What is of Worth

Worship. The word comes from the old English meaning worth-ship, or acknowledging what is worthwhile. In our oversaturated attention economy, to set aside a time and place to join together as a community to consider what is worthy of our attention, gratitude and energy, is a sacred act. Last Sunday I, along with three other UCE members, attended the “Total Praise” concert at Ebenezer AME Church. We were invited to attend and participate (though we weren’t able to pull together a piece to contribute to the program this time) in part because of our growing relationship with this congregation, most recently deepened through the Meeting Our Interfaith Neighbors class. The concert was a collaborative event featuring people of all ages singing and dancing their praise and the whole room was encouraged to sing, clap, and dance along. The prayers and the musical selections were beautiful, and although they used some theological language I don’t use, the power of music to connect and inspire was undeniably uplifting. With a full heart and loud voice, I sang along with the words, “I lift my hands in total praise to you,” knowing that my ‘you’ and the ‘you’ others were singing to may have been different.

The experience of worship – lifting up and celebrating what is worthy of our attention and gratitude, is a central part of the life of our beloved community. Sometimes people ask me how I create a meaningful worship service every week?! The answer is, first, I don’t (not every week), and second, I definitely don’t do it alone.

We speak often about shared ministry amongst our congregational leaders. This simply means we are all a part of the work of collectively living our values. We have professional and lay leaders who conspire together to imagine, organize, strategize, and implement the many ways we live our mission and values. No one person or group is in charge of the whole thing. It’s undoubtedly a less efficient way of running an organization – lots of opportunities for competing visions, miscommunications, and alternative commitments – but it is a much more meaningful and relational way of doing the work of living our faith. The process is the product.

Our Worship Planning Team is no different. Every month (usually 3^rd Saturdays at 9:30 am) about 8-12 people gather to reflect on the upcoming Soul Matters themes. We think about music, stories, visuals, and rituals that might connect to the monthly theme, and we begin to sketch out details for the services 6-8 weeks in advance. We also identify who might be a worship associate for each Sunday in a month. The team is large, currently twenty-eight people, but there’s always room for more.

This past year, the team participated in an online workshop developed by Rev. Erika Hewitt called Worship for Transformation. It draws wisdom from worship leaders and teams across the country who are creating engaging, interactive, and emotionally, mentally, and spiritually transforming worship experiences. It offered the team lots to consider in terms of being inclusive, considering who is in the ‘room’ both physically and virtually, and how to incorporate multiple senses into each aspect of worship. We also talked about the importance of knowing deeply why we worship: to re-affirm our values, to be challenged, inspired, and nourished.

Worship is meant to transform us, to lift us out of our daily lives often filled with deep grief and sorrow, as well as petty frustrations, to remember the beauty and meaning of life. It is meant to remind us that the sense of disconnection we’re steeped in is false. Acknowledging what is worthy of our attention and praise as a community invites us to be transformed in small and large ways into the people we hope to be. Worship is something to be crafted collectively, through shared ministry, and I’m grateful for all those who contribute to our weekly mutual transformation, whether it’s through sharing your reflections, sharing your musical gifts, enacting a story, creating art, bringing flowers, lighting a candle for joys and sorrows, or greeting your neighbor. If you want to be a part of the Worship Planning Team, just let me know and I’ll add you to the list in Realm.

I’m eager and joyful to be with you in the unfolding, collaborative process of honoring what is of worth and transforming our hearts and minds toward collective liberation.

See you soon,

Rev. Eileen

Interdependence Day?

I always feel a little conflicted on the Fourth of July. I love fireworks and have fond memories of sitting with my family and neighbors on a blanket as marching bands and community organizations paraded past, throwing candy and honking. However, I’m not, even on a good day wildly patriotic. I don’t love and never have loved saying the pledge of allegiance, or singing our national anthem, which I think should be, unequivocally, the Ray Charles version of America the Beautiful, rather than the bomb-bursting-rocket-red-glaring Star-Spangled Banner.

I love this country, don’t get me wrong. At least I love the idea of this country…or what it might have been. But of late, waving the flag or singing the national anthem feel especially, even absurdly, hypocritical. Not long ago, someone shared with me the story of a family member who said they didn’t feel comfortable putting a flag up on their house anymore, because it would signal support for “the other team.” How sad. There used to be at least an aspiration of unity around common ideals, but I find little evidence of that now.

Each day brings a new affront to what might have stirred the patriotic spirit. The latest vote for the big abominable bill will have lasting, irreversible and devastating impacts on this country and a great majority of its inhabitants. The passage of the bill unabashedly declares the U.S. a country content to rob from the poor to give to the rich and to deprive the generations to come of any possibility of economic stability, environmental protection, or the assurance that their basic needs might be met. It’s hard to wave a flag, put a hand over the heart, or pledge loyalty to that.

How can we keep loving a country that doesn’t love most of its people? How do we fight for an ideal that was never and will never be reached as long as reality is so subjective? How do we keep aspiring toward once shared values that have been desecrated?

I imagine often, what the fall of the Rome might have felt like. Did it feel like this? Or is the moment we find ourselves in more akin to the eve of the Civil War, or the Great Depression, or any number of moments when all seemed lost? I think about those who continued to resist in the rise of the Nazi regime and feel I owe it to them – those brave souls who did to not comply in advance – to hold on, to not surrender my ideals, to not give in to despair.

But forgive me if I don’t wear red, white, and blue today, but instead wear a Black Lives Matter shirt or one from an Indigenous Organization I’ve come to know. Or maybe I’ll wear my “Nasty Woman” shirt again. That year, maybe it was 2017, Senator Tammy Duckworth pointed and smiled at me as she marched passed in the parade and saw my cheeky, feminist patriotism on display.

Being patriotic does not mean fealty to a false wannabe king. It does not mean performative demonstrations of loyalty to a government that is doing everything in its power to dismantle itself and take everyone who relies on its protections down with it. Patriotism, if you feel you can muster it right now, means speaking truth to power. It means showing up for your community, your neighbors, your family and friends. It means celebrating every joy you discover which affirms the fierce persistence of life. It means protecting the vulnerable, continuing to love who you love, doing what you feel called to do with purpose and conviction, and bearing witness boldly to the values of justice, equity, pluralism, generosity, transformation, interdependence, and liberating love. Let’s display that kind of patriotism this Interdependence Day and keep living into it with each new day, each new opportunity to strive for the ideals this country once claimed with integrity.

Yours in faith and in service to our shared mission,

Rev. Eileen