Do you fear public speaking? If so, you are in a good company of more than 70% of us in the U.S. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has said, “According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death... This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” It makes a preacher (or a teacher or a comedian) seem like a super hero. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll be leading the Southwest UU Ministers in a training about how to preach without a manuscript or notes. I've added lots of resources to the website for them and for you, if this is a skill you would like to have.
I've never been afraid of public speaking (though sometimes I have been afraid of what I need to say) because I know one indispensable thing -- when anyone rises to speak or perform before a group an immense wave of positive anticipation radiates from the listeners. We want things to go well. We want to be delighted. We want the experience to be entirely positive. I believe that this is the source of heckling -- a strong sense of having one's hopes dashed, of being disappointed.
Worship is a shared experience and not a performance. It is to be judged on its authenticity, its effectiveness, its impact but never on whether or not it was perfectly done. Like life itself, much of its beauty is in its flaws and surprises and serendipity and in the eye and heart and mind of the beholder. There are no spectators. No one comes out unchanged. Even so, be not afraid.

God comes to the hungry in the form of food. Mahatma Gandhi

I am in Kenya to get a sense of the culture of the Kenyan Unitarian Universalists, but that is not best done through worship attendance. To know the power of their vision, I am exploring their social justice projects. In Kitengela, one ministry is food.

The traditional staple food of many African countries is a cornmeal (posho) mush called in Swahili ugali. It is eaten combined with sukuma wiki (literally "stretch the week") which can be collards or kale but is often walking stick cabbage. You mix the two together and eat them with your fingers. I guess the closest thing we have to this back home is greens and cornbread.

Familiar with the necessity of this staple food, the Kitengela congregation is serving their community throughout the entire cycle. They have a bit of farmland in the Central Rift Valley where they hire local unemployed people to help them with planting and harvesting maize. The kernels come to the city to a small rented room where they have installed one of three posho mills which they are purchasing on credit. There a local woman who belongs to the church is given meaningful employment grinding the maize into meal and selling it inexpensively to the neighbors. The congregation provides cornmeal to its poorest members. Ruai Congregation also has a posho mill in operation in another part of Nairobi metro area.

When the loud posho mill is turned on, women and children come immediately with little containers to buy the meal. Local chickens also hang around to get the gleanings when the maize is hand sifted in a frame providing excellent and free chicken feed.

This is such an enviable project and a good idea of what congregational development means in the Kenyan context. It is not about worship buildings and paid ministry. It is about well thought out and well executed public service. In Kitengela, they would love to go from 10 acres to 20 on their farm and to be able to rent other spaces for the two additional mills that they are purchasing. Their ambition is for their neighbors to be fed, healthy and employed.

It has been a few days since I posted an update, and I promise more later but here's the skinny. April is the rainy (and less expensive) season to visit Kenya, so I expected some rain. I arrived to and would find no power at my adorable garden cottage. After 24 hours in airplanes and airports, I rolled the taxi window down and nearly hung my head out into the cool Friday night rain. Yes, driving in Nairobi is everything you've ever heard and more.

These blackouts are just part of Nairobi life, and we've had 3 since I arrived including yesterday when I took a day for rest and reading. I've bought many great books by Kenyan authors since arriving. I'll post some about that later. If you do not have something by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, download or order something today. I started with his classic Weep Not, Child and have moved on to the more recent The Wizard of Crows. Don't read him because he's African; read him because he's marvelous.

Everyone that I've met has been wonderfully friendly and helpful. The picture above is of me touring Bomas of Africa with my driver Pius. This is a traditional Kikuyu hut, and he is of the Kikuyu. The sign says "Grandmother's Hut" which is what I am to most folks: Grandmother or Auntie or Mzungu (white person). A mzungu can draw children wherever she walks. Every once in awhile, someone calls me the old British colonial term memsahib which I find a bit embarrassing.

I've discovered that people from Louisiana are uniquely adapted to life in Africa. We are used to things being just a little bit worn out, and bugs in our room incite in us curiosity rather than fear. In my yard, I've been stalking green and blue butterflies and bothering William the gardener about all of the plants. There are at least fifty things blooming outside.

But the highlight of my trip was certainly visiting in the home of my good friend Victor Denis and being able to meet his wife Pauline, his daughter Michelle and his son Scofield. We walked through his neighborhood of Kitengela to church services with the Kitengela congregation. The hospitality as it is everywhere here was wonderful. We visited while folks gathered, had a service, a wonderful meal and some questions for me from the church elders and the many young adults who attended.

This was truly the post-post-modern church of which we have spoken. Over two dozen people about evenly divided between children and adults sat inside for the worship, while a collection of young women created the meal and talked quietly in the kitchen and almost a dozen more children and a few adults played in the courtyard. No one was hassled about being where they wanted to be on that fine bright Sunday morning. Even after the service, more people showed up for fellowship with a few arriving as late as 2 p.m. Today, I'm off to visit some of the outreach projects of this congregation. Yes, it's raining. For more pictures, keep your eye on my website.

Day Two: I've been traveling 16 hours now and am about to board my next 8 hour flight. I had such plans to sleep on the flight to London and then stay up all day to make the time adjustment. But travel is one of my favorite things, and I was up all night playing with the features of the brand new 777 that brought me here.

It has that posh business class with the little cubicles and reclining seats with major footrests. I viewed it all on my way to coach. There is a wonderful entertainment personal entertainment system for each seat with a wonderful variety of music, tv, movies, etc. I watched Hyde Park on Hudson and a lot of tv shows. I even listened to Kitaro but couldn't get to sleep.

However, at this point, sitting here with all of the other people who are heading for Nairobi I have that post-slumber party feeling that either the room or I is moving. Back home it's 2:30 am, and everyone is fast asleep. Wish me well as I try to stay awake today in the hope that I will sleep when the day's travel is done.

Day One: About to board the flight to London and then Nairobi, I had time for lunch. My usual go-to lunch at DFW is a veggie burger and baked fries at U Food in Terminal B. However, I'm living the high life in D today so the choices are more upscale and the Admiral's Club is enormous. For a grand adventure, there must be Mexican food lest I never eat it again.

The Cantina Laredo has my vegan recommendation for sit down service: enchiladas with avocado, artichoke heart and poblanos topped with tomatillo sauce with a side of jicama slaw. I am fortified, but I regret to tell you that I do not post pictures of my food. By the way, I am not eating vegan food for ethical reasons, and I'm not religious about it. The reduced level of pain and increased energy I've had since trying this in August 2012 has been truly remarkable. If anything hurts, you might want to try it.

This association between travel and Mexican food goes way back with me. I remember flying into my hometown in Shreveport on a Delta flight out of Atlanta. It was only the second time I had ever flown, and I was in retreat from Boston. I had moved there in the summer of 1976 (Bicentennial and World Series year) to see something of the world. My old high school boyfriend was a student at MIT, and I crashed in the dorm for a long time. But finally I found an apartment on Green (near the old Orson Wells Theater) and a job in a Brattle Square boutique only to be KO'd by winter.

I prowled around the frigid streets of Cambridge looking for fixes of corn muffins, Dr. Peppers and a concoction of fire-breathingly hot beef chunks in a bowl that someone had the nerve to call chili. I spent Christmas by myself in a snowstorm. I can't say that it was a bad day really, but I was whipped by Boston's winter in February and headed for home.

A middle-aged gentleman sitting next to me as we flew toward my home chatted me up about my life. There is so much ignominy in packing away a dream and heading home once again, but my family was taking me out to supper at a Mexican restaurant as soon as I arrived I told him. "They will hail the prodigal daughter and kill the fatted taco," he proclaimed. And they did.

I'm thinking about democracy today. Mainly because tomorrow is election day in Kenya. When I first started planning my trip to Kenya, my friend Victor warned me against coming in March. He didn't know if I would be safe from the violence that has plagued Kenyan elections. Wait, he warned me. Like people all over the world, I am waiting to see what happens in Kenya tomorrow and how people there respond.

Unitarian Universalists have a principle that says we promote and affirm "the use of the democratic process within our congrega- tions and in society at large." It's a bigger, more challenging statement than we can every know. Democratic process is hard.

It doesn't necessarily mean one person/one vote. There are very few moments in which all of the voters in a country or an institution are asked to vote. Rather we delegate our vote to our elected officials be they presidents, senators, mayors or boards. I have seen many people in congregations struggle with the idea that a good decision can be made without their presence in the room.

But that is not the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge arises when we lose the vote. Do we really believe in the democratic process then? Do we have faith in the wisdom of the process? Can we be gracious and supportive? More and more, lately, we cannot. What the Kenyans are experiencing is not so different than what I see around me. Violence is not always physical. We can wreak havoc upon the mind, society, our fundamental relationships. What if we saw losing as an opportunity to grow?

I'm already having a hard time sitting down to do these posts. I promised an update on Sunday. It is now noon on Tuesday. This is what I have always feared about these blogs -- the relentless pressure to keep to a schedule while trying to be creative.

I learned writing from journalism training and poetry. My work on newspapers serves me well here since we were trained to put our rear end in the chair and start typing. Edit it later. As a matter of fact, I tended to edit it with a very sharp blade in layout once I saw what it looked like on the page. Once a lifestyle editor, forever a lifestyle editor.

Poetry is a practice somewhat like brewing tea and on the other hand like suffering from a fever. It has the same quality as revelation -- an inability to turn away while knowing that a watched poem never peaks. For many decades now, my soul has not been tortured (in that sophomoric and euphoric manner common to college girls) that makes poetry flow. I pour that urge into my preaching and my teaching and blue moon chatting. As I write that last sentence I see that what worries me about a blog, a poem, a published article is the permanence. Permanence is an unnatural force and a fiction.

My sabbatical starts tomorrow, and I've already broken a big sabbatical rule. Working your slaves, your animals, the soil or yourself double time to prepare for the sabbatical year is strictly prohibited in the Hebrew scriptures that describe this tradition. I'm running like crazy right up until 5:30 when I head out to pick up my husband Robert.

However, I'm leaving this computer behind and won't be posting anything until Sunday, Feb 24. We sail away on the Disney Magic tomorrow for an 8-night cruise. By the time I get home, I'm pretty sure that I will be in a new mindset entirely and ready to embark on my next big adventure. This website and blog are part of what I'm fixin' to learn.

As Mickey always said, "C ya' real soon!!"