I’m not sure what to do with this. I’m thrilled that we’ve just elected our first African-American president. I wept last night. I wept reading the papers this morning. But I can’t help but feeling hurt that the love and support aren’t mutual.
I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.
Now, on one hand, Dan Savage is known for being inflammatory. On the other hand, we have had him speak in a workshop at the UU's General Assembly. And he's someone who, while extreme, is read by a lot of readers. So take that example with a grain of salt, but I could throw a lot of examples your way about this.
The numbers people have been looking at are based on an exit poll - see here - which says that 70% of African Americans voted yes on 8, while a bare majority of white Americans voted no.
Two things that can be said about this. Most problematically, is how people zeroed in on race, in an election where race was such a major issue. There are a lot of demographic groups that this exit poll could pin it on (Hispanics also voted yes on 8 in this exit poll, but not by as big a percentage). For example, you could blame lack of education--people with post graduate degrees voted 60% against, while people with a high school diploma only voted 57% for. Party affiliation is a big one, with 82% of Republicans voting for 8, and 85% of conservatives. Protestants and Catholics both voted overwhelmingly for 8, at 65% and 64% respectively, and white Evangelicals at a whopping 81% while the nonreligious voted against. Married people, voting 60% for, could also be blamed, and married with children more so at 68%. Another big break was by age. The older the demographic, the more likely they voted for 8. New, young voters age 18-24 voted against at 64%.
Yet with all these demographic groups to blame, people started quickly pointing the finger at African Americans. What's the problem with that? Plenty. For example, if the white vote had been 70% against, do you think we would hear, "It's white people who are to blame for this"? No, we wouldn't. We would break it down into the other demographics immediately--it'd be about white Republicans, or white evangelicals, or white married people with children. But with African Americans, we treat them as one monolithic group. Also, the African American vote is a small percentage of the vote. It took a whole lot of white people voting that way for their vote to be added to for this to pass. Numerically, rather than by percentages, there are way more white people who voted for 8 than African Americans.
It's significant that people pointed the finger at African Americans rather than the Hispanic vote, because Hispanic people vastly outnumber African Americans in California. So why are people focusing on African Americans? Barack Obama is African American, that's why. So the popular mythos has people saying, "Those black people showed up to vote for Obama, and if they hadn't done that, this wouldn't have passed."
But that's just not true, which leads to another major problem with all of this, which is how quickly people jumped to accept the poll's results, without question. If you want to read a good rebuttal of the CNN exit poll and the assumption that's being thrown about that African Americans made up enough of the electorate to turn the election against 8, look here.
Robert Cruickshank paints a more reasonable explanation:
“The other data that appears to be emerging (BUT yet to be totally verified) is that African-Americans who early voted (which was a huge number) voted YES while those on election day voted NO. Remember we did not do extensive campaigning in many of the African-American precincts until the final week or so which was long after tens of thousands had already voted. Our campaign was slow to use Obama's opposition to Proposition Eight which he gave the day after the initiative qualified five months before the election.”The people doing the scapegoating and finger-pointing are quick to say, "It's so sad how this minority group doesn't stand up for another minority group." So true--stand up for the African Americans, folks. Proposition 8 is not their fault.
That explanation makes much more sense than anything else I've seen. Early voters tend to be older and it would make sense if some of them in the African American community were strongly associated with Yes on 8 churches. Once the No on 8 campaign finally got its act somewhat together and did outreach to African Americans, we saw the rewards on Election Day.
Ultimately this reminds us how cheap, stupid, and misguided the scapegoating of African Americans over Prop 8 has been. Prop 8's passage revealed that the marriage equality movement has a lot of outreach to do in this state - to older voters, voters living in "red California," to some Latinos and African Americans but also to numerous white voters (if whites had voted strongly No, this discussion would be moot), to Asian and Pacific Islanders, to some religious groups, including LDS Californians.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Harsh, harsh words from Frederick Douglass, but well warranted to a country that had yet to throw off slavery. He was speaking of Independence Day and people who were not free. Just as he asked, “What to a slave is the Fourth of July?” it might be asked, “What to a Native American, is Thanksgiving?”
So, no, I do not come here today to preach a glorious history full of peaceful meals between Pilgrims and Native Americans, not I, whose family participated in the stripping of the Native Americans from their land, in their forcible eviction.
But I do say that I had misunderstood patriotism when I focused on the past. And I would misunderstand Thanksgiving if I focused on the historical events of our nation. A recent article in Time magazine summed this up nicely, saying, “America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the gap. Thus, patriotism isn't about honoring and replicating the past; it's about surpassing it.”[1]
On Thanksgiving we must struggle between our ideals and our reality, and we must struggle to close the gap. On Thanksgiving, I don’t want us to honor and replicate what the Pilgrims did, I want us to surpass it.
Our myth about the Pilgrims and the Indians, that tells of brotherhood being forged there and belies the bloody history that follows, however, does give us an important lesson, that ideal, from which we grow our future. A central message of that story is the message of interfaith cooperation. We remember, on this day, that we are a land of immigrants and native peoples, a blending together of many cultures. We remember what it says on the Statue of Liberty, of the “Mother of Exiles,” who says:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
So we celebrate Thanksgiving today, the coming to this land, and the blending of cultures that happened here, even from the first. In using bread from many cultures, we celebrate our diversity in this community. While my name, “Landrum” is Scottish, and I am descended from slave owners, our own reality is always more complex: my own ethnic heritage is German, Scottish, English, Swedish, Welsh, Irish, French, Native American, and probably a multitude of other things. In this room we represent many continents and many cultures, and we are grateful for that. We are grateful that we are a nation like a patchwork quilt. It links us to the past and to each other, but most of all, it links us to the diverse world and the interdependent web of which we are a part. One of the values of America that I’m proud of, and which I’m Thankful for, is this value of diversity, this value of welcoming in the immigrant.
Another American value I’m particularly proud of and grateful for is religious freedom. And we’re celebrating tonight, here at this interfaith service, that value of religious freedom and how it, together with the value of diversity, brings us to a modern version of Thanksgiving, to a time when we can worship together, across religious boundaries, knowing that while we have different cultures and different beliefs, we are one people, one nation. Sometimes people think of Thanksgiving as purely a Christian holiday. But it is, in fact, an interfaith holiday. The Pilgrims were there, but the Native Americans were, too. Thanksgiving, then, is a holiday which belongs to all of us. It is, if it is to remain true to its purpose, a time which brings differing people together across the table—the pilgrims and the Native Americans, or today, perhaps warring countries or event the most diametrically opposed of faiths. If we are to set our Thanksgiving table today, we must make room for Muslims, Jews, Christians, and people of Eastern and Native religions. Thanksgiving also includes atheists, agnostics, and Humanists. Our Thanksgiving table is the welcome table.
The scripture passages we read earlier show, too, how much we have in common. They speak of knowing God, of Thanking God, and of celebrating God. They speak of how we are to live together as people of different religions, yet all created by the same God, despite different scriptures and different passages. And so, tonight, as people of different faiths, we raise our voice together in Thanks, thanks for our creator, thanks for all the creation.
As people of faith, we come together this evening also, however, because we are part of one larger community, this Jackson community, and, as such, despite our different houses of worship, we have a common home in this community. And we know that this community is hurting right now. We have a national economy that is in shambles, a state that is particularly hurting and has been for a while, reliant on an industry that is going under. We have a community where we are high in unemployment, and low in economic security, high in foreclosures and low in economic growth. We have food pantries running low and shelters running full right now in this community. We are a community that is seeing harder days. The songwriter Irving Berlin, in a similarly depressed economy, said, “Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.” Despite our troubles, and I know some of you have troubles of health, or shelter, or jobs, we come together to give thanks.
In the Christian scriptures, it tells a story about loaves and fishes. Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish and managed to feed five thousand. Some see that as a story of a miracle—food that expanded to fit the need. I see it as a story of people’s matching generosity with their own, and managing to see abundance rather than scarcity. People of a loving God know that there is no limit to God’s love. People of a loving community know that there is no limit to our resources when we pull together. In my tradition, we often tell the old tale of “Stone Soup,” a folktale that’s been told in different ways in different cultures. The story is a person goes into a new community, and this traveler is told that there is no food for him. He says that this is okay, he was planning on making soup to share with everyone. He is loaned a pot, and he sets water to boil, and he puts his magic stone in the pot that will turn it into soup. As villagers ask how it’s going, he tells them one by one “Oh, it’s good, but it would be better with a carrot,” or an onion, or a potato, and so forth. The villagers supply the items and by the end, there is enough soup to feed everyone, including the traveler.
I’m thankful today to live in this community, not because of our history, but because of our possibility. Because we have ideals of freedom, of diversity, of interfaith cooperation, and of generosity. I’m thankful to live in this community not only because of the blessings that it provides to me, but also I’m thankful that it provides me with opportunities to become my best self, to live from a perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity, to practice generosity, rather than to horde my blessings. I’m thankful that we have this opportunity to come together, to live our values and our faith in this circle of diversity, in this sanctuary of open love and acceptance.
Happy Thanksgiving.
[1] Peter Beinart, “The War Over Patriotism,” Time Magazine, Thursday, June 26, 2008, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818195-2,00.html.
Shouldn’t we be taking “authentic steps of transformation” to stop domestic violence and other forms of abuse and discrimination among our members?Following our second principle means doing just that. But how? Our congregation has voted to support the Aware Shelter. It's one of the agencies we routinely pick for our quarterly collection. Members have talked passionately about how important it is that we support them. But there's not much that we've done lately, other than talk and a once-a-year basket. It's time to reaffirm our connection to them and do something deeper. I once went to them and asked to volunteer on a regular basis, but found that they only had the training for new volunteers twice a year, and I had just missed it. Perhaps it's time to ask again.
We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves,
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation:
Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
"Peace, My Soul.
Gods rest ye, Unitarians, let nothing you dismay;
Remember there's no evidence there was a Christmas Day;
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say,
O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact,
Glad tidings of reason and fact.
It's in good humor and it points to something very real about how we approach Christmas as a religion. For example, our UU hymnal changes a lot of words to Christmas carols. One example is "Joy to the World," which, in our hymnal, reads:
Joy to the world!
The word is come:
let earth with praises ring.
A far cry from:
There are strong reasons for this change, obviously. Unitarians don't believe that Jesus was the Lord or King. That's point one. The second point is that our hymnal did away with a lot of heirarchical language in reference to God. We don't use the whole monarchy metaphor for God.Joy to the world!
The Lord is come:
let earth receive her King.
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.
Over the river, and through the wood,I don't know about you, but we always sang it as Grandmother's house. That's apparently the more common version, but not the original. And I know at least one grandfather who feels slighted by the change.
To Grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.
Until I look up on Wikipedia that it was:Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; still with me abide.
And, ultimately, I think that's a good thing. Maybe this year I'll try singing "Joy to the world! The word is come."Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
• Gerdau Mac Steel has laid off 300 of 380 workers indefinitely.Michigan Automotive Compressor is also offering buyouts.
• Michigan Automotive Compressor Inc. has offered buyouts to nearly all of its 740
workers.
• TAC Inc. has offered buyouts to 70 of 590 employees and gone to a
four-day week.
• CertainTeed has temporarily laid off 80 of 250 workers.
• Jackson-based Sparton Corp. has cut its workforce of 1,000 by 60.
It isn't a church, it's a cult. They don't even believe in God. They worship the God of secularism. These sick people aren't Liberals, they're Ultra-Liberals. This is a collection of sicko's, weirdo's, & homo's. The UU church is the Fountainhead, the veritable wellspring of anti-American organizations like Moveon.org, Code Pink, andSome of that language you may find offensive; what follows was even more so, so I am not reprinting it here. And then, on the third page is a section titled "Know This If Nothing Else" with three itemized items: I. This was a hate Crime, II. This was a Political Protest, and III. This was a symbolic killing. Each one is elaborated on. The fourth page has a "Conclusion," and is signed by Adkisson. In the conclusion, he says to tell the police officer who killed him a message, so it's clear that he didn't believe he'd live after this intended killing spree. As he talks about wanting to kill many more people than he did, it's clear that his intention was to kill more than he was able to, thanks to the quick-witted congregation members at TVUUC.
other anti-American groups. Those people are absolute Hypocrits. They embrace every pervert that comes down the pike, but if they find out your a conservative, they absolutely Hate you. I know, I experienced it.
Members of my congregation have been hurt. But we have also been healed by the feeling that there is a love greater than our theological differences, a compassion that is not limited by the boundaries of any creed. I firmly believe, now more than ever, that love is stronger than death. Love is more powerful than hate.
Why does a movement that says it wants to grow and that has hundreds of thousands of people ready to join it stay so small?
What are the barriers between us and the future we say we want? What can we do to make that future of vital, welcoming, growing churches a reality?
The answer is religion. Really.
Religion. And more specifically, religious community. We have tried all kinds of things, mostly to little or no avail. Ironically, and tragically, we have never tried religion as a growth strategy.
But I look around my metro area and see at least 4 UU congregations that are dying. Five years ago, all five had part time ministers. Now none of them do.Red Sphynx, I'm not a growth consultant, and I hesitate to comment on any particular church's situation. And having read lots of growth literature and gone to dozens of workshops, I'm not sure that any of them really have helped me, personally, turn growth around in any congregation. So, no, sorry, I have no advice to give you, sadly. I'm somewhat familiar with some Texas congregations, having served in Houston for half a year, but that was already seven years ago. At that time, Jonalu Johnstone was the Growth Consultant for the district, and she was fabulous. I'm not sure from your district's webpage who is doing that work now, but I would suggest turning there for help. The district usually is the best place to turn for growth help, in my own experience.
Do you recommend some readings or some wisdom for turning the tide in those congregations?
How much does location affect the size of our congregation?Good question, Hugh, and since I'm obviously more familiar with our congregation. Yes, obviously the local population size is a limiter, and I've never heard a good solid number of what percentage of a population we can expect to grow to. When our own church got numbers as part of an extension ministry training that a previous minister went to, the numbers suggested there were a lot of potential UUs in the area, and we could be thousands large potentially. However, no UU church in any geographic area has ever measured up to those numbers from that agency, as far as I know.
If you haven't seen the original ad that this parodies, go see it on youtube here. There's also a very nice parody by Stephen Colbert.
Meanwhile, if you're done watching videos I just want to say that I'm very excited about going to the HRC Clergy Call in a couple of weeks. I made the decision to go today, and am looking forward to meeting up with other UU ministers who attend, as well as my elected representatives. This is my first ever lobbying trip to DC (and I've never attended a march on the Mall, either), so it's pretty exciting in that regard.
A sad sign of the economy, related to this however: the UUA's continuing education fund for ministers has dried up for the year. *sigh*
Once again, Planned Parenthood is coming under attack in the community, this time from the Columbia School District, where a group of parents have lobbied the school board to get PP removed from the sexuality education curriculum. The school board meeting was last night, and a number of supporters turned out. I don't know yet when they'll make their decision. Here's the statement I made to the board:
Hello; good evening,
I’m the Rev. Cynthia Landrum, and I am the minister of the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty, a church that has been in this area for 153 years, often with members who are not only taxpayers, but parents of children in this school district, and sometimes teachers, as well.
Our church is a proud supporter of Planned Parenthood, a decision we made by congregational vote about four years ago. We are also part of a denomination that believes strongly in the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. In 1994, we passed an “Resolution of Immediate Witness” in support of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools. It asks for us, as a member congregation to advocate for:
the availability of comprehensive, objective, unbiased, up-to-date, age-appropriate, sexuality education curricula in public schools, including information about:The Unitarian Universalists, together with the United Church of Christ, have a series of curricula, called Our Whole Lives, which provides us with a way to teach comprehensive sexuality education in our churches: “The curricula are based on the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education produced by the National Guidelines Task Force, a group of leading health, education, and sexuality professionals assembled by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).”[2]
· the reproductive system and its functions;
· the proper use of all forms of contraception, including the option of abstinence;
· sexually transmitted diseases, their prevention and treatment;
· sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape (including date rape), and incest, as well as their prevention and treatment through counseling, information, and resources;
· pregnancy counseling and options including information about organizations such as Planned Parenthood and…
that sexuality education curricula be taught by teachers specifically
trained to educate youth on the topic of sexuality education…[1]
Parents look to sex education to provide their children with practical skills that students and teachers report are not consistently covered. More than eight in ten parents say how to use condoms (85%) and other forms of birth control (84%), as well as how to talk about them with partners (88%), should be taught. They also want schools to address real-life issues, such as pressure to have sex (94%) and the emotional consequences of becoming sexually active (94%). Three quarters say abortion (79%) and sexual orientation (76%) should be discussed; most (74%) further specify when issues such as these do come up in the classroom they should be presented in a “balanced” way that presents different views in society.[3]I know that I, as a parent, am not yet equipped to talk about all of this with my own child, although I hope to become better informed as she grows older. I know of only one agency in Jackson County that consistently provides the type of excellent education on sexual and reproductive health that we need. That agency is Planned Parenthood. To what extent we have achieved success in lowering teen pregnancy rates and rates of sexually transmitted diseases, they can be credited; to what extent we have not, is a measure of how much we need the valuable tools that they have to share with the community.
Our church budget (including and especially my compensation) has been slashed;
our four-year capital campaign has been terminated (I prefer "postponed," but
others insist it's now or never); and our Michigan economy continues to
decline--and these things open us to new possibilities.
ter⋅ror⋅ism [ter-uh-riz-uhm] – noun 1.the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
It is the intent of the City of Jackson that no person be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of his or her civil or political rights or be discriminated against because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, height, weight, condition of pregnancy, marital status, educational association, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status. As used herein, "perceived" refers to the perception of the person who acts, and not to the perception of the person for or against whom the action is taken. (Source: PFLAG)Last night, the City Council tabled it until the July 14 meeting, and referred it to the city attorney for review. Ten people spoke up about the ordinance at the meeting, myself included. Only two were against it: one representative of the American Family Association, who apparently has spoken before the council on this issue before, and a deacon of Village Hope Church who spuriously linked the issue to same-sex marriage, saying that people had voted against same-sex marriage in this state and that the voters would therefore be against this, too. Personally, I think that a lot of people put marriage in a protected category and would still be willing to extend basic civil rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. To make a jump from a vote several years ago on same-sex marriage to this issue is a logical fallacy. And those of you, gentle readers, who know that I also teach English composition, know how I feel about logical fallacies.
I've been searching for a way to respond individually, and a way for our church to respond to this increase in violent hate crimes. Our monthly commUnity forUm series may provide an opportunity, if we can find the right spin that makes this make sense for a forum. Meanwhile, I'll be looking to the "Standing on the Side of Love" campaign for ideas.Hate crimes strike against our nation’s highest values—equality, justice,
and diversity. People of conscience must answer ignorance and anger by standing
with the victims on the side of love and tolerance. As a nation we have to get
beyond violence as our first response to difference. We need to find a way to
move toward the beloved community, not in spite our differences but in
celebration of them.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
“Our results suggest that it is postmodernism, not science, that is the bête noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century.”
"This is how Hitler started out," Duckham said. "First, Obama took over the auto industry, then the banking industry. We don't need him to take over the health care industry."
As a person of faith and as a citizen, I am appalled at County Commissioner Phil Duckham’s public actions and statements comparing Obama to Hitler. They were callous and insensitive comparisons. Comparing Obama to Hitler shows ignorance of Hitler’s motivations and actions, and insensitivity to the Holocaust survivors in our own community.
I invite any making such comparisons to do more to inform themselves. Actions I have taken to inform myself that I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand Hitler and the Holocaust include reading Anne Frank, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, and our own local Miriam Winter; meeting and listening to Holocaust survivors; going to the excellent Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI; taking courses on the Holocaust; and visiting Auschwitz.
Arthur Caplan recently wrote for MSNBC, “There is plenty to debate about health reform. But there is nothing to debate about the contemptible introduction of references, direct or oblique, to Nazi Germany. To do so is to engage in Holocaust denial. To do that is, as those Americans of the greatest generation who died or were injured fighting the Nazi menace well understood, inexcusable.”
Rev. Cynthia L. Landrum, Minister
Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty
At the recent community forum that our church hosts, in conjunction with the library, on healthcare, I shared some of what I, and this church, went through in trying to find healthcare for me when I came here. I assume that the board was informed of some of this, and the search committee of some of it, but that probably most of it was known only to Alice D., Bob L., and myself, as we struggled with the situation. I was, when I started work here, a little less than eight months pregnant. Both the people at church, and myself, I think had not thought it would be as much of a problem to switch healthcares as it turned out to be. I couldn’t just stay with my existing healthcare, because it was a regional plan for Massachusetts, and delivering my baby here would be “out of network.” Every plan we could find here, at first, considered my pregnancy a “pre-existing condition.” We finally found that if we joined as a group, as a business, rather than getting individual coverage I could be covered, but only if my current insurance was part of a group. Fortunately, through sheer luck, it was. I had to go through some work to prove that, we had to switch insurance agents, because one said it couldn’t be done, and in the end I had pretty much continual coverage. To get the healthcare insurance, I had to show proof of ordination—which involved a quick trip to the framers, who had my certificate of ordination for framing at the time, and I had to show my marriage license. I had never had to show my marriage license for any purpose, and, in fact, didn’t have a copy. Fortunately, Chicago will let you order an emergency copy by phone, but at first they had lost the record of our marriage! They found it in the nick of time, and I was able to get our whole family covered.What does this story mean to me? Again, it shows several ways in which the system is broken: even if you have insurance, if you move or switch jobs, your pre-existing conditions may not be covered; if you have insurance and it's not an employer-provided insurance, if you switch insurances your pre-existing conditions will not be covered; with some insurances, if you go "out of network," you're basically uncovered; if you're covered by insurance but you need to move to providing your own insurance plan that's not employer-based, your pre-existing conditions will not be covered. Basically, in most cases, you cannot lose your job or switch your insurance, or any pre-existing conditions will not be covered. Again, in order to find coverage, I had two volunteers, myself, and two insurance agents working on the situation constantly for over a month.
What did I learn from this? If you have the time and energy, and some good help, and are willing to spend a month hassling with the system pretty much continuously—I spent my entire study leave on this project, while Peter packed boxes—then you can sometimes, with a great deal of luck, work the system. The good news now is that we now have a denominational health plan, so ministers in situations like mine can carry their insurance from church to church—a major bonus for those professional interims, for example.
Rant: That is the most nonsensical non-apology I have ever read. Honestly. It begins by saying he'll never apologize but ends with an apology? And "if I offended"??? Clearly he did. So why the "if"? And he stands by the comparison of Obama to Hitler, yet the sign misrepresented his views? Say what you mean, Duckham, and say this:Reached by phone after the press conference, Duckham said he does not believe an apology is in order. Although his actions at the rally might not have been the best choice, Duckham said, he still stands by his comparisons between Nazi politics and Obama's plans for restructuring America.
"Was it my best choice to carry the sign — no. In hindsight, I wouldn't have done it," Duckham said. "But I will stick to my point that I was trying to make."
At the Jackson County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday night Duckham told attendees — some of whom demanded an apology — that the sign did not convey his message properly and misrepresented his views. He said he intends to take more care in expressing his opinions in the future.
"Apologize for my views? Never," Duckham said after the meeting. "But if I offended anyone, I apologize. That was never my intent."
I believe Obama is like Hitler, but I regret that I said so publicly because it brought me under fire. I do not apologize for what I did, but I regret that you noticed it.A somewhat more thoughtful analysis:
Imagine there's no countriesYes, folks, WE ARE A RELIGION. And I am tired of UUs glorifying the notion of no religion at church. Yes, I like the song, too, and you all sing it beautifully, but it's time to own up to the fact that we are a religion. But just as I "let" the song be sung in church, I was not ready to write a protest letter about the ad in the UU World.
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
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The message of the election is clear: We Unitarian Universalists want our movement to change. We want to embrace the possibilities inherent in these uncertain times. We are not reconciled to being a declining part of American religious life. We have too much to offer. The world needs our prophetic and compassionate voice.If we have a prophetic voice to share, if there's a purpose to being Unitarian Universalists, and we want to grow our faith, what are we doing putting an advertisement in the very front of our magazine that mocks exactly what Peter Morales is calling us to? Why do we begin by cutting ourselves down before we can even hear his words of prophecy and power? Advertising money? It's not a good enough reason to cut down our message so effectively.
Atheist: Someone who does not believe in God. There are many distinctions you can make among atheist--strong, weak, implicit, explicit, practical, theological--but the two major ones are strong atheism vs. weak atheism. A strong Atheist believes that it is certain and clear that there is no God. A weak Atheist does not believe in God, but doesn't assert the lack of God--it could be said to include all forms of non-theists.I put myself in the category of Agnostic and would call it a meta-strong Agnosticism: I believe it's currently unknowable whether or not it is unknowable whether or not God exists. And I'm a Religious Humanist. I once preached a controversial sermon in my internship congregation called "A Humanist's Search for God," and was told by some Humanists that a Humanist can't search for God. (I would call them church-going Secular Humanists, which seems like an oxymoron, yet I've encountered many in Unitarian Universalist churches.)
Non-theist: Someone who does not assert a belief in God. I would include Agnostics, Atheists, most Buddhists, and many others in this group. Some would argue any non-theist is an atheist. I generally reserve the term "Atheist" for the group that is really strong Atheists, and use "non-theists" as the catch-all term.
Agnostic: Someone who does not know whether or not God exists. Again, can be divided into many categories, the main ones being strong or weak. A weak Agnostic does not know if there is a God, but may feel that they are still weighing evidence or will receive more evidence. A strong Agnostic believes that ultimately it's unknowable whether or not God exists.
Humanist: Humanism has meant many things, but right now I'll borrow a definition from the Continuum of Humanist Education: "Humanism is a godless philosophy based on reason and compassion." A major distinction I would make among Humanists is religious Humanists and secular Humanists. Secular Humanists would assert that Humanism is a philosophy and has nothing to do with religion. Religious Humanists can see Humanism as a religion, albeit one that does not require a belief in God. It is also possible to believe in God and be a Humanist, I would assert. If you follow a "godless philosophy based on reason and compassion" that does not mean you cannot believe in God. Theistic Humanists may be rare, but they exist.
And a Note on Capitalization: Many Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists would not capitalize these words, and many do not capitalize God. I choose to capitalize God except when I am specifically pointing out that there are a number of different gods that have been believed in by different cultures. It is important to recognize that Atheists don't believe in any god, however, not just the Judeo-Christian God. I choose to capitalize here, although I'm often inconsistent, the terms Atheist, Agnostic, and Humanist out of a measure of respect for them as religious or areligious systems. That is certainly arguable, and I imagine it will be argued. I support you who do not capitalize in your lack of capitals. I choose to differ.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.If you think, well, Jesus just talks about visiting sick people, think about the medical knowledge of the time. Visiting a sick person then was pretty risky—you didn’t know that you wouldn’t be contaminated and die. Jesus asks people to risk their lives to take care of the sick. That’s a whole lot more risky than anything we’re being asked today to do to care for the sick. And, of course, many of Jesus’ miracles have to do with healing, most famously raising Lazarus up from the dead, but in over twenty other accounts in the New Testament he heals the sick. If you look at all the miracles credited to Jesus, about 70 percent of them are healing, if you count groups of people being healed as one miracle. Now, I’m also counting raising the dead and exorcisms as healing. But this is basically all he does, other than turning water into wine one time and cursing a fig tree. Basically, this is what Jesus does during his life: he wanders around, gives lectures, and performs miracles. And the miracles he performs are almost always healing the sick. And the lectures he gives often talk about how we treat other people.
I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.and:
this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to buildand:
these challenges can be met, so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.and:
This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration; it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.This isn't merely rhetoric. It's a major paradigm shift. And it's one I struggled against in deciding to ultimately vote for Obama. I thought he was pushing responsibility away and avoiding making promises with his language about how it takes all of us. Over time, however, I came to see that he was really creating a new vision about how we do things in this country, one that just might pull us back to some of the values that were great about America, such as civic engagement, and at the same time pull us into a future which is embracing new values, such as environmental responsibility, global citizenship, and diversity. I began to see that in talking about how we would do this together he wasn't advocating responsibility, he was claiming leadership, and I had to let myself be led.
Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it.and then:
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.and then:
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.After the vote in Maine this week, I ask:
Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.
Here at the UUMA Convocation in Ottawa, Ontario, a continent-wide gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers. The last Convo was in 2002 in Birmingham, AL, so it's been seven years since we've had this meeting. Our keynote lecture is from Thomas Moore.
Thomas Moore began our lecture today with a Sufi story: Nazruddin asked a couple of men, what do you want people to say about you when you're lying there in the coffin and people are talking about you. The first one said he wanted to remembered as a good man. The second one wanted to be remembered as someone with a big heart. Then they asked Nazruddin what he wanted them to say about him. Nazruddin said, "I'd like them to look at me and say, 'Look! He's moving!'"What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, author and anthropologist (Zombie.)Zombies are commonly understood to be an element of Voodoo religion. The Voodoo religion is perhaps one of the most misunderstood religions in our culture, right up there with Wicca or Witchcraft—it’s commonly characterized as a Satanic religion, as devil-worshipping, and evil. We see this Voodoo in popular culture all the time, even in something like Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, where the evil “Shadow Man” character responsible for the froggy transformations is a practitioner of Voodoo. So it’s difficult to say anything about what zombies mean in Voodoo, since just about everything one can read on the subject is filtered through a biased lens by the time it gets into our mainstream culture. We saw a lot of misconceptions about Voodoo shared after the earthquake in Haiti, such as the quote from Pat Robertson who said that Haiti is cursed for making a pact with the devil.
…zombies are a great metaphor. The great mass of humanity often comes across to us as unreasoningly hostile and driven to consumption, and the image of the zombie captures this perfectly." ~ David Barr Kirtley, author (Adams 2).Zombies are the perfect metaphor for any group of people we see as other than ourselves, and that we fear in some way. We can see zombies as metaphors for minorities, for example. George A. Romero’s iconic movie, Night of the Living Dead, which created the genre of the zombie movie, does this with the issue of race. As Stephen Harper writes:
To many people, it seemed as though there might be a race war in America. Conservative, reactionary discussions of this possibility often focused — as they sometimes do today — on the possibility that "we" might soon be outnumbered by "them." The line in Night of the Living Dead "we don't know how many of them there are" highlights this racist concern with numbers and the fear of being outnumbered or "swamped."(Harper)Zombies can also be seen as an AIDS metaphor. Ever since Night of the Living Dead, the image of a zombie as created by a witchdoctor has been replaced by the image of a zombie plague—zombies are created through some sort of initial virus, which then spreads to each person the zombie bites, creating new zombies that become a zombie plague. It’s easy to see the parallels that existed in the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, where people didn’t know what was causing AIDS, feared that it would become a plague that would kill humanity. Richard Bamattre writes:
In many films the monsters are set on fire by the humans; this not only makes for dynamic filmic imagery, but references the burning of bodies during epidemics, particularly the Bubonic Plague. Other issues of viral containment are explored; the entire nation of Great Britain is transformed into a quarantine in 28 Days Later as global authorities hope to contain the virus until the infected die out. The concept of quarantine is distinctive in that it attempts to physically separate the kingdoms: citizens of the kingdom of the sick are imprisoned within the terrain of the healthy and are subjected to surveillance and often experimentation of a scientific or medical origin.(Bamattre)Writer Nina Auerbach has said, “Every age has the vampire it needs.” Arguably, the dominant monsters of every age reflect the dominant fears of the society. And so, of course, Ramero’s original zombies reflected issues of racism, later zombies reflected issues of AIDS, current zombies reflect issues of illegal immigration. These are our fears, and we take them, label them other, and make zombies of them so that we can defeat them. As Max Brooks said, “"It's safe to do something like a zombie walk -- it isn't so fun to do a swine flu walk," Brooks said, “If, at a party, you bring up how you'd survive a zombie attack, you'd be the life of the party. But if you say, 'What would you do if super-AIDS came to America?' you'd clear the room" (Gross). Mark Dery writes:
The zombie is a polyvalent revenant, a bloating signifier that has given shape, alternately, to repressed memories of slavery’s horrors; white alienation from the darker Other; Cold War nightmares of mushroom clouds and megadeaths; the post-traumatic fallout of the AIDS pandemic; and free-floating anxieties about viral plagues and bioengineered outbreaks (as in 28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead, troubled dreams for an age of Avian flu and H1N1, when viruses leap the species barrier and spread, via jet travel, into global pandemics seemingly overnight.(Dery)
"Live" Free or Die.A little while ago, when I was teaching English composition, a student of mine asked if for her argument paper she could write a paper on why zombies deserved equal rights to the living. I let her do it, and then another student jumped on board with the counter-argument. It was an interesting dialogue about the nature of civil rights, and how and why they get extended to the next group and the next group and the next group—to African-Americans, to women, to gays and lesbians, to immigrants, and to the undead.
Throughout history, great men and women have had to struggle against dictators and tyrants who wanted to keep them from living the way these men and women felt that they should.
Zombies might not be "alive" or "living" in the traditional sense, but does that mean that they're letting anybody mess with them or keep them down? Hell no. ~ The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead, Scott Kenemore. (112)
The appeal of zombies is that it plays on everyone’s fear of death. A zombie represents death to the characters, and to readers and viewers. Death will always be in the back of their minds. It’s an unrelenting, unstoppable force, just like death. Zombies are out to get you; no matter how hard you try, eventually everyone has to succumb to it. It’s really an exploration of everyone’s natural fear of death. ~ Robert Kirkman, author of The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 ("What Do")This is the obvious: the greatest, most ultimate fear of humanity is death. Our religions of the world are all about what is ultimate, but also what is after death—and we have a hundred answers for this greatest question—heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, becoming one with the universe, becoming part of God, becoming dust. And so many religions and cultures give us examples of triumph over death, from the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, with Gilgamesh seeking eternal life, to figures who go down into the land of the dead and return such as the Sumerian goddess Inanna (or Ishtar), or the Greek stories of Orpheus trying to rescue Eurydice or Persephone who goes and returns each year to and from the land of the dead, to Odin in the Norse tales who dies and is resurrected, to Jesus of Nazareth triumphing over death both through performing miracles of resurrection and his own resurrection. Through our religions and our folk tales we are constantly telling tales of ways people triumph over death, or not.
…do we embrace these ideas as an indirect way of processing the horror that we feel at the reality of war and torture and death? The films that have covered the war in Iraq, its foundations and its consequences, have by and large been ignored by audiences, and yet during the height of our horror at the developments there, horror films that dealt with parallel subject matter in a setting and genre divorced from reality were hugely successful. ~ Christopher Golden, editor of The New Dead. (Golden x)and a second quote:
"I will never forget that I am a member of the Living, fighting for freedom and life, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principle that keeps my country and earth alive. --Code of Conduct, from U.S. Army Zombie Combat SkillsZombie movies are all about the battle, and they are popular at a time, like all times, when we have people out there fighting real wars, against real enemies. It is possible that the zombie movie is our way of dehumanizing our enemy, or, conversely, of making the real fights seem less real through our absorption of fake violence. When we watch a zombie movie or play a zombie video game, we can cheer at the decapitation of the enemy without guilt. We can rejoice in violence against an enemy that is unambiguously evil. Do we then extend that over to our real wars, and carry the dehumanization to the real enemies we fight?
Anyone who's killed by a zombie ought to be ashamed of themselves. It's the equivalent of a fighter jet being blown out of the sky with a Nerf dart. Humans are superior to zombies in every imaginable way: We're faster, smarter, stronger, more adaptable, and better looking. And yet, in zombie movies, our so-called heroes hole themselves up in a highly vulnerable location at the first sight of a limper. They sit around scratching their heads and getting hysterical while an army of the dead amasses outside instead on simply planning a counterattack. (Graheme-Smith 108-109)
Zombies don’t worry. Not about themselves. Not about others. Not about climate change. Nothing.
Zombies have “enough” of what they need in life (with the exception of living brains). Yet are, at the same time, “driven” with a passion and intensity that any CEO or motivational speaker would envy. Zombies don’t stop. Zombies don’t rest. And yet, zombies are at peace with this ceaselessness. You can be too. ~ From Scott Kenemore’s The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead (Kenemore 2).Zombie is a term used in our popular culture for someone who is just going through the motions. We’ll say, “He was a total zombie at work today.” Many people today have a sense that what they are doing from day to day lacks meaning, lacks importance. They’ve become zombies in everyday life.
Ground Zero is a war memorial, Ground Zero is a burial ground. We are asking for sensitivity…It is unconscionable to build a shrine to the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks at Ground Zero, right there. We are asking the imam Rauf and Daisy Khan to be sensitive. For mutual respect and mutual understanding that is demanded of us every day.If it was a shrine to "the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks," I would, indeed, think it was insensitive. What is the ideology of the Cordoba Initiative?
The programs at Cordoba Initiative (CI) are designed to cultivate multi-cultural and multi-faith understanding across minds and borders. In the ten years since our founding, the necessity to strengthen the bridge between Islam and the West continues to prevail. Cordoba Initiative seeks to actively promote engagement through a myriad of programs, by reinforcing similarities and addressing differences.The imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has been attacked as extremist and supporting terrorism is in fact a peaceful Sufi who has worked in interfaith circles for years, and, with Unitarian Universalism's own Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz, co-authored "The End of Barbarism? The Phenomenon of Torture and the Search for the Common Good." In it they write that there are two great religious commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor, and:
...the core of Islamic law, the Sharia, is built on these two fundamental commandments, with the sole difference that “to honor God and neighbor,” rather than “to love God and neighbor," more accurately captures the nuances of these commandments in Islamic legal language... Even today in many parts of the non-Western world, to deprive someone of his dignity and honor, to make him “lose face,” is to make him suffer a fate worse than death.
There is, then, a code of behavior that is based on eternal ethical principles common to the Abrahamic faith traditions, namely, that if we would love and honor the Holy, we must treat our fellow human beings with basic respect. This principle in turn is fundamental to any notion of the “common good.” For the common good presumes that human beings share certain needs and values that transcend religious, racial or political differences.The argument that building Park 51 close to the World Trade Center site is insensitive rests on the equation of this peaceful Sufi group with a history of both interfaith work and active work against terrorism and barbarism with the terrorists responsible for the attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is an equation that is deeply insensitive itself in that it denies the differences that exist in Islam, ignores that Sufi Muslims are themselves often persecuted and targeted by those same extremist groups, and ignores that whereas the terrorists were not, these peaceful Muslims are Americans who have been living, working, and worshiping in New York City for decades--it is not a case of outsiders moving in and erecting a monument to something foreign, it is Americans building a house of peace in their own neighborhood. It ignores that Muslims died on September 11th, too. It ignores that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his congregation went and distributed water to the rescue workers after the September 11th attacks. It ignores that the imam has worked with our government to understand Islam and to keep Muslim American groups terrorist-free. It ignores that these Muslims have been victims of religious intolerance within their own country--America--and yet still care enough about our freedoms and our beliefs to want to create a center to help us explore our own stereotypes and learn to work more peacefully with them.
. Meanwhile, the controversy over Rob Bell's book and whether or not he's a Universalist continues. Now, Rob Bell has come out and said he's not a Universalist. There are those who will say he is anyway, of course. But it's not so clear. The universalism he denies is one where, "a giant cosmic arm that swoops everybody in at some point whether you want to be there or not." It's easier to not be something that you paint as ridiculous, of course. I've been accused of doing that with theism, so I know. I also know this because I teach the straw man logical fallacy in English composition classes to first-year college students. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.(Note that many of the versions being shared have a sentence tacked on the beginning that was not King's, but the rest of the statement--all of that quoted above--was his. Jessica Dovey, Facebook user and English teacher apparently wrote the now oft-quoted sentence, "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.") One of the quickest ways we justify rejoicing at Osama bin Laden's death is by dehumanizing him, by making him pure evil, almost the devil himself. That's the response I heard from friends and acquaintances as the discussion launched from one Facebook friend's post to another: "He was evil." Once we make him evil, he becomes less than human, and we can respond with pure hate and pure rejoicing at his death.
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