Vessel

General Assembly needs to be in Arizona in 2012.

2010-05-17T08:52:00.001-05:00

The answer to change is not the boycott of an entire state to the tune of $615,000 - how much it'll cost to cancel contracts and move GA somewhere else.

Boycotts do work when they're targeted and used correctly. To try to do that to an entire state won't do much good. In the civil rights movement in the 60's certain companies were boycotted but not the political system that allowed oppression of blacks to continue. The system must always be changed from within, and that's why we need to be there.

As Cody Jefferson puts it:

"Besides the blog comments proving Sarah Palin and the anti-elitists right–"the only business in [Arizona] is brewing meth and building Taco Bell McMansion kits (to brew meth in)"–I'm especially troubled by the calls to boycott the state. From the New York Times to Raúl Grijalva, a Democratic congressman from Tucson, it seems that every liberal with a slight platform (and Shakira) is asking Americans to stop buying Arizonan goods, and to not travel there. The assumption is that what worked for MLK Day will work now.

But a boycott is exactly the opposite of what Arizona needs, at least in the long-term.

I've tried hard, to no avail, to think of any time in which calling a destitute population stupid and making it even poorer has effectively engendered in its people new ways of thinking. Indeed, a boycott might force Arizona legislators to overturn their new law–which 70 percent of voters supported, by the way–but I think it's likelier to just frustrate and further impoverish a whole lot of people who are already frustrated, broke, mad, jealous and increasingly worried that the East Coast is out to tell them how to live their lives. I'm not saying I have the key to unlock the Arizona of my dreams, but I can't believe the answer is calling its citizens unwashed meth-heads, canceling your reservations at its resorts (which employ illegal immigrants), or sapping even more money from its public schools (which educate illegal immigrants)."

Jesus didn't take his group of followers and attempt to start a utopia in the desert, using his healing powers on chosen few. Nor did he set up shop in his home town as a biblical doctor and profit off his clients. And he didn't go to the top of the power structure and attempt reform. He went to where the power should be: the people. And he told them they had all that they needed to be as miraculous as God intended.

Don't look at the above for its literal meaning; you'll be missing the point. We need to be in Arizona and help the people there. When something this atrocious gets passed it isn't the will of the people. They need allies there, our churches there need the support and visibility that GA can bring. We can't break off from the real world and expect it to fix itself. It gives Unitarian Universalists a noble goal: get the law off the books before 2012. Boycotting Arizona ensures that our tradition by and large ignores it and keep the status quo of leaving the problem to the congregations there.

I've always been troubled by Unitarian Universalists' habit of boycotting or creating a walled garden in our tradition as a response to injustice. Oh, you become vegan, and you stop watching television and you send one letter about Stupak and you listen to NPR and you drink fair trade coffee and you, you, you become something so far removed from reality that it's far too easy for Garrison Kieller to use you as a punchline. And then you wonder why our religion is in decline and viewed as fairly bizarre to the average person. We put ourselves out of touch by our own virtue.

It is time for a change in social action tactics. If it is not a change from within, it won't work. We need to change our ways, from within, to participate and help those needing change. We need to stop thinking that our unilateral actions - even if we do it as an entire tradition does much good without allies from within the system to change.

I am enamored with the standing on the side of love campaign. Real love means being with someone even when they're wrong. Not enabling, mind you, but really loving them. Gandhi and MLK were effective because they loved their oppressors. They understood them as people part of the same world as them. Boycotting Arizona puts us in the same trap as the legislators who passed this bill: believing that there are some people who have no inherent worth and dignity. They think it's immigrants. We think it's them.

Do Unitarian Universalist clergy still divorce a lot?

2010-05-14T15:30:00.001-05:00

Now that I'm entering seminary I hear a lot of people tell me that clergy have high divorce rates. Wondering if this is an urban legend I looked up some statistics that say not only is this true, but it is particulary true for UU clergy: "The highest clergy divorce rate is found among the Unitarian Universalists (47% women, 44% men) with the other denominations in between."

However, that's a two year old post on a ten year old study; does anyone have anything more recent?

Visualize the oil spill over your hometown

2010-05-13T09:01:00.000-05:00

Here it is over mine.

I am very sad about this oil spill. The gulf will probably never recover, and something that I'll used when I'm 80: "I remember when the gulf was still clear and my favorite animals were manatees..."

Tomorrow a woman is getting a baptism for her baby that will soon be aborted.

2010-05-11T20:25:00.000-05:00

Why? I don’t know. She’s Catholic, and believes the baby needs to be baptized. There are a few reasons I can think of: the baby won’t survive outside the womb or will cost the mother her life. Maybe there are reasons I can’t even fathom because I am not this woman. She’s Catholic, and there are none of her faith to minister to her. If the baby will die, if the woman will die, it doesn’t matter to the church, they won’t baptize the baby because it’s being aborted.

A Catholic priest won’t be there, but God will be there. People always ask why bad things happen if there is an all-powerful God in charge, but in the bad things God is there. We too often think that there always needs to be a cause and effect for things to exist, (if God is there, then he should do something about it!) but God is indefinably there, getting this woman through this experience by promising her that even if she couldn’t have the child, God will have her. And that’s a solace nothing else can offer.

It seems to me that Jesus was the one who comforted everyone and showed them how to love through their tragedies. To shun a woman who asks for a baptism at a time of great need is a mockery of what it means to be a Christian

A story

2009-11-11T15:14:00.000-06:00

I recently sent in my application to Meadville Lombard. I sent my minister my application essay. She said it was nice, but was disappointed that it reflected little on my personal influences. I told her the reason why was because I had a 2,000 word limit and the original essay was twice that. I cut out everything but my personal religious reflections. Which to me are intensely personal - what meaning of life do I ascribe to, put faith in is difficult to share.

She was right though, it did lack my unique upbringing. I supposed I tried to make myself look like everyone else. Not because I'm ashamed of my influences but because everyone is trying to get attention these days with how different they are than everyone. I need no further attention. Except, I suppose, during an application process when all the attention is focused on you already.

She told me it wouldn't have been hard to just put a story that would have given the reader a frame of reference to my personal history. Again, I'm unsure how to address it. Somehow turning an upbringing that is half a bubble off a plum into an asset is difficult to put it into words. However, a few weeks ago there was a story that I can very much relate as to how this might be so.

Once upon a time, long ago, in a country far away there was a nation looking for a tall tower on a hill. That was the national objective - everyone find the tower! The only problem was that everyone in this country was always looking at their feet to make sure they never fell down. So it was difficult to see the tall tower on a hill with everyone looking at their feet. One rainy day a man in this country, Bob, was running around looking at his feet when he noticed a huge gathering of other feet in the distance. There was a meeting! Something was going on! He ran to see what was going on. The rains had stopped and left a giant puddle. And there in the puddle was what everyone was searching for - the tower on the hill! Everyone was excited and arguing they had found it! Except when they went into the puddle and disturbed the reflection it disappeared. There was a great jostling and movement and then all of a sudden Bob fell down. Which did not happen at all to Bob because he was always looking at his feet to be sure where he was going.

And then he saw the tower. He saw it with his own eyes, because he had fallen and was on his back. He'd never noticed it before. Bob quickly got up and went in the direction of the tower. The way was hard and the path winding and it was steep and it was cold. He was still looking at his feet so it was all the more difficult to get there. Old habits die hard. But after many days he made it. He had made it to the tower! And at the tower he could finally see the whole of the land. It was wonderful! And he noticed there were others there at the tower too. And they were all a little unsteady on their feet.

This story really puts it together for me about how falling down or being different helps one to see what others cannot. I suppose that being born in a trailer park on the shores of South Carolina and growing up working class does make it a bit easier to not stare at my feet all the time, or at least a little happier when I fall down.

Apple Pie

2009-10-26T21:51:00.000-05:00

Looove this picture of pie. My family were not bakers so learning to make it myself is half the fun.

The Gordon Sisters did not have 'a complicated past'. They were racist.

2009-10-19T20:25:00.002-05:00

Check it out: liberals use the word ‘complicated’ to ignore unforgivable issues they have in their own past. For example, take this great story:

SISTERS IMMORTALIZED IN STAINED GLASS AT FIRST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH HAVE COMPLICATED PAST

Normally, I wouldn’t read this story. I didn’t know about this code word and care little about stained glass. However, this was on twitter a few times. I have a search filter up for the word ‘Unitarian’ and was intrigued. Unitarian Universalists hardly make the news for honorifics of their forebears.

The article starts off about how the movement traditionally dislikes stained glass; harking back to the ideal of being able to see the outside as it is and the outside seeing the people inside worshipping. Then the article goes onto say how the Gordon sisters honor the first principle in our movement, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. (Nevermind that this principle wasn’t around when the Gordon sisters were alive. Who decided that they represent the first principle? I hope it was the author of the article and not this church or there is going to be a lot more anger as you’ll see explained below)

Then the R-word: ”I won’t say, ‘They were racists!’ ” said the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger, waving her arms in mock alarm. “But I won’t lie about that in my teaching about them.”

I’m sorry, what is it called when someone advocated Eugenics - the belief that other people are ‘undesirables’ and should be killed - for blacks?

What is it called when a Gordon sister would not attend a banquet at the White House because a notable black person would be there?

What is it called when the Kate Gordon wanted white women to vote in order to neutralize the black vote?

What is it called when an expert on the subject calls the Gordon sisters ‘white supremacists’?

I think, particularly from the vantage point of our religion and that church, we should affirm them for exactly who they were. Racist. The Gordon sisters were racist Unitarians. Yes, they fought and did worthy things. The article takes careful note of all their achievements. But what the article does - and what it sounds like the church does not do - is acknowledge them for exactly what they were, detailing their immoral positions in society.

I am certain they did great things. I am also certain that many Ku Klux Klan members or Hitler did a lot of good amongst the horrors they committed. The point is that as members of the privileged class in power we acknowledge what our forebears did in painful detail. Saying things like ‘complicated past’, ‘common attitudes of the time’, and ‘I won’t say, ‘They were racists!’, hides white privilege. It hides the history and whitewashes the past to our liking.

The article also lists how many schools and other public buildings have had name changes from oppressive white heros to civil rights heros. Perhaps suggesting that the time for honoring racists is in the past, and this liberal church is taking a step backwards?

For Unitarian Universalists, this denial is particularly troubling. Our movement is the most educated and 95% white. What a contradiction for this church to uplift these two sisters as embodiment of the first principle when they clearly did not believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. What a difference one word in a principle makes.

Reading the minister’s words, you can see the denial at work from the first sentence. Their ‘dark history’ is not exactly hidden but not pondered upon either. She is right, when towards the end she says there is no such thing as perfection. If she truly believed this, then she’d refuse to have this article have such an apologetic tone: ‘that’s what others during the time thought too!’.

She’d come right out from the get-go and say “Yes, they were racist. We acknowledge this terrible part of our history, that we did believe in eugenics. That we did shun people with different skin colors, and that we did not follow our own principle. That is part of this, a remembrance to those oppressed peoples that we were privileged and took a part in oppression. We recognize this because today, we strive to acknowledge our power and that it should be shared. Today, unlike the past, we do believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

And here’s the further rub: nothing in the blogosphere, UUA, or UU world about this at all. What does that say about our movement and racism? Well, I guess we won’t exactly hide it.

You know who else changed the bible to fit political ideology? Hitler.

2009-10-19T20:23:00.002-05:00

I wish the parallel between the Conservative Bible Project and Hitler’s third reich editing the bible for political aim was a joke.

Nazi Germany decided to make Jesus Aryan and Paul a despicable jew to create more religious strife and overall acceptance for eugenics, i.e. the holocaust. Hitler referred to this more “accurate” representation in his speeches several times to give weight to belief that the jewish race was inferior.

It’s doubtful that the folks behind this new editing agenda are keen to build a case to kill liberals - but the sinister connotations of editing the bible for political and ideological gain can not be missed.

One could choose to dismiss this ‘editing the bible in your own image makes you like Hitler’ argument. The Conservative Bible Project could honestly wish to edit the bible for a more accurate representation. Or not. Even Thomas Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the new testament and left out anything that wasn’t to his liking. Most senators swear on a version of the Jefferson bible today. Jefferson did not kill others using his reinterpreted bible as moral guidance.

Another problem exists with claiming that this translation project has anything to do with accuracy. Having pre-conceived ideas of what the result would be ultimately taints the translation’s purity. Reputable bibical scholars strive for impartiality and acknowledge where their translation could be skewed.

It appears that the creators of this website have political motivations and have not talked to an expert in biblical translation. Academia is, after all, liberal.

It’s amusing to read on their website how they plan to go back to the original sources and plan to find more conservatism there. People four hundred years ago are not comparable to modern-day liberals. Assuming that they are is worth a chuckle.

What they’ll find when they go back to the original sources is that indeed, those old guys translating the King James Version of the bible were fairly conservative. They went back to the original sources and found Jesus more liberal and human than they preferred.

For example, see the Matthew virgin prophecy fulfillment error. Some modern translations willfully retain that error to make sure Jesus was born a virgin and fulfilled a prophecy. These translations are already inaccurate and conservative.

Translating the bible to fit ideology is wrong. They won’t find a more conservative Jesus by going to the sources. Jesus was not conservative. He shook the entire Jewish and Roman establishment upside down. He demanded social justice. Just like people wishing to promote religious peace remind everyone that christian anti-semitism doesn’t make sense with the slogan ‘Jesus was a Jew’ so too liberals ought to have slogan ‘Jesus was a Liberal’. Or perhaps they already have with ‘Pontius Pilate was a governor, Jesus was a community organizer’ comparing conservative then-governor Palin with President Obama.

Misunderstanding the bible does not end with conservatives however. Too often liberals toss out the bible believing it full of lies or myth that has no relevance to their daily lives. They refuse to look beyond traditional interpretations and see for themselves if the bible has any worth for them, confusing the deliverers of the bible as the message of the bible. Objectivity on both sides of the political spectrum could serve this painfully divided country well.