Lotsa blogs

I’m sitting here in the Benton Room of the Renaissance Hotel, for the Unitarian Universalist Blogger’s Reception. We have several well known UU blogs sitting around the table: Philocrites, Jess and John, Ministrare, and several others. There are two laptops and a PDA out, live blogging is happening even as we speak.

As one person just said, “How self-referential can you get?”

A bit of conversation about what topics people write about on their blogs. Many of the bloggers here wrote about Hurricane Katrina, but no one wrote about the tsunami that happened just before that (although many of the bloggers here hadn’t started their blogs at the time of the tsunami).

More conversation about who we write for: friends, family, the people who comment on the blog, people who are new to unitarian universalism, for ourselves, lots of different reasons. (But you know, dear reader, that I write just for you.)

General Assembly, first day

I spent the afternoon wandering through the Exhibit Hall, having learned that the best time to go there is before the crowds descend. Of course I stopped at the UUA Bookstore’s booth and bought too many books. I walked past the exhibits for all the advocacy groups, and I have to admit that I wasn’t even tempted to stop.

Part way down one of the aisles, I saw Anne, who lives not far from New Bedford. We said hello. “Lots of people,” I said. “Tough on introverts.” Anne and I are both introverts.

“I’ve stopped talking to anyone except people I know,” said Anne.

“In another two days, I’ll just stop recognizing people,” I said. You extroverts won’t understand this, but at a certain point we introverts just stop processing information like that.

Anne nodded. “You have to, out of self-defense,” she said.

I had just about finished walking through the exhibits when I ran into Jeff. He’s starting seminary in January. We had a long talk about denominational politics. We both agreed that one big problem that we’re facing is that the denomination is advocating entirely different (and, we felt, incompatible) approaches to anti-racism work.

Then it was time for the Webworker’s reception and meeting. Long talk with Lance and Casey and Donald — Casey and Lance play the same online role-playing game together (yes, many of the Webworkers are confirmed geeks) and it was fascinating to hear about that subculture.

And then rush off to the Opening Celebration. On the way there, I ran into Deanne, and then later Bette, two of the finest lay leaders I have ever had the pleasure knowing; both of them work harder in their respective congregations than anyone else I’ve seen, and they do it quietly and without much fuss. It was good to see both of them, if only in passing.

The opening celebration was interesting — less celebratory and more serious than usual. I’m writing a story about it for the UUA Web site [when the story goes up I’ll link to it here]. The highlight of the celebration, as always, was the parade of banners from congregations and affiliated organizations — and sure enough, there was Heather from the train walking with the UU Young Adults banner. I waved, but she didn’t see me.

Tardis needed

Electronic communications room

A bunch of us are sitting around staring intently at computer screens, tapping at keyboards, when Julie, one of the webmistresses, breaks the silence with laughter.

“I just got an email from someone saying that the link to streamed video for one of the events isn’t working,” says Julie.

We all start giggling. Of course the streamed video isn’t working — General Assembly hasn’t begun yet — you can’t stream live video of events that haven’t happened yet. Unless maybe you have a Tardis.

Having said that, live coverage will be available here.

Pee on Earth Day

Today is “Pee on Earth Day,” which is “a day to bring one’s urine outside to nourish plants and save water used to flush toilets, will be June 21 in the northern hemisphere (Dec. 21 in the southern hemisphere).”

This is the second year in a row that my partner Carol has declared “Pee on Earth Day” — yeah, it’s another way to sell her book Liquid Gold, but it’s also a fun idea.

I’m making my plans for peeing on earth here in St. Louis. What are you planning to do?

Radisson Hotel, St. Louis

Another crummy hotel. I say this to Carol when I call her, and she replies, “Good, then you know you’ve got the cheapest room in town.”

This place is much the worse for wear: chipped paint here and there, the shelf in the closet coming down, permanent stains on the bathroom floor. Hotel chains tend to treat their customers like cattle in a CAFO. My room stinks of cigarette smoke, even though it’s allegedly a non-smoking room. But obviously space must be tight, because they’ve given me a huge room with two beds (I’m paying for one), and a balcony. I can put up with the smell of cigarette smoke for the sake of the balcony. I had the sliding glass door open all night, and right now I’m sitting out on the balcony watching the traffic on I-70 at the base of the hotel, looking out over the green trees in the park on the other side of the interstate, and the bridges across the Mississippi River. I could complain about the cigarette smell, but if they moved me I’d lose the balcony.

In a short while I’ll head over to the conference center; for the moment I’m enjoying a moment of peace, sitting outside on this day of the solstice, before the craziness begins.

From Ohio to St. Louis

The alarm went off at six. Indiana is outside the train windows. Sun just touching the fields outside the window, a play of gold light on green shoots. We’re in flat country now.

I got to the dining car right when it opened at 6:30. Two Amish couples in plain dress came in just after I did. I was seated with a long-haul trucker, a woman who didn’t say much at all, and a retired man. The retired man asked the trucker to pass the sugar, then started to put sugar on his Frosted Flakes.

“You sure you want to do that?” said the trucker. “Those already got plenty of sugar on em.”

“Oh, yes.” The retired man smiled. “I’d put more on if I was at home. It’s just habit by now.”

When the trucker got off at Elkhart, the retired man told me about his hobby: visiting every major league ball park in North America. “I was just in Boston, but I couldn’t get seats at Fenway Park.”

“No,” I told him, “they sell out just about every game. You want decent seats, you have to buy them in March.”

He’s visited twenty parks so far. I asked him which he thought were the best.

“San Francisco and Toronto.” What about Baltimore, which everyone raves about? “Oh, that’s a good one too.” He was able to describe the park in satisfying detail: the old B&O warehouse that was integrated into the park; the plaques set into the ground showing where home run balls hit.

“The worst was Tampa Bay. It’s a domed stadium. The dome doesn’t open, though. And it’s so low that sometimes a pop fly will go ‘thunk’ off the ceiling. When you hear the crack of the bat, you don’t want to hear ‘thunk.’ ‘Crack, thunk.'”

On one of his first trips, to Cincinnati, he shared a taxi from the airport with someone. It turned out this other fellow was also visiting all the major league ball parks; he had two left: Cincinnati, and then Toronto. “I asked him how long it took him to do it, and he said five years. But I didn’t want to hear that. I don’t have five years.”

On this trip, he’s going to see Milwaukee, and the Chicago White Sox. But he couldn’t get a ticket to see the Cubs.

*****

A four hour layover in Chicago. I check my pack and my uke, and head out onto the streets of Chicago.

Across the Chicago River, and it starts to sink in: buildings, people, vitality of the streets. The people are the best part: I like watching the people hurrying by — in Chicago, they manage to hurry while still maintaining that relaxed Midwestern attitude; and everyone is so much more polite than in New England.

I walk to the Art Institute. It’s worth twelve bucks just to see Georgia O’Keefe’s huge painting Sky above the Clouds IV. I look at a few other familiar art works, see a few fine paintings by Ren Yi, a Chinese painter whom I am not familiar with, and head out.

Down Michigan Avenue to the Fine Arts Building. The elevator operator is sitting on his stool looking out into the lobby. “Performer’s?” he asks. “Yup, 904,” I say. He nods, and closes the outer door, but doesn’t bother with the inner door. We stop with the wood deck of the elevator just a few inches above the floor. He leans forward, opens the door, and lets me out. I buy some Renaissance-era sheet music, and decide to walk back down to the lobby. I pass three architect’s offices, three art galleries, a psychotherapist’s office; on one floor I can hear a violinist practicing; I pass offices with obscure titles on the doors, pass a piano store, through an open gate that says “Do Not Open Alarm Will Sound” (but the alarm isn’t sounding), the steps are now marble, down another flight and out.

Last stop: Prairie Avenue Bookshop, where I buy some books including one on the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of Unity Temple.

It’s time to head back to Union Station. I walk slowly, admiring the city.

*****

On the train from Chicago to St. Louis, I wound up sitting next to Rob. Rob lives in Tewksbury, was heading to Arkansas to see some friends. He asked me where I’ was going, and to save lengthy explanations I said, “To a conference in St. Louis.” The young woman across the aisle leaned over and asked me, “GA? That’s where I’m going, too.” Her name was Heather, she was from Nashua, New Hampshire, and the three of us wound up talking for the rest of the six hour ride.

As night was beginning to fall, we came around a bend. “There it is,” I said, and pointed out Rob’s window. The Gateway Arch was still visible against the pale blue-green sky, beautiful against the handful of skyscrapers that make up downtown St. Louis. “Wow,” said Rob. “It looks like a good place to visit. You see a place like this and you think, I’m going to come back here someday. but you never know if you’re going to see it again.”

Aboard Amtrak 449/49

Train no. 449: a coach class car, a cafe car with tables and bench seats, a business class car, and that’s all.

We sit just out of Back Bay station waiting for a signal. The conductor announces there will be 40 mph speed limit after one o’clock; CSX owns the track and has this speed restriction when temperatures go up over 90.

Winding in among the hills of central mass, we follow the courses of streams and rivers. Sometimes there’s a highway too, but seems like there’s almost always a river or stream nearby. The rivers are not the rivers I grew up on: these are swift and shallow, with rocky bottoms, class one and two rapids at least; a few flat millponds behind dams; not the flatwater, navigable rivers I learned to canoe.

In some tight (but not very deep) valleys, we pass flat ground beside the river with agricultural fields: corn not quite up to your knee; hay fields with bales of hay; markers of the season.

The man who was talking on his cell phone about “alternative radio” gets off at Springfield. quite a few more people get on, and now the train is nearly full.

We get into the Berkshires. The hills get higher and steeper; they stand out against the sky now. Going through one rock cut, the small wild pink rhododendrons in full bloom cling to the top of the rock face right where the soil starts. Some trees are not yet in full leaf. The streams keep getting smaller until what we’re following is nothing more than a brook flowing back the way we’ve come.

At the high point in the road, we pass along the side of an extensive swamp. Newly dead trees mark where beavers have recently come; then sure enough the beaver lodge, then their long dam. Blue flags blooming in clumps in the midst of the swamp. Red-wing blackbirds perced on cattails about to bloom. The beginnings of a stream winding convolutedly through the marsh. The marsh passes out of view. We go through a village, then the stream returns, bigger now, and flowing in our direction.

A line of blue mountains glimpsed through the trees, barely visible. Now I can see them over the buildings, over a lumberyard, over houses spread down the slope beside the tracks. Then trees hide that blue line of mountains.

The pittsfield station has been rebuilt since I last rode through here, in winter of 2003. Now there is what looks like a big parking garage labeled “Joseph Scelsi Intermodal Transportation Center.” It’s ugly.

After Pittsfield, pockets of decayed industrial landscape, woodlands, a shopping strip, more woods, glimpse of a big house, more woods. Always hills around us. The sky gets dark, darker, wind bending over trees (we whiz through a tunnel), the sky even darker, almost as if it’s night out, no rain yet, then I see dimples in a stream (the stream looks black in the gloom), a trip of bright sky for a moment between the lowering clouds and a line of dark hills, then all is dark. Drops on the window, steady rain now, dark enough that I can watch the computer monitor of the person sitting in front of me reflected in the window (he’s playing a video game). A strip of lightning. Thunder. Behind me the young man says: “Hey babe, you dropped out of service… yeah… there’s a big storm overhead…can you hear me?… hello?… ok. I’m about to switch trains in Albany, I’ll call you… I – I love you.”

Another hour to Albany, where we transfer onto train number 49, the Lakeshore Limited out of New York. The hills get smaller and smaller as we head west.

If they made Mr. C. king of the universe…

Dan, my stupid alter ego, is on the train to General Assembly. Time for Mr. Crankypants to tell you what’s what….

Mr. Crankypants’s denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is currently facing up to the fact that the denominational bylaws require us to review Article 2, the principles and purposes — that in fact we’re five years overdue in making such a review.

The current principles and purposes were drafted in the mid-1980’s, and they now sound selfish and narcisisstic principles — a true product of their time. Pity that Mr. C. isn’t King of the Universe (yet), for if he were, the principles and purposes would already be rewritten. Of course you want to see Mr. C.’s version of the principles and purposes. Read on, fair reader….

Knowing that no words shall ever be used as a creed among us, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association do enter into covenant together to uphold these religious principles:

That every person is worthy of love; and therefore we shall treat each other, and all human beings, with justice tempered by love and compassion;

That we shall remain religious seekers all our lives, acknowledging that as individuals we are finite beings with limited understanding; and therefore we acknowledge that we must remain responsive to the insights of other human beings, particularly those within our covenanted religious community;

That we shall depend on love, reason, and liberty in the day-to-day and year-to-year running of our religious communities, making them an example to the world of the best in human communities;

That we shall promote openness, fairness, and honesty in in our own communities and in all human interactions, living out the highest democratic principles to the end that we shall resist authoritarianism wherever it springs up;

That we shall extend morality and our love to all living beings and Earth’s entire biosphere.

Ongoing revelation continually opens new insights to humanity. We acknowledge the beauty and insights present in all great world religious traditions; we recognize that as a religious movement we are rooted in the Western religious traditions, though individuals among us may be rooted in other traditions; and we recognize our responsibility to re-interpret Western religious traditions in light of the lives we live in the present.

As free, but mutually interdependent, congregations we enter into this covenant; we promise to one another our mutual trust and support; and should we break this covenant with other congregations, we shall accept the guidance of, and appropriate discipline by, other congregations within this covenant.

Nit-pick if you will, but you have to admit these are far better, and far truer to our deep religious core, than the nasty principles and purposes currently in our bylaws.

Too bad Mr. Crankypants isn’t king of the universe.

Later note: As of September 4, 2008, the new draft version of Article II has been released… and Mr. Crankypants has graded it as if it is a term paper. Let’s just say it does not get a high grade. If only Mr. C. was King of the Universe this all could have been avoided….

Questions, and responses

After the question and response sermon here on June 4, a member of the congregation sent me one more series of related questions. I liked his questions so much, that I have his permission to reprint it. I’ll also include my responses to his questions, but as always my responses are provisional, subject to further thought, reflection, and modification.

Dear —–,

You ask a series of excellent questions, starting with…

In many ways, the 20th C was the worst in the history of the world, in human behavior: the Holocaust, the Stalinist gulags, the Sino-Japanese wars and associated atrocities, WWI and its 700,000 dead per week during certain attrition, and then–often not included in this–our own A-bombs and fire bombs on Dresden. Isn’t the UU “soft on evil”?…

This is a key question for all religious liberals in our time. I do agree that such a critique may be valid when applied to certain Unitarian Universalists. For example, the bitter and long-standing feuds within our denominantion between the theists and the humanists are little more than quaint theological diversions when considered in light of the massive evil of the 20th C. (evil which shows every sign of continuing into the 21st C.). When you are confronting things like genocide and totalitarianism, such 19th C. arguments about belief vs. unbelief seem utterly insignificant, and indeed morally bankrupt. Instead of participating in abstract theological debate, the situation calls for direct confrontation of evil.

But some of our most persuasive theologians and some of our most influential lay leaders have been quite aware of the presence of evil, and they have devoted themselves to articulating theologies that will help us confront and overcome evil. Some examples:

William R. Jones, UU minister and theologian, is best know for his book Is God a White Racist? Jones is an African American who is all too aware of the presence of evil in the world. His contribution to theology has been to work on a black theology of liberation that was not dependent on God.

James Luther Adams, a Unitarian (later Unitarian Universalist) minister and theologian visited Nazi Germany just prior to the outbreak of the second world war. He got to know the members of the Confessing Church quite well, and was himself active in struggles against totalitarianism. His theology aimed to develop liberal religion in part as a way to fight totalitarianism through supporting democratic ideals (you could say he saw democracy as a theological concept).

The Women and Religion movement within Unitarian Unviersalism took on the evils of sexism in our denomination, in the 1970’s and later. I would argue that their movement did more to shape who we are as a religion today than any other theological force in the past half century. Currently, ethicist and theologian Sharon Welch is the most prominent UU scholar doing work in the area of feminism.

Is our theology, derived partly from a civilized 18C deism and 19C Concord, out of step with our horrid experience of the modern world?

That’s an argument that has been made, but I don’t find it persuasive. I feel that the theology which continues to be most influential for us today is not deism or Transcendentalism, but the theology of the social gospel. The Social Gospelers understood sin to be more than a personal matter — it was equally sinful (or even more so!) to allow social injustice to be perpetrated against the poor and the weak of society. Therefore, redemption had to be more than personal — it also had to be communal — you can’t just “get right with God” on your own, you have to consider the sinfulness and redemption of the surrounding social matrix as well.

The Social Gospel movement made social justice activity an essential part of church life — it was no longer enough to engage in simple charity, churches also had to fight to change the root causes of social evil. I’m something of a modern-day Social Gospeler, and I would articulate the theological implications of this theology something like this: Evil is present in us and in the world; it is our repsonsibility to overcome evil, especially where such evil arises from human actions; if you want to call on God for strength and guidance while you work to overcome evil that’s fine, but don’t expect God to bail us out.

Isn’t, for instance, Calvinism — and its “Born Damned” — easier to credit — and to understand?!

Well, that’s certainly the answer promoted by the fundamentalist Christians who are creating a reductive and conservative version of Calvinism in our time. But it strikes me that such a Calvinism is merely a cop out — it’s throwing up your hands and saying, We’re all horrible so why bother to change anything. William R. Jones’s work helps us understand that such an attitude allows us to dodge responsibility, because evil is just all “God’s will” — which means that, sure, you have to wrestle with the intellectual problem of theodicy, but you don’t have to take any responsibility for confronting evil yourself.

In summary, I find liberal religion in general, and Unitarian Universalism in particular, to be quite aware of the massive evils in society, and in our own hearts. I am not proud of the way Unitarian Universalists get sidetracked into petty concerns like whether or not God exists (especially when half the time the people who argue about these things don’t adequately define their terms). Nor am I proud of the way we all too often engage in social action without engaging in the necessary theological reflection. Yet I am proud of the fact that we continue to challenge evil in the world (and inside ourselves). And I am proud that, rather than just managing the symptoms of evil, we do make progress in rooting out deeper social evils when and where we find them.

That’s my response to your questions — as always, it’s a response, not a definitive answer! — Dan