September 2005 Archives

In a previous post, I made the distinction between credentialing and ministry formation. Formation has to do with "spiritual and personal development. It is gaining the skills, personal habits, and awareness necessary to be a reflective practitioner of ministry."

A reflective practitioner is one of the defining characteristics of a professional. To reflect on one's experience is think about one's experience doing worship. providing pastoral care, administrating with a vision, witnessing justice and all the other practices of a minister. It is to think about that experience in the light of one's theological understandings, and one's knowledge of the history of religious movements. It is to think about that experience with understanding about how it is impacting the people of faith community and the larger community as well.

Thus formation that involves becoming a reflective practitioner requires experience in actually doing ministry. In the 1960s, Unitarian Universalists began to experiment with internships as a way to gain some experience before graduation and actually taking up a post as a professional minister. Another immersion in practice is known as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which involves working in a hospital, prison, family court, or other setting where people are in crisis and providing pastoral care under supervision and reflecting on these experiences in a peer group. By the 1970s both CPE and internship were required by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee before a candidate was could apply for an interview. Internship and CPE are designed to help a candidate become a reflective practitioner.

But the experience of actually being a minister is radically different from being a trainee, whether in a clinical setting or in an internship. The expectations that are projected unto a minister and the conflicts that arise in congregations in which the minister is the symbolic center are much more intense than the supervised practice ministries of internships and clinical experiences. The number of ministers who experience crisis and leave the ministry in the first few years has become an area of concern, and that concern is reflected in the greater attention to the period between awarding preliminary fellowship and the granting of final fellowship after three years of successful settlement.

Many of the ideas that we learned in CPE and internship have been extended to some ideas for continuing formation during the first years of professional ministry. We now require mentorship during these critical years, hoping that some of the experience with internship supervision can help continue the process of reflective process as the new minister experiences their initial settlement. Some ministers voluntarily form support groups with colleagues and engage in peer group reflection on the problems that arise in ministry.

I am convinced that continuing education, and continuing reflection with colleagues is a key to ongoing growth in ministry. Formation in ministry does not end with theological school, the certification of preliminary fellowship is just the beginning of becoming a reflective practitioner of a very complex profession.

Another entry to my worship materials workbook, these quotes for on the theme of non-violence.


"Do you know, Fontanes, what astonishes me۬most in the world? The inability of force to۬create anything. In the long run the sword is۬always beaten by the spirit."۬ Napoleon Bonaparte


"That which distinguishes us from all the animals is our capacity to be nonviolent.۬And we fulfill our mission only to the extent that we are nonviolent and no more."۬ M.K. Gandi, "Nonviolence: The Greatest Force"


"Power can guarantee the interests of some, but it can never foster the good of all.۬Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others."۬ Thomas Merton, "Blessed are the Meek"

Unitarian Universalists take stands on issues of the day. This is not new. It is a practice that has deep roots in our faith tradition. We don't take stands on the issues of the day because we have substituted "liberal politics" for "liberal religion" as some would contend. Unitarianism and Universalism were both ethical religions, and Unitarian Universalism is decidedly ethical in its stated principles, and as a preferred orientation of most of its adherents. When Unitarian Universalist congregations are searching for a minister they take a €˜theological orientation poll." This consists of choosing from among a group of possible Unitarian Universalist positions what best describes ones theology. One can choose more than one. In most congregations, Ethical religion and Ethical Christian have been high vote getters. Ethical Christians believe that the ethics taught by Jesus are important to living ones life, while Ethical Religionists do not need to specify which ethical teacher they follow. I suspect a lot of people check both.

We distinguish between personal ethics and social ethics. Personal ethics has to do with how we as individuals conduct our lives in relation to the world, and how we relate to other people. For religious people, personal ethics would involve how the apply the precepts of their religion in the choices that they make in life.

For example, our religion might teach the virtue of generosity. What does that mean in practice? What do we give to others? how much? to whom? and why? What do we expect in return. To we give with conditions? To we give to deserving poor? What does it mean to be generous to a fault?

But most religious communities also have teachings and traditions relative to how we relate to the larger community. If the religion teaches that one must do justice and walk humbly with that which abides, how does a religious community respond to injustice in society. If the religion teaches that it is the peacemakers who are blessed, how does one contribute toward a more peaceful world.

Our considered ethical responses to social injustice, war and the misuse of power by authorities constitutes our social ethics, and Unitarian Universalists have historically been a religious community that understood their responsibility toward the larger community. Some have said this is gift of the Puritans, who labored to bring about a Holy Commonwealth. Whatever the source, we have never been a tradition that cultivated inner peace, and personal virtue, and ignored community.

Some criticize Unitarian Universalists for being too political. If I understand, the criticism is that they experience their congregation as being overtly partisan for political liberals and against political conservatives. I think that it is possible that some congregational leaders are unclear about religious community and social ethics, and engage in Democratic Party politics in the church. I have never seen open partisanship by a minister or board member, but I believe that it happens.
I have seen a lay persons abuse candles of joy and concern to make a political action announcement, or blast some political leader for their politics. (I have always found support when I openly criticized the practice and asked the congregation to covenant not to allow such abuse.) There are those who abuse our faith community, congregational leaders must set firm guidelines to prevent such abuse.) Most congregations in my experience know the difference between ethical witness and political mobilization.

It is also possible that some Unitarian Universalists are uncomfortable with social ethical stance taking. For a congregation to conclude that the war in Iraq is wrong is consistent with our faith communities historic values. Some might accuse that congregation of being involved in politics, but they are wrong.

Gandhi once remarked "To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.  And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life.  €¨€¨That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me  into the  field  of  politics;  and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who  say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."

I have witnessed Unitarian Universalists becoming involved in opposition to war and injustice for forty years, and at every juncture I have also witnessed considerable resistance on the part of some Unitarian Universalists to their congregation or their Association taking a stance no matter that the decision was democratically decided according to the established procedures of the Association.

A more serious criticism concerns how our community converses about differences relative to social ethical stances. There is too much divisive squabbling and self righteousness that these procedures. How we talk with one another about social justice, anti-oppression and the justice of a particular war is too often charged with emotion. Our goal must be to discuss these questions and come to a majority vote without raising our differences to the level of emotional conflict. Some good people who have social consciences with draw from the process because some emotionally changed opponent has just read them out of the faith because of difference over words and their meaning.

We must creating safe communities for discourse and creative conflict, we must learn to base our procedures on religious principles.

Part of a long time project to compile worship resources for services in congregations of the free spirit. The following illustrate different takes on the theme of "misuse of religion to serve power.


"And I also want to say that this is the very first time I have felt that God is in the White House."۬ Gary Welby, American Republican

"We are on the right side, and God is with us, and anyone who has God on their side never loses."۬ Muhmmad Al-Mehimmad, Iraqi insurgent

"Tragic is the role of religion in contemporary society."۬ Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Religion in Modern Society"

"The names of the heroes,۬I was taught to memorize.۬They had guns in their hands,۬And God on their side. . . For you don't count the۬dead, with God on our side."۬ Bob Dylan "God on Our Side"

In a previous post, I began this series of essays on ministerial formation and credentialing. These essays are in response to a post by Joey Lyons at Radical Hapa where he raises some profound questions about our process of ministry formation. In my previous post, I made the distinction between formation for ministry, and meeting the requirements for fellowship with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. I also indicated that our credentialing process was designed to establish uniform standards for ministry, and so while the individuals who are involved in administering the process may be very supportive of individual students, the system is intended to screen out unsuitable applicants, rather than support formation.

There is an old maxim: Many are called, but few are chosen. Individuals, either by divine inspiration, by a quiet voice within, or by rational calculation of how best to use their assorted talents find themselves "called" to ministry. But to be a minister is to be in service to a particular faith community and that faith community must choose who will be and who will not be a minister.

Each particular faith community has a process for choosing among the many who feel called. Many faith communities select who and who will not go to seminary, there is considerable individual counseling, and clerical supervision of this process. The seminarians are supported financially and supervised throughout the process of their preparation. Other faith communities, including our own allow those who feel called to begin the process and then engage the selection process after the aspirant has had some education and experience. Bishops do not select our theological students, our students self select to go to school, with the understanding that the UUA will grant them candidate status only after they have completed the following requirements:

1. Career assessment program at a career center approved by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. (MFC)
2. Candidacy status granted by a Regional Sub Committee on Candidacy.(RSCC)
3. Sponsorship by a UU Congregation.
4. a year of theological school.

This means student must make a considerable investment before they reach the first stage of qualification, meanwhile our students observe their fellow students from a presbyterian, or episcopal polities to be "in care" in their more supportive but more controlling denominations.

Our Regional Sub Committees are recent innovation, before they were instituted students had no denominational feed back about their prospects before their interview with the MFC. The student could have a M.Div. and complete internship and be surprised that they were rejected.

Once upon a time, which wasn't so long ago, almost all Unitarian Universalist theological students went to a Unitarian Universalist theological school. The faculty and administration were Unitarian Universalist ministers, and the school was committed to forming liberal ministers. Most of the students were known and supported by their home congregations, and in relationship to the minister in their home church. Informal and formal mentoring and support for ministry formation came from the schools and the congregational ministers. Students were adopted into the ministers association by friendly gatekeepers who would spot a promising young man and invite them in. (The sociological name of this informal system is called an "old boys network.")

Now most Unitarian Universalist aspirants and candidates for ministry are enrolled in non-Unitarian Universalist schools, and located in geographical areas where there are only a few Unitarian Universalist congregations and ministers. The result is that these students have no formal support for Unitarian Universalist ministerial formation and experience themselves as isolated and neglected. In many of our non-UU theological schools the students have formed a UU students support group and UU ministers have been invited to be 'advisors' and teach polity courses, UU theology courses, etc. The UUA has limited funds available to support courses at non-UU schools, but has provided grants to support such efforts. While these efforts can not provide the same support as a UU theological school, they do provide some support.

Is a limit to the number of theological schools that we can support? I will be so bold as suggest that at best a UUMA chapter can provide support to two schools, because of geographical dispersion some of our chapters would not be able to do that much. If we are going to try to build a system of support for ministry formation, we must select which schools we can provide support services to, and which we can't. Students should know before they apply, what we can do, and what we can't.

There are other possibilities, such as retreats and special on line classes which we can explore. I think the UUA and the UUMA need to organize a consultation with some representative students to explore some of these non traditional possibilities.

I think it is time to embark on a whole new approach to theological education, ministerial credentialing and ministry formation. But that is the subject for a different essay.

Long long ago Dawn came to Darkness, and Changing Woman was born. Golden rays of light carried her from the sky to a mountain top. The Four Winds swept down and breathed life into her, printing spirals on her fingers, head and toes. The Flowers surrounded and cradled her. Joyfully, the Blue Birds sang.

The Holy People, who lived below, sent Talking God up the mountain to find out what all the commotion was about. When Talking God reached the top, he found a beautiful baby girl lying in the grass. Gathering her into his arms, he carried her down the mountain. The People were delighted by her, and fed her pollen, animal broth and dew from the loveliest flowers.The little girl ran races. And Talking God sang to her. In four days, she was fully grown.

Joey Lyons of Radical Hapa reflects that his Ministerial Formation and in an earlier entry he laments the number of his fellow students that drop out of the process of becoming UU ministers.  He writes that he has been intentional "about developing my ministerial skills and theology from a community based accountability, but honestly, I recognize that this is purely because I've chosen to do so.  Ultimately I am primary in shaping and negotiating my ministerial formation, almost to the point that I'm uncomfortable and a bit surprised at the level of individual responsibility necessary to achieve each level of UU Ministerial Credentialing."

I think a lot about the formation of ministers, and the Unitarian Universalist community of ministers  As a member of the Executive of the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association (UUMA),  I have a small role in shaping policy relative to formation, and collegial community.  In our polity, no one individual has a determining role, the UUA Board of Trustees,  the UUA staff, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) members, the theological school boards and faculty, the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the search committees, the internship congregations, the colleagues who mentor students, the UUMA chapters and the UUMA executive all participate in shaping policy and helping to oversee the process.  But it is the students in formation who determine the success or failure of all of those efforts.

Joey Lyons alludes to our reality, our polity is associative, rather than hierarchal.  Our Association of Congregations has established requirements for credentialing,  but we don't direct the process of ministerial formation.  In this essay, and in several to follow I will analyze this reality, examine the necessary limitations of institutional guidance, and propose some ideas that might contribute to a more supportive, community based ministerial formation in the future.

There is a distinction to be made between formation and the process of credentialing.  As I understand that term, formation is spiritual and personal development.  It is gaining the skills, personal habits, and awareness necessary to be a reflective practitioner of ministry.  For example,  if we think of a minister as a spiritual leader, we might ask what is this candidates spiritual practice?  How is this candidate engaged in deepening the quality of personal relationships to self, cosmos, spirit and other creatures?  What disciplines of self care and spiritual nurture does this candidate practice? Credentialing on the other hand has to do with an institution certifying competence.

Ideally we would meet with each candidate for ministry and discern what skills, knowledge, experience, spiritual and personal qualities that candidate would need to acquire in order to function and thrive as a minister.  One candidate might need to develop a sense of humor, another might need to develop more discretion when it comes to sharing their visions, another might need to cultivate their inner boldness.  But alas, the institution needs to make judgments based on uniform standards, so the MFC proposes standards and the UUMA has decisive input, and UU theological schools make contingency plans, and the non UU theological schools ignore the process, and the UUA Board of Trustees adopts the standards and the students adjust to the new requirements.  Over the last four decades, the requirements have changed significantly and there are plans and discussions to change them again.

The basic requirements for UU ministry are:

1. Career assessment program at a career center approved by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee
2. Candidacy status granted by an RSCC
3. Sponsorship by a UU Congregation
4. Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent;
5. Approved internship;
6. Basic unit of Clinical Pastoral Education;
7. Completion of the Reading List;
8. Interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.

We might question the efficacy of any and all of these requirements towards actually forming a minister.  Channing read with the minister in Lancaster, Massachusetts while he taught school, there was no Divinity School to attend. Couldn't our students just read with a tutor?  Do a little apprenticeship with a wise old cleric, and when ready for prime time, do some circuit preaching?  One of the little churches on the circuit would grab the aspirant up, ordain and install their find and a pastor would be formed.  That is the way it was,  it gave us great ministers.

We have established credentialing, and we have requirements.  But our students do not have uniform experiences in meeting these requirements.  Some schools that give Masters of Divinity degrees are part of major Universities, and some are smaller and intimate and deserve the name "seminary."  One school provides its students with access to famous scholars, the other provides directed spiritual and ministerial formation.  Some schools are UU friendly, some are not.  Depending on the peer group and the supervisor, as well as the maturity of the student, Clinical Pastoral Education can be nurturing experience through which a student learns pastoral skills and awareness or it can be an traumatic and destructive experience.  I have known students who dropped out of the process because of a personality conflict with one of the gatekeepers as they were moving along the process of credentialing.  We might blame the victim if the student has repeated conflicts with authority figures, we might blame the gatekeeper if many students have found that functionary problematic, or we might write this students loss off to serendipity.  My point is that the process has been created to make judgments of competence, based on uniform standards.  It is a screening process.  We are trying to institutionalize fairness, and encourage  a qualified ministry.  But these requirements do not help a student in the process of ministerial formation.  That has been left to the schools, to the mentors, to the intern supervisors, and most of all to the students.

Coming soon my second reflection will ponder our system of "self selection" of aspirants.  The UUA provides little or no support for students in the first year of theological school, and little guidance as they enter the process of credentialing.  This weakness is built into our polity, and the history of our ministry.  In order to make changes, we must begin by examining our polity.

One year ago Hurricane Jeanne crashed into Stuart, Florida causing wind damage, severe flooding, and disruption for miles up and down the adjacent coast that lasted for weeks.  One of the UU congregations North of us lost their building, others had serious damage.  Our building is four years old, and it stood up the storm, but we lost all our trees.  This was the second major hurricane to come ashore in our little city in two weeks Schools reopened in November, many schools systems lost so many class rooms that they are reopened last month on double sessions.  Because of the labor shortage repairs to homes took months,  the porch of my house was repaired in June.  Many of my congregants were getting insurance checks in March to repair serious roof damage.  Three congregants homes were totaled, and have subsequently relocated.  The shock remains.

So you can understand my "Yes" when I checked the Hurricane maps this morning.  No tropical depressions in the Atlantic Basin!  Cooler dry air is filtering into Florida.  I know the "hurricane season' ends eight weeks from now, but September is the peak.  And I keep thinking that Greenland needs some rain.

Calvinism had a concept that Universalism absolutely subverted, and the Unitarians liberalized.  Calvin argued that one could not know who was chosen and who was not, but one could make a good estimate. If God had rewarded that person with wealth, with a noble profession, with talents, then they were probably among the elect. The poor, the addicted, the laborers, the slaves were not favored and were probably damned. €¨€¨The Universalists by proclaiming God's salvation for all were also saying "God loves you just as you are, and we humans have an obligation to each other to overcome poverty and illiteracy. The Universalist preachers went to the poor, went to the frontier, not out of noblesse oblige, but because God's love compelled them to reach everyone.€¨€¨The Unitarians on the other hand saw potential in every one, but believed with Calvin that wealth was a blessing bestowed on those further along on the road to salvation, "salvation by character of course."  Since each individual Unitarian self cultivated the soul through vocation, and learning, the Unitarians ended up being elitists, and the Universalists ended up being democrats. (Voting patterns indicate differences along class politics between the two relgious movements.) €¨€¨Of course that was in the first decades, the Universalists helped enough poor people to become stable and self reliant to become a middle class organization in their own right.  I surveyed the history of the one Universalist church that I served from frontier radicalism, to becoming the oh so polite church of the town gentry. €¨

I see an analogy between cross cultural borrowing, and scholarship. If one is writing a paper, one makes an effort to cite the source of an idea, or information. If one quotes, one makes sure to quote exactly. It is not appropriate to distort what another writer has written in order to make polemic. And if the other writer has expressly forbidden the use of his/her words, it is considered unethical to use those words in one's paper.

Most writers agree, and vigerously defend their copywrite.

The Hopi do not want any one using their ceremonies. The Cherokee say you are welcome to use our stuff, but do it with respect. The Reform Jews say learn from us, but do not do our ceremonies our of context. Orthodox and Conservative have other concerns.

At the superbowl last year had what appeared to be native Americans dressed, doing a modern dance, dressed in totally green lycra... that is an example of distortion and misuse of Native cultural ways .

My results are pretty much the same on that politics test that Cranky Cindy, Lawperry, Chutney, Peacebang and John Cullihan have taken and commented on their blogs. The test designed to go beyond Democrat and Republican labels and report on what people actually believe reports that I am a " Social Liberal and and...Economic Liberal and I am best described as "a Socialist." The test reports that I exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. [ loc: (56, -150) modscore: (6, 39)]

I am not and never have been a Democrat. I don't think of myself as a "socialist" as that word is ordinarily used either. But I do believe in public solutions to public problems, and that we have a responsibility to make equality real in society. The Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes are not simply good intentions, they are meant to lived and promoted in society at large.

Many UUs actually believe that our Unitarian Universalist values are guide to personal and social ethics, and yet we view the Democratic Party with some skepticism. I asked several of other UUs at the church I am serving to take the test, and they all produced similar results. I think we share a common social ethics rather than being party line "socialists."

I am a Unitarian Universalist and I vote. So do lots of other UUs. Maybe that is why we pass resolutions critical of both establishment parties at General Assembly, and maybe that is why Bill Sinkford is President of our Association.

The head of the U.S. Office of Women's Health has resigned over the Bush administrations policies of substituting right wing ideology for science. The head of the FDA has also resigned due to backlash to her resignation that questioned his credentials. The misuse of science by become a major issue of debate.

Molly Ivins opines that there is a doctoral dissertation to be written on the Bush process for political appointees "named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a vet in charge instead!"

Planned Parenthood Federation of America Interim President Karen Pearl is outraged by appointment process and issued these comments: "It appears something funny is going on at the FDA and Planned Parenthood is not laughing. At a time when the FDA's credibility is already in question, these unusual announcements are troubling."

"The FDA has a very important job to do. The sooner they refocus on science and not politics, the safer and healthier Americans will be. The right person for this job is someone who understands this. The next director of the Office of Women's Health should advocate for sound science and stop the needless delays in granting women over-the-counter access to safe, effective emergency contraception. We hope this appointment is a step forward on the FDA's long road toward restoring its integrity with women and their health care providers like Planned Parenthood."

Evacuations must be planned, when government officials order hundreds of thousands of people to get in their cars and drive tragedies can result. A bus evacuating Houston exploded as its brakes stressed from stop and go traffic sent fire into the passenger compartment, filled with elderly patients with open oxygen tanks.
The New York Times reports:
A bus carrying elderly evacuees from an assisted living center in Houston was rocked by multiple explosions on its way to Dallas early this morning, killing at least 24 elderly residents.,
The bus was carrying 45 people - 38 residents, 6 staff members and the driver - from Brighton Gardens of Bellaire, an assisted living center in Bellaire, a suburb southwest of Houston, when it caught fire on Interstate 45, the main highway connecting Dallas and Houston. The explosions occurred near Wilmer, a suburb about 15 miles from downtown Dallas.
Witnesses and local officials said smoke, possibly from the brakes, had forced the driver to pull over to the side of the road before at least three explosions covered the bus in flames at about 7 a.m. Central time.

When asked about Hurricane Rita bearing down on Houston, Sir John Lawton, chairman of the United Kingdom's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution lashed out the destructive policies of Bush administration. He referred to the President and his staff as "the climate loonies in the States."

When asked for clarification he said ""There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate."

"I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."

With his comments, Sir John becomes the third of the leaders of Britain's scientific establishment to attack the US over the Bush government's determination to cast doubt on global warming as a real phenomenon.

A relatively new Unitarian Universalist reported to her minister the following conversation overheard in her community's coffee shop. It seems that two women were talking, and one woman expressed dissatisfaction with her mainstream church, it was rigid, do nothing, too dogmatic, and so forth. The other woman commiserated and the began talking about other local churches the two of them dismissing each in turn. Finally they got to the Unitarian Universalist Church, what do they believe? one woman asked the other. "Oh," said the other with authority, "they re-cycle."

"They recycle" maybe that would not be the one thing you would say, if asked what religious liberals believe. But perhaps our neighbors know us better than we know ourselves. Most Unitarian Universalists believe they are environmentalists, but perhaps we are the committed to an environmentalism that is inadequate to the crisis facing our planet. Global warming is bringing climate change, and climate change has given us an increase in violent storms, hot seas, and unusual draughts. Tomorrow Hurricane Rita will come assure, hitting the same region where Hurricane Katrina caused so much damage.

Bill McKibben outlines why the old environmentalism has died of its own inadequacies and why we must move on to entirely new orientation if we are to save our planet. Our religious commitment to being in right relation to our planet will require real change change in our economy and way of life.

Shawn Desjarlais tells the story of his efforts with other Native American youth to create an art form that speaks both to his indigenous roots and to his generations sense of self expression. The Native "hip hop" that Shawn and others are working to create is a distinctive beat, and style, and is explicit in its anti racism and struggle for sovereignty.

For the last three days we have had rain and winds coming from Rita. I am a hundred and thirty miles North of Miami on the Atlantic Coast, I guess I am four hundred miles from the Hurricane. (See the lake about one third of the way up the state of Florida, northern edge of the lake but on the Atlantic.)

As she moved from the Atlantic into the Gulf of Mexico she began to intensify and grow larger, so even though it has moved four hundred miles since we first began to feel it, we are still in its circle of influence.

She will be a big one when it gets to Texas. Looks like it will mess with the Corpus Christi and Galveston, and cause flooding in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas Fort Worth. Rain could endanger recovery in New Orleans. Houston? Depends on where it comes ashore.

Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington. She admits that reading her poetry and speaking to such a large audience (35000 people are expected) would have been an opportunity, and that participating in a community of writers is dear to her heart, but that participating in this Festival would be an implicit endorsement of the Bush led war against Iraq.

Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush to read from their works. Three years ago artist Jules Feiffer declined to attend the festival's White House breakfast as a protest against the Iraq War

A little Cherokee boy came to his grandfather with a tale of woe and anger about a friend who had treated him badly. He was very angry.

The grandfather said quietly in response, "I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way. But...the other wolf... ah! The littlest thing will send him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all of the time, for no reason except he loves to fight. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to boss my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "If I side with the good wolf, will that help him win, Grandfather?"

"Most of the time, Grandson"

Rumbling through my papers, I came upon this reflection written many years ago; at the time I was in Clinical Pastoral Education. Having never really answered the question for myself, I share it with you to ponder. My guess is that many of us have all been in similar situations.

She was 49 years old and going into surgery in the next hour. She was scarred. The appearance of a tall white man claiming to be a chaplain did nothing to calm her anxiety, but she let me sit. Check it out. Does this guy know what's happening?

In an earlier post I took note of right wing think tanks plan to blame the Katrina disaster on environmental groups.

Unlike the left, the right moves fast to realize an opportunity. In an article by Jerry Mitchell we learn that the Justice Department is doing research with the purpose of linking environmental groups to slow downs in levee construction. This is apparently in preparation for a congressional inquiry.

No one needs a conspiracy theory when the plot is carried out in the open. We will now see the mass media do its "fair and balanced" thing and this cleverly designed distraction will be delivered to every living room in the nation.

Saturday is farmer's market day in North Hatley, Quebec. The stalls were erected by an association of local producers who desired to market their wares directly to the public, so twenty stalls form a three sided rectangle market with a common area in between. Every Saturday until October, the sounds of both languages compete, and complement each other as buyers and sellers share their opinions on the merits of the harvest of lettuce and squash, speculate on the arrival of the apples and pumpkins and share news of upcoming community events. Some of the vendors sell produce, some sell freshly baked bread stuffs, one sells her paintings which she has made into greeting cards, and one sells Middle Eastern and Indian curries, chutneys, spreads and pastries.

Every place is unique and special. And in that sense Québec is no different than anyplace else in North America, except that the people of Québec are intensely aware just how special they are. The St. Lawrence has seen continuous French settlement since 1608, New France was prior to New England! French place names on the map of North America give testament to the Québécois of their ancestors roles as explorers, settlers, missionaries, and founding politicians of Canada. Most Québécois feel a need to preserve this unique French cultural society. The English cultures of North America surround, interact and overwhelm Québec. As a result French Canada fears assimilation, and will resist becoming just like the rest of North America.

State and local evacuation plans the United States assume that people own a car! Few if any of these plans make any provision for providing transportation in the case of a "mandatory evacuation" to people who have no car, no truck, no SUV to wisk them away on the interstate to a safe haven away from whatever disaster is about to visit their city.

This was not a secret before the Katrina, we simply choose to ignore the implications. In September 2004, a full year before his city flooded New Orleans mayor Rick Nagin stated that he could not order a mandatory evacuation in advance of Hurricane Ivan because he had no way of evacuating people without cars.

There are 11 million households in the United States that have no motor vehicles. That means as many as 30 million people are left out of the evacuation plan on file with FEMA for their city or region. Thats more people than California, our largest state!

My own state is prone to Hurricanes and its citizens have often been advised to evacuate. Florida's Department of Emergency Management's website, has a chart walking people through the decision of whether they should stay put or evacuate in an emergency, advises citizens in either case to fill their cars with gas. No mention of what to do if you have no vehicle, as is the case for 8.1 percent of Florida households.

How can we make real our promises to each other? We say that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We say that "we the people" form a government to provide for the common defense, we include an equal protection clause in that constitution. How can we leave the poor, the elderly. the frugal, the ecologically aware, and sight limited behind?

Thanks to Allison Stein Wellner, a writing on Alternet for bringing this to my attention.

I was on the elevator going up to extensive care, when my beeper buzzed. I looked at the number that had beeped me,
and went immediately to the emergency room. I announced myself as the chaplain on duty, and the nurse pointed at a door,

I asked, what is behind the door, be prepared, they taught me that in Boy Scouts, such a long time ago. She told me that a mother and father had brought a crib dead infant in and they were clinging to the infants body, holding on, could I speak to the them? convince them to give up the baby? The Attending asked but there was expectation in her tone, convincing the living to give up the dead this was a chaplain's job. Go do it.

There is no such thing as a traditional family pattern! How can there be traditional family value?

There are family patterns that have lasted a long time, but the ideal that is put forward Male Dominated, Female as Housekeeper children bearing the father's name, is a concept of the family that is less than four thousand years old and took root only among a minority of the worlds population.

More ancient than Patriarchy, there prevailed a more egalitarian form of family, some in which lineage was traced through the women, but all in which both men and women were equal in law and practice.

In English speaking colonial America, the male owned all property,and marriages were arranged by men, to facilitate property arrangements. That was a "traditional" family, for the male property holding European settlers in North America. The European who settled in North American brought their family pattern with them, but on this continent with lots of land to steal, and so the children were not as dependent on inheritance for land.

In the decades prior to the American Revolution, a radical change in family relations began to emerge. We see it in the church records of marriage and baptism. In Concord, Massachusetts in decade of the 1760s, more than half of the first born children baptized at the church, were born less than seven months after their parents were married! The diaries also indicate considerable concern, anxiety, "what is going on with the children, they are so defiant." Unlike their parents, they were choosing who they would marry, and defying the arrangements made between patriarchs.

With two generations beginning in New England, the old Patriarchal arranged marriage system collapsed in America, and a family formed on the basis romantic love and self initiated courtship emerged.

In the 1840s we begin to see another big change in the family, men going off to work.....for millennia in Europe and Asia, the patriarchal household had been the center of economic work. Silversmiths for example worked in their shops and their residence was attached. Bankers had offices in their residences, as did lawyers. Pastors lived in pastorates, next to the church. Farmers lived in a farm house on the farm, or walked out to their plot from a nearby village.

In the 1840s that pattern broke down, and males began to spend hours away from the residence, in offices, in shops, in factories and middle class women ecame the de facto head of the household, and child rearing The resident patriarch that had been the basis of the European traditional marriage was no longer resident.

The new division of roles for men and women began to become articulated. women as nurturers, men as bread winners. We do not find those ideas before, most women worked in their husbands trade in the centuries before, men had supervised children.

In the twentieth century a new pattern emerged, becoming significant in the middle decades of that century. We see middle class women going off to work, women pursuing careers children being cared for in the day time by institutions and service providers. Again a new pattern, a new way of being family.

I have not surveyed the change in Native American family patterns, the change in African American family patterns, or the changes in the family patterns of Europeans who became industrial workers. Each of these are significantly different from what was considered to be ideal by the dominant groups in American society both in the past and in the present. I have only surveyed the changes in what was considered "ideal" by the white people of property.

But even with those limitations, I believe we can see from this very brief trot through the family history that family patterns change, family dynamics change. There is no one way of being family in the United States today, no singular way of being family that is embraced by a majority, and none of the many ways of being family we see in the United States have sufficient antiquity to claim to be the traditional American family.

From Zora Neale Hurston€š1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
This excerpt is from chapter 18, about the 1938 hurricane that whisked through the Palm Beach and South Florida.



So she was home by herself one afternoon when she saw a band of Seminoles passing by. The men walking in front and the laden, stolid women following them like burros. She had seen Indians several times in the Glades, in twos and threes, but this was a large party.

They were headed toward the Palm Beach road and kept moving steadily. About an hour later, another party appeared and went the same way. Then another just before sundown. This time, she asked where they were all going and at last one of the men answered her.

"Going to high ground. Saw-grass bloom. Hurricane coming.€š

Lias announces to his friends that he has decided to leave and invites them to join him. He says: If Ah never see you no mo€š on earth, Ah€š I'll meet you in Africa.

Others hurried east like the Indians and rabbits and snakes and coons. But the majority sat around laughing and waiting for the sun to get friendly again.

Sometime that night the winds came back. Everything in the world had a strong rattle, sharp and short like Stew Beef vibrating the drum head near the edge with his fingers. By morning Gabriel was playing the deep tones in he center of the drum. So when Janie looked out of her door, she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west€š that cloud field of the sky€š to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.

It woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to roll in is bed. Began to roll and complain like a peevish world on a grumble. The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further around the shore heard the big lake and wondered. The people felt uncomfortable but safe because there were the seawalls to chain the senseless monster in his bed.

One of the great illusions of religious liberalism is the idea that the political division in the United States continues to be between liberals and conservatives. The problem with this understanding is that the new political right is not conservative by any traditional understanding of that term.

I was taught that conservatives sought to conserve that which is good and that which abides, but the new political right is advancing an agenda that is strikingly at odds with traditional conservative understandings of constitutional liberties, church and state relationships, and foreign policy. In two areas the departure of the political right from conservative values is striking, the right's war against science, and the right's attacks against environmentalists. Check out this commentary by Jim Motavalli on right wing think tanks who are misusing science to blame environmental groups for the Katrina disaster.

Four years after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the people of New Orleans experienced flooding as the result of Hurricane Katrina.

Will it be safe to go home? Eric Schmelzer looks back, and asks what can New Orleans learn from the Environmental Protection Agencies response in lower Manhattan?

This is a story I heard from another storyteller, and I have told it for at least ten years. I have embellished it I am sure. It is good for homecoming. If anyone knows its author please let me know. A Unitarian Universalist native of Japan remembers the story from his childhood.

Kori was a poor stone cutter,
everyday Kori went up the mountain and knelled down
Kori banged and chipped and chisled
at the stone mountain,
everyday he took stone away, stone for building,
beautiful stone.

But Kori felt weak and insignificant,
Kori wished to be great and powerful.

Now in Japan in those days there were many gods,
and one of them overheard Kori wishing to great,
"I wish I was the greatest thing in the whole universe"
Kori was heard to cry, "great like the sun."
and lo and behold Kori's wish was fulfilled
and he found that he was the Sun.
Powerful and magnificent,
he beat his rays down upon the mountain.
Kori felt powerful now.

But then a cloud passed by
and blocked Kori's view of the mountain,
so he couldn't beat down his rays,
Kori was immediately transformed into the cloud,
now he was powerful,
he could block the Sun,
but in a moment a strong breeze blew Kori the cloud away,
and Kori was transformed into the wind,

now Kori thought the wind must be the most powerful thing,
and he blew some leaves around,
and picked up a child's kite and made it soar,
and then he really came roaring along
and hit the side of the mountian,

But Kori the wind was easily defected by the mountain,
and Kori was transformed into the mountain.

Now Kori thought to himself as mountain
I must be the most powerful thing in the whole universe,
powerful enough to withstand the wind,
that blows the clouds around,
the clouds that block the sun's rays at will,
and the sun that beats down its heat on the mountain all day.

And Kori reveled in his power as mountain,
just then he heard high up on the mountain,
the sound of a stonecutter,
banging and chipping and chisling on the face of the mountain,
and taking stone away for building,
the powerful mountain could not withstand
the slow determined work of the stonecutter,
and just as quickly as before Kori became Kori again,

and Kori understood that the most powerful thing
one can be in this creation,
is finding all that you really are.

Kori came home and found himself,
but he never would he have ever known himself,
unless he gone out,
become the sun, and the clouds, the wind,
and the mountains.
He would not have know who he was.

We like Kori have gone out,
and now we have come home again, gathering with our wiser heads,
and our refreshed spirits, and our renewed hopes,
for another year.

How does one write a biography? If we explore the complex and contradictory life of a man do we diminish him, or do we deepen our understanding of our subject, ourselves and all humanity? I am thinking of doing a biographical sermon on Horatio Alger.

According to American Dreams "Horatio Alger captured the essence, emotion, soul and especially the spirit of an emerging America. His books all had the same message: no matter who they were, poor, orphaned or powerless, that if they would persevere, if they would do their best, if they would always try to do the right thing, they would succeed. Through honesty, hard work, and strong determination, the American Dream was available to anyone willing to make the journey.

Alger wrote more than 134 enormously successful dime novels targeted primarily at young boys. In each of his books, the theme was pretty much the same. It usually focused on a young teenage boy, from a poor and disadvantaged family who would overcome numerous obstacles along the way and triumph to build his own American Dream against the odds."

Alger had an impact on America, and his novels reflect the ideas of his Unitarian upbringing, especially the idea that progressive development of character is the key to success in life. But what of Alger's life? The Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography and Wikipedia reveal more about Alger's life before he became a popular novelist, some of which I am learning for the first time. This sermon is getting more and more complex.

Did Alger overcome his pedophilia? The wisdom today is that such behavior is incurable, yet it seems the Unitarians covered up his abusive behavior, and he went quietly away and became a best selling novelist.

In the wake of Katrina the details of FEMA's previous record are being exposed.  FEMA under Bush has been converted from a disaster relief agency into a apparatus for buying votes and doing public relations work for the Bush White House.  William Fisher reports on FEMA's response to Florida's destructive hurricanes last year just months before the elections.

Once there was an emperor in the Far East who was growing old and knew it was coming time to choose his successor. Instead of choosing one of his assistants or one of his own children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, "It has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you." The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One seed. It is a very special seed. I want you to go home, plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring to me, and the one I choose will be the next emperor of the kingdom!"

We arrived at the Woolworth's
and the picket line was already in motion.
The demonstrators Black, White, young and old,
were singing songs I had never heard before,
shooting slogans about Freedom, 
holding signs accusing the five and dime chain of Jim Crow,
Segregation, Racism,  Bigotry,

It was 1958
and I had come to believe
that Segregation was very, very wrong
so very wrong that I must act.

Richard Hofstader wrote in 1965:

...there is a difference between the paranoid style in politics and the clinical paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, over-suspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him: whereas the spokesman for the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life who fate affects not himself alone but millions of others.

In order to enlist people into the religion of violence it is necessary to have an enemy, who is consciously working to destroy ones community.  To create such an enemy we must suspect the motives of the other, fear that enemy because of they  "hate our way of life."

In 1965 Richard Hofstader was examining the paranoid style of U.S. politician as they postured against the Soviet Union and "communism."  In 2005 the religion of violence has constructed a new image of the enemy,  drawing connections between such disparate movements as the Baath Party in Iraq, the corrupt stalinist oligarchy in North Korea, the nascent populist socialist movement led by Hugo Chavez, the Palestinian militants, and the theocracy in Iran.  The "axis of evil" may never hold a consultation, but for the politician who has embraced the paranoid style the proof of their enemy status has been established by their existence.

Paul Vitney writing for the Common Dreams News Center  writes:

"Claims that the New Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment as emotional rhetoric. But yesterday's UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great American Dream is an ongoing nightmare."

It is uncommon for United Nations reports contain criticism of the United States, but as this report makes clear "Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat."

Later Vitney writes:
"Child poverty is a particularly sensitive indicator for income poverty in rich countries. It is defined as living in a family with an income below 50 per cent of the national average.  The US - with Mexico - has the dubious distinction of seeing its child poverty rates increase to more than 20 per cent. In the UK - which at the end of the 1990s had one of the highest child poverty rates in Europe - the rise in child poverty, by contrast, has been reversed through increases in tax credits and benefits."

As huge numbers of Americans watched the news from the Gulf Coast they saw this nations poor as humans, and were outraged by the slow government response to their plight. Many are now open to new understanding how government policies of help perpetuate and deepen that poverty.

NOAA is tracking Ophelia for the South Carolina Coast with a expected time of arrival of Tuesday.  They brought Michael Brown back to Washington to plan for future emergencies.  Is four days enough warning? (Posted at midnight, Saturday wee morning.

Once again I pray that the models are wrong, that the meteorologists left out some important cross currents, misjudged the water temperature, something.  Doesn't Greenland need some rain.

(Saturday late morning update.  Hurricane weakened by wind shear overnight.  Reports say that it  has reformed and getting stronger this morning.  They predict a Carolina land fall from Savannah to Wilmington as possible landfalls.  They are less sure of path than they were last night.)

(Sunday morning update still a hurricane, but moving slowly North toward Virginia.  Winds keeping it off the Carolina coast.)

Jeff Wilson making a comment at