Rev. Cyn

Thoughts on "Congregations and Beyond"

2012-01-24T15:19:00.000-08:00

The UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales published a working paper titled "Congregations and Beyond" last week. It's available in its entirety here. In it he says, "I am realizing in a profound way that congregations cannot be the only way we  connect with people." and "We have long defined ourselves as an association of congregations. We need to think  of ourselves as a religious movement."

The Rev. Morales says, " Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited  mobility and communication. Most members lived within a couple of miles of their  church." This is something that I've been thinking about recently, as well. The time that the church is where you go to in order to hear the latest ideas or even the latest gossip is a time that's behind us. The church is no longer the central, or even a central, hub for how people get and exchange information and ideas. There are still things that churches do better than other institutions, but those things are fewer and far between. We're no longer the best source of therapy--the psychological profession, as it emerged, has taken over that role. We're no longer where you might hear the best, most engaging lectures--you tube gives you access to the best in the world, and it's a rare church with a minister of that level of academic excellence. We're no longer the place where you hear first what is going on in your community -- our newspapers and even our friendships are available 24/7 on the computer. We are, still, the best form for worship, I think, although much of that is available in electronic form, as well, except for the communal aspect. We do retain the role of being one primary way that brings together groups of people for personal connection -- the social role of face-to-face regular gathering is filled less and less by other groups in this society, while we're still going strong. But the point is, congregations are less needed in many people's minds, and, accordingly, we're not growing.

The two-part strategy the Rev. Morales outlines is:

Congregations remain the base 
Focus energy on creating a movement beyond the congregation

Honestly, it looks pretty much like a one-part strategy to me, as part 1 is basically just reassuring us that this congregational thing that we're already doing will still be important. So what does part 2 entail? Looks like his answer is social media, re-engaging the identity organizations formerly known as "affiliates," small groups of other undefined sorts, and social action.

It is, well, vague. And not clear exactly what it would entail that's not being done currently.

But the question that he points to, well, that's intriguing. Morales points out the there are, as we've known, bunches of people who identify as UU and who don't attend UU churches. And there are bunches of people who were raised UU who don't attend UU churches. Some of them are fairly well connected to UUism in other ways -- he points to the fact that a significant number of people who attend SUUSI don't attend any UU congregation.

I'm sure any parish minister can name dozens of potential, former, or raised-UUs in that minister's geographic area who are not church members. And, like Morales who says we need "A great deal more research about those who identify as UUs but are not members of  a congregation," most of us don't know why these UU-types are not UU-affiliated in our towns.

But what I think is new about "Congregations and Beyond" is that Peter Morales is not suggesting we find out why they're not in churches, but, rather, find out what they are interested in doing that would connect them to our movement in other ways. Some people will never be church-goers, he's saying, but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of the UU religious movement.

It's a radical concept and one we ministers often argue against, saying such things as, "You aren't a Unitarian Universalist if you're not a church member, because the Unitarian Universalist Association is an association of congregations."

But I also know that there were a few years for me -- four of them, to be exact, the college years -- where I was not in a congregation but very much considered my religion to be Unitarian Universalism. I didn't attend church in my college town, which didn't have a vital campus ministry in those years, and I would occasionally attend when I was home from school, but not often, because my church didn't have any specific get-together for those of us home on holidays or summers from college, and so I wandered off from us as an association of congregations, but not from my UU identity.

I have trouble envisioning the way we strengthen these sorts of connections and grow this "movement" Morales speaks of, but I hope we'll keep talking about these ideas and exploring the potential.

The Most Hated Girl in America

2012-01-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

In 1964, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of the American Atheists, was called "the most hated woman in America." Judging from the response to Jessica Ahlquist, the love of atheists hasn't increased much. Indeed, in 2009, a University of Minnesota research study published in the American Sociological Review showed atheists to be the most disliked minority group of those they polled, including Muslims and homosexuals. When asked to respond to the statement, "This Group Does Not At All Agree with My Vision of American Society," 39.6% agreed atheists do not (26.3% for Muslims, who came in second), and 47.6% would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist (33.5% for Muslims, again the next highest category).

So perhaps the vehemence directed toward 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist should not be shocking. Ahlquist is a teenager who attends Cranston High School West in Cranston, Rhode Island. Cranston High School West had a prayer banner that hung in their school:

(picture from The Providence Journal: http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/01/federal-judge-o-1.html) Jessica, an atheist, felt that this violated separation of church and state. It did, according to the ruling issued by the U.S. District Court Judge last week. The judge weighed in very clearly on this question, saying, "The Court refrains from second-guessing the expressed motives of the Committee members, but nonetheless must point out that tradition is a murky and dangerous bog. While all agree that some traditions should be honored, others must be put to rest as our national values and notions of tolerance and diversity evolve."

Since that time, and probably before as well, Jessica Ahlquist has received messages of hate and threats of violence and death. She has been the victim of cyberbullying from within her community and without. Rhode Island state representative Peter G. Palumbo, who called her an "evil little thing." Even some moderate Rhode Islanders with Cranston connections I talked to recently were saying things like, "I don't see why it can't stay there. It's tradition. If you don't like it, just don't look at it."

Over and over again, I see something like this, and I'm stunned. I can't grasp what makes people so frightened, especially when they are the majority, of the actions and beliefs of a young girl. It's a fundamental piece of my understanding of what makes America great that we create a space where people should be free from religious persecution and that the way we do this is through freedom of belief, lack of state-sponsored religion, and freedom of speech.

Freedom of religion means that the government does not impose its religion on you. It's what protects us from Sharia law, too. These same people who are so incensed that a Christian banner is taken down from a public high school, well I'm sure the majority of them would not want a Muslim banner hung in its stead. We keep hearing the panic that Sharia law is being declared in Muslim communities in America, like Dearborn, from the conservative Christian right. But what protects us from being a country under Muslim law is exactly the same thing that demands that this banner be taken down.

But, of course, the fear of Muslims and the fear of atheists aren't logical, rational things.

The obvious irony is that the words of the prayer call on people to grow morally, to be kind, to conduct themselves in a way that brings credit to the school, and to be good sports and smile when we lose.

If only everyone who wants the prayer to hang could at least try to live up to it.

Cookies and Controversy: Part 2

2012-01-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

(Continuing from Part 1)

Well, it seems the video of young Girl Scout, Taylor, which asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies because Girl Scouts is inclusive of transgender girls, has been taken down. There are a number of well-done responses from Girl Scouts that are available, however. Some of my favorites are:

These Girl Scouts make several good points about what Girl Scouts is all about. A primary one is about the Girl Scout Law. In her original video, Taylor talked about the line of the Girl Scout Law that says, "Honest and Fair," and how Girl Scouts is somehow not being honest if they're not proclaiming loudly to everyone involved that there are transgender scouts, and who and where they are. Obviously, the Girl Scouts are being honest about their policies, and fair in their implementation, but the Girl Scout Law has nine other pieces to it, many of which apply in this situation:

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

It's obvious that the Girl Scouts in the response videos have learned what it means to be "considerate and caring," "courageous and strong," "friendly and helpful," "responsible for what I say and do," to "respect myself and others," and, most importantly, to "be a sister to every Girl Scout."

My biggest worry in all of this is that the Girl Scouts could bend to pressure from the right to change their policies in this and other areas. They're under considerable pressure from the right about interactions with Planned Parenthood, the transgender and lesbian scouts issues, and religious freedom. When I started as a troop leader two years ago, it was printed everywhere the Girl Scout Pledge was printed that girls could change the word "God" to any word representing the Girl Scout's belief. That's still the official policy, but it was controversial. And it's no longer on their website and it's not in my brand-new Brownie handbook where the law is printed, either. So it's not clear to me how a new scout or a new scout leader would be clear that Girl Scouts, unlike Boy Scouts, gives them this religious freedom. I worry about a new scout being told by a troop leader that they have to say the pledge as written, and taking that troop leader's word for it. Similarly, the conservative websites tell me that where Planned Parenthood was previously mentioned, in places like staff members' bios, it has been "scrubbed" from the website. There's nowhere on Girl Scouts USA's webpage where you're going to find the policy on transgender scouts, either.

So while Girl Scouts is open and welcoming, it's cautious, understandably. That's why it's important to me that we, on the religious left, know what Girl Scouts is standing for, and the pressure they're under, so we can be as supportive as possible. Don't buy the cookies if you don't want cookies, but when your local Girl Scout comes to you for support, please know that this is an organization that is working to empower young girls; to teach them valuable leadership skills; and to teach them love and respect for their bodies, minds and spirits; the people around them; and the world around them. Stop and tell the Girl Scouts that they have your support and you believe in what they do. There is so much in the world around us that is teaching negative messages to girls about their capabilities and their bodies, that I'm grateful that not only does Girl Scouts exist, but that it is a place that is open and welcoming to all girls, and we don't have to change our religious or political beliefs to belong.

And if you do want cookies, they go on sale here January 20th, a week from today.

Cookies and Controversy: The Background Information

2012-01-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

I've never seen so much discussion among my liberal and ministerial friends about Girl Scouts. Sure, there's the palm oil controversy which comes up every year at cookie time, and the confusion that people sometimes have between Boy Scouts of America's stances and Girl Scouts USA's stances. The two are unrelated organizations, and Girl Scouts USA welcomes scouts to change the word "God" in the Girl Scout pledge to any word representing the scout's spiritual beliefs. Girl Scouts also has not taken any stance limiting participation of lesbian or bisexual scouts or troop leaders.

The latest Girl Scout controversy is around transgender scouts. And, once again, Girl Scouts has taken an inclusive stance. The story that has caught the attention in the news is of a young girl, Bobby Montoya, who wanted to become a Girl Scout. Bobby is a 7-year-old transgender girl.

The story first emerged that Bobby wanted to become a Girl Scout but had been turned down by a local Denver-area troop. Bobby's parents then appealed to the council. The council overturned the troop's decision, saying, "Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout." Some articles have misrepresented this as Girl Scouts as an organization taking one stance and then reversing it, when it was more of a matter of a local troop not following the inclusive policy that was in place. When this story first emerged, I contacted Girl Scouts USA to ask about the policy on transgender scouts, and heard the same thing that I had heard from my local area coordinator and the same thing that the Colorado council said -- any child who says she is a girl and wants to be in Girl Scouts is welcome. I had heard that the Denver-area troop leaders had responded by disbanding the troop, but when I research this, it turns out it looks like this is just rumor and misunderstanding. It appears Bobby has not yet joined the troop, and that there have been no further developments on the situation in Colorado. On the other hand, there are troops hosted at a conservative Christian school in Louisiana that have disbanded in protest.

What's got people talking about this story again is a video by a California Girl Scout, Taylor [last name and troop number are being withheld, understandably]. Taylor urges you to boycott Girl Scout cookies because Girl Scouts admits transgender girls. I'm having trouble embedding her video -- it seems to have been taken down, but I'm sure it'll be findable soon.

Taylor's video is being spread through social media in thanks partly to the attention from conservative groups focused on pushing back against some of the more liberal and inclusive aspects of Girl Scouts, such as "Honest Girl Scouts" which takes issue with GSUSA for transgender scouts, but, more particularly, for some programs and events that have been done with Planned Parenthood, particularly at the international level (GSUSA is part of WAGGGS--the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouting). Taylor's video, while it appears at first to be just one individual Girl Scout sticking up for her beliefs, ends with her plugging the Honest Girl Scouts organization.

Just giving the background on this story was longer than I expected, so I'll share my thoughts and comments in a later post.

The Lowe Moment

2011-12-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

Lowe's recently pulled advertising from the show All-American Muslim, bowing to pressure from conservative groups such as the Christian Florida Family Association. The president of that group, David Katon, said this on NPR:

Our concern with ‘All American Muslim’ is that it does not accurately represent the term Muslim, which is a follower of Islam and a follower of Islam believes in radicalization, the use of Sharia law, which provides for honor killings, mutilation of women and numerous other atrocities to women.

Despite how often we hear anti-Muslim rhetoric in our society, this piece of vitriol really shocked me. His objection to the show is that it portrays moderate, average, peaceful American Muslims. Apparently a religious extremist like Katon can't believe that moderates within other religions exist. He paints a caricature of Muslims and then claims that anyone who doesn't look like his caricature isn't Muslim, and that moderate, peaceful Islam doesn't exist.

Of course it does. This is ridiculous.

The Muslims on All-American Muslim are more more peaceful, more American, and more Godly than Katon and his organization. His statements are a disgrace to the faith of real Christians, and thank goodness we aren't using his beliefs to paint a caricature of the religion he claims to be a part of, because he gives Christianity a bad name. I'll take Dearborn Muslims over his Florida Christians any day as my neighbors and friends.

I was excited to see the show air, by the way, and watched an episode or two, because it highlights the sort of people here in Michigan that I've gotten to know and care for as part of my community. Unfortunately, I found the show rather boring, which is, really, pretty good news. It turns out that All-American Muslims? Well, they're just like us. In truth, they are us. And that's just not very exciting TV in my book. Now, vampires or dragons or something, those are different.

Meanwhile, shame on Lowe's, which has offered this chicken-hearted response:

Lowe's has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.

No, Lowe's, what you did wasn't a response to controversy; what you did was a response to bigotry. The controversy wasn't something you acted in response to, it was something caused by your action. And your non-apology of "If we have made anyone question that commitment (to allowing people to have 'different views'), we apologize" isn't going to throw us off track while you continue to bow to the wishes of the hate-mongering bigots by not advertising on a show which is all about showing this thing you've just stated you have a commitment to--differing views. You're daring to tell us that you have a commitment to allowing different views, and then pulling ads from a show highlighting difference because the bigots say different views can't really exist?

We call bullshit.

Girl Scouting and the UUA

2011-11-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

Dashed off a letter to the UUA today. Leaving off the official's name to whom I addressed it, the text of it was as follows:

I am writing to you as a Unitarian Universalist minister and as a Girl Scout Troop Leader and Girl Scout Troop Organizer. I’ve paid attention over many years to the “continuing struggle for inclusiveness” situation between the UUA and the Boy Scouts, as outlined at http://www.uua.org/re/children/scouting/169633.shtml.

I’m proud as a Girl Scout leader that Girl Scouts do not share the Boy Scouts’ discrimination towards atheist and agnostic scouts and troop leaders nor their discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender scouts and troop leaders. Indeed, I proudly tell my Brownie Girl Scouts on a regular basis that the Girl Scout Promise, which includes the word “God,” can be, according to Girl Scouts USA, replaced by any Girl Scout to reflect her own spiritual beliefs. I model this in my troop meetings by replacing the word “God” in the GS Promise with “love,” “earth,” “peace,” and another of other terms.

Similarly, Girl Scouts has recently been in the news for their inclusive policies on transgender Girl Scouts, and has come down on the side of believing that any child who considers herself a Girl and wants to be a Girl Scout is welcome in Girl Scouting. I confirmed this through calling GSUSA directly and asking about transgender girls being welcomed in scouting, and through conversations with my own area coordinator.

That’s why I am disturbed that right under the “UUA and BSA” page on the UUA’s website, the next link is to a list of “Alternative Scouting Organizations,” and that this page then begins with stating “In addition to the popular Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of the USA, there are other scouting organizations.” (http://www.uua.org/re/children/scouting/169569.shtml.) This statement makes it look like the UUA has problems with Girl Scouts similar to the problems with Boy Scouts, and perpetuates a common misunderstanding that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are related organizations that share common policies and practices, when this is not the case. Girl Scouts ought to be listed as an “Alternative Scouting Organization” along with Camp Fire USA, Navigators USA, Scouting for All, and SpiralScouts. I grew up in Camp Fire, and can say that I have found Girl Scouts every bit as welcoming, if not more so, to girls of regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, disability, sexual orientation or other aspect of diversity. My little troop last year was a group of girls who through themselves and their parents represented every aspect of that list of diversity types, in fact!

I’m hoping the wording on the UUA’s webpage can be changed to represent the positive relationship that the UUA has with Girl Scouting. If you are not the person who this letter should be directed to, please tell me who I can refer this issue to. This March is the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts, and I’ll be highlighting Girl Scouts in our church this year, where several Girl Scouts have earned their “My Promise, My Faith” badge for learning about how the Girl Scout Law relates to the Unitarian Universalist Principles. I would love it if by the 100th anniversary our organization could show more support for this inclusive and supportive scouting institution.

Thank you for your care and attention to this issue.

In faith,

Cynthia Landrum
Minister
Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty
Clarklake, MI
Girl Scout Troop Leader & Troop Organizer

Random Acts of Kindness

2011-10-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

I'd been having a rough day, when I came to the studio with my daughter to wait for an hour while she takes her class. In the last ten minutes, one stranger has offered to buy me a latte, and another has told me that I look really nice in purple.

Random acts of kindness, folks, go a long way. You never know when the person you just reached out to really needed that kind moment from a stranger.

Here's hoping I remember to pay it forward.

Another Thing About GA

2011-10-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is a shout-out to the GA Planning Committee, I suppose. I know they're doing a lot of hard work, and I know that criticizing what they've done, when they have so many voices they've been asked to listen to and they've put a ton of thought & effort into things, is not helpful, constructive, or appreciated. So without criticizing, what I want to say is that I want them to know how much work we, ought here in the non-UUA-committee world have been doing, as well. We've been asked to prepare ourselves for this General Assembly, and I think we have been. By the time I get to General Assembly, here's some of what I will have done:

Read the UUA's "Common Read" book for 2010-2011, The Death of Josseline.
Read other books on immigration.
Read just about everything on the UUA's webpage on immigration.
Read countless e-mails and websites from social justice agencies on the subject.
Attended workshops designed to prepare us for "Justice GA" at my district annual assembly at two consecutive district assemblies.
Attended a training from Standing on the Side of Love.
Attended workshops and discussions at past GAs on the subject.
Held congregational discussions on the subject.
Preached on the subject.
Participated in press conferences and social justice events at a state level.
Held a Community Forum on the subject with local experts.
Taken one or two semesters of Spanish and perhaps also immersed myself in an intensive study course, as urged in the Responsive Resolution from GA 2011.
Participated in a UUMA chapter gathering focused on immigration justice and preparing us for the "Justice GA."

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. I don't think it's atypical for a UU clergy person--I think it's probably typical of the amount of work we're personally putting in to prepare ourselves for this GA. I know that's not everything I need to know. But I didn't start off this process knowing nothing about how to do justice work, either. And I also know that there are people who will have done a lot more than me, and people who will have done a lot less. And I'm sure that I will need some of the "education and preparation" times announced in the preliminary schedule. Since those are all on the early days, though, I worry that the people who have prepared the most before coming are the ones who will get the most preparation there, and vice versa.

I know there's no way to know the preparation level of each participant, and so things have to be somewhat geared towards the least prepared. But I'm just wanting to let folks out there know that when you ask us to do our homework, there are definitely those of us who are listening and doing so. If there can be something of a advanced track that's geared to us who have done so, that would be great.

The Writing Process

2011-09-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

I'm pouring out post after post on 9/11 to get out of my system those things which I need to say but which don't belong in my sermon. This is done in hopes that once these things are out, I can see what is left. What I know is left right now is the stone of hope that is hewn out of the mountain of despair. Perhaps it is connected to those five smooth stones. Or perhaps it is one of them. What mountains do we hew the other four stones out of, then? Grief, hope, memory, and even joy are all the tumblers now as I polish the stones up.

09/16/11 - The Stone of Hope

2011-09-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

I've been rereading what I wrote in those days after September 11th, 2001. Here's what I said at our water communion service on September 16th, 2001:

Like many of you, I have been inundated with the thoughts of millions this week. I hear speaker after speaker on television and radio, I read comment after comment in the papers and on e-mail. They blur together--the President, a minister, a fireman, a friend, a teacher, a rabbi, a senator, an imam... I marvel at their coherence sometimes, their ability to capture the depth of tragedy in a soundbite. I found myself unable to put pen to paper all week, still soaking it all in, still trying to make sense out of chaos. What follows here, therefore, is one person’s thoughts--still mutable, still very much in turmoil.

My first thoughts, of course, are for the victims and their families of this week’s horrible events. I hear phrases like “an end to innocence” and “our world will never be the same,” being exchanged, and they resonate within me. Certainly, it feels like a tragedy the likes of which we have not known in this country during my life time. And I applaud the efforts of those who have rushed to help. The way people can come together and set aside differences to work side by side and do what needs to be done is only a small solace, given the extent of tragedy, but it does warm my heart. It is in this that I find hope, and comfort.

As I gather my thoughts as to what the next steps in this country will be, I have two warring sides within me. They are both crying out to be heard. The first is the one we’ve been hearing the most of. Part of me cries out that justice must be done, that war is needed. This part of me suddenly finds myself crying at the words, “God Bless America” plastered on billboards all up and down the road. I want national unity, a feeling of togetherness, of solidarity in this cause.

But inside myself, I find no unity. The other side of me, too, cries for the victims. It too, mourns endless tears for the people who got up and went to work, only to never come home. But this side of me is critical of some of the rhetoric I’ve been hearing. I stay with my earlier beliefs: that if there is a god or goddess or gods, he/she/they, if they are in the business of blessing at all, would certainly bless all people. I fall back on Universalism, which says that all are loved by God, that whatever is ultimate in this world, we are equally blessed and embraced, and will all be treated equally in death. This side of me, too, worries at a nation which seems to feel right now that they would give up endless civil liberties for a larger measure of safety. It worries that rhetoric of war too quickly gets acted on in our own back yards against people, our Muslim and Arab-American neighbors, who are just as innocent as the victims of the plane crashes, and just as innocent as you and me.

In such a confusing time, what solace does a religion of questions offer? When we want answers so badly, how can we live with this ambiguity? I want so badly at a time like this to have a certain God, a personal God, whom I can turn to, instead of my endless agnosticism, a field of only more and more questions.

But as events unfold, I know that there are numerous lights that our religion must hold up. In an increasingly conservative world, in a country on the brink of an indefinable war, religious liberalism is needed more than ever. There is a particular role to be filled by us, and only we can do it.

One thing we must do, is stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters. Stand up for them, ally with them, help protect him. What we deplore is fanaticism and fundamentalism, and any disregard for life, not the religion of Islam itself. Muslim organizations throughout this country have publicized their statements decrying the actions of the terrorists who struck on Tuesday. Yet throughout this country, Muslims, Arabs, middle-easterners, anyone racially resembling an Arab, have found themselves targets of hate crimes.

The Houston Chronicle reported in a small article this week that Arab-Americans have faced “backlash.” They tell that six shots were fired at an Islamic center in a suburb of Dallas. An Islamic bookstore in the suburbs of Washington had bricks thrown through it’s windows. A sign announcing an Islamic community center in Dallas was defaced. In Sterling, Virginia members of an Islamic community center found their buses defaced when they gathered to go together to donate blood.[1] In Detroit, which has one of the largest Arab populations in this country, my mother asked her Lebanese co-worker about his personal experiences this week. She said, “He seemed to be so relieved that someone would actually give him a chance to speak about them. He, too, has been attacked verbally many times already, and even “shunned” by one of our own staff members with whom he has worked for ten years!”

As religious liberals, the first thing we need to do is be the person who actually speaks to our Arab and Muslim neighbors. We have to be better neighbors than ever before, because so many would dehumanize them, treat them as “other,” and not as ourselves.

Another thing we must do is stand up against other forms of hate, for they are also taking place. Televangelist Jerry Falwell, who would have you believe that he is a man of God, has blamed the tragedy on all sorts of liberal groups, from gays and lesbians to Pagans to ACLU members to pro-choice individuals. I think he covered, in his list, just about everybody I know, and much of what I hold dear. Other liberals have found themselves attacked by friends and co-workers for being a voice of dissent, for being unwilling to jump on the bandwagon and immediately cry “War!” Many are moving quickly from the passion of the moment to an unwillingness to allow for multiple voices in this country, an anger which is so deep from the horrible tragedy that has taken place gets quickly unleashed at the closest source they find.

I’m unwilling and unable to say yet, because of the deep confusion and divide in myself, that we must assume an attitude of war. I’m also not about to say, “We brought this upon ourselves.” I truly believe that these acts were in no way justified. What I am willing to say is that the strength of our nation, like the strength of our liberal religion, is in our diversity. Our strength is in being able to hear opinions we differ with and not resorting to name-calling and hatred ourselves, whether that cry is against those to the left or to the right of us. Our strength is in respecting all of the world’s religions, and in trying to understand them better, to work with them to find common ground, rather than resorting to a rhetoric of a God who blesses only our country, or only our religion, or only those who believe exactly as we do.

The strength of this country is not found in the quick answers of flag or anthems, it is found in the more difficult, onerous work of voting and of free presses, and of dissent. Similarly, the strength of our faith is not that we have an absolute God to fall back on, that we can say will go to war against evil with us, but that we have freedom of belief, and that we embrace our diversity. Our unity must be found in diversity, in knowing that we are a Muslim nation, and a Christian nation, and a Buddhist nation and an Atheist nation and a Pagan nation and a Jewish nation, and so on. Our unity must be found through acts of reason, not passion. Now is a time for deep consideration, as we forge a national identity, that it be one which doesn’t ignore these differences but rather embraces them and holds them up as a model for the world. If we cannot avoid fighting against ourselves, against Muslim Americans, against Arab-Americans, against any who disagree with our views, if we cannot avoid terrorist actions against our next-door neighbors, we cannot, with integrity, proclaim this to be a great nation.

Within our own four walls, I hope that we model in our church the best of what this country is, and the best of ourselves. This is the time which will test our faiths most, and the time in which we must not falter. This week has been a time of much hate, but also much love. May we embody the best of it, the pulling together, the helping and volunteering, even as we guard more vigilantly against the hatred which comes so easily. May we live up to our values now, for now is the time when our values are needed in the world.

I close with these words from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.[2]

[1] “Arab-Americans quickly faced backlash” by Hanna Rosin (Washington Post), The Houston Chronicle, Friday, Sept. 14, 2001, p.44A.

[2] #584, Singing the Living Tradition.

Visiting "Ground Zero"

2011-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

9/11 had a large impact on my ministry. About two years later, in 2003, now ministering in New England, my colleague Jennie Barrington and I, were talking often how 9/11 had shaped our ministry. We also were big Simon and Garfunkel fans, and Simon and Garfunkel were doing their "Old Friends" reunion tour. We bought two tickets to go see them in New Jersey, and we hit the road. We went two places: the concert, and Ground Zero. That was it -- we didn't do a Broadway show or see the Statue of Liberty, or go to the Met. We had two things we wanted to do: that concert, and see Ground Zero for ourselves.

I had been to New York City only two or three times before -- once to visit a boyfriend in college over the summer, once with my college's Glee Club on a concert trip. I had driven through it a couple of times on my way to New England, also, but all I can say about that is that the tunnels and bridges are expensive, and that driving through New York City six months after 9/11 with a truck full of furniture is a nerve-wracking experience. I had never gone to see the World Trade Center when it was standing. I've still never been to the Statue of Liberty, although I saw it from the ferry my first time there.

So we drove with our bad Mapquest directions ("take the exit" -- which exit?) down to our hotel in New Jersey near the concert venue. We listened to Simon and Garfunkel all the way down and all the way back, hearing some songs that we had never heard before on their newest release, such as "A Church Is Burning," which we heard with stunned ears, and replayed over and over again several times in a row, weeping, as we drove down. We talked about how to use the song in worship, something I still haven't done. And we went to the concert, which was a special treat not only getting to hear them, but hearing them in home turf, in the New York City area.

And then we went to Ground Zero.

There was no memorial there, of course. What there was was a big pit where work was still going on uncovering things that had been pushed down into the earth by the collapse of the towers. The area was surrounded by fences, tourists walking around, and people selling t-shirts and tchotchkes. It was a strange and surreal experience standing there by the fence with nothing particular to say or do once we got there. It had become more tourist site than memorial at that time. Yet it was an important moment, this finally seeing it for ourselves, and understanding how big the area was.

I don't remember if we wept or if we prayed, or if we just walked around and looked. I do remember that it changed us.

Do You Remember?

2011-09-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, particularly, but really for a lifetime, I can remember instances where people were talking about how they remember where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was shot or that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. I was born after both of those instances. But I could tell that there was something important about sharing those memories. For my generation, we had a bit of this with the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion. I remember that I was in science class at school when I heard about it. But for us, really, it's now 9/11 that holds this strange fixed moment in our cultural consciousness. I think it's true not just for us, but maybe a bit more so, since we aren't old enough to have experienced those tragic deaths of JFK and MLK, much less the World War II moments that still loom large for that greatest generation.

My story of 9/11/01 is intricately woven with the beginning of my ministry. I was in my first month of ministry, fresh out of seminary. I had started about a week into August, and the Sunday following 9/11/01 would be our ingathering Sunday, the official start to the church year. I was at home in my new Houston apartment when I got a call from our music director. She asked me if I had heard the news, if I had my television on. I hadn't. I remember her saying, "The World Trade Center is gone. It' gone." I turned on my television as she told me the news. And she asked me, "Do you think we should have a vigil this evening?" I said, "I'm not sure, I'll call you back in a few with a decision. Let me process this."

Two more calls from church members followed in rapid succession to make sure I had heard the news and to find out if we would have a service. By the second one, I said yes, and started to make all the plans -- called the music director to start planning the musical elements, called the president to start the phone tree so that people would get the news, and had somebody calling the television stations to get us on the list of services.

In my memory it was that very day, but perhaps it was the next day, that I had a meeting with the local Houston-area UU ministers. What a blessing that was. They shared resources that they had been thinking about for vigils and for the following Sunday: Annie Dillard, Anne Frank, Adrienne Rich.

I get the vigil we had and the following Sunday conflated in my memory. I know at the Sunday service we had our usual water communion. And I remember somebody bringing water from their trip to the World Trade Center. Whether it was actual water from there or symbolic water, I can't tell you. To me, it was water that came from the World Trade Center, and it was there with us in our water communion. I've carried that water as part of our water communion since -- I took some water from that water communion with me to my next congregation, and to the one that followed (my current congregation), and saved water from year to year. The World Trade Center is still there in the drops of water we pour every year into our common bowl at our water communion.

Other things I remember from those services are that we had a fireman in our congregation who shared the Fireman's Prayer with us, and that even as far away as Houston, there were people with connections at the Pentagon and in New York City. We shared with the entire country the pain, the fear, and the longing to get up and go and be of some help as we watched the endless process to try to find survivors and identify the dead unfold through our television sets.

This was the beginning of my ministry as a UU minister. And that I ministered through this time is still one of my biggest accomplishments as a minister. Nothing in seminary had prepared us for this situation. Those of us who were new in the field had had no training on how to craft a vigil after 9/11, how to minister to the fear and pain that was a national experience like this, how to be a non-anxious presence when the entire country was feeling the most anxiety it had ever felt in our lifetime. We were new and green in a raw and earth-shattering moment.

I didn't do everything perfectly, I know. I remember the competing tensions even then about patriotism and religion -- Do we sing "God Bless America"? Do we use a flag print cloth as our altar cover? But as I look back now as a minister with ten years experience, and open the files and read my words from that time in 2001, I wouldn't do anything differently. It was real and genuine. I'll be using some of those same resources my Houston colleagues shared with me from 2001 in 2011, and am still grateful for what I learned from them on that September day.

Talking to My Child About 9/11

2011-09-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who have written a lot of wise words about how to talk to children about 9/11. I'm not a child psychologist, or a teacher, or an expert on trauma. I am a parent, though, and ultimately every parent has to handle this themselves, whether or not they are also a a child psychologist, teacher, or trauma expert.

So I talked to my child about 9/11 today on the way to school in the car. She was born a few years after 9/11/01, so it wasn't something that had really come up before. But we had switched the radio from NPR to her favorite music station--the one that plays all the pre-teen pop songs--and they were talking about 9/11. So I just asked her, "Do you know what they're talking about when people are talking about 9-11 or September 11th?" She didn't. So I told her, in simple terms, that on September 11th, ten years ago, before she was born, some men, which we call terrorists, had taken over some planes, using knives, and wanted to kill everyone, so they flew the planes into buildings and crashed them, and that they did this with three planes, and two of the buildings, the World Trade Center or "Twin Towers" had completely collapsed, and a lot of people had died on that day. And then I just answered her questions -- she's pretty bold about asking questions. And that let me know where her thoughts were. And I made sure to tell her two things -- first, that this was why they check people over a lot more now before we go on airplanes, so that would keep us safer, and, secondly, that there were a lot of people who were heroes on that day, like some people on a fourth plane who stopped that plane from hitting a fourth building.

Her questions were:
Why do people want to remember this now, and talk about it?
Why did those people want to crash the planes?
Why did they hate us?

Ten years is a long time when you're not ten yet. However, explaining why we want to remember, when people are still sad, is easy to do for a kid who has done funerals for her pets. Answering "Why did they hate us?" on a car ride to school is less easy. I told her that I didn't really completely understand this, either.

How do we explain acts of violence to our children? It's definitely not easy. I'm still working on this one. Meanwhile what I want her to know at her age, the age of nightmares, is that we've worked to make things safer, and that most people on that day acted in good ways, and that's a big part of what we want to remember.

It's No Wonder...

2011-08-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

Almost two weeks ago, a blogger going by "Wondertwisted" wrote a blog post titled A 'Dear John' Letter to Unitarian Universalism. (Her real name appears to be "Cindy" based on the responses to the post, but since I'm a Cindy, that's confusing, so we'll call her "WT.") In her post, WT outlines the reasons why she's leaving Unitarian Universalism. The blog post immediately got a lot of my colleagues talking about it, mostly on Facebook as they posted up the piece. I've been thinking about WT's post since then, and am still not really ready to put out a full response, but here goes for a bit anyway.

I understand what it is my colleagues are saying when they are sympathizing with Wondertwisted. They see in her post a desire for a deeper spiritual experience in Unitarian Universalism. It's connected to the "Language of Reverence" discussions that went around a few years ago and the "Whose Are We" discussions the UUMA has started. The recent UU World piece by David Bumbaugh articulated this neatly, as well.

I also understand the yearning for a Unitarian Universalism that is more embracing of its Christian past. I serve a church with a high percentage of UU Christians, and I'm the child of UU Christians, and I think it's very important to create a religious atmosphere in UU churches that is welcoming and embracing of UU Christians. And I know that there are UU churches where UU Christians have felt the atmosphere to be hostile to their beliefs. I've heard this from a family member, for one thing. I've worked hard to discourage this kind of attitude whenever I've seen it. And I know some see in WT an articulating of how hostile our churches can sometimes be.

I read Wondertwisted a little differently, however. First of all, I'd like to say that while I want Unitarian Universalism to grow, I don't envision a world wherein everyone becomes Unitarian Universalist. It's well and good that people are different religions--I like religious diversity in the world. So I don't mourn that UCC members are members of the UCC and not the UUA. That's great that the UCC is there and that we have so much in common with them. And I think UU churches are sometimes a stopping point for religious wanderers on their way to somewhere else. That's okay with me, too. Not everybody who walks through our doors is really going to find that Unitarian Universalism is what that person is looking for. And a lot of what people are looking for and not finding in our church is something a lot more Christian than what we are.

So there are UU Christians and there are UUs who are not Christian and there are Christians who are not UU. And it's good that there are all these categories.

I think Wondertwisted may be, as she describes herself, a "Unitarian Christian," but she's not a UU Christian, and it's great that she's figured that out and gone off to somewhere where they are more Christian and maybe less Unitarian, but more what she's looking for. Let me explain.

It's comes down to this passage:

I was at a UU leadership function. I met a really smart, really energetic and sweet guy. The kind of guy that any church elder or pastor would love to recruit onto the board. He volunteered his path to me: “I’m a Buddhist-Humanist,” he said. Then he took a swig of fair trade coffee while I told every particle of my being that, no, I would NOT roll my eyes.

You can’t be a Buddhist-Humanist. You just can’t.

Here's the thing: Yes, you can. And that's part of what Unitarian Universalism is about. She says, "Be a Buddhist or a Humanist and do the work, because I suspect that claiming a hybrid philosophy might have something to do with wanting to be “spiritual” without the messy work of transformation." But sometimes "doing the work" of theology is in studying and understanding multiple religious traditions and understanding that each of them have to be adapted in some way to fit with one's own spiritual beliefs. I know there are critics of Building Your Own Theology out there, but I think it had a lot of things right. In Unitarian Universalism we do pick and choose and create hybrid theologies. And in many cases this is because we have "done the work" -- a lot more so than your average non-hybrid-believer. By way of example, a recent Pew study showed that atheists know a lot more about religion than the average believer.

It's frankly very easy to see how a UU can be a Buddhist-Humanist. Those two faith traditions have a lot in common. And neither Buddhism nor Humanism is a dead, unchanging, ungrowing thing. They both have flexibility in them. But one who sees the definitions of Humanism or Buddhism as so rigid that one can't find a home in both? Well, it's not surprising to me to hear that person doesn't feel at home in Unitarian Universalism.

Not everyone is comfortable with ambiguity, with gray areas, with the lack of rigid definitions, of course. I often say that what makes UU Christians and UU Buddhists and UU Pagans and UU Humanists all UU is that we all believe we don't have all of the answers, and that we can learn from one another. We believe in the value of coming together in religious diversity and sharing our religious journeys.

So blessings on your journey, Wondertwisted. I'm glad you've figured out where your religious home is. And it's okay that it's not us.

Pronoun Usage: Where Grammar and Justice Meet

2011-08-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

As many of you may be aware, I have my bachelor's and an M.A. in English literature, and I often teach introduction to composition at the local community college in addition to ministry. I'm teaching again this fall, and am thinking over my point of view about pronouns, specifically the use of "they" as a singular gender-neutral third-person pronoun.

My previous perspective had been that I was there to teach them to abide by the MLA style, and that the MLA style did not (yet) allow for the singular use of "they." Therefore, I have been marking this as a pronoun/noun error on papers for years. As far as I can determine, the MLA, Chicago, and APA style manuals all still recommend "he or she" or "he/she" or making the subject plural. The Chicago Style Manual states:

A singular antecedent requires a singular referent pronoun. Because he is no longer accepted as a generic pronoun referring to a person of either sex, it has become common in speech and in informal writing to substitute the third-person plural pronouns they, them, their, and themselves, and the nonstandard singular themself. While this usage is accepted in casual contexts, it is still considered ungrammatical in formal writing.

The Chicago Style Manual recommends all the usual work-arounds: "he or she," plural subjects, imperative mood, rewrite the noun, revise the sentence, etc. I couldn't find as clear a statement out of the MLA or APA, but my understanding is that they offer the same options. The textbook I'm using for my class, The Little Seagull Handbook, offers these same work-arounds.

My job, as I saw it, was to teach them to learn to use the MLA style and their handbook, and so I followed its rules.

However, there is one big problem with the he/she-type work-around: it leaves out people who do not use male or female pronouns to describe themselves. And in the transgender community, use of alternative pronouns is becoming more common, particularly use of "zhe" or "hir." Not everyone considers themselves as someone either male or female--we don't all fit neatly into two little boxes. I could have students list all the pronouns, but as awkward as "he or she" is, certainly something like "he, she, zhe, or hir" would be more awkward.

There's an interesting story here about how we took a situation that was understood as sexist--the use of "he" to mean people of all genders--and then created a popular usage, "he or she," that was still discriminatory. And the grammar handbooks are still fighting the first problem and sometimes not even acknowledging the second one. For example, the Little Seagull Handbook says, "Sexist language is language that stereotypes or ignores women or men... Writers once used he, him, and other pronouns as a default to refer to people whose sex was unknown to them... Use both masculine and feminine pronouns joined by or." The Chicago Manual of Style similarly gives this as an option without recognition of the justice problem that it creates in section 5.225--Nine techniques for achieving gender neutrality: "Use he or she (sparingly)."

There's one clear answer to this justice problem, and it's the one they all avoid: "they." I try to avoid it in formal writing, but I do it in speech all the time. It's being used commonly in speech, and grammar rules should follow usage, not dictate usage, is one argument. It's a similar situation, one can argue, to what happened with the word "you." "You" was originally a plural pronoun, and the singular was "thou." Now we use a plural pronoun as a singular one with no issue, except for the need to create a new plural such as y'all. (Heavens, let's hope we don't get a "th'all" emerging!)

We don't really, however, use "they" in a complete singular way. We switch our sentences mid-stream to plural. So we don't take the sentence, "A student can use whichever pronoun he or she wants" and replace "he or she" with "they" and say, "A student can use whichever pronoun they wants." We say, rather, "A student can use whichever pronoun they want." We change the verb there at the end to reflect the fact that "they" is a plural pronoun. If I'm allowing for a singular "they" it should be followed by a singular verb, yes? But that's not what we're doing in speech. And we're not going to drop "he" or "she" as pronouns anytime soon and just move to totally using they and having plural verbs for singular subjects. So it's still all mixed up.

I've explained all this to my students, and told them that I want them to learn to use the style recommended and that I think this will change in the next few years and the style manuals will accept "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, but until they do, I want them to be aware of how they're using their pronouns and follow the style manual.

But I'm swayed now by the justice argument. I was told of a situation in which the University of Michigan, my alma mater, dealt with this in a policy and ended up rewriting the sentences to avoid "he or she" or the singular "they" in order to be both grammatically and politically correct, when the justice advocates and the rhetoricians couldn't agree. The UU Ministers Association, I learned recently, embraces the singular "they" as a solution.

I would like to allow my students to use the singular "they," but at the same time I want them to be aware of what they're doing. I'm thinking of some sort of solution where they indicate their awareness through asterisks or brackets or italics: they, *they*, [they]. That would show they're aware of the singular pronoun, and I would like them to be. But that's as disruptive to the eye, on an aesthetic level, as people would think something like "z/s/he" would be.

So what will I do? I think, in the end, there's only one solution: explain it all, but let the student do whatever they want. There's still no reason I can't crack down on apostrophes. Thank goodness, because as fond as I was of pointing out pronoun/noun disagreements, the apostrophes are where my real passion is.

The Trouble with Bookstores, Redux

2011-07-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, as Borders closed some of its stores, I wrote this blog post. This week we get the word that Borders is completely liquidating and will be no more.

When I came to Jackson, Michigan, seven years ago, we had several small bookstores. None of them were great. Almost all of them are now out of business. What's gone? Best Books in Jackson Crossing, a small bookstore in a strip mall on West Ave., another small bookstore that was on West Ave. (I can't even remember their names), the Nomad Bookstore on Mechanic (which both came and went during these years), and now, we'll see the Waldenbooks in Jackson Crossing close, as well.

Where can you buy a book, other than online, in town?

You can buy textbooks at Baker College and Jackson Community College.
You can buy Christian books at Agape in Jackson Crossing.
You can buy children's books at the Toy House and a lesser number at Toys R Us.
You can buy comic books at Nostalgia, Ink.
You can buy used books at the Jackson Book Exchange.
And you can buy bestsellers at Meijer, Target, and I think K-Mart and Wal-Mart (I seldom shop at these two).

Honestly, our book selection won't be much different with Waldenbooks gone -- which perhaps was part of the problem. The real loss was the Nomad, which carried a somewhat different selection from all the rest, although it was still not the selection I was usually looking for.

But since we don't have much selection here, much less a bookstore with a comfy chair to curl up in, I did most of my book shopping in Ann Arbor or Lansing. In Ann Arbor, there were three big Borders a year ago, and one Barnes and Noble. I suspect that Barnes and Noble will become very overrun unless another big store pops up in town. Ann Arbor, you would think, could support at least one more bookstore in town. Hopefully Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million will seize the opportunity. Meanwhile, I may head to Lansing, which still has all of its big bookstores -- two Barnes and Nobles, and, even better, two Schuler's Books. I've just discovered they have weekly online coupons, which makes them more price-competitive, and they're locally owned--like Borders once was.

*sigh* I will miss it. Goodbye, Ann Arbor institution.

Two Cents on the Justice GA

2011-07-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

For the record, I'm not really opinionated about what is being called the "hot mess" -- the resignation of two members of the GA Planning Committee. I don't know enough about the internal politics of the GAPC or the UUA Board to really weigh in on the issue. Kim Hampton's post about the roll of worship and the SLT in the Justice GA is informed and informative. And I think Tom Schade is right on point to say, "It's always useful to remember that the future hasn't happened yet."

I am opinionated about the "Justice GA," on the other hand. And I know for every person who was sitting in the Plenary Hall when we voted for a "Justice GA" there was a separate opinion, and not all of our expectations can be met. Half of us probably think that there should be a Service of the Living Tradition, and half of us don't. Half of us think there should be an exhibit hall, and half of us don't. And the half that do and the half that don't for each item are a mix of those interested in the idea of the Justice GA and those that aren't. But I know this: there are a lot of people who've never gone to at GA before who are considering going to this one, because they understand that this year our denomination is doing something important and meaningful and different. There are people who can only go a GA once in a while who are making a special point to be at this one. The energy and excitement about the possibilities are high.

What we voted on was, to my mind, instead of doing business and usual and in lieu of cancelling or moving the 2012 General Assembly, to have a Justice GA where business as usual was minimized. My fear is that "business as usual" will be taken to mean only the actual business of the General Assembly -- the business resolutions, Actions of Immediate Witness, and other such business of the plenary.

On the other hand, I am also concerned that for people with mobility issues there will be nothing that they can attend if more and more is focused on off-site justice work. I'm personally dedicating myself to starting to learn Spanish this year in preparation for the Justice GA, as suggested to us in one of this year's Responsive Resolution--this represents a real investment of both time and money, neither of which I have a lot to spare.

And at the same time, I'm worried that I won't be able to even attend GA because I don't handle a lot of heat well, nor a lot of walking and standing, and if everything involves a combination of the two, it will be extremely difficult for me. This year and past years have been a "hot mess" for me when it comes to how we handle accessibility. During one GA (Ft. Worth), I very badly sprained my ankle -- it dislocated and then popped back into place in the process. I needed help with mobility. The planning for GA didn't include extra scooters; I was very lucky that one person who had ordered one had never shown up. This year, when our Standing on the Side of Love rally was a bit of a hike in the hot weather, I heard the announcement that if we needed to take a cab, we could get reimbursed later (already not the best system), and that cabs would be waiting outside the conference center. I didn't hear that it was at a different door, so I followed the crowd out the side door -- no cabs. I went back in and found out where I was supposed to go, and went out -- no cabs were waiting. This was not a particularly well-orchestrated initiative, from my point of view. It's very important for the Justice GA to remember that what is a "short walk" for one person in a huge obstacle for another, particularly in heat that many are not used to dealing with.

So, with all that said, here's what I, personally, would love to see:

No exhibit hall. It's become more and more pointless anyway. All of these agencies can be found online. We can shop online, and we can see their justice issues online. Instead, create a virtual exhibit hall that people can visit from anywhere.
A Justice Hall instead. If people need downtime and a place to wander or socialize, give them small tasks to do, like letters to write to elected officials.
One or two workshop slots only. There may be some workshops that are essential to hold, or exiting lecturers that we really want to feature, and there can be a some large justice-oriented workshops on how to build a movement, how to do social justice, how to engage cooperatively with other organizations, ARAOM work, etc.
Instead of workshop slots, we have justice slots. As for the all-justice slots, I would like to see not just large social justice rallies in these spots, but places where small groups go off into different parts of the area to work with local organizations on different projects. There needs to be great variety. And this probably means a sort of schedule where we commit to what we're doing in advance. And it means buses.
I would like to see the following cornerstone elements of GA: the Ware Lecture, the Service of the Living Tradition, and the Sunday morning worship service (which I would love to be the SLT again, but that's a whole other argument). I think all can be themed around this justice work, and all are important to what makes up a General Assembly. For the newcomers to GA, they would give the important taste of what GA is usually about.
All Reports -- all reports -- given in written and video ahead of time and no reports -- no reports -- presented verbally during plenaries. We can do our homework ahead of time.
A single plenary session to deal with all remaining business that we haven't been able to put off or voted this year to do next year.
Yes, more worship. When we can't be doing justice work, we should be praying, singing, and celebrating.
I would like to see Ministry Days themed around the Justice GA in the following ways: a Berry Street Address that's on theme; minimal business; a group action project; drop the "collegial conversations" element in favor of group social action; drop the usual conversation with the UUA President in favor of having him lead us in justice work as well.

Most of all, I want this experience to be meaningful and transformative for me and for our movement.

Obviously I'm not going to get all my wishes. Nor is anybody else. Meanwhile, let's have patience and understanding with the Board and Planning Committee as they do the hard work of creating a GA experience unlike any other.

Design Your Church a Mobile Website! - Maps Addendum

2011-07-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

It turns out I was over-thinking the maps option. I had created a page called "Directions" which had the address and phone number and an embedded customized Google map of the church in it (200x300 pixels). This was entirely workable. Someone could change the size of the map and move it up & down and so forth, to see what they wanted to see. It was pretty much like this:

View Larger Map

But this wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted to click on it and have the option pop up of going to my navigation app on the phone.

I discovered that if I clicked on the (plain text--no hyperlink) address itself that I had typed above the embedded map, I would get such a pop-up asking if I wanted to do that. But this wasn't intuitive enough and some people might not know their phones work this way (and some phones might not do it, for all I know).

Then this weekend someone sent me directions to an event using Mapquest. When I went to print the directions, Mapquest asked me if I wanted to send the directions by text message to my phone. When I did this, and the text message had a simple link. When I tried clicking on that link, I had the option of using my navigation app or going to the browser. Unfortunately, when I clicked navigation, it didn't work right -- it didn't put in the address. When I went to the browser, however, I was then able to go back over to the navigation app and have the address appear in there to navigate to.

So I tried just putting a Mapquest link to the church on the mobile Directions page that was like this: MAP. My phone, when I clicked on it, didn't offer me the navigation app option. So much for that. But it did take me to a very nice little Mapquest mobile version (which I do have to say seemed to offer more choices than Google's).

So then I went back to Google, wondering what would happen if I just linked to the map rather than embedding it, like this: MAP. Success! Clicking on it offered me the directions of going to Google's very nice mobile version of their map, or using my app. I switched my directions page on the Mobile home page to be linked to the map, rather than linked to a page with the link on it, and it's done!

Moral of the story: Whether you have a mobile version of your church webpage or not, instead of embedding the map, it would be good to provide a link to the Google map (or do both). That way mobile users--at least those with Android phones like mine--will have the option of getting their navigation app to give them directions on how to get to your church as they drive there. And even if it doesn't, Google will automatically route them to a mobile version of their map, which will be sized more appropriately for the phone than your embedded map is.

Design Your Church a Mobile Website!

2011-07-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

Why?

Some time ago I installed a button from Extreme Tracking on the bottom of my church website, inconspicuously, I hoped. I don't pay for the service, so I only get the free version, which tells me about the last twenty people to visit the website. At the time, I was noticing the diversity of browsers people were using--the usage had changed from almost exclusively Internet Explorer to a diversity of browsers with Explorer representing the largest percentage, but less than half, and Firefox hot on its heels. The big question then was how to design a page such that it looked good at different resolutions and through different browsers. That was just a couple of years ago. Earlier this week when I looked at data on the last twenty users, six were from mobile phones (one of which I could rule out as mine). With one-fourth of the users looking at the website from mobiles, I knew I needed a church webpage that was friendlier to mobile usage. I suspect that mobile phone users are more likely to be "seekers" than members, but I have no data to back that up, except that I could see search terms and know that some were coming from Google, some from my blog page, and some were going to the site directly.

So this week I've been working on a mobile version of the webpage. It's available at http://www.libertyuu.org/mobile, if you want to check it out. (Our regular page, for comparison, is at http://www.libertyuu.org, although I hope to redesign it next week because I'm pretty unhappy with its look currently.) I suggest you check the mobile site out on a phone, as that's what it's made for, and it looks strange on a PC. I don't yet have the script in place that would automatically route mobile users to it, but am working toward that goal. And there's a big question about iPad and other tablet users, whether they should be directed to the mobile site or the full site.

Content

I don't have any digital video or audio capability at my church, so both webpages are heavily text-based, and the mobile site more so, since I didn't want to direct them off too often to outside pages. The goal here was to keep information as brief as possible, and put up the things that seekers would most want to find. Brevity is not my strong suit, as anyone who knows me can attest to, so I'm still working on trimming it down. But I finally settled on nine links: Sunday Services, Directions, Religious Education, Social Justice, Newsletter, Beliefs, Shop, Phone, and More Information. I figured that what seekers want to know is when, where, and what they'd be getting from us, so "Worship" tells the "when," "Directions" (and "Phone") tells the "where," and all the rest are the key pieces for the "what" -- worship, religious education, social justice, and newsletter. The "More Information" lists staff members and the church e-mail and phone (again). "Shop" lets people go through our Amazon Associates account to shop on Amazon.com, guessing that some people might do this from their phones (although maybe, like me, they go through their Amazon apps, so this might have little appeal). There's a lot on our regular webpage that there's no link to here -- staff bios, church history, sermons, forms, by-laws. All that is stuff I'm guessing the average mobile user doesn't need. But I do intend to go back and add a link to the full site. And then, at the bottom, I have links to our Facebook page, Twitter, and all the icons that usually appear to tell people we're welcoming, accessible, etc. The other icons are all linked to a page that explains what they all are.

How to Do This:

The biggest question for me in doing this wasn't the question of what content to put on the page, but how to make what I call "the box" -- how to size my page correctly so that it's the right size for mobile phones. This is particularly complicated since mobile phones have a wide range of screen sizes. My father, William Landrum, is my tech support, but he hadn't done this before either, so we went through some trial and error before we got it to where I think it's right for most phones. It turns out it's not so much about creating a page where we create everything in a small box. When we did that, we got a phone screen where all the date was in a smaller box on the corner of the phone screen. The key is having a piece in there that tells the phone that this is designed for it. In the code, before head, even before where it says html, it says:

{?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?}
{!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"}

except that { and } are lesser-than and greater-than symbols -- I can't seem to type them in my blog without it becoming the code. I'm too lazy right now to figure out the work-around which I assume is pretty simple although complicated to Google, so I'm going this route. If you look at the code on the page, you'll see everything easily. It's in pretty-straight-forward html without bells and whistles. Anyway, that code does the trick, and the webpage is sized correctly. As long as whatever tables (and the cells in the table) you're using don't have a specified width or height, everything will wrap to fit on the mobile screen. Then it's just a matter of designing it such that you're not putting too much text up there, so that people don't have to scroll too much. You do want fonts and icons bigger than usual to make them easier to tap on. I'm going with font sized 5 (18pt), and it's workable, although perhaps still on the small side for larger fingers. My icons on the bottom are sized about 32 pixels high, and again they're on the small side to easily tap on.

One trick we've learned is that just like you can make a link on e-mail addresses that opens up an e-mail program to send mail, you can make a link that will have people's phones go straight to their dialer. This is something that often really irritates me when browsing the web on my phone, that I can't just tap on the phone and have the phone dial. It turns out it's because people haven't coded the phone number to do so, because they're assuming browsing from a PC, where you can look at the number and pick up your phone and dial it while still looking at the number. I can't count the number of times I've had to search for something to write on while holding my phone, so that I could dial and look at the phone number at the same time (no, I can't remember a ten digits easily, and that may be true for more people than you think, especially with a small child in the back of the car making all sorts of noise). So even if you don't design a mobile webpage, go to your existing page and hyperlink your phone number, people. Inside the angle brackets just type something that looks like a href="tel:5175294221", only with your phone number instead of my church's. It's that simple. Can you believe that every company isn't doing this? Ridiculous, when you think about it. But, like many of us, they're not realizing yet that a) a lot of their traffic is coming from phones and b) those people want to call for information or reservations or something, and c) it's this easy! Yes, if you're using an app to find your restaurant or other business, the app will often do this. But sometimes people search through a browser, too--and maybe more often for a church than for a restaurant. Can you tell I feel strongly about this? Nobody is clicking on your phone number from their phone hoping to be able to write it down on paper and use it later. They're happy it goes straight to the dialer, where they can hit "send" or they can save it in their contacts for later. Trust me.

Now, if only I could figure out how to link the address such that it opens up their navigation app, I'd be set. And, sadly, the Twitter and Facebook go to the mobile browser version, not to the often nicer apps. I want to put a link up for Gowalla and Foursquare to our locations, although this will have the same issue. And I'm thinking adding a "like" button for Facebook and a "+1" button for Google wouldn't hurt, either, although then I'm getting into space limitations again. And then if the church gets a Google+ presence, there'll be that to deal with, too.

Ironically, what takes up the most space is the name of my church -- Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty. It wraps to take up three lines of space once I put it next to a chalice picture. For a seeker site, I don't like the acronym option, so I think I'm stuck with it, but it's wasted space on a phone. That's something that, for example, Micah's Porch or our local nondenominational Westwinds has right. I remember when the first church I served, the Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church, whose acronym is nearly as long as "Westwinds," took a vote, which narrowly failed, to change their name. I can't remember for sure what the other option was (a lot had been discussed, and this is ten years ago now), but I think it was "Harmony Church." I'm guessing when any of you are designing a mobile page you'll be wishing, as I do, for a name more like "Harmony Church" and less like "First Unitarian Universalist Society of Eastern Suburb of Big City." I appreciate the desire to have our heritage and denomination present in our naming of ourselves, and I wouldn't propose going through a name change, having seen how difficult a subject it is, but never has it been more awkward than in designing for a screen about 200 pixels wide.

Well, that's all there is to it. I appreciate comments & suggestions for improvement, and am happy to answer questions if I know the answer. I've often felt like saying, however, in my best Bones McCoy voice (if I had one, which I don't--really), "Damn it, Jim, I'm a minister, not a website designer!"

Evolving Worship in the Social Networking Age - Part 3: Possibilities & Opportunities

2011-07-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 of this series I wrote about a proposal being generated through blog discussion about shorter sermons tied to social media in new ways. In Part 2 I wrote about some of the limitations as I see it. The main take-away there is that while some populations of some churches may be ready for this, others are not over the threshold yet. The problem is that we're on a cusp right now, where some "digital natives" are ready for something different, not everyone is comfortable with the use of it. As you go up by age/generation, a smaller percentage of people are using social networking.

So what can we do? Well, there's still a lot. I think for now it still means that for many congregations, having a physical space in which one holds worship is still necessary, and the cornerstone of that service is still the sermon. And, at the same time, the UUA General Assembly changed the definition of congregation such that this is no longer the only way (except for CLF) to be a congregation. The possibilities of what that can look like are endless. And social media is evolving so quickly that whatever one creates right now has to be dynamic and flexible. This week, for example, I got on Google+ for the first time. Will it make other social networks obsolete? Will it be a big failure? Only time will tell.

What I can do, right now, is dependent upon what will be supported by my congregation and has the most ability to be attractive to newcomers, as well. We don't have a critical mass on Twitter or MySpace, and responding to blog posts is sporadic but increasing. Facebook conversation, however, is plentiful. So what is possible is putting out, primarily through blog and Facebook, a conversation starter leading into the worship service that helps shape and inform it, and after the worship service putting out some summary that continues the conversation. This could be tied into a way to also have this conversation in a physical space before and after, for those wanting the face-to-face connection. We have no way to record audio or video digitally at the church--when we do, it's with borrowed equipment--so that remains in the future dreams list. The degree to which social media shapes the worship, then, is the degree to which people participate in these types of forums.

What I think is that for a time, this is going to look like not much happening. But eventually, it has the power to shape and transform worship. What it amounts to now is just an opening up and demystifying of the process--less of me going into the office and shutting the door and emerging with a worship service like Athena coming fully-formed out of Zeus' head, and more like writing with a bunch of people chatting around me in a coffee shop and sometimes stopping by the table. Can I write that way? Time will tell. I've gotten lots of practice by having a child popping in constantly -- about ten times while writing this blog post alone. Having constructive adults popping into the conversation should be a welcome change.

Phil Lund suggested we turn the sermon inside-out. I'm not doing that yet, but the first step to turning something inside-out is opening it up and showing the center. That's where I propose starting for now.

Evolving Worship in the Social Networking Age - Part 2: Limitations & Expectations

2011-07-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

So in my last post I talked about a proposal being generated to look at worship, particularly the sermon, in a new way in the light of social networking. I think it's worth noting that the authors of the three posts I cited are all people who are not full-time solo ministers with the corresponding preaching schedule that such demands, and that Dan Harper, who comes the closest to that role in his role as Associate Minister, is in a large church with presumably some staff, and in Silicon Valley, as well. What he describes seems less doable in a small country church such as I serve. So here's what I see as the limitations to the model he proposes:

1. Podcasting/Live streaming/any audio or video component -- Much as I love the idea of it, I don't have the technology for it. And should I have the technology, I still don't have the tech support that I personally would need. I could acquire the know-how to do it all on my own, given the technology, but right now that's beyond me.

2. Level of feedback/discussion -- right now, when I do post a sermon on my blog, or just on blog posts in general, I'm getting one or two comments, at most, and often times none, from members of my congregation. I think that some would be interested in the types of discussions Harper suggests, but it'd be hit or miss on participation. In a small church there just might not be the critical mass to have this kind of discussion going.

3. Receptivity -- My cell phone has no bars at my church. Now, I'm on the comparatively lousy Sprint network, and I know some church members have better coverage at my church, but not all of them. So Twittering during the service is narrowed down from just the people with phones that can tweet to people with phones that can tweet who aren't on roaming.

3. Accessibility -- I'm guessing about 75% of my church is on e-mail and Facebook, and another 10% are on e-mail but no other social media, but the other 15% (mostly seniors) are not online at all. (All numbers pure guesses, although I could go person-by-person and get real stats later.) If the entire nature of a sermon is changed such that it doesn't feel complete without online participation, what does that mean for the 15%?

This brings me to the expectations. Both Lund & Wells talk about the changing expectations for a sermon. Wells talks about thinking that if he were to give a 20-minute sermon that people would be fact-checking his data on their smart phones. I regularly give 15-20 minute sermons (I think my average is more like 15 minutes, really), and have yet to have someone whipping out the phone and telling me my information was wrong. Sure, I do occasionally get a fact wrong. But that culture hasn't pervaded the sanctuary yet. The assumption of both Lund and Wells is that people are wanting something different out of their sermon than the model we've been using for hundreds of years. I think that they're right for the percentage of the culture that is digital natives, but the question is when has an individual church reached that point? My church, I'm feeling, is not there yet. People generally seem to like the longer sermons (to a point), and when the sermons are shorter and there are more other elements in the service, I get more complaints. So my reality is not matching with what the new media guys are suggesting. Of course, and here's the rub: maybe the people who want something different are not coming, and our adherence to old forms is limiting growth. Is it? Quite possibly.

And so, with those limitations & expectations in mind, next I will address what I think the evolving model could looks like, and what I think is currently possible in a small, low-tech church.

Evolving Worship in the Social Networking Age - Introduction

2011-07-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

An interesting conversation has been going on in the UU blogosphere starting with Scott Wells at Boy in the Bands, then with Dan Harper at Yet Another Unitarian Universalist, and finally Phil Lund at Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie. All three are UU ministers--Scott Wells works for the Sunlight Foundation; Dan Harper is the Associate Minister for Religious Education at the UU Church of Palo Alto; Phil Lund is on staff at the Prairie Star District of the UUA.

Diving in--the original notion that Scott Wells posted is that in a digital age, the sermon is too long. He writes, "It made sense in a education- and resource-poor (and frankly, entertainment-poor) age, but if I held forth for twenty minutes or more every Sunday, I expect to be regularly challenged (perhaps mentally, and in an unspoken way) by people who would Google for facts during my oratory." Phil Lund echoes this: "Thing one: settling into a cozy pew for an hour or so to listen to a ripping good sermon may once have been considered a relatively inexpensive way to be entertained on a Sunday morning, but nowadays if I want to listen to someone talk about something on Sunday (or any day), all I need to do is logon to the interwebs and visit TED.com…for free."

Scott Wells suggests a different model: "It might make sense for a minister to preach briefly — tightly, eloquently, perhaps around a single point — to the “live congregation” and have it spelled out later in another way. Not print necessarily, but perhaps a podcast or video, or forgoing these perhaps a live event more in common with an interview or discussion than fighting with hymns and prayers for attention." Dan Harper spells out some concrete steps he's proposing in response: posting a reading on a sermon blog on Thursday; on Sunday before worship post the text of the sermon, along with links; give a hashtag for twitter conversation for during and after worship; stream the worship service live; continue conversation after on the blog. Phil Lund shares these thoughts and suggests turning the sermon inside-out, a process he promises to describe soon in an upcoming post.

That's all by way of background. I'll post my response soon, as well.

*amended 8:31pm 7/8/11 to reflect Harper's title correctly. Sorry!

FYI, Apps!

2011-06-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

Just FYI, the UUA is in the process of designing a UU app. A couple of weeks ago they put out a page where you can submit ideas. As is often the case, however, I can't find it easily by searching for it through the UUA's page. Problem number one is that "phone" and "app" are too common. "Submit ideas for mobile phone app" doesn't turn it up, either. Fortunately, I have found it for you. It's at http://www.uua.org/about/184350.shtml.

But, if you can't wait to see what the UUA will turn out, the Church of the Larger Fellowship just put out a very nice app, "Quest for Meaning." The Android version is available; the iPhone version may still be "coming soon." It was free when I downloaded it during GA, and features four options -- reading joys and sorrows, posting a joy or sorrow, lighting a chalice (along with a reading), and podcasts. It's a nifty little thing. I found it hard to located. In my apps store, I searched under "Quest" and then under "Unitarian" and then finally found it by searching for either "Quest Unitarian" or "Quest Church of the Larger Fellowship" -- I can't remember which.

Blogging GA: Plenty O' Plenaries

2011-06-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

This morning's plenary sessions at the UUA General Assembly dealt with several housekeeping bylaw changes (some of which will have to be voted on at next year's "Justice GA"), and the Actions of Immediate Witness. Four AIMs were proposed, and three passed. Interestingly, the one that didn't pass was on opposing the war in Afghanistan. Arguments against ranged from that it's not an immediate issue (since it's been going on so long) to that it instructs us to instruct the people of Afghanistan in how to run their country, which is inappropriate. It's significant to note that a similar AIM was rejected last year at the General Assembly. But both of these also follow on the heels of the 2010 Statement of Conscience on Creating Peace. AIMs have to pass by a 2/3 majority. The AIM on the war was so close that our moderator had to call for the vote three times before it was clear that it didn't pass. Those we did pass were on supporting supermarket workers in California, protesting the Peter King hearings on "Muslim radicalization," and opposing the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision. One of those was by a pretty close margin.

Later in the day, after I had already left, the General Assembly passed some interesting Responsive Resolutions. Apparently I am urged to go learn Spanish, as are you. Let's do that. Seriously. I'm sure I can take classes at JCC. And next year at GA there will be no AIMs. I think this might be something we're sorry about later, but hopefully not. And then the following year and thereafter we're limited to 3 AIMs per year, rather than six, for the delegates to vote on. What worries me about that is that I think the way we decide which ones go before the delegates are which ones get the most signatures, which may just mean that the ones proposed by the most efficient or persistent people, not really the most popular, are what we'll end up seeing. This year, for example, I signed a petition for an AIM titled "Solidarity" that was on workers and unions, but it didn't apparently get enough signatures for us to see it in the plenary. Was this because not enough delegates were interested in the subject, or because the person gathering signatures wasn't persistent enough? I may never know. So the AIM process is definitely problematic to begin with. Hopefully the changes made today made it better, not worse. I know others felt like the AIMs were not researched enough, and sometimes poorly written. But I don't see how lowering the number we can vote on improves that necessarily. Nobody, I think, is reading the whole proposed AIM before signing the petition.

Well, that's it for GA for this year. I've left Charlotte. Now we'll just have to see if I can learn enough Spanish plus do everything else we're urged to do to make ourselves ready for Phoenix next year. It's a tall order, I think. I'm already trying to figure out what will happen to my child in GA childcare if I'm arrested. I think they add on an additional charge for every 5 minutes you're late picking up... Meanwhile, send me the links to everything we're supposed to be doing to ready ourselves. No, this isn't cynicism, I really do take this seriously, but let's also remember that there are people sometimes new to our movement and sometimes of limited means who join us at GA, and not be too high in our demands, too, okay?

Blogging GA: Meadville Lombard

2011-06-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

As a Meadville Lombard Theological School alum, one of the regular GA events I attend is the Meadville Lombard alumni dinner. After everything Meadville Lombard has been through this year, I wasn't sure what the mood would be of the room this year. Often the event is a mixture of school pride, nostalgia as we hear 25 years and 50 years in the ministry speakers, and silliness as we hassle the president or scribe and bark (literally--it's a long story) our approval for various statements or motions.

This year, after Meadville Lombard has sold its historic building and cancelled the plans to join with Andover Newton in forming a new theological university, and has now leased space in the Chicago loop area (location still mostly undisclosed, but alums are in the know now). It's been such a whirlwind year that when you go to www.meadville.edu, you land now on their news page -- that's what they're putting first on the web, because it's so significant. Compare that to the front page of Starr King's at www.sksm.edu -- you get the picture.

So what was the atmosphere? We're mourning the loss of 5701 S. Woodlawn -- the Curtis Room, the Stairwell, the Stacks. But beyond that, there's a cautious optimism. I think the alumni are largely glad not to be worried about losing identity in this institution with Andover Newton, and glad for Meadville Lombard to be going it alone and to be self-sufficient. We're also glad that there's now, finally, an answer to the question of where Meadville Lombard's physical home will be, and that it will be in Chicago. Our reservations are mostly around things that have already been in place for a while -- the touch point program and the loss of the strong relationship to the University of Chicago that was there in days past. The touch point program is a big change from the residential program most of us went through, but it's been going on a couple of years, and the students (as well as faculty and supporters) are speaking of it as a strong program that's meeting all their needs and doing what it needs to do.

I was cautiously optimistic heading in. I come out of the Meadville Lombard annual event much more hopeful and with a lighter heart.

President Lee Barker invited us as alumni to come by 5701 this fall and say goodbye to the building. I'm thinking I want to take him up on that. It's only a three hour drive from Jackson to Chicago, so it would be easy to make it a day trip or an overnight trip. They have a very nice blog for sharing memories of our home in Hyde Park, but I think I need to make the pilgrimage.

Blogging GA: Social Media

2011-06-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

There were only a couple of workshops on social media this year at General Assembly, and one of them was at the same time as another big lecture I wanted to attend the other day, so I happily grabbed the one today that was sandwiched between the plenary sections. It was led by four ministers who talked about how they use social media. What was really nice was that they all saw use of social media as a valid piece of ministry -- not just something they do on the side -- and they also talked about how it shows the congregation a different side of the minister, through seeing snarky blog posts or goofy cat videos or exposure to the different interests and social groups a minister interacts with. And they all seemed to think this was largely positive for congregations to see this side of ministers. As someone who has friended congregation members on Facebook, I have to agree. My facebook friends see more of me than they would otherwise, and that's largely good. (Although an amusing question came up about seeing the minister in online dating communities -- a question that's pretty touchy, considering the topics of discussion at UUMA these days. For more on that, see my last few blog posts.)

One fun thing about this workshop was seeing other people I know from social media and seeing them interact with each other, and then having our workshop itself interact with social media when one of the presenters took a picture of the crowd and posted it to Facebook. The picture isn't wide enough to see me, but she tagged me anyway (I'm Facebook friends with 3/4 of the presenters), so if you're on Facebook with me, check it out. We're all being flaming chalices for her. (Please be aware that I don't friend UUs from other congregations unless I have a secondary connection with them in some way, like friends or relatives or working together on something where Facebook connection would facilitate things.)

Blogging GA: Ethical Eating

2011-06-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Today the UUA General Assembly had one main issue before them in the short (comparatively) plenary session: to vote on the proposed Statement of Conscience on Ethical Eating. There were two main debates that were held about the SOC. The first was about the elephant in the UUA room: classism. The proposal put before us in plenary included two lines that urged us to tell food sellers and producers that we will buy and pay more for ethically produced food. One fellow from my own economically devastated state of Michigan urged people to vote against the SOC because of this. He shared with the gathered delegates that while he wishes he could pay more for food to follow ethical eating guidelines, he's on food stamps. As another person put it, it's all about the math.

The second issue was around a sentence that says, "Minimally processed plant-based diets are healthier diets." The complaint was that this speaks for everyone, and calls on all UUs to be vegetarian. We heard from people saying that it's simply not true that vegetarian diets are better for everyone -- one woman spoke of her partner, a previously committed vegetarian, who was forced to add meat to her diet to survive due to increasing food allergies and other health issues. Another person said he just didn't believe that vegetarianism wasn't always the most healthy option for everyone. One person argued that the focus of the sentence was on the issue of processed foods. Yet another argued that the sentence talked about plant-based diets not vegetarianism, and that meat can be included in a plant-based diet. An amendment to strike this sentence was proposed, and struck down.

Later, we went back to those lines about money, and an amendment was made to strike them, and was passed with no argument.

Unlike Actions of Immediate Witness, which are proposed at General Assemblies and voted on at the same one, the Statements of Conscience we pass are much longer and thoughtful procedures. Ethical Eating started as a study-action issue for congregations, and then out of that process comes the statement of conscience. That this is now a statement of conscience makes it an important document for our faith, and UUs might be interested to read it and consider what it asks of us as individuals and congregations.

Blogging GA: More on Ministers and the Code & Standards

2011-06-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've now figured out what was unclear to me before. Here's what we've voted in that is now in our "Standards of Professional Practice" (our unenforced part of the document, or "best practices):

G. Personal or Romantic Relationships
1. A minister of a congregation, or a community minister affiliated with a congregation, who engages in personal friendship or pursues a romantic attraction with a member or participant of that congregation, or whose family members or existing friends join or participate in that congregation, must take into account the following considerations:
a. Such relationships will change the dynamics of the congregation as well as of the ministry, potentially in negative ways that may persist beyond that minister’s tenure.
b. Members of the congregation who have special relationships with the minister must often refrain from positions of visible leadership or systemic influence for which they might otherwise be eligible.
c. It may be advisable for a potential romantic partner to refrain from visible leadership or systemic influence for which they might otherwise be eligible in the congregation, agency or enterprise, at least until the nature of the relationship with the minister is clearly established and can be made public.
2. Ministers who pursue such relationships should seek and heed the advice of colleagues as to how the conduct of that relationship may affect their ministries and their congregations.
3. It is unfair and destructive to congregations for the minister to ask them publicly to accept a succession of several romantic partners, whether or not these partners have been previously connected to the congregation.
4. Community ministers should be guided additionally by the expectations of the agencies or enterprises where they work, and by the standards of professional organizations to which they may belong, regarding the establishment of personal friendships or romantic relationships with those they serve.
5. In all cases, ministers must be careful not to take advantage of those they serve, or damage the integrity of the congregation, agency or enterprise in which they serve.

And here's the stronger language under review (with the agreement that the final language would avoid he/she language in preference to the use of "they" as a non-gendered third person single pronoun. The justice advocate in me agrees. The grammarian still has problems with the singular use of "they" and would prefer other work-arounds such as consistent use of a full noun or pluralizing of the entire sentence):

1. A minister who initiates or responds to sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person he/she serves or serves with professionally must take into account that such relationships will change the dynamics of the congregation/work site as well as of the ministry, potentially in negative ways that may persist beyond that minister’s tenure.
2. A minister who initiates or responds to sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person he/she serves or serves with professionally agrees to:
a. Either the minister or the other person will leave the congregation/site of ministry for 6 months before the relationship can be pursued
b. Fully disclose to the potential romantic partner the implications for that person of a relationship with the minister, including the change that the person could lose his/her congregation or work site regardless of the success of the relationship.
c. Fully disclose such decision to the chapter Good Officer of the UUMA.
d. Fully disclose such decision to the congregation/work site if at the end of 6 months the relationship is pursued
3. It is unfair and destructive to congregations for the minister to ask them publicly to accept a succession of several romantic partners, whether or not these partners have been previously connected to the congregation.
4. Community ministers are guided additionally by the expectations of the agencies or enterprises where they work, and by the standards of professional organizations to which they may belong, regarding the establishment of sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person served professionally.
5. In all cases, ministers must be careful not to take advantage of those they serve, or damage the integrity of the congregation, agency or enterprise in which they serve.

It may also be under review for the "Code of Professional Conduct" (the enforceable part of our document) to read: "I will not engage in sexual contact, sexualized behavior, or a sexual relationship with any person I serve professionally." That piece of it was still confusing. We didn't vote on this, I believe, but it seems like adding this is the goal that we're still working towards.

At any rate, what is clearly the difference between what was voted in and what is under review is that what was voted in has much more to do with the role of the minister's partner in 1.a-1.c., and the review version is very explicitly laying out steps that should be followed if a minister is to date a member of the congregation in 2.a.-2.d. While we'll take this year to review it, I think the proposed version is very good, and these steps of contacting good offices, ending the pastoral relationship, and disclosing to the congregation, are important and necessary. People might argue over the six month period, I suppose. And I can certainly see that if one was dealing with a very new member to the congregation that this might be excessive, but this is also "best practices" and, as such, in consultation with good offices, it seems that sort of case-by-case situation could be negotiated.

Special thanks to James Kubal-Komoto whose comment on my last post prompted me to go back and read through it all to understand it. Balancing my laptop on my knee and trying to see where the differences in the two versions were proved not to be the most effective way for me to do business. Now that I can look side-by-side, the situation is more clear. That one sentence deal in the whole explanation threw me off and was, I think, unnecessarily confusing, but perhaps only to me.

Blogging GA: Thursday

2011-06-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

Today I dropped my daughter off at the UU Kids Camp for the first time. She had a good day; they took a field trip to the science museum. She's in the camp for three days, and it's field trips each day. I confess to a little disappointment around this. I've been so longing for her to have a UU camp experience. (See this article from a UU World blog on more about UU kids camps.) It seems like this great opportunity at General Assembly to have a camp that's integrated around UU principles and heritage and to tie it to our values. What is in fact the case is they contract the kids camp job out to a local child care provider to run. I suppose this is not the primary goal of GA, to provide UU experiences for children, but it's a wasted opportunity, if you ask me. All the same, I hope to continue doing this bringing my daughter to GA and putting her in the camp, hoping that I'll have additional opportunities to expose her to the larger world of UUism beyond the local congregation. She went with me to the Banner Parade last night and will walk the exhibit hall later in the week. We watched a bit of the Service of the Living Tradition together tonight. So those pieces of UUism will still sink in, perhaps. And if it doesn't, well, at least the kids camp was fun, eh?

After dropping the girl off at camp, it was a workshops day all day today. In the past, the days have been a mixture of plenary and workshops. This year plenaries are all stacked into the weekend, with the workshops packed into Thursday and Friday. I see the logic in this model, but I'm not enjoying it. It makes for a long day if the two aren't mixed.

One workshop I went to today was the first part of a two-part series by Galen Guengerich on "Church of the New Millennium: Formula for Failure." I'll probably miss part two, because it's in the same slot as Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Guengerich structured his remarks around an imagined future in which his daughter's grandchild is writing a thesis about why Unitarian Universalism failed and disappeared. He suggests that she would write that it's because we were "spiritual but not religious."

I'm reminded of when I was asked while interviewing for my current ministry whether I was "spiritual or religious." "Religious," was my response. I love the institution of Unitarian Universalism. That's what's so wonderful about being at General Assembly -- it's an embodied representation of this great thing that is Unitarian Universalism that I love. I love the moment the gavel is pounded during the opening plenary and the General Assembly is declared to be in session. I love the swirling frenzied excitement of the banner parade. I love running into colleagues between sessions and catching up or exchanging hugs. I love shopping around the exhibit hall. I love my mind and heart being stretched in program and worship. Heck, I even love discussions about our bylaws.

Guengerich expanded on what he meant by religious and spiritual, but you need to go hear it for yourself when it's available, as I'm sure it will be.

Today concluded with the Service of the Living Tradition, in which ministers and religious educators are honored for their service. Ministers who have passed are listed in the "roll call," and ministers receive preliminary and final fellowship, and are acknowledged when they retire. Similar milestones for religious educators are marked. I needed to go back to the hotel so I could be around my little one for one evening, since my next two are booked, and I needed to hear how kids camp went, so I opted to watch the service on line. It was clear from the service itself and from the comments of my colleagues on Facebook as well that this was the best service in years. The feed went in and out a bit (probably the hotel connection), but the sermon was awesomely good. Everybody seems to love that this year instead of admonishing people not to cheer and clap, this year it was encouraged. Every bit of the service was just right on. If you want to know what a Service of the Living Tradition is and what it means, watch this one. I can't remember a better one, including those in which I got preliminary and final fellowship (one of which was pretty darn good, one of which was awful, and I won't say which here on the blog). This was it. Seriously. This was religion.

Blogging GA: Ministry Days

2011-06-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today was "Ministry Days" (a misnomer, because it's one day and one evening, really). The two highlights for me of Ministry Days are the 25/50 worship service and the Ministerial Conference at Berry Street. The 25/50 worship service features a speaker from that group of ministers who have been in the ministry 25 years, and also one from that group who have been in the ministry 50 years. It's always a delight to hear their stories of their experiences and how things have changed and yet been the same. We have a similar thing at the Meadville Lombard Theological School alumni dinner, which will be later in the week. Can you imagine about 800 Unitarian Universalism ministers singing "Turn the World Around"? (We were some fewer than that, I think, but I can't remember the number. The total number of UU ministers is now in the 1700s.)

The Berry Street lecture is, we were informed, the oldest running lecture in the United States. It was started by William Ellery Channing in 1820. I can't explain the exact words shared of what the purpose of the Berry Street lecture is, but my understanding is that the person giving it is called to bring a new understanding around an issue of their choice to the UU ministers assembled. For example, Mark Morrison-Reed in 2000 talked about how we leave congregations. His discussion was fresh and informative, and I know congregations that have used his Berry Street words as study when their minister is leaving. Today the Rev Dr. Deborah J. Pope-Lance took us to task on an issue that's been plaguing our ministry for decades--clergy misconduct. It was incredibly timely. The UUMA has been wrestling with what language to have in their code of conduct for, well, a very long time. We had voted in some new language this morning, in fact, with an immediate amendment of stronger language following right on its heels. The tension is our ministry is between those who believe it is always wrong for a minister to get involved with a member of his or her congregation, and those who say that if done carefully and openly, ministers can and have built successful marriages with members of their congregations, and for single ministers in isolated locations, it's unreasonable for them not to be able to pursue romantic relationships within their congregation. Pope-Lance made it very clear that we need to take a hard line here. And in an increasing number of states in the U.S. it's already illegal for a minister to get sexually involved with a congregation member.

The votes this morning that we took were very confusing--it seemed like we voted to put certain language into place and then voted to study that exact same language for a year. I'm still sorting that out. But whichever it is, what seems to be in place for UU ministers starting now or soon is a best practices recommendation (not enforceable) that says that before ministers get sexually involved with someone in the congregation, that person must leave the congregation, or the minister must leave the congregation, for a period of six months. The minister must inform the UUMA Good Offices person. And then after six months, the relationship can be pursued, but the congregation must also be informed. There are a lot of further details, but that's the heart of it. And there's less detailed language in the enforceable part of our code, but that's where, I think, we're still also working on strengthening up the language.

Blogging GA: Ministry Days & Chapter Leader Training

2011-06-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

I got into Charlotte, NC yesterday afternoon for the 50th annual UUA General Assembly, which begins tomorrow evening. Before GA begins, however, there are "Ministry Days," and before Ministry Days this year there is Chapter Leader Training, which began yesterday evening and continued through the day today. As Heartland Chapter President, and still feeling my way around the job, it was a welcome opportunity to hear what other chapters were doing well and where we all were struggling -- mostly around membership questions, welcoming, and technology. It's become clear to me that something we need is a Chapter Connections/Technology officer in the Heartland. Luckily, I seem to have found someone for the job, and it's not me. Members of our chapter will not be surprised at the wonderful techie colleague who has indicated her willingness to step forward.

Don Southworth, the UUMA Director, started us off in worship today at Chapter Leader Training by talking about those moments when we feel really blessed to be able to do the work we do. It was a feeling echoed in our opening worship for Ministry Days when our Charlotte Colleagues reminded us how blessed we are in this work. And, yes, when we get together at this time of year we like to tell stories of how busy we were and how tired we are. But it's an amazing gift to get to do this work. And what a joy, really, to be together here with all these wonderful UUs engaged in the work of faith and love and justice.

Letter to the Editor

2011-06-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

My letter to the editor today in response to this article. Don't read the comments to the article if you don't want to feel sick or angry. I'm sure if you read the CitPat you'll see the article within the week. They're very good about printing letters, and I haven't written one in a while.

Dear Editor,

Your article on the Gay Straight Alliance at Columbia High School quotes people saying “They shouldn’t get to push it down other students’ necks” and “If you support your homosexuality, then we shall support our heterosexuality.”

First, heterosexuality is universally supported—at every church, school, and family, and by the state. These things aren’t labeled “heterosexual” because it’s the dominant norm. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, too, support their heterosexual relatives, classmates, teachers, and friends. The Gay STRAIGHT Alliance also supports heterosexuals.

Second, how is supporting students by allowing them to be themselves “pushing it” at people? By this argument, prom is a great big celebration of heterosexuality which pushes it at LGBT students. LGBT students interact with heterosexuals constantly without complaining if they openly declare it.

LGBT students often experience bullying. They are much more likely to be tossed out of their homes by their parents and out of churches by pastors. They face a constant barrage of mistreatment and need this support. Only two schools in our county have a GSA. I’m aware of only one Jackson community organization for LGBT people (PFLAG), and only one Jackson-area church openly and explicitly welcoming LBGT people (mine). That’s four oases of support in a very large and often hostile region for these youth.

Arguments against range from “I was bullied; I survived,” to “Bullying is unlawful; GSAs are unnecessary” to “They deserve it.” It’s outrageous to argue against bullied students coming together in support. Violence against children is always wrong. Creating environments that love and support all children is always right. It’s really that simple. The best rules, like the Golden Rule, always are.

The simple solution if you don’t like the GSA: Don’t join.

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum

Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty

More on HRC Clergy Call

2011-05-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

Today was lobbying day with the HRC Clergy Call. We started out with a little lobby training, then each state was assigned an HRC staff person. We all went to the press conference, and then off to the lobbying visits with our staffer.

The press conference was at a beautiful spot with the Capitol in the background. It was, unfortunately, extremely hot and sunny. The press conference offered no shade, and few of us had worn hats. Only one seemed to have brought sunscreen, but as she was a UU she offered me some. (I'm sure she would have happily offered to any denomination, but it was a small tube, so I was grateful to get some.) We put up umbrellas, but were told it would ruin the pictures. Since most of the cameras were pointed at the speakers, and we were not behind the speakers but seated in front of them, I opted after a while to go back into the shade. Clergy can be long-winded at these sorts of things, after all.

Once I was happily back in the shade, I was much more attentive. And they were wonderful speakers. The press conference started off with a Buddhist invocation from the Hawaii delegation. Joe Solmonese of the HRC spoke. Several heads of various denominations spoke, as well. Unfortunately UUA President Peter Morales was unable to attend. He had flown out the day before and had dinner with the UU group gathered there at the UUA Washington Advocacy Office, but he got sick somehow and was unable to be with us for the press conference. His piece was ably picked up by Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness.

After the press conference ended, my HRC staffer, Tim Mahoney, came to find me. There were supposed to be three of us lobbying for Michigan, but one UU colleague had things come up and was unable to make it. The second Michigan person, a non-UU from the Detroit area, had checked into Clergy Call the previous day, but never showed up for the lobbying. So Tim cancelled the visits with their congressmen, and he and I went to visit Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow, and Congressman Walberg, after a lunch in the cafe of one of the Senate buildings.

Two years ago when I went to the HRC Clergy Call I was surprised to learn that you usually don't get to meet with your representatives. This year I was prepared for that. Our schedule said that we would see staffers at my senators' offices, and perhaps meet with Rep. Walberg if his schedule permitted. It was a very busy day on Capitol Hill, so we didn't see Rep. Walberg, either.

It was a very friendly visit at Sen. Levin's office with a staff person who was extremely knowledgeable on LGBT issues. Sen. Levin is co-sponsoring ENDA, one of the pieces of legislation we were there to talk about, as is Sen. Stabenow. Sen. Stabenow's legislative aide who met with us was very courteous and asked good questions, and that was also a good meeting. After those two meetings, we dropped off packets at three other congressmen's offices on our way to see Rep. Walberg's staff. At Walberg's office I stressed the anti-bullying legislation that we were there to talk about. The staff member agreed that certainly no child ever deserved to be bullied, and so I talked about how children of LGBT parents, children who are LGBT, and children who are perceived to be LGBT are particular targets of bullying. I talked about how no matter how one felt about LGBT issues, nobody could believe those children deserved violence against them for what they were, or what they were perceived to be. And I talked about the high suicide rate of LGBT youth, as a direct result of the years of discrimination they face. It was a cordial meeting where we talked about values and the importance of protecting our children.

I have to brag a little and say that after each meeting Tim Mahoney, who was wonderful and helpful, told me that I did a great job and hit all the points that we were hoping for out of the event. And I am thankful for all the people who gave me their stories to take with me to Capitol Hill. I shared those stories with the staff members I visited with, and stressed their importance, that these letters represent real people in Michigan with stories about how things affect them.

So, after that I skipped the HRC Closing Reception back at their offices, an opted for one cab ride rather than two, and headed back to where I'm staying with a Methodist colleague. I've got sore feet, but high hopes.

Opening invocation from the Hawaii delegation.

Taqueina Boston speaking for the UUs. You can just see the tip of her head there.

Me.

HRC Clergy Call 2011

2011-05-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm in Washington, D.C. for the 3rd biannual HRC Clergy Call for Justice and Equality. There were many wonderful moments today worth talking about, but I want to tell you about some recent poll's results. HRC just commissioned a new poll to study religious responses to GLBT issues. The amazing and wonderful results are that people of faith overwhelmingly -- yes, overwhelmingly -- are now in support of LGBT justice issues. I know this may seem hard to believe. The media keeps showing us the voices of hate and telling us that's the faith perspective. But the truth is it's not.

Some specifics:

When asked "Do you favor protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations?" 70% of all people said yes, and 68% of Christians said yes.

85% of people say their faith leads them to believe in equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

76% of all people and 74% of Christians favor a law to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people or the children of GLBT people against bullying and harassment.

People also think that when faith leaders condemn GLBT people it does more harm than good.

When the Christian numbers are broken down, the Catholics are most in support of these things (both practicing and non-practicing), but even the non-denominational Christians, which includes evangelicals, are in favor of these GLBT justice issues.

These are wonderful results. Now if we can only get our politicians to hear them tomorrow during our lobbying time.

On Amazon

2011-05-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note here to say that the book is now available on Amazon. And, no, there aren't any used copies yet! It's cheaper to go through CreateSpace, as described in the last post, and use the coupon. I get a larger amount, even with the coupon, than I do through Amazon, so it's to my benefit as well. But if you're determined to use Amazon, if you follow this link, my church gets a percentage through their Amazon Associates account. And it is a little thrill to see it available through Amazon. It makes it just a little more real, although I've yet to see the final project in physical form -- my proof has arrived, but I'm out of town. More on that later.

My new book & the adventures of self-publishing

2011-05-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

My new book, An Extremist for Love & Justice, is now available! It'll be up on Amazon in a day or two, and I'll link to it then, but it's better for me if you go through the publisher (CreateSpace, Amazon's self-publishing arm): https://www.createspace.com/3593257. To encourage such, here's a coupon code for $2.00 off -- Q2MVMHDY.

I thought some readers might be curious about the self-publishing process, so I'll write a bit about it here.

Self-publishing has been an interesting process. I've learned a lot by doing it, one of which is how many typos I make, and another of which is that it always pays to document your sources while you're writing rather than having to go back later and look them all up again. Being consistent about MLA or Chicago style doesn't hurt, as well. I spent more time straightening out my footnotes than I could possibly imagine. They're still not perfect, which bugs me, but eventually I just had to move on.

As for self-publishers, I looked into various self-publishing options, including iUniverse, Outskirts, XLibris, Lulu, and CreateSpace. I heard good things from colleagues about both CreateSpace and Lulu, so those are the ones I looked into more--also they were two of four that were very responsive to providing information to me, iUniverse and XLibris being the others. Lulu seemed like a good option that I'll consider in the future. They're one extreme of the options--you provide your own book in PDF form with all the layout done, including page numbers, table of contents, fleurons, and the works. You also have to provide your cover as a completed PDF file with the correct spine width, and bleed margin and so forth. My graphics capabilities are pretty weak, but they have some templates you can play with, and I created something that I think was every bit as good as what I ended up getting. They'll give you a free ISBN, you upload your files, and you're basically done. All that is free. They make a larger percentage off of each book that's printed, but there are fewer up-front costs. But you don't get much for that -- the book is available through Lulu, but to make it available elsewhere there are additional fees (although still smaller than other publishers). Honestly, now that I've gone the other route and seen it all, I can't remember what turned me off of the idea of doing it through Lulu. I know I wanted the comfort of having it be formatted for me, and felt that a less-do-it-myself approach would yield a more professional result.

Once I ruled out Lulu, I ended up going with CreateSpace, because when I added in what I wanted, all of the others seemed pretty equivalent, and I had a colleague who had a good experience with CreateSpace, and since they're connected to Amazon, I felt that would make things smoother. I wanted something that would do the interior and cover layout, would provide an ISBN, and which would make it available on Amazon and other booksellers, particularly Borders and Barnes and Noble. To get all those pieces it seemed to work out to around $500, no matter which publisher I went with. (For example, iUniverse was $599, but would've included the Kindle file; xLibris was $449 but had extremely limited templates.) So CreateSpace was as good a pick as any, to my mind. For $499 they take your file and format it according to one of several templates. The templates have less flexibility than I would like, but they worked with me to find a reasonable compromise. Then they took my picture and words and created a cover according to one of several templates again. They have templates for the front matter of the book (title page, etc.), as well to choose from, and a list of several different fleurons and fonts for the cover and interior. I thought CreateSpace would give more flexibility here than Lulu, but in the end it was about the same as the one I had created myself on Lulu. CreateSpace did throw in their distribution services, so it can be available through just about any bookstore in the country to order. Lulu had the disadvantage of not doing Kindle format, and since I have a new Kindle, I thought I would like to have it in that form. Unfortunately, the Kindle file is not part of the CreateSpace package. It's something I can add on or do myself, so I'll probably look into doing that this summer and make it available on Kindle.

The CreateSpace process took more time than I thought it would after uploading the files in early April to today when I could finally approve the physical proof (and that's without actually getting my proof copy in the mail yet--I approved it sight unseen). There were several steps along the way where I was unclear what would handle next and how long it would take. But in the end they were very responsive to my calls, and I'm happy with the final result. I would recommend them for a first-time self-publisher, based on my experience so far.

Five Smooth Stones

2011-05-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

My colleague Tony Lorenzen recently wrote a blog post on James Luther Adams' "Five Smooth Stones." As a refresher, even though I know many of you can rattle them off the top of your head, James Luther Adams was a Unitarian and UU theologian and professor at Meadville Lombard Theological School. He wrote an essay on the five smooth stones of religious liberalism. The "smooth stones" metaphor comes from the story of David & Goliath, wherein David used 5 smooth stones in his slingshot and killed the mighty Goliath. JLA's Smooth Stones are:

"Religious liberalism depends on the principle that 'revelation' is continuous."
"All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion."
"Religious liberalism affirms the moral obligation to direct one's effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."
"[W]e deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation."
"[L]iberalism holds that the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."

Tony neatly sums these up in his blog post with one word each. My summary is a bit longer.

The first smooth stone tells us that there is no one religious truth that has already been told and that is handed down in one particular sacred text. Revelation can happen at any time, and is still happening. The second talks about democratic principles and freedom -- particularly important as JLA wrote this in response to experiencing the rise of fascism in Europe. The third tells us that we have a prophetic faith and we are all prophets -- we must all be voices for the social good, for the betterment of society. Fourth, good is created by us here and now, not something that is done just by God. The third and fourth stones are very linked. And lastly, that we have the resources to affect change, and so therefore we should have hope.

I refer to the five smooth stones often and had actually used the 5 smooth stones in the sermon that I had already written that I'll be preaching this Sunday. I'd been thinking on the 5 smooth stones the past couple of weeks for no particular reason except that I've been working on our program for Ohio River Group next year on "The Future of Liberalism," and one of our reading items might be the 5 Smooth Stones. This got me thinking--If I were writing the 5 Smooth Stones now, what would the Smooth Stones be?

I don't have my answer yet, except that Tony is exactly right when he says what's missing from the five smooth stones is love. That would be my first smooth stone -- a radical universal love that embraces all people. I love all of JLA's smooth stones, and think they're all vital now, but maybe I would combine the third and fourth to make that space for love and call it a day. But there may be something I'm not thinking about right now that is more vital for us to talk about in what distinguishes liberal religion. I'm still thinking on it.

So I'm still working on my five smooth stones. Meanwhile, what are yours?

Happy Birthday UUA!

2011-05-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

The merger of the Unitarian and the Universalist denominations took place 50 years ago -- the official date was May 15, 1961. So, of course, I started thinking about my experiences at the merger. But, wait! I wasn't born yet!

That's right, one of the neat things that we can celebrate is that there are generations now of people who are Unitarian Universalists from childhood on, some even with ten years or more in the ministry, who were raised in, influenced by, and in turn influenced themselves this new association that was created 50 years ago.

Many argued then that without this merger, Universalism would die. I look around me here, and I really believe that. At the time of merger, there were three little rural Universalist churches between ten and fifteen miles from Jackson. My church, a small rural Universalist church, joined the new UUA, and it's still going strong. The Universalist church in Horton, MI did not join the UUA, but eventually became Congregationalist. There's a church and a congregation thriving there, but no Universalist church. The Concord, Michigan church, the furthest from Jackson at 14 miles, floundered for a while and then went out of existence. They still have special programs there every year, such as a Christmas concert or service, but there is no longer a worshipping Universalist body. There is no church there, even though there's a church building there.

Without the merger, we might have died. With it, we have generations of Unitarian Universalists to spread our saving message -- our Universalist message of love and acceptance. All that, and Unitarianism, too. What a deal we got. Happy Birthday, UUA!

On the Death of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday night as I was watching television after a long day, I, like much of the nation, heard that there was going to be an upcoming announcement from President Obama. An unplanned late-Sunday-evening announcement from the President is clearly unusual. My immediate thought was that something horrible had happened--horrible, that is, for citizens of the United States and its military. So it was with some joy and relief that I learned that instead of our soldiers or civilians being dead, it was Osama bin Laden. I admit to some immediate partisan joy that this had happened under this particular president's watch. And I shared in some joking about the timing of the president interrupting Celebrity Apprentice. I admit to some joy at him being removed from a position of continued threat, and some relief that this was news of success for our country.

These are my first reactions, my gut reactions. They do not necessarily represent my best reactions or religious reactions, and that's the point that I want to make today. I understand why people want to go out and be with other people in the streets and celebrate. It is a natural reaction after a long period of cultural grief that we pin on this man, Osama bin Laden.

But at the same time I felt immediate sorrow that this hunt for Osama bin Laden, our figurehead for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, had ended with a killing. I wished immediately that we had captured this man alive rather than taking another life. I am not a pacifist, although I do believe that war always represents a failure, and I am also against the death penalty. To me, this killing, although it was done in a combat situation, it seems, represented a failure on our part to some degree, as well as, of course, the enormous political success of having finally captured this man our government and military was looking for for so long. I don't say "failure" to blame the military--I think it was a failure on Osama bin Laden's part that led to this outcome, for the most part. He chose a path of hatred and violence, and I grieve that he chose this path up until the end. But every death that ends in violence is also to some extent a failure on the parts of everyone involved, including us, the American people.

I think our best reaction, as a people, is not to celebrate, but to mourn. A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. that's been making the rounds illustrates the sentiment:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

(Note that many of the versions being shared have a sentence tacked on the beginning that was not King's, but the rest of the statement--all of that quoted above--was his. Jessica Dovey, Facebook user and English teacher apparently wrote the now oft-quoted sentence, "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.") One of the quickest ways we justify rejoicing at Osama bin Laden's death is by dehumanizing him, by making him pure evil, almost the devil himself. That's the response I heard from friends and acquaintances as the discussion launched from one Facebook friend's post to another: "He was evil." Once we make him evil, he becomes less than human, and we can respond with pure hate and pure rejoicing at his death.

There have been a lot of good articles about the Christian response to Osama bin Laden's death. A Vatican spokesperson said, "In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred."

Emotions are high about this. When my colleague James Ford used the word "glad," he got some apparently heated responses including one suggesting he could no longer teach the Buddhadharma. On the other hand, I've seen some pretty heated responses to some friends suggesting that gladness is the wrong approach. We're quick to chastise each other on both sides. I can't condemn anyone for a feeling of gladness--I experienced that same lifting of spirit myself, instinctively. (And it appears Ford wasn't talking about gladness at death--read his own words for an explanation.) What I can come back to is to say that feeling gladness at the death of Osama bin Laden is not my best self, nor my religious self. It does not reflect my values nor my theology.

What is the Unitarian Universalist response to this man's death? We have no set creed, but freedom of religion, so of course there is no one set response. But in our religious tradition we also know that we believe people are not inherently evil. Our Universalist heritage reminds us that no one is damned forever. And so I experience sorrow that we were not able to find the good in Osama bin Laden and that he chose a path of violence and death, and that we followed, chasing him on that path, and being on it ourselves. Our principles, while not a creed, also serve as a touchstone in times like this. The remind us of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being--every single one. So at times like this, when it is easy to fill up with hatred, I remind myself of the inherent worth and dignity of anyone that I might want to call "enemy." I look, too, to the principle that we strive for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. There are many quick to say that Osama bin Laden's death is "justice served." Perhaps it is -- although, I think justice is better done by a court than by a bullet. But it is not "compassion served," certainly. Can we feel compassion for Osama bin Laden, individually or as a people? What would that look like? I'm not there yet. I don't feel compassion for him. But I think I would be better for trying to.

Major Meadville Moments

2011-04-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Recently Meadville Lombard Theological School announced that they are ending negotiations with Andover Newton Theological School to become one combined theological university. The stated reasons are that the sale of its historic building has left it in a stronger financial position than expected, and that Meadville Lombard and Andover Newton couldn't agree on a governance model. This announcement would seem to be a good thing for Meadville.

But I think we're still holding our breath out here. At least I am.

I remain committed to the institution in many ways. I see good students go in and good ministers come out. I see a committed faculty, staff, and board, with a great deal of wisdom and experience among them. I see an institution that has a very important role in our movement as one of two very different Unitarian Universalist seminaries. I believe Unitarian Universalist seminaries have an important role in shaping our movement, and in maintaining a strong cohesive sense of our history and tradition among our ministry, even for ministers who don't graduate from a Unitarian Universalist seminary. I also believe Meadville Lombard, as the home of the only specifically Unitarian Universalist library, has a resource of immense importance to Unitarian Universalism.

However, my experience of Meadville Lombard has been that while it has continually managed to provide a a solid theological education and turn out good ministers, and while it holds a very important place in our Unitarian Universalist movement, to be a student and/or alum of Meadville Lombard is to go through a constantly-changing whirlwind relationship.

When I was a student at Meadville Lombard, I entered with one faculty and staff in 1996 and graduated with an almost completely different one in 2001. To my recollection, the only faculty and staff members who were at Meadville Lombard during my entire five years of seminary were Neil Gerdes, Susan Harlow, and Jon Rice. (My apologies if I've missed a staff member; I don't think I've missed a faculty one.) Most of this was because of planned retirements from an institution that had a very stable faculty for quite some time leading up to this. But during my time there, we said goodbye to Spencer Lavan, John Godbey, Ron Engel, Neil Shadle, Ian Evison and Michelle Bentley from the faculty. That alone provided for a somewhat disjointed seminary experience, where I went off to internship and returned to a very different institution where, as a student nearing graduation I had a faculty that knew me very little. But it was a wonderful faculty that came in, too, of Thandeka, John Tolley, David Bumbaugh, Susann Pangerl, and Carol Hepokoski with Bill Murry as the new president & academic dean.

The faculty and staff at Meadville Lombard now is almost an entirely different one from when I left, and I know some students in those ten years between now and then must have felt the same upheaval I felt during my time as they've watched this transition happen. Not all faculty and staff leavings then or now are happy ones for faculty and students, and this is particularly difficult for the students who have built up relationship with them as advisors and mentors.

During my time at Meadville Lombard the curriculum changed, as well. Those of us in process, like myself, finished under the old curriculum requirements where the arts of ministry three-part sequence was the core of the first-year experience, and the new students had a three-part theology core requirement with Thandeka as the cornerstone of their curriculum. The old in-sequence D.Min. program was retired (I was one of the last two graduates in 2001), and a new returning D.Min. degree was launched.

During my time at Meadville Lombard, Ian Evison came in as the interim president of the institution. During that time, we were told that Meadville Lombard was in a financial crisis, and that cuts needed to be made. I remember that the entire budget was pasted on the wall outside his door and that all serious suggestions were entertained. While at the school, there was a lot of transparency about what was going on, and students were very involved in the discussions, although not always happy with the decisions of the board. I have no reason to believe that the experience is different for students now, but as an alum the situation is very different, because you're not living the day-to-day life of the institution, and only seeing the published decisions, of course.

Shortly after I graduated, the word out of Meadville Lombard, as I experienced it through press releases and alumni dinners, was that the position was in great financial shape, and that they were looking into building another building that would go along with the main building and help complete some of the original vision of the building (originally, I believe, intended to be a quadrangle, only one side of which was built). This seemed unbelievable from an institution that had been on such shaky ground so recently. Indeed, this never manifested.

Not long afterward, the plan emerged to sell the main building at 5701 S. Woodlawn and buy a University of Chicago building across the Midway. A lot of people were probably unhappy with this, because of attachment to our historic building, but there were a lot of sound reasons for it expressed, one of which was that the institution was now in horrible financial shape again, and something major needed to change. However, this sale & move was supposed to make Meadville Lombard financially on solid ground again and able to move forward. This plan also never manifested.

Somewhere in there, there were talks of merging with Starr King School for the Ministry, again for largely financial reasons, although it seems like this was also at a time when we were hearing from both institutions that they were financially sound. There are a lot of conflicting rumors I've heard as to why these talks ended, so I can't really speculate. And it seems like Starr King-merger talks have happened twice during the years since I graduated, so that may explain why I've heard different explanations to their ending.

Then, about a year ago, the new plan, with Meadville Lombard again in financial trouble, was to do this we-don't-call-it-a-merger with Andover Newton. Meadville Lombard was to sell its buildings and be housed in a yet-to-be-determined place with a new curriculum that was mostly distance learning (see "Touch Point"), but still somehow centered in Chicago, with some but not all of the faculty, yet be part of this new entity with Andover Newton that wasn't a merger but two separate schools in an unnamed new theological university with a library housed somewhere yet to be determined. It had more questions than answers, except that it seemed to answer the biggest question: the financial one. So the sale of the buildings proceeded, and finally the historic building was sold.

Now, we're told, the sale of the buildings have put Meadville Lombard in better financial shape than was thought to be possible (even though they were thinking of this in prior years and thought it would put them in this kind of shape), and they can continue independently. But we still don't know where they will be housed, I believe, nor where the library will go. The faculty situations seem to be getting settled, one at a time. Since one of the reasons the talks with Andover Newton fell through were because of the concern being most raised about this -- the future of a distinctly Unitarian Universalist entity, perhaps we can breathe a sigh of relief that the talks ended rather than pursue a course that might have left us with nothing we could truly see as uniquely Unitarian Universalist in a few years.

So, breath out that sigh of relief, but then we're still not breathing easy yet. It's still wait and see. I know it's a tumultuous experience for students; I know, because it was one for me. There's a lot still up in the air to be decided. I know I'm hopeful that what's coming ahead is an era of new stability in an institution that hasn't had much of that for quite some time.

Meanwhile, I still believe that this institution, Meadville Lombard Theological School, has done good work in doing what they're charged to do: preparing and educating Unitarian Universalist ministers. And they are still an institution that has an important role in our past and a vital role in our movement's future. I trust that those at the helm are doing their best to see that the institution is able to fulfill that needed role.

And meanwhile? Students at Meadville Lombard are learning what I learned -- all this talk of budgets and buildings and all this turnover is good preparation for Unitarian Universalist ministry.

More on Bell & Universalism

2011-03-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm still in the beginning of reading Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Meanwhile, the controversy over Rob Bell's book and whether or not he's a Universalist continues. Now, Rob Bell has come out and said he's not a Universalist. There are those who will say he is anyway, of course. But it's not so clear. The universalism he denies is one where, "a giant cosmic arm that swoops everybody in at some point whether you want to be there or not." It's easier to not be something that you paint as ridiculous, of course. I've been accused of doing that with theism, so I know. I also know this because I teach the straw man logical fallacy in English composition classes to first-year college students.

Rob Bell set himself up a bit as a straw man by saying that he's not a theologian and also "I'm not very smart but I do know that there is good news." But that's too easy and not very fair to just use that. I've said all that myself at times--except the not very smart bit (not that I think I'm a genius or anything).

So is he a Universalist?

He thinks God's grace is not limited to just Christians. He thinks that Hell is what we make on earth, but Heaven is a real place we go to when we die. He doesn't clarify what happens to someone if there is no eternal Hell, but yet someone doesn't choose to go to Heaven. He'll leave that to God to sort out. And it's hard to concieve of the person standing at the pearly gates and being invited in and saying, "Nah, I'll go to the eternal coffee shop instead. I hear it has good music." Although many Universalists might--they do like their coffee.

You could argue Universalism as universal salvation, and Bell seems to believe that this takes away our free will (although I would argue no more than birth or death, which his God seems content to take away choice of), or you could argue Universalism as the lack of Hell, which Bell seems to agree with.

If there's a life after death but no Hell, there has to be a third option, or Heaven is just the default afterlife. Bell doesn't argue for pergatory, or my coffee shop idea, but his theology seems to require it, or for him to admit what many believe--that he really is a Universalist. And if Universalism is not the answer, has love truly won?

I'll leave that to Rob Bell to sort out. Over here with our heritage and living faith of Universalism, we know what it means that Love Wins.

Bell & Ballou -- On Universalism

2011-03-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

Today Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is released. Rob Bell is the minister of a mega-church in the Grand Rapids area, the Mars Hill Bible Church. They meet in what was formerly a department store that anchored a mall, which should give you a sense of their size. So this new book release has been much talked-about, and not only because Rob Bell has been accused of revealing in this book that he is a -- gasp -- Universalist!

As Unitarian Universalists and as religious liberals, we should welcome Rob Bell's book. It's been a while since the theology of Universalism has been such in the public eye. And I want to personally say, as a Michigan colleague, that if Rob Bell would like to sit down and talk with Unitarian Universalist ministers and exchange ideas, we'd be happy to do that with him.

Universalism isn't a new idea, but it's still heretical in conservative Christianity, of course. Universalists were kicked out of the National Council of Churches, deemed not Christian enough because of the heresy of Universalism. So it's no surprise to see attacks on Bell for proclaiming it now.

From what people are saying about the book, it seems that Rob Bell's thinking has followed that Hosea Ballou's when he wrote A Treatise on Atonement; In Which the Finite Nature of Sin Is Argued, Its Cause and Consequences as Such; the Necessity and Nature of Atonement; and its Glorious Consequences. Actually, the titles are even similar in a way (at least in wordiness), although over a century apart.

Ballou essentially argues that a loving God couldn't condemn any person to eternal Hell:

First, I reason from the nature of divine goodness, in which all pretend to believe, and none dare in a direct sense to deny, that God could not, consistently with himself, create a being that would experience more misery than happiness.

The marketing for Bell's book says:

Does it really make sense that God is a loving, kind, compassionate God who wants to know people in a personal way, but if they reject this relationship with Jesus, they will be sent to hell where God will eternally punish them forever?

Welcome to the heretical faith, Rob Bell. We're glad to have you here.

Unions: Are We Agreed?

2011-03-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

Joel Monka recently published a blog article on the union debate titled, "Umm, Hey, can we discuss this..." in which he cites several blog articles (mine among them) and an e-mail from the UUA Congregational Witness and Advocacy director asking people to join our UUA president in signing on to a group letter in support of the unions. Joel concludes his post by stating in an update:

"But my primary point, the raison d'etre for this post, is that there is plenty of room for disagreement and need for debate on this issue- I don't want it declared a basic tenent of our religion until such debate has taken place. I don't want Boston taking a position on my behalf without such a debate. I don't want clergy out there declaring that support for the unions in Wisconsin is an extension of our faith, an inseperable part of our principles, until we have had that debate."

I think this is a good point, and worth examining. My initial response was to agree.

I myself had more trepidation posting on this subject than others because my individual church has taken no stand on the issue, and I had not researched our denomination's history on the subject. I see my blog as a place to voice my particular argument (just as Monka also posts his argument), not as a voice for our denomination as a whole. While I don't often disagree with our denomination's positions (one reason I am so happy to be a UU), if and when I do I feel free to write about it. I think a clergy person making an argument for why something is an extension of our faith is part of the process. Assume every blog post here begins with "IMO," in other words. Similarly, Dan Harper's post, which Monka also cites, was making an argument for labor rights in what Harper was assuming was opposition to the larger UU culture. And I would say to do this sort of thing, to draw attention to where our association needs to catch up and pay attention to, is very much in keeping with the role of the clergy.

But that aside, surely a call from our UUA Congregational Witness and Advocacy office with our UUA President leading the charge indicates a stance our denomination has taken. Monka writes, "I don't want Boston taking a position on my behalf without such a debate." "Boston," of course, is understood here as UU-shorthand for "the Unitarian Universalist Association." Have President Peter Morales and the UUA office jumped the gun and taken this stance without the support or direction of the congregations? And, if so, is that okay?

For the first part, I would say that our president can easily take a stand on any issue that the General Assembly has taken a strong and established stand on. That seems pretty clear. What is our history on labor rights? Well, it's not too clear. "Economic Justice" as a broad category is something we've addressed often. We've often made broad statements like this one from 1985: "That this Assembly endorses the principle that every person has an inherent and moral right to work at a meaningful wage, food, clothing and shelter." Finding more specific statements is a little harder. The 1997 General Resolution "Working for a Just Economic Community" urged us to work for "Reform of labor legislation and employment standards to provide greater protection for workers, including the right to organize and bargain collectively, protection from unsafe working conditions, and protection from unjust dismissal." Most other statements we've made about collective bargaining were more specific to certain boycotts. In the 2003 Statement of Conscience "Economic Globalization," we also said, "Countries are responsible for requiring foreign and domestic companies to pay fair taxes, ensure their workers a locally defined living wage, provide a healthy and safe work environment, and respect the right of their workers to bargain collectively in independent labor unions and to engage in strikes and other job actions when necessary. The standards of the International Labour Organization of the United Nations should be incorporated in all trade agreements." Of course, we were talking about other countries.

I think the strongest argument for a statement on collective bargaining and unions for our denomination would rest on the fact that we've long used the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" as support for our arguments for what stands we do and do not take. We've had specific declarations on supporting the United Nations, establishing the UU-UNO office, urging congregations to celebrate a UN Sunday, and so forth. And the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" states in 23.4, "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

I think it's arguable that the debate in Unitarian Universalism over collective bargaining has been had, and that unless we reverse some statements, the UUA President does have so free rein to make statements on this issue on behalf of our denomination. It seems a reasonable interpretation, not just extension, of statements we have made to call for the support of workers to bargain collectively in unions.

But if it were not the case that we have some established precedent here, then what of the UUA president's actions? For better or worse, I think we have given our UUA president some pretty free rein to take social justice stances on behalf of the denomination. It's an open question, I suppose, whether this is good or bad and whether or not we should tie his hands more. After thought and examination, however, I have to conclude that I think UUA President Peter Morales is acting appropriately and in conjunction with established precedent.

And, luckily, I also happen to agree with him.

10 Reasons to Attend General Assembly

2011-02-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

General Assembly housing and early bird registration open March 1st. General Assembly is an expensive proposition. I can only afford it... well, actually, I can't afford it. My professional expenses are usually depleted by the time GA rolls around, and so it's out-of-pocket on a small church minister's budget when I go, which is usually every-other year. There are ways I cut costs -- I drive, when possible (and go less frequently when it's not); I stay at a cheap hotel on the outskirts and commute in to the city. I usually consider registering for only part of GA, but then break down and register for the whole thing anyway. But this year, despite the expense and the fact that I went last year, I'm planning on going again. Here's why you should, too. And, no, the UUA isn't paying me to do this. I really mean it. I have a feeling this year is particularly important, as is next year.

Celebrate the anniversary! This GA, Unitarian Universalism turns 50. You don't want to miss this big party for our faith.
Hear the Ware Lecture! The Ware Lecture is the most important lecture of General Assembly, and has featured some really fabulous speakers, including Martin Luther King, Jr. This year we're fortunate to have Karen Armstrong, author of many religious books. There are Ware Lectures that say such important, revelatory things for our faith that they're discussed for years. They're that good.
Participate in the business of our association! This may not sound exciting, but it actually is, and is really important for us as a faith, as well. We're a democratic faith, but if we don't participate in that democracy then, well... Every year there are "Actions of Immediate Witness" which are voted on, and these AIWs are part of how we respond, as a faith, to those things that are happening in the world. Last year the business of GA focused in several votes on how we respond to the issue of immigration, particularly in Arizona, but also in copycat legislation such as what we're facing here in Michigan. This year that discussion is sure to continue, along with, I predict, AIWs about the emerging democracies around the world and the anti-union legislation being pushed in Wisconsin and other states. Do you think our faith should take stands on these kind of issues? If you do, or if you don't, you should go to GA to get your voice here and be part of the process of democracy.
Experience UUism on a larger scale! If you've never been to a GA before, it's a really wonderful feeling to go to your first GA. There's a sudden understanding, on a new level, that we're not alone in our little churches (particularly for those of us where the next UU church is over 45 minutes away). You begin to see how UUism does have a larger culture that we're a part of, and how that matters. It goes way beyond reading the UU World, much as that helps. I think the first time I watched the Banner Parade during the opening ceremony, wherein each congregation is invited to have someone march with the congregational banner, well, I think I cried.
Shop! There are lots of cool vendors there with neat stuff, and, of course, Beacon Press and the UUA Bookstore have all the UU books you've been wanting. But there are also some really wonderful resources for your congregation -- worship, music, religious education, financial, staffing, administration, you name it. If you can't find something you want for yourself or your congregation, well, then, get your favorite blogging minister a new stole--maybe one in rainbow colors.
Get ready for the Justice GA in 2012! Our GA in 2012 in Arizona will be a special justice-focused GA. Last year there was much debate about whether or not to move the GA out of Arizona, to have a justice-focused GA, or to do business as usual. Justice-GA was the conclusion of that discussion, and this GA there will be a lot going on as we discuss exactly what that will look like and how to prepare for it.
Attend fabulous programs! I'm excited to see that the "Ground Zero Mosque" imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, will be joining us at GA this year. There are always wonderful authors and theologians and activists to learn from at our GAs.
Worship! It's a great opportunity to experience some of the breadth and depth of UU worship. And do be sure to attend the Service of the Living Tradition, where we honor ministers and religious educators who died, who are retiring and those who are just emerging.
Public Witness! There is often an opportunity at General Assembly to not just learn about justice work, but to participate in it among a community of UUs. The public witness opportunity for 2011 isn't announced yet, but I'm sure it will be energizing & important.
Keep your minister company! We want you there sharing this experience with us, and bringing that experience back to the congregation.

Drops of water turn a mill, singly none...

2011-02-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

I was fascinated to read Rev. Dan Harper's musing, "I’m fascinated by the way Unitarian Universalists pick and choose among politically liberal causes, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on why this might be so. Specifically, why don’t we support unionism (with the exception of Cesar Chavez’s farmworkers union, but then maybe that was more about immigrants than about unions)?" My response: We don't support unionism? Somebody forgot to tell me this, apparently. I thought we did. But perhaps he's right about the larger UU culture--there is a classism we're constantly accusing ourselves of that I can forget from my social location here in Jackson, MI, in a more working-class church. The colleagues I see posting on Facebook are full of union spirit right now. Perhaps we bloggers are just slow to be posting about it. Rev. James Ford just put out a nice post today saying, "Personally I blame the short term 'in it for me' philosophy that under girds libertarianism which is becoming the state religion here in the good old US of A, and what is increasingly looking like the dismantling of government by people who think it will liberate them, when in fact it will simply shake off the constraints on the rich and powerful." A couple of years ago we invited a union leader to speak on unions at our church for Labor Day Sunday, and it was a memorable event that I'm sure will be repeated periodically. I think I'll put it in the hopper for next year's JXN Community Forum series, or later this year if an opening exists when I return from sabbatical.

On the other side, I have heard UUs talking negatively about unions. I've heard some call the UUMA a union with a negative tone--mostly because of the same reasons corporations are against unions--it costs more when we're organized. This despite the truth of the comment Amy Zucker Morgenstern wrote in the comments on Dan's post saying, "I don’t think of the UUMA as a union. It doesn’t, for example, press us to refuse positions that are below fair compensation; we can undercut each other all we want." Too true.

But rather than debate whether we do or don't support unions as a movement, let me write about what I think about unions.

Professor and theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite nailed it when she wrote:

The rights of workers to join together and bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions is not just a civil right, it is a fundamental way we recognize that human beings have an inherent dignity and worth. This idea, that human dignity, what Christians call "the image of God," is what connects Christian moral reasoning and action for worker rights in the Social Gospel, the Civil Rights movement, in the Solidarity movement in Poland as seen in the work of John Paul II, and now, I believe, in a reawakened American labor movement.

Read the whole article. It's an important one. And I think James Ford was right on in blaming a me-first culture for what we're seeing now from the Republicans and the amount of popular support for their position.

Over and over again, we hear arguments from the right which say, "People in unions are making more than their non-unionized counterparts. This is unfair and needs to stop." And people are buying into this ridiculous argument because of a deep individualism and selfishness that resents anybody who gets more than they do. The better response to this argument would be to say, "Yes, people in unions are getting more out of the corporations and governments than their non-union counterparts. This shows the power in collective bargaining. Rather than tear that down, let's find ways to support and grow unions so that all workers can get these benefits." How did the American people become convinced that it's in their interests to keep people from making a living wage? How did we lose sight of the fact that the unions brought us the 40-hour work week, the vacation time and benefits we have, and the minimum wage?

Yes, people in unions have better health insurance packages than most of the rest of us. That's great for them. How can we expand that model? Too many people are crushed by health care debt, and now we want to increase that number? Amazingly, the unions, with their currently good health care, advocated for health care reform, even though they were not the ones needing it. They understand, in unions, that we're all related, that we need to care about each other, that the rising tide does lift all boats, that it takes many drops to turn a mill, singly none. And we repay them by wanting to limit their benefits more, and take away the right to collectively bargain?

Americans need to wake up to what's being done in the name of budget emergencies and realize that it's a red herring thrown out there to tear down their rights, strip them of wages and benefits, and put more in the pockets of those who already have the most. The budget emergency in Wisconsin, it's been shown, was created for just this purpose by taking a surplus budget and cutting corporate taxes and money coming in from the rich until a deficit resulted which then could be used to cut down the workers.

Thistlethwaite writes, "We need a new American populism that will fight for the rights of workers in this country as they are threatened yet again." If our right to collective bargaining is stripped from us, we need to take this battle to the streets until we gain it back. Bravo to my colleagues and friends in the streets of Madison. I know that some Unitarian Universalists are with you in person and many more are with you in spirit. This is the heart of our principles, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, at stake.

The Trouble with Bookstores

2011-02-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever helped me move in or out of a house knows that I have a lot of books. What my husband and I do for fun, when other people go to clubs or the movies, is go to the bookstore and read for a few hours. We used to do this about once or twice a week, before our child was born. Even after, it has been a staple of her life. It is a sadness to us that we keep moving further and further from good bookstores, as we've moved in our last three locations. Our definition of a good bookstore is one that has chairs to read in, a good selection of books, a children's section with a train table or play structure, coffee and snacks, and is open until 10 or 11 p.m., and open on my off-times (Monday, Sunday evening). If we can get 10-20% off as a matter of course, we're pretty satisfied with the deal, too.

As most will know, Borders is closing many book stores across the country. There are four closing here in Michigan. Store closings are part of our landscape right now. The Borders that is closing in Ann Arbor is in the same strip mall, Arborland, where an empty storefront sits that used to be a Circuit City. Once Borders is gone, I'm sure the whole strip mall will suffer. Some may see the closings as holding potential for independent book stores to bloom. Ann Arbor has a fair number of those, but not as many as it used to when I was in college. Perhaps they can once again grow. But in Ann Arbor, Borders was the local independent bookstore once, before it grew into the national chain we know today, so there's a special melancholy for the bookstore closing there. It's not the flagship store in downtown Ann Arbor (which actually sits across the street from where the original was housed, in the building that used to house Jacobson's, a long-gone from Michigan department store chain.

Here in Jackson, there is only one book store left in town, and it happens to be a Waldenbooks (owned by Borders) in one of the two malls. When I moved to Jackson there was a little independent bookstore in a free-standing building on one of the main roads, another little bookstore in a strip mall, and a small independent bookstore in the other mall. I doubt any of them were driven out by the Waldenbooks, nor was the little independent store that opened later (and then went out of business) downtown. Of course, as we know, they were all, including Borders, affected by the online competition of Amazon. One might argue that Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor was negatively affected by Borders. Shaman Drum, a wonderful independent that for years existed on the same section of road as the downtown Borders, went out of business not too long ago (2009). Shaman Drum specialized in some of the liberal arts and academic presses. When I was in college, the whole religion department ordered text books through Shaman Drum. However, when I went to find some specific theological titles a few years ago, I went first to Shaman Drum, didn't find them, and then went across the street to Borders, and did. Honestly, if I hadn't found them there, I would've ordered them through Amazon. With both bookstores 45 minutes away, both convenience and price were on Amazon's side. However, Shaman Drum says that the problem was in the decrease of textbook sales. Those textbook sales didn't go to Borders. They went to Amazon. As someone teaching at a community college, I honestly do tell my students, many of whom are scraping together the funds for college, to look for deals on textbooks online. With the price of textbooks as high as it is, they need to save whatever they can on them. The used textbook market online is much more advantageous to students than the way we used to be only able to get used books if that class had been offered the semester before, and even then, only a few might be available.

So it was with some sadness, some guilt, and some sense that this was really the fault of an industry that hadn't adapted to change that I went to the store in Ann Arbor that is closing during the first day of the store-closing sale. Honestly, there are some reasons why this store is closing. I think Ann Arbor never could support three Borders, a Barnes and Noble, plus all their independent book stores. When the third Borders opened up, the second one was bound to suffer -- it didn't have the downtown college advantage, and the new one had a better selection, more chairs to read in, a better media section, and, crucially for us, a train table and a small slide in the children's section. The Arborland Borders had a Barnes and Noble right up the street, too, so before the third Borders opened we often went to Barnes and Noble. We liked the book selection at Borders better, but Barnes and Noble had better chairs, more of them, and, again, that train table! It helped that Barnes and Noble, at the time, had a better discount program. When the little independent store in Jackson finally opened, we often went there, but its hours weren't as lengthy, it's selection was not as varied, and there were no discounts on books. The Borders also had the disadvantage of a really weird parking lot, not that that would've stopped us.

So here we were, at the Borders we had abadoned, on Saturday evening. The store had its store closing signs everywhere proclaiming its steep discounts -- 20-40% off everything. "20-40% is a closing sale? Can't I get that much off at Amazon all the time?" I wondered. I heard others wondering the same thing out loud, as well. Yes, there were some discounts that went steeper -- 70% off seasonal Valentine's Day items -- again something you would find when a store wasn't closing. All calendars were $1, again, not too shocking in February. Almost everything we put in our basket was only 20% off, and a couple items were 30%. We got an extra 10% for being members of their rewards system. We've gotten that much off on a good coupon before. It was underwhelming. But it was an experience to be there, feeling melancholy with hundreds of others. "I feel like a vulture," I heard one man saying, "I hope I'm not a vulture. I don't think I'm a vulture." "This is sad," I heard a woman say to a friend. "Yeah, it is crazy," her friend responded. "No, sad," the first woman said. "Crazy and sad," I said as I passed. The books were in disarray, and the coffee shop was closed, with a sign saying that it wouldn't be reopened. Bottles of specialty sodas and some personal-sized milk cartons were sitting in the case. I wondered if I should just take one. I hope they gave them to the employees to drink after closing. In the children's section, I looked for the newly-released book my child had been wanting. It wasn't on the shelves, which were already picked over. Not surprised, I sat down on the seats in the area, and looked down at the pile of books that had been abandoned there which was at about the same height as the bench. Amazed, I reached down and found the book I was looking for near the top with the corner and spine sticking out for me to see. The line for this not-so-great deal stretched from the front of the store to the back and then back to the front again. My husband jumped almost immediately into the almost two-hour line, while I shopped for different family members who called in their orders. My father actually wanted a calendar, so he got the best deal, except that I forgot to give it to him when I saw him. We experienced this same thing when our local bookstore in Jackson went out of business. We shopped and bought a lot of books, really just to support the owner, but the discount was about the same as we could've gotten at Amazon. I tried to focus on things that I know Amazon not to have great discounts on, honestly. And when I looked things up later, I had gotten deals.

They'll be selling the fixtures next, of course. My child suggested we get some bookshelves, until I asked where we would put them. Our walls are already full. Honestly, the move to electronic books was what needed to happen before my floors collapse.

I wish I could be a purist who would only shop at small, local, independent book stores. I tried to do that for a while. It helps if you actually have one, and have the money to routinely pay an extra 20%. It's not cheap to be idealistic. But without driving 45 minutes, I'm down to one Waldenbooks in the mall now, and I've got that new Kindle with 3G which will download books anywhere. More and more often when I want a book and to spend a few hours hanging out reading while my child plays at a train table I'll be doing it in my basement.

Facebook Ministry 201: Pages, Old Groups, and New Groups

2011-02-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

Many Facebook users are confused by the difference between "Pages" and "Groups," and between the new "Groups" and the old "Groups." Here's a brief-ish primer.

Pages

If you're wanting to create a Facebook presence for your church, what you want is a "Page." See my church's page at http://www.facebook.com/libertyuu for an example. To create a page, go to another page and scroll down to the bottom. On the bottom of the left column will be a link that says "Create a Page." If you click on that, it'll walk you through the steps. With pages you can post status updates which will appear in the news feed of the people who "like" (formerly "fan") the page. You can post blog posts or videos or whatever, just like with your own personal status update. You can create invents and invite all the followers to them. Pages also have the advantage of getting their own distinctive URL, which makes it easier to tell people where to find you than if your URL is something like http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Unitarian-Universalist-Church-of-Arlington-VA/165807771102 (not to pick on Arlington--it was just the top of the list). If you have a long URL like that and you want to fix it, it's as easy as going to http://www.facebook.com/username/, selecting your page, and giving it a name. This is a good thing to do for branding/marketing your church. I recommend using the same name as your church's website URL and also making it the same if you're on Twitter. Our church is known in all three places by "libertyuu" -- http://www.libertyuu.org, http://www.facebook.com/libertyuu and @libertyuu on Twitter.

For ministers and other public figures, I also suggest creating a Facebook Page for yourself. Politicians and actors and musicians have these -- they're the ones you "like" and follow. Creating a Facebook Page for yourself allows you to keep your personal and professional lives a little more separate on Facebook. My page is http://www.facebook.com/revcyn, and I use it to post ministry-related links, my blog, ministry topics and questions. That way my other friends and family aren't inundated with this type of material unless they choose to follow the RevCyn page.

Old Groups

The old Facebook "Groups" were very similar to pages. They were so similar that it was hard to tell which an organization had or which you should choose when creating one. One advantage with these groups is that you can list the officers of a group. Another is that you can message all the group members at once. On face value, they seem more set up for churches. However, this is if you are thinking of your church's Facebook presence as for the current members only. If you're thinking of your church's Facebook presence as outreach and marketing to new potential members, then Pages are the way to go. Groups can be open, closed or secret -- you can limit who can join and who can even see that it exists. They are, therefore, more of an insider thing than a Page, which is open to everyone to see. Some examples of organizations that set themselves up as Groups are Meadville Lombard Theological School and the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Both groups still exist, but both later also created Facebook pages, which is telling about the flexibility and features of Groups for organizations like these. I'm not sure it's possible to create these sorts of larger Groups anymore. There's no "create a group" link at the bottom of their groups, like there is with pages.

New Groups

Not too long ago, Facebook released a new Groups feature. With these new Groups, you can think of them as similar to Friends Lists (see my last post), but with more flexibility, and also as similar to old groups. You create these groups by going to the left-hand column on your home page, and there will be an item in the middle that says "Create a group." If there's not, click on some of the "more" options to expand your list. Once you create a group or are in a group, these groups will appear in this same column. You can post status updates in the group, and only the group members will see them, and they will appear in the news feed of members. Unless you turn off the feature, any time a member posts, you'll get a notification. In the group, click "Edit Settings" on the upper right to change these settings. What was controversial about these groups when Facebook released them is that you can put people in these groups without their permission, and then they have to opt out to get out of them, rather than opting in to get in. These groups are idea for small groups. I have one set up for my immediate family, and we post family get-togethers and family photos there. A minister might find it helpful to set up one for a committee or board. You do have to be friends with someone to add them to the group. But if you set the settings open enough, people who you are not friends with can get added, too, by another group member adding them or by finding the group through search functions, if you haven't made it a secret group. One weird thing about these groups is the status update that has been commented on most recently will appear at the top, rather than the one that was posted most recently. Also, you don't have to hit "share," just a return, to comment, making it a little more like a chat. And, speaking of chat, you can now use the Facebook chat feature to open up a chat with the whole group at once. I keep my chat "Offline," so this is a feature I haven't explored, but could come in handy.

Hope this helps with understanding the difference as you're setting up online presences, or exploring uses of Facebook in your lives. Let me know what other Facebook questions are out there, and I'll try to address them.

Facebook Ministry 101: How to Create & Use Friends Lists in Facebook

2011-02-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

One of my Facebook friends asked me for this information, and I said I'd write it up as a note, so I decided to write it up as a note here so that others could learn, if interested.

This can be useful information for anyone, but I think for ministers who friend congregants it's a particular must-know. The basic concept is that in Facebook you can create "lists" for your friends, and then you can do various things with these lists, including blocking access to certain information. This is somewhat different from "Groups" which I'll talk about another time, if it seems like people need to know.

Step One: Create a Friends List

Under the account link on the top left on your blue bar in Facebook there is an option called "Edit Friends." Click on that. Then there should be a button on the top that's labeled "+ Create a List." If it's not there, look on the left-hand column. Sometimes my menus look different because I've already done this than someone new's look. Click on the Create a List button. Enter a name at the top of the box that pops up, say "Congregants" and then click on the pictures of everybody who would belong in that group. Then hit the button on the bottom to create, and you're done. Congratulations! You've created your first friends group! Make as many more as you want -- I suggest starting with Congregants, Colleagues, Family, High School Friends, and College Friends. If you're anything like me, that will cover a whole lot of people. Oh, and then I have Girl Scout Parents, Jackson Residents, Family Friends, and so on...

Step Two: Sort Your Friends

After you've created a few lists like this, come back into the whole list of friends by clicking "Friends" at the top of the left column. You're now seeing everybody again. Scroll down the list systematically and make sure you've put everybody into the lists that are appropriate. It doesn't hurt to have dozens of lists, or to put people in more than one list, or to have someone who is in no lists. Think about two things as you're doing this. First, if you want to bar access to certain information to a certain group, for example minors, who needs to be in that list? Second, if you want to specifically grant access to a certain piece of information to a list, for example pictures of your child, who needs to be in that list?

Step Three: Viewing Friends Lists

When you've got 500 friends, as I do, one nice feature of the Friends Lists is that you can sort your status updates by lists. On the Home page, up at the top by the words "Most Recent" there is a little triangle. If you click on that, you can select a list, and you'll be seeing only the posts from that list. This can be helpful to use Facebook to check on how members of your congregation are doing -- spend a little time designated for pastoral care just perusing this list for issues going on. People may be using their status updates to let you know they're having a hard time. You can also sort it to see only your colleagues now, so that you can see who is posting about the latest big issue, or who else is doing sermon writing who you can procrastinate with. You can sort it by your family, so you don't lose their posts in the hundreds that fly by. It's helpful if you play a Facebook game, and you want to look for status updates from game players, too. Sometimes it's helpful to sort by only status updates, so that you can just see what people are writing about themselves and not all the videos and articles they're linking to.

Step Four: Barring Access

Now you're ready to start limiting permissions. Back up at that Account menu on the top left of the blue bar, click on privacy settings. If you haven't familiarized yourself with your privacy settings, you really should take some time to do so. But, for now, click on "Custom" on the left, and then on the center near the bottom, click on the little link that says, "Customize Settings." This is where all the action happens. This takes you to a list of different kinds of content everybody is setting. To the right of each item is a box where you can pick who sees it. Start by setting them all to "Friends Only" if they're set on "Everyone." "Everyone" means everyone -- whether they even have a Facebook account or not. You're open to Google. "Friends Only" will be those people who you've accepted as friends. Once you've done that, you're ready to get more in-depth. If you click on "Custom Edit" a dialog box will pop up. Here you can choose to limit a specific item to only a specific group, or you can bar a specific group. Under "Make Visible to" you pick "specific group" and then say that you want only family to see pictures, if that is the case, or you can enter a group under "hide this from" to keep congregants from seeing your pictures.

I suggest focusing on specifically "Photos and videos I'm tagged in." I limit access to this a lot, because anybody can tag you in any video or picture they want, even if it's not you. If there might be a photo of you somewhere that you don't want everybody to see, and you don't 100% trust everybody involved, then absolutely right now set your permissions on this item. I've lived a pretty tame life, but I don't trust everybody's sense of humor or sense of what's appropriate. And if you've friended any minors, this is where somebody might just think it's funny to tag you on an obscene photo, and then it pops up in that minor's newsfeed. Limit access to this in the way described above.

After that one, you can do the same to any other item. Right now, members of my congregation are limited from everything, because I want to protect my sabbatical space. I didn't have to de-friend them, just block them from commenting and block them from my posts, and then after sabbatical I can open things up again.

Just as a note, you can also list individuals as well as friend lists in all these settings.

Step Five: Individual Posts & Pictures

Once you've mastered this, you're ready for the advanced level. What you've just done on global settings can be done individually. Each and every status update, note, video, or link you post has a little box next to the "Share" button that has a picture of a lock on it. Click on that lock box and change the settings the same way you did in the security menus. You can choose with each status update who you want to see it and who you don't. You can even do this with those annoying pop-up posts for any games you play. So if you're complaining about work, you can block that individual status update from work people. Makes sense, yes? Be careful, though, that you don't accidentally type in the wrong group!

What can be done for individual posts can also be done for photo albums. Click on the album and then on "Edit Album" on the lower left. Once you're there, you'll see a privacy menu that works using the same concepts as the other.

That's it & good luck.

The Tiger Mom and the Real Debate

2011-02-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know you've all been waiting for me to weigh in on the "Tiger Mom" issue. But, really, does anybody who knows me think that I'm just going to say, "Oh yeah, we're totally like that"? For those of you who don't know me, I suspect I'm pretty universally regarded as not exactly a strict parent.

For those not familiar with it, Amy Chua launched a national debate with her article, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" in the Wall Street Journal. Chua has more recently said that, first, she didn't pick the title of the article and wouldn't have put it that way, and also that her book is about how she learned to back off of this model, and some if it is meant humorously. But that doesn't stop the debate from going on about whether or not the "Tiger Mom" model is the best model of parenting. Chua's children were not allowed to:

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

Her backing off from this model included letting one daughter quit violin. A subsequent Time Magazine article, "Tiger Moms: Is Tough Parenting Really the Answer?" brought the question of whether or not we should follow Chua's example to ensure greater success for our children.

The problem is, that we're asking the wrong question. There are clearly some extremes in Chua's model, and there are clearly some ways in which her model works towards creating the outcome she desires. Children perform better when they're rewarded for trying, for example. When you reward the effort, children learn to keep trying, rather than give up. Chua's example of not accepting a card her daughter made because she could tell it had no effort put into it may sound extreme, and her language was extreme, but the concept was solid. Her daughter admits she put no effort into that piece, and that she learned by doing it over.

This isn't the question that we should be asking, however. Instead, we should be questioning the initial assumption of what kind of children we want to produce. While a few articles have pointed at this, saying that Chua's model creates good outcomes for certain types of professions, it doesn't work for enhancing creativity, for example, most articles have taken at face value that what she wants to produce is what is good, and the only option for what a child should grow up to be. And Chua is raising intelligent, cultured daughters. But not all children are equally suited for the violin or piano. Some have gifts in other areas that Chua is neglecting--the not being allowed to be in a school play, for example. Is it more valuable to be a violinist than to be an actor? Chua allows only one answer to this question, and we accept it at face value, and then avoid the real discussion by trying to decide if she's right that she would produce a better violinist. The question is, do we want to all be violinists? She says her children can't choose their own extracurricular activities because they won't choose valuable choices, but she has set the values to only allow one outcome.

If what we want for our children is financial and material success, Chua's model is a good one. It had a greater likelihood of producing it. But is financial and material success all we want for our children? The old saying, "Money can't buy happiness" has some elements of truth to it. And even happiness isn't the only thing we might want for our children. We might also care that they're good citizens, or that they're creative and artistic, or that they bring meaning into their lives, or that they bring meaning into the lives of others. We need children to grow up to be doctors, but we also need children to grow up to be poets and philosophers.

But beyond this, all these things are thinking of childhood as a means to an end, something Chua admits. She's not focused on happy children, but on making sure they have the tools they need for adulthood. But children are not just future people, they're people in their own rights, right now. I let my child have a say in what her extracurricular activities are now not because of what it might mean for her future, but because of who she is right now -- a person. She's a person with interests and passions of her own, even during the early elementary years. And often they're not my own interests at all. Her tastes are not always my own. But I help her to develop and explore them. I'm a guide, not a god. I teach, guide, encourage, and share along her journey to adulthood, but I don't make the person she will become. She is already a person right now.

None of this means that childhood is without its limits--homework has to be done, and if it's not done at an acceptable level, or if grades come in too low, we, too, will make a child sit down and do it right. But I encourage not only her social development, as well, but her social being right now. Childhood is not just a means to an end. It is not only a state of future potential.

Similarly, in Unitarian Universalism we've been growing in our understanding of children's spirituality as, well, something that exists! We're not just educating them for the adults they will become, although we don't want to neglect that, we're also teaching them to be fully who they are now, and in touch with their own spiritual beings as they currently are. That means encouraging their natural awe and wonder. It means talking with them about their budding sense of justice and peace. My daughter has had, from a young age, a strong sense that there is, as she puts it, "someone who looks out for all of us." I help her by sharing the theological language for these concepts, by exploring the questions in this concept and alternative concepts, and by helping her touch base with this ground of all being that she senses. I share our Unitarian Universalist values and ideals. I am with her on her spiritual journey. As a minister, I've long said that I'm the minister for the children, too, not just the adults.

The Tiger Mom debate makes for great headlines and people can have great fun getting worked up about it, but let's not just take the debate on face value. Look deeper to the question of what the values underlying the assumptions are. That's where the real debate should be.

Death & Innocence & the Future of Democracy

2011-01-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

Christina McNight wrote over at her blog, following the Tucson shootings:

While I am beyond horrified at the killing of a nine year old girl – BEYOND HORRIFIED – I am equally as horrified at the people who seem to think that she was the only innocent person who was injured or killed that day.

ALL of the people in the parking lot on Saturday were innocent. NONE of them had “done anything”.

Her words got me thinking. This has always been my reaction to other events involving the death of young children--that it was tragic, yes, and that they were innocent, yes, but that there are a lot of tragic deaths and everyone is innocent.

Yet with Christina Taylor Greene, I've responded tragically. Christina is right that nobody in that parking lot had done anything that made them deserve to get shot, and all of the deaths were tragic. But I've responded to Christina Taylor Greene's death in a way I've never responded to any other similarly publicized tragedy. I hear her name, and tears just start coming down my face and I start thinking of what a loss to the world this beautiful little girl's death was.

Why has it affected me so much? Was it because of her age? her innocence? her beauty? her growing civic-mindedness? her talents? her birthday on 9/11? Cynically, one might suggest that the media and nation isn't so captivated when an African-American child is shot and killed in the city.

This isn't what has captivated me. I know what it is. It is that I, too, have a little girl, only a little younger than Christina Taylor Greene. I don't usually put pictures of her on my blog, to protect her privacy, but I'm going to make an exception this time and illustrate this with a picture of my family, and some other people, with Senator Carl Levin at a political rally. We never got a president to kiss our baby--this was as close as we came.

I've taken her to political rallies and protests and taken her to meet her congressional representative (who was then Rep. Mark Schauer). Schauer received threats while in office, of course. And outside his office last summer or fall there was another protest against the Representative who I consider a friend and voted for, and I saw a man in the crowd wearing a gun yelling at the office building.

It scared me. I'm scared for our president and our other elected officials when I see the photos of people bringing guns to political rallies, even if these people are only trying to make a statement about their second amendment rights. The way they're making that statement carries with it a threat of violence that is well understood by them, I believe, under the gun rights rhetoric. It scared me when I saw that gun, because I believed that man could mean violence, and it could've been a place to which I had brought my own child.

And then somebody acted on that very sort of threat this time. And I look at Christina Taylor Greene's picture and weep, because I can understand the heartbreak of her parents, although I've never been in their shoes, because I can imagine too easily being in those shoes.

This killing of a child in a public place while she was engaged in the exercise of democracy strikes a deep terror in me. And, at the same time, it feels like a great threat to our democracy, because it could mean that people like me will stay home from political events, and that little girls like Christina won't go to meet their representatives and learn to get engaged in democracy.

I want to say that I won't do anything differently because of Christina's death, but I don't know that this is true. What I do know is that I want her death to mean something, to mean something important in our country. I want her death to stand for a time when we changed and became more civil. I want her death to be a time when we changed and became more engaged in creating an America the Beautiful and stopped tearing each other down and threatening violence.

And part of those tears that fall every time I hear her name is a fear that before long her name, like so many others, will be forgotten, and this promise that she held, and that we hold for her now, will be unfulfilled.

Sermon 01-09-11: Arizona

2011-01-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

As many of my readers know, I'm on sabbatical. But I had volunteered to preach this past weekend at a colleague's church on her Sunday off. I had volunteered a new sermon topic, rather than a "canned" one, but one I knew I would use again in my own congregation later. I was most of the way done with my sermon, a sermon on the future of Unitarian Universalism, and had two parts left to go -- one was on the work our denomination has done on immigration reform, particularly in Arizona, and then the conclusion. That's where I had left things on Friday night. When I got back on the computer late Saturday afternoon, I checked into Facebook, and was hit by the news of the tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona. I knew I couldn't complete my sermon as I had planned, and was going to have to change it. Because I wasn't preaching in my own church, I didn't completely scrap the sermon, but as you'll see below it was greatly changed.

My first instinct was to reflect or pray, and so I wrote a prayer, which appears on the post before this on this blog (link below). I then spent a great time just absorbing the news, reading articles, watching TV, reading Facebook. I saw there the impact of social media on our ministry, as I saw colleague after colleague posting that they were scrapping their sermons. One was the Rev. Meg Riley, minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Her sermon can be read online here. A reading that a colleague posted up was used by many of us as a reading, including the Rev. Meg Riley and myself--the link appears below. We watched as the Rev. Peter Morales, our UUA president, quickly put up a statement on his Facebook page; about an hour later it went up on the UUA's page (link to statement below). I saw another colleague, the Rev. Erika Hewitt, mention that a chat room for ministers changing their sermons had been set up. I'm grateful to her for sending me the link to the chat room that UU blogger and minister "PeaceBang" had set up.

Nine years ago when I began my ministry, I was only a few weeks into my first ministry when September 11th, 2001 happened. At that time, there was a minister's e-mail chat, but my main support came from the fact that my UU colleague cluster in Houston was the next day. We met and talked about what we were going to do that Sunday and shared sources. It was of tremendous help. How wonderful it was now, nine years later, to have an online community of colleagues who could get together through social networking. Especially since this was a Saturday tragedy, the social networking played a large roll in supporting us all. Meg Riley speaks of it also on her post.

So with that as prelude, I'm sharing below what I shared this past Sunday, complete with showing you what I cut out. If you're in my congregation or district (Heartland), feel free to read this, but understand that I may preach all or substantial pieces again at my congregation and (possibly) the district assembly (although I'm hoping we'll have enough other preachers that I won't be--I'm just back-up).

INTRODUCTION TO PRAYER/MEDITATION:

"Statement on Shootings in Tucson" by UUA President, Rev. Peter Morales

PRAYER/MEDITATION:

"Arizona Prayer" by Cynthia Landrum

READING:

Excerpt from “Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords: Speaking for the Soul” by Diana Butler Bass

SERMON:

This year our denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is celebrating 50 years of existence, and I said to you all that I would talk on the subject of “The Next 50 Years.” I’m going to try to behave. After all, Yvonne was nice enough to invite me to come here. See—I’m starting out on task and everything. We’ll see where it goes from here.

[The original start to the sermon.] 50 years ago, after years of courtship, two denominations, the Unitarians and Universalists, made their relationship official and tied the knot, and became Unitarian Universalism, the denomination we’ve inherited today. Without going into a whole lot and making this a sermon about Unitarian and Universalist history, let me tell you a little about how I see the history of our faith – the larger faith, the wider hope.

We started out, two heretical faiths. Universalism was fresh denomination that believed in the inclusive wider love of God for all souls. Unitarianism was born out of a schism with Congregationalism, in which the Congregationalists chose to close their doors to the belief in the unity, rather than trinity of God, and church by church, the congregations picked sides and became one denomination or the other.

From the times of their creations, both denominations were faced with a series of internal controversies in which they could have, like many others before them, created doctrines and demanded adherence. Instead, we chose the non-creedal route wherein each time our faith became broader and more-inclusive. We did this when faced with the question of Transcendentalism, which espoused the belief that God could be found not only through our sacred scriptures, but through personal experience and the natural world. We did this with the “Issue in the West” and the emergence of Humanism, and said that one could be a Unitarian, and, yes, a Universalist, and not believe in God. In 1946 Tracey Pullman, minister of the Universalist Church in Detroit articulated the need for us to become a new religion, “greater than Christianity because it is an evolutionary religion, because it is universal rather than partial, because it is one with the spirit of science and is primarily interested in bringing out that which is God-like in man.” [1] Three years earlier in 1943, Robert Cummins had said in an address at the Universalist general assembly:

Universalism cannot be limited to Protestantism or to Christianity, not without denying its very name. Ours is a world fellowship, not just a Christian sect. For so long as Universalism is universalism and not partialism, the fellowship bearing its name must succeed in making it unmistakably clear that all are welcome: theist and humanist, unitarian and Trinitarian, colored and color-less. A circumscribed Universalism is unthinkable.[2]

That, in a nutshell, is the nature of both of the denominations that merged because of their great similarity and became Unitarian Universalism.

And a circumscribed Unitarian Universalism had been equally unthinkable. From this denomination which made it clear that theist and humanist, Unitarian and Trinitarian were all welcome we became a church which has made it clear that we are a faith that welcomes Wiccans and Pagans of all sorts of stripes—that you can not only be Trinitarian or Unitarian, you can be atheist, deist, pantheist or polytheist or panentheist or even transtheist. We became a movement which adapted to the feminist movement and became more welcoming of people of all genders into every aspect of our religious and corporate life. We’ve made it abundantly clear that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex, and questioning are equally welcomed with heterosexual people.

Thus ends my quick explanation of the history of Unitarian Universalism, but I want to add that we are a faith that has literally saved lives with our open acceptance. While others concern themselves with saving souls—often by prematurely damning people in this life, casting them literally out of home for transgressions—we have been concerned with saving lives, here and now, and building that beloved community here on earth. Never was that more clear to me than this fall when we watched, with horror, as suicide after suicide was announced of young gay men in despair. Ours is a saving faith, saving lives with acceptance – I wish they had known us.

So what does that mean for our future? Within this framework of who we are –the wider faith, the larger hope—what does that mean about who we will or need to become?

Whatever we become, it will be consistent with who we’ve been and what we are. It will be consistent with our non-creedal congregational faith. It will be consistent with James Luther Adams’ five smooth stones of religious liberalism:

"Religious liberalism depends on the principle that 'revelation' is continuous."
"All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion."
"Religious liberalism affirms the moral obligation to direct one's effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."
"[W]e deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation."
"[L]iberalism holds that the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."[3]

In other words, our faith is and will always be a place where we are open to new ideas; where we are willing and free participants; where we work to build the beloved community, to make the world a better place; where we believe in doing justice; and where we believe we believe in a radical democratic hope.

But all this is not to say we might not have to radically change as we move into the future. For example, there’s the challenge of how our faith will attract and retain members of the younger generation, or generations. A recent Pew Research study showed that among Millennials, a smaller percentage are involved in church life than preceding generations were at the same point in their lives.[4] Whereas in earlier generations when someone left a religion they felt the need to find another one, now it is much more acceptable in our society to be without a church, and so many of them simply do not go. It’s not because of a lack of faith—almost as many millennials believe in God as did GenXers at their age.

There’s some good news for us in this—Millennials have some attitudes that are in concert with us, like not taking scriptures literally, thinking that there could be more than one path to God, or increased acceptance of homosexuality and evolution. But there is some bad news, too – it doesn’t matter if they agree with us sometimes, they’re still not joiners of churches.

~~For example, Anna Snoeyenbos, a life-long UU who lives and worships in Atlanta, recently wrote on her blog:~~

My parent's generation was willing to put-in the work of keeping their churches going. I'm not convinced that my generation is. I know that personally - the last thing I want to do is spend hours of my time worrying over bylaws, nomination commitees, "vision-planning" committees etc. when I could be spending my time in prayer, fellowship and service to others. Remember, we're the generation that is more spiritual than previous generations, but less religious.

~~For boomers, this looks like laziness shrouded in idealism. For my generation, we feel that spending more time on polity and governance than on building the kingdom is navel-gazing and uninspiring…~~

Increased mobility and increased religious freedom has left us with more choices for faith communities than we know what to do with. Those communities that ask my generation to serve the world will thrive - those communities that ask my generation to serve themselves will not.[5]

Rather than bemoaning this—that Millennials are not necessarily interested in the work of running a church—we need to figure out how to address it, how to give them the church that they’re looking for. None of the five smooth stones is about the importance of committee work.

But while they’re not connected to congregations, Millennials are connected – socially. They’ve invented social networks that now the rest of us are climbing on board on. Our UUA President, Peter Morales, has said on a couple of occasions at least that he would like to see us become the app store for religion, or something to that effect. I can’t find his exact quote, but what struck me about it was the idea of the UUA president using the idea of “app store” as a model for how we should change and adapt. Right now, I’m convinced that reaching out to meet people where they’re at, through social media and through our traditional congregational life, and providing them with liberal religious content, whether or not they ever come in our doors and whether or not they ever join a committee, is part of what we’re called to do to become this religion that will grow and thrive in the next 50 years.

How else will we need to grow and adapt and change over the years to come? We know that technology has made our world smaller and that we’re more aware that we’re living in a multicultural world. Worshipping in a historically classical Protestant style was not, again, one of those five smooth stones. People of all races, even Caucasian, and all backgrounds, even your U.S. American Protestant backgrounds, all national origins, even a U.S.A. born and raised national origin, are expecting worship to be increasingly diverse. I know that I personally feel more fulfilled by worship that incorporates diverse sources, whether it’s from different cultures around the world, or different cultures within America, or different religions. I’m sure that’s true for many of you, too, perhaps for all of you. But when it isn’t, we need to stretch our comfort zones so that all our hymns don’t have to be 4/4 in C or F from hymns that are 100 years old in the European tradition, and so that all our meditation songs don’t have to be Bach or Beethoven or other great and wonderful classical composers from Western Europe. However much people of, say, my demographic profile want our worship to be multicultural, people from minority cultures and races want it even more, and the Millennials want it more.

I had a few examples of ways I think we’ll grow and change and ways we’ll be the same that I wanted to share with you today. I had some thoughts about the Millennial generation and how they’re going to change who we’ll be – they are less of church joiners, and we’re going to have to adapt to their desires, which is not to just to church as usual, but to look less like a place to join committees and more like a place to join a social network. I had some thoughts about how our worship needs to become more multicultural, reflecting not only the fact that we’re more aware of being part of a world community but also the desires of our members for worship that comes from diverse sources. It was all very deep and meaningful, I assure you. It was also somewhat dry, but that’s another story. I’m sure it would’ve gotten better.

And then the third point I was going to turn to was how no matter how our corporate form, our structure, our worship changes, we’ll have to continue to be this religion that is ever casting the circle wider, this religion which holds tight to that smooth stone that says we must continue to work to build the beloved community here on earth. And I was going to point to the current trends in Unitarian Universalism about where our justice work is going, namely immigration rights, and the work that has gone on in Arizona.

And then, of course, last night we had a terrible tragedy in Arizona, where several people were killed, and a congresswoman’s life is still held in the balance. And, like always in times of great tragedy, the crystal clarity of our living tradition’s purpose here in America shines through.

We are the prophetic faith, and ours is the prophethood of all believers. And may that ever be so. We are called in our faith to stand up against the culture of violence and death. We are called to be prophets crying in the wind at times against a whirlwind of anger and hate.

When it comes to Arizona, we’re doing just that. The culture isn’t with us yet on this one. We’re ahead of the curve, but I know and believe that the arc of the universe does bend towards justice, and so the path we’re on is right where the world needs us to be, and they’ll catch up on this one. I did.

When our denomination stepped up its work on immigration recently, I wasn’t prepared for it. It wasn’t my issue; I wasn’t studied on the issue, and I had no strong opinions, and I didn’t particularly care. What I’m proud of is that I’m in a denomination that didn’t wait for people like me to lead the way, that the leadership of our movement isn’t simply seeing where the will of the entire group is and waiting for that consensus to make a move. I’m proud of being part of a denomination that’s leading the way on progressive issues, even if maybe 70-80-90 percent of the country doesn’t agree on issues of immigration, although I don’t think it’s nearly that large.

I’ve told my congregation that all my sermons come down to love, so here it is. Whatever we become, it will always be true that the ultimate force of the universe is love, and that we must be a religion that proclaims there is more love somewhere—there is more love for the immigrant, there is more love for the gay and lesbian, there is more love for the Muslim, there is more love for the Republican, there is more love for the Democrat, there is more love for the shooter. There is more love somewhere.

In the wake of the shootings yesterday, and considering our deep involvement as a faith with the politics of Arizona, many began pointing to our responses to the shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, as helpful words for us to reflect on this day. Unitarian Universalist minister Meg Barnhouse, who knew the shooter, wrote:

I would like to understand all of the reasons why a person would do something evil, but that’s not a pressing need for me. I’m not sure we’ll ever understand. I think the capability for destruction is within all of us, given certain pressures.
What I do need is to hear stories of courage and kindness.[6]

The minister of that church, the Rev. Chris Buice, said this at the church’s rededication service:

He came into this space with a desire to do an act of hatred, but he has unleashed unspeakable amounts of love.[7]

In an article in Newsweek, he wrote:

Members of my congregation have been hurt. But we have also been healed by the feeling that there is a love greater than our theological differences, a compassion that is not limited by the boundaries of any creed. I firmly believe, now more than ever, that love is stronger than death. Love is more powerful than hate.[8]

Shortly after the shooting that happened in the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church in 2008, I wrote this:

The day after the tragedy, members of the Tennessee Valley congregation gathered at the nearby Presbyterian church for a vigil. The children and adults, who only a day before witnessed horror and tragedy, sang out the words from Annie's "Tomorrow." While surely they were still experiencing shock, anger, denial and grief, they raised their voices

The Knoxville congregation members couldn't know it yet, but that night they were joined by churches across the nation in vigils. That same Monday evening, voices were being raised in prayer and song in our congregation here and in at least 50 other Unitarian Universalist congregations across the nation.

By the middle of that week, more than 200 vigils would be scheduled. That is an amazing outpouring of love from a denomination with little more than 1,000 congregations.

A few years ago, the world watched in awe as the Amish people responded to a shooting in one of their schoolhouses. The Amish taught the world about their faith as they responded with love and forgiveness. Today, we learn about a very different faith community, but again the response is love and forgiveness.[9]

Here we stand today after another tragedy, and our response is what it must be: Love. Love beyond borders, love beyond politics, love beyond hate and fear, love.

Nobody can know what the future can bring for an individual, for a society, for a faith. I don’t know what challenges we will face, I don’t know how our faith will grow and endure, I don’t know what ways we’ll profoundly change. What I know is that the answer and the message, the alpha and omega, will still be Love.

So as we boldly go into the unknown future, that is the only thing I can ultimately put before us: Love. And so I close with the words of Elizabeth Alexander from her poem “Praise Song for the Day.”

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.[10]

Let us walk forward in that light.

Endnotes:

[1] The Larger Faith, 112.

[2] http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/universalists/Robert-Cummins.php 7 January 2011.

[3] http://www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith/aplace/workshop1/workshopplan/leaderresources/167560.shtml 7 January 2011.

[4] http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Demographics/Age/millennials-report.pdf 7 January 2011.

[5] http://www.deepriverfaith.com/2010/12/free-market-faith-why-congregationalism.html 7 7 January 2011

[6] http://www.uuworld.org/spirit/articles/118660.shtml 8 Jan 2011

[7] http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/117966.shtml 8 Jan 2011

[8] http://www.newsweek.com/2009/01/09/everyone-welcome-even-now.html 8 Jan. 2011.

[9] http://blog.mlive.com/citpat_opinion/2008/08/after_tragedy_people_of_faith.html 8 Jan. 2011.

[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-poem.html 8 Jan. 2011.

01-08-11 Arizona Prayer

2011-01-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

God of our silent tears, God of the weary and oppressed,

We offer up our prayers of comfort and care
for all those in shock and sorrow, pain and fear,
with the hopes that the goodwill of the many reaching out across the earth
will be a balm for those affected by the ill-will of the fear.
We pray for the families of the dead, for the wounded and their families,
and for the hearts grown cold and bitter against their neighbors,
that they may all feel the earth's nurture, humanity's overwhelming respect for life,
and the loving arms of that which is most high and most deep.
While we cannot change what has been wrought,
we can protest when life is treated callously
and we can pray and love and care
for those whose lives are cut too short,
for those whose world is filled with violence and hate,
and for the rising sun of a world filled with renewed conviction
to stand true to our God of Love,
true to our native land, home of those yearning to breathe free,
true to our principle of inherent worth and dignity for all.

Blessed Be and Amen.

WWRCD? (What Would RevCyn Do?)

2011-01-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

So, here's the scenario: I'm at my daughter's dance studio for the first time, waiting for her to finish dance class. It's the first time, because I've been teaching at the same time, so my husband has been taking her. Another mom comes in and signs her daughter up for class for the first time, greets the teacher warmly with words that indicate that she knows the teacher from outside of the studio, and then sits down at a table with two other parents whom it seems she's also old friends. I'm not at the table, I'm about half the room away, but I'm the only other person in the room except for the woman at the desk who keeps running in and out on errands.

The group at the table start talking about Facebook and Facebook etiquette and friends defriending them because of political differences. I'm interested, but the first time I start to react to the conversation they react like I would be intruding, so I revert to my introvert self and study my phone as if I'm checking Facebook. I'm not, because my phone is acting up. I turn my phone off and on, remove the battery, etc., all while continuing to hear the rest of the conversation.

The conversation turns to gay and lesbian people whom, it seems, in their world, are constantly, unlike heterosexual people, informing people of their sexuality, which is akin to informing people of what they do in the dark, which is where, apparently, this information ought to be kept. This is not my experience, of course. My experience is that I often hear my heterosexual friends and, indeed myself, refer to our partners with opposite-gender pronouns, thus flaunting openly our heterosexuality. On the other hand, I have known gay and lesbian people who were definitely in the closet publicly and referred to their same-gender partners with third-person-plural pronouns, thus hiding their homosexuality. Likewise with hand-holding in public. I see heterosexuals openly flaunting their heterosexuality all the time. Not so much when I see my gay and lesbian friends out publicly. The first same-sex wedding I performed it looked like the couple was afraid to kiss in the ceremony because that would be too out-there for their family and friends--at their own wedding!

So, what would you do? Enter a conversation that you were clearly eavesdropping in, and get in what would most likely be an argument with these other parents? Nothing? Something else? Tell me what you would do and what you would say--I could use the suggestions.

What I did was nothing. But I am hoping to do something in the future. I'm hoping that now that I know this information, I can go to the same place and try to put myself from the onset into the discussion so that I won't be an eavesdropping intruder, and trying to get whatever positive message I can across. My husband said he knew just who I was talking about because, apparently, there have been indications of this sort of thing, but less extreme, before. So maybe between the two of us we can go in there and open up a real conversation. Or, if we chicken out, at least have a real conversation about tolerance and prejudice that we let them eavesdrop into...

Concord at Christmas

2010-12-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

A bit of a travelogue post here, maybe of interest to Unitarians who haven't had the opportunity to visit some of our historic sites...

Taking advantage of the sabbatical over Christmas, I inserted a week of vacation into December so that we might go to my husband's home of Rhode Island for Christmas. While we were there, Peter (the aforementioned husband) really wanted to go to Concord with our daughter, and we hadn't had time over last summer's visit. Our daughter really enjoys the Henry books by D. B. Johnson, which tell stories from the life of Henry David Thoreau through portraying Henry as a bear. We have a complete set of the books, as does our church.

Peter and I lived in Gardner, MA for two years (just beyond Fitchburg, where Henry hikes to in one of those books, which is how we got introduced to the books) and visited Concord several times during that period. However, this was our daughter's first visit to Concord, and the first visit of Peter's mother, as well, although she's a Rhode Island native. It's not as big a tourist spot for the Catholics as it is the Unitarians, it seems. As the home of Unitarians Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, among others, it's a big spot for Unitarian Universalists to visit. In fact, Peter had given some tours for UU youth groups during our time there.

It was a snowy day when we stopped by the woods by Walden Pond. The state park was open to visitors without an entrance fee, so we drove in a little, but then drove back out to go first to the visitor's center. The clerk there was impressed that our six-year-old recognized Henry David Thoreau, and gave her a free button. I got a new blue water bottle with "Walden Pond" written on it to use at church, since my old one is showing some wear after I left it at a wedding and they didn't discover it for a few days, although I still love that it's insulated. Peter got a pencil. And we had a nice conversation with the clerk, who informed us that he had been to Jackson many times for the Civil War Muster. He also plays Henry in their dramatic productions and has a picture of himself as Henry the Bear drawn by D.B. Johnson of the Henry books. We were suitably impressed with this information. We then went over to the reproduction of Thoreau's cabin and peered in its windows. I hadn't seen it before, or hadn't remembered it if I had seen it. The cabin is impressively small. It's smaller than the sheds many people have just to house their outdoor tools. The woodshed for the house was almost as large. But, as Thoreau explains in the Henry books, the house it just for when it rains, the world outside is his real house. Deeming it too cold to hike down to the pond, although it looked beautiful with the snow falling on the trees, we proceeded on to downtown Concord.

Every other time I've been in Concord I think I've run into other colleagues there, but this time was the exception, probably because it was so close to Christmas. I expected Concord to be a bit more decked out of the holidays, but it had enough wreaths and greenery to make us feel holiday cheer. I don't know what I was expected--I think I had some ridiculous unconscious expectation of carolers in top hats and bonnets and sleighs going down the street. We parked near the Unitarian Church and had lunch after walking over to look at the monuments and find the small plaque amidst the large war monuments which marks where Henry David Thoreau spent his night in jail. Since the jail period is the subject of one of the Henry books, it was of particular interest.

From there we hopped back in the car and drove up to the Old Manse, where Emerson and Hawthorne both lived. Nathaniel Hawthorne etched some words in the windows we had learned on a previous visit, but we didn't opt for the tour this time, as it was less likely to hold a six-year-old's interest. We did take a detour from Unitarianism into Revolutionary War history to walk across the Old North Bridge next to the Old Manse to see the statue of the Minute Man, and see the site of which Ralph Waldo Emerson would later pen in his "Concord Hymn":

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

My daughter deemed it too spooky to go to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson and Louisa May Alcott are all buried, as well as other Unitarian figures (Emerson with an amusingly large huge raw chunk of marble and Alcott and Thoreau with small markers), and as we drove by it appeared closed. Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing wrote the poem "Sleepy Hollow" for the cemetery's founding:

No abbey's gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.

It was not the season for pale asters, anyway, and it would've been cold, even though the road goes right up to Author's Ridge. Last time I was there I saw Alcott's, Emerson's and Thoreau's grave. I'll have to look next time for William Ellery Channing's marker and some others.

We then proceeded on to Orchard House, where the Alcott family lived and Bronson Alcott founded the Concord School of Philosophy. I've been reading Alcott's Little Women to my daughter, in preparation for this Concord trip, although it's a bit old for her. Here we learned that Louisa's sister May Alcott (who is most like Amy March in Little Women) was an artist who taught Daniel Chester French to sculpt. French was also a Unitarian and he sculpted the Minute Man statue at the Old North Bridge and, more famously, Abraham Lincoln in DC's Lincoln Memorial. French also sculpted Thomas Starr King, our famous Unitarian for whom Starr King School for the Ministry is named. The statue of Thomas Starr King is the one that California removed from the National Statuary Hall in order to put in the statue of Ronald Regan, to the great dismay of Unitarians everywhere. (French is also buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.)

Peter pointed out that of all the abolitionist transcendentalists we had visited this day, Louisa May Alcott was the only one who served in the Civil War. The tour guide told us that Emerson had kissed the bride at one of Louisa's sisters' weddings, and that Louisa had been a bit jealous of that, saying something to the effect of although she was determined to never marry, apparently a kiss from Emerson would've been a tempting reason to do so. Upon leaving, we picked up an abridged chapter book of Little Women more suitable for early readers in the gift shop. Our local bookstore had not had such a thing before we left.

Full of Unitarian history, we called it a day from there, driving out on the road Orchard House was on to wherever it went. Where it went was Lexington, where we passed their Minuteman statue and their Unitarian church, but did not stop and tarry there, for it was snowy and we had miles to go.

For World AIDS Day

2010-12-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

Today is World AIDS Day, so to create an opportunity to help people think about doing something for World AIDS Day, I'm going to tell you a story. This is the story of how I first became involved in the issue.

Long before I knew that I knew anybody with AIDS or who was HIV+, long before I had the unfortunate honor of performing my first funeral for a man who died from AIDS, I recognized in myself a fear and a prejudice. That was the start. I knew that I was unreasonably fearful of people with AIDS, to the point where I feared I would act in a prejudicial manner towards somebody with AIDS. My friend Manda and I had volunteered the previous year (1995) for a program called "Alternative Spring Break" and had spent our spring break working for the physical disability rehabilitation center in Warm Springs, Georgia the year before (we met during that program), and were both considering doing the program again. I think it was Manda who first suggested that she was interested in the program that would volunteer at the Mobile (Alabama) AIDS Support Services. At any rate, we both decided to apply to spend our spring break with a group of about 20 University of Georgia students working for MASS (now called "South Alabama Cares"). I knew I had this prejudice and fear about AIDS, and I faced the decision in myself about whether to confront it or whether to live with the prejudice and fear. It wasn't consistent with my view of myself as a religious and moral person to leave this unchallenged. Therefore, I decided that I had to go to Mobile.

ASB did a lot of training with us before we left to prepare us for the trip. Honestly, I don't remember much of it. I was the oldest student on the trip--all the rest were undergrads, and I was a graduate student. We were mostly women, with, I think, two men in our group. I remember late-night discussions about theology on the trip when one of the young men told someone that he didn't believe in God. I was, and am, agnostic myself, so was right in the middle of the debate that ensued.

On our trip we encountered some sexism that I still remember. Our van broke down with a flat tire when we were on a day trip to the beach. Two of us in the group had experience changing tires, Manda and myself, and were preparing to figure out how to change the van's tire when along came a state trooper. He decided to oversee the project and wouldn't let the two of us help. Instead he insisted that two unprepared students--the two boys--complete the project. Manda and I took a long walk on the beach instead, cooling our heads so we wouldn't get in an altercation with law enforcement.

Another memorable part of the trip was that when we were working for MASS the local television station did a story on us, as did the local paper. A local businessman was so impressed with our service that he took us all out to a little seafood restaurant in the middle of nowhere along the ocean. At the end of the meal he gave everyone a card of thanks for our work, and in it was a crisp new $100 bill. The new $100 bills had just been released in March of 1996, and none of us had seen them yet. It was quite a gift, and obviously still memorable to me. It was amazing that a stranger would do this for us.

But nothing was as memorable as the work we did.

Honestly, I think MASS wasn't quite prepared for how much work 20 college students can accomplish in a week, and a lot of the time we were doing busy work. I think one afternoon we just raked leaves. Another large portion of one day was spent taking strips of condoms and tearing them into individual packages to be put in the bowl where people could grab them as they entered or exited the center. We processed thousands of condoms in this way, and there are a lot of amusing pictures of us sitting or standing in these huge piles of condoms. Sometimes we just did filing. It was a lot of the same sort of stuff (aside from the condoms) that we could have done for any agency.

And then one day we told that some of us could go out to a home of a man who was living with AIDS. This man was now blind, and having trouble taking care of himself between learning to live with blindness and with AIDS, all by himself. Manda and I both went out on the crew that went to clean up his home. And it was the hardest thing we could imagine. That's where the fear I was holding in myself had to finally be addressed. I had to know by the end of that day that I had come in contact with the virus, and that I was okay. I knew intellectually how one contracts HIV, but inside myself I still felt fear about ordinary physical contact--shaking hands, hugging--with someone with HIV. By the end of the day I would be able to if not put that fear inside me entirely away, at least put it into perspective.

The trip had a lasting impression on me. When I got back to Athens, I started volunteering with the local AIDS support agency. I would end up working on an AIDS-related topic for my master's thesis, as well.

In the end, I've learned a lot about HIV/AIDS, but by working, living, and worshiping with people with HIV/AIDS, I've learned a lot more about myself.

Addendum: Manda has blogged back about her memories of that day in Mobile. You can read her story here.

Ramblings and Rediscovering Christmas

2010-11-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog may notice I haven't posted in a month, which is unusual for me. I'm on sabbatical, so my posting schedule will be pretty irregular for the next few months. One of the reasons I timed my sabbatical the way I did--starting in late October and going through early April--was because one the areas I feel the most need to reinvent is the way I approach holidays, specifically Christmas. I've been in ministry for 9 years now, and I'm finding little new to share in my approach to the message of Jesus' birth. One of my main December goals is to go to other UU churches and see how they handle December. My approach has been to have an every-other-year system where one year I'm doing a world-religions focus for December and the next I'm focusing in on the Christmas story specifically. At this point in my ministry I've done Christmas sermons on the holiday blues, simplifying the holidays, Dickens, the historical Jesus, peace, hope, sharing and giving, holiday traditions, holiday spirit, and more. I'm sure there's more to mine in the Christmas story before I do it all again, but I need inspiration.

Another way I want to experience Christmas this year is through living the experience of Christmas in a new way. I went into ministry before I became a parent, and I'm a last-minute writer, so I haven't had weekends to do holiday activities with my child. I'm hoping to have more time to experience the joys of the season than I've had in previous years where ministry kept me working six days a week. My sabbatical rule: only work at most five days a week! :)

So in my experiencing of Christmas so far, we've gotten our tree up, and then I helped my best friend put her tree up last night--just assembling, not decorating. It turns out, I've learned, that fluffing out the branches of an artificial pre-lit tree can take even longer than putting up a real tree and stringing it with lights, if you do it right. While we did this, we had a discussion about believing in Santa. Turns out a similar discussion has been happening on the UU blogosphere between uuMomma and Paul Oakley (in a comment of his on Facebook).

My discussion was triggered by a comment I made that a lot of holiday movies seem centered around the question of belief in Santa, and that having this as a theme of the movies themselves may make a child viewing it open up the question of belief in Santa. The existence of people not believing in Santa in the movies points out that some people don't, in fact, believe in Santa, and might prompt a child to ask why that's the case. Some examples:

Elf - We watched this recently with our Santa-believing daughter, which is what raised the question for me. It's not the main point of the movie, but Santa gets his sleigh stuck because the magic has gone out of Christmas, and it takes more people believing to get it back in the sky.
The Polar Express - A little doubting boy is taught to believe in the magic of Christmas because of a special train ride.
And, of course, the classic Miracle on 34th Street, where the girl, her mother, and all of NYC don't believe in Santa Claus, until they get their Christmas miracles.

Right now my daughter does believe in Santa, and watching Elf was certainly not enough to break that spell. She's pretty resistant to it, in fact. She was the one who told us that Santa exists, not vice versa. And last year when we tried to tell her leprechauns don't really go around leaving pots of gold in her school playground, and that it was really the teacher, she refused to believe us. She was adamant that we were wrong about this. I think if I tried to tell her Santa wasn't real and we ate the cookies, she'd argue us down about it. Her belief in Santa includes space for the idea that some children don't believe in Santa, and that the guys in the mall in the red suits aren't really Santa, and yet Santa can still be real. Eventually she'll be told by some friend in a convincing enough way that she'll stop believing, I assume, or she'll ask me outright and I'll tell her the truth. Until then, her world is magical. And that means sometimes putting up with leprechauns, I suppose.

There's a lot of debate about whether telling children the Santa myth is the right or wrong thing to do. I've had some good debates about it in various circles. I really believe there's good and bad both ways, and that no parent should be judged on their decision about this. We went back and forth about it ourselves, so I have a hard time justifying either perspective completely. Meanwhile, our child made the decision for us, and as long as she wants to believe in Santa, I'm content to let her.

Interestingly, and tangentially here, I've often said (and read other people who've also said the same for them), that I stopped believing in God when I stopped believing in Santa. (I consider myself an agnostic, now, but I went through an atheist period.) Right now, my daughter is also a firm believer in God. That may change, or it may not. I'm not trying to change it, and am okay with wherever her belief goes, outside of fundamentalism. When we responded to her about her stance of, "I'm standing up for God," saying, "Well, sometimes we say we're 'standing on the side of love,'" she firmly responded, "It's the same thing, Mom. It's the same thing." And, after all, who can argue with that?

Freedom of press, speech, and religion

2010-10-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Juan Williams was fired from NPR this week because of comments he made on Fox News, where he’s a regular commentator. His comments included the statement that he gets nervous when he’s on a plane with people who identify first and foremost as Muslim, as evident from garb.

I realized I have a particular perspective on this that might be different, and so is worth sharing. And I expect it is probably an unpopular opinion, as well.

In this country we have a lot of freedoms, among them freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. Sometimes these freedoms come into conflict. And sometimes we voluntarily choose roles that curtail these freedoms. We’re free to not choose those roles and retain the full exercise of our freedoms, and usually we know in taking up these mantles that we are thereby giving up certain freedoms.

As a minister, I’m caught up by the freedom of religion that also requires churches, as non-profit agencies, to keep the government free from their influence. What this means is that the church is not to take any partisan position, not involve itself in campaigning for a partisan political candidate in any way, and not urge its members to vote for a specific partisan candidate. The way I interpret this, although some differ, is that as a representative of the church--the “face of the church” in many ways--I, too, cannot publicly take any position of endorsing a candidate or writing a letter to the editor in which I imply that one candidate is a horrible choice. I can take stands on issues and even behaviors, but the line is drawn between that and publicly taking a stand for a particular candidate. And, as a public figure, this applies even when I’m off the job. If I’m appearing on the news on TV or if I’m appearing in a quote in the paper, I’m known as a public figure and as a minister, so anything I saw will be perceived to be from the perspective on the church. It’s something you do when you take up a public life--you lose your ability to be just another voice, a private voice, in public forums.

Last week when I found a stack of political bumper stickers in the church for a candidate that I personally think is pretty darn wonderful, I handed that stack of bumper stickers to someone and said, "These need to be taken out of the church. Immediately. Can you see to it?"

Now, I still do have certain rights politically. I can still vote. My personal interpretation of things is to say that I can still have a bumper sticker or a yard sign for a candidate--my house and car are not only still more private than my public voice, but also they’re shared by my husband who retains his political voice. I have been known to even wear a political button when out and about (NEVER in the church), and to attend a political rally. But I don’t speak up publicly (i.e. at the microphone) at political rallies.

Now, back to NPR. NPR journalists, NPR argues, have similar problems to what I face in ministry. Because their job is to uphold an image of fair and impartial reporting, it is a necessary aspect of their job that they, like me, relinquish part of their freedom of speech in taking up this important role in our society. Any speech they make in a public setting with a microphone will be taken as coming from an NPR journalist. NPR journalists, like ministers, know that in taking up this public role of journalism they are bound by its code of ethics which requires them to be publicly neutral in order for NPR to have a public appearance of fair and unbiased journalism. Because of this, they cannot attend any political rally, something that made headlines recently when they decided that the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally counted as a political rally, and therefore their journalists who were not covering the event could not attend.

Essentially, NPR's Ombudsman argued in the wake of the firing, the problem was not so much Juan Williams' recent comments, but that a role as a regular pundit on Fox News was incompatible with the role of an NPR journalist. NPR's Code of Ethics says this in the section on outside speaking engagements:

8. NPR journalists may not speak to groups where the appearance might put in question NPR's impartiality. Such instances include situations where the employee's appearance may appear to endorse the agenda of a group or organization. This would include participation in some political debates and forums where the sponsoring group(s) or other participants are identified with a particular perspective on an issue or issues and NPR journalist's participation might put into question NPR's impartiality.

9. NPR journalists must get permission from the Senior Vice President for News, or their designee, to appear on TV or other media. Requests should be submitted in writing to the employee's immediate supervisor and copied to mediarelations@npr.org . Approval will not be unreasonably denied if the proposed work will not discredit NPR, conflict with NPR's interests, create a conflict of interest for the employee or interfere with the employee's ability to perform NPR duties. The Senior Vice President or designee must respond within seven days of receiving a request. It is not necessary to get permission in each instance when the employee is a regular participant on an approved show. Permission for such appearances may be revoked if NPR determines such appearances are harmful to the reputation of NPR or the NPR participant.

10. In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.

NPR's Ombudsman says:

It's not about race. It's also not about free speech, as some have charged. Nor is it about an alleged attempt by NPR to stifle conservative views. NPR offers a broad range of viewpoints on its radio shows and web site.

Instead, this latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR's values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.

Some have argued that this is an archaic view of journalism. Arianna Huffington has said that this view of journalism is both archaic and untenable and that what's needed is not objectivity but transparency. There's an argument for that--we know that journalists all have their biases, so why not let them show clearly so that we know what they are? Currently, however, we're seeing the results of that on the cable news networks, where prime time is taken up not by news reporting but by pundits expressing opinion rather than fact. I think we need more news sources like NPR and fewer like Fox News or even MSNBC. If maintaining this level of journalistic integrity requires their reporters to give up certain public freedoms, I think NPR has the right to expect this of their reporters. And in talking about rights, NPR has the right to fire a reporter for violating the terms of his employment and breaking the code of ethics.

Perhaps this should change, and ministers should have the right to endorse politicians from the free pulpit and journalists should have the right to endorse politicians on the free news. I think that point may come in both cases. And of course public has the right to put pressure on NPR if they disagree with the firing of a journalist for something he or she said, or if they want a journalist fired for something he or she said. Boycotts and letter-writing and other forms of persuading companies are time-honored methods of achieving change in corporations. Right now, though, I'm happy to have a news outlet that tries to achieve impartiality.

One More

2010-10-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of other UUs, I got the message about "Spirit Day" and wore purple yesterday, and pink, too, since that was the color being used in my community. Hopefully the national show of spirit helped someone, somewhere. But we know it's not enough. That point is made eloquently by Melissa Pope of Oakland University who said:

While the national press has picked up this issue over the last two months, we have been losing high numbers of LGBT youth to suicide for decades. In recent years, we’ve labeled the cause as bullying. But the root cause goes deeper – it goes to the very core of our society that discriminates against the LGBT community on all levels, including the denial of basic human rights that are supposed to belong to every person.

This response from Pope comes following the news of the suicide of a young Oakland University student, Corey Jackson.

Meanwhile, I'm searching for answers after the death of this one young man that has hit close to home. Sources close to him say that bullying wasn't the issue. And the message of the "It Gets Better" project seems to be that it gets better after high school when you can get out of your smaller circle into the larger, more liberal, more supportive world of college. I know, even as a heterosexual person, that it got better for me--high school was pretty miserable for a nerdy, awkward teenager, and once I got to a world where my intelligence was more appreciated and there were lots of other nerds, well, it got better. For lots of lgbt youth, they get off to college and find a world with a social circle and a support circle that they can fit into for the first time, and it does, indeed, get better.

Corey's death and other deaths of young college men belie this "It Gets Better" argument as a cure-all. For some people, it did get better. For some, like Corey or Raymond Chase or Tyler Clementi, apparently it did not. And I'm sure the support in Rochester/Detroit or Providence or New Brunswick could be stronger, but none of these are rural, isolated, or particularly conservative--Michigan, Rhode Island and New Jersey are all states that are blue or swing states. There are resources and support networks in all these areas. I'm sure all the campuses have support networks and probably offices dedicated to supporting lgbt students.

It wasn't enough for these young men.
Everything we're doing--it's not enough.

We have to change hearts and minds of those who are sending out the message that gay people are less than human, are sinners and damned, are not normal and natural.

After Zach Harrington's death, I watched the footage of the Norman, Oklahoma City Council meeting that he had attended on September 28th which debated whether to pass a measure proclaiming a lgbt heritage month for October in Norman. That is, I watched approximately half of the three-hour debate. That was enough. That was enough in a city council format, wherein each resident can say their few minutes of their point of view, and there's not rebuttal or correction or debate with each perspective unless the next person who gets up says something to refute the previous statement. I heard some really good people get up--one doctor, one minister, many other residents--and say some really positive, heart-filled things in favor of the measure. And I also heard lies after lies and stereotypes after stereotypes, and I heard slippery slopes and special privileges and all sorts of logical fallacies. The worst one comes at 1:42 into the video--this is the point where I started to just feel sick to my stomach. The speaker pretends that he hasn't made up his mind, asking how many people have reported to the police that they've been harassed by the police. Without having much time to respond, a member of the human rights council says that they have been gathering instances and hearing stories on this sort of thing at every single meeting, and that most of them go unreported, and the city council chair says that she does have the number of hate crimes reported in the city (6 in the last year). The speaker then comes to what he clearly always intended to say, which is that he's a minister in the city and that "78% of them carry sexually transmitted diseases and die from it" and that he "loves them enough" to "teach them that that's a lifestyle that's destructive to them."

Over and over the real opposition to homosexuality came out: religious beliefs. It always really comes down to that. As a country, I don't think we can, through the governement, be about the process of changing religious beliefs--I absolutely believe in freedom of religion from government involvement. But as a a minister, and as a human being, I believe that we, people of a healing and loving faith, absolutely have to be about the work of changing these beliefs. As Sophia Lyon Fahs said, "It matters what you believe." And the truth is, some religious beliefs kill. I don't believe in supporting or upholding religious beliefs that lead people to terrorism--I believe in changing those beliefs. These beliefs may not have the effect of causing their believers bomb buildings, but these beliefs are killing these young men, one at a time.

A year ago, Bishop John Shelby Spong, in a manifesto essentially declaring victory against a theology he now saw as irrelevant said:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured."

Spong believed:

The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us.

I had some skepticism at the time. Now, much as I like him, I think he was flat-out wrong. The battle isn't won, and we don't need to stop debating this theology in the public arena, we need to do it more. We have to do it more.

Everything we're doing--it's not enough.
We need to do more.

It Gets Better/Coming Out Day 2010/Everything Possible

2010-10-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day, a holiday started over twenty years ago to mark a celebration for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth and adults who were coming out of the closet and sharing the fact that they’re gay. This year, the weeks leading up to Coming Out Day have been horrendous and sad as we’ve heard news after news of young gay people committing suicide because of despair in the aftermath of bullying or the accumulation of messages of hate they’ve received in their short lifetimes. Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Zach Harrington, and others before them and probably some other recent ones as well—a string of deaths of young boys who thought they had nothing left to live for.

It should go without sayingthat we do think their lives are meaningful and important, and cherished, and that whatever God there is or isn’t is a God of love. We think that people are born gay, and it’s not a sin, but a natural difference in a segment of humanity’s glorious diversity.

It should go without saying, but if we go without saying it, those needing to hear this life-saving message of our faith, literally life-saving message, won’t hear it. It can’t go without saying at a time when so many aren’t hearing it, and are desperate with the need to know that they are loved, and that we consider them whole and good.

So at this time, I wanted to say this, now, to all of our children, and to their parents and loved ones, that we love you, and that whoever you grow up to be, whether you decide that you’re a girl who loves girls or a girl who loves boys, or a boy who loves girls or a boy who loves boys, and whether you decide that you are the girl or boy we think you are now, or if you decide that no, I’m not a girl, I’m a boy, or I’m not a boy, I’m a girl, that we love you, and we will keep loving you and we think you’re wonderful the way you are, and we want you to be happy.

One of the best ways I know to say this message is with Fred Small’s wonderful lullaby that says you can be anybody you want to be. So if you're a parent, grab your child and cuddle up, and if you don't have someone who you can cuddle up with nearby, let this song be the arms of a loving community around you.

Adapted from homily given in worship 10/10/10 at the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty.

An Open Letter to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox

2010-09-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Attorney General Mike Cox,

As a minister, a long-time Michigan resident, and also a University of Michigan alumna, I write to you imploring you to fire Andrew Shirvell for conduct unbecoming a State of Michigan employee. Every Michigan employee has the right to their own political opinion and freedom of speech, and those must be protected, but Andrew Shirvell’s behavior has undoubtedly gone beyond mere political opinion and into the realm of hate speech, cyber bullying, and cyber stalking in his actions regarding the University of Michigan student body president. As a state employee, he has lost the public’s confidence that he can perform his duties without bias. Andrew Shirvell’s behavior is deeply troubling and unethical, and that he considers it within the normal realm of political discourse makes it all the more troubling. Thank you for already recognizing his immaturity and lack of wisdom. I hope you will take this matter further in the days to come, and urge you to consider the case that his conduct has crossed the line for unbecoming our great state which needs no further embarrassments like Andrew Shirvell’s behavior dragging it down.

Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum
Minister
Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty
Clarklake, MI
http://www.libertyuu.org

Wedding Tips - Part 2

2010-09-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

(See here for part 1.)

Clergy know that in many cases we're just one more prop in the elaborate affair that is your wedding. The problem is, we went to theological school for three to five years to learn our profession, and for us a wedding service is a religious ritual. And it's demeaning to know you're being picked not because of your professionalism but because you have a nice building or because you have the right "look" for the wedding day or will look good in the pictures. We know you're shopping around based on location and whether or not you like us, but try to hide that a little, please. Basically, we want to be treated like professionals, and nowhere do we get treated less professionally, sometimes, than weddings. And don't tell us something like, "Well, we want to be married by a priest, but we can't because it's our second marriage, so we had to come to you, but we'll get this blessed by a priest afterward." Great--you've just told me that (a) I'm your second choice, (b) you don't really take either me or my religion seriously, so you'll have to get a secondary ritual done. And, yes, I've heard this one--more than once.

I know I'm taking something of a negative tone in these posts, and please take it with a bit of humor. Most of the time we're delighted to help you achieve the wedding of your dreams. But we're people too, and we get disgruntled and crotchety, and in writing this down I'm letting you see the dark side of the clergy--that we do grumble about some of the things that happen, we do exchange wedding horror stories, and we do have our pet peeves--mine are the aisle runners and the photographers. Here's some others that I've either experienced or heard about:

1. Wedding Planners - I haven't worked with these much, but I know from colleagues who have that there can sometimes be a clash of wills here. We're used to running things our way, and wedding planners are used to running things their way. It can throw us off our game to have an insistent wedding planner in the mix.

2. Ring Pillows - Put fake rings on them, folks. Stopping to untie tough knots that kept little ones from losing the rings can be pretty annoying. So can chasing a wayward ring bearer down the aisle (okay, I've never heard of that happening--but I bet it has!).

3. Ring Bearers and Flower Girls - Having little children in the service can be charming and adorable. It can also be your worst nightmare. Pick older children, and only have children if you're okay with something going wrong, because most of the time, no matter how adorable and obedient you think these children are, something will, indeed, go wrong. Have the children walk down the aisle, and then go from the front to sit with a trusted adult. Be prepared to go on with the show without them if they refuse to go down the aisle. And, this is important, have that adult they're sitting with be someone who is prepared to walk them out of the wedding area to somewhere else, missing the ceremony if necessary. You can even hire someone to be this person. It would be a great idea.

4. The Bridezilla - We've seen the stereotype enough to know what I'm talking about. Yes, it is your wedding day. But we are not all here to serve you. People are there because they're professionals performing a job, in which case they don't need you to be acting like you think you're a princess, or they're there because they care about you, in which case they're volunteers and friends and family, and you need to treat them with care and respect.

5. Groomzillas - Same goes for you, guys.

6. Drunkenness - All of us who have performed weddings have seen or heard of stories where somebody was drunk at the wedding and ruined the show. Keep your bridesmaids and groomsmen and bridesmen and groomsmaids sober at the rehearsal, the night before the wedding, and at the wedding. I won't perform a wedding if the couple themselves has been drinking on their wedding day, and I'll kick drunken attendants out of the show. There's nothing worse, folks, than being drunk or hung over on your wedding day. Why do you want to be miserable on the big day? And if you do need to get drunk before your wedding, you should be thinking twice about getting married to begin with.

7. Tardiness & Goofing Around - I know you think you're all cool and funny when you show up late for the rehearsal and then goof off the whole time. This is only my time you're wasting, after all. But ministers have families and partners and social lives, and we like to be able to do something else with our Fridays and Saturdays. So be there on time, and focus in and pay attention, and let us get through the rehearsal. If the rehearsal takes more than an hour, it's because you weren't doing your job, and you were late and/or goofing off. I know how to run a rehearsal, and it can definitely take less than an hour. Wedding couples, think twice about who you're having be these attendants. If you can get by with fewer, do so--a large wedding party makes for a lot more hassle. I wish you would pick them based on their capability of doing the job they're being asked to do, rather than your affection for them, but I know that won't be the case. But let them know that this show will go on without them, if they can't be there. Showing up five minutes after the wedding was supposed to begin is not acceptable behavior from one who is supposedly in this service because they care so much about you.

8. Something Goes Wrong - Always, always, something will go wrong. Someday I'll tell you about my wedding day, if you haven't heard the story before. It doesn't always go that wrong, but something will happen. If you're being wound up about it being your perfect princess day where everything is perfect-perfect, this will destroy your day. Don't let that happen. Prepare yourself for the fact that something will go wrong, and when it does, laugh it off and roll with it. It'll be the great story you tell later, whether it's a ripped dress or a toppled cake. As clergy, we believe that a wedding isn't about the cake or the dress, but about the promises and vows. The more you can remember that and believe that, the better your day will feel when the flowers turn up wilted or the pianist gets lost on the way there.

These are just pet peeves, of course, and they're annoying. But what's truly saddening at weddings is situations that come out between family members. And nowhere will the worst of your family dynamics come out more, unless it's at funerals. It's heartbreaking to see the negative relationship between siblings get played out by a sibling deliberately sabotaging a wedding, or a parent showing the broken relationship with their child through deliberate snubbing or even lack of attention to the wedding ceremony. There's nothing much I can do in working through the rehearsal and wedding to help you mend these relationships, and sometimes relationships are so broken they can't be mended, and for good reasons. But do what you can before the wedding, and don't expect all those negative dynamics to go away just because it's your special day--if anything, they'll get more intense. Weddings can bring out the worst in us all.

And now you've seen the ways in which weddings can bring out the worst in clergy--at least in this one, and make me peevish and ornery. But on the day of your rehearsal, I'll be there to protect your interests--to do what you've asked me to, even in the face of wedding planners, mothers and fathers, and photographers, siblings and florists, all of whom think it should go the way they do it or dreamed of it. I'm there to make it your day, not theirs. And on the day of the wedding, I'm there to help you put all of the annoying details aside and focus in on who you are as a couple and what this ceremony you're going through is about. Because it's not about flowers and music and rings and dresses and hair and nails and food. It's about a lasting commitment between two people and their pledges and promises for what kind of future they want to create between them. And I'm here for that.

To that end, one last piece of advice. On your wedding day, I don't want you running around and dealing with the last-minute details and the things that are going wrong. I want you to be able to be in the moment, thinking about what this is all about. So find someone to handle those things that will go wrong, because they will--someone not in the wedding party, not a family member, but someone who is organized and who knows all your details and wishes. If you have a wedding coordinator, that's actually great, even though I might clash with them, but if you don't, find someone to stand in in this role. I want you to enjoy the wedding.

Wedding Tips

2010-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

I only perform a handful of weddings per year, but I've been performing them for over ten years, so that's plenty of time to see some of the best and worst examples of wedding behavior. And every year lately I've been thinking of writing up this list of dos and don'ts, but I shy away lest a particular couple think it's all about them. Trust me, folks, it's not. Everything on here has been done by multiple people, and sometimes it's a colleague who mentioned the particular issue I'm listing.

1. Entitlement & Importance - Your wedding is important... to you. For your clergy person it's just another wedding, to some degree. And for some clergy people who are barred from legal marriage due to lack of same-sex marriage in most states, it can be a bit of a thorn in the side that couples can have a sense of entitlement about their marriage without looking at the bigger societal picture.

2. Religion - Presumably you've come to a clergy person rather than a Justice of the Peace because you want a religious wedding. Therefore, it would make sense if you cared a little about the religion of the person who is performing your wedding. Learn about our faith tradition. If you're at odds with it, you're coming to the wrong person to perform your wedding.

3. Taste - Just because you think it would be cool to get married in the nude or dance in the aisles or include your dog or jump out of an airplane doesn't mean that your clergy person is up for this. We may have different attitudes of what is in good taste, so check with your clergy person ahead of time if you're planning anything unusual. You may need to find someone else, so give yourself plenty of time with this.

4. Thoughtfulness - Your clergy person most likely thinks that the most important part of a wedding is the wedding service itself; it's what makes you truly married, not the big party that follows. Humor us in this, and show some thoughtfulness about your wedding service. Think ahead about what your wedding means to you and what you want it to be like.

Those are some over-arching ideas and issues. Now into the nitty-gritty:

1. Aisle Runners - Personally, I hate these things. I hate what they symbolize, which as far as I can tell is about the purity and/or nobility of the bride. That's why the bride walks on the aisle runner and not the groom. These things are tripping hazards, and they often are difficult to roll out correctly. The nature of them is that you only want to do it once, so it can't really be rehearsed. They interrupt the flow, and are quickly dirty and torn. Enough said.

2. Flowers - Personally, I'm allergic to them. That's the only reason they're on here. But avoid putting them under everybody's noses. Lots of people have allergies.

3. Music - I'm not a musician, first of all, so don't come to me with questions about what you should choose. If you're doing recorded music, there are lots of nice CDs out there with wedding music choices on them. Go to Amazon and type in "Wedding Music." Just don't wait for the last day. Oh, but don't plan to play it off your iPod. Who is working your iPod on the wedding day? Is it compatible with the church's sound system? Just a plain CD will work nicely, thank you. And in my church, you're responsible for your music. If it's recorded music, you need someone assigned to hit "play" and "stop." I can't do it, and you can't do it--we're already up front. When you hire me and rent the building, you get me and the building. You don't get extra staff people to push buttons. Lastly on music, unless you're working with professional musicians who do weddings all the time, have your musicians or recorded music there at the rehearsal. Seriously. It needs to be rehearsed.

4. Photographers - No where in weddings do ministers have more issues than with photographers, in my experience and opinion. Here's the situation: Ministers think they're running the show. Photographers think they're running the show. Sometimes we can't both be right. So here's who is: Ministers. We believe that the ceremony is about the ritual in the present. Photographers think it's about how it will look later in pictures. This can be the difference between thinking that something is a theater or is a movie set. In a theater, the most important thing is the audience's enjoyment. Photographers don't go walking on the stage to get the close-up. On a movie-set, the most important thing is the perfect picture. Getting right in front of the actor may be necessary. Here's why the ministers are right: If it's our church, it's our decision, our rules. If we say no flash photography, that means no flash photography. If we say no moving up and down the aisle and in and out the aisle during the ceremony, that means don't do it. Please convey your minister's rules to your photographer and make sure that he or she is prepared to adhere to the policy.

5. License - I'm not running city hall, so it's not my job to tell you how, when, or where to get your license. I just sign it, stamp it, and put it in the mail. It would be nice if I didn't have to stamp it because you'd done that, however.

That's enough for Part 1. Coming up in Part 2: late, drunk, and unruly wedding parties; screaming and kicking little children; bridezillas; and more!

Qur'an Burning Hits Home

2010-09-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the Florida pastor decided not to burn a Qur'an last Saturday, but somebody in East Lansing did. While the local Muslim group was out participating in peaceful interfaith work in the community, somebody left a burned copy of the holy text on their property. Some are calling it free speech, others a hate crime. Yes, it is symbolic action. But this Qur'an wasn't just burned on a church's property and left there, it was dumped on the doorstep of the mosque.

I would protect your right to burn a Qur'an or the flag or the Bible or any other heavily symbolic item on your own property, as long as the burning is done within proper guidelines for fires. Of course, I wouldn't defend your choice as a good one.

However, that doesn't give someone the right to bring that hateful symbol they've created and shove it in the face of a community that it means a lot to. As the article linked to above rightly points out, you can't paint a swastika on the walls of the synogogue, you can't burn a cross in the yard of a black church, and, no, you can't leave a burned Qur'an on the steps of the mosque. Even in a free society your free speech ends where it meets up with other people's property and safety rights.

Beyond all this, however, I'm saddened and disgusted that something like this happened so close to home.

Islam, Fear, and Lies

2010-09-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

I recently was in a discussion about Islam where a person said something like, "I had heard that the terrorists were just extremists, and the rest of Islam is peaceful, but then I got some e-mails that said that the goal of Islam is world domination, and that Muslims are allowed to lie about their faith if it serves the goal of spreading Islam, so how can you know what the truth is?"

I was a bit stunned into silence. And the conversation moved on rather quickly, and before I gathered my thoughts, the moment was lost. I'm still planning to go back to this person and see if we can have a longer conversation on Islam, one-on-one, or bring a presentation on Islam to this group that was meeting, but in the meantime, I'm, well, blogging...

I actually hadn't heard this particular myth that Islam was focused on world domination and that Muslims would lie to achieve this, so couldn't be trusted. So I did a web search on "Islam world domination lie" and the first upteen sites that came up were like this one, which screams the headline: "Islam Permits Lying to Deceive Unbelievers and Bring World Domination!"

What I'm finding is that these sorts of websites are very similar to, well, the "New Atheists." Follow me for a moment here...

My major issue with the group of authors who call themselves the "New Atheists" is that they reject any sort of liberal religion as valid. They point to the most extreme examples of religion, particularly Christianity, and say that this is what the scriptures literally says to do. Therefore your extremists in Christianity are the real Christians, and your liberal Christians aren't really Christian. Based on this logic, we can then condemn all Christianity as violent.

This view of Islam says, well, this is what the Qur'an literally says and if a group is interpreting, say, jihad as inner struggle, then they're not really following the Qur'an and not really Muslims and therefore all Islam is violent.

Folks, liberal religion exists in Islam, and it exists in Christianity. And, yes, there are violent extremists in both. There are people bent on world domination in both, and people who will lie to achieve this in both.

And the best way to fight extremism is not to fight the liberals of that faith, label them as equivalent to the extremists, and subject them to persecution.

Here's an analogy to help out: Terrorists are to peaceful Muslims like Imam Rauf as that pastor in Gainesville is to Jim Wallis.

Mosque at Ground Zero, Part 2

2010-08-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I argued that it is arguably a mosque that is being proposed by Park 51 to be built on Park Ave near "Ground Zero," although it is not only or even primarily a mosque. It is not, I argued, at "Ground Zero"--the real site of this community center (potentially including a mosque) is outside of the area most Americans would consider to be "Ground Zero." And, finally, the Cordoba Initiative should definitely have the right to build there.

However, I always argue that just because someone has the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing for them to do. So yes, the Cordoba Initiative should have the right to build a mosque anywhere that it's not in violation of local zoning--any place any other house of worship could be built. But it is the right thing for them to do, or is it, as many have been arguing, insensitive? After all, even the president, after saying they had the right to build it, came back and said, "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there."

Here's the basic argument, as put forth by Pamela Geller, author of the blog "Atlas Shrugs" and a major player in all of this:

Ground Zero is a war memorial, Ground Zero is a burial ground. We are asking for sensitivity…It is unconscionable to build a shrine to the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks at Ground Zero, right there. We are asking the imam Rauf and Daisy Khan to be sensitive. For mutual respect and mutual understanding that is demanded of us every day.

If it was a shrine to "the very ideology that inspired the jihadist attacks," I would, indeed, think it was insensitive. What is the ideology of the Cordoba Initiative?

The programs at Cordoba Initiative (CI) are designed to cultivate multi-cultural and multi-faith understanding across minds and borders. In the ten years since our founding, the necessity to strengthen the bridge between Islam and the West continues to prevail. Cordoba Initiative seeks to actively promote engagement through a myriad of programs, by reinforcing similarities and addressing differences.

The imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has been attacked as extremist and supporting terrorism is in fact a peaceful Sufi who has worked in interfaith circles for years, and, with Unitarian Universalism's own Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz, co-authored "The End of Barbarism? The Phenomenon of Torture and the Search for the Common Good." In it they write that there are two great religious commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor, and:

...the core of Islamic law, the Sharia, is built on these two fundamental commandments, with the sole difference that “to honor God and neighbor,” rather than “to love God and neighbor," more accurately captures the nuances of these commandments in Islamic legal language... Even today in many parts of the non-Western world, to deprive someone of his dignity and honor, to make him “lose face,” is to make him suffer a fate worse than death.

There is, then, a code of behavior that is based on eternal ethical principles common to the Abrahamic faith traditions, namely, that if we would love and honor the Holy, we must treat our fellow human beings with basic respect. This principle in turn is fundamental to any notion of the “common good.” For the common good presumes that human beings share certain needs and values that transcend religious, racial or political differences.

The argument that building Park 51 close to the World Trade Center site is insensitive rests on the equation of this peaceful Sufi group with a history of both interfaith work and active work against terrorism and barbarism with the terrorists responsible for the attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is an equation that is deeply insensitive itself in that it denies the differences that exist in Islam, ignores that Sufi Muslims are themselves often persecuted and targeted by those same extremist groups, and ignores that whereas the terrorists were not, these peaceful Muslims are Americans who have been living, working, and worshiping in New York City for decades--it is not a case of outsiders moving in and erecting a monument to something foreign, it is Americans building a house of peace in their own neighborhood. It ignores that Muslims died on September 11th, too. It ignores that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his congregation went and distributed water to the rescue workers after the September 11th attacks. It ignores that the imam has worked with our government to understand Islam and to keep Muslim American groups terrorist-free. It ignores that these Muslims have been victims of religious intolerance within their own country--America--and yet still care enough about our freedoms and our beliefs to want to create a center to help us explore our own stereotypes and learn to work more peacefully with them.

One of the saddest after-effects of September 11th has been the Islamophobia that has been demonstrated in our country, a country founded on principles of religious freedom. I understand that a lot of Americans think that the building of this cultural center designed to create peace and understanding is "insensitive." I also understand that there is a huge amount of ignorance about and prejudice against Islam in this country. I've witnessed it both through knowing people who shared these prejudices and through hearing the stories of my Muslim friends. The fact that the majority of Americans don't want this project to go forward near Ground Zero doesn't mean that they're right or that the creators of it are insensitive. What it means is that there is a lot more education that needs to be done in this country about what our Muslim neighbors believe. And it means that the Park 51 initiative is desperately needed.

"Mosque" at "Ground Zero"

2010-08-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

I've been in ministry nine years this August. This means I started my ministry in August 2001, and was about a month in when the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened. Like many people, I remember what I was doing and where I was when I heard the news--a member of the congregation called me. Immediately, my question was about how to minister to my congregation and community in this situation. I've talked with other clergy who began their ministries when I did, and they have a similar response--our ministries were shaped immediately, and perhaps permanently, by September 11th. Immediately, September 11th, 2001 became about our religious response, both pastoral and prophetic. The first response was about the pastoral--a vigil held at the church for a congregation worried about friends and loved ones and the possibility of future attacks on the city we were in, home of major oil companies and the George Bush Airport. I remember the next event in my schedule, I think the very next day, was a meeting with my clergy cluster, the other Unitarian Universalist ministers in the city, and we all talked about what we would be doing the following Sunday, and shared resources. I'm still grateful for the advice I received that day from my more experienced colleagues whom I had barely met.

Very quickly, the news came out that these attacks were the work of As-Qaeda, and the prophetic part of my ministry emerged. We were contacted by a local Sufi group who had a visiting leader, and they asked to come and do a presentation on Islam at our church. We had them come for an evening presentation and also a Sunday morning presentation. The local paper did a very large article on the event, which was a plus. As the country's attitudes toward Muslims in America grew increasingly hostile, and sometimes violent, it became clear to me that a very important part of the religious purpose of Unitarian Universalists right then needed to be in response to this, building interfaith dialogue and cooperation.

Here we are, nine years later, and Islam and the attacks of September 11th, 2001 are back again in our news, showing that this need for interfaith dialogue and cooperation, as various people weigh in on the issue of "the Mosque at Ground Zero."

Let's get some of the misconceptions cleaned up first:

Is it a mosque? Those who are against it are quick to call it a mosque. Those on the other side respond that it's a community center. Which is it? Well, I think it's primarily a community center, but the site for Park51 does say future plans include:

a mosque, intended to be run separately from Park51 but open to and accessible to all members, visitors and our New York community
a September 11th memorial and quiet contemplation space, open to all

We need to stop pretending, on the left, that this doesn't include a mosque, when its own site clearly says that it does. On the right, they need to admit that the mosque is not the primary function of the Park51 plan.

Is it at "Ground Zero"? No. It's really not. The Park51 center would not be on the footprint of the World Trade Center. It's on Park Place, one or two blocks north, depending on how you count. This map may prove helpful:

View Larger Map

Also, take a look at this map, which shows where the buildings of the World Trade Center were.

Those who argue against Park51's placement need to explain the following, in order for their stance not to be hypocritical, anti-Muslim, or just plain silly:

Do you believe that no religion should have a house of worship at "Ground Zero," or are you just restricting Muslims from this wide geographic area? If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you need to explain how this is consistent with a land of equality and religious freedom. There's a Catholic Church even closer at 22 Barclay St. Of course, it's possible to believe that they should be allowed to have a mosque there but that the planners should just chose respectfully not to--similar to my arguing that we have the right to draw Mohammed, but I choose not to, for example.
What span of land do you consider "Ground Zero"? If you think this stretch Park Place is included in "Ground Zero," what does "Ground Zero" include? If you just realized that your definition doesn't include the Park51 location, then your apology is humbly accepted.
If you are restricting all religious groups from this large area of commercial land in lower Manhattan because this is hallowed ground in some way, by what reasoning do we restrict religious groups from creating houses of worship while still allowing everything from strip clubs to a "hookah lounge" in the same radius? What should this hallowed land include? Understanding that this is a huge piece of commercial land in the middle of New York City, what would you put there? And how do we allow business but restrict it to only that which is palatable to all the victims' families?

If I were to decide what was placed at the site of the former World Trade Centers, what would I put there? I would include a memorial which would be carefully designed and thought out and probably immediately hated by much of the population. And I would include some sort of center for peace and religious cooperation and understanding. Oh, wait, that's what Park51 is planning on doing!

Next post: I'll address this argument that putting a mosque within a few blocks of "Ground Zero" is distasteful and offensive to the victims' families and argue for what is most needed.