The years are blurred, but I think it must have been around 2003 when the Michigan mandatory minimum laws were changed. One day JD got a letter from the state. The letter informed him that he would be released in a few weeks. JD showed me the letter. I congratulated him but he didn't seem that happy. I asked why he didn't seem happy. He said, "Goddamn, I've just done over a decade for what kids are getting two years for now. I missed my father's funeral.”And then, in "Statutes and Limitations," VanSumeren turns from personal narrative to thinking about how he would personally reform the system. He writes, simply:
I think that one's convictions should remain on one's record for no longer than the duration of the statute of limitations for that particular offense beginning from time of discharge after the successful completion of sentence. Thus, in the case of armed robbery, a twenty year felony with a twenty year statute of limitations, one's record should be cleared twenty years after the positive completion of incarceration and supervision, provided the offender commits no more felonies. And that's that.His writing isn't for everyone, but it is something which deserves a larger audience. It's real, and it's informative. Enjoy.
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man mater, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede but to quicken and exalt its own energies.Unitarian Universalist minister the Rev. Kirk Loadman-Copeland describes the events:
It began in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 and continued until 1884. The tradition spread to Connecticut in 1674, to Vermont in 1778, and to New Hampshire in 1784.... It was one of the few public holidays in pre-revolutionary America. Stores and schools closed and the day was marked with parades, picnics, and an Election Day sermon delivered to the officials by a distinguished minister.This seems to be the sense of the election sermon in Unitarian author Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter that the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale delivers:
Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale—as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it far behind them—an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England’s earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the close of his Election Sermon.At some point, however, the tradition of preaching the election sermon to the politicians themselves ended, for the most part, and we began to understand the term "election sermon" differently, as one preached to the congregation shortly before the election. Today, our understanding of the "election sermon" is definitely as a pre-election sermon given by the minister. The modern understanding has become so pervasive, partly because of the confusion of the term "election day" that the Unitarian minister the Rev. Forrest Church wrote in an election sermon:
Until reading up on it, my understanding had been that the Unitarian tradition of election sermons was always, as Forrest Church suggests, as we practice it now. But like most traditions, this one has apparently changed over time. That doesn't mean that what we now do is meaningless, just because the tradition isn't "pure," but that we must find the meaning in it not from the sake of tradition, but because it is worthy in its own right. For now, I think there's something important about speaking to the event at hand on the eve of an election, and am planning what I will say in my own this year.There’s a noble tradition in the ministry, going back to the 17th Century.One or two Sundays before an election, almost every preacher in the landdevoted his sermon to the body politic.It’s a great literary genre. Often, the brimstone was so hotthat an Election Day sermon was the one sermon a minister might be remembered by....Here’s how it went. The world has gone, or is about to go to Hell.The reason is simple. God is punishing you for your sins.Whatever is wrong in this world is wrong because you are wrong-headed,wrong-hearted, inattentive to God’s commandments,and God is watching and God is angry,and if you keep on messing up you will burn forever.
I'm outside "tent city" in Phoenix with about 2000 Unitarian Universalists and allies. It is 99 degrees now that it is night time, down from 109 today. In tent city, people who are rounded up for deportation are imprisoned out in this heat without relief. We are told that they can hear us in the tent city, as we chant and sing and cheer.
It is wonderful to have the UCC president (his title is different but I don't have it handy) with us tonight and telling us the UCC is with us in this fight.
Yesterday I went to hear Michelle Alexander speak about her book, The New Jim Crow. I also went to a follow-up session with the author of a UU study guide. Sadly, Alexander.had time for only two or three questions, and I was about eighth in line.
I think to read this book, no matter how progressive already, is to have a great awakening--at least it was for me.
And hearing her speak here in Arizona, it became clear to me that our immigration system is also part of the new Jim Crow. It is so similar in effect on a people to our prison system.
The UU Ministers Association voted today to pass new language for a year of study. This language would change our code of professional ethics from language that basically outlawed specific actions to a much simpler and straight-forward "19 words." The new language reads:
"I will not engage in sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person I serve professionally."
Previously, the guidelines forbade sexual relationships with people one counsels, interns, married congregants, staff, minors, and, if married, anyone one serves professionally except one's partner.
The new language passed by a majority this year and must pass by two-thirds next year. (This, incidentally, means it is harder to change the UUMA code of conduct than it is to change the state of Michigan's constitution--which is certainly more a problem for Michigan.)
I voted for this, although I was torn, as I have known colleagues who have met their spouse in their congregations, and have pursued those relationships is in ways that were non-exploitative. Universalist fore-father John Murray met Judith Sargent Murray as a member of his congregation. But times have changed. And while we know there are significant differences between ministers and counselors, we now hold ourselves accountable in ways much more similar to other professions.
The thought shared today in ministry days is that doing social justice without having the models and training is like doing the work of religious education without renaissance modules and trained religious education professionals.
We do have models and structures out there that we can tap into, though. In Michigan we have the Michigan UU Social Justice Network (MUUSJN), which recently brought a workshop on healthcare to Jackson. We can network with other local (non-UU) congregations, and with other Michigan UU churches. We need something like what we had in Jackson with the Jackson Interfaith Peacekeepers, but with a broader social justice platform.
I think one of the questions is: What do we want from our faith? Are we looking for our religion to be a place from which we do social justice? If so, let's start working on putting the structures in place to do that ministry.
I will do my best to beIt's obvious that the Girl Scouts in the response videos have learned what it means to be "considerate and caring," "courageous and strong," "friendly and helpful," "responsible for what I say and do," to "respect myself and others," and, most importantly, to "be a sister to every Girl Scout."
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
Our concern with ‘All American Muslim’ is that it does not accurately represent the term Muslim, which is a follower of Islam and a follower of Islam believes in radicalization, the use of Sharia law, which provides for honor killings, mutilation of women and numerous other atrocities to women.Despite how often we hear anti-Muslim rhetoric in our society, this piece of vitriol really shocked me. His objection to the show is that it portrays moderate, average, peaceful American Muslims. Apparently a religious extremist like Katon can't believe that moderates within other religions exist. He paints a caricature of Muslims and then claims that anyone who doesn't look like his caricature isn't Muslim, and that moderate, peaceful Islam doesn't exist.
Lowe's has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.No, Lowe's, what you did wasn't a response to controversy; what you did was a response to bigotry. The controversy wasn't something you acted in response to, it was something caused by your action. And your non-apology of "If we have made anyone question that commitment (to allowing people to have 'different views'), we apologize" isn't going to throw us off track while you continue to bow to the wishes of the hate-mongering bigots by not advertising on a show which is all about showing this thing you've just stated you have a commitment to--differing views. You're daring to tell us that you have a commitment to allowing different views, and then pulling ads from a show highlighting difference because the bigots say different views can't really exist?
I was at a UU leadership function. I met a really smart, really energetic and sweet guy. The kind of guy that any church elder or pastor would love to recruit onto the board. He volunteered his path to me: “I’m a Buddhist-Humanist,” he said. Then he took a swig of fair trade coffee while I told every particle of my being that, no, I would NOT roll my eyes.Here's the thing: Yes, you can. And that's part of what Unitarian Universalism is about. She says, "Be a Buddhist or a Humanist and do the work, because I suspect that claiming a hybrid philosophy might have something to do with wanting to be “spiritual” without the messy work of transformation." But sometimes "doing the work" of theology is in studying and understanding multiple religious traditions and understanding that each of them have to be adapted in some way to fit with one's own spiritual beliefs. I know there are critics of Building Your Own Theology out there, but I think it had a lot of things right. In Unitarian Universalism we do pick and choose and create hybrid theologies. And in many cases this is because we have "done the work" -- a lot more so than your average non-hybrid-believer. By way of example, a recent Pew study showed that atheists know a lot more about religion than the average believer.
You can’t be a Buddhist-Humanist. You just can’t.
A singular antecedent requires a singular referent pronoun. Because he is no longer accepted as a generic pronoun referring to a person of either sex, it has become common in speech and in informal writing to substitute the third-person plural pronouns they, them, their, and themselves, and the nonstandard singular themself. While this usage is accepted in casual contexts, it is still considered ungrammatical in formal writing.The Chicago Style Manual recommends all the usual work-arounds: "he or she," plural subjects, imperative mood, rewrite the noun, revise the sentence, etc. I couldn't find as clear a statement out of the MLA or APA, but my understanding is that they offer the same options. The textbook I'm using for my class, The Little Seagull Handbook, offers these same work-arounds.
{?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?}except that { and } are lesser-than and greater-than symbols -- I can't seem to type them in my blog without it becoming the code. I'm too lazy right now to figure out the work-around which I assume is pretty simple although complicated to Google, so I'm going this route. If you look at the code on the page, you'll see everything easily. It's in pretty-straight-forward html without bells and whistles. Anyway, that code does the trick, and the webpage is sized correctly. As long as whatever tables (and the cells in the table) you're using don't have a specified width or height, everything will wrap to fit on the mobile screen. Then it's just a matter of designing it such that you're not putting too much text up there, so that people don't have to scroll too much. You do want fonts and icons bigger than usual to make them easier to tap on. I'm going with font sized 5 (18pt), and it's workable, although perhaps still on the small side for larger fingers. My icons on the bottom are sized about 32 pixels high, and again they're on the small side to easily tap on.
{!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"}
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.(Note that many of the versions being shared have a sentence tacked on the beginning that was not King's, but the rest of the statement--all of that quoted above--was his. Jessica Dovey, Facebook user and English teacher apparently wrote the now oft-quoted sentence, "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.") One of the quickest ways we justify rejoicing at Osama bin Laden's death is by dehumanizing him, by making him pure evil, almost the devil himself. That's the response I heard from friends and acquaintances as the discussion launched from one Facebook friend's post to another: "He was evil." Once we make him evil, he becomes less than human, and we can respond with pure hate and pure rejoicing at his death.