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“Every disaster movie starts with the government ignoring a scientist” — social media meme, unknown origin
In times of collective stress in a society, people often turn to humor for relief. Social media has been full of pandemic-related memes for months, but the one above particularly hit home for me as both funny and naming a painful truth. The same meme could apply to both the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change; in both cases, so many people in the US and around the world deny a reality that mainstream scientists have confirmed over and over again. Our climate is really changing, and climate chaos is already harming marginalized communities all around the world. We know that more disaster is imminent if those in wealthy countries don’t make drastic changes to the structures of our lives and economies, but in a lot of US political discourse, there is still ‘disagreement’ about something that is factual.
The COVID-19 pandemic is very much real, and it continues to rage on throughout the US with a devastating toll on already marginalized communities, especially those held in jails and prisons. There has been evidence for a long time that wearing masks works to slow its spread, and that this fast-moving virus could have been much more contained if people in power acted quickly enough and believed what experts named.
There’s a pattern here: on the whole, the US seems to be exceptionally good at denying reality, and having widespread rejection of truth and facts resulting in dangerous consequences.
One of the most recent distressing recent examples of this pattern was the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. A group of armed insurrectionists, encouraged and supported by our former President, attempted to overthrow an election because of denialism. They have continued to deny that the presidential election was free and fair, despite overwhelming evidence that it was.
Our Unitarian Universalist faith continually calls us to examine what we think we know. We are called to reject denialism and embrace a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, as named in our fourth principle. I’ve always appreciated that the fourth principle particularly names that our search for truth and meaning in the world must both be free and responsible. Our faith espouses that revelation is not sealed, that the search for truth and meaning always continues. What does it mean to engage in an ongoing and responsible search for truth?
I believe in part that it means we must always keep in mind our responsibility to each other as we search for what is true. We have a responsibility to make sure our understanding of the world always takes into account the experiences of those who have been most targeted and oppressed throughout our his tory, including understanding how differently Black, brown, and white people experience this country.
Mass Moral Monday March and rally for voting rights, on the occasion of the start of the federal court’s consideration of “North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory”
After the January 6th attack, I saw many UUs express shock and anger on social media that the facts of the election were being denied by the insurrectionists. Though the magnitude of the facts being denied are particularly striking, to anyone who has experienced marginalization or listened deeply to those who have, the pattern of denialism was familiar. To white UUs in particular: I want to invite you to consider how you may have also participated in denialism at different points in your life. Has your culture taught you to listen only to one set of experiences, one set of facts? Have you ever questioned (or seen other white people question) the truths of people of color when they have named their experiences of racism and white supremacy?
Denialism is nothing new; it’s baked into the history of white supremacy and the history of the US. As Unitarian Universalists, our faith calls us to something different, something more. We must continue to search for what is true, and to center our responsibility to each other in our search.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223114/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/01.m4a
The proposed 8th principle of Unitarian Universalism states: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountability dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”
The 8th principle was conceived by Paula Cole Jones, a lifelong UU who believes that Unitarian Universalism needs to expand beyond our current seven principles to make space for true, deeply multicultural beloved community. She discussed and workshopped this idea with Bruce Pollack Johnson and others in their region, and the 8th principle was created. It has been formally adopted by a number of UU congregations, and some people are working for it to be adopted by the whole denomination.
A common response to this proposed principle is, “Why is it even important that we ‘affirm and promote’ any of that? Don’t we already do that? It seems easily summed up in the other principles.” Some say that it feels like we are lifting up one group of people, and leaving others to think that they are less worthy, because about 400 years ago, their ancestors did something bad to the ancestors of others. In other words, some think: why can’t we just let it go and move forward?
I have heard this and more hurtful responses to the 8th principle. As a Black Unitarian Universalist, those responses mostly make me sad.
How do I even begin to be in community and talk about who I am and how I see the world when conversations about race are often so laden in shame, anger, bewilderment? We all seek to protect ourselves from feeling bad, and questioning that which causes discomfort can be a tool to shield ourselves from that feeling. Often, we (including myself) as UUs live in the ‘whys.’ We are a community of seekers. Perhaps it’s even built into our principles.
Yet only asking why allows us to disconnect our brains from our emotions—the perfect out. I am not saying that we should never ask why. Rather, we should not only ask why but also ask how, who, what, and when. Only then can we get a more holistic answer.
Read the 8th principle to yourself again. How does it feel in your body when you take in those words? Check in with yourself—what are you noticing? Track that. Now, how does it feel in your body when you read just a tiny segment of my experience living as a UU? Track that, too. Are you surprised, or does this feel familiar or expected? I know that in my body, I have often felt discombobulated as I have struggled to build an understanding of this faith that has both created a space in which I can belong, and has also disregarded me, covertly asking me to live small to fit in.
I can’t live small. I have to live authentically, and in living authentically, I know that it is my job to offer love and compassion. It’s my job to speak my truth.
If we are to create a beloved community we need to know that everyone won’t agree on everything and that’s okay. It is in those times that we circle around each other to build a better community: a community in which we are all seen and valued.
The truth is that people of color are tired. We are so tired of holding the fragility of white people to be able to be in community with white people. We are already holding so much. I am asking white people to hold what is yours.
Conversely, from speaking to my white allies, I know that some white people are tired. They are tired of getting it wrong. They are tired of trying to do the right thing and having it be the wrong thing. Some are even tired of being responsible for their siblings who are unwilling to do the work. Can you hold that, too?
Recently, a CLF member commented that they were sorry that they missed a recent worship service, and that it was probably one of the only services this year that can’t be turned into shaming old white men. Ouch.
In response, I was reminded again of our community. A community that holds the dichotomy of me, stumbling upon this racial aggression and of the person who posted it, who seems to feel so unsettled by the work of the UUA to eradicate white supremacy that they feel personally attacked. Then I thought about my kids who have been raised UU since birth. I thought of how even in their church home, they have inherited this dichotomy in the only faith they have ever known. This is a complex ity that is lived in and through our congregations every day. How do we begin to heal this divide? How do my children and this person live in the same space and both feel valued?
Some people believe that we already have that and nothing needs to be done. I hold them in compassion, too. I continue to draw the circle wide with the 8th principle, and I invite you to do the same. I invite you to do the work of understanding and account ably dismantling racism, because until we all do this work, we cannot be liberated. Until we all do this work, we cannot maintain safety in our congregations. Until we do this work, we cannot heal our denomination. No matter how difficult it is to do, we must do this work.
About eight years ago I started a meditation practice of drawing or doodling that I call “inklings” —as it gives glimpses both inward into one’s self and outward into connection with others, the earth, or the great unknown. I do this by putting ink to paper. For the first year, I focused on drawing chalices over and over again, which grounded this practice in Unitarian Universalism for me. At other times, I’ve drawn as a method of prayer or meditation, focused on other people or myself, to send energy for healing or comfort. The benefits of doing a drawing or doodling spiritual practice like this are a lot like the benefits of any spiritual practice. It calms me when I’m anxious. It focuses me when I’m scattered. It connects me to my faith and to a sense of something larger. In times when the world feels out of control, it gives me a sense of order and places something small within my ability. And in a time of change, it gives grounding.
Here are the steps for a simple inkling practice of creating a prayer for the self. There are no mistakes, no wrong decisions, and no rules—every step is adaptable to your own wishes. This is not about creating great art. I will describe what works for me, but you will know what works for you and adapt it to fit into your location and available materials. It is also flexible in that it can be done with full attention or with divided attention. (And it is more socially acceptable to doodle in a meeting than to play a game on my phone!) The basic idea is to translate a spiritual practice— a prayer or meditation or worship service or ritual—into a doodle format.
Spiritual practices often begin and end in very specific ways. In Unitarian Universalism, we often light a chalice. So I often begin the inkling process with creating a sense of the sacred around the drawing process— lighting a candle, saying some words, or just finding a special place. And then the process is about focusing thoughts on the self or another person or idea and doodling about it. I do this in a few easy steps.
First, I begin by drawing something on the page to represent the focus of the practice. This might be a circle or a written name, but in this instance I used a circle with a moon in it to represent myself. (“Cynthia” means goddess of the moon.) Then I draw a circle or spiral or petals around the circle. These will be spaces I will fill with the things I am praying for. Anything can go in these spaces, but I often focus on things like love, hope, faith, family, health, friends, and home. And re member, none of these shapes have to be perfect. This is about the process, not the product.
An Unfolding Inkling
If this were a worship service, this next step would be the sermon—it’s the heart of the practice. I fill in the spaces with words, patterns, or images, or a combination, to represent the things I want to increase in life, attract into my life, or just to contemplate more, like health or happiness or love. I like to use a combination of written words and patterns that are meaningful to me. I often draw spirals, a symbol connect ed to the Goddess, and to labyrinths, and to feminist spirituality. When thinking about hope, I draw feathers, from the line from Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul.” But what is most important here is to meditate or find a sense of peace while drawing. When I draw a pattern I like, particularly simple ones, I can get lost in the repetition of it for a while. Conversely, Celtic knotwork is beautiful, but I’ll think more about drawing the knot than about the meditation subject, and this is not about creating great art.
Every worship needs a closing, and so lastly, something I do if I’m still not feeling the energy flowing to me that I was hoping for, is to add arrows, directly linking the concepts to the symbol representing myself. The arrows represent the hoped-for flowing of energy. Or if I’m feeling full of good energy, I can direct an arrow out of the circle towards another person or the community or the world. And then, for a closing as I’m finishing the inkling, I just add things around the edge and inside the patterns that I like to draw—spirals, dots, springs, leaves. Some people enjoy doing shading, or adding color, and coloring can be its own spiritual practice. Remember, there are no rules to this!
I invite you to try this process and find ways to make it your own. And if you’ve enjoyed this process, you might find it interesting to delve into two methods that inspired me when I got started, Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts’ “Zentangle” process, and Praying in Color, by Sybil MacBeth. There are a lot of different ways to create your own artistic spiritual practice, and it can be rewarding to try out different ideas and concepts. For me, putting patterns and shapes together to make a bigger image gives me just an inkling of how our 7th principle works—each little thing I do is a part of the larger picture, and each action we take contributes to the interdependent web. Through setting pen to paper, I hope that not only am I centering myself, I’m adding peace to the world.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223045/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/03.m4a
Once upon a time
I rejected the concept of surrender
without hesitation or investigation Would not even risk
thinking it (surrender, indeed!)
and yet…
when I remember the exquisite shade of red my white girl farmers tan turned
the first time I began to give a speech in Mr. B’ 9th grade Communications class and how I threw up in the girls’ bathroom at the thought of having to speak publicly
when I think of how I went to the microphone at General Assembly
my first one ever
to speak in front of over a thousand delegates on behalf of those too young to vote my heart pounding so hard
that the chalice on my necklace
was bouncing on my chest
when I reflect on my ever-emerging ministry facilitating conversations with first dozens,
now thousands of folx
organizing, teaching, preaching, creating, collaborating
and always learning
about white supremacy and systemic oppression and our faithful work
on the journey of collective liberation
when I re-member of these things
I have no other word than
surrender
I surrender to the call
of love and life and liberation
of life and liberation and love
of liberation and love and life
again and again and again
Each day
we are invited to risk
holy surrender
to the call of life and love and liberation.
and
we do not have to wait to be unafraid.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223024/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/04.m4a
The Church of the Larger Fellowship is comprised of over 2500 individuals serving Unitarian Universalism—half of whom are currently incarcerated. As those of you reading this who are incarcerated know, most of our members in prison are new to Unitarian Universalism and learned about our church from friends or cellmates. With no access to the internet or Sunday services, people who are incarcerated can only learn about Unitarian Universalism from the mailings we send and letters exchanged with our staff and other Unitarian Universalists outside of prison.
Our Prison Ministry provides all people who participate an opportunity to live out our Unitarian Universalist values by connecting with a pen pal. At the Church of the Larger Fellowship, our message is that all of us are part of the interwoven fabric of the universe. We are deeply and undeniably connected. We acknowledge that while our behaviors can vary from loving to hate-filled acts of disruption and harm, our inherent worth remains unchanged. This is the foundation of our pen pal program.
For free-world pen pals (those who are not currently incarcerated): this relationship has the power to bring you into proximity with the issues of those people who find themselves incarcerated. In turn, your heart may be renewed by witnessing the power of Unitarian Universalism present even in the most difficult of places. For members in prison: this relationship will bring you connection, community, and a deeper understanding of how others experience Unitarian Universalism.
The experience of being a pen pal can be transformative for everyone involved. If you are in the free world, you can learn more and apply here. If you are incarcerated and are already a CLF member, you can write to Beth at our Boston office (Worthy Now Prison Ministry, 24 Farnsworth St, Boston MA 02210) to ask for a pen pal application or check where you are in the matching process. Anyone who has completed our New UU course is eligible for a pen pal, though as many of you know, we currently have a waiting list for new matches and the process may take some time. We don’t currently have enough free world pen pal applicants—so if you’re not incarcerated and are interested in being a pen pal, please do apply!
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222908/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/05.m4a
In the second part of a two-part series, we address the “cult of disorientation,” and how friends and family members can help someone who has been manipulated by a cult. Part 1 of the sermon series can be found here: https://youtu.be/Ab9y5C4jIZc
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222845/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOJJgEhv2iM&feature=youtu.be
Seems like these threads are no longer created... How was your service this week?
If you feel like it, share a link to the recording too :)
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222733/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-01-31_Feast_of_Love.mp3
I have been attending Christian non denominational churches for over 20 years. I feel lost. I love the teachings of Christ but there are issues with the doctrines and teachings. Issues I can’t get over or ignore. I am also hurt to see the church turned into a mouthpiece for a political party. I have briefly looked Unitarianism but I ow almost nothing. Is this a place that welcomes questions instead of blind adherence to doctrine? Is it mostly apolitical? TIA
Compassion for Campers, the programthat provides supplies and gear for the McHenry County homeless who have no reliable shelter, has announceda revised schedule of distributionsfor the remainder of the cold weather months. The program is going to once a month service instead of every two weeks in February, March, and April.
According to Compassion for Campers coordinator Patrick Murfin, “After discussions with our great volunteers and in recognition of the difficulties we have in reaching the homeless population we aim to serve, all distributions will be held at Warp Corps, 114 North Benton Street in Woodstock, which is both centrally located and has existing contacts and relations with the homeless community and the social service agencies that serve them.” Client access to Warp Corps will be from the rear entrance on Jackson Street.
Distributions will be held on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30-5 pm on the following dates—February 16, March 16, and April 13.
Clients will be Covid-19 screened with a temperature check and standard screening questions. No one failing the test will be turned away but we will ask what they need and supplies will be brought outto them. All clients are required to be masked before entering the building and a mask will be provided to anyone who does not have one. Clients will be admitted one at a time and no more will be allowed inside at any time than the location can safely accommodate with correct social distancing. At the conclusion of the distribution all remaining supplies will be packed for storage and the host area will be cleaned and disinfected.
The Compassion for Campers warm weather outdoor program will resume in May at church sites and will probably resume rotatingbetween Crystal Lake, Woodstock, and McHenry. More information on that will be forthcoming.
Compassion for Campers is grateful to the Faith Leaders of McHenry County, volunteers from Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church, and Warp Corps for their invaluable support.
Volunteers are still needed to help with the distribution, especially younger folksin good health. Contact Patrick Murfin at pmurfin@sbcglobal.net or phone 815 814-5645 if you are available on Tuesday afternoons. Donations can be made by sending a check made out to Tree of Life UU Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050 with Compassion for Campers on the memo line. The donations are placed in a dedicated fundand not used for any other purpose. Tree of Life also donates all of the administrative expenses of the program.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222643/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/01-31-21-audio.mp3
Dr. Sharpie takes Possum back in time to 2011, to Oakland, California….
As usual, full script is below the fold.
Castor the Beaver: Going back in Sharpie’s time machine again?
Possum: Yeah, she promised to show me more protests from the past.
Castor: Just watch out your fur doesn’t get stuck on the duct tape.
Possum: Sharpie, can you show me a protest that’s not so far in the past?
Sharpie: In 2011, Occupy Oakland protesters set up tents in front of Oakland City Hall to protest against unfair conditions for 99 per cent of all Americans. The top one percent of Americans kept getting richer, while everyone else was losing money.
Possum: Did they sleep in those tents?
Sharpie: Yes. They set up a real community. They welcomed homeless people to join them. They started gardens, and they had a library where people could borrow books. People of all races and genders joined the movement.
Possum: Mm, it looks like kind of a nice place to live.
Sharpie: They ran everything by democratic process. On November 2, they organized a general strike in Oakland. They shut down the Port of Oakland to support the workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Those people weren’t getting paid enough. But the owners of big businesses kept get richer.
Possum: That’s not fair.
Sharpie: I know. Then on December 12, Occupy Oakland joined together with other protesters up and down the West Coast. They shut down the Port of Oakland again, demanding better pay for the people working there.
Possum: It seems like you shouldn’t have to protest to get paid enough.
Sharpie: A century ago, it was worse than that. Big businesses made people work 12 hours a day. Children had to work in factories. And there were no paid vacations. It was only by protesting that people got 8 hour days, paid vacations, and no child labor.
Possum: What happened to Occupy Oakland?
Sharpie: The city of Oakland got tired of them. So they sent in police to chase everyone away. They tore up the gardens and threw out the library books.
Possum: Are things getting better for working people now?
Sharpie: Unfortunately, no. During the pandemic, even though rich people are getting richer, they don’t want to pay fair wages to ordinary people.
Possum: So the protests didn’t work?
Sharpie: They helped. But you have to do more than protest. You have to organize.
Possum: I learned that protesters stopped child labor, and got people paid vacations.
Castor: Mm. That’s good. I like vacations.
Possum: I also learned that protesting isn’t enough. You have to organize.
Castor: Uh, oh. Dude, you hate organizing.
Possum: I’ll just have to learn, I guess. Sharpie’s going to show me one more protest next week.
Rev. John opens up the virtual question box. What do you want to ask the minister?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRF_CX3DtX8]
SERVICE NOTES
WELCOME!
New to our church community? Sign our guestbook and let us know if you’d like to get more connected.
For more information on our church community, visit us on the web at http://www.uulosalamos.org or call at 505-662-2346.
Connect with us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/uulosalamos
Have questions? Need to talk to a minister? Our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is available for virtual and phone appointments. Contact him at: revjohn@uulosalamos.org
MUSIC CREDITS
Permission to stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
Permission to stream music in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770
OTHER NOTES
Call to Worship by Krista Flanagan*
*permission secured through the UUA
**permission secured through Soul Matters
OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for January is the Esperanza Shelter. 100% of all offered this month will be given to our partner.
We are now using Givelify.com to process the weekly offering: https://giv.li/5jtcps
SERVICE PARTICIPANTS
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222623/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210131.mp3
The recently departed in shame occupantof the White House hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. Old Hickory was the president that the Resident admired most because they shared so many traits. Both were vain, quarrelsome, given easily to offense, relentlessly vindictive to his enemies, autocratic while appealing to the poor, uneducated, and resentful as their champion. He was also an unapologetic racist who gloated in his Indian removal policies and defended slavery. He was also, as we will see, the sworn enemy of the just emerging labor movement. All of these “virtues” made it easy for the Cheeto-in-Chargeto ignore Jackson’s opposition the Second Bank of the United States, his opposition to protective tariffs, and his swift defense of the Union in the South Carolina Nullification Crisis. But then Trump was a man of no firm convictions, only tactically useful stances. Among President Joe Biden’s first acts of cleansing was replacing the Jackson painting with a portrait founding statesmanand scientist Benjamin Franklin.
A canal connecting the navigable waterways of Virginia with the Ohio River had been George Washington’s dream first. And a big one. Decades later it seemed that despite enormous obstacles, it was finally coming to pass. But on January 29, 1834 the hundreds of immigrant Irish, Dutch, German laborers downed their picks and shovels in protest to the brutal conditions of hewing the ditch by hand from the stony soil of Virginia (now West Virginia) from first light to the descending gloaming seven days a week. Blacks were also on the job—mostly slavescontracted from local plantations—but whether they joined the impromptu strike is unclear. Slave or free all were ill clothed and given little more than a single thin blanket in the brutal winter weather. Wages—for those who got paid at all—were less than a dollar a dayand the use of tools and such were charged to the workers.
As the laborers downed their tools Supervisors and foremen on the job were roughed up and some Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company property was damaged.
The company claimed insurrection and riot and appealed for aid. In Washington, DC the crusty and volatile Andrew Jackson wasted no time in ordering Federal Troops to suppress the “rebellion.” It was the first time the Army was ever called upon to suppress a strike. It would not be the last.
When they arrived on the scene the smartly dressed Army Regulars had no trouble putting down the strike by men armed only with stones and brickbats. It is unclearif shots were fired or if the flash of bayonets was sufficient to dispersethe strikers, who had no organizationor union. A few identified“leaders” were arrested, others fled. Most of the men sullenly went back to work under armed guard. It is presumed that any slaves who participated where much more brutally handled by their ownersor overseers with the lash.
It all began before the Revolution. Virginia planter, surveyor, and militia officer Col. George Washington had vast land claims in the Ohio wildernesswhich he dreamed of filling with settlerson 99 year leases to the land that he owned. But besides persistent hostility by Native American nations, and the British policy of confining legal settlement to the east of the Allegany Mountains, the biggest obstacle to making those dreams come true was the near geographic impossibility of easy access to and from the land. Those mountains divided the watershedsof the Ohio and Potomac rivers and provided a rugged barrier to even land access.
Washington wanted to build canals, complete with locks to raise boats to higher and higher elevations to circumvent and push past the rapidswhich were the navigable limits of the Potomac. In 1772 he received a Charter from the Colony of Virginia to survey possible routes. But before work could progress beyond the planning stage, the Revolution intervened and Washington was occupied elsewhere.
But he never forgot the pet project. Back home at Mount Vernon in 1785 Washington formed the Patowmack Company in. The Company built short connecting canals along the Maryland and Virginia shorelines of Chesapeake Bay. The lock systems at Little Falls, Maryland, and Great Falls, Virginia, were innovative in concept and construction. Washington himself sometimes visited construction sites and supervisedthe dangerous work of removing earthand boulders by manual labor.
Now confident that his scheme would work, Washington began to plan more inland sections. A call to another job—as President of the United States—interrupted his plans, but he looked forward to resuming work in retirement.
Unfortunately that retirement did not last long and when the great man died in 1799, the Patowmack Company folded.
Almost 25 years later, in 1823 Virginia and Maryland planters began to fret that the Erie Canal, which was nearing completion in Upstate New York would leave their region far behind in economic growthas all or most of the productionfrom the rapidly growing states north of the Ohio would be funneled to the Great Lakes, and via the Canal and Hudson Riverto New York City. They organized and got chartered the new Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company.
Five years later in 1828 Yankee born President John Quincy Adams, probably with some qualms about the possible effect on the westward spread of slavery, ceremonially turned the first spade of earth.
Progress was slow and arduous as the canal ran parallel to the Potomac. There had been other sporadic work stoppages. Difficulties in the era of repeated financial panics also interrupted work. Then there was bad weather, the increasingly difficult terrain, and even a cholera epidemic. In late 1832 the ditch finally reached the critical river port of Harpers Ferry. Workers were pushing on to Williamsport when the trouble broke out.
Work continued with more interruptions and a lawsuit between the Canal Company and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad about a right of way to cross from the Virginia to the Maryland side of the river also complicated matters.
In 1850 the canal finally reached Columbia, Maryland far short of the goal of connecting with the Ohio. But by that time the rapid spread of railroads, particularly the B&O, had rendered completing the project obsolete. Washington’s grand canal never got any further.
But the existing ditch was still useful. Boats, originally romantically named gondolas and later called barges, used the water way until it finally went out of business in 1924.
Today you can visit the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park and hike along the tow path.
The bloody tradition of using Federal troops as strike breakers out lived the canal.
Right now, I am learning that not all music helps me concentrate. The beginning to realize that "Apassionata" by Beethoven is not the relaxing Sunday morning adjunct to writing this blog. It's waking me up, but it's taking up too much of my attention. Dum dum dum dum dum dum DUM! on the piano seems to take over my thoughts.
It's easy to listen to, yet it's not the "easy listening" genre found in grocery stores. It has musical merit with original tunes rather than sanitized versions of popular music. I would be distracted by easy listening, usually wailing with a certain "What did they do to this song?"
Concentration music seems to help put me in the zone, bolstering my writing without sucking my attention in. It's not neutral; it actually helps me write. Richard seems okay with me playing this more relaxed music when I think he'd rather listen to Beethoven. I'm thankful that this music exists.
Right now I'm listening to Eric Satie, having given up on Beethoven. This piece is getting written. All is good with Sunday morning's blog.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222556/https://www.dublinunitarianchurch.org/podcasts/310121-address.mp3
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222535/https://www.dublinunitarianchurch.org/podcasts/310121-mor1.mp3
Vital to the balance of a stone arch is the keystone, the wedge-shaped stone against which the two sides of the arch push in equal measure. In architecture, this is a vital and important role; in life, this is not a healthy situation in which to find ourselves.
When have you experienced balance brought about by things pushing you in opposite directions? How did you interrupt this?
The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!
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Please join us on Sunday (25 January 2021) at 11:00 AM for “The Big Picture, The Expanding Circle, The Story” with Rev. Barbara Jarrell.
Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.
We will have a virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.
And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.
Our high school age youth (9th to 12th grade or age-equivalent) will be getting together viz Zoom to touch base and talk about possible plans for the rest of the year.
We will be meeting via Zoom on Friday (5 February 2021) at 4:30 PM.
The Zoom link will be available on our Slack channel, in the RE Facebook group, and on request.
Contact Susan Caldwell by email if you have any questions.
Melissa Lewis will be outside in front of the church building collecting food for Noel United Methodist Church Food Pantry on the first Sunday afternoon of February 2021 (7 February 2021) from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM.
Requested foods this month:
Please join us this Sunday (31 January 2021) at 1:00 PM for our weekly family religious education online class via Zoom.
The Zoom link will be on the All Souls Religious Education Facebook group and on the church’s Slack General channel.
Today, we will share a well-known story from the Buddhist tradition and a game that will help us look at things from different points of view.
Contact Susan Caldwell by email if you have any questions.
Please join us on Sunday (31 January 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class (please note that we are changing back to our regular time for this class for the rest of the church year).
We will be meeting via Zoom.
Taoism (with our guest speaker Janis Gabriel) — Continuing our exploration of World Religions, we are delighted this morning to welcome a longtime friend of All Souls — Sifu Janis Gabriel.
Janis returns this week for a deeper dive into the Taoist tradition — rites of passage, her training as an Abbot, and the significance of Tai Chi as a part of the tradition.
You will also have a chance to ask any questions you may have had from last week.
Please join us next Wednesday (3 February 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.
This day is Inauguration Day so we may get on early to watch together or start a little late after watching the ceremony on our own.
Watch your email as well as the church Caring Connection and Slack channels that day for updates.
At some point, we will eat lunch together via Zoom.
Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, we have begun to broadcast a livestream video of our Sunday morning worship services.
This worship video will be available live and in recorded formats.
For our livestream video of our worship services, we are using Facebook Live. One does not have to log into Facebook or have a Facebook account to view this video.
You can find the 24 January 2021 worship video here.
Because I have a public-facing religious role I often find myself in situations where, suddenly, people want to know, in a nutshell, just what kind of religious person I am and what it is I believe; they want a label and they want it now! Although I generally resist offering people a label when I have the time and opportunity to be a bit more expansive, it remains the case — especially in our “too long; didn’t read” (tl;dr) age — that the demand for them is likely to continue for a good while yet. Given this, it has long seemed to me that the “best” labels to use are those which encourage, not an easy acceptance of the label that’s proffered, but, instead, those which cause a certain puzzlement and which go on to elicit further questions about what on earth might be meant by it.
Now, those of you who know me well will know that, when forced to offer such a label, I generally reply by saying I am a “Christian atheist” or, at least, that I have strong sympathies towards a Christian atheist perspective. As a label it has a couple of immediate and obvious benefits.
The first is that it’s basically true because I am a kind of a-theist whose a-theism is almost wholly a product of a radical and heretical liberal Christian tradition which has long displayed a relentless truth-seeking drive and skepticism. It is this drive which, although it has led people like me legitimately to come to doubt the actual existence of any kind of supernatural entity who could meaningfully be called God, it has also left us with a deep appreciation of the value and worth still to be found in certain religious practices and in many aspects of religious language use and theological thinking. In short, I am both a child, and a very critical friend of the modern theological school of thought known, rather dramatically, as “Death of God theology.”
Just to clarify this a bit before moving on; being this kind of a-theist does not stop someone like me from continuing to use the word “God” because, to cite the contemporary, existentialist philosopher, James W. Woelfel, in the poetic, mythological language of the Christian atheist, God is understood as-if he has died “completely to his transcendent status and [now] identifies himself entirely with humankind and our world” (The Death of God: A Belated Personal Postscript). Consequently, for the Christian atheist, the “only revelation of God” is that to be found in “the faces of [we] unlikely human beings” and in the natural world in general (of which, of course, humans are part), and God’s “only worship” is found in “our compassionate devotion to one another and to the needs of our earth” (ibid.). Indeed, I would argue that this is basically what the historical Jesus seems to have been doing in his own teaching where everything is always being dissolved into the call to show justice and charity, love, to one’s neighbour, which includes, of course, one’s enemy. Naturally, Jesus was not, himself, an atheist, but his tendency to see God primarily in examples of this-worldly, ethical action, sets a general direction of travel which, having passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the subsequent rise of the natural sciences, leads directly to the door of a twentieth and twenty-first century Christian atheist like me.
The second benefit of the label Christian atheist is, as I have already indicated, that it has the singular benefit of being able to surprise and puzzle people and, therefore, provoke from them further questions as they want to know how on earth anyone can be both a Christian and an atheist.
But it will come as no surprise to most of you to hear that one important question often put to me at this point is, “Since you claim to be atheist, why on earth bother keeping the label Christian at all? Why don’t you call simply yourself an atheist and be done with it?”
Well, for me, the answer is rooted in a historically contingent truth that, as Woelfel notes, Christianity remains “the religion which has decisively shaped and permeated our Western culture” and, whether we like it or not, it is the religion which “still dominates the world of religion by its sheer numbers and influence.” In consequence, because “it is the religion whose origins, history, and ideas the American or European religious thinker is ordinarily the most well-versed”, it is the religion “with which most religiously perplexed people must come to grips with in a special way, since it has both created our problems and will probably offer the most natural resources for our groping solutions” (“Borderland Christianity”, Geoffrey Chapman, 1974, pp. 16-17).
Woelfel’s points are, perhaps not surprisingly, echoed in my own ministry here in the UK within the liberal Christian and Unitarian tradition and, in consequence, most of my time is spent trying to help those who, for good or ill, have been shaped by Christianity, genuinely to come to grips with it so that they may, a) better understand key aspects of our own culture’s particular present difficulties and problems and, b) be able more freely and creatively than before, to use Christianity’s still undischarged resources and energies to encourage new, just and loving conversations and solutions more appropriate to our own, post-Christendom, pluralistic, multi-faith age to emerge.
However, despite my willingness to continue to use the label Christian atheist myself, I recognise that the aforementioned context means that it’s a label which clearly cannot suit, or even vaguely resonate with, everyone I meet — not even everyone in the local church where I am minister! This has meant I’ve always been on the lookout for other labels to describe my basic religious and philosophical perspective in a way that might make better sense, or at least be more generally amenable, to those outside the Christian tradition. The three labels I most often use these days are “religious naturalist,” “religious humanist” and the related one which concerns me in this piece, “ecstatic humanist,” borrowed from an essay published in 1973 by the aforementioned philosopher, James W. Woelfel called “Ecstatic Humanism with Christian Hopes” (“Borderland Christianity”, Geoffrey Chapman, 1973).
It’s important to note at this point that nearly all quotations in my piece today are gratefully borrowed from this essay even when, as in the podcast of this piece, they are silently made for the ease of the listener. If you want to check where my words end and Woelfel’s begin, please take a look at the text either on my blog or in the transcript accompanying this episode.
Ecstatic humanism, Woelfel tells us, is “a humanistic perspective which transcends or goes beyond purely secular forms of humanism”. This should make it clear that he is using the word “ecstatic”, not in its everyday sense, but in its etymological sense of “transcending” or “going beyond.” Woelfel uses it in order to help make it clear that he is encouraging a humanism which remains “sensitively open-minded about the possibility of dimensions of experience and reality beyond our present knowing” and which remains “constantly aware of the limitations of the human situation and human knowledge” (“Borderland Christianity”, Geoffrey Chapman, 1974, p. 22)
Like the label Christian atheist, the label ecstatic humanist has the benefit of not only being true for me but also a label which is able to provoke surprise and puzzlement and, therefore, often elicit further questions from people who want to know how on earth anyone can be both a humanist and ecstatic, i.e. being aware of, and sensitive to, aspects of the world that lie beyond the human. In this brief piece I can’t, of course, fully unfold the implications of the label but, drawing on Woelfel, I can at least give you a general, broad, brush-stroke picture.
The project I’m outlining here is humanist because, as Woelfel points out, it is dedicated to encouraging “the growth of humane and scientific knowledge and its application to the rational solution of human problems, the alleviation of human oppression and suffering, the enlargement of individual human rights and freedoms, the widening of educational, social, cultural and economic opportunities — in general, to the enhancement of human life” (ibid. p. 19).
It’s a humanist project because it seeks to encourage people to base their lives and decisions upon the best knowledge we have of humankind and the world “especially through the sciences, and to seek thoughtful, reasoned solutions to human problems.”
It’s a humanist project because it looks to human criteria in our thinking and living and because it strongly believes “that this is all we have to go on in any solid and public way” (ibid. pp. 19-20).
But it’s also an ecstatic and, therefore, a religious humanist project, because unlike other, purely secular humanisms, it’s not “truncated” (ibid. p.21). As Woelfel points out, truncated humanisms turn out not to be “fully humanistic because”
“. . . they are not open to all that man [sic] and his encompassing universe possibly are. They are not sufficiently sensitive either to the range of and depth of the human spirit or to the limitations of our situation or knowledge. They tend arbitrarily to draw boundaries around human experience and the world and presumptuously to declare that the matter is closed, the reality completely described and circumscribed” (ibid. p.21).
As Woelfel notes, truncated, purely secular humanisms in the end simply reveal an “insensitivity to data, to ‘the facts,’ and [an] overconfident reasoning — both of which are aberrations of the humanist approach to knowledge” (ibid. p. 21); they are, to put it another way, humanisms which have forgotten that there will always exist for us not only known unknowns, but also unknown unknowns.
Consequently, for Woelfel and, indeed, for me:
“A truly whole and adequate humanism is one which, precisely in its absorbing preoccupation with [hu]man[ity], is sensitively open to the possibility that man himself [sic] may be more than we think at any given time — that he [sic] may, for example, be a creature involved with dimensions of reality of which our knowledge either is ignorant or has only scratched the surface” (ibid. p. 22).
I hope you can see that it is precisely this openness to self-transcendence, to dimensions of reality which it can never access, or of which human knowledge is ignorant or has only scratched the surface, is what gives this project its religious dimension.
All in all, it has long seemed to me that what Woelfel is describing in his essay is, in general terms, what, at its best, the Unitarian tradition has been trying to offer people for the last four hundred and fifty odd years. Because of this, I have no hesitation in continuing to offer up for consideration a liberal Christian flavoured species of naturalistic, religious or ecstatic humanism in my own ministry with the Cambridge Unitarian Church. But, questions of meaningful historical continuity with my forebears aside, I increasingly feel a pressing need to offer up this basic religious and philosophical stance because, as we seek to recover from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and also try to deal with the increasing climate emergency, to get through this well — or even at all — we will clearly need to draw upon the fullest range of human resources and experiences available to us, both scientific and religious and philosophical.
However, in order not to succumb to the temptation to over-extend or exaggerate our religious and philosophical resources and experiences it seems to me that we always to need consciously and diligently to be weaving them together with a humanism that is not truncated. This is why, along with Woelfel, I continue to feel that it’s vital to articulate a modern, ecstatic humanism that can still take us “out of ourselves” to behold with wonder and awe “the mysteries surrounding our existence” — mysteries which include, of course, “religious experience, love, art and beauty, the devoted search for truth” (ibid. p. 24).
Although I realise many of you will not share my willingness to adopt and use the label Christian atheist if, like me, you feel that you are ‘a skeptic with a naturally religious mind’ (à la Ronald Hepburn) or an open-minded ‘reverent’ humanist (ibid. p. 14), then I hope you will at least spend a little time considering the case for an ecstatic humanism and perhaps, too, even now and then, using the label yourself. At the very least it might start an occasional, interesting conversation.
—o0o—
If you would like to join a conversation about this or any other podcast then please note our next Wednesday Evening Zoom meeting will take place on 10th February at 19.30 GMT. The link will be published in the blog and the notes to the podcast for that week.
WWUUD stream 
