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At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.
– Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen,
urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling before October
This week’s featured post is “Seven Days in January“.
He’s the subject of the featured post.
It was not close. With 84% of the expected vote counted (a lot is still in the mail, I imagine), only 37% voted to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, and 63% voted not to recall him. That’s similar to the margin Joe Biden had over Donald Trump in California in 2020 (63%-34%), and Newsom’s original margin in 2018 (62%-38%).
The original theory of the recall was that anti-Newsom Republicans would be motivated to vote, while Newsom-supporting Democrats would be apathetic. Republicans also hoped for a popular rejection of Newsom’s aggressive approach to fighting Covid (vaccine mandates for state employees and health-care workers). Neither of these ideas panned out. In particular, exit polls showed 47% saying Newsom’s coronavirus policies were “about right”, with another 18% saying “not strict enough”.
Bizarrely, both Trump and leading GOP replacement candidate Larry Elder claimed that the results were fraudulent before there were any results. The day before the election, Elder’s web site said
statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor.
as if the recall’s failure — and its vote-patterns — had already been known before any votes were counted. Former state GOP chair Ron Nehring called the statement “grossly irresponsible” and speculated that Elder’s claim may have discouraged Republicans from voting. (Why vote if the election has already been decided by fraud?)
The election threw a spotlight on California’s strange recall process, which can allow a replacement candidate to squeak into office with a tiny slice of the vote. For example, if we count all the No votes on recall as votes for Newsom, then Newsom has 6.8 million votes counted, while top replacement vote-getter Elder has only 2.8 million. It is not hard to construct a scenario in which a sitting governor has the support of 49% of the electorate, but gets replaced by someone with 25% support or less.
BTW, Elder’s total is being reported as 47%, but that’s only 47% of the people who voted for a replacement candidate. His 2.8 million votes is only 26% of the 10.6 million ballots cast.
The recall is an extreme example of the GOP’s nationwide election strategy: Rather than look for a 2022 candidate moderate enough to compete for a majority of votes in a California governor’s race, Republicans opted to manipulate a process that could allow an extreme conservative to gain power without a majority.
CNN correspondent Josh Campbell:
It was interesting how many California voters I spoke with at the polls said the Texas abortion ban motivated them to come out and vote against the recall of their governor.
Democrats are also counting on the abortion issue to work in their favor in Virginia, which has a gubernatorial election in November.
Nationwide, the surge seems to be turning around, but the more specific story is that it’s shifting. The current wave started in the Ozark region of Missouri/Arkansas, moved south to the Gulf coast, and now has shifted northeast into the Appalachian region. The most dangerous part of the country right now is Kentucky/Tennessee/West Virginia, where new cases per 100K people are in the vicinity of 100, compared to 45 nationwide.
As a Northeasterner, I worry that the surge is still coming my way: The next likely destination for the wave is central Pennsylvania, where vaccination rates are still below 30% in some counties.
New-infection numbers are also high in rural counties in the mountain West and in Alaska, though their populations are too small to have much influence on the national totals.
Death totals, which tend to lag behind infections, continue to rise nationwide. That average is now over 2000 deaths per day. The peak death totals were around 3300 per day in mid-January, when hardly anyone was vaccinated yet. When you consider how many people are vaccinated now (54% of the total population, including 83% of the most vulnerable over-65 age group), and how effectively the vaccines have prevented death (New Hampshire reported this week that only 24 of its 413 deaths since January 20 have been fully vaccinated people.), it is scary to imagine how many deaths we’d be having if the Delta variant had hit before we had vaccines.
Previously, the Biden administration had been proposing that all recipients of the Pfizer Covid vaccine (like me) get a third booster shot at some point. Friday, a CDC advisory panel endorsed that idea only for people over 65 (me in another month) and those at special risk.
βItβs likely beneficial, in my opinion, for the elderly, and may eventually be indicated for the general population. I just donβt think weβre there yet in terms of the data,β said Dr. Ofer Levy, a vaccine and infectious disease specialist at Boston Childrenβs Hospital.
Boosters for the other vaccines are under consideration, but the data hasn’t been analyzed yet.
A poll by Fox News (of all people) shows the public getting behind anti-Covid measures like vaccine and mask mandates in ever-increasing numbers.
Sometimes I agree with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and sometimes I don’t, but I am consistently in awe of her political talent. If you’re looking for traditional skills, she can give a speech or grill a witness with the best of them. But she can also tweet and troll and manipulate public attention in all the 21st-century ways.
The dress she wore to the Met Gala (an annual high-priced fund-raiser for the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) was one of the great political stunts. Ordinarily, the Met Gala is a contest in which celebrities dress up to compete for a fairly small amount of attention. (I don’t remember what anybody wore to previous Met Galas. Do you?) AOC didn’t just win that contest this year, she blew past the usual bounds of the event, so that people who ordinarily pay no attention to the Gala are talking about her. And she connected that attention to a popular political slogan: Tax the Rich.
You might be thinking: OMG, she walked into conservative criticism for hypocrisy. (I mean, what’s a socialist doing at a $35,000-a-ticket event anyway?) If so, you don’t understand the current political culture: In order to really command attention, you need to bait your enemies into attacking you in over-the-top ways that force your allies to defend you. That back-and-forth seizes center stage in a way that an unimpeachable statement never could. Trump pioneered the technique in 2016, and so reduced Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio to playing minor roles in his drama. Marjorie Taylor Greene has learned from the master, catapulting herself from obscurity to national prominence.
Among Democrats, only AOC seems to understand how this works. The Tucker Carlsons and Laura Ingrahams can’t get her out of their heads, so she can never be out of the spotlight for long.
BTW, she has good answers to the various questions that have been raised: Like other New York political leaders, she was invited to the gala and did not pay $35K to get in. The dress was borrowed from the designer, a woman of color, who also got significant positive attention from AOC’s stunt.
Finally, given all the attention paid to what women in politics wear, I appreciated seeing AOC turn that attention to her advantage. All those people who were going to stare at her butt anyway could stare at “Tax the Rich”.
An aside: Remember back in 2008 how Republicans went on and on about how hot Sarah Palin was?
Disney Princess theology. This comes from Erna Kim Hackett’s essay “Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking About White Supremacy”.
White Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology. As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt.
For citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when studying Scripture is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society β and it has made them blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice. It is some very weak Bible work.
I am reminded of something a religious educator at my church once told me: Lots of articles tell you what you should do if your kid is being bullied at school. But hardly any articles address the possibility that your kid is the bully.
You can see a lot of Disney Princess thinking in the way some Christian churches have responded to Covid: Everything is a plot to oppress them, because they are the center of the Universe. Shutting churches wasn’t a byproduct of a reasonable effort to limit crowds, shutting churches was the point! If the government can send people door-to-door to promote vaccines, it can send them door-to-door to confiscate Bibles!
Why should American Christians imagine that anybody wants to confiscate their Bibles? (I have literally never heard anybody propose confiscating Bibles. Even the atheist equivalent of “locker room talk” doesn’t go there.) Because telling the story that way makes them the damsels in distress, when actually they are the villains preventing America from beating this virus.
The Christian anti-vaxxers aren’t the faithful Israelites, they’re the Israelites who complained about manna.
Thursday Special Counsel John Durham indicted Michael Sussman, a cybersecurity attorney for the Perkins Coie law firm. The indictment revolves around internet traffic that appeared to imply some back-channel between the 2016 Trump campaign and Putin-connected Alfa Bank. Sussman told the FBI about the traffic and its possible implications, which never panned out. (The Mueller Report, for example, doesn’t mention Alfa Bank.)
During his meeting with the FBI, the indictment says, Sussman claimed not to be representing a client, but simply providing the information as a good citizen concerned about national security. But Perkins Coie represented the Clinton campaign, and Sussman had billed time spent investigating Trump’s Russia connection. The indictment says Sussman lied to the FBI, and was in fact representing Clinton at the time, in an attempt to get the FBI investigating Trump. Sussman has pleaded not guilty; he denies that he said he was not working for a client, and claims he was actually representing a different client at the FBI meeting.
Major editorial pages split on how significant this indictment is. The Wall Street Journal says Durham has “cracked the Russia case” and “delivered on RussiaGate“. The Washington Post disagrees:
This, to put it mildly, is not the confirmation of some broad 2016 deep-state conspiracy against Mr. Trump that the former president apparently desired.
After all, Trump often said Durham’s counter-investigation of the Trump/Russia investigation would uncover “the greatest political crimes in the history of our country” and lead to indictments of Obama and Biden, not to mention high-level co-conspirators like James Comey. There’s no sign of any of that in this indictment.
Reading the indictment itself, I can’t decide whether Durham’s case is weak or he is just a bad writer. The indictment paints a picture of Sussman working with a tech-company executive and various others to research cyber-connections between Trump and Russia. It is clear that the people involved were doing opposition research against Trump. Some worked for the Clinton campaign, while others were acting out of partisan sentiment, without any professional interest. What’s missing is anything sinister: The researchers do not appear to have invented the Alfa Bank data, for example. The larger importance of what they did is also iffy: They gave the FBI a lead that didn’t go anywhere.
From Trump’s point of view, the ultimate goal of the Durham investigation was to show that the Trump/Russia investigation was a hoax from the beginning. This indictment does not do that.
What’s more, nothing Durham turns up could possibly do that, because Trump did in fact collude with Russia. His campaign manager (Paul Manafort) was passing confidential campaign information to a Russian agent. Manafort himself was a longtime contractor for Putin-connected oligarchs, to the tune of many millions of dollars. Roger Stone was involved somehow in WikiLeaks’ release of the Russian-hacked Clinton campaign emails. Don Jr. met with Russians to solicit Russian “dirt” on Clinton.
And the reason we don’t know more about these Trump/Russian channels is that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of them, not the least by signalling to Manafort and Stone that they could count on pardons, which they ultimately received.
The demonstration in support of the January 6 insurrectionists fizzled Saturday. CNN’s Ana Navarro-CΓ‘rdenas quipped: “More people showed up to my last garage sale.”
Russia had parliamentary elections Friday to Sunday, and Putin’s United Russia Party appears to have won. The opposition to Putin operated under severe constraints, with many opposition leaders in jail, the media effectively under control of the government, and numerous fake candidates running to split the anti-Putin vote.
The opposition compiled a list of the most viable challengers in every district, but of course the government did its best to prevent distribution. The saddest and most reprehensible part of this story is that Apple and Google gave in to Putin and removed an opposition app from their app stores.
The Emmys were announced last night.
We might be headed towards another debt ceiling crisis. Democrats don’t want to push a debt-ceiling increase through on their own, and Mitch McConnell is refusing to cooperate. Something has to happen before the end of October.
As I’ve said many times, having a debt ceiling separate from the ordinary appropriation process is ridiculous. If Congress approves a budget with a deficit, the Treasury should automatically be authorized to borrow the money to cover it. Allowing Congress the option to vote for a deficit but refuse to authorize borrowing, is like installing a big self-destruct button on the government.
America’s top gymnasts testified to the Senate about the FBI’s handling of their sexual abuse complaints against USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Nassar was eventually removed and went to prison, but only after a long delay, during which he continued sexually abusing female gymnasts.
General Kenneth McKenzie of the US Central Command admitted that a drone strike strike in Kabul on August 29 was a mistake, and that the ten people killed were not terrorists. It is a sadly appropriate ending to the US intervention in Afghanistan, given how many such mistakes we have made in the last 20 years.
A difficult but worthwhile read is “The Other Afghan Women” by The New Yorker’s Anand Gopal.
[T]he U.S. did not attempt to settle … divides and build durable, inclusive institutions; instead, it intervened in a civil war, supporting one side against the other. As a result, like the Soviets, the Americans effectively created two Afghanistans: one mired in endless conflict, the other prosperous and hopeful. It is the hopeful Afghanistan thatβs now under threat.
Gopal introduces us to the Afghanistan of the countryside, rather than the cities.
Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, one of the ten Republican congresspeople to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, will not run for re-election.
His district, OH-16, is a convoluted construction southwest of Cleveland. It is reliably Republican, having been represented by a Democrat only two years out of the last 70. Trump got 56% of the vote there in both 2016 and 2020. Gonzalez himself got 63% of the vote in 2020.
I wish one of these Trump-resisting Republicans would stand and fight for his or her vision of the Party. Every time a Jeff Flake or a Bob Corker surrenders without resistance, Trump’s aura of invincibility within the Republican Party gets stronger. Every time somebody refuses to fight, it feeds the narrative that you can’t fight.
Words I never thought I’d write: Hang in there, Liz Cheney.
Every few days brings a new story of some anti-vax activist dying of Covid. I don’t think it’s healthy to focus on them or take too much satisfaction from them. But it’s useful to keep one in your back pocket in case you find yourself in a social-media argument with someone who thinks all the statistics are fake.
The web site sorryantivaxxer.com is a long series of such stories. I find it very creepy, and I would not advise hanging out there for long.
This week’s stereotype validation: Three Texas women attacked the hostess at a New York City restaurant when she asked to see proof of vaccination before letting them enter, as the current NYC rules require. They’ve been charged with misdemeanor assault.
In honor of the late comedian Norm MacDonald, who died Tuesday, here’s the moth joke, and the story behind it.
The Instagram page “On Adventure With Dad” chronicles the activities of a Photoshop wizard and his two small children. If you’re not on Instagram, the portfolio is here.
It's a very rare occurrence, but I have seen it both in my life and others. I initially made posts regarding this in the Christian subs, but the replies were overly monotheistic in nature (if you worship more than one God you're going to have a bad time, etc)
I discuss God a lot with people in general and my therapist in particular (who is Christian, but knows I am UU) God/Higher Power/Divinity etc has made His/Her/Their presence made known in my life in many ways, but NGL this has been a really bad year for me so far, so I am praying for myself and loved ones a lot. (I pray everyday and have for about 2 decades now)
I have had questions directly answered before, and also...not. I feel I have a generally good relationship with The Great Big Thing, and obviously He/She/They are not some kind of cosmic slot machine you put prayer coins into and expect a big payoff...that would be very disrespectful. But yet I continue to pray and have faith because...we're all on this Big Blue Boat together, and bound by something greater than all of us.
Did General Milley take steps to prevent a coup or to participate in one?
On paper, the American chain of command is simple: The Constitution makes the President commander-in-chief. Typically, he exercises that authority through a civilian Secretary of Defense and a hierarchy of generals, but nothing about that is necessary. On paper, the President can give orders to any soldier.
That authority over the entire military is summed up by an LBJ anecdote: As he was preparing to leave a military base, President Johnson walked toward the wrong helicopter until a young officer stopped him, saying “Your helicopter is over there, sir.” Johnson is supposed to have replied, “Son, they’re all my helicopters.”
At any level of the American military, though, there is an exception for illegal orders. If a superior tells you to execute prisoners, for example, you can say no. But you can well imagine that the bigger the gap in authority, the harder that “no” would be. Could a private or a green lieutenant really say no to a president?
And that brings us to the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. According to accounts from CNN and The Washington Post of the still-unpublished published book Peril by Bob Woodward and Roberta Costa, Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley did two questionable things in the late days of the Trump administration. [1]
Critics have a made a big deal about the China calls, but this appears to be fairly normal behavior in crisis situations. American military officers frequently cultivate personal relationships with their counterparts in other countries, and use those connections to smooth over possible misunderstandings. Politico reports:
A defense official familiar with the calls said … the calls were not out of the ordinary, and the chairman was not frantically trying to reassure his counterpart.
The people also said that Milley did not go rogue in placing the call, as the book suggests. In fact, Milley asked permission from acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller before making the call, said one former senior defense official, who was in the room for the meeting. Milley also briefed the secretaryβs office after the call, the former official said.
But the second revelation raises more serious issues.
Woodward and Costa write that after January 6, Milley ‘felt no absolute certainty that the military could control or trust Trump and believed it was his job as the senior military officer to think the unthinkable and take any and all necessary precautions.’Milley called it the ‘absolute darkest moment of theoretical possibility,’ the authors write.
Milley’s fear, I surmise, was that Trump would skip over the top military leadership and directly order some junior officer to take extreme (and possibly illegal) military action, which could be either a wag-the-dog foreign attack or a coup at home.
This apparently did not happen. But it was not an unreasonable scenario to plan for, especially given what was going on in the Justice Department, where Trump was going over the head of the Attorney General to push investigations and public statements in support of his stolen-election lie.
What Milley did, though, raises questions about civilian control of the military. Might the generals, at some point, simply refuse to obey presidential orders they disagreed with? And if those orders are illegal, or arise from “serious mental decline” (as the book says Milley believed about Trump), should they?
On paper, responsibility to protect the country from an insane or mentally incapacitated president lies with the vice president and the cabinet, who can remove the president via the 25th Amendment. No military officer plays any role in that process.
But what if they’re not doing their job? If you’re the person getting the crazy orders, does that responsibility fall to you, no matter what the Constitution says?
These questions point to a grey area in our system: If you believe that the train of constitutional government has already jumped its rails (say, because the president is planning or executing a coup), at what point do you take (or prepare to take) extra-constitutional actions yourself?
I don’t have a good answer to that question.
Republicans like Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio have called for Milley to be fired, while President Biden has expressed confidence in him.
I have trouble taking Hawley seriously, given his own treasonous inclinations. But I give more weight the critique of retired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who Trump fired (along with his brother) in retribution for Vindman’s testimony at Trump’s first impeachment. He also believes that Milley should resign or be fired.
In recent years, too many leaders have succumbed to situational ethics, and the public has looked the other way when people considered those leaders part of their faction. Doing the wrong thing, even for the right reasons, must have consequences. Many people in the Trump administration β including me β resigned or were fired exactly because they did the right things in the right way. Milley may have done the wrong thing for the right reasons. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not deserve greater consideration for doing the wrong thing β he deserves greater scrutiny. As my friend and former Pentagon official John Gans tweeted: βYou can break norms for a greater good, but that often comes with a price. Paying it is the only way to ensure the norms survive for the next time.β
That do-it-and-face-the-consequences path reminds me of my analysis of the ticking-bomb scenario. Remember? The Bush administration believed CIA agents should be able to torture terrorism suspects, because doing so might save lives if the suspect knew about a ticking bomb. The law, I wrote at the time, should never authorize torture in advance. In the unlikely event that an American official found himself in a ticking-bomb situation, and was certain that torturing a suspect would save many lives, the right move would be to break the law, and then confess and trust the mercy of a jury. Do it if you think you must, but don’t hide from the consequences. An official who isn’t willing to risk a jury disagreeing shouldn’t be torturing anybody.
Similarly, I think Milley should have made a full public confession as soon as the crisis had passed. (After Biden’s inauguration, say.) In a roundabout way, he has done this by talking to Woodward and Costa. [2] He will be appearing before Senate Armed Services Committee a week from tomorrow, where I suspect he will be asked a lot of questions related to the Peril revelations.
However, I think Republicans should approach this hearing carefully. At some point a Democrat might ask, “What specific behavior did you witness personally that convinced you that President Trump had undergone ‘serious mental decline’ after his defeat in the November elections?” Whatever else the hearing might uncover, the answer to that question is likely to be the headline.
[1] When you think about this story, you need to bear in mind how far we are from the root facts: The general public can’t even see the book until tomorrow. CNN and the WaPo are summarizing what Woodward and Costa report that various newsmakers told them. Even if you trust everybody involved, it’s still third-hand information.
[2] I am assuming the quotes attributed to Milley come from direct interviews.
This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.
St. Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, βIf God is with you who can be against you?β It can be added that you and God are a dynamic duo. The power of the universe is realized when your will is brought into alignment with Godβs will for you.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God. The lessons of the last five days of the ACIM workbook are all the same because they are so important. In working on these last five lessons we practice step three of AA which is turning our willfulness over to Godβs will for us which, simply put in one word, is love.
In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. When we become attuned to this inherent worth and dignity peace and bliss arises.
Today, lesson #362 suggests that we align our will with Godβs will for us. This takes discernment of what Godβs will for us is. This discernment is the answer to the question, βWhat would love have me do.β
It’s another week where many stories require more than a paragraph or two of attention: General Milley’s fears of what Trump might do in his final days in office, and the precautions he took; the California recall election; AOC’s dress; the Durham investigation’s first indictment; and whether or not the Covid surge is turning. Additionally, there’s the fizzling of Saturday’s demonstration in support of the January 6 terrorists, another anti-Trump Republican retiring, and a few other noteworthy things.
For that reason, there’s no featured post this week. I’ll put out a weekly summary around 11, and nothing else until next Monday.
In addition, the summary will include a brief introduction to the concept of “Disney Princess theology”, and close with a link to the Instagram page of a Dad who likes to appear to be endangering his kids.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041401/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-19_Resilience.mp3
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041340/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09-19-21-audio.mp3
"Ganesh Chaturthi and the Need to Remove Obstacles" (September 19, 2021) Worship Service
Each year in India there is a ten or eleven-day festival to celebrate Ganesh, the Elephant-headed god who is playful but who also is famous for a particular kind of power, one we all always seem in need of summoning into our lives. Join me for some stories, images, and reflections on the power of ritual.
Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Sam King, Worship Associate; Puran and K.G. Singh; Unitarian Church Jowai; UUSF Church Choir, conducted by Mark Sumner
Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Amy Kelly, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041254/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210919VRSSermon.mp3
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgy34qYPA80]
Presented by Guest Speaker, Jenny McReady Amstutz
A 12th-century Benedictine abbess, writer, poet, and composer, Hildegard had prophetic and mystical visions and is said to have been a miracle worker.Β How do mystical experiences fit into our UU faith?
Our prior guest speaker, Jenny McCready was married last month and returns to our pulpit today with a new last name, Jenny Amstutz.Β Jenny is currently serving as the minister of a small church in Littleton, Colorado, Columbine Unitarian Universalist Church, where she serves part time.Β Her part time schedule allows her to return to our pulpit.Β Jenny is the mother of five, ages 21 to 8 years and lives in Lakewood, Colorado, with her new husband Jason and a menagerie of pets.Β She is grateful to continue to be a visiting presence in our church and looks forward to a continued relationship with UCLA.
SERVICE NOTES
Β Β WELCOME!
New to our church community?Β Sign our guestbook and let us know if youβd like to get more connected.
For more information on our church community, visit us on the web at http://www.uulosalamos.org or call at 505-662-2346.Β
Connect with us on Facebook:Β http://www.facebook.com/uulosalamos
If you would like to submit a joy or sorrow to be read during next weekβs service, we invite you to write it in our Virtual Prayer Book.
Have questions?Β While our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is on sabbatical, contact our office administrator atΒ office@uulosalamos.org.
Β Β MUSIC CREDITS
βLe Soir,β No. 1 from Deux PiΓ¨ces by Louis Vierne. (Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.) Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
βGaudeamus Hodie (Let Us Rejoice Today),β words: traditional, music: Natalie Sleeth.Β (Nora Cullinan and Jess Cullinan, vocalists).Β Permission to stream song #61290Β in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
βBe Thou My Vision,β words: Ancient Irish, music: trad. Irish melody.Β (Wade Wheelock, violin). Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
βI Am that Great and Fiery Force,β words: Hildegard of Bingen; music: Josquin Deprez; adapted by Anthony Petti.Β Guitar, vocals, and editing by Eli Sauls.Β Percussion by Benjamini.Β Video clips from Pixabay.Β Permission granted through the Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed).
Β βO Virtus Sapientiaeβ by Hildegard von Bingen.Β (Choir, βSophiaβs Journeyβ of Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO.)Β Song Public Domain.Β YouTube video used by permission of Rev. Keith Arnold, Jefferson Unitarian Church Minister of Music.
βLΓ©gende,β No. 2 from Deux PiΓ¨ces by Louis Vierne.Β (Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.)Β Music Public Domain, video used by permission.
βThe Way,β text: unknown author, music: Nylea L. Butler-Moore. (UU Virtual Singers with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.)Β Used by permission.Β
Permission to stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.
Permission to stream music in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770.
Β Β OTHER NOTES
Hildegard of Bingen: Scientist, Composer, Healer and SaintΒ by Demi (Wisdom Tales, April 7, 2019)Β used with permission
*permission granted through the UUA
Β Β OFFERTORY
Our Share the Plate partner for September is Lutheran Family Services.
100% of all offered this month will be given to our partner.
We are now using Givelify.com to process the weekly offering:Β https://giv.li/5jtcps
Β Β SERVICE PARTICIPANTS
Jenny McReady Amstutz, Guest SpeakerΒ
Sue Watts, Worship Associate
Tina DeYoe, Director of Lifespan Religious Education
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Kathy Gursky, viola
Jess Cullinan & Nora Cullinan, vocalists
Wade Wheelock, violin
UU Virtual Singers: Kelly Shea, Nylea Butler-Moore, Rebecca Howard, Anne Marsh, Kathy Gursky, Mike Begnaud, & Skip Dunn with Larry Rybarcyk, acoustic guitar Β
Rick Bolton, Mike Begnaud, and Renae Mitchell AV techs
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041216/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210919.mp3
This holy instant would I give to You. Be you in charge. For I would follow You, certain that your direction gives me peace.
We have arrived at the last five lessons which are all the same. Basically, it is suggested that we rest in doing Godβs will for us. We have given up our willfulness and turned it over. We are going with the flow, resting in the peace of the Tao.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step three, that we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.
In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search takes us to goodness, truth, and beauty which is found in the holy instant when we rest in the presence of our Transcendent Source.
Today, it is suggested in lesson #361 that henceforth we listen consistently to the Voice of
God which speaks to us constantly. All we need do to experience the peace and bliss of God is to listen.
Please join us on Sunday (19 September 2021) at 11:00 AM for “Making Room for More Life” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.
Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.
Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.Β You can sign up for these announcements using this link.
Our September 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is North Louisiana Interfaith.
We will have aΒ virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.
And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.
We are holding additional opportunities for parent meetings this coming week via Zoom.
We want to determine what kind of religious education format and schedule will work best for your family and your children.
You only need to just one session though you are welcome to attend both if you want.Β It is the same meeting at two different times.
The same Zoom link will be used for both meetings on the following dates:
Email Susan Caldwell to let her know which meeting you will attend.
If none of these times work for you, text her at 318-465-3427 to set up an appointment.
Please join us on Sunday (19 September 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.
We have completed our White Fragility book study group using the book by Robin DiAngelo.
This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at racial disparities in health care.
In just about every aspect of health care in the US, racial disparities are often stark.
Whether the inequities are present in access to care, in attitudes of medical personnel that impact the treatment of people of color, or in a lack of trust in the medical profession brought about how they treat people of color, the inequities are very real.
Come join us to learn more.
Please join us next Wednesday (22 September 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.
Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.
A reading to repeat a few times throughout your day:
To the refugee family seeking a safe place
For their childrenβs dreams, say:
I am with you in this.
To the trans teenager longing for a world
That accepts them for who they are, say:
I am with you in this.
To the black parents wondering when
Will the lives of their children truly matter, say:
I am with you in this.
To the lonely, the frightened, the dispossessed, say:
I am with you in this.
To the bullied, the battered, the broken down, say:
I am with you in this.
To the hungry and the homeless,
To the silenced and the shamed,
To the weary and the worried, say:
I am with you in this.
To all those for whom your
Disheveled heart is aching, say:
I am with you in this.
-Philip Lund
The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!
Even in the difficult days of the pandemic, the music has continued! The following selections were recorded by dedicated, gifted musicians and were used in online services of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos (NM). Concert premiere Saturday, September 18, 2021 @ 7 pm (mountain) on our YouTube channel or on our Live! page. All music is in the public domain; videos used by permission. Program developed by Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music. Production created by AV Engineer Rick Bolton, with posting help from AV Tech Mike Begnaud.
PROGRAM
Flute Sonata No. 5 in E-minor, mov. 2 Allegro, BWV 1034 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Heidi Morning, flute & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Suite No. 1 in G Major, mov. 3 Courante, BWV by 1007 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Ursula Coe, cello.
Violin Sonata No. 4 in D Major, mov. 4 Allegro, HWV 371 by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).
Wade Wheelock, violin & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Sonata in B-Flat Major by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801). Tate Plohr, piano.
Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, mov. 1 Allegro, RV 531 by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Ursula Coe & Dana Winograd, cellos & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Seligkeit (Bliss), No. 225, poem by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph HΓΆlty (1748-1776), music by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Nora Cullinan, soprano & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Romanza in C Major by Ferdinand Praeger (1815-1891). Kathy Gursky, viola & Nylea Butler-Moore, piano.
Mazurka in B-Flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1 by Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849). JeeYeon Plohr, piano
MΓ€rchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures), mov. I Nicht Schnell by Robert Schumann (1810-1856).
Kathy Gursky, viola & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Lieder ohne Worte (Song without Words), Op. 38, No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
Yelena Mealy, piano.
Danses by Guy Ropartz (1864-1955). Anna Batista, oboe & Yelena Mealy, piano.
Opening & Closing Music: Excerpts from βValse Impromptuβ by Rustem Yahin (1921-1993).
Yelena Mealy, piano.
Segues: Excerpts from Cello Concerto in C Major, mov. 1, Hob. VIIb:1 by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Anna Perlak, cello & Yelena Mealy, piano.
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Mid-week Message from the Developmental Lead MinisterΒ Sept. 15, 2021 Friends,
I follow what is happening in religious communities both locally and nationally. In response to the pandemic, Unitarian Universalist congregations are experiencing many of the same dynamics as congregations of other faith traditions. Congregational leaders are feeling pressure in every direction, to fully reopening now, to staying virtual until the pandemic is over, to holding gatherings outdoors, to doing a hybrid of both virtual and in-person. What makes this time so incredibly challenging is that there are no road signs pointing the way, only guidelines and recommendations that must be adapted to each communityβs particular context and set of circumstances. What Iβm hearing from UU congregations that have resumed fully live, in-person services is that attendance has beenΒ smaller than anticipated. What this says to me is that not everyone is ready. Not everyone is eligible and/or medically able to be vaccinated. Parents with young children at home, people with compromised immune systems or high-risk conditions (and those living with them), teachers, and health care workers who may be exposed to COVID infections in the course of their work are among those who are not yet ready to be around groups of people at church. Our UU principles call us to radical inclusion and our UU sources call us to heed the findings of science. These suggest a cautious approach, maybe more cautious than some other faith communities. Yet, the longing to be together, to touch and hug, to laugh and cry, to raise voices together in song is real. For now, the middle way here atΒ FUUNΒ is to gather on Sunday morning in the social hall for some social time at 10 a.m.Β and to view to the recording of the Zoom worship service at 11 a.m.Β Fitting the sanctuary for a more hybrid type of worship service will take some time, effort, and financial resources. Other types of in-person gatherings are being considered on a case-by-case basis. I will be vetting these requests in consultation with medical experts and the Executive Committee of the Board.Β Β Β Β Β For each one of us, the calculus around the costs and benefits of semi-isolation versus being in person in community will be different. At the very least, we all have a responsibility to keep each other as safe as possible, holding each other in tender care while we navigate this complex and challenging time. It is times like these that make our shared promises and commitments as a covenantal community real. Open the Doorβ¦
β¦Close the Gap If you havenβt heard Silversonix, you -Richard Bird
Chair, Stewardship Committee |
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Mark Your CalendarΒ Sept. Oct.Β Nov. |
Peace be to me, the holy Son of God. Peace to my brother, who is one with me. Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.
As we arrive in the last days of the end of the 365 day A Course In Miracles workbook we can appreciate the non dualistic metaphysics of the teaching. The Son and the Father are one. I and my brothers are One. Christians call this Oneness of the Son, βBody of Christ.β It is in this growing awareness of the non duality of the Transcendent that peace arises.
In alcoholic Anonymous, we are encouraged, in step eleven, to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God through prayer and meditation. In this conscious contact, we find peace and serenity.
In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the love of the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Today, it is suggested in lesson #360 that we bless the world with the peace we have experienced through the awareness of the non dualistic Oneness of all existence.
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| Paul Wienpahl is in the white, short-sleeved shirt to the right of the tree trunk & Herbert Fingarette (whose words give this blog and podcast its title) is standing next to Wienpahl to the left of the tree trunk A recorded version of the following piece can be found at this link |
We continue this series, βWalking with Paul Wienpahlβ by looking at paragraphs 9 to 15 of his βUnorthodox Lectureβ from 1955. You can find links to Wienpahlβs lecture in the episode notes to this podcast or in my associated blogpost.
Letβs begin immediately with paragraph 16.
Β§16 To see this is to be a man without a position. To get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things is to cease to be an idealist or a pragmatist, or an existentialist, or a Christian. I am a man without a position. I do not have the philosophic position that there are no positions or theories or standpoints. (There obviously are.) I am not a sceptic or an agnostic or an atheist. I am simply a man without a position, and this should open the door to detachment.
The first thing to do here is to remind you that when Wienpahl talks about being a man or woman βwithout a positionβ he is not saying he is a person without direction and, therefore, someone incapable of saying anything substantive or meaningful or, indeed, of getting anything proactively and positive done.
Remember that Wienpahl has already addressed the question of direction in paragraphs 6 and 7 where he noted his feeling that creative activity cannot be without some sort of conscious direction because, if that were the case, it would lack form. Wienpahl will return to this in paragraph 25 which weβll look at in the next episode. Remember, too, that in saying this Wienpahl was also concerned to stress he felt this conscious direction needed to be something which is not impressed as if from βwithoutβ but should be something that develops as if from βwithin.β
So the question here is then how can one be a person without a position in whom this kind of directionality occurs?
Well, I think that what Wienpahl was beginning to intuit here β and what he wrote certainly helped me personally to intuit this β is that living in the world without a position, i.e. without fully predetermined and fixed ideologies, blueprints or theories about what is really, is, in fact, a prerequisite of being able truly to follow the direction of reality as it intra-actively unfolds within and around us.
To remind you, when things (including ourselves, of course) βintra-actβ they do so co-constitutively. In other words we are always-already changing other things and other things are simultaneously always-already changing us. Consequently, whatever any thing is, it is to be something always-already emerging through intra-actions. In human terms this means that is no predetermined end towards which a person can go and there is no final, predetermined fixed person one can seek to become.
None of this is to deny that positions exist β as Wienpahl admits, they obviously do β but what this way of thinking does help stop is the idea that positions are in any way primary or fundamental. Instead, positions must be seen as emergent and metastable and, therefore, temporary, and it is only by being aware of this intra-activity β by paying attention to it, and then being mindful of its consequences β that a person is helped to get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things which, in turn, helps a person cease being an idealist, a pragmatist, an existentialist, a Christian, a sceptic, an agnostic or an atheist etc..
As Wienpahl says, the point here is never to identify reality with anything except itself and never to forget that reality is a multifarious thing and, we should add, a constantly moving and intra-active thing. When we can see this, truly see this, then and only then do we become men or women without a position in the sense meant by Wienpahl. It is this realisation that helps a person begin to get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things.
In the next paragraph, paragraph 17, Wienpahl reveals he was beginning to realise that once a person has got out of the mind and into the world, beyond language and to the things, then that same person can also begin to see that what it is to be an individual self is always-already to be a person catalysed in some fashion by everything they are involved with.
Β§17 I hate to think that I need a catalyst like a friend. Yet I am afraid that if I go on by myself, I wonβt get anywhere. But thereβs the nub. Who wants to get anywhere? Why not let myself become what I shall? Trying to become something is trying to be a copy. I guess that we are afraid to become ourselves, and that is why we are seldom original.
As Wienpahlβs words suggest, we most commonly experience the truth of this in the company of a trusted and good, critical friend as the conversations we have with them over the years co-create our life together and begin to develop the, as if from within, proactive directions of our ongoing individual lives. But another place we can see this is in the relationship that is sometimes seen to develop between a hitchhiker and the person who has stopped to give them a lift. The philosopher Freya Mathews offers us the following illustration:
The modes of proactivity in question are those that work with, rather than against, the grain of the given. By this I mean there are forms of energetic flow and communicative influence already at play in the world. An agent in this mode is a kind of metaphysical hitchhiker, catching a ride in a vehicle that is already bound for her destination. Or, more usually, via the hitchhikerβs communicative engagement with the driver of the vehicle, both the hitchhikerβs own plans and those of those of the driver are changed. The vehicle heads for a destination that neither the hitchhiker nor the driver had previously entertained, but which now seems more in accordance with their true will than either of their previous destinations (Freya Mathews: Reinhabiting RealityβTowards a Recovery of Culture, 2005, SUNY Press, NY, p. 39).
Mathewsβ words speak both to Wienpahlβs fear that if he goes on by himself, he wonβt get anywhere and also the issue Wienpahl sees in the problematic idea of wanting to get anywhere specific in the first place.
Mathews words help us see that for the hitchhiker and the driver what we are tempted to call a destination is not something that can be absolutely predetermined by either of them alone but is something that only emerges from their intra-actions with each other and, of course, the wider events and environments through which they both moving. In short, the metaphysical hitchhiker lets things be by not seeking to turn back processes and the inner unfolding dynamics that are already under way. However, as she lets things be in this fashion, she nevertheless remains proactive in seeking her own fulfilment through her intra-active, communicative engagement with already existing unfoldings, such as, for example, the driver of the car.
Also, anyone adopting this way of being in the world begins to find that meaning and value in life always emerges from ongoing encounters with the things of the world and, consequently, that there is no longer a requirement either for any ideal, universal transcendent reality or destination to reach at all, nor is there a requirement for any final positions, fixed theories or blueprints about reality to help guide oneβs journey of life. In short the metaphysical hitchhiker is a man or woman without a position, who is not a copy of any other person, and who can, therefore, most truly be themselves in the intra-active unfoldings of life. Which thought leads us to paragraph 18.
Β§18 This helps me to see that I would rather become a mediocre Paul Wienpahl than a successful type, say a successful college professor. But I am afraid of individuality and, hence, of originality, which is the thing I also prize most. No wonder it doesnβt come. I am doing everything I can to prevent it. It is like peace for the world today. And it is the striving for it which would cause me not to recognize it if it did, by a miracle, come. For then it, I, would be like no other thing. And I couldnβt recognize it because of this and because of the striving.
Wienphalβs point here is, I think, that it is precisely our positions β i.e. too firmly held theories and blueprints etc. β that stop us from seeing reality, what is really, as clearly as we might. This is why we tend only to see ourselves in terms of being a failure or a success with reference to predetermined types such as, in the case of Wienpahl, a college professor or, in my own case, a philosophically inclined minister of religion. When we deviate too far from these predetermined types we are tempted to say we are βunsuccessfulβ; when we succeed in copying and staying close to these types we talk about ourselves as being βsuccessful.β But, as Wienpahl observes, this reveals just how frightened we often are of individuality and originality even as we continue to proclaim individuality and originality as being absolutely important to us.
Wienpahl then suggests that what is true of ourselves is also true of things like peace for the world today. It could be right in front of us in some unique, obscure, occluded or unexpected fashion and yet we simply wouldnβt see it because we are too busily looking for a predetermined, idealised type of peace that merely exists in our minds. In comparison to our predetermined, idealised types of peace the kind of peace that might, by a miracle, actually be in front of us may well be considered βmediocreβ and dreadfully modest, but it would, at least, have the benefit of being a kind of peace that is really. Given this situation no wonder peace doesnβt come; no wonder an authentic sense of in what consists our individual and original self doesnβt come. This is why a certain kind of striving must be let go and why we must learn how to let things be intra-actively in the way spoken of earlier by Freya Mathews. This is the kind of detachment about which, in paragraph 19, Wienpahl was talking . . . or so it seems to me.
However, Wienpahl is well aware that this kind of letting go, this detachment, is likely to strike many people as being a dreadful and unsatisfactory way to proceed and this prompts him to write paragraphs 19 and 20
Β§19 In this direction seem to lie disorder and revelation, chaos and mysticism, immorality and insanity. Things despised. But I sense that here also lies freedom.
Β§20 And by this means one can see through the trouble of our times. Ours is not an age of discovery. It is an age of the exploitation of discoveries. A technical age. It is an age in which science is the god. An age of planning and order. An age of psychoanalysis. We are bound, therefore, to destruction, as everything living, when bound, will die. Nor can the religionist take hope. For he also is bound because he thinks that he knows where we should go.
These paragraphs reveal that for Wienpahl, freedom is intimately connected with the discovery of reality, discovering what is really. To be free in the sense Wienpahl seems to be talking about is to be a metaphysical hitchhiker intra-actively discovering an ever-unfolding, ever-creative world; it is to be a kind of free-thinking mystic with hands who understands the need reciprocally to serve and be served by nature doing what nature does, what Spinoza calls βnatura naturansβ, nature naturing.
Alas, Wienpahl could already see in the 1950s that we are no longer in such an age of discovery but mired deeply in a destructively technical one, one which is only concerned to exploit discovery to the Nth degree. Ours is also a shockingly unfree and coercive age which believes it can and should have complete power and control over nature, and that it is appropriate to impose upon reality only human positions, blueprints, theories and ideologies. In short, Wienpahl realised we were living in an age in which its most influential and powerful so-called βleadersβ truly think humanity can go it alone β without the catalyst of other things, flora and fauna β and to believe we know where and why we are going before we get there. As Wienpahl observes, βWe are bound, therefore, to destruction, as everything living, when bound, will die.β Wienpahl can also see that neither can βthe religionistβ β or, at least the orthodox and traditional religionist β take hope because they, too, think that they know where we should go.
In this lecture Wienpahl was just beginning to feel his way to a different, more mystical way of being religious or spiritual that allowed a person to express a creative direction βas ifβ from within but without, at the same time, binding them either to a position or to a predetermined and fixed destination. In his case this led him towards an exploration of Zen Buddhism and also towards a radical re-reading of Benedict Spinozaβs philosophy that he finally published in 1979 shortly before his death in 1980. If you want a glimpse of what he discovered in Spinoza then just go to the episode notes of this edition and click on the link to the βPostscript to Paul Wienpahlβs βThe Radical Spinozaββ (New York University Press, 1979).
In the next episode, weβll look at paragraphs 21 to 28 in which Wienpahl further explores what it is to be a person without a position and someone who desires to get away from knowing to living.
NoteβTen years ago yesterday, September 17, 2011 the most significant social movement of the early 21st Century got underway with the occupation of Zuccotti Park, located in New York Cityβs Wall Street financial district. They intended to stayβand they did. Occupy Wall Street began with a call in the counter-cultural magazine Adbusters drafted by ideological but undogmatic ancho-pacifists. They got the ball rolling but stepped aside and never tried to exert leadership or control the movement that ballooned from their suggestion.
It came as America was still in the grips of a depression caused by the collapse of the corrupt mortgage banking industry that had caused untold numbers to lose their homes, plunged many into unemployment, and robbed an emerging generation of hope. Income inequality was growing and the movement adopted a slogan βWe are the 99%β in opposition to the tiny mega rich elite which repressed them.
Zuccotti Park was renamed Liberty Square and growing daily marches was launched from the encampment there. Soon similar encampments and marches sprang up in central cities across the country. A movement grew that gripped the country for months and gained wide-spread public sympathy. It was a movement that remained firmly rooted in non-violence despite occasional attempts by Black Block activists to steer it in a more violent direction and the increasing police violence that was being used to attempt to destroy encampments and quash street protest. Eventually the Obama administrationβs Justice Department encouraged and supported local authorities in aggressive police attacks. One by one the encampments flickered out, but the spirit in which they grew remained and a generation of activists turned to other causes.
The Occupy Movement greatly influenced subsequent popular movements built from the ground up including student protests against gun violence, the Womenβs March movement, Greta Thunbergβs climate change protests, Black Lives Matter, and immigration justice movements.
It is instructive to compare this truly organic movement to the carefully orchestrated insurrectionist mob that laid siege to the Capitol on January 6 backed by oligarchs, clear fascists, and White supremacists. Both movements claimed to be revolutionary.
I wrote extensively about the Occupy Movement over the next few years. He is a blog post from October 3, 2011 that caught the spirit of the early movement in New York.
On Friday, the day before New York City Police busted more than 700 marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge apparently just to show that they remembered how, the General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street protesters issued their Declaration of the Occupation of New York City to explain themselves.
For three weeks the media, when it was not totally ignoringa growing social revolution under their noses, mocked those twice a day Assemblies where the rag tag protestors without visible leaders, command structure, or ideology gathered to hash out plans for immediate action, logistic concerns, police relations, and, oh yeah, the purpose of the whole damn thing.
High profile members of the professional left, accustomed to demonstrations of vast coalitions, huge steering committees, leaders certified by the press as being important, bullet point demands, and pre-printed signage tut-tutted and wrung their hands.
Admittedly, the process as observed through shaky hand-held video cam clips posted on YouTube and protest sites, made them look a tad ridiculous. Denied the use of a public address system or even bull horns by police the participants quickly improvised a system whereby commentsof speakers were relayed to the whole crowd by repeating short phrases in chorus. At first it looks like a crowd of zombiesblindly parroting anything said to them.
And because the discussions were open to participation by everyone, not every speaker was succinct or even rational. Wackos and old lefties with ideological axes to grind got their say. But so did hundreds, in the end maybe thousands, of ordinary and here-to-fore voiceless citizens.
Formal motions and votes were noticeable by their absence. As the conversations continued the crowds driftedtoward consensus. It was clear to participants when that consensus was achieved.
Yet despite everything the Assemblies and their odd processes worked. Day by day, week by week the protests in New York grew until they could no longer be ignored. The young people, tech savvyand knowledgeable in the new ways of social media, found ways to spread the wordand build support. The protest spreadto dozens of cities around the country and even attracted international support.
Still, they kept being askedβWhere are your demands? What are you doing here? Show us your manifesto so we can shoveyou into a box and pin a label on you. So the Assembly went at the work of explaining themselves.
Anyone who has ever tried to draft a document in a committee knows what an irksome, almost impossible task it is. People argue endlessly not just about the Big Picture but about wording nuance and the placement of semi-colons. The results usually come out looking like they were constructed by a committeeβfilled with a mix of buzz words, in-group jargon, whereasesand wherefores and stilted legalese. The alternative is to swallow some ringing manifesto composed by a charismatic leader, an act which instantly converts a popular movement to a quickly ossifying ism.
The folks at the Occupy Wall Street Assemblies worked some magic. Iβm not sure just how they did it. I would have liked to watch the presses in action. In the end they came out with a clear and concise documentthat would not paint them into an expected corner. And they did so with rhetorical grace.
This is what they want to sayto the world right now. Pass it on.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of oneβs skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workersβ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save peopleβs lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Today, a body meditation from Kathy Underwood, to the words of Gandhi. Do what of it you are able to do and what brings you peace and joy.
I offer you peace (arms outstretched in front of you with palms facing up)
I offer you friendship (arms outstretch in front of you with hands clasped)
I offer you love (arms crossed over chest)
I see your beauty (touch eyes)
I hear your needs (touch ears)
I feel your feelings (hands touch chest)
My wisdom comes from a higher source (arms reach up, palms facing up)
I honor that source in you (arms outstretched in front of you, palms facing up)
Let us work together (arms outstretched in front of you, hands clasped)
The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!
Please join us on Saturday (18 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.
This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.
The group is free and open to all.
For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.
I am more than thrilled to learn that my old friend, Fellow Worker, and mentor Carlos Cortez will be honored Sunday, September 19 as one of four inductees into the Chicago Hall of Literary Fame in a ceremonyat the Cit Lit Theater, 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue from 7to 8:30 pm.
Carlos might not we well known to the general public, but he is a revered figure in the labor movement, especially with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and in the Latinx and Native American arts communities. He was perhaps best known for his lino and woodcut posters and illustrations. For him art of all types was inseparable from social activism and was meant to be easily accessible to ordinary people. He could have made a fortune and been far more widely recognized as a fine artist if he sold his posters in signed and numbered editions. Instead, he printed them himself in unlimited numbers by silk screening on what ever paper stock he could scrounge and were sold for a few dollars or more likely given away. In fact, if he discovered there was a commercial market for his prints that were being re-sold by dealers and galleries, he would print more just to keep the price down. Much of his work has been archived, preserved, and displayed and displayed at Chicagoβs National Museum of Mexican Art, which he helped nurture.
But he is being recognized now as a writer. He was also a roll-up-his-sleeves, plain spoken poet who publishedthree collections in his lifetime who shared his work at poetry readings and slams around the city avoiding the establishmentto find venues where the excluded and outcast could be included. He performed his pieces at union meetings and on picket lines, at rallies and benefits, and for those who gathered in the informal salon he kept open in the former Northwest Side neighborhood storefront where he made a home with his beloved wife Marianna.
Most of his work first saw print in the Industrial Worker with which he was associated for more than 40 years.
Born in Milwaukee on August 13, 1923 to a German Socialist mother and a Mexican indio/mestizo IWW member Father. He was steeped from the beginning in working class culture and revolutionary values. He took seriously the old Socialist admonitions not to allow governments to divide workers and turn them against each other in imperialist wars. During World War II he refused induction into the Army and spent nearly three years in the Federal Prison at Sandstone, Minnesotaβironically the same prison where I was held for the same offense for draft resistance during the Vietnam War. After the war he worked in various factories.
In the late 1950βs he decided to come down to Chicago to become more involved with the IWW where there was both an active general membership branch and the unionβs General Headquarters. He volunteered his time helping out at GHQ where Fred W. Thompsonthen the Editor of the Industrial Worker began to use his contributions of both illustrations and writings.
Soon he was contributing several pieces each issueβarticles, essays, folksy polemics, and occasional verse. Short musings, observations, and yarns were printed as a regular feature column The Left Side. Other pieces appeared signed as CAC, C.C. Redcloud, Koyokuikatl, and his IWW membership card number X321826.
When he first came down he was still known as Karl Cortez as his mother called him, but has he immersed himself in the city and connected to the Mexican and Chicago communities, he became Carlos and adopted the big hats, and flowing moustache and sometimes goatee which became his trademark.
By the late 60βs Carlos took over as editor of the paper and in 1970 I began my regular contributions to its pages. Later we reorganized the staff as collective and eventually I assumed the editorship while Carlos continued his contributions. When we lost office space to do the layout and production, we did it at a table in Carlos and Mariannaβs apartment. When that place was remodeled by their landlord they stayed with me and then Secretary Treasurer Kathleen Taylor in our near-by fourth floor walk-up apartment in the building dubbed Wobbly Towers for a few months.
Meanwhile Carlos and I both worked as custodians at Coyne American Institute, a trade school on Fullerton Avenue. A few years later when I was homeless Carlos returned the favor and I stayed with them for some time enjoying Mariannaβs strong espresso in the morning and hanging with Carlos over Wild Turkey in the evenings in the large gallery-like front room that served as his workshopand gathering spot. Almost any evening was an education.
It is really a tribute to the Industrial Worker as a working class institution that Carlos is being honored for the work that largely first appeared there.
During those years Carlos became a founding member of the Movemento Aristico Chicano (MARCH)βthe first organization of Latino artists in the city. With his close friend Carlos CumpiΓ‘n and others meeting in the comfortable front room, he built an organization which mentored many young artists, spread βthe cultureβ, and helped foster the re-birth of the muralist movement in the city. He also became an early supporter of the Mexican Fine Arts Center now known as the National Museum of Mexican Arts which became the repository of many of his works and has the largest collection of his extensive production in the world. He was also active with the Chicago Mural Group, Mexican Taller del Grabado (Mexican Graphic Workshop), Casa de la Cultura Mestizarte, and the Native Menβs Song Circle, a Native American group out of the American Indian Center. Through that association, he came to mentor and encourage young Indian artists with the same passion he dedicated to the Chicanos. In fact, there was no artist or poet of any race who was not welcome in that home, as long as they were ready and eager to serve the peopleβs needs and not βart for artβs sake,β a notion he found repugnant and elitist.
A lifelong bachelor, in the early 60βs a Greek friend told him that he should meet his sister. The trouble was that she was still in Greece. The two corresponded through her brother for a while. Carlos saved his money, quit his job, and crossedthe ocean as a passenger on a freighter. He met Marianna Drogitis, a lovely young woman who was, however, by the standards of her culture, a spinster having rejected several suitors. The two fell in love despite not speaking a word of each otherβs language. They communicatedby gesture and the few words of German they had in commonβshe had learned the language in occupied Greece where members of her family were active in the Resistance. They returned to the U.S. on another freighter, married, and settled into the happiest marriage I have ever seen in a Chicago apartment in 1965.
When I proposed to Kathy Brady-Larsen in the early 80βs, Carlos was pleased to make a drawing of the two of us with her daughters Carolynne and Heather for the invitations I designed. He and Marianna danced happily at our wedding party at Lillyβs on Lincoln Avenue.
By 1981 Carlosβs heart forced him to retire from wage slavery. It gave him more time to dedicate to his artwork, poetry and causes. Unfortunately, it also put a strain on Marianna who took extra work to make up for the lost income. Despite sometimes working twelve hours at two jobs, she always had a smile for any of Carlosβs many guests, and a pat on the cheek for the old man.
Carlos, although best known as a graphic artist and for his work on the Industrial Worker, was also a poet. He would do occasional readings at an old haunt, the College of Complexes, in coffee houses, at radical bookstores, and wherever his friends gathered. He wrote three books of poetry, including De Kansas a Califas & Back to Chicago, published by March/Abrazo Press, and Crystal-Gazing the Amer Fluid & Other Wobbly Poems, published by the old Socialist publisher Charles H. Kerr & Company. Carlos was Presidentof the Kerr Board for 20 years, a title he detested. He also edited, wrote the introductionto, or contributed to several other books.
Carlos was devastated when his beloved Marianna died in 2001. I last saw him at her memorial.
His health deteriorated rapidly after that, and he was often confined to a wheelchair. He continued to greet a steady parade of visitors and admirers to his studio home and participated in the planning of new exhibitions of his work, including one in Madrid sponsored by the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederacion National de Trabajo (CNT.) He suffered a massive heart attack and was confined to his bed for the last 18 months of his life.
On January 17, 2005 Carlos died, surrounded by friends and βlistening to the music of the Texas Tornados.β
His long-time friend Carlos CumpiΓ‘n will speak about him at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
The Chicago Hall of Literary Fame describes its mission thusly:
Chicago is not a city that can be crisply explained, neatly categorized, or easily understood.
Yet through our literature we strive to define our place in the world. Our literature speaks to our cityβs diversity, character and heart. In our literature can be found all we love and hate, frozen snapshots of our vast terrain over the years, commentary on our ever-changing culture. In our literature can be found who we are and what we do and where we do it. The value and character of our city is not only reflected in but shaped by our great books.
Our mission is to honor and preserve Chicagoβs great literary heritage.
Unlike other cultural institutions the Hall of Fame does not just honor world famous authors but takes pains to highlight authentic and diverse voices.
Other honorees this year include Black novelist Frank London Brown whose work describing life in the Projects in the late 1950βs included novel Trumbull Park and the short story McDougal. He was also a machinist, union organizer, and was director of the Union Leadership Program at the University of Chicago. He enjoyed some fameas a jazz singer as appearing with Thelonius Monk. Brown died young in 1962. Jeannette Howard Foster was an educator, librarian, translator, poet, scholar, and author of the first critical study of lesbian literature, Sex Variant Women in Literature in 1956. She was also the first librarian of Dr. Alfred Kinseyβs Institute for Sex Research, and she influenced generations of librarians and gay lesbian literary figures. She died in 1981. Gene Wolf was a science fictionand fantasy writer noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He has been called the Melville of science fiction. Wolfe is best known for his Book of the New Sun seriesβfour volumes, 1980β1983βthe first part of his Solar Cycle He died in 2019.
Carlos will be in good company.
Beloveds ~
The following was in response to a query from a colleague whoβs been asked to sit on a committee designed to address medical responses to fatness in elders. I answered way more than βThe brief,β as they say on GBBO (and probably in British schools, though I donβt know). Thanks to Revs. Kate and Molly for the query and the typing up and cleaning up!
What do I wish medical professionals knew about being fat in a medical environment?
β1. Medical professionals WAY before you have treated us poorly, guaranteed. Dismissively. As though weβre lost causes unworthy of help with our overall health. One fat woman I know with a cyst on her breast has had three surgeons see her and walk out. One mumbled, βsorry.β None gave his name.
2. Stay in your lane. No, it is NOT the job of every medical professional of every rank and kind to either a. Ask us to lose weight, b. Ask whether weβve ever dieted, c. Ask βHave you considered weight-loss surgery?β Consider before your speak how it is possible that we could not only live in this culture, but also be in a big body and NOT consider those things.
3. The most conservative numbers show that, at five years out, 85% of dieters have gained all their weight back. Of those, (raised hand) 40% will gain more than we lost.
4. We know that weight cycling, or βyo-yoβ dieting, is significantly more damaging to health than being βoverweight.β
5. In The Obesity Myth [transcriberβs insert: Paul Campos, 2004], the author looks at the numbers and discovers that those deemed βoverweightβ in fact have the longest life expectancy. (Though see BMI note below.)
6. Fat people can be orthorectic, anorexic, have binge eating disorder, or be intuitive and attentive to their bodies and therefore, healthful eaters.
7. Speaking of kneesβ¦ a. YES, many more heavy people have BETTER outcomes than smaller people. b. Not only that, but why do you get to decide that our pain is immaterial, when youβd happily treat the pain of a thin runner? At what point does our pain matter to you? And furthermore, c. Risks are just that, risk. There are may reasons people do things. Many. And not one of themβ¦ not ONE (I am using the microphone for those who didnβt hear)β¦ is because of laziness. Lazy should be excised from all our vocabularies.
8. Damn, I have many things to say on this topic. BMI was never intended to be an individual instrument of measurement, but rather a sociological statistical tool. It also correlates with (other) racist health care practices. Read Fear of the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings for more on this topic.
9. Paramedics, CNAs, nurses, transfer and transportation staff, interns, residents, and ATTENDING doctors need to have regular familiarity with or at least training in the pain management, wound care, movements, pitfalls (like areas for pressure sores), and the use of bariatric equipment all pertaining to fat peopleβs experience/needs.
10. Well over 85% of us have dieted at LEAST once in our lives. And yet the rate of success is so low⦠how would your reckon those as surgical odds?
11. I remember first being told, βYou donβt need that,β by one of my aunts when I reached for a cookie at three or four years old. I was on my first diet in second grade. I now weigh 600 pounds, after well over twenty (at least) rounds at intentional weight loss and several prescriptions of psych meds. You do the math.
12. Some of usβlike meβare like previously kicked and abused animals. We ASSUME weβre going to be hurt. So at the first sign of aggression we exhibit trauma responses BECAUSE WE HAVE LIVED THROUGH TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES. Ahem.
13. Gowns. Waiting rooms. Beds. Stretchers. Why do we have to call ahead, check in, be our own fat case managers? Gowns are too small — if they may be too small, tell us in advance to bring our own. If we even HAVE our own, given who has hospital gowns lying around? Waiting rooms MUST, thatβs MUST have large chairs, love seats, and/or (ideally and) chairs without arms. Thin people who are occupying one of these should know to get up and switch seats when we enter the room. We shouldnβt have to ask.
14. Patisserieβs dozen. Interrogate the fact that the people who know best how to use surgical tools appropriate for the very fat among us are those who practice βbariatricββthat is, βweight lossββsurgery. They are those trained in the use of the longer instruments needed to address our bodiesβ surgical concerns.
All surgeonsβand other health care providersβneed to stop blaming our bodies and start blaming your training and enculturation. (Wow, that last line sums up a lot!)
Good authors are Lindo/Linda Bacon, Lucy Aphramor, Ellyn Satter (especially for parents!),Sabrina Strings, and the founders of Be Nourished.
Lastβthe best way to keep your kids from hating their bodies is not to pour shame upon your own, Let us be kind. Even and especially to ourselves, no matter our size.
Nope, not lastβ¦ this is last: being fat can be so hard, Why would you make it harder? People have already tried blame and shame and it hasnβt worked. We cannot hate our way to health on any axis. First, do no harm.β
Beloveds, hear me, ALL of us–we cannot hate ourselves or our bodies into anything good. When did hate make flowers grow? Tender, gentle, persistent compassion makes things grow and flourish. May we all shower ourselves with compassion, and so, then, make it our mission to learn about those different from ourselves, and thereby create a better world for our Descendants of Blood, Choice, or Spirit.
Blessings on you, my dears. Blessed be your bellies. Blessed be –
~Catharine~
Godβs answer is some form of peace. All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.
Universalists teach that God loves us unconditionally and would never consign any of Godβs creations to hell. In the world of the ego, mistakes are made due to the separation which the ego condemns as sin to ignite guilt, suffering, fear, and anger. If we call on God to heal our separation, Godβs answer is some form of peace.
In Alcoholic Anonymous we are encouraged to improve our conscious contact with God which is done through forgiveness. We first forgive ourselves with Godβs love and then others.
In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Mistakes are recognized, acknowledged, and forgiven as we perceive and focus on the Divine Spark in every person.
Today, in lesson #359, we experience the peace of God when we forgive, which is the willingness to give up making other people and circumstances responsible for our unhappiness. We recognize that we are not victims except by our own choosing. We are responsible for the choice we make between Love and fear.
βMusic is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.β -Kahlil Gibran
However your body experiences music, spend some time with it today. Feel the rhythm, move your arms, sway in time, hum or sing, or listen to the words of a song that connects you to something beyond yourself.
The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!
On September 14, we hosted βFrom #NoDAPL to #StopLine3: Water Protectors, Movement Building and Solidarity,β featuring a conversation with Michael βRattlerβ Markus and the Rev. Karen Van Fossan.
We heard compelling testimony from both of our guests about the powerful organizing of the Water Protectors, the through-lines of movement organizing across time and space, the role of multinational corporations in violating treaty rights, and the impacts of our governmentβs ongoing criminalization of protest, free speech, and actions of conscience. We are so grateful for their wisdom and leadership.
Building on the energy and inspiration of last nightβs storytelling, Side With Love invites you to use last nightβs conversation as an on-ramp into the cycle of learning, growth, and action as part of our wide network of faithful organizers and activists.
Watch the full video recording of last nightβs call
Download the slide presentation
Download the chat transcript, including conversation and links regarding the ongoing UU young adult-led push for divestment of the Common Endowment Fund
Read PEN Americaβs full report, on anti-protest bills (2020)
Read the 2018 AIW βWe Are All Related: Solidarity NOW With Indigenous Water Protectorsβ
Last nightβs YouTube playlist of Indigenous-created music, originally curated by UU Ministry for Earth:
Watch the Side With Love video honoring Water Protector political prisoners at the presentation of the Courageous Love Award at General Assembly 2020
LETTER WRITING ADVOCATING FOR PARDONS
At the request of Michael βRattlerβ Markus and the other #NoDAPL political prisoners, those of us on the call last night committed to a practice of writing letters to President Biden, urging him to pardon the five #NoDAPL political prisoners. Here is your step by step guide for honoring this request for solidarity:
Type or neatly hand write your own letter using dark ink on 8 Β½ x 11β white paper. Letters should be addressed to:
President Joseph R. Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, D.C. 20500
Include the following points in your letter:
1) YOUR CONNECTION TO THE ISSUE: What motivates you to write about this issue? Situate yourself with context, such as:
Iβm a person of faith who believes we are called to protect the earth as a sacred giftβ¦
Iβm a climate activist who has been personally involved in the pipeline strugglesβ¦
Iβm an American citizen who is deeply concerned about the anti-democratic trend toward criminalizing the exercise of free speech through protest...
2) A REQUEST FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN TO ISSUE PARDONS TO:
Red Fawn Fallis/Janis
Michael βLittle Featherβ Giron
Michael βRattlerβ Markus
Dion Ortiz
James White
3) WHY THIS IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO:
Our Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and assembly, and criminalizing protest is a threat to democracy. Water Protectors should have never been arrested, charged with federal crimes, or incarcerated.
Our Constitution is supposed to honor treaties with sovereign Indigenous nations, and the Dakota Access Pipeline--like Line 3, Keystone XL, and all pipelines--is a violation of treaty law that Indigenous people have every right to resist.
Our climate is in crisis, and the Water Protector movement is morally just. President Biden has committed to combating climate change, and should honor the Water Protectorsβ leadership by pardoning these five political prisoners who were wrongly convicted for their witness.
4) Now organize your congregation or community!
Reach out to 10 of your friends, share these resources with them, and invite them to join you on zoom or in person (where safe) for a letter-writing party.
Recruit your congregationβs climate justice, racial justice, or social justice team to sponsor a letter writing party after services on Sunday, or at another time.
DONATE TO SUPPORT #NoDAPL POLITICAL PRISONERS
As we heard last night, the #NoDAPL political prisoners continue to experience the financial impacts of their trials and incarceration. Part of our ongoing commitment to solidarity is βleveraging our spiritual, financial, human, and infrastructural resources in support of Water Protectors, especially those who face ongoing charges and prison sentences, and their loved ones.β In that spirit, we ask you to make a donation to the UU Ministry for Earthβs #NoDAPL Political Prisoner Support fund, which will direct all contributions directly to the Water Protectors.
Weβre so grateful to be in the struggle with all of you at the intersection of our shared work for climate justice, democracy, and decriminalization.
In faith and solidarity,
The Rev. Ashley Horan
Organizing Strategy Director
Side With Love - UUA
No call to God can be unheard nor left unanswered. And of this I can be sure; His answer is the one I really want.
Jesus teaches, βSeek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.β What the heck is Jesus talking about? The spiritual yearning we all feel to become One with the All once again. We all yearn to go home.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is encouraged in step eleven to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God. All we have to do is ask, surrender our egos, and accept the peace and bliss that arises.
In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and what is this truth and meaning we all are searching for? It is the peace and bliss of the Oneness with God.
Today, lesson #358 reminds us that no call to God can be unheard or unanswered because God is the Ground of Our Being, our Transcendent Source and what we really want deep down is to go home again and belong to that from which we have separated ourselves.
Note: Versions of this have run previously in this blog, Iβm posting it again as a public service. Mexico has a real history and tradition that is deeper than a taco and tequila festival favored by Gringos.
Quick, whatβs Mexican Independence Day? If you answered Cinco de Mayo, youβd be wrong. That is a minor provincial holiday in Mexico that has become a celebration of Mexican pride in the United States. It celebrates the victory of the Mexican Army over the French Empire at the Battle of Pueblain 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico. The correct answer is Diez y Seis de SeptiembreβSeptember 16βwhich commemorates El Grito de Delores, the rallying cry which set off a Mexican revolution against Spanish colonial rule and the caste of native born Spaniards who ran roughshod over the people in 1810.
Early in the morning of that fateful day Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a respected priest and champion of the Mestizosβmixed Spanish and Indian bloodβand the Indios. Both classes were held in virtual serfdom by a system in which native born SpaniardsβGachupinesβheld ruthless sway. Hidalgo had for sometime been part of a plot by Criollos to stage a coup dβΓ©tat by Mexican born Spaniards who were the middling level officers and administers of the system.
The Criollo plot was to take advantage of resentment of the impositionof Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throneby Napoleon to declare Mexican independence within a Spanish Empire under Ferdinand VII, considered by the Spanish people as the legitimate heir to the throne. But Ferdinand was held in France by the Emperor, so if it had succeeded the plot would have created a de-facto republic. The Gachupines, who had accepted Bonaparte, would be driven out of Mexico.
Plotters decided on a date in December to stage their coup. In the meantime they were quietly trying to line up the support of Criollo officers and by extension the Army. But the plot was betrayed and orders were sent out to arrest theleaders, including Hidalgo.
The wife of Miguel DomΓnguez, Corregidor of Queretaro (chief administrative official of the city of Queretaro) and a leader of the plot, learned of the pending arrests and sent a warningto Hidalgo in the village of Delores near the city of Guanajuato, about 230 miles northwest of the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico City. The late in the evening of September 15, Hidalgo asked Ignacio Allende, the Criollo officer who had brought the warning, to arrest all of the Gachupines in the city.
It was apparent to Hidalgo and Allende that the Criollos had not had time to solidify their support in the army, and indeed that many Criollo officers refused to join. The revolution would inevitably be crushed. Sometime in the early morning hours of September 16, Hidalgo made a fateful decisionβhe would call on the mestizo and Indio masses to rise up.
At about 6 A.M. Hidalgo assembled the people of the pueblo by tolling the church bell. When they were together he made this appeal, which he had hastily drafted:
My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once⦠Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!
This is the famous Grito de Delores which sparked the revolt. Runnerswent out to nearby towns carrying the message. The long oppressed people flocked to the cause armed with knives, machetes, homemade spears, farm implements, and what few fire arms that they could take from the Gachupines.
With Hidalgo and Allende at their head, the peasants began the march to Mexico City. Along the way they acquired an icon of the Virgin of GuadalupeβMary depicted as a dark skinned Indianβwhich became the banner of the revolt.
Along the way a regular Army regiment under the command of Criollos joined the march, but the swelling ranks of peasantsβsoon to number up to 50,000, was out of control by any authority.
The first major battle of the war began at Guanajuato, a substantial provincial town, on September 28. Local officialsrounded up the Gachupines and loyal Criollos and their families and made a stand in the townβs fortified granary. Hundreds of peasants were killed in wild frontal assaults on the position until rocks thrown from above caused the collapse of the granary roof, injuring many. When a civil official ran up a white flag of surrender, the garrison commander countermanded the order and opened fire on the native forces coming forward to accept it. Scores were killed. After that there was no quarter. With the exception of a few women and children, the 400 occupants of the granary were massacred. Then the town was pillaged and looted, with Criollo homes faring no better than the native Spaniards.
Of course Hidalgo had unleashed an unmanageableand ferocious anger among the people. Along the march any Gachupines unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the rebels were brutally killed, as were any Criollos who sided with themβor were simply assumed to be European born. The revolt was not just a national oneβit was a virtualslave revolt with all of the attendant horror that implied.
Word of the fate of Guanajuato mobilized forces in Mexico City and caused most wealthy Criollos to side with the government or try to remain neutral.
Hidalgo and his closest supporters later abandoned the army and returned to Delores. He was frightenedand disillusioned by what he had brought about. A year later he was captured by Gachupine forces and hanged.
It took 11 years of war to finally oust the Spaniards. A triumphant revolutionary army finally entered Mexico City on September 28, 1821, issued an official Declaration of the Independence of Mexican Empire, and established a government of imperial regency under AgustΓn de Iturbide.
But Mexicans mark the beginning of the struggleβthe Grito de Deloresβas the true anniversary of independence.
Eventually the church bell from Delores was brought to the capital. Each year on the night of September 15, the President of Mexico rings the bell at the National Palace and repeats a Grito Mexicano based upon the Grito de Dolores from the balcony of the palace to the hundreds of thousands assembled in the Plaza de la ConstituciΓ³n. At dawn on September 16 a military parade starts in the Plaza passes the Hidalgo Memorial and proceeds down the Paseo de la Reforma, the cityβs main boulevard. Similar celebrations are held in cities and towns across Mexico.
Gnome, half-elf, orc β¦ Rogue, bard, sorcerer β¦ Who will you be?Β
It is commonly understood that imaginary play can be an important part of childhood. Can adults also learn something from battling dragons or casting invisibility spells? This Sunday, September 19, Rev. Alice will explore the life lessons and benefits found in role playing games [ … ]
The post Sunday, September 19 ~ Roll For It! ~ 10:30 a.m. appeared first on Unitarian Church of Marlborough and Hudson.
Truth answers every call we make to God, responding first with miracles, and then returning unto us to be itself.
What is truth? In Unitarian Universalism the fourth principle of seven is to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. What is this βtruthβ that we are searching for?
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that the truth we are searching for is the improved conscious contact with God as we understand God.
In Unitarian Universalism it is suggested in the first principle that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Today, in lesson #357 it is suggested that the truth we call for is found in the miracle of forgiveness which frees our brothers and sisters and ourselves.
This poem has appeared on this blogat least nine times for Yom Kippur. I guess that this makes it an official tradition. It was inspired not only by my genuine admiration for the Holy Day, but by an ongoing controversy in my own Unitarian Universalist faith. For many years UUs have gone blithely on incorporating snatches of prayers, ritual, and traditionfrom other religions into our own worship. We do it mostly in good faith claiming βThe Living Tradition which we share draws from many sourcesβ¦β
But lately we have taken grieffrom Native Americans for adopting willy-nilly rituals and prayers which we donβt fully understand and take out of context, many of which, frankly, turned out to be New Age touchy-feely faux traditions. And from African-Americans for Kwanza being widely celebrated is in almost all-white UU Sunday Schools.
Being UUβs, many of us were stung that our well-meaning gestures were not gratefully accepted as a sort of homage. Others busily set themselves up to the task of wiping the scourge of cultural appropriation from our midst, preferably with a judicious dollop of self-flagellation with knotted whipsβoops! Stole that one from 4th Century monksβ¦No, what they did was form committees and commissions to issue long, high minded reports to be translated into deepretreats. Seminary training was amended for proper sensitivity, and scolding monitors were appointed to detect insufficient rigor in rooting out the offense at General Assemblies and meetings.
In that spirit I offer you my poem. Angry denunciations and heresy trial to followβ¦
And, yea, I may also have been reading a lot of Carl Sandburg when I wrote this. Think it shows?
Cultural Appropriation
See, the Jews have this thing.
Yahweh, or whatever they call their Sky God,
keeps a list like Santa Claus.
You know, whoβs been naughty and nice.
But before He puts it in your Permanent Record
and doles out the lumps of coal
He gives you one more chance
to set things straight.
So to get ready for this one day of the yearβ
they call it Yom Kippur
but itβs hard to pin down because
it wanders around the fall calendar
like an orphan pup looking for its maβ
the Jews run around saying they are sorry
to everyone they screwed over last year
and even to those whose toes
they stepped on by accident.
The trick is, they gotta really mean it.
None of this βIβm sorry if my words offendedβ crap,
that wonβt cut no ice with the Great Jehovah.
And they gotta, you know, make amends,
do something, anything, to make things right
even if itβs kind of a pain in the ass.
Then the Jews all go to Templeβ
even the ones who never set foot in it
the whole rest of the year
and those who think that,
when you get right down to it,
that this Yahweh business is pretty iffyβ
and they tell Him all about it.
First a guy with a big voice sings something.
And then they prayβman do they ever pray,
for hours in a language that sounds
like gargling nails
that most of βem donβt even savvy.
A guy blows an old ramβs horn,
maybe to celebrate, I donβt know
When itβs all over, they get up and go home
feeling kind of fresh and new.
If they did it right that old list
was run through the celestial shredder.
Then next week, they can go out
and start screwing up again.
It sounds like a sweet deal to me.
Look, Iβm not much of one for hours in the Templeβ
an hour on Sunday morning
when the choir sings sweet
is more than enough for me, thank you.
And I have my serious doubts about this
Old Man in the Sky crap.
But this idea of being sorry and meaning it
of fixing things up that I broke
and starting fresh
has legs.
I think Iβll swipe it.
Iβll start right now.
To my wife Kathyβ
Iβm sorry for being such
a crabby dickhead most of the timeβ¦
Anybody got a horn?
βPatrick Murfin
I just updated the selection of games on my curriculum Web site. In-person games now either have adaptations to make them COVID-safe, or they’re clearly marked “not suitable for COVID.” There’s also a modest selection of field-tested online games for online classes and groups. There are games for all ages from school-aged children up to adults. These games can be used in Sunday school classes, youth groups, adult classes, and other small groups.
Games Web page with COVID-safe games and online games.
We’ve now been teaching my Neighboring Religions curriculum online since March, 2020. This curriculum has transferred extremely well to online teaching. Now I’m writing out the adaptations that we’ve used to make it work so well.
Neighboring Religions curriculum with online adaptations.
If you have any feedback or comments about either the games, or Neighboring Religions, please leave them here.
Save the Date for our Annual Palmer Lecture:Β Lindsey Krinks, Co-Founder and Director ofΒ Education for Open Table Nashville, has agreed to be this year’s Palmer Lecturer. The virtual lecture “Housing is a Human Right” will be on Friday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. For more information about Open Table Nashville, visit opentablenashville.org.Β
Rev. Palmer was named Minister Emeritus of FUUN in 1979 in recognition of his work as our first called minister. To further honor his legacy, the church began an ongoing lecture series on human rights issues with the mission to engage speakers of recognized stature and appeal to a wide audience in the Nashville area.Β View previous lectures atΒ Β firstuunash.org/palmer-lecture-archive/Β and join us this November.
I have been at a loss for words these past few weeks. But sitting quietly in the back yard–often next to the frog pond–has enabled me to see some beautiful birds. I’ll start with this cardinal, cardinals being for a long time my favorite bird. I saw this rather scraggly (like all juveniles) female while I was lying in the hammock reading. I love their little chirps.
I saw the cardinal just as I started reading a new book, Carnival Lights, by Chris Stark. It has taken me several weeks to finish because it was so painful. I had to stop and start, stop and start. This novel should have all the trigger warnings. It brings to life the theme of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and it also weaves the past into the near present (1969) with the long history of land theft, murder, and oppression. I grew to love cousins Sher and Kris, two teenage Ojibwe girls, running away in Minnesota. But I am not even sure to whom I might recommend the book? I felt like I was plunged into vicarious trauma as a reader, and I wouldn’t want to re-trigger that kind of trauma for my Native friends, one of whom already mentioned that, yeah, she’d never be able to read it.
Yet there were also threads of beauty and resilience interwoven into the tapestry of the story that fed my spirit too. Such powerful gorgeous writing, such depth of expression, such love. It is a brilliant book. I first found it because it was recommended by a Native author I love–Mona Susan Power. So perhaps for some Native women, the trauma is well known and understood, and the beauty and love in this story is a healing balm.
For me, in between reading, I had to go to my own backyard to find the grounding and fortitude to be able to continue. I was sitting near the pond watching the frogs when two yellow warblers (I think that’s who they are) started flitting about in the bushes, trying to attract my attention–perhaps away from something else? It seems too late for there to be a nest, but who knows? It must be almost time for their migration south. They were definitely letting me see them, and then flying to another bush close by. I saw them on two or three separate days, and caught these photos.
What do we do with the obscene brutality and violence that our whole society is built upon? What do we do with the exquisite beauty of a bird on a summer day?
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041153/https://findingourwayhomeblog.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/cardinal-1.jpg
On Sunday, September 12th, hundreds of UU gathered for the launch of the new Side With Love Action Center: a place where we can ground, grow, and act together. As we move into this recovery, we cannot go back to normal. The Side With Love Action Center is a place to harness the power of our faith to contend with the systems of oppression that create multiple, intersecting crises. Our justice campaigns (Creating Climate Justice, UU the Vote, LGBTQ ministries and Love Resists) are joining together to skill up our commun ity, take action to advance our values, and build grassroots power to confront injustice on the national and local levels.
At the launch, our speakers Cherri Foylin (Lβeau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp), Aquene Freechild (Public Citizen), and Rev. Tamara Lebak (Restorative Justice Institute of Oklahoma), joined us to talk about how interlocking systems of oppression are impacting our communities and invited us into the work of building beloved community.
We know our battles and our lives are bound together. Letβs mobilize our folx across our justice campaigns to show up at this critical moment. With so much at stake, now is the time to build moral courage and stronger organizing capacity to win for our communities.
In case you missed it!
Watch the Action Center launch video individually or with our congregation
Download and review the Launch Guide
Join us for the following Action Center events:
Join us for the the first Action Center action and political education event: From #NoDAPL to #StopLine3: Water Protectors, Movement Building, and Solidarity Tuesday, September 14, 2021 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM ET
Come to the Volunteer Squad Activation Huddle: Sunday, September 26, 2021 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM ET
Join the Community of Praxis Gathering: Monday, October 25, 2021 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM ET
Join the next Skill Up: Sunday, October 17, 2021 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM ET
Organize your congregation to host an Action Center event
Tell your story and report your work with the Story & Report Form
UUSJ Democracy Issue Briefing -September 15
Join a Finish the Job for the People National Day of Action -September 17
Save the Date
October Relay/Rally Pledge to Act -Indicate you came through UUA!
From #NoDAPL to #StopLine3: Water Protectors, Movement Building, and Solidarity Tuesday, September 14, 2021 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM ET
Stop the Money Pipeline to divest from Fossil Fuels
Support folx impacted by Hurricane Ida
Members of the Congressional βSquadβ β including Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush β have joined together to call on President Biden to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. This action has elevated our call to stop Line 3. Now we need to continue this momentum and build more pressure on President Biden to act. Here are two ways you can help right now:
Call the White House: Demand that Bidenβs Administration revoke the Line 3 permit immediately. Click here for a sample script and the number to call.
Write to President Joe Biden: Click here to fill in your contact information and write a message in your words about why you want President Biden to take action to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline.
At our Action Center launch we asked you to send emails to the Oklahoma Parole Board to recommend clemency for Julius Jones. See this petition for clemency for Julius Jones to the Oklahoma Parole Board.
BREAKING NEWS! On Monday the Oklahoma Board of Pardons voted to make a recommendation to Governor Stitt to commute the death sentence of Julius Jones. A huge Justice for Julius interfaith and community rally was held after our Action Launch (Sunday, Sept. 12th) at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Oklahoma City.
Very soon there will be next steps and action to urge Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to listen to the recommendation of the Oklahoma Parole Board. Please check www.justiceforjulius.com/events which will be updated soon for how to take action on the Governor.
Oklahoma is ground zero for the restorative justice movement, see https://www.restorativejusticeok.org/ for resources, training, and ways to connect.
Please mark your calendars for Saturday, Oct.Β 16, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.Β With the exception of 2020, since 2016 FUUN has actively participated in this interfaith Recycle Day Event. Members of participating churches are able to drop off to West End United Methodist Church parking lot items such as paper for shtredding, medicines, electronics (small fee), and more. Further information to follow. We need 3-4 volunteers to help make the day a success; contactΒ Kathy Ganske (her information is in Breeze).Β
Kathy is a member of FUUN and our inaugural co-chair for ENACT, which is FUUN’s Environmental Action Team. See our website page at firstuunash.org/enact/ for more information. Currently, our ENACT team doesn’t have a chair. If you are interested, please contact nominating@thefuun.org.
Lesson #356
Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another name for God. The miracle is thus a call to HIm.
As we near the end of the workbook, the terms used in the A Course In Miracles workbook become more understandable. Sin is separation from the Love of God. Healing is a return to the Oneness, the non duality of the Ground of Our Being, our Transcendent Source. The miracle is the shift in perception from the world of the ego based on separation and division to the world of God which is the Oneness, the Wholeness, holiness, get it? And so the miracle is a remembering from Whence we have come and the healing of the separation.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation, what today we call βmindfulness.β
In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the responsible search for truth and meaning which takes us to the place of miracles.
It is suggested in todayβs lesson, #356. that we drop the ego and call to the Oneness of God and work a miracle.
Except for the general excitement of a Division race, the game at Torontoβs old Exhibition Stadium on warm afternoon of September 14, 1987 started out as nothing special. The Canadian team was tied with Detroit in the American League East and naturally hoped to pull ahead with a victory against the Baltimore Orioles. The first inning passed with neither starter, Jim Clancy of the Jays and Ken Dixon of the Oβs, allowing a run.
Then in the bottom of the second inning all hell broke loose.
Ernie Whitt led off the second with a solo home run. One batter later, Rance Mulliniks hit a two-run shot. Exit hurler Dixon, enter Eric Bell who promptly let another runner get on base and then served up a fat one to Lloyd Moseby who smacked it out of the house.
Just like that it was a three homer, 5-0 game. And Baltimoreβs miserywas just beginning.
In the third George Bell launched one followed by Mosebyβs second of the day. Five round trippers, 7-0,
Leading off the fifth Whitt collected his second homer of the afternoon. The battered and bewildered Orioles pitching staff had now coughed up six four baggers.
Next inning Bell added his second boomer of the day. With seven homers and a 10-2 lead Jayβs manager Jimy Williams felt comfortable resting Bell, Moseby, and Tony Fernandez.
If Baltimore expected mercy from the bench, they were mistaken. Rob Ducey, in for Moseby, hit a 3-run homer. Witt immediately followed with his third shot of the day. Nine homers, 14-2 after seven.
Ordinarily designated hitter Fred McGriff would be expected to provide power to the home team, but he had been left out of the party. Until he stepped to the plate to open the ninth inning and delivered his contribution.
In total, the Blue Jays hit a grand total of 10 home runs, collected 21 hits and scored 18 runs and won the game handily 18-3 and had three hitters with multiple homers. The game set a record for most home runs by one team in a single game, a Major League record which still stands to this day. This is even more impressive in light of the fact the MLB record for total homers by both teams in a game, stands at only 12.
As a sidelight to the game when Orioleβs skipper Cal Ripken, Sr. realized the game was hopeless, he gave his son, Cal Ripken, Jr. some well-deserved rest. But in doing so he ended Juniorβs unbroken streak of 8,243 innings played.
The Jays went on to sweep the series and opened a 3Β½ game lead on Tigers with two weeks left in the season. But Detroit came roaring back, closing the gap and beating the Blue Jays head-to-head 1-0 on October 4 to claim the Division crown. The Michiganders lost the American League Championship to the Minnesota Twins who beat the Cardinals in the seventh game of an epic World Series battle to claim the World Championship.
The defendant insists that his liberty is invaded when the State subjects him to fine or imprisonment for neglecting or refusing to submit to vaccination … But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. … Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.
– Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan,
Jacobson v Massachusetts (1905)
This week’s featured post is “On Doing Your Own Research“.
Which is not even actually a mandate; a company that isn’t a government contractor can avoid penalties by instituting weekly testing for its unvaccinated workers. Anyway, here’s what President Biden announced in his speech Thursday.
In all, about 100 million Americans will be affected by the order. If we assume that they’re typical of the total American adult population (about 75% vaccinated already), that would mean that 25 million unvaccinated Americans are now facing the options of (1) get vaccinated (and maybe save your own life); (2) get tested every week; or (3) look for a job at a smaller company.
Republicans, who in general have fought any effort to control the virus, were quick to denounce Biden’s move.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, for example, said the mandate was “tyranny” and “unconstitutional”. He charged that Biden was only doing it to distract attention from Afghanistan. (Because why else would an American president respond to a plague that had killed 677,000 Americans and was adding to that total at the rate of 3K every two days?)
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called it “dictatorial” and predicted “This will never stand up in court.” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was one of several GOP governors pledging to challenge the rule in court. When asked about these threatened lawsuits, Biden said, “Have at it.“
Assuming that the Supreme Court will uphold the laws and long-established precedents — always a dangerous assumption with this highly political court — Biden is on pretty firm ground.
The authority for the mandate comes from the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970 (which was signed by that flaming liberal Richard Nixon). OSHA has never been used to mandate a vaccine before, but gives the government broad powers to enforce workplace safety.
As to whether individuals have an inherent right to refuse vaccination, that was decided back in 1905, when Massachusetts (among other states) mandated a smallpox vaccine. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan (the greatest justice you’ve probably never heard of; among other claims to fame, he was the lone dissenter in both Plessy v Ferguson and in the Civil Rights Cases that opened the door for Jim Crow) reasoned that a community’s power to protect itself against an epidemic would violate an individual’s 14th Amendment rights only if it went “far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public”.
In order to prevail, then, a challenge would have to argue on fairly narrow grounds. Either:
CNN reports that corporate America is actually pretty pleased with this government interference: Companies want a vaccinated workforce, but don’t want to appear heavy-handed. So they’re happy to demand vaccination and blame Biden for it. That’s why groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, who are knee-jerk opponents of all other government regulation, are on board.
This Texas Dad creatively lampoons the masks-violate-my-freedom crowd by stripping down during a school board meeting. Who’s free now?
With characteristic cruelty, anti-maskers laugh at a teen as he talks about his grandmother dying of Covid.
Last week I was uncertain whether the new-case numbers were peaking, or if Ida had disrupted the statistics. This week confirms the peak. New cases are down 7% over the last two weeks, though deaths (which usually run two weeks behind new cases) are still increasing. New cases are averaging 145K per day in the US, and deaths are averaging 1648 per day. The total American death total since the start of the pandemic is up to 677,988.
I continue to be amazed at the reactions of people who resist vaccines and masking and anything else that might mitigate the spread. 677K Americans are dead, with three thousand more every two days. You’d think that kind of impact would justify a little inconvenience. But no.
The anniversary was Saturday. I noticed two main trends in the commentary. First, acknowledging again the human impact: the losses people suffered on that day, the long-term suffering of people exposed to whatever got into the air, and the heroism of people who tried to help others at great risk to themselves.
The second major trend was to take a step back and recognize just how badly we screwed up our national response. After 9-11, the public was united in a way it hadn’t been since World War II. The country wanted to do something, and even people who believed that George W. Bush hadn’t legitimately been elected the previous November recognized that he was the only leader available to rally behind. For the next year or two, President Bush could have done just about anything he wanted, if he could claim it had some reasonable connection to 9-11.
What he did, largely under the influence of Vice President Cheney, was to start two wars that were unwinnable because they lacked reasonable goals. American military power could topple the the Taliban and Saddam governments fairly quickly, but Bush and Cheney had no clear notion of how to replace them, or what they wanted out of the new governments.
Many of the prisoners from those wars wound up in a lawless zone in Guantanamo, where they were tortured in violation of both our treaty agreements and longstanding American values. Once introduced, torture spread to other US facilities. In addition, the US government claimed enormous new powers to spy on its own citizens, and even to whisk them into military brigs indefinitely by declaring them “enemy combatants”. Internationally, America claimed the right to launch attacks on the soil of any country where we believed terrorists were hiding.
Subsequent administrations could have reversed these policies, but didn’t (unless forced to by the Supreme Court). They could have leveled with the American people about how little we were accomplishing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but didn’t.
The mainstream media was largely complicit in these efforts, and remains complicit today — as we saw recently when it savaged President Biden for ending the Afghan War. Twenty years of wasting money and misusing power never aroused a fraction of the ire that was unleashed when a president reversed that foolish course.
And while our troops are no longer fighting in Afghanistan, and President Biden claims the combat mission of our remaining 2500 troops in Iraq will end this year, the internal spying powers remain, and 39 prisoners are still at Guantanamo. The Biden administration may have tightened up control over drone strikes, but, like all post-911 administrations, it claims the right to attack anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.
Every surviving president but Carter appeared at ceremonies to mark 9-11. Biden, Obama, and Clinton were all in New York, and Biden and Bush were at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Carter’s absence is understandable. He’s 96 and has a variety of health problems. Also, his presidency ended two decades before 9-11, so he neither caused nor responded to it.
Trump took heat for not attending, and for marking 9-11 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, where he was a guest commentator for a boxing match. He did, however, address by video a Day of Prayer event on the National Mall organized by the Let Us Worship organization. Trump never tried to be the president of all the people, so it’s not surprising that he acts as ex-president only for crowds of his supporters.
In The Guardian, Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes examines where the $5 trillion spent on Afghanistan and Iraq went: mostly to military contractors.
Ross Douthat owns up to being part of a misguided post-911 consensus, and now sees the War on Terror as a 20-year distraction from our real foreign-policy challenge: the rise of China.
Kurt Andersen notes that the 20th anniversary of Pearl Harbor was not a big deal.
Paul Krugman recalls how willing Republicans were to exploit 9-11 to push an unrelated political agenda (βNothing is more important in a time of war than cutting taxes,” said Tom DeLay), and how this foreshadowed the party-over-country trend that has characterized the GOP ever since.
After a week of speculation about how the Biden administration would respond to the law, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a lawsuit. (The text of the suit is here.) The approach AG Garland chose was to sue the State of Texas in federal court, seeking “an order preliminarily and permanently enjoining the State of Texas, including its officers, employees, and agents, including private parties who would bring suit under the law, from implementing or enforcing S.B. 8.”
Because SB8 specifically does what Supreme Court precedents say laws cannot do (substantially burden a woman’s right to choose an abortion before a fetus is viable), the suit says SB8 is “in open defiance of the Constitution”.
The United States therefore may sue a State to vindicate the rights of individuals when a state infringes on rights protected by the Constitution. … The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review.
The suit notes that while Texas executive-branch officials may not be involved in enforcing the law, Texas judges are.
while Texas has gone to unprecedented lengths to cloak its attack on constitutionally protected rights behind a nominally private cause of action, it nonetheless has compelled its judicial branch to serve an enforcerβs role.
And when private individuals file suit to enforce the law, they also become agents of the state “and thus are bound by the Constitution”. (One indication of their state-actor status is that the people who sue under SB8 can collect a payment even though they have not personally suffered damages. Clearly they are not suing in their private capacity.)
The suit also notes an impact on the federal government: Whenever a government program requires it to cover someone’s health care, the government might wind up paying for an abortion — and thus itself being liable for damages under SB8. (Job Corps, Refugee Resettlement, Bureau of Prisons, Office of Personnel Management, Medicaid, and Department of Defense are examples.)
AP reports that yesterday Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett “spoke at length about her desire for others to see the Supreme Court as nonpartisan”.
Maybe she should worry first about what she is, and then worry about how she appears.
Texas Governor Abbott was asked about forcing women to have their rapists’ babies, and he responded in ways that make it clear he doesn’t take the problem seriously: First, he claimed the law gives women “six weeks” to get an abortion, when most women will not know they are pregnant by then, and most pregnancy tests are unreliable until after a missed period. And then he went to Fantasyland:
Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.
So: Nothing to worry about, because there aren’t going to be any more rapes in Texas. Sadly, though, Texas had nearly 15,000 reported rapes in 2019 (the most recent numbers I could find), and some unknown number of unreported rapes. Abbott did not reveal his magic plan to eliminate rape, or explain why he has not implemented it during the six years he has been governor. And what will he do when accused rapist Donald Trump comes back to the state?
And so Abbott joins the long list of Republican politicians who have said stupid and/or heartless things about rape.
A giant Robert E. Lee statue came down in Richmond Wednesday, provoking all kinds of discussion of Lee’s place in history.
Probably no American historical figure has been as thoroughly mythologized as Lee, who in Southern hindsight became the great saint of the Lost Cause. The glorification of Lee was so extreme that in 1996 a biography was titled Lee, Considered because it claimed that the Southern general had never been realistically evaluated by historians. So “considered”, not “reconsidered”.
The two main points of contention are (1) Lee’s relationship to slavery, and (2) how good a general he really was. The first was discussed by Gillian Brockwell in the Washington Post. As for the second, Lee, Considered makes a convincing case that Lee was a brilliant tactician, but not much of a strategist.
As Rhett Butler explained in Gone With the Wind, the South went into the war over-matched in manufacturing capacity and potential manpower. So there were basically only two ways the South could have defeated the North:
But no matter how clever its generals were from battle to battle, the South couldn’t possibly win the kind of war Lee got them into: a multi-year war of attrition. Bad strategy. The strategy by which Grant ultimately defeated Lee was to stop worrying about his own casualties and focus instead on inflicting as many as possible. Grant understood that he could replenish his forces, but Lee couldn’t.
How the South ultimately did win (in 1877) was through an endless terrorist campaign, not a second try at Gettysburg.
Connecting this note with the 9-11 retrospective: If Americans understood our own history, we would never have tried to remake Afghanistan. Even after the victories of Sherman and Grant, and a decade of military occupation, the North was never able to remake the South in its own image. Like the Taliban, the White supremacist aristocracy reestablished itself as soon as the Union troops left.
Tuesday is election day for the California recall. Polls on recalling Newsom were tight a month ago, but Keep now has a wide lead over Remove. Consequently, Republicans are already preparing to accuse Governor Gavin Newsom of fraud, because no elections they lose can possibly be legit.
Someday I want to hear their theory on how Newsom managed to coordinate this election fraud with all the polling operations.
Nate Silver does a quick analysis of the decline in President Biden’s approval rating. It corresponds to two events: the Afghanistan withdrawal and the rise in Delta variant cases. Like Nate, I think the Afghan situation will either fade from public attention or look better in hindsight. If this Covid wave is also peaking, Biden might bounce back, though Nate isn’t sold on that as a likelihood.
The negotiations over the Democrats’ reconciliation infrastructure package is getting serious, with Bernie Sanders on one side and Joe Manchin on the other.
James Fallows describes efforts to rethink college rating systems. The traditional US News approach measures inputs: how accomplished students are when they enter college. It would be better to measure what students gain while they’re there.
In line with this week’s historical themes, an actual historian debunks the Molon Labe slogan favored by gun-rights extremists. After all, according to the story, the Persians did come and take the Spartan weapons, after killing the Spartan king and all his warriors. Persian casualties were likely larger, but Thermopylae was merely “a speed bump under the wheels of the Persian war machine”, which went on to burn Athens before losing the naval battle of Salamis.
Probably, though, the whole Thermopylae myth was Greek propaganda intended to spin a disastrous defeat as a moral victory. (The Alamo myth serves a similar purpose.) It persists today for a different reason:
[The pro-gun] right-wing fringe favors Molon Labe, and by extension the larger toxic myth of Spartan badassery, primarily because it dovetails with other ideas they favorβnamely, the advancement of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim causes. … In the film version, a hunky 36-year-old Gerard Butler (the real Leonidas was 60 at the time of this battle) led a tiny, beleaguered force composed entirely of musclebound white men to defend the gates of Europe against a brown-skinned tide of decadent foreigners. This wildly false take on Thermopylae, and by extension Sparta, has become a constant reference point for right-wing fringe groups in slogan after poster after stump speech.
Back in 2015, Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam started the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Last year’s winner was “Terry the Turtle flipping the bird“.
This year’s finalists are now posted. The whole gallery is worth a look, but my favorite is this undersea choir.
It’s easy to laugh at the conspiracy theorists. But our expert classes aren’t entitled to blind trust.
One common mantra among anti-vaxxers, Q-Anoners, ivermectin advocates, and conspiracy theorists of all stripes is that people need to “do their own research”. Don’t be a sheep who believes whatever the CDC or the New York Times or some other variety of “expert” tells you. If something is important, you need to look into it yourself.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of pushback memes. This one takes a humorous poke at the inflated view many people have of their intellectual abilities.
While this one is a bit more intimidating:
And this one is pretty in-your-face:
I understand and mostly agree with the point these memes are trying to make: There is such a thing as expertise, and watching a YouTube video is no substitute for a lifetime of study. In fact, few ideas are so absurd that you can’t make a case for them that is good enough to sound convincing for half an hour — as I remember from reading Erich von Daniken’s “ancient astronaut” books back in the 1970s.
Medical issues are particularly tricky, because sometimes people just get well (or die) for no apparent reason. Whatever they happened to be doing at the time looks brilliant (or stupid), when in fact it might have had nothing to do with anything. That’s why scientists invented statistics and double-blind studies and so forth — so they wouldn’t be fooled by a handful of fluky cases, or by their own desire to see some pattern that isn’t really there.
All the same, I cringe when one of these memes appears on my social media feed, because I know how they’ll be received by the people they target. The experts are telling them: “Shut up, you dummy, and believe what you’re told.”
They’re going to take that message badly, and I actually don’t blame them. Because there is a real crisis of expertise in the world today, and it didn’t appear out of nowhere during the pandemic. It’s been building for a long time.
Liberal skepticism. Because the Trump administration was so hostile to expertise, we now tend to think of viewing experts skeptically as a left/right issue. But it’s not. Go back, for example, and look at liberal Chris Hayes’ 2012 book The Twilight of the Elites. Each chapter of that book covers a different area in which some trusted corps of experts failed the public that put its faith them: Intelligence experts (and the journalists who covered them) assured us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Bankers drove the world economy into a ditch in 2008, largely because paper that turned out to be worthless was rated AAA. The Catholic priesthood, supposedly a guardian of morality for millions of Americans, was raping children and then covering it up.
Experts, it turns out, do have training and experience. But they also have class interests. Sometimes they’re looking out for themselves rather than for the rest of us.
More recently, we have discovered that military experts have been lying to us for years about the “progress” they’d made in promoting Afghan democracy and training an Afghan army to defend that democratic government.
It’s not hard to find economists who present capitalism as the only viable option for a modern economy, or who explain why we can’t afford to take care of all the sick people, or to prevent climate change from producing some apocalyptic future.
Such people are very good at talking down to the rest of us. But ordinary folks are less and less likely to take them seriously. And that’s good, sort of. You shouldn’t believe what people say just because they have a title or a degree.
If not expertise, what? So it’s not true that if you argue with a recognized expert, you’re automatically wrong. Unfortunately, though, recent events have shown us that a reflexive distrust of all experts creates even worse problems.
Without widespread belief in experts, the truth becomes a matter of tribalism (one side believes in fighting Covid and the other doesn’t), intimidation (Republicans who know better don’t dare tell Trump’s personality cult that he lost), or wishful thinking (nobody wants to believe we have to change our lives to cut carbon emissions).
Which one of us is Galileo? The foundational myth of modern science (Galileo saying “and yet it moves“) expresses faith in a reality beyond the power of kings and popes. People who have trained their minds to be objective can see that reality, while others are stuck either following or rebelling against authority.
The question is: Who is Galileo in the current controversies? Is it the scientific experts who have spent their lives training to see clearly in these situations? Or is it the populists, who refuse to bow to the authority of the expert class, and insist on “doing their own research”?
Simply raising that question points to a more nuanced answer than just “Shut up and believe what you’re told.”
Take me, for example. This blog arises from distrust of experts. After the Saddam’s-weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, I started looking deeper into the stories in the headlines. Because I was living in New Hampshire at the time, it was easy to go listen to the 2004 presidential candidates. Once I did, I noticed the media’s habit of fitting a speech into a predetermined narrative, rather than reporting what a candidate was actually saying. Then I started reading major court decisions (like the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision of 2003), and interpreting them for myself.
In short, I was doing my own research. Some guy at CNN may have spent his whole life reporting on legal issues, but I was going to read the cases for myself.
When social media became a thing, and turned into an even bigger source of misinformation than the mainstream media had ever been, I began to look on this blog as a model for individual behavior: Don’t amplify claims without some amount of checking. (For example: In this weeks’ summary — the next post after this one — I was ready to blast Trump for ignoring all observances of 9-11. But then I discovered that he appeared by video at a rally organized by one of his supporters on the National Mall. I’m not shy about criticizing Trump, but facts are facts.) Listen to criticism from commenters and thank them when they catch one of your mistakes. Change your opinions when the facts change.
But also notice the things that I don’t do: When my wife got cancer, we didn’t design her treatment program by ourselves. We made value judgments about what kinds of sacrifices we were willing to make for her treatment (a lot, as it turned out), but left the technical details to our doctors. At one point we felt that a doctor was a little too eager to get my wife into his favorite clinical trial, so we got a second opinion and ultimately changed doctors. But we didn’t ditch Western medicine and count on Chinese herbs or something. (She’s still doing fine 25 years after the original diagnosis.)
On this blog, I may not trust the New York Times and Washington Post to decide what stories are important and what they mean, but I do trust them on basic facts. If the NYT puts quotes around some words, I believe that the named person actually said those words (though I may check the context). If the WaPo publishes the text of a court decision, I believe that really is the text. And so on.
I also trust the career people in the government to report statistics accurately. The political appointees may spin those numbers in all sorts of ways, but the bureaucrats in the cubicles are doing their best.
In the 18 years I’ve been blogging, that level of trust has never burned me.
Where I come from. So the question isn’t “Do you trust anybody?” You have to; the world is just too big to figure it all out for yourself. Instead, the question is who you trust, and what you trust them to do.
My background gives me certain advantages in answering those questions, because I have a foot in both camps. Originally, I was a mathematician. I got a Ph.D. from a big-name university and published a few articles in some prestigious research journals (though not for many years now). So I understand what it means to do actual research, and to know things that only a handful of other people know. At the same time, I am not a lawyer, a doctor, a political scientist, an economist, a climate scientist, or a professional journalist. So just about everything I discuss in this blog is something I view from the outside.
I don’t, for example, have any inside knowledge about public health or infectious diseases or climate science. But I do know a lot about the kind of people who go into the sciences, and about the social mores of the scientific community. So when I hear about some vast conspiracy to inflate the threat of Covid or climate change, I can only shake my head. I can picture how many people would necessarily be involved in such a conspiracy, and who many of them would have to be. It’s absurd.
In universities and labs all over the world, there are people who would love to be the one to expose the “hoax” of climate change, or to discover the simple solution that means none of us have to change our lifestyle. You couldn’t shut them up by shifting research funding, you’d need physical concentration camps, and maybe gas chambers. The rumors of people vanishing into those camps would spread far enough that I would hear them.
I haven’t.
Not all experts deserve our skepticism. Similarly, one of my best friends and two of my cousins are nurses. I know the mindset of people who go into medicine. So the idea that hospitals all over the country are faking deaths by the hundreds of thousands, or that ICUs are only pretending to be jammed with patients — it’s nuts.
If you’ve ever planned a surprise party, you know that conspiracies of just a dozen or so people can be hard to manage. Now imagine conspiracies that involve tens of thousands, most of whom were once motivated by ideals completely opposite to the goals of the conspiracy.
It doesn’t happen.
I have a rule of thumb that has served me well over the years: You don’t always have to follow the conventional wisdom, but when you don’t you should know why.
Lots of expert classes have earned our distrust. But some haven’t. They’re not all the same. And even the bankers and the priests have motives more specific than pure evil. If they wouldn’t benefit from some conspiracy, they’re probably not involved.
Know thyself. As you divide up the world between things you’re going to research yourself and things you’re going to trust to someone else, the most important question you need to answer is: What kind of research can you reasonably do? (Being trained to read mathematical proofs made it easy for me to read judicial opinions. I wouldn’t have guessed that, but it turned out that way.)
That’s what’s funny about the cartoon at the top: This guy thinks he credibly competes with the entire scientific community (and expects his wife to share that assessment of his abilities).
My Dad (who I think suspected from early in my life that he was raising a know-it-all) often said to me: “Everybody in the world knows something you don’t.” As I got older, I realized that the reverse is also true: Just about all of us have some experience that gives us a unique window on the world. You don’t necessarily need a Ph.D. to see something most other people miss.
But at the same time, often our unique windows point in the wrong direction entirely. My window, for example, tells me very little about what Afghans are thinking right now. If I want to know, I’m going to have to trust somebody a little closer to the topic.
And if I’m going to be a source of information rather than misinformation, I’ll need to account for my biases. Tribalism, intimidation, and wishful thinking affect everybody. A factoid that matches my prior assumptions a little too closely is exactly the kind of thing I need to check before I pass it on. Puzzle pieces that fit together too easily have maybe been shaved a little; check it out.
So sure: Do your own research. But also learn your limitations, and train yourself to be a good researcher within those boundaries. Otherwise, you might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept Godβs Word. Why not today?
The question that can guide our thoughts, intentions, and actions is βWhat would Love have me do?β When we operate at this level we perform miracles and peace and joy arises.
In Alcoholic Anonymous it is suggested, in step twelve, that we share our spiritual awakening with others.
In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.
Today, it is suggested in Lesson #355 that we perform miracles when we accept Godβs Word of unconditional love and share it bringing peace and joy to ourselves and others around the world.
This week, Biden upped the pressure on vaccine refusers, and Republicans freaked out about it. The new-case numbers finally started going down. We marked the 20th anniversary of 9-11. The Justice Department started fighting back against the Texas abortion law. And a big Robert E. Lee statue came down in Richmond.
This week’s featured post, though, backs up a little to address a more general question: Whether or not ordinary people should “do our own research” on the issues of the day. It’s easy to shake your head at the people eating horse paste to guard against Covid and say “Obviously not.” But the issue is actually more nuanced than that. This blog, for instance, is an example of someone doing his own research up to a point. I don’t run my own clinical trials, but if I totally trusted mainstream journalists to turn my attention in the right directions, there’d be no purpose in most of what I do.
So “On Doing Your Own Research” is a bit more sympathetic to the populist view than you might expect. It should appear around 10 EDT.
The weekly summary discusses the developments mentioned in the first paragraph, with particular attention to the legal basis for Biden’s “mandate” order, and for DoJ’s lawsuit against Texas. I’ll also go off on historical tangents about General Lee’s weakness as a strategist, and the similarity of the Thermopylae and Alamo myths. Let’s say that posts around noon.
So for context, I'm a 20-something. In the last few days, I've become interested in exploring spirituality. But there have always been little things that bothered me about them, with making any sort of specific commitment, and I've never been one for how much they try to force an opinion.
That being said however, after spending about a quarter of my life going from edgy atheism to just depressed and isolated, I'd like to think there is something beyond what I can perceive or study, and I'd like to show whatever may be out there that I am at least trying and hope they understand and accept that. Then I happened upon UU in a Reddit thread by chance (or perhaps by divine design if you are convinced of such), and I had been mildly intruiged when hearing about it previously. So I came here reading through the thread, and I liked a lot of what I read in theory.
Then came the anecdotes about the practice. I've encountered a lot of talk about this 8th Principle, and a lot of chaos. Further, while I recognize I'm not in the greatest position to have an informed opinion, my gut instinct doesn't seem to coincide with consensus. On another instance where I considered buying a book that I reached through a link here, I encountered the spelling of 'folx'. And there, I do feel comfortable as both bisexual and transsexual in openly (though respectfully, mind you) disagreeing with the mindset that sort of thing tends to stem from. Lastly, I've seen comments attesting to congregations consisting of generally older people, and of an active desire for demographic diversity. While I've no problem with diversity, I can't relate to actively seeking it out; and being a young'in I'm not exactly looking to be surrounded by people thrice my age.
It overall, to me, feels very reminiscent of the political screeding one may expect to see from apocalyptic Protestant congregations, just from a different cultural 'side'. And, I've enough experience to know I don't care for that sort of thing, having come from an extended family of devout Pentecostals. It registers for me as alienating in a very familiar way.
That all being said, I do want to supplement all that I've said above by confirming that I have gathered congregations can be very different from each other. Which on the one hand, could mean what I'm looking for is out there, but on the other makes everything I've looked at somewhat uncertain, and I already couldn't be sure I'd actually find what I'm seeking.
I'm overall left feeling rather conflicted. Because on the one hand, I'm still quite interested in exploring spirituality in a way that isn't going to try to force a particular doctrine; which everything I read tells me is exactly what UU offers. But at the same time, what I'm hearing is telling me a very different story. So I've left it to simply ask you folks outright for an outside take on my situation. I recognize some of my issues may not make me seem the best person in terms of my non-religious beliefs, so I will endeavor to be as respectful as I can in those domains so long as I can expect the same. I'm looking to explore myself, not proselytize politics; I find that doing so is rarely productive for anyone anyway.
Lastly, I hope the long essay I have written doesn't prove insurmountable, and thank you to anyone who's gotten far enough to read this particular sentence.
WWUUD stream 
Knowing the right thing to do is hard, even in good times. In challenging times, knowing the right thing to do is β well β challenging. Rarely are the choices we make as easy as yes or no, right or left, black or white. Mostly we live our lives in the grey zone. The balance sheet of costs and benefits for any given choice is complex, to say the least, because our lives are β well β complex. Put people together in community and the complexity increases. Throw a global pandemic into the mix and β letβs just say that nothing is simple these days.
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