Community Holy Water and George Downey's Chalice Story

 
As per our annual UUC Groton tradition at the beginning of the Fall season… this week we had our "Gathering of Community Water" ritual during our first "big church" service of the Fall. As always, there was a huge turnout as everyone proudly told their story — I loved it. Moreover, this year that was especially great for me because it rained on The Day I took my US Citizenship Oath and I had gathered that rain water specifically for this ritual. So I proudly said “Dual Citizen” as my "word" that goes with the water and that was very meaningful for me.

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On the right you see a picture of the huge "card" that everyone got to sign for George Downey's 90^th birthday along with a recent picture of him. Below is the text from his story about his most generous gift to the UUC community sometime after the year 2000.

“The Chalice Story ” — by George Downey      Several years ago Jean and I arrived, joining with others in the congregation for Sunday worship at First Parish Church of Groton. Our Chalice then was a pewter vessel showing some dents, with a somewhat distorted rim, and sitting slightly askew on its base.      Some place in Elea's sermon that morning my mind strayed to imagining a new Chalice vessel: what shape, how big, how wide, how high, what wood, what artistic presence? Well, my mind got back to Elea's sermon, but I took all of those fleeting thoughts home with me.      First, it was to the drafting board: rough sketches, finally a satisfying idea, scale drawings, full-scale drawings, templates cut to the shape of the finished design. The wood should be mahogany, like the molding trim around the top of the box pews.      It was time to go to my woodworking shop. I had a supply of leftover mahogany pieces. The pedestal is a stack of disks of diminishing diameters. These are glued and clamped. While the glue hardened for seven days it allowed time for me to re-sharpen all the lathe chisels to razor-sharp edges.      The lathe will turn the pieces slowly at first. The pedestal and the bowl are shaped separately on the lathe. The speed is increased as the pieces are rounded, and increased more for shaping. The pieces are sanded on the rotating lathe. The pedestal and bowl must fit together precisely for the final assembly and gluing. The last step is a finish applied to bring out the beauty of the mahogany wood. To this point this is just a created object in my workshop.      When the wooden vessel made its way from my workbench to our sanctuary and was placed on its stand, with a flaming candle, it was infused with new meaning as Our Chalice, truly a metamorphosis in wood!      The flaming Chalice is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism, and it is a centering symbol of our gathered community.      Our Chalice flame embraces all who come! - Sept 2014

George tells me the "he's not on-line", so I guess he won't likely see this. But I wanted to post it nevertheless because I very much value our heritage and believe firmly in doing whatever I can to help preserve it. As you can read in my blog articles about my UUC participation, I've been going to this Church for many years yet I had no idea of the story behind our beloved mahogany wooden chalice. Thank you so much, George !
 

Proud to be an American — Citizen Pammett

At long last it finally happened — I made my way through all of the tedious steps and have just taken the final step — the pledge of allegiance to the USA. Yup. Citizen Pammett and I am Proud to be an American!

Never having seen such a naturalization ceremony, I didn't know much about what to expect, so it was pretty interesting. First lesson learned: When they say "it starts at 10:30", what that means is that some people will arrive by then, but they don't actually start the ceremony until after everyone who is going to arrive has had their paperwork checked, and they're all sitting in their seats. So in my case that meant that we actually got going just after 12:30.

Then the interesting part started. First up, they said that we were 643 applicants, from 95 different countries. Then they called out all of the countries in alphabetical order, encouraging everyone to stand up and cheer when their country was called. Not unlike the Olympics… it was an amazingly long time until they got to Canada at which point I did cheer loudly to make my presence known — as if it wasn't already obvious enough due to my Uncle Sam top hat and celebratory garb. Much to my surprise, it was the only such hat that I saw all day. The festive garb was the brainchild and birthday gift from my baby girl, shown with me on the left when we went out for lunch afterwards with my longtime friend, Austin.

The ceremony was actually more interesting than I expected, featuring a very inspirational "keynote" from the Judge — herself an immigrant — who presided over the ceremony. Her quote, which totally enrolled me, was [that I was] “Pledging myself to an enterprise in human freedom”. Yeah !   I totally get it. After the Oath, tears came to my eyes as I sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” for my first time as an American Citizen. I was also touched by the symbolism of it being such a rainy day (new life). When I got home I put out a container to catch rain drops and I will use that water as my "Citizenship" contribution this Fall when we do our UUC tradition of combining community water to make ritual water for the coming year.

For comparisson — on the right you see what I looked like when I got my green card in 1982, which was already 5 years after I'd come to the USA. Yea... things change. How many times have I had to explain that at border crossings?
Which brings me to answering the question everyone asks: Why did I do it ?
Basically, to me it was a mater of Integrity. Technically, I'll always be a Canadian. But I have lived and worked my entire life outside of Canada — years in France but mostly in the USA. And at this point in my life I want to "go home" when I retire — home to my country. And though I have lived elsewhere for almost half my life, deep down I feel like this is my home and always will be. So I just wanted to make the commitment officially and take my rightful place doing my part in “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”.

So that's my story and I'm stickin' to it  !
 

Citizen Pammett → Declaration of Independence on July 4th

 
On this lovely day in July I just happen to stumble upon this really terrific video that I've embeded below.  

Of course, we've all heard about the vote that you see in that video clip — with the representatives from each of the 13 colonies when they voted to put their stake in the ground and founded this country. So that's not news. But what struck me when I watched this morning was how brave those people must have been → standing up to what had been the largest military force in the world. Of course it didn't come easy and imagine what it would be like doing that and knowing that people would die making this American Dream — this Dream of Freedom — come true.

 
So what does that challenge look like today — when we're facing a world that's so unimaginably different from even just a few decades ago? Click on the video, and as you watch it... think about what you are being called to stand up for in our new global economy, social-media dominated world.
 

The Long and Winding Road - to US Citizenship

 
Another very important milestone on my journey towards becoming a "naturalized citizen" of the USA, today, so here's another selfie.

The selfie on the right is me outside USCIS → the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (formerly known as the INS) in Lawrence, Ma, after the long-awaited citizenship test, which I passed with flying colors on this lovely day in June.

And now I think there's an excellent chance that it will happen in time for me to vote in November → the USCIS interviewer said that the only remaining step would be the swearing in, and that could be with the July group, otherwise likely to be in August (though of course they can never promise anything).


If anyone is interested in the process, it's well explained here :

 

Fingerprinting Without Ink - USA Citizenship

This selfie represents me at a very important milestone in my 30-year journey from being a "landed immigrant" to a "naturalized citizen" of the USA.
 

On the left — my selfie — is me waiting at the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (the INS) in Lawrence, Ma, for my appointment to get my fingerprints taken for my official citizenship records. And they did it without using any ink, unless you wanna call a full-hand touchpad gizmo something like digital ink.
 
Of course this is not the long-awaited citizenship, yet. I don't know when that will clear. But I do think I have reached the point where it is inevitable. There is nothing left that I have to do that I have any big barriers around, which is way more than I can say about most of the other steps along this path. The only major thing left is the interview (which I think is the same thing as the citizenship test) so I will have to study up a bit for that.
 
So there is a chance that it could happen in time for me to vote in November... But I rather suspect more of a delay than that, even though I must admit that the INS folks did pretty good getting to the fingerprinting part already given that I didn't actually submit my citizenship application — finally — until mid-March, 2014.