rivka

It's Sunday morning, and I don't want to go to church.

Nine years ago, Michael and I made the decision that we are a family that goes to church whether we feel like it or not. That goes double now that we have kids in Religious Education. Church is the way it is. But I'm not feeling it, and I haven't for a while.

Well, I have a toddler. I haven't been able to sit and listen to an entire service in... yeah, it's been a while. Michael does half the Colin duty, but he does it on the weeks that I am occupied during the service teaching Religious Education. (Which by the way, I have not been enjoying at all.) We could have made a push to get Colin comfortable in the nursery, but we haven't. I confess that I don't feel particularly motivated to do it. I don't feel like I've bonded to our new minister, so I guess I've felt less of a drive to get Colin settled so that I can go hear the sermon.

Michael, of course, is hugely involved in church leadership. Hugely. He's the vice-president of the Board of Trustees and the chair of the Stewardship Committee. We're swinging into stewardship season, so church business is about to start taking even more of his time than it already does. And the Nominating Committee has asked him to stand for presidency of the congregation this coming year. They don't really have any other candidates. It's something he is called to do, and he'll be awesome at it, but I'm dreading it.

I kind of feel like, the more that Michael does at church, the less there is there for me. Church starts to feel like an obligation, something that cuts into our family time and demands that I do a lot of extra solo parenting.

I don't know. It's not like my feelings about Unitarian-Universalism have changed at all. And it's not like I don't respect the value of our church as an institution. But I don't feel like going to church is feeding me. It just feels like work.

I know there are people on my friends list who have been committed to a church or another institution for the long term. How do you handle the down cycles? Or don't you have them?

The service went really well. At five minutes before the hour, there were only about 35 people present, and I felt disappointed. But by the time the prelude and call to worship were over every seat was filled and there were a couple of people sitting on the floor. (This was just the Parish Hall, so it was probably about 60-70 people - not the 300 it would take to fill the sanctuary).

I felt as though the readings and hymns I chose worked well. Hymns might actually sound better in the Parish Hall, where they don't get swallowed up by the immense barrel ceiling - but also I tried to choose hymns that were quite familiar so people would be more comfortable singing out. (For fellow UUs: we sang "There's a River Flowin' in My Soul," "Gather the Spirit," "Blessed Spirit of My Life," and "We'll Build a Land.")

I was nervous beforehand, but not at all nervous once I started to give the sermon. Michael only had to signal me to slow down once.

When it was time to introduce visitors, it turned out that the Final Exit Network guy didn't bring anyone to church after all, so all my worries about that were groundless. Many thanks to zeldajean, selki, and wcg, who were visitors on my behalf, as well as the home crowd: curiousangel, acceberskoorb, and telerib. I felt very supported.

After church, a number of people came up to tell me how much they appreciated what I had to say. I talked to someone who had been a hospice chaplain for twelve years and, oh my gosh, a woman whose adult son committed suicide three months ago and who wanted to ask my advice about her grandson. Several people asked me to send them the text. Several other people told me, more neutrally, that I had given them a lot to think about.

In the talkback afterward, Final Exit Guy told the group that, far from thinking he was on opposite sides from me, he thought I sounded just like a representative of his organization. Because - and he had written this down - at one point I said "everyone has a right to make their own decision." That was apparently all he heard.

A range of opinions were represented. For much of the talkback we discussed making choices about when to stop treatment, and personal and medical factors affecting those decisions. We got more into questions of suicide towards the end - maybe because that's such a more vulnerable issue. Interest was expressed in an adult RE class on end-of-life issues, which I think would be excellent.

I don't know if I changed any minds today. I do think that I complicated the issue for some people who thought it wasn't that complicated before, which may be all I can hope for. And I know that it was very helpful for people who were already leaning toward my point of view.

More of my argument about assisted suicide follows. This part is really long, so I'm putting it behind a cut tag. This is also the part that needs the most work, [N.B.: Michael says no, it's the last section (not posted yet) that needs the most work. So watch for something worse than this.] because I'm not used to making religious arguments - there are so few contexts in which they are appropriate. (Of course, a sermon would be one of them.)

Opinions and argument continue to be welcome.

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So you might remember that I am preaching at my church - for the first time ever - on July 11. The monthly newsletter just recently came out with this sermon description:

July 11—“Life or Death Situations”
Rebecca Wald
Rebecca will share lessons she's learned from working with people who are dying and people who want to die - two sometimes-overlapping groups. Is assisted suicide the best we have to offer those among us who are dying?

One of the things that led to me feeling called to preach this sermon is that a member of our congregation, a physician active in the Final Exit Network, was arrested a year or two ago for assisting in a suicide in Georgia. When he came back to church the interim minister lauded him from the pulpit and he got a standing ovation from the congregation. I think that his position has sort of been automatically adopted as the church's position, because, well, he's one of the noisiest members. But I think that many people haven't really thought it through. That's one of the reason why I really, really want people to hear a different perspective.

Well. That member just called my house and spoke to Michael. He told Michael that he wanted to bring a number of people from outside the congregation to hear my sermon, and was that okay? Clearly he means his Final Exit Network/Hemlock Society buddies. Michael said - as, really, what else could he say? - "Come, come, whoever you are..." But shit.

OMFG I am panicking about this. I'm gonna be lynched. Well, probably not. But he's going to pack the audience with people who are hostile to me from the outset. As if this wasn't going to be hard enough already.

Our Director of Religious Education posted this yesterday:

One of our little guys at church has begun walking. This morning in worship during "greet your neighbor" I went over to see the kids who were hanging out at the children’s corner. I saw him let go of the table and I squatted down and put my arms out. He toddled right over to me and gave me a hug. He’s a snuggly little guy and when he hugs, he tilts his head and puts it on my shoulder like he’s settling in for a long winter’s nap.

The almost-eight-year-old twins from another family were also hanging out at the coloring table and they came over immediately to give me the good news: "He can walk!" They were proud of him, recognizing the accomplishment with both joy and reverence. He let go of me and did a couple more laps, moving like a pin-ball between the kids and adults who were taking in his success with love and admiration. When he fell, one of the twins helped him back up. When he reached a boundary and turned himself around, he looked up at all the loving faces and beamed.

Sometimes church is magic.

The little guy in question is Colin. The twins were in our Christmas pageant this year, and they are a prime counter-example to everything society tells us about boys "naturally" being rough, rude, and non-nurturing. They're active, exuberant kids and they're definitely not goody-goody - but they love on Colin with sweetness and gentleness every time they see him. A lot of the bigger boys at church do. It gives me so much hope about the kind of men they'll grow up to be.

This community is something I value beyond measure. I am so grateful to be bringing up my kids in this love.

So the church Christmas pageant has three Sunday morning rehearsals followed by an evening dress rehearsal the night before Christmas Eve. Only this year we got about 20 inches of snow the day before the last Sunday morning rehearsal, which meant that it didn't happen. Instead, on Wednesday night a bunch of excited hyper pre-Christmas kids showed up for the first rehearsal with costumes (which weren't done, incidentally), the first rehearsal in the sanctuary (which always leads to insane aisle-running), and the first rehearsal without scripts (which was supposed to have happened that missed Sunday).

They had done a surprisingly good job of learning their lines, but everything else about the rehearsal was pretty awful. It's hard to nail down a lot of the blocking before you have the sanctuary to work with. The kids were pretty crazy. I honestly left the rehearsal expecting the performance to be a disaster.

Christmas Eve I was so flustered that we were parking outside the church when I realized that I was still wearing a pair of jeans and a grungy brown wool hoodie over a faded red T-shirt. "I forgot to get dressed!" I wailed to Michael. He looked down at his own jeans and sweater. "...So did I." It was 5pm. I had told the kids to arrive no later than 5:10. I was planning to be onstage for much of the pageant.

We dashed in carrying the last few props and an eleven pound ham. Threw the ham in the oven in the church kitchen and asked someone who happened to be in the kitchen to put the brown sugar glaze on it at 6:30. I took both kids with me to the sanctuary while Michael ran home to change and bring my clothes. The majority of the kids didn't show up until sometime after 5:30. We had no chance to rehearse, but we did go over my list of Important Last-Minute Reminders: Everyone speak LOUDLY and SLOWLY. Face the audience when you speak. When the Herdmans are being bad kids, they shouldn't actually make any physical contact. When the Herdmans are in the pageant-within-a-pageant, they stop goofing off and take it seriously. Angels and shepherds need to be quiet when they're onstage.

Also in this time period, one of the mothers went to town on the Herdmans' faces with a mascara wand to make them appropriately grimy and smudgy. They were all thrilled to be at church in their oldest and most awful clothes. I did not tell them how adorable they were, because they would've taken it the wrong way.

Ten minutes before the service was supposed to start I herded all the kids out of the chancel to the robing room. No, they were too loud to be there. To the little entryway behind the robing room. Still too loud. To the upstairs hall. I tried to engage them in conversation about Christmas to stop them from shouting and chasing each other. Michael brought me Colin to nurse at the last minute before church. I kept on chatting with the kids on my end of the hall until I looked over and saw a few of them at the other end of the hall looking at me like this: O.O O.O O.O "It's just how babies eat, guys," I said and hoped that I wouldn't be hearing from their mothers later on.

6:05. I marched the kids down the stairs, through the entry, through the robing room, into the chancel, and down the steps to the front pew. There was a welcome and a chalice lighting and then we were on.

And the pageant went beautifully.

We had some luck with the play-within-a-play format, because I could stay on stage the whole time (as a parent helping out the pageant director, very realistic) and move people into place if necessary. But the kids needed very little help. They said their lines beautifully and with feeling. They were mostly in the right place at the right time. They did not burn down the church when I let some of them hold candles. They looked fantastic, even the ones who were in totally makeshift last-minute costumes. And they had the pageant spirit, just beautifully.

Afterward during their shaky and confused bows acceberskoorb swooped down on me with a bouquet of white roses and, um, something else pretty. I don't know flowers.

And then we went to the Christmas Eve potluck. Last year there wasn't enough food and Michael didn't get any dinner. (That's partly why we brought a ham this year.) This year there was plenty, and we feasted on turkey and ham and smoked gouda mac and cheese and horseradish scalloped potatoes and tzimmes and all kinds of miscellaneous side dishes and desserts. And Alex actually ate food instead of just running around being hysterically excited. (Colin had a jar of pureed turkey-apple-cranberry holiday dinner, because I fall for marketing tricks like that.)

And we went home and put the kids to bed and hauled presents out of hiding places and wrapped a few things and hung candy canes on the tree from Santa and I lost one of Colin's stocking presents. And poured ourselves glasses of red wine and curled up on the couch to watch the first-season West Wing Christmas episode, "In Excelsis Deo," except that Colin kept waking up and finally we went to bed without finishing it.

Christmas Eve was good. The pageant was wonderful. We have amazing, amazing kids at our church. Is it too early to start worrying about what story we'll do next year?

Under the cut, the full text of the dedication ceremony Colin had at church on Sunday.

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The church "big questions letter exchange" continues. ( Topic of the week: 'What is the source of your moral authority? What or who guides your moral choices?' )

Every year, our church runs a "Mystery Buddies" program in which kids from the congregation rare matched up with adults. They spend a month (I think it's March) trading notes back and forth, signing their notes with secret code names, until the end when all is revealed at a special breakfast.

Apparently, adults in the congregation have complained that they want their own Mystery Buddies program, because this year the program has been expanded with an adults-only version called the "Big Questions Exchange." Each Sunday in November, those who sign up exchange letters with a person they have been secretly matched to by the Director of Religious Education. At the end of the month, we'll meet our match. Each week, as the program name suggests, the letters are supposed to tackle big religious questions.

acceberskoorb assures me that my secret match doesn't read my LJ, so I'm going to post the letters I write each week.

( Here's my first letter, addressing the question 'what happens when we die?' )

On Saturday, Alex and I went hiking.

We've done it a few times before, and she asks to go hiking pretty often. But this was the first time we've ever taken the opportunity to leave Colin home and go off to the woods for what Alex refers to as "special girl time." She was very excited.

It was a beautiful day, with temperatures in the low 70s. Perfect for hiking. I decided that Cascade Falls would be a good short-distance, high-reward hike for a four year old, so we headed to Patapsco Valley State Park not far outside the Baltimore city limits.

I hadn't been up that trail in years, and in the interim they had reworked the bottom portion to prevent trail erosion. So I, um, missed the turnoff to the falls. Instead Alex and I climbed to the top of the steep ridge, meandered up and down a hilly path for a while, and then turned around and came back. We found the falls on the second try. Alex had a lot of fun scrambling around on the rocks and was very very proud to be able to cross the stream from rock to rock and climb up to the top of the waterfall. Our hike was made complete when we found a small snake swimming at the base of the falls and got to watch his progress around and between the rocks.

All told, I think we went about a mile. Maybe a bit more. Some of it was quite steep and slippery, so even with the short length it provided plenty of challenge and excitement. I was proud of Alex. I hope we'll be able to do it again soon.

Sunday at church we covenanted with our new minister. Seven leaders from the congregation (including kids representing the Religious Education program) charged Rev. David with leading us in various aspects of our church life, and then he spoke about his goals and intentions, and we all wound up the ceremony by pledging in unison to support each other in the mission and work of the church. It was inspiring. It's exciting to have a new beginning.

Have I said anything about the new minister yet? It's still early days, but I think he's going to be good. The most obvious early change is a vast improvement in congregational singing, which, frankly, was pretty wretched before Rev. David got here. (Q. Why are UUs so bad at congregational singing? A. Because everyone is reading ahead to see if they agree with the next line.)

Rev. David has a beautiful voice, and he leaves his mike on for the hymns so he can act as songleader. Also he asked the church to buy the new UUA hymnal supplement, which includes more contemporary and world music, and he's having us sing the same songs several weeks in a row to improve people's comfort and familiarity. Those changes are making a huge difference in how well the congregation sings, and since singing is one of my favorite parts of church it's making me very happy.