Moving up to two cents a day

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Hubby and I are visiting Philadelphia. I consider visiting the National Museum of American Jewish History and when I looked at the website noticed a coin savings box. The two-cents-a-week rate remind me of the “two cents a day plan” the Universalists (PDF) once ran for missions.

Two cents a day (even in 1896) doesn’t sound like very much, but would that be today? (This resource to the rescue.)

About 56.24 cents a day, or more than $205 a year. Far more than the usual “chalice lighters” ask of $60. Food — and funds — for thought.

The Unitarian center: UK edition

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Last year I made a somewhat silly mapping thought exercise: locating the geographic center of the membership of the Unitarian Universalist Association. That’s one way to describe what holds us all together, I suppose.

This year, I’ve sought out and geocoded all the member churches of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, in Great Britain. I have some observations and a map like I made for the UUA, but there are some lingering choices for how to render the map. So instead, I’ll tell where the centerpoint — er, centrepoint — for UK Unitarians, based on the reported quota numbers. (With the understanding that this probably isn’t an adequate way to measure membership, much less participation.)

The proper location is on a farm south of Barton-under-Needwood, in Staffordshire, just off the A38. Hardly the place for 3,600-plus Unitarians and Free Christians, who’d about double the population. So let’s call it nearby Burton upon Trent, which has about 44,000 residents and at least has a train station on a main line.

To tell you the truth, I was hoping for Ashby-de-la-Zouch (for the name alone).

A liberal license in a liberal service book

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Free-culture and free software advocates easily identify art and technology as fields of interest. Software to share creates common tools for further creativity and interoperability. Riffing on existing films, photos and songs unlocks creativity. Drawing from the public domain preserves human accomplishment and refreshes it. These are easy to see, but worship?

Copyright and liturgy — literally, “work for the common good” — exist (for some sensitive souls) in tension. The bonds on what comes from God, or what is given to God, ought to be loose, if made at all. Since this attitude predates personal printing — think spirit duplicators in the pre-computer ago — little wonder the limits of liberal licensing extend to redistribution or free (that is, sponsored) distribution (one example) and not adaptation. In the United States, the public domain ascription of the Episcopal Church’s prayerbook is the exception that proves the rule: it has been widely adapted and modified. Unitarian Universalists could take this attitude to heart.

Gladly, I can point to one example that should still be effect and, for some, still useful. From the introduction to the 1937 Services of Religion prepended to Hymns of the Spirit (the red hymnal).

All of the services are intended to encourage a larger participation by the people than is sometimes to be found in what is called “Congregational worship,” but which too often is carried on only by the minister and choir with the people as silent auditors. To ensure full participation by the people the printed services should be in their hands, and they should be instructed to respond audibly in those parts assigned to them, which are printed in bold face type. In churches which lack the printed services or wish to follow a simpler form, it is suggested that the order of service, in a sense of the main sequence of events be printed on cards to be placed in the pews or hinged into the hymn books, the minister drawing upon such of the materials included in this book as he finds suitable for the occasion. Ministers wishing to reprint single services on leaflets for use in their own churches are liberty to do so but the words “Copyright by the Beacon Press” must appear in every such reprint and reprints may not be sold.

An imperfect license, but there are better ones today. Might I suggest, like the Open Siddur Project, a free/libre license using their license decision tree? (It refers to these licenses.)

Making sense of the last UUA Board meeting

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The news about the recent Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees meeting, in UUWorld online magazine (“Consultant to aid impasse between UUA board, administration“) deserves plenty of attention. And you are welcome to leave comments here.

I’m left wondering if the board is micromanaging, if the higher reaches of the management team is incompetent, or (what I think the real issue is) that the Association is governed by a corporate management style that is unsuitable to our policy, tradition and culture. And perhaps even good sense: if you’re given to self-punishment let me recommend you read the Board packets from the last several years. It’s impossible to think anyone not on the Board would have the time or stamina to be able to follow the process, and its product looks more like generating more process than say, new congregations, building loans, print or online publications, a new hymnal, religion education materials, etc. etc. etc. And need I remind anyone that the President is as much an elected official as the Moderator?

Performance metrics, however well-loved in the nonprofit sector today, can lead staff to “work to the test” and (at their worst) can become a kind of performance art which steer the work of the Association staff away from practical work.

Unlike Unitarian Universalist minister and blogger Tom Schade, I think the $100,000 the board reserved for a consultant is a valid point of discussion. (I agree about the high dudgeon, though.) $100,000 is unlikely to go very far in the world of organizational management consulting; and perhaps no do more than a few elections to change the dynamics in the board and administration. Do the remaining staff members, already with constrained budgets, wonder how seriously their work is taken? If I was one of the ten staff members who lost their jobs in the last round of layoffs the idea, that $100,000 worth of consulting would be a bitter bit of news. Congregational leaders, themselves under tight budgets, are asked to make the “fair share” to the Annual Program Fund, and I would wonder if it was being well used.

In short, the UUA acts like the kind of legacy organization or corporation that persons my age and younger than I mock. (TPS reports anyone?) Losing the old headquarters building and the new regional structure — belt-tightening dressed as progress — will lessen long-cultivated emotional warmth to the UUA. This latest performance will convince “the next generation” (younger than me) that the best place to lead, to serve and to share resource may well be some place different than the current structures of the Unitarian Universalist Association. If you don’t like what you see, vote with your feet and support new ways.

Tool for blogging with a hurt hand

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I hurt my wrist a few weeks ago, making typing difficult. It also makes blogging difficult. So I have started using a tool called Voice Note, available for the Chrome browser as a plugin. It transcribes what I read into a microphone and all it takes a little light editing for me to compose what you are reading now.

Boy in the Bands approved.

A map of British Unitarian churches forthcoming

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The annual meeting of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches took place recently, and (to mark the occasion) I have taken to reading the annual report (for 2012, PDF). Minister and blogger Stephen Lingwood referred to it in early March. Grim numbers. So little wonder I had a parallel concern with the persons interviewed in the UUWorld magazine (“British “Unitarians rally to save faith from extinction” by Donald E. Skinner) about the fate of British Unitarianism. I had already been putting together a map, not unlike the one I created for UUA member congregations last year.

And I discovered is how difficult it would be for a newcomer to find many Unitarian churches, based on their web sites. There’s often plenty of information about teas and their seventeenth-century history, too many lack basic directions, maps, visitor expectations, parking or transit information. So I hope my map in addition to being a visual tool for understanding prospect for new church development — see my earlier concern about a lack of a church in Milton Keynes — can also be useful in helping newcomers find a church that already exist. A good website isn’t everything, but why make it harder for vistors than it needs to be?

And because as was suggested in UUWorld article I believe what’s happening with the British Unitarians is a bellwether of what’s to come in the United States. We’re larger, but by no means large and the same thing can happen to us.

The map is quite a labor but I hope to have it up later this week.

“Sending you prayer”

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Even before the explosions in Boston, I was thinking about the idea of sending prayers to another person. We often hear the expression “I’m sending you prayers” or the secularized version “I’m sending you my thoughts”, as if possible prayers or something that can be packaged and deliver like a letter or parcel. Group in too the often-heard “I’m praying for you.” And these were sent in earnest, if my Facebook or Twitter accounts were reliable. It happens any time something awful happens.

I thought about this again because I had been reading about medieval developments in with Christian worship as a way to better understand how and why we worship today. I think people on the liberal end of Christianity like to think that we have little in common with medieval worshippers, ascribing all of our traditions to the seventeenth century or later. The medieval worshiper would understand our attention to color, sound, and movement. They would get our candles and oil-lamps. But they might have a more difficult a time with how little we pray.

Ancient models a Christian prayer had overlapping cycles of the day weekend and year. While the monastics would pray seven or more times a day — every day — others might still pray twice a day. Add in a mass on Sunday and other devotions. Plenty of opportunity to get both the continuous rhythm of the life of Christ and the saints with other, special, topical occasions for prayer. Today’s Protestants are likely to see that whole week of devotion compressed into the Sunday service. The rhythm of our “faith history” — and with it, opportunities to learn through worship — is a rival for time with our special concerns. “Special concern” worship — votive worship — is largely seen in weddings and funerals, ordinations, and the occasional community Thanksgiving service and prayer breakfast. We see it in “candles of joy and concern” which our medieval ancestors would recognize — the original lighters of a votive candle — if perhaps without the public attention! We see it too in the vigils for the dead…

I think we Unitarian Universalists feel the tension between cyclical worship that teaches, and occasional worship that concentrates on particular themes. (Votive worship can address particular doctrines as well as particular people; for this, today, read worship in reference to a particular cause or movement.) We feel the tension, but may not have the language to describe the variety, which makes our worship look ad hoc or random. (Or simply be ad hoc or random.)

So Sunday — or today in your own private prayer or thoughts — consider that “sending prayer” is as core to the faithful life as the best-heard sermon or best-sung praise.

The Universalist church in Harriman, Tennessee

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I’ve known for years that there was a Universalist Church in Harriman, Tennessee, and that it was proposed in 1890, Young People’s Christian Union (the Universalist young adult organization) as a domestic mission.

But why Harriman, Tennessee? Why not its larger neighbor, Knoxville? Indeed, why the then-stony soils for evangelism called Tennessee?

I found a clue in a guide for the YPCU 1896 Jersey City, New Jersey meeting. One of the sponsored events was a visit to a new development on Staten Island: Prohibition Park, a wholesome place for non-drinkers to live. Harriman, too, was established in 1898 as prohibition town with a national scope and an eye to honest industry. Universalist grain magnate Ferdinand Schumacher was an investor. So I’d think settlement utopianism was the attraction.

The church is long-gone, but understand that one of its windows survives in the United Methodist church in Winterville, Georgia, near Athens.

UUA cuts; covenant language

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Sad news — not an April Fool’s joke — that the Unitarian Universalist Association has laid off ten staff members due to budget shortfalls. As an organization budget hacker, I know that making difficult decisions is, by definition, difficult. Not having the facts, I won’t opine about the cuts except to express my sympathy for those who have lost their jobs, and to those who will have to work harder by their absence.

On the other hand, the news came within a finger-wagging press release from UUA president Peter Morales, which includes,

We rely on the covenant between our member congregations and the Association to enable us to provide the services and support your congregation needs.

When our congregations, for a variety of reasons, do not fully contribute to the Association, we must work to decrease our expenditures while sustaining a high level of support for congregations and individuals.

And so once again, covenant is trotted out as a tool to scold. (When do you ever hear covenant described as a tool for happiness?)

And scold whom? The very congregations who create the UUA. And so if I’m going to give the UUA’s leadership council the benefit of the doubt, so much more will I give it to the hundreds of congregational decision-makers who have their own tough choices.

Theological language will only go so far. The institution of the UUA provides services for its members, though I’m often left wondering if the services provided are worth the money or trouble. There are other avenues for almost eveything the UUA provides, if you’re willing to look. (Ministerial fellowship might be an exception, but the ministerial “oversupply” blunts the power of the guild.) Emotional appeals will only got you so far, and with tight money and a culture that’s more connected, secular and tolerant, they won’t go very far.