When we were in seminary, one of our professors was the Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake, who also serves as the presiding minister at the Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. The congregation was started intentionally as the first multiracial congregation by the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk in 1943.
When Dr. Blake would lead or participate in worship, he would wear the beautiful green robe that had been Dr. Thurman’s, and that he wore with gratitude, hope, and humility. The robe brought with it a presence… a tradition of powerful prophetic ministry.
Today we give thanks for items that invite us to be present in different ways and remind us of where we are from, who we are, and what we are called to do: A smooth stone from the bank of a river (or two); a beautiful vase made by Lynn’s Mom; a beloved painting by a member of Wendy’s chosen family; a collection of poems, written by a friend. What helps you remember to be present? It doesn’t have to be something outside of ourselves. It can be a birthmark, a scar, stretch marks, our own breath, our own heartbeat.
These words, this prayer by Thurman we offer you today:
“In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading presence of the Holy, my heart whispers:
Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in good time or in tempests, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.
Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.” – Howard Thurman
May you experience moments of precious presence today.
Fall Walk: Strawberry Fields Nature Preserve with Green Sanctuary
Saturday, October 2nd, 10 AM – noon (please arrive 10 minutes early)
Easy Terrain, about 1.5 mi
Proprietor Jeff Leon will lead a tour of this Nature Preserve to explore the woods woods, see an overlook of the Mohawk Valley, and wander through fields abounding with asters, goldenrod, and the spectacular blue fringed gentian.
Be prepared to comply with UUSS outdoor COVID protocols. Sign up by September 30th by email to gs.uuss06@gmail.com. For COVID we need to know the number in your party and contact information. Limit 25 participants.
If you have questions, contact Nancy at gs.uuss06@gmail.com or 518-588-7505.
Find out what's happening in the Central East Region! This month - Compass Gathering, Taproot, JUUst Breathe Live, Widening the Welcome Workshop, Summer Institute Workshops, UUA Board Open Houses and Meetings, Resources for UN Sunday, Fall Social Witness Convening and more.
On Saturday, Oct. 23rd, from 10:00-11:30 a.m., join us in the back garden of the church for a casual family chapel service, followed by a pumpkin carving party. All ages welcome, masks required for those over 2.
Bring a pumpkin, and the tools that your family would like to use for carving or decorating. Costumes welcome! This event will be cancelled if there is pouring rain. – Rev. Wendy & Rev. Lynn
Vaccines for all who are eligible are strongly encouraged. Masks are required. There will not be an online component to this potentially messy adventure.
As surely as we belong to the universe
we belong together.
We join here to transcend the isolated self,
to reconnect,
to know ourselves to be at home,
here on earth, under the stars,
linked with each other.
-Margaret Keip
Where is it that you find a sense of belonging and connection to others?
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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Multiplatform – Outdoors and Livestreamed on Youtube, 9:30 am
Somewhere along life’s journey, most of us in the United States are taught that staying in the lines is valued, even when those lines are strangling us as individuals and a ... read more.
A message for the 10:00 Foothills community, preached in the park on September 26th and October 3rd, 2021, the first and second Sundays in person after 18 months all online
Sermon
We were two days back after winter break when my family had our best day of pandemic school.
My son was actually all online, and my daughter was technically half in person; but both of these things translated to them being at home that day.
This is the funny thing about saying kids had school online for the last year – because from the perspective of our kids –their teachers were online, their classmates were online, but they were just home.
My partner and I were home too, each in our own by-then well established offices and rhythms. So that when someone texted me to turn on the real live news, on the TV, and I did, it caught the whole family’s attention.
Online school lessons stopped, and we all gathered round to watch history unfold in front of us.
An angry mob of pro-Trump protestors had broken into the US capitol, and we were watching it all happen on live TV. Josef kept asking the question we were all asking, mom, is this really happening right now? This is real?
For a lot of that day, I chose my words carefully:
Yes, it’s real. They believe they’ve been lied to, that Trump was actually re-elected.
I don’t know why the police aren’t stopping them.
You’re right, if they weren’t mostly white, it wouldn’t be like this.
I don’t know how it will stop, I don’t understand either.
I don’t know what will happen next.
To be honest, some of the time, I spoke less carefully.
Still, like I said, it was the best day of pandemic school. Because watching it all, we were all learning so much – about history, and about now; about our nation, and about ourselves.
Learning is actually terrible, and awful. It’s one of the earliest realizations I had in the pandemic – learning is terrible. I mean, having learned is amazing – when you’re on the other side of it all – you feel fabulous. But when you are really learning, not just in your head - but in your whole self where you are totally discombobulated and everything about how you do anything must be re-constituted from scratch – it is so painful!
Especially when the learning must be done quickly, because the new world is already here demanding our adaptation.
Do you remember the movie Alien – and that scene where the one guy is at one minute just enjoying regular conversation and the next he’s convulsing and struggling until finally an alien comes out of his chest?
Yeah, that’s about what I’ve realized deep learning feels like.
A little bit like birthing an alien out of your chest.
Like – who is this person I am becoming?
What is this world I’m now in?
And what’s all this goo I’m covered in?
When we think of it this way, it helps us remember that we have all been thrown into a world we don’t understand in the last 18 months,
and we are all learning, and learning is terrible –
Remembering this helps us stay in the place of compassion – for ourselves, and for the people around us, including the people who attacked the capitol that day in January, or for those who are having a very different understanding of the pandemic, or the vaccine, or other COVID precautions.
It helps to remember that we’re all going through something big. And we all have our own story within this bigger story. We’ve all been forced to birth an alien. I mean, we’ve all forced to learn, and it’s been often really hard. It’s important to practice remembering, because too often instead, we’ve practiced forgetting.
Too often we perform a careful amnesia that Unitarian Universalist minister Nancy McDonald Ladd describes it as performing - for ourselves, and for each other, our well-being.
I mean look at us: we have all have faced multiple moments in the last 18 months where everything we knew to be true was upended, and so many of the things we turned to for comfort and courage - like working out in a gym, or dancing in a crowd, or losing yourself in live theatre, or hanging out with your grandchildren, or gathering on a Sunday in a church - all these things became non options because they were themselves the danger.
But through it all, if someone asks, we’re most likely to say - I'm fine. Although my favorite answer that started last year is when someone would say I’m fine and then pause and say, I mean, pandemic fine. There’s a glimpse of the real there.
But as we’ve moved into this stage of the pandemic, this stage that is still just as confusing, where we have to learn, and adapt every single day - but now I’ve stopped hearing that phrase- the performance has returned. Like, the poem: I don’t weep, do you?
I read this article recently about how there’s this huge uptick in health crises from extreme dieting in the last few months –
because we are all so desperate to ensure that it doesn’t appear the pandemic has affected us at all. The threat of climate change, the presence of wildfires, and flooding, shrug. Nah, we haven’t aged, we haven’t lost anyone, or anything, Our kids - maybe they’ve fallen behind a little but they will catch up.
There’s no alien to see, no bluebirds.
We’re good. All good.
I’m not judging. I do it too.
It’s a coping technique we’ve all learned. Like somatic teacher Resmaa Menakem talks about, it’s not that we are defective by practicing this performance, we’re protective. We’re not defective, we’re protective. We’ve learned to protect ourselves by acting ok so that we could keep going.
I picked the poem from Charles Bukowski for today because I know that during this pandemic we’ve all had to do this. We’ve had to find ways to survive. And some of those ways have required us to push aside what was really happening - because we just had to keep going.
Like the song that came out last October, from The Bengsons, the Keep Going On Song - if you haven’t listened yet and don’t know it, maybe turn it on on your way home, or when you get home. The refrain of the song is simple - it just goes: Keep going keep going keep going on song. Keep going keep going keep going on.
We have all found our ways to keep going. It’s how you are all here, now. We have found ways to protect ourselves enough so that we could keep going. Especially in the isolation of the pandemic, the isolation we experienced, and that we watched our kids, and our youth experience.
We’ve had to compartmentalize some or a lot of what is true in order to keep going. Like in the poem, he says to the bluebird: “Stay down, do you want to mess me up? Do you want to screw up my work?”
We should be proud of our survival, and give thanks to our bodies and our minds for bringing us through.
And, we also know that this perpetual performance we’ve practiced has a cost. Over time, when keep cutting ourselves off - we lose the language and the skills and the strength to deal with what’s really real - we forget how to be honest with ourselves, let alone with others. We cut connection off with the reality in ourselves, and we cut connection off with others.
We numb pain, as Brene Brown reminds us - which means we are also numbing joy.
And all this practice does not mean that the things we aren’t dealing with go away - more like, they go underground, become sub-conscious.
More likely than not, these things end up guiding our lives and our actions in ways that we don’t even realize. As Richard Rohr says, “pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” When we don’t heal pain, we pass it on to others. And you can’t heal pain you practice not seeing, you can’t heal pain you’re avoiding or numbing yourself from. You can’t learn the lessons, you can’t metabolize the experience - birth the alien, or set the bird free - because all your energy is going into that protection, that performance.
Post pandemic, where we understand the idea of “transmission” at a whole new level - the idea that pain that is not transformed is transmitted - takes on a whole new power.
Doesn’t it seem really clear that we are living world shaped by untransformed pain? That pain is the real superspreader?
Which means that for as much as the vaccine is the way to heal the virus, the only way we’re really going to heal what’s going on in our world today - all the forces that led to those events at the capitol - and so many other things we’ve gotten through in our time - is birth the alien - learn the lessons, I mean tend to the pain.
The pain in ourselves, in others. The pain from the last 18 months, the pain in our country, and the pain that has been passed on generationally – and bring it in as a regular part of our story about what it means to be human, what it means to live a human life – here in Fort Collins Colorado, in the 18th month of a global pandemic. We need to practice remembering rather than forgetting. We need to stop the keeping going on, the pushing through. We need to practice staying put with life as it really is - and holding, and metabolizing it. And we need to do this together. We can only do this together.
It’s one of the main reasons we are so excited about this pod experiment, and our return to in person church. Because it’s one of the main things we can and will do together. It’s what church is really about. Here we help each other birth the alien. And set the bluebird free.
The bluebird is probably a better image than the alien, right? A better way to talk about what we’re doing when we are learning. This work of deep change where we are adapting to a profoundly changing world.
Because this work is so disruptive, and scary, and painful - just like a bird that comes close in always is! - but it is also beautiful.
Learning like this offers us something so entirely new that it threatens our whole existence, but it is also a life unto itself.
And these things are true about this world, this reality.
All that we are holding at bay, all we have practiced holding at bay, it is so disruptive, and scary, so overwhelming - but it also contains the seeds of a new life that calls to us to pay attention, and to listen. It calls us to release the protective performance and the forgetting, and instead remember ourselves, remember each other, stop transmitting all this untransformed pain.
Set the bird free, and let’s heal.
For any who remain insistent on an audit in order to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen, I’d offer this perspective: No congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters — particularly when the President will continue to say that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That’s the burden, that’s the duty of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won the election. President Trump lost.
I’ve been resisting writing about the Democrats’ intra-party negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that is supposed to supplement the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August.
While the issue is definitely important enough to deserve attention, the root of my resistance is that nobody really knows anything, and yet there is massive amounts of speculation about what might be happening. Maybe Joe Manchin is torpedoing the whole Biden agenda. Or maybe progressives are. Or maybe one side or the other is about to cave in. Maybe Biden is a legislative wizard who has it all under control, or maybe he’s an addled senior citizen in over his head.
It’s all speculation.
Here’s what little we know: The bipartisan bill passed the Senate in regular order, with enough Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. In terms of policy, the Democrats in the House agree that it ought to pass. But it leaves out a large number of progressive (and Biden) priorities. (The one that is most important to me is climate change.) So progressives in the House threaten not to pass the bipartisan bill if the Senate won’t pass the larger bill. No Senate Republicans support the larger bill, so it will have to pass through reconciliation (if at all), and all 50 Democrats are needed.
Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema have objected to the size of that bill, but so far have not made a counteroffer. Democratic moderates in the House had previously gotten Speaker Pelosi to commit to a vote on the bipartisan bill today, but that vote has been postponed to Thursday.
Midnight Thursday is the end of the federal government’s fiscal year, the annual witching hour when any shit not yet dealt with reaches the fan. So the government could shut down Friday, and the country might hit its debt limit shortly thereafter. In other words: a completely self-inflicted disaster of global significance.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe any of that will happen. I think Democrats will get something together, and two sizeable infrastructure bills will pass, with most of what all sides want included. The government will not shut down, and the debt limit will be pushed back to set up some future apocalypse. (We can’t just get rid of it, because …)
I believe this because I don’t think any Democrat in Congress benefits from sabotaging the whole Biden agenda and setting the party up for a massive 2022 defeat. I also don’t believe any of the Democrats — Manchin and Sinema included — are the kinds of loose cannons Republican leaders sometimes have to deal with. I’m also not afraid of Republicans getting some advantage out of the debt-limit battle. In the 2022 campaign, I don’t believe anybody will remember or care that this time around it was the Democrats who pushed back the limit without Republican help. (I also don’t believe voters will punish Republicans for their irresponsibility, although they should.)
As I said previously, though, I don’t know. Maybe I’m too optimistic. But I’m heartened by the account in Peril of the passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March. Manchin also had problems with that, and negotiations went down to the wire. But he ultimately voted for it. The picture Woodward and Costa paint is that Manchin has to maintain his moderate image in West Virginia and separate himself from liberals like Bernie Sanders and AOC, but that he also doesn’t want to be the guy who causes Biden’s presidency to fail.
I’m not counting on Biden to be an LBJ-style wheeler-dealer, but I think he will keep all the Democrats calm enough to recognize that failure benefits none of them.
Josh Marshall points out a piece of journalistic malpractice: Progressives and moderates are often presented as rival-but-equivalent factions fighting for their rival-but-equivalent proposals, when actually Democrats are pretty much united except for Manchin, Sinema, and a handful of folks in the House.
What Manchin et al are having trouble swallowing isn’t Bernie Sanders’ bill. (Sanders, if you remember, wanted a $6 trillion package.) It’s President Biden’s bill.
and the Arizona election audit
That’s the subject of the featured post. Short version of the report written by Trumpist Cyber Ninjas: The ballots were counted accurately. But Biden won, so there must be something wrong with the ballots themselves.
and Haitian immigrants
The images of men on horseback chasing down dark-skinned people, and of 14,000 immigrants camped under the Del Rio Bridge in Texas have sparked intense reactions from both the pro- and anti-immigration factions.
The current wave was started by a major earthquake in August, but Haitians have been trying to enter the US for one reason or another for a long time. And one US administration after another has been trying to keep them out. Vox has a worthwhile article about the unique aspects of our Haitian immigration policies.
and Peril
The book Peril (that last week’s post “Seven Days in January” was indirectly based on) came out Tuesday, and I rushed to read it. I didn’t find any major surprises: The incidents discussed in the pre-publication articles are pretty much the way they’ve been described.
Woodward and Costa leave readers to guess who the source is for each scene. In general, if the book tells us what somebody was thinking at the time, you have to assume that person is the source for the whole incident (though possibly various other people were also consulted). If the book follows one character through a series of scenes, I assume that person is the source. (In the case of somebody like Mike Pence, I suppose it’s possible that a right-hand-man is the source. But even then, I doubt that person would talk in such detail without the approval of his former boss.) If one person seems reasonable and everyone else in the room is crazy, probably we’re hearing the account of the reasonable person. (I know I describe a lot of my experiences that way.)
General Milley is pretty obviously the source for the incidents that involve him. Senators Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham are clearly sources. Pence’s national security advisor Keith Kellogg was a source, and probably Pence himself. (Kellogg apparently roamed the White House pretty freely.) A bunch of people in the Biden campaign. And so on.
The closer you get to Trump himself, the fuzzier the sourcing gets, as if sources asked for more protection. Ivanka and Jared? Mark Meadows? Hard to say. Unless you believe that Woodward and Costa made stuff up out of nothing (and I don’t), it’s clear somebody talked.
A phone conversation that Milley had with Speaker Pelosi after January 6 occurs early in the book and got a lot of press. When you read it in the full context of the book, the striking thing isn’t that Milley and Pelosi both think Trump is crazy. The striking thing is how they talk about his instability. You could imagine people around Trump coming to the shocking insight that the President is dangerously unmoored. But this conversation is nothing like that. It’s more like: We always knew he was crazy, but we had hoped he was manageable.
As the book goes on, it’s appalling how many people had such conversations. I’m left with the impression that no one with a chance to view Trump close up was actually surprised that he would start raving about imaginary election-stealing conspiracies, or that he would try to bring down American democracy rather than give up power. They had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but they weren’t actually surprised.
Lots of Republicans appear to have known, earlier or later in the process, that the election-fraud claims were bogus. Their silence is stunning. Even the ones who spoke up at one time or another have mostly shut up about it.
The lack of concern for the country is horrifying. Mitch McConnell had two chances to get rid of Trump through impeachment, and protected him both times. To this day, Republicans who know what he really is are going along with him.
and the pandemic
Once again, new-case numbers seem to be topping out, but the turn-around is slow. The seven-day average is 120K per day, down from a recent peak of 175K on September 13. Hospitalizations have also turned around nationally, though they’re still surging in some areas. Deaths are holding steady at just over 2000 per day.
Hospitals in Idaho and Alaska have instituted “crisis standards of care“, which is a fancy way of saying that they’re so swamped they can’t get to everybody.
Alaska this past week joined Idaho in adopting statewide crisis standards of care that provide guidance to health care providers making difficult decisions on how to allocate limited resources. Several hospitals in Montana have either activated crisis standards of care or are considering it as the state is pummeled by COVID-19.
Under the guidelines, providers can prioritize treating patients based on their chances of recovery, impacting anyone seeking emergency care, not just those with COVID-19. …
Typically, crisis standards of care involve a scoring system to determine the patient’s survivability, sometimes including their estimated “life years” and how well their organs are working.
Back in 2009, Republicans fighting ObamaCare warned about “death panels” that might decide old people weren’t worth saving. That didn’t happen then, but vaccine resistance is causing it to happen now.
Vaccine mandates are being tested this week, as deadlines are looming in New York and some other states. Thousands of health-care and nursing-home workers are pushing to the limit: New York says they have until midnight tonight to get vaccinated, or they’ll lose their jobs. If they hold out and are let go, care might suffer in some places. But if they remain unvaccinated and keep their jobs, care suffers in a different way.
you also might be interested in …
Germany’s 16-year Angela Merkel era ended yesterday with a federal election in which she was not a candidate. The Social Democrats appear to have won the most seats in the Bundestag, surpassing Merkel’s Christian Democrats. No party has a majority, though, so a coalition will have to be negotiated.
Among the minor parties, the Greens gained seats and the right-wing nationalist Alliance for Germany lost some.
More dramatic stories about infrastructure and debt-ceiling negotiations have drawn attention away from the collapse of negotiations over police reform. The House has already passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, but police reform is yet another casualty of the filibuster in the Senate.
A former Washington Post arts editor returned to her roots in rural Illinois, and moved into what she remembers as her grandmother’s house in Kinderhook. It’s been challenging to live in Trump country, where only 23% are vaccinated.
My family might go back four generations here, but we are outsiders. We are the “them.”
and let’s close with something musical
A recent trend on YouTube is for choirs around the world to set local complaints to music. Here is the Helsinki Complaints Choir.
The early emergence stage of the pandemic, followed by the ongoing threat of variants, has prompted rowdy and aggressive behavior in many areas of society (airplanes, ballparks). It is not surprising that some of this behavior has made its way into our congregational life.
The Arizona audit’s re-affirmation of Biden’s victory ought to finish off Trump’s stolen-election hoax. But it hasn’t.
The Cyber-Ninjas “forensic audit” of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona finally reported its findings, only four months later than planned. Guess what? Biden won.
“The ballots that were provided to us to count in the coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvass numbers,” Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan said during the presentation. He noted that the hand recount found President Joe Biden gaining 99 votes in Maricopa County and former President Donald Trump losing 261 votes — which he called “very small discrepancies.”
So there you have it: Not even vote-counters completely biased in Trump’s favor could come up with a way to claim he won in Arizona. The Cyber Ninjas hired by the Republican majority in the state senate tested the Maricopa County voting machines that were supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Hugo Chavez, looked for evidence of fake ballots shipped in from South Korea (or maybe China), and pursued every other lunatic theory of how Democrats could have stolen the state for Biden. They came up with nothing.
Biden won.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Jack Sellers, a Republican, summed up:
This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters. That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.
But it’s not the end of the story, and Trump’s noise continues. The Great Steal has become dogma inside his personality cult, so inconvenient facts must be trimmed to fit.
Just asking questions. The quote from Chief Ninja Logan hints (if you listen closely) at the direction the conspiracy theory goes next: “the ballots that were provided to us” were counted properly, and show a Biden win. But what if some number of those ballots were cast illegally by people not entitled to vote? Or by legal voters who messed up in some way that should have allowed Republicans to disqualify them?
After all these months, Logan can’t point to any specific ballots that fit those descriptions. But what if? And what if those speculatively dubious ballots are all Biden votes? Then maybe Trump really should have won Arizona — and maybe Georgia and Pennsylvania as well. Maybe he should still be president, even without an insurrection.
That’s why a large chunk of the Ninjas’ report is devoted to casting doubt on “the ballots that were provided to us”, using the technique Tucker Carlson has made famous: Raise questions without doing even the simplest legwork to answer them, and then imply that there are no answers or even that powerful people don’t want you to ask.
[The Cyber Ninjas] are overstretching themselves to find dirt, claiming the things they don’t understand are evidence of something bad.
Elizabeth Howard of the Brennan Center for Justice expressed the same idea in different words.
They’re desperately trying to suggest that what are routine procedures are suspicious, because they don’t have election administration experience or knowledge.
And precisely because the Ninjas lacked so much experience and knowledge, the “things they don’t understand” were many, and even humorous at times.
The most inflammatory allegations came from [Ben] Cotton, who claimed he discovered that thousands of files had been deleted from election department servers, and that several pieces of election equipment had been connected to the internet.
One internet-connected device Cotton specifically named was REWEB1601, which Maricopa County’s twitter account explained very simply.
REWEB1601 (as you might gather from the naming convention) connects to the internet because it is the server for http://recorder.maricopa.gov. This is not the election system. We shouldn’t have to explain this.
And the deleted files? That wasn’t very sinister either.
CLAIM: Election management database purged
BOTTOM LINE: This is misleading. Nothing was purged. Cyber Ninjas don’t understand the business of elections. We can’t keep everything on the EMS server because it has storage limits. We have data archival procedures for our elections and @MaricopaVote archived everything related to the November election on backup drives. So everything still exists.
Cyber Ninjas said it found thousands of voters who potentially voted twice in Arizona. The company came to this conclusion because it found 5,047 voters with the same first, middle and last name and birth year as people who voted in other counties.
“Bottom line,” the county wrote in a tweet in response, “There are more than 7 million people in Arizona and, yes, some of them share names and birth years. To identify this as a critical issue is laughable.”
Dead voters? Sometimes living people fill out a ballot, mail it, and then die before Election Day. Sometimes computer searches confuse the dead John Smith Sr. with the living John Smith Jr. of the same address, who voted. It’s not fraud. Voters who have moved? If they went to college, joined the military, or decamped to a vacation home from which they plan to return, their vote is still legal. And so on.
In short, the Cyber Ninjas found the kind of “suspicious” ballots that appear in every election everywhere. What they didn’t find was the slightest evidence of fraud.
The Romney prophesy fulfilled. When questioned, the Republican promoters of these partisan “audits” say they’re simply responding to widespread doubt about the integrity of the 2020 election, and that the point is to restore public faith in our democracy — ignoring their party’s (and often their own) role in raising those doubts in the first place by spreading lies.
The model here is the disingenuous justification Ted Cruz and ten other senators gave last January for objecting to the certification of the Electoral College vote.
A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People.
These are matters worthy of the Congress, and entrusted to us to defend. We do not take this action lightly. We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it. And every one of us should act together to ensure that the election was lawfully conducted under the Constitution and to do everything we can to restore faith in our Democracy.
Mitt Romney had the right response back on January 6:
For any who remain insistent on an audit in order to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen, I’d offer this perspective: No congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters — particularly when the President will continue to say that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That’s the burden, that’s the duty of leadership.
The truth is that President-elect Biden won the election. President Trump lost.
This week’s events proved Romney right. After the Arizona audit report leaked, 2020 Loser Donald Trump did continue to say the election was stolen.
The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over. There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!
And his allies were still not convinced of his loss. At a rally in Georgia Saturday, Trump rehearsed a litany of false claims about fraud in Arizona. And then his endorsed candidate for secretary of state said “Nobody understands the disaster of the lack of election integrity like the people of Georgia. Now is our hour to take it back.” His lieutenant governor candidate said “I can assure you if I’d been our Lieutenant Governor, we would have gotten to the bottom of this thing.”
And the crowd cheered.
Undeterred by the objective failure of the Cyber Ninjas to either find fraud or restore confidence, Trumpists continue to push the Arizona-like audits that are either proposed or already underway in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even Texas (which Trump won, but by a margin that presages future trouble for Republicans unless they do a better job suppressing the non-white vote).
In each case, Republicans claim to be “restoring confidence” in elections by responding to “doubts” about the accuracy of the 2020 outcome — doubts that they caused themselves by spreading lies. Already, we can anticipate the ninja-like outcome: reports that find no hard evidence of any miscount or fraud, but continue to “raise questions” based on nothing.
It’s almost like sowing doubt is the intention.
The goal: destabilizing democracy. WaPo’s Greg Sargent raises that issue explicitly:
Oozing with unctuously phony piety, Republicans told us again and again and again that this audit was merely about allaying the doubts of voters who have lost confidence in our elections, a specter that Republicans have widely used to justify voting restrictions everywhere.
But, now that this audit “confirmed” Biden’s win, it is still telling us that we should doubt our outcomes, and that more voting restrictions are necessary to allay those doubts. Why, it’s almost as if that was the real point all along!
The Atlantic’s David Graham points to the damage done: Whatever the outcome of the Arizona “fraudit”, its mere existence kept the stolen-election story going for five more months. The implication that there really was something to investigate (and that maybe there still is) lives on. Millions of low-information voters are left with the vague impression that there is something inherently hinky about election returns from big cities with lots of non-white voters.
The goal was to substantiate a new consensus Republican belief that Democrats cannot win elections legitimately, and that any victory they notch must be somehow tainted. It is not a coincidence that the places where audits have focused are those, like Maricopa County, or Harris County, Texas, or Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, with high levels of minority voters, who can be disparaged—mostly implicitly, but occasionally more directly—as illegitimate participants in the polity. Trump has been the foremost proponent of the theory, but he’s been joined by eager sycophants, demagogues, and conspiracists.
As for where this is going, neo-conservative thought-leader Robert Kagan presented an ominous vision in “Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here“, where he predicted
a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.
Kagan foresees Trump running again in 2024, being nominated, and staging a better coup next time.
Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.
Trump’s attempt to overrule the voters in 2020 may have failed, but not by much, and it was not thwarted by institutional safeguards.
Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that prevented it was a handful of state officials with notable courage and integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to obey orders they deemed inappropriate. These were not the checks and balances the Framers had in mind when they designed the Constitution, of course, but Trump has exposed the inadequacy of those protections.
Contrary to John Adams, the Republic was saved in 2020 not by laws, but by individuals. And those brave individuals are being replaced.
[T]he amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. [1]
In the end, the “forensic audit” movement isn’t about overturning 2020 any more: The deeper purpose is to “raise questions” about elections and about democracy in general, so that fewer people will be able or willing to take a principled stand against the Coup of 2024.
[1] The point of that shift is that gerrymandering insulates Republican majorities in key state legislatures from the voters. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Democratic voting majority that carried the state for Biden has also elected a Democratic governor and secretary of state. But the legislature is well fortified against the will of the People.
So yet another counting of the votes in Arizona — this one by the openly pro-Trump Cyber Ninjas — showed that Biden won. But Trump continues to claim fraud, and his GOP allies still demand similar “audits” in other other states he lost — and even in Texas, where he won by less than previous Republican candidates.
Ostensibly, the audit was going to resolve the doubts — one way or the other — about Arizona’s 2020 election. But instead, the report doubled down on the “raising questions” tactic that undermined faith in the election in the first place. It’s almost like tearing down democracy was the point all along.
So I’ll examine that in the featured post “The Big Lie Refuses to Die”, which should be out between 9 and 10 EDT.
The weekly summary will discuss the increasingly clear picture of Trump’s coup attempt, the Haitian refugees at the border, the agonizingly slow turn-around of the pandemic’s Delta surge, Germany’s election, and a few other things. Look for it around noon.
Watch the Service: To enable YouTube provided closed-captioning while viewing the service, click the “CC” icon on the bottom bar of your YouTube video player.
"Enough is Enough: The Inflation of Satisfied and the Risks" (September 26, 2021) Worship Service
In the stories of people I know, their children's stories, in what I see in the world, with dire consequences to the planet and to our mental health, I see the inflation of "enough" and I don't just mean in material terms. I mean in all kinds of ways. Let me give examples and let's look at what that might be doing to us and what can be done about it.
Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Wonder Dave, Worship Associate; Sam Hamner, Small Group Ministry; Allen Biggs, percussionist; Ben Rudiak-Gould, songleader; Mark Sumner, pianist
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Amy Kelly, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
Rev. Janet Newton is the senior minister at the First Parish Church of Berlin in Berlin, Massachusetts. Janet was born and raised Unitarian Universalist in the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, NM. She comes to ministry after many years as a high school English and philosophy teacher. Janet received a Masters in Divinity in May 2018 from Meadville Lombard Theological school. For Janet, religion is a collaborative invitation to find, feed, and honor the spark of the sacred within every human heart, that we may know ourselves and our communities more deeply, and that we may make love more visible in the world. Her experiences have helped her develop a vision for church that uses worship, conversation, contemplation, and opportunities for lifelong learning and service to help us grow our souls, build community, and heal our world. She said she’s still a little amazed that her calling means she can live “an intentionally conscious spiritual life.”
SERVICE NOTES
WELCOME!
New to our church community? Sign our guestbook and let us know if you’d like to get more connected. If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next week’s service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book. 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? While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator at office@uulosalamos.org.
MUSIC CREDITS
“Morning Has Come,” trad. round. (Unitarian Church of Los Alamos Choir; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Song Public Domain, video used by permission.
“Blue Boat Home,” words: Peter Mayer; music: Roland Hugh Prichard, adapted by Peter Meyer. Created by Paul Thompson, Music Director at the UU Church of the Palouse, Moscow ID. Used by permission of the UUA.
“To See a World,” words: William Blake, music: Norwegian tune, arr. Edvard Grieg. (UU Virtual Singers; Anne Marsh, reciter; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Song Public Domain, video used by permission.
“Rising Green” by Carolyn McDade, arr. Jim Scott. (Nylea Butler-Moore, piano). Used by permission of the UUA.
“The Lost Words Blessing” by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux and Kerry Andrew. (Janet Newton, vocalist.) Images by Maria Thibodeau Photography, used by permission; song used by permission of Adam Slough of JSL Productions.
“Petite Fleur” by Sidney Bechet. (Aaron Anderson, piano). Permission to stream BMI song #1169027 in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770.
“The Way,” text: unknown author, music: Nylea L. Butler-Moore. (UU Virtual Singers with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Used by permission.
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
Permission granted from Danusha Laméris for use of “Thinking” via email, September 20, 2021 Permission granted from Katie Mack for use of “Disorientation” via email, August 14, 2021 *permission granted through the UUA
OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for September is Lutheran Family Services. 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
Rev. Janet Newton, Guest Minister & vocalist
Rebecca Howard, Worship Associate
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Unitarian Church of Los Alamos Choir: sopranos Cathy Hayes, Mia McLeod, Janice Muir, Kelly Shea, Tamson Smith; altos Mary Billen, Susan Gisler, Rebecca Howard, Anne Marsh, KokHeong McNaughton, tenors & basses: Mike Begnaud, Peter Bloser, Skip Dunn, Kathy Gursky, Shannon Scott, with Yelena Mealy, piano
Aaron Anderson, piano
UU Virtual Singers: Alissa Grissom, Kelly Shea, Nylea Butler-Moore, Rebecca Howard, Anne Marsh, Kathy Gursky, Mike Begnaud, & Skip Dunn, with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar
Mike Begnaud, Rick Bolton, and Renae Mitchell AV techs
Fresh bread is something of a tiny miracle. Or maybe just a marvel. Born from simple ingredients and careful technique, it emerges from the oven steaming and scented and ready to provide sustenance.
What are the marvels and tiny miracles of your day?
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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This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at how Southern socialites rewrote history.
With so much attention turned recently to the teaching of history in our schools (including all the erroneous assertions that critical race theory is taught in kindergarten through grade 12), it’s time to take a look at how our textbooks came to frame the history that many of us learned in school and the huge role that the United Daughters of the Confederacy played in the process.
Please join us on Saturday (25 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.
This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.
The group is free and open to all.
For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.
So I was watching on A&E the show where Leah Remini discusses how she escaped Scientology and then made a special episode where she later covers Jehovah's Witnesses and how they are a cult of repression, fear mongering, isolation, not allowing free will because it is "Satanic", emotional abuse, emotional blackmail, etc. Basically, a cult as repressive as Scientology and it got me thinking that with UUism being open-minded and allowing different religious ideas and backgrounds, is it okay to be critical of other religions because I have always been critical some religions as I personally don't like what they believe in, such as Christian Science for being anti-medicine and the Jehovah's Witnesses for what was shown in the Leah Remini series. Of course, Scientology is one I'm critical of, that's a given so almost no one likes them but even then, is it okay if you don't feel those religions practice stuff you don't like?
Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future.
Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream,
and by covenant and the movement forward of one right action
and the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.
-Theresa Ninán Soto, from “We Hold Hope Close”
Where does your hope live today?
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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Paulo Freire wrote that “to do without hope, in the struggle to improve the world, is a frivolous illusion.”
How do we build hope? When we share our stories, move together for justice, and side with love we build hope! We know this and yet as co-chairs of the Commission on Social Witness, Alison and I have learned that hope is in short supply.
Folx are overwhelmed, and it’s no wonder! The sheer scale of challenges we face in our personal lives coping with the pandemic, and in our hurting world, is unprecedented.
Attacks on the transgender and gender nonconforming community, erosion of our basic right to vote, environmental crises leveling poor and POCI communities, and a global pandemic devastating folx who are already laboring in harsh conditions and lacking basic healthcare. We are all in need of some potent hope!
That is why Alison and I have created two hope-filled evenings - UU Social Witness Convenings on Oct. 6 & 13 - to gather together and side with love. We have invited 20+ speakers who are doing amazing work with inspiring organizations (including TRUUsT, BLUU, DRUUMM, ARE, UUJEC, UUSJ, State Action Networks in AZ and NC, the UUA Administration and Side with Love Organizing Strategy Team staff, and more) to come together, share stories of justice, and fill our hearts and minds with tangible ways to get our hope going!
We are enthusiastically inviting you to join us for two gatherings to make connections, get inspired, and start building more justice and more hope in our world. Let’s gather, inspire, and launch social witness action! The two events will focus on four critical social justice statements. We affirmed and adopted these statements at General Assembly 2021, now let’s act on them!
“Undoing Systemic White Supremacy: A Call to Prophetic Action"
“Defend and Advocate with Transgender, Nonbinary, and Intersex Communities”
“Stop Voter Suppression and Partner for Voting Rights and a Multiracial Democracy”
“The COVID-19 Pandemic: Justice. Healing. Courage.”
Check out the complete list of fabulous speakers and details.
Alison and I cannot wait to gather with other UUs, bear witness to what each of our guests is doing, and share ways everyone can get involved in making justice a reality, no matter what our resources or bandwidth might be. We UUs are called to bring forth the beloved community as much as we can in this life. Let’s keep hope and justice going!
Paulo Freire wrote that “to do without hope, in the struggle to improve the world, is a frivolous illusion.”
How do we build hope? When we share our stories, move together for justice, and side with love we build hope! We know this and yet as co-chairs of the Commission on Social Witness, Alison and I have learned that hope is in short supply.
Folx are overwhelmed, and it’s no wonder! The sheer scale of challenges we face in our personal lives coping with the pandemic, and in our hurting world, is unprecedented.
Attacks on the transgender and gender nonconforming community, erosion of our basic right to vote, environmental crises leveling poor and POCI communities, and a global pandemic devastating folx who are already laboring in harsh conditions and lacking basic healthcare. We are all in need of some potent hope!
That is why Alison and I have created two hope-filled evenings - UU Social Witness Convenings on Oct. 6 & 13 - to gather together and side with love. We have invited 20+ speakers who are doing amazing work with inspiring organizations (including TRUUsT, BLUU, DRUUMM, ARE, UUJEC, UUSJ, State Action Networks in AZ and NC, the UUA Administration and Side with Love Organizing Strategy Team staff, and more) to come together, share stories of justice, and fill our hearts and minds with tangible ways to get our hope going!
We are enthusiastically inviting you to join us for two gatherings to make connections, get inspired, and start building more justice and more hope in our world. Let’s gather, inspire, and launch social witness action! The two events will focus on four critical social justice statements. We affirmed and adopted these statements at General Assembly 2021, now let’s act on them!
“Undoing Systemic White Supremacy: A Call to Prophetic Action"
“Defend and Advocate with Transgender, Nonbinary, and Intersex Communities”
“Stop Voter Suppression and Partner for Voting Rights and a Multiracial Democracy”
“The COVID-19 Pandemic: Justice. Healing. Courage.”
Check out the complete list of fabulous speakers and details.
Alison and I cannot wait to gather with other UUs, bear witness to what each of our guests is doing, and share ways everyone can get involved in making justice a reality, no matter what our resources or bandwidth might be. We UUs are called to bring forth the beloved community as much as we can in this life. Let’s keep hope and justice going!
Ivy creeps its way up a brick wall, sending out hairy tendrils that stick to any roughness in the surface. It branches out and grows longer. Slowly, it covers the wall with its lushness.
How can you send out tendrils of spirit to move yourself forward today?
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!
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
After incredible organizing and mobilization of voters for the 2020 election cycle, we caught a glimpse of what real democracy looks like. We not only witnessed the power of the people, we collectively claimed it. Next week the Freedom to Vote Act will be coming up for a vote in the Senate, to help us keep power in the people’s hands.
All around the country, there have been attempts - some successful - to restrict the freedom to vote for millions of Americans. These efforts to restrict voting rights strategically harm communities of color, young voters, disabled voters, and new citizens. The freedom to vote has never been fully realized in this country, and despite that we have organized for significant changes and wins. But we cannot stop there. Take action to support the Freedom to Vote Act today!
The Freedom to Vote Act is a bold and necessary move towards real democracy. It includes provisions that would expand equitable access to voter registration across the country, such as requiring automatic voter registration systems through state DMVs, access to online voter registration, and same-day voter registration at all polling locations by 2024.
Voting itself would become more accessible, with the requirement of at least 15 consecutive days of early in-person voting, no-excuse mail voting for all voters in federal elections, accessible drop boxes, an easy way to cure deficient ballots, and the inclusion of all provisional ballots for eligible races in a county
And the Freedom to Vote Act includes protections that prevent future efforts to restrict voters’ rights. It bans partisan gerrymandering and redistricting, reduces the influence of corporations or wealthy donors through increased disclosure requirements, and protects election officials from intimidation or undue influence by partisan poll watchers.
Friends, the Freedom to Vote Act is a reflection of our commitment to justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, particularly as it relates to governance and our responsibility to care for one another. And because of its promotion of real democracy, there are efforts in the Senate to block or defeat it. We cannot let the collective power of the people be denied. That’s why the timing for reaching out to our Senators now is so key. UUs are continuing to come together with organizers around the country to take strategic action to protect the freedom to vote, and we need you to:
Join a Meeting with Your Senator
UUs for Social Justice (UUSJ) in DC will be holding direct federal advocacy meetings with Senate staff on Voting Rights (both Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act) from the following states: Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. We need your help & will train and orient you! If you want to participate please fill out this form. If you are from Alabama, Alaska, or Arizona please email anna@uusj.org.
Phonebank to Voters in Arizona & West Virginia
Join Common Cause for one (or more!) of its daily phonebanks to voters in Arizona and West Virginia to advocate for the Freedom to Vote Act and an end to the filibuster that is preventing the passage of liberatory legislation.
Get Ready, Stay Ready!
We’re here to bend the arc for as long as it takes, and that means staying connected and supported. Stay tuned for an upcoming Pop-Up virtual event following the Senate’s vote on the Freedom to Vote Act next week, so we can sustain our spirits in the movement and plan our next actions!
We know that the moral arc of the universe is long, and that it bends towards justice. But it needs our hands, hearts, and faith to do so. You can take strategic action to promote and protect voting rights today, by showing your support for the Freedom to Vote Act as part of the long-haul movement towards real democracy.
I remember being at some protest outside the Senedd once, and someone introduced me to someone else, and said, "Stephen is an activist."I remember thinking - am I? I don't know. What does it mean to be an activist? Who gets to use that title? Am I an activist because I turn up at a few protests? Or do I have to be one them organising the protest to be an activist? Do I have to lead? Do I have to
At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.
– Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling before October
The original theory of the recall was that anti-Newsom Republicans would be motivated to vote, while Newsom-supporting Democrats would be apathetic. Republicans also hoped for a popular rejection of Newsom’s aggressive approach to fighting Covid (vaccine mandates for state employees and health-care workers). Neither of these ideas panned out. In particular, exit polls showed 47% saying Newsom’s coronavirus policies were “about right”, with another 18% saying “not strict enough”.
Bizarrely, both Trump and leading GOP replacement candidate Larry Elder claimed that the results were fraudulentbefore there were any results. The day before the election, Elder’s web site said
statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor.
as if the recall’s failure — and its vote-patterns — had already been known before any votes were counted. Former state GOP chair Ron Nehring called the statement “grossly irresponsible” and speculated that Elder’s claim may have discouraged Republicans from voting. (Why vote if the election has already been decided by fraud?)
The election threw a spotlight on California’s strange recall process, which can allow a replacement candidate to squeak into office with a tiny slice of the vote. For example, if we count all the No votes on recall as votes for Newsom, then Newsom has 6.8 million votes counted, while top replacement vote-getter Elder has only 2.8 million. It is not hard to construct a scenario in which a sitting governor has the support of 49% of the electorate, but gets replaced by someone with 25% support or less.
BTW, Elder’s total is being reported as 47%, but that’s only 47% of the people who voted for a replacement candidate. His 2.8 million votes is only 26% of the 10.6 million ballots cast.
The recall is an extreme example of the GOP’s nationwide election strategy: Rather than look for a 2022 candidate moderate enough to compete for a majority of votes in a California governor’s race, Republicans opted to manipulate a process that could allow an extreme conservative to gain power without a majority.
It was interesting how many California voters I spoke with at the polls said the Texas abortion ban motivated them to come out and vote against the recall of their governor.
Nationwide, the surge seems to be turning around, but the more specific story is that it’s shifting. The current wave started in the Ozark region of Missouri/Arkansas, moved south to the Gulf coast, and now has shifted northeast into the Appalachian region. The most dangerous part of the country right now is Kentucky/Tennessee/West Virginia, where new cases per 100K people are in the vicinity of 100, compared to 45 nationwide.
As a Northeasterner, I worry that the surge is still coming my way: The next likely destination for the wave is central Pennsylvania, where vaccination rates are still below 30% in some counties.
New-infection numbers are also high in rural counties in the mountain West and in Alaska, though their populations are too small to have much influence on the national totals.
Death totals, which tend to lag behind infections, continue to rise nationwide. That average is now over 2000 deaths per day. The peak death totals were around 3300 per day in mid-January, when hardly anyone was vaccinated yet. When you consider how many people are vaccinated now (54% of the total population, including 83% of the most vulnerable over-65 age group), and how effectively the vaccines have prevented death (New Hampshire reported this week that only 24 of its 413 deaths since January 20 have been fully vaccinated people.), it is scary to imagine how many deaths we’d be having if the Delta variant had hit before we had vaccines.
Previously, the Biden administration had been proposing that all recipients of the Pfizer Covid vaccine (like me) get a third booster shot at some point. Friday, a CDC advisory panel endorsed that idea only for people over 65 (me in another month) and those at special risk.
“It’s likely beneficial, in my opinion, for the elderly, and may eventually be indicated for the general population. I just don’t think we’re there yet in terms of the data,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, a vaccine and infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Boosters for the other vaccines are under consideration, but the data hasn’t been analyzed yet.
A poll by Fox News (of all people) shows the public getting behind anti-Covid measures like vaccine and mask mandates in ever-increasing numbers.
and a dress
Sometimes I agree with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and sometimes I don’t, but I am consistently in awe of her political talent. If you’re looking for traditional skills, she can give a speech or grill a witness with the best of them. But she can also tweet and troll and manipulate public attention in all the 21st-century ways.
The dress she wore to the Met Gala (an annual high-priced fund-raiser for the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) was one of the great political stunts. Ordinarily, the Met Gala is a contest in which celebrities dress up to compete for a fairly small amount of attention. (I don’t remember what anybody wore to previous Met Galas. Do you?) AOC didn’t just win that contest this year, she blew past the usual bounds of the event, so that people who ordinarily pay no attention to the Gala are talking about her. And she connected that attention to a popular political slogan: Tax the Rich.
You might be thinking: OMG, she walked into conservative criticism for hypocrisy. (I mean, what’s a socialist doing at a $35,000-a-ticket event anyway?) If so, you don’t understand the current political culture: In order to really command attention, you need to bait your enemies into attacking you in over-the-top ways that force your allies to defend you. That back-and-forth seizes center stage in a way that an unimpeachable statement never could. Trump pioneered the technique in 2016, and so reduced Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio to playing minor roles in his drama. Marjorie Taylor Greene has learned from the master, catapulting herself from obscurity to national prominence.
Among Democrats, only AOC seems to understand how this works. The Tucker Carlsons and Laura Ingrahams can’t get her out of their heads, so she can never be out of the spotlight for long.
BTW, she has good answers to the various questions that have been raised: Like other New York political leaders, she was invited to the gala and did not pay $35K to get in. The dress was borrowed from the designer, a woman of color, who also got significant positive attention from AOC’s stunt.
Finally, given all the attention paid to what women in politics wear, I appreciated seeing AOC turn that attention to her advantage. All those people who were going to stare at her butt anyway could stare at “Tax the Rich”.
An aside: Remember back in 2008 how Republicans went on and on about how hot Sarah Palin was?
and here’s a concept more people should know about
Disney Princess theology. This comes from Erna Kim Hackett’s essay “Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking About White Supremacy”.
White Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology. As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt.
For citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when studying Scripture is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society — and it has made them blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice. It is some very weak Bible work.
I am reminded of something a religious educator at my church once told me: Lots of articles tell you what you should do if your kid is being bullied at school. But hardly any articles address the possibility that your kid is the bully.
You can see a lot of Disney Princess thinking in the way some Christian churches have responded to Covid: Everything is a plot to oppress them, because they are the center of the Universe. Shutting churches wasn’t a byproduct of a reasonable effort to limit crowds, shutting churches was the point! If the government can send people door-to-door to promote vaccines, it can send them door-to-door to confiscate Bibles!
Why should American Christians imagine that anybody wants to confiscate their Bibles? (I have literally never heard anybody propose confiscating Bibles. Even the atheist equivalent of “locker room talk” doesn’t go there.) Because telling the story that way makes them the damsels in distress, when actually they are the villains preventing America from beating this virus.
and the Durham investigation finally produced an indictment
Thursday Special Counsel John Durham indicted Michael Sussman, a cybersecurity attorney for the Perkins Coie law firm. The indictment revolves around internet traffic that appeared to imply some back-channel between the 2016 Trump campaign and Putin-connected Alfa Bank. Sussman told the FBI about the traffic and its possible implications, which never panned out. (The Mueller Report, for example, doesn’t mention Alfa Bank.)
During his meeting with the FBI, the indictment says, Sussman claimed not to be representing a client, but simply providing the information as a good citizen concerned about national security. But Perkins Coie represented the Clinton campaign, and Sussman had billed time spent investigating Trump’s Russia connection. The indictment says Sussman lied to the FBI, and was in fact representing Clinton at the time, in an attempt to get the FBI investigating Trump. Sussman has pleaded not guilty; he denies that he said he was not working for a client, and claims he was actually representing a different client at the FBI meeting.
This, to put it mildly, is not the confirmation of some broad 2016 deep-state conspiracy against Mr. Trump that the former president apparently desired.
After all, Trump often said Durham’s counter-investigation of the Trump/Russia investigation would uncover “the greatest political crimes in the history of our country” and lead to indictments of Obama and Biden, not to mention high-level co-conspirators like James Comey. There’s no sign of any of that in this indictment.
Reading the indictment itself, I can’t decide whether Durham’s case is weak or he is just a bad writer. The indictment paints a picture of Sussman working with a tech-company executive and various others to research cyber-connections between Trump and Russia. It is clear that the people involved were doing opposition research against Trump. Some worked for the Clinton campaign, while others were acting out of partisan sentiment, without any professional interest. What’s missing is anything sinister: The researchers do not appear to have invented the Alfa Bank data, for example. The larger importance of what they did is also iffy: They gave the FBI a lead that didn’t go anywhere.
From Trump’s point of view, the ultimate goal of the Durham investigation was to show that the Trump/Russia investigation was a hoax from the beginning. This indictment does not do that.
What’s more, nothing Durham turns up could possibly do that, because Trump did in fact collude with Russia. His campaign manager (Paul Manafort) was passing confidential campaign information to a Russian agent. Manafort himself was a longtime contractor for Putin-connected oligarchs, to the tune of many millions of dollars. Roger Stone was involved somehow in WikiLeaks’ release of the Russian-hacked Clinton campaign emails. Don Jr. met with Russians to solicit Russian “dirt” on Clinton.
And the reason we don’t know more about these Trump/Russian channels is that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of them, not the least by signalling to Manafort and Stone that they could count on pardons, which they ultimately received.
and you also might be interested in …
The demonstration in support of the January 6 insurrectionists fizzled Saturday. CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas quipped: “More people showed up to my last garage sale.”
Russia had parliamentary elections Friday to Sunday, and Putin’s United Russia Party appears to have won. The opposition to Putin operated under severe constraints, with many opposition leaders in jail, the media effectively under control of the government, and numerous fake candidates running to split the anti-Putin vote.
The opposition compiled a list of the most viable challengers in every district, but of course the government did its best to prevent distribution. The saddest and most reprehensible part of this story is that Apple and Google gave in to Putin and removed an opposition app from their app stores.
We might be headed towards another debt ceiling crisis. Democrats don’t want to push a debt-ceiling increase through on their own, and Mitch McConnell is refusing to cooperate. Something has to happen before the end of October.
As I’ve said many times, having a debt ceiling separate from the ordinary appropriation process is ridiculous. If Congress approves a budget with a deficit, the Treasury should automatically be authorized to borrow the money to cover it. Allowing Congress the option to vote for a deficit but refuse to authorize borrowing, is like installing a big self-destruct button on the government.
America’s top gymnasts testified to the Senate about the FBI’s handling of their sexual abuse complaints against USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Nassar was eventually removed and went to prison, but only after a long delay, during which he continued sexually abusing female gymnasts.
General Kenneth McKenzie of the US Central Command admitted that a drone strike strike in Kabul on August 29 was a mistake, and that the ten people killed were not terrorists. It is a sadly appropriate ending to the US intervention in Afghanistan, given how many such mistakes we have made in the last 20 years.
A difficult but worthwhile read is “The Other Afghan Women” by The New Yorker’s Anand Gopal.
[T]he U.S. did not attempt to settle … divides and build durable, inclusive institutions; instead, it intervened in a civil war, supporting one side against the other. As a result, like the Soviets, the Americans effectively created two Afghanistans: one mired in endless conflict, the other prosperous and hopeful. It is the hopeful Afghanistan that’s now under threat.
Gopal introduces us to the Afghanistan of the countryside, rather than the cities.
Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, one of the ten Republican congresspeople to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, will not run for re-election.
His district, OH-16, is a convoluted construction southwest of Cleveland. It is reliably Republican, having been represented by a Democrat only two years out of the last 70. Trump got 56% of the vote there in both 2016 and 2020. Gonzalez himself got 63% of the vote in 2020.
I wish one of these Trump-resisting Republicans would stand and fight for his or her vision of the Party. Every time a Jeff Flake or a Bob Corker surrenders without resistance, Trump’s aura of invincibility within the Republican Party gets stronger. Every time somebody refuses to fight, it feeds the narrative that you can’t fight.
Words I never thought I’d write: Hang in there, Liz Cheney.
Every few days brings a new story of some anti-vax activist dying of Covid. I don’t think it’s healthy to focus on them or take too much satisfaction from them. But it’s useful to keep one in your back pocket in case you find yourself in a social-media argument with someone who thinks all the statistics are fake.
The web site sorryantivaxxer.com is a long series of such stories. I find it very creepy, and I would not advise hanging out there for long.
This week’s stereotype validation: Three Texas women attacked the hostess at a New York City restaurant when she asked to see proof of vaccination before letting them enter, as the current NYC rules require. They’ve been charged with misdemeanor assault.
The Instagram page “On Adventure With Dad” chronicles the activities of a Photoshop wizard and his two small children. If you’re not on Instagram, the portfolio is here.
Did General Milley take steps to prevent a coup or to participate in one?
On paper, the American chain of command is simple: The Constitution makes the President commander-in-chief. Typically, he exercises that authority through a civilian Secretary of Defense and a hierarchy of generals, but nothing about that is necessary. On paper, the President can give orders to any soldier.
That authority over the entire military is summed up by an LBJ anecdote: As he was preparing to leave a military base, President Johnson walked toward the wrong helicopter until a young officer stopped him, saying “Your helicopter is over there, sir.” Johnson is supposed to have replied, “Son, they’re all my helicopters.”
At any level of the American military, though, there is an exception for illegal orders. If a superior tells you to execute prisoners, for example, you can say no. But you can well imagine that the bigger the gap in authority, the harder that “no” would be. Could a private or a green lieutenant really say no to a president?
And that brings us to the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. According to accounts from CNN and The Washington Post of the still-unpublished published book Peril by Bob Woodward and Roberta Costa, Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley did two questionable things in the late days of the Trump administration. [1]
Milley made two phone calls (October 30, 2020 and January 8, 2021) to his Chinese counterpart to say that America was not planning an attack on China.
He instructed military officers not to execute any attack orders from the White House without consulting him.
Critics have a made a big deal about the China calls, but this appears to be fairly normal behavior in crisis situations. American military officers frequently cultivate personal relationships with their counterparts in other countries, and use those connections to smooth over possible misunderstandings. Politico reports:
A defense official familiar with the calls said … the calls were not out of the ordinary, and the chairman was not frantically trying to reassure his counterpart.
The people also said that Milley did not go rogue in placing the call, as the book suggests. In fact, Milley asked permission from acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller before making the call, said one former senior defense official, who was in the room for the meeting. Milley also briefed the secretary’s office after the call, the former official said.
Woodward and Costa write that after January 6, Milley ‘felt no absolute certainty that the military could control or trust Trump and believed it was his job as the senior military officer to think the unthinkable and take any and all necessary precautions.’Milley called it the ‘absolute darkest moment of theoretical possibility,’ the authors write.
Milley’s fear, I surmise, was that Trump would skip over the top military leadership and directly order some junior officer to take extreme (and possibly illegal) military action, which could be either a wag-the-dog foreign attack or a coup at home.
This apparently did not happen. But it was not an unreasonable scenario to plan for, especially given what was going on in the Justice Department, where Trump was going over the head of the Attorney General to push investigations and public statements in support of his stolen-election lie.
What Milley did, though, raises questions about civilian control of the military. Might the generals, at some point, simply refuse to obey presidential orders they disagreed with? And if those orders are illegal, or arise from “serious mental decline” (as the book says Milley believed about Trump), should they?
On paper, responsibility to protect the country from an insane or mentally incapacitated president lies with the vice president and the cabinet, who can remove the president via the 25th Amendment. No military officer plays any role in that process.
But what if they’re not doing their job? If you’re the person getting the crazy orders, does that responsibility fall to you, no matter what the Constitution says?
These questions point to a grey area in our system: If you believe that the train of constitutional government has already jumped its rails (say, because the president is planning or executing a coup), at what point do you take (or prepare to take) extra-constitutional actions yourself?
In recent years, too many leaders have succumbed to situational ethics, and the public has looked the other way when people considered those leaders part of their faction. Doing the wrong thing, even for the right reasons, must have consequences. Many people in the Trump administration — including me — resigned or were fired exactly because they did the right things in the right way. Milley may have done the wrong thing for the right reasons. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not deserve greater consideration for doing the wrong thing — he deserves greater scrutiny. As my friend and former Pentagon official John Gans tweeted: “You can break norms for a greater good, but that often comes with a price. Paying it is the only way to ensure the norms survive for the next time.”
That do-it-and-face-the-consequences path reminds me of my analysis of the ticking-bomb scenario. Remember? The Bush administration believed CIA agents should be able to torture terrorism suspects, because doing so might save lives if the suspect knew about a ticking bomb. The law, I wrote at the time, should never authorize torture in advance. In the unlikely event that an American official found himself in a ticking-bomb situation, and was certain that torturing a suspect would save many lives, the right move would be to break the law, and then confess and trust the mercy of a jury. Do it if you think you must, but don’t hide from the consequences. An official who isn’t willing to risk a jury disagreeing shouldn’t be torturing anybody.
Similarly, I think Milley should have made a full public confession as soon as the crisis had passed. (After Biden’s inauguration, say.) In a roundabout way, he has done this by talking to Woodward and Costa. [2] He will be appearing before Senate Armed Services Committee a week from tomorrow, where I suspect he will be asked a lot of questions related to the Peril revelations.
However, I think Republicans should approach this hearing carefully. At some point a Democrat might ask, “What specific behavior did you witness personally that convinced you that President Trump had undergone ‘serious mental decline’ after his defeat in the November elections?” Whatever else the hearing might uncover, the answer to that question is likely to be the headline.
[1] When you think about this story, you need to bear in mind how far we are from the root facts: The general public can’t even see the book until tomorrow. CNN and the WaPo are summarizing what Woodward and Costa report that various newsmakers told them. Even if you trust everybody involved, it’s still third-hand information.
[2] I am assuming the quotes attributed to Milley come from direct interviews.
It’s another week where many stories require more than a paragraph or two of attention: General Milley’s fears of what Trump might do in his final days in office, and the precautions he took; the California recall election; AOC’s dress; the Durham investigation’s first indictment; and whether or not the Covid surge is turning. Additionally, there’s the fizzling of Saturday’s demonstration in support of the January 6 terrorists, another anti-Trump Republican retiring, and a few other noteworthy things.
For that reason, there’s no featured post this week. I’ll put out a weekly summary around 11, and nothing else until next Monday.
In addition, the summary will include a brief introduction to the concept of “Disney Princess theology”, and close with a link to the Instagram page of a Dad who likes to appear to be endangering his kids.
Rev. Meg Barnhouse & Rev. Chris Jimmerson's sermon delivered on September 19, 2021. Revs Meg and Chris will talk together about resilience. What helps them be resilient? What helps you?
Watch the Service: To enable YouTube provided closed-captioning while viewing the service, click the “CC” icon on the bottom bar of your YouTube video player.
"Ganesh Chaturthi and the Need to Remove Obstacles" (September 19, 2021) Worship Service
Each year in India there is a ten or eleven-day festival to celebrate Ganesh, the Elephant-headed god who is playful but who also is famous for a particular kind of power, one we all always seem in need of summoning into our lives. Join me for some stories, images, and reflections on the power of ritual.
Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Sam King, Worship Associate; Puran and K.G. Singh; Unitarian Church Jowai; UUSF Church Choir, conducted by Mark Sumner
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Amy Kelly, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
A 12th-century Benedictine abbess, writer, poet, and composer, Hildegard had prophetic and mystical visions and is said to have been a miracle worker.How do mystical experiences fit into our UU faith?
Our prior guest speaker, Jenny McCready was married last month and returns to our pulpit today with a new last name, Jenny Amstutz.Jenny is currently serving as the minister of a small church in Littleton, Colorado, Columbine Unitarian Universalist Church, where she serves part time.Her part time schedule allows her to return to our pulpit.Jenny is the mother of five, ages 21 to 8 years and lives in Lakewood, Colorado, with her new husband Jason and a menagerie of pets.She is grateful to continue to be a visiting presence in our church and looks forward to a continued relationship with UCLA.
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.
If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next week’s service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book.
Have questions?While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator atoffice@uulosalamos.org.
MUSIC CREDITS
“Le Soir,” No. 1 from Deux Pièces by Louis Vierne. (Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.) Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“Gaudeamus Hodie (Let Us Rejoice Today),” words: traditional, music: Natalie Sleeth.(Nora Cullinan and Jess Cullinan, vocalists).Permission to stream song #61290in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
“Be Thou My Vision,” words: Ancient Irish, music: trad. Irish melody.(Wade Wheelock, violin). Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“I Am that Great and Fiery Force,” words: Hildegard of Bingen; music: Josquin Deprez; adapted by Anthony Petti.Guitar, vocals, and editing by Eli Sauls.Percussion by Benjamini.Video clips from Pixabay.Permission granted through the Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed).
“O Virtus Sapientiae” by Hildegard von Bingen.(Choir, “Sophia’s Journey” of Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO.)Song Public Domain.YouTube video used by permission of Rev. Keith Arnold, Jefferson Unitarian Church Minister of Music.
“Légende,” No. 2 from Deux Pièces by Louis Vierne.(Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.)Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“The Way,” text: unknown author, music: Nylea L. Butler-Moore. (UU Virtual Singers with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.)Used by permission.
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
Hildegard of Bingen: Scientist, Composer, Healer and Saintby Demi (Wisdom Tales, April 7, 2019)used with permission
Jenny McReady Amstutz, Guest Speaker Sue Watts, Worship Associate
Tina DeYoe, Director of Lifespan Religious Education
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Kathy Gursky, viola
Jess Cullinan & Nora Cullinan, vocalists
Wade Wheelock, violin
UU Virtual Singers: Kelly Shea, Nylea Butler-Moore, Rebecca Howard, Anne Marsh, Kathy Gursky, Mike Begnaud, & Skip Dunn with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar Rick Bolton, Mike Begnaud, and Renae Mitchell AV techs
This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at racial disparities in health care.
In just about every aspect of health care in the US, racial disparities are often stark.
Whether the inequities are present in access to care, in attitudes of medical personnel that impact the treatment of people of color, or in a lack of trust in the medical profession brought about how they treat people of color, the inequities are very real.
A reading to repeat a few times throughout your day:
To the refugee family seeking a safe place
For their children’s dreams, say:
I am with you in this.
To the trans teenager longing for a world
That accepts them for who they are, say:
I am with you in this.
To the black parents wondering when
Will the lives of their children truly matter, say:
I am with you in this.
To the lonely, the frightened, the dispossessed, say:
I am with you in this.
To the bullied, the battered, the broken down, say:
I am with you in this.
To the hungry and the homeless,
To the silenced and the shamed,
To the weary and the worried, say:
I am with you in this.
To all those for whom your
Disheveled heart is aching, say:
I am with you in this.
-Philip Lund
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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Even in the difficult days of the pandemic, the music has continued! The following selections were recorded by dedicated, gifted musicians and were used in online services of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos (NM). Concert premiere Saturday, September 18, 2021 @ 7 pm (mountain) on our YouTube channel or on our Live! page. All music is in the public domain; videos used by permission. Program developed by Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music. Production created by AV Engineer Rick Bolton, with posting help from AV Tech Mike Begnaud.
PROGRAM
Flute Sonata No. 5 in E-minor, mov. 2 Allegro, BWV 1034 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Heidi Morning, flute & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Suite No. 1 in G Major, mov. 3 Courante, BWV by 1007 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Ursula Coe, cello.
Violin Sonata No. 4 in D Major, mov. 4 Allegro, HWV 371 by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Wade Wheelock, violin & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Sonata in B-Flat Major by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801).Tate Plohr, piano.
Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, mov. 1 Allegro, RV 531 by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Ursula Coe & Dana Winograd, cellos & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Seligkeit (Bliss), No. 225, poem by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748-1776), music by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Nora Cullinan, soprano & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Romanza in C Major by Ferdinand Praeger (1815-1891). Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.
Mazurka in B-Flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1 by Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849). JeeYeon Plohr, piano
Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures), mov. I Nicht Schnell by Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Kathy Gursky, viola & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Lieder ohne Worte (Song without Words), Op. 38, No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). Yelena Mealy, piano.
Danses by Guy Ropartz (1864-1955). Anna Batista, oboe & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Opening & Closing Music: Excerpts from “Valse Impromptu” by Rustem Yahin (1921-1993). Yelena Mealy, piano.
Segues: Excerpts from Cello Concerto in C Major, mov. 1, Hob. VIIb:1 by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Anna Perlak, cello & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Today, a body meditation from Kathy Underwood, to the words of Gandhi. Do what of it you are able to do and what brings you peace and joy.
I offer you peace (arms outstretched in front of you with palms facing up) I offer you friendship (arms outstretch in front of you with hands clasped) I offer you love (arms crossed over chest) I see your beauty (touch eyes) I hear your needs (touch ears) I feel your feelings (hands touch chest) My wisdom comes from a higher source (arms reach up, palms facing up) I honor that source in you (arms outstretched in front of you, palms facing up) Let us work together (arms outstretched in front of you, hands clasped)
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 Saturday (18 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.
This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.
The group is free and open to all.
For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.
Prior to becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister in 2012, I served as a pastor in Progressive Christian congregations for nine years. Since I am now starting my tenth year of service at the UU Congregation of Frederick, Maryland, it occurred to me recently that I have now been a Unitarian Universalist minister slightly longer than […]
The following was in response to a query from a colleague who’s been asked to sit on a committee designed to address medical responses to fatness in elders. I answered way more than “The brief,” as they say on GBBO (and probably in British schools, though I don’t know). Thanks to Revs. Kate and Molly for the query and the typing up and cleaning up!
What do I wish medical professionals knew about being fat in a medical environment?
“1. Medical professionals WAY before you have treated us poorly, guaranteed. Dismissively. As though we’re lost causes unworthy of help with our overall health. One fat woman I know with a cyst on her breast has had three surgeons see her and walk out. One mumbled, “sorry.” None gave his name.
2. Stay in your lane. No, it is NOT the job of every medical professional of every rank and kind to either a. Ask us to lose weight, b. Ask whether we’ve ever dieted, c. Ask “Have you considered weight-loss surgery?” Consider before your speak how it is possible that we could not only live in this culture, but also be in a big body and NOT consider those things.
3. The most conservative numbers show that, at five years out, 85% of dieters have gained all their weight back. Of those, (raised hand) 40% will gain more than we lost.
4. We know that weight cycling, or “yo-yo” dieting, is significantly more damaging to health than being “overweight.”
5. In The Obesity Myth [transcriber’s insert: Paul Campos, 2004], the author looks at the numbers and discovers that those deemed “overweight” in fact have the longest life expectancy. (Though see BMI note below.)
6. Fat people can be orthorectic, anorexic, have binge eating disorder, or be intuitive and attentive to their bodies and therefore, healthful eaters.
7. Speaking of knees… a. YES, many more heavy people have BETTER outcomes than smaller people. b. Not only that, but why do you get to decide that our pain is immaterial, when you’d happily treat the pain of a thin runner? At what point does our pain matter to you? And furthermore, c. Risks are just that, risk. There are may reasons people do things. Many. And not one of them… not ONE (I am using the microphone for those who didn’t hear)… is because of laziness. Lazy should be excised from all our vocabularies.
8. Damn, I have many things to say on this topic. BMI was never intended to be an individual instrument of measurement, but rather a sociological statistical tool. It also correlates with (other) racist health care practices. Read Fear of the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings for more on this topic.
9. Paramedics, CNAs, nurses, transfer and transportation staff, interns, residents, and ATTENDING doctors need to have regular familiarity with or at least training in the pain management, wound care, movements, pitfalls (like areas for pressure sores), and the use of bariatric equipment all pertaining to fat people’s experience/needs.
10. Well over 85% of us have dieted at LEAST once in our lives. And yet the rate of success is so low… how would your reckon those as surgical odds?
11. I remember first being told, “You don’t need that,” by one of my aunts when I reached for a cookie at three or four years old. I was on my first diet in second grade. I now weigh 600 pounds, after well over twenty (at least) rounds at intentional weight loss and several prescriptions of psych meds. You do the math.
12. Some of us—like me—are like previously kicked and abused animals. We ASSUME we’re going to be hurt. So at the first sign of aggression we exhibit trauma responses BECAUSE WE HAVE LIVED THROUGH TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES. Ahem.
13. Gowns. Waiting rooms. Beds. Stretchers. Why do we have to call ahead, check in, be our own fat case managers? Gowns are too small — if they may be too small, tell us in advance to bring our own. If we even HAVE our own, given who has hospital gowns lying around? Waiting rooms MUST, that’s MUST have large chairs, love seats, and/or (ideally and) chairs without arms. Thin people who are occupying one of these should know to get up and switch seats when we enter the room. We shouldn’t have to ask.
14. Patisserie’s dozen. Interrogate the fact that the people who know best how to use surgical tools appropriate for the very fat among us are those who practice “bariatric”—that is, “weight loss”—surgery. They are those trained in the use of the longer instruments needed to address our bodies’ surgical concerns.
All surgeons—and other health care providers—need to stop blaming our bodies and start blaming your training and enculturation. (Wow, that last line sums up a lot!)
Good authors are Lindo/Linda Bacon, Lucy Aphramor, Ellyn Satter (especially for parents!),Sabrina Strings, and the founders of Be Nourished.
Last—the best way to keep your kids from hating their bodies is not to pour shame upon your own, Let us be kind. Even and especially to ourselves, no matter our size.
Nope, not last… this is last: being fat can be so hard, Why would you make it harder? People have already tried blame and shame and it hasn’t worked. We cannot hate our way to health on any axis. First, do no harm.”
Beloveds, hear me, ALL of us–we cannot hate ourselves or our bodies into anything good. When did hate make flowers grow? Tender, gentle, persistent compassion makes things grow and flourish. May we all shower ourselves with compassion, and so, then, make it our mission to learn about those different from ourselves, and thereby create a better world for our Descendants of Blood, Choice, or Spirit.
Blessings on you, my dears. Blessed be your bellies. Blessed be –
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.” -Kahlil Gibran
However your body experiences music, spend some time with it today. Feel the rhythm, move your arms, sway in time, hum or sing, or listen to the words of a song that connects you to something beyond yourself.
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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On September 14, we hosted “From #NoDAPL to #StopLine3: Water Protectors, Movement Building and Solidarity,” featuring a conversation with Michael “Rattler” Markus and the Rev. Karen Van Fossan.
We heard compelling testimony from both of our guests about the powerful organizing of the Water Protectors, the through-lines of movement organizing across time and space, the role of multinational corporations in violating treaty rights, and the impacts of our government’s ongoing criminalization of protest, free speech, and actions of conscience. We are so grateful for their wisdom and leadership.
Building on the energy and inspiration of last night’s storytelling, Side With Love invites you to use last night’s conversation as an on-ramp into the cycle of learning, growth, and action as part of our wide network of faithful organizers and activists.
Download the chat transcript, including conversation and links regarding the ongoing UU young adult-led push for divestment of the Common Endowment Fund
At the request of Michael “Rattler” Markus and the other #NoDAPL political prisoners, those of us on the call last night committed to a practice of writing letters to President Biden, urging him to pardon the five #NoDAPL political prisoners. Here is your step by step guide for honoring this request for solidarity:
Type or neatly hand write your own letter using dark ink on 8 ½ x 11” white paper. Letters should be addressed to:
President Joseph R. Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, D.C. 20500
Include the following points in your letter:
1) YOUR CONNECTION TO THE ISSUE: What motivates you to write about this issue? Situate yourself with context, such as:
I’m a person of faith who believes we are called to protect the earth as a sacred gift…
I’m a climate activist who has been personally involved in the pipeline struggles…
I’m an American citizen who is deeply concerned about the anti-democratic trend toward criminalizing the exercise of free speech through protest...
2) A REQUEST FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN TO ISSUE PARDONS TO:
Red Fawn Fallis/Janis
Michael “Little Feather” Giron
Michael “Rattler” Markus
Dion Ortiz
James White
3) WHY THIS IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO:
Our Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and assembly, and criminalizing protest is a threat to democracy. Water Protectors should have never been arrested, charged with federal crimes, or incarcerated.
Our Constitution is supposed to honor treaties with sovereign Indigenous nations, and the Dakota Access Pipeline--like Line 3, Keystone XL, and all pipelines--is a violation of treaty law that Indigenous people have every right to resist.
Our climate is in crisis, and the Water Protector movement is morally just. President Biden has committed to combating climate change, and should honor the Water Protectors’ leadership by pardoning these five political prisoners who were wrongly convicted for their witness.
4) Now organize your congregation or community!
Reach out to 10 of your friends, share these resources with them, and invite them to join you on zoom or in person (where safe) for a letter-writing party.
Recruit your congregation’s climate justice, racial justice, or social justice team to sponsor a letter writing party after services on Sunday, or at another time.
DONATE TO SUPPORT #NoDAPL POLITICAL PRISONERS
As we heard last night, the #NoDAPL political prisoners continue to experience the financial impacts of their trials and incarceration. Part of our ongoing commitment to solidarity is “leveraging our spiritual, financial, human, and infrastructural resources in support of Water Protectors, especially those who face ongoing charges and prison sentences, and their loved ones.” In that spirit, we ask you to make a donation to the UU Ministry for Earth’s #NoDAPL Political Prisoner Support fund, which will direct all contributions directly to the Water Protectors.
We’re so grateful to be in the struggle with all of you at the intersection of our shared work for climate justice, democracy, and decriminalization.
On Sunday, September 12th, hundreds of UU gathered for the launch of the new Side With Love Action Center: a place where we can ground, grow, and act together. As we move into this recovery, we cannot go back to normal. The Side With Love Action Center is a place to harness the power of our faith to contend with the systems of oppression that create multiple, intersecting crises. Our justice campaigns (Creating Climate Justice, UU the Vote, LGBTQ ministries and Love Resists) are joining together to skill up our commun ity, take action to advance our values, and build grassroots power to confront injustice on the national and local levels.
At the launch, our speakers Cherri Foylin (L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp), Aquene Freechild (Public Citizen), and Rev. Tamara Lebak (Restorative Justice Institute of Oklahoma), joined us to talk about how interlocking systems of oppression are impacting our communities and invited us into the work of building beloved community.
We know our battles and our lives are bound together. Let’s mobilize our folx across our justice campaigns to show up at this critical moment. With so much at stake, now is the time to build moral courage and stronger organizing capacity to win for our communities.
Members of the Congressional ‘Squad’ – including Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush – have joined together to call on President Biden to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. This action has elevated our call to stop Line 3. Now we need to continue this momentum and build more pressure on President Biden to act. Here are two ways you can help right now:
BREAKING NEWS! On Monday the Oklahoma Board of Pardons voted to make a recommendation to Governor Stitt to commute the death sentence of Julius Jones. A huge Justice for Julius interfaith and community rally was held after our Action Launch (Sunday, Sept. 12th) at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Oklahoma City.
Very soon there will be next steps and action to urge Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to listen to the recommendation of the Oklahoma Parole Board. Please check www.justiceforjulius.com/events which will be updated soon for how to take action on the Governor.
Oklahoma is ground zero for the restorative justice movement, see https://www.restorativejusticeok.org/ for resources, training, and ways to connect.
We had about a minute in, when, June? when we in congregations thought we were on the path to pandemic freedom. I don’t know about you but I definitely was imagining A Return To Normal Church.
The defendant insists that his liberty is invaded when the State subjects him to fine or imprisonment for neglecting or refusing to submit to vaccination … But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. … Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.
This week everybody was talking about Biden’s vaccine “mandate”
Which is not even actually a mandate; a company that isn’t a government contractor can avoid penalties by instituting weekly testing for its unvaccinated workers. Anyway, here’s what President Biden announced in his speech Thursday.
Federal employees and contractors have to get vaccinated to keep their jobs and contracts. “If you want to do business with the federal government, vaccinate your workforce.”
Workers at health-care facilities have to get vaccinated if the facilities receive government funds (i.e., Medicare or Medicaid). “If you’re seeking care at a health-care facility, you should be able to know that the people treating you are vaccinated.”
Even companies that don’t do business with the federal government (if they have more than 100 employees) have to mandate vaccines for their workers. Workers can claim a religious or health exemption, but if they do, they have to be tested for Covid weekly.
In all, about 100 million Americans will be affected by the order. If we assume that they’re typical of the total American adult population (about 75% vaccinated already), that would mean that 25 million unvaccinated Americans are now facing the options of (1) get vaccinated (and maybe save your own life); (2) get tested every week; or (3) look for a job at a smaller company.
Republicans, who in general have fought any effort to control the virus, were quick to denounce Biden’s move.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, for example, said the mandate was “tyranny” and “unconstitutional”. He charged that Biden was only doing it to distract attention from Afghanistan. (Because why else would an American president respond to a plague that had killed 677,000 Americans and was adding to that total at the rate of 3K every two days?)
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called it “dictatorial” and predicted “This will never stand up in court.” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was one of several GOP governors pledging to challenge the rule in court. When asked about these threatened lawsuits, Biden said, “Have at it.“
Assuming that the Supreme Court will uphold the laws and long-established precedents — always a dangerous assumption with this highly political court — Biden is on pretty firm ground.
The authority for the mandate comes from the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970 (which was signed by that flaming liberal Richard Nixon). OSHA has never been used to mandate a vaccine before, but gives the government broad powers to enforce workplace safety.
As to whether individuals have an inherent right to refuse vaccination, that was decided back in 1905, when Massachusetts (among other states) mandated a smallpox vaccine. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan (the greatest justice you’ve probably never heard of; among other claims to fame, he was the lone dissenter in both Plessy v Ferguson and in the Civil Rights Cases that opened the door for Jim Crow) reasoned that a community’s power to protect itself against an epidemic would violate an individual’s 14th Amendment rights only if it went “far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public”.
In order to prevail, then, a challenge would have to argue on fairly narrow grounds. Either:
Individuals have more extensive rights to resist a federal mandate than a state mandate.
OSHA’s sweeping grant of power to regulate workplace safety has an invisible vaccine exception.
Increasing vaccinations does not increase workplace safety, and is not a reasonable measure to protect the public from Covid.
OSHA itself is unconstitutional.
CNN reports that corporate America is actually pretty pleased with this government interference: Companies want a vaccinated workforce, but don’t want to appear heavy-handed. So they’re happy to demand vaccination and blame Biden for it. That’s why groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, who are knee-jerk opponents of all other government regulation, are on board.
Last week I was uncertain whether the new-case numbers were peaking, or if Ida had disrupted the statistics. This week confirms the peak. New cases are down 7% over the last two weeks, though deaths (which usually run two weeks behind new cases) are still increasing. New cases are averaging 145K per day in the US, and deaths are averaging 1648 per day. The total American death total since the start of the pandemic is up to 677,988.
I continue to be amazed at the reactions of people who resist vaccines and masking and anything else that might mitigate the spread. 677K Americans are dead, with three thousand more every two days. You’d think that kind of impact would justify a little inconvenience. But no.
The anniversary was Saturday. I noticed two main trends in the commentary. First, acknowledging again the human impact: the losses people suffered on that day, the long-term suffering of people exposed to whatever got into the air, and the heroism of people who tried to help others at great risk to themselves.
The second major trend was to take a step back and recognize just how badly we screwed up our national response. After 9-11, the public was united in a way it hadn’t been since World War II. The country wanted to do something, and even people who believed that George W. Bush hadn’t legitimately been elected the previous November recognized that he was the only leader available to rally behind. For the next year or two, President Bush could have done just about anything he wanted, if he could claim it had some reasonable connection to 9-11.
What he did, largely under the influence of Vice President Cheney, was to start two wars that were unwinnable because they lacked reasonable goals. American military power could topple the the Taliban and Saddam governments fairly quickly, but Bush and Cheney had no clear notion of how to replace them, or what they wanted out of the new governments.
Many of the prisoners from those wars wound up in a lawless zone in Guantanamo, where they were tortured in violation of both our treaty agreements and longstanding American values. Once introduced, torture spread to other US facilities. In addition, the US government claimed enormous new powers to spy on its own citizens, and even to whisk them into military brigs indefinitely by declaring them “enemy combatants”. Internationally, America claimed the right to launch attacks on the soil of any country where we believed terrorists were hiding.
Subsequent administrations could have reversed these policies, but didn’t (unless forced to by the Supreme Court). They could have leveled with the American people about how little we were accomplishing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but didn’t.
Carter’s absence is understandable. He’s 96 and has a variety of health problems. Also, his presidency ended two decades before 9-11, so he neither caused nor responded to it.
Trump took heat for not attending, and for marking 9-11 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, where he was a guest commentator for a boxing match. He did, however, address by video a Day of Prayer event on the National Mall organized by the Let Us Worship organization. Trump never tried to be the president of all the people, so it’s not surprising that he acts as ex-president only for crowds of his supporters.
Ross Douthat owns up to being part of a misguided post-911 consensus, and now sees the War on Terror as a 20-year distraction from our real foreign-policy challenge: the rise of China.
Kurt Andersen notes that the 20th anniversary of Pearl Harbor was not a big deal.
Paul Krugman recalls how willing Republicans were to exploit 9-11 to push an unrelated political agenda (“Nothing is more important in a time of war than cutting taxes,” said Tom DeLay), and how this foreshadowed the party-over-country trend that has characterized the GOP ever since.
After a week of speculation about how the Biden administration would respond to the law, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a lawsuit. (The text of the suit is here.) The approach AG Garland chose was to sue the State of Texas in federal court, seeking “an order preliminarily and permanently enjoining the State of Texas, including its officers, employees, and agents, including private parties who would bring suit under the law, from implementing or enforcing S.B. 8.”
Because SB8 specifically does what Supreme Court precedents say laws cannot do (substantially burden a woman’s right to choose an abortion before a fetus is viable), the suit says SB8 is “in open defiance of the Constitution”.
The United States therefore may sue a State to vindicate the rights of individuals when a state infringes on rights protected by the Constitution. … The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review.
The suit notes that while Texas executive-branch officials may not be involved in enforcing the law, Texas judges are.
while Texas has gone to unprecedented lengths to cloak its attack on constitutionally protected rights behind a nominally private cause of action, it nonetheless has compelled its judicial branch to serve an enforcer’s role.
And when private individuals file suit to enforce the law, they also become agents of the state “and thus are bound by the Constitution”. (One indication of their state-actor status is that the people who sue under SB8 can collect a payment even though they have not personally suffered damages. Clearly they are not suing in their private capacity.)
The suit also notes an impact on the federal government: Whenever a government program requires it to cover someone’s health care, the government might wind up paying for an abortion — and thus itself being liable for damages under SB8. (Job Corps, Refugee Resettlement, Bureau of Prisons, Office of Personnel Management, Medicaid, and Department of Defense are examples.)
AP reports that yesterday Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett “spoke at length about her desire for others to see the Supreme Court as nonpartisan”.
Maybe she should worry first about what she is, and then worry about how she appears.
Texas Governor Abbott was asked about forcing women to have their rapists’ babies, and he responded in ways that make it clear he doesn’t take the problem seriously: First, he claimed the law gives women “six weeks” to get an abortion, when most women will not know they are pregnant by then, and most pregnancy tests are unreliable until after a missed period. And then he went to Fantasyland:
Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.
So: Nothing to worry about, because there aren’t going to be any more rapes in Texas. Sadly, though, Texas had nearly 15,000 reported rapes in 2019 (the most recent numbers I could find), and some unknown number of unreported rapes. Abbott did not reveal his magic plan to eliminate rape, or explain why he has not implemented it during the six years he has been governor. And what will he do when accused rapist Donald Trump comes back to the state?
And so Abbott joins the long list of Republican politicians who have said stupid and/or heartless things about rape.
Probably no American historical figure has been as thoroughly mythologized as Lee, who in Southern hindsight became the great saint of the Lost Cause. The glorification of Lee was so extreme that in 1996 a biography was titled Lee, Considered because it claimed that the Southern general had never been realistically evaluated by historians. So “considered”, not “reconsidered”.
The two main points of contention are (1) Lee’s relationship to slavery, and (2) how good a general he really was. The first was discussed by Gillian Brockwell in the Washington Post. As for the second, Lee, Considered makes a convincing case that Lee was a brilliant tactician, but not much of a strategist.
As Rhett Butler explained in Gone With the Wind, the South went into the war over-matched in manufacturing capacity and potential manpower. So there were basically only two ways the South could have defeated the North:
A “bloody nose” strategy, where a quick Southern strike would convince the North that it didn’t really want to pursue this war.
A Fabian strategy that would avoid pitched battles, drag out the war, and frustrate the North’s desire for a decisive victory until its electorate lost patience.
But no matter how clever its generals were from battle to battle, the South couldn’t possibly win the kind of war Lee got them into: a multi-year war of attrition. Bad strategy. The strategy by which Grant ultimately defeated Lee was to stop worrying about his own casualties and focus instead on inflicting as many as possible. Grant understood that he could replenish his forces, but Lee couldn’t.
Connecting this note with the 9-11 retrospective: If Americans understood our own history, we would never have tried to remake Afghanistan. Even after the victories of Sherman and Grant, and a decade of military occupation, the North was never able to remake the South in its own image. Like the Taliban, the White supremacist aristocracy reestablished itself as soon as the Union troops left.
and you also might be interested in …
Tuesday is election day for the California recall. Polls on recalling Newsom were tight a month ago, but Keep now has a wide lead over Remove. Consequently, Republicans are already preparing to accuse Governor Gavin Newsom of fraud, because no elections they lose can possibly be legit.
Someday I want to hear their theory on how Newsom managed to coordinate this election fraud with all the polling operations.
Nate Silver does a quick analysis of the decline in President Biden’s approval rating. It corresponds to two events: the Afghanistan withdrawal and the rise in Delta variant cases. Like Nate, I think the Afghan situation will either fade from public attention or look better in hindsight. If this Covid wave is also peaking, Biden might bounce back, though Nate isn’t sold on that as a likelihood.
James Fallows describes efforts to rethink college rating systems. The traditional US News approach measures inputs: how accomplished students are when they enter college. It would be better to measure what students gain while they’re there.
In line with this week’s historical themes, an actual historian debunks the Molon Labe slogan favored by gun-rights extremists. After all, according to the story, the Persians did come and take the Spartan weapons, after killing the Spartan king and all his warriors. Persian casualties were likely larger, but Thermopylae was merely “a speed bump under the wheels of the Persian war machine”, which went on to burn Athens before losing the naval battle of Salamis.
Probably, though, the whole Thermopylae myth was Greek propaganda intended to spin a disastrous defeat as a moral victory. (The Alamo myth serves a similar purpose.) It persists today for a different reason:
[The pro-gun] right-wing fringe favors Molon Labe, and by extension the larger toxic myth of Spartan badassery, primarily because it dovetails with other ideas they favor—namely, the advancement of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim causes. … In the film version, a hunky 36-year-old Gerard Butler (the real Leonidas was 60 at the time of this battle) led a tiny, beleaguered force composed entirely of musclebound white men to defend the gates of Europe against a brown-skinned tide of decadent foreigners. This wildly false take on Thermopylae, and by extension Sparta, has become a constant reference point for right-wing fringe groups in slogan after poster after stump speech.
It’s easy to laugh at the conspiracy theorists. But our expert classes aren’t entitled to blind trust.
One common mantra among anti-vaxxers, Q-Anoners, ivermectin advocates, and conspiracy theorists of all stripes is that people need to “do their own research”. Don’t be a sheep who believes whatever the CDC or the New York Times or some other variety of “expert” tells you. If something is important, you need to look into it yourself.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of pushback memes. This one takes a humorous poke at the inflated view many people have of their intellectual abilities.
While this one is a bit more intimidating:
And this one is pretty in-your-face:
I understand and mostly agree with the point these memes are trying to make: There is such a thing as expertise, and watching a YouTube video is no substitute for a lifetime of study. In fact, few ideas are so absurd that you can’t make a case for them that is good enough to sound convincing for half an hour — as I remember from reading Erich von Daniken’s “ancient astronaut” books back in the 1970s.
Medical issues are particularly tricky, because sometimes people just get well (or die) for no apparent reason. Whatever they happened to be doing at the time looks brilliant (or stupid), when in fact it might have had nothing to do with anything. That’s why scientists invented statistics and double-blind studies and so forth — so they wouldn’t be fooled by a handful of fluky cases, or by their own desire to see some pattern that isn’t really there.
All the same, I cringe when one of these memes appears on my social media feed, because I know how they’ll be received by the people they target. The experts are telling them: “Shut up, you dummy, and believe what you’re told.”
They’re going to take that message badly, and I actually don’t blame them. Because there is a real crisis of expertise in the world today, and it didn’t appear out of nowhere during the pandemic. It’s been building for a long time.
Liberal skepticism. Because the Trump administration was so hostile to expertise, we now tend to think of viewing experts skeptically as a left/right issue. But it’s not. Go back, for example, and look at liberal Chris Hayes’ 2012 book The Twilight of the Elites. Each chapter of that book covers a different area in which some trusted corps of experts failed the public that put its faith them: Intelligence experts (and the journalists who covered them) assured us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Bankers drove the world economy into a ditch in 2008, largely because paper that turned out to be worthless was rated AAA. The Catholic priesthood, supposedly a guardian of morality for millions of Americans, was raping children and then covering it up.
Experts, it turns out, do have training and experience. But they also have class interests. Sometimes they’re looking out for themselves rather than for the rest of us.
More recently, we have discovered that military experts have been lying to us for years about the “progress” they’d made in promoting Afghan democracy and training an Afghan army to defend that democratic government.
It’s not hard to find economists who present capitalism as the only viable option for a modern economy, or who explain why we can’t afford to take care of all the sick people, or to prevent climate change from producing some apocalyptic future.
Such people are very good at talking down to the rest of us. But ordinary folks are less and less likely to take them seriously. And that’s good, sort of. You shouldn’t believe what people say just because they have a title or a degree.
If not expertise, what? So it’s not true that if you argue with a recognized expert, you’re automatically wrong. Unfortunately, though, recent events have shown us that a reflexive distrust of all experts creates even worse problems.
It’s hard to estimate how many Americans have died of Covid because we haven’t been willing to follow expert advice about vaccination, masking, quarantining, and so on. Constructing such an estimate would itself require expertise I don’t have. But simply comparing our death totals to Canada’s (713 deaths per 100K people versus our 2034) indicates it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands.
Our democracy is in trouble because large numbers of Americans are unwilling to accept election results, no matter how many times they get recounted by bipartisan panels of election supervisors.
The growing menace of hurricanes and wildfires is the price we pay because the world (of which the US is a major part, and needs to play a leading role) refuses to act on what climate scientists have been telling us since the 1970s.
Without widespread belief in experts, the truth becomes a matter of tribalism (one side believes in fighting Covid and the other doesn’t), intimidation (Republicans who know better don’t dare tell Trump’s personality cult that he lost), or wishful thinking (nobody wants to believe we have to change our lives to cut carbon emissions).
Which one of us is Galileo? The foundational myth of modern science (Galileo saying “and yet it moves“) expresses faith in a reality beyond the power of kings and popes. People who have trained their minds to be objective can see that reality, while others are stuck either following or rebelling against authority.
The question is: Who is Galileo in the current controversies? Is it the scientific experts who have spent their lives training to see clearly in these situations? Or is it the populists, who refuse to bow to the authority of the expert class, and insist on “doing their own research”?
Simply raising that question points to a more nuanced answer than just “Shut up and believe what you’re told.”
Take me, for example. This blog arises from distrust of experts. After the Saddam’s-weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, I started looking deeper into the stories in the headlines. Because I was living in New Hampshire at the time, it was easy to go listen to the 2004 presidential candidates. Once I did, I noticed the media’s habit of fitting a speech into a predetermined narrative, rather than reporting what a candidate was actually saying. Then I started reading major court decisions (like the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision of 2003), and interpreting them for myself.
In short, I was doing my own research. Some guy at CNN may have spent his whole life reporting on legal issues, but I was going to read the cases for myself.
When social media became a thing, and turned into an even bigger source of misinformation than the mainstream media had ever been, I began to look on this blog as a model for individual behavior: Don’t amplify claims without some amount of checking. (For example: In this weeks’ summary — the next post after this one — I was ready to blast Trump for ignoring all observances of 9-11. But then I discovered that he appeared by video at a rally organized by one of his supporters on the National Mall. I’m not shy about criticizing Trump, but facts are facts.) Listen to criticism from commenters and thank them when they catch one of your mistakes. Change your opinions when the facts change.
But also notice the things that I don’t do: When my wife got cancer, we didn’t design her treatment program by ourselves. We made value judgments about what kinds of sacrifices we were willing to make for her treatment (a lot, as it turned out), but left the technical details to our doctors. At one point we felt that a doctor was a little too eager to get my wife into his favorite clinical trial, so we got a second opinion and ultimately changed doctors. But we didn’t ditch Western medicine and count on Chinese herbs or something. (She’s still doing fine 25 years after the original diagnosis.)
On this blog, I may not trust the New York Times and Washington Post to decide what stories are important and what they mean, but I do trust them on basic facts. If the NYT puts quotes around some words, I believe that the named person actually said those words (though I may check the context). If the WaPo publishes the text of a court decision, I believe that really is the text. And so on.
I also trust the career people in the government to report statistics accurately. The political appointees may spin those numbers in all sorts of ways, but the bureaucrats in the cubicles are doing their best.
In the 18 years I’ve been blogging, that level of trust has never burned me.
Where I come from. So the question isn’t “Do you trust anybody?” You have to; the world is just too big to figure it all out for yourself. Instead, the question is who you trust, and what you trust them to do.
My background gives me certain advantages in answering those questions, because I have a foot in both camps. Originally, I was a mathematician. I got a Ph.D. from a big-name university and published a few articles in some prestigious research journals (though not for many years now). So I understand what it means to do actual research, and to know things that only a handful of other people know. At the same time, I am not a lawyer, a doctor, a political scientist, an economist, a climate scientist, or a professional journalist. So just about everything I discuss in this blog is something I view from the outside.
I don’t, for example, have any inside knowledge about public health or infectious diseases or climate science. But I do know a lot about the kind of people who go into the sciences, and about the social mores of the scientific community. So when I hear about some vast conspiracy to inflate the threat of Covid or climate change, I can only shake my head. I can picture how many people would necessarily be involved in such a conspiracy, and who many of them would have to be. It’s absurd.
In universities and labs all over the world, there are people who would love to be the one to expose the “hoax” of climate change, or to discover the simple solution that means none of us have to change our lifestyle. You couldn’t shut them up by shifting research funding, you’d need physical concentration camps, and maybe gas chambers. The rumors of people vanishing into those camps would spread far enough that I would hear them.
I haven’t.
Not all experts deserve our skepticism. Similarly, one of my best friends and two of my cousins are nurses. I know the mindset of people who go into medicine. So the idea that hospitals all over the country are faking deaths by the hundreds of thousands, or that ICUs are only pretending to be jammed with patients — it’s nuts.
If you’ve ever planned a surprise party, you know that conspiracies of just a dozen or so people can be hard to manage. Now imagine conspiracies that involve tens of thousands, most of whom were once motivated by ideals completely opposite to the goals of the conspiracy.
It doesn’t happen.
I have a rule of thumb that has served me well over the years: You don’t always have to follow the conventional wisdom, but when you don’t you should know why.
Lots of expert classes have earned our distrust. But some haven’t. They’re not all the same. And even the bankers and the priests have motives more specific than pure evil. If they wouldn’t benefit from some conspiracy, they’re probably not involved.
Know thyself. As you divide up the world between things you’re going to research yourself and things you’re going to trust to someone else, the most important question you need to answer is: What kind of research can you reasonably do? (Being trained to read mathematical proofs made it easy for me to read judicial opinions. I wouldn’t have guessed that, but it turned out that way.)
That’s what’s funny about the cartoon at the top: This guy thinks he credibly competes with the entire scientific community (and expects his wife to share that assessment of his abilities).
My Dad (who I think suspected from early in my life that he was raising a know-it-all) often said to me: “Everybody in the world knows something you don’t.” As I got older, I realized that the reverse is also true: Just about all of us have some experience that gives us a unique window on the world. You don’t necessarily need a Ph.D. to see something most other people miss.
But at the same time, often our unique windows point in the wrong direction entirely. My window, for example, tells me very little about what Afghans are thinking right now. If I want to know, I’m going to have to trust somebody a little closer to the topic.
And if I’m going to be a source of information rather than misinformation, I’ll need to account for my biases. Tribalism, intimidation, and wishful thinking affect everybody. A factoid that matches my prior assumptions a little too closely is exactly the kind of thing I need to check before I pass it on. Puzzle pieces that fit together too easily have maybe been shaved a little; check it out.
So sure: Do your own research. But also learn your limitations, and train yourself to be a good researcher within those boundaries. Otherwise, you might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
This week, Biden upped the pressure on vaccine refusers, and Republicans freaked out about it. The new-case numbers finally started going down. We marked the 20th anniversary of 9-11. The Justice Department started fighting back against the Texas abortion law. And a big Robert E. Lee statue came down in Richmond.
This week’s featured post, though, backs up a little to address a more general question: Whether or not ordinary people should “do our own research” on the issues of the day. It’s easy to shake your head at the people eating horse paste to guard against Covid and say “Obviously not.” But the issue is actually more nuanced than that. This blog, for instance, is an example of someone doing his own research up to a point. I don’t run my own clinical trials, but if I totally trusted mainstream journalists to turn my attention in the right directions, there’d be no purpose in most of what I do.
So “On Doing Your Own Research” is a bit more sympathetic to the populist view than you might expect. It should appear around 10 EDT.
The weekly summary discusses the developments mentioned in the first paragraph, with particular attention to the legal basis for Biden’s “mandate” order, and for DoJ’s lawsuit against Texas. I’ll also go off on historical tangents about General Lee’s weakness as a strategist, and the similarity of the Thermopylae and Alamo myths. Let’s say that posts around noon.
Rev. Meg Barnhouse's sermon delivered on September 12, 2021. How do we live into the second UU principle and practice justice, equity, and compassion in human relations? What does it look like to incorporate the vast variety of prayerful practices into our lives?
Watch the Service: To enable YouTube provided closed-captioning while viewing the service, click the “CC” icon on the bottom bar of your YouTube video player.
"New Eyes and Not Afraid" (September 12, 2021) Worship Service
This Sunday is this confluence of holidays and holidays and anniversaries raising the question not just of how we begin in the midst of ongoing challenges, but how people have always done so; even we ourselves did 20 years ago. We frame that exploration with music, special music, for the occasion. Come join us.
Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister; Richard Davis-Lowell, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, organist; Sarah Brindell, Guest soloist/songwriter; Bill Klingelhoffer, shofar; UUSF Church Choir, conducted by Mark Sumner
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Carrie Steere-Salazar, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
Turning sap into syrup takes attention and diligence and wouldn’t most of us agree it’s worth it? likewise, unfolding the meaning of our lives, sorting out one way of understanding for one that fits us better is a life-long undertaking worthy of our time and attention.
Rev. Linda Whittenberg is no stranger to us. She was a member here during the first years of Dale Arnink’s ministry and has visited to read from her several books of poems and to speak on numerous occasions. She has called Santa Fe home for 42 years, even during the years she served as minister in California and Washington. After her husband, Bob Wilber’s death in 2020, she moved to Colorado to be near her three children who all live in the Denver Area.
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.
If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next week’s service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book.
Have questions? While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator at office@uulosalamos.org.
MUSIC CREDITS
“Beau Soir” by Claude Debussy. (Kathy Gursky, viola & Yelena Mealy, piano). Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“O Life That Maketh All Things New,” words: Samuel Longfellow, music: Thomas Williams’s Psalmodia Evangelica, 1789. (Yelena Mealy, piano). Hymn Public Domain, video used by permission.
“What Wondrous Love,” words: American folk hymn, music: melody from The Southern Harmony, 1835. (Wade Wheelock, violin). Hymn Public Domain, video used by permission.
“Find a Stillness,” words: Carl G. Seaburg, music: Transylvanian hymn tune, harm. Larry Phillips (Nylea Butler-Moore, piano). Used by permission of the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association).
“Sicilienne,” Op. 78 by Gabriel Fauré. (Kathy Gursky, viola & Yelena Mealy, piano). Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“Romance” by Claude Debussy. (Kathy Gursky, viola & Yelena Mealy, piano). Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
“The Way,” text: unknown author, music: Nylea L. Butler-Moore. (UU Virtual Singers with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Used by permission.
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.
OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for September is Lutheran Family Services. 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
Rev. Linda Whittenberg, Guest Speaker
Felicia Orth, Worship Associate
Tina DeYoe, Director of Lifespan Religious Education
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Yelena Mealy, piano
Kathy Gursky, viola
Wade Wheelock, violin
UU Virtual Singers: Kelly Shea, Nylea Butler-Moore, Rebecca Howard, Anne Marsh, Kathy Gursky, Mike Begnaud, & Skip Dunn
Mike Begnaud, Rick Bolton, and Renae Mitchell AV techs
Today is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Many people around the world feel the trauma of this day in their bodies and hearts.
Many people, every day, carry pain from trauma with them. It is important to be gentle and kind with this pain. You did not cause it. You do not deserve it.
How can you be gentle and kind to yourself today? How can you recognize and honor the pain you are feeling?
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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This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at racial disparities in health care.
In just about every aspect of health care in the US, racial disparities are often stark.
Whether the inequities are present in access to care, in attitudes of medical personnel that impact the treatment of people of color, or in a lack of trust in the medical profession brought about how they treat people of color, the inequities are very real.
Please join us on Saturday (11 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.
This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.
The group is free and open to all.
For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.
In the midst of devastating climate change, the appalling stripping away of voting and reproductive rights, the criminalization of migration, and the state sanctioned violence of policing - it can feel as though we are powerless to stop the tides of oppression. But nothing could be further from the truth.
We are excited to have Aquene Freechild (Co-Director of Public Citizen’s “Democracy is for People” campaign), Rev. Tamara Lebak (Founder of the Restorative Justice Institute of Oklahoma), and Cherri Foytlin (Founder of the L’Eau Est La Vie Camp in Louisiana) sharing their wisdom and calls to communal action that will have an impact. And we will build our interdependent web of liberation within and between our congregations as we mobilize in intentional, relational, and sustainable ways.
We know you wouldn’t be here with us if you did not believe another world is possible, and that we have the power to make it come to life. As we organize and activate our campaigns for Climate Justice, Decriminalization, LGBTQ+ & Gender Justice, and Democracy & Voting Rights, we need you to bring your faith in that liberated world, and your commitment to moving us towards it.
Sunday’s Action Center Launch is a turning point, not just for Unitarian Universalists, but for our world. Today we face those tides of oppression together, knowing that we are rooted in something stronger, more powerful, and more true than their violence. Today, tomorrow, and every day after, we will build interconnected teams, take impactful action, and change the world with our collective love.
This past Monday was Labor Day. In addition to enjoying a three-day weekend, it is important to be mindful that Labor Day is about much more than a last bit of time off at the symbolic end of summer. The first Monday in September is also an invitation to remember and celebrate the labor movement’s […]
Whether we are online or in-person, one of the best gifts we can give is presence-being fully present with one’s self, one another, and open to the sacred, the mystery of life, the Holy. This month, we’ll explore various ways we can live our Unitarian Universalist faith more fully, while deepening our practices of presence.
The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is often celebrated with apples and honey, for a “sweet new year.” It is seen as a blessing to be able to partake in sweetness, and it evokes gratitude.
How can you bring sweetness into your life today?
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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On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the shofar, a horn made from a ram’s horn, is blown in synagogues around the world. It calls people to attention and wakes them up to the spiritual work that needs to be done to greet the new year.
What is the spiritual work you have to do? How can you wake yourself up to it?
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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It’s almost impossible to get your mind around how much is currently being sacrificed in favor of a Senate procedural rule that appears nowhere in the Constitution and emerged to buttress segregation.
The Texas abortion law could be undone if Congress passed the Women’s Health Protection Act. But it won’t, of course, because the WHPA can’t muster 60 votes to get past a Republican filibuster.
So we can add one more item to the bill America pays to maintain the filibuster. Similarly, all the hoops and hurdles Republican legislatures have put in the way of voting could be reversed if Congress passed the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, or some watered-down version of either bill. Even Joe Manchin claims to want to pass something to protect voting rights, but again, unified Republican opposition makes the filibuster an insuperable roadblock.
Filibuster defenders need to be challenged to answer: What victories balance all these losses? At what moment in American history was the Republic saved from a catastrophic mistake because some prescient minority filibustered? I don’t know of one.
and the growing Republican acceptance of gangsterism and violence
Thursday, CNN reported that the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection had asked telecommunication companies to preserve the phone records of a number of Republican congresspeople, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Notice: preserve, not turn over. If the committee eventually decides that it needs some of those records, it will presumably subpoena them. At that point, McCarthy et al might challenge the subpoenas in court, and I assume the companies will do whatever the courts tell them. All perfectly normal.
If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States. If companies still choose to violate a federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.
An appropriate response to this tweet might be: WTF? Or more specifically, WFL: what federal law?
McCarthy’s office has not responded to CNN’s request for clarification on what law McCarthy believes the telecommunication companies would be violating.
These cell phone companies, they better not play with these Democrats, because Republicans are coming back into the majority in 2022, and we will take this very serious.
When you warn people not to cooperate with investigators, or else — that’s pretty much the definition of obstruction. But for congressional Republicans, it’s just Tuesday.
If our election systems continue to be rigged, and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed.
He went on to say that he dreads “having to pick up arms against a fellow American.” Not that he wouldn’t do it, but that he doesn’t look forward to it. You don’t “dread” things that you know you aren’t going to do.
Cawthorn’s spokesman claimed he was opposing violence. But when a conditional threat is based on a lie, the result is just a naked threat. Democrats can’t stop rigging and stealing elections, because they haven’t done that in the first place. If I tell you I’m going to burn your house down unless your dog stops peeing on my lawn, and you don’t have a dog, then the bottom line is that I’m threatening to burn your house down.
Given that history and Cawthorn’s devoted Trumpism, the only conclusion to draw is that Cawthorn is regretting in advance all the Americans he will kill if his side loses again. If they lose, they will claim fraud again and get violent again, but with more bloodshed this time.
Forget going into these school boards with frigging data. You go into school boards to remove ’em! That’s what you do! They don’t follow the law! You go in and you remove ’em. I’m going in there with 20 strong men, I’m going to speak to the school board and I’m going to give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed.
No attempt to convince, no organizing for the next election, no petitions or marches or sit-ins. Just “20 strong men”. Increasingly, that’s how the GOP wants to handle things.
All across the country, there are reports of the Proud Boys joining anti-mask protests outside of schools and school board meetings. Explicit threats are often part of these demonstrations.
and the pandemic
I’m not sure I trust this week’s numbers. On the one hand, they follow the recent trend of slowing growth: New cases are up only 8% over the last two weeks, compared to last week’s 20%, preceded by 36% and 60%. On the other hand, the biggest drop is 51% in Louisiana, with even bigger drops in the coastal counties where Ida hit. It could just be that the hurricane interrupted testing and reporting of new cases. But if these numbers are accurate, we could hit a peak this week.
and you also might be interested in …
It’s weirdly ironic that Covid-related unemployment benefits are expiring on Labor Day.
My part of the northeast got some rain, but no serious flooding when the remnants of Ida blew through Wednesday night and Thursday morning. South of here, though, particularly in Philadelphia and New York, things got ugly, and more than 40 people died.
In addition to the abortion ban, Texas now has open carry of firearms, without permits or training. So if you want to shoot up a Texas school or shopping mall, you aren’t breaking any laws until you pull the trigger.
The anti-voting law that Texas Democrats delayed by leaving the state? It passed. Harris County is suing to keep it from being enforced.
You’ll be pleased to know that Rudy Giuliani reports that he is “not an alcoholic” and functions “more effectively than 90% of the population”.
Trump Tower is having trouble finding tenants, but it has one really reliable, deep-pocketed one: the Make America Great Again PAC that Trump runs himself. It rents a space that could accommodate 30 employees, but it only lists three, and they’re not there most days. The high-priced lease appears to be a simple way to turn donors’ money into personal income for Trump, but it’s all perfectly legal.
and let’s close with something explosive
I’ve previously closed with videos of elaborate domino constructions that fall in amazing and beautiful ways. An even more kinetic version of the same basic idea is the stick bomb. The elasticity of tongue depressors is used to store potential energy, which can be released in a chain reaction.
As you undoubtedly already know, the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the new Texas abortion ban, which took effect Wednesday. In brief, the law bans abortion after a “heartbeat” is detectable in the embryo, which happens (not really, but sort of, more below) at around six weeks. That’s usually before a woman knows she’s pregnant, so most pregnant Texas women will not, at any point in the process, have legal options other than carrying their fetus to term.
What makes this law different from dozens of other anti-abortion laws (that routinely get voided by the federal courts) is its method of enforcement: Abortion is illegal, but not criminal. No one is arrested or sent to jail. But private citizens can sue people (other than the pregnant woman herself) who perform or “abet” a post-heartbeat abortion. If they win, they get attorneys fees plus $10,000.
That enforcement method makes it tricky for a federal court to block the law. Ordinarily, a court would enjoin state officials not to enforce a law that violates established constitutional standards, but here Texas can say: “We don’t enforce it. Private citizens and the state courts enforce it.” Five conservative judges (three of them appointed by Trump) decided to take advantage of that loophole. So the law stands and abortion is effectively banned in Texas.
Much has been written about this situation in the last week, so rather than add another article to the stack, I want to organize what’s already out there. That’s why this post is a list of short observations rather than a single essay. In each case, I’ll point you to other sources that do the elaboration.
Let’s start with some basic references.
The law itself (Senate Bill 8) is here. It’s written for lawyers, and I don’t recommend reading it unless you’re really getting down into the weeds.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the request to intervene is only 12 pages, and is much more readable. The majority’s statement is barely more than a page. Chief Justice Roberts wrote a three-page dissent. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan also wrote dissents, each of which was co-signed by the other two. So the Court published roughly ten times as much material explaining why it shouldn’t have done this than justifying why it did.
Slate has a good FAQ about what the law covers and how it might be interpreted. Some of the issues will depend on what judges do, and even if the law is technically on your side, you still will have to respond if someone sues you.
The bill is named the Texas Heartbeat Act, but a six-week embryo doesn’t have a heart.
Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.
“When I use a stethoscope to listen to an [adult] patient’s heart, the sound that I’m hearing is caused by the opening and closing of the cardiac valves,” says Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN who specializes in abortion care and works at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The sound generated by an ultrasound in very early pregnancy is quite different, she says.
“At six weeks of gestation, those valves don’t exist,” she explains. “The flickering that we’re seeing on the ultrasound that early in the development of the pregnancy is actually electrical activity, and the sound that you ‘hear’ is actually manufactured by the ultrasound machine.”
Healthline.com says that at six weeks, an embryo is “about the size of a grain of rice”.
You might be wondering why anti-abortion activists lie so blatantly about this rather obscure point of biology (or perhaps how they can call themselves Christians while they do). Similarly, they make bogus claims about a fetus’ ability to feel pain at 20 weeks. Neither of these thresholds have any legal significance. (After all, farm animals have heartbeats and feel pain, but they are killed by the millions without any political backlash.)
What activists are trying to suggest with heartbeats and suffering is the presence of a human soul, which many of them say enters the embryo at conception. (In National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters writes: “That heartbeat should strike the consciences of anyone with an open mind about the morality of the issue.” Sorry, but that shot just goes right past me; I am neither engaged nor shamed by it.)
They may describe this theological speculation as “Biblical”, but in fact it is not, as I’ve explained before. In Catholic circles, this teaching was virtually unknown before the 1600s, and it didn’t become orthodox among conservative Protestants until after Roe. For Evangelicals, the politics motivated the theology, not the other way around.
In any case, one American’s theology does not bind other Americans, because the Founders very explicitly did not set up a theocracy.
Complete bans on abortion are not popular now, and never have been.
Gallup has been asking about abortion for nearly half a century, and the numbers have been remarkably stable. Less than 1-in-5 Americans believe abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances”, and that’s been true consistently since 1975. The split between those who want abortion legal in “any circumstances” or “certain circumstances” bounces around a bit more. Even that may not represent an actual change of opinion, but could correspond to a change in the circumstances that came to mind when the question was raised.
On the specific question of overturning Roe v Wade, public opinion has long supported leaving Roe alone. In 1989 the public was against overturning Roe 58%-31%, and the most recent survey was 58%-32%.
I sum up my reading of public opinion with a quip. Most Americans, whether we are conservative or liberal, have exactly the same opinion about both abortion and guns: “I am appalled by the sheer number of them in this country, and wish there were fewer. But if my family gets into some extraordinary situation and decides that we need one, I don’t want the government to stand in our way.”
The court majority is acting in bad faith.
The majority purports to be stymied by the complexity of the situation: No one knows exactly who will decide to enforce the Texas law, so how can they craft an injunction?
it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention.
you know that the conservative majority would not affirm this principle in general. There is zero chance that Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Thomas would offer the same deferential treatment to a formally identical California law designed to frustrate citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights by incentivizing civil lawsuits against anyone who gives away or sells or in any way aids or abets the possession or ownership of a firearm.
It is certainly within the Court’s power to reverse previous precedents and thereby reinterpret the Constitution. But the typical way for a reversal to happen is through the regular docket (known to lawyers as the “merits” docket): A case challenging the precedent works its way up through the federal courts. Through that process, the lower courts develop a body of publicly available evidence and reasoning. Then the Supreme Court hears lawyers for both sides argue the case, and interested third parties submit briefs supporting one side or the other. The justices withdraw for weeks or months to consider it all, and then a decision is announced, supported by a written majority opinion (which may be critiqued by dissents from judges outside the majority). When Brown v Board of Education reversed Plessey v Ferguson in 1954, that was the lengthy process it went through. (The original lawsuit was filed in 1951.)
A case challenging Roe is already on the Court’s calendar for this term. We should get a decision by June at the latest. If a majority wants to reverse Roe — and apparently it does — that is the proper way to do so.
One key virtue of the regular process is transparency: The Court’s power may be mostly unchecked, but when it does something, we at least know what it did and why. Five justices can’t just say “Do this” and go home; they have to spell out the new interpretation in enough detail that lower courts and the various levels of state and federal government know what the law is now. The Court’s reasoning is available for legal scholars to examine and criticize, and Congress knows exactly what it must do if it wants to achieve a different outcome.
But the Court also has what is called the “shadow docket”. Wikipedia explains:
Shadow docket decisions are made when the Court believes an applicant will suffer “irreparable harm” if the request is not immediately granted. These decisions are generally terse (often only a few sentences), unsigned, and are preceded by little to no oral arguments. Historically, the shadow docket was used only rarely for rulings of serious legal or political significance, but since 2017 it has been increasingly utilized for consequential rulings, especially for requests by the Department of Justice for emergency stays of lower-court rulings.
So, for example, you might ask the Court to intervene if a law was about to go into effect that would remove one of your previously recognized constitutional rights. If, say, you had to give birth to your rapist’s baby because all the abortion providers in your state had to turn you away, you might reasonably claim to face irreparable harm. The no-longer-viable clinics might also reasonably claim irreparable harm.
By not acting, the Court is basically announcing: “Not so fast about thinking you have a constitutional right.” It has made women’s rights evaporate without any kind of transparent process. Or maybe that’s not the Court’s intention at all. Who can say, when the majority barely wrote a page of explanation?
Chief Justice Roberts, who is usually thought of as one of the conservative justices, complained about this lack of process:
I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante—before the law went into effect—so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner. … We are at this point asked to resolve these novel questions—at least preliminarily—in the first instance, in the course of two days, without the benefit of consideration by the District Court or Court of Appeals. We are also asked to do so without ordinary merits briefing and without oral argument. … I would accordingly preclude enforcement of S. B. 8 by the respondents to afford the District Court and the Court of Appeals the opportunity to consider the propriety of judicial action and preliminary relief pending consideration of the plaintiffs’ claims
Translating from the legalese: If we don’t know what to do, we should freeze the situation as best we can until we have time to figure it out. But the other five conservative justices rejected that reasoning.
The Senate’s hearings on recent Supreme Court nominees have been a charade. The nominees lied, and the senators who credited those lies were either naive or complicit.
Numerous examples are possible, but the most ridiculous one was the 45-minute speech Susan Collins gave defending her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. For eight paragraphs she addressed “the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roev. Wade”, assuring the country that the constitutional right established in Roe “is important to me”, and extolling Kavanaugh’s reverence for long-established precedents.
Naive? Complicit? Hard to say.
The 6-3 conservative majority is the result of a system rigged to over-represent White rural voters. The Court’s current conservatism does not and never has represented the will of the American people.
Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Both of these institutions are rigged in favor of White rural voters.
Three of the current justices (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were nominated by Donald Trump, who was chosen by the Electoral College in defiance of the American people. (Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes, but won a 304-227 victory in the Electoral College.)
Sometimes Roberts and Alito are included on this list of minority justices, because George W. Bush also lost the popular vote in 2000. However, they were nominated in Bush’s second term, after he won re-election democratically.
Recent Republican majorities in the Senate have also not represented the American people. The principle that each state has two senators means that blue (and racially diverse) California’s 39 million residents have the same power as red (and almost entirely White) Wyoming’s 581 thousand. Combined with the successful attempt to stack the Senate by admitting tiny Northwestern states in 1889-1890, Republicans have a consistent structural advantage: For the last quarter-century, Republican senators have neither represented a majority of voters nor received a majority of votes, and yet they have held the majority of Senate seats about half the time.
This includes the term when Mitch McConnell refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, as well as the next term when McConnell and popular-vote-loser Donald Trump awarded that Court seat to Neil Gorsuch.
Senate Republicans use their artificially inflated numbers, together with the filibuster, to make sure the system stays rigged in their favor by denying statehood to (largely Black and urban) District of Columbia and (Hispanic) Puerto Rico.
Now that abortion rights have actually been lost, the Republican dog has caught the car.
Somewhere in Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway describes a bridge that is much desired but (precisely for that reason) can never be completed: As long as the bridge is in the future, corrupt politicians can raise funds to build it. But if it is ever finished, the money will dry up.
For decades, anti-abortion politics has been a similar scam, as David Frum explains:
Pre-Texas, opposition to abortion offered Republican politicians a lucrative, no-risk political option. They could use pro-life rhetoric to win support from socially conservative voters who disliked Republican economic policy, and pay little price for it with less socially conservative voters who counted on the courts to protect abortion rights for them.
That dynamic played out most clearly in 2016, when Trump dominated the anti-abortion vote, while pro-choice people assured each other that they could stay home or vote for Jill Stein.
But now, after years and years of warnings and an ever-increasing set of hoops women have had to jump through, abortion rights really are vanishing, even for women who are privileged in every way other than gender. If you live in a professional-class suburb of Dallas, and if your U of T freshman daughter gets roofied at a frat party and comes home pregnant, she either carries the baby to term or your family has to break the law — and maybe get sued.
If this possible impact on their lives means that the complacent majority will get riled now, the jig is up. That’s why national Republicans haven’t been spiking the football to celebrate an achievement they’ve been promising for decades.
Congress could fix this, if Democrats thought women’s rights were more important than the filibuster.
The Texas abortion law would be undone if Congress passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which reinstates the protections of Roe v Wade nationally. Speaker Pelosi believes she can get the bill through the House. It’s unclear whether all 50 Democrats in the Senate would vote for it. But a handful of Republicans also claim to be pro-choice — here’s a chance to redeem yourself, Senator Collins — so the bill should get a majority, if it comes to a vote.
But it won’t come to a vote, because of the filibuster. A woman’s right to choose is yet another price the country must pay for Senator Manchin’s and Senator Sinema’s attachment to this time-dishonored Senate tradition, because the WHPA clearly can’t muster a 60-vote supermajority.
The Department of Justice could also do something.
Law professor Lawrence Tribe explains: It turns out the country has previously faced the problem of states turning a blind eye to (or even encouraging) vigilantes trying to intimidate Americans out of exercising their constitutional rights. In that previous era, Congress responded by passing the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which is still on the books.
Section 242 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime for those who, “under color of law,” willfully deprive individuals “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” … In addition, Section 241 of the federal criminal code makes it an even more serious crime for “two or more persons” to agree to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” This crime may be committed even by individuals not found to be acting “under color of law” but as purely private vigilantes, as long as they’re acting in concert with others.
Tribe believes that using the KKK Act to protect abortion rights in Texas would be “in tune not just with the letter but the spirit the law”. He asserts that we have now reached the point where “the need to disarm those who cynically undermine constitutional rights while ducking all normal avenues for challenging their assault on the rule of law becomes paramount.”
Ordinary people can monkey-wrench the enforcement process.
If any pro-life folks think women’s-rights defenders are playing dirty, let me point out that so far no one is using the kinds of tactics the pro-life movement has long used against abortion clinics. No one is bombing their offices or threatening their workers with violence, because (unlike the pro-life movement) the pro-choice movement doesn’t have a terrorist wing.
As satisfying as monkey-wrenching might be, though, it probably won’t make much difference. Even if monkey-wrenchers make vigilante lawsuits harder to assemble, abortion clinics and other support services are already being shut down by the threat of such lawsuits, even if suits have not yet been filed.
Texas has made rape a viable reproduction strategy.
If you are a man who is unable or unwilling to convince any woman to bear your children voluntarily, you can still win the evolutionary battle to pass on your genes by committing enough rapes. Eventually you may wind up in jail, but your descendants will thank you. They will also thank the Evangelical Christians who paved the way for you.
The big news this week was the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’ abortion-banning law. This was a backhanded way to subvert Roe v Wade, and other red states are already moving to copy Texas. There’s a lot to say about this situation — legally, politically, and socially — and there is no shortage of people already writing about it.
With that in mind, I have decided to take this blog’s name literally and do some sifting. Rather than write a long essay of my own, I’m pulling together what other people are saying as concisely as I can. So the featured post will be “[N] Observations about Abortion, Texas, and the Supreme Court”. N is currently up to 12, and I think I may stop there. The post should be out shortly.
Restoring the Roe rights is now another thing Democrats could do, if not for the filibuster. The weekly summary will make a list of these costs of the filibuster.
The summary will also examine the growing number of examples of Republican leaders embracing gangsterism and violence, including Kevin McCarthy threatening telecommunication companies with vague consequences if they cooperate with the investigation of January 6, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s threat of “bloodshed” if elections “continue to be stolen”. (Since no elections have been stolen, Democrats can’t avoid this bloodshed by not stealing them. But they could avoid it by not winning, which seems to be Cawthorn’s point.)
Hurricane Ida ravaging the Gulf coast makes this week’s Covid numbers hard to interpret. (Reported infections on the coast are down, but what does that mean?) The summary will include a few other odds and ends, before closing with a more kinetic variation on the domino principle: stick bomb explosions. That should be out before noon.
We invite all who worship remotely to join us the second Saturday of the month. We will enjoy the fellowship of All Souls while we break virtual bread, renew old acquaintances, and make new friends.
Watch the Service: To enable YouTube provided closed-captioning while viewing the service, click the “CC” icon on the bottom bar of your YouTube video player.
"In Our Hands Is Placed a Power" (September 5, 2021) Worship Service
Welcome to our annual Labor Day service, where we celebrate the contributions to social justice by the labor movement both currently and historically. As has been true for several years now, we will be joined by members of San Francisco's labor union choir Rockin' Solidarity. Hard times have always been here for the vast majority of the world's population, but now all of us are at critical crossroads, and which roads we take over the next decade or two may determine the very survival of humanity. As we make these life-or-death choices, what can we learn from both the victories and defeats of organized labor?
Rev. Millie Phillips, Guest Minister; Wonder Dave, Worship Associate; The Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus, Pat Wynne, Director; Mark Sumner, songleader; Bill Ganz, pianist
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Carrie Steere-Salazar, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
“Now, anything that exists in history must have form. And the creation of a form requires power … not only the power of thought, but the power of organization and the organization of power.” Thus liberal religion rejects “the immaculate conception of virtue and affirms the necessity of social incarnation.” These words of James Luther Adams, the great 20th century Unitarian Universalist ethicist, describe one of his “five smooth stones” – basic principles of liberal religion that stand in place of elaborate theological doctrine. Labor Day weekend is the perfect time to celebrate in story and song the achievements of the U.S. Labor Movement – a powerful example of “social incarnation.”
The Rev. Dr. Suzanne Redfern-Campbell retired from active ministry in July 2018, having served Unitarian Universalist congregations since 1985. Her most recent full-time ministry was at the UU Church of Las Cruces, where she served five years as Developmental Minister. This past year, she did a two-month sabbatical ministry for the UU Fellowship of Fairbanks, Alaska. Sue came to ministry from the practice of law, and has served congregations in six states and one Canadian province. During her ministries, Sue discovered a passion for helping congregations in transition and is an Accredited Interim Minister. She landed in New Mexico after marrying her late husband, Chuck Campbell, on New Year’s Day 2012, and now lives in Albuquerque with a hyperactive rescue cat named Phoenix.
SERVICE NOTES
WELCOME!
New to our church community? Sign our guestbook and let us know if you’d like to get more connected.
If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next week’s service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book.
For more information on our church community, visit us on the web at http://www.uulosalamos.org or call at 505-662-2346.
Have questions? While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator at: office@uulosalamos.org.
MUSIC CREDITS
“Let Us Break Bread Together,” trad. spiritual, arr. John Carter. (Nylea Butler-Moore, piano). Permission to stream the arrangement in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
“De Colores,” trad. Mexican folk song. (Susan Gisler, vocals & acoustic guitar). Song Public Domain, video used by permission.
“One More Step” by Joyce Poley, harm. by Grace Lewis-McLaren. (Susan Gisler, vocals & acoustic guitar). Used by permission of the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association).
“Step by Step, the Longest March,” Irish folk song, words from the preface to American Miners’ Association Constitution (1861).Recorded for the Unitarian Universalist Society of Iowa City for its October 11, 2020 service. (Dave Rowe, vocals, acoustic guitar, & penny whistle and Stacey Guth, vocals). Used by permission of the UUA.
“Nine to Five” by Dolly Parton. (Nylea Butler-Moore, vocals & piano). Permission to stream BMI song # 1068031 in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770.
“We Will Not Stop Singing” by The Chapin Sisters (Lily & Abigail). Song copyright The Chapin Sisters, published by sad pony music and foggy mountain music (ASCAP). Arranged by Adam Podd, featuring the First Unitarian Brooklyn Choir (with Dennis Wees, Kiena Williams, Brandon Hornsby-Selvin, and Candice Helfand-Rogers).Audio and video editing and production by Adam Podd. Used by permission of the UUA.
“The Way,” text: unknown author, music: Nylea L. Butler-Moore. (UU Virtual Singers with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Used by permission.
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
* “Opening Words for Labor Day,” by the Rev. Megan Visser (used with permission)
* Meditation: “We Need One Another,” by George E. Odell (used with permission)
Photograph of Frances Perkins used with permission of the Frances Perkins Center.
* “Be a Pain” music and lyrics by Alastair Moock. Produced by Anand Nayak Recorded & Mixed by Andrew Oedel. From the album, “Be a Pain: An Album for Young (and Old) Leaders.”Video produced and directed by Wishbone Zoe, based on album artwork by Tom Pappalardo. Song Credits: Alastair Moock: lead vocals, acoustic guitar; Anand Nayak: electric guitar, background vocals; Paul Kochanski: electric bass; Scott Kessel: drums; Eric Royer: banjo; Jamie Walker: electric guitar; Sean Staples: background vocals; Kris Delmhorst: background vocals; Rani Arbo: background vocals; Mark Erelli: background vocals; Boston City Singers: background vocals.
Reading: “Guiding Principles for a Free Faith:The Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism,” from On Being Human Religiously, by James Luther Adams (Beacon Press, 1976) (fair use)
* Benediction: “Commitment,” by Dorothy Day (used with permission)
*permission granted through the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association)
OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for September is Lutheran Family Services.
100% of all offered this month will be given to our partner.
This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at environmental racism in the US.
Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign calls on us to end the silos that have so often been characteristic of the movement to remediate climate change and other social justice movements.
If we Unitarian Universalists truly believe in the interdependent web of all existence, we need to take a hard and honest look at how climate change along with all the related threats to our environment affect us all but affect most severely those who are already most marginalized among us.
All Souls Director of Religious Education Susan Caldwell will be setting up parent meetings at various times next week with the goal of offering convenient times for everyone to participate.
We want to hear what works best for your family as we start the year in religious education.
North Louisiana Interfaith is a non-partisan political organization made up of religious congregations, non-profits, and other institutions throughout Northwest Louisiana.
All Souls has been a member congregation since 2005.
Interfaith leaders work together on issues that most concern the people in our institutions which arise out of house meetings where we listen to each other’s stories.
We work on issues at the local level and statewide level through our affiliate organization Together Louisiana.
Two ways to donate:
Online — Go to our donation site using this link. If you are paying your pledge, select “2021 Pledges” and enter that amount for your pledge contribution. Then select “Collection Plate” to give the amount you would like to give to North Louisiana Interfaith. All online collection plate contributions for the month of September 2021 will go to North Louisiana Interfaith.
Offline — Please send your give away the plate contribution checks to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 9449 Ellerbe Road, Shreveport LA 71106. Please put “North Louisiana Interfaith” on the memo line of the check if you want to have 100% of this check go to North Louisiana Interfaith. If you want less than 100% of the check to go to North Louisiana Interfaith, please put the amount you want going to North Louisiana Interfaith on the memo line.
Melissa Lewis will be at the church parking lot this Sunday afternoon (5 September 2021) from 2:00 to 4:00 PM to collect food and other items for the Noel United Methodist Church Food Pantry.
Items requested this month are Jiffy cornbread mix, canned fruit (any kind), and cereal (both large boxes and single-serving assortments are welcome).
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.
In recent weeks, millions of people around the world have been displaced from their homes because of storms, floods, fires, and wars. We hold them in our hearts and together work for their survival.
What is displacing you from solid spiritual ground today? How can you find a stable place to recover?
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 Saturday (4 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.
This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.
The group is free and open to all.
For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.
WWUUD stream 
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