Re-creation Lessons from a Kitten
Bill Musser, Northeast Iowa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
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In the beginning … a friend of ours notified us that some kind people a few miles away had found a stray kitten and were trying to locate a home for it. We briefly considered the fact that we already have a number of animals in our household, then decided to pay a visit to the little orphan and see what kind of “fit” we might be for it. The rescuing family had identified it as female, and within minutes of meeting it, our foster son piped up with the idea of the name “Annie” because “she” was orange-haired and all alone in this world. Almost immediately upon arriving home with “her”, however, we discovered that a name change might be in order, since “she” turned out to be a “he.” So “Annie” became “Mannie”, and after a few days of observing Mannie repeatedly transform (“morph” in computer animation jargon) from a placid, napping feline bundle into a flaming ball of energy, darting around the house, playing and wrestling with everything in sight, we added the “Morphin’” to his name, and he became “Li’l Morphin’ Mannie”, though we still refer to him most frequently as “The Kit-ten.”

The addition of Mannie to our home has brought us a new beginning, a different way of looking at the world, one that is more whimsical and playful, one that elicits frequent bursts of laughter from us all. We are not just the same old family plus one new, isolated element. The chemistry of our whole household has changed, including the sensibilities of our formerly impervious cat Claude, our forever-wanting-to-be-maternal dog Ginny, the whole family of twelve cautiously chirping canaries headed by the canariarchs Shirley and Dave, and an aquarium full of wary fish. We are beginning anew as a family, because this new element has changed each of us, individually, just a little bit. And we have new stories to tell, now—stories we share among ourselves of Mannie’s antics, stories that tell us who we are as a family, and stories (such as this one) that tell others who we are as well.

Like my family enjoying a new beginning with the addition of “Morphin’ Mannie”, our Northeast Iowa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is celebrating a “new beginning” by joining over 1,000 other congregations affiliated with the national Unitarian Universalist Association. We have “made it official.”  With this new element, the identity of our congregation has changed forever as we feel the support and fellowship of a much larger and older community of Unitarian Universalists, reaching around the world and across the millennia.

In recognition of this new step and of the new year as well, during the month of January the services of our Fellowship focused on “Beginnings”, recalling creation stories from many cultures and also the personal stories each one of us contributes to the whole as we set out on our journey together. We recognize that being human means changing one’s mind, opening one’s heart, sensitizing one’s conscience, making room for transformation, learning more information. We are a “morphin’ many”, always in the process of becoming who we are. We remember that “in the beginning …” is a daily occurrence. Life begins anew, never the same as it was before, but always present in our “becomings”. Those ancient stories of creation are “true”, not because they are precise or scientific descriptions of how or when things happened but because they speak to us of universal experience, of the breath we all share, of our common origins and destiny as creatures of the earth, of the reality and necessity of beginning anew every day, of the need for re-creation.

Few creatures on earth are as adept at recreation as Li’l Morphin’ Mannie. We are thankful for the fresh perspective, the eruptions of laughter, the good spirit he brings to our home.

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