Dear Ann and Abby:
I used to read your mother's advice columns in the paper when I was growing up, and now, I sometimes read y'all today. Growing up I felt that the column was quaint and old fashioned, and nowadays I don't know what to think: unrealistic and out of touch?
Of course with all these years gone, I may be the one who is quaint and out of touch.
I certainly am led to understand that the values I grew up with such as "fairness", "honesty", "empathy" and "generosity" are indeed quaint and out of step - but that's a different rant.
The other day I picked up the paper and snorted about the bad advice given. Today, my snort wasn't as bad or as long - indeed I mostly agreed, but thought the key thought was not given.

A woman wrote in, saying that she divorced her emotionally abusive husband 7 years earlier, he remarried first, she just recently. Her adult children blame her for the breakup, and she is concerned that she will miss opportunities to see her grandchildren, because of this conflict. Abby says to concentrate on her own life. Good advice as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough... because what's missing is the truth that you can't make somebody love you.

"You can't make somebody love you." is important enough that I'm staring a new paragraph for it. You can encourage people to love you, by doing various things to be loveable. You can most definitely do things that would make someone not love you; but you can't make someone love you. And after the years have gone by, it's even harder to do the various things to make one loveable. Debating with your children, spouse, parents, family, church, neighbors will not make them love you.

Aren't our children supposed to love us? Aren't our parents required to love us? How about our spouses - didn't they promise to love forever?

If we love someone hard enough, why can't they love us in return? What if we break our backs working morning to night, trying to win their love? What if we do all the things that we know they want us to do? What if we change ourselves so completely as to be a new person? What if we walk the straight and narrow?

If I had that woman in my office, I would ask her what's she done over the past 7 years to show her children that she still loves them. While we can't force someone to love us, we can show them that irregardless we still love them. Little notes, doing things, remembering holidays, birthdays, special occasions - not asking anything in return.

By the way, this doesn't apply to EXs. While I'm sure some EXs would appreciate you coming over to do chores, give them money, hop in the sack, mop the kitchen floor, etc.; as a general rule, this is not a good idea. A betting person would find it an easy bet that it would end bad. Don't do it.

As for our children and parents, we have to get our minds used to the idea that they might not love us, they might never love us, irregardless of what we do or have done. If the past post-trauma seven years of our showing them our love hasn't worked - then bluntly not much else will. We extend the olive branch, mean it, and we go on with our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving -
It is good that there is one special day a year for giving thanks. For although, it may be better to give thanks everyday, and several times a day - it's easy to forget, to rush, to expect things to be as they are, if not better.
So we are given one day a year for thanksgiving. Some people spend the time on getting together with family and friends, to eat, to watch parades and football games. Nothing wrong with that. To be in the joyful company of loved ones is a wonderful way to spend a day. To watch folks having fun is also a way to help us have fun.
But you can also be thankful when you're alone or not having fun. Fun is not a prerequisite to being thankful - just ask those folks with sinks of dirty dishes. Being alone does not necessarily mean being unwanted.
Sometimes we have to look ahead, to see the opportunities awaiting us. Sometimes we have to look behind, to see our accomplishments. The majority of us will never be rich or famous, but we will have things to be thankful for.

The question is never "Why me?", it's "Why not me?"
be thankful.

Over the next couple of days;  I hope to be sweeping the blog, clearing out the cobwebs,  and even changing the name - but not the address.  I began a regional denominational history blog (!) as my first blog, and then started this one to put my non-history stuff up. 

 I had  picked "UU-ing" as an obscure and oblique metaphor for the balancing act  that we all  have to live with in our lives.   It's been obvious that my seesaw has shifted positions.  In the spirit of my times, I had hoped to focus a lot on how living with one's feet in a denomination,  effects everything else. To that extent, it didn't work. I  missed diving down that road, and I couldn't enjoy the web scenery, cause I was to busy looking at the map, trying to figure out how to get back on that road..

It's been an interesting year as I live with increased health concerns and decreased capacities. Nothing major, but just the "normal" stages of life kicking me in the behunkas.  I hope that I find myself accepting these changes - both gracefully and even inquisitively. 
One of the things that I definitely believe is that there is no point in asking "why me?" - that the response to that is  "why not me?"    

And on that note - we'll see you down the road in just another mile or so.

There is a saying that "Justice delayed is justice denied."  Which of course means that we all want our injustice righted and as soon as possible.   Whether we are victims or those accused.

I am of course thinking of the case in Florida where a 17 year old unarmed male returning from a convenience store was shot by a gun toting man intent on stopping all crime in his neighborhood.   If it ended  here, we would  have a tragic and horrible event - but it went worse and became a complete tragedy.  The shooter claimed self-defense, and the police accepted that, and the shooter went home.

So the family of the dead child had to put away their grieving to put their energy into the legal and political aspects of the death.  Because officially their son was the aggressor and potential criminal, while the man who killed him was officially the victim of the alleged aggression.  I don't see how a family  can grieve and fight city hall at the same time.  To them, their son was killed - murdered by a man who seems to be getting away with it.
How can one deal with one pain, when you have to focus on another pain?  How does one heal even in the best of times?

and then there is the shooter and his family ...  It's clear to me that they are suffering as well, but with a different and no doubt more confusing  pain.  We can instinctively know   how a murdered child's family feels - how does a killer feel?

I've actually talked to folks who have killed and murdered, while they sat in jail wanting their day of
judgement - and I wonder if this man,who shot that child, thinks like they did.   If he feels the responsibility of
his deeds.  Or, if he deeply feels that he is the innocent victim, who only tried to do the right thing.  And when I think of murder, I of course think of the unsolved murder of my cousin.  Justice was delayed for some and denied for others.

When anyone is killed, whether by accident, manslaughter, or murder - there are no victors.   There is only the grieving. 

Love with No Exceptions

250 years of Universalism

September 30, 1770 – the moment when Love caught Fire

Universalist Sestercentennial is Taking Wing

No matter what you call it – sestercentennial, semiquincentennial, bicenquinquagenary, or just plain 250^th – 2020 is a big year for Universalism.  It will be the 250^th anniversary of John Murray’s famous 1770 sermon in Thomas Potter’s chapel in  Good Luck, New Jersey.  We celebrate 2 and ½ centuries of Universalist contributions.

The full array of Sestercentennial Universalist Celebrations will be in 2020.

But the magic is already beginning. 

Love Notes Performance

An endearing performance based on the reading of love letters written by Judith Sargent Murray to her husband Rev. John Murray has been commissioned.  The performance provides a touching insight into the lives of Rev. Murray and his wife Judith, as well as tell tells the larger story of the birth of Universalism in America.

 

Universalist Convocation 2019 

The Universalist Convocation will begin the celebration with a kick-off event at Murray Grove (May 17 – 19, 2019).  Dynamic speakers, including Rev. John Buehrens, former UUA President,  will provide the background on the arrival of Universalism in America.  And . . . there will be a performance of Love Notes.

 

UU History Convocation

The Unitarian Universalist History Convocation (October 17 – 20, 2019) to be held in Baltimore will celebrate TWO significant events in UU history. The first celebration is the 200th anniversary of Rev. William Ellery Channing’s delivery of his “Unitarian Christianity” sermon that is better known as the Baltimore Sermon.  The next celebration is the 205th anniversary of Rev. John Murray preaching his first Universalist sermon in Murray Grove in 1770.   Murray Grove is a sponsor of this History Convocation.

 

Other Plans for Celebration

Plans are evolving to celebrate the 250th anniversary of John Murray’s epic sermon in Thomas Potter’s chapel in Good Luck, New Jersey September 30, 1770. This was the beginning of the thread of Universalist History in “the new world.” And the place where it happened is our oldest historic site. The full array of Sestercentennial Universalist Celebrations will be in 2020.

• Visioning in 2014 – February 27 through March 1, 2014.  A visioning meeting was held at Murray Grove to conceive the 250th Anniversary Celebration in 2020 of John Murray’s epic preaching of Universalism in Thomas Potter’s chapel in Good Luck, New Jersey in 1770 and the resulting 250 years of Universalism on this continent. The group was composed of 21 individuals who traveled from Portland, Oregon, Yarmouth, Maine, Chicago, Gloucester, Delaware, Virginia and many points in between, including two local non-Unitarian Universalist historians. Laurel Amabile facilitated the gathering.
• Next steps 2015-16.  Joyce and Richard Gilbert agreed to be honorary co-chairs. Liz Strong and Carol Haag agreed to be working chairs. Extensive outreach to discover who would be involved in design and planning.
• Working group 2017-2018.  Developed a working group that held monthly phone conference calls, clarified several projects, and developed connections with several other organizations
• Sestercentennial Group 2019-2020. Fifteen individuals with specific responsibilities are developing projects to celebrate Universalism for this century based on the rich heritage of the past.

Interested?

If you would like to contribute to the planning of the celebration, please use our Contact Us page to express your interest and talents.

 

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Sunday night as I was watching television after a long day, I, like much of the nation, heard that there was going to be an upcoming announcement from President Obama.  An unplanned late-Sunday-evening announcement from the President is clearly unusual.  My immediate thought was that something horrible had happened--horrible, that is, for citizens of the United States and its military.  So it was with some joy and relief that I learned that instead of our soldiers or civilians being dead, it was Osama bin Laden.  I admit to some immediate partisan joy that this had happened under this particular president's watch.  And I shared in some joking about the timing of the president interrupting Celebrity Apprentice.  I admit to some joy at him being removed from a position of continued threat, and some relief that this was news of success for our country. 

These are my first reactions, my gut reactions.  They do not necessarily represent my best reactions or religious reactions, and that's the point that I want to make today.  I understand why people want to go out and be with other people in the streets and celebrate.  It is a natural reaction after a long period of cultural grief that we pin on this man, Osama bin Laden. 

But at the same time I felt immediate sorrow that this hunt for Osama bin Laden, our figurehead for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, had ended with a killing.  I wished immediately that we had captured this man alive rather than taking another life.  I am not a pacifist, although I do believe that war always represents a failure, and I am also against the death penalty.  To me, this killing, although it was done in a combat situation, it seems, represented a failure on our part to some degree, as well as, of course, the enormous political success of having finally captured this man our government and military was looking for for so long.  I don't say "failure" to blame the military--I think it was a failure on Osama bin Laden's part that led to this outcome, for the most part.  He chose a path of hatred and violence, and I grieve that he chose this path up until the end.  But every death that ends in violence is also to some extent a failure on the parts of everyone involved, including us, the American people. 

I think our best reaction, as a people, is not to celebrate, but to mourn.  A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. that's been making the rounds illustrates the sentiment:

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. 

There have been a lot of good articles about the Christian response to Osama bin Laden's death.  A Vatican spokesperson said, "In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred."

Emotions are high about this.  When my colleague James Ford used the word "glad," he got some apparently heated responses including one suggesting he could no longer teach the Buddhadharma.  On the other hand, I've seen some pretty heated responses to some friends suggesting that gladness is the wrong approach.  We're quick to chastise each other on both sides.  I can't condemn anyone for a feeling of gladness--I experienced that same lifting of spirit myself, instinctively.  (And it appears Ford wasn't talking about gladness at death--read his own words for an explanation.)  What I can come back to is to say that feeling gladness at the death of Osama bin Laden is not my best self, nor my religious self.  It does not reflect my values nor my theology.

What is the Unitarian Universalist response to this man's death?  We have no set creed, but freedom of religion, so of course there is no one set response.   But in our religious tradition we also know that we believe people are not inherently evil.  Our Universalist heritage reminds us that no one is damned forever.  And so I experience sorrow that we were not able to find the good in Osama bin Laden and that he chose a path of violence and death, and that we followed, chasing him on that path, and being on it ourselves.  Our principles, while not a creed, also serve as a touchstone in times like this.  The remind us of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being--every single one.  So at times like this, when it is easy to fill up with hatred, I remind myself of the inherent worth and dignity of anyone that I might want to call "enemy."  I look, too, to the principle that we strive for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.  There are many quick to say that Osama bin Laden's death is "justice served."  Perhaps it is -- although, I think justice is better done by a court than by a bullet.  But it is not "compassion served," certainly.  Can we feel compassion for Osama bin Laden, individually or as a people?  What would that look like?  I'm not there yet.  I don't feel compassion for him.  But I think I would be better for trying to.

The merger of the Unitarian and the Universalist denominations took place 50 years ago -- the official date was May 15, 1961.  So, of course, I started thinking about my experiences at the merger.  But, wait!  I wasn't born yet!

That's right, one of the neat things that we can celebrate is that there are generations now of people who are Unitarian Universalists from childhood on, some even with ten years or more in the ministry, who were raised in, influenced by, and in turn influenced themselves this new association that was created 50 years ago.

Many argued then that without this merger, Universalism would die.  I look around me here, and I really believe that.  At the time of merger, there were three little rural Universalist churches between ten and fifteen miles from Jackson.  My church, a small rural Universalist church, joined the new UUA, and it's still going strong.  The Universalist church in Horton, MI did not join the UUA, but eventually became Congregationalist.  There's a church and a congregation thriving there, but no Universalist church.  The Concord, Michigan church, the furthest from Jackson at 14 miles, floundered for a while and then went out of existence.  They still have special programs there every year, such as a Christmas concert or service, but there is no longer a worshipping Universalist body.  There is no church there, even though there's a church building there. 

Without the merger, we might have died.  With it, we have generations of Unitarian Universalists to spread our saving message -- our Universalist message of love and acceptance.  All that, and Unitarianism, too.  What a deal we got.  Happy Birthday, UUA!

My colleague Tony Lorenzen recently wrote a blog post on James Luther Adams' "Five Smooth Stones."  As a refresher, even though I know many of you can rattle them off the top of your head, James Luther Adams was a Unitarian and UU theologian and professor at Meadville Lombard Theological School.  He wrote an essay on the five smooth stones of religious liberalism.  The "smooth stones" metaphor comes from the story of David & Goliath, wherein David used 5 smooth stones in his slingshot and killed the mighty Goliath.  JLA's Smooth Stones are:

• "Religious liberalism depends on the principle that 'revelation' is continuous."
• "All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion."
• "Religious liberalism affirms the moral obligation to direct one's effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."
• "[W]e deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation." 
• "[L]iberalism holds that the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."

Tony neatly sums these up in his blog post with one word each.  My summary is a bit longer.

The first smooth stone tells us that there is no one religious truth that has already been told and that is handed down in one particular sacred text.  Revelation can happen at any time, and is still happening.  The second talks about democratic principles and freedom -- particularly important as JLA wrote this in response to experiencing the rise of fascism in Europe.  The third tells us that we have a prophetic faith and we are all prophets -- we must all be voices for the social good, for the betterment of society.  Fourth, good is created by us here and now, not something that is done just by God.  The third and fourth stones are very linked.  And lastly, that we have the resources to affect change, and so therefore we should have hope. 

I refer to the five smooth stones often and had actually used the 5 smooth stones in the sermon that I had already written that I'll be preaching this Sunday.  I'd been thinking on the 5 smooth stones the past couple of weeks for no particular reason except that I've been working on our program for Ohio River Group next year on "The Future of Liberalism," and one of our reading items might be the 5 Smooth Stones.  This got me thinking--If I were writing the 5 Smooth Stones now, what would the Smooth Stones be?

I don't have my answer yet, except that Tony is exactly right when he says what's missing from the five smooth stones is love.  That would be my first smooth stone -- a radical universal love that embraces all people.  I love all of JLA's smooth stones, and think they're all vital now, but maybe I would combine the third and fourth to make that space for love and call it a day.  But there may be something I'm not thinking about right now that is more vital for us to talk about in what distinguishes liberal religion.  I'm still thinking on it.

So I'm still working on my five smooth stones.  Meanwhile, what are yours?

My new book, An Extremist for Love & Justice, is now available!  It'll be up on Amazon in a day or two, and I'll link to it then, but it's better for me if you go through the publisher (CreateSpace, Amazon's self-publishing arm): https://www.createspace.com/3593257.  To encourage such, here's a coupon code for $2.00 off -- Q2MVMHDY.

I thought some readers might be curious about the self-publishing process, so I'll write a bit about it here.

Self-publishing has been an interesting process.  I've learned a lot by doing it, one of which is how many typos I make, and another of which is that it always pays to document your sources while you're writing rather than having to go back later and look them all up again.  Being consistent about MLA or Chicago style doesn't hurt, as well. I spent more time straightening out my footnotes than I could possibly imagine.  They're still not perfect, which bugs me, but eventually I just had to move on.

As for self-publishers, I looked into various self-publishing options, including iUniverse, Outskirts, XLibris, Lulu, and CreateSpace.  I heard good things from colleagues about both CreateSpace and Lulu, so those are the ones I looked into more--also they were two of four that were very responsive to providing information to me, iUniverse and XLibris being the others.  Lulu seemed like a good option that I'll consider in the future.  They're one extreme of the options--you provide your own book in PDF form with all the layout done, including page numbers, table of contents, fleurons, and the works. You also have to provide your cover as a completed PDF file with the correct spine width, and bleed margin and so forth.  My graphics capabilities are pretty weak, but they have some templates you can play with, and I created something that I think was every bit as good as what I ended up getting.  They'll give you a free ISBN, you upload your files, and you're basically done.  All that is free.  They make a larger percentage off of each book that's printed, but there are fewer up-front costs.  But you don't get much for that -- the book is available through Lulu, but to make it available elsewhere there are additional fees (although still smaller than other publishers).  Honestly, now that I've gone the other route and seen it all, I can't remember what turned me off of the idea of doing it through Lulu.  I know I wanted the comfort of having it be formatted for me, and felt that a less-do-it-myself approach would yield a more professional result.

Once I ruled out Lulu, I ended up going with CreateSpace, because when I added in what I wanted, all of the others seemed pretty equivalent, and I had a colleague who had a good experience with CreateSpace, and since they're connected to Amazon, I felt that would make things smoother.  I wanted something that would do the interior and cover layout, would provide an ISBN, and which would make it available on Amazon and other booksellers, particularly Borders and Barnes and Noble.  To get all those pieces it seemed to work out to around $500, no matter which publisher I went with.  (For example, iUniverse was $599, but would've included the Kindle file; xLibris was $449 but had extremely limited templates.)  So CreateSpace was as good a pick as any, to my mind.  For $499 they take your file and format it according to one of several templates.  The templates have less flexibility than I would like, but they worked with me to find a reasonable compromise.  Then they took my picture and words and created a cover according to one of several templates again.  They have templates for the front matter of the book (title page, etc.), as well to choose from, and a list of several different fleurons and fonts for the cover and interior.  I thought CreateSpace would give more flexibility here than Lulu, but in the end it was about the same as the one I had created myself on Lulu.  CreateSpace did throw in their distribution services, so it can be available through just about any bookstore in the country to order.  Lulu had the disadvantage of not doing Kindle format, and since I have a new Kindle, I thought I would like to have it in that form.  Unfortunately, the Kindle file is not part of the CreateSpace package.  It's something I can add on or do myself, so I'll probably look into doing that this summer and make it available on Kindle. 

The CreateSpace process took more time than I thought it would after uploading the files in early April to today when I could finally approve the physical proof (and that's without actually getting my proof copy in the mail yet--I approved it sight unseen).  There were several steps along the way where I was unclear what would handle next and how long it would take.  But in the end they were very responsive to my calls, and I'm happy with the final result.  I would recommend them for a first-time self-publisher, based on my experience so far.

Just a quick note here to say that the book is now available on Amazon.  And, no, there aren't any used copies yet!  It's cheaper to go through CreateSpace, as described in the last post, and use the coupon.  I get a larger amount, even with the coupon, than I do through Amazon, so it's to my benefit as well.  But if you're determined to use Amazon, if you follow this link, my church gets a percentage through their Amazon Associates account.  And it is a little thrill to see it available through Amazon.  It makes it just a little more real, although I've yet to see the final project in physical form -- my proof has arrived, but I'm out of town.  More on that later.

Right now I'm in Washington, D.C. for the 3rd biannual HRC Clergy Call for Justice and Equality.  There were many wonderful moments today worth talking about, but I want to tell you about some recent poll's results.  HRC just commissioned a new poll to study religious responses to GLBT issues.  The amazing and wonderful results are that people of faith overwhelmingly -- yes, overwhelmingly -- are now in support of LGBT justice issues. I know this may seem hard to believe.  The media keeps showing us the voices of hate and telling us that's the faith perspective.  But the truth is it's not. 

Some specifics:

When asked "Do you favor protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations?" 70% of all people said yes, and 68% of Christians said yes.

85% of people say their faith leads them to believe in equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

76% of all people and 74% of Christians favor a law to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people or the children of GLBT people against bullying and harassment. 

People also think that when faith leaders condemn GLBT people it does more harm than good. 

When the Christian numbers are broken down, the Catholics are most in support of these things (both practicing and non-practicing), but even the non-denominational Christians, which includes evangelicals, are in favor of these GLBT justice issues. 

These are wonderful results.  Now if we can only get our politicians to hear them tomorrow during our lobbying time.

Today was lobbying day with the HRC Clergy Call.  We started out with a little lobby training, then each state was assigned an HRC staff person.  We all went to the press conference, and then off to the lobbying visits with our staffer. 

The press conference was at a beautiful spot with the Capitol in the background.  It was, unfortunately, extremely hot and sunny.  The press conference offered no shade, and few of us had worn hats.  Only one seemed to have brought sunscreen, but as she was a UU she offered me some.  (I'm sure she would have happily offered to any denomination, but it was a small tube, so I was grateful to get some.)  We put up umbrellas, but were told it would ruin the pictures.  Since most of the cameras were pointed at the speakers, and we were not behind the speakers but seated in front of them, I opted after a while to go back into the shade.  Clergy can be long-winded at these sorts of things, after all.

Once I was happily back in the shade, I was much more attentive.  And they were wonderful speakers.    The press conference started off with a Buddhist invocation from the Hawaii delegation.  Joe Solmonese of the HRC spoke.  Several heads of various denominations spoke, as well.  Unfortunately UUA President Peter Morales was unable to attend.  He had flown out the day before and had dinner with the UU group gathered there at the UUA Washington Advocacy Office, but he got sick somehow and was unable to be with us for the press conference.  His piece was ably picked up by Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness.

After the press conference ended, my HRC staffer, Tim Mahoney, came to find me.   There were supposed to be three of us lobbying for Michigan, but one UU colleague had things come up and was unable to make it.  The second Michigan person, a non-UU from the Detroit area, had checked into Clergy Call the previous day, but never showed up for the lobbying.  So Tim cancelled the visits with their congressmen, and he and I went to visit Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow, and Congressman Walberg, after a lunch in the cafe of one of the Senate buildings.

Two years ago when I went to the HRC Clergy Call I was surprised to learn that you usually don't get to meet with your representatives.  This year I was prepared for that.  Our schedule said that we would see staffers at my senators' offices, and perhaps meet with Rep. Walberg if his schedule permitted.  It was a very busy day on Capitol Hill, so we didn't see Rep. Walberg, either. 

It was a very friendly visit at Sen. Levin's office with a staff person who was extremely knowledgeable on LGBT issues.  Sen. Levin is co-sponsoring ENDA, one of the pieces of legislation we were there to talk about, as is Sen. Stabenow.  Sen. Stabenow's legislative aide who met with us was very courteous and asked good questions, and that was also a good meeting.  After those two meetings, we dropped off packets at three other congressmen's offices on our way to see Rep. Walberg's staff.  At Walberg's office I stressed the anti-bullying legislation that we were there to talk about.  The staff member agreed that certainly no child ever deserved to be bullied, and so I talked about how children of LGBT parents, children who are LGBT, and children who are perceived to be LGBT are particular targets of bullying.  I talked about how no matter how one felt about LGBT issues, nobody could believe those children deserved violence against them for what they were, or what they were perceived to be.  And I talked about the high suicide rate of LGBT youth, as a direct result of the years of discrimination they face.  It was a cordial meeting where we talked about values and the importance of protecting our children. 

I have to brag a little and say that after each meeting Tim Mahoney, who was wonderful and helpful, told me that I did a great job and hit all the points that we were hoping for out of the event.  And I am thankful for all the people who gave me their stories to take with me to Capitol Hill.  I shared those stories with the staff members I visited with, and stressed their importance, that these letters represent real people in Michigan with stories about how things affect them.

So, after that I skipped the HRC Closing Reception back at their offices, an opted for one cab ride rather than two, and headed back to where I'm staying with a Methodist colleague.  I've got sore feet, but high hopes. 

Opening invocation from the Hawaii delegation.
 Taqueina Boston speaking for the UUs.  You can just see the tip of her head there.
Me.

I got into Charlotte, NC yesterday afternoon for the 50th annual UUA General Assembly, which begins tomorrow evening.  Before GA begins, however, there are "Ministry Days," and before Ministry Days this year there is Chapter Leader Training, which began yesterday evening and continued through the day today.  As Heartland Chapter President, and still feeling my way around the job, it was a welcome opportunity to hear what other chapters were doing well and where we all were struggling -- mostly around membership questions, welcoming, and technology.  It's become clear to me that something we need is a Chapter Connections/Technology officer in the Heartland.  Luckily, I seem to have found someone for the job, and it's not me.  Members of our chapter will not be surprised at the wonderful techie colleague who has indicated her willingness to step forward.

Don Southworth, the UUMA Director, started us off in worship today at Chapter Leader Training by talking about those moments when we feel really blessed to be able to do the work we do.  It was a feeling echoed in our opening worship for Ministry Days when our Charlotte Colleagues reminded us how blessed we are in this work.  And, yes, when we get together at this time of year we like to tell stories of how busy we were and how tired we are.  But it's an amazing gift to get to do this work.  And what a joy, really, to be together here with all these wonderful UUs engaged in the work of faith and love and justice.

Today was "Ministry Days" (a misnomer, because it's one day and one evening, really).  The two highlights for me of Ministry Days are the 25/50 worship service and the Ministerial Conference at Berry Street.  The 25/50 worship service features a speaker from that group of ministers who have been in the ministry 25 years, and also one from that group who have been in the ministry 50 years.  It's always a delight to hear their stories of their experiences and how things have changed and yet been the same.  We have a similar thing at the Meadville Lombard Theological School alumni dinner, which will be later in the week.  Can you imagine about 800 Unitarian Universalism ministers singing "Turn the World Around"?  (We were some fewer than that, I think, but I can't remember the number.  The total number of UU ministers is now in the 1700s.)

The Berry Street lecture is, we were informed, the oldest running lecture in the United States.  It was started by William Ellery Channing in 1820.  I can't explain the exact words shared of what the purpose of the Berry Street lecture is, but my understanding is that the person giving it is called to bring a new understanding around an issue of their choice to the UU ministers assembled.  For example, Mark Morrison-Reed in 2000 talked about how we leave congregations.  His discussion was fresh and informative, and I know congregations that have used his Berry Street words as study when their minister is leaving.  Today the Rev Dr. Deborah J. Pope-Lance took us to task on an issue that's been plaguing our ministry for decades--clergy misconduct.  It was incredibly timely.  The UUMA has been wrestling with what language to have in their code of conduct for, well, a very long time.  We had voted in some new language this morning, in fact, with an immediate amendment of stronger language following right on its heels.  The tension is our ministry is between those who believe it is always wrong for a minister to get involved with a member of his or her congregation, and those who say that if done carefully and openly, ministers can and have built successful marriages with members of their congregations, and for single ministers in isolated locations, it's unreasonable for them not to be able to pursue romantic relationships within their congregation.  Pope-Lance made it very clear that we need to take a hard line here.  And in an increasing number of states in the U.S. it's already illegal for a minister to get sexually involved with a congregation member.

The votes this morning that we took were very confusing--it seemed like we voted to put certain language into place and then voted to study that exact same language for a year.  I'm still sorting that out.  But whichever it is, what seems to be in place for UU ministers starting now or soon is a best practices recommendation (not enforceable) that says that before ministers get sexually involved with someone in the congregation, that person must leave the congregation, or the minister must leave the congregation, for a period of six months.  The minister must inform the UUMA Good Offices person.  And then after six months, the relationship can be pursued, but the congregation must also be informed.  There are a lot of further details, but that's the heart of it.  And there's less detailed language in the enforceable part of our code, but that's where, I think, we're still also working on strengthening up the language. 

Today I dropped my daughter off at the UU Kids Camp for the first time.  She had a good day; they took a field trip to the science museum.  She's in the camp for three days, and it's field trips each day.  I confess to a little disappointment around this.  I've been so longing for her to have a UU camp experience.  (See this article from a UU World blog on more about UU kids camps.)  It seems like this great opportunity at General Assembly to have a camp that's integrated around UU principles and heritage and to tie it to our values.  What is in fact the case is they contract the kids camp job out to a local child care provider to run.  I suppose this is not the primary goal of GA, to provide UU experiences for children, but it's a wasted opportunity, if you ask me.  All the same, I hope to continue doing this bringing my daughter to GA and putting her in the camp, hoping that I'll have additional opportunities to expose her to the larger world of UUism beyond the local congregation.  She went with me to the Banner Parade last night and will walk the exhibit hall later in the week.  We watched a bit of the Service of the Living Tradition together tonight.  So those pieces of UUism will still sink in, perhaps.  And if it doesn't, well, at least the kids camp was fun, eh?

After dropping the girl off at camp, it was a workshops day all day today.  In the past, the days have been a mixture of plenary and workshops.  This year plenaries are all stacked into the weekend, with the workshops packed into Thursday and Friday.  I see the logic in this model, but I'm not enjoying it.  It makes for a long day if the two aren't mixed. 

One workshop I went to today was the first part of a two-part series by Galen Guengerich on "Church of the New Millennium: Formula for Failure."  I'll probably miss part two, because it's in the same slot as Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.  Guengerich structured his remarks around an imagined future in which his daughter's grandchild is writing a thesis about why Unitarian Universalism failed and disappeared.  He suggests that she would write that it's because we were "spiritual but not religious." 

I'm reminded of when I was asked while interviewing for my current ministry whether I was "spiritual or religious."  "Religious," was my response.  I love the institution of Unitarian Universalism.  That's what's so wonderful about being at General Assembly -- it's an embodied representation of this great thing that is Unitarian Universalism that I love.  I love the moment the gavel is pounded during the opening plenary and the General Assembly is declared to be in session.  I love the swirling frenzied excitement of the banner parade.  I love running into colleagues between sessions and catching up or exchanging hugs.  I love shopping around the exhibit hall.  I love my mind and heart being stretched in program and worship.  Heck, I even love discussions about our bylaws.

Guengerich expanded on what he meant by religious and spiritual, but you need to go hear it for yourself when it's available, as I'm sure it will be.

Today concluded with the Service of the Living Tradition, in which ministers and religious educators are honored for their service.  Ministers who have passed are listed in the "roll call," and ministers receive preliminary and final fellowship, and are acknowledged when they retire.  Similar milestones for religious educators are marked.  I needed to go back to the hotel so I could be around my little one for one evening, since my next two are booked, and I needed to hear how kids camp went, so I opted to watch the service on line.  It was clear from the service itself and from the comments of my colleagues on Facebook as well that this was the best service in years.  The feed went in and out a bit (probably the hotel connection), but the sermon was awesomely good.  Everybody seems to love that this year instead of admonishing people not to cheer and clap, this year it was encouraged.  Every bit of the service was just right on.  If you want to know what a Service of the Living Tradition is and what it means, watch this one.  I can't remember a better one, including those in which I got preliminary and final fellowship (one of which was pretty darn good, one of which was awful, and I won't say which here on the blog).  This was it.  Seriously.  This was religion.

Okay, so I've now figured out what was unclear to me before.  Here's what we've voted in that is now in our "Standards of Professional Practice" (our unenforced part of the document, or "best practices):

G. Personal or Romantic Relationships
1. A minister of a congregation, or a community minister affiliated with a congregation, who engages in personal friendship or pursues a romantic attraction with a member or participant of that congregation, or whose family members or existing friends join or participate in that congregation, must take into account the following considerations:
 a. Such relationships will change the dynamics of the congregation as well as of the ministry, potentially in negative ways that may persist beyond that minister’s tenure.
 b. Members of the congregation who have special relationships with the minister must often refrain from positions of visible leadership or systemic influence for which they might otherwise be eligible.
c. It may be advisable for a potential romantic partner to refrain from visible leadership or systemic influence for which they might otherwise be eligible in the congregation, agency or enterprise, at least until the nature of the relationship with the minister is clearly established and can be made public.
 2. Ministers who pursue such relationships should seek and heed the advice of colleagues as to how the conduct of that relationship may affect their ministries and their congregations.
 3. It is unfair and destructive to congregations for the minister to ask them publicly to accept a succession of several romantic partners, whether or not these partners have been previously connected to the congregation.
4. Community ministers should be guided additionally by the expectations of the agencies or enterprises where they work, and by the standards of professional organizations to which they may belong, regarding the establishment of personal friendships or romantic relationships with those they serve.
 5. In all cases, ministers must be careful not to take advantage of those they serve, or damage the integrity of the congregation, agency or enterprise in which they serve.

And here's the stronger language under review (with the agreement that the final language would avoid he/she language in preference to the use of "they" as a non-gendered third person single pronoun.  The justice advocate in me agrees.  The grammarian still has problems with the singular use of "they" and would prefer other work-arounds such as consistent use of a full noun or pluralizing of the entire sentence):

1. A minister who initiates or responds to sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person he/she serves or serves with professionally must take into account that such relationships will change the dynamics of the congregation/work site as well as of the ministry, potentially in negative ways that may persist beyond that minister’s tenure.
2. A minister who initiates or responds to sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person he/she serves or serves with professionally agrees to:
 a. Either the minister or the other person will leave the congregation/site of ministry for 6 months before the relationship can be pursued
 b. Fully disclose to the potential romantic partner the implications for that person of a relationship with the minister, including the change that the person could lose his/her congregation or work site regardless of the success of the relationship.
 c. Fully disclose such decision to the chapter Good Officer of the UUMA.
d. Fully disclose such decision to the congregation/work site if at the end of 6 months the relationship is pursued
 3. It is unfair and destructive to congregations for the minister to ask them publicly to accept a succession of several romantic partners, whether or not these partners have been previously connected to the congregation.
4. Community ministers are guided additionally by the expectations of the agencies or enterprises where they work, and by the standards of professional organizations to which they may belong, regarding the establishment of sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person served professionally.
5. In all cases, ministers must be careful not to take advantage of those they serve, or damage the integrity of the congregation, agency or enterprise in which they serve.

It may also be under review for the "Code of Professional Conduct" (the enforceable part of our document) to read: "I will not engage in sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person I serve professionally."  That piece of it was still confusing.  We didn't vote on this, I believe, but it seems like adding this is the goal that we're still working towards.

At any rate, what is clearly the difference between what was voted in and what is under review is that what was voted in has much more to do with the role of the minister's partner in 1.a-1.c., and the review version is very explicitly laying out steps that should be followed if a minister is to date a member of the congregation in 2.a.-2.d.  While we'll take this year to review it, I think the proposed version is very good, and these steps of contacting good offices, ending the pastoral relationship, and disclosing to the congregation, are important and necessary.  People might argue over the six month period, I suppose. And I can certainly see that if one was dealing with a very new member to the congregation that this might be excessive, but this is also "best practices" and, as such, in consultation with good offices, it seems that sort of case-by-case situation could be negotiated. 

Special thanks to James Kubal-Komoto whose comment on my last post prompted me to go back and read through it all to understand it.  Balancing my laptop on my knee and trying to see where the differences in the two versions were proved not to be the most effective way for me to do business.  Now that I can look side-by-side, the situation is more clear.  That one sentence deal in the whole explanation threw me off and was, I think, unnecessarily confusing, but perhaps only to me. 

Today the UUA General Assembly had one main issue before them in the short (comparatively) plenary session: to vote on the proposed Statement of Conscience on Ethical Eating.  There were two main debates that were held about the SOC.  The first was about the elephant in the UUA room: classism.  The proposal put before us in plenary included two lines that urged us to tell food sellers and producers that we will buy and pay more for ethically produced food.  One fellow from my own economically devastated state of Michigan urged people to vote against the SOC because of this.  He shared with the gathered delegates that while he wishes he could pay more for food to follow ethical eating guidelines, he's on food stamps.  As another person put it, it's all about the math. 

The second issue was around a sentence that says, "Minimally processed plant-based diets are healthier diets."  The complaint was that this speaks for everyone, and calls on all UUs to be vegetarian.  We heard from people saying that it's simply not true that vegetarian diets are better for everyone -- one woman spoke of her partner, a previously committed vegetarian, who was forced to add meat to her diet to survive due to increasing food allergies and other health issues.  Another person said he just didn't believe that vegetarianism wasn't always the most healthy option for everyone.  One person argued that the focus of the sentence was on the issue of processed foods.  Yet another argued that the sentence talked about plant-based diets not vegetarianism, and that meat can be included in a plant-based diet.  An amendment to strike this sentence was proposed, and struck down. 

Later, we went back to those lines about money, and an amendment was made to strike them, and was passed with no argument. 

Unlike Actions of Immediate Witness, which are proposed at General Assemblies and voted on at the same one, the Statements of Conscience we pass are much longer and thoughtful procedures.  Ethical Eating started as a study-action issue for congregations, and then out of that process comes the statement of conscience.  That this is now a statement of conscience makes it an important document for our faith, and UUs might be interested to read it and consider what it asks of us as individuals and congregations.

There were only a couple of workshops on social media this year at General Assembly, and one of them was at the same time as another big lecture I wanted to attend the other day, so I happily grabbed the one today that was sandwiched between the plenary sections.  It was led by four ministers who talked about how they use social media.  What was really nice was that they all saw use of social media as a valid piece of ministry -- not just something they do on the side -- and they also talked about how it shows the congregation a different side of the minister, through seeing snarky blog posts or goofy cat videos or exposure to the different interests and social groups a minister interacts with.  And they all seemed to think this was largely positive for congregations to see this side of ministers.  As someone who has friended congregation members on Facebook, I have to agree.  My facebook friends see more of me than they would otherwise, and that's largely good.  (Although an amusing question came up about seeing the minister in online dating communities -- a question that's pretty touchy, considering the topics of discussion at UUMA these days.  For more on that, see my last few blog posts.) 

One fun thing about this workshop was seeing other people I know from social media and seeing them interact with each other, and then having our workshop itself interact with social media when one of the presenters took a picture of the crowd and posted it to Facebook.  The picture isn't wide enough to see me, but she tagged me anyway (I'm Facebook friends with 3/4 of the presenters), so if you're on Facebook with me, check it out.  We're all being flaming chalices for her.  (Please be aware that I don't friend UUs from other congregations unless I have a secondary connection with them in some way, like friends or relatives or working together on something where Facebook connection would facilitate things.)

As a Meadville Lombard Theological School alum, one of the regular GA events I attend is the Meadville Lombard alumni dinner.  After everything Meadville Lombard has been through this year, I wasn't sure what the mood would be of the room this year.  Often the event is a mixture of school pride, nostalgia as we hear 25 years and 50 years in the ministry speakers, and silliness as we hassle the president or scribe and bark (literally--it's a long story) our approval for various statements or motions. 

This year, after Meadville Lombard has sold its historic building and cancelled the plans to join with Andover Newton in forming a new theological university, and has now leased space in the Chicago loop area (location still mostly undisclosed, but alums are in the know now).  It's been such a whirlwind year that when you go to www.meadville.edu, you land now on their news page -- that's what they're putting first on the web, because it's so significant.  Compare that to the front page of Starr King's at www.sksm.edu -- you get the picture.

So what was the atmosphere?  We're mourning the loss of 5701 S. Woodlawn -- the Curtis Room, the Stairwell, the Stacks.  But beyond that, there's a cautious optimism.  I think the alumni are largely glad not to be worried about losing identity in this institution with Andover Newton, and glad for Meadville Lombard to be going it alone and to be self-sufficient.  We're also glad that there's now, finally, an answer to the question of where Meadville Lombard's physical home will be, and that it will be in Chicago.  Our reservations are mostly around things that have already been in place for a while -- the touch point program and the loss of the strong relationship to the University of Chicago that was there in days past.  The touch point program is a big change from the residential program most of us went through, but it's been going on a couple of years, and the students (as well as faculty and supporters) are speaking of it as a strong program that's meeting all their needs and doing what it needs to do. 

I was cautiously optimistic heading in.  I come out of the Meadville Lombard annual event much more hopeful and with a lighter heart. 

President Lee Barker invited us as alumni to come by 5701 this fall and say goodbye to the building.  I'm thinking I want to take him up on that.  It's only a three hour drive from Jackson to Chicago, so it would be easy to make it a day trip or an overnight trip.  They have a very nice blog for sharing memories of our home in Hyde Park, but I think I need to make the pilgrimage. 

This morning's plenary sessions at the UUA General Assembly dealt with several housekeeping bylaw changes (some of which will have to be voted on at next year's "Justice GA"), and the Actions of Immediate Witness.  Four AIMs were proposed, and three passed.  Interestingly, the one that didn't pass was on opposing the war in Afghanistan.  Arguments against ranged from that it's not an immediate issue (since it's been going on so long) to that it instructs us to instruct the people of Afghanistan in how to run their country, which is inappropriate.  It's significant to note that a similar AIM was rejected last year at the General Assembly.  But both of these also follow on the heels of the 2010 Statement of Conscience on Creating Peace.  AIMs have to pass by a 2/3 majority.  The AIM on the war was so close that our moderator had to call for the vote three times before it was clear that it didn't pass.  Those we did pass were on supporting supermarket workers in California, protesting the Peter King hearings on "Muslim radicalization," and opposing the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision. One of those was by a pretty close margin. 

Later in the day, after I had already left, the General Assembly passed some interesting Responsive Resolutions.  Apparently I am urged to go learn Spanish, as are you.  Let's do that.  Seriously.  I'm sure I can take classes at JCC.  And next year at GA there will be no AIMs.  I think this might be something we're sorry about later, but hopefully not.  And then the following year and thereafter we're limited to 3 AIMs per year, rather than six, for the delegates to vote on.  What worries me about that is that I think the way we decide which ones go before the delegates are which ones get the most signatures, which may just mean that the ones proposed by the most efficient or persistent people, not really the most popular, are what we'll end up seeing.  This year, for example, I signed a petition for an AIM titled "Solidarity" that was on workers and unions, but it didn't apparently get enough signatures for us to see it in the plenary.  Was this because not enough delegates were interested in the subject, or because the person gathering signatures wasn't persistent enough?  I may never know.  So the AIM process is definitely problematic to begin with.  Hopefully the changes made today made it better, not worse.  I know others felt like the AIMs were not researched enough, and sometimes poorly written. But I don't see how lowering the number we can vote on improves that necessarily.  Nobody, I think, is reading the whole proposed AIM before signing the petition. 


Well, that's it for GA for this year.  I've left Charlotte.  Now we'll just have to see if I can learn enough Spanish plus do everything else we're urged to do to make ourselves ready for Phoenix next year.  It's a tall order, I think.  I'm already trying to figure out what will happen to my child in GA childcare if I'm arrested.  I think they add on an additional charge for every 5 minutes you're late picking up...  Meanwhile, send me the links to everything we're supposed to be doing to ready ourselves.  No, this isn't cynicism, I really do take this seriously, but let's also remember that there are people sometimes new to our movement and sometimes of limited means who join us at GA, and not be too high in our demands, too, okay?

Just FYI, the UUA is in the process of designing a UU app.  A couple of weeks ago they put out a page where you can submit ideas.  As is often the case, however, I can't find it easily by searching for it through the UUA's page.  Problem number one is that "phone" and "app" are too common.  "Submit ideas for mobile phone app" doesn't turn it up, either.  Fortunately, I have found it for you.  It's at http://www.uua.org/about/184350.shtml. 

But, if you can't wait to see what the UUA will turn out, the Church of the Larger Fellowship just put out a very nice app, "Quest for Meaning."  The Android version is available; the iPhone version may still be "coming soon."  It was free when I downloaded it during GA, and features four options -- reading joys and sorrows, posting a joy or sorrow, lighting a chalice (along with a reading), and podcasts.  It's a nifty little thing.  I found it hard to located.  In my apps store, I searched under "Quest" and then under "Unitarian" and then finally found it by searching for either "Quest Unitarian" or "Quest Church of the Larger Fellowship" -- I can't remember which. 

An interesting conversation has been going on in the UU blogosphere starting with Scott Wells at Boy in the Bands, then with Dan Harper at Yet Another Unitarian Universalist, and finally Phil Lund at Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie.  All three are UU ministers--Scott Wells works for the Sunlight Foundation; Dan Harper is the Associate Minister for Religious Education at the UU Church of Palo Alto; Phil Lund is on staff at the Prairie Star District of the UUA. 

Diving in--the original notion that Scott Wells posted is that in a digital age, the sermon is too long.  He writes, "It made sense in a education- and resource-poor (and frankly, entertainment-poor) age, but if I held forth for twenty minutes or more every Sunday, I expect to be regularly challenged (perhaps mentally, and in an unspoken way) by people who would Google for facts during my oratory."  Phil Lund echoes this: "Thing one: settling into a cozy pew for an hour or so to listen to a ripping good sermon may once have been considered a relatively inexpensive way to be entertained on a Sunday morning, but nowadays if I want to listen to someone talk about something on Sunday (or any day), all I need to do is logon to the interwebs and visit TED.com…for free."

Scott Wells suggests a different model: "It might make sense for a minister to preach briefly — tightly, eloquently, perhaps around a single point — to the “live congregation” and have it spelled out later in another way. Not print necessarily, but perhaps a podcast or video, or forgoing these perhaps a live event more in common with an interview or discussion than fighting with hymns and prayers for attention."  Dan Harper spells out some concrete steps he's proposing in response: posting a reading on a sermon blog on Thursday; on Sunday before worship post the text of the sermon, along with links; give a hashtag for twitter conversation for during and after worship; stream the worship service live; continue conversation after on the blog.  Phil Lund shares these thoughts and suggests turning the sermon inside-out, a process he promises to describe soon in an upcoming post.

That's all by way of background.  I'll post my response soon, as well.

*amended 8:31pm 7/8/11 to reflect Harper's title correctly.  Sorry!

So in my last post I talked about a proposal being generated to look at worship, particularly the sermon, in a new way in the light of social networking.  I think it's worth noting that the authors of the three posts I cited are all people who are not full-time solo ministers with the corresponding preaching schedule that such demands, and that Dan Harper, who comes the closest to that role in his role as Associate Minister, is in a large church with presumably some staff, and in Silicon Valley, as well.  What he describes seems less doable in a small country church such as I serve.  So here's what I see as the limitations to the model he proposes:

1.  Podcasting/Live streaming/any audio or video component -- Much as I love the idea of it, I don't have the technology for it.  And should I have the technology, I still don't have the tech support that I personally would need.  I could acquire the know-how to do it all on my own, given the technology, but right now that's beyond me.

2.  Level of feedback/discussion -- right now, when I do post a sermon on my blog, or just on blog posts in general, I'm getting one or two comments, at most, and often times none, from members of my congregation.  I think that some would be interested in the types of discussions Harper suggests, but it'd be hit or miss on participation.  In a small church there just might not be the critical mass to have this kind of discussion going.

3.  Receptivity -- My cell phone has no bars at my church.  Now, I'm on the comparatively lousy Sprint network, and I know some church members have better coverage at my church, but not all of them.  So Twittering during the service is narrowed down from just the people with phones that can tweet to people with phones that can tweet who aren't on roaming.

3.  Accessibility -- I'm guessing about 75% of my church is on e-mail and Facebook, and another 10% are on e-mail but no other social media, but the other 15% (mostly seniors) are not online at all.  (All numbers pure guesses, although I could go person-by-person and get real stats later.)  If the entire nature of a sermon is changed such that it doesn't feel complete without online participation, what does that mean for the 15%?

This brings me to the expectations.  Both Lund & Wells talk about the changing expectations for a sermon.  Wells talks about thinking that if he were to give a 20-minute sermon that people would be fact-checking his data on their smart phones.  I regularly give 15-20 minute sermons (I think my average is more like 15 minutes, really), and have yet to have someone whipping out the phone and telling me my information was wrong.  Sure, I do occasionally get a fact wrong.  But that culture hasn't pervaded the sanctuary yet.  The assumption of both Lund and Wells is that people are wanting something different out of their sermon than the model we've been using for hundreds of years.  I think that they're right for the percentage of the culture that is digital natives, but the question is when has an individual church reached that point?  My church, I'm feeling, is not there yet.  People generally seem to like the longer sermons (to a point), and when the sermons are shorter and there are more other elements in the service, I get more complaints.  So my reality is not matching with what the new media guys are suggesting. Of course, and here's the rub: maybe the people who want something different are not coming, and our adherence to old forms is limiting growth.  Is it?  Quite possibly.

And so, with those limitations & expectations  in mind, next I will address what I think the evolving model could looks like, and what I think is currently possible in a small, low-tech church.

In Part 1 of this series I wrote about a proposal being generated through blog discussion about shorter sermons tied to social media in new ways.  In Part 2 I wrote about some of the limitations as I see it.  The main take-away there is that while some populations of some churches may be ready for this, others are not over the threshold yet.  The problem is that we're on a cusp right now, where some "digital natives" are ready for something different, not everyone is comfortable with the use of it.  As you go up by age/generation, a smaller percentage of people are using social networking. 



So what can we do?  Well, there's still a lot.  I think for now it still means that for many congregations, having a physical space in which one holds worship is still necessary, and the cornerstone of that service is still the sermon.  And, at the same time, the UUA General Assembly changed the definition of congregation such that this is no longer the only way (except for CLF) to be a congregation. The possibilities of what that can look like are endless.  And social media is evolving so quickly that whatever one creates right now has to be dynamic and flexible.  This week, for example, I got on Google+ for the first time.  Will it make other social networks obsolete?  Will it be a big failure?  Only time will tell. 

What I can do, right now, is dependent upon what will be supported by my congregation and has the most ability to be attractive to newcomers, as well.  We don't have a critical mass on Twitter or MySpace, and responding to blog posts is sporadic but increasing.  Facebook conversation, however, is plentiful.  So what is possible is putting out, primarily through blog and Facebook, a conversation starter leading into the worship service that helps shape and inform it, and after the worship service putting out some summary that continues the conversation.  This could be tied into a way to also have this conversation in a physical space before and after, for those wanting the face-to-face connection.  We have no way to record audio or video digitally at the church--when we do, it's with borrowed equipment--so that remains in the future dreams list.  The degree to which social media shapes the worship, then, is the degree to which people participate in these types of forums.

What I think is that for a time, this is going to look like not much happening.  But eventually, it has the power to shape and transform worship.  What it amounts to now is just an opening up and demystifying of the process--less of me going into the office and shutting the door and emerging with a worship service like Athena coming fully-formed out of Zeus' head, and more like writing with a bunch of people chatting around me in a coffee shop and sometimes stopping by the table.  Can I write that way?  Time will tell.  I've gotten lots of practice by having a child popping in constantly -- about ten times while writing this blog post alone.  Having constructive adults popping into the conversation should be a welcome change.

Phil Lund suggested we turn the sermon inside-out.  I'm not doing that yet, but the first step to turning something inside-out is opening it up and showing the center.  That's where I propose starting for now.

Why?

Some time ago I installed a button from Extreme Tracking on the bottom of my church website, inconspicuously, I hoped.  I don't pay for the service, so I only get the free version, which tells me about the last twenty people to visit the website.  At the time, I was noticing the diversity of browsers people were using--the usage had changed from almost exclusively Internet Explorer to a diversity of browsers with Explorer representing the largest percentage, but less than half, and Firefox hot on its heels.  The big question then was how to design a page such that it looked good at different resolutions and through different browsers.  That was just a couple of years ago.  Earlier this week when I looked at data on the last twenty users, six were from mobile phones (one of which I could rule out as mine).  With one-fourth of the users looking at the website from mobiles, I knew I needed a church webpage that was friendlier to mobile usage.  I suspect that mobile phone users are more likely to be "seekers" than members, but I have no data to back that up, except that I could see search terms and know that some were coming from Google, some from my blog page, and some were going to the site directly.

So this week I've been working on a mobile version of the webpage.  It's available at http://www.libertyuu.org/mobile, if you want to check it out.  (Our regular page, for comparison, is at http://www.libertyuu.org, although I hope to redesign it next week because I'm pretty unhappy with its look currently.)  I suggest you check the mobile site out on a phone, as that's what it's made for, and it looks strange on a PC.  I don't yet have the script in place that would automatically route mobile users to it, but am working toward that goal.  And there's a big question about iPad and other tablet users, whether they should be directed to the mobile site or the full site.

Content

I don't have any digital video or audio capability at my church, so both webpages are heavily text-based, and the mobile site more so, since I didn't want to direct them off too often to outside pages.  The goal here was to keep information as brief as possible, and put up the things that seekers would most want to find.  Brevity is not my strong suit, as anyone who knows me can attest to, so I'm still working on trimming it down.  But I finally settled on nine links: Sunday Services, Directions, Religious Education, Social Justice, Newsletter, Beliefs, Shop, Phone, and More Information.  I figured that what seekers want to know is when, where, and what they'd be getting from us, so "Worship" tells the "when," "Directions" (and "Phone") tells the "where," and all the rest are the key pieces for the "what" -- worship, religious education, social justice, and newsletter.  The "More Information" lists staff members and the church e-mail and phone (again).  "Shop" lets people go through our Amazon Associates account to shop on Amazon.com, guessing that some people might do this from their phones (although maybe, like me, they go through their Amazon apps, so this might have little appeal).  There's a lot on our regular webpage that there's no link to here -- staff bios, church history, sermons, forms, by-laws.  All that is stuff I'm guessing the average mobile user doesn't need.  But I do intend to go back and add a link to the full site.  And then, at the bottom, I have links to our Facebook page, Twitter, and all the icons that usually appear to tell people we're welcoming, accessible, etc.  The other icons are all linked to a page that explains what they all are.

How to Do This:

The biggest question for me in doing this wasn't the question of what content to put on the page, but how to make what I call "the box" -- how to size my page correctly so that it's the right size for mobile phones.  This is particularly complicated since mobile phones have a wide range of screen sizes.   My father, William Landrum, is my tech support, but he hadn't done this before either, so we went through some trial and error before we got it to where I think it's right for most phones.  It turns out it's not so much about creating a page where we create everything in a small box.  When we did that, we got a phone screen where all the date was in a smaller box on the corner of the phone screen.  The key is having a piece in there that tells the phone that this is designed for it.  In the code, before head, even before where it says html, it says:

{?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?}
{!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"}

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. 

One trick we've learned is that just like you can make a link on e-mail addresses that opens up an e-mail program to send mail, you can make a link that will have people's phones go straight to their dialer.  This is something that often really irritates me when browsing the web on my phone, that I can't just tap on the phone and have the phone dial.  It turns out it's because people haven't coded the phone number to do so, because they're assuming browsing from a PC, where you can look at the number and pick up your phone and dial it while still looking at the number.  I can't count the number of times I've had to search for something to write on while holding my phone, so that I could dial and look at the phone number at the same time (no, I can't remember a ten digits easily, and that may be true for more people than you think, especially with a small child in the back of the car making all sorts of noise).  So even if you don't design a mobile webpage, go to your existing page and hyperlink your phone number, people.  Inside the angle brackets just type something that looks like a href="tel:5175294221", only with your phone number instead of my church's.  It's that simple.  Can you believe that every company isn't doing this?  Ridiculous, when you think about it.  But, like many of us, they're not realizing yet that a) a lot of their traffic is coming from phones and b) those people want to call for information or reservations or something, and c) it's this easy!  Yes, if you're using an app to find your restaurant or other business, the app will often do this.  But sometimes people search through a browser, too--and maybe more often for a church than for a restaurant. Can you tell I feel strongly about this?  Nobody is clicking on your phone number from their phone hoping to be able to write it down on paper and use it later.  They're happy it goes straight to the dialer, where they can hit "send" or they can save it in their contacts for later.  Trust me.

Now, if only I could figure out how to link the address such that it opens up their navigation app, I'd be set.  And, sadly, the Twitter and Facebook go to the mobile browser version, not to the often nicer apps.  I want to put a link up for Gowalla and Foursquare to our locations, although this will have the same issue.  And I'm thinking adding a "like" button for Facebook and a "+1" button for Google wouldn't hurt, either, although then I'm getting into space limitations again.  And then if the church gets a Google+ presence, there'll be that to deal with, too.

Ironically, what takes up the most space is the name of my church -- Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty.  It wraps to take up three lines of space once I put it next to a chalice picture.  For a seeker site, I don't like the acronym option, so I think I'm stuck with it, but it's wasted space on a phone.  That's something that, for example, Micah's Porch or our local nondenominational Westwinds has right.  I remember when the first church I served, the Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church, whose acronym is nearly as long as "Westwinds," took a vote, which narrowly failed, to change their name.  I can't remember for sure what the other option was (a lot had been discussed, and this is ten years ago now), but I think it was "Harmony Church."  I'm guessing when any of you are designing a mobile page you'll be wishing, as I do, for a name more like "Harmony Church" and less like "First Unitarian Universalist Society of Eastern Suburb of Big City."  I appreciate the desire to have our heritage and denomination present in our naming of ourselves, and I wouldn't propose going through a name change, having seen how difficult a subject it is, but never has it been more awkward than in designing for a screen about 200 pixels wide.

Well, that's all there is to it.  I appreciate comments & suggestions for improvement, and am happy to answer questions if I know the answer.  I've often felt like saying, however, in my best Bones McCoy voice (if I had one, which I don't--really), "Damn it, Jim, I'm a minister, not a website designer!"

It turns out I was over-thinking the maps option.  I had created a page called "Directions" which had the address and phone number and an embedded customized Google map of  the church in it (200x300 pixels).  This was entirely workable.  Someone could change the size of the map and move it up & down and so forth, to see what they wanted to see.  It was pretty much like this:


View Larger Map

But this wasn't what I really wanted.  I wanted to click on it and have the option pop up of going to my navigation app on the phone.

I discovered that if I clicked on the (plain text--no hyperlink) address itself that I had typed above the embedded map, I would get such a pop-up asking if I wanted to do that.  But this wasn't intuitive enough and some people might not know their phones work this way (and some phones might not do it, for all I know).

Then this weekend someone sent me directions to an event using Mapquest. When I went to print the directions, Mapquest asked me if I wanted to send the directions by text message to my phone.  When I did this, and the text message had a simple link.  When I tried clicking on that link, I had the option of using my navigation app or going to the browser.  Unfortunately, when I clicked navigation, it didn't work right -- it didn't put in the address.  When I went to the browser, however, I was then able to go back over to the navigation app and have the address appear in there to navigate to.

So I tried just putting a Mapquest link to the church on the mobile Directions page that was like this:  MAP.  My phone, when I clicked on it, didn't offer me the navigation app option.  So much for that. But it did take me to a very nice little Mapquest mobile version (which I do have to say seemed to offer more choices than Google's). 

So then I went back to Google, wondering what would happen if I just linked to the map rather than embedding it, like this:  MAP.  Success!  Clicking on it offered me the directions of going to Google's very nice mobile version of their map, or using my app.  I switched my directions page on the Mobile home page to be linked to the map, rather than linked to a page with the link on it, and it's done! 

Moral of the story: Whether you have a mobile version of your church webpage or not, instead of embedding the map, it would be good to provide a link to the Google map (or do both).  That way mobile users--at least those with Android phones like mine--will have the option of getting their navigation app to give them directions on how to get to your church as they drive there.  And even if it doesn't, Google will automatically route them to a mobile version of their map, which will be sized more appropriately for the phone than your embedded map is.

For the record, I'm not really opinionated about what is being called the "hot mess" -- the resignation of two members of the GA Planning Committee. I don't know enough about the internal politics of the GAPC or the UUA Board to really weigh in on the issue.  Kim Hampton's post about the roll of worship and the SLT in the Justice GA is informed and informative.  And I think Tom Schade is right on point to say, "It's always useful to remember that the future hasn't happened yet."

I am opinionated about the "Justice GA," on the other hand.  And I know for every person who was sitting in the Plenary Hall when we voted for a "Justice GA" there was a separate opinion, and not all of our expectations can be met.  Half of us probably think that there should be a Service of the Living Tradition, and half of us don't.  Half of us think there should be an exhibit hall, and half of us don't.  And the half that do and the half that don't for each item are a mix of those interested in the idea of the Justice GA and those that aren't. But I know this: there are a lot of people who've never gone to at GA before who are considering going to this one, because they understand that this year our denomination is doing something important and meaningful and different.  There are people who can only go a GA once in a while who are making a special point to be at this one.  The energy and excitement about the possibilities are high.

What we voted on was, to my mind, instead of doing business and usual and in lieu of cancelling or moving the 2012 General Assembly, to have a Justice GA where business as usual was minimized.  My fear is that "business as usual" will be taken to mean only the actual business of the General Assembly -- the business resolutions, Actions of Immediate Witness, and other such business of the plenary. 

On the other hand, I am also concerned that for people with mobility issues there will be nothing that they can attend if more and more is focused on off-site justice work.  I'm personally dedicating myself to starting to learn Spanish this year in preparation for the Justice GA, as suggested to us in one of this year's Responsive Resolution--this represents a real investment of both time and money, neither of which I have a lot to spare. 

And at the same time, I'm worried that I won't be able to even attend GA because I don't handle a lot of heat well, nor a lot of walking and standing, and if everything involves a combination of the two, it will be extremely difficult for me.  This year and past years have been a "hot mess" for me when it comes to how we handle accessibility.  During one GA (Ft. Worth), I very badly sprained my ankle -- it dislocated and then popped back into place in the process.  I needed help with mobility.  The planning for GA didn't include extra scooters; I was very lucky that one person who had ordered one had never shown up.  This year, when our Standing on the Side of Love rally was a bit of a hike in the hot weather, I heard the announcement that if we needed to take a cab, we could get reimbursed later (already not the best system), and that cabs would be waiting outside the conference center.  I didn't hear that it was at a different door, so I followed the crowd out the side door -- no cabs.  I went back in and found out where I was supposed to go, and went out -- no cabs were waiting.  This was not a particularly well-orchestrated initiative, from my point of view.  It's very important for the Justice GA to remember that what is a "short walk" for one person in a huge obstacle for another, particularly in heat that many are not used to dealing with.

So, with all that said, here's what I, personally, would love to see:

• No exhibit hall.  It's become more and more pointless anyway.  All of these agencies can be found online.  We can shop online, and we can see their justice issues online.  Instead, create a virtual exhibit hall that people can visit from anywhere.
• A Justice Hall instead.  If people need downtime and a place to wander or socialize, give them small tasks to do, like letters to write to elected officials. 
• One or two workshop slots only.  There may be some workshops that are essential to hold, or exiting lecturers that we really want to feature, and there can be a some large justice-oriented workshops on how to build a movement, how to do social justice, how to engage cooperatively with other organizations, ARAOM work, etc.  
• Instead of workshop slots, we have justice slots.  As for the all-justice slots, I would like to see not just large social justice rallies in these spots, but places where small groups go off into different parts of the area to work with local organizations on different projects.  There needs to be great variety.  And this probably means a sort of schedule where we commit to what we're doing in advance.  And it means buses. 
• I would like to see the following cornerstone elements of GA: the Ware Lecture, the Service of the Living Tradition, and the Sunday morning worship service (which I would love to be the SLT again, but that's a whole other argument).  I think all can be themed around this justice work, and all are important to what makes up a General Assembly.  For the newcomers to GA, they would give the important taste of what GA is usually about.
• All Reports -- all reports -- given in written and video ahead of time and no reports -- no reports -- presented verbally during plenaries.  We can do our homework ahead of time.  
• A single plenary session to deal with all remaining business that we haven't been able to put off or voted this year to do next year.
• Yes, more worship.  When we can't be doing justice work, we should be praying, singing, and celebrating.
• I would like to see Ministry Days themed around the Justice GA in the following ways: a Berry Street Address that's on theme; minimal business; a group action project; drop the "collegial conversations" element in favor of group social action; drop the usual conversation with the UUA President in favor of having him lead us in justice work as well.

Most of all, I want this experience to be meaningful and transformative for me and for our movement.

Obviously I'm not going to get all my wishes.  Nor is anybody else.  Meanwhile, let's have patience and understanding with the Board and Planning Committee as they do the hard work of creating a GA experience unlike any other.

A few months ago, as Borders closed some of its stores, I wrote this blog post.  This week we get the word that Borders is completely liquidating and will be no more. 

When I came to Jackson, Michigan, seven years ago, we had several small bookstores.  None of them were great.  Almost all of them are now out of business.   What's gone?  Best Books in Jackson Crossing, a small bookstore in a strip mall on West Ave., another small bookstore that was on West Ave. (I can't even remember their names), the Nomad Bookstore on Mechanic (which both came and went during these years), and now, we'll see the Waldenbooks in Jackson Crossing close, as well.

Where can you buy a book, other than online, in town?

• You can buy textbooks at Baker College and Jackson Community College.
• You can buy Christian books at Agape in Jackson Crossing.
• You can buy children's books at the Toy House and a lesser number at Toys R Us.
• You can buy comic books at Nostalgia, Ink. 
• You can buy used books at the Jackson Book Exchange.
• And you can buy bestsellers at Meijer, Target, and I think K-Mart and Wal-Mart (I seldom shop at these two). 

Honestly, our book selection won't be much different with Waldenbooks gone -- which perhaps was part of the problem.  The real loss was the Nomad, which carried a somewhat different selection from all the rest, although it was still not the selection I was usually looking for. 

But since we don't have much selection here, much less a bookstore with a comfy chair to curl up in, I did most of my book shopping in Ann Arbor or Lansing.  In Ann Arbor, there were three big Borders a year ago, and one Barnes and Noble.  I suspect that Barnes and Noble will become very overrun unless another big store pops up in town.  Ann Arbor, you would think, could support at least one more bookstore in town.  Hopefully Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million will seize the opportunity.  Meanwhile, I may head to Lansing, which still has all of its big bookstores -- two Barnes and Nobles, and, even better, two Schuler's Books.  I've just discovered they have weekly online coupons, which makes them more price-competitive, and they're locally owned--like Borders once was.


*sigh*  I will miss it.  Goodbye, Ann Arbor institution.

As many of you may be aware, I have my bachelor's and an M.A. in English literature, and I often teach introduction to composition at the local community college in addition to ministry.  I'm teaching again this fall, and am thinking over my point of view about pronouns, specifically the use of "they" as a singular gender-neutral third-person pronoun.

My previous perspective had been that I was there to teach them to abide by the MLA style, and that the MLA style did not (yet) allow for the singular use of "they."  Therefore, I have been marking this as a pronoun/noun error on papers for years.  As far as I can determine, the MLA, Chicago, and APA style manuals all still recommend "he or she" or "he/she" or making the subject plural.  The Chicago Style Manual states:

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. 

My job, as I saw it, was to teach them to learn to use the MLA style and their handbook, and so I followed its rules.

However, there is one big problem with the he/she-type work-around: it leaves out people who do not use male or female pronouns to describe themselves.  And in the transgender community, use of alternative pronouns is becoming more common, particularly use of "zhe" or "hir."  Not everyone considers themselves as someone either male or female--we don't all fit neatly into two little boxes.  I could have students list all the pronouns, but as awkward as "he or she" is, certainly something like "he, she, zhe, or hir" would be more awkward. 

There's an interesting story here about how we took a situation that was understood as sexist--the use of "he" to mean people of all genders--and then created a popular usage, "he or she," that was still discriminatory.  And the grammar handbooks are still fighting the first problem and sometimes not even acknowledging the second one.  For example, the Little Seagull Handbook says, "Sexist language is language that stereotypes or ignores women or men... Writers once used he, him, and other pronouns as a default to refer to people whose sex was unknown to them...  Use both masculine and feminine pronouns joined by or."  The Chicago Manual of Style similarly gives this as an option without recognition of the justice problem that it creates in section 5.225--Nine techniques for achieving gender neutrality: "Use he or she (sparingly)."

There's one clear answer to this justice problem, and it's the one they all avoid: "they."  I try to avoid it in formal writing, but I do it in speech all the time.  It's being used commonly in speech, and grammar rules should follow usage, not dictate usage, is one argument.  It's a similar situation, one can argue, to what happened with the word "you."  "You" was originally a plural pronoun, and the singular was "thou."  Now we use a plural pronoun as a singular one with no issue, except for the need to create a new plural such as y'all.  (Heavens, let's hope we don't get a "th'all" emerging!)

We don't really, however, use "they" in a complete singular way.  We switch our sentences mid-stream to plural.  So we don't take the sentence, "A student can use whichever pronoun he or she wants" and replace "he or she" with "they" and say, "A student can use whichever pronoun they wants."  We say, rather, "A student can use whichever pronoun they want."  We change the verb there at the end to reflect the fact that "they" is a plural pronoun.  If I'm allowing for a singular "they" it should be followed by a singular verb, yes?  But that's not what we're doing in speech.  And we're not going to drop "he" or "she" as pronouns anytime soon and just move to totally using they and having plural verbs for singular subjects.  So it's still all mixed up.

I've explained all this to my students, and told them that I want them to learn to use the style recommended and that I think this will change in the next few years and the style manuals will accept "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, but until they do, I want them to be aware of how they're using their pronouns and follow the style manual.

But I'm swayed now by the justice argument.  I was told of a situation in which the University of Michigan, my alma mater, dealt with this in a policy and ended up rewriting the sentences to avoid "he or she" or the singular "they" in order to be both grammatically and politically correct, when the justice advocates and the rhetoricians couldn't agree.  The UU Ministers Association, I learned recently, embraces the singular "they" as a solution. 

I would like to allow my students to use the singular "they," but at the same time I want them to be aware of what they're doing.  I'm thinking of some sort of solution where they indicate their awareness through asterisks or brackets or italics: they, *they*, [they].  That would show they're aware of the singular pronoun, and I would like them to be.  But that's as disruptive to the eye, on an aesthetic level, as people would think something like "z/s/he" would be. 

So what will I do?  I think, in the end, there's only one solution: explain it all, but let the student do whatever they want.  There's still no reason I can't crack down on apostrophes.  Thank goodness, because as fond as I was of pointing out pronoun/noun disagreements, the apostrophes are where my real passion is. 

Almost two weeks ago, a blogger going by "Wondertwisted" wrote a blog post titled A 'Dear John' Letter to Unitarian Universalism.  (Her real name appears to be "Cindy" based on the responses to the post, but since I'm a Cindy, that's confusing, so we'll call her "WT.")  In her post, WT outlines the reasons why she's leaving Unitarian Universalism.  The blog post immediately got a lot of my colleagues talking about it, mostly on Facebook as they posted up the piece.  I've been thinking about WT's post since then, and am still not really ready to put out a full response, but here goes for a bit anyway.

I understand what it is my colleagues are saying when they are sympathizing with Wondertwisted.  They see in her post a desire for a deeper spiritual experience in Unitarian Universalism.  It's connected to the "Language of Reverence" discussions that went around a few years ago and the "Whose Are We" discussions the UUMA has started.  The recent UU World piece by David Bumbaugh articulated this neatly, as well. 

I also understand the yearning for a Unitarian Universalism that is more embracing of its Christian past.  I serve a church with a high percentage of UU Christians, and I'm the child of UU Christians, and I think it's very important to create a religious atmosphere in UU churches that is welcoming and embracing of UU Christians.  And I know that there are UU churches where UU Christians have felt the atmosphere to be hostile to their beliefs.  I've heard this from a family member, for one thing.  I've worked hard to discourage this kind of attitude whenever I've seen it.  And I know some see in WT an articulating of how hostile our churches can sometimes be.

I read Wondertwisted a little differently, however.  First of all, I'd like to say that while I want Unitarian Universalism to grow, I don't envision a world wherein everyone becomes Unitarian Universalist.  It's well and good that people are different religions--I like religious diversity in the world.  So I don't mourn that UCC members are members of the UCC and not the UUA.  That's great that the UCC is there and that we have so much in common with them.  And I think UU churches are sometimes a stopping point for religious wanderers on their way to somewhere else.  That's okay with me, too.  Not everybody who walks through our doors is really going to find that Unitarian Universalism is what that person is looking for.  And a lot of what people are looking for and not finding in our church is something a lot more Christian than what we are. 

So there are UU Christians and there are UUs who are not Christian and there are Christians who are not UU.  And it's good that there are all these categories.

I think Wondertwisted may be, as she describes herself, a "Unitarian Christian," but she's not a UU Christian, and it's great that she's figured that out and gone off to somewhere where they are more Christian and maybe less Unitarian, but more what she's looking for.  Let me explain.

It's comes down to this passage:

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.

You can’t be a Buddhist-Humanist. You just can’t.

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. 

It's frankly very easy to see how a UU can be a Buddhist-Humanist.  Those two faith traditions have a lot in common.  And neither Buddhism nor Humanism is a dead, unchanging, ungrowing thing.  They both have flexibility in them.  But one who sees the definitions of Humanism or Buddhism as so rigid that one can't find a home in both?  Well, it's not surprising to me to hear that person doesn't feel at home in Unitarian Universalism.

Not everyone is comfortable with ambiguity, with gray areas, with the lack of rigid definitions, of course.  I often say that what makes UU Christians and UU Buddhists and UU Pagans and UU Humanists all UU is that we all believe we don't have all of the answers, and that we can learn from one another.  We believe in the value of coming together in religious diversity and sharing our religious journeys. 

So blessings on your journey, Wondertwisted.  I'm glad you've figured out where your religious home is.  And it's okay that it's not us. 

There are a lot of people who have written a lot of wise words about how to talk to children about 9/11.  I'm not a child psychologist, or a teacher, or an expert on trauma.  I am a parent, though, and ultimately every parent has to handle this themselves, whether or not they are also a a child psychologist, teacher, or trauma expert.

So I talked to my child about 9/11 today on the way to school in the car.  She was born a few years after 9/11/01, so it wasn't something that had really come up before.  But we had switched the radio from NPR to her favorite music station--the one that plays all the pre-teen pop songs--and they were talking about 9/11.  So I just asked her, "Do you know what they're talking about when people are talking about 9-11 or September 11th?"  She didn't.  So I told her, in simple terms, that on September 11th, ten years ago, before she was born, some men, which we call terrorists, had taken over some planes, using knives, and wanted to kill everyone, so they flew the planes into buildings and crashed them, and that they did this with three planes, and two of the buildings, the World Trade Center or "Twin Towers" had completely collapsed, and a lot of people had died on that day.  And then I just answered her questions -- she's pretty bold about asking questions.  And that let me know where her thoughts were.  And I made sure to tell her two things -- first, that this was why they check people over a lot more now before we go on airplanes, so that would keep us safer, and, secondly, that there were a lot of people who were heroes on that day, like some people on a fourth plane who stopped that plane from hitting a fourth building. 

Her questions were:
Why do people want to remember this now, and talk about it?
Why did those people want to crash the planes?
Why did they hate us?

Ten years is a long time when you're not ten yet.  However, explaining why we want to remember, when people are still sad, is easy to do for a kid who has done funerals for her pets.  Answering "Why did they hate us?" on a car ride to school is less easy.  I told her that I didn't really completely understand this, either. 

How do we explain acts of violence to our children?  It's definitely not easy.  I'm still working on this one.  Meanwhile what I want her to know at her age, the age of nightmares, is that we've worked to make things safer, and that most people on that day acted in good ways, and that's a big part of what we want to remember.

When I was younger, particularly, but really for a lifetime, I can remember instances where people were talking about how they remember where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was shot or that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.  I was born after both of those instances.  But I could tell that there was something important about sharing those memories.  For my generation, we had a bit of this with the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion.  I remember that I was in science class at school when I heard about it.  But for us, really, it's now 9/11 that holds this strange fixed moment in our cultural consciousness.  I think it's true not just for us, but maybe a bit more so, since we aren't old enough to have experienced those tragic deaths of JFK and MLK, much less the World War II moments that still loom large for that greatest generation.

My story of 9/11/01 is intricately woven with the beginning of my ministry.  I was in my first month of ministry, fresh out of seminary.  I had started about a week into August, and the Sunday following 9/11/01 would be our ingathering  Sunday, the official start to the church year.  I was at home in my new Houston apartment when I got a call from our music director.  She asked me if I had heard the news, if I had my television on.  I hadn't.  I remember her saying, "The World Trade Center is gone.  It' gone."  I turned on my television as she told me the news.  And she asked me, "Do you think we should have a vigil this evening?"  I said, "I'm not sure, I'll call you back in a few with a decision.  Let me process this."

Two more calls from church members followed in rapid succession to make sure I had heard the news and to find out if we would have a service.  By the second one, I said yes, and started to make all the plans -- called the music director to start planning the musical elements, called the president to start the phone tree so that people would get the news, and had somebody calling the television stations to get us on the list of services. 

In my memory it was that very day, but perhaps it was the next day, that I had a meeting with the local Houston-area UU ministers.  What a blessing that was.  They shared resources that they had been thinking about for vigils and for the following Sunday: Annie Dillard, Anne Frank, Adrienne Rich. 

I get the vigil we had and the following Sunday conflated in my memory.  I know at the Sunday service we had our usual water communion.  And I remember somebody bringing water from their trip to the World Trade Center.  Whether it was actual water from there or symbolic water, I can't tell you.  To me, it was water that came from the World Trade Center, and it was there with us in our water communion.  I've carried that water as part of our water communion since -- I took some water from that water communion with me to my next congregation, and to the one that followed (my current congregation), and saved water from year to year.  The World Trade Center is still there in the drops of water we pour every year into our common bowl at our water communion. 

Other things I remember from those services are that we had a fireman in our congregation who shared the Fireman's Prayer with us, and that even as far away as Houston, there were people with connections at the Pentagon and in New York City.  We shared with the entire country the pain, the fear, and the longing to get up and go and be of some help as we watched the endless process to try to find survivors and identify the dead unfold through our television sets.

This was the beginning of my ministry as a UU minister.  And that I ministered through this time is still one of my biggest accomplishments as a minister.  Nothing in seminary had prepared us for this situation.  Those of us who were new in the field had had no training on how to craft a vigil after 9/11, how to minister to the fear and pain that was a national experience like this, how to be a non-anxious presence when the entire country was feeling the most anxiety it had ever felt in our lifetime.  We were new and green in a raw and earth-shattering moment. 

I didn't do everything perfectly, I know.  I remember the competing tensions even then about patriotism and religion -- Do we sing "God Bless America"?  Do we use a flag print cloth as our altar cover?  But as I look back now as a minister with ten years experience, and open the files and read my words from that time in 2001, I wouldn't do anything differently.  It was real and genuine.  I'll be using some of those same resources my Houston colleagues shared with me from 2001 in 2011, and am still grateful for what I learned from them on that September day.  

9/11 had a large impact on my ministry.  About two years later, in 2003, now ministering in New England, my colleague Jennie Barrington and I, were talking often how 9/11 had shaped our ministry.  We also were big Simon and Garfunkel fans, and Simon and Garfunkel were doing their "Old Friends" reunion tour.  We bought two tickets to go see them in New Jersey, and we hit the road.  We went two places: the concert, and Ground Zero.  That was it -- we didn't do a Broadway show or see the Statue of Liberty, or go to the Met.  We had two things we wanted to do: that concert, and see Ground Zero for ourselves.

I had been to New York City only two or three times before -- once to visit a boyfriend in college over the summer, once with my college's Glee Club on a concert trip.  I had driven through it a couple of times on my way to New England, also, but all I can say about that is that the tunnels and bridges are expensive, and that driving through New York City six months after 9/11 with a truck full of furniture is a nerve-wracking experience.  I had never gone to see the World Trade Center when it was standing.  I've still never been to the Statue of Liberty, although I saw it from the ferry my first time there. 

So we drove with our bad Mapquest directions ("take the exit" -- which exit?) down to our hotel in New Jersey near the concert venue.  We listened to Simon and Garfunkel all the way down and all the way back, hearing some songs that we had never heard before on their newest release, such as "A Church Is Burning," which we heard with stunned ears, and replayed over and over again several times in a row, weeping, as we drove down.  We talked about how to use the song in worship, something I still haven't done.  And we went to the concert, which was a special treat not only getting to hear them, but hearing them in home turf, in the New York City area.

And then we went to Ground Zero.

There was no memorial there, of course.   What there was was a big pit where work was still going on uncovering things that had been pushed down into the earth by the collapse of the towers.  The area was surrounded by fences, tourists walking around, and people selling t-shirts and tchotchkes.  It was a strange and surreal experience standing there by the fence with nothing particular to say or do once we got there.  It had become more tourist site than memorial at that time.  Yet it was an important moment, this finally seeing it for ourselves, and understanding how big the area was.

I don't remember if we wept or if we prayed, or if we just walked around and looked.  I do remember that it changed us.

I've been rereading what I wrote in those days after September 11th, 2001.  Here's what I said at our water communion service on September 16th, 2001:

I'm pouring out post after post on 9/11 to get out of my system those things which I need to say but which don't belong in my sermon.  This is done in hopes that once these things are out, I can see what is left.  What I know is left right now is the stone of hope that is hewn out of the mountain of despair.  Perhaps it is connected to those five smooth stones.  Or perhaps it is one of them.  What mountains do we hew the other four stones out of, then?  Grief, hope, memory, and even joy are all the tumblers now as I polish the stones up. 

This is a shout-out to the GA Planning Committee, I suppose.  I know they're doing a lot of hard work, and I know that criticizing what they've done, when they have so many voices they've been asked to listen to and they've put a ton of thought & effort into things, is not helpful, constructive, or appreciated.  So without criticizing, what I want to say is that I want them to know how much work we, ought here in the non-UUA-committee world have been doing, as well.  We've been asked to prepare ourselves for this General Assembly, and I think we have been.  By the time I get to General Assembly, here's some of what I will have done:

• Read the UUA's "Common Read" book for 2010-2011, The Death of Josseline.
• Read other books on immigration.
• Read just about everything on the UUA's webpage on immigration.
• Read countless e-mails and websites from social justice agencies on the subject.  
• Attended workshops designed to prepare us for "Justice GA" at my district annual assembly at two consecutive district assemblies.  
• Attended a training from Standing on the Side of Love.
• Attended workshops and discussions at past GAs on the subject.
• Held congregational discussions on the subject.
• Preached on the subject.
• Participated in press conferences and social justice events at a state level.
• Held a Community Forum on the subject with local experts.
• Taken one or two semesters of Spanish and perhaps also immersed myself in an intensive study course, as urged in the Responsive Resolution from GA 2011.
• Participated in a UUMA chapter gathering focused on immigration justice and preparing us for the "Justice GA."

That's what I can think of off the top of my head.  I don't think it's atypical for a UU clergy person--I think it's probably typical of the amount of work we're personally putting in to prepare ourselves for this GA.  I know that's not everything I need to know.  But I didn't start off this process knowing nothing about how to do justice work, either.  And I also know that there are people who will have done a lot more than me, and people who will have done a lot less.  And I'm sure that I will need some of the "education and preparation" times announced in the preliminary schedule.  Since those are all on the early days, though, I worry that the people who have prepared the most before coming are the ones who will get the most preparation there, and vice versa. 

I know there's no way to know the preparation level of each participant, and so things have to be somewhat geared towards the least prepared. But I'm just wanting to let folks out there know that when you ask us to do our homework, there are definitely those of us who are listening and doing so.  If there can be something of a advanced track that's geared to us who have done so, that would be great.

I'd been having a rough day, when I came to the studio with my daughter to wait for an hour while she takes her class. In the last ten minutes, one stranger has offered to buy me a latte, and another has told me that I look really nice in purple.

Random acts of kindness, folks, go a long way. You never know when the person you just reached out to really needed that kind moment from a stranger.

Here's hoping I remember to pay it forward.

Dashed off a letter to the UUA today.  Leaving off the official's name to whom I addressed it, the text of it was as follows:

I am writing to you as a Unitarian Universalist minister and as a Girl Scout Troop Leader and Girl Scout Troop Organizer. I’ve paid attention over many years to the “continuing struggle for inclusiveness” situation between the UUA and the Boy Scouts, as outlined at http://www.uua.org/re/children/scouting/169633.shtml.

I’m proud as a Girl Scout leader that Girl Scouts do not share the Boy Scouts’ discrimination towards atheist and agnostic scouts and troop leaders nor their discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender scouts and troop leaders. Indeed, I proudly tell my Brownie Girl Scouts on a regular basis that the Girl Scout Promise, which includes the word “God,” can be, according to Girl Scouts USA, replaced by any Girl Scout to reflect her own spiritual beliefs. I model this in my troop meetings by replacing the word “God” in the GS Promise with “love,” “earth,” “peace,” and another of other terms.

Similarly, Girl Scouts has recently been in the news for their inclusive policies on transgender Girl Scouts, and has come down on the side of believing that any child who considers herself a Girl and wants to be a Girl Scout is welcome in Girl Scouting. I confirmed this through calling GSUSA directly and asking about transgender girls being welcomed in scouting, and through conversations with my own area coordinator.

That’s why I am disturbed that right under the “UUA and BSA” page on the UUA’s website, the next link is to a list of “Alternative Scouting Organizations,” and that this page then begins with stating “In addition to the popular Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of the USA, there are other scouting organizations.” (http://www.uua.org/re/children/scouting/169569.shtml.) This statement makes it look like the UUA has problems with Girl Scouts similar to the problems with Boy Scouts, and perpetuates a common misunderstanding that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are related organizations that share common policies and practices, when this is not the case. Girl Scouts ought to be listed as an “Alternative Scouting Organization” along with Camp Fire USA, Navigators USA, Scouting for All, and SpiralScouts. I grew up in Camp Fire, and can say that I have found Girl Scouts every bit as welcoming, if not more so, to girls of regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, disability, sexual orientation or other aspect of diversity. My little troop last year was a group of girls who through themselves and their parents represented every aspect of that list of diversity types, in fact!

I’m hoping the wording on the UUA’s webpage can be changed to represent the positive relationship that the UUA has with Girl Scouting. If you are not the person who this letter should be directed to, please tell me who I can refer this issue to. This March is the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts, and I’ll be highlighting Girl Scouts in our church this year, where several Girl Scouts have earned their “My Promise, My Faith” badge for learning about how the Girl Scout Law relates to the Unitarian Universalist Principles. I would love it if by the 100th anniversary our organization could show more support for this inclusive and supportive scouting institution.

Thank you for your care and attention to this issue.

In faith,

Cynthia Landrum
Minister
Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty
Clarklake, MI
Girl Scout Troop Leader & Troop Organizer

Lowe's recently pulled advertising from the show All-American Muslim, bowing to pressure from conservative groups such as the Christian Florida Family Association.  The president of that group, David Katon, said this on NPR:

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.

Of course it does.  This is ridiculous.

The Muslims on All-American Muslim are more more peaceful, more American, and more Godly than Katon and his organization.  His statements are a disgrace to the faith of real Christians, and thank goodness we aren't using his beliefs to paint a caricature of the religion he claims to be a part of, because he gives Christianity a bad name.  I'll take Dearborn Muslims over his Florida Christians any day as my neighbors and friends.

I was excited to see the show air, by the way, and watched an episode or two, because it highlights the sort of people here in Michigan that I've gotten to know and care for as part of my community.  Unfortunately, I found the show rather boring, which is, really, pretty good news.  It turns out that All-American Muslims?  Well, they're just like us.  In truth, they are us.  And that's just not very exciting TV in my book.  Now, vampires or dragons or something, those are different.

Meanwhile, shame on Lowe's, which has offered this chicken-hearted response:

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?  

We call bullshit.

I've never seen so much discussion among my liberal and ministerial friends about Girl Scouts.  Sure, there's the palm oil controversy which comes up every year at cookie time, and the confusion that people sometimes have between Boy Scouts of America's stances and Girl Scouts USA's stances.  The two are unrelated organizations, and Girl Scouts USA welcomes scouts to change the word "God" in the Girl Scout pledge to any word representing the scout's spiritual beliefs.  Girl Scouts also has not taken any stance limiting participation of lesbian or bisexual scouts or troop leaders.

The latest Girl Scout controversy is around transgender scouts.  And, once again, Girl Scouts has taken an inclusive stance.  The story that has caught the attention in the news is of a young girl, Bobby Montoya, who wanted to become a Girl Scout.  Bobby is a 7-year-old transgender girl.

The story first emerged that Bobby wanted to become a Girl Scout but had been turned down by a local Denver-area troop.  Bobby's parents then appealed to the council.  The council overturned the troop's decision, saying, "Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout."  Some articles have misrepresented this as Girl Scouts as an organization taking one stance and then reversing it, when it was more of a matter of a local troop not following the inclusive policy that was in place.  When this story first emerged, I contacted Girl Scouts USA to ask about the policy on transgender scouts, and heard the same thing that I had heard from my local area coordinator and the same thing that the Colorado council said -- any child who says she is a girl and wants to be in Girl Scouts is welcome.  I had heard that the Denver-area troop leaders had responded by disbanding the troop, but when I research this, it turns out it looks like this is just rumor and misunderstanding.  It appears Bobby has not yet joined the troop, and that there have been no further developments on the situation in Colorado.  On the other hand, there are troops hosted at a conservative Christian school in Louisiana that have disbanded in protest. 

What's got people talking about this story again is a video by a California Girl Scout, Taylor [last name and troop number are being withheld, understandably].  Taylor urges you to boycott Girl Scout cookies because Girl Scouts admits transgender girls.  I'm having trouble embedding her video -- it seems to have been taken down, but I'm sure it'll be findable soon. 

Taylor's video is being spread through social media in thanks partly to the attention from conservative groups focused on pushing back against some of the more liberal and inclusive aspects of Girl Scouts, such as "Honest Girl Scouts" which takes issue with GSUSA for transgender scouts, but, more particularly, for some programs and events that have been done with Planned Parenthood, particularly at the international level (GSUSA is part of WAGGGS--the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouting).  Taylor's video, while it appears at first to be just one individual Girl Scout sticking up for her beliefs, ends with her plugging the Honest Girl Scouts organization. 

Just giving the background on this story was longer than I expected, so I'll share my thoughts and comments in a later post.

 (Continuing from Part 1)

Well, it seems the video of young Girl Scout, Taylor, which asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies because Girl Scouts is inclusive of transgender girls, has been taken down. There are a number of well-done responses from Girl Scouts that are available, however.  Some of my favorites are:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAnt5cqQ4Ss
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCDtaGCjujc
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=qxWM3dxfbX0
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BChDci9mkE&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=k85-CXLLIek

These Girl Scouts make several good points about what Girl Scouts is all about.  A primary one is about the Girl Scout Law.  In her original video, Taylor talked about the line of the Girl Scout Law that says, "Honest and Fair," and how Girl Scouts is somehow not being honest if they're not proclaiming loudly to everyone involved that there are transgender scouts, and who and where they are.  Obviously, the Girl Scouts are being honest about their policies, and fair in their implementation, but the Girl Scout Law has nine other pieces to it, many of which apply in this situation:

I will do my best to be
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.

 It'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."

My biggest worry in all of this is that the Girl Scouts could bend to pressure from the right to change their policies in this and other areas.  They're under considerable pressure from the right about interactions with Planned Parenthood, the transgender and lesbian scouts issues, and religious freedom.   When I started as a troop leader two years ago, it was printed everywhere the Girl Scout Pledge was printed that girls could change the word "God" to any word representing the Girl Scout's belief.  That's still the official policy, but it was controversial.  And it's no longer on their website and it's not in my brand-new Brownie handbook where the law is printed, either.  So it's not clear to me how a new scout or a new scout leader would be clear that Girl Scouts, unlike Boy Scouts, gives them this religious freedom.  I worry about a new scout being told by a troop leader that they have to say the pledge as written, and taking that troop leader's word for it.  Similarly, the conservative websites tell me that where Planned Parenthood was previously mentioned, in places like staff members' bios, it has been "scrubbed" from the website.  There's nowhere on Girl Scouts USA's webpage where you're going to find the policy on transgender scouts, either. 

So while Girl Scouts is open and welcoming, it's cautious, understandably.  That's why it's important to me that we, on the religious left, know what Girl Scouts is standing for, and the pressure they're under, so we can be as supportive as possible.  Don't buy the cookies if you don't want cookies, but when your local Girl Scout comes to you for support, please know that this is an organization that is working to empower young girls; to teach them valuable leadership skills; and to teach them love and respect for their bodies, minds and spirits; the people around them; and the world around them.  Stop and tell the Girl Scouts that they have your support and you believe in what they do.  There is so much in the world around us that is teaching negative messages to girls about their capabilities and their bodies, that I'm grateful that not only does Girl Scouts exist, but that it is a place that is open and welcoming to all girls, and we don't have to change our religious or political beliefs to belong.

And if you do want cookies, they go on sale here January 20th, a week from today. 

In 1964, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of the American Atheists, was called "the most hated woman in America." Judging from the response to Jessica Ahlquist, the love of atheists hasn't increased much.  Indeed, in 2009, a University of Minnesota research study published in the American Sociological Review showed atheists to be the most disliked minority group of those they polled, including Muslims and homosexuals. When asked to respond to the statement, "This Group Does Not At All Agree with My Vision of American Society," 39.6% agreed atheists do not (26.3% for Muslims, who came in second), and 47.6% would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist (33.5% for Muslims, again the next highest category).

So perhaps the vehemence directed toward 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist should not be shocking.  Ahlquist is a teenager who attends Cranston High School West in Cranston, Rhode Island.  Cranston High School West had a prayer banner that hung in their school:
(picture from The Providence Journal: http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/01/federal-judge-o-1.html)  Jessica, an atheist, felt that this violated separation of church and state.  It did, according to the ruling issued by the U.S. District Court Judge last week.  The judge weighed in very clearly on this question, saying, "The Court refrains from second-guessing the expressed motives of the Committee members, but nonetheless must point out that tradition is a murky and dangerous bog. While all agree that some traditions should be honored, others must be put to rest as our national values and notions of tolerance and diversity evolve."

Since that time, and probably before as well, Jessica Ahlquist has received messages of hate and threats of violence and death.  She has been the victim of cyberbullying from within her community and without. Rhode Island state representative Peter G. Palumbo, who called her an "evil little thing."  Even some moderate Rhode Islanders with Cranston connections I talked to recently were saying things like, "I don't see why it can't stay there.  It's tradition.  If you don't like it, just don't look at it."

Over and over again, I see something like this, and I'm stunned.  I can't grasp what makes people so frightened, especially when they are the majority, of the actions and beliefs of a young girl.  It's a fundamental piece of my understanding of what makes America great that we create a space where people should be free from religious persecution and that the way we do this is through freedom of belief, lack of state-sponsored religion, and freedom of speech. 

Freedom of religion means that the government does not impose its religion on you.  It's what protects us from Sharia law, too.  These same people who are so incensed that a Christian banner is taken down from a public high school, well I'm sure the majority of them would not want a Muslim banner hung in its stead.  We keep hearing the panic that Sharia law is being declared in Muslim communities in America, like Dearborn, from the conservative Christian right.  But what protects us from being a country under Muslim law is exactly the same thing that demands that this banner be taken down.

But, of course, the fear of Muslims and the fear of atheists aren't logical, rational things. 

The obvious irony is that the words of the prayer call on people to grow morally, to be kind, to conduct themselves in a way that brings credit to the school, and to be good sports and smile when we lose.

If only everyone who wants the prayer to hang could at least try to live up to it.

The UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales published a working paper titled "Congregations and Beyond" last week.  It's available in its entirety here.  In it he says, "I am realizing in a profound way that congregations cannot be the only way we
 connect with people." and "We have long defined ourselves as an association of congregations. We need to think
 of ourselves as a religious movement." 

The Rev. Morales says, "
Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited
 mobility and communication. Most members lived within a couple of miles of their
 church."  This is something that I've been thinking about recently, as well.  The time that the church is where you go to in order to hear the latest ideas or even the latest gossip is a time that's behind us.  The church is no longer the central, or even a central, hub for how people get and exchange information and ideas.  There are still things that churches do better than other institutions, but those things are fewer and far between.  We're no longer the best source of therapy--the psychological profession, as it emerged, has taken over that role.  We're no longer where you might hear the best, most engaging lectures--you tube gives you access to the best in the world, and it's a rare church with a minister of that level of academic excellence.  We're no longer the place where you hear first what is going on in your community -- our newspapers and even our friendships are available 24/7 on the computer.  We are, still, the best form for worship, I think, although much of that is available in electronic form, as well, except for the communal aspect.  We do retain the role of being one primary way that brings together groups of people for personal connection -- the social role of face-to-face regular gathering is filled less and less by other groups in this society, while we're still going strong.  But the point is, congregations are less needed in many people's minds, and, accordingly, we're not growing.

The two-part strategy the Rev. Morales outlines is:

1. Congregations remain the base

   
2. Focus energy on creating a movement beyond the congregation

Honestly, it looks pretty much like a one-part strategy to me, as part 1 is basically just reassuring us that this congregational thing that we're already doing will still be important.  So what does part 2 entail?  Looks like his answer is social media, re-engaging the identity organizations formerly known as "affiliates," small groups of other undefined sorts, and social action. 

It is, well, vague.  And not clear exactly what it would entail that's not being done currently. 

But the question that he points to, well, that's intriguing.  Morales points out the there are, as we've known, bunches of people who identify as UU and who don't attend UU churches.  And there are bunches of people who were raised UU who don't attend UU churches.  Some of them are fairly well connected to UUism in other ways -- he points to the fact that a significant number of people who attend SUUSI don't attend any UU congregation.

I'm sure any parish minister can name dozens of potential, former, or raised-UUs in that minister's geographic area who are not church members.  And, like Morales who says we need "A great deal more research about those who identify as UUs but are not members of
 a congregation," most of us don't know why these UU-types are not UU-affiliated in our towns. 

But what I think is new about "Congregations and Beyond" is that Peter Morales is not suggesting we find out why they're not in churches, but, rather, find out what they are interested in doing that would connect them to our movement in other ways.  Some people will never be church-goers, he's saying, but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of the UU religious movement.

It's a radical concept and one we ministers often argue against, saying such things as, "You aren't a Unitarian Universalist if you're not a church member, because the Unitarian Universalist Association is an association of congregations."

But I also know that there were a few years for me -- four of them, to be exact, the college years -- where I was not in a congregation but very much considered my religion to be Unitarian Universalism.  I didn't attend church in my college town, which didn't have a vital campus ministry in those years, and I would occasionally attend when I was home from school, but not often, because my church didn't have any specific get-together for those of us home on holidays or summers from college, and so I wandered off from us as an association of congregations, but not from my UU identity. 

I have trouble envisioning the way we strengthen these sorts of connections and grow this "movement" Morales speaks of, but I hope we'll keep talking about these ideas and exploring the potential.

A Christian colleague ran across the term "Practical Atheist" recently and brought it to a group I'm in for definition and discussion.  I wasn't familiar with it, and as probably the only thing close to an Atheist in the group (for the record, I call myself an Agnostic), offered up that it might be about a distinction between declared Atheists and default atheists (those who have not made a sort of declaration of atheism, but have no belief in God).  Other Christian colleagues in the group went with a definition of those people who might profess a belief in Christ, but live a Godless lifestyle.  Turns out, it seems they were right according to some definitions.  And that makes sense, because it's not a term that would make sense within the Atheist community, but makes sense in the Christian community.  And no term is likelier to drive Atheists hopping mad, now that I understand it better.

So here's the Wikipedia definition, which would be closer to my definition: "In practical or pragmatic atheism, also known as apatheism, individuals live as if there are no gods and explain natural phenomena without resorting to the divine. The existence of gods is not rejected, but may be designated unnecessary or useless; gods neither provide purpose to life, nor influence everyday life, according to this view."

However, I found this definition which matches my Christian colleagues' definition exactly on About.com:  "This is a category used by some religious theists to describe all those theists who technically believe in a god, but who behave immorally. The assumption is that moral behavior follows automatically from genuine theism, thus immoral behavior is a consequence of not genuinely believing. Theists who behave immorally must really be atheists, regardless of what they believe. The term 'practical atheist' is thus a smear against atheists generally."

The other top results of my Google search show that this term is generally being used in the About.com way, rather than the Wikipedia way.  For example, LifeChurch.TV says, "Practical Atheist -- You say you believe in God. Do you really? Do you live your life as if God is in the room, or do you assume He’s not paying attention? You call yourself a Christian. Are you who you say you are?" There's a video there that I chose not to watch.  If you watch it, let me know how awful it is.  Or take this article in the Christian Post as an example, about the guy behind the LifeChurch.TV video:  "S.C. Pastor Exposes 'Practical Atheists' among Christians."  It says, "Practical atheist, or Christian atheist, is defined as someone who believes in God but lives as if He doesn't exist."

The use of the term "Practical Atheist" in this way assumes morality is from God, and so those who are living amorally are atheistic, at least in practice, even if not in belief.  And it's a slam on Atheists.  But, as we've seen, people generally believe that Atheists don't have morals, because Atheists don't believe in God. 

For the record, then: living as if there is no God does NOT mean living immorally.  More on that in my next post.

So if living as if there is no God doesn't mean living immorally, what does it mean? 

• Without threat of eternal damnation, it means that we must take seriously the consequences of negative behaviors during our time on earth.
• Without threat of eternal rewards, it means we must live life to the fullest, appreciating the beauty, love, and kindness that we experience now, and share it with others.
• Without a God to make the rules, it means we must pay attention to our rules, create our own moral codes as individuals and a society and justify our behaviors as moral to the larger community. 
• With this as the only world we will know, it means that we must take care of it, and make ensure that our planet is livable for generations to come.
• Without a God's love and support, it means we must love and support one another.
• Without a God to blame for negative things happening, it means we must work to make a world where people are cared for in the best way possible.
• Without a God to thank for our rewards, it means we must acknowledge a randomness to life.  Some people get things easier than others.  And when we do, it's our moral responsibility to help those less fortunate.
• A truly "Practical Atheist" would be someone who believes in caring for the planet, living justly, caring for fellow humans and for animals.  

So I ask my Christian colleagues, when you hear the term "Practical Atheist" bandied about as synonymous for immoral behavior, challenge that term.  Atheists gave us the Eight-Fold Path.  Atheists gave us the Humanist Manifesto.  Atheists give us statements like this one from the American Ethical Union: "Dedicated to cultivating moral development in personal life and moral reform in society, Ethical Culture seeks to nurture relationships in which we act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in ourselves, to provide inspiration and guidance for moral living, and to transform the way humanity views the meaning of life."

What does it mean to live as if there is no God?  It means to be responsible for one's own morality; it does not mean to live immorally.  So let's make a deal, Christians.  If people don't live up to your idea of Christianity and you don't call them "Practical Atheists," then when people don't live up to my idea of Atheism I won't call them "Practical Christians."  A better term for Christians who act immorally would be Hypocritical Christians rather than Practical Atheists.  If a Christians are not living up to your understanding of your faith, Christians, call them out on it, but don't call them Atheists.  We don't claim them; they're all yours.

         I was deeply disturbed when Caylee Anthony went missing and mourned her death.  I know why, too.  She was of a similar age to my own daughter, and at least one person told me that Caylee reminded this person of my own daughter.  Caylee's big brown eyes, in particular, do have a resemblance.
         I cried when I read about Christina Taylor Green, who was 9 years old when she died in the shootings in Tucson.  She, too, reminded me of my daughter, a precocious, politically-involved, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl. 
         I know why I mourned these little girls who, for a moment, caught our nation's attention.  They were innocent, beautiful, and gone too soon.  And they were in the media spotlight -- beautiful little girls -- white little girls.  Their deaths were horrible, outrageous, and made us sad and also furious.
         Too often the children whose deaths we mourn as a society are like Caylee and Christina Taylor -- the white little girls.  Too seldom do we, as a society or as individuals unconnected to the family mourn young black children killed.
         This point about who captures our national attention and who we mourn and how there really is racism involved in this was brought home to me this week from an unlikely source -- a fictional one.  Like many others, I've read The Hunger Games and went to see the movie last week.  The character of Rue had a particularly tragic death in the book.  It's particularly tragic because she becomes a person who is important to the heroine, Katniss, and who Katniss particularly mourns, because she reminds her of her own little sister, Primrose.  Suzanne Collins, the author, describes Rue saying, "She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that's she's very like Prim in size and demeanor."  I know why I mourned Rue.  I had little sisters, too.  Rue was beautiful, innocent, and young.  Her character as portrayed in the movie also reminded me of my sisters and daughter. 
          But for some, the fact that they identified with Rue and mourned her death means that she can't be black -- even though the text says she is and the author has directly stated that she is African-American, too.  There are a number of twitter users who have posted about The Hunger Games following the movie saying thing such as, "why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie" (prompting, thankfully, spoofs such as "why does Frederick Douglass have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined abolition"), "call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn't as sad" (Yes, you're a racist), and "Rue looks nothing like I imagined her.  Isn't she supposed to be a pale redhead (or was that just in MY head?)?  Why is she black?" (Yes, it was just in YOUR head.)  For more, see what I think is the original Jezebel story here, more Jezebel commentary here, and a bunch of racist tweets here.
         Yes, too often the children whose deaths we mourn as a society are the white little girls, and too seldom do we mourn young black children killed.  That's why these people struggle with Rue being black--they mourned her, not realizing her race, and assumed her, therefore, to be white, despite textual evidence.  If you care, if she's important, she must be white.  We're used to not caring in our society about young black children who are killed.  And even more so those who are boys, boys killed too soon like Trayvon Martin.  Trayvon was innocent, beautiful, precocious, and gone too soon, too. His death was wrong, horrible, outrageous.  And remarkably, it, too, caught media attention and made us sad and furious.
         The fact that we are, really, conditioned through our media and our culture to be more sympathetically inclined towards dead white children and to find their deaths sadder and more outrageously wrong makes it even more clear how very, very wrong Trayvon's death was.  The fact that we are paying attention to it not because of his race but despite of his race shows how very, very horrible and wrong it was.  If you've listened to the 911 calls and heard him crying for help and heard the level of distress of the callers calling 911 you know it was brutal.  A beautiful, promising young man carrying iced tea, Skittles, and a cell phone, gunned down for the crime of walking while black and wearing a hoodie -- of course we are, and should be, outraged, sad, angry, furious, and tearful.  And there can be no doubt that if this was a young white boy, a high school football player, walking home from a store who was shot by a black man who happened to think he was up to no good for walking home that night, that the shooter would be behind bars awaiting trial, a trial at which he would not be treated kindly by the justice system.
         President Obama has said that the nation needs "soul-searching" in response to Trayvon's death.  In response, people are saying things such as "If Trayvon’s mother were white, would Obama give her a call?" implying that it is the president, not the shooter, who is the racist.  Of course, for Christina Taylor Green, Obama did speak at her funeral.  But facts never get in the way of racist attacks on the president.
         We do need a national soul-searching in response to Trayvon.  And especially if his death doesn't prompt sadness and outrage, we do need soul-searching.

The Rev. Barbara Child
The Rev. Cynthia Cain, Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington, KY
The Rev. Dr. Nana' Kratochvil, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan, Mt. Pleasant, MI
The Rev. Andrew L. Weber, YRUU Advisor, First Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Ann Arbor, MI
The Rev. Kimi Riegel, Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church, Southfield, MI
The Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
The Rev. Mary Ann Macklin, Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington, IN

For more information,

This week's Time Magazine cover of a woman breast-feeding her 3-year-old son sure has a lot of people talking.  My own feelings about the Time cover are conflicted.  On one hand, I think Time is making an important point, and the controversy surrounding it is ridiculous.  I vigorously defend the following ideas:

• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy.  
• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for toddlers, including 3-year-olds like this one.
• Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for boys, not just girls!
• It is okay and normal to be a sexy woman and also breast-feed your child.  Women can be both mothers and sexual beings at the same time.
• There is nothing wrong with breast-feeding standing up, either!

This cover does not show anything inherently sexual or abnormal or unhealthy.  The fact that so many people have looked at this cover and had an immediate negative reaction is about the ways we have hypersexualized women in this society, and see breasts, in particular, as only sexual.  It is also about how we have, correspondingly, not supported breast-feeding.  Our society has taken something that is normal and healthy, and made it something pathological--something so rare that women have to fight a ridiculous battle to engage in what our bodies are created to do.  Breast-feeding past three is the world-wide norm, and children continue to receive important nutrients for toddlers' developing brains and immune systems.  Breast milk actually adapts to a child's changing needs as the child grows--it's a pretty amazing thing.

The comments I have seen against this picture range from the uninformed, suggesting that there's absolutely no reason to breast-feed at this age and that the mom is just weird, to the downright ridiculous, suggesting that this boy will need psychotherapy, or the mom should be indicted on charges of corrupting a minor.  And overall the level of talk around this cover shows that as a society we are just profoundly screwed up on the subject of what should be seen as just a natural and good thing.  The controversy is an extension of the fact that women are routinely tossed out of restaurants and other public places in many states for breastfeeding, because women's breasts are viewed as inherently indecent. 

All that being said--and it's important, and comes first--I think Time did something of a disservice to the issue of making "extended breast-feeding" accepted in our society.  They took a picture that made extended breast-feeding look as freakishly weird as possible.  I say that while still supporting that there is nothing wrong with what is depicted.  But given that in our society extended breast-feeding is seen as unusual at best and as "wrong and perverted" as some comments have said about this picture, the cover photo is a picture that did everything it could to make the situation look even more abnormal and wrong.  It has a very tall-looking three-year-old as the child portrayed, and having him standing makes the picture look even stranger, and putting him on the chair extends his length, making him appear even older.  The picture doesn't capture the toddler's baby face, but makes him look older, and the fact that he's looking at the camera makes it weirder, as well.  Compare that photo to another one with the same mother and son, and it's easy to see that if this second photo were the cover story, a lot of the "shock" factor would be gone.
With both mom and son sitting, and the son's eyes closed, you can see how natural (and comfortable) they are. 

The other way, and to me the more significant way, in which Time does the issue a disservice is by the cover title, "Are You Mom Enough?"  The title does two things--both immediately sexualizes the mother to the viewer, and, simultaneously makes breast-feeding the latest battleground of the "mommy wars" perpetuated by magazines like Time for years.  The title sexualizes the mother by connecting the image to the saying "Are You Man Enough" which is often paired with sexy images in our society.  The viewer is instantly ready to see the woman as sex object, and the confusion of seeing her as sex object and also in a mothering role produces immediate discomfort for some viewers, who have placed women's lives into two separate categories of mother and sex object, with women not allowed to be both simultaneously.  As for the mom wars, by giving extended breast-feeding with this title, it both suggests that to not do extended breast-feeding is wrong, and, at the same time, suggests this woman has gone to an unnatural extreme with the subtitle, "Why attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes..."

What a magazine like Time could do, and should do, rather than look to shock and provoke is have an article on why extended breast-feeding should be accepted, and how this is just one of a range of acceptable choices for a woman to make.  Instead of creating mommy wars, we should acknowledge that there are a wide range of acceptable choices to make in mothering, and support all of them, as a society and as individuals. 

When I was a child, I went to a UU church that was a larger-sized church for a church in our movement.  The church religious education program was large enough to have paid staff, and a different classroom for every two grade levels through 7th grade, an eight-grade class of its own for coming of age, and an active high school group.  But a church that size often comes in a larger metro area, as was the case with Birmingham Unitarian Church in Bloomfield Hills, MI.  And so, in my school, I was one of only a small hand-full of families with Unitarian Universalist children in our school district of Ferndale, and in my grade there was only one other UU.  I was lucky--I think my two sisters had no other UUs in their grade in our school.  When I got to High School as a freshman, there were still the two of us UUs in a graduating class of over 300, and three UUs that I knew of in the school, although I later found that there were two sisters who went to another one of the metro area UU churches.

Now I'm in a smaller church and a smaller city, and the situation is very much the same.  We have a smaller church school, with K-5 in one class.  As I think about our UU children and youth, I don't think we have any two families with grade-school children in the same school.  I think we have children in Jackson schools, Columbia schools, Hanover-Horton schools, Grass Lake schools, and a couple more school districts further north of Jackson, but no two children in the same school from different families.  At the High School level, it's possible that we have more than two families with children in the same school district, if we count members who are not active in the church and whose children don't come to religious education classes, but our few active teens are all, I think, in separate school districts.

What these two examples tell me is that the vast majority of UU children and youth grow up fairly religiously isolated in their school lives.  Before we get to college, where we're in educational systems with thousands of students, we don't have enough critical mass to, for example, form high-school-based religious club.  And it also means that our children in religious education classes pretty much only see each other once a week.  Occasionally strong friendships can form--some of my daughter's best friends are her church friends--but it's harder for our children to make friends with children from their own religion.

There are positive things about this, of course.  It means we raise flexible, tolerant children, who are good at being allies and bridge-builders.  It means our children learn quickly and early how to relate to people of other religions and appreciate and embrace that diversity.

But it has its drawbacks in terms of support for our children when they face religious intolerance, which they sometimes do.  And I think it's also a factor in retention.  My child wants to go to church so often for the primary reason that she loves the other children there and doesn't get to see them any other time of the week.  But if she hadn't made those strong bonds there, there would be much less drive from her to go to church.  And, as we see, our teens often start to get to be reluctant to go to church, and we lose them.  I continued to go to church as a teen despite any strong friends who were active in my youth group, because we had a strong program--it had a sizable group, it was fun, and it was engaging. But if you have a small group, and no strong friendships, it's a rare UU youth who will prioritize religious education in a busy teen schedule.

Unfortunately, this means rocky roads for most UU religious education programs -- there's simply no magic formula to making friendships happen so that children will want to come to church. The best answer I have is this: One of the primary reasons someone comes to a UU church for the first time is because the person has been invited by someone that person knows.  What better person to invite than the parent(s) of your child's best friend?  If it works, you gain a friend at church, your church gains a member, and your child gains a reason to want to go to church. 

I can think of no better way to help our children be less religiously isolated, to help grow our religious education programs and churches, and to build the drive in our children and youth to want to come to church.

Tomorrow we vote on what Study/Action issue to adopt for 2012-2016, and I haven't made up my mind yet which one I'm voting for.  I talked with a proponent of "CSAI 1 - Climate Action and Adaptation Plans: Why Greenhouse Gases and their Effects Matter to Us" today, who points out that if we don't save the earth, none of these other issues will matter.  Well, yeah.  That's a point.  And he also points out that some of the other issues are related to this one, particularly "CSAI 2 - Families, Population, and the Environment."  I've also seen that a lot of people I know are walking around wearing anti-slavery buttons and that there seems to be a lot of support for "CSAI 5 - Ending Slavery."  The advocate for CSAI 1 asked me, "Well, what is your congregation engaged in?"  We're engaged in all these issues to some extent.  Our JXN Community Forum series has often engaged in environmental issues.  Our members are individually involved in the Occupy movement, and might be very interested in "CSAI 4 - Exploring Class Barriers."  But what immediately came to mind is that our church has voted for Planned Parenthood every year for the last several years as one of the local agencies to donate to, and I've seen our members be strong advocates for that organization.  And it's going to be hard to convince this feminist that, with everything going on in my home state, that I shouldn't vote for, "CSAI 3 - Reproductive Justice: Expanding Our Social Justice Calling."  I stopped at the booth for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice today.  I said to the woman there, "I'm from Michigan."  And she gave me a look of pity and said, "Vagina! Vagina!"  (This may be a somewhat exaggerated story, induced by heat, but that's the way I remember it right now.  My apologies to the lovely RCRC woman if I've exaggerated her response.)

Things are going crazy in Michigan, folks.  Our legislators are considering severe anti-abortion legislation.  Our women representatives are being barred from speaking in the house because of saying things like the word "vagina."   This issue is alive and serious in the state of Michigan.  We're turning anatomical terms into dirty words that can't be spoken aloud, and the effect is the silencing of women on women's issues.  How many women got to speak to the House Health Policy Committee at their hearing of the bill?  None--three men only, although Rev. Jeff Liebmann did a fabulous job.

This morning at the Meadville/Lombard alumni breakfast, we heard, as always, memories from ministers who graduated 25 and 50 years ago.  The minister from 50 years ago couldn't be there in person, but sent his memories in writing.  He talked about creating an organization of ministers to help pastor to women and help them connect to illegal abortion providers, so that they could have safe abortions in the time before Roe vs. Wade.

I don't want to have to do that ministry--but I might have to in Michigan soon, if this trend holds.

So my mind isn't made up about the CSAIs--but I sure know what's resonating right now.  We're here talking about immigration, but for the first part of the week, my heart was still on the Michigan capitol steps, where the Vagina Monologues were taking place Monday evening. 

In the last two years, I've known some ministers who attend GA without attending GA.  That is, they come to the city of the General Assembly, but don't register for General Assembly.  In doing so, they save registration costs, but are still able to have lunch and dinner meetings with colleagues, or churches, if they're in search, or meet with denominational committees if necessary.  There are a few GA events that are open to the public, as well -- Sunday morning worship, and the Service of the Living Tradition, and the exhibit hall on Sunday.  This year there are even more, since any person can attend the witness events that are held outside of the convention center, and that includes more events this year.

There are always good UU events to be found outside of the General Assembly programming, too, and this year I find myself, although registered for GA, interested in attending more of it.  One high-profile example is an event hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee at the Hyatt tomorrow: a conversation with Bill Schulz (UUSC president, and former UUA president, and former Amnesty International president or director or whatever the top title is there) and Anita Hill (yes, that Anita Hill!). (3:30-5:00, Hyatt Ballroom AB)

Another interesting opportunity is the ability to see The Minister's War tonight, tomorrow, or Sunday evening, or screenings of the shorter version throughout the days. (Full screenings at 6, 8, and 10pm at 222 E. Monroe St.)  There's a suggested donation of $5 for this.

All this means is it's a good year to be even around GA, and there's plenty to do without registering.  But that opportunity to hear Michelle Alexander alone was worth the registration, in my opinion.  And, of course, I get to vote in the plenaries, which is important, although you can do that as an off-site delegate, but there was still a $100 fee for that. 

Still, I can see the possibility of saving money in future years by coming to the GA city, attending some events electronically and some events off-site, and just making the most of what's available.  I might actually get to see something of the city, too, if I did that.  Many years at GA there are suggested sight-seeing things to do in these interesting locations, and I've never taken the time off or added time on to do those things.  To take one day off in a full day of meetings is reasonable by work standards, but it's harder to justify when I've paid money to be at the things that are offered that day.  So, this is definitely something to think about more for future years as a viable option.

I took my daughter to see Brave this week, and really loved it.  As I reflected on what I loved so much, I realized that this was almost the first "princess movie" I had seen with a positive (and living) mother figure.  The movie is the first animated movie I've seen with my daughter which is really a mother/daughter movie.  There are good father/son movies - Up! is an example of a father-stand-in and boy movie.  How to Train Your Dragon and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs both figure heroes who have strained relationships with fathers who don't understand them which get resolved through the events of the movie.  If you look to animal characters, you quickly see a strong father/son relationship in The Lion King and Finding Nemo.  But stories that tell about mother/daughter relationships are exceedingly rare in the animated film category.  First of all, as has been pointed out, this is Pixar's first animated film with a female star.  But there are plenty of Disney princesses, right?  However, if you think about it, the average movie princess has a mother who is dead and a step-mother who is evil..  It's the staple of Grimms' fairy tales, and nothing new.  But even while the Disney movies change up the Grimm Brothers' tales in many ways, they don't, by and large, introduce princesses with wonderful and living mothers.  Here's the list of Disney Princesses (including some that they don't always list):

Princess (Movie) - mother status
Cinderella - Dead, evil step-mother.
Snow White - Dead, evil step-mother.
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) - Honestly, I can't remember.  Probably alive, but asleep the whole time?
Ariel (The Little Mermaid) - Presumed dead.  I don't think she's ever mentioned.
Jasmine (Aladdin) - Presumed dead.  Again, I think she's not mentioned.
Tiana (The Princess and the Frog) - ALIVE, and a positive figure, but not in most of the movie, as, well, she spends most of her time as a frog.
Pocahontas - Presumed dead.
Belle (Beauty and the Beast) - Dead.
Rapunzel (Tangled) - Mother alive, but Rapunzel abducted and raised by evil witch.
Mulan - Mother alive, but Mulan is away for most of the movie.

As you can see, only one of these princesses was raised by a loving mother who is still alive when the movie's storyline takes place, unless you count Sleeping Beauty.  And, again, aren't they all asleep for the most part?  And the two movies where we really see the loving and caring mother, the girls are away from their family setting for most of the movie. Tiana in The Princess and the Frog spends most of the time removed from her family setting and wandering as, well, a frog.  Mulan bravely goes off to war, and has some strong feminist elements, but her primary relationship even when she's with her family seems to be with her father.  My husband loves Mulan, because he sees it as a father/daughter relationship movie, so I don't think I'm exaggerating this.

And while a lot of the fathers are dead, too, in princess movies, we do have strong father/daughter relationships with Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle, and Mulan.  Not all of these daughters are removed from their father's care through the whole movie, notably Jasmine and Pocahontas.

For bad examples of mother/daughter relationships, Disney's Tangled really takes the prize.  Here we have a daughter raised by a woman/witch who keeps her locked in the tower and apparently just wanted her because the girl's magic hair keeps the witch young.  The mother/witch figure is truly disturbing here, because it is portrayed as a twisted version of real affection.  Whereas the evil stepmothers in Snow White and Cinderella are just flat-out mean and nasty, the witch in Tangled is not directly so for most of the film. 

Brave is so very different in that it tells the story of a girl asserting her independence and developing her own identity, but it does so while having her deal with a loving, caring, and living mother.  And, even more unusual, the heart of the story is really about the relationship between Merida, the daughter, and Elinor, her mother.  They want different things for Merida's life, and the tension develops from this.  They love each other, but they don't understand each other, and they don't know how to communicate and regain the closeness they had when Merida was younger.  In one heart-breaking moment, they each, in anger, destroy an object that is precious to the other.  Elinor realizes immediately what she has done; Merida takes much of the movie to understand what she needs to do to repair things, literally and figuratively. 

We need more of this sort of movie--stories that tell of girls developing their identity and individuality--and we need more with mothers who aren't dead or evil who are a part of these girls lives.  So while there's much to critique in this movie, my bottom line is thankfulness.  I think this is a story that will stand up as my own daughter reaches those ages where she needs to pull away more from mom.  It will be something that I can refer back to as a metaphor for our real lives.

This blogger has been suffering from writer's block.  The problem is, when I think about opening up a page and writing, there's one thing that's been on my mind to write about.  And when I think about that one thing, I've been so boggled and amazed by what's going on that I can't find a way to write coherently.

So, about this war on women...

Now, I can appreciate and respect a pro-life position.  It's theologically consistent, and has a clear and hard line: life begins at conception, and so abortion is murder.  Unless the life of the woman is at stake, so that it's one life vs. another, or unless the fetus is not viable, murder cannot be justified.  That makes sense to me as a stance to take.  I don't agree, but I respect it.  I understand that what the Republicans are trying to express is, in part, the perspective that while rape is horrible and wrong, it doesn't change that abortion is horrible and wrong. 

But there are whole other levels going on here which are not just about whether or not abortion is murder.  That may be what they're trying to express, but they're also expressing a lot more.  What's going on is, at best, a complete lack of understanding of women from certain politicians, or just paternalism mixed with disregard for them, and, at worst and perhaps more likely, a deep misogyny. 

Let's start here at home, in Michigan, where State Rep. Lisa Brown was barred from speaking in the house because of her statement, "I’m flattered you’re all so concerned about my vagina, but no means no."  This barring her wasn't about her being disrespectful (there's plenty of disrespect being thrown around there all the time)--this was about discomfort with women's bodies, and silencing a woman's voice on the issue.  It really was about the word "vagina," and a belief that talking about women's bodies is, well, dirty and bad.  Rep. Mike Callton said so clearly: "It was so offensive, I don't even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company."  We can't really talk about women's bodies--or rape (no means no)--EVEN when the bill on the floor is about abortion.  In fact, when the bill was in front of committee, they allowed no women to speak to it, and only three men (including my feminist UU colleague the Rev. Jeff Liebmann, who gives his account of it here).  This is a paternalism that says women are not capable of making decisions for themselves, and, what's more, they don't really have anything that we need to listen to to say about themselves, either.  To be fair, the press secretary for Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger said, "It was his judgment at the time that when she finished her statement by referencing her vagina, and then saying ‘no means no,’ that was drawing in a rape reference, and he felt that crossed the line."  So if it wasn't really discomfort about vaginas (and it so was), well, it was talking about rape that was over the line.  And we want to keep rape out of abortion debates, just as we want to keep women's voices out of debates about abortion--and probably just about always.  In all, it's important that we not allow women to be the ones to talk about rape.  That's a man's job.

You can draw a straight line from the situation in Michigan to the statements from Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith.  Tom Smith was asked how he would tell a female relative who was raped and pregnant from that rape to keep the child.  Tom Smith said he had a "similar" situation in that a female relative had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and had chosen to keep the baby: "I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to ... she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape."  I wish he had finished that sentence in the middle--he didn't have to what?  There's a clear underlying understanding there of that he, the man, is in charge, and fortunately the woman, the lesser being, followed his wishes.  Her decision seems to have been about his views, in the way he sees it, despite his saying it was "fortunate" for him.  When pushed by the reporter if the situations of pregnancy from rape and other non-intended pregnancies really were similar, he said, "No, no, no, but put yourself in a father's position, yes. It is similar."  So what's similar?  The father's perspective, not the woman's experience.  I don't actually think he thinks rape is similar to consensual sex for a woman.  But that's immaterial.  We know and understand that for many people, and it's now in the platform of the Republican party, that rape is immaterial to the abortion issue, because abortion is just wrong, period.  But I really believe Smith is saying more than that.  He's saying that from a father's perspective a situation where a daughter gets pregnant from rape is similar to a daughter getting pregnant from consensual non-marital sex.  The experience of the woman, i.e. rape, is immaterial to his experience, which is all about the results and not about the experience of the woman, the wishes of the woman, the trauma of the woman, at all.  It's straight-up paternalism at its most extreme.  The man, the father, knows what's best for the woman, and her experience, knowledge, wishes, are immaterial.

What's the right answer to the question of what you would say to a daughter who was raped and was now pregnant?  The right answer might be that you wouldn't say anything at first--you would just listen, and care about her experience and her thoughts.

The new UUA Common Read book for the year is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and I, for one, could not be happier with the choice.  I read this book and preached on it last year after reading a Leonard Pitts article about the book.  The book was revelatory, even for someone who thought she was pretty liberal on this issue.  Two other people who I encouraged to read the book have had the same response.  I was so pleased to have the opportunity to hear her speak this year at General Assembly, and the experience in the room was electric.  She didn't have to say it out loud, even, but the thought that the New Jim Crow applies to the immigration system as well was surely at the front of everyone's mind. I'm looking forward to the Discussion Guide that the UUA will put online in October.  There is a discussion guide written by a UU, but it's the discussion guide to a discussion guide written for Christian churches--a guide of a guide, and, as such, I think is more limited in its usefulness than what the UUA will hopefully provide. 

As someone whose church is in a "prison town," I look forward to the conversations that may occur as a result of this Common Read choice.  This is an issue that would be good for UUs nationally to turn our attention to.  If you haven't read the book, go read it, even if you think you know what it says.  It will still open your eyes even further.

One of the reasons I created my RevCyn Facebook page was so that I could post about religion and social justice issues without subjecting ALL my Facebook friends, which includes conservative relatives and high school chums, to the full extent of my politics and faith.  I then post such things less from my own account.  One exception, however, is that because I try to draw a fine line between partisan politics and my ministry, and because I see the RevCyn page, and this blog, as an extension of that ministry, I try to refrain from endorsing a candidate here, or making statements about Republican and Democratic candidates that could be seen as an endorsement.  But my personal Facebook account,  however, is where I do feel free to be political, just as I do in my front yard and the bumper of my car.  Thus, as the election draws near, I run into more and more occasions where I risk alienating the conservatives among my Facebook friends.  The liberals among my 754 Facebook friends vastly outnumber the conservatives, since the majority of UUs are liberal, and a large percent of that 754 is colleagues and church members.  Add to that the liberals in the Jackson community that I work with through various agencies, along with the fact that most of my college friends are liberal, and you've got a pretty big block.  And most of those people enjoy talking politics--the old rule that it's impolite to talk about religion and politics would eliminate the very things we're enjoying talking about the most.

Recently, one of my high school friends posted this picture:

It was picked up and posted by another high school friend.  I don't know either of their political leanings.  The picture speaks to the fact that with a hot election like this one, it truly has become harder and harder to be friends with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum.  I personally find it hard to let a post slamming Obama and repeating what I believe to be lies go by without comment. 

I personally don't think getting heated up and arguing with people on Facebook ever does much good, despite what, I am sure, is the 100% completely logical, persuasive, and, let's face it, correct nature of my arguments.  What it does is alienate my conservative friends and push me deeper into my liberal enclave where I'm less likely to encounter, much less transform, people of different thinking, and where my conservative friends are less likely to have their thoughts challenged.  From what I'm learning through such works as The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science- and Reality, sharing facts and figures is not persuasive to those who have made their mind up on the right (and on the left, as well, although arguably to a lesser extent, according to that author).  And certainly re-posting snarky internet memes can't be the most effective way to change a mind.

To that end, I'm making an effort to let people know that I'm happy to block them from my political posts if they're in political fatigue or don't enjoy arguing.  What I won't do is pretend I'm not a liberal and don't have my views, but I'm willing to not constantly subject all those Facebook friends to my personal political beliefs.

On the other hand, I'm still left with the greater question, which is how to have the truly meaningful and transformational conversations with people on the other half of the spectrum from me.  I would love to have regular, deep, face-to-face conversations with conservatives who are willing to engage in these conversations with me, but I don't know where to find such a connection or event. I think if facts and figures and my wonderful logical arguments aren't what changes someone, and reposting Facebook memes is not the right tool, the answer has to lie in personal connections and personal, emotional content.  The only way to have those deep conversations is to build a relationship first.

So for right now, I'm trying to put relationship-building ahead of politics with my Facebook friends, while still being true to who I am at all times.  Not everyone will be willing to build relationships with a LGBT-friendly agnostic Unitarian Universalist minister.  So that's all the more reason to be gentle and kind with those conservatives who are.

Watching the national political conventions is a great opportunity to study the art of public speaking--the rhetoric and the oration.  There's a lot one can learn about effective public speaking, and thus preaching, by listening to these top-level politicians.  Four years ago, I remember thinking that Barack Obama, love him or hate him, was the greatest orator of our age, and, as I sit down and wait to listen to him tonight, it's a good time to reflect on some of what I've heard in the conventions so far, not from a political standpoint, but from the perspective of public speaking.  Now, I didn't watch much of the RNC.  I haven't actually watched that much of the DNC, either.  So I really only have a few to speak about, so I'll give you my thoughts on those, ranking them low, middle, and high.

The best I've heard...

Michelle Obama

I think Michelle Obama's come a long way as a public speaker in her four years as First Lady.  I remember not being terribly impressed by her four years ago--thinking she was good enough, and all that, but not blown away.  This time around, her words were so finely honed that I just got over one bout of tears when she would send me into another.  I found her words were finely crafted to make me feel compassion, and to make me feel connection with her--she spun her role as "mom-in-chief" and as wife to this man she was trying to humanize with great skill.  As to her speaking style itself, she had a verbal mannerism that did distract me: "It matters th-that you don't take short cuts..."  This little stutter-step was something she did repeatedly throughout the speech.  And I found it distracting, but charming.  Because of this, I did have to wonder if it was done deliberately--it humanized her, made you connect with her, made you see her as an ordinary person.  It gave her style a feeling not of polish, but of intimacy--she's talking to you as a friend, as another mom, about her worries and how she's now confident in her husband's role as president.

Bill Clinton

Holy cow.  His speech made me remember why this man was so successful.  It didn't tug at my heart-strings at all like Michelle's, but it was logical, organized, persuasive, and effective.  He was charming, friendly, and had a great way of drawing you in.  His style of saying, essentially, "Now listen, this part is important," worked effectively to grab attention focus the next point.  Overall, high marks for style & content.  After that speech, it was clear to me this was why we kept this man in office for eight years.  He might be a better speaker than Obama.  Certainly, his charisma is overwhelming.  Holy cow.

The mid-range...

Joe Biden

While I like what he had to say (and that he kept mentioning Michigan and the automobile industry), it didn't grab me.  There were no obvious flaws in style or content, but it didn't command my attention either emotionally or intellectually.  He was at his best talking about family members, and I liked those pieces.  The starting off with the address to his wife was funny and touching.  I believe he believes what he's said about Barack Obama, but the shouting pieces didn't fire me up they way they're intended to.  And much as I like that GM is alive, I'm getting tired of hearing, "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."  We've heard that already, Joe.  I liked his phrasing of "the hinge of history."  That was a nice piece of rhetoric.

The Amateurs

I'd also have to put most of the "average Joes" that have been trotted out here--they're not professional public speakers, and that certainly shows, and many aren't ready for this stage.  But they're also not put out to make a great speech, but rather to make a great point, to be an example of something, be it the point that religious people or military people can love Democrats or minorities can love Republicans or "Romney killed my job" or the opposite or whatever.  A notable exception in this category would be Zach Wahls, who I heard a lot of praise for, but whose speech I haven't listened to yet, and thus can't comment on directly.

And now for the worst...

Clint Eastwood

Oh, I understand it was funny to people who hate Obama, and I understand why.  But, try to be objective here.  The device was the most literal example of the straw man fallacy I've ever had the misfortune to see.  The only way it could be more literal is if he filled the empty chair with a scarecrow made to look like Obama.  Seriously.  I can't support a speech built entirely around a logical fallacy.  The delivery was rambling and made you feel that this was off-the-cuff in the worst sort of way.  And the jokes weren't all that funny--it was mostly funny that he pretended the president was saying things that were a bit offensive and unrepeatable. 

I wish I could balance this out more by showing you poor oration in Democrats and good rhetoric in Republicans.  I just really didn't listen to much in the RNC--I'm sure they had some good speakers.  I just didn't hear any.

I mentioned to some folks today that it's an old tradition to have an "election sermon," and some of the people I was speaking with had never heard of this tradition, so I thought I'd do a little research and write on it.  It turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought.  From how I understand what I'm reading, it seems there are two sorts of "election sermons" -- one is a sermon preached just prior to election day, and the other is called an "election sermon" but is preached before government officials but on inauguration day, which was called, confusingly, "election day."  So, for example, this "election day" sermon from 1790 --
-- was preached on "the day of general election," apparently before the newly elected officials.  Likewise, this Gad Hitchcock text from 1774 was preached to the elected officials on "election day."  Similarly, in 1830 Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing preached a notable election sermon, before the Massachusetts legislature in which he said the memorable words:

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:

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 land

devoted his sermon to the body politic.

It’s a great literary genre.  Often, the brimstone was so hot

that 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.

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.

"What do you do the rest of the week?" I was recently asked.  I don't mind the question.  Indeed, I welcome it.  It's a frequent frustration among ministers that, regardless of how hard we work, the perception exists that we really only work on Sunday morning.  I've heard this perception myself from members, visitors, and even staff during my years of ministry.  This perception can exist when we've really had an easy time of it, or on the week when we spent all of Friday and Saturday by a bedside and then got up to give the sermon on Sunday morning.  In fact, often the weeks people think are the hardest for me are actually the easiest, and vice-versa.  For example, I find as it approaches Christmas, my job gets easier.  Nobody wants to schedule extra meetings during this time, and some meetings get cancelled.  While Christmas programs are big productions, a lot of it can be the same from year to year, which requires less research and creativity out of me.  The problem is, when I was asked on the fly what ministers do, even having done this work for over a decade, I don't think I really gave a very good answer.  So, for the record, here is an arbitrarily numbered and completely incomplete list of things a minister might be doing on other days of the week, besides the obvious (blogging!):

• Preparing for Sunday -- indeed, this may be the bulk of what we do.  In seminary, I often heard that 20 hours per week was the average amount of time a minister spends preparing for the Sunday service, mostly spent researching material and writing the sermon.  Why does it take so long after years of seminary study?  Actually, it takes longer the farther one is from seminary, I think, because you've used up the sermons on all those seminary book topics, and you have to dig further and research more to keep fresh.  If I relied only on what I learned a decade ago for my sermons, my sermons would be pretty stale.  No matter how much reading I get done in study leave, I still find myself needing to find good articles for readings and more data for sermons throughout the year.
• Board and Committee Work -- How many committees does your church have?  Your minister probably goes to about n+3 committee meetings, then.  (Okay, n+3 was pretty arbitrary, and would totally vary by church size.  In a big church, there are more committees, but a smaller percentage are attended by the minister.)  In my church, I attend most of the committee meetings on most of the months in which they meet, with the exception of building and finance, which I'm happy to attend also, but often these particular committees meet at irregular times and I don't always hear about the meeting times until afterwards.  Some of the meetings may include advance meetings with the chair.  The board meeting I will write a report for, and that will take a certain amount of time.  Other committees may also have reports or preparation work to be done.  Some ministers may engage in the work of the committee, others see themselves as being there to represent the faith or provide a spiritual presence, others see themselves like a paid consultant or expert there to give advice and ideas.
• Pastoral Care -- Perhaps the most important non-Sunday work of a minister in the eyes of a congregation, this kind of work arrives suddenly and can be very intense.  It requires of us that we drop everything sometimes and attend to what is happening with our members.  Occasionally pastoral care will also involve administrative work of rounding up resources for a member in need.
• Rites of Passage -- Funerals and weddings, for member and sometimes non-members of the church are an irregular part of the work.  In the beautiful times of the year in our region, we may find ourselves working every Saturday on weddings.  In between weddings and funerals, there's also working with the people involved to plan the events, and then writing the service.
• Religious Education -- A minister may write, plan, and lead religious education classes or programs for children, youth, and adults.
• Administration -- A minister is expected to do a lot of administration work.  There's a reason why clerical and clergy are related work.  We answer e-mails, phone messages, compile reports, do filing, etc.  Sometimes we write pamphlets or webpages or blog.  Strangely, although I did secretarial work part-time through college, grad school, and seminary, and worked full-time as an administrator and in other paper-pushing time jobs for two years between degrees, this is the area I feel poorest in during my ministry years.  Of course, for most of that time I have not had a church secretary (a different thing from the secretary of the board), and I remind myself that it's actually in the UUMA guidelines that a minister should have access to a secretary...  Depending on whether there is a church secretary or not, the minister's skill in this area, and what committees a church has and how strong they are, a minister might be asked to create any number of different documents from the order of service to the newsletter to the pledge drive brochure to the entire webpage.
• Staff Supervision -- The minister is often head of staff, which means meeting regularly with staff, supervising, handling problems or conflicts, and doing reports.
• Fundraising -- Some ministers do some direct solicitation of funds, some do grant-writing, some organize and run fundraisers.  We're expected to know, understand, and be mindful of the church finances.
• Community Service -- Some ministers see an important part of their work as being involved in the greater community and representing their faith in that role.  This might be through volunteering at agencies or serving on boards and committees, or running programs in the community, or through a number of other ways.  Some ministers volunteer to be on-call at the hospital, or for the police or fire department, certain nights per month.  Some ministers do programs in a local prison.  Getting out there into the world and representing our faith and our individual church while we do so is an important piece of ministry for some, but not all, clergy.
• Social Justice -- Some clergy, but not all clergy, see social justice as an important part of a minister's role.  This may mean going to protests, lobbying at the state or national capital, writing our elected leaders, writing for the local paper, attending conferences, doing on-line work for social justice, and attending more committees and programs in the community or at a state or national level.  Clergy have a lot of different ideas about how to most effectively or most appropriately do this work, or whether to do it at all.
• Denominational Work -- Often our work is to be the conduit, or one of the conduits, for connection to our denomination or district.  Sometimes this is work that is essentially required of us by the larger body, and sometimes it is something to which we feel a responsibility for and sign up for.  We might serve on yet more committees or task forces, or work to help in a particular area, or just maintain contact with various officials.  We might spend a fair amount of time reading e-mails, newsletters, blog posts, and websites to stay up-to-date. 
• Work with Other Ministers -- Sometimes in our region we'll have a local interfaith or ecumenical clergy group.  We also probably have groups of colleagues we meet with periodically at a regional and national level within our denomination.  Sometimes this is something required of us, sometimes it is just something which we feel obligated to participate in as part of our role.  All of these bodies also have tasks, some of which we'll occasionally be doing, and boards and committees, some of which we'll occasionally be on.  We may also get called upon to do work with other ministers one-on-one, from teaching a particular skill to being a listening ear.  This is part of the work we commit ourselves to as ministers, to help one another. 
• Study -- Not just for worship services, ministry, like all fields, requires that we keep up-to-date with information and knowledge, and this requires study and continuing education programs.  Sometimes "study" can also mean staying up with popular culture or the news--it's important for us to know what's going on out there in the world.
• Spiritual Practice -- Ministry is a high burn-out profession because of the high demands.  It is necessary that we stay spiritually grounded in order to do this work.  But more than that, because we are spiritual leaders in our community, this is something we have to do in order to practice what we preach.  

I'm sure I've skipped dozens of things, including some big ones, among what we do.  But I hope I've convinced someone somewhere that ministry is about much, much more than just being in the pulpit on Sunday.

This year the UUA's Common Read book is Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. In it, she chronicles how the prison system has replaced Jim Crow laws as a system of racism and segregation.  It goes far beyond the more widely understood fact that there are differences in sentencing laws to the question of why we have a "war on drugs" to begin with.

For those interested in reading more about the prison system and the problems with it, there are several additional books I could recommend, but I also wanted to recommend a blog of a fellow I know, On Doing Time.  This isn't a slick or professional blog on the subject.  What it is is a first-hand account by a former member of my congregation about his experiences in prison and his thoughts and musings about it after the fact.  In 1999, as a young adult, R.W. VanSumeren, in a period of desperation, robbed a gas station at gunpoint and then a bank.  And he was convicted and served time for armed robbery.  That's what the record shows. But then VanSumeren takes you beyond the surface story to understand how someone comes into that moment of desperation, what it's like to be incarcerated, and what the struggles are after release for a convicted felon.  It's not always PC, and it's sometimes raw, but it's very real, and worth reading.

Let me share a couple of examples to show you what I'm talking about.  In a blog post titled, "J.D. & The Mandatory Minimum" he tells the story of his cellmate, J.D., doing 12-88 years for possession of two ounces of cocaine:

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 spent last week at the minister's study group, Ohio River Group, that I attend each year (I've missed only once since joining in 2005).  This year's theme was "Space," and during our meeting a growing list of science fiction suggestions was posted by its members on the white board.  What follows here is that list, with my own personal notations when I have any.  For confidentiality's sake, I am not posting either who posted these works, nor some of their own comments about why that went up on our white board.

Robert Sawyer: Starplex, Calculating God, Factoring Humanity, and Flashforward
Of the things on this list that I haven't read, these will be first on my list.

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake: A Novel, and The Year of the Flood
I've read some of Atwood's works (including The Handmaid's Tale, of course), and would consider myself a fan of hers.  I will be adding these two to my reading list, as I also heard a really interesting review of them on NPR some time back.

Ursula K. LeGuin: The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest
The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic, and deservedly so.  It's considered the first feminist sci-fi work.  It's notable for its construction of gender, in particular.

John Carey: Faber Book of Utopias

Arthur C. Clarke: The City & the Stars,  Against the Fall of Night,and The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (especially “The Star”)
I've read some Arthur C. Clarke, notably Childhood's End, and he's well worth reading, although not a particular favorite of mine.

Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man

John Scalzi: Old Man's War, Zoe's Tale - and his blog, “Whatever”

Elizabeth Moon: The Deed of Paksenarrion: A Novel and others

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1), Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) (Ender Wiggin Saga), and the short story “Mortal Gods” found in Unaccompanied Sonata & Other Stories
I was once a big Orson Scott Card fan.  I've read more of his books than any other author in the genre.  However, I stopped reading him when I started getting fed up with the fact that they were always a boy or man with extraordinary power at the center of things, often saving the universe--a Christ figure, in other words.  I would still encourage people to read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, because I think they are phenomenal books.  I just re-read Ender's Game, and I still love it.  But borrow them, buy them used, or get them from the library, as Orson Scott Card is also involved with NOM, and vocal and active against same-sex marriage. 

Octavia Butler: Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents
If you only read one book on this list, make it be Parable of the Sower, in my opinion.  It's a wonderful sci-fi exploration of process theology.  It's dystopian, but hopeful at the same time.  It's really, really good.  So good I've quoted it in sermons which have nothing else to do with science fiction.

Roger Zelazny: The Amber Series, i.e. The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber) and Lord of Light

Harlan Ellison: Deathbird Stories
I once did a whole paper in college on Deathbird Stories, which is a collection that has a lot to say about God, or gods.  It wasn't a very good paper, though.  I could write a better one now.

Sarah Zettel: No specific work suggested
Zettel grew up Unitarian Universalist, says the UU World when reviewing A Sorcerer's Treason.

Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow
I have never read a more  disturbing set of books than The Sparrow and Children of God.  That said, go read them.  They are phenomenal and profound.  They have much to say about manifest destiny and about theology.  Just be prepared for the nightmares. 

“Alien Planet” (YouTube)

Gary Shteyngart: Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

As we hear the stories coming out of Newtown, Connecticut, one of the stories we're hearing is about the heroism of teachers.  The stories are being shared of the teachers who died and how their last actions were to try to save their children, and the teachers who survived and how they ushered their children to safety, keeping them quiet, secure, calm, and safe in closets and bathrooms.

I have a school-aged daughter.  My husband and I made the decision to talk to her about the tragedy in Newtown, because she's old enough that she'll look over and read the headlines or hear someone talking.  We keep news sources around us--a daily newspaper, a weekly news magazine, a news radio station--and she was bound to hear about it somewhere.  Other parents, with different habits or younger children, might effectively shield their children from the news, but we knew we couldn't.  So she knew a little bit about it when we sent her off to school again this morning.  And it was a normal school day for her, although nothing feels normal anymore to me about sending my child off to school.  I imagine that's a feeling that will last for a while.

Much of the day, I was thinking about my child's teacher, and how much I appreciate her and every other teacher my child has had.  I know that they're dedicated and caring people.  I know they love our children.  I know they would shield my child with their life.  Teachers don't get enough thanks in this day.  This has been a tough week for teachers in Michigan -- a week that began with the passage of right-to-work laws and ended with Newtown.  We ask these people to love our children, take care of our children, protect our children, and educate our children, and we can't give them enough thanks.  They deserve more pay and more respect for the work that they do. 

And my child knows how much the teachers care, too.  Today, she told me, they made an announcement at her school, and the principal told the student body how saddened they were by what had happened in Connecticut, but that at her school the teachers and staff would do everything they could to keep their students safe.  My daughter said that some of the kids in her class didn't know what happened, so her teacher explained it to them.  "She didn't give details," my daughter said, "just a summary."  Apparently she's been learning about summaries lately, so she was very clear on this.  Some of the children gasped at the news, she said, when they heard that children had been killed.  But they weren't scared, thanks to the reassuring tone of their teacher.

Of course I hate that my daughter has to know about this.  I hate that schools have to think about policies about how people come in the building.  I hate that children have to learn lock-down procedures.  And most of all, of course, I hate that violence was committed against children.

But I'll continue to send my child off to school, scary as it is--mostly scary for me, not her.  She can't live in fear of the world, in fear of living her life.  And because I will continue to send her off to school, I'm thankful for the love and dedication of teachers.  One teacher from Newtown said that as she huddled with her children waiting for the police to arrive, she told them she loved them.  She didn't know if that would be okay with parents, but she wanted if these children were going to die, for them to hear at this time that someone loved them.  I know my child's teacher would do the same thing if she were there.

So I'm writing this today for all the teachers in my life--my daughter's teacher, my sister who is a teacher in Detroit Public Schools, my congregation members who are teachers.  Thank you for the work that you do.  Thank you for loving our children.  Thank you for being there with them in the joyous times of holiday parties, and the dark and scary times huddled in a closet.  Thank you.  We love you for loving our children.

This past Sunday our church had a pageant planned, that we went forward with.  Mindful that it was an intergenerational service, I carefully crafted a prayer that would address the tragedy in Newtown, but without explaining the context to young ears that might not have heard of events yet.  This is what I wrote:

Spirit of Life,

There has been a lot of talk about God's role in the Newtown, Connecticut shootings.  I have no more (but no less) a direct line to God than anybody else, but these things I know about God.  Others have been saying these things before me, but they bear repeating.

1. This tragedy in Newtown was not "all part of God's plan," and it didn't happen because "God wanted another little angel."  We as human beings have free will.  The shooter made his decisions to kill children and adults, not God.  We also have free will in how we respond.  Go listen to the early interview with the father of Emilie Parker: "The person that chose to act this way was acting with a God-given right to use his free agency and God can’t take that away ... that’s what he chose to do with it. I’m not mad [at God, I'm assuming]. I have my own agency to use this event to do whatever I can to make sure my wife and daughters are taken care of."  Robert Parker has it absolutely right.  I was so incredibly impressed with the strength of his faith and his clear understanding.  God wasn't there in the finger pulling the trigger--that was the absence of God, because it was the absence of love, the absence of mercy, and the absence of compassion.
2. This tragedy is not a "punishment from God for being kept out of schools" nor was it "God's judgement."  God did not choose this.  See point number one.  And God isn't in the schools?  What a small God that would be!  God was there. 
3.  It's not true that "God never gives you more than you can handle."  Again, see point number one--God did not give you this tragedy.  Secondly, sometimes we do reach a point where something is more than we can handle.  But please know that you don't have to handle it alone--that's why we have church, and why we have mental health professionals.  If this is more than you can handle, reach out for support.

What is, then, God's role in this tragedy?  God is in the creation of love.  God was present in Victoria Soto when she died trying to shield her students.  God was there in Anne Murphy as she died cradling 6-year-old Dylan Hockley in her arms, dying in an embodiment of a pietà.  God is there in the outpouring of sorrow from this nation.  God is there in the people who are responding with every fiber of their being and their last drop of energy, whether it's standing in vigil, helping to bring the community together, counseling the survivors and family members, burying the dead, or just struggling to fix this broken culture of ours.  God is there in the lights we light in the darkness.  God is there in the touch of a friendly hand.  God is in the love we create.  God is in our response.  

Ever since the Sandy Hook shooting, I've been working on a two-part blog series about guns and gun violence.  It's been slow going, because it's an emotional and difficult issue for me.  I've been torn apart in my feelings about Sandy Hook, and mourning deeply, particularly as a mother of an elementary-school-aged child.  This blog series has now become at least a three-part series, maybe more.  I thought I just needed to explain who I was and position myself in this debate, and then lay out my person vision.  Now I understand that I also need to tell my readership, which hopefully and probably includes more than my own religious community, about the community I serve.

I serve a more politically diverse, which is to say more conservative, church than the average Unitarian Universalist church.  It's very different from all the other churches I've known, as someone who was raised Unitarian Universalists and moved quite a bit before seminary and has served seven churches if you count internship, student ministries, and a summer ministry.  This church I serve now is a rural, historically Universalist church.  It has a higher than average Christian percentage for a Unitarian Universalist church.  It has a higher than average moderate-to-conservative population, I would guess, as well.  Two of our biggest controversies have been about whether or not the American flag belongs in the sanctuary and whether or not the picture of Jesus does.  There are strong feelings on either side, and we've worked for compromises in each.  I also have members who wish I would preach more hellfire and brimstone, and have said so--in those words.  I'm not speaking metaphorically!  But with each of our members, there's a reason why they come to us, and those reasons are important.  Sometimes it's historical connection, sometimes it's a gay family member, sometimes it's because they know we were there in some important moment of need or crisis.  Sometimes the reason is theological, sometimes historical, sometimes community, sometimes the drive to be challenged by people who think differently.  And they lovingly stand by this church, even when they disagree with its stands and, often, its minister.

And so it is also true that we have a lot of gun owners.  Most of them are hunters.  It's not unusual in our church in hunting season to have a candle of joy lit for a buck killed.  We've happily eaten the venison at church fundraisers.  (I might add that they were successful, joyful, and well-attended dinners when the venison has been featured, along with vegetarian alternatives, but our gun-owners do outnumber our vegetarians, and some of our vegetarians who don't eat meat because of factory farming issues may happily enjoy the venison, as well.)  I can count on my fingers fifteen percent of our adult members and regular friends of the church where I know those adults have or had guns in their household.  I can count another ten percent where I think it's very likely, but they've never specifically said.  (These are some of our older members from farming backgrounds, where it would be a normal part of farm life to own a gun, but they've never mentioned it specifically.)  There's another group where I wouldn't be surprised to find out they have guns in their household.  And then there's always the ones that might surprise me, such as some of our radical, activist, liberal members who are also gun owners.  But I wouldn't be surprised to find out we have a 30% gun ownership in this Unitarian Universalist church.  I'm sure that whatever the national average for gun ownership is among Unitarian Universalists, we would beat it by a good ten percent at least. 

But I also know this story.  Months before our Governor vetoed the legislation that was going to allow concealed carry in churches, I mentioned that this legislation was pending to one of our most avid gun owners.  "There's just no need for anyone to be doing that," was the response I got.  "Nobody needs to have concealed carry in churches."

What did that tell me?  There may be a lot of guns in our church, but we're just another slice of America here.  And there's a lot of room for compromise between the perspectives of our most extreme members on the right and left of the gun debate.  I see a willingness among our gun owners and second amendment believers to put in sensible reforms.  And I see a willingness among our reform advocates to leave room for gun ownership for our avid hunters.  I see a great willingness here for our church to find common ground here, to have the difficult discussion in microcosm that our polarized country needs to have in macrocosm.  I don't know if we'll have that discussion in organized form or just individually, but I believe it will be, and perhaps already is happening.  So it is with this understanding, that my church is a diverse and unusual place, that I begin to share here my own thoughts, knowing they may not be typical for our group here, but that I have a free pulpit that they have lovingly given me.

I've always been a lukewarm believer in the right to own guns.  Lukewarm, I say, because I think the right to own guns leads to a host of problems, that that writers of the Second Amendment never envisioned an America like today, with the weapons that our government has, and the weapons our citizens have.  I am not, by any means, someone who believes that the Constitution is a perfect document, either.  I believe it's important that a process exists for amending it, and am willing to amend it when it is important for freedom and liberty.  I am willing to rethink the Second Amendment entirely, and don't hold the right to own guns as sacrosanct as I do freedom of religion, speech, and of the press.

Lukewarmly, however, I do support the right to own guns.  I was brought up in a household where there were guns, and I had the example of a responsible gun owner in my father, who kept the guns, if not under literal lock and key, securely away from me during my childhood.  There were important histories tied to guns that were owned by my forefathers that made them family heirlooms, such as my ancestor's "Civil War rifle."  I also have the example of many relatives and friends and congregation members who are hunters and both enjoy hunting as a sport and as a means for providing food for their tables.  I want a degree of gun ownership to continue to exist that allows for hunting, family heirlooms, and perhaps some measure of gun ownership for personal protection.  I am not a passionate defender of this, however. 

I once had a liberal friend say to me, "I would never willingly enter a house where I knew there were guns."  I enter these houses all the time, and without fear most of the time.  There are always exceptions, such as pastoral care calls to someone who is mentally unstable, where I might refuse to meet in a private residence, but that would be true even if there were no guns present.  I know my friends and family and congregation members to be responsible gun owners, and have no more fear of violence or accident there than I do walking down the street.  I also refuse to live and act out of my fear of guns, even where I have fear.  I do fear for my child's safety at school.  I do fear for my sister's safety at the school where she teaches.  I was at a luncheon recently where someone said, "There was a lockdown today at a school in Detroit," and fear for my sister rushed into my heart.  Turns out it was Novi, not Detroit, but we're over here in Jackson, so maybe that distinction was lost.  I do fear for my safety and the safety of my family in my congregation, in the movie theaters, on the street corner with my congress member, in the schools.  We live in an increasingly violent country, with random violence striking in not just the places that we were taught to see as dangerous, like the inner city, but striking in the places we always assumed we were safe--churches, schools, street corners with our congressional representative.  I refuse, however, to live out of that fear and either stop going these places or wear a gun everywhere I go.  I've always refused to let that fear keep me out of the cities, choosing to visit, work, shop, and also live in places that others have deemed too dangerous at many points in my life.  I refuse now to let fear keep me from living a normal life.

But refusing to fear doesn't mean that the problem should be ignored.  There are reasonable reforms that can help make America safer.  And I have opinions about it, just like everybody else, which I'll address in my next post.

I've been thinking a lot, as most people have, about my perspective about gun violence and what should be done.  I've done a lot of learning, such as educating myself on the difference between a clip and a magazine.  I've been listening to my relatives, my colleagues, and my friends and congregants who are school teachers, police officers, parents, and politicians, and to my president--of the UUA and the USA.  And I've been listening to the NRA, and not just the clips played on MSNBC. 

My friend Dani Meier, for example, a long-time anti-violence advocate, gun owner, and school counselor, wrote a HuffPost piece titled "Thoughts From 'A Good Guy With a Gun'" in which he writes, "First, as microcosms of society, schools will always have some students, parents, and teachers with anger problems, mental illness, or poor self-control. As educators, we regularly try to model peaceful conflict-resolution, 99.9 percent of which we successfully deescalate despite significant volatility. And when we don't succeed, weapons are not needed. Introducing guns in those scenarios, in fact, invites other kinds of nightmares."  He also says, "I am a decent shot, but I am not -- nor will most educators ever be -- like Dirty Harry, capable of picking off a moving target amidst the chaos of innocent children and adults scrambling for cover."

My friend the police officer, to illustrate another opinion, doesn't think bans on high-capacity magazines will make much difference.  I respect his opinion, although it goes against what most liberals are calling for.  He says, "3 ten round magazines equals 30. A magazine change can take a second, so limiting it doesn't have much of an effect."  While I think he's probably right, I also, therefore, don't see how it's too much of a restriction on the second amendment to put such a ban in place.  And a dropped or fumbled magazine during a shooting could make potentially make a world of difference.  My officer friend also thinks the open-carry advocates go too far, and that they should be required to carry their license and prove upon request that they are allowed to carry the gun when they are practicing their open carry rights.  And he says, "Of the guns that I have personally taken off the streets, or ones that have been used in crimes (including homicides) that have occurred in [the city he works in] I can't think of one that involved an assault style rifle, or large capacity magazine. Shotguns and pistols are the weapon of choice to the street criminal. I have never had one gun that was also registered to the criminal. Most guns are stolen, or taken from someone else."  I think he has a point, and that when we look at what would stop a mass shooting like the one in Newtown, it's a different set of solutions than would stop the individual shootings we see in Chicago.  And both are huge problems in our society.  We're focusing too much on stopping the violence in Newtown and not enough on stopping the violence on the streets of Chicago or Detroit.

I went to a Detroit event about The New Jim Crow recently hosted by the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, and heard people there talking about gun violence from a multitude of informed perspectives, and one person talked about having police in schools from a different perspective than I'd heard shared elsewhere.  She said that it was her suspicion, based on the cases she'd seen as someone who was in a position that injustice cases were brought to her, that when there were police officers put in school, children's behavior that might have been resolved in other ways tended to get criminalized.  I think it's important if we're talking about police officers in schools, that we think about what some of the unintended consequences of that might be.  

The Rev. Peter Morales, the UUA president, in another HuffPost piece, writes, of what he thinks President Obama should do saying, "We join with Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence in calling for change."  (Who "we" are is unidentified, by the way.)  Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence states:

1. Every person who buys a gun should pass a criminal background check; 
2. High capacity weapons and ammunition magazines should not be available to civilians; and 
3. Gun trafficking should be a federal crime. 

I respect the thoughtful views of all of these people, and the hard work that President Obama and Vice President Biden have done.  It's a complex problem.  And I largely agree with their solutions, although I'll go more into that in the next piece in this series.

... will resume in about two weeks.  I'm working up a sermon on it, and don't want to pre-publish everything that I plan to say from the pulpit.  Sorry for the delay.  Meanwhile, I'm at the UUMA Institute and hope to have something interesting to write soon.

In the workshop I'm attending at the UUMA Institute, we've been talking about the different generations in our church and what motivates them to come, what calls them to be involved, and what they care about.  We've talked about what incidents shaped and defined these generations.  Today, the thought that came to me, prompted by something said by a colleague, was that if the generations are motivated by different things, not only does our membership and outreach efforts need to be targeted differently to each group, our pledge drive might be more effective if targeted differently to each group.

So, for example, the Silent Generation, born 1925-1945 are builders and institutionalists.  They dislike debt.  The Great Depression had a big impact on them, and they like frugality.  They are civic-minded, and the older members of this generation may have served in WWII, younger ones in the Korean War.  A pledge campaign that emphasizes the institutional needs and building needs will be something they might connect to more than one that emphasizes mission and vision or social justice or programming.  They also may respond to debt retirement campaigns.  A lot of this is also true for the generation that preceded them, the G.I. Generation.

The Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964 are very different from their parents.  Baby Boomers sometime like new experiences and sometimes like to be pampered a bit.  They like having a vision and are associated with rejecting some traditional values.  Hippies were Baby Boomers, as were Yuppies.  Baby boomers are more likely to give to programming, and to vision, and to social justice work.

Generation X, born from 1965 through the mid-eighties, are cynical about the lack of the vision of the Baby Boomers coming to fruition.  They tend to be pragmatic, but also to thrive on change and starting up new ideas.  If you have a new program to institute--and if it's practical with a solid plan--the Generation X members may be motivated to give to that.  Many of them have young children now, and are motivated by practical aspects of church life that involve their children, i.e. religious education.

Millennials, born between the eighties and 2000, are also having children now, at least the older ones.  They like technology, and are generally more optimistic than the generation that preceded them, and are more visionary and less pragmatic.  They are entrepreneurial and they like to have positive feedback.  They are less interested in joining organized religion, but those that are involved are more embracing of multiculturalism and diversity than generations that preceded them.  They may be motivated to give to projects that embrace their values, and to ones where they have the opportunity to lead or to learn.

Of course, these are broad stereotypes, and people may completely disagree.  But I'd like to hear less about what you disagree with than about what you think motivates your own generation or those you're in close connection with.  Our workshop is much more focused about how to attract and involve different generations -- this was just a side thought of mine about how this information that I've been focused on for years in these other arenas might be used in a pledge drive as well.

This is probably the longest sermon I've ever preached, and it's way too long for a blog post, but I'm posting it all as one anyway.  The members of my congregation that I quoted gave me permission to use their names in the service, but I didn't ask them about the web, so I'm using their initials to give them a small degree of anonymity.  Those who know our congregation will know who they are, and that is okay, since those people could have easily been in attendance, as well.  I've tried to represent their views honestly and fairly, but of course everything is filtered through my understanding, so my apologies if I've represented anybody incorrectly.

I also had some last-minute additions to the service, as members came in and talked with me.  I've tried to recreate those additions and ad-libs in this version, but they may be slightly different.

Lastly, the church was really full of energy this Sunday, and I think it was generated by knowing that this was the sermon topic.  We didn't have time for a congregational response time because of the length of my sermon, but I'm hoping that given how interested in talking about things people were that we will continue to find ways to discuss this issue. 

Guns & Violence: Reflections & Hopes

 I've preached about many controversial things over the last eight and a half years in this church.  I've spoken about abortion and gay rights and said words like "condoms" and "masturbation" from this pulpit.  But I think I've never given a sermon that was as controversial in this church as the one I'm about to give today.  I hope it will be received with love and understanding knowing that my goal here today is to build bridges between us so that me might further the dialogue on this issue.  We come together here with many different viewpoints, but as one covenanted community, dedicated to coming together in our diversity and worshiping together, and dedicated to love and justice.

When I was in Florida the other week, I opened up the newspaper looking for, well, the news. As I opened to the national news pages, I found myself on a page where every article had something to do with gun violence.  Today I turned on the radio on the way to church to hear the story of Hadiya Pendleton’s funeral—a fifteen-year-old girl who died from a shooting.  The mass shootings get our nation’s attention the most often, but violence happens all too regularly on the streets of our nation’s cities – a fact we are finally awakening to.

But the mass shootings are important, because they show us in starker, more graphic realities something of the deepening problem in our society.  And while overall violence may not be on the rise, the mass shootings are.

When I was in high school, for those four years, there were no mass shootings in schools.  Those kind of shootings didn’t happen often.  The most recent one had been a decade earlier, with seven people killed at California State University.  There were a few during my college years – the University of Iowa, where one of my friends was in graduate school, so that was notable to me, where six people were killed.  Columbine didn’t happen until I was in seminary (1999), and Virginia tech (in 2007) was after I entered the ministry.  Schools were considered pretty safe places when I was growing up –probably true for most of you, as well.  Both Columbine and Virginia Tech had an impact on me, though.  Virginia Tech I related to as a professor, since I had been teaching English at JCC.  In fact, I had two students who wrote essays about imagining themselves as shooters, picking off students from the campus rooftops.  My students learned that you can’t have this kind of imaginative writing in a post-Columbine world.  The shooting in the Knoxville Unitarian Church in 2008 hit home in a stronger way – this can happen in a Unitarian Universalist church, that a shooter enters wanting to kill you, because of who you are—religious liberals—and all that represents.  And the shooting in Tucson in 2011 where Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six people were killed.  That one hit home for me, too, partly because of little nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who reminded me of my own daughter, who I have taken to numerous political events, and who has stood with me on many a street corner while I talked to my elected representatives.

But my reaction to all of these wasn’t anything like my reaction to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in December.  After Sandy Hook, I felt like I was crying for days.  And I was—every time I opened the computer, or turned on the television, or the radio, or thought about those beautiful little first graders, as their names were slowly released over the next couple of days.  I was wrung out, distraught, destroyed inside at the thought of it.  And I’m sure my reaction was so intense because they were so close in age to my old child, and the thought of an adult choosing to target elementary school children is so vile and abhorrent.  Columbine was teenagers killing teenagers.  Virginia Tech was a college student killing college students and adults.  But this was one of our deadliest school shootings ever, and the victims were some of the youngest ever.

I didn’t jump to thinking our laws had to change after any of the others.  But this, this was different.  This was a sign that our country was broken somehow to me.  And I sensed our president felt the same way, as a father of two young girls.  I understand, and I feel deeply, the need to do something—anything—in response to this tragedy, even if it isn’t effective.  The idea of twenty six- and seven-year-old children dying at school and our country not responding by doing anything just seems unthinkable to me.

Of course, it’s not that simple, and our emotional and intuitive reaction isn’t always the best one.  And as we, as a country, muddle through the quagmire of data and emotion, the right path isn’t entirely clear.

Like many people, in the weeks since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, I’ve read dozens of editorials about guns and gun violence.  I’ve read magazine articles from Time and Mother Jones and all sorts of sources.  I’ve watched videos about guns from avid hunters and second-amendment hawks.  I’ve exchanged Facebook messages on the subject with friends ranging from social workers to policemen.  I’ve talked with my family members, which includes peaceniks and gun owners.  And I’ve talked with members of this congregation, who run from liberal to conservative, and from gun enthusiasts to gun abolitionists.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this church is the perfect place for us to be having a conversation about this issue.  We have a real diversity in this congregation, particularly on issues like this, that often break down along political lines and class lines.  We have a diversity of beliefs and experiences about guns here, and we’re a congregation where we come together and worship together, and share a common faith.  Our faith can keep us grounded, keep us connected, keep us covenanted together in love as we explore the issues that are dividing our country.

I figure I’m probably seen as pretty far to the left in general.  I think this whole county has me pegged as an extreme liberal at this point.  And so it might be assumed that I’m extremely liberal on gun control issues, to the point of wanting to ban all firearms.  I have liberal friends who say that they won’t enter a house if they know there are guns there.  And ones who say that they don’t particularly believe in the second amendment, or don’t think that it really is about private gun ownership in their view.  But my views are not what some might assume them to be.  I grew up with guns in my house, and with a parent, my father, who had been raised on a farm with folks who went hunting and enjoyed it for sport and for food.  He talked often about inheriting his father’s double-barreled muzzle-loader, and how his father still had possession of it, but that it was to come to him one day.  He taught us that guns were to be respected, and not to be touched by children.  I respect hunters, in particular, as I’m not a vegetarian, and I think hunting and killing your own food is more ethical than my own meat-eating, which includes a lot of factory-farmed beef and poultry.  I don’t actually think we should do anything that would ban hunters from hunting the way that they do currently.  I also don’t think that my father should have to give up his grandfather’s hunting rifle or my ancestor’s civil war rifle, although that may already be in a cousin’s possession.

So I start from the opinion that there’s a compromise position here between the two extremes, and that this is where I stand, and that this is also where the majority of Americans stand.  Most of them don’t believe in a complete ban on guns.  Most of them do believe in some restrictions.  I also believe that in this congregation, there’s a lot of hope for setting an example, since we have the diversity we have of opinions and beliefs.  I felt like, if I can find people in this congregation who are at different places than me about gun ownership and find places where we agree, then that’s a hopeful sign for our society at large, as well as being a good example of where this country needs to come to.  We may be on the liberal end of the spectrum in terms of political and religious beliefs, as a whole, but we are not typical liberals in terms of our percentage of gun owners.  We have some people with a lot of knowledge and experience with guns, and who carry or use them on a regular basis, and a lot of gun owners in general.  And so, since I am on the liberal end of the spectrum, I talked with two of our more avid gun owners in the congregation to see where our common ground is.  The people I talked with are G.B., who works in the state prison, G.H., a hunter and member of the Jackson Outdoor club where he has been involved with many things, including teaching people to shoot, and a little with D.M., a gun collector and hunter, before the service today.

G.B. and G.H.  own more than 30 guns between the two of them.  Their guns are mostly for hunting and personal protection.  They own hunting rifles and hand guns.  G.B., like my father, owns some family heirloom-type pieces that are probably not safe to shoot.  When G.H. inherited one that wasn’t safe to shoot, on the other hand, being a machinist, he fixed it.  G.H. says he doesn’t really see the point in owning something like an AR-15.  He sees that those guns are meant for killing people, and not really for anything else.  He tells me they’re not fun to shoot, to him, and they’re also not cheap to shoot.

I started with the position of believing it’s reasonable to ban assault rifles like the AR-15.  What I found is that neither G.H. nor G.B. seems completely opposed to such a ban.  But they both are not convinced that it would make much difference.  D.M. doesn’t think it would make a difference, either, saying that you can kill people quickly with buckshot, as well.  G.H. says that if all guns were banned, for example, people would just make their own.  D.M. agrees with this.  He knows how to make a gun, and says it’s fairly simple.  As I researched this sermon, I found that the most deadly school attack in our country’s history was here in Michigan, and was the bombing of a school in Bath.  38 elementary school children died in Bath in the bombing in 1927.  Columbine was a deadly school shooting, but it was intended to be a bombing, too, but the bombs didn’t go off.  The bombs in both these cases were home-made.  I have no doubt that G.H. is right—if there weren’t guns available, people would make their own guns, or they would kill another way.  The man who bombed the school in bath killed his wife before the bombing.  He apparently hit her on the head with a rock or some other blunt object.

But despite the fact that people can kill other ways, and most shootings in America are with handguns, not the semi-automatic assault rifles preferred by our mass murderers, I still think that anything that might slow down an assailant has to be a good thing, and there’s no real reason for these weapons like the Bushmaster used by Adam Lanza, except for killing people.  G.H. agrees that this weapon is really made for this one thing.  I have no problem limiting the sale of these kinds of guns –it doesn’t affect family heirlooms; it doesn’t affect the ability of people to protect themselves; it doesn’t limit their ability to hunt.  I say do it.

The other common proposal is limiting the magazine sizes.  My friend who is a policeman says there’s no point to this—three tens equal a thirty.  G.B. seems to think it wouldn’t make much difference, too.  If he could see that it would make a difference, he might agree to it, I think.  G.H., on the other hand, doesn’t think people need to have those large magazine sizes, and would be willing to limit them, although he concurs that a magazine change is extremely fast, and doesn’t slow down a shooter much.  My opinion here is that many shooters have been stopped because an unarmed bystander tackled them.  This is what stopped the shooter in the Tucson, Arizona shooting.  In the Knoxville UU church, Greg McKendry, an ushers blocked the shooter and was killed, and then the shooter was brought down by other members tackling him.

About registrations and concealed carry licenses and gun show loopholes and things like that, our church members here spent some time informing me of what is already in place.  G.H. says that if I walked into a gun show here in Jackson without any documentation showing I had a concealed carry permit or had gone through a background check, that no dealer here would just sell me a gun.

Another area we talked about was arming teachers or having armed guards in schools.  Here both G.B. and G.H. were cautious—both weren’t wholesale for arming teachers, but might allow it if the teachers went through some rigorous training first.  G.B. compares it to the training that pilots get, and suggests that teachers would have to become certified police reservists first.  G.H. says it would be important that they never put down the gun, because once that happens, it’s only a matter of time before it gets in the hands of a child.  I’m reminded of Jackson resident Dani Meier who wrote an article in the Huffington Post, in which he said this:

I am what the NRA might call a "good guy with a gun."

But as someone who has worked in K-12 schools and colleges for a quarter century, let me suggest a few reasons why bringing my gun to school is not the answer to gun violence in America.

First, as microcosms of society, schools will always have some students, parents, and teachers with anger problems, mental illness, or poor self-control. As educators, we regularly try to model peaceful conflict-resolution, 99.9 percent of which we successfully deescalate despite significant volatility. And when we don't succeed, weapons are not needed. Introducing guns in those scenarios, in fact, invites other kinds of nightmares. And tragedies.[i] 

I have great qualms about armed teachers, because of the potential for accident or a child getting his or her hands on the weapon, but I personally was, for a while, leaving the door open a crack for armed guards at schools.  I know as I sent my child back to school after Sandy Hook, I was scared.  I think I would’ve been less scared if I knew her school had an armed guard.  However, when I was at a discussion group in Detroit about the New Jim Crow recently, an official in an EEOC-type position said something that made me think twice.  She said that she believes, based on what she’s seen, that when there are cops at schools, that children’s behavior that might otherwise have been dealt with by the school becomes criminalized.  And I think we’ve already established which kids are likely to be seen as bad seeds, and which ones are likely to be seen as good kids who just did something stupid.  When thinking about that, I started to think that there might be unintended consequences of armed guards at schools, at that I would have to see some more data on this before I was comfortable.  Interestingly, both G.B. and G.H. also balked at the idea of armed guards or police officers at schools.

What all this showed me is that most of the people in this country are like me and G.H. and G.B.—we’re in the middle, willing to try different things, wanting to do what will be effective, although we may differ sometimes on our judgment of what we think the data is in about and what we’re still assessing.

But all this led me to also realize that there’s a way in which those who jump quickly to the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument have a point.  The bombing of an elementary school in Bath happened largely without guns, although there were some guns involved.  People have been killing people since Cain killed Abel, if you believe your Bible stories.  And we’re no closer to understanding why, it seems, than we were at the dawn of time.  I wish I could just say that it’s mental illness, that it’s a sickness.  But I don’t think that after all this time we know that.  Adam Lanza seems to have only been diagnosed with aspberger’s.  Plenty of people have aspberger’s syndrome and live lives that are not violent or murderous.  It’s not associated with things like this.  Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, had depression.  Thousands upon thousands of people have depression but never think of killing another human being.  I think there is a mental illness component in these killings, yes.  You only have to look at Jared Loughner or James Holmes to see that something strange is going on with them.  And with the two of them, from Tucson and Arizona, we have a couple who are still alive who we can learn from, unlike Dylan and Eric from Columbine or Seung-Hui Cho from Virgina Tech, or now Adam Lanza.

Mental illness is certainly a piece of the puzzle, but there is something more, something that has to do with a culture that cheapens life and people who don’t believe that life and love have value and meaning and importance.  Most shootings aren’t like Adam Lanza.  While the Sandy Hooks are the ones that capture our attention and tug at our heart strings, most shootings in American are individual, common, and go without a national response.  They’re one person with one pistol shooting another person over something trivial—something much more trivial than life.  2012 was the deadliest year in decades in Detroit.  Detroit’s mayor said, “We’ve just lost respect for each other; we’ve lost respect for life…  I don’t want to say that you can forget about this generation or the generation before us, but if we’re going to solve the problem, we’ve got to get into the heads and the minds and the hearts of our young people, and it’s going to take all of us to do that.”[ii]

G.B. said to me:

The governing principle in human relationships is the principle of love, which always seeks the welfare of others and never seeks to hurt or destroy…  Any thinking person who subscribes to that principle and also has a firearm - I have no fear being in their company. How do you get a person with a mental health issue to understand this principle - I don’t know. How do you get a teenager with no economic hope and a belief that they have only a very few years left to live to understand this principle - I do not know.

 This whole discussion is chasing the wrong ghost. I see no difference between a firearm, a knife, a baseball bat, a car or a really big rock. All of them are perfectly useful tools when operated by a thinking person. All are tools which can have terrible consequences when used incorrectly or used with out care. We only talk about the ownership of a tool and not the condition of our hearts and minds. 

How do we get from here to there - I do not know.

I think G.B. is really on to something here.  It’s worth remembering that when the church shooting happened in Knoxville, the church responded by talking about love.  The UUA put out a full-paged ad in the Boston Globe about Love.  They started the Standing on the Side of Love campaign.  You know all my sermons come back to love.

The problem is that somewhere, love is broken, and that has to be what is happening here that allows people to commit these horrific crimes.

I think as a religious community, we are called to do two things.  We are called to teach love, and, also, we are called to teach non-violence.  And the two things go together.  For where there is perfect love, there is no violence.  Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, and he taught us to turn the other cheek.  His response to a violent state that wanted to kill him, was to go to his death.  Not all of us may be entirely able to embrace a path of non-violence, even in the face of even person harm.  I know I would probably embrace a violent solution if I felt my life were at stake.  And I can’t blame anybody who chooses self-preservation and self-protection.  But we jump too quickly to those thoughts as a country, to the point where non-violence isn’t even held up as a viable alternative in these discussions, much less as a model.  Mahatma Ghandhi talked about the path of nonviolence being the path of love, nonviolence as a love-force, or soul-force -- satyagraha.  He said, “Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy. Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return.  Love wrestles with the world as with itself, and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me, is that every problem lends itself to solution if we are determined to make the Law of Truth and Non-violence the Law of Life. For, Truth and Non-violence are to me faces of the same coin.”[iii]  Another example – at one point, Martin Luther King, Jr. had armed guards.  Eventually, he chose the path of non-violence, and he got rid of his guns and his armed guards.  And, of course, he also died, a victim of gun violence.  And that is certainly one possible outcome of an embrace of non-violence, and one that makes this a hard path to choose.  Yet here are King’s words:

And so I say to you today that I still stand for nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country. And the other thing that I am concerned about is a better world. I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out violence. Only light can do that. And so I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love. For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I am going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today.  I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love. I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr. did choose the path of love and non-violence it knowing where the path might lead—people around him were killed along the way, and he certainly knew that it was a possible, and perhaps even likely, outcome for himself, as well.  Jesus chose it, too, knowing where the path would lead.

Somehow, however, if we are to change this broken society, we have to embrace ahimsa, the principle of not hurting other living things.  We have to embrace the path of love.  For Gandhi, love and non-violence were inextricably linked.  And I think it’s just possible he was right.

This is not a problem that legislation can solve, in the end.  In the end, it’s a problem only theology and the human heart can solve.  And when we look to the world’s religions, we see the same answer over and over again.  Thich Naht Hanh said, “All violence is injustice. Responding to violence with violence is injustice, not only to the other person but also to oneself. Responding to violence with violence resolves nothing; it only escalates violence, anger and hatred. It is only with compassion that we can embrace and disintegrate violence. This is true in relationships between individuals as well as in relationships between nations.”  In the Old Testament book of Micah it says, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your cloak do not withhold your coat as well. Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  From as long ago as the Hebrew prophets and the Christian teacher of Jesus to as modern as the Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian leaders of today, we get the message.  Churches across this country are taking up the call.  Peace, love, the siblinghood of all humanity.

We may have individual fears about our security and the security of our children.  We may have individual passions for hunting or a need professionally to carry a gun on a job.  We may believe passionately in the second amendment.  But as a religion, as a faith, and as individual people as well, we must start taking seriously a discussion about non-violence and a discussion about love.  We have to hold up our principle that every life is sacred, and every person has inherent worth and dignity.  We need to feel deeply in our bones that we are all related.  We need to proclaim a love so deep and profound that it cannot tolerate the taking of a human life.  And then we need to live our religion, as much as we are able, each and every day, until the whole world is living this profound love as well.

May it be so.

Right now the Michigan governor is deciding whether or not to appoint an "Emergency Financial Manager" (EFM) for the city of Detroit.  A Michigan political blog, the Eclectablog, points out that if the governor does so, 49% of African-Americans in the state of Michigan will be residing in places under EFM rule.

Why this is such a big deal, and why the EFM law is such a big deal to begin with, is that an EFM replaces local democratically-elected government with a person appointed by the governor.  The people residing in cities run by an EFM still have a mayor and city council, but the mayor and city council no longer make any financial decisions, which is to say they have extremely limited power.

Here's Rachel Maddow, a year ago, as the first city, Benton Harbor, was getting its EFM explaining how this is anti-democratic. (She starts talking about the EFM law about six minutes in.)





If you think this isn't really anti-democratic, consider this...  Last November, Michigan voters voted to repeal the EFM law.  It was the only one of six ballot issues where the vote didn't go our governor's way.  And Michigan voters thought this would do away with the EFM law and restore democracy.  What did our governor and legislature do in response to this clear statement from the Michigan electorate?  They promptly replaced it with extremely similar legislation.  It was one of those lame-duck legislation pieces they swept through this year along with making us a right-to-work state and a host of other things (reproductive freedom curtailed, prisons privatized...).  But this time they did the same trick to it that they did to the right-to-work legislation: they tied it to appropriations so that this time it's not subject to voter referendum.  Yes, that's right.  Our government heard the will of the people to repeal something, and then replaced it with the same thing but in a way that makes it impossible to repeal.  And they did so so that they could replace democratically elected government with appointed officials.  Governor Snyder said, "This legislation demonstrates that we clearly heard, recognized and respected the will of the voters."   Well, heard and recognized, anyway.  I think it would be more truthfully phrased, "We clearly heard, recognized, and have found a way to work around."

This is what we call "democracy" in Michigan these days.  And you can say it's not another sign of the New Jim Crow if you want, but African-Americans in this state in particular are losing voting rights regardless. 

An article this week from Tiffany K. Wayne, titled Same-Sex Marriage Does Threaten "Traditional Marriage" does an excellent job at pointing out just exactly what is threatened by same-sex marriage: traditional gender roles.  Wayne writes:

Same-sex marriage makes a lie of the very foundation of traditional gender roles.  Same-sex marriages say that a woman can run a household, or that a man can raise a child. This does not square with those whose lives and beliefs and relationships depend on upholding and living their lives based on differences between the sexes.

Wayne is right on in her analysis.  This is absolutely about equality.  It is absolutely also about feminism and gender roles.  The fight against same-sex marriage is inherently linked to the fights against women's reproductive freedom. 

Wayne doesn't get into religion in her article, which is a shame, because I think it would further her argument.  If one looks to the Bible for what marriage is about, and then looks at the Biblical arguments against homosexual practices (for the Bible doesn't speak about same-sex marriage, just sex), it's very clear that marriage laws are about property and same-sex relationships are problematic because they are a threat to the understanding of property.  Women are owned in the Bible; they are possessions.  Marriage is an economic agreement between men about the body of a woman.  As it was explained to me in reading and studying on this passage, the reason a man "shall not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman" (Lev 18:22, NIV) is because a man can't own another man.  Upsetting gender roles in general in the Bible is abomination.

Another example of the way property and sex are linked Biblically is to think about the case of Onan.  Onan "spilled his semen on the ground..." (Genesis 38:9, NIV).  For this, he was punished by God, which gives us the Biblical argument against masturbation.  But the problem with Onan's actions lies later in the same verse: "... to keep from providing offspring for his brother."  Onan's duty was to provide his late brother's wife with offspring, but Onan didn't want to do this.  What was at stake was ownership, property, inheritance.  Masturbation in the Bible isn't really an issue about sex -- it's an issue about property.

But back to gender roles, specifically women.  Wayne writes:

An even more frightening argument against same-sex marriage that is blasting from my TV is that the state has an interest in “procreation” – i.e. who does it and under what circumstances.... It is about who should bear children and under what circumstances. In other words, controlling women’s reproductive behavior.  We often hear the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967) – the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case undoing the ban on interracial marriage – brought up as an example or precedent for expanding civil rights when it comes to marriage.  But equally as relevant to the current political climate, I would argue, is the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that married couples could use contraception.  Let me repeat that: the United States Supreme Court had to decide that a married woman could practice birth control. And if you think that decision is untouchable and safely entrenched in the history books, then you haven’t been paying attention to threats to access to not only abortion, but birth control, in recent political battles.

Need examples?  In Michigan, a bill is advancing through the legislature that would allow health care providers to refuse to provide services based on religious objections.  This refusal would not be required to be disclosed in advance.  State law already gives health care workers the right to refuse to perform abortions.  So what is this about?  Birth control.  Oh, and it doesn't just give the right doctors and pharmacists to refuse to prescribe birth control or fill prescriptions.  It also gives Michigan employers the right to have their insurance refuse to cover birth control for their employees.  Think this won't pass through our Republican-controlled legislature and be signed by Governor Snyder?  I wouldn't bet on it.

What I hope for most is for our feminists and our LBGT advocates to ban together and understand that these issues are deeply connected.  If we lose the fight on same-sex marriage, we'll be losing the fight on birth control, and vice versa. 

In Michigan, having safely banned same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment, the push has been on restricting reproductive freedom, through limiting access to abortion and birth control.  It's time we pushed back here, and pushed back hard. 

And now, a brief advertisement.  For Jackson residents, our next JXN Community Forum will be on April 18th at 6:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Library downtown.  And the subject is reproductive freedom, with a small panel consisting of our representative, Rep. Earl Poleski (R), and someone from Planned Parenthood.  It will be an excellent opportunity to find out what the recent legislation in Michigan has accomplished, and what is upcoming. 

I used to experience the occasional horrible events of terrorism and gun violence without a strong personal reaction of fear.  After September 11, 2001, I was greatly saddened, I was worried about the potential for war, and I had some immediate concern about whether or not Houston, where I was living, would be a target if there were still attacks to come.  I felt concern for the Muslim community in Houston where I was living and in my hometown area of Detroit.  But I didn't hesitate to fly on a plane when the opportunity next arose.  I responded by hosting events on Islam at our church.  I didn't experience fear at a visceral level, just sadness, as I recall.  I didn't experience fear after the Oklahoma City bombing, either.  With school shootings, I didn't experience fear after Columbine or Virginia Tech or any of the school shootings in between.

After Sandy Hook, I heard a lot of people talking about fear, and a lot of people talking about how this doesn't increase their fear, and wouldn't change how they would do anything.  But the experience is different for me as a parent when we have events that include children at or close to my own child's age. 

• I felt fear when nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was killed while meeting with her member of congress, Gabrielle Giffords, on a street corner in 2011.  Christina-Taylor Green seemed so much like my own daughter, precocious and big-eyed.  I've paused and thought of her and experienced fear every single time I've taken my own daughter to a political protest or meeting with her congress member or any elected official since.  
• I felt fear during and after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.  My child is a little older than the first-grade students who were killed, but it was a very short time ago that she was in first grade, and she's still in elementary school.  Sandy Hook could have been her school, and was like her school and every elementary school in so many ways.  
• And I felt fear after the Boston Marathon this week.  I've never attended the Boston Marathon, but I know many people who have, and one who was there.  And like 8-year-old Martin Richard killed this week by one of the explosions, my child has been in crowded community settings that could just as easily be a target for someone with a home-made bomb.  Martin Richard looks like my daughter's classmates, as we see the pictures of him holding a sign wishing for peace. 

Many parents, like myself, experience these deaths of young children in a different way than we've experienced the violent episodes of our country's history in the past.  We can see in these children our own children. Some affect us more, some less.  My child is much younger than Trayvon Martin when he walked back from the store, or Hadiya Pendleton standing in a park in Chicago, but with each child shot, my parent-brain sorts out: how much was this situation like one my child could be in?  I've felt no fear about movie theaters, even after the Aurora, Colorado shooting, even though a six-year-old girl was killed there.  Why didn't it affect me the same way?  I can't say.  But after Sandy Hook, it was a real struggle to let my child go back to school on the next school day.  I waited anxiously for her to get home for the entire day.  If there had been any threats of violence in my own community, I don't know that I would've been able to send her off at all. 

We know that statistically the odds of being in a school shooting, or other mass shooting, are very small, as are the odds of being in a bombing.  But we also know that these events struck unlikely and every-day sorts of places, and it could happen anywhere just as easily.  The statistics protect our hearts, but the randomness lets the fear back in.  All these children were doing ordinary things, things that should have been risk-free: going to school, attending a marathon, talking on a street corner.

We respond in different ways to this fear.  After Sandy Hook I heard parents talking about how they talked to their own children about the shootings, and heard other parents saying they were trying to shield their children from the news entirely.  And I heard parents speaking with great emotion on both sides.  With our hearts in our throats, it's hard to remain calm and non-judgmental, particularly if it feels like somebody is questioning our decisions about our children.  We're in "mama bear" mode, protecting our children the best we know how.  And we can be, and some were, somewhat cruel to each other: "This is why I would never send my child to public school," "Anyone who keeps their child home is a coward," "You must talk to your child about this to help them cope," "If anyone talks to my child about this, I'll be furious at them."  After Sandy Hook, and in the wakes of school threats since, we make the tough decisions: Do we send our child to school, even though there are threats?  Do we keep our child home, and being labeled a coward?  Do we talk to our child, possibly increasing his or her fear?  Do we shield our child, risking that our child will find out in a scary way?  Do we take our child to high-profile events where things are more likely to happen?  Do we keep our child home? 

Not all parents feel fear in the same way.  And not all parents will have reactions to the same kind of events.  It's not rational or logical, this fear.  But just because it's not rational or logical, doesn't mean that it can be or even should be completely ignored. We're quick to say, "You can't let the fear affect you."  We're quick to tell parents and all people that if we give in to fear, we're letting the terrorists win. 

It is not the parents' reactions that is the problem here.  Attacking each others' responses to this situation is misplacing our anger, our fear, our blame for this culture of violence. 

For the parents out there, if you're feeling fear, that's okay and understandable.  If you're not, that's okay and understandable, too.  And whatever your reaction here to these insane circumstances, if you're doing what you think is best for your child, then I support your decision.  Send your child to school.  Keep your child home a day or two.  Home school your child.  It's not your decision that's broken or wrong or crazy, whatever it is: it's this culture where children are killed in ways like these. 

My heart still breaks for Christina-Taylor Green, and it breaks anew for Martin Richard.  No child's life should be taken in such a way as these.  No child should be the victim of violence.  We shouldn't have to worry about our children at the marathon, or at school, or on a street corner, or walking down the street, or standing in a park.

When I was a child, we never had drills of what to do if a shooter entered the school.  Our biggest fear was nuclear holocaust, and there were no drills, because we were told that we'd all just die pretty quickly, since we were so near the large city of Detroit.  It was a different sort of fear we grew up with then.  It was scary, but not something we dealt with on a regular basis, and wasn't talked about at all until junior high.  In elementary school the scariest thing was fire drills.  Today, my child has regular lock-down drills, and it's a normal part of elementary school life. 

Childhood is different now, and parenting is different now.  And there are a whole lot of different and acceptable responses to these circumstances.  So parents, be gentle with one another.  And non-parents, be gentle with us.  This is new, and we're just trying to do what's best for our children.  Trust us to be the ones who know what that is, even if you would do things differently.

I’ve preached and blogged on a number of justice-related subjects over the dozen years that I’ve been in ministry. I’ve written about feminism, racism, classism, and homophobia. I’ve written about immigration and war and reproductive freedom and prison reform. I’ve written about religious intolerance and all sorts of types of bigotry. But there’s one issue I’ve always avoided writing about. I used it as a one-sentence illustration of a different issue once, but only, I think, once.

There are some prejudices that most of our society knows are wrong. Most people in our society know that racism is wrong, although there is still plenty of racism out there. And then there are issues that as a society we’re divided on, like homophobia, but where the liberal circles I’m in have a clear understanding that it’s wrong. But there are some prejudices that are still deemed completely acceptable. Those can be hard to write about, harder to speak up about, and hardest to confront when they’re clearly your issue to deal with. For the dozen years I’ve been in ministry, and all the years in the pews before that, I’ve never once heard a sermon on this issue. A Google search on “Unitarian sermon” plus various wordings of this issue turns up nothing. It's mentioned about once on the UUA's website.  I’ve only once (maybe twice) heard a colleague say that they were speaking about this issue. I’ve never read a UU blog post on this issue. And it’s only in the last six months or so that I’ve seen some individual Facebook posts by a handful of people indicating that they’re aware of this issue and sympathetic. And I’ve seen more than that which were outright insulting and negative. I was once told that there were only a handful of “issues” that ministers have that made it difficult for them to get jobs, and this was among them; the others were being transgender and being physically disabled. It’s an issue that’s come up as a complaint about me in almost every church I’ve been the minister at.

So I’m finally coming out of the fat closet today. You knew I was in there, anyway, because I carry this issue on my body. But I don’t talk about it, I don’t do advocacy work about it, and I don’t write about it or preach about it. And I’m starting to change that.

First of all, I want to say this: shaming is bad. It is wrong to shame people. People shame fat people all the time, and they seem to feel good and virtuous about it. The argument is that “Fat is unhealthy. My shaming them will help them to stop this unhealthy behavior.” Without even addressing the “fat is unhealthy” statement, this is wrong on two other levels: shaming does not help people. And even if shaming someone did change that person’s behavior, that does not justify the shaming. The shaming is still wrong. Your fat jokes are not justified by your “concern” for my health. Period.

Don't think fat shaming exists?  Heck, people not only do it, and justify it, they even recommend it.  And the result of all the fat jokes and insults has not been a thinner America.  The result is people who feel hurt, wounded, devalued, and debased.  The result is depression and self-loathing.  And do you know what a major side-effect of depression and self-loathing is?  Weight gain.  Your shame does not help the problem; it compounds it.

Secondly, people stereotype fat people with a lot of other assumptions unfairly. Fat people are considered lazy, first of all, and lacking willpower. Here’s a great example from a University of New Mexico professor who tweeted: “Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth.”

The science of weight loss is rapidly attacking the “willpower” myth. Fat people do not lack willpower. Lack of willpower is not why we are fat, and, even if it was, it wouldn’t mean that this lack of willpower occurred anywhere else in our life.

As for lazy, there are numerous other explanations for why fat people don’t exercise, when it is true, which it often isn't. Often there are other physical problems that have led to weight gain, and sometimes these also make exercise difficult. In my case, for example, I broke my leg very badly one year and then the next year broke my back. Since these two bad breaks, most forms of exercise became very painful. An hour of an exercise that taxed my back would be followed by two days laying on my back unable to move from back pain. And then as the weight has gone on, those problems have been compounded.  People assume I have trouble walking and with my back because I'm fat.  The fat has not made it easier, but the causality is actually reversed.  I gained weight because I have trouble walking and with my back.

Beyond other existing physical problems, fat people are hampered by the fact that a lot of gym equipment isn’t well-suited for our bodies. And then, there’s the shaming. Yes, it comes back to that again.  Ever been a fat person at a gym? Ever seen one? Did people stare? Did they laugh or snicker? Did people turn their heads in disgust? Were they outright rude? I’ve heard all these things and more from fat friends about their trips to the gym. Do you want to go somewhere where you are laughed at and insulted and made to feel like crap? Would you consider avoiding such a place? Again, people justify their fat shaming as acceptable because a fat person is unhealthy. Yet when a fat person does make an attempt to exercise, the shaming doubles.

And if you think the scorn heaped upon the fat person at the gym is bad, just imagine the fat person who has the nerve to fly on an airplane. 

The truth is, fat is a complex issue that we’re only beginning to understand scientifically. Only 15% of diets are successful right now. We’re learning that the body works to put back on weight after it has lost it. Once your body has lost weight, it learns to use calories much more efficiently, in the attempt to put back on the weight. A person who has never dieted can consume more calories to maintain weight than a person who has dieted. We’re also learning that there are dozens of genetic variations associated with body size. We’re learning that our bodies’ response to artificial sweeteners is much more complex than the “zero calories” they were sold to us as being.  The moral here is that even when fat people have been trying to make a healthy switch, it's not always as simple as it seems.  Fat is a complex issue, and dieting is more complex than simply "calories in, calories out."

I think every fat person in this society has felt the pain of thousands of microaggressions.  We get them every time we open a magazine or turn on the television to find another "hilarious" TV show making yet another fat joke.  This is liveable -- we live with it constantly.  But what needs to change is how we respond to individuals in our lives -- our parents, children, siblings, relatives, friends, coworkers.  What needs to change is how we respond in our liberal religious communities as well.  So far, my experience of our response has been that we see fat people among us as an "issue" to be addressed, and the mode for addressing it is to complain or shame.  How could our response be different?

When I was a new minister, a complaint came to my committee on ministry, and the complaint was that I was fat.  I think there were some surrounding words about how this would make the congregation look bad, because there were negative stereotypes about fat people.  "There are positive stereotypes, too," I responded.  "What are they?" I was asked, as I recall.  I talked about how fat people are seen as "jolly" (i.e. Santa), as goddess-like (when female), as friendly and approachable.  Fat people being seen as asexual could even been a benefit in the ministry, arguably.  All of these "positive" stereotypes are still stereotypes and no more real than the negative ones, of course.  But mostly, I said, in seeing a fat minister, other fat people might see themselves as welcomed, as valued, and as acceptable to our community. 

That's the vision I hold out -- fat people could walk into your sanctuary and know instantly that they are welcomed in your church.  What would it take to make that a reality?  What signals might be sending the opposite message?  How can they be addressed?  It's time for more Unitarian Universalists to take up this question -- to preach it, to teach it, and to live it.

A lot gets projected onto fat people.  And a lot gets projected onto people when they talk about fat.  So here's the nutshell version of what I was trying to say in my last post:

1. Be nicer to fat people.  Shaming people is not nice. 
2. Shaming fat people is also not productive and helpful.  Truly.  Not.  Helpful.
3. Judge not.  Period.   Really.  Stop judging other people. 
4. Let go of some of the stereotypes you associate with fatness.  Like many stereotypes, you can find examples where they seem true, but they aren't always true.  Particularly look at your assumptions about willpower and laziness, but there are others you should challenge and let go of, as well.
5. Fat is complicated, and varied, so avoid assuming that everyone can be fixed by your personal favorite simple solution or that your personal diagnosis or experience fits everyone, whether it is "diet and exercise," "calories in vs. calories out," "emotional eating," "addiction," or "willpower."  Even if you're someone who has struggled with this issue, don't assume that everyone's struggle is like your struggle. And if you haven't struggled with it, don't assume that because you  haven't found it a struggle that it is a simple issue. 
6. You may think that what needs to change is the other person's fat.  They might need to change, but that's their decision and their business, not yours.  What you need to change is how you treat people, if you're not treating them with kindness and understanding.  In other words, what I said in #1.

It seems I still have more to say on this issue, so those who are tired of it already may want to just close this post now and avoid the next few.  I promise to move on to another subject soon, but having NOT written about this for ten years of ministry, I've built up a list of things to say.  And it seems that there is a segment of people who have been yearning for someone to write about this. 

So what was the straw, the final thing that made me break my silence?  I think it was the "fat-shaming professor," Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who tweeted, "Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth."

For the record, having written an M.A. thesis, a D.Min. thesis, and something over 300 sermons, I'm pretty sure that's not the #truth.  But I was raised by a fat man with a Ed.D.  He always told me what the hardest thing about finishing a dissertation was, and it wasn't his weight, it was having his daughter born during the dissertation writing.  I know a bit about what it takes to finish a dissertation--I was born into that legacy.

It's not that I was so angry over what Prof. Geoffrey Miller said, though.  Actually, it was a relief to have somebody say it so starkly, when usually it's never said aloud to our faces.  The #truth was finally out in the open, and the #truth was that fat prejudice does keep us from getting jobs.  And it's not because our fat makes us unable to get the job done, it's because of prejudice.  But it gave me the opportunity to talk about the fact that this kind of prejudice is common for us, and does affect us, and in ways that are not fair and have nothing to do with our ability. 

In ministry, I've known all along that while weight doesn't really affect my ability to do my job, it affected my ability to get a job.  I was told this by people in positions where they would know.  I have no doubt that past and present settlement directors would agree that fat ministers have a harder time getting asked to interview.  And they would tell you this in very kind ways -- they're not to blame, and I certainly don't blame them for the situation, and I'm appreciative when they see the situation.  And I'm not trying to say that other people don't have prejudice against them, or that this struggle is harder than other struggles.  I do say that many isms we are confronting openly, and this one we're not.  Whether that makes it harder, I can't say, I can only say that it makes it more hidden, which is what I'm trying now to do something about.

A couple examples from my own life about being fat and trying to get a call to a congregation may serve to illustrate.

During my seminary years, I was in a room with a bunch of seminarians and a minister who was with us because he was looking around for a new associate minister.  I was soon to graduate, and looking for just such a job.  And yet, no matter how many times I tried to inject myself into the conversation, I couldn't get this minister's attention.  I felt invisible.  We all feel invisible at times, but I was told later by another colleague that this wasn't a big surprise in this case, and that it was likely about weight.  I didn't put the weight interpretation on it initially; my initial interpretation was that this guy was just a jerk.  The weight interpretation was given to me later by a person who was in a position to know.

Another example: In a pre-candidating weekend, I was asked to preach at a neutral pulpit in a mid-sized church.  The search committee of the small church I was pre-candidating for said to me, "Your pulpit presence is so large.  Do you think that could work in a smaller church?"  Now, mind you, I've now been preaching successfully in small churches for over a decade.  The comment was, at first, baffling.  Should I have been somehow more meek in the pulpit?  Made eye contact with fewer people?  Gestured as if the room was smaller?  But then it seemed a clear interpretation emerged.  I do think that this comment was not so much about size of the congregation as it was about size of the minister.  Usually it's not a problem--in any size church--for the minister to hold the attention of the entire congregation during the sermon.

All of these little things could not be about weight.  They could be about other issues.  That congregation could have been looking for a meek pulpit presence.  Any one incident can be picked apart and explained by other reasoning.  I've heard African-American ministers tell me that this is something that happens to them often, that they'll tell about an incident of racism, and the white listeners will want to pick apart the incident and analyze it and get to decide for themselves whether or not it was an incident of racism, rather than just accept the experience of the teller.  I can't prove to you these were about size.  I can't prove that size was a factor in any of the congregations that chose not to interview me, either.  I just know that overall fat ministers have a harder time in settlement than average.  That's the #truth.

In our society, everyone is judged on their looks.  And ministry, for all that we are a liberal denomination, is a field where the image is part of the job process.  There's a degree to which looking particularly "ministerial" is an asset in this profession, and not looking like the image of a minister is a detriment.  And "fat" is not part of what people's internal image when they think "minister."  This is not the only trait people carry on their bodies that has this struggle, to be sure.  But it's one we're not confronting actively.  It's not a part of the "Beyond Categorical Thinking" discussion, to my knowledge (although it's been so long, I could be entirely wrong here).  I've never seen a workshop or discussion where people were working on getting over their fat prejudice in the process of hiring a minister.

The fat-shaming professor has been rebuked.  The school has said it's not their policy.  Academics everywhere are distancing themselves from him and from his opinion.  And yet it is the #truth that sometimes we still need not apply, because we will not be chosen.

The other side of this, and it would be remiss of me not to say this, is that sometimes a congregation doesn't let weight stop them from picking a good minister.  While I've never had a congregation where weight wasn't raised as an issue with me at all, in my current congregation the times have been few and far between.  This congregation I'm in treats me like my ministry is valued, and I really can't say enough what a great group of people they are.  I feel like here there's a clear understanding that my worth as minister isn't measured by the scale on my floor.  #truth

Yesterday at UU Planet, Peter Bowden wrote about how some churches were guilty of ignoring the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.  He said, "If it is Summer, that’s no excuse.   CLERGY, if you serve a congregation you are responsible for making sure this happens while you’re on Summer vacation."

I don't have a plan for how such things will be handled when I'm on vacation or study leave.  I was fortunate to be up and hear the news.  And, upon hearing it, decided that I needed to go to church, and after a little delay, realized that I needed to do something to address the verdict in the worship service, even though the worship service wasn't my responsibility directly that way.  Bowden is right, that it's always our responsibility, even when on summer vacation (or study leave).  We are responsible for the worship of the congregation, even when we're on leave.

There's a question about where to draw the line in terms of current events that need to be responded to.  It's there somewhere between 9/11, where obviously one does, and the smallest news event you can think of on the other side, where it's not a necessity.  The Trayvon Martin case is somewhere between 9/11 and nothing big, surely.  Perhaps some could make the case that for their congregation, it wasn't a necessity.  But you never know who may come through your doors looking for answers or comfort or to give voice to their anger.  I know it was the right thing for many in my congregation that I did show up on a study leave week to lead the congregation in prayer.

Here is, roughly, what I said, as I reconstruct it from my notes I made before the service:

Today many of us may have come here with the recent news of the not guilty verdict in the case of George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin.  We may be experiencing a wide variety of emotions in relationship to the news.  We may be angry, or sorrowful. Some of us may feel relieved, or even glad.  Some of us may simply feel confused.

We have a justice system in our country where the burden of proof is on the prosecution.  This may well be a case of self-defense. 

But we also have a cultural system in this country where a young Black man is assumed to be a threat.

This may be justice for George Zimmerman.

And yet, at the same time, there is no justice today for Trayvon Martin's death, and a young man has still died who should have had a safe walk home.

It is for him today that I ask a time of silence, reflection, prayer, or thought as we listen to "Ella's Song" by Sweet Honey in the Rock.


Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.

Blessed be, and Amen.

In the wake of the verdict about the Trayvon Martin case, there are a lot of protests going on, and petitions calling for a civil rights case against George Zimmerman. 

With all honesty, I think that George Zimmerman is innocent under the law.  And what we need to do now is channel this energy, this passion, and change those bad laws, state by state.

Michigan is a "Stand Your Ground" state.  There have been rallies and protests going on in Detroit.  What we need to do is get this base mobilized to change these laws.  The Stand Your Ground laws perpetuate and exacerbate an already large problem of racial bias in our sentencing.  In states with Stand Your Ground laws, a new study has shown that whites who kill blacks are more likely to be found to be acting in self-defense than any other racial combination.  It's true in all states, but more so in Stand Your Ground states.

The studies aren't as thorough as they could be -- they don't compare home-invasion with non-home-invasion cases, for example. 

Even if Stand Your Ground doesn't perpetuate racism, it's still a bad law, however.  What we've basically been slowly instituting in this country is a system of shoot first and ask questions later; a system of bring a gun to a fist fight; and a system where guilt and innocence is decided by who is the fastest, quickest draw in the West, North, or South (not so much the East, which has fewer states with these laws).  In this system, the innocent person is the one with the gun.  The innocent person is the last person standing.

In this system we have, George Zimmerman was the innocent person -- he was the scared person with the gun, and the gun is the decider. 

We need to create a culture wherein it is not only acceptable, but better, to walk away from a fight.  We need to teach people to run away if they have the option of running away.  Stand Your Ground is a law that says even if you have the option of running away, you have the option to stay and take a life instead.  That's a bad decision.  It's a bad law.  Lethal force by civilians should always be left for where there's no alternative.  It shouldn't be a choice.

But we have the power to repeal these laws.  It'll take effort.  It will take a movement.  But I believe it can be done in Florida, and it can be done here.  

I'm leading a workshop at SUUSI this year on "Blogging for Beginners."  My mom (herself a former director for on-line learning for a university) pointed out to me that I should have handouts of my PowerPoint slides for the participants.  Handouts for a class about blogging?  That's so low-tech!  But I was trying to decide, indeed, how to share these -- whether to upload the file and share the URL or to e-mail them, or what.  Finally, I thought, "Why not just blog them?  The class is about blogging, after all!"  I remembered that I had found a way to do this once with some web-based application.  Turns out it's even easier now than it was before.

If you're not in the workshop, keep in mind that these are just slides for some basic information and URLs that I thought might be helpful.  It's not everything we'll cover.

I had a great time at SUUSI this year leading a workshop on Science Fiction and Fantasy and Religion.  One favorite part of the class was the great reading/viewing list we generated.  I hesitate to some degree to share it with those who weren't part of the class.  On the other hand, it's such a great list of works that others may find engaging.  Please be mindful that this is partly a result of where our particular conversation wandered.  The categories that are short are usually so because they are categories we didn't get to, so they just have my starter items in them.  And yes, there are a couple of things slipped in there that you might not consider SF/Fantasy, but which were a part of our discussion.


The Nature of God

Avatar (Film)
The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents – Octavia Butler
The Mists of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley
Contact – Carl Sagan
Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Stargate SG-1 and Other Stargate Series and Film (TV Series and Film)
Deathbird Stories – Harlan Ellison
Doctor Who (TV Series)
A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge
Various Works - Charles DeLint
The God Engines – John Scalzi

Creation

2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clark
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
The Narnia Series – C.S. Lewis
Calculating God – Russell J. Sawyer
Various Works - Charles DeLint

Messiahs and Prophets Real and False (The Chosen One)


Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
Dark Tower Series – Stephen King
The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents – Octavia Butler
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series)
The Hero’s Journey – Joseph Campbell
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Grimm (TV Series)
The Black Cauldron and The Chronicles of Prydain Series- Lloyd Alexander
Heroes (TV Series)

Good and Evil (The Force)

Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
The Wrinkle in Time Series – Madeleine L’Engle
Star Wars Series (Film)
The Golden Compass and the His Dark Materials Series– Philip Pullman
The Matrix Series (Film)
Doctor Who (TV Series)
The Lord of the Rings Series and other works – J.R.R. Tolkein
Various Works – Terry Brooks
Various Works – Terry Goodkind
The Black Cauldron and The Chronicles of Prydain Series- Lloyd Alexander
The Wheel of Time Series – Robert Jordan
Grimm (TV Series)
Stargate SG-1 and Other Stargate Series and Film (TV Series and Film)
Once Upon a Time (TV Series)
Farscape (TV Series)
Goblins (Web Comic)
Dungeons and Dragons (Role Playing Game and Books)
Steel Rose – Kara Dalkey
So You Want to Be a Wizard – Diane Duane
Person of Interest (TV Series)
Dexter (TV Series)

Lilith

True Blood (TV Series) and Sookie Stackhouse series – Charlaine Harris
Lilith’s Brood Series – Octavia Butler
The Narnia Series – C.S. Lewis

Belief & Faith

Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Matrix Series (Film)

Afterlife

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series)
Battlestar Galactica (TV Series)
The Narnia Series – C.S. Lewis
Riverworld Series – Philip José Farmer

Apocalypse (Dystopia)

The Matrix Series (Film)
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents – Octavia Butler
Always Coming Home – Ursula K. LeGuin

Ethics (The Prime Directive)

I, Robot & Various Works – Isaac Asimov
The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents – Octavia Butler
Babylon 5 (TV Series)
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Stargate SG-1 and Other Stargate Series and Film (TV Series and Film)
Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clark
Time Machine – H.G. Wells
With Folded Hands – Jack Williamson
Wall-E (Film)
World War Z – Max Brooks
Warm Bodies (Film)
1984 – George Orwell
Shaun of the Dead (Film)
We – Eugene Zamiatin
The Sparrow and Children of God – Maria Doria Russell
Anthony York, Immortal –Andre Norton

Free Will and Fate (Time Travel and Prophecy)

The Matrix Series (Film)
1984 – George Orwell
Gattaca (Film)
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
12 Monkeys (Film)
Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clark
Doctor Who (TV Series)
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
11/22/63 – Stephen King
Groundhog Day (Film)
Lost (TV Series)

Post-911 Themes and Just War

Battlestar Galactica (TV Series)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling
Enterprise (TV Series)
Doctor Who (TV Series)
Ender’s Game, Xenocide, and Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card
Little Brother – Cory Doctorow

Social Justice

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Avatar (Film)
Planet of the Apes (Film)
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series)
Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
The Maze Runner – James Dashner
Torchwood (TV Series)
The Gate to Women’s Country – Sheri S. Tepper
Various Works - Mercedes Lackey

Agency of Children

A Fistful of Sky – Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Babylon 5 (TV Series)
Doctor Who (TV Series)
Torchwood (TV Series)
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Various Works - Patricia C. Wrede
Various Works - Mercedes Lackey

Mind, Self, and Soul (Do Androids Dream)

The Golden Compass and the His Dark Materials Series– Philip Pullman
Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
I, Robot & Various Works – Isaac Asimov
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Bladerunner (Film) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Battlestar Galactica (TV Series)

Humanism

Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Doctor Who (TV Series)

Inherent Worth and Dignity

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Star Wars Series (Film)
Gattaca (Film)

Interdependence
Avatar (Film)
The Word for World is Forest – Ursula K. LeGuin
Ender’s Game, Xenocide, and Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card
Pern Series and Petaybee Series – Anne McCaffrey
Lost (TV Series)
Day After Tomorrow (Film)
Revolution (TV Series)
Waterworld (Film)
The Postman (Film) and The Postman – David Brin
Book of Eli (Film)
Various Works - Mercedes Lackey

Some Additional Works with Religious Themes Mentioned in Class

American Gods and Sandman Series - Neil Gaiman
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K. LeGuin
A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
Various Works - Philip Jose Farmer
Various Works - Arthur C. Clark
The Lathe of Heaven and The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. LeGuin
Various Works - Anne McCaffrey
The Darkover Series – Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Vorkosigan Saga and Various Works – Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dazzle of Day – Molly Glass
Twilight Zone and Various Works – Rod Serling
Various Works - Stanislaw Lem
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Tales of Alvin Maker Series – Orson Scott Card

I was once a big Orson Scott Card fan.  The number of Orson Scott Card books I own may still outnumber any single other author on the dozens of bookshelves in my home.  I read his works voraciously in college and in my early 20s.  I read the Ender saga, the Alvin Maker series, the Homecoing Saga, and assorted other books and short stories of his.  I recently re-read Ender's Game and still enjoyed it.  At some point in reading his books, however, I suddenly stopped, because I felt like I was reading the same story over and over again -- the same boy messiah saving the human race -- and I disagreed with the theology underpinning it.  But I enjoyed all those stories of his up until that time.  I still do, when I read them.  I recently re-read Ender's Game and found myself wanting to read them all over again, or start reading the later books in the series that I never read, or the Shadow Saga.

But between the time I was the big Orson Scott Card fan and now, I learned a lot about Orson Scott Card's politics, politics I find much more dangerous and objectionable that the issue of his messiah figures.  Orson Scott Card has been very outspoken against same-sex marriage and LGBT people in general, as well as saying some really negative things about President Obama, comparing him to Hitler.  Card was on the board of an organization devoted to opposing same-sex marriage in California. In an op-ed he wrote:

What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

So now Ender's Game is a movie, opening this week, and the old Orson Scott Card fan in me really wants to see it, and the activist in me wants to boycott it.  And there are people calling for a boycott. 

As I read the arguments against boycott from LGBT-friendly sources, I find many of them full of fallacies.  For example, one writer says:

But I have decided I will go see it in the spirit in which I still read Dickens and Shakespeare, dig into Norse mythology, listen to Wagner.

 The problem with this argument is that Wagner isn't currently able to help promote Nazism by our listening to him now.  Orson Scott Card, however, is still actively campaigning.  Another argument states:

In a world where ethical consumerism is sometimes the best way to get our point across, art is a murky zone. Did you watch Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, or perhaps the queer film Bitter Moon, by director Roman Polanski, the man who raped a 13-year-old? From Mel Gibson, whose hideous anti-Semitic and sexist diatribes are now legendary, to Chris Brown, Cee-Lo Green, O.J. Simpson, Charlie Sheen, Axl Rose, Alec Baldwin, Donna Summer, 50 Cent, Amanda Bynes, and many more, people have committed crimes that range from uttering slurs to rape, battery, and murder.

 Well, actually I've avoided giving any money to Roman Polanski by not seeing any of his films in the theater.  And once I learned of Mel Gibson's anti-semitism I've avoided seeing him in the theater.  Basically, when an artist starts promoting hate, I do try to avoid paying money for that artist's works. 

The best argument for seeing Ender's Game is the argument put forward by the filmmakers and Harrison Ford that says their film is made by a lot of pro-LGBT people and has pro-LGBT themes, and they're going to do a benefit for the LGBT community.  Furthermore, some are saying that no money is going to Orson Scott Card directly from the film, as he sold the rights years ago. 

But a successful Ender's Game does benefit Orson Scott Card, as it will encourage the film industry to make more of his books, particularly those in the Ender Saga, into films.  And Card will make money from those films, as well.  There's just no way that a successful Ender's Game would not be a positive for Orson Scott Card's bottom line.

However, I'm sympathetic to the outreach of Lionsgate to the LGBT community and the way they're distancing the film from Card's views.  And that prompts me to offer a compromise to myself: If I go see Ender's Game, then I will give the amount of my ticket price directly to an organization working for same-sex marriage or liberal politics to offset the gain in Card's pocket, much like offsetting a carbon footprint.  The question, then, however, is whether I continue to do so for any future Card movies, since I arguably contributed to the success that made those films possible, and I would have to say yes.  My hope, however, is by the time another movie got made, we will have won this fight.

So that's my solution for now, although I haven't tossed it past my husband yet, who is also leaning towards an Ender boycott.  Let me know what you all think out there.  How are you handling the question of Ender's Game, if it's a work you, too, enjoyed in the past?

The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is tomorrow. And with this anniversary I'm reminded of what a major moment this was in the history of our country and in the lives of most Americans who were alive and old enough to understand it fifty years ago.  It's one of those moments where people remember where they were and what they were doing when it happened or when they heard.  People remember it as a "Turning Point" where there was a "Loss of Innocence." 

I don't remember it.  I was born after the fall of Camelot.  I was born into a world where the Loss of Innocence had already happened, the Turning Point was past, and we were in the age of cynicism.  I have some sympathy for Steve Friess who wrote an article in Time titled "Five Reasons People Under 50 Are Already Tired of JFK Nostalgia" and Nick Gillespie who wrote in The Daily Beast, "JFK Still Dead, Boomers Still Self-Absorbed."  Those of us younger than the Baby Boomers have been steeped in Boomer nostalgia for as long as we can remember.  And right now we're hitting the 50th anniversary of all those Major Moments.  (And for those of us in Generation X, the only thing worse than Boomer nostalgia is people talking about how Boomers need to make space for a new generation -- the Millennials.  It's particularly annoying to see Boomers cede ground to their own wonderful children, leaving out the forgotten generation between.) 

I'm not as cynical as all that--most of the time.  I do think the Turning Point marks a Loss of Innocence and was a Major Moment, but I do think that it was primarily that for the Boomers.  Our country had had crooked politicians before.  Our country had had war before.  People had seen death and suffering before.  The Loss of Innocence that happened at this shot heard round the world was the Loss of Innocence of the Boomer generation.  This moment is terribly important -- for them.  And that, in and of itself, is worth spending time reflecting upon.  Their grief, their fear, their shattering loss, all of that was very real and very important, then and now. 

I saw how important this death was for my Boomer friends during the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama.  There were so many comparisons being made between Barack Obama and JFK -- youngest presidents, change agents, Caroline Kennedy saying Obama will be "A President Like My Father."  There was such fear that I heard from Boomers of assassination.  It was almost as if someone like Obama, who was being closely associated with Kennedy in many minds, was already marked for assassination.  The fear I heard from some Boomers was very real and very present in their minds.

So, yes, Kennedy's death continues to matter.  And to not understand the impact it had on this large American generation, in particular, is to ignore a large pastoral issue in our country -- a very real grief that continues to need to be honored and understood.

As someone born after the death of JFK (and RFK and MLK, for that matter), the only thing I can relate it to is the fear and shock we (and maybe this is stronger for those of us who are younger) after September 11th, 2001.  September 11th, 2001 is a date that I mark before-and-after.  Before 9/11 we lived in a country that had not had a major attack on our soil in fifty years.  After 9/11 we lived in a culture of fear where many things would be done differently -- the way we travel being the most obvious example.  Before 9/11 we lived in a country where fear of hijacking was minimal, and we would assume hijackers wanted to take the place to a location of their choice.  After 9/11 we understood that the goal was death.  Our heroes became those who managed to crash their plane themselves in the fields, rather than into the terrorists' target.  I know I've had arguments with at least one Boomer over whether or not 9/11 should be memorialized in our culture.  For them, it's not as pivotal a moment.  Their Turning Point had already  happened; 9/11 was awful, but not seminal.  For my generation, however, 9/11 was a Turning Point.  For me, happening at the beginning of my ministry, I feel like it changed my profession, my understanding of the mission and purpose of ministry.  It was a big Turning Point.  But I hadn't lived through JFK.  The biggest cultural moment for me prior to 9/11 was the Challenger explosion. 

These are called "Flashbulb Memories" -- the memories of events that are so strong that we can remember everything about that particular moment.  And unlike all the other 1960s nostalgia we'll be hearing about, JFK's assassination was a Flashbulb Memory moment, as were the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lennon, and the Challenger explosion and September 11th, 2001.

So, Gen X and Millennial friends, we need to get over our cynicism and stop rolling our eyeballs.  This nostalgia and sharing of 50th anniversaries is going to go on for a while.  Probably it'll go until 2019, as we mark the anniversaries of the peace movement, the civil rights movement, etc.  We've got the anniversaries of the assassinations of Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. yet to come. But what we need to do is cut through the surface level, the media level, that we'll be hearing about, and talk to people about what this moment really meant to them, how it changed them, why they continue to focus on it, what it's deeper meaning is.  We need to get past the nostalgia and into the real work of the grief and fear, and the way it continues to shape our country.