This is a personal post by Earl Alvin Daniels, the originator of WWUUD.net. It is my hope that this post will be archived and no longer needed on the live version of this website, when/if this website continues into the future.

The background…

With the transition of Thich Nhat Hanh yesterday, I am brought to the present moment awareness of what is really important. I need to be attentive.

I see much good in the Unitarian Universalist world, where many people find much-needed acceptance. I also see people trying to protect that world in ways that are not so accepting. It is tragic when the oppressed become oppressors, when the maligned and attacked react in ways that seem to go beyond protecting to attacking.

I see shunning of people. I see acceptance, albeit limited at times.

I see fear. I see suffering.

I see people trying to build a better world and people protecting what they have. Sometimes these are the same people.

I see walls dividing people. I see opportunities to build bridges. And even more opportunities to see that we are on the same island.

My heart is heavy in those instances. Since 2017, I have often felt “caught in a fight” where people who I love are in conflicts that seem to ignore our interbeing.  There are no “bad guys” in these conflicts, they are all doing their best. The conflicts still continue. I fully agree that we do not want to cause psychological, spiritual, or emotional damage to any individuals and communities.

The dilemma seems to exist within our perceptions of “individual” and “community.” I feel that the path forward may be found in a new first principle that includes Love. I am not in a good place to lead into that Love, and this site alone will not provide “facts” that will alter anyone’s perceptions.

While this site was started for other reasons, it is now only being maintained as a hopefully unbiased witness to what is going on in the UU world in the light of what seems to be significant changes. I am willing to discuss how this collection came to be and how it has been maintained.

So, I’m looking for someone to take on this site. See my other post for more…

This website collected more than 168,000 UU-related news articles, blog posts and tweets using the WordPress plugin, WP RSS Aggregator.

While it is a fine plugin for grabbing and displaying the latest few dozen news articles, it was not made to archive 168,000 items. At about the halfway point of that collection, this site was bogging down my rented virtual server, so I moved it into my home test server. That bought me a bit of time. The split content/meta data table structure of WordPress eventually overloaded even the newer replacement server box.

So, I am moving the entire collection to FreshRSS which has a much more streamlined database. Since there’s no easy way to embed FreshRSS inside this WordPress site, it may be a few weeks before the database is accessible again (it’s basically been bogged-down offline for months, anyway!).

During the conversion, I am having the system attempt to archive attached media in archive.org – a time-consuming process. I plan circle back and try to archive the content of other historical items that are still currently available online. Once this whole process is done, I plan to make a copy of all the data available on archive.org, as it is a trusted repository.

I am also interested in helping with any project that uses this information. I feel that Unitarian Universalism needs to be better understood and needs to continually engage in self-reflection, especially as I personally find that the UU world is decreasingly important in my spiritual life {long story, only upon request! ;-}.

Peace, Earl Daniels

The Twitter campaign revealed here is apparently not something that Unitarian Universalists (UUs) are doing, yet deserves some exposure here. This WWUUD site has an automated collection system that pulls in UU-related information into the Stream. As an automated system, it often gets information that is not really of interest to UUs, or is even negative.

Since the information is concentrated here in a list that I occasionally review, some odd trends sometime appear.

Near the end of 2018, a handful of Twitter accounts started tweeting about the July 27, 2008 Knoxville UU Church shooting. These tweets have been coming at an increasing rate, for a total of at least 130 messages, listed below.

I do not know the motivations of those with these accounts. It appears to be a small part of a much bigger campaign. I do think it has some intent to shift conversations, search engine results and possibly even sway public opinion. And I know it makes me uncomfortable that someone, some robot, or a few people, are putting much effort into this.

I welcome others to investigate these accounts and draw their own conclusions. Post on the WWUUD Facebook page if you have any idea what’s going on!

View the list in a full window

Ordained

by Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar 

Nothing in life is ordained, nothing.
An acorn contains the exact plan for an oak,
but earth and wind and water have a say
in how the tree will grow, or fail to thrive.
You can set off down the road to Graceland
and end up in Dollywood instead.
You might be set to spend your life
talking to people about sex,
and find yourself dealing in God.
It happens.
You do not ordain yourself,
nor does the past,
nor the fates,
nor some omnipotent deity.
If your life is to be ordained,
it is by the sum of the parts,
the gathered force of love nudging you
irresistibly toward the next step.

Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Newbury, South Carolina, joins a growing list of UU congregations making the commitment to offer sanctuary to immigrants who have not received full consideration of their plight and life here in the United States.

• News article from The State newspaper
• Fox Carolina article
• See more sanctuary-related posts in the WWUUD stream

At our 1972 General Assembly, we passed a General Resolution calling for “the banning of smoking from all closed places of public meeting.”¹

We were out front on this issue, as this was one year before Arizona became the first state to have some smoke-free public places.²

It was a small social justice issue, yet it’s good to see the arc of the universe still bending towards justice!³

^{1 “Smoking in Public Places,” UUA.org, June 1972, https://www.uua.org/action/statements/smoking-public-places}

^{2 Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events, The Background of Smoking Bans (National Academies Press (US), 2010), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219563/.}

^{3 Unitarian Minister Theodore Parker, 1853}

Original Lyrics

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee

(sung to the tune of Holy, Holy, Holy) by Christopher Raible

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, Praise the strength of coffee.
Early in the morn we rise with thoughts of only thee.
Served fresh or reheated, Dark by thee defeated,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

Though all else we scoff, we come to church for coffee;
If we’re late to congregate, we come in time for thee.
Coffee our one ritual, Drinking it habitual,
Brewed black by perk or drip instantly.

Coffee the communion Of our Uni-Union,
Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity.
Feel the holy power at our coffee hour,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

I suggest swapping two lines:

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, Praise the strength of coffee.
Early in the morn we rise with thoughts of only thee.
Served fresh or reheated, Dark by thee defeated,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

Feel the holy power at our coffee hour,
If we’re late to congregate, we come in time for thee.
Coffee our one ritual, Drinking it habitual,
Brewed black by perk or drip instantly.

Coffee the communion Of our Uni-Union,
Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity.
Though all else we scoff, we come to church for coffee;
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

Just makes more sense to me, as if this is supposed to make sense!

Christopher Raible Remembrances (2011)

Near the end of an almost one hour interview, Rev. Raible discusses parody hymns and reads his most famous one.

This hymn is likely in his pamphlet,  Hymns for the cerebration of strife : freely translated from a well-known Unitarian Universalist publication of similar title, 
Raible, Christopher G., Boston, Mass. : Unitarian Universalist Association, 1972.