RevCyn

This week's Time Magazine cover of a woman breast-feeding her 3-year-old son sure has a lot of people talking.  My own feelings about the Time cover are conflicted.  On one hand, I think Time is making an important point, and the controversy surrounding it is ridiculous.  I vigorously defend the following ideas: Breast-feeding is normal and healthy.   Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for toddlers, including 3-year-olds like this one. Breast-feeding is normal and healthy for boys, not just girls! It is okay and normal to be a sexy woman and also breast-feed your child.  Women can be both mothers and sexual beings at the same time. There is nothing wrong with breast-feeding standing up, either! This cover does not show anything inherently sexual or abnormal or unhealthy.  The fact that so many people have looked at this cover and had an immediate negative reaction is about the ways we have hypersexualized women in this society, and see br...

When I was in seminary at Meadville Lombard Theological School , we were often focused on one big hurdle that UU ministers have to get over: the MFC visit.  The MFC, or Ministerial Fellowship Committee, is a committee that grants UU ministers "Fellowship," which gives us the right to search for a church through the UUA's systems, access to UUA grants, and is a major gate to keep out people the MFC believes are not suited to the UU ministry.  It's a major credential on the path to becoming a UU minister, and without it you're unlikely to be able to be a UU minister.  It puts you in the group, basically.  When I went through it, this is how it went: The MFC asked for all sorts of paperwork, which I shall not go into, and all sorts of steps you go through before you get there, and then you had your interview, in which the committee members each asked you a question.  The question could be a single question or a series of questions along a particular line, or a ques...