tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-181997262024-03-19T08:20:25.436-04:00A Jersey Girl in KentuckyRev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comBlogger253125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-54562144322337193772022-11-04T18:17:00.000-04:002022-11-04T18:17:58.558-04:00Freedom: What Does It Mean?<div style="background-color: #fafafa; border: 0px; color: #1e1e1e; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.3em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 2; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The University is also committed to free expression. Speech not specifically directed against individuals in a harassing way may be protected by traditional safeguards of free speech, even though the comments may cause considerable discomfort or concern to others in the community. (Source: University's Non-Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation Policy available at <a href="https://www.sewanee.edu/media/provost/Non-Discrimination-Policy.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #669999; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 2; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">www.sewanee.edu/media/provost/Non-Discrimination-Policy.pdf</a>)</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-20314476987334009562020-01-21T09:10:00.001-05:002020-01-22T14:14:12.730-05:00Black & White? Reflections for MLK 2020.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Most of us want life to be simple.<br />
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Complexity and ambiguity challenge our comfort. They force us to acknowledge that we can't control things, that in fact, we can't even entirely understand things.<br />
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It's often only in retrospect that we see clearly events and forces that shaped our lives or our world. We now "get" the impact of our decisions on the environment, the economy, and our health. We see now the radically inclusive message of MLK, even though in his final years, he was widely hated. His disapproval rating was higher than Trump's! 85%<br />
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I have to remind myself that when I was the same age my adult children are now, there was no Google, no cell phones, no microwaves for that matter! There was no legal gay marriage, no podcasts, no Twitter. Some things really were more simple. But even though nostalgia may blur our perspective, simple is not necessarily better.<br />
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Much of Western religion is dualistic: human/God; good/evil; spiritual/material. Eastern religions have become increasingly popular in the West as humanity embraces the unitary and organic dimensions of life.<br />
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This <a href="https://cac.org/the-dualistic-mind-2017-01-29/" target="_blank">article by Fr. Richard Rohr</a> makes the distinction from a Christian perspective and argues that Jesus was the first non-dualistic teacher. He writes:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "optima" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i>The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. Dualistic thinking works well for the sake of simplification and conversation, but not for the sake of truth or the immense subtlety of actual personal experience. Most of us settle for quick and easy answers instead of any deep perception, which we leave to poets, philosophers, and prophets. Yet depth and breadth of perception should be the primary arena for all authentic religion. How else could we possibly search for God?. </i></span><br />
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Some of us do better than others with uncertainty. I love mystery, not-knowing, and the quest for truth. I believe faith is dynamic, not static. That's why the UU faith appealed to me in my early thirties and why I became a minister. I am comfortable with not having the answers and with others who feel the same.<br />
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To me, Unitarian Universalists are people who don't see everything in Black & White, but who acknowledge the shades of grey in life, in community, in relationships. We are known for the tendency to critique ourselves, but there's a difference between self-criticism and self-destruction.<br />
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Some of us have become alarmed and disaffected over the past few years.<br />
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New voices have emerged that question our UU faith's efforts at anti-racism. Not only do these voices proclaim that the UU Association past and present is riddled with White Supremacy, they apparently reject any person or any voices who question their approach. You are either in agreement with their assessment, their remedies and their vocabulary or you, too, are part of the system of white supremacy. I've thought, prayed upon and contemplated all of this for months. My current position is that things have gone awry. Instead of providing tools and inspiration for anti-racism, we have vastly increased polarity, paranoia, and discord.<br />
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What wasn't triggered by the 2017 resignation of Peter Morales and the consequent controversies became crystal clear after the publication and distribution of the <i>Gadfly Papers, </i>a book that questions the narrative of <a href="https://www.uua.org/ga/justice/anti-racism-oppression-multiculturalism" target="_blank">ARAOM</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory" target="_blank">CRT</a> and the attendant behaviors of its proponents. Here's a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gadfly-Papers-Inconvenient-Essays-Minister/dp/1070524484" target="_blank">link to the book.</a><br />
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And here's a book by a UU layperson: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Self-Confessed-White-Supremacy-Culture-Universalism-ebook/dp/B07XJZ8CZV/ref=pd_sim_351_1/146-9104399-5557356?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07XJZ8CZV&pd_rd_r=b290faed-caaa-4c19-9c5d-49b0d253778c&pd_rd_w=mgxpN&pd_rd_wg=dDzuH&pf_rd_p=04d27813-a1f2-4e7b-a32b-b5ab374ce3f9&pf_rd_r=YPBWYV45XS219CC41ZBJ&psc=1&refRID=YPBWYV45XS219CC41ZBJ" target="_blank">Click here</a><br />
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I don't disagree with the spirit of CRT or ARAO agendas. They are legitimate but not universally accepted among the approaches to racial injustice (and other forms of marginalization).<br />
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I strongly disagree with those self-appointed white saviors who've designated themselves judge and jury toward anyone who differs with them. The censorship and backlash toward Todd Ekloff over a pamphlet-type book he wrote is, given the authoritarianism and anti-democratic forces at play in the wider world, chilling.<br />
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Google "gadfly papers" and you'll find sermons and essays in support and in dissent.<br />
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There are others who feel as I do. Some express feeling ostracized or silenced. Many of us have voluntarily left spaces in which we feel we can't be honest. Several have given up membership in the UUMA...a consequential decision.<br />
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I feel primarily a deep sadness. I feel so alienated from colleagues and from our Association.<br />
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It would be easy to just go along with the majority who have discovered and adopted this way of understanding whiteness and who seem to have found the answers. But I can't do that and maintain integrity.<br />
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I will likely stay out of the argument since it is clear the majority of my colleagues do not welcome my perspective. Still, it's painful. It is painful to be judged, dismissed and scolded. The majority would reply that any pain I feel is negligible compared to what they call "harm" in the form of microaggressions and discrimination people of color among us have felt. Fair point! Nor would my argument that I have devoted my 25 years in ministry to racial justice and equity carry any weight; in fact, me pointing out the many endeavors and projects that I have undertaken just prove my white supremacy and my cluelessness.<br />
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As a Jungian, I can't help seeing the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI-Ko-d29X4" target="_blank">projection </a>at work here.<br />
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The excoriation of fellow clergy, the disregard for our congregations (who pay our salaries and support our families) and the dismissiveness toward any alternative positions is frighteningly like that we hear from extremists and zealots. The failure to acknowledge and integrate our own shadow is what creates these fanatical and polarized positions.<br />
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We all have within us hatred, avarice, racism, and tribalism. We don't like to acknowledge our indifference, our laziness or our callousness. At least I know this is true for me. The incorporation of these shadow parts of myself is, however, essential to my sanity and equanimity, and more importantly to my ministry. Within the congregation I serve are people who espouse CRT and ARAOM and advocate its path toward anti-racism. In the same congregation are people who need to learn, who are working for justice, who have given decades of their time and large amounts of their money to advance justice. I serve these people. I love all of them and accept them as they are. I can learn from them. Far from seeing my ministry as an endeavor to fix them, I see the pastoral and the prophetic imperative as an obligation to love first, gain their respect and trust, and from there to remind them of how our faith faces injustice.<br />
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That includes our history of efforts at anti-racism and anti-oppression. We UUs have had bungles, blunders, and massive failures ( so many that there are books written about them: <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Black-Pioneers-in-a-White-Denomination-P16859.aspx" target="_blank">Here </a>and<a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Revisiting-the-Empowerment-Controversy-P18363.aspx" target="_blank"> here </a>and <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Darkening-the-Doorways-P17147.aspx" target="_blank">here</a>.) We are the sum of our members: flawed, fumbling and sometimes foolish. But I have found in our congregations more dedicated, authentic, and devoted humans than in any other organization I've ever been part of. We are not the sum of our mistakes. We are the sum of our love, our humanity, our devotion to the good.<br />
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I am also prone to projection. In the vehement and divisive arguments about racism that have only grown more central to our faith tradition, I see my own shadow: I can be intractable and confrontational. I enjoy at some level being the contrarian and challenging the assumptions of others. There is within me an extremist, particularly on matters of oppression and on issues of race. I want to believe that I'm right about my liberal views and therefore I don't mind offending people. The reality is that I'm sometimes wrong and also, more importantly, I don't change anyone by my outrage. Only love and patience lead to evolved mindsets.<br />
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In the end, we UUs have always come from love. With the exception of a few troubled individuals, we act in good faith, not from agendas of greed, avarice, bitterness or superiority. We assume the best of people rather than look for their flaws. I want us to celebrate all that is good about us and to enlarge upon that, rather than giving in to the impulse to compulsively criticize ourselves and one another and to focus upon what's wrong.<br />
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It's not simple. It's not "black and white." It's complex, just as we humans are complex. We who represent the best of liberal faith have allowed ourselves to be decimated and torn asunder. We may look back upon this time as the birth pangs of a new day, or as the time we capitulated and let ourselves be ripped apart.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-73708421392588508172019-11-29T14:32:00.001-05:002019-11-29T15:30:06.836-05:00Attention<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span>
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<b><span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
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<b><span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Invisible
Work<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Because no one could ever praise me enough,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">because I don’t mean only these poems but the unseen</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">unbelievable effort it takes to live</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">the life that goes on between them,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">I think all the time about invisible work,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">about the single mother on welfare I talked to</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">years ago, who said, “It’s hard.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">You bring him to the park, run rings</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">around yourself keeping him safe,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner, and there’s no one</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">to say what a good job you’re doing, how you were</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">patient and loving for the ten</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">thousandth time, even though you had a headache.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">And I, who am used</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">to feeling sorry for myself because I am lonely</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">when all the while, as the Chippewa</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">poem says, I am being carried</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">by great winds across the sky,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">think of the invisible work that stitches up the world</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">day and night, the slow, unglamorous</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">work of healing, the way worms in the garden</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe and bees</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">enter and leave their lovers like exhausted Don Juans while owls</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">and poets stalk shadows, our</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">loneliest labors under the moon. There are mothers</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">for everything, and the sea</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">is a mother too,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">whispering and whispering to us long</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">after we have stopped</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">listening. I stop and let myself lean</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">a moment against the blue</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">shoulder of the air. The work</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">of my heart</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">is the work of the world’s</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">heart. There is no other art. ...<i>Alison Luterman</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">To ask what MATTERS is to ask what is of utmost importance to a
being. If someone can’t tell you, you can find out, they say, by looking at
their checkbook or their calendar. I imagine today it would be their Smart
phone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">I would answer the question this way:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">I would say both nothing matters AND everything matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">The word <i>matter </i>is ancient and multi-layered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Besides <i>substance </i>it also means <i>potential.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">It comes from the root as MATRIX and MOTHER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">And matrix means, among other things, WOMB.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">There is no sense in which we can divorce our theological and
philosophical understanding of life and death from the matrix into which we
were born. Even if we were to divorce ourselves from that matrix, we would
still have a theology based upon rejection, which is still a belief system.
Everyone believes in something, or as Dylan sang, <i>you have to serve
somebody.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">So: <i>matter.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">For me, when I am practicing contemplation and mindfulness,
what does NOT matter is winning the lottery, what kind of car someone drives,
titles and honorifics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">What matters is the tear on the cheek of one child, the fate of
even one child going hungry or separated from their mother, or getting killed
in a school shooting or a bomb blast, being abused or neglected, be it in
Syria, at the Mexico border, or here in Tennessee. The well-being of creatures,
the worms in the garden, the bees and the owls, one moment of connection, one
second of peace. Love matters. Truth <i>matters.</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">But that is when I am disciplined and diligent. Other times, I go
on the web and buy a new sweater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">What matters to you?<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Because no one could ever praise me enough,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">because I don’t mean only these poems but the unseen</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">unbelievable effort it takes to live</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">the life that goes on between them,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i>I think all the time about invisible work,</i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Who does this invisible work?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here’s an example from our own Unitarian heritage:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The day he was taken by the Nazis in Prague, Dr.
Norbert Capek preached as usual to his congregation, using metaphor as many
Unitarian ministers did in Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. He preached as
storm troopers stood in the back of his church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We all know that this is the worst winter
in our history and the ground is terribly frozen. We also know that Spring must
come and the seeds now buried will sprout and bloom again.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, the Nazis knew this was code, as it was not
Winter but Spring, and the 72-year-old man was arrested and sent to Dachau
where he was the victim of cruel medical experiments as well as the gas
chamber. For practicing this faith, our faith of freedom and humanitarianism.
He never gave up. Even in the camp, he led church services and continued to
compose hymns for his fellow. Invisible work.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What we do, and refuse to do, matters. Our <i>attention
</i>becomes intention. Our attention is what moves us from intention to action.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Bumper sticker: <i>What you do matters.</i> (Holocaust Museum)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What do you do? <o:p></o:p></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">And I, who am used</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">to feeling sorry for myself because I am lonely</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">when all the while, as the Chippewa</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">poem says, I am being carried</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">by great winds across the sky,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">think of the invisible work that stitches up the world</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">day and night, the slow, unglamorous</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">work
of healing…<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">And,
words matter. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">Words.
Like “though” and “intimidated”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">Words
like “bad news” and “investigate”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">One
word can cause deep wounds, another word can heal and repair. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">The
word “matter” matters.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">Black
Lives <i>matter. </i>This movement was brilliant in many ways. The opposite of
black lives MATTER is not <i>All Lives Matter. </i>The opposite is <i>Black
Lives Don’t Matter. </i>I will tell you that black lives didn’t matter to me
for my first few decades of life. I neither lived near nor knew any person of
color, other than our housekeeper, Emma, almost nothing was taught us in school
even though it was at the height of the Civil Rights movement, nor did my family
of origin affirm black lives in any way. I lived about two miles away from the
AME church where the impetus for the <a href="https://fairsharedevelopment.org/files/The_Philadelphia_Inquirer_Mount_Laurel_12_2016.pdf" target="_blank">Mt. Laurel decision</a> was formed. Attention
became intention which became ontological results. Nearby is <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/new_jersey/underground-railroad-site-in-disrepair-south-jersey-church-seeks-to-save-it-20170616.html" target="_blank">Jacob's Chapel</a>, a stop on the Underground RR as I suspect my family home may have been.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span>
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><a href="http://fairsharehousing.org/mount-laurel-doctrine/" target="_blank">Click here for more on the Mt. Laurel Doctrine</a>.</span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6MakvljePEH1KLxBKxPmae28GvJYW9Mcc38jU30YVa1KaVM3Vsm5uPNFVpmU2KnLdS5Dk7Mp-DMEU1G_LuWLzqS8NDR5DEB7_2m202AQdrOKgiWjG0aQPFZs7O7rWUMExKrjJg/s1600/20131021-232037.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6MakvljePEH1KLxBKxPmae28GvJYW9Mcc38jU30YVa1KaVM3Vsm5uPNFVpmU2KnLdS5Dk7Mp-DMEU1G_LuWLzqS8NDR5DEB7_2m202AQdrOKgiWjG0aQPFZs7O7rWUMExKrjJg/s320/20131021-232037.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jacob's Chapel AME Church. Genesis of Mt. Laurel Decision</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span>
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">The
phrase and the movement <i>Black Lives Matter </i>pleads with us to see the
myriad ways in which the institutions of this society, this <b>matrix </b>in
which we exist, education, government, real estate, religion, law enforcement,
justice, health and wellness, even entertainment and the arts, have neglected,
trampled over, and treated as less than human persons of color. I find it hard
to believe that any educated white person could review their life and not see
this, not comprehend the privilege which they have been granted, the doors that
were open to them and closed to others, the suspicions placed on others but not
on them. We have been trained and have trained ourselves to neither review nor
acknowledge these things. Again, <i>only a discipline and a mindfulness will
keep us alert to this </i></span><br />
<i style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">pleading.</i><br />
<i style="color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></i>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEfAMwMiLH8BljQ3XrasodyscNVghsVtI5SdyPfwT0DA3yLJsm0T_zIM2po-_9EZdK44e2VEH5PPs05N8GNaDMUleD0BvboRlqxxkmXMPdlXHo_xEbis4Kz1s5nEChEhzV7EZftQ/s1600/38834_416913867382_5880032_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="719" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEfAMwMiLH8BljQ3XrasodyscNVghsVtI5SdyPfwT0DA3yLJsm0T_zIM2po-_9EZdK44e2VEH5PPs05N8GNaDMUleD0BvboRlqxxkmXMPdlXHo_xEbis4Kz1s5nEChEhzV7EZftQ/s320/38834_416913867382_5880032_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cain Family Home 1940-2018</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">There are mothers</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">for everything, and the sea</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">is a mother too,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div .0001pt="" 0in="" 137.4pt="" 183.2pt="" 229.0pt="" 274.8pt="" 320.6pt="" 366.4pt="" 412.2pt="" 45.8pt="" 458.0pt="" 503.8pt="" 549.6pt="" 595.4pt="" 641.2pt="" 687.0pt="" 732.8pt="" 91.6pt="" baseline="" class="MsoNormal" line-height:="" margin-bottom:="" normal="" tab-stops:="" vertical-align:="">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">whispering and whispering to us long</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">after we have stopped</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">listening. I stop and let myself lean</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">a moment against the blue</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">shoulder
of the air<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">What
this small congregation does <i>matters. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our <b>intention</b> to love and heal comes
through when intention becomes attention and the invisible work of housing,
feeding and caring for the least among us. Our attention turns what matters
into substances, food, mattresses, conversation, socks and toothbrushes.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">Listening
matters. Giving our full <i>attention </i>to the other.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">How can you pay attention?<o:p></o:p></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">The
work <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">of
my heart <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">is
the work of the world’s heart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">There
is no other art.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #f1c232; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; padding: 0in;">What is the work of your heart? Will you stop long enough to hear
it?<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-81037885343489300112019-11-13T18:48:00.005-05:002023-07-24T15:43:43.508-04:00Thanks<div class="card-header pb-2 pt-3 bg-white" data-v-101110cb="" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #343434; font-family: "Founders Grotesk", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6rem !important; padding-left: 3.25rem; padding-right: 1.25rem; padding-top: 1.2rem !important; padding: 1.2rem 1.25rem 0.6rem 3.25rem;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXUa3Vh5v8LH3mUeD2JXckLJyGLZyFb3bl645u3_A957S85uDh3FWTTkSLQCpWYrHcBCQ4BrkPMZGBsf8-BTMOcP22Ci1-FSr7_XICeSy8iydreFb35AOdS4eRgSgIH8XCDB1CiQ/s1600/PICT4191.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXUa3Vh5v8LH3mUeD2JXckLJyGLZyFb3bl645u3_A957S85uDh3FWTTkSLQCpWYrHcBCQ4BrkPMZGBsf8-BTMOcP22Ci1-FSr7_XICeSy8iydreFb35AOdS4eRgSgIH8XCDB1CiQ/s320/PICT4191.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<h1 class="card-title" data-v-101110cb="" itemprop="name" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Poets Electra Roman No 2"; font-size: 2.5rem; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; margin-top: 0px;">
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<h1 class="card-title" data-v-101110cb="" itemprop="name" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Poets Electra Roman No 2"; font-size: 2.5rem; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; margin-top: 0px;">
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<h1 class="card-title" data-v-101110cb="" itemprop="name" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Poets Electra Roman No 2"; font-size: 2.5rem; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; margin-top: 0px;">
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<h1 class="card-title" data-v-101110cb="" itemprop="name" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Poets Electra Roman No 2"; font-size: 2.5rem; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; margin-top: 0px;">
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<h1 class="card-title" data-v-101110cb="" itemprop="name" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Poets Electra Roman No 2"; font-size: 2.5rem; font-style: italic; font-weight: 500; line-height: 3rem; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; margin-top: 0px;">
Thanks</h1>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<span class="card-subtitle" color="var(--black)" data-v-101110cb="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: -0.375rem;"><a data-v-101110cb="" href="https://poets.org/poet/w-s-merwin" itemprop="author" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #007ab3; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_self">W. S. Merwin</a><span class="dates" data-v-101110cb="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> - 1927-2019</span></span></div>
</div>
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<li class="pr-2" data-v-66c151a4="" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; padding-right: 0.6rem;"><a data-v-66c151a4="" href="https://facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpoets.org%2Fpoem%2Fthanks&t=Thanks" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img data-v-66c151a4="" src="https://poets.org/social/facebook.svg" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 6px; vertical-align: middle;" /></a></li>
<li class="pr-2" data-v-66c151a4="" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; padding-right: 0.6rem;"><span><br /></span></li>
</ul>
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<div class="poem__body px-md-4 font-serif" data-v-101110cb="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.25rem; padding-left: 1.8rem; padding-right: 1.8rem;">
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">Listen</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with the night falling we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we are running out of the glass rooms</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with our mouths full of food to look at the sky</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">and say thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we are standing by the water thanking it</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">standing by the windows looking out</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">in our directions</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">after funerals we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">after the news of the dead</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">over telephones we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">remembering wars and the police at the door</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">in the banks we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">in the faces of the officials and the rich</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">and of all who will never change</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we go on saying thank you thank you</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with the animals dying around us</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">our lost feelings we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with the forests falling faster than the minutes</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">of our lives we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with the words going out like cells of a brain</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with the cities growing over us</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we are saying thank you faster and faster</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">with nobody listening we are saying thank you</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">we are saying thank you and waving</span><br />
<span class="long-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin-left: 32px; text-indent: -32px;">dark though it is</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-38173078249367047702019-10-23T12:12:00.001-04:002019-10-26T14:26:29.462-04:00The "Cheers" Effect" When Small is Better<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0l5QegkxjxkjSp_z4kEf483A7q3tefk79GcKtvgZfsjJoMV41wonAYdSsaFKm98jR0ZuIEzV4XOWXR3ngIAUMV459TpLwqfUzZSxekFAa6ZMxkBREmmmmtczf447v-6jskRKiNg/s1600/RUMI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0l5QegkxjxkjSp_z4kEf483A7q3tefk79GcKtvgZfsjJoMV41wonAYdSsaFKm98jR0ZuIEzV4XOWXR3ngIAUMV459TpLwqfUzZSxekFAa6ZMxkBREmmmmtczf447v-6jskRKiNg/s320/RUMI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper,
lover of leaving…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Where do we “belong”? To Whom? And what comes of
knowing that?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I lost the one place I considered “home” this past
year, and at about the same time, I watched a Netflix show called <i>I Don’t
Feel at Home in this World Anymore. </i>It was a dark comedy, sort of like my
life, and near the end a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgTv220rusw" target="_blank">gospel song</a> plays:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This World is not my home, <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I can’t feel at home in this world
anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I found myself singing it for days in my head. The
singer is anticipating Heaven and angels: <i>The angels beckon me from Heaven’s
open door. </i>And <i>I fixed it up with Jesus a long, long time ago. </i>The
theology was a bit off, but the emotion so real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The existential angst it expresses suits well this
disorienting, disturbing time in our history. “Losing” home just underscored my
sadness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For me, the sale of our family home in rural Southern
New Jersey was devastating. I should have expected it, but I was deeply distressed
when it happened. It caused rifts in my family of origin that just exacerbated
the ones that already exist. The house is an 18<sup>th</sup> century farmhouse,
and to me, it was still "my dad" even though Dad had been gone for over twenty
years. His loves and passions were everywhere, from his shop (“man-shed”) connected
to the freestanding garage, to the screened in porch where I sat during
thunderstorms. Where I loved to sleep in summer. I still see him at the kitchen
stove, making baked apples or stew or pop-overs and beaten biscuits. <i>How would
I go on without home?<o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwbca9WrQEBVjke6YunRRDOm5C78E5-jamoTT2eIhnEgMVJ0D6HQ8XTLMEE1N13xZvGwcqhglv0-qUHSbczzQK1K2ol1MmeXGjdBCU0uqIfjU3rABPcPsaYvKYH-Zr3Pcn8J70Q/s1600/20190710_173148.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwbca9WrQEBVjke6YunRRDOm5C78E5-jamoTT2eIhnEgMVJ0D6HQ8XTLMEE1N13xZvGwcqhglv0-qUHSbczzQK1K2ol1MmeXGjdBCU0uqIfjU3rABPcPsaYvKYH-Zr3Pcn8J70Q/s320/20190710_173148.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photos of the renovation!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My Buddhist studies had already taught me about <i>impermanence.
</i>It’s the only thing we can count upon. I would have to change or let go of
my notion of home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Last spring I broke conventional rules and sent a
letter to the new owners. I offered to share the dozens of old photos and
slides taken during our family’s 75 year stewardship of it. Cris, the new owner,
emailed me enthusiastically, and in July, I visited them. In 6 short months
they had completely redone the house and yard. I was astonished, and
disoriented! My dad’s shop was transformed in a she-shed, with a screened porch
added to it. The living room where we’d sat in the same chairs, staring at the
same painting, being lectured or scolded, was now a combination kitchen-family
room. The old kitchen was a laundry/office, and the former dining room, where
nothing had been moved for decades, was a TV room/parlor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Seeing such an alteration in something I had counted
on for sixty years was a revolution in my heart and mind. It was a conversion. My
overall feeling was joy; I still felt grief, but I understood that a complete
upheaval was what had made it possible for this old place to survive and thrive. Had
I not been a student of Appreciative Inquiry, and Buddhist teachings, I may
have responded very differently. The feeling of disorientation expressed in “I
can’t feel at home in this world anymore” can be a lament, or an invitation to
an entirely new way of seeing and being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Where Do We Belong? NATURE is one answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1t-nRU_TrwtxV0WouH-4HAp3n1liScodZ0g8fRkEeDak/edit#slide=id.p1" target="_blank">SLIDE SHOW of FRACTALS CLICK HERE!</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Benoit Mandelbrot first coined the term
‘fractal’ in 1975, discovering that simple mathematic rules apply to a vast
array of things that looked visually complex or chaotic. As he proved, fractal
patterns were often found in nature’s roughness—in clouds, coastlines, plant
leaves, ocean waves, the rise and fall of the Nile River, and in the clustering
of galaxies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" font-family:="" georgia="" line-height:="" quot="" serif="">“Pollock painted nature’s fractals 25 years ahead
of their scientific discovery!” He published the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399422a0.html" target="_blank">finding</a> in the
journal <em><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Nature</span></em> in
1999, creating a stir in the worlds of both art and physics</span><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 15.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" georgia="" line-height:="" quot="" serif=""><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">As it turns out, <i>chaos </i>is one
necessary stage in the activities of the Universe, and consequently in our
organizations and in our own selves. What we once called depression or the “dark
night of the Soul,” besides being problematic for equating darkness with
negativity, can be what opens one human or one organization to order, beauty,
and growth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">This is why nature is soothing
and why people need more nature and less Euclidean structures. It is why we
feel connected, why we feel we “belong,” why we feel at home in Nature. We are.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“It is ironic that in
the midst of this proliferation of specialty islands, we live surrounded by
communities that know how to connect to others through their diversity,
communities that succeed in creating sustainable relationships over long
periods of time. These communities are the webs of relationships called
ecosystems."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> All of our attempts to organize ourselves out of chaos are
ultimately fruitless. But embracing the chaos that necessarily emerges when
humans come together is a key to a new way of understanding order. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
Margaret
Wheatley tells us that humans act out of two paradoxical needs: <i>the need to
belong and the need for self-expression. </i>Too often, we sacrifice one for
another. It can result in stifling conformity or isolation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
<i>The
price that communities pay for this conformity is exhausting and, for its
members, it is literally deadly. Life requires the honoring of its two great
needs, not one. In seeking to be a community member, we cannot truly abandon
our need for self-expression<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
<i>Particularly
in the West, and in response to this too-demanding price of belonging, we move
toward isolationism in order to defend our individual freedom. We choose a life
lived alone in order for it to be <b>our life</b>. We give up the meaningful
life that can only be discovered in relationship with others for a meaningless
life that at least we think is ours. An African proverb says "Alone, I
have seen many marvelous things, none of which are true." </i><o:p></o:p><br />
<i><br /></i>
(For much more on & by Wheatley, <a href="https://margaretwheatley.com/" target="_blank">click here</a>.</div>
<div>
<span 14.0pt="" font-size:=""><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
The core
of AI is that systems are <i>self-organizing</i>. We can observe this in
Nature, and in places where human nature is allowed to flourish. Think of the
way humans responded after Katrina, Sandy, Paradise. Self-organization trumped
official efforts which compounded the tragedies. Our religious organizations
should be examples of this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div>
<span 14.0pt="" font-size:=""><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
The
reasons they are not is that they try to hard to impose order. They become cesspools
of conformity and/or conflict at worst and at best, islands of specialization,
rather than islands of sanity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
One of
the biggest tragedies of organizations is that, in their efforts to “grow, be
successful, be relevant” they fail to see that they are not welcoming to those
who may join us or whom we may help. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Come, Come
whoever you are.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" style="font-size: large;" times="">The beauty of this “new”
science and new way of understanding organizations is that once we begin to
accept our <b>own belonging in the scheme of things</b> and stop trying to
organize our way out of chaos, we begin to see the “other” as equally a part of
the universe, as equally belonging (or maybe even more at home) as we.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" an="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" quot="" serif="" style="font-size: large;" times="">We become open to the “other.”
Immigrants, persons of color, trans and gender non-conforming persons, old
people, mentally “ill” people, even Conservatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" style="font-size: large;" times="">We see the world and
our relationships in an I/thou lens rather than an I/it. (Buber)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">What can we do now? What
ought we do?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Love yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Love others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Love the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">This is the question of
sustainability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Now, I hope you will
leap with me from science and fractals to the questions of small farms, small
places, and small churches. The key word is <i>sustainability. </i>If the past
century has proven anything, it is that bigger is not better. In fact it is the
proliferation of bigness that has created a society that can neglect, delude
and profit from the destruction of the planet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Wendell Berry has always
made this argument; it has fallen mostly on closed ears as regards the people
of power, influence, and money. But it has planted seeds in places and people
everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">The problem
of sustainability is simple enough to state. It requires that the fertility
cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay—should turn continuously in
place, so that the law of return is kept and nothing is wasted. For this to
happen in the stewardship of humans, there must be a cultural cycle, in harmony
with the fertility cycle, also continuously turning in place. The cultural
cycle is an unending conversation between old people and young people, assuring
the survival of local memory, which has, as long as it remains local, the
greatest practical urgency and value. This is what is meant, and is all that is
meant, by “sustainability.” The fertility cycle turns by the law of nature. The
cultural cycle turns on affection.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">(from the <a href="https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-biography" target="_blank">Jefferson Lecture</a>, 2012)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">When Berry writes “affection,”
he means not only emotion but its effects: small places, families, businesses,
stories, music, human relationships that are genuine. All of those are actions
you can still do. Each of those is a form of resistance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">I’ve been to his
Baptist church in rural Henry County. He also means small churches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Small churches matter
for the same reason small farms, local food, and small communities matter. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times=""><br /></span></div>
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<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">My internship
advisor spoke at my Ordination almost 25 years ago. He had composed a sermon
titled, <i>The Dream of the Lost Sermon. </i>Interestingly, on his way from
Rockville to the small church in VA that ordained me, he had a flat tire and
rushed in moments before he was to preach. The dream pretty nearly became a reality,
his sermon illustration all too real! But the sermon was a beautiful expression
of how we can trust in ministry that we will have the right thing to say, know
what to do. Later he told me how much he enjoyed his time there: “I was wrong
in my thinking about small congregations. They aren’t small people; they’re
just small churches.”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">UU Church of the Shenandoah Valley, 1993</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My brother Jeffrey, cousins Kurt and Taryn, me, twin Sister Suzanne & a neighbor c. 1958 in our living room</td></tr>
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<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">Berry writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">No doubt
there always will be some people willing to do anything at all that is
economically or technologically possible, who look upon the world and its creatures
without affection and therefore as exploitable without limit. Against that
limitlessness, in which we foresee assuredly our ruin, we have only our ancient
effort to <b>define ourselves as human and humane</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span 14.0pt="" font-size:="">Of the
land-community much has been consumed, much has been wasted, almost nothing has
flourished.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span 14.0pt="" font-size:="">But this has
not been inevitable. We do not have to live as if we are alone.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span 107="" 14.0pt="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">I belong to KY, to my
farm Innisfree, Nashville for this time, to the world of birds and trees and water,
to people, my family, my children, and now to you. I belong to the forces that
have shaped this old world, mystery and wonder and curiosity. Where do you
belong? To whom? And what will you do once you realize that is your life?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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House around 1900.</div>
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House late 1800s</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-83629764833821992612019-10-13T23:06:00.002-04:002023-07-24T15:42:51.329-04:00Gadfly Redux<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I left the discussion group for <i>Gadfly</i> some time ago. I'm serving a congregation now, and will leave the discussion to those who want to continue. It seems clear to me that while some people are making a genuine effort to listen and to find some commonality, most are stubbornly refusing to hear one another and becoming even more entrenched as the argument continues.</div>
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In this case, there really are fine people on both sides. I love and esteem my colleagues. I think the majority of them are more dedicated, more productive, and more capable than I. That's not false modesty. I just don't feel entitled to judge their devotion to this faith and to the causes we all find important.</div>
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<span>I do want to share a few things that have come across my radar. One is the following, sharing another Letter of Censure meted out by the UUMA:</span></div>
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<span>A few people have asked about my letter of censure from the UUMA. I had been posting to the ministers’ group on Facebook and speaking at UUMA chapter meetings about my concerns with the UU racial-justice orthodoxy for some time. The precipitating event was
this post. (The letter of censure follows.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Facebook post (March 2018)</b></span></div>
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<span>A PLACE TO DISCUSS? I have reservations about current UU racial-justice ideology, and would like to find a place to discuss them with colleagues (of all r<span style="font-family: inherit;">aces). I can’t imagine
that our moderators would allow such a discussion here. Can anyone suggest a place?</span></span></div>
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<span>Not intending to discuss my reservations now, but so readers will know the kind of thing I’m talking about, here are brief statements of some of them:</span></div>
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<span>(1) We use a non-standard definition of “racism” (racial prejudice + power) that, while emphasizing the crucial factor of relative power, tends to make anti-white racial prejudice invisible.</span></div>
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<span>(2) Some UU people of color who are not African-American, whose ethnic group has not suffered anything like what African-Americans have suffered, appear to be appropriating the moral authority of African-Americans.</span></div>
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<span>(3) Much of our eagerness to attract African-Americans to our congregations seems motivated by white guilt.</span></div>
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<span>(4) The Commission on Institutional Change has called on congregations (2/10/18) to “answer the call to fund BLUU as an act of reparation for the denial of opportunities over centuries.” As someone who in 1969 was present at a demonstration at the headquarters
of the NY Catholic archdiocese demanding that such “reparation” be paid to African-American organizations, and who later decided it was a terrible idea, alarm bells are going off in my head.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Letter of censure</b></span></div>
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<span>Reverend Richard Trudeau</span></div>
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<span>Dear Richard,</span></div>
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<span>At its meeting on March 21, 2018 the UUMA Board of Trustees voted to issue a letter of censure against you for conduct that violates our Covenant and Code of Conduct.</span></div>
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<span>Specifically we found that you violated our Covenant in two areas:</span></div>
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<span>• To support one another in collegial respect and care, understanding and honoring the diversity within our association;</span></div>
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<span>• To use our power constructively and with intention, mindful of our potential unconsciously to perpetuate systems of oppression;</span></div>
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<span>We further determined that you also violated our Ethical Standards within the Code of Conduct:</span></div>
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<span>• I will demonstrate respect and compassion without regard to race, color, class, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, physical or mental ability or ethnicity. Such equitable treatment shall be extended to all to whom I minister regardless of position
in the organization, including to those who disagree with me.</span></div>
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<span>• I will work to confront attitudes and practices of unjust discrimination on the basis of age, color, class, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, physical or mental ability, or ethnicity, and to challenge them within myself and in individuals,
congregations, and groups I serve.</span></div>
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<span>The board took these actions as a result of complaints made against you on Facebook and in your chapter meetings. We hope that in receiving this admonishment from your fellow ministers you may take time to reflect upon how your words have been harmful to colleagues,
specifically colleagues of color.</span></div>
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<span>This censure is a matter of counsel; it has no formal impact on your membership in the UUMA which you, of course, retain. However, please know that we will be in contact with your local chapter to ask how they will work to ensure that chapter meetings and retreats
are truly open to, and minimally safe spaces for, UUMA members of all identities and backgrounds, and particularly for those with historically marginalized identities.</span></div>
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<span>Signed,</span></div>
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<span>The UUMA Board of Trustees</span></div>
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<span>Surely there are ways other than letters and censuring/censoring to deal with our differences.</span></div>
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<span>Here's an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us/politics/democratic-candidates-racism.html?searchResultPosition=5" target="_blank">article in the NYTimes</a> I found helpful. It deals with "White Guilt," something I think is rampant among liberals, particularly UUs.</span></div>
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<span>And, importantly, <a href="http://www.katebraestrup.com/" target="_blank">Kate Braestrup,</a> a UU minister and best-selling author, has written a thoughtful and provocative column about all of this. Not being a UU minister, she can't be censured. <i>Or can she?</i></span></div>
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<i><span><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span>To read Kate's column, click here: <a href="https://trulyopenmindsandhearts.blog/2019/10/12/am-i-still-a-unitarian-universalist-minister/" target="_blank">"Am I Still a Unitarian Universalist Minister?"</a></span></i></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-61442175658022840572019-10-13T18:08:00.003-04:002019-10-13T22:22:07.570-04:00We are Always Coming Out(See suggested links at bottom of post)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Legally marrying a couple I'd done a service of union for. Finally!</td></tr>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a coming out story would be<br />
a chronicle of all the days of all my lives<br />
it seems there is either nothing to tell,<br />
or far too much<br />
how can i possibly capture any of it<br />
stop the flow<br />
march it out in lines for all to see and know<br />
i am always coming out<br />
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels<br />
i struggle and persist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">– Constance Faye (“Come Again”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a coming out story would be<br />
a chronicle of all the days of all my lives<br />
</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We live many lives.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">If we are lucky, we know this, and we grow more and more fully
into the “I” that is the most whole and most evolved. <i>We become who we are
meant to be.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">On this Sunday after <i>Coming Out Day</i>, I have had the
opportunity to reflect upon some of those lives, and to accept that I have not
always been who I was meant to be, to accept that even now, the age some people
“retire”, I am still becoming. I am still learning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It seems there is either nothing to tell<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Or far too much.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When I was becoming aware of human sexuality, it was “last
century” as my kids love to say. Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate
for President, had not been born. We whispered about our two Phys Ed teachers,
Miss Carson and Miss Bookner, who were, we were sure, <i>lesbians</i>, we made
fun of the Thespian Society (I was a member so I heard the comments all the
time), we wondered about effeminate boys and masculine girls. The word “queer” was
just gradually beginning to be used to mean “gay” and not just “weird”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I didn’t know anyone who was gay; or at least anyone who was
openly gay. I had no books, poems, films, or music to help me understand. Naturally,
I was afraid of what I didn’t know. I wasn’t openly homophobic, but I was
avoidant and silent. This continued through most of my twenties, even after
going to college. It seems almost bizarre to me now. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It was not until I became involved in the UU Church in Cherry
Hill NJ that I met and was befriended by gay men and women, and that I volunteered to join the committee to introduce one of the first Welcoming
Congregation programs. Something we talked about was that if we promoted the
workshops, people would think we were ourselves gay/lesbian. Deciding I was
fine with that was one of my first baby steps toward coming out: as an ally, a
liberal, and an advocate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">how can i possibly capture any of it<br />
stop the flow<br />
march it out in lines for all to see and know<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My then very young sons (the oldest is the same age as Mayor
Pete) and I went to SUUSI for several summers before I entered the ministry. (Once
I was a clergy person, I just couldn’t enjoy SUUSI the same way again. Nude
hikes, anyone?) It was there we were befriended by a family whose kids got
along great with mine. Dee Graham and Signa, her late partner, had two
biological and one adopted (Black) child. To me, from a circumscribed life in
South Jersey, this ought to have been shocking, but our friendship grew so
naturally and so organically that it’s hard to pinpoint the moment I “changed”.
What I know for sure is that it took, for me, eating, playing, relaxing and
co-housing with, LGBT persons to become for real what my intellect knew was
right: <i>an outspoken ally.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">None too soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My kids would learn never to use the word “gay” as a slur. They
stood up against its use by others. Colin was actually censored by his
elementary school for cross-dressing in the Halloween parade, while Casey
regularly put on make-up and skirts in adulation of Kurt Cobain, the lead
singer of <i>Nirvana.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">i am always coming out<br />
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels<br />
i struggle and persist</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Since becoming a minister, I have had the opportunity to not
only eat, sing, laugh, and share space with gay colleagues and congregants, I
have had the opportunity to minister to lesbian, gay, transgender, queer,
questioning, and gender fluid people. I have been with them at the death beds
of their beloveds, done funerals for their children who died of suicide or
overdose, sat with them in hospitals and hospice, in childbirth and trauma. I
have performed numerous services of union and many legal weddings. It has been
a privilege.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">All this has been possible because UUism is a welcoming,
affirming, embracing place for LGBTQI+ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>persons. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And I want to say that it has not only been a blessing to those
people, it has enriched my life beyond measure. That is the thing: opening,
embracing, loving the “other” enriches us. We are the richer, the deeper, the
more profoundly human because of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">i am always coming out<br />
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels<br />
i struggle and persist</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I’m still unfolding. Aren’t you? My daughter is bisexual,
although I’m sure she’d reject even that label. Of late, she’s been a career
woman with our dog (which she stole, but that’s another story) and her two
therapy rabbits as her family. I will freely admit that it took me by surprise
and that it worried me. What if? What if? What if? I knew enough about people’s
struggles and pain to know what she was in for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My former interim congregation in NJ was one of three who called
a trans minister. I worried, knowing them: how would these South Jersey mostly
straight UUs manage to remember to say they/them/theirs instead of “she”? Or
“he”? They've done great.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">i am always coming out<br />
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels<br />
i struggle and persist</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I regret that I was homophobic and heteronormative for so long.
I forgive myself, because I didn’t know, and had no means to know. I accept
myself as part of this world, organically interconnected with all beings and
all life, for better, and increasingly obviously for worse. As I age, my
aspirations scale back but my determination remains, just more closely focused.
My being here with you is an outgrowth of that. I no longer expect massive
change, but I want to be a part of what can be, with what is left to us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here is my challenge: <i>Who will we choose to be going forward?</i>
We have yet to becoming entirely embracing of trans and gender fluid people, people
of color, of people of lower socio-economic backgrounds, of mental, emotional,
and spectrum disabilities, of blue collar people who don’t read the <i>New York
Times. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But we can grow. We can learn, evolve, and reach out.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I want to be a part of what Margaret Wheatley calls <i>Islands
of Sanity. </i>I want us to be able to honor our two great needs, for <b>connection</b>
and for <b>self-expression</b>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll
talk more about that next time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpbAN8by3pdXNRhpqAMQ_5VEfxwyoflCcuhBaaCGrdk-0-bLNcFEmdttGin_2eczFq2Bhc3AIjcg6xdoK_ssnbP_mw-SgldaOR2Y6v7u934XNEXPie7Um4DjuQ86ZINF0o5xf0g/s1600/thomas+merton+4b+-+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="616" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpbAN8by3pdXNRhpqAMQ_5VEfxwyoflCcuhBaaCGrdk-0-bLNcFEmdttGin_2eczFq2Bhc3AIjcg6xdoK_ssnbP_mw-SgldaOR2Y6v7u934XNEXPie7Um4DjuQ86ZINF0o5xf0g/s320/thomas+merton+4b+-+cropped.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: white;">Brother Thomas Merton</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For now:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The mystic and scholar Thomas Merton reminds us of the futility
and the promise of our work together:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i>What if your work
achieves nothing? Thomas Merton, a writer and contemplative in the
Catholic tradition, said, “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have
to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve
no result at all, if not, perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: white;">“As you get used to
this idea of your work achieving nothing, you start more and more to
concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of
the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as,
gradually, you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for
specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In
the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”</span></i><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i>Colin & Baby Marjorie 1993</i></div>
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Links to learn more:</li>
<li><a href="http://www.uurainbowhistory.net/">www.uurainbowhistory.net</a> Stories, a timeline, more</li>
<li><a href="http://www.margaretwheatley.com/">www.margaretwheatley.com</a> Go to "library" for articles, podcasts, videos.</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-85332994733648428302019-09-16T12:21:00.001-04:002019-09-16T12:37:11.704-04:00Expect Less and Find Joy? An examination of our expectations<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>What do you expect?</i></td></tr>
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<span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Expect nothing. Live
frugally<br />
On surprise.<br />
become a stranger<br />
To need of pity<br />
Or, if compassion be freely<br />
Given out<br />
Take only enough<br />
Stop short of urge to plead <br />
Then purge away the need.<br />
<br />
Wish for nothing larger<br />
Than your own small heart<br />
Or greater than a star;<br />
Tame wild disappointment<br />
With caress unmoved and cold<br />
Make of it a parka<br />
For your soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Alice Walker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wicklow Mountains Ireland</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“EXPECT NOTHING</span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When
I was in Ireland, about seven years ago, I took a bus tour of the Wicklow
Mountains. It’s a beautiful, magical area south of Dublin. Our tour guide had a
bottle of Jameson’s Irish whiskey that he pulled out at each stop, and some
little cups into which he poured a shot for anyone who wanted some. Besides the
fact that we’d never get away with this over here, because someone would sue
the tour company, it greatly enhanced the tour. He was a fun and funny guy. At
one point, he asked us: <i>ladies, do you want to have a good time tonight in
Dublin? …Lower your expectations. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
may not get far with that over here, either.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx96_Q8Jeuy_27XZqaLNn_unUuVt3y279m49yW_cUTVHIPVJSfEM_ffwbcMfn_aOm40fQn9pp2VR48B90l74a5T0DaXIUI1dTZAnwFCBt-bZkfgphxGcIFd2dzcpXaGOlqX1xXoA/s1600/427524_10150634823312383_1864887138_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx96_Q8Jeuy_27XZqaLNn_unUuVt3y279m49yW_cUTVHIPVJSfEM_ffwbcMfn_aOm40fQn9pp2VR48B90l74a5T0DaXIUI1dTZAnwFCBt-bZkfgphxGcIFd2dzcpXaGOlqX1xXoA/s320/427524_10150634823312383_1864887138_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Proof!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I
didn’t want to have that kind of a good time in Dublin, so I have no comment on
whether it works, but I think lowering our expectations is generally a good
idea in life. Especially our <i>expectations of others</i>. And of ourselves,
if we are too demanding. And, it may go without saying that our unrealistic
expectations of others and those for ourselves are closely interwoven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It
has been noted that to expect too much of someone is to <i>expectorate</i> upon
them. Surely this analogy is tempting, whether we have been the recipient of
expectations or the disappointed expector. Not accurate since expect comes from
ex-<i>spectre,</i> and expectorate comes from ex-<i>pectoris</i>, the chest. <i>But
it raises a question<b>: in what ways can expectations be troublesome for us
and burdensome for others? How do they impede our progress as human beings and how
do they hinder our relationships?<o:p></o:p></b></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Bill
Bryson’s book (and now movie <i>Wild</i>) <i>A Walk in the Woods </i>tells you
something about his expectations of backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. Since
I’ve backpacked several sections over the years, I know whereof he speaks. At
the time of writing, about 2000 hikers set out each year to hike from GA to ME
and less than 10% ever make it. One hiker called home to be picked up after
three days, saying <i>this wasn’t what I expected. </i>Two days later, he’s
back, saying his wife made him return. Three days later, he phones again for a
ride to the airport. “What about your wife?” asks the driver. His answer: <i>This
time, I’m not going home. </i>The problem? Not the AT, but his <b>projections,
his expectations</b> upon it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Much
of our expectation, of partners, of children, and of organizations, is built
from the projections we carry. <i>What if we practiced expecting those around
us to be just themselves and nothing more? </i>How might our relationships
change?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In
<i>A Separate Reality, </i>the sorcerer Don Juan tells Carlos Castenada that he
must learn to reduce his wants to <b>nothing</b>. <i>If we’d learn to reduce
our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we’d get would be a true gift</i>. For
those of us who’ve lived with privilege, this is good advice. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Expect nothing. Live
frugally on surprise.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But
there is a huge gap between letting go our expectations of others that come
from our own projections and <b>giving up hope altogether</b>. So many people
got off the trail of life when their hopes were dashed and became <b>bitter or
cynical</b>. My father was one of these people. He once told me there was no
use in my going to college, because I’d just end up married with children. We
used to kid that when he was about my age, he stopped filling the gas tank all
the way because he figured he’d die any day. (He lived to 87) He was, after
all, proud of his Scottish ancestry, if not exactly a genius. The weight of
others’ <b>low expectations and cynicism can be as burdensome as their
projections.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">DON’T EXPECT TOO LITTLE
(the other side of the coin)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It
would not be good for communities of people who have been adversely affected by
the low expectations of society and themselves to take Don Juan’s advice, which
was given to a white UCLA Professor from affluent background. For <b>African-Americans,
Native Americans and indigenous people, other marginalized groups, and for that
matter women,</b> high expectations <i>coupled with compassion </i>are their
due.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And
the <i>bigotry of low expectations</i> is not just something George Bush said. In
my extensive interviews with Black residents of Springfield KY, almost everyone
who had started out in segregated schools recalled fondly their teachers and their
experiences, before integration. They had Black as well as white teachers.
Currently, there are ZERO teachers who are POC in Springfield, even though the
city is 24% Black.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What about our
expectations of <b><i>faith and religious community</i></b>?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Wendell
Berry writes that making a marriage and keeping a farm are nearly the same.
Called ministry has been compared with a marriage, and I think buying a farm
might be another good analogy for community and church life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style=; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When one buys the farm
and moves there to live, something different begins. Thoughts begin to be
translated into acts. . . . It invariably turns out, I think, that one’s <b>first
vision</b> of one’s place was to some extent an imposition on it. But <b>if
one’s sight is clear and one stays on and works well</b>, one’s love gradually
responds to the place as it really is, and one’s visions gradually image <b>possibilities
that are really in it</b>.. . . Two human possibilities of the highest order
thus come within reach: what one wants can become the same as what one has, and
one’s knowledge can cause respect for what one knows.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Rather
than coming to our lives each day like a disgruntled guest in an English
cottage, expecting a “mean” meal, or like a petulant child disappointed and
disillusioned, we might go instead as to a potluck meal, that wonderful mix of
competition and cooperation, of contempt and compassion, where we bring the
best we have to give, and choose from the offerings of others, TRUSTING that
the meal will suffice and may even be complete, that <i>joy may emerge</i>. In
fact something good is as likely to happen as something bad, especially in the
warmth of human community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVAC5D81320Idh250dlhxC7u8w0y9bwfvZs6e0Nn7JkYgd9a9iO2Ny0dTj_yo4FdfLLSJ7818fsyr4zuvS8-xLCMI58_uqcfSyho8FHPJ0bE2S4gAj93pFficYhAhsDNPWPfGKmA/s1600/420390_10150624285257383_81322483_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVAC5D81320Idh250dlhxC7u8w0y9bwfvZs6e0Nn7JkYgd9a9iO2Ny0dTj_yo4FdfLLSJ7818fsyr4zuvS8-xLCMI58_uqcfSyho8FHPJ0bE2S4gAj93pFficYhAhsDNPWPfGKmA/s320/420390_10150624285257383_81322483_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Good thing I didn't lower my expectations, because I inadvertently met Marky Mark (aka Mark Wahlberg)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></span></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-6807579674747510512019-09-09T09:51:00.003-04:002019-09-09T11:47:04.307-04:00EXPECTATIONS & Family Here is the sermon from September 8, 2019<br />
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<br />
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<b><span 14pt="" 150="" font-family:="" font-size:="" line-height:="" new="" quot="" roman="" serif="" times="">The
Place Where We Are Right</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">by Yehuda Amichai</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">From the place where we are right<br />
Flowers will never grow<br />
In the spring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">The place where we are right<br />
Is hard and trampled<br />
Like a yard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">But doubts and loves<br />
Dig up the world<br />
Like a mole, a plow.<br />
And a whisper will be heard in the place<br />
Where the ruined<br />
House once stood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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My maternal (Patton) 1954</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Murray Bowen, whose work
on family systems I shall be pointing us toward, will say that to understand relationships,
we have to look beyond the individual (child) to the nuclear family, the
extended family, and the culture one is immersed in to begin to improve. To “do
better” and have our kids “do better” is a modest but achievable goal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When
we think of <b>expectations</b>, we are almost inevitably thrust into thinking
of our parents, guardians, and other family members, in addition to our own expectations
of our children if we have them. It’s gratifying to know that we have tools to understand
what’s going on, and perhaps to <b>lighten up</b> on ourselves or others. That’s
why this work is a spiritual task.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As
we approach the high holy days in the Jewish tradition, we are reminded that forgiveness
of self and others is the <b>most important spiritual task</b>. We can probably
agree that it is needed more now than ever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">(Here's a take on forgiveness shared by a GNUUC member: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/taylor-swift-lover.html?searchResultPosition=1" target="_blank">Taylor Swift on Forgiveness</a> )</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Bowen
Family systems provides a tool and a lens. Allow me to begin by saying that to
some extent, it is a <b>Eurocentric </b>and perhaps even North American-centric
lens. Murray Bowen (born in Waverly, TN:
educated at UT; first practice in Crossville, TN) developed his theory in the
1960s and it was brought to congregations by <b>Rabbi Edwin Friedman</b>. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdcljNV-Ew" target="_blank">Summary of Friedman on Leadership</a>) Believe
it or not, how you engage at work and in the institutions you join is largely
determined by your emotional attachment to <b>family of origin</b> and your <b>sibling
position and birth order.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Further,
he “believed that a major obstacle to scientific study of human behavior is
that humankind has tended to consider itself a unique form of life, with a
special pace in God’s plan. Such <b>self-glorification</b> precludes our seeing
the myriad ways we act just like other forms of life,” he wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Bowen systems is a
rational, scientific way of looking at relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The term <i>Differentiation
of self </i>comes from biology. It can and should be understood through
studying the development of cells; DNA; and evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“I be you and you be me;
or I be me and YOU be you?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">ANXIETY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It begins with anxiety</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My Maternal Granny Patton
was chronically anxious. Even as a small child, I was aware of the tension and
sense of doom in my relatives. Her anxiety was focused upon her husband, an
alcoholic until he joined one of the first AA groups in the 1940s, in his
seventies; her children, several of whom predeceased her: Mora, who died at 30;
Wade Jr. who died of alcoholism, as did my mother’s sister Joyce, and my mother
Marjorie who died at 44. These deaths mirrored the pattern in her family of
origin, in which my great grandmother died in childbirth in her thirties,
leaving my grandmother, two sisters, and a baby boy, who then died at 6 months.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Like the Kennedys, but
less famous, my maternal family of origin was emotionally fused, and beset by
tragedy. My cousin Wade the 3<sup>rd</sup> died in his early 20s, while at a drive-in
movie. His father and his aunt died of severe alcoholism. My nephew Jim died at
30 of a drug overdose. My twin sister’s other child, Jessica, (different father)
struggles with addiction and instability, which is why I am raising her son. My
mother, my nephew, two of my uncles all died within days of Christmas. These
tragedies and untimely deaths create an <b>anxious expectation</b> of disaster.
Numerous triangles form within such a family. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Let’s you and
Him/Her/Them fight!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Triangles can be
understood as the most stable building block of relationships</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.
Whenever a 3<sup>rd</sup> person or entity (food, alcohol, chronic illness,
church, minister) is brought into the picture, you have a triangle. It serves to
lessen the anxiety between the original dyad, but often creates unhealthy ways
of coping.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“I will strive NOT to
make my own salvation dependent on the functioning (no less the existence) of
another.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What was missing in my
Granny’s family, the Self and Patton crew, was <i>self-differentiation. </i>This
is very simply, the ability <b>to live from one’s core values</b> and to <b>reason</b>
out responses, rather than be jerked around by the emotions that surround us. <i>The
well differentiated person is provident, thoughtful and autonomous in the face of
stress. </i>Quite simply, less likely to freak out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Take a moment and think
about these “coincidences” and patterns in your family.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In what ways do I give
away part of myself to connect with others?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Wherever you go, there you
are…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Achieving self-differentiation</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">
is possibly the most important and most difficult task of maturation. Many
people grow old and die without ever having done so. Whenever a member of the
family is <i>distancing </i>and/or practicing <i>cutoff </i>from family, they
are functioning under the mistaken assumption that by avoiding the family of
origin, they can become more whole. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I was well into my
adulthood when I began to understand this. Like my Granny Patton, my own mother
died when my twin and I were five and my brother was 7. Even now, my brother,
who lives in CT and has become successful in his life and work, does not visit
and communicates rarely with us. My first marriage was to a printer from a
family of printers (as was my Grandfather Patton) who was also well on his way
to alcoholism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">How has emotional
cutoff/distancing influenced your current relationships? <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“<b><i>Every over-functioner
deserves their under-functioner.”<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Overfunctioning </span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">is
present when one observes the OF:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Giving advice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Worrying about people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Doing things others could do for
themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Feeling responsible for others<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Talking more than listening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Having goals others don’t have for
themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Going through cycles of “burnout”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Underfunctioning </span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">one
might see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Asking for advice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Getting others to “help”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Acting irresponsibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Setting goals but not following through<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Getting sick mentally and sometimes
frequently<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Tending to be addicted to substances<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">On my father’s side, I
never knew my grandparents. Not only did my father never speak about his
parents, ( cutoff) he almost never talked about my mother after she died. When he did, it was with a kind of reverence <b>that
left me feeling the weight of his expectation for me.</b> ( anxiety)I looked
like her and reminded him of her, and I carried these projections way into my
adulthood. In fact, I named my own daughter Marjorie Lee, and she looks even
more like my mother than I do.(triangles) (multi-generational transmission)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOSq_WoUGj0oWp4_mlBQIq4FzkZhIYbq2xDjQB3CMTH8DrnRmo8GlB9W_TjynyxgFbUx3zWHOK40MJItil20SZfMQyAeqIHttLsFu8GUMoDiIRuA_K9PTrbyhCxi3LrpM8THDBzA/s1600/70538741_10157430729887383_1644346878021599232_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="912" data-original-width="621" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOSq_WoUGj0oWp4_mlBQIq4FzkZhIYbq2xDjQB3CMTH8DrnRmo8GlB9W_TjynyxgFbUx3zWHOK40MJItil20SZfMQyAeqIHttLsFu8GUMoDiIRuA_K9PTrbyhCxi3LrpM8THDBzA/s320/70538741_10157430729887383_1644346878021599232_n.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
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My great-grandmother Cain </div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As an expert underfunctioner, one family member nearly always blames/sees
herself as innocent victim/draws in other family members/creates a “crisis”. It
is exhausting for me, even after studying and practicing FS for over ten years,
to manage to remain self-differentiated in the face of <b>sabotage. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“No one has ever gone
from slavery to freedom with the slave holders cheering them on”. (Friedman)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Family systems is the <b>Pilates
</b>of spirit and being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We each have within us a
core of self, and we can develop it through recognizing (identify &
isolate) what is truly “myself” and then practice <b>using these muscles</b> so
that we can stay centered in times of anxiety. Just as Pilates and core
strength benefit many other systems: our internal organs, our spines, our balance,
just so defining and differentiating self will have consequences we cannot
imagine: <b>all of our relationships </b> will improve, and so will our health, both
mental and physical. We will become more fully who we are meant to be, more
human, more whole. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">ADDENDUM:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Link to <a href="https://thebowencenter.org/theory/" target="_blank">Bowen Family Center</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">recommended reading: </span></span><i style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Extraordinary Relationships, </i>Roberta M. Gilbert</span></div>
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<br />
A good resource for congregations, especially leaders, <a href="https://www.episcopalfoundation.org/uploads/pages/files/FS_3.11_Family_Systems_Theory_080111_.pdf" target="_blank">HERE</a>.<br />
<br />
UUA Resource on Family Systems and Congregations <a href="https://www.uua.org/safe/handbook/culture/165814.shtml" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-26655101587735748792019-08-21T19:15:00.000-04:002019-08-21T19:20:24.833-04:00I Love You...Now Change!<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style=; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Given at GNUUC 8/18/19</span></div>
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<span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">“The most exemplary nature is that of
the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in
the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by
experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and
returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all
things that die and enter into it. It keeps the past, not as history or as
memory, but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up
out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past
enters its future.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<span style=;">― </span></span><b><span style=; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Wendell Berry, </span></b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/220184"><b><span style=; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Long-Legged House</span></b></a><span style=; color: #181818; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Has anyone ever tried to
evangelize you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When I was in seminary,
long, long ago, there was a young, earnest man named Stacy who wore a very
large cross and carried a BIG Bible. He was as out of place in the progressive,
UCC seminary as we UUs were in the Bible and Theology classes. Matter of fact,
he seemed to derive an inordinate amount of joy from praying for UUs,
especially, it would seem, me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I just recall a few of
our interchanges, but what I do remember is that the more he assumed Unitarian
women were fallen Jezebels, the more annoyingly outrageous I was tempted to act
(which, in seminary, isn’t very). I probably wore shorter skirts, laughed
louder, and made more off-color comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And once, when he was telling me he’d pray for me, I said, <i>Stacy by
all means pray for me. But enlighten me: Why do you have to TELL me you are
praying for me?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">If he changed me, it was
just to make me dig in even harder. I think those of us who are
liberal/progressive in religion or politics can be a thick-headed as the people
we like to complain about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Have you ever tried to change the mind of a Trump fan?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My dentist, Dr. Flowers,
which first of all, poor guy… right? His name is DON FLOWERS…. Is a raging
conservative. Actually, he’s not much different than the majority of folks in
Washington County. The big difference is that he starts talking about it while
my mouth is full and I can’t reply. (If he only knew how many times I was
tempted to bite his fingers!) I’ve reminded him numerous times that I’m a
liberal. I did once ask him not to disparage President Obama. If he said
anything racist or homophobic, I’d gently correct him again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Last week, he was
replacing a crown<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a few days after the
mass shootings. Ignoring the evidence that the Walmart shooter was clearly
racist and clearly indoctrinated by Trumpish rhetoric, he started talking about
the Dayton incident by announcing that he’d been in the very same shopping
center earlier that day with his son who is living in Dayton. <i>At least they
can’t blame that on Trump, </i>he proffered. <i>The guy was a Warren/Sanders
supporter and involved in Antifa. But you won’t hear THAT in the mainstream
media. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">You may wonder why I
don’t find another dentist. Well, first of all, he’s a very good dentist, he’s
extraordinarily kind and considerate, very gentle, asks me if I’m ok so many
times that I get tired of it, and second, he’s one of two dentists in our small
community, and the other wasn’t taking new patients.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Last time I was there, he
mentioned that he, like Seth, had been in marching band, and all of the geeks
and less-popular kids were there too, and how much it had meant to him. He was
very concerned about how Seth was doing. I won’t say he changed any of my
beliefs, or my politics, but he helped me see that he was a complex and unique
human.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I’d like to make a few
suggestions about change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I do not agree with the
old saw, <i>The only thing you can change is yourself.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I understand its purpose.
Trying to willfully and forcefully change others is pretty fruitless. It is
sometimes our way of avoiding the truth that what we detest in the other is
very present in us. It may be only a smidgen present. But it’s there, and we don’t
like it. We want to get rid of it. For example, there’s a part of me that is
self-righteous, indignant, and obnoxious when it comes to injustice. Very
similar to Dr. Flowers and his right wing rants. <i>That, I learned by studying
Jung, is my shadow. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Second, trying to change
others forcefully <i>does not work. </i>My husband’s brother is an ardent Trump
fan, gun person, pro-lifer, born again Christian who has goaded and taunted my
husband for years (thankfully this happens less than once a year since he’s in
CA). But last time Eric went out there, when his dad was dying last fall, he
stayed with this brother and things got very heated. It ended with Eric leaving
and staying at a hotel, and with his brother calling him a snowflake. I realize
this is happening in families, churches and workplaces all over this land.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It's as if we are all
reading from scripts and making the same useless arguments! Are they or we
changed? Rarely. What seems to happen is that we dig in our heels., becoming
even more polarized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We, as Unitarian
Universalists, we represent this faith tradition. We can all do better. I know
I can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At General Assembly this
summer in Spokane, a ruckus broke out over something called <i>The Gadfly
Papers. </i>It’s self-published broadside by the Spokane minister, Dr. Todd
Ekloff. Subtitled <i>Three Inconvenient essays by one pesky minister, </i>it’s
described as a critique of the “emerging culture of political correctness,
Safetyism, and Identitarianism” and their negative effect on “America’s most
liberal religion.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Ekloff starts by
discussing this culture in public life outside of religion, for example on
college campuses, which has been well-documented. Then he moves to detailing
some events and issues that have come to pass in our denomination. I won’t go into the book in detail, because you can
either read it or read about it online. There are parts I agree with, and parts
I do not. What I struggle with almost 2 months later is that about 500 of my
colleagues signed a letter of condemnation and disavowal of <i>The Gadfly
Papers. </i>Many acknowledged they hadn’t read it when they signed. But that
didn’t matter, they said, because POC and other marginalized people had said it
was harmful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The challenge for me is
that I know Todd Ekloff. He was serving a congregation in Louisville during the
14 years I served in Lexington. Among other things, he lost a good job with a
state agency because he took a public stand on same sex marriages. He refused
to perform any marriages until same sex marriage was legal. He and his family
suffered economically for years. <i>I know he’s not racist, homophobic,
transphobic, or any of the other labels that have been hurled at him. </i>Or, no more so than I or you.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here’s the point: </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">not
only are the people from the left or right not succeeding in changing others
for the better, <i>they (in this case) actually provided a real life example of
<b>what he was talking about in his essays, </b></i><b>and, </b>they made
things way, way worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Scott Alexander: <i>You
don’t change anyone by “should” ing all over them.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Rev. Dr. Eklof will be
fine. But I sincerely wonder whether Unitarian Universalism will be. We are
shrinking, albeit more slowly, in our numbers and in our influence in the
public square. “This is how the left is eating its own,” is a phrase I read in
one article, and something I see happening in our institutions and our politics
far beyond this denomination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As Wendell wrote in our
meditation about topsoil,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style= font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>It increases by experience, by the passage
of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by <b>ambition
or aggressiveness</b></i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We
are changed by life and by living with open, questing hearts and minds. We do
change one another, the same way we garden, fertilize, plow and tend the soil.
Gently, thoughtfully, aware of all that makes us human and that connects us. <i>We
change and are changed by Love.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And
that is why we return to community, again and again, with curiosity, humility,
and receptiveness. </span></i><span style=; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So
may it be.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-91398320567704511232019-06-26T18:22:00.000-04:002019-09-10T20:16:39.781-04:00Why You Should Read The Gadfly Papers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I can't call myself a Christian, even though it is the religion of my youth, and in spite of the fact that I resonate with the Christian story, its scriptures, and many of its followers. I'm comfortable in most Christian churches. But I differ from the orthodox faith in a few important ways. I don't believe we are meant to worship Christ. I don't believe that the Resurrection and all that has been attached to it (Heaven, Hell, sin, etc) is meant to be taken literally. But most of all, having studied World Religions, visited Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish countries and places of worship, I don't believe that God as I understand God would select only people who say the right words into God's chosen people, and into Heaven. Unitarian Universalism, even with its many flaws and foibles, is my chosen faith tradition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"UUs", as we call ourselves, are famous for three things (at least): our social justice work and witness; our radical acceptance and affirmation of all people; and our Humanist leanings, which "counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of Science..." (<i>UU Sources)</i>. We're also colloquially known as the church for atheists, the "No Hell" people, and, most recently, the <i>Side With Love </i>people, or just the Love People. Each of these monikers is partly true and partly an over-simplification. Historically, we are the far left wing of the Reformation, but we are not unlike Reform Jews and liberal Protestants, we have lots of members and ministers who are theistic and Christian, in addition to atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists. And more. I love that we are unafraid to critique ourselves and unflinching about our devotion to service and justice. So many UUs are fearless crusaders for the disenfranchised and the marginalized that we sometimes think of ourselves, when asked what we stand for, as the 19th Century Universalists claimed, people who "don't stand; we move".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So for these reasons, and many others, I have experienced my fellow UUs to be unflinching in our examination of facts before we make statements or jump on any bandwagon. It can make congregational life very contentious at times. And, denominational life, too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I expect the people who call themselves UUs to employ both hearts and minds when responding to events, whether local or international. I am continually amazed and inspired by the courage and conviction of my fellow UUs and especially my colleagues. As I write this, I know Unitarian Universalists are taking direct action against the migrant "camps" on our Southerm border, and even getting arrested for helping and offering food and water to undocumented immigrants. As <i>Roe v. Wade</i> gets eroded by state legislatures and is clearly under threat nationally, UUs have stepped up in droves to be clinic escorts and to march and petition for laws that protect women and freedom of choice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I'm troubled, though, by recent trends in our faith tradition. I will start by saying that I may be wrong, I certainly have been wrong in the past, and I will readily admit that my words were misguided if that proves to be true. Here are my main concerns:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">* UUs everywhere, but particularly clergy and particularly on social media, are <b>afraid to speak their truth.</b> Their fear is due to their perception that not only will they be shamed, shouted down, and piled upon metaphorically, but that they may actually lose their standing with our association and consequently their livelihoods. <i>This I know for certain.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>* </i>When our UUA President Peter Morales was forced/encouraged to resign two years ago, along with at least four other ministers in leadership positions, a narrative was begun that because a woman who identifies as a POC (Person of Color) was not selected for a position, and for many other reasons, including that People of Color felt unwelcome and marginalized in our churches and fellowships and that it was time for White UUs (but especially white, cis-gendered and male UUs) to be quiet and listen. <i>I know this happened, although some may quibble over my phrase </i>forced to resign, <i>I heard and saw enough to believe this.<b> I also believe that UUs who are persons of color do feel both marginalized and tokenized in our culture.</b> I've seen it first hand in my 25 years of ministry.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">* Likewise, UU transpeople, UUs with disabilities, and UUs with other historically disempowered identities became emboldened to speak out and were heard. The UUA Board even pledged to raise (and fulfilled that pledge at our recent General Assembly) <b>five million dollars</b> for the BLUU (Black Lives of UU) organization. This would not only give BLUU access to resources they could use for attracting more POC and also for outreach to the POC in our congregations, it appeared to me (admittedly a distant observer) to help the UUA and many in leadership feel somewhat less guilty about what has come to be called the <i>Black Empowerment Controversy </i>of the 1960s. <i>I believe this to be factual.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>So, why am I troubled, and what does all of this have to do with <b>The Gadfly Papers</b>, distributed at "G.A./GA" (General Assembly)?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">These new ways of understanding ourselves as part of <b>white supremacy culture </b>and of re-aligning our assets and resources to help ameliorate that, have led to push back and resistance on the part of (some) clergy, and many people in congregations. That is as it should be! We are, after all, UUs, and we question everything. We are also human, and with that comes resistance to change, fear of the unknown, and typical human foibles, like needing time to learn, and being dense, and trying to "look" adequate. Of course we are. I have said to congregations I've served that they should expect struggle and dissent, and that the Church is less a place to get your ego assuaged and your pre-existing beliefs affirmed than a laboratory for learning to be more human. I've had to re-adjust my thinking and my attitude numerous times. <i>There is no shame in being wrong.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">What troubles me is not the fact that UUism is changing and as ever, is somewhat ahead of the curve of society in general. (Who was it that said UUs are the people who are always reading the next page? I love that) . What bothers me is that so many of us have either left the Chat groups we used to love on Facebook, have withdrawn from groups and associations we once took part in, and have, in some cases, left UUism altogether, <b>not because we don't agree with the ultimate goal</b> of these changes in our culture, but because we are so intimidated and feel so unable to engage in the conversation, at all. We are afraid to say one wrong word.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>The Gadfly Papers </i>is one person's well-researched (although his sources and methods have been questioned) and carefully constructed argument (some question that, too) about what he perceives as a culture of shaming, shunning, and alienating anyone who does not go along with the words and the narrative that has been given. The reason I started by explaining why I'm not Christian is that, to me, UUs are the people who live in THIS world, doing good and fighting injustice as best as they can, NOT people who have said some magic words of a creed, and are therefore among the "elect". Most of us have been shamed and shunned for practicing and sharing this faith. <i>We look to our fellow UUs to help us evolve with good humor, acceptance, and respect.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I've now read <i>The Gadfly Papers</i> twice, the second time trying to see the essays from the perspective of those who feel harmed by their publication and by their distribution. I will likely read them a few more times. But I'm UU. Just reading them wasn't enough. I saw a comment claiming that one of Todd's sources, "<i>The Coddling of the American Mind..." </i>had been discredited and debunked. I looked it up and found it had been a bestseller, had been given 5 stars on the website, and had been nominated by the New York Times as one of the best non-fiction books of that year. I followed through by looking up other resources he used. I've read all of the responses that I have seen, and I list them below.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> I saw a reference to someone I had known years ago, in my early ministry. He (Mel Pine, a UU from VA who has now left the denomination) <a href="https://meltingpotdharma.com/2017/04/12/my-faiths-crisis-my-faith-crisis/" target="_blank">wrote a column</a> after the resignation of Peter Morales, UUA President, and questioned the means by which it occurred. I then saw a 17-minute video made by a leader of BLUU, calling this (now seventy-something) man a "fuck-shit" and his whole column "shit", and then equating him with acts of racism that had occurred in his county, as if he were guilty of them just be being there. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lesliemacFRN/videos/10154747866014565/I" target="_blank">Video links here </a> (since yesterday, when I saw the full 17-minute video, and had to listen on earphones because it was full of the F-word and other language, and my 14 year old was nearby..I've been blocked, and can not see it</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">.) She also physically threatened him in a Facebook post. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I know how he felt, because the same person wrote very nasty comments on my homepage (I've since de-friended her). <a href="https://meltingpotdharma.com/2017/04/27/dear-leslie-mac/" target="_blank">More on this here.</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Since you may not be able to see the video (removed after being up for two years) here's a bit of humor at the expense of its creator. Daily<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2017/09/roy-wood-jr-investigates-safety-pin-box-a-woke-white-person-subscription-service.html" target="_blank"> Show clip</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I do wonder why the 300 ministers who want to see Todd Eklof face consequences are OK with this blog post written by a UU minister, in which she admits she does not know him, but calls him a white supremacist, abhorrent, and his writings 'fuckery'. <a href="https://revashleyhoran.com/2018/10/" target="_blank">Read it here</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">(added 8/20): The link I posted to the Fuckery post somehow disappeared. Here's a new one.<a href="https://revashleyhoran.com/2017/04/13/enough-of-this-fkery-already-white-uus/" target="_blank">Here is the blog post</a> I will also add that the minister who wrote it is now the Organizing Strategy Director for the UUA. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">According to the UUA, her 'fuckery' rant doesn't matter, because:<i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "neue helvetica w02" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></span>
<span arial="" font-family:="" helvetica="" neue="" quot="" sans-serif="" w02=""><i><span style="font-size: large;">“Ashley brings a depth of experience and relationships both within and beyond Unitarian Universalism. Her experience working with congregations and in movement spaces is a tremendous asset in this role. Additionally, her experience in organizing bold actions, taking risks for justice and weaving spiritual depth, growth and reflection for groups engaged in justice making mirrors the understanding that the work of justice is inseparable from our religious and theological foundations,” writes UUA president, the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray.</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Or maybe it is part of her "taking risks for justice."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Let's just assume, for argument, that Mel Pine's post was less-than-enlightened. His writing about his need to feel "safe" certainly would trigger POC and others who have felt so unsafe for years and decades, not just in UU congregations, but everywhere. If we look deeper, we can see that Mel has a Jewish heritage, so in spite of his white male identity, he carries a legacy of danger and fear. I don't see where that blog post about his 'fuckery' OR Leslie Mac's calling him fuckshit numerous times starts a Beloved Conversation. (Ashley Horan was or maybe still is the "Beloved Conversations" creator/moderator).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Although it's far from true that everyone who is against <i>The Gadfly Papers </i>is being nasty and shaming both the author and anyone who is seen as aligned with him, many, many are. And that appears to be okay with my colleagues.. I am actually the cheese who stands alone here, because I think he had the right to write them and to distribute them. I can't even begin to count the number of pamphlets, broadsides and even books I've been handed at GA. He says he had hoped to start a dialogue, and instead he's having hellfire rained upon him. <b>A minister who commented on my post of the newspaper article about him said his acts were evil. Others called it ego-driven, manipulative, a stunt, and dishonest. <i>He dropped a bomb and ran </i> was one comment. As I wrote this, another minister called him hurtful, clueless, and appalling</b>. (this after I explicitly asked people NOT to leave personal attacks, but to go directly to him).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Letters have been written and signed calling for his resignation. One person said they hoped he didn't get away without facing consequences; another said <i>Oh, no, he won't. </i>Presently Todd, whom I've called a friend/colleague, although we've been out of touch since he left KY, is deeply chagrined and in pain. Yes, he knew what he was saying was controversial and he'd be attacked, but he had no idea it would be so swift and so merciless(only a few people claim to have read the whole thing; many refuse to buy it and help promote the book, even though it's 2.99 on Kindle, and believe me, I'm a writer... he'd be lucky to recoup the costs of printing it). What he's not doing is <i>gloating,</i> which a reliable source told me they saw too much of among his adversaries. I also saw comments saying it would <b>take years to unravel the harm he and the book had caused.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So, I'm left with <b>more questions than answers: </b><i>if his thesis and his supporting documents, anecdotes, and arguments are so wrong, what's the big deal? Why not ignore him and the book, and let it fizzle out? UUs are smart and savvy; they can think for themselves.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Why are ministers signing a letter condemning the book in the strongest terms when they have read none, or 5 lines, or 20 pages, or as a few people said, "</i>I don't need to read it; the titles were enough". Or, "<i>I won't read it"? (I'm not mad at my colleagues; I choose to believe, as I always have, that they are overwhelmingly loving, honest, and exceptionally dedicated humans).</i>Indeed, I acknowledge that new evidence or facts may cause me to change my mind entirely about the book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Update! I based the above statement on social media posts and interactions. I still have heard only a handful of ministers say they've read it in entirety. As far as I can see, no open dialogue or debate about the <i>content of the book itself </i> has been held among ministers, unless there was one that I wasn't informed of, in which case...not "open". There is a private but open to anyone group that is discussing the actual book. Only 3-4 ministers have spoken in Todd's defense, or at least in protest of the book being censured. On that group, I was called a "liar" by a colleague (publicly, in a forum open to anyone) along with another colleague for the statement, "most ministers who signed the letter had not read the book." In my opinion her comments to us are a breach of the UUMA covenant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>But I imagine some are mad at me, for signing the <a href="https://www.revscottwells.com/2019/06/12/a-uuma-guidelines-proposal-response/?fbclid=IwAR3YpnRxPYvT61tV8Ct4Cr3eOjxjOe08RQVFJeoNfxm4XU9msOfX_Ws9Xuk" target="_blank">"Clergy Letter"</a> , for asking people to at least read Todd's book before condemning it (and him) and may even call me racist or worse. I'm not going to talk about the 25 years ministry I've devoted to anti-racism, because the reply of some will be (as it was to Mel Pine) that it's just evidence that I'm a white savior, or a hypocrite. I will say that I have a disability (chronic daily migraines) and I'm raising a child, family member who is autistic. Hence, I resonate with a sensitivity to how people say things and what they do. Seth's 14 years have been a long story of micro-aggressions, exclusion, and stereotyping, much of it from UUs. So, yes, I can relate, if only marginally, to the urge to be angry, demand justice, and look for someone or something to blame. But there is no "one" to blame. Can we try to work together, believing that people will come around?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Maybe Todd made a gross miscalculation by using GA, a GA in which the new direction for our faith was being held up, a GA held on the 50th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.uuworld.org/articles/empowerment-tragedy" target="_blank">Black Empowerment Controversy </a>, to publicize his treatise. Maybe he was wrong to employ terms like PC Culture, Call-out Culture, Virtue signaling and safetyism, terms that are often used to disavow and defuse legitimate movements and arguments. If he is wrong, can he be forgiven?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>The current narrative is that Todd was asked to meet with Right Relations team members to discuss his book, and would not. He says he refused to do so, upon advice, without a Good Officer, and was asked to leave GA. Since the Assembly was held in Spokane, where he is the UU minister, this was swift and harsh punishment. But I've also heard that other ministers, some of whom signed a clergy letter (link above) responding to the proposed guidelines changes for our Ministerial Association, were asked not to lead workshops at GA or Ministry Days because of their association with the letter. Whence comes this ethic of punishment and scolding?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Are UUs expected to be automatically "woke", aware of anything they might say, anxious and self-censoring, and fearful of making a misstep? What kind of faith is that?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>And what kind of justice is it if all you've done is make people afraid to speak up?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I became a UU in Cherry Hill, NJ, not long after our initial<i> Welcoming Congregation </i>workshops were launched, and I attended a training with Rev. Scott Alexander, who authored the workbook. He said that day, "You never change people by <i>should</i>-ing all over them." What can we glean from that?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>As a child from a family where alcoholism was rampant and charity rare, I am somewhat conflict-averse. But mostly, I recoil from situations and people who use shaming, bullying, and metaphorical finger-shaking to force their ways upon me. UUism needs to evolve, and it will. Perhaps we should try again, with love, acceptance and good faith, treating others as we would want to be treated?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gadfly-Papers-Inconvenient-Essays-Minister-ebook/dp/B07S9TB7JY?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=ad-backfill-amzn-one-good-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B07S9TB7JY" target="_blank">BUY THE BOOK</a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"The Gadfly Papers" <a href="https://www.revscottwells.com/2019/06/23/the-gadfly-papers/" target="_blank">3 part series </a>by Rev. Scott Wells</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">here. Todd Eklof also writes a reply.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<a href="https://www.revscottwells.com/category/unitarian-universalist-association/"><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.revscottwells.com/category/unitarian-universalist-association/</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Statement </i>by DRUUM </span><i style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/DRUUMM/photos/a.165860406803228/2215621331827115/?type=1&theate" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/DRUUMM/photos/a.165860406803228/2215621331827115/?type=1&theate</a></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-4HvVMVT1pC3FkOZR0iIFd2XyMjYrt3z_egd8EAiNus/mobilebasic" target="_blank">Statement </a>by POCI(Persons of Color and Indigenous Persons)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">UU Ministers' <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zVsfNpC-SM3dKpqGGR2hIMDwbIaH8a1n46InWdlm95I/mobilebasic" target="_blank">Response Statement</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/allies-for-racial-equity/to-preserve-our-faith-we-must-do-better-an-invitation-to-white-unitarian-univers/2825278037488426/" style="font-size: x-large;" target="_blank">ARE letter</a><span style="font-size: large;"> (Allies for Racial Equality)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">SOME REDDIT THREADS</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UUreddit/comments/c4lp4f/what_is_going_on/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; font-family: "libre franklin", "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; transition: all 80ms ease-in 0s, all 130ms ease-in-out 0s, all 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">https://www.reddit.com/r/UUreddit/comments/c4lp4f/what_is_going_on/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UUreddit/comments/c4g4pj/the_gadfly_papers/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; font-family: "libre franklin", "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; transition: all 80ms ease-in 0s, all 130ms ease-in-out 0s, all 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">https://www.reddit.com/r/UUreddit/comments/c4g4pj/the_gadfly_papers/</a><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://medium.com/@crothbauer/telling-our-stories-the-failure-of-the-gadfly-papers-44b08351ed07" style="font-size: x-large;" target="_blank">Chris Rothbauer Column</a><br />
<br />
Some <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10xsbHFVpnsQtGY4ZVPASsFmNrj_blx26U_4b2Jp2guo/edit" target="_blank">extensive rebuttal </a>of the GP by UU Minister DennisMcCarty<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-35567230906756687482018-10-09T19:35:00.000-04:002018-10-09T19:35:31.536-04:00FAULT LINES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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8/5/2012</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">POEM, “Fault
Line”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">California
is so many things, but it’s hard to think about California without thinking of
earthquakes. The San Andreas Fault and its handiwork is plainly visible. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Research has shown that the Southern segment,
which stretches from Monterey <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all the
way down to the Salton Sea, is capable of a Richter scale 8.1 earthquake. An
earthquake of that size on the Southern segment (which, at its closest, is 40
miles away from Los Angeles) would kill thousands of people in Los Angeles, San
Bernandino, Riverside, and other areas, and cause hundreds of billions of
dollars in property and economic damage.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Isn’t is
great to live in such a safe part of the country?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Maybe..……in
November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a
serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the
highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States,"
further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across
Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Texas, and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 magnitude quake or
greater would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water
distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure.[22] The
earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Maybe, we
all live on the edge, but Californians just can’t deny it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As writer
Alice Gregory notes upon moving East:</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In California, you know when you’re
burning. The brightness hurts, and when you close your eyes, you see red. The
cliffs are high and jagged, the ocean smashes the shoreline, and landslides
really can bring you down. There you are dwarfed and powerless. There are
earthquakes; and mudslides; and for about three months of the year, entire regions
of the state threaten to spontaneously combust. You wouldn’t dare sleep naked
in California—you might need to run outside in the middle of the night,
awakened to a rattling house and a mile-deep fissure in your front lawn.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We love to
watch the Olympics for many reasons, not the least of which is that moment of
suspense and the drama of the competitors’ expressions of joy or defeat.
Vicariously, we relive our own near-triumphs and empathize, or imagine the
glorious moment of victory and feel envy or admiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love the synchronized diving and the moment
the divers poise on the edge of the board. Every muscle of their bodies must be
perfectly attuned, and to my way of thinking there must be a spiritual as well
as a visual/mechanical connection in order for these dives to be so perfectly
harmonized, almost poetic. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But there,
as they pause on the edge, everything is potential: victory, defeat, even
danger, and yet they voluntarily do this over and over again! So, of course, do
we. (CIM)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Each day we
arise is a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">journey to the edge</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We have only
to acknowledge our own <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">vulnerability </b>to
understand how close we really come.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And I am not
just referring to our physical risk, although that is greater than we
acknowledge, given the way we hurtle down the freeways at enormous speeds,
live, eat, and move in ways that are contraindicated for longevity and comfort;
and all of the many toxic and violent threats of modern life. I am also
referring to what I am just going to call our own <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">theological fault lines</b>. Those potential rifts and separations that
we pretend not to observe, that we neglect at our own expense. You can only
live deceptively and selfishly for so long before it begins to consume you. You
can see these upheavals in peoples bodies and faces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When our USA
men’s diving team was waiting to see whether they would win a Bronze medal or
no medal at all, their reactions were so different. The younger man (age 17)
was fraught with anxiety. The older of the two, who was actually more on the
edge in this case, since he is 34 and would not have another chance to ever win
a medal, was smiling. He looked okay to me. He stayed with the younger guy even
though he preferred to not watch the other results. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>I actually have no idea but
I would like to think he was at peace because he had done his best. If you
watched TV at all this week, you probably know, they did win the bronze medal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here is my
point. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Whether we
acknowledge it, live in denial, glimpse it from time to time, we are all living
on the edge. There is really so little separating us from huge loss and
disaster. (mention Colo, 4<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Knoxville, etc…) When we
know this, we have a choice. We can<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>figuratively grasp and compete and consume one another, acting as if
nothing but our own survival, winning, getting through,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>surviving , the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“bottom line,” how things come out, and
fixing everything that is wrong is really what it’s all about. You may have
guessed by now that this is not what I would recommend theologically.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">However, I
see people acting this way every day, as if the product were more important
than the person. Yes, even Unitarian Universalists. Sometimes, even myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But when I
meditate upon the edge, the fault line of my own existence, spend some time in
that land where we all live theologically, where no one finally survives, then
I know the answer is love, respect and decency for every human I encounter, and
I can return to other humans, regardless of how hungrily they may be licking
their chops, with kindness and regard.</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">C.S. Lewis talks with one of his
college students about</span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">why we love</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> if losing hurts so much, Lewis who lost his mother as a</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">child and his wife as an adult,
responds, “I have no answers anymore,</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">only the life I have lived. Twice in
that life...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've been given</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the choice: As a boy... and as a man.
The boy chose safety. The man</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">chooses suffering. The pain now is
part of the happiness then. That's</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the deal.”</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Taking this
to a universal level we can look to Joanna Macy, Buddhist teacher and
eco-feminist. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Macy states that feeling
that one</i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">must always be hopeful can wear a
person out, but if we just show</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">up, and be present, do not pull down
the blinds, the possibilities</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">exist that the world will heal. She
believes there is a new paradigm</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">occurring that is known as “The Great
Turning.” The Great Turning</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">is a concept she helped coin and
define. Macy calls The Great</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Turning “the essential adventure of
our time: the shift from the</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">industrial growth society to a
life-sustaining civilization.” She</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">says it is a time of transition from
a bankrupt political society,</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">which measures success by growth and
profit and is being replaced</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">by moral strength, courage and
creativity. The generations alive</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">today may not see a drastic change in
their lives or environment</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">but the choices we make for profit
today will effect the beings in</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the next hundreds and thousands of
years and determine whether</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">they will be born of sound mind and
body.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So when we
feel ourselves in those places of fear and anxiety, let us turn toward one
another with love as the first principle, and we will find our way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The shifting plates, the restive
earth, your room, your precious life, they all proceed <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">from love</b>, the ground on which we walk, together.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-19846889201146906392018-10-09T08:57:00.003-04:002023-07-17T09:40:25.542-04:00Failure<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jj4ESA7UBEpnih6VYjfhcnOfwejWvZf6Q9J2U2fEBGvzEWTivvetuWkkT8kYCOF8B3WJCDVW2SULECdm_6NaPun99QNHWf7SdNTaRTXJFQQLu_v8jCnZYOUD3TqwTeErSENvrg/s1600/BMX+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jj4ESA7UBEpnih6VYjfhcnOfwejWvZf6Q9J2U2fEBGvzEWTivvetuWkkT8kYCOF8B3WJCDVW2SULECdm_6NaPun99QNHWf7SdNTaRTXJFQQLu_v8jCnZYOUD3TqwTeErSENvrg/s320/BMX+%25282%2529.jpg" width="192" /></a></div>
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Son #2, BMX</div>
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<b>Failure</b><br />
<br />
When my sons were adolescents, and devoted to skateboards and BMX bikes, we visited a skateboard shop called "Failure". I can only guess that the young adults owners' parents told them it would be a failure, or they would, so they embraced the name. I got a bumper sticker, and it lived on my Toyota Camry for about 400,000 miles. That was about 25 years ago, and I'm still learning to embrace the idea. It's one of the most valuable disciplines I can practice.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRuKkylahL0F2XlFF2Gdcuxm-wr6pTodlO49kAPuHtogZMTN7l2e35HVDYi7km4-aUImrupZ450uOqvhsJEBJp_zjOwlSzyZN0S1tnmFZ7OU_DzXa5X_B_WkrfOATTWlkWUmuG4w/s1600/Kavanope.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="960" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRuKkylahL0F2XlFF2Gdcuxm-wr6pTodlO49kAPuHtogZMTN7l2e35HVDYi7km4-aUImrupZ450uOqvhsJEBJp_zjOwlSzyZN0S1tnmFZ7OU_DzXa5X_B_WkrfOATTWlkWUmuG4w/s320/Kavanope.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seen in D.C.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b>Kavanope</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
Last week, as the Senate moved toward confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in spite of numerous accusations of sexual assault and his own partisan display, not to mention his erratic and unseemly behavior, my family and I were in Washington, DC. Seth knew some things about the story, having heard the news, asked questions, and listened to our conversations. Had we not left on Thursday morning. I might have taken him to see the protests as the Supreme Court, which were starting to accelerate. I can't think of a better way for him to have understood democracy--what's left of it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUw-RykjjZvDa6SFZDeqBitGp12A48ztVT6Zf59n9i2WQ4IW3CpFDhbukU0NgxaPm53sw-S5iwyf-lnYZZ7lTPznhHsVXleYz1MHTDaGx5rf54Kry1AmjG8pTBmkqPaMMgGD7EFA/s1600/Kavanaugh+ceremony.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="457" data-original-width="725" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUw-RykjjZvDa6SFZDeqBitGp12A48ztVT6Zf59n9i2WQ4IW3CpFDhbukU0NgxaPm53sw-S5iwyf-lnYZZ7lTPznhHsVXleYz1MHTDaGx5rf54Kry1AmjG8pTBmkqPaMMgGD7EFA/s320/Kavanaugh+ceremony.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mood.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I didn't believe from the beginning that the Democrats would succeed in keeping Kavanaugh off the bench. Even if, by some miracle, they had, Trump would have come up with another pick, just as far right, equally political, and the GOP would have been so angry and incensed that they may have fared worse in the midterm elections.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, in spite of being a victim of sexual assault at a young age, I didn't share the outrage that I heard and saw from my (mostly white) women (mostly colleagues. I<i>n fact, it began to trouble me somewhat. Here's why:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>* </i>To dwell too heavily upon this insult to our sensibilities in which, yes, once again, women have been been devalued, disbelieved, and discounted, to the point where it brings out more rage than many other things which have happened of late raises the question: <i>Is this white privilege?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>* It's tone deaf.</i> Knowing that these very assaults and insults have been the life story of women of color for generations, the alarm and horror, the <i>outrage, </i> of white women, must look almost comical to women across the globe. Imagine a woman who has endured systematic rape and abuse with no recourse watching a smart, well-off, successful white woman testify that someone almost raped her in high school. Yes, I know myself that this can cause lifetime trauma. I don't question her testimony or her distress. I question our response, as white women.<br />
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<b>The People of Failure and Hope</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Back to <i>failure. </i>My Buddhist practice and study has taught me that impermanence is the only sure thing. All human endeavor will fail. None of us will conquer death, illness, or loss. Acknowledging the inevitability of failure is a spiritual process and practice that is not easy, but can bring equanimity.<br />
<br />
On our trip to D.C., we visited the new African American Museum of Culture and History. It is a celebration of triumph and a mourning of loss and horror. The history of Black people in the U.S. is one of suffering, and also one of triumph.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3sHelltksiFiuovKd5N5huzFwhDGny1jTcrYtR9tTf142Je0VpvrTiQCVWhyEoqOy0vSswRCT4dAvdcFe-ozgU9TmWS9YatyUyD26IdRynA-eQUhkUZBGSZ3AkxVSQujzGmh_Mg/s1600/NMAAHC.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3sHelltksiFiuovKd5N5huzFwhDGny1jTcrYtR9tTf142Je0VpvrTiQCVWhyEoqOy0vSswRCT4dAvdcFe-ozgU9TmWS9YatyUyD26IdRynA-eQUhkUZBGSZ3AkxVSQujzGmh_Mg/s320/NMAAHC.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cafe at National Museum of African American History and Culture.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
The next day, Seth asked to go to the <i>Holocaust </i>museum. He said he knew about the Holocaust, and the museum exhibits were presented in a way that was less alarming than I might have expected. But he had not known that disabled people were the first to be destroyed. Many exhibits emphasized this, so it was impossible to downplay. <i>He knew this would have included him. </i>We skipped quite a bit of the latter part, but at the end, we had a chance to talk with a Holocaust survivor. I explained to her that Seth had Autism, and she talked with him at length, telling him that people could be mean, be bullies, but there were kind and good people too, and we must always be kind. He listened intently, and after, he cried and hugged me.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1WwaSvkH8EUMTP50o3DDFRBmEWA5kK75RlypLDXjtK38zuQZ9Lnjitesy1asAco2Ha2xagfNftYi51PKBx95YpdJ_zbmTVlCaBAYL6RpSpl0C-hCGrCpzUqmLzZ1fBrmjHnq1Q/s1600/Holocaust+survivor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="1080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1WwaSvkH8EUMTP50o3DDFRBmEWA5kK75RlypLDXjtK38zuQZ9Lnjitesy1asAco2Ha2xagfNftYi51PKBx95YpdJ_zbmTVlCaBAYL6RpSpl0C-hCGrCpzUqmLzZ1fBrmjHnq1Q/s320/Holocaust+survivor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Jews understood, and African Americans understand, after unfathomable loss, and total failure, something remains. Love, humanity, and goodness. Therein lies our faith. Some call it God.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMGU0PzzQ1ADWWAE5dQhywQV13saRx75inFttMsAItldpthetHDSQu7w9CcaxpR7z3evnxTjI4KERwugvA83nozxnPl5gz4wnwagZwQE_R18EvzqYIru6vm5nc1Rrl0VGNRX-2eQ/s1600/Dachau.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="1080" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMGU0PzzQ1ADWWAE5dQhywQV13saRx75inFttMsAItldpthetHDSQu7w9CcaxpR7z3evnxTjI4KERwugvA83nozxnPl5gz4wnwagZwQE_R18EvzqYIru6vm5nc1Rrl0VGNRX-2eQ/s320/Dachau.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Acceptance</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I had so many dreams last week. I didn't recall all of the details, but I know they moved me forward. The failures and losses in my life have been so many of late that It has felt overwhelming. I've reached a point with all my siblings that to both be honest with them and continue a relationship seems impossible. I've had problems communicating with my grown children. I wrote years ago on this blog about how<a href="http://ajerseygirlinkentucky.blogspot.com/2007/03/failure-so.html" target="_blank"> ministry is failure</a>. The home our family has owned for 70 years is being sold in a manner that is duplicitous and hurtful. My chronic migraines have worsened in a way that has prevented me moving forward with writing and other projects. And, on this trip, we realized once again how limiting life with an Autistic child is. Seth really can't endure much in the way of travel, or sight-seeing, his interests are very narrow, and his anxiety is overpowering. All normal, but our expectations were far too high. Each of these things separately can be managed, but each is really beyond my control, and with the help of my dreams, the contemplation I had some time for, and some intervention from God, I came at last to a place I can be a peace with. I made decisions. I accepted finitude, loss, impermanence, and failure <i>again.</i><br />
<br />
Failure. Some call it surrender. Or, life.<br />
<i><br /></i>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5M4Ap-sKQ0L4jzMgkqpNfJA-r6v2INkLbXXkZdkh0m4S1dGZJaqoM3Nz-Ux_4nPx9_d8GmbjiwIcgA7esW2GbV0JRpTqLP4ELXQ8zE7QKmCE5LrY1eabbqC8vtVD2ysryEfDvvQ/s1600/Autism.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5M4Ap-sKQ0L4jzMgkqpNfJA-r6v2INkLbXXkZdkh0m4S1dGZJaqoM3Nz-Ux_4nPx9_d8GmbjiwIcgA7esW2GbV0JRpTqLP4ELXQ8zE7QKmCE5LrY1eabbqC8vtVD2ysryEfDvvQ/s320/Autism.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-50362584783030977182018-09-28T09:42:00.001-04:002018-09-28T10:05:15.918-04:00Women, Girls, & Cats: Be a Vashti<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCIiPe7S1gd0Cu0KEDujS25cwoVCj4KP8qw4LRdCNmOW1XgbZ4Em_KlYK7lF150nePRY0GnnlNjGx4xIXDI2hel9TiLtunVkO_7NQeZmegoAuZsWKG2pwdGfrW7Q55MFxqNf8QeA/s1600/V.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCIiPe7S1gd0Cu0KEDujS25cwoVCj4KP8qw4LRdCNmOW1XgbZ4Em_KlYK7lF150nePRY0GnnlNjGx4xIXDI2hel9TiLtunVkO_7NQeZmegoAuZsWKG2pwdGfrW7Q55MFxqNf8QeA/s400/V.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="chapternum" style="bottom: -0.1em; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; left: 0px; line-height: 0.8em; position: relative;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="chapter-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span class="text Esth-1-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="chapternum" style="bottom: -0.1em; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; left: 0px; line-height: 0.8em; position: relative;">1 </span>This is what happened during the time of Xerxes,<span class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NIV-12704a" data-link="[<a href="#fen-NIV-12704a" title="See footnote a">a</a>]" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Esther+1&version=NIV#fen-NIV-12704a" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #b34b2c; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: top;" title="See footnote a">a</a>]</span><span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12704A" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12704A" title="See cross-reference A">A</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12704B" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12704B" title="See cross-reference B">B</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> stretching from India to Cush<span class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NIV-12704b" data-link="[<a href="#fen-NIV-12704b" title="See footnote b">b</a>]" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Esther+1&version=NIV#fen-NIV-12704b" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #b34b2c; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: top;" title="See footnote b">b</a>]</span>:<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12704C" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12704C" title="See cross-reference C">C</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Esth-1-2" id="en-NIV-12705" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">2 </span>At that time King Xerxes reigned from his royal throne in the citadel of Susa,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12705D" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12705D" title="See cross-reference D">D</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span> <span class="text Esth-1-3" id="en-NIV-12706" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">3 </span>and in the third year of his reign he gave a banquet<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12706E" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12706E" title="See cross-reference E">E</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the provinces were present.</span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-4" id="en-NIV-12707" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">4 </span>For a full 180 days he displayed the vast wealth of his kingdom and the splendor and glory of his majesty.</span> <span class="text Esth-1-5" id="en-NIV-12708" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">5 </span>When these days were over, the king gave a banquet, lasting seven days,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12708F" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12708F" title="See cross-reference F">F</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> in the enclosed garden<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12708G" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12708G" title="See cross-reference G">G</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> of the king’s palace, for all the people from the least to the greatest who were in the citadel of Susa.</span> <span class="text Esth-1-6" id="en-NIV-12709" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">6 </span>The garden had hangings of white and blue linen, fastened with cords of white linen and purple material to silver rings on marble pillars. There were couches<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12709H" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12709H" title="See cross-reference H">H</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl and other costly stones.</span><span class="text Esth-1-7" id="en-NIV-12710" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">7 </span>Wine was served in goblets of gold, each one different from the other, and the royal wine was abundant, in keeping with the king’s liberality.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12710I" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12710I" title="See cross-reference I">I</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span><span class="text Esth-1-8" id="en-NIV-12711" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">8 </span>By the king’s command each guest was allowed to drink with no restrictions, for the king instructed all the wine stewards to serve each man what he wished.</span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-9" id="en-NIV-12712" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">9 </span>Queen Vashti also gave a banquet<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12712J" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12712J" title="See cross-reference J">J</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> for the women in the royal palace of King Xerxes.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4IIF0rZv-RIsjV65bY-K661KzBDrdmplMrCiHNoKKX_OF9VCJ003P54V044o3jolY9kfSSl98lj1QIoqin68f88INJ-Y3NZJcEoJ34Vkh3atHAa37lpGYgECj5He7_yEOIEUg3g/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="184" data-original-width="274" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4IIF0rZv-RIsjV65bY-K661KzBDrdmplMrCiHNoKKX_OF9VCJ003P54V044o3jolY9kfSSl98lj1QIoqin68f88INJ-Y3NZJcEoJ34Vkh3atHAa37lpGYgECj5He7_yEOIEUg3g/s320/images.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-10" id="en-NIV-12713" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">10 </span>On the seventh day, when King Xerxes was in high spirits<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12713K" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12713K" title="See cross-reference K">K</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> from wine,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12713L" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12713L" title="See cross-reference L">L</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span>he commanded the seven eunuchs who served him—Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12713M" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12713M" title="See cross-reference M">M</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar and Karkas—</span> <span class="text Esth-1-11" id="en-NIV-12714" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">11 </span>to bring<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12714N" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12714N" title="See cross-reference N">N</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> before him Queen Vashti, wearing her royal crown, in order to display her beauty<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12714O" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12714O" title="See cross-reference O">O</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> to the people and nobles, for she was lovely to look at.</span> <span class="text Esth-1-12" id="en-NIV-12715" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">12 </span>But when the attendants delivered the king’s command, Queen Vashti refused to come. Then the king became furious and burned with anger.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12715P" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12715P" title="See cross-reference P">P</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-13" id="en-NIV-12716" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">13 </span>Since it was customary for the king to consult experts in matters of law and justice, he spoke with the wise men who understood the times<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12716Q" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12716Q" title="See cross-reference Q">Q</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span><span class="text Esth-1-14" id="en-NIV-12717" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">14 </span>and were closest to the king—Karshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena and Memukan, the seven nobles<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12717R" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12717R" title="See cross-reference R">R</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> of Persia and Media who had special access to the king and were highest in the kingdom.</span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-15" id="en-NIV-12718" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">15 </span>“According to law, what must be done to Queen Vashti?” he asked. “She has not obeyed the command of King Xerxes that the eunuchs have taken to her.”</span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-16" id="en-NIV-12719" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">16 </span>Then Memukan replied in the presence of the king and the nobles, “Queen Vashti has done wrong, not only against the king but also against all the nobles and the peoples of all the provinces of King Xerxes.</span> <span class="text Esth-1-17" id="en-NIV-12720" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">17 </span>For the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women, and so they will despise their husbands and say, ‘King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she would not come.’</span> <span class="text Esth-1-18" id="en-NIV-12721" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">18 </span>This very day the Persian and Median women of the nobility who have heard about the queen’s conduct will respond to all the king’s nobles in the same way. <b>There will be no end of disrespect and discord</b>.<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12721S" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12721S" title="See cross-reference S">S</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-19" id="en-NIV-12722" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">19 </span>“Therefore, if it pleases the king,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12722T" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12722T" title="See cross-reference T">T</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> let him issue a royal decree and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media, which cannot be repealed,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12722U" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12722U" title="See cross-reference U">U</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span>that Vashti is never again to enter the presence of King Xerxes. Also let the king give her royal position to someone else who is better than she.</span><span class="text Esth-1-20" id="en-NIV-12723" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">20 </span>Then when the king’s edict is proclaimed throughout all his vast realm, <b>all the women will respect their husbands, from the least to the greatest.”</b></span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-21" id="en-NIV-12724" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">21 </span>The king and his nobles were pleased with this advice, so the king did as Memukan proposed.</span> <span class="text Esth-1-22" id="en-NIV-12725" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">22 </span>He sent dispatches to all parts of the kingdom, to each province in its own script and to each people in their own language,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-12725V" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-12725V" title="See cross-reference V">V</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> proclaiming that every man should be <b>ruler over his own household, using his native tongue.</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifusk85d-V2leUnbFXSkUWcvpQVdaPhqNVhtManZSdczJ5UTI3EMy-8xzFEvuz85ExfKGcojm4zfEEpddX07ouIDErcJ_rqjh5_PUZAm2AIeDDhyphenhyphen7T47ss6yjmTsCZ_a8f_dAnpQ/s1600/vashti-640x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="640" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifusk85d-V2leUnbFXSkUWcvpQVdaPhqNVhtManZSdczJ5UTI3EMy-8xzFEvuz85ExfKGcojm4zfEEpddX07ouIDErcJ_rqjh5_PUZAm2AIeDDhyphenhyphen7T47ss6yjmTsCZ_a8f_dAnpQ/s400/vashti-640x400.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Usually, the part of the Book of Esther that gets the most attention, by scholars of the Hebrew or First testament, is the story of Purim, and Esther's heroic actions. Many people have never heard of Vashti. Banished when she defied her husband who ordered her to dance before his friends wearing (nothing but) her crown, she is an early example of feminine self-determination in the Scriptures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This week, the real horror has not been the high school assault made by a 17-year old Brett Kavanaugh. The horror has been the continued assault on social media, in the hearing room, and on TV, on women who dare question the status quo. <b>Who speak up to the culture of rape and violence so clearly elucidated in Kavanaugh's yearbook. (which he lied about)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have a cat named <i>Vashti</i>. I would probably have a daughter with the name if I'd had one after I studied this text. For women, the decision not to obey the patriarchy, whatever form it takes in your life, is monumental. The refusal to dance. The absolute refusal to be judged by others' standards. The courage of self-determination. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>And make no mistake. </i> It is not only men who enforce the patriarchy. Women can be the willing emissaries of its rules and restrictions. This has certainly been true in my life. We saw it played out in yesterday's Senate hearing as Rachel Mitchell grilled Dr. Ford in lieu of the white male Senators, with a smile on her matronly face.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">My cat Vashti is an indoor cat. She hasn't faced coyotes, hawks, owls, foxes, and the many other predators on our farm. But she's been through four dogs, all much larger than she. All have ultimately backed down from her claws and her snarls. Most have taken some real wallops on the nose to get the message. <i>Nevertheless, she persisted. </i>She's about 13 now, and slowing down. But she's lived up to her name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I was so excited when I learned that <a href="http://www.10thdistrictame.org/bishop.html" target="_blank">Vashti McCollum</a> was elected the first female Bishop of the AME Church! She lived up to her auspicious name as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is 2018. No human being is entitled to bully, berate, intimidate, demean, or diminish another because they are bigger, richer, whiter, or happen to be male. Or because they give the most money to the church, or they are an adult. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But this is something women need to do themselves, and with one another. I love the idea of her banquet. Let's have those! Support and empowerment. Not whining and blaming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Be Vashtis.</span></div>
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more on the Hebrew Scriptures:</div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-22" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><b>From the New York Jewish Times:</b></span></div>
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<span class="text Esth-1-22" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: #f7f7f5; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: "pt serif" , serif; font-size: 18px;"><b>Vashti is attacked by commentators on the Megillah. The Talm</b>ud explains that she was the great-granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar, a Babylonian king who conquered most of the known world and exiled the Jews from Israel for 70 years. (The Purim story takes places during that exile.) Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar, was king while the Persians destroyed Babylon. When the Persians ransacked the castle, they found Belshazzar’s toddler daughter, Vashti. Cyrus, the king of Persia at the time, decided to marry her to his son Ahasuerus. He thought the Persian monarchy would benefit from her prestigious pedigree.</span></span></div>
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There are still many Vashtis today, women who are punished because they say no, women who are stuck in abusive relationships. It is imperative that we learn from the Megillah and work to change the culture we live in today.</div>
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Support friends who are survivors of rape and domestic violence. Counter rape myths when you hear them. Patronize charities and organizations that help women escape domestic abuse, such as Shalom Bayit, the Shalom Task Force and Stop the Violence. Ensure that women have the courage to say no like Vashti did, but make certain that they will not suffer her end.</div>
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Your name reveals the essence of your soul, according to Jewish teaching. In Persian, the name Vashti means goodness. A commentary explains that Vashti comes from the Hebrew word “shtei” meaning two. While Esther is considered the only hero of the Purim story perhaps Vashti can now be counted as the second.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-8361714816319081342018-09-25T20:34:00.001-04:002018-09-26T08:19:34.225-04:00For All the Men I Love<br />
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I hate what's happening right now, because the men in my life aren't pigs.<br />
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That's what Michele Goldberg calls (some) men in an op-ed in today's NYT: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/opinion/columnists/kavanaugh-georgetown-supreme-court.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">Pigs All the Way Down</a><br />
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I have a husband that's a good man, who never did anything remotely like the actions being reviewed nightly on MSNBC, and I see the pain as he listens to the descriptions. I know he's thinking about his daughter, about me, and about the victims' accounts, but he's also suffering some trauma of his own. As a painfully shy, very thin, teenager who was viewed as a stoner in the eighties, and who was teased and even beat up by the very same entitled and arrogant jock types we've all seen or heard about, who are being featured in the Brett Kavanaugh accusations, I can only imagine he is reliving some of that humiliation. I know it still affects him. I'm just glad he doesn't go on Facebook and see all the accusatory posts from women saying, <i>Where all all the passive men?</i><br />
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I have two adult sons. They are super respectful to me, and when they have been in relationships, to the women they are with. At least, as far as I know. I've done my best to show them a woman who is self-determined and who does not make her life around another person. I do see that the women they have chosen as partners have that quality. No doormats!<br />
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I have had lots of men friends. As a minister, there have been times when most of my good friends were other clergy, and almost all of them were men. Some of the kindest, most caring, loving, and thoughtful people I have ever encountered have been my clergy friends from other denominations and faiths. They've been there for me, and taught me, confronted me and guided me.<br />
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Some of my best teachers have been men.<br />
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I have had two Buddhist meditation teachers, several writing mentors in my MFA studies, as well as group leaders in recovery groups, family studies groups, my Spiritual Direction training, and preparation for ministry, all of whom are on my Jewel Tree. I count them with gratitude among my most beloved friends.<br />
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There have been men in the congregations I have served who have taught me so much, just by being vulnerable and by their willingness to grow and be changed and who've empowered and encouraged me. I've always been amazed that such highly educated and accomplished men (and women, but in my experience, men were better) were willing to take direction and to trust my leadership and skills.<br />
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So I'm writing this to say, yes, damnit, there are some really entitled, privileged, prigs as well as plain old pigs of men out there. Some aren't even privileged. There are other environments than prep school that lead to misogyny.<br />
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But the vast majority of men that I have met (and maybe this is because of the choices I have made and keep making) are not jerks. This is for you. I see you. I believe that all of this might be painful for you as well. Your sister, daughter, or mom or even you have been assaulted. You are angry but you don't know what to say or do. But what you are doing matters. My husband? He's been the dad to my sister's grandson, a 13 year old with Autism, for ten years. Some days it's a challenge. But I've never heard him complain. When I hear him say, "Son," as he teaches Seth the same thing for the 100th time, I am so impressed at his patience.<br />
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It is each one of you who is making the men of tomorrow a new breed. Keep going.<br />
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Thank you.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-66424084307633013802018-09-23T13:27:00.001-04:002023-07-24T14:08:39.985-04:00Faith and Sexual Misconduct<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Women are raging.<br />
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And women who've been abused sexually are feeling traumatized all over again, not merely by the description of the alleged assault against Dr. Ford, but by the behavior of the GOP, the President and some of their apologists. To say "boys will be boys" or to say "all guys do this" is to open wounds so deep that it seems as if blood is flowing throughout our society.<br />
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The rage spills over into social media. Women (and some men, because men are victims too) report that they feel physically ill, and have had exacerbation of chronic conditions.<br />
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It's important to remember that so often the initial trauma is bad, but that it could have been far less had there been a vehicle for healing available. Instead, most victims face shame, repression, silence, denial, and disbelief if they do tell. Those who report are scorned by the perpetrator's allies and humiliated by attorneys and sometimes law enforcement. <i>I believe that most perpetrators of sexual violence get away with their crimes, usually for their entire lives. </i>Hence the hashtag #whyididntreport<br />
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This column by Maureen Dowd covers the extent of the fury. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/22/opinion/sunday/kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-anita-hill-clarence-thomas.html?action=click&module=Trending&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Trending" target="_blank">Read the column</a>.<br />
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In my own family, this has happened.<br />
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My mother died when I was 5. Soon after, my father remarried, a woman with 4 sons, the oldest of whom sexually abused my sister, my brother and me. In my case, he backed off. I think he knew my father and stepmother would believe me if I told. But the others suffered severely, and their trauma has destroyed our family, our relationships, and taken a toll on several generations. So much of my own life has been devastated by the actions of this person that I am keenly aware of not only the first hand but second, third, and fourth hand effects of sexual trauma. A few years ago, I went back to my home place to live and work, and made an effort to unmask the perpetrator, now in his sixties, who has two young sons in his care. It was more out of concern for their safety than for revenge that I went to extreme measures to alert authorities to his crimes. Although I was listened to (probably because I am a minister), and I had a chance to meet with individuals in law enforcement up to the County Judge Executive, and there was a home visit made by Child Protective Services, <i>nothing could be done. </i>The person involved, Roger Tees of Atlantic County, NJ, was not yet 18 at the time the actions took place in our home. There's no statute of limitations, but he wasn't an adult. So.<br />
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Soon after, he and his wife and their young children came to the church I was serving as an interim. They only stayed for about 20 minutes, then got up and left. I suspect they came in an attempt to intimidate me. They did not. I tell you this not to claim a victim stance or a moral high ground but to say that I speak with knowledge of someone whose life was permanently altered by sexual assault and who has yet had a productive life, who refuses to stop trusting men, or people in general.<br />
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Roger Tees and his sons</div>
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The faith tradition I serve, Unitarian Universalism, is historically Christian but has evolved to embrace many paths to God and truth. We do agree on a number of tenets, not a creed. Topmost among them is <i>The inherent worth and dignity of every person.</i><br />
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There have been times when I've questioned that. Times when I've felt that, although every person is born with innocence and free of sin (where Universalists fall away from Calvinists), there are those who immerse themselves so egregiously in evil that they eliminate any trace of worth and dignity. Nonetheless, my Christian foundation cautions me, as do my experiences, that there is always hope, that salvation is possible, and that even the most unrepentant may yet do good.<br />
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This stepbrother claims to be Christian and wears a big cross. To me, if he were even slightly serious, he would have made amends to those he hurt, and he'd be attempting to right his wrongs. He'd have gotten treatment for what was a classic example of pedophilia. If not, his "Christianity" is a cover for what I fear may be continued abuse that I can do nothing about, and what no one else, neither family, friends, nor the state, <b>will do</b>. <i>You only hear these stories in retrospect, and by then the next round of abusers has already been created. </i><br />
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<i>Back to my own faith.</i><br />
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I'm disconcerted by the number of Unitarians and especially of Unitarian ministers who are making statements that, if I were a male, would make me feel as if I'd somehow been in the room with Kavanaugh and Ford. If you say #notallmen, you're toast, yet some posts I've seen look an awful lot like it's okay to say #allmen and that just doesn't go along with my personal beliefs. How can you believe in the <b>inherent worth and dignity </b> of every human, yet somehow deny that to 50% of humanity? It's one of many problems I have with my own faith tradition right now.<br />
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Brett Kavanaugh is a conservative and a person with whom I likely disagree on many things. He's not a monster. What he allegedly did at 17 sounds pretty bad. I don't know what he's done to repent or repair the damage. He didn't apologize to the victim. Nor did he go on to a life of sexual assault (both conjecture).* Nonetheless, even though, as a liberal, I don't want to see him on the Supreme Court, I think he has <b>inherent worth and dignity. </b><i> </i>I think he probably did it. It's going to outweigh all good he's done since, in many minds. What if he'd gone to her then, begged forgiveness, stopped drinking? I am assuming he was and is Catholic. Did he tell his Priest? I agree with one wise commentator this week: <i>He should step down. </i>That would be the ethical, moral, and even politically correct thing for him to do. It's what <i>appears </i>to be his lying about it now, as well as his lying and dissembling about numerous other issues, that to me is completely disqualifying.<br />
<br />
*Clearly, since, I wrote this, further allegations and details have emerged. It is now evident that unless the GOP and Trump are correct and all of this is a huge "con job", BK has a litany of behaviors that are appalling and disqualifying. Furthermore, perhaps even more distressing, it would seem he has chosen to lie about it all.<br />
<br />
I conducted an unofficial poll of mostly ministers from my own faith tradition. I just asked them to respond to the question, <i>Does Brett Kav have inherent worth and dignity? Yes or No. </i>I also added the comment, <i>And not "yes, but.." </i>This should be an easy "yes" since it is first among our Principles, and many answered "yes". Others felt compelled to say "but" without using the word by explaining to me that even though he has it, he is still responsible for his actions, etc. Some explained that while it is inherent, it can be diminished by one's behavior and choices. One asked me if I was applying a litmus test for UUs (very funny for anyone who knows me).<br />
<br />
My true goal was to see what people would say. Although it's true (as many reminded me) that our principles are not beliefs, or a creed, for me they have been a foundation to my 25 year ministry. They explain why we exist as a people, historically, and theologically, and they call us to service and justice. We have welcomed and embraced individuals in our midst that others would shun. We ordained LGBTQ individuals when other faiths banned them. We affirm people of all faiths and of none. We have even striven to make room for sex offenders to return to society. So whence comes this Puritanical hellfire toward Brett Kavanaugh? No way am I suggesting he be put on the Supreme Court. He's suffering humiliation and it sounds like it is well-deserved and long overdue. But him being drawn and quartered will not move us any closer to the real solutions we need to seek.<br />
<br />
<i>Every human being deserves forgiveness and Grace. That is my faith. I'm sticking with it. </i><br />
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For the rest of us? I'm not telling anyone else what to do right now. I'm going to go on believing that most people are basically good. It's worked for me so far. And it's what my faith tells me.<br />
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<i>Kids. Innocent & Safe.</i></div>
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<i>Inherently Good.</i></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-61565480593277767692018-09-19T09:39:00.002-04:002018-09-23T14:59:11.094-04:00Pointing Fingers & the Kavanaugh Debate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Every man is some woman's son.<br />
<br />
Although he may not have been raised by his mother, someone raised him, and how boys were raised has a bearing on what sort of men they become.<br />
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As I contemplate the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, and especially as I read the extensive discussions on my social media (most of them among liberal and progressive "friends"), it's impossible to do so without the knowledge of a mother of adult sons, a sister, and a wife. When I hear colleagues ask: <i>Where are the men? Why aren't they speaking up? </i>I think, what can they say right now? When I read words like <i>this is male privilege. This is what men do... </i>I know I can't say anything along the lines of "Not all men," because that is <i>verboten. </i>I write this because I think the divisive rhetoric will get us nowhere and I want us to be able to get somewhere.<br />
<i><br /></i>
I pray that my sons, my husband, my brothers never did anything like this. I will probably never know. I know that raising boys has been a challenge over the past 36 years. I have felt that my own influence has been offset by the lyrics in the music they listen to (at times incessantly), the TV shows and movies they've watched, and the general culture: books like <i>Fifty Shades of Gray, </i>video games like <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>. I remember being overjoyed when it became clear they'd not join the military, when I realized they would never pledge a fraternity, when the women they had relationships with were clearly treated with respect. But there is much I don't know. Because they suffered from years of addiction, I was not always a part of their lives. Men don't usually tell their mothers the intimate details about their liaisons. And, since their father and I divorced when they were young, my influence was supplemented by his. What I know is that I expected to be treated with respect. I didn't tolerate sexist and misogynist behavior and comments. I hoped that by seeing me leave a demeaning and verbally abusive relationship, they'd understand the worth of women. <i>But was that enough?</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdjzuqrU4Nd5u2856Y6MRlbCPYdxVkwOnlSF7vYRW10ylMah4twH1wIr7yPnQWmJaW8Yyznyvr9JqUh6RYrVckCWRvNp_KeVfuVnZaV8G4xCrIVO2C61TwRzCTLxKoQODKu2J9g/s1600/38667_417142762382_1033680_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="495" data-original-width="719" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdjzuqrU4Nd5u2856Y6MRlbCPYdxVkwOnlSF7vYRW10ylMah4twH1wIr7yPnQWmJaW8Yyznyvr9JqUh6RYrVckCWRvNp_KeVfuVnZaV8G4xCrIVO2C61TwRzCTLxKoQODKu2J9g/s320/38667_417142762382_1033680_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Since I have a young son, my sister's grandchild, I get to spend time around people with children his age. I can observe current day mothering as well as I could observe mothers and sons thirty years ago. Here's what I see that troubles me: women routinely allowing boys to boss them around. Women condoning and permitting behavior from boys they wouldn't tolerate from girls. Women letting men dominate conversations, make subtly aggressive remarks, and shuffle all the child-related responsibilities onto them. <i>Boys learn from what they see.</i><br />
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<i>And so do girls. </i>I have a daughter, too. From the beginning, I felt the importance of teaching her that she must never allow herself to be objectified or demeaned by men. And it was clear to me that the best way I could teach her was not to <i>tell </i>her but to show her by my own life. But things are complex. This did not succeed in every regard. Most of the interpersonal negativity in her experiences have been caused by women... as they have in mine. <i>Raising girls not to trust men is not the answer.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I'm convinced that growing up with misogyny unaddressed is how boys become entitled, arrogant, and dismissive of women's needs. If what boys observe is that women routinely set aside their own passions, health, creativity, and even their opinions in order to please the men around them, why would boys expect the world to be different when they become men? Why wouldn't they expect women to be available and even eager to please them sexually?<br />
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Men, here's a query you can reply to! <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/men-high-school-experience.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article" target="_blank">Your HS experience?</a><br />
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I can see how this might sound as if it may be an attempt to excuse the behavior of men who do things like Kavanaugh is accused of doing. <i>It is not! </i>Nor do I have any patience for those who say women that are assaulted asked for it, or are somehow to blame. My point is that as bad as things seem to be today, as egregious as this type of behavior is, there are a multitude of things that need to change:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTeR0h_2p3GlxGsL3KK5J_7PnEXv2VezbIqStRt7IOtzXjBiLdA13l26j1ow7VpyxG5HuJKl5aZontCkl5k6mvMZ7k-cuLTHxWAAFMK6RT3U96WrpAo4VYBMnPUrGRhgmwcNKWA/s1600/20180723_210307.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTeR0h_2p3GlxGsL3KK5J_7PnEXv2VezbIqStRt7IOtzXjBiLdA13l26j1ow7VpyxG5HuJKl5aZontCkl5k6mvMZ7k-cuLTHxWAAFMK6RT3U96WrpAo4VYBMnPUrGRhgmwcNKWA/s320/20180723_210307.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
* How boys are raised by men <b>and women</b><br />
* The influence of culture: music, literature, and film/TV<br />
* Sex education<br />
* Fraternity culture and the culture of violence<br />
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<br />
Those of us who are mothers of sons can take an unflinching look at how we influenced our sons' attitudes. For me, there were things I did well, and things I could have done better. Rather than pointing fingers at the men on my Facebook timeline (the vast majority of whom are decent, respectful, and beyond laudable in how they treat women), it feels more productive to do some self-examination. Even now, with sons in their thirties and a boy in his teens, I can look at ways <i>I allow </i>people to treat me. I can demand respect and decency. I can believe that I <i>deserve </i>to be treated well. Those are things I can influence, and they matter.<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-66685296154239509332018-09-17T17:38:00.000-04:002018-09-18T10:49:39.709-04:00Entitled<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpz-Q__1BHexbSVOj0HrrBJ_9y17emrS9Upj6i198WLzIZGjJsxojFQSdcJP7fld4aCQCsHuoGsWOJmm_I1TEZp8KMwHatm6iN413h8233PjUI8FYECHyEt2EbsxDrHXQZeSw_1w/s1600/mc+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="189" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpz-Q__1BHexbSVOj0HrrBJ_9y17emrS9Upj6i198WLzIZGjJsxojFQSdcJP7fld4aCQCsHuoGsWOJmm_I1TEZp8KMwHatm6iN413h8233PjUI8FYECHyEt2EbsxDrHXQZeSw_1w/s200/mc+%25282%2529.jpg" width="128" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fifteen.</td></tr>
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I haven't been blogging as much lately.<br />
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Unless I have something to say that is likely to add to the general conversation, I think it makes more sense to wait and listen. When I feel compelled to speak/write, I will. I have so many projects underway, both writing projects and gardening ones, that my blog doesn't call to me quite as often. I've turned off comments for a very specific reason, but if we are connected through other social media, I welcome your feedback.<br />
<br />
So, the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. I can't imagine that this isn't raising some issues for every woman (and probably many men), no matter their age. <i>Did that happen to me, ever? </i>Did I do something like that? For not a few, the answer will be <b>yes. </b>How much should that "yes" continue to impact the rest of our lives, if it happens as early as this was alleged to have happened.. high school?<br />
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I went to plenty of parties in high school where there were no parents, and there was drinking. I remember going into bedrooms. I'm pretty sure that boys laid either on top of or next to me, but there the comparison ends. Although they (and sometimes I) were drinking, and probably drunk, I wasn't forced into a bedroom, pushed onto a bed, held down, nearly suffocated, nor were my clothes nearly torn off. I didn't have to flee to a bathroom and wait, terrified, until the offender left. And there was <b>never </b> a second boy in the room. That's just so upsetting, for a number of reasons.<br />
<br />
I didn't feel then, and I don't feel now, that I was ever forced to do anything against my will. I'm a good ten years older than the accuser and the accused here, so I bring my own experience to the conversation, because it may be more relevant than someone who is that age today, or was that age ten years ago. As a girl, I felt more powerful than powerless, because I knew that I had something (even if I was insecure about it) boys liked, and I could either give or withhold my affection. The boys with whom I spent this kind of time were inexperienced, usually awkward, and endearing. So I write this not to say #notallmen because that has become anathema, but to say that what is alleged to have happened was <b>not normal, not okay, </b>and not just a case of "boys will be boys".<br />
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15.</div>
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I was also sexually abused. This happened at a much younger age, around nine or ten, when the oldest stepbrother of four moved into our home after our mother died when I was five. Because I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes, he backed off after making numerous attempts to groom and grope me, and I spent the next year or two, until he moved away, hiding from him. Tragically, he did succeed with my brother and sister, and their trauma has been far worse than mine. But even with what happened to me, I've been affected in ways that continue to have repercussions decades later. So, it's easy for me to believe that the accuser is still affected, as well as to believe she did not tell many people. Neither did I.<br />
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sixteen.</div>
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<i>Here's why I think what happened to her happened, and why so many women signed a letter supporting her attacker:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
His actions were those of an entitled, pampered, male from the upper classes of American society. Much like Trump, he believed that if he wanted something, he could just take it. Of course, he kept that sort of behavior in check over the remainder of his adult life, because what he wanted would be undermined by allegations like the one that has arisen. There is a class of people who are making decisions for us, who are running our institutions, and who are taking our money, who have never experienced the day-to-day life of American people. This is epitomized as much by Brett Kavanaugh throwing a 15 year old girl on a bed at a party as it is by Donald Trump throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria.<br />
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Strangest of all is that those who are enabling this triumph of entitled imposters are the poor and uneducated who have never seen the inside of a prep school, and who might think what Kavanaugh did is no big deal, yet sit back and ignore the rape of the environment, the stifling of peace accords, the undressing of trade economies. Who are being assaulted themselves, and don't even know when they're getting groomed.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-86314843025404962802018-07-29T12:42:00.003-04:002023-07-13T18:49:45.523-04:00Leaving Home<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>For the Traveler</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Every time you leave home,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another road takes you</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Into a world you were never in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">New strangers on other paths await.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">New places that have never seen you</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Will startle a little at your entry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Old places that know you well</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Will pretend nothing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Changed since your last visit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When you travel, you find yourself</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alone in a different way,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More attentive now</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To the self you bring along,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Your more subtle eye watching</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You abroad; and how what meets you</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Touches that part of the heart</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That lies low at home:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How you unexpectedly attune</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To the timbre in some voice,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Opening in conversation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You want to take in</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To where your longing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Has pressed hard enough</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Inward, on some unsaid dark,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To create a crystal of insight</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You could not have known</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You needed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To illuminate</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Your way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When you travel,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A new silence</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Goes with you,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And if you listen,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You will hear</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What your heart would</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Love to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A journey can become a sacred thing:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Make sure, before you go,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To take the time</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To bless your going forth,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To free your heart of ballast</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So that the compass of your soul</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Might direct you toward</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The territories of spirit</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Where you will discover</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More of your hidden life,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the urgencies</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That deserve to claim you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">May you travel in an awakened way,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gathered wisely into your inner ground;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That you may not waste the invitations</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which wait along the way to transform you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And live your time away to its fullest;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Return home more enriched, and free</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To balance the gift of days which call you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">~John O' Donohue~</span></div>
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Seth asked me, <i>Mom, do you know the 5 stages of grief?</i></div>
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And as he rattled them off: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, I blurted out, <i>Of course I do! It was my job. Remember? But how do you know them? </i></div>
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Seth regularly astonishes me with the nuggets of wisdom and information he gleans from his "studies" on YouTube and the Internet (yes, we have <i>restricted mode on & locked. </i>Do you?) Still, since we were driving to a big going-away celebration (maybe that's the wrong word) for my middle son, who is headed off to work on his PhD in New Mexico, a 4-5 year venture, and who, if he stays on trajectory and decides to teach, may not move back to Kentucky... it was a timely topic. My son's friends are legion, and loyal. He makes friends easily everywhere he goes. They all know how gregarious he is, and how he's the one with ideas and inspiration, who calls people up, makes plans and makes stuff happen. He's also pretty much always upbeat, and he's generous of time and spirit. He's as loyal to them as they are to him. Sometimes, when I'm being introduced as his mom, I feel as if I'm a celebrity of sorts. He's that beloved.</div>
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The rest of us in the family are introverts. We have friends, but for me, I'd rather have 2 or 3 genuine friends that I can trust and who are authentic and with whom I share basic outlooks and interests. I need to leave my time together feeling better about myself and the world, not sucked dry or wondering, <i>what did </i>that <i>mean?</i></div>
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I'd rather read a book. Or be on my farm. And I think my other kids and my husband are pretty much the same. So at this party, I had some time to see many of my son's friends I'd not seen for months or years, and to meet some I'd never met. A common theme was how sad we'd all be without him. There really was an undercurrent of grief. I have to say that I haven't been feeling that way. I am so happy for my son; I know he'll stay in touch and visit, wherever he lives; I know that we can't plan or control the future; and I know how lucky I am to have had him around for 33 years (except for a year and a half when I was studying for ministry and he was staying with his dad). He didn't even go away to college!</div>
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But... there's something else. I've been musing about it. Wondering: <i>am I just in denial? </i>For sure, I'm slow to recognize and feel the impact of major losses. Because there was no acknowledgement of the pain associated with losing my mother when I was five (we were expected to soldier on), I developed a sort of frozen first response around sadness. It actually came in handy in ministry, when I had to be strong for families who'd lost someone, especially tragically. I can go numb for days or years, and then something will trigger my well of sorrow and deep melancholy. I'm sure this has been at the root of many or perhaps most of my bouts with depression.</div>
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But as I looked at the group picture I took right before leaving the party, I felt this sense of unmitigated joy. Some (not all) of the people are in recovery. A few have been sponsored or been sponsors to one of my sons. Many are friends from 5Ks, biking, coffee drinking, and other loves.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGQHldHSCPCPKV2q8X100Mh8WUlYA0azOHPItIpLQ0qjLNI_bzBJAPeZ5OQOVVAA2ebB48jYrPOPyh3DOEP5244eyQbrRazjDXOUtRzhPt11gtOsSeLqiYoUqADsWm9Z5k_DoLQ/s1600/IMG_20180728_072414_447.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1013" data-original-width="1600" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGQHldHSCPCPKV2q8X100Mh8WUlYA0azOHPItIpLQ0qjLNI_bzBJAPeZ5OQOVVAA2ebB48jYrPOPyh3DOEP5244eyQbrRazjDXOUtRzhPt11gtOsSeLqiYoUqADsWm9Z5k_DoLQ/s200/IMG_20180728_072414_447.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjwvYB5y0O5FwcjRDRb0vCufMMNIpxQmqR4ckSkJX9NyJeln8MfsVdv6NRl0NRPGG8X5gLdn-6YBEoKaUMM_woTUJoHa9F1aiROhHW7BkXVuCFNYnHCicXp3aVJ8FPsp0f1ZMIZw/s1600/AA.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="960" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjwvYB5y0O5FwcjRDRb0vCufMMNIpxQmqR4ckSkJX9NyJeln8MfsVdv6NRl0NRPGG8X5gLdn-6YBEoKaUMM_woTUJoHa9F1aiROhHW7BkXVuCFNYnHCicXp3aVJ8FPsp0f1ZMIZw/s320/AA.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It kept reminding me of this other, precious photograph I have of my grandfather Patton, about 80 years ago, in one of the early AA groups in Philadelphia. I was reminded that evening that while addiction and alcoholism is still rampant, there is a path to sanity. Through God and the 12 Steps of AA <i>millions of people </i>have restored their lives and gained success and happiness they never dreamed of. In my own family, people have died from alcohol and drug abuse, at least three in the past two generations. However, people have also found recovery and led others to recovery and better lives.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixQxbhNIpVmireza5TqSuPSo4dnHqw_GGNJEY-7QQ4yNcDOkLVgbLRlNpGJGz3oPgsXBVgriJiCmdOm3fd9VK_MzZSJrO9Y2cc-URCI79t-bgpuP97lq7Qm_a6sbKkI7r296XENA/s1600/Patton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="1600" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixQxbhNIpVmireza5TqSuPSo4dnHqw_GGNJEY-7QQ4yNcDOkLVgbLRlNpGJGz3oPgsXBVgriJiCmdOm3fd9VK_MzZSJrO9Y2cc-URCI79t-bgpuP97lq7Qm_a6sbKkI7r296XENA/s320/Patton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Patton Family</div>
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Sometimes people say, <i>I can't believe how much he's changed! </i> about my son's recovery. But what I think is that actually, he just returned to the self he always was. He <i>changed </i>when he was under the influence of and imprisoned by substances. No one who has not gone through this can imagine how excruciating it is to stand by while the child you loved and nurtured from infancy leaves you and virtually disappears.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIHWCvKkr9ZzE397nIV_bgQIx2Fx0T2EDwlesPUN4n-Pm9XUslzHRCjqQBgV8EfGScFmbVchgxGTii1hyaOvWzz1xN3ejHOdzX9ojJeEVq74-SWDU_jwaLg8ez5nLEhQPKSnIuDw/s1600/AA.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIHWCvKkr9ZzE397nIV_bgQIx2Fx0T2EDwlesPUN4n-Pm9XUslzHRCjqQBgV8EfGScFmbVchgxGTii1hyaOvWzz1xN3ejHOdzX9ojJeEVq74-SWDU_jwaLg8ez5nLEhQPKSnIuDw/s200/AA.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4uGKYkSiazZ_x8KVRMLeijiocoXqtq-WklwpIkKGwRUI_eOTr3jsvlf6BNrQyEOsua6TpCN-_TyWhYWhQYRnKArTUMadm7kwumkysOU_H7Eqqhe_KsJmUoQCVvWJrMrIszrvdnw/s1600/casey.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4uGKYkSiazZ_x8KVRMLeijiocoXqtq-WklwpIkKGwRUI_eOTr3jsvlf6BNrQyEOsua6TpCN-_TyWhYWhQYRnKArTUMadm7kwumkysOU_H7Eqqhe_KsJmUoQCVvWJrMrIszrvdnw/s320/casey.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I've described it as a grief that never ends, because you are burying the person over and over. You just keep running through those five stages again and again and again.<br />
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You go for years, unable to look at a baby picture or album, unable to laugh at a memory, terrified someone will ask you how your kid is doing, feeling their judgment in their "well meaning" questions (I still feel this 7 and 4 years on) and not even daring to imagine a future.The feeling of shame you have when others talk about their kids' proms, college exams, marriages, and visits is profound. At some point, they stop even asking. And you absolutely feel alone. Yes, there is <i>Al Anon. </i>And sometimes, it helps.<br />
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And maybe you are one of the lucky ones. Because <i>so many </i> do not find recovery before death finds them, and while we do not comprehend this mystery, it seems manifest that those who do must live even more gratefully, and more fully, for those who do not.</div>
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<span color:="" white="">My saddest thought was not that my sons would die young; it was that they would live a life of ever-increasing dissolution, never going anywhere, always in debt, spiraling from disaster to disaster, a life that slowly destroyed not only them but all who loved them.</span></div>
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<span color:="" white="">So here's my answer: <i>No, I'm not sad/angry/worried or in denial because my son is moving away (for now). I'm quietly joyful. I'm joyful because I actually did lose him before. He left for years and I came to believe I would never see him again. I was wrong. I am so grateful for his freedom that I could never feel remorse about anything he chooses to do with it. </i></span></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-28236347191811013032018-04-15T19:52:00.001-04:002018-04-22T11:00:38.051-04:00Dismantling Racism Part 3: Pray Don't Prey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm pretty sure this was not meant to happen, because when I stopped to take the pictures, there was a place behind the skeleton of the barn where some new construction had begun. Later, I saw some men there, but I was in a hurry, so next time, I will ask them'</div>
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Either way, it fell.</div>
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I'd been standing inside it a week earlier taking pictures and wondering about what it meant to "dismantle" racism. </div>
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You can see in the picture below the new lumber to the left..again, maybe that was part of the process of deconstruction, and perhaps they were harvesting all the wood they could harvest before pulling it down. It reminded me of stories I'd always heard growing up of "the old barn" that was on our property and which my dad, with some other men and a few tractors, pulled down so that we, his three kids, wouldn't be endangered playing in it.</div>
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He used the good barn wood to make a desk, tables, and some other beautiful things that remain in our family. They are treasures today.</div>
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So, <i>dismantling racism. </i>As we pass the 50th anniversary of MLK's death, I think it's fair to say that no one has the answer, or we would not be in the place we are in today. There are all kinds of people who <b>think </b>they have the answer(s) and who are very loud, boisterous, and insistent about them.</div>
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Last week, the denomination I've served for 23 years published a report written by a Commission appointed to look into what they call the<a href="https://www.uuworld.org/articles/news-brief-southern-region-report" target="_blank"> "Hiring Practices Controversy".</a> Feel free to read if you like dirty laundry, but long story short, our President resigned, our Moderator died, and two or three white male staff members also quit after accusations of unfairness and white supremacy in hiring of a regional staff member. </div>
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Our denomination is in turmoil. People are talking past each other, accusations are flying, and, worst of all, there seems to be no safe space to discuss anything without being shamed or shouted down. There is, it seems, an "official" position which shall not be questioned. So why even have a commission? The Commission has been funded at almost $500,000. <a href="https://www.uuworld.org/articles/uua-leaders-alarmed-conflicts?utm_medium=uua.org&utm_source=publication&utm_campaign=homepage" target="_blank"> More on all of that here</a>.I hope for and expect some great results.</div>
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I struggle with this, not because I mistrust the sincerity and good will of the Commission members, but because I do not understand how to explain half a million dollars allocated to this study when I was turned away by every UUA official I requested help from in my work with a local rural African American woman whose husband has been incarcerated for almost a year waiting to be deported to Mexico. (Their story is in the fundraiser on this blog). I didn't ask for money; only for help sharing the plea. How do I face this family when my denomination claims to support undocumented immigrants and poor Black families and tell her they could do nothing? (By the way, the UUSC did provide resources and connections for us). <i>This is exactly what conservatives talk about when they criticize liberal hypocrisy. This is why Black communities trust white liberals the least of all! </i></div>
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I may be wrong, since I've been disconnected from denominational activities for the past year or so, but I know how we do things. If I weren't already a Unitarian Universalist, I would run, not walk, away from them as quickly as I could. They sound and look like a group of people trying to use will, intellect and ego to force results. Rather than going out into the world with prayerful reflection and open hearts, we've chosen to look inward and point fingers at one another with accusations of white supremacy.</div>
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This all brings to mind the Serenity Prayer, which might be a good start. <i>(God) grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.</i></div>
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I guess what I'm suggesting is that it might be helpful for us to do more <b>praying</b> and less<b> preying</b> (on one another).</div>
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And, as Carl Jung brilliantly told the founder of AA, lasting <i>sobriety would never be possible without a spiritual conversion. </i>And I think this is the true problem that my denomination is not addressing. Racism is not just a structural problem, it is a soul sickness that requires a deep spiritual reckoning and repentance, something many liberal religionists have no language nor ritual for.</div>
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This week I heard some talk about how what's missing from the movement against racism is a "leader like MLK." I disagree with that. One has only to look at the success of the gay marriage lobby or what appears to be the burgeoning movement by young people for sensible gun legislation to see that movements today can be spontaneous, organic and can reach a point of saturation and success without charismatic leaders.</div>
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This is the science of <a href="https://appreciativeinquiry.champlain.edu/learn/appreciative-inquiry-introduction/" target="_blank">Appreciative Inquiry.</a></div>
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I don't understand why we (UUs) aren't using AI (Appreciative Inquiry)in this process.It involves raising up what is best, innovation and creativity which evolve based upon the positive core value. It has its scientific basis in quantum theory. I know it is hard to sustain in organizations, because I have tried it with one church, that reverted back continually to Newtonian thinking*. But at another congregation, which grasped AI, change and innovation were welcomed.</div>
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More on <a href="http://www.davidcooperrider.com/ai-process/" target="_blank">Appreciative Inquiry</a></div>
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When I think of places where oppression and discrimination have been effectively addressed, I can see that it happened because diligent, positive, dedicated and creative work came to a tipping point. It's how things like recycling, smoke-free buildings, breastfeeding, and so many more major developments and shifts in cultural awareness have come about.<br />
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Racism has a grip on our culture, and<b> white privilege is real</b>. It's endemic. We have to relearn everything we thought we knew. We can do it! We've done things as hard as this before. We have poets, teachers, brilliant writers, and so many good people who can unlearn white privilege. It may happen slowly at first, but just like we saw with the Stoneman Douglas rallies, there may come a sudden cataclysmic moment when the last vestiges of it crash to the ground. I believe this can happen. Not by shaming or blaming one another, but by loving and believing in the goodness of each other, the God-ness in one another.<br />
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And from the remnants, some thing beautiful and precious may be created.<br />
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* <b style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, tahoma, calibri, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Newtonian World View</b><br />
<ul style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Universe as Great Machine</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Focus on Parts</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">One Right Answer</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Predictable</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Linear</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Duality (This or That)</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Objective</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Value Things</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Competition</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Doing Creates</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Single Reality</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Material Focus</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Separation</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Autonomy</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Make It Happen</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Resist Change</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Matter is made up of “Things”</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Scientific World View</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Study of Physical Matter</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Control</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Particles of Atoms</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Finite</li>
</ul>
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<br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" />
<b style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Quantum World View</b><br />
<ul style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Universe as Great Thought</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Focus on Whole</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Many Paths</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Random</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Non-Linear</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Wholism (This and That)</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Subjective</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Value Relationships</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cooperation</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Consciousness Creates</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Multiple Realities</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Spiritual Focus</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Interconnection</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Synergy</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Allow It to Happen</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Embrace Change</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Matter is “Bundles of Energy in Relationship”</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Consciousness World View</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Study of Consciousness</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Participation</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Fields of Energy</li>
<li style="list-style: disc outside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Infinite</li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><b><i>SCROLL DOWN FOR PARTS ONE & TWO OF DISMANTLING RACISM & A LINK TO OUR BOOK IN PROGRESS</i></b></span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-36841178552295434742018-04-09T20:43:00.000-04:002018-04-09T20:54:52.219-04:00Sympathy for the Devil<br />
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Am I crazy? I can't believe I'm away from network and cable TV, and I'm going to watch a four-part series on Netflix called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/watching/titles/tv-shows/267165?smid=pl-share" target="_blank">Trump: An American Dream</a>. <i>I'll just give it a try, </i>I think, as I download the first part. But I end up watching all four, bizarrely intrigued. I'll be the first to admit that my husband and I are among those who start our day with <i>Morning Joe </i>and end it with <i>Rachel Maddow </i>or <i>Chris Hayes, </i>watching what Trump calls "fake news" and what we call a link to sanity.<br />
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But unlike lots of my liberal and progressive friends (and even my own husband), I have a hard time hating Donald Trump as a human being, or believing that if we just get rid of him, all will be well. I sometimes feel sorry for Trump, in a weird way. He seems so unbelievably angry and sad, for someone who has everything that anyone could possibly dream of.<br />
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The documentary helps explain this. Born into a wealthy family, with demanding parents and all sorts of childhood issues that would predispose anyone to neurosis, Trump also channels what became a fatal addiction issue with his brother into a lust for power, sex, and fame, since, although he doesn't drink and disparages drugs, he has to fill the deep inner emptiness with something.<br />
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One line in the documentary rings more true than any other: <i>Donald Trump is deeply insecure. </i><br />
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With that in mind, it's easy to see through his bluster, his destructive demands and decisions, his tiresome tirades, and the callous way he has dangled our democracy over the cliff for more than a year. He's not just a sociopath; he's actually an over-indulged, petulant, self-aggrandizing infantile being. He is who he is. It is <b>we, the voters who did and didn't vote, the citizens who coasted along while our democracy languished, who allowed him to have control of western civilization.</b><br />
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<i>We don't want to acknowledge this, our laziness, our indifference, how little we've done to maintain our freedom, our environment, how little we've done to reach out to conservatives and Republicans and people who are economically or educationally disparate from us, so we project all of it onto Donald Trump.</i><br />
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In the past few weeks, a story has come to prominence about a family who were killed when their van went off a cliff in Northern California. As the facts rolled out, (and much remains unknown), two things happened. It became clear that the parents, a white married female couple, had been investigated more than once for child abuse and neglect of the six children, all of whom were Black. It also appeared that the crash seems likely to have been deliberate, a murder/suicide, not an accident. An article published by the Washington Post pointed out numerous questions and complexities raised by this set of facts. Article: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/04/06/we-cant-ignore-race-in-the-tragic-story-of-devonte-hart-and-his-white-adoptive-mothers/?utm_term=.ef72b0487d5d" target="_blank"> Can't ignore race</a><br />
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Just as it is easy for Democrats and liberals to project all of our frustrations with the current situation on to one person, it might be easy for folks to look at this family and blame the mothers, since they were gay, or liberal, or adopted too many kids, or were white women adopting Black kids, or because they home schooled. That is projection, too.<br />
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Likewise, it's projection to make heroes out of people who adopt kids, who take on kids with special needs, who adopt cross-racially. Because this happens, people like these women, who clearly were not ready to parent at this level and intensity (if at all) may have masked their problems, taken on more kids, or adopted in the first place, or adopted because of their own needs for affirmation or love, the worst reason of all to adopt. I know something about this, since I took on a special needs child nine years ago, and I still startle when I tell people and they express sympathy, or express how wonderful they think we are.<br />
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<i>But, </i>in this situation, there are some actual fingers to be pointed. Our Family and Child Services systems are broken. This horrendous story is one of probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of examples where the cries of kids and the reports of adults go unmet. I have experience with this too. My eldest stepbrother, who repeatedly raped two of my siblings, has custody of his two young sons, and despite everything I have done to alert and beg the State of NJ to intervene, they have done nothing after the one cursory visit.<br />
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As a minister, I look back, and wonder about some of the families I observed at my church. Do we always ask, listen, and pay attention to children? Besides teaching kids to tell someone about abuse, it might be good to teach all adults what to look for and what to do when they see and hear certain signals. They are common: kids who don't go out, too skinny, under-developed, don't do normal "kid" things, seem scared or anxious, act perfect or too good to be true.<br />
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Finally, I've seen lots of online conversation about the Hart family, because one of my Facebook contacts knew them, and wrote about her shock, but mentioned her empathy for the mothers. She was skewered. From every possible direction, (white) women let her know in no uncertain terms how full of white supremacy her remarks were, since she was mentioning the women (white, murderers) and hadn't named the children (Black, victims). Their comments to her were vicious. Whenever I see anyone react with such vitriol (including myself), I think "projection". White supremacy and white privilege are deeply embedded in the psyches of white people. <b><i>We hate them and want to push them away. </i></b>Hence, many (usually young) progressives, seeing these anywhere, become valiantly self-righteous in what they see as defense of all People of Color.<br />
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Sometimes, it is good to turn the projector off, to look within, and see what is there that we might improve. I know that is certainly true for me.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-57749439419760074942018-03-27T10:36:00.004-04:002018-03-27T22:00:10.325-04:00When are we all Stormy Daniels???<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>our daffodils!</i></div>
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Of course we'd never be a porn star or have sex with Donald Trump. PTL!<br />
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Nor am I planning to share any further photos here, at least none of Stormy with or without Donald. Maybe some kittens or puppies or flowers.</div>
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But one can not escape her unless you avoid all TV and radio and print news. <i>What is it really all about? </i>Some, maybe most are intrigued by the cheating, the salacious details, the weird little comments such as, "you remind me of my daughter," when she was around the same age (!) but there has to be more. </div>
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The commentators (and her lawyer) insist that the real significance is the evidence this whole thing affords that Trump lies (we knew that), cheats (knew that decades ago), bullies (REALLY?!), and most important, has committed criminal acts of campaign finance fraud. Fine.</div>
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It's the age-old tale of a dozen people looking at an elephant, each seeing a very different thing. Here's mine. In the interview (Yes, I watched it!) I saw a woman who was moderately attractive, who looked very tired, stressed, and careworn for someone who is only thirty-eight. I saw someone who, legal or no, made a decision along the way to use her body as a tool to get the things she wants and needs. Talk about her being "intelligent and well spoken" aside, I saw a woman. By the way, who's to say that lots of porn stars and strippers aren't intelligent or well-spoken? Not me!</div>
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The extent to which we, as women, have traded our dignity, our bodies, our looks, and our lives, the only lives we have, to get security, money, adulation, or what we mistook for "love" is only a matter of degree but not of kind. The day we give our power and our integrity away, we begin to be a victim. And this culture mediates against women and leads them down this path in a multitude of ways. It's aided and abetted <i>by women</i>, who will take their sisters down, and mothers who raise daughters to play this role and raise sons who perpetuate this whole scenario.</div>
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So, there's that.</div>
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But, maybe even more pointed: I also saw in this woman's face and posture and demeanor, and heard in her voice, someone who has been disbelieved, threatened, controlled, bamboozled, attacked, and gas-lighted, now and perhaps every time she has stood up for herself. Is she strong and tough? no doubt. Is she scrappy and maybe even mendacious? Possibly. Is she scheming and possibly dissembling? Could very well be! And.. all of these things are defense mechanisms employed by women who are discounted and disbelieved.</div>
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Here's what I want to say: <i>I have been disbelieved and discounted. I have a chronic illness. I have migraine headaches about 25 days per month I <b>can tell </b> people think I am exaggerating or making them up! I have had people in my own family, denominational "officials," and people in close relationships look at me and take a few steps back as if they think I am "crazy" or maybe too loud or too angry, because they don't want to hear the truth, and never apologize when the truth comes out weeks, month, or years, later. <b>That's gas-lighting</b>. Pure and simple. It happens to women. All the time. It happens because we </i>know things. <i>We're intuitive. Like witches.</i><br />
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<i>It happens to victims of sexual assault. It happens to people of color, and marginalized people everywhere. It happens to children. </i><br />
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<i>That's what I'd imagine is happening to Stormy aka Stephanie right now. That's what I felt as I watched her in that interview. The one image that I can't un-see is the photo of her slumped in the chair, strapped up to the lie detector, her ample breasts still the most notable feature. I feel like women, and disenfranchised people of all stripes, and men too, often, go around like this, strapped up to a lie detector, always feeling like we have to haul a briefcase of proof around or produce witnesses to validate what we say or that what we assert is true.</i></div>
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<i>But some of us (of all genders as well) but I can only speak for myself, keep coming back with the truth. We are like the daffodils in Kentucky. Damn things won't die! They've popped back up after three (or four?) big snowstorms, many overnight freezes, and wind and heavy rain. Resilient and determined, our mantra is <b>"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."</b></i></div>
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That's why we are all (maybe not all, but most, at some time) Stormy Daniels. Some of us aren't. If you keep your mouth shut, let "them" have their way, go by the script, you'll get by. But the truth will still be true.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-65785704418227362802018-03-22T18:39:00.002-04:002018-04-22T11:03:31.476-04:00Dismantling Racism. Part 2<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After writing about <i>Dismantling Racism </i> and continuing to think about the topic, all the while driving by this barn, which has been slowly deteriorating over the ten years I've owned my farm, but which took a sudden lean after some tornadoes came through, I realized I had more to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The word <i>dismantle </i> implies linguistically that there was a mantle in the first place. A mantle is a cloak, a covering, a veil or shawl, but it can also be protective covering. We all recall learning about the earth's <i style="font-weight: bold;">mantle. </i>And it can be a symbol of responsibility and power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I saw that almost all the siding had been stripped away from the skeleton of the barn, I began to wonder whether it was going to be rebuilt. I stopped on a morning when I thought I might catch the sunlight, to take some pictures and snoop around. I was intrigued by the seeming fragility of the structure's frame. It wasn't even made with lumber, just trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some of the vertical beams had rotted, I assume, and been sawed off and propped up with other very precariously propped logs. You can see some of this detail in the large picture below. I almost felt as if it might fall on me if I touched anything. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Racism <i>is like this, </i> because it's built on such an intricately interwoven and yet fallible set of assumptions, myths and stereotypes. Its mantle, its power and its veneer are what keep (most white) people feeling safe and invulnerable. It hides their flimsy and worthless skeleton. I think our job, as anti-racists, is to strip away that veneer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I do the work of anti-racism I can do it with love and genuine empathy if I see how it is a protection and a vestige of power or worth for some white people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I saw a Facebook post lately that stated that Unitarian Universalists who are dismantling racism must "sit back, be quiet, and take direction from people of color, listen to their stories, and follow their lead." I disagree. I don't think there is any one way to dismantle racism. There are people of color who would agree with that and also POC who would say, "I need your help. I need your voice. I welcome your leadership." I think white people must have a spiritual practice and be spiritually mature enough to trust themselves to discern when it is time to speak and when it is time to be quiet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I had an idea. But then, I'm always having ideas, and some of them do not turn out as planned! I went home from looking at the barn, and I was still puzzling about how I will ever get started building our home out on our farm so we can move from the small double wide we live in. (It's fine, but we want to have a passive solar home and I do think the chemicals in this place contribute to my migraines.) We just can't afford it as long as we own the B&B in town. It hit me that we could dismantle our almost -finished (by the former owner) log cabin and reconstruct it out on the ridge where we want to live! My husband hated the idea, probably because the cabin is filled with his troves of hoarded stuff, but I've not given up!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That may be TMI for you, but this is why I tell it. There are so many thorny and seemingly insoluble problems in our world. Each of us has one we are called to (well, some people just want to get manicures and watch Zombies and eat fast food, but they probably aren't reading this!) ...it may be environment, or women's rights, or addiction, or cancer, or, like me, racism. And there are probably more ways into and around that issue than we may even have dreamed. Just sitting back and being quiet is <i>not </i> an option for me. I am listening, learning, praying, waiting, and studying the people and the history of one small community, and as long as they welcome me, I will use the skills I have, writing, speaking, and motivating, to dismantle racism, even a little. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Silence is not an option.</span></div>
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<i>Silent Spring 2018 snow on the lettuce ...... </i></div>
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<i>Silence Innisfree first day of Spring</i></div>
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<b style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, tahoma, calibri, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;"><i>SCROLL DOWN FOR PARTS ONE OF DISMANTLING RACISM & A LINK TO OUR BOOK IN PROGRESS</i></b></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-2338724328641569702018-03-21T11:51:00.002-04:002018-03-21T17:20:46.742-04:00My Own Private Oregon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<i>Crazy Guru or gifted Saint?</i></div>
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I just finished watching <i>Wild Wild West </i>on Netflix. It's probably not what you'd think. It's a documentary about the Rajneesh Bhagwan aka OSHO who had a commune or community in Oregon for four years, and all of the mayhem, legal and interpersonal, that went along with it. This all happened on a tract of land that was adjacent to a small town in Oregon called Antelope. How these people coped with the influx of thousands of international migrants, formerly homeless individuals (whom the Rajneeshis dumped out when they no longer needed them) and the outside invasions I wonder... but it absolutely fits the definition of a cult. And, it still exists (back in India)and still has adherents almost thirty years after the Bhagwan died. I've been fascinated with cults for as long as I can recall. Just lately, I watched the entire Patty Hearst saga. I've preached and read about them throughout my ministry. I think the fact that humans can be so willingly misled and so easily convinced to follow an evil leader is theologically very significant. <a href="http://www.offbeatoregon.com/H1005c_Bhagwan2of4.htm" target="_blank">Short version here</a><br />
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Surely, we see this now in our own national political mess.<br />
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<i>Map shows town of Antelope & John Day Fossil Beds</i></div>
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But I also thought: <i>Darn, I didn't know about this when I went through Oregon. I could have checked it out.</i><br />
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But, it's too late now. The former <i>Rajneeshpuram </i>has been made in a Christian Camp for <i>Young Life, </i>a campus evangelical organization with a world-wide following who, as a townsperson says (Really, I've never seen anyone as mellow as these townspeople!) "...is a kind of sect, too, but at least they're not running around naked and poisoning people and carrying AK-47s"<br />
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<i>some of the ten restaurants where over 750 people were poisoned in an attempt to suppress to vote and sway the county election by the Rajneeshis</i></div>
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I have a fuzzy memory of my original yoga teacher in NJ talking about this guru with all these fancy cars (Bhagwan had ninety Rolls Royces) but I don't think he was someone she had admired or followed. From 1980-84 I had three pregnancies and two children, so I have almost no recollection of these events.<br />
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<i>Bill & Louise Shellabarger</i></div>
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I heard about Oregon from the time I was young. Oregon was the place one of my aunts, my mother's sister Louise, the "baby" in the family of seven children, had gone off to after she'd married a soldier. They met either during or after WWII (Aunt Louise was in the WACS, an acronym no one bothered to explain to me, and which, like so many things, I didn't feel emboldened to ask about).When she was spoken of, quite often, it was with a sense of awe and reverence, as one might speak of the departed.<br />
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This because in those days, few people could afford to fly across country, and the one or two road trips people made in their life times became legendary. In fact, my own parents had made such a trip with my mother's parents (and Louise's) and there were photos to prove it, my granny and Pop-Pop standing side by side in front of an old roadster, arms at their sides, my grandfather in a suit and felt hat, Granny in her go-to flowered shirtwaist and clunky oxford shoes. It may have been my parents' honeymoon, in-laws included.<br />
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<i>Louise, front right. Back row: Marjorie (my mother), Mary Ruth (Aunt Ruthie), Mora (died young), Aunt Adele (wife of Uncle Wade who died of alcoholism), Front: Joyce, (died of alcoholism).</i></div>
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I'm told the Shellabargers came east and saw us as infants, but after that, the only visits were made by my Aunt Ruthie, who survived all her brothers and sisters, and lived to be 86. Louise died suddenly of a heart attack (as did my mother, my uncle J.D., and those others who did not die of alcoholism or die tragically young.)<br />
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Shortly after my divorce, I did what almost everyone thought was a foolhardy thing, and took my two young and very active sons on a road trip. We traveled in a great arc around the country, hitting 21 states and a multitude of National Parks. After that trip, I entered seminary, to pursue my (also deemed foolhardy) notion of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister, and turmoil ensued: a custody battle, which most of all damaged my sons, years of upheaval, and later, challenges they would both take years to resolve. I am so glad we had that summer, that trip, that foolhardy journey.<br />
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<i>Casey, me, Colin, Buckaroo</i></div>
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Naturally, Oregon was a goal. (I also recall that we all said AH-regahn, just like we said FLAH-rida, and AH-range. A NJ thing.) Sometimes, you hear certain family myths all your life, and you start to think they aren't true... they're just stories, completely false or partly made up. I recall that Aunt Ruthie did fly out to see Louise several times during my childhood, and it wasn't Ruthie but maybe my dad or uncle who I can remember saying about Bill and Louise that they let the cat walk around on the table and eat the butter. Clearly they were appalled by this. And they, in turn, must have left an inverse impression on them (which got passed along) because when I finally met my cousin Nelson, she said she always imagined us living in a city where there was no grass, only concrete (we lived in South Jersey on 4 acres, very rural) and that we drank our coffee with our pinkies in the air.</div>
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But I am getting ahead of myself! What intrigued me the most about stopping in Oregon to meet these people (it was 1991 and Louise had died by then some years earlier) were their names. I'd always been fascinated with the name "Nelson" for a girl, but Aunt Ruthie had been telling me that Nelson now had a son named Buckaroo. <i>How could that be? </i>And this of course intrigued my sons, ages 6 and 9, as well. Who would saddle (pun intended) their kid with a name like Buckaroo?</div>
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<i>John Day Fossil Beds NM</i></div>
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The first stop we made in Oregon was at John Day Fossil Beds. What a cool place! First, let me say this trip was pretty much un-planned. We stuck a big map on the wall of our living room for several months before we went and charted out a route based upon things people suggested or things we really wanted to see. But about three days in, near Johnstown, PA, we (or really I) made a decision that we would 1) stick to National Parks and monuments because I suddenly realized they were virtually free, tons better than anything you could pay for, and unique hidden treasures. (Back then, there were fully-funded Ranger Talks and programs.) Now, over 35 years later, I have my Senior Pass.... and 2) take as many random suggestions and invitations as we realistically could along the way. Yes, I now realize this sound extremely dangerous. I still think I'd do it again. But, I digress. I've written an entire book about that trip. </div>
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For what <i>ever </i>reason (I know mine, just not his) Colin and I agreed we would come back to live in the Ranch House at John Day when he grew up. Like, somehow, just he and I were going to get the house from the National Parks and live in it with nobody else. That never happened.</div>
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<i>Ranch House, John Day, Oregon</i></div>
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But guess what did happen? Colin lived in Oregon this winter, near the coast, where he worked on a crabbing boat. Nelson and her family aren't in Oregon anymore. Or he'd have visited them. He gets his wanderlust and spontaneity from me, I'd say.</div>
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<i>Colin (left) with crab haul</i></div>
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We then went to see Crater Lake, also a National Park, but a much more well-known one, because so many people had recommended it. I was pretty determined to get to the places I wanted to get to throughout the trip, so I just forged ahead, but I recall seeing more and more and more snow as we ascended, and the road was pretty treacherous. We set up our tent after dark, in the snow, but ended up sleeping in the car. It was pretty, but we headed back to the Visitor Center by noon.</div>
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From there I called my cousin. I didn't bring a phone number with me. I called information. The only reason I was able to find her is that Shellabarger is an uncommon name. If I'm not mistaken, I reached my cousin Bill, her brother, and he gave me her number. She was delighted to hear from us, and told us where to meet her, at a bar up the road from the ranch they live and worked on, so that was that. We had a great visit. The kids went fishing, and Buckaroo was everything his name could have made you dream of. He swaggered out in boots and a big ten gallon hat, and they ended up trading the hat and boots to the kids for tapes and Patagonia shorts.She had a box of old pictures in her mobile home, and we poured over them. What family does. At a certain point she looked down and said, look. We have the same hands. I wish I'd taken a picture.</div>
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What amazes me most about that trip through Oregon, finding my cousin, and having my kids meet their cousins Buckaroo and John how easy it all seemed, with no GPS, just maps, no cell phones, just phone booths, and no way to even know if where we were going or staying along the way was safe. I was truly indomitable at that point on my life. I was 36.</div>
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I returned to Oregon (Portland) a few years ago, as a minister, when our denomination held its annual assembly there. My full-time professional ministry was winding down, and I was half way through a two-year interim ministry in NJ. It was a joy to attend the sessions and the workshops this time. I could treasure the things I knew I'd not see but perhaps a time or two again. I stayed at an Airbnb some distance from the convention center, and took a bus to the gatherings. It was in a funky, eclectic neighborhood, and I enjoyed checking out the cafes and bistros and one day, accepted the gift of a bicycle tour from my airbnb host (who was also a tour guide). It's a hilly city, but I was riding a brand-new electric bike, and we were offered legal marijuana at stops along the way. I didn't partake, since I didn't own the bike.. but the views and company were fabulous, even un-enhanced.</div>
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That was an entirely different Oregon. So was the Japanese garden and tea house I found nestled right in the middle of a busy city block, walled off, peaceful, elegant, utterly restful and serene. At that particular General Assembly, we'd just heard about the Charleston shootings, and I recall sitting with a dear colleague, watching as President Obama broke in to "Amazing Grace" at the Reverend's funeral. I needed space and time to process this, and so much more. It seemed fitting that the ministry I was about to launch on my first visit was ending there in Oregon. So much heartbreak. loss, and disappointment had come between those two visits and yet there I was. I had enormous gratitude for what remained.</div>
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As I became more engaged in anti-racism writing and reading, it came across my radar that Oregon had been intended as an all-white state. So, this same place, of majestic and serene beauty, of kooks and ranchers and hippies, tree-huggers and foresters and tea houses and crabbing boats, is all one place. It's the same place where the Bundy brothers took over the bird sanctuary. It's the place where my daughter's best friend from Smith College comes from, even though I imagined she'd have have some upper crust friends from the Cape, you know, it was Prina, whose parents had emigrated from India, and owned a hotel/motel in the small community of Redmond, with whom she bonded. Oregon!</div>
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In that same way, each of us is at once one and yet many different persons.Whitman: <i>I am large. I contain multitudes.</i> It's so hard for me to remember this when I look at others... <i>so hard! </i>But it's also hard to remember about myself. I'm not the person everyone wants me to be or expects me to be or that even I expect myself to be. I have hidden tea houses in me and I also have crimes against humanity. Don't you? Sometimes, I can see Mt. Olympia and sometimes I am trying to call someone, and I am calling, but they aren't there, and no one is there, and who I need to call is gone forever. The best lesson for me is that if I had never traveled with my sons, or taken the chance to meet my cousin, or find that tea house, if Colin hadn't jumped onto that crab boat, we wouldn't know a thing. That's what Oregon's taught me. So far.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18199726.post-31715696670905000352018-03-10T10:27:00.001-05:002018-04-22T11:03:09.962-04:00THOUGHTS ON "DISMANTLING RACISM" in 2018<br />
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">A colleague, whom I
consider a front-line soldier in the fight for racial justice, asked a question
on Facebook and tagged me. I needed a minute to contemplate her important
question. Here it is:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span 14.0pt="" 150="" line-height:="">"Looking for helpful, compelling descriptions of what it means to
"do the work" of dismantling racism. Who's got one?"</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Dear
Barbara,</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
This may be neither helpful nor compelling! </span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: 13.5pt; text-align: center;">I live in a very rural, agrarian, poor county in Kentucky. The county seat,
however, is almost one-quarter people of color (primarily Black, descendants of
the original slaves). What makes this place unusual is that, because of its
isolation, virtually every Black family could trace its ancestry (if there were
resources to do so) back to slaves owned by almost every White family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
I've written, with the community, a book/project about this, and invite you to
read the original draft. It will change considerably over the coming years, as
we add more photos, and incorporate more interviews, including audio from those
folks we've talked with. <a href="http://www.thespringfieldproject.blogspot.com/">www.thespringfieldproject.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">(I don't
have a space for comments on the blog. If you read the book, you may contact me
at cyncain@gmail.com)</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
The phrase "work" troubles me a bit. I've asked myself why. I know we
talk about doing "dreamwork" or "spiritual work" or
"working on ourselves." For me, this process of confronting and
addressing, of acknowledging racism within ourselves as well as within nearly
every system and organization in this society is demanding, yes; it is painful,
yes; it can be overwhelming. But is more than work. Calling it "doing the
Work" somehow implies that we know the steps, how to do them, what comes,
next, what succeeds. I submit that Anti-racism is a life-long calling for which
some are summoned, and we may never know why. It is a passion, a heartbreak, an
art, and a joy. This has never been more clear to me than when, after being
employed to do social justice, including anti-racism, as well as pastoral
ministry, I continued to do everything I had before, write, read, pray, listen, speak, dream, contemplate, and much more with no salary at all after
I left the church. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span><i><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;">It may be
that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when
we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 150%;">. <b>Wendell Berry,
Kentucky Farmer</b></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
The word <b>dismantling </b>has some important connotations, and I
can see why it has been widely employed by white folks who endeavor to
systematically end racism. It implies that something will be taken apart
step-by-step, with a methodical coolness. Certainly racism is structural, so
there is something to be said for an analysis that acknowledges looking at the
deep underlying pillars and beams that uphold it. A thorough understanding of
the history of racism, the ways it has been woven into the cultural and
institutional as well as the psychological fabric of our society, is
crucial. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
But racism, as pernicious and pervasive as it has proven to be, will not last
forever. As much as (some) millennial and Gen X folk would like to kick us
Boomers to the side (I've experienced this!) and get on with their own wisdom,
we may know a thing or two. It was, after all, we who birthed and raised <i>them </i>to
be as accepting, open-minded, and in many cases, anti-racist as they are. No,
we didn't fix racism (or much of anything else). But we have some good ideas,
and some of us have money, connections, and other assets and talents that we
could share if you'd welcome us to the work/joy.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
I disagree with the gentleman who said you can't do this alone. This spiritual
battle for the souls of the world is being fought in many places: the arts,
small, isolated communities where a group of liberal white people would be
shunned and get nowhere, one-on-one in Bible studies, coffee houses,
construction sites, the streets of Baltimore, in Congress, and even in
classrooms. It's not likely to be systematic. It can best be understood by reading about
chaos theory and also Joanna Macy's <i>Coming Back to Life: </i> read her rendering of the <a href="https://upliftconnect.com/legend-shambhala-warriors/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">shambhala warrior prophecy</a></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">I also recommend the work (there's that word!) of Michael Eric Dyson, especially <i>Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, </i>who writes about "individual reparations." This has been a powerful incentive for me of recent years. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/magazine/michael-eric-dyson-believes-in-individual-reparations.html" target="_blank">Dyson on individual reparations</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">
More important, to me, than whether one acts alone or with a group is whether
one has a spiritual practice. As in Buddhism it is expected that the adherent
have a sangha and a teacher, and in recovery a sponsor, one ought in
anti-racist activities, have a church, spiritual director, and/devotional
practice. Especially for white people, to whom I am speaking here, always
de-centering one self and one's ego and motivations are extremely important.</span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">
What I see most challenging today, Barbara, is that <b>good people are afraid.</b> I
learned a long time ago that everything we do comes either from <b>fear </b>or
from <b>love. </b> Once you get straight on that, and you come
to know people of color well, and love them, not just the idea of them, you
will act from love, and it will require enormous courage. You will make
enemies. You will have to do and say things that will shock and offend all
sorts of people. You will speak truth to power. </span></span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 150%;">Some of us will, as Cornell West predicted in that great Ware Lecture, "go down swinging like Muhammad Ali." I count you and me in that bunch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think the barn I've been using as an illustration works well. It was once a tobacco barn; we don't need those barns, and we don't need tobacco. Much of the wood, however, is salvageable, and they've withstood the strongest tornadoes. Still, not all are <i>dismantled. </i>Some are brought down by acts of God: wind and weather; some burn; some are demolished. Some rot away slowly, dissolving into earth from which they came. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Frederick Douglass:</span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span><strong><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">Let
me give you a word on the philosophy of reform.</span></strong><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"> The whole history
of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her
august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been
exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being putting all other
tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle
there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain
without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of
its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one;
or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><i><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><br style="background-color: white; font-family: "quattrocento sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic;" />
</span></i><strong><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">Power
concedes nothing without a demand</span></strong><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;">. It never did and it never will. Find out just what
people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are
resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.<br />
</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Frederick
Douglass<br />
in a letter to an abolitionist associate, 1948</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://www.discoveruu.com/images/logo.png</div>Rev. Cynthia Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05939044773581361835noreply@blogger.com