Poverty, Chastity, Obedience: The Monastic Vows

There's a wonderful recent piece written by a ministerial colleague on one of the less obvious travails of public ministry--a UU minister can't buy just any car..

The author details his acute awareness of the judgements congregants make about the moral signals a Minister sends when they visibly deploy their cash. The car one really wants and the car one should have are two very different cars. In the end, he drives up to church in a new Smart Car, to the rapturous approval of his flock. And a nagging sense that he's not so much their pastor as their poodle.

Pre-ministry days with my precious--a 1980 Triumph TR7, loaded with a 3.5 litre V8. Off-the-charts power-to-weight ratio. A fond and guilty memory now...

Transitioning into Ministry from academia involved some considerable down-sizing: two years without pay, living away costs, ending in a 40% income reduction once I started working again. So I sold my car, and haven't owned one since. Thankfully my partner makes professor money, so she can and does own a car, and I sometimes even get to use it.

My more recent solutions to transport have involved public buses, taxis, a push-bike, my two big feet, and a 250 cc Vespa. Which method I use depends on the weather, distance, destination, and purpose of the trip. On the Vespa, you can conceivably tool about in a smart suit, like the Italians do. It is of course very energy efficient,  but my partner worries every time I go out on it. I would like her not to worry about me, hence my thoughts turn to car ownership again.

Chosen because it was available in ecclesiastical black...

Poverty, or at least some display of financial modesty, is perhaps the only one of the three traditional monastic vows UU ministers are still expected to keep. Chastity? Well, there is no vow of celibacy in our tradition, thank God (though some could have done with it). Obedience? Our tradition of freedom of the pulpit means our prophetic witness need not obey our associations, boards, or congregants, but only the Spirit as we are given to understand its will. So yes and no.

So the remaining vow of poverty stands as the last enforceable fossil of the old monastic tradition. My stipend is pegged to that of the Uniting Church scale, which I guess is broadly deemed a reasonable standard of living for clergy. Still, it can look like Croesus' bank account if you happen to be a modest pensioner. All relative, I guess, and really not often commented upon, probably more due to the customary bourgeois reticence toward talking about anything so vulgar as filthy lucre.

Still, there are occasions when outward signs of material comfort are commented upon. The subtext, whether approving or admonishing, is always: "How can he afford that on what we pay him?" Smart cloths, stylish eyewear, natty ties, quality shoes, what suburb I live in, and even good grooming all excite comment that assumes someone in the clergy must look poverty-stricken to maintain moral authority.

For the record, before Ministry, I used to make decent money, and invested it in property, and good shoes and suits that wouldn't go spectacularly out of fashion anytime soon. These still serve me well. Over the past six years I have naturally topped them up, but topped them up frugally, and I hardly ever pay retail. I buy:

• buy op-shop shirts and ties of often remarkable quality
• discontinued, seconds, or heavily marked-down suits
• second-hand electronics

The only thing I try not to skimp on is shoes, our primary connection to mother earth. "Look after your shoes, and your shoes will look after you" my father always said. Generally, this means the Florsheim clearance outlet.

Dyed in the blood of the lamb.

But here's the thing: I miss having a safe, fun, reliable car. You can keep it the way you want, play the music you love, have a little privacy on the roads, and stay warm, cool, dry in all weathers. Naturally, like the author of the article, I would want to have the car I want; no one should be able to tell me what to drive. But as soon as I roll up in my ultimate fantasy vehicle (this one)...

1968 Jaguar E-Type. Perhaps the most beautiful and powerful English sports care ever made.

then the JUDGING will commence.

And you know that's true. No, it's not environmentally friendly. Yes, it is a fetish object of conspicuous consumption. No, one does not imagine anyone in a dog collar emerging from it. Yes, it is an index of my shallowness to lust after a hunk of retro metal. I'm only human.

But God I want one. And I could buy one. Tomorrow. It might not be a smart purchase, just an expensive vanity, but what the hell? You're a long time dead...

But you know that ain't gonna happen. The cognitive dissonance will be too great. And worse, in a context where folks get judged for not travelling with a damn 'keeper-cup' absolutely everywhere, this would bring out the worst in UUs--the tendency to sanctimony--a force which no moral authority can withstand. (There's a rich irony for you...)

On the other hand nothing feels as good as judging others, especially by standards one doesn't need to maintain oneself.

For example, I don't use plastic straws, 'cos their bad for the planet. Not using them affords two pleasures: the pleasure in saving the planet, and the pleasure of judging those who do use them. The air on the moral high ground is always Alpine-pure. So maybe I SHOULD buy this car, and give everyone the opportunity to feel more righteous than the Minister. 

But I'll probably settle for Prius...powered, as we know, by the inexhaustible fuel supply of one's own smug self-righteousness.

Kafka-esque Presidency

(This will appear in the next issue of Quest (the newsletter of ANZUUA), as the first of a regular column called "Presidential Ponderings")

Franz Kafka begins his story "The Metamorphosis" with one of the great openings in world literature:

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous vermin."

​Gregor's shock, at once horrifying and comical, has become my own. Waking up from drug-and-flu induced dreams on a Sunday last October to find that I had been elected (appointed?) ANZUUA president in absentia and unopposed will probably not be the only Kafka-esque thing that happens over the course of the next few years.

Because I meant what I said at the BGM (through a healthy proxy)--that I had zero interest in presiding over an organisation content with managing its own decline and irrelevance, and that if you don't want a brisk (and probably brusque) change agent, please don't vote for me. And so it follows (as does the night the day) that you've only got yourselves to blame for what follows from turning me into this...President-creature. 

As regards the 2017 ANZUUA conference, I can't read a room I wasn't in, but reports from eye-witnesses suggest we did ourselves no favours as an association, and I think anybody who was there will know why. Let me say, straight up, that I have zero tolerance for bullying in any context or form. Committee meetings and General meetings will be forums where mutual respect and democratic principles will be firmly enforced. Those who insist that their will prevails by shouting down opposition may wish to consider whether they care to attend any such future events. We need to stop these petty internecine wars if we're ever going to grow and thrive together. 

But maybe that's a mistaken assumption. Perhaps, in our heart of hearts, we don't actually want to grow and thrive together. Perhaps we are prepared to let ANZUUA burn on the altar of our personal/local hobby-horses. Often, the core of such self-seeking destructiveness is having ONE SACRED GOAL against which all others must be disregarded. Social justice martyrdom must trump nourishing fellowship. Atheism must trump theism. Bourgeois politeness must trump speaking prophetic witness. I use the word 'trump' knowingly...

If Unitarians are anything, they are the church of BOTH/AND rather than the church of EITHER/OR. The heart of our spirituality is seeing the divine not in one or another isolated things, but in all beings and all things. This is the stern challenge of our Unitarian faith that has never been as easy as it looks. As an association of churches and fellowships, we have to make enough space in our hearts and in our forums so that all concerns and dreams can be heard and gently held.  Love, and the respect that follows from it, is the one and only trump card we hold.

With that caveat out of the way, here are a few general directions in which the current ANZUUA committee is heading:

1. Freeing up the frozen assets in the Bottomley Trust
2. Developing an annual budget
3. Developing criteria for material support of small and emerging congregations/fellowships
4. Developing methods of greater resource sharing and communication amongst our congregations
5. Developing regional ANZUUA in-house print material for all congregations.

Also, feel free to write or call anytime to express hopes, dreams, concerns, whatever. My personal email is robmacpherson1@hotmail.com and my direct line is 0419 550543.

With every good wish and blessing for our shared future,

Gregor Samsa  Rev. Rob MacPherson, President