Category Archives: Liberal religion

“Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents”

What are today’s household gods? A few days ago, the New York Slime published Gary Snyder’s paean to his Macintosh computer, titled “why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh.” There are several good lines in the poem, and here are two of them:

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates…

The Roman household gods, the Lares, were less brief and not made of plastic. Yet many of today’s households have small altars devoted to personal computers, we give them offerings of electricity and our attention, and many of us pay obeisance to them on a regular basis; so I’d say at the moment personal computers sometimes fill the role once filled by Lares.

Holding one’s nose

My sister Jean sent a link to an interesting map that tries to explain why Martha Coakley lost to Scott Brown.

For me, the most important piece of information is that Democrats stayed home, while independents turned out in force. If I were still living in Massachusetts, I would have had had to hold my nose in order to vote for Coakley. Her law-and-order rhetoric sounded like she was getting paid by the prison lobby. She’s quixotically stubborn at times, so that even after Hillary Clinton released delegates to vote for Obama, Coakley refused to vote for him. While Coakley claims to support equality (broadly construed), including marriage equality, I never saw that she was much of an advocate for people who were poor or economically disadvantaged. While I could stomach her as attorney general (and yes, I voted for her in that post), I did not see here someone who would fill Ted Kennedy’s role as an advocate in the U.S. Senate for those who are poor and oppressed; indeed, she seemed no better than Scott Brown. Given those comparisons, I’m not entirely surprised that Massachusetts Democrats stayed home.

As a religious and spiritual progressive, I’m finding it more and more difficult to distinguish between political liberals and political conservatives. Both political stances seem like shallow ideologies motivated solely by party unity and retention of power, rather than humane political philosophies concerned with making life better for all people. U.S. politics seems to be driven in large part by fairly unimportant wedge issues — abortion, gun ownership, same-sex marriage, testing in schools — rather than by truly important issues like feeding the hungry, caring for children, preventing usury and exploitation of the poor. In those few areas where U.S. politics currently concerns itself with substantial issues — health care, war — the big issues are so narrowed down that they are almost meaningless.

I better stop ranting now, before my blood pressure goes up too much. As ideologues, neither Coakley nor Brown deserved to win; neither one would bother much with the real problems. And so we will continue to not feed the hungry, and not help the suffering, and not be peacemakers; and the last shall not be first because those who are first plan to stay right where they are.

Corrected 21 January, thanks to Philocrites. See comments below.

Sex, food, and giving money away

Last Sunday, we took up a collection for Haiti relief work here in the Palo Alto church; next Sunday is the formal beginning of the annual canvass, or fundraising drive. In the midst of all this, a member of the church happened to send me a column by Nicholas Kristoffy titled “Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex, and Giving.” Kristoffy writes:

“Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.”

I’d argue that sex is not a selfish pleasure (at least, not when it involves another person). Nevertheless, giving money does feel awfully good to me — better than food, maybe not quite as good as sex. Actually, this might be a good rebuttal to the whole doctrine of original sin — if helping others makes us feel so good, doesn’t that mean we are essentially good?

Thanks to Dick D. for sending me the column.

General Assembly is “dramatically broken”

There’s a new article up on uuworld.org titled “Big Changes Proposed for General Assembly.” General Assembly is the annual gathering of U.S. Unitarian Universalists, ostensibly held to transact the business of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). In October the UUA Board of Trustees commissioned a report to study whether General Assembly actually provides the setting for democratic decision-making it is supposed to provide. The short answer from the report: “GA is not really democratic,” and in fact provides “faux democracy and unaccountable representation.”

The UUA Board of Trustees will hear and discuss this report at its current meeting, which begins today and runs through Sunday. Will the Board of Trustees act on this report? If they don’t, I hope former UUA Moderator Denny Davidoff carries out a threat she made at the 2009 General Assembly, when she said, “We should get serious about governing ourselves democratically, or I will move in 2010 that we rescind the fifth principle [of the principles and purpose of the UUA Bylaws, calling for democratic process] until we can prove we are democratically represented.”

In the mean time, the 2010 General Assembly Committee has scheduled only business meetings on Saturday and Sunday of this year’s General Assembly. No doubt this will annoy some who see General Assembly as one big social event, but perhaps it will keep the focus of General Assembly where it should be, to wit, on doing the business of the UUA.

We welcome visitors, and hiss at Haman

During the first fifteen minutes of the 11:00 worship service, we had a child dedication this morning. Five children from two different families were dedicated, including one baby and four older children. The godparents each brought their own children. Thus after the child dedication was over, and the children left for Sunday school, I expected to see perhaps a dozen children come out of the Main Hall — the children associated with the child dedication, plus another 3 or 4 of our regulars. At the end of the first hymn, I opened one of the sliding glass doors at the back of the church, and as the children kept coming I realized that we were going to have more like 20 children.

Melissa, the lead teacher today, was waiting in the classroom for us. She, to was surprised as the children streamed in. I rounded up a few stray children; Melissa quickly rearranged the rooms so we could all sit down in a big circle. “Let’s take attendance first,” she said, and looked at me. “Dan, do you mind taking attendance?” I didn’t mind at all. Melissa asked each child to say their name and age; we had 18 children, ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old. Of our regulars, Dorit, Zach, and Heather were present (Heather’s sister, Sara, who is 12, is now staying with her parents to hear the sermon). Dorit brought her friend Vi. Rawley and Carl, who usually attend the 9:30 session, had been with us before. The rest of the children were either one-time visitors, or usually came at 9:30.

After I took attendance, Melissa asked me to do our regular check-in (and in an aside to me, said that she had to run and make some more photocopies that she would need later). I said we’d go around the circle, and everyone would have a chance to tell about one good thing and one bad thing that happened to them in the past week, or they could pass. Usually when we have new children, they choose to pass. However, this Sunday, most of the children chose to say something — this felt like a real accomplishment! Melissa was so welcoming, and I think our regular children have become quite good at accepting and welcoming newcomers and visitors. The children were mostly quite attentive to each other — except for Dorit, which is most unusual, but Dorit was distracted by the novelty of having her friend Vi, and the two of them could hardly keep from talking to each other.

Melissa began telling the story of Queen Esther. I had to run off to gather some more supplies. When i came back, Melissa was in the middle of the story. Now whenever I’ve heard this story before, the storyteller has always had us hiss when Haman’s name comes up, so when Melissa said “Haman,” I almost started to hiss — but caught myself when no one else did. So at a break in the story, I mentioned this point, and Melissa said that was a good idea. She began the story again: “So the king turned to Haman…” — and she paused while we all hissed.

Melissa told the story very well, and the children listened attentively. (By “attentively,” I mean that there was the usual squirming on the carpet squares, but no side conversations, and no wandering eyes or heads.) At the end of the story, Melissa asked the children what they thought of the story. Rawley said she thought there might be a lesson to the story, and Melissa asked her what she thought that lesson might be. After Rawley gave her idea, Kayla, who was at the 11:00 Sunday school for the first time, spoke passionately but not very articulately, saying we should stick up for our ideals. A couple of other children also said what they thought the story meant. Melissa and I said the story could mean all these things, and Melissa had a couple of other ideas of what the story could mean.

Ellie (who usually comes at 9:30) asked if the story were true, which prompted another general discussion. Continue reading →