The Grace of Silence is going paperback

Here's my latest column for United Church News:

Recently I’ve been hearing about colleges who assign “common reads” to their incoming students--- a single title that is to be read before arriving at college and then discussed in small groups when school starts. It’s a take-off on a program that’s been popular in communities and states for at least ten years, often going under the name One Book ______[fill in the name of your community or state]. The popular book for college programs this year is The Other Wes Moore.
Seven years ago, Penn Central Conference decided that we would begin a “One Book: Penn Central Conference” program, and our first selection was The Practicing Congregation by Diana Butler Bass. We have done at least one and sometimes two books every year since 2004-2005.
This year we chose the book called The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris. One member of our Sacred Conversation on Race Ministry Team came in very excited after reading this book. The rest of us read it as well, and we found it both moving and challenging. So we decided to recommend it to the whole Conference as our “One Book” for the year.
We always work to buy from the publisher, which allows us to offer the book to our congregations at an excellent price while preserving the author’s right to royalties. We started with a hundred copies and we are so glad we did. Soon groups from local churches were reading the book, and more surprisingly, we had entered into a conversation with Michele Norris, the book’s author and a popular NPR host. Michele has started a website and project related to the book that includes an exercise called “Race Cards.” It challenges people to distill their insights about race to six words and send them in to Michelle’s website.
One thing led to another and we were so very blessed to have both Michele Norris, and our own UCC staff person Waltrina Middleton, with us for our Penn Central Conference Annual Meeting. People brought with or bought copies of The Grace of Silence for Michele to sign, and we found in our new friend a gracious human being, willing to help us learn and grow. One of the most exciting parts of the weekend was a plenary where Michele and Waltrina answered questions from our youth.
Now, we’d like to challenge the whole United Church of Christ to read The Grace of Silence. We think it’s an important book, and an accessible way to re-start the “Sacred Conversation on Race” in the United Church of Christ. What if churches, Associations, and pastor’s groups everywhere began to read and discuss this book? What if they began to submit “Race Cards” to Michelle [we gave her nearly a hundred to take home from our Annual Meeting!]?
Michele and Random House believe in this idea so much that they are willing to make this offer to UCC congregations: If your church would like a complimentary copy of The Grace of Silence to consider for a community-reads, Vintage Books would be happy to provide one. Please email your request to Jen Marshall at jmarshall@randomhouse.com.
Give it a try, and then send us an email about your experience at pccucc@pccucc.org. We’d love to hear how it’s going for you. Hey, maybe next year we can all read The Other Wes Moore!

Still Struggling After All These Years

Can you belive that after 35 years in ministry, I still have days when I struggle with these basic questions: What is my purpose? Do I really believe I am called by God to do what I am doing? Or did I fall into it for lack of another career path I cared about? Do I really believe in a God who calls anyone? And what DO I believe about God? These are tough, persisting questions.

Without a concept of God calling, however, I am at a loss to know why some people are good and some are evil, some are generous and some are selfish. But then that leads to the quesion of why some people respond to God's call and others not. I believe God calls everyone to do good, to act generously, or as Micah says 'to love, mercy, justice and humility.' There---I guess I did say something I believe: God calls everyone to good. Once you get that far, I suppose its the free will question. Some respond and some do not. And I do believe that some cycles of evil get handed down from generation to generation, but so do some cycles of good. Though it sometimes seems counterintuitive, I believe that good is stronger than evil; that good can break the cycles of evil.

I can sometimes see small glimpses of good that I might have done in my ministry with others. But I will probably never have a clear sense of my purpose, or my ability to affect others. I guess that's okay. I have to leave some things for God. [Big sigh.] I've never been very patient with mystery. Blessings, Marja

I Wake Up Singing

Most mornings, I wake up with a tune in my head. I have no idea how my subconscience picks the tunes. It might be a song I learned in Vacation Bible School, but it just as easily might be a pop hit from college days, or a classic hymn, or a snatch of something I can't even identify. Often, later in the day, like today, I can't even remember what tune it was I couldn't get out of my head this morning.

So does this happen to you? And do you think it is just random synapses firing? Or do you think that maybe during our dreams, God reconnects us to our past through music? I'm not going to go the route of saying that we need to be careful what kinds of music our kids are listening to [though indeed, with the rate of deafness among young adults, hearing music in their heads may be the only option left to them in 30 or so years.]

I'm not even going to propose that there is some deep meaning in the songs my brain chooses. I do, however, think it is interesting. Is my brain preparing me for something by bringing back "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam"? Or does God just want my attention? Maybe God wants us to pay attention to our lives, past, present and future. Slow down. Hum the tune. Struggle to bring back the words.

So, now I've confessed. I wake up singing. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about the joyful little dances I do in my living room or kitchen. Life is really a miracle, isn't it? We don't always get to know the why but we do get to observe the what. And that my friends is pretty remarkable, all by itself.

Go on---sing a little bit. Dance a little. And whatever you do, smile! [As it goes in the old joke, it'll drive everybody crazy.]

Why I need to Use Facebook

I’m trying to become more regular about at least reading my Facebook page, if not posting a bit more often. Of course, I’m a little wary about it because I’m one of those people that got hacked a month or so ago [I trust I’ve taken every precaution necessary to avoid any such damage in the future]. Still, I want to remind myself to be on Facebook, not because I don’t have enough to do and need to kill some more time, but rather because it’s such a good source for connecting. And I learn things!
This morning I logged on and discovered that my friend Martin Bailey had “liked” a picture of a bicycle rack at UCC church. It was whack on the side of the head---why hadn’t that occurred to me? Every UCC congregation should have a bike rack outside their building. It’s a whole new evangelism tool!
Now, I’m not naive. I do know that most people drive to church. Many drive miles to return to the church of their youth, or the church that meets their needs. Some drive past two or three UCC churches in the process and who knows how many churches of other stripes. So what’s the good of putting up a bike rack for people over sixty who drive 3-12 miles to get to their place of worship?
Well, just this----most [but not all] of our congregations still have neighborhoods. It’s just not the same neighborhood that we knew when we were young. What if---oh radical idea!---we made it easy for the people in our neighborhoods to visit? A bicycle rack says you are welcome and expected here, even if you don’t drive a car.
Perhaps the people in our neighborhoods don’t look like us anymore. Perhaps when they are talking to each other, they speak a language we don’t understand. Perhaps they don’t understand our order of worship. They might change us a bit, perhaps by bringing crying children into our worship, or asking if we could sing some livelier songs.
Maybe they would welcome an invitation by Facebook or Twitter to attend our service. Maybe if we posted a YouTube video of worship or something else we are doing, they might feel more comfortable about approaching our [sometimes] forbidding –looking buildings. I can imagine a congregation putting up a “video tour” of their building for just that purpose.
So I’m making a new pledge to myself. I’m going to log on to my Facebook page more often---not just to see what my friends are up to, but to see what I might learn from someone near or far. Let’s be the church that’s not so old we can’t learn new things. And that includes learning what Facebook and church have to do with each other.