A Busy Spring

I did not intend to take a break from writing here for several months, but time got away from me. Here’s the bullet list of (some of) what has been keeping me busy:

• Continued full-time ministry at the Minnesota Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bloomington, MN.

• Connecting more deeply with my local (and especially hyperlocal) community in North Minneapolis as we continue to deal with the impacts of federal occupation (which is not entirely over but has become more subtle and mostly faded out of the news).

• Taking my first class at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities after transferring to their Doctor of Ministry in Theology and the Arts program from another DMin program at a different school. (The class was “Engaging a Multifaith World.”)

• Final editing steps for my forthcoming book (with contributions from many others) from Skinner House Books, Defiantly Joyful: Unitarian Universalist LGBTQIA+ Histories.(Coming very soon—stay tuned for details!)

• Working on my next book, Raising My Voice: Breaking Silence to Build a More Just World, coming later this year from Balsam Spring Publishing.

• Travel to Michigan for the Festival of Faith and Writing (combined with a visit to my mom), and to New Orleans for my brother’s retirement ceremony after serving in the Marine Corps for over 33 years.

I’m looking forward to shifting into a gentler pace for the summer—some time off from my ministry job, no travel plans for a while, and no summer class for the DMin program—which I hope means more time and mental bandwidth for writing. Thanks for hanging in there while I was silent!

At the end of my last post in January, I asked “What is Love asking you to do?” That is a guiding question in my ministry and life, and I invite you to adopt it (or a similar question grounded in your own theology) as a regular check-in with yourself about what your work is at this particular time.

Maybe for some of you, right now, it’s just surviving. That’s plenty. You are whole and holy and worthy of love just for being you, not for what you accomplish.

(Photo is of a recent article in UUWorld magazine about “Resistance as an Act of Faith” in Minneapolis and elsewhere; I’m one of the clergy in that photo from our moral witness at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, at which about a hundred of us were arrested.)