Rev. Daniel's Blog

Pro & Con: Should Congress pass the DREAM Act for immigrant children? | ajc.com

2011-08-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

Pro & Con: Should Congress pass the DREAM Act for immigrant children? | ajc.com

Interesting take! What do you think?

UU convicted of littering while supplying humanitarian aid

2009-07-01T12:45:00.001-07:00

Title: uuworld.org : uu convicted of littering while supplying humanitarian aid

You try and do something nice, and what do you get for your trouble? The threat of a $10k fine and a year in jail.

Chances are, he'll be in seminary in a year...

How my congregation voted for Morales and Hallman

2009-05-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

At our annual congregational meeting, members looked over the two single page sheets the UUA provided in the last meeting, one for each presidential candidate.

Last month's newsletter article from me, which went out in April, but didn't get posted here until recently, and it had the web site addresses for the candidates, etcetera.

I told people I would announce who I was backing at the annual meeting, but I stressed they should check out the web sites and try to get a feel for the best president themselves, in advance of the annual meeting.

At our annual congregational meeting we had a secret ballot, it occurred early in the meeting, so we could announce the results before the end of the meeting. We had previously agreed that we would award votes proportionally. That is if 50% of the congregation voted for one candidate, then each would get 6 votes (we get 12 delegates at GA, due to our size-- 576 adult members).

I discovered just before the annual meeting that I, the outgoing board president, the music director, and an incoming board member (the only people who told me their picks) had all chosen the same candidate-- Peter Morales.

The congregation voted this way:

10 votes -- Rev. Peter Morales
2 votes -- Rev. Laurel Hallman

We will be mailing in our absentee ballots next week, well in advance of the June 17 deadline.

I am proud of my congregation. They did the research, arrived at their choice, and are making their voice heard, despite the fact that only 4 of us are attending GA in Salt Lake City, due to costs, etcetera.

The Next UUA President

2009-05-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Paul Rickter, the secretary of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s board of trustees, writes:

“Absentee ballots with instructions and biographical information about the candidates will be mailed to congregations in early May and must be returned by June 17.

“By sending delegates to vote on site at General Assembly on Saturday, June 27. All GA delegates who have voting credentials that were not used to vote absentee will be eligible to vote on site...

“When discerning how to vote in the election (absentee or on site), congregations have wide discretion in determining whether and how to instruct their delegates. For example, a congregation could hold a congregational meeting to discuss the election and then could direct its delegates to vote for particular candidates. Or the congregation could appoint delegates and allow those delegates to vote their consciences.

“More detailed instructions for voting will be included with the ballot mailing in early May.

“Please let me know if you have questions about the election. For more information on UUA Elections, see http://www.uua.org/aboutus/governance/elections/index.shtml.”

What does this have to do with you? About every 8 years, there is a major election for UUA president. This year, at the General Assembly (GA) in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a major election for UUA president, and the two candidates are distinctively different.

Because the GA is being held in Utah, and few Eliot members are expected to attend, and because many UUs (including me) believe the selection of the next president is an issue critical to the future of Unitarian Universalism, we will take part of our annual meeting (9:30 a.m., Sunday, May 17) to vote the congregation’s wishes. At that time, I will also indicate who I am endorsing. In the meantime, you should review the two candidates web sites yourself:

Peter Morales - http://www.moralesforuuapresident.org
Laurel Hallman - http://www.hallmanforuuapresident.com

We will accomplish our democratic exercise by briefly reviewing the two candidates, vote by secret ballot, and then fill out the absentee ballots proportionally. For example, we get 12 delegate votes: if the two candidates each get about half the Eliot member votes, then the absentee ballots will be split 6 and 6, and we will mail them all in. Hopefully, one candidate will clearly emerge as the front runner, but it is more important that we vote the congregation’s will, and not any particular person’s will.

Notice of Eliot Unitarian Chapel
Annual Meeting

9:30 a.m. Sunday, May 17, 2009

Halfway There

2009-03-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

A minister was in a long line at a gas station. The cashier said: “It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip.” And the minister replied, “It’s the same in my business.”

As I write this, we are 4 weeks into our canvass, and half of our pledging families (200 out of 350+) have made their financial pledge. It used to surprise me that after a month only half a congregation would answer the call to make their pledge.

After all, it happens every year, it’s not a surprise or anything. It takes less than 5 minutes to fill out a card. Why would it take more than a month to answer the call?

I think many of us have an ambivalent attitude toward financially supporting our church.

We like church, but we are uneasy with the thought of paying for it. And if we don’t send our money in, we won’t get our home foreclosed on, our water or electricity turned off, our cable TV going dark, or our cell phone silenced.

Does my congregation really need “my” financial donation? The short answer is: yes.

We have collected about $300,000 of the $430,000 we hope to collect for the annual canvass. Half the members and friends have already contributed more than half the money we need. But it is those last few dollars and pledges that will make a difference.

We operate on a very thin margin. It is the extraordinary generosity that makes things happen, that keeps the mortgage paid, the water & electricity flowing, the phone and computer systems humming.

Frankly, it’s a miracle that 570+ mostly unrelated adults get together and continue a 50 year tradition that is Eliot. They don’t have to. No one is forcing them.

And yet, the miracle that is Eliot continues.

Soon, we will send out an email and begin to make phone calls for the remaining pledges. After that, we will send a letter, and then another one. That’s what it takes to get some folks to follow through on their implicit promise they make when they agree to support Eliot.

The implicit covenant is this: when you join a church like Eliot, you promise to support it with your care, concern, and gifts. You do this because you know that is what it takes to make Eliot happen.

In turn, the community makes things happen you could never do on your own: we foster free religious thought in Kirkwood, we nurture spiritual growth for hundreds of children and adults; and we act for social justice in many, many ways.

No matter how often you come to church, whether or not you like the music or the preaching on a particular Sunday, the miracle that is Eliot Chapel is deserving of your speedy, thoughtful consideration.

Only you can know how generous you want to be financially with Eliot. But all of us can know, that getting a pledge card in quickly– regardless of the amount– enables the leadership to plan well for the short term future.

How much should you pledge? I think 3% is a goal worth shooting for. It’s what Bonnie and I aim for. Gross or net or adjusted gross or whatever. Pick a number.

If that number is too big, think about a base line pledge of $150 per month (Bonnie and I are increasing 5%, and will be at $275 per month, starting now).

In any event, think about a 5% increase to support a cost of living adjustment for our excellent, new staff. For the vast majority of us, a 10% increase in our pledge wouldn’t even be noticed in our cash flow.

And remember the Preservation Pledge the congregation unanimously voted for at our last annual meeting. That works out to $1 per day for 3 years. I just wrote a check for $365 last month.

So? If you feel you can’t afford $365 for a Preservation pledge, then make some smaller amount. It is important to participate in the Preservation Pledge at whatever level you can. Your financial contribution is more important than the actual amount.

It may seem like a lot to ask for a 5% raise and another $365 per year to fix up the aging sanctuary. It is.

It is a lot to ask 570+ mostly unrelated adults and over 300 children to think about coming to church several times a month, to teach, to sing, to read, to talk, to drink coffee, to delve thoughtfully into the great events of the day, to truly consider who we really are, and who we really want to be.

It’s too much to ask, really. It’s an impossible undertaking. Probably one that shouldn’t even be tried.

But that’s what we ask people to do. And by some sort of incredible, wonderful miracle, that’s what happens.

If you have already made your pledge: bless you and thank you.

If you haven’t yet made your pledge, you can call us, email us, go to our web site and fill out a form. There are a dozen ways to say: Yes! Eliot is important, and I’m going to do my share to make it happen.

May you feel good about your generosity, and may we continue the miracle that is Eliot.

Taking the Next Step

2009-02-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

We are at a unique time in our history. On February 1st, we had 36 people sign the membership book, probably the most who have signed in one day since Charter Sunday. Our adult membership is at 576, making us the 37th largest physical congregation (out of 1100) in the United States, and our children’s program, at 305, makes ours the 14th largest.

We are in the middle of our canvass, which, despite the economic recession, looks to be doing well. This fall we will celebrate our 50th year. Already, Jan Erdman and Mary Quinn are working on this. We will begin a new ministry evaluation process. We will begin a new strategic planning process. We are beginning to think, now in the spring, about the kinds of things we want to be doing in the fall.

Now is the time to think about how you might help fulfill your personal life mission, by helping fulfill the Eliot mission: we gather to foster free religious thought, nurture spiritual growth, and act for social justice.

There will be leadership opportunities in some new groups that are forming. And it can be great to get leadership training and the opportunity to network with other UUs about how they get things done, and the kinds of programs they are doing.

So, I encourage you to think big about what we might do in the fall, and I encourage you to consider attending the annual District Assembly in Milwaukee, WI in late April. A couple hundred UUs will be in attendance and you can read more about it in this newsletter.

If you are considering going to the UU General Assembly in Salt Lake City, UT in late June, you will want to acquire housing via the UU web site ASAP. I have more information about that in this newsletter as well.

Just remember– if you’re an old-timer, or you just signed the book, or even if you are still a guest– now is the time to think about your involvement at Eliot. Just check the Information Guide, the website, and this newsletter for the latest updates. And please, don’t hesitate to give me a call, send me a note, or make an appointment if you would like to ask a question, make a comment, or just plain talk. I would really enjoy that.

DA: Leadership in Times of Profound Change

2009-02-12T10:22:00.000-08:00

I invite you to join me and hundreds of Unitarian Universalists to the 2009 Central Midwest District Assembly! We will gather in Waukesha WI, for three days of worship, fellowship, and fun. The dates of the Assembly are: April 24-26, 2009, Friday through Sunday.

We welcome Sharon Daloz Parks, author and independent scholar, as our keynote speaker to speak on our theme this year "Leadership in Times of Profound Change," followed later in the afternoon by the reverends Peter Morales and Laurel Hallman. We are one of the few districts to get them both in person at our annual meeting. These two candidates for the Presidency of the UUA will speak to us and will answer some prepared questions. Our UUA trustee, Justine Urbikas will moderate.

Our district executives and staff solicit ideas about the kind of programming that will be most valuable to the leadership of congregations. This year, we have recruited people to present workshops on such topics as ecology and sustainability, retaining visitors as involved members, and healthy congregations and covenants.

Our exciting Opening Celebration comes with music, inspiration and a banner parade. There will be a delicious banquet along with fabulous entertainment. We will gather Sunday morning for special worship. We will be together with UU friends, old and new, from across our Central Midwest District!

The registration fee for the District Assembly itself is $155. All events will be held at the Marriott Milwaukee West in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and overnight rooms are reserved until April 15, 2009 at the rate of $105 per night. You can reserve rooms online.

Consider a weekend of inspiration and celebration. I do have some funds available to defray registration costs for Eliot folk who want to go as our congregational delegate.

GA and the next UUA president

2009-02-12T10:21:00.000-08:00

Some of you will recall that the UU General Assembly (GA) happened in St. Louis in 2006.

About 4,000 UUs invaded downtown for four days of workshops, worship, networking, singing, and so forth. There are tremendous opportunities to learn more about all aspects of church leadership from the best and brightest in the denomination.

This year, the GA is being held in Salt Lake City, Utah. So far, the only people going I know about are my family, Jan Chamberlin (music director) and Leon Burke (choir director). We will go to learn, and to contribute, and to bring back creative ideas for Eliot for the coming year.

Every great once in a while, a really important election happens at the national level of the Unitarian Universalist Association. This year there will be an election for the next UUA President. Two UU ministers are running: Peter Morales and Laurel Hallman.

Peter’s web site is at: http://www.moralesforuuapresident.org.
Laurel’s website is at: http://www.hallmanforuuapresident.com.

Much like the United States, the UUA national organization is at a critical time in its discernment for the future. It is important that Eliot make its voice heard in such an important decision.

Only congregational (and minister) delegates get to vote at GA. Delegates are apportioned according to congregational size, with a ratio of one delegate per 50 congregational members. Because of our membership size (576 as of this writing), we get 12 delegates. Normally, those delegates would only get to vote if they were physically present in Salt Lake City.

However, the UUA bylaws allow for the provision of absentee ballots in elections. This means, we as a congregation can figure out who we want to be president, and send in all 12 absentee ballots accordingly.

Since delegates are representatives of a local congregation, they should vote the will of the congregation, not their own will; otherwise they are representing themselves as individuals, not as a messenger from the congregation. The difference here is between representative democracy and direct democracy.

So, here is how we can accomplish this at Eliot. At our annual meeting in May (or perhaps sooner), I will have the two candidates information available, probably as an order of service insert, along with a ballot of our own design.

I will answer any questions you may have about the process and tell you who I am endorsing as president. Then, we will collect the Eliot ballots and with the help of 12 volunteers, apportion the UUA absentee ballots according to how the congregation votes. So, each candidate got half the vote, we would send in 6 ballots for one candidate, and 6 for the other.

This system ensures it is the will of the congregation-- not the opinion of particular individuals-- who decide the votes. It also ensures we vote all of the absentee ballots we are entitled to. This system ensures any congregational member can have input simply by showing up to a meeting after church. It allows you to be more informed as to what is going on at the national level, it gets far more people informed about the candidates, and it insures the congregation as a whole (and not just a few elite) gets a chance to participate in the election process of GA.

Membership Growth - You Have to Ask

2009-02-01T18:13:00.000-08:00

To see a 2 minute video about membership growth at our church, click here:

What We Get From Eliot

2008-11-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

What We Get From Eliot

We are at a turning point– in so many ways– at Eliot Unitarian Chapel. We have a new, coherent administrative staff. We have new energy in our music program. We are standing by our faith in restoring our historic stone chapel. And our children’s religious education program continues to grow. Six years ago, when Rev. Bonnie and I first got here, the RE registration was a little over 250. Now it is over 300, a 20% increase. To accommodate further growth, we will eventually have to gut the old RE wing and put something else up. But that is an issue for another day.

We are undergoing another staffing transition in our children’s RE program. As part of that effort, meetings have been held, surveys collected, conversations started. Some of the initial results are in– results about how people feel about their Eliot experience.

Three questions, in particular, struck me as particularly interesting. The comments we got were thought provoking too. Below are the 3 questions, and a sampling of responses, some edited for length.

In what ways have you and your family gotten what you hoped for from Eliot?

We have met a group of friends with young children that are a constant support. We have Sunday services with messages that relate to our daily lives and ministers who give 100% to support the greater Eliot community. Eliot support staff are hard working and very supportive.
My kids and I have found a lot of friends and they are learning respect for many religious and spiritual traditions. Also, I have found a congregation that gives voice to my spiritual beliefs.
I feel like I have a spiritual community of people that share many of my values, though not all and that’s a good thing. I feel spiritual leadership from Daniel and Bonnie and support from them in a personal way. I think having a ‘third’ place’ has truly enriched our family life– creating a sense of belonging in a larger community.
I could write a book about how my children have a healthy, balanced understanding of faith and religion that they have received from Eliot’s RE program, which is really the Eliot members and friends that have taught my children.
We found a place [our daughter] can learn more about the different religious traditions than we could have shared. And in the process found out that we had a hole in our lives as well that Eliot has filled. It’s amazing to find out you were UU all along and just didn’t know it.
I like the way the kids are exposed to a wide variety of religious traditions, and the seven principles. I like that they can see that you can live a moral, meaningful life without having to buy into a rigid set of religious beliefs. Things that come up at church often serve as a springboard for discussions at home. The kids have friends who are very religious, and I like that their experience at Eliot gives them their own religion and they are not interested in getting involved with their friends' religion. They are respectful of others' beliefs, but they identify as UUs.
I feel like there is definitely a place for us at Eliot Chapel. We feel very integrated into the RE community in particular. I also feel like I'm challenged to live my values in a way that I wasn't before, but always felt was important.
My children now feel our beliefs are part of something larger than ourselves. My daughter couldn't understand why we didn't attend a church when all of her friends did. When we found Eliot we were in shock that there was a place for us in the organized religion world.

In what ways have you and your family not gotten what you hoped for from Eliot?

I wish influences beyond Jewish and Christian traditions could be utilized for teaching and learning during services and beyond. I want my children to be exposed to many perspectives.
I haven’t connected deeply with anyone. I have a lot of buddies, but no friends.
I would like to see, hear, feel more about social justice and community activism and how world religions, including Christianity instruct us in this way.
I would really like more traditional spirituality, more Jewish and Christian focus.
I think the spiritual leadership is excellent; however, I sometimes feel short-changed when we don’t get the real leaders. Both Dan and Bonnie are excellent, but the assistant/ interns have left a lot to be desired. In addition, the lay support often wears, suggests, and speaks their social agenda. I usually check the calendar to see who is ‘playing’ before we decide to go or not.
Little attention paid to Unitarian Christian roots.
Making more friends and family connections (due to our lack of attendance).
Sometimes Sunday morning can actually be too hectic with the Chalice Choir, teaching, donuts, special services, forms to fill out, etc. We could of course, just choose to do less, but they are ALL things we want to do ;-)

In what ways have you and your family gotten more than you expected from Eliot?

We have found the people that attend Eliot to be accepting and friendly. I appreciate the ministers are willing to listen to ideas/suggestions are promote a community that strives for decency in their thoughts and actions.
The more we give and participate, the more we get that feeling of belonging.
I think we are surprised by how many people are at Eliot who seem to genuinely care about us and our well-being- and vice versa. We came looking for spiritual guidance and ended up with a place that feels like home.
I am slowly repairing my very broken relationship with God and enjoying my personal spiritual journey.
I got more than I expected to (services and sermons, etc), when I first started coming for the kids.
I never could have expected to feel so much a part of things so easily. We spent several years searching for our spiritual home and we felt almost instantly that we were more than just welcomed, but integrated almost seamlessly.
I am so impressed by all the ways that parents and kids can be involved. From chalice choir to service projects.
Met so many more wonderful people than I ever thought. Taking my kids to Bergfried has been an unexpected treat.

The good news is that, for the most part, Eliot folk are making connections, living out their faith, and finding hope and courage to act for social justice. Of course, there are the obstacles of time and follow through, but the range of responses is heartening and a good reminder of what we’re about, and what we might do better.

Here’s hoping you find some peace and joy in the beginning of winter.

2008-11 Board Report

2008-11-14T11:54:00.001-08:00

My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.

Worship Services

Nothing significant to report. Overall, this has been a relatively quiet month.

Chapel Business

Budget Update. We should have an income statement, and balance sheet for you in the Office Report. We are on track are we with income and expense for the current fiscal year. For Canvass 2008-2009, Ken Denson and Charlie have had a preliminary meeting.

Building and Grounds. At my request, Charlie Lewis conducted some research as to how much of the utilities the Nursery School has been using. At the moment, we think that the current amount of 25% of the utility bill looks to be a correct apportionment.

Membership. Our first “New U” of the program year will be conducted on Saturday, 11/15/08. Previously, we did not have the minimum of 10 people we want to start the class. I have a separate memo for the board on the membership process.

Staff. They have been working well together. Rev. Bonnie has an update for you regarding the RE Administrator search.

Web Site. Charlie has more on this in the Office Report.

Social & Pastoral contact

Community for Understanding and Healing. I continue to participate in that group as part of my plan to be active in the civic life of Kirkwood. I see other Eliot members (including a youth) at these events. This month, we had a speaker from the St Louis historical society.

Police Chaplain program. I continue to meet with this group. We are going to meet with an officer who will tell us the police perspective on domestic violence intervention. This will be helpful to know. Also, we are gathering names for folks who might need a turkey for thanksgiving, and another list of folks who the police should check out in times of crisis (e.g., those on oxygen during a power outage). If you have some names, please let me know.

Pastoral Activities. I had two phone calls, along with a couple of coffee hour discussions.

Tough economic times

2008-10-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Tough Times

"It was a harsh summer... For many, it was as if the clocks had rolled back to the thirties and the time of the Great Depression. Company upon company declared bankruptcy. Unemployment soared. The 'sever and prolonged recession,' as it was dubbed by the media, sent ripples of depression across America. Politicians used the depressed state of the country to their advantage."

The excerpt above is from evangelist Robert Schuller's best seller, Tough Times Never Last; Tough People Do. And by the way, the book was written 25 years ago, and he was talking about the recession of 1982!

In the book, he argues that the biggest problem at the time was dealing with negative anticipation, and negative attitudes. I think that is still the challenge today. And some say we are not in as bad economic fundamentally, as we were in 1982.

I know people are nervous about the drop in the stock market, about the drop in our congregation's portfolio. But I also understand that most congregations don't see a significant decrease in giving in tough economic times. This is good news.

At Eliot, we do have a few families that have been particularly hard hit, and folks having been asking for larger amounts from the Ministers Discretionary Fund. And there was such a hit to that account, that we got board permission to do an appeal at a Sunday service in October, and people were very generous. We received $2,530 in cash and checks from one Sunday appeal, and a couple folks who sent checks in later. So, UUs can be very generous.

Yes, some people are out of work, but most are not. Those of us with retirement accounts or mortgages have seen those values go down. But most of us are- I imagine- still going to keep kids in music lessons, buy groceries, gasoline, and all the rest of it.

Even though I may not have much in common theologically with Robert Schuller, I agree with him that attitude is everything. In fact, we can look for strategic opportunities, and we can remember that just as we got through 1982, we'll get through 2008.

And although we will have some surprises- some unpleasant, some wonderful- we will walk together on our journey as religious communities.

At times like these, I find it helpful to keep my head up, my gaze to the horizon, and to keep moving!

Reflections on a Police Ride Along

2008-09-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Reflections on a Police Ride Along
Thursday, August 28, 2008.

Along with about 20 other Kirkwood area ministers, I have joined the chaplain program sponsored by the Kirkwood Police Department. I have a pocket badge, and an ID. I understand we are going to get jackets later on.

As part of the program, the ministers go on ride-a-longs. I understand I was the 2nd one to do so. Below is an account of how the day went. Enjoy!

Thursday morning, 6:45 am, roll call. A half dozen police sitting around. The lieutenant recaps a little of what is going on. There is some light joking.

I am assigned to two different officers for different parts of the 8 hour shift that runs from 7 am to 3 pm.

One officer mainly drives me around and shows me where our US Senator, Claire MaCaskill's compound is in Kirkwood, plus the homes of a few TV announcers. He has also been investigating the theft of a parishioners purse during a Room At The Inn night at Eliot. He has been living in Kirkwood and serving on our police force for 38 ½ years. He has seen it all. I don’t really want to know what ‘it’ is, actually.

We get a call from the dispatcher. A woman is complaining about difficulty breathing. When we arrive, there is an ambulance and a fire truck. We enter the woman’s home. Inside there are about 7 people. The old woman is complaining about difficulty breathing, but she seems fine to me. She is not getting along with her equally aged husband. A neighbor is in the room. He agrees to hang out with the husband until another relative shows up. One of the men in the room confides to me that he thinks the old woman is fed up with caring for her husband and just needs a couple days away at Missouri Baptist. It is really hard to be old and feeble yourself and have to take care of a crotchety spouse at the same time.

When I inquire as to why so many emergency responders are here in this woman’s house, this is how it is explained to me. The woman called, 911, so an ambulance came. When an ambulance comes, usually a fire truck comes, too, because they don’t know how many people they will actually need. When the fire truck comes, the police now come, too. Why? Because not that long ago, a man in Maplewood set fire to his truck, and when the firemen came to put out the fire, he shot and killed the fireman. So, now the police go on fire calls too.

Otherwise we drive around the high school a few times making sure the high schoolers are getting to school. We turn on the radar gun a few times riding around town– it checks car speeds while we are moving and it checks ahead and behind our police car.

We give out a couple of parking tickets to outrageously and dangerously parked cars. We pull over an old guy in a pickup truck, which is heavily laden with old pallets. Apparently, he drives around town, picks up the pallets from loading docks, and then goes and sells them somewhere. That’s not the problem. It’s that he has no tail lights or brake light. So, the officer tells him that she could have the truck towed, since it is illegal to drive, but she will just give him a ticket and tell him to get the lights fixed.

When the officer calls the car’s license plate in, they can tell us what kind of car it is supposed to be, the address it is registered to, and the date of its registration sticker.

At one point, the air conditioning breaks down. It is about 90 degrees out. The police officers wear tight fitting ballistic vests, along with tee shirts and their uniform. It gets them pretty hot. So the a/c is pretty important. And they often keep their driver’s side window down to hear better for better situational awareness. So, we take the car into the depot, and they test it, fix something, send us back out. Later in the day, it happens again, so we get a ‘new’ car. These cars are not in the best of shape. They are running pretty much constantly– 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are always 5 of them out on the streets of Kirkwood. The officers patrol in zones, so they cover a lot of the same ground.

The dispatcher comes on line to tell us a woman has called 911 several times. All they can hear is her telling someone to stop what they are doing and the woman is saying to this person they should go into a mental institution. And the woman hangs up. Several times. They can target a cell phone to a certain range, but not pinpoint. We drive over to where the call was to have originated. We drive around slowly, looking around, listening. The cell phone call could have come from inside a house. The woman is not answering her cell phone now. Who knows? We don’t find anything. We drive on. Later on, they get through to the woman. It was just an argument about something. Nothing serious.

I remind the officer about lunch. This is about one o’clock. Two hours to go on the shift. We go to Subway, sit down to eat. I get three bites in, and we get a call on the radio. A truck has crashed into a tree on North Taylor street. That is in our zone. Just like on TV, we quickly stash our lunch in the plastic bags, and jog out to the patrol car.

I’m wondering if it is going to be a grisly scene. If there will be an opportunity to offer pastoral care or a prayer to a stranger. I’m a chaplain after all. The adrenaline begins to pump a little bit.

We hop in, maneuver over to Taylor, and with our light on and siren whooping, we quickly get in behind a fire truck and an ambulance. They got the call too. We are going about 40 miles an hour up Taylor toward Manchester. We are zooming through stop signs, people are pulled over for us. First in line is the fire truck, then the ambulance, and then us, the police car. And I’m riding shot gun. Whooee!

When we get there, we don’t see anything. Some guys mowing lawns tell us there was a panel truck that crashed into a tree over there– they point– and the truck took off again. We look around and can see where the truck hit the tree. There are small bits of truck and a huge gouge. We drive around the block but the panel truck is long gone. Finally, the fire truck and ambulance head back to their station.

We drive and talk a bit more. We get a call about a suspicious character on North Taylor street: an African American youth with a red Mohawk haircut. Well, he shouldn’t be hard to spot. And we spot him. He seems like an ordinary youth. But he is black. With a red Mohawk, and he is seated on a curb scratching his leg. The officer asks if he is hurt or anything. He says, no, he is just scratching his leg. She waves and we drive off. She happens to know who he is, and that the youth is out on bond for some offense, and she knows he isn’t wanted for anything.

So the gist of it is that a neighbor sees a black youth with a red Mohawk haircut walking down the street, and that automatically makes him a suspicious character, and it is good to call the police in on such situations, right? Because North Taylor doesn’t have black people, and black people– especially youth, and especially a youth with a red Mohawk– how much more suspicious can you get? But this is profiling, it is racist. And the police get calls like this all the time. Calls about the neighbors leaves blowing on to your yard. Calls about rescuing a lost cat, dog.

We end our day by driving to a few houses in Kirkwood and handing out packs of 20 flyers to neighborhood block captains. The flyers are about a Take Back the Night event coming up later next month. It is community policing. I think next time, I’ll do a half shift, because 8 hours is pretty grueling. And I’ll go later in the day. They tell me more is going on then. The bad guys don’t get up early in the morning. Most shoplifting and other crime happens after 2 pm.

Well, you can learn a lot about how people view the police by riding with them in their cars. Some people smile and wave, others look suspiciously at the officers, as if the police are already guilty of something. But the ones I met are caring people with a tough job to do.

September Board Report

2008-09-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

Lead Minister’s Report to the Board of Trustees
September 12, 2008

My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.

Worship Services

Sunday Services. I preached twice last month, and I am set to preach three times in September, with Rev. Bonnie preaching on 9/21. I will be preaching in Mt Vernon, IL that day. I am still working on getting the rest of the fall scheduled. Last Sunday service produced several dozen responses to the question: when did you first know you were white? I have been able to use transcription software to get all those handwritten notes into electronic form. While I won’t be able to use all of the responses in the upcoming sermon, I will post them all on my blog: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com.

Chapel Business

Adult religious education. This month I began teaching a four session class called, “articulating your theology.” It will meet for four Wednesday night, and participants will produce a short statement about Unitarian universalism and their religious beliefs.

Board Stewardship Committee. I participated in this meeting. We discussed raising the pledge base, cultivating large gifts, expanding the script program, and moving Eliot more fully into e-commerce. Charlie Lewis and I are making progress in this area. Bill Miller and I meeting later this month to discuss the same topics.

Bookkeeper. Our bookkeeper is back on the job and doing well.

Building and Grounds. I called a meeting to try and get everyone on the same page as far as our grounds keeping and landscape plan goes. Besides myself, Marge Bergfeld (an Eliot member who owns a landscaping business), Charlie Lewis (Office Manager), Karen Rose (Eliot’s landscape contractor) attended, along with Larry Reuter and Curtis Kristofitz of the Building and Grounds (B&G) Committee. There has been some tension as the guys from B&G have been denied access to work orders, invoices, and even contact with Karen Rose by the previous Business Administrator. We discussed the work Ms Rose was doing, had done, her general plan and approach to the grounds. Larry & Curtis had a variety of saved up, pointed questions, which were answered satisfactorily. Marge Bergfeld was able to provide a professional perspective that was most helpful. Our group toured the grounds and made on the spot decisions about particular plants. Charlie will come up with a proposed annual calendar and grounds plan which we will then take back to the group. There is some tension between ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ of thought here. The old school apparently thinks there should be as few plants as possible with as much lawn grass as possible. The new school favors more native plants with reduced water, chemical, and maintenance inputs.

Canvass. The staff and I are eager to begin to work with the new canvass team. Hopefully we will receive some information soon.

Chapel Calendar. We have been making tweaks to the online CalendarWiz program we use for our calendaring. It is working well, and is available as a link from our new web site.

Disaster Preparedness. I distributed kits for families for disaster preparedness last Sunday, as part of the Sunday service. I also asked for volunteers for a Disaster Preparedness Task Force. I have since received about a half dozen inquiries. I plan to convene the group in two weeks, after returning from Boston. I also convened a telephone conference call among ministers from large UU churches in our district. We discussed what we were doing (if anything) and best practices.

Membership Coordinator. After an extensive interview, I have brought on Tracey Howe Koch as “Volunteer Membership Coordinator.” This is essentially, a staff position, but unpaid for this year. Tracey will work with me initially, and then I plan on handing off the membership area to Rev. Bonnie, due to the civic activity I have taken up in Kirkwood.

Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute has advised us to get another survey done to see if our neighbor has complied with the court order. Charlie is working on facilitating this. Our lawyer has been on vacation, but I will be communicating with him regarding the sign posted on the neighbor’s RV. It continues to be an eyesore.

Information guide. We are in the process of a total overhaul of the information guide. Previously, all of the religious education material was published in separate booklets and pamphlets. While some material for RE will still be published separately, the new information guide will be a comprehensive resource for all the activities and programs of Eliot Unitarian Chapel.

Web Site. The board let me know last spring that a more functional web site was a priority. Brent Vaughn and Charlie Lewis have been working tirelessly to get this up and running. They have even installed a major upgrade of the software. I have been doing some testing and updating.

Social & Pastoral contact

Community for Understanding and Healing. I participated in the last meeting where we saw a short video on white privilege and then broke out into discussion groups. I will continue to participate in that group as part of my plan to be active in the civic life of Kirkwood.

Pastoral Activities. I had two office visits, and a phone call, along with the usual coffee hour discussions. I plan on two in home visits in the next month.

Picnic at Des Peres Park. We had an Eliot picnic at Des Peres Park (8/24). Bonnie, and I and our girls spent a couple hours there with parishioners in a relaxed environment.

Police Chaplain program. I have been in several meetings at the police department with other Kirkwood area ministers to discuss and implement the chaplain program. I took my “ride-a-long” in an 8 hour shift. It was illuminating. You can read more about the ride along on my blog which is at: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com. I plan on doing this about once per month as a way of meeting more neighbors and interacting with our public officials.

Upcoming.

I will be in Boston from September 14 through the 17th for a UUA task force.
On September 18 I will be introduced with the chaplain team to the Kirkwood city Council.
On September 19 and 20th I will be in Chicago for a district board meeting.
On September 21 I will be preaching in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and Rev. Bonnie will be doing the service here.

When did you first know you were “white?”

2008-09-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

When did you first know you were “white?”
25 People answered the question. Below is a transcription of their handwritten notes. Each story is separated by a blank line.

As a youngster I grew up in a community of mostly white people except for a neighborhood called “Hershey Hill.” When we passed through this area, my mom would tell us to lock our car door, and we did. I noticed that the porches and front yards of these homes were filled with people with brown skin and as I grew older, equated this with the chocolate candy for which the neighborhood was so named. How clever, I thought.
At eight years of age, my dad coached my basketball team and we gave rides to a girl who lived in Hershey Hill. One evening I asked her if she was scared to live in Hershey Hill. She cried, my dad got mad at me and I suddenly realized the thoughtless prejudice of my family.

When I first went to Nipher junior high with kids from the Meacham Park area, I was taken aback by the dark skin and loud, aggressive behavior of the black kids. It took me most of high school to stop being startled by both of these aspects.

My first memories were living on a military base in Germany. We had lived on and off base, so I knew we were Americans and not Germans. In the states, from second grade on, I lived several years in Lincoln, Nebraska. At some point we heard about Omaha having problems but I probably didn’t realize those problems may have been a result of being poor and black until high school. However, we did have a handful of black families all accepted as part of our community. In grade school the immigrant kids seemed more exotic and different than the black kids. The kid’s parents spoke Lativan and the girl with a really long braids had a funny name. They were different.
The three black kids in our high school were just kids. It didn’t seem like they were different. I didn’t really know about problems until I was out of high school. Lincoln was a lot different from Omaha and way different from St. Louis. Now I know there are a lot of black kids at another high school in Lincoln and racial tensions were not unknown. It was just not something my family had to deal with. However it is possible that her family’s choice of high school may have been based partly on race. What we were told was that it was because my brother wanted to be on the debate team.

I grew up in a country that was 99% white and 95% one religion. Sometime around 10 years of age, I was at an amusement park, where they had rides and so on. In one corner they had some shows, singing and so on. One little closed area had inside an exotic “jungle” show. A featured part was a black person, presumably African, who was dressed in a grass skirt holding a spear. He walked on hot coals and broken glass. He said not a word and an emcee narrated. I thought of Tarzan books. It was obviously cool. These exotic people lived in a land far away. Among us white people lived a small number of gypsies, the only minority that were different already by the way they dressed.
We had a sort of passive religion, a religion weren’t mostly in school. Religion was not a major part of ethnic identity, at least not in childhood. Language was a major barrier between “us” and “them.”
I then had to become “them.” though still part of white people! In my 13th year I was in an urban Chicago school and did have one black friend, one of the handful of black kids in the school. I had trouble understanding several kids, they spoke poorly. My black friends spoke perfect Midwest English.

By the time I was a toddler, I knew “white” was considered superior, or preferable, to “black,” but because of an early memory of a friendly black man, I could not figure out why.

When I was six or seven years old my father, a social worker in Kansas City was helping us with bailing people out of jail during the riots following King’s assassination. Late one night he came home tired and frustrated and it was the first and only time I saw him cry. This was a monumental in my thinking about the divide that existed between the races and I definitely knew I was white.

I was 2 ½ years old when I first knew I was white. We had a black cleaning lady once a week.

When we were driving downtown and my father pointed out the ‘ziggaboos’ and I saw chocolate colored people. But somehow I knew he was wrong to call them that. So from an early age – five? – I knew my father and I had different beliefs.

Growing up in Edwardsville, Illinois and going to Catholic school, I had no exposure to any ethnic city other than Caucasians and primarily Catholics. I do remember an African American – although I did not know that term – called “preach” who walked the streets of downtown and ran errands for merchants and lawyers from the county courthouse. He was extremely friendly and well liked by the community. I had a sense that I was different from preach in many ways. Skin color was just one of those ways.

I first knew I was white at age 12, in 1964, in downtown St. Louis. A black man saved my life. Obviously, he was a good person. The only difference between us was the color of our skin.

Somewhere around six or seven years old I learned I was white when my father worked with the Mill Hill missionary fathers were coming and going between Africa and St. Louis and England. As Catholics we work for the poor who always seemed to be black. Living in the city of St. Louis my other experienced was a racist grandfather who – for as long as I can remember – talked about the “niggers” who we saw around us. Then in seventh grade we move toward integrated neighborhood which I loved. It was always confusing until then. Now I am struggling with the “whiteness” in many ways of our congregation. It just doesn’t feel like home. I wish I had suggestions...

My first recollection was when I was around 10 years old walking up to town in Sparta, Illinois where my grandma and grandpa lived. I was with my sister who was 11. Two girls of color approached us and we all exchanged looks and remarks, thus I knew that I was white and they were black.

When I was growing up in Kirkwood I only saw white people. I don’t remember seeing many people with dark skin until TV, and I went to college at a SIU in Carbondale.

I grew up in a town and state that had very few minorities. However, in second or third grade, I became friends with an African American girl named Laverne. My mom and I would go to her house (in a “bad” part of town) and bring her back to our house so we could play together. I was fortunate to have parents who didn’t see people as black or white.

When I was a child, age 5 to 12, I lived in a small town of block from the county courthouse. Our next-door neighbors on both sides were “rich,” business owners in town whose homes were brick. We rented a white framed two-story house from one of them. The other had children my age, my only playmates. They also had a black maid, whom I noticed a dark skin, but I never saw any other discrimination. A block away lived a black family you the mother was renowned for her barbecue, which another neighbor used to buy and take home. I don’t remember any other contact with black people except the black AME small white framed church, which was right next door to our big Zion UCC church uptown, only a couple of blocks on the other side of the courthouse.
I went to church camp in the late 1950s, early 1960s, and met kids from Fort Smith, Arkansas. The civil rights movement and the lunch counter demonstrations across the South came in to my consciousness. The kids I met at Camp became penpals, and I learned there older college aged siblings were participating in the protests. The music at church camp that we didn’t like was due up – early rock ‘n roll – so I joined with three or four black kids and started an a cappella to a group that sang at Camp Aurora and Windyville, Missouri.
After college in a few years at Monsanto – when they started hiring blacks – I met the best friend I had there for over 25 years I’ve been retired six years now, and we still get together for dinner several times a year – recently to celebrate Obama’s nomination.
I still find “white” and “Caucasian” we are words to describe myself. I’m German through and through, but intellectually I know that race as such doesn’t exist scientifically. It’s a weird world and getting weirder the longer I live!

I think I knew I was white when I knew black people were not “allowed” in our neighborhood or schools in 1945. “They” had their own neighborhoods and their houses were not nice – they didn’t keep them up. Then I didn’t think more about it – until I was old enough to see the injustice. I began to imagine what it must be like to be another race. I had to deal with fear also. I was afraid of black people. I stayed clear.
Of course that changed you I’m still afraid of hatred no matter where it comes from – and uncomfortable sometimes. But, I have found love and appreciation. I also see progress.

My parents talked about the Negroes. It seems difficult to say the word... we were driving they talked in general – they did not point. But I could see and feel the difference. I could feel a difference because of the way my dad said the word: Negro.

I graduated in January 1955. And I knew that the schools would be integrated in February 1955. I first realized that it wasn’t because no “Negroes” lived in my school district and that none came to my school – I was shocked to learn that they were not allowed to come to school. P.S. I. thought of myself as “Italian” but then new I was “white.”

There was a woman my grandmother called “the maid.” My grandfather called her “the colored gal.” Tinnie and I loved each other, or at least I loved her and she was very, very kind to me. The first time I realized we were different colors I at least had the sense to feel guilty. My grandma and I had lunch at the kitchen table and Tinnie said on a stool at the counter. I asked me to come sit with us. But my grandmother said, oh no, she preferred to sit at the counter. Tinnie did not smile at me, concentrated on her lunch, and I knew it wasn’t the truth. I knew that she was somehow considered inferior, and I felt very bad about that I felt bad because I loved her. Incidentally, my grandmother always was polite and considerate of her employees and unfailingly went through the annual struggle of paying Social Security on their behalf.

I grew up in Hungary (100% Caucasian population) and the first time I realized I was white was when I saw black students in my biology class at the local university.

I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Quite a while ago now. About that time I was in kindergarten, my mother told me that I should not talk to the “dark” people on the buses, which we regularly rode around town. She said their skin was dark because they were bad and we were very lucky because our skin was white. I can remember thinking two things: (one) that the dark people were different shades and (two) I wasn’t white like milk or my white crayons, but I knew if I said these things, I would be “in trouble are you” shortly after this, I was watching a “arc” mother on the bus with her children and she was very good to them and I thought my mother was wrong or she had lied to me.
This is something that happened with my twin boys when they were four years old. Their best friend was a black boy from preschool. It was early summer and we had invited him over to play. I told the boys that could change into their swim trunks before getting into a little wading pool in the backyard. A few minutes later, my boys came running out of the bedroom and one of them said excitedly, “mommy, mommy, guess what! Vernon’s black all over.”
They had obviously thought previously that only his face and hands were black (the visible parts). I’ve always loved this memory.

I grew up in Chicago and when Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were terrible riots in the city. I particularly remember because it happened the day before my birthday, and the police were telling people not to come down into the city until the streets were under control from rioters and looters.
I remember my dad speaking about the looters "schvartzahs" (blacks in yiddish), how they were acting like animals turning on their own kind and ruining their neighborhoods.
This was the day I knew I was white, and because I was afraid of that was going on in the city, I was glad I was.

Growing up in rural Iowa in the 30’s and 40’s, I had never seen a black person until I entered high school. Then there were two black boys in school. I had little contact with them. I was never taught to be prejudiced even though I had grown up in a white society.
When I entered college, my room mate who grew up in a segregated Kansas City told me how difficult it was for her to drink from a fountain after a black person. I was shocked!
When Duke Ellington and his band came to play a concert at the college, there was no motel in Waterloo or Cedar Falls, Iowa, that would let them stay over night. They had to be housed in a dorm at the college. I was the editor of the College newspaper and wrote an editorial about the irony of this.

I was introduced to the idea of "white" in 1967 when I was 7 years old and I was invited to a friend's birthday party. Melody was African-American and my parents told me I was not allowed to attend the party because she was black. My older sister who was 19 at the time took me aside, out of hearing of my parents, and told me that our parents were wrong and she would get me to the party. Everything went as planned that Sunday afternoon and I did go to the party. I don't recall my parents ever finding out. My parents have both since passed away. Dad would be 91 and Mom would be 88 if they were still living. My parents did "evolve" and make changes in their thinking as they aged, but in 1967, that was who they were.

August Board Report

2008-09-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Lead Minister’s Report to the Board of Trustees
August 15, 2008

My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.

Worship Services

Sunday Services. Last month, I was on vacation, and checked in regularly with the staff to ensure we were making progress on our summer plans. Study Leave has occupied me for the first two weeks of this month. I have about half the 30 service topics I need, and am making headway on the last half. In the coming year, we hope to have more “non-competes” when it comes to Sunday fund-raising, and we hope to be able to champion our Social Action projects throughout the year via a “Mission Minute” in the Sunday service.

Chapel Calendar. I have been trying to do more coordination regarding the Eliot Calendar and Sunday Services. Bonnie and I met with Amy Stark to discuss calendar planning for Social Action projects and shared collection recipients and the shared collection calendar. This year, we also will be coordinating with the Partner Church Council (PCC). Last year, we ran into a few glitches. For example, the PCC scholarship kickoff Sunday was also to be a shared collection Sunday.

Chapel Business

Bookkeeper. As you read in the Office Report, our bookkeeper had a heart attack recently, so we don’t have complete numbers for you but we do have a financial snapshot for you.

Membership Coordinator. Citing family concerns, Jennifer Foss has resigned. She has indicated she is available to train the next MC. I believe we need the Membership Coordinator function to keep newer and older members engaged and committed, to help with volunteer recruitment, and some development work. Having a non-member fill this position has not worked out. Hiring a member is fraught with possible complications. After considerable discussion, Bonnie and I think we have an Eliot member as a possible candidate. We will meet privately with that person to discuss possibilities, and will report to the board on our progress.

Summer Projects. Our publications are moving along on schedule. We hope to have the picture directory, the information guide, new brochures, and new business cards ready early next month.

Building and Grounds. You can read about our progress in the Office Report.

Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute notes that we won our court case, and that the neighbors have put up a sign on the side of their RV that is “is retaliatory in nature and highly inaccurate factually and legally.” He recommends we ask them to take the sign down, and if they don’t to make a formal complaint to the City of Kirkwood. I am sending his letter under separate cover. I believe the board should make a decision as to how we should proceed, and that ideally we will decide this at the August board meeting in advance of the program year kick off, September 7.

Disaster Preparedness. I attended a two day conference on disaster preparedness held at Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood. We will be reviewing our procedures for fire drills, earthquake, tornado, and ‘invader’ drills in the coming year. We will be distributing kits for families for disaster preparedness sometime this fall.

Social & Pastoral contact

Community for Understanding and Healing. They have had some book reading and reviews. Bonnie attended the most recent one. Their community conversations start up again in September, and I plan on attending those.

Police Chaplain program. I have signed up for my first “ride-a-long” and will report about that in my blog and board report.

Pastoral Activities. I have been keeping up with Bonnie in this area. And I plan to start my regular pastoral routine (monthly quota of visits and calls initiated by me) in September.

Parade Participation

2008-06-18T13:31:00.001-07:00

There is a photo (below) in a recent Webster-Kirkwood times edition, where you can see the lawn chair brigade that a dozen folks (including me), featured in the Meacham Park Parade and Homecoming.

It's true, all of us in the lawn chair brigade were white, but it is also true that there were a lot more white faces at this event than in previous years. My face is blocked, but if you look carefully, you can see Rev. Bonnie and daughter Kaylie standing next to her, bringing up the rear of the parade. We were the very last item in the parade, and our captain liked to stop and show us off, so we were really dragging and bringing up the rear.

On the other hand, all the residents lining the streets were grateful we were there to lend support and recognition to their parade. Apparently, the parade & homecoming celebrated its 35th year this year. And despite being a Kirkwood resident for the last 6 years, I had never heard of it.

In fact, until the parade, I didn’t know there was an actual ‘park’ in Meacham Park. And it is a nice one, too. In the end, we got a snow cone, walked around, smiled at babies. I saw a few Eliot folk there– including a couple people singing in the community gospel choir.

Our ‘precision lawn chair brigade’ was sponsored by the Community of Understanding and Healing, which has done a lot of work since the shootings in February to try and bring understanding and healing to our community.

Despite the fact that our brigade was late coming to the end of the parade, we showed up, we showed our support, and it was appreciated.

I suppose many of us have been a little late to the parade of working for an anti-racist multi-cultural town.

But there will be other opportunities– maybe not a lawn chair brigade– but other substantive opportunities for you to try and live your faith, and work for an earth made fair and all her people one. Just keep your eyes and ears open!

See you in August– Daniel

Eliot member Kevin Mitchell has a new book out

2008-06-18T13:29:00.001-07:00

Eliot member Kevin Mitchell has a new book out. You can read about it here.

June 7 – Meacham Park Homecoming and Parade

2008-05-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

June 7 – Meacham Park Homecoming and Parade

I think the idea of a a precision lawn chair brigade is just too good to pass up. I invite you to join me at the three rehearsal sessions listed below, or to join the parade that Saturday, or simply to show up and see the thing.

It would be good for folks like us to go hang out with neighbors to our south in Meacham Park.

This event is coordinated by the Community for Understanding and Healing. You can read more about them here.

==

Mark your calendar, put on your walking shoes, and join CFUH as part of the Meacham Park parade and homecoming Saturday, June 7 – parade at 11:00 AM – food, fun, and games for the kids afterward in the Park. The parade route begins at Turner School, circles the Meacham Park area (a distance of about one mile), ending at the park grounds at the corner of New York and Orleans.

We also want as many of the drill team members as possible to attend a first rehearsal and planning session on May 21 at 6:30. (It takes bodies to make sure the plans are reasonable.) All rehearsals will be on the Kirkwood High School Essex parking lot.

The CFUH parade contingent – a precision lawn chair brigade, followed by, hopefully, many marchers – will assemble at 10 AM at Turner School. We are looking for a couple dozen good strong women and men for our precision lawn chair brigade.

People who are in the brigade will need to meet several requirements:

• the ability to carry an aluminum lawn chair the distance of the parade (BringYourOwnChair).
• the ability to learn a drill routine which may require lifting, sitting, getting up, reversing direction, etc.
• availability to attend two Wednesday evening rehearsals - May 28 and June 4 at 6:30 PM.

We are ordering CFUH t-shirts, blue with white lettering – (see a mockup at http://cfuh.org/mpParade.html)

Front: "Community for Understanding and Healing" with our logo

Back: "on a quest to transform Kirkwood into a prejudice-free, highly respectful community"

We hope many of you will order one of these shirts for $8 (XXL $9), but this is not a requirement for marching in the parade – you can wear a white or blue shirt of your own.

Send an e-mail to register@cfuh.org and let us know:

• if you plan participate in the parade, and if you want to be in the lawn chair drill team or march behind them. We want to identify our lawn chair brigade members by May 20.
• if you would like to order a t-shirt. Include the size: S, M, L, XL, or XXL. Payment can be made at the time of delivery which will be at the drill team rehearsals or on the day of the parade.

2008 District Assembly

2008-04-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

2008 District Assembly in St. Louis

Was great! We got lots of good comments on the Friday night opening celebration. Thanks to the UU ministers of St. Louis. And Eliot’s choirs, including Inner Voices and the Children’s Choir, were wonderful with the banner parade.

Saturday worship was led by Rev. Bill Sasso (Carbondale) and was well received.

The Sunday morning worship featured the 1st Unitarian Church of St Louis choir. And they were excellent. As was Rev. Khelber van Zandt V (Alton) as liturgist, and Rev. Krista Taves (Emerson) doing a children’s story which involved about a dozen adult actors who could barely keep straight faces to tell.

The highlight of Sunday morning at the Hilton Frontenac was the preacher– our own Tracey Howe-Koch, who overcame 8 other contestants to win the sermon prize and who delivered the sermon with such enthusiasm she received a standing ovation!

I have no doubt Tracey will be asked to deliver her sermon again at area churches.

We had all eleven delegates attend, so a good Eliot turnout. Krista and I– along with Eliot Senior Youth Victoria Mitchell– did a workshop on our innovative youth programming at Emerson and at Eliot.

Jan Chamberlin also led a workshop and her efforts were highly praised by district staff as going above and beyond expectations so much, the staff felt they had to give her a special gift certificate for all the work she had done.

We passed two district resolutions to be sent on to the UUA board. One was about affordable child programming at the UU General Assembly (GA); the other was about funding for national youth programming. This last resolution, originating from our own Ms Mitchell, has spread like wildfire and will be brought up and voted on at this year’s GA in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

We might only get District Assembly here once every 20 years or so, but the people and staff at Eliot did a fantastic job!

Racism in Kirkwood

2008-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

Racism in Kirkwood

On Saturday morning, April 12, there were a couple hundred people from Kirkwood and surrounding areas at the Kirkwood United Methodist Church. I saw about 10 or so folks from Eliot that morning. Pastor Dave Bennet and a few others gave some opening remarks.

We were reminded that 99.9% of the human genome is the same, and that only .1% is different among the human races. We were reminded that the US Senator Barack Obama is a distant cousin of the movie actor Brad Pitt.

We were also reminded that there are significant cultural differences between blacks and whites, and certainly Kirkwood is no different than other places in that regard. There are economic and educational differences.

Mostly racism in Kirkwood is the corporate, silent kind. We don’t have Klansmen walking around town in hooded robes.

We reminded of drug and prison statistics: 11% of white teens use drugs; 9% of black teens. But white teens were 1/3 more likely to have sold drugs, and black teens represent half of those jailed for drug use. We were told there are more black men in prison than in dorm rooms. And that even if there are more black police, things don’t seem to have changed much.

We were given a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “a religion concerned about souls but not about conditions that hurt the soul– that religion is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of doing something.”

As in March, we broke up into one of about 20 different groups (I’ve been in group #12). And we talked about our racial & ethnic backgrounds, when we first came to realize what ethnicity we were, when we’ve experienced racism, and ideas for improving race relations in Kirkwood.

There was an old timer from Meacham Park there. I remembered him from last time. Fascinating guy. He talked about how in the old days, Meacham Park was part of the county, not Kirkwood. Most people didn’t have indoor plumbing. It was a ‘rough’ neighborhood in some respects, there were drug houses.

Even though white people saw blacks as more or less monolithic, some of the blacks saw themselves as being in different ‘sects’ depending on where– exactly– they lived.

Come to think of it, I have to wonder if that isn’t the whole thing about ‘what high school you went to’ in Kirkwood, as being such a defining thing. I guess it is defining because by saying where you went to high school, you say what neighborhood you grew up in, and that– somehow– brands you for life.

I heard a story about how 5 black girls died in house a fire in 1965 and no fire truck showed up. And that shortly after that, there was a black fire chief for a while. An article from the Kirkwood- Webster Times had this to say:

[Kirkwood Mayor] Reim said he was shocked and saddened to learn of the disaster. Meacham Park's volunteer fire department was unable to respond to the house fire, because of a broken-down fire truck. Reim speculated that with proper fire equipment or a building code, the children might still be living.

I heard another story about a black woman going to a restaurant at Station Plaza, just across from our church across the railroad tracks. And that not only was she the only black person out of a couple hundred people, but that people kept looking at her– as if she was out of place. She felt so uncomfortable, she finally got up and left.

And we heard more stories about black men simply walking through a traditionally white neighborhood, getting questioned by police. And about police pulling over black folks in cars for the crime of ‘driving while black.’

We heard how Meacham Park still has only one entrance and exit, and that there is no polling place to vote there. Part of the reason there is no polling place is that you need 100+ registered voters in an area to get a polling place, and that a lot of folks in Meacham Park feel disenfranchised enough to think it not worthwhile to vote at all.

We don’t like to admit racism exists, but it does. What shall we do about it? You might join folks for the next meeting of the Community for Understanding and Healing (www.cfuh.org) which is on Saturday, May 3 at Grace Episcopal Church on the corner of Argonne & Woodlawn. Registration and coffee is at 9:30 a.m. with the program running from 10 to noon. All adults and teens are welcome, and no child care is available.

Kirkwood Candidate Forum

2008-04-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

The following is from the Community of Understanding and Healing, but it just came out, so it's a little late.....

The topic of city government has clearly emerged from our two dialogue sessions. In an effort to provide additional valuable resources to our participants, we feel this announcement is in line with our community effort to understand and heal through reflective dialogue. We want to make it very clear that we do not endorse any candidate as our mission states that we are a "non-political group." We encourage all of our participants to become informed about candidates’ positions. Audience members can submit questions to be addressed by the candidates.

Candidate Forum

sponsored by Meacham Park Neighborhood Improvement Association (MPNIA)

Tuesday, April 1 – 7:00 p.m.

Kirkwood Church of God

345 Meacham St.

All Candidates for Mayor and City Council have been invited. MPNIA is hoping for a very good turnout.

Directions from Big Bend: At the light just east of Combs Tire, go south On Milwaukee Ave, go 3 blocks then left onto Meacham St., go 1 block (you will pass the park) to the corner of Orleans and Meacham St.

Civic Involvement, Racial Healing

2008-03-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

Civic Involvement, Racial Healing

The shootings in Kirkwood has changed the nature of the Kirkwood Ministerial Alliance (KMA). At the last meeting, the KMA attendance wasn’t 7 evangelical pastors, but 25 pastors, and a couple of laymen, with 2 black pastors and 2 black laymen, and a white businessman who wants to help. And me, the only non-Christian in the group.

We are hosting the KMA here at Eliot in early April.

I also participated in the Community of Understanding and Healing (CUH), held at Meramec last month, and was joined by about 6-12 Eliot folks. I will be actively participating in the Alliance and at the monthly CUH meetings.

The first CUH Dialogue Session was held 23 February 2008 at Kirkwood Baptist Church. Almost 200 people attended, and 161 people participated in 12 groups. On March 8 the group met again at St. Louis Community College at Meramec. Over 250 people attended, and 242 participated in 15 small groups.

The next CUH meeting will be Saturday, April 12 at Kirkwood United Methodist Church (201 W. Adams - Kirkwood) . Here's the schedule: 9:30 a.m. - Registration, coffee, and conversation; 10:00 a.m. to noon - Small group dialogue sessions. I hope to see Eliot folks again!

Also in "Eliot Peace and Justice News," I arranged for Rev. Bonnie and David to lead Eliot folks to join Meacham Park folks, in a new group called "Coalition for Peace," where about 10-12 Eliot folk (all white) joined about 20 Meacham Park folk (all African American) in marching this last Saturday from Nipher School to City Hall, to show solidarity, work for justice, voter registration for young African American men, and the willingness to work with the larger Kirkwood community. Bonnie has an article about that in this newsletter.

You can see a KMOV news (tv) clip of our Eliot participation here.

If you look closely, you can see Rev. Bonnie a couple times, as well as David Breeden our intern. And an Eliot member was interviewed.

Even though the Coalition for Peace was announced at the KMA meeting, Eliot Chapel folks were the only "white" people to show up. Why?

I hope to find out at the next KMA meeting, April 5. And I hope to see you at Kirkwood United Methodist, April 12.

These are small steps, but they are the steps that could make a difference. I am reminded of a politician who reminded us we can trash talk about race, or throw our hands up in despair. Or we can say– now is the time to do something about racial healing and reconciliation. And it begins with us.

Trying to get more integrated into Kirkwood

2008-02-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

Trying to get more integrated into Kirkwood

It has been a violent month. First the shootings in Kirkwood. Then a week later more shootings at Northwestern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL.

On Thursday, February 7th, the massacre in Kirkwood occurred. I was in a meeting with the Lead Ministers Relations Committee (Kim Fitzgerald, Kathy Mead, Luis Ortiz, David Seidensticker, and Julie Triplett).

Within 24 hours, the Kirkwood Ministerial Alliance (KMA) organized a prayer vigil for that Friday night. Unfortunately, they didn’t notify us. We found out about it anyway, but by the time I found out I was most of the way to Bloomington, IL for a district board meeting and wouldn’t be able to make it back in time.

We were able to get our intern and Reverend Bonnie there. Rev. Bonnie wore her stole and stood toward the front, and I understand one of the TV stations showed her a few times. I also heard from a few of you that it was hard to hear the prayers through all the noise of the generators for the TV crews and the helicopters above. And that what prayers were heard were very much in line with evangelical Christianity, and it would have been nice to hear something a little more in keeping with liberal religion.

So, the KMA has changed its meeting time (which conflicted with another monthly meeting I have) and will now meet once a month on Saturday at 8 am. Why the change? In the years I’ve attended KMA meetings (off and on), there haven’t been any black pastors, because unlike the white pastors, the black pastors have day jobs and can’t afford the luxury of attending a mid-day meeting.

You can be sure we will be attending the March meeting, and trying to make sure we get called in emergency pastoral visits– if they will let us!

February 2008 Newsletter Essay

2008-01-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

Giving it to the Church

The Butterball Turkey Company set up a hotline to answer consumer questions about preparing holiday turkeys. One woman called to inquire about cooking a turkey that had been in her freezer for twenty-three years. The operator told her it might be safe if the freezer had been kept below zero degrees the entire time. But the operator warned the woman that, even if it were safe, the flavor had probably deteriorated, and she wouldn't recommend eating it. The caller replied, "That's what we thought. We'll just give it to the church."

Giving it to the church, indeed! Sometimes, if we don't pay attention, it seems like the spirit of creativity, of stone soup, can become the spirit of Scrooge. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in the distant past, some folks wanted to get together and create something larger than themselves. They wanted to get together with other folks– to create a church! They wanted to create a place where people could share their history, a place where people could openly explore & present their religious ideas, a place of toleration, of reason, conscience, and the never-ending search for truth.

Their desire was strong, their number small. Long was their reach, swift was their response, creative was their approach to creating a new church as an offshoot from an older one.

The years rolled by. People died, others were born, drifters came & went. Old folks came just in time to find the religion of their dreams. Children grew up in the church, became youth, and moved away, some moved back. New people came, old-timers stayed.

The spirit of operating on a shoestring, the spirit of "making do" stayed; it seemed the right thing to do. But over time, the church grew large, it's children needed materials, its ministers & employees needed a fair wage & benefits.

The church moved from folks gathered 'round a living room to folks gathered in an English Gothic style church. A place of art and music, a place where children could learn, and all could be warm in the winter & cool in the summer, a place to sink into silence, meditation, and prayer, a place to dream dreams. The church planted roots which grew deep, it grew & flowered!

By now, most of you are considering your financial pledge for the upcoming fiscal year (July through June) and let me say– thank you! For the consideration. But don’t miss Celebration Sunday on February 10! – Daniel