RevCyn

When I came to Jackson, MI in 2004, it took me a while to realize how unsupported the LGBTQ community felt here. During my seminary years, all my LGBTQ friends and colleagues were entirely out of the closet, and as someone with cis-gender and heterosexual privilege, I had basically forgotten that the closet could still exist. But here in Jackson, I found, the closet was still deep and wide. People I knew through church or PFLAG or social justice work might be out in one context and still in with family, work, or other friends. So I learned this again, and said it many times to people in one context or another that Jackson was not as progressive with LGBTQ rights as many other locations.  I said it, and I knew it, but I hadn't felt it. In Michigan we have no state-wide protections for LGBTQ people. In fact, when our state's civil rights legislation, the Elliott-Larsen Act was passed in 1976, LGBTQ protection was specifically left out because of fear that adding LGBTQ protecti...

At our the preceding Ministry Days preceding the UU General Assembly, ableist language was used in worship to the extent that UUMA Board Member Josh Pawelek issued this response: Clearly there is a problem with ableism in our public presentation. Public statements, music, stories and metaphors that perpetuate ableism have been hurtful to colleagues. As with any oppression, this ableism likely runs deeper than our public presentation. I remain grateful to all those who are willing to call it to our attention, and I am deeply sorry that such calling is still necessary. ( The full response is here .) The most prominent example of ableist language in our movement, however, is our social justice arm: Standing on the Side of Love .  And before you say, "It's just a metaphor," I invite you to watch this and read this by UU minister Theresa Soto.  The point here is not to convince you that ableist metaphors are a problem.  The point is that we often think, even i...

They died in the high schools, in the cafeterias and the libraries and the classrooms. And we cried, and we wondered. And we blamed gaming and outsiders. And nothing changed. They died in the universities and community colleges, in the classrooms and dorms. And we bawled, and we yelled. And we blamed reporting systems and foreigners. And nothing changed. And they died on the street corners lobbying, on the pavement and sidewalk. And we keened, and we lobbied. And we blamed politics and mental illness. And nothing changed. And they died in the movie theaters and restaurants and clinics, around tables and in cushioned seats. And we sobbed, and we argued. And we blamed gun culture and zealotry. AND NOTHING CHANGED. They died in the elementary schools, in the arms of the teachers. And we wept, and we mourned. And we blamed autism and parenting. AND NOTHING CHANGED. And they died in the churches, the mosques, and the temples, in worship and in song. And we howled, ...

My dear colleague (and formerly my minister) Lynn Ungar has written a thoughtful piece about the Brock Tuner rape case on Patheos.  I appreciate her deep thinking and opportunity to look at the situation differently, but I have to respectfully disagree with her conclusions. First, like Lynn Ungar, I want to see large changes in our prison industrial system.  I believe too many nonviolent offenders are given long sentences and this is to the detriment of our society.  I want to see people getting rehab, not jail time, for drug use.  But there are a few groups of people I'm willing to see get long prison sentences.  And one of those groups is rapists.  There are cases where I feel bad for a criminal who will have the rest of their life affected.  Brock Turner isn't one of them.  I'm not a survivor of rape, but I've lived with the aftermath.  In 1995-6 as a graduate student at the University of Georgia, I lived with two other female studen...

The really neat thing about the new UUA Wordpress Theme is the UUA Services Plugin.  This solves the problem I didn't even really  know I had, and does it very elegantly. Sunday Services Plugin The problem: how to we advertise our Sunday service topics on the website?  And how do we do it such that we don't have to update weekly?  Previously, I had looked at three options.  One was what I ended up with: create posts monthly that list the month's services.  This only has to be updated once per month, and that's the advantage.  The disadvantage is that it doesn't list them individually.  There are other disadvantages, too.  Another option would be to put posts up weekly.  The big disadvantage there is the weekly nature of this for a church with no full-time staff except myself.  Another option would be to create them as "events" with the Events plugin.  This carries with it extraneous information like location as a mandatory ...

Continuing my thoughts about the new UUA Wordpress Theme... Header I've already talked about my preferences with the logo, but there's more to the header than that.  The theme lets you have the logo and title, social media icons, your Sunday service time (or other text), and a small header menu.  The organization of the header area is aesthetically pleasing, and it's well-sized so that it doesn't take up too much of the screen.  Overall: bravo! Footer The footer has four areas.  In one area, the UUA logo will appear, and if you set it to, you can also have the Welcoming Congregation logo and the Green Sanctuary logo.  These balance nicely to form a block if you have all three.  We're not a certified Green Sanctuary church, so my footer has a bit of a hole there.  It'd be nice to include things like the AIM logo, but you have three other areas that can go in. Some other choices that congregations might wish to include are a Standing on the ...

Well, it's been two days since the UUA's Wordpress Theme debuted, and in that time I've learned a LOT about it.  It took me one day of frustration, wherein I finally reached out to Christopher Wulff, who created the UUA Theme, about my problems downloading and installing, and he quickly figured out that my PHP version on my website was too old and that my upload size specified by my php.ini file was too small.  I was able to call my hosting provider who quickly fixed those things, and minutes later the UUA theme was installed and operational on my webpage. It took me about half a day yesterday to get the theme to the point where it all looks nice and proper on my site and many of the new items are functioning nicely.  You can take a look at http://www.liberyuu.org .  What I have NOT done yet is taken all the content they offer and add and change my existing pages.  I've done this on a small handful of key pages, particularly in the "About" section, but overa...