On Turning 60, Part 2

On Turning 60, Part 2

Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta

August 3^rd 2014

This morning we have a special occasion to celebrate. After last Sunday’s Camp Meeting service, I wanted to pick music that would be relevant to our mature 60 years. In May I gave the first part of this sermon On Turning 60 about myself, so I figure I know what it feels like to be 60…and so some of the hymns we could have sung today for our 60^th are:

            Go Tell It on the Mountain, But Speak Up

            Just a Slower Walk with Thee

            Nobody Knows the Trouble I Have Seeing

            It Is Well With My Soul, But My Knees Hurt

(http://www.guy-sports.com/humor/jokes/jokes_over60.htm)

Well, maybe 60 isn’t so old, especially when I think of the congregations I visited in England earlier this month: Leeds Unitarian Chapel had its first services in March of 1674, and York Unitarian Chapel in 1693.

Mill Hill Unitarian Chapel, Leeds

Closer to home, Unitarianism arrived in South Carolina in 1787. The Charleston church is the oldest Unitarian Church in the South.

But even though our congregation is 60 years old, the first Unitarian congregation actually formed in Augusta in 1826 (http://studio205.tv/redrobotfoods/unitarian-universalists-in-atlanta-100-years/).

A meeting house was built in 1827 and a minister was called in 1830. Until 1837, the Rev. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, whose father had designed the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, was minister to the Unitarian church in Augusta.  

Rev. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch

But by 1837 Rev. Bulfinch was gone, and the congregation dissolved because of three reasons: internal conflict; conflict with the American Unitarian Association over its anti-slavery stand; and severe criticism from the Augusta community for the Unitarians’ liberal Christian beliefs. Following these disagreements the church, like others in the South, closed in 1840. Rev. Bulfinch later wrote a novel that was a thinly veiled commentary on his struggle with slavery, which many of his parishioners supported; soon he left the Unitarian church and became a Christian minister.

A Unitarian Church formed in Savannah in 1830 but it also experienced the same problems as the group in Augusta and by 1859 it had disbanded. The experience was so disheartening to Unitarians that, when a brash young minister of the Savannah church suggested in 1854 that a Unitarian denomination-sponsored mission group be established in the Atlanta area (specifically in Marietta), he was soundly rebuked by one of the founders of the Augusta congregation and a pillar of Unitarianism in Georgia. Dr. Richard Arnold 
wrote to the young minister saying, “No, no, Georgia is too new a country, in that section of it, for Unitarian Christianity. A few from the land of steady habits may carry it thither with them, but if it were strangled in Augusta, I have no hopes of its reviving and flourishing in Marietta, Cobb County, which twenty years since was an Indian Hunting ground. . . ” (http://studio205.tv/redrobotfoods/unitarian-universalists-in-atlanta-100-years/).

That’s the Unitarian experience; there were more small, active Universalist churches than Unitarian churches in Georgia before the war, but no congregations remained active afterward. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/unitarianism-and-universalism) And so for more than 100 years, until 1954, there was no Unitarian presence in Augusta.

Now, last night we had a dance to celebrate our 60 years, and Tracy Craig and Alan Totten gathered dance music from every decade since UUCA was created. And while I was looking at some of the titles, I thought some of them would explain some important points about this church that I picked out of Lyn Dennison’s paper on the first 50 years of this congregation (Lyn Dennison, History of the First Twenty Five Years of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta, Augusta, GA, 2004).

Savannah Riverwalk, Augusta

The first title is from a Bruce Springsteen song from 1979, “The River”. The Savannah River is a vital part of our history. The roots of our congregation as we know it today were planted in Aiken in 1953 with the founding of the original Unitarian Fellowship of Aiken. The Augusta Fellowship was founded in 1954, one year after the Aiken Fellowship was founded. These early Unitarians mainly were here to construct and operate Savannah River Plant, at that time the newly opened plutonium production facility. To begin with in Augusta, services and meetings were held at a local Jewish Reform temple, the Congregation Children of Israel.

The Unitarian Fellowship of Augusta, is of course, now the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta. After the Aiken Fellowship dissolved many Aiken UUs traveled back and forth across the Savannah River to Augusta for years, actively participating in the Augusta congregation.

In the year 2000, a Unitarian Universalist fellowship was organized in Aiken, with the help of the Augusta minister Dan King. (aikenuu.org)

David Bowie’s song “Rebel Rebel” from 1974 is another appropriate song title, because it wasn’t long after the fellowship formed that the small group of Unitarians began to make waves. In the 1950s and 1960s, the UU Church’s attitude towards racially integrated congregations was locally controversial. The church received phone threats when its members made statements about racial politics in the local media. This congregation was also in the 10 % of rebels who voted ‘no’ to the proposal to consolidate Unitarians and Universalists in 1961 – mainly because it had experienced growth as a Unitarian fellowship and was afraid to lose the momentum of increasing membership.

Being counter-cultural is another way of being rebellious. The Augusta UU congregation voted in 1999 to become a designated Welcoming Congregation, way ahead of its time in being a place of worship that was LGBT-friendly. (http://www.pluralism.org/profiles/view/73450)

Unlike most other churches, over the years we have made alliances with other progressive houses of worship, and we’ve developed interfaith relationships at a time in the world when it is more important than ever to pursue dialogue and not conflict.

Now the congregation is about to embark on another cutting-edge project, beginning its work on becoming a Green Sanctuary congregation, bringing environmental awareness to our own members and the wider community. The word Rebel in the South sometimes has a different meaning, more associated with the ‘War of Northern Aggression’! But there is no doubt that this Unitarian Universalist community has long been known as a bunch of upstarts who defied the status quo, whether it is race relations, LGBT rights or the lack of a Bible-belt mentality.

Augusta’s own Godfather of Soul, James Brown, sang “It’s a Man’s World”. The Augusta Unitarian Fellowship was founded in an era when women were beginning to speak their own truth to power. Women from our congregation led a small group in 1961 to start Augusta’s first integrated preschool, Open Door, which still exists on Walton Way.

 

Open Door Kindergarten

And nationally, after the consolidation of Unitarians and Universalists, UU women took on the sexist language of church hymnals.  Hymns for the Celebration of Life, the UUA’s 1964 hymnal, had sections titled “Man,” “Love and Human Brotherhood,” and “The Arts of Man.” Their work resulted in Singing the Living Tradition in 1993, which uses more inclusive language.

Another change that also has impacted this congregation was the rapid increase in women UU ministers—from about 5 percent in 1977 to about 50 percent today. (http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/23905.shtml) So maybe the Aretha Franklin song “Sisters Are Doin It for Themselves” sums up these developments.

And speaking of women artists, Tina Turner sang, “What’s Love Got to do with It?” So far the history has been interesting, but underpinning the existence of this congregation is its commitment to love. Love for its members, for its friends, for the community, the wider world. We see examples through the years of how members and friends have gone about building what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called the Beloved Community…and they have done it together, loyal to each other and to this covenantal congregation.

Love has a lot to do with it, Tina, and within that, relationship, as in the Beatles song “With a Little Help from My Friends” and James Brown’s “I Feel Good - I Got You”. And we do make the CSRA feel good when we add to its cultural life; we have well-respected musicians like Rob Foster and Joe Patchen, our music director, and singers in music groups like the Augusta Choral Society; we have members like Bea Kuhlke, a well-known artist whose current exhibition is getting rave reviews; we have a jazz concert series beginning next Friday that has resurrected Chamber Jazz, in this sanctuary which used to be the venue in the 1990s for jazz concerts.

4 Seasons Chamber Jazz Concert Series

In fact, maybe the only known Unitarian Universalist miracle occurred here at the Augusta Jazz Project series during that time! Here’s a little bit of history I only found out when I did a radio interview with Brenda Durant on yesterday’s Arts Weekly. Brenda told me that she used to come to the concerts here, and that one night after the concert was over all the men left before putting the room back to its normal configuration; so, even though she had a neck and shoulder problem that she’d been receiving treatment for, she and a friend picked up a piece of heavy furniture and moved it. As soon as she put it down she felt a click and her neck felt fine, no pain at all!

So, where do we go from here? Will the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta celebrate 60 years from now? Will those children who sang Happy Birthday this morning be here in 60 years as the elders of this congregation? And just as importantly, how will we spend those 60 years?

Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work: I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” I think this church should work on both…and when I think of what has made us successful, and what could cause this church to remain a vital force that draws people from all over the area and across the Savannah River, a rebellious and counter-cultural beacon of liberal religion, an inclusive community, a beloved community, a church that opens itself and gives of its values and talents to the wider world – well, I believe it comes down to risk-taking, to courage, and to a tough skin. And when I read Rev Tony Larson’s post in the Etext library this week – which I’ve posted on our UUCA Facebook page – I knew that it would form part of my anniversary wishes to each of you in this congregation:

“You should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you don't like getting offended. If you haven't been offended yet, it’s only because you haven't been around long enough. In trying to sermonize on some of the issues in our lives today, I'm bound to hit some raw nerves and you'd better be ready for it. At least you know it's not personal. I care about you - and the fact that we disagree at times in no way takes away from that.

You should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you're a Christian who doesn't think atheists belong here. You should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you're an atheist who thinks Christians don't belong here, or Buddhists, or psychics, or pagans, or spiritualists. Remember the criterion for membership here is humane living. The rest is a matter of individual choice.

You should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you want all the answers, because we don't even know all the questions.

Finally, you should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you can't stand name calling. You are likely to get it by staying here. When you tell people you're Unitarian Universalist, some of them will seize on the more sensational aspects of this church. "Oh, you're that atheist church." or "You're the people who worship flowers."

Labelling is a price that you pay and a risk you take in belonging to this church. Some people who use to be members here, decided not to take that risk. Then there are others who decide that those who label and name-call reveal more about themselves than about this church. There's bravery in the decision to stay. There's courage in not running out when you're under fire. And, if it's any consolation, Unitarians and Universalists have had a long history of being labelled and vilified - and of responding with courage that comes from faith in the human race, from the days when UU's fought that respectable institution called slavery, to their battle for women's rights to vote and their struggle for civil liberties.

You should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you don't like diversity, and you should not be a Unitarian Universalist if you can't stand the name calling that will inevitably result from being a diverse church.

My thanks to all of you who have stuck it out!” (http://downlode.org/Etext/why_not_unitarian.html)

And my thanks to you all for being here today to celebrate the wonderful legacy this church is building for the next 60 years!

Blessed Be, Amen.

Gaye W. Ortiz

8/1/2014

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

June 15^th 2014

“Who are these Unitarian Universalists, standing around the coffee table on Sunday morning discussing last night's movie and next fall's election; reviewing the morning's sermon, designing tomorrow's education, storming over next century's oceans? Joyful celebrants of the gift of life, mixing nonsense with quest of the ages, turning secular need into concerned action, serving wine on the lawn and petitions in the foyer?” Betty Mills is the author of that well-known quote used frequently in worship, and even on the webpage of the Augusta MAINE Unitarian Universalist Community Church!

In the 1950s in Bismarck ND, this housewife revealed to friends over dinner one evening the fact that she and her husband had ‘fallen away’ from their churches. They discovered that the same was true of the people around the table…and, wishing to provide a spiritual upbringing for their children, decided to found a UU church in Bismarck.

Betty Mills became a well-known UU lay leader, writing a book about Unitarian-Catholic dialogue in 1964; in fact she was so well-known for her service to the UU faith that she remembers a neighbor lady saying, “It’s a shame that she’ll go to hell and take those four beautiful children of hers right with her.”  (See more at: http://inspiredwomanonline.com/1075/betty-mills-inspires-me/#sthash.ySNH31i6.dpuf) She is still going strong, and just last month at the Bismarck UU Church delivered a sermon on liberal religion called “On Not Being Scorched by the Torch.”

Now, if that story about the founding of the UU church in Bismarck sounded vaguely familiar to some of you, it is probably because that very same type of dinner table conversation went on here in the Augusta and Aiken areas in the 1950s, and the result here was the same – two fellowships created by young families, who wanted to create a place where they could explore faith and provide a program of religious and spiritual formation for their children. In August we will celebrate 60 years of its existence!

To go back to the quote I began with, it’s a pretty accurate description of the sometimes quixotic nature of our members: Joyful celebrants of the gift of life – and to Betty’s phrases ‘serving wine on the lawn’ and ‘standing round the coffee table’ we might add ‘piling plates high with potluck delights’. And as much as we may look back at the morning’s sermon, we do look to the future, at next fall's election and designing tomorrow's education. What else is our ‘concerned action’, our ‘signing petitions in the hallway’ for, if not to make a better future for our world?

In fact we are a prophetic people, even as we ‘mix nonsense with the quest of the ages’, because we already ‘storm over next century's oceans’. We were ahead of the times when it came to slavery and civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights – what will the storms of the next century be, I wonder? Whatever they might be, I have no doubt that UUs will be in the midst of the struggle – ‘Gathered Here in the struggle and the power’.

So our work as Unitarian Universalists is not done by any means…but as we wind down the church year, it is the time when we can stop and look back over the last year.

It is the time for recognizing the service that many of you have provided for the good of this congregation, so that as we gear up to celebrate our 60^th anniversary, we can see that we have a lot to celebrate…and top of the list of things is service – to each other, to the community and to the wider world. There is a church in England with a stone above the front door, on which it is carved: “Servant’s entrance.” Maybe we need to imagine that being carved above our door as we walk through it each Sunday morning.

The title of my sermon this morning is, Well done, good and faithful servant. It comes from the 25^th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and it’s found in a story called ‘The Parable of the Bags of Gold’. This parable is sandwiched in between ‘The Parable of the Ten Virgins’ and ‘The Sheep and the Goats’. It’s fair to say that in these three parables, the master in each of these stories comes away fairly disappointed, things don’t go terribly well.

Jesus is the storyteller, trying to teach with the help of these parables about the Kingdom of heaven, and what it will be like.

The first story has the five foolish virgins and the five wise virgins, who as part of a wedding celebration go out to meet the bridegroom with their lamps; the bridegroom, clearly suffering from an all-night batchelor’s party, has fallen asleep and hasn’t shown up. The foolish virgins have to leave and go buy more oil for their lamps because they didn’t prepare well and fill them up before setting off. Sure enough, while they are gone, the bridegroom comes, the wise virgins go off with him to the banquet, and the door is closed, leaving the foolish virgins out in the cold. The moral of the story, Jesus says, is to keep watch because you do not know the hour or the day that the kingdom will come.

On the other side of the Bags of Gold story, is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Jesus warns that Judgement Day will bring a separation of people, just as a shepherd sets apart the sheep from the goats. The King rewards the sheep because, as he says, “‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’”

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

The goats, on the other hand get a bad rap (or even, a baaaad rap), and are cast into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. They, like the sheep, did not recognize the Lord in the least of their brothers and sisters, the difference being that the goats didn’t bother to help them in the first place.

Now we come to the story of the bags of gold, given by the master to his servants as he prepared to go on a journey. When he returns and holds them to account, he finds that two of the servants made gains on the gold, and they present the extra bags of gold to him. To each the master says,

‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

However, one servant – instead of putting the money to work for him – digs a hole and hides it, and when he presents the one bag back to his master receives a tongue lashing because he did not return it with interest. The moral, as Jesus makes clear, is that ‘whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. 

Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ His fate, like that of the goats and the foolish virgins, mars what otherwise might be a rather positive set of stories about what the Kingdom of Heaven will be like.

But, is this image of the master accurate as to what God might be like? Carla Works, in her commentary on Matthew Chapter 25, draws our attention to the business practices of the master, which may seem more fitting to some Wall Street sharks that we know:

“He is a man who reaps where he does not sow, and gathers where he has not scattered seed. He aggressively seeks to expand his estate and takes whatever he can wherever he can to make a profit.

He even reprimands the servant for failing to invest the money with the bankers so that he might have gained interest -- a practice forbidden to Jews as written in scripture (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-38).

The master's willingness to earn money at the expense of others challenges any allegorical interpretation of the parable that would directly correlate him with Jesus, who never acts in a manner to seek personal gain. That a wealthy landowner would behave in this manner, however, makes the story all the more compelling. 

The third slave admits that he was afraid to lose the master's money. To protect himself, he buried the talent in the ground. Although this may seem odd to audiences today, burying treasure was quite common at this time (13:44).

The master is furious. He had entrusted this servant with a portion of his property in order that the slave would use his abilities -- abilities that had helped the master in the past -- in order to turn a profit for his lord. This slave, however, was too afraid to take a risk -- even though risky behavior was part of the master's business. Instead, he attempted to secure his own well-being. In the end his unfaithfulness to carry on the master's work cost him severely (25:30).

The master expected the servants to continue his business, to take risks to make a profit, and to emulate his behavior. Two servants were found faithful, and they are rewarded. Their faithfulness had increased the master's wealth and expanded his estate.” (https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1018)

Always an interesting if not bizarre jaunt into bible land, you may be thinking, but what does this have to do with Unitarian Universalists, who, although we honor the wisdom and social activism of Jesus, don’t hold to the idea of casting anyone into anything resembling eternal hell?

Well, recall how the faithful servants of the first story are spreading the Kingdom of God to the whole world by doing their good work of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger?

This is a theme that comes up again and again in all that we do as a faith tradition when we follow our principles, when we stand on the side of love.

And it is important that we know how to explain our values to the wider world, by using the stories and teachings that the dominant Christian culture of our area understands. Just today a message from the UUA about the need for speaking up against gender discrimination says

“As religious people, we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. There's not a qualifier to that command. Love one another. That is the basis of community, religious or otherwise. With so many young LGBT teens killing themselves because we are quiet in the face of societal pressure, it's for us to be more open, so that people may remain alive. With so many of our homeless youth in NYC -- over 40 percent identifying as LGBT -- it's for us to let down our tight sense of how people must look so that our kids may have a home again.

For those who follow the teachings of Jesus, or other progressive religious voices centered in compassion, we are called to care for those who are homeless, who are poor, or who are ill. I believe that also means to help ensure those conditions do not come about, and to avoid contributing to those forms of pain and suffering.”

Next week Rev. Mark Kiyimba is going to come here to speak about the importance of our UU faith. What will he see when he walks into this sanctuary and meets you, the members and friends of this congregation? In light of what is happening in his part of the world, we clearly have to live into our faith in working for the inherent dignity and worth of every person.

We can be proud of our 60 years of doing that, and we can see that the founders of this congregation invested wisely in the future of this church with their bags of gold.

This afternoon, as we abide by our covenant and as we once again make our democratic ideals come to life through the practice of our governance in the annual meeting, we can say to those assembled, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”

May we be the ones who make it so, blessed be, Amen.

Gaye W. Ortiz

6/11/2014

On Turning 60 Part 1

On Turning 60 Part 1

May 18 2014

I would like to begin this morning’s message with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. His advice to greenhorn ministers in 1838 still inspires those of us who stand behind the podium today, and I adapt it for my gender: “The true preacher can be known by this, that she deals out to the people her life—life passed through the fire of thought.” Today’s sermon may seem to be simply a reflection about my age, but it has a point, and that is to set the scene for another 60^th birthday later this summer – ours as the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta!

I participate in a monthly teleconference that is part of a UUA program, Beyond the Call, in which ministers from across the country in small groups explore and discuss worship. This week, one of my colleagues talked about the difference between anxiety and vulnerability, when it comes to sharing our personal - and possibly pastoral - stories with the congregation.

Seeing as how I’m reflecting on getting older, this remark made me think about how I approach talking about my age. Probably above all else, I usually think carefully about words I’m using, and today is no exception – and so I felt I should mention that the proper term for a person between 60 and 69 years of age is sexagenarian. Now this may sound like being 60 is a lot of fun, but I think it’s a truism that when you’re 60 you can live without sex, but not without glasses.

There are other things about turning 60 that are amusing, I hear: You get into heated arguments about pension plans. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.

To make me feel like I am not alone in celebrating this milestone, I looked to see if any famous women are turning 60 this year – and of course, the most famous media female icon of all, Oprah Winfrey, is one of the celebrities turning 60 this year. She claims she’s never felt better. In fact she says “I approach this milestone, the landmark of 60, with humility, supreme thanksgiving, and joy.”

But other famous people have commented on being 60, and it’s not all good:

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not. - Mark Twain

Age is a high price to pay for maturity. - Tom Stoppard

My favorite, though, comes from Oscar Wilde: To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

I was looking for advice on how to handle turning 60, and one website said “Find a hair cut that suits your face. It is a golden rule that shorter hair suits older ladies”….so that explains my new hairstyle this week.

A lot of literature about growing older suggests that I’m at a stage when I can be less cautious about what I do or say – for example, Jenny Joseph’s poem, “Warning”:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple


With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.


And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves


And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.


I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired


And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells


And run my stick along the public railings


And make up for the sobriety of my youth.


I shall go out in my slippers in the rain


And pick flowers in other people's gardens


And learn to spit.



You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat


And eat three pounds of sausages at a go


Or only bread and pickle for a week


And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.



But now we must have clothes that keep us dry


And pay our rent and not swear in the street


And set a good example for the children.


We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.



But maybe I ought to practice a little now?


So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised


When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

I like this idea of giving yourself permission, after a lifetime of asking or waiting for it. This is also the delicious twist of what writer Ian Martin’s advises on turning 60: Before you say anything nasty about someone, just pause for a second… and browse through some really good adjectives in your head. Sounds like turning 60 is going to be fun!

I know that many have transitioned before me this year in becoming 60 – including my husband, who is much older than I am – he turned 60 in January. But I’m impressed by this number: in 2006 76 million people, know as the Baby Boomer generation, began turning 60. This phenomenon caused the coining of a new phrase: The Silver Tsunami. And the person who came up with the phrase, Mary Finn Maples, looked at the characteristics of this generation as it ages, and one of her observations was that “Baby-Boomers (the Silver Tsunami) hold worldviews vastly different [from the previous generation], because they were raised in a country at relative peace and have not been exposed to a global war.

Moreover, these worldviews have encouraged them to expand their attention to their own spirituality, allowing them to focus as well on their physical, emotional, mental and financial health.” From her research, Maples compiled hundreds of definitions of spirituality from interviews with her subjects, and this is her resulting description of Baby Boomer spirituality:  that intangible essence that brings and maintains meaning in one’s life. It is larger and more encompassing than religion, though religion can be seen by choice as an aspect of spirituality.

When dealing with Boomers in a pastoral or counseling context, Maples suggests that there are several positive abilities that can help them cope with aging:

•               equanimity – the ability to balance spiritual and wellness perspectives and experiences

•               perseverance – developing the self-drive to keep going, accept and meet the challenges of reconstructing one’s life when one has experienced physical, emotional or spiritual adversity

•               self-reliance –believing in oneself, especially following the loss of spouse or partner. The ability to grow spiritually when one is now alone after a number of years in a partnership.

•               emotional aloneness – allowing wanted aloneness but also reaching out to others, at the appropriate time.

•               meaningfulness – life satisfaction comes from spirituality or making meaning out of goals, aspirations, future thinking, physical exercise and experiences.

I’ve certainly gained life satisfaction, and one way, that comes with growing older, is becoming a grandparent.

Writer Ian Martin says that “Grandparenthood is a beautiful revelation. You have kids, you know you will never experience that feeling of unconditional love for anyone else, ever, and then it happens all over again. A heart-stoppingly beautiful miracle.”

At the other end of the spectrum from grandkids, the two elders of our family, Wil’s dad and my mom, have both demonstrated to our family their ability to cope with ageing. Both lost their life partners of many years, a devastating blow, but resulting for both of them in self-reliance; well, more so for my mom! My father-in-law decided to remarry, but his faith is very important to him, and his second wife is a true partner in that sense, enabling him to reconstruct his life while growing spiritually.

My mother, as some of you know, moved to St John Towers last year, and is the life of the party there. You would never guess that she spent over a decade as the primary caregiver of several members of her family as they grew ill and died. It could be said that she’s making up for lost time…but I prefer to look at it from the perspective of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who said: “Old age is not a defeat but a victory, not a punishment but a privilege. One ought to enter old age as one enters the senior year at a university, in exciting anticipation of consummation.”

There is no doubt that as I cross the threshold into my senior years, I am, at the same time, a youngster in my career path. The average age of our freshly minted UU ministers is the mid-40s, and that is fairly old, I guess you could say. But when I went to the First-Year ministers workshop in Boston at the end of February I met a woman who is 88 and in her first year of ministry! Her first career was as a psychologist, then at 76 she got her law degree…and then found her calling to the ministry after that.

The fact is, I have no idea where life will take me, no one does. I don’t feel particularly anxious or vulnerable when talking about turning 60, because I aim to enjoy each day with whatever it brings, and to use my gifts as I am able to make this world a better place – and, as a true Universalist might say, to love the hell out of the world! I believe I’ve found my purpose in life, and that I’m settled into the journey. No one could express the feeling I have about my travels like Mary Oliver, and so I’d like to conclude this part one of my reflection on turning 60 with her poem The Journey.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew 


what you had to do, and began, 


though the voices around you 


kept shouting 
their bad advice—
though the whole house 


began to tremble 


and you felt the old tug 


at your ankles. 


"Mend my life!" 
each voice cried. 


But you didn't stop. 


You knew what you had to do, 
though the wind pried 


with its stiff fingers 
at the very foundations, 


though their melancholy 
was terrible. 


It was already late 
enough, and a wild night, 
and the road full of fallen 
branches and stones. 


But little by little, 


as you left their voices behind, 
the stars began to burn 


through the sheets of clouds, 
and there was a new voice 


which you slowly 
recognized as your own, 
that kept you company 
as you strode deeper and deeper 


into the world 


determined to do 
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

May it be so, Blessed be, Amen.

Sources:

Ian Martin, 60 Thoughts about Turning 60. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/29/sixty-things-learned-turning-60

Over 60s one-liners. http://www.guy-sports.com/humor/jokes/jokes_over60.htm

Margaret Manning, Sixty and Me.http://sixtyandme.com/famous-women-turning-60-in-2014-and-why-they-should-join-sixty-and-me/

Matt Dabbs, Rabbi Abraham Heschel on Old Age and Facing Death. http://mattdabbs.com/2009/01/12/rabbi-abraham-heschel-on-old-agefacing-death/

Jenny Joseph, Warning. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning/

Mary Finn Maples, Spirituality, Wellness and the “Silver Tsunami”: Implications for Counseling.http://counselingoutfitters.com/vistas/vistas07/Maples.htm

Gregory M. Lamb, Brown at 60: a civil rights landmark. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2014/0516/Brown-at-60-a-civil-rights-landmark?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily&utm_campaign=20140516_Newsletter%3ADaily_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3ADaily%2520Newsletter%2520%2805-16-2014%29