Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between "religion" and "spirituality," especially in regards to how it affects one's commitment to a particular community of faith and/or faith tradition. And I just ran across this interview with author Marilynne Robinson in the current issue of Sojourners Magazine (http://www.sojo.net/). I think the following passage gets to the heart of the issue:

Interviewer: John Ames, the narrator of Gilead, loves language. He often refers to the etymological roots of words. I’m curious how you understand the difference between the roots of “religion” (i.e. “to bind together again”) and spirituality (i.e. “wind or breath”). Modern culture seems much more taken with spirituality than religion. How do you understand the difference between the two?

Robinson: Biblically, the creation of religion came about with the descent of the Spirit. But I think modern religion has come to represent the customary rigidities that settle down over human practice. This has always happened, historically. When I see favorable change occur—that is, when religion lives up to its best rather than worst definition—I consider it to be the reinhabiting of religion by the Spirit of God.

Spirituality sometimes becomes the invention of a life that makes us emotionally comfortable, and thus doesn’t address the very real demands of a religion. Serious engagement with any religion requires the adherent to acknowledge its demands and difficulty.

One popular definition of religion has been as an opiate, that its purpose was to make people comfortable in the world. Some still accept this as the true definition and have tried to re-create it, to use religion to make themselves comfortable. But any of the major religions, seriously understood, clearly makes you uncomfortable in the world.
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One of my goals for this blog is to give you some idea of what I do as the Lifespan Program Director for Prairie Star. I think the past few days are a pretty good example of what a typical week is like:

On Sunday morning I visited one of the larger UU congregations in the Twin Cities to speak at their forum about attracting young adults. I proposed that we acknowledge the limitations of the current UUA-designated young adult age range (18-35) and begin to concentrate on specific life course ministries to folks within that range, e.g., campus ministry, young adult singles, young adult couples, and young adult parents. (Later in the week, I ran across an article in the journal Family Ministry: Empowering through Faith about a church that offers "Great Date" nights for young adult couples; I'll write more about that in a follow up post.)

I took Monday off as a Sabbath day.

On Tuesday I went into the office, sorted through various e-mails and snail mails, answered phone messages, and visited with a youth and young adult coordinator at another of the larger UU congregations in the Twin Cities. We discussed our plans for campus ministry at the University of Minnesota next year (we're hoping to offer a series of monthly meetings with meals, worship, and some programming as a baseline experience that other programs can be built around).

Wednesday I worked in the office in the morning (e-mails, phone messages, etc.), and continued to make arrangements for some trainings we'll be offering in Prairie Star next fall: two different opportunities for OWL trainings, and a Renaissance Module in Teacher Training. I came home around noon for lunch and worked a bit at home before heading off to Mankato, Minnesota for a six o'clock meeting with some folks about their RE plans for next year. While there I was told by one volunteer that sometimes it's a choice between church and family on Sunday morning, which I see as a real problem. I'll follow up on that in a future post as well.

Yesterday I got up early and drove to Frontenac, Minnesota for a meeting of Guy UU Ministers, which was apparently cancelled because no one was there! I decide to make the best of it and scope out some locations in southern Washington County that might be appropriate for a start up UU congregation. I was not at all surprised to find that the absolutely best possible place to put a new congregation was already taken by--surprise!--the Mormons. No matter what you think of their decidedly different take on Christianity, they do offer several things: a clear set of values, a family-orientation, and remarkable skill when it comes to growing a movement. I'd like to do a follow up post on this with some maps to show you exactly where this LDS congregation is and why it's clearly the best place to put a congregation in Washington County, Minnesota. At any rate, once I returned home I spent the afternoon working on the usual e-mails and phone calls.

Today I took the morning off to work out at the local Y (their motto: "Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women"). Henry David went along and visited his friends in the Kid's Care center. When I picked him up, the caregivers told me that he was waving bye-bye to everyone who left the room! And now I'm back home, working on my blog and managing the unending stream of e-mails and continuing to read material about lifespan faith development. I still need to return a few phone calls. A priority project for today is getting the Prairie Star District LREDA Chapter web page up and running.

So. Truth is this was a slow week for me. And remember, I'm working 3/4 time now in order to spend more time with my family. Boone, our Annual Youth Election Con was last weekend, and if I were working full time, I would have started the week off by driving back from central Iowa on Sunday afternoon after spending three to four days with our district youth. (Thankfully, our district YaYA--Youth and Young Adult specialist--was there instead.) Most other UUA district program consultants do work full time and their schedules are even more hectic than mine. Sometimes I wonder if these jobs aren't designed to keep us so busy that we can't do anything but maintain the status quo. If that's true, I think we're in trouble. We need to be as innovative as possible when it comes to reaching out to individuals and families that might find something of value in our liberal religious movement. I hope I'll always be able to find a little time to read and reflect on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Perhaps if enough of us do that, we'll start being able to give those Mormons a run for their money.
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I'd like to share with you the "charge to the graduates" that my wife, Julia, gave on May 10 at a reception for the students graduating from Hamline University's Graduate School of Education. I think it speaks to all of us, no matter what our vocation may be. (By the way, Julia was asked to do the charge this year because she was given the GSE "Faculty of the Year" award last year!)

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what charge I want to leave you with, and I’ve finally settled on this: BE COMPASSIONATELY ENGAGED IN THE WORK YOU DO! Compassion, I believe, is one of the most powerful ways to work for change.

Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic activist, notes that compassion differs from empathy. We often feel empathy when someone close to us goes through a difficult period. Berger says: “Real compassion is when we [have a spontaneous neurological response] to those who are unrelated to us or whom we have been culturally shaped to distance ourselves from. In other words: our enemies.” We don’t often think in terms of “enemies” when we think of teaching and learning, at least I hope we don’t. But certainly any time we deal with people, as we constantly do in the classroom, in meetings with other teachers, in conversations with parents and supervisors, we’re bound to encounter folks who just see things differently than we do, people who may at times feel like enemies. Thomas Merton defines compassion as “the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” Is it possible, then, that we can be aware of our interdependence with these very enemies?

I’d like to explore with you 3 practices or paths to compassion, and try to relate them to situations we teachers may find ourselves in. These practices are mindfulness, curiosity, and deep listening.

Mindfulness: Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is a doctor interested in the connection between mind and body, describes a 5th grade classroom in Utah where the teacher gives her students opportunities for mindfulness. Each day, the children have a chance to focus inwardly: “In the process of focusing on their breathing and watching their thoughts come and go, they learn that they don’t have to react to every thought that comes into their minds, that just because the mind is jumping around and agitated at times doesn’t mean they have to jump with it.… I noticed a peaceful atmosphere in her classroom with the students cooperating and discussing their work together. There was genuine interest and concern among the students and the teacher.”

Curiosity: One of the biggest obstacles to relating to those who we see as different is a lack of imagination. If we can approach an encounter with the “other” with an attitude of curiosity rather than judgment, there’s a good chance that we’ll learn something in the process. I think about the student teachers that I work with in their practicum settings. When I’m in a bad mood, all I can focus on is the things that they are doing “wrong.” When I can remember to be curious about what will happen next, about their motivations for making the teaching choices they’ve made, about how their learners will respond to an activity, there is much more room for learning for all of us.

Listening: Mary Rose O’Reilley, who teaches English at University of St. Thomas, notes that “In academic culture most listening is critical listening. We tend to pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we critique the student’s or the colleague’s ideas; we mentally grade and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen with an agenda.” Contrast this with the type of listening Brenda Ueland, a Minnesota writer, describes in the following words: “I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all--which is so important, too--to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.…This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.” Can you imagine what all could happen in a classroom, in a faculty room, in a school board meeting where THIS type of listening occurs?

So, those are the 3 practices that I propose for moving closer to compassion: mindfulness, curiosity, and deep listening. Of course, any one of these can take a whole lifetime of practice, and we’d still never do it perfectly.

The examples I’ve given have mostly to do with interactions in the classroom, with peers, with supervisors. But I think the real power of compassion is that is can lead to change not only on an interpersonal level, but at a larger, social justice level. By practicing compassion, my heart is cracked open to see the injustices around me, and I can’t help but respond actively. Martin Luther King, The Dalai Lama, Ghandi and many others who have worked for equity in our world have spoken of the importance of having compassion for our enemies.

So, beware: practicing compassion is a life-long pursuit that will ultimately change your life and the world around you.
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I'm sorry that I didn't post anything last week, but it happened to be one of the busiest weeks of the year around Prairie Star. There was a meeting of our district board, followed by our Annual Meeting in Iowa City, Iowa, followed by the district's joint UUMA/LREDA retreat. But I'm finally back home in the Twin Cities and I've got a few moments for a brief post.

As you may have noticed, I spend a lot of time trying to come up with ways to broaden our definition of "family." I've written about it a few times in the past here. Now I'd like to share with you a couple of resources I've found that do an exellent job of making the word "family" more inclusive. The first can be found on a new blog we're starting here in Prairie Star called Faith Developments. It's from Kate Zabertini, the religious educator in Rochester, Minnesota. Take a look at how she's eloquently broadened the use of "family."

The second is from Patricia D. Fosarelli's book Family Ministry Desk Reference. Fosarelli is an M.D. with a D.Min., and her book does a fantastic job of showing how many pastoral care issues are really family ministry issues. Her book is divided up into 15 brief chapters that present the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of various family issues as well as possible individual and congregational responses. Here's what she covers:

The addition of a family member through birth, adoption, foster care, or elder care
The loss of a child in pregnancy, at birth, or in infancy
The loss of a family member through death or divorce
Single-parent and stepfamilies
The sudden loss of possessions, status, pets, employment, or savings
Moving
Chronic illness and lack of adequate health insurance or medical care
Aging
Substitute care (child care) and latchkey children
Adolescent sexuality, pregnancy, and parenthood
School failure, poverty, unemployment, and racism
Substance abuse, alcoholism, and depression
Child abuse
Domestic and societal violence
Media

This is a pretty diverse group of challenges, to be sure, but it's obvious that every one of us will face one or more of them at some point in our lives. And it's also clear that if we, as religious leaders, don't take a family perspective when dealing with these challenges, we could be missing an opportunity to minister to the whole person as well as the whole family system.

Family ministry is more than ministering to households that happen to be made up of one or two parents with one or more children in their care. It's about ministering to all persons across the course of their entire lives, paying special attention to how their family systems affect the way they respond to life's challenges. Anything less than that is not family ministry. Nor is it comprehensive pastoral care.
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