Author: Daniel Harper

Vesak in the White House

Many Buddhists recognize today as Vesak, a day which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. (This is a lunar holiday, so it doesn’t always fall on May 5.) And this will be the third year of a Vesak ceremony in the White House. (Nicely timed this year to lead off Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.)

It’s kind of amazing that there will be any recognition of a Buddhist holiday in the White House. No doubt the usual Christian nationalists and right wing Christian bigots will bemoan the celebration of a non-Christian religious holiday in the White House. No doubt the usual fundamentalist atheists will bemoan the celebration of any religious holiday in the White House. But I like the idea. Personally I don’t celebrate Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, or death, but I’m glad of this recognition of the cultural and religious diversity within the United States.

The meaning of justice

From the novel Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei, a native Hong Konger. The novel is set in Hong Kong in the year 2014, and follows the adventures of Au Nga-Yee as she tries to find out why her sister Siu-Man committed suicide by jumping from the window of their apartment. Without spoiling things for you, I can safely tell you that the plot involves social media, the Dark Web, and the tech industry. Nga-Ye has to hire N, a hacker and a most unusual detective, to figure out what really happened to Siu-Man.

Late in the book, N, the detective, reflect on his motivations for continuing to work as a detective:

“The word he hated most in the world was ‘justice.’ Which wasn’t to say he didn’t know the difference between good and evil — but he understood that rather than simplistic morality, most conflict in the world arose from differences of opinion, with both sides raising the flag of justice and claiming to be on the side of reason. This allowed them to justify the most underhanded means as ‘a necessary evil’ to defeat the other side — the law of the jungle, essentially. N had a deep understanding of this. He had money, status, power, and talent, so he could do pretty much whatever he wanted and other people would see him as an avatar of ‘justice’ — but he knew that keeping others down in the name of justice is another form of bullying.” (Chan Ho-Kei, trans. Jeremy Tiang, Second Sister [2017; trans. Grove Atlantic, 2020])

While this passage merely represents one character in a murder mystery talking to himself, there is some truth in what this character says. It is all too easy to misuse the word “justice.”

Not me

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Let me tell you a little bit about Unitarian Universalist (UU) views on prayer.

Back in 1997, I was on the Pamphlet Commission for the Unitarian Universalist Association. We were updating an old pamphlet titled “UU Views on Prayer.” We were reviewing a collection of excellent brief statements on why Unitarian Universalists prayed, and how they prayed. Suddenly I said, “I don’t pray myself. And I notice we have nothing that says ‘prayer is a crock.'” We argued back and forth for a bit on whether a pamphlet on prayer should have a statement against prayer. We finally decided that a full range of UU views on prayer must include a statement from someone who did not pray.

We asked several well known humanist ministers to write such a statement. One turned us down rather rudely, saying he couldn’t be bothered. The others were more polite, but clearly didn’t want to have their humanistic credentials tarnished through association with a pamphlet on prayer. So the other members of the Pamphlet Commission told me that I’d have to write it, and I did. Here’s what I said:

“I don’t pray. As a Unitarian Universalist child, I learned how to pray. But when I got old enough to take charge of my own spiritual life, I gradually stopped. Every once in a while I try prayer again, just to be sure. The last time was a couple of years ago. My mother spent a long, frightening month in the hospital, so I tried praying once again but it didn’t help. I have found my spiritual disciplines — walks in nature, deep conversations, reading ancient and modern scripture, love — or they have found me. Prayer doesn’t happen to be one of them.”

That old “UU Views on Prayer” pamphlet was retired several years ago (thank goodness). Sadly, the new pamphlet on UU prayer doesn’t include a statement from someone who doesn’t pray. I wish it did. In a time when prayer has become weaponized by Christian nationalists, we need to affirm those people who don’t pray, who can’t pray, who refuse to pray, who dislike praying.

The May Day that mostly doesn’t get celebrated in UU congregations

I’m a day late in celebrating International Working People’s Day, the real Labor Day that’s celebrated pretty much everywhere in the world except in the U.S. My only excuse is that both my personal life and my professional life are overly full these past few weeks. My day-late celebration will include reading UU Patrick Murfin’s excellent May Day post on his blog, then singing a couple of classic labor songs from my short stint in the San Francisco Labor Chorus.

Many UU congregations celebrate the Euro-Pagan Beltane May Day, but there are very few which would seriously celebrate International Working People’s Day during a Sunday morning service. The only UU congregation that I can think of that might do so would be First Unitarian in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles church included “Solidarity Forever” and “The Commonwealth of Toil,” two classic union songs, in the hymnal they published in 1976. But I’m not sure what other UU congregations would be comfortable singing those songs on Sunday morning.

If your UU congregation sang a union song (any union song at all) either last Sunday — or if they plan to sing a union song in this Sunday’s service — I hope you post a comment to that effect.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Today while walking in the Attleboro Springs Audubon Sanctuary, I saw Jacks-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) in bloom. The dramatic striped spathe shelters a spadix on which the flowers are born. This is one of my favorite native flowers — we used to grow them when we lived in the rental share in Concord center — and seeing their blooms today prompted me to learn a little more about them.

According the Extension service of North Carolina State State University, individual Arisaema triphyllum plants can change between male and female from year to year: “This unique plant, which is pollinated by flies and gnats, has the ability to change gender.  A plant that starts out as male can spontaneously change to female the next year and vice versa. …”

Or, according to another source, first year plants only produce male flowers; then the plant becomes hermaphroditic, producing both male and female flowers. In any case, as is so often true, our stereotypical human norms around gender and biological sex being determined from birth do not apply to all organisms (the stereotypes don’t even always apply to human organisms).

A fascinating plant. Makes me want to start growing Arisaema triphyllum again.

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum). Note the two trifoliate leaves, the striped spathe, and the pale green spadix inside the spathe.

Another person I need to learn about

Somehow a copy of The Week: The Best of the U.S. and International Media from June 17, 2022, wound up in our bathroom. In it, there was an obituary of Sophie Freud, granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, and long-time professor of social work at Simmons University in Boston, who died on June 2, 2022, in Lincoln, Mass.

Apparently, Sophie called psychoanalysis a “narcissistic indulgence.” She compared Sigmund Freud to Adolph Hitler, saying both were “false prophets of the twentieth century.” Apparently, she also slammed so-called transference and counter-transference between male psychotherapists and female patients — with good reason, I think, as it seems a little too close to sexual misconduct.

She sounds like someone I want to know more about. With luck, a good biography will come out in the not too distant future.

Update, 4/30: The Lincoln Squirrel, the independent newspaper in Lincoln, Mass., provided a link to an excellent profile of Sophie Freud published back in 2007. And there was an obit in the NY Times. In 2007, Sophie Freud published her feminist memoir, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family.

Another book I need to read

I’ve long been skeptical of the philosophical concept of the “social contract.” It always sounded anachronistic to me. The social contract is supposed to go back to prehistory, but the whole notion of a “contract” is actually a modern Western notion.

But I never thought about who gets to participate in the social contract. Back in 1997, Charles W. Mills published “The Racial Contract” in which he takes on philosophers like Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant. Apparently, in that book he argues that the people who get to participate in the social contract are white people. And if white people are the only people who get to participate in the social contract, then people of other skins colors… well, maybe they aren’t really people, but sub-people.

Cornell just issued a 25th anniversary edition. I really should buy a copy and read it….

Urban gulls…human shouting…

In the Mass Audubon class I’m taking, tonight’s lecture was on birds. We learned about a scientific paper titled, “Urban gulls show similar thermographic and behavioral response to human shouting and conspecific alarm cries” (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 20 Sept. 2022). Equipment used in this research included a plush Cornish pasty and a child’s baby carriage with an infrared camera hidden inside it. No, I am not making this up. Apparently some ornithologists manage to have a sense of humor while doing serious science.

Thank a librarian

Today is National Library Workers Day. I managed to thank three librarians. I got the official name of the day wrong (I kept calling it “National Library Staff Appreciation Day”; I have no idea where I got that from). But I got the sentiment right.

If it seems kind of corny to thank a librarian or a library worker — it’s not. Library workers were on the front lines during the COVID lockdown, arranging for pickup of library books, getting coughed on by thoughtless library patrons who came to pick up books, putting together online resources to keep library patrons sane, and more. Then in the last two years, librarians have been on the front lines of the culture wars; the American Library Association recently reported that “for a second year in a row the number of books targeted for censorship nearly doubled from the previous year.”

One of the purposes of National Library Workers Day, by the way, is to “advocate for better compensation for all library workers.” Librarians are often woefully under-compensated; I think this is partly because library work is often viewed as “women’s work,” which to many people means it’s worth less. But librarians are actually critically important because they help promote the free and unfettered flow of information upon which a healthy democracy is founded.

Finally, Thursday is National Take Action for Libraries Day. That’s the day when you are encouraged to write to your elected representatives and tell them how important it is to support libraries. The theme this year is “Tell Congress: Stand Against Censorship.”