Stumptown Sojourn part two

OK, now that I’ve described all the things I DIDN’T do at General Assembly, let me tell you some of the things I DID.

• I did manage to refrain from buying anything at the UUA bookstore, and to stay away from Powells. Ordinarily book shopping is a highlight of my GA experience, but as someone who will be returning to Massachusetts in a few weeks with the challenge of packing up everything that I own and moving it to Maine, more books are the LAST thing I need right now.

• I did spend an afternoon staffing the UU Historical Society booth in the Exhibition Hall, and also attended both UUHS workshops: one by Cindy Tucker about her new book on the Eliot women (which, I’m embarrassed to say, came at kind of an awkward time in the afternoon, and put me right to sleep), and the other by Barbara Coeyman about “Creating Congregational Histories” which was full of good ideas about preserving, interpreting, understanding and honoring our history, and actually helped wake me up. I’m relatively new to the UUHS board, and now that I’m moving down east I’m not sure how effectively I’m going to be able to perform my new duties as treasurer of this venerable organization. But I believe in its mission, and would kinda like to see UUHS become as revitalized as the UU Christian Fellowship became while I was serving on that Board.

• I also attended a handful of other very stimulating workshops: one on UU blogging featuring a panel of my favorite bloggers, one by Peter Henrickson about Church Personnel Management, an extremely thought provoking session by Linda Laskowski of the UU church in Berkeley CA about using Deming-style Process improvement techniques to understand and improve our Newcomers Hospitality and Membership Growth practices, and finally a workshop led by UUA Stewardship Director Wayne Clark about his new book, Beyond Fundraising. These last two workshops in particular generated over a dozen pages of insights, observations and reflections in my diary, and are certainly worthy of entire postings in their own right. But not today.

• I attended the First Unitarian Church of Portland Oregon’s “Breatkthough Congregation” workshop, and also their Sunday morning church service, where I heard Marilyn Sewell preach about climate change. The breakthrough congregation presentation was interesting to me because I was, of course, an arm’s length witness to that entire course of events, so I was very impressed by how accurately and succinctly Associate Minister Tom Disrud (who started his career as a journalist) was able to summarize how an unlikely combination of circumstances came together in a timely manner to create a significant growth window for that congregation, and then the struggles they had afterwards to adjust to those new dynamics, and create the thriving congregation I worshipped with Sunday.

Also enjoyed running into a few of MY old parishioners from Hillsboro who are now attending First Church, and touring the new Buchan Building which has just been completed and is awaiting a few finishing touches over the summer. Melissa Buchan had been the head of the Lay Pastoral Care team the year I worked as the summer minister at First Church, and truly both a fine person and a lovely soul. The new building is a terrific tribute to both her influence and her generous involvement with that congregation in both life and death.

I also had dinner with my former wife to celebrate what would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary, and I even let her pay. After all, she’s the trial lawyer with the (I assume, since it’s been awhile since we’ve filed a joint tax return) six-figure income and the beautiful Craftsman Bungalow just one block from our daughter’s home in Southeast Portland. And to tell the truth, I couldn’t be more proud of her success. She’s certainly worked plenty hard to achieve it.

I do regret not being able to meet up with many of my other Portland friends who were not in church on Sunday or attending the General Assembly. I’m especially disappointed that I wasn’t able to see my former Oregon State University professor Marcus Borg (who lives in Portland, and was leading a seminar at Trinity Episcopal Church with John Dominic Crosson later that same week), or the former president of the start-up Wy’East congregation near Reed College, where we started a campus ministry program that has now helped turn out four UU ministers...including one of the adult advisors! But let’s just face facts. I can’t do everything. And what I did do at GA this year was actually just enough.