Finding bright spots

Carol and I are reading Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, by two brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath; we both have jobs that call on us to implement social change, we both know how hard it can be to implement change, so we are both interested in new approaches to making change happen.

Switch starts with some basic human psychology: human beings are governed by both emotions and rational thought; human beings respond to the situations they find themselves in. Therefore, say the brothers Heath, to implement change we have to use both thoughts and feelings, and we have to create situations where change is easier rather than harder.

The second chapter of the book is titled “Find the Bright Spots” — but, they warn, finding bright spots is harder than it might seem. Human beings tend to focus on the negative aspects of life. To demonstrate this, they give a wonderful case study.

A pharmaceuticals company is having difficulty selling a new allergy drug. The company hires a consultant to help them figure out what’s going on. The consultant finds three saleswomen who are selling twenty times as much of the new drug as salespeople elsewhere. The consultant says to himself, “Ah, ha! there’s a bright spot. I’ll investigate that, and maybe I’ll learn how to improve sales elsewhere.” The consultant goes to investigate. He finds that these three saleswomen are teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drug — it has to be administered intravenously, which is very unusual for allergy drugs. So he takes this finding back to the pharmaceutical company, and tells them that if they have their sale force start teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drub, they’ll increase sales. And what does headquarters do? They refuse to believe in the bright spot, and they investigate the three saleswomen to find out why they have an unfair advantage over the other salespeople.

Recently, I discovered a bright spot in our congregational life here in the Palo Alto church. We are an introverted congregation; there are plenty of extroverts here, but the majority of us are introverts. But if I make public this bright spot (as I am, in fact, doing right now), I had better take into account the tendency of human beings to focus on the negative aspects of life. Like this imaginary conversation:

Ordinarily Negative Human Being: “What, we’re an introverted congregation?! That means no one will ever talk to newcomers!” Me: “Actually, that’s not true. We introverts excel at one-on-one conversations. We also do very well in structured social settings such as congregations.” ONHB: “We’re all introverts, no wonder we tend to be quiet in worship services!” Me: “Which means our quiet, mellow worship services well feel welcoming and calming to people whose lives are too crazy busy. Which is most everyone in Silicon Valley.” ONHB: “People will think we’re all geeks!” Me: “Umm, we are in Silicon Valley, half the population is geeks.” ONHB: “Oh yeah. Well, maybe it’s good we’re an introverted church.” Me: “I think so. I like our calm, peaceful church, where people have really interesting conversations, and where our worship style is calm and low-key. I like the fact that there are other geeks like me, including engineer geeks, science geeks, theology geeks, finance geeks, and many other kinds of people who are quietly passionate about things.”

Visakha’s Sorrow

Another children’s story from a work-in-progress of stories for liberal religious kids. This story comes from the Udana, viii.8. I used Eugene Watson Burlingame, Buddhist Parables, pp. 107-108; as well as The Udana: or the Solemn Utterances of the Buddha, trans. from the Pali by Dawsonne Melanchthon Strong (Luzac/ India Company: London, 1902), pp. 126-127. I’m not sure what I think about this story; not sure I much like it. But it does seem to get at something central to Buddhism. (Update: a few typos fixed.)

Once upon a time, the Buddha was staying in the city of Savatthi, in the Eastern Grove. He was staying as a guest in the mansion owned by Visakha. Now Visakha had a granddaughter whom she loved very much; this granddaughter was her darling and her delight. While Buddha was staying in her mansion, Visakha’s granddaughter died after a long illness. When Visakha heard that her granddaughter had at long last died, it was very early in the morning. Visakha was overwhelmed with grief when she heard the news. Even though it was very early in the morning, she went to see the Buddha.

She approached the Buddha, greeted him politely, and went to sit down at his side. The Buddha looked at her, and could see she had been crying. He said quietly, “Well, Visakha, what is it that brings you here at a very early hour, with your hands and hair all wet from tears?” Continue reading →

Back again

All our Web sites were down for several hours yesterday. That got me to thinking — how do you let people know when your Web site is down? So I posted our Web site status on my Facebook page; didn’t think to put something out via Twitter; forgot about LinkedIn; then realized that anyone who tried to access one of our Web sites would just give up when the site didn’t load.

Everything’s fine now. Still no word from our Web host about what happened, but since they’re located just outside Utica, New York, I’m thinking the outage may be related to the big winter storm that hit upstate New York yesterday.

Five years old

Five years old on Monday, I was taking a lunch break in my office in the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois, a stone’s throw away from the little stone church building built by Unitarians in 1843, just a few years after the Illinois frontier had opened up after the conclusion of the Blackhawk Wars. I had spent the morning looking through old church records, to what end I no longer recall. On my lunch break, I decided to start a blog on AOL’s now-defunct blogging service. Being a peripheral participant in geek culture, of course I had to name it “Yet Another Unitarian Universalist Blog,” although I soon dropped the last word. The only person I told about it was my partner Carol, yet within a couple of days several people in the congregation had discovered my new blog, and the blogger’s collective at the old Coffee Hour site had reviewed my first post. Something interesting was happening here: religion had expanded into the digital realm. And there I was, one of the people exploring this new landscape.

It’s been a wild ride since then. Here are some of my favorite moments from the past five years:

  1. I was asked by Peacebang to serve as an example of a poorly-dressed minister when she was interviewed by Mainstream Media about her “Beauty Tips for Ministers” blog. Alas, my photo didn’t make it into the published interview.
  2. I attended one of the Boston-area UU blogger’s picnics, where I got to meet a couple of blogger spouses. They were both very nice mild-mannered people.
  3. Upon being introduced to me at a denominational gathering, a woman said, “Are you really as mean as Mr. Crankypants?” She looked frightened. I was completely nonplussed, and made some halting reply that did nothing to reassure her.
  4. I have had several entertaining online arguments with my older sister, bouncing back and forth between our two blogs.
  5. Commenter, fellow-blogger, and friend E recently took me to task in a long phone conversation for willfully misunderstanding J. D. Salinger in a post (she was right, of course, not that I admitted that while we were talking).

I started out thinking that blogging was just another publishing medium, like letterpress or photocopying. Then I began to understand that social media like blogs are more than a technological means for getting my words and ideas out to a wider public; they are really a way to carry out a larger conversation than can happen face-to-face. Recently, I have begun to understand that really all writing and publishing are forms of social media: when Richard Steele published The Spectator, his letterpress-printed words opened up a broader conversation; when zines started using the new technology of photocopying, they too were opening up a broader conversation; blogs and other online publishing platforms use new technologies, but the ultimate goal of a broader conversation remains the same.

For those of us who use online technologies, the real challenge now is to raise the quality of our writing. We bloggers need our Steele and Addison — or better yet, the blog equivalents of Mark Twain — people who write good prose and who have something to say that’s worth saying. We bloggers need someone who will raise the standard for the rest of us. Maybe the blog equivalents of Richard Steele and Mark Twain are already publishing but I haven’t seen them. Most bloggers write prose that’s either precious, cute, tainted with the contemporary workshop aesthetic,1 confused, rushed, or just plain bad (I tend towards the latter three). Currently, we read blogs for the information, not for the quality of expression.

I plan to write this blog for at least another five years. I hope that five years from now I will be able to point to several blogs written by great English prose stylists. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be one of those writers.

———

1 See: David Dooley, “The Contemporary Workshop Aesthetic,” Hudson Review, Summer 1990, no. 259.

Same sex unions in Great Britain

Guardian online has a nice opinion piece by Andy Pakula about same-sex unions in England. Andy is the minister of the Newington Green and Islington Unitarians in London. Andy writes in part:

Since 2004, pressure has grown to remove the ban on mixing religion and civil partnership. Three religious groups – the Unitarians, Quakers, and Liberal Jews – have come to their own decision that they must treat all couples equally and have pressed for changes to give permit them this element of religious freedom. The gay Labour peer, Lord Alli, recently tabled an amendment to the Civil Partnership Act that would lift the ban on civil partnerships in religious premises. Opposition from the bishops in the House of Lords, however, led to its withdrawal.

A letter to The Times today from a group of senior Anglicans strongly supports the repeal of this ban.

Andy’s piece is short and well-written — definitely worth reading.

A blog is back

“Truth to Power,” a blog written by “a survivor of clergy misconduct” is back in action. The blog has left Google’s Blogger service (after the Google Buzz fiasco, would you trust Google with anything confidential?), and is now hosted on First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville’s “Safety Net” Web site.

You’ll find the “Truth to Power” blog here. The blog’s author has wisely turned off comments on that site, but I am happy to host comments about the February 20th post in the comments section here below.

Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

At last night’s Sacred Harp singing, Hal told us that as of February 19, the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has officially recognized the name “copernicium” for chemical element number 112, an element which was first synthesized in 1996 at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. The song numbered 112 in the 1991 Denson edition of The Scared Harp is a song titled “The Last Words of Copernicus.”

Coincidence, or conspiracy? For those of you who think this is mere coincidence, IUPAC made this new name official on February 19, which was the 537th birthday of Copernicus. Now take 537, divide it by the atomic weight of the synthesized atom of copernicium (Cn-277), and you come up with 1.94. This is extraordinarily close to 1.87, which is the height of Barack Obama in meters. The difference between 1.94 and 1.87 is 0.07, and there is no Sacred Harp song numbered 7! (And the half-life of 277Cn is 0.7 ms!) Clearly, IUPAC is telling us that Barack Obama is not American, but instead is a Polish citizen, like Copernicus! No wonder no one can find Obama’s birth certificate — it was “lost” when the Soviets ruled Poland, because Obama is really a Soviet!

Mere coincidence? Or part of a world-wide conspiracy of scientists and politicians who want to do away with our American Christian democratic lifestyle by cramming global warming and same-sex marriage down our throats? You wimpy liberals probably think this is coincidence, but if this blog disappears in the next few days, you’ll know it’s really a conspiracy!

Art and the chant workshop

We hosted our third chant workshop tonight; Chandra Alexander of Sharanya led us in Hindu Goddess chants. She gave us a handout with the words of the chants (in Sanskrit, with transliterations), and asked us which chants we’d like to try.

I asked for a chant titled “God Is Mother and Father”; the title alone reminded me of the mid-19th C. prayers of Theodore Parker, in which he often referred to his God as both Mother and Father. (The 1862 edition of Parker’s prayers, edited by Rufus Leighton and Matilda Goddard, is now online at Google Books.) Not that there is a precise congruence between the two. The Hindu chant can be translated as: “You are Mother and Father, you alone are friend and relation. you are wisdom and prosperity, O God of Gods you are everything.” Parker does not tend this far towards pantheism; his God is personal, God as persona: “O Lord, our Father and our Mother too, we know that we need not ask any good thing from thee, nor in our prayer beseech thee to remember us, for thou lovest us more than we can love ourselves…” (July 25, 1858, p. 185).

Either way, while I can appreciate the beauty of both chant and prayer, I can’t say that I a parental god-image does much for me. But that’s the way art works, isn’t it? I don’t have to believe in the reality of a thunder-god to feel awe and reverence in the presence of a Greek sculpture of Zeus.