RevCyn

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 supermarke...

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 wa...

After reading the blog posts highlighted on " The Interdependent Web " and some of their comments, I've been thinking about whether or not I think getting arrested while doing public protest is always, sometimes, or never helpful/effective, and whether or not this particular instance of UUs getting arrested in Arizona was meaningful and helpful or not.  Obviously, an extreme being very seldom the right answer, I'm going to go with "sometimes" here, but then the second question needs further addressing. Lest you think that as a radical lefty UU, I am always lock-step with the "party line," let me give an instance of what I think was not the most helpful or effective use of being locked up for the cause.  While I support Jay Carmona personally, and I support the cause of ENDA strongly enough that I've gone to Washington D.C. to lobby on that issue, something I've only done on this one occasion, the sit-in in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's...

This minister skipped the morning plenary, but has learned that the following things happened: We passed the Statement of Conscience on Peacekeeping. We failed to choose a new Study/Action Issue. Apparently even though there was a clear favorite emerging with the understanding that immigration is the big issue right now, and the anti-slavery group throwing their support to it, no study/action issue got a clear majority, so there will be a run-off election at the next plenary session. The prediction is that immigration will sweep the run-off. The reason I did not make it to plenary today was because I was in a series of back-to-back meetings. One of those was for UU Ministers Association chapter leaders. The exciting thing I learned there was that the new UUMA webpage creates profiles for individuals and groups (chapters are the first groups set up, but later there can be groups for all sorts of things, like study groups). Since I’ve been the webpage administrator, I’ll be invol...

I was experiencing writer's block, so I went over to my livejournal account and looked at their writing starters for writer's block. One, from about a week ago, caught my eye: "When it comes to making a difference , some people donate money and others volunteer their time. What cause gets your time or money?" Apparently, October 25 was "Make a Difference Day." Well, I'm five days late to write on this, but I'll give it a go. It's not surprising that our church and related organizations get the largest percentage of my time and my money. My largest charitable contribution is to our church, and I've only just started to increase my other charitable giving. Some of that is to denominational organizations I support: the UUA itself, Chalice Lighters , Meadville Lombard Theological School and Starr King School for the Ministry , and the UUSC . Sometimes I only give to these in little ways, like the " Guest at Your Table " effort that we...