Adidas-wearing pastor has a goal for Salt Lake City Unitarians: Get a kick out of life

  So, had a Tribune assignment to profile a new pastor at Salt Lake 1st Unitarian Church. 

  When he politely, and eloquently, declined to offer the usual background  -- age, marital status, family background -- I thought how will this possibly work? But it did, going to show even a 60+(+) semiretired journalist can learn a new trick now and then. 

  I thought it turned out rather well, and as always, Francisco Kjolseth found the less-traveled photos path to make the page pop. Kudos, again, to Editor Dave Noyce, another one-of-a-kind character blessing my universe, and a talented wordsmith to boot. 

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     After 34 years with outspoken social and political activist Tom Goldsmith at its helm, Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church is turning to a contemplative Harvard Divinity School-educated minister and educator to help chart its future.

    But as interim pastor, the Rev. Ian White Maher will not be replacing the Rev. Goldsmith, who retired from the pulpit in May. Instead, the Portsmouth, N.H., native has a two-year contract to help the nearly century-old, 300-member church at 569 S. 1300 East contemplate both its congregational and civic missions before selecting a permanent senior pastor.

    “I’m not just here as some sort of consultant to make sure the church is healthy, though that is part of my job,” Maher explains. “But truly why I am here is to help people believe that they can fall in love with this life. . . to truly fall in love again despite all the grief and heartache we see.”

    Indeed, Maher — whose own activist credentials are hardly lacking, including advocacy for immigrant, LGBTQ and racial rights as well as what he characterizes as “multiple civil disobedience arrests” — sees the inward, contemplative journey as going hand in hand with First Unitarian’s long history of pushing for social justice, income equality and environmental protections.

    “There are so many people today who feel completely disconnected from their spiritual lives, and from organized religion,” Maher says, citing a 2014 Pew Research study showing 23% of Americans identify as “nones” when asked their religion — up from 16% in 2007. (During the same time period, self-identified Christians dipped to 71% from 78%).

    That’s [more than] a fifth of the American population. You have all these people that are ‘unchurched.’ And that doesn’t mean they are [all] atheists; it just means that what had been working is no longer working,” Maher contends. “I honestly, truly believe that the problems that we are facing — war, refugee problems, income inequality problems — are not actually our [real] problems. Our problems are greed, alienation and loneliness, and these are actually spiritual problems.”

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     To read the rest of this story, and view photos that illustrate it, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/22/new-adidas-wearing-pastor/

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: Times for deep reflection, repentance and resolve

(Excerpts from my story in Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune on the beginning of Judaism's High Holy Days)

   Listen carefully during the daylight hours of Tuesday and Wednesday, and you may hear the blasts of the shofar rising from synagogues along the Wasatch Front.

  From a twisted ram’s horn come tones both alarming and plaintive, at the same time triumphant and hauntingly like the sobs of a lost child for its mother: This is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, which begins Monday evening — a two-day observance as rich in millennia-old traditions as it is in how 21st-century Jews in Utah and across the planet understand and experience the holiday.

  “Rosh Hashana has so many different meanings to it,” Rabbi Samuel Spector of Salt Lake City’s Congregation Kol Ami acknowledges. “In Judaism, we say that this was the day that God created humankind. There is a big focus during Rosh Hashana on togetherness, on seeing the holiness and humanity and one another, and in coming together as a community.

  “It’s a time for us to really reset. Ten days later is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,” Spector says. “We learn that, leading up to Yom Kippur, we are supposed to do an accounting of our souls and think about how we can be better, how we can both make our world better and be better ourselves, and make our world better in the new year.”

 To read the rest of my story, and see more photos, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/05/utah-jews-enter-high-holy/