The finches are house-hunting!

Once again, I meant to take down the Christmas wreaths and lights after Valentine’s Day (my tradition). But here it is, early March, and Spring is just around the corner. Jews celebrate Purim - a holiday marked with costumes, celebration and (in some interpretations) licensed drunkenness just this one time of the year. And for Hindus it is Holi - the spring festival rooted in ancient fertility rites, where participants are sprinkled or smeared with brightly colored powders.
And we get house finches! Last year they nested in the wreath by the front door (my hip surgery was my excuse for not removing it sooner) and we proudly watched the hatchlings be fed and ruffle their feathers before they took flight.
And now on a Sunday morning, polishing the Canvass sermon, I am distracted by several finches, male and female, flitting back and forth between the bush and the front of the house. I guess I ought to take down the decorations later today. But do I take it all down - a preventive measure insuring a bird-free front door - or leave the wreath up, just in case?
If there’s any evidence of a new nest, I think the wreath will have to remain until the eggs are laid and any fledglings are gone. There it will hang, a rather forlorn bit of holiday greens sporting wintry pinecones and a jaunty ribbon, hosting spring’s new life.

A person is a person because of other people

Two weeks ago I attended a UUA conference called Now Is the Time: Leading Congregations into a Multicultural, Multiracial Future. There, in a hotel conference room just outside Washington D.C., about 150 Unitarian Universalists were trying (yet again) to address issues of race and culture and class.
Even at my most naive, I know better than to go to one of these conferences hoping to come back with easy answers and handy programs that will make the world fair and just. But, of course - that’s just what I did
I’ve been processing the experience and I can’t quite distill it into a neatly bullet-pointed list. As I reflect back on what I heard and experienced last week, it seems that the bigger the problem is, the smaller the response needs to be.
Creating a world filled with justice and equality and peace is a huge challenge. But we can’t let the enormity of the issue or the intractable nature of racism stop us.
We must be the change we want to see: our hope for a rich, diverse, inclusive community and society.
Of course, no one program or workshop or resolution will provide the answer. The work begins with each individual, each of us. It requires us to become what Reverend Jacqui Lewis, the keynote speaker, called a border person - someone comfortable with differences, who challenges the divisions we setup to keep people apart.
A border person recognizes difference, affirms the other; is willing to see the other in his or her own self. We have to practice radical hospitality. We have to be open
The Zulu people will sometimes greet one another with the word “Sawubona" - which means "I see you". And the response - "Ngikhona" - means "I am here" (or “I exist”).
This is so much more than another form of “hello”. Inherent in this Zulu greeting and our grateful response, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn't exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence. A Zulu folk saying clarifies this further:
"A person is a person because of other people".