Mr. Crankypants grades the proposed Article II of the UUA bylaws

Mr. Crankypants sees that the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association has issued a draft revision of Article II of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Let’s look this document over as if it’s a term paper, and mark it up accordingly. For reference, here’s the document (thanks to Scott Wells).

Let’s use the Red Pen first:

Line 1: Title is misleading. This paper reads as if it is bylaws rather than a covenant. Review historic prose styles of covenants. Then either change the title to something like “Principles and Purposes of These Bylaws” or “Profession of Faith,” — or rewrite the whole paper so that it sounds like a solemn agreement that is entered into by two or more parties.

Line 7: “Principles” should not be capitalized. It cannot be a proper noun in this context.

Lines 10-11: Summing up two complex religious traditions in this offhand way is questionable. Cite references, please. Also, please make clear that you are referring to North American religious traditions, as there are other traditions with the same name in other parts of the world which differ substantially from the North American versions.

Lines 26-27: Weak, flabby prose. Instead of saying things like “Grateful for the traditions… we strive to avoid misappropriation” etc., why not just say: “We are our own religious selves, with our own religious traditions, and we promise not to be cultural imperialists who steal and exploit other religious traditions.”

Lines 29-67: Too wordy. Mushy prose. This sounds like it was written by a committee, all of whom were chewing on mashed potatoes. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!

Line 32: “Beloved Community” should not be capitalized. Worse, it smacks of jargon and the phrase should be completely removed.

Lines 69-75: Excessively legalistic, and filled with meaningless catchphrases. What is it that you are asking people to do? Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!

Now let’s give it a grade, and offer some overall comments:

Grade: C-

This paper does not live up to its title. The excessive use of jargon is absolutely inexcusable, and obscures what might otherwise be fairly good prose. The paper is far too long, given what it is trying to say, and should be half the present length. Your paper has potential, though. To raise your grade, you can rewrite it completely and resubmit it. However, consider bringing it to a class workshop for peer comments, and consider asking the tutors at the Writing Center to help you remove catchphrases and jargon.

Finally, Mr. Crankypants hopes that regular reader Mme. Merde-Merde, who is a professor of writing and composition, will offer her own thoughts on this…. or any other reader, for that matter, although the rest of you will probably be too nice.

Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that two years ago already Mr. C. wrote a much better version of this.

The second law of thermodynamics as applied to the laundromat

Before the previous owners sold the laundromat, it was a particularly well-kept place. The attendants were generally polite and even friendly. The one who worked on week nights got so she recognized us. “Don’t use those dryers,” she told me once. “They don’t work as well as these over here.” She was right, and I thanked her. The floors were always swept clean, the old magazines under the front counter were always neatly stacked, everything was always neat and tidy. And on top of each washing machine, next to the opening where you put in your laundry detergent, they put little measuring cups saved from the tops of discarded jugs of liquid detergent; the measuring cups rested on little squares of terry cloth, obviously cut out of abandoned towels but always freshly laundered. More than once, we found it quite convenient to have these measuring cups and squares of terry cloth so easily available.

At the beginning of the summer, a big sign appeared in the window: “Under New Management!” the sign said, and on the next line, “Free Coffee!!” The free coffee lasted a few weeks and then went away. Our friendly attendant disappeared not long after that. The floors were no longer swept quite so neatly. And tonight I noticed that several of the little measuring cups and their squares of terry cloth have disappeared.

Or put it this way: tonight I suddenly noticed that macroscopic irreversibility was happening in our favorite laundromat from one week to the next. It is perhaps exciting to see an example of a fundamental law of physics in action. But I would prefer it if the new management worked harder so as to make it appear as if the second law of thermodynamics did not apply within the isolated system of the laundromat.

Silent Sermon Bingo

After yesterday’s post about Boring Meeting Bingo, it’s only fair that I tell you about Silent Sermon Bingo. A decade or so ago, I was working as a Director of Religious Education at a Unitarian Universalist church. It was my first year working at that church, and the parish minister asked me to figure out how to better integrate children into the Easter service, which in that church was about the only time when the children were expected to sit through a full-length sermon. Fortunately, I had heard about Silent Sermon Bingo (I think it was Emily Leite who told me about it):–

Every child gets a bingo card upon entering the church. It’s a typical bingo card with a five-by-five array of squares. In each square are words that children might expect to hear during an Easter sermon (making sure there are at least five words in a row that the minister promises to use in the sermon). The instructions on the bingo card give the usual rules for bingo, with this added rule: “The most important rule is that this game is SILENT, so DON’T shout ‘bingo’ when you win!”

As you might guess, this game requires pretty good reading and comprehension skills, so it is really aimed at ages 9 through 12 — we came up with other activities to help out younger children (coloring books, mazes, etc.).

I have a very fond memory of sitting in the congregation about two pews back from a ten-year-old girl who was often rather, um, boisterous during intergenerational worship services. This time she was quiet as a mouse, hunched over her bingo card, listening intently to the sermon. About twelve minutes into the sermon, I saw her cross off one last word on her bingo card, then pump her fist and whisper, “Yes!” After that, the game apparently took so much out of her that she was quiet for the rest of the worship service.

One step closer to facism

Salon.com has documented how, in the lead-up to a major election in one country, police forces broke into the houses of suspected political opponents brandishing automatic weapons, handcuffed everyone in the house, confiscated computers and political pamphlets, and arrested suspected ringleaders under a vague law giving broad powers to arrest just about anyone. No, not in Russia or Africa, this happened in the United States. Kinda makes you wish for the good ol’ days when President Nixon was wiretapping and intimidating people and lying. Thank you, Will, for blogging about this.

Boring Meeting Bingo

You probably already know about Boring Meeting Bingo, also known as Bull$#!t Bingo. First you make a bingo card with a grid five boxes wide by five boxes high. Into each of the twenty-five resulting boxes you write catchwords or catchphrases that are likely to be used during the meeting. When one of those words or phrases is used during the meeting, you put an “X” through it. When you get five “X”s in a row, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, you shout out “BINGO!”

You may also know that there are online random bingo card generators which use specific lists of catchwords and catchphrases to generate bingo cards for Education Bingo, Marketing Bingo, Software Bingo, etc.

Well, I want to play denominational-specific Unitarian Universalist Boring Meeting Bingo in the worst kind of way. But I haven’t been able come up with enough Unitarian Universalist catchwords and catchphrases. I have to attend several meetings a month where I want to play this game, and I’ll want to play against other people, so I’m going to need forty or more UU catchwords and catchphrases.

So I need your help. Below is my list of UU catchwords and catchphrases thus far. Please add your contributions to this list in the comments below! (I left out acronyms because they seem too easy, but maybe you can convince me otherwise.)

  1. anti-oppression
  2. fiscally responsible
  3. policy governance
  4. herding cats
  5. mission statement
  6. empowerment
  7. prioritize
  8. safe congregation
  9. win-win
  10. walk the talk
  11. lay leader
  12. interfaith
  13. stewardship
  14. inherent worth
  15. process observer
  16. check-in

Ideally, I’d like to come up with a ton of these bingo cards to bring to General Assembly (oo, add that phrase to the list), our annual denominational meeting. Imagine hundreds of people bending over their bingo cards during some terminally boring discussion — when suddenly at the back of the hall, someone stands up and shouts “BINGO!” — pandemonium ensues…. [Update: Niko tells me that Boring Meeting Bingo did take place at General Assembly back in 2005. Maybe someone can track down one of those bingo cards and give us the catchwords and catchphrases used on those cards?]

Dropped through our mail slot

When I went down the stairs to go to work this morning, I found that someone had dropped a flyer through the mail slot. This is what it said (I am retaining all the capital letters used in the original):

WATCH THE HOUSE GUESTS SLEEP?
WATCH A PARALYZED WOMAN WALK?
THIS IS REALITY TV
DIRECTV CHANNEL 365 EVERY NIGHT AT 8.00PM-ET
watch online at: www.god.tv/realitytv

As usual, the conservative evangelical Christians seem to be well ahead of religious liberals in their use of new media. Won’t some nice liberal religious philanthropist step forward to fund a Unitarian Universalist online video series that’s also shown on cable TV? No? You say they big ads in dead tree publications like Time magazine? Oh well….

Labor Day parable

I’m incorporating the following parable, which is attributed to Jesus by the writers of the Christian scriptures. Conventional Christianity interprets this parable something as follows: Doesn’t matter when you convert to Christianity, you will get to go to heaven after you die. But what if this conventional interpretation is wrong?

Instead, how about this interpretation: In this absurd parable, Jesus asks us to contemplate the idea of an employer who treats his workers better than we expect. This parable sounds absurd because most anyone who has worked for someone else has experienced being stiffed by an employer, but not many of us have experienced being treated better than we expected to be treated. Jesus asks us to contemplate an absurd world in which employers are more moral than they need to be; and he calls this absurd world “heaven’s imperial rule.” Could it be that Jesus is telling us that we could create heaven here on earth? You decide for yourself….

———

“For Heaven’s imperial rule is like a proprietor who went out the first thing in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the workers for a silver coin a day he sent them into his vineyard.

“And coming out around 9 a.m. he saw others loitering in the marketplace and said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and I’ll pay you whatever is fair.’ So they went.

“Around noon he went out again, and at 3 p.m., and repeated the process. About 5 p.m. he went out and found othes loitering about and says to them, ‘Why do you stand around here idle the whole day?’

“They reply, ‘Because no one hired us.’

“He tells them, ‘You go into the vineyard as well.’

“When evening came the owner of the vineyard tells his foreman: ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages staring with those hired last and ending with those hired first.’

“Those hired at 5 p.m. came up and received a silver coin each. Those hired first approached thinking they would receive more. But they also got a silver coin apiece. They took it and began to grumble against the proprietor: ‘These guys hired last worked only an hour but you have made them the equal to us who did most of the work during the heat of the day.’

“In response he said to one of them, ‘Look, pal, did I wrong you? you did agree with me for a silver coin, didn’t you? Take your wage and get out! I intend to treat the one hired last the same way I treat you. Is there some law forbidding me to do with my money as I please? Or is your eye filled with envy because I am generous?’ ” [Mt. 20.1-14, as translated by the Jesus Seminar]