Postcards From Myself

I was cruising around the internet this evening and came across a very cool video. Take a look below and let me know what you think. Although still not perfect, I think it does a pretty good job of talking about Unitarian Universalism. My only problem is that it still tends to defines Unitarian Universalists by what we are not, instead of by what we are. Good stuff though - and thought provoking. While you are at it, check out UUPlanet.TV. It is an interesting site with lots of UU videos. If you are up to it, check out the very odd and over the top Alien Wisdom.

Please let me know what you think of the video.

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
- Thomas Jefferson

Discuss amongst yourselves. Please. And with others. Please discuss with everyone and let your voices be heard. In too many areas the freedom of the individual is being replaced with the comfort and complacency of the masses or the ease and profit of big business. Without the free and open discussion of these issues, our liberties die and their passing goes unnoticed.

There was an essay in the “Bookshelf” section of the most recent UU World that tried to be amusing, but ended up troubling me. W. Frederick Wooden’s essay entitled “Why I’m sticking with classics” while noble in defense and even promotion of classic literature, which as a long ago English literature major I love, seemed to go off course and strike a number of bad chords with me. I dislike sending negative feedback, but in this case I felt I must.

The first problem is one that was mentioned in the piece itself. It seems he is doing a lot of his classic reading so that he can rub other people’s noses in it – not because he enjoys the reading or wants to gain the knowledge. He says that when people talk to him about reading the latest pot-boiler, he wants to be able to retort that he is reading great classics instead. Not only is that mighty arrogant, but it is downright obnoxious.

Second, and much more importantly, he basically states that only the classics are worth reading or writing, so no one should even try writing new works now. In fact Wooden says there are “too many bad books already, “ and that “they are driving out the good.” If that is not a defeatist attitude then I don’t know what is! Is this what we are supposed to be telling our children? “Sorry son, Babe Ruth was the greatest player in the game, there is no reason for you to play baseball,” or “sorry dear, Penicillin has already been invented, no reason for you to want to be a researcher.”

Finally, his attitude towards recent religious works is that the current books are “at least statistically likely to be about stuff I already agree with.” Again the hubris astounds me. Assuming that someone agrees with you is just as bad as assuming that people won’t agree with you because they are of a different background. Making assumptions without hearing the other side of the story is exactly what some critics do when they call for banning a movie they have never seen and have no intention of seeing. Ignorance goes both ways.

I do realize that Mr. Wooden’s piece was intended to be humorous – at least I hope that was the intention. But, unfortunately, there is just too much troubling rhetoric in it for me to get to the humor. I would dare say that very often humor is a tarp thrown over the truth, and when we pull back that tarp we uncover the real message. Please let that not be the case here.

Thanks for the great magazine, and sorry for the negative feedback.

Note: This was an email letter I sent to the editors of UU World magazine.

If we throw out all the creeds, dogmas, and names of the deities and only concentrate on what is left, might we not come to find a true religion of hope, love, and charity? This struck me a couple of times in the past few days. Once was during the morning’s sermon at my church. And yes, for those of you who may be bewildered, Unitarian churches can have sermons. Anyway, this sermon was on love and inclusion. One of the things that struck me was a statement that, “we find enemies when we ourselves feel weak or unsure.” That really hit a cord. Yes, this can certainly be taken on a national level, but I won’t go into that here - at least not yet.

What I really thought about was my personal relationships. Many of the people I have bad feelings toward are not bad people at all. They can’t be. They have nice friends and families and live fine lives. So perhaps the reasons for some of my feelings come from the fact that something about them makes me feel weak. Or points out insecurity in myself.

Now, if we take that further and look at why some religions are so venomous in their attacks on others, we may find the same thing. An article in The New York Times yesterday talks about the shifting faiths of the American people. What would make an organized religion feel weaker or more threatened than members leaving the ranks? Perhaps by looking at those people or groups that we dislike or even hate we can find out what our weaknesses or vulnerabilities are.

Finally take that a step further. When we now those problems, when we have found what it is about the other that triggers those distasteful feelings, it is then that we can rise above them. We can move beyond those problems to find our commonalities. We can move beyond the dogmas, creeds, dress, and dance to find that we are focused on the same thing. For example, what do most major religions care about? Be they Eastern or Western, the core of most religions is love, good works, care for the family and community, and the importance of world beyond one’s own self. Concentrate on those things, and maybe we won’t feel so threatened. And if we feel less threatened, maybe we will have fewer enemies.

Right now is the time of Lent for many religions. For the liberals religions, like mine, we may not observe the rules of Lent, but it can still have value for us. So first we need to know what Lent is and a brief history of Lent.

According to that all knowing source, Wikipedia, “Lent, in most Christian denominations, is the forty-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured temptation by Satan. Different churches will calculate the forty days differently.“Later it goes on to say “There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance.”

It is that fasting and abstinence, most often most associated with the Catholic religion here in the States, that we most often associate with Lent. There is much more to it, of course, and I don’t mean to take this holy time to lightly or casually, so no offense is meant to any of the pious reading this. I welcome your input.

Observed from the outside I see two important ways that lent affects me and may affect you. First is that, as with any self-imposed deprivation, this time of sacrifice can actually lead to over indulgence before and after. Consider Mardi Gras and Carnival for example. Both of these are direct anticipations of the austere time to come. People who are about to go on diets experience the exact same thing. Right before you got on that diet, you binge. Next week you can’t have that chocolate cake, so you are going to have even more of it now to make up for it. In many ways people use Lent as more of a time for recovering from the prior celebrations than as a time of penance.

The second thing though I think is the real importance. If we do not overreact before and after, if we can mediate our compulsive over-indulgence, then the time can be a great time of reflection and possibility. If you do chose to make an honest abstinence from something, then why not replace that with offerings to the less fortunate or to a worth cause. If you choose to not have your daily Starbucks injection, why not take that money and accumulate it and make a donation to your favorite charity such as Habitat for Humanity or Friends of New Orleans or the Red Cross?

Also, keep a diary or even a blog during this time to record your feelings. You may go through times of desire, temptation, self-doubt, and triumph. What is also very interesting is what happens when the time is over. Do you go back to your old habits? Have you broken a habit permanently? Or is it just back to business as usual. All of these are very personal questions with no right or wrong answer. They are questions that only you can answer and only if you take the time to place value in self-discovery.