the Socinian

The Collection of Geniuses

2010-07-03T09:18:00.005-04:00

(A couple of years ago, I posted a few of the parables of Safed the Sage, which was a popular series of columns written by the Rev. William Eleazar Barton about a century ago. For some reason I was thinking about Safed again recently, and so here's another.)

There came to our city a Woman who called often at the house wherein we abide, and she counted herself a friend of Keturah. And I asked of Keturah saying, Is this Susie person married or single?

And Keturah answered, Both.

And I said, It is just about what I should have expected.

And Keturah said, She hath many of the marks of Genius, and she knoweth many persons who are Geniuses. Yea, and she hath invited us to spend an evening with her and meet a Group of her Friends, all of whom are Geniuses in their way.

So we went, I and Keturah, and we spent an evening in the Flat of Susie. And she trotted out her Geniuses.

And there was a Poetess who wrote Vers Libre so wonderful that it could not be told from Prose. And there was a Musician who played his Violin after a new theory which maintained that Music should have neither Melody nor Harmony nor Key nor Time, but reach High Levels of Soul through Free Interpretation. And there was an Author, who had writ a Great Book, so profound that no Publisher could understand it or see the need of publishing it. And there was a woman who had a New Theory of Thought-Transmission, and interpreting Morals in terms of Music, and Music in terms of Color.

And Susie introduced them to us, one by one, and I and Keturah were about the only people there who were not Geniuses. So they began every man and woman of them to tell us their Theories.

And when we came away, we were weary, and we walked not, but ordered a Taxi.

And Keturah said, It was a Great Social Triumph for Susie.

And I answered, Yea.

And Keturah said, And I was Bored.

And I said, So was I, unless there be in the Dictionary some word which meaneth the same and then some.

And I said, Keturah, Thou are no Genius, neither am I. But thou are mighty Good and Wonderous Sensible, and I am a Philosopher, which is, being interpreted, a man with Good Ordinary Common Sense.

And Keturah said, An evening with a Choice Assortment of Geniuses is like unto a Feast in a Pickle Factory.

And I said unto her, God hath need of mighty few Geniuses; and as for a job lot like that we have met, it is of the Lord’s mercies that they are not consumed. Let us be thankful that in this world are so large a number of Commonplace Sensible Folk.

Advent reflection

2009-12-24T07:13:00.002-05:00

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’” Luke 2:13-14

Advent reflection

2009-12-23T07:14:00.000-05:00

“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow:
Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing!
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!”
Edmund H. Sears

Advent reflection

2009-12-22T06:57:00.001-05:00

“When all the people of the world love,
Then the strong will not overpower the weak.
The many will not oppress the few.
The wealthy will not mock the poor.
The honored will not disdain the humble.
The cunning will not deceive the simple.”
Mo-Tse

The Shortest Day

2009-12-21T11:07:00.003-05:00

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!

--Susan Cooper

Advent reflection

2009-12-21T07:01:00.001-05:00

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” Psalm 133:1

Advent reflection

2009-12-20T07:38:00.001-05:00

“And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.” Black Elk

Advent reflection

2009-12-19T09:33:00.002-05:00

“O come, desire of nations, bind
All peoples in one heart and mind;
Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease;
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.”
Henry Sloane Coffin

Advent reflection

2009-12-18T07:16:00.001-05:00

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah 9:2

Advent reflection

2009-12-17T07:29:00.002-05:00

“They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Advent reflection

2009-12-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

"From Sinai's cliffs it echoed; it breathed from Buddha's tree;
It charmed in Athens' market; it hallowed Galilee;
The hammer stroke of Luther, the Pilgrims' seaside prayer,
The oracles of Concord, one holy Word declare."
William Channing Gannett

Advent reflection

2009-12-15T06:57:00.000-05:00

“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1-3

Advent reflection

2009-12-14T07:33:00.001-05:00

“I am the source of all, everything proceeds from me. I dwell in the heart, and dispel the darkness born of ignorance with the bright light of knowledge. I am the seed of all being; nothing can exist without me. Whatever is endowed with glory, brilliance, or power, know that it arises from but a fragment of my splendor.” Bhagavad Gita 10:8, 11, 39, 41

Advent reflection

2009-12-13T07:50:00.001-05:00

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” Black Elk

Advent reflection

2009-12-12T07:47:00.000-05:00

“The Logos is eternally valid, yet men cannot understand it -- not only before hearing it, but even afterward. All things come to pass in accord with this Logos, but men seem to be quite unaware of it.… Although intimately connected with the Logos, men keep setting themselves against it.… Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one.” Heraclitus

Advent reflection

2009-12-11T07:38:00.001-05:00

"If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me', even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." Psalm 139:11-12

Advent reflection

2009-12-10T07:09:00.001-05:00

"If there is anywhere anything consolidated, it has been bound by the Logos of God, for this Logos is glue and a chain, filling all things with its essence." "The two natures are indivisible; the nature, I mean, of the reasoning power in us, and of the divine Logos above us." Philo of Alexandria

Advent reflection

2009-12-09T06:50:00.000-05:00

"The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it." John 1:5

Advent reflection

2009-12-08T06:01:00.001-05:00

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." Psalm 8:3-5

Advent reflection

2009-12-07T07:45:00.000-05:00

"He who overwhelms with good the evil that he has done lights up the world, like the moon emerging from clouds." Dhammapada 173

Advent reflection

2009-12-06T07:50:00.002-05:00

"Falsehood implies the making of a wrong statement by one who is overwhelmed by intense passions." Upasakadasanga Sutra

Advent reflection

2009-12-05T09:22:00.001-05:00

“For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.” Isaiah 60:2,18

Advent reflections

2009-12-04T07:34:00.008-05:00

This was the year I finally got myself onto facebook, primarily to keep in touch with my now-teenage kids. Once there, however, I found myself reconnecting with many long-lost friends, and the time spent renewing old friendships has come at the cost of time for blogging.

Anyway, over the past week, I have begun posting daily Advent reflections on my facebook page, and I thought I ought to cross-post them here.

In the Christian liturgical year, Advent is the season of deepest darkness in which the fallen world waits for God to renew the earth with the arrival of his presence, glory and redemption. It is a season of reflection, waiting and hope. Historically, of course, the actual date of Jesus' birth was not known, so the early Church fathers chose to celebrate it at the time of the winter solstice, when other religions celebrated a similar theme of new light emerging from darkness. In that perspective, I see the Advent tradition for UUs not as an idiosyncratic and historically inaccurate superstitious remnant of a repudiated religion, but rather, as the specific cultural idiom by which one culture, our culture, expresses a universal human hope for the breaking forth of more light upon the whole earth -- literally, spiritually, and figuratively. That being the case, I have tried to find complementary thematic selections from a broad selection of cultural sources.

Here are the ones I have posted so far:

Monday: "Hatred was never extinguished by hatred. Only love can extinguish hatred; this is an eternal truth." Dhammapada 1:5

Tuesday: "None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." Hadith 13 of al-Nawawi

Wednesday: "Thus the master lifts up everyone and abandons no one. He is ready to use any situation and wastes nothing. This is called embodying the light." Tao Te Ching 27

Thursday:
"For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main."
Arthur Hugh Clough

Today: "There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men." Black Elk

5 Bad Doctrines

2009-11-08T22:35:00.004-05:00

"Toujoursdan", an Anglo-Catholic friend of mine at Facebook and Beliefnet.com who also writes the blog Culture Choc, posted a note on Facebook and his blog answering a question someone had asked him, and tagged a number of people for further replies, including me. Here's Dan's original note:

“List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply [un]-Christian.

“1. The substitution of orthodoxy for faith. Faith is trust in God; orthodoxy is an intellectual assent to a series of statements about God. Too often the church teaches that doctrinal orthodoxy equals deep faith. Too often the church has taught that unorthodoxy is a lack of faith. Now I believe that creedal orthodoxy is beneficial in that it may lead to deeper intimacy with God, but it isn't faith and orthodoxy won't save anyone.

“2. Being "born again": Yes, Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again in the Gospel of St. John, but modern evangelicalism often turns Christ's "born again" command into an emotional "warm fuzzy" experience that distorts the conversion experience altogether. Extreme versions of evangelicalism turn "the sinner's prayer" into a magical incantation that prompts God to save a sinner, making God the passive party in our relationship. Conversion and discipleship are rarely instantaneous processes, and God chooses to save whomever God chooses to save. The rarely discussed dark side of "born again" theology are the doubts that occur once the warm fuzzies go away and need to recreate the warm fuzzies in order to remain secure in ones' salvation.

“3. Biblical inerrancy: Specifically, the belief that every book in the Bible, and in many cases, every verse in the Bible carries the same weight and is as infallible as every other book or verse in the Bible. This turns the Bible into a divine encyclopedia where one is supposed to find an answer to every question which often leads to disastrous results. Now of course, EVERY Christian picks and chooses to accept and apply some verses and EVERY Christian chooses to ignore other verses which they go to great pains to rationalize, but the rhetoric that "You can't pick and choose" is thrown around with great regularity. Of course you can pick and choose. It's the criteria and intent of what you pick and choose that makes all the difference.

“4. The Book of Revelation: Oh, how I wish the book has never made it into the canon. Oh, how I wish we'd headed the warnings of the Church Fathers who warned that it this book is likely to be misused. All the time and energy wasted trying to turn a letter of encouragement written in code, into a frightening glimpse into our future. Of course, all this energy is spent interpreting the Book of Revelation is done because we don't trust God and we want to know what will happen in the future in order to exert some kind of control over it, or control over our response to it. This turns faith on its head.

“5. That individual "faith" (see #1) in Christ is the only way to salvation. The flip side of this is that people who don't profess individual belief in Christ are unsaved and are targets for proselytizing or elimination altogether. Not only has this caused Christians to act with great evil toward Jews, Muslims, Africans and other indigenous peoples, but it transformed Christianity from a religion of peace and love to one based on fear: fear of God and fear of hell. When I read passages like the Sermon on the Mount I am led to believe that what Christ said and who Christ was does save people, but I don't accept the flip side of this belief. In the 20th Century mainline Protestants and Catholics looked for various ways to include non-Christians of goodwill into God's kingdom, but evangelicals still reject these efforts.

“Are there any you would add?”

I agree with everything Dan says and thought I'd post my further answers to him here. Here are my added five:

1. On the point of orthodoxy, I would add that it is an obvious human tendency to project our own subjective orientation and perceptions onto the rest of the universe as if they were normative, and to try to invalidate all that does not fit within the paradigm. This, however, is not God’s way. Creation is infinitely diverse, not uniform, and God seems to urge us to seek harmony through diversity, not monotony through unity or dissonance through conflict or exclusion. It was the human urge toward an artificially ordered, grandiose uniformity that God frustrated at Babel, and it was to the thus divinely ordained diversity of understanding that the Holy Spirit spoke at Pentecost in so many different tongues. Doctrinal orthodoxy never redeemed anyone. It is not nearly as important to agree with the orthodox fine points of Christology and the Atonement as it is to appreciate that the supreme power in the universe is Love and its supreme purpose is Reconciliation.

2. Much of contemporary Christianity is unwittingly infected by Gnosticism. The God of the Bible is not only supremely benevolent but also intimately involved in the material universe, including its ongoing creation, evolution, restoration and repair, constantly loving and reconciling and “seeing that it is good”. The ancient Gnostics in contrast upheld a cosmology in which matter and material existence were the corrupt creation of a false, evil creator-deity they called the Demiurge; in which purity, truth, and the true God could be found only in a spiritual, non-material realm; and in which the route to escaping material corruption and regaining spiritual purity required secret knowledge unavailable outside the closed community. Many strains of Christianity embrace a similarly Gnostic “pure spirit = good, carnal and material = evil” cosmology that ignores the significance of the Incarnation, and condition the escape from material corruption upon a form of secret knowledge in the guise of doctrinal correctness or “decision theology”. The predestinarian Calvinist strain of Christianity in particular also envisions God as a monstrous demiurge, able but unwilling to lift most of humanity out of a corrupt carnal condition.

3. Although most religious understanding is ultimately a speculative attempt to express in subjective, figurative terms what cannot be objectively observed and proven, Christianity is infected by an unhealthy tendency toward literalism and absolutism. This comes up both in terms of Biblical exegesis and application, and in terms of doctrinal orthodoxy. Genesis 1 is not a paleozoology or paleogeology textbook. When Jesus says, “this is my body and blood”, he is not speaking any more literally than when the Psalmist says, “the Lord is my rock”. When Jesus is metaphorically compared to the Yom Kippur scapegoat or the Passover lamb, it emphasizes continuity from the parent Jewish tradition in upholding the importance of atonement and deliverance, but it says nothing about the necessity of believing in the Penal Substitutionary Atonement as required by the Calvinist demiurge. Jesus taught in metaphors and parables, but as Ralph Waldo Emerson warned the Harvard Divinity School class of 1838, “the idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes.”

4. Related to Dan’s point about inerrancy, a doctrine that appears clearly false to me is the assertion that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible was written by many different human authors over the course of about 1,200-2,000 years, and underwent many revisions, redactions, expansions and contractions before eventually reaching its final form by human consensus. It has far more useful things to tell us if we receive it as the authentic witness of an evolving faith community over a particular period of time to its genuine understanding and experience of God, than if we suppose it to be God’s own supernatural self-revelation. To treat the Bible as if it contained God’s verbatim utterances is to elevate a human artifact to divine status, or literally to “worship a graven image”; it is idolatry. When the phrase “Word of God” appears in the Bible, it refers to the Logos of John 1:1, not to the canonical anthology of scriptures. Which leads finally to:

5. Christianity in practice largely ignores or misunderstands the significance of the Logos. In the Greek philosophy from which the Gospel of John borrows, the Logos or Word is the rational ordering principle of the universe – not just drawing up the blueprints at the beginning of creation, but continually upholding and sustaining all existence, the “Ground of Being” as Paul Tillich describes it. John portrays Jesus as a personification or incarnation or human image of this Logos, through which all things have their being, but too often Christians turn the idea on its head and insist that the indispensible thing is the particular person of Jesus himself, rather than the universal Logos that John perceived to be present in him. When John says that “the Word was with God and the Word was God”, he draws an identity between seemingly disparate Jewish and Gentile apprehensions of divinity. Jesus the man personified the Logos to Christians, yes, but the eternal Logos survived the death of the human Jesus and, I think, has also been perceived in some fashion in all other cultures in every time. Whenever Christians insist that revelation was sealed with the closing of the canon, or that there is no valid religious apprehension except through Jesus or through Christianity, whenever they sneer condescendingly at “pagan” traditions or withdraw from them in fear, they are in fact alienating themselves from much of the omnipresent Word that according to their own tradition is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all things. Instead of becoming effective agents of the Logos in the continuing reconciliation and redemption of the whole world, they are standing in the crowd at Golgotha, jeering at him even while they cast lots to claim his cast-off garments.

Avast, ye lubbers!

2009-09-19T14:38:00.013-04:00

Me hearties, terday be both Talk Like a Pirate Day 'n' Rosh Hashanah, arrh, 'n' so Cap'n Fausto wishes all his mateys who be kinfolk ter ol' Cap'n Jonah that King Neptune hisself'll grant 'em fair winds 'n' seas, arrh, 'n'll carve their initials in th' gun'l's o' his divine galleon, 'n'll seal 'em up with pitch 'n' tar enough ter last another whole turn o' th' seasons, by Blackbeard's bloody boots, arrh.

'N' terday 'e also spied th' moon wi'out needin' 'is spyglass, arrh, 'n' 'e minds that makes th' morrow th'end o' Ramadan, 'n' 'e also minds that all mateys be equals under th' Pirate Code, arrh, 'n' so's not ter fergit his comrades in th' life what be plyin' th' coast o' High Barbary, 'tis ter them hale buckos he wishes, Eid mubarak, by Davy Jones' own whiskers, arrh.

Mary Travers, R. I. P.

2009-09-17T09:46:00.003-04:00

We seem to be losing so many of them so fast lately. Today yet another flower is gone, long time passing, but she seeded the still-blooming social conscience of an entire generation.

Religion and Science: Conflict or Harmony?

2009-08-28T10:43:00.004-04:00

A fascinating discussion here.
(Thanks to blogging buddy LutheranChik for the link.)

Edward Moore Kennedy, R. I. P.

2009-08-26T08:23:00.007-04:00

I knew him, not only as a powerful politician from afar, but also as a father cheering on his son's team at the elementary school track meet. A troubled man who struggled -- not always successfully -- to contain the demons of his own desires and the temptations of his own privilege in order to serve all humanity and especially the oppressed and outcast, he has truly run the race and won the victory.

Yet as he himself said when he lost his 1980 Presidential primary challenge to President Carter, "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Into thy hands, O merciful Father, we commend thy servant Teddy. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Urgent for Twitterers: Iranian Solidarity

2009-06-16T16:07:00.001-04:00

Courtesy of Lizard Eater, via Facebook. I don't tweet, but if you do:

For those who tweet: Change twitter profile to location: TEHRAN, time zone: GMT+3.30. Iran govt hunting 4 bloggers. If we're all Iranians harder 2 find them.

Famous UUs, Part Deux

2009-06-06T08:50:00.003-04:00

If it is frustrating to see “Famous UUs” sometimes revered within our little denomination more for their fame itself than for the religious lessons they can help us remember, it is equally gratifying when one of them is honored outside the denomination for his or her forthrightly religious witness.

That’s why, this morning, I almost bounced with glee this morning when I sleepily turned to the editorial page of The New York Times and found an editorial tribute to the not-quite-so-famous-these-days Universalist and Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King, whose statue was removed from Statuary Hall in the US Capitol this week to make room for Ronald Reagan’s. An excerpt:

…King was a big deal in the 1800s, but hardly a Californian alive knows or cares. The vote in the California Legislature to replace his statue was all but unanimous.

…He was a Unitarian preacher, and an amazing one at that; spellbinding, said people who heard him. He spoke up for slaves, for the poor, for union members and the Chinese. Most memorably, he spoke up for the Union, roaming the state on exhausting lecture tours, campaigning for Abraham Lincoln and a Republican State Legislature, imploring California not to join the Confederacy. He succeeded, but he did not live to see the Union victory. He died of diphtheria in 1864, age 39.

“He saved California to the Union,” this paper wrote, quoting Gen. Winfield Scott.

…Here, then, a final toast to the worthy but obscure. To the frail patriot Thomas Starr King.

"Famous UU" revisionism

2009-06-01T07:21:00.019-04:00

Oh, how we love our lists of Famous UUs. They stroke our egos. They remind us of how influential past UUs once were in society at large, and they kinda sorta suggest that either we still could be, or at least still have the moral rectitude to deserve to be, just as influential today. We enjoy basking in their reflected glory.

Such lists are often topped by John and John Quincy Adams, two of the four (arguably five, if you include Thomas Jefferson) Unitarians who have become President of the United States. While President, Adams the father signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which declared that the US is not a Christian nation, and which was unanimously ratified by the Senate. After stepping down as President, Adams the son argued and won the Amistad cases, freeing a shipload of mutinous African slaves. That's some mighty righteous UUing, right there.

But a disturbing quality I find in UU hagiography is that it often revises the portraits of our saints to more closely resemble who we would have liked them to be than who they actually were. For example, we like to claim the Adamses as our co-denominationalists, but when you look at them more closely, their religion wasn't one that many of us would want to claim as our own. Yes, they were accomplished politicians and did some things in that field that we still admire today, but few UUs today know that they were also devoutly religious, not in any modern "UU" sense but in the old New England Congregationalist mold, and that John Quincy Adams in particular produced a fairly weighty oeuvre of religious writing that included a new metrical translation of the Psalms for singing in church to replace the older Bay and Scottish psalters.

Here's a stanza from his setting of Psalm 14 that I had to find on a Baptist church's website, because it doesn't appear anywhere in Singing the Living Tradition or Singing the Journey. I think it's obvious why not:

The fool denies, the fool alone,
Thy being, Lord, and boundless might,
Denies the firmament, Thy throne,
Denies the sun’s meridian light;
Denies the fashion of his frame,
The voice he hears, the breath he draws;
O idiot atheist! to proclaim
Effects unnumbered without cause!

When we dismiss and ignore, rather than engage and wrestle with, this sort of challenging material from our denominational past, do we gain or lose?

I think we lose when we bury and forget those parts of our religious heritage we can no longer affirm. They can still serve as a reminder of the crucible of issues that made us who we are today, and help us frame issues that each generation needs to confront afresh in order to pursue a complete, rigorous and truly "free and responsible search for truth and meaning".

"Give then not hell, but hope and courage."

2009-05-13T06:01:00.003-04:00

Well, that's certainly one way to do it.

Further reflection on May Day, a day late

2009-05-02T09:53:00.002-04:00

How ironic is it that on May 1 of this year, the big headline in all the newspapers was that Chrysler was filing for bankruptcy, and would probably emerge with 55% ownership redistributed to the United Auto Workers?

Somewhere, Marx and Engels are smiling.

Happy May Day!

2009-05-01T08:42:00.002-04:00

Luke 23:44-45

2009-04-10T07:23:00.003-04:00

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

On this darkest of days, allow yourself an audio treat by listening to the opening chorales of Bach's four Passions -- including not only St. Matthew's and St. John's, but also reconstructed versions of the lost St. Mark's and St. Luke's -- over on Dan Sloan's blog, Culture Choc.

On the road to Emmaus

2009-04-09T10:06:00.017-04:00

I believe in science (at least, when it's done right). I believe almost all of God's work is done naturally, not supernaturally, and is revealed to us in the same fashion, through application of our own powers of observation and reason. Even that which has traditionally been called "God" is a construct of natural human apprehension, a mere figure of another reality that cannot be described or experienced in human terms.

Now, I do not necessarily deny that God is capable of acting supernaturally. Science can only explain the natural, not the supernatural. But it's really, really rare and unusual for that to happen. Almost everything in human experience can be understood and explained in natural terms, even if much of it has not yet been understood or explained.

I believe that God acted naturally, not supernaturally, when he inspired human observers to write down their experience and understanding of God. And I believe he did so again when he inspired others to assemble those writings and bestow on them the status called "scripture". And he does so again each time one of us picks up a book of scripture and tries to draw meaning out of it. I believe scripture has true, powerful and timeless things to teach us about God, handed down to us from those who first apprehended these things. However, by no means does that make scripture perfectly, consistently, absolutely, thoroughly, literally, and inerrantly true in every word and detail, as some would claim. Scripture is still a human witness, not a supernatural revelation.

Do I believe that God in reality acted supernaturally in every instance where scripture portrays him as having done so? No, although I don't deny the hypothetical possibility that he might have done so in some of those instances. But whether he did or not in any one instance, all these instances are first and foremost one human being (the author) earnestly telling a story to another human being (the reader). When scripture portrays a supernatural occurrence, it's as if the author is slapping your face and shouting, "HEY! WAKE UP!! I'M TELLING YOU: THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! SOMETHING REALLY UNUSUAL IS GOING ON HERE!!! YOU'D BETTER TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY AND FIGURE OUT WHAT IT MEANS!!!!"

So, in the middle of Holy Week, we might ask, what does the Resurrection mean? Did Jesus's corpse literally, physically, come back to life after death? I can't say, categorically, no, but I deeply doubt it. God may be capable of supernatural things, yet it would be really, really unusual, so skepticism is warranted and understandable.

However, something most people on either side of the literal question miss is that, whether he did or he didn't, the meaning of the story is exactly the same: Long ago, Jesus the man revealed something new about God to us. God can be present with and among us. God somehow entered the human condition to be with us. Jesus the man lived and he died. But the Body of Christ rose again, and remains alive eternally.

And here's the most important part, the deepest meaning of the story: we, the gathered community of faith, are now that Body, whether we call ourselves by that name or any other.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

--St. Teresa of Avila

Bicentenary Twofer

2009-02-12T08:33:00.002-05:00

On February 12, 1809, two of that century's greatest freethinkers were born.

Happy Birthday, Abe and Chuck!

Howard Dean for HHS Secretary

2009-02-04T10:34:00.003-05:00

Daschle dodged taxes and took big dough from the companies he was going to have to regulate. We've all heard that song before, and we're bone tired of it.

Dean, in contrast, is squeaky clean, he's wielded executive authority as a governor, he's built winning political coalitions against long odds as a party chairman, but even more than that, he's a real live M. D.

Pick a primary-care doctor rather than an industry lackey to run health care reform? How novel is that?

50 years ago, today...

2009-02-03T10:14:00.004-05:00

...was the day the music died.

According to Don McLean and Paul Simon, something much deeper died then too.

Did it really? Can/should it be revived?

Things to do

2009-02-01T13:42:00.015-05:00

...if you're going be attending an in-laws' family reunion for three days, but the only mandatory event is Saturday night:

1. Bring a fishing rod that fits in your suitcase.

2. At dawn on Sunday, while everyone else is sleeping one off, dunk a line in the water traps at the closest golf course.

3. Hook a few small bass and even reel one in.

4. Wonder whether the really big one that bit off the head of your popping bug was a bass or a turtle or a gator. Decide it must have been a gator, because it makes the best story.

5. Leave around 9 when the golfers start to show up.

6. Wish you had driven just a little farther to another golf course.

7. Drive two exits down the interstate to the nearest UU church.

8. Discover that they threw a fundraising dinner the night before, and that the salad dressing came from Costco.

9. Hear an invocation adapted from a prayer written by a past minister of your own church.

10. Hear the witness of a member that he cannot believe in supernaturalism, that believing in reason and observation rather than Jesus and the Bible is the only reliable way to discern truth, that he believes in this life and not the afterlife, and that the other nine months of the year he belongs to a Methodist church in Indiana. Remember bemusedly that your own Humanist grandfather, who was Corliss Lamont's Ph.D. thesis advisor at Columbia, grew up in a Methodist church in Indiana.

11. Sing the same hymn that you used to introduce a sermon you delivered not long ago.

12. Hear the self-described "non-theist humanist" minister deliver a sermon on righteousness and self-righteousness, arguing that there is no real difference between the extreme religious right and the extreme religious left in the sureness of their self-righteousness. Hear her describe both self-righteous positions, right and left, as "fundamentalist". Hear her describe self-righteousness, in her estimation, as the most grievous of all sins. Hear her close with the admonition that, "(are you ready for this?) without confessing our own sins, there can be no salvation," or words to that effect.

13. Greet the minister on the way out of the sanctuary: "So you're Katy-the-Wise! Finally, we meet. I'm Fausto." Hear the minister, not missing a beat, respond: "Oh, you must know Suzyn."

14. Congratulate her on her effective integration of traditional religious language with a non-supernatural theological orientation. Hear her respond: "It's just too powerful, too meaningful to leave out. We really can't do without it. The thing about fundamentalists -- on both ends of the spectrum -- is, they just don't get metaphor. But that's their problem; it shouldn't be ours," or words to that effect.

15. Trade stories about ChaliceChick.

16. Go back to the in-laws' and get ready to watch the Super Bowl.

[Update: Fixed a few typos and links, and added the grandfather/Lamont reference.]

While Aretha was singing in Washington...

2009-01-28T21:49:00.001-05:00

...here's what was going on in South Dakota:

After the Epiphany

2009-01-07T17:55:00.005-05:00

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

--Howard Thurman

For all your midwinter celebrations...

2008-12-24T12:18:00.001-05:00

...there's only one wine.

Palin's Turkey Interview: the Outtakes

2008-12-23T10:46:00.001-05:00

[courtesy of Slate V]

Waiting

2008-12-20T23:39:00.026-05:00

One particularly dark morning last week, I started my car down the driveway on my way to work, and then stopped it again.

On the lawn, not 30 feet away, stood two large coyotes.

This was extraordinary. Coyotes are not historically native to New England, but most of us who live here are at least peripherally aware that their range has expanded eastward over the last century to include the northeastern US and eastern Canada. (Eastern coyotes are bigger than western ones, because their ancestors crossbred with wolves during their migration. Some studies put the proportion of wolf DNA in the eastern coyote at around 28%.) In the last two decades their population has risen smartly and they are being sighted more frequently in suburbia, as surrounding farmland falls out of use and reverts to scrub and woods. Nevertheless, we are usually aware of their presence more from the occasional eerie sound in the night or cat that doesn’t come home in the morning than from personal encounters. They are largely nocturnal, and tend to be intimidated by humans in daytime, avoiding us if they can.

Yet here were two of them, up close. I rolled down my window. "Hey, what are you doing here?" I asked them. They stood there calmly holding their ground for about a minute, unintimidated. I stared straight into their eyes, and they into mine. Then they slowly turned away and wandered nonchalantly over toward the neighbor’s yard, and I continued down the driveway toward my civilized obligations.

I think they were out in the open that morning because it was so dark. The mornings are at their darkest right now. This is the season of the winter solstice, the longest nights and shortest days of the year. It is the season around which many cultures in many parts of the world have independently developed ceremonial observances to express the spiritual hope that darkness and despair will not prevail, and that light will return.

In the Christian tradition that is the spiritual heritage of Unitarians and Universalists, this season and the hope it expresses are known as “Advent”. That hope is expressed as well as any culture has ever expressed it in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John: “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.” In the Christian view, of course, that darkness was epitomized by the rigid, spiritless religion practiced in the Jerusalem Temple and the cynical, oppressive civil authority exerted over Judea by Rome, and that light was personified in the infant Jesus. This Jesus would grow up to preach a novel new gospel – that a “Kingdom of God” would come that was not the exclusive province of a distant supernatural heaven, but that would soon find its fulfillment on earth as well, and that we ourselves, in all our human inadequacy, were its chief builders. “The Kingdom of God is within you,” he preached. “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven,” he prayed. He used witty, ironic parables to drive home his points. His ironic short tales can still put modern masters of the genre like O. Henry to shame.

This grown Jesus died cruelly, almost 2,000 years ago now, brutally executed on trumped-up charges of sedition and insurrection. Christians believe he rose again and ascended into heaven, and while antisupernaturalists may find that impossible to believe literally, in either case he is no longer here. Advent, then, is a season of waiting in darkness for the light to return, both in the celebration of an innocent baby’s birth long ago, and also in the hope for the breaking forth of a future Kingdom governed by divine principles of justice, equity and compassion, where the meek are raised up and the haughty brought low. It is the arrival of this glorious Kingdom, governed by its glorious King, that orthodox Christianity has by long tradition called the “Second Coming”.

In the meantime, though, we wait in darkness, just as in times long ago. In his poem “The Second Coming”, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described the darkness:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And surely, many of us can find echoes of Yeats’s words in the state of our world recently.

In Navajo and other Native American cultures, Coyote is known not just as a wild animal lurking around the fringes of human settlement, but also as a mythological figure, a deity. In Navajo lore, when Coyote appears, something very different and unforeseeable is usually about to happen. He is sometimes a gadfly, pestering and distracting; he is sometimes a trickster, waiting slyly and patiently to lure the unsuspecting into radically changed circumstances; he is sometimes vaguely malevolent; he is sometimes a buffoon; but in an especially fundamental sense, he is also the original source of much of the wisdom that guided the ordering of creation.

In orthodox Christianity, this same ordering principle of the universe is given other names. In Genesis it is identified with the Hebrew God, but elsewhere it is given the Greek names Sophia (meaning “Wisdom”) or Logos (meaning “Word”). The same first chapter of John equates these differing perceptions: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... All things were made by him, and without him was not one thing made that was made.” John then goes on to identify the Word as present in the person of Jesus: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

In this dark Advent season, it was Wisdom in the persona not of the pure Christ Child but of the wily Coyote who so unexpectedly appeared to me. He is Wisdom as the trickster, the paradigm shifter, the sly one who laughs across the emptiness and waits unseen, and then suddenly turns everything upside down in ways that could never be anticipated. Yeats wondered:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

In these dark times, I don’t know what change is in store, but I hope and believe that the shift Coyote brings will be benevolent rather than malign, just as our optimistic liberal faith urges. I see small portents at last of a favorable change in the wind, a break in the storm – or at least I would like to think I do. It is darkest just before the dawn, but the light shines in darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.

Many regulars in the UU blogosphere know Pastor Perpetua. (If you don’t, you owe it to yourself to go check out her blog. She rarely has time to post, but every post is a gem.) This month, in her congregation’s newsletter, she devotes some thought to the context of Advent as a season of waiting (“especially if you have small children in your life,” she writes!), and mentions that what orthodox Christians await at Advent is the Second Coming. She goes on to say that “our [UU] faith does not teach that Jesus will come again,” and asks instead, “what is coming into birth for you?”

I happened to see Perpetua a week or two ago, and I challenged her on that point. “We UUs do expect a Second Coming, at least in its figurative meaning,” I said. “We may no longer feel comfortable speaking in that idiom, but we take a back seat to no one in working to usher in the Kingdom. We may choke on ‘feudal’ or ‘patriarchal’ words like ‘kingdom’, we may not see Jesus as a manifestation of God or even affirm any sort of supernatural Being, but bringing that heaven into its fruition on earth is what we have always striven toward. If ‘the Beloved Community’ is another term for the same thing, we are still hoping and working for it every bit as devoutly as we always have.”

“But orthodox Christianity wraps it up so intractably in the person of Jesus, and we don’t necessarily, at least not any more,” she demurred. “Besides, a lot of the evangelical Christians literally expect that when the Second Coming occurs, they will be swept away from this corrupted place to meet him in the air, and that’s not just mistaken, it’s truly sinful! We don't teach that, and we never have.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “although that millennialist view of the Second Coming is not orthodox, it’s heterodox – probably even more so, and far more dangerously, than our own Unitarian view of Jesus as human. If we UUs hadn’t already watered down the word to the point of triteness, I would say it’s heretical. In the worst sense of the word.”

“That’s true, it is wildly heretical when measured against a standard of Christian orthodoxy,” Perpetua conceded. “The idea that we UUs inherited and retain many orthodox Christian beliefs and values, but merely prefer to use different words to express them now, deserves much more attention than it gets. But the thing is, those millenialists, as heretical as they are, are co-opting the popular understanding of what it means to be Christian today. For someone like me from the other end of the theological spectrum to try to reclaim the orthodox center from the heretical right is far more than I can attempt in just a little newsletter column. It’s more than I could even attempt in a month of sermons.”

And then Perpetua gave me a sly look. A Coyote look. The kind of look a court jester might have used when preparing to deliver an ironic truth.

“But you, you have a blog,” she said. “You could have some fun with it.”

Indeed, I do have a blog. And a few days later, while I was trying to figure out how to begin to develop that idea, I started my car down the driveway on a particularly dark morning to go to work. And then stopped it again.

The next day I emailed Perpetua, who as it happens spent some of her formative years in New Mexico, to ask what profound insight she might be able to offer on the surprise appearance of coyotes at Advent.

“You’ll have to wait,” was her reply.

When Jesus met Buddha

2008-12-15T05:53:00.003-05:00

There was a fascinating article in Sunday's Boston Globe about the largely forgotten cross-influences of Buddhism and Christianity on each other along the old Silk Road.

Excerpts:

In a widely publicized open letter to Italian politician Marcello Pera, Pope Benedict declared that "an inter-religious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible." By all means, he said, we should hold conversations with other cultures, but not in a way that acknowledges other religions as equally valid. While the Vatican does not of course see the Buddha as a demon, it does fear the prospect of syncretism, the dilution of Christian truth in an unholy mixture with other faiths.

Beyond doubt, this view places Benedict in a strong tradition of Christianity as it has developed in Europe since Roman times. But there is another, ancient tradition, which suggests a very different course. Europe's is not the only version of the Christian faith, nor is it necessarily the oldest heir of the ancient church. For more than 1,000 years, other quite separate branches of the church established thriving communities across Asia, and in their sheer numbers, these churches were comparable to anything Europe could muster at the time. These Christian bodies traced their ancestry back not through Rome, but directly to the original Jesus movement of ancient Palestine. They moved across India, Central Asia, and China, showing no hesitation to share - and learn from - the other great religions of the East....

When Nestorian Christians were pressing across Central Asia during the sixth and seventh centuries, they met the missionaries and saints of an equally confident and expansionist religion: Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhists too wanted to take their saving message to the world, and launched great missions from India's monasteries and temples. In this diverse world, Buddhist and Christian monasteries were likely to stand side by side, as neighbors and even, sometimes, as collaborators. Some historians believe that Nestorian missionaries influenced the religious practices of the Buddhist religion then developing in Tibet. Monks spoke to monks.

In presenting their faith, Christians naturally used the cultural forms that would be familiar to Asians. They told their stories in the forms of sutras, verse patterns already made famous by Buddhist missionaries and teachers. A stunning collection of Jesus Sutras was found in caves at Dunhuang, in northwest China. Some Nestorian writings draw heavily on Buddhist ideas, as they translate prayers and Christian services in ways that would make sense to Asian readers. In some texts, the Christian phrase "angels and archangels and hosts of heaven" is translated into the language of buddhas and devas....

One story in particular suggests an almost shocking degree of collaboration between the faiths. In 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in Chang'an, bearing rich treasures of sutras and other scriptures. Unfortunately, these were written in Indian languages. He consulted the local Nestorian bishop, Adam, who had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese. Together, Buddhist and Christian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical good will, and we can only guess about the conversations that would have ensued: Do you really care more about relieving suffering than atoning for sin? And your monks meditate like ours do?

These efforts bore fruit far beyond China. Other residents of Chang'an at this very time included Japanese monks, who took these very translations back with them to their homeland. In Japan, these works became the founding texts of the great Buddhist schools of the Middle Ages. All the famous movements of later Japanese history, including Zen, can be traced to one of those ancient schools and, ultimately - incredibly - to the work of a Christian bishop....

Check it out. It's worth the read.

Solstice Mistakes for UUs to Avoid

2008-12-03T14:26:00.006-05:00

1. Don’t turn the Flaming Chalice into a seasonal idol. It has no seasonal significance. In fact, it has no figurative significance at all. It began out of convenience as a randomly chosen image for some stationery, for goodness’ sake. (If you deconstruct its components into authentic, historic religious symbols, though, chalices represent the Blood of Christ and flames represent the Holy Ghost. Did you really mean to idolize them?)

2. Don’t turn the 7 Principles into a seasonal idol. They have no seasonal significance. They may be sound rules to try to live by, but they aren’t a creed or a similar statement of our highest truths. They are no more than a transitory statement of broad propositions that all of us in our wide theological diversity were at one time willing to support, a lowest common denominator, a catalogue of platitudes. When they were first written and adopted as a denominational bylaw, it was on the express condition that they be periodically reconsidered and revised as appropriate. We are already several years late in meeting that condition, but we're on the verge of doing it, so it could even be said that whatever denominational authority they once held has now lapsed.

3. Don’t envy or covet the authentic seasonal observances of other traditions if they don’t have authentic meaning for you. As your mother told you a million times, “Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to go along.”

4. Don’t bowdlerize the authentic seasonal observances of other traditions to make them more enjoyable or meaningful to you. It’s an insensitive, self-centered affront to others, who take their own traditions quite seriously and might see even well-intentioned imitation as blasphemy or mockery. We sensitive and enlightened types call that "cultural misappropriation", and respectfully avoiding it has even been included in the discussion draft for the present 7 Principles' replacement. (See lines 26 and 27 here.) Rather, celebrate other traditions’ seasonal observances authentically if at all, and preserve and uphold our own authentic traditions of the season as well. We have enough of our own not-oppressively-dogmatic seasonal heritage to draw upon if we wish – for example, the Puritans’ rationalist rejection of midwinter celebrations of Jesus’ birth as being unsupported from Scriptural or other evidence; or Charles Follen’s 19th-century re-introduction of Christmas trees and other “Yuletide” traditions that had been forbidden as unacceptably pagan by the Puritans; or Edmund Sears’ beloved carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, which manages to express the spirit of the season without mentioning Jesus; or Charles Dickens' similarly Jesus-less masterpiece, "A Christmas Carol"; or James Pierpont’s “Jingle Bells”; or Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus illustrations.

5. Whatever you do to mark the season, don’t just pull it out of your @$$ and make it up as you go along, while holding forth as if “this” is what “we” do at this time of year. Most people are smarter than that, or at least most other people are, so it only makes “us” all look like fools and dilettantes.

If you’d like to simplify your hectic seasonal planning by avoiding all these mistakes at once, consider avoiding Chalica.

[reposted by necessity from last year, with minor revisions]

Some atheists get it right

2008-12-03T09:34:00.004-05:00

Elsewhere in the UU blogosphere, I've recently been critical of two ill-conceived publicity initiatives by groups of atheists or humanists, which seem to me more of a public attempt to express passive aggression toward the Christian majority at a sensitive time of year than to actually reach out to embrace new prospective recruits and grow the movement.

In contrast to those dubious efforts, the striving of a different group of atheists deserves hearty applause:

Atheists sue to take God out of state's terrorism law
By John Cheves
Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader
Tue, Dec. 02, 2008

An atheists-rights group is suing the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security because state law requires the agency to stress "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

American Atheists of Parsippany, N.J., and 10 non-religious Kentuckians are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, set to be filed Tuesday in Franklin Circuit Court.

Edwin Kagin, a Boone County lawyer and the national legal director of American Atheists, said he was appalled to read in the Herald-Leader last week that state law establishes praising God — and installing a plaque in God's honor — as the first duty of the Homeland Security Office.

The state and federal constitutions both prohibit government from getting involved in religion, Kagin said Monday.

"This is one of the most outrageous things I've seen in 35 years of practicing law. It's breathtakingly unconstitutional," Kagin said.

Gov. Steve Beshear's office had not seen the suit and therefore had no comment, spokesman Jay Blanton said.

The requirement to credit God for Kentucky's protection was tucked into 2006 homeland security legislation by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a Southern Baptist minister.

"This is recognition that government alone cannot guarantee the perfect safety of the people of Kentucky," Riner said last week.

Riner said he expects Homeland Security to include language recognizing God's benevolent protection in its official reports and other materials — sometimes the agency does, and sometimes it doesn't — and to maintain a plaque with that message at the state's Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort.

In the suit, American Atheists argues that Homeland Security should focus on public-safety threats rather than promote religion. The suit notes that the federal and state homeland security agencies were created as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists, and it refers to those attacks as "a faith-based initiative."

The plaintiffs ask for the homeland security law to be stripped of its references to God. They also ask for monetary damages, claiming to have suffered sleeping disorders and "mental pain and anguish."

"Plaintiffs also suffer anxiety from the belief that the existence of these unconstitutional laws suggest that their very safety as residents of Kentucky may be in the hands of fanatics, traitors or fools," according to the suit.

© 2008 Kentucky.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kentucky.com

Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty with Tripoli declared in part that "the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...". One of our own Famous UUs executed it on behalf of the United States, adding beneath his signature, "Now, be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said treaty, do, by and within the consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof." Adams was of course no atheist himself, and at the time his native Massachusetts had not yet even thrown off the last vestiges of its historic theocracy, but it was gestures like his that put some of the final nails in the coffin. The hyperbole in the last couple of paragraphs of the news report may raise an eyebrow or two, but bravo to the American Atheists for preserving American freedoms from the renewed encroachment of latter-day theocrats.

Old Fat Naked Women for Peace

2008-11-26T08:19:00.003-05:00

My dear old high school pal (and sister UU) Katie sent me a link to this hilarious video:

(The performers are The Righteous Mothers, from Seattle. I'm guessing you UU bloggers from the Pacific Northwest have already heard of them.)

Armistice Day

2008-11-11T21:07:00.004-05:00

"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nation."

--Woodrow Wilson, Armistice Day Proclamation, 1919

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is:
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine --
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine,
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
May peace abound where strife has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build, together,
A world united, righting every wrong:
A world united in its love for freedom,
Proclaiming peace together in one song.

--Lloyd Stone, 1934 (tune: Jean Sibelius, Finlandia, 1899)

It's Like This, PeaceBang

2008-11-07T17:31:00.004-05:00

Punt

Bunt

V-E Day must have felt like this.

2008-11-06T06:50:00.002-05:00

Sweetness in the air and justice on the wind,
Laughter in the house where the mourners have been,
The deaf shall have music, the blind have new eyes,
The standards of death taken down by surprise.

Alleluia! the great storm is over,
Lift up your wings and fly!

--Bob Franke

Why do they hate Freedom?

2008-10-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832)

2008-10-04T10:53:00.015-04:00

Continuing with Will Shetterly's challenge to name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade, here's one that I think even meets UUpdater's stricter criterion of raising current federalism issues that might be troubling to Sarah Palin (if she knew anything about either the case or the issues).

In Worcester, Chief Justice Marshall (that's him in the portrait) held that the Cherokee people were a sovereign nation entitled to the protection of the Federal government against infringement of their sovereignty by any of the constituent Federal states (in this instance, Georgia). Nevertheless, President Andrew Jackson, a fervent advocate of Famous UU Thomas Jefferson's "Indian removal" policies (which today would be called "ethnic cleansing"), took the (probably correct, in the narrowest sense, but obviously unjust) legal position that he was powerless to act under his Federal executive authority unless and until the Georgia courts expressly disobeyed the Federal court. (Georgia did nothing to expressly overrule Marshall's decision; they simply ignored it.) Congress, which agreed with Jackson on Indian removal, had no will either to impeach him or pass authorizing legislation. Thus, the Cherokees' judicial victory was only Pyhrric, and the eventual consequence of its toothlessness was the tragic Trail of Tears.

Some questions of present-day concern that Worcester would pose for Governor Palin, if she were sentient enough to apprehend them, would be:

1. What authority should the judicial branch have to direct or restrict the actions of the executive?

2. Should the executive branch possess implicit power, not expressly delegated in the Constitution or by legislative act, to enforce decisions of the judiciary?

3. To the extent the executive possesses such implicit power, what should be the limits of such power?

4. To the extent the executive posseses such implicit power, should there also be a corresponding duty or obligation to exercise it in order to prevent the intent of the judiciary from being frustrated?

5. If a President neglects obligations imposed by the judiciary, whether express or implicit, should there be a judicial remedy, or is impeachment by the legislative branch the only available recourse?

6. Should the President, Vice President, or other executive officers possess any implict power or duty to carry out policies that are not either expressly or implicitly granted by the Constitution, legislative act, or judicial decision?

7. Is there any difference between the Federal and Alaska constitutions on these separation-of-powers issues, or do exactly the same principles apply to the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Alaska as to the President and Vice President of the United States?

8. What conclusions can be drawn from the decision in Worcester, if any, regarding the State of Alaska's capacity to conduct affairs of state with neighboring sovereign powers? As Governor of Alaska, have you conducted yourself in a manner consistent with the Worcester ruling on matters of international sovereignty? Why or why not?

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)

2008-10-02T19:40:00.004-04:00

Over on his blog, Will Shetterly asks for some Supreme Court precedents that may have escaped Sarah Palin's attention. This one illustrates how far UU views of the differently abled and sexually active have evolved in less than a century.

“The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainty is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tube....Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

--Famous UU and US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court

Arrrh, Part II.

2008-09-19T21:50:00.003-04:00

Arrrh.

2008-09-19T20:21:00.002-04:00

It needed to be said.

Evolution news

2008-09-11T13:56:00.001-04:00

An image of Darwin mysteriously appears on the Scopes Trial courthouse in Tennessee. Details here.

Barbie for President, part II!

2008-09-09T15:07:00.003-04:00

They're here! Be the first one on your block to own the new Sarah Palin action figure doll!

(CC and the rest of you scoffers, bite your tongues.)

GOP delegates defend enthusiasm for Palin

2008-09-08T12:45:00.001-04:00

Palin's not so keen on community organizers

2008-09-04T17:27:00.002-04:00

If you saw Sarah Palin's speech last night, you heard her brag about all her executive experience in her handful of months as a governor and belittle Obama's years as a community organizer.

Well, their experience is what it is, but as a witty commenter over at Daily Kos points out, Jesus was a community organizer, while Pontius Pilate was a governor.

What I've been reading

2008-08-30T07:43:00.006-04:00

The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

The autobiography of a Western-leaning Muslim girl and her coming-of-age in revolutionary Iran, rendered all the more gripping by its graphic novel format.

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew -- Three Women Search for Understanding, by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner

Through a free, responsible, and often tension-laden search, three women of different faiths discover the common truths beyond the illusory differences of their religious traditions. As a UU, it was good to be reminded that something we UUs take for granted can be so difficult for others to discover.

Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen

If Dave Barry wrote suspense novels, he would be Carl Hiaasen. Death, mayhem, telemarketing, and earth-centered values plague an unlikely collection of zany characters in the Everglades.

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson

As Daniel Burnham and an all-star team of America's best Beaux Arts architects, landscape architects, and urban planners race to complete construction in time for the opening of the massive 1893 Chicago World's Fair, a demon-possessed serial murderer is also building a nearby tourist hotel, fitted out to serve double duty as a house of torture and death. It may sound too weird and fantastic to make a credible story -- except that it's all true.

Barbie for President!

2008-08-30T07:26:00.002-04:00

I was never going to vote for McCain, but until yesterday I at least had some comfort that the other side's candidate for once didn't seem too awful. I am utterly gobsmacked by McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for VP, though. I thought if I suspended judgment and waited a day, his good and clever reasons might become more evident, but it's not happening.

McCain seems to me to have been pandering to two constituencies: evangelicals and disaffected female Clinton supporters. Romney or Ridge would have been better qualified, but it seems he too was afraid of further alienating evangelicals to give the nod to either of them. Even given his decision to pander, though, I am astonished at Palin's utter unpreparedness.

McCain is over 70 with a history of recurring cancer, so he really needs to think about his VP's Presidential qualifications. I'm sorry, but being mayor of a town of less than 10,000, plus a year and a half governing one of the nation's least populous and most remote states, doesn't prepare you to lead the world. There's also the question of whether a mother of five young children, including a baby with Down's syndrome, is correctly discerning her life's call if she aspires to lead the world.

McCain seems to be calculating that his two target constituencies are too stupid or too preoccupied with their own narrow concerns to care about those things, but I think it's a bad miscalculation that ultimately will offend more members of both constituencies than it will win. If you're evangelical, are you really going to support a mom who won't be there for her kids? If you're a Clintonista with a feminist political agenda, are you really all that tempted to vote for a guy who chooses beauty pageant contestants for both his life mate and his running mate?

In one stroke, McCain has neutralized his two strongest arguments against Obama: that he's inexperienced, and that he doesn't have the judgment and wisdom necessary for leadership.

Is the "Living Tradition" an oxymoron?

2008-08-16T07:13:00.007-04:00

The discussions that have blossomed elsewhere in the UU blogosphere about whether and to what degree our denomination is accurately described as "post-Christian" leave me wondering about another of our UU shibboleths: the "living tradition". We like to flatter ourselves that we are the heirs and stewards of a religious "tradition" that can be traced in a continuous line back to, depending on how you count, William Ellery Channing and John Murray, or the Enlightenment, or the Radical Reformation, or prominent theologians of the pre-Nicene Christian Church. We like the turn of phrase so much that we even use it for the title of our hymnal.

I have argued against using the term "post-Christian" normatively to describe all of us in the aggregate, because it imposes a false uniformity on what is in fact a broadly diverse collection of individual personal spiritual orientations, and because it seems to exclude both the enduring witness of some of our oldest congregations and a renewed appreciation for our own unique permutation of the Christian way of seeing among our newer members and clergy. Such exclusion seems to me inconsistent with our relatively newfound, but ostensibly denomination-wide, "prophetic" calling (as Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams described it) to name and resist oppression in all its forms. Others have argued with equal merit that as an empirical description, and in spite of permissible but uncharacteristic deviation, “post-Christian” accurately describes a prevailing theological orientation among a majority of us.

If the "post-Christian" epithet is correct, however, either normatively or as an empirical description of a dominant faction, what is the "tradition" we are referring to that still lives? What is it in what we do today that would cause our denominational ancestors of a century or two ago to recognize us as remaining in unbroken covenant with them? What are we, either as a whole or at least a quorum, doing to preserve our tradition, teach it to the next generation, and keep it vital?

Or would it be more accurate and honest to say that the "traditional" elements of our religion no longer live except in the family scrapbooks and photo albums of happy but bygone memories?

[The Revs. Amy Freedman, pastor of Channing Memorial Church in Newport, RI, and Carl Scovel, pastor emeritus of King’s Chapel in Boston, posing in front of a statue of William Ellery Channing and a tower that according to local legend was built by pagan Norsemen. Is one monument more authentic than the other?]

Hit-and-run Earth-centered post

2008-08-05T10:35:00.004-04:00

Hats off to Polity Wonk for identifying the denominations of Vermont.

Although a bit tongue-in-cheek, Polity Wonk's post identifies real ways that real people who feel a dependence on the earth, the environment, and natural cycles have found to express and live their appreciation.

To me, these seem more genuine than trying to invent and adopt a figurative religious language by reconstructing bits and pieces of long-extinct, pre-industrial cultures into something that is (to me, anyway) inauthentic.

But even so, I respect the urge to try, in whatever way we do try. The earth is sacred. Our very existence depends on her, and so it is our sacred duty to honor her and care for her. In an age where she herself is threatened, by our actions, the legacies of culture, religion and history that we inherit from our predecessors do not give us adequate tools to express that.

Prayers ascending...

2008-07-27T18:47:00.006-04:00

...for the members of the Tennessee Valley UU Church, for recovery for the wounded, for comfort for their traumatized children, and especially for Greg McKendry, who reportedly died a hero's death as he shielded the children from an intruder firing a shotgun in the sanctuary.

I'm sure I speak for the whole UU blogosphere in expressing our grief and our solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Knoxville.

[Update: Linda Kraeger, a visitor from the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church, hs died as well. It seems there were a number of kids and adults from Westside visiting TVUUC this morning. So now prayers are ascending for Linda and for Westside too. We hold all of them in our hearts this very sad day. And thanks also to the members of the neighboring Second Presbyterian Church, who took in and cared for the TVUUC kids fleeing the scene.]

Religion Notes from All Over

2008-07-14T06:19:00.002-04:00

Mormon missionary calendar-maker excommunicated

Sun Jul 13, 11:09 PM ET (AP)

The creator of a calendar that featured shirtless Mormon missionaries was excommunicated Sunday after a disciplinary meeting with local church leaders in Las Vegas.

Chad Hardy said he bears no ill will toward the council of elders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"I felt like I spoke my truth," the 31-year-old entertainment entrepreneur said. "Bottom-line, they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have."

"Men on a Mission," which has sold nearly 10,000 copies at $14.99 each, included pictures of 12 returned missionaries wearing black slacks, but not their trademark white shirts, in modest poses. The men also were photographed in traditional missionary garb and share their religious beliefs in biographical sketches.

Some of the 12 models have also been called to disciplinary meetings, but none were punished.

"I have no ill feelings toward any of those people," Hardy said of the church council. "They did what they believed was right and I really do feel it was the best decision for both of us."

Frank E. Davie, the senior leader over a group of Mormon congregations in the Las Vegas area, confirmed the 12-member council's decision in a telephone call to The Associated Press. He declined further comment.

Hardy said the purpose of the 2008 calendar was not to tear down the church or its 13 million members.

"The project is about stepping outside the stereotypes and stepping outside of the image," Hardy said. "Not everybody fits the image and I let them know we're not trying to portray an image for the entire church."

An excommunicated person is removed from official church rolls, but are still welcome at church services. Excommunicated members are prohibited from receiving the sacrament and can't perform church callings such as teaching or preaching during meetings. They also cannot enter church temples.

The Banquet

2008-07-07T10:04:00.001-04:00

I love it when different religious traditions stumble across the same apprehension. I figure, the more widely apprehended a religious principle is, the more universally true it must be.

Widow throws party to find place in heaven

Fri Jun 6, 6:28 AM ET A rich 80-year-old Indian widow has spent thousands of dollars on a feast for 100,000 people in the hope it would please the gods and open the doors of heaven for her, local officials said.

People from surrounding villages and towns were fed lunch over two consecutive days by Phuljharia Kunwar, who lives in the eastern state of Bihar and has no family or relatives.

Kunwar spent $37,500 (19,186 pounds) on the feast. Local officials said she spent lavishly on the meal because she had no one to bequeath her property.

"She told us she could now begin her final journey and her soul could rest in peace in heaven," Ajay Kumar Bulganin, a local lawmaker who attended the feast, held over Wednesday and Thursday, said.

"She was worried that no one would care about throwing a feast after her death."

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. ... When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

[Luke 14:1, 7-14]

In case you were wondering...

2008-07-04T23:32:00.009-04:00

Yes, Katie Mayhew,

the 16-year-old amateur singer from Martha's Vineyard who won a high school talent search and knocked the crowd's socks off earlier this evening at the July 4th Boston Pops fireworks celebration, is a descendant of the same Mayhew family from Martha's Vineyard as Jonathan Mayhew,

the Unitarian minister who preached the sermon that John Adams called ""the spark that ignited the American Revolution", and who coined the famous phrase "no taxation without representation".

Given the patriotic theme of the evening, I'm astonished the producers didn't mention the connection.

Obviously, a commanding stage presence and the ability to mesmerize crowds in Boston are gifts that still run in the family.

Old Buddy, Goodnight

2008-05-27T22:21:00.022-04:00

The wind blows cold in Wyoming,
The stars shine clear and bright,
But if you don’t wake up tomorrow at all,
I guess it’s, old buddy, goodnight.

Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips, a fellow UU, and as he put it, a “rumor in his own time” and one of the grey eminences of the “great folk music scare of the 1960’s”, went to sleep in his own bed last week at the age of 73 and didn't wake up. I had been a fan of his for more than 30 years and had seen him in concert several times.

The tributes to this modern bard are beginning to roll in, and others can tell of his masterful storytelling, his prodigious knowledge of railroading and hobo lore, or his fierce advocacy for labor rights and society’s outcasts. I’ll tell instead a little vignette of how his art touched my own family.

I grew up in Washington, DC, in the charged atmosphere of the 1960’s. My father was a management consultant with a practice that focused on organizational restructuring, and the federal government was a steady client. One of his most ambitious assignments came in 1971 when his team was commissioned to design a feasible national railroad passenger system out of the wreckage of the Penn Central Railroad bankruptcy. It was for him a particularly fascinating project because his father had been an electrician and shop foreman in the old McIntosh & Seymour plant of the American Locomotive Company in Auburn, NY, just off the New York Central “Water Level Route” that carried the 20th Century Limited between New York and Chicago. (And not far, or at least so I imagine, from the farm in the preceding post.)

By the time Penn Central collapsed, it was generally recognized that airlines had eclipsed rail as the dominant passenger travel mode, and that rail passenger service was unprofitable in all but the shortest, most densely populated routes. Enabling legislation prompted 20 out of the nation’s 26 leading railroads to contribute their money-losing passenger operations to the newly-formed National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which soon adopted the now more familiar trade name “Amtrak”. The task fell to my dad and his team to recommend which unprofitable routes should be shut down and which should be continued under state or federal subsidies. Whole states stood to lose their service. For a Type A personality like my dad, combining the romance of the nation’s railroad heritage with the chance to match wits and do battle with powerful senators and governors over the future of an important sector of the economy was heady stuff.

Among the legendary routes my dad shut down was the Wabash Cannonball, an old passenger line of the Wabash Railroad, named for an even older minstrel song that became a big hit for the Carter Family when they recorded it in 1929. Utah Phillips rode the last regular run of the Cannonball, and wrote a new song about it, with the wistful refrain:

There’s no round trip ticket, you’re on the final run,
This Cannonball is never coming back.
Tomorrow she’ll just be
Another memory
And an echo down a rusty railroad track.

A few months later one of the news networks ran a documentary about Amtrak closing the door on a nostalgic chapter of American life. Dad watched most of the segment dispassionately, with occasional rationalist jibes about fiscal discipline and sound transportation policy and hard choices and soft English majors to balance the TV producers’ mawkish sentimentality. (I don’t remember now who the anchor was, but if he wasn’t Charles Kuralt, he should have been.) When the piece closed with Phillips’ song about the last run of the Cannonball, however, Dad suddenly looked like he had been punched. All these years later, he still listens to it every once in a while.

So goodnight, Utah, but not goodbye. You’ll always be around, whenever there’s starlight on the rails.

His earthly race is over; as the curtains 'round him fall
We'll carry him home to victory on the Wabash Cannonball.

The Action of Immediate Witness

2008-05-25T13:47:00.006-04:00

(Another parable of Safed the Sage)

The Dog And The Limited

Now I rode on a Fast Express Train called the Limited. And we went through a Country where there were Many Farms. And the Train went like the Driving of Jehu.

And there was a farmhouse that stood near unto the track but back, as it were, about the space of a Furlong. And in the Farmhouse dwelt a Farmer. And the Farmer had a Dog. And when the train drew Nigh, the Dog started from the Farmhouse toward the Train. And he Barked Furiously, and he Ran Swiftly. And I marveled that he could run so Swiftly, and that at the same time he could Bark so Furiously. But with all his barking he could not make so much Noise as the Train, neither with all his Running could he overtake it.

And the path that he made in his Running was a Great Parabolic Curve. For he started before the Train entered the Farm, running toward the Train, and going East, for the Train was heading toward the West. But as the Train ran on and stopped not, the Dog ran South, and when the Train was going By and not even Hesitating, he Curved so that he ran Southwest and then West. And at the west side of the Farm he fell into a Ditch, and rolled over and over and got up, and shook himself, and stood for a moment and cursed the Train, and then Returned Home.

And the Train went on.

And a month thereafter I rode on the same Train and behold! the Same Dog did all the Things that he had done before.

And three months thereafter I rode again on the Same Train, and the Same Fool Dog was still Getting Experience in the Same Manner, but Learning Nothing Therefrom.

And I saw that he was even like unto some Men, who might be Pounded in a Mortar and a Pestle, yet would not their Folly depart from them.

For even as the Dog watcheth daily for that Train, rising every morning and listening for it, and chasing it through the Farm, and Tumbling in the Ditch on the West Line of the Farm, so there are Men who Chase their Follies Continually, and learn Nothing from the Tumbles.

And what would the Dog have Done with the Train if he had Caught it?

The New Recipe

2008-05-20T14:33:00.004-04:00

(Another parable of Safed the Sage)

There was a morning when I rose from my bed, and looked at the sunrise, and thanked God that I was alive, even as I do each day. And I descended and came down, and ate my breakfast. And behold, upon the table there were Doughnuts. Now if there be Doughnuts, I eat of them, but they minish not in any wise the other things that I eat, for I eat of them last.

And I said unto Keturah, Hast thou bought Sinkers from the Market? For I had not smelled the cooking of them.

And she said, I have not; for I value my peace of mind and the good will of my husband. I made these. Yea, and I made them by a New Recipe.

And I said, Wherefore wilt thou try New Recipes when already thy Doughnuts are perfect?

And she said, It is not thus that thou dost preach, for thou dost ever exhort men to do better and better.

And I said, Thine aspiration to have things better and better is thine only fault. Thou dost even try to have it so with thy Husband.

And she said, Yea, and this far I have done very well in the matter of his improvement.

So I ate of the Doughnuts, and I said, Behold, these are just like all of thy Doughnuts.

And she said, I am glad thou dost think so. For they are so made that they absorb less Fat; therefore are they more Wholesome.

And I said, Go not too far with me in that Wholesome stunt; I do not want things too Wholesome; I can digest anything save it be Health Foods.

And she said, My lord, when I try a New Recipe, thus do I try it. I consider all the things that I have been wont to use that I know are good, and if I find in the New Recipe some other good thing, that also do I put in.

And I said, Keturah, thou hast the finest idea of Progress to be found in any cook on earth. For thou goest ahead, but thou playest not far from thy Base.

And I said, If all the reformers would learn of thee, then would the Millennium come sooner.

And she said, I am glad that thou dost like the new Doughnuts.

And I verily did like them. For they had one ingredient that changeth not, and that is Keturah.

For, believe me, her Doughnuts are Some Doughnuts.

The Man From Jonesville

2008-05-20T11:14:00.005-04:00

Now, there was among my Neighbors a man whose name was Smith, and he was from Jonesville. And he told me often of Jonesville, what a Lovely Place it was, and how every one who lived there was Happy and Virtuous, and how sorry he was that he ever had left there, and how he wanted to go back to Jonesville. And when the men in the city where I lived failed to clean the Snow off their Sidewalks, or the City Council indulged in Graft, or the children were Rude, or there was an Early Frost, he told me that Such Things did not happen in Jonesville. And this continued for nigh unto Twenty Years; and the older he grew the more he talked about Jonesville. And I told him I hoped that when he died he would go to Jonesville.

Now it came to pass that he prospered, so that he retired from Business. And he sold his House and Lot in the City wherein I dwell, and went back to Jonesville that he might Spend his Last Years in Peace, and Die in Jonesville. And we all Bade him Farewell, with something of sorrow, and something of Relief.

And it came to pass that at the end of Six Months, he and his wife moved back again, and bought back their Old House for a Thousand Dollars more that they sold it for. And they were Tenfold more Happy to get back than they had been to go away.

And it came to pass on an Evening that Keturah and I called on them. I said, Old Fellow, tell me on the Level, what was the matter with Jonesville?

And he said to me, Speak not to me of Jonesville, lest I do thee Harm. It is the toughest Joint this side of State Prison. The dear people we knew have all died or moved away, and they who are in their places are Unneighborly and Snobbish. And they Tango and do other Outrageous Stunts, and their Kids are the Limit. We have come back to Dwell in the place where we have spend Twenty Happy Years, and we have but one favor to ask of our old Neighbors, and that is, that they never speak to us of Jonesville.

And as Keturah and I walked home, I spake to her, and said, Keturah.

And Keturah answered, I know what thou art about to say; and I suspected all the time that it would be just so.

And I said, There are many men and women who sigh for some Jonesville or other, who might be Decently Happy where they are if they would make it their business.

And Keturah said, Our Jonesville is right here.

And I said, Amen.

"Now is the Time": The Problem, in a Nutshell

2008-05-01T09:43:00.002-04:00

Overheard, chez Fausto, at the breakfast table this morning:

Fausto: You know, there's been some grumbling lately on [Peacebang's] blog about the UUA's "Now is the Time" campaign.

Mrs. Fausto: What's that?

How well do you know the Hebrew Bible?

2008-02-26T21:49:00.003-05:00

Not as well as you'd like? Well, then, you're in luck.

Yale University has posted here a complete collection of course materials -- syllabus, lecture notes, video lectures, reading assignments, etc. -- for its undergraduate “Introduction to the Old Testament” course. It’s as close as you can come to actually sitting there in the lecture hall and auditing the course in real time. (Plus you don’t have to live in New Haven!)

For extra credit, identify the particular text and volume in the image below, and their significance:

Vote.

2008-02-12T09:56:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, a new day job has cut deeply into the time I have been able to devote to thinking deep thoughts and disgorging them here, but I am nevertheless flattered that two of my blog entries have been nominated as the "Best Single Entry" in the the "Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary" category of the 2007 UU Blog Awards.

They are:

Biblical Prooftexting for UUs

and

Unitarian Judas.

My humble thanks to the unknown person or persons who nominated me. And to the UUpdater for all the effort involved in hosting the awards.

Now, gentle reader, please go cast your vote here. Be heard, whether it's my voice you admire or one of the many other inspired and articulate voices in the growing UU blogosphere.

Epiphany

2008-01-04T20:08:00.000-05:00

Twelfth Night
(The Song of the Camels)

Elizabeth Coatsworth

Not born to the forest are we,
Not born to the plain,
To the grass and the shadowed tree
And the splashing of rain.
Only the sand we know
And the cloudless sky,
The mirage and the deep-sunk well
And the stars on high.

To the sound of our bells we came
With huge soft stride,
Kings riding upon our backs
And slaves at our side,
Out of the east brought on
By a dream of a star,
Seeking the hills and the groves
Where the fixed towns are.

Our goal was no palace gate,
No temple of gold,
But a child in his mother's lap
In the cloudy cold.
The olives were windy and white,
Dust swirled through the town,
As all in their royal robes
Our masters knelt down.

Then back to the desert we paced
In our phantom state
And faded again in the sands
That are secret as fate--
Portents of glory and danger,
Our dark shadows lay
At the feet of the babe in the manger
And then drifted away...

Biblical Prooftexting for UUs

2007-12-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

For a couple of centuries now, we Unitarians and Universalists have tended to hold a pretty relaxed view of Biblical authority. We tend to see the Bible as an anthology of human spiritual insight from an ancient time – some of which may still be useful in our own lives, some of which has been superseded or refuted by more recently acquired human knowledge, but none of which comes directly to us from God’s mouth as a perfect utterance or supernatural set of rules.

As a result, may of us don’t take the Bible as seriously as we might. Which is too bad, because a lot of that ancient human insight is still pretty reliable. In fact, we tend to forget that historically it is the original source of many of the distinctive religious premises that we UUs think define us and set us apart from mainstream Christianity.

Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this is that when we do get into religious discussions with Real Christians[TM], we find ourselves at a disadvantage, because many of them ascribe such overwhelming authority to the Bible that won’t take any religious argument seriously that isn’t supported by Scriptural prooftexts. We UUs generally do not place much credence ourselves in the probative value of Scripture, much less prooftexting, not only because we do not hold the same exalted view of Biblical authority that conservative Christians do, but also because it is so easy to misconstrue or misapply the meaning of a text. We would agree with Shakespeare's observation in The Merchant of Venice that even “the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” (that is, provided we assume at least for the sake of argument the existence of a Devil). If we remember those Biblical passages that our denominational ancestors traditionally used to support our religious beliefs, though, and if we can cite them when appropriate, we might regain some of the influence we have lost over the years in the larger interdenominational and interfaith discussion.

So, ladies and gentlemen, coming to you direct from a prior engagement at the KJV Fundamentalist Auditorium, here are a few Bible verses that we Unitarians and Universalists have traditionally understood “our” way.

On the validity of religious insights from beyond the Abrahamic tradition:

Matthew 2:1-2 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

On perceiving Jesus as a human exemplar, rather than a deity incarnate:

John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

I Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

On the principle of “deeds, not creeds”:

Micah 6:6-8 Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

On revering the immanence of divinity in nature, or “earth-centered spirituality” as we sometimes call it:

Genesis 1:31a And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Psalm 19:1-6
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

Psalm 23:2-3a
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters: he restoreth my soul.

Psalm 24: 1-2
The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

Psalm 139:7-12
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

On the inherent worth and dignity of every person:

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Matthew 25:34-40 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

More specifically, but to the same point, Unitarians have traditionally denied the doctrine of Original Sin as developed by St. Augustine and emphasized to the point of unhealthy obsession in Calvinism. Contrary to widespread Christian teaching, there is no Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden story, and no corresponding consequence of total depravity and unworthiness or eternal damnation burdening all the descendants of Adam and Eve. Instead, there is only a specific, rather moderate and limited, punishment for their limited transgression -- pain in childbirth, and toil for sustenance:

Genesis 3:16-19 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

And finally, on the universal reach of divine love and reconciliation, excluding no one on the basis of culture, tradition or belief:

Matthew 18:12-14 How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

I Timothy 2:3-4 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

I Timothy 4:10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.

Solstice Mistakes for UUs to Avoid

2007-12-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

1. Don’t turn the Flaming Chalice into a seasonal idol. It has no seasonal significance. In fact, it has no figurative significance at all. It began out of convenience as a randomly chosen image for some stationery, for goodness’ sake.

2. Don’t turn the 7 Principles into a seasonal idol. They have no seasonal significance. They may be sound rules to live by, but they aren’t our creed or a statement of our highest truths. They are no more than a transitory statement of broad propositions that all of us in our wide theological diversity were at one time willing to support, a lowest common denominator. When they were first written and adopted, it was on the express condition that they be periodically reconsidered and revised as appropriate. We are already several years late in meeting that condition, so it could even be said that their denominational validity has lapsed.

3. Don’t envy or covet the authentic seasonal observances of other traditions if they don’t have authentic meaning for you. As your mother told you a million times, “Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to go along.”

4. Don’t bowdlerize the authentic seasonal observances of other traditions to make them more enjoyable or meaningful to you. It’s an insensitive, self-centered affront to others, who take their own traditions quite seriously and might see even well-intentioned imitation as blasphemy or mockery. Rather, celebrate other traditions’ seasonal observances authentically if at all, and preserve and uphold our own authentic traditions of the season as well. We have enough of our own not-oppressively-dogmatic seasonal heritage to draw upon if we wish – for example, the Puritans’ rationalist rejection of midwinter celebrations of Jesus’ birth as being unsupported from Scriptural or other evidence; or Charles Follen’s 19th-century re-introduction of Christmas trees and other “Yuletide” traditions that had been forbidden as unacceptably pagan by the Puritans; or Edmund Sears’ beloved carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, which manages to express the spirit of the season without mentioning Jesus; or Charles Dickens' similarly Jesus-less masterpiece, "A Christmas Carol"; or James Pierpont’s “Jingle Bells”; or Thomas Nast’s Santa Claus illustrations.

5. Whatever you do to mark the season, don’t just pull it out of your @$$ and make it up as you go along, while holding forth as if “this” is what “we” do at this time of year. Most people are smarter than that, or at least most other people are, so it only makes “us” all look like fools and dilettantes.

If you’d like to simplify your seasonal planning by avoiding all these mistakes at once, consider avoiding Chalica.

Mrs. Fausto Wants to Know

2007-12-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

if Chalice Chick can please explain the difference between a bailment and a license.

The Interdependent Web of All Famous UUs

2007-11-27T20:17:00.000-05:00

In which Famous UUs Matt Groening and Keith Olbermann scratch each other's back:

March on Down the Field

2007-11-17T11:55:00.000-05:00

Tune in at noon (Channel 56 in the Boston media market) today, when the historic antagonists in the oldest Congregational theological rivalry reconvene for their annual figurative hashing out of differences, otherwise knows as the “Oldest College Football Rivalry,” or more simply, “The Game”. This year, the fey Romantics of Cambridge hit the road to test their mettle against the iron Calvinists of New Haven in the Yale Bowl.

It promises to be a tough contest. Both teams have exceptionally strong defensive squads, and for the first season since the 29-29 tie of 1968 (when Yale was captained by Brian Dowling, the real-life “B.D.” of later Doonesbury fame), both are undefeated in Ivy League play. The winner today will become the sole Ivy League champion (in many years the title is shared).

Despite the teams’ seeming equality, predestinarians and other advocates of the theology of visible sainthood will note that Yale is undefeated in all games this season, while Harvard has fallen to Holy Cross and Lehigh outside the League.

[Update 3:24 PM: Predestination is overrated. But you knew that already.]

Armistice/Remembrance/Veterans' Day

2007-11-11T08:08:00.001-05:00

Strange Meeting
Wilfred Owen (1918)

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now...'

God's Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns fell silent.

Too late.

The profligate, senseless waste and carnage of the First World War had put the lie to the unreserved faith in human nature that was known as “Liberal Religion”. Just as the aftermath of World War I birthed the political tensions that would define the rest of the twentieth century and still burden us today – communism, fascism, democracy, the failure of each to live up to its own ideals, and the instability of the regimes and national borders carved out of the old Ottoman Empire – so also did it birth a spiritual challenge that Liberal Religion has not yet adequately answered: facing the reality and tenacity of the problem of human evil, which is present not only "out there" in some demonized adversary, but more importantly "in here" within each of ourselves.

Woodrow Wilson, a liberal Presbyterian and strong advocate of what we UUs have called "the inherent worth and dignity of every person", tried and failed to “make the world safe for democracy,” and to establish a League of Nations in which the political forces that historically had led to war could be resolved instead by reasoned deliberation. Instead, even with the fatal foolishness of national jealousies freshly obvious to all Europe, the terms of peace that were forced upon Germany were so punitive that they almost inevitably gave rise to a Hitler. Yet Neville Chamberlain, a Unitarian and arguably the last great national leader that Liberal Religion ever raised up, is known now to posterity as the great weakling of the century, the trusting fool who appeased Hitler, precisely because of his naive optimism that his own revulsion to war would be shared by his national and political rivals.

We whose spiritual ancestors scoffed at Calvinism must grant the prophet of Geneva at least this much: there is something enduring and rotten at the center of the human soul that can never be completely expunged. And yet, unlike Calvinists, and in spite of the weighty contrary evidence of the twentieth century, we liberal religionists of today still behold and affirm, if not the certainty of the eventual perfection of human nature, then at least that there also exists in the human soul an essential goodness, abiding together with essential human depravity and carrying the potential in every heart and every age to outshine it.

We refuse to abandon our very ancient faith that, over the long sweep of time, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it. We do, nevertheless, tend to lose sight of the fact that in the present moment what is required to lift darkness is the right quality of light, rightly focused. Evil has power, and – as Chamberlain discovered, to his rue – good will does not necessarily prevail over evil merely because it is good. Our challenge in our time is to find a way not only to acknowledge the presence of corruption in the human spirit, but also to make persuasive again the case that the nobility also present in the human spirit is stronger, and must win.

[Erratum 11/13/07: It appears that my source giving the date of the Hopkins poem as 1918 was incorrect. Another source indicates that Hopkins died in 1889.]

Happy St. Servetus Day!

2007-10-27T09:22:00.000-04:00

Thanks to James Ford over at Monkey Mind for reminding us that today, October 27, is a day to celebrate freedom of conscience in spiritual matters. On this day in 1553, the theologian and research physician Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy by Geneva under the guidance of John Calvin, with all the known copies of his writings chained to his leg. (Calvin had requested that he be mercifully beheaded, but the Council of Geneva insisted upon burning.) Faithful to the last, Servetus' dying words were, "O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me."

In our time not only UUs but also Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, Oneness Pentecostals, and Swedenborgians recognize Servetus as a spiritual ancestor.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

--James Russell Lowell, 19th century Unitarian poet and Harvard don

Yodeling for Jesus

2007-10-16T21:22:00.000-04:00

Doesn't the thought of Jesus just make you want you to lean your head back and yodel?

Yeah. Me neither.

Theology of Baseball

2007-10-06T12:51:00.000-04:00

Night Baseball, by Marjorie Phillips

Forget all that Calvinist claptrap about the Red Sox. Sitting on top of the Green Monster and under the Coke bottles at 1 in the morning, and watching a ball hit by Manny Ramirez fly overhead to end the ninth inning, is a truly transcendent experience.

Yo, Peacebang.

2007-09-24T09:40:00.000-04:00

Had another sighting.

Update 10/1/07:

Terday, there be no God but Neptune.

2007-09-19T09:13:00.000-04:00

Kiki, 1994-2007, RIP

2007-09-16T21:19:00.000-04:00

Today the Fausto family joined the ranks of UU bloggers who have recently lost a family pet. We're sad, but holding up.

Put the rubber mouse away,
Pick the spools up from the floor,
What was velvet-shod, and gay,
Will not want them any more.

What was warm, is strangely cold.
Whence dissolved the little breath?
How could this small body hold
So immense a thing as Death?

-Sara Henderson Hay

Unitarian Judas

2007-08-03T05:41:00.000-04:00

Over at Biddies in my Brain, Laura takes an evening to watch Jesus Christ Superstar, which moves her to ask, where does Judas fit into a Unitarian belief system?

She continues,

Judas *fits* in the Christian mythos beautifully... he is understandable... he has a place. ... In Unitarian Universalism, does Judas revert to being a bad guy? Or does he simply not exist? This is a question I have never asked of my faith and it is bothering me tonight because I *do* find a yin-yang relationship between Jesus and Judas in Christianity, a relationship that sets of an eternal dance that seems somehow sacred beyond any divinity incurred on the Christ figure in the standard story told by Trinitarian Christians. ... Judas does not exist in the other Abrahamic Unitarian faiths - he is not part of the canon. And that is fine and understandable - I can accept that, and would be happy if that were the case with my faith. But for some reason for me, tonight, it is important to know what happened to Judas in Unitarian Christianity. Did we rewrite the canon and leave him out?

Great question. I haven't seen any explicit treatment of Judas in the old Unitarian or Universalist literature, but there's an awful lot of it I've never read. Nevertheless, I gave Laura my thoughts there and am re-posting them here:

"Unitarian Christianity sees Jesus as a less-than-divine figure, and his work in restoring us to wholeness with God more as offering an exemplary model than a ritual sacrifice.

"Universalist Christianity is concerned less with the nature of Jesus and the means of his atonement than it is with the understanding that, however the atonement worked, it included everyone and left nobody out.

"However, I don't see how those departures from orthodox Christianity would make a difference in how we perceive the role that Judas plays in relation to him. If anything, it might make Judas more real and relevant to us.

"In a Unitarian view, Jesus and Judas are both archetypes of different ways to put faith into practice. Jesus Christ Superstar, I think, does a particularly good job of exploring the benign aspect of Judas' motives. How many contemporary Judases do we know who do wrong while meaning desperately to do right? How many times have we been that sort of Judas ourselves? Is it too easy to be a Judas in those circumstances? Is it necessarily wrong to be? Regardless, doesn't Jesus offer a better model?

"In Origen of Alexandria's original doctrine of apocatastasis, which was the precursor to our more recent Universalism, God's love is so enduring and powerful that it will ultimately overwhelm all resistance, and ultimately even Satan will give up his rebellion and be reconciled to God. You don't have to accept that cosmology to understand the point of the mythology, though: it is ultimately through love that all differences and wrongs are reconciled."

I intended to add (but I hit "submit" too soon):

"Jesus even forgave the jeering crowd as he hung in mortal agony from the cross. In a Universalist view, it seems to me, the Judas who felt such remorse for his betrayal that he hanged himself must also be fully forgiven and redeemed. If that's the case, the figure of Judas offers us an image of hope as well as ignominy when we, too, err in our effort to do right."

(P. S. I'm pretty sure Laura isn't quite correct to say that "Judas does not exist in the other Abrahamic Unitarian faiths". I'm pretty sure he appears in a similar role as Jesus' sidekick and foil in the scriptures of Islam and Baha'i, i. e., the post-Christian ones. Can anyone confirm that?)

More on polyamory, with speculation on the wisdom of ancestor worship and reviving the dead

2007-07-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

On my previous polyamory post, I expressed my doubt that polyamory, whatever its merits, has any compelling connection to UUism. E. Isaacson offered the following intriguing and articulate response:

Where's the connection?

I guess we have suppressed any recollection that Mary Wollstonecraft, a member of the Rev. Richard Price’s Unitarian congregation, made waves with her 1792 tract on the Vindication of the Rights of Women, by denouncing monogamous marriage as an oppressive patriarchal institution, which she characterized as “legal prostitution.”

It seems we have suppressed as well any memory that Wollstonecraft’s lover, William Godwin, expressed remarkably similar sentiments the following year, writing in his 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice that “marriage, as now understood, is a monopoly, and the worst of monopolies. So long as two human beings are forbidden, by positive institution, to follow the dictates of their own mind, prejudice will be alive and vigorous. So long as I seek, by despotic and artificial means, to maintain my possession of a woman, I am guilty of the most odious selfishness.”

It’s best to forget as well, I suppose, that Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth to Godwin’s daughter, leaving him to raise the girl – and that their daughter in 1814 eloped with the notorious polyamorist and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Never mind that in 1818, as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, she published her own novel, which she titled Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus.

It’s best to forget that the government took Percy Bysshe Shelley’s children from him, reasoning that one who believes people should be free to love one another – without legal restrictions – cannot be a fit parent.

Who could think that the polyamorist Unitarian radicalism started by Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacked the very foundations of England’s patriarchal social order, might be tolerated? And who among us would fault Edmund Burke for denouncing Wollstonecraft and the Unitarian Society as “loathsome insects that might, if they were allowed, grow into giant spiders as large as oxen”?

So – let the secular world remember our Unitarian forebear Mary Wollstonecraft as the founder of modern feminism. Let the secular world praise her lover William Godwin as an influential and enlightened social philosopher. Let the secularists honor Percy Bysshe Shelley as a great romantic poet, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as the author of one of western literature’s most important novels.

But ask twenty-first century UUs what these people stood for? Well, we're not really interested in the connection.

Unfortunately, E.'s comments may make a rousing oration, but as a coherent argument they are unpersuasive. I fail to see how the romantic entanglements and consequential troubles of a few famous Romantic-era muses, some of whom were coincidentally also Unitarians, would make polyamory an especially UU issue, either then or now. The Wollstonecraft-Shelleys weren't Unitarian because they were polyamorous, and they weren't polyamorous because they were Unitarian. There was no direct connection between their Unitarianism and their polyamory, and even if there had been then, E. hasn't explained why that connection would still apply today. If Mary Wollstonecraft's indictment of the social institution of marriage didn't even catch fire among the Unitarians of her own time, why should it now?

In fact, the Wollstonecraft argument sounds like one more example of the misguided UU propensity toward "ancestor worship", which I think has little if any validity as a spiritual practice or dependable means of faith formation. To me, saying UUs today today should support or practice polyamory as a social institution because Famous UU Mary Wollstonecraft once did makes no more sense that saying UUs today should support or practice slavery as a social institution because Famous UU John C. Calhoun once did. (No, I'm not saying polyamory is the moral equivalent of slavery, but I am saying that in neither case was there any obvious nexus between the religion and the arguments for the social institution.)

Wouldn't a more enduring religious lesson from these particular ancestors have to do with the fatal hubris of trying to invent a living thing in our own image by breathing new life into dead parts?

What if an individual discerns new truth, but the gathered community rejects it?

2007-07-14T23:27:00.001-04:00

[The Trial of Anne Hutchinson]

This problem has been faced many times in our denominational history. Two of the better-known precedents are the Antinomian Controversy involving Anne Hutchinson in the 1630's and the Lord's Supper Controversy involving Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's.

God is still speaking.

2007-07-13T11:41:00.001-04:00

[Charles West Cope, Pilgrim Fathers Leaving Delft]

PeaceBang has drawn a lot of responses to her post about the UCC’s new slogan, “God is still speaking”. What I’d like to explore here is the backstory, which many UUs may not be aware of, but which explains why their slogan would catch our attention.

The oldest congregation in the UUA is First Parish Church in Plymouth, Mass. It was first gathered (in secret, to avoid persecution for heresy) in 1608 in Scrooby, England, spent a few years in exile in Holland, and migrated to the New World in 1620 aboard the Mayflower in pursuit of the freedom to worship openly.

Around 1800, in one of the earliest outbreaks of what would later be called the “Unitarian Controversy”, the Plymouth church divided, with the liberal faction remaining in First Parish and the stricter Calvinist faction forming a new church that is now affiliated with the UCC. Because of this schism, both the UUA and UCC now trace their earliest origins in North America to the Pilgrims of Plymouth.

What this dry old history means to us today is that, contrary to the intuition of many contemporary UUs, the Mayflower Pilgrims were UUs too. Well, proto-UUs. Liberal Calvinists. Free-thinking dissenters branded as heretics. A hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, when Unitarianism was arguably at its zenith, it was the Pilgrims, not Theodore Parker or Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Unitarians all looked to as their denominational exemplars. The Pilgrims truly have a more rightful place on the Famous UUs list than many of the names who are actually there. (Which makes for great elevator speeches about who we are, by the way.)

And what exactly did these early religious liberals believe that set them apart from more rigid Christians? Here’s Governor Edward Winslow of Plymouth writing in 1646, recalling the farewell sermon given by their pastor John Robinson, who had remained behind in Holland in 1620 and died before he could rejoin his congregation in the New World:

We were now, ere long, to part asunder; and the Lord knoweth whether ever he should live to see our faces again. But … he charged us, before God and his blessed angels, … if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry. For he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word.

He took occasion also miserably to bewail the state and condition of the Reformed Churches, who were come to a period [full stop] in religion; and would go no further than the Instruments of their Reformation. As, for example, the Lutherans: they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of God's will He had further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. "And also," saith he, "you see the Calvinists. They stick where he left them, a misery much to be lamented.

"For though they were precious shining lights in their Times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them; and were they now living," saith he, "they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light as that they had received."

Here also, he put us in mind of our Church Covenant; at least that part whereby "we promise and covenant with God and one another to receive whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to us…," but withal exhorted us to take heed what we received for truth; and well to examine and compare and weigh it … before we received it. "For," saith he, "it is not possible … that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." [Emphasis added.]

“The Lord has more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word”. That is the pastoral charge that would form the foundation of what are now two entire denominations, the UUA and the UCC. That is the understanding that informed the original covenants of so many of the oldest congregations in both denominations, with their expressions of devotion to truths yet to be known. And it is the source of many subsequent paraphrases in both denominations, such as these 19th-century examples:

It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.
(Unitarian minister and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his Divinity School Address)

New occasions teach new duties;
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward,
Who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her campfires!
We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly
Through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal
With the Past's blood-rusted key.
(Unitarian poet James Russell Lowell, from his poem "The Present Crisis")

We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind --
By notions of our day and sect – crude, partial, and confined:
No, let a new and better hope within our hearts be stirred,
For God hath yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word.
(Congregational layman George Rawson, from his hymn “We Limit Not the Truth of God”)

Reason's noble aspiration
Truth in growing clearness saw;
Conscience spoke its condemnation,
Or proclaimed the eternal law.
While Thine inward revelations
Told Thy saints their prayers were heard,
Prophets to the guilty nations
Spoke Thine everlasting Word.

Lo, that Word abideth ever;
Revelation is not sealed;
Answering now to our endeavor,
Truth and right are still revealed.
That which came to ancient sages,
Greek, Barbarian, Roman, Jew,
Written in the soul’s deep pages,
Shines today, forever new.
(Unitarian minister Samuel Longfellow, from his hymn “Light of Ages and of Nations”, #190 in the grey hymnal)

So, when in the 21st century the UCC undertakes a new outreach program with the slogan “God is Still Speaking,” it’s only natural that their phrase would resonate with many UUs as well. After all, the understanding that it expresses is not new to the UCC or unique to them; rather, like some of our own favorite UU slogans, it’s a restatement of a bedrock principle that we UUs have always held in common with them.

Junk Summer Reading

2007-07-12T09:12:00.001-04:00

Skaneateles Lake, New York

It's summer, life is a bit slower, and it's a good time to kill some time with pulp fiction of unpredictable quality.

So I picked up a paperback to read on a return train trip from New York to Boston the other day. It's called The Fourth Perimeter, by Tim Green. The plot involves the revenge planned by an ex-Secret Service agent, now a multi-millionaire technology entrepreneur, after his only son (who has also become a Secret Service agent, in spite of his family fortune) is murdered and the crime scene altered by the murderers to look like a suicide.

Before many pages had turned, it became apparent that much of the action was going to take place in and around Skaneateles, New York, the region where my father and stepmother were born and raised, so this had some personal appeal. It's not often that your idle entertainment evokes real venues you know and supporting characters whose type you immediately recognize. I've had the same breakfast in the same coffee shop, and the Presbyterian pastor who in the book buried the dead son might well have been the same one who in real life married my father and stepmother. As a drama critic might say, there is an extraordinary unity of time and place. To me, anyway.

On the other hand, I am also reminded of the Robertson Davies quote that CC recently invoked in her review of the 2007 Service of the Living Tradition:

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.

On that score, picking up this book is far more likely to give you burned hair than paper cuts. More than a few of its premises strain credulity. There are improbable plot twists to convince you that if deus ex machina is a valid literary device, then the incarnation of deus is not Jesus but the weird guy with the manic laugh in the dunk-the-clown booth at the county fair. In the craft of its language, too, the brute force of the smith's hammer is still palpable in the dents and weals left behind. Here's a sample:

The eastern sky had begun to glow in a crimson wash that extended from one end of the lake to the other. The low ceiling of purple clouds hovered just above the fiery horizon in a dramatic, brooding mass. The angry blood-red sky somehow filled Jill with foreboding.

And later:

The moon rose over the ridge on the east side of the lake like an enormous luminescent melon.

I don't know about you, but watching the sunrise usually calms my nerves, at least if I'm awake that early. It's the enormous luminescent melons coming over the ridge that fill me with foreboding.

What are you reading this summer?

Poly and UU: Where's the Connection?

2007-07-11T09:35:00.000-04:00

(Four people who never made the Famous UUs list)

I've weighed in at several other UU bloggers' polyamory discussions, but one point I've tried to make seems to be getting lost elsewhere so I'll raise it again here.

I get that there are disagreements about the merits of polyamory (or lack thereof).

I get why some people think it is a sociological issue.

I get that people who make polyamorous life choices find themselves outside a monogamous social convention.

I get that it is fair to debate whether they find themselves there as a result of their own willing choices or as victims of unfair social prejudice.

What I don't get is why anyone would consider it a Unitarian Universalist issue.

I submit that it is totally absent from our denominational and theological history (except for a brief, disastrous experiment in the 1960's and '70's), that there has never been a GA resolution or similar consensus among UUs that the social convention of monogamy is morally oppressive or even problematic, and therefore, that Unitarian Universalism has no compelling religious or moral interest in the cause.

Who says otherwise, and why?

They Get More Creative

2007-07-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

Just received this impressive piece of spam, on my employer's e-mail account, no less. Had to share.

Hello,

You may be surprised to receive this mail, as you read this, don't feel so sorry for me because I know everyone will die someday.

My name is Mrs. Angela White, a business woman in London. I have been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer which was discovered very late due to my laxity in caring for my health. It has defiled all forms of medication right now and I have only few hours left to live, according to medical experts. I have never particularly lived my life so well as I never really cared for anyone not even me but my business. Though I am very rich, but I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and I only focus on my business as that was the only thing I cared for in my life. But now I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world. I believed when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would live my life in a different way from how I have lived now, but now that God has called me through this way I willed most of my properties and access to my immediate and extended family and as well as few close friends.

I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul and so with that reason I decided to give alms to CHARITY ORGANISATIONS, as I want this to be one of the last good deed I did on earth, so far I have distributed money to some Charity Organization in countries like India and Africa. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore.

I once asked my family members to close one of my accounts and distribute the funds which I have there to CHARITY ORGANSATION in Rwanda and Pakistan; they refused and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them. The last of the funds which no one knows of, is the cash deposit in one of the banks here. I want to know if you can be of good help to dispatch these funds to CHARITY organizations. I have set aside 40% of the total amount $1,500,000.00 One million five hundred thousand dollars) for you and your time and patience for carrying out this duties. This means you will keep $600,000 (Six hundred thousand dollars) for yourself and donate the rest to any charity organisation. May God be with you as you have decided to take a bold step to heal the world with me or even in my demise. I am going in for an operation now, and I don’t think I will make it. And this hurts.

If you can give me this assistance, you can then contact my lawyer who will assist you in getting the funds to you in my absence if i die or not. He would give you more details. His name is Barr. Bob Coleman and his email address is: (Note: address withheld to protect the innocent) He would guide you through receiving the funds.

Best Regards,

Angela White

Now is the Time?

2007-07-04T08:03:00.000-04:00

Time for what?

Other than opening your wallet, I mean.

I went to the uua.org website and surfed around the "Now is the Time" pages to try to figure out why they need the dough, how they intend to spend it, what concrete results they hope to achieve, and what their vision is for our future. About all you can find is some vague happy talk about growing.

Well, sorry, but this birthright UU and Yankee-by-choice grew up indoctrinated in the probative value of rational skepticism. So, as Michael Servetus said, right before they lit his personal barbecue, "Where's the beef?"

Growth doesn't just happen by throwing money at it. If you want a bountiful harvest, you have to cast good seed, and it has to fall upon fertile ground. If your seed is bad it won't sprout. If it falls on poor soil it may sprout up quickly, but it will soon wither. At least, that was the point of a UUA-approved lesson that I taught from the "Jesus and his Kingdom of Equals" curriculum to a bunch of fourth- and fifth-graders last spring. Don't they read their own propaganda?

It also happens to be the point of Matthew 13:3-23, Mark 4:2-20, and Luke 8:4-8, where the lesson first originated a couple of thousand years ago, but (as PeaceBang notes) these days a lot of UUs seem to consider themselves more authoritative than Matthew, Mark and Luke.

I would dearly love to see our denomination grow. However, to do so we need a vision, a message and a concrete action plan that can succeed. I just don't see them. I'm not interested in helping the UUA piss away $20 million try to persuade people that UUs are more authoritative than anyone else about anything, but I don't see much reason yet to hope that they would do anything else with the money.

Oh, my.

2007-07-02T14:35:00.000-04:00

Is this what they mean by "the Light of the World?"

Aside to Robin Edgar

2007-06-28T09:57:00.000-04:00

Robin, in contrast to the policies at some other UU venues, you are welcome here. You have a fine mind, and you usually offer illuminating insights when you are willing to apply it strictly to the topics at hand. I hope you will continue to do so here, because your participation often enriches the discussion.

As you've probably noticed, however, I have deleted a few of your comments recently. I did this because I thought you were not sincerely engaging the immediate discussion, but instead, you were diverting attention to other concerns that were not at issue here. This blog is not intended to serve as a vehicle for raising issues that you can and do raise elsewhere, so I will continue to delete posts that I do not consider appropriately responsive to the immediate topics at hand.

I would like to think I can count on your co-operation.

Another One Bites the Dust

2007-06-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

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.