Another One Bites the Dust
And cogently explains the reasons why here.
It is a time for mourning whenever, as William Butler Yeats once put it,
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I am not as pessimistic as Comrade Kevin, perhaps because I am a member of a healthy congregation, led by a healthy, sensitive and articulate minister, in a region of the country where the positive identity and beliefs we once possessed have not yet been entirely discarded in favor of a value system built only upon the supposed efficacy of "witnessing against". But I do appreciate the grievances expressed, and at times feel them myself.
posted by fausto @ 6/26/2007 09:37:00 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I think we are just now coming out of the coldness of the Humanist/atheist period of UUism. It's taking a while, but we are starting to get spiritual again. We are starting to warm up. We need to re-learn community.
I hope I didn't come across as hostile or accusatory in that post.
Unitarians ought to understand better than most that faith journeys are evolving processes and what is true for one may not be true for all.
I am off to my own adventure and indeed another climateric event in both my life and my faith journey.
I am just weary and burnt out and I know my prose must reflect it.
If you or your readers want some counter-point to my musings, check out what Chutney has to say over at Making Chutney
His opposition stems from the fact that, to the best of my reckoning, we need to be upbeat and forward-thinking to resolve the inherent issues in UUism. He indirectly calls me an "outsider prophet", which is strange because I certainly don't feel like John the Baptist or John of Patmos.
Kevin, I didn't take your comments as hostile, just truthful. You came across as disillusioned and disappointed, which is understandable given your experience, but you are not alone in the concerns you expressed.
I think you're reading too much into Chutney's comments by taking those comments to be opposed to yours, though. I don't think those comments were specifically meant to respond you and your frustration with UUism.
What I get from them is that the book Chutney is reading might lead us to ask whether in reality the "prophetic witness" that we UUs like to think of ourselves as offering to the rest of the world is an engaged, constructive and participatory effort or an estranged, condemnatory and marginal one. Does our prophetic witness as we practice it actually feed souls and build community, or does it only stand on the sidelines and excoriate? If we were witnessing effectively, it would be the former sort of effort and not the latter -- but are we?
To me, that question is actually in sympathy with many of the concerns you raised in your "farewell address", rather than opposed to them.
Thanks for the props, Fausto!
-- your minister
Sure thing, "Anonymous"!
("Anonymous?" As if.)
Well he is far less anonymous than he was. . .
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