Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042134/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-26_Wasted_Effort.mp3

What do UUs hear at church on Sunday morning?

UU preachers have "freedom of the pulpit" meaning that they can preach on anything they want to. How do they decide what topics to cover? What are their objectives in choosing their topics and delivering their sermons? Is there any rhyme or reason or is it a local decision based on the preference of the preacher and what the preacher thinks the congregation wants to hear?

There is an interesting article in the New Yorker published on 10/07/21 entitled "What American Christians hear at church." which describes studies done of on line sermons both before and after the pandemic.

It is relatively easy to listen to UU sermons from various congregations because they are posted on-line on platforms like YouTube. The sermons range from poor to mediocre to excellent. In rating them what would be the criteria an evaluator could use? There are multiple criteria such as informative, entertaining, inspiring, etc.

The most important criteria is to what extent does the sermon promote the vision and the mission of the church?

The question of to what extent does the promote sermon the vision and mission of the church can be answered only if there is a clear vision and mission statement. The mission and vision of Unitarian Universalism is articulated in the seven principles that people covenant together to affirm and promote.

The prime mission of the church is to encourage acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. Using this as a criteria there are few sermons that encourage spiritual growth. It seems that UUs are much more focused on social justice and feel good psychobabble.

Given that preaching is the corner stone of worship, and in UU congregations so much of the preaching is off the mark, is it any wonder that the denomination is stagnant if not loosing members?

UUs don't even have a shared model of spiritual growth let alone resources that facilitate the development of it. This lack of shared model for spiritual growth is a huge deficit in Unitarian Universalism limiting its ability to carry out its mission and achieve its vision of achieving salvation for humanity.

Let's focus on models of spiritual development and then see to what extent sermons preached in UU churches facilitate it.

恒星币上涨18%
英为财情Investing.com – 根据英为财情 Investing.com Index的行情系统显示，星期四00:05 (16:05 GMT) 恒星币 交投于0.15054附近，上涨幅度达到17.90% ，这是 从2019年5月15日 以来 ，该币种获得的最大日涨幅。此次上涨推升 恒星币 的总市值达到 $2.85896B ，在加密货币总市值中的占比为 1.12% . 而 恒星币 市值此前在达到高位时为$12.12000B .在最近的24小时内， 恒星币 的价格维持在$0.13168 到 $0.16040 之间交投。在过去的7个交易日里， 恒星币 上涨了 62.18% ，其总市值出现了明显的 增长 。截至发稿， 恒星币 24小时内的总市值为 916.23557M ，在全部加密货币总市值中占比 0.74% .在过去的7个交易日里，恒星币 保持在 $0.0883 至$0.1604 间交投，该币种目前相较于其 2018年1月3日 的历史高值 $0.92，相差 83.64%.其他加密货币行情根据英为财情Investing.com的行情数据显示，比特币目前报$7,991.2，当前交易日 下跌0.05% .另外，行情数据同时显示，以太坊 目前报$273.62 ，增长了 13.37%.比特币 目前的总市值为 $141.30546B ，该币种目前市值在全部加密货币的总市值中占比为 55.59% , 于此同时， 以太坊目前的总市值为 $29.05616B ， 在加密货币市场中占比为 11.43% .

EOS 下跌12%
英为财情Investing.com – 根据英为财情 Investing.com Index的行情系统显示，星期日00:16 (16:16 GMT) EOS 交投于2.3697附近，下跌幅度达到12.17% ，这是 从2019年9月24日 以来 ，该币种遭遇的最大日跌幅。此次下跌导致 EOS 的总市值下降至 $2.3951B ，在加密货币总市值中的占比为 1.20% . 而 EOS 市值此前在达到高位时为$17.5290B .在最近的24小时内， EOS 的价格维持在$2.3697 到 $2.6972 之间交投。在过去的7个交易日里， EOS 下跌了 26.05% ，其总市值出现了明显的 下跌 。截至发稿， EOS 24小时内的总市值为 2.2342B ，在全部加密货币总市值中占比 2.80% .在过去的7个交易日里，EOS 保持在 $2.3697 至$3.4003 间交投，该币种目前相较于其 2018年4月29日 的历史高值 $22.98，相差 89.69%.其他加密货币行情根据英为财情Investing.com的行情数据显示，比特币目前报$6,967.1，当前交易日 下跌4.76% .另外，行情数据同时显示，以太坊 目前报$142.92 ，下跌 6.61%.比特币 目前的总市值为 $129.3899B ，该币种目前市值在全部加密货币的总市值中占比为 65.06% , 于此同时， 以太坊目前的总市值为 $16.0277B ， 在加密货币市场中占比为 8.06% .

以太坊上涨10%
英为财情Investing.com – 根据英为财情 Investing.com Index的行情系统显示，星期三00:10 (16:10 GMT) 以太坊 交投于173.41附近，上涨幅度达到10.43% ，这是 从2019年4月2日 以来 ，该币种获得的最大日涨幅。此次上涨推升 以太坊 的总市值达到 $18.11B ，在加密货币总市值中的占比为 10.28% . 而 以太坊 市值此前在达到高位时为$135.58B .在最近的24小时内， 以太坊 的价格维持在$160.99 到 $175.01 之间交投。在过去的7个交易日里， 以太坊 上涨了 21.86% ，其总市值出现了明显的 增长 。截至发稿， 以太坊 24小时内的总市值为 9.72B ，在全部加密货币总市值中占比 12.81% .在过去的7个交易日里，以太坊 保持在 $137.6818 至$175.0117 间交投，该币种目前相较于其 2018年1月13日 的历史高值 $1,423.20，相差 87.82%.其他加密货币行情根据英为财情Investing.com的行情数据显示，比特币目前报$5,046.4，当前交易日 上涨了6.25% .另外，行情数据同时显示，瑞波币 目前报$0.36239 ，增长了 7.17%.比特币 目前的总市值为 $88.13B ，该币种目前市值在全部加密货币的总市值中占比为 50.05% , 于此同时， 瑞波币目前的总市值为 $14.98B ， 在加密货币市场中占比为 8.51% .

Do you believe in magic or in love?

The understanding of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose. T-1.1.10:1

People love magic shows. They are mesmerized, enthralled, amazed, and entertained. When magic is used to induce belief in the characteristics of our Transcendent Source, though, it is questionable and an attitude of skepticism is appropriate and warranted.

In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step one, that we admit that our lives are often unmanageable and no amount of magic is going to set them right.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning and the use of magic may not be responsible.

Today, it is suggested that we attend to a shift in our perception and attention from the world of magic to the world of Spirit which is Love. Love is the miracle not magical powers in the world of the ego.

EOS上涨10%
英为财情Investing.com – 根据英为财情 Investing.com Index的行情系统显示，星期一03:50 (19:50 GMT) EOS 交投于2.4506附近，上涨幅度达到10.01% ，这是 从2019年1月14日 以来 ，该币种获得的最大日涨幅。此次上涨推升 EOS 的总市值达到 $2.2499B ，在加密货币总市值中的占比为 1.81% . 而 EOS 市值此前在达到高位时为$17.5290B .在最近的24小时内， EOS 的价格维持在$2.2183 到 $2.4547 之间交投。在过去的7个交易日里， EOS 下跌了 10.64% ，其总市值出现了明显的 下跌 。截至发稿， EOS 24小时内的总市值为 757.6369M ，在全部加密货币总市值中占比 4.43% .在过去的7个交易日里，EOS 保持在 $2.1987 至$2.9534 间交投，该币种目前相较于其 2018年4月29日 的历史高值 $22.98，相差 89.34%.其他加密货币行情根据英为财情Investing.com的行情数据显示，比特币目前报$3,648.6，当前交易日 上涨了4.58% .另外，行情数据同时显示，瑞波币 目前报$0.33198 ，增长了 6.12%.比特币 目前的总市值为 $64.9704B ，该币种目前市值在全部加密货币的总市值中占比为 52.28% , 于此同时， 瑞波币目前的总市值为 $13.7752B ， 在加密货币市场中占比为 11.08% .

以太坊 Geth 客户端开发者考虑移除对存档节点功能的支持
链闻消息，以太坊 Geth 客户端开发者 Peter Szilagyi 发推表示，考虑移除对存档节点功能的支持，在 Gas 越来越高的情况下，存档节点没有可持续发展的意义。Peter Szilagyi 在回复中表示也有可能采用一种混合模式，让用户有一个用于访问存档数据的全局数据分发层和自己的完整客户端，可以验证和证明数据是正确的。

Mike Adams

Continue reading "Reclaiming My Culture"

For many people, the practice of prayer is as important as the content of prayers. Spending time intentionally connecting with a force greater than yourself is a powerful way to remind us of our spiritual beings.

Practice prayer several times today. How does pausing for prayer change you?

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!

Continue reading "Writing a Limited Access Agreement"

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The 14th Dalai Lama suggests that “True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.” His Holiness teaches that the heart of compassion is to genuinely want for an end to suffering for all sentient beings. Many of the world’s respected religious paths have compassion as a tenet. We’ll explore some of these teachings this month.

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There have been at least 38 editions of the working people’s hymnal popularly known as the Little Red Songbook since it appeared in 1909.  Here is the story of those remarkable little books.

The Wobblies, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were always a singing union and from the earliest strikesand job actions after the union’s founding in 1905 music was a part of meeting, rallies, marches, and picket lines.  Nowhere was this truer than in the Pacific Northwest where early organizing drives among lumber workers who were often called timber beasts because of their ragged appearance and often near starving conditions. 

Unable to effectively get to remote logging camps, IWW organizers relied on street meetings in cities like Spokane,Washington to protest the job shark hiring agencies that dispatched men to the camps collecting fees from the ax men and employers alike.  They found that songs helped attract crowds for the union’s soapbox orators. When Salvation Army Bands were often sent to drown out the meetings workers would sing the old hymns with new words.

The Spokane local issued a song card featuring four selections in 1906.  The sold for a penny, but most were probably handed out for free at the street meeting.  The card featured already familiar labor songs and one original— Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock’s Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.  McClintock was a former Texas cowboy, harvest worker, and hobo who had become a lumber worker while also working as a musician in saloons.  The song was originally written in the 1890’s but was popular with all sorts of migratory workers.  McClintock also penned another popular Hobo song, The Big Rock Candy Mountain. 

The song cards were so successful that the localdecided to assemble and sell a small songbook designed to easily fit into a shirt pocket.  It sold for 10¢, not an insignificant sum in those days when a dime could generally buy a meal at Skid Road diners, but not a prohibitive one.  The first edition did not have the now familiar red cover but did have red lettering.  The songbook hit the streets in January of 1909 and was an immediate success. The book’s official title was a mouthful—Songs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles, and in the Shops – Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent.  Subsequent editions shortened that to Songs of the Workers and/or Songs of the IWW to Fan the Flames of Discontent.  Three editions were printed in Spokane over the next three years and were bound in heavy red stock, giving it the enduring nickname, The Little Red Song Book.  But that title appeared on only two of the subsequent 38 official editions.

Each new songbook added new songs like the labor standards The Red Flag sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum, the global Socialist anthem The Internationale, and the easily adapted Civil War song Hold the Fort.

When the Spokane local was under siege during aftermath the 1909 Free Speech Fight, issuing and printing new editions shifted to Seattle.  It was in an early Seattle edition that Joe Hill’s song The Preacher and the Slave was published in 1911.  Mac McClintock claimed to be the first to sing it at a street meeting because Hill was too shy to perform publicly.  

Joel Hägglund a/k/a Joseph Hillstrom and Joe Hill was a young Swedish born itinerate worker who had been involved with the IWW for a few years.  Several of his songs were added to editions of the Songbook including The Tramp,Stung Right, Where the River Frazier Flows, There is Power in a Union, Mr. Block, and Casey Jones Union Scab all of which have become labor standards.  Hill was famously framed on a murder charge in Salt Lake City, Utah.  While being held he was inspired by young IWW orator Elizabeth Gurly Flynn who worked tirelessly on his defense committee and who had visited him in jail to write The Rebel Girl.

After Hill’s execution by firing squad on November 19, 1915 his poem Final Will was included in all subsequent editions of the Songbook.  At least two later versions of the book were officially named Joe Hill Memorial Edition, including one issued by the Cleveland Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union 440 in the early 1950’s.  By popular demand later editions have also included I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson which was popularized by Paul Robeson and Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs’ long ballad Joe Hill.

Other notable early additions to the Songbook included Dump the Bosses off Your Back by John Brill.  Industrial Worker editor and commercial artist Ralph Chaplin’s rousing Solidarity Forever was included in a 1916 edition and has become the leading labor anthem of all time.  Chaplin’s illustrationswere also used on the covers of several editions.  The powerful We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years with words by an “Unknown Proletarian” and music by Rudolph Von Liebich appeared in 1919.

Somewhat surprisingly a song closely associated with the IWW’s 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike did not make it into the Songbook until 1984 although it appeared in the union magazine Industrial Pioneer in 1946.  James Oppenheimer’s Bread and Roses was first published as a poem in the American Magazine in December of 1911 shortly before the strike.  The mostly women mill workers adopted Bread and Roses as their strike slogan.  It wasn’t until the 1940’s that Carolyn Kohlsatt adapted the song to the melody most Wobblies still sing, although an alternative tune by Mimi Fariña in 1976 is gaining popularity.  In the 1970’s the song became a Women’s Liberation anthem as much as a labor one and it has even been included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

Production of the Songbooks moved to IWW General Headquarters in Chicago and resumed after the great post-World War I Red Scare sent most Wobbly leaders, including Ralph Chaplin, to prison.  The ‘20’s saw the appearance of another notable contributor, Matt Valentine Huhta, who signed is contributions T-Bone Slim including The Popular Wobbly, Mysteries Of A Hobo’s Life, and The Lumberjack’s Prayer.

Editions of the Songbook have also included labor songs from other sources notably Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid with an updated final verse by Nancy Katz, The Banks are Made of Marble by Lee Rice and popularized by the Almanac Singers with more contemporary lyrics added, Which Side are You On by Florence Resse, and the old British rouser The Black Leg Miner as sung by Billy Brag.

In 1995 the union issued an unusual “double tall” International Edition, one of only two editions to use the words Little Red Songbook on the cover.  In addition to most of the standard songs included more modern music and songs from around the world including songs in Spanish. It also included for the first and only time the full musical notationof each song.

Wobblies have continued to add new songs and adapted old ones, especially with more gender inclusive language.  Bruce “Utah” Phillips was the union’s popular balladeer, philosopher, storyteller, and inveterate agitator who died much loved and mourned in 2008.  His contributions to the book included Larimer Street, Starlight on the Rails, and All Used Up.  He also introduced the music from the Songbook to whole new generations. 

Other newer contributors include Anne Feeney,Scabs and Whatever Happened to the Eight Hour Day; Kathleen Taylor, The LIP Song and Soul Stealers; Goddard Graves, Go I Will Send Thee; Leslie Fish, Babylon Updated and Freedom Road; Carlos Cortez, Outa Work Blues; Darryl Cheney, Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees Are Gone and Who Bombed Judi Bari; and Tom Morello,Union Song.

Hell, even I made an appearance under the monikerThe Irish Cowboy with a rock & roll picket line song Roll the Hours Back and The Dark and Dreary Slum Where I Was Born, a take-off on Woody Guthrie’s Oklahoma Hills.

Utah Phillips gathered both touring and Chicago-based member of the IWW’s Entertainment Workers Industrial Union #630 for a concert performance at Holstein’s on Lincoln Avenue to record a long dreamed of “Little Red Record.”  Released under the title Rebel Voices in 1988 the record included performances by Phillips, Faith Petric, Fred Holstein, Bruce Brackney, Marion Wade, Bob Bovee, Jeff Cahill, Kathleen Taylor, J. B. Freeman, Robin Oye, Eric Glatz, and Mark Ross.  It is still available on CD or by Download.

In 2007 noted folklorist Archie Green published The Big Red Songbook which included 250 songs culled from the various editions of the IWW songbook.  In 2016 a new edition was co-edited by Green, labor historian David Roediger, Franklin Rosemount, and Salvatore Solerno with an introduction by Tom Morello, the Wobbly rocker of Rage Against the Machine andAudioslave, and a posthumous afterward by Utah Phillips.

Multiplatform – Outdoors and Livestreamed on Youtube, 9:30 am

This month, we’re talking about how to design a life worth living. Unitarian Universalism is a faith that knows we do not live for ourselves alone. Our theology is one of collective liberation and collective salvation. What ... read more.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042114/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzqR_XTUBhE&feature=youtu.be

“Each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life, and that gift is its prayer.”
-Douglas Wood

How do you add to the beauty of the world?

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!

A sermon for Foothills Unitarian Church, on our second Sunday in the sanctuary after being only online for 18 months.

Reading: The Tensions of I and We by Fred Muir

Near the end of my junior year in college, on the afternoon of the first Earth Day, I was in a class on American Transcen­dentalism. We sat in the grass and listened as the teacher read aloud Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address.” It was as though he was channeling the Sage of Concord, who was speaking to me.

After class, I asked what religion Emerson was. “Unitarian,” he said. I asked if it still existed. “Exist?” he replied. “Yes it exists! There’s a congregation on the west side. Do you want to go Sunday?” And that was that! 

Prior to my Earth Day epiphany, I was religious—I had felt the pull toward ministry as a boy in my liberal Protestant church—but did not think of myself as “spiritual” because I never had the words to put to the spirituality I had known since childhood. 

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature,” Emerson proclaimed. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Emersonian individualism has become part of the American story, of course. 

Think of the “i” that’s placed in front of the names of Apple products. Some say the “i” means “Internet.” Others explain that the “i” stands for “individual”: This is your personal piece of technology, to be used for whatever purpose you want. Fifteen years ago, Apple appealingly exploited the theme of individualism in a commercial that sounds like Emerson channeled through Jack Kerouac: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. They push the human race forward.”

Many of us were drawn to Unitarian Universalism because it seemed to be the church of Emersonian individualism. We are the iChurch. 

I’m not sure Emerson’s goal was for us to be “the crazy ones,” but my thirty-seven years in the UU ministry have convinced me that historian Conrad Wright is correct: “[O]ne cannot build a church on Emerson’s dicta: ‘men are less together than alone,’ or ‘men descend to meet.’”

For all its appeal and its influence in American culture, individualism is not sustaining: Individual­ism will not serve the greater good, a principle to which we Unitarian Universalists have also committed ourselves. There is little-to-nothing about the ideology and theology of individualism that encourages people to work and live together, to create and support institutions that serve common aspirations and beloved principles.

The inherent worth and dignity of the individual is not just our First Principle as UUs: often it is our defining principle. But we frequently overlook another strand of our tradition in our Association’s Principles and Purposes, another story about ourselves that can deepen and grow our future. It is not the language of individualism, not of the iChurch, but of covenant: “As free congregations we prom­is[e] to one another our mutual trust and support.”

We cannot do both covenant and individualism; individuality, yes, but not individualism. Articulating and living our Principles as a commitment to covenant—creating and sustaining a community by “promising to one another our mutual trust and support”—this takes extra effort.

Sermon

In the middle of July, as wild fires raged across the west, with drought and heat threatening major cities, and as the Delta variant created the groundhog’s day of weighing risks and precautions – right then, two different US billionaires launched themselves into space.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, whose net worth is over 177 Billion, took what CNN called a supersonic joyride on July 20^th – he and three others onboard were weightless for three whole minutes.  The 11 minute ride cost Bezos 2.5 million dollars per minute – so quick math – that’s a 27.5 million dollar joyride.

Just over a week earlier, Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, also launched himself into space, on his latest test flight for what will become a space tourism company – Branson says he wants to make space accessible to everyone – it’ll only cost you $250,000 a ticket.  With a net worth of over 4.4 billion, Branson was quick to point out to reporters after his flight that he doesn’t want to be known as a “billionaire,” since as he says, he started off with 200 quid (that’s about 270 bucks), implying, I guess, that his money changes nothing. 

A third billionaire, Elon Musk, is also working on a space tourism effort – SpaceX – but has yet to actually launch himself into space.  I’d say maybe he’s saving up, except his net worth is just over 150 billion.  So.  I don’t know.

Regardless of their intentions – and at least Bezos seemed pretty insistent that his were humanitarian – the spectacle of billionaires escaping the planet while the planet is burning and COVID was raging – was to many of us disgusting, and also just one more absurd reality we’ve been forced to witness over recent years. 

One of my favorite cynical tweet went: “Jeff Bezos, you have the ability to end world hunger. You also have the ability to take a teen to space. Which do you – oh that was fast.” 

Watching the whole thing play out, I kept wondering if these billionaires and their efforts to go to space – especially right now – represented the least UU thing ever, or the most. 

I mean, most Unitarian Universalists I talked to or saw posting about it treated it like it was the antithesis of our religion – focusing on how irresponsible it was, how selfish, and wasteful, especially in light of things like world hunger, or COVID, or climate change – and how much good their resources could do to address these major global problems.

And I agree, these are not Unitarian Universalists values. 

And, I also felt like, in their choices, you could see some of the roots of our faith. We too have had times where we have made scientific discovery the most important value – leading to a shameful history in eugenics. We too have been a part of colonization – leading to our equally shameful founding of boarding schools for Native Americans.And we too have prized the sort of rugged / Emersonian individualism Branson, Bezos and Musks’ stories epitomize. 

We too appreciate calling most sacred the law of our own nature, and trusting in our individual selves most of all.  “We are the iChurch.”

For a lot of us, discovering a religious community that encouraged individualism felt like freedom. It was for many of us, the thing that brought us here.  We love Emerson!

As UU Minister Cheryl Walker has said, “Individualism is so attractive in the beginning. For many people who felt the heavy yoke of being in communities of faith where they could not fully be who they were, individualism tastes like the food they have been hungering for. But it is good only when we are starving. When we have had our fill, we look for food to sustain us for the long journey of life. That life-sustaining food can be found only in true communities of shared purpose and values, where the individual is affirmed but is not worshipped.” 

Fred Muir first described Unitarian Universalism as the iChurch in 2012 in a Lecture to his fellow Unitarian Universalist ministers, entitled “From iChurch to Beloved Community.” Muir’s critique of the iChurch focused on what he called our “Trinity of Errors”(it’s funny because we’re Unitarians!). These three historic errors, in his estimations, prevent us from living into our potential impact and relevance, and will ultimately lead to our decline. 

The Trinity of Errors start with our individualism; then, this individualism leads us to the second error, exceptionalism.  As he says, “We must stay conscious of how we explain, defend, and share our perspective, lest we come across as elitist, insulting, degrading, and even humiliating of others.”

These two errors of the iChurch are co-equal with the third error: our allergy to power and authority, which he says, ironically has led to their abuse and misuse.  He writes:

“Unitarian Universalist anxiety about power and authority makes it hard for us to welcome and listen to a diversity of interests and passions without being distracted and immobilized.”

Instead, as Rebecca Parker notes, “Most liberals, consciously or not, seem to prefer that their religious institutions remain weak, underfunded, or distracted by endless attention to ‘process’ and checks on the exercise of power. One friend of mine, quips that liberal religion teaches you can do anything you feel called to do as long as you do it alone.”

In place of these errors, Muir advocates a return and reclaiming of our practices of covenant, as we heard in the reading, he invites us to “articulate and live our Principles” not as individual statements of belief – the inherent worth of any individual, but as promises to one another, a commitment to create and sustain a community, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.”

Instead of the iChurch, we need a church focused on we.      

2012 was the year I arrived at Foothills. So if this all feels familiar to many of you, I’m glad. Over the past 9 years, many of us have been trying to look intentionally at the ways Muir’s Trinity lives in our individual hearts, and in our collective practices. 

Of course, while Muir’s critique focused on Unitarian Universalism, we can also apply it to American culture, which has also been heavily influenced by Emersonian individualism. The story of the American Dream, or what UU minister Lisa Bovee-Kemper calls the “Fallacy of the American Dream,” which, “tells us that not only are we expected to succeed alone, but also that every person has the innate ability to do so.

[This lie, as Bovee Kemper says,] is the single largest contributor to the [fractured and declining] state of our nation (and many of our churches) today.”

That the state of our nation has been such a persistent pain point for many of us over the last five-ish years has likely been motivating to many of us: we can see the impact of extreme individualism play out with each new absurdity we have had to witness, including with the elevation and election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, who seems to me, the supreme example of a proud individualist. 

In turn, as a congregation, Foothills has met each selfish, ego-driven, divisive headline over these years with an increasing care for the whole.  We became a sanctuary congregation, we started our twice-a-month food bank, we moved to three services, we accepted different sorts of music, and different styles of ministers, and different words. We addressed unhealthy uses of authority, and got more explicit about how we intend power and accountability to work.  We grew up all sorts of small groups, and spiritual practices, and we have been shockingly generous with our giving – including to fund the building we’ve needed for at least 15 years. (By the way, we break ground early next year.) We practiced partnering and following the lead of other organizations, and we regularly give away $50,000 a year to other community partners.

To be clear, we did all of this not because it was good for any particular one of us – any “I”, we did it because it was good for we.

Actually, if you talk to any one of us, you will likely hear disagreement, discomfort, and even distaste for some or all of the shifts we have made.  And, if you keep talking past that, you will also tap in to a clear abiding yes, an understanding that we do this not for me, but for we. 

Something over these years clicked.  We got done with that lonely outdated story of liberal religion as a place where you can do anything you want, as long as you do it alone. We didn’t get rid of individualism – it is the water we swim in, and we still love Emerson, and we can still get seduced by the idea of being non-conformists who just always go our own way. But along side this, we also began to discover what it could mean to prize not individualism, but the Beloved Community.  

And then came Friday March 13, 2020. Will we ever forget that day?

On that day, everything, everything changed, and for a time, we – far beyond the church – I mean, much of the world, we were all in it together. We were flattening the curve, We were cheering for health care and other essential workers, and we were learning new terms like social distancing, unprecedented times, and the promise and perils of muting yourself.    

Our congregation’s collective orientation drew an easy yes to sheltering families experiencing homelessness in our otherwise empty building, and through much of 2020 kept us committed to remaining connected in totally unfamiliar ways.   We learned zoom and circles; we spread kindness and sang silent night; we gave to the discretionary fund and the immigrant relief fund.

In our personal lives, we set aside travel plans, learned tech we had no interest in learning, and we tried to listen to well-meaning adult children who told us to stay home. 

2020 was a time of sacrifice, and we accepted the sacrifice because it was meaningful. Even as politics and capitalism troubled the idea being all in it together, we made these choices because we were living our values. Through our collective commitment, we could imagine our collective salvation.

But then, things shifted again.  The vaccine arrived.  To be clear, the vaccines are a miracle, a miracle of science. They came way sooner than any of us had any right to expect – I think of my dear queer siblings who just kept dying through all those years of AIDS – Vaccines are a miracle.

And, vaccines do not work in the iAnything.  Vaccines require we.

Many of us got our vaccine knowing this, and it made our resolve even stronger – it was our individual and collective path to liberation. It’s what led us into the work of vaccine equity earlier this year. 

But then, to our shock, and our heartbreak, it turns out, others had the opposite reaction to the vaccine. For many people, the vaccine represented not collective salvation, but the need to assert individual liberty, and individual choice. And so, here we are, nine months into the availability of an extremely effective vaccine, but instead of dwindling virus numbers – we are crossing 700,000 lives lost. Nurses and doctors and other medical staff are burning out and dealing with trauma in ways not unlike veterans of war. And all this must be set in the context of the climate crisis, where the supremacy of individual success – the fallacy of the American Dream – is corralling us all to an uninhabitable planet.

But, at least the billionaires will make it out ok, right?

Friends, I’m tired.  Are you tired? I’m tired, and I’m angry, and I’m sad. Like the series we’ve been offering online, I am filled with rage, and grief – .  I am tired of accommodating selfishness, and being the one to make all the sacrifices. I’m tired of marching for women’s right to basic health care – as I’m guessing many of you did yesterday in response to the restrictions on abortion.

I’m tired of being the ones to go high.

I’m so tired I start to think, maybe it’s time we meet today’s individualism with some of our own – we were the OG non-conformists afterall. Maybe everyone should just go their own way.  Focus on their individual lives, families, health, individual goals – If you don’t get the vaccine, and end up sick, or worse, you made your choice.

In our exhaustion, and our grief, it’s understandable that we have lost some of our resolve for the common good.   It is understandable that individualism would feel alluring, safer, familiar – both in how we interact in the world, and how we want to show up in our church. It makes sense that we’d show up here, in our church, with a strong tilt towards individualism. 

We have made so many sacrifices. “Individualism, as Cheryl Walker says, “tastes like food we’ve been hungering for.” 

And still after some time – we will also remember that if ever there was a moment to lean into the power of true community, it’s now. 

For as much as we know that initial spark of being celebrated as an individual, we also know, we remember, the deeper power of being for others. We know and we remember the power of being for the greater good, and for the future.  

We know the power of living knowing that we Inter-are.  I am of you, and you are of me.  As Thich Nhat Hahn says it.

Here we know, and we remember: we do this so that we all may live. 

So let us affirm even now, especially now: the end of the iChurch. As Fred Muir said nearly a decade ago: “That story is over; it won’t take us where we must go.  What we need for a healthy future is the Beloved Community…”

And the good news I have for you friends, is that we’re already doing it.

Right now. Look, we are wearing these masks, and we are not singing, and we are pre-registering – who would’ve ever thought Unitarians would pre-register for church?

And if you ask any one of us, do we like it, is it our preference? We’d say no way.  We hate it.  But we do it because it’s not about me, it’s about we.

The aching earth and its hurting people need us to keep declaring the end of the iChurch, and needs us to keep offering a community grounded not in individualism, but in covenant, a community grounded in the the promise of mutual trust, and support – where– no matter what comes at us next – we remain committed to life abundant, for all.

CommUUne is a space for worship, for entertainment, for edification, and for connection.

The post CommUUne: Spiritual Nourishment, Purposeful Entertainment appeared first on BeyondBelief.

The Pandora Papers … mostly demonstrates that the people that could end the secrecy of off-shore, end what’s going on, are themselves benefiting from it.

– Gerard Ryle,
Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

This week’s featured post is “Pandemics Are Beaten By Communities, Not Individuals“.

This week everybody was talking about Congress

Some important stuff got done this week and other important stuff got delayed, but at least complete disaster was avoided for now.

in general, we’re still in the same situation I talked about last week: The public can see what has gotten done and what hasn’t gotten done. But the negotiations over the stuff that still needs doing are private, so we don’t really know what’s going to happen.

We’re talking about trillions of dollars and very important decisions, though, so everybody wants to know what’s going to happen. Consequently, commentators are speculating like mad. And that’s fine, as long as we all understand that none of us really know anything.

So I want to caution everybody not to get too spun up about Manchin and Sinema, or the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or the Democratic leadership, or President Biden, or whoever you plan to blame for whatever bad things you think are going to happen. Wait and see how it all comes out.

What got done was keeping the government running until December 3. The new fiscal year began Friday, and the government did not shut down. That seems like a relatively low hurdle, but with one of the major parties committed to sabotage, it was an accomplishment.

Beyond that, stay tuned. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns that she will run out of wiggle room later this month if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

The new estimate from Yellen raises the risk that the United States could default on its debt in a matter of weeks if Washington fails to act. A default would likely be catastrophic, tanking markets and the economy, and delaying payments to millions of Americans.

A bill to raise the debt ceiling passed the House but was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate last Monday. Mitch McConnell insisted that “Republicans are not rooting for … a debt limit breach.” They’re just not willing to vote to prevent one as long as a Democrat is president. Democrats did not act this way during the recent Republican administration.

And then there are the two infrastructure bills: the $1 trillion bipartisan one (which everyone is calling the BIF) that passed the Senate, and the $3.5 trillion one that Democrats want to pass via the filibuster-avoiding reconciliation process, but that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (and a few Democrats in the House) are still not supporting.

[Note: All these numbers are over ten years, so they’re not as big as they look. We’re currently spending over $700 billion a year on defense, but we appropriate it year-by-year, so we never end up talking about a $7 trillion defense bill.]

The Manchin/Sinema faction (which isn’t very big, but doesn’t need to be with voting majorities this small) was hoping to pass the BIF first, then talk about the larger bill. So far, House progressives (with President Biden’s support) have blocked that path. (Josh Marshall points out how strangely negative the NYT’s coverage of this has been.)

Manchin wants a smaller price tag, and wants programs (free community college, for example) to be means-tested rather than general entitlements. What Sinema wants is unclear.

While I admit to not knowing any more than the other speculating commentators, I remain optimistic. All Democrats must know that they face disaster in 2022 if they can’t point to meaningful accomplishments. And whether you’re progressive or moderate, and whether you face a re-election campaign or not, you have to understand that being in the minority sucks. (If Mitch McConnell gets control of the Senate again, no one will care what Joe Manchin thinks.) So I believe they will make something happen, though I can’t predict what it will be.

Unsurprisingly, Kevin McCarthy is lying about the infrastructure bills raising middle-class taxes.

and the pandemic

This week brought a sad milestone — the 700,000th American death — but also good news: a pill that can help you get well after you’ve been infected.

Friday, Merck announced molnupiravir. (Where do they get these names? If I’d seen that word without an explanation, I’d have guessed it was a Norse weapon like Thor’s hammer.) It’s new and hasn’t been approved yet, but the results from the trials look good.

The study tracked 775 adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were considered high risk for severe disease because of health problems such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease. The results have not been reviewed by outside experts, the usual procedure for vetting new medical research.

Among patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died at the end of 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those getting the dummy pill. After that time period, there were no deaths among those who received the drug, compared with eight in the placebo group, according to Merck.

The breakthrough is that it’s a pill people can take at home.

All other COVID-19 treatments now authorized in the U.S. require an IV or injection. A pill taken at home, by contrast, would ease pressure on hospitals and could also help curb outbreaks in poorer and more remote corners of the world that don’t have access to the more expensive infusion therapies.

“This would allow us to treat many more people much more quickly and, we trust, much less expensively,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the research.

Experts emphasize that the best way forward is still vaccination: Prevention is better than treatment.

And like every other way to fight Covid, Merck’s pill isn’t a guarantee: 7.3% of the people who took it in the trial wound up either in the hospital or dead. (Remember: They were chosen to be a high-risk group. Your odds might be better.) So it’s best to think of molnupiravir as part of a defense-in-depth strategy: Get vaccinated. Avoid high-risk situations (like packed-in indoor crowds). Take Merck’s pill if you get sick. And if you still have to go the hospital, get monoclonal antibodies or some other IV therapy.

The other good news is that the Delta surge really does seem to have passed its peak. In spite of hitting the 700K total, deaths per day have finally started to decline. After being above 2000 per day for two weeks, they’ve now fallen to 1878 per day. New cases are averaging 106K per day, down 28% in the last two weeks.

Strangely, the states where cases are still rising are nearly all on the Canadian border: Alaska is the worst, up 54% in two weeks, but cases are also rising in North Dakota, Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, and (just slightly) in New Hampshire.

This is weird because:

• Canada isn’t seeing a big outbreak. (Cases are down 3% in two weeks.)
• There’s not a lot of transit back and forth among our northern states. The Maine-to-Idaho region is not a thing.

New York City’s vaccine mandate is working. In spite of scary stories about thousands and thousands of teachers who would lose their jobs rather than get vaccinated, large numbers are getting vaccinated at the last minute.

If you’re old enough to remember the Tea Party anti-ObamaCare protests of 2009, the current anti-mask and anti-mandate protests should look familiar: School board meetings around the country are being disrupted now, the way that congressional town-hall meetings were then, by loud people who seem to represent a upswelling of grass-roots anger. The disinformation, the over-the-top accusations of tyranny, the air of menace — it’s all pretty similar.

Coincidentally, the same people turn out to be funding and organizing it on a national level. Once again, they’re providing the disinformation and the tactics that allow a relatively small number of folks to look like a national movement.

The letter sounds passionate and personal. … But the heartfelt appeal is not the product of a grass roots groundswell. Rather, it is a template drafted and circulated this week within a conservative network built on the scaffolding of the Koch fortune and the largesse of other GOP megadonors.

The template is being distributed by the Independent Women’s Forum. But who are they, exactly?

As a nonprofit, Independent Women’s Forum is exempt from disclosing its donors and paying federal income taxes. But the group, which reported revenue of nearly $3.8 million in 2019, has drawn financial and institutional support from organizations endowed by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and his late brother, David, according to private promotional materials as well as tax records and other public statements.

Tributes to sponsors prepared for recent galas — and reviewed by The Post — recognize the Charles Koch Institute as a major benefactor. Other backers include Facebook; Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway fortune and the husband of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and the Walton Family Foundation, a philanthropy controlled by the family that founded Walmart.

Another similarity to the Obama era: Patrician conservatives don’t care if their plebian followers die. Back then, Koch organizations campaigned to get people to refuse ObamaCare, even if they couldn’t afford health insurance without it. That campaign undoubtedly killed people, just like this one is killing people.

and the Pandora Papers

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has a new treasure trove of leaked documents outlining how the rich and powerful hide their money. You can think of this YouTube video as a trailer for the more detailed revelations that started showing up today on the ICIJ’s web site and in newspapers like The Washington Post.

I have a friend who’s been working on this project, but he’s been taking confidentiality seriously, so as of this morning I didn’t know any details.

but I want to tell you about a book

This week I read Forget the Alamo, which I found enormously entertaining.

The short version is that everything you think you know about the Alamo is wrong. The Texas Revolution wasn’t about escaping Mexican tyranny, it was about preserving slavery. Sam Houston’s army was seeded with American military “deserters”, who mostly went unpunished after they returned to their units. (That kind of resembles what Putin has been doing in eastern Ukraine.) The Alamo wasn’t a strategically significant battle where brave Texans voluntarily sacrificed their lives; William Travis just didn’t take Santa Anna’s advance seriously until it was too late to retreat. Davy Crockett didn’t go down swinging his rifle after he ran out of ammunition, as he does in the movies, but most likely surrendered and was executed. And so on.

In addition to the pure satisfaction of dispelling historical myths, the authors manage to take history seriously while still writing in an engaging style. Take this passage for example:

[Davy Crockett’s] arrival at the Alamo is one of history’s great juxtapositional flukes, as if Teddy Roosevelt or Mark Twain had darted onto the Titanic at the last minute.

In the early 1830s, Texas was where an American Southerner went after screwing up so badly that he had to disappear from somewhere else. So the backstories of all the major characters are fascinating.

After the battle, there’s the progress of the myth, which had an open field because there were no survivors to contradict tall tales. (“Ahem,” say Mexican soldiers.) What developed was what the authors call the Heroic Anglo Narrative, which served to terrorize generations of Hispanic Texan seventh-graders. (One Tejano compares “The Mexicans killed Davy Crockett” to “The Jews killed Jesus.”)

In addition to the historical detail, the book is a running meditation on the stories we tell each other, why we believe them, and what they say about us.

and you also might be interested in …

On my religious blog, I explained why “Male and female he created them” in Genesis shouldn’t be read as a divine establishment of binary gender.

The partisan hacks at the Supreme Court continue to be deeply offended that so many people think they’re partisan hacks. Samuel Alito, who continues to be my least favorite justice even after Trump’s three appointments, is the latest one to object.

Senator Whitehouse parodies Alito’s argument:

“Nope, just random that we churned out 80 partisan 5-4 decisions for Republican donors, opened dark money floodgates, crippled Voting Rights Act, unleashed partisan bulk gerrymandering, and protected corporations from court. Pure coincidence.”

Alito makes the bottom of my list due to his consistency. Other justices (Thomas, say) may at times have more bizarre opinions. But they also have ideological quirks that make them at least a little unpredictable. If you want to know where Alito will stand, though, you just need to ask three questions:

• Which side of a case increases Republican political power?
• Which side increases big business’ power over workers and consumers?
• Which side lines up best with Catholic dogma?

Unless those answers point in different directions — and they almost never do — you know what Alito’s position is.

Here in the US, we’re running into a few supply chain problems, but it’s nothing compared to what’s going on in the UK, where there is plenty of gasoline at refineries and terminals, but very little getting into people’s cars. The bottleneck seems to have something to do with all the truck drivers from various EU countries who went home after Brexit took effect.

Germany had a close election last week, and everybody is just moving on without lawsuits or riots or anything. Weird, isn’t it?

Bright red Idaho is the latest state to refute Trump’s Big Lie. A document circulated by My-Pillow-guy Mike Lindell alleged votes were switched electronically from Trump to Biden in all 44 of Idaho’s counties, and listed county-by-county what the vote totals should have been. (Why anyone would bother to perpetrate this fraud remains a mystery, since it didn’t come close to flipping the state.)

Idaho officials immediately noticed that 7 of their counties don’t have electronic vote-counting at any stage in their process, describing this as “a huge red flag” in Lindell’s claim. So they recounted the two smallest counties by hand, and found exactly the same number of Biden votes as the original count. (Trump lost a few.)

When confronted with this complete refutation of his claim, Lindell did the same thing the Cyber Ninjas did in Arizona: moved the goalposts to say that the problem was with the ballots, not the counting. “The ballots themselves are not real people.”

In spite of his somewhat snide tone, Ross Douthat makes an interesting point. From a 20-year perspective, liberals have been quite successful: Bush-style military interventionism is no longer popular, the push to limit and privatize programs like Social Security was turned back and reversed, and alternatives to one-man-one-woman sexuality are now widely accepted.

Conservative rhetoric seems to be timeless. I ran across this quote in the book Freedom: an unruly history by Annelien de Dijn (which I will say more about after I finish it). Cato the Elder, speaking in 195 BC in favor of an anti-luxury law that the women of Rome wanted to see repealed (because it specially targeted women’s jewelry), warned against allowing women to have a voice in government:

The moment they begin to be your equals, they will be your superiors.

We still hear that point today from every overprivileged class, directed at every underprivileged class. Whether the subject is women, people of color, non-Christians, gays and lesbians, non-English speakers, transfolk, or what have you, the message is the same: There’s no such thing as equality. So if men, Whites, Christians et al. stop being the masters, they’ll become the slaves.

In spite of Cato’s efforts, the Lex Oppia was repealed. But Rome never did become a matriarchy. In more than two thousand years of testing, Cato’s they’ll-take-over theory has never proved out. And yet we still hear it.

Alex Jones has lost two lawsuits filed by parents of children who died in the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones repeatedly charged on his popular InfoWars radio/YouTube show that the massacre was a “false flag operation”, and that the parents were “crisis actors” whose children did not die. In addition to causing the families emotional distress, Jones’ charges led some of his listeners to verbally abuse the parents or make threats against them.

Jones lost the lawsuits by default when he refused to cooperate with the court’s discovery process by providing documents, an action the judge described as “flagrant bad faith”. A jury will now determine the damages he owes the parents.

and let’s close with something musical

A commenter pointed out that last week’s closing wasn’t “recent” at all. The Helsinki complaint chorus video was posted in 2006, which I should have noticed. This week’s closing, “The Sounds of Starbucks” sounds like the result of a pandemic depression, but was posted in 2018.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042005/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/10-03-21-audio.mp3

We win by changing the statistics, not through an iron-clad personal defense.

Here’s what frustrates me most about the US struggle against Covid-19: the widespread attitude that rejects any partial solution, and instead demands a rock-solid personal guarantee. “If I do this and this and this, I’ll be OK.” And if that kind of assurance isn’t possible, then what’s the point?

Masks can’t offer that guarantee, unless you’re willing to walk around in a full hazmat suit. Distancing won’t do it unless you become a complete hermit. Vaccines allow breakthrough cases. Even the just-announced Merck treatment pill isn’t a complete cure: It claims to cut your risk of hospitalization in half, not eliminate it completely.

So what’s the point? No matter what I do, I’ll either catch the virus or I won’t. I’ll live or I’ll die.

The flip side of this binary attitude is a deep gullibility about snake-oil “cures”: I’m not worried about Covid, because I’ll just take hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. Or maybe I’ll prevent it by gargling iodine or something. Some guy on YouTube claims that always works.

Or maybe I’ll deny the problem completely: There is no virus. The panics at ICUs in states with low vaccination rates are all staged by “crisis actors”. Really, it’s all about government forcing us to wear masks and get shots. If they can do that, the global dictatorship is at hand.

All of this makes me despair about my former profession. I used to be a mathematician. Apparently we’ve done a really bad job teaching people how to think statistically.

You see, fundamentally an epidemic is a numbers game.

Maybe you’ve seen TV episodes where a deadly disease gets loose until a heroic scientist intuits a miracle cure: Some chemical everybody has in the garage or under the sink turns out to be a perfect antidote to whatever-it-is. You swallow a teaspoon of baking soda or something, and you’ll be fine.

The reason TV writers go for a that kind of scenario is that they need to wrap things up by the end of the hour. But it’s hardly ever how things actually work.

Maybe you’ve noticed that there’s an outbreak of Ebola in Africa every few years. One spilled over into the US briefly during the Obama administration, but they happen every now and then. The latest one was in Guinea, and it was declared over in June.

There’s still no reliable cure for Ebola. [1] And there wasn’t a vaccine until 2019. But they beat back the outbreaks — including the 2014-2016 outbreak that made it to the US — anyway. Plagues of all sorts get controlled somehow, usually without a cure.

It’s a numbers game.

So let’s talk about numbers.

During a surge in new cases, you’ll hear a lot about exponential growth, where the number of new infections doubles every so-many days: I get sick. I infect two other people. Each of them infects two other people, and so on. Before long, the ICUs are full and bodies are stacking up in the morgues.

Fortunately, though, the same dynamics can also get you exponential decay, where the number of new cases gets cut in half every so-many days.

The difference between the two scenarios can be subtle. If every 10 infected people give the virus to 11 more, you’re on an exponential growth path. But if they only give it to 9, you’re in exponential decay. [2]

That’s how a community can beat a virus without a rock-solid method of prevention or cure. So sure, masks and distancing don’t guarantee you won’t pick up an infection. Vaccination doesn’t guarantee you’ll shake it off, or even that you won’t pass it on. But if those tactics just change the odds a little bit — get those 11 new infections down to 9 — the community will beat the pandemic rather than lose to it.

That’s how we win.

Now we run into the second problem: It isn’t just that people don’t understand how to think statistically, often they don’t want to. We don’t like to think of ourselves as drops in a statistical ocean, because we are individuals. [3] The evil of modern society was summed up more than half a century ago in “Secret Agent Man“:

They’ve given you a number and taken away your name.

Conservative rhetoric in particular is tuned for me-thinking rather than we-thinking. [4] But pandemics are fundamentally statistical — they’re waves that pass through an ocean — and we beat them by acting for the common good, even if we can’t get an individual guarantee.

It’s not that you aren’t an individual, but the individualism/collectivism thing is kind of like wave/particle duality in physics. You are an individual, while simultaneously being a drop in the ocean. Whether your individuality or your membership in the community is more important depends on what question is being asked.

Pandemics are ocean-level challenges: You can’t create one by yourself, and you can’t solve one either.

We also have a bias towards all-or-nothing thinking about risk. Instinctively, we don’t want to manage risk, we want to nuke it. [5] We want to tell ourselves “Bad things can’t happen because I’m doing this” rather than “I’ve shifted the odds in my favor.”

While that kind of thinking is natural, it’s also something to be overcome, because it either incapacitates us or pushes us into denial. Every time I get into my car I risk dying in a traffic accident. I could just refuse to go anywhere, or I could deny the risk via some kind of magical thinking about my exceptional driving ability or the power of my St. Christopher medal.

Instead, I do what I can to turn the odds in my favor: I wear a seat belt. I drive carefully, and avoid getting on the highway when I’m tired or influenced by drugs.

Probably you do something similar. We know how to manage risk. We just need to do it. And if enough of us do it well enough, exponential growth turns into exponential decay.

[1] The FDA approved its first Ebola treatment in 2020. In the trial, only 33% of the people who got the drug died, compared to 51% in the control group. That’s what success looks like.

[2] I know that 11/10 isn’t 2 and 9/10 isn’t 1/2. But the weird thing about exponentials is that all the curves you get from exponents over 1 look one way, and all the curves from exponents under 1 look another way. All that changes is the scale on the time axis. In other words, the value of “so-many” in “every so-many days” changes.

[3] Except for that one guy in Life of Brian.

[4] Perversely, though, it’s often the do-your-own-research crowd that is most influenced by group-think.

Today, being pro- or anti-vaccine has become essential to many people’s social identity during the pandemic. William Bernstein, a neurologist and author of The Delusions of Crowds, pointed me to the “moral foundations” theory, which attempts to understand what motivates the decision-making of people on the right and left ends of the political spectrum.

That theory holds that, within the American right, the concepts of loyalty and betrayal are more influential to their worldview than on the American left. Staying true to your group is a powerful pull for conservatives.

“For these folks, facts mean nothing; membership and identity, everything,” Bernstein said over email. “Groupishness, in-/out-group differentiation … is much stronger on the right.”

That’s why not-getting-vaccinated or not-wearing-a-mask can become such a point of principle that people will lose their jobs or even get violent rather than comply: It’s not just the inconvenience or the relatively minor risk; it’s betraying the group they feel loyal to.

[5] The scholarly name for this is “zero-risk bias“. If you ask people what they’d be willing to pay to eliminate some low-probability high-impact risk (like toxic waste contamination in their neighborhood or a radiation leak in a nearby nuclear power plant), you’ll get one number. But if you ask what they’d be willing to pay to cut that risk in half, you’ll get a number close to zero.

People don’t want risks to shrink. They want them to go away.

It’s been a week of good news and bad news. The government didn’t shut down, but the debt ceiling is still hanging overhead, threatening a self-inflicted disaster in about two weeks. Neither infrastructure bill passed by the deadline that had been set for it, but the deadlines got extended and negotiations continue. The 700,000th American died of Covid, but a promising new treatment got announced.

There is a certain amount of water in your glass. How do you feel about it?

The featured post this week is something I’ve been meaning to say for a while. My background in mathematics for once has some relevance to a major issue: Whether we beat the pandemic or not balances on the knife-edge difference between exponential growth and exponential decay. If every 10 infected people infect 11 more, we have exponential growth. If they infect 9, exponential decay. Once you grasp that, you see the importance of tactics that change the odds — like masks and vaccines — even if they don’t guarantee your individual well-being.

That post is called “Pandemics Are Beaten By Communities, Not Individuals”. It should be out between 9 and 10 EDT.

As for the weekly summary, the focus this week is on Congress, and we’re still in the situation I outlined last week: We all desperately want to know what’s going to happen, but we just don’t. For what little it’s worth, I remain optimistic. At least the government didn’t shut down.

Elsewhere: the Covid numbers continue to turn around. The vaccine mandates are working. Alex Jones is going to have to pay the Sandy Hook parents. And I enjoyed the new book about the Alamo. The summary should be out around noon.

If you would have Love you must let go of the things of the ego.

Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.” T-1.1.7:1

The miracle is a shift in perception from the world of the ego to the world of the Spirit. This shift is everyone’s right, but for it to occur two things have to happen; First the person has to know that there is a choice between ego and Love and secondly, a person can’t have both. If the person would have Love they must purify their mind by letting go of the ego.

In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step three, that we make a decision to turn our willfulness over to the care of God as we understand God.

In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search requires a letting go as much as a curiosity about our Transcendent Source. All the major world religions teach that we can’t have both. It is this letting go of the things of the ego which the Course names “purification.”

Today, it is suggested that we purify our minds by forgiving all the people and circumstances that we hold responsible for our unhappiness. It is time for us to experience miracles.

The morning of October 5, 1957 Americans woke up to news that shocked and frightenedthem. Late the previous evening—about 11:30 October 4 Eastern Standard Time—the Soviet Union successfully placed a man-made object into earth orbit.  Two objects, actually—a shiny metal ball about 23 inches in diameter with four whip antennae weighing just over 180 pounds, and the protective rocket nose cone from which it had separated when it reach orbital Space.

The ball, Sputnik 1 was essentially a simple radio transmitter encased in a polished aluminum-magnesium-titanium alloy heat shield made in two hemispheresbolted together and sealed with an O-ring.  Its four antennae broadcast simple repeated beeps alternatingly on two broadcast bandsthat could easily be monitored across the globe by HAM radio operators.  An hour after launch, after determining that it had completed one low earth elliptical orbit Soviet authorities had announced their achievement and released information on how radio transmissions could be monitoredand how the artificial moon might be observed from Earth.  Actually only the nose cone was large enough to reflect enough light to be seen from earth by the unaided eye.  The transmitting satellite, however, could be observed by telescope.

Sputnik was launched from a remote base near Tyuratam in the Kazakh SSR, the site for testing of R-7 two stage rockets.  In a final race against time, the launch facility had been completed only weeks before the successful launch.

The Soviets determined to proceedwith a project to launch an artificial satellite in January of 1956 after President Eisenhower announced plans to launch an American one during the much ballyhooed International Geophysical Year (IGY) scheduled to last 18 months from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958.  What they didn’t realize was that the American effort was lagging due to the unreliability of the primary launch vehicle, the Navy’s Vanguard rocket.

The project was divided into two parts—the development and construction of the satellite, and the development of a reliable and powerful two stage rocket which would, not coincidentally, be suitably adaptable for use in the creation of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of carrying and delivering a heavy nuclear war head. 

Work on the creation of an ambitious satellite was divided between five industrial/scientific ministries under the loose coordination of the USSR Academy of Sciences.  Original specifications for an object that would weigh between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds including a 700 lb. payload of scientific instruments and experiments.  It was to be able to transmit data to ground stations.  But when the various ministries delivered their parts, they did not fit together due to variationsin specifications.  Worse, the heavy package proved to be more than the troubled R-7 rockets could handle

From May 15 to July 12 three attempts to launch an R-7 failed.  A fourth attempt on August 21 was partially successful—the head successful separated achieved orbital space but had to be destroyed upon re-entering the atmosphere.  A fifth test had similar results.    While this meant that the R-7 was not yet ready for use as an ICBM, it was determined that it was capable of deploying a lightweight satellite.

Given the problems with the two components, the launch date for Object Dwas pushed back to April 1958 by which time glitches in the satellite itself and the launch vehicle could be ironed out.

But Soviet officials worried that the delay would allow the U.S. to reach space first.  They ordered the hasty construction of a stripped bare satellite with greatly decreased weight.  The only real pay load was the radio transmitter, critical in proving to the world that the Soviet Union got there first.

The Council of Ministers approved a plan to develop the basic devise in February.  Two were ordered.  The first was delivered to the launch site in late September, just as the R-7 rocket was deemed reliable for launch.  Within days it was in orbit.  The second Sputnik was successfully launched in December after the spectacular explosion of America’s Vanguard 1 on the launch pad.

In Washington President Eisenhower took the news with his usual calm equability.  Intelligenceover-flights in high flying U-2 spy aircraft had provided photosof the launch complex and the Soviet defense establishment had even quietly announced the development—prematurely as it turned out—of an operational ICBM after the first semi-successful test of the R-7. 

In one critical way, he was relieved that the Soviets had got their satellite up first—it was a potential slice through a Gordian Knot of international law.  The Soviets were voraciously complaining that over-flight of American high altitude balloonsexploring the edge of space violated their air rights.  He wasn’t sure if the Russians had yet detected the U-2 flights at near the same altitude.  The U.S. wanted to argue that space was beyond air rights, that it was international and free to any nation.  Since Sputnik would fly over the US, Eisenhower was confident he could use that a president for the American position.

The President was also confident that the impending launch of Vanguard I would surpass the Soviet achievement.

Ike was shocked by the hysterical, almost panicky response from the press and public alike who were soon joined by swarms of Congressmen and Senators demanding to know how America had lost a Space Race it didn’t even realize we were in.

America of the 1950’s was awash in two things—paranoia about the Soviet Union and Godless Communism and a fascination with space travel that seemed nearly at hand.  America’s good Germans led by former Nazi V-2 developer Werner Von Braun were assumed to be better than the bad German scientists that the Soviets had dragged into Russia.  Von Braun was a ubiquitous television personality, collaborating with Walt Disney on elaborate animations of a future space station and trips to the Moon and beyond.

Science fiction filmsand the lurid covers of paperback novels and pulp magazines were filled with sleek space ships, all somehow resembling huge versions of Von Braun’s V-2.  The dawn of an American space age seemed inevitable and at hand.  If they thought at all about a Soviet space program it was with the assurance that their science and technology were primitive, years behind the US.

Now here were the Ruskies were, flying high over our very heads with who knows what intentions.  If they could put up a satellite, could they bombard the States with nukes from space, or zap us with death rays.

In response to the uproar Eisenhower went on TV to reassure the public that the US would soon be back in the game.  He ordered the launch of the Vanguard I moved up.  That launch failed on national television on December 6.

Meanwhile the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was ordered to hastily revive scrapped plans for a launch vehicle and stripped down satellite similar to Sputnik.  Explorer I a 38 lb. satellite was successfully launched on top of a Jupiter-C January 31, 1958—at least within the promised IGY window.

Sputnik 1 burned up upon re-entering the atmosphere on January 4 after completing 1400 orbits.  Its radio transmitter emitted those beeps for 22 days, long after the expected failure of the battery. 

“Spirit of Life, God of Love, I am entwined in your delicate web of mutuality. The life energy that makes me reach for the sun also moves me to become wrapped, like the strong bittersweet vine and the delicate sweet pea, around those I meet and love. Here in the tangle of my daily life I feel your pulse and sense what it means to be alive. Here, twisted and knotted, I thrive, seeking the light that will pull from me the fragrant blossom of love. Spirit of Life, help me to experience the beauty of your interwoven and intricate web, that I might always embrace, without reserve, all those whom my life touches.”
-Stephen M. Shick

What do you feel connected to today? How can you more fully experience that connection?

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!

"Higher Love: Installation Service" (October 3, 2021) Worship Service

"The Installation Service of Senior Minister Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern"

This is a sermon (Higher Love) about where this ministry together takes us and some of what we learn along the way. Our preacher, the Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, is the Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI. Rev. Maclay has been in Providence since 2017 in a congregation that first gathered in 1720! Rev. Maclay played a central role while serving in Maryland for the successful passage of that state's Marriage Equality legislation, as well as their DREAM Act and their repeal of the death penalty. In Providence she has led the organizing of faith communities for gun control and worked during this pandemic with other faith leaders, particularly Black religious leaders, to found and co-lead Faith in Science, promoting equity of vaccine access and uptake for people of color in Rhode Island.

Shirley Gibson and Kathleen Quenneville, Members of the Search Committee that called Rev. Southern; Rohit and Leila Menezes, Rev. Southern’s husband and daughter, respectively
Dennis Adams, Worship Associate, UUSF; Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI; Rev. Mr. Barb Greve, Hospice Chaplain with Vitas Healthcare and former Co-Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Rochelle Fortier Nwadibia, Board of Trustees Moderator of UUSF; Harry Arthur and Max Benbow, Representatives of the Family Ministry Program; Rev. Dr. John A. Buehrens, Former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister of UUSF; Jonah Berquist, Board of Trustees Vice Moderator of UUSF; Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake, Presiding Minister, Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples; Charles Du Mond, Co-Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Michael Pappas, M.Div., Executive Director, San Francisco Interfaith Council; Rev. Rosemary Bray-McNatt, President, The Starr King School for the Ministry; Rev. Margot Campbell Gross, Minister Emerita, UUSF; Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister, UUSF.

Eric Shackelford, Camera; Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Director of Communications; Joe Chapot, Live Chat Moderator; Thomas Brown, Sexton; Dan Barnard, Facilities Manager; Judy Payne, flowers

Reiko Oda Lane, Organist & Bell Choir Director; Mark Sumner, Pianist & Music Director; Wm.; Garcia Ganz, Pianist; Andrés Vera, Cellist; Jon Silk, Drummer; UUSF Choir; UUSF Bell Choir

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041914/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20211003ELMSermon.mp3

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6r1wCinnro]

Presented by Rev. Bob Janis-Dillon, Guest Speaker;  Rebecca Howard, Worship Associate;  and Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music

Where is the meaning of life to be found? Join us in a recounting of a journey of discovery, including wild strawberries, hitchhiking, a smidgen of philosophy, and one too many electric fences.

The Rev. Bob Janis-Dillon had the great privilege of studying with the Rev. John Cullinan at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. He has served a UU congregation in New Jersey before serving for six years in Northwest England, as minister for three Unitarian congregations in Wigan, Warrington, and Chester. He currently serves in New York as minister of Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills, and as an accredited spiritual director.

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

“For the Beauty of the Earth,” words: Folliott Sandford Pierpoint, music: Conrad Kocher, arr. Kenon D. Renfrow. (Yelena Mealy, piano).  Permission to stream the arrangement in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948.  All rights reserved.

“Just as Long as I Have Breath,” words: Alicia S. Carpenter, music: Johann G. Ebeling, harmony rev. John Edwin Giles (Unitarian Church of Los Alamos Choir with Yelena Mealy, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.)  Used by permission of the estate of Alicia S. Carpenter and the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association).

“Voice Still and Small” by John Corrado.  (Yelena Mealy, piano).  Used by permission of the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association).

“The Lone, Wild Bird,” words: H.R. MacFayden, tune: from William Walker’s Southern Harmony, based on harm. by Thomas Somerville, adapt, arr. & new material by Nylea L. Butler-Moore.  (UCLA Virtual choir; Wade Wheelock, violin; Nylea Butler-Moore, Director & piano; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.)  Used by permission.

“On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson.  (Susan Gisler, vocals and tambourine;  John Eklund, acoustic guitar and vocals; & John Tauxe, mandolin).  Permission to stream BMI song #889280147 in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770.

“Autumn Light” by Alice B. Kellogg.  (Nylea Butler-Moore, piano).  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

“A Communion of Heart and Soul” by Bruce Southworth from UUA Worship Web*

Excerpt from ”Part of a Larger Life” by John Saxon from UUA Worship Web*

Excerpt from “The Ten-Principal Upanishads” put into English by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats

    *permission granted through the UUA

    OFFERTORY

Our Share the Plate partner for October is the Roadrunner Food Bank.  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. Bob Janis-Dillon, Guest Speaker
Rebecca Howard, Worship Associate
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Susan Gisler, vocals and tambourine
John Eklund, acoustic guitar and vocals
John Tauxe, mandolin
Yelena Mealy, piano
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
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  
Rick Bolton, Mike Begnaud, and Renae Mitchell,  AV techs

My weight trend line is now officially flat after 3 months of getting back on the horse! I have proved that logging food intake helps a lot. I stopped logging in May, thinking I had everything under control, and my weight gradually crept up. I started logging again July 10, and have now “flattened the curve.” Good thing I believe in science and not in magical thinking. Magical thinking can be fun, but it can also hurt you. No, I am also getting vaccines, boosters, and whatever else my doctors recommend. No horse medicine for me, save that for the horses! Knowing how many calories I have already had in a day helps me decide whether or not to have some ice cream after dinner.

I have also kept up my exercise routine – logging over 150 miles in September, most of them on hiking trails which, trust me, are both harder and more rewarding that walking around the block. The long hikes burn a lot of calories, so a few dinners out and even restaurant desserts haven’t thrown me very far off.

So exercising and paying attention to calorie intake seem to be enough to have stopped the upward trend I had going. I am glad I did not have to start weighing and measuring my food again, which was super tedious. I would have done it though, and still will if it proves to be necessary. For now, I am simply celebrating 3 months of relatively stable weight and what feels like a reasonable relationship with food. It is mostly fuel for me, a solid relationship that sustains me and keeps me happy and healthy. But I also enjoy a periodic “date meal” in honor of the work I have done the last few years and in tribute to that wild and almost reckless spirit that has kept me going and doing for more that seven decades now.

L’Chaim!

My average weight this week is down .7 pounds for a total loss of 171.7

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041846/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/211003.mp3

The Cambridge Unitarian Church

The shared silence of our new morning service has been very hard won by us and I trust that we will come to cherish and further cultivate its subtle gifts for many, many years to come.

Click on this link to find out more about the new morning service of mindful meditation

Ordinarily the relocation of a factory from one town to another would hardly be the fodder for all but the most arcaneand specialized of almanac-like features.  But on this date in 1854 Aaron Lufkin Dennisonmoved his four year old watch making business to new facilities in Waltham, Massachusetts, setting the stage for a revolution in industrial production first known as the American System of Watch of Watch Manufacturing.  The principles of precision made interchangeable parts, use of specialty machine tools, and consistent calibration measured by highly accurate instruments were soon applied to other industries ushering in a new phase of the industrial revolution that created the machines that increasingly shaped daily life.

It was not an easy or smooth road.  Dennison would be beset by set backafter set back—failed early designsand processes, bankruptcies, board intrigues, faithless partners, and financial panics.  The new plant in Waltham would slip from his hands in bankruptcy in just three years, and he would be unceremoniously fired as machine shop superintendent in 1861.  He would go on to found a number of new businesses to see his dreams crushed time and time again.

Meanwhile the factory, known as the Boston Watch Company in 1855 would go through ownership changes and name changes, finally becoming known as the Waltham Watch Company in 1907 and famous for its railroad chronometers and quality pocket Watches.  The company’s direct descendent, the Waltham Aircraft Clock Corporation manufactures that specialty product in Alabama.  Firms that purchased marketing rights to the Waltham name along with some inventory and goodwill and since merged are now known as the Waltham Watch Co. (Delaware) and markets imported watches.  A former Swiss subsidiary is now known as Waltham International SA, and markets luxury Swiss made watches to Japan and other international markets.

Dennison was born on March 6, 1812 in Freeport, Maine.  His father was a shoemaker, the lowliest of the skilled trades who taught music on the side.  The family moved to Brunswick when he was a boy.  He got the minimal schooling of a boy of his class—reading, writing, and simple ciphering.  He may have supplemented this with reading from books borrowed from neighbors. 

He spent much of his childhood and youth at various jobs to help the family.  He carried hod for a bricklayer,cut wood, and was a herdsman.  By his teenage years he was accomplished enough at his lettersand arithmetic to clerk at a local store before joining his father in his cobbler’s shop.  Dennison displayed his first interest in improving production techniques by suggesting his father pre-cut pieces to make shoes by the batch rather than start-to-finish one at a time.

At age 18, rather than formally apprentice to his father, Dennison bound himself to James Cary, a local clock maker.  During his apprenticeship he apparently devised some sort of machine for cutting gear wheels.  The exact nature of the machine is unknown but was probably a modification of an existing wheel cutter that allowed him to press a few layers of metal at the same time, creating identical gears with each impression.  Again, the idea was to provide parts in batches for future assembly.  Cary so admired his apprentice’s skill and ingenuity that he offered Dennison a partnership at age 21.

But Dennison knew he had to learn more or be stuck in a provincial shop.  He headed to Boston to work for and study with the best American watch repairers.  He volunteered to work for three months at jeweler Currier & Trott without pay and then was hired by them.  By 1834 at age 22, he felt confident enough to open his own repair shop.  But he gave that up only two years later when he was offered the chance to work under Boston’s most sophisticated master watch maker, Tubal Howe of Jones, Low & Ball where he could learn the techniques of the best Swiss and British craftsmen. 

He stayed with Howe until 1839 when he left for New York City where he spent several months with a colony of Swiss watchmakers.  Returning to Boston he once again set up his own shop offering not only repair services but also selling watches, tools, and repair equipment.  During this period he perfected the Denton Combine Gage “upon which all the different parts of a watch could be accurately measured.”  This later became the Standard Gage of the industry and was just the first in the specialty instruments he devised.

Meanwhile Aaron established a second business with his younger brother Eliphalet Whorf Dennison, his former partner in his old Boston repair shop.  Together they went into a specialty business manufacturing paper boxes for jewelry stores.  The enterprise, filling an unmet niche, was a success.  But after a few years Aaron withdrew from the company to pursue his dream of manufacturing his own watches, leaving the firm in Eliphalet’s hands.  It continued to prosper as the Dennison Manufacturing Company and still exists today as Avery Dennison Corporation a manufacturer of pressure sensitive adhesive products which recently sold its well-known envelope, business stationary, and school supply lines which continue to be marketed under the name Avery.

Thing must have been looking pretty good for the 28 year old Aaron in 1840.  After years of dedicating himself single-mindedly to business he married Charlotte Ware Foster who was connected to the Ware family of distinguished Unitarian clergy.  Together they would have five children.

While continuing to operate his businesses, Dennison dreamed of going into watch manufacture.  He developed a plan over the 1840’s based on his old notion of producing parts in batches. 

He was specifically inspired by the success of the Federal Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts in manufacturing muskets for the Army using interchangeable parts.  This made rapid productionpossible in times of need, greatly reduced the cost of each firearm, and facilitated repair in the field using standardized parts.  Dennison was not the only entrepreneur impressed with the system.  Samuel Colt applied it to his pistols in the mid 1830’s and contributed the innovation of assembly line production—assembly of parts in succession with semi-skilled workmen each performing a specific task and sending the work to the next worker on the production bench for the next step.  Others were adapting Springfield and Colt innovations in other fields including Cyrus McCormack for his reapers.

But the manufacture of watches, some of the most complex machines of their time requiring scores of small parts that had to be produced with precision, required whole new demands compared to the few and large parts with relatively high tolerances of muskets, pistols, and farm equipment.  Dennison planned it out in his head.  By 1845 he had worked out a detailed planand constructed a scale model of a production facility.  All he need now was a backer.

It took until 1849 to secure the support and partnership of Edward Howard of the manufacturing firm of Howard & Davis and Howard’s father in law Samuel Curtis.  While the partners erected a new factory next to the existing Howard & Davis building in Roxbury for the new firm of Dennison, Howard & Davis, Aaron went to London to buy what parts could not yet be manufactured in the States.  He also hired English journeyman watchmakers, and studied the critical process of gilding brass parts.  When he returned he completed the design and construction of specialized machines for his production process.

But there were major problems.  The new machines were not yet perfected, he had trouble duplicating the gilding process, and the first watches produced, an eight day watch with a single mainspring barrel, did not keep time accurately enough to be successfully marketed.  Dennison needed a more skillful machinist to perfect his ideas and in 1852 he found one in Charles Moseley.  He also brought on master watchmaker N. P. Stratton who designed a new 30-hour watch and perfected the gilding process while Mosely rebuilt the machines.  The resulting watch was marketed successfully.

In fact sales were so strong that in 1855 the company moved to its expanded facilities in Waltham and adopted the new name of the Boston Watch Company.  Dennison oversaw production as the plant superintendent while Howard and a Board of Directors managed the business affairs.

Prospects looked as a good as the brisk sales of the new watch, which was superior to anything but jeweler crafted one-of-a-kind watches then available from an American manufacturer.  Then the devastating Panic of 1857—regarded as the first world-wide depression devastated sales and dried up the capital needed to ride out the storm.  The Boston Watch Company was forced into bankruptcy.

Most of the machinery and watch inventory, and some of the skilled workers, were taken back to Roxbury by Edward Howard, who established the Howard Watch Company. The buildings and large machinery were sold at auction to Royal E. Robbinswho restarted watch manufacture under the name of Tracy Baker & Company.  Dennison was retained in the reduced capacity of superintendent of the machine division.  His relationship to Robbins, however, was tense.  Robbins felt Dennison “meddled” in other divisions of the factory.  Dennison felt Robbins was losing track of his vision. 

In 1861, just as the Civil War was about to greatly increase the market for watches among officers who needed to be able to coordinate battlefield movements and the exploding demands of war timeindustrial production,  Robbins unceremoniously fired Dennison.

In the post-war period, Tracy Baker & Co. would change hands again and become the American Waltham Watch Company and finally simply the Waltham Watch Company, for many years the largest American producer of time pieces. 

It took until 1864 for Dennison to find a backer for a new firm, A. O. Bigelow.  Together they formed the Tremont Watch Company.  This time the plan was a little different.  The Civil War had dramatically driven up wages for skilled workmen in the North.  Dennison figured out that the most famous and skilled watch makers in the world in Switzerland made significantly less than their American counterparts.  In an early example of offshore outsourcing, Swiss journeymen would manufacture to specification fine parts like escapementsand wheel trains while larger parts including barrel plates, cases, faces, etc. would be made in the States where the watches would be assembled. 

Dennison and his family went to Zurich to make the arrangements.  While he was gone, the Tremont board, without consulting him, decided to move the factory to Melrose to produce a cheaper model watch entirely in their factory.  The company was reorganized as the Melrose Watch Company. Dennison resigned in protest.  He was essentially stranded in Europe. He remained in Switzerland trying to set up a new arrangement with an American manufacturer without success.  As Dennison expected Melrose failed by 1870.

In 1871 relocated to England where he tried to manufacture watches from parts made in Zurich and plates from Tremont.  Using capital raised by this venture he helped organize the Anglo-American Watch Company in Birmingham in 1874.  He and his English partners bought up the parts stock and some of the machinery of Melrose, shipped it to England and began producing watches there for the first time on the American System of Watchmaking.   In 1874 the company changed its name to the English Watch Manufacturing Company.  It turned out the reputation of American production in England at this time was similar to the post-World War II reputation of goods Made in Japan harming sales.  Dennison left the company about the same time.

Dennison had a second business in Birmingham manufacturing watch cases, for which the main clients was, ironically, the Waltham Watch Company, the descendent of the firm he had created.  With the addition of a partner the firm became Dennison, Wiggly & Company in 1874.  Dennison remained in England managing this, at last, successful, firm until he died on January 8, 1895 at age 83.  His son Franklin became managing partner.  The name was changed to the Dennison Watch Case Company in 1905 and continued to provide its products to the industry until 1965.

Dennison died with neither the fame nor the enormous wealth of other significant American industrial innovators and businessmen.  The creator of the American System, which transformed manufacture and production in profound ways far beyond the watch industry, spent almost 40 years in a kind of exile. 

Part Twoof a history I’m writing, telling the story of Unitarians in Palo Alto from the founding of the town in 1891 up to the dissolution of the old Unitarian Church of Palo Alto in 1934. If you want the footnotes, you’ll have to wait until the print version of this history comes out in the spring of 2022.

Part one, 1891-1905

The Unitarian Church of Palo Alto Begins, 1905-1910

In 1905, Ewald and Helene Flügel invited Rev. George Whitefield Stone, the Field Secretary of the American Unitarian Association for the Pacific States, to come to Palo Alto to christen their children. When Stone arrived in September, 1905, the Flügel children were aged 4, 10, 13, and 15 years old. The family had lived in Palo Alto since 1892; it may be Rev. Eliza Tupper Wilkes had christened the two eldest children in 1895. In any case, Stone came to Palo Alto, and while there he conducted Unitarian services each Sunday from September 10 through October 8. At the conclusion of the service on October 8, Stone said he was willing to continue with weekly worship services if those assembled showed sufficient interest. Karl Rendtorff made a motion “that a Unitarian Church be formed at once,” giving Stone the authority to appoint a “Provisional Committee” to transact any necessary business until a regular congregational organization could be formed. The motion was seconded by Melville Anderson, and “carried by a rising vote.”

Stone promptly appointed five men and two women to the Provisional Committee: Melville Anderson, John S. Butler, Henry Gray, Agnes Kitchen, Ernest Martin, Fannie Rosebrook, and Karl Rendtorff, who became the Secretary-Treasurer. Melville Anderson, Henry Gray, Ernest Martin, and Karl Rendtorff were all professors at Stanford. John Butler and Fannie Rosebrook had both been on the executive committee of the old Unity Society. Agnes Kitchen was active in civic affairs in Palo Alto, including the Woman’s Club. Once again, women filled leadership positions in the new Unitarian congregation from the very beginning.

Just two weeks later, on October 23, the women formed their own Unitarian organization. The Women’s Alliance, formally known as the “Branch Alliance of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto,” became a local chapter of the National Alliance of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women. How did the Palo Alto women decide to form their own Branch Alliance so quickly? Perhaps George Stone promoted the idea. The national organization existed to “to quicken the life of our Unitarian churches,” which would have suited Stone’s goal of building a self-sustaining Unitarian church. But it’s equally possible that some of the women had already belonged to a Unitarian women’s group. The National Alliance had roots in several earlier organizations, including the Western Women’s Unitarian Conference, organized in St. Louis in 1881; Emma Rendtorff and her mother Emma Meyer were active Unitarians in St. Louis in that year. Closer to Palo Alto, the women’s organization of the San Francisco Unitarian church, called the Channing Auxiliary had been active in promoting Unitarianism along the entire Pacific Coast ever since it was formed in 1873; perhaps some of the early members of the Palo Alto Alliance had contact with the Channing Auxiliary.

According to the national organization, the general goals of a Branch Alliance were as follows:

“The first duty of each branch is to strengthen the congregation to which it belongs. … Each branch is expected to engage in some form of religious study, not only for the improvement of the members themselves, but to enable them to gain, and to give others, a comprehensive knowledge of Unitarian beliefs. … With this preparation the Alliance undertakes the higher service of joining in the missionary activities of the denomination. … This includes…aiding small and struggling churches, helping to found new ones, supporting ministers at important points, and distributing religious literature among those who need light on religious problems.”

The Palo Alto Branch Alliance carried out all these tasks with dedication and perseverance from its founding in October, 1905, until its final dissolution in October, 1932. The Alliance raised a significant amount of money for the church during its 27 years of existence. Its members engaged in regular “religious study,” and may have been better versed in Unitarianism than many of the men in the church. The Alliance acquired a selection of Unitarian pamphlets and distributed this religious literature both in the church and through the U.S. mails. Alliance women cleaned the buildings, taught in the Sunday school, organized church social events, and met with other Unitarian women to learn from one another. It was the single most important group within the church, and without it the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto could not have existed.

The importance of women leaders in the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto cannot be overemphasized. Although prominent or charismatic men got most of the credit—male ministers like Sydney Snow, or male laypeople like David Starr Jordan and William Herbert Carruth—the Women’s Alliance did much of the critical behind-the-scenes work that allowed the male leaders to stand in the spotlight. And the national network of Unitarian women also provided key financial support to the nascent church: both the Channing Auxiliary in San Francisco and the St. Louis Branch Alliance made significant financial contributions in the first year of the Palo Alto church’s existence.

The American Unitarian Association also provided critical financial support to the new church. In fact, the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto could not have afforded to pay its ministers without the financial support from the denomination. The lay leaders of the new church aspired to become financially independent in the future, especially as it became clear that money from the denomination entailed some loss of local control, but for the moment they were happy to receive whatever financial assistance they could get.

In the late autumn of 1905 and through the winter, the prospects for the new church looked bright. More than a dozen people signed the church covenant, “In the love of the truth, and the ‘Spirit of Jesus,’ we unite for the worship of God and the service of man.” Equally importantly, some forty Unitarians contributed varying sums of money to purchase a building lot on which to erect a church. A newly-elected Board of Trustees were able to obtain the services of respected Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck, who was himself a Unitarian, to design their new church building. And the American Unitarian Association found a minister to send to Palo Alto, one Sydney Bruce Snow, a former newspaper reporter who was about to graduate from Harvard Divinity School in the spring of 1906.

Then on April 18, 1906, the great earthquake temporarily halted the church’s forward progress. Guido Marx, professor at Stanford University and a Unitarian, remembered the earthquake:

“Gertrude [his wife] and I were rudely awakened by the shaking of the house and the accompanying rumble, roar, and crash. ‘What is it?’ said she. ‘It’s an earthquake—and it’s a bad one,’ I replied. ‘What shall we do?”Stay right here. This little house will last as long as anything.’ I knew the sturdy construction of our bungalow…but in my heart I felt that nothing could survive such a vicious shaking—that this was the end for us. It was like a terrier shaking a rat.” [Quoted in Sandstone and Tile, vol. 30, no. 1, winter, 2006 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Historical Society, 2006), p. 3.]

The damage in Palo Alto was not as bad as it was in San Francisco, but it was still extensive. Palo Alto Unitarians had to turn their attention to relief work, so they had little time to think about their new congregation. There could be no progress on the new building in any case, since Maybeck’s plans for the new church building burned in the San Francisco fires following the earthquake.

Sydney and Margrette Snow’s arrival in Palo Alto in the autumn of 1906 served as a coalescing force for the new church. The congregation ordained Snow on October 14, 1906, renting space for the ceremony in Jordan’s Hall on University Ave. in Palo Alto. Sydney and Margrette formally joined the church as members that same month, and Margrette also joined the Women’s Alliance. In his first year as minister, Snow had to officiate at the funeral of Agnes Kitchen, a member of the Board of Trustees. This was confirmation that forming a new church was the right thing to do. The Palo Alto Unitarians had wanted a minister who could officiate at rites of passage—think of George Stone christening of the Flügel children—and the untimely death of Agnes Kitchen helped justify the work and expense that was going into the new congregation. Having a church with a minister was already much better than the old lay-led Unity Society.

Another reason the Palo Alto Unitarians formed their church was to provide religious education for their children. The church organized almost right away, and Emma Rendtorff became the Superintendent. In the 1905-1906 school year, nine children enrolled in the Sunday school. We can make a good guess of who those nine children were by looking at children from church families who were about the right age. These include Felix Flügel, who turned 13 in 1905; Barbara Alderton, who turned 12; Stephanie Marx (child of Charles and Harriet), 12; Ewald Flügel, Jr., 10; Henry Alderton, Jr., 9; Eleanor Marx (child of Guido and Gertrude Marx), 8; Anna Franklin, 7; Alberta Marx (child of Charles and Harriet Marx), 5; and Guido van Dusen Marx (child of Guido and Gertrude Marx), 5 years old.

Enrollment in the Sunday school increased to 12 children the following year, and then to 17 children in 1907-1908. Adele Meyer, Emma Rendtorff’s sister, took over as Superintendent of the Sunday school in 1907-1908, which is also probably the year that Emma’s daughter Gertrude was finally old enough to enroll.

Bernard Maybeck drew up a new set of plans for the church building, over the summer of 1906. Funding for the building came from the American Unitarian Association, and from the national Young People’s Religious Union organization, which hoped to promote Unitarianism in yet another college town. Frances Hackley of Tarrytown, N.Y., a Unitarian philanthropist, also donated money. Because of the rebuilding efforts following the earthquake, construction prices had risen. but luckily “the lowest bid was just low enough,” and construction began.

While their new building was under construction, the church continued to meet in rented space in Jordan’s Hall in Palo Alto. On Sundays, the Sunday school met first, at ten o’clock, with the worship service at eleven. And in late November, 80 people came together for the first anniversary dinner. Finally, in March, 1907, their new building was ready for them. A lengthy description of the building appeared in the Palo Alto Times on March 17, 1907:

“The new church, which has attracted considerable attention during its construction, is somewhat unusual in design. It is the work of Mr. B. R. Maybeck, of the firm of Maybeck & White, who has erected several of the buildings connected with the University of California and other semi-public structures in Berkeley. The church in Palo Alto is noteworthy in the use of rough, less expensive forms of material for a permanent building, designed to have all the atmosphere of a church. The only materials used in the interior finish are redwood boards and battens, common redwood shakes, rough heavy timbers, which rather more than carry the weight of the roof, and cement plaster like that used for the outside of buildings, forming a deep chancel arch as high as the roof. The timbers, whose rough surfaces have been left unplaned, are stained with an old-fashioned logwood dye, such as our grandmothers used in their dye-pots, giving a deep color, almost black. The shakes were dipped in an acid solution before they were put on the ceiling, and have turned gray, not unlike the stone-gray of the cement. The surfaced redwood of the walls and pews is being finished by a Japanese painter who understands the treatment of this fickle wood, and it will take on a soft gray color to harmonize with the shakes and plaster.

“The windows of the church, which are set high, will have small leaded panes of a light amber tone, and the lanterns for illumination at night will give as nearly as possible the same light. The color scheme is completed by the hangings and upholstering in the chancel, a soft plush velour, rose pink in shade. The pulpit and a high hooded chair are to be covered with this material, and a curtain will hang behind the chair across the whole width of the chancel and down the sides to the arch. It is intended later to cover the rail of the choir loft, and the swinging doors from the vestibule to the church with the same material.

“The aisles of the church are along the sides, the pews running solid through between two rows of posts, which form the main support of the building. From these posts and from the posts set in the side walls run heavy beams clear to the roof tree. The roof spaces between the beams are covered with shakes down to the walls, where the boards and battens begin. The chancel arch is the denominating feature of the interior. It is, as already stated, as high as the roof, and is massive like the rest of the structure. The pulpit stands directly under the center of the arch, three or four steps higher than the lower level of the church floor.

“On each side of the chancel is a room, the larger one in the tower on Cowper Street being a parlor, and the smaller, on the other side, a study for the minister. The parlor is very high and is finished similarly to the church. The building is set very close to the street, its front steps coming almost to the sidewalk on Channing Avenue, and the tower lying only a few feet from Cowper Street. This position was made necessary by the size of the lot, but after construction had begun the congregation bought an additional fifty feet on Channing Avenue, making a frontage of 125 feet, and 100 feet on Cowper Street. This gives room for enlargement and development. The church with the gradual slope of its roof, and the three dormers on each side, is low in effect. The tower at the rear, however, breaks the skyline with its turrets. The vestibule at the front has a lower, flat roof, whose beams project beyond the wall, and with cross-lattice work form support for vines. It is planned to have the whole church overrun with vines, for like all such buildings, it is not complete without the setting which only time and the growth of shrubs and vines can give.”

The congregation chose to use the hymnal Hymns of the Ages (1904), edited by Louisa Putnam Loring. This hymnal was a selection of hymns from the University Hymn Book, an 1895 hymnal compiled by Unitarians at Harvard University. However, according to Unitarian historian Henry Wilder Foote, Hymns of the Ages “represented a rather limited and individualistic point of view and did not prove adaptable to general use.” A few years later, during Clarence Reed’s tenure as minister, the church would replace this hymnal with the American Unitarian Association’s new Hymn and Tune Book (1911).

By the time of its third anniversary, the new congregation was still small, but growing. On November 10, 1908, “between fifty and sixty people” attended the third anniversary celebration which included dinner, after-dinner speeches, and dancing. Because the church didn’t have a social hall yet, the celebration again took place in Jordan’s Hall. The church could look back on three years of steady accomplishment: they had purchased a building lot, called a minister, survived the great earthquake, and built a building. And they looked forward to further progress, for at the dinner the Women’s Alliance announced a initial contribution of $100 ($2900 in 2020 dollars) so they could build a much-needed social hall.

Five months later, on April 11, 1909, Sydney Snow announced his resignation. He had been offered the position as minister of the Unitarian church in Concord, N.H., a larger congregation with a larger salary. The lay leaders of the Palo Alto church presented Snow with an expression of their appreciation done in beautiful calligraphy, which said in part:

“You have won your way into our hearts; you have brought us many messages of inspiration, of comfort, and of steadfastness; you have never failed to give us the sympathy, the friendship, and the light which we have needed. … Though our hearts are torn with personal sorrow at your going, though we would have you ever with us as your guide and friend, yet we do not falter or despair… Go from us, then, to be to others all you have been to us.…”

During the rest of its existence, the members of the congregation were never able to retain the ministers they liked best. They were always too small, and they never had enough money to pay an attractive salary to keep a minister for more than a few years.

They're back and they are pissed off.  Who?  The women by the millions who launched the resistance the day after pitiful inauguration of the former Resident of the White House and his minions in Congress, state capitols, and local government in January 2017.  That led directly to women seeking election at every level, the Blue Wave election of 2020 that re-took the House of Representatives and launchedthe powerful new voice of the Squad, and in no small measure mobilizedthe voters who ousted the scum-bag-in-chief.  They also amplified the Me Too movement and inspired other resistance movements to take to the streetsin unprecedented numbers.

Despite these successes, Federal courts were stacked against themand the Supreme Court now has a majority hostile to women, their bodily autonomy, and rights.  Enabled by gerrymandering, voter suppression schemes, deep pockets funding Astro turf organizations and candidates, and MAGA delusional madness, Red State governors and legislatures have launched relentless attacks on abortion rights and women’s rights to control their own bodies and lives.  The recent Texas law which the Supremes allowed to go into effect circumventedthe established right to abortions under the Roe v Wade decisionby placing a civil bounty of $1000 on anyone who aids an abortion in any way to be paid by the state for each successful civil suit brought against them.  More than a dozen states are ginning up copycat laws.

So this fall’s iteration of the Women’s March which will be held today in Washington, D.C. with more than 650 sister marches around the county will Rally for Abortion Justice.  It should be the largest single-day mobilization dedicated to abortion justice and reproductive freedom in history.

A call to march posted by one of the March’s chief sponsoring organizations Planned Parenthood stated:

On October 2, we’re marching in every single state ahead of the Supreme Court reconvening on October 4. Women’s March and more than 90 other organizations, including National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, Planned Parenthood, SHERO Mississippi, Mississippi in Action, Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, The Frontline, Working Families Party, SisterSong, [and the Unitarian Universalist Association]  are organizing a national call to mobilize and defend our reproductive rights.

Abortion has never been fully accessible, but we are at the risk of losing our reproductive freedom completely. The call to action is clear, and urgent. The relentless attacks from Texas to Mississippi are ramping up quickly. Anti-choice extremists have a deep desire to return to a time when there was more clear and effective domination and control over queer and trans folks, women, and people of color; they want to revive those old values and societal norms to the point of re-acceptance. The authoritarian agenda of reproductive control is fueled by misogyny and racism - and we must challenge it, together.

On October 2, we’re going to send the Supreme Court and lawmakers across the country a clear, unified message. The attack on our reproductive rights will not be tolerated.

We have this opportunity to invite all the people that know us and love us into this important movement and work united as we build something better for our families and communities. As a small powerful group tries to come for our human rights over and over again, we’ll never let go of our vision of reproductive justice; for unfettered abortion access and everything we need to support and grow our families to thrive and live healthy lives.

The Washington March will begin at noon at Freedom Plaza, 1455 Pennsylvania Ave NW and march to the steps of the United States Supreme Court.  In Chicago the March to Defend Abortion Access will begin at 11:30 at the Daley Center, 50 West Washington Street.

Closer to home for those of us in McHenry County the Rally for Rights will be held on Woodstock Square at 2:30 pm, rain or shine.  Participants are asked to mask up and come with suitable rain gear.  Members and friend of the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry will be there.  Look for the TOL banner if you want to march with us.  The local March is organized by the Women’s March Woodstock,  McHenry County NOW, Democratic Women and other progressive organizations.

Don’t be surprised if today’s uprising is as effective at the first one, pink pussy hats or no.

It has been one of the honors of my life to be able to attendand support in Chicago and Woodstock as a male ally since the beginning.  After the second Women’s March in Chicago in January 2018 I dared write:

Today, I Am a Woman

After the Chicago Women’s March

January 20, 2018

Today, I am a woman—

            a put-a-bag-on-her-head-woman,

            a never hit on by Cosby, Weinstein, or Trump woman,

            a lumbering lummox of a lady,

            a barren womb non-breeder,

            a hairy-legged horror,

            a gawky, graceless girl,

            a disappointment all around.

But Sisters, today, I am a woman—

            if you will have me.

Tomorrow I will be just another prick.

—Patrick Murfin

Please join us next Wednesday (6 October 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.