Shelley Jackson Denham

Evin Carvill Ziemer

Darrick Jackson

Alex Sherwood

Sarah Gettie McNeill

Jennica Davis-Hockett

Continue reading "Welcoming Neurodivergent Folx to Our Congregations"

JACK
CLF Member, incarcerated in TX

I’m a volunteer Suicide Companion, assigned to watch over and talk to other prisoners who are in crisis, severely depressed, who hear voices telling them to harm themselves, those who have found prison life beyond their ability to endure.

My schedule had me leaving my unit at 3am recently, only to find a gaggle of officers outside staring up at the moon, as it was nearing a total eclipse, something no other inmate was blessed to be outside to see.

As a Druid and practicing UU, we are taught that there are three facets we must honor—the Earth Path of nature awareness and natural living, the Sun Path of seasonal celebrations honoring the Sun’s cycles and the yearly cycle of growth and harvest, and the Moon Path. To live the Moon Path is to touch the divine energy that creates the universe and lives in all things. We do this through meditation and prayer, opening a wider awareness of the universe, ourselves, and our place in it.

Locked up, I seldom see the moon, since prison yards are islands of light at night, making the moon and stars invisible, and seldom are we even allowed out at night. So to see the full moon at 3am is true soul food. To see the moon nearly covered by the Earth’s shadow put my mind to thinking, meditating for days after.

The moon’s white color comes from the Sun’s rays. The blue tint is a reflection of the blue marble that is the Earth during the eclipse, the white and blue had become a dusky red-brown disk. I began to wonder if it was a reflection of my soul, my daily life. Prison has a way of tainting our lives with negativity and endless drama. It taints our Moon Path meditations and prayers.

Seeing the moon fainted by Earth’s shadow rather than the pure blue made me take stock of the red-brown reflection of my current life and the place I’ve allowed negativity to grow in it. The only way I’ve been able to do nearly 20 years behind bars has been to be positive, to reflect the pure blue, the pure white light of positivity, to not be drawn into the prison dramas and voices of negativity. Yet like the Moon’s eclipse, I’ve been eclipsed by those who live negative lives, those whose lives are drama, those who stare vacantly at nothing while the drug courses through their veins, and whose every waking minute is focused on finding something to alter their minds. I’ve allowed those who live negative lives, who live for drama, who live for conflict, and who live to escape reality to affect me.

My meditations since that 3am shocking visage have shown me the way out of my frustrating and negative prison games. The first way is to say: “No! I’m not going to play your games. I’ll be here to talk, if you need me to be a sounding board, to counsel you as a friend, but don’t bring your drama, your negativity to me. If you are going to do drugs, take it somewhere else, but I’ll gladly support you if you want to quit.”

At 76 with seven years to go on my sentence, I’m considered one of the trusted people by some, but to become a part of the problem negates my status as “old school,” and I begin to reflect the dull red-brown of the Moon’s eclipse and I begin to wallow in the my pity pot of negativity.

It was fated for me to see the total eclipse while over 1200 other inmates slept behind locked doors. It was fated for me to see the Moon’s Path when I had been sinking into the pit of negativity and feeling helpless to escape it. Once again the Moon’s path of reflective meditation allowed me to see the road to freedom from the negatives of prison life. It allowed me to be a touchstone for some who need me to listen and reflect, to help them overcome the ever-present negativity of prison life, the trap that we all face.

Buddha, the Goddess, Allah, or God of three persons — whichever — we are led when we open our lives to the creation of the universe, and we open our lives and our hearts to hear them speak to our souls.

Unitarian Universalist is the only one of widespread presence that works on this. To my knowledge.

#asuuforum @ All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church Kansas City, Missouri https://www.instagram.com/p/BwPT5lVHIlv/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=14anyavfgwkq0 …

Restorative justice is an act of giving back, not going back, for nothing will ever be the same as before the damage was done. Most justice is seen as retribution, or revenge. The victim is to be made whole again by the act of removing the perpetrator from society, punishing them in the hopes that by this act the victim will gain some kind of restoration, while the perpetrator’s years of incarceration may deter them from future misdeeds.

However, this system does nothing to truly restore the victim’s sense of loss and harm, and it produces even more victims. For every incarcerated person there is likely to be a spouse and children who are made destitute by the imprisonment. There are children who grow up without one of their parents in the home. And the larger system is victimized by what is so often the family’s need to rely on services such as food stamps and public health services.

Those who must manage the prisoners are also victimized by the rules and by being seen by their charges as captors. These guards then go home and may find it difficult to adopt the role of loving and listening parents and spouses. The rate of substance abuse and family dysfunction is high among prison guards, creating yet another generation of victims.

Most of all, the actual victim of the crime is not restored, for vengeance has no restorative qualities. They may well live in fear that they will once again become victims. Their lives are forever changed.

Restorative justice gives the victim the opportunity to take control, to give up that feeling of powerlessness. They may well be able to face their perpetrators and let them know just how their actions have caused damage— often permanent harm. It allows victims to be part of the legal process, not, as so often happens, becoming victimized once again by a process in which they have no say in the outcome. In many cases restorative justice gives the perpetrator the opportunity to perform acts of contrition to try to restore the lives they have harmed through their actions.

Restorative justice is often able to divert the perpetrators from long-term incarceration, and from the high social cost that goes along with it. The goal of restorative justice is to make whole that which was torn, with each of the participants emerging stronger than before, able to enjoy a sense of peace, responsibility and unity.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232810/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/05.mp3

There’s a community of Holiness Church, as well. Baptists, Methodists, Presperterian, Unitarian Universalist, 9 or 10 Roman Catholic Churchs. A synagogue, Laotian Buddhist Temple, 2-3 Wiccan groups, 1000s of Spiritualistsahs HooDoo practioners. A Ba’hai Temple

Gonna join a Unitarian Universalist church and convince the pastor to preach about Spinoza

"Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church says it will become South Carolina’s first “sanctuary church,” flouting the federal law that makes it illegal to knowingly harbor undocumented immigrants." https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article222573195.html …

That’s definitely a Unitarian Universalist stole on an officiant in the background, bearing their slogan “standing on the side of love.” Now I’m curious: did the UU send folks down for this? Or is that a local UU minister and the UUA just sends everyone the same stole worldwide? https://twitter.com/zackford/status/1064510370772062209 …

Yes, I'd have heard of it. I'm a Unitarian-Universalist. We've heard of pretty much everything. But why does "pandeism" need a messenger? What does it offer as a belief system that is more useful than good old secular humanism?

@BlackLivesUU hi, how can non-Facebook users receive info about virtual worship w #BLUU ?? I disengaged from FB a few years ago and have zero desire to utilize it going forward but want to become more active w BLUU. Thank you!!

Meanwhile, the head of Unitarian Universalist Association appears to be in Sen. Grassley’s office participating in a protest action in support of Kavanugh’s accusers. https://twitter.com/sfrederickgray/status/1045328883959181314 …

@wallstreeter43 @jandrew62956555 @EBatterson @_NIKD_ @DrJ_WasTaken @adr3n Nice try, but I'm a Unitarian-Universalist.

@wallstreeter43 @jandrew62956555 @EBatterson @_NIKD_ @DrJ_WasTaken @adr3n Nice try, but I'm a Unitarian-Universalist.

Head of the Unitarian Universalist Association condemns #MuslimBan2 as “un-American” and an attack on “single religious group.”pic.twitter.com/041Rzz77Vd

Head of the Unitarian Universalist Association condemns #MuslimBan2 as “un-American” and an attack on “single religious group.”pic.twitter.com/041Rzz77Vd