The Greg-stein Files, Part 3: Religious Educator edition

The third in a series of personal notes focusing on gratitude.

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May 2022

Dear Melody,

I will miss you when you’re gone. 

For many years you’ve been vital to our family’s involvement in the church. I don’t need to remind you of the importance of child care! Beyond that, UUC’s religious education programs have helped Phil grow from a typically self-absorbed kid into a sensitive, kind teen. No single person or family can take full credit for that, but you have certainly been a key member of the team.

If I may make a small confession, though, for several years I thought of you as kind of a generic administrator — someone who mostly coordinated volunteers, sent out email newsletters, made decisions about curricula, kept track of kids’ personalities and needs, etc. A highly competent administrator, to be sure, but someone who simply got things done, as opposed to someone with a visible, distinct personality.

I can’t remember exactly when this change happened, but it happened when you were preaching. Suddenly the black box of your background and your philosophy and your personal quirks opened up a bit. You were fierce; you were eloquent; you were funny! You were born to preach, it seemed.

In searching the UUC website for the original “Whoa, Melody!” sermon, I came across one that may or may not have been it: your 2019 message on “Seeking Radiance,” which centered on your pilgrimage to the Keats-Shelley House. There are many wonderful moments in that sermon. For me, the most striking aspect of all is the way you were able to re-inhabit your high school and college self. I love how you were able to conjure up — for yourself, and for all of us — what it was like to be a teen bewildered by belief systems but determined to make sense of them, a teen transformed by the irrational beauty of romantic poetry.

This leads me to two wishes for your future. 

To be clear, I have no idea where you’re going next. But kids deserve to be guided by adults who really remember what it was like to be a kid, and such adults are rare. For that reason, among others, I wish that your future work, like your present work, allows you to be a mentor to young people.

My second wish is that you keep preaching, at least occasionally. When you take the pulpit, Melody, your words have a power that I would not have believed until you delivered them and I heard them for myself.

I will miss you. All of us will miss you.

As some Unitarian Universalists would say, and as others would not: Godspeed.

Greg Crowther