Liminal Ft. Lauderdale

So, I am in Ft. Lauderdale, the site of our 2008 General Assembly. As a member of the UUA Board, I have work to do, starting at noon Tuesday. As a member of the UU Ministers’ Association, I wanted very much to see and be with my colleagues. I can do both of those things, but I find myself in a liminal state just the same. I didn’t count on how hard it would be not to go to GA this year, principles or no principles. I am an unrepentant GA junkie, in spite of the scorn shown by so many colleagues I respect about our annual gathering, in spite of their feeling that GA has become a circus and a display, rather than the venue in which we conduct the business of the Association.

Sorry, beloved friends. The business of the Association, among other things, is to grow and strengthen Unitarian Universalism, not simply to perfect amendments to our bylaws or to refine our governance, crucial though that task may be. My job as a minister of this faith is to spread the spark of liberal religion, to fan it and to make it catch fire. What does it profit our movement if we save the Cambridge Platform, but sacrifice the hearts and minds of those people we see each Sunday morning? Depending on what day you ask me, I suspect that neither our congregations nor the Cambridge Platform are faring very well.

Still, this is the week when we renew our hope in both our congregations and our faith, and it is hard to know that I will not be in the convention center for so many things I love, for I would no more walk through that security zone than I would cross a picket line. It will hurt me to miss the banner parade or the debut of my friend Rev. Jason Shelton’s Cantata, a project he has worked on for years. It will hurt to miss my new colleague Rev. Beth Putnam, a member of my own congregation, “walk” at the Service of the Living Tradition, where I myself have preached before. But the same love of Unitarian Universalism that first brought me into ministry keeps me out of the convention center here in Ft. Lauderdale. The same belief that religion must be the conscience and not the agent of the state has made it impossible to participate in all the rituals of General Assembly that I treasure. And so I spend the week here in a liminal space, between the religion to which I have given my life and the conscience that it has taught me to cherish. I am learning every hour that it is not an easy place to be.

One Response to “Liminal Ft. Lauderdale”

1. lizardeater says:

   June 25, 2008 at 2:33 pm

   “My job as a minister of this faith is to spread the spark of liberal religion, to fan it and to make it catch fire.”

   Beautifully said, Rev. Rose. At GA 2004, your sermon at SLT brought me to tears and pushed me to finally accept the Call. I began seminary two months later.