One Picture...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Basta!

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?

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

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

(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.