October 2005 Archives

Garrison, why don't you like the Unitarian Universalists? Now, as one of "them," I don't take offense to your jokes, but I have heard through usually reliable sources that you harbor some hostility, so I am curious.

Olav Nieuwejaar
Milford, NH


Olav, my ill-feeling toward the UUs is due to their relentless evangelizing among the dead, as evidenced by a UU publication I saw that claimed Emily Dickinson as one of theirs and also Walt Whitman. They already have Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Jefferson and Louisa May Alcott - shouldn't that be enough for them? Emily Dickinson was Lutheran, as evidenced by her poem, "Success is counted swedish by those who ne'er succeed," but the UUs are ransacking the past for people who might have been thinking along UU lines and claiming them as members in good standing. Next thing you know they'll be claiming Elvis.

from the Prairie Home Companion Website.

Sometimes observers from Europe look at America and see our behavior in a way in a new and illuminating way.  Slavoi Zizek in an article originally published in IN THESE TIMES on Oct 13, comments on the "news" reportage about the destruction of New Orleans and the calculated attempt to portray the people of New Orleans as looters and rapist. He writes:

"We all remember the reports on the disintegration of public order, the explosion of black violence, rape and looting. However, later inquiries demonstrated that, in the large majority of cases, these alleged orgies of violence did not occur: Non-verified rumors were simply reported as facts by the media. For example, on September 3, the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department told The New York Times about conditions at the Convention Center: "The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets." In an interview just weeks later, he conceded that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue: "We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault."

Why?  Zizek continues:

"But we are not dealing here only with good old racism. Something more is at stake, a fundamental feature of the emerging "global" society. On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers were hit. Twelve years earlier, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. November 9 announced the "happy '90s," the Francis Fukuyama dream of the "end of history": the belief that liberal democracy had, in principle, won, that the search is over, that the advent of a global, liberal world community lurks just around the corner, that the obstacles to this ultra-Hollywood happy ending are merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance where the leaders did not yet grasp that their time is over). In contrast, 9/11 is the main symbol of the end of the Clintonite happy '90s, of the forthcoming era in which new walls are emerging everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the European Union, on the U.S.-Mexico border. The rise of the populist New Right is just the most prominent example of the urge to raise new walls?

Here is a link to whole article.

Gary Kowalski writes: "Which is More Dangerous; science or religion?"  I did a double take when a friend handed me a newspaper clipping with that headline.  It was an ad from an organization called the The Great American Think off, which posed the question as the subject for its annual Philosophy Competition.  Reading more, I learned the contestants were invited to submit opinions in the form of an essay of 750 words or less, with a monetary award and book contract promised to those with best answers.

Maybe my friend thought I might want to enter the contest.  But while the idea of a philosophy competition has a quaint appeal, this one seemed deliberately misleading.  Isn't it possible that science and religion are allies rather than antagonists?  Doesn't the real peril arise when the two are seen as stark alternatives rather tan as natural partners?  The timing of the contest, on the edge of the twenty-first century, was an alarming indication that the warfare between science and religion - a running skirmish for the past four hundred years - is still unresolved and spilling over now into a whole new millennium. 

Gary Kowalski serves our congregation in Burlington, Vermont as its minister and his most recent book Science and The Search For God argues that the antagonism between science and religion stems from an argument between bad science and bad religion,  and he writes convincingly the most recent scientific research and theory compels us "to move beyond materialism toward an understanding of the world that includes the realities of consciousness and spirit.  In the twenty-first century,  human beings have less reason than before to feel they hold a privileged or special position in the cosmos, but more cause than ever to feel connected and akin to all that is." 

Gary Kowalski provides his readers a wise and thoughtful guide to wrestling with one of religion's perennial problems, what do (we think) we know and how do we know what (we think) we know.  Don't do a book reports sermon on this book, but ponder it and it may give birth to a dozen reflections over the years.

Several weeks ago I wrote of cliché book report sermons. 

Books make good jumping of points for sermons,  even reports can help frame a sermon.  But the sermon should be more than what one has read.

I offer an example of a preacher using written material as a jumping of point, but also using personal experience and theological reflection to bring the message home.  but John Cullinan writes about  Engaging Our Theological Diversity.  But John uses stories from his personal experience to discuss his understanding of theological diversity,  check out a audio file of his sermon  How We Walk Together. 

This is no book report sermon, Preacher John speaks from his own authority! 

There is also a written manuscript.

If you think that religious humanism is an invention of dominant culture intellectuals rooted in the European enlightenment, then you might be surprised by this anthology of writings. Anthony B. Pinn has assembled a collection which includes slave narratives, selections from novels, essays, and theological analysis that shows a religious humanism that arose out struggle for liberation of African Americans in the United States, a religious humanism that is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with African American Christianity and earth centered spirituality. By these hands: A documentary history of African American Humanism is essential reading for Unitarian Universalists who seek to understand the intellectual history of the United States, and the contribution of African Americans to that history. Discover a rich, engaged religious humanism in the writings of Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, William Jones, Richard Wright and many other writers. The writings reveal a different struggle than the one usually raised by Enlightenment based "scientific humanism." The struggle for African American religious humanism is not "does God exist given science," but rather "is God an old white man." This humanism does not seek to liberate from "superstition" as much as it seeks freedom from submission to the dominant culture's God game. Reading these writers one receives the gift of a liberating theology not imported from another land, and not rooted in an alienating supernaturalism.

The publishers blurb sums the book up in this manner: "The Black church is often praised for its contribution to Black culture and politics. More recently Islam has been recognized as an important force in African American liberation. Anthony Pinn's new anthology By These Hands demonstrates the crucial, often overlooked role that Humanism has played in African American struggles for dignity, power and justice. Pinn collects the finest examples of African American Humanism and shows how it's embrace by a variety of prominent figures in African American thought and letters has served as the basis for activism and resistance to American racism and sexism."

"Pinn uncovers little known treasures of African American Literature such as The Slave Narrative of James Hay, where an abused slave decides to rely on himself, rather than God, for deliverance from the horrors of slavery, and a letter from Frederick Douglass which scandalized his religious friends by proclaiming that "One honest Abolitionist was a greater terror to slaveholders than whole acres of camp-meeting preachers shouting glory to God."

The Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) oversees the credentialing of Unitarian Universalist ministers, working as a committee appointed by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Board of Trustees but with its own mandate elaborated in the By-laws of the UUA, the MFC develops the standards for ministerial fellowship, and interviews candidates in the light of those standards. In recent years the professional ministry of the UUA has been awarded fellowship in three separate categories: Parish ministers, Religious Education ministers, and Community ministers.

At its September 2005 meeting the MFC began awarding fellowship in Unitarian Universalist ministry without reference to categories. From now on, ministers entering preliminary fellowship are assumed to be able to serve as parish ministers, religious education ministers and/or community ministers.

The MFC still hopes to recognize achievement in a "speciality." If a minister achieves three renewals of preliminary fellowship as a community minister, for example, they will be awarded final fellowship as a community minister. The same for parish ministry and religious education ministry, "specialization" means three annual renewals in a single form of ministry.

But even in this half realized form, this change will help ministers develop new and more flexible ways of doing ministry - we have had ministers teaching in a college and serving a small church, for example, for whom filling out renewal forms under the rules of "three" categories was a nightmare. What was the part time chaplain, who is also the assistant parish minister responsible for religious education supposed to do? Choose one part of their work, and deny the rest?

Yet some ministers wanted the UUA to recognize their speciality, the full time religious education ministers insisted that a "one track" ministry would undermine their distinctive profession. Some community ministers are concerned that a "one track" ministry will eventually mean that the only way to do ministry will be a minister in a congregation. College, hospital and military chaplains will be forgotten, and social justice ministers working in a community organization will be dismissed as "social workers, not ministers."

I understand the concern, but now that at least 250 ministers who are not serving a particular congregation....some are college teachers, some are UUA officials, some are institutional chaplains, some are doing arts ministries, some are doing justice ministries, and many other ways and given the fact that more than 200 ministers who are not settled solo ministers or senior ministers but rather assistant ministers, specialized associate ministers, religious education ministers, part time ministers, or interim ministers, and the fact that we have large numbers of ministers who are retired, or taking a leave for child care, the "norm" of the settled parish minister is actually a minority along with a diverse array of other minorities. No one way of being minister in the UUA in now a majority of our ministers. Thus I don't think we will go back to the old days when "minister equaled parish minister," but rather we will continue to evolve a more diverse ministry with many different ways of doing ministry.

Should the MFC be in the business of recognizing specialization? I don't think so, I think the specialists should recognize specialization. That is not the role of "denomination." Rather it should be left such organizations as the Association of Pastoral Counselors, and the Association of Professional Chaplains. But what about smaller, less established specializations? I think the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association could provide a supportive institutional framework for groups of ministers who have developed advanced skills to have those skills recognized and certified by other ministers who have developed similar skills. Let the MFC certify "ministers in fellowship with the UUA." Let specialists certify specialists.

I celebrate the MFC ceasing to award fellowship in categories, I think it allow our ministry to meet the challenges of the future in creative ways.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Unitarian Universalism is not a "religion light," but a profound and deeply spiritual way of being religious.

Just one example: there is tradition among Unitarian Universalists that every person can have religious insight based on reflection on their personal experience.  Our liberal religious tradition teaches us that we can share our experiences.  It teaches us that by sharing in community we become a religious community.  Our tradition asserts that congregations are always in the process of becoming such covenanted, intentional religious communities.  To become a "congregation" is for us not so much a sociological achievement as a religious attainment.  A congregation is more that a gathering of people united by self-interest and mutual admiration.  A congregation is a community whose purpose is spiritual growth and transformation.

Some of the ways we can share our experiences include reflection, study, discussion and deep listening to one another.  In the process of sharing we gain new perspectives on our own insights and understanding.  In congregation we grow by the process of sharing insights.

In order for this to happen, we need to hold the insights that we've gained by personal experience and community exchange without being dogmatic. We need to remember that they are the result of our very human processes of testing and judgment. They may appear true to us, but that does not mean that another person's truth isn't true to them.  Thus we need to be open to the insights of others.  Just because we find a particular belief held by another person or another religion difficult to accept does not mean that it is not true by other standards.

It's always possible that people who believe in things that we can't grasp have had experiences that have led them to that belief.  Experiences we haven't had.  And it is also true that our own beliefs are shaped by our own personal experiences.  Another person may not understand our beliefs because they haven't had our experiences.  For example, my personal religious experiences have informed and shaped my understandings of what I call "God,"  and the transformative power of this "God" that I leads to what I call wholeness (salvation).  I can not assume that everyone has had similar experiences, nor drawn similar conclusions.  Our way of being religious teaches me to share my insights, with humility and appreciation for others insights as well.

In summary:  Our liberal way of being religious is a process; not a set of dogmas.  This process allows us to become more and more open to our own experience, at the same time to become more and more appreciative of the limits of our own experience, and more understanding of others people's experience even when it isn't our own.

That is a lofty spiritual goal, and it isn't easy.  It sure isn't "religion light."

"David Hilliard Eaton (1932-1992) was the first African American to serve as senior minister in a large Unitarian Universalist church. During his tenure, All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC became a center of community service and social action, and was the first congregation within the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to achieve a racially balanced black and white membership."

From the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography

I reprint this prayer poem by David Eaton in preparation for All Soul's Day.

A Common Destiny


All living substance, all substance of Energy,
and Being,
and Purpose,
are united and share the same destiny

All people,
those we love and those we know not of
are united and share the same destiny.

Birth -to- Death
this unity we share with
the Sun,
Earth
our Brothers and Sisters,
Strangers
Flowers of the field,
Snowflakes
Volcanoes and Moon Beams.

Birth-Life-Death
Unknown-Known-Unknown.

I pray that we will know the Awe
and not fall into the pit of intellectual arrogance
in attempting to explain it away.

The mystery can be our substance.
May we have the faith to accept this wonderful Mystery
and build upon its everlasting Truth.

We do not wake up each day with a blank mind.  Through a life time we have formed opinions, made judgements  and  acquired facts that inform how we see and understand the world.   We "construct" a viewpoint,  usually in the form of a story about who we are and how we related to the percieved world. 

We don't do this alone.  We call our shared "constructions of  reality" social constructions.   Race is a social construction. 

Biologicially,  we are one species,  with no significant differences between all the peoples of this planet.  Yet,  people who live in communities, and these people share social constructions that have been passed down from generation to generation.  Race was an idea that was constructed in three hundred years ago,  yet it still informs peoples consciousness at present.   

White people is a social construction.  People of color is a social construction.  White means not colored.  Colored means not white.   Circular.  Dumb.

Who is and who isn't "white" has evolved over time.   I was a child  in an "interracial"  family, in Jim Crow Texas.  Interracial marriages were illegal in some states and not in others, and interracial couples moved from states that recognized their marriages to states that would not have allowed them to be married,  but did not challenge their marriages if they didn't raise a fuss.   Texas was a let sleeping dogs lay state.   Lots of Texans had  native ancestors and they were hoping that dog would stay asleep for a long, long time.   Don't stir up trouble now....

In one context,  I was considered "white" and in one context I was considered "mixed blood" and non - white.   Go see my Father's family and we were Indians. 

  Racism was real, and it was painful.  But from the perspective one little boy,  it was based on make believe differences.   

Social construction is a much more dignified way of saying "make believe,"  of saying that race is more than a bad idea.   But "make believe"  can hurt.   Sometimes I think "make believe" hurts more than genuine differences.

Ministry is changing.   Change isn't new, but there is less anxiety when we take note of the changes before they are too advanced.

While there is controversy about just what is the oldest profession,  it is clear that nearly all human communities set aside some individuals for religious leadership,  shaman, keeper of wisdom, priest,  sage and more recently the professional clergy.   In the United States,  Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Unitarian Universalists have similar credentialling requirements for professional clergy.   Undergraduate education,  a graduate level professional school that contributes to formation,  a  selection process supervised by the faith community,  and various kinds of supervised practical experience. 

Unitarian Universalist ministry three decades ago was made up mostly of men, mostly of white men, mostly of men who went to theological school soon after graduating from college, and mostof these ministers would then  serve  congregations of  small to middling size.   A few had careers as teachers, denomination officials, and chaplains,  but it was not a large number.

All of that has changed, and our ministry continues to evolve.   We are increasing the number of ministers of color,   over half of our ministers are women,  our theological students more often than not have had a previous career, and a significant number of ministers will never serve a congregation as the sole pastor. 

The Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association has just completed its fall meetings, which included discussions with the U.U.A. staff  most closely concerned with ministry.   There are changes  ahead for our ministry,  we discussed some of those changes, and at future meeting we will discuss others.  Our whole minstry will be involved in those discussions. 

I will post my thoughts on this subject in a series of posts.   I would welcome your thoughts.

I am sitting in the computer room at Eliot Picket House (tying on an Windows machine.)  The wireless system is down, so I can't post with my Powerbook, and I find this software challenging.

But if I were home, I would have no power.  Wilma has taken ripped through the community were my church is located, and roofs have been ripped up, wires are down, and aluminum car ports, drain pipes and screening is shrewn all over the place.   

There are bigger disasters.  But three strikes in 58 weeks, and patience is out.   Enough!

There is a myth among Unitarian Universalists that our congregations are full of affluent, highly credentialed liberals. Once the myth is accepted and begins to shape our expectations; the carpenter, the store clerk, and the hospital worker sitting in our pews become abnormal, simply because we have constructed our norm on the basis of that myth. The myth also masks the economic insecurity of the middle class.

In my experience there quite a few blue collar workers in our congregations, and there many desperate middle class or "white color" workers. How will our congregations serve the real people in our pews: through the celebration of a myth of affluence, or by talking about the desperation that people face daily in their lives of failing to make it in America?

Barbara Ehrenreich who introduced many middle class readers to the plight of the working poor in her Nicked and Dimed; On (Not) Getting By In America has written a new book Bait and Switch : The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. In this book Ehrenreich attempts to get a white color job, she goes to job coaches, vocational counselors and she was told to think positively. She writes; "there is a tremendous American theme about positive thinking. We have a hard time dealing with truly bad news and discouraging information. Throughout my experience trying to get a white-collar job, I was encouraged to think positively. You are supposed to see your job loss as some great break, your chance to move on to something bigger and better. The reality is that 70 percent of people who lose their jobs and do get rehired, are rehired at a lower pay. But to criticize the system, or to be negative is considered "un-American."

She was unsuccessful in her job search, a not unusual experience among many qualified and experienced members of the congregations I have served. Both of Ehrenreich's books are a must read for Unitarian Universalists who seek to understand the increasing desperation of our people. Here is a link to a great interview with Ehrenreich.

Mary Wellemeyer writes:

Thoreau took few books to his cabin
at the edge of Walden Pond.
One of them was the Iliad,
Homer's tale of the siege of Troy.

He read it in the Greek,
and I imagine him by lantern light,
reading slowly and carefully through it,
translating, making sure he understood -
surrounded by the quiet.
He would have read it with his soul.

This man who later went to jail
for refusing to support a stupid war
has spent long hours with the tale of Troy.

Thoreau had never armed himself,
going over piece carefully,
praying that his arming
and his skill and luck
would bring him safely home from war,
but by reading Homer's words he must have known
the fear that went with putting on
even the most beautiful armor.

Home lets the reader know it:
Each piece of armor might be the difference
between life and death.
War is still like that.

And proud Achilles, berserk with grief-
Home does not spare the read there.
Battle madness is a tragedy too often seen
in fighting then, and since.

I imagine Thoreau reading deeply
of the risks of combat
and the dangers of moral compromise by generals.

Read slowly, from the Greek, in a cabin in the woods,
the tale unfolded a message of peace.
Peace spoke clearly through the same words
read by many would-be heroes
nurturing dreams of glory with those pages.

From her book of meditations admire the moon.

Robert Williams writes:
At the dawn of Renaissance Europe's discoveries in the New World and conquest of the American Indian, Europeans already enjoyed the singular advantage of possessing a systematically elaborated legal discourse on colonialism. This discourse, first successfully deployed during the medieval Crusades to the Holy Land [and , I should add, eventually to the English colonization of Ireland] unquestioningly asserted that normatively divergent non-Christian peoples could rightfully be conquered, and their lands could be lawfully confiscated by Christian Europeans, enforcing their particular vision of a universally binding natural law. This is to say that for centuries our churches have been involved in the colonization and conquest of the world on behalf of Europe.

Contemporary religious liberals too often disparage systematic thinking, rationalizing their retreat from the task of articulating their values to the vagaries of post modernism. But as Lakoff and others have pointed out unless those who hope for a more open, and humane society begin to articulate where they stand on moral and ethical questions, those who advocate authoritarian. sectarian and corporate values will win the battle of "framing" the big questions of the day. The moral value expressed above, a.k.a. Christian triumphalism is alive and well in our country today. What is the religious liberal response?

The churches of New England preached the rationalization that Williams cited above to justify the genocide of the Natives that the Pilgrims and Puritans encountered. These Christians saw themselves as the children of God coming into the Promised Land, and the indigenous people of what they called the New English colonies as "Canaanites." Such is the first chapter in the history of the "free church" in America.

Williams quote is from his The American Indian in Western Legal Thought; The Discourse of Conquest (Oxford University Press, 1990) and can be found on p.1. I followed a foot by George Tinker, whose article in Soul Work: anti-racist theologies in dialogue refers to Williams.

James Cone begins his essay in Soul Work; Anti Racist Theologies in Dialogue with two quotes. The first is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote:

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

and the second quote is from Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote:

We have to repent . . . not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

We are familiar with the pejorative "Good German" which refers to those remained silent in the face of the holocaust. What evils are we called to prophesy against? What does it mean to be a "Good American?"

The Civil Rights movement was attacked for extremism, many "friends of the Negro' advised a gradual, moderate approach, and argued that mass demonstrations and boycotts would only alienate moderate "white" opinion. Meanwhile the Klu Klux Klan and the White Citizen's Councils were organizing violence against men, women and children who stood for voter's rights and access to public institutions.

Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged his listeners with this response; "The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the the extension of justice?"

Given our cultures capacity to marginalize those who stand against its oppressive norms could you be an extremist for love? Institutionalized religion tends to be a mechanism for conformity, and submission to the "way things are." This despite the fact that most significant religious leaders in all traditions urged non conformity to the prevailing standards of an unjust world. We recall Paul of Tarsus "be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."

How does liberal religion help us take a personal stand for justice? How does it hinder us in taking that stance?

Skinner House has issued admire the moon, a mediation manuel by Unitarian Universalist minister and poet Mary Wellemeyer. Mary is parish minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester, New Hampshire. I reprint this poem with Mary's permission in preparation for All Soul's Day.

Some bright morning. . .
Never mind the metaphorical stuff,
this death and rebirth that means
transformation from one phase to another,
one way of being alive in the world
yielding to another.
Never mind that.

Some bright morning when this life is over. . .
When this life is really over
how will it be? How will I know?
That old spiritual has a clue,
a word from the people's ancient memory.

Some bright bright morning when this life is over, I'll fly away.
I imagine a bright spring morning
with misty vapors rising off ponds and farmyards
and leaves of different colors, not yet fully out,
the sun shining steadily above the mists,
the little leaves stirring in the wind,
and the clouds moving across the sky.

Some bright morning
this life will be over, and something
within and beyond
will tell me, call me away.

I'll smile and close my eyes,
the melody of the old song will in my head
and I'll fly, released from this life with joy.

Florida is tense.  The media packages the news, and it is tempting to package a category five hurricane as a looming disaster.  The mathematical models that the meteorologists use to predict the path of tropical storms has had Wilma trapped in the Caribbean by a ridge of a high pressure system in the Gulf, when that high pressure system weakened according to the experts, Wilma would turn North and move into the prevailing Westerlies and smash into Florida.  That was Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Friday morning and the turn to the east is still to come

I write on Friday morning, and Wilma is just striking Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, with expectations of catastrophe, and the winds that will carry it toward Florida are now predicted to come later.  Wilma was to come to us on Saturday, now it may hit Florida on Monday maybe, and then there is always Tuesday.  Of course, it might hit Cuba.  The whole Caribbean and the much of the Gulf region becomes involved in watching when a hurricanes direction depends on winds and jet streams that are somewhere in Minnesota but expected to come and push the storm and bring us havoc and destruction.

I suppose it is important for the weather people to warn us of impending catastrophe, but I wish they could do that and be a little more tentative.  Can't we be properly scared with "Wilma may turn" and "it could slow down" and all the qualifications one reads in the actual reports being prepared in technical prose at the National Hurricane Center.

Church services are being cancelled in some of Florida's UU congregations for a hurricane that may still come but later than expected.  I will make the call for my congregation in a few hours.  I am involved in the uncertainty, because I am scheduled to fly to Boston for the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association Executive meetings, and as a parish minister I am worried about my church and my people.  I can stay and worry, or go and worry.  The long range models see Wilma headed for Massachusetts,  which I hear needs the rain. 

For my soul, I pray for Mexico's people.  And I will refrain from listening to the weather reports on television.  (Checking out the Hurricane Center's web site is more like research, and less sensational sound bites.)

Since the publication of the Commission of Appraisal's Engaging Our Theological Diversity we have experienced a renewed conversation about what is the core of Unitarian Universalism.  The conversation has been energized by the Commissions provocative question; with so much theological diversity are we danger of imploding, exploding, splitting, or otherwise suffering adversely from our decades long celebration of theological diversity?

Jeff Wilson over at The Transient and The Permanent has answered no, he "predict[s]  that UUism will not implode, that it will not fracture into a bunch of Balkanized groups, that it will keep marching on toward a future of squabbling and coffee hours and social justice work and revelation of beauty. Because what holds us together isn't really coffee or politics or any specific religious language, it's a belief in love and freedom."  Matthew Gatheringwater began an extended discussion at Coffee House with the provocative question whether a changing Unitarian Universalism will drive some people to  leave.  He asked what is your Tipping Point? Many of the participants argued that for them, they prize Unitarian Universalist "diversity" and if it was threatened they would leave.  Since the Unitarian Universalist community consists of multiple spirituality's, and multiple theological orientations, it seems unlikely that we will become less "diverse" in the near future.

Richard Grigg has made the distinction between exclusive pluralism, and inclusive pluralism.  The United States is religiousily plural, but Grigg would point out that that is exclusive pluralism.  Each religious community is in competition with all the others, and members of a particular religious community identify with their own religious community exclusively.  While liberals Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Unitarian Universalists may function in alliances relative to the Religious Right, we recognize boundaries between say ourselves and the United Church of Christ.  But at our best Unitarian Universalists practice inclusive pluralism;  we are not like an interfaith coalition, we support each others spiritual development and members see such support as good for their congregations as a whole.  I know of many non-Christian UUs who helped to develop fellowship groups for UU Christians, and non Pagan UUs that have helped develop activities for pagans.  It is essential to our way of doing ministry that theists ministers find ways to minister to non-theists, and vice versa.

It is my contention that Unitarian Universalism is a religious movement that arose out of interaction of the humanist tradition as it [re]emerged during the Renaissance and by (heterodox) Protestants during the Reformation.  Those North Americans whom we associate with the early emergence of Unitarianism and Universalism in this country were simultaneously humanists and dissenters from orthodox Protestantism.

Peacebang put it thus way: "I think Unitarian Universalism is a Humanist religious tradition that uses readings and teachings from various world religions, and which respects and remains enthusiastic about the diversity of wisdom sources available to us. We're not inter-faith, IMHO, unless we actually are congregations of Muslims, Jews, Christians, pagans, etc."  I agree, and applaud her placing the question so starkly.  We share a religious humanist orientation, and that we manifest in a plurality of spiritual preferences.  And, while many will find this controversial, I observe that we are continue to function as a Protestant denomination.  Most of us can identify with Unitarians, Universalists and other religious liberals going back to Renaissance and Reformation, because we share in a common tradition.

We share a common framework and that framework is both humanist and Protestant.  We have allowed the word humanist to defined in a way that excludes many, if not most Unitarian Universalists.  We have allowed the conflict to be defined as "Humanist" versus UU Christian,  versus UUs who use the word God, and versus those who just love the universe and want to use poetry to describe their exuburance.  We have accepted a definition of humanism that is militantly secular and which scorns all religious language.  The result has been that in the reaction to this arrogant secularism, humanism has acquired a bad name within our movement.  Thus we have become divided over words, rather than over differences of substance.

I believe we must renew our understanding of the humanist tradition, so that god loving humanists, humanists who don't do god, Christian Humanists, Cosmic Story humanists, and "naturalistic" humanists can learn to talk to one another once again.  Because we share a core religious humanism and because most U.U.s continue to draw inspiration from our formative Protestant tradition we have been enabled to explore the wisdom of the world's religions.

We have not become an interfaith organization in the process.  While there is a small number of individual members of in many of our congregations who do not share in this core orientation, that orientation has both a history and a momentum that has prevented us from flying apart, or any of the other dire predictions that some perceive to be the consequences of our diversity.

There are social, religious, and political forces in this world that oppose the values and world view of humanism, liberalism, and Progressive Christianity, and while we are fighting with each other we may lose this world.

Sam Keen writes:

"The powerful have always been willing to baptize the status quo and name it "peace," and the impotent are regularly accused of being troublemakers when all they seek is justice."

George Lakoff writes: "Today's right-wing conservative values are just plain un-American in this context. This is a country where people pull together in the face of disaster. They don't just tell one another to sink or swim. Sink-or-swim conservatism is not in the American tradition, or the American heart. Empathy, mutual responsibility, fairness, and community -- all progressive values -- are part of this heritage. As Katrina showed, Americans hold a deep sense of shared fate and want an effective government that represents these values, does its job, and serves the people valiantly. Americans want to act responsibly and contribute. Katrina proved it. Those are the central progressive values. Americans have them."

Lakoff argues that the Democrats are once again taking potshots at the Bush administration rather than engaging in "framing the values" around the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He outlines an approach to understanding the catastrophe and making sense of the wrong headed policies that he argues are based in conservative moral values.

Religious liberals need to wrestle with Lakoff's analyis of metaphor and values, it might help us move away from the destructive controversy within Unitarian Universalism that pits a narcissistic search for self which we call "spirituality" against a blatantly partisan politics which we call social action. We are a religious community and we are about values, and meaning, and there is an organized movement in our country that opposes our values. Our response must be about articulating the values that flow our religious perspective, rather than looking for a messiah among the current crop of Democrats who would be king.

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911

Abolitionist, suffurage activist, journalist, novelist, poet, Unitarian

I am one of those old fashioned religious liberals that has a high regard for the teachings of Jesus and a low regard for many of the teachings of the historic Christian Church. It occurs to me that Jesus was more interested in getting "heaven" into people, and while the Church has made getting people people into heaven central to its mission. Heaven was for second Temple Jews a mystic state of "being in God", and it became in the centuries that followed a place to go after we died. While followers of Jesus yearned for the realm of God, where the beatitudes would be realized in human interrelatedness, the Church saw fulfillment is an eternal bliss to come.

American Universalism was born in the context of the American revolution, and it rejected the notion an aristocracy of souls who had already been selected for salvation. God's love included all, and all would be saved. But the 19th century Universalists did not wrestle with the nature of salvation, to be saved was to go to heaven, and heaven was in the words of that old wobbly song "we'll have pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye."

Its otherworldly visions of salvation have had less appeal among religious liberals in the twentieth century than they did in previous centuries. Unitarianism which placed ethical living central to becoming "whole" created a way of being religious that is a modern version of "putting heaven into people." But eventually, Unitarianism with its "salvation by character" has revealed its shadow; self reliance became relationship denying self sufficiency, and progressive character development has became the self indulgence of self help fads and the novelty of new "spirituality's." Religious liberalism is being renewed by an emphasis on "salvation through quality relationships ." Can we be saved, that is can we become "whole" alone?

William Schultz writes: We affirm that every one of us is held in Creation's hand - a part of the interdependent cosmic web - and hence strangers need not be enemies; that no one is saved until we All are saved where All means the whole of Creation.

I find Schultz's affirmation to contain a new vision of Universalism, one that goes beyond the works righteousness of 19th century Unitarianism, and the problematic "pie in the sky" promise of 19th century Universalism. Creation's promise is yearning to be fulfilled.

Francis Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911

"Harper died on 22 February 1911, nine years before women gained the right to vote. Her funeral service was held at the Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia" where she was a member. She had ties to the Unitarians going back to her young adult years when she worked as an abolitionist. The quotes are from UU Dictionary of Biography article on Harper by Janeen Grohsmeyer

http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/francesharper.html

"A pioneering journalist, author of fiction and poetry, and a professional lecturer, Frances Harper had a remarkable life. Active in abolitionism, suffrage, and the temperance movement, she lived long enough to see her efforts rewarded. She gets credit for introducing the tradition of African American protest poetry. Famous during her lifetime, Harper used her prestige and writings to fight racism and also make strong feminist statements."

Paul P. Rueben; PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide: Chapter 5: Late Nineteenth Century - Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper (1825-1911)

She wrote: "We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and a noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom."

Bury Me In A Free Land

 

Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

The statisticians tell me that more people fear speaking in public than fear just about anything else. And then their are all the people who speak in public a lot, and who who have gotten used to the experience. Most of these people would testify that they actually enjoy being up in front of people sharing some idea, expressing some opinion, and communicating with a group.

I remember having stage fright, the jitters and the sweating that would overwhelm me as I prepared to speak. I think I was afraid of being judged, judged because of the mediocrity of what I would say, judged because of the inadequacy of my delivery.

It was sometime after I began regular public speaking as a teacher, and later as a student for the ministry that I discovered my mantra, which I present below. I used to say this to myself quite often, less now. It helped. In time I stopped thinking about what judgments the audience was making about me, and more about how I could sing my song with force and spirit.
I give you Maya Angelou who wrote:

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

Back in the day I would complain "if I hear one more book report sermon, I will scream." One of the most common sermonic methods for Unitarian Universalist ministers was to read a book and then tell their congregation all about it on Sunday.

I think we still find inspiration for a sermon in the books that we read, but we have learned to relate the contents of the book to our lives, or some national happening. I know I will read John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History before I attempt a little prophetic preaching about the impending pandemic of "bird flu." One can read books, just don't do a book report.

But apparently there is a new cliche genre of Unitarian Universalist sermons.

Hafidha Sofîa writes: "I personally don't need to hear another Readers Digest sermon about appreciating the flowers in my garden. I want to hear from people who know and from people who believe. Even if I disagree with them, I will know more about myself after an hour with them, than a whole month of essays about 'celebrating spontaneity."

I have been trying to think about the "flowers in my garden" sermons I have heard. I know I have heard quite a few, but save for one, they all have slipped into the depths of subconsciousness where most sermons on normative virtues tend to go (including my own best efforts.) One of those garden spirituality sermons was very good, but it would be rejected by Readers Digest for creativity and depth. Alas, most were nice, set pieces on appreciation. Appreciation is virtue and must be taught, I assume, but to hear a sharing of convictions is memorable.

If Ralph Waldo Emerson were to come as a visitor, would he know I ever lived? Like most preachers, I think the honest answer is, it depends on what Sunday he came to visit.

Is it possible? Is it possible to preach one's convictions, and passions week after week? Not just when the spirit moves and inspiration happens. It would take a different kind of energy than a real good book report, or my current favorite, tell a provocative story, and talk about its meaning for today. That worked for me today. They loved it. It engaged them. But I don't think I revealed any depth of soul, they knew more about my message, but not more about my convictions.

Maybe someday, I'll send out the memo: Cancel the meetings, Cancel the memorial services. Got to do some pondering, wrestle with some big existential questions!

Meanwhile, I plan the November calendar. Hmmm. Stewardship. Pulpit Exchange. Thanksgiving. Global Warming.

Maybe in January.

Why do I love Howard Thurman? I remember hearing him preach when I was young and he was powerful, he inspired my spirit and moved my soul. Many years have passed, and I return again to his writings and find new and deeper meaning. I know I am not unique in my admiration, but I love Howard Thurman.

Howard Thurman wrote:

"There must be always remaining in every life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and - by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and and creative relatedness-something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning, then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory, old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels."

T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Last night I officiated in a service of remembrance for a ninety year old woman. She had grown up in Iowa and gone to college at Iowa State and become a teacher. Her teaching career took her to a series of schools and colleges during the 1930s and when World War Two came to the United States she joined the Red Cross and was assigned to service at Fort Hood, in Texas. She married an army physician and settled in New York where they raised two children. and she returned to teaching art in a high school.
When her husband died and her retirement came she moved to Florida. It was in Florida that she met an old college classmate, who had introduced her the Unitarianism way back in college and she found her way to the church that I serve.

She thought of herself as a Unitarian all those years, but going to Unitarian church had been associated with the relationship with her friend. After graduation, pursuing a career and a marriage, raising a family took her away from that relationship and from church going for fifty years. Ten years ago she resumed her friendship with her Unitarian friend, and returned to where she had started, as if it were the first time.

Churches also serve, when they just stand and wait.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes:


The "burning bush" was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, when we pay attention.

Most religious traditions place "awareness," "attentiveness," and " being present" as central to spiritual practice. Whether it is praying, meditating, walking among the miracles of the natural world, or the revelation of the divine that we encounter in deep relationships with another we must be present and attentive "for more than a few minutes."

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way:

"These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are . . . There is no time for them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence . . . But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tip toe to forsee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present."

We become aware by paying attention to that which is set before us by existence. We learn to pay attention by being present to this moment of time.

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom."

Clarisa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run with the Wolves.

I have been working with listening to stories lately, and I have been telling stories as well. I have been told that people come to church to hear familiar stories, as well as new stories. They come to hear new stories, so that they can reflect on their own story and maybe even share it with someone.

Let stories happen to you, and share them with others. And listen to stories, let other peoples stories happen to you as you reflect on your own.

Back in 1990 then UUA President William F. Schultz wrote an article entitled "Theology According To Newsweek" It seems that the magazine had "quoted" the UUA President as saying that UUs believe that "the individual is the ultimate source of authority." He said that statement was only a snippet of what he had said. It was accurate, but incomplete. He wished they could have found space for "an additional phrase or two."

According to Schultz, Unitarian Universalists do posit the individual conscience and decision maker with authority. Our faith tradition recognizes and encourages each of us to exercise our considerable freedom to choose that which we hold sacred, and of ultimate concern. But there are consequences. , Emerson once said that "we should be careful what we worship. for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

But he goes on to say that there are other complimentary sources for authority in our religious tradition. I think these are sources of authority for Unitarian Universalists, and thus I offer his list with some of my own thinking for general discussion. I have used his categories but the arguments not quoted are my own.

1. The tradition. We honor certain norms within our community which are grounded in what Unitarians and Universalists in previous generations held dear. Some examples: our association of congregations is guided by traditions of congregational polity; our association of ministers asks its members to abide by ministerial standards that arise from that polity; we call and ordain ministers by methods that have evolved over time; and many of our congregations have historic covenants that root them in a heritage of the free church and open them to the future witness.

2. The community. We are individuals, but we individuals who are enriched by creative interchange with others. Schulz writes "the love and nurturance, the feedback and critique, which we find in a healthy congregation are invaluable resources in the shaping of religious pilgrimage."

3. Reason. We use reason and verify the evidence so that our ideas are grounded in community experience. We apply the critical method to so that we do become infatuated with our own intellectual constructions.

4. Nature. Shultz writes "if we posit as we do, the value of the earth, then the natural rhythms of Creation provide authoritative echoes of their own. In an age of global warming, ozone deletion, rapid destruction of arable land, wetlands, and critical habitat, we should listen to Mother Nature.

5. The Holy. "The final and most idiosyncratic source of religious authority is whatevery we call Holy. Be it God or Good, Jesus or Jeremiah, the Bible or Bhavada Gita, that which commands our highest loyalty commands our hearts.

According to Shultz "this last source requires testing against the previous four. But then those must be judged also in reference to the fifth."

The Holy? As a source of authority for Unitarian Universalists. Schultz wasn't the first to assert this claim. Some folks think Bill Sinkford invented "the language of reverence" but long before Sinkford became President "boy Humanist" Bill Shultz was openly inviting us to renew our acquaintance with Unitarian Universalism and to use religious language.

Unitarian Universalists respect the wisdom of ancient thinkers and peoples, but are always open to new insights, a new manifestation of the HOLY. This is a story as told by Bearwalker

The Ancient One by Bearwalker

Ancient One sat in the shade of his tree in front of his cave. Red People came to him and he said to Red People, "Tell me your vision."

And Red People answered, "The elders have told us to pray in this manner, and that manner, and it is important that only we pray as we have been taught for this has been handed down to us by the elders."

"Hmmmm," said the Ancient One.

Then Black People came to him and he said to Black People, "Tell me your vision."
And Black People answered, "Our mothers have said to go to this building and that building and pray in this manner and that manner. And our fathers have said to bow in this manner and that manner when we pray. And it is important that we do only this when we pray."

"Hmmmm," said the Ancient One.

Then Yellow People came to him and he said to Yellow People, "Tell me your vision."
And Yellow People answered, "Our teachers have told us to sit in this manner and that manner and to say this thing and that thing when we pray. And it is important that we do only this when we pray."
"Hmmmm," said the Ancient One.

Then White People came to him and he said to White People, "Tell me your vision."
And White People answered, "Our Book has told us to pray in this way and that way and to do this thing and that thing, and it is very important that we do this when we pray."

"Hmmmm," said the Ancient One.

Then Ancient One spoke to the Earth and said, "Have you given the people a vision?" And the Earth said, "Yes, a special gift for each one, but the people were so busy speaking and arguing about which way is right they could not see the gift I gave each one of them." And the Ancient One asked same question of Water and Fire and Air and got the same answer. Then Ancient One asked Animal, and Bird, and Insect, and Tree, and Flower, and Sky, and Moon, and Sun, and Stars, and all of the other Spirits and each told him the same.

Ancient One thought this was very sad. He called Red People, Black People, Yellow People, and White People to him and said to them. "The ways taught to you by your Elders, and your Mothers and Fathers, and Teachers, and Books are sacred. It is good that you respect those ways, for they are the ways of your ancestors. But the ancestors no longer walk on the Face of the Earth Mother. You have forgotten your own Vision. Your Vision is right for you but no one else. Now each of you must pray for your own Visions, and be still enough to see them, so you can follow the way of the heart. It is a hard way. It is a good way.

Part of the collection of Indigenous Literature compiled by David Welker. http://www.indians.org/Resource/resource.html

I am fascinated with the process in which white Americans came to define themselves in their process of becoming americanized, rather than just being Europeans that came here to steal land. We can have an insight into this long labor of self definition in the painting below.  On first viewing we see that Corn Planter is not wearing his traditional chief outfit for this "art."  He is dressing in the fashion of his conquerers, outside of paintings it is unlikely he wore garments and armor of that sort.  The chief's job was to be the leader of hunting, male games, and when necessary war, at work he would ordinarily dress for mobility.  Corn Planter is dressing up, but for whom?

This is a painting created for the art market, and Corn Planter must present an idealized image that conforms not with his people's traditions, but with the artists understanding of his market. Who was the intended consumer of this cultural artifact.  What does it tell us about the European conquerers who were yearning to be both american natives, and enlightenment citizens of a new republic.  Do we find echoes of the white Americas need to play Indian in order to become americanized in contemporary Unitarian Universalism?  How about such activities as the following:  "Native Drumming Classes will be held on Wednesday in the parish hall" or, "the youth will doing a sweat this weekend, and invite adult allies support."

Anne Lamott wrote:

Broken things have been on my mind lately because so much has broken in
my life this year in the lives of the people I love--hearts, health,
confidence. . . [good friends have died].

Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life's nature: that
lives and hearts get broken--those of people we love, those of people we'll
never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room
of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to
take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting
room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them
juice and graham crackers.

And then she went on vacation.

"Traveling mercies," the old people at our church said to her when she
left. This is what they always say when one of us goes off for a while.
Traveling mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and
sound.

from her "Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith"

you lay buried for two thousand years
until a farmer saw you in a furrow
and claimed you for his own

now you cry, still bleeding,
for the sins of Columbus and Reagan
and the wandering spirit of your creator

and you stand, sacred and disciplined,
sharing your vast knowledge with arrogant strangers
who cannot understand the simplicity of your message:

turn off your computers and listen,
just listen

American Indian Resource Directory http://www.indians.org/index.html

Al Gore has given a major address in which he laments the death of "the marketplace of ideas" as propaganda becomes the dominant form of mass discourse, and he argues that America has entered an "alternative universe" where politicians are no longer accountable to truth. While he has a more generous view of "the founding fathers" than I do his point that the leaders who wrote the constitution and sought out to create a new Republic were committed to a deep appreciation of a broad humanism is well taken. I only wish he had talked like this back when he was running for President.

Funny, same thing happened to Jimmy Carter.

Called burial prayer, it is a prayer of resignation, and renewal, given in preparation of death, often for a whole life time. I found this on a web site with connections to the Cherokee, but it doesn't appear to be Cherokee specific.

O' Great Mystery,
Empty. Fullness

۬Whose voice I hear in the winds,۬And whose breath gives life to all the world,۬hear me! I am small and weak, I need your۬strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes۬ever behold the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have۬made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the۬things you have taught my community.

Let me learn the lessons you have hidden۬in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my۬brother, but to fight my greatest ememy,۬
My deluded self, My pride filled self, My thoughtless self.

Make me always ready to come to you with۬clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset,۬my spirit may come to you without shame.

A resource for human rights activists from the movement to transform Columbus Day.

1. Question: What's Wrong with Christopher Columbus?
Answer: We've all been lied to about Columbus. Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, he was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Columbus initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Columbus, his brother, and his son all continued slave trading of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Europe and from Africa to the Caribbean. Under his administration as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands, 8 million people were killed, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples. The Columbus legacy is steeped in blood, violence, and death. Public holidays celebrating Columbus not only teach children to honor a cruel and brutal man, they encourage people in this society to ignore, look away, and even support racist practices embedded in today's economic, political and judicial systems.

2. Question: Aren't these accounts of Columbus an exaggerated revision of history?
Answer: No. By conservative accounts based on Spanish surveys, the Taino numbered as many as 8 million in 1493. [Source: Cook and Woodrow, Essays in Population History, Vol. 1, Chapter VI, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
During Columbus' tenure as "viceroy and governor" of the Caribbean Islands and the American mainland from 1493 until 1500, he instituted policies of slavery (encomienda) and the systematic murder and rape of the Taino population. Dominican priest, Bartolome de Las Casas was the first European historian in the Americas. He was an eyewitness and wrote in painful detail of the tortures he witnessed. In a survey conducted in 1496, he estimated that over 5 million people had been exterminated within the first three years of the Columbus rule. [Actual survey conducted in 1496 by Bartolome de Las Casas, cited in J.B. Thatcher, Christopher Columbus, Vol. 2 [Source: New York: Putnam Sons Publishers, 1903-1904), p. 348ff Later accounts that gloss over the horrors of the Columbus regime are the revisions of history.
By the time of Columbus' departure, only 100,000 Taino were left, and by 1542, only 200 were left. Within the entire Caribbean Islands, about 15 million indigenous people are estimated to have been exterminated within one generation of Columbus' arrival. This is genocide, the wholesale killing of an entire race of people. These policies, established here, laid the foundation for extermination policies that Europeans used to justify the elimination of over 100 million native people throughout the Western Hemisphere. By any standards those numbers describe a Holocaust.

3. Question: Wasn't Columbus just a product of his times? Is it not unfair to judge a 15th Century man by 21st Century standards?
Answer: To view Columbus as violent and racist is not an imposition of 21st century morality. His own diaries reveal his brutality -- a brutality that offered no fair judgment to his victims. Bartolome de Las Casas began his days in the Americas as a beneficiary of the encomienda (slave-holding) system. However, as he watched the horror of human destruction caused as a result of Columbus' actions and decisions, as well as the actions of the soldiers under Columbus' command, De Las Casas repudiated the system. He described in vivid detail the massacre of the Indians, denounced Columbus, and published his findings in Europe in his History of the Indies.

The violence of Columbus' extermination actions was widely debated in theological and academic circles within Europe. European legal and moral principles tended to favor the rights of indigenous peoples to be free from unjustified invasion, murder and pillage by Europeans. Francisco de Vitoria, professor at the University of Salamanca in the early 1500s and often considered the father of modern international law, wrote extensively on the rights of indigenous peoples. Vitoria and others in Columbus' own lifetime rejected the view that popes and monarchs had the automatic right to enslave indigenous peoples and take their land. The rights of human beings were as much 15th Century issues then, as they are 21st Century issues today.

4. Question: But those events happened a long time ago. How could they possibly matter today?
Answer: Columbus' actions set the foundation for legal and social policies -- still used today in United States, Mexico, Canada, South America and in many countries around the world. These policies justify the theft and destruction of indigenous peoples' lands and knowledge by corporate and government interests. Media, films, judicial systems, educational systems, and other political and social institutions support this continued assault on the natural resources of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples today remain at the margins of technological society -- struggling to overcome the destruction of land, culture and language. In many ways all peoples on this planet are impacted. These attacks on indigenous peoples and their land and their knowledge contribute to the destruction of ecosystems and the erosion of human rights for all people.

An excellent website on the movement to transform "Columbus Day" is http://www.transformcolumbusday.org/index.html where these questions and answers were originally published. It is primary focused on the Denver movement to transform Columbus Day, but their materials would provide useful resources for other locales.

In school I was taught the names۬Columbus, Cortez, and Pizzaro and۬A dozen other filthy murderers.۬A bloodline all the way to General Miles,۬Daniel Boone and general Eisenhower.

No one mentioned the names۬Of even a few of the victims.۬But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine۬Was crushed so quickly by Mr. Pizzaro's boot?۬What words did he cry into the dust?

What was the familiar name۬Of that young girl who danced so gracefully۬That everyone in the village sang with her--۬Before Cortez' sword hacked off her arms۬As she protested the burning of her sweetheart?

That young man's name was Many Deeds,۬And he had been a leader of a band of fighters۬Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed۬The march of Cortez' army with only a few۬Spears and stones which now lay still۬In the mountains and remember.

Greenrock Woman was the name۬Of that old lady who walked right up۬And spat in Columbus' face.۬We must remember that, and remember۬Laughing Otter the Taino who tried to stop۬Columbus and who was taken away as a slave.۬We never saw him again.

In school I learned of heroic discoveries۬Made by liars and crooks. The courage۬Of millions of sweet and true people۬Was not commemorated.

Let us then declare a holiday۬For ourselves, and make a parade that begins۬With Columbus' victims and continues۬Even to our grandchildren who will be named۬In their honor.
Because isn't it true that even the summer۬Grass here in this land whispers those names,۬And every creek has accepted the responsibility۬Of singing those names? And nothing can stop۬The wind from howling those names around۬The corners of the school.
Why else would the birds sing۬So much sweeter here than in other lands?

Another document from the movement of Native Americans and European American supporters to revisit the meaning of the Columbus Day celebration. Native peoples in both North and South America are increasingly regarding the second monday in October as a day to remember what might have been, and to remember the horror of five centuries of genocide. Unfortunately it focused only on the 1992 -500th Anniversary- but it is provides a model for study, reflection and local resolutions.

A Faithful Response
to the 500th Anniversary of the Arrival of Christopher Columbus

As adopted by the Governing Board
May 17, 1990
A Resolution of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA

As U.S. Christians approach public observances marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first landing in the Western hemisphere, we are called to review our full history, reflect upon it, and act as people of faith mindful of the significance of 1492. The people in our churches and communities now look at the significance of the event in different ways. What represented newness of freedom, hope and opportunity for some was the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others. For the Church this is not a time for celebration but a time for a committed plan of action insuring that this "kairos" moment in history not continue to cosmetically coat the painful aspects of the American history of racism.

1. In 1992, celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the "New World" will be held. For the descendants of the survivors of the subsequent invasion, genocide, slavery, "ecocide", and exploitation of the wealth of the land, a celebration is not an appropriate observation of this anniversary.

* For the indigenous people of the Caribbean islands, Christopher Columbus's invasion marked the beginning of slavery and their eventual genocide.

* For the indigenous people of Central America, the result was slavery, genocide and exploitation leading to the present struggle for liberation.

* For the indigenous people of South America, the result was slavery, genocide, and the exploitation of their mineral and natural resources, fostering the early accumulation of capital by the European countries.

* For the indigenous people of Mexico, the result was slavery, genocide, rape of mineral as well as natural resources and a decline of their civilization.

* For the peoples of modern Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines the result was the eventual grabbing of the land, genocide and the present economic captivity.

* For the indigenous peoples of North America, it brought slavery, genocide, and theft and exploitation of the land which has led to their descendants' impoverished lives.

* For the peoples of the African Diaspora, the result was slavery, an evil and immoral system steeped in racism, economic exploitation, rape of mineral as well as human resources and national divisiveness along the lines of the colonizing nations.

* For the peoples from Asia brought to work the land, torn from their families and culture by false promises of economic prosperity, the result was labor camps, discrimination and today's victimization of the descendants facing anti-Asian racism.

* For the descendants of the European conquerors the subsequent legacy has been the perpetuation of paternalism and racism into our cultures and times.

2. The Church, with few exceptions, accompanied and legitimized this conquest and exploitation. Theological justifications for destroying native religious beliefs while forcing conversion to European forms of Christianity demanded a submission from the newly converted that facilitated their total conquest and exploitation.

3. Therefore, it is appropriate for the church to reflect on its role in that historical tragedy and, in pursuing a healing process, to move forward in our witness for justice and peace.
Towards that end, we are called to:

a. reflect seriously on the complexities and complicities of the missionary efforts during this period of colonization and subjugation that resulted in the destruction of cultures and religions, the desecration of religious sites, and other crimes against the spirituality of indigenous peoples;

b. review and reflect on the degree to which current missiologies tend to promote lifestyles that perpetuate the exploitation of the descendants of the indigenous people, and that stand in the way of enabling their self-determination;

c. identify and celebrate the significant voices within the church that have consistently advocated the rights and dignities of indigenous peoples;

d. recognize that what some historians have termed a "discovery" in reality was an invasion and colonization with legalized occupation, genocide, economic exploitation and a deep level of institutional racism and moral decadence;

e. reflect seriously on how the Church should and might ac- complish its task of witness and service to and with those of other faiths, recognizing their integrity as children of God, and not contributing to new bondages.

4. Therefore, the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA:

a. Declares 1992 to be a year of reflection and repentance, and calls upon its member communions to enter into theological and missional reflection, study and prayer as a faithful obser- vance of that year;

b. Commits itself to be involved in activities that bring forward the silenced interpretation of the 1492 event including:

* taking action to influence how governments or other institutions plan to celebrate the "discovery" of America;

* using its TV, radio and print media resources to educate the Church and its constituency about the factual histories of indigenous people, the colonization of their lands and the effects today of colonization, including the loss of land, lives and cultures; and

* advocating the inclusion of the accurate factual history of indigenous people, including African Americans, in textbooks to be used in public and parochial education systems in the United States; and

* cooperating with other hemispheric interfaith bodies in a gathering in the Caribbean islands to analyze the effects of the European invasion and colonization of the Americas from the perspective of their descendants;

c. Calls upon its member communions to join in affirming and implementing this resolution in dialogue with indigenous people of the Americas;

d. Requests that the Division of Church and Society (or its legal successor) in cooperation with the Division of Overseas Ministries (or its legal successor) develop programmatic materials for the speedy implementation of this resolution;

e. Requests appropriate units to explore convening a gathering of representatives of traditional tribes, urban Indian and tribal governments to discuss ways to strengthen Indian ministries;

f. Supports the endeavors of theological schools and seminaries to help open alternative understandings of 1492/1992;

g. Declares this resolution to be our humble and faithful first step contribution towards a deep understanding among peoples of our country. It is our hope that in a new spirit of reconciliation, we move forward together into a shared future as God's creatures honoring the plurality of our cultural heritage.

This document also quotes, in its footnotes, documents from other church bodies such as the Final Document of the European Ecumenical Assembly "Peace With Justice for the Whole Creation", May 1989, Basel, Switzerland, issued by the Conference of European Churches and the Council of European Bishops' Conference, June 2, 1989, which states that "1992 will moreover mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of a period of European expansion to the detriment of other peoples." In the Basel document, European churchpersons acknowledge having "failed to challenge with sufficient consistency political and economic systems which misuse power and wealth, exploit resources for their self-interest and perpetuate poverty and marginalisation...We commit ourselves to struggle against all violations of human rights and the social structures which favor them."
Another footnote quotes "A Public Declaration to the Tribal Councils and Traditional Spiritual Leaders of the Indian and Eskimo Peoples of the Pacific Northwest", Bishop Thomas L. Blevins, Pacific Northwest Synod, Lutheran Church in America, and eight Bishops and leaders of other denominations, August, 1987. This statement speaks of "unconscious and insensitive" attitudes and actions by the church which reflect "the rampant racism and prejudice of the dominant culture with which we too willingly identified." The footnote also mentions a speech to the Indian Leaders of the Northwest Territories by Pope John Paul II in September 1987, in which the Pope assured the Native people that the Roman Catholic Church "extols the equal human dignity of all peoples and defends their right to uphold their own cultural character, with its distinct traditions and customs."

Finally, the U.S. Council of Churches document includes a biblio- graphy of materials which it recommends be used in education. Some of these entries may surprise you, especially if you've read any of them:
1. Bartolome de las Casas, "Historia de los indios (ca. 1550), "Tears of the Indians (ca. 1550), "In Defense of the Indians" (ca. 1550)
2. Deloria, Vine, Jr., "Custer Died For Your Sins", 1970; "God Is Red", 1983
3. Galeano, Eduardo, "Memory of Fire: Genesis", NY:Pantheon, 1985
4. Jackson, Helen Hunt, "A Century of Dishonor", 1881
5. Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest", Chapel Hill, 1975
6. Jordan, Winthrop, "White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812", Baltimore: Penguin, 1968
7. Limerick, Patricia Nelson, "The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West", New York: W.W. Norton, 1987
Clearly, it is no longer the "official" position of the Church to convert Native Americans. A quick look at the Vatican II Documents' "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions" (1965) also plainly states that the Catholic Church supposedly now recognizes that there can be salvation outside the Church, and rejects the oppression of other religions as "foreign to the mind of Christ". Any missionary who says otherwise is guilty of ignorance at best and hypocrisy at worst; I offer the above documents in order to educate the former group! As for the latter, there's not much we can do for them other than point out that they can hardly call themselves Christians.

Monday is an important day for indigenous peoples of the Americas. It has become a day of remembering what could have been. It is a day of remembering the unfolding genocide. The genocide of indigenous peoples continues to this day.

But for too many of the inhabitants of North America, monday will be a day to celebrate Columbus and "his discovery." How do we judge history? An interesting academic question. But more importantly, how do we judge the present? I judge the present state of the nation based on how our people relate to our ancestors, and how our people relate to the future generations.

In preparation for this day of remembering, I print the following open letter. It was the opening document of a campaign that will continue until October the 12th is renamed and the people of the United States cease to live in denial of their history.

An Open Letter From the AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT of Colorado and Our Allies

When the Taino Indians saved Christopher Columbus from certain death on the fateful morning of October 12, 1492, a glorious opportunity presented itself for the cultures of both Europe and the Americas to flourish.

What occurred was neither glorious nor heroic. Just as Columbus could not, and did not, "discover" a hemisphere already inhabited by nearly 100 million people, his arrival cannot, and will not, be recognized by indigenous peoples as a heroic and festive event.

From a Native perspective, Columbus' arrival was a disaster from the beginning. Although his own diaries reveal that he was greeted by the Tainos with the most generous hospitality he had ever known, he immediately began the enslavement and slaughter of the Indian peoples of the Caribbean.

Defenders of Columbus and his holiday argue that critics unfairly judge Columbus, a 15th Century product, by the moral and legal standards of the late 20th century. Such a defense implies that there were no legal or moral constraints on actions such as Columbus' in 1492. In reality, European legal and moral principles acknowledged the natural rights of Indians and prohibited their slaughter or unjust wars against them.

The issue of Columbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable by dismissing Columbus, the man. Columbus Day is a perpetuation of racist assumptions that the Americas were a wasteland cluttered with dark skin savages awaiting the blessings of European "civilization." Throughout this hemisphere, educational systems and the popular media perpetuate the myth that indigenous peoples have contributed nothing to the world, and, consequently, we should be grateful for our colonization, our dispossession, and our microwave ovens.

The racist Columbus legacy enables every country in this hemisphere, including the United States, to continue its destruction of Indian peoples, from the jungles of Brazil to the highlands of Guatemala, from the Chaco of Paraguay to the Western Shoshone Nation in Nevada. Indian people remain in a perpetual state of danger from the system begun by Columbus in 1492. The Columbus legacy throughout the Americas keeps Indian people at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator. We are under continuing physical, legal and political attack, and are afforded the least access to political and legal remedies. Nevertheless we continue to resist and we refuse to surrender our spirituality, to assimilate, or to disappear into Hollywood's romantic sunset.

To dignify Columbus and his legacy with parades, holidays and other celebrations is repugnant. As the original peoples of this land, we cannot, and we will not, tolerate social and political festivities that celebrate our genocide. We are committed to the active, open, and public rejection of disrespect and racism in its various forms--including Columbus Day and Columbus Day parades.
For the past five years the American Indian Movement of Colorado and our allies have been compelled to confront and resist the continuing Columbus legacy in the streets of Denver. For every hour spent organizing non-violent opposition to the Columbus parade, we have lost an hour that we were not able to use in assisting indigenous treaty rights struggles, land recovery strategies, and the advancement of indigenous self-determination.

However, one positive benefit of our efforts was the public debate over Columbus Day that has spread into the public schools as an educational tool for students and their teachers. Overall, we view the demise of the Columbus Day Parade in Denver as a welcome opportunity to move beyond the divisive symbolism of the past.

We therefore suggest the replacement of Columbus Day with a celebration that is more inclusive and that more accurately reflects the cultural and racial richness of the Americas. We also suggest that the community support a more honest portrayal of social evolution in this hemisphere and a greater respect for all people on the margins of the dominating society. There is no more appropriate place for this transformation to occur than in Colorado, the birthplace of the Columbus Day holiday.

[The following appeared on a full page of the Rocky Mountain News on Saturday, October 8, 1994.]

In school I was taught the names۬Columbus, Cortez, and Pizzaro and۬A dozen other filthy murderers.۬A bloodline all the way to General Miles,۬Daniel Boone and general Eisenhower.

No one mentioned the names۬Of even a few of the victims.۬But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine۬Was crushed so quickly by Mr. Pizzaro's boot?۬What words did he cry into the dust?

What was the familiar name۬Of that young girl who danced so gracefully۬That everyone in the village sang with her--۬Before Cortez' sword hacked off her arms۬As she protested the burning of her sweetheart?

That young man's name was Many Deeds,۬And he had been a leader of a band of fighters۬Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed۬The march of Cortez' army with only a few۬Spears and stones which now lay still۬In the mountains and remember.

Greenrock Woman was the name۬Of that old lady who walked right up۬And spat in Columbus' face.۬We must remember that, and remember۬Laughing Otter the Taino who tried to stop۬Columbus and who was taken away as a slave.۬We never saw him again.

In school I learned of heroic discoveries۬Made by liars and crooks. The courage۬Of millions of sweet and true people۬Was not commemorated.

Let us then declare a holiday۬For ourselves, and make a parade that begins۬With Columbus' victims and continues۬Even to our grandchildren who will be named۬In their honor.
Because isn't it true that even the summer۬Grass here in this land whispers those names,۬And every creek has accepted the responsibility۬Of singing those names? And nothing can stop۬The wind from howling those names around۬The corners of the school.
Why else would the birds sing۬So much sweeter here than in other lands?

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes:
We understand that ordinary people are messengers of the Most High. They go about their tasks in holy anonymity. Yet, if they had not been there, if they had not said what they said or did what they did, it would not be the way it is now. We would not be the way we are now. Never forget that you too yourself may be a messenger.

The prophet is one who points to the corruption and banality of the present moment and cries doom. The prophet details the betrayal and calls the people back to covenant.

Is there an implicit covenant that is framed by the promises and ideals of the U.S. national tradition? I taught history before I choose to go back to theological school. I know that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence did not extend beyond white male property owners, and that the "we the people" that constituted the Constitution did not include the nations of Native Americans or the African American people. Yet over time we extended the promise, and "we the people" enter into a covenant to create a national community based on ideals of inclusive justice.

Can I critique the performance, the failure to honor the covenant and the same time believe in the promise enough to be call on others to renew the covenant? Will our descent in post modernist nihilism and narcissist aversion to bad news make our people immune to hear with ears that hear the good news that prophets are among us, and our local prophet may be ourselves?

The young salesman approached the farmer and began to talk excitedly about the book he was selling. "This book will tell you everything you need to know about farming," the salesman said with conviction. "It tells you when to sow and when to reap. It tells you about weather, what to expect and when to expect it. This book tells you all you need to know.

"Well thank you." said the farmer "but that is not my problem. I know how to farm. MY problem is doing it all.

from Joseph Gosse, Spiritual Life magazine reproduced in 100 ways to keep the Soul Alive.

It was a long time ago. Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

........................

This was originally going to be a post on the decline of intellectual discourse in America. I hadn't even begun to write when the post disappeared, and I found it here. I assume that I hit the publish button, but I also wonder about a bug in the software. At any rate the title is provocative, and since it has already been picked up by the feeds it is too late to delete. People would be punching the listing over a Kimba and getting zip.

I might complete the thought behind the post someday, and publish it under a new title.

But if Unitarian Universalism is maintain its intellectual discourse I think we need to discuss issues based on standards of evidence. It is important that my co-religionists know how I feel about all sorts of things, but my feelings don't constitute a sufficient basis for making policy decisions for Unitarian Universalism.

We need more people talking to each other, at a deeper level of depth and candor. I experience less willingness to exchange ideas and experiences, for fear that we might make our conversation partner feel challenged.

As I said, I have not finished this thought. The lesson is don't compose in Ecto, my handy editing and posting software. Write in a word processor and thenransfer. Makes sense, but here I am composing in Ecto.

After my post on "Cheap Meat" yesterday, Shawn Anthony inquired of vegetarian resources, says he gets tired of eating the same old thing. HAFIDHA SOFÍA recommended beans, there is an amazing variety of beans all of which are rich in protein and can be combined to create nutritional and delicious meals. Beans and corn were the staple of the Cherokee and most North American Native Peoples east of the Mississippi and the Europeans conquers remarked on how tall and healthy they were. Lentils and bulgar kept the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia feed, chick peas are a staple in Syria and North Africa. We can go on and on. With peppers, onions, and seasonings, a person could live well on beans.


I have recommended these two resources to transitional vegetarians.

"The New Becoming Vegetarian: The Essential Guide To A Healthy Vegetarian Diet" (Vesanto Melina, Brenda Davis)

I recommend "New Becoming" because it talks about the life style issues involved, and developing one's own style. It has good thinking about families with children.

"Student's Vegetarian Cookbook, Revised : Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty Vegetarian Recipes" (Carole Raymond)

I recommend "Student's Vegetarian" because it is simple, so many recipes take forever and require exotic ingredients. My own cooking time is thirty minutes, and I save food ideas that look like they take a lot of time.

I have been struggling with vegetarianism for thirty years. Neither of my parents looked favorably on vegetarianism. Meat meant protein, and protein meant health. And that was that.

I never experienced the revulsion to killing an animal that many vegetarians report as preceding their conversion experience, my attraction to forgoing meat was motivated by other concerns. First, the fact that most of the world's people subsist on vegetable proteins mostly drawn from the legumes, seeds, and nuts. The information that we could solve world hunger if we feed the soy beans that the U.S feeds to cattle to people was shocking information. I tried vegetarianism for several years in keeping with diet for a starving planet. When I remarried ten years ago, my spouse had also tried vegetarianism, and had been advised by dietitian to eat some fish occasionally - so we became almost vegetarians with a little seafood.

When I began to explore Native American spirituality I began to develop an ethic relative to animal food that made sense to me. I will eat fish if it has been caught by fishing the high seas, but I would strive to avoid factory farmed fished. I have gone fishing and eat what I caught as well. I have never had an opportunity or desire to engage in the hunt, but I have less moral objections to hunting than I do the meat and poultry industry. I do experience the whole idea of factory farming as morally reprehensible. But I have also thought that such meat and poultry was unhealthy. Now I read an article that reports that factory farm raised meat and poultry creates a serious health risk.

Abid Aslam writes "Crowded, inhumane, and unhygienic conditions on factory farms can sicken animals . . . Additionally, factory farmed meat and fish contain ''an arsenal of unnatural ingredients'' including chemical and other pollutants, arsenic, and hormones.

World beef prices have fallen roughly 25 percent over the past 30 years, Nierenberg says, and meat consumption is rising fastest not in the West but in the developing world.

From the early 1970s to the mid-90s, meat consumption in developing countries grew by 70 million tons, nearly triple the rise in industrial nations.

Some might see that as good news, an indication that people in poor countries are eating more protein. Nierenberg, however, says that ''as developing countries continue their climb up the protein ladder, the genetic stock of their livestock is eroding as higher-producing industrial breeds crowd out indigenous varieties.''
The less diverse the herds, the more susceptible they are to the diseases that stalk the feed lots, scientists have said."

Within a generation we might see a revolution in how we eat and we will look on our present meat based diet in the same way we now look on smoking tobacco.

Carl Jung gave us the terms extroversion and introversion,  and people have been misusing the terms ever since.  Being aware of the world and of people outside of oneself and at the same time being in touch with our inner lives of ideas and emotions are dual components of living a life of wholeness.  If one were a total extrovert one could not stand to be alone, one could not think outside of a conversation, one would have no inner resources to handle the difficulties that humans are prone to encounter.  Similarly a total introvert would have no relations with other people,  and would be oblivious to their environment.  Most of us balance introversion and extraversion, living both in the outer world of people and things and inner world of ideas and feelings.

When we use the term "spirituality" we are usually refering to our inner, and personal religious lives.  Some of us have a spiritual practice, for example prayer, or  mediation.  Unitarians and Universalists had their own particular spiritual practices, such as journaling, and walking in nature.

When we use the term "religious" we are usually referring to our practices in the world, or to the practices of a particular faith community.

When people tell me that they are spiritual but not religious it reminds me of the misuse of the terms introversion and extraversion.  Can one really be spiritual (seeking the inner and personal) and have no practice in the world?  Can one find "inner meaning" and wholeness with no regard for the wisdom of the world's spiritual traditions (a.k.a. the world's religions.)

I think what these "spiritual but not religious" people are actually saying goes something like this: "I am aware of my need for a spiritual life, and I am oriented toward enduring values, but the organized religions that I have experienced are too dogmatic, authoritarian and/or hypocritical.

And they want to confess that to a Unitarian Universalist.

A shareware provider of subway maps that download for installation on a IPod has received a cease and desist order from New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority.  Apparently they see their subway maps as intellectual property although they give them away for free at the toll booths.  Boston however has no problem with downloadable copies of its subway maps, nor does the District of Columbia.

Check out the story, and keep an extra nickel in your pocket just in case.  Read Charley's story below.

My partner and spouse and I live near Tampa, Florida where she serves a Unitarian Universalist church,  I serve the Treasure Coast Unitarian Universalist Church on the Atlantic Coast of Florida about 160 miles away.  We travel back and forth taking on days off.  My residence near Stuart is a community called Indiantown.  Photos from the collection of the Canadian Museum of History.  I was inspired to post this morning by a new blog (see below.)

Indiantown had a large Seminole Population at one time, but at present most of the people who live in Indiantown are Mayans who work in Florida as farmworkers and grounds keepers for institutions, country clubs, and more affluent residents.

I have been to celebrations of the Maya,  different from the Cherokee. But of the same indigenous spirit.

A new blog by Hafidha Sofia posts a reflection on the Maya.  Congratulations and good luck to Hafidha on her new blog

Never Say Never To Your Traveling Self

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America

The President of the United States, and all other officers of the United States including those who work at the Pentagon swear an oath to uphold the constitution.  They failed.  They did not provide for the common defense of "we the people" when it came to the Katrina disaster, because they were diverted in their completed non defense related war against Iraq.

A report commissioned by the Office of Secretary of Defence as an "independent and critical review" details how funds for flood control were diverted to other projects, desperately needed National Guards were stuck in Iraq and how military personnel had to "sneak off post" to help with relief efforts because their commander had refused permission.  The report says that the US has long been committed to war on two fronts, but the Katrina disaster plus Iraq proved too much for the U.S. defense. 

I once won a T-shirt with the ICUU slogan printed on it because I was able to name the member organizations of the International Conference of Unitarian Universalists, that was 1997 and they keep adding new countries with a Unitarian and/or Universalist movement.  In case you are confronted with a quiz at some UU meeting here is some information.

PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF UNITARIANS AND UNIVERSALISTS
We, the member groups of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, affirming our belief in religious community based on:

€¢    liberty of conscience and individual thought in matters of faith,
€¢    the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
€¢    justice and compassion in human relations,
€¢    Responsible stewardship of earth's living system,
€¢    and our commitment to democratic principles,

We declare our purposes to be:

€¢    to serve the Infinite Spirit of Life and the human community, by strengthening the worldwide Unitarian and Universalist faith,
€¢    to affirm the variety and richness of our living traditions,
€¢    to facilitate mutual support among member organizations,
€¢    to promote our ideals and principles around the world,
€¢    to provide models of liberal religious response,
€¢    to the human condition which upholds our common values.

Full Member List

Organizations that fulfill the conditions laid down in the ICUU constitution and by laws. An organizations applying for full membership must satisfy the EC and the Council that it has established a record of stability, unity, and effective administration.

€¢    Australia & New Zealand
€¢    Britain
€¢    Canada
€¢    Czech Republic
€¢    Denmark
€¢    Europe
€¢    Finland
€¢    Germany
€¢    Hungary
€¢    India
€¢    Nigeria
€¢    Pakistan
€¢    Phillipines
€¢    Poland
€¢    Romania
€¢    Russia
€¢    South Africa
€¢    Spain
€¢    Sri Lanka
€¢    United States

Provisional Member List

Argentina

Although Argentina is known as a traditional Christian country, many people are looking for an alternative answer for their spiritual needs.
A group is meeting in Ushuaia where people from different traditions exchange ideas and worship together in a new Meditation Center at Lilian Burlando's home.
Dr. Lilian Burlando۬del Tolkeyen 976۬(9410) Ushuaia۬Tierra del Fuego۬Argentina۬Phone: 54-2901 445294۬Email: lburlando@uolsinectis.com.ar or ushargentina@yahoo.com.ar

Brazil

A new leader replacing Paulo Ereno will be announced shortly.
Rev. Greta Browne۬801 Vernon Street۬Bethleham, PA 18015 USA۬Email: sauus@hotmail.com

Bolivia

A group has been organized in La Paz as part of the Federation Latinoamericana.
Teresa Flores Bedegal۬Casilla 499۬La Paz, Bolivia۬Email: tflores@mail.megalink.com

Latvia

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Latvia.
In 1993 a new congregation was started in Riga. The group now meets regularly and has been granted recognition and registration by the Latvian Government. Group (15 to 20 people) meet every week in an Art School.
Haralds Purins۬Email: haraldspurins@inbox.lv۬or maijaozolina@hotmail.co

Puerto Rico

Unitarian Universalists of Puerto Rico,۬Barrio Mariana, 305۬Naquabo, PR 00718۬Website: UUPuertoRico.org۬Donner Lohnes: donnerlohness@hotmail.com

The International Council of Unitarians and Universalists announced the 26th in its monthly series of global chalice lighting readings. Congregations worldwide are invited to participate in this community-building project.  All ICUU-affiliated groups have been asked to submit brief chalice lightings for the project. Every month, a chalice lighting reading will be distributed to Unitarian and Universalist congregations around the world. We ask each congregation to use the reading for at least one worship service in the designated month, identifying it as the "Global Chalice Lighting" for that month and naming the group which submitted it. Readings will be circulated in English and, where different, in their original language.

It is hoped that the ICUU Global Chalice Lighting Project will enhance the worship experience in our congregations and raise awareness of the international dimensions of our religious movement.

This Chalice Lighting, in English and French, is to be used during October 2005.  It was submitted by the Canadian Unitarian Council and was written by Janet Vickers.

Breath of the divine, light a flame of reflection in all that we do.
Breath of creation, light a flame of connection in our circle of care.
Breath of wonder, light a flame of inspiration to cultivate participation.
Breath of fear, light a flame of courage to be who we are: sentient, vulnerable, and diverse.
Breath of this moment, light a flame of celebration for our future unfolds the covenant of this day.

Souffle du divin, donnez vie à la flamme de la réflexion pour découvrir le sens profond de nos actes.
Souffle de la création, donnez vie à la flamme de la compassion pour créer des liens qui nous unissent.
Souffle de l'émerveillement, donnez vie à la flamme de l'inspiration pour nous inciter à la participation active de tout notre être.
Souffle de la peur, donnez vie à la flamme du courage pour être qui nous sommes : consciencieux, vulnérables et diversifiés.
Souffle du moment, donnez vie à la flamme de la celebration pour que notre avenir puisse se déployer grâce à notre engagement d'aujourd'hui

Woody said:  "I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns."

Woody Gutrie, songwriter, singer, poet, social critic, and model for a generation of other singers died on October 3, 1967 after a long struggle with Huntington's disease.  He was 55.  Woody called his songs "people's songs." His vision for spiritual and social justice embodied in his lyrics and music continue to shape and influence American society.  Coming of age in Oklahoma during the time of the "Dustbowl"  and Great Depression he traveled throughout America during the 1930s, 40s and 50s as one of the main spokespeople for the causes of labor, anti-facism, anti-racism, and democracy.

CARPENTER SHIH went to Ch'i and, when he got to Crooked Shaft, he saw a serrate oak standing by the village shrine.

It was broad enough to shelter several thousand oxen
and measured a hundred spans around, towering above the hills.
The lowest branches were eighty feet above the ground,
and a dozen or so of them could have been made into boats.
There were so many sightseers that the place looked like a fair,
but the carpenter didn't even glance around
and went on his way without stopping.

His apprentice stood staring for a long time and then ran after Carpenter Shih and said, "Since I first took up by ax and followed you, Master, I have never seen timber as beautiful as this.
But you didn't even bother to look, you went right on without stopping.
Why is that?

Forget it-say no more! said the carpenter, It is a worthless tree!
Make boats out of it and they'd sink, make coffins and they'd rot.
Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine;
use it for posts and the worms would eat them up.
It's not a timber tree-there is nothing it can be used for.
That's how it got to be so old!"

After Carpenter Shih had returned home, the oak tree appeared to him in a dream and said "What are you comparing me with?


Are you comparing me with those useful trees?
The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron,
the rest of those fruitiferous trees and shrubs-
as soon as their fruit is right, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse.
Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around.
Their utility makes life miserable for them,
and so they don't get to finish off their years Heaven gave them.

They bring it on themselves-the pulling and tearing of the common mob.
And it is the same with all other things,

As for me, I've been trying for a long ime to be of no use,
and now that I'm about to die, I've finally got it.
This is to be of great use to me. If I had gotten to be of some use,
would I have ever grown to be so large?

When Carpenter Shih woke up, he reported his dream.
His apprentice said, If it is so intent on being of no use,
what is it doing there at the village shrine?

Shhh! said Carpenter Shih. Say no more!

published in Drew Leder's Spiritual Passages; Embracing Life's Sacred Journey.

Simone Weil writes:

There is a God. There is no God.
Where is the problem?

I am quite sure that there is a God
in the sense that I am sure my love is no illusion.

I am quite sure there no God
in the sense that I am sure there is nothing
which resembles what I can conceive when I say that word.