2013 Holiday Blessings

 

Me at Disibodenberg, Germany in November 2013

2013 Holiday Blessings

There are years that ask the questions, and years that answer.    – Zora Neale Hurston

I have often reflected in my annual holiday letter that the year has been the usual mix of blessings and curses.  But for me, 2013 has been nothing short of miraculous blessings.  The impossible just takes a little time!

Some of the blessings came out of the blue – grace many people would call it – and some were the result of very hard work on my part.  But even when I knew I was working hard and participating, there still seemed to be an element of grace in the result.  For instance, I scoured Portland for months seeking the right house, and just when I thought I would never find one for the price I wanted to pay, a house more perfect than I thought existed appeared.  And I am very happy in it today.

Courage to Change



50th Anniversary March on Washington August 28, 2013



Courage to Change 

by The Rev. Connie Yost

A Sermon Preached at

Eastrose Fellowship Unitarian Universalist

Gresham, Oregon

September 1, 2013

I returned last night from an inspiring week in Washington DC, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. On Tuesday, I attended a conference on Civil Rights, titled "Marching Forward By Looking Back," where people from diverse backgrounds came together to share stories and solutions of what has worked in different communities and what still needs to be done. There was a lot of hope and excitement in the air. I went to bed that night grateful to be part of this historic occasion and grateful to be in the work of ministry -- that work of justice, hope and healing that we all share.

On Wednesday, August 28, the exact day of the March on Washington fifty years ago, I joined with thousands of others as we marched in the rain along the streets of DC for about a mile and a half, down famous streets with names like Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing at the Department of Labor, noting that the theme of this March was "Jobs and Freedom," a theme that was Martin Luther King Jr's focus when he was assassinated in 1968. It was an experience I will never forget, walking shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, with young people, old people, people in wheelchairs, people in baby carriages, black people, brown people, white people, people of all races, men, women, people of all sexual orientations, all religions, all together, all as one, singing "We Shall Overcome."

Pre-Birthday Ruminating

 

Ministerial Meditations

by The Rev. Connie Yost

July 22, 2013



Annie Oakley "Little Sure Shot" age 28, 1898



I recently flew to Los Angeles to meet with one of our Chalice Oak Foundation clients, the nonprofit 20KWatts, which brings solar lighting to desperately poor communities in Central America.  As I boarded the small commuter plane in Long Beach to return home, I found my seat next to a young girl who was sitting next to the window.   I settled into my seat and asked her if she was travelling alone.  Limpid blue pools looked straight at me and she kindly but firmly announced that she was.  "I'm old enough," she told me.  "People don't think that I am, but I am.  I'm fourteen."  Impressed with her self-possession, I struggled with what to say next.  Certainly I would NOT say that she didn't look fourteen.  She knows that; everyone always says that.  And I remember how much I always hated people telling me that I didn't look my age (when I was younger, mind you!).

So I said, "Well, that's very good.  I know how annoying it is when people think you're a lot younger than you are.   They treat you like you don't know anything.  I always hated that."  "Yes," she agreed.  "It is annoying," she said and calmly went on reading her book.

I didn't start travelling alone much less on an airplane until I was much much older than fourteen.  But then, I was raised in the pre-feminist dark ages, discovering my own womanpower well into my thirties and with little support from my parents or society.  I wondered how my life might have turned out had I been as empowered as she when I was 4'7" and weighed 80 lbs.

Give it Some Time

Ministerial Meditations

by The Rev. Connie Yost

July 2, 2013

Management guru Peter Drucker

I recently saw the movie, Before Midnight in which a committed couple with a long history argue and say some terrible things to each other, but clearly love each other.  She says she doesn't love him and he knows she doesn't mean it  --  probably, maybe, hopefully.  There's a threat on the horizon, that he'll give in to the need to move to Chicago to be near his son, and she will have to decide to either go with him, giving up her career and current life, or not.  How to make that choice?  Better to decide now that she doesn't love him and it is over.  She decides.  Not him.  Now, not later.  Case closed.

Only life doesn't work like that.  Well, I guess you can make it work like that--you can preempt things by making defensive moves, but I think that's a mistake.  I understand the impulse though.  It always feels better to me when I think I am in control of a situation, no matter how wrong my decision may be in the grander scheme of things.  There's just something so primeval about needing to feel in control of our own destiny -- safe -- that we can actually do things that hurt us and lead us far astray from our life force and true passions.

Promises Made to Be Broken

Ministerial Meditations

By The Rev. Connie Yost

July 10, 2009

Red Cloud, Mahpiya Luta, Oglala Sioux Chief, 1897

On this past 4th of July holiday, I was reflecting on the price our freedom has cost the peoples who were enslaved, made war upon, lied to and abused in the quest of our Independence and prosperity. 

While Thomas Jefferson and others eloquently wrote that they would sooner "cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose," indigenous peoples were increasingly lied to and manipulated as their ancestral lands were taken from them.

Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota of the Sioux nation, who lived through the battle of the Little Bighorn and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, which pretty much marked the end of the US government's war on the western Indian Nations, as their colonization was now complete.  He reflects:  "I did not know then how much was ended.  When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.  And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.  A people's dream died there.  It was a beautiful dream…the nation's hoop is broken and scattered.  There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Dreams Can Come True

 

Plant Dreaming Deep: The Story of

EarthWorks Community Farm

by The Rev. Connie Yost

December, 2006

                  

EarthWorks Class Fall 2006

            In 2002, while in seminary at Claremont School of Theology, I attended a conference on poverty and heard a young man from inner city Boston named Wil Bullock speak about how at age 15 he became employed by The Food Project, where for one whole summer he worked alongside other youth to grow and sell organic vegetables to the community.  Now he was 22 and running The Food Project’s for-profit business venture – marketing salsa made from their farm’s organic tomatoes, peppers and onions.  He said, “The Food Project changed my life.  It gave me – a kid from a struggling, single parent family – the chance to do meaningful work.  It gave me a way to think about the importance of food and community.  Now I work to advocate for the health of our planet and people.”   He said, “Today I am honored to be part of this movement for change.”

            That speech touched me deeply.  It was one of those aha moments when my entrepreneurial passion joined my passion for social change and gardening, and a practical vision for restoring our connection to each other – especially to our youth – and to the earth was born.

Quanah Parker, Comanche Leader

Ministerial Meditations

By The Rev. Connie Yost

April 28, 2012

Quanah Parker, Comanche Leader

            On a recent trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas, I got to indulge my passion for travel to 1) places I haven't been before; 2) national parks; and 3) Indian museums, art galleries and crafts stores.  Killing time at the Portland airport, I stopped at Powells to browse the sale table and a book immediately jumped out at me, Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne.  On the cover was a picture of a handsome Indian and it read, Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

            That caught my attention, as I was going to Indian Country where the Comanche live to this day.  It's a fascinating book but I quickly realized it wasn't bedtime reading.  The Comanche were a nomadic warrior people, and the book sparred none of the gory details of their battles with other Indians (mostly Navajo, Apache and Tonkawa), white settlers, soldiers, and buffalo hunters.  The basic storyline is the Comanche were expert warriors and horsemen who lived and rode on the Great Plains, and because of these skills were able to resist first the Spanish, then the French, then white settlement on their lands until the late 19th century.  The American West did not open up until the end of a forty year war with the Comanche.

Hildegard and Viriditas

Ministerial Meditations

By The Rev. Connie Yost

April 6, 2013

Hildegard's Illumination All Beings Celebrate Creation

            I am home from my trip to Germany which, like all the best travel experiences, was much more and much less than I expected.  The less part was that I expected to experience the "greening" of Spring that Hildegard of Bingen wrote so much about.  That was not to be as there was a huge blizzard in the area just 2 days before I arrived.  So instead of green, I looked out my hotel window and saw various shades of white and gray for the first few days.  I never imagined that we would be running around in the snow at Disibodenberg where Hildegard lived until she was nearly 50 years old (just ruins now, but still a wonderful site, even in the snow).  I was on retreat with 30 other people, visiting the sites where Hildegard lived and did her ministry.  She left Disibodenberg to found the monastery at Rupertsberg (the only original part of the structure left is just a cellar now), and if that wasn't enough, at age 67 she acquired the damaged buildings of the Eibingen convent and restored them for 30 of her Benedictine sisters and thereafter, crossed the Rhine twice a week to supervise her two monasteries until she died at age 81.

            Part of the "more" part of the trip was all that I learned and experienced about Hildegard.  She was a pistol in her time, influencing the pope and cardinals and gaining audiences and respect in high places despite her criticisms of the Church (Catholic, of course, in those days).  She continues to inspire us today.  In fact, there is an incredible surge of interest in her ministry today.  She even finally made it to the top of sainthood in the Catholic Church, being declared a doctor of the church just last fall, taking only 900 years to get there!  (A lesson in patience, for sure.)

The UU Missional Church



Me in the Everglades National Park, soon to see a beautiful Roseate Spoonbill, February 2013

Yes We Can, Yes I Can -- The Missional Church Within

By The Rev. Connie Yost

A Sermon Preached at the UU Congregation of Salem Oregon

February 10, 2013

             I just returned from our UU minister's intensive training retreat that happens every other year.  The first one was in 2011; I did not go but I heard so many good things about it that I vowed I would go this year.  So I did.  Wow.  Imagine 425 UU ministers worshipping and sharing bread and learning together.  It was all awesome, but it was the worship that really got me.  The music, the silence, the singing, the readings, the preaching.  My God.  What beautiful, hurting souls we all are. 

            Church, when we really do it right, celebrates who we are.  Who we really are.  And if you're anything like me, you have your successes and failures in life, your gifts and gaffes, your regrets and dreams.  No matter our age, state of our health, current or past history, we have a soul which longs to connect with a force greater than ourselves.  I submit that this force is love, it is compassion, it is what I call God.  The Quakers often refer to this force as The Light.  You may have a name you prefer, or no name.  Thomas Merton called it Mercy within Mercy within Mercy.  Think about that for a moment.  Think about a love so deep and so vast that it is pure compassion.  Mercy within Mercy within Mercy. 

Traveling as Spiritual Practice



Me on my birthday August 6, 2011 with Momma Mt. Rainier



A sermon by The Rev. Connie Yost

Preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of McMinnville, Oregon

June 16, 2013

I am a traveler by birth, disposition and, I am sure, the hand of God.  It is in my blood.  My Dad was a great traveler, limited only by lack of money and time during his long, working life.  But he lacked nothing in imagination and passion for seeing the sights.

It was different with my mother.  She went along, of course, but she did not open up to anything new except with fear and criticism.  In many ways, it must been a real drag for him to have her along.  But in their world, you did not travel alone if you have a spouse.

Not so with me.  I have traveled with husbands, lovers, family, other people's family, friends, enemies, strangers, stuffed animals, cats, and one sad time, a turtle.  But I much prefer traveling alone.  A lot of people don't get this. 

"Hey, lady, where's your husband?" the young cab driver says the minute I get into the taxi at the airport in Puerto Vallarta.  "He's dead," I say.  It's not true, of course, as at that moment I have no husband, and the ex's are very much alive.  But it is the only thing guaranteed to kill the conversation cold.  You cannot explain to most people why you love traveling alone. 

I think most people are afraid of being alone in any place, and certainly can only think of what horrible dangers might befall them, especially if they are female, when traveling out of their tiny comfort zone.

In truth, we are not safe anywhere.  That is just the sad reality that very few people, before they are faced with major illness and death, are willing to accept.  It is an occupational hazard for those of us in the ministry, medical profession, social services and other helping professions.  We know we are going to die, because we see people die all the time.  I am sure that changes us, each in our own way.  But overall, I think it makes us appreciate the life we have more, and gives us a certain urgency to stop wasting time, tell the truth, help others, and follow our passions and dreams.