DairyStateDad

Why I've been so silent for the last 3 weeks

2012-01-18T09:05:00.000-06:00

Let's just say I was way ahead of the curve in going dark to protest SOPA. Yeah! That's it!

A Different Kind of Christmas Song

2011-12-24T22:09:00.000-06:00

For 23 years, this song has been as much a part of my Christmas as any of the classic carols.

Christmas Eve at my church probably shares much in common with the service at other UU churches: It is, first of all, an amalgam that blends the Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, and the Christmas Story itself into one grand festival of light. Yet even with that characteristically Unitarian Universalist syncretism, it is one time (not the only one necessarily) when we happily read familiar tales from the Bible and without apology invoke the names of God and Jesus.

Most years, our minister takes the pulpit in the guise of one who was there on that Bethlehem night of legend 2,000 years ago. He's been a shepherd, one of the Magi, Jesus's cousin John, an angel, and, I think, even the innkeeper. Some roles he's played more than once. In 1990, as American troops gathered in Kuwait to launch the invasion that would become the First Gulf War, he spoke as a Roman centurion. And in whatever persona he adopts to retell the story, I find myself moved beyond measure, my eyes welling with tears of comfort.

Tonight, he was Joseph. (In case you were wondering, he firmly pointed out that he was Jesus's real father -- despite the stories that later made it into the Bible.) He told of how much he learned to be a parent from his son, and how hearing not only the local shepherds, but even visiting astrologers from afar, speak of the promise that the infant represented made him see his own child differently -- an attitude that he recommended to parents everywhere.

When the message is over, and after we sing "Silent Night" with the traditional words, then comes another musical tradition. For reasons that I don't really know, we always close the service with a song that doesn't mention Christmas anywhere in its lyrics, a song sung by a little green frog with a banjo and a nasal voice.

It was an odd touch, I thought, the first time I experienced it more than two decades ago -- odd, and yet somehow perfect in its reflection of the hope and mystery and promise of Christmas. Now I have trouble imagining the night before Christmas without it.

When the older DairyStateKid was less than 6 months old, I began singing it to him every night as a lullaby. And the tradition continued when his younger brother came along five years later.

Tonight, we all went to church: The two DairyStateKids, their stepmother DairyStateMom, the older DSK's Buddhist girlfriend, and me. We heard the stories, basked in the warmth of the candlelight, sang the old familiar carols, and then joined together in this song.

Later, as he lay in bed in the darkness of his room waiting for the sleep that will bring Christmas Morning, the younger DairyStateKid, who will be 15 in one month, asked me to sing the first verse one more time. Of course I did.

Searching for My Voice

2011-12-21T08:28:00.001-06:00

More than a year ago I began a series of posts on politics. After the 2010 elections, I got stalled.

The reasons were many: family responsibilities, my struggle to manage ~~a growing~~ an overwhelming workload, but also an emotional paralysis that arose from the events that unfolded in my home state and in the nation over the last year.

I knew what I wanted to say, sort of, but I couldn't find the words or make the time to lay it all out.

Today I read this article in Yes! magazine. It comes as close as anything I have found to articulating where I have been moving, spiritually and politically, in recent years:

I participated because I have witnessed overwhelming evidence that the economic and political systems of my country stand against those people who the God I worship stands for. My conception of God, inadequate as it may be, is better described as the Love that generates creativity and community than as a super-man judging us from some heavenly skybox. Such a Love contrasts with everything that reserves power, dignity, wealth, or the status of full humanity for some while denying these things to others. My commitment to Love requires me to challenge the increasing consolidation of all these good things in the hands of a few, and to collaborate for the creation of something that Love would recognize as kin.

Read the whole thing here.

ETA: I'm not commenting here so much on the specifics of the Seattle event that the YES contributor referred to. Christine, in the comments, makes some good points about that. I'm speaking rather of the overarching spiritual and political point of view from which the writer comes, and to which he speaks.

Now, where this leads me day to day remains, for now, unclear.

I don't think it leads me out of either of my spiritual homes. It does sharpen my longing to live in both of them, together, more fully.

I don't know what it might imply for my professional life of 30-plus years or for the direction it might take going forward. That's a particular challenge because, given my very real life circumstances and responsibilities, I don't see the sort of freedom that might allow me to simply abandon my livelihood as it is now.

I almost didn't bother to write this post. As I said, I've been trying to put into words, for a very long time now, a collection of experiences, feelings, beliefs, yearnings, resolutions that are still too inarticulate for me to be able to put down on paper or keyboard. I'm not there yet, so what's the point in writing anything?

But I guess I have to start somewhere. So let it be here.

Oh yes, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and a Happy 2012 to all.

A retired, Southern police officer writes about #OWS

2011-12-13T12:07:00.000-06:00

...and what he says might surprise you.(h/t, The Rev. John Shuck)

Isn't This What We're Here For?

2011-12-10T17:07:00.001-06:00

In the New York Times, Eric Weiner writes:

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

Surely this is where Unitarian Universalism fits in today. Or has the potential to. At least that's how I've always seen it -- and it's what drew me to, and keeps me in, this religious movement.

But, if it doesn't, why doesn't it?

A Thought for Advent

2011-11-25T22:47:00.001-06:00

Stephen Lingwood has posted these Advent thoughts on his blog for a couple of years now.

Jews, Obama, and #OWS

2011-11-10T11:07:00.000-06:00

If you think that Obama is anti-Israel...

And if you think that American Jews care only about the president's stance toward Israel...

Or...

If you think that Occupy Wall Street is rife with anti-Semitism...

Read this.

Why Do I Write?

2011-10-20T21:23:00.001-05:00

Heather asks, and answers, as does Christine.

So here's my answer: To understand the world around me, and to understand myself.

That's the "deep" answer.

My first, semi-wise-ass answer was "Because I can." And because it's how I make my living (in my other life, that is).

But the very next question I find myself asking is, why haven't I been writing more -- by which I mean, why haven't I been writing more here?

God knows I have had more than a few things crossing my mind to write about... Questions to ask, conundrums to puzzle out... But I haven't been making time for it of late. That other life has been pretty demanding of late, which, when it's the source of my livelihood, probably beats the alternative.

I've been pondering, however, the question of merging my writing identity here with my public writer's identity... erasing the seams between the two.

As yet, no definitive answer. So I'll just keep writing, to see if I might eventually figure it out...

Quote for the Day

2011-10-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

Heresy hunting has nothing to do with truth or with goodness. It raw paranoid power, nothing more. Heresy hunters are bullies. They will take your lunch money everyday if you let them.

The Rev. John Shuck. Read it all.

A Song for Today

2011-09-11T18:18:00.001-05:00

I've been ruminating about what, if anything, to write about today, and about this day 10 years ago. I have many thoughts, but they're not especially coherent right now. And I've been, and continue to be, preoccupied with work demands that have sucked out all of my time.

But taking a break just now, I saw this over at Will's blog.

It's a simple summation of the feelings I hold most tenderly as I think back on that day.

Do I have ADHD (2) ?

2011-09-07T08:03:00.000-05:00

I saw a therapist yesterday. When I described my experiences, he agreed that my behaviors are suggestive of ADHD in some form.

One especially interesting insight: When he looked at my scores from my neurological testing from 14 years ago, one thing popped out that the doc who tested me hadn't seen (and perhaps was not then well known) -- namely, that certain large gaps between specific sets of scores -- even though both were in the "normal" range -- were indicative of this problem as well.

He's also encouraging me to consider trying medication (he doesn't prescribe himself, but referred me to a couple of possible psychiatrists). I will think about that. We have a follow-up appt. set.

Meanwhile I'm drowning in an overdue project.

Do I have ADHD?

2011-08-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Regular readers know that I don't often go deeply into personal disclosure here. This post is an exception.

For years I have wondered if I have ADHD -- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Not so much because of the Hyperactivity part, but because I've always felt it extraordinarily difficult to focus, set priorities, and overcome inertia.

14 years ago I actually underwent a neurological exam for the condition. I recently re-read the report. It was negative -- as in, no indication of ADHD. Indeed on the various concrete tests (things with sorting cards, flashing lights, etc.), I held my own.

Yet also, reading the report, I believe I downplayed my personal behaviors and difficulties that led me to seek the test in the first place.

(I took the test as part of research for a first-person magazine article on adult ADHD. In a way, the fact that I was rated as non-ADHD helped advance a general spin in the story about how challenging it was to actually understand and diagnose ADHD in adults. I was not and am not a skeptic on the concept, to be sure. But I digress...)

In recent years it has seemed like my difficulties have become more intense, but they aren't fundamentally "new". I've tried many different strategies to overcome them, but have been unable to stick with any of them for long.

I was not someone labeled ADHD as a child; I got decent, though not perfect, grades in school. But I tended to be forgetful when it came to things like homework assignments, and to this day I seem to find that I can't concentrate and focus until a deadline is right on top of me -- in fact, probably behind me.

I've begun exploring a round of counseling for this, in hopes of dealing with it once and for all. I welcome any insights you might choose to offer.

Not Your Daddy's Jesus

2011-08-10T13:22:00.001-05:00

Plaid Shoes makes a good point about the dearth of UU resources on Jesus.

I'm working up a 10-hour adult RE class/summer camp workshop on contemporary progressive scholarship on Jesus. I'm thinking of proposing it as a workshop at the UU summer camp I go to, and maybe field-testing it as an adult RE class at my church.

Here's my initial draft.

Not Your Daddy's (or Mommy's) Jesus

New visions of the New Testament's message

Traditional Christianity teaches that Jesus was the Son of God who came into the world to be sacrificed as a ransom for the sins of human kind since the fall of Adam. Many Unitarian Universalists who have come out of Christian churches have rejected that interpretation of Jesus and left Christianity behind. Yet UUs are not alone in our disquietude with the traditional teachings about Jesus. A growing number of scholars and thinkers within the Christian tradition are also rejecting those teachings. Delving back into the scriptures, they are finding instead a revolutionary message of radical inclusivity in the story and teachings of Jesus and are seeking to reshape Christianity into a religion of Jesus instead of a religion about Jesus. Through readings and discussion, this workshop will introduce participants to various thinkers who are part of this new, progressive encounter with Jesus that is rippling through Mainline Christianity. We'll learn about the work of Marcus Borg; the Jesus Seminar; Brian McLaren and others. Short readings from various sources will be provided.

Comments and feedback not only welcome, but positively begged for...

Video/Audio vs. Print

2011-08-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

In the news business, newspapers are turning to online video as the Next Big Thing, using it to enhance or sometimes replace print versions of stories they report on.

A number of ministers -- UU and non-UU -- opt to post their sermons only as podcasts.

On his blog, Will has a recording of something by Adolph Reed that I really want to get to...sometime. ("I haven't had a chance to play this," he notes...)

Am I really that unusual in my preference for print over audio/video? I don't boycott web video or anything like that. (There are some web videos I make a point of watching, in fact.)

But my bias is toward the written word, big time. Maybe its my general impatience and the difficulty I have sitting still. I can flip through really quickly and zero in on the portions of a text that are most pertinent to me right now.

If I have to listen to an hour-long audio clip or video clip, it's gonna be when I'm otherwise able to multi-task, like cleaning up my office space.

Am I that unusual this way?

A Thought on Funerals

2011-07-26T07:32:00.000-05:00

The Rev. Marilyn Sewell writes about funerals and memorial services, and in the course of her essay acknowledges that sometimes those who are mourned are mostly remembered for their faults:

But what if Virginia was a difficult person? What if she was a narcissist, who didn't really pay much attention to her children? Or what if she was a raging alcoholic? Do we really want to remember her, to celebrate her life? Yes, we do, just as she was, in all of the various colors of her life....

I nodded when I read this, and immediately thought of the recent eulogy that Bruce Springsteen gave his bandmate and friend, Clarence Clemons. Clarence was evidently a sometimes problematic personality, notwithstanding his talent, and Bruce was straightforward about that in his remarks, in a very loving yet frank manner, as befits a true friendship.

Wisconsin, Protest, and Godwin's Law

2011-07-13T08:38:00.003-05:00

There was a big event in our town yesterday -- the technical college that was said to be the first of its kind in the nation, the grandaddy of our state's technical college system -- marked its 100th anniversary.

Wisconsin's governor, Scott Walker, showed up to give a speech and was jeered and heckled by a couple of hundred protesters. (They were, according to news accounts, silent and respectful for all the other speakers at the centenary event.)

I trust there's no doubt among those who know me or who have read this blog how I feel about the legislative tsunami that has ripped up our state's social contract in the last six months since Mr. Walker took office. (And in case there was any doubt, I suspect that the foregoing sentence has erased it, even if you didn't follow the link!)

But I dislike the drowning-out of the governor's speech. I would have preferred to see protesters respond to him silently -- perhaps turning their backs, or holding up a big sign that observes he has made unsustainable cuts to education in our state. I think there are moral reasons to take that route, but I also think tactics, and yes, PR strategy, are still important. There may be deep polarization and few undecided people in our divided state, but nonetheless not everyone has the same emotional investment on either side that the most loyal partisans do. And for those who are less certain about their support of the governor or of his critics, I fear that the length to which the protesters went risks marginalizing their own message.

DairyStateMom made essentially the same point over breakfast this morning, and I reflexively agreed (because she's very smart, because I did agree with her, and because it's always wisest to do so when neither of us has had our morning coffee quota).

But then I paused and fulfilled Godwin's Law.

I would feel differently, I allowed, about drowning out a speech by Hitler (an act that would have carried with it far greater risk to the heckler, I'll note). So in that case, where does one draw the line?

"Scott Walker isn't Hitler," she said. "He's not sending people to the gas chamber."

Indeed he isn't. And I do deplore the casual characterization of political opponents as Nazis, from whatever corner of the political spectrum it comes and whoever the target is -- at least within mainstream politics.

Yet that principle embedded in that position, and underlying Godwin's law itself, raises* the question: Can we ever make that characterization? And what is the standard?

And if we believe, as I am inclined to, that the looming changes wrought by our governor, his legislative majority, and their corporate financiers risk increasing the deaths of poor people who will be failed by our healthcare system while systematically disenfranchising voters whose circumstances make it more difficult for them to submit to new Voter ID procedures, is the comparison more apt than we give it credit for?

Or, to turn to another context in which the accusation of fascism is lodged, would a president who went to war on the strength of lying propaganda, who authorized the torture of prisoners, and who in the process instituted a national security state that places increasing shackles on personal liberty and privacy, be legitimately characterized thus?

Here's a case that's not quite the same thing, but similar enough: The other day Will linked to an item pointing out the gross disparity between the prison sentence (15 years) of a homeless man who robbed someone of $100 and a businessman (40 months) who committed fraud in the ~~millions~~ billions.

"Some'll rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen," Woody Guthrie sang.

Should we be less willing to make such fine distinctions [ADDED] that treat the fountain-pen robber less severely, just as the pin-stripe-suited proto-fascist is?

____________

*Free English major tip for the day: It does not "beg" the question, however often you see the latter term misused in just that way. Here's a good rundown on the distinction between the two.

Choosing Paths

2011-07-11T14:11:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Christine on her new job...

Reading her post (as well as Matt Kinsi's comment) got me to thinking...

I'm in my 50s, and to be honest, always tended to measure jobs by how close I thought they could get me to the goal of 'changing the world.'

So I chose journalism, first in the newspaper business and then, when I opted for self-employment 16 years ago, went to the less-lucrative side of freelance journalism rather than more lucrative means of employing my craft (such as marketing, advertising, PR and related areas).

But in retrospect, I'm not sure that always made the most sense. I wonder sometimes if I would have been better off doing something that paid better and at the same time left me more free to pursue interests in activism.

No way of knowing for sure, and I'm not lying awake at night questioning the route I took. But the one thing I realize now that I didn't then is that the choices are nowhere near as black-and-white as I saw them 15 and 30 years ago...

Summer Camp

2011-07-05T06:36:00.006-05:00

I'm writing this post overlooking a placid Missouri lake 90 minutes or so southwest of St. Louis.

I'm here for the annual, week-long gathering of several hundred Unitarian Universalists. This group has been meeting for some 60-plus years, most of that time on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Changes five years ago in the configuration of the facility that hosted them for most of that time forced a relocation, and this is now the fourth year that the organization has been meeting here in Missouri.

Summer Assembly was for a time an important part of my religious life and experience and a beloved community. My former spouse and I first attended 18 years ago, when DairyStateKid#1 had just turned 2 years old, and attended annually for years thereafter. It was there, in our 11th summer of attendance, that she told me that she had decided it was time for us to separate; by the time I returned the next year with my two sons, we had been divorced for months and I had met the person who would become the DairyStateMom of this blog.

The transition away from Lake Geneva was a challenge for this group of 500-plus UU campers, and it was followed by a period of true mourning. My sons and I continued through the camp's one-year interim site in 2007 and the first year at this new place the next year. For many reasons, I skipped the last two years, but now I am back.

Summer Assembly is as pure a distillation of the blessings and foibles of Unitarian Universalist culture and community as I think you will find anywhere. The spirit is generous and relaxed, the speakers tend to veer more toward the experiential and inspirational side of UU-ism than the dry and intellectual side. For children it is a safe and permissive environment, and there has been a special joy in seeing them grow over the years, many of them into sensitive, caring and energized adults.

So after two years away, here I am again. I am taking a workshop on photography to help me get more comfortable with the fancy new camera I bought recently for my work. I had hoped to take another workshop on Unitarian Universalists and Prayer, but that canceled at the last minute. And each morning we have a worship service featuring talks by Meg Barnhouse, one of our UU rock stars, who is our theme speaker.

Of late, much has been on my mind that all boils down to -- just what is it, anyway, that I want to do with my life? Summer Assembly has often been a time to contemplate that question, in various iterations, and so it is again.

So for that reason alone, I think this is a good place to be right now. And I am glad to be here.

Something I've Stumbled Upon

2011-06-15T08:14:00.001-05:00

Sea Raven holds a doctorate of ministry and describes herself as an "exile" from the traditional church. She's a student of Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality. And she has a blog on Liberal Christian Commentary. She's also worked with Christian UUs and it strikes me she understands Unitarian Universalism very well...

I encountered her while perusing recent comments at Shuck and Jive.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I suggest you check her out...

What he said

2011-06-12T07:19:00.000-05:00

Presbyterian minister John Shuck sums up his own beliefs -- and challenges traditional theology. Along the way, he quotes an apologist for the Trinity who insists that without a fundamental affirmation of it, "we have become functional Unitarians." Maybe, Shuck says, that's something worth emulating.

Trying to retrofit our belief systems to a modern understanding of the Universe, Earth, and Earth's inhabitants turns theologians and pastors into pawn brokers for ancient religious relics that fewer and fewer people embrace.

Read the rest.

Liberal Alternatives

2011-05-24T14:28:00.002-05:00

I started this post some weeks back as a half-baked rumination by a non-clergy-person in response to a couple of posts by Christine Robinson. In the first of those, she suggests that

Most UU churches, it seems to me, benefit from being much more forthcoming about their denominational label.

Anyway, my post sat around in the drafts for some time, and now comes news that UU membership in the U.S. is continuing to contract. This offers what we in the news business call "a news peg" for moving this particular post forward.

I want to add one more wrinkle to the discussion.

Today people looking for a liberal, eclectic, non-doctrinal (or at least less-doctrinal) and progressive church experience may have choices besides joining a Unitarian Universalist church. They aren't everywhere, but the fact that they exist at all is intriguing to me.

They also exist on a spectrum.

At one end of that spectrum is a place like DairyStateMom's church. On the surface, it's a highly traditional Presbyterian church that is explicitly Christian in its practice and belief.

Yet parishioners with whom I've talked there talk quite openly about their own "spiritual journey" and an openness to "individual belief" there; the church institutionally is at the forefront of the efforts to open up Presbyterian ordination standards; and it is there that I've been introduced to the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, whose take on Jesus is certainly a radical departure from Christian orthodoxy.

The Easter sermon I heard there a few Sundays ago never sought to frame the resurrection in terms that had to be taken literally. And a year ago, the senior pastor focused her Easter sermon on Emily Dickinson's life story and her poem, "Hope is a Thing with Feathers."

I have said that, had I stumbled into a church like hers 30 years ago when I was unchurched and had not yet encountered Unitarian Universalism, I might very well have wound up joining it and never becoming a UU. Or, to put it slightly differently, if my 24-year-old self were to stumble into her church today, I might have found it comfortable enough to embrace.

Now, knowing all that I know now, I would find that at least a little bit regrettable, because I so value the much broader interfaith exposure I've gotten in UU churches.

One of the blogs listed down the side here is by Tennessee Presbyterian Minister John Shuck. As progressive and welcoming as DairyStateMom's church is, The Rev. Shuck's church is clearly further down at the left end of the spectrum, theologically and culturally, from hers. Except for the fact that its preaching is much more consistently centered on the life of Jesus, it would in fact come close to passing for a UU church, judging by its embrace of theological diversity and progressive social witness. If I found myself living in that part of the world, even as a UU, and it was closer than any UU church, I could see myself quite at home there.

Finally, there are across the country various progressive, often (but not always) non-denominational churches that while they primarily identify with Christianity, make it very clear that they welcome a wide range of belief and even non-belief. I haven't been to any of them in person but would happily go given the opportunity.

(Off the top of my head I'm aware of one in Wilmington, Delaware; in Florida [I think Miami], Evanston, Ill., and Grand Rapids, Mich. There's also a small Anglican group based in Milwaukee that operates in a similar vein, although to what extent it is an established church organization as opposed to just the vision of a few idiosyncratic organizers is not at all clear to me.)

It might be interesting to compile a comprehensive list of such places and map their location against the locations of existing UU congregations. I have no idea whether they tend to flourish where UU congregations are scarce, or if in fact they end up clustering in more or less the same places where there are UU churches as well, but filling some kind of felt need for some people that UU churches, for whatever reason, don't meet.

I don't think this is necessarily a zero-sum game. I am not saying these liberal alternatives keep UUism from growing or are some kind of "competition". And I am not saying that we should make our churches either more like or less like these other liberal alternatives. But in thinking about why UUism is shrinking rather than growing, it might be useful to see what insights we might gain from their presence.

Who Am I?

2011-05-23T20:13:00.002-05:00

I thought Jacqueline Wolven raised some good questions in her post a few days ago, which I happened upon a few days later after taking a look at the weekly roundup of UU blogs.

This post isn't exactly a direct response to her questions, but it is inspired by them.

Up to now, I have run this blog semi-anonymously. At least for the foreseeable future, I expect to keep doing so.

"Semi," in that I've been upfront with various friends in and out of the blog-UU-sphere about my identity here. "Anonymous" in that I don't sign posts with my name and for the most part don't comment on other blogs except under the DSD identity.

So...why the secrecy at all?

The main reason is to separate what I write here from my public identity as a journalist. In that capacity I write for a variety of outlets, and I am not constrained from having a point of view. Nonetheless, I am inclined to believe I will feel a little freer about what I write here if it is not connected with my public journalistic self.

Now, a bit paradoxically, even in this semi-anonymous guise, I tend to be circumspect.

I publicly identify here the various churches with which I have an ongoing relationship: My own church, DairyStateMom's church, and my "church away from home" that I frequent when visiting family in the East.

For that reason -- and because my blogging ID here is only semi-anonymous -- I choose not to air dirty laundry (not that there really is any to air) about any of these places.

In other words, I have not chosen to use this space to work out personal differences I might have with one or another specific institution. I might speak more broadly, but leave it at that. In this regard I am following my instinct, but I bring it up to emphasize that my choice of a masked identity is not motivated by any desire to be more personal, particularly about criticism.

From time to time I think about casting the mask off entirely, and I think Jacqueline Wolven has worthwhile things to say about that approach. For now, however, I choose not to. I thought that it might be useful, for myself and for my two-and-a-half readers, to reflect on why.

Book Review: Proverbs of Ashes

2011-05-21T07:33:00.000-05:00

Proverbs of Ashes, by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker

This book preceded by several years the Brock and Parker book Saving Paradise, which I read at about the time I started this blog.

Its central thesis is that the traditional atonement theology that emphasizes the suffering of Jesus on the Cross as a necessary redemption for humankind in fact sanctions abuse and violence, particularly against the oppressed.

As I've written here before, I have never put much stock in atonement theology. The church in which I grew up didn't stress it, and when I encountered it among some fundamentalist schoolmates, it seemed bizarre, wrongheaded, and even monstrous. Yet while I wasn't personally wounded by it, I developed a grim fascination with the belief system, a fascination that I've never really shaken.

Before I bought Proverbs of Ashes I had expected the book to be primarily theology, but it turns out it's mostly memoir laced with a theological exploration. The authors' accounts of their respective lives and the crises that led them to confront their own rejection of atonement theology are by turns harrowing and soothing, poignant and stark, but always boldly honest.

My takeaway message from it is that redemption isn't found in sacrifice but in connection and in self-respect. I get that, but, then what?

As moving and meaningful as I did find the book, I found myself wishing at the end for a more explicitly stated resolution, an alternative bumpersticker slogan that would state a progressive theology of Christ with the pithiness of the evangelist's sign I saw the other day ["1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4 Given"]. Of course, my wish for that misses some of the point, doesn't it? This is, after all, about a Christian witness that is too profound and too ambiguous to be boiled down to a bumpersticker.

Finally, there's a loose end for me.

Where does all of this leave the values of honorable and courageous willingness to risk all for a larger goal and principle?

I'm thinking most immediately of the Freedom Riders, whose story was told this week on Public TV. They willingly endured brutal and potentially fatal violence in the name of human rights. I don't think they saw the violence itself as redemptive or necessary. But they did see the willingness to endure it as necessary to the larger goal of making it possible for all people to travel freely across the land as they chose(although, as the PBS documentary shows, they were perhaps naive about the dangers they would face).

Less dramatically and more contemporaneously, I think of the resurgent interest in missional church, which emphasizes selflessness and willingness to lose oneself in service to the larger community.

Proverbs of Ashes doesn't dismiss such values as much as simply ignore them, at least as far as I can tell. It's that final connection that's missing for me, and that I'd like to see someone ultimately address.

Proud of my "Mother-in-Law Church"

2011-05-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

For a very brief few years more than two decades ago, Garrison Keillor was married to a woman from Denmark and moved away to her native land to be with her. During that time he referred to Denmark as his "mother-in-law country."

For what I hope will be a much, much longer time (nearly six years and counting already!), I have been married to DairyStateMom, and for that reason, I have come to think of the Presbyterian Church (USA) -- and specifically, the congregation of which she is a member -- as my "mother-in-law church." The senior pastor of her congregation is a co-leader of one of three different Presbyterian organizations striving to open up ordination in the PC(USA) -- not just of pastors, but of church elders (who are the lay leaders of a congregation) to non-celibate gays and lesbians.

This week, the barrier fell. DairyStateMom wept with joy at the news, and I, too, felt overjoyed to see her church move toward becoming one "as generous as God's grace," in the words of the pro-gay Covenant Network of Presbyterians.

It's been tough to decide where I will worship this Sunday. Certainly part of me would love to be at DairyStateMom's church and to hear what their always-wonderful senior pastor says about this important new milestone.

But even more, I want to go to my own church and light a candle of joy and thanksgiving on behalf of my "Mother-in-law Church." So that is where I will be.

What They Said

2011-05-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

I've read many good and thoughtful commentaries in the last few days on the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Here are three that stand out for me in particular:

Lizard Eater on the Psalms and how they speak to these events.

The Rev. David Pyle on how the Osama's death is likely to make no difference at best, and could likely lead to new terror.

And the Rev. John Buchanan, pastor of Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church and editor of The Christian Century, on a faithful response from a Mainline Christian perspective.

Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T23:54:00.007-05:00

All day I've been sorting through my reaction to the news last night that President Obama had followed through on one of his campaign promises: To capture, and if need be, kill, Osama bin Laden.

I will cop to some moments of light-hearted triumphalism on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of last night's news. They are moments that, in a more sober frame of mind now, I would not have indulged in had I the opportunity to take them back.

I will cop, too, to the fact that some part of me felt a thrill of pride at the efficiency and dispatch of the military people who carried out the mission successfully. And yes, I also felt a certain smug superiority on the President's behalf, thinking how he was doing the serious work of helping to plan this mission even as he had to swat away idiocy about his birth certificate and assorted other distractions from inside and outside the Beltway.

I was proud of the solemnity of President Obama's brief speech on the events. I have seen some comments suggesting that having killed bin Laden without a trial violates our sense of justice, and I have found it easy -- too easy -- to wave away such objections. "You don't understand," I scoff back at the screen. "They would have taken him alive, but there was a firefight. So his death was unavoidable!"

I understood the glee and frat-party cheering in front of the White House by college students about the same age as my older son. I still remember the day he came home from 5th grade on September 11, 2001, with a note from his teacher explaining that the kids had not been told what had happened that awful morning, that it was thought better for them to hear the news from their parents.

But by that point last evening, I found the cheers and glee and chants of "U-S-A!" unseemly at best. And today, as friends responded in various quarters with ~~a quotation from~~ ~~an apparently~~ a possibly invented quotation attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.* about grieving the loss of lives but not cheering the death of an enemy, I found myself nodding in assent, and quietly acknowledging my own moral discomfort.

A superbly grounded young friend of our family who is spending this college semester in the Middle East posted on her own blog a nuanced and compassionate response, which I commend to wider attention. And at Deep River, I identified, too, with Anna Snoeyenbos's pricked conscience. My own sister, QuakerStateMom, spoke on her Facebook page deeply from her heart:

Am I relieved that Osama Bin Laden is no more? Yes. Am I sobered that our President played a role? Yes. Is it justice and closure? Not really. Was it inevitable? Probably. Do I rejoice? No. I have felt sickened since hearing the cheers... This is a time to soberly call on God's injustice: Mercy and Love.

God's injustice. That is no typo. It is a turn of phrase coined to counter the traditional justice of an eye for an eye, replacing it with a radical message of love.

She posted that not long after I had posted on Facebook a link to Eboo Patel's essay at the Beacon Press website, in which he tells of a friend who has joined the Navy SEALS (the same outfit who executed the mission to get bin Laden): “It is guys with guns that end wars, Eboo,” his friend told him. I felt Patel's essay grappled with the deep moral ambiguity of this moment.

I am not a pacifist. I do see a rough justice in the events of the last 24 hours, and I reluctantly believe that we continue to need a trained military to protect our land and our people. I respect those who have been called to service in that capacity, including, most recently, the son of a UU friend.

And I am also aware of the misuse to which military might has too often been put, even as I want to believe that other uses of it have been for a greater good in protecting the vulnerable in far away places as well as here at home. I wish that we could rise to a level at which military power was not needed, but I just don't have the faith that will be possible in my lifetime.

I think back, as well, to Sunday morning, hours before this news broke. At the UU church I attend, the sermon was preached by a pulpit guest, a local Buddhist priest who is an old friend of our congregation. One of the things he said was that everyone has a Buddha nature -- "even Donald Trump." Or even Osama bin Laden.

I believe that. Or at least I want to. Living it is another matter.

But while I have not yet grown enough to embrace pacifism myself, I believe we desperately need pacifists. They are a voice of conscience in our society and in our world. We ignore their restraining admonition at our moral peril.

And I recall, again, my favorite scene from The American President.

_________________
*Moments after posting this, I saw Will's latest post and learned of the apparently fictional provenance of the King quote. Accuracy is important to me, but I do share Will's sense that embedded in the fiction, there is a larger truth.

Further update: Reading further through the comments to the Atlantic item, many people claim that almost the same quote is demonstrably attributable to King. But right now I'm not seeing it. I do see another quote that is as good and seems well sourced; it happens to be the title of the blog entry from our friend to which I linked above.

Final, probably unnecessary, update: OK, what appears to be the case is that a false quote was inadvertently grafted on to a real one.

An Easter Message

2011-04-21T12:45:00.000-05:00

Crystal S. Lewis, writing at TheReligiousLeft.org, preaches an Easter sermon that goes straight to the heart of the story.

Amen!

Churches vs. Other Nonprofits (Again)

2011-04-18T08:18:00.002-05:00

Scott Wells offers useful observations on churches and political endorsements.

But I still haven't found an answer to a question I had the last time this subject came up:

Why are churches treated differently from other nonprofits? This isn't simply a pitch to tax the churches (which I have suggested before). Instead,it's about why churches as nonprofits are classified separately from secular nonprofits.

Scott says the First Amendment is the reason, but (perhaps because I'm not a lawyer) I don't follow that.

Both, say, the East Bainbridge United Way and the First Baptist Church face IRS restrictions in how they can comment on politics (specifically, neither can endorse political candidates). Neither organization pays taxes.

Yet there's a whole special category of "church" for First Baptist Church. One side effect: Organizations that function as a church but are for some reason not structured in the way the IRS thinks a church should be end up being held up for special scrutiny.

It seems to me that to treat the First Baptist Church differently than the East Bainbridge United Way (or any other nonprofit) at best skirts the Establishment Clause: it privileges an organization simply because it is a "church". On the other side, it also forces that organization to justify itself as a church. Talk about government entanglement with religion!

So can someone explain the justification for this difference? I'd really like to know -- and I didn't want to hijack Scott's thread in the process.

"We are in the Universe, and the Universe is in us."

2011-04-12T15:57:00.001-05:00

Neil DeGrasse Tyson on plumbing the depths of the Universe as a spiritual experience.

(via Evolutionary Christianity)

Blind Men, Blind Elephants

2011-04-11T11:07:00.003-05:00

In the comments to my previous post, Steve Caldwell refers to a joke over at his blog that parodies the famed Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant -- a parable about the ineffable nature of the divine.

(A digression: Writing that I was reminded of seeing a blog whose motto was "effing the ineffable..." -- which led me to Google that phrase and see it attributed to, among others, Alan Watts...)

In God Is Not One, Prothero also makes reference to the blind-men-and-the-elephant story, and how it is usually interpreted: "No one has the whole truth, but each is touching the elephant" -- a single, unified God perceivable through all religions. He then turns that favorite ~~ecumenical~~* interpretation on its head:

But this folk tale also demonstrates how different religions are, since it has been told in various ways and put to various uses by various religious groups.

For Buddhists, it is about how metaphysical speculation is pointless and merely induces suffering. For Hindus, it is about the ability to reach God through many paths. For Sufis, it is about using the heart rather than the mind to perceive God. For the satirist John Godfrey Saxe, the British poet who arguably introduced the story to the west, it's about the stupidity of all theology.

Now, I've always liked the story's message about the necessity of humility for anyone who seeks to privilege his or her own faith perspective, so I suppose the Hindu interpretation (or the Jain one, evidently) is most appealing to me. But I smiled in rueful recognition when I read Prothero's take on it.

As Steve notes on his blog, one lesson from the parady is about the hazards of appropriating other religious traditions and rituals:

Like the blind elephants, we may accidentally transform and even distort another's religion into a form wildly different from the original through our exploration.

A point well taken. But I'll say this: In reading Prothero it's fascinating to see how many religious traditions have borrowed from and been influenced by each other over the centuries. This seems especially true in Asia, as Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism all influenced each other (and where it's not uncommon for people to in fact worship in all three traditions interchangeably), but it is not limited to that part of the world or to those faiths by any means.

I've always been inclined to a more laissez-faire attitude toward the issue of appropriation. So long as what is borrowed is borrowed respectfully, and so long as its authenticity is not misrepresented, I'm inclined to give a lot of what some people criticize as appropriation a pass.

Reading Prothero just reinforced my point of view on the matter.

________________
*By coincidence, I just now read this post pointing out that "ecumenical" is not the same as "interfaith". Taking that message to heart, I've edited the passage accordingly, and decided I didn't really need an alternative adjective.

Book Review: God Is Not One

2011-04-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

God Is Not One, by Stephen Prothero

DairyStateMom got me this book for Christmas, and I finally got around to reading it over the last few weeks. Eminently readable and often laugh-out-loud witty, it will become a valued reference on the basics of eight major religions in the world. I have no real argument with his selections of which ones to cover and which not to, although I do wish that he'd included a chapter on the Pagan revival. (His closest is a chapter on the Yoruba religion from Africa, which has come to the Western Hemisphere in the form of Santeria, Vodun and numerous other variants.) Of course, modern Paganism is not one thing, and I'm sure there are sensible and thoughtful arguments against trying to lump its many different expressions into a single chapter.

My other principal disappointment (and it, too, is relatively minor) is that when in the chapter on Christianity he assesses the current state of the faith and appraises its growing edges, he focuses almost entirely on the rise of Pentecostalism and the conservative surge, driven mostly by Africa, in Mainline Protestantism. He thus ignores the very interesting (to me, anyway) Emerging/Emergent Church movement where the left wing of Evangelicalism meets a more vigorous and experimental progressive Mainline Christianity. (I would situate other progressive Christian movements, including Michael Dowd's Evolutionary Christianity and the Creation Spirituality of Matthew Fox, in this larger trend.) Again, I presume his defense would be that these eddies are so small within the larger river of contemporary Christianity that he had to draw the lines somewhere -- an editorial task I'm always loath to undertake.

While the book is primarily a narrative reference work, it's framed within an argument about how we discuss religious diversity and religious pluralism. Early on, Prothero takes exception to the common metaphor of pluralists that the different religions of the world are "many paths up the same mountain" and meet at the top there. The religions of the world, he argues, are better understood as going up different mountains, and what they find at the top is equally different, one from another.

One particular problem with the one-mountain metaphor, as he notes, is that it tends to enforce a view of all religions that sanitizes their more difficult and troubling elements in the name of ecumenism. Part of Prothero's brief here is to not flinch from those troubling elements and also not to paper over intra-faith conflicts and disagreements in his descriptions.

I think that Prothero's point about the deficiency of the one-mountain metaphor is true as far as it goes, and while I have casually accepted the "many paths/one mountain" image in my own conversation and thought, I'll try very hard not to do so again, and instead to always mentally footnote Prothero when I read or hear those references. I find, instead, a very helpful alternative in Forrest Church's metaphor for pluralism, The Cathedral of the World, in which many varied windows look out on and interpret a mysterious universe. To a great extent, I believe this approach avoids the problem Prothero identifies. (And yes, I am aware of Steve Caldwell's interesting extension of the Cathedral metaphor, in which he suggests atheism offers a clear plate-glass window as an alternative to the many different varieties of stained-glass presented by the world's faiths.)

Prothero's rejection of the one-mountain metaphor doesn't mean he rejects religious pluralism. Rather, he prescribes that conversations about religious differences can and should move from the arena of faith and belief to the more neutral ground of description, and that the project of interfaith cooperation can move ahead by simply focusing on shared values and objectives, rooted in the respective faith traditions and calls of the participants. Of course, there are limits to that, too: I rather doubt a UU congregation that has stood boldly for reproductive choice could find a way to team up with a Baptist church whose congregants man the gauntlet to discourage patients from entering the local Planned Parenthood clinic each weekend -- at least not on anything that has to do with reproductive freedom. But perhaps they could join together on a Habitat for Humanity house-raising.

Prothero says that the old kind of pluralism, which emphasizes getting along with our neighbors over doctrine, was "a game for religious liberals -- religious conservatives need not apply." Of course, to really get to the vision of pluralism that Prothero advances, the most doctrinaire -- whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or even Atheist or, yes, UU -- will still have to be willing to modulate their own dogmas, at least in their words, if not in their hearts.

That in itself may be challenging enough. But if it's not any easier, it's probably something worth trying.

A Lament, and A Question: Please Weigh In!

2011-04-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

Well, if you haven't heard yet, the news from Wisconsin's state Supreme Court race has just gotten positively bizarre: Thanks to a previously unreported 10,000 or so votes, the seemingly-defeated incumbent now appears to have a 7,000-vote margin of victory against the once-triumphant challenger whose paper-thin margin of fewer than 300 votes was wiped away. Given that the race itself had become a proxy war in the highly charged battle over union rights for public employees, the emotional uproar brought on by this revelation is almost impossible to exaggerate.

I have two thoughts about these latest developments.

The first, and big-picture observation, is that except for who actually wins, the new numbers really don't change the overall landscape. Before the vote-canvassing upset Thursday, I thought the smartest (if fairly obvious) observations were from those who saw etched in these numbers the deep and fairly even division of the state's residents. The margin is still in the area of one percentage point; we're talking roughly 1 person for every 8 or 9 square miles in the state, or little more than 100 people per county. So we're likely to see-saw a bit over the next few years, as we have in the past, as momentary circumstances edge first one, then the other party over the top. In that way, we're an awful lot like the whole country. (And our governor's lame claim that somehow it was just "Madison" vs. "the rest of the state" was absolute horse-pucky.)

As an aside, a county-by-county map of the vote [which appears not to have been updated since Thursday's revelation] points out something else: That majorities for one candidate or another are notably greater in individual counties, suggesting that Wisconsin has experienced the "Big Sort" phenomenon that Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing wrote about in a book of that name published three years ago.

There are, of course, already dark conspiracy theories being spun. I am not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. I think Oswald probably did kill Kennedy, acting more or less alone, I don't think 9/11 was an inside job, and so on.

But I do admit to questioning the way the 2000 Florida vote ~~was~~ wasn't resolved. I do think that big, corporate money in campaigns has hijacked our political system in ways that we are only dimly aware of, serving an agenda in the interests of wealth rather than democracy.

As I said to DairyStateMom this morning:

"I don't want to be a sucker for a conspiracy theory. I also don't want to be a sucker for a conspiracy."

And so I end with a question and hope to get some serious responses in comments:

What is the most bizarre theory about a long-hidden conspiracy you can recall that actually turned out to be basically true?

And that latter point is key: basically true according to a reasonably broad consensus. Kennedy theories and 9/11 debunking haven't reached that threshold yet -- nor have any of the other examples I cite above, whether I am inclined to believe them or not.

Any suggestions?

Wow. This is Hard. And True.

2011-04-06T17:52:00.000-05:00

Christine, commenting at Spirituality and Sunflowers, paraphrasing something at People of the Second Chance, says this:

[I]t is hardest to give grace to grace killers. You know what I mean? And I say that because when I read blog posts similar to the one referenced, I know that I struggle with anger, and indignation with this sense of “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” I struggle to remind myself of this, that I should give grace to the people who fail to use it. To be gentle in one’s criticism.

I don't know anything that has brought me up so short as that. I think practicing it might just be the work of a lifetime.

Amen.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T19:51:00.002-05:00

One More Thing...

2011-03-17T08:06:00.001-05:00

A sequel to this post...

(Thank you, Crystal S. Lewis!)

I've Always Been One

2011-03-15T20:28:00.001-05:00

I don't have anything really profound to say on this day of standing up for Universalism -- certainly nothing so profound as what I've read elsewhere today. I'm not studying for the ministry, I am not a pastor or theologian, I cannot point to a moving, transcendent experience that affirmed the beliefs I hold.

I'm just a layperson mumbling in the corner, thinking out loud, sorting out what I believe and how that might inform the way I live my life.

As I've noted before, I didn't grow up UU, but rather in the Mainline Christian church. I heard at an early age about the concept of Hell, and when I learned the Nicene creed, saw that it was embedded therein ("he descended into Hell..."). Yet the notion that Jesus's death and resurrection were specifically aimed at atoning for Original Sin and saving people from eternal Hell, and that belief in that atonement was mandatory to avoid that punishment, were always alien to me.

At one point I recall asking my mother something about Hell -- I was probably at least 10 and could have been as old as 14 -- and her definition was "separation from God."

But when I heard about the violent doctrines of eternal torture from Fundamentalists I knew, I was simply flabbergasted. God and Jesus were about love, I knew. Those other doctrines simply didn't compute. I rejected them out of hand.

So I've never felt wounded by the church of my upbringing -- although I've certainly been angry on behalf of others for the doctrines of fear they've been taught and have believed.

I will probably take a look at Rob Bell's book when I'm next in a bookstore or library and can find it. I am intellectually interested in what he has to say, whether he is or isn't a strict Universalist. But what I am especially interested in is, Then what? What does he say about what one does with the insight that God's love is far, far bigger than the pinched and wrathful deity of the Fundamentalists?

Because what I believe I need most deeply in the spiritual realm has nothing to do with what happens after I die. What I know I need most is to learn how to live, with myself and with others, in this world.

We do need salvation from Hell. But it's the Hell on Earth we need to save ourselves, and each other, from.

Why It's Fun to Have a Blog

2011-03-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

Because sometimes you can just share all those goofy YouTube videos you just discovered even if they're so old everyone already knows about them.

Like this one:

Or this one:

I thought about putting up the one of Kermit singing "Dancing in the Dark," but it wasn't as funny.

A Serious Question about Godwin's Law (updated)

2011-03-11T11:10:00.003-06:00

Godwin's Law is the humorous maxim that asserts that, the longer an Internet discussion continues, the probability of someone raising the Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

As I noted over on Will's blog, its more serious purpose, as I understand it, is to rein in hyperbolic warnings of looming fascism.

So, back when the Nazis were rising to power, what (besides thuggery, of course) was used to shut up the anti-Nazis?

Update:

Steve Caldwell points out that my question has been anticipated previously.

Jesus, the Anti-Literalist

2011-03-05T10:46:00.000-06:00

From Anne Robertson's "Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally":

No matter where Jesus turns, his efforts to communicate are hampered by those who want to interpret his words literally, and by doing so miss the entire point.

(Thank you, Crystal S. Lewis, who put this on her FB page.)

American Grace

2011-03-01T07:28:00.001-06:00

I've been hearing about this book and will add it to my ever-growing list of books I want to read:

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam.

One little data point in the review caught my attention, though:

Half of all married Americans have spouses of a different faith.

That's something that demands unpacking, it seems to me. "Have" implies in the current day. Could that be really true? Or does it mean they married someone of another faith but don't necessarily practice both in the home? I'll definitely have to find that book.

And I'll bet Susan Katz Miller might have something very interesting to say about this...

How to Help Your Church Grow

2011-02-27T14:59:00.000-06:00

Hint: It's not about whether you play modern music.

This morning DairyStateMom and I went to her church, where the pulpit guest was the Rev. Sarah Drummond, Dean of the Faculty at Andover Newton Theological School, a United Church of Christ seminary.

After the sermon (which I'll refer to in a moment), the Rev. Drummond gave a short talk about a research project she did that was written up last year in the magazine published by the Alban Institute, a sort of church think tank.

The study, described in the link at the top of this post, looks in depth at one UCC church that reversed a long and seemingly unstoppable decline: First Church in Cambridge. Drummond recalled visiting it when she was a student at Andover Newton back in the early 1990s and being overwhelmed by a musty smell that signaled decay.

A decade passed, and when Drummond returned to Andover Newton to join the faculty, she was struck by how that decline had reversed itself: the congregation was now thriving, welcoming new members by the dozen, most of them in the 21-35 age group.

In response to this phenomenon, the church, along with seminary students and Drummond, embarked on a study of its new members in order to learn how to better serve them. In the process, they learned what it was that drew and kept these new members.

The whole article fleshes this out, but here's the summary:

1) The new members welcomed high expectations of them for belonging to a church, but wanted and needed flexibility in how they might participate in the life of the church.
2) They appreciated being welcomed -- but when the welcome had a whiff of desperation, it was creepy and a turn-off.
3) They found comfort in a clearly stated belief system -- but wanted acceptance of their doubts and questions: belief without dogma, if you will. They also were drawn by the awareness that the church was living out its beliefs.

Oh, and by the way, this was a church that throughout the period of both decline and growth has remained liturgically (including musically) traditional within its denomination. Indeed, the sense of calmness and the sense of a space apart from the world embedded in its worship aesthetic was attractive to the many people who joined.

During the Q&A today, someone asked Drummond what at the church had preceded this influx of new members -- had there been some kind of strategy or marketing campaign launched?

The answer, she said, was that the church had engaged in a deliberate examination of what its vision for itself and its role in the community should be. As a result, it became much more connected with the wider needs of the community -- for example, connecting volunteers with a local homeless shelter that had been operating separately in the church's own basement for years.

"I'm hearing you say," I said, "that what the church did wasn't focus on, 'How can we recruit more members,' but rather, 'How can we be more authentic.'" Drummond agreed.

In a sense, it really was a case of "Build it and they will come" -- with "it" being not "a place that will attract young adult members," but rather "a principled religious community."

My point here is not to condemn contemporary music in worship or alternative worship styles. Rather, my point is simply to say that to the extent those are matters of style, they won't accomplish much for people who hunger for substance.

Driving home, I connected the insight with the text from Matthew that had been the topic of Drummond's sermon that day: Matthew 6:24-34. Specifically, I recalled how the passage ends:

31. Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32. For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

So it appears to have been with FCC: Instead of fretting about how to market itself to more people, the church thought about how to seek the kingdom of God. And that's what made the difference.

Dairy State Distress: Part 2 (updated)

2011-02-26T13:38:00.002-06:00

Evidence emerges every day of the deep irresponsibility embedded in Gov. Walker's power grab.

The latest is found in this story from the Wisconsin State Journal: Deadline looms for debt restructuring plan.

Walker's "budget repair bill" and its provision to strip public employees of all but the most meaningless of collective bargaining rights included a deadline-sensitive element to restructure $165 million in debt.

As reporter Dee Hall explains in the above-linked story, debt restructuring is something that has been done before, and could have been done as a stand-alone measure without controversy. Walker, however, insisted on an all-or-nothing bill that included his collective-bargaining-rights takeaway and has since refused to compromise.

The debt-restructuring deadline is real.

As everyone now knows, Wisconsin Senate Democrats absented themselves in order to deny a quorum and block the bill. That also had the effect of blocking the debt-restructuring, which seems likely to lead to the following scenario Hall describes:

Now it's unclear when or if the state will be able to sell bonds or notes in time to avoid a looming March 16 deadline to deposit $165 million into the state's bond security and redemption fund. The money from the fund is used to make the May 1 debt payment, which this year is $165 million.

So let's make this clear: Gov. Walker, in order to get his radical change in collective bargaining, is willing to hold the state's fiscal affairs hostage. In short, he's committed political blackmail.

I can anticipate a counter-argument that it's the Senate Dems who are the hostage-takers or blackmailers, in the name of preserving the collective bargaining rights of public employees. The problem here is that the burden of proof is on Walker, on two counts: 1) The radical nature of the change he is trying to make in what has been a settled and legal practice in this state for 50 years, and 2) the nature of that change to fundamentally destroy the human rights of a group of people.

For further evidence of our governor's fecklessness, read this, from Wisconsin blogger Jay Bullock.

Update

I want to briefly address the question about Gov. Walker's motives.
Plenty of people argue, and I will assert, persuasively, that this bill is part of a much larger trend and strategy to eliminate unions and arrogate more power to capital. But I will put that aside for a moment.

There is a long-running structural deficit in Wisconsin's budget that does need to be solved. There are long-running concerns about benefit costs, particularly pension costs, for public employees. No one denies the need to deal with those.

But the real reach of the collective-bargaining-stripping position is to the rights of local public employees (rights that local officials have said they are not asking to be taken away). What that is about is that Walker's next budget will reportedly cut close to $1 billion in aid to local governments and school districts. By unilaterally stripping those bargaining rights, Walker is arguably buying his way out of accountability for the potential costs of that budget: telling taxpayers and municipal leaders they can effectively dump all of the cost of those lost revenues on workers.

Dairy State Distress: Part 1

2011-02-26T12:49:00.005-06:00

Given that I live in the state that has become Ground Zero in the fight for worker rights, I've so far been silent here on the subject of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's war on public employees and their unions.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that work and family have taken even more of my energies than usual in recent months and pushed blogging down on my priority list. The second is that, even though this blog is semi-anonymous, my work as a journalist has made me cautious about public expression of opinion on subjects that circumstances require me to write about professionally. That's not a rule I follow without exception, to be sure. But it has governed some of my choices about what to write about and what not to, and how I write about certain topics as well.

My silence doesn't, however, reflect any ambivalence on the subject itself. There are many things that I view in shades of gray, aware that no side is completely wrong and many sides have an element of the truth in their favor. The battle going on in Wisconsin is not one of them.

Our governor, through his budget repair bill, is in the midst of a breathtaking power grab, one that is driven only partially by the state's straitened fiscal condition, and one that could easily have been avoided except for greed and hubris.

I know blogging standards call for me to post a variety of links to outside verification of what I'm about to assert. But here I need to cover too much ground to take the time to do that.

In case it is not already abundantly clear to the outside world, this battle is not about specific union concessions on wages or benefits. Days after the governor's budget repair bill being introduced, the state unions involved announced their willingness to accept the wage and benefit concessions as written into the bill.
What they opposed was the bill's wholesale stripping of all collective bargaining rights for local and state public employees except the right to negotiate wages, and that only up to the Consumer Price Index.

That bill represented a sharp, 180-degree turn from 50 years of Wisconsin law and practice -- a massive clawback in worker rights without the sort of public debate and consensus that ought to accompany such a huge turnabout.

Which is not to say that such a turnabout would be justified in any case, as you'll see from my further argument below.

I've followed labor issues for more than two decades, writing about them for a major metropolitan newspaper for nine years and, since then, as an independent journalist for a variety of outlets. I have wherever I have had the opportunity been a union member (and for two years I did work at a non-union paper), and via a small part-time newspaper job I have currently, I am a union member now. As a journalist, I will frankly acknowledge that I had more respect for unions and workers and their role than some of my colleagues and some of my readers. To the extent that my sympathies for unions meant that their story got more attention in the paper and in what I wrote than they might have otherwise, I plead guilty. But I will also vigorously defend the fairness of everything I've written to all parties involved: union, employer, worker.

In fact, I consider worker rights, including the right to collective bargaining, to be as fundamental to democracy and to the good society as any other rights. They are as fundamental as the freedom of speech and assembly, the freedom of religion, and most of the other rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. (I don't consider the 2nd Amendment one of those fundamental rights, by the way, but I know that's a non-starter politically, so I'm not even going to debate that point.) I will acknowledge that, to date, my position on worker rights is not yet reflected in our Constitution, which is to me mainly evidence that the document is not yet perfect. I still want an Equal Rights Amendment, too.

Are unions imperfect? Absolutely. Have public employee unions (and private sector ones, for that matter) shot themselves in the foot at times? No question. Can workers be happy and productive in their workplaces without a union? Undoubtedly some can.

All that is beside the point. Inept politicians have not led us to chuck out wholesale the institutions of democracy; corrupt law enforcement has not led us to abandon the professional policing of our communities; sporadic legal misfeasance has not led us to abandon the rule of law.

For whatever faults they have--and I believe their faults have often been amplified by propaganda and bad journalism, while their benefits have been muted and obscured by the same forces--unions in both the public and the private sectors have been a bulwark against the winner-take-all economy and society. Their continued weakening has helped pave the way for an oligarchy of wealth that more and more controls our public and even private lives.

The actions of Gov. Walker--and of the Republican-dominated legislature, including a state Assembly that abruptly cut off debate early Friday morning and then held a vote and adjourned so quickly that some Democrats could not even cast their votes--are divisive, domineering, and bald-faced oppression. They are also deeply irresponsible, in the service of ideological extremism. And that will be the subject of my next post.

Mental Health Break

2011-02-24T09:19:00.001-06:00

I had hoped I could embed this, but I can't.

For anyone, near and far, who might need a little cheering up.

An anniversary to remember

2011-02-23T09:56:00.000-06:00

From "The Writer's Almanac" for today:

It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land" — now one of America's most famous folk songs.

The melody is to an old Baptist hymn. Guthrie wrote the song in response to the grandiose "God Bless America" song, written by Irving Berlin and sung by Kate Smith. Guthrie didn't think that the anthem represented his own or many other Americans' experience with America. So he wrote a folk song as a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," a song that was often accompanied by an orchestra. At first, Guthrie titled his own song "God Blessed America" — past tense. Later, he changed the title to "This Land is Your Land," which is the first line of the song.

Or, for a little more upbeat version:

It's been another unplanned hiatus here at the blog. I think it's going to end soon.

More on IRS Ecclesiology

2011-01-27T09:35:00.002-06:00

Discussion continues at Scott Wells' blog about churches and IRS status, in light of the agency's ruling that stripped a virtual organization of its church status.

As I noted in the update to my earlier post spinning off of Scott's, another commenter points out the possibility that churches could be simply lumped with all nonprofits, avoiding the separate classification.

So why is there a separate category for churches from other nonprofits? Forget my earlier suggestion about taxing churches; why isn't it sufficient simply to treat all nonprofits the same, including churches?

Two tentative answers I can imagine are that

1) Churches would then have to file form 990 reports on revenues and expenses, including the top 5 highest-paid employees, which they don't now.

So what? (Other than political backlash.)

2) They might have to justify other kinds of expenses -- yet I'm not so sure that's true.

But in fact, I'm asking this question in genuine ignorance.

Taxing the Church

2011-01-25T09:16:00.001-06:00

Scott blogs about a court decision that finds an online religious group doesn't qualify for tax exemption under IRS rules.

As neither a lawyer nor an expert in virtual churches, I can't speak directly to the substance of the specific issue. But my first reaction was to raise a question I've had many times over the year when the issue of churches and tax law comes up -- most often in the context of whether churches can or should endorse political candidates.

Now I happen to think it is almost always a bad idea to make such specific endorsements from the pulpit. (I hedge only to cover the possibility that if I were a preacher and an Adolf Hitler was running for president, the the temptation would be too great not to stand up and declare my opposition. [Uh-oh, did I just set a Godwin's Law record?])

But I've long wondered whether it wouldn't be better to abolish the tax exemption on churches on grounds that to permit it (and then to have to police it) involves excessive entanglement of state with church.

If I were a graduate student in economics or perhaps public policy, I think there might be an interesting paper in examining what the actual impact would be on churches if they were taxed as regular corporations are. After all, much of their expenses would be deductible anyway (as operational expenses, salaries, etc.); probably the real impact would be at the local level, in the realm of property taxes, and aren't there some churches that voluntarily pay a property-tax equivalent to offset service costs from their local municipalities?

Update:

Steve Caldwell, in a comment to the original Scott Wells post that triggered my musing here, suggests what might be an easier solution: No separate category for churches vs. other non-profits.

The Kingdom of God, Subway edition

2011-01-20T13:48:00.001-06:00

This is where you find it.

I know nothing about this man's religion. And it doesn't matter what he believes. It's the way he lives it.

Evolution Sunday

2011-01-18T15:03:00.001-06:00

No, this one is not at a UU church. But it looks to me like a lot of UUs would be quite at home there.

Aside: Scott Wells has been undertaking some interesting research on where UU churches are, particularly in "micropolitan" areas. In that vein, I wonder if liberal non-UU churches in conservative areas tend to create a de facto monopoly, making it more difficult (or less urgent) to start a UU church in those places...

A Passing Thought on Pro-Censorship Unitarians

2011-01-17T07:41:00.001-06:00

At UU World, Christopher Walton has a short note about a new book that recounts the history of the Watch and Ward Society, which promoted censorship a century ago.

It strikes me that the 1980s movement to fight pornography and other forms of sexually oriented entertainment from a feminist/progressive stance(Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, etc.) -- a movement that I briefly sympathized with, but later rejected -- were the intellectual heirs of that earlier group.

Relatedly, I believe that some Unitarians and Universalists also joined in with religious conservatives in that earlier era to promote prohibition.

FWIW...

Not Rising to the Bait

2011-01-08T10:32:00.003-06:00

In the last 24 hours I've turned away from opportunities to comment on two different things I saw online that just made me shake my head.

One was an anti-Christian blog post by a UU blogger that reflects such a blinkered and narrow view of Christianity that I was just beside myself. But I also recognized that blogger's life story I'm sure has been one of deep wounds from Fundamentalist Christianity.

The other was in a comment to a post by one of my favorite bloggers. The comment was by a Christian who took exception to anyone calling him or herself a Christian unless the person subscribed to...

...a blinkered and narrow view Christianity (and one that, paradoxically, was expressed in the comment in such a vague way that it was all but bereft of substance and meaning).

Well, it gives me ~~the chance~~ an excuse to post this old favorite cartoon.

Amateur Hour

2011-01-07T17:50:00.001-06:00

There is a discussion over at Will's blog about interracial romance in science fiction.

I was gonna post something about the William Shatner-Nichelle Nichols kiss on Star Trek TOS but then I realized this is sorta like bringing up ~~Lionel Trains~~ Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains

in a discussion among fine-scale model railroaders.

:-)

In Memoriam: Daniel I. Pevar, 1976-2010

2010-12-28T15:29:00.000-06:00

Grief hits us again.

My nephew Dan was a gentle, creative and caring man who died suddenly Monday, a victim of bipolar disorder.

I have no words for this. I am grateful that, after it looked like I would not be able to travel back east for his funeral, circumstances now make that possible.

Dan is the middle son of my sister Susan and her husband Marc. In honor of their Jewish faith, in memory of my beloved nephew, in shared sorrow with his parents and his brothers, I link to this prayer in that tradition, written by a college friend of mine.

It is called "For the Bereaved."

Last night, Dan's father told me: "Cherish your sons."

And so I say that to whoever stops by this place: Cherish your children.

Amen, and Blessed Be.

Holiday Greetings from Space

2010-12-23T06:31:00.001-06:00

(Thanks, Will!)

Deck Us All...

2010-12-22T09:23:00.001-06:00

I remember when this first ran. Consider it my Christmas Card to everyone.

h/t Roger Ebert.

I love this

2010-12-19T07:57:00.000-06:00

h/t, Kay at Sunshine and Starlight

Quote of the Day

2010-12-18T17:58:00.000-06:00

From Presbyterian minister John Shuck:

Now that the military says gays can be soldiers, I wonder when Presbyterians will allow them to be preachers of peace?

Do tell, indeed!

'A Church for Atheists'

2010-12-14T08:36:00.002-06:00

The Rev. Andy Pakula explains in a very nice post how Unitarian/UU churches welcome atheists as well as theists.

It reminds me of a story I heard from an Englishman (Andy happens to be in England, too, but he is originally from the U.S.) when I was at my Church-Away-From-Home sometime last year.

My English acquaintance told me of his friend who had moved in retirement from London to a small community up in the North of England.

As the retiree got to be known in the community, someone realized his general acumen and approached him about joining the vestry of the local Anglican church.

Flattered, the retiree nonetheless demurred. "I'm an atheist," he explained, apologetically.

His inviter was unperturbed. With a shrug and a wave of his hand, he responded, "Oh, that doesn't matter!"

My Episcopalian mother, and one of the priests at her church, found this story as funny as I and the man who told it to me did.

'Do as I Do...'

2010-12-13T09:17:00.000-06:00

DairyStateMom directs me to this post by Andrew Sullivan, which in turn links to a Weekly Standard article.

The article itself is a review of a book aimed at Christian parents (and, by context, I'd infer mostly Evangelical parents more than Mainline ones). I'll stipulate that the book's author might define the "life-changing, culture-challenging demands of the gospel" a bit differently than I would, and instead just highlight the same quote that Sullivan does:

Parents who show, by their words or their actions, that the tenets and practices of their faith are vague, unimportant, or only tenuously related to daily life, produce teenagers whose faith is vague, marginal, and unlikely to shape their actions and plans in any significant way ...

Mormons, by contrast, challenge their teenagers and require a lot of time, study, and leadership from them. Mormon parents rise at dawn to go over their church’s history and doctrine with their children. More than half of the Mormon youth in the study had given a presentation in church in the past six months. They frequently shared public testimony and felt that they were given some degree of decision-making power within their community. They shape their plans for the immediate future around strong cultural pressures toward mission trips and marriage. Whatever one thinks of the actual beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it seems obvious that both adult Mormons and the teens who follow them really, really believe.

One thing that this quote skates over is the extent to which traditional Mormon beliefs (and those of certain other high-loyalty religions) are rooted at least partly in authoritarianism -- or at least, that's my perception.

So, a question for us UUs and Progressive Christians, and those of any other faith who seek to decouple our belief system from authoritarianism:

Are there lessons that we, too, can learn from this, that we can implement in a non-authoritarian way?

Some friends yesterday explained in a talk at my church why they (he raised Catholic, she raised as a secular Jew) opted for a UU church for their children (and themselves) instead of choosing a non-religious upbringing in which they would simply learn about religion on their own and make their own choices. He said, You can't really understand religion unless you grow up in a religion of some kind. And having that structure gives you something to question and even rebel against, which is healthy.

I liked that a lot. And I think there's a connection here...

A Meditation on Politics, Part 3: Idealistic Pragmatist? Or Pragmatic Idealist?

2010-12-03T08:27:00.003-06:00

From the late 1970s onward, in my days of working for daily newspapers, I took the ethical admonition to stay out of political activism very seriously. So I would follow political campaigns on my own time, and I would vote my hopes (and my fears), but I stayed away from any deeper involvement.

In graduate school in 1982, students were assigned to one of several teams producing a newspaper or other news product covering the November '82 elections. Since we were in New York, the lead story was the govenor's race to succeed Hugh Carey. In that extraordinarily tight race, Democrat Mario Cuomo defeated Lew Lehrman, a Reaganite Republican who, if memory serves, funded much of his campaign with his own money. I think there was little doubt that many of us in the grad school privately preferred Cuomo, but I also would argue that, for the most part, the stories we produced for our journalism "laboratory" were fair and largely unbiased. (I do recall one of our number, however, speaking disparagingly of "all the cheering from the pressbox" -- a probably accurate if a bit hyperbolic assessment. And I don't even know that that guy was anti-Cuomo -- it's as likely that he, who like me had already worked in the business, just felt his professional ethic of objectivity tainted.)

In elections that followed, my choices at the ballot box reflected an evolving and not particularly organized or disciplined political outlook. In 1984, living and working in New York State, I was intrigued by Gary Hart's desire to modernize the Democrats' image, but in the primary wound up choosing Jesse Jackson, knowing full well that the vote was symbolic. That fall I voted for Mondale, hoping against hope that he might actually win. Four years later I voted for Jackson in the primary again, admiring his effort to add struggling blue collar workers -- whose travails I was covering in my daily newspaper assignments -- to his Rainbow Coalition. Yet when I pulled the lever for the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis that fall, I was not merely choosing some lesser of two evils or acting out of loyalty to the Democratic Party -- the practical, pragmatic, and technocratic ethos of his campaign appealed to me as well. It honestly struck an idealistic chord in me.

In 1992, after considering Tom Harkin, who had the strongest pro-labor message, I voted for Jerry Brown in the primary -- skeptical of his flat tax, but appreciating his outsider argument and his zeroing in on big money. I thought Brown had done a credible job, too, of speaking to workers and voters being displaced by the economy. It remains fascinating to me that his appeal fell flat with many blue-collar voters while capturing the interest of those of us with higher incomes and with college or professional degrees.[Here's an interesting summary, from two years ago, of Wisconsin's pivotal role in past Democratic primaries.]

Very soon after Brown narrowly lost the primary to Bill Clinton, I happened to travel to Peoria, Illinois, to cover the Caterpillar strike. While I was there that week, Clinton came in, met both with company and union officials to urge them to settle, then shook hands along a picket line and held a news conference at an airport hangar. Sometime before I'd heard on the radio some of a fairly lengthy talk Clinton had given at some sort of policy-wonkish forum and been impressed by his rhetorical skills. But I hadn't been especially impressed by him in the early rounds of the primary campaigns and was embarrassed by the emerging Gennifer Flowers scandal. All that changed in Peoria, where in just a few superficial hours -- and with no one-on-one exposure to him, just the news conference as well as a few brief opportunities to observe him close-up as he spoke with individual voters -- I had found him to be mesmerizing. The day after his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, I called up a former Democratic legislator in my community and privately asked how I might get a job with the campaign. He gave me some contacts, I faxed a resume, but I heard nothing and decided not to pursue it further. As the polls that fall showed a likely Clinton-Gore win, I started keeping track of the predictions in a file, mostly with the suspicion or fear that the Democrats might pull defeat from the jaws of victory and there might be a story to write in the aftermath about the inaccuracy of polls.

In fact, of course, the polls were largely accurate. And pretty much from then on, I've been inclined to believe them, whether I wanted to or not.

I found the Clinton presidency maddening. I admired his rhetorical skills and his gift for outwitting his ideological foes. I was frustrated by -- yet, paradoxically, I fundemantally empathized with -- his tendancy to compromise with conservatives over policies such as the admission of gays and lesbians to the military. I distrusted his free-trade economic philosophy but recoiled from the anti-foreign (in this case, meaning anti-Mexican and anti-Asian) language of some of free trade's harsher blue-collar critics. And I admired his choices for the National Labor Relations Board, for Labor Secretary (Robert Reich), and his appointment of a commission to examine labor law and policy -- a commission whose ultimate recommendations for easing the ability of unions to organize were a dead letter after the GOP takeover of Congress in the 1994 mid-terms. And don't even get me started on the Lewinsky/Starr episode.

Midway through the Clinton years I went from being a full-time newspaper employee to a full-time freelancer. Because I still wrote stuff that touched on politics at least some of the time, I continued to restrict myself from political activism. But I also continued to vote from a peculiar place of idealistic pragmatism.

When Bill Bradley sought the Democratic nomination in 2000, I found myself really excited -- and voted for him in the Wisconsin primary even though he'd already dropped out. (I had no interest in the Nader Green Party run, despite having several acquaintances who thought it was time for a real third party. I wasn't happy with the Florida outcome,of course, but I was also not as reflexively inclined to blame Nader for that as others were.)

You might think, based on the history I've already taken far too many electrons to lay out, that in 2004 I would have supported Howard Dean. Yet for reasons I'm not even sure of, he didn't really grab me. In the fall of 2003, I was far more interested in Wesley Clark, seeing him as a candidate who could more skilfully navigate the treacherous waters of an opposition presidential campaign in wartime. We all know how that worked out. But Dean? Nah. Dennis Kucinich? With sincere apologies to my dear sister, who was a Kucinich supporter that year, not a chance.

DairyStateMom and I were dating by this time, and a niece of hers (whom I'd met at Christmas 2003) was a campaign staffer in Iowa for John Kerry. But when the Wisconsin primary rolled around, John Edwards was still a contender, and I liked his economic message. As it turned out, both Edwards and Dean lost to Kerry in this state.

That fall, heartsick over the Bush presidency, I for the first time put a presidential campaign sign in my yard, for Kerry. In the days leading up to the election and election day itself, I forgot my polling lessons from 1992 and convinced myself -- along with millions of Kerry voters across the country -- that he really might win. In the personal depression that followed the outcome, I was all but immobile for days. But that, too, passed, and soon after the election I was on my way to Washington to profile an up-and-coming young member of Congress from my state.

And that is where I'll pick up the story next time.

PS: On February 26, 2011, I went through and edited the titles of this series slightly.

In Memoriam: Edward N. Broadfield, 1947-2010

2010-11-28T16:42:00.002-06:00

I have two sisters. The younger, 7 years older than me, is now with her husband an observant Orthodox Jew. The elder, 9 years my senior, is a Quaker.

And now, a widow.

On ~~Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,~~ Thanksgiving Day, after four weeks or so of his not feeling very well and (if I have my facts right, and I might not) an inconclusive visit to a doctor a while back, my brother-in-law woke up feeling very ill. My sister rushed him to an emergency room. ~~And there,~~ After an overnight stay at the hospital, unexpectedly and of an as-yet-uncertain cause, he died.

Ed was a big teddy bear of a man, a soft-spoken African American who has lived most of his life with disability, having lost one eye to previously undetected glaucoma in basic training after he was drafted in the late 1960s. (He received a medical discharge and lifetime Veterans Administration medical care soon thereafter.) His work was primarily in a volunteer capacity, engaged in the operation of the Friends Meeting that my sister and he have been longtime members of, and as a community mediator.

He was as spiritually centered as any person I've ever known.

In my family, he was the person who took the greatest interest in, and most seriously, my love of trains and model railroading. He'd been a train buff himself as a teenager.

I remember him fondly as well for two other gifts he gave me in my youth. He explained American football to me (my father had little to no interest then in professional sports, although he watched the amateur Olympics with enthusiasm). And when my father was away on overseas study for a year and I began asking my mother and my sister about sex, Ed was drafted to explain it to me. He did so with grace, compassion, tenderness and deep respect that was worthy of the best OWL facilitator anywhere.

When my oldest son was born, it was no question who should be his godfather at his dedication, and Ed fulfilled the task in his own quiet way.

In a note to family and friends about this news, DairyStateMom said this:

Ed was at our wedding; those of you who celebrated with us that day might remember a big, soft-spoken African-American guy with an enveloping hug. I think a regular hug from Ed for all would go a long way toward solving the most intractable problems of human relations.

I couldn't put it any better.

Rest in Peace, Ed.

Sorry for the long hiatus

2010-11-27T19:44:00.000-06:00

It wasn't intended, exactly.

I've had a rush of work and deadlines to meet, and that's not over yet. I will be resuming my meditation on politics soon, but not quite yet.

And now I'm grieving, and will share more about that, soon, too.

Whoever you are with, please, always, remember this: Live those moments as though you might never see them again. Because you don't know when that will be true.

A Meditation on Politics, Part 2: The Card-Carrying Anarchist and the Centrist

2010-11-03T03:53:00.004-05:00

The Card-Carrying Anarchist had been an on-and-off friend since I was in 3rd grade or so. We had met in Sunday School at my Episcopal church; his father taught then at the same college as my father did. We later crossed paths again when I was in about 6th grade and he was in 7th. He was of Italian descent, at least on his dad's side; there were Pa. coal miners somewhere in his background, I believe.

Now, in my junior year of high school (his senior), we ran into each other again, in my psychology class. In the years since we had first met, he had immersed himself in radical history and politics. He had read Bakunin, the Russian anarchist theorist, and was already a member of the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World -- hence my nickname for him. (I kind of wish I'd been clever enough to think of that as a nickname for him at the time, but alas it was only in retrospect.)

We wound up sitting together at lunch most days. It was election season and I wore my McGovern button

every day in a school where "Nixon Now" and "Nixon -- Now more than ever"

buttons were far more common. The CCA wasn't impressed. "Don't Vote -- It only encourages them," was his motto.

The CCA was my principal tutor on the subject of radical politics and class consciousness. One day when I used the disparaging term "redneck," he corrected me, pointing out that the term was a dismissive insult to working-class whites. From our conversations -- and from some of the reading it inspired -- I began to learn a bit more about some of the obscured parts of American history. When I returned to the Quaker high school in my senior year, he was still in the area; I did a report for my history class on the IWW and brought him in as a guest speaker. My classmates didn't quite know what to make of him.

We corresponded for a time when I was in college and he had moved to New York to become a union organizer for the Garment Workers. But when it came to politics, while I found his ideas intriguing and ideals inspiring, I never made the commitment he did to fundamental radicalism. The closest I came was a brief flirtation with joining the Socialist Party, headquartered in Milwaukee at the time, and another with the equally brief presidential aspirations of populist Democrat Fred Harris in 1976.

But just as I had cast off the Nicene Creed as too constricting in describing my religious beliefs, I found myself reluctant to commit to any particular political party platform. To be sure, I always preferred Democrats when it came time to cast a ballot, but I wasn't drawn to the active organizing activities for any of the candidates on my campus.

Instead, I stumbled into journalism via the campus newspaper. Many things appealed to me about that craft. I loved writing, but I felt hopelessly incompetent at having to be "creative" (even though I was a composition major and took classes in Fiction and Playwritng). The best short story I ever wrote was basically an only lightly fictionalized account of the personal turmoils of another high school friend. Working for the college paper, I didn't have to make things up.

And I liked the idea of "getting all sides" to a story -- and the detachment it required. I absorbed the then-dominant ethic of "objectivity" with ease.

Degree in hand, I found a newspaper job. I payed close attention to national politics, but as an observer more than a partisan. I had voted for Carter in 1976, and largely admired his attempts to emphasize human rights in international affairs and energy conservation in the domestic sphere. I didn't particularly understand the economics of the time, from either a socialist or a capitalist perspective.

By 1980 I was subscribing to The Nation and Mother Jones, but I read them with the same reserve that I approached politics -- sympathetic to their basic outlooks, interested to learn more, but not deeply immersed in their world view.

Ted Kennedy challenged Carter from the left for the Democratic nomination that year, but I wasn't all that engaged with that fight. Instead, I was intrigued by the campaign of a local congressman, John Anderson, who was challenging Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. Illinois had an open primary, allowing me to choose either the GOP or the Democratic ballot, and for the only time in my life I took a Republican one, voting for Anderson.

By now I had become completely disenchanted with Carter, and thought I would probably vote for Anderson's third-party candidacy in November. But when the time came to enter the voting booth, I thought to myself, "well, if I'm going to vote for a loser, why not one that I can feel a wholeheartedly support?" And so it was that in 1980 I picked Barry Commoner of the newly formed Citizens Party.

Looking back on that time, I find myself regretting, a lot, that I didn't vote for Carter's re-election. Not that it would have made a difference.

And this is where I'll try to pick up the story next time... even as I absorb the political changes of November 2nd, 2010.

PS: On February 26, 2011, I went through and edited the titles of this series slightly.

A Meditation on Politics, Part 1: Hating Politics

2010-10-30T06:50:00.002-05:00

This is a post I've been putting off writing since practically when I started this blog.

I've been putting it off because I don't know exactly what I want to say. I've been putting it off because what I want to say covers such sprawling territory I don't know where to start. I've been putting it off because I know so painfully well how much I don't know.

But I've come to the point where I can't not start saying something.

This is likely to be pretty raw -- in the sense of not being more than very lightly edited. As a writer I often massage my message before I unveil it. That's been less true of this blog, and I think it will be even less true of this post or series of posts.

So. To begin.

I've come to hate politics. I engage in what's going on just enough to do my job as a journalist, some of which involves writing about the media. But otherwise I keep myself at an ever-increasing distance. When NPR comes on in the morning at 5 a.m., I shut it off, and DairyStateMom is kind to indulge me. (Of course, she will get to hear the same cycle during her 1-hour commute to The Big City a couple of hours later, but still -- I appreciate her accommodation even so.)

I do occasionally get sucked in during the day to certain political news items, whether on the NY Times or Washington Post websites or on more specialized sites, blogs, etc. Sometimes I post a link on Facebook to some matter that I find especially trenchant, but I'm fairly restrained about that, too.

But for the most part, I tend to push away from my mind much contemplation about what's been going on politically.

I am constrained from direct activism on account of my journalistic work. I'm a freelancer, so that is arguably more of a personal choice. (I could, after all, choose to freelance in areas that don't overlap politics.) But because of the topics I tend to write about -- maybe even want to write about, it could be argued -- I feel it more appropriate to keep arm's length. (Two exceptions: In 2004 I put up a Kerry sign on my lawn; in 2006 I would wear a discreet button opposing the state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage -- but never to interviews.)

That seemingly necessary detachment may contribute somewhat to my aversion to politics these days, because to some extent that aversion is driven by a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. If I worked in another field, perhaps I might find myself throwing myself into some volunteer political activism, so that I might be able to say to myself, "I'm doing all I can to help bring about the outcomes I prefer / stop the outcomes I fear..."

As I have on other subjects, I find it most helpful to start with autobiography.

I grew up in a politically engaged home. I often say my parents were Stevenson Democrats (as in Adlai -- the guy who ran against Eisenhower in 1952 and '56), but it would be just as accurate to say they were Roosevelt Democrats, too. It's probably pretty safe to bet they never voted for a Republican in my lifetime, but that didn't keep my father from paying close attention to the other side. I recall listening to the Republican convention on the radio with my father in 1964, and hearing Clare Booth Luce ("Mrs. Luce," my father said, telling me who was speaking) giving what must have been an endorsement speech for Barry Goldwater. (My clearest memory from that time is when she referred to him as "the wave of the future," and my father recoiled, recognizing the title of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book that saw Fascism as inevitable and counseled submission to it. I was in 3rd Grade that year. That fall My Weekly Reader had an article about the election with big side-by-side head shots of LBJ and Goldwater on the cover. A friend of mine drew pictures of devil's horns on Goldwater and a halo and wings on Johnson, and I followed suit. There may have been kids who did the opposite; I cannot recall with certainty.

In 1968 I went to bed on election night not knowing for sure who had won the presidency; it was the first question I asked my mother when I awoke the next day. Of course, we weren't happy.

In 1972, a junior in high school, I volunteered for the McGovern campaign. I have three specific memories from that time: A Saturday morning spent calling voters to identify their preference ("You gotta be kidding!" said one woman when I asked if she planned to vote for McGovern in the election, before slamming down the phone); a trek through some neighborhood in my [very Republican] rural southeastern Pennsylvania community to hand out fliers; and a depressed election night at local HQ watching the returns on a black and white TV (as I snuck sips of beer from the refreshments cooler). I wrote a morose, rambling and probably not very coherent memoir of the evening -- the very next day, if memory serves -- and showed it to my English teacher (whose politics were very definitely not left of center).

That junior year was fateful in certain ways. From 8th grade through 10th grade, I had gone, instead of to the local public school, to a Quaker school in Delaware. For 11th grade -- for reasons that were, I believe, mostly financial (certainly not academic ones) -- I was sent back to the public school, with the promise that I could return to the Quaker school in my senior year (which I did).

As it happened, that junior year back in the local public school re-united me with a childhood friend, whom I will call The Card-carrying Anarchist (The CCA for short). And that's where I will resume my story next time.

PS: On February 26, 2011, I went through and edited the titles of this series slightly.

Some weather we're havin'...

2010-10-29T08:50:00.000-05:00

Andrew Leonard at Salon asks

Ah, science. How many latter-day wrecks of the Edmund Fitzgerald are we going to need before we start paying attention again to what it has to tell us?

(Thanks, DairyStateMom!)

A Witness Speaks

2010-10-27T07:32:00.001-05:00

Some year I hope to go to the UU Christian Fellowship annual revival.

These remarks from a speaker there may help explain why.

I especially like how he finishes it.

Today's Obnoxious Sales Pitch

2010-10-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

From Barnes & Noble [we have a membership for discounts, so we get e-mails promoting special sales]. This was the headline on today's e-mail message:

Why Pay Full Price To Make A Child Happy When You Can Save 20% on Any Toy?

Just contemplate that for a minute, if you can.

On Bullying

2010-10-20T16:19:00.005-05:00

I don't have any purple clothes, or I would be wearing purple today.

I certainly had my encounters with bullies in my lifetime, and to my shame, there have been times when I have been the bully. But I don't have much to say that's original or especially eloquent on the topic.

Instead, I want to acknowledge the best two things I've read about this subject, and the larger issue captured in the "It gets better" campaign, are this today by Coffee Em, and this a few days ago by Desmond Ravenstone.

Both are calls to action. Both are prayer in its best form.

To which I can only say, Amen. May it be so.

Update: When I refer to my own bullying, I'm not speaking in the context of anti-gay bullying. I'm thinking of times in the past when I've lashed out inappropriately in other contexts. Just thought I'd make that clear. Not that it makes it any better.

Another 'Waiting for Superman' Observation

2010-10-15T21:24:00.001-05:00

Waiting for Superman truly excoriates the union–in incredibly vicious ways. While there are many areas in which I’d like to see unions become more progressive, I don’t want us to forget that it was the union that brought us pilot schools and it is always the union that fights for better conditions in classrooms (often when districts or even the public is looking the other way). And if the union was so much the problem, why wouldn’t non-unionized states like Texas, South Carolina or Virginia have fabulous schools?

Linda Nathan.

Hear, hear!

Quote for the Day: On Our Polarized Culture and Politics

2010-10-15T10:42:00.000-05:00

I recall nearly two decades ago standing up during a talkback, or maybe during Joys and Concerns, to express my distress at the then-dominant mode of political discourse: The reckless demonizing of different opinions.

It has only grown worse, as Krista Tippett, host of the public radio show Being (formerly Speaking of Faith), observes.

What we once called the red state, blue state divide is now more like two parallel universes where understandings of plain fact are no longer remotely aligned. This leads to a diminishing sense of the humanity of those who think and live differently than we do. And that is the ultimate moral slippery slope, for everyone on it and for the fabric of our civic life.

For months I've been planning to write a post on why I've come to hate politics. I still may write that, but this eloquent summary touches on a part of the answer.

James Freeman Clarke on The Bible

2010-10-12T13:01:00.000-05:00

Boston Unitarian's "A Wonderful Epoch" has this inspiring passage on approaching the Bible after one has come to realize it cannot be literally true:

Then we shall be set free from the bondage of the letter, and be able to open our souls to the coming of the everlasting Spirit, which moves where it will, creating light and life in the midst of darkness and the shadow of death.

I'd love to know more about when and where Clarke said or wrote this.

'Sympathy for Garrison'

2010-10-07T13:15:00.001-05:00

"Lizard Eater" describes a moment that put her in touch with Garrison Keillor's offense at the altered "Silent Night" that consumed the energies of so many of us last December -- and then wrestles her reaction through to closure. Check it out.

'Waiting for Superman'

2010-10-06T07:22:00.001-05:00

I haven't yet seen "Waiting for Superman," the new documentary about education reform, but what I've heard so far about it makes me skeptical.

Full disclosure: I do editorial work for a group of education scholars who bring both rigorous scholarship and progressive values to the subject of school reform. I happen to believe that their scholarship is far more soundly based than the work of most of the loudest voices in the school reform debates, but my relationship with them arguably makes me biased. For that reason, I don't often directly engage education myself, here or in my day-to-day writing.

But I was heartened to see this rebuttal to the memes that appear to be embedded in the "Superman" movie.

I do not think that public schools are free of problems. But I detest the way the discussion over making them better has become so bound up with failed, market-based ideologies while ignoring the complexity of the problem and the multiple contexts of class, poverty, cultural divides and political dysfunction in which those schools operate.

Question of the Day

2010-10-05T08:06:00.001-05:00

From DairyStateMom:

"Why is it that when we talk about blue-collar workers, 'competitive' means wage cuts, and when we talk about CEOs, 'competitive' means higher salaries?"

Indeed.

A Resonant UU Voice

2010-09-30T14:56:00.002-05:00

A while back I mentioned, in declaring myself a Christian, that I was still a UU. Voices and thinkers like The Rev. John Wolf (who began his career in the church I now call home) inspire me in that tradition.

Thank you, David Markham.

Huh!? Smashing for Jesus

2010-09-30T00:27:00.003-05:00

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

I don't know if the above link will work; it's probably behind a pay wall.

In the event it doesn't, here's the gist of it:

A nearby Assembly of God church held a late afternoon/evening youth event with hip-hop artists, Christian rock groups, basketball, an inflatable play house...

and a spray-painting (on an old trailer) and van-smashing spree.

For as many as 2,000 students in middle school and high school, this was a night to express themselves with activities that, on the surface, could just as easily taken place on meaner streets. But it was all legit.

...There was also the chance to win special prizes, including $15,000 and Apple eMac computers.

But for the Rev. Jon Brown, youth pastor for nearly nine years at the church, the event was really more than a night of fun.

It was giving them a venue that might open a door for kids to turn to God and for some who’ve never been to a church, he said....

Brown said the group is trying to reach kids in the way they understand — socializing with friends, enjoying the moment. While realizing that many come for the entertainment, others do find that they can can accept Christ, according to Brown.

“The ‘Premiere’ is to introduce them to Jesus, many for the first time,” he said.

Now, granted, my understanding of Jesus's message and mission and this church's understanding of the same are likely to be very, very different from each other.

But still!?! What exactly does wanton vandalism -- even if it's with things donated to the church -- have to do with anyone's interpretation of the Gospel?

I'm actually amazed (and, to be honest, a bit depressed) that kids who showed up didn't feel so completely patronized that the whole thing was just a turn-off.

I know from time to time we UUs wonder about how we could better engage our youth to be more connected in our churches.

This is one idea I hope we don't try to copy.

As an aside -- I recognized the name of one of the kids in the story. He goes to the same UU church I do.

If I see either of his parents I'll have to ask what they thought of the whole thing...

"Facebook isn't our friend."

2010-09-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

Good advice and a tale of woe here.

It's My Birthday

2010-09-21T07:32:00.000-05:00

It's my birthday today. A warm and loving card from the always thoughtful DairyStateMom was at my place at the kitchen table.

And an old college friend who maintains a blog of prayers that he composes growing out of his Jewish tradition just happened to post a link to this April prayer today on his Facebook page.

Follow the link for the whole thing. It's called "Regarding Old Wounds" -- and it seems right for a birthday taking-stock time.

Amen, and Blessed Be.

Yet Another Book I Want to Read

2010-09-20T06:39:00.000-05:00

Reviewed in the UU World.

Hunting for a Book to Buy

2010-09-19T21:32:00.000-05:00

My brother-in-law and his wife have given me an Amazon gift certificate for my upcoming birthday. It's a very much appreciated gift.

Yet tonight I spent more than an hour browsing through my wish list, as well as the recommendations generated by it -- and I have yet to pick what I want to get. Lots of choices, but I find myself saying, "Well, I want to read that, but I don't know that I'll really want or need to OWN it..."

This may be a reaction to having too many unread books in my shelves; I'm not sure. Or perhaps it's a reaction to not wanting to accumulate any more stuff of whatever kind.

Yet I do want to make use of this generous and thoughtful gift...

I hope I come up with something I'm really wanting to buy soon!

A Tennessee Editor Visits Ground Zero

2010-09-17T22:31:00.000-05:00

From The Rural Blog, run by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky:

Tenn. editor visits Ground Zero, shares the experience with his readers and takes a stand
...
"This country was settled by people seeking religious tolerance, a pillar that was built deep into the American infrastructure. Surely we cannot move that pillar, and threaten the foundation, because of 19 people."

"What's Our Story?"

2010-09-15T08:25:00.000-05:00

I'm working up to writing something about politics, about which I've been procrastinating since I started the blog more than a year ago.

For now, this, from Doug Muder, to which I was led by nagoonberry. Both are worth another read.

A New Analysis of the Current Politics

2010-09-14T07:13:00.000-05:00

This looks like an interesting book.

It's also exactly the kind of book that I've been avoiding of late because I fear it will just depress me.

A Beautiful Chalice Lighting Reading

2010-09-13T08:53:00.000-05:00

The Rev. Debra Haffner offered this at a service yesterday and on her blog today. While lines it in make specific seasonal references, it could also be adapted for other occasions.

The first words spoken in the Hebrew Bible are, "Let there be light."

Let there be light today as we once again gather in community.

Let us feel the light of each others' lives.

Let us feel the light of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and the end of Ramadan.

Let us remember those we lost on September 11th.

Let this light remind us to bring our light into the world-our search for truth, appreciation of diversity and full inclusion.

Let it remind us to witness against those who would burn sacred texts, commit acts of terrorism, or deny that every one of us has inherent dignity and self worth.

Let this chalice represent what brings us back to our beloved community-the gifts of friendship, of wisdom, of insights, of encouragement, or support. Let this light remind us of our history, our knowing, our shared silence and our shared laughter, our shared tears, and our shared hopes for our futures.

May our lights be rekindled - as individuals, as friends, as family, as a church community.

Let there always be light.

Amen.

What part did you not understand?

2010-09-11T16:50:00.001-05:00

God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule.

(Thanks, Will!)

'Bring 'em All In'

2010-09-11T15:36:00.004-05:00

This song by Mike Scott of the Waterboys is the most succinct contemporary rendition of the essential message of the Gospels that I've encountered.

It is equally at home in the Unitarian Universalist faith.

Two things I read this morning.

2010-09-10T09:52:00.000-05:00

Each spoke to me directly.

How Do We Learn to Love? by Marilyn Sewell.

Admitting to God, to ourselves, by Ms. Kitty.

I am a Christian

2010-09-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

I've actually been contemplating making this declaration for months. But I've been on unofficial and unplanned hiatus from this blog for most of the summer -- a product of distraction, an erratic schedule, vacation, more kid-time, and a thousand other things.

I am a Christian.

I am also, still, a Unitarian Universalist, and I do not consider these two declarations of faith to be mutually exclusive.

I know there are millions of Christians who will tell me that, no, I am not a Christian. But I take comfort in the millions who will accept my declaration of faith on its face.

I do not believe that Jesus died so that I might be saved, by a vengeful, sadistic and petty tyrant of a god, from an eternal torment as a result of an act committed by a mythical ancestor 6,000 years ago.

But I still declare myself a Christian.

I do believe that the planet and the Universe are indeed as many millions of years old as the best scientific evidence appears to show them to be. I believe my ancestors emerged over eons, increasingly complex from once-simple organisms. I believe that their actual coming into being, the entire universe's coming into being, was an act of creation by a supreme and not entirely knowable, distant and overarching yet intimate, creative force and personality for which God is the most familiar name, however imperfect and insufficient.

I believe that many people have walked this planet and been acutely in touch with that force, that personality. I believe that one of them lived about 2,000 years ago, a working class man born into a humble family in the Middle East, in a country under the grip of a foreign oppressor, who grew up to preach a radical message of love, equality, humility, and sharing, a message that called on all to transcend boundaries established by social norms and structures of hierarchy. His message was not, in itself, unique, but it was rendered in a powerful and distinctive voice

That message speaks deeply to me. And so I call myself a Christian.

I do not know in what way Jesus transcended his death on the cross 2,000 years ago. I don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that some sort of real resurrection occurred, although if it did I wonder why it was not more widely recorded even in that time. But, more likely, I believe that what transcended death was the force of his example and the force of his radical egalitarian vision.

These ideas that I embrace are not the product of any original thought. For the last two years I've been on an autodidactic journey through a handful of works of contemporary Christian scholarship. And so I've read, mostly, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, both Jesus Seminar scholars; and Michael Dowd; and Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakishima Brock. The most recent installment of my curriculum was Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus: a distillation, in a voice and tone that rings with the familiar cadences of the Evangelical pulpit, of the radical teachings I described above. All of the works I've described spoke to me, but Message spoke with the most fervor and enabled me to say:

I am a Christian.

And what now? What next?

While I'm sure I will read more in that vein in the coming months and years, that journey has reached a pause, as I synthesize what I've encountered and make sense of it in my own life.

I will have more to write about some of this, I'm sure, in coming days, weeks and months. For now, it just felt it was time to say what I have said.

And so I have.

"Disestablish Your Congregation"

2010-09-09T15:31:00.000-05:00

Dan Harper on Liberal Religion as Countercultural. And I will assert it is as relevant to progressive Christians as it is to Unitarian Universalists.

(And thanks to Will for pointing me to it.)

WTF, indeed...

2010-08-25T07:58:00.000-05:00

"Your WTF moment for the day."

I have nothing to add to this.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."

2010-08-20T10:43:00.000-05:00

A report in the Washington Post indicates that President Obama remains very private in his religious expression and observance -- in contrast to predecessors and political rivals.

What did Jesus say?

When is the Jedi Council not the Jedi Council?

2010-07-14T08:31:00.000-05:00

When it's the Presbyterian Church.

An old story, I know, but new to me.

Taking or Giving?

2010-07-12T09:56:00.000-05:00

Last week DairyStateMom's denomination, The Presbyterian Church (USA), held its biennial General Assembly in the Twin Cities. We did not attend, but DSM especially avidly followed news of the event.

At the beginning of the week a worship service was held that included American Indian elements -- with worship leaders who dressed traditionally and called on the four directions. It was mostly well received, although The Presbyterian Lay Committee (a conservative group that also opposes the denomination's move to open ordination in the church to non-celibate gays and lesbians) seemed scornful and condescending in its online news report on the event.

Yet it is clear to us, based on the accounts of those who experienced it firsthand, that the worship service remained a distinctly Christian one, albeit not looking like the tradition with which most white, Western worshipers would be familiar.

Discussing this with DSM got me to thinking about the issue of Appropriation, a topic about which I've had some things to say in the past. What, I wondered, is the difference between this event and the various uses of rituals and materials from other traditions that occur in Unitarian Universalist worship?

A key distinction is that, for the most part, when UUs take other traditional elements and put our own spin on them, it is just that -- a mostly white, Western act of taking and interpreting for ourselves those other traditions. (I acknowledge that there may be exceptions to this generalization.)

In this particular Presbyterian event, however, it was the reverse: The ceremony was led by American Indian Presbyterians. In essence, they were taking something from their own culture and reinterpreting it in a new context in which they also were participants, namely Christianity. Indeed, I see it as a gift they were giving to their fellow Christians in that time and space (which makes the criticism and scorn of it all the more ungracious, in my opinion).

I've been inclined to mostly defend our UU practice to borrow from other traditions in our worship, and I still largely feel that way. But the distinction of making a gift of one's own cultural traditions to a larger context--such as a worship service--versus "taking" from the cultural traditions of others, is an intriguing one, and one that should lead us to some careful thought as we make choices about how we create and re-create rituals in the context of UU worship.

Tweeting the Declaration

2010-07-05T09:58:00.000-05:00

Slate had a contest. I read about it here. My favorite:

@Boston1775: "We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances."

Praying for the Sick

2010-07-01T08:01:00.002-05:00

DairyStateMom's church has an interesting summer discussion group that meets every Wednesday evening for an hour to reflect on chapters in the book Einstein's God, taken from various programs on Speaking of Faith, by Krista Tippett. Last night we discussed her program on Dr. Mehmet Oz.

There's a little bit in the program about research on whether intercessory prayer helps speed recovery for people, and there was very clear acknowledgment on the part of the discussion group that the evidence is contradictory at best and, more likely, doesn't support a scientifically objective claim that prayer "works." (Interestingly, the topic of the medical efficacy of prayer was also the subject of discussion among members of a prayer group at my own church a month or two ago. )

What's always struck me about the research is the way it typically examines what I'll call "distant" prayer -- that is, the patients participating in the research are being prayed for by others who are not there with them, and who don't even know them. (And to avoid the placebo effect, they're not even supposed to know if they are being prayed for or not.)

I think I understand why that is; the argument seems to be that it's an approach least likely to be subjected to a variety of interfering variables that could taint any findings. Yet I'm still troubled by the attempts to quantify the effects through scientific research. I haven't really been able to articulate this point well for myself, but this morning I achieved a small sort of epiphany.

However well-meaning this research might be, in the end it strikes me as mindlessly reductive. If the final, definitive conclusion seems to be that prayer has "no effect," is everyone simply going to abandon the practice?*

I rather doubt that they will. And I think to simply counsel them to do so would be regrettable at best. I've been witness to great comfort experienced by people who have been prayed for, and if that helps some, I think that's enough, whether it's by placebo effect or by some naturalistic mechanisms we don't understand, or thanks to a supernatural intervention (a possibility that I doubt). I also don't think that prayer is only for the person being prayed for. It is for the person doing the praying.

I'm a very strong believer in science. And in truth, I don't pray much at all (although I'm changing that a bit). But I also think there are some subjects and questions that are beyond the means of science, and simply remain in the realm of mystery. And I think this is probably one of them.

* I acknowledge that there are already millions of people who have no interest in it, as is their right.

Some Pedantry about Language (updated)

2010-06-21T19:50:00.003-05:00

I will try hard not to make this a regular feature.

As a practicing English major I will confess to being a fussbudget over certain things. I refuse to allow the use of "impact" as a verb. I follow the Strunk & White dictum about the placement of "however" in a sentence, based on its usage. I insist that "enormity" must be used to refer not merely to the bigness of something, but the bigness and bad-ness of that thing. So Muffy wouldn't come back from Bloomington, MN, extolling "the enormity" of The Mall of America, but her anarchist ex-boyfriend would use just that word to explain why it should be blown up.

And when I hear the word "orientated" I absolutely cringe. It's oriented, damn it! "Orientated" is merely a bastard back-locution derived from "orientation."

(Yet I have seen references to the English preferring "orientated." I don't consider them [the references, not the English] authoritative, so the jury is out on that as far as I'm concerned.)

But until recently I haven't thought about the parallel "obliged" and "obligated." Lately, though, considering the "oriented/orientated" dichotomy, I have begun to think that "obligated" may result from the same sort of word inflation as "orientated." I've seen some comments to support that point of view, but again, nothing definitive.

Thoughts?

Update:

Well, I did indeed check out the site Joel refers to (not references, thank you!) in the comments [http://www.takeourword.com], and here is what they say about oriented vs. orientated. (You'll have to scroll down the page to see it in context.):

In times like these we turn to the excellent H.W. Fowler's The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (third edition, edited by R. W. Burchfield) for a decision. He examines the words' etymologies (they both derive from the French desorienter, as Will Wagner points out). They both followed the same path to their present-day meanings, which are identical. In the end, Fowler says that the two words are equally interchangeable. One may find that orient is more common in the U.S., while orientate appears more frequently in the U.K., but they are still equal in meaning and correctness.

Perhaps so, but in my opinion "orientated" is still an Abomination Unto The Lord.

Nothing on Obliged vs. Obligated, however.

Evangelical Christianity and Me (Part 2)

2010-06-15T22:00:00.004-05:00

I've touched on the role that the Friends (Quakers) played in my mother's religious life. Before we joined the Episcopal church when I was about 5 or 6, my mother was attending a Quaker meeting, and I was going to First Day school (RE) there. I remember that only vaguely. At some point we must have been going back and forth between that and the Episcopal church, because my mother is very fond of telling a story when, coming home from the Friends meeting one Sunday (where I had apparently been very bored), I said to her: "I want to be babatized and go to the Episcopal church!"

I don't have a clear memory of this. Sometimes it seems familiar to me, but I'm not entirely confident that it's indigenous to my memory as opposed to residing there from repetition of the story.

Even after we did join the Episcopal church, my family remained very close to a number of Quaker friends, some of whom taught on the college campus where my father (and later my mother) taught, others whom they'd known from Philadelphia, where my mother had worked as a teacher at a Quaker school.

Then, starting in 8th grade, I attended a Quaker school as well, further cementing my ties with that faith. I think I got three particularly strong messages from my experience with the Friends: Their strong commitment to social justice, the concept of the light of God in everyone, and a respect for pluralism (which I know may not be universal among Friends). Meanwhile I continued to attend the Episcopal church, was confirmed therein when I was 12 or 13, and remained quite happily engaged with it through high school. I also was active in an ecumenical Christian youth group in the community, which had representation from Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists. Our own priest had been a driving force in putting that group together. I am not sure, in retrospect, whether the Baptist church involved was American (Mainline) or Southern (Evangelical), but I rather suspect the latter.

And it was during this time that I continued to encounter strongly fundamentalist peers. Most of them were through the Boy Scout troop to which I belonged, but one of them was a classmate at the Quaker school -- an African American -- who had had a born-again experience in about 11th grade or so and in my senior year tried mightily to convert me. We had many earnest -- and mostly good-natured -- arguments/discussions, but he never did succeed in converting me.

Yet the impact of his persistence was ironic. He had come to believe certain things in the Bible literally, and as I reflected on my very clear understanding that the Bible was not to be taken that way, I found myself examining the creed that we recited every Sunday in my own church. "Born of the Virgin Mary." "On the Third Day He rose again." It was one thing to read the Bible symbolically, but here we were, reciting those phrases and stating unequivocally, "I believe..."

Could I really believe these things? I asked myself. And if I couldn't, wasn't it as absurd to be stating them as articles of faith as it was to believe in the literal creation story, the literal forecasts of Revelation, or the literal notion that only by asserting personal belief in salvation through Jesus Christ could I be spared from eternal damnation?

Although I had only a superficial awareness of other religions (besides Judaism -- my sister had married a Jew when I was a high school freshman), it was at this time in my life that I became very clear on one principle that has stayed with me ever since: With so many religious faiths in the world, I just could not believe that Christianity was the only "right" one and all the rest were "wrong." I concluded that in some way all must have a piece of the greater cosmic truth, whatever that was.**

In my first semester of college, I went once to the Episcopal church near the campus. It was the fall. A guest priest was there that day. I remember nothing of the sermon except one line. Well into his delivery, the priest acknowledged that there were some who sought a "Copernican revolution" in religion, placing Christianity alongside other faiths and taking away its primacy. I found myself nodding in agreement -- and then he followed up: Well, he said, that was absolutely the wrong idea.

I stayed for the end of the service, but when I left the church, I didn't go back. I attended the Episcopal church a few times after that, back home (once because I went to Christmas Eve services with a girl I briefly dated); I attended Quaker meeting once or twice over the next several years, but was bored, missing the liturgy of the Episcopal church if not the wrestling with dogma, however gently couched. I took a Religious Studies 101 class in Interpreting the Bible in my senior year of college -- a class I liked very much. But I felt little interest in returning to the church of my childhood, or to any Christian church in those days. Eventually I found my way, some seven years after I graduated from high school, into a UU church (as I've written about here.)

But over the years, I've continued to harbor a bit of a grudge toward fundamentalism and Evangelical/"Jesus Saves" Christianity.

Why is that?

I've come up with three answers--none of them mutually exclusive, all of them probably a piece of the answer.

1) I felt it both anti-intellectual (especially the rejection of science) and monstrously unjust. (It was only fairly recently -- within the last decade I think -- that I connected the fundamentalist insistence on the literal Adam and Eve story with the Jesus Saves Christology: Without the literal fall, the atonement theory has no meaning. I mention that in passing here.)

2) Somewhere deep down, I may have harbored an irrational fear -- what if the fundamentalists are right? And resented them for sparking that fear.

3) And I resented them for tainting even Mainline Christianity for me, contributing to my loss of faith in a source of real comfort, guidance and meaning during my growing up.

There may, indeed, be yet other reasons I have not managed to articulate for myself. Some days, I think 1) is the most powerful source of my resentment. Others, I find it is 3). Sometimes -- not much any more if at all -- even 2) has raised its head.

The last two years, however, have seen me on a journey back to Christianity. Certainly not the Christianity in which I never believed, and to be sure, not exactly the Christianity of my own childhood and teen years. But Christianity -- in a form that I can claim and embrace wholeheartedly -- nonetheless.

I will write more about that another time.

__________________________

** Indeed, when I first read Forrest Church's metaphor of The Cathedral of the World (first presented in the book he co-wrote with John Buehrens, A Chosen Faith) some 15 or more years later -- and long after I had become a UU -- the image in that metaphor brought me back to the insight I'd had in high school. I don't have any kind of diary from when I had reached that earlier conclusion, so I have no way of knowing for sure whether I had arrived at it through the same or at least a similar metaphor. But it felt very at home with me.

Evangelical Christianity and Me

2010-06-14T21:44:00.001-05:00

I've said this before. I was never a fundamentalist, or an Evangelical. But for most of my young adult and adult life, I've harbored a special wariness of the fundamentalist and even the Evangelical approach to Christianity.

I grew up attending an Episcopal church, and also with close association to the Quakers, in Southeastern PA. My mother's father was an Episcopal clergyman whose primary vocation was teaching and writing. He was an associate of some kind of John Dewey (by interesting coincidence, I've been a consultant for the last 10 years to an education scholar who is very much a latter-day Dewey disciple). And his principal written work (besides some letters to the New York Times around the time of WW 1 that I happened to stumble across) was a two-volume history of Christianity. I have a re-bound copy of it in my bookshelves, and I actually managed to read about the first 4 or 5 chapters a few years ago.

My mother (a/k/a EmpireStateMom for those of you who are coming in late) says his basic outlook was that of the Gnostics. I've not gotten a clear understanding of why that is or what about his outlook she equates with the Gnostics.

I open with this digression because my spiritual biography really starts with hers. My mother went to a Quaker college and for years afterward found herself alternately worshiping with the Quakers, the Congregationalists, and ultimately the Episcopalians. I was about 5 or 6 when I was baptized in the Episcopal church and I felt quite comfortable there as I grew up.

My father was an anthropologist who taught at the college level after a few years of doing research in Western Africa. He had grown up attending an Episcopal church, I believe, although I vaguely recall his family might have identified as Presbyterian. They lived in Texas.

From a very early age my father made sure I knew about and understood evolution. He was not hostile to Christianity, but pretty much by the time I had reached an age in which I could understand and appreciate Myth, I understood the earliest Biblical books to be Mythical.

I was in about 7th grade when I began to realize that some classmates in my heavily fundamentalist/Evangelical pocket of the world were not of the same point of view -- that they were absolutely certain that Adam and Eve were real, historical figures. (I even recall some of them quizzing a science teacher on the subject -- and I also recall her saying to them that she was more inclined to believe the biblical version, or something like that. It was a conversation I didn't get involved in at the time.)

Later, and separately from that realization, I came to understood the essential principle of fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity: That the sole, or at least primary, reason for Jesus's coming to earth was to be crucified and resurrected in order to in some way absolve humanity of sin, and that that "salvation" could only be achieved by "accepting Jesus as personal Lord and savior."

As I've noted previously, that was not the message I got from the church I grew up in. The message that I did get was much more indirect -- in retrospect, and not at all certain that I'm getting it right now -- I would say that we were taught that Jesus was God come to earth to help us understand God better. But it was nowhere near as explicit and cut-and-dried as that.

I never bought into the personal savior theory as articulated by the fundamentalists, and I never bought into the closely aligned view that the book of Revelation was a reliable forecast of the future of the world. In high school I first discovered the work of Jack Chick, the fundamentalist cartoonist, specifically from an anti-evolution tract called "Big Daddy." (My father pointed out the many inaccuracies in its reading of the scientific data, and also pointed out the likely intentional way in which the pro-evolution professor is depicted in line with Jewish stereotypes.) I fantasized instead trying to write a tract that would rebut fundamentalist dogma with a liberal Christian social gospel, but couldn't get very far because I really couldn't articulate the message in such simple terms.

But something about my encounter with this strain of Christianity marked me for the rest of my life. I was always on the lookout for it; in my late 30s and early 40s I even subscribed for a time to an anti-fundamentalist newsletter. That dogma is a trigger for me, in fact -- provoking a visceral reaction that I don't fully understand.

This didn't set out to be a multi-part post, but I will leave off for now and continue anon.

Beyond Purity Codes

2010-06-13T20:54:00.000-05:00

Just tonight I stumbled across an essay that is several months old. I found it from a link on Brian McLaren's blog. I've just finished reading McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus, and I've been poking around the Web to learn more about him. So far, I like what I see.

This item is not by McLaren, but it is by a Christian, and one who challenges Christians who take an esclusivist approach. Money quote:

Speaking as a Christian, you can find plenty of ammunition in the Bible and in the tradition to insist that the point behind faith in Jesus is to be “pure” for God, with Jesus’ blood being that special reagent that will purify us in the ways that we are incapable of purifying ourselves. Okay, that’s one way of looking at it. But it is just as possible, just as logical, just as spiritually coherent to see in the Christian tradition an arc of wisdom that calls us to move beyond the purity codes that defined our ancestral religious practices, instead embracing hospitality, which includes everything from welcoming the stranger, to opening our hearts to those who are “different” from ourselves, to embracing non-oppositional or non-dualistic consciousness, consciousness that celebrates the action of the Holy Spirit in the most unlikely of places, rather than seeking to judge and divide all things into that which is “good enough for God” and that which is not.

No iPad for Me

2010-06-11T12:05:00.001-05:00

At a lunch a few weeks ago, someone brought an iPad. I have to admit, it was a very cool thing to look at and to page through.

But just when I thought I might be waivering and cancel my one-person boycott of the iPad, Apple comes to my rescue.

Grow up, Steve Jobs.

Update: I feel compelled to credit Will for the specific way I articulate my sentiments...