“I Speak for the Trees” ~ Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum
I will do my best to beIt's obvious that the Girl Scouts in the response videos have learned what it means to be "considerate and caring," "courageous and strong," "friendly and helpful," "responsible for what I say and do," to "respect myself and others," and, most importantly, to "be a sister to every Girl Scout."
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
Our concern with ‘All American Muslim’ is that it does not accurately represent the term Muslim, which is a follower of Islam and a follower of Islam believes in radicalization, the use of Sharia law, which provides for honor killings, mutilation of women and numerous other atrocities to women.Despite how often we hear anti-Muslim rhetoric in our society, this piece of vitriol really shocked me. His objection to the show is that it portrays moderate, average, peaceful American Muslims. Apparently a religious extremist like Katon can't believe that moderates within other religions exist. He paints a caricature of Muslims and then claims that anyone who doesn't look like his caricature isn't Muslim, and that moderate, peaceful Islam doesn't exist.
Lowe's has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.No, Lowe's, what you did wasn't a response to controversy; what you did was a response to bigotry. The controversy wasn't something you acted in response to, it was something caused by your action. And your non-apology of "If we have made anyone question that commitment (to allowing people to have 'different views'), we apologize" isn't going to throw us off track while you continue to bow to the wishes of the hate-mongering bigots by not advertising on a show which is all about showing this thing you've just stated you have a commitment to--differing views. You're daring to tell us that you have a commitment to allowing different views, and then pulling ads from a show highlighting difference because the bigots say different views can't really exist?
I was at a UU leadership function. I met a really smart, really energetic and sweet guy. The kind of guy that any church elder or pastor would love to recruit onto the board. He volunteered his path to me: “I’m a Buddhist-Humanist,” he said. Then he took a swig of fair trade coffee while I told every particle of my being that, no, I would NOT roll my eyes.Here's the thing: Yes, you can. And that's part of what Unitarian Universalism is about. She says, "Be a Buddhist or a Humanist and do the work, because I suspect that claiming a hybrid philosophy might have something to do with wanting to be “spiritual” without the messy work of transformation." But sometimes "doing the work" of theology is in studying and understanding multiple religious traditions and understanding that each of them have to be adapted in some way to fit with one's own spiritual beliefs. I know there are critics of Building Your Own Theology out there, but I think it had a lot of things right. In Unitarian Universalism we do pick and choose and create hybrid theologies. And in many cases this is because we have "done the work" -- a lot more so than your average non-hybrid-believer. By way of example, a recent Pew study showed that atheists know a lot more about religion than the average believer.
You can’t be a Buddhist-Humanist. You just can’t.
A singular antecedent requires a singular referent pronoun. Because he is no longer accepted as a generic pronoun referring to a person of either sex, it has become common in speech and in informal writing to substitute the third-person plural pronouns they, them, their, and themselves, and the nonstandard singular themself. While this usage is accepted in casual contexts, it is still considered ungrammatical in formal writing.The Chicago Style Manual recommends all the usual work-arounds: "he or she," plural subjects, imperative mood, rewrite the noun, revise the sentence, etc. I couldn't find as clear a statement out of the MLA or APA, but my understanding is that they offer the same options. The textbook I'm using for my class, The Little Seagull Handbook, offers these same work-arounds.
{?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?}except that { and } are lesser-than and greater-than symbols -- I can't seem to type them in my blog without it becoming the code. I'm too lazy right now to figure out the work-around which I assume is pretty simple although complicated to Google, so I'm going this route. If you look at the code on the page, you'll see everything easily. It's in pretty-straight-forward html without bells and whistles. Anyway, that code does the trick, and the webpage is sized correctly. As long as whatever tables (and the cells in the table) you're using don't have a specified width or height, everything will wrap to fit on the mobile screen. Then it's just a matter of designing it such that you're not putting too much text up there, so that people don't have to scroll too much. You do want fonts and icons bigger than usual to make them easier to tap on. I'm going with font sized 5 (18pt), and it's workable, although perhaps still on the small side for larger fingers. My icons on the bottom are sized about 32 pixels high, and again they're on the small side to easily tap on.
{!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"}
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.(Note that many of the versions being shared have a sentence tacked on the beginning that was not King's, but the rest of the statement--all of that quoted above--was his. Jessica Dovey, Facebook user and English teacher apparently wrote the now oft-quoted sentence, "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.") One of the quickest ways we justify rejoicing at Osama bin Laden's death is by dehumanizing him, by making him pure evil, almost the devil himself. That's the response I heard from friends and acquaintances as the discussion launched from one Facebook friend's post to another: "He was evil." Once we make him evil, he becomes less than human, and we can respond with pure hate and pure rejoicing at his death.
Ground Zero is a war memorial, Ground Zero is a burial ground. We are asking for sensitivity…It is unconscionable to build a shrine to the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks at Ground Zero, right there. We are asking the imam Rauf and Daisy Khan to be sensitive. For mutual respect and mutual understanding that is demanded of us every day.If it was a shrine to "the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks," I would, indeed, think it was insensitive. What is the ideology of the Cordoba Initiative?
The programs at Cordoba Initiative (CI) are designed to cultivate multi-cultural and multi-faith understanding across minds and borders. In the ten years since our founding, the necessity to strengthen the bridge between Islam and the West continues to prevail. Cordoba Initiative seeks to actively promote engagement through a myriad of programs, by reinforcing similarities and addressing differences.The imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has been attacked as extremist and supporting terrorism is in fact a peaceful Sufi who has worked in interfaith circles for years, and, with Unitarian Universalism's own Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz, co-authored "The End of Barbarism? The Phenomenon of Torture and the Search for the Common Good." In it they write that there are two great religious commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor, and:
...the core of Islamic law, the Sharia, is built on these two fundamental commandments, with the sole difference that “to honor God and neighbor,” rather than “to love God and neighbor," more accurately captures the nuances of these commandments in Islamic legal language... Even today in many parts of the non-Western world, to deprive someone of his dignity and honor, to make him “lose face,” is to make him suffer a fate worse than death.
There is, then, a code of behavior that is based on eternal ethical principles common to the Abrahamic faith traditions, namely, that if we would love and honor the Holy, we must treat our fellow human beings with basic respect. This principle in turn is fundamental to any notion of the “common good.” For the common good presumes that human beings share certain needs and values that transcend religious, racial or political differences.The argument that building Park 51 close to the World Trade Center site is insensitive rests on the equation of this peaceful Sufi group with a history of both interfaith work and active work against terrorism and barbarism with the terrorists responsible for the attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is an equation that is deeply insensitive itself in that it denies the differences that exist in Islam, ignores that Sufi Muslims are themselves often persecuted and targeted by those same extremist groups, and ignores that whereas the terrorists were not, these peaceful Muslims are Americans who have been living, working, and worshiping in New York City for decades--it is not a case of outsiders moving in and erecting a monument to something foreign, it is Americans building a house of peace in their own neighborhood. It ignores that Muslims died on September 11th, too. It ignores that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his congregation went and distributed water to the rescue workers after the September 11th attacks. It ignores that the imam has worked with our government to understand Islam and to keep Muslim American groups terrorist-free. It ignores that these Muslims have been victims of religious intolerance within their own country--America--and yet still care enough about our freedoms and our beliefs to want to create a center to help us explore our own stereotypes and learn to work more peacefully with them.
What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, author and anthropologist (Zombie.)Zombies are commonly understood to be an element of Voodoo religion. The Voodoo religion is perhaps one of the most misunderstood religions in our culture, right up there with Wicca or Witchcraft—it’s commonly characterized as a Satanic religion, as devil-worshipping, and evil. We see this Voodoo in popular culture all the time, even in something like Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, where the evil “Shadow Man” character responsible for the froggy transformations is a practitioner of Voodoo. So it’s difficult to say anything about what zombies mean in Voodoo, since just about everything one can read on the subject is filtered through a biased lens by the time it gets into our mainstream culture. We saw a lot of misconceptions about Voodoo shared after the earthquake in Haiti, such as the quote from Pat Robertson who said that Haiti is cursed for making a pact with the devil.
…zombies are a great metaphor. The great mass of humanity often comes across to us as unreasoningly hostile and driven to consumption, and the image of the zombie captures this perfectly." ~ David Barr Kirtley, author (Adams 2).Zombies are the perfect metaphor for any group of people we see as other than ourselves, and that we fear in some way. We can see zombies as metaphors for minorities, for example. George A. Romero’s iconic movie, Night of the Living Dead, which created the genre of the zombie movie, does this with the issue of race. As Stephen Harper writes:
To many people, it seemed as though there might be a race war in America. Conservative, reactionary discussions of this possibility often focused — as they sometimes do today — on the possibility that "we" might soon be outnumbered by "them." The line in Night of the Living Dead "we don't know how many of them there are" highlights this racist concern with numbers and the fear of being outnumbered or "swamped."(Harper)Zombies can also be seen as an AIDS metaphor. Ever since Night of the Living Dead, the image of a zombie as created by a witchdoctor has been replaced by the image of a zombie plague—zombies are created through some sort of initial virus, which then spreads to each person the zombie bites, creating new zombies that become a zombie plague. It’s easy to see the parallels that existed in the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, where people didn’t know what was causing AIDS, feared that it would become a plague that would kill humanity. Richard Bamattre writes:
In many films the monsters are set on fire by the humans; this not only makes for dynamic filmic imagery, but references the burning of bodies during epidemics, particularly the Bubonic Plague. Other issues of viral containment are explored; the entire nation of Great Britain is transformed into a quarantine in 28 Days Later as global authorities hope to contain the virus until the infected die out. The concept of quarantine is distinctive in that it attempts to physically separate the kingdoms: citizens of the kingdom of the sick are imprisoned within the terrain of the healthy and are subjected to surveillance and often experimentation of a scientific or medical origin.(Bamattre)Writer Nina Auerbach has said, “Every age has the vampire it needs.” Arguably, the dominant monsters of every age reflect the dominant fears of the society. And so, of course, Ramero’s original zombies reflected issues of racism, later zombies reflected issues of AIDS, current zombies reflect issues of illegal immigration. These are our fears, and we take them, label them other, and make zombies of them so that we can defeat them. As Max Brooks said, “"It's safe to do something like a zombie walk -- it isn't so fun to do a swine flu walk," Brooks said, “If, at a party, you bring up how you'd survive a zombie attack, you'd be the life of the party. But if you say, 'What would you do if super-AIDS came to America?' you'd clear the room" (Gross). Mark Dery writes:
The zombie is a polyvalent revenant, a bloating signifier that has given shape, alternately, to repressed memories of slavery’s horrors; white alienation from the darker Other; Cold War nightmares of mushroom clouds and megadeaths; the post-traumatic fallout of the AIDS pandemic; and free-floating anxieties about viral plagues and bioengineered outbreaks (as in 28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead, troubled dreams for an age of Avian flu and H1N1, when viruses leap the species barrier and spread, via jet travel, into global pandemics seemingly overnight.(Dery)
"Live" Free or Die.A little while ago, when I was teaching English composition, a student of mine asked if for her argument paper she could write a paper on why zombies deserved equal rights to the living. I let her do it, and then another student jumped on board with the counter-argument. It was an interesting dialogue about the nature of civil rights, and how and why they get extended to the next group and the next group and the next group—to African-Americans, to women, to gays and lesbians, to immigrants, and to the undead.
Throughout history, great men and women have had to struggle against dictators and tyrants who wanted to keep them from living the way these men and women felt that they should.
Zombies might not be "alive" or "living" in the traditional sense, but does that mean that they're letting anybody mess with them or keep them down? Hell no. ~ The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead, Scott Kenemore. (112)
The appeal of zombies is that it plays on everyone’s fear of death. A zombie represents death to the characters, and to readers and viewers. Death will always be in the back of their minds. It’s an unrelenting, unstoppable force, just like death. Zombies are out to get you; no matter how hard you try, eventually everyone has to succumb to it. It’s really an exploration of everyone’s natural fear of death. ~ Robert Kirkman, author of The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 ("What Do")This is the obvious: the greatest, most ultimate fear of humanity is death. Our religions of the world are all about what is ultimate, but also what is after death—and we have a hundred answers for this greatest question—heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, becoming one with the universe, becoming part of God, becoming dust. And so many religions and cultures give us examples of triumph over death, from the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, with Gilgamesh seeking eternal life, to figures who go down into the land of the dead and return such as the Sumerian goddess Inanna (or Ishtar), or the Greek stories of Orpheus trying to rescue Eurydice or Persephone who goes and returns each year to and from the land of the dead, to Odin in the Norse tales who dies and is resurrected, to Jesus of Nazareth triumphing over death both through performing miracles of resurrection and his own resurrection. Through our religions and our folk tales we are constantly telling tales of ways people triumph over death, or not.
…do we embrace these ideas as an indirect way of processing the horror that we feel at the reality of war and torture and death? The films that have covered the war in Iraq, its foundations and its consequences, have by and large been ignored by audiences, and yet during the height of our horror at the developments there, horror films that dealt with parallel subject matter in a setting and genre divorced from reality were hugely successful. ~ Christopher Golden, editor of The New Dead. (Golden x)and a second quote:
"I will never forget that I am a member of the Living, fighting for freedom and life, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principle that keeps my country and earth alive. --Code of Conduct, from U.S. Army Zombie Combat SkillsZombie movies are all about the battle, and they are popular at a time, like all times, when we have people out there fighting real wars, against real enemies. It is possible that the zombie movie is our way of dehumanizing our enemy, or, conversely, of making the real fights seem less real through our absorption of fake violence. When we watch a zombie movie or play a zombie video game, we can cheer at the decapitation of the enemy without guilt. We can rejoice in violence against an enemy that is unambiguously evil. Do we then extend that over to our real wars, and carry the dehumanization to the real enemies we fight?
Anyone who's killed by a zombie ought to be ashamed of themselves. It's the equivalent of a fighter jet being blown out of the sky with a Nerf dart. Humans are superior to zombies in every imaginable way: We're faster, smarter, stronger, more adaptable, and better looking. And yet, in zombie movies, our so-called heroes hole themselves up in a highly vulnerable location at the first sight of a limper. They sit around scratching their heads and getting hysterical while an army of the dead amasses outside instead on simply planning a counterattack. (Graheme-Smith 108-109)
Zombies don’t worry. Not about themselves. Not about others. Not about climate change. Nothing.
Zombies have “enough” of what they need in life (with the exception of living brains). Yet are, at the same time, “driven” with a passion and intensity that any CEO or motivational speaker would envy. Zombies don’t stop. Zombies don’t rest. And yet, zombies are at peace with this ceaselessness. You can be too. ~ From Scott Kenemore’s The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead (Kenemore 2).Zombie is a term used in our popular culture for someone who is just going through the motions. We’ll say, “He was a total zombie at work today.” Many people today have a sense that what they are doing from day to day lacks meaning, lacks importance. They’ve become zombies in everyday life.
Here at the UUMA Convocation in Ottawa, Ontario, a continent-wide gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers. The last Convo was in 2002 in Birmingham, AL, so it's been seven years since we've had this meeting. Our keynote lecture is from Thomas Moore.
Thomas Moore began our lecture today with a Sufi story: Nazruddin asked a couple of men, what do you want people to say about you when you're lying there in the coffin and people are talking about you. The first one said he wanted to remembered as a good man. The second one wanted to be remembered as someone with a big heart. Then they asked Nazruddin what he wanted them to say about him. Nazruddin said, "I'd like them to look at me and say, 'Look! He's moving!'"Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it.and then:
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.and then:
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.After the vote in Maine this week, I ask:
Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.
I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.and:
this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to buildand:
these challenges can be met, so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.and:
This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration; it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.This isn't merely rhetoric. It's a major paradigm shift. And it's one I struggled against in deciding to ultimately vote for Obama. I thought he was pushing responsibility away and avoiding making promises with his language about how it takes all of us. Over time, however, I came to see that he was really creating a new vision about how we do things in this country, one that just might pull us back to some of the values that were great about America, such as civic engagement, and at the same time pull us into a future which is embracing new values, such as environmental responsibility, global citizenship, and diversity. I began to see that in talking about how we would do this together he wasn't advocating responsibility, he was claiming leadership, and I had to let myself be led.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.If you think, well, Jesus just talks about visiting sick people, think about the medical knowledge of the time. Visiting a sick person then was pretty risky—you didn’t know that you wouldn’t be contaminated and die. Jesus asks people to risk their lives to take care of the sick. That’s a whole lot more risky than anything we’re being asked today to do to care for the sick. And, of course, many of Jesus’ miracles have to do with healing, most famously raising Lazarus up from the dead, but in over twenty other accounts in the New Testament he heals the sick. If you look at all the miracles credited to Jesus, about 70 percent of them are healing, if you count groups of people being healed as one miracle. Now, I’m also counting raising the dead and exorcisms as healing. But this is basically all he does, other than turning water into wine one time and cursing a fig tree. Basically, this is what Jesus does during his life: he wanders around, gives lectures, and performs miracles. And the miracles he performs are almost always healing the sick. And the lectures he gives often talk about how we treat other people.
Atheist: Someone who does not believe in God. There are many distinctions you can make among atheist--strong, weak, implicit, explicit, practical, theological--but the two major ones are strong atheism vs. weak atheism. A strong Atheist believes that it is certain and clear that there is no God. A weak Atheist does not believe in God, but doesn't assert the lack of God--it could be said to include all forms of non-theists.I put myself in the category of Agnostic and would call it a meta-strong Agnosticism: I believe it's currently unknowable whether or not it is unknowable whether or not God exists. And I'm a Religious Humanist. I once preached a controversial sermon in my internship congregation called "A Humanist's Search for God," and was told by some Humanists that a Humanist can't search for God. (I would call them church-going Secular Humanists, which seems like an oxymoron, yet I've encountered many in Unitarian Universalist churches.)
Non-theist: Someone who does not assert a belief in God. I would include Agnostics, Atheists, most Buddhists, and many others in this group. Some would argue any non-theist is an atheist. I generally reserve the term "Atheist" for the group that is really strong Atheists, and use "non-theists" as the catch-all term.
Agnostic: Someone who does not know whether or not God exists. Again, can be divided into many categories, the main ones being strong or weak. A weak Agnostic does not know if there is a God, but may feel that they are still weighing evidence or will receive more evidence. A strong Agnostic believes that ultimately it's unknowable whether or not God exists.
Humanist: Humanism has meant many things, but right now I'll borrow a definition from the Continuum of Humanist Education: "Humanism is a godless philosophy based on reason and compassion." A major distinction I would make among Humanists is religious Humanists and secular Humanists. Secular Humanists would assert that Humanism is a philosophy and has nothing to do with religion. Religious Humanists can see Humanism as a religion, albeit one that does not require a belief in God. It is also possible to believe in God and be a Humanist, I would assert. If you follow a "godless philosophy based on reason and compassion" that does not mean you cannot believe in God. Theistic Humanists may be rare, but they exist.
And a Note on Capitalization: Many Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists would not capitalize these words, and many do not capitalize God. I choose to capitalize God except when I am specifically pointing out that there are a number of different gods that have been believed in by different cultures. It is important to recognize that Atheists don't believe in any god, however, not just the Judeo-Christian God. I choose to capitalize here, although I'm often inconsistent, the terms Atheist, Agnostic, and Humanist out of a measure of respect for them as religious or areligious systems. That is certainly arguable, and I imagine it will be argued. I support you who do not capitalize in your lack of capitals. I choose to differ.
Imagine there's no countriesYes, folks, WE ARE A RELIGION. And I am tired of UUs glorifying the notion of no religion at church. Yes, I like the song, too, and you all sing it beautifully, but it's time to own up to the fact that we are a religion. But just as I "let" the song be sung in church, I was not ready to write a protest letter about the ad in the UU World.
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
The message of the election is clear: We Unitarian Universalists want our movement to change. We want to embrace the possibilities inherent in these uncertain times. We are not reconciled to being a declining part of American religious life. We have too much to offer. The world needs our prophetic and compassionate voice.If we have a prophetic voice to share, if there's a purpose to being Unitarian Universalists, and we want to grow our faith, what are we doing putting an advertisement in the very front of our magazine that mocks exactly what Peter Morales is calling us to? Why do we begin by cutting ourselves down before we can even hear his words of prophecy and power? Advertising money? It's not a good enough reason to cut down our message so effectively.
Rant: That is the most nonsensical non-apology I have ever read. Honestly. It begins by saying he'll never apologize but ends with an apology? And "if I offended"??? Clearly he did. So why the "if"? And he stands by the comparison of Obama to Hitler, yet the sign misrepresented his views? Say what you mean, Duckham, and say this:Reached by phone after the press conference, Duckham said he does not believe an apology is in order. Although his actions at the rally might not have been the best choice, Duckham said, he still stands by his comparisons between Nazi politics and Obama's plans for restructuring America.
"Was it my best choice to carry the sign — no. In hindsight, I wouldn't have done it," Duckham said. "But I will stick to my point that I was trying to make."
At the Jackson County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday night Duckham told attendees — some of whom demanded an apology — that the sign did not convey his message properly and misrepresented his views. He said he intends to take more care in expressing his opinions in the future.
"Apologize for my views? Never," Duckham said after the meeting. "But if I offended anyone, I apologize. That was never my intent."
I believe Obama is like Hitler, but I regret that I said so publicly because it brought me under fire. I do not apologize for what I did, but I regret that you noticed it.A somewhat more thoughtful analysis:
At the recent community forum that our church hosts, in conjunction with the library, on healthcare, I shared some of what I, and this church, went through in trying to find healthcare for me when I came here. I assume that the board was informed of some of this, and the search committee of some of it, but that probably most of it was known only to Alice D., Bob L., and myself, as we struggled with the situation. I was, when I started work here, a little less than eight months pregnant. Both the people at church, and myself, I think had not thought it would be as much of a problem to switch healthcares as it turned out to be. I couldn’t just stay with my existing healthcare, because it was a regional plan for Massachusetts, and delivering my baby here would be “out of network.” Every plan we could find here, at first, considered my pregnancy a “pre-existing condition.” We finally found that if we joined as a group, as a business, rather than getting individual coverage I could be covered, but only if my current insurance was part of a group. Fortunately, through sheer luck, it was. I had to go through some work to prove that, we had to switch insurance agents, because one said it couldn’t be done, and in the end I had pretty much continual coverage. To get the healthcare insurance, I had to show proof of ordination—which involved a quick trip to the framers, who had my certificate of ordination for framing at the time, and I had to show my marriage license. I had never had to show my marriage license for any purpose, and, in fact, didn’t have a copy. Fortunately, Chicago will let you order an emergency copy by phone, but at first they had lost the record of our marriage! They found it in the nick of time, and I was able to get our whole family covered.What does this story mean to me? Again, it shows several ways in which the system is broken: even if you have insurance, if you move or switch jobs, your pre-existing conditions may not be covered; if you have insurance and it's not an employer-provided insurance, if you switch insurances your pre-existing conditions will not be covered; with some insurances, if you go "out of network," you're basically uncovered; if you're covered by insurance but you need to move to providing your own insurance plan that's not employer-based, your pre-existing conditions will not be covered. Basically, in most cases, you cannot lose your job or switch your insurance, or any pre-existing conditions will not be covered. Again, in order to find coverage, I had two volunteers, myself, and two insurance agents working on the situation constantly for over a month.
What did I learn from this? If you have the time and energy, and some good help, and are willing to spend a month hassling with the system pretty much continuously—I spent my entire study leave on this project, while Peter packed boxes—then you can sometimes, with a great deal of luck, work the system. The good news now is that we now have a denominational health plan, so ministers in situations like mine can carry their insurance from church to church—a major bonus for those professional interims, for example.
As a person of faith and as a citizen, I am appalled at County Commissioner Phil Duckham’s public actions and statements comparing Obama to Hitler. They were callous and insensitive comparisons. Comparing Obama to Hitler shows ignorance of Hitler’s motivations and actions, and insensitivity to the Holocaust survivors in our own community.
I invite any making such comparisons to do more to inform themselves. Actions I have taken to inform myself that I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand Hitler and the Holocaust include reading Anne Frank, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, and our own local Miriam Winter; meeting and listening to Holocaust survivors; going to the excellent Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI; taking courses on the Holocaust; and visiting Auschwitz.
Arthur Caplan recently wrote for MSNBC, “There is plenty to debate about health reform. But there is nothing to debate about the contemptible introduction of references, direct or oblique, to Nazi Germany. To do so is to engage in Holocaust denial. To do that is, as those Americans of the greatest generation who died or were injured fighting the Nazi menace well understood, inexcusable.”
Rev. Cynthia L. Landrum, Minister
Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty
"This is how Hitler started out," Duckham said. "First, Obama took over the auto industry, then the banking industry. We don't need him to take over the health care industry."
“Our results suggest that it is postmodernism, not science, that is the bête noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century.”
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I've been searching for a way to respond individually, and a way for our church to respond to this increase in violent hate crimes. Our monthly commUnity forUm series may provide an opportunity, if we can find the right spin that makes this make sense for a forum. Meanwhile, I'll be looking to the "Standing on the Side of Love" campaign for ideas.Hate crimes strike against our nation’s highest values—equality, justice,
and diversity. People of conscience must answer ignorance and anger by standing
with the victims on the side of love and tolerance. As a nation we have to get
beyond violence as our first response to difference. We need to find a way to
move toward the beloved community, not in spite our differences but in
celebration of them.
It is the intent of the City of Jackson that no person be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of his or her civil or political rights or be discriminated against because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, height, weight, condition of pregnancy, marital status, educational association, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status. As used herein, "perceived" refers to the perception of the person who acts, and not to the perception of the person for or against whom the action is taken. (Source: PFLAG)Last night, the City Council tabled it until the July 14 meeting, and referred it to the city attorney for review. Ten people spoke up about the ordinance at the meeting, myself included. Only two were against it: one representative of the American Family Association, who apparently has spoken before the council on this issue before, and a deacon of Village Hope Church who spuriously linked the issue to same-sex marriage, saying that people had voted against same-sex marriage in this state and that the voters would therefore be against this, too. Personally, I think that a lot of people put marriage in a protected category and would still be willing to extend basic civil rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. To make a jump from a vote several years ago on same-sex marriage to this issue is a logical fallacy. And those of you, gentle readers, who know that I also teach English composition, know how I feel about logical fallacies.