December 2011
4 posts
1 tag
One teachers approach to preventing gender...
togetherforjacksoncountykids:
“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I...
Imagine a camel with a big red bow. #UU
Those Lexus ads are so romantic and heart-warming: pretty people expressing their love with a surprise gift of a brand new car with a big red bow on top. In previous years, I found them slightly irritating. This year, given the pain in world, they strike me as unfeeling and insensitive. Here’s my solution, inspired by yesterday’s sermon by our minister, Liz Lerner-Maclay. She is...
Can personal peace exist without universal peace?
That’s the question Rev. Liz Lerner Maclay is asking this morning in her sermon. She means it as a real question, one for which she does not yet have an answer. She points out teachings from variety of spiritual traditions that provide complicated answers. Yes and no. Emphatically yes and also equally emphatically no.
For me, my fleeting experiences of peace are what drive me to seek peace...
October 2011
6 posts
2 tags
A Little Change →
Meg Barnhouse’s thoughtful essay on class and race in the context of the checkout line at the Dollar Store.
4 tags
Our church in the 60s
I am doing a bit of church history in advance of the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed’s visit next month. We were most definitely a civil rights congregation; our minister, Fred Cappucino, and one of our members marched in Selma. We hosted some of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation who came to DC in January, 1965, to protest the seating of several congressmen from Mississipi. We...
2 tags
“i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of...”
– e.e. cummings (happy birthday 10-14-11)
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I have 25 slaves working for me
Slavery Footprint is a newly launched website and mobile app to help consumers calculate how many slaves are working to prodvide what you use, wear and eat. It’s easy to navigate, and “fun” to use, if something that informs you that dozens — or hundreds — of human beings, many of them children, are working under the worst possible condictions to make sure you have...
2 tags
September 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Kindness →
Naomi Shihab Nye’s beautiful poem.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever...”
– Steve Jobs
Our Hunger Games
A few weeks ago, I finished Suzanne Collins’s amazing “The Hunger Games”, the first volume in her dystopian trilogy that is about to make it to the big screen. It has been a very long time since I have been so absorbed — obsessed? — with a book. It is, in some ways, a familiar tale of man-hunts-man survival, but Collins gave us a teenaged heroine who is the antidote...
August 2011
5 posts
“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”
– Stephen Hawking
“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is...”
– Jack Layton
6 tags
“Thank you to all the people in the world who are always ten percent kinder than...”
– Helen Exley
“”Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social...”
– Michael Eric Dyson
July 2011
15 posts
3 tags
Why the food justice movement matters. →
UU Summer camps: they're magically religious →
So true! Already looking forward to UUMAC 2012!
“A government is for the benefit of all the people.”
– William Howard Taft (Unitarian, United States President, U.S. Supreme Court Justice)
The truth
I spent two days instead of a week at my favorite UU community because my 1st principle boundaries were at the breaking point. Because I love the community and hate to see it struggle. And because I could not help.
1 tag
What's a UUMAC? →
Unitarian Universalist Mid-Atlantic Community. It’s a one-week multigenerational camp that draws UUs from the Joseph Priestly and Metro New York districts (and beyond). It’s been my “family reunion” since 1997. It is good to be together.
Race: Are we so different? →
An amazing exhibit, in DC for a few more months, then on the road. Can we organize a visit or two or three for local UUs? (Mixed church groups, that is?)
“Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything; that’s how...”
– “Anthem”, Leonard Cohen.
Cognitive Sensations: mind monkeying →
katiekin:
I participate in a contemplative practice with other folks now and then. Recently, as part of a year long intention to “befriend myself,” I decided to practice a bit of un-training during that time. Rather than settle down my “monkey mind” I decided to follow it around, as if it were a toddler…
1 tag
Faith coaches
Last night, toward the end of a tweetchat on multicultural faith formation, Rev. Naomi King made this observation: “Spiritually intense work is work that changes, that engages the uncomfortable, & that moves into the larger story.” When I recite our congregational statement of commitment on Sunday, I pledge myself to the “search for truth, to right of each to believe as...
“Life is so generous a giver, but we judging its gifts by their covering, cast...”
– Fra Giovanni, 16th century mystic (from CLF Quest podcast, July 2011)
Why I joined an online church →
I just joined the Church of the Larger Fellowship, the international UU ministry without walls. Why, you might ask? After all, I have been a member of my own (very real) congregation for nearly 30 years. I am not unhappy there; I sing in the choir and am on some productive, rewarding committees. Most of my social life revolves around that church. So why CLF?
I’ve been drawn to the online...
1 tag
An Independence Day prayer from Rev. Naomi →
3 tags
Retaining our youth
I had a deep conversation about UU programming for young adults with my son (24) and daughter (29) yesterevening. Because it will be turning over in my mind for a while, it will help to capture its essence here.
Daughter’s take (YRUU, cons, DYSC, now celebrating Jewish holidays with her husband and stepdaughter): Still considers herself UU, sees church membership as a possibility in the...
1 tag
Labels and limits
I’m a boomer. A first-wave Baby Boomer, born in 1949. I’ve never liked the label, but after General Assembly I have really started to hate it. Several times in the last week someone (usually someone younger) use “boomer” or “hippie” to describe older UUs in a way that is simultaneously vague and derogatory. If I was actually in on the conversation, I might be reassured that they didn’t mean ME....
June 2011
17 posts
2 tags
My de-snarkification
I have tried off and on, over the last year or so, to moderate the tone of my online discourse. While I learned very early in my teaching career that sarcasm is dangerous in the classroom, my inner snark was regularly on display on Twitter and Facebook.
Then I started to notice that a steady diet of snark — including reading and re-posting — didn’t feel right. The UU first principle (respecting...
2 tags
“Compassion is a deep desire to see others relieved of suffering; love is the...”
– @DalaiLama
1 tag
WatchThis peaceful garden, with its labyrinth and gentle fountain, is located on the south side of the Memorial Chapel at the University of Maryland.
2 tags
WatchGini Courter’s powerful Moderator’s Report starts around 13 minutes; tiara and banana time start around 9.
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Moderator’s report: ‘All of us working together’ →
This is the UU World coverage of the report. To see it for yourself, watch the video posted above.
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How GA transformed a meeting #UU
I hate meetings, as a rule. As a bigtime Meyers-Briggs introvert, working solo is my preferred mode. (Probably explains why I try to find a seat in the uncrowded rear of GA plenary sessions.)
So imagine my surprise when a strategic planning meeting at my church last night turned out to be not only productive, but spiritual as well. Two of the four of us had attended GA, and not only mentioned it...
4 tags
My re-entry after General Assembly
1) unpack and do laundry. Keep yellow “Standing on the Side of Love” shirt on the top of the pile
2) Strategic planning meeting tonight. Look for ways to ensure high participation in the process, especially from members under 50.
3) Tweet not about others in a manner that I would not be tweeted myself.
4 tags
3 tags
Spanish for Social Change →
As we prepare for Justice GA in Phoenix…
2 tags
Phoenix on my mind #uuaga
Train 80 just pulled out of Charlotte, taking me back to Maryland and everyday life. My mind is buzzing with memories of General Assembly and ideas about Justice GA in 2012. First, I am not sure I’ll be able to go. If I do, I want to make sure at least half of our delegates are under 50, with at least two young adults. We had six delegates this year, all fifty years of age or more — an...
3 tags
Youth and Young Adults #uuaga
Friday was so full of great moments — from the impassioned, civil debate over the proposed Statement of Conscience on ethical eating to the late-breaking news of the victory for marriage equality in New York — but one experience stands above the rest.
In the UU community, Bridging is the ceremony in which we recognize and celebrate the transition of our youth to adulthood. As the...
4 tags
Dancing to many tunes →
Musical diversity can be a challenge. Even folks with very eclectic tastes often make exception; they listen to “everything” except rap or country or opera or metal. I subscribe to the Duke Ellington rule: If it sounds good, it is good.
This year’s Service of the Living Tradition featured organ music, jazz, mellow singer-songwriters, traditional Protestant-style hymns and a rock anthem “”Answer...
1 tag
Spiritual, not religious?
The high points of my second day at General Assembly:
Hearing stories of miscommunication, hurt, reconciliation and healing at the workshop on cross cultural communication. Wholeness is possible in our shattered world.
Galen Gueringerich’s powerful lecture on the future of the UU movement, wherein he warned that “spiritual, not religious” might make a good epitaph Looking forward to part 2,...
Celebration of Ministry at GA
I am not a minister. However, I was privileged to be able to attend this morning’s Celebration of Ministry service as a member of the choir. Scheduled toward the end of Ministry Days (right before GA), this service honors those who have celebrated 25 and 50 years as ministers.
There were familiar faces there, from a seminarian who is a member of our church, to a beloved interim minister...
1 tag
GA or bust!
I leave today for our annual conference, aka the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly. It’s my fifth GA, and a very special one. The music director from my church, Michael Holmes, is leading the music for the Thursday evening service honoring ministry, which will feature musicians from UUCSS and some truly rockin’ music.
I’ll also be live-tweeting as I go, if...
Solstice service
Solstice service yesterday at UUCSS. It was ecumenical; it was planned by pagans and shamanic folk. Apparently there were some fairly contentious discussions about words and rituals, not unlike Christmas Eve planning meetings among our various flavors of Christians in our congregation. From what I learned, the pagans are more theistic, preferred more goddess references, while the shamanic...