One of my favorite religious blogs is “Speaking Truth to Power,” in which blogger “uugrrl” talks about clergy sexual misconduct. She writes with deep insight both because she’s naturally a thoughtful person, and because she herself is a survivor of clergy sexual misconduct (and yes, the perpetrator was a Unitarian Universalist minister). In an especially good post late last week, uugrrl quotes Thich Naht Hanh on sexual misconduct:<\/p>\n
Responsibility’ is the key word in the Third Precept. In a community of practice, if there is no sexual misconduct, if the community practices this precept well, there will be stability and peace. This precept should be practiced by everyone…. If you don’t practice this precept, you may become irresponsible and create trouble in the community at large. We have all seen this. If a teacher cannot refrain from sleeping with one of his or her students, he or she will destroy everything, possibly for several generations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then uugrrl goes on to comment:<\/p>\n
I once read of a Zen survivor of abuse who made the abuse her koan. It seemed a perfect fit to me. Perhaps this is why I still care about this subject so many years later.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m still working on how suffering sexual abuse could be a koan — I guess that will be a koan for me to work on. Anyway, read the whole post: <\/p>\n