Republcans Need Advice from the UUA?

Life would be a lot easier for the Republican establishment if they followed the UUA (and Iranian) model – just run a couple of approved candidates.

But now the poor UUA had one of their two candidates drop out, so now they have to find another.  (http://www.uuworld.org/articles/new-presidential-candidate-march-6).

Trigger Safety

We eat dinner each night by the light of four short votive candles and two tall tapers.  Formerly we used matches to light the candles, but it gets tricky trying to light six candles from one match.  A few years ago a friend gave us a butane lighter, and that was convenient.  But the lighter got older and conked out.  We got older too.  Now every lighter we buy has some incredible two-switch, hard-to-pull grip.  After spinal surgery, my dominant hand is weak enough that none of the butane lighters work for me - even though I'm still perfectly functional with kitchen knife skills, carrying bags, etc.

Yesterday I got sufficiently aggravated that I embarked on an internet search for lighters and what was the deal.  As suspected, this is fallout from child safety rules.  As of 1999, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) required that all multi-purpose (non-cigarette) lighters have to be impossible to light by 85% of children under age five. 

OK, we'll let it go that I can't use a lighter because of the never-existent five year olds in my house.

But for God's sake, what about guns?  Why can't we impose the same kind of rules there?  The CPSC rule estimates that nationwide this rule saves 3.7 lives per year.  How many deaths per year would we avoid by making guns as hard to use as a candle lighter?

ReferencesSafety standards for Multi-Purpose Lighters  https://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/77807/multi.txt

What's the Matter with Marin?

A recent New York Times article titled "Who Turned my Blue State Red" opens with:

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net. 

The article (referred to hereafter as Blue State Red)  goes through an analysis of who is voting and makes two observations:

1. The really poor don't vote against their interests - instead, the lowest quintile isn't voting, period.  If they vote it's Democrat, but they don't turn out.
2. Those one or two rungs up the ladder are reacting against what they perceive as a growing dependency on the safety net.  This is the going red part.

The closing recommendations:  Democrats need to improve the economy (to reduce the need for aid) and run programs better (to reduce the resentment in item 2.)

 

It's worth paraphrasing the concluding parts of the article to get the flavor of the thinking. 

So where does this leave Democrats and anyone seeking to expand and build lasting support for safety-net programs such as Obamacare?

For starters, it means redoubling efforts to mobilize the people who benefit from the programs…

But it also means reckoning with the other half of the dynamic — finding ways to reduce the resentment that those slightly higher on the income ladder feel toward dependency in their midst. One way to do this is to make sure the programs are as tightly administered as possible…

The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growth in the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise… If fewer people need the safety net to get by, the stigma will fade, and low-income citizens will be more likely to re-engage in their communities — not least by turning out to vote. 

What's the Matter?

Blue State Red has some parallels to the popular 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas?  The problem posed in both is one of low-income people voting "against their interests."  In Kansas, the voters are distracted by social issues.  Blue State Red makes a different statistical argument that (a) the poorest aren't voting and (b) the next economic rungs up are resentful.

 

My problem with both of these analyses is their framework of analyzing problems in terms of homo economicus - (economic man):  the assumption that one's most important interests are economic.  This resembles the Marxist charge that some economic classes suffer from "false consciousness" - they are fooled and don't see where their "real" interests lie.  Both the bottom quintile and the next rungs up are significant beneficiaries of government programs - why won't they just understand?

 

But if people "should" vote as homo economicus, what's the matter with Marin?  Marin County - the highest income county in California - is solidly Democratic (in 2012, 74% for Obama  and 80% for Democratic Senator.)  The next two highest income counties, San Francisco and San Mateo, are just as solidly blue.  Why are these well-off people not voting for low-taxation Republicans?  If high-income people can vote for values against their purely economic interests, why don't we grant the same expectation to low income voters?  Are they supposed to be purely economically driven because they have low incomes?  This is either liberal bigotry or condescension - "those people" don't have complicated moral reasoning, or "in their situation, don't they realize that economic considerations should come first."

 

Democratic theorists can be caricatured as stuck in a materialist mindset - it's all about the goodies.  Look at the recommendations in "Blue State Red":  reduce resentment, fix the programs, get out the lowest quintile vote.  Nothing to see here, folks, move along - just need to tighten the program and fix the false consciousness.  It plays right into the mindset of Romney's 47%.

 

Instead, I think that the work of Jonathan Haidt is relevant here:  there are multiple foundations  of moral reasoning, but the relative importance attached to these categories varies strongly between liberals and conservatives.  And that in many ways liberals just don't get it.  This is summarized nicely in his 2008 TED talk.  A fundamental point of that talk is that of five foundations, liberals attach primary importance to only two:  harm/care and fairness.  Conservatives attach nearly equal importance to three others, named in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.  Liberals tend to be leery of the latter three, as tools that have been historically used by power structures to maintain control.  But Haidt's observation is the fact that for a large number of people, generally conservative, these moral foundations are very important. 

Take these differences in moral foundations as facts on the ground.  What is someone promoting a liberal program to do?  Here are three approaches of limited utility, although they provide a good source of self-righteousness:

1. Yell louder - "YOU'RE SUFFERING FROM FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU STUPID PEASANTS.  VOTE YOUR ECONOMIC INTERESTS."
2. Work harder - more get out the vote drives, more legal challenges to keep programs alive, etc.
3. Tell the conservatives that they have the wrong value system.  Just stop clinging to their guns and religion.

Instead, the approach from Haidt would be to expand the liberal moral reasoning.  His research suggests that the right cares as much about care and fairness as the left; it's just not their only wavelength.  In this framework, conservative moral reasoning isn't wrong, bit instead more complex.  Communicate to conservatives on the other wavelengths too.   A couple of thoughts:

 

One source of the authority/respect moral foundation is traditional religion.  Stop being afraid of it.  Stephen Colbert did this brilliantly on the Late Show when he said: 

If you want to know if somebody is Christian, just ask them to complete this sentence: Jesus said ‘I was hungry,’ and you gave me something to eat, ‘I was thirsty,’ and you gave me something to drink, ‘I was a stranger,’ and you… _________”

And if they don’t say ‘welcomed me in,’ they are either a terrorist or they are running for president. 

Colbert casts the entire argument in a different frame - not some dry intellectual point about universal rights, but instead casting it as moral imperative from a great teacher.  Is this a rhetorical trick, a cheap appeal to emotion?  To Socrates, perhaps yes.  But from Haidt, maybe a lot of people don't do their moral reasoning a la Socrates.  Maybe it is a legitimate appeal to how they reach moral conclusions, using a moral authority that works for them.  And this isn't just pandering - there are some great truths from those old dead men, a recognition which is out of favor on the left.

 

In general, the left tends to have an aversion to religion.  Rightly so in some ways - but by avoiding religious language because of a bad history from many religions, the left has given up a source of powerful language.  One of great rhetorical powers of Dr. Martin Luther King was that he could draw from the justice language of the Bible.  He certainly did not stick to dry intellectual arguments of economic fairness.

 

Another moral foundation is in-group/loyalty.  When we classify everyone by economic class (or other identity) we have thrown away the power of re-defining the in-group to have larger boundaries.  Our culture has cliché language for identifying with the other - "there but for the grace of God go I."  But we also have powerful religious language.  When asked "who is my neighbor," Jesus draws the circle broadly:  he tells a parable where there the Samaritan - a member of a despised religious group - was the one to actually take care of the mugged traveler.  Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul says in two different letters,

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one. 

Again, this is powerful stuff that would speak to a large portion of the country.  I think that one could certainly draw on this to re-define groups and loyalty, shifting attitudes by working within a different worldview.

 

Others might create better examples than the two I give here.  But the point is this:  continuing to ask "what's wrong with group X" reflects an illiteracy in in moral reasoning.  Continuing to make the argument on the same grounds, just "better", starts to look like the insanity of repeating that which doesn't work and expecting different results.  Turning out the vote or incremental decreases in resentment are simply  staying on the same playing field.  Learning the differences in moral reasoning, and shifting to the that ground, could actually lead to changing hearts and minds.  Lasting change only comes about because you have convinced someone, not just because you have beat them in a contest.

 

---------------------------------

References

NY Times Article:  Who Turned My Blue State Red:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.html

 

Jonathan Haidt

TED Talk on the Moral Mind: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en

transcript:  https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind/transcript?language=en

http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

http://righteousmind.com/coddle-u-vs-strengthen-u/

https://edge.org/conversation/moral-psychology-and-the-misunderstanding-of-religion

 

Stephen Colbert, Immigration, 2015-11-19:

https://sojo.net/articles/watch-colbert-shows-why-gop-leaders-need-welcome-stranger

 

Moral Foundation Theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory

http://www.moralfoundations.org/

 

California Income by County:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_locations_by_income

 

Homo Economicus:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

 

Marin County Election Results, 2012:  http://www.marincounty.org/depts/rv/election-info/past-elections/page-data/tabs-collection/2012/nov-2012/final-election-results

 

What's the Matter with Kansas:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Matter_with_Kansas

 

False Consciousness:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

 

Paul of Tarsus

Galations:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%203:28

Colosians:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+3%3A11&version=ESV

 

 

A Remembrance and Appreciation

Alice V., one my high school teachers, passed away recently.  Alice was not in my Pantheon of teachers who provided the Aha! moments or pushed me to deeper thinking, whether in science or humanities.  But on remembering Alice, maybe my Pantheon is missing some members.

I knew Alice, successively, in three different roles - high school guidance counselor, speech team coach, and mother of my high school girlfriend.

Guidance counselors were to be held at arm's length.  After all, they were part of the high school power apparatus, their offices just across the main entrance from the principal and vice-principal's office.  Inspired by other teachers, I had read my Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Communist Manifesto; so in addition to being low-level enforcers of high school order, guidance counselors were preparing us for our future lives of quiet desperation, hopefully as members of the petit bourgeoisie.

In my freshman year a teacher suggested I try out for the speech team.  A couple of older students who were my intellectual idols were on the team, so I started showing up every Thursday night for team practice.  Alice was the head (and often only) coach.  Teams competed in multiple events , such as humorous or dramatic readings, impromptu or extemporaneous speaking, and debate.  Speech meets happened at the other schools in our athletic league, and also large multi-day tournaments sponsored by college debate teams (who did the judging and used the registration fees to pay for own team expenses.)  So as a side-effect, while a high-school freshman I spent time around college environments.

Via a process of benign neglect or just allowing me to get my feet wet, I started competing in the event called humorous interpretation.  This was not a good match.  As many actors have noted, comedy is much tougher than drama.  But after a couple of months, Alice suggested that I pair with another student to compete in "Oxford debate" - pairs against pairs on a fixed subject for the whole school year, randomly assigned to the affirmative or negative side in each round.  We were OK - win some, lose some.

Alice also had me compete in the event called "extemporaneous speaking" - you are given one or more subjects in current events and have 45 minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech.  Also a better match than humorous interp, but it meant I had to read U.S. New and World Report cover to cover each week.  I retain the habit, except that now it's The Economist.

At the end of the year, team members with more seniority filled slots in my events at district competition, so Alice placed me in an event in which I never competed:   impromptu speaking.  You receive a list of topics, and immediately speak on one of them for five minutes.  The trick is to choose one topic nearly immediately, but pretend to stare at the list for maybe ten seconds while composing an outline for the speech.  Surprisingly, I took second place and gained a berth to State; and I also gained a new event.

The summer after my sophomore year, Alice encouraged me to go to a two-week  speech summer school at a nearby university, funded by a school-district scholarship.  I was immersed in debate training and long conversations with other students.  When I came back in the fall, I needed a new debate partner - the previous one having graduated from high school.  After a couple of other tries, Alice suggested her daughter Jan.  We dutifully got  together in evenings at my house to work on opening statements, review lines of argument, etc.  But the debating team of Tom and Jan didn't go in exactly the direction that Alice has probably envisioned for it.  Jan and I were in the same grade and had hung out together with other students at school and speech meets.  But during the evenings of sitting together hashing over approaches to debate, I found I really liked her.  We competed rather unsuccessfully in a couple of debates, but we moved from debate partners to girlfriend-boyfriend.  And to me, Alice transitioned to "mother-of-the-girlfriend."  Yes, she was still speech coach, but she (and my parents) became the traditional impediments to the course of true love - limits on telephone time, curfews, and use of the family car.

For the rest of the year, I transitioned to the single opponent event called Lincoln-Douglas debate - one on one with cross-examination.  I did well, making it to quarter-finals at a large college-sponsored event and later qualifying to go to State from my school league.   And the high school romance lasted until partway through our first year of college.

So what about that Pantheon?  Alice was not a fount of rhetorical knowledge or technique.  I did not get any Aha moments from her.  Instead, she was there to facilitate debate practice every Thursday night, and drove a carload of speech students to meets most Fridays, and spent time at big multi-day tourneys herding high school students to and from the college campuses.  She nudged me into events where I excelled.  Maybe my view of Alice was overshadowed by the lens of "mother of the girlfriend," but it may also be that we construct our Pantheons too much from peak experiences.  I am reminded of Paul in 1 Corinthians - there are many different gifts, all important.  Alice's gifts were not of the flashy sort.  She had the gift of being there, for years on end, organizing and facilitating our efforts.  High school speaking competition and the early exposure to a larger intellectual world gave me better thinking, writing, and presentation skills throughout the rest of my life.

Thank you, Alice.

trUUthiness

Recently a visiting minister refused to use our standard chalice-lighting song - because she deemed it racist.  The words in question?

Let there be light to drive away the darkness.
Let there be wisdom to shine on the unknown.
Let there be love to heal our aloneness.
Let each of us be a light for one another.
-- Max Landau Moss, UU minister

Can you play "spot the racism?"

The answer:  the first line - "drive away the darkness."   She asserted this to be derogatory to people of color.  Yes.  Really.

This is not my first encounter with such re-readings that place the interpreter in a privileged state of advanced moral sensibility.  We need a word for it, like Stephen Colbert's truthiness.

Humpty Dumpty (in Through the Looking Glass) said, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."  The current practitioners have taken it an Orwellian step further:  "When you use a word it means just what I choose it to mean."

I close with a thought on light and darkness from a different (apparently unenlightened) source:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, in the collected sermons Strength To Love.

The Price of Nice

Mea culpa.  This piece referred to Dan Harper pulling a post that he wrote.  I was wrong.  I have removed the original of this post, and will be revising.  My apologies to Dan and readers.

The Message Justifies the Metaphor

An all-too-frequent pattern of argument starts by mischaracterizing a physical phenomenon, raises it to a grand mystical principle, and then applies it to the human condition.  Robert Latham does this in the February 2013 issue of the Pacific Central District newsletter, moving from supposed natural phenomena to how churches should function.  The reasoning is so egregiously specious that I must comment.

Here is a quick summary of Latham's argument.

• The early scientist Christiaan Huygens observed pendulums synchronizing their motion [1].
• There is a grand principle of synchronization, also supported by the (pseudo-scientist) Itzhak Bentov [A] with a "room of grandfather clocks."
• Latham asserts the principle that everything that exists is a force field that has a rhythmic beat; the force field with the strongest power brings those around it into its beat.
• Human organizations have walls that prevent them from coming into time with the dominant beat.
• You should get rid of the walls and join the dominant beat.

 There are two different problems with the article:  logic and conclusion.

Bad Logic

First, the argument is a logical fallacy. 

Let's be boring and non-metaphysical and understand what Huygens really discovered.

• The pendulums affect each other because they have been linked together.  Latham's description is wrong.  Huygen's pendulums were not simply "sat side by side", but mounted together in a single frame in a design for a ship-going clock.  The pendulums move the frame, which transmits motion to the other pendulum.  Huygens, as a careful scientist, also performed experiments to see if was air motion that cause the synchronization, and ruled out that as a cause.  All reproductions of this result have a mechanical linkage between the two pendulums, not some mysterious force field.
• The outcome (synchronization) depends on the relative mass of the pendulums and the frame.
• If the frame is very heavy, the pendulums do not move it (much) and they do not synchronize.
• Under some conditions, the linkage can result in a "death" state where one pendulum totally stops.
• The effect that Huygens observed was actually anti-synchronization:  the pendulums are swinging in opposite directions, where they exert a zero net force on the frame.
• Finally, under some conditions, you can get two metronomes or pendulums to synchronize.

 So what are the mundane physics characterizations?

1. There is a non-mystical explanation:  there must be a mechanical linkage between the two pendulums for any effect to occur.
2. The outcome isn't simple:  depending on the pendulums and the linkage, the outcome can be nothing, synchronization, anti-synchronization, or a death state for one pendulum.
3. Nothing in these observations suggests a rhythmic force field that connects everything.

So much for the grand principle that applies to everything.

Next, his  conclusion doesn't really follow from his grand principle.  We're supposed to break down walls so we can synchronize.  But Robert, if "everything is in a force field … that has a rhythmic beat, " - it's not much of a grand force field if it can be walled off or if we need to make a choice to join it.  If rhythmic entrapment always happens - then why do we need to get on board?  Isn't it just going to happen anyway?

Latham's article is an argument by analogy.  Such arguments can be very thin ice:  false analogy is one of the standard rhetorical fallacies.  As the Wikipedia [3] article on "Analogy" notes,

(in rhetoric) analogies are sometimes used to persuade those that cannot detect the flawed or non-existent arguments.

Consider a different argument by physical analogy.  A large group marching in step across a bridge can destroy the bridge - this is why soldiers marching across a bridge are supposed to break step with each other.  We could draw an equally logically-invalid conclusions from this analogy:  we should all make sure we march to a different rhythm.

So find a better analogy not dressed up in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, or better yet skip reasoning by analogy entirely.

Bad Conclusion

Second, the argument he wants to make is thinly-disguised religious authoritarianism.  In a literal etymological sense, it is a call for fascism:  "fascism" from the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks tied together, the sticks suggesting strength through unity.  Sounds good, right?  Latham calls us to come into line with the dominant rhythm.  But his argument assumes that the dominant rhythm is the good one.  Those of us who see the call to come into line with the will to power are simply misguided.  If we just get on board, all will be well.

This aligns with the broad message from the UUA hierarchy that we all need to grant more authority to ministers and the central UUA in order to achieve, uh, um, something wonderful.  All this focus on getting on board and figuring out the hierarchy is just another sign of how lost UUism is.

Notes

[A] Latham's reference says Benton, not Bentov.
 

References
Latham's article is at http://goo.gl/rdbvf

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_sympathy

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_Analogy

[5] http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020221/full/news020218-16.html

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces

On Covenant and Creed: A Response

Even though I disagree with his diagnosis, I have to thank Thomas in On Covenant and Creed for getting me fired up and crystallizing some thoughts I've had for a long time.  We had this interchange, extracted from the longer thread:

Thomas:

So, I seek a covenant ... between each UU and their home congregation. ... Thus, we all covenant together with a single set of principles... Yes, this definition will exclude some, maybe even some who currently attend UU services or pay dues. This is the price I think we must pay to establish an identity that UUs can take pride in. We need a sense of communal identity and meaning.

Me:

I joined a UU congregation years ago. I give money to two congregations. I did not, do not, and would not “pledge to Affirm and Promote the Seven Principles.” So I guess you’re telling me that I’m not a UU. [Not in the original - I was married in a UU church, I've buried friends in a UU church.]

Thomas:

I am interested to know what you have problems with in the Principles.

I have not stated that I think the 7 Principles should be the final covenant, but they are what we have, and thus they are where we would have to work from to get where we are going.

My response is such that it should stand alone as its own posting.

So what's my problem?  My answer has three parts:  Pledge and Covenant; Principles and Creed; and a counter-proposal.

"Pledge" and Covenant

Thomas asks "what have problems [I] have with in the Principles."  While I do have issues with the Principles, addressed in the next section, my statement was not that "I have problems" with them.  I said "I [do not] pledge to Affirm and Promote" them.  This is important.  Really important.  Fundamental to what defines the Free Church since Francis David.

Why should we be covenanting to affirm etc. the Principles?  To know who is in or not?  A good person or not?  Saved or not?  I am serious here - what difference in deeds should it make that I have, or know you that you have, taken such a pledge?  If it doesn't make a difference in deeds, then what is the point?  If it does make a difference how you and I act toward one another - that's really a problem.  We have invented a boundary to know who is in and who is out.  That was my point in citing Jesus in the original post/reply thread:  everyone is supposed to be my neighbor.  "Covenant" then brings to mind one of its bad historical word associations - "restrictive."

Next, suppose that we did such a covenant on some set of really cool Principles.  These Principles are now a bludgeon.  Sally says to Joe, "I don't like what you're doing - it violates the Third Principle."  So Joe shuts up.  This is not theoretical.  I have been in the room more than once where this happened.

So not pledging to some words is not just "the way we've always done it."  It is one of the foundational choices that defines this religious tradition.  There are no magic words, none, that I have to say that someone can later say "you are violating those."

As Scott Wells said in a Giving up Unitarian Universalism for Lent:

If I hear covenant used as a coded message to clam up and step back in line, I’ll scream so loud that Cotton Mather will rise from his grave. I didn’t come to Unitarianism or Universalism for its threadbare institutions or the opportunity to conform.

Or drawing from Buddhism:  "If you fnd the True Principles on the shelf - burn them."  They would be used wrongly.

We do not want words that let us define who is in and who is out.  Otherwise we are in the position that Jesus criticized - do not even the pagans do that?

The Principles

So my primary reason for saying "I do not pledge ... Principles" is the pledge part.  Now let's take up the Principles.  I do in fact have problems with the Principles.  For those who find the Principles comforting, you can choose to skip to the next section. I have no desire to take them from you.

The Principles are timid, vague, incoherent, and lack poetry.  Davidson Loehr wrote:

Using logic to show the incoherence of the Seven Banalities feels kind of rude, like throwing melons at a little dancing bear. ... It’s important to understand how and why the Banalities are not only simplistic but also incoherent.

Timid and vague  You probably could get almost every member of the Democratic party to sign up to the Principles.  As Loehr notes, they pretty much correspond to modern American cultural liberalism.  There are no commandments, no hard work, no demands.

Incoherent  They are a grab bag of Good Things.  Some quasi-religious things - the search for truth and meaning, spiritual growth; and some procedural goals - "world community" (whatever that is) and "the use of the democratic process."  This is like the committee coming up with the Principles of

1. Motherhood
2. Apple pie
3. Robert's Rules of Order
4. Recycling

They lack poetry  This matters.  Principles are words, and words matter - it seems especially to Unitarian Universalists.  There is nothing in the Principles to compare with lines like these:

• But let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
• We hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal ...
• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven...
• I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood...

These are the kinds of words that inspire.  They have active verbs.  The propose a vision.  They get people marching.  The UU principles - they are something to be revised every twenty years or so.

A Proposal

I will step back to what I think is a shared point of view between Thomas and me:

• There is a message of value in Unitarian Universalism.
• UUism is ineffective in bringing this message to life.

If you, dear Reader, think the largest part of "ineffective" is "we ought to have a larger voice in social justice issues," then we are not on the same page and there may not be much for me to say.  Simply having a more powerful voice sounds like something more effectively done in a political party.  But if you think "ineffective" means "there is an important religious role for UUism and it's not happening," then I agree with you.

I suggest that the solution is not any of the following:

• Better governance of whatever flavor
• A stronger role at the UUA or GA to make sure the congregations do X.
• A better statement of the Principles.

I would throw away the Principles in a heartbeat.  The important stuff is in the Sources.  Move them back into first place, with this understanding:

• Being human is hard.  We often don't do it very well.
• Some people have had flashes of insight and wisdom, and they or others wrote it down.
• None of them had a monopoly.  (This is the liberal religion twist.)
• We have this accumulated wisdom as a gift.
• We have to work to claim this gift.

Rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, let's do what Theodore Parker proposed, writ large:  separate the permanent from the transient in Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and other wisdom literature.

Rather than beliefs, and creeds, and Principles, which we in the West picked up from the Greeks, perhaps we should return simply to commandments on the right way to act.  For example, Micah 6:8:

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Slightly revising for UU sensibilities this could be

Act justly
Love mercy
And walk humbly on the earth.

That pretty much covers it.  Three commandments, no Principles, work hard at the Sources, and no covenant or creed.

References

Davidson Loehr, "Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying", Journal of Liberal Religion.  http://www.meadville.edu/uploads/files/101.pdf

A post-script on Pledges

When pressed in a discussion with my wife, there are pledges I would be willing to give. I choose not to say the Pledge of Allegiance (there go my chances for elected office), because I find it inane to pledge to a flag, of all things, and offensive that it's "under God", and I am not sure what "pledging allegiance" is supposed to entail - it sound awfully obedient to me.  On the other hand, I would be willing to swear to uphold the Constitution. It starts with poetry and knows exactly what it's about.  I also made a pledge when my wife and I were married (although like good UUs, we wrote our own vows.)

Just Asking...

About the story in the UU World about "Fair Share" giving [1].

Part of the article discusses a "unified ask" - all the congregational money going directly to the UUA instead of UUA and Disticts. The discussion mentions "congregational and district leaders," but in support of the argument, Teresa Cooley references "a poll conducted by the UU Ministers Association [where] 70 percent of ministers said they wanted to move toward a unified ask."

For the most part, congregations have no knowledge of the changes happening in the UUA.  I think "congregational leaders" are being conflated with "the ministers." I think that currently all the District Executives (who, following the cite of ministers, might be the "district leaders" being mentioned) are also ministers.

The ministers are not the ones who pay the bills.

Kind of like taking a survey of the teenagers to see how much and who the family should pay for cable and phone.

References
[1] UU World, Board of Trustees hears report on ‘fair share’ giving.  http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/208991.shtml

The Velveteen Association

John Buehrens has a little ice-breaker story that he likes to tell near the start of a talk. [1]

When I was running for President of the UUA, one of the things my friends and family had to put up with was hearing me called “the evangelical rabbi of liberal religion.” Which provoked my daughter to send me this card she’d found, with a drawing of guy my age, with a beard, glasses, hair somehow all loved off on top, wearing a well-traveled robe, a prayer shawl, and a yarmulke – under the caption, “The Velveteen Rabbi,” with him asking the question: “When can I run and play with the real rabbis?”

It's a good story - it gets a laugh, it loosens up the audience.

Let's back up for a second and ask "why is it funny?"  Psychologists have several theories of humor, but one one them, proposed by no less than Immanual Kant, is "incongruity theory" - "humor arising from discrepancies between what is expected and what is observed."[2]  The audience is hearing a story about a rabbi, from a speaker who bears a physical resemblance to one sterotype of a rabbi, so our minds are thinking about Jewish teachers.  But then in the punch line we get a play on words between rabbit and rabbi, referencing the well-known story of the Velveteen Rabbit, who wants to be a real rabbit.  It's funny because we had to do a mental shift.  Rabbis aren't rabbits; Buehrens isn't Jewish; and he's being self-deprecating (which also playes into the sterotype of a lot of old Jewish stand-up comedy.)

But still and all, rabbits aren't rabbis, or vice versa.  This brings me around to today's observation.  In a recent UU World article [3] on "fair share" giving, there's a subtext about changing the nature of the UUA.  This includes

• Moving toward a "single ask" (money from the congregations only going to the UUA instead of the UUA and Districts."
• Wanting people to feel a "greater sense of identity, .... a greater sense of mutual accountability.  We want people to ask 'what is my accountability?'"

These aren't the first examples that indicate that there are those who want to make the UUA more like a real denomination.  It has been a recurring between-the-lines theme for several years.  But the UUA is an association of congregations, not persons.  No individual is a member of the UUA.  They are members of their individual congregations.  And the goal of the UUA is to serve the congregations.  That's what it is supposed to be - an organization providing shared services.  From the UUA bylaws [4],

The primary purpose of the Association is to serve the needs of its member congregations, organize new congregations, extend and strengthen Unitarian Universalist institutions and implement its principles.

It is human nature to want more power at the center to be able to direct things.  And to have more status because you are "speaking" for the "denomination."  But the UUA isn't that kind of rabbit.

References
[1] The Velveteen Rabbi:  http://uugroton.org/Sermons/buehrens-whythestork.pdf
[2] Theories of Humor:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor_(positive_psychology)
[3] UU World, "Fair Share Giving":  http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/208991.shtml
[4] UUA Bylaws, Section C-2.2  http://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/bylaws/articleii/6907.shtml

P.S. And by the way, how's that "organize new congregations" part going?

Be Careful What Lesson You Learn

Many of us are watching transfixed with horror at the ongoing mess in Europe.  It's the low-grade horror of a large slow-motion disaster movie.  I want to talk about the reasons for the disaster, and how it could be (or could have been) different.

One of the major reasons for the disaster is the design of the European Central Bank (ECB.)  The ECB is and is not like our Federal Reserve.  An important difference is that the ECB cannot buy government debt.  This means that in times of economic crisis, the ECB cannot step in and act as a "lender of last resort", one of the historical roles of a central bank.

Why this limitation?  Because the Germans, as a condition for creating the Euro, required that the sole role of the ECB was price stability.  This is because the Germans have a visceral fear of hyperinflation.  You can understand their reasoning.  Hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s led to an unstable political environment.  That environment helped the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.  Not wanting a repeat - let's make sure we never have hyperinflation.

But what if the Germans learned the wrong lesson?  In 1919, after the Peace of Versailles, John Maynard Keynes wrote a book called The Economic Consequences of the Peace.  Three important facts about the post-war (WW I) world are:

1. The world went back on to fixed exchange rates (the gold standard.)
2. The fixed exchange rates were  at the wrong level, causing persistent outflows from Germany
3. Huge wartime reparations were imposed on Germany, which it was in no position to repay.

So with this setting:  what was Germany to do?  The government financed itself by simply printing money, leading to the hyperinflation and the rest.  But was the hyperinflation the source "cause" of the subsequent problems, or just an intermediate symptom?  Instead of blaming hyperinflation, the lesson should be the underlying forces that led to the hyperinflation.

Consider the parallels with today.

1. The Euro-zone countries are locked into a fixed exchange rate, similar to the gold standard.
2. Some countries in the Euro-zone are not currently competitive, using the exchange rate under which they entered the Euro.  Instead of printing money, as in the 1920s, the Euro-zone countries or their banks ran up high levels of debt, which everyone else pretended (for a long time) were repayable.
3. Huge repayment plans are being imposed on some countries, which they will not be able to repay for decades, if ever.

So what is going to happen?  The austerity programs being imposed on the debtor countries are politically unsustainable.  Radical parties of the right and the left are on the rise.  The Germans think the solution is even more austerity and putting them in charge.

Without a different mindset, this won't end well.  The lesson to be drawn from the 1920s is not "avoid hyperinflation at all costs."  Instead, the lessons should be

• Avoid impossible fixed exchange rates between differing economies, and
• Don't impose impossible debt payment plans.

If you don't learn these two lessons, then as Keynes noted, there will be consequences.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Finance:_The_Bankers_Who_Broke_the_World
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/krugman-the-great-abdication.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_central_bank/index.html

Diversity on my doorstep (literally)

The middle of the street outside our flat has been sinking for several years.  (The western half of San Francisco was sand dunes up until the 1920s; underneath it's still just sand.)  SF public works shows up periodically, dumps another load of asphalt over it, which also proceeeds to sink.  This week, we must have finally made the construction schedule.  There's a crew and a flotilla of large equipment, performing construction archeology on layers of asphalt, concrete, brick, then sand.

Lunch time comes and they hit the Safeway across the street, so there's the all-Hispanic work crew down there sitting at the edge of the hole in the street.  Lunch consists of cokes, spicy chicken wings, and sushi, while conversing in Spanish.  They casually throw the chicken bones in the hole - it's going to be covered with concrete in an hour anyway.  The Chinese ancestry mailman walks up the street, asks "what you guys do to street?"  They answer back, he walks on.  Immigrants from former Soviet states walk down the street to the Muni stop.

Is this a great country or what?

Which Path? Saul of Tarsus and William of Iowa

Around the year 35, Saul of Tarsus travelled from Jerusalem to Damascus.  While on the road to Damascus he had a conversion experience.  The change was so radical that thereafter in the Bible he is not Saul, the Hebrew, but Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Paul's conversion epitomizes a strand of Christian tradition.  Another example is the Apostles, seven weeks after the crucifixion of Jesus.  During the Jewish festival of Pentecost they suddenly have a religious experience that makes them come out to the streets and begin preaching.  The Christian Pentecostal movement takes its name from this event.  Much of modern Protestant Christianity has a focus on a single, point-in-time, life-changing conversion.

In 1947, W. Edwards Deming made a different journey.  During the American Occupation, he travelled to Japan to assist with their 1951 census.  While there, he also lectured and trained Japanese engineers in quality control techniques.  He taught the value of continuous incremental improvements in industrial processes - not a search for great breakthroughs, just a steady focus on practices.  Deming's teachings were foundational to Japan's post-war industrial success in firms such as Toyota and Sony:  continuous improvement in quality, productivity, and empowerment of each worker.

I was reminded of Deming's legacy by an article in The Economist about Honeywell Corporation, until recently considered "one of America's most messed-up firms."  But over the last few years Honeywell performed a remarkable turnaround.  They did not do it by finding a magic silver bullet.  Instead, their new CEO had spent time at Toyota factories in the U.S. and decided to implement a process of continuous improvement at Honeywell.  Each morning, every worker takes part in a small group meeting, held standing up and no more than fifteen minutes long.  Each employee is expected to contribute two new ideas for improvement, however small, per month.

In Japan, Deming's teaching found fertile ground.  But until the 1980s, Deming was a prophet without honor in his homeland.

Did Deming's teaching find a better initial reception in Japan than in the U.S. because of a difference in religious roots?  Did it seem more natural to a Buddhist tradition than a Pauline tradition?  Much of Western culture emphasizes the radical conversion experience, as in Paul or Pentecost.  But Buddhist heritage emphasizes steady practice.  In sitting meditation you are attentive, notice, let go, and just focus on your breathing.  Some days it goes well, others not so well, but stay with the practice and you will get better at it.  Do you achieve enlightenment?  Who knows.  Do you become more attentive?  Probably.  Can you continue in improving your practice?  Yes.

Relate this to current Unitarian Universalism:  radical transformation is a buzzword in some UU circles.  But is this a piece of Christian baggage that we would be well rid of?  Radical change sometimes happens.  But like winning the lottery, it is of note exactly because it is so rare.

Buddhist teaching and the success of Deming's students argue that we are better served by attentive practice and incremental change.  It's not as sexy as winning the transformation lottery,  but many small enlightenments may take us where we want to go.  And if they don't - at least we'll be enlightened.

Oil and Other Costs

As a former energy economist with a junk-brain full of trivia facts, I fell back asleep the other morning computing the cost of oil relative to the total economy, after hearing an NPR story with some presidential candidates blathering on about oil prices.  As I returned to sleep, I noticed the result was about the same magnitude as another number.

More precise than my mental calculations, here are some statistics in Harper's Index style.

U.S. Daily oil consumption, million barrels:  18

Yearly consumption, million barrels:  6,570

Round number price of a barrel of oil:  $100

Cost of U.S. oil consumption for on year:  $657 billion

U.S. Defense Department budget, 2010:  $663 billion

The last two numbers are surprisingly similar. Of course, that is pure coincidence based on the price of oil and current consumption.  But it makes you wonder how much we could reduce the last number if we reduced the first number.

I'll Have What (S)he's Having!

A minister I respect deeply has written his third blog post expressing his disquiet about the "Whose Are We" training.  I share his misgivings and more.

"Whose Are We" is a training taking place during UU Ministerial Association (UUMA) chapter retreats around the country, starting in the Fall of 2010.  The training starts with a sermon by Sarah Lammert (now Director of Ministries and Faith Development at the UUA), followed by a series of exercises. 

The Introduction

Rev. Lammert tells of attending a UU summit meeting focused on lay and professional ministerial formation.

We started with a worship service, and the very first words uttered were those of Rev. Jon Luopo, the minister of the University Unitarian Church of Seattle. He told this story:

It seems that in Seattle the interfaith clergy organization has a tradition of asking senior colleagues to share their life odysseys. On this particular occasion, a Roman Catholic Priest was telling his story, and he said that his life had been in large measure a failure. He remembered the heady days of Vatican II and how hopeful he and his generation of liberal priests had been that real change was coming to the church he loved so dearly. And yet; these many years later he felt that the church had if anything become hardened and deeply conservative, and his dreams had not been realized.

Now, this priest was someone who was valued among his interfaith colleagues, and they were somewhat hurt and stunned by his revelation. And yet; one colleague noted, despite the severity of his words, his demeanor seemed quite peaceful and content. “How can you claim that your life was a failure, and yet appear so calm and serene?” “I know whose I am.” replied the priest. “I know whose I am.”

The priest knows the ground of his faith - even though the institution of the church has let him down, his God is still there, permanent, reliable, and certain.  Most UUs don't share the God of the priest.  Even among UU theists, few pray to a personal God.  And no UUs inhabit the certainty conferred by two thousand years of tradition.

The UU ministers are like the woman at the next table in When Harry Met Sally:  "I'll have what she's having!"  In an attempt to find the priest's spiritual peace, they have taken a shortcut.  Skip the path common to many faith traditions -- years of religious practice and submission to God and Church.  More importantly, skip the Certainty.

The certainty that underlies the priest's response is fundamentally inconsistent with Unitarian Universalism.  Inherent to liberal religion is humility with respect to the certainty of our beliefs, our experience, and our conclusions.  Whether willingly or not, we left the comfort of certainty behind in the Enlightenment.  Certainty is the price we paid when we turned away from revealed truth to accept religious plurality -- and gained the freedom to find and follow our own spiritual path.

The First Exercise:  "Whose are You"

The participants split into pairs, and sit facing each other.  They take the role of Questioner and Responder.

Questioner:  "Whose are you?”

Responder:  a short phrase or word that comes to mind

Questioner:  “God be merciful. Whose are you?”

Responder:  another short phrase or word that comes to mind

Questioner:  “God be merciful. Whose are you?”

….

They continue in this way until bell rings, after about five minutes.  (If you have every done an exercise like this, five minutes can be a long time.)

When I read this, my immediate reaction was "Oh no - I know this exercise!"  This is straight out of various Mind Dynamics trainings.  I have been in it.  To sit across from someone and focus on them for an extended period of time evokes a powerful emotional response.  It is not something we normally do.  Depending on your perspective, it is a powerful method for getting deep inside the participants, or a cheap psychological parlor trick.  You can evoke the emotional response, but you don't get deep answers out of cheap parlor tricks.  This exercise is fundamentally manipulative.  I'm not sure if it has any appropriate use.

Then I recognized the words of the Responder.  It is the Kyrie!  Kýrie, eléison:  Lord have mercy.  These words have power - so powerful that they have been used for over a millennium in the Catholic Mass.  Like the exercise, the Mass uses the Kyrie in a repetitive fashion.  So the UU ministers have reached out to an ancient liturgy and put it in a training exercise.  (Talk about cultural and religious misappropriation.)  After a few repetitions of "God be merciful," where is the Responder's mind expected to go?

Take note - I do not have problem with God language.  But I think the story and the exercise go way beyond God language - it's hard to work with the story and exercise without evoking theism - which is a different thing entirely.  And there's the problem.  Unitarian Universalism, as understood by a great many of its congregants, allows for a non-theistic stance.  But this training does not.  It comprehends spirituality in a dualistic theistic fashion - God as an entity not identical with the world, who acts in the world.

This training has chosen a cheap answer.  The broader culture understands a deity.  Many who have come in to Unitarian Universalism also understand a deity; they just don't like the one in their old religion.  "Whose are We" takes the approach, to bring back spirituality, let's bring back a deity.  A personal, dualistic God is a short path to spirituality - but it is not the only path.  And it is a path that Unitarian Universalists left with Theodore Parker's search for the Transient and Permanent.

Liberal skepticism was not totally absent.  In some trainings, the participants revolted - they resisted the "God be merciful" response, and chose their own less theistic response.

 

After the Training (1)

The ministers were encouraged to write sermons relating to the Whose Are We training.  Many did so. 

One esteemed minister here the in Bay Area gave such a sermon.  She named who she belonged to - her family, her partner, her parents, her ministerial colleagues; the body of the earth, whales, dolphins, and her watershed.

Missing from the list was her congregation.  Later that year she left her church for a fund-raising job at the UUA.  I guess we know whose she wasn't.

After the Training (2)

The Pacific Central District of the UUMA held their training in Fall 2010.  During the same three day retreat the ministers "heard each other's pain" about their relationship with Cilla Raughley, the District Executive, and wrote a letter effectively requesting her firing.  I question the professional wisdom of mixing a training session designed to evoke emotional response with what should have been a thoughtful discussion about a covenantal relationship with District staff and lay leadership. 

God be merciful, indeed.

Movie Review: "The Heart of the Game"

Four thumbs up.  The plot twists are unbelievable, except it's a documentary, and real life is sometimes like that.  The film follows the coach and players of a Seattle high school girls basketball team for six seasons.  Heart-warming but not sappy, thought-provoking but not polemical.  Get it, watch it, you'll be glad you did.

Documentaries that span long time periods always make me wonder about the world of film-makers.  When they start, they have no idea that the process will go on for years.  For every one of these multi-year documentaries that go where no one could have seen, there must be many more that just start and stop, and maybe turn into some short documentary.

It reminds me of two other multi-year documentaries that you should watch:

"The Congregation", about a new minister in a Methodist church.  Events go places no one could have expected.  (http://www.pbs.org/thecongregation/)

"Preacher's Sons", about the Unitarian minister Greg Stewart, his partner, and their five adopted sons.  (http://www.preacherssons.com/film/)

Minister Says "Go Get Your Own Denomination"

Holy Grail or Sacred Cow?  Perhaps both.  A respected UU minister asserts that if you are not on board with Policy Governance, you should find another denomination.

In the Policy Governance mailing list, some participants have questioned aspects of Policy Governance and whether it is the only or best approach to church growth.

Minister X, referring to a previous post extolling Policy Governance, writes

…  I kind of think it should be the last word for this chat group, which could now be split in two--one chat for those who want to move forward with a kind of governance that will bring us a brighter future, and one chat for those who want to bitch and moan about the loss of what was comfortable.. Those of you in the latter group, please go get your own chat, if not your own denomination.

First, consider what this means coming from a UU minister.  Is your higher calling really to reorganize the church and be sure that those that dissent leave?

The pros and cons of Policy Governance and or any organizational structure are unimportant.  What is important is what these debates say about the state of the movement and its leadership.  There is no mission, no vision.  If there was, how we organize would be a minor task.  We would choose some approaches that work and move on - it would not be such a large subject of Board and congregational focus.  The UUA is on a quest for salvation by re-organization.

What lies behind the contempt for dissent?  The dismissive tone fits a widespread UU pattern of first characterizing someone as resistant to change, negative, or anti-clerical, then shunning them.  Maybe two centuries as the Standing Order in Massachusetts runs deep in the Unitarian cultural DNA.  (The Unitarians were the state-sanctioned, tax-supported church in Massachusetts until 1835.)  This is not a pastoral voice.  It is a management voice - and a rather harsh one at that.  It puts Policy Governance as its doctrine, and the quest for organizational efficiency as its sacrament.

Folks, this is a church.  As a free-thinking, non-creedal community, we are supposed to care for all, even the dissenters.  We are in business of saving souls - all of them, not just the ones that agree with you.  And if you don't understand that, maybe you're in the wrong line of work.

What Did Your Church Do This Sunday?

We are going through the greatest economic disaster in most of our lifetimes, one that is taking a huge human toll all around us.  Was it appropriate last Sunday (Labor Day) to reflect on issues like the value of work, the history of the Labor movement, the massive injustices in the distribution of income and wealth in our country, the pain in the lives of so many of our fellow citizens, and what our response should be?

This Sunday is one of those Round Number anniversaries of September 11, 2001.  One of our cultural rituals on these special anniversaries is to pause  and take stock of where we have been.  The 9/11 attacks provide a host of spiritual, moral, and social issues on which we could reflect.

In the midst of the Great Recession, and a Sunday that falls exactly 10 years after the attacks of 9/11, you might think that the choice of sermon topics was compelling, even obligatory.  What did UU churches choose to celebrate or commemorate on the first two Sundays of September, 2011? 

While two thirds of our Bay Area churches had in-gatherings and Water Communion, less than half commemorated either Labor Day or September 11th.  Out of 20 churches, only three addressed  both.

What world do Unitarian Universalists live in and what do they hold important?

Yes, we have friends and neighbors who have lost jobs and lost homes, but the Great Recession hasn't fallen as hard on us as on most Americans.  Most UUs have college degrees.  As of August 2011, 76% of those with a college degree were in the labor force, compared to 60% of those with a high school degree.  And the college educated are mostly finding jobs:  their unemployment rate was 4.3% versus 9.6% for those with a high school education.  This is Somebody Else's recession.

Our usual religious language is completely inadequate to the task of confronting 9/11.  The Seven Principles don't say anything about suffering, sin, evil, or a moral framework to judge good and bad responses to 9/11.  Most of our congregations have few members in the military, police, or firefighters.   We don't see the face of those who bear the burden of our government's decisions in responding to 9/11.

So we once again look inward after taking the summer off from religion?  The past two Sundays offered the opportunity to give witness to important moral issues of the day and, perhaps more importantly,  to minister to those to who come to us seeking comfort .  What would a visitor think we are about?

My Unitarian Universalist Conversion Experience

Once upon a time in a younger universe my wife and I were in the long-distance dating phase.  It was the first trip where I had flown to her city.  On Saturday, she asked if I would be willing to go to church in the morning.

Church!?  Huh!?  She's cute, she's smart, but she has a religion thing?  Deep breath.  What kind of church?  Unitarian.  What kind of religion do you believe in?  I think of myself as a kind of Christian.

OK, bring out my personal way-back machine.  In my high school years I had what William James refers to as a Variety of Religious Experience.  (And as a good nerd I promptly read James.)  I interpreted this experience in a cultural context and got baptized.  A nice civilized Methodist water-on-the-head baptism in my mother's church, after my girlfriend's Lutheran minister wisely refused me.

In college I discovered the group Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF.)  IVCF was right up my alley.  They had a an emphasis on careful reading of the Bible with analysis of the historical background and meaning of a passage, not just quoting Bible verses.  I went on weekend retreats to learn to do Bible study and then lead a study group in my dorm room.  I was a self-professed Jesus Freak.

But I never really got to the point of "witnessing" and attempting to "bring someone to Jesus."  The pull to me was that the Jesus I was studying in the New Testament was not the insipid twit of my childhood surrounded by lambs and lions with a sickly sweet smile.  This Jesus talked about justice and tough commandments to love everyone.  And in a slap to the moralizing modern Christians, his very first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding when Mom tells him the drinks are running out; and the wine was so good that everyone noted how odd the host was for holding back the good stuff until the end of the party.  Great moral teacher, cool miracles.

While IVCF emphasized the reading of scriptural texts, we all knew the answers in the back of the book.  Jesus might be clever, tough, loving, and critical, but we all knew he was part of the Trinity, was born of a Virgin, and rose from the dead.  Just like good Marxists, analysis was encouraged, but it all had to stay within the confines of overall correct doctrine.

As the years stretched into graduate school, the IVCF model didn't really provide anything for me, and I felt no need to attend any church.  I reset to a vague mystical-atheist stance - I suggested that I thought that there might be some kind of Deity on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; I was comfortable with the Tao and Buddhism.

Pop out of my way-back machine.  There I am sitting with Mary asking me if I'll go to church, and claiming to be some kind of Christian.  From the very start, our relationship was always intellectually engaged.  Let's see what the hell she's talking about.  Take a deep breath and walk into this intellectual minefield.

Christian, huh?  So do you believe in the Resurrection?

No.

Virgin birth?
No.
Trinity?
No.
But those are standard Christian doctrine - if you say you're Christian, you have to believe in those.
Unitarians don't.

Pause.  As a good liberally-educated nerd, I knew the name vaguely.  I hadn't parsed it.  Unitarians - I knew of Anti-Trinitarians.  But that was a battle of centuries past.  Wait a minute - you're a heretic!  I thought they were all killed off a long time ago.  Nope - we've got a whole church full.  Some think of themselves as Christian, some Buddhist, some Pagan.  The ministers refers to a fair amount of Buddhism in his sermons.

Hmm.  This is a whole different kind of church.  Heretics, that's OK.  All right, I'll go to church with you.

* * * * *

More than fifteen years later I'm in still in that church.  It's my community - the people who visit me in the hospital and bring over food to us when I come home.

My home church falls far short of its potential.  The larger UUA movement is maddening and infuriating and possibly fatally flawed.  But I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson who wrote "I rejoice that that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief … that there is not now a young man living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."  His forecast was off, but his position sound.  Unitarian Universalism is my theological home - where else could I go when starting from a position of  Reason as arbiter of belief?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Scene:  7 AM at Grand Teton National Park.  I'm walking sleepily over to the lodge to get us coffee.  Walking behind me are two girls in their late teens.  They're going on about this and that.  Then one girl says

So I was in my room last night, and Jason texts me.  It's like 11:10 at night, so I text back "It's 11 at night.  Where are you?"  He texts "I'm at a party."  I text back, "Dude - you're at a party.  Stop texting me and talk to the people you're with."

'Nuff said.