The season of waiting

At the Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church in Hayward, California, the director of religious education, Darcy Baxter, and the parish minister, Katie Kandarian-Morris, recorded a series of short video messages that give a Unitarian Universalist response to this question.

Here’s what they did: Darcy got the children at Starr King to write down their thoughts on how to be patient during Advent. The children wrote these thoughts inside cards, the outside face of which they then decorated. Darcy hung these cards on a bulletin board so that they look like an Advent calendar.

Now Darcy and Katie are recording a video for each day of Advent. Each video begins with Darcy reading one child’s suggestion of how to be patient. Katie and Darcy talk briefly about the suggestion, and then Katie reads a prayer or mediation for the day. Each video is only about two minutes long, but taken together they form a sort of video Advent calendar.

My favorite suggestion of how to have patience: clean the house. This is in fact what I do when I am trying to be patient. What a great way to utilize social media to extend the reach of a congregation’s ministries!

Advent reflection for December 6:

Continue reading “The season of waiting”

Jingle Bells

So James Pierpont, the guy who wrote “Jingle Bells,” was a Unitarian, and worked as the music director at the Unitarian church in Savannah, Georgia, before the Civil War — and before that church has to close down because it leaned strongly Abolitionist. But “Jingle Bells” is not in any Unitarian Universalist hymnal. If you want to sing it during a Sunday service, here’s an arrangement laid out on a half-letter-size sheet, that you can stick into the typical order of service:

Jingle Bells (PDF)

(This arrangement is from an early edition of Pierpont’s sheet music, available online at the Library of Congress.)

Supreme Court will hear Prop 8 appeal

The Supreme Court has announced that it will hear the appeal regarding the lower court decision to strike down Proposition 8, which repealed same-sex marriage in California.

So there will be no free weddings at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto — at least not until June, 2013, assuming the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s ruling.

73 DE W1CUA

Here’s Dad’s Christmas tree:

This requires a bit of explanation. The aluminum foil under the tree is a nice Christmas-y touch, looking a little like ice and/or snow. But it’s also the ground plane for the vertical antenna for Dad’s 2 meter rig 40 meter rig — you can see the antenna sparkling in the lights just to the left of the tree.

This is about as cool as Christmas decorations can get.

Free weddings in Palo Alto, if Prop 8 goes down!

If the Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal on the lower court’s ruling overturning Proposition 8, same-sex marriage will be legal again in California. And if that happens, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (www.uucpa.org) will offer free weddings for one day about a week after the Supreme Court announcement — we’re saying about a week afterwards, because it’s unclear how long it will take Santa Clara County clerks to issue marriage licenses. The deal goes for opposite-sex couples, too.

We can’t set a firm date yet, for obvious reasons. In the mean time, please help spread the word — if Prop 8 goes down, we’ll do free weddings for a day!

Quotation on congregational decline

I ran across the following in the notebook we hand out to Committee on Ministry members.

Staffing for growth

1 program professional for every 100 active members [active members defined as average Sunday attendance]
1 support FTE [full time equivalent] for the first program professional; 1/2 FTE for each subsequent professional
Ministerial interns don’t count in the equation

“If you staff below maintenance level, I can promise you that you will decline. And if you staff above the staffing for growth level, you will probably decline as well. Not having enough to do leads to low performance levels.”

Unfortunately, the quotation is given without an attribution. Search engines don’t turn up anything with quite this wording. Anyone have any idea where this comes from? I’d love to know, because it’s such an interesting assertion — that your congregation will decline if you have too many program and support staff.

Did God really say THAT?!

Chris Schriner has started writing a new blog titled “Did God Really Say THAT!? A Blog about the Bible.” Chris decided he wanted to take on Biblical literalism, so that’s what he’s writing about on his new blog. Chris is learned, funny, and provocative. He’s also a former psychotherapist, and a humanist who is sympathetic to theists. Who better to write such a blog? In his most recent posts, he’s been taking on capital punishment in the Bible, like the following words spoken by God in Exodus 20.15: “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.” Wait, did God really say that? If so, as Chris points out in one post, then there are going to be a lot of toddlers on death row.

So what are you waiting for? Go join the fun by clicking here.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Scroogemas…

Susan and I were standing outside the Main Hall yesterday morning, waiting for the first service to begin. A fifth-grade girl walked up, wearing a red sparkly t-shirt. I asked if she was dressed for the Christmas season. She said she was.

I introduced her to Susan, and added, “Susan and I are both Scrooges.”

The fifth-grader looked a little surprised, and maybe skeptical.

“Here, we’ll show you,” I said. “Ready, Susan?” Susan nodded.

And in perfect unison we said: “Bah! Humbug!”

The fifth-grader laughed to see two otherwise respectable middle-aged adults act like Scrooges. This is why you bring your children to a Unitarian Universalist congregation: so they learn what adults are really like.

Conscientious objectors

Although it seems unlikely that the United States will reinstate compulsory military service any time soon, there are people who are so opposed to any form of military service that they may want to establish themselves as a conscientious objectors for personal and/or moral reasons rather than for practical reasons. Then too, the political climate in the United States could change very quickly, all young men are required by law to register with Selective Service at age 18, and it is not unreasonable to want to establish conscientious objector (CO) status now just in case you need it later.

When I had to register for the draft upon turning 18, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) provided counseling and resources that helped me, but the CCCO died in 2010. And the big concern for most organizations in the present political climate is supporting people already in the military who discover that they are COs.

However, I have found some good online resources for non-military COs. Most important is the Center on Conscience and War (CCW) Web page titled “Advice to Youth Facing Selective Service Registration” which offers three main suggestions:

Print in legible black ink on the face of all Forms sent to Selective Service (not on the edges): I am a conscientious objector.

Make a photocopy all forms for your own records before you submit it to the postal clerk for date stamp and initials. Send all mail return-receipt requested.

Prepare a statement of your beliefs. Get it on file with your church or a reputable peace organization such as CCW. Such a statement could be helpful in getting the government to recognize your CO beliefs.

You can read the full article here. You can find a PDF of “Basic Draft and Registration Information,” a more comprehensive article, here.

What about Unitarian Universalists and conscientious objection? The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) offers a brochure titled “Conscientious Objectors and the Draft,” available online here. Unfortunately, this brochure is somewhat dated, but it’s still worth reading. According to this brochure, the UUA maintains a registry of conscientious objectors; with the demise of the CCCO registry, this is good news for UU COs.

All this makes me think back to how I documented my own conscientious objection to war as a Unitarian Universalist youth. The first thing I did was talk with Rev. Pat Green, the associate minister at my Unitarian Universalist church, about my religious objections to war and the military; he helped me sharpen my arguments in favor of pacifism, and find a religious basis for them. Pat also helped me to understand that although Unitarian Universalism does not have a specific peace witness (unlike, e.g., Quakerism), our religion nevertheless calls on us to follow our conscience in the face of difficult moral and ethical decisions. Thus I learned that as a Unitarian Universalist I could remain firmly opposed to participation in war on religious grounds, and other Unitarian Universalists could remain firmly committed to a career in the military on religious grounds. And Pat also pointed out that because of this, it was much harder for a Unitarian Universalist to convince a draft board that he was a CO than a Quaker (and yes, I do mean to use the word “he” here, since women have yet to be subject to compulsory military service in the United States).

I also registered with the CCCO — if I were doing this today, I would register with the UUA, my local congregation, and the Center on Conscience and War (CCW). I have vague memories of writing out a statement of my pacifism, but I don’t remember what I did with this. I got involved in the peace movement, specifically in campaigns to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal, attending demonstrations in Washington, etc. Before I turned 18, I found a qualified counselor who could give me advice about registering with Selective Service — the man I saw was trained by the CCCO, but as I understand it the CCW still trains such counselors. I also knew my Unitarian Universalist church would back me up if I ever needed to establish a claim, and I suppose that’s one thing that kept me involved in Unitarian Universalism.

If I were to give advice to a Unitarian Universalist youth today on how to establish CO status (and one recently asked me for just such advice), I might refer them to the Web page “How To Compile a CO Claim,” which suggests the following:

  • State that you are a CO when you register with Selective Service
  • Write a statement of your CO beliefs
  • Get three people who know you well to write a letter supporting your CO claim
  • Get active in peace work, and document your activity
  • Document other ways in which your pacifism has affected the way you live your life (at the very least, give money to CCW!)
  • Collect all these documents, and get them notarized
  • File copies of these documents with the UUA, your local UU congregation, and find out if the CCW will keep them on fiel as well
  • Keep the originals in a safe place

If you have any other suggestions or resources for UU youth who want to establish their conscientious objection to war, I’d love to hear them — leave them in the comments below.