The First Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts


So much time has passed since my last blog post. I should admit to having allowed the quotidien ministerial tasks and responsibilities of being a solo pastor to overtake me, making for less fun time to do things like blogs exploring the spirituality of place. But, I won't.

So I hope it is enough to say, that I am back from outer space and I am looking forward to reconnecting to this hobby of mine, and sharing it with those who might find it interesting. 

The other day I had the tremendous opportunity to visit the First Church in Roxbury, a borough of the city of Boston. It is the actual first church, founded by British settlers, most them Puritans in the early 17th century. The first church was a Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregation, that  lasted until the 1970s, when the church closed for good, and the building was deeded to UU Urban Ministries. Today it serves as a mission to the Roxbury community, offering needed services in that underserved area, such as after-school tutoring, job readiness training and supportive services to survivors of Domestic Violence, among other things.

I think it is beautiful that the church can have a second chapter as a place of respite and empowerment in a challenging urban environment. Of course, I wish it were still a functioning place of worship, that worshiped in way that we UUs worship. But, churches are irrepressibly a cultural thing, and the cultures that would readily connect with the UU experience do not exist in large enough numbers in that community. 

I went to the church to collect some old and rare books from the long disused Minister's Study. These books will now live at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton, where we have a thriving congregation, a terrific minister and fabulous music. I have to thank the UU Urban Ministry and Rev. Ken Sawyer, a member of the board, for entrusting these books to me and my congregation. 

Since moving to New England I've made a practice of visiting the historic churches, that like my own, live in the center of most of the towns and cities and have played key roles in the histories of those places. I don't know how this practice became my work, but it is and I am passionate about it. Often I take pictures of every aspect of the church building. (they are usually called "meetinghouses" here)

Of all the churches I've visited so far (12 and counting), First Church in Roxbury moved me the most. At times I felt overcome with emotion. It is a place filled with all of the ghosts I don't believe in. My visit felt more like an initiation into some ancient mystery or a portend of the coming apocalypse, its hard to tell which? I'll save the more elaborate description, for the book I have to write about these visits. For now, I hope it is enough to say, that this place is really, really special. 

The building is situated on a hill with views of downtown Boston, about 3 miles and a world away. The grounds are surrounded by a big iron fence, and an elaborate gate for entry. The land behind the fence is parklike and its feels sacred, and set apart from its surrounds. I imagine it must seem like an impossible place in a notoriously rough and tumble Roxbury.

The sanctuary is really a place set apart, and it communicates a kind of immortality, expressed in things that age, but somehow never die. I hope you will appreciate this in the pictures of the place. The magic comes through the memorials on the wall, the roughness of the floorboards, the stable decay of the pews and other fixtures.

The absence of people, the monumentality of the space and the way the light pours into the room, even on a cloudy day is also what makes this place so special. While I walked in the sanctuary I felt a sense of kinship with all those who came before me, and I also found myself swept up in their dreams and aspirations for the world, and I was also swept up in what would become their disillusionment. 

However, I also felt a sense of sadness, because I know that this place will go on, in some way, as it has, but it is unclear if the traditions of this place and it's people will survive? The sanctuary had a ruinous quality to it. It was like visiting a archeological site that once belonged to a proud race of people now vanished from the face of the Earth. The unexpected collapse of their civilization lent a kind of weightiness to the present. I also had the sense of weightiness in that the future, if we have one, now rests on my shoulders.  There I was, to get the ancient scrolls (so to speak) from the temple and to carry them into the future.

I wondered if I am up to the task, and I was convinced that I wasn't, at least not yet. Nevertheless, I hope that I can rise the the occasion and eventually become the person who can carry these traditions forward. I hope that I can also remember that I am not alone in this work.

I am thankful for spaces like these, and thankful to the people who work so hard to keep them going. We need spaces that inspire, desperately; spaces that call us out of the cramped and claustrophobic ordinariness of 21st century life and into the majestic, ever-unfolding mystery of the cosmos.

This place really, really does that!







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​Oh the Places We Will Go!

I was installed as the Parish Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton in Massachusetts on Sunday, April 9, 2017. It was a momentous occasion with all the beauty and pageantry of a wedding, a coronation and an inauguration all rolled into one. The installation occurred eight months into my pastorate here, by design; on the Sunday closest to the full moon, which is a traditional time of culmination and fulfillment.

I chose the theme of “Coming Back to Life” for the service, because I believe that I have entered a generative stage in my life that dovetails perfectly with the new found confidence and expansive spirit of the church I serve. I feel as though the magic of the day has recreated me into a new person and the whole congregation has been energized in this process.  My people and I are endowed with new powers and special abilities. And word of new found vigor is spreading; people are coming to the church like never before: families that were active in the past are reconnecting and curious townsfolk, hearing that something exciting is occurring, are visiting en-masse every Sunday and other times during the week.

The installation confirmed our new status as minister and congregation. The change was affirmed and celebrated by visiting friends and family members.  Our commitment was witnessed by clergy of diverse traditions from throughout the Blackstone Valley and beyond. We even had local civic leaders and a state representative in attendance. It was an extraordinary thing to be feted in this way. I know that there were many more people who could not be there in person, but their spirits filled the sanctuary.

While the installation in some ways is a deeply personal thing in the life of a minister and a church, it has an impact that extends far beyond our small meetinghouse on the common in Grafton. I often think that the good we do for ourselves, whether it is prayer, meditation, healthful eating, journaling, singing, walking- whatever, is never exclusively for ourselves. People are always watching, listening, perhaps even silently wishing us well in our practice, because they know we are doing it for them too. As we are transformed through our spiritual practices and rites of passage others are changed too. Our evolution as individuals and a community ripples out into the universe.  Sometimes just being who you are, being your most authentic self, whatever that is, is enough to make a world of difference. I didn’t always think this way, but the installation really brought all of this into proper focus for me and for the church as well.
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I believe that my vocation of ministry is a calling to be a religious leader. I was led here by the spirit to be with a people who need me, speaking a language they can understand, for as long as they need me. I hope to grow here and to teach and to be taught here.  I want to infuse all I do with joy, gratitude and purpose. Most of all, I want this ministry to be a witness to the wonder that is unfolding in this time. Right now the world is groaning under extraordinary labor pains, as it anticipates a new birth of greater love and justice, as well as mercy and reverence. My parish is Grafton and Upton, and I see the whole world as my parish, to recall an idea first coined by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and my job, now confirmed by the installation, is to minister to all the people.  From this semi-rural, exurban, post-industrial corner of the commonwealth of Massachusetts I hope we can influence that world, making it a better place by lighting the fire of the spirit right here.

This house is for the ingathering of nature and of man in nature. It is a house of friendship, a haven in trouble, and open room for the encouragement of our struggle...This house is a cradle for our dreams and the workshop of our common endeavor. -- Kenneth Patton

At times it is difficult to love this house, the meetinghouse of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton. It is old, it's barely weather tight, the roof leaks in places, repairs are always expensive if they are to be done right; no parking, no elevator for disabled and elderly members. We have steep stairs for the sake of steep stairs and they creak loudly, especially when you try to climb them discreetly.

The meeting house is an 1860s building designed to look much older, more colonial, more pure-it-tanical, less Church of England. I love its aggressive simplicity; it's overt restraint. I love its light and openness. In fact it is as open a space as a building can be and still retain it's structurally integrity given the building technologies of the time it was built. 

I want to do everything I can to preserve its simplicity, because I recognize that it is an outward display of our hope for religion, that religion be pure and simple, without too much embellishment, free of too many theological flourishes and not overly heavy with tradition, doctrine and creed. Religion can fuel our excesses, and promise us more than is possible. This place doesn't allow for that.

Our meeting house is for a faith that is as open and unadorned and light, as the clear glass windows. But, because it is still a house built by human hands it is still framed by our principles (Currently seven of them) and culture (mostly White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant with some notable exceptions -- ME) and our lived experience (21st century North America). Our faith, much like our place, is not without a context and antecedents. We try to keep what is essential: Love and Service and Hope.

The openness of our meetinghouse reveals what is most important to us, nature and human nature. Our space is actually space for the Spirit to move and where the Spirit can move us, perhaps even transform us. It is a blank canvass inviting us to write the vision and make it plain, as ancient scripture reminds us. Our house is a place where dreams come to life, and where we become stronger for the work of healing our heartbroken world. 

I'm glad for this place of search and discovery. It's a house of history and the future; cradle and workshop.

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We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Robert Oppenheimer

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There have been times in my life where I’ve had to step back to fully take in the puzzling enormity of some action or decision I’ve taken. In those moments I’ve Instinctively reached out for some kind of comfort in the form of a “self-embrace” an autonomic hug, with my arms crisscrossing my belly, reaching around my back, as I wondered “what have I done?” These moments were sometimes good and other times bad, but usually somewhat ambiguous.

In the case of the scientist Robert Oppenheimer he ushered humanity into the nuclear age, by unleashing the power of the atom in the 1940s. Oppenheimer realized that life as anyone had experienced it before was forever changed. His generation slipped into an uncharted  landscape with an array of terrifying and beneficial possibilities in it. Oppenheimer couched this realization in religious language of scripture, quoting lines from the Bhagavad Gita: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds”. One world order was dying while another world order was being born and Oppenheimer was left wondering “what have I done?”

When I was ordained to Unitarian Universalist Parish Ministry two years ago I had a similar realization. I crossed a threshold and entered an entirely new world as a religious leader. The ceremony, participants, speeches, and even the cake of that day communicated to me on a visceral level that life as I knew it would never be the same. In that moment I resisted the urge to give myself a autonomic hug, not wanting to be a spectacle at the spectacle of an ordination. But that moment is seared into my memory as a huge, joyous threshold event.

Whatever your threshold event is, whether it’s developing a device of unlimited destructive power, or developing a curative vaccine, entering into marriage, starting a new job, moving into the new home, becoming the parent or becoming a UU minister, I hope you allow yourself the grace of an autonomic hug, the hugs of loved ones. I also hope you are open to the grace that seeks to embrace us all on our journeys.

a "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner

While on Study Leave from my church, taking a break from reading, I had the chance to visit the stunning Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina. The city of Wilmington is a gracious southern urban center, an oasis, rich in history and culture. It is the kind of place to encounter the beauty, tragedy and complexity of the unfolding American story articulated in beautiful architecture.

I am a great lover of Victorian architecture in all of its forms and I can never resist a chance to visit a house museum. Traipsing through the rooms I like to imagine the life and times of their former occupants. Of all of the houses I've visited over the years, this one was unique in having a well preserved building for the household staff. Being a house in the south means that some of its inhabitants were enslaved and that is true of the Bellamy Mansion. 

The curious little building behind the mansion was described as the finest examples of a "Negro House" which is a sort of dependency that would have housed the senior household staff: the cook, bulter, laundress and coachmen, etc. The Negro House as the photo above shows is well within the shadow of the mansion. There is a small yard that separates the two buildings, but  the contrast between the gleaming white mansion and the subdued dependency couldn't be pronounced, and that is especially true when one considers the lives of their respective occupants.

The building itself seemed very sturdy, it is in the Italianate style, like the mansion it serves, but it is entirely pared down, with very little in way of ornimentation, but in that sense it was stronger in a way. It had a steep stairway and very narrow little rooms. Both the Negro House and Mansion were built by enslaved people. 

While the inhabitants in the Negro House might have had a better life as slaves in the city, better than their country house and field counterparts, they were still enslaved. Their full humanity was denied and their potential was brutally repressed and their freedom taken away. As a minister I am always asking myself "where is the holy in this?" and how will God show up here in this mess? It is hard to discern any good as it relates the institution of Slavery. Slavery is always bad-period. 

The tour offered opportunities for reflecting on the past and its strange mix of grandeur and brutality, humiliation and hope. If there is grace, which is God presence, in any of this, it has to be found in the hope of Sarah Sampson.

Sarah was the enslaved cook and head housekeeper during the Civil War period. I am sure everyday as the war moved closer and closer to Wilmington, she must've imagined a time when she might be free to choose how to live her life, or at least a time when her children, or their children, or their children's children, might be free to choose. Perhaps they would deside to be servants in a great townhouse, or they might choose to work in the building trades, or maybe to be minister in a New England church. The never ending hope for freedom is the spark of the holy that we all so desperately need.

May Sarah's memory, and the memory of all those like her be a blessing forever. 
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I am standing in what might have been Sarah Sampson room in the Negro House. And as I do I call to mind the line from a famous poem.

...Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise
                                                 -Maya Angelou