Reconciliation

The Presidential primaries are upon us. Circumstances have whittled down the large field of Republican candidates a little. And yet another non-Romney hopeful, Newt Gingrich, has risen to the top of the most-popular-by-poll list. (The pushback on Romney, I maintain, is his staunch Mormon identity. But that’s a topic for another time.)

I started this blog in 2007 during the last Presidential campaign cycle with special focus on religious, politics and the American Experience. It’s time for me to once again pick up that thread.

It’s not that the campaigns and debates to date have been free of religious discourse. Indeed, several of the debates have focused on the candidate’s religious perspectives. Once again, the self-proclaimed socially conservative candidates are generally against same sex marriage and abortion. This was expected.

Something of a surprise is the impact on public opinion of sexual morality in the candidates’ lives. Herman Cain dropped out of the pack of candidates when accused of work place sexual harrasment, plus an accusation of a long standing adulterous relationship.

Gingrich, now on his third marriage, has confessed to committing adultery during his previous marriages, including an affair while he was leading the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, who was being held up to scruntiny, in part, for his sexual indiscretions. Curiously, Gingrich first explained his own past behavior  hinged on loving his country too much and working too hard.

He had an adulterous affair with current wife. But she also led him to convert to Catholicism, an identity that Gingrich is using in a very clever way.

In the most recent debate, fellow debaters challenged Gingrich directly or indirectly about his behavior relative to his marriages. He responded to one accusation, saying, “I said up-front, openly, I’ve made mistakes at times. I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness; I’ve had to seek reconciliation. I’m also a 68-year-old grandfather.”  (The latter has faint echoes of Henry Hyde's excuse of "youthful indiscretion.")

In the Catholic tradition confession (before a priest) and reconciliation (through the Eucharist) converge in a sacrament of forgiveness. In two sentences Gingrich invoked the notion that God had forgiven him for his misdeeds. And I add, by implication, if God has forgiven, shouldn’t mere mortals forgive him and move on, too?

It’s perilous to take to task such a fundamental and long-standing doctrine of the Roman church, now known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Many of us have a more visceral sense of moral justice, somewhere along the spectrum of penance and punishment.

My 95 year old mother, a lifelong Roman Catholic has come to question plastic grace. When I asked her what she thought about Gingrich’s pronouncement regarding reconciliation, she said, “So he can be a sinner all his life, become a Catholic late in life, confess, and be forgiven. He gets to start all over?”

In the Protestant, as well as the Catholic, tradition in America, the notion of forgiveness--either by being born again or by confession--is a religious center and has seeped out to marble the popular culture. It is often said that Americans quickly forgive public individuals who have been sinners, in one fashion for another, to a lesser or greater degree. (Sin is a theme for another day, too.)

As I noted earlier, Gingrich is very clever in his phrasing. Implicitly, he challenges us to argue, not against his character, but against a doctrine at the center of the Roman Catholic tradition that he has recently adopted. Remember, Gingrich implies that he has been forgiven according to Catholic doctrine.

He has deftly shifted the focus from himself to an institution and its theology.  He is clever.

Selections for the Holidays

Throughout December, I'll be posting selections from my recently published Holiday Anthology on a new blog "If Only for the Season."   UUism's openness allows us to celebrate the many Mid-Winter Festivals with gusto.  Here's my first selection.

Keep the “X” in Xmas

preview on Amazon

One of my earliest Christmas sermons (c. 1980) was titled “Keep the X in Xmas.” And that would have been more than twenty-five years ago in a far-away place called Youngstown, in a long-ago time called the 20th century.

I recall that I was playing off a then current campaign by certain Christian groups not to use this common shorthand of Xmas. They contended that this was just one more ploy–a conspiracy really–by a Godless and hostile culture to secularize the Christian spirit of Christmas.

If you Google the four letter word Xmas, you can navigate to the Wikipedia notation (it’s first in the list) that says, in part: “Some people believe that the term is part of an effort to 'take Christ out of Christmas' or to literally 'cross out Christ';[citation needed] it is also seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas or a vehicle for pushing political correctness, or as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers).”

There are time-honored justifications to use X to represent Christ, but I took the clever tack a quarter a century ago, that X stood for an x-factor: the mystery and wonder of the traditional Nativity tale. 

I also strained to explain a deeper quality in X, something that is truly timeless at the Winter Solstice, as enacted by the ancients who built bonfires on hilltops and rolled flaming wheels down those hilltops to coax the waning sun to once again wax toward the spring equinox.

For me the X-factor is real and still beyond my ability to describe fully: it’s what converges within and beneath and beyond at this time of year, something that motivates our spirits to break out in Mid-Winter festivals.

Then and now, I liberally call myself a pagan drawn to the natural, cycling rhythms of our earth-home. [p. 45]

Thanksgiving Meditation: An Apple Accounting

[This is a personal favorite, inspired by a year spent in the region of  the great orchards of central New York State.  It appeared in my 1998 book A Place of Your Own.]

I know of no better way to stimulate the Harvest Season's deep sense of gratitude then to make an Apple Accounting.

Indulge your senses, awaken memory, and stimulate gratitude with an ordinary, humble apple – fresh, waxy, plump, and red. Take one from the bowl. Polish it to a rich glow, in which you can see your reflection. Encounter its natural beauty.

Before that first wonderful bite, imagine:  The March thawing of the earth and the first flow of sap rushing through winter stiff branches – aching from dormancy and itching for life. The cool showers of April seeping into roots and swelling buds. The May perfume of astonishingly white apple blossoms, blushed with pink– buzzed and kissed by bees. The steady green growth of youthful June. Swelling days and the embrace of heavy nights in July. August's ripening and deepening colors. September's coolness penetrating deep into the tangy flesh, sweetening as it chills. The yellow glow of October’s harvest moon waxing the red skin.

Winter melts to spring; spring matures to summer; summer ripens to autumn: the unity of life from blossom through fruit. In the intimations of the cold and heat, drought and rain, sunshine and darkness, fair weather and storm, envision the roundness of the days and the cycles of the earth. And hidden deep in the flesh, know that seeds wait to renew life through eternity.

As you pause, hold the fruit in your hand, feeling its heft and hardness. Run your fingers over the smoothness of the skin. Smell the sweet, fruity perfume. Once again see your reflection, as though the apple holds you in its meaning even as you hold the apple's meaning in your imagination.

Now take a bite. Savor textures and tastes. In the crunch and juice, in the firmness and yielding of the flesh, in the tartness and sweetness, you know the proportion and goodness of things. Here is evidence of Nature's beauty, bounty, and order.

Remember your reflection in the Apple skin. Nature has blessed you, too.

Let your personal memory quicken and take an accounting of your life through your days and seasons – an accounting that brings you the realization of your good fortune to be a living, sensing, feeling, thinking creature.

In this apple accounting, you experience firsthand a genuine Thanksgiving for the natural miracle of Life, in the scheme of things so improbable yet inevitable; so fragile, yet tenacious and abundant.

Respectfully Yours and Mine

I have one daughter, now an adult living in Brea, CA with two young children of her own.  One of my great pleasures is watching her being fully embedded in the timeless  art of being a nurturing mother—providing physical care yes, but more, passing through the generations love and guidance, while taking joy and satisfaction  in her 7 year old son Brett and her 2 year old daughter Bridget.

The year Katie was 9, I was intern minister in Syracuse NY.  We lived in a government subsidized town house packed together with other town houses in a little complex.  The complex was atumble with kids.  I remember most of all the sound of plastic tires—Big Wheels—racing over the asphalt pavement at all hours of the day.

Katie had a lot of playmates in that confined and family-packed place, including several girls her age.  Some were nice and some weren’t.  One girl, her name was Becky I remember, lorded it over Katie throughout the year we lived there.  Becky took every opportunity to tell Katie that whatever she had or did was better than what Katie had or did.

This irked Katie to no end.  However, Katie, even at  9 was able to process Becky’s ways.  Once Becky blurted out in the presence of Katie's Mom, “I like my Mommy, better than your Mommy.” 

Now think of all the possible responses -- different ways of tearing down Becky’s Mom and lifting up Katie’s own Mom.  But Katie gave a response that is among the wisest responses possible, which I’ve long considered to be among the best insight/advice I’ve ever heard.

Katie said simply, “Of course you like your Mommy better.  She’s your Mommy.”

Think about that inborn wisdom – that whatever is ours we like the best, whether it’s our political party, or our sports team, or our school, or our whatever…  (Notice that we claim so many things as ours.)

Just because something is ours and we like it the best, doesn’t mean it’s categorically the best, but from within our own experience we like it better than anything, anywhere else.

My daughter taught me to let others take pride in and express loyalty to what is theirs, while maintaining my pride in and loyalty to what is mine.  I've found this outlook/strategy anxiety-reducing and respectful.

Exultation and Imitation

Gingko Outside My Front Door

Being the oldest
  of its kind –

It is the gingko's

Solemn duty

To speak

On behalf of all trees.

It does this

By waiting

And by holding

Until kindred trees

Have given their color

And dropped their leaves.

Then, having distilled

  a season of sunlight,

And having bided its time, –

Almost overnight, –

The gingko's

Fan-shaped leaves

Take on the color

  of the sun

So that

The waning days

  of autumn color

Are a yellow exultation;

When

  in a final act

  of imitation

The ginkgo

Drops  leaves

  to the earth

  in a rush –

Like sunlight

  radiating across

  the cosmos

To puddle

  On a barren planet.

Philosophy of Life, Yes

So, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry believes that he has been called by God to politics generally and by implication specifically to be President. That sort of thinking characterizes a significant branch of evangelical Christianity – that there is intimacy and communication between the believer and God. At the very least, such thinking is prideful. At the worst, such thinking leads to unexamined righteousness. When God is on your side, whatever actions you take are justified. (I remember what Bob Dylan wrote long ago:" You don't count the dead, when God’s on your side.")

I'm thinking about this as I'm double tasking: watching a CNN news report on Perry’s religion and reading a New York Times interview with poet laureate Philip Levine, now a wise 83 years old. In the interview, Levine, a blue collar intellectual, muses, "There is a kind of Protestant ethic that believes that if you're really a good person, God will reward you with a full table and a garage full of automobiles and a beautiful husband or wife – that we should be judged by what the world has delivered to us."

When this outlook is magnified, it often leads to a theology of prosperity, that the Bible proposes Christians will reap financial and other material rewards by virtue of their faith. This is a distorted and malicious doctrine of how Jesus lived and what he taught. It is a slippery slope to unrestrained materialism and the perversion of greed. 

Yesterday, in my Sunday sermon, I spoke to the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. In my preface, I described my own long progression as a student of religion and ethics. As a matter of personal choice, but also as a teacher with my own liberal assembly, I'm now most interested in advocating an effective philosophy of life free of the traps and trappings of traditional religion.

As I prepared yesterday's remarks on the philosophy of Stoicism, I was pleased to find that that much of my outlook and many of my disciplines resonate to the Stoic way. In particular, I admire and cultivate character based upon virtue: the macrocosm of Nature rflected in the microcosm of Self.

I envision the notion of a philosophy of life becoming increasingly my focus – a focus well-suited to an age seeking a center that will hold.  Where is that center?  Where it's always been: in the Self.

Respect

[A  few years ago I devised a sermon, "Seven Effective Attitudes of Unitarian Universalists"   One of the seven attitudes I identified is respect.]


One of the important twentieth century historians of Unitarianism cited Individualism, Freedom of Belief and Conscience, and Toleration as the great markers of our tradition.

Toleration always struck me as condescending, a passive rather than active attitude.  Acceptance is only a little better.  (Remember Thomas Carlyle’s famous response to Margaret Fuller’s declaration, “I accept the Universe.”  He said, “Egad, she better!”)  I favor Respect, which contains Acceptance and Toleration and more.

We respect the many religions of the world, not as much for their beliefs as for their origins from the same human impulse to seek meaning and purpose, as well as for the role these religions play in family and community.  Such diversity is a fact of human culture.  And then the great world religions each bring a different, relatively unique emphasis to Universal Religion.  For example among the Abrahamic religions, Judaism brings Justice, Christianity brings Love, and Islam brings Surrender to God’s will.

Our attitude of respect relates to what we call our first principle: “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”  Our reasoning begins with respect for self that logically extends to our fellowkind.  Two hundred years ago, our forebears emphasized that human kind was indeed formed in the image of God and that we had a natural divinity, too.  In a similar sense to the Buddhists bowing before one another to acknowledge the Buddha-spirit in one another, so we figuratively bow to the divinity of one another.  Some of us might be more comfortable with an Enlightenment recognition of egalitarianism and rights, but we nevertheless agree that what each of us recognizes in self extends empathetically to all.

In recent years our respect has expanded to include not only other forms of life, but also to include the whole of the earth.  This has been expressed in another principle that declares, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

In my mind, Respect has an element of Reverence.  Indeed, Reverence is Respect written large.

Third Story: Death

2005 Standford University

"My third story is about death," Steve Jobs said in his now famous “The Commencement Speech, delivered in the throes of pancreatic cancer. His third story was an intimate personal story--a story that resonates to a universal human story. 

I've spent thirty years putting death into its proper context. Steve Jobs did so in this single speech.  He spoke from personal experience with brevity, sensitivity, and just the right tone and authority for our age. That’s why it’s appearing everywhere, offering sobering inspiration. For example, CNN played the speech in its entirety during the morning broadcast following Mr. Jobs’ death.

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

The he told the newly minted graduates, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Such carpe diem counsel is nothing new.

I'm completing a book, Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes that highlights Ecclesiastes down-to-earth philosophy of life, dating from 2300 years ago.  It draws from an even older vein of wisdom found on 4000-year-old Babylonian tablets, collected as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Similar advice comes from a variety of ages and cultures:  Experience and gain knowledge. Enjoy life with the one whom you love. Work hard and enjoy the fruits of your toil-- figuratively, wine and bread in moderation.  Don't let the things you pursue and acquire overwhelm you.  Never forget, even in your youth, that death is your fate.

Steve Jobs’ death is a "Big Chill" moment for Baby Boomers.  We’ve paused and are reflecting.

He's given us incredible technologies. He's also given us something more valuable via that simple, remarkable speech, yet another expression of a timeless philosophy of life: know that you are mortal and that your death can come at any moment; nevertheless, live and enjoy the life you have to its fullness.  

And by example, he recommended that when death comes, meet it with dignity, grace, and no regrets.

As Deep as Time, As Broad as the Earth

Click to visit Monarch Watch

[This is the time of the year monarchs flock and begin a monumental trek to Mexico mountains to winter.  Here's my dedication for UCH's Monarch Way Station: September 2007.]

This small parcel of land

      set aside by intention and action,

Has already been blessed

      by the natural graces

      and ordinary miracles

Of Nature

                    Where all Life

Is embraced by myriad bonds

      of mutuality.

Today we affirm Relationships

      as deep as time

     and as broad as the Earth —

An Interdependent Web Of Life

In which Butterfly and Human Being

      alike has an ordained place.

Isn't this Web of Life

Amazing?

Isn't this Web of Life

Wonderful?

Isn't this Web of Life

Sacred?

Here we  gather  and care for

      plants of the Prairie

      to feed Caterpillars

And to provide a Way‒Station

      for Monarchs

Wending their way in Autumn

      to a Winter Sanctuary

      a thousand  miles distant

And returning like clockwork

  In the Spring.

This is our pledge and our prayer:

May we be Agents of Life

Finding the ways and implementing the means

      to sustain and enhance life

      in all of its forms

On this Blessed  Earth.

Here and now,

Everywhere,

Forevermore.

Animal Blessing Ceremony

May the animals in our lives

– indeed, in our world –

reveal to us deeper relationships,

life answering to life;

causing us to revere Life's Spirit

in all manifestations:

in the intricate and beautiful

Web Of Existence, yes,

but even more

through myriad fellow creatures –

especially those companion animals –

whose presence bless us daily.


[The animals and their friends paraded down and around the aisles, then together stopped.]

With intention, compassion, and abiding affection,

we pause to hear the murmur of life

in this hallowed room

as we contemplate

the meaning and presence of our fellow creatures

in sacred silence.

[after the silence]

Say aloud the names
you have given your companion animals.

Now everyone say with me:

“We are all in this together.”

Simple Prayers Wherever You Go

Kindle ebook

It has stayed with me for more than a quarter of a century, James Madison Barr's "I don't pray, but if I did, this is what I would say..."  (Barr, now decased, was longtime humanist Unitarian minister in Memphis.)


Prayer isn't among my personal spiritual disciplines, at least formally.  But when my adult daughter, a member of the Anaheim, CA UU society alluded to her prayer life, I put together a little book for her as a Holiday gift.  I called it Simple Prayers.


In the brief introduction to my ten simple prayers, I spoke of prayer as a matter of self-transcendence.  I explained I sought to strip prayer to its essence with the hope that those who use my offerings will be able to use a particular prayer throughout the day.


Here's one of the ten simple prayers:

9

Mercy and Forgiveness,

Scour my mind and rectify my heart.

I think the resulting book, published on Create Space and available on Amazon, is handsome.  It includes blank pages for journaling--keeping a record of one's prayer life..  It's the sort of book one might keep on the home desk or on a bedside table.

Recently I turned it into a Kindle ebook.  This is the sort of resource to keep with one during the day, easily accessible for immediate inspiration/succor.  Hence, I gave this edition the subtitle Wherever You Go, fulfilling the longstanding UU admonition to make one's life a "prayer without ceasing." 

The Kindle edition has the additional  advantage of making my little book more private for public reading/reference. 

Jesus's Portrait

I've been to quite a few wedding receptions.  I could compile a nonfiction book on the people I've met and the stories I've been told around and across banquet tables.

Occasionally, I feel trapped by the conversation, especially if the subject is about religion or politics, and I disagree with something said.  I don't want to be contentious at such a celebratory event.

At a reception recently, the conversation turned to the book, #1 NY Times besteller, Heaven Is Real.  You probably know about it:  A four old boy, his father a Wesleyan minister in Nebraska, nearly dies from a burst appendix. Over subsequent weeks and months, the little boy reveals aspects of a brief but detailed visit to heaven, including an encounter with Jesus, wearing a crown, purple sash, and white robes.

The parents present the young boy with portrait after portrait of Jesus.  None resemble the Jesus he met until he's presented with a painting by another child prodigy, Akiane Kramarik of Mt. Morris, Illinois, who paints largely from her imagination.  For believers, including the boy's parents, this conjunction of child prodigies has  special authority.

I've posted a photo of the charming prodigy and her Jesus-portrait.  What strikes me about  the painting is the styled hair of Jesus.  It reminds me of what's called a tell in poker--a gesture that gives away the player's hand.  This hairstyle screams of the early years of the twenty-first century when she painted it.  (I'm reminded of movie epics that can be dated by the hairstyles, no matter how period-authentic the costumes are.)

The book Heaven Is Real appears to be full of its own sort of theological tell, doctrine that is concordant with unique Weslyean doctrine.

Some years ago, anthropoligsts devised an image of what Jesus might really have looked like, given his time, social status, and genetic background.  It caused a bit of a stir.  I always thought that this face would have fit nicely into a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western  (music of course by Ennio Morricone.)

Such renditions beg the questions of cultural-centrism,  of idolatry, and even of the notion of cult--religion looking to one figure in particular.

Regarding the historical Jesus, I lean to the outlook of the relatively recent Jesus Seminar, particularly John Dominic Crossan.  Jesus was a social radical who doesn't resemble the popular portrait that most folks carry in their imagination.

Whenever I get distressed about such things, I turn to Theodore Parker's "Transient and Permanent in Christianity (1841)," and find my distress much relieved.

Follow Up: Goshen College and the National Anthem

Goshen students show their support of "The Star Spangled Banner" 

Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana has Mennonite roots.  

Through March of 2010, true to its peace-church heritage, it did not play the national anthem at its sporting events.  I blogged about a change, the playing of the national anthem before a baseball game:  In My Estimation, March 25, 2010.

An article in today's NY Times reports on a reversal of playing the national anthem, using instead, "America the Beautiful."

According to the article, the issue of anthem/no anthem has theological implications.  Obviously, the overarching issue is peace/war.  A second theological issue is hospitality.

In 2009 the college began a campaign emphasizing its pacifism called "Peace by Peace."  Apparently there was some push back from non-Mennonites, particularly recruited athletes.  Perhaps the anthem controversy reflected this push back.  The playing of the anthem, theoretically, made the college more hospitable to non-Mennonites.

The NY Times article reported remarks by a college official:  "There is a theological question, 'which was that if we talk so much about peace, that will make it hard to attract non-Mennonite students.'

"'And if we can’t attract non-Mennonite students, are we being hospitable?' Dr. Berry said.

"Hospitality is, like pacifism, a core Christian virtue, and some Mennonites believed that playing the anthem was justified to help students from other backgrounds feel welcome."

This controversy, in a tiny college ensconced in conservative Middle America,  fascinates me.

I admire Goshen's faith tradition, particularly Mennonite practices, including pacifism.  I suspect the implicit issue is the school's long term survival.  It needs a steady supply of students beyond the Mennonite culture.  The theological concern over hospitality seems to me to be a subterfuge that skirts the ultimate issue of mere survival.  Yet I don't doubt that those engaging in talking about anthem/no anthem were sincere in wanting to be a hospitable place without violating Mennonite pacifism.

The compromise playing of "America the Beautiful," settles the issue for now.  Each side saves some face.  The college will survive.

I invite you to read my 2010 blog for background regarding the playing of the national anthem at sporting events, a curious custom now deeply embedded  in the American culture of sports--a practice that has theological undertones.

In Tribute and Hope

[I wrote this meditation for the observance of 9/11]

It is good,

  right, and fitting,

For so many reasons,

That we remember,  

  especially remember,

Those who died

  and the families who suffered

  and suffer still;

To say aloud the names,

To tell the stories,

To speak our grief,

And then to be silent

  in respect and in reflection;

Feeling varied emotions

And seeking meanings

  alone and together.

And when we have remembered–

  paid our respects –

Promising not to forget,

We return to embrace

All that is excellent

 – true, beautiful good –

That we might live,

Not just once again,

But more fully

– in wisdom, courage, and compassion –

Vowing that we shall make our world

  a better place

In Tribute and in Hope.

We're Not Done Yet

10 years ago, when  Jeff Briere was intern minister at UCH, we collaborated on a description of Unitarian Universalistm: 101 Reasons I'm a Unitarian Universalist.  (Jeff is now minister in Chattanooga.)  

Jeff and I each wrote 50, one-paragraph reasons, interesting and informative tidbits of UU practice, history, and lore. Originally produced on a photocopy machine, a few years ago, I turned it into a paperback book and self-published it on Lulu. This summer Lulu formatted it as an e-book and submitted it to Apple’s ibookstore. (It had languished as a paperback book, but as an e-book‒an iTune‒it immediately sold a dozen iPad downloads.) It's now available on Kindle, Amazon's e-bookstore.

A decade after its creation, I find 101 Reasons to be a cunning and effective portrayal of Unitarian Universalism, as good a brief introduction as there is, relative to being consumable and entertaining.  

At the time, Jeff and I compared our design to a pointillist painting. We wrote this introduction:

Dear Reader,

To explain how so many different people

could practice one religion

in so many different ways

is daunting.

Perhaps the difficulty lies

in attempting a verbal explanation,

when painting a picture

would better communicate

the nuances of Unitarian Universalism..

Think of this collection

as a pointillist canvas

upon which are 101 spots of color.

In turning the pages,

you can see each little dot.

Stand a few feet back

and the dots blend in monumental images.

Then you can begin to see

larger shapes and forms

that create the tableau

of the living tradition of

Unitarian Universalism.

Wishing you meaning and purpose.

Jeff wrote the conclusion, the one hundred, first reason and arguably the most compelling reason for being a UU:

101

We aren’t done yet. That’s a phrase you hear now and again. We aren’t done yet. But when have you heard that in reference to religion? Unitarian Universalism isn’t done yet. We talk about a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. A search. An on-going organized plan to find something true and meaningful. And when we find that true and meaningful something, there will be another search, because there isn’t only one true and meaningful thing out there to find. We aren’t done yet. [JB]

As I think of Unitarian Universalism at age 50, remembering the hopes voiced in 1961 for a new and improved liberal religion, Jeff's conclusion resonates for me, "We aren't done yet." 

An Emergent Animal Ministry

A few years ago I edited a collection of poetry and prose, In Praise of Animals under the Skinner House imprint.    While the collection was proposed by my editor at SH, I'd long been interested in Animal Rights.  For a couple of decades I'd been calling Animal Rights "an ethical frontier," the next step in a progressing ethic of respect and reverence.

Within Unitarian Universalism Animal Rights has become a more sophisticated movement as ethical treatment thinking has transformed to an animal ministry perspective.  I think this represents, in part, a distancing from a secular animal rights activism.  The emergent Animal Ministry movement looks more to moral suasion  than to confrontational coercion.

I've prepared a Reader's Guide to my In Praise of Animals collection.  I think it is an apt means for the uninitiated to begin to explore what is now being called "multi-species" relationships--our appropriate relationship with our animal kindred as well as the web of life that embraces us all.  My guide is a resource for individual reflection.  But it would also work well in a readers or book discussion group.

Animal Rights is no longer a frontier.  It is a realm of ethical being that is rich and fulfilling.  It is, in my estimation, a coming home for the human species.

If Only for the Season: A Holiday Anthology

This summer, I've been working on a collection of my Holiday writings. I ended up with forty-six selections.  I chose the title If Only for the Season after a popular meditation I wrote more than twenty years ago.  I had several intentions: to capture the breadth of Mid-Winter observances and moods; to express universal, deep meanings; and to provide a resource for all who come to the season with a liberal spirit, especially fellow Unitarian Universalists.

I'd been aiming for the book's September 1 release. I made it, thanks to the layout and design skills of Ellie, my spouse.  Ellie offers her considerable expertise to those who want to use the wonderful services of on-demand publishing.  [Visit her Publishista site.]  The finished product is a handsome book,  8.25 inches square.


This is a collection for personal use, as well as for fashioning services and celebrations during the Holiday Season. It makes a thoughtful and meaningful gift.  (It makes an implicit statement regarding the Holidays versus Christmas annual controversy.  And it is respectful and enlightening about Christmas.) 


You can see the book's preview on Amazon.  You can buy it at Amazon or CreateSpace's online store.  I recommend the latter.

An Innate Sense of Life: Moral Grounding

In late September UCH will host a first ever Multi-Species Workshop, sponsored by our Animal Ministry group, in conjunction with an animal blessing Sunday Service.  


I’m awfully proud of our progressive religious ways.  Our relationship to animals  has a deep vein of identity and compassion that's now a burgeoning movement within our ranks.  

The three towering figures of early American Unitarianism are Channing, Emerson, and Parker.

In particular, Channing and Parker are known for their highly developed consciences.  They embody the Unitarian core notion of CHARACTER. 

From the current perspective of animal rights/liberation joined to the emerging  (scientific) understanding of an innate moral sense—particularly “do no harm,” the following two anecdotes are a propos.  In addition, these anecdotes beg the value of moral development and age-appropriate religious/moral education that we UUs have long promoted.

First, William Ellery Channning from a letter:

I can remember an incident in my childhood, which has given a turn to my whole life and character. I found a nest of birds in my father's field, which held for young ones. They had no down when I first discovered them. They opened their little mouths as if they were hungry, and I gave them some crumbs which were in my pocket. Every day I returned to feed them. As soon as school was not, I would run home for some bread, and sit by the nest to see them eat, for an hour at a time. They were now feathered, and almost ready to fly. When I came one morning, I found them all cut up into quarters. The grass around the nest was red with blood. Their little limbs were raw and bloody. The mother was on a tree, and the father on the wall, mourning for their young. I cried, myself, for I was a child. I thought, too, that the parents looked on me as the author of their miseries, and this made me still more unhappy. I wanted to undeceive them. I wanted to sympathize with and comfort them. When I left the field, they followed me with their eyes and with mournful reproaches. I was too young and too sincere in my grief to make any apostrophes. But I can never forget my feelings. The impression will never be worn away, nor can I ever cease to abhor every species of inhumanity towards inferior animals.

Second, Theodore Parker from an “Autobiographical Fragment:”

When a little boy in petticoats in my fourth year, one fine day in spring, my father led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon sent me home alone. On the way I had to pass a little " pond-hole " then spreading its waters wide; a rhodora in full bloom — a rare flower in my neighborhood, and which grew only in that locality — attracted my at­tention and drew me to the spot. I saw a little spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub.    I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile; for, though I had never killed any creature, yet I had seen other boys out of sport destroy birds, squirrels, and the like, and I felt a disposition to follow their wicked exam­ple. But all at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within me said, clear and loud, "It is wrong!" I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion — the consciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon my actions, till the tortoise and the rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and asked what was it that told me it was wrong? She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron, and taking me in her arms, said, “Some men call it conscience, but I pre­fer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding this little' voice." She went her way, careful and troubled about many things, but doubtless pondered them in her motherly heart; while I went off to wonder and think it over in my poor, childish way. But I am sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impression on me.

In my estimation an innate awareness of the value of life—one’s own and then in compassion with fellow creatures—is both traditional Unitarian and cutting edge, 21^st century progressive UU religion.  I’ll be searching Emerson to determine whether he had a similar childhood experience.