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Showing Up

11/27/2019

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Last Sunday, I participated in our community's interfaith Thanksgiving service, held at Temple Sharaay Tefila. The theme of the service was coming together to oppose hatred in all of its forms--racism, anti-immigrant bias, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and more. I showed up because it was important that our Fellowship's voice be added to those who side with love.

In the strategic plan that the Board is developing to implement our congregation's vision, one of the things we're looking at is how we become the congregation that shows up in our community. Shows up for justice. Shows up to help. Shows up for action. Shows up when marginalized communities call on us--without question or comment or complaint. And that starts with me, as your minister, showing up. 

But I can't be everywhere, nor can I know of everything, nor am I enough, by myself, to represent our Fellowship. So I need to know: Where do you show up in our community? When you hear of opportunities that are important, will you let the rest of us know? And will you show up, too?

Perhaps if you're going to show up somewhere, you'll wear a UUFNW t-shirt (available in my office) when you do so. It's not necessary, but it says to the community that you're representing an organization and not just there as an individual.

At Temple Sharaay Tefila on Sunday, the interfaith youth of the Westchester Youth Alliance were making and packing 3,000 Thanksgiving meals for people in our community who would otherwise be hungry this week. Their director invited us to participate in this next year so that the number can go higher. I will be passing along that invitation to our youth and adults when the time is right.

I hope that we can be the people who show up. I promise to show up more. I hope to do that alongside you.
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Call me (or better yet, Text)

10/8/2019

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I love to talk to you. I love to catch up, to find out how things are going in your lives, to dive deep into your burning questions of meaning and spirituality. I just hate to do it on the phone. And yet, I'm aware that for many people, telephone calls are a primary means of communication. And so every now and then, I am forced to pick up the phone and call someone. I've started doing it more. It's still hard for me.

I realized recently that when I'm on the phone, in order for me to be fully present with the person with whom I'm conversing, it helps me to be in a dark room with no other sensory input at all.  Of course, I do most of my phone calling while driving (on the hands-free speaker system in the car, don't worry), which is very much the opposite of that environment. 
​
Here is a pretty good ranking of how I like to communicate:
  1. In person. Over coffee or tea. One-on-one when possible. In my office if you'd like. Or wherever is most convenient for you. If you'd like to have an in-person conversation, let me know. I'll meet you somewhere. Or drop by my open office hours some Thursday afternoon at Mimi's. Nothing else comes close. But not right after service on a Sunday (and especially not right before service on a Sunday), though that's a great time to make an appointment with me (my  calendar is always in my pocket).
  2. Over Zoom, FaceTime, or similar video chat that has both visual and audio components to it. At a pre-arranged, mutually convenient time. 
  3. Facebook Messenger or other social media-esque application. I have What'sApp now. I'll chat with you there if you'd like. If there's one I don't know about that you use, I'll download it to talk with you on.
  4. By text message. Best for short questions and not real conversations.
  5. On the phone at a pre-arranged time so that I can be in a dark room on a comfy chair.
  6. By e-mail. revmichaeltino@gmail.com.
  7. Long, handwritten letters sent by US Postal Service mail.
  8. Telegraph? Semaphore? Morse code from a light hung on the mast of a ship sailing the Hudson River?
  9. On the phone at a random time that might or might not be good for either of us.  

But however it is you reach out, please do. Because I love talking with you.

Yours in faith, 
​Rev. Michael
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Where You Go I Will Go

6/4/2019

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This week, I had the great fortune of traveling to North Carolina to preach at the ordination of Karen Madrone. Karen served UUFNW as a Field Education student in her second year of seminary, and is now off to become an interim minister in Utah. Karen and I are also linked by the UU Church of Greensboro, where I did my ministerial internship in 2005-6. The picture at right is of the laying on of hands, after the congregation ordained her.

​The sermon I preached is shared here.
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Where You Go I Will Go
Sermon for the Ordination of Karen Madrone to the Unitarian Universalist Ministry
UU Church of Greensboro, NC - June 2, 2019​
Rev. Dr. Michael Tino
Where you go I will go, beloved, where you go I will go. 
Where you go I will go, beloved, where you go I will go.
And your people are my people, your people are mine.
Your people are my people, your divine my divine.

Set to music by Shoshanna Jedwab, the words are from the first chapter of the Book of Ruth, from the passage in which Ruth makes a sacred promise to her widowed mother-in-law Naomi. Refusing to abandon Naomi in order to return to a land once her home, Ruth claims Naomi as family, and embraces Naomi’s God and Naomi’s people as hers.

So it is here, in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, that we choose our people. So it is here, in this Unitarian Universalist congregation, that Karen chose you as her people, and here, right here, that you chose Karen as someone you wish to ordain to the ministry.

How and why we make these choices matters.

“Your people are my people.” This text from Ruth points us to a critical decision point in Unitarian Universalist faith. There is a possibility, a potential, inherent in our religion, in our ministry, in our theology of pluralism and interdependence—a seed buried at the core of our faith. And we have to decide if we will let that seed lie dormant or if we will plant it and nurture it and grow it into a great tree.

And the decision we have to make is how our theology is lived. Where does our theology reside? Where does our theology find life?

Unitarian Universalist theology, as embodied by but not limited to the principles that our congregations covenant to affirm and promote, is a dying and dormant seed if we plant it in the individualism of our past.

If we see our theology as affirming the individual, if we understand our principles as statements of our personal worth, if we construct our congregations to be mere collections of people engaging in individual spiritual journeys, we are not doing the work of transformation that our world requires of us.

Once long ago (and also not so very long ago), covenants were designed as circles drawn to keep people out. “We covenant” implied “but not you, or you, or you, and certainly not *them*.” We created Unitarian Universalist identity by fostering a narcissistic hyper-individualism that venerated Thoreau’s solitude in the woods without remembering that he often walked the half a mile to town to have dinner with the Emersons and have his mother wash his laundry. We embraced principles that spoke to us of our own freedom and conscience without qualifying that freedom with responsibility or that conscience with process.

When theology is lived in the individual, individuals feel empowered to inject their toxicity and fragility into congregational systems. Individuals advocate for themselves in congregational systems, for their own needs, for their own theological language, and on behalf of their own religious wounds, without caring that there might be something larger, something more important, something outside of us.

We have another choice: Our theology, our principles, our religion, can be lived in relationship.

We can choose to understand that nothing we believe matters, nothing we do is real, nothing we proclaim is worth shouting, unless it comes from real and right relationship with others with whom we share a mutual accountability.

If we choose this, we are choosing fertile and warm soil in which to grow the potential of our faith.

Instead of understanding covenant as exclusionary, as defining who is in and who is out, we can see the sacred promises we make to one another as invitations to go deeper, invitations that are open to anyone who chooses to accept them.

We can choose to understand that when someone accepts our invitation to come into our circle of love and wholeness, we are changed as a result, and that such change is good. When someone accepts that invitation, the circle grows, and this growth is good.

When theology is lived in the midst of community, when it is given life as the bonds that connect each and every one of us as an interdependent web of creation, we understand our principles as living, breathing, organisms that require our care.  We understand that affirming and promoting inherent worth and dignity (yours, and mine, and those of the people outside of this room) is a process, an ongoing challenge to meet people where they are and experience them as who they are.

In order for me to engage in that process, I need to make myself better. I need to listen better. I need to understand better. I need to check my fragility and my privilege and my reactivity, my defensiveness and my selfishness. I need to be accountable to others for how I live the values that we proclaim together. I need to start down a path that leads me to you, my people. So it goes for all of us.

This is harder to do than the individualist stuff. Much, much harder. But so much more worth it.

In a Unitarian Universalism where our theology is lived interdependently, we make relationships and connections central instead of centering ourselves and our needs.

In a covenant of relationship and invitation, when we say “your God is my God,” we don’t promise to give up our own theology, background, or heritage. Instead, we promise to add to it. We promise to embrace how others find and experience the sacred.

I don’t ask you to believe the same things I do, nor will I necessarily believe the same things that you do. But in the context of this community, I understand that your spiritual journey and mine are interdependent, and I proclaim that your understanding of the ultimate is worth celebrating, even when it means that my God is not central for a moment. In return, I ask that when my theology is lifted up you do the lifting, even if it’s not your theology. If instead, you tear down what I hold sacred, your claim to have chosen me will be in vain.

I don’t ask you to have the same experiences I have, nor will I necessarily understand all of your experiences. In the context of relationship, I ask that you listen to my experiences and allow them to transform you. In return, I will do the same. In an individualist theology, when I am told I’ve done something racist, I can beg forgiveness based on my good intentions, ignoring the impact of my behavior and never getting to systemic factors that made it possible. In relationship, when a person of color relates to me an experience of racism that I am responsible for, it is my task to learn, to do better, to grow, and to work to transform the system in which that act happened. I get better, the system gets better, the relationship is honored. This is our promise.

If we live our theology in connection, in relationship, we commit ourselves to accountability in our spiritual growth. We commit ourselves to one another. We claim one another as our people, and in turn we are claimed. Your people are my people, your divine my divine.

And so we turn to the matter of the day, the ordination of Karen Madrone, and ask where the theology behind this act lives.  Today, you, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, will ordain Karen. You will speak words that will transform her. And you do not do this in isolation. This is not one specific and defined group of people ordaining one individual, though I get that it can look that way.

The act of ordination is a deeply relational act—with Karen, with our Unitarian Universalist faith, and with the world that she is called to minister to.

You will place upon her shoulders a stole, fashioned in the shape of a yoke that hitches work animals to plows and carts. The stole will have weight far beyond that of the fabric used to put it together—and this is a good thing.

In 2006, when I finished my ministerial internship here, Karen was a new member of UUCG. As I completed my service with you, you gave me *this* stole as a symbol of your relationship with me, as a reminder of the trust you had in me to represent you in our world. It is the stole I chose to have placed upon my shoulders at my ordination and installation the next year.

At the time you presented the stole to me, Joyce Allen, who wove this beautiful fabric and embroidered golden chalices upon it, whispered to me, “you know, Michael, that I am an old witch. There is magic woven into every fiber of this stole. Powerful magic.”

Indeed there is. I feel that magic every time I wear it. And I feel the weight of the yoke on my shoulders. It’s a good weight. A healthy weight. A comforting weight. It is the weight of your trust. It is the weight of your blessing. It is the weight of the words spoken by the congregation that ordained me—the congregation I still serve in Mount Kisco, New York. It is the weight of generations of ancestors whose investment in me made this possible. It is the weight of faith ancestors whose investment in our religion made a place for my ministry. It is the weight of people I have chosen as mine, surrounding me with their love. It is the weight of the world, whose hurts need ministering to. It is the weight of the hands laid upon me that day in 2007 when I first wore it.

This stole, like any stole worn by an ordained minister, bears the weight of relationship. It connects me to an entire web of being in which I have been asked to play a special role. It requires of me a humility and a presence that I need to be reminded to place on myself.

This stole, like the one that Karen will wear today, is a mark that I have been claimed as someone else’s people. Where I go, you will go. You ride on my shoulders. You make my ministry possible.

And when I wear it, it is a recognition that I, too, claim you as mine. Where you go, I will go, beloved. Your people are my people, your divine my divine.

Karen is among her people today, people chosen in mutual accountability over a dozen years ago. You have journeyed together, grown together, challenged each other, learned from each other. And you will go with her throughout the days of her ministry. Blessed be.

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Who is in the room?

3/13/2019

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This week, UUWorld, the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association, published an article that caused harm to transgender (including genderqueer and gender non-binary people) and intersex people.

There are many reasons why this article was harmful (including that it contained a number of serious inaccuracies), and I don't want to spend time going over all of them (my colleague CB Beal does a marvelous job of explaining this in an article they wrote on Medium that is now part of the UUA's official apology).

What I do want to  ask you to think about is the tendency for those of us whose identities are dominant in our society to talk about those with marginalized identities as if they're not in the room, when in fact they are right next to us.

Yesterday, I said to a colleague of color, "How rich would you be if you had a dollar for every time someone proclaimed that we are an all-white religion in your presence?" They would be very rich, I was told. If we pretend that we do not already have people of color in our congregation, we will certainly make that pronouncement come true. No one wants to stay somewhere where they are made invisible and voiceless.

Similarly, cisgender people at UUFNW can't talk about the harm caused by the UUWorld article as if it had been done to people somewhere else. Transgender, genderqueer, and gender non-binary people are part of this congregation.

Part of what we are called to do as Unitarian Universalists is to engage in the work of building relationships. That starts with the people we share a congregation with. Let us do the work necessary to really know who is in the room with us. 
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A Tiny Reminder

3/6/2019

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Amidst the melting snow in my front yard on Monday was a tiny reminder of what is to come: the first crocus of spring.

I make a big deal of this every year because it's my new year holiday. Celebrating it requires careful noticing--paying close attention to what is going on right under my nose. I know where the crocuses are planted, but never which one will bloom first or exactly when it will happen.

Celebrating this moment in the cycle of the year also requires me to have an ongoing relationship with these beings--delicate but strong, tiny but able to withstand the harshness of the end of winter. This year, I had begun to worry--this is the first year since 2015 that they didn't bloom in February (one year, they even began blooming in January), so when the calendar turned to March, I began to pace like an expectant dad. But the crocuses didn't let me down. They're back.

The crocuses are my friends in a certain way. They inspire me and ground me. They fill me with hope. They make me worry. They ask for my care, and in return they provide me with beauty.

​Happy new year.
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Growing Together

2/13/2019

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One of my commitments to you as your minister is to pay attention to the areas where I need to grow and develop. Among those areas is in pastoral care, where I am trying to do better to be responsive to your struggles and sorrows. I am notoriously bad at phone calls, and it is more and more obvious to me that sometimes you need to hear my actual voice--notes and messages and texts are simply not enough. I've heard that feedback, and I am trying to do better.

In response, I hope you will grow with me. And part of that involves looking at the institutional and personal barriers to reaching out for help. If you're wondering why you haven't heard from me about something that has happened in your life, you might ask yourself if I even know about it. If you've heard from a member of our Lay Pastoral Care Ministry Team, they're reaching out on my behalf--and it's OK to tell them you'd like it if I called or visited.

Among my guilty pleasures is following the Twitter account of the anonymous clergy colleague who goes by the pseudonym "Unvirtuous Abbey." Most of the time, they post funny things about life in religious institutions. Sometimes, they engage in humorous theological banter (humor being subjective, after all). Sometimes, however, they make pointedly accurate observations, like recently, when they replied to a thread about things that bother them in their ministry with this tweet: "
I once heard from three people (one of whom was from another church) that one of my parishioners said I hadn't been in to visit. She told everyone but me that she wanted a visit. When I visited her I told her this and she said, 'But you're so busy, I didn't want to bother you!'"

It's funny, of course, but also so true. I shouldn't have to hear about dissatisfaction with my pastoral care ministry in an evaluation from the Board--we should be able to talk to one another about these things. I'll promise to do my very best not to get defensive if you promise you'll be honest and direct, even if that honesty has to be blunt.

Our relationship as minister and congregation is nearing the end of its twelfth year, believe it or not. One of the beautiful things about healthy long-term relationships is that growth is an ongoing thing for all parties involved. This relationship is no different.

I hope to continue to grow as a person and as a minister. I hope you'll continue to grow as members and friends of our congregation. I hope our Fellowship will continue its growth as an institution. Together, we will learn new ways of being with one another that will serve us well into the future.
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New Day Rising

2/5/2019

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On Saturday, January 26, I was in Fairfax, VA, at a regional UU conference called "New Day Rising." The conference focused on how congregations engage effectively in the work of anti-racism and dismantling white supremacy culture.
I made the trip to Virginia at the invitation of regional leaders, who asked me to participate in the afternoon program. As part of that, I was one of seven congregational leaders (or groups of leaders) to give seven-minute talks about something our congregations had struggled with or succeeded in. I got to brag about you.
My talk, entitled "Beyond the Banner," explained the process by which our congregation came to endorse the UUA General Assembly's 2015 statement on Black Lives Matter, how we chose to hang our banner, and what we have done since then.
I talked about the repeated thefts of our banner, and the response of the congregation to that vandalism. I talked about the willingness of Board leadership to respond to pushback from those in the community offended by our prophetic witness. And I talked about becoming community partners in the work of anti-racism.
So, what's next for us beyond the banner? I didn't go there in my talk, but there has to be a next chapter. Racism and white supremacy haven't been dismantled yet. How are you feeling called to address these issues in our society? The next chapter is yours to write.
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STREET
ADDRESS

​236 S. Bedford Road
Mount Kisco,
NY. 10549

Postal ADDRESS

P.O. Box 298, Mount Kisco, NY, 10549

Telephone

914-241-1360

Email

Office: uufnwopenhearth@gmail.com
Minister: revmichaeltino@gmail.com
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