"Whose Are
We" is a training taking place during UU Ministerial Association (UUMA)
chapter retreats around the country, starting in the Fall of 2010. The training starts with a sermon by Sarah
Lammert (now Director of Ministries and Faith Development at the UUA), followed
by a series of exercises.
The
Introduction
Rev. Lammert tells
of attending a UU summit meeting focused on lay and professional ministerial
formation.
We
started with a worship service, and the very first words uttered were those of
Rev. Jon Luopo, the minister of the University Unitarian Church of Seattle. He
told this story:
It
seems that in Seattle the interfaith clergy organization has a tradition of
asking senior colleagues to share their life odysseys. On this particular
occasion, a Roman Catholic Priest was telling his story, and he said that his
life had been in large measure a failure. He remembered the heady days of
Vatican II and how hopeful he and his generation of liberal priests had been
that real change was coming to the church he loved so dearly. And yet; these
many years later he felt that the church had if anything become hardened and
deeply conservative, and his dreams had not been realized.
Now,
this priest was someone who was valued among his interfaith colleagues, and
they were somewhat hurt and stunned by his revelation. And yet; one colleague
noted, despite the severity of his words, his demeanor seemed quite peaceful
and content. “How can you claim that your life was a failure, and yet appear so
calm and serene?” “I know whose I am.” replied the priest. “I know whose I am.”
The priest knows the
ground of his faith - even though the institution of the church has let him
down, his God is still there, permanent, reliable, and certain. Most UUs don't share the God of the priest. Even among UU theists, few pray to a personal God. And no UUs inhabit the certainty conferred by
two thousand years of tradition.
The UU ministers are
like the woman at the next table in When Harry
Met Sally: "I'll have what
she's having!" In an attempt to
find the priest's spiritual peace, they have taken a shortcut. Skip the path common to many faith traditions
-- years of religious practice and submission to God and Church. More importantly, skip the Certainty.
The
certainty that underlies the priest's response is fundamentally inconsistent
with Unitarian Universalism. Inherent to
liberal religion is humility with respect to the certainty of our beliefs, our
experience, and our conclusions. Whether willingly or not, we left the comfort of
certainty behind in the Enlightenment. Certainty is the price we paid when we turned away
from revealed truth to accept religious plurality -- and gained the freedom to
find and follow our own spiritual path.
The
First Exercise: "Whose are
You"
The participants
split into pairs, and sit facing each other.
They take the role of Questioner and Responder.
Questioner: "Whose are you?”
Responder: a short phrase or word that comes to mind
Questioner: “God be merciful. Whose are you?”
Responder: another short phrase or word that comes to
mind
Questioner: “God be merciful. Whose are you?”
….
They
continue in this way until bell rings, after about five minutes. (If you have every done an exercise like
this, five minutes can be a long
time.)
When I read this, my
immediate reaction was "Oh no - I know this exercise!" This is straight out of various Mind Dynamics
trainings. I have been in it. To sit across from someone and focus on them
for an extended period of time evokes a powerful emotional response. It is not something we normally do. Depending on your perspective, it is a
powerful method for getting deep inside the participants, or a cheap
psychological parlor trick. You can
evoke the emotional response, but you don't get deep answers out of cheap
parlor tricks. This exercise is
fundamentally manipulative. I'm not sure
if it has any appropriate use.
Then I recognized
the words of the Responder. It is the
Kyrie! Kýrie, eléison: Lord have mercy. These words have power - so powerful that
they have been used for over a millennium in the Catholic Mass. Like the exercise, the Mass uses the Kyrie in
a repetitive fashion. So the UU
ministers have reached out to an ancient liturgy and put it in a training
exercise. (Talk about cultural and
religious misappropriation.) After a few
repetitions of "God be merciful," where is the Responder's mind
expected to go?
Take note - I do not
have problem with God language. But I
think the story and the exercise go way beyond God language - it's hard to work with the story and exercise
without evoking theism - which
is a different thing entirely. And
there's the problem. Unitarian
Universalism, as understood by a great many of its congregants, allows for a
non-theistic stance. But this training
does not. It comprehends spirituality in
a dualistic theistic fashion - God as an entity not identical with the world,
who acts in the world.
This training has
chosen a cheap answer. The broader
culture understands a deity. Many who
have come in to Unitarian Universalism also understand a deity; they just don't
like the one in their old religion.
"Whose are We" takes the approach, to bring back spirituality, let's bring back
a deity. A personal, dualistic God is a
short path to spirituality - but it is not the only path. And it is a path that Unitarian Universalists
left with Theodore Parker's search for the Transient and Permanent.
Liberal skepticism
was not totally absent. In some
trainings, the participants revolted - they resisted the "God be
merciful" response, and chose their own less theistic response.
After
the Training (1)
The ministers were
encouraged to write sermons relating to the Whose Are We training. Many did so.
One esteemed
minister here the in Bay Area gave such a sermon. She named who she belonged to - her family,
her partner, her parents, her ministerial colleagues; the body of the earth,
whales, dolphins, and her watershed.
Missing from the
list was her congregation. Later that
year she left her church for a fund-raising job at the UUA. I guess we know whose she wasn't.
After
the Training (2)
The Pacific Central
District of the UUMA held their training in Fall 2010. During the same three day retreat the
ministers "heard each other's pain" about their relationship with
Cilla Raughley, the District Executive, and wrote a letter effectively
requesting her firing. I question the
professional wisdom of mixing a training session designed to evoke emotional
response with what should have been a thoughtful discussion about a covenantal
relationship with District staff and lay leadership.
God be merciful,
indeed.
