CLF Delegates' Notes

Parking in Charlotte (Sean)

2011-06-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am posting here, uncharacteristically, outside of GA to ask for help.

We were actually not planning on attending GA this year, because we expected to be in the intermountain west right now. Readers of our other blog will know, however, that we were deployed by the Red Cross to two relief operations in Alabama and Mississippi, responding to the tornado outbreak and flooding, respectively. And so it is that we find ourselves in Jackson, Mississippi today, just a week before GA. While the relief operation here is ongoing, Louise has put in five weeks and is ready for a break; the operation that I worked in Alabama just ended.

At this writing, we are planning on driving to Charlotte and attending GA as walk-ins. However, we've done none of our usual advance planning for parking the bus during our stay. I'm hoping some of our readers here may have suggestions or connections. Perhaps one of the UU congregations in the area can accommodate us, for example, as did the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis during GA last year.

I'll be working on accommodations from now right up until our arrival or until I nail something down. Feel free to post here in the comments or email me directly at slwelsh -at- gmail -dot- com if you can help. Ideally, we are looking for someplace within an easy scooter ride of the convention center.

If we do make it to GA, I am guessing we will not be CLF delegates this year, as there are only a limited number of slots and we did not ask in advance. Nevertheless, I am sure we will share at least some of our thoughts and observations here.

2010 Wrap-up (Sean)

2010-06-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

I promised earlier to come back and fill in some gaps in my coverage of Friday and Saturday. Since then, Louise has posted her report, and she's covered many of those points. Louise also takes better notes than I do -- I'm a slow writer, and all my life I have had the problem that I can either pay attention and be present with what is being said, or take notes, but not both. I won't rehash the items that Louise has already covered.

I wrote on Friday that I would explain my "nay" vote on the SOC on "Creating Peace." In hindsight, when I reflect upon those reasons, I should have simply abstained. What it really came down to for me was that the "Calls to Action," while laudable in purpose, struck me as overly burdensome (as I have written elsewhere) for congregations that, in many cases, are struggling for their very existence. As I have said before, I am concerned that we are asking them to expend a great deal of energy and resources on a goal (world peace) that is largely beyond our influence.

Spending the same amount of effort on, for example, marriage equality, or more outreach to those marginalized in our society such as people of color, LGBT, or recent immigrants, would have more of an effect in the world (and, yes, I know that we are already working on those issues). That being said, if the delegates, who theoretically represent their congregations, are willing to step up and take on this challenge, who am I to suggest it is too much. (Although I must repeat my oft-stated concern that perhaps the very congregations that are already stretched too thin are the ones who are not sending delegates to GA.)

That's a good segue into one of my wrap-up points, which is that I am convinced now more than ever that the GA business process is broken and needs to be fixed. That goes hand in hand with the Association's organizational structure being byzantine and cumbersome, a fact that is now recognized by the board and is being addressed. But, as I wrote last year, I am most looking forward to a more robust democratic process as proposed by the Fifth Principle Task Force, wherein a much smaller number of delegates who are more focused and empowered will carry on the business of the association. Funding for delegates and a stronger mandate to bring with them the will of their congregations and carry back the action items will, I hope, lead to more intentional and purposed actions at GA.

On Sunday morning I wrote that I would have more to say about the Phoenix discussion Saturday afternoon. Since then, as Louise has written, we received some clarification and background from Gini during her Moderator's Report. And, not having gone to the mini-assemblies on the topic (in hindsight, a mistake on my part), it is not reasonable to be too critical of the resolution that ended up before us. What I can say, though, is that more time could have been spent sharing with the assembly how the compromised was reached, and, more importantly, what was the shared vision of how the 2012 event would look.

At one point in the debate on the floor I went to the Procedural microphone to ask just what the BOT considered the "minimum business" of the assembly, and whether the proposal implied an overall event that was much smaller, much larger, or about the same size as a "normal" GA (whatever that means). I got a dismissive answer to my first question (they defined the term, rather than enumerating the list of required business), and no answer whatsoever to my second. When I sat back down, I turned to Louise and said that I must not have been clear, and she immediately shot back that, no, my question was crystal clear and the Board and Moderator chose not to answer it. We had dinner later with three other delegates who all concurred with her assessment.

On Sunday, Gini asked for a show of hands of the assembled delegates during her report, on several questions. One was whether everyone understood that what was asked for was a much larger event than a normal GA, and it was clear to me at that point that this was the answer to my question that she was unwilling to give before the vote. This does strike me as an aberration in the democratic process; if that was the vision of the framers of the resolution (as amended in mini-assembly), then it should have been stated thus, especially under direct questioning.

I suppose I have an axe to grind in all this, because Louise and I happen to own (with about a half dozen partners) a pair of restaurants in downtown Phoenix, just a short walk from the convention center and most of the hotels. (And we do hope that you'll dine with us in Phoenix.) I was well-prepared with a 2-minute "con" speech for the original resolution (an outright boycott of Phoenix), which went something like this:

Neither we nor our partners support SB1070 (but most of us being out-of-state, we don't have a vote).
If any of the businesses around ours ever supported this bill, I can assure you they don't any longer.
The economy nearly put us out of business, and SB1070 is threatening to be the final nail in the coffin. We send money to Phoenix every month now just to keep the doors open.
We do that not only to protect our investment, but also to keep our workers employed. Many of those workers are Latino/Latina.
Phoenicians in general are not supportive of this legislation and that includes the Mayor and the police department.
As with all boycotts, businesses like ours and their employees bear the true cost, and state legislators are unlikely to "hear" any message sent by people who don't show up.
How much more effective would it be for us as a movement to show up in force instead, and take our message to the streets?

I never had to deliver this, of course, and in the end we are pretty satisfied with the compromise. Someone else got up to speak against boycotting local businesses that are in many (most?) cases opposed to the bill. In the end, it was a contentious and divisive issue and I am impressed with the respect and thoughtfulness of the debate, the compromise, and the ultimate charge. That has not stopped some rancor, I note, on UU World over the outcome.

I think that mostly catches me up here. I have one more item to add, which is that we both very much enjoyed marching to Loring Park on Saturday to deliver our Standing on the Side of Love message at the Pride Festival. (Although that seems a bit like, uhh, preaching to the converted.) We had not realized the Twin Cities had such a large and well-organized festival; after listening to the speech we spent what time was left wandering around, and I would say we barely made it through a third of the enormous event.

In all, we had a great GA and, as always, we are grateful to the CLF for allowing us to participate as your delegates. We are also grateful to the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis for allowing us to park Odyssey in their parking lot, which we will be departing this afternoon.

One final note, for those reading here real-time or subscribed via RSS: today is the last day to make your donation to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) for this year's annual fund and have your gift matched by Shelter Rock. We've made our donation, have you?

GA 2010 (Louise)

2010-06-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

I was unable to write daily reports this year because of the way GA was structured, so I'll try to summarize my thoughts from my chicken-scratch notes.

Scheduling all the plenaries on Friday, Saturday and Sunday was a mixed bag. I love plenary, and having concentrated days of business and governance helped keep the flow of ideas and discussion going. However, for delegates in the choir, like me, it meant that Saturday and Sunday had no breaks longer than 30 minutes. That's not enough time to purchase and eat a meal, so I carried food with me. It held body together, but soul got really, really tired.

Thursday and Friday had some chunks of time available, so that's when we worked the CLF booth in the exhibit hall. It is always a treat to see the CLF staff again, and I enjoy booth duty because they are all so much fun. This year I was able to wear a name tag that said, "I have a UU Prisoner Pen-Pal, Do YOU?" which helped start several conversations about our prison ministry.

We did not attend any evening events. By our second or third GA, we figured out that there is just too much going on and not enough of our time and attention to go around; something had to give. So, no Service of the Living Tradition, no Bridging Ceremony, no Ware Lecture, and this year, no Closing Ceremony. That makes me sad, and I'm always tempted to push just a little harder to fit it all in, but I have to respect my physical limits.

Choir this year was less organized than usual. We had four rehearsals to learn music for both Sunday morning worship and Closing Ceremony. By the end of the third rehearsal, we had not even opened the Closing Ceremony music. I had mounting anxiety that we wouldn't be prepared for that event. Fortunately, the Closing music was quite simple and we were able to learn it in a single hour. Ironically, I was unable to physically make it all the way through the day to Closing anyway.

I prefer a strong, dictatorial music director. Tell us what you want, correct our errors, set a high bar, and bring out our very best music. This year's director did not conduct her rehearsals that way. The end results, however, were fine. Sunday morning's music sounded very nice, and our invocation to "Come, Come, Whoever You Are" moved me to tears. Perhaps it is because it is a strong reflection of my life on the road, living full-time in our motorhome. I am a Wanderer, a Worshipper, and very much a Lover of Leaving.

Plenaries I and II were introductory in nature. We agreed on the rules we'll follow, discussed the business agenda, and met a few committees. As Sean has said, we didn't attend the 30 minute Plenary II at 8am Thursday to give ourselves a little more sleep and gird our loins for the rest of GA.

Plenary III started the meat and potatoes of the work to be done. My notes and impressions:

I was impressed by the breakthrough congregation from Summit, NJ. For their centennial celebration, they raised $100K and gave it all away to the community. Wow! I went to high school about 5 miles away from Summit, and I'm sorry I didn't know about UUism then. Sounds like a really neat church.
Jane Rzepka received the Distinguished Service Award. I cried, hard. I'm going to miss her so. My CLF, the only one I've known, is so colored by Jane's presence. It is hard to imagine CLF without her. Meg Riley has big shoes to fill, and I pledge to welcome her whole-heartedly. I know that ministerial transitions are hard enough without congregants holding on to the past.
The Committee on Social Witness spoke passionately to endorse the Statement of Conscience, Creating Peace. There was then a spirited debate on using the words "Theological Principles" vs. "Theological Groundings." Several newer, younger UUs said they had become UUs because they resonated with our 7 principles, and didn't want to dilute that connection by using the word in another context. Interesting.
I loved when Helene Atwan of Beacon Press commented on having one of our authors interviewed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, "It doesn't get any better than that!"
Both the Financial Advisor and the Treasurer gave reports that were glum. Our investment income fell about 10% in 2009. Our endowment lost $14M in 2008 and $23M in 2009 and as a result we had to cut endowment spending by 16%. 13 staff members were laid off. Dan Brody commented on GA2012 that there could be significant financial impacts whether we moved away from Phoenix or stayed. Personally, I feel that it will cost much more to boycott Phoenix than to stay there, and was prepared to argue against a boycott with financial points from these reports. Fortunately, the boycott idea was dismissed fairly early in the discussion.

Plenary IV, Saturday morning, brought inspiration and insight:

What jumped out at me from the Board of Trustees report was the statement that so many congregations feel alone. I remember that from my time at the UU Church of Palo Alto. We rarely interacted with other congregations, and few people were involved at the district level.
UUA governance is too big and byzantine; we are trying to move to a smaller organization through by-laws changes.
Only 2 out of 5 congregations can send delegates to GA.
GA decisions must be congregationally accountable. How do we accomplish this in the CLF?
Adam's report on the Standing on the Side of Love campaign was rousing, ending with the hall chanting, "Love! Love! Love!"
Breakthrough congregation from Harrisburg, PA purchased an inner-city church building and doubled their membership. Now that's a great way to reach out to a more racially diverse population!
Representative Keith Ellison clearly could have chosen to be a preacher instead of devoting his energy to government. He spoke passionately about Radical Abundance, and got us on our feet by saying, "Love is the only thing that makes SENSE!"
I asked myself, what would happen if I fully embraced that which I voted against? It's that whole "lean into discomfort" thing. We think of the democratic process as majority rule, but the flip side of that is the minority needs to be integrated back into the process. Vote your heart, but accept the will of the group if you lose. No, not just accept, but embrace that will. Hard stuff.

Plenary V was emotional:

The slideshow of UUs who died in the last year is always very moving to me. Jerry Davidoff and my dear friend Ed Barlow were among them. I miss them both.
The Sherborn, MA breakthrough congregation was started in 1685. How amazing is that?
Peter Morales choked up during his President's Report. It is good to be moved by your work.
Katie Tyson, an influential UU youth, died in a car crash on her way home from GA last year. To honor her memory, an offering was taken to fund sending other youth to GA. Katie said, "GA messes with your mind." And that's a good thing.
We began our debate and vote of the Business Resolution: GA 2012 in Arizona with an hour of discussion about right relations and prayer. It was a LOT of prayer, and I felt it was an excess of being reminded to treat each other kindly. After 30 minutes or so, I started to feel like we couldn't be trusted. The next day, we were given more background on why the BOT thought this was necessary, which helped a little bit. Three prayers in a row by three different ministers made this agnostic rather peevish.
The actual debate and vote were quite civil, so perhaps all the preamble was helpful, even necessary. I'm pleased that we will be going to Phoenix and not forfeiting a huge sum of money to cancel hotel and conference center reservations.

Plenary VI started with the disturbing news of a murder/suicide involving children in a UU congregation in Transylvania. I have not been able to find out any more about this.

Dan Aleshire gave an excellent talk on The Future of Ministry. While this wouldn't normally be my cup of tea, his stellar speaking skills made it totally engaging.
The video for the Mankato, MN breakthrough congregation was quite funny. Two new members talked about how appealing the church was in the new building. One man quipped that he "at least knew where the exits were." A woman said that meeting with a small group in someone's home was too intimate and a barrier to attending a church for the first time. When she saw how "professional" the church had become, she attended then joined.

Plenary VII was very productive, and I'm sorry I had to leave early to make the choir call for Closing Ceremony. After that 30 minute call, I decided to bow out of the ceremony, so I should have just stayed in Plenary.

I learned that July 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The District Presidents' Association report was a recitation of comments from people who were clearly afraid of change. I'm not certain, though, who made these statements. District board members? Congregants?
Only 11 congregations submitted reports on the 2009 GA resolutions concerning inclusion and accessibility. Every year we vote up these Mom and Apple Pie resolutions, toss them over the wall to the congregations and into a giant sucking void. I often vote against resolutions because I don't think we have a workable process for seeing them through.
The Action of Immediate Witness about Israel and Gaza generated a lot of debate and strong feeling
Senator Al Franken spoke of his religious beliefs: "Be Just, Be Good." He counts his blessings as a form of prayer, and he told us, "You're my favorite kind of church." He was funny and genuine.
Gini's Moderator's Report fleshed out some of the history behind the Board's concerns regarding the Arizona debate. Specifically, she talked about the Black Empowerment controversy from the 1970s, which I was unfamiliar with.
Gini also recognized, by a show of hands, all the congregational presidents in the hall. With over 1000 congregations, there should be 1000 presidents, but alas, many fewer can attend. I really hope that the Fifth Principle task force can help change that.
A large number of Resolutions in Response to the Report of an Officer were put forth, debated and voted. I had to leave before they were completed, and so missed the final Proposal of Marriage by one delegate to another. I hear, though, that it passed unanimously.

As always, I am grateful for the opportunity to be a CLF delegate. It is an honor and a privilege. I look forward to attending GA in Charlotte next year and hope to be a delegate there as well.

Sunday report (Sean)

2010-06-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was another overfull day. In fact, we never made it to closing ceremonies; I raced home after the final Plenary, which ran a few minutes over, in order to walk the dog before what was sure to be a late night, with no chance for dinner until perhaps 9:30. Louise, meanwhile, actually had to leave Plenary fifteen minutes early in order to make the final choir practice. We had not yet finished voting on Responsive Resolutions.

About fifteen minutes after I got home, she called me. "I'm coming home." What? I already knew that choir this year had been a frustrating experience for her, although I thought they sounded great at Sunday morning worship. But after a day that started for her at 7:45 for the last pre-worship practice (meaning she had to leave here at 7:15), had no opportunity for breakfast or lunch, and only a few minutes for a snack before Closing Ceremony, she realized she was just not going to make it through the whole day to 9pm. Of course, once you're seated on the dais, there's really no graceful way to bow out. So she decided to drop out of choir before it even started. Thus it was that we skipped closing for the first time in our GA "careers."

In addition to the choir, worship was excellent as usual. I did think that Reverend Morales ran a bit long in the sermon, which was a reiteration of many of his campaign assertions regarding membership numbers and what brings people into (or drives them away from) our faith community. In any case, I did not feel energized by it, and would have preferred something a bit more inspirational for morning worship.

A presentation by Dan Aleshire, Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools was actually the highlight, for me, of Plenary VI. A business resolution entitled "The Green Revolution in Religion" passed handily, as did a raft of changes to the Bylaws that were essentially proposed and supported by the Board.

The afternoon's session included a report on transforming governance by the District Presidents' Association, which echoed many of the findings of the Fifth Principle Task Force, and talked about moving forward on that path. The presenters read a list of statements made by either district presidents or their constituents, and we both found many statements disturbing. By which I mean, some of the statements wandered far enough from our core principles as a movement that we wondered to each other whether they were made by congregational leaders (we hope not) or random congregants (better, but still worrisome). I did not write them down; I hope they will appear on-line in due time.

The secretary's report on the progress made by congregations to last year's responsive resolution on Power, Privilege, and Oppression was equally disturbing. While the report highlighted some very good results from exactly two groups (a congregation in Kent, OH, and a district in New York), congregations as a whole have overwhelmingly refrained from responding to this.

While I do think that, in the case of this particular resolution, this is a shame, I think this result reinforces what I have been saying here for some time: It is all too easy for a room full of delegates, swept up in the emotions of the moment, to pass resolutions that charge congregations to heap more work onto what are often already over-full plates. I often wondered whether every delegate with a voting card in the air is going to return to her congregation brimming with enthusiasm to pass along the new charge and get to work right away. I need wonder no longer: Secretary Loughrey's report has answered my question.

We moved on to debate on the Actions of Immediate Witness for this GA, which I will discuss momentarily. Before we finished with them, however, the moderator had to suspend debate, complete with stopping the motion clock, to accommodate a distinguished guest, introduced by CLF's own Meg Riley (in her role as UUA Director of Advocacy and Witness). That guest was none other than Minnesota Senator Al Franken, who was met by rousing applause.

Senator Franken spoke for an unusually long time (IMO, under the circumstances). He spoke about his own faith background and shared with us a story about his father that actually moved him to tears at one point. A side of Al Franken that I had never seen in either the comedian or the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota. I did not write any of it down, but more is here on UU World. It was one of the high points of my day.

Afterward we resumed debate on the AIWs. You can read about the AIWs and how the vote (and debate) went elsewhere, suffice it to say that protracted debate was held on only a couple. The AIW to End the Blockade of Gaza and Growth of Israeli Settlements [in Palestine] was defeated by a narrow margin. I believe it had a majority but not the required 2/3 majority. Arguments on both sides were strong, and this blogger voted against the resolution on several grounds:

As delegate Denny Davidoff said, we "have a lot of chutzpah" to think we can control the government of Israel. IMO, this AIW calls congregations and individuals to futile action.
While I may question their tactics at times, I do not question Israel's right to defend itself from the unending flow of weapons to Hamas. If U.S. soil was rocket-bombed daily, would we be content with leaving our defense to "an international inspection" of cargo heading into enemy territory?
Why does this resolution unilaterally target Israel, without making mention of the culpability of those who would see her destroyed? For that matter, as many speakers brought up, why is Israel singled out, among all nations who have transgressed even against Palestine, for action by our movement?
Most importantly, it is clear to me that, for the most part, the delegates can not possibly have enough information or insight into the actual state of affairs in that part of the world to make an informed decision about taking these actions. I know I, personally, do not, and I would venture a guess that my own education and experience on the subject is reflective of no fewer than 50% and more like 80-90% of the delegates. This is just presumptuous.

All of that said, I think there would have been little disagreement, myself included, on the portion related to Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. But the elements were not separated nor really separable as the AIW came to us.

The discussion on ending the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan also saw a great deal of discussion and was similarly defeated. Here I think things were a bit more clear-cut, with the room dividing along traditional "all war is wrong" and "just war" lines, with the twist that even some die-hard pacifists realize that you can't start a war someplace and then just walk away without picking up the pieces.

Once again, this delegate voted against, principally because the resolution left no wiggle-room for necessary (IMO) peacekeeping forces and an orderly transition. The "immediate" nature of the proposal was, well, too immediate. I suspect many delegates felt the same way and this is why the AIW failed.

The remaining AIWs passed, and, as usual, I (or we, in some cases) were in the small minority opposed to some. In particular, I thought the notion that we could somehow immediately stop using off-shore oil expressed in the Gulf Coast Environmental and Economic Justice AIW was quaint and unachievable. As one delegate said, passing knee-jerk unachievable resolutions makes us look like cranks rather than the well-reasoned people we proclaim to be. The ultimate goal of the resolution is laudable, but the language and timetable was unreflective of scientific reality.

The remaining bylaw changes, postponed from an earlier Plenary, passed with little drama, and the final credentials report reflected 1,957 delegates representing 581 congregations and a grand total of 3,880 attendees. Sadly, not that many delegates remained in the room when the Responsive Resolutions were brought forward. Again, I will let you read about these elsewhere, with two exceptions. First is that the responsive resolution on ENDA passed by a landslide without the text of the resolution, or even what report it was a response to, ever being presented to the delegates. I have to confess that we were among the guilty here, even though I had a niggling sense that we had not heard all we needed to. Only after the vote did a delegate ask this as a point of personal privilege, prompting the moderator to have to ask the floor if anyone needed to then change his vote.

The last resolution turned out to be a marriage proposal, which while perhaps a slight abuse of the rules of procedure, was well-received by the assembly. The flabbergasted recipient of said proposal asked the assembly what we suggested, at which point the moderated called for a show of voting cards; I do not think there was a single nay or abstention.

I think that will about wrap up my coverage of Sunday, and my next post will attempt to go back and fill in the blanks I left in my Friday and Saturday coverage.

A wild ride (Sean)

2010-06-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was basically a full day of Plenary and I have much to report. Unfortunately, I must leave for today's service in just a few minutes, and so I must make this brief; I hope to catch up later. I was trying to figure out why it's been harder to blog here at this GA than in years past, and a casual comment from someone yesterday made it hit me: This year, all the workshop sessions were moved to the front of the schedule, and all the Plenaries to the back.

Effectively, this gave us a "free day" on Thursday (when there was not yet anything, really, to blog about) and a block of time Friday afternoon, but we won't come up for air now until GA is over. This appears to be yet another stab at re-inventing GA; you may recall my earlier reports on the disaster that was "Open Space" a couple years ago and the marathon sessions of last year's UU University.

You may also recall my lengthy report on the findings last year of the Fifth Principle Task Force, and I am happy to report here that progress is being made. The board officially announced yesterday that they recognize many of the shortcomings found by that group, and will be working to change GA into the more deliberate experience that I talked about last year. The commitment is to make some kind of change, but what, exactly, that will look like is undecided. They have committed to a transparent process, however, and will be posting the work and progress on the web site.

I will have to update the meat of yesterday's business later. Suffice it to say that the most contentious item on the agenda was saved for the very end of the day, and that was a decision on what to do about GA in Phoenix in 2012. What ended up being passed is a compromise that takes us to Phoenix then, charges us to focus on immigration issues, and prohibits us from doing any business at all there other than the "minimum business" mandated by the bylaws. We shall see if that holds; I'll have more to say on this later.

Day 3 snapshot (Sean)

2010-06-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day, and we're beat. I hope to catch up here maybe tomorrow with more detail on today's activities, but tonight I just don't have the energy. To make matters worse, I have Red Cross curriculum development that is due Sunday, and Tropical Depression 1 has formed in the Caribbean (we are, actually, on call already for hurricane season).

In the meantime, a quick snapshot: This morning was Plenary-III, wherein we debated and voted on the Statement of Conscience (SOC) on "Creating Peace," which had been referred back to committee last year, and also voted on choosing one of five Congregational Study Action Issues (CSAIs). A very moving part of the morning's ceremonies for us, of course, was the presentation of the Distinguished Service Award to our very own Reverend Jane Rzepka. We also heard reports from the treasurer and financial advisor, and Louise will be posting some details of those in due time.

As a quick summary, we passed the SOC on Creating Peace by a landslide after some contentious adopting of amendments. I may have cast the only "nay" vote in the room, and when I have time I will explain my reasons. The amendment process and several motions to extend debate put Plenary a full hour over, and we ended just in time for Louise to go to choir (more precisely, stay at choir, which was scheduled for the main hall and booted Plenary out). That meant I had to forego a 1pm session so I could go home and walk the dog, and I made it back to the MCC just in time for the Legacy donor reception. As for the CSAIs, the votes had not yet been tallied by the time we adjourned, so we will find out tomorrow morning if one had a majority, or if, more likely, we will have a runoff vote.

After the donor reception we did our second hour of booth duty at the CLF booth, having already done an hour yesterday. That took us right up to the CLF worship, and we helped cart the various accoutrements over to the ballroom for the service. Worship was good, as always, with sermons by Reverends Abhi Janamanchi and Gail Geisenheimer (and please excuse me if I got the spelling of either name incorrectly, I don't have them handy, but will correct them here later as needed). We ended up wit usher duty as well, and since we were already there helped get everything back to the booth.

By this time it was pouring rain with a tornado watch, and we decided to wait out the storm downtown rather than riding the scooters back home, so we took advantage of Minneapolis' enclosed "Sky Walk" system to make our way to the Hilton for dinner.

Tomorrow we have another early start and long plenaries; we'll see if I find time to update here. I do hope to share with you some more about the SOC and CSAI votes and process today.

In-gathering (Sean)

2010-06-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome once again to our almost-live blogging of the 2010 General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA), to become our official report to the board of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).

We are in Minneapolis, with our bus well-parked in the lot of the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, who have very generously offered us this parking space for the duration of GA. We arrived here Tuesday evening, checked in with the office, and got settled into position. Apparently, there will be no service here Sunday on account of GA.

Yesterday was the first official day of the Assembly, and we attended the CLF in-gathering cum reception for outgoing minister Reverend Jane Rzepka, followed by opening ceremonies and Plenary-I. In-gathering was very informal this year, and we had a "normal" turnout of perhaps 40 or so; frankly, I was a bit disappointed, as I expected the reception for Jane would have brought in more of a crowd.

Plenary hall is good this year, with decent acoustics and lighting. We enjoyed, as always, the banner parade and the convocation, and Plenary-I consisted of the usual pleasantries and reminders principally aimed at first-timers. By 9:30 Plenary was adjourned to 8am this morning.

Plenary-II was scheduled for only half an hour, and the agenda showed only committee reports and no actual business to be conducted. We've done this before, and learned the hard way that we can get burned out early in the program if we try to do absolutely everything. So while we usually consider Plenary to be mandatory, with everything else optional, we gave ourselves permission to skip this morning's session, since we can read the reports on-line, and the detailing of the mini-assembly process is, again, targeted at first-timers.

In a few minutes, we will be heading off to our 1pm workshops; there is no more Association business today, and we'll get into the meat of things tomorrow at Plenary-III.

Wrapping up (Sean)

2009-07-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

Photo by cole24

My apologies for taking a full week to get this posted -- once we left GA we had some catching up to do on the rest of our lives.

We've already blogged most of the salient details of our experience at this year's GA, but I promised I would say more about the AIW's and voting thereupon. I'm sorry that I don't have the energy (or, alternatively, scanning software) to enter the text of the proposed AIW's here (I have not found them posted on-line yet, either, but maybe I just don't know where to look), but there were six of them, and the assembly passed all six overwhelmingly. Update: Links to the six AIW's can be found here.

I, however, voted in favor of only a single one, either abstaining or casting my vote in a tiny minority of "opposed" on the rest -- and I will explain my "no" votes in just a moment.

My reasons for abstaining are easier to explain, and I think were unwittingly highlighted by a question asked from the Procedural mic, I think sometime after we had passed the fourth AIW. One of the delegates got up and asked if, by passing these, we were committing to do anything about them. The visceral sense that I had at that moment is that a fair number of delegates in the room were wondering the same thing.

Frankly, many of these AIW's are like mom and apple pie -- it's hard to be against them, conceptually. And it probably makes us feel good to stick our voting cards high in the air to express our support for the sentiments. However, I feel strongly that merely saying we believe something should be done, without actually doing anything, both dilutes our message, and distracts our attention.

The responses to that delegate's question, while accurate, sound almost schizophrenic: Yes, we as an assembly are committing to do exactly what each AIW says we will do -- in most cases, that's to bring the statement/issue back to our congregations for immediate action, including letter-writing campaigns, calls to congresspersons, etc.. In the very next breath, however, is the stipulation that our rules of congregational polity mean that the Assembly can not make any congregation do these things, nor will we get involved in congregational priority-setting. So, really, take it or leave it -- we all voted for it, but whether your congregation does anything about it is really up to them. I, therefore, personally think that voting like this at General Assembly does little more than make the assembled delegates feel good about themselves, without actually either advancing the issues or bringing the faith together. (I recognize that there are exceptions, however.)

Ironically (or perhaps not), the one AIW which I voted in favor of, a call for a Commission of Inquiry on US-sponsored torture, contained only eight "whereas" phrases, followed by a "resolution" calling for such a commission. Nowhere does it state that anyone either in congregations or the UUA will do anything further to advance this cause. I suppose one might hope that the Washington office might do something with this, or perhaps Rev. Morales can take it with him to his next meeting with congress or maybe Secretary of State Clinton, but we did not actually charge anyone to do anything.

I suppose that one of the reasons I abstained from some of the other issues is precisely because they did charge our congregations with doing something (but see above), and yet it seems to me that we, as a movement, have already spread ourselves fairly thinly across a broad range of initiatives, possibly to the point of failing to first adequately care for our own survival as a relevant faith. The last thing I want to do, frankly, is to mandate that every congregation begin a letter-writing campaign to the Bolivian Ambassador calling for a Truth Commission on human rights violations, when I know for certain that some of those congregations are struggling for their very survival in harsh economic times, and we aren't even certain that our own government isn't guilty of human rights violations. Nevertheless, according to the resolution so adopted, I am apparently mandated to write just such a letter myself.

There was, in fact, another resolution which I was initially in favor of -- opposing sexual orientation- and gender-identity-based violence in Iraq. A lofty and admirable goal, to be sure. The resolution commits us to pressure the US government to, in turn, pressure the Iraqi government to deal with this. Ultimately, I was swayed by several impassioned arguments from the Con microphone. Chief among those was that it was rather hypocritical of the US to be bullying anyone else on the planet on these issues, where clearly we have not yet even committed to wiping out these crimes (or even, in some cases, making them crimes) on our own soil.

Another persuasive argument that was made on this issue was that we have committed to being respectful of other cultures and religions, yet here we are committing to tell another culture and/or religion what behavior it must tolerate of its citizens or practitioners. While there is almost never a justification for violence, implicit in our plea here is that persons of non-heterosexual or non-birth-gender identity have an inherent right to a place in that culture. Our values and principles here regarding the rights of the individual are in direct conflict with our values and principles regarding respect for (or non-interference in? Like the "Prime Directive" from Star Trek?) the values and principles of other cultures and religions. The language of the AIW makes no attempt to resolve or even acknowledge this clash.

There were two AIWs to which I was unequivocally opposed. Both involved supporting pending legislation which, to my observation, the vast majority of delegates had not even read. (Perhaps they are little different from actual legislators in this regard.) While I admire the work of the handful of people who worked passionately on these resolutions, my motto is "trust, but verify," and so I undertook to research the legislation myself. Unsurprisingly, given the diversity of both people and opinions within our movement, the views expressed so passionately by these AIW's crafters represent but one side of very complex issues.

One of these was the AIW calling for unequivocal support of HR2894 (aka the "Holt Bill"), HR1826, and S751-752, all of which relate to ensuring fairness and accountability in elections. Again, a lofty and admirable goal. As I mentioned in my last post, I attended a workshop on this particular issue put together by its champions.

Photo by Sokwanele - Zimbabwe

Now, even a quick survey of arguments for and against these bills will turn up a great deal of controversy even among fair-election proponents regarding either their efficacy or their necessity, with a host of election watchdogs expressing a great deal of concern in injecting the federal government into elections that are not, currently, within their purview. But the real gist of the arguments being made by the supporters of this AIW are that honest and fair elections can not happen if computers are involved in any way, and/or if there are no paper ballots.

Now, I am a computer scientist by training (and so, perhaps, I am not unbiased), but this, to me, is hogwash of the highest order. The presumption that mechanical counting machines and/or paper ballots are not subject to tampering or error of any sort is simply unsupportable, and while I admit that tampering with computers may be easier for some people than tampering with lever-machines or paper ballots, the fact is that you can get just as close to tamper-proof or perfectly accurate with an electronic system as you are willing to spend to do so.

One of the arguments raised by this group is that election results can not be left to a single black-box vendor, as they have been in some past situations (due either to budget issues or a lack of technical savvy on the part of governments), and here I could not agree more. I would advocate, in fact, for open-source software to manage electronic voting. Another argument has been that votes can not be verifiably traced to an individual voter absent a paper ballot with a signature, and, here again, this is not true: any number of biometric measurements could be included at the polls, not to identify the voter ahead of time, but to verify her ballot in the case of it being contested, and to ensure that each voter casts a unique vote. One-way cryptographic signature techniques can be used to ensure that the vote can not be tampered with once cast.

A final argument made by this group is that computers have been losing tons of money at banks and financial institutions, who merely write off this loss without allowing the public to see that the computers are fallible. True -- right up until the cost to improve the computer system is lower than the amount being written off. As I said earlier, you can make it as fool proof and reliable as you want by spending more money; for banks, it is strictly an economic decision.

Paper ballots are subject to all the same issues. They get lost. They get mis-marked. They get miscounted. Does no one remember the "hanging chads"? For secretaries of state, it becomes an issue of spending money and resources on reliable and verifiable electronic voting, or money and resources printing, securing, collecting, and tabulating paper ballots. I, for one, do not want to see us roll back the clock on this one, any more than I want to hand back my plastic and check book and have to go back to carrying gold bullion around to purchase goods and services.

The other matter to which I was opposed was the resolution in support of the Red Rock Wilderness Act (S799/HR1925), legislation which has been pending (and failing to pass) for over a decade. My objection here is the all-or-nothing approach of a Wilderness declaration, which essentially bans all use, in this case of 9 million acres of BLM managed land in Utah.

Photo by yathin

Again, the goal is lofty and admirable. What this fails to consider is that, while a Wilderness declaration means you can't do most things on this land, the absence of such a declaration does not mean that you must do them. In other words, the BLM today is free to place specific use restrictions on any or all of this land, and has already done so in many cases. Supporters of this legislation, however, would have us believe that all manner of environmentally irresponsible usage is rampant. In point of fact, other than cross-country recreation, all of the subject acreage is currently free from such usage -- a precondition for it to even be considered for wilderness designation.

My chief objection to the legislation in its current form is that it makes all nine million acres of what is today public land nearly completely inaccessible to the very public that it supposedly benefits. Oh, sure, you'll be able to hike there, but most of it is unreachable by even the strongest and most well-prepared hikers in anything short of several days, and then only with expeditionary-level preparation. This is, IMO, elitist: it makes all this public land inaccessible to all but the exceptionally physically fit and able-bodied with plenty of time on their hands.

There is no question that the BLM has bungled some land-use decisions, and certainly they can continue to do so in this region. So let's fix the BLM, and/or the corporate lobbying process that grants public land use for resource extraction without proper safeguards and appropriate remediation. But a sweeping Wilderness declaration for nine million acres strikes me as overreaction on a grand scale.

I suppose, before I conclude, that it is my duty to tell you, the leadership of CLF, that the Assembly has spoken and we are to do all these things. (And, again, I am hoping the actual text of what we agreed will be available shortly.) So go forth and pass the word to the congregants!

That pretty much wraps up my report on the business aspects of GA 2009. All told, it was a good Assembly, much less harried and crammed full than the last one we attended in Portland. As always, we both personally got a lot out of it, spiritually and in regard to helping with the business of the Association. We thank the CLF for allowing us to represent them at the Assembly, and look forward to being of service again in the future.

My penultimate post for the year (Sean)

2009-06-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

Photo by mischiru

I have more to say about Saturday -- I promised a post on the "Touch Screen Voting" workshop, which actually goes hand-in-hand with some other comments I'd like to make about this year's AIW's and the process by which they were adopted. Frankly, I am running out of steam -- I've been typing here most of the day, and I will save those topics for my final post, at some later time.

Also on Saturday was, of course, the election. No need to blog the results, as it has been well discussed around the UU blogosphere. Instead I will simply state an opinion here about the polls: They were not open long enough, and certainly they were not open for enough hours outside of Plenary. In fact, given that the very delegates who are able to vote in the polls ought to be in Plenary for the duration, I would go so far as to say that polling hours should be entirely outside of Plenary hours. I also heard of at least one delegate who came to GA expecting to vote on-site, but could not because their flight required them to be at the airport before the polls opened, yet absentee ballots could not be accepted on site. Long lines at the polls might have been avoided by assigning delegates specific blocks of time in which to vote, or allowing sign-ups for blocks of time in advance.

Louise did a great job of covering Saturday and Sunday in her last post. I can confirm that things sounded just as wonderful from the audience as they did on stage, and both morning worship and closing ceremonies on Sunday were very moving.

In addition to more reports, the final Plenary-VI session included some business. We voted on, and passed, all six Actions of Immediate Witness. As I already mentioned, I'll have more to say about this in another post.

We also discussed several "Responsive Resolutions" -- motions on resolutions in response to a report of an officer or committee delivered earlier in GA. I was unable to copy all these down, and the text is not yet available on-line, however, unsurprisingly, a number of them had to do with the bylaw problem and the Article II amendments. In summary, we

Agreed to look more carefully at use of "Inclusion" rather than "Non-discrimination" as language in the proposed Principles revision.
Agreed that the BOT should look into and take appropriate action upon revising the "broken" language in bylaw article C15.1 that I discussed here earlier.
Agreed that the BOT should find a way to revisit a proposal to revise Article II in the immediate future.
Refused to recommend to the BOT that they accept a list of some 50 names of interested parties gathered at GA as an "ad hoc" task force (later revised to "resource") to work on the Article II process. (This whole resolution was, frankly, not clearly worded -- many of us thought the 50 wanted to work on content, whereas they later clarified that they wanted to work on process -- and the body agreed that it was really the board's job to appoint a commission, not accept a self-selected group, and, in any case, nothing stops them from calling on any of the list of 50 for help).
Agreed to raise the issue with the U.S. government about the denial of visas to female religious leaders from Africa to attend a religious conference here, apparently on economic grounds. Not sure how this qualified as a responsive resolution -- it sure looked like an end-run around the limits on AIW's to me, which is not to say that it is not a worthy cause.

Also on Sunday I briefly attended a workshop that was listed in the program as "Implementing our Newly Adopted UUA Statement of Conscience." As Louise wrote here on Friday, we did not actually pass the SOC, but, rather, referred it back to the CSW as "not fully baked." I was interested to see what this session would become, and what, if any, path forward was set forth.

I won't get into details on the contention that arose around this SOC, as that has been blogged elsewhere. I will say that I did think, myself, that it was not decisive enough to be useful to the office of legislative affairs, nor respectful enough of those who choose to serve in the armed forces, to pass as it was written, and these two concerns represented the bulk of the objections. My observation in this workshop was that the CSW had felt "finished" with this work, and it is not clear to me that they have the energy to resolve this -- if it can even be resolved, something about which I have my doubts.

Saturday and Sunday (Louise)

2009-06-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Photo by mike_benefiel

I have just finished re-reading both of our earlier reports, and I must say we are a verbose couple! When the CLF by-laws were written to require a written report by CLF GA delegates, they probably didn't expect quite so much verbiage. And if you are one of the CLF Board members tasked with reading this report, I apologize in advance if this seems like too much information. We would both welcome your comments; if you want us to write less, please let us know.

That being said, we blog regularly and are used to processing a day's events in this format. That and the reverse chronological order lends itself best to daily reading, rather than trying to digest it all at once, backwards. So, your indulgence is appreciated.

(As a side note, I just suggested to Sean that he might want to pause in his writing to wash the dishes, as they have been piling up. He replied, "You have to blog when the Spirit says blog, and you have to wash dishes when the Spirit says wash dishes. And right now, I'm blogging. Oh, and by the way, you are the Wife, not the Spirit." Oh, snap!)

Saturday was another full day, of course. Sean has written a lot about Plenary IV, so I'll just add a few things here. I was tickled to hear that our Public Witness event from Friday made the front page of the Salt Lake City Tribune. SLC really is a small city, and having over 3,000 UUs in town packs a wallop, I think. I am sure that we made a huge impact on the local LGBT community and hope they heard our message of love and acceptance.

At least twice during this plenary, speakers who had been clearly given a time limit blatantly ignored it. One woman said right up front that she had 4 minutes, then spoke for 10. One receiving an award seized the bully pulpit and gave a homily 15 minutes long. While I understand that a person being honored should also be heard, surely each knew their time limit in advance. These awards aren't big surprises. The sad consequence of this time disrespect is that another, equally important, item was completely short changed. It broke my heart to slip out of the worship service at the end of plenary to attend the next choir rehearsal. If I was going to have to choose between that lovely worship and someone's rambling committee report, I certainly would not have chosen the latter! Harumph.

On the positive side, the reports from the UU Service Committee and the UU United Nations Office were so uplifting. As donors to the UUSC, we love hearing how our gifts are being used to improve the world. Now I'm thinking seriously of making a donation to the UU-UNO as well. Good stuff!

After choir rehearsal #4 and a quick lunch, it was on to Plenary V. We had heard on Friday night that the fierce thunderstorm that roared through Salt Lake right before the Service of the Living Tradition had caught our huge "Standing on the Side of Love" banner hanging outside the convention center and whipped it around. Apparently the hardware holding it up smashed through the atrium windows, breaking glass and damaging the banner. The story of this exciting event, and the subsequent gorgeous double rainbow that followed the storm, was retold in words and funny dancing at the plenary opening by the SSL committee members. They also told us that pieces of the banner would be available as souvenirs. I was pleased that no one was hurt and that the committee was making lemonade out of it all.

(Several people noted wryly that a more conventional religious gathering would probably seize on storm and rainbow as evidence that a deity was approving of our actions at GA, but most UUs chose to be simply awed at the natural spectacle and grateful for a benevolent outcome. I would much rather claim, through my own concrete actions, to be Standing on the Side of Love than that God is on Our Side. Too many have used that claim to justify a world of hurt.)

After plenary, I attended the tech rehearsal for Sunday morning worship. The technology required to present a multimedia event of this size is just staggering. Dozens of microphones, scores of people, monitors showing the words to the hymns and close-ups of the speakers, chairs in their proper places, lighting, cues, sight-lines...what a production! The hard work of some very invisible volunteers makes the huge difference between a worship service where 5,000 people can hear and see, sing and be moved, and a big mushy muddle of tiny garbled figures on a stage far away in a huge echo-y conventional hall. There's a special place in heaven for audio-visual folks, a big sound board where they can fiddle and tweak to their heart's content, without temperamental "talent" making demands. Blessed are the A/V nerds!

Photo by ardie96750

After rehearsal, we went to dinner with dear, long-time friends that we see only at GA. Two bottles of wine later, the Ware Lecture simply wasn't in the cards, and I gratefully went to bed early.

Sunday morning rolled around early, as choir members were required to be in place by 7:30am. More sound checks, vocal warm ups, and then we ran through our pieces one last time. As the final chord of our anthem "Choose to Bless the World" echoed through the still-empty hall, our GA choir director, Allison Wilski, paused. She quietly told us that she had a difficult year in her personal life, and that Spirit had been missing. She told us that we had restored her, had opened her heart again with our love and music, and tearfully thanked us.

And that, dear readers, is why I go to GA. That moment, that opening of one heart to music that I made, that I studied and worked for. To be part of something larger through music. Our life on the road makes it very, very difficult to be part of a regular musical group. I can play my own guitar and sing to the cats, but to practise with others toward performance in a worship service is a blessing I only can find at GA.

Photo by WolfS♡ul

Floating on Allison's praise and love, we rocked the worship. Everything came together and it was all lovely. Abhi's sermon was great, the hymns were among my favorites, the hall was packed with UUs. I loved it!

Immediately after worship, we had ANOTHER tech rehearsal, this time for the giant Closing Ceremony production. We sang in a rather complicated combination with Gini Courter speaking a prayer, and that needed to be ironed out logistically. Fortunately, there was time after that for a substantial lunch, because the rest of the day was completely filled with no time for dinner until after 8:30pm.

The final plenary took the rest of the afternoon. I was moved by the chalice lighting, which honored the UUs shot in Tennessee last July. It was powerful to hear about their lives, and how the community came together to mourn and heal.

Other highlights: Gini's Moderator Report. She said that the bad economy can "out" bad governance, as budget cuts force unhealthy practices into the light. She encouraged us to see this as an opportunity for spiritual growth. She also warned us against letting the power of elected boards and committees be usurped by self-selecting, non-official groups. That democracy demands that we honor our elections and responsibilities in this way.

We learned that the morning's offering had raised almost $30,000 for the Utah Pride Center. Yee haw!

And finally, Closing Ceremony. The choir, of course, had to arrive early to get settled on stage and warm up. When GA was at Portland in 2007, I chose not to sing in the choir. That year, they did not participate in Closing Ceremony, the choir's traditional venue. Instead, they had a small, separate concert, sparsely attended. That, for me, was not enough to justify the many hours of work in rehearsals. I don't know what happened in Ft. Lauderdale in 2008, but here in Salt Lake City in 2009, the choir performed at two of the key events, and I am so thrilled! Every minute of preparation was worth it.

We began with rousing hymns. Then a slide show of Bill Sinkford's presidency. At the end, he received the longest standing ovation I've ever been part of. He was an excellent president, and he will be missed. But like the President of the US, it is clear how difficult a job it is. The photos, to me, highlighted how much he has aged in the eight years. Sitting behind him, he looked a bit fragile to me, and tired. I suspect he is relieved that it is over, and looking forward to a well-deserved rest. Thank you, Bill.

Rev. Sinkford then charged Peter Morales with the new responsibilities of presidency. He drew on the words and wisdom of other past UUA presidents, and included Bill Shultz's recommendation to surround himself with true friends. They would "praise and support you in public, but behind closed doors, and preferably with martini in hand, would tell you when you are being a horse's ass."

Photo by Sister72

In what other denomination will you hear that exact advice? I love being a Unitarian Universalist.

Rev. Morales was inducted into his role with the traditional laying-on of hands. Gini prayed, we sang. And then, it was over.

Until next year.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as a General Assembly delegate of the Church of the Larger Fellowhip. It has been, once again, an honor and a privilege.

Status Quo is not an Option (Sean)

2009-06-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Photo by needlessspaces

Saturday afternoon I attended a session on the work of the Fifth Principle Task Force (FPTF), after hearing the Task Force's report in Plenary earlier in the day. I'm not sure where I was when they populated this TF, but I would have volunteered in an instant, as the subject is near and dear to my heart.

I will not rehash their interim findings -- you can see their "report" in slide form here:
http://www.uua.org/documents/boardtrustees/5thprinciple/090417_presentation.pdf

In brief summary, the charge and subsequent findings of the TF suggest that the supposedly democratic process by which we govern the affairs of the association is fundamentally broken. In short, the process by which delegates are chosen and then charged to attend GA does not reflect true democratic principles. In many (most?) cases, delegates are self-selected, often on the basis of having sufficient personal funds to attend. (Many will argue with this point -- to be clear, I am not saying this is universally true, but it is true in enough cases to be of concern.)

I will cite my own experience as a case in point. I have been to five General Assemblies, starting with Boston in 2003, then Fort Worth, Saint Louis, and Portland in quick succession from 2005-2007, and finally here in Salt Lake in 2009.

My first time at GA I was not even registered. We did not yet live on the road in our bus, and we attended a brick-and-mortar congregation in Palo Alto, California. Louise had been a long-time lay leader in that congregation, culminating in chairing the BOT, and was sent to that GA by the congregation as a delegate. This made sense to me; I went along for the ride as the sidekick/husband. At that time, I had not fully committed to the faith, and certainly did not see myself as ever being involved in governance.

I confess I did not know what happened inside the hallowed halls of Plenary, nor did I care. The look and feel of GA was quite familiar to me, however -- in a former life, I was very heavily involved in an even larger society that was governed by volunteers through deliberative process and which put on two large symposium/trade show events annually, with an average attendance of 6,000-7,000. At various times I sat on or chaired the committees of that organization that organized the seminars, symposia, and trade shows, and concluded my decade and a half with that organization with a stint on the board, and as treasurer. While GA may seem like a large undertaking to many who attend, to my eyes it was actually a rather smallish affair.

I flitted around the Boston event as much as I could without an attendee badge, taking advantage of those events open to the public (including a few hours in the exhibit hall), and socializing with people in the public spaces and at meals. It is, perhaps, a dirty little secret that one can come to one of these conferences and do a great deal of interacting without ever paying a registration fee -- facility rules and sometimes statutes preclude an organization from excluding anyone from any space considered "public," which includes hotel hallways and often convention center areas outside of the meeting rooms themselves, particularly if those spaces are not being billed to the organization as booked square footage.

I naturally assumed that Louise was off doing "representative government" and that, of course, everyone else there was, too, having been duly elected by their congregations through a democratic process.

Two years later, in our first year of nomadic life, Louise suggested to me that we should attend GA in Fort Worth. Now, by this time I had fully converted to the faith (if one can even use that phrase in UUism), and we were dues-paying members of this very congregation, the Church of the Larger Fellowship. I was eager to attend, from the perspective that this would be an opportunity to meet other CLF members, our ministers, and the folks in the office who support us. Plus, secretly, I love conferences -- why else would I spend a dozen or so years volunteering to work them.

Then Louise told me she would be a delegate for the CLF. Whoa -- how does that work? Apparently, you just ask. Well, OK -- I'm still not well-enough versed in things to think I can be part of governance, and I'm certain, of course, that this is really just a CLF thing -- it makes sense that we'd have trouble democratically electing and then charging our delegates, given the nature of our congregation. At this point, I am still convinced that what goes on in the Plenary hall, where I still have not ventured, is representative governance at its best. For myself, I elect (pun intended) to be a plain attendee, and I have the simplest of badges, undecorated by the "fruit salad" of ribbons I sport today.

By Saint Louis in 2006, I am comfortable enough with GA and with my grounding as a UU to agree to be a delegate. I am still a little shocked by the fact that all I need do is ask the CLF office to become one, supplying no credentials and making no promises or covenant to vote in any particular way. Note that I had met these folks exactly once, in Fort Worth. My obligation appears limited to making a report to the CLF board, which is the purpose of this very blog. Still, I remain convinced that this is a CLF aberration, and carry that illusion with me all the way to my first Plenary.

I even wrote about my discomfort with my part in this supposedly democratic process in my first post from Saint Louis, here. My naivete is also apparent in that post, wherein I speculated that "the delegates are intended to bring with them the sense of the smaller body which those delegates are to be representing. I'm sure that many congregational delegates come here already briefed on their congregations' wishes with respect to the many issues that come before the assembly."

What I have since learned, starting with St. Louis and progressing all the way to today, is that the CLF is decidedly not an aberration, at least in most respects. (It can be said, however, that generally most of our congregation does not personally know nor have personally communicated with their delegates, which is probably different from most other congregations.) Through discussion with many delegates, and direct observation of what happens in Plenary and in mini-assemblies, I can state without equivocating that many (most?) delegates are selected on the basis of (1) their ability to pay their own way to GA, (2) their ability to dedicate the time away from the rest of their lives to attend GA and (3) their own desire to attend.

Photo by A Girl And Her Camera

There are exceptions, of course. Many congregations democratically elect their delegates (although possibly only from a pool of people who can meet points 1-3 above), and many charge them with specific voting instructions. But my observation suggests this is the exception, rather than the rule.

FPTF chair Denny Davidoff (who, ironically, was the chair of the CLF BOT for most of my tenure and thus among the audience for my several reports here) drove this point home during her report in Plenary, wherein she asked for a show of hands: how many congregational delegates were fully reimbursed by their congregations to attend GA -- travel, meals, hotel and registration? How many partially reimbursed? The numbers, in a room full mostly of congregational delegates, were appallingly low. Thankfully, we did not delve into how many of those assembled knew the will of their congregations on the issues at hand.

No need, really, because the unending campaigning in the halls of the Salt Palace made that issue entirely clear. The two presidential candidates have been slated for a long time, and there have been some 22 candidates' forums around the country at the district level. To some degree, every congregation has had a chance to meet the candidates, or at least become familiar enough with their platforms, qualifications, and credentials to have discussed the matter as a congregation and provided their delegates with some direction on the matter. Yet the shear number of "uncommitted" delegates, as evidenced directly by the amount of campaigning and campaign resources, speaks otherwise -- have a look at the material Louise linked here to get a real flavor.

It is with all this as a background that I wholeheartedly endorse and support the recommendations of the FPTF, which can be found in their presentation. Specifically, moving GA to a biennial schedule, scheduling it mostly on a weekend when most working folks could attend, reducing the number of delegates to a manageable yet meaningful size, then fully funding those delegates so that congregations can elect them completely democratically, charging them with a congregational mandate -- even if that is to just "vote their conscience" as duly elected representatives.

What this means, of course, is that I am supporting putting myself out of a "job." While the final tally of elected delegates for the CLF may change somewhat from the current proposal (wherein we are allocated 4, the same as any congregation above 1,000 members, IIRC -- it's not in the presentation but was in a list of FAAQs -- Frequently Asked Anxious Questions), it is certain to be far smaller than the 22 delegates we are currently allocated. Additionally, we must, as a congregation, find some way to discuss the issues in advance of GA, and elect representative delegates to do that real work for us. It will be a "challenge" in every sense of that word.

I think it is a needed change, and, should the CLF choose to continue to send me to GA as a delegate, I pledge to work towards this goal, while ensuring fair and reasonable representation and a voice for our unique congregational makeup. Because surely we do not want to see the somewhat haphazard sort of governance which I have described (and will describe) elsewhere in this blog continue.

Ammendments to Article II (Sean)

2009-06-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of my Saturday coverage.

I'm not really sure where to start on this subject, and many other bloggers have covered most of the issues in a great deal of depth. Suffice it to say that, having just suggested in my last post that many delegates arrive unprepared, we were, ahem, unprepared. At first I thought we were just out of the loop due to having missed last year's GA, but as things progressed, I learned that pretty much the entire assembly felt blindsided by this.

Without rehashing the entire (ongoing) discussion here, let me just say that all of the angst, all of the confusion, and even all of the trouble the assembly had moving the matter forward comes from what I believe to be a simple but catastrophic oversight in section C15.1(c)4 of the bylaws. Let me explain:

One would hope that, in the normal course of the affairs of the Association, the assembled congregations would periodically undertake to review and perhaps modify Article II of the bylaws, which state the "Principles and Purposes" of the Association. One would also hope that "periodically" would mean that we would not let as much as a decade and a half to pass between such reviews.

Should we do that, the process of review and amendment is quite reasonable, and is described in bylaw section C15.1(c)1 -- any proposal to review or amend must come before GA to determine whether further review is warranted, at which point the GA may, by majority vote, refer the proposal to a commission appointed by the BOT to conduct such a review, which is to involve member congregations. Within three years, such commission shall bring the proposal and any amendments thereto in front of GA, which may adopt them by a two-thirds majority.

This process is open and inclusive -- congregations, through their delegates, will know of the proposal before study and review begins because it will have already come before GA, and the commission is specifically charged to include congregations in the review process. No one at the subsequent GA wherein the proposal is potentially adopted could reasonably claim to have been blind-sided.

The bylaws also include a "safety valve." Lest the "Principles and Purposes" stagnate and become credal without intentional thought by the Association, C15.1(c)4 requires the BOT to establish such a commission to review and study Article II -- note that this no longer requires or involves the General Assembly prior to the review and study process -- and may then, in its discretion, place any proposal resulting therefrom on the agenda of the next GA. That GA may then vote by simple majority to admit the proposal to the next GA, wherein it may be adopted by a two-thirds majority.

The problem is two-fold. One is that the first time the proposal appears before GA may well be the first time any delegate is even aware the issue was being worked -- that's the blindsided part. The second is that there is no provision whatever for any further work or amendment to be done to the proposal between the time it is admitted by majority vote and the time it is adopted by two-thirds vote.

The simple fix to this is to change C15.1(c)4 to, instead, charge the BOT, if no proposal has been brought forth in 15 years, to charge a commission to bring forward such a proposal, to then be submitted in front of the General Assembly in accordance with the already reasonable process described by C15.1(c)1, which ensures not only that the proposal appears before the assembly twice, but also allows for a reasonable discussion, debate, and amendment process in the interim.

Note that I've already prattled on for eight paragraphs about broken process and a frustrated assembly, yet I have not said even one word about the content of the proposed changes to Article II. It could (but will not) go without saying that there was some lively debate and discussion about several points in the proposal. There were enough contentious issues, in fact, that many in the assembly felt they could not get behind and support the proposal entirely as it stood, without amendment (for which, as I said, there is no allowable process within the bylaws).

I personally did not spend a lot of time dwelling on the content, as it became clear to me that there would be ample opportunity to get involved in that one way or another at a later time (remember, even a vote to "adopt" here would merely have placed the proposal on the agenda for the next GA, where a 2/3 vote would be required). What was immensely clear to me, though, was that enough people felt disenfranchised by the new language that there was no way I could, in good conscience, vote to have the matter languish for another year with no ability for discourse and amendment.

In the end, enough people were either against the content itself or, as me, the process by which things would move forward, that the proposal was defeated by the thinnest of margins. In a vote that required a hand count by the tellers, the motion failed by a mere 13 votes, out of 1,159 cast -- a margin of just 1%.

The mandate to the Association is clear and two-fold: we need to fix the bylaws so this does not happen this way ever again, and someone needs to come forward with another proposal for amendment of article II that will now follow the reasonable process of C15.1(c)1.

Several have suggested that such a proposal could not be considered by the Assembly until two years have passed, as that is the way it is so stipulated at the end of C15.1(c)1. However, my reading of the Bylaws suggests otherwise -- there is no such stipulation in C15.1(c)4, under which this proposal was brought, and the stipulation under (c)1 appears to me to be applicable only to proposals originally brought forth under that section. I see no prohibition on bringing any proposal brought under (c)4, but then defeated, immediately in front of the assembly under (c)1.

Of course, this is my reading in the calm light of day and after GA is over. My regret is that I did not see this sooner -- I could have brought a motion under C15.1(c)1 to refer the existing proposal right back to the BOT under that section for referral to a new commission for study, thus starting the clock immediately at this GA, while allowing the commission to consider amendments, which might then have been immediately forthcoming right here in Salt Lake. Oh well.

Saturday, part one (Sean)

2009-06-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Photo by Leo Reynolds

We arrived bright and early for the start of Plenary-IV at 8:45. Once again, many reports ran over, and we held the business until the end of the session. That business was to admit AIWs to the agenda. To touch again on the subject of GA-reform, it is clear to me from the many procedural questions, and even some of the discussion from the Pro and Con microphones, that many delegates arrive to GA without a clear understanding of why they are here, or of how business is conducted in a deliberative body, or, for that matter, of the processes for Social Witness and governance within the movement. I also had a sense that delegates were generally unaware of the burden their actions place on the Association and/or their congregations, a sense which would be confirmed later.

For the record, I voted in favor of admitting only two of the proposed AIWs. Nevertheless, all six were admitted by wide margins. I would guess that, had the committee been allowed to forward more than six (I believe there were nine submitted), we would have admitted all of them.

Running over on time meant that many delegates, ourselves included, left in the middle of worship.

Plenary-V, in the afternoon, thankfully ran mostly on time. There were no early reports, other than the Breakthrough Congregation in Peace Dale, RI. These breakthrough reports all feature a video presentation, and I think the pressure is enormous to keep those to their alloted times; since they are prepared ahead of time, the temptation to keep speaking extemporaneously does not exist.

Not on the agenda, but brought to the floor by a delegation of Iranian-American ministers, was a prayer in Farsi and a call for a moment of silence in support of the people of Iran during the current turmoil in that country.

Doing well on time, the report of the Fifth Principle Task Force, chaired by Denny Davidoff, was moved up from Plenary-VI. I was moved by Denny's report to attend the workshop on this topic, "Status Quo is not an Option," later this afternoon, and I will say more on this in another post.

That took us to the debate and vote on amendments to Article-II of the bylaws, which is a big enough discussion to warrant its very own post, immediately forthcoming.

After Plenary, I attended the Fifth Principle Task Force's workshop, which is also a discussion worthy of its own post, followed by an unrelated session entitled "Does Touch Screen Voting Violate the Fifth Principle?" -- and I plan yet another post on that subject as well. I have lots more writing ahead of me, clearly.

Monumental catch-up (Sean)

2009-06-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

Photo by Steffe

I'm sorry to have to post what will amount to two and a half days of updates here all at once. In order for it not to become one monumental post, I will try to break it up into several chunks. Not only because it is otherwise likely cumbersome for you to read, but also it seems a sisyphean task. Unfortunately, a hectic schedule since my last post here on Friday left me little time for the computer -- barely enough to keep up with email. Spending time repelling boarders here on the blog did not help.

Last GA I attended, in Portland, I brought the laptop with me (I had a physically smaller one back then), and so I was able to type updates throughout the day as time permitted, and even take notes in session real-time, making it easier to transform into a post later. Having several free wireless networks in close range of the convention center helped, and carting the laptop in with me was not really an issue on the light rail. This time around, I have a larger machine, which does not fit in the trunk of the scooter which I rode back and forth to the convention center. Of course, the line for the Internet cafe at GA, open only during exhibit hall hours, made that an impossibility as well.

Next time around, I really need to set things up so that I can post small snippets here from my BlackBerry (something I did not have last time). I did not think about this enough ahead of time, or else I'm certain I could have set it up for this go-round.

In any case, onward to where I left off, on:

Friday

Louise did a great job of describing Plenary-III in her last post. I will only add that people giving reports need to learn to stick to their time allotments. To do otherwise is, frankly, disrespectful of the delegates' time. I'm quite certain that some delegates had already left the hall by the time we got around to actually conducting business, the very important debate and vote on the Peacemaking SOC, and those delegates later felt disenfranchised. As delegates, we take our responsibility to be in Plenary from start to finish, and so, at some level, we are held hostage to anyone placed on the podium during a Plenary session and their time-management skills. This is clearly an area for improvement as we re-imagine GA (more on that re-imagining later).

Photo by doctor paradox

In any case, the Plenary ran over by half an hour, and, of course, we ran the clocks out more than once during the Peacemaking debate. It is perhaps the case that the body, which might otherwise have moved to extend time for debate even further, felt the pressure of the upcoming scheduled public witness bearing down upon them. I can't say having a more comfortable time margin, or more delegates in the room, would have changed the outcome. And, ultimately, I personally believe the decision to refer this one back to committee was the correct one -- I could not support it as it stood, and I don't really think the whole assembly could have amended it enough on the spot to make it right.

Friday evening while Louise was in choir rehearsal, I attended the Kate Clinton comedy performance, which, as a recovering Roman Catholic like herself, I found uproariously funny. There were, perhaps, a couple of moments where she (we?) was, shall we say, somewhat less respectful of "other traditions" as we UU's should strive to be -- other bloggers have already made hay of this.

We elected to skip the public witness, in order to eat dinner, and the Service of the Living Tradition because, again, it just ran too late. As Louise has already shared, it is just not reasonable to try to do something in every time slot at GA. This is a lesson we have both learned the hard way.

A much better day (Louise)

2009-06-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Gracey

Ah, finally some meaty business at Plenary! Today we heard reports from a number of important committees and task forces, but not nearly as many as at some previous GAs. It felt like a good mix, and each report was fairly brief. In the past, a few groups have given their reports in the form of skits or songs, usually quite badly. Thankfully, all were pretty standard today. I don't mind a little humor or variety, but those often go hand-in-hand with taking too much time to say too little.

The preliminary number of delegates attending this year is 1,928, and total folks registered is 3,349. I thought that was fewer than previous years, but can't find any notes here in the blog. Events and rooms definitely seem less crowded this year. Either the Salt Palace is plenty spacious, or the numbers are down, except for choir. Only 150 people are admitted into the choir this year, and there is a waiting list.

Highlights for me today:

The GA Service Project is the Utah Pride Center, a LGBT support group that grows each year. This year they held a Pride Prom, with over 700 youth attending. Queer youth are still at a higher risk of suicide, abuse and neglect, so having such a great place for them to hang out and receive love and support is worth our attention and money.

Two great quotes from the Investment Committee: "We invest with the aim of tilting the world toward justice." "Greed and fear are not an investment strategy."

In this tough economic year, the Shelter Rock UU congregation increased its gifts by over 3%. Shelter Rock, well, rocks!

The musicians who played during the offering were super: Emma's Revolution. Indie Folkies singing inspiring protest songs. Then we sang "Standing on the Side of Love," one of my favorites, just for the joy of it.

The voting part of the meeting was the debate on the Statement of Conscience (SOC), "Peacemaking." Ultimately, we voted to refer it to the committee on Social Witness, but not before much lively debate, a few moments of process confusion, and some deft moderating by Gini Courter. Very interesting and invigorating! I just love this stuff.

I was especially proud when a Youth Caucus (YC) representative from my old congregation, The UU Church of Palo Alto, stood at the CON microphone to speak against an amendment. He stated that the YC so strongly opposed the amendment that if it passed, the YC would have to withdraw their support of the entire SOC. I was impressed that the YC could so clearly state their consensus and was prepared to do so. Interestingly, what they opposed was making the SOC too pacifist. That our youth have such a strongly realistic streak is amazing to me.

After plenary, we ducked out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant, the Blue Iguana. Then it was on to the third choir rehearsal. Note to self, for future reference: no Mexican food within an hour before singing. I kept hearing the meditation chant in my head, "When I breathe in, I breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I breathe out chips and salsa." Urp! Despite my being bloated, not devoted, we sound pretty good. I'm psyched that we'll be wearing stoles for the worship service, just like a real church choir.

Photo by mahalie

The decision to skip the second half of UU University this morning was clearly the right thing to do. Having a little more sleep and then some downtime this morning for blogging, reading email and eating a leisurely breakfast really made a difference in my energy levels today. We also chose not to attend the Service of the Living Tradition, although it I had warm and fuzzy feelings just watching all the ministers line up in their formal academic and ministerial robes.

I just need to remember this for next GA...I can't do everything. Plenaries, choir, booth duty, and a handful of worship services and special events are all I can handle. Leaving enough time for quality sleep and unrushed, healthy meals is vital.

Comments are now moderated

2009-06-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

Regrettably, we have had to turn comment moderation on due to vandalism on this blog.

To Mr. Robin Edgar:

Your permission to access this web site is hereby revoked. Any and all continued use by you of this site, including but not limited to the comment feature, reproduction of any site content elsewhere, or "hotlinking" of material on this site will be construed to be in violation of one or more of the following statutes:

Title 18 U.S.C., §§ 1001 and 1030
Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510(12)
Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2710

I do not care to engage in a debate with you. This is the final policy of the administrators of this web site. Any violations will be reported to your Internet access provider as abuse, as well as to any relevant jurisdictional authorities for criminal action.

To everyone else: I apologize for this distracting diversion from our main focus here, and the resulting requirement for comment moderation.

Getting past the guilt (Sean)

2009-06-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chris Gin

Here it is 11am on Friday and I am still sitting in the bus typing on my computer. I am "supposed" to be, according to the schedule, in the second half of my chosen "UU University" track, "Theology for a secular age." And, actually, I would like to be there -- I really enjoyed the first half, held from 1-6 yesterday afternoon.

I was already feeling some guilt from having missed opening ceremonies and in-gathering Wednesday evening, although then I had a better excuse, which involved an obligation of hospitality. When I got home much later than anticipated last night (more on this in a moment), I gave myself permission to sleep in just a little, telling myself that no real harm would come of missing, perhaps, the first hour of the track. That, I think, was the beginning of the end.

Louise, who is also in the Theology track, was feeling so exhausted and crummy last night, that she bailed out of the convention center right after the candidates' forum, even though we had tickets for the farewell cocktail party for outgoing president Bill Sinkford. So she, too, slept in this morning, and, uncharacteristically, I was up first. We might well have made it to the Salt Palace by 9:30, thus missing 90 minutes of our four-hour session, had we not both launched into UU-blogger overdrive as a result of three blistering comments left here early this morning.

It is, perhaps, poor judgment on my part to take action on such matters before my first cup of coffee has kicked in (and how do Mormons function in the morning, anyway -- Postum just doesn't cut it, IMO). But the comments were inappropriate and distracting, and so I deleted them, which took all of perhaps 30 seconds. The problem with that, of course, is that in typical over-apologetic UU fashion I then felt the need to explain my actions to all our readers, and that took something closer to an hour. By then, we looked at the clock and realized that we would catch, at most, an hour of our track before it ended, then come right back here for lunch (we need to walk the dog a couple times each day, so taking all our meals on-site is not in the cards). As much as I enjoyed the first half, we conceded defeat and decided to just remain home through the lunch hour.

Further compounding the guilt associated with all this (yes, I'm a UU, but I grew up Catholic -- guilt is second nature), I had allowed to the CLF staff when I went by the booth yesterday that we were having difficulty finding any free hours in the schedule to do our booth duty, another part of our delegate commitment along with this blog. So in addition to feeling bad about missing our session, I can also beat my breast and say I could be sitting in the booth right now. Oh well.

I do have to remind myself periodically that, even though we have certain commitments to meet as delegates, we did get here on our own nickle, are coughing up $200 for this camp site in order to attend, and paid the $700 registration out of our own pockets. So, at some level, what we do with our time outside of Plenary sessions (which we consider mandatory) is really our own choice. So I suppose that missing the second half of our track is really just a waste of part of our conference fee.

As long as we made the choice to stay home for the morning, though, I am taking the opportunity to catch up on my reporting. Seriously, we are completely overbooked when we are here at GA (making me wonder why we thought sitting through UU University in the first place was a good idea), and even finding the time to update this blog is a challenge. If I don't do it regularly, though, I find that I lose track of everything I wanted to report.

As I wrote here yesterday, our day started with Plenary-II, wherein no business was conducted but we did have a pleasant worship service followed by an introduction to UU University. Apparently, while previous UU University sessions have been well received, two concerns led to the decision to include the UU University program into the GA general program this year, unfettered by competing scheduled activities. The first was a desire to bring UU University to a much broader audience, and the second was a complaint that many could not find a way to schedule both.

While I admire the motivation, and this was, perhaps, a good first effort, I do have some concerns about the format. We spent five hours in UU University yesterday, from 1-6. Even with two half-hour breaks (so, OK, it was really four hours), that's a long time to be couped up in a single venue with uncomfortable chairs. This morning's piece was another four hours, and spending that much more time in the same chair in the same room is definitely not something I missed by skipping this morning's session. I believe that breaking things up into shorter blocks spread across more of the schedule would have been preferable.

I will also say that, out of six tracks, five were focused on congregational issues that, while not irrelevant to CLF, are difficult to translate to the ethereal realm in which CLF operates. This is why we both ended up together in the sixth track (normally, our sensibilities suggest a divide-and-conquer strategy, wherein we deliberately choose separate activities to increase the breadth of our experience as well as our reporting here).

After Plenary we had, as always, a wonderful CLF worship service led by Rev. Jane Rzepka. When you have one worship service a year, you always make it a good one. This year's service featured a homily from Rev. Bill Schulz and music from a very talented group of soon-to-be credentialed (the very first ones!) musicians led by Sarah Dan Jones.

We had one more session before lunch. Louise had choir practice, and I chose to attend a session on The Path to Immigration Reform, introduced by Rev. Abhi Janamanchi. Apparently, featured speaker Kim Bobo was unable to attend due to a last minute conflict, and in her place Alexia Salvatierra, a Lutheran minister from Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, gave a very interesting presentation on how current immigration policy is tearing apart immigrant families, ripping children from their parents and presenting lawful US residents with a Hobson's choice of following deported members to Mexico or living apart.

The other speakers were somewhat drier, and I found the session as a whole to be very monotonous. I also felt that the "path" implied by the title was not really laid out -- the problem was well explained, but what we, as individual UUs or as congregations, can do to help, apart from the usual advice to hound your legislators, was not made clear. Episcopal minister Rev. Canon Pablo Ramos did a great job exposing the problem in the Salt Lake area, but failed to explain how UU's from elsewhere in the country can help. Also, clergy from other denominations did not appear to be well-briefed on the possibly non-Christian or even non-theistic makeup of part of their audience.

We squeezed in a round trip to the bus for lunch and a dog walk into the allotted hour, and were back in time to start our UU University track. I'm afraid I just don't have it in me to summarize that here, other than to say that I found the speaker, Rev. Galen Guengerich (pronounced, as far as I could make out, the same as former house speaker Newt), from All Souls New York, to be entertaining and engaging. The program is available on DVD if you are interested, and we are thinking about getting one so we can pick up what we missed this morning.

We had just an hour for dinner between the 6pm end of the session and the 7pm candidates' forum. The University track ended with a worship service, and just like my "bad Catholic" days, we sneaked out early to beat the dinner rush. We walked in to Olive Garden across the street at quarter to six and were seated immediately -- when we walked back out at 6:30 there was a line of UU's out the door.

The candidates' forum was, to date, the most informative (if not engaging) element of GA. This was the first time either of us had heard either candidate speak, and I have to agree completely with Louise's earlier post on this matter -- neither of these candidates will fill the shoes vacated by Bill Sinkford. I, too, am leaning towards one candidate -- not the one towards whom I was leaning when we arrived. I do not want to overshare on this matter just yet -- stay tuned. I also intend to consult with some of the CLF congregational leadership before making a final decision and casting my ballot.

In addition to hearing from the two presidential candidates for about 25 minutes apiece, we heard from the candidates for the two uncontested positions, Moderator and Financial Consultant, for a few minutes each. Gini Courter and Dan Brody are perfect fits for their respective positions, and I can share that I'd vote for each of them even in a contested race.

After the forum, Louise was absolutely wiped out and went home, leaving me to carry the torch to the final donors' reception on Bill Sinkford's watch, making it something of a farewell party for him. Several carefully chosen speakers had a couple minutes each to share their memories of Bill's presidency (and candidacy), including CLF's own Denny Davidoff. And then we were all treated to a surprise, the Sinkford's included, when The Persuasions entered the room singing. Apparently, this is Bill's all-time favorite group, and, courtesy of a handful of "angel" donors, a group of leadership that knew this about him arranged for this surprise farewell gift.

The Persuasions launched into an extensive set, and I left after perhaps the tenth number. The song list was apparently culled from Bill's favorites by some stealthy means that I did not entirely follow. By the time I left, the entire party was dancing in the aisles.

That put me home sometime past 11, which brings this story full circle. In a few minutes, we are off to the next Plenary.

Rules for this blog (Sean)

2009-06-26T08:54:00.001-07:00

Apparently, we need to clarify what, exactly, this blog is (and is not).

This blog, as we have stated here several times, exists primarily as our report to the CLF board, one of the requirements we must fulfill as delegates from that congregation. We chose the blog format because it suits us well, since we also blog our everyday life elsewhere, and also because it allows other CLF members (along with anyone else), the vast majority of whom can not come to GA, to follow along more-or-less as it happens. That put us among the very first UU bloggers, back in 2005, and due to the way we get indexed by search engines, there now appear to be quite a number of UU's following along, including many other UU bloggers. Welcome, welcome all.

Because this is our blog, it is also our forum for speaking on UU issues. We consider our opinions on all such matters to be an integral part of our required report to our congregation.

We invite thoughtful comments on what we've posted. If we've made factual errors, or mis-reported something, that is certainly worthy of commentary. Likewise, if we have stated an opinion on which you'd like to comment, that is also appropriate. Lastly, encouragement or constructive suggestions for the reporting process, especially from CLF members, is also welcome.

What this blog is not, however, is a public forum for commentary on GA or on UU issues in general. This is not a bulletin board or a chat room, neither is it a bully pulpit for anyone else's opinions other than our own (you are certainly welcome to get your own blog for that, and we along with our readers can then decide for ourselves whether to follow along).

Accordingly, I have just deleted three comments here that were, to my eye, unrelated in any way to the content of the posts to which they were supposedly commentary. They appeared to me to be "spam" -- by which I mean an attempt to use our blog to reach our readers with someone else's message. In this case, these were comments by a UU (or former UU) who clearly has some grievances (although, I assume, not with us personally), and I have deleted them without prejudice -- I have no idea whether these grievances are legitimate or not, and deleting them is not in any way an expression of judgment of their veracity, nor is it intended to diminish the commenter's inherent worth or dignity.

Like (we presume) most UU's, we are sensitive to the plight of our fellow (wo)man, to include the grievances of UU's with the UUA or their individual congregations. And we are willing to listen to those stories as we are able -- again, like most UU's, we dedicate a particular segment of our lives to helping others less fortunate than ourselves. But co-opting our report to the CLF is not an appropriate mechanism for getting our attention.

Again, we do not want to stifle legitimate commentary on this blog, and, for the time being, we are leaving comments open and unmoderated. As always, we reserve the right to delete any comments for any reason we see fit, even as our actions in this regard remain informed by our guiding principles.

No Bill Sinkford (Louise)

2009-06-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I've heard both candidates for UUA President speak now, and am leaning ever so slightly toward one of them. Not that either one lit a fire under me. Bill Sinkford is a tough act to follow.

I don't think either one of them would screw up the job, and beyond that, I don't feel it matters much who holds the position. Either would be competent, neither will make a splash, and ultimately, the work of our denomination lies with the congregations, not with the UUA or its President.

I'm much more invested in knowing that Gini Courter will continue four more years as Moderator. Her skill in running GA plenaries is impressive and makes those meetings much more interesting and engaging for me.

Off to a slow start (Sean)

2009-06-25T11:39:00.001-07:00

For the first time ever, we arrived at GA without having pre-registered, and so we found ourselves having to wait in the on-site registration line. Things moved quickly, though, and we were registered within about 15 minutes. While we stood in line we caught a glimpse of loyal reader Lance Brown, who has been reading not only this blog, but also our travelogue for quite some time. He seemed quite busy, so we did not get a chance to say hello.

After collecting our APF ribbon, we breezed into the exhibit hall to pick up our delagate authorizations from the CLF booth, where it was great to reconnect with Iris, Beth, Patty, and Linda. As always, we hung around the booth for a good 20 minutes or so, just catching up. Transubstantiating the delegate authorization into actual credentials, of course, being the holy miracle that it is, required standing in a much, much longer line, but after another half hour or so we were official.

That was just in the nick of time for Louise to make choir registration and practice -- the only real and practical reason why we needed to be fully registered by yesterday afternoon. After choir we both rendezvoused at home for what was planned to be a quick dinner of leftovers before returning for opening ceremonies.

You know what they say about best laid plans... we had a visitor show up at the bus just as we arrived home for dinner. Not exactly unexpected, but we ended up spending more time visiting than we had anticipated, and ultimately decided that trying to make it back to the Salt Palace in time for opening ceremonies was logistically difficult at best. We opted to skip them, after a quick check of the agenda revealed that no actual business would be conducted. I am sorry we missed the banner parade, as well as the introductions and president's address, but we've been through this before, and I know we can circle back at pick up the details later.

In-gathering this year was too late in the evening for us. I suppose if we were in a downtown hotel where we could just stagger across the street, we might have attempted it. I suspect we'll not make any of the post-10pm events on the schedule this year.

We did get up bright and early this morning to make Plenary-II, wherein, again, no business was conducted. Of course, there was no line at all this morning for delegate credentialling, making us wonder why we waited in line so long last night. I suppose so that we could have our delegate ribbons on in time for the first wave of candidate politicing -- I've been acosted in the halls half a dozen times already.

This afternoon's agenda is UU University, where we are in the Theology track. And I am desperately trying to find time on the schedule to do booth duty -- delegates, it turns out, have no free time at all.

Now let us sing (Louise)

2009-06-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Photo by ktylerconk

This year's GA is set up a little differently than the last several we attended. This afternoon and tomorrow morning are 9 hours of "UU University Focused Track Programming." More on that later after I've attended; I'm skeptical but willing to give it a try since it is the "big thing" for GA2009.

The plenaries seem to be about the same amount of time as usual in the schedule and scattered around different days and times of day. So far we haven't done any actual business, so my inner Governance Wonk, Process Junkie and Robert's Rules of Order Groupie haven't surfaced to be sated.

Choir rehearsals are well scheduled this year, allowing time to eat and even digest a bit before singing. Unlike in Portland, we will be singing at Closing Ceremony! Hoorah! We will also sing at the big Sunday morning worship service, which is new for me at GA and also highly exciting. Two performances, both important and integral to services and ceremonies, mean lots of reward for the hard work of learning 7 new pieces in about 5 hours. Whew! I've had two rehearsals so far and am feelin' the love.

This morning was the CLF worship service, which was great. Jane was funny and smart and charming and wise, and Bill Schulz was less funny but very moving and powerful. And when we sang the hymns, the floodgates of my heart opened and I wept. Finally, finally, worship and song together, bypassing the intellectual brain and moving straight into my heart. Now THAT's church.

The schedule is filled out with several fora for hearing the candidates for various offices (including the biggie, Association President); a handful of open sessions of workshops, and our volunteer time in the CLF exhibit hall booth. Lunches are crammed down in 30 minutes and we're hoping for a few nice dinners.

I've given myself permission to skip all late night activities (including Ingathering, which was at 10pm last night), the Public Witness event, and probably either the Ware Lecture or the Service of the Living Tradition. I find both tend to be very intellectual rather than emotional, and sometimes its just too much thinking at the end of a long, long day. Compare and contrast CLF worship, above. We'll see.

So. Singing, delegate-ing, and UU University-ing, in that order, are my priorities for this GA.

Not taking ourselves quite so seriously, too (Louise)

2009-06-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

I found this hugely entertaining, and actually quite helpful.

"UU heavyweights will ache to have a meal with you and tell you all about the sterling qualities of their favored candidate."
So You’re Going to GA—A Guide for the Unsuspecting UU Delegate in an Election Year

Thinking about being taken seriously (Louise)

2009-06-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

After taking a year off from attending GA (Fort Lauderdale was too far to drive our RV in the summer heat and humidity), I feel unprepared this year. I haven't read anything about the two candidates for President, for instance. I am ready to buckle down and listen now, though.

What little prep I've done is look for other blogs and Twitter streams to follow. Unfortunately, I haven't been particularly successful. I am following @SideofLove, a brand new website and account. Time to step up my efforts to hear more voices.

And speaking of voices, Side of Love posted a video of Sonia Sanchez answering the question, "What does standing on the side of love mean to you?" I am unfamiliar with Ms. Sanchez, so I don't know if this is her standard persona/voice. She is described as a poet/activist. My gut reaction to this clip was embarrassment and hope that the main stream religious community in Salt Lake doesn't see it. It's really flaky and "woo woo." UUs already suffer from a cliched image of being fringe and strange, so having a kerchief-ed lady sing/chant "love love love" struck me as not helpful to our cause. She gave the keynote address to the UU Ministers Association. Will that address be publicized? Was the whole speech like this? I don't know.

I did like it when she said, "Put on the sleeves of love, put on the feet of love..." I believe we must, indeed, use our bodies to do the hard work of building love, tolerance and justice in the world. Roll up our sleeves, set our feet to marching and our voices to protesting when others take a position of hate. But don't hand the opposition something to mock mercilessly, because they will.

The other piece I saw lately was this one in the Salt Lake Tribune. Hallman and Morales wrote eloquently of the need to challenge hate speech and hate actions in our world. The comments were very discouraging, effectively calling UUs "chicken little" and hypocrites. If such a reasoned printed discourse can be viewed so negatively, New Agey sing-song chants will not be received well...

Solidarity (Sean)

2008-08-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

We are working today, at Red Cross headquarters in Mercedes, Texas on the Hurricane Dolly relief operation. And, while Red Cross policy allows time off to attend religious services, we have half our staff off today on regularly scheduled days off. Also, I am filling in for my boss, while Louise is covering the desk. Consequently, we were not comfortable with taking two hours to trundle out and back to the nearest UU congregation, in Pharr.

Nevertheless, we are mindful of the call to attend services today, in solidarity with our brethren in Knoxville who have suffered such a senseless tragedy. Since we were unable to travel to Pharr, I have elected to post here instead.

There is not much I can say about this event that has not already been said. We've been following some of the discussion and much of the news, although our ability to do even that is hampered by the hours we have been putting in here on the operation. We are in a slack period right now, affording me the chance to post, but we were in the thick of things as the tragedy unfolded, and we were in a virtual news blackout with our noses to the grindstone. It was only later in the week that the full extent of what happened became clear to us.

Our hearts go out to the victims of this tragedy and to the entire community. We can only hope that perhaps some good will come of this incident; that it will, in some way, expose the simmering intolerance that courses through our world, and call to action people of all faiths to work together towards understanding and peaceable coexistence.

Taking a year off (Sean)

2008-06-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

In case you might be wondering why we are not posting here from Fort Lauderdale: we're not there. We decided to take a year off from GA, mostly because Fort Lauderdale did not fit in with this year's travel schedule.

For those who do not know, we live full time in our converted Neoplan bus, Odyssey (OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com). Right now, we are in Wyoming, on our way to a rally where we will be conducting some training for the American Red Cross, our other calling. Immediately after we are done training, we will go on the availability list for Disaster Services, as storm season is upon us. The organization has already called out several thousand volunteers this season, and, frankly, if we were not scheduled to do this training, we'd already be deployed to one of the floods, which also would have preempted GA.

I expect we will be back at GA next year, and will again offer to be delegates for the CLF, providing no disasters supervene.

Just a few GA photos (Louise)

2007-07-04T15:43:00.000-07:00

Last year I was really motivated to take pictures at GA, but this year I only have these three lame ones to share.

Art in the lobby of the Oregon Convention Center. I believe the glass flowers are the work of Dale Chihuly, but admit to being too lazy to look for a citation nearby.

The CLF banner. Is this a new one? I didn't remember having seen it before.

The Dragonboat in the lobby of the OCC. We have good friends who dragonboat and have seen a couple races, so it was fun for us to "meet under the boat."

GA thoughts still swirling around (Louise)

2007-06-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

This Boy in the Bands post motivated me to write about my reaction to the final Open Space vote on 30 statements. My thoughts are in the comments on his site.

On a related note, I've really been enjoying following the GA commentary in other blogs. I'm using UUpdates.net to find many UU sites . I feel like part of a real community and love the variety of voice and attitudes. As Jane would say, "Isn't that just like church?"

On to Plenary VI (Sean)

2007-06-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the delay in getting this out. I was hoping to post yesterday, but the dog's been having trouble with her ears, and we needed to get her to a vet. Portland's transit system actually allows you to bring your pet, as long as it's in a carrier -- in our view, a real commitment by the transit system to getting people out of their cars. It took all morning, but we were able to get her taken care of. (We've now got drops to put in her ears for the next couple weeks.) I also wanted to see OMSI while we were still here in Portland (well, OK, I really wanted to see the submarine), and I spent the afternoon there.

Continuing my delegate's report from where I left off, on Saturday afternoon after Open Space Convergence concluded, I attended an excellent and also very well attended session entitled The Pentagon Papers Then and Now: UUs Confronting Government Secrecy, moderated by Amy Goodman and with panelists Daniel Ellsberg, Senator Mike Gravel, and Reverend Robert West. Ellsberg and Gravel were both very well-practiced speakers, and I would add also quite humorous -- I really enjoyed their presentation.

That took us into Plenary VI, wherein little business was conducted. We heard several reports in succession, to wit:

Report of the UU Women's Federation (which had been deferred from Plenary-V)
A moving report on Breakthrough Congregation Davies Memorial
Report of the Journey Toward Wholeness committee
Presentation of the Distinguished Service Award to Leon E. Spencer

We then had a brief song break, after which Dr. Helen Bishop did a short presentation on the Open Space process. Here she announced that over 1,000 GA attendees participated in the process, a number which I question, as I came up with much different math on the subject, as follows:

Firstly, I counted/extrapolated perhaps 800 people who attended the initial "domain" sessions wherein proposals were made for break-out sessions to be convened. (I suspect the 1,000 number came from counting in the "largest" room -- the only one designated for folks with hearing impairment and the closest room to the Plenary hall -- and extrapolating. I counted in three other rooms, and got an average of 80 attendees.) Now, perhaps, one could say that these 800 or so people "participated," but, considering the only thing we did in those sessions was allow people, individually, to step forward and propose topics, a more sensible number of "participants" is 285 -- the number of people who stepped forward. But, OK, 700 other people at least observed this initial part of the process.

As I shared in my last post, only 175 people were involved in the final "convergence" sessions. That's down from 285 "interested" parties on day one. Which leaves the math in the middle -- hard to figure just from sampling. Here's my own guess: I counted an average of six people in the first (of six) sets of breakout sessions, and an average of only three people in the last set. If you extrapolate these numbers across all 105 sessions that resulted in statements, that would be some 470-480 people participating in breakouts. But wait -- that assumes that, over six slots, no individual attended more than one session. That represents the most generous interpretation of the data. I would guess that no one attended all six -- there were just too many compelling alternatives on the agenda. But at least some people attended more than one. Which means that the true number of participants is somewhere between ~120 (if the average number of sessions per attendee was 4) and ~400 (at an average of 1.2). I would guess the number to be squarely in between those two, based on the number of participants in the end-game.

So Dr. Bishop's number of 1,000 is, IMO, overly optimistic. I would think an overly generous estimate would be 500, which does not represent even 10% of GA attendees.

In any case, the list of 105 statements produced by the break-out sessions had been distributed to GA attendees, and we were told that it would be forwarded to the Board of Trustees along with all the back-up materials. The list of 30 statements that were produced by the Open Space convergence process was then distributed. Attendees were invited to step up to the microphone and spend up to 45 seconds to say which of these statements really excites them.

Many folks got up to express their support for several of the statements. In keeping with the fact that these were recurring themes in both the break-out and convergence processes, there were lots of statements in favor of supporting our youth, the great turning toward Earth community, and anti-racism/anti-oppression/multi-culturalism.

The Youth Caucus strongly endorsed statements number 12 and number 11 from this list.

After time expired for statements of support, there was a recognition of those volunteers whose terms are ending with this GA, and then Plenary was recessed until Sunday morning.

Louise and I stayed on for the youth-led worship service, and then headed off to the annual donor reception. After another exhausting day, we went home before the Ware Lecture started. Which reminds me to mention the length-of-day issue: at several points, including in Plenary, we've heard that the poor attendance at the bridging ceremony was, umm, disrespectful, or at least less than fully supportive of our youth. I can't say I disagree with this, even though we did not stay for the Bridging ceremony (9:00-10:00).

But neither did we stay for the Service of the Living Tradition (8:00-9:30), likewise disrespecting our newest clergy, or the Ware Lecture (9:00-10:00), and the simple reason for our absence from all of these is that days which start at 8:00am for us can not end at 10:30pm. It takes a minimum of half an hour for us to travel to or from the CC, which means once we are there, we're there for the day. And the poor dog is home crossing her legs by the time we get back even as it is (sometime after 8:00pm). I'm guessing this might be an anathema to folks who, after finishing the Bridging Ceremony (or whatever) will be traipsing off to hotel ballrooms to participate in "Evening Entertainment (10:00-Midnight)," but that's our life. So, yes, I want to attend Bridging (and Living Tradition, and the Ware Lecture), but meet me half way: schedule them at a time I can reasonably attend.

Living the life that we do, of course, we'd rather see all of GA run another full day, and the whole schedule be less frenetic. I realize that most attendees are in a different place, and the schedule we have now fits better into their lives. But everything is a trade-off, and this schedule means that at least some GA attendees will come late enough to miss morning activities, some will leave early enough to miss evening activities, and some will take time out of the middle of the day to get some rest. In our case, as delegates we view Plenary as non-negotiable, and that means we need to be on-site by 8:30am. So, I offer my apologies to the youth, and to those newly fellowshipped, and to the esteemed Ware lecturer, for not attending, but I would suggest that it is also the UU thing to do to respect that I, and others, have limitations.

Recovering (Louise)

2007-06-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

We're both taking some much-needed downtime today and may (or may not) finish our GA blogging tomorrow. It is amazing how exhausting GA is.

I will say right now that Portland is now at the top of my list of places to eventually settle down, strictly on the basis of the excellent First Unitarian Church's choir(s). First UU sent a choir (a combination of two or more of their regular choirs) to GA for closing ceremony and they were so good, so tight, so professional. I doubt that the streaming video captured it, but having been a member of about a dozen choirs, this one was among the best I've ever heard. The Sanctus was exquisite. The opportunity to hear them was adequate compensation for not singing in the service myself.

The GA choir sang a short concert in the 30 minutes preceding Plenary VIII. They did a fine job, even without me. It's good that they didn't follow First UU Portland, though. Five rehearsals under even the best director just can't compare to years of working together. I hope that the GA choir members had a rewarding experience this year, even without being part of Closing Ceremony. By day two of GA, I was grateful not to have the added time burden of rehearsals.

More Open Space (Sean)

2007-06-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

Well, GA is now over. Last night I was pretty wiped out, since it had been a non-stop day, without even a big enough break to get some notes posted here. After Closing Ceremonies we had dinner plans with a friend who lives in town. I'll talk about yesterday in some later posts -- I think I have several ahead of me.

Now that I've had a little rest and rejuvenation, I'd like to try to cover the continuation of the Open Space process from Saturday.

Before I get into that, though, I should mention an item from Saturday morning's plenary that I could not recall when I was typing my last post: The first item Saturday morning was the report on Breakthrough Congregation, First Unitarian Church of Portland. I'm not sure how I forgot that, other than my mind is turning to mush here, since it was a great report and we had remarked to each other about what a huge and vibrant church it was. The other item I omitted was the report on the implementation of past Statements of Conscience.

Moving on, as I mentioned in the last post, plenary ran over by a good bit. When we were done, I raced over to my assigned "domain" room for the Open Space Convergence session. Unfortunately, the plenary delay meant that I missed the first 20 minutes.

When I arrived, I counted only 18 people in my domain room. Louise went off to count heads in all ten rooms, for completeness, and counted about 174, so my room was fairly representative. And, her headcount included the 20 facilitators. When I came in, folks were sharing their observations on the process. There were several comments around the small number of people participating in the open space process.

At this point, facilitator Lois informed us that the written report, as it stands, which was handed out this morning, will be passed up to the board of trustees as-is. The report, which was the result of the break-out sessions, was a list of 105 "priorities" statements, the direct aggreagation of the written reports turned in by the group conveners. I'm not sure what happened to the other 15 reports, but I know there were a couple of empty slots on the schedule, and I observed that some break-outs simply did not happen.

Lois then asked all participants to think of three or four key words to include in the concept of the mission of our faith community. The process was similar to "brainstorming" -- all the words went up on flip-charts, and we will "vote" on them by placing sticky dots next to the words we think are most expressive of the mission.

I note here that this is a separate and distinct step from what had been done thus far in creating the 105 statements. At some point, it became clear to me that these two parts of the process are unrelated -- what we are moving forward with here does not carry forward any of the preceding work -- other than the earlier workshops perhaps informing our thought process as we craft and vote on the individual words.

At this point participant Rev. Kurt Kuhwald noted that many of the 105 statements do not speak to mission, but to strategy.

The complete list of words from our domain:

Great Turning
Earth Community
Love
Respect
Courage
Compassion
Spiritual
Awareness
Transformation
Justice
Spiritual Depth
Lead
Transformation
Deepen
Cultivate
Living
Intergenerational Community
Religious Identity
Growth
Communications
Welcoming
Interfaith
Religion
Beloved Community
Spirit
Knowledge
Learning
Welcoming
Faith
Truth
Ministry
Commitment
Catalyzing
Empire
Urgency
Turning
Responsibility
AR/AO/MC (Anti-racist, anti-oppressive, multi-cultural)
Crisis
Dominator Culture
Unity
History
Diversity
Faith Development
Youth Ministry
Youth-Adult partnership
Mentoring
Spiritual Growth
Mystery
Sustainability
Ethics
Roots
Diversity
Worship

Note that several "words" contributed were actually phrases, even though, when someone asked if phrases could be used, the answer given was "no." Also, during this process, about half a dozen or so more people filtered into the room, and were asked to contribute words to the process. In the interest of completeness, the three words I contributed to the charts were Love, Respect, and Courage.

After this, each of us was issued four sticky dots to place as we saw fit next to words, which we all did. Then the session was adjourned for lunch.

When we returned from lunch, the facilitators had counted the dots, and here is our room's "top ten" list of words (in order of number of votes):

Intergenerational Community
Earth Community
Spiritual Depth
AR/AO/MC
Justice
Turning
Faith
Empire
Religion
Diversity

I counted only 16 people in the room at 1:10, plus the two facilitators.

Someone asked a question: What are these words supposed to speak to?
Answer: Same as the original Open Space Technology question: "What is the mission of our faith community in this complex world?"

Someone asked to clarify the OST process. Answer: the 105 statements from the breakouts will go to Boston for consideration by the board. Moving forward from here, the statements we will work on around these ten words will be what appears on the ballot in Plenary tomorrow. After we work the ten statements, we will again dot-vote to determine the top three, and those will move forward. So there will be 30 statements from the ten domains for the delegates to vote on.

We had a small group, so, after a brief discussion, the group immediately decided to consolidate several words:

Empire, Turning, and Earth Community
Faith, Spiritual Depth, and Religion

That gave us only six items to work on -- these two consolidations, and the other four words.

Upon further clarification, we learned that each statement is to be only about 15 words in length.

People then gravitated to words (or consolidations) that called to them. We ended up with people working on:

Empire, Turning, Earth Community
Faith, Spiritual Depth, Religion
AR/AO/MC
Intergenerational Community

I observed here that will leave two words, Justice and Diversity, that no one is working on. It was agreed that groups finishing early with their focus could tackle them.

My belief is that when this process was created, the expectation was likely that there would be more people in the room and so ten words would have been more manageable. With a group of only ~16, we worked on only four topics (and one of those topics had a lone individual working on it).

I say "we", but of course, I did not work on any -- I simply observed the process and wrote these notes. One other person clearly did not want to work on the wording, but wanted to know approximately when the voting would be so he could come back.

During this time, I stopped into two other domains and counted 16 and 20, respectively. Again, in stark contrast, I also stopped into a traditional session hall running against Convergence 2, where a session was in progress on the breakthrough congregation in Portland (a follow-up to the morning's presentation in Plenary). I could not count in that room easily, but I estimated an attendace of around 150 -- nearly as many in one traditional session as are taking part in the entire Open Space process.

Our domain ultimately came up with five statements:

Intergenerational community: "Our Religious communities become truly intergenerational as faith development is recognized as a lifelong task."
Earth Community: "As UU's we must now lead the turn from our current empire culture to earth community."
AR/AO/MC: "Recognize the work of the youth in the association regarding Anti-racism/Anti-oppresive/Multi-culturalism and incorporate it into the larger UU community"
Justice: "UU's of all ages covenant to build a just world."
Spiritual depth: "Covenant to deepen our spiritual practice, explicitly connecting our faith with action."

The results of the dot voting clearly chose the statements on Spiritual Depth (19 votes) and Earth Community (15 votes), with a runoff between the Intergenerational Community and AR/AO/MC statements (14 votes each). The Intergenerational Community statement won the runoff by a wide margin.

So these three statements rolled up to the list of 30 for the delegates to vote on. Unsurprisingly, these themes were commonly repeated in the roll-up from the other domains.

I realize this was a very long-winded post with an overabundance of detail, but I know several people are reading here for the explicit purpose of seeing how the Open Space process worked. I have several comments on the process, now that I've been through the whole thing, but I will hold them until after I have reported on the ultimate conclusion of the process in Plenary.

Asleep at the wheel... (Sean)

2007-06-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm going to take a break from the non-stop play-by-play of GA tonight to follow up on some earlier posts. Also, I'm looking at the several remaining pages of notes from today (mostly on Open Space), and I just don't have the stamina to organize it and get it on here.

I'd like to go back to my perhaps over-the-top reaction to the BOT report yesterday. Maybe I can even say "our" reaction, though I can't really presume to speak for Louise.

First off, these posts generated some comments. Wherein it has been pointed out that this is old news, and, had we just been following along in some major UU information spaces (such as UU World -- duh), we'd have known about it.

Chris Walton helpfully pointed out that UUWorld.org has articles about the theological education and independent affiliate funding discussions, as well as the more recent seminary funding cuts. And Scott Wells pointed out that these items have generated a number of threads on his blog and The Lively Tradition.

So I am inclined to believe that this was all very ho-hum by the time the BOT got around to its assigned time slot in plenary to summarize its report, which is likely always received by GA delegates in much the same way the morning Bloomberg report is received by pension-fund members -- they sort of have some vague sense that it impacts them in some way, but not enough connection to the details to pay close attention. And so perhaps it is true that I really was the only one startled by the news.

We also have some acquaintances on the board, and chatting with one of them over cocktails tonight, managed to glean that the internal perception is that these decisions were well publicized, particularly within the impacted groups, and that feedback has been solicited and is being received. Having only tenuous connections, at best, to the directly impacted parties myself, it is also, in hindsight, unsurprising that I had not already heard the news through those channels.

So my apologies (and shame on me) for possibly over-reacting here. And, sheesh, I had no idea how many people are even paying attention to my ramblings here. (All that being said, I did feed back that the back-channel chatter, as it were, is less than entirely positive.)

I'll try to get some of the Open Space reporting posted here tomorrow. I'm definitely too sleep-deprived to tackle it tonight.

Plenary the Fifth (Sean)

2007-06-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, really big day today. I'll try to be brief, but I will also try to be as complete as possible. I have several pages of notes, and, in order to break up the work and also the size of the posts, I will break this up into at least two posts, starting with the business of this morning's plenary. I have plenty of notes on the Open Space process as well, but those will have to wait for a later time.

Before I start, though, I want to apologize here for misspelling Gini's name in several places here. I try to be careful about these things, and when I was unsure of the spelling, I looked it up. Of course, when you look something up you become only as good as your sources, and, apparently, I turned to the wrong source. Many apologies to Gini, who really works hard at her job, and deserves better.

This morning's plenary was the first real business of GA. I know we did some other things there first, but I didn't take notes on them and I don't have the agenda here in front of me (Louise and I are sharing a copy). So I will jump right to the meat: The debate/discussion on draft Statement Of Conscience "Moral Values for a Pluralistic Society" brought forward from GA 2006.

The assembly moved and carried that there will be 15 minutes for discussion of the SOC before amendments are taken up.

During the discussion, I noted more folks lined up at the Con microphone than the Pro.

Too much to capture, but the gist of the con arguments was that we need to spell out our moral values, BUT this document is either not strong enough or not clear enough, or both. One speaker felt the document called on the wrong set of references/sources, and one speaker felt the statement so weak that it would actually provide ammunition to those who would oppose us.

The gist of the pro arguments was that, while this statement is not perfect, it is timely and any further delay in passing an SOC on this matter is unacceptable.

After the 15 minutes expired, the amendments were taken up. I found two problems with the way the unincorporated amendments were presented to us -- on one page indexed only by line numbers. (1) The amendments were not individually numbered or otherwise indexed for easy reference and discussion (so we had to say, for example, "the amendment to lines 13-28 of the original text"), and (2) we did not have before-and-after versions, so we had to keep jumping back and forth between the original text, and the amended (only) text without context.
This puts me at a loss on how to relate what amendments we discussed here, so I will refer to them only as "the first amendment," "second amendment" and so on. You'll have to go to the minutes to figure out just what was discussed.

In fact, though, only the first amendment was discussed before a motion was made to refer (meaning send the entire matter back to committee, for presentation again at GA one year hence).

Since the body was in the middle of an amendment discussion, the moderator asked the delegate making the motion to refer, to hold the motion until after the first amendment was debated and voted upon.

I note here that, just as last year, quite a number of delegates with a real desire for input to the document seemed to have arrived at this point in plenary without having first attended the mini-assembly where the SOC was discussed and worked. These same people now appear upset that there is no more time at this GA to work the document before voting.

Now, every year during the very first plenary, Gini tells all of us to pay special attention to the rules of procedure, and even points out that there will be a mini assembly to work on the statement(s) and that interested parties should go to that assembly. Then the delegates vote in those very rules of procedure, which is always nearly unanimous. And yet people, apparently, do not read the details or follow the procedures, and then are surprised later by what comes before the assembly in plenary. Which finds us at the point of "this doesn't look done to me, so let's send it back."

Moving along, the vote on the first amendment carried (thus incorporating same into the SOC).

The amendment having thus been taken care of, the motion to refer (which is not debatable) was taken up, and this motion was defeated.

Another motion was advanced to refer for only one day, convene another mini-assembly, and take the SOC back up at a later plenary at this GA (a nightmarish proposition that we went through last year at great cost) [editor's note: I managed to lose track of this item in my notes (by somehow starting to type new things above it rather than below) and, while I've tried to put it in the right sequence, it may actually be in the wrong place -- corrections from readers gladly accepted].

Now, related to my diatribe above, in response to yet another attempt to re-do the process, Gini asked for a show of hands -- how many delegates worked this issue in their congregations: almost no hands were raised. She remarked that we couldn't fix that here. Then she asked for another show of hands: how many here went to the mini-assembly: a few more this time, but still almost no hands raised. And again she remarked that we were not going to fix that here.

Thus having, in her own words, "poisoned the well" a vote was taken and the motion was defeated.

A question was asked at the Procedural microphone -- are we not already doing/acting these values in accordance with years of existing SOC's UU values, association policy, etc.?

To answer this Gini called upon Rob Keithan, director of the UUA advocacy office in Washington, DC. Answer: The advocacy office already lives and advocates essentially these values in accordance with existing SOC's and denominational history.

After Rob's answer, the motion to defer was presented again, on the grounds that this answer might represent substantial new information to the assembly. Gini stated that motion was not in order having already been defeated, and could not be reconsidered without new information of an even more substantial nature.

At this time, some CSW members pointed out that some of the more substantial proposed amendments, that might move the conversation further along, are much further down the list (and, due to a printing error, were omitted from the copies distributed to the delegates). Gini acknowledged this, but pointed out that this fact was likely moot since only 20 minutes of discussion time remain and the assembly was unlikely to get as far as even the proposed amendments already printed.

It was then moved, from the amendment microphone, to commence debate on the second amendment. A short discussion pro and con followed, and the amendment carried, thus being incorporated into the SOC.

In the middle of this, a motion was made from the procedural microphone to add 15 minutes to the discussion of the amendments, and this motion carried.

Also during this time, a procedural clarification was asked: Can we now only vote the entire SOC up or down, with down meaning that at least another four years would pass before we can have this kind of SOC before us again. Answer: yes, that's what it means.

That was followed by another procedural clarification: has there now been enough new information to reconsider referral? Gini answered that it was really her call and, yes, she will entertain this motion just before the final vote on adoption of the SOC, if it is made by someone who originally voted not to refer and has subsequently changed his or her mind.

At this point the third amendment was proposed, and discussion began. Since time was running short, even though several speakers remained at the microphones, a delegate came to the procedural microphone to move the question, which motion carried. The motion to adopt the amendment then failed.

With very little time remaining, the fourth amendment was proposed, followed by a very brief discussion. This motion to amend also failed.

At this point Gini entertained again the motion to refer as per her earlier statement. Such a motion requires a 2/3 majority and this also failed.

We proceeded immediately then to vote on adoption of the SOC as ammended, which passed by a relatively narrow (by my observation) margin.

At this time we had the brief daily report from Right Relationships Committee chair Petra Aldrich, which was somewhat troubling. Apparently, once again, racial stereotyping has raised its ugly head at GA, as exemplified by an incident that occurred on the Max. On a less serious note, lack of TG or gender-neutral restrooms had been noted, and Petra informed us that single-stall restrooms were available in selected locations, noting that all UU's had the right to "pee without stress" (to some chuckling). I found those restrooms later, which I was amused to note were labeled "Family."

The Women's Federation report, scheduled for this time, was moved to a later plenary with their agreement, so that the delegates can move on to the Actions of Immediate Witness.

Unfortunately, at this point we were now moving into the 10:45am session time. Even though, as Gini was quick to remind us, we as an assembly voted earlier to extend debate (and thus extend plenary), it was very disappointing to me to see hundreds of delegates leave the room. Apparently, informational sessions (or maybe Open Space?) are more important to many GA delegates than conducting the business of the association. Or at least admitting the AIWs.

In any case, all six proposed AIWs were admitted to the agenda, after a brief presentation of each followed by voting.

More later on Open Space.

Stolen Thunder (Sean)

2007-06-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Notwithstanding the fact that Scott found our tandem-blogging useful, I did mention that it was uncharacteristic. What is more common is one or the other of us posts first, and tonight that was Louise, while I was off dealing with a PayPal dispute. So she has already delivered what I consider to be the stunning news of the evening, which was the content of the Board of Trustees report. I, too, was floored -- perhaps it was coincidence, but it sure felt to me like this set of major changes got announced without fanfare at a very slack time in plenary -- sort of like the way pork-barrel amendments get read into the congressional record when virtually no one is on the floor.

Louise already went into the IA status changes, which is news enough just by itself. Announcement of that particular item fell to Jose Ballester. However, I also took notes on another item mentioned by Tamara Payne-Alex, which I could not find written anywhere in the printed copy of the BOT annual report (the IA issue is spelled out in black and white there, brief as it was). It all went by so fast, I hardly had time to type, but what I thought she said was that the board is now considering changes in how theological education is funded. At least, that's what I typed in the "copious notes" to which Louise alluded in her earlier post. Wow. I guess I had better start reading the board minutes, which are posted on line after each meeting.

The other two board speakers were Charlie King and Julian Sharp (who is actually the youth trustee, not a trustee-at-large as Louise wrote), according to those same copious notes. Before Julian started off the main part of the board report (appearing to me to be the lead speaker, coming after, as he did, a procedural announcement from Ginny), we had a presentation by three young UUs that, I am ashamed to say, I did not recognize (the names flew by before I could capture them), though I now take them to be members of the Task Force. Not realizing this was actually part of the board report, here are the raw notes that I typed at the time:

Not on the agenda was a "welcoming" presentation by young UU's on the "Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth." I have to confess it was a bit touchy-feely, so much so that I did not really get the sense of what the Consultation actually does. But the presentation concluded with an invitation to visit them in their booth, so I guess that will be my opportunity to find out.

Later, after the aforementioned bombshells prompted us to get and read the printed annual report, I found the paragraph in the BOT report on this item -- which explains why it was "not on the agenda," as it was actually part of the BOT presentation.

As long as I'm core dumping my notes on you, here's what I wrote about the rest of the plenary:

Chair Linda Friedman introduced the slate of candidates for open positions filled by the Nominating Committee. Each candidate delivered a short introduction. A motion to elect the entire slate of candidates was made and carried handily, although I noted a very small handful of ballots cast in opposition.

[and]

Ginny Courter invited anyone with comments on either of the Responsive Resolutions to meet after the bridging ceremony in specific locations to provide that feedback before the resolutions are finalized.

I also attended the 4:30 blogging session, but I knew ahead of time that Louise was going to write it up, so I didn't take any further notes. It was a good session, though, and I was happy to put some faces with the names and on-line personae. Including ChaliceChick, who may have been prescient when she wrote, in this post, about the UU Polyamorists. I suspect it is now a moot point, given the IA changes.

In between, Louise and I did another shift in the CLF booth. The 6-7 hour is the one just before close, and we were stunned when CLF staffers Beth and Iris asked us to close up shop for them. There is always a staff member in the booth. Tonight, however, the staff was getting together for some type of celebratory dinner (I confess I don't remember whose what was being celebrated, and, even if I did, it's probably not for me to post it here anyway). After we were done being stunned, though, we felt privileged that they trusted us with the responsibility. They did, however, take the cash box, which meant we couldn't sell anything (though I flagrantly violated orders and sold a copy of Jane Rzepka's book to a passing minister -- and CLF member -- anyway, and I will dutifully turn in the proceeds in the morning).

Two other items merit mention here, the first because I mentioned it to Louise and she said I should blog it: In order to get on-line at the convention center, I have to go outside. There's WiFi inside, too, but the CC wants $12 a day for it. (As an interesting, to some anyway, side note, I can see the free downtown Portland MetroFi network, with five bars of strength, inside the CC, but I can't get on -- I think the CC is jamming that channel to force people onto their own revenue-producing network.) While I was posting my first report today, a Portland Duck rolled up in front of me, put down his ladder, and half a dozen tourists got on. I was mighty tempted to just fold up the laptop and climb aboard for an amphibious tour of Portland. Well, Louise thought that was funny -- I guess you had to be there.

The other item is that I sat next to some Freightliner middle-manager on the Max this morning, on our way into the CC for morning plenary. He had his laptop out and was busy working on emails or whatever, and I remember thinking ho-hum another day at the office, poor guy, etc.. So when Louise shared her mid-day Max story with me, I was again floored. It was clear, in hindsight, that this guy had no idea what was just about to hit him. (I am assuming here that he was among the victims -- if he was one of the hatchet-men, he'd have to have been pretty cold blooded to be as calm and casual as he was on the train. In a former life, I was a walking bundle of nerves on layoff day until the word was out and the deed was done.)

Open Space Breakout Session Titles (Louise)

2007-06-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

Sean mentioned in one of his posts how cryptic the Open Space breakout session titles were. The master schedule format limits the title to 40 characters, including spaces. Note that this is NOT an Open Space Technology limitation. OST doesn't require any particular format at all; in fact, the session titles could be hand-written on a piece of butcher paper in crayon. This was an artifact of the way the printed and electronic schedules were published at this GA.

To give you a flavor, here are the session choices that were available at 4:30 today. Participants initially choose sessions based entirely on these titles.

Model the future of religious relationship
How shall we better embody our 7th principle
How can we become more anti-racist
Forming and promoting UU religious identity
Articulating our faith to the world
Vehicles for participation
To provide excellent youth ministry
Reparations/healing for racist history
Well-being for all: a moral foundation
Just immigration policy
Minority scholarships to promote equality
Universalism, a courageous hospitality
Meeting the needs of those who come
More love, baby!
Sustaining the earth
Commitment to support youth retention
UUA becoming a peace denomination
Owning and using our collective identity
Dialogue with the world: uu mass media

How could I forget? (Louise)

2007-06-22T23:03:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to mention the UU Blogger workshop this afternoon! (Can you tell the IA thing got me riled up?)

iMinister, ChaliceChick, Philocrites, and UU Planet were the panelists and did a fine job presenting the ins and out of blogging. The crowd was extremely mixed, from those who admitted to not ever having seen a blog to those of us who regularly maintain one.

My big thrill was meeting PeaceBang and thanking her for inspiring me to look for other UU bloggers. My daily fix of 5 or 6 UU blogs has become a vital part of my spiritual journey. Some are funny, some are thought-provoking, but all are authentic UU voices that I can hear every day from anywhere in the world. For an isolated CLFer who lives quite literally anywhere in the world, that is a real blessing.

CLF folks can appreciate how wonderful it is to finally put faces to names we've only seen online.

I hope that the Church of the Larger Fellowship will consider using blogs as another method of sharing our voices. I would love, for instance, to read one written by Jane Rzepka. How about one that shares the letters from our incarcerated members? We have wonderful, lively interns and strong connections with the Church of the Younger Fellowship; how about blogs from them?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Louise)

2007-06-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

I am envious of Sean's willingness to carry his laptop to the convention center and "live blog." I scolded him for checking his email during plenary tonight, but it turns out he really can multi-task and took copious notes of the procedings.

Okay, Thursday's standout GA moment for me:

Watching the two Breakthrough Congregation videos at morning plenary. The vitality of these churches was contagious and they received thunderous applause. There was some discussion on another blog about what a lukewarm reception the crowd gave to the introduction of two new affiliate congregations at an earlier plenary. During one of the breakthrough videos, they listed as a proud accomplishment that they had spun off two new churches recently, and the crowd cheered. So rest assured that there is appreciation of that type of growth.

Paul Rogat Loeb's lecture on Peacemaking. He spoke about how incredibly hard it is to do the good work of justice and offered advice on avoiding burnout. His story-telling is young, hip, funny and thought-provoking. I was inspired to sign up to help with a Peacemaking and Technology Work Group. They plan to create a website, and I will volunteer to be the editor.

Robert Fulgham's talk, "What in God's Name am I Doing?" I laughed, I cried, I sat on the floor. It's nice to spend an hour just feeling good, warm, simple things about being in the world. His story-telling is down-home, funny, head-nodding "yup, that's right." Even Robert cried as he thanked us for the honor of speaking to us.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to hear two such different, yet inspiring, authors speak. Good to feel connected to a movement that includes big names, big ideas.

Two other outstanding moments, but not as positive:

On the light rail train back to walk the dog at lunch, a man sat down next to me and asked how my day was. When I ride transit, I arm myself with my 1000-yard stare and "I'm not interested in conversation" body language. I nodded vaguely in response. "Better than my day, I bet," he continued. I turned slightly toward him and said, "I'm having a pretty good day, thank you." He replied, "I was just laid off. Just now." The sincerity in his voice finally broke through my barriers and I looked him in the face and said I was sorry. He told me he had worked making bumpers for Freightliner trucks for 14 years and they closed the plant today. He looked and sounded the part of tough blue-collar manufacturing guy, except for the pain in his eyes. He looked right at me as he told me he had hoped to get 20 full years before retiring from this job, but now he only had 60 days of severance pay. Stunned with sympathy, I could only say, "Wow, how hard. I'm so sorry. You must be shocked." And then, he got off the train at the very next stop. "Good luck!" I called after him. I wanted to run with him to ask more questions, to offer more...something. Hope? A job? I don't know.

Tonight at plenary, the agenda included only two items: the candidate's forum/election and the UUA Board of Trustees report. The plenary was sparsely attended. The slate of candidates were all brought forward by the Nominating Committee and consisted of one candidate per open slot. Pretty obvious that they would all be elected. They each gave their 1.5 minute introduction and were easily voted in. I think this easy and predictable procedure lulled the assembly into a sleepy state. When the Board then gave their report, including what I consider to be the bombshell of major changes to Independent Affiliate status, there was polite applause. Each of the four At Large Trustees spoke for about 2 minutes, then Gini adjourned the session.

Did anyone else notice? I've read the Board's Annual Report and the two paragraphs on IAs were just as short as the verbal report, slipped under the radar, and yet significant.

I don't necessarily disagree with the Board's position that "...our congregations are not served by Independent Affiliates operating in isolation or being an alternative for congregational life." It just seems to me that if we are severing ties with groups that we have had long and meaningful relationships with that we owe both them and ourselves more time to discuss, reflect and absorb this. As far as I can tell, there isn't even a workshop on the topic. We can talk for hours about how a song offended someone so much that we formed a task force to investigate, but our divorce from Faithful Fools, Project Hope and District Presidents’ Association warrants not a moment more than a cursory and vague report. I disagree with the process here. Am I missing something?

Racing off to... nothing (Sean)

2007-06-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

"Running" off to my next session proved wholly unnecessary. I had allocated the 2:45-4:00 time slot to "check in" on some more OST sessions. (To use the OST jargon, I've deemed myself a "bumblebee," flitting among several session rooms, as well as a "butterfly" hovering on the edges of the discussions. Mostly in the name of research.) So I zeroed in on a session entitled, simply, "Ten Times in 20 Years." Really, it was because the title was so, umm, uninformative, that I just had to go to the session to find out what it was about. It should not have been very surprising, therefore, that I arrived to find only the lone convener of the session in the room. He allowed that just one other person had come by, also to find out what it was about, and that person had left as soon as he found out.

Stan, the convener, was pleasant enough, and let me know that his intent was to discuss the paradigm of growing the denomination by a factor of ten in a span of twenty years. That made sense, and we chatted briefly about his concerns that we may be a dying denomination, and I talked a bit about the "Now is the Time" campaign. After five minutes or so, I told him I was going to "buzz off" (sticking with the bumblebee metaphor) and wished him well -- he seemed perfectly comfortable with the fact that he would get to write his task force report all on his own and submit it. I did suggest that he might have included the word "Growth" in his 40-character title and gotten a few more takers. We both agreed that coming up with the right 40 characters on-the-spot in the domain sessions was suboptimal -- perhaps telling people further ahead of time, such as at Plenary-I, about this limit might have given people some time to come up with more creatively descriptive titles before submitting their topics.

I buzzed over to five more nearby break-out rooms, including one topic that actually called to me: Habeas Corpus. Two of the five rooms were stone cold empty, including the Habeas one (reminding me of the current ACLU campaign: "Habeas Corpus is missing"). One had only two people in it, though they were clearly well engaged, and the other two had six each. To offset the empty rooms, though, I also noted that there were a half dozen people at each of two impromptu tables in the lobby, presumably convening topics that didn't make the random selection.

In stark contrast, after twenty minutes or so of looking at OST sessions, I decided to take in the remainder of Robert Fulghum's lecture, "What in God's name am I doing?" -- I couldn't. The room was packed to the doors, and the room monitors were not letting anyone else in. I would estimate that to be a ~500-person crowd. I think Louise attended it, so she'll have to update me later.

Similarly, I attended the 10:45 Starr King President's Lecture by Dr. Amina Wadud entitled "Islam and Gender," and I counted 325 seats, all full, and 100+ "standees" including myself (though we mostly squatted or sat in the aisles once the lecture started), and Louise attended a session next door that was similarly packed, so between our two "normal" sessions there were 800+ attendees, nearly as many as attended the entirety of the Open Space Domain process.

Dr. Wadud delivered a compelling lecture, by the way. Reverend Rebecca Parker did the introduction, which was very moving, so much so that Dr. Wadud was speechless for a moment. I love listening to Rebecca -- she is one of the most articulate and eloquent speakers I know. That said, her five-minute introduction of Dr. Wadud was preceded by a nearly ten minute advertisement for Starr King, which is a bit tiresome for those of us who've already heard it several times. It's just a guess, but I think the Meadville Lombard merger flap is prompting both institutions to re-assert themselves a little vigorously.

In between those two time slots, I attended an eye-opening session entitled "This is my song? Reflections on Cultural Misappropriation" and delivered by moderator Ginny Courter and the Task Force on Cultural Misappropriation. Apparently and unbeknownst to me, even though it happened right in front of me, there was a disquieting moment at GA last year. In hindsight, I remember it and I remember thinking about it at the time, but I am hard pressed to cite details. It was a song break during plenary, and a group of musicians did a very upbeat presentation of a song that had been a spiritual belonging, culturally, to the African-American community. And, perhaps unsurprisingly (even though people were clearly caught off guard) some of our members of color were offended by a seeming inappropriate use of these cultural materials. It brought up a host of questions about how we incorporate elements of other traditions into our community, and yet still respect those traditions and cultures.

Arising out of this "learning opportunity" is the above-named task force, and what a great and challenging mission they have! You can read about their work, including the definition they have crafted of "Cultural Misappropriation" and some of their results thus far, on the UUA web site. The Q&A to the session generated some great comments, including the observation that altering long-standing Christian hymns to make them non-theistic may be another form of cultural misappropriation that some of our community finds offensive.

This morning was Plenary-III, where we heard reports from Beacon Press, UUA Financial Advisor Dan Brody, the Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, and the UUSC President. The O. Eugene Pickett Award was presented, and President Bill Sinkford also made his award for Volunteer Service, recognizing, in lieu of an individual, the work of the UU Trauma Response Ministry, to widespread applause. We also heard moving reports from two Breakthrough Congregations, the Carbondale (Illinois) Unitarian Fellowship, and All Souls Unitarian Universalist, Kansas City, Missouri. As always, details of all these proceedings are available on the UUA web site.

Hey, somebody reads this... (Sean)

2007-06-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

I have a few minutes here before my next session, so I thought I'd take advantage of free WiFi in downtown Portland to post a few thoughts.

First off, thanks to "Boy in the Bands," who is apparently reading our posts and gave us a great plug in this post on his blog. I feel a little sheepish, though, because I haven't really participated in any of the Open Space sessions -- I've attended a couple, and mostly have just taken away some statistics and observations to post here. Frankly, I've looked at the matrix of all 120 break-outs, and I can't find a single title that moves me to jump in and contribute to the discussion. As Louise wrote in her last post, I am hopeful that the "convergence" sessions and the final roll-up in Plenary will engage me, and that I will feel I have something substantive upon which to cast my five votes.

This is a good reminder that I owe an answer to a comment that he posted here earlier, although I'm afraid it's not much of one: I believe the somewhat muted response to the new congregations had to do with several factors, including the energy level with which their presentation was made (lower, IIRC, than in years past), and the fact that it was already late in the evening, even later if you consider how many folks are here from the east coast, where the first day is always the worst jet lag.

Since I am caught off guard by having an actual audience, now is also a good opportunity to point out why we are writing here: As CLF delegates, we owe the board a written report of our experience at GA. Louise had the idea back in '05 (when she was a delegate but I was not) to use the format of a blog to create that written report. It's a great format, because it makes our report accessible immediately to the CLF board, but also in real time to CLF members who could not make it to GA. And so I try to organize my thoughts and words with that "audience" in mind (although I am always surprised when an actual audience materializes).

Louise also happens to be a big fan of several UU bloggers (the real kind, who blog year round and not just at GA), and has been following along on their plans here at GA etc., and apparently put a short link to us on somebody's comments, and, voila, we have new readers. I do know that we also get some folks from completely outside the UU community, who are some of the 300 or so readers of our regular travel journal and come over here just because I'm not posting over there during GA.

We'll be going to the UU blogger panel (as attendees, not panelists) today at 4:30. And, now, I have to run off to my next session, so more later, including notes on today's sessions.

Simultaneous updates... (Sean)

2007-06-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

Uncharacteristically, Louise is typing her post here even as I am typing mine. We'll see whose post makes it in first, although Blogger dates them from the time we start typing the entry, so hers will predate mine no matter what.

I have only a few key observations about today:

Plenary was brief, to the point, and on time. Distinguished visitors were introduced, and President Bill Sinkford presented his annual report. You can read that on line elsewhere, but the gist was that the organization needs a vision, which we all must come together to create, and he shared with us one possibility -- his own. Mighty applause was forthcoming several times throughout.

Another key element of Bill's report was the "Now is the Time" fundraising campaign. Again, you can read this on line. Suffice it to say that we were moved by the focus, and we are considering shifting part of our annual giving, which last year went in large part to UUSC, to the new campaign (call it "leverage" if you like).

The remainder of plenary was the introduction to OST.

The opening OST "domain" sessions went OK. There was some confusion, as the program indicated a 10:00 start, but Ginny indicated a 10:30 start during plenary, which was barely over by 10. So at 10ish, we were wandering around the lobby areas, and were told that the sessions would start at 10:30 -- no problem.

At 10:30 we went in to one of the appointed rooms. The entire assembly was randomly divided into ten rooms (although people were free to deviate, so Louise came with me to my assigned room). I counted about 70 people in the room, and mostly the same number of people wandered in as out during the first ten minutes or so.

Our facilitator, who happened to be fellow CLFer Lois Reborne, did a good job explaining the procedure, and, after a brief Q&A, people started submitting ideas for break-out sessions. An unfortunate limitation of the system was that session titles could be no more than 40 characters (including spaces) in length, leading to some weird titles. Our "domain" submitted 24 sessions, and, from that group, 12 were drawn at random. (Each other domain also chose 12 sessions). Those whose submissions were not formally "selected" were invited to post their topics on a board in the main hall and try to gather a group of interested people to discuss them. Within the 24 submissions, there was a good deal of subject-matter overlap, and thus it remained in the 12 random selections.

The whole process lasted only 22 minutes, which amazed me. We adjourned, and I spent a few moments afterwards typing my notes, and looking at the program to see if there was a regularly scheduled session I wanted to attend. Finding none, I wandered out into the lobby, and noted that several other domain rooms were still in session. I very casually went into two of them, noting the attendance at about 70 or so per each, and saw they were involved in much the same process as our domain had just finished. (I did think it was odd that we were done so far ahead of everyone else.) So my quick math is that, out of 5,000 or so people at GA, 700-800 participated in the "domain" phase of OST, and 120 sessions were selected at random from, perhaps, 250 submissions, with lots of overlap.

I then went to the exhibit hall, and then we had lunch. (And, don't get me started on how there are not enough food venues in the CC to feed 5,000 people who all have the same lunch hour. I was fortunate to have arrived at a cafe ten minutes ahead of the crowd.)

We attended a 1:00 session on volunteer leadership opportunities (can you say "suckers"?), and then headed to the nominal location of the information boards to get the skinny on what OST sessions were scheduled when and where. The idea being that the 120 (ten domain rooms times twelve topics per domain) formal break-outs were to be scheduled in 20 rooms over six time slots, the first of which was slated for 2:45 this afternoon. When the 1:30 scheduling announcements had not appeared by 2:10, we walked down to the OST headquarters room to get the straight skinny. Of course, normal start-up pains had the whole scheduling process a little behind, and, after getting all the information we could (from none other than, again, Lois), Louise and I stationed ourselves outside OST HQ to fend off the madding crowds, give out as much information as we could, and insulate the OST people so they could actually finish the schedule and have even a chance of getting it published before the start of the 2:45 sessions.

Somewhere during this crazy half hour or so, I chatted with Lois about the time difference between our domain and the others, only to find out that Lois had started her session at the program-indicated time of 10:00, while other facilitators started at 10:30. Just by sheer coincidence, we had entered the room (around 10:30) at a natural break in the proceedings when it seemed to us like we were coming in at the beginning. (What we missed was more OST explanation and what I like to call "Kumbaya" -- let's all get in touch with ourselves and the moment. Oh well.)

By the time the schedule was done, and Louise and I had handed out a couple hundred copies to frustrated GA attendees (and pointed countless others to the electronic screens around the CC with the same information), we had neither the inclination nor the stomach to actually go to a break-out session. (To be honest, none of the topics caught our interest, and, lacking a mandate from CLF to advance any specific agenda, we had no basis for choosing.) Nevertheless, I felt compelled to continue my observation of the OST process (if for no other reason than to report it here), so I popped into a random break-out room (I don't even know the topic) for a few minutes to check in. There were 13 people, mostly passionately engaged in discussion, although two seemed to be just observers. A one-session sample does not a survey make, though, so I won't extrapolate the observation until I have been in at least one more break-out.

Exhausted, we went home for a while to rest, walk the dog, and regroup. We returned to the CC to handle CLF booth duty for the 6-7 hour as we had previously scheduled. We always enjoy working the booth with CLF staffers Beth and Iris, who always seem genuinely glad to have us there.

After the exhibit hall closed, we went downtown on the Max for a nice dinner at upscale Portland City Grill, on the 30th floor of the US Bancorp Tower. The food was excellent and the service impeccable (even in the lounge -- we couldn't get into the dining room on short notice), although there was a little mix-up in the kitchen with regard to my "no mushroom" request. The waitress made it right by comping my entree, and the manager also came over and bought us a round of drinks, a classy gesture. So two thumbs up from us (in case any other GA attendees reading this blog are looking for a nice dinner venue).

Tomorrow is another early morning, with Plenary beginning at 8:30.

Process Junkie (Louise)

2007-06-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of programming at GA: workshops, breakout sessions, etc. Plenary in the morning until 10:00am then an unbroken series of scheduled events that initially seemed to me to be...totally uninteresting stuff.

By noon, I was tired to the bone. I had a good night's sleep last night, my regular coffee and breakfast this morning, and an easy walk to transit and then to the convention center. What was dragging me down?

I gave myself permission to come back home and take a nap. But before that happened, we wanted to see what sessions would be offered through Open Space. At 10:30am, we had met in large domains to propose session topics. Not wanting to facilitate a breakout session, I watched from a distance. Most of the topics proposed seemed, um, same-old, same-old. I guess I was skeptical of the whole Open Space thing.

By 1:30, the proposed topics were supposed to be posted in a central location so that attendees could choose their next session at 2:45. We couldn't find any schedule, so we sought out the Open Space office. Inside, it was a bit chaotic. This being the very first Open Space GA, steep learning curves were being climbed. The technical gurus in charge of getting the schedule posted on electronic boards around the convention center were clearly having trouble. We were not the first random attendees to walk in and ask what was going on. Each question stopped the work in process. They clearly needed help managing the tide.

The help we offered was simple: we sat at the doorway and answered the question of when and where the Open Space schedule would be posted. We did that for 45 minutes, and it was the most energizing part of GA so far. To Be of Use. It felt great. So easy, and yet no one else had thought to do it.

Then we attended a traditional workshop given by the Nominating Committee and the Committee on Committees about how to submit an application to serve on a UUA board/committee/task force. The prospect of giving my time in that way is exciting.

It reminded me of what I enjoyed most about traditional congregational life. I loved being a facilitator, a leader, following the process of other people making the church into what they needed it to be. I'm really not all that invested in the results of a vote or a workshop, I just want to help make other people feel like they OWN it. What I love about plenary is how the discussions and voting and process can make us come together and often be our best selves. I'm probably the only person who is disappointed that plenary time this year was cut 40%. Maybe I'm really not a UU, but an RR (Robert's Rules-ist).

What I have loved about the previous 3 GA's I've attended have been plenaries and choir. I'm realizing now that they are quite related. Choir rehearsals are work toward the goal of creating worship that enhances everyone's journey. Do I enjoy it? Yes, immensely. But I also enjoy the work of plenary with the goal of creating a plan to move the denomination toward its goals. The goals themselves? I'm not too picky, as long as they aren't directly in conflict with my beliefs.

This gives me hope that later, as Open Space reconverges back into the most important conversations, that I will become more interested in the process. It also gave me hope when we did an hour of CLF exhibitor booth duty (a requirement for CLF delegates) and I was once again energized by the sense of being of use. I guess I came here to work and the work is what gives GA meaning for me.

Calmer and collected (Louise)

2007-06-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

In the daily poetry list I subscribe to, I received the gift of this poem by Alice Walker:

Expect Nothing

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
------

A wonderful reminder that joy and life grow out of seeing what IS not what I want it to be. I decided to not join the choir this year, and it felt like the right decision. I will watch for and be nurtured by surprise; it was my expectations that GA would be the same as last time that got me into a snit. Shame on me; I know better.

Opening Ceremony did for me what it always does: remind me of the larger picture. Hearing about what Unitarian Univeralism committed to long before I was involved tells me once again that this is the place for me.

CLF In-Gathering was nice. I always like to the faces behind the names. Jane gives such large hugs from such a petite person!

We also had dinner with old friends we usually see only at GA. It has become a tradition and I love that.

Off to morning plenary...

Glad to be through the first day... (Sean)

2007-06-20T23:57:00.001-07:00

Well, we're back home after an exhausting first (half) day.

At least the logistics are fairly easy. We're staying at the Gateway Elks lodge (map), which is a short walk from the "Max" light rail station. From there it is a 13 minute ride to the convention center (CC), and $19.50 apiece bought us seven-day passes good for the entire transit system. As a bonus, there is a grocery store across the street.

I'm exhausted, though, because Louise has been insufferable since discovering that Choir and Worship were in direct conflict (and that choir also conflicted with our already too-few dinner/social options). It was really painful to watch her ruminating about this for most of a day -- it's been really, really hard on her. In the end, she decided she just could not do choir, even though she reported it here earlier as "non-negotiable." A tough choice, but she's been more upbeat since releasing that burden. I'm sure she'll have more to say about it herself later.

That meant that we did not need to be at the CC until a little before CLF in-gathering at 4:45 -- just long enough to get registered and make dinner plans for tonight with some friends we see only once a year -- at GA. (She happens to be a minister, and is moving from a congregation in California to an interim position in Virginia at the end of the month, so we had much to catch up on.) So far, so good, but we made it all the way to the CC stop on the Max before Louise realized that she had left our delegate credentials back at our bus. We briefly flirted with the idea of making the half-hour-plus round trip back home to get them, possibly being late to in-gathering, before we determined that we would not really need our delegate ribbons or voting cards for the opening celebration. Which just means we will have to be a bit early tomorrow to go through credentialing before Plenary-II begins at 8am.

Speaking of Plenary-II, roman numerals and all, the plenaries are so numbered all the way to Plenary-VIII, at the end of GA. Being of a certain age, neither of us can now get the tune of "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am" [sic] out of our heads, substituting, of course, "Plenary" for Henery. Either the Herman's Hermits version, or, worse, the Alvin and the Chipmunks version. I'm hoping that, by the time Plenary the VIII is over and done, the inane tune will fade from my brain.

Also speaking of Plenary-II, that is when we will be indoctrinated into Open Space Technology (OST), which, it is hoped, will be a springboard to some productive outcomes at this GA. I'm trying to keep an Open Mind^TM, but I tend to approach these things with a certain amount of skepticism (having been through myriad meeting facilitation schemes in the past). For one thing, calling this method a "technology" is like calling a pencil and paper "note-taking technology" -- not factually wrong, but a bit overblown. Of more concern, though, is the fact that even proponents of OST advise against meeting structure involving schedules and blocks of time -- even meals are unscheduled. Yet we have a program involving very specific and fixed blocks of time for the OST activities, even overlapping with the more traditional GA sessions and workshops. I am eager to hear how we will be working around this as we have our OST introduction tomorrow morning.

The only other substantive thing I have to report tonight is that the Opening Celebration was pleasant, motivating, and generally on time. In addition to the usual festivities including the banner parade and the welcoming into the fold of new congregations, UUA president Bill Sinkford made an impassioned presentation of how GA outcomes do make a difference, highlighting several key advances through the decades involving race and gender equality, LGBT issues, and accessibility. As always, we are reminded that work still needs to be done on all those fronts, and especially in the areas of race, ethnicity, and full accessibility.

Oh, and lest I forget, the CLF business meeting took place at in-gathering, wherein the slate of nominees for officers was unanimously approved, as were last year's minutes.

A huge decision (Louise)

2007-06-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I read the GA schedule last night. I electronically searched the document to remind myself when the CLF worship service would be held. That led me to the page where all of Sunday's events are listed by title only, under the appropriate time. There, just a few lines away from the worship service I look forward to ALL YEAR, was this ominous line: "GA Choir Rehearsal V."

ARRRRRRGH! Choir conflicts with Worship!?! Skipping this rehearsal is not an option: it is the dress rehearsal for the concert and with only 5 practices anyway, the need for all members to attend all rehearsals is intense. There is simply no way to do both.

I knew that the rehearsal schedule had been changed significantly, probably in response to choir members who complained of other conflicts. I've heard many choir members regret that rehearsals overlap many of the program time slots. This year, it looks like most of the rehearsals are in a stand-alone time slot. That would be great, except for a couple things.

1) That stand-alone time slot is during DINNER. That's right, three of the five rehearsals are stuffed between afternoon program/plenary and big evening events. So, if you sing, you can't eat. More importantly, the opportunity to socialize over dinner with friends I see only once a year is gone.

2) The stand-alone time slot for the concert is during LUNCH on Sunday. Again, when will the choir members eat? Our last rehearsal is immediately before the concert. Final plenary is immediately afterwards.

While I'm at it, I think moving the choir's performance from Closing Ceremony to a special concert time (at a lousy time) just plain sucks. Being part of Closing Ceremony is a huge, huge part of the spiritual practice of singing for me. I sing in church to WORSHIP, not to perform. And while choral music enhances a service, choral music alone is an acquired taste. I suspect that the hard work of 160 people will be heard by only a few (and they'll be hungry!)

Living on the road full-time as we do, GA is my once-a-year chance to be part of a choral group. We simply aren't anywhere long enough for me to commit to enough rehearsals otherwise. Likewise, it is our once-a-year time to attend "our" church service, CLF.

Having to choose between the two has literally made me sick to my stomach. An option I considered (briefly) was to skip GA altogether. I know many people come to GA and find they can't attend some events because of conflicts, but choir is a huge commitment. 5 rehearsals plus concert/ceremony; miss one and you're out (there is a waiting list of others who promise to attend them all.) My question is: should it be my ONLY commitment at GA?

Choir or CLF worship?
Choir or social dinners?
Choir or food?

Damn!

Getting in the GA groove (Louise)

2007-06-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

GA starts in two days and I'm starting to look forward to it. In the last several months I've been reading a number of UU bloggers and of course the discussions now are mostly about General Assembly. One asked who was blogging for GA, which prompted me to get this site ready. That primarily involved capturing the official GA image and sticking it into the blog template. Beyond that, the software does it all. Gotta love these free blog sites.

Sean downloaded the GA program in .PDF format several weeks ago, but I haven't looked at it at all. I like to take the printed hard copy and page through it, highlighting and circling interesting things. Since our snail mail will not catch up to us before GA starts, I'll have to pick up a copy at registration and begin my planning on Wednesday. Non-negotiables for me: choir practice and plenaries. I understand there is a UU blogger session this year and I'd really like to attend that. It would be great to put some faces with the voices I've been reading lately.

At some later date, I'd like to write about how much more connected I've become by reading these UU blogs. This full-time living in an RV, always on the road, is a lonely one from a UU standpoint.

Introduction (Louise)

2006-06-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our report as delegates at the 2006 UU General Assembly in St. Louis, MO. We are Louise Hornor and Sean Welsh, husband and wife. For those of you unfamiliar with how a blog works, a few explanations are in order.

First, the entries are in reverse chronological order. If you read from this entry down, you will be traveling backwards in time. It probably makes more sense if you start by clicking here and reading upwards. If you do, you will notice that there are more entries further down. That's because I (Louise) was a delegate in 2005 and used this same blog to record my impressions then. So, if you really want to start at the beginning and work forward from GA 2005 in Ft. Worth, TX, click here.

Sean and I posted our entries in an intermingled, all-inclusive, higgledy-piggledy, rather UU sort of way, which is how we do pretty much everything. Recognizing that a casual reader might not hear our individual voices very clearly, we've put the name of the author for a given entry in parentheses at the beginning of the post.

A few photos and one brief video are also included to break up the monotony of the written word. We hope you find this blog an interesting account of GA 2006. Feel free to comment by clicking the word "Comment" at the bottom of any given entry. Or, you may email us at louise.hornor (at) cornell.edu and slwelsh (at) gmail.com

Final day (Louise)

2006-06-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

My final GA day was much less emotional than previous days, which is odd in that Sunday contains two big show-stoppers: Morning Worship and Closing Ceremony. While I enjoyed both, neither was the highlight of the week for me.

Morning Worship was terrific in the way it always is: a sense of wonder and amazement to be worshipping with THOUSANDS of UUs. We could fill a small city. Hymns were sung. Amens were shouted. Babies cried. Folks wandered in late. An offering was taken (why don't we do that in the CLF service? Giving, offering our resources, is a spiritual act...) I felt for an hour like a member of a Mega Church that could whup a big Texas Protestant evangelical church in tug of war.

Sean did a good job describing Sunday's plenary business. All week, as we listened to reports and debate in plenary, I jotted notes in the margin of my agenda about things that caught my interest or moved me. No jottings on Sunday. One item that I knew intellectually was important, the report from Meadville-Lombard Seminary on radical new thinking in the theological community, was given in such a dull 30-minute presentation that I really struggled to pay attention. The main speaker was a M-L professor and convinced me that if I go to seminary at some point in my life, it will be at Starr-King. Maybe it was just that 5 days into GA I was tired of "ministerial phrasing;" you know, that sing-song meaningful voice that many sermons are given in. 20 minutes of sermon once a week is fine, but GA contains dozens, maybe hundreds of hours of sermonizing and a body does tire of The Voice. Don't get me wrong; I realized this year that I have truly become an adult because I actually found 20 minutes to be too short. But, still. One of the reasons Rev. Meg Barnhouse's piece at Closing Ceremony was so wonderful is that she speaks like "jes folks." Plus she is so funny she makes me tear up.

We had a wonderful visit with our friends Pam and Di over dinner. It was great to catch up and talk deeply about our spiritual lives.

Closing Ceremony started off a little rough during Choir warm up. Earlier in the day we had exactly the right number of chairs on stage for our group of over 175 but by 7pm a chair was missing. The bass gentleman who discovered he had no seat did not seem to have the skills to handle this minor crisis, so I offered him my seat. It wasn't entirely altruistic; I was at the far edge of the tenor section, with basses who didn't know their part very well singing quite loudly (and incorrectly) behind me. One of the people around me smelled very bad, and I was anxious to move anyway. Hey, I'm flexible, I'll find a seat. It took a bit of asking around to find where an extra chair could be squeezed in. I am disappointed to say that the dozen or so other choir members that I asked if there was an empty seat further down their row or to shift their chairs a bit to see if we could find room were mostly rather rude and uncooperative. There was certainly no sense of "we're part of a group and in this together."

I resigned myself to sitting on the steps, and was truly okay with that. We were going to sing eight pieces including hymns, so I'd be standing much of time anyway. Plus, I was in the lowest 10th percentile age-wise, so better me than someone with arthritic knees. However, when I went to inform the tenor section leader of my plan, she would have none of it, waved her hands and put me between two of the soloists in the front row. This was ideal. The woman on my right smelled of fresh lavender and they both sang like powerful goddesses. We rocked and shouted and loved that music into ministry, oh yes!

The music was great, but the complicated nature of conducting us, the Children's Choir, the band, and the congregation (often simultaneously) in the large echoing hall seemed to make Mimi anxious. Watching her worried face saddened me, a little. I think she truly loved working with us, but was a bit disappointed in the final performance. I loved the rehearsals more, myself. I suspect she did, too.

This is not to say that this GA was a disappointment, though. Both Sean and I are inspired to give more of our time to the church. We are planning to step forward to help with making CLF a Welcoming Congregation, and are thinking about which UUA committees we are best suited for. We're setting our goals pretty high: he's considering running for Planning Committee and I've got my eye on the Board of Trustees. We'll see how that all fits in with our Red Cross work.

The party's over...(Sean)

2006-06-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

GA is over, and I'm wiped out. We were scheduled to leave here this morning, but we're going to extend another night just so we can get a day of rest. (Well, OK, we'll probably also go to the arch and maybe see a bit more of St. Louis, since we did not get the chance at all during GA.)

We had a wonderful worship service yesterday morning. The room was packed -- I would estimate close to 5,000 in attendance, which would be most of the 4,000+ registered attendees, some of whom brought their children, plus folks from the surrounding community. Reverend Gail R. Geisenhainer delivered a very moving sermon, centered on her introduction to, and acceptance by, the UU faith at a time that was even less safe for persons of differing sexual orientation. She is a powerful speaker, and I was moved to tears several times during her sermon. CLF's own Rev. Jane Rzepka delivered the blessing.

Plenary was long, but fruitful. Several Actions of Immediate Witness passed uncontentiously with little or no debate. An Action of Immediate Witness calling for support of the creation of a US Department of Peace generated lively debate, culminating in a vote split nearly evenly. The AIW did not pass, as a 2/3 majority is needed. An AIW on immigration reform also generated lively debate, including debate on a proposed amendment to strike a bullet item opposing any government attempts to declare any official national language. Ultimately, the AIW passed with the wording intact. You will find all the AIW's on the UUA web site.

Ginny gave over a good chunk of her alloted time for the moderator's report to the youth, who spoke to us about youth of color once again being disenfranchised and disrespected through a variety of incidents throughout GA. I will not repeat them in detail here, for fear that I will misremember or misstate the issues -- I am sure you will have the chance to learn about them through a follow-up report that I can only assume will be forthcoming. It would appear that few of the delegates or other attendees read the report of the special commission from the Fort Worth GA, and history has repeated itself. We still have much work to do in this area to actually live the values that we so strongly profess.

I am sorry to say that a prior commitment meant that we were out of the room as the SOC on Global Warming and its myriad amendments were debated and voted upon. I understand that it was finally hammered out and passed as amended. Let me take a moment to say here that the matter of this SOC came before us early in the week -- with 50 proposed unincorporated amendments. The assembly, wisely seeing that we could not possibly, even if we took the entire week to do so, formally debate and vote on 50 individual amendments, then on the entire motion, moved into discussion as a Committee of the Whole. (Although, first, a Motion to Refer, which would have sent the entire matter back to the congregations for another year, was defeated.)

In the Committee of the Whole, we discussed the fact that this SOC coming to us, as it did, in such an unfinished and un-agreed-upon state, reflected a broken process, wherein the work that rightly should have been done in and by the congregations was not done. It became clear that we were attempting to do, in four days at GA, work that should have been much further along in two years of congregational process. This was a key insight that informed our later voting on the bylaw changes to modify the process, on which I previously reported under the title "Making Sausage" -- come to think of it, an apt title for this post, too. At any rate, the Committee of the Whole was able to agree on incorporating quite a number of the amendments without the lengthy and cumbersome formal process. When time ran out, we reported back to the assembly a recommendation, which was readily adopted, to incorporate said amendments, refer the matter back to the CSW for further work during the week, and bring the product of that work back to the assembly at this final plenary session.

Which brings us back to last night's plenary, extended, as it was, to accommodate the additional work. Again, a previous commitment precluded our participation, but I was quite comfortable that we had sent all the right messages back to the committee. We also knew that many more interested persons would become engaged in the further work during the week. You should find the final, passed SOC on the UUA web site.

We were back in the hall in time for closing ceremonies, where Louise sang in the choir. The music was very upbeat and moving, and, as usual, closing ceremonies were also upbeat, with only one speaker, at-large board member Tamara Payne-Alex of San Jose, hinting at the problems of earlier in the week. Rev. Meg Barnhouse delivered a set of reflections on the week that was at once uproariously funny and also extremely moving, and I teared up for the second event in one day. I hope her words end up on the web site, either in printed or audio form -- I think you would enjoy and appreciate them.

Judi McGavin invited us all to Portland, Oregon for GA 2007, and I will close for this year by saying I hope to see you there.

2006-06-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

The 2006 GA choir, singing at the Closing Cermony. Louise is smack dab in the middle of this photo.

2006-06-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Just a few of the congregational banners, displayed around the convention center

2006-06-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Louise waiting for the MetroLink into St. Louis

Saturday (Louise)

2006-06-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

Sean did a good job summarizing the business of yesterday's plenary, but did make one small factual error. This morning he attributed that to "association-sponsored wine drinking." The donor appreciation party last night was quite lovely, with a wide variety of finger foods, a jazz combo, and free-flowing vino. Also, if you want to know where the stylishly-dressed UUs hang out, this was the place. Not a Birkenstock in sight.

To correct his minor mistake: the Statement of Conscience adoption process never required any set percentage of congregations to participate. One presenter mentioned that statistically we might get as high as 10% participation in a good year. So, a leap to a 25% requirement is statistically huge.

Yesterday I had the option of attending two elective sessions, plus two plenaries and choir rehearsal. The first elective, after morning plenary and before a noonish choir rehearsal, I sat in on a workshop called "Using UU Values to Cope with Difficult Behavior." Most folks were hoping to gain skills to take back to their Board meetings, but I'd like to apply it to my Red Cross work. By the time the second elective time rolled around, I felt like I had been going non-stop and the wimp factor kicked in again. I wanted to attend a workshop on being an ally for the differently-abled, but my energy was gone.

Hidden deep in the 132 page program, on the same page as the "ally" workshop description, in a tiny blue box at the bottom of the page, was listed a quiet sanctuary from GA madness: the location and hours of the meditation room. My heart leapt! A beautiful round room, filled with pillows and sunlight, quietly embraced and soothed me. I left calmed and centered, walking more slowly than I had in weeks. That end of the giant convention center was so quiet, and as I walked back into GA I had this lovely transition time. First I heard a murmur of traffic outside, then two quiet voices conversing. As I passed the "ally" workshop room, I saw they had broken into small, intense groups. One man was weeping, with his hands over his face. I was sure that good, healing work was happening there. Around the corner, dozens of colorful banners greeted me, and I could hear footsteps, more talking. Down the escalator, into the exhibit hall, and people were talking more loudly, with animation. The exhibit hall swirled with people, and I plunged in, smiling.

Plenary highlights: We have a self-funded health-care plan for employees and ministers. Yay! Hearing about a group that is working on rituals for women with breast cancer caught my attention. I spent a bit of time day dreaming what those rituals might look like. And one of the discussions about congregational life made me wistful. I do miss the intimacy of my old church in Palo Alto. I miss having the details in my life noticed: my tears, my joys, a new haircut, my slow changes into the person I am now.

I spent some time talking to a staff member at the UUA office of Identity-Based Ministries about what it would take to make the CLF a welcoming congregation. Sean and I both want to do this work, and we hope to talk to Jane Rzepka today.

Making up for lost time (Sean)

2006-06-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

It seems like I am making up for not posting until today by posting three times in one day.

Plenary this afternoon involved a fairly contentious vote on what amounts to a complete restructuring of the way we create, agree upon, and act on statements of conscience. I will not duplicate here the text of the bylaw changes or amendments thereto, as they either already are or soon will be available on the UUA web site.

The gist of it all is that several years of introspection, analysis, and work have culminated in a recommendation to move from a process whereby a study/action item is adopted each and every year, then follows a two-year trajectory leading to resolution by the assembly as a SOC of the UUA, to a process whereby study/action items may be adopted at most once every other year, each then following a three-year trajectory to resolution. The overall intent is to involve the congregations more fully in the process, and one manifestation of that intent is to also require a full quarter of all congregations (vs. previously only one tenth) to ratify any such issue before it can be resolved in assembly.

An amendment was proposed early in the debate to lower the ratification requirement back down to 10%. Many passionate arguments were asserted both pro (that is to say, in favor of amending the original bylaw change proposal so as to lower the 25% threshold down to 10%) and con. The synopsis of the pro argument is that participation by more than 10% of any general demographic is difficult (at best) to achieve, and that UUA policy, not unlike civil law, is crafted, adopted, and implemented by those who care most (or, as it was worded, "those who show up"). The synopsis of the con argument is that, as people of faith, we must have real commitment to the principles which we are adopting -- in short, if 25% of congregations can not, in the new extended time frame, get charged up enough by or involved enough in any proposed statement of conscience, then such a statement is unlikely to result in any meaningful action by the movement as a whole. I strongly agree with this latter argument and voted accordingly.

The vote on whether or not to amend the motion to change the bylaws to reflect the lower threshold was extremely close -- so much so that the moderator asked for a re-show of voting cards. In the end in failed by a small margin, leaving the assembly to continue debate on the original motion. (As a sidebar I will note that perhaps a number higher than 10% but lower than 25% would have been a better compromise. No such motion was made. If the 25% hurdle proves insurmountable as things move forward, some future assembly can always take up the matter of lowering it as appropriate.)

Again, passionate arguments were advanced on both sides. My own, necessarily abbreviated summary is that the con camp felt that there are many pressing issues of social justice upon which we, as a movement, should be taking stands, and that reducing the number of such stands below at least one per year, and/or extending the time frame from proposal to "implementation" of such stands beyond the current two years was unacceptable. The pro camp generally felt that the process by which we currently take such stands is inherently hurried and thus flawed to the extent that congregations hardly have time to wrap their arms around the issues, and, once adopted, the pressure to "move on" to the next stand precludes the possibility of meaningful internalization and subsequent action on stands already adopted. The pro camp also felt that the existing Action of Immediate Witness process, which will continue, remains available for important stands that are urgent, time sensitive, and do not necessitate as great a level of congregational involvement.

While I am a relative newcomer to the faith, it has been apparent to me for some time that the current process does not seem to result in fruitful, meaningful change within the denomination or even in the individuals who are so passionate about the issues in the first place. That is to say, people who are already passionate about an issue of social justice remain so, and people who were not already passionate do not become energized by a mere written position paper being somehow formally adopted by the association. Sure, there are certain specific times when designated representatives of the denomination, for example, President Sinkford, have been able to cite these positions at opportune times when circumstances called for a well-documented and agreed-upon stance. But, really, is that all we want from our Statements of Conscience? Are we not, as brothers and sisters in solidarity, called upon to internalize, actualize, and apologize these values in our own lives?

I voted my conscience -- that we need to own these issues at the congregational level and that, if we can not even do that, we have no business formalizing them as statements of conscience of the entire denomination. Apparently, a majority of the delegates felt the same way, as the motion to amend the bylaws passed by a clear (but by no means unanimous) margin. Moving forward, we will have a new process for adopting statements of conscience, and I hope it will prove to be more spiritual and holistic for the entire community. I also hope that CLF will accept the challenge to find a way to integrate this process into our own diverse and widespread congregation and to be a full and active participant in the new, congregation-centered process.

In other news, we also attended the annual donor appreciation reception this evening, as both Friends of the UUA and members of the Legacy Society. Much wine was poured -- make appropriate allowance as you read the foregoing. Perhaps it won't make sense to me in the morning either.

More catch up....(Sean)

2006-06-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

A few additional minutes here for another couple of observations.

Several references have been made here thus far to some incidents at or around the Fort Worth GA concerning youth of color. A brief statement from President Sinkford and Moderator Courter was read at all in-gatherings asking all to be mindful, and the special commission that was assembled after Fort Worth to investigate the matter spent a few minutes at plenary introducing themselves and, again, urging mindfulness. The actual findings of the commission and the facts around the incident, however, were touched upon only in the most superficial way.

The mystery around the incidents was nagging at me and last night I finally made time (perhaps at the expense of posting here) to get on the UUA web site and read the commission's final report -- all 25 pages. It is an interesting read that is quite thought-provoking, and I encourage you to make the time yourself. I had to poke around to find it... here is the link (pdf).

In the same vein and following up on Louise's comments about other GA attendees in our own restaurant, we found out today at plenary that last night, at another restaurant, a UU youth with a service dog was having dinner when another group entered the restaurant, was seated, and complained loudly to the manager about the presence of the dog and asked for it to be removed. The manager, to his credit, refused, as it was a legitimate service dog on duty. The group apparently continued to discuss the dog situation among themselves loudly for the remainder of the meal. When the youth got up to leave, she observed that this group was wearing GA badges. As this aspect of the story was related, one could hear a collective gasp from the gathered delegates, and the feelings of anger and sadness in the room were palpable.

Catching up...(Sean)

2006-06-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is the middle of the penultimate day of GA, and I am finally getting around to my first post here. I did toy briefly with the idea of transcribing my thoughts from the last three days as separate posts and back-dating them as appropriate, but that would mean some folks would miss them, since the tendency is to read back only to the last post one's already seen. Also, it would fail to properly capture my state of mind and the fact that I've been too busy to post here in all that time (I'm not sure how Louise manages to do it...).

One of the positive aspects of being late with this, and I know this is cheating just a bit, is that Louise has already done a fine job of describing many of the events thus far. I can simply say that I agree with all that she has written here. I can also clarify that, no, she is not a wimp... last night's gulf coast presentation did, indeed, run over by a huge margin and I, too, considered it disrespectful to the assembled delegates, in much the same way that I also considered many of the delegates disrespectful on Thursday when they left the room in droves before the end of the agenda and its alloted time. Two wrongs don't make a right, and I expect that one of us will take up the issue of last night's overrun with Ginny in the same way that Louise did regarding Thursday.

I myself could have stayed later, to hear the rest of the presentation and whatever announcements might have been made before adjournment. However, I also left at 9:20 to accompany Louise home. As many of our readers here know, we live full time in our motor coach, and it is parked across the Mississippi in East Saint Louis, Illinois, necessitating a brief ride on MetroLink, the local light rail system here, and a short walk to and from the stations on both ends. I thought it would be nice to ride and walk home together.

As long as I have mentioned the motor coach, I will also tell you that what occupied my time most of Thursday morning was an emergency repair thereto. I won't bore you with the details, which will be available over on our personal travelogue site, but suffice it to say that I made it to the America's Center just in time for the CLF worship service, where Louise greeted me at the door by handing me a program.

Thursday was also the first plenary session with a business agenda, where we discussed and voted on the lone Study Action Issue, and also took a straw poll to assist the CSW on the Actions of Immediate Witness. While this is my third time at GA, having hovered in the background in Boston in 2003 (as an unregistered spouse of a registered delegate), and participated as a registered attendee in Fort Worth last year, this is my first GA as a delegate, and it brought forth some mixed feelings. They had to do with how I was to vote.

Let me say here that I have a good deal of experience with deliberative bodies and also with volunteer organizations. Voting in conference is not foreign to me. However my gut feeling is that in such a conference of delegates, the delegates are intended to bring with them the sense of the smaller body which those delegates are to be representing. I'm sure that many congregational delegates come here already briefed on their congregations' wishes with respect to the many issues that come before the assembly. I felt that I had little to no idea how the CLF, as a whole, would vote on these issues. Perhaps there is some mechanism within the CLF for becoming so informed that I am, as yet, unaware of. In the end, I gave myself permission to simply vote my own conscience on the issues at hand. If any readers of this blog have a different suggestion, please feel free to comment on this post.

2006-06-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

Our choir director, Mimi Bornstein.

Exhausting (Louise)

2006-06-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

Today was a very long day, and I didn't even make it to evening worship or the entertainment. Other people seem to have much more stamina than I do. I like to think that is because I put more energy into each moment so I need to sleep more to recharge my batteries. But maybe that's just wishful thinking and I am really just a wimp.

The morning plenary held one gem and one long, intriguing discussion. The gem was learning that Starr King Seminary now offers a two-year Master's degree for lay leadership. Something to seriously consider for the future. The big discussion, which did not finish and will be continued on Sunday, was the crafting of our Statement of Conscience about Global Warming. Clearly, many UUs feel very passionate about the subject, and watching them debate the topic and struggle with the plenary process was a fascinating delight.

I then worked my final hour in the CLF booth, which passed very quickly. Choir rehearsal followed that, then two "elective" sessions. I chose to hear Meg Barnard sing and tell stories, which made me alternatively laugh and cry. A Good Thing. For the second session, Sean and I both heard Michael Dowd passionately speak about Evolution and religion. I feel strongly that his work will be the "aha!" breakthrough that builds true bridges between the religious left and right. His website is The Great Story.

We dashed off for a quick dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant downtown. Very traditional, with white tablecloths, mahogany panelling and waiters in tuxedos. I was embarrassed when a large group of UU convention-goers came in and immediately started complaining loudly about the menu prices. I suspect they tipped badly, too.

Evening plenary held some very good things. I was moved by the UUSC presentation, by how together we can do such good work that none alone could accomplish. How wonderful to be part of this greater whole! And when Jerry and Denny Davidoff receivedthe Distinguished Service Award, I was reminded that we do, indeed, stand upon the shoulders of giants. The "UUs and Gulf Coast" presentation, which ended the program was disrespectfully long. Given that it was a carefully scripted piece with around ten performers reading (well and movingly) from a printed document, its length should have been well known beforehand, within 5 minutes or so. Going 40 minutes over is inexcusable. Yes, it is an important subject, but so are most others on the agenda. We use a backward ticking clock and a loud bell to end discussion by delegates and yet allow some presenters to increase the length of the session by over 25%? Unfair and un-UU.

But then again, it is late and maybe I'm just a wimp.

Thursday (Louise)

2006-06-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

Today we got to sleep in a little, because the first event did not start until 11:15. That was choir rehearsal, which flew by in a heartbeat. Our director told us that she had dreamed us all year, preparing for GA. At one point in the winter she could hear us, in her head, singing a particularly wonderful harmonic piece. When we sang it today, she flashed back to that memory and it moved her to tears. At that same moment, while we were singing, I choked up with tears and had to just mouth the words for a few measures. How strange and wonderful that we both cried then. Music is a direct conduit to my soul.

After choir, the annual Church of the Larger Fellowship worship service took place in the same room. The musicians for the service started to warm up, and I was waiting for Sean anyway, so I stayed. Other volunteers were starting to put brochures on the chairs, so I helped. That led to handing out programs as people wandered in, and it felt like a blessing to say, "Welcome!" to each one. It felt just like being back in Palo Alto at my old church. It felt like MY church, where I am comfortable and part of the infrastructure. "The singing? Oh, the musicians are practising. Come in and listen and the service will start soon. This is CLF; you'll love it! We have wonderful sermons and terrific music. Don't miss it!" And it was all those things. We sang 5-6 songs, heard the premiere of two parts of a new cantata, nodded and "amened" to Revs. Jane and Rosemary. Jane hugged me, remembering me. Oh, that felt so good, so welcoming. As Jane said last year, wasn't it Just Like Church? Oooooooh, yeah.

After a quickie annual CLF congregational meeting (other churches would be so jealous if they knew our annual meeting takes 10 minutes), it was off to plenary. Once again, my feelings were mixed. The "In Memoriam" tribute to UUs who have died this year and remembered the UUA in their wills is always so moving to me. And a video about the UU Fellowship of the Eastern Slope, a Breakthrough Congregation, was inspiring and uplifting. But as the last hour of plenary approached and at least half the delegates left, I felt angry and betrayed. Being a delegate is a commitment. All those who spoke passionately about their topics in the last hour were cheated out of the full attention of the gathering. I think that is disrespectful! I talked to the moderator, Ginny, about it, and truly felt heard by her. That helped. But it still stung, a little. Sigh. Time to work on forgiveness? But what about justice?

2006-06-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

A short (approx. 1 minute) video of the Opening Ceremony Banner Parade. Click here or on the photo to watch the video.

2006-06-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Sean working the CLF booth.

Back in the swing of things (Louise)

2006-06-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

It is great to be back at another GA. Today was the first choir rehearsal, always a big thrill for me. The conductor this year is Mimi Bornstein, who is fun and enthusiastic as well as talented. We are a big choir this year, and we sound good already.

After rehearsal, Sean and I both worked the CLF booth. Working three hours in the booth is part of our responsibilites as delegates, although it appears that most delegates blow it off. Too bad for them; it is a fun way to be of service and meet many fine folks. We met Patty and Beth in the booth, and caught up on the year's events with Iris.

I took some time away from the booth to register as a delegate, and on my way across the exhibit hall ran into several old friends from Palo Alto, including Bryce and Fran, Pam and Di, Cilla, and Ken and Anne. Many hugs and lots of catching up to do!

At 5pm we went to the CLF in-gathering, a nice opportunity to put some more faces and names together. The food was great, especially the yummy hummus selection. Everyone won a door prize, and spirits were bubbly.

Opening Ceremony was an odd combination of rousing, moving, and boring. Without a doubt, the chalice lighting was the longest I have ever witnessed in 16 years of UU-dom. It went on, and on, and on. Sheesh. Each of the first 4-5 speakers spoke too slowly and deliberately, and the first hymn ("Shall We Gather At the River?") was sung like a dirge. The Banner Parade was great, though, as always. This year I tried to photograph every banner from places where we had visited on our RV travels, and finally stopped when I realized the ratio was over 50%! Wow, we've been around. I was proud of that accomplishment, and moved that UU churches are in so many wonderful cities and towns.

First Plenary was imbedded in the service. Our Moderator, Ginny, is so good that she makes business a pleasure. She's organized, witty, and tuned into the Mystery of Community Through Governance. We welcomed four new UU congregations and that made me proud, again.

By the end, it was late, and we were ready to hop on the Metro back to the RV park across the mighty Mississippi.

2005-08-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

Closing ceremony

Mysterious and wonderful

2005-06-27T23:23:00.000-07:00

WOW!!! I am so jazzed about Closing Ceremony, I am dancing on air! What a fabulous, moving, exciting, thrilling, wonderful sacred time it was!

I know from past experience that being involved in a service always makes it better for me. I've given sermons, read children's stories, lit chalices, recited poetry, and performed music at many UU services. But never have I been part of a group singing to 5,000 people, at least 500 of whom were in a conga line. That's right: there was a conga line of happy, laughing UUs snaking through the Ft. Worth convention center arena. The song was Dance With Me:

Dance with me, querida, into the Mystery.
Celebrate, we'll light the flame.
Take my hand, we'll move together on a journey.
As we sing the song of love that calls our name.

Dance with me, sing with me. Celebrate the Mystery!

GA has been a Mystery in the best sense for me. What is the love and dedication behind the work to set it all up and make it run smoothly? What touches all the hearts and opens all the wallets to bring thousands of people from literally all 50 states and several other countries together? What magic makes it happen and makes it moving? I don't know, and I don't think it matters. The feelings are real and present.

Blessed be!

2005-06-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

Voting on the Actions of Immediate Witness. My heart was full of wonder and joy that literally THOUSANDS of people care enough about Unitarian Universalism to be part of this process!

Volunteer time

2005-06-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

This morning I worked a shift in the CLF booth in the Exhibit Hall. Had a nice conversation with the new Youth Representative on the Committee for Social Witness. I also enjoyed speaking with our CLF minister, Jane Rzepka, and the staff members at the booth. Since I forgot my camera, of course now I can't put faces with names, darn it! (I admit that I'm actually writing this post weeks after the fact to finally finish this blog and turn in my delegate report, so it isn't too surprising that I've forgotten alot...)

The one thing I regret about GA is that I never found time to browse through the Exhibit Hall. The few spare moments I had, the hall wasn't open. Oh well!

2005-06-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

Introduction to GA of the brand new Church of the Younger Fellowship. Woo hoo! Great energy, great logo. You'll have to trust me on the logo. No flash photos are allowed in any of the sessions, so in the large, dark hall it is difficult to get clear shots.

2005-06-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

The Dallas UU Church choir, waiting in the wings.

On Being a Good Delegate

2005-06-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

Several times during plenaries, we delegates were encouraged to think about our congregations when we voted. For the five Study Action Issues, Meg Riley urged us to choose the issue that would most like fire up our congregation. After all, the issues must be studied and discussed by congregations to be made real in the world.

The delegates were also straw polled on the potential Statements of Immediate Witness. Eight were presented, and we were asked to vote for no more than three in order to narrow down the total field to six.

Having never met any of my fellow congregants, how was I to vote? What is the sense of the CLF? When I was active in the UU Church of Palo Alto, this was easy. Attending services regularly, reading the Bulletin, and listening to the talk on the patio and in committee meetings, I heard the hot topics everywhere.

I suppose one way to handle voting now would be to think about what the Palo Alto folks would get fired up about. But as I spend more time in GA, I realize that Palo Alto is not a typical UU church. It is very much a reflection of the liberal, well-to-do California city it resides in.

When the minister from the Dallas church said, "A member of my congregation told me it was much easier to come out as a gay man than to come out as a UU here," I knew that the work and word of Unitarian Universalism is different in the heartland, in the Bible belt. Harder, and more life saving. That same minister said that it is very common for visitors to her church to weep. They weep because for the first time in their spiritual life, they feel normal.

Toto, we are in Kansas now. This spiritual landscape is alien to me. It ain't California, and it certainly ain't Boston.

CLF represents people from every state and beyond. I can't in good conscience treat them like Palo Altans. Nor can I profess to understand their lives as an abstract. I can only learn about each one as I meet them, if I meet them.

The only way to vote as a CLF GA delegate, is by choosing items that fire ME up. So that's what I've been doing. It feels selfish, but oddly liberating as well. I feel like a church of one.

2005-06-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

This is the CLF banner. Not nearly as colorful as some, but a great concept. It shows a field of stars, perhaps a galaxy, and says "We are here." It was hanging from the third floor balcony, so the only way I could get close enough to photograph it was to stand above it, stick my camera out into the void, point and shoot by guessing. Took me four tries to get even this good a shot, so that's all folks.

2005-06-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

Photos from the CLF worship service. This couple received the Unsung Heroes Award. I think their name is Simonson. They both were quite surprised and got a lot of applause. I assume they are well liked and basically all around neato folks.

2005-06-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Lois in another photo that doesn't do her justice. Sheesh, my pictures would be better if people didn't do all that moving around. By the time I frame a nice smile, they move on to some other facial expression!

2005-06-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

Linda. A lousy shot, but I really want to post these names and faces while they are fresh in my memory.

2005-06-24T20:41:00.001-07:00

Jane, our minister. Hopefully, I'll get a better photo at another time. She really does have a terrific smile.

2005-06-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

Denny, Lorraine, and Lynda

2005-06-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

CLFers rock out at worship this morning. This is the most musical congregation I've ever been part of. Either the tone deaf are hiding it really well, or there really are some great voices here.

2005-06-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Banners, banners everywhere. This is fewer than 20% of them.

Almost too pooped to post

2005-06-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, GA is really wearing me out! I'm just not used to going non-stop all day anymore.

Today's highlights: CLF worship...great, two good sermons, tons of fun, upbeat music, got to put a few faces with names, mostly staff members.

Needed tickets to attend Intergenerational Lunch and tix were sold out days ago. Note to organizers: more capacity needed at this event! Had to walk to Radisson Hotel for a fast salad for lunch. Convention center is 4 blocks long, plus two to the hotel, then all the way back to the far end. Yikes, more walking than I've done in many months.

Good choir rehearsal, lots of laughing. Tenors all moved to one section so some strong voices in my ear to help me learn.

Quick walk through the exhibit hall, found the CLF booth, signed up for a Monday morning shift. Feet killing me; so much walking!

Short worship service before Plenary 2 was very moving. I couldn't make it all the way through the hymn without tears...what was THAT all about? Hymn was Wake Now My Vision. Young woman minister, I thought she was excellent and had to look hard for her after the service to thank her. Hard on the heels of this service and in the same space was Plenary, so it was a bit chaotic.

Tried once more to find the red bandanna crew, and finally gave up. Feeling pretty isolated, and the beginning of plenary was introductions and thank yous and awards and stuff. I didn't know anyone. Finally spot one man with bandanna. I leapt from my seat, greeted him and said, "Let's sit together!" He replied that he was looking for his wife, then we could sit down. I watched him search and search for her (its a HUGE hall) and I just couldn't stand on my feet any longer. At this point, I was done with looking for CLFers, so I sat in a random row. A very pleasant looking lady smiled at me, moved over a chair and made room. I noticed that her name tag said she was a minister. Her tacit welcome was just what my sore heart needed, and I settled in next to her like a baby bird (the seats are REALLY close together).

Later, during discussion of the Study Action Issues, she and I whispered together. I found her to be quite thoughtful and observant. She had to leave early; I never did get her full name. Bless you, anonymous minister lady, for helping me through Plenary.

Found two parts of Plenary to be moving: the presentation of the Quimby Congregation from Port Townsend, WA and the nice memorial slide show of UUs who died this year and left money in their wills to the UUA. All those names and photos...surely, they were all well loved and even in death were giving, optimistic fellow church members. Bless you, spirits of those who have passed.

After Plenary, where Sean met me in the final 15 minutes, we headed to the Petroleum Club a few blocks away for a cocktail reception for those who have donated to the UUA (either now or via estate planning). The food was great, the music was hoppin', and I saw Cilla, Andrew, Bonnie and Pam again. The theme was "Hats Off to You" and we were encouraged to wear funny hats. Sean brought me my pink fuzzy bunny ears hat and dozens of people gave me the thumbs up. Only about 10% of the attendees wore any hat, and pink ears stood out. Oh well, I don't mind looking goofy.

And even better, the ears started several really nice conversations. One couple, Sandy and Bruce from Brevard, North Carolina, were so interested in our story. It was very validating. I have to admit that everyone who has heard us say we live in our RV and travel has thought it was just great. People I met yesterday have come up to me today and asked further questions or introduced me to someone else: "This is the woman who lives in her bus!"

I've been looking so hard for new friendships through the CLF, but the truth is that the friends are everywhere at GA, from every congregation. And after all, CLF is just a variation on all UU congregations. The values are the same, people are the same everywhere. I've never had trouble making new friends, and here is a conference with over 3,000 of them. Bless you, smiling faces, outstretched hands, hugging arms. It is good to be back in my UU home.

2005-06-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

Please, please take me with you to GA! I fit so nicely here in your backpack.

2005-06-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

I have no affiliation with the Gainesville church, but loved the enthusiasm of this banner bearer. He waved and smiled and just looked like a party all by himself. The Lord entertains them that entertains themselves.

2005-06-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Yay, new Church of the Younger Fellowship banner! As usual, the youth caucus is a raucus caucus.

2005-06-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

First session of the convention today: choir orientation. On the way to the rehearsal room, I ran into Bonnie S., a member of my old congregation in California. It's been almost two years since I saw her, and it was great to catch up a little bit. She was on her way to the PCD District In-Gathering, so I dropped in briefly to see who else I knew. I saw Cilla and Andrew, Reed S. and Ruth F. Wow! How wonderful to see familiar faces!

Choir was great. This year there are two co-directors, Jeannie and Jason, and they are both young and enthusiastic. "Too enthusiastic for me!" grumbled one older lady later on the escalator. The music varies widely, from Latin influenced to Barbershop to Broadway to Plainchant. Lots of rhythm, lots of movement. I sat next to Alma, who was also in my section in Boston.

Sean met me after rehearsal and we had a fabulous dinner at the local steak place, del Frisco's.

7:30 was Opening Celebration and Plenary I. I dutifully wore my red bandanna to signal fellow CLFers, but could not find them. We spent 10 minutes wandering the huge hall (a hockey arena), looking for flashes of red. I saw one teen in the youth caucus wearing a bandanna and one hat with a bandanna hat band, but no CLFers. How disappointing! Sean and I sat in the nosebleed section and my disappointment turned to anticipation as the band "The Lucky Pierres" opened the meeting.

I was thrilled to watch the banner parade, as usual. I moved a bit closer to take some photos, hoping to see the CLF banner, but no luck. The last message on the email list was asking for someone to carry the banner, but I don't think there were any takers. I would have volunteered, but my feet can't handle that much marching/standing/waiting in line. I did see many banners from places familiar to us, and cheered them on loudly.

I did not realize that this year's GA theme was Nurturing Families and I have to admit that it is not really my bailiwick. But some of the family stories presented tonight were quite moving and its hard to NOT support such a broadly do-good theme. Families: nothing really controversial there.

NINE new UU congregations welcomed into the fold; that's pretty impressive.

As often happens with me, I was most moved during the singing. There is something about opening voice and breath that also opens my heart, and I choked up several times. During "Turn, Turn, Turn," I couldn't make it through the phrase, A time for peace, I swear its not too late. It is good to be moved to tears; it cleanses the soul and hammers home the important things.

After the celebration, we headed up Main St. to catch our bus home, and ran into Bonnie again with Pam A. Pam threw her arms around me and said, "Oh, I thought I'd never see you again after you moved away!" We agreed to try to get together for a dinner/lunch/drink/coffee here in Ft. Worth.

Even though I was a bit sad to not find and make some new CLF friends today, it was wonderful to see some old friends. Tomorrow morning is the CLF worship service, so I'll take my bandanna and try again. In the meantime, the warmth of my reunions with carry me through the night.

Registration

2005-06-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

Today we tested the Ft. Worth transit system and were pleased to find how easy it is to get to the Convention Center. We are staying at a small RV park about 2 miles west of downtown, and the #2 bus takes us within a block of our target on both ends.

We registered, picked up our program and ribbons, had a nice dinner at the local Italian restaurant, and headed back to the coach. Our closest neighbor at the RV park is also attending GA, selling jewelry as an exhibitor. Maybe she knows about prayer boxes? Hmm.

I read through the entire program, highlighting sessions that looked interesting, circling those that are "mandatory" (Plenaries and choir rehearsals, of course!) Fond memories of GA2003 came flooding back. I can't wait to jump into the good work of the Plenaries; I'm a bit of a process junkie.

Tomorrow during opening Plenary #1, many of us CLF delegates have agreed to sit together. Since most of us have never met face to face, we have decided to wear red bandannas. Hopefully, a red bandanna is not a gang symbol here like it is in San Jose, or I'll have trouble on the city bus...

Boxed In

2005-06-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

This afternoon as I was checking us into the campground, the woman behind the counter politely asked what brought us to Ft. Worth? I mentioned that we were here for a conference, and she said, "Oh, are you part of the church group?" I said I was, and she showed me the prayer boxes she had purchased for her gift shop. They were small, intricately decorated boxes on necklaces and key chains. I have no idea what a prayer box is used for, but I admired the pretty little silver charms.

Do the boxes come prefilled with prayers? Do you insert your own? Or do they contain the answered prayers? I did not open one, so I don't know if there is a piece of paper, like a fortune cookie has, inside. If there was, would it contain lucky lottery numbers?

Having grown up in a Presbyterian household, I thought I had seen most of the standard Christian items. After 20 years in California, I also thought I'd seen most everything else. But I was flumoxed by prayer boxes, and too embarrassed to ask. Perhaps later in the week I'll work up the courage to find out more.

2005-06-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

Where was this listing this morning?!?

Lost and found

2005-06-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

This morning I downloaded the PDF version of the GA Program and started looking for sessions to attend. The most important activity at GA for me is the choir. I searched the program high and low and could not find any choir rehearsals. Oh, no! I looked in the index; no listing for choir. I looked under Music; lots of sessions, but none of them choir.

I was so upset, I went into the bedroom and cried. No choir! We've driven 1500 miles across 100+ degree desert and GA has no choir this year! I almost said to Sean, "Let's just forget it; its not worth it." But we have other business in Ft. Worth, so we packed up and pressed on.

Now that we have settled in for the night, I fired my computer back up and searched again for rehearsal listings. This time, it came right up: Choir Orientation, Thursday afternoon at 4:30. I have to admit, I burst into tears again, I am so relieved.

We're on our way...

2005-06-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Well, technically speaking, we're always on our way. That's because we live on the road in our bus. If you're interested in all the gory details about that, check out our website here. Otherwise, suffice it to say that we are Louise Hornor (me) and Sean Welsh (my husband), and I am a delegate to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly 2005 for the Church of the Larger Fellowship. I set up this blog to record my thoughts and feelings about GA this year.

Today we will drive into the greater Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Statistical Area and check out a few campsites, perhaps pick up our monthly mail. Tomorrow we will visit the convention center and register. Our schedule was complicated enough these last few months that we decided it would be simpler to register on site rather than in advance.

Thursday we'll attend our first GA event (District In Gathering, if there is one for CLF? Need to read that program!) and get started. I'm beginning to feel quite excited!

2005-06-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Louise

2005-06-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

Sean