Peace to the Tenn Valley UU Church

Today I saw some reports about a fatal shooting in a church in TN. But on clicking a Yahoo link about a second fatality, I had to look further.

It happened at the Tenn Valley UU church in Knoxville. Details are still sketchy, but apparently:

A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast.


Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started.

The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody.

It was said that the gunman shouted hateful things, but no one has quite elaborated what those were. All of this happened during a youth service of Annie, which was likely the lay service since the minister was out of town. Tragic if the gunman was playing on the idea of "Annie, Get Your Gun" and trying to hurt those who are for social justice.

UUA President Rev. William G. Sinkford said that "Members of the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Ministry are on their way to Knoxville to offer additional ministry to the congregation as it grieves. And Unitarian Universalists around the world are sending love and prayers to the Tennessee Valley congregation to tell them they are not alone on this dark day."

Yep, I am one of them.

Tomorrow night the Knoxville Second Presbyterian Church (close by) is offering a space with light food and counselors to debrief as well as offer crisis intervention. There will be a candlelight ceremony at 7:30 ET.

Prayers for Greg McKendry, an longtime usher and greeter who took the bullet between the gunman, the children, and the congregation, and for Linda Kreager, another victim. My heart is heavy for their families and for the congregation.

More about this from Elrod at the Daily Kos.

John Edwards: Honor Our Heroes

Here's a statement his campaign released this morning:

“Today, Elizabeth and I offer up our prayers in memory of all those who have fallen for America, and our hearts go out to their families. We honor all the brave men and women in uniform who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. Because of their courage, our country is safer. Because of their dedication to the causes of liberty and justice, our country remains the land of the free. And because of their sacrifice, we are a stronger nation and a stronger people. We honor these heroes especially on this day, but every day we should remember the sacrifice they made to protect our freedom.”

Yesterday, I read a comment at the Daily Kos, where there was a special Edwards Memorial Day Weekend edition, by LadyLib, who did much to honor our soldiers, both the fallen, and to support our current ones, that is worth sharing:

I put my End the War bumper sticker on today...

first time I have ever put a bumper sticker on one of my cars. I also put my Edwards sticker on too. I wore my End the War tee shirt today while I went to decorate family graves and put flags on all the graves of family members that were vets....I can't believe how many there were. I spent all day going from one cemetary to another. I also made up a care package for a soldier.

One might recall 10 things one could do this weekend as suggested by the Support the Troops, End The War website. She did at least 4 of them.




Last night, I prayed for the troops as I read that our military are bleeding them and half of the American people do not know what is happening. Here's an excerpt from the No Quarter's site that Taylor Marsh pointed her readers to and beware, some of it will infuriate you when you read it.

My military buddies are terrific, patriotic warriors. They do their jobs with great integrity, great personnel sacrifice, and minimal bitching (at least in public). But they know we are kidding ourselves if we think we can sustain current operations in Iraq without either a draft or significant reinforcements from the so-called "coalition of the willing". We must do one or the other because our current recruitment and retention policies are not sufficient to sustain the operations tempo for the Army and Marines in Iraq.

We cannot rely on the Iraqi soldiers or police. In January of 2006 the Pentagon claimed that there were 137,000 trained Iraqis soldiers. This month the Pentagon claims there are 143,000 trained Iraqis. The failure to substantially increase the size of the Iraqi Army is only part of the problem. The Iraqi Army also is heavily infiltrated by Shia militias. They are not a national force dedicated to defending Iraqis regardless of race, religion, tribe or creed. They are a sectarian vendetta force and will not bring the peace.

Meanwhile, American men and women are paying a price in blood that is not being reciprocated by the Iraqi political leaders. Because we lack the manpower on the ground in Iraq to gain tactical control of the situation, our continued presence perversely becomes a recruiting tool for sectarian militias and, to a lesser extent, foreign terrorists. This policy is undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East and around the world.

As you plant a flag to honor fallen soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen tomorrow, pray also that the Congress will find the courage to put a stop to this madness.

Cruel. But I still honor them for putting on that uniform. And our government needs to pull them out. They are not dying for my freedom; they are unwanted in Iraq, and dying because of a strife that has been long time coming. The Iraqis alledgedly cannot rely on us any longer if their own soldiers will not help them. We have always been a nation of helping others as long as they wish to help themselves.

Much to be done when they return, and that will cost billions in itself. One in three has a serious injury that will take much therapy, or some instances, the soldier may not be able to work again, and we will have to figure out how to help take care of their families.

Alas though, Memorial Day is to honor the fallen. I salute my late mother-in-law's brother, Jimmy Smith, who died in WWII. And to his sister, who was very patriotic too.


As I am not a great wordsmith, I chose to search for something within my faith that could express better than I could about Memorial Day. Here is a sermon given exactly a year ago by Rev Steve Eddington of the UU Nashua Church entitled "A Time to Remember".

Having conducted the number of memorial services and funerals as I now have, I feel fortunate to have gained what I feel is a pretty good understanding of some of more common ways the measure of a life is taken, and of the marks of a full life. So for the remainder of my sermon for today I want to share some of what those measures are; and then I want to focus on the lives of two very fine members of this congregation who passed away over this past year and say a bit about what the were the marks of their lives.

I've spoken before on the topic of what kinds of things are most remembered in a person who has died, so I'll just briefly review it here. One thing I find striking, in preparing a Memorial Service with family and friends of the deceased, is how little attention is usually given to how a person earned their living or how much wealth they had - even though we devote a very substantial chunk of our lives to these endeavors. Their job or profession will be mentioned, and even affirmed. But it is the ways in which the person extended him or herself to others, whether on the job or in other settings, that gets the emphasis. It is how the person gave of him/herself to their family, friends, community, and religious community that is remembered far more than whatever they managed to acquire. Nobody's material worth has ever been belittled or demeaned, that I can remember, it just doesn't get top billing.

Closely related to this, it is the things you were most passionate about, and devoted to, that are best remembered. I recall doing a service for someone who had been instrumental in starting and promoting softball and tennis programs for children and young people here in Nashua, and the tournaments he'd gotten the city to host, and the teams he'd taken to out-of-town tournaments. This man's job was barely mentioned, but his passion for these sports was reounted at length. So, whatever you feel most passionate about, whether or not it has anything to do with your job, is going to show through; and it is one very significant way in which the measure of your life will be taken.

You will also be measured for the ways in which you made people laugh. I don't mean by that how good your jokes were; but for the joy you brought to people's lives, for how you lightened and lifted someone's spirits when they most needed it. You will also be measured for how "at home" you were with yourself - for how grounded you were, for how clear you were in your convictions, even as you allowed space for others of differing convictions than yours. How well you carried yourself with an inner confidence - not an inflated ego, but an inner confidence - is yet another often cited measure of a life.

You'll also be measured for how religious you were. This may sound a little strange, especially since I'm the minister in town who often gets called upon when a family wants a minister to officiate a service for a member who has passed away, and who - as the family often puts it - was "not very religious." But, they'll go on to say, we still want a minister to do his/her service. That's when the funeral director thinks, "Well, better call up the Unitarian Universalist guy."

So I get that call, and meet with the family. More often than not I'll hear about how the deceased person loved and savored life, savored living, respected the earth and its creatures, or cultivated a sense of awe and mystery and wonder at the Larger Life that surrounds us all; and I'll end up thinking (although I usually keep the thought to myself), "This person sounds pretty religious to me." Well, whether you care to call it religious or not, how well you embraced, loved, savored, and gave of yourself to life will be a very clear marker in taking the measure of your days.

It reminds me about what Elizabeth Edwards says often about loved ones who have passed away: that it's more than a name, it's about their stories and who they were as people.

Peace be with them and with you.

Flower Communion

This thread was inspired by being at Taylor Marsh's blog today, in which she has a really nice piece about the framing of faith by our Founding Fathers and yet in this century thus far, our onward Christian/PNAC soldiers, Bush Co, continues to put us into debt and make us pay a very heavy price for a war 71% of Americans wish we would get out of sooner, than later.

This is what my comment was on her blog:

The separation of church and state, albeit not explicit in our Constitution, is one of the more important aspects of the Founders' framework to keep sacred. Last year and the year before, when I watched the confirmation hearings of Roberts and Alito, I was concerned that their faith might color their judgment and not uphold this separation of church and state. So far, we have been fortunate that not much has appeared before the court that has tested them in this regard.

I'm from the same group of Jefferson and Adams, both who were Unitarians, whereas that group merged with Universalists in 1961, thus the term UU for Unitarian Universalist. Most of us are for peace, support community actvism for the good, and seek out ways that even Jesus told us: to comfort the poor. For us, that is a moral imperative.

Today I am reminded of a UU tradition which is the Flower Communion, often held on Easter Sunday. To borrow from Pastor Margo McKenna, here is the story of the tradition of it:

The first part of how we arrived at the ritual we celebrate today begins with Rev. Norbert Capek (1870-1942), who founded the Unitarian Church in Czechoslovakia. He introduced this ritual to his congregation on June 4, 1923. He had felt the need for symbolic ritual to bind Unitarians together, and chose to use the “communion service,” as it was familiar to many Unitarians who had left Roman Catholicism. He also felt strongly that Unitarians should not allow Christians to claim the word “communion” solely for christological purposes, rather, wanting to return to the original use of the word which is defined as: drawing together.

Rev. Capek chose flowers as the symbol of this ritual. It was his way of honoring the native spring blossoming of Czechoslovakia, drawing Unitarians closer to the earth, a nod to the agrarian life of most members, and a ritual to draw Unitarians together. To him, the significance of the Flower Communion is that as no two flowers are alike, so no two people are alike. Each flower contributes its own unique scent and color to the larger bouquet, and thus has a unique contribution to its overall beauty. The flowers, joined together, form a spectacular splash of color and scent that transforms a room. So, each person sitting here is unique and colorful and brings a contribution to our whole bouquet - our congregation! Our common bouquet would not be the same without the unique addition of each individual flower, and so it is with each UU congregation. Flower communion is a statement of this community.

By exchanging flowers, we show our willingness to walk together in our search for truth, setting aside attitudes and actions that work to divide, rather than unite us. Each person takes home a flower brought by someone else, thus symbolizing our shared celebration in community.

The second part of our story today, is the larger history of Unitarians and Universalists. Before the UU merge in 1961, there was a rather large divide on the issue of celebrating Easter. Universalists, who had largely remained liberal Christians, and who believed that Jesus died and was raised again to save all humanity, loved to honor Easter Sunday. Unitarians, who had largely become humanist and/or atheist through the years, usually did not celebrate Easter, due to its connotation of a need for blood sacrifice to a deity, in order to save humanity. This difference was a large one for these two groups as they were discussing merging in the 1950’s. So, when the Unitarians and Universalists decided to merge in 1961, discussions about how to handle Easter were long and heated.

This brings us back to Flower Communion…As I mentioned at the beginning, Flower Communion was first celebrated in Czechoslovakia on June 4, 1923, not on Easter Sunday. Rev. Capek seems to have done this for two reasons: First, the spring blossoming did not arrive in Czechoslovakia until June, and second, Unitarians did not honor Easter.

Though Rev. Capek died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942, Unitarians were already celebrating his Flower Communion service here in the U.S. by 1940. It was being held yearly in many Unitarian congregations just before the summer recess, and continued to be honored for the reasons Rev. Capek had first dreamed of, and in his memory after WWII was over.

The long and heated debate about Easter was resolved when someone suggested a recommendation to congregations: that they honor the Unitarian ritual of Flower Communion and celebrate it on Easter Sunday for Universalists. Thus, in the Flower Communion, the symbol of “drawing together” as envisioned by Rev. Capek is still honored, and when celebrated on Easter, continues to honor those who come out of the Christian tradition.

Given our poor situation in Iraq and the thousands of not only Americans, but Iraqis, Brits, Italians, Koreans etc have died and the violence continues to surge as we are embroiled in Iraq's civil war, I'd like to take a moment to give thanks to all of them who risk their lives each day. I also want to commend those on the ground boots here, serving a meal to the elderly, the homeless, or perhaps inviting a single person to a seder.

At the Flower Communion service, each person brings flowers, either from their yard or elsewhere, and puts them in a community basket. Then at the end of the service, each person goes by the basket (or if a smaller congregation, the basket is passed around) and takes one as a symbol of love, peace, and remembrance.

Here are some baskets from Second Parish's Flower Communion (I'm sure they will share), and I am passing it to BW and Taylor's readers to take a symbolic flower.

Pax.