Our Minister's Reflections
Reflections From Stacy Craig’s Desk
Time Is Now
As I have been preparing ideas for the February 6 service on our relationship with time, I’ve been reflecting on the time we are in now. It’s February. We spent time in lockdown and isolation trying to control the contagion, and the great efforts and sacrifices saved lives—many of whom we don’t even know. Now we are in a new stage where the variants are so contagious they cannot be controlled, and our leaders are trying to keep disruptions to schools, healthcare, and the economy to a minimum while encouraging vaccines as the best way to prevent serious illness and death. If the models are correct, the omicron variant should have peaked by the time you read this. The steep climb of infections is predicted to be followed by a steep decline. While we let this wave of COVID crash across our lives, we’ll gather virtually for worship services, with a strong hope that we’ll move to all in-person plus live-streamed services starting in March.
All plans are subject to reality.
One of the most typical responses to vulnerability is to shield. This can include numbing (whatever this looks like for each individual) and disconnecting from others. I’d like to encourage you to make February a month of connection. If pandemic time is characterized by isolation, it could also be characterized as the time when we learned new ways to stay connected. Find safe ways to stay connected: call someone on the phone every day, ask a friend or neighbor to have an outdoor driveway chat, be authentically glad to see those at the store or post office, write a card, start a gratitude text exchange, speak to a bird, bake something for someone, send valentines to librarians, healthcare workers, or anyone you’ve appreciated lately. Let’s not wait to connect when it is safer/warmer/happier/easier. What does it mean to embrace the phrase: the time is now?
In care, Stacy Craig
Wellness for 2022
How can one weep for someone one has never met? This is the question that went through my mind as I sobbed reading the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had died. He died at the age of 90 on December 26, 2021. Perhaps you have a prophetic voice—a writer, speaker, singer, or even a friend—who has been deeply impactful in your life. For me, it is Desmond Tutu. His work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and his commitment to restorative justice are things I’ve returned to again and again during times of upheaval and instances of injustice. The thing about Arch, as he was affectionately called, was that he held all sides accountable. What I learned from him was how to stop ‘othering’ and instead consider common humanity. I learned forgiveness. His work has deepened my understanding of collective trauma and inspired the vision for collective healing.
During the month of January, through small groups and in worship, we’ll be exploring intention. Intention is, I believe, living into one’s self and truth no matter the circumstances one is in. Often, I find myself reacting to conditions and allowing this to dictate where my attention goes. Bringing attention back to intention is freeing oneself from being swung around by external forces. I feel being true to his intention of peace and reconciliation is something Desmond Tutu demonstrated and manifested in all aspects of his work. In celebration of his life, work, and joy, and in celebration of all those who carry the intention for peace and reconciliation, I’ve requested to screen Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times on Monday, January 17, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Wellness to you in the New Year! May intention help lead the way into 2022.
Stacy
Connection
This past month, I was reminded of how interwoven our lives are in the Chequamegon Bay. Whether it is the care and wisdom of an elder; showing up wholeheartedly in one’s job, in community service or leadership; or avocations such as music and theater, we take care of one another. Our lives inevitably intersect in profound ways that are, perhaps, only possible in rural settings. The cycle is powerful, perhaps even numinous. For example, the CUUF Board sees stress points and provides problem-solving leadership and care, allowing me and others to adapt and innovate to connect with more people, which in turn allows us to care for those who are caring for others and for us. Sometimes there are flashes of insight and I had this over the last month. This… this… is the possibility of what Rev. Dr. King and others have called Beloved Community.
All of this requires deep connection, which is even more complicated than usual during the ongoing high rates of COVID in our area. As we move forward with planning an in-person holiday service, there is much care and consideration in how to do this to maximize connection and reduce risk. This means we are prioritizing connection over perfection and care over convenience. No one should feel obligated to come in person just because there is an in-person option. We see you, and we’ll do our best to create a livestreamed service that helps you “be in the room” from wherever you are. We hope that the outdoor spiral and outdoor fellowship after the service will provide some middle ground for low-risk connections.
If you or those around you have needs that are not being met, please reach out so we can begin working towards new possibilities. Some of these changes are slow and some are tricky but know there is an enveloping circle of care in this region. Let’s stay resilient, together.
In peace and care,
Stacy Craig
Finding Our Spiritual Foundation
Many people who find a spiritual home with Unitarian Universalism (UU) didn’t grow up in this tradition, and I frequently get the question: where did UU come from? Some traditions, including religious traditions, live in the past. Others forget their roots and are blown into whatever modern fad speaks to them. UU fellowships today look different from where they came from. UU Historian Susan Ritchie believes that to know one’s history is a bit radical for our times as we are often swayed by popular culture. History, she says, helps us preserve identity and what makes us distinct.
American Unitarianism and Universalism began as two separate entities yet they both started in North America. Unitarian’s ancestry can be traced back to a liberal branch of the Puritans who split away. They adopted the Puritan’s radical organizational model: that centralized power corrupts the church and so the laity, the people, through a democratic process, govern and choose their leadership. The people voluntarily contribute funds to the church, which is where the tradition of offering plates arose. There is no higher authority yet churches are affiliated with one another and connected through a larger spiritual covenant.
Some have credited the Unitarians with forming our current system of democracy and while this is likely a stretch, it is clear that Unitarians were influential in developing the democratic process we still use today. We also see many of the early Unitarian traditions in our fellowships today: self-organized, self-governed, and they call their own ministers. Lay leadership is key, the democratic process is used throughout the system to make decisions, while consent, voluntary contributions and covenant inform how they gather.
This early Unitarian split also began articulating the source of truth. The Puritans held the Bible as authority. Unitarian thinkers and writers, including the Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing, began to explore how logic may also be a source of truth, and what is on the inside–what is true to us–could also be a source of truth. Today we see this as well in UU communities, who affirm truth both from outside sources such as science, Jewish and Christian traditions, and humanist writings, along with internal sources of truth such as the voice of consciousness.
Universalism wasn’t a branch that grew off from a tradition, but is likened to a field of wildflowers that popped up around the countryside. Universalism, I would say, was a reframing of what was told as an ultimate truth of the Protestant churches at the time: our souls are eternal and some of us are going to burn in a painful, awful hell forever, and there might be nothing we can do about it. This is, essentially, the Calvinist doctrine of double pre-destination. What became to be known as Universalists were people and communities who said ‘no’ to this supposed truth. Instead, God’s love embraces us all–a universal salvation–and we don’t need the threat of hell because doing good is part of being human. Circuit riders brought this message to rural areas of Pennsylvania and New England, and it took hold in people’s hearts and minds who then formed churches. There is a famous Universalist story that a man named Thomas Potter built a chapel in 1760 because he believed that someone would eventually come to preach a gospel of love. The chapel sat empty for ten years until Potter met John Murray, who had been excommunicated because he believed in an all-loving God. Potter asked Murray to preach at his chapel and Murray declined, saying he was going back to Europe. Potter asked that if the wind didn’t blow and the ship was unable to depart, that Murray would just preach once. The wind didn’t blow, Murray preached to a packed chapel on Sunday morning, and Murray stayed and the first Universalist congregation was founded in the U.S.
The Universalist church was described as a family, and the most confusing thing for members was when they invited someone to join their family and they were refused. Those whom the family symbol resonated with, such as union workers who believed in the brotherhood of man, found Universalist churches to resonate, as a spiritual home.
Using the language of spiritual home and spiritual family is not some feel good cliché, but is actually rooted in this tradition. Unitarian Universalists merged to become a consolidated identity in 1961 and they brought many of their distinct traditions with them but worked to find common ground as well. In the 1980’s, a group of women requested UU principles be reviewed to include gender inclusive language. This opened up a whole process of retelling the story of who we are. Using grassroots, democratic process of engaging congregations and fellowships in study and dialogue, the sources of belief were separated out from the principles. The six sources allow for the plurality and diversity of beliefs, while the seven principles articulate the theological common ground of the UU faith. If there is a shared belief perhaps it is this: by honoring diversity and plurality, we can achieve a unity to heal a fractured world. If this is what you are looking for, welcome home!
Time to Get Back to Normal
How often have I said over the past year, “When things get back to normal…” knowing full well that I do not want to return to many of the ways that things were, nor call them normal. Yet life has a sense of suspended reality to it. It’s difficult to live in the present when everything feels like it is shifting on a continuous basis. As with any change, the challenge is to find a new normal when we aren’t even sure what is possible. I’ve reflected with several people about this topic and we can all find things that we want to be a part of a new normal:
- Daily practice of self-care.
- Daily walk(s), especially exploring one’s own city, roads, or parks.
- Slowing down with family.
- Playing music/singing on a daily basis.
- Investing time and energy into the things that give back to us.
As the Worship Committee met last fall, we began to see a theme emerge in the speakers that were being proposed: they all spoke to what was being unveiled during this time of change. Our speakers in 2021 will engage some of the systems, practices, and opportunities that we may want to consider for a new normal. As we begin a New Year, let us take time to listen to that which calls us to reconnect as a global community whose fate and health are interconnected.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
On September 23, I tuned in to the UU the Vote “Gather the Spirit” event. It started with a DJ spinning records as we were reminded that what we are working for—promoting a strong democracy, countering voter suppression, and community organizing—is something to celebrate and should be pleasurable.
There are several goals for UU the Vote but number one is that every person in a UU fellowship across the country will vote. The service included highlights from fellowships which are sending postcards, organizing phone and texting banks, and finding creative ways to reach out to voters. As we heard highlights from around the country, one of the organizers reminded us that a honeybee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. When it feels like goals and challenges are insurmountable, we don’t need to work harder. We need to work together. Take shifts for the revolution.
While I really enjoyed this event, what is gnawing at me right now is that I’ve noticed a growing gulf between neighbors, family members, and friends. I feel like I’m being asked to take sides that I don’t believe in. I feel like everyone is working for a revolution, but we’re not working for the same one. In my bi-monthly column for the Ashland Daily Press, I wrote about how the Enneagram has been helping me to connect to others, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from it. Below is an excerpt from the article as I know not everyone gets the paper.
As the U.S. presidential election nears, when our differences can be more divisive than ever, I’ve found working with the Enneagram to be especially helpful in finding connection with others and calm within myself.
The word Enneagram comes from the Greek words Ennea, which means nine, and gram, which means a figure. It describes an ancient figure, one that predates Greek culture, of a diagram with a circle enclosing a nine-pointed star. Many Greek philosophers engaged the Enneagram as a way of talking about the way the ego and soul could become disconnected, or as a way to explain the soul, or elements of our beings that were eternal. The Christian Desert Fathers engaged the Enneagram, as did Islamic mystics, such as Sufis. The ancient symbols and interpretations have made a resurgence in the past fifty years. The current research and application of the Enneagram is similar to Myers-Briggs or other personality tests which help to identify different patterns of thought, feeling, and action. These patterns were created as we developed to help us survive but also to find satisfaction. The Enneagram is based on the premise that there are nine categories which describe our personality patterns and the implications they have for shielding, or protecting, ourselves. To be aware of this is to understand how we relate to times of stress and safety.
One of my professors, John Lee, said to me once that we must know the self to lose the self. We were discussing how the spiritual practice of centering prayer offers an emptying of the self to create a direct connection with the divine. Mystical traditions especially focus on the practices of recognizing the ego self as just one layer of our beings. The Enneagram provides a tool for this self-emptying through self-awareness, which can help us integrate the spiritual aspects of our lives.
After engaging several books and the online tools on The Enneagram Institute’s website, I have concluded that I am a seven. The Enneagram teaches me that I often find distractions, especially pleasureful ones, when I encounter pain or hardship. As I see more hostility on both sides of the political spectrum during election season, I feel myself wanting to change the radio, to change the conversation, to try to make everything better with a good meal and a walk in the woods. Yet I am a spiritual being, one that relies on connection and who knows that we all have a common destiny. While I am intolerant to hate or things that cause another harm, I can use the Enneagram to help me accept differences, to stay curious about others’ thoughts and actions, and to understand my own patterns which lead to disconnection.
Respecting our differences also helps me know how to apply the Platinum Rule: to treat people not as how I would want to be treated, but how they would like to be treated. After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that we are all in this together.
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
by Stacy Craig
All Plans Subject to Reality: CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
Welcome to the 2020 fall series of the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship! Like all organizations, we reviewed several scenarios for how we could come together this fall. I want to take a moment to outline our plans for worship and programming, knowing that all plans right now are subject to reality!
This year we will have a hybrid of online, intergenerational worship services along with several in-person, outdoor, socially distanced rituals and experiences for our special services. With this combination, we care for our most vulnerable by minimizing exposure while focusing on accessibility to our services. I hope this combination will encourage strong participation and identity with CUUF across lifespans during these physically distanced times.
The first example of this hybrid model is in September. We will have both an in-person, outdoor “On the Water” service on Long Lake outside of Washburn as well as an online Water Service which will be live and interactive on Zoom video conferencing. We are planning a similar combination for our All Hallowtide Service, Holiday Service, and Flower Service. Whether in person or online, we will focus on providing safe access and engaging messages across lifespans. Your feedback and participation (which is part of our democratic structure) are so very welcome this season as we consider multiple points of view on how COVID-19 is affecting us all differently.
In addition to the hybrid worship services and rituals, we will also offer small group programming and gatherings either online or socially distanced. These include:
The Other Sunday—Held online the first Sunday of each month, we will have different speakers and presenters on current events, issues, or topics with discussion to follow.
UU Women—Held online on the third Sunday of every month (unless there is a service conflict), this is a time for informal conversation, check-ins, and mutual sharing and support.
Grief Group—In collaboration with Jan Wise, we will offer an in-person grief group to help process transitions and loss once it is safe to gather in person. If anyone would like to process loss and grief individually, or is seeking spiritual direction, Jan Wise offers one-on-one socially distanced sessions on her porch. Call or email Jan to set up a time. Cost for sessions is freewill contribution.
Anti-Racism Study Group—CUUF plans to host a study group that will start in October. In addition, we are coordinating with area faith communities who are also offering online anti-racism book clubs, movie discussions, and training. These will be hosted by a particular church or fellowship, but open to all. We will include information about these opportunities in our newsletter and emails.
UU Spirituality Course—Beginning in January, we will offer a 6-week online course to help deepen our understanding and identity of UU history, thought, practice, principles, and sources.
Outdoor Gatherings—Some people have asked about having outdoor gatherings such as a walk, hike, yard games, campfire, or other socially distanced activities. We welcome these suggestions and invite anyone to offer an activity, and we will help communicate and publicize the opportunity to everyone in CUUF.
Our UU principles and sources help guide our search for meaning and truth. Let us come back together, reconnect, and call upon them now to help guide us during this difficult and powerful season. This is the season of our presidential election, when we may see the best and worst of each other. All will have to work hard to see the perspectives of other people while also calling out those things that are wrong because they threaten another’s wellbeing. This is the season of yellow, the fields and gardens giving a burst of warmth as the days begin to shorten. We reconnect as we enter the season of the harvest. Whatever weight or worry you may be carrying about this upcoming season, you do not have to carry it alone. Whatever delight or celebration you carry, we share this with you. I’m looking forward to reconnecting this fall.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
Bound Together
Bound Together
by Stacy Craig
“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Crafted by a group of Aboriginal rights activists from Queensland, Australia in the 1970s
On May 21, I was on a video conference with the Climate Change Task Force, which is facilitated by Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. A ‘Zoom-bomber’ entered and started playing hideous, racist music, with the N-word being repeated over and over. Since the meeting was open to the public, and the task force is large, it took a while for the meeting coordinators to mute the intruder and remove them from the meeting. The meeting went on as if nothing had happened.
Four days later, George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit money. George had been an athlete in high school, a rapper, and was working security in a nightclub before he lost his job due to the COVID-19 shutdown. During the arrest, Officer Derek Chauvin used a hold method where he placed his knee on the back of George’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. The incident was captured on video and shows George beginning to bleed from the nose. We hear him call that he can’t breathe. We hear him call out for his mother, who died two years ago. We see his body go limp. The knee stays on the neck, despite pleas from onlookers. Following his death, riots and protests have broken out all over the world, with a clear message: we cannot go on as if nothing has happened.
A few years ago, Pastor Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (the church were Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor), wrote, “If white churches and their pastors will not stand in solidarity with the poor and against deep structures of racial injustice such as America’s prison-industrial complex, ‘the new Jim Crow,’ then they will have demonstrated that they are every bit as much invested in the maintenance of white privilege and white supremacy as were their forebears of a different era…theology that is not lived is not theology at all.”
For a long time, the black church has been speaking out about the issue of a justice system that treats people of color differently than white people. To put it very simply, Unitarianism means we come from a common source; Universalism means we share a common destiny. In the middle of this, our experienced lives, there is a common injustice for people of color in America. Are our UU beliefs false, or is it our lived experience that must change for us to have a theology that can hold up to Warnock’s critique? For too long, we have all been doing what we did in the climate change task force meeting. As Lt. Governor Barnes said, we soldiered on.
I’m done soldiering on. Police brutality against people of color can change. How do we do this? This powerful quote reminds us: “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This isn’t a race issue, or a people of color issue, this is an issue of what it means to be human. We come from a common source, we move to a common destiny; truly, our liberation is bound together.
At the memorial service for George Floyd that was held in Minneapolis, Reverend Al Sharpton asked all who gathered to stand in George’s name and say: get your knee off our necks. He called for this to be when we make America great for the first time.
Rite of Passage
Rite of Passage
Right before I started this article, I submitted my final paper for seminary. While I still have a clinical course to attend this summer, completing the four years of class work feels both exhilarating and disorienting. We often mark major transitions in our lives with ceremonies to help us move through the heap of emotions and experiences. We move between spaces: from the familiar to the mysterious, from the places we’ve been to the place we are going. Like our high school seniors and college graduates, the ceremonies to help guide this transition have been cancelled for me. We will have an online Zoom celebration and I’m going to bake myself a cake and go fly fishing on the day I would have graduated. I’m really looking forward to all of this, especially if the cake turns out. Yet I’ve found myself reflecting this week on ceremony and transitions.
A graduation ceremony recognizes the individual journey but also connects a shared achievement to create a rite of passage from student to graduate. It honors the hard work of the past and connects this to the hope and dreams for the future, even though the way ahead may not be clear. A metaphor for this is a threshold. We come to a place that lies between the life we have known and the life ahead of us.
Graduates aren’t the only ones at a threshold. All of us are becoming aware of the slow adaptation from quarantine to the world opening up. Like our graduates, we might feel like ceremony, ritual, and community would help right now.
Artist and pastor Jan Richardson has written about thresholds in several of her books and poems. She writes,
I am still fascinated by thresholds—those places we come to that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us. I am continually intrigued—and eager, and fearful, and amazed, and mystified—to enter into those spaces where we have left the landscape of the familiar, the habitual, and stand poised at the edge of a terrain whose contours we can hardly see or even imagine.
Whether we arrive at these between-places by design, by accident, or by the choices that others have made for us, the threshold can be a place of wonders. It can also be chaotic, discombobulating, and even terrifying. Yet a threshold, chosen or otherwise, is a place of wild possibility. A threshold invites and calls us to stop. To take a look around. To imagine. To dream. To question. To pray.
In our services this past month, we explored the early spring rooting that happens beneath the snow despite the transitions of freeze, thaw, rain, sleet, snow, wind, and sun. We explored the one-note choir, which can go on indefinitely because others will hold the note while we take a breath. As we move across thresholds, be rooted deeply in who you are and what you value. Take the time to dream, question, pray, and pause as you move forward. And as movement happens, remember we will not be alone in the work ahead. We will re-root not in some new, distant future but in who we are, as a community which holds belovedness and radical interdependence at the core of our being.
In peace and the place of wild possibility,
Stacy Craig
Time Is Now
As I have been preparing ideas for the February 6 service on our relationship with time, I’ve been reflecting on the time we are in now. It’s February. We spent time in lockdown and isolation trying to control the contagion, and the great efforts and sacrifices saved lives—many of whom we don’t even know. Now we are in a new stage where the variants are so contagious they cannot be controlled, and our leaders are trying to keep disruptions to schools, healthcare, and the economy to a minimum while encouraging vaccines as the best way to prevent serious illness and death. If the models are correct, the omicron variant should have peaked by the time you read this. The steep climb of infections is predicted to be followed by a steep decline. While we let this wave of COVID crash across our lives, we’ll gather virtually for worship services, with a strong hope that we’ll move to all in-person plus live-streamed services starting in March.
All plans are subject to reality.
One of the most typical responses to vulnerability is to shield. This can include numbing (whatever this looks like for each individual) and disconnecting from others. I’d like to encourage you to make February a month of connection. If pandemic time is characterized by isolation, it could also be characterized as the time when we learned new ways to stay connected. Find safe ways to stay connected: call someone on the phone every day, ask a friend or neighbor to have an outdoor driveway chat, be authentically glad to see those at the store or post office, write a card, start a gratitude text exchange, speak to a bird, bake something for someone, send valentines to librarians, healthcare workers, or anyone you’ve appreciated lately. Let’s not wait to connect when it is safer/warmer/happier/easier. What does it mean to embrace the phrase: the time is now?
In care, Stacy Craig
Wellness for 2022
How can one weep for someone one has never met? This is the question that went through my mind as I sobbed reading the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had died. He died at the age of 90 on December 26, 2021. Perhaps you have a prophetic voice—a writer, speaker, singer, or even a friend—who has been deeply impactful in your life. For me, it is Desmond Tutu. His work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and his commitment to restorative justice are things I’ve returned to again and again during times of upheaval and instances of injustice. The thing about Arch, as he was affectionately called, was that he held all sides accountable. What I learned from him was how to stop ‘othering’ and instead consider common humanity. I learned forgiveness. His work has deepened my understanding of collective trauma and inspired the vision for collective healing.
During the month of January, through small groups and in worship, we’ll be exploring intention. Intention is, I believe, living into one’s self and truth no matter the circumstances one is in. Often, I find myself reacting to conditions and allowing this to dictate where my attention goes. Bringing attention back to intention is freeing oneself from being swung around by external forces. I feel being true to his intention of peace and reconciliation is something Desmond Tutu demonstrated and manifested in all aspects of his work. In celebration of his life, work, and joy, and in celebration of all those who carry the intention for peace and reconciliation, I’ve requested to screen Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times on Monday, January 17, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Wellness to you in the New Year! May intention help lead the way into 2022.
Stacy
Connection
This past month, I was reminded of how interwoven our lives are in the Chequamegon Bay. Whether it is the care and wisdom of an elder; showing up wholeheartedly in one’s job, in community service or leadership; or avocations such as music and theater, we take care of one another. Our lives inevitably intersect in profound ways that are, perhaps, only possible in rural settings. The cycle is powerful, perhaps even numinous. For example, the CUUF Board sees stress points and provides problem-solving leadership and care, allowing me and others to adapt and innovate to connect with more people, which in turn allows us to care for those who are caring for others and for us. Sometimes there are flashes of insight and I had this over the last month. This… this… is the possibility of what Rev. Dr. King and others have called Beloved Community.
All of this requires deep connection, which is even more complicated than usual during the ongoing high rates of COVID in our area. As we move forward with planning an in-person holiday service, there is much care and consideration in how to do this to maximize connection and reduce risk. This means we are prioritizing connection over perfection and care over convenience. No one should feel obligated to come in person just because there is an in-person option. We see you, and we’ll do our best to create a livestreamed service that helps you “be in the room” from wherever you are. We hope that the outdoor spiral and outdoor fellowship after the service will provide some middle ground for low-risk connections.
If you or those around you have needs that are not being met, please reach out so we can begin working towards new possibilities. Some of these changes are slow and some are tricky but know there is an enveloping circle of care in this region. Let’s stay resilient, together.
In peace and care,
Stacy Craig
Finding Our Spiritual Foundation
Many people who find a spiritual home with Unitarian Universalism (UU) didn’t grow up in this tradition, and I frequently get the question: where did UU come from? Some traditions, including religious traditions, live in the past. Others forget their roots and are blown into whatever modern fad speaks to them. UU fellowships today look different from where they came from. UU Historian Susan Ritchie believes that to know one’s history is a bit radical for our times as we are often swayed by popular culture. History, she says, helps us preserve identity and what makes us distinct.
American Unitarianism and Universalism began as two separate entities yet they both started in North America. Unitarian’s ancestry can be traced back to a liberal branch of the Puritans who split away. They adopted the Puritan’s radical organizational model: that centralized power corrupts the church and so the laity, the people, through a democratic process, govern and choose their leadership. The people voluntarily contribute funds to the church, which is where the tradition of offering plates arose. There is no higher authority yet churches are affiliated with one another and connected through a larger spiritual covenant.
Some have credited the Unitarians with forming our current system of democracy and while this is likely a stretch, it is clear that Unitarians were influential in developing the democratic process we still use today. We also see many of the early Unitarian traditions in our fellowships today: self-organized, self-governed, and they call their own ministers. Lay leadership is key, the democratic process is used throughout the system to make decisions, while consent, voluntary contributions and covenant inform how they gather.
This early Unitarian split also began articulating the source of truth. The Puritans held the Bible as authority. Unitarian thinkers and writers, including the Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing, began to explore how logic may also be a source of truth, and what is on the inside–what is true to us–could also be a source of truth. Today we see this as well in UU communities, who affirm truth both from outside sources such as science, Jewish and Christian traditions, and humanist writings, along with internal sources of truth such as the voice of consciousness.
Universalism wasn’t a branch that grew off from a tradition, but is likened to a field of wildflowers that popped up around the countryside. Universalism, I would say, was a reframing of what was told as an ultimate truth of the Protestant churches at the time: our souls are eternal and some of us are going to burn in a painful, awful hell forever, and there might be nothing we can do about it. This is, essentially, the Calvinist doctrine of double pre-destination. What became to be known as Universalists were people and communities who said ‘no’ to this supposed truth. Instead, God’s love embraces us all–a universal salvation–and we don’t need the threat of hell because doing good is part of being human. Circuit riders brought this message to rural areas of Pennsylvania and New England, and it took hold in people’s hearts and minds who then formed churches. There is a famous Universalist story that a man named Thomas Potter built a chapel in 1760 because he believed that someone would eventually come to preach a gospel of love. The chapel sat empty for ten years until Potter met John Murray, who had been excommunicated because he believed in an all-loving God. Potter asked Murray to preach at his chapel and Murray declined, saying he was going back to Europe. Potter asked that if the wind didn’t blow and the ship was unable to depart, that Murray would just preach once. The wind didn’t blow, Murray preached to a packed chapel on Sunday morning, and Murray stayed and the first Universalist congregation was founded in the U.S.
The Universalist church was described as a family, and the most confusing thing for members was when they invited someone to join their family and they were refused. Those whom the family symbol resonated with, such as union workers who believed in the brotherhood of man, found Universalist churches to resonate, as a spiritual home.
Using the language of spiritual home and spiritual family is not some feel good cliché, but is actually rooted in this tradition. Unitarian Universalists merged to become a consolidated identity in 1961 and they brought many of their distinct traditions with them but worked to find common ground as well. In the 1980’s, a group of women requested UU principles be reviewed to include gender inclusive language. This opened up a whole process of retelling the story of who we are. Using grassroots, democratic process of engaging congregations and fellowships in study and dialogue, the sources of belief were separated out from the principles. The six sources allow for the plurality and diversity of beliefs, while the seven principles articulate the theological common ground of the UU faith. If there is a shared belief perhaps it is this: by honoring diversity and plurality, we can achieve a unity to heal a fractured world. If this is what you are looking for, welcome home!
Time to Get Back to Normal
How often have I said over the past year, “When things get back to normal…” knowing full well that I do not want to return to many of the ways that things were, nor call them normal. Yet life has a sense of suspended reality to it. It’s difficult to live in the present when everything feels like it is shifting on a continuous basis. As with any change, the challenge is to find a new normal when we aren’t even sure what is possible. I’ve reflected with several people about this topic and we can all find things that we want to be a part of a new normal:
- Daily practice of self-care.
- Daily walk(s), especially exploring one’s own city, roads, or parks.
- Slowing down with family.
- Playing music/singing on a daily basis.
- Investing time and energy into the things that give back to us.
As the Worship Committee met last fall, we began to see a theme emerge in the speakers that were being proposed: they all spoke to what was being unveiled during this time of change. Our speakers in 2021 will engage some of the systems, practices, and opportunities that we may want to consider for a new normal. As we begin a New Year, let us take time to listen to that which calls us to reconnect as a global community whose fate and health are interconnected.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
On September 23, I tuned in to the UU the Vote “Gather the Spirit” event. It started with a DJ spinning records as we were reminded that what we are working for—promoting a strong democracy, countering voter suppression, and community organizing—is something to celebrate and should be pleasurable.
There are several goals for UU the Vote but number one is that every person in a UU fellowship across the country will vote. The service included highlights from fellowships which are sending postcards, organizing phone and texting banks, and finding creative ways to reach out to voters. As we heard highlights from around the country, one of the organizers reminded us that a honeybee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. When it feels like goals and challenges are insurmountable, we don’t need to work harder. We need to work together. Take shifts for the revolution.
While I really enjoyed this event, what is gnawing at me right now is that I’ve noticed a growing gulf between neighbors, family members, and friends. I feel like I’m being asked to take sides that I don’t believe in. I feel like everyone is working for a revolution, but we’re not working for the same one. In my bi-monthly column for the Ashland Daily Press, I wrote about how the Enneagram has been helping me to connect to others, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from it. Below is an excerpt from the article as I know not everyone gets the paper.
As the U.S. presidential election nears, when our differences can be more divisive than ever, I’ve found working with the Enneagram to be especially helpful in finding connection with others and calm within myself.
The word Enneagram comes from the Greek words Ennea, which means nine, and gram, which means a figure. It describes an ancient figure, one that predates Greek culture, of a diagram with a circle enclosing a nine-pointed star. Many Greek philosophers engaged the Enneagram as a way of talking about the way the ego and soul could become disconnected, or as a way to explain the soul, or elements of our beings that were eternal. The Christian Desert Fathers engaged the Enneagram, as did Islamic mystics, such as Sufis. The ancient symbols and interpretations have made a resurgence in the past fifty years. The current research and application of the Enneagram is similar to Myers-Briggs or other personality tests which help to identify different patterns of thought, feeling, and action. These patterns were created as we developed to help us survive but also to find satisfaction. The Enneagram is based on the premise that there are nine categories which describe our personality patterns and the implications they have for shielding, or protecting, ourselves. To be aware of this is to understand how we relate to times of stress and safety.
One of my professors, John Lee, said to me once that we must know the self to lose the self. We were discussing how the spiritual practice of centering prayer offers an emptying of the self to create a direct connection with the divine. Mystical traditions especially focus on the practices of recognizing the ego self as just one layer of our beings. The Enneagram provides a tool for this self-emptying through self-awareness, which can help us integrate the spiritual aspects of our lives.
After engaging several books and the online tools on The Enneagram Institute’s website, I have concluded that I am a seven. The Enneagram teaches me that I often find distractions, especially pleasureful ones, when I encounter pain or hardship. As I see more hostility on both sides of the political spectrum during election season, I feel myself wanting to change the radio, to change the conversation, to try to make everything better with a good meal and a walk in the woods. Yet I am a spiritual being, one that relies on connection and who knows that we all have a common destiny. While I am intolerant to hate or things that cause another harm, I can use the Enneagram to help me accept differences, to stay curious about others’ thoughts and actions, and to understand my own patterns which lead to disconnection.
Respecting our differences also helps me know how to apply the Platinum Rule: to treat people not as how I would want to be treated, but how they would like to be treated. After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that we are all in this together.
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
by Stacy Craig
All Plans Subject to Reality: CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
Welcome to the 2020 fall series of the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship! Like all organizations, we reviewed several scenarios for how we could come together this fall. I want to take a moment to outline our plans for worship and programming, knowing that all plans right now are subject to reality!
This year we will have a hybrid of online, intergenerational worship services along with several in-person, outdoor, socially distanced rituals and experiences for our special services. With this combination, we care for our most vulnerable by minimizing exposure while focusing on accessibility to our services. I hope this combination will encourage strong participation and identity with CUUF across lifespans during these physically distanced times.
The first example of this hybrid model is in September. We will have both an in-person, outdoor “On the Water” service on Long Lake outside of Washburn as well as an online Water Service which will be live and interactive on Zoom video conferencing. We are planning a similar combination for our All Hallowtide Service, Holiday Service, and Flower Service. Whether in person or online, we will focus on providing safe access and engaging messages across lifespans. Your feedback and participation (which is part of our democratic structure) are so very welcome this season as we consider multiple points of view on how COVID-19 is affecting us all differently.
In addition to the hybrid worship services and rituals, we will also offer small group programming and gatherings either online or socially distanced. These include:
The Other Sunday—Held online the first Sunday of each month, we will have different speakers and presenters on current events, issues, or topics with discussion to follow.
UU Women—Held online on the third Sunday of every month (unless there is a service conflict), this is a time for informal conversation, check-ins, and mutual sharing and support.
Grief Group—In collaboration with Jan Wise, we will offer an in-person grief group to help process transitions and loss once it is safe to gather in person. If anyone would like to process loss and grief individually, or is seeking spiritual direction, Jan Wise offers one-on-one socially distanced sessions on her porch. Call or email Jan to set up a time. Cost for sessions is freewill contribution.
Anti-Racism Study Group—CUUF plans to host a study group that will start in October. In addition, we are coordinating with area faith communities who are also offering online anti-racism book clubs, movie discussions, and training. These will be hosted by a particular church or fellowship, but open to all. We will include information about these opportunities in our newsletter and emails.
UU Spirituality Course—Beginning in January, we will offer a 6-week online course to help deepen our understanding and identity of UU history, thought, practice, principles, and sources.
Outdoor Gatherings—Some people have asked about having outdoor gatherings such as a walk, hike, yard games, campfire, or other socially distanced activities. We welcome these suggestions and invite anyone to offer an activity, and we will help communicate and publicize the opportunity to everyone in CUUF.
Our UU principles and sources help guide our search for meaning and truth. Let us come back together, reconnect, and call upon them now to help guide us during this difficult and powerful season. This is the season of our presidential election, when we may see the best and worst of each other. All will have to work hard to see the perspectives of other people while also calling out those things that are wrong because they threaten another’s wellbeing. This is the season of yellow, the fields and gardens giving a burst of warmth as the days begin to shorten. We reconnect as we enter the season of the harvest. Whatever weight or worry you may be carrying about this upcoming season, you do not have to carry it alone. Whatever delight or celebration you carry, we share this with you. I’m looking forward to reconnecting this fall.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
Bound Together
Bound Together
by Stacy Craig
“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Crafted by a group of Aboriginal rights activists from Queensland, Australia in the 1970s
On May 21, I was on a video conference with the Climate Change Task Force, which is facilitated by Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. A ‘Zoom-bomber’ entered and started playing hideous, racist music, with the N-word being repeated over and over. Since the meeting was open to the public, and the task force is large, it took a while for the meeting coordinators to mute the intruder and remove them from the meeting. The meeting went on as if nothing had happened.
Four days later, George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit money. George had been an athlete in high school, a rapper, and was working security in a nightclub before he lost his job due to the COVID-19 shutdown. During the arrest, Officer Derek Chauvin used a hold method where he placed his knee on the back of George’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. The incident was captured on video and shows George beginning to bleed from the nose. We hear him call that he can’t breathe. We hear him call out for his mother, who died two years ago. We see his body go limp. The knee stays on the neck, despite pleas from onlookers. Following his death, riots and protests have broken out all over the world, with a clear message: we cannot go on as if nothing has happened.
A few years ago, Pastor Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (the church were Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor), wrote, “If white churches and their pastors will not stand in solidarity with the poor and against deep structures of racial injustice such as America’s prison-industrial complex, ‘the new Jim Crow,’ then they will have demonstrated that they are every bit as much invested in the maintenance of white privilege and white supremacy as were their forebears of a different era…theology that is not lived is not theology at all.”
For a long time, the black church has been speaking out about the issue of a justice system that treats people of color differently than white people. To put it very simply, Unitarianism means we come from a common source; Universalism means we share a common destiny. In the middle of this, our experienced lives, there is a common injustice for people of color in America. Are our UU beliefs false, or is it our lived experience that must change for us to have a theology that can hold up to Warnock’s critique? For too long, we have all been doing what we did in the climate change task force meeting. As Lt. Governor Barnes said, we soldiered on.
I’m done soldiering on. Police brutality against people of color can change. How do we do this? This powerful quote reminds us: “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This isn’t a race issue, or a people of color issue, this is an issue of what it means to be human. We come from a common source, we move to a common destiny; truly, our liberation is bound together.
At the memorial service for George Floyd that was held in Minneapolis, Reverend Al Sharpton asked all who gathered to stand in George’s name and say: get your knee off our necks. He called for this to be when we make America great for the first time.
Rite of Passage
Rite of Passage
Right before I started this article, I submitted my final paper for seminary. While I still have a clinical course to attend this summer, completing the four years of class work feels both exhilarating and disorienting. We often mark major transitions in our lives with ceremonies to help us move through the heap of emotions and experiences. We move between spaces: from the familiar to the mysterious, from the places we’ve been to the place we are going. Like our high school seniors and college graduates, the ceremonies to help guide this transition have been cancelled for me. We will have an online Zoom celebration and I’m going to bake myself a cake and go fly fishing on the day I would have graduated. I’m really looking forward to all of this, especially if the cake turns out. Yet I’ve found myself reflecting this week on ceremony and transitions.
A graduation ceremony recognizes the individual journey but also connects a shared achievement to create a rite of passage from student to graduate. It honors the hard work of the past and connects this to the hope and dreams for the future, even though the way ahead may not be clear. A metaphor for this is a threshold. We come to a place that lies between the life we have known and the life ahead of us.
Graduates aren’t the only ones at a threshold. All of us are becoming aware of the slow adaptation from quarantine to the world opening up. Like our graduates, we might feel like ceremony, ritual, and community would help right now.
Artist and pastor Jan Richardson has written about thresholds in several of her books and poems. She writes,
I am still fascinated by thresholds—those places we come to that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us. I am continually intrigued—and eager, and fearful, and amazed, and mystified—to enter into those spaces where we have left the landscape of the familiar, the habitual, and stand poised at the edge of a terrain whose contours we can hardly see or even imagine.
Whether we arrive at these between-places by design, by accident, or by the choices that others have made for us, the threshold can be a place of wonders. It can also be chaotic, discombobulating, and even terrifying. Yet a threshold, chosen or otherwise, is a place of wild possibility. A threshold invites and calls us to stop. To take a look around. To imagine. To dream. To question. To pray.
In our services this past month, we explored the early spring rooting that happens beneath the snow despite the transitions of freeze, thaw, rain, sleet, snow, wind, and sun. We explored the one-note choir, which can go on indefinitely because others will hold the note while we take a breath. As we move across thresholds, be rooted deeply in who you are and what you value. Take the time to dream, question, pray, and pause as you move forward. And as movement happens, remember we will not be alone in the work ahead. We will re-root not in some new, distant future but in who we are, as a community which holds belovedness and radical interdependence at the core of our being.
In peace and the place of wild possibility,
Stacy Craig
Reflections From Stacy’s Desk
Time Is Now
As I have been preparing ideas for the February 6 service on our relationship with time, I’ve been reflecting on the time we are in now. It’s February. We spent time in lockdown and isolation trying to control the contagion, and the great efforts and sacrifices saved lives—many of whom we don’t even know. Now we are in a new stage where the variants are so contagious they cannot be controlled, and our leaders are trying to keep disruptions to schools, healthcare, and the economy to a minimum while encouraging vaccines as the best way to prevent serious illness and death. If the models are correct, the omicron variant should have peaked by the time you read this. The steep climb of infections is predicted to be followed by a steep decline. While we let this wave of COVID crash across our lives, we’ll gather virtually for worship services, with a strong hope that we’ll move to all in-person plus live-streamed services starting in March.
All plans are subject to reality.
One of the most typical responses to vulnerability is to shield. This can include numbing (whatever this looks like for each individual) and disconnecting from others. I’d like to encourage you to make February a month of connection. If pandemic time is characterized by isolation, it could also be characterized as the time when we learned new ways to stay connected. Find safe ways to stay connected: call someone on the phone every day, ask a friend or neighbor to have an outdoor driveway chat, be authentically glad to see those at the store or post office, write a card, start a gratitude text exchange, speak to a bird, bake something for someone, send valentines to librarians, healthcare workers, or anyone you’ve appreciated lately. Let’s not wait to connect when it is safer/warmer/happier/easier. What does it mean to embrace the phrase: the time is now?
In care, Stacy Craig
Wellness for 2022
How can one weep for someone one has never met? This is the question that went through my mind as I sobbed reading the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had died. He died at the age of 90 on December 26, 2021. Perhaps you have a prophetic voice—a writer, speaker, singer, or even a friend—who has been deeply impactful in your life. For me, it is Desmond Tutu. His work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and his commitment to restorative justice are things I’ve returned to again and again during times of upheaval and instances of injustice. The thing about Arch, as he was affectionately called, was that he held all sides accountable. What I learned from him was how to stop ‘othering’ and instead consider common humanity. I learned forgiveness. His work has deepened my understanding of collective trauma and inspired the vision for collective healing.
During the month of January, through small groups and in worship, we’ll be exploring intention. Intention is, I believe, living into one’s self and truth no matter the circumstances one is in. Often, I find myself reacting to conditions and allowing this to dictate where my attention goes. Bringing attention back to intention is freeing oneself from being swung around by external forces. I feel being true to his intention of peace and reconciliation is something Desmond Tutu demonstrated and manifested in all aspects of his work. In celebration of his life, work, and joy, and in celebration of all those who carry the intention for peace and reconciliation, I’ve requested to screen Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times on Monday, January 17, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Wellness to you in the New Year! May intention help lead the way into 2022.
Stacy
Connection
This past month, I was reminded of how interwoven our lives are in the Chequamegon Bay. Whether it is the care and wisdom of an elder; showing up wholeheartedly in one’s job, in community service or leadership; or avocations such as music and theater, we take care of one another. Our lives inevitably intersect in profound ways that are, perhaps, only possible in rural settings. The cycle is powerful, perhaps even numinous. For example, the CUUF Board sees stress points and provides problem-solving leadership and care, allowing me and others to adapt and innovate to connect with more people, which in turn allows us to care for those who are caring for others and for us. Sometimes there are flashes of insight and I had this over the last month. This… this… is the possibility of what Rev. Dr. King and others have called Beloved Community.
All of this requires deep connection, which is even more complicated than usual during the ongoing high rates of COVID in our area. As we move forward with planning an in-person holiday service, there is much care and consideration in how to do this to maximize connection and reduce risk. This means we are prioritizing connection over perfection and care over convenience. No one should feel obligated to come in person just because there is an in-person option. We see you, and we’ll do our best to create a livestreamed service that helps you “be in the room” from wherever you are. We hope that the outdoor spiral and outdoor fellowship after the service will provide some middle ground for low-risk connections.
If you or those around you have needs that are not being met, please reach out so we can begin working towards new possibilities. Some of these changes are slow and some are tricky but know there is an enveloping circle of care in this region. Let’s stay resilient, together.
In peace and care,
Stacy Craig
Finding Our Spiritual Foundation
Many people who find a spiritual home with Unitarian Universalism (UU) didn’t grow up in this tradition, and I frequently get the question: where did UU come from? Some traditions, including religious traditions, live in the past. Others forget their roots and are blown into whatever modern fad speaks to them. UU fellowships today look different from where they came from. UU Historian Susan Ritchie believes that to know one’s history is a bit radical for our times as we are often swayed by popular culture. History, she says, helps us preserve identity and what makes us distinct.
American Unitarianism and Universalism began as two separate entities yet they both started in North America. Unitarian’s ancestry can be traced back to a liberal branch of the Puritans who split away. They adopted the Puritan’s radical organizational model: that centralized power corrupts the church and so the laity, the people, through a democratic process, govern and choose their leadership. The people voluntarily contribute funds to the church, which is where the tradition of offering plates arose. There is no higher authority yet churches are affiliated with one another and connected through a larger spiritual covenant.
Some have credited the Unitarians with forming our current system of democracy and while this is likely a stretch, it is clear that Unitarians were influential in developing the democratic process we still use today. We also see many of the early Unitarian traditions in our fellowships today: self-organized, self-governed, and they call their own ministers. Lay leadership is key, the democratic process is used throughout the system to make decisions, while consent, voluntary contributions and covenant inform how they gather.
This early Unitarian split also began articulating the source of truth. The Puritans held the Bible as authority. Unitarian thinkers and writers, including the Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing, began to explore how logic may also be a source of truth, and what is on the inside–what is true to us–could also be a source of truth. Today we see this as well in UU communities, who affirm truth both from outside sources such as science, Jewish and Christian traditions, and humanist writings, along with internal sources of truth such as the voice of consciousness.
Universalism wasn’t a branch that grew off from a tradition, but is likened to a field of wildflowers that popped up around the countryside. Universalism, I would say, was a reframing of what was told as an ultimate truth of the Protestant churches at the time: our souls are eternal and some of us are going to burn in a painful, awful hell forever, and there might be nothing we can do about it. This is, essentially, the Calvinist doctrine of double pre-destination. What became to be known as Universalists were people and communities who said ‘no’ to this supposed truth. Instead, God’s love embraces us all–a universal salvation–and we don’t need the threat of hell because doing good is part of being human. Circuit riders brought this message to rural areas of Pennsylvania and New England, and it took hold in people’s hearts and minds who then formed churches. There is a famous Universalist story that a man named Thomas Potter built a chapel in 1760 because he believed that someone would eventually come to preach a gospel of love. The chapel sat empty for ten years until Potter met John Murray, who had been excommunicated because he believed in an all-loving God. Potter asked Murray to preach at his chapel and Murray declined, saying he was going back to Europe. Potter asked that if the wind didn’t blow and the ship was unable to depart, that Murray would just preach once. The wind didn’t blow, Murray preached to a packed chapel on Sunday morning, and Murray stayed and the first Universalist congregation was founded in the U.S.
The Universalist church was described as a family, and the most confusing thing for members was when they invited someone to join their family and they were refused. Those whom the family symbol resonated with, such as union workers who believed in the brotherhood of man, found Universalist churches to resonate, as a spiritual home.
Using the language of spiritual home and spiritual family is not some feel good cliché, but is actually rooted in this tradition. Unitarian Universalists merged to become a consolidated identity in 1961 and they brought many of their distinct traditions with them but worked to find common ground as well. In the 1980’s, a group of women requested UU principles be reviewed to include gender inclusive language. This opened up a whole process of retelling the story of who we are. Using grassroots, democratic process of engaging congregations and fellowships in study and dialogue, the sources of belief were separated out from the principles. The six sources allow for the plurality and diversity of beliefs, while the seven principles articulate the theological common ground of the UU faith. If there is a shared belief perhaps it is this: by honoring diversity and plurality, we can achieve a unity to heal a fractured world. If this is what you are looking for, welcome home!
Time to Get Back to Normal
How often have I said over the past year, “When things get back to normal…” knowing full well that I do not want to return to many of the ways that things were, nor call them normal. Yet life has a sense of suspended reality to it. It’s difficult to live in the present when everything feels like it is shifting on a continuous basis. As with any change, the challenge is to find a new normal when we aren’t even sure what is possible. I’ve reflected with several people about this topic and we can all find things that we want to be a part of a new normal:
- Daily practice of self-care.
- Daily walk(s), especially exploring one’s own city, roads, or parks.
- Slowing down with family.
- Playing music/singing on a daily basis.
- Investing time and energy into the things that give back to us.
As the Worship Committee met last fall, we began to see a theme emerge in the speakers that were being proposed: they all spoke to what was being unveiled during this time of change. Our speakers in 2021 will engage some of the systems, practices, and opportunities that we may want to consider for a new normal. As we begin a New Year, let us take time to listen to that which calls us to reconnect as a global community whose fate and health are interconnected.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
From the Minister’s Desk: In this Together
On September 23, I tuned in to the UU the Vote “Gather the Spirit” event. It started with a DJ spinning records as we were reminded that what we are working for—promoting a strong democracy, countering voter suppression, and community organizing—is something to celebrate and should be pleasurable.
There are several goals for UU the Vote but number one is that every person in a UU fellowship across the country will vote. The service included highlights from fellowships which are sending postcards, organizing phone and texting banks, and finding creative ways to reach out to voters. As we heard highlights from around the country, one of the organizers reminded us that a honeybee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. When it feels like goals and challenges are insurmountable, we don’t need to work harder. We need to work together. Take shifts for the revolution.
While I really enjoyed this event, what is gnawing at me right now is that I’ve noticed a growing gulf between neighbors, family members, and friends. I feel like I’m being asked to take sides that I don’t believe in. I feel like everyone is working for a revolution, but we’re not working for the same one. In my bi-monthly column for the Ashland Daily Press, I wrote about how the Enneagram has been helping me to connect to others, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from it. Below is an excerpt from the article as I know not everyone gets the paper.
As the U.S. presidential election nears, when our differences can be more divisive than ever, I’ve found working with the Enneagram to be especially helpful in finding connection with others and calm within myself.
The word Enneagram comes from the Greek words Ennea, which means nine, and gram, which means a figure. It describes an ancient figure, one that predates Greek culture, of a diagram with a circle enclosing a nine-pointed star. Many Greek philosophers engaged the Enneagram as a way of talking about the way the ego and soul could become disconnected, or as a way to explain the soul, or elements of our beings that were eternal. The Christian Desert Fathers engaged the Enneagram, as did Islamic mystics, such as Sufis. The ancient symbols and interpretations have made a resurgence in the past fifty years. The current research and application of the Enneagram is similar to Myers-Briggs or other personality tests which help to identify different patterns of thought, feeling, and action. These patterns were created as we developed to help us survive but also to find satisfaction. The Enneagram is based on the premise that there are nine categories which describe our personality patterns and the implications they have for shielding, or protecting, ourselves. To be aware of this is to understand how we relate to times of stress and safety.
One of my professors, John Lee, said to me once that we must know the self to lose the self. We were discussing how the spiritual practice of centering prayer offers an emptying of the self to create a direct connection with the divine. Mystical traditions especially focus on the practices of recognizing the ego self as just one layer of our beings. The Enneagram provides a tool for this self-emptying through self-awareness, which can help us integrate the spiritual aspects of our lives.
After engaging several books and the online tools on The Enneagram Institute’s website, I have concluded that I am a seven. The Enneagram teaches me that I often find distractions, especially pleasureful ones, when I encounter pain or hardship. As I see more hostility on both sides of the political spectrum during election season, I feel myself wanting to change the radio, to change the conversation, to try to make everything better with a good meal and a walk in the woods. Yet I am a spiritual being, one that relies on connection and who knows that we all have a common destiny. While I am intolerant to hate or things that cause another harm, I can use the Enneagram to help me accept differences, to stay curious about others’ thoughts and actions, and to understand my own patterns which lead to disconnection.
Respecting our differences also helps me know how to apply the Platinum Rule: to treat people not as how I would want to be treated, but how they would like to be treated. After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that we are all in this together.
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
by Stacy Craig
All Plans Subject to Reality: CUUF Worship for the 2020-2021 Service Year
Welcome to the 2020 fall series of the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship! Like all organizations, we reviewed several scenarios for how we could come together this fall. I want to take a moment to outline our plans for worship and programming, knowing that all plans right now are subject to reality!
This year we will have a hybrid of online, intergenerational worship services along with several in-person, outdoor, socially distanced rituals and experiences for our special services. With this combination, we care for our most vulnerable by minimizing exposure while focusing on accessibility to our services. I hope this combination will encourage strong participation and identity with CUUF across lifespans during these physically distanced times.
The first example of this hybrid model is in September. We will have both an in-person, outdoor “On the Water” service on Long Lake outside of Washburn as well as an online Water Service which will be live and interactive on Zoom video conferencing. We are planning a similar combination for our All Hallowtide Service, Holiday Service, and Flower Service. Whether in person or online, we will focus on providing safe access and engaging messages across lifespans. Your feedback and participation (which is part of our democratic structure) are so very welcome this season as we consider multiple points of view on how COVID-19 is affecting us all differently.
In addition to the hybrid worship services and rituals, we will also offer small group programming and gatherings either online or socially distanced. These include:
The Other Sunday—Held online the first Sunday of each month, we will have different speakers and presenters on current events, issues, or topics with discussion to follow.
UU Women—Held online on the third Sunday of every month (unless there is a service conflict), this is a time for informal conversation, check-ins, and mutual sharing and support.
Grief Group—In collaboration with Jan Wise, we will offer an in-person grief group to help process transitions and loss once it is safe to gather in person. If anyone would like to process loss and grief individually, or is seeking spiritual direction, Jan Wise offers one-on-one socially distanced sessions on her porch. Call or email Jan to set up a time. Cost for sessions is freewill contribution.
Anti-Racism Study Group—CUUF plans to host a study group that will start in October. In addition, we are coordinating with area faith communities who are also offering online anti-racism book clubs, movie discussions, and training. These will be hosted by a particular church or fellowship, but open to all. We will include information about these opportunities in our newsletter and emails.
UU Spirituality Course—Beginning in January, we will offer a 6-week online course to help deepen our understanding and identity of UU history, thought, practice, principles, and sources.
Outdoor Gatherings—Some people have asked about having outdoor gatherings such as a walk, hike, yard games, campfire, or other socially distanced activities. We welcome these suggestions and invite anyone to offer an activity, and we will help communicate and publicize the opportunity to everyone in CUUF.
Our UU principles and sources help guide our search for meaning and truth. Let us come back together, reconnect, and call upon them now to help guide us during this difficult and powerful season. This is the season of our presidential election, when we may see the best and worst of each other. All will have to work hard to see the perspectives of other people while also calling out those things that are wrong because they threaten another’s wellbeing. This is the season of yellow, the fields and gardens giving a burst of warmth as the days begin to shorten. We reconnect as we enter the season of the harvest. Whatever weight or worry you may be carrying about this upcoming season, you do not have to carry it alone. Whatever delight or celebration you carry, we share this with you. I’m looking forward to reconnecting this fall.
In peace,
Stacy Craig
Bound Together
Bound Together
by Stacy Craig
“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Crafted by a group of Aboriginal rights activists from Queensland, Australia in the 1970s
On May 21, I was on a video conference with the Climate Change Task Force, which is facilitated by Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. A ‘Zoom-bomber’ entered and started playing hideous, racist music, with the N-word being repeated over and over. Since the meeting was open to the public, and the task force is large, it took a while for the meeting coordinators to mute the intruder and remove them from the meeting. The meeting went on as if nothing had happened.
Four days later, George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit money. George had been an athlete in high school, a rapper, and was working security in a nightclub before he lost his job due to the COVID-19 shutdown. During the arrest, Officer Derek Chauvin used a hold method where he placed his knee on the back of George’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. The incident was captured on video and shows George beginning to bleed from the nose. We hear him call that he can’t breathe. We hear him call out for his mother, who died two years ago. We see his body go limp. The knee stays on the neck, despite pleas from onlookers. Following his death, riots and protests have broken out all over the world, with a clear message: we cannot go on as if nothing has happened.
A few years ago, Pastor Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (the church were Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor), wrote, “If white churches and their pastors will not stand in solidarity with the poor and against deep structures of racial injustice such as America’s prison-industrial complex, ‘the new Jim Crow,’ then they will have demonstrated that they are every bit as much invested in the maintenance of white privilege and white supremacy as were their forebears of a different era…theology that is not lived is not theology at all.”
For a long time, the black church has been speaking out about the issue of a justice system that treats people of color differently than white people. To put it very simply, Unitarianism means we come from a common source; Universalism means we share a common destiny. In the middle of this, our experienced lives, there is a common injustice for people of color in America. Are our UU beliefs false, or is it our lived experience that must change for us to have a theology that can hold up to Warnock’s critique? For too long, we have all been doing what we did in the climate change task force meeting. As Lt. Governor Barnes said, we soldiered on.
I’m done soldiering on. Police brutality against people of color can change. How do we do this? This powerful quote reminds us: “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This isn’t a race issue, or a people of color issue, this is an issue of what it means to be human. We come from a common source, we move to a common destiny; truly, our liberation is bound together.
At the memorial service for George Floyd that was held in Minneapolis, Reverend Al Sharpton asked all who gathered to stand in George’s name and say: get your knee off our necks. He called for this to be when we make America great for the first time.
Rite of Passage
Rite of Passage
Right before I started this article, I submitted my final paper for seminary. While I still have a clinical course to attend this summer, completing the four years of class work feels both exhilarating and disorienting. We often mark major transitions in our lives with ceremonies to help us move through the heap of emotions and experiences. We move between spaces: from the familiar to the mysterious, from the places we’ve been to the place we are going. Like our high school seniors and college graduates, the ceremonies to help guide this transition have been cancelled for me. We will have an online Zoom celebration and I’m going to bake myself a cake and go fly fishing on the day I would have graduated. I’m really looking forward to all of this, especially if the cake turns out. Yet I’ve found myself reflecting this week on ceremony and transitions.
A graduation ceremony recognizes the individual journey but also connects a shared achievement to create a rite of passage from student to graduate. It honors the hard work of the past and connects this to the hope and dreams for the future, even though the way ahead may not be clear. A metaphor for this is a threshold. We come to a place that lies between the life we have known and the life ahead of us.
Graduates aren’t the only ones at a threshold. All of us are becoming aware of the slow adaptation from quarantine to the world opening up. Like our graduates, we might feel like ceremony, ritual, and community would help right now.
Artist and pastor Jan Richardson has written about thresholds in several of her books and poems. She writes,
I am still fascinated by thresholds—those places we come to that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us. I am continually intrigued—and eager, and fearful, and amazed, and mystified—to enter into those spaces where we have left the landscape of the familiar, the habitual, and stand poised at the edge of a terrain whose contours we can hardly see or even imagine.
Whether we arrive at these between-places by design, by accident, or by the choices that others have made for us, the threshold can be a place of wonders. It can also be chaotic, discombobulating, and even terrifying. Yet a threshold, chosen or otherwise, is a place of wild possibility. A threshold invites and calls us to stop. To take a look around. To imagine. To dream. To question. To pray.
In our services this past month, we explored the early spring rooting that happens beneath the snow despite the transitions of freeze, thaw, rain, sleet, snow, wind, and sun. We explored the one-note choir, which can go on indefinitely because others will hold the note while we take a breath. As we move across thresholds, be rooted deeply in who you are and what you value. Take the time to dream, question, pray, and pause as you move forward. And as movement happens, remember we will not be alone in the work ahead. We will re-root not in some new, distant future but in who we are, as a community which holds belovedness and radical interdependence at the core of our being.
In peace and the place of wild possibility,
Stacy Craig
Congratulations to Stacy!
Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s new minister, Stacy Craig, will graduate with high honors on May 3 with a Masters of Divinity, Church Leadership and Religion and Theology, from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in St. Paul, Minnesota. She will be completing a Clinical Pastoral Experience (CPE) this summer as part of that program. This will include working with restorative justice in the prison system and with people working through addiction and recovery through The Recovery Church in St. Paul. A CPE is a supported experience where Stacy will be immersed in difficult work to find her own struggles and to build empathy and pastoral care skills for others while also learning to care for herself while doing difficult work.
Stacy’s course of study at United Theological Seminary has been challenging and inspirational. She has deepened her knowledge, expanded her search for the truth, and made lifelong connections. Her studies, though concluding soon at United Theological, will continue as she pursues the road to ordination over the next couple of years. Though the actual graduation ceremony is delayed until spring of 2021, let’s help Stacy celebrate her huge accomplishment now!