Beautification

Placing advertising signs within ten feet of the public right of way is a violation of the Albany city statutes. The array of advertising for UPC on the parking strip makes our church look sort of shabby. I think they should be removed.

We have had a visitor from Illinois for the last week: a friend of Marian's who she last saw in the sixth grade in South Bend, Indiana. Marian and she just left for her return home. This has given me cause to think about hospitality.

I have heard that Muslims value hospitality greatly, and their tenets compel them to offer it to strangers who come into their midst. But what if the strangers don't come? We have many visitors to our church, but most of them are very much like us. They don't stand out.

Glenn has said to me that one of the reasons we don't have many (any?) black members or visitors is that during the Civil War, Presbyterians would not condemn slavery. Do you suppose they still hold that against us to this day? I guess there has to be some reason why they don't come.

Could it be that we don't welcome them as well as we could. When we visited here, we were invited to lunch by one of the members. Jesus said, "The King [the Son of Man, come in His glory]will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" Further, he says that whatever we didn't do, we didn't do for Him.

At least, we offer them a coffee drink at no charge. I hope we do a little more.

In Acts, Philip meets a eunuch on the road. In the course of their conversation, Philip asks the eunuch if he understands the scripture he is reading. The eunuch replies, "How can I, unless someone explains it to me?"

This unvarnished, honest reply reflects where I find myself much of the time. The Holy Spirit is my first resource, of course, but sometimes it seems to me that I am unable to avail myself of the understanding that I should have. So I too ask, "How can I [understand] unless someone explains it to me?"

UPC has two pastors who complement each other very well. Glenn's scholarship and Sharon's empathy with her congregation have proven to be great resources to me. By this I don't mean to indicate that Glenn has no empathy, nor Sharon scholarship, but I have found their strong points to be as I described.

I have been troubled by my inability to reach to the heart of the spirituality I seek, so I have been asking what I will call the "Eunuch's Question" more frequently.

A couple of weeks ago, Sharon recommended Barbara Brown Taylor's book, "An Altar in the World" to me. I have found it very helpful in terms of redirecting me from a search outside of myself to that which I encounter every day with my human senses. It's very fine to seek a supernatural experience, an epiphany, an "AHA!" moment, but when it comes to spiritual matters, the Holy Spirit says to me more often than not, "Come on, Tony; you know I don't work that way!" (Some readers may recall God speaking this line to Bill Cosby's Noah back in the 70s.)

It only took me a week to read, but has profoundly affected my spiritual thought process. It's available from Amazon, and is in Kindle format (my favorite).

Disinterested "democracy"

When decisions are made in your name without your participation, can it be a democratic process?

Turns out that in our Presbyterian Church, decisons are made by a group known as the "Session," a body of elected elders. From there, groups of church sessions form collectives of "Presbyteries," which then can be formed into "Synods," and, ultimately, into a "General Assembly."

Today I learned that the Presbytery to which our church belongs made a decision that, in my humble opinion, was controversial. Yet this decision was made by a near-unanimous vote of almost four hundred representatives.

One Session member from our church reported this issue to a group of members in an informal meeting. Turns out that none of us was aware that this was even an issue for discussion by the Presbytery, yet it commits funds from all the member churches.

This seems to be a general method for doing business. Is it because of apathy among the membership or failure to adequately provide information from the church staff? Perhaps responsibility lies in both areas.

I have only been a member for a couple of years, but don't remember any notification of agenda for Session, Presbytery, or General Assembly ever being highlighted or called to the attention of the church membership.

I would like to propose that Session investigate methods by which members can better inform themselves of these matters. Email or Internet postings should facilitate this process and make it at least as easy as a single telephone call.

Such efforts would greatly democratize a process which presently seems oligarchical at best.