I have debated and debated about starting a blog offering my Unitarian Universalist perspective as a minister in Mississippi.  There have been many things that have been happening in Mississippi that when they occurred, I thought, I have some thoughts about that.  

First things first, I suppose, my username serenityhome is a loose translation of my birth name,  Fred L Hammond.  Fred is my full first name and means peace.  L, well that is another story but it is my full middle name and therefore does not have a period after it since it is not an abbreviation.   Hammond means home on a hill.  Hence my username. 

There are currently six Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi.  I currently serve two of them.  I am half time in Jackson and half time in Ellisville.  The other congregations in the state are located in Oxford, Tupelo, Hattiesburg, and Gulfport.   The congregation in Ellisville is the oldest at 102 years. 

Our Home Universalist Unitarian Church in Ellisville was founded in 1906 by Orange Herrington and family.  It was a Universalist congregation.   When Orange heard about Universalism he said that he would form a congregation in Ellisville even if it had to be in “our home” and thus the congregation began.   

Gulfport and Jackson rival each other for being the next oldest.  I am not sure which congregation has that claim.  Both were started during what is called the Fellowship era in the late 1940’s /1950’s of the Unitarian Church, then known as the Association of Unitarian Church of America (AUA).

The Gulfport congregation is the only other congregation that currently has at least half-time professional ministry.  They have been rebuilding themselves after Hurricane Katrina. They lost many of their members to other states after this ill-fated historic event. They are a hardy bunch and I am confident that they will continue to rebound to surpass their pre-Katrina state.  Their story in the aftermath of Katrina is one way too familiar in Mississippi and Louisiana. 

The Jackson congregation, which I am more familiar with its story, began in 1951 when the AUA contacted some faculty at Milsaps College about setting up a liberal religious presence in response and in support of the civil rights movement taking form throughout the south.  The congregation was among the first in Jackson to be integrated.  Its first minister was Rev. Donald Thompson who served the congregation in the mid-1960’s.  He was active in the civil rights movement and was critically wounded by sniper fire by members of the KKK in August of 1965.  This was just several months after Unitarian Rev. James Reeb was killed in Selma for his participation in the voting registration protests there.   Rev. Thompson survived and returned to serve the congregation, only to have renewed death threats aimed not just at him but against other people as well because of his presence in Jackson.  He left the state in December of 1965. 

I know very little about the congregations in Hattiesburg, Oxford and Tupelo.  Hattiesburg celebrated their tenth anniversary this year.  Oxford is a few years older than Hattiesburg. Tupelo is the newest affiliated congregation with the UUA.  You may find more information about the Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi by going to www. uums.org

In future posts, I will write more about my reflections on Unitarian Universalism and Mississippi.

Blessings

Rev. Fred L Hammond

There has been quite the uproar over comments Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, made in regard to racism in America and whether or not presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama agrees with these sentiments.

My paths have crossed Jeremiah Wright’s several times over the last 20  years. I first met him when the majority of African Americans were refusing to acknowledge the impact of the AIDS pandemic in their  communities.  His words were challenging to his community.  He confronted  Homophobia and he advocated for Black churches to respond to the pandemic when  White America was not addressing the unique issues African Americans  were facing with AIDS.  I remember the congregation hearing him in New  Haven, CT being ruffled by his message and this was a congregation  active in AIDS ministry to African Americans.  His challenge helped change  the way supports were given to African American families living with  HIV/AIDS many of them orphaned HIV+ children living with grandmothers.  I  was grateful for his words, wisdom, and insights then and I continue to  be  grateful for his words, wisdom, and insights today.   He is, in my  not so humble opinion, one of the great religious leaders of our day.   He lives up to the qualities of the prophet of the same name.

I think it  is unfortunate that his message will be lost on White America because his style of preaching is contextual to his community and not to White  American culture. I think if we read his sermon rather than heard out of context quotes from it, we would read and understand the logic and reasoning he sets forth.  

Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ come from the same roots in the development of religious freedom in this country.  We are distant cousins with the Puritans as our direct ancestors.  The Puritans valued the right of the minister to be able to preach a message unhindered by the congregation or community.  This enabled the minister to speak out on moral issues of their day that may go against the current thinking or acceptable customs.  It empowered the minister to be able to challenge the congregation in its moral and spiritual development. 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has done exactly that.  In an age where it is considered to be unpatriotic to speak hard truths about America, he has spoken from a critical eye on what he sees in America.  In an age where people are flocking to the soothing words of Rev. Joel Osteen, he speaks a word of prophetic justice.  

His words have been taken out of context.  He is being maligned in the press. Such is the fate of prophets from age eternal. 

The minister’s role in the pulpit is not to be agreed with what he or she says.  That response simply becomes a self-congratulatory clap on the back.  No, the role of the minister in the pulpit, in the free pulpit,  is to offer words that may challenge our perspectives, cause us to think and ponder, and reconsider our positions.   The role of the minister in the free pulpit is to enable the congregation to stretch its wings to being more of who we are called to be as a people of faith.  A people that seeks to have justice flow to water the fields, where compassion blossoms across the land, and equality is the fruit of our harvest. 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is fulfilling his call as minister.  We should all be so blessed to be able to hear what his message really is to America.  It is a prophetic message.  A message that challenges our world view in the larger context of faith. 

Blessings,

Rev. Fred L Hammond 

A few weeks back, I attended an exploratory conversation regarding the potential development of a Truth Commission in Mississippi.  The purpose the organizers (Susan Glisson, among others, from the Winter Institute at Ole Miss) stated is to “provide an historic forum for the people of the state to understand a divisive and violent history.  From this beginning, we can create effective organizing strategies and public policy initiatives to confront structural racism.”

This opportunity to explore and understand our past is important for this state to be able to move beyond the racism that is incidiously intertwined in our governmental policies from the state level to the most benign local level.  Many people were impacted by Mississippi’s Sovereignty Commission created by State Legislature in 1956. This was a spy organization created to spy and squelch civil rights activities in the state.  This state mandated commission supported the violent efforts of the white supremacist groups.   It is time for us to look at the full scope of its reach.  It is time to hear the stories of the lives impacted and destroyed by this arm of the law in Mississippi. 

The potential of mandating a Truth Commission to look at our painful past is also vital to Unitarian Universalists in this state.  Many Unitarians and Universalists were active in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.   We suffered for our stance.  Here in Jackson Mississippi our minister received death threats and were critically wounded.   The current building of Jackson’s congregation was built to reduce the risk of firebombing and sniper shooting. It was built in the early 1970’s when the Synagogue in Jackson was firebombed and leveled by that event.   At Our Home in Ellisville, trucks would pull up during Sunday services and yell out threatening words to the worshippers within.  African American Churches across Mississippi burned in those days.  Fear was part of waking up in the morning. 

Healing can only begin when we allow ourselves to look at the wounds that continue to define us and understand how those wounds impact our decisions and actions today.  Understanding how our past has shaped our present can empower us to make different choices.  Choices where justice, compassion, and equity can be enhanced in our state.

I look forward to the conversation, understanding that such a conversation will be painful to hear but also understanding that hearing it 30, 40, 50 years after its occurance is not as painful as it was for those individuals living it the first time.   May our hearts be ready to embrace the truth and may that truth truly set us free to reach our full potential as people of faith.

 Blessings,
Rev. Fred L Hammond 

I am often asked by others what do Unitarians Universalists do for Easter.  Do you even believe in Jesus?  If not, then how exactly do you celebrate Easter?   These questions usually refer to the question of whether Unitarian Universalists believe in the doctrines that many Christians have about Jesus–born of the virgin Mary, ability to perform miracles,  his descent into hell, and his physical resurrection from the tomb, and then ascension to heaven where he sits on the right hand of the father.   These are doctrinal questions that have been debated for 2000 years.

Unitarian Universalists have no doctrinal test or creed that a person has to subscribe in order to be a member of a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.   What they are asked to ascribe to is a covenant with the members to seek to uphold a set of principles, seven to be exact.  These set of principles if upheld would be evident in hopefully ever increasing measure through our behaviors and deeds as Unitarian Universalists.   Like all covenants, some principles are harder to adhere to than others and so create opportunities for us to apply our spiritual disciplines that inform us.   These disciplines come from our living traditions and include direct experience of the trancedent mystery, the words and deeds of prophets, our Abrahamic faith heritage from which Unitarian and Universalism emerge, the humanist teachings using reason and science, wisdom from world religions, and the earth-centered spiritualities.   

A Unitarian Universalist does not need to subscribe to the doctrinal beliefs about Jesus in order to celebrate the resurrection of life.  There is enough evidence around us to tell us that resurrection is a living reality.  Many Unitarian Universalists celebrate Easter as a re-birth in the cycle of life itself; the return of spring, birds and animals are giving birth to new life, there is an abundance of life all around us this time of year.  Unitarian Universalists tend to emphasize the life of Jesus, his teachings of compassion, his willingness to confront the institutional evils of his day rather than focus on whether or not Jesus physically raised himself from the dead.  These teachings are resurrected in us daily, every time we show compassion to the least of these, or confront the institutional evils of our day, or insist on the equality of all people. 

So for me, do I even believe in Jesus?  Yes, I believe that Jesus is a historical figure.  I trust teachings of Jesus.  I seek to emulate them daily in my life.  Do I believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus?  I do not need to. Everytime I see a person express compassion, confront institutional evils such as racism, or seek to reduce suffering in the world; there Jesus is incarnated.  His message is resurrected in our deeds.   Therefore as a Unitarian Universalist, I join Christians from around the world to celebrate Easter. 

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

I am in a conundrum when I think of the US military occupation of Iraq.  Yes, I believe we are an occupation force.   We now know definitively that all of President Bush’s advisers, the Pentagon, the CIA told him in advance that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, that he had no Al Qaida terrorist links, and there was no direct link to the events of 9/11.  We now know definitively that Iraq was not a threat to our national security.  We now know that President Bush lied to the American people to promote some other agenda.  (What that other agenda might have been is open for speculation.) These are now historic facts and we have not held President Bush accountable for lying to the American people. 

And while Bush is now saying that it was right to remove Saddam Hussein because he was an evil heinous dictator; these reasons after the bold face lies do not hold water for me.   The cost to America as a result of Bush’s stampede of the American public into a war on false pretenses is our loss of the moral high ground in the world; the trillions of dollars of debt after having record surpluses; a looming recession; and not the least of these the increased suffering of the innocent people of Iraq. 

Al Qaida now has a presence in Iraq where one did not exist before.  Terrorism is a daily living nightmare in Iraq.  Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died since our occupation began.  Where is the morality in our going in to free a people from a dictator? 

My conundrum is this… will leaving Iraq result in a better Iraq?  Or will it create and allow more terror and horror to proliferate?  Will our leaving open the doors for a Taliban type government to form which would be worse than the government we toppled five years ago?  Will leaving improve the lives of the Iraqi people; reduce their suffering?  Is our presence there at this time keeping the nation from experiencing out and out civil war? 

Some have said, that we should leave and allow the Iraqi’s to determine the fate of their own country.   That is what we should have done five years ago.  We should never have interfered with the evolution of another people. Freedom will come to a country from within its people.  It is not something that can be bestowed to another by an outside force.  We have evidence that this is so when we look at every communist regime in the world.  Some have now embraced democracy.  And even though China remains a communist state and there are uprisings in Tibet, the Chinese people have experienced through a form of capitalism some increased freedoms.  The desire for freedom may result in violence but it must be from the people who are not free.  Not from an outside force, who will rightly be seen as an occupying force determined to dictate their will over another people.  Have we learned nothing from Korea and Vietnam?  Evidently not… because here we are caught in the maelstrom of Iraq with either choice being less than desirable.   Either choice ensures the suffering of an innocent people. 

I don’t have an answer.  Imagine that. 

I only know that I want our troops safe. If our troops must be sent into the battlefield then I want them to be used in ways that preserve the integrity of this country.  I feel our president has  degraded our nation’s integrity and the office he holds.   The scars of this current presidency will be difficult to heal.  We have to reflect on these past eight years and learn the lessons that they teach us, including I believe to always hold our president accountable for the atrocities and the benevolence he or she commits in our name.   May our hearts be open to humbly accept the responsibility each of us have played in creating this war and to find the wisdom to empower us to correct the errors of our ways.  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

I don’t know if any of you have seen or heard the political ad where the candidate running for congress states several things:  Has conservative values (OK); nation founded on Faith, Family, and Freedom (OK); will not waver on his views of traditional marriage (OK, I happen to be pro equal marriage rights); will continue to stand up for the unborn (OK, I happen to be pro choice);  and Washington needs a good dose of “Old Fashion Mississippi Values.”  (er… WHAT?!).

I understand the conservative values statement but I tend to be progressive in my values.  I am not totally convinced that Faith, Family, and Freedom were the three things America was founded on but I have heard this rhetoric from conservatives before.   I understand how someone could be against equal marriage rights and even against a women’s right to choose.  But to end the ad with wanting to bring to Washington “Old fashion Mississippi values”?  

Uhm… I don’t know about you but here is what popped into my mind when he said this…  White supremacy…  White Privilege… Re-instituting the Sovereignty Commission which spied on civil rights activists and colluded (or if that word is too strong … conveniently turned a blind eye) with the terrorist organization known as the KKK… segregation of schools…  lynchings…  Burning churches…  The free use of degrading terms to demonize groups of people (such as the n word)…  These were the values of Mississippi 40-50 years ago.  These are the old fashioned values of yesteryear and he wants to bring these back?  To do what?  …  (My ability to be facetious won’t really work here.) 

How about some new values or better yet a return to values that a very wise teacher taught on the shores of Galilee…  Love your neighbor as your self… Do unto others as you would have others do unto you…  How about being like the good Samaritan–that reviled demonized race of ancient times–who sought to relieve the suffering of another…   How about seeking to emulate those values… 

How about wanting to keep jobs in Mississippi instead of having them leave for cheaper wages in other countries.  How about wanting to ensure equal educational opportunities in our schools so that all students regardless of the school district they live in have the same chance to excel.  How about insisting on a living wage in Mississippi?  How about wanting equality for all the citizens of Mississippi.     How about ensuring affordable housing for low-income families?  How about ensuring that couples who are looking to adopt and raise children in loving homes can, regardless if they are common-law wed or same gendered (This is a bill before the state legislators).  How about not creating felons of undocumented employees and their employers for hiring them (This was just signed into law by Governor Barbour).   How about fixing our judiciary system so that the punishment is the same for a person of color as for a white person who commits the same type of crime. 

These actions are based in values that I could get behind.  They represent the values that my faith teaches…  inherent worth and dignity of all persons;  Justice, compassion, and equity in human relationships.  

May our hearts embrace the desire for a different kind of Mississippi,  not one from the past, but one that seeks to uplift all of its citizens towards a better future. 

Blessings,
Rev. Fred L Hammond

I thought the response by United Church of Christ’s denomination President Rev. John Thomas to be one that wonderfully illustrates the history of the free pulpit and the role of prophets in the church.  I have linked his response here:  http://www.ucc.org/news/responding-to-wright.html

The comments that Rev. Thomas received appears to prove that old adage that a prophet is never welcomed in his own home.  It seems that once again that only when our prophets are dead– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcom X– do we then begin to honor their legacy and words to us. 

We also seem to be in an era in this country where patriotism is only thought to be a true character of a person when they only wave the flag or wear a lapel pin or speak lofty praise of governmental actions.  We seem to be living in an era where any voice of dissent is seen as a mark of treason.   Dangerous times when the land of the free is so afraid of a voice of dissent that it must squelch it. 

Rev. Wright’s legacy with Trinity Church in Chicago goes far beyond the soundbytes that a conservative news media chose to focus on and then the rest of the media followed like hungry dogs.  The church has been a beacon of hope to thousands of families living on the south side of Chicago.  Rev. Thomas in his remarks recognizes the whole picture of who this man is.  He is more than a selected soundbyte.   

I offer my thoughts and prayers that Rev. Wright and Rev. Thomas will be able to continue to stand with integrity in their convictions with the freedom of the pulpit to express these. 

Blessings,
Rev. Fred L Hammond

The Christian Science Monitor today ( http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0401/p02s01-usju.html?page=2) reports that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case as to whether the display of the Ten Commandments the Utah public park constitute a form of government speech which is not allowed to everyone.   The Salt Lake City based Summum church requested to have a monument of their Seven Aphorisms erected next to the Ten Commandment monument (http://www.summum.us/summum.shtml).  

The Seven Aphorisms, the Summum Church contends are the first set of laws or commandments given by G-d to Moses on Mount Sinai.  These were the first set of tablets that Moses broke into pieces when he saw the people of Israel behaving in a manner not worthy of receiving these laws.   The Summum church claims these Seven Aphorisms survived through oral tradition and is found in the teachings of Jewish Mysticism (The Kabbalah) and in Christian Gnosticism.   When the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah refused to allow the monument, the church sued claiming their Free Speech Amendment rights were violated.

The Federal judge hearing the case found for the city. However, the 10th US Court of the Appeals found for the church. This case now goes to the US Supreme court in the fall. 

What is at stake here however is more than simply allowing another religious voice to place a monument on public lands.  The City of Casper, Wyoming filed a friend of the court brief regarding this case.  Rev. Fred Phelps’ church is seeking to use the 10th US Court of Appeals case to have a monument placed next to their Ten Commandment monument in their city park.  Casper is the home for Matthew Shepard. who was brutally murdered and tied to a fence in cruciform for being gay.   Rev. Fred Phelps, as we might remember attended Shepard’s funeral with pictures of the young man surrounded with flames indicating he is now in hell for his sins.   Phelps wants to place next to the Ten Commandment monument in Casper, WY;  a monument stating: “MATTHEW SHEPARD Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God’s Warning ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.’ Lev. 18:22.”

The decision of the 10th US Court of Appeals places the City of Casper in a bind.  The language of Rev. Fred Phelps is what people have defined as hate speech.  Yet, should it be allowed in a public forum to preserve Freedom of Speech and to prevent a form of government speech?  Does allowing such a hate filled monument then become seen as the sanctioned voice of the government because it is on public land? 

Strictly from an ethical standpoint, I am at a loss to this question.  I understand the argument presented by the Summum church to Pleasant Grove.  AND, I most definitely understand the question raised in Casper, WY where they do not want to honor in any way the murderous actions of those who killed Matthew Shepard but may be forced to if the ruling of the 10th US Court is upheld by the Supreme Court. 

What is clear to me from these proceedings is this: our actions to seek justice in one location could have profound and negative unjust actions result in another location.  We need to be deligent to explore as many possible outcomes in advance of our deciding what causes of justice we are eager to fight for in our society. 

Ours is a faith that comes with no easy answers.  We have no doctrine that delineates easily our actions into concrete right and wrong.  We must search for those answers to the best of our ability and know that an honest responsible search for truth and meaning is enough.   It also means that if we are later proved to have erred, that we accept our errors and begin love again. 

Blessings,

Rev. Fred L Hammond

The following is an adapted excerpt from a sermon I gave entitled “Identity Crisis”.   I thought it would be helpful for those exploring Unitarian Universalism to have a minister’s perspective on these very common myths about us.   

1.  Myth:  Unitarian Universalism is a new religion. 

No.  While the Unitarian and Universalist denominations merged in 1961, Unitarian Universalism is a faith tradition with roots in the Protestant reformation of the late 1500’s and theological thoughts going back to the founding days of Christianity.   Unitarian and Universalism thought were profound shapers of the formation of the United States of America.  Five Presidents have been either Unitarian or Unitarian influenced; Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft.   Thomas Jefferson never officially joined a Unitarian church however,  there is enough documentation to suggest his religious beliefs were very much aligned with Unitarian thought.  John Quincy Adams was raised in his father’s Unitarian church but later joined a Congregational church as an adult.  For fundamentalist Christians to claim that the founding fathers were intending a Christian nation to be developed is a weak argument given the profound influence of Unitarian theology in colonial America which was non-creedally based.   

Judith Sargent Murray, wife of John Murray the founder of Universalism in America had a profound impact on the social development of this country.  Her writings on education,on women’s issues, and on social concerns were ahead of her  time and influenced the development of public education, the suffrage movement, and the development of modern social work. 

2. Myth:  Unitarian Universalists can believe whatever they want. 

Not true.  Yes, we are a creedless faith just as our spiritual ancestors the Puritans did not have a creedal test for membership.  But just as our Puritan ancestors did, we have covenanted together to uphold certain standards.  Today we call those standards our seven principles.   And while our individual theologies may differ from one another, these theologies are to support our striving to live out these seven principles.  If our beliefs counter these principles, then we are challenged to examine our beliefs and explore how to bring them into alignment with these principles. 

3. Myth: Unitarian Universalists do not have a faith.  

No, I have a very strong faith.  My faith is not handed to me from some text book written thousands of years ago by a people who could not even imagine my life and culture.  My faith is an intimate and personal relationship with my here and now.  My faith is concerned with how closely I live my values now, and not on whether some hereafter judgment will allow me to enter a heavenly paradise. My faith is focused here in this life; the hereafter will take care of itself.   Yes, I have a strong faith.     

4.  Myth:  Unitarian Universalists are wishy-washy in their values. 

No. I am very firm in my values.  My values are based on my ability to sift through the lessons of humanity, seeing what is moral and good.  Using my intellect, my faculties of reason and experience; I weigh out the measure of what constitutes liberty, justice, and equality.  My values guide me to act in certain ways to help correct societal ills.  Many of us have come to conclude that one need not think alike in order to embrace others into our family. We have learned that from great diversity comes greater ideas and wisdom that can guide us in living our humanity collectively.  Our values give us the basis from which we are free to explore other religious thoughts without being threatened that those thoughts might reveal a truth that contradicts our presumptions.  My faith is firm in its values. 

5.  Myth: Unitarian Universalism is a cult.  

No.  Just because someone may not understand another’s faith does not mean the other person is in a cult.  There are distinct characteristics of a cult.  Cults tend to be insular.  Cults tend to want to separate from society.  They tend to want to isolate members from those from outside the group, including their friends and family.  Cults insist that their way of being and doing is the only course of action that is correct.  Cults tend to discourage questioning and free thinking about their beliefs.   Cults tend to have a central key figure who is charismatic and whose totalitarian authority is supreme above all others. We Unitarian Universalists want to question.  We want to encourage our young people to have critical thinking skills.  We want our young people to find a spiritual path that exemplifies and strengthens their values and moral convictions.  We want to be engaged in society, to seek improvements for all people, of all classes, races, and sexual orientation.  Our faith has been engaged with American Society since the days of King George III.  We value the democratic method of governance within our congregations.  No, we are not a cult.  In fact, we have our seven principles that we covenant to uphold that would help prevent any of our congregations from becoming cult-like. 

If you would like more information on Unitarian Universalism please check out http://www.uua.org or watch this video on youtube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wezp1W2HKlU 

Blessings,
Rev. Fred L Hammond

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin  Luther King’s assassination in Memphis, TN.  Unitarian Universalists had a special relationship with King’s civil rights movement.  Over 200 Unitarian Universalist clergy answered his call to come to Selma to protest the voting registration policies.  During that call Unitarian Universalists lost Rev. James Reeb to a fatal beating.  These were dangerous times and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was able to engender hope and freedom for all of America. 

There are two things that happen when a man like Martin Luther King is killed.  Either he is placed high on a pedestal or his detractors inflate his failings.   Both are true regarding this man.  His work with civil rights has elevated him on a pedestal for many making him untouchable and his legacy as unrepeatable by any other person. His admirers have called him an American Saint (even though Baptists do not canonize people) and Prophet.  His detractors inflate his flaws–his womanizing and his alleged plagiarizing on his doctoral thesis.   The truth is that this man, this human being, was both saint and sinner.   He led a people to the mountain tops.  He made some mis-judgments along the way.  

The lesson is this…  We all have the potential to do wonderful and great things to help right society’s wrongs.  We all have the potential to make errors in judgment and behave poorly as a result.   One does not discount the other.  As humans we can accomplish great and wonderful things regardless of our human failings. We can do things that create suffering and still have moments of grace where good things happen through us.  Humanity is neither 100% good nor 100% evil.  We are a mixture of both. 

To place a person on a pedestal of 100% good is to deny our own potential of doing great things to improve society.  To place a person in the other direction is to deny our own potential to do things that create suffering.  We potentially will do  both and have probably done both in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. 

 Let’s honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for the human he was.  A man who strove to help set a people free in the land of the free.  Who sought to make things right and reduce the suffering of so many individuals and families.  A  man who also  brought suffering to his own family because of his own human inclinations.  Because Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was human, we too can strive to help set people free in this land of the free.    May we continue his legacy by seeking the path of non-violence in all of our deliberations and actions. 

Blessings,
Rev. Fred L Hammond

During our Adult Forum at one of the congregations I serve, a member mentioned that sometimes he goes outside and sits on the tailgate of his truck and ponders lifes’ mysteries.  Another member mentioned that he too does this as well.  The wisdom these two people offered to the group discussion from these tailgate ponderings were absolutely marvelous. 

There is a different perspective that one can develop when placing oneself in a setting that is a bit different from the usual.  The usual perspective one has of pick-up trucks is from the driver’s or passenger’s seat.  We face forward and steer the vehicle on the road, whether that road is paved, gravel, or dirt.  From the tailgate, one gets to look where one has been, gets to look up at the sky, the clouds, the stars in the universe.  When sitting on the tailgate, one is not too concerned with the direction one is going in, one simply enjoys where one is.  These are profound spiritual perspectives that are important as we are usually more concerned with the direction we are headed rather than just enjoying the moment.   We need these moments of respite to allow our spirits to breathe with the wind instead of fighting the headwind.   

As a child, I used to ride in my father’s pick-up truck over to the fields and woods that my grandparents owned.  To watch the dust get picked up and swirl behind the truck was a beautiful sight. I remember sitting there and watching the tall sunflowers that grew along the graveled road bob their heads up and down as the truck passed by.   I remember our beagle, Booze, would barely be able to contain himself in the truck as we approached the brook.  He would jump to one side of the truck and then the other and then at the opportune moment would jump out to run in the fields.  There was a sense of joy in the freedom, Booze displayed at riding in the back of the pick-up truck. 

More recently, I rode in the back of a truck south of Chiapas, Mexico when the group I traveled with was going to El Pacayel, a small ejido in the mountains near the Guatamalen border.  The bed of the truck had a wood structure with canvass attached to it that provided a covering over head.  So it was hard to see the terrain except through a few openings in the front and in the back of the truck.   Perspectives were limited by this arrangement.  Yet, it made the ride through this terrain mysterious and wonderfully exciting. 

At one point in our riding this truck, we stopped at a house where the farmers had steamed white corn and were selling it to passer bys. To the corn we applied mayonaise and hot sauce and it was the best corn on the cob I have ever had-both sweet and spicey.   It was a moment of learning more about these marvelous people.  It was a moment of laughing and joking with them.  It was a moment of grace and gratitude of having a small bite to eat and some drink with them.   It was a moment of sharing our common humanity with them.

I wonder if there are others whose spiritualities were informed by the experiences they have had while being in the back of a pick-up truck.  I wonder if others have pondered the questions of life while sitting on the tailgate of their truck.  I’d love to hear your stories…  There is bound to be some nuggets of wisdom that were found while tailgating with one’s heart. 

Blessings,

Rev. Fred L Hammond

Appeasing opponents is a dangerous game in politics, it sometimes backfires.   When Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) met with state representatives regarding the negative impact 37 anti-immigrant bills would have, not only on immigrants, but all of Mississippi’s citizens; they were told that ” ‘at least one bill dealing with immigration’ to relieve the political pressure being put on the members by right wing forces in their districts” (from MIRA en ACCION! newsletter April 2008) had to be passed.    What was not known to MIRA that the most heinous, the most inhumane, the most un-Christian [and I use this term in the most biblical sense of the term] of these bills would be the one.

Senate Bill 2988, the misnomered Mississippi Employment Protection Act, was passed by unaninmous vote in the Senate and almost unaninmously in the House. This law would criminalize undocumented employees with a felony and employers would lose their license, permit, or certificate to do business in the state for up to one year,  lose government contracts and placed on a government contract ban for up to three years and shall be liable for any costs incurred by the agencies or institutions by such cancellation of contract or loss to permit to do business in the state. 

The right wing forces are quick to quote scriptures to justify their actions against a woman’s right to choose, against same gender marriage, and to justify the actions of our government against innocent people in other lands.   Here is the scripture that I am going to use to state this action by Mississippi Legislators is unjust, unlawful, and against the moral code of how we are to live with each other.  

Leviticus 19:33-36.  (King James Version)  And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

This law criminalizes people who have come here to find work that the US government  and US corporations denied them within their own lands with the passage of NAFTA.  Since the dawn of time people have traveled the globe looking for a better life.  This is a right that is the birthright of every human to be able to choose  where they want to live. 

We have taken from these people their livelihoods in their countries by exploiting their laws against them, stealing their lands and their resources out from under them for our American consumerist greed.   And then when they come here looking to better their lot, we tell them they are not welcomed here.   We respond not with the remorse of what we have done to their homeland by our greed, but with the arrogance of supremacy, of being rulers of the world, of being gods in our own sight. We seek them out instilling fear with our guns brandishing in the air in public and private arenas. (see Mira en Accion! February 2008) When we do hire them, we pay them below generally acceptable standards.   We ignore and violate Leviticus 19:33-36 by these actions. 

Remember from whence you once came.  Our nation is a nation of immigrants.  Some here by their free will, others sold into slavery and degradation by the wills of others. We have struggled against our racist past to proclaim that freedom is a value we bestow to all people who live here.  It does not show our freedom, our highest moral ground when we treat these new immigrants to this land with such distain and fear.  

What this law does reveal is that America (because similar laws are being passed across this land) and specifically Mississippi is fearful and insecure.  To have to resort to such heinous acts with this legislation is an act of fear not faith.   It reveals that the people of this state have little faith their needs will be met even though Jesus (whose name is proclaimed on every hillside and street corner in this state) taught that even the sparrows who neither tarry nor toil are well fed by their heavenly father who loves them.  It makes me question the people in this state who shout “Lord Lord” on Sunday and cheer the passage of this law on Monday what Jesus are they proclaiming Lord.  

Certainly not the Jesus who claimed to fulfill Isaiah 61:1″The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. ”  Later in the chapter it reads:  “Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards”  This too, is a result of the message that Jesus claimed to have fulfilled.   

If this is the Jesus they have faith in, then they would have sought another solution than this law because they would know that the two greatest commandments according to Jesus is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul.  The second is to Love your neighbor as you love yourself.   

This means to me, that I want my neighbors, documented and undocumented, to have the best life possible here in Mississippi because that is what I want for myself.   I don’t want to be criminalized for working in this state.  So why would I want someone else to be criminalized.  I don’t want to lose my certification to work in this state so why would I want another person to lose their certification, their livelihood, because they hired someone capable of doing the job.  

Governor Barbour has claimed to have created 50K jobs in the last four years with thousands more in the pipeline.   http://www.governorbarbour.com/speeches/2008SOS.htm.  He claims that there are more high-paying skilled jobs than ever.  So why the irrational fear of not enough jobs in this state when every indication is there is plenty and more on the way?  I know the reports that are saying we are moving into a recession, and penalizing employers with loss of permit to work and contracts in this state helps prevent deepening a recession how?  

Jesus did not come only to give a ticket to the here-after.  Anyone can offer eternal life because it is an unprovable claim on this side of death’s door.  Once death has occurred, how are you going to take umbrage if the claim is false?   Or as Universalist Christians believe; everyone has entry to the life eternal so the exclusive ticket offer is moot. 

But Jesus’ message had a more important here and now component.  His message states we are to have life and have it abundantly–on this side of the pearly gates.  His message proclaims the hearts of men and women no longer need to to live their lives with fear and despair, but could be transformed to live with generosity of spirit, with love and compassion, with a desire for justice to flow through the land.  These are his teachings.  Or do the right wing forces of Mississippi not believe the truth and power of their savior’s message? The right wing forces who pressured the state into passing this heinous act must not because this anti-immigration law convicts them of their unbelief. 

I am not a Christian and yet I believe this message. I see the rightness in doing unto others as I would have them do unto me.  It is a transformative message.  It is a message that would seek to humbly and compassionately find another solution to undocumented immigration.   I for one will pray this law is repealed when it is discovered it is unenforceable and unfundable.  May we live our lives with the integrity our faith convictions offer us… even if it means to live life along a narrower path…one that recognizes the abundance of grace for all of us immigrants in this land.   Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

I came across this blog today by a Unitarian Universalist Republican.  Many in our congregations ( primarily Democrats and Green Party members)  find the two  concepts incompatible with one another.  This blogger shows that liberal religion and conservative politics do not have to be nor should they be oxymorons.  It is a good read with good things to think about.   

http://uurepublican.blogspot.com/2008/04/are-uu-values-compatible-with.html

I have also added this blog to my blog roll so others can refer to this site later.

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

” We are simply too small to do the things we want.”   “It is the same people doing all the work.”   “How can we grow when the things we believe we need to do takes having additional members.”  Those of us belonging to Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi, hear these comments all the time.  It can be quite frustrating. 

What if there was a way to focus on one thing and do it well in our small congregations?  What if there was support for our congregations to learn one specific skill set that will enable us to focus on one thing within our congregation and do it well?  What if we were able to have the same quality worship of congregations that are larger than us?  What if we were able to have an Children’s Religious Education program that was able to entice the children to come every week? What if we were able to have a signature social justice and action project that was known in the community? What would happen if we focused on just one thing and did it well?

Well, my friends in small congregations, our positive thoughts, our intentions of the heart, our intercessory prayers, our supplications have been heard.  Mid-South District, which serves some 30+ congregations in Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Georgia, Florida and Tennessee are developing a model program to help small congregations, under 70 members, to do exactly these what if’s. 

This past Thursday, Connie Goodbread, Mid-South District (MSD) program consultant,  held a conference call with leaders of the Mississippi congregations to introduce us to a new program she, with MSD Growth Trustee Norman Horofker and District Executive Eunice Benton are developing a new offering entitled Unlimited Potential! (UP) Program.  The upcoming MSD Annual Assembly in Valparaiso, FLorida, May 2-4 will have a session for leaders of congregations to discuss this program in more detail.  If you are a member of a congregation in Mississippi, I encourage you to consider attending this Annual Assembly and learn more about this program. 

Here is my take on what is being proposed. 

I was the co-founder of Interfaith AIDS Ministry in Danbury, CT.  A non-profit that provided prevention and support services to people and their families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.  When the organization began, we focused on doing one thing well.  We did not set out to be a large organization providing multiple services but instead decided to do one thing that was needed by the community impacted by HIV/AIDS. This is not to say that we didn’t do other things but our focus was on one thing–ancillary supports to families.  This program over time grew and as the medical resources for people living with HIV/AIDS changed and the demographics of the pandemic changed, we changed and adapted our programs.   So from the time I stepped in as Executive Director ot the time I left to enter Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, the agency naturally grew from one part time position to a compliment of 8 staff with three very strong programs; A full service HIV/AIDS nutritional program with nutritionist and complete food pantry,  Brazilian focused prevention case management, and youth focused AIDS prevention education.   We still did other things but these became our signature programs, the ones that we did exceptionally well in serving the needs.   

Congregations also cannot be expected to do all the things that a large congregation can… and in our association, a large congregation is over 500 members and currently tops out at about 1500 members.  Yet, many small congregations, especially those under 70 members, look at large congregations with, for lack of a better term, congregation envy.  And at the same time state that they enjoy the intimacy of being a small congregation.   This sets up an ongoing cycle and low and behold the small congregation remains where it is; not able to do all the things that it feels it must do and not able to do the things that it can and must do because it is focused on what it is unable to do. 

As I understand the concept, UP! will ask for three to four members from each congregation to form an UP Team, who will be asked to  attend hands on trainings over the course of 18 months with Connie Goodbread serving as consultant to each congregation.   The congregation will be asked to focus on doing one thing, and doing it well.  For one congregation it might be figuring out how to best utilize the Our Whole Lives Curriculum instructors to provide this vital program to the greater community.   How to set this program up.  How to market it to the right audiences that would be interested in having their children receive a comprehensive sexual education program.  This becomes the one thing this congregation does well and it allows the congregation to live out its values.  For another congregation it might be to focus on how to become radical in its hospitality.  Then Hospitality becomes the one thing this congregation learns how to do well. 

The intention of this program is not to focus on growth in members.  The intention of this program is really to do one thing and do it well.   When the community sees and experiences the congregation doing this one thing well, it will attract people who appreciate this one thing done well.  Then after doing this one thing exceptionally well, the congregation can focus on the next thing to do well so that in time it then has two things that the congregation does extremely well. 

There are probably already things that each congregation  under 70 members does well. The UP! program is geared to assist the congregation in doing one more thing really well.  I hope the congregations within the MSD will take full advantage of this gift that is being offered and attend assembly this year.  It is bound to be an exciting offering.  I will see you at District Assembly!  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond     

I am an avid amateur genealogist.  [Did I just hear someone say rabid?] I enjoy tracking my ancestors and learning more about their lives, who they were, what they thought, what kinds of struggles did they have.  This all fascinates me.  It also fascinates me to discover how I am related to other people.  It is for me a clear sign of the interdependent web of which we are all a part.  

Ancestry.com has a feature that allows someone as rabid about genealogy as I am to look up famous people and their connections to your family tree.  Of course, the connections are only as good as the research that people have done to confirm these connections.  I discovered that I am related, albeit, distantly, to some 6 presidents and 6 first ladies, as well as Rev. William Ellery Channing, one of the icons of Unitarian history.  Interesting, if this sort of thing excites you.  

What startled me is that one of these Presidents that I am distantly related to is none other than President George Walker Bush through his mother, Barbara. 

Now for those of you who know me know that I am not a huge fan of our President.  In fact, I have pretty strong opinions about where I think he should be instead of at the White House.  But the fact that somewhere  inside him and inside me flows the same DNA has stirred up some things for me.   

First, that someone so [Fill in your own expletives @%$#&*!] could be even remotely related to me is astounding.  But it reveals another thought… oft times expressed as “there but for the grace of god, go I.”  I don’t know what experiences he may have had that led him to being the type of persona I see in the media.  For that matter I am not even sure what experiences I have had that were directly responsible and linked to the expression of my own unique persona.  But here I am and here he is on this planet.  Opposites in our opinion, hanging steadfast in our stubbornness to believe that ours are the right ones. Stubborness must come from his mother’s side of the family as it must come from my father’s side of the family.   

In my quest to understand my heritage, I learned several years ago that one of my great grandmothers, several generations back, was Adrienne Cuvelier.  She was the mother of the first white male born in the New World–New Amsterdam, before it was New Amsterdam, to be exact.  It was her family which is claimed to be responsible for one of the first massacres of the native people here.  She instigated revenge for the killing of a white man after a poker game with the native peoples.  In revenge, the men from the fort in the middle of the night crossed the river into New Jersey to slaughter men, women and children of the native people.  Many were decapitated with their heads placed on stakes brought back to the fort.  Grandma Cuvelier was so deranged that it was said she played kick ball with one of the heads after it fell off the stake.  The chief of this village, it is written, is said to have asked what kind of people would kill their own sons and daughters.  Many of the tribe had intermarried with the families from the fort and therefore white blood flowed within their beings. 

I remember feeling sick, physically sick when I first read this historical account of my ancestors role in this brutal attack.  It was unimaginable to me to act in this manner.  And I wondered what part of her still existed in my veins. 

What her act represents to me is the  beginnings of White Privilege in this country.  The belief that whites are so privileged to act in a manner that this behavior coming from other people would be considered at best; arrogantly rude or as in the example given above; down right evil.  Not justifying the act of the native person’s killing of another person, but for the members of the fort to lay blame on an entire village of people is to declare those people as an other, an object that can be gotten rid of as easily as one would get rid of an insect infestation.  To separate oneself from the shared biological connection these people had is a form of schizophrenia, it is to disown a part of our selves.  And, given that my ancestors included 6 Presidents and 6 First Ladies means that others of my ancestry were in the position to strengthen this notion of White Privilege as it developed in America.  

It is said that all people can trace their DNA back to Africa.  Which means that we are all related some how, albeit very distantly.  So when we find ourselves disagreeing vehemently with another person, whether they are in the same room as us, in the news media or across the globe in Iraq or North Korea, know that he or she is kin.   And just as I may disagree with my immediate family on a variety of issues–just listen in on my families annual Thanksgiving political debates–I do not wish any harm to befall them. 

So too, I wish only well being for my Cousin George Dubya.  I close with this Metta. 

May all in my immediate family dwell in peace in their hearts and minds and in their actions. May all in my immediate family know their own well-being.  May all in my distant family dwell in peace in their hearts and minds and in their actions.  May all in my distant family know their own well-being. May all living in other lands dwell in peace in their hearts and minds and in their actions.  May all living in other lands know their own well-being. Namaste… Rev. Fred L Hammond          

I am bit taken aback by the communication power of the Internet.  My intention of this forum is to discuss Unitarian Universalism in Mississippi where I currently serve two congregations.   In my post on the new MSD District UP! Program, I compared this innovative program for small congregations to the development strategy used to develop the Interfaith AIDS Ministry that I led for 15 years in CT.   Focus on one thing and do it well.  Then build on that success. 

I wrote to Mr. Patrick who posted the comment regarding the AIDS situation that the GUAHAN Project is facing in the Pacific Islands.  His work is as an AIDS instructor in Hawai’i.   He wrote back: We recently visited Guam to provide some training, and saw how hard it was for the AIDS Service Organization and the local Salvation Army. Migrants from Micronesia have been arriving in Guam seeking care and a better life. The endemic shortage of healthcare providers there has meant many go without adequate or any care despite desperate need. Our friend at the Salvation Army, Simion Kihleng, reported that many of the Micronesians he works with literally have nothing but the clothes on their backs. Their children go to school with nothing, and their hopes for a better life remain unfulfilled.  So, I have been using a little of my free time after work to encourage people to consider helping some people in Guam, Micronesian and beyond. I really appreciate your assistance and support.”
I also received this information from the Executive Director of the GUAHAN Project :

“Please visit our website for the latest in GP’s ramping-up of outreach services in the poorest and least fortuante communties on Guam.  In remote locations away from the tourist areas and shopping centers on Guam, many people from the nieighboring islands live wihout water, power and sewage infrastruture.  There are no roads, just rocky paths that are so rough and undeveloped that school buses, garbage trucks and most emergency vehicles do not pass over them to get to these villages.  There is no trash collection so people discard their waste by the side of the roack gravel trails.
 
My brother visited Guam from Los Angeles for a few days last week and I took him to one of the communities caller “Zero-Down,” named so because customers could buy homestead properties for no cash down and low monthly terms.  Problem is, no utilities or proper water drainage was designed in these parcels of land.  My brother said he was “disheartened” and was taken aback at what he said was “no less than total squalor.”  I think that most of us living in these U.S. Pacific Island Jurisdictions become so engrossed in promoting our islands of the the sun-sand-surf vacation resort destinations that we forget that some of our own people live in hopeless situations.   
     
“High rates of domestic violence, rape, drug abuse and child abuse occure in these places.  Nearly all victims have no way to report these offenses or are unable to do so because of fear of reprisal.  STD rates are astronomical and there have been outbreaks of dengue fever and other communicable diseases impacting people with little to no resources.  As you might expect, truancy is very high and there now appears to be a growing number of undocumented individuals here.  I posted some photos of “Zero Down” in the GP website Gallery.
 
“Your messages help us to focus more on the plight of our own brothers and sisters in our region.  The GUAHAN Project intensified the outreach servces to these areas to provide greater HIV/STD prevention and education services, access to OraSure CTR, urine-based testing for STDs and critical referral services.  We will combine beneficial activities such as a clothing donation component to the current outeach program.  The GUAHAN Project is committed to supporting our neighboring islands’ social service needs as our time and resources allow. –Alexis Q. Silverio, GUAHAN Project Executive Director-“

This adds to his comments below in the UP! program posting.  We can no longer live on this planet and think that what  we do here in Mississippi  has no impact anywhere else on the planet.  Our life here is connected to one another.  The love we share here can make a difference elsewhere.  If you feel so moved to help the people in Guam and the Pacific Islands, check out the website of the GUAHAN Project.  Blessings abound, Rev. Fred L Hammond

The Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that capital punishment via lethal injection is not unusual or cruel punishment.  All of the justices left the door open for more litigation to prove that capital punishment is unconstitutional.  So this was not a case regarding the death penalty per se but only regarding this method of implementation.  

Can a person who has a Universalist theology be a proponent of the death penalty?  Does Universalism contradict such a stance? 

The orthodox view of universalism states all experience salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  There are no exceptions.  All will be reconciled with their creator, God through the redemptive actions of Jesus on the cross.  All are saved. All are going to Heaven.  Period.  

This orthodox stance is as controversial today as it was in John Murray’s day.  The notion of an elect who are saved is therefore disputed and rejected.  Bishop Carlton Pearson, a pentecostal minister, had a conversion experience where he embraced this universal stance.  He was expelled from his church as a heretic for preaching that God would embrace and redeem everyone including ‘murderers and fornicators.’  He calls it the gospel of inclusion but it is identical as far as I can tell to John Murray’s notion of universalism.   His opponents have built up a wide array of arguments stating how he has erred from the one true path.   He certainly is no longer advocating what is considered to be orthodox Christianity of the Nicene Creed. 

So given the fact that this notion of universal salvation remains a controversial one even today.  The question remains for me.  Can someone be a universalist and support the death penalty?  What does this say about us if the answer is yes.   Does it say, we have the right to judge a person’s worthiness of living life based on their actions against the current laws of society and we then let God to sort it out after we put the person to death?  To me, that seems a bit arrogant on our part to think we have the ability to judge the worthiness of a life to continue or to be halted; regardless if the method is done in what the supreme court deems to be a humane methodology.  

Orthodox Christianity or at least those proposing a Christianity that requires a confession of the mouth and of the heart to proclaim Jesus as personal savior, maintains the possibility of what I remember being called deathbed salvation.  The notion goes like this, a person who has committed the most heinous of sins [I will let your imagination come up with what those might be.] can at the moment of death ask Jesus for forgiveness for those sins, and salvation and entry into heaven is then assured.  All their sins are at that moment are wiped clean.  I think this is the reason [I could be wrong]  why a minister / chaplain is present to the person on their last walk to the execution chamber in prison for the hope of a last minute repentance. Of course, we rarely hear of death row conversions as that would be against the hope that this person is now burning in hell.  [Another notion that Universalists and Unitarian Universalists do not believe in.]   But this notion of deathbed salvation seems equally crazy to me as the arrogance of judging a person no longer worthy of having life, believing in universal salvation and sending them on to Heaven by killing them.

Now many, but not all,  Unitarian Universalists with a Universalist theology no longer believe in the doctrine of a here after in heaven but still believe that all of humanity has the potential for reconciliation.  They still believe that all of life has a worth to have life that goes beyond the actions that life may have committed. There is still the belief that redemption is available to all even if they humanly find it hard to grasp it. 

I’d like to hear some comments on this as I find it a curious position to take: To believe in universalism and to believe that the death penalty is an appropriate judgment for a crime. 

In case you have not surmised… I am opposed to the death penalty.  I believe that if someone is convicted of a crime that is heinous [again, I leave the definition of heinous to your imaginations] that the best punishment is life imprisonment perhaps with solitary confinement.

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond               

in my post on the Death Penalty and Universalism I wrote: “To me, that seems a bit arrogant on our part to think we have the ability to judge the worthiness of a life to continue or to be halted; regardless if the method is done in what the supreme court deems to be a humane methodology.”

I think I hit a contradiction in my theology that will need to somehow be reconciled.  I happen to believe that there may be end of life choices that are humane to be made… such as euthanasia when there is no possible hope of a person to recover from a terminal illness or in an alzheimer’s coma or only being maintained by extraordinary life supports.  But my comment above regarding the death penalty seems to fly in the face of this other issue that many families are facing in our age of medical miracles that can sustain the human body long after the brain ceases to interact with its world.   Are we not judging the worthiness of life by pulling the plug on a loved one who nolonger is able to have the quality of life that we have determined as worthy of living? 

Unitarian Universalists uphold the principle of “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”  This means that we are each responsible to wrestle with these issues for ourselves.  In the process, we may come to differing conclusions to the challenges that living in the 21st century offers.  It would be easier to have a pontiff like the Pope to decree what we are to believe on this or that issue.  And if the answers contradict other 21st challenges, sobeit, someone with more responsibility for my soul has given the answer.

That is not how Unitarian Univesalism works however.  We are each responsible to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.    In doing so, we come to differing positions and these differing positions allow us to have a richness in our discerning our journey in community with each other.  

I wrote a sermon entitled:  When Death is the Only Choice” which delves a bit into this issue.  Here is an excerpt from that sermon:
“End of life questions are unique to our time because for the first time in human history we have the ability to prolong life. We are now able to postpone death by decades. Events that would have been fatal at the beginning of the 20th century, now in the beginning of the 21st century are only temporary set backs. Neither Karen Ann [Quinlan] nor Terry [Shiavo] would have made international attention in 1907. They both would have died shortly after their initial medical traumas.

“The debate regarding Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, now at a fevered pitch, is a consequence of enhanced power to extend life. Euthanasia is defined as “the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit.” Assisted suicide is defined as “someone providing an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called ‘physician assisted suicide.’” [http://www.euthanasia.com/definitions.html]

“Opponents to assisted suicide and euthanasia have a few arguments that do cry out for our consideration. Disability advocates like the national disability civil rights organization TASH see assisted suicide as a means for profit driven Health Maintenance Organizations to cut costs in medical treatment. Assisted suicide is only a true choice for those who financially can pay to receive medical care or receive assisted suicide. Those who do not have the financial ability may be left to the mercy of the Health Maintenance Organizations or HMO’s. Already, stories are being told of managed care companies overruling physician’s treatment decisions because of cost factors, with sometimes the overruling hastening the person’s death. There may be some truth in the disability advocates argument if legal assisted suicide were to be made available.

“It has been argued that cost savings to Health Maintenance Organizations do not figure into assisted suicide decisions. However, the studies that state cost savings as being minimal only look at the last month of life. Yet, in Oregon where assisted suicide law exists, the definition of terminal illnesses is having 6 months to live. Suddenly the half a billion dollars saved in the final month becomes several billion saved over six months. Would several billion dollars be an incentive for HMO’s to encourage assisted suicide options?

“Numerous studies have shown the inequitable medical treatment given to blacks versus whites. “African-American women die from treatable illnesses (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, etc.) at twice the rate of white women and African-American men die at a rate almost three times greater than white men. [Sunday Oregonian 6/7/98]”

“Bio-ethicists have expressed concerns that permitting assisted suicide presents new opportunities to victimize minorities. One African American bio-ethicist said, “People know they don’t get the health care they need while they’re living.  So what makes them think anything’s going to be more sensitive when they’re dying.” [Detroit Free Press 2/26/97].

“In the first year of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, all but one of the requests for assisted suicide were requested “for fear of losing functional ability, autonomy, or control of bodily functions [Oregon Health Division, 1999]” In the Netherlands, where voluntary euthanasia exists, physicians report that more than half of requests are because of the fear of loss of dignity.

“Thousands of people with disabilities rely on personal assistance and feel that needing help is not undignified but has enabled them to live. TASH and other disability advocates state the current “public image of severe disability as a fate worse than death …” [Coleman, Diane, J.D. 2002. “Not Dead Yet,” in The Case Against Assisted Suicide – For the Right to End-of-Life Care.] Their argument is that people with severe disabilities would be pushed into assisted suicide because of this public image of relying on personal assistance as an indignity.”

This is a complicated issue and one that I will continue to struggle with in terms of my theology and in terms of my own desires for end of life care.  There seems to be no easy answer.  May we each find our own reconciliation to this 21st century moral dilemma.  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond    

As I write this, it is almost Earth Day. I remember the first Earth Day celebration, 38 years ago. The church I attended as a teenager participated in Earth Day with an all day clean up of Orange Square, the small park across the street from the church and as I recall there were some talks held at the church on the importance of being good stewards of our planet.

Today, Earth Day is more than just cleaning up the litter that we were too lazy to place in trash receptacles. And lazy does not even acknowledge the full weight of that act; there is a strong tinge of arrogance attached to littering as well. And privilege.

Arrogance that comes from centuries of teachings that human kind was to dominate and subdue the earth to our will. Privilege in that we were the superior entities on this planet and not simply animals like the whale or the grizzly bear.

Today, we are realizing, albeit slowly, that we are not the masters of our planet. We are an interconnected, interdependent species with all of life on this planet. Our survival depends on the survival of even the smallest creature or plant. The difficulty in this realization is that our society wants instantaneous consequences. We want to see results immediately and that is not how the planet works. Slowly poisoning our eco-system takes time for it to show up in the environment. And we are even slower to realize that we had something to do with it.

Several years ago there were reports of frogs either disappearing or having increased deformities. Pictures of frogs with extra appendages or lack of appendages began to show up on the internet. Some of the frogs were sterile. It slowly dawned on people that perhaps this was the result of DDT and other pesticides and chemicals being used. The reason these effects showed up in frogs is because amphibians have a shorter life cycle than other more complex animals. They also have a skin membrane that is purposely conducive to absorption of moisture—moisture that may be contaminated with chemicals such as pesticides.

Could it possibly be that our use of chemicals are also having profound effects on our DNA as well but because our life cycle is slower it will take some time before it shows up in the human species? Or has it already appeared and we are blind to recognize it as such? Why is it that autism incidence rose 1342% since 1993? And Asperger’s Disorder has an even higher rate of incidence. It simply cannot be because we are better at diagnosing these disorders. Could our pollution habits have a connection to the rise of these and other disorders?

I am not suggesting a conspiracy theory here. I am, however, asking questions of where our arrogance to our planet has led us to. Whether we like to think so or not, we are part of the ecosystem of our planet. The only difference is we have the profound ability to impact that ecosystem and us along the way. It is time we become conscious of that impact and change our behaviors. Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

I keep running into a view of God here in Mississippi that I frankly have a hard time wrapping my head around.  It is a view that I heard in Connecticut but never so intensely.  This is the notion that God is a punishing God.  The notion that God will strike you with some punishment if you are not living right or more specifically if you are not living right according to my wishes and desires. 

Back in the early 1980’s and into the 1990’s,  a belief went across America that AIDS was a punishment from God for being Gay.  Young men were being thrown out of their congregations because they had this disease.  It was a painful experience on top of having a fatal disease.  The one place one could turn to for a message of comfort turned its back on young men who were diagnosed with AIDS.   When babies began being born with HIV/AIDS, I heard the argument that God was punishing the parents for their sins by giving them a baby with this disease.  What sort of cruel god do these people believe in that an innocent child should have to suffer for the sins of its parents?  They had to state it was the parents sins because even they could not wrap their heads around the possibility that a new born was worthy of god’s punishment.  This merely affirms the ludicrousness of their punishment argument.

In my work with people living with HIV/AIDS I spent a lot of time counseling these individuals that fear is not something God instills in people of faith.  God was not punishing them.  That image of God was an Old Testament image when people had no notion of how diseases and illnesses operated, or other forces of nature for that matter. 

Yet, this notion of a punishing God is very prevalent here in Mississippi.  I meet educated people who truly believe that their illness is a punishment from God for some alleged sin.   I meet people who believe that if they are wronged by their relatives or their friends that when something bad happens to their relatives and friends that God is punishing them for that wrong.  I’m serious. 

Now people in my circles tended to laugh when we heard the late Rev. Falwell state that the actions of gays, lesbians, feminists and the ACLU resulted in God lifting a veil of protection over America and God punishing America with the events of 9/11.   And we rolled our eyes when Rev. Haggee (friend of Senator McCain’s by the way,  since America is currently big on beliefs by association) stated that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to clean up New Orleans of its sodomites. And not to be outdone, we have Rev. Phelps stating that soldiers dying in Iraq is God’s punishment on America for not getting rid of gays.  

But there are people who actually believe this stuff in Mississippi (and throughout the Bible belt of the South).  I have met people who actually believe that God will punish America for allowing undocumented residents to live here.  Or that God will punish America for allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children.   And when something bad happens to an undocumented resident or a gay person, that is seen as proof that God is punishing. 

I simply do not understand.  What could a person possibly do that would be so heinous as to receive the grief of a miscarriage or a terminal illness as punishment?  And why would one person receive such punishment and not another?   O I have heard the argument that god is showing his infinite mercy in the hopes that that person would see the consequences of such grievous sins committed and repent before such punishment befalls them as well.  This is pure BS.  If god is impartial in his judgment then his mercy on me over someone else doing the same sin shows favoritism not impartiality. This has been seen as proof of being among the elect of god.  God loved Jacob but hated Esau; Calvin’s predestination of the elect and all of that talk.  What it shows is that god is a capricious sob that acts more like an animal than any supreme being because the righteous, by our standards anyway, are punished by the same acts of god.   Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes of “the wicked” and “the righteous.”  The airplanes that became bombs on 9/11 killed the righteous and the wicked.   If god was angry at gays and feminists as Rev. Falwell and Rev. Robertson claimed, then couldn’t god have been a bit more specific in his aim?   Why kill the righteous when he could have just killed the offending party? 

A member of one of my congregations once reported that someone refused to stand next to him during a thunderstorm in case god decided to strike my congregant dead.  His response was ‘where was his faith? Did he think god’s aim wasn’t good?’  Joking aside the point is made.  If god is so PO’d at the wicked, then why is he impotent on dealing with the wicked that he takes the righteous too?   I know, blasphemy. 

The notion of Universalism states that all are loved and precious in god’s sight.  All of creation is blessed and good.  We live in a world where there are natural forces.  Hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, tsunami’s, birth and death are all natural forces.  We live in an ecosytem that is interdependent for its survival.  That means that bacteria , viruses, amoebas, algae, insects, plants, fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals are dependent on each other for survival.   Remove any one of them and life on this planet is diminished or placed out of balance.  [We are beginning seeing the results of our actions towards the earth being placed out of balance.] This means that things will happen in this world.  Some things will be filled with pleasure and joy like sunshine causing rainbows after a thunderstorm.  Some things will be filled with pain and sorrow like miscarriages and HIV/AIDS.    But neither the rainbow nor the miscarriage is a result of our righteousness nor our wickedness.  They just are. 

Humankind is perhaps the only species on this earth that seeks to place meaning on events.  I think we try too hard to make sense of it all which in turn increases our pain and suffering.  My dear friend James posted a song on his blog that I think sums it all up… “Let the Mystery Be.”    Take a listen to it. Blessings. 

Moveon.org is sponsoring a contest for political ads for Barack Obama.  Here are some of my favorites.   I wasn’t able to figure out to post these differently but enjoy…  For other clips and to vote on your favorites go to Obamain30seconds.org.  Blessings,

http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-2491-u5KqEL

http://www.obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-2441-UhcnHd&linkfromdisplay=true&linktarget=_blank“

http://www.obamain30seconds.org/vote/index.html?id=-6801616-.oQCUO&voted=1

http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-2319-RD5L_u

A new article on the tomb that some have alleged belonged to Jesus and family has been published.  This story came to public light last year when Discovery Channel aired a documentary on the finding of the tomb and the possibility that the tomb belonged to Jesus, the one called Christ, who Christians claim rose from the dead. 

One of the conclusions of the increased odds for this being the tomb of Jesus is this: “What are the implications for orthodox Christians? ‘It means they should start studying what was meant by resurrection in the first century,’ Dr. Schaberg says. ‘Resurrection is not a simple thing, where the body just stands up and walks out.’ ”

Many orthodox Christians fear that this would rock the very foundation of their faith, should this find be scientifically verified as the tomb of Jesus.  But does it–really?   Does no longer having a resurrection of the physical body of Jesus dismantle to shreds the three year ministry of Jesus? 

Many Unitarian Universalists no longer believe in the resurrection of Jesus or even in an afterlife but they are deeply committed to fulfilling the radical promises of Jesus’ life.   The notion that we could somehow aspire to live life in radical opposition to institutionalized and embedded racism, economic injustice, environmental terrorism, and xenophobia is still as radical today as it was 2000 years ago when Jesus first spoke of it on the Sermon on the Mount.   

If this is the tomb of Jesus, it might mean Christians need to reframe their world view narrative.  Author Brian D. McLaren has written a recent book entitled:  Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.  In it he proposes that the narrative of Christianity must re-focus more on the life and teachings of Jesus in order to be relevant to the global crises facing the world today.   Such a narrative makes the Christian story more accessible today.  It is not very different from the narrative that many Unitarian Universalists currently espouse. 

To transform the world, to perform acts of Tikkun Olam [the Hebrew for Heal the world] means to relate to the world in a manner that creates justice where there was no justice.  It means to strive towards creating the beloved community that Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned for America 40 years ago and for the world at large.  To seek to implement the teachings of Jesus, his life message, does not require a physically resurrected Jesus, who sits on the right hand of the father.  It never has.   Blessings,

I received two emails today. Both looking for support to begin a PFLAG Chapter.  PFLAG is the Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays organization that provides support to parents and friends of sexual minorities.   It is broader than Lesbian and Gays, this organization includes bisexuals and transgender supports as well.  There are currently two PFLAG chapters in Mississippi.  One in Oxford and the other in Waveland, MS.   These are both on opposite sides of the states, north and south. 

These are life giving resources for parents of sexual minorities and for sexual minorities themselves.  I say life giving because we live in a society that is hostile to sexual minorities.  It is more so in conservative regions of the country such as Mississippi.

I came out of the closet as a gay man in CT; a state that has multiple resources for sexual minorities.  A state that also has legislated protections for people like me.   I was protected in my employment.  I was protected in my housing.  I was protected in parental rights and in adoption.  And CT is one of a few states that have civil unions ensuring partnership rights on a state level.  Mississippi does not have these rights secured for sexual minorities.  In this state it is still legal to discriminate housing and employment based on sexual identity.  Ironically, single gays and lesbians can adopt but same sex couples cannot adopt in this state.  In this state, gay fathers who divorce their wives in order to live their life with integrity can be court mandated to hide their sexuality, hide their partners from their children so as to not influence their children’s sexuality or lose visitation rights.   

In this state, homophobia is the norm.  I remember reading a news article shortly after arriving here about the KKK’s current activities in Mississippi.  The journalist writing the story made a passing remark in the story about the KKK no longer being the vile racist organization because their targets were now gays and immigrants.   The assumption was that it was understandable how the KKK could be angered about the presence of gays and immigrants.  The implied was aren’t we all? 

None of the six Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi have been certified as Welcoming Congregations. This is a certification program that the UUA offers congregations desiring to learn more about homophobia and how it operates in society.   I serve two congregations in the state and have visited two additional congregations, and fortunately I have not felt any homophobia in these congregations.  All of the congregations I am personally aware of have sexual minority members.   However, having the designation would be a public sign to sexual minorities that our congregations are a save place to come and worship openly for who they are.  It is an excellent program and one I recommend for UU congregations.  Especially here in the conservative bible belt where sexual minorities are shunned because they love differently.  It is quite likely that some people coming out of conservative religious communities and into our faith communities are living with an internalized homophobia that has been taught to them.  This program is a good one to go through every so many years in a congregation to re-affirm their welcoming congregation status so that the congregation as a whole continues to grow towards justice for all.

Forming these two new PFLAG chapters is important vital work.  It is important that resources be made available so that parents, especially conservative religious parents have a place to go where they can talk about their situation in a supportive non-judgmental arena.  A place where their questions can be heard and answered, rather than judged and condemned  because something sinful happened to cause this event.  A place where they can learn the skills to help their children to live healthful and productive lives. 

I look forward to these chapters forming in Mississippi.  I know the work that PFLAG has done in other communities and the lives they have saved.  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond 

I thought this quote was correctly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson but alas, it may not be.  There are two other poems with very similar language, some things added, some things substracted.  A poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley which won a prize in 1904 and a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I sought to find another source for the the Stevenson poem and could not.   Perhaps one of our dear readers may know the correct source of this quote.  Regardless of who said it first or best, these are good words to heed.  Blessings,

Today, thousands of students across the country participated in the Day of Silence. I do not know how many or if any students in Mississippi participated.  This has been an annual event sponsored by GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Educators Network) to bring attention to the plight of sexual minorities being harrassed, bullied, and yes, even killed for being gay in schools. 

This year’s Day of Silence is in memory of Larry King, a 14 year old boy who was killed by another student because Larry sent a valentines card to him.  The idea that receiving a valentine card from some one the same gender is so horrific that the only proper recourse is to shoot him goes against all rational human logic.  Yet, in our society, thousands believe that of all the verses in Leviticus that can be set aside as not being applicable to 21st century living, the one verse that must be upheld is the one that refers to men lying with men as with a woman being an abomination and should be killed.  The teenager who shot and killed Larry King thought this was the appropriate way to respond to receiving a card offering admiration and affection.   

There are two victims of this death; Larry and Brandon, the boy who killed him.  GLSEN is seeking to end homophobia so that no one, not another Larry, not another Brandon, will have to be victims of fear.   If there is a GLSEN chapter near you, invite them to speak in your congregations about homophobia and the work they are doing to end it in schools.  Find out how you can support their work.  I have linked their website to this post.  Blessings,       

My friend Rev. Ricky talks on his blog about a woman in his congregation who was denied services from an agency she needed because she did not meet the eligibility requirements.  She felt anger towards the non-profit and wanted to get beyond it.

In reading this, I was reminded of a surviving spouse of a person we served at Interfaith AIDS Ministry.  She wanted to know how she could continue receiving supports from us.  She had given us the complement that we did what we said we would do and that our services actually made it easier for families struggling.  Our policy was that we continued providing supports to the family one year after the person with HIV/AIDS died as a means to help with the grieving process and to aid in transitioning to other support agencies if needed.  

She was at the cut-off line in eligibility for services from other agencies.  It was clear that she and her family would benefit greatly but that she simply did not qualify because of a number of factors.  She told me that she would infect herself with HIV if it meant that she would be able to live a more quality-filled life with services.  Needless to say I counseled her away from such an action, yet here was the level of desperation we have come to in this country.  Stating that her quality of life would be improved with HIV-a disease that includes treatments that are oft times just as painful and disabling as the disease itself-is a harsh commentary on American life.

At that time, I heard similar stories from my executive director colleagues in the HIV/AIDS arena.  The work they began doing was more and more poverty relief. How do you provide sufficient supports to people living with HIV/AIDS and their families when they are on the cut off line of poverty?  When they are unable to make ends meet on minimum wage? 

It isn’t just HIV/AIDS that places them on this cut-off line… the line is filled with so many more factors…  As the recession that our government denies being in deepens, families that have been floating just above this cut-off line will begin to sink.   It is already happening.   The gap is growing between the rich and the poor.   The middle is waisting away to use an HIV/AIDS metaphor. 

What is the response of the church?  What will it take for us to respond in a manner that doesn’t just provide a safety net for those falling but prevents the fall in the first place.  There is a story that I have heard many versions of and it has been attributed to many people that I do not know its original source. 

The story goes like this…  I was walking along a river when I saw a baby drowning.  I ran in and pulled the baby out.  Just as I pulled this baby out, I saw another baby drowning in the river and another.  I called on the passer-bys and soon there were hundreds of us saving babies drowning the river.  We formed an organization to save drowning babies.  We had services galore for these drowning babies.  Then it dawned on me, and I left the river.  People asked me where was I going when there was so much work to do?  I said, I am going up stream to find out who is throwing babies into the river and stop them. 

Justice is not just the pulling out of the river the drowning babies.  Justice is locating the cause that placed the babies in the river to drown in the first place and stopping that causal condition.   We in America have many causes to the drowning babies problem. 

We can get caught up in the symptom and think that this is the work we must do- to treat the symptom.  Yes, by all means help those suffering and seek to relieve their suffering.  But to truly create justice in America we need to focus on the cause and work there as well. 

I have seen more poverty since moving to Mississippi.  I see more people who are on this cut off line.  They are struggling to make ends meet.  I have listened to their stories, heard their despair, and felt their hopelessness that things will get better.   We need to do better.   We are the richest country in the world and we can do better.  We can create justice that is equitable and compassionate.   Let us begin.  Blessings,

I spent the day listening and participating in the continued exploration of developing a Truth Commission in Mississippi.   There were about 40 of us from across the state to continue the discussion and next steps in this quest to own our past and to help shape our future.  This morning we heard from the Greensboro Truth Commission speak about their experiences.  The panel consisted of Jill Williams, former executive director of the Greensboro Truth Commision, Rev. Nelson Johnson, survivor of the November 3rd 1979 shooting, and retired Mississippi Episcopal Bishop ‘Chip’ Marble, who retired to Greensboro.  They were a powerful panel sharing their personal struggles and victories of the spirit.  

In the telling of their story, they tell of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s visit where he told them, “You will always be a crippled community, whether you like it or not… as long as you refuse to face up to your past.”

Rev. Johnson tells us that everything that we are today is a product of our past.  We can’t simply leapfrog over our past to suddenly make a better community, we must instead “work through our DNA of our yesterday– push beyond the acceptability [levels] of justice” because what we are dealing with “sinks beneath the surface and gets into the drinking water” of how we live our daily lives.  This is how insidious the acts of the past are on our present. 

Desmond Tutu told the Greensboro folk, that there is no such thing as a Truth Commission that is authentic that isn’t strongly opposed.  So expect this to be a moral and spiritual issue. 

By lunch time we were asked if we were ready to take the next steps to develop a declaration of intention.  With a few exceptions, the entire room stood up in unison to proclaim we were ready to begin this work.   We were reminded of the previous meetings where we discussed a possible time period in Mississippi history of 1945-1975.  1945 because this was the end of a World War where black men were coming home after fighting for democracy and not having its power at home.  1975 because this is the time of the rise of white private academies to ensure that segregation would remain in Mississippi.  This time line is still under discussion.  We are aware that there were events before 1945 and we are painfully aware of events after 1975 that could be explored to tell the story.  We broke into three groups where we were asked to consider these three questions that would assist us in developing our declaration of intent.  

1) What are the injustices that need to be examined that would tell the story of Mississippi?

2) What is it we want to achieve with this Truth Commission?

3) How do we link this work [of the Truth Commission] to the continuing work of Equity and Justice?

The afternoon sessions were equally powerful.   I am personally grateful to assist in this work in whatever small measure I can.   May the truth of what happened in Mississippi and how our past shapes our present, set us free to enable us to be able to consciously shape the future where all receive equitable justice and treatment.  Blessings,

The New York Times today published an article entitled “Letters Give CIA a Legal Rationale.”   It seems that once again, our arrogance as supreme power has given us a method to snub our noses at the Geneva Convention and other international laws that define torture. 

What struck me as veery in-ter-restink as Arte Johnson’s character on the late 1960’s comedy “Laugh In” would say is that John McCain has been arguing on both sides of the street for and against torture.  Glenn Greenwald, former constitutional lawyer and civil rights litigator on his blog in response to the NYTimes announcement today wrote:   ” In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display — with great media fanfare — of insisting that the Military Commissions Act [MCA] require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. [bold is Greenwald’s]  After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. That law pretends to compel compliance with the Conventions, while simultaneously vesting the President with the power to violate them — precisely the power that the President is invoking here to proclaim that we have the right to use these methods.” 

If this isn’t enough in the veery in-ter-restink category, Glenn Greenwald claims in his book Great American Hypocrites which he quotes on his blog, John McCain also is the proponent of another act that allows for torture to occur while pretending that it is opposing torture.  Greenwald writes:

In 2005, McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which made the use of torture illegal. While claiming that he had succeeded in passing a categorical ban on torture, however, McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted his legislation to the point of meaningless: (1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the U.S. military, but not to the intelligence community, which was exempt, thus ensuring that the C.I.A.—the principal torture agent for the United States—could continue to torture legally; and (2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate by a vote of 90–9, President Bush issued one of his first controversial “signing statements” in which he, in essence, declared that, as President, he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed by McCain’s law.”

So what does this all mean?  It means that our nation does not torture unless it is in our national interests to do so.  Which means we use torture because as Supreme Power- we can;   [thumb in ears, waving fingers with tongue stuck out at the rest of the global community].  And it means that John McCain does not deserve to be President because he is a mastermind of melodrama as a ruse to keep our eyes off of what is up his sleeve.  No one can be that naive to present legislation as one thing and then allow concessions of this magnitude and not know it makes the legislation not worth the paper it is printed on.  He knew and he approved.

McCain aside, the topic of what is and isn’t torture has been in the American conversation before.  And we need to look at this a bit deeper than McCain’s protestations and complicity.  Paul Kramer wrote for the New Yorker an article entitled “The Water Cure: Debating Torture and Counterinsurgency–A Century Ago.”  

A different form of water torture was used then with Filipinos who had thought that we were liberating the Philippines from Spain so they could be an independent and sovereign state.  Americans thought that as well, because the rationale used to take American into war with Spain was for “liberation, rescue, and freedom.” [hmmm… I have heard this rationale used recently to go to war withanother country…]  When the Filipinos realized that US intention was to assimilate Filipinos into American citizens, they fought back.  When they fought back, US soldiers used “the water cure” to gain information from their prisoners.   The notion that America used torture brought outrage to the world stage and to Americans.  [We then ruled the Philippines for an additional 40 years.]  Yet, after a few months of debate  Paul Kramer states:

“The public became inured to what had, only months earlier, been alarming revelations.  [T]he New York World [ in 1902] described the “American Public” sitting down to eat its breakfast with a newspaper full of Philippine atrocities: It sips its coffee and reads of its soldiers administering the “water cure” to rebels; of how water with handfuls of salt thrown in to make it more efficacious, is forced down the throats of the patients until their bodies become distended to the point of bursting; of how our soldiers then jump on the distended bodies to force the water out quickly so that the “treatment” can begin all over again. The American Public takes another sip of its coffee and remarks, ‘How very unpleasant!’ ”

This seems to be the direction that the American public is going with the current ‘is it torture?’ debate.  I opened with the statement that America’s arrogance is snubbing our noses at International Law.   We have grown arrogant in our location as a Supreme power… I do not use the phrase super power because we are now the only super power in the world and in my mind that makes us Supreme.   There is a real danger in playing the Supreme Power role, aka god.  Arrogance is only the beginning of the selling of our American soul as supreme power.  Such arrogance usually follows with a case of supreme humiliation…  Has our world history of the 20th century taught us nothing? 

We have an opportunity for repentance.  A word that simply means to change directions and head a better way.   There is an organization that is seeking to stop torture in the US not just by the US military but also by the CIA called  The National Religious Campaign Against Torture or NRCAT.   In June they are hoping congregations in every state will display a banner stating “Torture is a Moral Issue” or “Torture is Wrong.”   They are seeking to bring this discussion to the national arena to end once and for all this administration’s use of torture and to ensure that torture by any other name is never used again in the name of democracy, freedom, and liberation.  

As a people of faith, we must speak to our legislators that euphemistic terms for torture is still torture.  That allowing the CIA to torture still means we use torture.  We must insist the Executive branch of our government to adhere to International laws regarding international interpretation of defining torture.  The Executive branch of our government needs to be held accountable to the constitution and to the laws of the land.  The Executive branch must be curtailed in its abuse of power of “signing statements” which have been used to state the law is to be enforced unless the President says otherwise.  

We don’t torture unless it’s in our best interests is not an acceptable answer. The ideals of this nation are founded on higher principles than the ole “because I said so” of the Presidents.   It is time we begin living up to our calling as a nation dedicated to liberty, and justice for all.  We must live up to our calling that Lincoln calls us to as written on his memorial … “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”   So may it be…  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

Today, the good people at Maryland-based Space Telescope Science Institute is releasing a series of photographs of galaxies colliding taken by the Hubble telescope in celebration of the 18th anniversary of this telescope.   I was hoping to insert some photographs of these amazing galaxy formations but there seems to be a glitch with wordpress’ program since their most recent upgrade.   Stay tuned I will try again. 

Any way, this announcement and these remarkable photographs got me remembering a conversation I had years ago when I was still very much a staunch christian with another staunch christian.  I made the heretical comment of life being on other planets.  [I should have realized then I was on my way out] His comment was that god had his hands full with sinful humanity on earth and therefore would not create life elsewhere.  I thought this was a very arrogant statement to make.  It also questioned god’s omnipotence–another theological doctrine but at the time, that thought did not occur to me. 

I don’t know how many people believe today that we are alone in the universe.  With the proliferation of successful sci-fi television series and movies with themes of inter-planetary interactions, it is hard to know if people are more accepting of the possibility of life elsewhere or not.   While interaction with extraterrestial beings remains within the realms of fiction and hypnotic trances, there is no proof that we are alone or that we have counterparts in the universe.

If first contact with an extraterrrestial did occur, what would that do to the majority of our world religions?  Would it disintegrate the truths they espouse?  Or would it shine a light on the exclusionary facets of many world religions and only those facest would fade away making the world religions more inclusive more universal in thought?    

There was an excellent movie several years ago entitled: Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr in the leading roles.  The story line was an intergalactical war between two species, Humans and Dracs.  The lead stars in this movie chase each other to a hostile planet and in order to survive have to work together.  In the process, Lou Gossett, Jr.’s character begins to teach Dennis Quiad’s character about the Drac religion which had strikingly similar values to our world religions.  The movie is a fable about tolerance and acceptance of others different than ourselves but for our discussion here it asks the question “if life did exist elsewhere, what truth that we see as truth remains?” 

There is a fear, at least in fundamentalist Christianity, that if one iota of doctrine is found to be untrue or unaccepted that the whole fabric of the faith will unravel.   I have heard this argument regarding the doctrines of creationism, virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, homosexuals, original sin and many other revered religious doctrines. 

I think my friend would include life on other planets into this unraveling because he would likely quote me John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (New International Version).  If there was life on other planets, How would god save them from their sins?  He already sent his only son to us?  He already “so loved [this] world”; how could he so love another?    Again the questioning of god’s omipotence.  I really do have to talk to him about his contradictory theologies. 

If there is life on other planets, and this universe is so vast and wide to deny life on other planets ‘would be illogical’ to quote a wise Vulcan; but what remains of faith?   One of the wisdoms of Unitarian Universalism is that it is not hinged to a specific doctrine or doctrines or even specific events being true in order for Unitarian Universalism to retain its integrity.  We are a non-creedal faith.  If there is a hinge or an anchor to Unitarian Universalism it is to the values that we seek to live in our lives.  

The value of inherent worth and dignity of every person.   This value is not dependent on some event in order for it to be true.  The verse I quoted earlier supports this value, “For God so loved the world…”  but it is not contingent on god [or even the existance of god] to make it true, each person has inherent worth and dignity in and of themselves.  This value does not disintegrate if we discover that we are not alone in the universe. 

The question then remains… how committed are you to your values that they will not be shaken by the removal of your doctrines?  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond 

This is an excellent introduction to Unitarian Universalism. It has been seen elsewhere. But there may be people in Mississippi who have not seen it. Enjoy!

Plus, placing this video here taught me how to do this on this blog…

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

Staying at a hotel for MSD district annual assembly, I was awoken at 2:45 AM to loud screaming at the pool. There was a group of people in the pool area and they were having quite the discussion. In my half stupor, I opened the door and began yelling for them to quiet down. They did not hear me. I yelled again… they still did not hear me… it slowly dawned on me as I was waking up that I was now part of the problem rather than the solution. I shut the door and called the front desk who had just received several calls regarding the situation and no doubt my cacophony was included in the complaint.

I have been reflecting on whether there were other times in my life when my actions were part of the problem?   Were there times that I with the sleepiness of unawareness acted in ways that contributed to racism through white privilege; or global warming  through abandoned consumerism; or injustice through self-centered attitudes. 

Being part of the problem is never the role a person wants to be in when trying to solve a dilemma. We want to make things better, we want to create justice, we want to heal the wounds that have been inflicted; not make things worse by increasing injustice with layers of bureaucracy, or re-wound the inflicted. Yet, sometimes we have approached problems the same way for so long we think that must be the right way to solve this new problem or old problem that has once again surfaced to our awareness.  

The bumper sticker that reads “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem” never seemed very helpful to me.  I wanted a bit more awareness about this problem. What was the problem, how was I contributing to it, how could I stop contributing it? 

Somewhere in my sleepy stupor of wanting to return to sleep and no longer hear the yelling and screaming, I realized that I had become part of the problem and not the solution.  I owned my participation in exacerbating the problem and saw a means to stop contributing to the problem and perhaps found another way to solve the problem. It was a matter of becoming fully alert and present to what was happening. 

This seems key to me… to be fully alert and present to what is happening. It may be painful to be fully alert and present and so I understand the desire to keep responding from the sleepy numbing stupor but that will not create the solution desired and may actually increase the problem.  yet, it is only when we are fully awake can we respond with our full authentic selves and bring healing and transformation to this world. 

May we all seek to realize the role we play in the problems we face and become awake and alert in order to see our ways to the solutions we seek.  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

“William Moore” by Phil Ochs
What price the glory of one man?
What price the glory of one man?
What price the hopes,
What price the dreams,
And what price the glory of one man?

And they shot him on the Alabama road
Forgot about what the Bible told
They shot him with that letter in his hand
As though he were a dog and not a man
And they shot him on the Alabama road

“I was made to wish for more—more than the mere possible or even the probable. I must pursue the impossible . . . Whether I go forward as Don Quixote chasing his windmill or as the pilgrim progressing must be left for you to decide . . . I can only give my life.” —The Mind in Chains: The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic, William L. Moore

William Moore was a mail carrier who chose to walk from Chattenooga, TN to Jackson, MS to  hand deliver a letter to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett asking for an end to segregation. He wore a sandwich board placard which read:  “End Segregation in America: Equal Rights for All Men” and on the other side read “Eat at Joes–Black and White.”   He had spoken with a Floyd Simpson in the morning of  April 23, 1963 and found dead later that day.  The gun used was owned by Floyd Simpson but he was never convicted for the murder.   Other freedom walkers in the weeks that followed after Mr. Moore’s death tried to complete his freedom walk.  They were all thwarted in Alabama or in Mississippi. 

In the letter he hoped to deliver included the following: “The white man cannot be truly free himself until all men have their rights. Each is dependent upon the other. ”   These words are still true today, and a group of men and women are walking this week from Highway 11 in Gadsden, Etowah County, AL, where Moore was murdered to Jackson, MS to finish his postal route and will deliver the original letter to Governor Haley Barbour. 

William Moore was also an atheist.  Those marching with the letter are members of the American Atheists.     So they are marching not only in memory of William Moore and to complete his task of delivering this letter, albeit 45 years later, so that history will not be able to record that his mission was forever unrealized.   But also with the message of honoring the freedom of conscience.  It was never clear if Moore was killed for his equal rights stance or his atheist beliefs.  He proudly proclaimed them both to all who would listen.   

Freedom of conscience is as radical an idea for 21st century America as it was for our American founders who ensured that this country would have religious freedom of thought.  Even the right to not believe.

He was made to wish for more.  This week his legacy is remembered and we all will wish for more– more equality for all people in this land, more honor and respect for the freedom of conscience in this land.  Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond 

This video has received as of this date over 6 million hits. I was recently asked to comment on Oprah’s views of multiple paths to god and what does Unitarian Universalism say about this by WAPT Channel 16 News reporter Megan West. (Unfortunately the link to WAPT News to watch the interview with me is no longer available.) 

Oprah has received some bad press simply for stating she believes that there are multiple paths to god. Our understanding of god is limited. The Buddha tells the story of the 4 blind men and the elephant. The blind men are describing the elephant through their senses. The first blind man says the elephant is like a wall, tall and wide as he touches the elephants side. No says the second man, the elephant is like a tree firmly planted into the ground as he touches the elephants legs. NO shouts the third man, the elephant is like a whip as he attempts to touch the elephants tail, The fourth man shouts, no no, the elephant is like a snake as he touches the elephants trunk.

All four are describing parts of the elephant. They all have a piece of the puzzle that is the elephant. So it is with truth, we each have a piece but not the whole piece. That is why we need community to help us expand on the truth we have. It is also why we need the diversity of reflection, of ideas, so that we can sift through and find how the pieces fit together.

There is no Church of Oprah but in my mind’s view, she is asking the right questions. The answers she has been coming up with seem to be leading her to increase her philanthropy, increase her tolerance of the different, and increase her desire to leave this world a better place because of her life. All wonderful fruits of her life, I would say. Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

I wrote the following words for our chalice lighting:

“There is perhaps no greater symbol of universal love than the love between a mother and a child. For whatever else happens in that relationship, it was first and foremost love that gave birth to life and the potential of extending that love forward into eternity. We light this candle in honor of the mothers everywhere who gave birth to us. “

I have been on vacation and decided to do some day trips to explore Mississippi a bit more.  Yesterday I went to the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Brooksville, MS.  I drove up from Ellisville taking the scenic route of route 29 to 15 to 25.  This enabled me to see the rural landscape of MS which was just beautiful with rolling hills, fields, and pine forests.  What I was not anticipating was the gravel roads leading into the refuge from 25.  It did however, increase my anticipation of a wonderful early afternoon in nature. 

I walked the Scattertown trail, a 1.75 mile roundtrip trail in the woods.  The wonders of this trail that I saw included swallowtail and mourning cloak butterflies and deer.  Those of you who know me, have heard me speak of my childhood rampages through the woods of my grandparents property, where my grandmother introduced me to the wonders of the flora and fauna that grew there.  So to walk through these woods yesterday brought back memories of these walks with my grandmother pointing out to me the great diversity of life that exists around us.

From here I drove to the visitors center and looked over Bluff Lake.  This man-made lake has taken on a beauty that no person could have foreseen.  There are cypress and water-lilies growing with heron, cattle egrets, white wood storks and other birds gracing the lakes edge. 

I walked the woodpeckers trail in the hopes of catching sight of the now rare red-cockaded woodpecker.  It was the wrong time of day as they tend to be seen at sunrise or sunset when they come out of their nesting spots.  I did see the entrances to their nests in the pines but they are way smarter than I for resting during the hottest time of day. 

There were more trails that I hope one day to explore.  If you decide to go and explore our interconnectness with the web of all life, do perform a body check afterwards as ticks are also plentiful.  I found three of the little buggers on me, two of which had begun to burrow their heads into me so I am now on doxycycline as a preventive measure.  But don’t let ticks deter you from this beauty there is much to appreciate. 

Here is a short video on this wonderful national treasure

BLessings,

AAron Sawyer, founder of DiscoverUU, a web based blog aggregate, has written a wonderful affirmation that deserves to be passed around…  You can read it at this link which will send you to his blog and to links to other UU’s blogging and you can read it here.

UU AFFIRMATION

I believe in my right to search for the good, to choose it for myself, and hold it in my heart.

Together we share in the joy of community, the power of reverence, and the challenge of freedom.

This is the promise of my heart extended to you, as we walk on separate paths, together.

Blessings,

I have been taking some vacation time and exploring Mississippi.  My journeys took me to Natchez, MS on the Mississippi River.  I was keen in visiting the William T. Johnson home on State Street because he is an interesting person of history.  Mr. Johnson was born into slavery in 1809.  He was freed by Captain William Johnson, presumably his white father in 1820, when he was eleven by petition to the state.  The petition* included this quote justifying emanicipating a child, “that disposition of this property [would be] most agreeable to his feelings and consonant to humanity… [giving] liberty to a human which all are entitled as a birthright, and extend the hand of humanity to a rational creature.”  

Mr. Johnson learned the trade of being a barber and soon had three barber shops in Natchez.  He was held in high esteem by the citizenry of the city and became quite wealthy.  But this is not the reason, Mr. Johnson is to be remembered.  He is to be remembered because he kept a diary for 16 years that reveals what life was like for the freed people of color living in Mississippi in the first half of the 19th century.  Natchez had the largest community of freed people of color in Mississippi at that time.  He also owned 15 slaves when he died.   This adds curiousity to his life as well.   Why would a former slave own slaves?  Part of the answer thats been suggested might be in the desire to elevate oneself in a society that measures success by slave ownership. 

His diary does not reveal his personal opinions about slavery.  To talk or to write openly about the abolition movement in the north or to express an opinion about slavery as a person of color was a very dangerous act.  Mr. Johnson must have known this.  The closest he comes to revealing an opinion is his writing about what he calls “the inquisition” where freed people of color were rounded up for working with abolitionists.   He writes that some of the people rounded up proved to be of Indian decent and were cleared and released.  A law was passed requiring all free people of color to leave Mississippi unless a petition was made on their behalf by respectable white freeholders.   Mr. Johnson had that respect from the white community and was allowed to remain.

Mr. Johnson was killed over a dispute of land boundaries by a Baylor Winn  on June 16, 1851.  Mr. Johnson was shot on his way home with free black apprentice Edward Hoggart,  his son William and a slave.  His dying words named Mr. Winn as the person who shot him.   The community of Natchez was in such an uproar over the murder of Mr. Johnson that Winn’s trial had to be in a neighboring county.   The issue at stake however, was not Winn’s innocence or guilt but rather on Winn’s ethnic background.   Everyone in Natchez knew that Winn was of African decent.  But Winn successfully convinced the court that his ancestry was not interracial betwen white and black but rather Native American and therefore was White.  Mississippi law stated that black witnesses could not testify against a White man.  Winn was therefore never convicted and allowed to walk free.  However, several years later, it was proved by the Virginia census records where Winn’s family originated, that his ancestry did indeed include African lineage.  Mississippi did not acknowledge the documentation. 

Mr. Johnson’s diary has been published  and is available.  His daughter’s diary has also been published and gives a picture of Mississippi after the civil war.  These are important documents that capture a slice of what life was like for free people of color in the antebellum south.   Do go and visit his homestead and learn more about our history from a potentially different perspective.   Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

* Information taken from “Between Two Worlds: The Life of Free Black Diarist William T. Johnson”  published by the Natchez National Historic Park.

I am very proud of Mississippi Unitarian Universalist Congregations.  While we were the last state to give representation to this important issue, 5/6 Unitarian Universalist congregations in the state signed on to participate in National Religious Coalition Against Torture’s (NCRAT) observance of this critical issue by displaying banners.  This is the highest percentage of UU congregations in any one state to participate.  In fact, to date MS is the only state to have five Unitarian Universalist congregations participating.  California comes in second with four Unitarian Universalist congregations participating.  To see the banner at the Hattiesburg Unitarian Universalist Fellowship click here. (I wasn’t able to post the picture directly.  I will add more pictures as they become available.)

 Here is what NCRAT released to the press about this month long event:
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) launched its Banners Across America initiative in a telephone press conference describing the nationwide anti-torture banner campaign taking place during the month of June. Hundreds of congregations across the United States have joined this campaign in an effort to mobilize the American faith community in opposition to U.S.-sponsored torture. The “Banners Across America” initiative, organized by NRCAT, is timed to allow local congregations to participate in a nationwide, interfaith public witness during Torture Awareness Month.

To date, 298 congregations, located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, are participating in this effort by displaying anti-torture banners during the month of June. Most of the large, vinyl banners are black-and-white and have anti-torture messages: “Torture is Wrong” and “Torture is a Moral Issue.”

Rev. Richard Killmer, NRCAT’s Executive Director, opened the press conference. “We are thrilled that almost 300 congregations have made a significant and courageous witness in their community by displaying an anti-torture banner on the exterior of their building. In a public way these congregations are stating clearly that torture is always wrong – without any exceptions.  These powerful witnesses may hasten the day when we see the end of U.S.-sponsored torture,” he said.

Linda Gustitus, NRCAT’s President highlighted the following organizational goals:

**Stop the use of torture techniques by the CIA
**Close secret prisons
**Stop rendition for torture
**Hold our government accountable for what we have done. NRCAT has called for a Select Committee of Congress to investigate all aspects of U.S. sponsored torture post 9/11.

“Torture is not a political issue,” emphasized Ms. Gustitus. “Whether you’re for or against torture shouldn’t depend upon whether you’re for or against the President, the war or a particular party. Torture is a moral issue. It is immoral to use torture, and it is immoral to condone it — affirmatively or silently. Torture destroys the very soul of our nation and it must be stopped.”  

Rev. Chris Grapentine, Pastor of Northside Community Church in Ann Arbor, MI, described the successful efforts in that city to engage a diverse group of congregations in this public witness. The 13 participating groups include churches of several denominations, a Jewish group, and a Buddhist temple.

“The banner will show our neighbors that we stand against the inhumane treatment of all people, even our enemies, because Jesus calls us to love our enemies,” said Rev, Grapentine, whose congregation is an American Baptist Church.

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster of Rabbis for Human Rights noted that 27 Jewish congregations across the country are participating in the banner project, displaying a special banner that features the message “Honor the Image of God: Stop Torture Now.”

“The strong response of the Jewish community to the banner project demonstrates that we believe that stopping torture is a Jewish religious imperative,” stated Rabbi Kahn-Troster. “As a community who has historically been a victim of torture and oppression, we are compelled by our values to identify with the plight of the stranger and work to ensure k’vod habriot, the dignity of every human being. Torture denies that every person is created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God. The synagogues hanging the banner are sending a message to our government that Jews regard torture as an affront to their Jewish values.”

Unitarian Universalists seek to uphold their first two principles that all people are endowed with inherent worth and dignity and the desire to seek justice, equity, and compassion within all human relations.   Torture dehumanizes everyone involved, not just the recipient but also the deliverer of the torture. The deliverer of torture is spiritually wounded by the act to  an equally extreme degree.  It is easy to identify the wounds- physically, emotionally, psychically, and spiritually to the tortured. The trauma caused to the deliverer of the torture is equally extreme because it is hidden in a ruse of being sanctioned by authorities; by being wrapped in patriotism. One cannot in clear conscience claim to be a person of faith and honor their spirituality and allow / observe / participate in torture; to do so is to deny one’s spiritual foundation and humanity. 

I close with this quote:
“A time comes when silence is betrayal. People do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us. We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond
 

I had written a blog regarding the current Medicaid shortfall crisis and Governor Barbour’s solution as being unethical.   Well that seems to be an under statement.  Governor Barbour is being down right mean-spirited to get his hospital tax which is going to increase the medical crisis in this state.  According to the Jackson Free Press (JFP) story entitled “Medicaid Ultimatums”, Governor Barbour has threatened to cut $375 Million dollars in state funds to hospitals if he does not get his hospital tax to offset the $90 million shortfall.  House Democrats want to instead pass an increase on the sin tax on cigarettes, ideally to a dollar a pack which would bring in “$162.8 million in new annual tax revenue” and “almost a $1 billion in long term savings from tobacco related health issues.”    

Governor Barbour is not serving the best interests of Mississippi.  Instead he is serving the interests of the tobacco industry for whom he once served as a lobbyist.  When Barbour was sworn in as governor he swore to serve the state of Mississippi not the tobacco industry.  Barbour is revealing himself as a person who holds no integrity for the office of Governor.  

In October 2007, Governor Barbour addressed the campus of Wesley College.  During the chapel service ” The Governor’s message was clear – Your personal faith shapes your values, and Judeo/Christian values were the foundational values that shaped our country. Governor Barbour expressed to the students that Christians today should be involved in the political process.”  

I agree that personal faith shapes our values, however, I am afraid that Governor Barbour’s values are not based in any understanding I have of Christianity.   If they were, then he would see without a doubt that saving lives is more important than tobacco profits.  He would see that supporting a medical system that is able to serve all of Mississippi is of greater value than his loyalty to his former employers, the tobacco industry.  Instead, his values and his threat if played out may result, as JFP reports, in “medical facilities to… cut staff, raise fees or even close doors in some cases” at a time when the economy continues to reel under the threat of recession with skyrocketing gas and food prices, unprecedented mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment rates at 5.9 %  making Mississippi’s rates one of the five highest in the country.  If he makes good on his threat, then a medical system already struggling to close the gap in services will only increase the already deepening medical hardships the underserved and under insured face.  Jesus said, one cannot serve God and mammon (money).  It seems by Governor Barbour’s behaviors that his values are based on personal monetary gain.  Something we saw in the aftermath of Katrina when his family received multi-million dollar contracts in the clean up efforts.

Ironically, Barbour is an ordained Deacon in his Yazoo City Presbyterian Church.  I say ironically, because having been ordained a Deacon in the Presbyterian Church myself, I know the role of Deacon in the Presbyterian denomination is to assist in the pastoral needs of the church, tend to the sick, and aid the impoverished.   A role he obviously feels he can sloth off as Governor.  Sorry, Governor, ordination is life long and a calling from the most high; it is to be integrated into one’s entire life and cannot be taken off like a winter coat when it gets too hot to wear.  

It seems to me that Governor Barbour had a choice when he became governor, to use his ordination as Deacon and the life long calling that ordination demands to help shape his policies to create a more compassionate, a more just Mississippi for all its citizens OR to use  his connections as former tobacco lobbyist to promote and protect an industry whose product has resulted in the loss of millions of lives and economic hardship on the survivors.   The Governor still has a chance to choose according to “[his] personal faith values.”  Choose wisely. 

Blessings, Rev. Fred L Hammond

Transient and Permanent’s blog asks the question whether or not the principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations define us a liberal religion?  I find the question interesting on a number of fronts. 

I wrote this as an answer to the question at the blog site: “The principles could be a manner in which we define liberal religion. I know that I refer to the principles when I am confronted with an issue that makes me uncomfortable. For example, today I preached on torture. I needed to wrestle with the principle of inherent worth and dignity when the torturers of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are displaying themselves as monsters of intense evil rather than as humans with inherent worth let alone dignity. I don’t know how successful I am with this question. But if the principle is true regardless of what I see expressed, then how do I reach that essence that reveals it to be true when everything shouts the opposite? I could not gloss over the principle as some rote phrase of rhetoric. If my faith has any chutzpah, any substance to it, then it has to be able to answer this question. Does/Can a person steeped in providing torture have inherent worth and dignity? Does/Can our principles help us in answering these more critical questions of our 21st century reality? I believe they can but on the way, it means that we are going to fumble and sometimes err in our living out the question, but if we are able to maintain our openness to the question, then we can have a fairly exciting journey along the way.”

But I want to explore this a bit further.  In the last decade or so of my being a Unitarian Universalist I have taken the seven principles to define for me, a prescriptive yardstick that I will measure the questions that arise in my journey. 

I will use what is perhaps our most beloved principle, the Inherent worth and dignity of every person.  In the face of evil emanating from a human, does this person have inherent worth and dignity?  It’s a tough question.  It is one that some of my esteemed colleagues have responded with an emphatic no.  

Rev. Bill Schulz, former UUA president and former executive director of Amnesty International, has come to the position that inherent worth and dignity is something that needs to be assigned.  That it really isn’t inherent at all but rather is bestowed upon others.  [For more in-depth on his opinion read Bill Schulz’s 2006 Berry Street Lecture  What Torture Taught Me]  There is documented proof of the power of bestowing worth and dignity.  It is the power behind successful programs like Big Brothers and Big Sisters and other similar mentoring programs.  For a child to have at least one adult person in their life who is in a positive relationship with them is a powerful influence on how that child will approach and experience adulthood. 

The successes that Psychotherapists such as Carl Rogers, Bruno Bettelheim, Victor Frankl have had with their clients also stem from the establishment of authentic relationships in which the psychotherapist has bestowed worth and dignity on the client.   Many years ago, I worked with a developmentally disabled adult who was formerly a client of Bruno Bettelheim’s as a child.  This relationship was so very potent in her life, that to mention his name, she would simply gush with adoration.  Understand this was a person who usually spent most of her day in deadpan expression to any and all activities she engaged in.   So this notion of bestowing worth and dignity is a powerful one and necessary one for all sorts of healing of woundedness in our lives. 

My experiences in working with people with developmental disabilities and with people living with AIDS reinforce this notion that worth and dignity can be bestowed upon another and have remarkable impact on the person’s life and well-being.  I have used in sermons a story about a young man living with HIV/AIDS who was homeless, heavily addicted to heroin and cocaine, considered violent by the police and convicted of many serious crimes.  I worked with this young man and his significant other for several years.  When I first met him, in conversation on the phone, I called him Sir.  A title he was taken aback by.  He told me he was never called Sir ever, he had been called lots of worse things and given the description stated above you can imagine what those things might have been; none of which very affirming.  In my working with him and his common law wife,  he began to soften in his attitudes towards life.  He reconciled with his family.  After he died, his family told me that his relationship with me had reached him in ways that his family never was able to and they were grateful for my assistance of their son.   Bestowing worth and dignity on another can be a very powerful and transformative event in a person’s life. 

But is worth and dignity already inherent?  Unlike my esteemed colleague Rev. Bill Schulz, I still claim that it is inherent. When a child is born, before that child has developed, the child has inherent worth and dignity.  That worth and dignity is the potential of a life well lived.  It is the seed longing to sprout and become a mighty oak.   Life circumstances and experiences might crush that potential. Choices may be made in response to those events that lead the developing child down a path of destructive behavior, much like Sir, described above.  But that seed, remains waiting for any opportunity to break forth.   I call that seed, the spirit of life that pulses through all of creation.  There is such potential.   Even when a person has made choices, even if they are coerced choices, that lead to behaviors that we find detestable, it does not mean that worth and dignity is no longer inherent in the person.  It means that the person is in need of someone who is able, willing, capable, of bestowing worth and dignity upon them in an authentic relationship calling forth the inherent seed of worth and dignity to break through.  In other words, redemption is still possible. 

Finding such a person willing to do this for another is hard.  This is why the iconic Jesus is so palpable for many people today because when a person imagines themselves being in the presence of this Jesus, all forgiving and all merciful, they are bestowed worth and dignity in a world where few people will do this act.  These individuals then find within themselves the ability to turn their lives around, find the strength for recovery from drugs and alcohol, find the will power to hold steady employment.  They then credit this iconic Jesus with the miraculous.  What usually really happens is that after their initial event with the iconic Jesus, someone then takes them under their wing and bestows this worth and dignity upon them.  It is this person who in relationship with them, aids them along.  Christians call this discipleship.  Business men call this mentorship.

Our Inherent worth and dignity comes to fruition through authentic relationships with one another.  This is why coming together in community is so vitally important.  We have an opportunity to be redemptive for one another.  It is a wonderful gift that we can offer others.  We cannot offer it, however, by walking up to someone and say, “Hi, I am here to offer you redemption.”  This is where evangelical Christians quest to save the world misunderstand Jesus’s message.  In bestowing worth and dignity, redemption comes from the day to day relationship with that person.  It comes from doing the mundane things of daily living with that person.  It is in the daily routine of seeking to make choices that will harm none.  It comes from the spiritual quest to be mindful in our thoughts and actions.   Redemption is not a commodity that can be offered.  It is a transformation process that develops within the daily life of community.

For me, our principles offer a touch stone where I can wrestle with the issues of the world.  They are more than just words for an association of congregations.  The principles do define my liberal religious life.  I believe that engaging these principles can be a spiritual practice for many people.  Blessings,  

The Director of Religious Education at one of the congregations I serve, led the Adult Forum discussion on Sunday.  She was using the curriculum of Spirit in Practice, a UU curriculum that explores a variety of ways people express their spirituality.  It has been a wonderful study for this congregation. 

She shared a story entitled “The Wise Fool”   I will paraphrase the story here. 

There was a great Sufi holy man Nasreddin Hodja who was approached by a group of women one day.  They were quite upset and cried out, “Help us, Hodja! Help us!”   Hodja replied, “What is the trouble?” 

“Our husbands!” The women cried.  “They have all decided that they must go into the desert and dedicate themselves to finding Allah.  They have abandoned us and the children!”

“This is wrong!”  Hodja declared and he set out on his donkey to find the men.  When he found them he began to shout, “Help me! Help me!” 

“What is the trouble, Hodja?” the men replied.  

“My donkey!  I have lost my donkey and cannot find him anywhere.  I must find my donkey.”  He said.

“But he is right there,” the men laughed.  “Can’t you see that you are sitting on him?  You do not have to try to look for him.”

“And why do you,” Hodja replied, ” believe you must go into the desert to look for Allah?  Go back to your wives and your lives.”   And that is what the men did.

There is a belief that in order for us to have a fulfilling life, that we must have that life over there–where ever over there may be.  And so, people are disatisfied because they feel trapped in their present condition.  They go through their daily routine as a grind, muttering through out their very being that they wished they could be someplace else and really live.  Of course, there is nothing wrong in wanting to be someplace else and seeing different things and living different experiences that various locations offer.

But finding a fulfilling life someplace else is just like going into the desert to find Allah.  Allah is already here in the fabric of our lives and routines.  The Sufi holy man knew that Allah was to be found in the faces of the wives and children.  So too a fulfilling life is to be found in the daily routines we awaken ourselves to experience.  

Being awake, being fully alert to all that is going on around us can and will reveal to us what we must do  or be in this moment.  That response will shape our next moment and the next, and in reflection we will discover that our being here in the day to day routine made a difference in our having a fulfilling life.  We will discover that the opportunities for fulfillment were already here all the time. 

I hear from my friends in other parts of the country, who comment and state that living in Mississippi must be really hard.  It must be a culture shock to live there.  They of course are referring to the stereotype and biases that have developed against Mississippi.   But people are people where ever one lives.  The Human condition is the same that I experienced in Connecticut as I experienced in Illinois and in California and now in Mississippi.  The location of the people encountered does not matter.  We tend to run into the same people no matter where we live. 

The difference, I believe, is in how we decide to respond to our daily encounters with others and how we respond to the daily routines we find ourselves in.  It is a matter of being at peace with ourselves and in our present living.   If we believe that nothing good ever comes out of Nazareth  (John 1:46) then we will miss the opportunity to meet Jesus or the Buddha or the Mahatma.  And believing that something good does come out of your location in time and space, is a step towards finding Allah in the midst of the desert of our lives.  Blessings, Fred

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” Matthew 13:33 

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has reported its findings yesterday regarding religious tolerance in the New York Times.   The story stated, ” … 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that ‘many religions can lead to eternal life,’ including majorities among Protestants and Catholics.  Among Evangelical Christians, 57 percent agreed with the statement, and among Catholics, 79 percent did.  Among minority faiths, more than 80 percent of Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists, agreed with the statement, and more than half of Muslims did.”

The findings as reported does not indicate if this tolerance in other’s religious beliefs is a shift from intolerance or if Americans were always more tolerant of religious beliefs?   The question for me, is what role, if any,  did Unitarian Universalist’s play in this attitude?  As a faith, Unitarian Universalists acceptance in right of conscience, in the personal quest for truth and meaning, has meant that we recognize that all faith journeys are valid for salvation, regardless of how we might define the word salvation. 

While it may be presumptuous to think that our minority faith has had any impact on the larger whole towards tolerance, does presumption mean it is therefore beyond consideration?  Long before I became an official Unitarian Universalist, I was always impressed with the Unitarian Universalists that I knew with their openness and acceptance of other point of views.  Unitarian Universalists seemed to role model this concept for me in ways that my conservative charismatic Christian faith did not. 

And not that my charismatic Christian friends were not tolerant of others, they were but it was done in the arrogant tolerance sort of way.  I mean there was always this ‘I will tolerate your position because you simply don’t know better yet’ attitude.  Once you knew better and you decided to reject their message, all tolerance bets were off.    While Unitarian Universalists are not immune to this sort of arrogance, we tend to be aware of its tendency and confront it because deep down we also know that humanly we only have a piece of the universal truth.  And not a very big piece at that. 

We tend to embrace the wisdom of Buddha, where he tells the story of four blind men trying to describe what an elephant [metaphor for Truth] looks like.  An elephant is like a trunk of a tree…  no no an elephant is like a huge wall… no no an elephant is like a whip…  NO! You are all wrong, an elephant is like a serpentining serpent…  All were correct in their experiences of the elephant; legs, body, tail, and trunk.  We each may have a piece of the Truth but our limited experiences and senses fail to see the whole picture.  This is one important reason why we need to be in community with each other so we can hear others experiences of Truth in the hopes of enlarging our conception of our elephant. 

Even if, American’s have generally had a broad tolerance for other faiths, in what ways can Unitarian Universalists be the leaven that leavens the whole of America?  Jesus stated this is what the Kingdom of Heaven was like; placing leaven (yeast) in flour and soon it was all leavened with yeast.  We can live our lives like that.  Our values, our principles that we seek to uphold, can be leaven for the society in which we live.  Blessings,  

There has been over the last few days an interesting conversation on spirituality on the minister’s chat list.  What is it?  How do we define it?  How do Unitarian Universalists who have, for the most part, shied away from the other worldly forms of spirituality of the 19th century re-engage the topic without returning to the spiritualist’s ruminations?   Can we find a common definition of the word that all would agree on it’s meaning?

Here is a bit of what I wrote to my colleagues:  ‘I have a sermon that I have given a few times now, entitled
“Spiritual being having a Human Experience”  It is from a quote by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, the 20th century theologian / priest / mystic who stated:   
       “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”    

‘I have taken this to mean that there is something transcendent about life.  And something very spiritual about our human experiences so enjoy them– all of them, in what ever shape or form they come to us; even those that cause us great pain.  I do not mean enjoy the pain in a sado/masochistic manner but enjoy as in embrace all of life as it comes to us.  Feel it deeply.  Reflect on it deeply.  Suck the marrow out of it all… ‘    

For me, a healthy spirituality is one where our humanity is embraced, that we are able to live through the events of our lives as whole and present as possible.  Yes, there may be events that happen in our lives that are difficult to face and the defense mechanisms of denial and repression are valuable responses in the moment to get us through these moments.  But at some point in time, to be able to reflect on these moments, to embrace them as events that have happened and then to let them go so those events lose their power over the living of our current moments. 

To be able to reflect upon and embrace the wonderful events as well and then to let them go because I don’t want that  event to be the standard bearer / the pedestal of all other events like it.  I want the next wonderful moment to stand on its own merit and to be enjoyed fully for what it brings. 

A healthy spirituality for me is one where we are able to transcend our aloneness to know that we are connected and part of the interdependent web of the universe.  It is a means where we bask in the awareness of all that is; marvel at its beauty; wonder at its complexity and simplicity.    For me, spirituality is to live as authentically as I can and fully in touch with all I bring to the moment.  It is about living to the fullest of my human potential. 

I have not even come close to answering the questions at the beginning of this post.  This is a conversation that is answered when there is relational dialogue.  So I open the floor and invite your comments.  What is spirituality to you?  How do you define it?  How do you experience your sense of the spiritual?  Blessings,

“An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation.  His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts.  But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final.  They’re laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won’t be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp.
      Quiz:  How many biblical prohibitions are they violating?  Well, wives are supposed to be ‘submissive’ to their husbands (I Peter 3:1).  And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that ‘pertains to a man’ (Deuteronomy 22:5).  Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19).  And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they’re committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22).
      So why are they having such a good time?  Probably because they wouldn’t think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or – at best – unrealistic.  Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes.”  ~Deb Price, And Say Hi To Joyce 

The Presbyterian General Conference voted in their national body to overturn their ban on ordaining Gays and Lesbians.  This is a major step forward for this denomination.  A few decades ago now, it had passed a similar resolution but in their polity in order for it to become official, had to be ratified by a majority of the Presbyteries within their denomination.  It failed to reach that majority vote.  This next year will show whether the attitudes of Presbyterians have really changed over these many years or  will this again be a vote aborted. 

The subject of ordaining sexual minorities has been a divisive issue in main line denominations these past few years.  We are witnessing a widening schism in the Episcopal church over the ordaining of a gay priest to the position of Bishop.  Presbyterians also struggle with this potential of schism.  Yet, the scenario quoted above is seen as perfectly aligned with teachings of the church even when it is shown to ignore biblical teachings.   Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.  Yet he mentioned some of the concerns mentioned in our scenario above, especially divorce.  

It seems to me that if one is to be true to the teachings of Jesus, that one ought to seek the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.  What is at the heart of a devout religious life?  To live justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with one’s god.  This is a pretty broad prescription from Micah with room for interpretation.  It does leave open the ability to adjust our living based on our new understandings that Science and Reason offer us.   As well as evolving cultural understandings of what is sinful behavior. 

May Presbyterians weigh seriously the call placed before them and the path they will go down as a result of their vote. Will they seek to follow the spirit or the letter of their doctrines?  May they choose the spirit.  Blessings,

Funny how some songs change their meanings as one gets older.  I have always liked this song.  I now see the lions as the great prophets, like Gandhi, King, Emerson, Parker, and others whose words challenge us to live our lives differently.  “They were not as frightening as they were before.  Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me”… Once we know and understand their message, the fear of their challenge fades away.  Where are they now?  Who will be seen as the prophets of this age?   

But then Bruce Cockburn says the song was in reference to a nuclear war threat between China and Soviet Union but every good poet knows, that the reader / hearer adds their own meaning to the words.   BLessings,

Rev. Christine Robinson of the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, NM states that Unitarian Universalism is an open source faith.   A term used in internet circles.  She also talks about their Branch Ministry where they are using the Internet, DVDs to provide resources for folk in the rural areas of New Mexico where there are no Unitarian Universalist congregations.  This is an exciting experiment that is being developed there with great promise for other parts of the country, like Mississippi. 

The UUA’s Mid-south District is adapting her congregation’s idea to provide resources to the congregations of Mississippi.  I will be moving to Tuscaloosa, AL to serve that congregation on a part time basis and will continue to serve Our Home Universalist Church in Ellisville, MS on a once a month basis.  In addition with the generous cooperation of the Tuscaloosa congregation, I will be developing a series of DVDs of sermons and adult education programs that will be subscribed to by Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi, as of this writing four of the six congregations are participating.  These DVDs can be used to supplement their worship services with a sermon or for their adult education programs.   I will also over the course of the year visit these congregations and provide a to be determined workshop, consultation, etc on a Saturday and then worship on Sunday.  It is the intention of the Mid-south District and my intention, that this resource will aid in the furthering of Unitarian Universalism in Mississippi by offering professional ministry to congregations that perhaps are not able to have a called professional ministry.  Who knows, perhaps these DVD sermons will also be posted on You Tube or on this blog for others to witness.  

This is an exciting time and a wonderful opportunity for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa to extend their ministry in an innovative manner to support the ministries of the Unitarian Universalist congregations in Mississippi.  Blessings,

Mike Myers of SNL fame, had a sketch called “Coffee Talk”, during which the character would exclaim in yinglish ( a non-yiddish word that sounds like it could be yiddish) the she was becoming ‘Verklempt.’   To give her time to re-compose herself she would offer a topic,  such as Holy Roman Empire, neither Holy, nor Roman, nor even an Empire.  Discuss.  She could easily have offered:  “Unitarian Universalist:  Neither Unitarian nor Universalist.  Discuss.” 

UU Blogger Aaron Sawyer has received some criticism for a video he did and posted on YouTube. He responds to the criticism on his blog.  What came up in the discussion is whether or not Unitarian Universalist Association is a denomination or a religion.  I responded in part thus: 

               “If we see ourselves as a denomination that means that we are a denomination of a specific faith tradition such as Christianity. Yet, we no longer identify as a Christian faith. We may have people who honor their Christian heritage and identify as Christian but Unitarian Universalism is not a Christian faith.

               “There are other Unitarian and Universalist faiths out there… are we a denomination of them? Judaism is unitarian in theology. Islam is unitarian in theology. Oneness Pentecostalism is non-trinitarian ( Jesus is the one God, so the emphasis is different) in theology. There is also the Biblical Unitarians. Unity is a universalist faith. And there are pockets of universalism within Methodism, Roman Catholicism, United Church of Christ, and Episcopalian traditions, to mention a few. Are we a denomination of these groups? The closest we could be affiliated would be Judaism because they are also a covenantal faith like we are (there are also some major differences which would separate us) but the others have very strong doctrinal and creedal requirements which we as a whole do not meet.

               “Therefore it seems that declaring Unitarian Universalism a religion is closer to the truth of our identity since the term denomination does not seem to match. I know that there are many of us who will cling to the word denomination for nostalgic reasons but we really are no longer a denomination.” 

Unitarian Universalism is in an interesting bind because as a faith we originated out from strong Christian / Abrahamic roots.  Unitarian theology is the theology that most Abrahamic faiths embrace.  Judaism, Islam, and Baha’i are all unitarian in theology.  They believe that God is one.  Only Christianity broke away from this stance in the 4thcentury with a Trinitarianview of God.  Today, we are seeing a shift in Christianity with the rise of non-trinitarian sects forming within Christianity such as Jehovah Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostalism.  Mormonism is non-trinitarianin that they describe the father, son, and holy spirit as more of a godhead, three distinct beings; father and son with distinct physical bodies and the holy spirit in spirit form. Together they form the godhead. 

What is important to note is that none of the religions that formed out of Judaic roots sought to begin a new religion.  Jesus was not looking to begin a new religion; nor was Mohammed, the founder of Islam; nor was Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism; nor was Baha’ullah, the founder of Baha’i.  They each sought to correct what they saw as errors in the religion they grew up in.  This is an extremely simplistic answer as there are more complex layers and nuances to the founding of these great religions but essentially this is true. 

So what errors does Unitarian Universalism seek to correct?  I think there are several.  The first is that revelation is forever evolving and revealing itself.  Part of that revelation occurs in the discoveries that the sciences unveil.  We have unlocked many of the mysteries of the world through scientific inquiry.  Prior to modern day science there was a belief that the earth was the center of the universe, today we know that we are not the center of the universe but that we are on the edge of a vast galaxy in a vaster universe of galaxies.  This revelation changes how we view our humanity in relationship with the universe and with the concept of god. 

The second correction Unitarian Universalism offers is the interdependent web of all creation.  We see ourselves as interdependent with the life on this planet.  We are not beings given dominion over the creation but interdependent players in the balance of life.  Our actions have a profound impact on the life on this planet.  Species live and die because of our ignorance and arrogance.  Unitarian Universalism seeks to honor that balance by becoming aware of our impact in the environmental arena and to reduce our human footprint on the world. 

The third correction we offer is the inherent worth and dignity of all people. This is our first principle that we as congregations seek to uphold.  We struggle with what that means in our lives especially in the presence of evil.  Yet, when followed, changes the way we treat the other in our presence.  Part of the meaning is in the listening to the often harsh reality of the lives others have lived because of the privileges we may have at their expense.   We seek to value the experiences that everyone lives by seeking systemic changes to situations that create injustices and oppression in the world. 

These and other correctives that exist in Unitarian Universalism seem to indicate that Unitarian Universalism is a religion in its own right.    A religion that is evolving.  Blessings,

The Gallup people released last month their findings on how many Americans believe in Creationism, the belief that God created the world within the last 10,000 years ago including humans as is versus those who believe that evolution was how it all began millions of years ago.   The results have not changed much over the past 26 years when they began asking these questions.  

“Between 43% and 47% of Americans have agreed during this 26-year time period with the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. Between 35% and 40% have agreed with the alternative explanation that humans evolved, but with God guiding the process, while 9% to 14% have chosen a pure secularist evolution perspective that humans evolved with no guidance by God.”

What is more, 60% of those identifying as Republican, 40% of those identifying as Independent  and 38% of those who identify as Democrats believe in Creationism.    So we have a partisan view of how it all began. 

Sigh… 

 The song in this video is the Stream of Life by Rabindranath Tagore.  A translation of which is found in the “Singing the Living Tradition” hymnal of the Unitarian Universalists.  # 529  The Stream of Life

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.  It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultous waves of leaves and flowers.  It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.  And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.” 

Thanks to Erik Walker Wikstrom for the suggestion to watch this video.  Apologies for not being able to get the high definition version on here.  Enjoy!

PS  In case the youtube link does not work you can see this video at the Stride Gum Website, the sponsors of this video here.  CLick on Dancing 2008.

I have been pondering about universalism alot lately.  The Universalist Herald has had several articles in this month’s issue discussing what Universalism should look like in today’s Unitarian Universalism.  Yes, I said should.  Because that is how this magazine has been taking up the cry to revive Universalist thought. 

There does seem to be a need for a universal message in today’s ultra conservative climate.  In Laurel, MS there is an evangelical presbyterian minister who writes a column on faith, his faith specifically, and he has twice now denounced universalism as heresy.  I responded the first time but decided not to the second time.  His theology is steeped in Calvinism.  I have gotten the impression that most of the community in which I live in Mississippi is steeped in Calvinism.  I was speaking the other day within someone who stated being raised Baptist and was taught, indoctrinated, to believe that if you disagreed with anything that was said you were facing the fires of hell.  It wasn’t until leaving home, meeting other people who did not see the world in such harsh  tones did the realization occur that maybe church had missed the mark. 

But what should that universal message be?  The Universalist Herald has been promoting what I would call a purist universalism.  This is the doctrine that the atonement of Jesus on the cross is freely given to all of humanity, that all are saved, and would be restored to God in the afterlife.  John Murray, oft considered the founder of Universalism in America, believed that there was a period of purification that some would have to go through before this restoration, and Hosea Ballou believed there was no need for this purification as the act of Jesus was sufficient. 

Both John Murray and Hosea Ballou rejected the notion of Original Sin.  This is the doctrine that Augustine of Hippo expanded on and through his efforts became the doctine of the Catholic church and later of many protestant churches.  Original Sin states that when Adam and Eve disobeyed god by eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge,  that sin and death entered the world; not only did humanity fall from grace but all of creation to this very day.  Murray and Ballou believed that men and women were responsible for their own sin not the sin of some proverbial ancestor.   Jesus’ death and resurrection took care of any sins that were committed paving the way for God to restore humanity to itself.

The Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington,DC has revised the 1899 Universalist Declaration of Faith.  They ask for participation in the reading of this declaration each Sunday.  Reading it is not mandatory.  The revised declaration is as follows:

“In faith and freedom, we are called to bring hope and healing to the world, so that all my rejoice in God’s grace. I believe in the universal love of God, the spiritual authority and leadership of Jesus Christ, the trustworthiness of the Bible as a source of divine revelation, the need for repentance and forgiven of sin, and the final harmony of all souls with God.”  

There is very little difference from the original declaration.  Words that implied a sexist point of view have been removed.  John Murray’s ‘certainty of  just retribution for sin’ has been removed and Hosea Ballou’s belief emphasized a bit more implicitly.  The declaration is in fact a creed. 

I have difficulty with this declaration of faith.   I no longer call myself Christian. I seek to follow the teachings of Jesus but I do not see Jesus as Christ; I do not believe his death served as an atonement for anything; and I doubt his physical resurrection.  Given that these criteria are cornerstone to the definition of Christian, I cannot in good conscience call myself one. 

I question whether the Bible is to be considered trustworthy.  There are gems found within the Bible that are priceless. It is these gems that I mine for when I read the Bible.  But there is plenty in the Bible that has inspired malicious acts against others.  For a text to inspire such evil places it in the questionable box for it to be trustworthy as a source of divine revelation.   

Yet, I think the Universalist Herald might point to the Universalist National Memorial Church as an example of the type of Universalism that needs to be spoken today.  Perhaps.   But I see this growing call to re-claim, revive Universalism as being poised along a string of tensions.  For many of us, this would be a call to repentance for having left our Christian roots and return to the bosom of Jesus, forsaking all others.   

I consider my theology to be universalist.  Universalism for me is the knowledge that the source of all that is and all that is not,  is love.    Universalism as I have come to understand it is the knowing that love is a stream of well-being that flows through all of creation. This love is always there for us to tap into regardless of the circumstances around us. There is absolutely nothing as the author of Romans stated that can separate us from the love of god.  Universal Salvation for me is accessible in this life time.  I do not need to wait for an afterlife to experience it. 

It does not depend on a notion of sinfulness that needs redeeming, nor the death of an innocent man to make it available.   It does not require that I believe in god or Jesus in order to tap into the knowledge / experience that I am loved for who I am.  This love that flows inspires me to create justice for others.  It is inclusive of all paths of spirituality inviting all to swim deep in the waters of universalism.  This is the message that needs to be put out there in ever abundance.   Blessings,

Along this road that we call life, we are always transitioning from one place to another, from one emotion to another, from one focus to another, from one desire to another.   Sometimes we do not know that we are in a transition until suddenly we become aware and realize that we have transitioned and no longer are the person we thought we were.  Sometimes our transitions are deliberately planned out, even if the impetus for the transition is not of our making. 

Today, I will have preached my last sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jackson, MS.  My contract with them is at a close.  I have renogiated a new and different contract with Our Home Universalist for the 2008/2009 year.  And I have negotiated a contract with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tuscaloosa, AL.   I am in the process of moving my home to Alabama and will only be living in one abode next year instead of living two weeks at a time in two abodes. 

This blog will also be facing a transition.  Since I will continue to be serving Our Home in Mississippi, and doing additional work with a few of the other congregations here, this blog could remain the same with same title:  A Unitarian Universalist Minister in Mississippi. I anticipate that I will still be responding to some of the state wide concerns that affect the liberal religous voice.   However, I will also be serving a congregation and making my home base in Alabama.   Adding “and Alabama” makes the title too long.  So the question that I need to be making is do I change the name of the blog–say to my nom de plume, Serenity Home? 

If this is your first time reading this blog, Serenity Home is a translation, albeit not entirely a literal translation,  of my birth name.   Fred being my full first name means “Peace”.  Hammond means “Home on a Hill”.   My middle name L is for the “L” of it as my grandfather would say.  

Or do I start a companion blog that will be centered around the life of being a minister for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tuscaloosa?   Your comments on this decision process are welcomed.  

Blessings, Fred

One of the gifts that living within a Catholic Charismatic lay community gave me was the notion that each of us has a ministry-a sense of purpose in this life.  Not all ministries were life long, some were for a moment in time, or for a season.  But each person had a ministry, some unique way that they would build up community or enhance the life of others or in other words make a difference for their being. 

This outlook changed the way I did my everyday work.  Whether I was a student in a college studying for a degree or working with developmentally disabled or people living with AIDS, my work was a ministry.  It was the context in which my ministry was to take shape. 

What was also evident to me during those days and for the ensuing years, is that we don’t always know consciously, anyway, how we deliver our ministry to others and the impact that it has on others.  Sometimes it is clear to us like when a person  has fallen through the ice and we just happened to be passing by at that exact moment so we save the person.  We have a clear idea of how our presence changed the fate of another.   Yet mostly we may never know or we may find out years later. 

There is the apocryphal story of the young boy who one day cleared out his locker at school and was walking home.  He had difficulty carrying all of his stuff and another boy happened by and offered him a hand by taking some of his stuff.  They walked all the way to his house, chatting about this and that, and in the process became life long friends.  Years later, the boy tells his friend that he had planned to take his life that day and his friend coming by changed all of that in an instant.    Whether true story or not, the message is clear that this young friend had in some way ministered to the hurt and pain the boy had felt.

We each have a ministry that will build up or enhance the world in which we live.  Each of us have this ministry laid out before us and we can choose to be open to the possibilities or we can deny them.  We can an Ebenezer Scrooge in the living of our lives or we can be George Bailey, making a difference in others lives in small apparently insignificant ways that are in the long run profound.  Blessings,

Today was the execution of Dale Leo Bishop convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Marcus Gentry.   The person who actually dealt the fatal blows that killed Gentry was Jessie Johnson, who is serving a life sentence with no parole. Bishop was an accomplice in this act, there is no doubt about this but he did not kill Gentry.   So why is this another wrongful execution?    The state of Mississippi two months ago executed Earl Wesley Berry, a mentally retarded man with paranoid schizophrenia, who faced execution because his lawyers did not submit the proper paperwork on time.  Bishop suffered from bi-polar disease.  But his lawyer, Bob Ryan, was handling 21 death row cases at the time and simply did not give Bishop the deligence due him.  Ryan is being accused for suppressing evidence that could have helped spare his life.  (Clarion- Ledger July 22 2008)  Bishop’s family could not afford the psychological testing that would have diagnosed him as bi-polar.  This diagnosis occured while Bishop was on death row and was then prescribed lithium.   It is against Mississippi’s law to execute people who are mentally impaired by retardation or by mental illness because of the belief that had they not been so impaired they would not have acted in such a manner. 

Is it just me, or does no one else understand that Mississippi’s legal system is dysfunctional and corrupted.  I use that word in the same sense that a computer program can become corrupted and no longer functions as it should.  The person who actually strikes the fatal blows gets life inprisonment and the person who is the accomplice gets the death penalty.  What kind of crazy justice is this?  A person who is unable to receive mental health services because of not being able to purchase it gets the death sentence, when those very services would have spared his life.  He might have been incarcerated for life but he would have been spared the death penalty because of his mental illness.    The incompetent lawyer who desired only to get the cases off his desk so he sloppily handles the case.  This is not justice.  This is criminal and it seems to be systemic in Mississippi.

I will paraphrase a quote from a letter sent to John Calvin the founder of Calvinism, when he executed Michael Servetus, non-trinitarian, during the reformation by burning him at the stake in Geneva.  To kill a man for justice, is simply to kill a man; it does not bring justice. 

Blessings,

My time in Jackson has come to a close.   My time in Brighton, MI has been over for a year.  My internship in San Diego is now two years ago.  My time in Chicago at Meadville Lombard is also now gone.  Not to mention my co-founding and  running the Interfaith AIDS Ministry in Danbury, CT.   I thought this song was an appropriate sentiment to times gone by.  Regardless of the challenges those days may have brought me, they were all good and filled with blessings of wonderful people and angels who graced my path.  May your days always be filled with blessings as well…   Here is to the future days that I will soon be looking back on with joy…

“In the end, Gentry’s family said Bishop’s execution was justified. ‘Whether you believe in the death penalty or not, stand in our shoes and feel the pain, the loss of someone you love,’ the Gentry family said in a statement.”  (Clarion-Ledger July 24, 2008) 

This is a powerful and important statement made by the Gentry family.   I can only speak for myself, but I do stand with them in their loss of someone loved. Which is why I do not want to repeat that loss by inflicting it on another family.  To do so is not justice, it is revenge.  It does nothing to reduce the pain the Gentry family feels.  Revenge only has the purpose to embitter the heart further. It is incapable of inviting love and forgiveness back into the heart.

A life for a life is Old Testament thinking and rhetoric.  It is based on a theology of a vengeful and wrathful god.  It is based on a theology that the unrepentant and even those who are repentant too late are destined to the eternal fires of hell and damnation.  This is not a theology that embraces the concept that god is love.  It is not a theology that embraces the notion of universal salvation and the reconciliation of all people to their creator.

Where is the faith of a god who is ever present in our time of need? A god who is able to break through the darkest of nights with the light of day?  Where is the faith of life being eternal and death merely being a shedding of the chrysalis body?   Where is the faith of a loving god that embraces all of her children in pain?   Was this faith manifested to the Gentry family in their time of sorrow? 

For Unitarian Universalists who may not believe in a supernatural being to supply these answers, it is certainly answered in the relationships one has with another.  I personally believe it is through my relationships that god’s presence is felt and embraced.  It is through these relationships that I receive solace and comfort. 

One of the most powerful examples of this is in the relationship that Jesus had with the sisters of Lazarus.  Lazarus had died and when Jesus approached the tomb, it is written that Jesus wept.  Mary and Martha came out and expressed their anger towards Jesus for not being there in time.  They had seen Jesus perform miracles and yet, Jesus was not there to heal their brother’s affliction.  He embraced their pain.  He was present to them.  He did not try to argue with them that what they were feeling was inappropriate.  He simply wept with them.   This speaks to me about how to be with others in the presence of pain.  It then behooves me to develop these relationships with integrity and respect. 

In Hinduism, the word namaste is offered as a salutation.  It roughly translates as ‘ The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.”  We can tap into in the divine in others in our relationships.  But to do so also means that we need to re-align our perception of how god moves and has its being among us.  The pain the Gentry family feels is just as divine as the love and joy a family feels at the birth of new member of their family.  We should not fear feeling this pain.  

It is not something we should seek out, but should it come, our faith (regardless of its construct in traditional terms) should be teaching us to embrace it, to feel it deeply, to honor it and to allow our relationships with others to birth us into a new feeling.  Love expressed purely can do this. 

I pray that the Gentry family have family members and friends who are able to help them embrace the pain and to then let it go into the divine arms of love. 

Blessings,

Wow, this blog site sure has been jumping the past few days.  I have had the highest readership in the last few days and I thank you all for that readership.   This site will be on hiatus for a while during my move to Tuscaloosa.  I have the good fortune to have the help of members of the Jackson congregation and the Tuscaloosa congregation to help me in that move tomorrow morning.  I no sooner place my belongings in my beautiful apartment in Alabama and I am off for training on interim ministry in Boston.  This means that I will not be back online for at least a week, perhaps two as I need to have internet connection established in my new apartment. 

So dear readers, I will be back online in August.  Blessings abound,

I was driving from Tuscaloosa, AL to Oxford, MS to offer a workshop and saw a bill board message that read:  “Even so, Lord Jesus, Come, for Lo the Days are Evil.”   There has been a lot of contemplation within our Unitarian Universalist congregations about evil after the tragic shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Knoxville, TN.  Evil is a subject that we don’t handle well as a faith movement.  So when it strikes in such a personified and directed way, it is time we take notice and find ways to deal with the matter. 

What struck me about the billboard isn’t so much the statement of announcing the days are evil.  What struck me about the billboard is that the solution offered was an outside intervention, the return of Jesus, to remove the person or people from the evil days.  Rather than seeking divine guidance in dealing with the evil and reducing its impact and power, this solution was to pluck us out of the evil by the return of a Messiah to rescue us.  It was a let’s not deal with the evil we see and instead pray for the rapture as our get out of evil days card. 

It seems that Unitarian Universalists have something in common with conservative fundamentalist Christianity after all.  While we might not be praying for the return of Jesus, we do tend to look the other way in the face of evil and not call what is evil by its name.  We might call it racism or economic injustice or genocide or war but to label these as Evil would mean that we have developed a theology around evil that answers or attempts to answer questions such as: What is evil?  How does evil generate? How can evil be dismantled of its power?  Is it a power, an entity of force in the world?  Can someone be possessed by evil?  These are tough questions.  

Our Humanist inclinations are that humanity has the ability to solve the problems of the world.  If we only made a more concerted effort we could solve the problems we see around us.   We tend not to call these evils but rather as problems needing to be overcome.  Our Humanist inclinations get a bit fidgety when Evil is mentioned.  We have no problem in using the word love as being a universal force in the world.  But state evil as being a force and we find ourselves jumpin’ all around the subject.  

So  while our conservative Christian friends wish to be plucked out of the Evil they see around them, we would prefer to bury our heads in the sand when Evil with a capital E is mentioned.  I sense the events in Knoxville are about to change our thinking about this reality in our midst.  It is with some curiosity that I pause and wonder how we will begin to deal with the nature of Evil from here on out. 

Blessings, Serenity Home

As part of my ministry to Mississippi congregations this year, I will be visiting various congregations in MS providing a workshop or some other event on a Saturday and then preaching on Sunday.   This past weekend took me to the town of Oxford, MS, the home of William Faulkner, University of Mississippi (aka Ole Miss) and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Oxford.

If you ever get a chance to visit Oxford, do plan on worshipping with these fine folks on Sunday.   As with all of the congregations in Mississippi, the Oxford congregation is a small congregation of about 60 members.  They are lay led with an occasional visiting minister on Sundays. 

I was asked to lead a workshop on Saturday on Unitarian Universalist transformative worship.  I used as my primary text  the wonderfully written text by Revs. Kathleen Rolenz and Wayne Arnason entitled “Worship that Works” This is a great resource that every worship committee should have a copy of as part of their arsenal for developing good solid worship services. 

I was amazed that 15 people came to this workshop.  I was told there would be ten in attendance which I thought was a phenomenal turnout, but then to have 15 blew me away.  It speaks to how important having quality worship is for this congregation.  We covered alot of things in the workshop.  Some of the exercises we did including a listing of what this congregation’s intent for worship’s outcome to be.  We talked about their most memorable service, UU and non-UU, was for them and what made it so memorable.   And we worked together in developing some components of a worship service and discussed why the hymns or readings we chose went where we had placed them.   The workshop went well and I look forward to hearing from them how they have thought about this information and incorporated their learnings into their services.

The Sunday service was a very warm and inviting one.  The greeters found out some small bit of information about the visitors and then the greeters introduced these folks to the congregation.  The music was on guitar this morning which added to the warmth of the experience.  Do stop by and say hello to these folks.

As a visitor was leaving, one of the members called out to them and said, “Y’all come back now, ya’hear.” 

Blessings,

I just read an interesting blog that proposed instead of taxing cigarettes that we tax soda to fund Medicaid.  Now before y’all start screaming about taking soda from the children because it is too expensive to purchase because of another tax… take a deep breath… and think about this. 

The author of the blog (and I don’t think he was simply lampooning this idea) states the reasons for taxing cigarettes is because we want to place incentives for people to quit smoking and to make the cost of cigarettes out of reach for young people to even begin smoking.  We know that smoking is harmful to everyone, those who inhale and those who don’t inhale but are in the presence of smokers who do.  Study after study has shown that smoking is the cause of many maladies that afflict the human condition in the 21st century.  We all know this.  The smokers know this.  The tobacco lobbyists, yes, Governor Barbour, even you know this.   Yet, if we are successful in reducing the numbers of smokers in the state what does that do to the tax revenues to fund Medicaid?  It creates another crisis.  So perhaps it is time to tell smokers, you want to smoke and increase your chances of committing suicide through cancer or heart disease or some other tobacco related death, go for it.  Your life is worth more, much more to us alive than dead, but if that is your choice to commit suicide, have at it. 

Let’s raise the funds for medicaid by taxing something that we all enjoy.  That as far as we know, has no slow suicide side effects and we can feel good about paying instead of thinking we are funding our future hospital stay for cancer.  So tax soda… better yet, place a penny tax on all foods. We already pay a tax on groceries in this state so what is one more penny.  Surely that would raise the amount of money needed and perhaps even allow Medicaid in this state to be expanded.  We can feel good knowing that we are being compassionate by helping our neighbors receive the medical attention they need when they need it. 

It would be a solution that would appease Governor Barbour’s tobacco friends and a solution that would honor our values for being compassionate to those who are poor and in need of medical attention.  If we really get creative, it could even be the beginning of funding universal health coverage for all of Mississippians.  Wouldn’t that be a grand idea and one that supports our Ole fashion Mississippi values of hospitality.   Why it might just place Mississippi at the top of a list of positive innovations in the country.  Isn’t that a wonderful thought? 

If you agree, write your state legislators and propose the idea to them.  It’s an idea that might just work. 

Blessings,
Serenity Home

I am going to be writing a sermon on the theology of Mary Oliver as she expresses it through her poetry.  If you are new to the poetry of Mary Oliver, her latest book Red Bird is from my humble perspective one of her best collections.  Mary Oliver also spoke as a Ware Lecturer at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 2006.   She has touched a chord within many Unitarian Universalists that I thought it would be interesting to examine what it is about her poetry and the imbedded theology of her work that appeals to us, Unitarian Universalists. 

I would like to know from you what is your favorite Mary Oliver Poem.  Because of copyright, only list the title in the comment section and if you know the book it was published in mention that as well.   Say a few words about what that poem means to you.  I will in my sermon give credit for all the responses I receive here. And I will post the sermon on my blog as well so y’all can see what I have come up with in looking at her body of work.   Thank you in advance, my dear readers.  Blessings, Serenity Home

Well, it is 11 PM and I have finally put to bed my sermon for tomorrow’s service.  I usually like to have my sermons completed on Friday so all I have to do is rehearse it and finish scripting the Order of Service.  Today I did both. And focused on several other things pertaining to ministry.  It has been a full day. 

The process of writing this sermon was longer than I expected.  Perhaps because it was supposed to be a homily because additional things are happening in tomorrow’s service like our annual water ingathering ceremony.  Well, the homily is 14 pages long as opposed to my normal 18 -20 pages. It was difficult to say all I wanted and felt I needed to say in less words.  I tried.  I cut severely and rewrote multiple sections several times. 

Plus, conversations occurred during the week that shifted the content a bit.  This is a good thing.  I believe sermons should be a reflection on the life of the congregation in some manner. Perhaps not entirely but in some manner it must connect to what is happening in the now. 

Sometimes it isn’t until I hear the words aloud that I go, O No… that is not what I meant to say at all.  Or realize that a sentence that looked good on paper simply reads poorly aloud.  Or worse, it makes no sense what so ever… I wrote what???   

This sermon is also going to be the first to be placed digitally on video and then burned to DVD and sent to the Mississippi congregations to be used as they see fit.  So my writing felt compounded a bit by knowing my audience was larger than the congregation that hears this tomorrow.   How do I write a sermon for six congregations?  All of them different in theological diversity and in developmental growth as congregations.  I never deliver the exact sermon twice.  So even if I do recycle a sermon I always re-work it with the congregation I am speaking to in mind. Re-working a sermon sometimes takes just as long in hours as the original writing did.   Not to mention that I might have grown or shifted in my own theological point of views on the subject.  So to deliver a sermon that will be heard live by one congregation and by memorex by several others is a new challenge.   So some of what I ended up writing was for these other congregations in mind. 

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s service.  I always have looked forward to the services.  I place my intentions that the congregation will receive what they individually and collectively need to receive… even if it wasn’t scripted into the service.  That is always the best.  Those moments when the whole combined equals more than the sum of the parts.  How does one write that into a sermon?  How does one factor in the experiences of lifetimes, brief or long, that are going to be present and hearing these words and filtering what is being said with that kind of life long filter.  That is the amazing thing for me in writing sermons. Having those transcending moments occur unbeknownst to me as the preacher are simply the gems that sermon writing engenders if done well.

Blessings,

   I have been reading No Time To Lose:  A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron.  This is her commentary on The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva. 

I was struck by the following quote in her book: ” Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practice that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others.  Rejoicing generates good will.  The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice:directing your attention to people–in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones–just wish for them all to be happy and well.” 

Many of you know that in my spiritual journey I spent many years as a Charismatic Christian.  Rejoicing was something that we did a lot.  Usually it was aimed or directed towards God but sometimes it was because of the good fortune another in our community experienced and still we aimed it towards God.  It was one of the pieces of worship that I missed when I began attending Unitarian Universalist congregations.   Where was the rejoicing.  Where was the exuberance of thanksgiving when things went well. 

So when I read this quote, I thought here is how we can rejoice.  Stating our gratitude in others good fortune.  Thinking good fortune for the people we meet.  If our minds are thinking of others good fortune it is difficult for us to be thinking of anything else.  We can train our minds to express a rejoicing that taps into what Pema Chodron states is our “soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness.” 

I can reclaim a rejoicing heart.  Blessings, Serenityhome

USAToday (August 26 2008)  reported that when ICE and Homeland Security raided Howard Industries in Laurel, MS taking away as many as 600 employees, (other reports stated ICE arrested 350);  the employees response was to clap.  

This is how deep xenophobia exists in Mississippi.  It is fear that the media and state government in Mississippi have propagated and nurtured.  This is the state that when a murder occurred in a trailer park outside of Jackson and the investigating police discovered the neighbors were undocumented the headlines conflated the two events, making it sound like the undocumented citizens were the alleged murderers.  The murder was committed by a white citizen. 

What is sad and what the clapping employees do not yet realize; is because  of this raid Howard Industries, if convicted of hiring undocumented workers, will not be allowed to do business in Mississippi for one year and no public contracts for three as the result of a new state law that went into effect on July 1.   

Further Howard Industries is obligated to create 2000 new jobs as per a contract awarded in 2002 of over 31 Million dollars.  If Howard Industries is unable to meet employment goals, it will be fined $3,000 for every job below quota.  

The clapping will undoubtedly turn to tears in the weeks and months ahead if Howard Industries is unable to continue contracted work.  This will mean lay offs in a region already reeling under the still yet to be declared recession.  And because the media has failed to write reports that truly inform the public and not just bias them against undocumented workers, there will probably be increased anger and prejudice aimed at the wrong people in this failed system of immigration. 

Right now, there are reports of as many of 175 parents under arrest, leaving their children’s fate in limbo.  Our Home Universalist Unitarian Church attempted to contact the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, the congregation mentioned in USAToday,  to see what supports could be provided and was told that the families “are all gone” and there was nothing to be done.   Our Home UU Church will continue to seek avenues of support that could be provided to the families impacted by this event.  

Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) based Jackson, MS is seeking to provide legal representation for the detained employees.  Jackson is about 100 miles to the northwest of Hattiesburg where the arraignments are taking place.  They are in need of financial support in order to attend to these families suffering from this indignity.  This includes donations for mileage and hotel costs.   Please consider supporting MIRA so these individuals get the due process under the law that they are entitled to.  What happened a few months ago in Postville, Iowa was that many of those arrested there were not informed sufficiently of their legal rights under the law. This resulted in many inadvertently waiving their rights and pleading guilty, not fully understanding what they were giving up.   This must not happen again here in Mississippi. 

And when employees clap at the enforcement of an unjust law, it is a sign that our sense of morality has deteriorated.  The injustice these immigrants face; the fearful interrogations they are confronted with, no one should be clapping… we should instead be horrified and outraged that our nation is using tactics that dictatorships use to maintain totalitarian order.  These tactics do not represent American values and ethics.  These tactics represent something far more evil. 

Stay tuned…

Blessings, Serenityhome

I just returned from a week of vacation in Albuquerque, NM at my sister’s celebrating my Mom’s 80th birthday.  It was a full week of touring the region.  My sister is an artist so part of the time we spent visiting the Art Galleries in Santa Fe and looking at all of her works that she houses in her studio.  It was a good time.  We also went to Chimayo to visit the  El Santuario a very old Catholic church with a mystical history of a glowing crucifix and sacred dirt that heals.  While in the village we met a vendor who was selling various dried chilipowders.   He was having people try his concoctions by placing a pistachio in the mouth to get the mouth watering then taking a shellful of the chili elixir.   Those of you who know me, know that I claimed to be highly allergic to pistachios and told him this.  To which he responded, ” You mean, you used to be allergic to pistachios. You are no longer.”  No, I told him I am allergic, to which he politely disagreed and asked me to repeat after him, ” I used to be allergic to pistachios.”   I did so. 

He did not insist that I take a pistachio  but did allow me to try his green chili mixture with out the required nut. It was wonderfully blended.  I was the last one to purchase his wares.  So he began chatting with me about his insisting that that I used to be allergic.  He stated that words are alive.  They only offer two things to the world, blessings or curses.  We have control over what we offer.  And we tend to believe what we say  to be true.  So why would we state things that are curses?   When we state things that are negatives, we are cursing. When we state things that are positive we are offering blessings.  Which would I prefer to receive?  Well, blessings of course.  So for me to state that I am allergic to pistachios is a curse that I offer to myself.  Yes, he said, I had a reaction to them years ago, but my body is constantly renewing itself, couldn’t it have renewed itself no longer allergic?  Why propagate something that may no longer be true?  Well, he had me.   So he asked me to repeat the affirmation that “I used to be allergic to pistachios.”  He threw in an extra flavor  of chili seasoning in my bag for my willingness to listen to him and sent me on my way. 

A few days later, my family was eating lunch in Old Town Albuquerque at High Noon Restaurant.  It is a wonderful cafe.  When our lunches were delayed in coming, the cook had the staff prepare a salad for our table with apologies.  It was a delicious green salad with a feta and green chili vinaigrette dressing.  As we are eating, my mother announced, “Fred, there are pistachios in the salad.”  I had already taken several bites of the salad so it was too late.  I stated, “I used to be allergic to pistachios.” and continued eating.  Years ago, I would have gotten deathly ill.  This day, I felt fine.   Was it the words of affirmation and blessing, the vendor had me say?  Was it the sacred dirt from El Santuario?  Was it simply that a childhood allergy had been outgrown?  I don’t know.  I am simply grateful that I am well and my time with my family was spent in well-being. 

Blessings,
Serenity Home

Benjamin asked on the recent blog regarding the ICE raid on Howard Industries what makes US immigration laws unjust?  It is a good question.  It is also a difficult question to answer because there are so many nuances to our legislation that places layers and convolutions to the process that immigrants have to go through to become citizens here. 

I am not an expert on immigration law. I am a minister so my answers will be based on my perceptions as a minister within the Unitarian Universalist liberal faith.  Prior to becoming a minister, I did advocacy work for AIDS education and prevention in undocumented communities in Connecticut.   This is the lens through which I see my world and more specifically this issue. 

Because this is such a convoluted and complex issue, I will just look at the recent example at Howard Industries to describe why this aspect of the immigration laws is unjust. 

First the employer rarely faces any consequences while the employee is deported. This is based on federal laws.  It has been suggested by one of the commentors on the blog about the raid, that it was doubtful that Howard Industries would be charged for hiring undocumented workers under the new MS Employment Protection Act.   The reasons given are interesting ones but highlight the injustice if this scenario unfolds.  According to the commentator, Howard Industries is too important a corporation to Mississippi to be prosecuted under this new law.   If this is true and Mississippi does not enforce the law recently passed, then this proves this law is unjust because some employers would be exempt from its reach.  It also proves that Mississippi’s legal system is corrupt and also unjust to allow the law to be ignored in favor of such an important contractor.  If laws cannot or will not be fairly applied across all corporations that are impacted by it, then the law is biased in its creation and is aimed at a different segment of the population.  Say perhaps minority owned corporations? 

The law passed mandates that employers use the E-Verify system.  This is a national data base that allegedly has screened legitmate social security numbers against falsified ones. It also screens official green cards  against forged green cards.  I say allegedly because this system has been noted to be full of holes which showed up when the program was piloted in 1997.   These errors were never corrected. 

In the book, The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers by Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, they quote Amy Sugimori of the National Employment Law Project summary of two independent surveys done for Homeland Security.  The E-Verify program, then known as the Basic Pilot Program, Guskin and Wilson quote Ms Sugimori as stating this program, “jeopardizes employee rights as defined by fair information standards” and could result in ” growth in the underground economy, which could lead to worker exploitation and related problems.” 

We have already seen the growth in the underground economy.   Many of the commentators on the ICE raid blog stated that the undocumented employees were paid sub wages for their work.   If this is true, then this would be an example of the growth of the underground economy.  Employers hire undocumented workers for less wages under the threat of deportation if they complain or organize for their labor rights.  Employers use existing anti immigration laws to exploit undocumented workers by stating they are taking a huge risk in hiring them. 

There is erroneous thinking that if we make life difficult for undocumented workers that they will not settle here and leave.  This was certainly the thinking of some legislators in the capitol when the MS Employment Protection Act was being discussed.  Mississippi has encouraged ICE agents to make it clear that undocumented immigrants are not wanted here.  Mississippi has averted its eyes to ICE agents entering public restaurants with guns brandishing in the air and rounding up anyone who “looks”  foriegn, regardless of citizen status.  The raid in Howard Industries was done with huge flair and dramatics of ICE agents helicopting in with guns.  It was done with one intent…  to instill fear.  These tactics are only done in the most repressive of regimes and to have them done here is a sign of something far more sinister afoot. 

Unfortunately, many undocumented workers have been living in far greater fear for decades in their home countries where repression, economy, and government bullying tactics are far worse.  America still remains a better place to be even with our unjust behavior towards them.  Equally unfortunate is that enforcement procedures is a recently revived and strengthened money making industry.  Boeing received a 2.5 billion contract to set up a highly sophisticated surveillance system.  Contracts like these means that larger corporations are going to be lobbying for increased immigration enforcement legislation in Washington because anti-immigration laws means money and lots of it.   This is another injustice as a result of immigration laws.  Corporations taking advantage of repressive and oppressive laws to increase their wealth and keep the poor, poor. 

The United States has had a love/hate relationship with Mexican immigrants for the past century or so.  In early 1917 the Immigration Act  shut the door to Asians but opened the door to Europeans who could pay a “head-tax” and pass a literacy test.  When the US entered World War I, agricultural centers were complaining of a shortage of farm laborers.  The US suspended its head tax and literacy test and invited Mexicans to come and provide farm labor and a few other labor areas.  When the depression struck, Mexicans were seen as taking jobs away from citizens and thousands were deported even those who were now legally citizens.  World War II created another labor shortage and once again, Mexico was where America turned to help with their labor shortage.  This program called the Bracero Program was filled with corruption.  The wages were held in escrow and mysteriously never made it to the employees when they returned to Mexico.  There is still litigation being sought in Mexico and in the United States to recoup these earnings.   In 1954 another wave of deportations occurred, Operation Wetback.  Thousands of people were rounded up simply because they looked Mexican.   So it seems what is happening today is a repeat of our love / hate relationship with Mexican people.  We love Mexicans when we are in need of laborers, we hate Mexicans when that need is over.  Another injustice of our immigration laws as they seem to be created to only serve the whims of our desires and not what is best for all people. 

This is only a thin slice of what I see as injustice in our immigration laws.  There are many many examples.  NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, has contributed substantially to the immigration woes this country faces.  But that my friends is another blog. 

Blessings, 
SerenityHome

Created by OnePlusYou –

Not sure what this fun meter actually says about me… perhaps I am not angry enough at what is happening in the world. Those who know me know that I have slipped and used some cusses from time to time. If cussin’ is a concern for you, now you know this site is safe for young readers… well at least in the cussin’ department anyway. Blessings,

It reads like something out of a Roddy McDowall Planet of the Apes movie, but there is a movement that has been gaining momentum.  It is called the Great Apes Project.  The latest country to have joined it is Spain.  The Great Apes Project seeks to confer Human Rights to Humans closest relatives.  The project believes that since the non-human hominids express love, fear, anxiety, and jealousy that they should “enjoy the right to life, freedom, and not be tortured.”  New Zealand and Britain have laws that protect the great apes from experimentation.  The Great Ape Project includes chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The science community has proposed reclassifying humans, chimpanzees and bonobos into one genus making a 50,000 year old common ancestor link more clearly understood.  Chimpanzees would be Homo Troglodites and Bonobos would be Homo Paniscus.   In addition to their DNA being extremely close to ours, chimps and bonobos also exhibit similar behavior patterns that humans do.  The chimpanzees tend to exhibit human’s more violent tendencies and bonobos tend to exhibit human’s more sexual tendencies.  Bonobos are the only other hominid species that express face to face copulation. 

The project is perhaps only one step towards Humans respecting all of life on this planet.  Each creature that crawls, swims, flies, or walks upon the face of the earth does have an integrity and dignity that is profoundly and uniquely theirs.  It seems to me that honoring that dignity would be the human thing to do.  We need to do it quickly because all of these species are under threat of extinction mostly due to our own greed and excessive consumerism.   

Blessings,

I am giving a sermon on Sufficiency on Sunday and in my research came across this man:  Satish Kumar.  He is the editor of Resurgence, a magazine dedicated to “raising awareness to the ecological and spiritual issues of our time.”  He has developed a Green Manifesto.  If you click on the link you can watch a short video about this manifesto. 

Anyway, he is promoting what he is calling Slow Sundays.  The first Slow Sunday was held on July 27 2008.  A day where we return to the more simpler days of family time, no shopping or consumerism, a day where we honor each other.  In short, a return to a sabbath rest.  He is also calling for this to be a day of baking bread as a defiant stance to the mass consumerism that has taken over modern global society.   He states that this act would reduce the carbon foot print of families significantly for that day.  It is a simple act.  A small act.  But a profound act that would reconnect people to the earth for our sustanence. 

In my early 20’s I baked bread quite a bit.  I enjoyed the kneeding and rolling of the dough.  It had a rhythmic flow to it.  There was something connective about the process and of course, something magical about watching the dough rise with yeast.  Bread was alive.  It was living food. My favorite bread to make was swedish rye bread.  Its aroma would fill the house with thoughts of well-being and nurturance.   

Satish Kumar is asking that 28 September 2008 be a day for baking bread.  A day to spend time with friends and family doing activities that are not consuming our resources or leaving a carbon foot print.  Its a small act.  But maybe it is always the small acts that bring about the biggest changes, like the butterfly flapping its wings here and causing a hurricane over the atlantic.

I think I will be baking bread in the near future… Blessings,

One of my congregants sent me a news story from yesterday’s Washington Post about Rev. Robert Seargears worship services.  He has been doing a series of dramatic lessons from this summer’s block buster movies.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083001704.html

 He dresses up in character, portrays something of the story then reveals how the struggle the character or characters are facing can teach us something about God or the parables of Jesus.  Some of the characters he has portrayed is the Joker from the Batman movie Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, and the Incredible Hulk.  It has been both controversial and stimulating for his parishioners.   His Assembly of God district thinks it is inappropriate to use the movies to teach biblical truths.  

It is creative if nothing else.  However, he is highlighting something that we Unitarian Universalists have claimed as one of our sources that inform our faith.  ” Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openess to the forces that create and uphold life… ”  All of life can be seen as pointing to the unfolding mystery if we would simply be open to the possibility. 

Of course, it requires that we are open to seeing life as being able to reveal itself as an unfolding mystery.   That is where, I believe  a spiritual practice comes in.  Whatever we use to pause and reflect on the wonder of life in and around us, would be important to be able to notice the possible lessons and wisdom life has for us.   I do several different types of prayer and meditation.  When I am out of doors, I seek to become mindful of all that is around me.  I want to hear everything that is of nature.  The birds singing in the trees, the rabbits rustling in the bushes, and honey bees buzzing full of pollen and nectar.  I want to notice everything that is of nature.  The blueness of the sky, the varying shades within the roses of a rose bush, the ants scurrying on the ground.   I remember some of my most difficult decisions were made during these times of mindfulness.  It wasn’t that I was thinking of those decisions to be made, instead I was focusing on what was around me. 

I remember during one of these times of listening to the sound of swans gliding over a still pond during a cool summer evening contrasted with listening to the rushing sounds of cars on the interstate.  The former seemed to be in the flow of life, of peaceful intentions to swim from one point to another.  The cars seemed to be forcing their way through, with all the crassness of an intimidating bully.  Which way did I want to live my life? 

Life can be our teacher if we let it to be.  And if we intend it, we can find the wisdom of the ages repeated in our daily lives.  For Robert Seagear, he has found an ability to find connections in today’s movies to the biblical truths he values as important for his congregants to grasp and understand.  And perhaps, they are grasping them for the first time, even though they have heard the parables and teachings of Jesus many times over but never in this fresh and creative way before. 

Unitarian Universalist folk singer Peter Mayer has a song that has become popular in many of our congregations, entitled “Holy Now.”   Everything can be holy if we are willing to let it unfold for us like the blossom it is.   Breathe deep the fragrance.  What is life offering us?  An opportunity to love?  An opportunity to heal a relationship?  Life can show us its deepest truths if we seek to be open to it.  Perhaps this is how Jesus heard inspiration whispering to him the parables.    Blessings,

I have been reading a blog from the United Kingdom, This Fragile Tent.  He is a liberal Christian who is asking some interesting questions about what it means to be a person of faith in today’s world.  In  today’s blog, entitled, How do you love an unknowable God?  He mentions the Christian concept of a personal relationship with God and then states “It is an idea that seems to domesticate God, and recast him in a role that is of our own making.”

I added a comment that I thought there was a danger to domesticate God.  Anne Lamott said, ” You can safely assume that you made God in your own image when it turns out that God hates the same people that you do.”

But this is what we do isn’t it?  Domesticate God.  I see it most evident here in the south, this desire to have God recast into our own image so we are comfortable in our conservative way of living.   Good people, good honest working people, who attend church all day on Sunday and during the week in order to learn how to love God with all their hearts, minds, and spirits, clapped when their co-workers were arrested as alleged undocumented workers at Howard Industries.  They believed that God’s will was being done in those arrests.  They rejoiced in the suffering of others.  God was domesticated into their own image. 

Many of those arrested are also good people, good hard working people who came to this country believing that God would make a way for them.  They believed it was God’s will for them to better their lives and to live without political oppression from their governments. They believed that God wanted them to be able to have work enabling them have sufficient sustenance for their family.   God was domesticated into their own image, too.   Are both right?  Are both following the will of God as best as they can discern? 

Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has some strong opinions about God’s will.  She believes it is God’s will for abstinence before marriage, for comprehensive sex education not to be taught to our teenagers.   And when her teenage daughter became pregnant by a young boy who does not want children, who does not want the responsibilities of marriage, it was God’s will that she have this baby out of wedlock.  God has been domesticated.

When news analyst Bill O’reilly commented on this situation, he very compassionately stated that this was a private family matter.  The baby will be born into a loving home, mother and child will not become a taxpayer liability through welfare, and that it is the family’s and mother’s choice to have this child born.  No argument from me.  I agree even if there is a contradiction between Sarah Palin’s desired values for the citizens of Alaska and the living out of her own values within her family network. 

Bill O’Reilly had a different reaction, a few months before, when examining the story of Britney Spears teenage sister becoming pregnant and who was planning to keep the child.  His response was that the parents were irresponsible in not controlling the behaviors of their teenager.  He denounced the behavior as not being acceptable moral behavior.  For Palin’s daughter, the same standards did not apply? He has conveniently rationalized his contradictions. Palin’s daughter, a young teen of high moral standards; Spears, a young promiscuous teen needing to be reigned in and controlled; both making the choice to keep their babies and raising them.   Bill O’reilly has domesticated God. 

My examples used are just the most recent in the news coverage.  So my stating this argument using Republicans can also be made using Democrats, Independents, and even the Green Party candidates.  We do tend to domesticate God into our own image to justify the actions we choose to make given the current circumstances.    Our going to war in Iraq has been rationalized by some as a fore runner to the second coming; as a spiritual war between the forces of good and evil (good being Christian Americans, evil being Islamic Arabs whose country we invaded and occupied under false assumptions).  These rationales are the domestication of God.   

I suppose the opposite stance on the war in Iraq could also be a domestication of God.   To try to base one’s life on the prophet Micah could also be a domestication.  Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what the Lord requires of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” 

Maybe it is part of human nature to seek to recast God in our own image and thereby justify our actions.  It adds to the mystery of who this God really is, since we all seem to see through a mirror darkly.  And any definitive answer becomes its own trap door into which we fall.  Blessings,

This age old question keeps popping up into our daily lives.  It is a question that Unitarian Universalists struggle with as a people of faith.  I remember my grandmother used to say that there were always three sides of every story.  Your side, my side and the truth of the matter. 

It remains a difficult question to answer.  Some folks see truth as in stark contrasts.  It is a concrete truth meaning if this is true than that must be false. For instance it is true that parts of the earth are in light and other parts are in darkness.  Concrete truth.   But there is also a relative truth.  We state the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  This is relative truth.  It is relative to our perspective of living on the planet earth.  The sun does not really rise.  The earth is rotating on its axis which gives the appearance of the sun rising.  And because the earth is rotating counter-clockwise it makes the sun appear to rise in the east.  Planets that rotate clockwise would have their sun rise in the west. 

My first automobile was my grandfather’s green metallic rambler stationwagon. It was a good looking car and it served me well.  A friend of mine during that time period commented that he really liked the brown metallic car I had.  He thought the color was just wonderful.  He was colorblind.  He was unable to see greens so for him the car was brown.  In reality it was green.  He just was unable to see it.  Actually the color might have been something else because there are spectrums of light that we are unable to see with our eyes.  For him the truth of the color of the car was brown.  For me the truth of the color of the car was green.  For the bees and other insects that see ultraviolet and ultrared spectrums the truth of the color of the car might be something else again.  For my beagle that I had during that time, the  truth of the color of the car was gray.  What is the Truth? 

It would be simple if truth could be revealed in stark contrasts.   We could see clearly this is true and this is false.  But that is not how the world works.  It certainly does not work that way in religious circles.  If it did, Christianity would not have schismed into myriad of denominations.  Buddhism would not have broken into a variety of schools and lineages.  Judaism would not have several movements within its purview.   There is truth in the perspectives.  There is also untruth in the perspectives as well. 

It comes down to how well we are equipped to see the various nuances and respect the others perception as they will be seeing truth to the best of their lights.  It would do me no good to argue with my friend who was colorblind that my beautiful brown metallic rambler stationwagon was really green metallic.  It is truth that he would never quite grasp because his eyes simply do not have the ability to see certain colors.  Nor would it do any good for the insects of the world, if they had speech, to argue with me that the green metallic car of mine really had other shades of colors swirled into it or that the orange day lily really has deep blues and reds directing them to the center where the nectar is to be found.  I cannot see these colors in the day lily but they can. 

What can be done is for us to listen to my friend describe how the brown metallic car gives him pleasure to look at.  And in the listening maybe learn something new about how the world works.  Unitarian Universalists need to learn this skill as much as anyone.  The skill of deep listening, not judging, not arguing, not trying to change another’s point of view.  SImply listen, simply be present and hear what is being said and how it is being said.  To understand another is perhaps the closest thing we can come to knowing the truth as another perceives it.   And in maybe in the listening we can also learn the truth of love.   Blessings

My dear friend and colleague, Rev. James Ishmael Ford, wrote a wonderfully clear blog on the inclusion of a sentence in the new proposed by-laws for the UUA.  The sentence reads, “Grateful for the traditions that have strengthened our own, we strive to avoid misappropriation of cultural and religious practices and to seek ways of appreciation that are respectful and welcomed.”   It sounds innocuous enough, right?  His concern is that someone will take it upon their shoulders to become the misappropriation police and begin an inquisition. 

However, I think it is a real concern especially since we as a movement have yet to come to consensus of what we mean by Cultural Misappropriation. It is a discussion that is only now beginning to filter into our congregations awareness even though segments of our faith have been talking about this topic for decades.  Is it simply when an all white congregation seeks to sing an African American spiritual?    The Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network  has adopted the definition as defined by the UUA Task Force on Cultural Misappropriation – September 2006.   You can read the report by this task force here.

“Cultural misappropriation is the term given to the set of injuries marked by:

• using music, reading, symbols, ritual, or iconography of a group without a willingness to engage in their struggle and/or story and connecting their struggle and/or story with our own (UU and community).
• the use of cultural practices as bait rather than an as organic part of our cultural experience
• an unwillingness to respect the community of origin or dishonoring the refusal of a community to share
• disrespect or casual engagement with a practice, or
• unwillingness to share the pain caused by intentional or unintentional misuse.”

So it isn’t simply a white congregation singing an African American Spiritual, it involves the education and appreciation of the culture that developed African American Spirituals.  There is more to the struggle for freedom that is behind the words and music of these songs.  There is more meaning to “This Little Light of Mine” than just a wonderful children’s hymn by which we send the children off to their religious education classes.  Based on the definition above, when we sing it as a wonderful children’s song, we are denying the context in which this song was originally sung.  The original composers sung it in defiance of the slavery and the cruelty they faced by their task masters.  No amount of abusive infliction of pain and suffering was going to take away from them their integrity and dignity as humans.  “This Little Light of Mine”  no longer sounds like a cutesy children’s song, does it? A white congregation could then sing this African American Spiritual in recognition of the resilience of spirit and soul under harsh conditions and perhaps even in repentance of their ancestors abusive behaviors to attempt to destroy the spirit of a people.

There is another difficulty regarding this issue.  We are relational beings.  We are influenced by the networks and clusters we come in contact with on a daily basis.  We are always incorporating various things into our perceptions and into our behavior repertoires.  It is one of the ways that families suffering from severe dysfunction begin to heal towards healthier ways of being.  It means incorporating another family’s culture into ones own and thereby shifting the dynamics of that culture towards health.  Families are the microcosm of this example but it also extends out to communities such as congregations, villages, states, countries and even global communities.  

The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are filled with examples of how a conquering nation incorporated the traditions of the people conquered to sway control over them perhaps, but appropriation of their cultures was the result.  The reverse is also true and found in these texts where the conquered people assimilated into the prevailing culture.  Is it misappropriation for Americans with its increasing interaction with Latino/as cultures to begin celebrating Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead as the cultures begin to merge?  Or is it misappropriation for the Latino/as communities in America to begin to assimilate into American culture and celebrate Thanksgiving.  Or is it misappropriation for the entrance into the English language some Spanish words.  In the border communities of our country, this is more pronounced.  Yet this happens with every cultural exchange of people.  In the northeast, especially in New York City, one is apt to hear a Yiddish word thrown into the conversation and have it understood by all its listeners regardless of cultural background.

We are relational beings.  There is no way one could keep a culture or even our religion “pure” even if it was desired.   Stating this in this way smacks me with an image of white supremacy, the thought that white culture is superior to any others and the desire to keep the race pure.  Are we by including this sentence in our by-laws advocating for a Unitarian Universalist supremacy where we keep pure what is culturally and specifically Unitarian Universalist? 

I don’t think this was the intent by the Commission on Appraisal when they wrote this sentence into the proposed by-laws.  Yet, there are those among us who may want us to return to an earlier version of Unitarian and Universalist spirituality.  And this sentence would give them the go ahead to begin to enforce this desire.  I concur with my esteemed colleague, James Ishmael Ford, that the inclusion of this sentence is a dangerous cliff to be on.   Blessings,

Postscript:  I just read in Wikipedia that “This Little Light of Mine”  while long considered to be an African American Spiritual, it is in fact not.  It was written in the 1920’s by Harry Dixon Loes.  It was however ‘appropriated’ as an anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, so my point above is still valid in more ways than one.

Seven years ago, I was driving to work on a beautiful fall day when I heard on NPR that a plane had collided into one of the World Trade Towers in New York City.  At the time, it was not known if this was a small plane or a large plane.  Soon we were to know the horrific truth that this was no accidental collision but a well orchestrated plan of attack as a second plane aimed for the second tower.  Fear loomed large that day. 

I lived only 65 miles from the center of Manhattan in Danbury, CT.  There were many people that I knew who worked in the towers or nearby and by mysterious grace they were fine.  I decided to keep the agency I ran open for business in case any of our clients needed someone to talk about what they were observing  / feeling.   In retrospect, I needed to keep the doors open so I could talk about what I was observing /feeling. 

A couple of things happened in Danbury that I am still very proud.  As the news unfolded and we learned this was done by arab terrorists, the Jewish community offered escorts to the women of the Islamic mosque in town to enable them to do their shopping.  It was evident that a backlash on anyone of Arabic descent was going to occur.   Jews and Christians attended the Islamic mosque in prayer and as watchful eyes for any potential hate crime to occur.   The interfaith community gathered in a way that had not happened as fully before.  Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Unitarian Universalists, and I am sure a few more faiths gathered in prayer representing all these faiths.  I was proud of Danbury’s response.  In other communities to vent ones frustration and anger, hate crimes increased against Arabic people; yet in Danbury we were able to say no to this sort of irrational response to something so horrific.  I believe we are better for it.

I wish I could say that Danbury’s response mirrored the country’s response.   Sadly, I cannot.  The days and months that followed, I saw our government use every fear inducing tactic imaginable to increase the anxiety of the American People against a nebulous enemy.  Our government whipped us into such an anti-Arab anti-Islam sentiment that when we were told that a dictator known for his vile and hateful cruelty against his own people was somehow connected to the airplane hijackings aimed at destroying American lives and symbols of our democracy, we bowed and said Amen to our government’s plan to wipe them from the face of the earth.   

A few of us felt aghast at such a plan.  I joined the millions who gathered in NYC to protest going to war against Iraq. The day we gathered the US government raised the terrorist alert to Red to try to keep us from speaking and gathering.  We were not all allowed to join the site of the protest at the UN building on the east side.  I was with people who were sidelined by police in a more central location in the city.  So we were cut off from what the speakers were saying.   And at some appointed hour, the police came in with busses and horses to round us up should we not disburse.  Instead of announcing by bull horn that the protest at the UN building was over, to disburse, we were pushed by the encroaching police in riot gear and on horses against the buildings.  Children were separated from their families under the crush.  The crush was to force feed us like a river down pre-determined channels.  It worked but the image remains in my mind as to where our country is heading as these are the tactics used by regimes that do not tolerate freedom of speech or the right to assembly. 

In the years since the beginning of this unjust war against an innocent people who we now know had nothing to do with the events on 9/11.  I feel betrayed by my own government.  The government has lied to us repeatedly and continues to instill fear and hatred into our hearts.  It has used this event to turn against our neighbors from the south who seek to live a better life. Fear has been carefully and manipulatively manufactured against undocumented workers and families.  And we used 9/11 to turn them into enemies of our nation when they are not enemies at all.   Homeland Security has become misguided in its mission to protect this country from terrorists.  Instead it sees all immigrants as a sort of terrorist and encourages the citizens of this country to do the same.   Hatred and xenophobia are at an all time high in this country of bountiful. 

I shudder when I hear candidates for the highest office of the land state their beliefs that Iraq and Iran are the battle grounds in the spiritual fight of good and evil.  I shudder when I hear candidates state that it is God’s will that this battle be fought by us today. I shudder when I hear candidates state that this is a war between Christianity and Islam.  Because these are words that have been used by dictators and totalitarian leaders for centuries to coerce their people into submission. 

It was not so long ago, that America saw the horrors of one such dictator who marched across Europe, rounding up 11 million Jews, gays, and political opponents sending them to concentration camps to be gassed or tortured to death.  The argument used: it was a war between Christianity and Judaism.  We were in denial that this could happen.  We are in denial that it is still happening in parts of our world today.  Yet, this dictator used language of faith for his arguments and the religious people gave ascent because they were also fearful.  Fear is a powerful tool for submission of the masses.  Fear if not checked will crush a person’s / a nation’s spirit just like a dog who has been abused who comes whimpering at the call of its owner. 

So as I mourn today in remembrance of the thousands of lives lost on 9/11, as I mourn the thousands of Americans lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, as I mourn the even more thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis whose lives unknowingly were going to be caught up in the aftermath of this day, seven years ago;  I also mourn the loss of my country that has allowed its will to be crushed by a deceitful government.  This is not what America hopes to be.  These are not the ideals we proclaim loudly to the world. 

I pray for America’s repentance in its arrogance in thinking it is the world’s savior. I pray for America’s people that we will let go of paralyzing fear and embrace love and compassion for other nation’s people.  I pray that America will once again capture the vision of its integrity and dignity and respond from this core and not from deceit and shear military power.   I pray that America will begin to understand that with great gifts and riches are also given great responsibility and accountability to the world community.  That this abundance is to be shared not hoarded.  Not doled out as charity where the poorer  nations grow reliant on it or beholden to do our biddings, but shared in a manner that enables self-empowerment and development of emerging equal partners in the global community.  I pray that America will turn from its domestic sins of racism, xenophobia, and corporate greed to enable all of its citizens; its people, its wildlife, its vegetation to thrive within its borders.   Blessings, SerenityHome

Readers may have noticed that I have changed yet again the background theme of this blog.  WordPress has a series of pre-programmed theme pages for bloggers.  And when I moved to begin serving the Tuscaloosa, AL congregation I thought it was time to change the backgound theme and to slightly change the title of my blog.  This seemed to work until I added another page and discovered the title no longer fit on the page.  So I found what I thought was a very attractive and classic theme.  It was nice.  It allowed for the title of the blog to be placed in full across the top of the page.  Then I discovered that all of the other pages, including the sermons and the about page, were no where to be found.  So I have changed it again.   I am not sure I like the colors.  But it seems to allow all of the pages to be included, it does not cut off any pictures I have embedded, and the title of the blog is fully displayed.   So for now I will use this one until another option comes along that appeals to the more classic look I was wanting.  Let me know what you think?  And now back to our line of programming… Blessings,

Postscript:  A little education goes a long ways… I discovered how I could get the things I wanted back on my blog page so I have once again… hopefully it does not drive everyone crazy… changed back to the design I really like on WordPress.  Blessings and thanks for your patience as I go through this shedding of skins thing… I feel so reptilian…   LOL

Wordle is a fun program that takes any text, in this case all of my blog entries, and according to word usage, enlarges the key words to comparative sizes. I tried to get a clear image here of my wordle but the code given to me only had thumb size and I was unable to figure out what the language was needed to increase its size for posting a clear image. You may see a larger image here.

I have also placed my sermon “Theology of Torture” into wordle form as well. You may see it here.

I am beginning to get know more of my surroundings in Alabama. I was recently introduced to the Friends of Hurricane Creek Newsletter. This is a piece of land near Tuscaloosa that needs some loving care.  It is as E.O WIlson of Harvard University and native Alabaman states one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet.  Watch the video of E. O. WIlson standing near the bank of Hurricane Creek as he describes this valuable heritage to us.  And listen to the variety of birds singing in the background.   Blessings,  

Mary Oliver

Rev. Fred L Hammond
September 14 2008 ©
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa, AL

Wise Ol’ King Solomon is credited with saying there is nothing new under the sun.  Little did I know that he also included as nothing new a discussion on the Theology of Mary Oliver.   I thought this was going to be a sermon rarely done before.  And then I discovered colleague Rev. Victoria Weinstein a.k.a. blogger Peacebang did a blog entry earlier this year on Unitarian Universalist’s fascination on Mary Oliver.  Then I discovered colleague Rev. Kathleen McTigue did a sermon in 2006 entitled “God of Dirt: The Theology of Mary Oliver.”  And then I discovered her inspiration for her sermon was a text by Thomas W. Mann entitled “God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the other Book of God.”   So my hope in the light of these esteemed colleagues and scholars is to add to the conversation on Mary Oliver’s theology.

Mary Oliver has won the hearts of many Unitarian Universalists.  Her popularity among us gained her the esteemed and prestigious place of being a Ware Lecturer in 2006 at our General Assembly. She currently has six books listed in the top 30 best sellers list of poetry as reported by the Poetry Foundation and three of these are in the top five. 

One possibility to her being, as I have heard here and elsewhere, the unofficial poet laureate of Unitarian Universalists is Mary Oliver is not afraid of the questions.  Kathleen McTigue writes regarding Oliver’s theology, “By that word [theology] I mean not only what her poems reflect of her beliefs about God, but what they reflect about a host of other religious questions: What is holy? Who are we? What are we called to do with our lives? What is death, and how do we understand it when we turn our faces toward its inevitability? These questions matter to all of us. And the answers in Mary Oliver’s poems feel so resonant and so true…”

What is it about her poetry that resonates with so many of us?  This may be a rhetorical question.  So I will try to answer the question in the personal. 

I lived across the road from my paternal grandparents.  They owned sixty some acres that had reverted with an exception of a few fields back to its natural state of pines, oaks, and maples. My grandmother was trained as a botanist.  She had taught for a few years but then focused on her love of wild life as an avocation.  Every morning just as the sun was rising she would take a walk through her property, taking notice of the animals and of the various plants that grew on her land.  She knew every one by name and it seemed as if she was in intimate contact with them.  As a child, I was convinced that they confided in her their secrets because it seemed all of the birds and animals would visit at her back stoop.  The fields behind their house had a few apple trees that would be visited by black bears, deer and raccoons.  The chickadee and chipmunk would take sunflower seeds from her hands. There is even the coveted photograph of a chickadee taking seed from her lips as if she was receiving a kiss.   She had a connection.  And she would marvel at the arrival of flowers and ferns that would return each spring to her rock garden and along her walking paths. 

One of her greatest lessons to me came directly from her observations of nature.  On a walk with her in the woods, she pointed out to me a New York Fern.   On closer inspection she stated to me that there are always variations in life; ‘see how this frond ends in one point, but this one in a double point, and this one in three? The norm is one point but every species has variations and diversities within them; each a special creation.’   Years later, as I struggled with my sexuality, it was this lesson that came back to me and gave me new insight into my being.

Mary Oliver’s poems bring back these memories of my grandmother.  So when I read her poem, entitled, “Spring” I am flooded with memories and connections.  And these connections expand into new possibilities of understanding our world.

[Spring House of Light p6]

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world. …

She captures for me that sense of the sacred that I experienced as a child watching the black bear knocking apples off the branches to feed her cubs.  We would watch from my grandmother’s kitchen window in hushed silence the bear caring for her young.  There was this sense of awe / this sense, as Mary Oliver later states in the poem, of also being “dazzling darkness” “breathing and tasting” all of life’s glory.   There is in her poetry a sense of communing with nature in a raw earthy sensual manner that our world at our fingertips of the computer age no longer has access to experiencing.

Yet, life is to be lived to the full and Mary Oliver’s poetry hints at how this could be.  There is an attitude one is to have towards life.  Thomas Mann in his book God of Dirt, quotes this passage from her essays in Winter Hours;  “Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the recognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state. I am not talking about having faith necessarily, although one hopes to.  What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude.” 

Thomas Mann then responds with, “The heart of natural spirituality is not what one thinks about God, but how one relates to the natural world as the realm of God.”  (p 11 God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God)  And Mary Oliver’s poems are filled with how she relates to the realm of God.  Her poem “The Summer Day” expands this notion. 

[The Summer Day  House of Light p 60]

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. …

She asks a universal question.  But she answers with this: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, / how to be idle and blessed.”

Paying attention is her form of prayer within the realm of God called nature.  She defines prayer from this perspective in her poem entitled “Praying” [ Praying, Thirst, p 37

Just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but a doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

For Mary Oliver all of nature speaks to her.  In her poem, “One or Two Things” (Dream Work p 50)  She writes: 

The god of dirt
came to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever…

By paying attention she is able to perceive the world around her as the voices of creation.  Each plant, beast, bird has a message, a thought that will illuminate the heavens and the life we are living here.  It is from the dirt that all of life has sprung so it is not in any derogatory sense that Mary Oliver speaks of the god of dirt. In fact it is with highest praise and recognition that she is able to commune with nature and hear the voice of the god of dirt. 

Thomas Mann in his text, states Mary Oliver is saying “to attend to what is now, rather than pine for what is forever.”  She states later in the poem that she has longed just to love her life.  It is then the butterfly that appears earlier in the poem, who answers her, “The butterfly / rose, weightless, in the wind. / “Don’t love your life / too much,”…  Thomas Mann comments on this symbolism.  The butterfly loving its life too much would refer to the butterfly’s chrysalis stage.  If it remained there, it would never become a butterfly.  He states “It would never be ‘transformed’ … the same is true for humans who long for ‘forever’.  As a contemporary proverb puts it, ‘some people long for eternal life but don’t know what to do on a Sunday afternoon.’ The longing for ‘forever’ prevents an enjoyment of the ‘now.’ ”    Mary Oliver listens to the voice of nature in her being present to it.

The concept of nature speaking is not so heretical an idea. The Psalmist wrote:  “The heavens are telling the glory of god; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19 v 1—4a)

This listening to the silence of the world and hearing its voice is a common theme in many religions.  I recently saw a short video clip of an American teacher by the name of Gangaji, who follows the teachings of a Hindu Maharshi, who spoke about being in silence.  She teaches that quieting the thoughts of our mind enables us to hear the essence of our being and not our thoughts about our being.  Doing so she claims will open the door ways to our authentic self, the self that uses no words.   Gangaji claims that when we have thoughts about ourselves we are no longer experiencing our selves directly but instead objectifying our relationship with our selves into an I-it instead of an I-thou relationship.  

Oliver alludes to this in her poem The Notebook (House of Light p 44),  “The turtle / doesn’t have a word for any of it—the silky water / or the enormous blue morning, or the curious affair of his own body.”   She is caught up in her scribbling and crossing out that she almost misses the moment of when the turtle leaves. She writes, “How much can the right word do?” 

Sometimes it is the silence that reveals the spirit.  Sometimes it is silence that reveals our relationship with nature, with the realm of God.  In her poem “Spring” she states that she goes about thinking about the bear with “her white teeth / her wordlessness / her perfect love.”    But there is no harsh rebuke if she misses a moment of this level of relationship with the world, with herself.  She closes the poem “Notebook,” with “There is still time / to let the last rose of the sunrise / float down/ into my uplifted eyes.”

Where does this take her when she listens in silence, when she pays attention to the natural world around her?   Her poem Mindful [ New and Selected Poems, Vol. Two, p90] offers us clues. 

Every day
I see or I hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight, …
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation…

She goes on and states these are not the exceptional things but rather the drab every day things that she is mindful of that brings her such delight.  The world is filled with wonders and it is her life long task to find them.  She states in other poems that this is her work, “which is standing still and learning to be astonished.”  (Messenger, Thirst p 1)

It is in the realm of God, nature, that she draws comfort and strength.  After the death of her spouse, Molly Malone Cook, she writes several poems on grieving.  In After Her Death, (Thirst p 16) she writes about feeling lost.  She adds, “…The trees keep whispering / peace, peace, and the birds / in the shallows are full of the / bodies of small fish and are / content.  They open their wings/ so easily, and fly.  So. It is still / possible.” 

In the poem entitled, Gethsemane (Thirst ,p 45), it is the stars, the grass, the crickets, and the lake far away, and the wind that stays awake and waited with Jesus on that night before his arrest.  Again there is this sense that nature is in communion with all of creation, including humans especially in our time of need.  In the poem, Heavy, (Thirst p 53) she closes with these words, “How I linger / to admire, admire, admire / the things of this world / that are kind, and maybe // also troubled—/ roses in the wind, / the sea geese on the steep waves, / a love, / to which there is no reply?”   Her grief is palpable and yet she is finding a way through it in the world she sees around her. 

There is much wisdom in her poetry.  Her contemplation of the natural world around her has enabled her to garner strength when experiences are difficult to handle.  This contemplation also gives her access to joy and praise as she observes the life of the fauna and flora of her world. 

Mary Oliver has two poems that allude to a specific verse in the Christian scriptures attributed to Jesus.   The verse is Matthew 6:28 and 29 which reads: “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”

In Another Everyday Poem (Red Bird p 12) she writes: 

Every day
I consider
the lilies—
how they are dressed—
and the ravens—
how they are fed—
and how each of these
is a miracle
of Lord-love …

In the poem Lilies (House of Light p 12) she writes

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.
They rise and fall
in the wedge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,
and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would wait all day
for the green face
of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself
even in those feathery fields? …

Both of these poems speak of the lushness of life to supply every need.  The joy of life even in such brevity is a wonder to behold. “for the lilies / in their bright dresses /cannot last / but wrinkle fast / and fall…”  (Another Everyday Poem)  She adds,  “[W]hat a puzzle it is / that such brevity—/ the lavish clothes … / makes the world / so full, so good.”   Their length of days does not detract from the joy of living.  She offers a perspective on life that few acknowledge deeply.   It does not matter how long a life is lived to enable offering joy and love to others, making the world full and good.  In doing so she flips the sorrow of loss into recognition of gratitude for life and the experiences that life offers. 

Yet there is also awareness that something still separates her from this kind of life. She later speaks in the poem, Lilies; “I think I will always be lonely / in this world, … where ravishing lilies / melt, without protest, on their tongues— / where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss, / just rises and floats away.”   –It is the existential quest for wholeness and purpose in life. We are not always so self-assured as this.  We are more like the people that Jesus admonishes in the Christian scriptures worrying about having our needs fulfilled or protected from harm from this day to the next. Even at the end of life, the lilies without protest melt their existence into fodder for the cattle.   Mary Oliver captures this sentiment for us, letting us know that the flora and fauna in its wordless awareness has a peace and wholeness about life that we humans have somehow lost.

She asks, “Can anyone doubt that the lion of the Serengeti / is part of the idea of God?” (Serengeti p 61 House of Light)   She describes the frightening roar and the fear this animal displays as it too lives its life as both the “flower of life and the winch of death.” This notion of what we might call good and evil seems to have no duality within her poetry.   The animal is only displaying what it is created to do; it does not have a sense of any other way. We humans tend to see things in dualities.  The lion that seeks to feed its cubs by killing us is seen as an evil; something to be feared.  The lion that seeks out the lame and infirmed animals for food is seen as good.     Yet, in nature, it is both /and not either /or.    

She does not have an easy answer for this state of being.  In The Owl Who Comes (New and Selected Poems Vol. Two p 52) she writes:  “and if I wish the owl luck, / and I do, / what am I wishing for that other / soft life, /climbing through the snow?”    She suggests that we are “to hope the world /  keeps its balance.”  Beyond that she does not know “what we are to do… /  with our hearts.”    The question is still posed, “Can anyone doubt that the lion of the Serengeti / is part of the idea of God?”  The implications of the question are ones that all people of faith continue to struggle with in living their spiritual path. 

So back to our rhetorical question of what is it about Mary Oliver’s poetry that speaks to us as Unitarian Universalists?  Is it perhaps Mary Oliver is able to speak to our deep longing to be connected to this natural world and not separate from it?   Could it be that she is offering a corrective to our Judeo/Christian myth of being created to have dominion over the world?  That instead we are to be in partnership, dare I say as co-equals, in living on this planet.  That perhaps there is indeed wisdom in the flora and fauna of this earth that is more profound, more revealing about how we are to live and breathe our days here? “My work is loving the world,” (Messenger, Thirst, p 1) she states.   It is our work, too.  Blessed Be.

Sources: 

• Mann, Thomas W.; God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God; (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications) 2004
• McTigue, Kathleen; God of Dirt: Theology of Mary Oliver, sermon delivered on May 7 2006 at the Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven, CT as found at http://www.unitariansocietynh.org/content/usnh/God_of_Dirt_sermonliturgy_5-7-1.pdf
• Oliver, Mary; Red Bird; (Boston: Beacon Press) 2008
• Oliver, Mary; Thirst; (Boston: Beacon Press) 2006
• Oliver, Mary; New and Selected Poems, Volume Two; (Boston: Beacon Press) 2005
• Oliver, Mary; House of Light; (Boston: Beacon Press) 1990
• Gangaji as found on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdshiy7CrwA
• Earthbound Spirit for directing me to her favorite Mary Oliver Poems on my blog at www.serenityhome.wordpress.com

Leviticus 19:34
“But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

A recent comment on what has been the most read blog entry to date on this site, ICE Raid in Laurel MS, made a statement that I was “veiling my liberal philosophy behind a facade of religious love.”   I responded to this by stating that I was not veiling my liberal philosophy and that I claimed my stance on Biblical teaching.  I then quoted the above quote.   

The person felt that undocumented people had no rights, no inalienable rights as declared by our most sacred civil documents.  They broke the law and therefore must be rounded up and deported, end of story.  Does this also mean that we are to have no compassion?  No sense of moral decency in our treatment of these people?   The families who have had their husbands and wives taken into custody, have no ability to buy food, they will not be able to maintain their shelter because their income is now gone.  Is this what it means to be an American; to turn our backs on the stranger in our lands?  Is this who we have become?  Have our hearts really grown this cold towards the face of suffering?  

The writer re-iterates an argument for the clapping that occurred as these workers were rounded up.  It was mentioned in previous comments that the clapping was done only because a law was being enforced.  I suggested clapping at that moment was a rejoicing at the misfortune of others. 

Which message was sent to those being carried away by ICE agents? Clapping because a law was upheld or clapping because these people are getting what they deserve?  I still believe the latter was sent.  It stated, ‘you are not welcome here.’  It stated, ‘what happens to you is not of my concern.’  It stated, ‘you are not a person that I identify as having human worth.’  This is the message the clapping sent.  And it goes against the commandment that is expressed in Leviticus 19. 

There is a growing trend in the south and elsewhere in the country to demonize groups of people.  I see it in our congregations when conservative religious topics are brought up.  I see it in the conservative media  reports of Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and others.  We need to stop this nonsense. 

Bill Moyers did a PBS story on the events that occurred in sister congregation in Knoxville, TN.  In a letter written by Jim Adkisson, he blames the liberals for his woes and states that because he could not get to the elected liberals, he was going to target to kill those liberals who voted  for them.   Bill Moyers examines the virulent messages that are being sent out by the media that may have spurred Jim Adkisson on to commit a such violent act.  It is a disturbing report with graphic hate language against groups of people, immigrants and liberals among them.  http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html

There is a way to disagree with presenting points of view without succumbing to demonizing language that seeks to strip the humanity from a person or group of peoples.  That way is to honor the person who is speaking as being more than just the words they are saying.  To listen to what is being said behind the words to what the real message is. 

I am hearing fear.  That ubiquitous emotion that takes on a form of a ghoul and devours  a person’s heart if they are not careful.  When the heart is devoured then there is no telling what the person may end up doing.  Clapping at the arrest of co-workers seems pretty benign on the onset but it was, I believe fear that instigated the events at Howard Industries. Fear of loss of jobs.  Fear of not being able to support families.  Fear of not recognizing ones community as it becomes bi-lingual.  

Listening intently to the radical right on talk radio spew their hatred at groups of people is a more invasive fear that corrupts the heart.  Listening to the radical left do the same in return has the same result.   If one begins to believe this fear is based in a real threat, then people begin to act on these hateful words the radical right and radical left spew.  That is when fear has won the soul and spirit of a person, of a community.  We only need to look at Rwanda and Darfur for recent examples of how fear spewed from the media engendered a people to place into action a genocide.  Germany is now too distant a memory to see how they used their messages of hatred to blame the Jews for their economic problems.

And America is in trouble economically.  Another bank collapses due to faulty management practices and gas prices rocket to all time highs of over $5 a gallon; people will be looking for a scapecoat for their woes.  It is not hard to imagine where the radical right will be looking to place blame.  Yet, we are all accountable for our current economy.  As the cartoon character Pogo from the 1940’s to 1970’s said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”  

We are our own worst enemy.  And that acknowledgement alone should engender some compassion on those who are in the minority among us.  Getting rid of them is not the answer.  It does not solve the problems that our system has institutionalized into our fabric of being.  Blaming groups of people is an immature way of solving problems.  We used it when we were kids and it didn’t work then.   So why would we think it would work now? 

One of Unitarian Universalists’ forebears, Francis David of 16th century Hungary, is quoted as saying, “We do not need to think alike to love alike.”  May we begin to emphasis the loving alike in how we live our daily lives.  Blessings,

Postscript:  In case some of my readers think that what I am writing here is just a liberal religious point of view I offer you these following links of more conservative (conservative to Unitarian Universalists) Christian faiths who are seeking to live out the commandment in Leviticus 19:34:  Disciples of Christ ;  Roman Catholic Church  and there is an excellent video on the blog site of Jim Wallis, leader of Sojourners, a conservative Christian community in Washington, DC.

I have been thinking about what the terms liberal and conservative mean in religious terms.   It is oft conflated with political leanings and the two do not always readily match up.  

WIkipedia’s definition of Liberal Religion is not entirely correct because it excludes religious perspectives that may indeed have a doctrine.  It is also not entirely correct because it is only using sources from the Unitarian Universalist tradition to define it.  Liberal Religion is a category of which Unitarian Universalism is a sub-category. The two are not synonymous words.   Yet, when I do a google search,  one would think the two are synonymous terms, excluding all others. 

Yet, when I think of Liberal Religion; I think of United Church of Christ, Unity, Religious Science of Mind, and the Union of Reformed Judaism.  I am sure there are others that would fit under a Liberal Religion category.  

The beliefs of these and of Unitarian Universalists are varied and across the spectrum.  United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline protestant denomination firmly rooted in the Christian Reformed tradition.  The Union of Reformed Judaism is a movement within the Jewish faith and is the largest Jewish movement in the United States. Unity and Religious Science of Mind have their roots in the 19th century following, among others,  Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy ( A Unitarian Minister, making these groups distant cousins of Unitarian Universalism) but expanding it into what is known as the New Thought Movement.

But what makes them liberal in contrast to conservative?  Because our society is defined by its majority religion, Christianity, one of the definitions has to be how one would read the Hebrew and Christian texts aka the Old and New Testament.  What lense does one use in reading these texts? 

I believe it is safe to say that all of these liberal religions read the Hebrew and Christian texts as the story of a people of faith who are journeying together learning who they are in relation to their world and to their God.  These are humans who are applying what they know and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.  When taking the story as a whole; for Jews it is the whole of the Torah; for Christians it is the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Scriptures; they discover that there is an evolution in how God operates in the world which is with increasing generosity of mercy, with justice, and with loving kindness for all of creation.  So this becomes the lense through which these texts are read by liberal religious people. 

1. Revelation and truth are not closed, but constantly revealed.
2. All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion.
3. Affirmation of the moral obligation to direct one’s effort toward the establishment of a democratic (a just and loving) community.
4. Denial of the immaculate conception of virtue and affirmation of the necessity of social incarnation. Good must be consciously given form and power within history.
5. The resources (divine and human) that are available for achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate (but not necessarily immediate) optimism. There is hope in the ultimate abundance of the Universe. 

A conservative lense reads these texts as not just as a story of a people but as the word of God.  There fore there is power in the text itself.  Revelation is closed.  There is no new revelation of the divine that could be revealed that is not already revealed in the sacred texts.  The Book of Revelation closes with a statement that anyone adds or substracts to this will receive the afflictions included in the book.  Many conservative religious read this as referring to the whole of the Bible and not just the text known as the Book of Revelation.  It is a fairly strict command.  But it exemplifies how conservative religious view their faith in a theological context.

This explains the animosity between conservative religions and science.  Science being the new revealed revelation that cannot be true because revelation is closed.  So it is difficult for conservative religions then to reconcile science’s evolution to the Genesis story of Creation.  Even tho from a liberal point of view, the Genesis creation story as an ancient metaphor fits nicely with the Big Bang theory of all that is around us. 

It explains the animosity Conservative religions have regarding societal changes towards justice for all people.  Because there are texts in the Bible that dictate other things.  A liberal reading would argue that these edicts were attempting to address specific problems in a specific societal context and therefore do not mesh with today’s societal mores.  A conservative reading states no, the word of God is unchanging and therefore if it was wrong three thousand years ago it is still wrong today.   

I believe there may be a difference in how a liberal and a conservative religious would define the phrase “a living faith.”   For a Liberal undestanding, a living faith is a faith that lives and breathes in todays context.  There are always new understandings to be found and integrated into ones view of their world.  One’s biases and prejudices are confronted with this understanding of a living faith.  For a conservative understanding, I think it refers more to becoming more like the image of people living in the bible.  To put on the mind of Christ is to embrace the characteristics of what are considered righteous living in the Bible rather than what is considered righteous living for today. 

I realize as I am writing this that I have a strong bias towards liberal religious thought.  So perhaps some of our more conservative religious readers could help us out with their understanding of how to live a conservative religion’s perspective.   Blessings,

I have been caught up in reading and listening to the various banking firms going belly up partly because of the housing crisis with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  There have been way too many financial institutions failing in recent months to really ignore this as just part of the capitalist survival of the fittist rules of the game.  So from my humble position of not being an economist, it seems that there is something systemic that needs to be examined and corrected. 

I am not convinced that the government implementing a department with a czar who has the broad sweeping powers to swoop in and rescue failing banks is the answer.   What the solution does is place increasing burden on the tax payer to the tune of $700 billion for this year. (What will it be next year?)  The tax payer in this case, given our current tax structure, is the shrinking middle class and the working poor. 

This strategy only postpones and amplifies the coming crash.  It is like turning tax payers into the multitude of fingers placed to stop up the holes in the dyke without draining the water behind the dyke. The dyke will burst and cause even more havoc and suffering than if the system was examined and prepared for a long term fix.   

We have been convinced that growth in the economy is always good.  It is a capitalist theorem  that growth is the favorable scenario.  What if our assumptions are not correct?  What if continous growth is not good.  What if there is a natural cycle like there is in organic cycles of birth, growth, maturation, and death?  A plant that grows too fast towards the light becomes spindly and cannot support itself.  The plant will collapse upon itself and die.    (What if Chauncey Gardener in the movie Being There is correct?)

Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and AIG are examples of companies that grew too fast within the housing mortgage market.  They did not take the time to look at their infrastructure to ensure that they were developing good solid foundations. Times were good.  Money was flowing in like Niagra Falls.  So who could blame them for not seeing the fault lines developing in the ground beneath them?  Growth at all costs seemed to be the mantra. 

I am not convinced that the Federal government has any better means of developing infrastructure since the Federal government operates from the erroneous belief that deficit spending is a good mode of operation. Both sides of the political aisles have used this methodology over the years so I am not advocating here for one party over the other.  The Federal government believes erroneously that the taxpayer has deeper pockets.  And the Federal government has ensured that there are sufficient tax benefits and shelters for the top 5% who control the wealth in the country–those who really do have deeper pockets. 

Where am I really going with this line of argument?  I think our American priorities are misplaced.  We value money and consumerism over relationships and the welfare of people (citizens).  When 9/11 occurred Americans took a moratorium on spending and spent time with family and friends.  The Government told us healing our relationships was Un-American, shopping and spending was patriotic.  And we bowed our heads and rung up our credit cards as fast as we could because who wants to be considered unpatriotic.  The things that matter most in our spirituality as a nation was short shrifted from expression.   

Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center wrote the following on what he calls Sacred Economics: 

      “The basic religious economic  premise was not just about being nice to poor folks. It was about the flow of God’s abundance that must move through the whole society, not get stuck in the pockets of the rich.  When the flow gets stuck, the clumps of super-wealth become an embolus. They stop the flow of healing blood,   the arteries choke up, the heart stutters and stops   —   and society collapses. 

        “Massive  depressions are not good for societies or for the human race. I had just  been born when a major industrial nation that had lost a war, had lost its  sense of place and identity and its allies in the world, had gone through  a massive economic disaster, then responded to its own fear and anger by  choosing an addled war hero to hold power.  Faced with rising chaos,  he chose as his successor a ultra-right-wing crazy, who everybody said was  sure to calm down once he actually held power.

        “The war hero was Von Hindenburg. His successor? Look it up.

          “So it is certainly urgent to  shape our financial system so that such a collapse does not descend upon  us.  But are we simply propping up the old system – the same one that  has set up our risk of disaster? Are we turning over the process to many  of the same people who set up the disaster in the first place?    

           “Or can we address the basic issues, the ones our religious traditions teach, the ones that the hard-headed masters of disaster dismiss contemptuously?  

            “So far, the most “radical”  poultices have been that a governmental economic czar will save the financial institutions that are in trouble,  by buying and selling their assets  — and taxpayers will bear the burden and the risk. 

            “There has begun to be discussion of a slightly deeper remedy – the re-regulation of these institutions so that greed and ambition cannot so  easily pocket the abundance that must move through society.

            “But so far the whole notion of rhythmically redistributing wealth -a vision at the heart of Biblical economics – is not on the agenda. That vision is encoded partly in the redemption and redistribution of family land each fifty years — the Jubilee – and the annulment of debt each seventh year – all in the context that for the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year, and the year of seven cycles – seven times seven plus one -the whole society rests and reflects, along with the earth itself. Not only physical work pauses, but hierarchy pauses as well.  Boss and servant vanish, for a day, a month, a year.

           “And the redistribution is also encoded in the right of the landless to feed themselves by working, gleaning, in the fields of the landowners. No one can deny them this relationship with the means of production. No ‘unemployment.’ 

           “And no compulsory overtime. Shabbat is for  everyone.

           “Let us start to imagine how to transcribe this wisdom for a society that needs to let the earth rest from our pouring CO2 into its atmosphere, from our sucking out the water from its veins, from our injecting poisons in its body.

          “We can restore our  economy for both work and rest by building energy-efficient railroads,  windmills, solar collectors.  We can use the new governmental oversight of banks to insist on micro-lending to the poor for urban  gardens, for workplaces within walking distance of our homes, for  insulating our houses to save the heat and money that are pouring out of  our porous doors and windows.   

         “We can insist on a living wage, with livable hours.  Time to sing, to dance, to pray and  meditate, to rear the children, to care for the elders, to make love. If  the flow of abundance starts at the grass roots, it will reach everyone.  Our banking crisis and the fear that elevates a Hindenburg will vanish.”

Now perhaps it would be impossible to institute a jubilee year of equity.  But we can shift our mind-set regarding our relationship with money and consumerism.  We can begin to see that money was not meant to be the ultimate end purpose of life but rather as a means to aid in our enjoyment of life to the fullest with one another, with our families and friends, with our local communities.   It is our relationships with one another that are to come first.  Our government is to help ensure that the well-being of all of its citizens is ensured.  It should not be focusing on the well-being of things like corporations and big businesses but people, the ones that operate the things of corporations and big business.   Blessings,

Soulforce, the organization seeking to have conservative Christian groups embrace their gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, intersexed, questioning members, is sponsoring another Equality Ride.  They have been quite successful with their previous rides to Christian Colleges and Universities to discuss how they have treated sexual minority students.  This fall they will be coming in October to Heritage Christian University in Florence, AL and Mississippi College in Clinton, MS. 

Soulforce is based on Gandhi’s teachings of non-violence to create change and justice.  I was privileged to have been able to participate in Soulforce’s first event in meeting with Rev. Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, VA.  It was a powerful event meeting face to face with 200 of Jerry Falwell’s congregation and attending his worship service.  I went back to Lynchburg a few years later and served as a peacekeeper for Lynchburg’s first Gay Pride event.  Having conservative Christians lean up against me and shout in my ear that I was attempting to sexually assault them was a most difficult moment in being silent and resilient in justice work. Being the buffer of their hatred so those who came to celebrate their humanity could do so was well worth it.  We also stood in silent vigil this time outside of Thomas Road Baptist Church on Sunday in prayerful intercession regarding Jerry’s violent accusations of Gays and Lesbians being one of the causes for 9/11. 

While in Lynchburg, I heard first hand how difficult it was to be in the closet at Falwell’s Liberty University.  The anguish the students faced, trying to please their parents by going to a Christian University; trying to discover who they were as a child of God; and knowing that being that person at that campus meant at best expulsion and worst the taking of their life.  The spiritual violence committed is atrocious.  The pain and suffering is incredible. 

The message of Jesus seems so clear to me.  Love one another.  Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  

Those who heap vile hatred against others must not be able to love themselves very much and they also must want to be treated in the same manner.  How very sad.  And after 2000 years, the message of Jesus is still not heard even by those who call out ‘Lord Lord.’

Blessings,

I recently heard this song by Holly Near and it seemed to be so appropriate with all that is happening in America today.   Blessings,

One of the comments I hear from time to time is that because Unitarian Universalists have no core doctrine, no central dogma therefore Unitarian Universalism cannot be a religion, let alone foster spirituality.  While it is true that other religions have doctrines and dogmas that shape the boundaries of their practice, our covenants shape ours.  One popular covenant that is heard in our congregations is this one.

Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth its sacrament and service is its prayer; to dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve human need, to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine.  Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

These are lovely words though sometimes hard to do. In this covenant we define how we are going to be loving people. We have placed seeking truth as a sacrament, as a holy obligation, and as something that holds a sacred significance to us. Service as its prayer; meaning that in our efforts to support the church, in our supporting our justice making causes, in our compassion to serve human need, and in our seeking to dwell in peace that truth is found in these efforts empowering us to be loving people. The prayer is answered through our loving actions “…to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine.” Notice we do not state that all souls shall grow into harmony with each other but rather with the divine. There is great wisdom here. It is in the diversity of our human relationships that new desires / new thoughts / new ways of being together can develop and shine. The divine here is that quality of connecting to our best selves / our higher selves / our higher power. We state in the last sentence that we are going to hold each other accountable to each other and to God.  God being that which is ultimate in our lives; the creative interchange as Weiman states; the ground of being as Tillich states.   

This covenant is sometimes hard to live out consistently. That is okay because it also teaches us how to forgive as we connect to the promise we make. In any relationship there will be opportunities for forgiveness and a church community is no different. We can never know what filters people are wearing on any given day. People could be wearing the filters of exhaustion, filters of feeling overwhelmed with work or projects, filters of not understanding, filters of a day where everything seemingly went wrong, filters of not feeling adequate, filters of being abused, filters of not feeling well physically. The list goes on. So in the process of interacting with one another, words are also spoken and heard through these filters. Misunderstandings occur, misperceptions occur, and feelings are hurt with people withdrawing from the situation or the task at hand.

This covenant reminds us to seek forgiveness from each other, to try to listen to the other person without our own inner self chatter happening at the same time. To reflect on what is being said to us and to grow in new understanding and appreciation of the other. Through this deep attentive listening to the other we can begin again to honor our covenant of faith.

Covenants require re-commitments in order to uphold them as central to our being together.  Covenants act as a centering touch stone that we can call each other back to and help remind of the promise to higher commitments and ideals we seek to reveal in our coming together.  When we fall short of that promise to each other and/or to ourselves we can always renew that promise and begin again. 

It is in examining our covenants on a regular basis that we can discover how we are fairing as a community of faith.  Even for those faiths that have doctrines and dogmas that its adherents are asked to affirm for themselves personally, covenants are sometimes developed to aid the congregants in living the ideals those doctrines point towards.  Covenants are deeply spiritual in their very nature dating back at least to the covenant made between God and Abraham and his descendants.  This covenant was reviewed regularly and was often the topic of the prophets.   Keeping a covenant is spiritual discipline. 

Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth its sacrament and service is its prayer; to dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve human need, to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine.  Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

Blessings,

There has been a debate in the blogosphere among Unitarian Universalists regarding  UUA President Bill Sinkford being part of an interfaith coalition that met with Iran’s figurehead president  Mahmoud Ahmendinejad in NYC recently.  One blogger stated that simply talking does not make one a prophet, sometimes it makes you a fool.  He states that a true prophet is one who is able to organize power behind the words spoken and therefore can be held accountable to what is spoken. He argues that Bill Sinkford’s words without any power behind them, made him a fool.   He quotes Nehemiah 5 as an example of what he calls prophecy with power.  It’s a fair argument.  Through out the Hebrew Scriptures the prophetic has been paired with power, whether that was the power of an impending doom if changes were not made or the power of miraculous events. 

Yet there is a place for the fool too as prophetic voice.  The fool is one who no one takes seriously and therefore is able to speak unvarnished truth.  The fool is the one that people scoff at and deride and then realize that they were the foolish ones with their behaviors.  We see the role of the fool as prophetic voice in Shakespeare’s plays, such as portrayed in  King Lear.  We see the prophetic fool in modern days with Stephen Colbert’s presentation at the White House Press Corp dinner in 2006.   Yet the fool also has power.  It is a power that comes with inner convictions that enables the fool to speak words of truth.  It is because the person is playing a fool that sometimes the words get heard and changes can occur. 

Some of my colleagues (read through to the comments)  thought our UUA President, Rev. Bill Sinkford, played the fool by speaking with one of the heads of state of a tyranical dictatorship.  Many thought he should have sided with the protesters outside and that stance would have been the correct prophetic stance to take.  Funny thing about prophetic stances most are not realized as such until much later, sometimes years later.   

Jonah was very concerned about playing the fool with the city Nineveh.   So he ran away.  Yet, Jonah eventually after some bizarre twists and turns, does take the prophetic stance and speaks with the King of Nineveh.  The King was a tyrant.  The king and his people had done some horrible things.  And after hearing Jonah, the King and the city of Nineveh repented and Jonah’s fear of looking like the fool is realized.  It is a risk that prophets take sometimes. 

One never knows how the spirit of love is going to move and speak through us.  Nor on what ears the message of love will fall on.  The fool can be a prophetic voice.  Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge the actions of those around us as they just may be responding to a higher conviction than we can discern with our senses.  Blessings,

The Ad Council has teamed up with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) to present three Public Service Announcements (PSAs) regarding the use of the phrase, common with young people, “That’s so gay.”   You can see the three PSAs at this site:  Thinkb4youspeak.com   They feature Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes.  The New York Times released a story about the Think Before You Speak campaign today.

 “ The campaign is “something I dreamed about for 10 years,” said Kevin Jennings, the founder and executive director at GLSEN, and has been in active development for two years.”If you follow hateful language, you eventually get hurtful behavior,” he added. “The chain of events begins with kids learning it’s O.K. to disrespect people.”

“The campaign is “a very bold step” on the part of the council, Mr. Jennings said, in that “this will be, by a million miles, the largest public education campaign on L.G.B.T. issues.”

Thanks to my friend Leif Mitchell for alerting me to this campaign.

I tend to be the type of person who when faced with a fear will try to read up on the subject so I have  better understanding of what is happening and thereby reducing my fear levels.  I figure knowledge equals personal power and therefore can and will help me navigate whatever fearful thing I am experiencing. 

This current economic crisis has suddenly propelled me to try to understand a subject that held very little interest for me.  And, as a minister who will be pastoring people who are deeply affected by this crisis, it is important that I understand what is going on. [The fall out will affect all of us in some manner as this crisis unfolds.]  As I read about such strange banking products as credit default swaps and commercial papers I am a bit awe struck by the level of greed our capitalism has brought us. 

When I read that even the buyers and sellers of credit default swaps did not even understand how that product worked, I begin to think people are a bit crazed in their quest to make money.   Our society has given up quite a bit in our desire for more money.  The people who work in these industries work incredibly long hours sacrificing family and community relationships to enable the possibility of early retirement or retirement at a comfortable level. 

So the question how to thrive in these uncertain times is an important question.  I think we need to first come up with a broader societal definition of what determines thriving.   It is too narrow a definition to have financial worth to be the only criteria for thriving.  That is like a plant that has received too much fertilizer but not enough other supports like sun, water, and soil so it grows tall and straggly, and eventually unable to bear the weight of itself. 

There needs to be a balance.   It is this balance that I think America is in need of finding.  There is a need to find what is essential to living a fulfilling life and to seek that first. [While typing this I am reminded of a song I used to sing, “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God” and while this might work as an interpretation of what I wrote, I would mean it only in the sense of the Beloved Community or the Realm of God that Jesus states is already within us and waiting to be lived out in our daily lives.]  While it was a TV show full of glorified nostalgia, The Waltons highlighted the means in which one family, albeit fictional, thrived during the depression era.   The show focused on family values.  A phrase that needs unpacking since it too has been glorified and idealized beyond human reckoning.  Family values, as I refer to the term, means placing emphasis on the relationships we hold dear.  It means making a commitment / a covenant to the relationships we deem valuable. 

It means developing a means in which we will be together and support one another in ways that will honor our inherent worth and integrity.  It means developing a means in which we strive to be in right relationship with one another.  It means finding ways to be with one another that does not place the family or individuals into financial harm. 

For example, while it is a wonderful family experience to go as a family to Disney World or Busch Gardens or some other amusement park, if doing so means placing that on a credit card that you will pay off over the next several years, then it is placing the family into financial harm.  Find another activity that will also be a wonderful family experience that will not negatively impact your family’s over all health. 

It also means developing community values.  Become involved in your church community  or town community by volunteering and working with other people to help improve the world in which we live.  It might mean spending a day with others cleaning the environment or serving food at the local soup kitchen or becoming a big brother or big sister to a child in need of an adult mentor.  And despite what Sarah Palin has said about Community Organizers; organizing the community around a local concern, whether it is affordable housing or developing neighborhood parks is a powerful and responsible means of displaying community values. 

More importantly these activities build on relationships.  They break down the walls that people have erected against one another because of our fear of not having enough money, enough oil, enough products, enough what have you.   This is not the time to be pointing the fingers at this political party or that political party because frankly we all created this mess.  Yes, even you and I, because we bought into the lie that having more money is what mattered most.  We bought into the lie that money solves all problems. 

So while I hope and pray that our leaders are able to find solutions in order to reduce the impact of suffering within a crisis that seems to be unraveling at the seams at an incredible pace.  We can pull together and begin to place into balance what is essential to thriving which is not money but rather fostering love and compassion in our relationships with one another.  We will need to do this if we are to thrive during what ever comes our way.

I try not to take political stands regarding specific candidates for office.  As a minister, I find that to be a very fine line in our nation’s quest for separation of church and state.  A value that has come under attack by my more conservative colleagues of the cloth.  However, there is an issue that has arisen that I feel demands a response from all religious leaders regardless of theological persuasion.  That issue is the tolerance of hate speech at political rallies. 

One of McCain/Palin campaign strategies is questioning who Barack Obama really is.  It’s a fair question.  However, the responses from the audience have been threatening and hateful.  Shouts in response have included, “Terrorist!”, “Traitor”, and “Kill Him” and “Off with His Head.”   McCain and Palin do not address these comments, in fact they have encouraged them with their own speeches of tieing Obama with “domestic terrorist” William Ayers.  The problem with allowing these comments to continue is that they eventually find a willing person to carry out the deed. 

Georgian Congress representative John Lewis, stated, “As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all,” the statement continues. “They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy.  We can do better.  The American people deserve better.”   Lewis compared the hateful rhetoric being engendered at McCain’s rallies akin to the hateful rhetoric of Alabama Governor George Wallace which has been indirectly connected to the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. 

Perhaps the analogy Rep. Lewis drew is unfair or out of proportion but tell that to gays and lesbians and other sexual minorities who are attacked and harrassed because their churches preach that homosexuality is an abomination and should be killed.  Matthew Shepard and more recently Larry King were killed because their killers heard repeatedly from the pulpit that gays did not deserve to live.   The late Rev. Jerry Falwell blamed gays and lesbians and liberals (ACLU, Feminists, abortionists)  for the 9/11 attacks.  This sort of rhetoric stirs up hatred and violence against people because it is being made by people or made in the presence of people we are supposed to be able to trust.  Senator McCain and Governor Palin are among those people we are supposed to be able to trust. 

McCain’s response to Lewis and Obama was “Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people obama [sic] called ‘bitter’ and attacked for ‘clinging to guns’ and faith. He fails to understand that people are angry at corrupt practices in Washington and Wall Street and he fails to understand that America’s working families are not ‘clinging’ to anything other than the sincere hope that Washington will be reformed from top to bottom.”  

I agree that people are angry.  But screaming out “Kill Him!”  is not an appropriate anger response to the issues.  It is scapegoating.  Justifying such hate speech by stating they are angry is also not appropriate. There are appropriate ways of expressing anger, shouting “Off with his head!” is not one of them.  Allowing such inappropriate expressions will rile a crowd to a frenzied pitch that, if not stopped, will result in actions that all of us will regret. 

McCain/Palin talk about reforming Washington politics.  If they are serious about reform then they should be helping their supporters to channel their anger towards that reform.  But it takes someone who has good anger management skills to know how to do this kind of organizing anger towards the positive.   

I was fortunate to witness this at the Free Jena 6 rallies in Jena, LA.  The crowd had been listening to a speaker who clearly was angry and was stirring the crowd towards doing something outrageous right at that moment.  Rev. Jesse Jackson was called to the stage by the organizers and I was in awe at how he effectively and quickly calmed the crowd down. I was very grateful.  Be angry yes, but channel that anger in appropriate ways.  Hate speech is never justified.   Blessings,

Up until recently, the only way I had to know if this blog was beneficial in meeting my objective of having a dialog about Unitarian Universalism  and its values in the South was through comments made to individual posts and the statistics of how many hits to entries.  The top five blog entries on this site to date are:  

1. ICE Raid in Laurel, MS. 
2. Another Wrongful Execution
3. Liberal vs Conservative Religion
4. The Theology of Mary Oliver
5. What is Truth?  

Those that received the most comments are:

1. ICE Raid in Laurel, MS
2. Liberal v Conservative Religion
3. Covenantal Faith
4. Universalism- Along a string of tension
5. What makes US immigration Laws unjust  and HIV Felony Law  (tied in 5th place)

This gives me some insight into what people are most interested in.  But it is still a bit of a guessing game as to how effective I am in having a dialog.  So here is something that may help me that the people at wordpress, who host this blog, have developed.  I look forward to reading your comments and the results of this poll.  Blessings,

Many years ago there was a tv game show where a celebrity panel had to try to discern which of the three contestants was the person being described.  After each of the contestants gave their answers to a variety of questions, and the panel made their decisions public, the host of the game show would announce, “Will the Real John Doe, please stand up.”  The three would look at each other and one would always pretend to begin to stand and then the Real John Doe or Jane Doe would stand up.  It was a fun show of light hearted deception. 

In recent weeks, the election campaigns have turned mean.  Perhaps it is normal for the alleged candidate who is perceived as loosing to turn up the heat in the final weeks of the campaign.  I was too young to recall the time when patriotism  of Americans were called into question in such a mean spirited way.  I am referring to the McCarthy Era when all of America seemed to be looking for a Communist under every rock.  Thousands of people across America were blacklisted and lost their ability to earn a living in their chosen profession.  In many cases when that nightmare of facist-like history in America was over, many were left spiritually broken unable to return to the passion of their first career. 

The present day situation is sounding very similar.  We have a congresswoman in Minnesota who wants to call for an investigation of all elected officials in Washington to find out if any are Anti-Americans. She defines Anti-Americans as being Leftist Liberals.   Among her top picks are Senators Obama and Biden and Speaker of the House Pelosi.    We have a public figure in Virginia distinguishing between the area of Virginia just outside of DC and the rest of Virginia which she calls the Real Virginia.  Real Virginia by the way is conservative and Republican.  And we have a Vice Presidential candidate declaring that the Real America is found in those Pro-American pockets of small towns.   She states, it is these Americans who have fought bravely in our wars and are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

John Stewart of The Daily Show stated that Osama Bin Laden must be very embarrassed to discover that he attacked Fake America when he attacked NYC and Washington, DC because these places are not part of the Real America. 

And what are those brave men and women from these large cities fighting in Iraq feeling; now that they have been called False Americans?  Do they get to come home since they are not really Americans and therefore have no claim to fighting in our wars? 

This talk of who is a Real American versus who is Anti-American, is not an innocent tv game show of light hearted deception.  This is blatant diviseness. It is a tactic used to instill fear into the hearts of the citizenry.  It is a tactic that Joe McCarthy used to engender the Red Scare.  It is a tactic that will undermine the very freedom that Americans, all Americans, cherish.  The McCarthy Era was not a proud moment in America’s history.  It was a time when the freedoms we take for granted were underseige.  If McCarthy had won in his campaign to route out every suspected Communist, and many were never to have been found to be a communist, only alleged; the democracy experiment begun in 1776 would have been over 50 plus years ago. 

If we allow our public elected officials to instill fear that there lurks within America two America’s, one real and one false; one good and one evil; one standing firm in the will of God and one opposed to the will of God; then our nation of democracy with all its freedoms will cease to be.   We have chosen the motto  “E Pluribus Unim” for a reason.  Out of many, One. 

It is our diversity of thought, our capacity to hear many opinions, that adds to our greatness as a nation.  It is because of our diversity that America has become that “beacon on the hill”. Strike any voice from being heard and America’s greatness as a nation is diminished.

In our current economic crisis, in our attempts to dis-entangle ourselves from Iraq, in our attempts to improve the domestic well being of all of America; it is time for us to honor our commitment of E Pluribus Unim.  Attempts to instill fear and mistrust in each other is not the answer to our problems.    

When the events of 9/11 reached the far corners of the world… World Leaders stated, “We are All Americans now.”  Such was the pain felt by the world in those events.  It is a message that needs to ring loud and clear within our own citizens as well.  “We are All Americans” 

Everyone of us should stand to answer the question asked, “Will the Real America, Please stand up?”  By doing so does not mean that we are in agreement with the how-tos in fixing the problems that face this country.   What it does mean is that we want what is best for her to maintain the democracy that was established so that we are a free people. 

When Election day comes, vote not because you are a Republican or a Democrat.  Vote because you are an American who has the freedom to vote for the best of America.

In the UUA’s  Mid-South District, many lay led congregations are participating in a program developed by Education Director Connie Goodbread and MSD Board member Norman Horofker called UP! (Unlimited Potential).  This program is seeking to offer skills and expertise to small congregations under 70 members to enable them to have excellence in an area enabling them to thrive as a congregation.  The recent discussion has been focusing on mission statements.  This is an area of church development that I find of great interest.   Norman presented the group with the UUA tag line  “Nurture your Spirit.  Help Heal our World.” This tag line was recently used in UUA’s advertizing campaign in Times Magazine.  It can be made into a powerful mission statement…  

IE:  We are a congregation where we nurture our spirits empowering each other to help heal the world. 

Mission Statements or Statements of Purpose need to be this powerful and this simple.  They are a concise sentence that answers these three questions:  Why do we exist?   What do we do? What is important/ essential for us as a congregation?

Mission and vision statements are sometimes confused.  A vision statement builds on the mission statement and answers these questions:  What are we going to be as a church?  Who are we going to reach?  How are we going to do this?

So using the community in which I live only as a reference point, a vision statement could be the following:

IE:  Our presence in Tuscaloosa creates a community of open minds, open hands and warm hearts through our diverse spiritual practices and by our seeking to do social justice work and community service.
 
Vision statements are to be visual.  You can see diverse spiritual practices being done.  You can see social justice work being done and you can see community services being done.  You can also see open minds, open hands and warm hearts in the interactions of the people within the congregation and as this vision begins to take hold, it will also be seen in the larger community in which the congregation lives.

Mission and vision statements then become the ground on which you build your strategic plans for the next several years.  This is the ‘how to’s’ of these words.  How do we nurture our spirits?  How do we heal our world? How do we express ourselves as having open minds?  What kinds of activities over the next several years would help us accomplish this? 

Every activity done within the congregation and in the community is linked to these statements–From the board meetings to the Children’s RE program to the worship services to community projects to developing the budget.  Everything.  

Missions are living entities that might evolve over time.  So it is good to review the mission of the congregation from time to time to see how the congregation has grown and evolved.  The community in which the congregation lives may also have changed over time requiring a different focus of interaction. 

There is the legendary story of the congregation which located itself in an affluent part of the city and over the decades the neighborhood became run down.  Homeless men would be found sleeping in the doorways and people had to step over them to enter the church.  The church decided to refocus their mission to meet the needs of the community and they established a soup kitchen and a homeless shelter.  From there they went on to develop transitional housing services to help get people back on their feet to employment and self-determination of their lives.  This story is repeated again and again as an example of a church redefining who they were going to be in the world.  It is a common story happening in many cities across our country. 

I am looking forward to seeing what these congregations come up with in redefining their mission in the rural south in which they live, breathe, and have their being. Blessings,

A few years ago now, how quickly time passes, in order to become a Unitarian Universalist Minister I had to meet with the Minister Fellowship Committee (MFC).  This committee is charged with making sure that all ministers in fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association have met a set of criteria and standards to be a minister.  There were a variety of questions asked.  One question that I was asked was the following:  “What is the Meaning of Life for the Jew?”  I did not answer the question well. 

I have pondered this question alot since then.  The question is based on a presumption that religions answer the question, “What is the meaning of Life?”   It is a false presumption because that is not the question that religions answer.  Religions answer the question, “What is my relationship with the other?”   The other being everything from this other person sitting before me to the world around me to the concept of god.  But the question, “what is the meaning of life?” is not the question being answered by religion. 

The word religion comes from the Latin religare meaning to bind fast or to bond between.  It is a relationship that is established when one practices a certain religion.  And it is a bond that is tied fast between the person and the practice (read also God) they are upholding. 

Judaism answers the question by stating that my relationship with the other is covenantal.  Abraham established a covenant with God.  It was a promise that if his people did certain things then God would ensure that his people would continue to prosper.   The society that was developed by Abraham and his descendents is based on this covenantal relationship.  The story of the Hebrew scriptures is the story of this covenantal relationship. 

Christianity, Orthodox Christianity specifically, answers the question by stating that my relationship with the other is inherently broken.  The religion then seeks to develop ways to fix that brokenness.   The story of the New Testament, especially those books written by Paul of Tarsus,  is how a relationship with Jesus fixes that brokenness.

Universalist Christianity states my relationship with the other is separation.  It then seeks to develop ways to bring about reconciliation.  It could be argued that within the story of the gospels is found the story of reconciliation of humanity with God.

Buddhism states my relationship with the other is illusion.  It then seeks to develop ways that will bring about enlightenment, the ability to see clearly.  The story of the Buddha tells his journey towards this enlightment. 

Islam states my relationship with the Other is ultimately submission.  It then seeks to develop ways in order to be in submission with the Other (specifically Allah). 

Now through following these various ways of relating to the Other, one may discover that their life has meaning.  But this is meaning that is added to their life as a result of being in relationship with the other.  Religions can help add meaning to ones life by giving it a shape or a touchstone from which one can center their life around. 

Unitarian Universalism answers the question of what is my relationship with the other by also answering that it is covenantal.   It is a covenant that is renegotiated with every relationship I enter.   Sometimes the covenant is negotiated consciously, sometimes not.  The values that Unitarian Universalists promote do keep me grounded as I seek to live them in my daily life.  And in my seeking to live my covenant, I find that my life is filled with meaning and purpose at least from my perspective of looking out at the world and how I relate to it.  Blessings,

Exxon-Mobil announces its largest profit ever in the third quarter, July- September, following its record breaking second quarter profits.  This is the same quarter that gas prices rose to over $4 a gallon forcing small businesses to raise prices or curtail scope of business, forcing airlines to reduce flight schedules and layoff employees, forcing farmers to increase food prices, and forcing some schools to go to a four day school week to save on rising fuel costs.  The impact of this energy crisis was widespread but evidently wasn’t hurting Exxon-Mobil.    

This is the second quarter in a row that Exxon-Mobil broke profit records.  In the second quarter Exxon-Mobil earned a record $11.68 Billion,  in the third quarter earned $14.83 Billion.  Is it me, or does this not seem quite right given the extraordinary hardship rising fuel costs have caused us this past summer? 

Now if Exxon-Mobil had posted a modest profit or even posted a just better than break even quarter, I would think that Exxon-Mobil had managed their affairs well during this fuel crisis of the record breaking oil costs that was daily fluctuating the costs at the pump.  But a record breaking profit???  When the rest of America was faltering towards recession?   And they are wanting a tax credit from the government because it would help bolster the economy?  What else is going on here? 

Bernice Johnson Reagon  of Sweet Honey in The Rock wrote this song entitled “Greed.”  Here are some of its words.   

I been thinking ’bout how to talk about greed
I been thinking ’bout how to talk about greed
I been wondering if I could sing about greed
Trying to find a way to talk about greed

Greed is a poison rising in this land
The soul of the people twisted in its command
It moves like a virus, seeking our anyone
Greed never stops, its work is never done
A creeping, killing, choking, invading everywhere
There really is no escaping greed’s tricky snare

Nothing seems to stop it once it enters your soul
It has you buying anything, spinning out of control
Not partial to gender, or your sexual desire
All it wants is for you to own, to possess and to buy
It rides with the culture, touching us all
Greed really isn’t picky, it’ll make anybody fall

It’s been around a long time, since way before we began
Before this was a nation, greed drove people to this land
Greed driven people created slavery,
Black men, women and children became somebody’s property
Greed is a strain of the American dream
Having more than you need is the essential theme …

When O when, will America realize that our actions of greed impact everyone.  Greed is going to be (and current events indicate is) our downfall.  Exxon-Mobil from where I sit, it seems your greed is partly responsible for the economic crisis we are facing today.  Corporations can no longer operate as if they are islands unto themselves.  We need to begin co-operating with each other in living on this planet or face peril. We need to shift our thinking of wanting more and more to wanting what is sufficient.  If that is a socialist stance, then sobeit, but cooperation is a core value that I seek to uphold.

I came across this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh in his book “The Art of Power”  that sums up pretty much how I have been feeling lately about life in these American States; from the economic crisis to Exxon-Mobil’s 2nd record breaking quarter in a row, from the divisive election campaigns to the ICE raids on undocumented immigrants.  This quote offers us an opportunity to finding a way out.  It’s not an easy way out, but definitely a way out.

“We are not elected to Congress to fight only for our ideas. Your idea may be superb, but it might still be improved by the ideas of other people.  Regardless of what party a person belongs to, if she has a real insight, we should practice deep listening to really hear her.  If she is fighting only for her own idea we will know it clearly, but if she has a real insight we must be open to it.  Listening in this way will help Congress become a community where there is mutual understanding, mutual sharing.  Our democracy will be safer.  The integrity of the individual and the integrity of our institutions will be saved; otherwise there is only the appearance of democracy, not real democracy.  When you are not yourself, when you are not operating on the ground of your insight, your compassion, your experience, when you have to speak and vote soley along party lines, you are not truly yourself, you are not offering your best to your nation and your people.  The aspiration to offer our best is there in each of us.  We should help each be our best, because only then can we truly serve our people and our nation.

Just as politicians need to collaborate with those in opposing political parties, businesspeople can learn to collaborate with and learn from other companies rather than competing with them.  Communication is important, not just within a company but between companies.  It is possible to replace competition with cooperation and collaboration. If the leaders of corporations get together and practice looking deeply into the situation of the world to develop the products that best serve society, they will be able to devise mutually beneficial policies and working conditions. If they become sensitive to the suffering of humankind and the suffering of other species, they’ll be able to come together without fighting.” 

May it be so.

My first time experience to vote in this southern state was very different from any voting I had ever experienced in New York State, Connecticut, or in Illinois.  Voting turnout was heavy but the process used left me feeling a bit unsure of the integrity.  It took place in a small elementary school not far from home.  I entered the library which was crammed with people.  There were three tables set up to alphabetically check people in.  It seemed that everyone who lived in this community had a name that began with the letters H-Q.  There was no one checking in at the A-G or the R-Z tables.  The workers had this deer in the headlight stare as they looked at the crowd streaming in.  I got the impression they were not expecting this level of a turn out at 9:30 AM. 

Ahead of me was a young man that I had seen driving in on his motorcycle.  He was wearing a t-shirt that proudly declared his love of the confederate flag.  “Gone from our skies but still flying strong in our hearts.”  

I received my ballot and sent to sit at a table with 4 other people filling in their ballots.  So much for privacy in voting.  In all the other states I voted in, we were ushered to a private place; perhaps behind curtains, perhaps to a screened cubicle where one person and one person only pulled the levers, or punched the chads, or in the case today darkened circles to be read by an electronic machine-the type known for producing major errors. 

My table emptied and an elderly couple sat down next to me.  The gentleman looked at the ballot a little confused and his wife said, “Now mark the Republican slate here.”   

I wanted to speak up and state that no one is to tell another how to vote but I suddenly felt unsure of how I should act in this place. Was I safe here to speak up?  The elderly man looked very confused.  It was apparent to me that he was not sure of where he was or why he was there.  I did not see anyone that I could talk to about this. 

I flashed back to my days of working with developmentally disabled adults and a discussion about having the profoundly impaired adults registered to vote.  While I was a strong advocate for having these people participate as fully as possible in society, I was concerned that any voting they would do would not be from an informed position but a coerced one.   Of course there are many developmentally disabled adults who can and should be able to register to vote. These individuals who operated in the toddler range of maturation and intelligence should not register because their votes would reflect their adult care-givers opinions and not their own.  

Perhaps the elderly gentleman always and consistently voted straight Republican ticket in the years when he was able to clearly think for himself so his wife prompting him was consistent with how he had voted in the past.  But what if this year was different.  What if this year in a moment of mental clarity his opinion differed from his wife’s?  We will never know.  This year however, from my limited perception, his wife voted twice.    

I looked around and there were up against the far corner of the wall a row of screened in cubicles where people could stand and darken their oval choices in semi-privacy.  Every one of them was filled with people.  I looked at the line of people waiting to register their participation and pick up their ballots.  That line filled the small library and wound around and out the building entrance.  There were people leaning up against book cases darkening their choices.  Every table was filled with people. There was no room for a line to even be developed to wait for a screened in cubicle.  It simply did not exist.  I was not convinced that speaking up would have enabled a solution to open up that would limit the low hum of talking between voters as they filled in their choices and perhaps the choices of their neighbors.  It was too late to suggest the gymnasium as a better location for the freedom to vote one’s conscience.

The heading is a quote from St. Francis of Assisi who forever chided his followers to not rest on their laurels.  Justice is forever unfolding and sometimes it creases over on itself and looks like it is falling backwards before the next unfolding reveals its success. 

20 months ago the thought that America would even entertain the notion of electing an African American as president seemed surreal given its long history of inbred racism.  Yet, today, this is a reality with President-elect Barack Obama.  The possibilities his presidency offers America and the world are great. 

Yet, there is also the plight of equal marriage in this country.  It looks like Proposition 8 in California will be enacted into that state’s constitution and 18,000 same-gendered couples will have their marriages declared invalid. Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida also enacted constitutional amendments barring same gendered couples equal protection under the law.  The quest for equal rights for sexual minorities remains a long journey ahead. A journey in which the religious right continue to impose their faith constructs on millions of people who do not share their beliefs in direct opposition of our nation’s creed of religious freedom. 

The election of America’s first African American President is historic but it does not mean that our quest for justice in this country is now over.  In fact it is far from over.  We have work to do in striving to form a more perfect union where all people are able to experience their “unalienable rights, that among these are life,  liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

The election proved that we can succeed in having our dreams become realities if we are deligent and steadfast.  But we cannot afford to bask in our victories when there is so much more to be done in living up to this nation’s promise.

Let’s get to it.

The Mississippi based blog Cotton Mouth discusses an incident that was reported by WAPT of two junior highschool students thrown off their school bus in Pearl, MS for mentioning President Elect Obama’s name.  The Girl’s Basketball coach of the same junior high threatened to suspend any student who also invoked Obama’s name.   Allegedly the bus driver and the coach have been told their reactions were unwarranted and the children not punished. 

It has also been reported that some workplaces in Mississippi will not allow Obama’s name be spoken either.  One of my congregants stated that she saw a racist symbol about our president elect in a business establishment.  She became indignant and angry.   We all knew that racism would not be erased by simply voting into office an African American President.  Our work for racial equity remains a task uncompleted.  Let’s get to work. 

I offer this song by Jim Croce.  It seems to be an appropriate prophetic response. 

Blessing as a Spiritual Practice a sermon given by Rev. Fred L Hammond November 9 2008 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa, AL

As I picked up my package and began turning to leave the store, I heard the sales assistant say “Have a blest day.” I looked at her and saw her face smiling brightly, she meant what she said. This was not just a polite phrase her momma taught her. I hear this phrase a lot in the south, “Have a blest day.” It is not something I heard often in other parts of the country.

There is a difference between the phrases “Have a good day” and “Have a blest day.” Having a Blest day implies something more than just good. It signifies to me a day that is filled with grace, a day where love is shared freely, where all the traffic lights are green as you approach them and you soar to your destination unhindered.

These are days when I feel confident in who I am from the very core of my being. These are days that regardless of what events occur I can rest assured that the integrity of me is in tact and cannot be undermined in any way. But where does this come from this assuredness of integrity; this self confidence of my being. It is more than just someone in a store saying “Have a Blest day.”

This morning we celebrated a Blessing ceremony for one of our youngest members. You heard from Tyler’s parents and sister their blessings, their best hopes and dreams for him. You heard from family friends offering their blessings on Tyler as well. And then we as a congregation chimed in with our blessings.

This blessing ceremony was done in a style used in pagan circles. Where the energy of the individuals and the group focus their best thoughts and wishes on the one they wish to bless. The blessing according to pagan beliefs then acts as a spiritual shield for the child. It becomes a grounding point for the parents to remember and reflect on when parenting may stretch their skills. And it becomes a touchstone for Tyler to always know that he was born into a home of love and care for his best unlimited potential.

The blessing does not originate in a vacuum but is grounded in the ongoing relationship of the person being blessed and the person or persons offering the blessing. The fruition of the blessing may not be seen in the near future but may take decades to unfold as Tyler’s life twists and turns with the wide variety of experiences to be had. There may along his path be apparent defeats that might crush a blow if it was not for the grounding his parents and this congregation offered him today to hold fast to the promise of a fulfilling life of purpose and meaning.

Matthew Fox, theologian, speaks of what he calls Original Blessing. Before there could be any fall from grace, there was first and foremost an Original Blessing. Fox tells us that blessing is found in the metaphorical creation story. After each day, God “Looked at what he had done, and it was good… all of it was very good!”

Matthew Fox states that the creative energy that created the heavens and the earth, call it god, call it source, call it by what ever name, continues to create and invites creation to participate in its creating. There is a relationship in the bestowing of the blessing. Fox further states, “Blessing involves relationship: one does not bless without investing something of oneself into the receiver of one’s blessing. And one does not receive blessing oblivious of its gracious giver. A blessing spirituality is a relating spirituality. And if it is true that all of creation flows from a single, loving source, then all of creation is blessed and is a blessing, …” (Original Blessing p 44)

In this creation story is the investment of the creator in bringing about the creator’s best wishes for creation. The story tells us that the intention of creation is to be something of worth, to be something good. And if Matthew Fox is correct in his theorem, then ongoing creation is also something of worth, something good.

According to the Abraham myth found in Genesis, God said to Abraham, “…I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation. You will … be a blessing… Everyone on earth will be blessed because of you.”

This was done in the context of a covenant established between god and Abraham. Covenants are relational contracts between people. They convey how a people is to be in relation with one another. Covenants when followed convey how the people will be perceived by others. For the Children of Abraham, the covenant they made with God was to be a blessing to others, even if the others did not embrace their way of life.

From this covenant and from the stories of a people of faith in the Hebrew Scriptures, we have modern concepts of justice between people. It took the evolutionary journey of these ancient people to develop these notions of equitable justice but we do find them rooted in this tradition. Concepts such as those found in Leviticus, that book of law that is oft quoted by those seeking to repress others also has some of the most liberating verses on justice. Such as this one in Leviticus 19:34: “But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: ….”

Elsewhere in Deuteronomy (10:18) talks about showing justice to the orphan and the widow through providing food and shelter. The prophet Micah reminds the people of his day that God had already showed them how to know what is right…It is to love mercy, to act justly, and walk humbly with your god.

These are acts of blessing bestowed on another. It is through the ongoing covenant, the ongoing relationship of these people that blessing is bestowed. This is a daily process with a promise woven into the fabric. How that fabric is later to be used may still be unknown but its cloth will be a blessing to others.

Sometimes it is in the keeping the covenant to work towards justice that future blessings are finally realized. It is in the laying down of the groundwork that future blessings are able to sprout to their fruition.

There is the story of an elderly man who decided to plant fruit trees on his property. His neighbors chided him for doing this because it was evident that he would never live long enough to be able to benefit from his labors in planting these young saplings. The elderly man responded and said that he planted the trees not for himself but for those who would come after him and be blessed by the bountiful fruit these trees would offer. He was bestowing blessings into his future. He saw a vision of what could be and wanted his life to be a blessing towards that future.

Forty-three years ago, a young African American by the name of Jimmie Lee Jackson, ordained a deacon by his church, sought for four years to register to vote. He was denied. He knew that voting was his right as a citizen and he knew that it was a right for every citizen. He was determined to work towards voting rights.

When another young man, James Orange was arrested for assisting and recruiting potential voter registrants, Jimmie Lee marched in Marion, AL with hundreds of others in protest of the arrest. The police began to beat up the protesters and chased Jimmie Lee, his mother and his 82 year old grandfather into a café. The grandfather was beaten and when his mother attempted to get the police off of him, she too was beaten. Then when Jimmie Lee came to her aid, he was shot at point blank range by a State Trooper. It was Jimmie Lee’s death that provoked the march on Selma. Jimmie Lee’s belief that all people deserve the right to vote was a blessing that laid the foundations for what was to come. His untimely death was not in vain towards that goal.

In March of that year hundreds of ministers joined Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the march on Selma to again protest not only the inequity of the voting laws that kept African Americans from voting but also the extreme measures used to enforce this injustice. One Unitarian minister by the name of James Reeb was struck down while walking on a street. He went to Selma with the conviction that all people have inherent worth and dignity and therefore should be afforded equal rights.

Forty-three years ago, a young mother from Detroit Michigan, came down to Alabama to assist in voter registration efforts of African Americans. She knew that the promise of this country was that all of its citizens were created equal and had a voice in how this nation should be governed. She came and bestowed her blessing of knowing what was right and just for America. She had covenanted to work along side those who did not have the vote.

African Americans were given complicated and sometimes inane literacy tests geared for their failure. Unitarian Viola Liuzzo offered the blessing of standing along side people of color in their quest for the vote.

Forty-three years ago she was shot by four KKK members while driving an African American home after the march in Selma. The police and the FBI conducted a smear campaign to discredit her character enabling her murderers to be acquitted. Three of KKK were later convicted on violating her civil rights. Her family was subjected to all sorts of shame by the government in order to reduce her murder to that of an unfortunate woman who associated with people who did her wrong.

It was the events of these three deaths that resulted in the swift passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If you ever get a chance to visit the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Headquarters in Boston, you will see a plaque commemorating the lives of these three people and their efforts to bestow the blessing of freedom and justice for all people.

Rev. Martin Luther King had a dream. He said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King’s dream was bestowing a blessing on this nation. Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo were also part of the planting of that orchard of which they would never benefit of its fruit. Some blessings don’t always germinate and manifest as fast as we would like them. But blessings do go forth.

This past Tuesday, this nation elected a man based on the content of his character and not on the color of his skin. Now you may not have liked his politics and you may have voted for his opponent, that’s okay. The right to vote is the right to choose what our destiny is in moving forward. This election result could not have happened if the convictions of the promise of this nation were not held fast by these men and women in the civil rights movement.

Their efforts and the blessings they offered us were not forgotten by our denomination. After the election results came in, the UUA sent bouquets of yellow roses to Marie Reeb Maher, the widow of James Reeb, and to the daughters of Viola Liuzzo. Rev. Clark Olsen, who was with James Reeb when he was fatally attacked, helped orchestrate the honoring of their lives and their sacrifice that enabled this day to be possible.

Sally Liuzzo had this to say in response to receiving the roses, (quoted with permission from Ms. Liuzzo) “We have a policy at my job not to talk politics. All that was thrown out the window yesterday. My boss encouraged me to tell anyone that asked my mom’s story, when they questioned why I received yellow roses. …

“I cannot begin to explain the sense of pride I have right now for my mother and all the civil rights activists of that time. I feel like everything they have fought for, has now been realized. Black children will no longer feel like they are ‘less than’ and they will now know….they can be ANYTHING they set their minds out to be, Here I am crying again.

“Thank you from my sisters and [me], for never forgetting our mother. The three of us were totally overcome with emotion. I feel like mom’s sacrifice has now been worthwhile. Yes……she made a huge difference. I am so proud of America for getting past the limitations of race, and vote for what is best for our country.

“….Actually we feel like mom reached out…through the UU church…to send those flowers. The yellow roses told us that she had a hand in it. She has a mighty strong spirit….that is alive and well. …”

We may never know the impact our lives may have on another person nor how our actions for justice today will empower the people who come after us no matter what the immediate consequences of those actions may have been. But if we want to have blessing as a spiritual practice then I believe we must do several things.

The person offering blessings holds fast to the best possible potential for the lives of others. The person joins in a covenant which holds each other accountable towards these highest ideals. When the blessing being offered is to right an injustice, the perpetrators of injustice may not believe they are doing anything wrong, therefore the relationship needs to be one gently revealing the untruth they have bought into. It means to be willing to listen respectively and willing to state respectively where the error is found. The person stands firm in their convictions of the vision they see possible even when disappointment and failures happen.

In October 2002, I was asked to join the members of Soulforce to provide support to Lynchburg VA’s first pride celebration. We were also there to follow-up on a meeting we had with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and his congregation a few years before. I had joined Soulforce to meet with Rev. Falwell asking him to stop his anti-gay rhetoric because it was resulting in untold pain in the gay community. He promised to stop but in the days that followed 9/11 he blamed the gay community and other groups of people for the attack on our country by Al Qaeda.

On the Saturday of my time in Lynchburg, I was to be a peacekeeper, essentially a wall between the local queer community of Lynchburg and the ultra conservative Christians who were there to taunt them. The original plan placed us on one side of the road and the protestors were to be on the other side of the road, a good 25 feet away. However, the police allowed the anti-gay group to cross the road and they were standing with their chest up against my back screaming in my ear all sorts of foul things. Words my grandmother said no good Christian would even whisper let alone shout in mixed company. My task was to stand there silently ignoring their taunts and absorbing their hatred so that it would not interfere with the joy of the hundreds of young people coming out to proclaim who they were. We did not allow these taunts to rile us even though we were emotionally drained by the end of the day. The event with the exception of the loud jeering of hell fire went peacefully.

Then on Sunday morning we lined up in single file outside Thomas Road Baptist Church for a silent vigil to sadly confront the broken promise Jerry Falwell had made to us. One of the more touching moments for me was when I was standing in front of a neighbor’s house when a young father with a three week old infant came out to stand with us. He was a teacher at the local school and said he taught in his class room that all people are to be respected for who they are. He wanted the world his newborn son grew up in to be one where people would live their lives with the same inherent integrity that his son was born with. If his son were to be gay, he would want his son to be proud and able to live life as freely and fully as anyone else.

This was the contrast of the two days. I knew I was offering a blessing to those young people at the pride festival by standing there and absorbing the hate so to shield them from those blows. I knew that this young father and infant were being a blessing to me on Sunday, affirming the essence of my being, enabling me to continue to stand tall.

My vision of the blest day that is filled with grace, a day where love is shared freely, where all the traffic lights are green as you approach them and you soar to your destination unhindered is not here yet. There are still people who are seeking justice; justice in education, justice in marriage equality, justice in employment and housing, justice in racial equity, and justice in health care. There are people who are still in pain in the face of these injustices. It is my intention to be part of the blessing that enables justice to roll down like a mighty river. There is much work to be done. Let us begin our blessing work. Blessed be.

Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose untimely death in 1965 in Marion, AL during a protest march over the arrest of Civil Rights and Voter Registration activist James Orange, still has not found justice.  It was his death that led to the March on Selma which resulted in Bloody Sunday and the deaths of Unitarian Universalists Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo.  And ultimately to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

James Bonard Fowler, the state trooper who states he only shot Jimmie Lee in self-defense was indicted in 2007.  Interestingly this incident and another death of an African American male a year later in Fowler’s custody never show up in his personell records.   The trial which was supposed to begin on October 20, 2008 was postponed pending an appeal filed by the prosecution.  It is unknown when the appeal will be settled.

It is hard to have a murder trial 40 years after the event.  Memories are always distorted.  Truth is tarnished with each passing day.  The real question is after so many years can Justice finally have its day in court?