A long battle with the Veteran’s Administration ended in victory today for Pagan veterans, and all those who believe in equality under the law. Until now, the VA has steadfastly refused to allow the Pentacle- a five pointed star within a circle, symbol of Wicca and other Pagan faiths- to be put on tombstones of fallen soldiers, even if “Wiccan” was the religion listed on their dog tags. (see my previous post an issue worth supporting ) The VA allows symbols for 38 faiths- including Eckankar, Humanism, and even Atheism... but NOT Wicca.
In this press release from the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a settlement was announced in a lawsuit the AU brought against the VA. “In the lawsuit, Americans United represented Roberta Stewart, whose husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart, was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2005; Karen DePolito, whose husband, Jerome Birnbaum, is a veteran of the Korean War who died last year; Circle Sanctuary, a prominent Wiccan congregation; Jill Medicine Heart Combs, whose husband is severely ill; and the Isis Invicta Military Mission, a Wiccan and Pagan congregation serving military personnel.”
“This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation’s veterans,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “It is a proud day for religious freedom in the United States.”
As a Pagan, a solitary syncretic Wiccan if you want specifics, I’m happy that my government finally recognizes that the blood of our heros spills as red as that of anyone elses’. But I headlined this as a wistful victory... because as a UU, I’m ashamed that I could never get other UUs interested in this cause, that we were not co-sponsors of that lawsuit. I could never figure out whether it was the witches we didn’t give a damn about, or the veterans.
Ok, ok, that last sentence was harsh, and over the top... but the fact remains that in the 55 weeks since I first wrote about it, I’ve never received comment one, not on the blog, not on the letter tacked on the wall at church, nor have I seen anyone else get any better reaction than I have; explain it how you will.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Thinkers blogs
uuMomma has tagged me in the “Thinking Blog” meme (which started here )- which was quite flattering, as we frequently disagree- but she likes me anyway! (Why do I feel like Sally Fields accepting an Oscar?) So now it’s my turn to reach out and touch five bloggers!
Several of my regulars I cannot pick, because they’ve already been mentioned- as well they should be, because they are on everyone’s favorite’s list: ChailceBlog , Peacebang , Ms. Kitty‘s Saloon and Road Show , Philocrites . One blog I check regularly I cannot mention for other reasons, but we all know him- his initials are RE, and he hails from Montreal. This may surprise some of you, but I can’t help it- despite everything, I still hope for the day when he returns to the light side.
Ok, five of my daily favorites...
1. The Happy Feminist . Simply the best feminist writing anywhere, any format.
2. The Wild Hunt . Pagan news and music- and he hangs out with UUs.
3. Trivium . Very well written look from a lay leader’s perspective.
4. Bill Baar’s West Side . It is said that the essence of youth is beauty; of age, perspective. Bill and I both have perspective.
5. It’s All One Thing . Where there’s a Will, there’s a story.
Several of my regulars I cannot pick, because they’ve already been mentioned- as well they should be, because they are on everyone’s favorite’s list: ChailceBlog , Peacebang , Ms. Kitty‘s Saloon and Road Show , Philocrites . One blog I check regularly I cannot mention for other reasons, but we all know him- his initials are RE, and he hails from Montreal. This may surprise some of you, but I can’t help it- despite everything, I still hope for the day when he returns to the light side.
Ok, five of my daily favorites...
1. The Happy Feminist . Simply the best feminist writing anywhere, any format.
2. The Wild Hunt . Pagan news and music- and he hangs out with UUs.
3. Trivium . Very well written look from a lay leader’s perspective.
4. Bill Baar’s West Side . It is said that the essence of youth is beauty; of age, perspective. Bill and I both have perspective.
5. It’s All One Thing . Where there’s a Will, there’s a story.
Only religion can do it
There has been much discussion recently about the role of religion in society, following on the heels of a number of high-profile books and essays saying that religion is the root of all our problems, and should be eliminated in the best interest of mankind. I have come to the reverse conclusion- that if mankind is ever to enter the golden age we are on the verge of, it must and will be religion that will usher us there.
My thoughts jelled while reading the abortion discussion at Ms. Kitty‘s Saloon and Road Show . People are sometimes surprised to find out how strongly pro-life I am, because I do not call for legislation. My position is that it is not possible to write a law that will not be abused by one side or the other, that this is one of many issues that cannot be solved by the government- one must change hearts and minds. In fact, this is true of all the great issues, because of the very nature of government itself.
Government can only coerce, by virtue of having armed men at its command. Government is not equiped to persuade, and has no moral authority to place its values and judgments above your own. Individual statesmen can be persuasive, but they are only by virtue of their own personal integrity. Outlawing something only allows you to punish the perpetrator; it does not prevent the action from occurring. This is why there has been so little call for new laws in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre- we have learned from Iraq that if a man is willing to die in the process, the full armed might of the US may not be enough to stop him.
If you really want to stop a given behavior, not merely punish it, you must do so by moral persuasion. This is something religion is uniquely equiped to do- but not just any religion. To be truly effective at such persuasion, the religion must have two features, the first of which is that any judgments made must be based on behavior, not belief or intent. Bizarre things happen when belief trumps behavior; people will kill themselves or others in the search for eternal life. They will deny their children medical care, snuffing out their young lives to buy them lives in another reality. The religion of the future of mankind must deal with one reality at a time.
The second thing it must do is truly preach the interconnectedness of all things. I don’t mean environmentalism, which is the only thing most people seem to think of when that phrase is used; I mean the fact that actions have far reaching consequences, that karma acts in the here and now, not the next life. Perhaps it would be better to use the more evocative term Adam Smith used when he wrote of this concept as applied to the economy: the invisible hand. Its actions are not always understood until afterwards- the law of unintended consequences- but the reaction of the invisible hand is unstoppable, more certain than death or taxes.
What do I mean, truly preach the invisible hand? I could envision a prison ministry going like this... you pull out an 8 x 10 glossy of a young child- “look at this- good looking kid, isn’t he? He lives in Africa. $500 a year would buy him a glass of milk and some green vegetables every day- but we can’t afford to give it to him because it costs $30,000 a year to keep you here in prison. You, there- how long are you in for?”
“Three more years.”
“Oooo... sorry...” as you speak, you take out a pen and scratch the eyes out of the picture. “This kid can’t wait that long- he and sixty more just like him will go blind from vitamin A deficiency. Here, keep the picture- he won’t need it. You- I’m told you’re a drug dealer?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, they gave me a list of your customers; many are going into rehab. Oh, hey, this is ironic; it turns out your grandmother needs drugs, too, drugs that aren’t covered by Medicaid. But you know, we only have so much money for public medicine, and we have to spend it on rehab- addicts kill people for drug money, little old ladies don’t. So Bob is getting what would have been your Granny’s 80th year of life instead; Jenny gets her 79th year... oh, wow, there another dozen names on this list. Here, take the list; you can explain it to your grandmother when she comes to visit you tomorrow- she still loves you, you know. The rest of you- when you’re out there acting like a big shot, you’re sentencing your friends and family to a form of slavery to pay for it, and you’re sentencing other more needy people to death. When you’re ready to admit that you’re the ones screwing up your own lives, not “the man”, and you want to turn it around, come see me.”
The effects of the invisible hand are, of course, world-wide. As I discuss here , according to the United Nations, there’s enough food right now to cure hunger today. The technology and resources exist to give everyone safe water and sanitation. In fact, the resources exist right now to give everyone on Earth a lifestyle equivalent to lower-to-middle class American- don’t take my word for it; Google around and run the numbers. So why don’t we? A combination of mismangagement, red tape- and money.
So what are we spending the money on instead? Again, you can prove it to yourself by Googling around and using a calculator, but I’ll go ahead and give it to you: crime. Take all the money spent on Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System, add in the cost of private security, lawyers, and the schools to teach them, factor in how much manufacturing goes into locks, security doors and barriers, cost of insurance, lost productivity... it’s literally trillions of dollars. Cut crime by 50% world-wide, and Sally Struthers will never have to cut another commercial about famine in Ethiopia. End civil wars as well, and Darfur will look like Muncie, Indiana.
But governments can’t do it- if they could, it would be done already. But religions could- religions have made far greater impact upon the world’s zeitgeist than this before. So what religions are candidates for this role? Liberal Christians- the UUA, UCC, others- might understand about deeds, not words, and interconnectedness, but are so hamstrung by their horror of being “judgmental” as to be utterly incapable of speaking truth to poverty (as opposed to speaking truth to power, which everybody and their blogger is doing). Pagans and NeoPagans understand “one reality at a time” and “the invisible hand” better than the Christians, as they are merely extensions of their “Rede” and “Karma” and “Three-fold Law”- but are hamstrung by their total lack of organization. Most Buddhists get it, but are no stronger a force in most G-8 countries than the Wiccans. There is no religion today positioned to take us into the promised land.
But what about the future? What religion will be the first to step up and lead mankind into its golden age?
My money is on the NeoPagans. The UUs have the organization, history, and money to do it, but have shown no desire to grow beyond a debating society. The UCC depends on defectors from the mainline Christian churches for their growth, and I just don’t think that’s good enough. The Pagans have no organization, but they have the energy, enthusiaism, and are perhaps the fastest growing faith in America. I’m betting the Pagans can grow an organization faster than the UUs can change from talkers to doers. So mote it be.
My thoughts jelled while reading the abortion discussion at Ms. Kitty‘s Saloon and Road Show . People are sometimes surprised to find out how strongly pro-life I am, because I do not call for legislation. My position is that it is not possible to write a law that will not be abused by one side or the other, that this is one of many issues that cannot be solved by the government- one must change hearts and minds. In fact, this is true of all the great issues, because of the very nature of government itself.
Government can only coerce, by virtue of having armed men at its command. Government is not equiped to persuade, and has no moral authority to place its values and judgments above your own. Individual statesmen can be persuasive, but they are only by virtue of their own personal integrity. Outlawing something only allows you to punish the perpetrator; it does not prevent the action from occurring. This is why there has been so little call for new laws in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre- we have learned from Iraq that if a man is willing to die in the process, the full armed might of the US may not be enough to stop him.
If you really want to stop a given behavior, not merely punish it, you must do so by moral persuasion. This is something religion is uniquely equiped to do- but not just any religion. To be truly effective at such persuasion, the religion must have two features, the first of which is that any judgments made must be based on behavior, not belief or intent. Bizarre things happen when belief trumps behavior; people will kill themselves or others in the search for eternal life. They will deny their children medical care, snuffing out their young lives to buy them lives in another reality. The religion of the future of mankind must deal with one reality at a time.
The second thing it must do is truly preach the interconnectedness of all things. I don’t mean environmentalism, which is the only thing most people seem to think of when that phrase is used; I mean the fact that actions have far reaching consequences, that karma acts in the here and now, not the next life. Perhaps it would be better to use the more evocative term Adam Smith used when he wrote of this concept as applied to the economy: the invisible hand. Its actions are not always understood until afterwards- the law of unintended consequences- but the reaction of the invisible hand is unstoppable, more certain than death or taxes.
What do I mean, truly preach the invisible hand? I could envision a prison ministry going like this... you pull out an 8 x 10 glossy of a young child- “look at this- good looking kid, isn’t he? He lives in Africa. $500 a year would buy him a glass of milk and some green vegetables every day- but we can’t afford to give it to him because it costs $30,000 a year to keep you here in prison. You, there- how long are you in for?”
“Three more years.”
“Oooo... sorry...” as you speak, you take out a pen and scratch the eyes out of the picture. “This kid can’t wait that long- he and sixty more just like him will go blind from vitamin A deficiency. Here, keep the picture- he won’t need it. You- I’m told you’re a drug dealer?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, they gave me a list of your customers; many are going into rehab. Oh, hey, this is ironic; it turns out your grandmother needs drugs, too, drugs that aren’t covered by Medicaid. But you know, we only have so much money for public medicine, and we have to spend it on rehab- addicts kill people for drug money, little old ladies don’t. So Bob is getting what would have been your Granny’s 80th year of life instead; Jenny gets her 79th year... oh, wow, there another dozen names on this list. Here, take the list; you can explain it to your grandmother when she comes to visit you tomorrow- she still loves you, you know. The rest of you- when you’re out there acting like a big shot, you’re sentencing your friends and family to a form of slavery to pay for it, and you’re sentencing other more needy people to death. When you’re ready to admit that you’re the ones screwing up your own lives, not “the man”, and you want to turn it around, come see me.”
The effects of the invisible hand are, of course, world-wide. As I discuss here , according to the United Nations, there’s enough food right now to cure hunger today. The technology and resources exist to give everyone safe water and sanitation. In fact, the resources exist right now to give everyone on Earth a lifestyle equivalent to lower-to-middle class American- don’t take my word for it; Google around and run the numbers. So why don’t we? A combination of mismangagement, red tape- and money.
So what are we spending the money on instead? Again, you can prove it to yourself by Googling around and using a calculator, but I’ll go ahead and give it to you: crime. Take all the money spent on Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System, add in the cost of private security, lawyers, and the schools to teach them, factor in how much manufacturing goes into locks, security doors and barriers, cost of insurance, lost productivity... it’s literally trillions of dollars. Cut crime by 50% world-wide, and Sally Struthers will never have to cut another commercial about famine in Ethiopia. End civil wars as well, and Darfur will look like Muncie, Indiana.
But governments can’t do it- if they could, it would be done already. But religions could- religions have made far greater impact upon the world’s zeitgeist than this before. So what religions are candidates for this role? Liberal Christians- the UUA, UCC, others- might understand about deeds, not words, and interconnectedness, but are so hamstrung by their horror of being “judgmental” as to be utterly incapable of speaking truth to poverty (as opposed to speaking truth to power, which everybody and their blogger is doing). Pagans and NeoPagans understand “one reality at a time” and “the invisible hand” better than the Christians, as they are merely extensions of their “Rede” and “Karma” and “Three-fold Law”- but are hamstrung by their total lack of organization. Most Buddhists get it, but are no stronger a force in most G-8 countries than the Wiccans. There is no religion today positioned to take us into the promised land.
But what about the future? What religion will be the first to step up and lead mankind into its golden age?
My money is on the NeoPagans. The UUs have the organization, history, and money to do it, but have shown no desire to grow beyond a debating society. The UCC depends on defectors from the mainline Christian churches for their growth, and I just don’t think that’s good enough. The Pagans have no organization, but they have the energy, enthusiaism, and are perhaps the fastest growing faith in America. I’m betting the Pagans can grow an organization faster than the UUs can change from talkers to doers. So mote it be.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Update to “An Inconvenient Truth”
In my post of last November 27, An Inconvenient Truth , I pointed out that the hurricane statistics quoted in Al Gore’s movie are at considerable variance with the historical record, and that his predictions for the 2006 hurricane season could not have been more wrong if he had tried. He is making the same predictions for the 2007 season- that there will be a dramatic increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes- and I must say I admire his consistancy; the beauty of weather prediction is that if you stick to your guns, no matter what you say you will eventually be right.
But then Tuesday, there was this story out of University of Miami's Rosenstiel School and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Princeton, New Jersey, claiming that Global Warming may be making hurricanes milder, not more intense: “The study, to be published on Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters, found that climate model simulations show a "robust increase" in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic during the 21st century from global warming.
Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction at different altitudes, tends to tear apart tropical cyclones, preventing nascent ones from growing and already-formed hurricanes from becoming the monster storms that cause the most damage.”
So as we enter the hurricane season this summer, we can be sure of the following:
If there is an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes, that is proof of Global Warming.
If there is a decrease in the number or intensity of hurricanes, that is proof of Global Warming.
Even if Global Warming means never again Katrina, we must fight it now, while it’s still a theory; if we wait for hard evidence, it will be too late.
The best way to fight Global Warming is the Kyoto Accords, which have the following bullet points: 1. China, which will surpass the US this year as the world’s leading greenhouse gas producer, and several other third world countries will be exempt from any regulation. 2. The G-8 nations will have modest restrictions. 3. The US will have draconian restrictions, crippling our economy.
If you question any of the above, you’re a mouth breathing, Fox listening, Creation claiming, Holocaust denying, Religious Right Wingnut.
But then Tuesday, there was this story out of University of Miami's Rosenstiel School and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Princeton, New Jersey, claiming that Global Warming may be making hurricanes milder, not more intense: “The study, to be published on Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters, found that climate model simulations show a "robust increase" in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic during the 21st century from global warming.
Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction at different altitudes, tends to tear apart tropical cyclones, preventing nascent ones from growing and already-formed hurricanes from becoming the monster storms that cause the most damage.”
So as we enter the hurricane season this summer, we can be sure of the following:
If there is an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes, that is proof of Global Warming.
If there is a decrease in the number or intensity of hurricanes, that is proof of Global Warming.
Even if Global Warming means never again Katrina, we must fight it now, while it’s still a theory; if we wait for hard evidence, it will be too late.
The best way to fight Global Warming is the Kyoto Accords, which have the following bullet points: 1. China, which will surpass the US this year as the world’s leading greenhouse gas producer, and several other third world countries will be exempt from any regulation. 2. The G-8 nations will have modest restrictions. 3. The US will have draconian restrictions, crippling our economy.
If you question any of the above, you’re a mouth breathing, Fox listening, Creation claiming, Holocaust denying, Religious Right Wingnut.
Friday, April 13, 2007
A Military Chaplain Repents
is the title of this interview
with Rev. George B. Zabelka (deceased), former chaplain of the 509th Composite Group- the bomber squadron that dropped the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Hat tip to The Witches‘ Voice ) This interview is an absolute must read for anyone considering the question of whether the UUA should become a peace church- no matter which side you’re on.
with Rev. George B. Zabelka (deceased), former chaplain of the 509th Composite Group- the bomber squadron that dropped the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Hat tip to The Witches‘ Voice ) This interview is an absolute must read for anyone considering the question of whether the UUA should become a peace church- no matter which side you’re on.
To dance like no one was watching
Jamie Goodwin at Trivium is always a good read, but his recent post Speaking In Tongues resonated with me even more than usual.
Like Jamie, I was raised in a fundamental tradition- Apostolic in his case, Baptist in mine. After trying a pose of atheism- which my soul could no more accept than fundamentalism- I ended up as a NeoPagan and a UU. And like Jamie, I harbor no hurts or ill will toward the faith of my childhood, and treasure the time spent there.
Jamie and I are in the minority in that position- the vast majority of UUs I have met who are former Christians are contemptous of their Christian upbringing. They seem to believe that they have grown above and beyond those forms of Christianity, that those beliefs were lower rungs on the ladder to higher understanding. Some will state openly and some will only imply what most clearly believe- that the old fashioned John 3:16 Christianity is for the intellectually or emotionally impaired. Not me. I have no illusions that I could fence with the likes of C.S. Lewis or W. F. Buckley. My path is not better than theirs, I have not grown beyond them, I have merely grown away from them. I am on a different path because I have different emotional and spiritual needs, not because I am more intelligent than they.
Because we do not despise where we came from, Jamie and I are both capable of seeing that in some ways, modern UU has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Our horror of ritual, for one thing. UUs are almost unique in shunning ritual; nearly all other religions recognize that ritual is a unifying factor, that it is a trigger for joy and comraderie. The ritual that Jamie misses is speaking in tongues- one of the very rituals most ridiculed by those who believe they are above such trailer-trash holy-roller stuff. Of course, those people have no theological arguments for their attitudes, merely cultural prejudice; they equate dour New England reserve with intellectual advancement, and “making a joyful noise” with more primitive cultures worthy of a “National Geographic” article.
They are missing what makes “being taken by the spirit” one of the oldest and most universal of religious rituals. Whether it is a VooDoo congregate channelling a Loa, or a Wiccan “drawing down the Moon”, or a Pentacostal “speaking in tongues”. or a Baptist “making a joyful noise”, they are letting go, “dancing as if no one were watching, singing as if no one were listening”. It is a catharsis, and more- it is your concious connecting with your subconcious, leaving you more whole and healthy than you were before. It is a revelatory experience; you cannot hide internal conflicts from yourself during such an experience.
But alas, it is an experience the average UU will never know. Or if they do, if they find a safe place in which they can truly let go, to bring forth what is within and share, it will not be within the confines of a UU service.
Like Jamie, I was raised in a fundamental tradition- Apostolic in his case, Baptist in mine. After trying a pose of atheism- which my soul could no more accept than fundamentalism- I ended up as a NeoPagan and a UU. And like Jamie, I harbor no hurts or ill will toward the faith of my childhood, and treasure the time spent there.
Jamie and I are in the minority in that position- the vast majority of UUs I have met who are former Christians are contemptous of their Christian upbringing. They seem to believe that they have grown above and beyond those forms of Christianity, that those beliefs were lower rungs on the ladder to higher understanding. Some will state openly and some will only imply what most clearly believe- that the old fashioned John 3:16 Christianity is for the intellectually or emotionally impaired. Not me. I have no illusions that I could fence with the likes of C.S. Lewis or W. F. Buckley. My path is not better than theirs, I have not grown beyond them, I have merely grown away from them. I am on a different path because I have different emotional and spiritual needs, not because I am more intelligent than they.
Because we do not despise where we came from, Jamie and I are both capable of seeing that in some ways, modern UU has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Our horror of ritual, for one thing. UUs are almost unique in shunning ritual; nearly all other religions recognize that ritual is a unifying factor, that it is a trigger for joy and comraderie. The ritual that Jamie misses is speaking in tongues- one of the very rituals most ridiculed by those who believe they are above such trailer-trash holy-roller stuff. Of course, those people have no theological arguments for their attitudes, merely cultural prejudice; they equate dour New England reserve with intellectual advancement, and “making a joyful noise” with more primitive cultures worthy of a “National Geographic” article.
They are missing what makes “being taken by the spirit” one of the oldest and most universal of religious rituals. Whether it is a VooDoo congregate channelling a Loa, or a Wiccan “drawing down the Moon”, or a Pentacostal “speaking in tongues”. or a Baptist “making a joyful noise”, they are letting go, “dancing as if no one were watching, singing as if no one were listening”. It is a catharsis, and more- it is your concious connecting with your subconcious, leaving you more whole and healthy than you were before. It is a revelatory experience; you cannot hide internal conflicts from yourself during such an experience.
But alas, it is an experience the average UU will never know. Or if they do, if they find a safe place in which they can truly let go, to bring forth what is within and share, it will not be within the confines of a UU service.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Working class Unitarians?
Doug Muder has written what is in my opinion the finest UU blog post to date, entitled Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class . Go and read it before reading the rest of this post. In fact, go read it even if you never read the rest of this post.
I am a working class Unitarian, as obviously Doug is. He describes mindsets and attitudes from the working class that the upper classes might not understand, attitudes necessary for survival. He closes by asking, “The question I want to leave you with is whether Unitarian Universalism is bringing the world a message about life, or just a message about our lives? Can we speak in words that make sense both in the high place and in the maze?” This is possibly the most important question ever asked of UUs, and not just for the purpose of recruiting from the lower classes; it is vitally important because if we are not speaking truths that are universal, we’re not speaking truth at all!
Lessons learned from growing up poor are often in direct contradiction to lessons taught at UUA GA workshops. Let’s take a composite poor person’s life, part mine and part several friends- call him “Don”, because he might be a she, spelled “Dawn“- to see what I mean. Don’s parents drilled him in the lesson Doug mentions, “Second chances. Rich kids, professional kids – they get them. The door never completely closes on you. If your parents are doctors or lawyers, you can flunk out of two or three colleges. It’ll work out...In the working class it’s not that way...What if you had one shot? You wouldn’t blow it, would you?” And so Dawn works like a dog all through High School. Because he’s not a natural student, he spends hours every night studying rather than hanging with his friends. he works summers and weekends at the kind of menial jobs a teenager can get because he’s going to need every penny at college.
Don attends a community college or state school because even with a Pell grant and loans, that’s what he can afford. He also works while going to school. Some “Dawns” will earn enough in their blue collar day job that they can’t bear to go on with the dual life- I didn’t have the stamina nor, I’ll admit, the discipline to work full time and still finish school. Upon graduation, or upon getting his journeyman badge if he dropped out of college, he lands an entry level position behind peers with degrees from fancier schools. Don spends the decade of his 20’s, perhaps longer, either working overtime or a second job to cover the crushing student debt load (and possibly credit card debt as well) he picked up in college. Finally, somewhere in his late 30’s or 40’s, he’s down to one job and has time to think about things like re-connecting with a spiritual life; he wanders into a UU church.
Here he learns that he’s a “winner in life’s lottery”, that those with less are “less fortunate”. This is in direct contrdiction to his life experience... he’s been working 50-60 hours per week since he was 13 years old, working his youth away when his peers were having fun, and now learns the fruits of this discipline are considered “good fortune”. His life experience is that anyone who stays away from drugs, finishes high school, and doesn’t have/father a child out of wedlock can earn a decent living; outside of a physical or mental handicap, poverty is the result of bad life choices, usually multiple bad choices... but if he dares say so he’ll be denounced as a heartless Republican and shunned.
At other workshops, he’ll learn that all he has is not good fortune, but the result of “privilege”- either “White Privilege”, or “Male Privilege”, or (shudder) the dreaded “White Male Privilege”! He contemplates his scarred and callused hands, the varicose veins from being on his feet 12-14 hours a day working two jobs for a quarter of a century, and wonders how hard he’d have had to work without all that “privilege”...
In the mainstream Christian church in which he was raised, “envy” was one of the deadly sins. His life experience confirmed this; envy leads only to schadenfreude, and the inability to enjoy those blessing one does possess. Here, he learns that envy is a virtue, not a sin; the problem is not that the poor don’t have enough but that the rich have too much- it is the gap that is the problem. In his parent’s day, the diseases of the poor were kwishiorkor, pellagra, rickets, scurvy- many hundreds of thousands died in the United States before WWII from simple dietary deficiencies due to extreme poverty...today, the diseases of the poor are diabetes and heart disease from overweight- but the UUA teaches that things are worse than ever because the gap is bigger.
To Don/Dawn, the UUA does not exist in the real world, or at least not in the world inhabited by the bottom three quintiles. Don longs for a church that preaches personal responsibility, because choices have consequences; the UUA teaches that personal results have societal causes. Problems that Don sees as caused by correctable human flaws that should be preached about are seen by the UUA as societal inequities that can only be cured by political action. Oh, well, he shrugs, at least the UUA works with people from both parties- the Democrats and the Greens.
Doug ends his piece with “My hunch, my faith – or maybe just what I need to believe to do what I do – is that we can find such a message, that there can be a truth that encompasses all times and all places, a wisdom big enough for all people.” My faith is that there is just such a message. My sadness is that I don’t believe we have any intention of looking for it- that we would rather surrender the working class to the Religious Right than to admit that any position the GA’s have voted on was wrong.
I am a working class Unitarian, as obviously Doug is. He describes mindsets and attitudes from the working class that the upper classes might not understand, attitudes necessary for survival. He closes by asking, “The question I want to leave you with is whether Unitarian Universalism is bringing the world a message about life, or just a message about our lives? Can we speak in words that make sense both in the high place and in the maze?” This is possibly the most important question ever asked of UUs, and not just for the purpose of recruiting from the lower classes; it is vitally important because if we are not speaking truths that are universal, we’re not speaking truth at all!
Lessons learned from growing up poor are often in direct contradiction to lessons taught at UUA GA workshops. Let’s take a composite poor person’s life, part mine and part several friends- call him “Don”, because he might be a she, spelled “Dawn“- to see what I mean. Don’s parents drilled him in the lesson Doug mentions, “Second chances. Rich kids, professional kids – they get them. The door never completely closes on you. If your parents are doctors or lawyers, you can flunk out of two or three colleges. It’ll work out...In the working class it’s not that way...What if you had one shot? You wouldn’t blow it, would you?” And so Dawn works like a dog all through High School. Because he’s not a natural student, he spends hours every night studying rather than hanging with his friends. he works summers and weekends at the kind of menial jobs a teenager can get because he’s going to need every penny at college.
Don attends a community college or state school because even with a Pell grant and loans, that’s what he can afford. He also works while going to school. Some “Dawns” will earn enough in their blue collar day job that they can’t bear to go on with the dual life- I didn’t have the stamina nor, I’ll admit, the discipline to work full time and still finish school. Upon graduation, or upon getting his journeyman badge if he dropped out of college, he lands an entry level position behind peers with degrees from fancier schools. Don spends the decade of his 20’s, perhaps longer, either working overtime or a second job to cover the crushing student debt load (and possibly credit card debt as well) he picked up in college. Finally, somewhere in his late 30’s or 40’s, he’s down to one job and has time to think about things like re-connecting with a spiritual life; he wanders into a UU church.
Here he learns that he’s a “winner in life’s lottery”, that those with less are “less fortunate”. This is in direct contrdiction to his life experience... he’s been working 50-60 hours per week since he was 13 years old, working his youth away when his peers were having fun, and now learns the fruits of this discipline are considered “good fortune”. His life experience is that anyone who stays away from drugs, finishes high school, and doesn’t have/father a child out of wedlock can earn a decent living; outside of a physical or mental handicap, poverty is the result of bad life choices, usually multiple bad choices... but if he dares say so he’ll be denounced as a heartless Republican and shunned.
At other workshops, he’ll learn that all he has is not good fortune, but the result of “privilege”- either “White Privilege”, or “Male Privilege”, or (shudder) the dreaded “White Male Privilege”! He contemplates his scarred and callused hands, the varicose veins from being on his feet 12-14 hours a day working two jobs for a quarter of a century, and wonders how hard he’d have had to work without all that “privilege”...
In the mainstream Christian church in which he was raised, “envy” was one of the deadly sins. His life experience confirmed this; envy leads only to schadenfreude, and the inability to enjoy those blessing one does possess. Here, he learns that envy is a virtue, not a sin; the problem is not that the poor don’t have enough but that the rich have too much- it is the gap that is the problem. In his parent’s day, the diseases of the poor were kwishiorkor, pellagra, rickets, scurvy- many hundreds of thousands died in the United States before WWII from simple dietary deficiencies due to extreme poverty...today, the diseases of the poor are diabetes and heart disease from overweight- but the UUA teaches that things are worse than ever because the gap is bigger.
To Don/Dawn, the UUA does not exist in the real world, or at least not in the world inhabited by the bottom three quintiles. Don longs for a church that preaches personal responsibility, because choices have consequences; the UUA teaches that personal results have societal causes. Problems that Don sees as caused by correctable human flaws that should be preached about are seen by the UUA as societal inequities that can only be cured by political action. Oh, well, he shrugs, at least the UUA works with people from both parties- the Democrats and the Greens.
Doug ends his piece with “My hunch, my faith – or maybe just what I need to believe to do what I do – is that we can find such a message, that there can be a truth that encompasses all times and all places, a wisdom big enough for all people.” My faith is that there is just such a message. My sadness is that I don’t believe we have any intention of looking for it- that we would rather surrender the working class to the Religious Right than to admit that any position the GA’s have voted on was wrong.
Monday, April 09, 2007
New belief quiz
QuizFarm has a new belief quiz that is interesting, but flawed in my opinion. Try it before you read my score below, which I’ll compare with my Belief-O-Matic results. I’m interested to see if you get the same surprising results I did.
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Ok, first my Belief-O-Matic results:
1. NeoPagan, 100%
2. New Age, 100%
3. Unitarian Universalism, 98%
4. Liberal Quaker, 97%
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestant, 91%
Considering that I admit to being a NeoPagan and a pledge-paying member of a UU congregation, I’d say they were reasonably close.
The QuizFarm results:
You scored as Islam.
Your beliefs are most similar to those of Islam. Do more research on Islam and possibly consider taking the shahadah and officially becoming a Muslim, if you aren't already. Despite the actions of some - who go against the teachings of Islam - Islam is a religion of peace; the word "islam" means "peace through submission to God." "Muslim" means "one who submits to God." Islam is the third of the three Abrahamic faiths, and it shares much with Judaism in Christianity; its differences are the acceptance of Muhammad as the last and final prophet, and the oneness of God - in other words, that Jesus, though he was a revered prophet, was not in fact God, and only one God exists. Apparently the Taliban could not read (though their name means "students"), because the Qur'an states that men and women are equal as believers, and that all believers should be educated and seek knowledge. Modesty in dress and behavior is required in Islam for both men and women to preserve the values of society and move the emphasis from superificial appearance to intelligence, knowledge, and God.
Islam 83%
Satanism 79%
agnosticism 67%
Paganism 63%
Hinduism 58%
Buddhism 50%
Judaism 46%
Christianity 29%
atheism 8%
Ok, I can understand the high Satanism score- Satanists are quite Libertarian, as am I (although to my mind, they take the next step to full libertine). But Islam 83%? Surely the author of this test must be very niave about what is and isn’t tolerated within the faith of Islam. Yeah, yeah, religion of peace, got it... but would the average Imam take it peacefully if he knew that someone in his flock who professed to be Muslim was also a panentheist, an animist, and practiced religious witchcraft? If I have a reader more knowlegeable of Islam than I, (which wouldn’t take much, I’ll admit), perhaps they could tell me if that would be within the acceptable range of practices? Can Islam be syncretic with Wicca?
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Ok, first my Belief-O-Matic results:
1. NeoPagan, 100%
2. New Age, 100%
3. Unitarian Universalism, 98%
4. Liberal Quaker, 97%
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestant, 91%
Considering that I admit to being a NeoPagan and a pledge-paying member of a UU congregation, I’d say they were reasonably close.
The QuizFarm results:
You scored as Islam.
Your beliefs are most similar to those of Islam. Do more research on Islam and possibly consider taking the shahadah and officially becoming a Muslim, if you aren't already. Despite the actions of some - who go against the teachings of Islam - Islam is a religion of peace; the word "islam" means "peace through submission to God." "Muslim" means "one who submits to God." Islam is the third of the three Abrahamic faiths, and it shares much with Judaism in Christianity; its differences are the acceptance of Muhammad as the last and final prophet, and the oneness of God - in other words, that Jesus, though he was a revered prophet, was not in fact God, and only one God exists. Apparently the Taliban could not read (though their name means "students"), because the Qur'an states that men and women are equal as believers, and that all believers should be educated and seek knowledge. Modesty in dress and behavior is required in Islam for both men and women to preserve the values of society and move the emphasis from superificial appearance to intelligence, knowledge, and God.
Islam 83%
Satanism 79%
agnosticism 67%
Paganism 63%
Hinduism 58%
Buddhism 50%
Judaism 46%
Christianity 29%
atheism 8%
Ok, I can understand the high Satanism score- Satanists are quite Libertarian, as am I (although to my mind, they take the next step to full libertine). But Islam 83%? Surely the author of this test must be very niave about what is and isn’t tolerated within the faith of Islam. Yeah, yeah, religion of peace, got it... but would the average Imam take it peacefully if he knew that someone in his flock who professed to be Muslim was also a panentheist, an animist, and practiced religious witchcraft? If I have a reader more knowlegeable of Islam than I, (which wouldn’t take much, I’ll admit), perhaps they could tell me if that would be within the acceptable range of practices? Can Islam be syncretic with Wicca?
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Update to “Not in my day”
A couple weeks ago I posted about some 12 year olds who had sex during class in my local school system; I had been surprized that A. They had the nerve, B. The teacher never noticed. Well, after seeing this story , my school system appears to be just average. I quote from the story: “Four students - two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy - were arrested on charges of obscenity, a felony... The investigation showed that two males and two females had sex in the classroom while the 11-year-old boy acted as a lookout, Buckley said.”
What makes this story more interesting, though, is that the kids had a perfect diversion- they were screwing during a special school assembly. The purpose of the assembly was to discuss a stabbing death involving one of their students... I guess the school officials were under the illusion that the kids might have been upset. Evidently, they were more resilient than the school administration imagined.
Write me off as an old fogey if you will- I just don’t remember grade school being like that forty years ago.
What makes this story more interesting, though, is that the kids had a perfect diversion- they were screwing during a special school assembly. The purpose of the assembly was to discuss a stabbing death involving one of their students... I guess the school officials were under the illusion that the kids might have been upset. Evidently, they were more resilient than the school administration imagined.
Write me off as an old fogey if you will- I just don’t remember grade school being like that forty years ago.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Three proofs of Spring
I received three very welcome proofs that Spring has in fact arrived this past weekend. The first was when our winter depressive cat , Laurie, asked to go outside for the first time in months. True, she only dashed from green spot amidst the brown to green, and asked to come back in after eating only six early-blooming violets- but she had gone outside of her own volition for the first time in months.
The second sign of Spring was when one of our younger cats, Tabitha, found a full grown fieldmouse and brought it into the house. She dropped it on the living room floor, and a soccer game ensued; she and her sister Hillary on one side, older brothers Simon and Garfunkle on the other. Alas, it would appear that fieldmice are not of adequately robust construction for such games; with only three goals scored, the game had to be called on account of equipment breakage.
For the last proof, we turn from the fieldmouse to die fledermaus- our own namesake species, the Indiana Brown Bat. Two of them were in my backyard Saturday night, tumbling through the sky as only a bat can. I sometimes wonder if those amazing aerobatics are really necessary to catch bugs, or if they do it just because they can?
The second sign of Spring was when one of our younger cats, Tabitha, found a full grown fieldmouse and brought it into the house. She dropped it on the living room floor, and a soccer game ensued; she and her sister Hillary on one side, older brothers Simon and Garfunkle on the other. Alas, it would appear that fieldmice are not of adequately robust construction for such games; with only three goals scored, the game had to be called on account of equipment breakage.
For the last proof, we turn from the fieldmouse to die fledermaus- our own namesake species, the Indiana Brown Bat. Two of them were in my backyard Saturday night, tumbling through the sky as only a bat can. I sometimes wonder if those amazing aerobatics are really necessary to catch bugs, or if they do it just because they can?
Saturday, March 31, 2007
A new fundamentalism
There’s an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune, A new fundamentalism? Some decry strident tone of fellow atheists . Reasonable atheists are starting to challenge the vicious, insulting language of the branch of atheism more correctly described as “anti-theism”, currently led by men such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. “BOSTON: Atheists are under attack these days for being too militant, for not just disbelieving in religious faith but for trying to eradicate it. And who is leveling these accusations? Other atheists, it turns out.” And none too soon, say I.
While Greg Epstein, who holds the partially endowed post of humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist E.O. Wilson decry the language of the "atheist fundamentalists", there are attempts to put a decent spin on the nasty habits of Harris and Dawkins, such as the statement in the article that “His (Dawkins) attempt to win converts is clear in "The God Delusion," when he writes of his hope that "religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." I don’t see how anyone can believe that for a split second; it’s quite clearly an attempt to deflect justified anger- when, in all of human history, has anyone ever gained a convert by saying “Your God is ‘a psychotic delinquent’, your insanity is destroying the world, and teaching your faith to your children is worse than sexually molesting them.” Dawkins cannot pretend that that is the sort of rhetoric one uses to persuade people.
Sam Harris, of course, sees things differently. “Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," sees the disagreement as overblown... Harris also rejected the term "atheist fundamentalist," calling it "a silly play upon words." Sorry, Sam, but the term is fully justified. You admit to “intellectual intolerance”, saying "We do not jail people for being stupid, but we do stop listening to them after a while." Any statement about God that is stated as known fact is a religious statement, even if that statement is “He doesn’t exist”; you, Sam, are a religious fundamentalist, and a bigot to boot. There is no virtue in expressing contempt for your fellow man.
While Greg Epstein, who holds the partially endowed post of humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist E.O. Wilson decry the language of the "atheist fundamentalists", there are attempts to put a decent spin on the nasty habits of Harris and Dawkins, such as the statement in the article that “His (Dawkins) attempt to win converts is clear in "The God Delusion," when he writes of his hope that "religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." I don’t see how anyone can believe that for a split second; it’s quite clearly an attempt to deflect justified anger- when, in all of human history, has anyone ever gained a convert by saying “Your God is ‘a psychotic delinquent’, your insanity is destroying the world, and teaching your faith to your children is worse than sexually molesting them.” Dawkins cannot pretend that that is the sort of rhetoric one uses to persuade people.
Sam Harris, of course, sees things differently. “Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," sees the disagreement as overblown... Harris also rejected the term "atheist fundamentalist," calling it "a silly play upon words." Sorry, Sam, but the term is fully justified. You admit to “intellectual intolerance”, saying "We do not jail people for being stupid, but we do stop listening to them after a while." Any statement about God that is stated as known fact is a religious statement, even if that statement is “He doesn’t exist”; you, Sam, are a religious fundamentalist, and a bigot to boot. There is no virtue in expressing contempt for your fellow man.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Genuinely depressing
A Tip of the Hat to UU Enforcer for bringing this You Tube advertisement by and for Starr King School of Ministry. *sigh* It “encapsulates” (to quote the ad) nearly all that’s wrong with our denomination.
The raise the least issue first, it’s just plain bad on its own level as an advertisement; I doubt it’d get a “C” from a high school AV teacher. In fact, if you didn’t speak English, you wouldn’t recognize it as an ad at all- the format and feel is that of a memorial for someone or thing deceased. It opens with still red credit panels, followed by one person very stiffly speaking a short paragraph, followed by a still photo slide show of people you don’t know, followed by still panel credits, with the soundtrack being a single piano playing some slow, doleful tune. As a college-level effort, it’s pretty sad.
The sole speaker is a student, Neal Anderson. Here is what he says: “I chose Starr King School for the Ministry because it best encapsulated the values that I have and the values that I wanted to expand upon. The explicit dedication to educating to counter oppression was very important to my call to ministry. I wanted to grow in my understanding of how Unitarian Universalism can live the countering of oppression in the world, and also how we as Unitarian Universalists can build sustainable and justice centered communities.”
Good God. I’m sure Neal is a perfectly nice fellow, but is there something about UUism makes one incapable of speaking English? I haven’t heard language like that since those humorless, dedicated students in the 70’s who actually carried the “little red book” and spoke of “dialectics”. And look what he calls a “call to ministry”; no mention whatsoever of actually ministering to anyone. A minister is counselor of first choice for many people, someone to help you make sense of the tragedies and absurdities of life, someone who may not help you find the answers, but at least helps you find the right questions. His statement of purpose makes him sound like one of those who will continuously harangue from the pulpit... the kind who answers “How could God allow my child to get cancer” with “Now you know the kind of heartbreak Palestinians living in Israel live with daily; won’t you write your Congressman?” (Yes, this is an exaggeration of an actual exchange)
What does it say about Starr King that they would consider that statement as the best one to put forward to entice people into the seminary? Personally, were I running a seminary, that statement wouldn’t have even earned him admission. Where is “The explicit dedication to educating to” help his neighbors find their spiritual path, to use our principles and purposes in our daily lives? I constantly get the feeling that many UUs, not to mention ministers, cannot bear such mundane duties, that it is beneath them, that the purpose of Unitarian Universalism is to deal with the BIG IMPORTANT ISSUES... we’re far too smart to deal with hunger by doling out meals, we know that we must lobby Washington to deal with the root causes!
*Sigh* It still hasn’t reached tipping point for me yet... but it’s not too far away, either.
The raise the least issue first, it’s just plain bad on its own level as an advertisement; I doubt it’d get a “C” from a high school AV teacher. In fact, if you didn’t speak English, you wouldn’t recognize it as an ad at all- the format and feel is that of a memorial for someone or thing deceased. It opens with still red credit panels, followed by one person very stiffly speaking a short paragraph, followed by a still photo slide show of people you don’t know, followed by still panel credits, with the soundtrack being a single piano playing some slow, doleful tune. As a college-level effort, it’s pretty sad.
The sole speaker is a student, Neal Anderson. Here is what he says: “I chose Starr King School for the Ministry because it best encapsulated the values that I have and the values that I wanted to expand upon. The explicit dedication to educating to counter oppression was very important to my call to ministry. I wanted to grow in my understanding of how Unitarian Universalism can live the countering of oppression in the world, and also how we as Unitarian Universalists can build sustainable and justice centered communities.”
Good God. I’m sure Neal is a perfectly nice fellow, but is there something about UUism makes one incapable of speaking English? I haven’t heard language like that since those humorless, dedicated students in the 70’s who actually carried the “little red book” and spoke of “dialectics”. And look what he calls a “call to ministry”; no mention whatsoever of actually ministering to anyone. A minister is counselor of first choice for many people, someone to help you make sense of the tragedies and absurdities of life, someone who may not help you find the answers, but at least helps you find the right questions. His statement of purpose makes him sound like one of those who will continuously harangue from the pulpit... the kind who answers “How could God allow my child to get cancer” with “Now you know the kind of heartbreak Palestinians living in Israel live with daily; won’t you write your Congressman?” (Yes, this is an exaggeration of an actual exchange)
What does it say about Starr King that they would consider that statement as the best one to put forward to entice people into the seminary? Personally, were I running a seminary, that statement wouldn’t have even earned him admission. Where is “The explicit dedication to educating to” help his neighbors find their spiritual path, to use our principles and purposes in our daily lives? I constantly get the feeling that many UUs, not to mention ministers, cannot bear such mundane duties, that it is beneath them, that the purpose of Unitarian Universalism is to deal with the BIG IMPORTANT ISSUES... we’re far too smart to deal with hunger by doling out meals, we know that we must lobby Washington to deal with the root causes!
*Sigh* It still hasn’t reached tipping point for me yet... but it’s not too far away, either.
Monday, March 19, 2007
A Tale of Two Papers
The above the fold headline of The Sunday Times: Iraqis: life is getting better . The above the fold headline of the Indianapolis Star, Monday: Poll: Iraqis losing hope . Says the Star: “Six in 10 Iraqis say their lives are going badly. Only one-third expect things to improve in the next year.”; says the Sunday Times: “By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces.”
Well, that certainly cleared that up.
Well, that certainly cleared that up.
Not in my day
Usually when an old curmudgeon like myself notes how the younger generation is going to Hell in a handbag, we are told that old fogies have been saying that for thousands of years, and a quote by Aristotle is brought up to demonstrate it. I still say what’s going on today is different from what went on in my day.
OK, perhaps I was a bit backwards not having had my first kiss yet by the 6th grade- but even the most forward of my classmates weren’t having sex during computer lab, as recently occurred in a local school. I can’t even decide which is the most important of reasons why this could not have happened when I was 12 years old.
Did you have a party for your 15th birthday? In my day such a party would have broken up and all gone home by 10:00- but this past weekend one 15 year old girl’s party here in town had a fight break out around 1:00 a.m., that ended up as a three car running firefight that left two dead . Again, I can’t even begin to state on how many levels that is wrong.
Now, I will admit that occasionally after a high school ball game a fight would occur... but I sure don’t remember it becoming a major riot that could tie up Times Square, with a subway firefight as happened Sunday . We’ve gotten used to the idea that winning an NBA championship requires a riot afterward; (I got some “what rubes” type ribbing from friends over the fact that Indianapolis had a polite Dome Rally after winning the Super Bowl), but for a high school game? What’s next- will shots be exchanged following a foul during the “hokey pokey” in kindergarten?
OK, perhaps I was a bit backwards not having had my first kiss yet by the 6th grade- but even the most forward of my classmates weren’t having sex during computer lab, as recently occurred in a local school. I can’t even decide which is the most important of reasons why this could not have happened when I was 12 years old.
Did you have a party for your 15th birthday? In my day such a party would have broken up and all gone home by 10:00- but this past weekend one 15 year old girl’s party here in town had a fight break out around 1:00 a.m., that ended up as a three car running firefight that left two dead . Again, I can’t even begin to state on how many levels that is wrong.
Now, I will admit that occasionally after a high school ball game a fight would occur... but I sure don’t remember it becoming a major riot that could tie up Times Square, with a subway firefight as happened Sunday . We’ve gotten used to the idea that winning an NBA championship requires a riot afterward; (I got some “what rubes” type ribbing from friends over the fact that Indianapolis had a polite Dome Rally after winning the Super Bowl), but for a high school game? What’s next- will shots be exchanged following a foul during the “hokey pokey” in kindergarten?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Missing a bet on Fox
The Nevada Democratic Party had scheduled a debate for the announced Presidential candidates in August, to be hosted by Fox News- until MoveOn.Org got wind of it, and raised such a ruckus that the debate has now been cancelled. Two different versions of the story are here and here .
It seems to me that the party is missing a bet here- the problem isn’t that Fox is involved, but that it’s the wrong division of Fox. What we have here, counting both major parties plus the Greens and the Libertarians is over a dozen candidates that have to be winnowed down to four for the final election. Fox has in place the best mechanism yet devised for doing just that- what they should have done is scheduled a special “Presidential Edition” of American Idol!
Look- more people vote for Idol candidates than for President- and they pay extra to do so. Make those 866 charges into campaign contributions; 30 or 40 million calls an evening add up to a lot of money- it could even the playing field for the less well financed candidates. People would actually hear more from each candidate on the “Idol” format than they do in standard debates, especially as the numbers of candidates get smaller each week; we’d have better informed voters. It would save the parties and the taxpayers a fortune; primaries are not paid for by commercials. And a lot of the candidates could well use advice from Simon Cowell!
It seems to me that the party is missing a bet here- the problem isn’t that Fox is involved, but that it’s the wrong division of Fox. What we have here, counting both major parties plus the Greens and the Libertarians is over a dozen candidates that have to be winnowed down to four for the final election. Fox has in place the best mechanism yet devised for doing just that- what they should have done is scheduled a special “Presidential Edition” of American Idol!
Look- more people vote for Idol candidates than for President- and they pay extra to do so. Make those 866 charges into campaign contributions; 30 or 40 million calls an evening add up to a lot of money- it could even the playing field for the less well financed candidates. People would actually hear more from each candidate on the “Idol” format than they do in standard debates, especially as the numbers of candidates get smaller each week; we’d have better informed voters. It would save the parties and the taxpayers a fortune; primaries are not paid for by commercials. And a lot of the candidates could well use advice from Simon Cowell!
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
A Conservative in a Liberal Faith
A conversation that began on CRAPonSundays and was continued on the ChaliceBlog here and here raises two old questions: 1. Is it proper and/or effective for a church to be involved in politics, and 2. How can a UU be a political conservative? As the political positions are derived from the PPs, a UU shouldn’t be a conservative. I will address the second question first, as the answer to that leads directly to the answer to the first.
Those who don’t understand how a good UU can be a political conservative have fallen afoul of a logical fallacy, mistaking the method or means for the desired end goal, leading to a false choice. Instead of asking “Is method A or method B the best way to achieve our goal?”, they ask “Do you agree with method A, or do you disagree with the goal?” For example, they might say “Do you support the Living Wage, or do you not care about the poor?” A conservative might say, as I did here , that the issue is not whether I care about the poor, but whether or not this program will in fact help the poor- and I know it will not. My concern for the poor is why I’m against it. Unfortunately, this basic question- will the proposed program actually work- never seems to be addressed in depth when “debating” the topic, only whether or not it follows the PPs. To a conservative’s ears, this sounds like “politicians’ logic”: Something must be done. This is something; therefore we must do it.
None of the general principles of a classic (not a religious right) conservative, things like fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility and personal action, that rights reside within the citizen and are only loaned to the government, not vice-versa, least government possible, and even that as local as possible, etc., are in conflict with the PPs- with one possible exception: Conservatives recognize that government is rarely the right vehicle to address the basic issues, that either the marketplace or other citizen organizations (like churches) are far more effective in issues where hearts and minds must be changed. This is in direct opposition to the current mindset of the majority of the UUA, who seem to believe that social justice comes only from the pages of a sternly-worded fax to a congressman.
That last leads me to why we, as a denomination rather than as individuals, should steer clear of politics- if you want to actually do something, rather than just make a statement, you don’t want to go to the government in the first place. If you look at the social advances we’ve made in the last half century or so, almost all of it came from social organizations and social pressure, rather than government action. Martin Luther King made his points from the pulpit talking about God, not from the Washington Advocacy Office talking about votes. MADD has done more to stop drunk driving with social pressure than any lawnorder politician ever accomplished- comedians like Foster Brooks used to base entire careers on how funny public drunkenness is; could you imagine such an act succeeding today? Why do you think there’s no more blackface humor or “I’m Cheryl-fly me!” style sexist advertising on TV? Changing public sensitivities, driven by social activists, not government projects. Disney and other private companies did more for gay rights by using their buying clout to force insurance companies to stop discriminating than anything the government has ever done, and it was groups like GLAD that created the social atmosphere that made it possible. Any government action that aided any of these things followed the social pressure from private groups; they didn’t lead it.
That being the case, I believe that every penny spent on the Washington Advocacy Office is wasted, as is every moment of time spent debating resolutions aimed at Congress. We should be talking directly to the people, not to politicians who quite frankly have no reason whatsoever to listen to us anyway. We could instead be asking the entertainment media to change the way certain issues are presented or referenced, like MADD and GLAD and anti-smoking groups and so many others did. We could be producing Public Service Announcements to be distributed to radio and TV stations. We could be training experts in given issues who would be able to speak to churches and clubs around the country, or giving lectures at Barnes and Nobles. You know- those things that are proven to work.
Those who don’t understand how a good UU can be a political conservative have fallen afoul of a logical fallacy, mistaking the method or means for the desired end goal, leading to a false choice. Instead of asking “Is method A or method B the best way to achieve our goal?”, they ask “Do you agree with method A, or do you disagree with the goal?” For example, they might say “Do you support the Living Wage, or do you not care about the poor?” A conservative might say, as I did here , that the issue is not whether I care about the poor, but whether or not this program will in fact help the poor- and I know it will not. My concern for the poor is why I’m against it. Unfortunately, this basic question- will the proposed program actually work- never seems to be addressed in depth when “debating” the topic, only whether or not it follows the PPs. To a conservative’s ears, this sounds like “politicians’ logic”: Something must be done. This is something; therefore we must do it.
None of the general principles of a classic (not a religious right) conservative, things like fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility and personal action, that rights reside within the citizen and are only loaned to the government, not vice-versa, least government possible, and even that as local as possible, etc., are in conflict with the PPs- with one possible exception: Conservatives recognize that government is rarely the right vehicle to address the basic issues, that either the marketplace or other citizen organizations (like churches) are far more effective in issues where hearts and minds must be changed. This is in direct opposition to the current mindset of the majority of the UUA, who seem to believe that social justice comes only from the pages of a sternly-worded fax to a congressman.
That last leads me to why we, as a denomination rather than as individuals, should steer clear of politics- if you want to actually do something, rather than just make a statement, you don’t want to go to the government in the first place. If you look at the social advances we’ve made in the last half century or so, almost all of it came from social organizations and social pressure, rather than government action. Martin Luther King made his points from the pulpit talking about God, not from the Washington Advocacy Office talking about votes. MADD has done more to stop drunk driving with social pressure than any lawnorder politician ever accomplished- comedians like Foster Brooks used to base entire careers on how funny public drunkenness is; could you imagine such an act succeeding today? Why do you think there’s no more blackface humor or “I’m Cheryl-fly me!” style sexist advertising on TV? Changing public sensitivities, driven by social activists, not government projects. Disney and other private companies did more for gay rights by using their buying clout to force insurance companies to stop discriminating than anything the government has ever done, and it was groups like GLAD that created the social atmosphere that made it possible. Any government action that aided any of these things followed the social pressure from private groups; they didn’t lead it.
That being the case, I believe that every penny spent on the Washington Advocacy Office is wasted, as is every moment of time spent debating resolutions aimed at Congress. We should be talking directly to the people, not to politicians who quite frankly have no reason whatsoever to listen to us anyway. We could instead be asking the entertainment media to change the way certain issues are presented or referenced, like MADD and GLAD and anti-smoking groups and so many others did. We could be producing Public Service Announcements to be distributed to radio and TV stations. We could be training experts in given issues who would be able to speak to churches and clubs around the country, or giving lectures at Barnes and Nobles. You know- those things that are proven to work.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Freedom Vs. Truth
I believe I have mentioned before that what got me hooked into UU was the first sermon I heard by Reverend Bruce Clear- I know I have recommended his sermons here before . I am about to do so again- and amusingly, this sermon opens with a description of the sermon that hooked him into UU. And why does he tell that story? A teaser: “I tell this story to prepare you for what might sound a bit shocking to some ears, whether newcomers or long-timers. I am going to speak out this morning against truth. I declare that I don't believe in truth.” The full text is here .
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Important announcement
I had hoped it would not be necessary to say the words- especially as for five crucial days I have been too sick to coherently blog. But catching up on the news, it seems that these days nothing can be taken for granted, and things that go without saying now need to be said. Therefore, I state this formally for the record: I am not the father of Anna Nicole's baby.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
For UUs living outside New Orleans,
This is Shrove Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras. I said it that way because while most Protestant denominations pay scant attention to Lent and Mardi Gras, it seems that many UUs have taken a step beyond inattention to cultural illiteracy on the subject- which I think is a shame.
I’ve been thinking about this since doing coffee hour Sunday, with our service group, The Channing Club. When we do coffee hour, we like to decorate the table holding the cream, sugar, and snacks. This time we did a Mardi Gras theme, and I wore the green, purple, and yellow jester’s hat I picked up in New Orleans. A number of people asked why the hat, and I usually smiled and answered “Just confirming what everyone always suspected about me.” But there were a surprising number who actually hadn’t a clue about Mardi Gras. “Oh, what, is that this weekend?” “Well, Tuesday is technically Mardi Gras, but it’s actually the end of the whole Carnival season.” “Really!”
It surprised me how many knew how little about Mardi Gras, even to the point about not knowing about its connection to Lent. Of course, there wasn’t time while serving coffee for lectures on the subject, nor is it my place to do so. But a lot of Protestant denominations are rethinking their position on Lent, thinking they may have been hasty ditching it along with other Catholic practices in the schism, that it may have been one of the babies in the bathwater- and I think they may be right, and that it wouldn’t hurt we UUs to take another look at it.
Those who know Lent only from childhood Catholic friends who had to give up chocolate or gum or comic books for a month are unaware of the valuable symbolism involved. Lent commemorates Jesus' first step into his ministry- he spent forty days in the wilderness praying, fasting, learning to handle doubts and temptations. Those who practice Lent do so because they are aware that whether they like it or not, their lives too are a ministry; that the world will judge Christianity by the actions of Christians. The idea is to spend forty days out of the year in spiritual contemplation, practicing and testing your discipline and devotion.
This seems to me to be an excellent practice for UUs to adopt. It’s non-denominational; Jesus didn’t invent the practice- the forty day trial is a recurring theme in the Bible. For example, Moses stayed on the Mountain of God forty days (Exodus 24:18 and 34:28), Elijah traveled forty days before he reached the cave where he had his vision (1 Kings 19:8), Nineveh was given forty days to repent (Jonah 3:4). Thus, a UU Lent would include a tradition that Jews and Muslims could share as well, and excludes no one- though a Pagan, the Divine knows I could certainly use periods of discipline and contemplation. Even some atheists may benefit from a little introspection. I think if carefully thought out, a UU Lent could be a useful and unifying practice for us.
I’ve been thinking about this since doing coffee hour Sunday, with our service group, The Channing Club. When we do coffee hour, we like to decorate the table holding the cream, sugar, and snacks. This time we did a Mardi Gras theme, and I wore the green, purple, and yellow jester’s hat I picked up in New Orleans. A number of people asked why the hat, and I usually smiled and answered “Just confirming what everyone always suspected about me.” But there were a surprising number who actually hadn’t a clue about Mardi Gras. “Oh, what, is that this weekend?” “Well, Tuesday is technically Mardi Gras, but it’s actually the end of the whole Carnival season.” “Really!”
It surprised me how many knew how little about Mardi Gras, even to the point about not knowing about its connection to Lent. Of course, there wasn’t time while serving coffee for lectures on the subject, nor is it my place to do so. But a lot of Protestant denominations are rethinking their position on Lent, thinking they may have been hasty ditching it along with other Catholic practices in the schism, that it may have been one of the babies in the bathwater- and I think they may be right, and that it wouldn’t hurt we UUs to take another look at it.
Those who know Lent only from childhood Catholic friends who had to give up chocolate or gum or comic books for a month are unaware of the valuable symbolism involved. Lent commemorates Jesus' first step into his ministry- he spent forty days in the wilderness praying, fasting, learning to handle doubts and temptations. Those who practice Lent do so because they are aware that whether they like it or not, their lives too are a ministry; that the world will judge Christianity by the actions of Christians. The idea is to spend forty days out of the year in spiritual contemplation, practicing and testing your discipline and devotion.
This seems to me to be an excellent practice for UUs to adopt. It’s non-denominational; Jesus didn’t invent the practice- the forty day trial is a recurring theme in the Bible. For example, Moses stayed on the Mountain of God forty days (Exodus 24:18 and 34:28), Elijah traveled forty days before he reached the cave where he had his vision (1 Kings 19:8), Nineveh was given forty days to repent (Jonah 3:4). Thus, a UU Lent would include a tradition that Jews and Muslims could share as well, and excludes no one- though a Pagan, the Divine knows I could certainly use periods of discipline and contemplation. Even some atheists may benefit from a little introspection. I think if carefully thought out, a UU Lent could be a useful and unifying practice for us.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
What do I believe about God?
Ms. Kitty has a truly marvelous entry in the latest UU Carnival, Ms. Kitty's Saloon and Road Show: Prophetic Atheism . At the end, she asks a question one almost never hears asked by a UU Minister: What do you believe about God?
Like Ms. Kitty, I cannot believe in the “old man on the throne” God. The ancient concepts of God, from Zeus to Jehovah, is not really a God, but a man writ large; a being who thinks as men think, who sees as men see (just better), who feels the same emotions men do, and acts upon them just as savagely as men do. This is the God that inspired Mark Twain to say, “God created man in his own image; man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” For this reason I no longer even use the word “God” to refer to that which I worship, nor use the masculine pronoun; they have too much baggage- I say “the Divine”, and “She”.
I am a Panentheist: the Divine is part of the fabric of space-time itself, (I speculate on how it could have happened here ), and so is in everything. The Divine is not the creator, but the substance of creation- but She is also a living sentience. As She is in everything, I am also an animist.
The Divine does not manipulate the physical world; she does not cause natural disasters to punish, nor saves from disaster to reward.
The Divine operates through living agencies, by speaking directly to our souls. She does not compel, she only persuades; we are free to ignore her if we wish.
The Divine does not damn us for disbelief, nor punish us for disobedience; She dispenses her gifts unconditionally. Any price we pay for these “sins” we impose on ourselves, by denying ourselves her abundant joys and wisdom.
The Divine is not fed by our praise, nor diminished by the unbelievers’ ridicule. If you deny her, She will love you still; if you praise her, she cannot love you more. Just accept her, and be enriched.
What do you believe about God?
Like Ms. Kitty, I cannot believe in the “old man on the throne” God. The ancient concepts of God, from Zeus to Jehovah, is not really a God, but a man writ large; a being who thinks as men think, who sees as men see (just better), who feels the same emotions men do, and acts upon them just as savagely as men do. This is the God that inspired Mark Twain to say, “God created man in his own image; man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” For this reason I no longer even use the word “God” to refer to that which I worship, nor use the masculine pronoun; they have too much baggage- I say “the Divine”, and “She”.
I am a Panentheist: the Divine is part of the fabric of space-time itself, (I speculate on how it could have happened here ), and so is in everything. The Divine is not the creator, but the substance of creation- but She is also a living sentience. As She is in everything, I am also an animist.
The Divine does not manipulate the physical world; she does not cause natural disasters to punish, nor saves from disaster to reward.
The Divine operates through living agencies, by speaking directly to our souls. She does not compel, she only persuades; we are free to ignore her if we wish.
The Divine does not damn us for disbelief, nor punish us for disobedience; She dispenses her gifts unconditionally. Any price we pay for these “sins” we impose on ourselves, by denying ourselves her abundant joys and wisdom.
The Divine is not fed by our praise, nor diminished by the unbelievers’ ridicule. If you deny her, She will love you still; if you praise her, she cannot love you more. Just accept her, and be enriched.
What do you believe about God?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Do we choose to believe?
What is belief? There are many definitions, but the one that covers more uses of the word than any other I am aware of is the mental acceptance of the truth or factuality of a claim. The “claim” can be of any nature- a statement, an assumption, even the evidence of your senses- “I can’t believe my eyes.” Many attempt to make a distinction between what we know and what we believe, but this is a false distinction; as individuals, we have no source of information that can be trusted as absolute objective fact, not even our senses. As individuals, we live in a subjective world, a mental model that we hope is a close match to the objective world.
Belief is how we construct that mental model, and it is arrived at in many ways. We can largely trust our senses, but not completely; as Scrooge said to Marley, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.” Even when operating in perfect order, our sense are still not adequate to determine fact, as they are subject to our perception- was that two faces, or a vase? Was that a bird or a bat- or a meaningless ink blot? Authority is another way we construct the model- but of course we must realize that those authorities are also fallible. Logic is another method, but logic has its limitations as well, and we cannot predict when a new discovery will upset the old rules. Belief is the weighing of all these factors- largely unconsciously- and assigning a level of trust to each claim.
What sorts of proofs and evidence we trust most is a function of our personality types. Some trust authority to a much higher degree than others- when faced with that old question, “Who you gonna believe- me, or your lying eyes?”, the answer would be, “You.” Some trust past experiences highly- how highly can be demonstrated by an anecdote I heard at a seminar. The speaker was an author, a blond Caucasian woman, who had been partly raised in China and so spoke several dialects like a native. She said that quite often she would ask a local something, and be told “I don’t speak English”- the local having been so accustomed to the “fact” that Westerners don’t/can’t learn Chinese that it didn’t sink in that she had addressed them in Chinese!
Some trust logic so highly that they feel no need to test a conclusion logically arrived at. This is why for centuries tomatoes were believed poisonous in Western Europe; the plant is a close relative of the Deadly Nightshade, and tasting your fingertips after handling the leaves and stems will tell you they contain some of the same toxins. Q.E.D.! When two or mores types of evidence agree, belief in the conclusion is strong indeed. It only makes sense that heavy objects fall faster than light objects; look, a rock falls faster than a feather! This was so convincing that it was believed for thousands of years.
What controls how our minds balance the different types of evidence? What makes a person prize logic so highly that he writes off his own powerful emotional experiences, as Scrooge did, as, “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” What makes another trust authority so highly that if his reading of the Bible led him to believe there was an invisible bridge across the Grand Canyon, he would take the leap of faith and step out upon that bridge? What part does education play in assigning values to evidence, what part experience- and what part genetics?
I look at my own experience. Though raised in a devout atmosphere, at no time did the Bible stories seem any more real to me than Greek myths. I remember quite clearly, my age in single digits, lying awake at night wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn’t believe. Surely, at that age, that came from within- believe me when I say that fifty years ago in Indiana grade school children were NOT taught to question God or Christianity! On the other hand, despite years of trying on atheism- back when I bought into the false choice of either Jehovah or nothing- I could never accept that, either. Even though I share with Richard Dawkins a high I.Q., a technical education, and a tendency toward linear thinking, I cannot deny the Divinity my heart knows exists.
Is it possible that we can no more choose how we believe than we choose our sexuality?
Belief is how we construct that mental model, and it is arrived at in many ways. We can largely trust our senses, but not completely; as Scrooge said to Marley, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.” Even when operating in perfect order, our sense are still not adequate to determine fact, as they are subject to our perception- was that two faces, or a vase? Was that a bird or a bat- or a meaningless ink blot? Authority is another way we construct the model- but of course we must realize that those authorities are also fallible. Logic is another method, but logic has its limitations as well, and we cannot predict when a new discovery will upset the old rules. Belief is the weighing of all these factors- largely unconsciously- and assigning a level of trust to each claim.
What sorts of proofs and evidence we trust most is a function of our personality types. Some trust authority to a much higher degree than others- when faced with that old question, “Who you gonna believe- me, or your lying eyes?”, the answer would be, “You.” Some trust past experiences highly- how highly can be demonstrated by an anecdote I heard at a seminar. The speaker was an author, a blond Caucasian woman, who had been partly raised in China and so spoke several dialects like a native. She said that quite often she would ask a local something, and be told “I don’t speak English”- the local having been so accustomed to the “fact” that Westerners don’t/can’t learn Chinese that it didn’t sink in that she had addressed them in Chinese!
Some trust logic so highly that they feel no need to test a conclusion logically arrived at. This is why for centuries tomatoes were believed poisonous in Western Europe; the plant is a close relative of the Deadly Nightshade, and tasting your fingertips after handling the leaves and stems will tell you they contain some of the same toxins. Q.E.D.! When two or mores types of evidence agree, belief in the conclusion is strong indeed. It only makes sense that heavy objects fall faster than light objects; look, a rock falls faster than a feather! This was so convincing that it was believed for thousands of years.
What controls how our minds balance the different types of evidence? What makes a person prize logic so highly that he writes off his own powerful emotional experiences, as Scrooge did, as, “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” What makes another trust authority so highly that if his reading of the Bible led him to believe there was an invisible bridge across the Grand Canyon, he would take the leap of faith and step out upon that bridge? What part does education play in assigning values to evidence, what part experience- and what part genetics?
I look at my own experience. Though raised in a devout atmosphere, at no time did the Bible stories seem any more real to me than Greek myths. I remember quite clearly, my age in single digits, lying awake at night wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn’t believe. Surely, at that age, that came from within- believe me when I say that fifty years ago in Indiana grade school children were NOT taught to question God or Christianity! On the other hand, despite years of trying on atheism- back when I bought into the false choice of either Jehovah or nothing- I could never accept that, either. Even though I share with Richard Dawkins a high I.Q., a technical education, and a tendency toward linear thinking, I cannot deny the Divinity my heart knows exists.
Is it possible that we can no more choose how we believe than we choose our sexuality?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Warning: low humor part 2
Taking a break from my work to pass along a very bad joke:
I understand that Fox has just bought a new sitcom based on the Space Shuttle on the strength of its first episode. "The plot was strange," said a Fox spokesman, "But the pilot was irresistible."
I understand that Fox has just bought a new sitcom based on the Space Shuttle on the strength of its first episode. "The plot was strange," said a Fox spokesman, "But the pilot was irresistible."
Monday, February 05, 2007
I'm still alive
It's been a while since I've posted, but it wasn't for lack of opinions. (strangely enough, I seem very well equiped with those) No, there have been a number of "real life intruding" incidents in a row, such as losing the furnace with real temperature 5 below, windchill 25 below; Imbolc, Superbowl preparations, coffeehour duty at church, game and victory celebrations (you do know I write from Indianapolis), meeting with book dealers, etc. I expect to resume my normal blogging pace shortly.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A chocolate chip time machine
I won’t go into the psychological state that resulted in my coming home yesterday with two different bags of cookies and a gallon of milk, other than to say it had been years since I had last done that. Nor were they small packages of gourmet cookies, the only sort I normally indulge in, but Oreos and store brand chocolate chip.
When I poured a large glass of milk and ripped open the Oreos, I was suddenly transported more than 45 years into the past, to an afternoon when my mother and baby brother were asleep, and my father (who worked second shift) not yet awake. The memory was so vivid I nearly saw double, my own fingers superimposed over a five year old’s, as they dunked the Oreo into the milk. I honestly didn’t know for a moment whether my fingertips really were that cold, or if I was remembering how cold my fingertips got in the milk as I waited for the Oreo to become completely saturated with milk before eating it.
Understand that this is a delicate moment- the cookie must be totally soaked to be at the peak of perfection, but not so soaked as to fall apart into the milk and have to be retrieved with a spoon. Not that I would have, actually; cookie etiquette called for you to get a new cookie instead, and drink the sludge later. The memory didn’t fail me; I timed the dip perfectly, the cookie squishing delightfully in my mouth, the edge that had been between my fingers the only dry spot, like Achilles' heel.
The five year old cookie expert’s eye noted that the chocolate chip cookie didn’t have the structural integrity to saturate in the cup; it would have fallen apart almost instantly. Without thinking I shifted to the alternate milk protocol: I bit off a piece, but did not chew, holding it in my mouth as I took a sip of milk and held them together until the cookie was saturated before smooshing it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue.
I’m not a person noted for my keen memory- there are people I’ve sat next to at church for ten years whom I still need to read the nametag to get the last name right; I still have to look at the calendar to get the exact day of my brothers’ birthdays, having only the months memorized... and yet these memories were so vivid that it was only after I swallowed the first half of the chocolate chip cookie that I realized I had actually tasted another brand of cookie altogether- the one I had eaten on that afternoon in 1961. I had never truly believed the Zen master’s claim that it was possible to drink tea from an empty cup before; now I know that it’s true.
Who needs drugs? I have chocolate!
When I poured a large glass of milk and ripped open the Oreos, I was suddenly transported more than 45 years into the past, to an afternoon when my mother and baby brother were asleep, and my father (who worked second shift) not yet awake. The memory was so vivid I nearly saw double, my own fingers superimposed over a five year old’s, as they dunked the Oreo into the milk. I honestly didn’t know for a moment whether my fingertips really were that cold, or if I was remembering how cold my fingertips got in the milk as I waited for the Oreo to become completely saturated with milk before eating it.
Understand that this is a delicate moment- the cookie must be totally soaked to be at the peak of perfection, but not so soaked as to fall apart into the milk and have to be retrieved with a spoon. Not that I would have, actually; cookie etiquette called for you to get a new cookie instead, and drink the sludge later. The memory didn’t fail me; I timed the dip perfectly, the cookie squishing delightfully in my mouth, the edge that had been between my fingers the only dry spot, like Achilles' heel.
The five year old cookie expert’s eye noted that the chocolate chip cookie didn’t have the structural integrity to saturate in the cup; it would have fallen apart almost instantly. Without thinking I shifted to the alternate milk protocol: I bit off a piece, but did not chew, holding it in my mouth as I took a sip of milk and held them together until the cookie was saturated before smooshing it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue.
I’m not a person noted for my keen memory- there are people I’ve sat next to at church for ten years whom I still need to read the nametag to get the last name right; I still have to look at the calendar to get the exact day of my brothers’ birthdays, having only the months memorized... and yet these memories were so vivid that it was only after I swallowed the first half of the chocolate chip cookie that I realized I had actually tasted another brand of cookie altogether- the one I had eaten on that afternoon in 1961. I had never truly believed the Zen master’s claim that it was possible to drink tea from an empty cup before; now I know that it’s true.
Who needs drugs? I have chocolate!
Monday, January 29, 2007
What is it about some people
that makes them think they must embellish points they have already won with lies to drive the points in harder? While people from all walks of life do this, this behavior is most egregious in politicians, whose words are recorded and can be recalled.
In a speech delivered in Davos, Switzerland last Saturday, Senator Kerry said, “"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.... So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I've never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today." The conclusion may well be true; we may be a pariah state- he’s in a better place to judge than I am, he gets out more than I do. But he is knowingly lying when he lists the two reasons he did as the reasons the Bush administration has lost world respect.
Why do I so boldly call Senator Kerry a liar? Let’s take his first complaint: “When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto,...” While it is true that the US did cynically sign the Kyoto Accords, knowing full well that it would never be submitted to the Senate for ratification, it was Al Gore, representing the US for the Clinton administration that signed it, and it was Bill Clinton that refused to submit the treaty to congress! True, Bush could have submitted it to the senate when he took office more than a year later, but he did not do so for the same reason that Clinton did not: the senate had already passed a “sense of the senate” resolution stating that they would never ratify any climate treaty that excluded China, which Kyoto does.
This resolution, s.res.98
, was sponsored by Senator Byrd and passed by a bipartisan 95-0. There was no possibility of the Kyoto treaty being ratified under either President, and so no reason to submit it- something that Sen. Kerry knows full well, for as the link above shows, he voted for it! Sen. Kerry is blaming Bush for failing to pass a treaty that had actually failed under the previous administration- and he himself had been one of those who had killed it!
So let’s move to his second point: “when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa,...” I offer this article from The Independent , January 2, 2007: “The foreign affairs legacy of President George Bush so far speaks most loudly of terrorism, Afghanistan and the quagmire of Iraq.
But statistics just compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reveal that since taking over the Oval Office, Mr Bush, partly under pressure from his Christian supporters as well as celebrities such as Bono and Bob Geldof, has dramatically increased US aid to Africa. ... The development aid is complemented by Mr Bush's rapidly growing commitment to fighting HIV and Aids in Africa, as well as malaria. In what has become the largest health initiative of his presidency - the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) - Mr Bush has pledged $15bn over five years to fight HIV in Africa and provide drugs for Aids victims.
... "Bush and his Christian supporters seldom get the credit they deserve for their role in the global fight against Aids," the Los Angeles Times noted. "US spending on the disease overseas under Bush has risen tenfold, while Christian groups have given unselfishly to the cause."...” I’ll add to that the words of Bob Geldof: “"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Mr Geldof, who organised the 1985 Live Aid fund raising concert for Ethiopia, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.”
So... the most bipartisan foreign affairs effort in 50 years- the 95-0 rejection of Kyoto during the Clinton administration- and Bush’s African AIDS initiative- virtually the only thing he’s gotten right and is universally praised for- are the only two things Sen. Kerry can think of to criticize Bush for?!? Almost any other person on the planet could have stood at that podium for an hour listing Bush’s blunders without consulting notes- but Kerry has to make things up? Can somebody explain that to me?
In a speech delivered in Davos, Switzerland last Saturday, Senator Kerry said, “"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.... So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I've never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today." The conclusion may well be true; we may be a pariah state- he’s in a better place to judge than I am, he gets out more than I do. But he is knowingly lying when he lists the two reasons he did as the reasons the Bush administration has lost world respect.
Why do I so boldly call Senator Kerry a liar? Let’s take his first complaint: “When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto,...” While it is true that the US did cynically sign the Kyoto Accords, knowing full well that it would never be submitted to the Senate for ratification, it was Al Gore, representing the US for the Clinton administration that signed it, and it was Bill Clinton that refused to submit the treaty to congress! True, Bush could have submitted it to the senate when he took office more than a year later, but he did not do so for the same reason that Clinton did not: the senate had already passed a “sense of the senate” resolution stating that they would never ratify any climate treaty that excluded China, which Kyoto does.
This resolution, s.res.98
, was sponsored by Senator Byrd and passed by a bipartisan 95-0. There was no possibility of the Kyoto treaty being ratified under either President, and so no reason to submit it- something that Sen. Kerry knows full well, for as the link above shows, he voted for it! Sen. Kerry is blaming Bush for failing to pass a treaty that had actually failed under the previous administration- and he himself had been one of those who had killed it!
So let’s move to his second point: “when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa,...” I offer this article from The Independent , January 2, 2007: “The foreign affairs legacy of President George Bush so far speaks most loudly of terrorism, Afghanistan and the quagmire of Iraq.
But statistics just compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reveal that since taking over the Oval Office, Mr Bush, partly under pressure from his Christian supporters as well as celebrities such as Bono and Bob Geldof, has dramatically increased US aid to Africa. ... The development aid is complemented by Mr Bush's rapidly growing commitment to fighting HIV and Aids in Africa, as well as malaria. In what has become the largest health initiative of his presidency - the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) - Mr Bush has pledged $15bn over five years to fight HIV in Africa and provide drugs for Aids victims.
... "Bush and his Christian supporters seldom get the credit they deserve for their role in the global fight against Aids," the Los Angeles Times noted. "US spending on the disease overseas under Bush has risen tenfold, while Christian groups have given unselfishly to the cause."...” I’ll add to that the words of Bob Geldof: “"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Mr Geldof, who organised the 1985 Live Aid fund raising concert for Ethiopia, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.”
So... the most bipartisan foreign affairs effort in 50 years- the 95-0 rejection of Kyoto during the Clinton administration- and Bush’s African AIDS initiative- virtually the only thing he’s gotten right and is universally praised for- are the only two things Sen. Kerry can think of to criticize Bush for?!? Almost any other person on the planet could have stood at that podium for an hour listing Bush’s blunders without consulting notes- but Kerry has to make things up? Can somebody explain that to me?
Thank you
For nominating me for best new blog at the
Third Annual UU Blog Awards . That is such an honor that it feels greedy to ask for your vote as well- but I am doing so anyway. Make an old man happy!
Third Annual UU Blog Awards . That is such an honor that it feels greedy to ask for your vote as well- but I am doing so anyway. Make an old man happy!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
So near, and yet so far, Part 2
Davidson Loehr, in his essay Salvation by Character:
How UU's can Find the Religious Center , once again does what he always does so masterfully: correctly diagnosing the disease, then discussing the symptoms instead of the underlying illness!
To Mr. Loehr, the problem is that our religious language has not kept pace with our changing religious concepts. What change is he referring to? “...we have not adequately filled the hole left by the death of God... The theological problem of Western religion can be put another way: During the last few centuries, God ceased to be a being, and became a concept. The "being" God needed a place to be, and that vanished when people stopped believing there could be anything "up there." Since then, "God" has "dwelled" in the minds and hearts of believers, as a concept, an idea, or a feeling. While the language has stayed the same, this "category change" for the word "God" has changed the game of theology almost completely.” He goes on to describe the problems this has caused, and the attempted solutions or ways around the problem others have tried: “Scientism, Politics as a Religion, Theological Double-talk”. He proposes his own solutions- redefining the language we use, and the questions we ask.
But there is one question so basic it cannot occur to him, any more than a fish can question water... his one TRUTH, the central concept upon which all else in his (and nearly all of UU theologians) philosophy hangs prevents him from asking it: Is God dead? He is so proud of not telling me what I must believe that it never occurs to him that it is equally hubris to tell me what I must NOT believe- a living God. This is the modern liberal theologian’s one essential creed, that God as being is dead. How many currently serving UU ministers believe in a living God- 5%? 1%? Any at all? Is it even possible to graduate from a UU seminary believing in a living God?
Mr. Loehr is aware that this is out of the mainstream of humanity- “Most dictionaries define "religion" as involving a belief in a god, and nearly everyone still takes that to mean a supernatural Being who lives somewhere "up there."“ Just how far out of the mainstream is it? While it’s impossible to get any definitive numbers, here are some low conservative estimates, culled from an evening‘s Googleing: believing in a living God, (not necessarily Abraham’s Jehovah, but a being nonetheless), some 5 billion. Those who have felt the presence of God directly, whether in a church service, or during a transcendental moment in their lives, over a billion. Those who feel the presence of God regularly, several hundred million. Those whom God has spoken to directly, (including Pentecostals who have spoken in tongues, Wiccans who have drawn down the Moon, VouDoun and Obeah and Santeria who have been possessed by a Loa, etc.), tens of millions.
One of the most important and meaningful dialogues the UUA could get into would be “Is a living God compatible with modern science?”- but it is a debate the UUA as presently constituted will never have. How do I know? Because one cannot have a true debate with those whom you despise- and that is not too strong a word for how believers are perceived within the UUA. Contempt for any such belief was the central theme of the “Language of Religion” forums the UUA held through the official website a couple years ago, and contempt fairly drips from every page of this, and many other of Mr. Loehr’s essays- “The Liberal Bias: Intellectual Integrity. Not all religious paths require intellectual integrity. In fact, most don't. ...That's a key difference between the broader conservative religious paths and the narrower liberal paths. ...If we're going to check our brains at the church door, almost any faith will do. Ours is, and has always been, a much harder and more demanding route. ...Like Santa, the old God-as-a-being is gone. Those who've dressed up in his clothes have tried to sell us visions of science, politics, and theological self deceptions.“
The fourth paragraph of his essay opens, “Mainline and liberal churches, including ours, continue to attract a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.” How many times has this been noted? How many blog entries, forum threads, and discussion groups have asked “We’re the most welcoming denomination there is- why don’t more gays join?”, or “We put more effort into race relations than any other denomination- why don’t more African-Americans join?” Could it be that after the first visit, they stopped thinking of themselves as a minority, and instead looked at themselves as believers amongst those who think ordinary Christians check their brains at the door? Could they have first felt welcomed as gays, then felt their integrity questioned as believers in a living God? It’s amazing to me how many UUs who lecture about institutional racism and heteronormative behavior in our culture at large fail to recognize the institutional atheism within the UUA.
I think we need to start a new dialogue among ourselves. Is an anti-creed- things thou must not believe- the same as a creed? Should we be as welcoming to those who have conventional beliefs as we are to those with alternative beliefs? Is God dead?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
So near, and yet so far
William R. Murry‘s article, “Reason and reverence“, in the Winter 2006 issue of UU World, discusses his faith, which he describes as humanistic religious naturalism . What he describes is so close to what I, and many other Neopagans believe... and yet, so very far.
Most Pagan faiths share the Humanist beliefs in social commitment and personal responsibility. Having rejected the concept of a “savior”, we have no one to take the blame for us- we have to accept the consequences of our actions. Having no savior, Pagans know they must work for the betterment of society; we’re not waiting for someone else to come and do it for us. Most Neopagans share the Religious Naturalism perspective that finds religious meaning in the natural world, as do a great many of the classic Non-Abrahamic faiths, from Shinto to Native American. Where we all differ from the classic Humanist or Mr. Murry’s Religious Naturalism is his rejection of a supernatural realm, or a supernatural God/s/dess.
He does say that he is a theist; but that his God belongs to the natural universe, rather than a supernatural deity. I think part of the difference is in the definition of “supernatural”, as my deity, too, belongs to the natural universe- but does not resemble his. When a modern Pagan, or indeed a modern theist of most any stripe says “natural” and “supernatural”, they mean “that which is understood”, and “that which is not understood”. When a modern atheist, or post-modern theist of Mr. Murry’s variety uses those words, they mean “that which is understood”, and “that which is fantastic in concept; non-existent”. For the first type of theist, the Divine is (or can be) an actual being, a non-human sentience; for the post-modern theist, the Divine is a vague “force of creation”, or more often “love”. To this kind of theist, an actual being would be “supernatural”, and therefore nonexistent.
This produces a conundrum for the post-modern theist that is clearly revealed in his article. He speaks of the importance of reverence; it is the fourth of his five characteristics a viable future religion must have. He says, “...but it is only reverence, understood as feelings of respect and awe, that can save us from the hubris that would destroy all the good we have accomplished.”, and “...a religion without a profound sense of reverence is no religion at all.” Exactly so. But nowhere does he explain, or even hint at the OBJECT of his reverence, his respect, his awe. As he quotes Carl Sagan at the end, one can infer that it is the universe itself he so reveres- but that seems a bit weak to base an entire religion on, doesn’t it? The stars are pretty, therefore I must change my life and work for others? It might be God he reveres, but given his only description of God, “...power of creativity, an immanent force for good in the world, or simply as mystery.”, that hardly seems like the object of a reverence so deep that it “...can save us from the hubris that would destroy all the good we have accomplished.”
Of course, he must remain vague, as any explanation of the object of such words as “faith”, “worship”, “reverence”, etc., would of necessity involve a definition of what he means by “God”, which means tap-dancing around the Humanist insistence that reason denies the existence of a living God. I believe there are two causes for this insistence that reason denies the existence of a living Divinity: 1. Misunderstanding the limits of reason. “Reason”, “Rationality”, or any human logic system is a mental construct to try to understand the universe- it is not the universe itself. When reason and reality conflict, it is “reason” that must yield, not reality. I discuss this here and here To those who still can find no room for a living God, I say first explain Dark Energy and Dark Matter , and then tell me how we know too much to believe. 2. Misunderstanding the nature of and limitations of the Divine. This, I believe, is Mr. Murry’s error.
Mr. Murry cannot see the hand of the Divine in nature. He sees the fact that “nature’s rain falls on the just and the unjust” not as the evidence of the Divine’s unconditional love, but as proof that “Nature knows nothing of justice, love, kindness, or generosity.” It seems that he buys into the fundamentalists’ concept of a judgmental God who punishes with natural disasters, and rewards by saving one from those same disasters. The only God he was looking for was an angry God. There are other visions of God- I discuss some of mine here He goes on to say that it is Humanism that “...provides the values that naturalism lacks.” This seems to me to be running very close to the hubris he himself warns against when he speaks of reverence.
The theist who believes in a Living Deity is caught between two forces: the background culture that insists on the false choice of either the God of Abraham, or atheism; and the Humanist who insists on the false choice of either reason or a “supernatural” God, but not both. Oddly enough, it is the second sort who cause me more grief in my daily life. With every passing year- almost every passing day- there are fewer and fewer Christians who would call me a devil-worshipper and attack me. If they do, I have the first amendment to protect me. If push comes to shove, I have the second amendment, too. (no, I’m not a fluffy bunny pagan) But there are plenty of Humanists and/or atheists in my congregation and my denomination who have no patience for anyone who does not see things their way, and are often not shy about announcing it, either.
Mr. Murry speaks of “A new humanism is emerging among Unitarian Universalists,...a religious humanism that offers depth, meaning, and purpose without sacrificing intellectual honesty or the spiritual dimension.” I hope that this is not another declaration of war on theism, but fear from some past experiences that it will become exactly that. I, too, refuse to sacrifice intellectual honesty; I will not write off my, and many others, transcendental experiences as temporary insanity. (as some oh-so-tolerant UUs have described them) I will not be ashamed of saying grace or any other ritual that deepens my connection to the Divine. I welcome the emergence of Humanistic religious naturalism as a new faith tradition, and hope that when he said “...and a profound respect for others.”, he meant respecting theists, too. If he does, perhaps UU will become the “viable religion of the twenty-first century” he seeks.
Most Pagan faiths share the Humanist beliefs in social commitment and personal responsibility. Having rejected the concept of a “savior”, we have no one to take the blame for us- we have to accept the consequences of our actions. Having no savior, Pagans know they must work for the betterment of society; we’re not waiting for someone else to come and do it for us. Most Neopagans share the Religious Naturalism perspective that finds religious meaning in the natural world, as do a great many of the classic Non-Abrahamic faiths, from Shinto to Native American. Where we all differ from the classic Humanist or Mr. Murry’s Religious Naturalism is his rejection of a supernatural realm, or a supernatural God/s/dess.
He does say that he is a theist; but that his God belongs to the natural universe, rather than a supernatural deity. I think part of the difference is in the definition of “supernatural”, as my deity, too, belongs to the natural universe- but does not resemble his. When a modern Pagan, or indeed a modern theist of most any stripe says “natural” and “supernatural”, they mean “that which is understood”, and “that which is not understood”. When a modern atheist, or post-modern theist of Mr. Murry’s variety uses those words, they mean “that which is understood”, and “that which is fantastic in concept; non-existent”. For the first type of theist, the Divine is (or can be) an actual being, a non-human sentience; for the post-modern theist, the Divine is a vague “force of creation”, or more often “love”. To this kind of theist, an actual being would be “supernatural”, and therefore nonexistent.
This produces a conundrum for the post-modern theist that is clearly revealed in his article. He speaks of the importance of reverence; it is the fourth of his five characteristics a viable future religion must have. He says, “...but it is only reverence, understood as feelings of respect and awe, that can save us from the hubris that would destroy all the good we have accomplished.”, and “...a religion without a profound sense of reverence is no religion at all.” Exactly so. But nowhere does he explain, or even hint at the OBJECT of his reverence, his respect, his awe. As he quotes Carl Sagan at the end, one can infer that it is the universe itself he so reveres- but that seems a bit weak to base an entire religion on, doesn’t it? The stars are pretty, therefore I must change my life and work for others? It might be God he reveres, but given his only description of God, “...power of creativity, an immanent force for good in the world, or simply as mystery.”, that hardly seems like the object of a reverence so deep that it “...can save us from the hubris that would destroy all the good we have accomplished.”
Of course, he must remain vague, as any explanation of the object of such words as “faith”, “worship”, “reverence”, etc., would of necessity involve a definition of what he means by “God”, which means tap-dancing around the Humanist insistence that reason denies the existence of a living God. I believe there are two causes for this insistence that reason denies the existence of a living Divinity: 1. Misunderstanding the limits of reason. “Reason”, “Rationality”, or any human logic system is a mental construct to try to understand the universe- it is not the universe itself. When reason and reality conflict, it is “reason” that must yield, not reality. I discuss this here and here To those who still can find no room for a living God, I say first explain Dark Energy and Dark Matter , and then tell me how we know too much to believe. 2. Misunderstanding the nature of and limitations of the Divine. This, I believe, is Mr. Murry’s error.
Mr. Murry cannot see the hand of the Divine in nature. He sees the fact that “nature’s rain falls on the just and the unjust” not as the evidence of the Divine’s unconditional love, but as proof that “Nature knows nothing of justice, love, kindness, or generosity.” It seems that he buys into the fundamentalists’ concept of a judgmental God who punishes with natural disasters, and rewards by saving one from those same disasters. The only God he was looking for was an angry God. There are other visions of God- I discuss some of mine here He goes on to say that it is Humanism that “...provides the values that naturalism lacks.” This seems to me to be running very close to the hubris he himself warns against when he speaks of reverence.
The theist who believes in a Living Deity is caught between two forces: the background culture that insists on the false choice of either the God of Abraham, or atheism; and the Humanist who insists on the false choice of either reason or a “supernatural” God, but not both. Oddly enough, it is the second sort who cause me more grief in my daily life. With every passing year- almost every passing day- there are fewer and fewer Christians who would call me a devil-worshipper and attack me. If they do, I have the first amendment to protect me. If push comes to shove, I have the second amendment, too. (no, I’m not a fluffy bunny pagan) But there are plenty of Humanists and/or atheists in my congregation and my denomination who have no patience for anyone who does not see things their way, and are often not shy about announcing it, either.
Mr. Murry speaks of “A new humanism is emerging among Unitarian Universalists,...a religious humanism that offers depth, meaning, and purpose without sacrificing intellectual honesty or the spiritual dimension.” I hope that this is not another declaration of war on theism, but fear from some past experiences that it will become exactly that. I, too, refuse to sacrifice intellectual honesty; I will not write off my, and many others, transcendental experiences as temporary insanity. (as some oh-so-tolerant UUs have described them) I will not be ashamed of saying grace or any other ritual that deepens my connection to the Divine. I welcome the emergence of Humanistic religious naturalism as a new faith tradition, and hope that when he said “...and a profound respect for others.”, he meant respecting theists, too. If he does, perhaps UU will become the “viable religion of the twenty-first century” he seeks.
Friday, January 19, 2007
I’m proud of the Indiana State Senate
If things go the way common sense would dictate, Indiana will become the first state to immunize school girls against HPV. From the article in Indystar.com : “Senate Bill 327 would require HPV vaccines in girls before the start of sixth grade. A vaccine approved last year by the Food and Drug Administration wards off some strains of HPV, which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer. Indiana children must get booster shots for diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella before middle school, so the proposal's backers say it makes sense to add the HPV vaccine to that age group. But schools wouldn't be forced to turn away girls who aren't vaccinated against HPV, as they do for other required shots.”
This is a completely bipartisan effort- also from the Star: “The state proposal, written by Sen. Connie Lawson, R-Danville, has the blessing of every female senator -- seven Democrats and six Republicans.”
We needn’t worry about the state’s reputation, though- there are champions of the state’s reputation as the home of the ignorant yahoo fighting against it: "This says, 'Hey, you can engage in sexual activity and not be at risk for this disease,' which is pretty pervasive," said Micah Clark, director of the American Family Association of Indiana. "Without an abstinence message, it could offer some false hope that you're invincible against this disease, and you're not." I was with them opposing handing out free condoms to 13 year olds in the public schools- I did think there was an element of mixed message, of “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” there... but the HPV vaccine? Does he imagine a 13 year old boy is going to say to a 13 year old girl, “Hey, that thing about you not getting cancer is hot- wanna do it?”
A slightly more serious challenge is the cost- some $2.7 million. That is, after all, 3.6% of what we’re spending on the new football stadium for the Colts- some of the luxury skyboxes might have to settle for a Leroy Nieman on the wall instead of a Chagall; but still, if enough girls are spared cervical cancer, it may be worth it.
This is a remarkably far-sighted and sensible proposal for a legislative body who spends most of it’s time and our money on things like fighting against Daylight Savings Time, or fighting against the federal judiciary for the right to dedicate opening prayers to Jesus... I can only hope against hope it passes.
This is a completely bipartisan effort- also from the Star: “The state proposal, written by Sen. Connie Lawson, R-Danville, has the blessing of every female senator -- seven Democrats and six Republicans.”
We needn’t worry about the state’s reputation, though- there are champions of the state’s reputation as the home of the ignorant yahoo fighting against it: "This says, 'Hey, you can engage in sexual activity and not be at risk for this disease,' which is pretty pervasive," said Micah Clark, director of the American Family Association of Indiana. "Without an abstinence message, it could offer some false hope that you're invincible against this disease, and you're not." I was with them opposing handing out free condoms to 13 year olds in the public schools- I did think there was an element of mixed message, of “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” there... but the HPV vaccine? Does he imagine a 13 year old boy is going to say to a 13 year old girl, “Hey, that thing about you not getting cancer is hot- wanna do it?”
A slightly more serious challenge is the cost- some $2.7 million. That is, after all, 3.6% of what we’re spending on the new football stadium for the Colts- some of the luxury skyboxes might have to settle for a Leroy Nieman on the wall instead of a Chagall; but still, if enough girls are spared cervical cancer, it may be worth it.
This is a remarkably far-sighted and sensible proposal for a legislative body who spends most of it’s time and our money on things like fighting against Daylight Savings Time, or fighting against the federal judiciary for the right to dedicate opening prayers to Jesus... I can only hope against hope it passes.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Reflections on my first year blogging
I started this blog on January 11, 2006 with some hopes but few expectations- which was a good thing, as 2006 proved to be a kidney stone of a year- it did pass, but there was pain. Friends and regular readers know that this past year I have dealt with death in the family and the collapse of my business, plus many lesser blows I haven’t bothered my readers with. I’m proud that with all that has gone on in my life I managed to keep the blog going at all- it would have been so easy to let it go, to drop this least important of my burdens when I was feeling overwhelmed. And yet, for reasons I don’t truly understand myself, I did not- I even managed some essays that I’m quite proud of.
Here are some of the posts that have meant the most to me this past year, even though not all of them are my best work, and in no particular order:
Two cat anecdotes, A genuine act of faith , and I wonder
Some thoughts on the UUA: Why I love UU , How UU can grow... , What is to be the UUA’s role in the world? , and Does UU have a center?
Some personal philosophy: Reason in religion , What gets me through the night , My favorite word of reverence , My musings on Moral Authority , and Holiday musings from an Earth centered perspective
And some random moments: Thoughts on food , Lay off of Hammurabi already! , "Think as I think," , In the Midst of Life... , Michael Moore parody , Dark laughter , U.S. energy use , and The myth of overpopulation .
I’m proud of these moments, but there were too few of them- I vow to do better in 2007!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Finally, Vietnam
Somewhere around three weeks into the Iraq war people started drawing false Vietnam analogies, but now in 2007 we are finally fulfilling them.
It started with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid warning the President before his speech that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq would be unacceptable - even though the President’s plan is nearly identical to that recommended by Speaker Pelosi’s own choice for Intelligence Committee chairman only a month ago . Other politicians who had criticized Bush for not sending enough troops are now criticizing him for sending more troops. Tipping point... it is now conventional wisdom that there are more votes to be gained by blanket opposition to the war than by being right about the war, even if it means flip-flopping when you could have had a legitimate “told you so”. Vietnam syndrome.
This means that the President’s plan is doomed to failure, because no matter what happens it will be reported as a failure on the evening news, just as the Tet offensive- the greatest US victory in the Vietnam war- was reported as a failure on the TV news. This means that Teddy Kennedy’s position, (and to be fair, he has been consistent from the beginning), that he frankly doesn’t care what happens to the Iraqis as long as we leave, will become the official position of the Democratic party.
If Iraq follows the Vietnam example, the purges after our precipitous withdrawal will eclipse anything that went before; in Vietnam, about two million died- and they didn’t have the religious hatred involved. And just as the violence spread from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia, so it will from Iraq throughout the Middle East. The Islamists already believe that their victory is inevitable; that all they have to do is shed blood- ours, theirs, anybody’s- and America will break and run. And why shouldn’t they believe it? It’s perfectly true. Tens of thousands of terrorists from all over the world will flood into Afghanistan, and we will flee before them- after all, after having surrendered Iraq, no American politician’s spine will suddenly stiffen over Afghanistan. The current government of Pakistan may or may not have time to flee to exile in Europe before the extremists take over, but it matters little in the long run- do you think the French or Italian police will be able to prevent the fatwa’s from being executed? Within two years, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will all be run by Al Quaeda and Taliban forces- armed with Pakistan’s atomic bombs.
Has the war been mismanaged? It’s been the biggest cluster-you-know-what since Debbie did Dallas... but no matter how bad staying is, leaving prematurely will be worse. Strangely, though, the people comparing Iraq to Vietnam mean by that that we should leave- but the real lessons of Vietnam show we should stay.
It started with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid warning the President before his speech that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq would be unacceptable - even though the President’s plan is nearly identical to that recommended by Speaker Pelosi’s own choice for Intelligence Committee chairman only a month ago . Other politicians who had criticized Bush for not sending enough troops are now criticizing him for sending more troops. Tipping point... it is now conventional wisdom that there are more votes to be gained by blanket opposition to the war than by being right about the war, even if it means flip-flopping when you could have had a legitimate “told you so”. Vietnam syndrome.
This means that the President’s plan is doomed to failure, because no matter what happens it will be reported as a failure on the evening news, just as the Tet offensive- the greatest US victory in the Vietnam war- was reported as a failure on the TV news. This means that Teddy Kennedy’s position, (and to be fair, he has been consistent from the beginning), that he frankly doesn’t care what happens to the Iraqis as long as we leave, will become the official position of the Democratic party.
If Iraq follows the Vietnam example, the purges after our precipitous withdrawal will eclipse anything that went before; in Vietnam, about two million died- and they didn’t have the religious hatred involved. And just as the violence spread from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia, so it will from Iraq throughout the Middle East. The Islamists already believe that their victory is inevitable; that all they have to do is shed blood- ours, theirs, anybody’s- and America will break and run. And why shouldn’t they believe it? It’s perfectly true. Tens of thousands of terrorists from all over the world will flood into Afghanistan, and we will flee before them- after all, after having surrendered Iraq, no American politician’s spine will suddenly stiffen over Afghanistan. The current government of Pakistan may or may not have time to flee to exile in Europe before the extremists take over, but it matters little in the long run- do you think the French or Italian police will be able to prevent the fatwa’s from being executed? Within two years, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will all be run by Al Quaeda and Taliban forces- armed with Pakistan’s atomic bombs.
Has the war been mismanaged? It’s been the biggest cluster-you-know-what since Debbie did Dallas... but no matter how bad staying is, leaving prematurely will be worse. Strangely, though, the people comparing Iraq to Vietnam mean by that that we should leave- but the real lessons of Vietnam show we should stay.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
A minor accomplishment
I finally had a couple hours today, so I sat down and labeled my posts. Now if anyone is sick enough, they can search my insane ramblings by category!
Friday, January 05, 2007
Five Theological Questions Meme
In her Friday 1/05 entry, Ms Kitty lists Five Theological Questions her mentor had asked. It brought back a lot of memories for me- when I had my first crisis of faith some 37 years ago, I began an intensive philosophy/religion search. In the course of that search, I ran across a number of similar lists, some ancient, some modern, and so these are things I have pondered many times over many years. Although my answer have varied over the years, and may do so again for all I know, I do have a current set of answers, and so I’m going to treat her questions as a meme.
1. Who am I and what is my purpose (the question of Being)?
I began as a not quite blank slate upon which much was written and much was asked. I did not frame the questions, but I am responsible for my answers. I am the total of all my decisions to date. One of those decisions was my purpose: to leave this world in a better shape than I found it. That means, at minimum, to follow the moral code I have adopted, one based on the principal of least harm. What more it may mean I’m still exploring.
2. What must I do to be made whole (the question of Salvation)?
I do not accept the basis of the question. I do not believe in Original Sin; we are born perfect, ready for heaven. When we sin, we are writing for ourselves a record that will be very painful to read when we achieve enlightenment- but that is our pain, self imposed, a pain that in our better moments we will embrace to aid our growth, like the pain involved removing a splinter. There is nothing else to be “saved” from.
3. Who or what is in charge (the question of God)?
There is a big and a small component to this. The small component is my life; I am in charge of that. Sure, there are times when I’d like to palm off the responsibility of making decisions to someone else... but it’s my duty, and I cannot give it to someone else even if I wanted to- because even that act is itself a decision, a decision to shirk my duty. Even to do nothing at all is a decision to accept another’s decision.
The big component is the world, and no one is in charge of that. The way in which we are made in God’s image is that we, too, have the power to create, the spark of unpredictability. God does not cause bad things to happen to good people; we do, by working at cross purposes. If mankind ever united in a cause, then that collective decision would be in charge... until then, no one is.
4. How do I know what I know (the question of Authority)?
Small surprise as a Unitarian but first I drip what I know through the filter of reason and logic. But I also know that logic often fails us, as I discuss here . Then it becomes time to ask your gut. Does my soul know this to be true, no matter what my mind says? Am I trying to argue myself out of what I know is right?
As to Authority... well, this may sound arrogant, but I accept no authority outside myself for the truly important questions of life. I’ll listen for wisdom, listen to proffered advice- but I regard no other mortal to be an authority on my soul.
5. And What does my death mean (the question of Time)?
This is something I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about. One reality at a time is my motto. I have faith that if I make myself truly worthy of this world, I have no need to fear what I find in the next one.
Tag: anyone who has answers ready!
1. Who am I and what is my purpose (the question of Being)?
I began as a not quite blank slate upon which much was written and much was asked. I did not frame the questions, but I am responsible for my answers. I am the total of all my decisions to date. One of those decisions was my purpose: to leave this world in a better shape than I found it. That means, at minimum, to follow the moral code I have adopted, one based on the principal of least harm. What more it may mean I’m still exploring.
2. What must I do to be made whole (the question of Salvation)?
I do not accept the basis of the question. I do not believe in Original Sin; we are born perfect, ready for heaven. When we sin, we are writing for ourselves a record that will be very painful to read when we achieve enlightenment- but that is our pain, self imposed, a pain that in our better moments we will embrace to aid our growth, like the pain involved removing a splinter. There is nothing else to be “saved” from.
3. Who or what is in charge (the question of God)?
There is a big and a small component to this. The small component is my life; I am in charge of that. Sure, there are times when I’d like to palm off the responsibility of making decisions to someone else... but it’s my duty, and I cannot give it to someone else even if I wanted to- because even that act is itself a decision, a decision to shirk my duty. Even to do nothing at all is a decision to accept another’s decision.
The big component is the world, and no one is in charge of that. The way in which we are made in God’s image is that we, too, have the power to create, the spark of unpredictability. God does not cause bad things to happen to good people; we do, by working at cross purposes. If mankind ever united in a cause, then that collective decision would be in charge... until then, no one is.
4. How do I know what I know (the question of Authority)?
Small surprise as a Unitarian but first I drip what I know through the filter of reason and logic. But I also know that logic often fails us, as I discuss here . Then it becomes time to ask your gut. Does my soul know this to be true, no matter what my mind says? Am I trying to argue myself out of what I know is right?
As to Authority... well, this may sound arrogant, but I accept no authority outside myself for the truly important questions of life. I’ll listen for wisdom, listen to proffered advice- but I regard no other mortal to be an authority on my soul.
5. And What does my death mean (the question of Time)?
This is something I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about. One reality at a time is my motto. I have faith that if I make myself truly worthy of this world, I have no need to fear what I find in the next one.
Tag: anyone who has answers ready!
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Recently encountered irritants
The aristocracy is not “To the manner born”. One is not host on a petard. It is the muster that one does or does not cut. Leech and leach: one is a noun, the other a verb.
Ok, I’m really not a grammar Nazi. I was not among those who complained that Star Trek’s mission statement split an infinitive; I’m wont to tell those who chide me for ending a sentence with a preposition that that is the sort of nonsense “up with which one should not put.” I would never correct a friend or blog; I’ve always held that my pomposity in doing so would be a greater offense than a minor language faux pas. But the examples listed above were out of books from major publishing houses.
Come on, publishers- if you’re going to charge me $26.95 for a book you told me was an important work, hire a Goddamned editor! Running a book through a spellchecker is not good enough; have a human being- preferably a high school graduate- read the thing before committing to print. I’m not offended when Ludicris or 50 Cent abuses the language; they quite literally don’t know any better. But I expect better from major publishing houses.
Ok, I’m really not a grammar Nazi. I was not among those who complained that Star Trek’s mission statement split an infinitive; I’m wont to tell those who chide me for ending a sentence with a preposition that that is the sort of nonsense “up with which one should not put.” I would never correct a friend or blog; I’ve always held that my pomposity in doing so would be a greater offense than a minor language faux pas. But the examples listed above were out of books from major publishing houses.
Come on, publishers- if you’re going to charge me $26.95 for a book you told me was an important work, hire a Goddamned editor! Running a book through a spellchecker is not good enough; have a human being- preferably a high school graduate- read the thing before committing to print. I’m not offended when Ludicris or 50 Cent abuses the language; they quite literally don’t know any better. But I expect better from major publishing houses.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Eating in Provence
Having covered the horrors of air travel in the first installments, it’s now time to explore the real reason anyone would go to the French Riviera- no, not nude beaches! (not in December, anyway) Food!
To begin with, we found it’s even more important in the provinces than in Paris to time your sightseeing around meals- you simply will not be served except at designated meal times. Between 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm nothing more substantial than a crepe or an ice cream can be had, and usually not even that. If you speak French, and are very polite, and have a really good reason for not being there at the appointed hour (like your plane being late), and they are feeling guilty over some secret sin and need one act of charity to be promoted from Hell to Purgatory, they will tell you where the nearest convenience store selling baguettes and cold cuts is- that’s as close as you’ll get to off-hours service. The reverse if often true as well- even relatively important tourist sites may well be closed during the critical lunch and dinner hours.
Once those restaurant doors open, however, wonders await. Being on the Mediterranean, you would expect a lot of seafood specialties, and you’d be right. True Bouillabaisse, for example, cannot be made anywhere else- it depends on species found only there. Bouillabaisse must be ordered 24 hours in advance (especially when you’re there in the off-season as we were). There’s a bit of ritual to it, too. First they present a silver platter heaped with freshly caught... well, I assumed seafood, although some of the specimens were so exotic that I could only hope they came from terrestrial oceans, for your approval. This is a very dangerous moment for me, just like the moment when the sommelier offers the cork and small sip for approval. Am I the only one who has to suppress an impulse to spit it across the room and scream “Are you trying to poison me?”, just to see what would happen?
Ok, evidently I am. Well, since I am not writing from jail, I suppressed the impulse with the chef, too, and he took the platter back to the kitchen. After appetizers and a bit more wait, servers came out with huge bowls, trays of condiments, breads, etc. The bowls were piled high with all the strange things I had approved earlier, each one cooked separately in whatever specific manner each demanded before being loaded into the bowl. Lastly, a large tureen of broth was produced and ladled over the pile in the bowl. In the interest of public sensibilities we should probably draw the veil over the rest of the scene.
Desserts in France are different from American restaurants- smaller, less heavy, less of an “instant diabetes” feeling. On the other hand, all French restaurants serve Creme Brulee. It’s not that Creme Brulee is the ultimate dessert, but for someone who grew up as a cross between Bart Simpson and Beavis & Butthead, a dish that combines a sugar rush with a blowtorch is irresistible. Afterwards is something else you won’t get in America: brandy and cigars.
There were other surprises as well. I had thought that raw fish was unique to Japan, but it’s not. “Carrapacio” is very thinly sliced, raw meat with spiced oil drizzled on it; it was available in salmon, beef and lamb. Being in close proximity to Italy, there was pasta and beans on the menu- in the rest of France, your only carbohydrate choices are bread or Pomes Frites. One last surprise was the method of pricing on the menus- be very careful, because it may not be what you think. We ordered a rare fish that was priced at 18.00 Euros... when we got the bill, it was over 80.00 Euros! The part we had missed was that it was 18.00 Euros per 100 gram serving, and that having killed the fish, they serve (and charge for) the whole thing, however many 100 gram servings it turns out to be. Had they not accepted plastic (which many places outside of Paris do not) it might have been very embarrassing!
To begin with, we found it’s even more important in the provinces than in Paris to time your sightseeing around meals- you simply will not be served except at designated meal times. Between 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm nothing more substantial than a crepe or an ice cream can be had, and usually not even that. If you speak French, and are very polite, and have a really good reason for not being there at the appointed hour (like your plane being late), and they are feeling guilty over some secret sin and need one act of charity to be promoted from Hell to Purgatory, they will tell you where the nearest convenience store selling baguettes and cold cuts is- that’s as close as you’ll get to off-hours service. The reverse if often true as well- even relatively important tourist sites may well be closed during the critical lunch and dinner hours.
Once those restaurant doors open, however, wonders await. Being on the Mediterranean, you would expect a lot of seafood specialties, and you’d be right. True Bouillabaisse, for example, cannot be made anywhere else- it depends on species found only there. Bouillabaisse must be ordered 24 hours in advance (especially when you’re there in the off-season as we were). There’s a bit of ritual to it, too. First they present a silver platter heaped with freshly caught... well, I assumed seafood, although some of the specimens were so exotic that I could only hope they came from terrestrial oceans, for your approval. This is a very dangerous moment for me, just like the moment when the sommelier offers the cork and small sip for approval. Am I the only one who has to suppress an impulse to spit it across the room and scream “Are you trying to poison me?”, just to see what would happen?
Ok, evidently I am. Well, since I am not writing from jail, I suppressed the impulse with the chef, too, and he took the platter back to the kitchen. After appetizers and a bit more wait, servers came out with huge bowls, trays of condiments, breads, etc. The bowls were piled high with all the strange things I had approved earlier, each one cooked separately in whatever specific manner each demanded before being loaded into the bowl. Lastly, a large tureen of broth was produced and ladled over the pile in the bowl. In the interest of public sensibilities we should probably draw the veil over the rest of the scene.
Desserts in France are different from American restaurants- smaller, less heavy, less of an “instant diabetes” feeling. On the other hand, all French restaurants serve Creme Brulee. It’s not that Creme Brulee is the ultimate dessert, but for someone who grew up as a cross between Bart Simpson and Beavis & Butthead, a dish that combines a sugar rush with a blowtorch is irresistible. Afterwards is something else you won’t get in America: brandy and cigars.
There were other surprises as well. I had thought that raw fish was unique to Japan, but it’s not. “Carrapacio” is very thinly sliced, raw meat with spiced oil drizzled on it; it was available in salmon, beef and lamb. Being in close proximity to Italy, there was pasta and beans on the menu- in the rest of France, your only carbohydrate choices are bread or Pomes Frites. One last surprise was the method of pricing on the menus- be very careful, because it may not be what you think. We ordered a rare fish that was priced at 18.00 Euros... when we got the bill, it was over 80.00 Euros! The part we had missed was that it was 18.00 Euros per 100 gram serving, and that having killed the fish, they serve (and charge for) the whole thing, however many 100 gram servings it turns out to be. Had they not accepted plastic (which many places outside of Paris do not) it might have been very embarrassing!
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