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Online Annual Meetings

1 April 2020 at 15:51
Many UU congregations are beginning to think about how to do an online annual meeting.  The UUA has created a helpful page for this at https://www.uua.org/leadership/library/voting-online.  However, as someone who ran the online voting for the offsite participants at the UU Ministers Association's annual meetings for several years, I have some additional advice.

Voting Methods

Zoom Polling: Those who are using Zoom as a platform for meetings and worship services will have noticed that Zoom has a "polling" feature.  The advantage of this is it's integrated with Zoom, Zoom will save your results, and the results can be shared easily in the meeting.  There are some disadvantages to using Zoom polling, however, as well.  One disadvantage is that if two members in a household are sharing a screen, they will only get one vote.  With the prevalence of smart phones, this may be minimal, and you could ask for a roll call of vote.  Another disadvantage is that Zoom only allows 25 motions per meeting.  For most congregations, I suspect that is enough.  However, if you have something that people may want to make amendments upon amendments on and call the question about and so on, you may need to have plans for a secondary method in place.  Another thing to note is that you'll have to sign into the meeting early to set up your polls.  The host (or maybe the co-host) has to be the one running the polls, as well.  And, of course, people on phone will be unable to vote. 

Other Polling Platforms or Forms: There are a lot of companies that provide online polling options, each for a price.  What we used at the UUMA was Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere unfortunately is a yearly and not monthly subscription, so for your average congregation the price is going to be higher than you wish.  (Although they are offering a 90-day COVID-19 free subscription for educators.  If you consider yourself an educational institution, or you have an educator who wants to create an account, then you're all set.)  This will still require everyone in your Zoom meeting to be voting from a separate device.  Advantages over Zoom Polling are that you can vote from a device that has internet but not Zoom capability, and you're better able to divide the Zoom hosting functions from the poll-creating functions, in terms of volunteers managing the meeting. 

Since I know Poll Everywhere the best, I'll describe how it works, and assume that other online polling platforms work similarly.  What happens in Poll Everywhere is that you create your vote with its multiple choice options (yes/no/abstain), and then you get a link for that vote.  You open the poll for responses, and then the link can be pasted into the chat box of Zoom or livestream, or Youtube or Facebook (although you'll want to make sure only your members have access to the vote).  The results can be displayed through a "share screen" as they're coming in. 

Zoom Raising Hands: Using the "raise hand" feature in Zoom is actually a pretty appealing method.  Raised hands jump to the top of the participants list, and can be easily counted.  However, this has the same disadvantage as Zoom polling, in that folks on shared screens can only be counted once, especially if they have a divided vote.  You could, however, designate certain other symbols in Zoom to indicate two votes from a household on a particular measure.  The disadvantage is that people on some devices may have difficulty finding the "raise hand" feature.  But it does allow folks on the phone to vote with a *9. 

Raising Hands: Raising your hands the old-fashioned way with your acutal hand is surprisingly a very doable method in Zoom for congregations whose annual meeting might number under 150 or so.  Simply ask folks to raise their hands, and scroll through the screens and count your votes.  It can work.  It takes a little time, but less than you would think.  A roll call vote also allows you to take the time to invite the folks calling in by phone to vote, calling them out one phone number at a time.  It's time-consuming but very doable.  People need to know to keep those hands raised until you say to lower them.  Mute everyone while you do this, so people's boxes on Zoom won't change their order on you while you're counting!

Roll Call: Hey, if it still works in Congress to have a roll call vote, it can work for your congregation!  This is time-consuming, but the easiest, particularly for a small quorum number in your meeting.  People can give a yea/nay vote pretty quickly. 

Advice for Your Meeting

Motions: If you're using an electronic polling method, since you want to have the polls lined up in advance with the wording already spelled out, it helps if someone has the exact wording for the motions and is pre-arranged to make your motions.  This limits the on-the-fly editing your poll creator will have to do.  Encourage people to make their motions in writing, by typing them into the chat box.  This slows things down in a helpful way, and helps eliminate confusion. 

Slow It Down: Some congregations have a history of people getting impatient in business meetings, and people being quick to call the question.  The congregation needs to be educated that a meeting online must necessarily be different.  Votes will take a little while, and we need to be patient.  Allowing for people's technology problems and the lag time that may happen between screens means we can't jump to call the question.  It also means motions upon motions upon motions will be even more confusing than in in-person meetings.  Talk to your congregation first about the fact that you'll simply not be using the "call the question" procedure, perhaps.  Build in wait times after every vote to allow people to figure it out and the votes to be properly counted. 

Line Up Volunteers: You need several additional volunteers to run an on-line business meeting.  If you're using a polling system, you need someone opening and closing the votes and displaying them, as well as typing up new motions.  If you're doing a hand-count method of some sort, you need one or two people at least assigned to do the counting and report the results.  These folks will also be needed to determine your quorum. 

Who Speaks:  Using the "raise hand" feature in Zoom to have people be called on to speak for or against a motion limits the confusion of everyone trying to chime in at once.  People pop to the top of the participant list in the order that they raised their hand, so this keeps it orderly.

Limit Chatting: The chat box needs to be used for motions, for voting, and for other business.  Discourage folks using it to chat about their opinions or have side conversations. 

Love Letter to East Liberty and Blessing

12 June 2018 at 17:38
"Love Letter to East Liberty," delivered at the 06-03-2018 worship service:

This is not actually a sermon. It is a love letter.

Dear Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty,

I know it is hard right now to keep spirits up. I know some of you are mad at me for leaving, or worried about what will happen. I know it’s disheartening to not know yet who your next minister will be, and to learn that you’ll be having a part-time minister so that will leave even more work on the shoulder of volunteers.

But I have so much faith in you, because I know you and have loved you for so long. Here’s what I know.

I know that many churches out there in historic buildings have buildings that are crumbling. They are struggling to keep their building workable, and they can’t even imagine how to make their buildings accessible. And I know you, here, are keeping your building from becoming a historical museum, just an homage to the past, but moving it ever forward to what you need for your present and future. You’ve made it largely accessible, and even paved the parking lot in an effort to be easier for people with physical accessibility issues were kept away by the gravel situation.

In this way, maybe a small size has been a blessing. It has kept you nimble, able to act quickly and decisively on some of the biggest issues before you.

I know that many churches are inward-focused exclusively. They make themselves a haven for themselves, and then they don’t care if anybody else finds them. And I know that you’re a church that keeps trying to find ways to get yourselves known in the community, doing the forums for over ten years for that reason, among others. Despite the few numbers you have, you did work that built a place in the community for dialogue and learning that continues today.

Speaking of which, there’s the social justice work to do in the world that many churches find it easier to ignore, and yet you continue to engage in it, this year taking things even deeper with adding the idea of a social justice theme for the year, and planning activities and writing articles and doing teaching and preaching on the issue. You’ve engaged in the work of justice in this community, and that’s had a dramatic effect on making this community a better place. You were the first openly welcoming church in our entire county, and have been a welcoming home for LGBT people for just about 14 years officially, although you welcomed individuals before that. And you helped make Jackson a more welcoming place. Without this church, it might not have happened for even more years.

And you’re a church that cares for your members. People come to me to find ways for our church to reach out to members who are struggling financially. You bring casseroles to people who are struggling physically. You put loving arms around people who are struggling emotionally. Your small size means you know everyone, and you know when someone needs help, and you reach out.
So I know in my heart that this church is too vital, too caring, too engaged, and too forward-looking to not be successful in your future. You’ve been a blessing to me, and to so many people who have walked through these doors. And your next minister, which you will find and I think it will be soon, will see how caring and wonderful you are, and will love you too.

This church has been a blessing to me in more ways than I can count. You excel at taking ministers who are new, or who are hurting, and building them up and supporting them and growing them into the ministers they are capable of being. When I came here, I was starting a whole new phase of my life as a mother, and I was a new minister with only three years of ministry in churches that had been very difficult years. And you gave me a chance, and you helped me to shine. I say often to our board, that you understand that ministers can’t be everything to all people, that nobody is excellent in every single way, and that the work of the church has to be in part to let the minister shine in their areas of excellence and rather than critiquing the weak spots, to become the solution, to shore up those areas. Because we all minister together. And you have, here, allowed me to shine. And while I may not be the perfect pastor, you’ve supported the pastoral care through lay ministry. And you do this in so many areas, so that that we can shine together as a welcoming beacon of liberal religion in this area.

But if you were only a church that new how to support new or hurting ministers, that wouldn’t have been enough to keep me here for 14 years. But you’re more than that. This loving community, and leadership of amazing lay leaders has been a joy to be in. Our board has fun together. You’re a healthy church, and a happy one, and interested in new ideas and structures. When I suggested the social hour teams, you ran with that and made it work. When I asked for worship associates, you did that for several years to support the worship. When I talked about, this year, trying to hold another worship service in a second location, in Jackson, the board was willing to green-light that project. It’ll be a project for a future minister someday, I hope. When I talked with one of you about hosting individual adult religious education projects, that idea was embraced and run with and worked well for a year-long series. When I said to the board and finance crew that our paving project had to include ramping the schoolhouse, you saw that that was done. I’ve not only been listened to, and allowed to become a leader in this community, you’ve valued my input and given me your own. We did all these things together. And you’ll do even more with whoever comes next.

And this church gave me the freedom to spread my wings. The leadership of the church understood me and heard me when I said that ministry, to me, had to be more than within the four walls, it had to include being in the community, and it had to include service to our larger denomination, the larger faith. And so you allowed me to give back to our faith, and to be vital in our community, and understood it to be part of your ministry to the world.

And you allowed me to spread my wings in other ways, whether through teaching, or through art, or through participation in organizations like Girl Scouts or my study group, or whatever it was needed to both keep me afloat financially, and to keep me energized personally. You learned about sabbaticals for the first time in your history, and while they were controversial, you lived up to your commitments and promises that you had made with me when I began.

I’ve been blessed to be the minister here. And I hope you’ve been blessed by this amazing church, and that it has worked blessings in your life either by being there when you needed support, or by giving you a mission, a vision, when you had energy to spend it in the world, or by deepening your spirituality and connecting you deeper to this living tradition of Unitarian Universalism, or by growing new ideas, or helping your children grow into caring and spirit-filled people.

I’ve been blessed, and I hope you’ve been blessed, but I know for certain that this world, this community around us, has been blessed by this little church in the wildwood. And I know it will continue to be blessed by your presence, your ministry, to this community, to this world, and to each other, long after I have gone.

I believe that the world needs Unitarian Unversalism. Our history of a faith that not only has fought for justice from abolition and suffrage to LGBT equality and Black Lives Matter, but our faith that has proclaimed radical and vital theological messages, as well. This faith that says that God is Love, that all are Loved, that God loves all unconditionally, and that you are welcome here. This faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says questions are holy, your bodies are holy, and wholly loved. 

This faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says that radical hope means you keep striving, keep bending the arc toward justice, this faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says this earth and we are interdependent, and all the people are part of one living breathing organism, that says science is completely compatible with our theology, and that we are stardust, this faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says peace will prevail, this faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says religious authority comes not just from scriptures, and not just from the ordained, but from the transforming sense of awe and wonder that you experience in your own lives, this faith is a blessing to the world. This faith that says there is no original sin, and that you are holy and good, this faith is a blessing to the world.

And you are this faith, this living tradition. Unitarian Universalism does not exist without its people, two more more gathered in its name. You are this living tradition in these walls, and in this community. You are the Unitarian Universalists here in East Liberty, which as we know is a state of mind, but you are the Unitarian Universalists bringing this living tradition to this entire county. And it needs you here, as much as you need this church here, this aching hurting world needs you here. The people who haven’t found you yet, including that minister who hasn’t found you yet, they need this beloved community, and you will be a blessing to them, as you were to me, as you are to each other, as you are to this world. Thank you for blessing me, for blessing each other, for blessing this community and world.

Love,
Cindy


"Blessing for the Congregation," delivered at the 06-10-2018 worship service:

For sharing your times of sadness and joy, work and play, rest and excitement, I offer you my thanks.
May your lives be blessed more peace and joy, and may you minister to each other through all sorrows.

For creating a welcoming home for stranger and friend, child and adult, I offer you my thanks.
May you ever open your doors ever more widely and welcome each stranger or friend.

For sharing the strength of your heritage and your present selves, I offer you my thanks.
May you continue to go boldly into the future, living a vision of a bold and dynamic faith.

For doing the work of justice, and your commitment to humanity and the earth, I offer you my thanks.
And may you ever bend the arc toward justice and live our religion.

For all that you have been in my life and to each other, I offer you my thanks.
May your future be bright with hope and faith, with justice, and, most of all, love.

Heartbreak and Loons

6 April 2018 at 11:38
This is a doodle I made based on a sermon about heartbreak and gun violence and the healing power of community.  The sermon quoted Mary Oliver's poem "Lead."

Triggers

22 February 2018 at 13:02
Photo by Quentin Kemmel on Unsplash
I'm realizing that although I have at least two degrees of separation from any mass shooting, these school shootings and other mass shootings are still something of a trigger for me. It's at least in part related to the 2013 shooting deaths of Chris Keith and Isaac Miller. Chris Keith was a former member of my church. She and her son Isaac were killed in an act of domestic violence, by her estranged husband.

Like the killer in the recent school shooting, Chris's killer was a known threat. These are the things I know about her killer: He had been abusive of Chris for some time. Chris minimized the abuse when talking to me, saying it was the first time, when it wasn't, but she wasn't ready to leave. What I didn't know, but found out after her death was that authorities had been called all the way back in 2003, before I met her. In the news it was revealed that Chris had taken out a personal protection order against him at one time. Chris had said, "Threats of shooting me to death with one of his hunting rifles were par for the course," in her personal protection order (source). She also said he was diagnosed with depression, and in 2011 he "stayed in bed for nearly the entire year, only rarely getting up other than to use the bathroom... At least once a week, he told me if I ever left him he would kill me." And eventually Chris withdrew the personal protection order. And I also know that her killer had been previously reported to CPS for what I consider to be violence against a child, because my religious education coordinator and I reported it -- and Chris told me that CPS had followed up on it, but it was an incident that had been previously investigated by that point.

These are the things I heard second-hand, from friends of Chris: Her killer had numerous run-ins with the police around domestic violence, including a recent incident. In response, he checked himself voluntarily in to a psychiatric unit, and the police took his guns. Even though these were known things about him, he hadn't been convicted of domestic violence, and he hadn't been convicted of child abuse, and he hadn't been involuntarily committed for mental illness. So his guns were returned, because there were no laws that could keep them from him. So he took his biological children to visit his parents for the night, for an early Christmas celebration, and then he killed his wife and step-son -- and himself.

It's taken a while for people to fully understand this, but we now know that many of these mass shooting killers are also men who have committed domestic violence. There is a link there between these larger events and the domestic violence events that happen every day. Everytown for Gun Safety says that 54% of the mass shooters between 2009 and 2016 were known to have committed domestic violence in their past. That's the domestic violence we know about, which means the real rates may be higher.

Domestic violence is mass murder, too, although we don't really understand it that way. Nearly three people per day are killed in acts of domestic violence.

The keys to solving mass shootings are the same keys to solving domestic violence, both in the need for gun control, and in the need for greater background checks and the work of mental wellness.
But we're not solving domestic violence murders with background checks, because too often the domestic violence is unreported, or, like in Chris's case, the victim pulls a protective order or doesn't follow through on prosecution. We know this is the case, again and again, in domestic violence. So banning gun ownership of people who are convicted of domestic violence, while a good step, is not going to catch most of these people. It's only after the deaths that we hear the stories of repeated abuse. Chris's friends and family (and clergy) had some idea what she endured, and wanted to help her to get out, and she did separate from her abuser, but it wasn't enough to stop him from killing her.

The same is true for focusing on mental illness -- too many people are undiagnosed, and most people who are diagnosed will never commit a violent crime -- so it won't do the job of stopping these killers.
But if we stop domestic violence entirely -- look at and understand the roots of domestic violence, treat people at the root causes -- we might address a lot of these mass shooting incidents as well. This includes looking at how masculinity is constructed in our culture, and recognizing the ways that this construct of gender can turn toxic and violent. It includes a better understanding of mental illness and mental wellness. It includes working with children, so that we can break the cycle of abuse over generations. It includes teaching things like self-control, understanding triggers, empathy, and resilience. In short, we need to teach love, and not the fantasy love that leads to domestic violence, but a real agape love and an ethic of care.

And none of that may ever be enough. Violence happens in liberal religious communities, it happens in rich families and educated families and liberal families. And it will evade our attempts to address it over and over again. It lives and grows in secrecy and shadows. So this is not meant to be a substitute for gun reform. The ability to purchase weapons designed to kill and do so quickly increases the deaths in these situations. Our society should be able to stop access to these weapons like the AR-15, which are unnecessary for either sport or personal protection. And we need to make it so that a man like Chris Keith's killer won't be able to get those guns back, when we know as much as we know about him, and so that the recent killer, who was a clearly known threat, won't be able to walk into a store and legally purchase a gun, either. And when we do so, the body count in our mass killings will go down.

The New First Responders

15 February 2018 at 17:53
When I was a child, we had fire drills and tornado drills. That was it. No longer did we have the drills of what to do during bomb raids or, worse, nuclear attack, knowing that hiding under our desks would be ineffective. During my daughter's entire childhood, active shooter drills have been a regular part of the school routine. The world she has grown up in is different than the one I did.

When I did my internship, training for the ministry, the congregation I was interning at did their very first fire drill in their 150-year history (on my first Sunday in the pulpit). An active shooter drill or an active shooter policy was something we would never have thought of. But they have one now.

Today I got a different sort of e-mail from the superintendent of my daughter's school system than I've ever gotten before after a school shooting or other incident. In this e-mail, the superintendent issued the usual sorts of calming statements about how they are thoughtful about safety and doing what they can. But then the superintendent said:
[The school district] continues to plan for safety and security improvements in this changing landscape but we need your help. The best safeguards start with vigilance. We know that social media is a place where warning signs and chatter can take place. It takes all of us to monitor the many channels of social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram etc.). Together we have thousands of eyes and ears. Everyone, including our students, should be reminded that if you see something or hear something, please tell a principal, teacher, counselor, myself or another adult. 
I paused for a moment. We are asked to all be the system that prevents school shootings.

Not long after reading that e-mail, I read this blog post by Diane Ravitch calling for a teacher strike for gun reform which said, "Teachers are now first responders, trained to protect their students if a shooter gets in the building. Some have given their lives for their students. Parents should join teachers. Enough is enough." Our teachers are giving their very lives. Our educational leadership is calling on every citizen to help stop the violence. In the churches, we are first responders now, too. It is commonplace now for churches to have active shooter policies, with training for what the roles are for ushers and Sunday School teachers and nursery care workers and ministers.

The truth is, nothing that our teachers and students and ushers and Sunday school leaders and ministers are doing is making the difference to decrease the number of school and church shootings. And there's a limit to what we can feasibly do in many situations. All we can do is respond to the best of our ability once they start, based on the best guesses of experts about what kind of training we should use. Sometimes that means laying down our lives to protect others.

It's appalling that teachers and church-goers are asked to be our first responders, and need to be trained to deal with active shooters. Let's just stop right there for a moment, and say that the world where we have to train teachers and church-goers for this is not right. It's not what we are there for, not what we're called to, and it's not the way things should be.

We are taking these actions -- training teachers to throw down their lives to save their students, training ushers to bar the doors, asking all our citizens to monitor the Facebook and Instagram posts of everyone they know for signs of violence -- for one reason: our government has failed to act.

The idea that there's no law that would prevent this, and that the government is doing everything they can do is false. It's a [expletive deleted] lie. And things are going the wrong way; our legislators are doubling down on the politics of death. In Michigan this fall, the house and senate passed a bill to allow concealed carry in churches and schools, among other places.

This must end. We must, as a society, make it clear that the second amendment does not extend to the right of every citizen to own a weapon designed to kill at rapid pace. It is possible to turn this country around, and it is past time to do so.

Resistance, Renewal

6 February 2018 at 14:28
I'm working on getting back into my doodling practice, and also back into my blogging practice.  Hopefully you'll see more posts soon.  Meanwhile, this doodle is a year old -- but the need for resistance continues.
You have permission to use this art, with attribution, for any liberal/progressive resistance-related or Unitarian Universalist-related purpose.

The Painful Steps to Justice

16 February 2017 at 19:13
When I came to Jackson, MI in 2004, it took me a while to realize how unsupported the LGBTQ community felt here. During my seminary years, all my LGBTQ friends and colleagues were entirely out of the closet, and as someone with cis-gender and heterosexual privilege, I had basically forgotten that the closet could still exist. But here in Jackson, I found, the closet was still deep and wide. People I knew through church or PFLAG or social justice work might be out in one context and still in with family, work, or other friends. So I learned this again, and said it many times to people in one context or another that Jackson was not as progressive with LGBTQ rights as many other locations.  I said it, and I knew it, but I hadn't felt it.

In Michigan we have no state-wide protections for LGBTQ people. In fact, when our state's civil rights legislation, the Elliott-Larsen Act was passed in 1976, LGBTQ protection was specifically left out because of fear that adding LGBTQ protections would cause the whole act to fail to pass. Since then, there have been efforts to amend Elliott-Larsen, but all have failed. What's happened in its place is that individual cities -- over 40 of them in Michigan -- have passed city-wide protections, one at a time.

People had been trying to get a Non-Discrimination Ordinance (NDO) passed in Jackson long before I came here. The local paper recently wrote about the history of this fight, and traced it back to 1999 when it was first brought to the City Council. It was brought to a first reading, but then never went to a second reading for lack of votes. I got mildly involved -- enough to write and speak about it -- when it was being brought back in front of the council in 2009, where it failed again. A grass-roots organization was formed, which we titled "Jackson Together," and I got more deeply involved. We worked to bring it in front of the City Council again in 2012. My part was to collect a list of some clergy who were supportive of the NDO, and I created the Facebook page for the group, and was one of those who spoke up at the City Council meeting. The City Council sent it to committee for review.  It never came out of committee. Later, the committee was disbanded. The Jackson Together group fizzled out. And then in 2014, a high school student started asking around about why the NDO didn't exist in Jackson, and he became determined to see it pass. I suggested we resurrect the old Jackson Together group, and so he and I and another local clergy member took the helm, and we started meeting again.  We created lists of local businesses in support of the NDO, updated the clergy list, and brought it back before the council. This time, the state-wide LGBTQ advocacy group, Equality Michigan, asked us to table the issue.  They thought they had enough Republican support to amend the state-wide Elliott-Larsen Act.  They were wrong.  But meanwhile, our City Council never would get the NDO back off the table to a vote.  As so our group fizzled out again.

This time, the LGBTQ community started organizing again for another push before the City Council, and asked me to join them.  I resurrected Jackson Together to be a Facebook presence for disseminating information.  Various groups convened and worked on it under different banners -- Jackson Together, PFLAG, the newly created Jackson Pride Center, a working group of our Vice Mayor -- and we started just going to the City Council meetings repeatedly asking for it to be passed. Finally a couple of council members got it on the agenda in January. We organized people to meet before the Council Meeting and go over to the Council Meeting together. When we got there, our organized support group was less than a fourth of the crowd, as over 400 people tried to pack into the City Council chambers.  The line was outside the building to get into City Hall.  The Council had never seen anything like it.  They hastily met and worked out a plan to adjourn and reconvene at the local Michigan Theater around the block at 8:30.  400-500 people packed into the Michigan Theater, where citizen comments were shortened to two minutes. Over two hours of testimony ensued, with 76 people speaking for the ordinance and 4 against. Finally, around midnight, the City Council passed the ordinance through its first of two readings, with a vote of 4-3. Voting against us was the mayor, a council member who had voted to table the ordinance back in 1999, and a third council member. In favor was one member who said that she didn't promise to vote for it in second reading. We knew we had work to do in the next two weeks.

Over the next two weeks, we had phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, letters to the editor, letters to council members, press conferences, editorials, and daily pushes on social media. I created daily graphics with action items for social media, and gathered clergy together to write a press release and to sit together for the final vote. As one of the identified leaders, I also spoke to the press on several occasions leading up to the vote, and worked with the press to help identify others to talk to.

For the final vote, over 600 people packed the Michigan Theater, and we had five hours of citizen comments.  Those of us who worked hard organizing were pleased that the supporters still outnumbered the opposition, who had also worked hard to turn out their people.  88 people spoke in favor, and 66 against.  Around eleven, the press had to step out to make their "live at eleven" reports, and then come back in.  One gave me his number to text him if they should suddenly finish and go to the vote, but they didn't.  It was after midnight again when they finally voted. The opposition had been trying to force one of our supporters on the Council to recuse himself because he worked for a large company, Consumers Energy, that had made public statements in favor of the NDO.  The first name they called for the vote was our Council Member who was on the fence. We held our breaths.  And she voted in favor. Some folks started cheering, but I didn't yet. The second council member was one we knew we could count on.  But then the third person was called, and it was the Council Member who had pushed to table the issue in 1999, and who had never supported it.  And he voted yes! Even if the Consumers Energy employee was forced to recuse (which he wasn't), we now had won. In the end, our vote was 5-2 in favor of the ordinance, with only the mayor and one other council member voting against.

I've always known that the arc of the universe bends toward justice.  And I've preached many times about how we don't always get to see it happen, how Susan B. Anthony died before women got the vote, and how the arc can look flat from where we're at.  But this time, after nearly two decades of activism, we were victorious at last. There was great rejoicing -- cheering, hugging, thanking each other for our work and our support.

It wasn't until a couple of days later, when the euphoria subsided, that some of the harder parts of the night came to the forefront for me. We had listened to sixty-six people get up to the microphone and talk about how they didn't think this NDO was necessary.  Some were polite.  Some cited reasons that really would've been cleared up if they truly understood the ordinance -- fear that an accusation alone would cost them the fine, or that even if they didn't know someone was gay they could be fined for not hiring them, etc.  But as the night wore on, things got nastier and nastier.  And at the same time as they got nastier, person after person would say something like, "Everybody for this NDO keeps talking about hate.  I don't hear any of us talking about hate.  I don't hate gay people.  But..."  And then they would talk about how their religion and their God tells them that homosexuality is a sin, and so they can't possibly be expected to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, or do photography for a same-sex wedding.  A Catholic priest spoke about how this would (and, of course, it won't) force him to perform same-sex weddings.  Over and over again, people talked about bathrooms at schools. (The NDO has nothing to do with schools, and explicitly states that it doesn't require changes to bathrooms.)  A sample comment reported in the paper was, "I don’t want some confused guy in the bathroom with my daughter.”  But the nastier ones used language of "perversion" and "Sodomite."  Living and working among progressives as I do, and being given the privilege not afforded to my LGBTQ friends and congregation members, I hadn't heard language like that in years. Another pastor got up and told the Council that if they passed the NDO, God would damn Jackson like he did Sodom.  Our row of clergy in the front was stared down in particular by several people as they got up to tell what they thought their God and their Bible had to say about how we treat people in this community.  We had certainly proven to the City Council that the NDO was needed, as person after person spoke about how they shouldn't be forced to hire, rent to, or serve LGBTQ people in this community.

And in the face of all that hate, person after person, from high schoolers to senior citizens, got up and spoke about their fear, about the discrimination, about the hatred they had faced, about family and friends who turned their backs on them.  Not knowing if they could be fired tomorrow or denied housing next week, some who had been out for ages and some who were only now coming out of the closet, they got in front of the City Council with cameras on them from all directions, and told their stories.

As I reflected, I posted this on Facebook:
"Two days later, still up too late and unable to sleep. Euphoria having worn off a bit, I'm thinking about what our local LGBTQ community had to go through on Tuesday. Five and a half hours of deliberate misgendering and mockery, name calling like sodomites and perverts, insinuation that they would harm people in restrooms, being told that God would damn them. And then over and over again being told that this wasn't about hatred, but their identity goes against God. I know how awful it was for me to listen to that, and can't imagine how hard it was for our LGBTQ community who came up and talked about fear, about abandonment, about abuse, and about discrimination. I'm so proud of our LGBTQ youth, but so sad the world still holds these hatreds. 
"I'm proud of the work we did to win the vote, and happy we have the nondiscrimination ordinance at last, but I'll never forget how some of the people stared right at me as they said that their Christian faith demanded they act this way. For one evening my hetero privilege was stripped away, and it was shocking and scary. There were people trying to intimidate me at several points. As I left the theater, a man started yelling at me and accusing me of things I hadn't done, and I felt threatened and afraid. Fortunately the police were there and hurried him on his way, and also fortunately I had a ride to my car. 
"I'm so glad we had our row of clergy to counter that disgusting show of the worst of our community. God loves you, friends. And those people were outnumbered by the ones who know that you are loved for who you are."
My biggest regret was that we stacked our clergy people in the front of the deck, trying to set a tone about God's message, and then it was followed by hours of hurtful theology.  I wanted a time at the end of the night for us to be able to get up then and say, "You are loved.  You are loved by God for being just who you are.  God made you queer, trans, bi, lesbian and gay, because that is wonderful."

But my LGBTQ friends here tell me they had fewer regrets and fewer surprises.  They had seen this hate before, and they knew it was here under the surface still.  They were less surprised than me at the language thrown at them, and many were less intimidated than me by the preachers staring them down while yelling about Sodom.  And at the end of the night, they had won. After twenty years of working, we had bent the arc toward justice.

Standing, Rolling, Dancing, Singing, Praying, Preaching, Acting on the Side of Love

29 June 2016 at 13:03
At our the preceding Ministry Days preceding the UU General Assembly, ableist language was used in worship to the extent that UUMA Board Member Josh Pawelek issued this response:

Clearly there is a problem with ableism in our public presentation. Public statements, music, stories and metaphors that perpetuate ableism have been hurtful to colleagues. As with any oppression, this ableism likely runs deeper than our public presentation. I remain grateful to all those who are willing to call it to our attention, and I am deeply sorry that such calling is still necessary. (The full response is here.)
The most prominent example of ableist language in our movement, however, is our social justice arm: Standing on the Side of Love.  And before you say, "It's just a metaphor," I invite you to watch this and read this by UU minister Theresa Soto.  The point here is not to convince you that ableist metaphors are a problem.  The point is that we often think, even if it is ableist, "Standing on the Side of Love" is a done deal and it would be too hard to change it.  I'd like to offer a different possibility.  I think we need to change this, and it's possible to change this.  The important part of the "Standing on the Side of Love" isn't the "Standing," it's that we're acting "on the Side of Love." 

Step 1: Start including our non-standing bodies in the message.  Without changing the name officially, widen the images and merchandise.  Start by offering "I Roll on the Side of Love" or "Rolling on the Side of Love" or "Sitting on the Side of Love" t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other items. Make it easy for people to get these items -- don't make them make their own.  Start making images that you share on your webpage with these words more and more frequently. 

Step 2: Offer more and more words as options -- we can dance, pray, sing, and act in lots of ways "on the Side of Love."  Start using all sorts of words more and more frequently until "standing" is just one word among many, used no more frequently than the others.  Do this on merchandise and images in particular.  Maybe ministers would like t-shirts that say "Preaching on the Side of Love" or "Serving on the Side of Love."  Maybe DREs would like "Teaching on the Side of Love" or "Growing on the Side of Love" or other ideas. 

Step 3: Drop "Standing" as the title of the organization in favor of "On the Side of Love" or "The Side of Love."  Start by using the shortened version on images and merchandise where no one verb will do.  Then as people get used to the new name, change URLs and official name and usage of the organization. 

I think it's time for us to recognize that while it's been a great campaign and done some really neat things, the title is ableist, and that is problematic.  Let's fix it, folks.  We're better than just throwing up our hands and saying, "Oh well." 

For Orlando and for Change

13 June 2016 at 12:13
They died in the high schools, in the cafeterias and the libraries and the classrooms.
And we cried, and we wondered.
And we blamed gaming and outsiders.
And nothing changed.

They died in the universities and community colleges, in the classrooms and dorms.
And we bawled, and we yelled.
And we blamed reporting systems and foreigners.
And nothing changed.

And they died on the street corners lobbying, on the pavement and sidewalk.
And we keened, and we lobbied.
And we blamed politics and mental illness.
And nothing changed.

And they died in the movie theaters and restaurants and clinics, around tables and in cushioned seats.
And we sobbed, and we argued.
And we blamed gun culture and zealotry.
AND NOTHING CHANGED.

They died in the elementary schools, in the arms of the teachers.
And we wept, and we mourned.
And we blamed autism and parenting.
AND NOTHING CHANGED.

And they died in the churches, the mosques, and the temples, in worship and in song.
And we howled, and we prayed.
And we blamed white supremacy and religious bigotry.
AND NOTHING CHANGED.

And they died in the nightclubs, on dance floors and at bars.
And we wailed, and we raged.
And we blamed religious extremism and homophobia.
And will anything change?

A Response to "On Outrage and Douchebags"

9 June 2016 at 17:18
My dear colleague (and formerly my minister) Lynn Ungar has written a thoughtful piece about the Brock Tuner rape case on Patheos.  I appreciate her deep thinking and opportunity to look at the situation differently, but I have to respectfully disagree with her conclusions.

First, like Lynn Ungar, I want to see large changes in our prison industrial system.  I believe too many nonviolent offenders are given long sentences and this is to the detriment of our society.  I want to see people getting rehab, not jail time, for drug use.  But there are a few groups of people I'm willing to see get long prison sentences.  And one of those groups is rapists.  There are cases where I feel bad for a criminal who will have the rest of their life affected.  Brock Turner isn't one of them. 

I'm not a survivor of rape, but I've lived with the aftermath.  In 1995-6 as a graduate student at the University of Georgia, I lived with two other female students, one of whom I hadn't known before moving in together.  That student had been raped not long before we moved in together.  I didn't know intimately what my roommate was going through in the months that followed.  I just knew how I didn't get to know her because she was curled inside a protective shell.  I just knew how she would panic if I left a door or window unlocked.  I just knew how difficult it was for her to sleep without fear.

My roommate raped by John Alexander Scieszka, a serial rapist who had been previously incarcerated, released, and raped again.  He was the kind of rapist who would go out drinking, and then follow a woman home, climb in her window after she had gone to bed, and rape them. 

In an article about the cases, a former police sergeant who spent fifteen years investigating rapes said this:
Ingram said some rapists started out as Peeping Toms, or fed their clothes fetishes, stealing undergarments from clotheslines or homes before targeting victims. Others were simply opportunists.
   ''They were looking for open windows, unlocked doors, people moving around alone,'' he said. ''They were just looking for the opportunity to prey on someone.''

When I see the pictures of Brock Turner on social media, I see similarities between him and John Alexander Scieszka.  Where they are similar is that they both raped a woman, in both cases they went after an unconscious woman, and in both cases it was a woman they didn't previously know.  Brock Turner's rape is sometimes talked about as a "campus rape" which makes it sound like something similar to "date rape," but he didn't know the woman he raped, and he wasn't dating her.

And there are differences -- perhaps -- between Brock Turner and the serial rapist.  This may have been Brock Turner's first rape.  Quite possibly it was not.  And I believe Brock Turner didn't necessarily set out with rape on his mind, unlike John Alexander Scieszka.  Brock Turner is the kind of rapist, probably, who is a opportunity rapist.  He didn't set out to rape, but he saw the opportunity to rape, and he chose to rape.  But there's absolutely no reason to believe that if he was going to follow one girl out of a party, wait until she fell unconscious, and then rape her behind a dumpster, that he wouldn't do this again and again.  He was simply an opportunist, and he found "the opportunity to prey on someone."

There are occasions when consent might be murky.  When the woman is unconscious isn't one of them.  Brock Turner's rape wasn't a date rape, and it wasn't a case of a woman "changing her mind" and it wasn't a case of "he said/she said."  Let's remember that he was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman.  There's no implied consent, no revoked consent, no question of consent when a woman is unconscious.  There's no sense of "she seemed to want it" or "she was asking for it" -- she was unable to want, unable to ask, unable to consent.  And Brock Tuner chose to violate her. 
 
Yes, our justice system needs reform.  And some people definitely get sentences they don't deserve, and that's the bigger part of the reform needed.  But surely part of what shows us that it needs reform is when a white affluent college athlete gets a lenient sentence for a heinous crime.  How long a sentence should a rapist get?  I think I'm willing to jail a rapist for at as long as it takes a woman who is raped to fall asleep with the light off, and for at least as long as it takes for her to go to bed without triple-checking the door locks.

Secondly, Lynn Ungar invites us to put ourselves in every part of the situation -- "What if I am also the perpetrator, the one who is willing to take what I want even if it causes suffering to others? What if I am the father, willing to make excuses for the causes as well as the people I love, wanting to protect what I care about even at the expense of those who are outside my circle?"

But not every person is willing to harm people, especially to the point of rape, to get something they want, particularly something as fleeting as sexual satisfaction.  (And not every parent is ready to excuse the heinous acts of a child out of the deep parental love they feel.  Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza's father said to the New Yorker, "I wish he had never been born.")

Something that's important to remember, particularly as Brock Turner continues to deny that he is a rapist and blames alcohol and sexual promiscuity for his situation, is that not all people -- not all men, either -- are rapists.  Most people who get drunk don't rape unconscious women.  Most of us, when we find an unconscious woman, even if we were drunk would at best get her help and at worst ignore her.

In fact, while one in four women will be raped in her lifetime, it's not nearly one in four men doing the raping.  The 2002 study by Lisak and Miller found six percent of men admitted to rape, and almost two thirds of them were repeat offenders.  The odds are that Brock Turner would be one of them if he hadn't been caught.

I appreciate the thought of trying to put myself in Brock Turner's shoes, but the fact is I am not likely to wear those shoes, nor are the numerous men around me who are standing up for women and fighting the rape culture.  I'd rather hold up the idea that most men don't rape and fight the rape culture than the concept that we all have a little rapist inside.

Lastly, I too am sick and tired of the outrage, and also sick and tired of the outrageous.  And there are so many pieces of this story that are outrageous, but one of them is surely the lack of responsibility taken by Brock Turner himself, from the denial of his actions to the concept that what he should do to help society as recompense is talk to groups about "sexual promiscuity."  Yes, I believe in Brock Turner's inherent worth and dignity as a person.  I believe he is a child of God, if there is a God.  And I also believe he has to take some responsibility. 

Brock Turner is more than a "douchebag."  He is a rapist. 

Review: UUA Wordpress Theme -- A Further Look, Part 3 (UUA Services Plugin, Ideas for the Future, Content)

29 October 2015 at 15:50
The really neat thing about the new UUA Wordpress Theme is the UUA Services Plugin.  This solves the problem I didn't even really  know I had, and does it very elegantly.

Sunday Services Plugin

The problem: how to we advertise our Sunday service topics on the website?  And how do we do it such that we don't have to update weekly?  Previously, I had looked at three options.  One was what I ended up with: create posts monthly that list the month's services.  This only has to be updated once per month, and that's the advantage.  The disadvantage is that it doesn't list them individually.  There are other disadvantages, too.  Another option would be to put posts up weekly.  The big disadvantage there is the weekly nature of this for a church with no full-time staff except myself.  Another option would be to create them as "events" with the Events plugin.  This carries with it extraneous information like location as a mandatory part of the posts. 

The UUA Services plugin gives you a new post type of services.  And it has the fields that are relevant for you (title, description, date, speaker), and not the ones that aren't (like location, or price).  Then it gives you two pages to display this on -- Upcoming Services and Past Services -- as well as the box on the Home page, and ability to put this list in any of your widget areas (footer, sidebar, Home page).  It displays nicely, and you can update them monthly, yearly, weekly, whatever, and it will store your services in date order, with this week's at the top, and then move it over to the past services after it's done.  Then you can go back in and add the podcast or the full text of the sermon, or whatever.

The other solutions to the services problem were all like putting square pegs into round holes.  This is the round peg, and it's nicely crafted. 

Ideas for the Future

Now that this solved the problem I barely knew I had, it makes me want more!  Wouldn't it be nice to have a Religious Education plugin where we could add weekly information about what's going on in religious education that would function similarly?  Well, maybe for the next version...  For right now, you could add it in with the Sunday services. 

Another thing that came up in my messages with Christopher Wulff, designer of the UUA Theme is how to handle emergency notifications.  He noticed that my church website has a page for announcing emergency closures.  With a rural location in the snowy North, this is something that happens once a year or so.  He said he was thinking about creating a banner that could be turned on for the Home page that would be something we could use for things like this, and asked if we would use such a thing.  The answer for us is yes!  And if people don't want to use it, it's an extra they can ignore.

Content

The content suggestions are wonderful, and something I'm slowly working my way through.  I'd love to have the content information as a Word file, not just as something I have to be careful about uploading because it may erase my existing content.  However, I'm overjoyed at its existence.  The information provided with the theme gives not only best practices, but also sample copy, and tells you things like "Our tree tests show that a significant minority of users will look for information about the choir and about religious education programs under Connection.  Make sure your page includes links to the Choir and Learning pages."  This is extremely useful information that will help congregations a lot.  I'm incorporating all of this slowly into my page, but it's really good to know that the information is here to help me. 

This is where I think the UUA really went above and beyond with this theme.  I was looking for a theme like any other them, but geared toward congregational use.  This theme and its materials gave me SO much more that it's like Christmas for my webpage.  Thank you!!

Review: UUA Wordpress Theme -- A Further Look, Part 2 (Header and Footer)

29 October 2015 at 15:26
Continuing my thoughts about the new UUA Wordpress Theme...

Header

I've already talked about my preferences with the logo, but there's more to the header than that.  The theme lets you have the logo and title, social media icons, your Sunday service time (or other text), and a small header menu.  The organization of the header area is aesthetically pleasing, and it's well-sized so that it doesn't take up too much of the screen.  Overall: bravo!

Footer

The footer has four areas.  In one area, the UUA logo will appear, and if you set it to, you can also have the Welcoming Congregation logo and the Green Sanctuary logo.  These balance nicely to form a block if you have all three.  We're not a certified Green Sanctuary church, so my footer has a bit of a hole there.  It'd be nice to include things like the AIM logo, but you have three other areas that can go in.
Some other choices that congregations might wish to include are a Standing on the Side of Love logo or a Black Lives Matters logo, particularly as more congregations have formal votes to support Black Lives Matters.  But, again, there are three other areas in the footer you could put these things in yourself, it's just that if you have a hole in the one block, it might be nice to fit them together.

So in the other three areas, I had some questions as to what to put.  Obviously one needed to be the address, as in the demo site, because it's not anywhere else prominent on the Home page.  The second, the demo site has a little description of the minister.  I didn't want that.  And the third has a little newsletter sign-up form.  I don't have a way to do that yet.  So I opted for links for the newsletter (this will change monthly, the way I have it set up) and some other information that wasn't elsewhere -- that we are wheelchair-accessible, have listening devices available, and support breastfeeding.

So, overall review of header and footer: lots of nice options, everything you need. 

Review: UUA Wordpress Theme -- A Further Look, Part 1 (Aesthetics and Home Page)

29 October 2015 at 14:48
Well, it's been two days since the UUA's Wordpress Theme debuted, and in that time I've learned a LOT about it.  It took me one day of frustration, wherein I finally reached out to Christopher Wulff, who created the UUA Theme, about my problems downloading and installing, and he quickly figured out that my PHP version on my website was too old and that my upload size specified by my php.ini file was too small.  I was able to call my hosting provider who quickly fixed those things, and minutes later the UUA theme was installed and operational on my webpage.

It took me about half a day yesterday to get the theme to the point where it all looks nice and proper on my site and many of the new items are functioning nicely.  You can take a look at http://www.liberyuu.org.  What I have NOT done yet is taken all the content they offer and add and change my existing pages.  I've done this on a small handful of key pages, particularly in the "About" section, but overall I've left my existing content in place, intending to change it over time, but this will take time.  And it's wonderful that the UUA Theme has so much to offer than I can do this.  It's not a downside at all that I could take weeks looking at and understanding it all.  There's so much material here to go deep with, and what I've done is implement the showy face-value stuff at this point.

Look and Aesthetics:

If you'll remember from my last post, I had a few things I was looking for in a theme's look:
  1.  A theme that let me use my own custom logo along with a title to the site.  
  2. A theme that did not need a large picture in the header. 
  3. A theme that allows for some sort of slider on the first page. 
  4. A theme that includes links for social media like Facebook and Twitter in its header. 
  5. A theme with a top menu bar. 
  6. A top menu bar that was aesthetically pleasing to me -- a thin stripe with links on it, and not something that looked like tabs. 
  7. A theme with a presentation page for the home page that's different from other pages. 
  8. A theme that was accessible on multiple different platforms and responded nicely on mobile devices. 
  9. A theme that gave me some choice about color scheme.  
So how did the UUA Theme do on my checklist?  The only disappointment thus far is #1.  The site allows me to put in a custom logo, but when I do this my title for my church disappears.  This is something I've noticed on a lot of themes.  The answer Christopher Wulff gives to this question is, "We encourage congregations to use a logo/wordmark that includes their name."  That would not be my preference, but I can understand why they went with it, because for many churches that might be the preference, because their logo includes their name.  For example,  
Since my logo is just a little icon, I'd prefer to just put it in the box and let my header play out as usual, especially as I don't have Helvetica on my computer, nor on the webpage that I use to design images, and I'd like to use the same font as the rest of the site.  But you can't please everybody.  If that's my biggest gripe, I'd say that it's pretty good.  For now, I'm using the UUA logo.

#2, #3, #5, #7, #8 are all unequivocal yeses.  The UUA Theme does nicely on all of those.  For #4, there are a few social media links that are easy to add to the header:  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, GooglePlus, and Instagram.  That pretty much covers the basics, so is an acceptable array of choices.  For #9, the Theme gives you three color schemes to choose from, but then also lets you choose a custom background color and/or background image, so you don't have to stick with the UUA Brand wallpaper.  Beyond that, you have to get it CSS stuff, which I don't do.  I'll add a note here about fonts, which is that the fonts on the UUA Theme are chosen for accessibility and for my church I had switched to the UUA's font choices already.

Overall, I'll say I'm not a big fan of the UUA branding color scheme, but on the "dark blue" option of the UUA Theme, I don't mind it.  I like the yellow contrasting color you get on the homepage with the dark blue, and the overall color scheme in this version of the webpage is relatively pleasant.  The Grey Red choice the theme offers is also pretty nice.  I'm not a fan of the Aqua Green choice, but maybe somebody else is. 

The overall look of the webpage, though, that is something I am a big fan of when it comes to this theme.  I really love it -- it feels modern and clean.

Home Page

The Home page with the UUA Theme works differently than I've encountered elsewhere.  You create an empty page called "Home" and place it at the top of your menu, and then the content on it is all driven by widgets that come with the plugins that come with the them and that the theme recommends.  Previously, I've seen the homepage created on a separate tab within the "appearances" section, so this took a little getting used to, and I had to play around with it a bit to get it working right.  At first, despite a Home page at the top of my menu, the page was still pointing to another page that I had previously set up, and I had to find this setting and change it.  That was particular to the way I had done things on my site in the past, so it took relearning what I had done before to undo it.  Once I did that, however, setting up the widgets to appear on my Home page was easy, except the Carousel.  I put a static picture into that spot while I worked out how to use the Carousel, which was very non-intuitive for me.  I just couldn't figure out where you put the images in the Carousel, actually.  It turns out that if I scroll down on the right, there's the "Feature Image" box, and that's where it goes.  I wasn't sure if that image was what generated the image, or the image link box further down, so it took a while to get that straightened out.  I also had problems in that the text the information page about the theme told me to put in a box in the widget wasn't working.  A quick message to Christopher Wulff got this straightened out -- the text he says to put in the box is "[image-carousel category=”Homepage”]" but this only works if you've put your Carousel images into categories (useful if you want carousels in more than one location).  I had not, so I needed to type "[image-carousel]" instead.  The rest of the Home page was very easy to set up.  I like the three picture and link boxes that appear on the second row.  They're easy to change and implement, too.  On the third row, I had a little more figuring out what to put.  I don't have enough users generating content for me to really keep a "News" section going yet, and our Newsletter provided for a pretty short column.  So I opted for two columns that will generate new content -- an Events list and a blurb about our monthly Forum -- and one that'll remain pretty static, into which I put the Common Read book.

The best feature of the Home Page, however, is the second widget in the top row, generated by the Services Plugin.  This takes your Sunday service for the week and automatically puts it up front each week.  The Services Plugin is the really outstanding part of the theme, and I'll talk about it more in my next post. 

Review: UUA Wordpress Theme -- A First Look

27 October 2015 at 12:24
Today the UUA launches its new Wordpress theme.  The official title seems to be "UUA Wordpress Theme for Congregations," but I'm referring to it here as "UUA Theme."  This is something I've been waiting for, and vocally advocating for and blogging about , for some time, so I was anxiously awaiting the debut.  So here are some first impressions based on the demo site and what I've read in the materials, as I wait for the launch to happen.  Overall, I think it's really a fantastic job, and just exactly what I was hoping for.  

Look and Aesthetics:

When I was looking for a Wordpress theme for my site when I converted to Wordpress a year or two ago, I was looking for several things in my theme:
  •  A theme that let me use my own custom logo along with a title to the site.  This is surprisingly rare -- lots of pages allow only for one or the other, or you have to hack the code, which I don't do.  The UUA theme clearly lets you use the UUA logo along with a church title, and I'm betting allows churches to put their own chalice logo in.  
  • A theme that did not need a large picture in the header.  The UUA Theme does not.
  • A theme that allows for some sort of slider on the first page.  The UUA Theme does.
  • A theme that includes links for social media like Facebook and Twitter in its header.  The UUA Theme does.
  • A theme with a top menu bar.  The UUA Theme has top navigation. 
  • A top menu bar that was aesthetically pleasing to me -- a thin stripe with links on it, and not something that looked like tabs.  The UUA Theme has this as well.
  • A theme with a presentation page for the home page that's different from other pages.  The UUA Theme has this.
  • A theme that was accessible on multiple different platforms and responded nicely on mobile devices.  The UUA Theme is.  
  • A theme that gave me some choice about color scheme.  The UUA Theme does.  From the materials and demo site, I can't tell how much flexibility is here, but I can tell that there is some.
In other words, the UUA theme hit every single point that I was looking for.  When I created my church's website, I demoed dozens of different themes, trying to find one that did all this, and couldn't.  I eventually settled for one that met most of theses points but not all. 

UUA Services Plugin:

One thing I've never adequately solved to my satisfaction was how to manage Sunday services on a webpage.  Ideally, you want every Sunday's service information to be posted separately, to be the top one people see, but to be able to see other upcoming services easily as well.  And you want to do this without having to update your webpage every single week, because volunteers aren't always available every single week to do the update.  If you create posts, they'll post in the order you create them, unless you use some sort of plugin application to withhold publication, but I didn't really know how to easily do this, amateur as I am.  Well, the UUA Services Plugin solved my problem entirely.  The good folks who created the Theme recognized that this is the one area pretty essential to congregations that no other plugin did very nicely, and so was one that was important for them to create themselves.  And it works very nicely, even taking each service from "Upcoming Services" to "Past Services" automatically each week.  Bravo!  A great recognition on the UUA's part that this is exactly the plugin we needed, where nothing else did the job easily.

Other Bonuses:

In configuring my menus to match the UUA Theme's suggestions, I learned how to make a null link at the top level of menu items.  That was something I didn't know before, and had really wondered about when I converted to Wordpress.  It was obvious to me that there was some confusion within myself about whether the top of the menu should be a page itself, or just pull down the menu, but I didn't know how to do that.  The UUA Theme materials explained the best practice, and how to accomplish it.  Problem solved.

Content: 

Something I wasn't expected, and am overjoyed about, is the demo content.  I haven't gotten a chance to look at it yet, but it's so wonderful to have sample content provided -- not all of us are great writers, and even if we are may not understand the best way to write for webpages.  The demo content, as well as the list of suggested images, are exactly what our congregations need.

Well, my ancient computer may have downloaded the theme by now, so that's all for my "First Look."  I'll be back with more after I've tried it out. 

Walking Alongside: Remembering a Friend

30 August 2015 at 00:29
My friend the Rev. Laurie Thomas passed away this month. As I've been thinking about her and our times together, one memory that sticks out for a number of reasons is the time we traveled to Boston together for a weekend. I asked Laurie's permission, which she granted, to write up the experience as a blog post, but for some unknown reason I never did.

We encountered in the course of a weekend so many little, and big, accessibility issues and issues of injustice or prejudice, that my head was spinning. I was angry--furious--at the encounters. Laurie just shook her head at me. This was everyday life for her, and not out of the ordinary at all. Besides, she explained, she didn't have the luxury of being angry. If you're angry, people won't want to help you, and in some of these situations she might require help of people who don't know her. "Nobody likes the angry gimp," she said to me.

The first instance we encountered was before we even left Detroit. We were at the airport and decided to get some lunch before the flight left. We went over to the nearest restaurant to our gate, and the hostess looked at us and said -- to me -- "She can't bring that in here." I looked at the hostess incredulously. "What do you mean she can't bring it in here? That's ridiculous. She doesn't get out of that. It's like a wheelchair. You have to let her in here with it." Laurie just looked at me in amusement. The hostess backed down as I pointed out a table by the door that we could easily get to and from.

There were other small issues as we boarded and exited the plane. When we got off the plane, they had managed to switch some switch such that her scooter wouldn't work. They wanted to transfer her to a wheelchair, but Laurie wasn't having that. Eventually we got the scooter, and went out get our transportation to the hotel.

We were headed to stay at Eliot & Pickett House, the B&B that was then owned by the UUA. It was right off the subway line, but the subway stop there is not accessible, so that wasn't an option. The bus system will send buses that can accommodate wheelchairs and scooters, but apparently you have to have a special card with them, which as a non-resident, Laurie did not. The UUA had phoned around for us, and determined that a cab was the best way to go. They were assured that there were cabs that could handle the scooter, and that all we needed to do was go to the cab stand and tell them we needed an accessible cab.
So off we went, and they promptly ordered us an accessible cab. Well, accessible it was not. The back was too small to fit the scooter in. No problem, they said, we'll order a larger one. The next one came. This could handle the scooter, but not with Laurie on it. The scooter would need to be forced into the back. And it was a van, so a higher seat to get up into, which Laurie couldn't easily transfer into. In fact, she couldn't get into it at all. So they sent it off. And while we were waiting for a third cab to come, the cab stand manager got a good idea. He suggested we call two cabs -- one that the scooter would fit into, and one that Laurie would be able to transfer into. I would then ride with the scooter, to make sure it got there okay. We agreed that if the third cab didn't accommodate her, that this is what we would need to do. And so it was. We departed with me with the scooter, and Laurie in a second cab. The only problem then was that the second cab got lost trying to find Eliot & Pickett House. I sat outside on Laurie's scooter while the minutes ticked away, worrying about her. At last she arrived. The cab driver, having driven in circles, charged her outrageously. So we were there at last, having only spent triple what a cab ride should have been.

Eliot & Pickett House has a ramp that looks like an after-thought and takes you in a side door around the capitol side of the building. But the ramp was no obstacle, and the staff was prompt and friendly with help. I can't say enough nice things about the staff at Eliot & Pickett, in fact. The best thing about the trip was that Eliot & Pickett House was completely accessible for everywhere Laurie needed to go to. I could barely fit into the amazingly small elevator to get to my room, but the room Laurie stayed in was well-appointed for one on wheels. "It's the legacy of Helen Bishop," Laurie told me. Helen Bishop was the former District Executive of the Central MidWest District, and, indeed, responsible for many a church's accessibility improvements, as they struggled with making themselves a building their own DE could enter. As for Eliot & Picket House, its only problem was a lift that was required to get to one part of the building that the staff had forgotten how to work, or had to find the key for. But Segree Bowen quickly solved it, and showed us, and so we could move around the building freely.

Once we were settled in, it was time to find dinner. There are a number of restaurants within walking distance of the UUA, and obviously we didn't want to go anywhere that would require transportation, so we set off down the street. Some of the crosswalks in the area of Beacon Hill aren't ramped, surprisingly. Many of the buildings in the area had small steps at the threshold, making it difficult for the scooter, but the third restaurant we came to finally had a flat entrance, and so we ate there. It was a bit pricey, but perhaps everything was around there. At least the food was good. We ate there again the next day, grateful for a place we could enter and exit easily.

The next day, we went to visit the UUA. This visit is why I didn't shed a tear when the UUA moved to a new building. Because after this experience, it was clear to me that they needed a better building. It's a short flight of stairs to get into 25 Beacon from the front door. Wheelchairs have to go in through a narrow alley around the corner of the block. I went in the front door while Laurie went in the alley. This way I could alert the receptionist that someone was coming in that way. And so I did. I went in and told the woman at the front desk that I had a friend who would be coming in that way, and asked her to please help make sure that she got in successfully. I sat down and waited. And waited. Finally, I asked the receptionist, "Do you see her? Is she there yet?" The receptionist said, "Oh yes, she's been there. It looks like she's having trouble with the gate." And then didn't move. "Um, is there something we can do?" The receptionist said, "Oh yes, you can go let her in." "Um... I have no idea how to get there?" Finally, the receptionist got up, showed me through the building to a not-very-obvious side exit, which I think was through a side room to my memory, where there, indeed, Laurie was waiting on the opposite side of a closed gate. The gate had no call button or push button to open it or alert someone -- the call button was on the other side of the gate when you got to the building. Had I not been advocating for her, it felt like the receptionist might have been happy to watch her sit there all day. It was not a warm welcome to our religious headquarters.

And so we came into the UUA's barely-accessible building. We looked around the bookshop, which had barely enough space to maneuver. Parts of the building are inaccessible, so we didn't stray far inside, just meeting with the people we had come to see. And then we left by the narrow alley, off to lunch at the accessible restaurant.

Returning to the airport, we knew, would be a challenge. So we carved out much of our day for the return trip, anxious not to miss our flights. We decided to call a cab to get us about four hours before the flight would take off. We figured one hour to get to the airport, one hour to get to our gate, and two hours for hassle. The UUA helped again by calling ahead and finding a cab company that assured us they could handle a cab with the dimensions Laurie specified to them. The cab came. It was too small. We had that cab driver radio back to his headquarters, and they sent out a second cab. It arrived. It was too small. I think we did that again, and then it was the third cab driver that we then said to him that we would do what we did before, with taking two cabs. He wasn't happy about waiting around for us for a fourth cab to come, but by now time was ticking. Eventually he hailed down another cab from another cab company that was passing by on the small little street Eliot & Pickett is on. And off we went with our two cabs to the airport. I tipped him extra for the hassle, because he helped out a great deal, and lifting the scooter in and out of the cab alone is a struggle. And unlike last time, this cab driver was good about sticking with the other guy so that Laurie could get right on her scooter when we got to the airport. And we got to our flight barely on time. Two hours of hassle, indeed.

These are just some of the struggles I watched Laurie face while we were traveling together. There seemed to be a million little hassles and problems we encountered at every turn. It took a team of support between me and the UUA to make the trip possible. And throughout it, Laurie met the obstacles cheerfully, with good humor. It was me getting angrier, more frustrated, and irritable with every encounter. But this wasn't uncommon for her. She lived with these injustices and obstacles all the time. I only had to handle them for a weekend.

Blessing the Backpacks -- Backpack Charm Craft Instructions

28 August 2015 at 18:28
From my wonderful colleagues I got the idea of doing a "blessing of the backpacks" as the children of the congregation go off to school.  It's not a new idea -- Christian churches have been doing it for years, and apparently some UUs, too -- but I had never heard of it before.  Churches often apparently put some sort of zipper pull tag on the backpacks.  Here's an example found on Pinterest:


A couple of colleagues shared their ideas, and some images, in a closed Facebook group, which started me thinking.  I'm fairly crafty with things like this, so I knew I could come up with something.  I was inspired by Karen G. Johnston's example created by her DRE and a member, but couldn't figure out their fancy knots:
http://awakeandwitness.net/2015/08/27/blessing-of-the-backpacks-a-mini-primer/
But, on the other hand, I do have some tricks up my own sleeve.
Here's my prototype:

My prototypes cost me over a dollar each to make, but to make in bulk they'll cost less than 30 cents apiece, not counting tools or jump rings.  You start with 1-inch bottle caps, the kind that are designed for jewelry and crafts.  You can get them in silver, black, mutli-colored, patterned -- really any way you want.  The ones that I used are also described as flattened bottle caps, but you can get ones that are more bottle-cap like.  My price of $0.30 each is based on using these:

Print out your pictures, sizing your pictures to one-inch.  Your church logo or the UUA logo would work nicely in these.   As you can see, I used one of my Zentangle chalices, on a star-shaped background. Please do check with me before using my artwork.  I liked the symbolism of the star for kids who are all stars. 
I can get about 45 onto one page.  And here's the big secret: I print these out on full sheets of label paper.  That makes my chalice self-adhesive, which simplifies what could be the messiest, gunkiest, error-prone stage of the process.  Label paper seems pricey, but when you price it out per item if you're making a ton of these, it's less than one cent per chalice.

You'll need to acquire a one-inch circular punch.  I like Martha Stewart's punches for my scrapbooking, so I got hers. 

Punch out your circles on the label paper.  And the next step is that BEFORE you remove the backing, stick a one-inch clear circular epoxy sticker on top of that circle.  This makes the backing much easier to get off, really.  And you're going to stick the epoxy sticker on anyway.  So do it in this order and trust me.  Then just remove the label backing and pop that circle into your bottle cap.  The bottle caps I got came pre-punched with holes and jump rings in them, so it was important to line up the top of the sticker with the top of the bottle cap.  Bottle caps are cheaper if you don't buy them punched, though, so you'll need a bottle cap punch, and then jump rings or split rings if the hole it makes is too small for your ball chain.  Probably any metal punch of the right size would do, but they sell ones specifically for this.

Jump rings are not priced into my 30 cents each, but they're less than a penny each, if you buy bulk.  This is where you have a difficult choice to make, because jump rings open up very easy if a kid is pulling on this backpack charm, but split rings are a pain to put on.  My more expensive bottle caps came with split rings already on them.  I think there's probably a tool to make those jump rings easier (I do see things called "Split ring pliers, but they just look like needle-nosed pliers with a sort of hook on the end).  If someone knows if these are helpful, please inform us in the comments.  I mostly just juggle around and pry with my needle-nose pliers until I get them opened.  They're like little mini key chains, and you know what a pain it can be to get keys on and off a regular key chain!

So that's the chalice bottle cap part of the charm done.  Next I got some bright peace sign beads to add on.  I'd add UU beads, except that I don't have any alphabet beads where the hole is big enough for the ball chain to go through.  But that would be a nice option.  Turns out you can get packs of all Us. 

And then lastly add a ball chain key chain of about four inches.  You can get these in packs pre-cut.

And there you have it!  Cute backpack charms for the blessing of the backpacks!

South Carolina: It's Time to Take It Down

21 June 2015 at 19:27
Dear South Carolina Governor & Legislators,

I was born in Charleston.  I'm a daughter of the South.  There's a city in Spartanburg County -- Landrum, SC -- that was named for some distant relatives of mine.  And my direct ancestor fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy.  My family owns land in the South that was passed down for generations, land that once we enslaved other people on. 

I understand heritage. I understand heritage is complicated.  I understand we have to remember the bad of who we were, and the hard times, along with the good of who we are, and the good times.  I understand that lives were lost and lives were changed, and the Confederacy and the Civil War continue to shape us.  I understand that we can't forget the past, nor do I want to.

I understand heritage.  I struggle with mine, celebrate mine, mourn about mine, live with mine.  Heritage is complicated.

But flying the Confederate flag doesn't represent my heritage, which goes back generations before and continues generations after the Confederacy.  It could only represent a thin slice of heritage at best.  But this symbol doesn't do even that.  It doesn't even truly represent that slice of time -- it's not the flag that flew in South Carolina during the Confederacy, it's the battle flag of another state.  It's not something that's been there, flying over or in front of government buildings, untouched, since that time. It's a symbol that was brought back into our public spaces by the resistance to the Civil Rights movement, a symbol that was brought back for reasons of hatred and racism.  It's a symbol that's been used and abused by the KKK.  It's a symbol that might seem to say "heritage" for some small percentage, but says "hatred" and "oppression" for so many others.  And it has no business on our public lands and flying over our government buildings. 

It's time to acknowledge that this symbol was put up for the wrong reasons, it's the wrong symbol, and it's time for it to come down.  It doesn't truly represent heritage.  It represents a hate that has no place in our government any more.  It represents a time when we acted wrongly, fighting against voter registration and glorifying a time of slavery. 

To truly respect our heritage, to truly honor it, we have to also be willing to honor the truth -- the complicated truth that there were things our ancestors were wrong about, and there were things they chose that we can't applaud.  My ancestors had honor and love and a number of good virtues, I'm sure.  But my ancestors drove Native Americans off their land, and then on that land my ancestors enslaved African Americans.  That's not something I want to wave a flag proudly for.  It's not something I want to forget, either.  But honoring and respecting heritage means understanding this complexity, that not all was good, not all was admirable, and not all was what we want to carry forward.  I might have German ancestors, but flying the Nazi flag wouldn't honor heritage, it would honor hate.  Flying the Confederate flag doesn't honor the complexity of heritage -- it shouts a message of oppression.

And one thing that clearly we need to not carry forward at this time in our country is a symbol that speaks of hatred, of oppression, and of slavery.  We need to not have symbols that glorify racism and oppression as part of our government and its buildings and sites.  The symbol needs to be placed in its proper context, and that is purely historical.

It's time to take down the Confederate flag.

Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum



"They died... discussing the eternal meaning of love."

18 June 2015 at 12:27
In the Civil Rights era, there were churches that were centers for civil rights organizing.  And they were attacked -- bombed, set on fire.  We know best the story of the 16th Street Baptist church where four young girls died.  In his eulogy for them, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would say, "They died between the sacred walls of the church of God, and they were discussing the eternal meaning of love."

In that same eulogy for the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also said:
"They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."
They are words he would share again in his eulogy for the Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb.

After the shooting in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, a shooting motivated by hatred of the values we stand for, the UUA launched our social justice movement "Standing on the Side of Love." 

This shooting in Charleston, South Carolina at the Emanuel AME Church says something to us in our religious faith, too. This shooting doesn't call for us to launch a movement, but to join a movement.  This shooting calls for us to be partners, work in solidarity, join coalitions, build bridges. 

These deaths say to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for Love.

The Trouble with Truancy - Part 2

13 June 2015 at 13:12
As my letter in Part 1 of this series illustrated, it's fairly easy to have a truant child.  Missing two weeks due to illness is quite easy to have happen, and the requirement that many districts have that a doctor's note is the only way to excuse the absence means a classist system of who can and will have absences excused and who will end up with a truant child.  All other things being equal, two children out for two weeks with the same two colds can end up with very different fates, not because of the nature of the child, or the diligence of the parent, but simply for economic reasons.

That income levels and truancy are related is no surprise.  A recent MLive article reported:
"Some districts, including many affluent suburban ones, reported little or no truancy. The Forest Hills schools outside Grand Rapids reported five truant students among 10,147 enrolled, and Bloomfield Hills in suburban Detroit just 32 out of 12,306. But Kentwood, another metropolitan Grand Rapids district, had 590 truant cases, representing 6.8 percent of its students, according to the data."

So what?  What does it matter if a child is labeled truant?  Well, it turns out it matters a great deal.   In Michigan, a truant child can mean a fine to a parent, and even jail time

Well, apparently that wasn't enough for our Michigan Republicans who control our legislature.  This week, Governor Snyder signed a new bill into law that cuts welfare to families if a child is truant. 

So imagine, if you will, a low-income family with three children.  The youngest child gets sick for a week, and the parent keeps her home.  It's a mild cold, so there's no need to see a doctor, but the child misses a week of school.  Now they have 5 of the 10 days towards being considered truant.  The child gets sick again.  The family can't afford to see a doctor, but keeps the child home again.  Now the child is truant.  The parents are then fined for having a truant child.  And, now, our government takes food away from the whole family. 

Governor Snyder said, "Much like the Pathways to Potential program, this legislation brings together parents, schools and the state to determine obstacles that keep students from being in school and how to overcome them."  When my child was sick a couple of years ago with a mild cold and I wrote the letter to my school board in frustration, it did bring parents and school together.  My child's principal had told me there was no way she could excuse the absence without a doctor's note.  The school board seemed to hear the situation, and agree that the policy was flawed.  Two years later, the policy is still (or back) in place.  Children are still being considered truant because of illness and income.  Now Governor Snyder thinks this will bring together parents, schools, and state?  Yes, it will -- unnecessarily.  It's completely unnecessary to bring the state into this level of involvement between schools and parents.  The fact that it's penalizing lower income people who are already struggling with the truancy laws is unconscionable. 

The Trouble with Truancy - Part 1

13 June 2015 at 01:27
Two years ago, I wrote our school district about the truancy policy.  At that time, I was told that I had presented a good case, and they were going to change their policy.  I don't know if it actually did change and then changed back, but looking at the policy on my school district's webpage, the policy is the same as the one I complained about.  In this post, I'll share that letter.  In my next post, I'll talk about why it matters, and what the Michigan government has just done that makes this even worse.


Dear JPS School Board,

I’m writing to you because I’ve been disturbed about the JPS elementary school attendance policy for some time.  Specifically, I find it disturbing that the only way an absence can be “excused” is with a doctor’s note.  My chief issue with this policy is that I think it is, in a word, classist.  In addition, I think that it represents a misuse of the medical system and it fails to respect a parent’s reasonable judgment.

The policy as it now stands requires a doctor’s note to excuse an absence.  I am fortunate to have insurance and have a family doctor I can turn to.  Even so, it may require a $20 co-pay for a visit before a doctor will be willing to write a letter, which may mean a $20 fee for a note to excuse an absence for what I know is a cold with a mild fever.  Since I’m following our school’s procedures of keeping a child home when sick, I’ll need to do this if I think she might be sick for even five days total per year.  This is doable for me, if I’m worried about the situation.  However, for a family in a harder economic situation, that $20 co-pay can be onerous.  But that’s assuming a family has a regular doctor and has insurance beyond catastrophic coverage only.  I’m certain that not all families in our school district do, with more than half of the children in our county living in poverty (http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2012/01/report_more_jackson_county_chi.html).  As you well know, most of our elementary schools qualified for the federal program supplying free school lunches for our children based on the poverty rates of our area. 

What we are creating, therefore, is a system wherein wealthier students when they get sick are less likely to be considered truant and poorer children are more likely to be considered truant, based not on their real truancy rates, but based on their access to affordable medical care.  The schools need to be helping address income inequality between our students, not creating further income inequality.

Beyond issues of class, however, this system represents a misuse of the medical system and a lack of respect for the judgment of parents.  To return to my own child’s situation, we’re told we’re supposed to keep children home if they have any fever.  However, when I keep my child home with a sniffle and a temperature that’s up one or two degrees, as I have done today, I therefore also need to call my child’s doctor and get a note from her.  In the past, the doctor has told us with cold-like symptoms and a very mild fever there’s no need for the child to see a doctor unless the condition persists beyond a couple of days.  I therefore know that there’s no need, other than the JPS policy, to seek a medical professional’s advice.  Today we called the doctor, anyway, to try to meet the policy demands.  However, we haven’t received a call back yet.  Sometimes they’ve been willing to provide a note for school without seeing her and, really, what does that prove, except that we have a good relationship with our doctor?  If they won’t write a note for today without seeing her, I’ll need for her to see the doctor, in order to prove she was sick.  My daughter may be well tomorrow, but I would need to pull her out of school tomorrow in order to get the note to excuse the first day’s absence.  (The note would probably then say that my child’s absence wasn’t excused, because she was fine by the second day.)  So now my child would have been out for one and a half days when one day would have sufficed, wasting the doctor’s time, my time, and my child’s time, just because of a poor policy.  Frankly, I’m unwilling to pull my child out of school for an unnecessary doctor’s appointment, because school is more important to me than your attendance policy.  So if this happens for eight days per year, my child will probably be referred to a truant officer for early truancy intervention.  My hope is that if this happens, “early truancy intervention” is something which focuses on telling other parents to keep their children home when they’re sick so that my child can catch fewer colds and miss fewer days, or helps set up free clinics for parents without insurance!  Of course, you can see that we’re caught it a Catch-22.

To not accept my word that my child has a mild fever and a sniffle is to disrespect my judgment as a parent, one who does care about my child’s medical status and knows that a doctor visit is not necessary.  To have to pursue it with a reluctant physician, as well, is a misuse of the medical establishment, and disrespectful to our physician, as well. 

If you all think back to the days when you were a child, and were home sick with a mild cold, you’ll remember that your parent probably called the school and told them you were sick, and that was the end of the matter.  There should be a way to continue to do this.  Be creative.  While the occasional problem of a parent keeping a child out of school more for other reasons may exist, there are ways to address this without creating a burdensome system with a difficult financial cost to the parents to it. 

Thank you for considering my argument.  I hope I have managed to convey my issue respectfully, although this policy frustrates me every time my child has been home sick.  I understand not excusing a family vacation, or even a trip to the dentist, but if you want parents to keep sick children home, as I know you do, I hope you will consider making it easier for us to do so. 

Sincerely,
Cynthia L. Landrum
Parent

New Legal Religious Discrimination in Michigan

12 June 2015 at 13:59
Michigan's Governor Snyder signed a new set of discrimination laws yesterday.  "Senate Substitute for House Bill No. 4188" states:

"Private child placing agencies, including faith-based child placing agencies, have the right to free exercise of religion under both the state and federal constitutions.  Under well-settled principles of constitutional law, this right includes the freedom to abstain from conduct that conflicts with an agency's sincerely held religious beliefs."

Both faith-based and non-faith-based agencies receive government money.  Given the separation of church and state, it should be the case that agencies receiving federal or state money are not allowed to religiously discriminate in who they serve.  However, this separation has been eroded over the years in a multitude of ways, from President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision. 

Even so, this is a new level of affront to freedom of religion.  Hobby Lobby isn't receiving government money to do its work.  It's a for-profit organization.  Adoption is a different sort of business.  Half of adoption agencies are faith-based in Michigan -- Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and the evangelical Bethany Christian Services. How much money are they receiving from the state?  Michigan Radio reports that it is "up to $10 thousand dollars a child." 

This is most notably an attack on same-sex couples.  The Catholics and Methodists both do not recognize same-sex marriage, and the president of Bethany Christian Services, William Blacquiere, has said, "At Bethany, we would never deny a family for their secular status, or single-parent, or anything of that nature. However, if the family would be in conflict with our religious beliefs, we would assist them to go to another agency."

Actually right now judges are stopped from granting two-parent same-sex adoptions already.  Same-sex parents who adopt usually end up with only one of them as the adoptive parent.  This is what started the court case that led to Michigan's challenge to the same-sex marriage ban.  And with a Supreme Court decision potentially changing the marriage equation, this might change, but right now this is the case.  So the religious right is getting ducks in a row to make sure that if you can get married in Michigan you can still be banned from adopting, denied housing, barred from public accommodations, and fired from your job the day after your wedding.  Seriously.  I do not exaggerate.  This is currently the case that all these forms of discrimination are legal, but our legislators are writing laws that ensure that they're not just legal by the default of having no legal protections from discrimination, but explicitly and purposefully legal.

However, it is not just same-sex couples who might be denied adoption.  So who else might conflict with the religious beliefs of these Christian organizations?
  • Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any people of non-Christian faiths
  • Atheists, agnostics, and the unchurched
  • Single parents and unwed couples
It wasn't that long ago that people had religious objections to interracial marriage and interracial adoption.  Even that most abhorrent form of discrimination could be seen as legal with this new legislation. Our legislature has been hard at work lately making sure that their rights to discriminate are protected at every turn.  What they're worried about, it seems, is their freedom to hate, and what the corporations want. 

What's missing in all of this, of course, is what's best for the children. 

Regarding Starr King: A Heartfelt Call

12 January 2015 at 23:41
I began this blog article in late November, and worked it through several drafts and researched it as thoroughly as I was able, and then had it reviewed by several trusted people, and then, after all that, decided not to publish it.  Instead, I wanted to reach out first directly to the Starr King Board, and so on December 15th, 2014, I sent a letter to the Starr King Board and SKSM President Rosemary Bray McNatt.  Since my December drafts, however, a lot has happened.  Two more faculty have resigned from Starr King.  Rev. Kurt Kuhwald's resignation letter and other documents can be read on Dan Harper's blog.  It's also worth noting that Rev. Kurt Kuhwald also asks the UUA Board to conduct an inquiry -- something I don't address in my statement, but worth considering further.  The UU Society for Community Ministries has put out a Statement of Concern, calling on Starr King to reverse the refusal of diplomas and to focus energy on restoring trust.  And a list has been published of colleagues pledging support for Starr King, including financial donations.  In staying silent, I was hoping for Starr King to come to resolution quickly.  That has not happened, and events have continued to escalate.  And so I feel it's time to publish the statement I worked so hard on in December, updating it only slightly to reflect recent events.  


I’m a graduate of Meadville Lombard, and believe firmly that we need Unitarian Universalist seminaries, and we need to support Unitarian Universalist seminaries institutionally and personally and financially.  Our UU seminaries have an important role in our movement.  While it is true that UU seminaries only train a fraction of our ministers in the UUA, all of our ministry and congregations benefit from them – from the scholarship that comes from them, from the fact that they keep documents and artifacts important to our movement in their libraries and buildings, and from the institutional opportunities for knowledge that they offer not just to their own seminarians but to all seminarians and ministers in our movement. 

I’m not just a graduate of Meadville Lombard, I’m also married to a graduate of Starr King.  For one year, we created an exchange program between the two schools where I studied at Starr King for the fall semester, and my husband (then fiancé) studied in Chicago for the winter and spring quarters.  I got to see first hand why so many Starr King graduates see Starr King as a magical and special place.  Rebecca Parker’s leadership while I was there was at once theologically rigorous and softly pastoral and uniquely visionary.  The faculty were demanding and yet the institution was caring.  I believe Starr King is a wonderful and unique institution, and I support it strongly. 

In addition, I joyfully embrace the calling of Rosemary Bray McNatt as the new president of Starr King School for the ministry.  Her leadership is the right leadership for this time, and it should have the opportunity to thrive.

And so I urge those Unitarian Universalists who are able, to join those pledging support for Starr King School for the Ministry at this time.  This theological school is a treasure to us as a movement.  It is an important resource for Unitarian Universalism, and needs our support to continue its important job of training Unitarian Universalists for the ministry. I will continue to give to Starr King when I am able, and I continue to believe in its overall mission and purpose.

When I was at Meadville Lombard we had a lot of fear and anxiety among the students, so I understand how that climate can happen.  There was enormous transition going on during my time there – an almost complete president, faculty, and staff  turnover, a transition in our relationship to the University of Chicago, and re-accreditation by the association of theological schools, just to name some factors.  I’ve watched events unfolding at Starr King[i] with concern and love for my friends on the faculty and board and ad hoc committee. 

Starr King had the need to investigate.  But there is clearly internal division about their response, with the faculty originally voting to confer the degrees; three faculty members speaking up about disagreements with this process; two board members, three faculty members, and one staff member resigning, all in some part related to this situation; and at least two students reported withdrawing, perhaps more.  This tells the larger community that people of good will and conscience in the system, who care deeply about the school, are not united behind the current approach.  It’s time for the board to reconsider.

Personally, if I were in this situation, I would not hand over my email account and laptop -- if I had the strength and courage that Brock and Spangenberg have.  Their clarity in understanding that doing so would violate the confidentiality expected of them as UU ministers should be applauded, not held against them.  I find it troubling that Brock and Spangenberg’s ethical stance is being considered as evidence against their fitness for ministry, rather than for it.  (“Garcia believes that students’ refusal to turn over their personal communications to the school is relevant to their fitness to be ministers,” writes the UU World; please note that SKSM disagrees with the word “believes,” essentially saying it is relevant.) 

I believe Starr King has the right to withhold degrees – but it needs to be for a clear cause.  In this case, from the beginning Starr King’s approach has been a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach -- “To be clear, the conditional conferral does not suggest that the board has concluded that those students have engaged in improper conduct. Rather, we have concluded that we do not yet have sufficient information to be able to grant the degrees unconditionally.”  Starr King’s statementsmake it clear that there is no proof of any improper behavior, nor evidence that either Brock and Spangenberg are the original leaker, nor that they are not the Strapped Student, who according to Rosemary Bray McNatt's statements has withdrawn from the school.

I’ve had members of my congregation and others who usually pays no attention to denominational politics talking to me in dismay about Starr King’s actions, particularly the demanding to see confidential personal e-mails. We’ve reached a tipping point where the response is doing more harm to the institution than the original leak did, and where Starr King stands to lose considerable respect and trust from our lay members and ministers if the situation continues much longer beyond the over half a year that it's been already.  It's time for Starr King to bring this situation to a close.   
I urge Starr King to resolve the matter of Brock's and Spangenberg's degrees quickly; to consider these students innocent until proven guilty, rather than the opposite; and remove the request to see Suzi Spangenberg’s and Julie Brock’s personal email accounts and computers.  

Julie Brock and Suzi Spangenberg were leaders in the SKSM community.  We know that they were there at an April 4 student body meeting where the leaked documents were discussed.  We know that the school says they were early recipients of the leak.  Beyond that, there has been no proof of their involvement.  And this delay has come with increasing financial cost and increasing damage to their reputations, as well. We do have an organization that functions as a gatekeeper that's equipped to evaluate this information. 

The Ministerial Fellowship Committee, if Starr King does not resolve the matter and leaves the degrees in limbo, could consider taking the unusual step of allowing Brock and Spangenberg to forego the M.Div. and consider their work done “an equivalent determined by the MFC.”  I respectfully ask of the MFC that they consider taking this action. Of course, Brock and Spangenberg should still be held to the same rigorous standards as any candidate for our ministry, and complete any other unfinished steps, such as internships.  

The students are the ones with the least power and access to resources in this situation.  Regardless of their guilt or innocence in the leaking of documents, they are also taking a principled stand and enduring financial hardship to do so. Funds not used by Brock and Spangenberg for their legal help will, with the donors’ permission, go to a fund to help seminarians in crisis.  That’s a worthy thing to support, as well.

So I also invite Unitarian Universalists to join in supporting Brock and Spangenberg’s legal defense fund. (Note: Control of the fund has being transferred to the UUSCM, and you can donate here: http://www.uuscm.org/SKSM-Student-Legal-Defense-Fund).

I don’t have any more right to decide what should be done than any other Unitarian Universalist. And yes, there are things about the situation that I don't know, but other things, such as the request for e-mails and the assumption of guilt before proof, are clear from what we do know.  This has been one of the hardest things I've ever written, because I know it's controversial, it's murky, and I have conflicting loyalties.  It pains me to think that speaking up for what I think is right may cost me friendships and be professionally or personally damaging.  That's why I've stayed silent as long as I have, and I'm sure that's true for others as well.  But my worship theme for this month is "integrity."  I have tried to act with integrity in speaking first to the SKSM Board and President, and now by speaking up for what I think is right.  This has gone on too long, and is creating more damage as it goes on to everyone involved.  It's time to change course, to deescalate, and if that doesn't happen, for UUs to speak up.  We have a right, collectively, to influence our movement, our religion, our ministry, and our theological schools.  


[i]  Here are links to documents about the situation, in addition to the newer information linked to in my introduction:

Tonight's Statement to the Jackson City Council

16 December 2014 at 17:33


Earlier this year, Jackson Together, with the support of the HRC, Jackson Area Civil Rights Awareness Association, PFLAG, and more, asked once again for this City Council to take up the issue of a Non-Discrimination ordinance to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.  It was tabled.  We were asked to support this tabling of the motion by our mayor and vice mayor and Equality Michigan, the reason being that they thought that the state legislature, at the behest of the governor, would amend Elliott-Larsen to include LGBT people, and that would provide some of the same protections as our NDO at the state level.  That change did not occur, as you know.  The Mayor and Vice Mayor pledged to us that this issue would be brought back up in December if Elliott-Larsen was not amended.  I’m here to hold you to that promise.  The people of Jackson have waited too long for equality.

We’ve heard some nonsense about how this is not doable, and we’ve heard some nonsense that it’s bad for business.  I call this nonsense because sixteen cities larger than ours in this state have passed just this sort of ordinance, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek.  They have all proven that this is possible to do, and that it’s not bad for business.  In fact, many companies are looking for places where their employees will be protected, and have already passed nondiscrimination policies for their corporations.

Perhaps you think we’re too small to tackle this.  Yet twenty-one smaller cities have also proven this possible, including Adrian, Fenton, Grand Ledge, Mt. Pleasant, Pleasant Ridge (which has a total area of half of a square mile -- I grew up there), and Traverse City.  

A recent Rolling Stone article named Michigan as the fifth worst state in the nation for LGBT people.  They wrote:

Dave Garca, the executive director of Affirmations LGBT center, told CBS.... "It is still legal to fire people in Michigan for being gay, we can not marry, cannot adopt, and the governor signed away domestic partner benefits for LGBT public employees," Garcia said… it has "created an anti-gay environment across the entire state."
Garcia has a point: The Guardian's 2012 survey showed that Michigan has almost no protections for LGBT people at any level, putting it on par with Mississippi.[1]

It’s time for Jackson, Michigan to rise above the level of Jackson, Mississippi.  It’s time for the City Council to act.

Ferguson

24 November 2014 at 23:45
I would normally post this on the Lively Tradition, where I've been doing most of my blogging as of late, but posts there get reviewed first by Tom Shade.  Tom was down in Missouri this week, but was headed home today.  He stopped in the middle of Illinois and turned back South again as the Grand Jury results were announced.  

I have no eloquent words to share tonight.  Just a cry of "no more."

My heart is heavy tonight as I hear the Grand Jury's decision.  It's not a surprise, any more than it was a surprise that George Zimmerman was acquitted of Trayvon Martin's death.  And it may be that this decision is what is legally right, but it means no justice for Michael Brown, just as there has been no justice for so many young black men and boys who have been killed by law enforcement, including Tamir Rice, age 12, who died yesterday in Cleveland, shot for playing with a toy gun. 

If Darren Wilson didn't break the law, what we need in this country, I'm feeling, are new laws.  We need new laws limiting the use of deadly force.  We need new laws that prescribe other methods of stopping people whenever possible.  We need police to enter a situation and not escalate it, but deescalate it. 

If it's legal to shoot an unarmed man six times, we need to change that law.  And changing that law isn't on the Grand Jury, it's on us, the American people. 

We need to have a national conversation about the use of lethal force by our police, and how this is being so commonly used against unarmed black men in this country, and how we're letting that happen.

UU Sermon Writing - Part 6

17 November 2014 at 14:31
This is my final post in this series on UU sermon writing.  I've been trying to establish that sermon-writing for UU ministers is a more time-intensive practice than in many other preaching traditions, that it takes a bigger percentage of time for the new minister, the long-term minister, and the part-time minister.  That being most of us, what I'm saying is it takes a whole lot of time and there are a lot of variables that make it take even longer than some might think, and it's not a one-size-fits-all thing.

So then I've turned to what we can do about it.  In my last post I reviewed the ideas of theme preaching and preaching extemporaneously, both of which I recommend.  The review of Nate Walker's upcoming book Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship, which he kindly mentioned in the comments of the last post, says, "all of us are smarter than any one of us."  This is why theme-based preaching is so helpful.

So I think finding ways to make the sermon-writing process easier is good.  And I think those calling for extemporaneous preaching as a way to get out of our heads and into our hearts may be right about that.  But the truth is even with talk of "congregations and beyond" and even with branding and insight into new types of ministry, right now the Sunday morning worship is still the heart of what we church ministers do.  It's appropriate that we throw much of our lives into that work, and while it's always good to find ways to make that easier, another option is to take that work that we've poured our lives into and use it more

One thing that the internet age has done is upped the ante for good preaching.  No longer is it sufficient to be the best preacher in town.  An "excellent sermon" is now a higher standard as we can easily compare our sermon on any subject to dozens of colleagues' sermons with a simple internet search. At the same time, we're firmly rooted in an academic tradition which prizes original writing and academic honesty.  Ministers found guilty of plagiarism face strong consequences.  And I don't disagree with that -- plagiarism is not honest.  But think about this idea for a moment.  What if instead of always crafting our own sermons we sometimes shared, openly, what we felt was the best writing out there on the subject at hand -- even if it was not our own?  Why shouldn't it be okay for some of our worship services to be focused on the work we find to be most excellent in our movement?  Right now a good sermon gets shared maybe five times, for most of us, except for those who are invited regularly as guest speakers who might use a sermon more than that.  You might preach it once in your own church, twice doing pulpit exchanges, once at a General Assembly workshop if it wins an award, and then it might get picked up and read at a UU fellowship.  Given that most of us guest-preach or do pulpit exchanges only a few times a year, I'm guessing, most of our best work ends at our own church's doors.  And sometimes we just know, let's face it, that a sermon isn't working for us, and that our words are not coming together on a subject.  Maybe it should be more okay to say, "my colleague X speaks eloquently on this subject, and today I'm going to share their sermon, with a few changes that I'll mention where I'm personalizing it to our location." We should take those award-winning sermons and archive them (with an index of topics or some other search method in place), and make our own best work more broadly available. 

It's a radical, and uncomfortable, idea, I suspect.  But I think we need to think outside the box like this in this new era.

More radical than this idea is something that's already being proposed, and that's multi-site ministries.  Look for a new webpage up about this in the next couple of weeks.  If I think about it then, I'll come back and link it in, but it's still being developed right now (for now, here's the GA workshop).  But this is the work coming out of Scott Tayler's office at the UUA and with regional staff focused on it across the country (in MidAmerica, that would be Dori Davenport).  When congregations are yoked together in different ways, it may become more the practice that the best sermons we do will get heard in more locations -- or at least the best preachers will get heard in more locations, and hopefully have the time they need to devote to their craft.  You see, it's also true that not all of us are great at everything.  It's hard to admit it sometimes, but we all have strengths and weaknesses.  And for some of us, preaching is a weakness, yet we may have other real strengths for parish ministry.  But there aren't enough associate positions to go around if they're limited to the big churches.  That's why we need to bring congregations together so that we can all play more to our strengths and have someone else helping the church in our weakness areas. 

These are just two models of how we can reinvent the preaching role.  But we need to explore a lot more ideas like these as we respond to the changing religious landscape around us.  What are the ways in which our intellectual professorial model of the sermon is working for us, and what are the ways it is not?  

UU Sermon Writing - Part 5

16 November 2014 at 16:00

My interim friends have told me I have overstated the case on interim preaching, and that there are many who always write fresh material or whose rewrites are extensive enough that it's not much of a time-saver to have old material to use.  I believe they're right, and apologize for overstating the case.  I think it's still true, however, that the time when sermon-writing takes the most time is early in ministry in general and after a number of years in a long-term ministry.  The longer you go in any pulpit the more you know you've used your best stories and examples.  Moving to a new church lets you use those pieces again, even if written into new sermons.  Early in ministry, in general, you have a lot of fresh examples, but are unused to the rhythm of regular preaching, which makes it harder.

So, turning to the focus of my last parts of this series, I've talked about how preaching in our religious tradition takes up a significant portion of the week, and a higher percentage for part-time ministries.  It's appropriate that this big percentage of our working hours goes into the production that is Sunday morning, since this is the most visible part of ministry and Sunday morning worship is the heart of the church still.  Even so, it's a lot of work for a one-time production, and it leaves less time for all those other parts of ministry which may be things that would attract the non-churched "nones," like web presence, social justice work, community building, adult religious education, and other writing and other public speaking and public presence. 

There are two things we can do to change the equation.  One is spend less time on Sunday worship.  The other is use the worship service more.

For the first (and less radical) option, I highly recommend the workshop on "Preaching by Heart" ( http://www.preachingbyheart.org) by Rev. Stephen Shick  and Rev. Dr. M'ellen Kennedy.  I went through the workshop last winter.  I'm a manuscript preacher and love the written word.  I love writing.  But I tried preaching extemporaneously from that point forward on a regular basis (less often this fall, but still using it), and the results were great.  Even though I still felt like it kept me from finding the exact perfect words that I might have chosen on paper, my congregation greatly appreciated the extemporaneous preaching, something they had always liked about my predecessor, Rev. Susan Smith.  And it saved a lot of time.

Shick and Kennedy argue convincingly that people today are suffering from spiritual disconnection, and the direct experience of connection more present in extemporaneous preaching is what they're longing for more than for the perfectly crafted theological argument.

Another way to change the equation by spending less time in worship preparation is through theme preaching, which is a movement that is sweeping our country.  The secret to this isn't that we're preaching on themes, it's that we're doing it in groups and then the groups can share resources -- stories, images, examples, quotations.  Each preacher can then frame those in their own way, but it saves a lot of research time.  Essentially we're getting that lectionary benefit that Christian ministers have by working with each other and sharing themes.

There are a number of theme-based groups, I think, across our movement.  But the two main ones I'm aware of are the "Soul Matters" group ( http://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com) led by Scott Tayler (Congregational Life Director at the UUA) and the themes published by All Souls, Tulsa ( http://themebasedministry.org). 

I would guess that each of these tactics can decrease worship preparation anywhere from 25-50%.  For me, preaching extemporaneously probably saves me 5 hours of actual writing time, but all the other preparation time is the same, research particularly doesn't go away.  Soul Matters themes, on the other hand, changed things in the opposite way -- research is decreased by maybe as much as half, but the writing time is the same.  Since trying themes I've used less extemporaneous preaching, so I can't speak to how the two might work together, but it's conceivable that together they could decrease worship preparation time very significantly by decreasing both the writing and the research. 

Next and final: worship and the changing church -- using the worship service MORE.

UU Sermon Writing - Part 4

15 November 2014 at 23:44

I've talked about why UU sermon writing takes more time, why UU ministers don't preach every Sunday, and why the dynamics are tougher for part-time ministers.  Next I wanted to talk about some models for making this situation more workable, particularly in light of the changing dynamics of church life.  But before I do that, I want to talk about one more thing that really belongs in Part 1 or 2, which is for whom does sermon-writing take the most work?

My suspicion is that there are two categories of ministers who need the most time for sermon-writing.  The first is ministers who are new to the ministry.  These ministers don't have a large number of old sermons to draw from, although they have a handful from seminary and internship.  Their advantage is that their seminary learnings are fresh, and that they've had more recent experiences of being regular worshippers at other ministers' worship services, but they have a disadvantage of less experience in the work of writing sermons week after week without pause.

The second category of ministers who take more time for sermon-writing are those who have been in their current pulpits for several years.  Any bank of sermons they had coming into that pulpit has been used up, and they have to cover the same holidays for years running and bring new approaches each year. 

These two categories of ministers will need the most time for sermon-writing.  Those who will need the least time are those coming to a new pulpit from an old one, who have built up a bank of sermons from which to draw.  While every preacher will need new material to respond to events in the world and in the individual church, and most sermons will need a rewrite for a new context, these ministers are still at an advantage having large blocks of sermons that they can use from week to week.

This is particularly a useful feature in interim ministry, of course, because that ministry has all the regular work of ministry plus particular goals of the interim ministry period to achieve.  Having blocks of sermon-writing time freed up for the other work is important.  The down-side of this is that if the congregation gets used to the level of activity of an interim minister using old worship materials, then they may expect that same level out of their newly settled minister, as well.

Up next: changing models for the changing church

UU Sermon Writing - Part 3

14 November 2014 at 16:16

In the last couple of posts, I've outlined why it is that the sermon-writing process is different for UU ministers and why it is that we are not in the pulpit every Sunday.  And, of course, this has ramifications.  And the impact of this is different for bi-vocational (part-time) ministers.  It's important to look at this, since bi-vocational ministry is getting a lot of interest these days because of the increasing struggle of churches to afford full-time ministry, particularly in the changing religious landscape with fewer people in younger generations interested in traditional church.  The bi-vocational trend may need to look different in our UU churches than it does in other denominations.

Generally in our movement, it seems that half-time ministers preach twice a month for ten months of the year, or a total of 20 sermons.  They don't really get extra Sundays off for denominational leave; those are just scheduled into the half time that they're not working -- even though, of course, denominational work and continuing education is, indeed work.  Note that two half-time ministries would equal more than one full-time ministry -- a minister with two half-time ministries would have no off Sundays, and no Sundays free for continuing education, chapter meetings, and General and District/Regional Assemblies, unless that half-time minister was preaching at two churches on the same weeks at different times.

Now think about what percentage of a minister's time is devoted to preparing for and leading worship.  With a full-time minister, it might be as much as 20 hours a week on those weeks the minister is preaching, or 60 hours in a four-Sunday month.  If that minister is working, conservatively, 50 hours a week for those 4 weeks of the month (pretend this month is February that we're talking about), then that's 60/200 hours, or 30% of their time devoted to worship.

With a half-time minister, suppose that minister is working, again conservatively, 25 hours a week for four weeks of the month, and preaching twice using 40 hours devoted to worship preparation.  That's 40/100 or 40% of their time.  So the bi-vocational minister will need a greater percentage of their time for worship preparation. 

The problem is, what do you decrease and do less than half of?  Not pastoral care.  Trust me, you can't just refuse to answer every-other pastoral need.  You're doing 100% of that, not the 50% that half-time ministry would suggest.  So that's going to take a double percentage.  Now you need to cut something else even more.  Perhaps you only respond to half of the social justice issues in your community?  The major area to cut is committee work and administration, but administration is a hidden work of the minister to begin with, that congregations don't think you're spending much of your time on.

Basically, as every half-time minister knows, there's no such thing as half-time ministry. 

This becomes even more complicated for 3/4-time ministries, particularly when increasing from half-time ministries.  A church increasing from half time with 20 Sundays wants naturally to move to 30 Sundays for 3/4 time, which is virtually full-time ministry from a preaching standpoint.  With preaching and worship being a large percentage of the job. 

If, again, you start with assuming a 50-hour week, 3/4 time of a 4-week month would be 150 hours.  Three sermons at 20 hours each would be 60/150, or 40% again.   It's a slightly better struggle than half-time ministry, because you're still doing 100% of pastoral care and 100% of everything else that you can't really do less at, but now you're getting paid for 75% of it.  So it's closer to workable.  But the big problem is when you try to go to full-time ministry without any substantial increase in the number of Sundays, so what the congregation is getting for paying you 25% more is basically just the good feeling of knowing they're paying you fairly for the work you've already been doing, but they aren't going to see much more result for it.  I suspect, as a result, sadly, the 3/4-to-full jump is the hardest to make.

Ultimately, I want to say that bi-vocational ministry is harder in our tradition because the worship preparation time is harder in our tradition, and it's the most visible and desired part of ministry, and part-time ministers really are seldom given the amount of time they need to devote to it, without just working more and more hours for part-time pay.  This is one reason why you find ministers less willing, in our tradition, to consider part-time ministry. 

UU Sermon Writing - Part 2

13 November 2014 at 15:14

In my last post, I talked about one major reason why UU ministers usually don't preach every Sunday of the year, and why our tradition is different from Christian churches about this.  In addition, there are the following reasons:

First, and most importantly, we believe in the prophetic power of the laity.  We're not the only ones with something to say about our faith, about the big questions, about the future of the church, about social justice.  We have amazing lay people, and we believe in sharing our free pulpit with them.  This is a major difference from traditions which believe the ordained have a more direct connection with God, and a difference from traditions that don't let lay people preach without license.  While we often give ministers a quality control responsibility for how their pulpit is shared, we fundamentally believe in the "prophethood of all believers."  Our lay people are amazing, and we want to hear them.

Secondly, we have an increasing understanding that a healthy church is helped by a healthy minister, and that our ministers have high-stress jobs where they are always on call, and have little time to spend with family and friends who work or go to school in a regular work week.  We want ministers to have friends and to have family, and to get some time to spend with them.  That means they should limit their working evenings and have some Sundays off. 

So how often do we preach?  That varies tremendously.  But what I often hear is that the average UU minister (full-time) gets one Sunday off per month (for 10 months), plus 4 weeks of vacation and 4 weeks of study leave.  And then often added to this is up to 4 weeks of denomination leave for things like General Assembly, District/Regional Assembly, UUMA Institute and Chapter meetings, other continuing education, and study groups.  Some of these may not actually encompass a Sunday, but may take up enough of the week to make it difficult to prepare a sermon for Sunday.  So my math would say that full-time ministry would look like 52 Sundays a year minus 10 off minus 4 vacation minus 4 study leave minus up to 4 denominational leave, and the result would be 30-34 Sundays per year leading or participating in the worship life of the church. 

Next up:  Implications for bi-vocational ministry and implications for the changing church.

UU Sermon Writing - Part 1

13 November 2014 at 14:37


With all the discussion in recent months about bivocational ministry, it's worth discussion what implications it has for that central role of the minister: the preacher.

My assertion is that Unitarian Universalist preaching for our ministers is a very different thing from preaching in Christian traditions, and from what lay people experience when they preach.  And the reasons that this is different are also some of the reasons why many of our full-time ministers don't preach every Sunday.  Here are some of those reasons:

First, in many Christian traditions, there's an assumption that all your sermons are going to in some way tie back to that specific faith and its religious text, the Bible.  You've spent much of your seminary career studying that particular text and you know it well.  Your members are not surprised to hear the same stories coming up in worship again and again, and the same Biblical images.  You may have a lectionary that you use that tells you which passages to use for each week of the year.  You have online resources of sermon starters, stories, examples, and more, to go with that lectionary.  And you probably have a group of local or online colleagues who are doing that same lectionary that you can discuss the week's choices with.

Our lay people when they preach have something of a similar experience, in that they're often preaching on something that they're an expert on, or at least is their real passion.  And they may have months to prepare that one particular sermon.

Contrast both of these with the UU minister's experience.  While you've had four years of theological school, you're expected to be well-versed in not just our religious tradition of UUism, and not just that tradition plus Christianity, but that tradition, Christianity, and all the world's religions.  But then these world religions and theology while they may inform your preaching, will likely not comprise all of your topics.  It is a common experience for the UU preacher to tackle a number of new sermon topics each year, each of which might require extensive new reading in an area completely new to the preacher, and which may be a topic never used again. 

This is the number one reason I think our preaching takes a larger percentage of our time, and also why we don't preach every Sunday even while full-time. 

The amount of time it takes a minister will vary, but I've often heard colleagues saying it takes them two full days of sermon-writing, although most of our letters of agreement give us one sermon-writing day.  20 hours is a number I've heard multiple times, which would equal about half of a regular worker's full-time week.  That 20 hours may include research, meeting with musicians and worship associates, writing, and more.  It seems like a lot of time, but as central as Sunday morning still is to our tradition, and with our expectation of scholarly and original work, it's not surprising that we put so much emphasis on it.

Coming up next:
-- Other reasons UU ministers get some Sundays off
-- Implications for bivocational ministry
-- The changing church and implications for worship

A Witness on Wheels: General Assembly Misses the Mark

12 September 2014 at 18:36
I wrote the following piece right after General Assembly this year, but left it unpublished for a few months to reflect on it.  Reading the UU World piece on "Fired Up: General Assembly Energized Unitarian Universalists with New Models of Ministry and Outreach" fired me up to finally publish it. 

At General Assembly this year, I was using a scooter. It’s not the first time I’ve been on wheels – I was using a wheel chair for a semester in college, due to broken bones. As for scooters, I’ve been using them there for the last several years, because it helps me with pain management. This year, newly diagnosed with various foot and ankle problems, it was more of a necessity than ever. As someone who is usually about on legs rather than wheels, every time I’ve been in this situation I’ve learned a lot. And I’m aware enough at this point to know there is still a lot more that I’m not aware of about how people on wheels experience the world.

This General Assembly was the most difficult one I’ve experienced in terms of accessibility. The problems included the facility, the planning, and even the theology. But one event stands out as the most painful for me because it went beyond facility and planning problems and became an event where the participation of other GA attendees made the situation worse and worse.

This year at GA, the big witness event was Providence’s “Waterfire.” The plan was for everyone to gather for worship, and then process to the Waterfire location, a couple of blocks away. I knew enough about how difficult the witness events on wheels can be to check in with the accessibility table, where they gave me a map of where was accessible and where was not, and told me the plan was for all the scooters and wheelchairs to exit worship first, directly behind Peter Morales and some other dignitaries and people on stage, and for everybody else to wait and let those on wheels go first. This sounded workable, so I decided to go.

At the “Dunk” – the Dunkin’ Donuts Center where worship was held – there were only two elevators that we had access to. While the lower level is at ground level, the main entrance is up a huge flight of stairs to the second level. With the dozens of scooters and wheelchairs in use at GA, this can cause quite a backlog when everyone tries to exit the lower level at once. We can stay on the upper level, but there’s a limited number of spots (I got the very last one for Sunday worship), and if you wish to participate in plenary (now called “General Session”), you need to go to the lower level to reach the microphones. After opening worship, they held everybody in for a few songs so the people on scooters and wheelchairs could exit first. Of course, some people had exited at the same time anyway, making the request moot, but then people were waiting for elevators for nearly an hour before the last ones were out. It was a nice gesture, but completely inadequate to the problem, to sing an extra few songs so that we could exit before the throng.

For the Waterfire event, therefore, they had planned another exit. We were to follow our President (along with our family or companions) out the zamboni entrance into the alley and then zip around to the front, which we did. That part went smoothly. I was about three scooters behind Pres. Morales, and the chaplains were keeping pace with me for a while, and then moved ahead and joined the people on foot at the front, as the scooters spread themselves out a bit, to get onto the single-file sidewalk, and give ourselves enough space between each scooter or wheelchair to see terrain and obstacles, and to stop if we needed to stop suddenly. The scooters have no breaks.

When we got to the front, some of the gathered UUs had filled up the sidewalk. We had to carve a path through, following President Morales, but the walkers who were escorting us called out for people to move to let us through, and most did. A few inserted themselves into the procession, taking up our spaces that let us see the uneven sidewalks and the curbs. We navigated through the crowd at the front of the Dunk, and got to the next curb. The crowd behind us started walking.

As we processed up the next block, dozens of UUs started walking around us toward the front of the procession. Our walking companions called out to them to tell them they were requested to let the scooters go first. Most ignored the calls to let us do so. As they would get in front of a set of scooters, they would start filling in the gap we were leaving so that we could see terrain and curbs. We got pushed farther and farther back.

On the next block, a steady stream of UUs started to pass me on the curb. We were held up by the crowd in front of us, having to stick to the sidewalk.  Sticking to the sidewalk, you can only go as fast as the person in front of you.  However, those who wanted to truck on by on the curb could do so easily and get up to the front. It’s much the same phenomenon of when a lane closes on the highway, and some cars have merged over and are going slow in the one lane that’s open, but other cars zip by on the shoulder, and then squeeze in the lane farther ahead.  I called out to some folks passing by to try to explain the situation, but was rebuffed or ignored. Admittedly, I may have sounded a bit frustrated by that point.

Why does it matter? Why should the scooters go first? First, it was an act of grace, an act of inclusion, a recognition that we’re often forced to the back of the line, the back of the bus. Second, it’s a necessity for us to have the space to see in front of us. In a crowd, that means you relegate us to the back, or you allow us to go first. The third reason has to do with getting us to a place where we can see the event, as I will get to shortly.

By the time we got to the Waterfire location, I was a full block behind Peter Morales and the chaplains,  despite staying dangerously close to the scooters in front of me. He held the crowd of UUs who had gotten ahead of us at the corner, while the scooters were all directed around to the ramp to get down to the water. The staff at the Waterfire location directed us over to a ramp that was full of UUs watching the water.

They had us wait for a few minutes, and at first were suggesting we park on the ramp. The woman who had been escorting us asked a fellow standing on the ramp railing videotaping if he could move for us. “No, I can’t,” he replied. Then we were told another woman had an idea of how to handle things. She escorted one scooter at a time down the ramp, and over to the area that had been roped off, presumably for us, full of standing people in Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts. She carved a spot out in the people for one scooter at a time, getting us each all the way up to the railing. And so I was carved out a spot by the railing, with clumps of UUs standing on each side of me, and could see absolutely nothing for quite a while, since with the nose of the scooter in front of me I was effectively a row behind, and seated, with people standing virtually in front of me.  I could see whatever happened directly in front, but no more. The women to my left and right, though, were gracious – more gracious than I, muttering under my breath – in helping me to eventually see when they understood the nature of the problem, and, of course, it was crowded and they wanted to see, as well. Another woman on a scooter told me later that she had one couple between her and the rail that refused to move to the left or the right, despite there being space to do so, and so she saw next to nothing.

It’s a different feeling of hopelessness for me being on a scooter in a crowd where you’re completely pinned in. On foot, you can always force your way out. On a scooter, I feel trapped, like I couldn’t get out if I wanted to. I remember feeling that way at the social witness event at Tent City at the Phoenix GA. But there, there was a feeling of such goodwill and generosity from my fellow UUs. Our bus chaplain, who is a friend of mine, stuck with me all night. She left her cases of water to distribute by me, and her backpack, so that she would know where they were, and I was her touchstone and she was mine for the evening.  When I needed to move around, the crowd helped. They lined a path and kept it clear. The UUs on duty made sure we were safe, and all was kept orderly. 

Waterfire was the opposite feeling. I felt isolated and abandoned in the midst of a crowd of people Standing on the Side of Love.

After the fires were all lit and some singing had happened, and the crowd thinned a little, it seemed like a good time to leave and try to explore some of the rest of the Waterfire event. My scooter got stuck on the cobblestones, and the friendly crowd of UUs did help me to get started and get out of the space. Trying to explore the rest of Waterfire, however, was a disaster on wheels, but I was on my own with my family and not with anyone from GA at that point – which was part of the problem. My little map was helpful, but getting anywhere on the wheels was nearly impossible. I accidentally took the sidewalk instead of the street at one point, and had to ask about a hundred people to move so I could get down it, as they were still watching from there down to the water. I forced my way miserably down to the love tent, my voice hoarse from asking people to get out of the way, found the tent and got a carnation, and tried to move beyond it to see what the tents beyond were. The crowd was so thick at that point that I couldn’t really maneuver at all, much less really see what was there. My family and I turned around in frustration and headed back to the convention center where I was let in to park my scooter for the night.

In the end, it just really wasn’t an accessible event. I got further than anyone else on wheels I spoke with did, and that wasn’t far, and didn’t encompass most all of the UU-sponsored spots. I think it would be more honest for the GA planners to say, “This big cornerstone event of GA just isn’t accessible,” and then for our gathered assembly to wrestle with the honest emotions of what it means to have a major part of GA that all of us don’t have access to. I think we could learn something from that exercise. What I’m hoping for the future is for the GA attendees to learn and understand why the scooters are being allowed to go first and why it’s not okay to just hop around us. I’m hoping for the GA Planning Committee to learn that choosing a location and events so inaccessible isn’t simply “a necessary trade-off,” it’s an act of oppression. And I’m hoping that for future GAs, we can show real improvement both through stronger planning and through educating our attendees further.

After GA, one of my colleagues posted on Facebook the question of whether we should change the name “Standing on the Side of Love,” because it’s not inclusive of those on wheels. People quickly responded that it’s a metaphor, not to be taken literally. I used to feel that way, too.  After this Standing on the Side of Love event, it felt like in Providence it was meant to be taken literally, after all. We can do better than this as a faith. We can do better than this for social witness. I’m hoping we will, and that I can feel included in "Standing on the Side of Love" again.

The Meaning of #Ferguson

19 August 2014 at 13:50
Generally I write about things on my blog that are not the same things as I'm preaching on -- the blog is an outlet for thoughts that aren't about something I will be preaching on, but still want to get out there.  This past week, I threw out my regularly scheduled sermon to write about Ferguson, as many ministers did around the country.  Because I was channeling all my reading and research and thoughts into the sermon, however, it meant a lack of blog writing on the subject.  For those not in my pews, therefore, I realize it can feel like I've been silent on the subject.  So I'm doing what I don't very often do, and posting my entire sermon, lightly edited, to this blog.  The sermon I was to give was a reprise of one I did post to this blog, a sermon entirely in rhyme about Earth Day and The Lorax.  It's the tenth anniversary of my call to the church, and I had asked people to vote on their favorite sermons of ones I have given over the past ten years.  So during announcements, I announced the change thusly:
There once was a minister who planned far ahead,
Not knowing that current events would instead
Make her wish her week’s sermon was not planned
So that she could respond to events in our land.

She had planned to give her whole sermon in rhyme.
When she gave it before, it was liked at the time.
It was a sermon that was given for a holiday, Earth Day,
And speaking in rhyme was an unusual way
To bring attention to the message of global warming
And all the climate trouble that’s forming

It’s still a relevant message, so she’ll give it next week,
But if it was next week’s sermon on art that you seek,
Well, don’t fret, because it’s likely a topic this year.
Ann Green, you see, is likely to steer
The sermon she purchased at auction that way.
And, so the message that you’ll hear today
Is not the one that was in your Bellnote.
Not the one that got the vote,
That was submitted when Cindy asked for your choice
Of sermon for her anniversary to voice.

Nevertheless, there’s more ways to celebrate,
This ten-year occasion, than just when we congregate.
A party at Elissa’s is coming on Saturday at seven.
Or seven thirty, either way, it’s sure to be heaven.
We’ll hope to see you there.  And again, come next week,
If it was the Lorax/Earth sermon you came here to seek.

It was a light moment in an otherwise solemn service.  The reading was "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes.  And here's the sermon.  Please forgive that my footnotes are not all in Chicago Style, and that it's still a little bit rough.  Sermons are an oral presentation style, not a written one.  The hashtag in the title is a reference, of course, to the role of Twitter in getting this story out.  There are many things I haven't covered in this sermon -- how the rights of the press have been suppressed, the discussion that's being had about the militarization of the police, and how the media covers the deaths of young, black men (although I mention this briefly).  Those are all important subjects to look at, and I hope I will, in time.

"The Meaning of #Ferguson"

Ninety-five years ago, in the summer of 1919, which would come to be known as the “Red Summer,” race riots broke out in cities across this country – in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Connecticut, Tennessee, Maryland,  Arizona, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Texas, you get the picture.  Not here, but Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.  In Chicago, they started when a young black man was stoned while swimming in an area reserved for whites, and drowned, and Chicago police refused to arrest those who did the stoning.[i]  The Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay wrote a poem for that summer, “If We Must Die,”  The poem reads:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Fifty years ago was the summer known as Freedom Summer, a summer devoted to registering African Americans to vote in Mississippi.  It was then and there that three young civil rights workers were killed – twenty-one-year old James Earl Chaney, an African American young man from Mississippi, and two Caucasian young men from New York, 20-year-old Andrew Goodman and 24-year-old Michael Schwerner.  Paul Simon was a classmate of Andrew Goodman, and he dedicated a song he had written before the death, “He Was My Brother,” to Goodman:
He was my brother
Five years older than I
He was my brother
Twenty-three years old the day he died
Freedom rider
They cursed my brother to his face
“Go home, outsider,
This town is gonna be your buryin’ place
The folk-singer Tom Paxton wrote, similarly:
Calm desperation and flickering hope,
Reality grapples like a hand on the throat.
For you live in the shadow of ten feet of rope,
If you're Goodman and Schwerner and Chaney.

A lot of things have changed since 95 years ago and 50 years ago.  But this summer, the way things have erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, it’s bringing those summers back to mind.  There are no songs or poetry emerging yet that I’ve heard, although time will tell.  What we have, in the internet age, is a hashtag -- #iftheygunnedmedown.  What the hashtag is about is young African-American men and women posting two different pictures of themselves on Twitter.  One is a picture of them in college or high school graduation robes, or in military uniform.  The other is in street clothes, flashing a gang sign.  And the question is, if they gunned me down, which picture would the media use? 

This sermon is not about the details, and about whether this young man, Michael Brown, was a good kid or a thug.  What I have to say today is about why this case has become so important, why we’re talking about this young man’s death at all, and why there is protesting still going on down in Ferguson.

So, briefly, what we think we know, for those who haven’t been following the news, is that a young man, 18-years-old and college bound, African-American, was killed by a police officer in Ferguson.  It looks like, based on the latest news, that Michael Brown may have stolen some cigarettes or cigars from a local store.  It was reportedly a strong-arm robbery, which means the thief was unarmed.  It would be shoplifting, but it appears was a tussle with the store owner who tried to stop the thief, which would make it strong-arm robbery by definition.  This robber is alleged to be Michael Brown, but that’s not completely proven.  [Update: It’s now being reported that the shopkeepers didn’t call in to 911, that Michael Brown paid for his purchases, and that a call was made by another shopper.]  It then appears that as Michael Brown was walking somewhere, a police officer ordered him to get out of the street and stop walking in the street.  One witness says they then ran, another witness says she saw Michael Brown struggling to get away from the police officer who had grabbed him through his window.  It also seems that while the stop was unrelated to the robbery, by this point the officer may have linked Brown to the robbery.  Brown then, according to a witness, breaks away and runs away, and is shot.  He then spins around, holds his hands up in the air to surrender, and is shot several more times.  He then is left, dying or dead, for quite a while, untouched, with a crowd gathering, until an ambulance arrives. 

So Michael Brown was not, possibly, a perfect citizen for us to be rallying around.  Or maybe he was just an 18-year-old kid out for a walk.  Whether he was or was not does not matter.  It’s really beside the point.  As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow:
When black youth find it difficult or impossible to live up to these standards—or when they fail, stumble, and make mistakes, as all humans do—shame and blame is heaped upon them. If only they had made different choices, they’re told sternly, they wouldn’t be sitting in a jail cell; they’d be graduating from college. Never mind that white children on the other side of town who made precisely the same choices—often for less compelling reasons—are in fact going to college. The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners.  All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives.[ii]
In Michael Brown’s situation, his mistakes, if he made any, didn’t lead to his incarceration, but to his death.  Here in 2014, it seems that this young man’s life, Michael Brown’s life, matters beyond his family, but to the nation.  Why? 

This story of Michael Brown came on the heels of another African-American man, Eric Garner, who was killed this summer by the police, in New York City.[iii]  An asthmatic, he was put in an illegal choke hold and died on the street.  Also this summer, John Crawford, in Ohio, was shot and killed inside a Walmart.  Unlike Michael Brown and Eric Garner, he was armed.  Armed with a BB gun he picked up on the shelf in Wal-Mart, with intent to, perhaps, purchase.  And Ezell Ford, in California, was killed this summer.  Also unarmed, it’s reported he was shot in the back while lying on the ground.  Dante Taylor, in California, this week, was unarmed, tazed by the police when he resisted arrest, and died.  A robbery suspect had ridden away on a bicycle, and Dante Taylor was on a bicycle.  Many of these African-American men didn’t behave perfectly in the situation.  But they were all unarmed, all African-American, all dead at the hands of police. 
What is true in this country is that white Americans and black Americans have a very different experience of law enforcement in this country, and very different expectations of how we’ll be treated in encounters with them.  White Americans, largely, are taught that police are to be respected, admired, and are there to protect you.  Police can be expected to come when you call, to respond to you politely, and to treat you with respect.  Police are not expected to hassle you or stop you when you’re walking down the street or driving down the street, unless you’re speeding.  And when you are stopped for speeding you have a polite chat, get your ticket, and drive on your way.  White people can reasonably expect when they’re in a store and walking out that they will not be stopped; even if the security alarm buzzes as you go out, you’ll be waved on your way.  How many of you watch Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC?  Did you know she is a Unitarian Universalist?  Melissa Harris-Perry reports that a black person is killed by a white police officer at least twice a week from 2006-2012.[iv]

The protests in Ferguson have taken up the chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” as reportedly Michael Brown had his hands up and said, “Don’t shoot.” 

After Trayvon Martin, we heard a lot in the media about how African-American men are socialized in this country – told respect and not challenge law enforcement in any way, because those encounters, in the African-American community, are considered to be encounters that can easily become deadly.  It’s hard for white people to understand the reality of growing up and living in a way where the police aren’t your protectors, they’re your antagonists, where you might be stopped and detained regularly for no reason. 
This isn’t new.  In 2001, talking about a man who attempted to get into the White House when George W. Bush was president, with a gun, comedian Chris Rock said, on the Daily Show, “That's right. That guy jumped the fence or whatever and they shot him…  I knew it wasn't a brother, because they shot him in the leg. It's like, 'Oh, they shot him in the leg? Must've been a white guy.'"[v]

In American, when you’re white, you can carry your gun around with you, and have encounters with the police where they merely ask you for your concealed carry license.  If you’re black, you can’t pick up a BB gun off the shelf in Wal-Mart.  That’s the perspective of African-Americans in this country.  After Trayvon, Etan Thomas, an NBA player, wrote, “Very soon, I have to ruin my son's rose-colored glasses view of the world we live in. I have to teach him that...[i]f the police stop you, make sure you stop in a well-lit area and don't make any sudden moves. Keep your hands visible. Avoid putting them in your pockets.”[vi]  Actor Levar Burton, from Reading Rainbow and Star Trek the Next Generation, has said:
Listen, I’m gonna be honest with you, and this is a practice I engage in every time I’m stopped by law enforcement. And I taught this to my son who is now 33 as part of my duty as a father to ensure that he knows the kind of world in which he is growing up. So when I get stopped by the police, I take my hat off and my sunglasses off, I put them on the passenger’s side, I roll down my window, I take my hands, I stick them outside the window and on the door of the driver’s side because I want that officer to be relaxed as possible when he approaches my vehicle. And I do that because I live in America.[vii]
Contrast that to what you might expect from police, if you’re white.  Tim Wise, who is a white author, has written this:
One day I locked myself out of my car on Roberts Street and so I’m trying to break into my car with a coat hanger and a cop comes up. And he sees me doing it. He does not even ask me for ID or proof that that’s my car. Literally, the NOPD was like, hey you’re breaking into the car the wrong way. Let me help you. The cop was trying to help me break in. Now there is not a black man in this country 23 [years old] for whom that would’ve been the reaction.[viii]
In fact, I watched a video where they recreated exactly this sort of thing.  They had an African-American man and a white man, both dressed in t-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, both trying to free a bicycle that had been locked up with bolt cutters.[ix]  The white guy got asked if it was his bike, but out of a hundred people who pass by, only one tries to stop him.  With the African-American guy, he’s stopped repeatedly right away.  And when it was a blond-haired white girl, openly telling people she was stealing it, people helped her.

I took a test earlier this month, for a inter-cultural competency inventory that the MidAmerica Board is all talking together.  I’ll find out next month where I stand.  But this model that we’re using is called the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity[x], and it says that intercultural sensitivity is something people can and do learn.  In it, people move from Denial to Polarization to Minimization to Acceptance to Adaptation.  In the Denial stage, people would say that there is no racism, no difference between the races.  We’re all human, that’s all that matters.  To some extent, our Unitarian Universalist theology encourages a level of denial, to ignore differences and look at our common humanity.  In this stage, we have one size fits all solutions.  Laws are laws, crime is crime, the police are the police, end of story.  The next stage is polarization.  It’s us vs. them.  And we defend ourselves at that stage through fear and anger – distrust of others, denigration of others, feeling our way of life is threatened.  We can see some of that in the police response in Ferguson – meeting protest with tear gas.  We can see that kind of response in the arguments around immigration earlier in this summer.

Minimization, the next step, returns to a “deep down we’re all the same” point of view. W e avoid stereotypes, and we’re consistently, and insistently nice, avoiding anger.  Lots of us UUs find ourselves here.  We can recognize differences, but we minimize them.  We want to assume we’re all the same deep down and focus on that and ignore, or minimize, the difference.  Our response to Ferguson here is to use expert data – most of those young men who were killed were troublemakers.  The police are really here to serve and protect.  People need to just avoid conflict.  Everything will be okay.  Minimization.  We just all need to follow the golden rule.

The next step in intercultural growth is Acceptance.  Everything becomes relative at this point.  Behaviors are relative, values are relative.  We have a curiosity about other cultures without evaluating them.  We assess communities in their own communities, rather than applying global rules.  So a response to Ferguson at this level might take into more account of the socio-economic and historical struggle of Ferguson, and say, no the experience of the police in that community is not the same as it is here in my community.  At the same time in Acceptance, you can realize that values are relative, but hold onto your own – I value peace, and nonviolence.  I can see that others are responding differently, and understand why, but without giving up my ethical commitment to nonviolence. 

The last stage is Adaptation.  At this stage, we begin to adapt our own culture and change it in response to others.  This is where we need to get to, as a movement, as a faith, and as an entire country, with Ferguson.  We need to adapt our American culture to understand the lived and very different experience African-Americans have had in this culture.  Adaptation is shifting to be more effective in the situation, not changing permanently, necessarily.  It was adaptation to bring in a different person, an African American officer, to lead the police in Ferguson.  Another example of adaptation: my colleague Tom Shade wrote an article this week in which he charged us, as a movement to do three things in response to Ferguson – Learn, Re-Think, and Teach.  In talking about re-thinking, which is adaptation, he asked what it would mean for us to move from thinking “#notallcops” in response to Ferguson to thinking “#yesallblackmen.”[xi]  What that means is what is your first reaction to the story?  Do you jump first to saying, "Not all cops are like that?" Or do you jump first to saying, "Yes, that's the experience of all black men in our society, for the most part."

Another example of that charge comes from 48 years ago, but it’s a charge directly to us.  In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the Ware Lecture at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.  The Ware Lecture is where basically we, as a movement, invite an outsider to come in and tell us something we need to hear.  In his lecture, titled “Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution,” Dr. King said these words, that I think speak to us today about moving from denial to adaptation, and about how to respond to not just Ferguson, but police violence, and also the New Jim Crow today.  This is a long quote, and I’ll close with his words.  He said:
…certainly we all want to live the well adjusted and avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must say to you this evening, my friends, there are some things in our nation and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry .I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I must honestly say, however much criticism it brings, that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence….  Yes, I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries—"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, cried in words lifted to cosmic proportions—"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his day “he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.[xii]
May it be so, my friends.  May we be amazing maladjusted to the troubles of our day.


[ii] Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition (p. 205).
[iv] Harris-Perry, Melissa, http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry, August 17, 2014
[x] Information taken from presentation to the Heartland Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, Fall Chapter Meeting 2013.  More on the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_scale.
[xii] King, Martin Luther.  Ware Lecture, Unitarian Universalist Association, 1966.  http://www.uua.org/ga/past/1966/ware/index.shtml

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring

13 August 2014 at 20:53
Robin Williams' daughter wrote, "while there are few things I know for certain right now, one of them is that not just my world, but the entire world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence. We’ll just have to work twice as hard to fill it back up again."

What I've noticed in the last few days is that the world is a little more honest, a little more caring, and a little more vulnerable.  I've noticed friends who normally chat about their child's latest achievement or complain about their latest work hassle open up about their own depression.  I've seen people show a vulnerability through honesty about their own struggles.  Among my colleagues, there's been a lot of writing about personal experience.  People are opening up about their own depression among friends on Facebook.  Some are even posting more publicly on blogs.  Rev. Tony Lorenzen writes, "It’s the depression, both his and mine, that makes his passing a powerful loss."  Rev. Marilyn Sewell writes, "I have dealt with depression off and on all of my adult life. I never once seriously considered suicide, but I can understand why depressed people decide to end their lives."  Intern Minister Kimberley Debus and Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom both talk about both Robin Williams and the Rev. Jennifer Slade who committed suicide earlier this summer.  Debus writes:
I have lived that moment when, despite having some success and security, I could see no way out.
I have lived that moment when, despite knowing that there were people who would miss me, I thought they would be better off without me.
I have lived that moment when, despite being knowledgeable about mental illness and the tragedies of suicide, it just didn’t matter.
It's difficult, I think, for people in the caring professions to acknowledge their own depression and suicidal feelings.  It's difficult because, right or wrong, we feel we're supposed to be worrying about other people and not have worries ourselves.  It's difficult because we're supposed to be psychologically healthy to engage in this work, and admitting our struggles puts us at professional risk.  It's difficult for the same reasons that Robin Williams' depression was difficult to understand.  With Williams, the question is how can someone be depressed when they are so successful, so rich?  With ministers, the question is more, how can someone be depressed if they're someone spiritual, who looks at the deeper side to things, who is in connection with the holy, whose mission it is to make meaning?  How can we find life meaningless when we know "we are the meaning makers"?  So it's not to be taken lightly that people are being open, being real, and talking about this. 

I know why Robin Williams' death is meaning so much to me.  My whole life I've been surrounded by people dealing with deep depression.  Dead Poets Society which dealt with depression and suicide came at a time in my life when I had so many friends around me that were deeply depressed that my very poor joke about the matter became to say that I ought to introduce myself by saying, "Hi, I'm Cindy.  We've just met, so you must be depressed." The movie hit as I embarked upon my first poetry class in college, the prerequisite to becoming an English major.  I was in a Dead Poets Society group of sorts, albeit with a different name, where we met in the evenings and read poetry and literature and talked philosophy, and felt life intensely.  Williams' death calls me back to those days, to the powerful emotions of the time, to the poetry and the call to "seize the day" and make our lives extraordinary.  "O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring."

When I went through the worst period of depression in my own life, a few years later, I was well enough to seek help, and to get better.  And I wasn't depressed enough that I ever seriously got close to suicide myself.  But the death of a celebrity from suicide helped me, strangely.  That celebrity was Kurt Cobain.  When he committed suicide, as rich and successful and popular and idolized as he was, it helped me to realize that the action, suicide, bore no connection to the things we think suicide is about -- money, fame, love.  I wasn't a big Nirvana fan at all, but Kurt Cobain's death woke me up to my own levels of depression and where, unchecked, it could lead.  I sought help, got myself into therapy, and got a better and deeper sense of myself than ever before.  And I've never had that level of depression since.  Something about Kurt Cobain's death, as little sense as that makes, changed things for me that day.

I hope Robin Williams' death is changing things for people now.  I sense that it is, in this openness to people talking openly and honestly about their struggles.  I hope that it's helping to erase the sense of shame around mental illness to know that someone like Williams could suffer from it.  I think it is. 

When I heard of Williams' death, my heart cried out, "Oh Captain, my Captain!"  Indeed, the Whitman words were soon trending on Twitter and people standing on desks across the country and world.  (Mine is too cluttered and not sturdy, but the fact that I tell you that tells you I thought about it.)  It's appropriate not just as a quote from a movie that dealt with suicide, and as words used to hail Robin Williams' character in the movie, but also for the subject of the poem, the death of Abraham Lincoln:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.   

Williams was no Abraham Lincoln, but he is captaining our ship somewhere--somewhere a little darker, less colorful, but a little more loving, more open, more honest, and more real.


Blogging Updates

23 July 2014 at 16:17
This is just a quick post to say that I've been writing less for this Rev. Cyn blog in part because I've been writing for other locations.  If you want to be reading more from me than you're getting here, I'm writing for Loved For Who You Are approximately once a month, and you can read my posts here:
I'm also beginning to write for Tom Schade's blog, The Lively Tradition.  The rate at which I'll be posting there is yet to be established.  You can find my first post here:
Both of these blogs have a very specific focus, so the posts that you'll be finding there are the ones that meet with their missions, and what I'll be posting here at Rev. Cyn are those posts that do not.

Oh, and I also have an upcoming article at the UU World about spiritual practice -- watch for it! 

Reflections on Marriage and Clinton

13 June 2014 at 20:21
Terry Gross's interview of Hillary Clinton on NPR is getting some press, because of a length exchange in which Terry Gross pressed Hillary Clinton for an answer as to whether or not she had "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage, or whether she had been in favor of it much longer, but didn't take a stand for political reasons.  After several exchanges, the picture emerged of an evolving perspective on Clinton's part. 

Clinton said:
Were there activists who were ahead of their time?  Well that was true in every human rights and civil rights movement, but the vast majority of Americans were just waking up to this issue and beginning to think about it, and grasp it for the first time, and think about their neighbor down the street who deserved to have the same rights as they did, or their son, or their daughter. It has been an extraordinarily fast, by historic terms social, political, and legal transformation and we ought to celebrate that instead of plowing old ground when in fact a lot of people, the vast majority of people, have been moving forward.  
And then a bit later she said:
“I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage and I don’t think you did either. This was an incredible new and important idea that people on the front lines of the gay right movement began to talk about and slowly, but surely, convinced others about the rightness of that position. When I was ready to say what I said, I said it.”


Hillary's painting the picture of a world where only the most vocal and "front lines" of advocates were for marriage equality in 1996 made me think, as another heterosexual female, "When did I decide same-sex marriage should be legal?"  I wasn't, by any means, a "front line" advocate on any issue in 1996.  How does my own timeline compare to hers on this issue?

Now, I'm quite a bit younger than Hillary Clinton, so I think I came later to this issue in terms of dates than I would have as an older adult who might have been thinking about the issue a decade before me.  But truly, I can't remember not believing in same-sex marriage.  I can, however, remember a time when I probably hadn't thought about it at all.  I know it was an issue I never even thought about in high school.  I wasn't even really aware of the gay rights movement, as far as I can remember, until I got to college.  The first time I can remember arguing with someone about LGBT rights was with my friends in about fall of 1990 -- my junior year in college -- when I had my first couple of close friends who were out as bisexual.  But I don't really remember any discussions we were having on marriage specifically.  I was more focused on AIDS awareness and domestic violence as the issues I was working on. 

Bill Clinton's first term was the second presidential election I got to vote for as an adult.  He was elected just after I finished college.  At that time, some of my friends weren't "out" yet, and I didn't have many LGBT friends that I knew of, only a couple. 



After college, I took a couple of years off from school, and was not terribly active in any social justice causes during those years, although I do remember that my mother was starting to get involved in LGBT advocacy.  My mother, for the record, is just slightly older than Hillary Clinton.  Their college years overlap. My mother and I talked about it a lot during the next couple of years, as I entered graduate school.  My mother was in seminary at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and involved in a GLSEN group there.  She was vocal enough about LGBT rights, including ordination, that her local Methodist church refused to endorse her for the ministry, and her ministerial career was stalled.  (I'll explain some other time how it is that my mom was a Methodist seminarian at this point, but who raised me UU.)  In graduate school, my number of LGBT friends increased dramatically, and I remember being more strongly an LBGT advocate, to the point where my Dad, as I remember it, sat me down to assure me that if I was a lesbian they would still love me. During that time, I remember I attended my congregation's Welcoming Congregation workshops and was a strong supporter of that process.

DOMA was signed by Bill Clinton in September 1996, which was the same fall I entered seminary.  I can't remember if it was before then or at that point, when I was close to getting engaged myself and also considering performing weddings, that I started to believe so strongly in same-sex marriage.  It's the same with LGBT rights in general -- I can't remember not supporting them, and I can't remember when the issue first came to mind for me, but I'm pretty sure I supported it the instant it occurred to me that it was something to support.  But I do know by the time I entered Meadville Lombard in 1996, I was solidly in favor of same-sex marriage, but hadn't done any real advocacy work on the issue.  By the time Peter and I got married in 1999, we personally spent a lot of time discussing whether we ought to get married at all with same-sex marriage not legal.  I performed my first same-sex marriage during my internship in the spring of 2000, and my second that summer while doing summer ministry in Rockford, IL.  So you could say that from my first being aware of the issue of gay rights until the time I performed my first same-sex marriage, a dozen years had passed, during which I had evolved from awareness to advocacy to direct involvement. 

By 2002, newly in the ministry, I was writing articles, sermons, and taking stands on same-sex marriage, as well as doing direct lobbying on the issue.  In 2003, I stopped signing licenses in Massachusetts until same-sex marriage was legalized there.  That year I performed the wedding of a friend who hadn't been out to me (or anyone) when we were college roommates a dozen years before.  And in 2004, when we got marriage equality in Massachusetts, I happily performed many ceremonies before moving to Michigan, where we promptly banned marriage equality that fall.  When Obama was elected in 2008, I wasn't a fan at him at first, for two reasons.  One was that he wasn't in favor of same-sex marriage, and the other was that I thought his healthcare plan didn't go far enough.  Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn't in favor of same-sex marriage, either, yet.  But some candidates did -- Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.  Edwards was saying during the campaign that he was "conflicted" while his wife publicly said she supported it.  Hilary was perhaps the most hampered from coyly suggesting support, tied as she was to her husband's passing of DOMA.  After he was in office, Obama began "evolving" (2010) on the issue. 

In the end, I think if Clinton is accurate in saying that "When I was ready to say what I said, I said it," then she was very late to the game in terms of opening her mind.  She announced her support of same-sex marriage in 2013 at the point where fully half the people in polls were saying they did, too.  She didn't evolve with the second lines or even third lines of supporters.  She didn't evolve when progressives and mainstream liberals were evolving.  Her support came after most liberals, half the moderates, and some conservatives were supporting it.  To put it in perspective, the month Clinton announced her support for same-sex marriage we had the first Republican U.S. senator announcing support, too, and by the end of that spring, we had three Republican U.S. senators.  But at this point, is it more respectable for her to say she waited to announce her support for political reasons, which she denies, or to have evolved so slow?  

What I can say, is I wasn't a front-liner on this issue.  And as woman legally married to a man, I wasn't called into this issue by my own necessity.  But I had been performing same-sex weddings for over a dozen years by the time Hillary Clinton decided she could support the idea.  From my perspective, she was about a decade late of where I would have hoped a national leader would be.  And so I'm rather happy Terry Gross pushed her on the issue and brought it into the national spotlight. 

Shadow Children and Taking a Stand

10 June 2014 at 11:16
-- Some spoilers herein -- 

My daughter's teacher told me of some books she's been reading to my daughter's class this year -- Among the Hidden and Among the Impostors from the "Shadow Children" series by Margaret Peterson Haddix.  The stories are dystopian futures for youth readers, not unlike The Hunger Games or  Divergent, but for a slightly younger audience.  In Haddix's Shadow Children books, third children are illegal in this post-famine totalitarian state.  The first two books follow the story of Luke, a third child.  In the first book, he's in hiding in his family home.  In the second, he's at a school under a fake ID. 

What struck me, when reading these books, is that the main character, Luke, fails to act.  Unlike many science fiction and fantasy books where the main character becomes the central character in the struggle for justice or freedom, Luke, at least in these two books, does not.  In the first book, he's invited by his friend Jen to join in a rally for freedom and rights for third children.  Luke is afraid, and does not go.  In the second book, children are banding together, sharing their real names and starting to organize for another stand for justice.  Luke hangs back, and doesn't admit to also being a third child.  I haven't read all the books, and it's possible he becomes more of a leader in future books, but in the first two he's not even a follower -- he stands out of the action entirely in the first book, and in the second only really acts when attacked, and then in self-preservation, not in a call for more justice.

How strange, I thought, to read the story of someone who doesn't take up the fight, who waits it out in fear.  It's a story of how many, even most, of us react in times of fear and persecution.  But it's not usually the subject of a novel, which usually focuses in on the savior character -- the Ender, the Katniss, the Luke Skywalker hero figure. 

The world relies on the Jens to get out there and make a stand and lead the rally, but the world is full of Lukes, who hang back out of fear, and protect themselves.  And that's okay, especially for children, and especially for those for whom it is most dangerous to speak out. 

As a faith leader, I think often about what stands I'm willing to fight for, and to what extent.  There are ministers in our movement who were arrested in Phoenix for a stand they took against immigration policies and the inhumane "Tent City" there.  With a young child at home, I'm not anxious to risk imprisonment, although I respect greatly those who are. 

In other ways, perhaps I risk a great deal, putting my name out there in the media on controversial issues.  And maybe I'm only willing to do that when I disregard the risk as minimal.  There is violence that happens along and along against liberals who take public stands, but so far I've never encountered any.

The cause of justice has a lot of room for a lot of different levels of action.  Not everyone needs to be Martin Luther King, Jr.  There are a lot of degrees of action one can take.  I've appreciated in some protests I've been at, that there's been material distributed that essentially asked people to go different places and do different actions based on how willing they were to be in the front line, and how willing to be arrested.  Sometimes there are different roles prescribed for faith leaders, and sometimes separate areas for those willing and prepared to speak to the media.  There are different roles that are helpful and available in social action -- we need people to write letters, and we need people to talk to the media, and we need people to network with friends, and we need people to sometimes risk arrest and retribution. 

I suspect that by book four, Luke will be much more involved in actively fighting for the rights for third children, but so far I've enjoyed the story of one who hung back from action, who watched it from the sidelines.  Sometimes it's okay to stand in the shadows, too. 

This Religion Will Break Your Heart

5 June 2014 at 17:29
It's something I learned in seminary -- I went to one of our two UU theological schools, Meadville Lombard, and attended the other one, Starr King, for one semester.  When you're at a school full of people who want to dedicate their lives to serving our religion, your heart will be broken.  Something will go wrong or toxic or just plain hurtful, and it'll hurt all the more because it happened in a place of love and trust and faith.

It happens again and again in our churches and in our ministry, for congregants and ministers both.  A congregation will behave badly as a system, and congregation members will leave, hearts broken, from pain that the institution they loved could behave so badly.  Ministers will behave badly, too, and people will leave, hearts broken.  And people will stay, hearts broken.

For ministers, we will see colleagues we know and love behave badly.  We will see a friend leave the ministry, forced out by their own misconduct, and our hearts will break.  We will also see friends we love forced out of the ministry for reasons we can't understand, and our hearts will break. 

If you stay in this faith long enough, your heart will be broken.  Somebody you loved and trusted in this faith will do something you think is so hurtful and incomprehensible, so wrong-headed, that it will break your heart.  Or something will be decided that you just can't agree with, and it will break your heart.  And then, if you stay long enough, it will happen again and again. 

That person who has broken your heart still has inherent worth and dignity; they are still worthy of love.

That system that has broken your heart still has important work and worth to our movement.

This faith that you love still is a vehicle for greater love and justice in this world.

Carry on.  Love on.

Swallowing the Rape Whistle

1 June 2014 at 21:02
Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I had a dream -- that sort of dream where you're not really completely asleep, but you're not driving the dream with your conscious mind anymore.  I dreamed I swallowed a whistle.  I jerked myself back to full consciousness, and tried falling asleep again, and it happened again.  I swallowed a whistle.  For a few minutes I couldn't shake my brain from bringing this whistle image to me again and again.


How strange as a dream it seemed, but I knew right away what it meant.  I knew, with the first dreaming moment, this wasn't just any whistle that was getting stuck in my craw.  This was a rape whistle.  And it wasn't just any rape whistle.  It was the one given to me when I went to seminary.  That was part of the introduction to Chicago, as I remember it, at Meadville Lombard: Welcome to Chicago.  You're in an area that may be more dangerous than you're used to.  Don't walk alone at night.  Here's a rape whistle.

Dreaming of swallowing the rape whistle was a dream with an instantly clear message to me: we have to stop swallowing the idea as a society that the answer to violence against women is to tell women to protect themselves.

It's a message I've heard for decades, and a message that I've helped share, really, and incorporated into the way I lived my life.  I remember my roommate in at the University of Michigan telling me one night when I was going to be walking somewhere at night, "Put on your bitch face, and carry your keys."  She meant carry your keys like a weapon.  (Funny thing, this is now at least sometimes called "Wolverine keys" but because of the X-Men character, not because we Michigan Wolverines did it.)
And I did.  I put on my most confident, I-know-where-I'm-going-and-I'm-tough-don't-mess-with-me bitch face, and I carried my keys like Wolverine. 

And then, years later, I carried that rape whistle with me everywhere I went for years until it rusted off my key chain.  Think about what that means: it's not uncommon for women in this country to carry with them, at all times when not at home, a symbol of violence against women and their own vulnerability to such. 

During my college years there were annual "Take Back the Night" rallies.  I attended some.  But this way of dealing with violence against women was a fringe thing, a feminist thing. So while we yelled "Take Back the Night," we still walked home in groups.

In college at the University of Michigan I was part of a team called SafeWalk.  We volunteered our time for a few hours a week every week, and went to the library where were dispatched, in teams of two, to go anywhere within a mile or so of campus and walk people, mostly women, from wherever they were to wherever they were going. ( It's interesting to see that at some point the University officially incorporated the service into the U, and now they provide rides up to 3 am, which was later than we could go, because the library closed at 2, so we didn't have our dispatching station after that hour.)  The idea back then was that no person at U of M would have to walk alone at night if they weren't comfortable doing so.  It was a good service.  I'm glad I did it.

But it wasn't the solution. 

I'm not saying to just walk alone at night, to just forgo the escort and the whistle and the Wolverine keys.  I'm saying that for decades we've been telling women this was the normal way of life -- the world is violent, protect yourself.  And what we need to be saying is: We need to change the world.  This is not okay.

It's so good and bad all at once to hear everyone talking about the rape culture, about #yesallwomen, about violence and misogyny.  Good, of course, because our society is talking about it.  Bad, because this is still the way it is.  Bad because this year my congregation had a former member killed in an act of domestic violence, and so it's timely for us to be hearing about this in the culture, but we're also perhaps still grieving and raw to some degree, and so it's a hard time to be talking about it.

But maybe, just maybe, the time has finally come where we can, as a society, stop swallowing the rape whistle and start to really take back the night.

Poet and Prophet

28 May 2014 at 16:06
So saddened to hear of the death of poet and prophet Maya Angelou.  So many of her poems have meant so much to me, from "Phenomenal Woman" to "Still I Rise" to "On the Pulse of Morning" to "A Brave and Startling Truth" to "Amazing Peace."

No words can sum up the beauty and majesty and deep soul of Maya Angelou, except her own. 

Every year on Christmas Eve I've included "Amazing Peace."  It's a poem that's come to mean a great deal to me.  Here's a clip of it, after some interview:


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UUA Surprises! Cool New Principles Version!

28 May 2014 at 15:15
Tom Schade has dubbed the rebranding effort of the UUA a #thanklesstask. Yeah, he's right. And I don't want to heap on the criticism.  I believe the UUA is working hard to turn our ship in the right direction, and this is the work that they ought to be doing, and they're getting a lot of flack about it, much of which is unfair.

But...

You know how I've been saying that the UUA has been telling us "more is coming" and the logo was just the "tip of the iceberg" with regards to the branding?  And, at the same time, nobody has published the roadmap of where they're going, and even when you're asking, they won't tell you what it is? And how Dawn Cooley said, "surprised people react poorly"? 

Well...

As reported in Boston Magazine:
Proverb also worked with the UUs to shorten their seven core principles, making them easier to remember, and has suggested putting them into “some sort of acronym form so that they’re easier to pull up quickly in your brain,” Needham says. “We don’t know if that will fly.”
Let me say briefly, that I'm SURE what they meant was not "we've shortened the principles" but "we've created a shorter version of the principles...for marketing purposes."  That's OF COURSE what was meant.  They know that the principles are important and core to you, and they're not really just mucking with them.   

Now...

Um, let me just guess that people are going to be surprised.  And if the UUA logo was conflated with the sacred symbol of the flaming chalice, well then the Principles in the UUA Bylaws are conflated with scripture or creed, even though we'll quickly tell you they aren't a creed.

I hope the reaction will be love, support, excitement, and thanks to the UUA.  They deserve it, because this is really a good idea.  This week I was trying to envision what seven principle banners could look like in our sanctuary, and the wordiness was a big problem, but the kid's version was too simplistic.  An acronymn seems like a good idea, as long as it doesn't spell out something like FRACKER.  (Free and responsible, Respect for the interdependent, Acceptance of one another, Compassion, ummm.... Karmic inherent worth and dignity?, Equity, Right of conscience.)  The other mnemonic devices people have come up with -- pairing them with rainbow colors, using the image of an arch -- have been good, but UUs do love our acronyms

What I'm afraid of is that they're going to get a lot of people upset that they took on this #thanklesstask.  And that the stakeholders are going to be very, well, surprised.  Be prepared -- my prediction is a lot of acting poorly will ensue.

Do you remember the hubbub when a former UUA president said something about how the word "God" should be in the principles?  Or at least that's what people heard.  What was said was more like:

"We have in our Principles an affirmation of our faith which uses not one single piece of religious language. Not one. Not even one word that would be considered traditionally religious. And that is a wonderment to me; I wonder whether this kind of language can adequately capture who we are and what we're about."

People were surprised.  Much debate followed.  Many people said upset things about the UUA.  Humanists felt like they were being pushed out and unwanted.  People felt like the UUA was trying to change the principles, and that wasn't okay with them. 

Some of this was good.  We had a lively conversation in our tradition about "the language of reverence."  But there was no Twitter or Facebook back then.  The conversation happened in individual clusters of people, by e-mail, in our seminaries and other institutions, and on the fledgling blogosphere. And so the whole discussion was more subdued than it might be now. 

UUA, I love you and I think you're doing the right thing -- but when we're asking for the roadmap, even scouring the UUA webpage, the UUA board meeting minutes, the UUA world, and the VUU and blogosphere looking for the signposts (yeah, I have), as well as asking in independent conversations, give it to the stakeholders before Boston Magazine sometimes?  Mmkay?  That's all.  No feelings hurt.  Enough said.  Love ya. 

And don't be surprised that not everybody will love this.  Hopefully I'm wrong and we'll all go, "Wow!  Awesome!" and abandon, for a brief moment, our culture of critique.

Heck, that could happen.  Let's give it a shot, everyone. 

Stand Like a Fat Superhero

22 May 2014 at 13:36
Yesterday, a presentation by a colleague about body movement and its effects on physiology drew my attention to this TED Talk by Amy Cuddy:


The point of her talk is that standing or sitting in "power stances" can not just change how people see you, they can change yourself.  Just two minutes of standing like a superhero can increase your testosterone and decrease your cortisol -- in other words, your stress goes down and your confidence goes up.  People who did two minutes of power poses before interviews were more likely to get the job.

Cuddy doesn't belabor the point, but she starts off interested in this question because of a gendered effect she was seeing of women in business school not participating as much, and therefore not succeeding as much. 


I remember in seminary noticing this effect, although I didn't notice the science behind it.  I remember sitting on the sofa in the Curtis Room at Meadville Lombard, and a male student came and sat next to me.  He sat down immediately into one of Cuddy's power poses -- arms stretched out along the back of the sofa, legs open.  (Almost exactly the pose that's in the upper left of the image above.)  He seemed to own the space that he occupied, and the space that I occupied as well.  Now there's nothing wrong with that, but I remember thinking, "Wow.  You never see a woman spread herself over a space like that."  And, generally, that's pretty true.  My male colleague felt comfortable in a power pose in a public setting, and I did not.  The problem isn't that he did.  Rather, the problem is that women often don't own their space the same way.  And the result is both chicken and egg -- we don't have the increased confidence that would have us taking such stances, but the lack of taking such stances also diminishes confidence.  Putting yourself in a "closed" position decreases your testosterone and increases your cortisol. 

Regarding the "superhero" pose, I remember vividly a time when I struck that pose.  I was auditioning for a play, Captain Fantastic, my junior year in high school.  As part of the audition, we were asked to strike the superhero pose, and I did so.  And the room broke up in laughter.  I attributed it to a size issue.  I wasn't obese, but I was buxom, and that apparently made the superhero stance humorous.  But my learning that day was that I wasn't a superhero, by body type.  I was cast as the school principle instead. (This is not all bad.  Despite not being a superhero, the principle was in every single scene and had more lines than anyone other than the two leads.  So it was a better part.  And it remains my largest theatrical role to date.)

I've thought a lot over the years as I've become a fat person about the way that fat people are shamed by society, and how that makes us alter our stance.  If it's rare to see a woman in a power pose, it's even more rare to see a fat person in one.  We're taught, I think, that we take up so much space already that we must put our body into "closed" positions to minimize the effect, rather than taking up even more space in an "open" position. What I hadn't realized was that the way we alter our stance not only changes how people see us, it alters ourselves, as well.

I thought about this as I heard a report on NPR on the way home from that same collegial meeting yesterday that said fat people don't run as much for public office, and when they do they lose at a high rate -- and for women it's worse than men.  (Couldn't find the NPR link, but here's the same study reported on CBS.)  It wouldn't be surprising if this prejudice also affected other highly public image-conscience jobs, like ministry.  In fields that's are much about authority and power, I wondered what the power stance effect might be, and how that might be relating to weight.  Part of the problem with the politicians not getting elected -- or ministers not getting called -- is probably the public's perception and negative image of fat people.  But we also know that the power stance thing can influence people's performance.  Negative self-image and negative perception by others form a loop where each influences the other, and it can be a downward spiral or an upward spiral. 

There are things other people can do to break the spiral.  After posting about fat shaming last year, I got some push-back.  The fat-shamers believe this: "Fat is bad for you. If I shame you about your fat, you might lose it.  That would be good for you.  If I accept your fat, you won't lose it.  That's bad for you."  The truth is this:  Increase fat acceptance leads to more confident fat people.  Fat people who are more confident will more often take stances that decrease their cortisol.  This, in turn, will decrease their appetite and cravings.  A person who truly cares about the health and well-being of someone will praise, not shame, that person.  And I don't mean just praising weight-loss efforts -- we understand those for the back-handed compliments they are.  I mean praising a person's awesomeness just the way they are.  That's what other people can do. 

And for fat people, this is the little thing we can do to break that spiral, as well.  I believe fat people are often putting themselves into a "closed" position that increases their stress levels and decreases their confidence.  And, not surprisingly, increased cortisol also increases appetite and cravings, and decreases muscle mass.  And it increases depression. Doing the opposite -- adopting the open power stances can reverse the cycle. 

So today, I'm telling myself and fat people everywhere:  you are a superhero.  Stand like one.  For at least two minutes.

2014-2015 Liturgical Calendar

13 May 2014 at 13:09
Every year during July, I take a few days and put together a spreadsheet of the upcoming year's worship services.  I've begun early this year, because of some changes that I'm proposing with my worship committee, so I'm trying to draft an early calendar this spring.  I go through a lot of steps when I'm creating this, and I'm guessing many other ministers do, too.  I don't know of anywhere that posts something that's like what I do, so I thought I would share this year.

My process begins with just listing all the Sundays in the year (easy to do in a spreadsheet -- enter two or three in the column, then drag down for 52 cells and it'll fill it in).  And then I just add in Christmas Eve. 

The next step is more laborious.  I enter all the holidays and recognition days I can think of for the following year.  The rule is that I enter each holiday by the Sunday preceding it, unless it falls on a Sunday.  I use a calendar of world religions at interfaithcalendar.org, and look up the year's secular holidays such as Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, etc.  I add in some of the awareness months -- a handy list is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commemorative_months.  There are a handful of holidays that are neither national nor religious but liberal sacred days I try to remember, such as Coming Out Day and Earth Day, and I look up the dates for those, or plug them in if they're always the same.  My church recognizes the Season for Nonviolence, so I add that in.  I add in any UU history dates that I'm aware of, particularly Flower Communion.  This year is the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, along with the deaths of UUs James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, so I've made sure to add those in.  And then I try to figure out any dates that UU organizations are particularly promoting.  I don't have many of these yet -- dates aren't up for 2015 30 Days of Love from Standing on the Side of Love (although I've made a guess), or the 2015 Justice Sunday, or if there'll be some sort of UUA Association Sunday or the equivalent.  The UU-UNO usually has a Sunday, but it's on or near United Nations Day, which I mark.  This year I have a few other UU figures' birth or death dates in there, courtesy of a list of holidays much like this one, but shorter and monthly rather than weekly, from Scott Tayler for a group of people who use theme Sundays together. This year I've added to the calendar a remembrance of two individuals connected to our community who were murdered last year.  I've left that in here for this public version, but if you're copying this, you'll probably want to delete that out (see 12/7/14).  You'll also see that holidays and awareness months are slimmer in July -- but also I take July off, so I focus less on that month. 

The next column I work on is a column of my important dates.  I enter the days for General Assembly, Regional Assembly, UUMA Chapter meetings, Ohio River Group, and the MidAmerica Region Board meetings.  This helps me to know what Sundays I might need to schedule off either because I'll be out of town or because I'll be so busy that week that I'll wish I had scheduled the Sunday off. 

Once all that is done, I begin to plan my preaching schedule -- which days I'm on and which days I'm off.  And since our musician plays 2 (or maybe 3 now, with hymn-sharing between Sundays) Sundays per month, I start to figure out which days are most important for him to be there (for example: Ingathering, Easter, Flower Communion), and figure out a proposed schedule for him, that he will then manipulate according to his travel schedule.

The whole calendaring process takes a good chunk of time.  Getting to this point has taken me the better part of two days.  And since the holiday step is so laborious, I thought I would share that, in the hopes that it might save somebody else some work.  Also, if there are holiday, holy day, or remembrance dates you would add on your own calendar, tell me in the comments.




Date
Holidays & Remembrance Days
Conference Schedule
8/3/2014
Art Appreciation Month

8/10/2014
Art Appreciation Month

8/17/2014
Art Appreciation Month

8/24/2014
Art Appreciation Month

8/31/2014
Art Appreciation Month; 9/1: Labor Day

9/7/2014
Hispanic Heritage Month; Suicide Awareness Month;
9/5-6: MidAmerica Board, Starved Rock, IL
9/14/2014
Hispanic Heritage Month; Suicide Awareness Month;

9/21/2014
Hispanic Heritage Month; Suicide Awareness Month; 9/24-26: Rosh Hashanah; 9/22: Mabon, Equinox

9/28/2014
Hispanic Heritage Month, Suicide Awareness Month; 9/22 Peace Corps birthday, 9/29 Cervantes birthday, 9/30 John Murray preaches first sermon in US, 10/4: Yom Kippur; 10/4-7: Eid al Adha

10/5/2014
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Bullying Prevention Month, Pastor Appreciation Month; National Book Month; 10/7: Afghan Invasion Anniversary; 10/11: Coming Out Day
10/5-8: HUUMA, Pokagon, IN
10/12/2014
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Bullying Prevention Month, Pastor Appreciation Month; National Book Month; 10/13: Columbus Day

10/19/2014
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Bullying Prevention Month, Pastor Appreciation Month; National Book Month; 10/23: Divali, 10/24: United Nations Day; 10/25 Pablo Picasso birthday

10/26/2014
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Bullying Prevention Month, Pastor Appreciation Month; National Book Month; 10/26: Reformation Day; 10/27 Michael Servatus Dies; 10/31 Anniversary of UU Merger; 10/31 Luther's 95 Theses; 10/31 Halloween; 11/1: All Saints; 11/1: Samhain; 11/2: All Souls

11/2/2014
Adoption Awareness Month, American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, Alzheimer's Awreness Month, Family Caregivers Month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); 11/4: Election Day;

11/9/2014
Adoption Awareness Month, American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, Alzheimer's Awreness Month, Family Caregivers Month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); 11/11: Veteran's Day; 11/9: Carl Sagan's Birthday

11/16/2014
Adoption Awareness Month, American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, Alzheimer's Awreness Month, Family Caregivers Month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); 11/22: National Adoption Day
11/10-13: Ohio River Group, Dayton, OH; 11/14-15: MidAmerica Board, Location TBD
11/23/2014
Adoption Awareness Month, American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, Alzheimer's Awreness Month, Family Caregivers Month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); 11/24: Origin of the Species published; 11/27: Thanksgiving

11/30/2014
Adoption Awareness Month, American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, Alzheimer's Awreness Month, Family Caregivers Month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); 12/6: St. Nicholas' Day

12/7/2014
Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month, Seasonal Depression Awareness Month, 12/5: Anniversary of Chris Keith & Isaac Miller's Deaths

12/14/2014
Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month, Seasonal Depression Awareness Month, 12/16-24: Hanukkah, 12/14: Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary Shootings

12/21/2014
Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month, Seasonal Depression Awareness Month, 12/16-24: Hanukkah; 12/21: Yule, Solstice; 12/25 Christmas

12/24/2014
Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month, Seasonal Depression Awareness Month, 12/16-24: Hanukkah; 12/25 Christmas

12/28/2014
Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month, Seasonal Depression Awareness Month,

1/4/2015
Poverty in America Awareness Month; 1/5: Twelfth Night

1/11/2015
Poverty in America Awareness Month

1/18/2015
Poverty in America Awareness Month; 1/18: Baha'i World Reigion Day; 1/19: MLK Day; 1/21: National Hug Day

1/25/2015
Poverty in America Awareness Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence

2/1/2015
Black History Month; Teen Dating Violence Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/2 Groundhog Day, Imbolc, St. Brigid's Day, Candlemas; 2/7: Charles Dickens' Birthday

2/8/2015
Black History Month; Teen Dating Violence Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/14: Valentine's Day; 2/12: Darwin's Birthday; 2/13 Susan B. Anthony's Birthday

2/15/2015
Black History Month; Teen Dating Violence Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/17: Mardi Gras; 2/18: Ash Wednesday; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 2/19: Chinese New Year

2/22/2015
Black History Month; Teen Dating Violence Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 2/26: 50th anniversary -- murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson

3/1/2015
Women's History Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 3/7: 50th Anniversary -- March from Selma, "Bloody Sunday"

3/8/2015
Women's History Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 3/11: James Reeb Murdered -- 50th Anniversary; 3/12: Lincoln's Birthday; 3/13: Susan B. Anthony's Death; 3/9: 50th anniversary -- 2nd march from Selma "Turnaround Tuesday"

3/15/2015
Women's History Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 3/17: St. Patrick's Day; 3/20: First Day of Spring, Equinox, Ostara; 3/21: Naw Ruz, Nooruz

3/22/2015
Women's History Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 3/21: 3rd March from Selma to Montgomery --50th anniversary; 3/25: Viola Liuzzo murdered -- 50th anniversary

3/29/2015
Women's History Month; 1/30-4/4: Season for Nonviolence; 2/18-4/2: Lent; 3/29: Palm Sunday; 4/1: April Fool's Day; 4/1: Dr. Seuss' birthday; 4/3-11: Passover

4/5/2015
Jazz Appreciation Month; National Poetry Month; Sexual Assault Awareness Month; Child Abuse Prevention Month; Autism Awareness Month; 4/5: Easter; 4/3-11: Passover; 4/7: William Ellery Channing's birthday

4/12/2015
Jazz Appreciation Month; National Poetry Month; Sexual Assault Awareness Month; Child Abuse Prevention Month; Autism Awareness Month; 4/16 Yom Ha'Shoah

4/19/2015
Jazz Appreciation Month; National Poetry Month; Sexual Assault Awareness Month; Child Abuse Prevention Month; Autism Awareness Month; 4/22: Earth Day
4/15-17: HUUMA, Naperville, IL; 4/17-19: MidAmerica Regional Assembly, Naperville, IL
4/26/2015
Jazz Appreciation Month; National Poetry Month; Sexual Assault Awareness Month; Child Abuse Prevention Month; Autism Awareness Month; 4/30: Hosea Ballou's birthday; 5/1: Beltane, May Day; 5/1: International Workers Day

5/3/2015
Jewish Americans Heritage Month; Foster Care Month; 5/5: Cinco de Mayo

5/10/2015
Jewish Americans Heritage Month; Foster Care Month; 5/10: Mother's Day;

5/17/2015
Jewish Americans Heritage Month; Foster Care Month;
5/15-16: MidAmerica Board, Location TBD
5/24/2015
Jewish Americans Heritage Month; Foster Care Month; 5/25 Emerson's birthday; 5/25 Memorial Day; 5/25: Pentecost

5/31/2015
Jewish Americans Heritage Month; Foster Care Month; 6/4: Capek celebrates 1st Flower Communion

6/7/2015
LGBT Pride Month; 6/18-7/17: Ramadan

6/14/2015
LGBT Pride Month; 6/18-7/17: Ramadan

6/21/2015
LGBT Pride Month; 6/18-7/17: Ramadan; 6/21: Father's Day; 6/21: Solstice, Litha; 6/25: Olympia Brown ordained

6/28/2015
LGBT Pride Month; 6/18-7/17: Ramadan; 7/4: Independence Day
6/22-24: Ministry Days, 6/24-28: GA, Portland, OR
7/5/2015
6/18-7/17: Ramadan; 7/18-21: Eid al Fitr

7/12/2015
6/18-7/17: Ramadan; 7/18-21: Eid al Fitr

7/19/2015


7/26/2015
8/1: Lughnasadh

8/2/2015
Art Appreciation Month

Guest Blog: Kairos, Engagement, and Marriage in Little Rock

12 May 2014 at 22:31
Guest Blog Entry by the Rev. Jennie Ann Barrington, Interim Minister for The Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas; May 12, 2014


“There is a creative tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things, and moments come when we can work with it and it can work through us. But the tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things is by no means omnipotent. (It is not all-powerful; we have to work with it; we have to do our part.) Other forces work against it. This creative principle is everywhere. It is a continuing process. Insofar as you partake of this creative process, you partake of the divine, and that participation is your immortality, reducing the question of whether your individuality survives the death of the body to the estate of irrelevancy. Our true destiny, as co-creators in the universe, is our dignity and our grandeur.” (Alfred North Whitehead)


This weekend I realized I was wrong. I’ve never been enamored of officiating weddings for people who know nothing about the congregation I serve, nor about Unitarian Universalism, but they like the look of our building and grounds, and are under the impression that UU ministers will marry anybody, and the focus of their ceremony seems too much on frills and party favors, rather than on the essence of the marriage, itself. I had even told the board and the Ministry Committee that I would be saying no to requests for weddings from couples who had no relationship to our church. It is true that, when I have been able to do such weddings in the past, that has given a group of people a favorable impression of Unitarian Universalism. But I felt my time serving the UU Church of Little Rock would be better spent on strengthening it as an institution, and caring for its members and friends. This weekend I knew I had to reverse that decision, and be sure that the congregation knew. So I talked with the Church Administrator and the website manager, who then gladly sent out this announcement:


“In light of the recent decision by Judge Chris Piazza of the 6th Circuit Court that the ban on gay marriage in Arkansas is unconstitutional, gay couples were able to obtain marriage licenses for the first time in Eureka Springs on Saturday morning, where 15 marriages were performed.  In anticipation of couples in Pulaski County seeking licenses on Monday morning, our Rev. Jennie will be going to the County Courthouse tomorrow to be available to perform marriages for gay couples. She feels this is an historic event in Arkansas and wishes to be part of this joyful occasion.”


Judge Piazza (Bless his heart!) discerned that Arkansas’ previous prohibitions on gay marriage were wrong, just as the prohibitions against the Lovings’ marriage were wrong. He felt deeply that they needed to be reversed. The end of his ruling is exquisite: “The hatred and fears (against the Lovings) have long since vanished, and (they) lived full lives together; so it will be for the same-sex couples. It is time to let that beacon of freedom shine brighter on all our brothers and sisters. We will be stronger for it.”


So Sunday night I drove to the church to create a sample same-gender wedding ceremony and print it out, and picked up everything I thought I’d need, including my credentials to legally officiate marriages in Arkansas. Then I called my colleague, the Rev. Cindy Landrum, in Jackson, Michigan. A similar scenario has recently occurred in her state, and she rose to the occasion. I told her what I had amassed to bring with me, and asked her if I’d forgotten anything. “An ink pen,” she added, helpfully. “Got it,” I said, “I have two!” I did not know how many couples would be there in the morning. The news articles said there would be long lines of people. Cindy said that I might have to do several ceremonies at once, inserting the couples’ names, then sign the licenses all in a row, then do several more ceremonies. I prefer not to do weddings, nor baby blessings, that way. But I was prepared to do whatever would be most helpful. I also asked Cindy how long we might have on Monday before there was a stay. She thought maybe half a day. As it was, after a couple hours, we heard that Judge Piazza refused the stay, so we had all day for the officiating and recording of gay marriages.


The atmosphere was boisterous, celebratory, and amiable. I was given a nametag that said “Officiant” by people with official-looking clipboards. For the first several hours, there were at least fifteen Officiants in addition to me. So we did not have to do “mass weddings;” we were able to give each couple personal attention. Some Officiants were clergy, and some were lay people. I felt that all of us were committed to giving the gay couples the right to be married that they should have had a long time ago. There were writers and photographers from the media all around us, respectfully asking if they could publish our names and pictures. And there were many volunteers and people who had come to cheer us on, offering to take pictures or record the ceremonies on the couples’ phones. Many of them had name tags that said, “I’m an Ally – Free Hugs!” This meant a lot to me because I have been trained to advocate for gay rights, empowered to do so, I would even say charged to do so. But the allies, friends, and family were there because of their deep personal commitment, without any official role to bolster them on. I heard several people say that they have been fighting for this cause for at least twenty-five years. Throughout the day, we all kept spontaneously crying at the realization of the magnitude of the right of gay people to marry in the state of Arkansas. The timing of this wonderful court decision took me by surprise. But the fact that Arkansas is the first Bible Belt state to have legal gay marriages does not surprise me. I have found the people of this state to be christian in the broadest and best sense of the word. When I moved here in July (from Indiana and, before that, from New England) every time I turned around, people were feeding me—delicious food, rich conversation, warm fellowship. I found this astonishing. But, to them, it is simply what they do for someone who is in transition. People here notice when someone is in need, and do what they can to help, to share what they have, to even the playing field. They give people rides, provide home hospitality, and lend a caring ear. So I was not surprised that what I experienced in the rotunda of the courthouse today was an ethos of graciousness. Why on earth shouldn’t gay people be given the same rights of marriage that heterosexual people have?


I first started asking that question back when I was a seminary student in Maine, in the mid-1990s. At that time, I did not have any official role from which to speak up for gay rights. I was a secretary in a small law office in Portland, Maine, and a “temp” at that. The battle my friends and neighbors were fighting then wasn’t even for gay marriage. It was simply to keep discrimination out of the Maine constitution against people who are gay, or perceived to be gay. I went to several “house parties” to learn from the organizers how to most effectively change people’s minds. One afternoon I was walking across a park and a local TV station was asking where people stood on the “No On One” campaign. They asked me, and I said, “I believe people who are gay should have the right to say publicly that the person they love most, and are committed to, is someone of the same gender, and not be discriminated against for that.” The interview was on the news that evening. (I remember I was wearing my black fisherman’s cap.) And I worried that the next morning I would be fired, because I knew that one of the partners in the law firm was a close friend of one of the organizers of the opposition to our campaign.


I was not fired from that law firm. But I still remember feeling, on the one hand, that I had no real power or influence to speak of, yet, on the other hand, I knew I had to speak out in order to be who I really am, in my core values, and also in my network of relationships. The people who came to the courthouse today had been told they were not allowed to ask, “Will you marry us? Legally?” Yet when they heard about Judge Piazza’s ruling, they came to us and asked, and we affirmed and applauded them. I am grateful that today, twenty years after that gay rights campaign in Maine, I now have the influence, credentials, and backing to spend a day at the courthouse of a capital city legalizing gay marriages. I am most grateful to the UU Church of Little Rock for having the resources, decision-making processes, and wherewithal to have brought me here. They were glad and proud about what I did at the courthouse today, and so were the many other people who sent me texts, cheering on me and my couples. There are moments in time when we must dare to claim our “agency” to be a vehicle for what is true and fair and gracious. Alfred North Whitehead said that that agency is divinely-endowed to all people. But it is up to all of us to recognize those moments of kairos, and bravely engage with each other, with systems of power, and with God.


Today I officiated twelve gay weddings. Each couple was unique, and very nice and appreciative. All of them wept. For the sample ceremony I brought with me, I cut out most of the extra words, knowing people would want the briefest of weddings, so they could be recorded before a stay was announced. So what are the essential parts of a wedding when you boil it down? Certainly not the frills and party favors and fancy attire. The couples looked like their most real and comfortable selves, and many came to the courthouse on a break in their work day. But I did say some opening words by way of blessing, including that marriage takes patience and courage. And we took time for the vows, including, “for better, for worse,” and “so long as we both shall live.” Some couples exchanged rings, some did not. But I did say a prayer for each of them. Then a pronouncement, a benediction, the kiss, and the presentation of the newly-married couple. Eight of the couples were women, four of them, men. Two were African American. One drove from Oklahoma. But most of them were from right here in Little Rock. What was the same about all of them is that marriage is really important to them--  important enough to walk into a room full of strangers, several of them with no attendants, worrying that there might be hate-filled protesters blocking their way (for the record, there was only one, and he was shooed away quite early in the day), and risk asking, “Is there someone who will help marry us?” The day has dawned that the majority is saying, “We do.”



Surprised People STILL React Poorly to the Very Large Project

30 April 2014 at 18:07
My dear friend and colleague Dawn Cooley wrote a great article, "Surprised People React Poorly" back in February.  She's responding to the new UUA logo and the following critique of the logo that swept through social media.  In her post she says that people who are surprised react poorly, as the title states, and because of that she suggests a plan:
Towards a 2-part solution: Trust is a 2-way street.  I encourage those of us on the sidelines to recognize our own reactivity, our own distrust of authority, and remember that we are the UUA.  The people we tend to point fingers at care very, very deeply about our faith tradition and are hard at work trying to ensure our future.   We do a thorough job of holding them accountable, but can we practice occasionally cutting them some slack? Apparently, this new logo wasn’t a whim and wasn’t created out of thin air, but has been a year-long process of dialogue with 50 different UU stakeholders (according to the recent VUU episode available here, particularly at 30:49).
And, for the UUA Administration, it would be much easier to cut some slack if we had confidence in where we are going.  I am reminded of a GPS I use which won’t ever give me the whole map of where I am going, but only shares one turn at a time. I hate it because I never really know if it is directing me to my desired destination.  Give me the whole map at once (rather than just pieces at a time) and then I will be more likely to trust each individual turn. I want the same from my UUA Administration. You seem to have been working from a plan – please share it in more detail.
This week, another dear friend and colleague, Erika Hewitt, writes (here and again on Tom Shade's blog here) about being engaged in a "Very Large Project" for Unitarian Universalism, and finding herself "armoring up."  She says:
We find ourselves bracing for criticism not because our Very Large Project is controversial nor because we have paranoid temperaments, but rather because of the cultural patterns that we witness in the larger UU world (much of it online):

Often, our people respond to brave risk-taking by shaming the risk-takers.

Too often, our people respond to the vulnerable expression of creativity or vision by criticizing the creation or vision, and naming the ways it failed to suit their personal taste.
Erika and Dawn point to a very real problem of a lot of criticism that the people who lead in our movement are faced with.  We do need to give them more of a a measure of goodwill. 

But I agree more with Dawn's prescription for dealing with it, recognizing that it's a two-way street.  In the 2/13/14 UU World article on the logo, it says, "And the UUA is developing other resources for congregations, regional groups, and the national association to use. This effort is about much more than a new logo and a new look for the website, Cooley said." And on my 2/13/14 blog article, Deborah Neisel-Sanders from UUA youth/young adults comments, "I can say that the new logo is just the tip of the iceberg; a good number of wishes that the logo reveal has generated are already in development or scheduled to be."  Three months after Dawn's request for the "whole map," the fuller picture about the UUA Brand has not been released.  The answer may be that there is not a whole map yet -- but then tell us so, and tell us the points you know along the way.  Instead of providing more information, my sense is that people have "armored up" instead.  Information-seeking is not critique--but it's difficult to tell tell the difference when you're on the defensive.  And the defensive posture is understandable when you've been heavily critiqued.  It's a vicious cycle, but Dawn points the way out of the cycle. 

To Erika, then, I would say, you're right.  But at the same time, you need to tell us more about your Very Large Project rather than armoring up.  Surprised people react poorly, and wishing they wouldn't and telling them they shouldn't isn't going to change everyone.  Rather than preparing for the fight, avoid the fight by bringing people along with you on your journey.  You begin by showing us your map, and engaging us in the Very Big Questions that your Very Large Project is addressing.  Share the vision.  As you say, "Creativity and courage are contagious." 

You're so right to point us to a path towards trust -- but trust is something created between us.  Trust is a two-way street. 

Being Led by Our Principles

30 April 2014 at 16:19
A friend and colleague asks, "When did our Principles ever lead us to a place we didn't already want to go?"

It's a bit like asking "When is something truly altruistic?"  The fact that I did something might argue that to some extent I wanted to do it -- that I felt doing it served some purpose.  But sweeping aside the philosophical question, I think I can point to places our Principles have led me that I was at least conflicted about. 

The first time I remember being pushed by my principles to do something that I was uncomfortable doing was in graduate school.  I became aware that I had what I knew was an unreasonable fear of people with HIV/AIDS.  And I felt that my principles called me to address my fear and get over it.  And so I volunteered to spend my spring break with the Alternative Spring Break program working for the Mobile (AL) AIDS Support Services.  I've written about that experience in this blog before.

The next time I felt like my principles were calling me to engage an issue that I was a bit uncomfortable with was when our movement started adding transgender people to our Welcoming Congregation.  My prejudicial view of transgender people was that they often reinforced gender stereotypes rather than breaking them down, in a way that was contrary to feminism, which taught me I can be anybody I want to be and still be a woman.  The more I heard things like "It's about more than just plumbing" the more I felt that, no, being a man or a woman is just about plumbing -- everything else is cultural.  And it put me in a logical loop where I had trouble understanding the struggle of transgender people.  I knew that this was something to work on, and that my principles were calling me to understand -- and to have empathy.  And it took both personal conversations with friends and putting my heart before my head to break me out of this loop and understand that what looks like strengthening gender stereotypes is a radical challenges to boxes, just from a different angle than feminism. 

The most recent time when my principles led me where I was reluctant to go was on the issue of immigration reform.  I didn't want to get involved in this issue particularly.  I had never really connected with it.  But the work that our denomination was doing and how it was grounded in our principles made it clear to me that it didn't matter that I personally didn't really connect with the issue.  I needed to study it and understand it and then take action and speak out. 

I'm not always perfect at listening to my principles.  There are places that my principles are leading me now where I'm resisting.  In a word: vegetarianism.  So I'm not perfect at this.  But I do try to let my principles stretch me and grow me.  It's not often that our Principles lead me somewhere where I don't want to go -- but both figuratively and literally I didn't want to go to Mobile, and I didn't want to go to Phoenix.  I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I listen to our Principles and stay open to new understandings and new ideas.  And I hope that they'll lead me someplace unexpected soon. 

And Let Them Know About It!

17 April 2014 at 17:35
A colleague pointed out recently to me that I do something fairly naturally which is not something every minister or even every congregation knows how to do, which is to get the word out about significant actions that I or my congregation has taken, both within the UUA and in the local media.

I credit two people with having trained me to do this.  One is my internship supervisor and mentor Drew Kennedy, who I remember talking to me during internship specifically about how to work with your congregation and board around your media presence.  The second is a workshop that was held at our UUMA chapter meeting with John Hurley presenting that I attended during my first year in ministry.  I've attended subsequent workshops, and now teach communications at our local college, so all this has been added to in small ways over the years.

The basic is this: If you're doing something newsworthy in your congregation or town, let people know about it.  Let them know about it beforehand, and then let them know about it afterwards.

First, for ministers, a word of caution, straight from what I remember Drew teaching me back in 1999-2000, but it's still as wise today.  It's important to have a clear understanding with your board and your congregation about the minister's role in contacting the media and being a media presence.  And even if you have that sort of clear understanding, contact them and tell them every time you know you'll be in the paper, if you have time to do so, before the article comes out.  It is helpful, but not sufficient, to have something in your letter of agreement, but the real understanding need to be there between you and the congregational leadership.  My letter of agreement simply says this: "The Minister is encouraged to be visible and involved in social action in the community, preferably in consonance with the social mission of the Congregation."  But over time, we've developed an understanding that I'm pretty free to, and even encouraged to, talk to our local press.

With that said, before your big action or event, if possible, you want to tell your local press.  Develop a relationship with the reporter who is the one who covers religion, but also with one who covers the local news beat in general.  You don't always want to be on the religion page only.  E-mail your press releases to the paper itself more generally, but also to the specific reporters.  Develop a quick press release format where you don't have to spend too much time writing, or find a specific volunteer in the congregation who is particularly good at this.  I'm lucky that my RE Coordinator also is handy at this, so if I want a press release to go out and there's enough turn-around time, I contact her.  It helps to develop a list of local media sources with their contact information, so that you can send it out to a bunch of sources all at once. 

For example, when I said I was not going to sign marriage licenses anymore, I wrote up a quick press release.  I had one from ten years earlier saved on my hard drive about a related stance I took in Massachusetts, and I changed the quotes and dates and details, and e-mailed it to the reporter that had written the most recent article at our local paper that I had been involved in on marriage equality.  It bounced back saying she was out of town and giving some other writers' e-mails, so I sent it on to them.  The next morning I awoke to a phone call from one of those reporters.  And then the day after that, I was on the front page of the paper.  It was really that easy, because I had a template and knew what to do and who to contact.  The most important thing about getting that article was that I thought to tell them.  Too often we take great actions in our congregations and don't think to tell the press.

After you've done something, and particularly if you have an article in your paper or or on local TV, it's time to tell the UU movement about it.  There are a few places you want to share your message about the exciting and interesting things your church is doing.  The UUA will often find out without you telling, partly because they have a clippings service.  But some of our local papers might not get picked up by that, and it never hurts to tell them yourself.  If you have a "congregational life story" you can send it to websubmissions @ uua.org.  And then there's the UU World, where Rachel Walden compiles a media round-up of UUs in the news weekly, which can be found at http://blogs.uuworld.org/media.  This is a list of UUs in the news, so if your congregation or minister has made the local paper or TV station, you can submit your story to the UU World directly for inclusion there.  If it's a big enough story, the UU World may elect to do a larger news article on it, as well.  So as soon as something has happened in our town where it makes the local paper, I e-mail that article to the UUA and the UU World, just to make sure they don't miss it. 

Those are the primary places to notify with your news in our movement, but your district or region may have a webpage where they post stories, as well. The MidAmerica Region does.  And if you have a state-wide advocacy network, you might let them know if they do a newsletter.  And lastly, if you're writing up your story yourself and it fits their mission, you can send it to Standing on the Side of Love for their blog and e-mails.

As an example of this, after our brief day of marriage equality where same-sex marriages were performed in Michigan, I realized how instrumental UUs had been in the four counties where our clerks had opened for Saturday business.  I wrote up a synopsis for the MidAmerica board, because we write little things to each other about what congregations are doing and what justice efforts are being done in our states.  The MidAmerica staff asked to share it on their webpage, and then our state advocacy network, MUUSJN, asked to share it as well.  I posted that to Facebook, where it then got shared with friends on staff at the UU World.  Realizing their interest, I e-mailed them and the UUA a copy of what I had written, and then the UU World contacted me and then other ministers to get a longer story.  Would the UU World have known what happened if I hadn't done this?  Yes, they would've seen news clippings of the individual actions of UU ministers in the four counties.  But contacting them helped them to put the story together into one larger story, which is that ministers serving UU churches were instrumental in making what happened that day possible.  And that helped create the larger and important narrative for our movement about what we're doing. 

Back when I took that workshop with John Hurley in 2002, he said to send him an e-mail when we were in the paper.  Back then the articles didn't have links, but they could get the article through their clipping service.  And they would take those articles and circulate them around the UUA.  I imagine a manila folder.   I don't think they do that anymore -- they probably just read the UUs in the News column weekly.  But I still send my news articles to John Hurley -- and now he tells me he'll forward them to Rachel Walden for UUs in the News, so that's really the place to send them.  But it was neat when I sent him the article about not signing licenses that he remembered when I had sent him the press coverage I got ten years ago, and was pleased that this could still have an impact in our local communities, which it does.

The moral is, don't be afraid to be a little shameless about telling your story and getting your word out there.  It's exciting for other Unitarian Universalists to hear what you've been doing, particularly when it comes to justice work.  We learn from reading the stories of the work done in other congregations, and we feel more connected as a movement.  And in your local papers, showing that your congregation is doing justice work is not only important for getting the justice cause heard, it's important for telling your community what Unitarian Universalism is.  It's okay for justice work to have the side benefit of raising your congregational profile in your community -- let your acts shine.

Nickel and Dimed in Bivocational Ministry

12 April 2014 at 20:45
In the last week or two, I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bivocational ministry" as the potential saving model for sustainability in our movement.  The subject has come up in a number of collegial conversations, and Scott Wells introduces the subject in a recent post

First of all, as far as I can see "bivocational ministry" is just a fancy term for "part-time ministry" that makes it sound like something the minister wants because they have some other wonderful job they don't want to give up.

What are the problems with bivocational ministry?  It can be a great choice if:
  • You're independently wealthy
  • You're a second-career minister with a lucrative first profession
  • You have a spouse with a good income
On the other hand, it's not so great if:
  •  You're a first-career minister
  • You're not independently wealthy
  • You don't have a spouse with a good income
I was a part-time minister for a couple of years.  You could call me "bivocational" since I had a second part-time job.  As a first-career minister, I don't have a professional practice in psychology to make up a second job.  What I have is an M.A. in English, and so I taught adjunct at a community college.  I continue to do that now, even though I'm in full-time ministry.  But I taught enough during my 3/4-time ministry to make up 1/4 of my income through college teaching.  And I gave up that life as quickly as I could to go into full-time ministry.  Why?

Part-time work in this country usually comes without benefits.  As a 3/4-time minister, I therefore threw much of my total cost of ministry (TCM) into benefits.  I had a benefit package that looked much like a full-time ministers, but with a tiny salary attached to it.  The other 1/4-time job would make up some of the income difference, but not all of it.  Full-time work, because of the benefit balance piece, pays better than two part-time jobs.  Esssentially, you see, I was paying for 1/4 of my benefits that wouldn't be part of a balanced 3/4-time job out of salary.  And adjunct salary being what it is, it wasn't equivalent to 1/4 of a professional salary.

This leads to my second point: part-time employment is usually under-paid.  Even if the minister isn't underpaid in their half-time ministry, their other half-time job probably is underpaid, especially if this is a first-career minister.  As you find in ministry, being well-trained for ministry doesn't exactly put you on the top of the market for non-ministry jobs out there.

And part-time ministry is overworked.  Full-time ministers in our movement often get one Sunday a month off.  Most half-time ministers seem to get two Sundays a month off.  And 3/4-time ministers get one Sunday a month off.  That's what I find as I talk to my part-time colleagues.  So a 3/4-time minister is often doing full-time ministry for 3/4 of the money.  And since full-time ministry is often a job and a half at full-time pay, that's even worse.

I left part-time ministry for health reasons: I was pregnant.  And I had good health care through my ministry profession.  I probably could've gotten maternity leave (although this was a debate with the congregation, which is another story).  But an adjunct professor gets no paid maternity leave.  So essentially getting pregnant meant I would lose 1/4 of my income at the same time as I gained 1/3 of my family.  That math didn't look good or sustainable to me.  And the idea of working as much as I was working with a baby also didn't sit well.  And so I found myself in search and pregnant at the same time. 

For me, bivocational ministry looks like a ministry model to attract older and wealthier ministers.  It looks like an even more classist ministry.  And it looks like a future that if we pursue it will lose a lot of ministers who would add a lot to our movement, but who simply can't afford the luxury of part-time work.

In a movement that's talking about how work should be sustainable for a family, let's quit the talk of bivocational ministry as our future fix, and keep thinking about how to make a sustainable ministry sustainable for congregations as well.  It's a challenge, but if we don't meet this challenge we aren't living our faith.

Equality Comes to Michigan -- Part Four: Weddings

5 April 2014 at 13:27
It's time to finish up my series about my memories of that day in Ann Arbor.  With the abundance of clergy we had, the blessing was that those who had religious communities were often able to find their own clergy person and have them perform the ceremony, and many others were able to find someone who represented their own faith tradition, whether Christian or Jewish or Pagan.  I did see one African-American couple come down who were specifically looking for an African-American minister.  It sounded like they had seen him earlier and were trying to find him again.  I don't know if they did, or not.  I hadn't seen him, but the room was very crowded for most of the day. 

Those couples without connections to local clergy had their pick of the rest of us who were there available. I officiated at two services.  And just enjoyed the day and celebrated with other couples and witnessed and helped the rest of the time. 
The first wedding I performed that day was for Adam and Michael.  They have been together over a dozen years, and had had a wedding before, although it wasn't a legal ceremony.  They'll now have two spring anniversaries to celebrate.  Adam and Michael were glad to hear I was UU -- they said they were hoping for either a UU or Unity minister.  Here in this picture (by Annette Bowman), I'm blessing the wedding rings that they have been wearing for years.

At the end of the ceremony, I copied what the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer of the First UU Congregation of Ann Arbor had been doing during all the ceremonies she had been performing that day.  I held their hands aloft, and loudly proclaimed them married and introduced them to the room.  As each marriage was thus announced, all other activity in the room would pause and the room would all cheer and celebrate together, and then other ceremonies would resume.  This picture (by Jon or Kathy McLean), is taken just as we're bringing our hands down from that moment.  It captures Adam and Michael mere seconds after their marriage has become legally recognized. 

The second ceremony I officiated at is one I don't have pictures of except from The Detroit News, where they're shown in the slide show here (slides 8 and 9).  Shirley and Shirley were among the last couples to get married that day, and the room was emptying out.  You have to be a resident of the county to get a license there, and one Shirley lives in Detroit, but the other Shirley is an Ypsilanti native.  It was fun introducing Shirley Hayslett-Cunningham and Shirley Cunningham-Hayslett to the room, though I got a bit (understandably, I think) tongue-twisted with that one. The room cheered and laughed in a friendly, loving way.  

Before long, it was after 1pm, and couples were being turned away as the Washtenaw County Clerk's office closed.  Despite the fact that our governor is refusing to recognize these marriages and a stay on performing more is in effect, the law of Michigan right now still stands that our constitutional ban on same-sex marriage is overturned, and same-sex marriage is legal.  Refusing to recognize the marriages while the appeal is pending is to refuse to recognize couples that were, and are, legally married.  Thankfully, the Federal government is recognizing these marriages. 

It puts a damper on that day that these couples are on hold, certainly.  In cases like Michael and Adam and Shirley and Shirley, these couples literally don't even know what their own name is, since hyphenating your name is a perk of legal marriage, without any other steps necessary to have a legal name change.  It's just one of the thousands of legal problems that couples whose marriages aren't legally recognized have arrange separately.  It's the smallest example, and one that heterosexual couples just take for granted and don't even think about.  Some of the same-sex couples were startled to find, that day, that this was something they could easily and legally do in a legally-recognized wedding. 

Name changes are one thing --  although names are fundamental to our identity, and meaningful -- but the inheritance rights and the adoption rights are very significant and have a huge impact.  So many couples in my community live in situations where if one person dies, the other parent will not have any legal claim on the children they have raised and parented together.  The court case in Michigan began as an adoption case for this very reason. 

I find myself unsure about how to end this post.  This was a joyous, celebratory day, full of love and full of the joy of recognizing families in our state.  We knew that a stay would come to the decision, but I had hope that these marriages would be recognized in our state until and unless an appeal was successful.  I think it's a crime that they're not.  And so a day of joy is still a day of joy, but followed by anger and sorrow.  We are still are fighting for equality in Michigan. 

Signing Licenses: My Pledge

27 March 2014 at 20:08
Over a decade ago, I decided I wasn't going to be an instrument of the state anymore if the state continued to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying.  I talked to my congregation and the board of trustees about it and then, in October 2003, I took a public vow not to sign any more marriage licenses until the Commonwealth of Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage.  I was one of about a dozen clergy who had done so, one of whom was the Rev. Fred Small, author of the beloved song "Everything Possible."  After hearing Fred Small talk about his decision and his reasoning, my mind was made up.  I cried when I heard him, because he had given name and voice to what I had been feeling, and had reached a solution that removed him from the wrong equation.  I knew I had to do likewise.


A year and a half later, in May of 2004, same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.  I performed a few weddings that spring and happily signed licenses for all, and then, that summer I moved to Michigan.  A few months later, in November of 2004, we passed our constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage.  I didn't take the same vow in Michigan as I had in Massachusetts.  In Massachusetts, it felt like it was part of a building momentum towards changing things.  Here, it felt like it would be futile, so I went ahead and signed.  But with every license I signed, I felt like I was doing something wrong.  For ten years I've ministered in this state and signed licenses in this state, knowing that it felt wrong each time.

There are 1138 benefits at the federal level alone that go along with marriage.  There are benefits at the state level, as well.  My friend Shelly explained on Facebook this week that if her wife were to die, Shelly would have to pay taxes on the house that they both own.  Those taxes would be enough that she would likely lose her home.  Her wife would have to do likewise if Shelly were to die.  And her wife would have no legal claim over the son they've raised together.  Shelly's story is just one of thousands in our state.

Finally, after almost a decade since it became legal in Massachusetts and banned in the constitution here, we had a brief window last weekend where we were able to perform legally-recognized same-sex weddings in Michigan.  Those marriages are now on hold, with our governor saying he won't recognize these legally-performed weddings until the appeal process is finished.

Having signed the marriage licenses on Saturday for two same-sex couples -- Michael and Adam, and Shirley and Shirley -- I don't think I can go back to signing just licenses for opposite-sex couples. 
I realized this just as I was typing this.  I wasn't planning on writing this today.  But if these marriages are on hold, so am I.  Until all the marriages that I perform are recognized by the State of Michigan, the State of Michigan is no longer part of my role as minister.  I will officiate at weddings, but until I can sign licenses again for same-sex couples in Michigan, I'm not signing any licenses in Michigan and will only sign licenses in states which recognize same-sex marriage, from this point forward. 

I owe that to Michael and Adam, and to Shirley and Shirley.  I can do no less.  Their weddings are no less real and their marriages no less valid than any other I have ever performed.

Equality Comes to Michigan -- Part 3: Meaningful Helpers

26 March 2014 at 19:49
Before I write about the the marriages, and what a joy that was -- I want to write about the helping things that people did, because they made a huge difference.

At the Washtenaw County Clerk's office, there were about twenty clergy and judges present ready to marry people, and they came from all sorts of different faiths.  There were a few of us Unitarian Universalists (the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer, the Rev. Tom Schade, and myself, and the Rev. Mark Evens was there at the beginning).  I saw several UCC ministers.  There was a rabbi.  There were three Pagan officiants of various stripes.  There was a Native American officiant.  There was an Episcopal priest.  I'm sure other Protestant denominations were present.  And then there were a handful or more of Universal Life Church members.

Now, I've always had a sort of a "thing" about ULC ministers.  It's always seemed a bit unfair or wrong that without any training and any credentialing process, people can hang out a shingle and do what I do, into which I put 5 years of training into and tens of thousands of dollars (which I'm still paying off).  And perhaps a bit of my sore attitude is due to my own ULC ordination.  When I was doing my CPE (hospital chaplaincy) during seminary, some of the other CPE students ordained me through the ULC as a joke -- making fun of UUism, basically.  They went online, put in my name, and voila, I was an ordained ULC minister.  I keep the certificate, which they printed off and framed, by my desk even today.   

Well, I was about to get "schooled" in the commitment and dedication -- and love -- of ULC ministers.  And now I'm proud to be one.

I was sitting next to a ULC minister named Ted Van Roekel, mentioned here. Ted had come not knowing if any other clergy would be there, and he had come with enough papers that he could have performed all the marriages if he needed to.  At the table perpendicular to mine were three more ULC ministers.  One, Naomi, had just become ordained for this particular purpose, or so I heard through a friend of a friend.  She is Jewish, and had asked her rabbi, the one who was present, if this was a way that would be appropriate for her to help out.  He had agreed, and so she came.  Between her and myself was another ULC minister.  She had a full day's schedule and had to come and go, but she contacted Thomas Dowds, who came with a case of water for us.  The room was hot, and after a while those performing the most weddings were getting parched, so the water was a real blessing.  Even more special, however, Thomas brought two large sheet cakes for wedding cakes so that all the couples could have some wedding cake. 

Back to Ted: Ted didn't know who might come, so he created a plan.  He put out a request for friends to come and help -- to work as runners, to serve as witness.  And he asked particularly for two friends of his, Annette Bowman and Matt Klinske, to come and take photographs.  Annette served as wedding photographer for 32 weddings that day, and took down each couple's emails on a sheet of paper so that she could e-mail them later.  She took over 600 photographs and processed them for over four hours on Sunday, and still wasn't done.  By Tuesday evening, she had sent me pictures of the ceremony I performed that she photographed, which was near the end of the period.

There were so many clergy present that those of us who didn't have a church in the area were not in high demand.  I performed two ceremonies.  Ted performed two ceremonies.  When he did the first one, he was nervous and even shaking from excitement and joy.  I understood -- I had felt the same way minutes before when I performed my first ceremony of the day, even though I performed legal marriages in Massachusetts a decade ago.  I helped by filling out his paperwork as he did the ceremony, just as some of the other ULC ministers had done while I performed a ceremony. 

It was these special touches -- the photographers, the cakes, and the buckets of flowers that somebody else brought -- that built a community around these people.  Ann Arbor Unitarian Universalists were part of building that community, too.  They came to celebrate and form religious community, folks like Kathy and Jon McLean, wearing their Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts and standing as the congregation for wedding after wedding that Gail performed.  Beloved Community was created in Ann Arbor on Saturday.  And I am still in awe and tears about the caring and dedication of all these people, who came and helped and celebrated because they were standing on the side of love.

Equality Comes to Michigan -- Part 2: Arriving in Washtenaw and Starting the Day

24 March 2014 at 19:36
I arrived at the Washtenaw County Clerk's office about 9:05, and licenses were to begin being issued at 9:00 a.m., so I was a tad late.  The crowd was packed into the building, and a few people were milling outside, but the line wasn't yet out the doors.  I walked in and heard a gentleman with a clipboard telling a couple where they should go and what they should do.  I approached him and said, "I'm clergy.  Where do I go?"  He said, "There's a room downstairs.  The stairs are over there.  And thank you for being here!"  I headed down stairs and asked someone downstairs where I was to go.  They told me the clergy were all in the back corner of the room ahead.  I wove my way through the crowd, and saw the Rev. Mark Evens, who is very tall, and knew I was in the right area.  I tossed my coat on a table that had a bunch of coats, and greeted Mark (who had to depart early) and the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer and the Rev. Tom Schade.  I didn't yet really realize what was going on, but the first wedding of the day at that site was being performed by Judge Judy Levy, and she was giving it all due honor, taking her time to craft a really beautiful ceremony, that I was too breathless and excited to really pay attention to, to my fault.  Later in the day, she came over beside me to get her papers in order, and I learned that the ceremony she used was one she adapted from her own wedding ceremony.  She's a brand new judge, having only been finally confirmed ten days before.  In fact, I had met her a few weeks ago, when she was not yet "Judge Judy" when I went to hear the court case with the Hanover-Horton High School GSA, and Judge Friedman introduced us to her as she happened by.  My biggest regret of the day is that I didn't listen more intently and reverently, because I was anxious to get started. I was in too much of a social justice mode and not yet really in a worshipful spiritual mode.  And while we were doing the work of justice that day, it was really not about that.  It was about weddings, about love, and about these incredible couples and their relationships and lives and families.  It took me a little while to really let that sink in and understand it at a deep level.  I get the social justice stuff quickly and intuitively.  Gail helped me to see, by witnessing her and listening to her, that this was sacred space

After the ceremony was done, and a lot of cheering happened and photographs were taken by all the press and onlookers, someone made an announcement explaining the basic process.  You got a number, when your number was called you could go up and apply for your license.  When you got your license, you should come back down here, and clergy would be at the tables along the walls ready to perform ceremonies.  There were about twenty clergy in the room scrambling to find places at the table as the room emptied out a bit.  After a while, one of the Ann Arbor members came along with their Standing on the Side of Love banner, wondering where we might put it.  We decided to lay it out on the table like a table cloth, and the other ministers sharing the table with us didn't seem to mind.  Tom Schade laid his stole out in front of me to create a little sacred space.  He had offered to lend it to me, and it's his only stole, but he and I had both donned our collars for the occasion instead.  I turned on the chalice app on my tablet. A lot of members of the Ann Arbor church were there to witness and celebrate and form the Beloved Community for the members and friends Gail would be marrying that day.  Two of them, Kathy and John McLean, had been members of the Marquette, Michigan congregation back when I was a student minister up there.  Their daughter is in seminary preparing for the UU ministry, and Kathy has been making her stoles.  She had just finished a rainbow stole for her daughter, and had brought it along for the day so that it could soak up the energy of the day.  Although I was content without a stole, and could've worn Tom's, I offered to wear Kathy's daughter's it so that it would be even more a part of the day, and Kathy happily lent it to me. Honestly, it was the most beautiful rainbow stole I've seen, and I was really proud to wear it for her.  Kathy and John and the other Ann Arbor UUs were amazing that day -- witnessing and celebrating and helping.  They were the congregation, made visible and present for each and every wedding. 

As we settled into place, it wasn't long before couples with licenses started entering the room. 

Photo by Annette Bowman

Equality Comes to Michigan -- Part 1: Hearing the News and Preparing to Respond

24 March 2014 at 11:49
This past Friday, after 5 p.m., when the county clerks had just closed, Judge Bernard Friedman, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, ruled that our constitutional ban against same-sex marriage, voted into the constitution in 2004, was unconstitutional.  In his findings, he said:
In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” Tr. 2/25/14 p. 40, state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor , 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Today’s decision is a step in that direction, and affirms the enduring principle that regardless of whoever finds favor in the eyes of the most recent majority, the guarantee of equal protection must prevail.
 We knew that the state attorney general, Bill Schuette, had immediately filed an appeal and an emergency stay of the decision, but that it, too, happened after the close of offices Friday.  So it looked like if couples were to get married, it would happen only licenses could get issued over the weekend.  On Facebook, I began to see UU colleagues in Michigan immediately asking if any clerk was going to be open over the weekend.  We heard a statement from Barb Byrum, the Ingham County Clerk, that she would open first thing on Monday morning and start issuing licenses, but we knew that the emergency stay could go through so quickly that we wouldn't have our window if we had to wait until Monday. I called Equality Michigan to find out if they knew anything more from any county clerks, and only got answering machines, unsurprisingly.  Then I called Randy Block, Director of the Michigan UU Social Justice Network.  He hadn't learned anything about any clerks opening yet, either, but said he would call and e-mail me if he did and I said I would post it by e-mail to the clergy groups and to Facebook. 

Around 9:30 p.m., I had just seen that the Washtenaw County Clerk was going to open on Saturday morning via a post from Gail Geisenhainer, who was busy talking to her members and community contacts and perhaps the clerk himself.  Randy Block called to say that he had learned Washtenaw County Clerk (in Ann Arbor) was going to be open and also the Muskegon County Clerk, and amazingly the Muskegon County Clerk would be issuing licenses from the Harbor UU Church there in Muskegon!  He sent me an e-mail about Muskegon and I forwarded it to our chapter Yahoo group, along with the request that if anybody were to hear about any other county that they notify the group.  Some folks wanted to stay in their own counties and put pressure on their clerks to open, but I knew my own County Clerk would not be opening, based on our experience with her in October, so, faced with a choice of protesting here or helping there, I prepared to travel to Washtenaw.  Oakland and Ingham County seemed the most likely to open, so I and others kept an open ear.  We knew Barb Byrum in Ingham had said Monday, but also knew that she wanted to issue licenses.  And the Oakland County Clerk, Lisa Brown, had been active and public about the desire to issue licenses, and had testified for the defense in the case.  Those were the counties to watch.  The UU ministers in Southeast Michigan had done some good work earlier in the year getting to know who our county clerks were and identifying which of them would issue licenses with the most haste.  We had created a Google doc to share this information. 

On a personal note, my daughter had a performance on Saturday and my whole family was heading here to Jackson to see it.  And my car had been totaled a week ago, and we had just gotten the news that the insurance company considered it totaled slightly before Friedman's decision, but they wouldn't be issuing us a rental car until Monday.  So I had a busy schedule to juggle and one car for our household.  I posted to Facebook asking if any other local progressive clergy would also be interested in heading to Washtenaw, but got no positive response.  But I determined that if we left here at 8 and got me to the courthouse at 9, my husband and daughter could get back just in time for her to show up for her performance.  I didn't know for sure how I would get home and when I get home, but we agreed to play that more by ear.  I knew my daughter would understand why I wanted to be in Ann Arbor.  I had been saying all year as this case progressed that if I could get anywhere and perform ceremonies and sign licenses when it became legal, that I would do so.  I knew all the couples I had married before in non-legal ceremonies were in counties where they wouldn't be able to get licenses, so I was free to go wherever I could.

Around 1:15 a.m. I saw a post from Equality Michigan on Facebook that Lisa Brown in Oakland would be opening for business, and I shared the post and e-mailed our HUUMA Yahoo and Southeast MichigaN UU Ministers Yahoo group.  In the early hours of the morning I realized my copies of the ceremony I had prepared and my stoles were all at church, and I wouldn't have time to get them in the morning, as there was no way my husband was going to agree to get up the extra 40 minutes early.  I hunted down my clergy collar that I hadn't worn since maybe the Phoenix GA -- I hate the thing, as it's too tight.  I printed off new copies, with my printer that had decided in the name of equality that it would cooperate that day.  And then I went to sleep to get the five hours that would carry me through the next day.

The next morning I awoke and got ready, and checked Facebook.  Across Michigan, we were preparing for the day.  Jeff Liebman stayed in Midland, prepared to act if his clerk would open, and talked to the press and contacted couples he knew were waiting there.  Colleen Squires and Fred Wooden prepared for a protest to happen in Grand Rapids on Sunday.  I saw that Barb Byrum must have decided to open for business, because Kathryn Bert had posted that she was headed there.  She brought her team of Nic Cable and Julica Herman with  her.  Kimi Riegel awoke to see my post about Oakland County and headed there.  Tom Schade and Gail Geisenhainer had already said the previous day that they would be there in Ann Arbor.  Mark Evens came briefly, as well.  And in Muskegon, Bill Freeman headed to church. 

The UU clergy of Michigan were ready and prepared for this day to come, and it had come at last.

Re-Organization, Indeed

22 March 2014 at 20:08
The Rev. Tom Schade had a great post over at The Lively Tradition today.  In it, he calls for a reorganization of the UUA.  He has two main points, the second of which is:

Creating a service bureau at the denominational level which provides back office functions for local congregations (bookkeeping, payroll, website design and production, even pledge accounting) on a profitable fee-for-service basis. It should seek clients in other denominations as well.

I wanted to add my two cents and just unpack this a bit.

Website

I've already written about how congregations often struggle with website design and production, and how the UUA could create a template webpage that we more easily adapt, that would be on message and higher quality than what most of us produce on our own.  For every one great UU congregational website, I swear I can find you five bad ones, and not all in small churches.  But I'm not naming names.

Since that post that I wrote, I've been redesigning our website.  Even moving to a Wordpress site, it took me the better part of three weeks working at trying out different themes and widgets and plug-ins before I decided I was halfway happy with the solution.

Do you know who could do a better job than someone whose degrees and training are in English, psychology, and ministry?  I bet they'd do it in half the time, too.  And then I could do the work of ministry that this congregation really called me to do.  But I don't have many people who understand web design in my congregation, except one who is developing in that area, and the UUA is not helping so far with this, so it's left to the individual congregation, and whatever expertise we can drum up, or hire out if we can afford it.

Payroll

My best example is my 90-member church.  We struggled with payroll.  It was complicated for our treasurer to understand.  It took a lot of volunteer hours.  There were plenty of instances when payroll was done incorrectly.  In fact, in ten years at this church, it was only within the year that we got the deduction for healthcare done right and the percentage that I get in lieu of FICA.  And that's even after a handful of years ago when we started hiring a local small business organization to handle our payroll. Even companies that do this for pay don't always work with a lot of churches, and churches are different.  We had to educate them, if memory serves, about housing allowance.  I've done spreadsheets and graphics to explain housing allowance and the other components of my package to my board.  My theory, as I said in the comments at The Lively Tradition if you ask ten ministers if they've ever had a church mess up their paycheck or their tax forms, you'll get ten yes answers.  It's complicated, even for those who understand things, and a lot of our churches, particularly small ones due to sheer numbers, just don't have someone who totally understands things.

Who could understand this and do it for churches?  Yes, the UUA could.  And it would be a service we'd happily pay for, as we're paying for it now.  And they'd understand churches a lot better than your average local small business support organization.

Pledge Accounting

Again, something we struggle with.   We ask members if, in addition to their pledge, they'd like to separately pay their UUA dues, and pay for a paper newsletter subscription, and if they'd like to have their pledge electronically deducted from their bank account.  And we pay a fee to Vanco, as many churches do, for this service.  It's complicated to get the systems all set up right, with some people paying annually, some monthly, some weekly. 

If the UUA bundled this in with a financial services package, would we opt for it?  Yeah, I bet we would.

Bookkeeping

Our church has a volunteer bookkeeper, but we pay for occasional professional accounting services from yet another person.  That paid accountant helped set up our software and checks over things every so often, as I understand it, to make sure we're entering information correctly.

Would we be interested in paying the UUA to handle this instead, along with pledge accounting and payroll?  Yep, I think so.

In sum, we have a pretty good cadre of volunteers doing this work, but it takes an enormous amount of time from them.  All of them are not people who were in this type of work for a living, so they're very good and intelligent and proficient amateurs.  We've seen immense burn-out in our treasurers.  We've struggled to find the right pieces to farm out to professionals, and struggled to find the professionals who understand churches. 

The UUA would like to see churches doing a better job at spreading our message and being out there in the world working for justice.  We'd like to pour more of our resources into worship and programming and social justice and religious education.  But for a small church, the back-office work is eating up our volunteer hours. 

It's time for re-organization, indeed. 

Choose Love: A Prayer for the Passing of Fred Phelps

20 March 2014 at 13:58
I met with a local high school's GSA a week or two ago, and was talking about what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality.  I believe that even Biblical literalists are choosing what parts of the Bible they take literally and currently and what parts they choose to understand either as metaphor or as written for a certain historical context.  Even the fundamentalists don't follow all of the purity laws.  And they're choosing to place emphasis on the passages that judge over the passages that preach love and forgiveness.  Given that you have to pick and choose, the question really is why some people choose to pick hate.  I said, "I choose to pick love."

The hard part about choosing love is the same as the hard part of believing in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and the hard part of believing in universal salvation.  The hard part of choosing love is applying it to someone you see as having chosen a path of hatred and pain.  

Today we've heard that Fred Phelps died last night.  Fred Phelps was a person who made it his mission to choose hate.  He carried signs proclaiming hate, he picketed funerals proclaiming hate, he built a church to spread his hate.  There are people wanting, understandably, to celebrate his death and to picket his funeral.  It's hard not to have sympathy for that perspective.  Fred Phelps spread a lot of hate and pain during his life, and the cessation of that message being spread by him feels like it must be a good. 

The struggle in the face of the death of Fred Phelps is to remember his inherent worth and dignity, to believe in his salvation, and to choose love in the face of his hate even now.

Here's my prayer:

Spirit of Life,
May Fred Phelps, child of the universe, be at peace.
May his family be at peace and come to know love.
May the world heal from the hate that was sown.
May we all choose love in increasing measure. 
Blessed be.  Amen.

Today in the Michigan Same-Sex Marriage Case...

28 February 2014 at 17:52
Today I went along with the Hanover-Horton High School Gay-Straight Alliance to view the historic trial going on in the federal court in Detroit that will potentially overturn Michigan's constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage.  The GSA group walked proudly and peacefully past the protestors for "traditional marriage" outside as we came into the federal court building.  Judge Friedman greeted us warmly as we came into the courtroom, asking if we were the high school group that he had heard was coming, giving the group president a moment to introduce the group, and saying he would stay around afterward to share some information about how the courts work and answer any questions excepting that he could not answer questions pertaining to the case.

Today in DeBoer vs. Snyder there was one witness on the stand.  DeBoer's team called their Harvard's Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Dr. Nancy Cott.  In addition to being a professor of history at Harvard, Cott was an expert witness for the federal case Perry v. Schwarzenegger against Proposition 8 in California, and is the author of the book Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

Hearing Professor Cott was like getting to go to a Harvard lecture on the subject.  She deftly covered the history of marriage and explained that those who would uphold "traditional marriage" are aiming at a target that's always been moving.  She explained three main ways in which marriage has changed in the course of American history: asymmetrical (gender) roles, divorce, and race, and explained how each was relevant.  To Michigan's credit, she noted, we were one of the first to, early on, get rid of laws banning interracial marriage (which she made a point of showing were always about whiteness, and never about two other races marrying).  An interesting example of women's roles in marriage changing that she gave was that earlier in history women who married men from other countries automatically lost their American citizenship, because their identity was assumed to be subsumed under their husband's.  She described how marriage in America has been increasingly moving in a direction of equality and openness.  She cleanly swept aside religious concerns explaining that in America marriage had been a civil institution from the beginning, citing a statement by William Bradford defining marriage as a civil institution in America and a critical distinction from England.  She explained that clergy performing legal ceremonies are doing so because the state has entrusted to them and loaned to them its power.  And she clarified that clergy could impose additional restrictions on marriage to what the state imposes, such as a Catholic priest requiring people to be Catholic or not divorced, but that those additional restrictions did not, in turn, affect the state's qualifications for marriage.  As a Massachusetts resident, she said that same-sex marriage had had no discernible negative impact on heterosexual marriage, and that, to the contrary, there were younger people who had been uncomfortable with the institution because it was discriminatory who now felt more comfortable with the institution.  Overall, she nicely laid out that the arc of our nation's history bends towards marriage equality. 

The state in their questioning of Professor Cott, the state looked foolish and awkward to this decidedly biased viewer.  The lawyer for the state began by stating that she was going to be asking yes-or-no questions and asked Professor Cott to restrict her answers to yes or no.  Judge Friedman told Cott that she could also state if her answer could not be restricted to yes or no, and so Cott managed to give a more nuanced answer to almost every question.  It was clear from the questions that the state's case will rely on the importance of binary gender, on the importance of the state upholding a model of biological mother and father as ideal in childrearing, and the idea that the state has an interest in procreation.  The state's lawyer tried to pin her down on the idea of gender being binary as important to the state's interests, and Cott responded that so far gender had been understood as binary, but that was changing as we understood and included transgender as a category.  They managed to pin Cott down as saying that the state did have an interest in procreation, but then Cott was able to explain that as she had thought about it further, she would have to qualify it, because that was such a vague statement.  She explained that the state had an interest in procreation occurring, because we need people, but that as to whether or not marriages were procreative ones or not, the state had never expressed an interest, such as in limiting marriage to those within ages where procreation is possible.  The one point at which I think she floundered a bit was in making the case for why we shouldn't also allow polygamy, which the state's lawyer defined as something that "fundamentalist Mormons" believe in.  Cott chose to address this by denying that any religious group existed that believed in polygamy, and that, rather, those Mormons who did believe in it were not only doing something illegal but something that went against their religion.  I think this was a weak argument for why same-sex marriage is different than polygamy, and a narrow understanding of Mormonism as monolithic and not viewing fundamentalist offshoots as valid religious organizations. 

The one awkward moment for DeBoer's attorney this morning came when he compared Michigan's case to the other states where Federal judges have overturned same-sex marriage bans.  Judge Friedman quickly pointed out that those had been summary decisions, not full trials like this one.  The lawyer quickly regrouped and said not that those were pointing for how this should be decided but rather that when the lawyer found in DeBoer's favor, as he surely must, that the Michigan decision would show that those decisions had been correct and uphold them further. 

As the court day concluded, Judge Friedman asked the state's attorneys how long each of their witnesses was likely to take, so that they could all have a sense of the timeline for the case.  It sounds like there will be another three days, roughly, of testimony as the state now brings their witnesses.

Afterwards, Judge Friedman did indeed come talk with our GSA group.  He seemed quite delighted in having us there, and introduced us to various people, including Judith Ellen Levy who has been nominated as a U.S. District Judge by President Obama and is currently the Civil Rights Chief of the US Attorney's Office in Eastern Michigan.  Levy is an openly gay attorney and was very friendly to the GSA and told them what the state of gay rights was like when she was in college and what her own marriage ceremony was like (in DC, if I recall correctly) -- her family sat in the jury box and gave her a "life sentence."  It was great for the GSA to get to meet this great role model in the legal and judicial field.  After that, Judge Friedman returned and told us about how the district court works, explaining with great enthusiasm the different types of cases and giving examples of a drug case and a case against Winnebago that he had judged, since he happened to have their displays hanging around and could use them as examples.  He steered clear of talking about the DeBoer vs. Snyder case except to say that he had left time after the case before his next case, as he intended to issue the decision right away since it was such an important case, and that there had already been groups, such as the county clerks association, asking for a stay, and it was common in cases like this one.  He didn't outright say that a stay would be issued immediately, but it certainly sounded likely. 

After today, my hopes are even higher than ever that equality will prevail soon in Michigan.  And when we do, we'll be the first state to have struck down a same-sex marriage ban with a full trial, making our stand even stronger.  I'm thankful the GSA invited me to attend with them today, and glad I did.  It was an uplifting day, full of hope and possibility.

Tips for Preaching from Tablet

22 February 2014 at 22:00
I've been using my tablet (a Nexus 7 Android tablet, and before that my Kindle) to preach from rather than paper-printed text as of late, something that I know some of my colleagues are doing but some are hesitant about.  There are some good reasons for doing so:

1.  It saves paper.

That would be enough, but here are some more:

2.  I can move around with it and am not tied to the pulpit, even if I want to preach from a manuscript.
3.  It cuts down on clutter and filing. 
4.  No shuffling or sliding or flipping paper noises.
5.  Nobody accidentally walks away with part of my manuscript.
6.  I never lose a page.
7.  I never get to the middle and find out that the ink ran out midway through printing.
8.  I never leave a page on my printer.
9.  I never grab the wrong folder.
10.  For Christmas Eve and other dimly lit services, it's back-lit.
11.  Color doesn't cost more!  

For people worrying about technology failures, I can say that I've never had the tablet or Kindle technology let me down, but I've had a number of paper-related problems, including running out of ink, a printer that fails to communicate with my computer, and #5-9 above.  But I have taken to sending the file to both my tablet and my Kindle and bringing them both, just in case, so if the tablet had failed to charge fully the night before, for example, the Kindle would be ready to grab.  I've never had the electronic technology fail me, though, whereas I've had numerous problems with paper, from text where the ink ran out to grabbing the wrong folder, to leaving a page on the printer. 

There are some things that are different about the tablet, however, so here are a few tips:
  1. Experiment with font sizes.  I have good eyes and normally preach with a 12-point font.  I find that if I set the font to 26-point, it's the right size for me on the tablet and Kindle.  Another way to do it is to set the font to what you would normally use, and then manipulate the paper size to be tablet-sized.  Both of these formatting options work with the Kindle.  I've only used the former with the tablet, but I assume the later would work. 
  2. Lock the screen rotation, so that if you're walking around and hold it at a little bit of an angle, it doesn't keep flipping back and forth in orientation.
  3. Experiment with different apps to read it in.  I was using the Adobe app, but have found I prefer to read it in the Kindle app.  The reason is that I like to tap on the corner to turn pages rather than swipe, as I find the motion both less distracting and better for keeping one hand free while preaching.  An advantage of the Adobe app is that you can make hand-written notes on the document if you want.  Sometimes I open the file in both so that I have this choice.  If I want to use the Kindle app, however, it's better to e-mail it to my Kindle (using your Kindle or Kindle app's e-mail address, which you can find out in Amazon), rather than just e-mailing it to myself and opening in Kindle. I find if you just open it using Kindle, if you close the app it loses the file and you have to do it again. 
  4. Find a good cover with a strap to slip your hand in on back.  My tablet's cover isn't optimal, and I like my Kindle's cover better.  It's this one, which has a strap to slip my hand in, so that I don't have to be holding on to the tablet, and frees up the thumb to flip pages.  I plan to get essentially the same cover for my tablet soon.  Whatever your choice, make sure that cover looks professional enough that it wouldn't be out of place at a wedding or funeral, and that the tablet doesn't slip out of it easily, which is the problem with my current one. 
  5. Make sure your tablet is set so that it won't time out and shut down during the meditation or hymn, especially if you have a password on it.
  6. This is the one I've just learned.  You don't see as much on a page, so your page breaks are very important.  It may seem at first like you want to have a page break at the end of an element, but if you can't tell it's the end of an element your voice won't have the right inflection as you end the reading.  So put some sort of symbol at the end of each element -- maybe a little chalice -- so that you know the reading has come to an end.  And go through and make sure that all your page breaks are not at places you'll find jarring.  
That's really all there is to it -- it's easier than it seems.  And if you're still asking why you should do this, go back to reason #1.  That's all you need. 

What's In a Name?

20 February 2014 at 15:51
As the UUA has rolled out it's new logo, I've seen a number of places where folks have asked if we should consider changing our name.  Unitarian Universalism is a mouthful.  And it refers to old theological arguments that don't have a lot of relevance to some of our members.  For example, Tom Schade asks the question: "The biggest question of our public presence is should we try to build new congregations and liberal religious communities under the name 'Unitarian Universalism' or under more post-denominational language?"

When I was in my first year of ministry, I arrived at a church that was in the midst of a discussion about name change.  It was a new church that had started with a name that many understood to be a temporary one, but others understood to be the permanent one.  The congregation met and discussed and polled and came up with some top choices that were names like "Harmony Church."  After much discussion, it was time for a vote.  And by a narrow margin, they kept their original name.

My own church has members who every so often remark upon the idea that "Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty" is a mouthful.  There are other problems with the name. "East Liberty" refers to a school district that no longer exists; our mailing address is Clarklake, and the nearest city is Jackson.  (Our former minister, the late Rev. Ruth Smith used to say "East Liberty is a state of mind.")  "Church" is a problematic term for some, and may turn away people from non-Christian backgrounds -- a reason why "Society" and "Congregation" are used by so many other UU congregations.  "Universalist Unitarian" is designed to highlight our Universalist heritage, but it confuses many people who are familiar with our denomination. 

I think it's highly unlikely that Unitarian Universalism will change it's name as a faith or that the UUA will change it's name as an association.  {And thinking about the term as both a faith and a denomination/association needs to be unpacked more than I'm doing here.  For many "Unitarian Universalism" doesn't describe their faith, only their association.  For me, it does both.  It's as complicated is untangling whether the flaming chalice is a religious symbol or a logo, or both, when used by the UUA and our churches.)

Back in 2012 Chris Walton did an analysis of UU congregations' names in the UU World.  At that time 756/1054 congregations used "Unitarian Universalist" in their name, and that wasn't counting the "Unitarian Universalists," Universalist Unitarian," just "Unitarian" or "Universalist" or other combinations.  These added more than 150 more.  So changing "Unitarian Universalist Association" to something else would create a lot of work for the individual churches, not unlike what we went through at merger. 

That being said, it's not impossible.  It could be done.  And I think it's the right thing to be asking the question about our denomination's name.  What does "Unitarian Universalism" mean to you?  Can you imagine a name that would be a better fit?  What would be your choice to name your faith?  How do we capture this free-thinking non-creedal inherent-worth-proclaiming love-affirming historically-rooted faith of ours in a phrase shorter than "Unitarian Universalism"?  The Standing on the Side of Love movement has captured our attention in a few short years -- are we morphing to identify more as "the Love people" than as Unitarian Universalists?  Does SSL mean more to some of us than UUA?  Back in that analysis by Chris Walton, the most common theological term in our church names was "All Souls," which was used then by 22 churches including three of our ten largest.  Is "All Souls" something that is meaningful to you? 

As someone born after merger and raised UU, I've been a Unitarian Universalist most of my life.  The term does carry meaning and relevance to me.  But UUism by any other name would still be my faith. 

An Open Letter to the UUA

13 February 2014 at 16:33
I read the UU World article on the new logo, branding, and outreach effort with great interest.  The article tapped into some things I've been frustrated about and some things I've been excited about.  A couple of points in the article really resonated with me (the italics are mine):
The Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley, the UUA’s Program and Strategy Officer, said the new initiative developed out of a growing realization that the UUA and its congregations have been sending “inconsistent” messages about Unitarian Universalism into the larger world.
and
“We want congregations to think about the messages their congregations are sending out to the world that doesn’t know anything about them,” she added. “That includes thinking about how their building looks to guests, the structure of their services, their programs, whether they’re inward-oriented or serving the community, and what their online presence is like.
and
And the UUA is developing other resources for congregations, regional groups, and the national association to use. This effort is about much more than a new logo and a new look for the website, Cooley said. “We have to figure out how we live out this faith of ours, not just how to sell it. We need to get clearer about the ways the culture is changing and the ways we serve that culture.” 
Bravo.  Thank you for your vision.  Here's what I need to start.

I'm a minister who has been out in the field for over a decade, and is relatively technologically proficient for someone in the ministry with a liberal arts degree preceding that, but there are ways in which I was unprepared for the way ministry and church would change during my ministry.  And as a minister of a relatively small church, I see ways in which my church is unable to respond.  There are concrete things that the UUA could do that would make things easier.

In my situation, I'm a minister who is the person who creates our church webpage (and created our UUMA chapter webpage and the Ohio River Group webpage).  Nobody else in my church for a long period of time had the know-how (although this is starting to change).  A small, rural congregation, we had no money to pay a professional website developer.  The end result?  A webpage that is serviceable, but not a strong online presence.  It's been my opinion that there are a lot of small churches and even some larger ones with poor websites.  I can see two solutions to this.  One is churches grouping together.  But with our tendency to not collaborate well -- something I hope will change -- this kind of thing is hard to get going.  A simpler solution is for the UUA to provide a basic webpage template for congregations that is in keeping with UUA branding and customizable to some extent for our local congregation information, or for the UUA to create strong pieces -- graphics and videos, etc. -- that can be incorporated into our websites.

When you add to that the need to create church Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Google + pages, and more, this becomes even more impossible for many congregations -- small, rural, and aging ones, in particular -- to do well.  There's been a lot of good work from the UU Media Collaborative and UU Media Works and others online, but good-quality professional images that we can post and tweet are always needed.

When we were doing newspaper advertising, the UUA created professional advertisements, and congregations could buy the packet for customizing and using in our local newspapers. We still use print materials, and it would be easy to create all sorts of them to customize to a local setting and get printed.  I struggled this week with finding "Standing on the Side of Love" brochures that I could bring to a local event.  I had the choice of buying ones from the UUA Bookstore, which would leave anyone picking it up with no clue how to connect locally, or making my own from scratch.  SSL does have images that we can cut and paste, and thankfully tells us the hex code for the color and the font name (but not where to find Scala Sans for free), but whole brochures, business cards, etc., that we could then customize would be so easy to make available to us.  (By the way, could you provide the font name and color values for that new brand?  I also hope it's a font easily available.  I'm not finding what looks like an exact match.)  With no administrative staff in my small church, if I want to have a special SSL handout for our event Friday, it's up to me to make one, with hours that could be spent elsewhere if something was more grab-and-go online.  The end result will also likely be less professional.

Lastly, the biggest and most important issue I've struggled with.  To bring my 158-year-old congregation into the ability to podcast and post videos, we've encountered many barriers, from willing Sunday morning volunteers to people with the technological know-how to purchasing equipment.  We've been painstakingly putting the pieces in place -- ability to digitally record, a video camera -- but another barrier from the Association remains: our hymnal.  I know that I'm hearing that exciting, dynamic worship isn't always sermon-based, but the sermon is practically the only thing we have the copyright to.  The idea that we could at a local level track down the copyright permissions for any hymns we use is an obstacle we will never overcome.  I hear from my local Lutheran colleagues that they pay an annual fee to their denomination which covers use of anything in their hymnal for use in worship and using for videos, podcasts, etc.  What I hear from my UU colleagues is that they either ignore copyright or post only the sermon, or make the videos or audios only available to their members.  Having a hymnal where we know we can use anything in our worship service and still make that worship service accessible technologically is a must for our congregations going forward.  If we want to think about reaching out beyond our four walls, it would be great to be able to do so with music and worship.

In a nutshell, there are four technological obstacles that I see small congregations unable to conquer that our larger Association could help with:
  • Professional webpage templates
  • Professional graphics and videos
  • Professional downloads for customizable print materials
  • Copyrights for electronic transmission of worship
Conquer these, and you'll free us up to do that reaching out to our larger community and to the "nones." 

Thank you again for your vision.  I look forward to having the tools to address it.

Pete Seeger & Generational Mourning

30 January 2014 at 19:39
The Rev. Erika Hewitt launched a long Facebook discussion this week with this tweet:
Gentle reminder to clergy mourning #PeteSeeger: too much of his music on Sunday & you'll exclude Gen X & Millennials. #NotJustBoomersInPews
— Rev. Erika (@UUYogini) January 29, 2014

She later clarified and qualified that statement. But I think she was pointing at something that's important to remember, not unlike what I was saying a few months ago here.  The point I think is worth taking away from Hewitt's post is that while yes, certain people, Pete Seeger among them, were very important to history and have a strong connection to our Unitarian Universalist values, that it's not wrong or misguided or unfortunate to be someone who did not connect to Seeger's music, and that the sorrow that many are feeling at his death shouldn't be assumed to be universal, even among Unitarian Universalists.  The problem comes when people assume that their cultural memories are universally shared and/or more culturally important.  GenXers are sometimes quick to get frustrated about the larger Baby Boomer generation assuming their nostalgia and their cultural experience are either universal to all Americans or more important than any generation's experience before or since.  And yes, GenXers can be overly sensitive about this.  But that doesn't mean Boomers aren't sometimes guilty of this universalizing, too.  Pete Seeger's death is important, but it's more important to people who connected with his music, and it's okay if people didn't, folks.

Folks the Facebook threads about this are being quick to say that Pete Seeger wasn't a Boomer.  That's true.  But his music was more influential with the Boomer generation than those that followed.  Singers are often more influential to the generation that follows them in birth age, since they sometimes reach their popularity when they are of an age older than the high schoolers who listen to them.  Let's put it this way:  Simon LeBon was born in 1958.  That makes him a Baby Boomer.  But I'll be surprised if I hear anybody arguing that Duran Duran was Baby Boomer music, and important to their generation.  Of course, I'm not claiming Duran Duran has great cultural importance to GenX, either, but for those of us reaching our teenage years in the 1980s we may know more Duran Duran lyrics than we care to admit to, and more than the average Boomer does, as well.  Guess which other eighties star is a Boomer?  Bruce Springsteen (1949), Michael Jackson (1958), Madonna (1958), Sting (1951), Peter Gabriel (1950), Axl Rose (1962), Prince (1958), Adam Ant (1954), Morrissey (1959), Siouxsie Sioux (1958), Belinda Carlisle (1958), Jon Bon Jovi (1962), and Bono (1960).  I could go on.  We GenXers are heavily influenced by music by Boomers, just as Boomers were influenced by some music by people a little older. 

As a GenX person who grew up with early Boomer parents who weren't particularly connected to folk music and listened to country and jazz instead, if you had asked me last week to list as many Pete Seeger songs as possible, my list would've looked like this:
  1. If I Had a Hammer
The end.   I might not have gotten that far, as I often mix him up with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, who did a famous version of it.  They were more influential to me, because the album Peter, Paul & Mommy was released not too far before I was born, and so they had children's music when I was a child.  I would've thought "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" was theirs, too, since they did record a version of it as well.  I may have mistakenly guessed a Bob Dylan song or a Woody Guthrie song, like "This Land Is Your Land."   And I thought "Turn, Turn, Turn" was by someone in the Byrds.  This is despite hearing him play at General Assembly in Fort Worth, where the only song I remember much of is "Abiyoyo," which nearly bored me to tears, and which I wouldn't have remembered the name of.  Nevertheless, I do remember enjoying the evening, which I think I attended, but am not sure.  I dislocated and sprained my ankle one evening, which made most of that GA a blur of pain meds and pain.

Lest you assume that I don't think Pete Seeger's death matters, I do.  I've rearranged some of this Sunday's service in my own congregation to remember him.  I think he's important because of his history of activism.  I think he's important to remember in worship because of this and because he claimed something of a UU identity. What I think we should be careful of, however, is assuming that everybody likes Pete Seeger, that everybody knows who he was and why he's important to us politically and culturally, and that everybody is mourning his death.

Spread Like the Squash Plant

21 January 2014 at 12:45
What follows is the text of a sermon I delivered on Sunday, January 19, 2014 at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, MI January 19, 2014.  I gave a very similar sermon at the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty on January 12, 2014.  They were each tailored to those specific audiences, and the text for Jackson included how Jackson is now being seen as part of the Ann Arbor region, and was a longer version than this.  Earlier versions (without the Marge Piercy metaphor, and with several other substantial differences) were given at the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty in January of 2013, at as the winner of the Heartland Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association sermon prize at the Heartland District Assembly on April 13, 2013 just prior to our vote to become part of the MidAmerica Region, and the next day at the Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church in Southfield, MI on April 14, 2013. 

Good morning!  As Gail said, I am the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of East Liberty, which is about 45 minutes due west of here in the Jackson area, where I have been serving for ten years in a small, historically Universalist congregation that is 158 years old.  The view from Jackson of our faith is a little different, perhaps, than it is from here, and so I wanted to share with you some of what I’m seeing about the future of Unitarian Universalism from out there in the country, and from my perspective as one of your board members on the MidAmerica Region Board.  

In December, an older member of my congregation, a member of one of our founding families actually, asked me, at a holiday luncheon, “Cindy, do you see anyone in the younger families in this church who will do what we did?” No, I said, no one will do what you did.  The volunteerism in younger generations looks very different now, and what they want out of church is different.  But the church can continue on, if it learns to adapt and change.  The answer I think is in the Marge Piercy poem we shared as a responsive reading:

Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden…
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us it is interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.[1]
You see, this is not at all how we’ve been looking at growth, and change, in our churches and association.  But what Marge Piercy expresses organically is, I think, the same as something that I’ve been talking about in ways that are organizational, theological and missional.  So let me explain.

First, we begin with the fact that as a denomination, we are not growing.[2]  We’re stagnant at best, but shrinking by some measurements.  And, overall, this is true for other progressive religions, as well.[3]  And we’ve got to figure out how to, as a movement and as individual churches, stop this slide.  I’m cutting out a lot of the data that proves this and the anecdotes that illustrate it, in order to spend more time with the solution than the problem, so you’ll just have to believe me, or check my footnotes later.[4]  Churches are on the decline, the liberal protestant ones particularly so.[5]  My little church is at best stagnant – it’s been under 100 for 158 years.  Despite all the emphasis and talk about growth in our movement, and we’ve done that plenty in our church, the number of churches that ever do grow is relatively small. 

In America, there’s a shift going on in regards to religious participation.  A Pew Research study a couple of years ago showed that among Millennials, younger adults in their 20s and early 30s, a smaller percentage are involved in church life than preceding generations were at the same point in their lives.[6]  It’s not just that they’re waiting until they have children—they come less then, too.  It’s not because of a lack of faith—almost as many Millennials believe in God as did Gen Xers at their age.  It’s because more of them have been raised without religion, and they don’t see the purpose for it.  Their generational identity is one where they’re not focused on building and maintaining institutions.  They’re interested in mission – in being out there in the world and changing it. 

One way to understand this shift is using the concept of horizontal versus vertical identity, something explored by Andrew Solomon in his book Far From the Tree.  Vertical identities are those identity elements that you get from your parents—race, ethnicity, usually language, and a lot of our culture.  I think of this as growing like the tree—a family tree, a Michigan maple. 

Not every piece of our identity, however, is something which we share with our parent.  Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children are quite often born to heterosexual cisgendered parents.  This is horizontal identity, because we find our identity group among our peers.  This is growing like the squash plant, instead of the maple.  We search outside our family for connection around something that is core and important to us.

Religion in America, I would argue, used to be largely vertical.  Religion was something you inherited from your parents.  We still see some of that vertical identity of religion over in my little church—families who have been here for generations.  We’ve grown like the family tree trusting this would maintain, at least, our family church.  But it hasn’t in the last couple of generations.  Of the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of our eldest members in the area, only a small percentage come.  I understand that you have a few multi-generational families here, as well.  And that’s wonderful where it’s still occurring, but not the norm for most churches anymore.  Along those lines, I heard a joke that the Presbyterian Church USA has adopted a new slogan: Shrink Less Rapidly: “work in great unity and joy to lose only five percent.”[7] 

Growing generationally, vertically, like the tree no longer works.  It’s time to grow like the squash plant, grow horizontally, grow like a chat group, grow like a meme.  This is what we need to do, but aren’t doing yet.  Horizontal communities are proliferating, but their availability has weakened the perceived need for church to be one of them, and so we have the rise of the “Nones,” those who don’t attend any church.  It’s much easier today to build your community in other ways.  Andrew Solomon writes:
[T]he ability of everyone with access to a computer to find like-minded people has meant that no one need be excluded from social kinship. …. If you can figure out who you are, you can find other people who are the same.[8]

This reality is what our UUA President, Peter Morales, was responding to when he wrote in a working paper in 2012 titled “Congregations and Beyond”:
Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited mobility and communication..... When Unitarianism and Universalism were in their infancy, no one would think of belonging to a congregation ten miles away. Churches were the centers of community life in a largely agricultural society…. To be limited to a traditional parish form of organization in the 21st century is like limiting ourselves to technology that does not require electricity.[9]
The Rev. Phil Lund, who is one of our regional staff members, echoed this on his blog, saying that if we’re afraid to make changes we are “like the lieutenant in that opening scene of The Matrix…. as Agent Smith might say, ‘No reverend, your church is already dead.’”[10]

So if the old model of church is dead or declining, what is successful?  What can we look to?  Here’s where we talk about change, and get to the squash plant.   In this environment where churches are struggling to survive, there are things that are thriving.  Horizontal communities are proliferating, and are flexible, and are popping up everywhere in response to need.  For example, in March of 2012 there was a rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. that was the largest ever known gathering of atheists.  Atheism is starting all sorts of groups and movements and conferences across America right now.  Did you hear the recent report on NPR about the Sunday Assembly?  They’re starting a movement of things that sound a lot like churches that do something a lot like worship, and it’s growing like a weed.  It’s growing like a squash plant.  Why is it that they can get 8-10 thousand people to gather for a rally?  And can build dozens of new congregations?  They’re creating horizontal community, and they’re tapping into the changing and shifting cultural needs and they’re doing it well.  We have so much of the structure and knowledge in place to tap into this, but we have to recognize that we’ve got some outmoded ideas, too, and some structures that aren’t serving us. 

Millennials have many attitudes that are in concert with us, like not taking scriptures literally, thinking that here could be more than one path to God, or increased acceptance of homosexuality and evolution.  The Pew Research studies have also shown that the majority of Americans overall believe that there are multiple paths to Heaven, even the majority of Christians.[11]  Between the Pew Research Study on Millennials and the Faith Formation 2020 study, we know that people, particularly younger adults are calling themselves “spiritual but not religious.”  We also know our society is growing in diversity.  So the community of people who are like-minded is growing.  We just need to build the church of the future, the church that they might be interested in joining.  And it needs to be a church that is accessible to people who may work retail, as many young adults do, who may be starting their families later, and who are looking more to tapping into their community than to maintaining a beautiful building.[12]

Reaching the Millennials is not going to come from growing like a tree, or doing more of what we’ve always done.  But the good news is that we’re on the brink of a new great awakening, as many religious leaders are seeing it.  Here’s some of what they’re seeing this new awakening will mean.  At last year’s UU minister’s institute, the Rev. Susan Ritchie pointed to our tradition of radical laicism.[13]  We believe in the prophetic power of our lay people.  Amen to that.  That’s a unique part of our tradition.  And it makes us flexible and powerful.  Millennials aren’t attracted to hierarchy.  They’re starting things like Occupy, where ever person gets a voice—not unlike here.  Occupy has a General Assembly every day.  Also at the UUMA Institute, the Rev. Scott Tayler, who is the new director of congregational life at the UUA, talked about how our future is in realizing that now, with so much at our fingertips, the idea that every church had to be able to do everything, and that ministers had to be the great generalists, is an old model.  He said:
I would say our calling… is to just end the ridiculous habits and structures that we have and the culture we have of isolated ministers working in isolated churches.  And we have a calling to work in partnership.  And right at this moment I’ll take any bet… in twenty years our movement will be characterized by staff teams, staff teams of three to five people who all know their special gifts serving three to four congregations.  We will either see that in twenty years or we’ll be dead as a movement.[14]
 Structurally, you see, we’ve been a forest of Michigan maples, each growing trying to reach the sky and spread our branches as much as possible to cover each our own area.  Over in the small church, we’re seeing the unsustainability of our model right now.  But by the time the bigger churches see it, with their relative health and strength, we may be dead, as Agent Smith said.  We need to awaken to this now, and start building the church of the future.  We need to stop being churches in silos, and work together in clusters of churches, and allow our clergy to provide for each of our churches in our squash garden what they do best.  I may have a weakness in, well, bad example, because I’m great at everything, right?  But seriously, another minister may have a great knowledge of classical music or jazz and renaissance art, while I possess a knowledge of, well, 80s music, sci-fi, and comic books. 

This is why we moved from district to region in Unitarian Universalism, as well.  We’re allowing our district staff to stop being generalists and start focusing in the areas of their excellence, be it religious education or fundraising.  And the result for us will be strength.  If we’re going to build this church of the future, we need to get outside of our trees, our silos and steeples, and be something interconnected with rabbit runs. 

This is where I think this might not be as obvious in the healthier parts of our movement, which is the larger congregations, the liberal centers like Ann Arbor.  But from Jackson in a rural congregation it seems clear that the old models, for us, are dying, and we need to create new ways.  Over in East Liberty, for 158 years, we’ve been an isolated congregation with our little steeple pointed to the sky.  We’ve been our church in a silo, one minister, one congregation, working largely by ourselves.  Small churches form the vast majority of our churches – 15 of the 27 UU congregations in our state are under one hundred and 20 of them are under a hundred and fifty – because it’s easier to build and sustain a small group initially, but the idea that we can have lots of independent small groups but sustaining staff and buildings and programming and institutions isn’t sustainable.  We need to bring our small groups into clusters and regions and provide services across a wider area.  We need to spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden to weave real connections and create real nodes, to keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in.  And what I’m asking you to think about, here in Ann Arbor, is your role as a major hub for your region, surrounded by smaller congregations.  I’m telling you today that I think you have a mission, and a purpose, and a role to play that is uniquely yours, in our movement and in our future.  You’re the biggest squash in our patch.  You’re the Great Pumpkin.

The organization level has to do with interconnection, hubs and nodes, but what about at the level of mission and theology?  In the book Church 3.0, author Neil Cole says overall, we have to move from being an organization dedicated to protecting what we have—a building, a community, a way of being here—to an organization that is focused outside our four walls, focused on changing what’s wrong out there.[15]  This is what young adults are saying when they’re saying that they’re “spiritual but not religious,” I think.  We can have too much focus on building the institution, and not enough focus on building the movement for love and justice. 

The Rev. James Forbes of Riverside Church of New York, which is UCC and American Baptist, has said that the Unitarian Universalists have already been called by God (or I would add universe or our broken Earth) for a specific purpose.[16]  And that purpose has something to do with our excellence in interfaith cooperation, which is necessary for overcoming our systems of militarism and capitalism and building the beloved community. 

Scott Tayler puts this as we have to offer healing spiritual disconnection to the world, and we do this through three things: reconnecting with your deepest self, opening to life’s gifts, and serving needs greater than our own.[17]  Michael Piazza, a UCC minister of the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas says we need to focus our ministries on the emerging cultural values such as Religious and cultural pluralism, Environmental concern, Care for one another, and Compassionate capitalism.[18]  And he also says we need to root up our beautiful flower beds in the dying progressive church and plant vegetable gardens addressing our real needs.  To a Christian audience he says this: “We can either give birth to new congregations in our old churches or resign ourselves to being glorified funeral homes. Our best advice is to plant a vegetable patch of liberal, active, passionate adults who might just believe that the church of Jesus Christ can change the world.”[19]

So I say, plant that vegetable patch, because Unitarian Universalism can change the world.  Unitarian Universalism is uniquely poised to be the religious community of the future, but we have to take the mission of attracting the next generation seriously.  We have to realize that, frankly, a lot of people aren’t looking for somewhere they can join a committee.  They’re not looking for somewhere to give away their money to.  They’re not looking to spend their time maintaining a building.  They’re not even looking for somewhere to ask them to get up on a Sunday morning and go out.  What they might be looking for is someplace full of energy, that celebrates diversity and multiculturalism, or that tries new and interesting spiritual practices.  They might be looking for a community of like-minded folks, and they might be looking for a larger sense of mission.  They might be looking to engage in their community through organizing for social change.  They might be looking for a democratically-run organization.  They might be looking for someplace with spiritual freedom and lack of dogma.  They might be looking for a faith community that sees sexuality between two loving consenting adults as not only not shameful, but sacred and even spiritual.  They might be looking for a church where we can say things like “vagina” in a state where you can’t say it in your state house.[20]  They might be looking for a place where even with their relative youth, and lay person status, they’re understood to have prophetic witness.  They might be looking for something that Unitarian Universalism has the potential to be, and is, already, in its heart and soul.  They are looking for what we can be if we weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses, live a life we can endure, and make love that is loving. 

When you put that all together, you see that we have a calling to use our amazing prophetic laity and our excellence in working with the interfaith community, and I would add our strong history of religious liberalism and anti-oppression witness and action, and we need to harness these things, deepen our spirituality, and take our mission out into the world, serving needs greater than our own, and building the beloved community, and standing on the side of love.  What an amazing world this can be when we truly take up that call from Lake Michigan and Benton Harbor to Detroit, from Ann Arbor and Jackson to the Keweenaw peninsula.  So I’m asking you now, rise and join me.  I mean this literally!  Rise and join me in singing!  Because this day is coming.  It’s arriving soon, and I want you to go with me to that land.  Please join in singing #146. 


[1] Marge Piercy, “Connections Are Made Slowly (The Seven of Pentacles),” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston, Beacon Press: 1993) 568.
[2] Christopher L. Walton, “UUA Membership Declines for Fourth Year,” in UU World Magazine (Boston, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations: Fall 2012), http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/229854.shtml.

[3] See: John Dart, “UCC Has Been Progressive Pacesetter,” in The Christian Century (July 18, 2013), http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-07/ucc-has-been-progressive-pacesetter.

[4] See: See: Ross, Douthat, “Is Liberal Christianity Actually the Future?” in The New York Times (July 25, 2012), http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/is-liberal-christianity-actually-the-future/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.

[5] See: Connor Wood, “Why Is Liberal Protestantism Dying, Anyway?” in Patheos (July 26, 2013), http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2013/07/why-is-liberal-protestantism-dying-anyway/.

[6] “Religion Among Millennials: Less Religiously Active Than Older Americans, but Fairly Traditional in Other Ways,” Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (Washington, D.C., Pew Forum: 2010), http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Demographics/Age/millennials-report.pdf, 1.

[7] “Presb. Church USA Launches Ambitious Plan to Lose Only 5% of Members,” Lark News, http://www.larknews.com/archives/556.

[8] Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree (New York, Simon & Schuster, Inc: 2012), Kindle Edition, 20.

[9] Peter Morales, “Congregations and Beyond,” (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2012), http://www.uua.org/documents/moralespeter/120115_congs_beyond.pdf.

[10] Phillip Lund, “Your Congregation Is Already Dead,” Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie (October 17, 2011), http://philontheprairie.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/your-congregation-is-already-dead/.

[11] “Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life” Pew Research: Religion & Public Life Project (Washington, D.C., Pew Forum: December 18, 2008), http://www.pewforum.org/2008/12/18/many-americans-say-other-faiths-can-lead-to-eternal-life/.

[12] John Roberto, Faith Formation 2020: Designing the Future of Faith Formation, (Naugatuck, CT, LifelongFaith Associates: 2912). Kindle Edition, Locations 773-786.

[13] Susan Ritchie, “Friday Closing Panel,” (Presented at UUMA Center for Excellence in Ministry, St. Pete’s Beach, January 2013), http://www.uuma.org/?page=2013InstituteFriday2.

[14] Scott Tayler, “Friday Closing Panel” (Presented at UUMA Center for Excellence in Ministry, St. Pete’s Beach, January 2013), http://www.uuma.org/?page=2013InstituteFriday2

[15] Neil Cole, Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass , 2010), Kindle Edition, 9.

[16] James Forbes, “Friday Worship” (Presented at UUMA Center for Excellence in Ministry, St. Pete’s Beach, January 2013), http://www.uuma.org/?page=2013InstituteFriday1.

[17] Scott Tayler, “Friday Closing Panel” (Presented at UUMA Center for Excellence in Ministry, St. Pete’s Beach, January 2013), http://www.uuma.org/?page=2013InstituteFriday2

[18] Michael S. Piazza and Cameron B. Trimble, Liberating Hope!: Daring to Renew the Mainline Church (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press/United Church Press, 2011), Kindle Edition, Locations 242-248.

[19] Michael S. Piazza and Cameron B. Trimble, Liberating Hope!: Daring to Renew the Mainline Church (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press/United Church Press, 2011), Kindle Edition, Locations 620-622.

[20] See: Eyder Peralta, “Michigan State Rep Barred From Speaking After ‘Vagina’ Comments,” National Public Radio (June 14, 2012), http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/14/155059849/michigan-state-rep-barred-from-speaking-after-vagina-comments.

More Than You Can Bear

9 January 2014 at 14:18
I came across this blog post today where the author debunks the commonly expressed phrase "God will never give you more than you can bear."  It was a well-done article, but from a very Christian perspective.  The sentiment has always been a particular pet peeve of mine, so I thought I would take it on today as well.  I understand that almost always when someone says it, it is is meant as an uplifting thought -- "You can and will get through this" is the message.  But it is, in my opinion, just a poor way of expressing it.  Here's what's wrong.

First, it's got God all wrong.  As I've said before, I may not know if God exists or not, but I have some pretty firm ideas about what God is like if God does exist.  And sending you problems is not part of what God does.  See my article after the Sandy Hook shootings about that.  God is not choosing to send you pain or suffering or death or financial struggle.  That's not God.  That's life.  And life is random at times and unfair at times.  And sometimes we make poor choices, and sometimes there is no good choice.  Telling people that God chose this for them is unfair to God, and unfair to the person struggling.

Secondly, frankly, we do sometimes get more in life than we can handle.  That's why people have mental collapses.  That's why some people end up committing suicide.  That's why people end up homeless.  Something was more than they could handle. 

So, yes, sometimes in life we get more than we can bear.  The author in the article that was linked to above comes to the conclusion that what makes it bearable is the help of God.  God, essentially, will carry your burdens for you.  If your faith does that for you, fabulous.  Frankly, it's never done that for me.  My agnosticism comes from a lifetime of not seeing God's effect in my life or presence in the world whatsoever -- if I had that, I'd be a believer.  My answer to how people can get through the unbearable comes down to other people.  As a true humanist, that's all we really have, in my opinion.  So sometimes it means the strength of religious community, or other communities, helping you through it.  Sometimes it means just family or friends or loved ones who help you through.  Sometimes it means the social safety net.  Sometimes it's the medical establishment or other professionals in the area of your struggle.  Sometimes it's still not bearable, and there's nothing we can do, however much we try.

In my opinion, saying "God will never give you more than you can bear" lets the speaker off the hook.  When you see someone struggling so much that you feel compelled to say this, saying it isn't making their load easier, it's making your load easier.  You no longer have to do anything to help, because they can bear it, you see?  Instead, try the more complicated approach: "I can see you're really struggling with this.  How can I help support you?" Or even try a less committed approach, "This is a real struggle for you.  Do you have the support you need?  What support systems are out there that you can reach out to?"  Lastly, what we can do to make life more bearable is work to support the people who are most at risk for their burdens becoming unbearable -- increase the social safety net, increase access to healthcare, increase mental health services, increase access to food and shelter.  Maybe if we come together more as friends, as families, as communities, and as societies, there will be less unbearable moments.

Art and Spirituality

7 January 2014 at 15:59
A year ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Zentangle, a spiritual practice based in meditative doodling.  I was at her house and noticed a small box with the word "Zentangle" on it, and asked her what it was.  She showed me the book One Zentangle a Day.  I was instantly interested, and purchased the book for myself, and started working my way through it.  The book starts you off with a few patterns, adding about three new patterns (called "tangles") per day.  On the third day, I started making Zentangle chalices.  This is my first one:
It incorporates pretty much every pattern I had learned at that point.  Within a couple of weeks, I started doing a chalice every day that I Zentangled, and pretty soon I was Zentangling chalices almost exclusively.

You can Zentangle in a very meditative state, or you can do it more distractedly while doing something else, from watching TV or sitting in a meeting.  I find that Zentangling chalices even when doing it in a more distracted mode is a valuable spiritual practice for me.  The chalices connect me back to Unitarian Universalism with every doodle.

Then, over the summer, my sister Carrie Landrum showed me some mandalas she had created and told me about how she was exploring mandala-making as a spiritual practice.  I noticed there were some Zentangle mandala books and products, so I added them to my wishlist and kept Zentangling chalices.

This fall, I kept Zentangling chalices, and was doing some while at my study group, Ohio River Group.  Here's one I created there:
Our subject this year was "Art and Religion" at Ohio River Group, and Susan Smith was leading the worship services.  She introduced us to the book Praying in Color and the spiritual practice described in it.  In it, you write down the name of someone you want to include in your prayers, and you start doodling around it while thinking of the person.  I found that the doodling easily could be Zentangling, and combined the two ideas and did some Zentangle/Praying in Color prayers.  I've purchased the book and am reading and incorporating some of its thoughts into my spiritual practice.  Now, sometimes I'll think of a specific person at the flame as I doodle the chalice.  I still don't usually incorporate color, but it isn't really necessary for me.  When I feel like I've reached the limitations of black and white, perhaps then I'll branch out.  What I have done is started writing down at the bottom of the page what I was thinking about or doing as I doodled the chalice.  Because of this, I can tell you what was the focus of my meditation as I doodled each of these.  Sometimes it's rather silly, such as this one, watching Doctor Who:
 
I think the chalice is holding back the Zygons or something.  Other times, however, it's much more meaningful.  I made this one on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings while thinking about those families as well as the family of a former member of my congregation and her son who had been murdered a week before:
For Christmas this year I received the book Zen Mandalas and am starting to incorporate mandalas now into my Zentangle chalices.  I find putting the chalice at the center of the mandala makes the mandala form and the Praying in Color form work very well together.  Here's one I drew recently while thinking of a good friend whose ex-husband, also a friendly acquaintance of mine, had recently died:

The word "mandala" as well as the word "Zen" have to be taken very loosely in this process.  I use those terms because they were applied to this form by these authors. 

It's not every day for me, but during the last year I've made one hundred Zentangle chalices.  It's been an interesting process over the last year as I have developed this spiritual practice.  I find it remarkable that restricting the format -- always a chalice, and always in a box or in a mandala -- doesn't make me feel that my creativity is restricted.  I'm always free to draw something else if I choose, and occasionally I do.  Rather, the restricted form is a way of focusing in my thoughts, and freeing me from getting distracted by what I want to do with the design as much, letting me focus on the repetitive strokes that make up the individual patterns.

That's all I really have to say about it -- for me art and spirituality both are hard to translate into words like this.  So I'll leave it here.  If you have an artistic spiritual practice, please share in the comments!

Plantations, Difranco, and Me

2 January 2014 at 18:17
I have been reading about Ani Difranco and her response -- and the responses to it -- to her misstep of holding a retreat at Nottoway Plantation with great interest.

For those who haven't been following it, Ani Difranco is a white feminist singer/songwriter.  In late December, she announced that she would be holding a "Righteous Retreat."  This was an occasion where people could join her and friends for 3 days/4 nights singing and songwriting in the Big Easy, with a price tag of $1000.  The location of the retreat was to be Nottoway Plantation, the largest antebellum plantation in the South.  Difranco made the large misstep of choosing a site for her retreat especially burdened with the history of slavery, and a site that seemed to gloss-over and even glorify that history.  Furthermore, her statement said, as others have noted, (emphasis mine):
We will be shacked up at the historic Nottoway Plantation and Resort in White Castle, LA, for 3 days and 4 nights exchanging ideas, making music, and otherwise getting suntans in the light of each other’s company.... In the evenings we will perform for each other and enjoy great food in a captivating setting.
The poor wording choices added to the misstep, taking it way beyond clueless.  And the internet erupted, pointing out the racist setting and demanding the cancellation.  Difranco was slow to respond.  And then she did cancel the retreat, issuing a statement that has been critiqued as a "fauxpology," in which she indicates that at first she had hoped to still go to the location and have a discussion about the setting become part of the experience, and then realized she would have to cancel it after all.  There are excellent critiques of her response here by Emi Koyama and here by Tim Wise.  Koyama's blog links to many other good critiques, as well.  Essentially, Difranco avoids taking any blame, seems to believe that it is her place to reclaim a slavery location, and throws blame back at those critiquing her actions calling those statements "hatred." 

Interestingly, in the days that have followed the cancellation of the Righteous Retreat, Nottoway has adapted it's historical statement on its webpage saying:
We hope also for Nottoway Plantation to serve as an educator, giving the public a glimpse of life on a Louisiana sugar cane estate in the mid-1800s. With this comes the regrettable fact that, as was typical during that period, Nottoway's workforce was comprised of slaves. However, to sidestep this issue out of a fear of public scrutiny would be an injustice. To bypass a historical property such as ours in order to avoid talking about slavery would be to ignore the opportunity we all have to keep moving forward — to not only acknowledge the shameful shortcomings of our past, but more importantly, to continue to grow in our understanding and support of one another. 
It's a very small step.  Nottoway is by no means turning itself into a museum about slavery.  It's still primarily about sharing the opulent lifestyle of its owners, and allowing its guests to luxuriate in, not engage critically, with that history.  As Tim Wise writes:
At least at Dachau, the guides don’t waste time ruminating on the vicissitudes of life as a camp guard, or the architecture of the prison wings. There, the purpose of the visit is to horrify, to remember without deflection or protection from the evil that envelops the place even now. But in America, we turn our chambers of horror into historical amusement parks, into places where more is said about manners, and weddings, and cotillions, and carriage rides, and ball gowns, and Doric columns and parasols, than about the system of white terrorism that made all of those things possible.
Nottoway's new statement will no doubt be highly critiqued, but that's not what I'm writing about today.

As I said, I've followed all this discussion with great interest.  And it's not because I'm an Ani Difranco fan.  I've never really listened to her, and  I can't name a single song.  No, I've been interested because I am a white feminist.  And feminism, white feminism, which I love and embrace in so many ways, had a horrible history of racism that we have to acknowledge.  This event is as painful as it is in large part because of this history of feminism that we too often ignore.

And I've been following it because I'm a Landrum, and my family owns a small piece of plantation land. 

My Landrum ancestor, my grandfather's great-grandfather Jeptha Landrum, owned a plantation. Jeptha was born in 1803 and commissioned as a lieutenant in 1822.  He was commander of a military expedition that assisted in driving the Creek Indians out of Fayette County, Georgia.  I know the chief's name, Black Hawk, because his son named his horse for him.  In 1827, he won some of that land in Fayette county in the land lottery.  Jeptha became a judge, and built up a plantation of 3000 acres and had 50 or more slaves.  He was a Jeffersonian Democrat, naming one of his sons (not the one I'm descended from) Thomas Jefferson.  The Landrums had this plantation for only the one generation.  After the Civil War, my grandfather's grandfather, Larkin deLafayette Landrum, would have the work of selling off portions of the land during reconstruction.  He saved some land that was passed down.  My grandfather's father inherited some of that land, and it was divided among his children.  My grandfather inherited  a handful of acres, that was then split upon his death between my father and aunt.  My father owns one of the last couple of parcels that remains in the family (my aunt sold hers). 

My family and I have been struggling for decades and generations with our legacy as descendants of people who enslaved other people, and what that does mean and should mean to us.  We've struggled with the fact that we own this few undeveloped acres of land that was once part of that plantation, and what we can do and what we should do with that land, other than just leave it alone and pay taxes on it, or visit it once in a while and tromp around in the woods, which is all we've done so far.  The only thing on our parcel is the ruins of a small (1-2 rooms) house from after the Civil War that some ancestors lived in for a period (I think my great-grandfather with his family).



 

As you can see, it's no Nottoway Plantation.   I'm no millionaire heiress.  I'm also a descendant of poor country farmers who hung onto this land even though it was mostly just a tax burden to them.  Why did they keep it?  A sense of honor or legacy or family or duty?  A nostalgia for the Old South? I'm sure the reasons were complex and varied and perhaps not even understood.  Why will I hang onto it, if I do?  That, too, is complex and not thoroughly understood, except that to get rid of it is equally complex.  Can I just sell it and keep the money? 

One thing that's clear in Difranco's situation is that she tried to turn her event into an event focusing on slavery without partnering with the descendants of slaves in that framing.  As Jaya wrote:
Ani, you don’t get to choose how Black women want to deal with the legacy of slavery. 
I agree.  But I do have to choose how I deal with the legacy of oppression.  This Difranco did not do, to her detriment.  Similarly, Kimberly Foster writes in a post titled, "Dear Ani DiFranco Supporters: You Cannot Reclaim an Oppression You Have Never Experienced":
There can be no healing at Nottoway Plantation. Continuing to hold an expensive getaway here is an affront to feminists of color.
I agree that I cannot reclaim an oppression I haven't experienced.  Is this the same thing as reclaiming a site of oppression?  Is it possible for my heritage to be reclaimed?  What would that mean?  These are the questions I've been engaging in for decades.  And then, how do we go about it?  How do we avoid making racist mistakes that continue to add to the problem of the legacy of slavery?

We will make mistakes.  That will absolutely happen.  It's fear of missteps, in part, that keep me and people like me from really dealing with our legacy of slavery, and fear of a reaction like the one Ani Difranco got.  But Ani made the crucial mistake of not really acknowledging her mistake -- or even seeming to understand that it was one.  Like her, I didn't ask to get handed this problem.  But it is mine to deal with, and as a would-be ally, it's important that I do so, and not, when I make mistakes, blame the people who point them out to me.  When we make mistakes, as white feminists and would-be allies to people of color, it's important for us to recognize and own them, something Difranco did not really do.  Mel Hartsell gives an example of what Difranco could have, should have said:
I was well-intentioned when I thought that it would be an act of boldness for us to have a progressive event in a place so wrought with suffering. I did not see outside of my white privilege or reach outside of my circle to gather input from communities that would be directly affected by this venue. 



It's pretty tough to see outside one's own privilege. And often we would like to ignore that it exists.  I would like to be able to just inherit this land when my time comes and have it come to me free from the legacy of slavery.  But it doesn't work like that.  My inheritance will come without its history.  It is my legacy, and as such I'm compelled to engage with it.  However, it's very clear that it's also something that I cannot do alone.  It is also not the case that I will get to just simply decide that I am able to reclaim it from this legacy all by myself.  That was the main thing Difranco did wrong, beyond her initial clueless lack of insight into what her location choice stands for -- she didn't dialogue with people of color either in her attempt to keep the retreat there, or in her framing of her understanding when pulling out of the location.

And that is what this situation says to me --  I get to live with my legacy, but I do not get to decide alone what the Landrum plantation land means and how or whether it can be "reclaimed."  If I want to truly engage that question, I have to engage in it with the descendants of people who were most affected.  That's going to take more work.  It's easier for to find out the name of Jeptha's son's horse than the names of the people who he had enslaved, much less their descendants, if it can even be done.  And I can choose whether or not I engage in the task of finding them, but I can't control whether or not they will want dialogue with me or to help me engage this question -- it's not their job to resolve my legacy for me. 

For now, I continue to ponder and philosophize, rather than act.  But it's a story that won't be complete until more steps are taken.  It's a burden that will hang on me until I address it.  

Dealing with Trauma

11 December 2013 at 23:41
Our community lost a former member and her child in a traumatic and violent way.  What I want to share with our community right now is a little bit about how to recognize if you are experiencing trauma, and what some of the things you can do are.

First of all, you don't have to be close to someone who was killed in order to experience this as a traumatic event in your life.  There are a lot of forms that a trauma response can take.  Sometimes it leads to people questioning God or one's faith-- how can there be a God who lets these things happen?  Sometimes there is anger -- How could somebody do this?  Sometimes the dominant emotion is grief -- How could anybody do this?  Sometimes it's a feeling of guilt -- I should've done something more.  Sometimes we experience things bodily -- sleeplessness, lack of appetite or stress eating, exhaustion, stomach problems, stress dreams or nightmares, and more.  Some people will feel none of these at first, and they may hit later.  A list of things you might experience and some things to do is here, and for children here.  There are a wide range of responses that are "normal" in a situation like this.  People naturally search for meaning -- what could've gone differently, who is to blame.  That's also normal.  But it's not necessarily helpful -- trying to make sense out of senselessness is what keeps our minds going in circles and leads to some of those symptoms of sleeplessness, stress, and more.  Of course, some people deal with trauma by seeking information, and others by shutting details out.  Both are ways we protect ourselves in this time, so be aware that if you're in one style, others may not be.  If one thing you're looking for is information on domestic violence, there's more information here.

The next thing to know is that trauma has a cycle that a community will go through.  At first we will mostly pull together to get through things.  After that, however, there can be division.  Some people may think we're doing too much, and some people not enough.  A good chart for understanding this is here.  In the months to come, what will be most important is that we continue to give each other lots of space and assume goodwill.  And what we need to do personally is each keep a close tab on ourselves and loved ones and reach out for resources when we're having trouble coping. 

The bottom line right now is take care of yourselves.  If you need help, reach out.  And if you see someone else reaching out, give a hand and connect them back to some of the resources.

A Moment of Grace: Taking the Long Way In

10 December 2013 at 22:09
This week our congregation lost two people who were loved by us -- a mother and son who were former members who were killed in an act of domestic violence. 

Today at the end of an emotional and difficult day, I went to the hospital to visit a member who had been suddenly hospitalized.  (The member is doing okay, but still in some pain.)  I parked near the E.R. and walked in the E.R. doors to avoid being out in the cold, and then walked through the hallway to the main hospital lobby.

There in the hallway were pictures from The Real MEN's Project.  I've seen these pictures before.  Most of them are in the wonderful book, Real Dads, by Dani Meier, the founder, which I got for my husband for Father's Day the year it came out.  But it was different suddenly encountering them in a hallway, and not just because of the bigger size of the photos.  It was different because it was an encounter in a different way with these fathers in our community who have signed a pledge against domestic violence along with their children.  Each picture has the name of the photographer beside it, and at the bottom of the picture there's a pledge of nonviolence signed by the father photographed.  One of my favorites is this one by my friend Tom McMillen-Oakley.  They hang it upside-down, he says.  This is the right-side up view:  That's his daughter's feet in the photo, along with his own.


There are a few other names and faces I recognized once again as I walked around.  On the way back out of the hospital, I stopped again, and this time stopped and looked at each and every photograph, and the men and their children, at the names of the photographers, at those signed pledges over and over again.  And then I sat and just smiled, and cried a little.

What a wonderful, healing balm that walk was.  If you need a moment to cry tears of joy, take a walk to Allegiance Health and walk the long way in.   If you're not local, watch the video.  You don't get to see those signed pledges, but you see the images of these fathers and children:


 It was exactly what I needed to see today.  What a moment of grace that was to take the long way in.

Healthcare.gov and the Small Church

26 November 2013 at 18:43
So I spent some time on Healthcare.gov today, the questions being 1) How hard is this, really? and 2) Is there a comparable plan to my employer's healthcare plan (the UUA's Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield) that would cost less money?

Last night I created my user name and password, and then was booted out of the system because it was under maintenance.  Fair enough.

I went back in today.  I had to answer some security questions that prove that I'm me.  It turns out the government has more handy access to facts about myself than I do.  I had to chase down the information of what year my car is. 

Then I had to provide information on the members of my family, including how much money we make, before taxes.  That's complicated.  How do I classify my housing allowance?  I decided to just put it in as income before taxes, even though it won't be taxed.  What about my husband's income?  Well, he's an adjunct professor.  We never know how many classes he'll be given in a given semester.  I decided to just make a wild guess, and give an annual amount, because there's no way to figure out a monthly amount -- all the months are different, depending on where they fall in the semester and how many classes there are.  Then I had to look up how much I pay in student loan interest.  That was fairly easy, but required rebooting my computer, since Excel decided to crash, which is where I needed to go first to get access to that information.

After that break, I came back in the evening and put in some more information.  It was confusing to answer when I might be eligible for insurance in 2014 through my employer when they hadn't asked me yet if I had insurance currently from my employer, but I just said January 1st for 2014.

Finally, the demographic information was complete.  I am not, I was told, eligible for Medicaid.  Then it seemed to pause as if that was the end.  The screen wasn't completely comprehensible as to where I would go next.  But I figured that out, and found out that I had to tell them that we're non-smokers and a couple of other things, and then I could see plans.

So I think I can say that this wasn't too painless.  It was millions of times easier than when I applied for insurance 10 years ago coming here.  I was pregnant at the time (I did have to tell the government that I'm not pregnant right now, but I think that wouldn't have changed my eligibility, I hope, unless to make me more eligible).  I had to get a copy of my marriage certificate from Chicago, because my husband's last name is different.  Chicago momentarily lost it, making me think maybe we weren't really married -- a great thing to tell a pregnant woman going through a move, job change, pregnancy, and stresses about health insurance, by the way.  If it hadn't been the case that my previous insurance had been through my church, I would have not been eligible for any plan we could find in Michigan.  The plan I was on in Massachusetts was a plan that was local to that area, so there was no sense in keeping it.  Finally, we found the one single Blue Care Network plan in Michigan that was forced to take me.  Never mind that they had fired me back in 1993 following a health problem, I was glad to have them.  It took me MONTHS to get this worked out, even with a health insurance agent's help.  She still sends me Christmas cards -- they're always the first to arrive.  I will forever be grateful to her.  And that's a better story than two years prior to that in the enlightened state of Texas where because I was overweight (and hadn't been on an employer's plan) I was only able to get catastrophic coverage. 

MILES easier on Healthcare.gov.   OH SO MUCH easier.  MONTHS easier.  HOLY COW easier.  It took less than 24 hours of total elapsed time, and less than 4 hours of actively working on it time. 

So, what were the options?  My healthcare insurance is, I think, going to cost my church and me $1301 per month next year on the UUA's plan.  It's considered a "gold" plan according to the UUA.  What does healthcare.gov have to offer?  Well, they have no catastrophic plans or platinum plans to offer, and a lot of the others.  But I want a gold plan, as that's what I've become accustomed to, and because of the number of doctor visits, tests, and more that my husband has had in the last couple of years with some big-ticket health problems.  And I'm no spring chicken.  So there are 10 gold plans.  They range from $919.25 per month ($500 deductible, $10K out-of-pocket max, $30 co-pay/$50 specialist) to $1469.88 (0 deductible, $8K out-of-pocket max, $40 primary/$60 specialist).

The UUA plan for 2014 will have an $1600 deductible and family out-of-pocket maximum of $4800.  Our co-pays are $20 primary/$30 specialist. 

Turns out the closest plan to this, "Priority Health MyPriority MyHealth Access Gold 1000," with $2000 deductible and out-of-pocket maximum of $5000 with 20/20 co-pays is $1311 per month.  Other plans go up and down on the various numbers, but the closest ones are all in the same ballpark. So the UUA plan beats it slightly on all parameters, including price, except for the specialist co-pay.

So the good news is that the UUA's plan is very competitive with comparable plans.  And the bad news is that "Obamacare" didn't bring us cheaper, better healthcare.  It actually brought us healthcare for the average small business employee that is going up 9.3% this year along with deductible increases.  So that's sad for me, who had held out hope that while it would get all those uninsured people a better situation it might actually take a load off the small church, as well.  It seems that is not to be the case.

Science Fiction & Thanksgiving

26 November 2013 at 16:18
**SPOILER WARNING**

This is what is on my mind this morning, as I come back from a weekend where I went out to the movies twice, once to see Catching Fire and once to see the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special.  There's a common thread that runs through both the recent Doctor Who seasons and the Hunger Games trilogy, and that is the effects of war on the survivors and the ethical struggles before and after making a decision to kill innocents in order to end a war.

It's not really in Catching Fire that this question occurs; it's actually in the next book, Mockingjay.  In it, there are two parts that I'm thinking of -- first, there's the decision by District 13 to bomb children and aid workers to advance the rage against the Capitol.  Here's the description of when Katniss learns about the weapons that will eventually be used in that way:
This is what they’ve been doing. Taking the fundamental ideas behind Gale’s traps and adapting them into weapons against humans. Bombs mostly. It’s less about the mechanics of the traps than the psychology behind them. Booby-trapping an area that provides something essential to survival. A water or food supply. Frightening prey so that a large number flee into a greater destruction. Endangering off-spring in order to draw in the actual desired target, the parent. Luring the victim into what appears to be a safe haven— where death awaits it. At some point, Gale and Beetee left the wilderness behind and focused on more human impulses. Like compassion. A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then a second, more powerful bomb kills them as well. (Kindle Locations 2381-2387)
Gale and Beetee are contemplating something unthinkable to Katniss:  large-scale killing of innocent people in order to get at a few desired targets.  And then, there's the question posed to Katniss and the other surviving victors by Coin near the end.  President Coin says:
"In fact, many are calling for a complete annihilation of those who held Capitol citizenship. However, in the interest of maintaining a sustainable population, we cannot afford this....  What has been proposed is that in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power.” (Locations 4675-4682)
Coin presents these options as if they are the only choices -- mass killing of all Capitol citizens, or a Hunger Games, killing innocent children to satisfy those whose rage calls for complete annihilation.

Katniss is not the person really making these decisions, despite the illusion that the victors get to decide between two false choices, but she is haunted by the decisions she has had to make, and haunted by the knowledge that people she knew and cared for have been involved in these decisions.  It is President Coin who made the decision to kill innocents to stop the war sooner, and to give into the two evil choices of mass annihilation or hunger games to satisfy political unrest after the war has ended.  We don't see in Coin any regret, any awareness of the level of evil.  We only get that through Katniss, who has willingly been her Mockingjay.

In Doctor Who, the Doctor has been haunted for the last several seasons by the decision he made to destroy his home planet of Gallifrey in order to end the Time War.  We haven't known a lot of details about this until recently, and whether or not he thought he made the right decision, only that the decision left him in a world of regret and sorrow.  In the 50th anniversary special, we get to hear him say for the first time that he has counted the number of children he killed, and that his decision was wrong.  Fortunately for a Time Lord, he is able to undo, or, rather, not do that decision.  He makes another choice, and Gallifrey falls no more.  It doesn't erase his centuries of sorrow at what he thought he had done, but it changes the final outcome.

In the real world, we don't get to stop time and go back and put Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a pocket universe to protect them.  The Pequot Massacre isn't averted by our sending an arrow through Captain John Mason at the last moment.  Science fiction often lets us off the hook about feeling the full weight of the horror -- our heroes, eventually, make the right choice.  But what science fiction also is letting us do is know that there is a number to be counted for the degree of comfort and safety we hold.  Were we as good as the Doctor, we would hold that number in our heart and know it, and know the decision was wrong.  Of course, were we as good as the Doctor, we wouldn't actually have pushed that button after all. 

I want our world to be more like the Doctor and less like Coin.  But I fear that the opposite is true and our world is much more like the District 13 or even the Capitol, which in the end seem much alike.

It's a sad message I'm taking into Thanksgiving this year.  But after a Sunday of sharing the pulpit with a local Native American friend, talking about the truth and myth of Thanksgiving, this is where I'm at.  Ultimately, I conclude where I did on Sunday, that what I, at least, am feeling now is the need for the holiday time this year not to be so much about giving thanks as truth-telling.  Thanksgiving is becoming, for me, less of a Passover story of exodus, and more of a Yom Kippur, a day of atonement. 

Generations and the loss of JFK

21 November 2013 at 11:56
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.

Ender's Game

30 October 2013 at 23:19
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?

SUUSI SciFi and Fantasy Recommendations

31 July 2013 at 16:36
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.

Science Fiction and Fantasy and Religion Works
SUUSI 2013
Workshop #152 – Cynthia Landrum

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)


The Narnia Series – C.S. Lewis
The Matrix Series (Film)
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Dune – Frank Herbert
Star Trek (TV Series and Films)
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
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

Blogging for Beginners

19 July 2013 at 22:06
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.



We Don't Stand for Stand Your Ground

16 July 2013 at 19:40
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.  

We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest

15 July 2013 at 16:44
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.

The Last Straw and the #Truth

12 June 2013 at 18:49
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

The Big Issue Simplified

10 June 2013 at 22:02
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.

The Big Issue

7 June 2013 at 15:41
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.

Parenting in an Age of Fear

18 April 2013 at 10:45
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.

Traditional Marriage, Gender Roles & Birth Control

5 April 2013 at 10:46
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. 

"Democracy" in Michigan

20 February 2013 at 15:35
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. 

Guns Part 4: The Sermon

13 February 2013 at 21:44

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.


[i] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dani-meier/school-shootings-guns_b_2411441.html
[ii] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect-for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite
[iii] http://sfr-21.org/sources/lawoflove.html

Generations and Giving

30 January 2013 at 23:55
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.

The "Guns" Series...

29 January 2013 at 18:06
... 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.

Guns Part 3: What I've Heard

17 January 2013 at 15:19
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.

Guns Part 2: My Own Story

17 January 2013 at 11:03
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.

Guns Part 1: My Church

17 January 2013 at 10:50
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.

God's Role in All of This

20 December 2012 at 15:54
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 oneAnd 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.  

Sunday's Prayer

20 December 2012 at 03:11
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,
Our hearts are heavy and full, our minds confused and anxious, our spirits burdened and troubled.  At times like this, we are grateful to come together in religious community, to hold the hands of those we love, to see the smiles and laughter on the faces of the young, and to recommit ourselves to the work of the world, the task of building love in this community and elsewhere. 
We take comfort in the circle of community, and in the stories of helpers and heroes.  Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, said, in words that have been shared much recently:
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in this world."
We give thanks for the helpers and heroes in our world, those who labor to keep us safe and protected—the fire fighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, and, especially, the teachers. 
            Sure in our knowledge of the goodness of the world, and the inherent goodness of people, the kindness of strangers, the arc of the universe that ever bends towards justice, we rededicate ourselves to our community, we bind ourselves again to love.
            Blessed be. Amen.

Thanks for Teachers

17 December 2012 at 20:20
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.

Some Sci-Fi Recommendations

16 November 2012 at 15:36
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 StarsAgainst 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

On Doing Time

31 October 2012 at 12:27
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.
 

The Work of Ministry

2 October 2012 at 13:10
"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.

The Election Sermon

14 September 2012 at 02:06
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.

Politics and Preaching

6 September 2012 at 22:13
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.

Politics and Staying Friends

4 September 2012 at 14:53
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.

The New Jim Crow

30 August 2012 at 00:27
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.

The War on Women

29 August 2012 at 13:34
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.

Brave -- The First Princess Tale Good for Mothers

30 June 2012 at 14:16
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.

No Mas Muertes

24 June 2012 at 03:10
I bought this pendant from a booth in the exhibit hall at General Assembly today.  This year the exhibit hall is different, in that they've invited some local groups to come and share their wares.  This pendant benefits the Hogar de Esperanza y Paz (Home of Hope and Peace), which provides food for children, adult education classes, and children's camps.  The Hogar Women's Cooperative makes these medallions.  One of the artists was kind enough to tell me the story.  I had her tell it to me twice on two different days (and bought a pendant each time), through an interpreter, to get some of the details, although I'm sure I've lost some of them already.  The second time I asked about the process of making the medallions, which I was told on the first day is a two day process.  After hearing all the many steps it takes to make these, I can see why it takes so long.  It was really complicated, and I couldn't possibly repeat the information, unfortunately.  I thanked her for the information, and with my limited Spanish explained that my husband is an artist, and would have many questions.


The woman pictured is Antonia.  She was a young woman, and the mother of a young son--a toddler or infant.  She didn't like having her picture taken, and so this is created from one of the only pictures of her as a young woman.  She was from Central America (my memory is saying Guatemala, but I'm not positive) and walked across all of Mexico and into the Arizona desert.  At some point, she couldn't keep up, and was left behind by the "coyote," the guide.  When they found her body, her son was still alive, staying alive by licking the last of her tears.  And this is all I know of Antonia's short story--all I know is this and her image on the medallion.

No mas muertes. 
No mas muertes.

Tent City

24 June 2012 at 00:46

I'm outside "tent city" in Phoenix with about 2000 Unitarian Universalists and allies.   It is 99 degrees now that it is night time, down from 109 today.  In tent city, people who are rounded up for deportation are imprisoned out in this heat without  relief.  We are told that they can hear us in the tent city, as we chant and sing and cheer.

It is wonderful to have the UCC president (his title is different but I don't have it handy) with us tonight and telling us the UCC is with us in this fight.


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