My experience of the fourth day of the 2011 General Assembly in Charlotte, NC, was framed around two lectures… the Murray Street Address by the Rev. Bill Sinkford… and the Ware Lecture by Karen Armstrong. For me, these two lectures swam in my personal pond through waters that have been … Read more →
Category Archives: Articles
General Assembly Day 3: A Tale of Two GA’s…
I remember my first General Assembly many moons ago. I was so excited for the opportunity for all the workshops I could ever dream of on every aspect of church life, of theology, and of our ecclesiological history. I packed each moment full of engaging panel discussions, of plenary sessions, … Read more →
General Assembly Day 2: Lions, Tigers, and Ministerial Authority, Oh My!
One of the things that always amazes me about my time at a General Assembly is how different my experience is depending on what I wear. Now, for most people this might not be literally true, but it my case it is. Let’s take the first and second days of … Read more →
General Assembly Day 1: Unitarian Universalists of the Holy Spirit
As I sat in the second row, center aisle of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2011 General Assembly of the UUA, next to my military chaplain colleagues, what struck me most about the service was how many times the word “Spirit” came into the ceremony/celebration/worship service. By the time I … Read more →
Blogging the UUA General Assembly
As I did last year, I once again intend to write an article here at Celestial Lands for each day of the General Assembly in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sandy and I are here in Charlotte, checked into the hotel suite of rooms we annually share with the Rev. Katie Norris … Read more →
The Church and Leadership Development
One of my developing ecclesiological theories is that the church, especially the liberal church, serves among its many purposes as the laboratory for being a whole, full, and religious human being. The liberal congregation is the container, the laboratory where we are able to learn how to engage one another … Read more →
Soldiers and War Memorials
This Sunday, I preached a “sermon-in-dialog” with Roy Wedge, a member of the UU Fellowship of Midland, a Vietnam era Air Force Veteran, and a singer/songwriter. Below is the final section of that sermon, written and preached by myself, telling the story of the last time I visited the National … Read more →
It’s okay to be Takei…
What more could I add? I want a coffee mug… Yours in Faith, Rev. David
Staycation and Mr. Bean
This week is Candidating Week for the congregation that I am serving as an Interim Minister. Now, by all indications Candidating Week has gone well, and the congregation will vote tomorrow on whether to call Jeff Liebmann as their new settled minister. What will be with that will be… and … Read more →
Osama bin Laden and Unrealistic Hopes
These last few days, I have been on a trip to attend a U.S. Army Chaplains training conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have been in hotels, airports, and restaurants in my military uniform, sometimes with other Army Chaplains, but often on my own. For these several days, I have had … Read more →
Audacity as an Art Form
So, I think all of the regular readers of the Celestial Lands know that I watch Rachel Maddow. In truth, my Rachel Maddow fandom goes all the way back to Air America, where I was one of the few, the proud, the Liberal Radio Audience (as anyone unfortunate enough to … Read more →
The Feeling of Abandoning the Field
In my weekly pastoral letter to my congregation here in Midland Michigan, I spoke of a feeling that I have. It is a feeling I know makes no rational sense, but I have long believed that feelings are not necessarily supposed to make rational sense. They are the soul trying … Read more →
Unionized Ministry
Recently, I had the honor and privilege to meet Rev. Don Southworth, the current Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA), at the Spring Minister’s Retreat for the Heartland Chapter of the UUMA. This is my first year as a “regular member” and not a student member of … Read more →
The Purpose of Religious Communities
I always know I’m onto something when I can get a congregant to look at me cross-eyed. A few months ago I was having a conversation with a dear congregant from a corporate background about how our Fellowship here in Midland “did things”. How our committees and teams function, how … Read more →
Is Libya a “Growing-Up Moment” for the United States?
For all our power in the world, the United States is still a very young nation. Unlike the modern states in Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East, we do not stand upon thousands of years of history in the location where our nation is. Because of our youth … Read more →
Happy Birthday Dad…
This is a repost of an article from each of the last two years. This is a hard time of year for me. I guess we all have these times of the year, where the past experiences of our lives fill up the time we spend living today… times in … Read more →
Standing With Labor in Michigan
Today, a group of Michigan UU Ministers cut short our monthly UUMA Cluster meeting to join in the demonstration called by organized labor at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. I’ll leave it to professionals to determine how many were in attendance, though many of them were union workers … Read more →
Dawn Breaks on “Offer Day”
It is an interesting part of being an Interim Minister, that you come to love a congregation, that you have ministered among them, that you have hopes and dreams for them, that you are an intimate part of a religious community… and you know that you are only there to … Read more →
A Short “I Told You So”
I wish I could say I did not know this was going to happen. I really wish I had been wrong. I really wish that my theory that the power of Mass Protests to significantly affect political realities is expirational had been proven wrong. I wish that mass protests still had the power … Read more →
What Turned a Conservative into a Liberal?
I regularly have conversations with conservatives, both political and religious conservatives. Sometimes that is through my work as an Army Chaplain, sometimes through my work as a liberal minister in a fairly conservative town, and sometimes it is through people from my past who seek me out to ask me … Read more →
Generations of Ministerial Colleagues
Last week I attended the First Year Minister’s Seminar at the UUA Headquarters at 25 Beacon Street in Boston. The program was great… it was good to hear directly from the many different UUA staff offices, and the conversation I had about my theory of social justice with a senior UU … Read more →
Faith is Hard… and Liberal Religion Needs Some
One of the earliest articles I wrote here at Celestial Lands is one where I seek to define, for myself, the meaning of faith (that faith is not belief, it is “sacred trust”). I sometimes think we Unitarian Universalists and others of Liberal Religion have a harder time coping with … Read more →
The Expiring Cultural Power of Mass Protest Movements
What gives mass protests their power? Is it the will and voice of the people? Is it the power of the ideals that motivate them? Is it the amount to which they adopt civil, peaceful, resistance methods? Is it their hope for the future? Or when they represent a broad … Read more →
A “Real” Chaplain
The next person who even hints to me that, because I am a reservist I am not a “real” military chaplain, I might just scream at them. Fair warning. I’ve been somewhat defensive about this for awhile, and quite frankly I’ve moved beyond defensive to feeling darned angry. I’m not … Read more →
Liberal Religious Social Justice
I have had some wonderful and amazing conversations, both in person and online, in relation to my recent article on Gun Control, Militias, and the Second Amendment. I can always tell when I’m doing “good work” when people respond passionately and personally to an article, some in favor of what … Read more →
Gun Control, Militias, and the Second Amendment
I have chosen never to carry or use a firearm ever again. I made that choice not because of a fundamentalist attitude toward guns, but rather because I am entirely too good with them. I reached a place in my faith journey where I realized that I would rather die … Read more →
Shocked that our Nation is Shocked
Last Saturday, when our nation learned of the tragic shooting in Tucson Arizona of 20 people, including the killing of Federal Judge John Roll and the wounding of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, I was in a Board Retreat with my congregation’s Board of Trustees. None of us learned of the shooting … Read more →
A Quick Welcome
Now, I know I say that I write the Celestial Lands Blog for myself, and for my own spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and theological development… but that does not mean I do not check out the site statistics on a regular basis. Over the past week or so, I have noted … Read more →
Church Life, Alcohol, and Me
Every year at this time of year I end up having the conversation with someone (usually a congregant) about church life, me, and alcohol. There is a familiar flow to the conversation, and I thought this year, after having one conversation with a friend and ministerial colleague along these lines … Read more →
On Why I Write
Every year around the New Year I take a retrospective look at my writings of the past year… not just here at Celestial Lands, but my sermons, newsletter articles, and assorted other writings. I write a lot… it is part of my spiritual practice to do reflection upon life, the … Read more →
It Does Not Feel Like a Victory
As a civilian pastor and as a military veteran, I think I was pretty clear over the years that I thought the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was unjust, unfair, and asked service members to violate their own honor by lying about such a core part of their identity. I … Read more →
Just Go Home
I know, I get in trouble with someone when I delve into pure politics here at Celestial Lands. But I just can’t help myself. I’m not even completely serious about this one, because for the Democratic Leadership in the U.S. Senate and House to do what I am about to … Read more →
The Journey from Conservative to Liberal
I remember a day in seventh grade when I came home all excited to tell my parents that I had discovered that I was a Liberal. We had been studying the American political system in social studies class, and in our textbook was a little box that showed the typical … Read more →
Joy and Sorrow are Woven Fine
There is something about the way congregations come together, to support one another, to grieve with one another, to celebrate with one another, to laugh with one another… often all at the same time… that amazes me. Something in the way a disparate group of people, brought together by belief, … Read more →
I Am an Appalachian-American
Yesterday, I was driving home from an ordination in Rockville Maryland, and I took a route that carried me through the Appalachian Mountains of Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania… and I felt at home. I felt at home in a way that is hard to describe. As I spent … Read more →
We Give Thanks, For this Blessed Day
As is customary on Thanksgiving morning, I woke up thinking of all the things that I give thanks for. All the things in my life that I am grateful for… and I thought I would share a few of them. I give thanks for my wife, and for the fact … Read more →
Decline, Denial, and an 8K Ruck March
This weekend was a military drill / Battle Assembly for me, and it taught me something… that I’m not as young as I once was. Nor am I as young as I would like to be. Nor am I as young as I like to think I am. I was … Read more →
“Government-Paid Missionaries for Christ”
Recently I received a letter from a fellow Unitarian Universalist who is very concerned by incidents and attitudes he perceives among some military chaplains, where they seem to understand themselves as “government-paid missionaries for Christ”. The letter details some of his own research into the issue of some chaplains who … Read more →
Generations of Veterans
Our common conception of how Veterans share a the same experinece of combat is belied by the way that combat actions and environments have evolved over the last 70 years. There is no generalized understanding of what a Veteran is. … Read more →
Glowing Coal
Something that regular readers of the Celestial Lands might have picked up on… and something that anyone who has been in a congregation I have served as a minister probably could not have missed… is that I love our congregations. I love the congregations of this Liberal Faith Tradition we … Read more →
Military Chaplaincy, Congregational Ministry, and a Year of Discernment
I’ve written before about liminality, and about living in liminal spaces. To live in a liminal space is to live without certainty… to live without knowing what the outcomes of life will be, and to allow that creative not-knowing to develop new patterns and new possibilities. We humans are not … Read more →
Civilian Control and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Harass, Don’t Pursue
As a military chaplain, the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” does not apply directly to how I relate to soldiers. Any soldier can tell me anything in confidence, and I am bound by a level of confidentiality that is equivalent to the seal of the Catholic Confessional. In … Read more →
Liberal Faith’s Learning Lab
I recently had a series of conversations with ministerial colleagues that re-ignited a thought I have been working around for some time… What in the world do we do liberal religion for? What could justify all of the expenses of maintaining a church or a Fellowship? What makes the anguish … Read more →
To Love but not Befriend
I don’t know if there is another human relationship like that a minister needs to build with their congregants. Or even the relationship a minister needs to build with the congregation as a whole. As I have been building my relationship with the members of the congregation in Midland Michigan, … Read more →
A Salute to Chaplain Dale Goetz, KIA
It has happened many times, where a fellow UU or a ministerial colleague takes me aside and asks me if this military chaplaincy “thing” is really something I want to do. When I explore it with them, where their anxiety is coming from, it almost always centers around their concern … Read more →
Leaving Chicago
As we left Chicago on Friday for the last time as “Chicagoans”, I saw the tension in my wife’s shoulders begin to drain away, tension that has been there for four years. From the smile on her face, I’m pretty sure she felt that tension draining away herself. It was … Read more →