The senior high youth group led the worship service at church today, and they used Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” as one of the readings. I remembered that my dad had a parody version of “If” written for engineers, and I thought: Why isn’t there a parody version of this old chestnut for Unitarian Universalist ministers and lay leaders? So I wrote one:<\/p>\n
If<\/strong><\/p>\n If you can keep your cool, and coexist, Yes, I know “lay leader” doesn’t quite scan right. But I didn’t have time to write two completely different final couplets. Instead of complaining, why don’t <\/em>you write a parody version of this poem?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The senior high youth group led the worship service at church today, and they used Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” as one of the readings. I remembered that my dad had a parody version of “If” written for engineers, and I thought: Why isn’t there a parody version of this old chestnut for Unitarian Universalist ministers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[337],"class_list":["post-6799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-religion","tag-uu-jokes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6799"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6801,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6799\/revisions\/6801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen others want to argue, fight, and shout;
\nIf you can handle humanist and theist,
\nBalancing your own belief and doubt;
\nIf you can listen both to blame and praise,
\nAnd treat those two impostors both the same;
\nAnd read church bylaws with a steady gaze;
\nAnd work for common good and not just fame;
\nIf you don’t break, but like the Tao you bend,
\nYou’ll be a UU [minister] [lay leader], my friend!<\/p>\n