Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

This Saturday, January 10, I’ll be headed up to Boston to attend a demonstration against the federal “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). It’s one of dozens of demonstrations that will take place across the country, to tell president-elect Barack Obama that he must keep his campaign promises on LGBTQ rights.

“Join the Impact,” the organizers of the demonstration this Saturday, organized a similar protest on November 15, part of a nation-wide series of protests against the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Half a dozen members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation attended the November 15 demonstration in Boston, which tells me that they are paying attention to how much public support there is for same-sex marriage rights.

Speaking of the demonstration this Saturday, the organizers write: “This demonstration will ONLY be successful if it rivals the scope and scale of the one in November. We must show lawmakers that November 15th was not a one-time-only event.”

I think that statement is correct. I don’t know what’s going on in your state, but the Massachusetts Congressional delegation is clearly paying attention. There were over 5,000 people in Boston’s City Hall plaza on November 15 — it would be good if we could double that.

For more information, check the national Join the Impact Web site and click on the link for January 10th DOMA protest to find links to what’s happening in your state on Saturday. If you’re in Massachusetts, go to the Mass. Join the Impact Web site, and click through to their Facebook page for the most up-to-date info.

Tonight, I was talking with my dad, and he mentioned that he was going to take his Christmas tree down on Twelfth Night (January 6), figuring that was the traditional ending of Christmas.

“Well, actually there’s another tradition that says you take down your Christmas greens on Candlemas Eve,” I said, “which is February 1. There’s a poem by Robert Herrick about it.”

“Well, your mother always said that Christmas decorations should stay up until February,” dad said.

“That’s right,” I said, “and all these years I’ve uncharitably thought it was just because she was procrastinating, but maybe she was just living out some old Christmas custom.” Mom was full of old New England customs, so full that I think there were times she didn’t realize that she was following some old, time-hallowed custom. Mom was also very fond of Robert Herrick, so perhaps she had read his poem on the subject:

Ceremonies for Candlemasse Eve

Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,
   Down with the Mistleto;
Instead of Holly, now up-raise
   The greener Box (for show).

The Holly hitherto did sway,
   Let Box now domineere;
Until the dancing Easter-day,
   Or Easters Eve appeare.

Then youthfull Box which now hath grace,
   Your houses to renew;
Grown old, surrender must his place,
   Unto the crisped Yew.

When Yew is out, then Birch comes in,
   And many Flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kinne,
   To honour Whitsontide.

Green Rushes then, and sweetest Bents,
   With cooler Oken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
   To re-adorn the house.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turne do’s hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

(This version of the poem from The Poems of Robert Herrick, Oxford University Press (1902/1920), p. 267.)

In short, if you choose to leave your Christmas greenery up for another month, you can cite Robert Herrick as your authority for doing so. And is you want to sing while you’re taking down your Christmas greenery, it turns out that there is a Candlemas carol that sets Herrick’s poem to an old West Gallery folk tune. Here’s my adaptation of this carol, or you can find versions online in a higher key, and in four-part harmony.

It’s time for the annual Moby-Dick Marathon. The marathon takes place each year on the anniversary of the date that Herman Melville shipped out of New Bedford harbor on board the whaleship Achushnet. Over some twenty-five hours, volunteers read Moby-Dick aloud in its entirety. We live right across the street from where the Marathon takes place, and Carol has spent quite a bit of time at the Marathon already, but the way my schedule worked out I had to write my sermon today. I finally went over at about ten o’clock.

It was the usual late-night Moby-Dick Marathon scene: everyone there was quiet, maybe half the people were following along in their own copy of the book, and a few people were dozing. Not exactly a hopping Saturday night scene, but exactly the kind of scene many of us book sluts wouldn’t mind seeing every Saturday night. Unfortunately, I have to get up early tomorrow morning to go to work, so I left after about half an hour.

Today I was reading one of those horrible year-end reviews articles in the Boston Globe, and in the long list of people who died in 2008, I saw the name of Alain Robbe-Grillet, the French novelist.

Somehow back in 1989, I no longer remember how or why, I read Robbe-Grillet’s novel Jalousie. The novel mostly consists of very precisely-described scenes, often things half-seen through the wooden slats of the jalousie windows of a banana plantation in a French colony somewhere in the tropics; and through these descriptions, written landscapes and still-lives as it were, Robbe-Grillet revealed one man’s intense jealousy towards his wife’s friendship with another man.

It was the right book at the right time for me. I saw that you could write precisely and carefully about one thing, while you were really telling your reader something else altogether. I learned that some things can only be precisely described in this oblique manner.

Later, I tried to read some of Robbe-Grillet’s other books. They were dry and pointless, sometimes to the point of being silly. I have never tried to go back and re-read Jalousie, for fear that I would find that it, too, is a dry, pointless, and silly book — I would rather remember it as the right book at the right time, that taught me exactly what I then needed to learn about writing. So even though I will never read his novels again, here’s a new year’s toast to Alain Robbe-Grillet (b. August 18, 1922, d. February 18, 2008).

raw wind, stinging snow,
the old year leaves as it came:
nasty, brutish, cold

There was good news and bad news in 2008.

First, lots of bad news:

The economy: From my perspective, it was already going downhill last January. I knew something was up when the minister’s discretionary fund at church was out of money, more people were asking me for money, and no one could afford to donate any more money. In September, Wall Street and the media finally woke up to the fact that our economy has been driven by predatory lending and Ponzi schemes for the past decade, and suddenly we were in a “global financial crisis.” The Dow Jones industrial average fell 34% in 2008, the biggest one-year drop since 1931.

War: The war in Iraq went nowhere. The much-vaunted surge didn’t seem to change anything except that the federal government was spending even more money over there, and the few people who were willing to be soldiers were going over for their fourth or fifth deployment. No improvement, just a slow ongoing decline. Blessed would the peacemakers be, if we had any peacemakers.

Climate: Summer was hot, hotter than ever. Yeah, I know that global warming is “just a theory” and “not really based on facts.” Even if it is true (and it is indeed a well-proven theory), we’re supposed to be calling it global climate change. Well, the result of global climate change here in New England is that it was hot last summer, and it is freakishly warm this winter.

But also quite a bit of good news:

Green technology: “On October 3, President Bush signed into law the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that included the hoped-for 8-year extention of the solar investment tax credit. The act also lifted the $2,000 cap on the tax credit for residential systems, granting both commercial and residential systems eligibility for a 30% tax credit…. The law will encourage rapid growth for the solar industry….” (Distributed Energy: The Journal of Energy Efficiency and Reliability, November/December, 2008, p. 50.) The lousy economy is driving us to become more energy-efficient, and to develop renewable energy sources.

Green religion: One of the more interesting things to come out of the presidential campaign was that about half the Christian evangelicals are now promoting what they call “Creation care.” It’s a little weird that they can’t bring themselves to say “ecotheology” or “environmentalism,” but at least they’re headed in the right direction, and are starting to catch up with liberal and moderate religious groups.

Personal: This marked year 19 with Carol, which is better than I can express. I have wonderful extended family, great friends, and a job that I love. I know 2008 was a tough year for many people, but from my selfish point of view it was a great year.

The president: Obama is no saint, by world standards he is pretty conservative, he has far too many ties to the corporate puppet-masters, but — he is Not-George-Bush. And as for George Bush, the shoe incident sums it up for me:

Yup. At great personal cost, Muntadar al-Zaidi became an instant folk-hero by summing up what many people around the world think about George Bush. (Image courtesy Dependable Renegade.)

A few year-end observations about this blog:

Readership continued to slowly increase this year. Late last spring I noticed that I had over 5,000 unique visitors to my Web site in one month, and probably four fifths of them visited this blog. I am mildly shocked that so many people visited this blog — that’s far beyond my most optimistic goals for this site. Oddly, I find I have stopped paying attention to readership statistics.

More numbers: The 1,500th post went up sometime in December. Even as my readership goes up, my Technorati ranking drops — it’s now at 23, half what it was when I started out — go figure. The index to this blog now contains more than 225 entries.

Historical factoid: This blog began its life as an AOL blog. For a long time after I transferred all the posts to this site, I maintained the original blog as hosted by AOL. But this fall, AOL finally did away with its blog hosting service, and the original blog is now finally gone.

Sturgeon’s Law predicts that 90% of anything is crap, which would imply that there were some 36 good posts on this blog this year. Some of the best posts were based on material sent in by blog readers, like this parody of “Spirit of Life”. I think one of my best posts was a video attack ad. One of my favorite posts documented local religious history. Another of my favorite posts simply documented ordinary life.

The absolute best part about writing this blog has been hearing from you, the readers. Some of your comments here on the blog have been extraordinarily insightful. Your email messages to me have ranged from intellectually stimulating to poignant to hilarious. And every once in a while, I get to talk to a reader face-to-face, which is most fun of all. I love hearing from you — that’s what really makes this whole endeavor worth my while.

A couple of days ago, Carol and I were walking down along the waterfront. Carol headed off towards the south side of State Pier. “Let’s go up here,” I said pointing to the north side of the pier, where the Martha’s Vineyard ferry docks. “I haven’t seen any seals yet this winter. Maybe we can see seals from up there.”

Carol turned, and started walking in that direction. She has already seen seals several times this winter.

It sounded questionable even as I said it. “Or we don’t have to go up there. I mean, we almost never see any seals up there.”

But Carol, being a good sport, was already heading up to where the ferry was docked. We got to the end of the pier, and looked out towards Fairhaven between the ferry on one side and the fishing boats on the other side. “Look,” I said, “It’s a seal!”

“Where?” said Carol. “Oh, I see it!”

The seal played on the surface of the water for a minute or so, and then slipped under the water and disappeared. We kept walking. It was a gray, raw, gloomy day. Inside, I was happily repeating to myself: I saw a seal! I saw a seal!

Jerry Stone, adjunct faculty at Meadville Lombard Theological School, and retired professor of philosophy at William Rainey Harper College in Chicago, sent this email message today:

“Friends — I have just found out that my new book, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative is now available from SUNY Press for orders placed in December for a 20% discount plus free shipping (WOW!). I apologize for the late notice. Orders can be placed at sunypress.edu.”

“Discounted price” means it’s US$60 instead of US$75. Big bucks for a book, but those who are interested in process theology (Bernard Loomer apparently looms large in this book), or contemporary humanism, or connections between religion and environmentalism, might want this book. I know my local library isn’t going to get it, so I just ordered my copy. (It’s also available in a downloadable version for US$20.)

If you want to know more about Jerry’s work in this area, try this article from Process Studies, or this article on the Meadville Lombard Web site, or my report on a 2006 lecture by Jerry. For those who might be interested, I’m placing Jerry’s abstract of the book below. Read the rest of this entry »