Sparks in the Dark

Universalism Rap

2011-06-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

I was, a few months ago, carpet bombed by the muse. I don't read music, I don't play an instrument, and essentially sing only in groups. I rarely write any sort of poetry. So finding myself suddenly with what was clearly song and... rap... was more than unexpected.

Worse, it demanded it be presented. And now it has been; sung as part of a sermon, sung to a camp, and shared in print with classmates.

So now I'm unleashing it. Feel free to rap it yourself, however the spirit moves you. I just ask that if you use it in a service or such--or reprint it--that you keep my name associated with it.

As I've performed it, the refrain's sung and the rest is a sort of spoken word rap.

Universalism Rap
© Patrick McLaughlin (with many thanks to Marcia Stanard for her assistance)

It's a crazy idea, in the end love wins
and God's looking forward to forgiving sins.
It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

If you go back to the second century,
Origen preached to folks like you and me,
saying God doesn’t hate, God’s all about love,
and salvation happens when push comes to shove.

It says love is patient; love is kind.
We know that love is crazy and can be kind of blind.
It says love’s forgiving; it sure isn’t hate—
and even devils are forgiven when it gets real late.

It makes plain sense, said Hosea Ballou.
Eternal punishment, it just can’t be true!
So he wrote it and preached it in the 19^th C—
and made a whole lot of people just crazy.

It's a crazy idea, in the end love wins
and God's looking forward to forgiving sins.
It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

He wasn’t alone; there was also John Murray,
whose tale reads like Job in the Bible story.
His family all died; he was jailed for debt—
so his country and his pulpit and his faith he fled.

His ship stuck off New Jersey, at Good Luck Point,
where he met a man – Potter – who owned a joint;
a church he’d built, for someone to come preaching
universal salvation (he knew about the teaching).

Murray was done, “I’ll be gone on the sea!”
Potter insisted, said there’d be no breeze.
“I know god sent you here this church to fill,”
and Murray preached, ‘cause on Sunday it was still.

It's a crazy idea, in the end love wins
and God's looking forward to forgiving sins.
It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

Like Jesus planting mustard in the parable field,
this crazy idea that all souls get healed.
And most who preach it just get the sack—
but universal salvation keeps coming back.

It’s a gospel of inclusion that some teach.
Final reconciliation might be preached.
They’re just different words for God’s great scheme—
everyone’s included in that final dream.

It's a crazy idea, in the end love wins
and God's looking forward to forgiving sins.
It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

So follow the logic when you teach God's love;
your hope isn't just in heaven above—
because heaven's on earth, wherever love's found
and everywhere we go is holy ground.
‘Cause truth's not held in just one place;
God's been talking to the whole human race.
There's not one truth, or just one way,
and there's not gonna be any judgment day.

Because heaven's on earth, wherever love's found,
and everywhere we go is holy ground.
Yes, heaven's on earth, wherever love's found
and everywhere we go is holy ground.

It's a crazy idea, in the end love wins
and God's looking forward to forgiving sins.
It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

It's a crazy idea, being loved so well,
No one in the end gets damned to hell.

Nuh-uh. No hell. Amen.

Of Wild, Feral, and Domestic UUs...

2011-05-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I've made a correction based on Chris Walton catching an error I made while moving data from the World's pdf to Excel. I've corrected the data in the columns so that it's accurate, but am striking through the erroneous data in the text and replacing it with the corrected numbers. Thank you, Chris!

Also, Christine asked about how I extracted numbers from the Pew survey on the unchurched, which made me realize I'd forgotten to write about assumptions and method, as I'd intended. The basic assumptions; the two surveys are accurate and reliable, and the Pew survey includes both churched (member) and unchurched UUs in proper proportions, as well as that the two data sets, taken four years apart, represent pretty much the same population. I think all of those are reasonable, but any one of them might be questioned.

It's that second assumption that the actual math rests on. If member UUs are represented in Pew's sample in proper proportion to the overall population, and non-member UUs are as well, then we can take the Pew number, subtract the UUA's adult membership data, and discover how many unchurched UUs there are (the "wild" and "feral" populations). This, in fact, is what was done in the post I linked to in Transient and Permanent. When I saw that post, and the data from UU World, I realized that one could do some fairly simple algebra; we had the Pew numbers (UUs at large) and the UU World data (member UUs). Backing out the UU World numbers from the Pew numbers would give the numbers for the free range UUs. If the two sub-population were the same size, I'd simply have subtracted (Pew - UU World = unknown). Transient and Permanent's insight that there were three free range UUs for every member UU (actually, just over three--the numbers are 76% free range and 24% members--since I don't believe that the numbers we're working with are that precise, I worked with the 3:1 ratio) just required weighting the numbers. Thus the actual formula looks like 4(Pew) = UU World + 3(unknown) -- the need to multiply Pew's number is because we're working in percentages, not absolute numbers.

-------------------------

On Facebook this morning, Chris Walton posted a link that I'd previously missed at UU World, a comparison of data from two polls, one by UU World in 2004 and one by Pew Research in 2008. Both look at reported data from UUs. What's fascinating are the differences....

I am indebted as well to this posting at Transient and Permanent, which mulled over some of the Pew data three years ago.

Here's the basic data:

	UU World	Pew Research
Income
< $30,000	14%	19%
$30k–$49,999	13%	25%
$50k–$74,999	19%	16%
$75k–$99,999	16%	13%
$100,000>	25%	26%
No response	13%

Education
< high school	0%	3%
High school	2%	16%
Some college	11%	30%
College grad.	20%	22%
Post-graduate	65%	29%
No response

Gender
Male	31%	54%
Female	65%	46%
No answer	4%

Age
Under 30*	4%	18%
Over 65	29%	16%

The asterisk notes that UU World used the UU range of 18-35 for Young Adults, when surveying.

Pew surveyed some large number of Americans and calculated that there were, as of 2008, some 683,000 UUs. Adult UUs. Given the data from the UUA at the time, Transient and Permanent observed that this meant that there were just over three UUs out there, unchurched (but familiar enough with us to claim to be UUs) for every one of us who's on the books as a member. That's a startling number.

The Pew data alone is striking. In the population at large, slightly over half of those affirming they're UUs are male. But no more than a third of those who are members are male. Given the imperfect overlap on the age ranges, it looks like there are five times as many under 30s who say they're UUs as are members. Etc., etc. The numbers clearly indicate that there's a very real difference between the different UU populations, the unchurched--what worker referred to as "free range," recently--and the churched.

And then it hit me. The Pew survey wasn't of the unchurched. It's of those who responded that they were UUs; members and not, both. The difference between the churched and unchurched would be even more extreme. So I did some number crunching (after having sufficient coffee, because uncaffeinated this morning, I managed the trick of multiplying billions by two (I think that's what I did, anyway; it's irreproducible) and came up with trillions). What I did was to figure out what the unchurched population would have to have responded with in order for Pew to get its numbers after adding in the churched part of its sample. (Note to self: Take this back to the kids to prove that there are occasional adult uses for algebra.)

The numbers are, of course, imperfect; there are rounding errors, and such. So columns do *not* add up to 100%, etc.

	Churched	Unchurched
Total UU pop	24%	76%

Income
< $30,000	14%	20%
$30k–$49,999	13%	29%
$50k–$74,999	19%	15%
$75k–$99,999	16%	12%
$100,000>	25%	26%
No response	13%

Education
< high school	0%	4%
High school	2%	21%
Some college	11%	36%
College grad.	20%	23%
Post-graduate	65%	17%
No response	3%

Gender
Male	31%	62%
Female	65%	40%
No answer 4	4%

Age
Under 30*	4%	23%
Over 65	29%	20%

The classism that some of us have talked about becomes more apparent when we look at what economic class member UUs are likely to be in, versus non-member UUs. Ouch. Interestingly, the people in the upper middle class-to-wealthy range are the only group that seems unaffected. They're equally likely to be UUs.

Education is even more striking. That's where the real class boundary is stunningly apparent. Mark Morrison-Reed's analysis that education is the single best marker for whether one is likely to be a (member) UU is clearly on the money. Ouch, ouch.

Gender... ok, so it's not news to anyone that the outwardly religious have been predominately female for well over a century. It thus isn't surprising to see that UU members are two-thirds women. But if it was a surprise that over half of those who say they're UUs are male, to find that three out of five people who are unchurched UUs are male was startling.

And then there's the age data. ~~65%~~ 29% of those who are members are over 65. Only ~~17%~~ 20% of those who are unchurched UUs are over 65--and while at most 4% of those who are UU members are under 30, 23% of those who aren't members are under 30.

So what's the picture look like--in very crude, simplistic averages?

Church-going UUs are relatively well-off, extremely well-educated older white women. Indeed, that's what we see in congregations. "Free range" UUs are probably middle class, but are pretty likely to be lower middle class, if not poor; they're much less educated (perhaps struggling still to get educations?), they're young, and male. Simply taking US demographics--young, male, lower education and income... they're also far, far more likely to be mixed race or people of color.

Now that's a divide that's going to take a lot of work to bridge.

You've GOT to be kidding me...

2011-05-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

(Okay, so I've been deep in the weeds of my internship for the last eight months. So mostly I've just been too busy with that, and the rest of life, and trying to maintain my family's sense of family--and feeding my own tremulous sense of sanity to blog. And before that, hospital chaplaincy--and HIPPA regulations are more intimidating to the idea of blogging anything having to do with one's life than anything my former life's security clearances might have done. But this... just demanded a rant...)

So, apparently, some folks have been suggesting/arguing that one isn't UU unless one is a member of a congregation. (I'd like to point out here that Rev. Naomi's post is entitled "Faith is not Membership;" we're not disagreeing. I just find her response too gentle for my soul; as I said, it called forth a rant.

And the first rant dropped into the ethereal abyss of the internet. So this one is Mark II, now with less spittle.

You have got to be kidding me. Really? Seriously? Someone wants to really make the assertion that you can't adhere to UUism without being a member of a congregation?

Someone hold back the Logicians of the HUUmanist wing of the faith, because it wouldn't be pretty if they ripped into it.

Really, one only becomes a UU by signing a book (or a membership card--not everyone has books. Some may not even have either of those...)? It's just a club?

So, kids--who aren't permitted by our congregation to be members until they're nearly adults, and only then by a more onerous process than the adults ever go through--aren't UUs? The youth I've chaperoned and ministered to at UU Youth Camps weren't UUs either? My goddaughter, who read the adults at her congregation the riot act (from the pulpit, during a Youth-led service) for their failure to live up to UU standards--those that they have taught to the kids in Children's RE--she wasn't a UU (and if so, what business did she have telling adult UUs that they were an embarrassment to the faith?)?

And the people who've written down--over a decade ago--what their vision of religion is, thinking that no such religion exists... and are overwhelmed to find out that it does, that there are already thousands of people who share their faith--they're not already UUs?

When do the members of a dying congregation cease to be UUs? When the last one goes in and turns off the lights, they are now no longer UUs, just because the congregation failed?

When someone who was raised UU and lives in some benighted backwater (which might, from census data, be some rural area, or might be a vastly populous part of some urban center...) decides to try to found a new congregation... they aren't UU? And they're not until someone else shows up and wants to be one?

Really?

The people who've spent decades feeling alone and isolated, who weep when they join a congregation and ask us where we've been all these years (because we failed them, keeping the light hidden so well that they'd never even heard our name...), they only become UUs when they sign up? Even though their beliefs didn't change in the slightest?

Seriously?

Let us speak then to the false idol of congregationalism, to the fetishising of a means of organization.

Because UUism isn't conferred magically by congregationalism. Baptists are congregationalists, too. And so are many others.

And our Unitarian cousins in Transylvania aren't congregationalists at all.

Congregationalism is simply the vessel in which UUism exists. In our tradition, in our time. But it's not hard to imagine a presbyterian form of UUism (and in fact, it's pretty clear that there are more than a few of us who'd be more comfortable with just such a scheme). But that wouldn't make it not UUism.

So the people who grew up UU, who think of themselves as UUs, who practice their beliefs and faith, and who adhere to the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that we hold up and inculcate--they're not UUs? Just because they either can't attend a UU congregation, or don't want to (or can't) drag themselves to the local congregation on Sunday morning? Or because the music and form of worship that the congregation is wedded to is demonstrably 19th century, and the individuals are used to late 20th and early 21st century forms of UU worship and music that speaks to them?

Words fail me.

On both sides of our tradition, the faithful have been free-rangers; going where the congregations weren't, or where the congregations (or ministers) weren't ready or willing to go. The idea that we want to jam the world into the Procrustean Bed of formal congregational membership so that we can sneer at those outside the walls and insist that they aren't really UUs... is insane. Were it a proposal from the dreaded entity "Boston," there would be a serious risk of the UUA being dissolved, or of a competing association/conference/convention forming (we've done it before).

Get over yourselves.

If there are UUs out there who aren't connected, then it's more likely our fault for not letting them know we exist, or not providing what they need in order to be in covenant and community with us. But for the love of that which has been called god, stop demonizing them. Stop pointing the finger. Stop falling into the illogical trap that imagines that there's something magical and mystical about a signature on a Book. Because there isn't.

The failing is ours, whatever it is. Perhaps it's the daunting paleness of an array of UUs. Perhaps its the grotesque and often ignored (and denied) classist attitudes and behaviors of our congregations. Perhaps its that a foray into Gershwin is avante-garde music for the local congregation. Perhaps... oh, hell, who knows?

But just stop. We are the people who keep trying to draw the circle larger. Not the people who exclude. At least that's our intent; we're human and we fail. But don't try to create an exclusionary communion of the booked held apart from the not-booked. That is just utterly contrary to our traditions, and it's a hideous violation of the universalist spirit.

Here I stand. Love ya. You're entitled your opinion, of course. And I'll insist on your right to hold it. But it doesn't mean I have to respect it.

Fellowships...

2011-01-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

Scott Wells (Boy in the Bands) asks "What's Wrong With Fellowships?"

It's a bit late to reply to there--and I'm aware that I may go on at enough length that I shouldn't reply there. So here...

It seems like the issue of fellowships must be in the (UU) air. It's the third or fourth time in a few days that it's been brought up where I'm aware of it.

I think my first answer is "Who Cares What's Wrong With Fellowships?"

The UUA and AUA (and so far as I can tell, the UCA) have no history of a successful church planting program. Period. With one noteworthy exception--the Fellowship Movement. According to the small volume by that same name, congregations that are, or started as, fellowships account for close to a third of current UU congregations, and about the same percentage of current UUs. And I'm pretty sure that doesn't include congregations that started after the end of the Fellowship Movement, as supported by the UUA (the date escapes me now--in the late-mid 1960s, if memory serves at all). But more congregations have continued to rise up more or less along that model, even without the scant encouragement and assistance.

Great amounts of UUA staff time and significant sums of money have been invested--both before the Fellowship Movement and since--in very intentional church plantings. I don't think that even their great fans would disagree that the results have been profoundly underwhelming, considering the amount of money and support. Particularly compared to the money and support given the the Fellowship Movement (one staff person, Monroe Husbands--a name I doubt the MFC will ever ask anyone about, but should be, and some office support. Plus his slender travel funding).

What flaws would one accept today for an effort that added a few hundred congregations to our movement?

I suspect that the answer is "at least a few; even serious ones."

The complaints I have seen range from "well, many failed," to "they didn't often grow into larger churches and call ministers," to "they tended to be anticlerical." I'm sure there are a few others.

And they're no doubt largely accurate. Sort of.

So let's just sift through that, a bit.

Many failed. Of course many failed. Most new institutions fail, whether businesses or non-profits, or churches. And--lets be fair--these were start ups in places that were often explicitly in places that no one in their right mind saw as hot options for starting a new UU congregation. They were seen as marginal places, if that, most of the time. And so a higher than average failure rate should have been expected. But the author of The Fellowship Movement rather debunked that. The survival rate was actually pretty good, all things considered. And there are still ~300 UU congregations that come out of that. How many failed start-ups, with minimal UUA input, would we accept failing, in order to get 300 new congregations? (My answer? I don't think I'd bat an eye at 75% failure rate, in such conditions.)

They didn't often grow very large. True. But then... many of them started in marginal areas. And the vast majority of our congregations are on the small side. Critiquing fellowships for not being more likely to become large (and none are more than about 60 years old) than their non-fellowship counterparts is... well... . Is there an obligation to become large? And some have broken those size boundaries--particularly, it's my impression, when they're in areas that became suburbanized by metropolitan area growth in the past 50 years. In short, when there were plenty of people to draw on.

They didn't call ministers. Well, in part that's true. In part, some remain too small to do so. And in part some are happy as fellowships--with all their flaws and drawbacks--and the lay led style of worship. The implication that they're something less than real UU churches is unjust, and violates the notion of what a congregation is, all the way back to the Cambridge Platform. Of course, there's also no UUA requirement. It's something that almost all of them get over if and when they grow to a size where professional ministry becomes not simply a good idea, but necessary. It is, I think, a natural price of the very feature that made them successful and able to survive; they were able to do jsut fine on their own, thanks... and the question of why they need a minister is a shade obscure to them.

They were anticlerical. Well, there's a strong bit of truth there. Of course, so was the whole era that they existed in--being founded in the 1950s and '60s. Anticlericalism was rampant in the whole society, and in UU circles in general. In fellowships, that wasn't countered (as a result of no ministerial presence) and probably they got a bit stuck in it. Also, as they began to explore professional ministry, there were culture clashes. Ministers who expected them to be like "normal" churches, and to treat their ministers accordingly, were often oblivious to the fact that these people had done a very laudable job of running the whole show on their own, for years, and perhaps were less sensitive and graceful about things than they ought to have been. The assumption that the model of ministry in such a congregation would be pretty much just like that in another UU church was an error. And both sides paid for it. Some ministers were harmed and careers damaged. And so were some fellowships, as well.

And a fair amount of all this is, I believe, a feature of the times. Fellowships (to some degree) flourished because of the culture they were launched into, and the demographic shifts of the times. But they were also relatively isolated, and had to grow and survive on their own. They created their own cultures and ways--which actually are in many ways remarkably consistent from one to the next.

And because of the above, the UUA (and many ministers) are horrified at the idea of replicating the experiment. Never mind that it was successful--and that nothing else has been.

I'll just observe that I find that incredibly foolish and short-sighted, not to mention critical in all the worst (and none of the best) senses of the word.

New fellowships--congregations popping up along that same model, without the official encouragement--are really not different creatures. But their environment today is vastly different. It's not the 1950s and '60s and '70s. The cultural anticlericalism is a different beast. And probably most significant, these new congregations are not utterly isolated, as their forebears were. The very nature of the internet means that they have access to contacts and resources and information and models that early fellowships would have given their right arms for. They have access to professional sermons that can be used, from many more sources than they'd have had in the past. And the potential exists for them to have vastly more local support than in the past, even if just in the form of seminary students and occasional ministerial preaching. They can be informed of the hazards that their cultures risk developing, and means of avoiding them.

And so on.

What's wrong with fellowships?

Given current attitudes in the UUMA and at UUA HQ, what's wrong is that there won't be many more. "We" would rather not deal with the possible headaches--even if it means refusing to try a fellowship movement for the 21st century, with lessons learned from the first run.

Given that I've seen some of our best contemporary worship and such at fellowships that have grown up and out of their worst flaws, I think the whole movement suffers a lot more than merely missing a few hundred more congregations....

Better, apparently, that there are amazing gaps in where one can find a UU congregation--as Scott's just shown with his analysis of where there are, and aren't, congregations to be found.

I think it's a damned shame.

Six 9/11s a Year

2010-10-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

We've spent billions and committed what will be trillions (yes, in the plural) of dollars to the nominal cause of responding to the attacks of 9/11/2001. We've been so serious about this that in addition to the wealth committed, we've also sacrificed the lives of thousands (the final tally's not in, but more than died on 9/11) of US service people, and the brains, minds, and bodies of tens of thousands more who came home (or will come home) permanently maimed.

It's dismal news that the analysts tell us that it will be for naught, that the way we've spent American lives and treasure has actually made the world more unsafe and unstable, and made the US more a target than it was. But let's set that aside for now. What's not debatable is the cost, in dollars and flesh.

So what would we do about something that's causing as many unnecessary, innocent deaths in the US, every year? What about something causing six times as many deaths--every year?

Would we commit to trillions on trillions of dollars, risk thousands of lives, and talk about a generational effort (it's not a conflict, so that word has to be modified...) to resolve it, once and for all?

The Institutes of Medicine of the National Academies released a report six years ago that observes,

"Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. "

About 8,000 of those are infant deaths, the result of the shameful infant mortality rate that the US suffers from. And that's directly attributable to a lack of prenatal health care. That's the estimate--and observation--of the Centers for Disease Control.

We do very well--essentially as well as anywhere in the world--with caring for premature babies. But because of our health care system, we have many more premature babies per 100,000 births than other developed nations. And that's attributable to our health care system's failure to care for pregnant women.

Most distressing in all this is that the picture's not getting better. It's getting worse.

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.

That's from HealthAffairs. The same source observes

The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

All this while being the "leader" of the free world.

It's not for lack of funding. We spend more, and more per capita, than any other nation. Since 1970, our spending has increased at a rate significantly above what any other nation's increase in health care costs have been. But our results... have been abysmal. Spending more and more, we cover a smaller and smaller percentage of our population. Life expectancy has fallen a long way from the top tier of nations, and more and more American infants are put at risk of early death.

And?

And we do almost nothing about it.

We're all minorities.

2010-09-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

I recently read this in the comments (electronic letters to the editor?) to an article about a case in NJ where the police really screwed up while presenting Miranda rights to a Latino minor and his Spanish-speaking mother. All of which I offer just to provide context. But this isn't about that case. It's about the comment.

Constitutional rights should NOT be afforded to ILLEGALS.

The writer insists that "illegals" should not be afforded Constitutional rights. One has to wonder what rights they should be afforded, in that case. But the Constitution is pretty clear; in most cases, it asserts, rights are inherent in human beings, period (in a few cases, they inhere to citizens, but those are a narrow class of things like political rights, the right to vote, etc.).

Should constitutional rights be "afforded" to someone who has committed murder? Isn't that a crime that's far, far, far worse than the mere infraction (which is all it is, legally) of crossing the border in a manner not in accordance with the law?

Why does it--why do we--affirm (not afford!) the same rights to people who may have, and who have, violated some law?

The answer is simple. It's one to commit to memory and remember every time our sense of anger and outrage and desire for punishment (we like to think of it as "justice" when we feel that way) surges. We affirm and uphold the rights of everyone. All the time. Even--especially--the people who have done terrible, terrible things. Even people who aren't like us. People who are different. People who are scary, who trigger that primitive thing deep in our brains that worries about leopards in trees and monsters under the bed.

We uphold that for them, but not for them. We do it for ourselves.

You see, we do it to ensure that in that terrible moment where we are looked at--justly or not--by someone as the scary thing, the monster, the other, the bad person, we are not outside of being treated with rights. In doing so we are ensured just and equitable treatment by a system that rejects the impulse that judges without facts and understanding and imposes a harsh punishment on the monster under the bed, so that it never, never, never comes back.

But of course it does. The monster under the bed is almost entirely in our heads. It's always with us.

No matter how often we kill it, or imprison it, or treat it brutally (which, I suspect, really doesn't make it go away at all. It feeds the real monster under the bed; the one in our heads).

We "afford" rights to people who might be people who immigrated illegally for the same reason that we afford rights to people accused of murder, or theft, or speeding. We do it for ourselves, so that our rights are protected and held sacred.

The minute that we carve out an exception to this principle, the minute that we except a person, or a group from having the same rights, we put ourselves at extreme risk. If anyone can be put outside the protect of the law, then anyone can be put outside. Including you.

After all, each of us is part of some minority that others might dislike, despise, or fear. History proves that.

It's the lesson that Rev. Martin Niemöller wrote about;

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

You can replace any of those groups, those categories, with any others. Niemöller was writing about what actually happened in Germany. But the lesson is a universal one. (It's worth noting that in the US today, despite the widespread failure of Communism, it--and Communists--are still a pretty powerful monster under the bed. So are trade unionists, for many, despite being down to only several percent of the population (despite their having provided us 40 hour weeks and many other good things...). And it's still easy to find people who fear and hate Jews, too.) Mexican, Tea Partier, Liberal, Conservative, Mormon, Muslim, Gay, Evangelical, and on and on. No group is the majority. Even more to the point, no one is the majority. They just look like it in the moment... if you don't look too closely.

The majority is always a collection of minorities who are--for the moment--ignoring their multitude of differences.

Anyone can fall out of that coalition the minute that they become the moment's monster under the bed.

"Illegals" are afforded the same rights as everyone else, because we insist that everyone has those rights. Not out of generosity, but out of the deepest self-interest. So that when "they" come for us, we're not outside the circle of light that keeps the monsters away.

It's important. The monsters don't like the light. As long as we make sure it shines on all of us, they'll stay deep in the darkness in our heads and hearts.

Social Justice and Modern (Biblical) Obligations

2010-08-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

From the very beginning of the Jewish state in Canaan, there was a fundamental (divine) directive to share. The land was divided up among the tribes, and the tribes were to support and sustain their own (but that’s not all). Recognizing that some would become wealthy, and would hoard, and that some would become poor, simply through ill fortune, or being born to poor, unfortunate parents, God’s directive was that the land be taken back and redistributed equitably every 50 years. Every seven years, all debts were to be canceled, forgiven, forgotten.

Now, it’s questionable (say the scholars) as to whether that was ever actually done. But you know what, that’s moot. These folks want to argue that they shouldn’t have to care for the sick, the ill, the unfortunate, the homeless—that it should be voluntary, that the state should not be in the business of doing that with money taken from them in taxes. It ought to be... well, optional. Pure charity.

Hogwash.

Let’s just note in passing that for all their talk, that voluntary care of the poor isn’t happening—and hasn’t, not in this country, nor any other, to a level that begins to be sufficient. So the idea that it’ll get taken care of by good Christians out of charity is poppycock. Not that there aren’t all kinds of charitable works—Christian, Jewish, Muslim and otherwise. There are. But not enough. Not nearly enough. Not even close.

So, back to that argument from Biblical grounds.

Just WHO was responsible in ancient Israel (and Judah) for such care?

Well, the original Israelite community was tribal; the tribes were responsible. But those chieftaincies didn’t last very long. Various pressures from inside and outside resulted in the creation of the Israelite kingdom. So the king took on the responsibilities of the relatively anarchic tribal confederation. The Hebrew scriptures are pretty clear; just check almost any of the prophets—raging criticism of the wealthy (that would be the rich…) and the powerful (nobility, priests…) and particularly the kings. Railing against those storing up abundance and living in plush accommodations with gold and ivory and pleasant oils, luxuries… while the poor starved, while widows and orphans were dispossessed and abused.

Check any of the prophets. Shall I wait while you check? I recommend Isaiah (an especial fave of most Christians). I recommend Isa 1:14-17.Or heck, there’s 5:1-23 (there’s more, too). Gee, my translation even subheads Isaiah 5:8-23 “Social Injustice Denounced”—what do you mean that social justice doesn’t appear in the Bible?

Most of the justification for the destruction of Israel and Judah, and the Babylonian exile, is that the rulers and the powerful were corrupt, greedy, selfish and unjust. They didn’t share with the rest of the people, they let the poor starve and they stole their land. Which was God's anyway, according to the Bible, and people only got to use it—and only until it was redistributed again.

Short form: having more than enough when there are people homeless and hungry is viewed by God as the worst of sins—just like theft, just like murder. In fact, it is essentially apostasy; the willful violation of God’s commandments. Sin.

So, back to the question of responsibility. Who’s responsible? Well, the king. And so you find the prophets just ripping into the kings for their malfeasance, warning everyone that God is going to devastate the kingdom, that they will be laid low, slain, dragged off into slavery... and that it's God's will if this crap continues.

But heck, what’s that got to do with today and all those folks who don’t want to share with the poor? They’re not king (for which we can all be grateful…).

No, they’re part of The People. Here in the USA, that means that they are, by definition, collectively the sovereigns—just like being king. Which means we’re ALL responsible. It’s not just a question of whatever charity we feel like giving. We bear the responsibility. We The People—the government.We stand in the same relationship to the missing king as the king did to the defunct tribal confederation. All those responsibilities, from defense to justice to... caring for the poor... those are ours.

So when they whine that it’s unfair to tax them to give alms to the poor, to care for the sick, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry… they’re wrong. All those conservative Christians have a responsibility to meet—as sovereign—to see that the wealth of the nation is shared equitably with all, before excess is used for comfort and luxury. Taxation is how We The People take our money from our pockets to do our collective business.

It’s a Biblical, social justice obligation for good Christians and Jews.

For the rest of us, there are other good arguments. But that's for another post, some other day.

Would I Be Offended?

2010-07-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt reports that she was once asked by her son if she'd be offended if he chose a different religion when he grew up. She observes that as his mother, no, she and his father raised their kids to think and make choices for themselves. But as a UU minister, well... yeah, it would bother her.

I'm not sure my response would be any different. Just differences in nuance.

I grew up UU, so the choice was mine to stay or not (or, given the realities of my teen years abroad, to return to being an active UU or not...). Neither of my parents were ministers, so that element's not the same, but I'm not sure that it's different for any UU and their kids--save in degree. I know older members of our congregation who raised their kids in the fellowship--and some think of themselves as UU (but don't attend), and some attend somewhere, or here, now and then, and at least some have adult children who went off and chose very different religions.

For any parent, regardless of their faith, I think there's an ouch in that.

The roots of the word, religion, refer to those things that tie us (back) together, with each other and the holy. Having one's child reject those things for others tends to feel like one's less connected, disconnected from, not tied back together with... one's offspring. Ouch.

Would I be offended? Not by the act. Part of me would be pleased that my child felt the freedom to make that right choice (for them, for now)--at least as long as they felt able to be above board with me about it. But there'd still be an "ouch" to it.

Still, I can imagine reasons--people make these kind of choices in order (sometimes) to marry a beloved who is a devout and committed member of some faith tradition. With whatever reservations and mental Twister....

What would offend me would be having them reject the core values we've raise them with. Which are, of course, pretty UU. But I've talked with enough people who aren't UU, who listen to or read the seven principles and observe that they don't really have an disagreements... to know that there are plenty of people who share our values who aren't UU.

Like so many historic figures from the UU past, I guess I'm more interested in the universals of (our) religion than in the particular peculiarities of it, less devoted to the transient in religion and focused on the permanent.

Besides, one of my favorite Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes comes to mind; "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribes." If one of my children ever takes that step, I'll offer them my blessings on their journey, and observe (to myself, I hope, only) "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Can we please get on with it?

2010-07-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

The CATO Institute says it will improve American household incomes by $180 billion/year by 2019.

The Center for American Progress says it will improve American household incomes by $189 billion/year.

Quoting CATO:

[I]t is worth noting that very different think tanks employing two different models have come to the same result: Legalization of immigration will expand the U.S. economy and incomes, while an “enforcement only” policy of further restrictions will only depress economic activity.

Quoting CAP:

The U.S. government has attempted for more than two decades to put a stop to unauthorized immigration from and through Mexico by implementing “enforcement-only” measures along the U.S.-Mexico border and at work sites across the country. These measures have failed to end unauthorized immigration and placed downward pressure on wages in a broad swath of industries.

Comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) would benefit the US economy by something on the order of $2.5 trillion (the studies agree).

Oh, and that fantasy of stuffing all the undocumented into boxcars and shipping them out of the country?

Mass deportation reduces U.S. GDP by 1.46 percent. This amounts to $2.6 trillion in cumulative lost GDP over 10 years, not including the actual cost of deportation.

What's a Soul?

2010-05-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

As its Big May Question, UU Salon asks, "What is a Soul?"

Does it exist before we are born? Does it disappear when we die? It is unchangeable, or capable of growing/shrinking/strengthening? Can you lose your soul, or gain one?

Answers to such a question are explicitly rooted in one's theology. Those are theological questions. Is there a soul? What is it? Depending on what one believes, those answers may be defined (by a faith's doctrines, or by authorities who've already weighed in...). Or not.

Unitarian Universalists, of course, don't have an easy out; we don't share a theology that defines these answers. Even if we've adopted an existing theological view, within the context of our UUism, that offers answers, that's something that we have to consciously adopt.

So what are my answers?

Well they arise from the things I've already concluded. I'm not a supernaturalist (and having said that, I think we actually know so very little that I'm entirely confident that there are things that look entirely supernatural...). I'm some form of pantheist. "This"--all of this that we see, touch, feel, experience (and the much, much greater part that we do not) is part of what I describe as nature. And that's all there is.

"Soul" is a term I use to describe that experiential essence of being; the "I" that seems to exist within a living being. Not the thinking, but the aware observer that experiences being aware and observing. Perhaps that is an illusion--but if so, it's a "real illusion," in the same sense that solid objects are illusions.

I tend not to believe in a soul as an entity that has a coherent existence separate from the living wave-form of a being. (But I'm entirely at ease with the idea of being wrong; it's something humans are particularly adept at--being spectacularly, flamboyantly, fervently wrong). It's a part of the universe, too. It, I suspect, ends with death. And just like matter, it doesn't go away. "Away" is a false concept. There's no away to go to. It just changes form. Matter decays into component materials and becomes other forms of matter--living or not. Energy goes off as well. The essential thing that is us doesn't remain coherently us; instead, traces of what we were end up smeared across the rest of the planet and all life and through the universe (given enough time).

It's an answer that's actually the same as other answers--it just depends on the perspective one takes on it. It's entirely possible to look at this and say "There's only one soul, and it's shared and interwoven through everything and everywhen." Which is about as good a metaphor for god as anything I've heard.

Can it die? No. Can it be squandered? Sure. Soul is--as best I can make out--'meant' to be exercised and enriched. Shared.

UU membership shrinks... a proposal

2010-04-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

I read (unsurprised, but not pleased) that the overall membership of the congregations of the Association shrank this past year. A rather small decrease in the grand scheme, but still, a second year of slight decline.

No doubt there are many solutions possible. Some of them might even be worth undertaking.

Here's one that recognizes an unintended discouragement to membership that the UUA imposes on most member congregations. Large congregations, as I recall, are assessed their dues based on a percentage of their budget. It doesn't matter if they have a great couple years and grow by 30%. Their numbers don't directly affect their dues. Their budget drives their dues. Assuming that new members come in (as has generally been the case) paying below average pledges (there are a variety of reasons for this, all of them understandable and... that's not on topic now), the large congregation's budget would grow, but not by 30%. So growth is a good thing for large UU congregations.

But in those below that dues category, dues are essentially a poll tax on congregational members. You're in a small or small-medium congregation and you gain 30% new members? Yay! Uh... but those 30% won't (see above) increase the budget 30% for some time to come.... However, the dues the congregation will pay will increase by... 30%.

There's a direct effect I've seen to this.

In encouraging new members... there's also a frank and honest conversation about what membership means (that's good), and that it costs the congregation for each new member. Some congregations simply require that new members pay the cost of their membership. Others don't. There are explanations and justifications for each viewpoint....

But it's ironic. At the very time that we're leaning harder on our need to be more open to a more diverse membership, without regard to all those categories we could list in our sleep, we have a barrier that is economic. That means that the relatively poor, those who are young and strapped, or those who are financially strapped for whatever reason... are discouraged from membership.

Which drives down the membership of not-large congregations--and drives down membership of the UUA congregations as a whole.

Does it happen? I know of cases. I know of a woman who would be a member of my congregation right now--but she knows she can't give that much, and since it costs the congregation UUA and District dues if she becomes a member, she's not. She gives what she can anyway, supporting the congregation (but not the UUA...). I believe I know of others, but haven't had the conversation with them that would make it explicit.

Want more members? Use one single system for congregational dues that *doesn't* rest on a poll tax. It's discouraging potential members. It may also be helping hamstring efforts at being welcoming and affirming to all who think they could find their home among us.

It's funny, there are those who insist that to *be* a UU, one has to be a member of a congregation. I understand the idea. It has some--but not enough, I think--merit. But if that's the case, then what we're saying is that there's a wealth-test to be a UU, too--unless you happen to be able to be a member of a large congregation.

A simple percentage of budget scheme would make a lot of things easier on a lot of people. We'd still want to count membership for other purposes. But I think using it to determine funding for the UUA and Districts is a bad idea.

A Reply (and comments) to misstreebc

2010-03-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

There being no way for me to post a response to a posting on livejournal (without creating an account, which I do not want, that would oblige me to accept some spam from the corporation behind live journal...), I'm responding here.

The temptation to just let it go, ignore it, and move on would usually win at that point... but misstreebc is clearly speaking of my congregation; I recognize the service from the description.

Today was my 3rd time at a UU service.

I enjoyed the service very much, and am very, very in accord with the idea of a church whose beliefs are based on values and principles rather than creed or dogma.

There is one thing that bothered me, though. The sermon was about church history and a sister congregation in a Romanian village. It was an interesting sermon, and made me appreciate the religious freedom we have in the United States. A couple of times, though, the minister broke into the song "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", and seemed to be celebrating the deaths of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau,sescu and his wife. I can totally understand celebrating justice, the renewal of religious freedom, and the end of an oppressive regime, but to actually celebrate their deaths really bothers me. IMO, life must always be respected, no matter how vile the person. I could never celebrate the death of another human being.

From what I understand, this seems to violate a core Unitarian belief in the worth and value of every human being. Am I right?

First, I was a little taken aback myself. Not so much because Ceausescu's death was being celebrated (though I did notice...), but because I wondered at how the folk in the congregation who identify as Pagan, as Wiccan, who use the term witch to identify themselves felt.

I remember Ceausescu's fall--and death--and as a fan of politics (national and international) and history, I'd have to say... few have been more deserving of execution.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty on a variety of grounds. But I suspect, being honest with myself, that were I a Romanian of that time, in a position to help make that decision, I'd have made the same one. The man was a veritable fountain of evil actions, and there were certainly forces in the country that would have sought to free him and restore him to power. Had be been freed, there'd have been a vicious civil war, and where he had power, there'd have been a sea of blood.

4,000 were massacred--on his orders--at Timisoara. Something like another 80,000 were killed on his orders during his regime. In addition, then (1989) exiled dissident Mihai Botez estimated that at least 15,000 Romanians died annually from starvation, cold, and shortages even though Romania was rich enough to provide those basic requirements. (Ceausescu chose not to do so. He was trying to pay down an international debt to avoid having the failure of his policies revealed....)

It's an imperfect world. It's important to remember that huge numbers suffered badly under his rule. Minorities were demonized in ways that Fred Phelps fantasizes about. Literally thousands of ethnically Hungarian villages were destroyed, meaning many Unitarian congregations were victims, meaning literally tens of thousands of people who are close religious kin were his victims, along with the Romany and others.

It's a sad, sad thing that there are any human deaths that are good things. But the blunt fact is that there are. Across Romania, celebrations broke out spontaneously.

Perhaps the minister could have handled it more delicately, but in terms of expressing how most Romanians felt--and particularly how those who aren't ethnic Romanians felt--the trope from The Wizard of Oz, "Ding, dong, the Witch is dead!" is probably pretty apt. That we, as UU congregations, hold life very highly and affirm the inherent worth and dignity is true. But our sympathies lie with those who have not been the oppressor. Ceausescu was pretty much entirely the oppressor. Think about what Romanians--people who'd been his victims, who'd been oppressed and terrorized by him--must have felt about him to decide to execute him on Christmas Day.

Ding, dong!

No, it's not the enlightened tear that the Buddha might have shed. But it's honest--and the minister was trying to convey what things had been like, and how people felt. It's so easy for us to say, in this country, what we'd never do. We've never faced it (most of us), or anything like it.

You ask an interesting question. Does it violate our affirmation of the worth and dignity of every person to celebrate a death?

My own answer is that were that all it was, I'd say yes. But when that death is utterly woven into liberation for millions, and means the literal salvation from misery, suffering and death for many thousands... I fully understand it. I suspect that were we common citizens of Bucharest in 1989, we'd have celebrated.

Free at last, free at last.

Maybe we've just been misunderstanding...

2010-03-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

what "bipartisan support" really means.

It's good to see that there's widespread support for the Constitution still.

Sometimes... even good news gets overspun

2010-02-16T20:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, I want to preface this by saying that I've participated pretty heavily in the UU process on Peacemaking--and that I think this is a very important issue and that I support it.

So, from the official (I think it's official...) UU Peacemakers blog:

Congregations voted to place the Peacemaking Statement of Conscience on the agenda of General Assembly (GA) this summer. The participation rate was 74% (counting "yes," "no," and "abstain" votes), with 38% of congregations voting "yes" and 0.8% voting "no". The remaining congregations either voted "abstain" or did not vote.

74% participated. That's spectacular. Since the old process had seen nothing better (as I recall) than 10% and the new one mandated a minimum of 25% as a sort of "quorum" to permit GA to consider it, I had thought it was setting us up for a lot of failure. I'll take my crow medium, with some BBQ sauce, please.

74% - 38% = 36% -- of whom 35.2% abstained?

What is that about?

It takes energy, effort, time, people... to respond. We've historically mustered a lot of ignorance and apathy over issues.... And now we're seeing active apathy? Or is that conflict, inability to agree on how to respond?

Alas, that 38% in favor looks far less spectacular in that light.

But I look forward to seeing what's next, because--as I said--I think this is really important.

Where I've Been...

2010-02-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last six months doing CPE (hospital chaplaincy as in intern), taking classes at the same time, and being a (less than) full-time parent. Plus a variety of other things... followed by a month of intensive classes at Meadville Lombard.

I hope to start blogging occasionally soon... but have a pretty intense schedule for the next <> year or so.

It's Called Blackmail

2009-11-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

The Roman Catholic Church, as a result of its views on poverty, human rights, etc., provides all kinds of charitable works. Everything from hospitals to soup kitchens to caring for orphans.

All of which is immensely laudable. Worthy, indeed.

Which is why this is so shocking.

What it boils down to is a threat; if the city grants equal marriage rights, the church will cease providing charitable services.

It's their privilege, of course. But it's morally indefensible. It's using the poor, sick, indigent and orphaned as hostages.

Not a number to be proud of

2009-09-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

We're All Diminished: the murder of James Pouillon

2009-09-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

Bill asks where all the bloggers--and the UUA--are regarding the murder of James Pouillon.

Well, murder is wrong. The murder of Pouillon is a reprehensible act. The fact that I disagree with his views about abortion doesn't change the reprehensibility of his murder.

But the blogosphere on the left didn't just ignore this. It got addressed at DailyKos, where the murder was decried, and decried again when the facts trickled out that it wasn't a politically-unrelated killing. Front-paged, too. I suspect that the news of the killing didn't spread as widely--Pouillon was a relative unknown, while Tiller had a far higher profile and people had been targeting him for a long time. The analogy breaks down, the cases are only loosely similar. I've seen nothing (which may only mean that I've not seen it) suggesting that this killer was associated with pro-choice groups or attended a church or participated in some other group that demonized Pouillon and talked about how good it would be if he were to be dead.

That still doesn't bear on the murder of Pouillon--only on the larger politics and newsworthiness of the case.

Harlan James Drake, Pouillon's murderer, seems to have targeted people he held grudges against--the other person he killed, Mike Fuoss, ran a gravel pit. The police caught up with Drake as he was--the police believe--he was on his way to kill a third individual he had some grudge against.

It's a damned shame. James Pouillon was, from all reports I can find now, steadfast in his beliefs, and equally a gentle, non-violent man.

I think that the case hasn't been addressed much because it's lower profile and murkier; Pouillon was--it appears--killed because the images he protested with offended Drake. That's not an excuse--murdering people because they show pictures that offend isn't tolerable, nor acceptable, explicable, or reasonable. But it's not clear that Drake was on some sort of crusade against anti-abortion protesters. And it's usually an error to leap off into a posting when the facts aren't available or clear. That's the sort of thing people did when McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City--started insisting that this must have been an attack by anti-American Muslims....

None of which makes Pouillon's murder any less regrettable.

Just that presumptive politicizing of murders is... highly inflammatory, and socially unwise.

Chicken Little Politics

2009-09-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

Is it over now? Can the non-hysterical, non-bed-wetters come out now?

The mere notion that significant (or at least very noisy, very publicly-attended parts) of a political movement would display utterly hysterical, hide the children (literally) behavior because the president was going to speak to school children is, frankly embarrassing. I'll admit that I've been annoyed, disgusted, shocked, stunned, appalled and revolted by both actions and political performances of the GOP in the last decade. But I have never run to cover the eyes and ears of my now teenaged sons when any politician spoke publicly.

In fact, on occasions I made sure that my sons listened to a speech by George W. Bush, so that they could hear him, and so that we could talk about what he said, what it meant, what it implied... and whether that was objectionable or not.

No sheets were soiled. No hysteria about protecting children from hearing words dripping from demonic lips.

I'm embarrassed for the GOP. I recall having intelligent conversations about policy over the political divide with my grandparents--but I know for certain that they'd have been utterly mortified by the shameful performance by the standard-bearers of their party now. So yellow, so terrified of their own imagined shadows that a speech by a president had to be avoided? The cartoons should be showing an elephant cowering on a tabletop, avoiding a mouse.

Just so... embarrassing.

One Picture...

2009-08-17T12:57:00.001-07:00

Speaking truth to ignorance.

Read the two signs on the left for your starting, cognitive dissonance moment. And the rest.

And enjoy the observation of the man in the middle.

What "Call" (Can) Mean

2009-08-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

Kit Ketcham, on Facebook, posted her call story--in response to someone's request. Since I dipped an oar in that conversation... she urged that I do likewise, that it might be useful for others.

A little context and background.

I grew up UU--my parents joined a congregation when I was little, just a couple years after the consolidation. We only were active until I was about 10--and then we moved overseas. So I had the tattoos--but didn't have the LRY experience, and didn't return to formal involvement for almost 30 years. I grew up in a happily agnostic, very Humanist home. Plenty of theist family friends, and extended family--but not at home. The son of a mechanical engineer and rocket scientist... a pretty solidly scientific world view was something I absorbed.

Ministry will be my third career. I've been a writer and editor, and a full-time, at-home father and homeschooling parent (it's so fun to be asked why we homeschool, and to say "for religious reasons," since it usually triggers complete brain meltdown that's fun to watch...). I'm still doing that. I will be at least until I'm done with my M.Div and... I think I might be done before I get into a pulpit.

I'd been a deeply involved member of the congregation for years before my call. I'd been on our search committee--7.5 years ago now--and knew, as well as any lay person's likely to, what professional ministry work demanded, and looked like. I'd never even thought about doing it, nor had any impulse toward it. After all, I knew enough to know better. During search, a number of people had urged the idea on me--but they did the same to my co-chair, and we both felt it was panic; desperation, fear of some outsider. The fact that people liked it when we preached--once, or maybe twice, in a year... well, so what? Once a year's not that hard.... But do it regularly--and all the rest? Crazy.

I also dress pretty casually, given my options. Jeans, t-shirt. I like living in So. Cal, and wasn't looking to find reasons to move. I'm a night owl. Etc.

So... three years ago, I was my last year on the board of trustees. I'd been president, led the congregation though a couple big things, including a major governance revision and shrinking the board down to something sane... and at last, I was out of the presidency. For the first, time, I got to go to General Assembly (Portland, for anyone trying to place this) without feeling like I had to go and attend all sorts of things for the congregation's benefit. This was going to just be going to attend interesting lectures, visit with people... have fun. My beloved agreed to go--leave the kids in the care of our goddaughter--mostly because it was Portland, a city she loves.

We registered... and then dawdled on hotel reservations. Silly of us.

So nothing in the downtown was available, and the hotels for the convention had been full for ages... and our hotel ended up being well out of town, up on the Columbia, near the end of the Yellow Line (blessings on a city with real, working public transportation). Thursday night, we hopped on the train and my sweetheart -- not a night owl -- promptly fell asleep against me. There I was, the only person awake in the entire car, with at least 20 minutes to kill. So I started flipping through the catalog. Since I had come for my own pleasure, I hadn't planned it out. I was deciding what to do... when I felt like it.

So I started reading. What might be fun, interesting?

As I flipped pages, I read session titles... and read those that might be appealing. I flipped a page and read So, You're Thinking Of Becoming A UU Minister... -- and heard my own voice, in my head... but very clearly and distinctly (a quite odd experience)... "You know, I could do that, and I'd never have to think about it again."

Now, hearing voices--even your own--is disturbing.

But remember, I was a writer and editor. Words count, and I'm acutely aware of meaning, ambiguity and nuance.

Again.

The voice part was disturbing; that was strange... but "again" just threw me into a spin. Again says that something has happened before, and is happening... again. Remember, I had not thought about it. Not considered it. Smiled nicely at anyone crazy enough to suggest it, and moved away quickly from the lunatic.

Again.

We arrived at the end of the line and got off the train. I allowed my partner a few minutes walk in cool air--most of the way back to the hotel--before saying anything about the fact that the world had turned upside down and inside out while she'd been sleeping. The conversation went more or less like this;

"Uh, there's this session that I think I... uh... ought to go to..."
"Oh, good." (as in, that's nice.)
"About becoming a minister."
(brief pause--and these words are a verbatim report...)
"Uh, maybe your next wife--because I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a minister's wife."

Oh. Not only was I hearing voices and having incredibly disturbing experiences, I was being told that my life was probably going to get run through the chipper-shredder, just for starters.

She fell asleep easily when we got to the room. I usually have no trouble sleeping--and had trouble falling asleep. I usually find that problems are much more manageable when I sleep on them, too. I woke, and still felt like I had a cinder block in my stomach. My beloved was by now amused. Not sure about this whole minister thing, but entertained to see me so incredibly wound up and off-center.

"I think you should go to that session," she told me, and we headed in to G.A.

Of course, it wasn't that day--it was the next day. So I had a day to squirm on the meathook... and I have no idea what session I attended. I probably have some notes, somewhere--it would be interesting to see what I didn't absorb....

As I came out of the session and up the hall, I spotted her coming out of one room and heading my way--and our minister came out of another, and joined her and the two of them chatted as they came my way. When we met up, it turned out that our minister had skipped breakfast to get to something before G.A. started, and was suffering a blood sugar slide... and so I saw my opportunity; I went into search committee/board member mode and took her to go get an early lunch. We could talk about the annual meeting, the elected officers, the budget... stuff outside of my issue and distress. Yay! My dear smiled at us and went off to whatever she had next on her schedule.

Off we went. And all was well.

Until 10 minutes into the actual meal.

Suddenly, she looked at me and asked "So, are you going to go to seminary, or what?" And fortunately, my mouth was empty, so I didn't do a spit-take. But I think my jaw dropped, and I felt like checking my forehead to see if there was a mark.... (I knew my partner wouldn't have said a word, so it never even crossed my mind.)

So I spilled what was going on--and she was amused. She'd simply been asking, because she'd assumed for years that it was on my mind, that I knew, felt a call... and must be thinking about it. She was surprised I hadn't been and found it funny. So we talked for a few minutes.

And then--thankfully--someone, a stranger, walked up and asked if he could join us. I was off the hook!

Alas, it turned out he was a minister, and that our minister knew him, and knew his story and... so we went back to the conversation, now with a new acquaintance as part of it. Squirm. Mind you, I'm still completely unsure about this--highly dubious, and half-convinced that this insanity will shatter my family, end my marriage and who knows what else. I'm not looking for approval and assurance. I'm looking for the way out. I'm looking to spot--and grab--the brass ring.

Fortunately, a few minutes later, she had a meeting to get to... so she left, I made my apologies, and I fled that nightmare conversation. Now, wandering through the exhibit hall... the seminary booths leered at me. I was pretty sure they hadn't been there before--I'd never seen them at other G.A.s and I hadn't noticed them the previous day. So I left the hall....

I've no idea what the next 24 hours were like, or what I did. All I recall is that after lunch the next day, the session finally was going to happen.

I went. I was the first person in the room. The presenters weren't there, yet. So I left... wandered around... got a drink... came back and was the second person into the room--someone entered just before me, so I couldn't just leave. Slowly people trickled in, avoiding each other's eyes, wincing when they saw--and were seen--by someone they knew. Phrases like "Don't can't tell so-and-so I was here" were heard more than once.

I sat through the session. Unusually, for me, I had nothing to say. No questions. I was listening for the thing that would tell me, "No, I don't have to do this." There were things I heard that might have been killers a couple years before... but not now. Nothing. David Pettee offered--among other things--a description of various categories of calls and call stories; that was the only hopeful thing... I didn't hear mine.

I left at the end, wandered past the exhibits, and somehow collecting packets of information from a number of seminaries.

I happened to run into David the next morning, and mentioned that I'd been at the session, and hadn't heard my call listed. So he asked me to briefly describe it.

"You want the short, sound bite version, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'd call it the Alien Call; I didn't know it was there, and all the sudden it ripped its way out of my chest, and looked me in the face."

David recoiled very slightly, though he managed not to look perturbed, and said something like "Well, I think you need to think about that..." and moved on.

So... we went home. I discovered that I was fine--as long as I was busy with something that demanded my attention. Educational work for the kids, fine. Committee and board meetings, great. The only problem was that any time--and every time--that I was alone with myself, "it" leaped into my awareness. Driving. Showering. Doing household chores. Driving home from meetings....

So I capitulated. I started actively looking for a seminary.

And for a moment, I thought that I'd found the brass ring. Remember, I'm a full-time parent. Homeschooling. There aren't any seminaries close by that would knowingly let a UU in classes--maybe on campus. There's one that was suggested in the L.A. basin, but that's a two hour (plus traffic) drive, one way. The notion of leaving two teenaged boys alone from very early Wednesday morning until late Thursday -- their mother's a consultant and frequently travels on business; her work week is very unpredictable much in advance... and that travel is mandatory; it's how we eat... -- didn't seem reasonable.

Fortunately, by this time, she'd decided that I ought to go ahead with this... though she retained real reservations about it, come the day that it became a reality. But going to school, she could handle.

But there wasn't one... and the idea of suggesting that we should pack up the family and move so I could be close to a seminary sounded like insanity.

And then I discovered that Meadville Lombard had a program that would allow me to do most of the study and work at home--I'd just have to go and live in Chicago for about three weeks... in January, each year, for how ever many years it took to complete the degree. That, at least, was something that could be arranged for.

I began to mention it to friends--who all seemed to think it made sense to them... which made me wonder why they were at ease and not surprised, and I was. I called and told my father what I was going to do, and got a solid and affirmative response; he thought it a fine idea. Everyone else seemed to think so--and I was still pretty freaked out.

So I applied and hurried like crazy to make the end of September deadline for everything to be complete, including the interview.

And found myself in Chicago, the next January, walking into an incredibly cold wind--while it was flirting with 80 degrees back home--when I suddenly realized that David Pettee had listed my call's category. It was just one that, having grown up as I did, I didn't connect with, or really have the language for.

Oh.

Crap.

I've no idea what to make of it. I've made peace with it. I'm enjoying the work--I'm taking an insane class load (that's official, as expressed by both other students and professors) as a "part-time" student with a family and life here at home. I'm nearly getting solid As... having skated through my B.A. with B- and C+ grades. I'm loading myself up with other, non-academic work, and I'm happy... and productive.

But it's very much a sense of being compelled.

"Called."

I could have chosen otherwise. But I'll admit that the experience was so unsettling that the idea that it might come back and need to really get my attention was more than enough to persuade me that I didn't want to find out.

"Again" is not something I want. Once was enough.

Article II Revision Voted Down... an observation

2009-06-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

I will note here that I did not attend the mini-assembly (four reasons: I'm not a delegate, I already got my input into the process starting nearly a year ago, I was satisfied with the language (not enthralled, but this is bylaw language, in the bylaws, not poetry), I knew that the bylaws-established process did not permit sumstantive amendment at this stage, and I fully expected that there would be amendments--in the future--to the painstakingly drafted language).

So I was rather shocked to find that there was a coalition of people hostile to the change. I'll have to explore (please, feel free to explain your part if you're part of it) those reasons.

Two I've heard that I'll admit that I dismiss is that "they're not broken" (one doesn't only address things that need to be "repaired") and that changing them would create chaos for various R.E. people and somehow violate the wonderful Sources Cantata (which was performed at the PSWD D.A. and is wonderful). Those are crappy reasons for embracing creedalism. If that's where we're going, fine--that should be argued for in public.

One of the arguments I'd put forth for a serious change is that the Principles themselves have started to be treated like a creed by some--hurling some principle at another, citing it as being violated, and accusing the violator of being a bad UU because of it. If that's not creedal thought and behavior, I'm not sure what is.

The words aren't the essence. The essence is what we're about, and to my mind, ought to be expressed and re-expressed regularly so that we avoid mistaking the container for the contents.

The support of nearly half of the voting delegates (tangent: where were the others on such a major issue?) for the change makes clear to me that a change is coming, and soon. Of course, the bylaws forbid it being brought back up for two years. But I suspect that will sorely test our beloved moderator's insight, grace, and good will. Would a proposal to amend only one section of Article II qualify as bringing the same issue up? Given the fervent call (supported by the Youth and Young Adults) for the statement of inclusion in place of the statement on non-discrimination, I would hope to see that change sooner, rather than later.

Thursday - GA 2009

2009-06-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

It's late, so this is going to be short...

Berry Street Essay -- awesome. The start as a head fake, and then... Paul Rasor taught us the mathematics of oneness. And the formal response was as powerful.

Opening Plenary -- Gini Courter, as usual, added to her fan base. And they haven't even seen her herd cats in a full plenary session yet. Sinkford spoke movingly--very, very movingly. And yes, he spoke to Iran, too. Not that I have any fantasy that Iran's leaders give a damn what the head of a small religious community in the USA thinks.

Opening worship -- lovely. Wonderful.

What you can see streamed, watch.

A few hours of sleep call...

The Summer

2009-06-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

Much quoted of late -- made more famous by being Twittered -- are Ahmed Shamlou's lines "To slaughter us/ why did you need to invite us / to such an elegant party?"

Reading more of his work, it's easy to find it very relevant.

The Summer (published 1973)

The trustees of the Garden

From the depths of the confine

send the tired passer of the route

a green tinted kiss.

***

On the wide shoulders of the breeze

slowly dance the seeds of a new fragrance.

And what would it be

The fruit of the grown tree

This year,

So that the birds are spared

from the defined lines of the cage?

By Ahmad Shamlou

Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani

Haiku, applied topically

2009-06-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

Beneath the Alborz
I hear free birds a-twittering
In Tehran's green trees

Basta!

2009-06-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Having observed a discussion of the various titles used for ministers, and how various ministers don't care for them, or approve of them, or want them, or use them... or wish that there was one that was right... proper... acceptable...

Many titles, one heart.
Many objectives, one task.

All serving hands are these.

I'm struck by all the titles--terms of address--I bear, or have borne. They serve the needs and lips of others, and I'm fine with all of them.

Back to work.

Just, as the old joke has it, don't call me late for dinner.

How Much Bigotry is Protected?

2009-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

It has long been the unchallenged right of any clergy member to decline to perform any marriage. There are rabbis who will not perform a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. There are significant strictures around the Catholic marriage of a Catholic and a non-Catholic, with the non-Catholic obliged to meet with a priest for an interview and to attend pre-marital classes given by the Church--and that is a significant liberalization of earlier practice. Any member of the clergy may decline to marry individuals who aren't members of their faith (or who are) for essentially any reason.

Religious marriage is not a right. Religious communities are not arms of the state. The only marriage that the state acknowledges are civil marriages. Religious marriage is only accepted where it has been performed lawfully--meaning that the marriage license granted by the state has been duly exercised and signed, and delivered to the state. In other words, where a clergy member has acted as an agent of the state. But the same clergy member could perform a marriage ceremony and--bereft of the license--the state will not accept and acknowledge the wedding as legal. The state merely allows a member of the clergy to perform lawful--civil--marriages.

The clergy person is not a state employee.

The clergy person is providing a religious service. And because of the Constitution's First Amendment, this is a highly protected thing.

As a result, no one can oblige the clergy to perform any particular marriage.

Thus the exemption clause in the law legalizing same sex marriage in New Hampshire was utterly redundant. That's not a big deal, really.

Only some people would like to insist that this exemption should be very broad--and permit religious objection to legally justify acts of bigotry that are not religious in character. This, in fact, is urged by Thomas Berg, in The Christian Century, in an article titled Gay Marriage; A threat to religious liberty? What's most disturbing is that Mr. Berg teaches law.

He suggests that florists and photographers, for example, should be able to refuse to serve same sex couples, because of religious objections to same sex marriage. Presumably this extends to caterers and others... which leads to the obvious question; how is this any different from being able to decline to serve blacks or other groups--so long as one avers a sincere religious belief that to do so is contrary to one's religion? Cry race mixing.... He insists that it's somehow different.

But one can support same-sex marriage and acknowledge that there has been bigotry against gays and lesbians without labeling all traditionalist believers as bigots or equating the discriminatory treatment of gays with America's unique legacy of race discrimination, which includes slavery and a bloody Civil War and led to three landmark constitutional amendments. That history has led us to penalize race discrimination in virtually every context, with few conscience exemptions.

But one can? The justification for enforcing equal legal rights for black Americans is not that they are entitled to them because hundreds of thousands died in that cause in the Civil War. The justification is that every last one of us has the same fundamental and inviolable rights as every other. The only time that the state gets to weigh rights is where rights conflict.

So, what's protected?

Your thoughts are. Your speech is. You can say what you like--unless it falls into that very narrow category of speech that is legitimately seen as endangering someone else (my right to flap my lips isn't as weighty as your right to not be injured or killed). Your right to practice your religion is. Your right to not practice any particular religion, or any religion at all, is also protected.

But one cannot take one's anti-Catholic opinions and refuse to rent to a Catholic, any more than one can take one's bigoted views and refuse to sell a home to a Jew, or refuse to feed a black family in a restaurant because they're black.

But Berg is suggesting that one ought to be able to refuse to serve gays and lesbians getting married, to refuse to do business with them, because one claims that one has religious objections to same sex marriage. Logically, why would this not also oblige and permit those with such religious views to refuse to serve them at all?

But beyond that, why should one be permitted legally to take one's religious views into the marketplace as grounds for refusing to deal with another party? This requires a good--solid--legal justification, and one that is generalizable, not merely homophobic (just as racist justifications were rejected).

Face it, selling flowers is not a religious service. Neither is taking photographs. Nor is providing food.

The First Amendment bars Congress from establishing religion, and from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

When providing drugs (pharmacy), selling flowers, photographic services, housing and feeding people can be described as a distinctly religious practice, perhaps the Court will need to decide which rights in conflict take precedent. But in the meantime, the notion that there is a religious exemption for non-religious services and providing goods to others is simply nonsense. Wanting to protect one's bigotry doesn't make it constitutional, or legal. And indulging in sophistry to try to suggest it is is shameful.

Justice for Tiller

2009-06-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm confident, alas, that that phrase, justice for Tiller, is what some groups and individuals believe happened.

Justice, of course, is the last thing that happened. What happened was first degree murder. Cold blooded, evil. The planned killing of someone who faced an ongoing ethical challenge and refused to embrace a simplistic answer, of someone who did not demonize those who disagreed with him.

Murder.

In a church.

During a worship service.

Those who fed and fueled this murder did so, fanning the flames of hate and violence. Radio Rwanda didn't kill Tutsis--but they urged it, encouraged it, and approved of it. It's as much their fault as it was those wielding machetes.

And it's clear that those like O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Operation Rescue and the rest are as culpable in this murder as Radio Rwanda was of genocide.

They've talked about Tiller and provided information about Tiller and demonized him in the most outrageous ways, and to pretend that they didn't think that this could be--would be--the result is nothing but an attempt to delude the rest of us (and themselves).

If there's any justice for Tiller, it will be that people like Randall Terry and Bill O'Reilly have lives where they need someone like Tiller, and don't have him.

As for Tiller's murderer, I hope he gets what McVeigh should have gotten--life in a gray concrete cell; decades of looking in a mirror with the conviction of murderer stamped on them by society--and then to be forgotten.

On Eating Ethically

2009-05-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

(Another post found languishing--from last November. Probably intended to wax more verbosely; I shan't.)

Those who've wrestled with ethics are aware that it's not a simple or easy topic. Even in the abstract it's slippery. Applied to reality, it seems like the best rule is that if it seems clear cut and obvious, it's probably not.

The challenge of eating ethically means that one's first got to decide what ethical means and includes in this case. And one needs to be wary of the notion that perhaps there's One True Ethical Answer.

My own answer is that ethics means you do the best you can, based on the information available to you when you have to make a decision. "Can" needs to be monitored closely, lest it become an excuse for laziness--it refers to ability, not to feeling like it.

............

I know others who are engaged with the issue of ethical eating. I have vegan and vegetarian friends and colleagues who either do--or do not--try to push their dietary beliefs. A few may be eating what they are for religious reasons, and others for health reasons, and some simply because they find eating meat icky (my beloved used to work with a vegetarian woman who chain-smoked, lived in a dome house, married a Marine, and disliked vegetables. I don't assume I know why people do most things that they do, usually. Often, our answers are complex and nuanced, even to ourselves). Most do so for ethical reasons.

I know people who eat... according to all kinds of rules. Some who are gluten intolerant, some who are allergic to some food or another (or several). Myself, I've had to give up corn--in any form--because it causes a nasty and painful case of eczema.

Our tradition is to hold a large Thanksgiving for family, friends and a wider circle of people... and that has meant, at times, some serious food labeling so that people know what they can or should eat.

It would be unethical to force or deceive people into eating things that cause them physical harm or distress. That's obvious when it's physical distress, but I think it's generally true as well for emotional distress as well. It's none of my business when a vegetarian decides to lapse and have a small slice of the smoked turkey--but it would be incredibly arrogant, and unethical, for me to intentionally slip them some disguised meat in a dish they thought was "safe."

But there are many more ethical issues to consider. Believing that working conditions should be safe and humane, and that workers should be paid a living wage--as I do--what does that mean when I buy food that's inexpensive? Does that mean that someone is unable to afford shelter and food for himself or herself--and for their family? Is eating that food ethical? Particularly right now, facing a serious economic crisis, we have to face both sides of that equation. Is everyone involved in growing that food, getting the food to the table, and eating it being treated ethically?

It runs both ways.

If I'm buying food that I expect to be safe and organic--or fairly traded--and those assurances are lies, there's clearly an ethical lapse.

But for a moment, assume that those involved in growing and transporting the food are getting a decent wage and working conditions. Assume the food is organic. Fairly traded. But it's shipped from around the world to get it to me, consuming a significant amount of fossil fuel and adding to the problem of climate change. Is it ethical for me to buy and eat it? Is it ethical for the grower to ship it to where it can be marketed to me?

My own sense is that it's going to be a very complex ethical calculus to decide what "ethical eating" means. The answers may not be the same for every person, and they may change as one asks the question in different places, and at different times of year.

For my family, our slowly evolving answer has been to look for and buy certain things preferentially. Some years ago, that meant we began to eat more and more organic food. We started to make a point of looking for evidence of fair trade practices. More recently, after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, we got serious about buying locally grown food. Each of those is an ethical choice, and each of them can easily conflict with the others... and with other concerns.

My sister and her family live in Anchorage. Buying locally grown food is very much a seasonal thing for them; winter produce comes from somewhere else, somewhere far away, for them. No matter how much they may decide that eating locally is important... it's unlikely that they'll manage to eat as locally as we might, living here in Southern California. On the other hand... it's easier for them, in some cases, to know that the food that they eat is healthy, and that those involved in getting it to the have a decent life; they live in a smaller community, and the farmers and fisherfolk aren't people far, far away from them.

I'm an omnivore. I'm not horrified by the idea that what I'm eating was a living being. Everything one might eat (other than a number of chemicals that I'd recommend against for various reasons) was a living being, to my way of thinking. The criticism that eating other animals is a result of speciesism never carried much weight for me. Essentially every life form depends on the death of other life forms. That I can empathize and, I believe, understand a dog or cow more easily than I can a tree or a carrot doesn't change the fact that each of them are living beings, and that to eat them (or turn them into animal food or paper or buildings) is still killing another living being. Asserting that it's speciesist to eat animals baffles me. Why is it not equally speciesist to eat plants? They--and we--are all part of real, living species. Each individual life form tries to survive, and each species does too.

So my point is that if any life has the right to survive by consuming any other life form, it's fundamentally ethical, because it's necessary, and as I hold life to be sacred... it has a right to continue to exist. That turns out to be more of a right as a species, since for life to continue, it has to consume other life. There is a fascinating dynamic here, where every creature naturally tries to continue to live--and must eventually die and feed other life--and yet the species are not really concerned with the survival and life of any individual. To the species, what is important is that it, collectively, does well and survives.

Arguably then, those species that we humans have entered into relationships with that are often terms "domesticated" have generally done very well. Wheat, corn, cattle, chickens, dogs and cats--among others--have done very well as species. There are, without question, many, many times more individuals of those species alive and living in more places than there would be if human beings were out of the picture.

Exterminating a species, or a distinct population, is a horror. When talking of human beings, we refer to such things as genocide, and consider it to be one of the ultimate crimes. That we are currently exterminating species of all kinds at rates that nature usually reserves for disasters like hitting the earth with a very large meteor should give us pause. If we're worried about the ethics of our relations with other species... I think we should be worrying far more about those we are driving extinct than those we arrange to be numerous and eat. For me, the extinction of the passenger pigeon and other such creatures have to understood as ethical failings vastly larger than the question of whether eating a steak is ethical.

The Words Are Dancing

2009-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Needing to write
--oh, needing to write!
The ideas lie there motionless,
Like beached sea lions, sunning themselves.
There, but hardly moving;
Just groaning and bellowing and posturing
--for each other.

No words.

What does it take?
Which Muse will tease them
into the water
where they magically change form
and dance?

Which Muse needs offerings...
(Coffee? Bonbons? A movie, read a book?
Perhaps a walk--I'll do some dishes, scan the mail,
pick a rose... stare out the window at the far off hills)
--something to conjure her fleeting visit...
To tempt behemoths off the beach.

(Wrote this months ago. Must have intended to come back and revise and edit. But as I'd forgotten all about it... I think it's time to just free it.... Posted it, and discovered that blogger interprets posting something written in February, but not posted, as being published in February. So, once again, with feeling.)

Found meanings.

2009-05-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

I have rather catholic tastes in music (that's a small c, folks). But still, one has preferences, and blind spots.

My encounters with Alice Cooper's music have been pretty limited--I do recall seeing a film in '72 or '73 that certainly included "School's Out" (a topic perpetually popular with secondary students).

And that's pretty much it (that I'm aware of). My taste for horror is pretty limited, and shock rock left me cold (shock for shock's sake always seemed kind of lame)... and my taste for metal was limited (something that's oddly changed a bit in recent years--I turned my sons onto metal with a fairly obscure Faeroese band, Tyr, that does what I can best describe as Norse folk metal (the idea of Vikings liking heavy metal makes sense to me, at least). Old sagas and epics set to metal rock tunes (mostly), and sung in Faeroese and English).

So when I noticed that a search for "sparks in the dark" showed "sparks in the dark lyrics," I had to go look.

Alice Cooper?

I don't think I ever knew the song. It wasn't the inspiration for the blog's title.

But I'm fond of serendipity.

It's only me and you, babe

is certainly a truth about the relationship of blog(ger) and reader.

Love this!

2009-05-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

As a former writer/editor, one who suffered many... inadequately well-educated individuals, I adore things like this.

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, -- as that a sentence must never end with a particle, -- and perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think -- Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it. Henry David Thoreau

That's wonderful. Not as well known as Churchill's smackdown;

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Any native speaker of English immediately feels the grotesque awkwardness of that. It's English, but it ain't good English. So many of the rules of "proper" English taught in school are nothing but the rules of good Latin and Greek that were imported and applied witlessly by lexicographers who were awed and enamored of the classical tongues of the educated.

Which, of course, is as clever as applying the rules of chess and bridge to football.

Do feel free to post your favorites, I adore these snarky gems.

The Buddha Knew Gordon Gecko...

2009-03-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

Were there a mountain all made of gold,
doubled that would not be enough
to satisfy a single person:
know this and live accordingly.

Saṃyutta Nikāya 1.156

Does that really require any comment? I think that this ought ot be put on a plaque on the desk of every banker, broker... and on a billboard facing the NYSE front door.

A Journey To The Center of UUism

2009-02-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

David Bumbaugh has presented -- to several audiences now -- a document that talks about Unitarianism and Universalism, their merger, theological issues in that merger... opportunities missed (or delayed) and, as if that weren't enough, offers an observation and a proposal about views that lie at the very core of Unitarian Universalism.

It would be sad to let that remain something heard by groups here and there (and vigorously discussed by some), and Rev. Bumbaugh views the whole document as something that is "in the public realm, intended to be used to promote whatever discussion seems fruitful." So, I'm taking this excerpt of it and offering it for consideration and discussion, as well as offering some of my own thoughts and comments.

While we proudly proclaim the great diversity among us, every study I have seen of Unitarian Universalists suggests that our diversity rests in a powerfully homogeneous core of shared beliefs and attitudes. Indeed, the studies suggest that at the core we are far less diverse than many other religious groups. Let me suggest to you some of the content of that core:

We believe that the universe in which we live and move and have our being is the expression of an inexorable process that began in eons past, ages beyond our comprehension and has evolved from singularity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, from disorder to order.

We believe that the earth and all who live upon the earth are products of the same process that swirled the galaxies into being, that ignited the stars and orbited the planets through the night sky, that we are expressions of that universal process which has created and formed us out of recycled star dust.

We believe that all living things are members of a single community, all expressions of a planetary process that produced life and sustains it in intricate ways beyond our knowing. We hold the life process itself to be sacred.

We believe that the health of the human venture is inextricably dependent upon the integrity of the rest of the community of living things and upon the integrity of those processes by which life is bodied forth and sustained. Therefore we affirm that we are called to serve the planetary process upon which life depends.

We believe that in this interconnected existence the well-being of one cannot be separated from the well-being of the whole, that ultimately we all spring from the same source and all journey to the same ultimate destiny.

We believe that the universe outside of us and the universe within us is one universe. Because that is so, our efforts, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions are the dreams, hopes and ambitions of the universe itself. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe is reaching toward self-awareness, toward self-consciousness.

We believe that our efforts to understand the world and our place within it are an expression of the universe’s deep drive toward meaning. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe dreams dreams and reaches toward unknown possibilities. We hold as sacred the unquenchable drive to know and to understand.

We believe that the moral impulse that weaves its way through our lives, luring us to practices of justice and mercy and compassion, is threaded through the universe itself and it is this universal longing that finds outlet in our best moments.

We believe that our location within the community of living things places upon us inescapable responsibilities. Life is more than our understanding of it, but the level of our comprehension demands that we act out of conscious concern for the broadest vision of community of we can command and that we seek not our welfare alone, but the welfare of the whole. We are commanded to serve life and serve it to the seven times seventieth generation.

We believe that those least like us, those located on the margins have important contributions to make to the rest of the community of life and that in some curious way, we are all located on the margins.

We believe that all that functions to divide us from each other and from the community of living things is to be resisted in the name of that larger vision of a world everywhere alive, everywhere seeking to incarnate a deep, implicate process that called us into being, that sustains us in being, that transforms us as we cannot transform ourselves, that receives us back to itself when life has used us up. Not knowing the end of that process, nonetheless we trust it, we rest in it, and we serve it.

This faith statement is not a creed. (Perhaps we might attach to it the historic Universalist Freedom Clause: Neither this nor any other form of words will be used among us as a creedal test.)

Faith statement? And yet... I find nothing there that I can't agree with or accept. I think that he's managed to sidestep the endless, probably pointless, and generally useless discussions that pit theism and atheism and batter at each other--something that I've come to view as the current Unitarian Universalist version of the (possibly mythical) medieval discussions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Is that close enough for it to serve as a faith statement for the movement? If not, why not--and what would have to be changed for it to be... not perfect, but acceptable?

If You Thought Conservative Thought Was At All Modern...

2009-02-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of U.S. elections, there's been a suggestion that the Republican party--firmly in the grip of its conservative wing--wants to build a bridge to the last century (if not the one before it).

Proving that American conservatives are pikers, the Catholic Church has returned to indulgences. Oh, they assure people, they're not for sale--that practice has been outlawed by the Church since 1567. But today you can get them for charitable contributions.

cough cough (nudge nudge)

While this actually started several years ago, the practice of not-selling indulgences has been pushed into increasing prominence by Pope Benedict. Building bridges back to the Reformation, I guess. Then there's the re-communication of a Holocaust-denying, far-right-wing bishop. At this point, I won't be shocked if Benedict puts some country under interdict in an attempt to muscle its leadership.

What's in the water in Rome?

(hat tip to Rev. Sewell; I missed this bit of lunacy...)

Tomorrow... Feb 12...

2009-02-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

It's Darwin's birthday (the notorious, mild-mannered Anglican clergyman who wrote books about natural selection).

It's also Lincoln's birthday (the American president noted particularly for his gaunt looks, top hat, and love of jokes).

For both of them, the 200th. 1809 was a good year, clearly.

(Personally, I'm most appreciative of the fact that on Lincoln's 200th birthday, a black American is president of the United States.)

I have to figure out what to toast those three fact with--but I have 24 hours still to figure it out. I'm open to suggestions.

Texting in Church

2009-02-11T14:17:00.000-08:00

Context here. I'm not on LJ, and have no desire to create an account just to comment.

So, texting in church?

Not surprisingly, the immediate reaction is a collective gasp of shock and horror.

Permit me to disagree.

Why? Well...

First, an experience--real one--where a member used her phone to text her husband (who'd stayed home to watch golf, I believe) to tell him to GO GET CLEANED UP AND COME TO THE SECOND SERVICE because he would really, really, really want to hear it. It was nearly the end of the first service and if she'd waited to leave after the service, turn on the phone and call... he'd never have made it.

When a sick teen stays home, this is a way of being able to be "there" for them.

One can't be sure what's being texted, or why. How is this any different--or more distracting--than someone whipping out a pen and scribbling notes? Maybe they're catching words that are incredibly important--or scribbling furious refutations.

Key concerns (in each case, and anything related): it needs to be discreet and quiet. As someone who's been in the pulpit preaching about race issues when a person of color, in the front row, closed her eyes and lay her head down*, there are vastly worse distractions than someone discreetly texting. Trust me, anyone who's feeling "disrespected" because someone is doing something that MIGHT imply distraction is simply too full of concern about the import and significance of what they're saying.

A sermon is a conversation of sorts--in which the preacher is invited in... and doesn't hear the other half (the critical part!) of what goes on. You've worked like hell to organize the message you're preaching and you have to assume that people will hear that... in their own ways. Sometimes, something triggers in the mind that you could never imagine--like the fact that someone forgot to get cat food, or pick up milk--or medicine--and being able to text that to someone else to deal with means that it's dealt with and the listener, now unburdened, can come back to attend to what's being spoken about.

If people are coming to church and texting--and keep coming back--I'll assume that they're getting what they need. I'm really not hung up about whether it looks respectful to someone who isn't paying attention to what I'm saying because they're worrying about whether that person texting is being disrespectful. I'd rather that people attend as best they can, as they need to for themselves. But then, I'd rather have people there, even if not dressed "for church," too.

* -- As it turns out, she finds watching a sermon highly distracting; caught up in that, she doesn't hear it as well. So, caught by what I was saying--and agreeing--she shut the world out to be able to focus.

Hate Crime: When it's not even a question...

2009-02-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

Sara, over at Orcinus, has already said much of what I wanted to.

Adkisson, who murdered two people--and tried to murder more, and wanted to die a martyr to his cause--has been sentenced to rot in prison for the rest of his life, without parole, and without even a shadow of a hint of remorse.

I'd call that justice.

I came to a final parting of the ways with the death penalty back during the trial of Timothy McVeigh. It's not that he didn't deserve it; hell, if anyone has, he did. But executing him gave him the way out that he wanted. He didn't have to wake up for decades and face himself in a mirror, the man who backed a truckload of explosives up to a building with a bunch of children in it. That's what anti-government, anti-liberal, conservative "heroes" look like in America; people who blow up buildings full of kids and shoot up churches with kids performing on stage.

More than once, I've seen people urge that such scum should be executed--publicly. I've seen the demands for proof that it was really a hate crime, and insistence that this wasn't what "real" conservatives do.

Well, Adkisson's letter makes it clear. He wrote one page under the header "Know This If Nothing Else," and his first statement is that this was a hate crime. He acted out of hate, and reading the letter it's clear where the ideas and wording of that hate came from--straight off of right wing talk radio. So let's call that what it is--hate radio, just like Radio Rwanda was; urging hatred of liberals. Too strong, you think? Nah. We have expressions from Michael Reagan that he'll pay for the bullets of anyone who shoots a liberal, and Goldberg about taking a baseball bat to people who criticize him, Buchanan and others. How much clearer does it need to be than an offer to pay the costs of committing the murder of the people you're preaching hatred against?

Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Savage, Reagan, Goldberg, Hannity, Coulter... hatemongers, inciters of murder--who proclaim their deep religious ties and are embraced by right wing religionists.

But a little more about Adkisson and his letter, since it's a spotlight into the dank hole that he and McVeigh (and others) crawl out of. It states it's a hate crime, that it was a political protest (that, incidentally, make it terrorism--by definition), and that it was symbolic (the people he shot at and killed were surrogates for the Supreme Court Justices and politicians who he really wanted to kill--the folks that hate radio fulminates against and that right wing religion has been praying to see die.

Still think Radio Rwanda is an analogy too far? You're wrong. Radio Rwanda called for people to go and kill the cockroaches--and Tutus were massacred. Adkisson's been listening to American Hate Radio--and what he heard is what he wrote, that liberals are a pest like termites, and should be killed.

There's nothing there to compromise with. Nothing to be bipartisan with.

Free speech? Sure. But that doesn't mean that it's entitled to consequence-free broadcasting; the airwaves belong to The People, and are to be used in the public interest. Urging hatred of other people, urging their murder--that's not in the public interest.

Water Cascading Over Rocks: Race, Ethnicity, Conversion

2009-02-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

Reading Transient and Permanent led me to Monkey Mind before I got there on my own (monkey mind is a place I live, but that's a different story), and as I drafted a comment, I realized it was pretty tangential--attending more to our own open door and not really about that same issue in western Buddhism. And it was getting long, so I brought it here.

This past week, in class, David Bumbaugh posed a question to us.

Are we an ethnic church?

The reaction in that class of 20 suggests that something important got touched.

He observed that our growth patterns are classically more along the lines of ethnic churches--Unitarian churches, in particular, were planted where "our people" had already gone (St. Louis, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego...) in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and then the Fellowship movement just drips of it; planting small churches where enough of "our people" existed to maybe make a go of it (with astonishing effect, too).

Ethnic?

Clearly not in the sense of that various sects from various lands that come to North America and form themselves around their ethnic identity. A lesson that I took early from anti-racism work is that "white" isn't really an ethnicity; it lacks most of the features of that--which helps explain, I think, why Anonymous Dudley's guest speaker said she'd have to give too much up. At this point in time, we're largely a white church, and someone out of an ethnic church tradition can see and feel how much they'd lose--even if the faith they'd move into offers so much that they admire and feel drawn to.

And yet, I think that Bumbaugh's question nags at me because I suspect that while we're not yet very aware of it--and in many ways it's still somewhat inchoate to us--we're in the process of creating an ethnicity. We have begun to see our people--to know them when we see them and hear them, and sometimes to know them as "ours" even before they know of us. Hell, it's an ethnicity of people who are mostly adopted into it; native born UUs are fairly rare.

But if that identity is so tenuous for us, and we are so wary of it, perhaps many coming in who already have an ethnic identity don't see it and feel it--or at least not as an adequate alternative for them. Where's the food, music, culture?

Or is that an illusion?

We have tended to see culture as something that others have, most of us in this movement (tribe?) and we've tended to view it as a static thing. Japanese culture or Zulu culture or Lakotah culture or German culture... those things are frozen. The modern world erodes them (and it does, that's not a complete falsehood), and what exists of them now isn't really their culture (wrong! Culture is a living thing, or it's dead. I think this is part of what's so difficult and challenging about cultural appropriation/misappropriation--cultures have always adopted thigns from each other and mutated them...).

Few of us have only one culture. Most of us in some way live at the intersections of various cultures; deeper in some, shallower or more on the surface of others... and in the end, my culture is mine alone, because no one quite shares all the pieces of culture that I do, in the same way. But we still see that there are loosely (or not so loosely) definable boundaries. Groups do exist.

I think we're afraid of setting out our boundary stones, afraid that we can't move them (sotto voce: again!). I think in a sense that we've taken (and in many cases grown) the key values of North American society as touchstones of faith, which is why it feels so attractive to people--peace, life, order, liberty, happiness, good government. It's part of why they have trouble seeing it as a faith--don't almost all of us hold those values? Well, yes, most of us do. You're standing inside the doors.

Do you want claim this?

See Emma Lazarus's poem for a moment as a religious claim

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Look at the names of the statue that poem refers to; originally named Liberty Enlightening the World, most commonly just known as The Statue of Liberty, and re-named Mother of Exiles by Lazarus.

I think I'll end this rambling thought here.

Drink up!

2009-01-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not hitting celebratory champagne (yet, at least).

I'm realizing that millions of us are at risk of dehydrating from all our tears of joy today.

Remember to drink plenty of water today, folks!

Trying to figure it out...

2009-01-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

I'm a folk music fan. So I've known for years that Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land had lyrics that got bowdlerized for the delicate sensibilities of the wealthy and powerful. Those are potent and important lyrics.

And now Pete Seeger, bless him, has publicly restored those lyrics to the public consciousness (I've not looked to see how many delicate flowers wilted and died because of it).

So here's what I'm trying to figure out in words;

Why is it that so many people are so deeply touched by that act?

Just reading that it happened got to me. I hadn't read the article, hadn't seen video. I just had seen enough words to tell me what had happened--and I could fill in the rest. I knew... and was choked up. My wife tells me that when she heard it, she was in tears. Many others have written about it and remarked on it.

It's such a small and curious thing--and yet such a large and numinous one. Why?

That Day Has Come--Almost

2009-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

No, this is not an "I can't wait for tomorrow post." Tomorrow will come--and I look forward to it as much as anyone--at the same pace it always has.

(Which my Buddhist friends, and Lewis Carroll--jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today--would both remind us is never. But that's another discussion.)

A CNN poll today shows that two thirds of black Americans reported that Martin Luther King Jr's vision for race relations in America has been fulfilled--and that just under a majority of whites feel the same. Perhaps that's more or less the Obama electorate; most blacks and almost a majority of whites. More or less, because black Americans voted for him overwhelmingly--which means that a significant number of blacks who did vote for him don't think that King's vision has been fulfilled. On the flip side, it means that an appreciable number of white Americans who didn't vote for him do feel that King's vision has been fulfilled.

I've no evidence, but my gut-feel is that the black/white dichotomy of this poll is explicable in this manner; roughly 70% of Obama supporters think King's vision's been met. (That, given the scant report of the poll, would be a hair over 30% of all whites, given that 43% of whites voted for him.)

That would give us the number of blacks who do, and it would provide a majority of the whites who agree. The rest, you ask, who are those white people who agree then? Those are whites who would like to believe so--and in most cases probably wanted to believe so--or would have asserted so--before Obama ran for the presidency. Perhaps even before he ran for the Senate.

This has been a thought experiment in how what may look like a coalition may not be; how fractured alliances may really be--and how a poll may tell you something that it really should not.

Ok, so if that's correct... then black Americans are roughly twice as likely to agree that King's vision's been met as whites of a moderate to liberal bent (I'm labeling, and I'm aware of it) are. Or maybe those aren't really whites of a more liberal bent. Or perhaps we're ever so slightly more aware of shadows that still lie over King's vision on the white side of things.

Interracial dating and marriage is more common, but there's still a not-uncommon twitch at first about it. That's actually true for both sides of the color line. But I think the motivations are, on average, slightly different. I think that whites are -- again, on average -- more able and willing to see beyond skin tone to character and the quality of one's heart than they were. But one still hears stories of kids whose parent takes them aside to have a word about this. And, gloriously, one hears more stories of the kid calling the parent on the inconsistency of that word with what those parents have taught those kids for years.

I think we're getting there.

I think there's been great progress.

But I don't think tomorrow came. I don't think we, as a nation, yet judge each other simply on our hearts and characters.

King walked so Obama could run. And yes, Obama won, and that was an amazing, historic moment. Progress indeed. The fact that a black American will sit behind the desk in the Oval Office on Lincoln's 200th birthday is a truly significant thing. The fact that a vast, staggering number of us--of all shades and ethnic origins--think that Obama can, and should make a huge difference for this nation on issues that are real and tangible, that's significant.

But his race was still an issue. His skin tone had to be addressed. It had to be walked around at times and skillfully handled.

There's a tale reported during the election of someone door knocking in Pennsylvania, asking who the residents of one home were voting for, and the answer came back "We're voting for the nigger." I think that captures this limnal moment we're in. We, as a nation, are starting to be able to judge hearts and characters--but we still see skin color, and it still carries assumptions, judgments, fears and prejudices.

That should be no great surprise. Real change comes slow; damnably slow and frustratingly slow. Oliver Wendell Holmes observed "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribes." I think we in America are starting to give up on some of those tribal tattoos--and taking up new ones, for good and ill. But many of us still have the old ones, or scars from painfuly excising them--ghosts of tattoos that haunt us.

Tomorrow isn't here yet. But maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow's jam promises to have a rich and wonderful flavor.

Peace, Baked Daily

2009-01-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

We winnow ourselves of husks
That we may grind ourselves to flour
To make dough

Leavened by imagination
Flavored by the salt of our sweat--and blood and tears--

Rising (some things cannot be hurried much)

Baked hot
(Surely this will burn us, let us out!)
Emerging crusty
Glorious to the eye

Breaking bread
Ourselves, each other
Fed

Thoughtsherds

2009-01-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

I have several long blocks to walk each day--at least twice--in the cold. My body is moving, caught in tension between sweat and freezing; my mind seems to find this conducive to thought-fragments that seem... eye-catching, like shiny potsherds.

Contemplating the curious habit of claiming iconic figures who were (or may have been) Unitarian or Universalist (or UU, even) as a way of claiming legitimacy, which seems to serve as a device for not really having to actually know much at all about those figures as real people both worthy and painfully human, brilliant and flawed. Jefferson, the apostle of freedom--and slave-owner (oh, wait, not a marble saint, so don't claim him any longer?), or ... oh hell, there's a long list.

Fine, hero-worship. That's fine, and even useful. But know your heroes as human. Iconoclastic, fine too--but while you're pillorying others for their failings and imperfections, watch your hypocrisy level (just where were all your clothes made, and by whom; what were they paid and what were their working conditions? There are more slaves today than 150 years ago; "ours" labor out of sight...)

Can we manage to make useful pots from all our feet of clay? Watching everyone walk on the potsherds is both painful and so very old and tiresome.

Dream Verse #1

2009-01-17T06:25:00.000-08:00

Without much comment. Words from a dream; I'll see if it fills itself back in.

A life spent stacking stones for a great temple

may be as virtuous as

One spent [farming / feeding -- image indecipherable/words obscured]

A life spent stacking souls for God

may be as sinful as

One spent in war, counting bodies of the slain.

Nod to a meme.

2008-12-22T20:46:00.000-08:00

Chalicechick has tagged the universe with her latest meme...

Since I'm a fan of any distraction in a storm, here's my response.

1. Aside from reading, my favorite pastimes are - having long conversations, and cruising the internet looking for interesting, um, distractions.

2. I don't think that ministry is typically thought of as driving a desk--though there's a lot of that to it--and since I'm already surprised to find myself pursuing ministry, I have no idea what I might be doing if I were to take up some other profession. Probably politics, since my mother's deceased and can't be terminally mortified by that.

3. I am irrationally worried about - I don't do much worrying; it's one of my more annoying character traits, I'm told. When awakened at some obnoxious hour of the night, I can spend a while gnawing on the things that should be getting done that aren't. But that's probably not irrational. I've never been able to worry about getting pregnant personally--but have spent some time worrying about a partner's really inconvenient timed possible pregnancy.

4. If I were the opposite sex - I would have one less irrational worry. Probably true--as long as it doesn't presume to descend from #4, as CC's does.

5. The thing I miss most about childhood is - being happiiy oblivious. Unlike CC, I was a fairly happy kid.

6. I like to collect - nothing. Too much collects anyway. Way, way too much.

7. The only thing I've ever been homesick for was home--meaning family. I grew up more or less transient, and the rolling stone that was my family was the thing I missed; no place was really "home" in any deep sense.

8. I’ve never really liked to eat - um, no... can't claim that. It'd be a big, fat lie. As for marshmallows, well, I never was a fan of them on their own. Now I avoid them like the plague since they're made with HFCS, and corn in any form doesn't get along with me.

9. When I have nightmares... I've no idea. I rarely remember any dreams.

10. Magazines subscribed to: Mostly science magazines--several of those. TIME comes and keeps coming although I canceled it years ago. Plural years ago. I've no idea why it keeps coming. National Geographic, Smithsonian.

Of Eating... Ethically

2008-12-01T17:46:00.000-08:00

This--ethical eating--being the big (and I think it is, justly) new issue being discussed and wrestled with by UU congregations, I wanted to start a conversation here.

But first, a grace.

I did not grow up in a family that said grace. I found the practice... curious... well into my 20s. Most of the time, it seemed rote and hasty, and I was baffled. This poem, when I encountered it, hit me like a pile of bricks, and it became--for me--the essential core of what I pause and htink on before I eat. Not said aloud, but considered.

Song of the Taste
(Gary Snyder, from REGARDING WAVE (New Directions, 1970))

Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds

aa the fleshy sweetness packed
aa around the sperm of swaying trees

The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
aa aa aa soft-voiced cows
aa the bounce in the lamb’s leap
aa the swish in the ox’s tail

Eating roots grown swoll
aa inside the soil

Drawing on life of living
aa clustered points of light spun
aa aa aa out of space
hidden in the grape.

Eating each other’s seed
aa aa aa aa eating
aa ah, each other.

Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:
aa aa aa aa lip to lip.

I've poked around at this enough to realize that it's a vast array of entangle issues.

Is it ethical to kill and eat (at all, or animals, or certain animals)?
Is it ethical to treat animals (that will be used for food) inhumanely? Is that only an issue for their slaughter, or their lives?
What are our ethical obligations to the members of a species and to the species?
What about organic/non-organic food?
Local or non-local?
Effect on the local ecology?
Effect on the ecosphere (impacts on climate change, etc)?
The working conditions and treatment of those working on raising, processing, and transporting food?
The payment of a decent (living) wage to those performing those tasks?
Inequality in access to adequate food?
Cost of food?
Sustainability of the practices of raising and transporting food?

What else? Have I missed other areas or subtopics?

Incivil Disobedience

2008-11-25T21:45:00.000-08:00

This looks like an interesting and effective scheme.

R.I.P.

2008-11-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

Equal Marriage, California

June 17, 2008 - Nov 4, 2008

In hopes of the resurrection

Time for the War on Christmas

2008-11-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. The Kulturkrieg's Stoßtruppen are at it, warning us of the devious and pervasive forces that are out to suppress Christmas and to ruthlessly extract any reference to Christ--and to ensure that no one observes and celebrates the day in any manner whatsoever.

It's a damned serious problem and should not be mocked.

My small effort on behalf of the struggle to fight this insidious scheme is the fruits of my research to understand where it came from originally. I'm not suggesting that I've found its source, but I've managed to move that goalpost back in time, and want to share it.

"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."

Massachusetts Bay Colony
Law Banning Christmas Celebration
May 11, 1659

Damned Puritans.

Who would have guessed that the War on Christmas was a Christian cause?

Offered without comment...

2008-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

because I'm so offended that visions of the Jacquerie arise...

(Context: This is the corporation that we, the taxpayers, bailed out by buying a just under 80% share of...)

As reported by ABC:

After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort
Rescued by Taxpayers, $440,000 for Retreat Including "Pedicures, Manicures"

By BRIAN ROSS and TOM SHINE

October 7, 2008—

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

"Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

Stream of consciousness--BBC-triggered

2008-10-05T14:41:00.001-07:00

Filed under "Sad, even pitiable, but somehow amusing":

Pope laments decline of scripture

...

The Pope lamented what he called the harmful and destructive influence of some forms of modern culture.

This, he said, had decided that God was dead, and man was the sole architect of his destiny and master of creation.

...

Um, no. Architect? Now, perhaps unlicensed general contractor... that looks likely.

Filed under "Headlines one never wants to see" (bad echo!):

Germany seeks to reassure savers

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has moved to reassure savers in German financial institutions that their deposits are safe.

I'm afraid to even look at the editorial cartoons that might conjure up. Perhaps fortuitously, the cartoonist I know who'd have gone straight for that cheap, creepy image is having surgery.

File this one under "Pot calls kettle black":

Palin makes Obama terrorist claim

(For anyone unfamiliar with Gov. Palin, her husband was a member of an Alaskan secessionist party--whose founder died in an illegal attempt to buy explosives gone bad--until she began running for major public office, and she's been on friendly terms with that party even after her election. Obama knows a '60s era radical--whose acts of violence occured when Obama was 8 years old--and has become a minor Chicago area philanthropist since.)

Filed under "More of the same":

Afghan victory hopes played down

The UK's commander in Helmand has said Britain should not expect a "decisive military victory" in Afghanistan.
...
But he stated: "We're not going to win this war.

Sort of like in Iraq, or just like in Iraq? Britain's played this game in Afghanistan before...

William Butler Yeats, Crisis Economics Poet

2008-10-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Just swap "Washington" for "Bethlehem."

Bring on the Swedish Plan. Among other things, it worked pretty well for Sweden's crisis. Of course, it's Swedish and therefore suspect on the right--anything borne in on the shoulders of tall blond(e) Scandinavian socialists must be riddled with libertine values... like insisting on value for tax payer funds.

Or something that's vaguely responsible, please.

What it sounds like Congress is doing is pouring more oil into the engine that's belching white smoke as the old Buick careens down the road. More than oil's necessary. Oh, oil is too--but only as a stop gap, so that there's enough lubrication to get the heap into the mechanic's without having the engine seize up.

Fun and... educational

2008-10-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

h/t to Chalicechick

Absurdism to Live For

2008-09-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

Maoists appoint "living goddess."

What is there to say to that? What can one add?

First they came for...

2008-09-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

In 1971 Martin Niemöller said he was not sure exactly when he said these words--and over the years, it appears that he (and others) cited his words differently--but this is the version he preferred, if people wanted to cite his words;

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

I was pretty disturbed when Adkission barged into TVUUC in Knoxville and started shooting Unitarian Universalists--because "they" were liberal folk who were supporting liberal, egalitarian politicians. But this isn't about that.

It's about the fact that nothing is being done about the forces that appear to have driven Adkission in the direction of such an act.

I was horrified when Bill Gwatney was sought out and murdered in what appears to be a political assassination, because he was the chairman of the Democratic Party in Arkansas. (Wikipedia says "No motive was discovered, except Johnson quitting his Target job earlier that day." But Johnson went to the Democratic Party HQ, asked for Gwatney because (he said) he wanted to volunteer--and then murdered the chairman. It's mind bogglingly hard to draw a connection between losing one's job at Target....) But this isn't about that.

It's about the fact that nothing is being done about the forces that appear to have driven Johnson in the direction of such an act.

Now, I'm appalled. There was a terrorist attack in America--in Dayton--on a place of worship, affecting hundreds of people, adults and children--and it's barely been reported. (So much for America not having had any terrorist attacks since 9/11--that's two, at least, the anthrax letters and this one... and both of those appear to have been commited by home-grown terrorists...)

The good news is that no one was killed. But people were terrorized and harmed, and that's absolutely terrorism. Worship was disrupted; people were driven out of their service by tearing up, coughing and shortness of breath. Firefighters were washing peoples' faces and eyes at the scene, and some people were taken to a hospital.

... a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window...

Perhaps it was someting like pepper spray--or tear gas. Or it could have been any of a number of other noxious things. But what's disturbing is that it was done... and that the national media hasn't covered it, and that there's no public expression of concern.

You see, it was a mosque that was attacked...

... in a community where the hate "documentary" Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West had been distributed widely (inserted into the local paper or mailed, as it has throughout the country). It's been distributed by the Clarion Fund, and carries the endorsement of the chair of the counter-terrorism department of the U.S. Naval War College, citing his name and using the implicit authority of an official U.S. military institution to lend it credibility.

In each case there's an attack on people who are the object of the hate messages of the political right.

And there's nothing done about the root causes.

But maybe you're not a liberal, a Unitarian Universalist, a Democrat or a Muslim, so you can just shake your head and move along. But you should remember Niemöller's words, and as you move along, as yourself one question;

Will there be anyone there when they come for you?

Pretty big news...

2008-09-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

hat tip to Br. Garotte of Moderation for this bit of news:

(I'd have discussed this there, but the blog only allows comments from livejournal users)

Full news here. All emphasis mine.

Bishop Carlton Pearson, who has been publicly criticized for teaching that all people will go to heaven, has folded his Oklahoma church into a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
...
After leading what once was a prominent charismatic church, Pearson said he chose All Souls because of its inclusive atmosphere, accepting gays, blacks and people of all beliefs or none.

“I wanted a place where my people could find safe harbor,” he told the Tulsa newspaper. “They’re already outcasts in the evangelical charismatic community.”

Senior Minister Marlin Lavanhar of All Souls said the addition of several hundred people with a black Pentecostal worship style has enlivened his mostly white congregation. “The ‘amens’ and the ‘right ons’ pull something out of you when you preach,” Lavanhar told the Tulsa World. “There’s a lot of laughter and tears. We’ve never been so free in worship.”

For those unfamiliar with the back-story here, Pearson (educated at Oral Roberts U., and mentored by Oral Roberts himself) led the church he founded--Higher Dimensions-- which was one of the largest churches in Tulsa until he began to preach universalism, which he called the 'Gospel of Inclusion.' 19th century Universalists would certainly recognize Pearson's statement as a common position among them;

For others it may very well be that the punishment merited by their sins is greater than what they receive in this life. For those people perhaps there will be some kind of punishment after death, but we believe that it will be remedial and corrective rather than just punishment for punishment's sake. Exactly what that will be and how long it will last we don't know. Will Hell for some people last 10 minutes or 10 million years... we don't know. But this we do know; Hell will not last for eternity; it will not be endless... Don't sin. Be reunited with God now, rather than after you have put yourself (and those you love) through Hell.

His preaching that resulted in hostility and pressure from other parts of the evangelical community, leading to the teaching being labeled heresy, and the unrepentant Pearson a heretic. New Dimensions lost many members and suffered financial crises as membership fell. Eventually he and New Dimensions moved within the UCC fold.

I'd followed the story somewhat at the time and thought that was probably the end of the public story. Finding that New Dimensions has merged with All Souls in Tulsa is quite a remarkable coda. It should be fascinating to see what this means for UUism in Tulsa, just for starters.

I apologize in advance...

2008-09-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Greek word for "again" or "backward" is palin.

The Greek verb for speaking is "lalein."

Palilalia is a speech disorder characterized by "involuntary repetition of words, phrases, or sentences."

Which may explain why we keep hearing the governor of Alaska tell us about her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere.

The word she seems to repeat most, however, is "exceptional." America's an exceptional country, those listening to her are exceptional Americans. Given her support for hostilities against Russia, one's forced to assume that she really is a hard core American exceptionalist. Which rather does argue that both she and her running mate are running for Bush's third term.

I, like most Americans, take exception to that idea.

Funny--but it hurts.

2008-09-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself."

Just spotted that over on the front page of Daily Kos. It's part of the Republican platform, adopted in September, 2008.

So... who was it that's been bailing out Wall Street and wants to do more?

Irony, anyone?

There's a fascinating dynamic here that boils down to the socialization of risk and the privatization of profit For the record, the proposed no strings, no oversight bailout proposed by the Administration is a debt of $2000 for every individual person in the USA--with no promise that it's enough, that it will work, or that there will be any benefit to the public. Just please fill this hole with your money, American taxpayers.

Of course, no one much talks about the fact that the hole that Wall Street created is--potentially--about three times the GDP of the planet. That's the size of the credit default swap market that we're asked to throw ourselves into for the good of Wall Street. What's unknown (and perhaps unknowable) is how much of that unspeakably large amount is really there and how much is fluff, vapor, hype and lies. Are we being asked to cover a hole that's only 1% of the market's size? Maybe. Or maybe not. They're not telling, they don't want to, and they don't think we can make them (hell, maybe they don't even have a clue).

But... good money after bad, anyone? Sunk costs? I think we shouldn't touch this one with the proverbial 10 foot pole. It's going to hurt--like hell--no matter what. But guaranteeing most all of Wall Street's bad judgment and greed is a complete fool's game.

The Perversity of the Universe Tends Towards...

2008-09-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

a maximum. That, for the uninitiated, is O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's Law (Finagle's Law being Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment)

For the last decade, we've had a pair of rescued basenjis--until July, when the first of them turned out to have cancer and decency--kindness--required us to euthanize him. I miss him; he was a gentleman among canines. The other is the stereotypical misfit; we suspect she was separated too early from her mother and litter and raised away from other dogs. She's never quite been right--but she was good with people (except that she could never be reliably housebroken). When her comrade departed, she mourned in the most painful, vocal way. Basenjis are not like other dogs in a number of ways; their vocalizations are one. Eerie and evocative mourning.

She didn't do well and we ended up determining that she was diabetic. So we all learned the ins and outs of treating an aged diabetic dog. And she seemed to be doing ok. Not great, but ok. Better. Then she ended up at the vet (naturally while we were out of town and our goddaughter was minding the place and the pets), having not been eating much. An outrageous amount of money later, she was home, boney and... somewhat better. For a while.

But not for long; she's not been eating well for days and so she's not been getting insulin, and the vet didnt' return one call and then the answer was (of course!) bring her in and we'll keep her for a day and (oh, yes, this is what they did the day when we racked up an obscene bill that... isn't repeatable). So today we had a long talk with the boys about where this looked to be heading.

...

Only tonight, for the first time in about a week, she actually ate a normal amount and got insulin.

This, of course is all stacked up on a wide range of things that have all of us feeling worn, stretched, tired...

Laughter is all that's left. And turning in early, I think. Tomorrow will be boils and clowns, I expect, and one really must be well rested for that. To properly appreciate it.

Festina Lente

2008-09-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

“Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain admitted in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.”

Certainly that's laudable. It's annoying as hell when people make rash, hasty choices and then whine and complain about the consequences. I've listened to a couple people who made those kinds of choices about cars (big gas guzzlers that they didn't need, but liked for some reason... and now complain, just a few years later, about the cost of filling the tank. The only thing that wasn't utterly predictable was the actual date that would happen... rash, hasty choice).

But there's a vast difference between a hasty decision that saddles you with a gas guzzler or a too-large mortgage, or even a bad marriage, and one that affects others more than it affects you.

This, in the end, is the reason that the whole vetting (or not) of Sarah Palin issue is such a big concern. As long as Governor Mooseburger never has to do anything but preside over the Senate (when it pleases her to condescend to do so*), hide out in an undisclosed location**, and shoot lawyers, her being VP is really a fairly minor thing for the country. It won't really matter that much; the observation that the post of vice president isn't worth a bucket of warm spit*** is pretty apt, historically. It's only the most recent Veeps who've managed to make their roles signficant, and in each case that's entirely the result of the willingness of the president to let them do more. It's entirely plausible that a hypothetical Vice President Palin would be little more than a spokesmodel for the McCain Administration.

It's what happens if the McCain Administration turns into the Palin Administration for any reason (death, resignation, impeachment or a longer term invocation of sections three or four of the 25th Amendment) that matters. Who Sarah Palin is, what she thinks and believes, what she'd like to do, and how she's likely to act in regards to the Constitution, the law, etc. is what really matters.

That, in fact, is one of the two reasons for vetting a VP pick. The first, of course, is to put all the cards on the table for the presidential nominee--so he or she knows what scandals and skeletons might arise in the campaign. We've pretty much already seen that John McCain isn't complaining about his decision there (about other people's questioning the hastiness and the nominees credentials, that's another story). But John's not the one who would really suffer the consequences of a hasty decision on his part, in this case. After all, if Sarah Palin becomes president, and there's anything to regret... the suffering would befall the American people, not John McCain. Vetting thus becomes a fiduciary responsibility, really. Picking someone well grounded, informed, and capable of doing the job well is the real obligation.

Given the vetting process, and what we already know didn't happen (no one appears to have gone to Alaska first, and really gone through the records and asked the questions, and worse, the McCain campaign has simply lied about the thoroughness of its process--which it won't discuss the specifics of--claiming that the FBI investigation cleared her. Only the FBI doesn't do that, and says it didn't do that for this campaign or candidate...).

Is Sarah Palin ready to be Vice President?

The campaign has touted her security credentials--the governor of the only state that borders Russia, and commander of the AK National Guard. The threat of a Russian invasion of Alaska has never been significant, and barely imagined since the collapse of the USSR (long before Palin became governor). In fact, a major rail line connecting Alaska to Russian Asia (and thus to the rest of the Old World) has been talked about repeatedly in recent years. That's hardly the stuff one mulls over when a nation is a military threat. Further, Gov. Palin is reported to have never given any order to the AK National Guard. Apparently military credentials can be acquired by osmosis, simply by holding a titular military post.

The campaign likes the story of her fighting Republican corruption in AK--as a way of suggesting she's even handed and full of mavericky goodness. But the truth is that in Palin's time, the State of Alaska has been essentially a Republican preserve, and the opportunities for Democratic politicians there to be corrupt have been few. And, as any observer of Alaskan politics can tell you, going after corrupt Republican politicians there is sort fo like going after salmon in spawning season; it's hard to miss. It is, in fact, hard to find a significant Republican Alaskan politician not mired in at least one serious scandal, and in fact, Palin has her own (abuse of power--a case which is serious enough and inescapably substantial enough that the GOP controlled legislature demanded an investigation of it. The McCain campaign says it knew about it and accepted the governor's assertion that it wouldn't matter (insert raised eyebrow here).

Then there are Governor Palin's lies. She appears to suffer the same blindspot that John McCain does--not understanding that the past is there to be examined, and that in the age of "the google" it's terribly easy to test the veracity of many statements. There's the Bridge to Nowhere; she presented herself as a bold opponent of it who wrote to Congress, shot it down and saved the nation all that money. The truth? The truth is that there's extensive evidence, including media reports and phtographs, that show Palin actively supported it. The truth is that she wrote to Congress against it after the earmark was already dead, in Congress. The truth is that the Bridge to Egg-On-Your-Face wasn't built... but Alaska got all that money anyway, helping it maintain its status as the ~~welfare~~earmark dollar per citizen queen status it's long held. There's the governor's luxury plane that she campaigned against--and, she or McCain or the campaign claim, sold on eBay and made a profit. The truth? The truth is she put it on eBay, and it didn't sell. After it failed to sell, it was sold through conventional used plane channels and was sold at a loss.

There's her performance as mayor of Wasilla, which reveals her to have an expectation of personal loyalty and support from government employees. Those who didn't support her election were fired. The town librarian was asked to let Palin know how she could ban books--and on rejecting the notion, Palin tried to fire her. That firing was blocked by the city council, and limitations were imposed on Palin.

Then there's her involvement with the Alaska Independence Party (a party her husband was a member of until Palin ran for governor, in 2002), which advocates the secession of Alaska from the USA. Palin herself may not have been a member of the party in the past (that's murky; the chair of the party affirmed she had been, but is now uncertain), but she's certainly been cozy with them, attending at least one convention and sending supportive messages by video as governor. Since the party's talked of "infiltrating" major parties as a means fo gaining influence, that's all rather unsettling.

Does that all sound like the kind of president for all Americans that we might want? Does it sound like the kind of issues that should have been caught in vetting, and dealt with, prepared for? Yet none of that seems to have been dealt with proactively; each thing's been something that the campaign has dealt with in a very reactive mode. That's not what one would expect of an organization that had thoroughly vetted a candidate.

That doesn't just speak to Palin's inappropriateness as a candidate, it speaks to McCain's. It's one thing to make hasty decisions and to grit one's teeth and take the consequences. It's another to foist the consequences off on others.

* Perhaps Palin would be more hands-on than Dick Cheney, but that is a perfectly accurate description of his attitude about his only constitutional obligation. Given that McCain seems to be affirming most of the current administration's policies and behaviors, I'm inclined to assume things will stay the same except where they're explicitly not going to be.

** Again, Dick Cheney's modus operandi; he's been harder to find than Waldo for the last eight years. Given Palin's being kept away from the press since her selection, which is a very strange behavior in a campaign for office, one is hard put not to be reminded of Cheney's behavior.

*** The notorious characterization of the post by the 32nd vice president (for FDR's first two terms), John "Cactus Jack" Nance Garner IV. That's what he said, and he called a writer who quoted it as "warm spit" a "pantywaist" for doing so.

Appeal to UUs Interested in Article II Revision...

2008-09-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be in the position to present--personally--some reactions and opinions to the draft revision to a member of the CoA.

I'd like to compile the things that are approved/disapproved or and the critique...

I have no idea how much time I'll get (but some, for certain) for this, and I don't know how much this "outside of channels" communication will matter.

But if you're interested... here's a chance.

Note: This is directed specifically to the revision of the draft (or what it should be, reasonably). I'm going to keep this to the topic, narrowly. Strictly salient posts about meaningful revision for good and useful cause--or I'll delete them.

Pitbull With Lipstick

2008-09-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well, Sarah told us who--or at least what--she is, and what her role will be.

What she offered last night was a Bridge to Nowhere (the one she avidly supported until it got killed and is now insisting she actively opposed and helped kill), an America where there's not even a perfunctory effort at claiming to unite, but rather one which is securely under divide et impera.

Obama came out a few days ago, insisting that attacks on her family were inappropriate and off-limits. In thanks, he got the pitbull hanging off his arm, mocking everything he's done to serve America, essentially since he got out of law school. Nice lady, the Palin kids' mom.

Barack, if you need to remember who you and Joe are dealing with, look at the lipstick marks on the puncture wounds on your hand.

America, in the event that you believe that what the country really, really needs is someone who can field-dress a moose, you know who to vote for. Personally, I'd rather see someone who knew (before this summer) what the job of the Vice President of the United States is.

Ironic and Amusing...

2008-09-02T17:04:00.001-07:00

at least to my friends and family.

And some others.

Created by OnePlusYou - Online Dating

I know that somewhere, my mother is in hysterics.

Criticizing "Inherent"

2008-09-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Currently, and in the just offered draft revision, of the UU Principles is the statement that we (the member congregations) affirm and promote... or (new language) covenant to honor and uphold (I like that new language):

the inherent worth and dignity of every person

I criticized "inherent" last night over at the Chaliceblog.

Chalicechick asked what the problem is with "inherent."

Lots. Rather than dump it all there in a reply that would get skimmed, I decided to post here (in a post that will get skimmed).

One criticism, pointed out in a conversation between services, is that "inherent" means that you have it, it's yours by your very nature... so... there's nothing anyone can do about it. You have inherent worth and dignity, and that is that. The most abused, oppressed, neglected individual has all their worth and dignity inherently and nothing anyone can do will affect that. So... why act?

Bill Schulz pointed out that there are only three philosophical bases on which we seem to find a foundation to rest human worth;

One is God; all God's children have worth and because it's god-given... but that one's been so shredded that we can put it aside (as a movement). We don't agree on the existence of god, much less divine nature, much less the details, and so we as a movement can't claim that (the culture is in the same boat) bedrock, and must look for another.

Another is Natural Law. Essentially, this is an argument that something in our nature is of inherent worth. It's not far from the argument made about god-granted worth--and no one has managed to weave together much of an argument for it. Assert it? Sure. But argue it and explain why? Nah.

(I'll grant here that I tend to feel that it is... but I grew up UU, and American, and liberal, and my feeling otherwise would be a shock. But having grown up with and integrated the belief doesn't make it true. It merely makes it what I believe--and want to believe. That's fine, but just asserting it is like asserting the divine right of kings; who says so?)

So, bereft of god-given and nature-granted, what do we have?

If worth doesn't come to us from some greater power, what and where is left?

Us.

Schulz points to the slow, steady struggle by humanity to assert that we have worth, and to assert it in larger and larger numbers and in finer detail. From The Rights of Man (well, from even before that) to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And, he says, so far that has been a progression; we haven't (yet?) stepped backwards. We have worth and dignity because we, humanity, assert it and affirm it--not because it's inherent, but because we see truly having worth and dignity as being part of what makes being human possible, and that to deny that to someone is thus a crime against that person and a crime against humanity.

So having the Principles assert, affirm and honor the worth and dignity of every person would have meaning. It would put us firmly in the camp that we're actually in, and by removing "inherent" would actually create a greater call to doing social justice work, because what's so very important to us, to all of us, is delicate, precious and no one but humanity is or can.

For those who personally feel it's inherent, removing it doesn't deny that. It sets that theological assertion aside--and in doing so affirms to a larger group that they have the obligation to act.

In short? "Inherent" is a cop-out. And the phrase "inherent worth" is semantically slippery, too. Worth? Worth what, and to whom? Gold and jewels have no inherent value--but people value them enough to in some cases kill for them. We give them worth. "Worth" is an abstraction, a perception, like "tastes good." Does something inherently taste good? That's silly; we've all met people who dislike things we think taste wonderful.

Worth is an assertion of value--to some human being. Thus the errancy of inherency is demonstrated.

But I bet we have to have a great, freaking floor fight over it. There's a member of the CoA I need to talk with, because I'm really quite surprised at this whole draft.

Please, say it ain't so...

2008-09-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

A pdf of the Principles, revised, has been released through Scott Wells. You can find that blog post and pdf here, at Scott's blog.

I've read the pdf once, and am referring back... but my initial reaction is one of disappointment.

Our principles (and related predecessor documents for the Unitarians and Universalists both) have been open to significant revision in the past, both as called for in bylaws and when the spirit moved. Given the effort put into this project by the CoA, I had expected (and heard things that led me to expect) significant revisions and changes--in reaction to the comments and criticisms that had been heard and collected.

What we got was some very slight editing (very) and a bunch of explication of the principles.

Nothing in the new material (or the editing) appears to even attempt to address the very serious critique of "inherent" in inherent worth and dignity of every person. Yet I heard it raised in my home congregation from a life-long, third-generation UU on philosophical, moral and practical grounds as well as reading Bill Schulz's blistering critique in UU World. (I also got to hear him, in person, dismantle the argument for inherency and found it devastatingly persuasive--and haven't seen anyone put up any counter-argument other than that it's a historical nod to universalism... which (historical nod) is thin stuff as far as arguing for a moral statement.)

Nothing makes this appreciably more inspirational--I doubt that this will increase the number of UUs who want the principles read to them on their deathbeds by even 1/10th of 1 percent. The language of the principles wasn't poetic, still isn't, and the explication certainly isn't. It reads like the output of a committee.

Nothing is new. This is warmed over leftovers. This is not a bold statement, reframing UU principles in new and insightful ways nor does it boldly assert a new vision of a farther horizon of the faith.

At the moment I'd urge a vote against, simply on the grounds that we should not indulge in deluding ourselves that this revision is.. well... a revision. The General Assembly's time in Salt Lake (and beyond) would be better spent on other matters. Just declare this a false start. Let others try again.

Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC...

2008-08-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

My, that man gives a fine speech.

I'm looking forward to reading the whining about it.

Still unbelievable...

2008-08-19T12:53:00.001-07:00

In America, today, an annual income of $150,000 is rich. Not wildly, mind-blowingly rich, but rich. That's a weekly paycheck of almost $3,000--before taxes--while the median income would provide a weekly check of about $850.

What does John McCain think the break point to rich--just in income--is?

$100,000--per week.

If you make two and a half times--in a week--as much as the average American makes in a year, John McCain thinks that you're rich. If you make less than that, you're middle class.

The median income earner--firmly middle class, by definition, being right in the middle--makes about three times what the minimum wage earner does. Rich--at $150,000--means that you make about ten times what a minimum wage worker does.

At McCain's barely rich number?

333 times as much.

McCain's barely rich earner makes more than 33 times as much as the real barely rich person. Given the same distribution as really exists, the (mythical) median income earner in John McCain's (fantasy) world earns about $1.4 million per year. And minimum wage would be $250/hr.

And Peacebang wonders why there are some people who are hostile to the rich? It's not the mere wealth. It's the cluelessness and the arrogance--and the effect that cluelessness and arrogance has on the rest of us that stirs it. It's the class warfare that's waged as a normal daily thing on those who aren't making enough money to even exist in McCain's world.

Unbelievable.

2008-08-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

McCain's interview with Warren:

Warren: Define rich. Everybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich and -- but not the poor, the middle class. At what point -- give me a number, give me a specific number -- where do you move from middle class to rich? Is it 100,000, it is 50,000, 200 [thousand]? How does anybody know if we don't know what the standards are?
McCain: ... [elliptical chatter]... "I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich.... [more off-topic chatter]... So I think if you're just talking about income, how about five million.

Hear that, America? If you're only making a million bucks a year in income, you're working poor in John McCain's book.

Those of us who make something within sight of the median income ($42,000/yr) aren't even in sight of the poverty level.

More sometime after I pick my jaw off the floor.

Out. Of. Touch.

This so quickly after talking about renegotiating the water compact with other states, in Colorado--which is akin to urinating on a high voltage line.

Utterly. Out. Of. Touch.

Opinions wanted

2008-08-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

(Yes, I'm really not blogging as often as I intended. More later. Maybe. No promises.)

That said, I've a question for all three of my readers regarding expectations for public behaviors.

What needful activities should be discreetly performed in public and which should be banished to a public bathroom (or not) and why? I have in mind here things like nursing an infant or giving oneself an insulin injection.

You're free to provide explanations, caveats and qualifiers. Please consider the range of public restroom experiences, gender issues, specific locations (restaurants, parks, theaters...)--the whole thing. Compare, contrast....

This just in from North Texas...

2008-07-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm dawdling my way to class in Chicago next week, rather than flying cross continent home, spending a few days and flying back to Chicago. It might be a little less un-green than doing so, but I'll admit that my impulse was to avoid long hours in a 737--and to grab the chance to visit friends and relatives I've not gotten to see in years. I'll admit to not having foreseen that each of them would want (well, understandably, I suppose) to explore my choice to go into ministry. I guess I'm practicing the long version of the elevator speech, among other things. But it's all good; these are all folks I've known most of my life and are important. I can understand them wanting to know what I'm doing and why... and wanting to understand something of my religion.

Warning to anyone mulling over the idea of seminary and ministry:

Be prepared. Your decision to do so will mean that people who you've never shared one word about religion with will ask you to say grace (and the answer, uh, my family never said grace and I feel kinda awkward... is not acceptable. Figure it out. Have something that you can offer. It can't be any worse for you than it is for me. I'm just now figuring out that any minute now someone will ask me to pray with them... ack).

But that's not the point of this post. Pardon me for that wild tangent.

This is a political observation... or started out to be... and I'm going to drag it back to that now. My uncle is pretty conservative. I don't think he was when younger, but my grandparents were Nixonian cloth coat Republicans, and maybe that's some of it. Or maybe it's having lived so long in Texas... or something. Probably all of it and then some. But here I am visiting with people who have a panoramic photo of the inauguration of George W. as governor. This morning's coffee cup has the Presidential Seal on it, with "West Whitehouse, Crawford Texas" on it.

Ack.

But my family's not inclined to mince around issues, so of course we talk politics as well as religion. This guy's seriously thinking about voting for Obama. Not only that, he doesn't think that it's delusional to imagine that Texas is competitive and could vote for Obama. People, he says, are pissed off, unhappy and disgusted.

Pinch me. The other staunch conservative in the family--in Alaska--talked to me last year about his support for a living wage and national health care and his fury at Bush and the GOP.

2008 Ware Sermon

2008-06-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

Well, the Ware Lecture is expected to be good. So the expectations are high--and it's almost certain to be good. Sometimes it's wonderful.

Tonight it was... amazing. More a sermon than a lecture. Incredible.

Inspirational. Not just a standing ovations, but people clapped until their arms hurt. I watched our minister take noted frantically -- and scrap plans for the fall sermons. My wife was in tears.

Wow.

Moral Cowardice and Civil Disobedience

2008-06-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

The essentials of Civil Disobedience are threefold; acting from a moral belief, one violates the law, and one accepts the consequences of that violation. Gandhi's presentation of the concept of satyagraha was that moral force itself makes your case. You stand before the judge, you express your moral stand and you force him to either accede to your moral point or to punish you. If punished, you accept it, and you presume that the media and popular opinion will (perhaps not now, but in time) move to correct the injustice. Martin Luther King Jr took the same path... as Henry Thoreau had before Gandhi. This is not new, it's not rocket science. It's not hard in theory, it's only hard to do in practice, because you put your body and liberty on the line.

There are three (I've heard five... but not seen it in print) counties in California where the county clerk has decided to refuse to have the clerk's office perform same sex marriages. Now, that's against the law, and while I disagree with the act, the decision to take that stand is--presumably--a moral stand. Or should be. However, in each case, it turns out that the clerk is a moral coward.

Not one of them is actually making that stand. Instead, they've refused to have any marriages performed by the clerk's office (in those counties). They're still issuing licenses for same sex couples, as required by law. But if their action was a moral statement, then one would expect that they'd simply refuse to issue same sex couples licenses at all. No, all they're doing is refusing to perform any marriages--and thereby they avoid the legal consequences, because they're not in violation of the law. They don't have to perform marriages. They do have to issue licenses, and they do have to not discriminate in the services offered to the public.

(I'd like to reiterate; I disagree with their stance. I'm simply doing the moral calculus here. Personally, I'm delighted that same sex couples in those counties are getting marriage licenses.)

Bottom line? The clerks aren't committing real civil disobedience. They're not acting based on their moral beliefs. They're simply engaged in a gratuitous act that's most analogous to a tantrum. They're not acting in a moral and consistent way, and they're not willing to face the consequences of acting on the basis of their beliefs.

Thin, thin stuff there. Not enough moral force there to light a single candle.

One Wonderful Afternoon (Equal Marriage Support Experience)

2008-06-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Unitarian Universalists in San Diego County (and I suspect throughout California) rallied today to celebrate Equal Marriage being a reality. We gathered at the county administration offices where marriage licenses are issued and marriages performed to support and celebrate those getting licenses today.

I couldn't get there this morning; my wife had a hell of a schedule and I had to take one son to a dentist appointment. I'm told there was a rush at and shortly after 8 am at the San Marcos office. I got there at 1 pm.

There were no protesters. None. There weren't any at any time during the day. There were a couple sheriffs (and cars) there, but they had nothing to do (other than to gently and politely point out that we were blocking one sidewalk at a time when we were with three couples at the same time and in the process sort of spilled out over the whole walk).

It was wonderful. Weather aside (it was marvelous), it was a real delight to be there. Couple after couple came in and they were immensely pleased that folks they didn't even know were there to celebrate with them, had come out to spend the day cheering them on.

The gay couple who'd been together 42 years, and were so happy that they could at last get married, officially.

The lesbian couple in their late 20s, with their twin daughters, utterly delighted with the roses they were handed and the bubbles someone was blowing.

The guys who were part of the local LGBT Alliance leadership and were there for their license, getting a church wedding Sunday (one of three we heard about for that Sunday at that church).

The older ladies who arrived with two daughters (soon followed by granddaughters... one with her young son), who were initially put off. They saw us, didn't read the signs or shirts.. and thought we were protesters there to harass them. They told us that their daughters planned to sort of push through and protect them. You can imagine the rollercoaster of emotions for all of us when they realized we were there to support them and celebrate with them--tears in both their eyes, one daughter's, and both of the UU ministers with us, of relief and joy. They were so happy when they came out of the building.

Any one of those would have been worth standing in the sun for four hours. Each couple so joyful when they had their license (and in some cases, marriage done).

No protesters. Not one. Remember, this is northern San Diego County--the not-long-ago John Bircher underbelly of red Orange County, where dirtballs like Tom Metzger and the (so called) Minutemen were and are a reality. This is the county which, we're told, holds a disproportionate number of those bankrolling the attempt to amend the California Constitution). They didn't muster a single protester.

The sum total of negativity? Two events. One was two guys who walked in dressed pretty similarly (we were actually wondering if they were a couple who were in for a license). As they left, the one was on a cell phone and commented (but not very loudly) "gay marriage is wrong." The other was almost at the end of the day, a single middle-aged woman who asked what the signs were about. When I explained, she asked "And you're supporting that?" When I said "Absolutely," she sort of shook her head and said "You need to repent," and walked away.

We had several people ask questions--people who seemed to be making up their minds about what they thought, and whether this was ok... I just hope that the fact that people were out, happy and pleasant and civil, including clergy, supporting it, made them really consider their votes.

....

But it's not really all joy. Ignoring that there's this absurd ballot measure. One of the ministers told of getting a call yesterday; a chaplain in a hospice where a man was dying. He and his partner of 24 years wanted to get married--legally--while they could. But it wasn't possible. Because the deadline to start, legally, was today (in San Diego, where licenses were only issued starting today--a few counties stayed open late yesterday to take advantage of the 5 pm deadline), that couple likely didn't make it to the altar. The fellow in hospice wasn't expected to live another day.

The delaying of this did that to them. It's wonderful that it's finally here--but it's too damned late for some.

Do what you can to help ensure that the amendment effort fails, or it will be too late for others, too.

New wheels... some day.

2008-06-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

I have relations who are going to find this surprising. I grew up in a family full of engineers; cars and tinkering with them were, well... the norm. Heck, even my little sister is an engineer. I'm the sport--literature, history and... good lord... theology too, now?

I've never been about cars. Not the normal American guy who read car magazines and wanted to rebuild the engine or restore a classic car. Oh, I could maintain one; I kept an old Dodge Dart running and road-safe for years. But I didn't care that it was a Dart, or how it looked. It was transportation. Automobiles--all of them--have always been just transportation, to me. In a distant way I can appreciate the aesthetics of some, in about the same way that I can distantly appreciate the aesthetics of the ensembles that some designer has models strut down a walkway. And with about as much interest (read: minimal).

All that's ever interested me were transportation and user value. Enough space to transport stuff. Enough comfortable (enough) seats for the people who would be riding in it. Safety. Reliability. Economics. Efficiency. (I did say I came from a family riddled with engineers, right?)

So I'm sitting here marveling that I've gone and put down a deposit on a car (as opposed to going out and looking to buy one when I actually needed one, and had to get one (I live in not-urban core SoCal; public transportation is only beginning to maybe be meaningfully available to me... and only enough that I could use it some of the time). No, this one's not even going to be available to anyone until late 2008, and ours won't be available to us, in all probability, until 2010 (we're #3017 on the list).

The aesthetics of it, I can see, are quite modern and very, very functional. My younger son's reaction? "Want!" (Ok, so he's part of the mainstream genepool of the family...). Me? It's the insane level of efficiency that grabbed me. I've been tantalized by the Prius of a friend and it's 45-50 mpg; it's so much more fuel efficient than my van. But this? 230-300 mpg makes a Prius look like a gas guzzler. At last I'll be able to get green transportation.

Of course, it's not going to replace the van. I'll be watching closely to see when they start building a four seater model.

I did say I came from a family of engineering geeks, right?

Not for Weak Stomachs: Aftermath of Hiroshima

2008-05-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

Let me make this very clear; I'm not encouraging you to click and view these photos. In their own way, these are--in my opinion--as ghastly as the images from Abu Ghraib. You may or may not feel impelled to (I did; I saw the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and museun as a pre-teen, and... well, I felt impelled to see the whole of it).

Having said that, we have two presidential candidates who seem to need see them; one sings about bombing Iran and the other talks about obliterating Iran. Each of them need to be shown these, and asked if they're really ready (good Christians that they affirm that they are--remembering Jesus' admonition that whatever you do to the least, you do to him as well) to do this to millions of other human beings.

I don't think I can accept someone willing to sing or blithely talk about doing that as a political leader.

Excuses, excuses...

2008-05-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

I mean to blog more. But I missed all of April.

Perhaps the fact that I'm taking a class online helps explain where some of my time went (I'm a bit behind, too).

I fell down the stairs on the 14th and fortunately didn't break anything. But the injury was still pretty serious; it's only two days now that I've not been strapped up to support and protect the muscles. It no longer hurts actively (I gave up the drugs pretty quickly. Naproxin seemed to do a good job -- of upsetting my stomach. Vicodin did a good job of making me slow and stupid (which is a big part of how I got behind in class). Neither did much for pain).

Taxes--which were almost done (enough to file for an extension) when I fell down the stairs (and were nudged into something that got sent... by my dear wife) ate too much time earlier in the month.

My younger son finally got the kitten he's wanted for at least two years, and I've been grandparenting and being a cat toy.

District Assembly happened. I was able to go (strapped up and very careful)--and it was great. But it did devour time (on the other hand, it also meant that our District Exec was in the area and I finally got the interview he needed to do with me done. So it wasn't just a distraction from things that need doing).

Bills are overdue now. There's plenty of picking up that needs doing that I couldn't do for hte last couple weeks (and some... I still can't). Mess. Clutter. Oh... May is going to be interesting--assuming that the two weeks until I'm pretty much back to normal is accurate.

Cast Out Of Heaven

2008-03-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

There is a depiction of Hell in which the damned sit at a banquet table laden with wonderful food, but cannot eat it. Their hands are in fingerless gloves, wrapped around the handles of long spoons—too long to allow them to get their spoons to their own mouths. The damned, selfish and self-centered, suffer in torment.

Heaven, it turns out, is no different. The difference is only that the denizens of heaven are happily feeding each other.

My guess is that they’re not even two different places; the damned are so self-absorbed that they don’t even notice that others are getting fed. Or, if they do, the idea that someone would just feed them is so outlandish and unthinkable that they’re baffled at how those folks are managing to get food.

It’s an attractive notion—that hell is something that we do to ourselves and to each other.

Mohandas K.Gandhi—that Gandhi, the Mahatma guy—wouldn’t sit still for that. Nor would Martin Luther King, Jr. Then there’s that John Murray character, who’s remembered most often for this;

You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.

Murray (and I’ll bet the others, too) wouldn’t just be feeding each other. They’d be stepping over the line and nudging full spoons to the lips of the tormented. “Here, taste it,” you can hear them saying. “Take a bite. You look famished.”

I have no doubt of it. Each of them knew full well that they could pour out hope and bring something to those mired in hunger and hopelessness. Each of them knew that it was an uphill struggle all the way. They would happily feed the damned and each other, as well, for as long as it took to save every last one of those lost souls. Sooner or later, they’ll open their mouths—maybe to complain or whine—and in they’ll pop a spoonful of something delectable.

They’d smile, laugh and take delight in the look of shock on the face of that poor soul, and keep at it. Sooner or later, they’ll get the idea.

Of course, folks like Murray and Gandhi and King would utterly screw up that Calvinist idea of Heaven and Hell. If the damned were suffering among the saved, they’d be busy saving them. Damned troublemakers. If the damned and the saved were separated—that classic Heaven above and Hell below idea—they’d be militating to be let out of Heaven, to be allowed to go and evangelized Hell, to preach hope to the damned and to demons. They’d be stirring up sit-ins and protests in Heaven, or stirring up the damned to rise up and help each other; persuading devils to use those pitchforks to pull people out of flames.

Of course, if you believe in the kind of afterlife where the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, you have to wonder what would get done with saints like these folk (and all the others like them—it’s easy to make a long list of people who would not bat an eye but would dig in to do the work of ending the suffering of other souls). They’re too good to put up with in Heaven, and too much trouble to let loose in Hell.

That god? He’d have to evict them. No Heaven for them, and certainly no Hell. They’d be shipped back to the only place left—Earth. That leads one to wonder if the Buddha wasn’t on to something.

Take up your spoons; you have nothing to lose but Heaven and Hell—and if you’ll just start feeding each other, dammit, you can make heaven on earth.

Good stuff here...

2008-03-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

On the use--or misuse--of theology and religious language.

I'll admit, I was a sucker for this:

The almighty focus group only knows.

Hypocrisy: Dope Slap!

2008-03-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Elliot Spitzer, having prosecuted a prostitution case and fulminated about how awful it was... gets busted for paying for sex in D.C. (a crime in the District), and for arranging for his obscenely expensive prostitute to come from New York (a federal crime, a violation of the Mann Act). For that, he gets a dope slap (he had to have been familiar with the Mann Act, it's not exactly new or obscure...) as well as a verbal flogging for the hypocrisy.

Of course, there's plenty to go around. The Republican Governors Association called for Spitzer to resign within hours.

The Governor of New York should immediately resign from office and allow the people of New York to pursue honest leadership. The American people are tired of corrupt and hypocritical politicians. The Governor of New York is just another in the long list of politicians that have failed their constituents." – Nick Ayers, RGA Executive Director

Curiously, they haven't gotten around to calling for Senator Vitter, or Senator Craig to resign. No doubt it's a backlog in their heavy duty moralizing schedule that's to blame. Not even that they're wrong. I think he ought to resign. It's just that they lack the, uh... moral stature... to call for it without it being a complete joke. Heck, they haven't even called for an investigation into Senator McCain's close and disturbingly intimate (even to his own staff) relationship with a lobbyist (of course, it's not clear to me if McCain's relationship--if accurately depicted--would violate the Mann Act or not).

It's just marvelous to me that each of these men has thrown stones from their little glass houses. Hubris, indeed.

Six 9/11s A Year--Every Year

2008-03-10T09:35:00.001-07:00

Given that it's an election year, we get plenty of fearmongering. Ads, interviews and speeches that imply and suggest (if they don't say outright) that if some candidate is (or isn't) elected, we will suffer ~~hell and damnation~~attacks on "the homeland" and that ~~billions-and-billions~~ ~~millions~~ many of us will die because "they" will come and get us. Here, at home. In our offices, living rooms, kitchens, gyms, bedrooms.

Scary. If you don't elect the right candidate, you'll get another 9/11. Or maybe, because you were so bad, and God really hates you now, more than one 9/11.

I'm sick of it. It's such specious nonsense (literally), and it's also fantastically hypocritical.

We suffer six 9/11s a year in the United States of America. This year, last year, the year before--and will next year and the year after. We -- our government -- do nothing.

Over 18,000 people will die unnecessarily this year. That many dies last year. That many will die next year. I might be one of them. You might be one of them. If not, your parent, child, friend or neighbor will be one of them. The odds are that we'll do nothing. They have come to get us for years and years and will come this year, and will come next year... and odds are we'll just go about our business--being afraid of other people most of whom would simply like us to go away so that they can try to rebuild their war savaged countries.

We're spending trillions of dollars to protect ("protect") ourselves from things that aren't likely to happen--and doing it badly, ineffectively, inefficiently and venally--and we're not willing to spend billions to protect ourselves from six 9/11s a year.

Just read it.

Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States.

... America ... is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage.

I'm a Universalist. I believe in attempting universal salvation in this life. Salvation from infectious disease, cancer, mental illness and other disorders. Not at some future date, not pie in the sky salvation -- maybe -- in the hereafter.

Today and every day.

Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. House the homeless.

If we accept six 9/11s a year, why not accept just one more and ignore it too? The idea is absurd. So why are you accepting six a year?

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

2008-02-08T19:55:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not considering dropping blogging as a means to recapture time, nor to gather together enough still-functioning neurons to do something else important.

I'm just looking at the controversy over General Assembly being--to no one's delight--behind the port security boundary in Ft. Lauderdale. I do understand the upset some feel. I feel some of it myself. There's something wrong about needing to pass through security in order to attend a worship service of one's own faith... or of one you're sincerely curious about. There's something even more fundamentally wrong about having to pass through security run by an utterly dissociated institution--the government--in order to attend it.

I understand that it wasn't intended or planned--and that we were assured that it wouldn't be that way by the time that G.A. happened (lesson: No assurance is worth the paper it's printed on in a contractual arrangement... if it's not in print, and signed. The planning committees need to learn this lesson. There have been hotels that weren't built that we were assured would be, previously. From now on, can we please get all those assurances on paper? Or if not, then we should take note... and make sure that we label them with big caveats, and understand the consequences we'll face if those vapor promises evaporate).

I'm pleased that the UUMA has moved Ministry Days functions outside the boundary.

So what am I going to do? The ethical issues make for a fine challenge, given that I just had an intensive class on the subject. Pity I can't figure out how to turn this into a paper....

I think it's clear that there's no malicious intent. I don't see that there's serious harm, as long as this is not treated as precedent. Yes, some may not be able to attend, and that creates a potential issue of privilege. That can't be fixed at this point, and I don't see this as an issue momentous enough to just spend a million dollars on to fix for this year (if that would even do so). Still, the UUA needs to undertake not to let this sort of thing happen again.

So much for the general issues and abstractions.

Our minister is receiving final fellowship there, and would really like us to be there. My wife's going.

Relationships matter.

So, I'll be going. But I will be making a point of refusing to accept this as a precedent. If it recurs, I won't be going--not even if I'm the one receiving final fellowship.

Up For Air

2008-01-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

Two days in -- as far as classes go. But things started full bore back on Jan 2, and the only "free" time I've really had was Saturday afternoon (which I can't remember--I must have studied) and part of Sunday afternoon.

Not that I've not had a good time, mind you.

But classes start at 9 and end at 5, with a generous lunch hour... which seems to feature some important must-go-to bring-your-own-lunch event a half hour after the break begins. And Meadville Lombard's experienced massive turnover and shuffling of the staff, so we modified residential students only began to get ID cards today (though we got keys to the buildings the first day--go figure). All is chaos, but everyone's intentions are good and their responses are prompt and, well, responsive.

But I have another 10 straight days of classes before I get a break--I must have been nuts to sign up for the weekend program too. Classes are good, and the place is warm (and I'm not just talking about the bizarre weather). With that, I hear a text book calling. Or maybe it's laundry that needs doing, or....

How to induce hysteria (in an online student)

2007-12-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

Have a more senior student post a remark which implies that someone's comments are fascinating... and that the student is looking forward to the comments of those who've not yet posted (their remarks).

(For those unfamiliar with this brave new world, there are classes in which much (or all) of one's contact with other students and professors is online. Papers may be posted for review, discussion and commentary in order to assist in developing important conversations.)

The implication appearing to be that there's an assignment that's due--or actually overdue--and that some people should get off the stick....

Mad scramble.

What texts are referenced in the comment and the reply?

Crap! Crapcrapcrap! I haven't gotten to reading them--yet! Augh!

Quick, go check the syllabus--when was that paper due? I was pretty sure that I'd done everything due in December already, for that class. Augh!

Oh. Wait. Someone has gone and done the assignment due Jan 3rd (damned overachievers), and then gone and commented on someone's paper for the last assignment... making it look like more than one person had done recent work....

Oh.

Hold the Xanax.

I'll go back to figuring out how to complete another project and procrastinating.

haiku

2007-12-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

Growing avalanche
Six thousand thousand thousands
There are rocks below

In Memoriam

2007-12-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Roll Call
William Stafford (1914-1993), Poet Laureate
Red Wolf came, and Passenger Pigeon,
the Dodo Bird, all the gone or endangered
came and crowded around in a circle,
the Bison, the Irish Elk, waited
silent, the Great White Bear, fluid and strong,
sliding from the sea, streaming and creeping
in the gathering darkness, nose down,
bowing to the earth its tapered head,
where the Black-footed Ferret, paws folded,
stood in the center surveying the multitude
and spoke for us all: "Dearly beloved," it said.
I was part of a memorial service on Saturday, for a young woman whose life was cut off far too short. I can't claim I was already familiar with Stafford's poetry--I wasn't. But I tripped over Roll Call this morning... and somehow the two connect in my head. The loss, the grief for the pointless, purposeless loss.

Stafford was born in Liberal, Kansas--sounds like the set up for a Garrison Keillor joke, but it's both true, and true. Stafford was a conscientious objector during World War II. That such a man was poet laureate of the United States... in 1970... rather boggles my mind.

Objector
William Stafford (1914-1993), Poet Laureate
In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity—the ordered life
our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face
annihilation unless all citizens get in line."
I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.
And there's grief, and resistance unto death of another sort.

This is, among other things, a blog about religion. About Unitarian Universalism. I've no idea about William Stafford's religious beliefs--and that really doesn't matter here. What he has to say speak to us, and we are wise enough--and not too proud--to take wisdom and inspiration where we find it.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other
William Stafford (1914-1993), Poet Laureate
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Hope in a dark era. But as Parmenides wrote, The light is at home in the darkness. Hold onto the line ahead of you.

I Don't THINK So...

2007-11-30T22:25:00.000-08:00

But maybe someone else will be able to confirm this.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I've never lived in or near the region. In fact, I've spent a grand total of two days in Chicago.

Having lived most of my life in the West.... Maybe Inland North sounds like Western shot through with Strine--I once had an Aussie accent that persuaded everyone, including the Aussies, that I was a native of Down Undah. A few Fosters and an Aussie to speak with and I slide back there easily.

Recommendations wanted for memorial reading

2007-11-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

Without going into all the details... I've been asked to do a reading at a memorial service. And to provide it.

The service is for the adult daughter (20?) of an acquaintance who is a friend of mutual friends--and for a time the family attended our fellowship, years ago. I interacted with the daughter, but we weren't ever close.

She was killed in a car accident.

And I'm just starting to look for a text. Naturally, I need it ASAP, although the memorial won't be for a few weeks.

Now here's a great question, and another, too.

2007-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

My wife just got a book which I'll be swiping and reading (I'm going to claim it as extra-curricular reading for my UU Polity course), The Fellowship Movement, by Holley Ulbrich, subtitled "A Growth Strategy and Its Legacy." Now I haven't even cracked the book -- so what in the world am I doing already writing about it?

On the back cover there's this:

"Why, when 32% of current membership is from congregations started during the fellowship movement, do we still question this growth strategy? But also, how can this type of historical growth lead to congregational cultures that block growth today? Ulbrich's thorough and comprehensive history offers answers and insights pertinent to today's growth efforts."

Um. Yeah.

My own congregation's a fellowship (still--and I suspect for good--despite having a full time ministry for over 15 years. And no, I'm not sure what that hybrid will eventually result in; it does mean that there's a very strong culture of member leadership, of joint ministry...). I see both the success -- even by Monroe Husband's estimations, this was damned dubious, since a group big enough to support one nascent fellowship opted (for geographical reasons) to found two fellowships. Both still exist, as fellowships (with ministers), and both are successful and growing.

And I see something of "we're a fellowship" attitudes that create obstacles to growth--to people embracing and permitting the growth that wants to happen. We get a lot of visitors. If more of them--if more of them who came back a second time...--stuck, we'd be growing much faster. I'm not sure how much of that is attributable to the fellowship, and how much to UU failings in general in this regard, but I'm really looking forward to Ulbrich's comments.

Now the question: Can I squeeze this 125 page paperback into the next few days, when I have some reading and a paper to write as well?

Urging you to support the WGA

2007-11-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

It doesn't seem that there's a great deal that most of us can do, in support of this strike (I could drive to L.A., and refuse to cross the picket line--but then, if I crossed, I'd be turned away by security right beyond the picket lines...). That's frustrating to me, since I generally support the ideals of unionism and my impulse is that there must be something I can boycott (TV? I already don't watch broadcast and cable; what I see on our set is DVDs--which only makes the WGA's point).

So here's something you can do. Sign a petition.

Someone explain this to me...

2007-10-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 1970s, the minimum wage provided an income to someone working 40 hours a week that could be lived on modestly, even when supporting a family. Now, even by official standards, the minimum wage only buys about half as much of the basics of life--and for anyone who has looked at the cost of housing and transportation lately in urban areas... it's pretty clear that it's worse than that.

Back then, health care was a common feature of "good jobs" (which were far more common), and for those who didn't have it, well, an encounter with the medical system was not likely to make one bankrupt.

I'm just at a loss. We have a society which officially proclaims that boatloads of money have been being made for years, and that productivity is waaaay up since the 1970s, and yet somehow... those on the low end of the economic ladder are vastly less able to survive, and essentially unable to afford any health care other than what Uncle Sam provides. So our government wants to cut back on that (yes, yes, I know that Bush "wants" to give the program an additional $5 billion over the next five years... but it's a fact that the amount is insufficient to pay for the program at the current levels--due to rising costs. It's a cut, because medical inflation will devour all of it and then some). And yet more of us are more exposed to health care crises than we were 35 years ago. We're less likely to have health care coverage, and the coverage is far more likely to turn out to have holes that have been cut into it specifically to avoid actually having to pay for health care (in some cases, cut into that safety net when the insurers could see precisely where you were falling).

Is it just that our elite classes have forgotten the lessons of history? Populations that get driven into desperation spasm, and spasm in very ugly ways.

It's official...

2007-09-28T17:01:00.001-07:00

I've been accepted to Meadville Lombard's M.Div. program (modified residency program) and will start classes there this coming January.

And with that, I better start getting all that reading done.

Would the Family Be Welcome?

2007-08-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

Reading Making Chutney, and having read Doug Muder's article already, I find myself mulling whether the rest of my family would be welcome--comfortable--at a UU congregation. My father would; he's one of the many non-attending UUs, but was at one time quite active. In fact, he asked me to let him know when would be a good time to come an join us some Sunday, when he and his wife are in California for the winter and spring. He'd be comfortable, I think, and fit right back in. Were my mother still alive, she would too. Maybe even more comfortable. My brother might be, and I suspect my sister would (the congregation close to them would be delighted too, I suspect--a family with three young kids...). But none of that's a surprise. My parents became UUs in the early '60s, and their kids grew up UU and attended one congregation or another until shortly before the family moved overseas.

But what about the rest? The previous generations, and the extended family?

I can make guesses, but in part they're absurdist. Would my grandparents fit in with the UU church of today, or the UU church of the time when my parents joined? Or should I look to the Unitarian or Universalist churches when my grandparents were young adults with kids? Heck, would John Murray or John Adams be one of us today? People--and religions--are in part creatures of their time.

This isn't to deny the classism issues that Doug and Making Chutney are pointing out. Those are real, and valid. There's a disturbing sense, and an implicit one, that this is a religion for those smart enough to get it. But I think that's erroneous; most of what we're about, when you boil it down, doesn't have to be framed in loftily intellectual language--and it's not as if other religions (say, Catholicism) don't have a place among the intellectual, the highly cultured and the, well... vulgar.

I am quite confident that at least three of my grandparents could have been comfortable UUs. The last might have been, if there'd been a place--then--for her to express her strongly mystic nature.

I'm not sure that we'll see UUism move in the near future to being embracing of all. Class is a hell of an issue to engage, and I suspect that it will be as hard (or harder) than race, in the end. But I think that we can--and should--get over the obsession with education. Smart and thoughtful isn't a credential from an (increasingly) overpriced educational facility. I have known too many people with plenty of alphabet soup who had superglue poured into the mechanism of their soul and mind--who couldn't be UUs; not flexible enough, not thoughtful enough, not considerate, and far too self-obsessed. I've seen the obsession; when I was asked for my bio for publication preparatory to my being the nominating committee's candidate for president of the board, I wrote it up... and got it coughed back by someone asking if I didn't want to mention where I'd gone to college and what degree(s) I had. I didn't really. But I acquiesced, grudgingly. I wish I hadn't.

In most things of this scale, I find I'm an incrementalist; let's eat the mountain a bite at a time. Let's stop asking what degree someone holds in order to determine the inherent worth and value of her opinions and his perspectives. Let's start by embracing smart and thoughtful and good, and not caring what the post-production educational label reads.

One of my grandfathers was the best educated man I've ever met--and I've dealt with people who sport both multiple Masters and PhDs. Grandpa got himself kicked out of high school for his hijinks, and went on to get--eventually--into an extremely responsible federal position that required a college degree.

Smart isn't formally educated. Intelligent isn't schooled. Thoughtful isn't well-trained. And good, well, I'm not sure good has anything to do with any of those. I'd like to encourage our congregations to embrace smart, intelligent, thoughtful, kind and good people (as well as those of us who only manage to be some of those things, some of the time).

Beautiful and calm...

2007-08-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

This place, that is.

We're back from a week there, and had a wonderful time. My only gripe isn't anything that anyone can do anything about--it's that mountain air, in summer, during an extended drought (even the cedars are looking stressed; we need rain!) is damnably dry.

Wrong Question

2007-07-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race creates the hypercomputer "Deep Thought" to figure out the Answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, the Universe, and Everything. After 7.5 million years of computation, Deep Thought provides the answer, which it affirms has been carefully checked for accuracy. The answer is 42.

It turns out that Deep Thought was asked for the answer, but no one ever determined what the question really was. It seems that Earth was then created as a vastly more powerful computer, run by mice, to figure out what the question was--or should have been. Earth, alas, was destroyed--in order to build a hyperspace bypass--five minutes before the question would have been figured out.

It has been said that we Unitarian Universalists are less concerned with having the right answer than we are with asking the right question. There's a legitimate explanation for this--it's because the answer can be no better and no more illuminating than the question that is being answered. And, as Douglas Adams' work points out, the answer is often meaningless if you don't even know what the question was.

Unitarian Universalists practice a religion that puzzles many outside it. Their questions show their confusion. They ask things like "What do you Unitarian Universalists believe?" and "Do you believe in God?" or "Do you believe in the Bible?" The answers we give are good answers, in the sense that they are accurate and that we offer them intending to be helpful. Our answers generally sound something like this "Well, some of us believe this, and others believe that, but still others believe differently still." Or we tell them "Some of us do, and some of us don't. But you'll very often hear us read passages from it or quote it during our services, either way." And we tell them that "Some of us believe in God, while others believe in a different sort of God, and some of us believe in several or many gods, and some of us are quite certain that there isn't any god at all."

Not surprisingly, our earnest questioners are puzzled, and frustrated. They feel they've been told the answer is 42.

The problem is that we're being asked the wrong question. Unitarian Universalism is not about what we believe. We are not a creedal faith.

The question that should be asked of us is "How have you agreed to be?" (meaning together, and in the larger world) , because we are a covenantal religion, based in what we have agreed and committed ourselves to.

What I believe, and what you believe, may be very interesting. We actually spend quite a bit of time and effort helping each other figure out what we--individually--believe. But we accept that our beliefs are, and can be, quite diverse, because as long as those beliefs permit and encourage us to be, in the ways that we are committed to, they're all equally acceptable to us.

This leads me to two points. I'm going to simply affirm the first, because I've made it before, in a slightly different context. When someone asks you what we believe, or any of those other questions, don't tell them that the answer is 42. Tell them that they're asking the wrong question. Tell them what the right question is, and what the answer to that question is.

Here's my version of that;

We are a covenantal religion. We are bound together because we affirm and commit ourselves to certain principles, in our worship, within our community, and in our dealings with the larger community. We firmly believe that we have an obligation to ourselves, to each other, and to all the world to work for peace, for justice, and for the improvement of life here and everywhere, for all people and all the earth.

The second point needs more attention from us.

Reading the Bible, one notices a pattern regarding covenants. There are covenants that are made--and broken--and which are renewed and restored, or which are replaced by new covenants which seek to recreate the covenantal relationship, having essentially renegotiated it.

So it is within our faith's history. One can trace covenantal relations back at least as far as the Mayflower Compact, made by and among the Pilgrims. It does not matter that we no longer have the same covenant as our distant--or more recent--religious ancestors did. Those covenants have been renegotiated and the fundamental relationships within our congregations have remained.

Lacking creeds, a lack we celebrate, we must carefully tend our covenantal relationship. This is true at the level of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and as a result, we review the principles which we affirm and promote, and we consider changes and amendments to them on a regular basis, so that we can refresh our relationship among our congregations and reaffirm it. It is equally true that we need to review our covenants within our individual congregations, to ensure that the covenant remains meaningful and to ensure that the nature of our relationship with each other remains fresh in our minds.

This is not a social club, although there is a healthy and vibrant social community here, and that is a good thing. This is more than that. This is a community brought together by vision, common need and common goals and bound together by our commitment to that vision, and to each other.

That is something which is worthy of frequent renewal and reaffirmation.

I've met only a few Unitarian Universalists who expect that we will achieve some great shared answer--at least not to the common sorts of questions that are asked about religion, the kinds of trivial concerns people have about what our creed is. But I believe that we know a significant part of the big answer, and that it's embedded in the principles we have and continue to revise and improve. We value reason and experience. We value wisdom. We value each other and the whole of the universe we are part of. We value how we make decisions. Those are key things, and while we may improve them, it's hard to imagine them being abandoned in any future version of our faith. Answers, good answers, lead to insight and action. We're getting there.

But do we know what our question is? It's important to ask the right one, remember?

I'll just close with this, a theory--a joke, perhaps--from a later work in which Douglas Adams carried on the story begun in his Hitchhiker's Guide.

There is a theory that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable.

There is a corollary to that theory which states that this has already happened.

The power of the right answer and the right question may indeed be nothing more--or less--than the existence of the universe. But even so, the right answer means nothing without the right question.

And Then There Were Three... (work in progress)

2007-07-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

Having mulled over criticism from Fausto (many thanks!), and after a discussion with a philosopher friend, I've attempted another pass at UU principles. In the process... I've tried to get it down to three. Or maybe that's four... if it was five before.

I probably need to go back and look at my initial objectives, to be sure that I haven't lost sight of something. But it's a work in progress, so I'm showing my work. Criticism is of course, sought.

Affirming our faith's rejection of creed, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to uphold these religious principles:

We shall responsibly love and care for the Earth and all living things; treating all beings and each other with justice and dignity, guided by knowledge tempered with love and compassion; understanding that we are a part of nature, not apart from it.

We remain religious seekers; we are finite beings with limited understanding, we must therefore remain open and responsive to the insights of others.

We shall promote openness, liberty, and honesty in all interactions, depending on love, reason, and responsibility in governing our religious communities; offering an example to the world by resisting authoritarianism and living out the highest democratic principles.

We affirm that ongoing revelation offers new insights to humanity. We acknowledge the beauty and wisdom present in all the world's religious traditions and in science; we recognize our roots in the Western religious traditions and the rich inspiration we find in other faiths, as well as in the human struggle for knowledge. We affirm the value and need for mystery, wonder and reason, and we recognize our responsibility to re-interpret religious traditions in light of the present.

As free and interdependent congregations we enter into this covenant; we promise to one another our mutual trust and support; should we break this covenant, we shall listen, accept guidance and appropriate discipline by other congregations within this covenanted association. This is our bond of union.

Interdependent Web--of which we are a part

2007-07-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

I was struck, reading iMinister, just how inconsistent our practice is with our principle.

That's not intended to flog the insufficiently faithful, the incorrect, or those with another view. It's simply an observation.

What does it mean to affirm and acknowledge that we are inextricably part of all this, and to stay indoors most of our lives, blinds drawn (or not), eating foods grown under circumstances and in conditions we barely even consider, much less examine, most of the time? What faith we put in some box of fruit or slice of meat displayed to appeal to our senses as we flit through the grocery store.

But what else do we lose, ignore, and abandon when we don't have the pleasure and joy--and work--involved in the eggs from chickens you know personally, or the nectarine or orange the scent of which you caught in the sun before you picked it?

We know there's a disconnect that happens when we humans are dissociated from things that are real and intimate; the experience with the dying and death of loved ones, with the birth of to-be-loved ones. There's a cost. What's the cost of being disconnected from the food and water that literally sustains us?

I can't help but suspect that the price is very high.

Are We Capable of Enlightened Self-Interest, Still?

2007-07-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman quotes FDR, and observes...

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” So declared F.D.R. in 1937, in words that apply perfectly to health care today. This isn’t one of those cases where we face painful tradeoffs — here, doing the right thing is also cost-efficient. Universal health care would save thousands of American lives each year, while actually saving money.

So this is a test. The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can’t overcome those forces here, there’s not much hope for America’s future.

So the question is, are we as a people still capable of enlightened self-interest?

I watched Sicko finally, last night. The last week had been too much a frenzy to find the time. It's not that a great deal of what Moore had to tell was news to me. I'd heard the number of Americans uninsured. I knew--from personal experience--how obscenely expensive basic health insurance is, even for those of us whose health is good enough to get the cheapest rates. I also have seen the absurdity; my younger son was denied coverage--completely denied, not merely 'uprated' (charged more for being higher risk) because he'd sprained the hell out of his foot a year ago... and been treated to minimize the discomfort and to speed the healing. In the process, a transient diagnosis of the condition (completely cleared up) made him uninsurable. He's in superb health, hasn't been to a medical facility since his birth other than for the common injuries of boyhood, and is active. But uninsurable. And so on....

But still, the movie hit me like a kick in the gut. It wasn't the failures of our system. It wasn't the criminal malfeasance of those running the for-profit system we're caught in. It wasn't even that other nations--most other non-Third World nations--have managed to do vastly better. It was the brutal dichotomy, the comparison of the basic humaneness of the societies that provide decent health care... with the home of land of the once-free and the home of the depraved.

Those are hard, hard, hard words to write. I spent my teens living abroad; I came home eyes wide-open, aware of America's failings, flaws and history... and yet very much a patriot. At least then, it seemed that all in all... this was the finest nation on earth. Today, I don't feel I can say that--our leaders violate the Constitution and the law, arrange for torture and condone it, make war without justification, and the country just seems to tolerate it. Grumble... and go back to shopping, or watching TV.

And we even put up with our own people, here at home, being allowed to die, to boost profits.

I think Krugman's test is apt. If we can't do this, for ourselves...

Not Merely Heresy...

2007-07-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

One of the minor pleasures of being a Unitarian Universalist is getting be be a heretic... or actually, at least two kinds of heretic. And, from some perspectives, a heretic to heresy and an apostate as well.

Heresy

  from a Greek word signifying (1) a choice, (2) the opinion
  chosen, and (3) the sect holding the opinion. In the Acts of the
  Apostles (5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5) it denotes a sect, without
  reference to its character.

What distinguishes UUism from the run of the mill heretics is that we abandoned the dogma of having to defend and protect our heresy. Most heretics find themselves intently denying what they've abandoned and defending their new position on Truth. Instead, we've institutionalized heresy, and dumped dogma.

No (good) UU will tell you what to believe. They might well be willing to debate what you believe, but it's not in an attempt to convert you--rather more an effort to test whether you've seriously thought through what you believe. But a UU will expect you to have some well-considered belief, or a well explained agnosticism. Believe what you will--what you must, not what you'd like to believe, but we expect you to believe what you believe... and we expect you to test it and challenge it. Upgrade your beliefs, perhaps, or even change them, that's fine. Laudable, even.

But we damned well expect you to be a heretic--even if you insist on holding firmly orthodox opinions.

What Keith Olbermann said...

2007-07-03T21:27:00.001-07:00

Is enough for me.