MY ALASKA ADVENTURE

February 10, 2008

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Juneau

Kenneth Torquil MacLean

I guess that what the word "adventure" evokes for me is almost always some faraway place where I have not been before. I think of the American woman who went to Vienna. As she was walking down the street, she sneezed. A man walking by said, "Gesundheit!" and she responded, "Oh, it's so good to hear someone speak English!"

My first trip to Prague, as the representative of the Unitarian Universalist Association was full of adventures, as members of the church there told me how their church had been stolen from them. I met with them in a rented room in the Hussite Church and spent a good bit of time over the next five years in helping them to get their church back. We finally succeeded. But my departure from Prague on that first trip was something of an adventure. My friends picked me up at the hotel early in the morning and took me to the airport for my flight to London. I got my bag checked and went through passport inspection and was headed to gate B2 for my flight. But I noticed a restroom on the way there and was sure I had time to duck in there for a moment. Suddenly I was in total darkness. I felt the wall for a light switch with no success. So I went to open the door, and the doorknob came off in my hand. I could not open the door. Thinking that I would feel pretty silly if I had to tell my friends that I missed my plane to London because I got locked in a restroom in the Prague Airport, I did the only thing I could do: I banged on the door. After a couple of minutes, the door opened and there was a woman standing there who said in English, "Are you all right?" "Oh thank you," I responded as I thrust the doorknob into her hand and ran for my plane. I sometimes wonder what she did with it.

My work for our denomination, responsible for international relations for five years, took me to many parts of the world: every year to India, where we are doing magnificent work for poor people, for bonded laborers, for those who were called "untouchables," and for women, in helping them to organize and gain the power to change their lives; several times to Japan, where I took part in the 2000th anniversary of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine, and also

participated in misogi, the purification rite in which, wearing a loin cloth and a head band, one steps into a very cold waterfall. I couldn't remember the right words to say under the waterfall, so I just said "Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb!” I visited some Unitarian churches in Transylvania, where the men sit on one side, and the women sit on the other, as they have been doing for over four hundred years. Most of those Unitarian churches in that part of Romania now have partner churches in the United States, and there have been a great many visits back and forth. It would be hard to say which churches have been most affected by the experience of getting to know and forming close relationships with Unitarians in a totally different culture, the Americans or the Transylvanians.

As many of you know, I was all set for the adventure of a cruise to Alaska fifteen years ago. My wife and I drove up from Palm Springs and got as far as Seattle, when she had to go into the hospital. "Triple by-pass today," said the doctor, and she died there after seven weeks in intensive care. We missed the cruise to Alaska. Then, two years ago, I got a letter from Jetta Whittaker, asking if I was interested in a ministry of some months in Juneau. I was interested and responded positively. A few weeks later I had to communicate that I had fallen and broken my neck and would be wearing a collar for several months and also facing surgery. I got a wonderful Get Well card signed by the members of this fellowship, and that meant a great deal to me, coming from people who did not even know me.

Well, the surgery worked, with a chip from my hip and four screws, and four months later the surgeon certified that I did not have a screw loose, so I could begin to think again about coming to Alaska. Fortunately, I was not superstitious about the way my plans to come to Alaska had worked out so far. Soon I was in contact with Dave DIerdorff, and we traded e-mails back and forth for several months until I found myself on a plane coming in from Seattle on a sunny August afternoon, with a gang of Unitarian Universalists there to meet me.

In the previous weeks I had been reading John McPhee's marvelous book about Alaska, called Coming into the Country, the book from which I read this morning. I was learning about the relation of Juneau to the rest of Alaska; about the drama of the Russian possession of Alaska, the famous purchase--it was called "Seward's Icebox--and then the steps that led from U. S. Territory to statehood. I had spent a summer long ago working in Hawaii when it was still a territory. In both cases, I had a lot to learn.

Of course, as many of you know, it is very different to go to a place to take up a job from going as a tourist, and especially when one goes as a minister who becomes instantly part of an established community. And that takes me immediately to the center of this particular adventure, for it has been the people I have met, the work they have done and are doing here, the different attractions which brought them to Alaska, or kept them here, and the ways in which many of them became part of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship which had been knocking about Juneau for half a century.

One of the strands of John McPhee's presentation of Alaska and its people was a very strong individualism, a sort of libertarianism which can be expressed as "I came up here to be left alone!" but has many other forms, like the desire to live close to nature, even to the extent of living on what can build and trap and fish and hunt and grow. It comes out in social forms, in politics, and it shapes, to some extent, all the communities possible, from a village like Eagle, to the towns, the cities, and the state itself. What I found was a lot of people who take real responsibility for getting things done and for responding to those who are vulnerable in many different ways, through a host of different organizations, or by themselves, as individuals. And I found a Unitarian Universalist fellowship with a lot of its members well aware of the needs in the community and often deeply involved in responding to them. There is no doubt that this is a liberal religious community with a social conscience. There is a generosity of spirit here which is probably the most notable characteristic of this group.

This led to some unexpected and memorable experiences for the minister from Southern California and the East coast. There was a Saturday morning when I found myself on a beach in North Douglas picking up cigarette butts and other trash as part of the fellowship's contribution to a tidy community. I thought, "I haven't done this since I got out of the Army!" And then on Halloween a few of us were at the Glory Hole--wonderful name!--serving dinner as substitutes for our youth group members so that they could go out for tricks or treats.

All these experiences have taken place in this dramatic setting between the channel and the mountains and the glacier, where snow and sun and rain transform the landscape constantly, and where a serious photographer like my son, sees pictures everywhere and scrambles to catch them in the right light.

Of course the purpose of my being here was to try to provide a sample of ministry in these few short months, a ministry not just of Sunday mornings but connecting in varied ways through the week. I have long felt that there is very little that I have to teach any Unitarian Universalist church or fellowship, but rather my function is to remind them of the faith and values and dreams which continue to shape our lives and give them meaning. And two of the dreams for this religious community which I did not create, but which I have tried to remind you, are for a permanent home of your own, and a large enough membership to have a full-time minister.

Don Johnston, who was a fine minister and a great person, wrote:

The double destiny of being human is to sense the brevity,

to compare life to a candle, to the grass;

but also to sense the length, the breadth and depth,

the continued story.

What matters is not just the years, but the moments, for moments are all we have in life. We use up many of them in the routines of eating, sleeping, and working. Those moments slip by us and shape themselves into the weeks and months and years of our lives. Other moments stand out; they connect us to great events and to other people and their stories, many of them far away from us in place or time.

As I leave Alaska to return to the desert, I will carry the moments of connection here with people who have enriched my life, who have shared moments that made life vivid and exciting, moments that let me see who I was all over again.

Remember our moments together, what we have struggled for, and enjoyed, and achieved, and survived. For these moments are really all we have, as time goes by.