Happy Cindy Changes the World

Alice Walker -- We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness

2009-05-18T11:35:00.002-05:00

Video from C-SPAN Book TV. Can't embed, external link here. The first 8 minutes are street interviews.

Self Advocacy - Autism Awareness Month is almost over.

2009-04-28T16:48:00.004-05:00

Click the picture to see it full size on it's original site at Asperger Square 8.

Autism Awareness month is almost over. Have you asked an Autistic person about it yet?

"Three generations of morons is sufficient"

2009-04-28T06:18:00.010-05:00

The above quote is from a Supreme Court Opinion, 88 years ago, regarding the involuntary sterilization of people with developmental disabilities. How much better are things today? "Autism Steals." "Autism Leaves an Empty Shell." "Autism is No Hope, No Future."

This video was put together by Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Dan Marino Foundation, and Kent Creative. It was written and performed by individuals on the autism spectrum.

Have a few more minutes? Wonder what situation is behind this that would make these people think that a PSA is needed to advocate for basic human rights? aka: the inherent worth and dignity of all persons?

Ari Ne'eman is the President of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. He refers to himself as an Asperger's Autistic, is the narrator of the above PSA, and speaks to this question in a Keynote address to ASAN in this video. It is housed at the Dan Marino's Childnett.tv and outlines the challenges and dangers that face people on the autism spectrum by well-meaning people under the names of "education" and "treatment."

If you choose not to watch the above video, let me simply tell you that the quotes above were taken from real live "autism advocates" --- that is, people who are not autistic who want to cure autism because "This is the special curse of autism. You have your child, and yet you don’t have him. You have a shell, a ghost of all the dreams and hopes you ever had." (from Autism Research: A Legacy of Neglect, an Opportunity for New Discovery by Jonathan Shestack, co-founder and president of Cure Autism Now.)

While there are no easy answers, and human life is infinitely complicated, I cannot help but think that people with autism ought be in the middle of the discussion, not the periphery. It seems that the philosophical difference between autism as illness and autism as natural neurological diversity is a pretty great distance. It seems that the difference between "curing" something and helping them live the best life they can, maximizing their skills and learning to live with the challenges is pretty great distance.

After all, we don't still try to cure glbt folk, do we?

Read it like there's gonna be a quiz.

2009-04-19T14:48:00.010-05:00

The Mosaic Project recommendations are out.
This is one of the most clear, vibrant, passionate, intellectually and developmentally sound documents that has come out of the UUA. And I'm the kind of geek who reads these documents on a fairly regular basis. Laura Spencer's report clearly articulates the challenges youth and young adults of color, multicultural youth and young adults, trans-racially adopted youth and young adults face within our movement, locates this experienced reality soundly within the best literature and theory known, and it's recommendations are unmistakable.

If you care about our youth, and/or our ability to be a relevant multicultural religous movement, and/or AR/AO work, and/or being a person who takes Right Action, and/or just being a better person next week than you are today, then this document is for you.

Read it. Like there's going to be a quiz.
Don't whip through it online like it's a blog, and toss off an opinion.

Print it out, put it in a binder, write in the margins, look up the references. Ponder and think and grow and be an active reader, engaging the material; a reflective Unitarian Universalist who listens deeply when people articulate their reality. Be a UU who pushes themselves to think outside even their own box.

Unitarian Universalists have poured their lives out as the text upon which this exegesis is written. We should respect and honor that by seeing, hearing, and responding.

The Question

What are the ministry needs of African, Caribbean, Native/American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latina/Latino and Hispanic, Middle Eastern/Arab, Multiracial and Multiethnic and trans-racially adopted Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth and young adults?

* How does our Unitarian Universalist faith need to change in order to meet these needs?
* What structures need to be strengthened or established to support families, congregations, campus groups, districts, and continental bodies in their ministries to these youth and young adults?

The Mosaic Project Report offers recommendations to help congregations, districts, and Association create an environment that is an effective part of the scaffolding that supports Youth and Young Adults of Color both in their development of a healthy identity and through the transition from childhood to adulthood. The positive impact of creating such an environment can reach beyond the Youth and Young Adults of Color community into all ministry areas. By creating congregations, communities, and institutions that embody the seven Principles, Unitarian Universalists can indeed move closer to building the world we dream about.

It's all about systems and structures, and ultimately, what those of us with access to decision-making do to make those systems and structures more appropriate, supportive and embracing, and empowering for all of our youth and young adults.

And there will be a quiz. Whether by your higher power, your conscience, or by the youth of today and tomorrow who will judge our actions in the future, there will, by god, be a quiz.

I pray we pass.

Non-Anxious Presence vs. Actual Calmness

2009-04-18T08:03:00.010-05:00

Chalice Spark posted a great post about being a non-anxious presence in our work. In the comments, Anna Banana raises a good question about the difference between maintaining a "non-anxious presence" and being calm. As I understand it, the former is a behavior, not necessarily a feeling state.

We may or may not feel calm, anxious, stressed, fearful; but our behavior relative to the congregation can be a grounded one that avoids overreacting, taking "bait," or permitting changes of the subject and the like. Our non-anxious presence can be to keep the eye on the ball, so to speak, to hold up the core values and specific issue at hand, slowly, carefully, with humor even, regardless of our internal feelings about it.

If we act stressed, people around us will feel stressed, even if they'd not needed to in the first place. It's why Opening of the church year is so challenging for me, because I am stressed! I'm working 70 hours a week dealing with things like 17 families that didn't register their kids on time so I need to reconfigure classes the day before teacher training. But the members are there with excitement, looking forward to a new year, anticipating new things.
If my stress/anxiety shows in my behavior then their feelings may change and become MY feelings, and the subject (opening excitement and joy) will change to be about me (and my frustration, anger, anxiety.)

Conversely, when the congregation is under stress, (say because of finances,) I am of course also under stress, and most definitely am not "feeling calm." My behavior in terms of being a non-anxious presence for them helps them keep the focus on their challenges, their feelings, and their tasks and roles.

Many of my colleagues, (particularly among the ordained ministry and those other religous professionals I consider foreparents or mentors,) seem to be able to maintain an actual inner sense of calm while behaving in a non-anxious manner.
Both.

I aspire to this, but I have a limbic system that goes from zero to 70 in .1 seconds. So the distinction between feeling and behavior is a really important one for me. Behaviors are something that can be practiced.

These include behaviors that are
a) behaviors of welcome, listening, focusing, acknowledging feelings and elephants in rooms, visioning, constancy, and perhaps above all, predictability,
b) behaviors that access my higher cognitive functioning despite the fight or flight or cry response my emotional self is looking for
and c) back my limbic system down to 55.
(I am told that meditation can be used for helping the limbic system chill out, but cannot attest to that personally. I find nature radio on pandora.com helps as a limbic system governor, and once the gas has been hit, jumping jacks in the office w/ the shades drawn to discharge adrenaline is useful. Jumping jacks in public would likely be counter productive. I'm just saying.)

The most challenging, as someone for whom inner calm does not come easily, isn't finance committee meetings, or congregational meetings about the latest issue; these can be prepared for. The greatest challenge is keeping space in my brain prepared to the inevitable subject out of left field while I'm full of 79 things to juggle on Sunday Morning. When I'm juggling balls, and someone tosses me a grindstone. When a member starts talking about about something they've been keeping pent up, or something they feel is exceptionally timely and must be addressed on the spot, it can be very difficult to implement the mantra, "this isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."

"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."
"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."
"This isn't a good time, please call me and we'll find a time to have tea."

As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start practicing it like an actual mantra. I'll let you know how that works.

(grounded...eye on the ball... left field. Must be spring, Go Red Sox.)

Being a Professional Religous Professional in difficult economic times

2009-04-15T08:13:00.027-05:00

A very wise colleague recently told me that she thought that at the core of what we do, is that we educate people on how to "do church." My work is not the same thing as my job description and commensurate task list.

I really like that as a hook upon which to hang my hat. Our work is that we provide leadership in how to live in a certain kind of community that doesn't exist elsewhere. We provide opportunities for people -- adults, youth, children -- to practice the skills necessary to be able to be in right relationship. It's relatively easy with people who think like us and laugh at the same jokes, but our religious community, when done right, includes people we don't particularly enjoy being with, people we don't understand, people we find challenging, angry, or obstructionist, and "doing church" with them takes a lot of work.

When we ask ourselves, "What is a congregation uniquely positioned to provide it's members," we come to that answer. We are a religous movement that affirms the worth and dignity of our most challenging people. We are a faith tradition that expects that people will be oriented toward right relationship, toward health and wholeness; toward, dare I say, liberation from that which limits and challenges us. We are a faith tradition where people covenant to stay at the table together and work things out, to practice and practice and practice again the skills to be able to work things out.

Religious Professionals whose work is in congregations are in a unique position relative to the members and congregations in which we serve. We spend 20 or 40 or 60 hours a week "working" on the doing of church. By the time we've been doing this work for several years, we have engaged in myriad collegial conversations and spent intense time in educational development opportunities at 15 and 25 and 40 hours a pop, learning from our colleagues and foreparents, from those who specialize in understanding particular aspects of our work. We may have spent 1 or 3 or 4 or 10 years in advanced studies in preparation for the work we do, learning how the early Christian church, liberationists in Latin America, marginalized populations and mainstream congregations in the US all have "done church." We've learned about congregational systems theory, and the impact of congregational size on the necessary administrative and program structures; we've worked to be a non-anxious presence.

And the people we serve, for the most part have not spent years and years in this endeavor. They attend worship once a week. They serve on a committee, or teach a class, maybe both. Some few immerse themselves in "being" Unitarian Universalist in an active, core sense. Maybe, after a number of years, they serve on the Board or on committees and boards of the larger association. Or they blog regularly about our Association and our lives together.

But church time is slow time.

C h u r c h T i m e i s S l o w Tiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeee.

I came out of Seminary great guns, intending to change the world, to start adult education programs that mimicked the kind of intense bonding and exploration I experienced in Seminary. I was going to start outreach ministries that met the felt needs of the poorest in the community from church basements, empowering the members of any congregation I served to imagine wildly the kinds of needs they, banded together as a congregation, could meet.

And here I am two decades later on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, talking with people, not about the next outreach activity, not about deep intense theological questions about the meaning of life, but about the importance of the Safe Congregation Policies. We explore why it isn't a good idea for a person who doesn't actually believe that the rules are necessary to be the actual person who teaches them to newcomers. Sometimes I practice, teach, and engage in right relationship with my community by saying "No."

Here I am, again, trying to find language for why the word Faith doesn't mean belief in what isn't provable. Or in a conversation about why, just because the word Covenant is printed on the side of big rigs and is claimed by reconstructionist Christians we still get to use it. That, in fact, we must use this language, for it is our language. The very deepest innermost truth of our faith is in our covenant one with another.

Here I am, again, asking a group of incredibly passionate and talented RE Volunteers to remember that they are working with a group that exists in the context of a larger RE Program, which is in the context of the larger congregation, which is uniquely qualified to offer it's membership a certain kind of being-in-relationship.

Here I am, again, (trying to be careful) asking questions about why a congregant who buys fair trade coffee and won't shop at Walmart would entertain the idea that when staff hours are cut, that staff member should just offer up volunteer time to fulfill their job description.

Here I am, not engaged in a deep discussion about multinational economic oppression, but explaining why I think that all staff will support another staff person's raise to the local Living Wage even though none of us are going to get a COLA this year; why it's a justice issue; why we are also bound together in right relation.

Under economic pressure, congregations need their religous professionals to be professional -- that is, to continue to help them learn how to "do church." If my hours or program budget were to be cut further, what would that mean to me as a professional? What would it mean to my family? These are my questions to answer, and they belong in conversation with my family and colleagues.

But, how would the congregation "own" the consequences of choices to cut? This, ultimately is my role as a religious professional under economic pressure -- how might I help the congregation understand that those consequences have to do with how they live their lives together, how they support their children and youth, how they walk together in justice and peace and right relation. Changes in my job description would mean modifications in how they support their own religious community, but it ought not be about whether or not I am hurt or angry. Their reaction to any cuts that are made ought not be to personally apologize to me. Because it's not about me.

My family life is about me, my economic realities are about me, and my solutions will be about me. But the congregation must learn through this as through everything else, how to "do church," how to be in right relation, how to make hard choices and then follow up with right action.

What I do as a religous educator is far more complicated, rich, and meaningful than the exciting work I'd once dreamed. Starting up community education programs to teach basic car repair to single mothers would have been much simpler.

PS. Late breaking news people, Literary License. It's a lovely thing. Remember, I never talk about my congregation on this blog, and so there are no exact literal conversations with exact identifiable congregants; just as I hope you understand that it could not possibly be true, in that literal factual sense, that I had all of the above conversations, literally, this Wednesday afternoon.

Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah

2009-04-10T10:32:00.002-05:00

Since I'm on the subject of Facebook, here's a very funny page. But it's a Fake Facebook page, so don't try to click the link to see who God's friends are. It won't work.

Below is a screenshot of the beginning.

Here's the link to the whole thing.

Facebook as the new Scanners

2009-04-03T05:36:00.008-05:00

My grandfather had a scanner.

My dad has a scanner.

I have a scanner.

My uncle and brother are technogeeks, so they graduated to ham radios and shortwave and I don't understand a word they say so they don't get to be in my blog today.

If this is new to you, let me explain that a scanner is a radio device one can set to certain frequencies to listen to police, fire, ambulance (and for the truly compulsive, the two-way radio broadcasts between the base and, say, the Heating Oil delivery truck, or the local college security officers.). Scanners are the explanation of how local tv news sometimes get so quickly to the scene of the accident. It provides, not long narratives of reality, but little bits of information that provide a mental image of reality, a little fuzzy in the manner of television when it went out magically over the air the way television is supposed to be transmitted. Yet it is still a little specific at the same time...like when that fuzzy tv had great audio.

A scanner is how my dad kept up with the local situation for weeks while there was no electricity after the ice storm of 1998 in the Northern Adirondacks (and Vt, and Quebec). Battery back up, very hard core.

My grandfather's scanner usually brought out opinions from my grandmother,
"I told you there was no good letting kids play in that park down there," or
"He was probably drunk," or "As fat as that, it's no wonder she had a heart attack."

I have used mine in times of electrical outage, or when I hear lots of sirens, or, sometimes, if there's nothing on tv and I wonder what's going on in my town[s].
I get to find out that the electricity is out because someone crashed into the pole at the end of the road, so I know it won't be long. I can tell if any neighbors already called in a noise complaint...

My partner pointed out the other day that I haven't turned it on since I joined Facebook.

Is Facebook the new Scanner? Have all my bits of technology and hobbies been replaced?

Married Gay People Who Are Sorry

2009-03-24T11:33:00.003-05:00

I haven't had time in months to post any original thoughts on this blog, (I'm unclear if I've even had any original thoughts) but who needs original thoughts when there's Portia Di Rossi and Jimmy Kimmel?

Wizards of Winter and Barbra

2008-12-14T20:39:00.002-05:00

Two very cool videos of a house with Christmas lights sync'd to music. First the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Wizards in Winter, then Barbra Streisand's Jingle Bells.

Child safety redux - Who is in charge of looking out for dangers?

2008-11-22T07:22:00.005-05:00

Thinking Out Loud.
I came across this fabulous set of PSA's. They are fun and simple. Click the video tests, in order, below. Make sure your children aren't in the room, b/c unexpected words may fly out of your mouth.

Now that you've got the hang of it, watch this one.

Page down ...

These are from http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

I was all proud of myself when I saw the bear in the second video. After the first video, I was looking for a bear, and I found it, then noticed it change. I was not a little dismissive of the video, given, ::eyes roll:: how easy it was.

Normally, I'm the queen of continuity errors. In the middle of a film, if someone's cigarette grows a quarter inch when the angle changes, or if the coffee handle turns left instead of right, I have a good grumble, out loud. If continuity errors continue, I often add a dramatic Tony Soprano arm wave to the grumble. And whomever is in the living room with me is resentful of my interruption of their experience. They'd not noticed continuity errors, and so it was I, not the film's inattention to detail, that interrupted their experience.

I'm embarrassed to say in this case, I stopped at the bear, even though I knew the gist of the exercise. I stopped looking. I stopped seeing. I watched, but didn't see.

So I find myself pondering this in relation to our congregations and the safety of children (and elders, and other vulnerable people.)

It's so easy to miss something you're not looking for.

Is this why DRE's and church staff are more aware of the number of people in the building who are not congregants, in fact, the number who live on the edge of sanity, sobriety, and the law? (This is likely most true of those of us in downtown congregations).

Is this why, given people's natural (and I would say appropriate) desire for congregations to be places of safety and sanctuary, that they resist efforts to increase security in ways that require them to be inconvenienced or, frankly, to have to notice that bad things happen even in church?

So is this part of an explanation of why we seem to be the only people who notice when matches are left out on the edges of things, or when a door is unlocked because it's inconvenient to have to continually walk to open it during committee meetings? Because we are looking?

And if members are not looking, even when there are policies that say they ought, then of course members are going to be uncomfortable or even resentful of us when we point out risks. It is not the fact of a unlocked door, or the matches, or the suddenly covered security-window-in-the-door that interrupted their sense of sanctuary. It was the staff, the DRE, or the identified safety wonk on the RE Committee who interrupted their sense of sanctuary.

I wonder if this is a partial explanation for why congregations sometimes seem to expect us to write and implement policies, to monitor and ensure safety, but push comes to shove, not really bother membership about their behavior when that behavior impacts safety.

And if it is, what's the solution?

As Harriet the Spy said so frequently, Hmm, think about this.

What makes your heart sing?

2008-09-24T07:32:00.002-05:00

I think, and of course I'm not the first, that this is a core question for religious educators. We should be asking everyone we come across in our work, "What makes your heart sing?"

When we have some insight into the answers to this question, we create space within which to imagine ways to make everything we do be meaningful. We can look for ways to create connections between people, practices and principles; we can pull on members' natural inclinations and desires to seek moments of meaning. We can collaborate on opportunities for service that aren't driven by how we've always done something, but by maximizing connections between past, present, and future/vision.

When we listen to people's answers, we can go to our RE Committee and Minister and colleagues and say,
"Look what I found out! XXYYZZ is the new AABBCC! Or: 10 people have told me that they cherish JJKKLL. What would happen if...."

(Perhaps our RE Committee and Minister and colleagues are, in fact, the first people to whom we should direct the question.)

I often think that I know how to do my job -- what the goals are, what the needs of the families are. But people will answer these two questions very differently:
What do you need? elicits a different answer than What makes your heart sing? My "job" is to flex and learn and remember that I need to be able to hold both of those questions (and all the answers) in order to truly support faith development.

...

It surprised me how much this video makes my heart sing.
As it started, I so didn't see it coming...what happened in my heart.

If you have a fast internet connection, this link will get you to his page and a hi-res version, which is even more glorious.

Someone you love has Mito

2008-09-23T11:41:00.005-05:00

Every year 1000-4000 children are born with a Mitochondrial Disease. The person in my life who I know lives with Mito is Gwen, who I've written about on this blog many times before. Gwen and her family are no longer part of our congregation because our local hospitals didn't have the specialized treatment necessary to support Gwen, so they are now the beloved members of another UU congregation.

Many, if not most people with Mito are misdiagnosed, or not diagnosed until after death, so take a minute to learn about this often misunderstood disease. This is Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week, to do yourself and your loved ones a favor, take a moment for awareness.

Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.

This means that organs fail to work properly -- or fail outright. Without energy to run the cells, cells die, and can't do their jobs within the organs. So people with mito may not have GI tracts that work, or kidneys that will flush, or livers that wil cleanse. They become extremely vulnerable to the slightest bacteria or virus.

Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.

Click the image to the left for a larger version of Symptoms of Mitochondrial Diseases.

Treatment
"At this time, there are no cures for these disorders.
Goals of treatment
note: goals may never be met

* alleviate symptoms
* slow down the progression of the disease"

For more information about treatments and therapies, click the link in the above quote about Treatment.

As research continues, there seems to be more and more connection between mitochondrial diseases and autism spectrum disorders.

David Holtzman, MD, PhD, a Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, notes, “Mitochondrial Disease may present with the clinical features of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Several recent studies have documented biochemical evidence of abnormal mitochondrial functions in at least 30% of children with ASD.”

FMI about thinking about connections between ASD and Mito, start here

Support these organizations:
Mito Action
United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation

People you love are living with this disease. They may or may not know it.
Support research.
Take a few minutes and play with the above websites and google and youtube.

Daydreaming as active engagement with our internal landscape

2008-09-07T21:12:00.005-05:00

Religious Professionals absolutely cannot jump from task to task to task, rushing willy nilly from one to do list to the next. It cripples us. We have to have time intentionally carved out that's full of daydreaming, imagining, making the improbable connections that amount to leaps of creativity and connection in our professional lives. Professional development, formal or not, needs to include opportunities to "contemplate our internal landscape."

Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe:

scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming ... is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings - such as the message of a church sermon - the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist,

...

Every time we slip effortlessly into a daydream, a distinct pattern of brain areas is activated, which is known as the default network. Studies show that this network is most engaged when people are performing tasks that require little conscious attention, such as routine driving on the highway or reading a tedious text. Although such mental trances are often seen as a sign of lethargy - we are staring haplessly into space - the cortex is actually very active during this default state, as numerous brain regions interact. Instead of responding to the outside world, the brain starts to contemplate its internal landscape. This is when new and creative connections are made between seemingly unrelated ideas.

The article is here. Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large at Seed magazine and the author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist."

On Competency Expectations : Take a cue from the Canadians

2008-07-01T15:37:00.007-05:00

Setting aside the fact that expecting competency and professional ethics from professionals is simply appropriate, it seems to me we could take a cue from the 1998 Canadian Supplement to the UUMA guidelines.
Others have quoted the new rule, but I'll put it here for any who aren't following along on other blogs.

"The fellowship of a minister may be terminated by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee for unbecoming conduct, incompetence, or other specified cause."

Employment law is different in Canada, so a minister can be "dismissed for cause." Dismissal from a congregation is not what this particular rule change is about, but I mention it here because we might take some wisdom from this in terms of its usefulness in identifying where the bar might be set, what might constitute incompetence.

“Cause” is a term of art and in general means particularly egregious behavior such as repeated drunkenness in the pulpit...

I think it's the funniest line in any professional document I've ever read, and it makes me happy every time I can find an excuse to refer to it. This may be the first time I've been able to refer to it and have it actually be directly relevant.

And it also appropriately sets the bar clearly so as to avoid messes regarding personality or disagreements of style, theology or low/high churchiness and the like.

If you've never seen it, the entire paragraph is:

In Canada a distinction is drawn between being dismissed for cause and being dismissed. “Cause” is a term of art and in general means particularly egregious behavior such as repeated drunkenness in the pulpit, failure to conduct services with no notice given or molestation of children in the church school. In situations where there is clearly cause, no benefits of any kind and no salary need be paid after the date of dismissal. Where “cause” in the legal sense cannot be established it may be that longer benefits than those described as normal in the US will have to be paid. In either case the minister is entitled to be treated fairly, to know the details of the charges and to have an opportunity to reply. Failure to proceed fairly can result in a review by the courts. Separation of church and state is not observed rigidly in Canada, and there are an increasing number of cases where courts have concluded that ministers were not treated fairly.

Also, as an aside, may I take this moment to state my strong opinion that all LREDA members ought not only read our own Guidelines, but the UUMA Guidelines as well (and hopefully the updated ones will be finalized if not already, and Google-able and on the UUA website soon) And vice versa. We are all accountable to professional standards and expectations of ethical behavior, and as religious professionals it is incumbent upon us to be aware of how those standards and expectations are and are not the same given our different responsibilities within a congregation.

I'm just saying.

Keeping Mum

2008-05-01T17:15:00.003-05:00

Dark British comedy with a Rowan Atkinson as the Vicar and Maggie Smith as, er, Mary Poppins, sort-of. What could be better?

If you've never seen this 2005 film, and if you ever think I'm funny, then try to catch it. If you don't ever find me funny, I recommend you give it a pass because I find it hilarious.
and sick.
and hilarious.

I like to believe that people who don't find me funny won't find Maggie Smith funny. I'm just saying.

TMC Monday 1:30 am
Showcase Tue 11:15am
Sho2 Wed 9:15 am
TMC may 8 9:20 am

Autism: The Musical

2008-04-01T07:56:00.003-05:00

Watch it on HBO. It's amazing. It's honest. You'll fall in love with the kids and appreciate the depth of the time and effort parents put into helping their kids grow and develop. You will watch as people struggle with communication, social skills, and impulsivity. The film shows snippets of the joys and challenges, the positive communication and melt-downs -- both child and adult. It is a film about children with autism, but it is just as much about how neurotypical adults sometimes have similar behaviors and responses to the world -- just not as frequently.

Here is the schedule. The next showing is Wednesday at 6:15 East, 9:15 West. It is also On Demand, although it doesn't show up yet on my On Demand Schedule. There are also some cut scenes available On Demand, which you'll want to go to immediately after seeing the film.

Don't have HBO? Go visit a friend....

My only significant critique, (which would have completely changed the film), is that they only gave a tiny nod to the inadequate resources that are provided to help children fully develop their potential, or to the reality that public schools fail to meet the legal standards of education on a regular basis.

Daddy’s Roommate Buys a Prius

2008-03-17T17:26:00.004-05:00

A satire of the fundraising letters of James Dobson (Focus on the Family).
Said satire is brought to you by the funny evangelicals at The Wittenburg Door.

Green Homosexuals, The Newest Threat to American Families

EXCERPT:

We must defend our way of life. Many of you know my stand against homosexuality.
AND, more recently, you may have heard how I have criticized evangelical leaders who have formed unholy alliances with the environmental movement to “save” the planet at the expense of our God-ordained standard of living.

What you may not know is that these two radical movements have now joined forces.

My friends, we are now facing a Gay-Green threat: Homosexual activists who also seek to limit carbon emissions and promote recycling, as well as a sustainable lifestyle!
I know it sounds like “gangrene” and that is entirely appropriate, since this is a rottenness which will eat away at the integrity of our American way of life.

And, in case you've never seen what Mr. Dobson writes, here's an excerpt of a real letter:

April 2004
Dear Friends:
I write to you today with a profound sense of concern and apprehension for the welfare of the family, and indeed, for the future of our nation. I do not recall a time since the beginnings of Focus on the Family, 27 years ago, when the institution of marriage faced such peril, or when the forces arrayed against it were more formidable or determined. Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise.
For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The institution of marriage, along with an often weakened and impotent Church, is all that stands in the way of its achievement of every coveted aspiration.

Latency aged boys collect things

2008-03-05T18:25:00.002-05:00

It's part of the developmental deal, 10-12 year old boys build model worlds - railroads, lego-lands, duct-tape tech deck skateboard parks - and they collect things. They collect baseball cards, Pokemon cards, matchbox cars...

My grandson collects "Quotes I Like by Barack Obama."

He writes them on little flash cards so he can learn them.

I'm so proud.

Laugh like a pig Auntie Cindy

2008-02-26T10:13:00.005-05:00

When Naomi was much smaller, she loved my laugh, which, when there is enough humor in the ether, does have an occasional snorting quality to it. My brother Dave and sister-in-law Mari used this as a way to help her differentiate between Auntie Beloved and Auntie Cindy.

Before, it went like this:

Age 18 months - 2 years--
"How does Auntie Cindy laugh?"
[Naomi would scrunch up her face and pull air in and out of her 18 month old nose, like 18 month old smelling the flowers on speed]

Age 2--
She'd be on the phone and say,
"Laugh Auntie Cindy."

Age 2.5--
on the webcam, she'd scrunch up her face and say,
"Laugh Auntie Cindy."

Age 2.75--visiting in person
This time, after spending 8 days with her, we were riding in the car when out of the blue she suddenly made the connection.

"Laugh like a pig Auntie Cindy."

Everyone swears they never taught her what a pig sounds like.

Happy Cindy is SO HAPPY with her nieces

2008-02-14T13:57:00.004-05:00

the 7 week old twins, and a toddler in California in the early spring with actual live daffodils in the front yard.

Naomi sez:
Auntie Cindy, are you Happy?
Yes Naomi, I am Happy.
Are you SO HAPPY?
Yes, Naomi, I am SO HAPPY!

And today is my 8.5 / 2.5 year anniversary with the honey. (That's time together pre and post marriage rights)

What could possibly make it be better? It'd maybe help a little if the toddler internalized the instructions in this video which she's watched, so far, 5 times. I post it here for easy retrieval for all RE Teacher trainings.

Puppy Bowl

2008-02-02T18:39:00.001-05:00

Before the Super Bowl is the Puppy Bowl IV, on Animal Planet. Tomorrow 3 pm. With a half time show of kittens.

This is a preview of one of this year's contestants.

Puppies make me happy.

DocWatch Jan 21 thru Jan 26

2008-01-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

Docs to explore this week:

Today, Monday 1/21
noon Sundance Murder on a Sunday Morning A 15 year old boy is arrested and charged with murder. The evidence? He's black and the victim was white and he was walking in the area. when did this happen? Was it one of the injustices Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was protesting in 1965? nope. 2000.
3:30 pm Sundance Blue Vinyl. Last Chance to see it in the near future.
4 pm HBO Hard as Nails Justin Fatica is not for everyone. When he steps up to the altar, the unordained minister becomes a frenetic whirlwind of energy, using a mix of professional wrestling, hip hop and Scripture to bring Jesus to thousands of young worshippers. Despite his success, Fatica's intense, over-the-top approach faces some serious resistance--even from his own beloved Catholic Church. This documentary follows the self-ordained preacher who started his controversial "Hard as Nails" ministry as a way to reach troubled kids.
5:15 Sundance Shakespeare Behind Bars Each year, inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Facility in Kentucky take on a difficult and challenging task: the production and performance of a Shakespeare play. This powerful documentary by Hank Rogerson follows rehearsals for "The Tempest" — a story heavy on the theme of redemption — as the cast, some serving life sentences for murder, develops their chosen roles, giving the audience an unexpected view of some complex, intelligent, thoughtful men in the process. "Ingenious"— Village Voice.

Don't miss this one.
8 pm Logo Brother Outsider. The Life of Bayard Rustin Watch preview Riveting Portrait of Forgotten Civil Rights Pioneer and Strategist About the Film Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Brother Outsider has won 20+ awards

Long before Martin Luther King, Jr. became a national figure, Bayard Rustin routinely put his body--and his life--on the line as a crusader for racial justice. Rustin's commitment to pacifism and his visionary advocacy of Gandhian nonviolence made him a pioneer in the 1940s, and captured King's imagination in the 1950s. In 1963, with more than 20 years of organizing experience behind him, Rustin brought his unique skills to the crowning glory of his civil rights career: his work organizing the historic march on Washington, the biggest protest America had ever witnessed.

But many viewed Rustin as a political liability. He was openly gay during the fiercely homophobic era of the 1940s and 1950s; as a result, the very civil rights movement he helped create frequently shunned him. The compelling new film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin chronicles Rustin's complex life story, a tale of race, prejudice, and idealism at the heart of 20th-century America. Though he had to overcome the stereotypes associated with being an illegitimate son, an African American, a gay man and a one-time member of the Communist Party, Rustin--the ultimate outsider--eventually became a public figure and respected political insider. He not only shaped civil rights movement strategy as a longtime advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., but earned the respect of numerous U.S. Presidents and foreign leaders.

Tuesday 1/22
8:00 am and 1:35 pm Show Showcase FLOCK OF DODOS: THE EVOLUTION-INTELLIGENT DESIGN CIRCUS Evolutionary biologist Dr. Randy Olson is the star of this tongue-in-cheek documentary that examines both sides of the evolution versus "intelligent design" debate, a controversial subject that has pitted faith against reason and school boards against scientists in an increasingly emphatic war of words and ideas. Which side will survive, and which will go the way of the now-extinct dodo bird?
8:30 am Logo Brother Outsider. The Life of Bayard Rustin Watch preview

Wednesday 1/23
5 am Disc Times John of God For 40 years, the Brazilian spiritual medium John of God has reportedly healed millions of people. Follow the journeys of skeptics, medical professionals and the chronically ill as they seek out the healing hand of this mysterious man. TV-MA

3 p Sundance Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident . Helen Caldicott.
10 pm Dis Health Switching Sexes: The Aftermath For people who find that their mind's identity and physical sex are mismatched, sexual reassignment surgery is a viable solution. Follow two transsexual men as they struggle through the heartache and sacrifice of becoming female.

Check Local Listings PBS "American Made" is a compelling look at family, faith and racism as a Sikh family is stranded on a desert road and family members try to flag down passing cars.
Check Local Listings PBS "A Son's Sacrifice" What motivates a young educated New Yorker to take over his family's halal slaughterhouse? Visit Imran Uddin at his unusual workplace at this preview.

Thursday 1/24
1 am Dis Health Switching Sexes: The Aftermath For people who find that their mind's identity and physical sex are mismatched, sexual reassignment surgery is a viable solution. Follow two transsexual men as they struggle through the heartache and sacrifice of becoming female. (also 5 pm the 26th)
9:05 am TMC extra Genesis - a really cool look at the life cycle, follow-up films to Microcosmos and Winged Migration. Link to the trailer. You might recognize the narrator as Sotigui Kouyate, who played the lead (and won lots of awards,) in the film Little Senegal. also on at 6:05 pm

Friday 1/25
12:30 pm HBO Hard as Nails Justin Fatica is not for everyone. When he steps up to the altar, the unordained minister becomes a frenetic whirlwind of energy, using a mix of professional wrestling, hip hop and Scripture to bring Jesus to thousands of young worshippers. Despite his success, Fatica's intense, over-the-top approach faces some serious resistance--even from his own beloved Catholic Church. This documentary follows the self-ordained preacher who started his controversial "Hard as Nails" ministry as a way to reach troubled kids.

Saturday 1/26
10 am Sundance Murder on a Sunday Morning A 15 year old boy is arrested and charged with murder. The evidence? He's black and the victim was white and he was walking in the area. when did this happen? Was it one of the injustices Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was protesting in 1965? nope. 2000.
8 pm LOGO Out On The Job.

WATCH ON DEMAND
Friends of God HBO
Ghosts of Abu Graib HBO

WATCH ONLINE
NewsWar A Frontline 4 part investigation into the future of news.
Religion and Ethics Newsweekly
P.O.V Online Short Film Festival Scaredycat
No Dumb Questions Three children learn about, and talk with their uncle as she becomes their aunt.
Southern Comfort Robert Eads, a transman, is dying from ovarian cancer. A fascinating, touching, and beautiful portrait of his life in Taccoa GA.
Out On The Job. 3 people come out on the job. How's that work for them?

I seem to be morally average, and I'm not sure how I feel about that

2008-01-21T09:23:00.000-05:00

A nod to Steve Caldwell for pointing out Two online quizzes on God at The Philosopher's Magazine on the Net. I started looking around the site. Great opportunities for COA and YRUU application. I took the Morality Play quiz, a more philosophical version of the values clarification exercises we did in the 70's. Turns out I'm average in terms of my moral parsimony. Parsimony. Great word. Means something along the lines of frugality and tightness in regards to clarity and internal consistency. See also Occam's Razor.

Actually, it said I'm average in terms of my moral parsimony for people my age. I may have to go back and answer it the same way, then say that I'm 20 and see how I compare.

It was forced choice exercise however, and I was often forced into the most true answer. I kept wanting a third option "find another way." (In another quiz, Taboo, I kept wanting another option as well "not morally wrong, but gross." Please note, there is no direct link to Taboo from this blog because it is most definitely not for church use with minors.)

This is the link directly to the games page.

Changed the number of posts on the first page

2008-01-18T09:14:00.000-05:00

After some ponder as to why a colleague gets stuck on this blog... it's not a bug, and it's not a secret plot to force people to indulge in the beauty and brilliance of my opinions, so I changed the number of posts on the page. This way, if the problem is the sheer amount of stuff on the front page, particularly where I've put so many YouTube posts up lately, the problem should, could, might, stop.

So, if anyone gets stuck on this site now, please let me know by commenting.

DocWatch Jan 14 - 20

2008-01-14T09:27:00.001-05:00

Docs to explore this week:

Today, Monday 1/14
4 pm Sundance Keep Not Silent Three pious orthodox Israeli lesbians live in vastly different circumstances.

Tues 1/15
8:30 am Logo Zero Degrees of Separation Selim and Ezra, a gay Palestinian-Israeli couple, are fighting for the right to live together in Jerusalem
8:40 am STZ Iraq For Sale

Wed 1/16
4:15 am HBO fam Middle School Confessions Drinking, sex, violence, depression, school failure, and harassment. These are just some of the daily realities of life for many of today's adolescents.
5:15 am HBO sig. A Boy's Life Cindy Sez: this movie is like a Family Systems R Us. What's wrong with Robert? According to the grandmother with whom he's lived for the past five years, he's an emotionally disturbed seven year old with a serious personality disorder. To the boy's mother, therapist and school administrators, however, the real problem isn't Robert...
10 am Sund Little Peace of Mine After witnessing a terrorist attack on a busload of children, Nadav, a precocious 12-year-old Israeli boy, founds Peace for the Future, an opposition party promoting a constructive dialogue between Arab and Jewish kids.
11:20 am Shocase Flock of Dodos

Thurs 1/17
10 am Sund Guerrilla Girl an idealistic 21-year-old middle-class Colombian woman from the city who joins the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, South America's largest guerrilla movement.
12:45pm TMC Genesis
12:45pm HBO Sand and Sorrow
8 pm Disc Galapagos: Beyond Darwin (with middle school lesson plan)
local - PBS Frontline Cheney's Law (you can also watch the full program online) For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power.

Fri 1/18
8:30 am Sund White Light/Black Rain
10:30 Sund Strange Culture What does it take to fall under suspicion as a terrorist in contemporary America?
8 pm Hist Cults: Dangerous Devotion
(Although I still have not seen this, it purports to be about dangerous/destructive groups, not new religious movements) -- includes Charles Manson -J im Jones and Jonestown, Warren Jeffs and the Yearning for Zion Ranch --Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo --David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
11:30 Sund Short Hymn, Silent War (20 minutes) the lives of four Afro-Canadian women are altered following an accidental shooting.

Sat 1/19
3 pm LOGO The Believers (The Transcendence Gospel Choir)

Sun 1/20
9:45 Starz Who Killed the Electric Car
3 pm Hist Jonestown Paradise Lost technically docudrama but quite accurate. useful for teaching about how politically progressive, charismatic leaders with good social values can still end up being dangerous.

I'm Tagging myself -- Hallelujah

2008-01-11T14:33:00.000-05:00

There's an incredible version of Leonard Cohen himself singing it posted over at Monkey Mind yesterday. (thanks)

It is, in fact, the greatest song of all time. I'm just saying.

The best two uses of it have been in 3rd Watch's 9/11 episode (cried like a baby) and in When Night is Falling. Again, just saying.

One fun thing about this song is that there are actually 15 verses and you never know which ones artists will choose to include in their versions. Usually the same ones, but not necessarily.

This one is K.D. Lang live.

I'm not going to tag you, you tag yourself.

Today's Man an Extraordinary film for use in Teacher Training

2008-01-09T08:06:00.000-05:00

This film is a portrait of a young man who was diagnosed at age 21 with Asperger's Syndrome, and shows him with incredible strengths and, to him, mystifying challenges.
I have not seen a film thus far that so generously and with gracious love shows the audience both, and also shows how the people around him interact with him in ways that help him be successful.

Run to the website and see when it shows (by now, when it repeats) near you.

Other websites worth checking out about Asperger's:

At Yale Med.
At Mayo Clinic.
Online Asperger Syndrome Information and Support

By People with Asperger's Syndrome, their friends and family

Cognitive Karaoke

It feels like a watered-down version of coming out as gay at age 17 (1991) -- while at the time the prospect of coming out might have perversely suggested sordid, unwelcome and unfathomable images into the minds of friends and family, now the only response to the question "Well, what do you *do* as an Asperger person?" is "I try not to get hit / fired / dumped." Not exactly fuel for conversation one way or another.

Wrong Planet
Delightful Reflections
Proudly Autistic (products including the t-shirt "I'm autistic, what's your excuse?")
Smart Software
Natural Variation - an anti-quackery and Pro Neurodiversity Blog
the office supplies blog. (new)

and a great instruction page on how to support/teach kids who fall on the Asperger's end of the autistic spectrum. She identifies challenges kids face, and suggests appropriate and helpful things a teacher can do. ( "Understanding the Student with Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Teachers" by Karen Williams, 1995,)

DocWatch --Documentaries to supplement Religous Education Programs

2008-01-05T11:38:00.001-05:00

For teacher trainings - academic background for teachers - clips for supplementing curricula with children/youth - documentaries for Adult Education - our own knowledge -- there are lot of uses for documentaries in our work, but who has the time to look through all the listings for what is on when? Well, I'm just mad for documentaries and I scour the cable tv listings anyway, so I may as well take a few more minutes to post them here for other religious educators to reference.

I am going to post here a listing of documentaries that will be on television during the next week. My intention is to post every weekend-ish what's coming up the following week.

I will focus on overtly religious, social, and political documentaries, but sometimes science docs will leap out at me. Producing a listing of good and useful documentaries is, of course, completely subjective, but my subjectivity is grounded in an expectation of historical accuracy, in the context of Unitarian Universalist Religious Education, and progressive/radical social/politics. So, dear reader, if you aren't progressive or radical, or aren't a Unitarian Universalist, or have no interest in the light that archeology sheds on Biblical myths and stories, what are you doing on this blog?

I assume that DRE's will be able to assess for themselves how to use these docs in an age-appropriate manner and with which particular UU curricula, but I will occasionally annotate if I'm already familiar with the material. Sometimes I'll include links to further info on the docs, but if I don't google will get you there quickly.

I am of course, not suggesting that you videotape them off the television, although a case can be made for copying for educational purposes, I am simply suggesting that you preview them for future purchase.

All times are EST
Monday Jan 7

9:30 Black Starz UNSTOPPABLE: a Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis - brief article/clip
10 Sund Heaven Came Down Appalachian Rattlesnake Handlers - I know you all know not to show this as an example of typical pentecostal belief and ritual
11:15 Starz E Iraq for Sale The War Profiteers.
12noon Logo Farm Family: In search of Gay Life in Rural America
9 pm Sund The Short Life of Jose Antonio Guiterrez José Antonio Gutiérrez was born in Guatemala and lost both his parents during his country's long, bloody civil war — a war that was covertly funded by the United States government. But it was as the first American military casualty of the Iraq War in 2003 that Gutiérrez is remembered. Documentary filmmaker Heidi Specogna traces Gutiérrez's short, eventful life and reveals a troubling story of illegal immigration, foster homes, and how the American military entices Latinos to enlist by promising them a fast track to citizenship.
10:30 pm Sund I Want To Be a Pilot
12:45 Sund 5 Days The 5 day removal of Israeli settlers from sections of the Gaza Strip. a clip is avail at the website

Tuesday Jan 8
3 am Sund The Short Life of Jose Antonio Guiterrez
7:10 TMC Genesis - a really cool look at the life cycle, follow-up films to Microcosmos and Winged Migration. Link to the trailer. You might recognize the narrator as Sotigui Kouyate, who played the lead (and won lots of awards,) in the film Little Senegal.
9 p Sundance Blue Vinyl A darkly funny doc about the uses and hazards of vinyl (polyvinyl chloride can kill ya)

Wednesday Jan 9
2:45 am Sund Blue Vinyl
6-6:30 HBO Fam Educating Peter

Thurs Jan 10
5:15 am TMAX Protocols of Zion antisemitism in aftermath of 9/11) also available on demand online here.
11:05 SHO Flock of Dodos (Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design") Really funny and good.
PBS Check local listings Today's Man: Adventures of a young man with Asperger's

Friday 1/11

5 am DiscTimes - Mysteries of Asia - Lost Temples of India
6 DiscT - Surviving Sudan
12:10 SHO - After Innocence men released from prison by DNA evidence
4 Hist Cults: Dangerous Devotion (Although I have not yet seen this, it purports to be about dangerous/destructive groups, not new religious movements) -- includes Charles Manson -J im Jones and Jonestown, Warren Jeffs and the Yearning for Zion Ranch --Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo --David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
Saturday 1/12
6 a HBO Friends of God A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi. excellent. It was filmed just before Rev. Ted Haggard was outed as a user of male prostitutes and crystal meth.
7: 30 am HBO sig. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (There is a study guide for educators at the website)
10:15 Sund Guerilla Girl
12:30 HBO2 Sand and Sorrow
6:30 pm HBO Fam Educating Peter

A Unitarian Schism?

2008-01-02T07:33:00.000-05:00

I was recently reminded about the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator, having noticed what might have been the best name ever. I realized that having been abstinent from the ether/internet world for so long, I might have been reborn as a new and different person, so I went over to see what my name is currently.

But I find myself in a conundrum of great magnitude. I did not realize a schism has developed.

And this schism is clearly of greater concern to the Unitarians involved than, say, boycotting a national democratic decision making event, for someone has already decided not to remain in community and struggle over their differences, but I don't know what those differences were, or to which group I belong, and which name I should accept?

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Spikey Mace of Looking at All Sides of the Question.

Get yours.

But the First Reformed Unitarian Jihad says that my name is


My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother/Sister Gatling Gun of Courteous Freedom. What's yours?

Oh to decide my jihadian fate without the context of theological specificity or the subtext of comprehension of a denominational schism. I fear I may accidentally join the wrong group and go to hell.

Oh. Right. No Hell.

Unitarian Universalist.

Phew.

P.S. Made you look.

Post on Happy or Cranky? New Year's Eve with Kathy Griffin

2008-01-01T11:19:00.001-05:00

... on tv. I could never meet her quote to hang out with her in person...

I spent time with my beautiful godson and his family, then came home to discover a Kathy Griffin stand-up marathon on Bravo. If you're not familiar, she's the most incredible self-referential actor-mocking comic in America today. Tho' I think she's the only self-referential actor-mocking comic... Stayed up without napping till after midnight for the first New Year's eve in a decade.

I must admit that Kathy Griffin's CrankySnarkyness makes me Happy Cindy. So on which blog should I post about it? In a brief moment of cross-self-referentiality in honor of the Great Ms. Griffin, I'll post here a funny snarky clip of one of my favorite bits.

To set the context, she's referring to her ever so brief gig working for E! television interviewing stars on the red carpet outside the Golden Globe Awards in 2005. She decided that others were more suited to comment of gowns and such, so she's spend her time asking ridiculous questions and mocking the celebrities she interviews. Just for the record, she got fired for the story you'll hear if you watch the clip below

and because my mom reads this blog, I searched until I found a clip with the *%#!@s beeped out.

Does your office look like this?

2007-12-21T12:12:00.000-05:00

This video is some sort of promotional/educational "what a DRE job is, and what skills you need to have to be one."

My question is this. Honestly, do any of you DRE's, (or do the DRE's in your congregation) have desks and offices that are this neat?

It all comes together at Christmas -- Embodied Faith, COA, and OWL

2007-12-19T11:53:00.000-05:00

The story of Jesus Birth, interpreted by Christian faith, is a story about Jesus as G-d's embodiment on earth. Jesus, according to this belief, was embodied G-d at the very moment of his birth.

My personal belief is in the embodiment of the sacred in all life, and my faith journey leads me to support and promote that sacred spark of life in every way possible. When one holds a baby just born, there is no doubt that there is something sacred about it, a baby is not simply a mass of DNA and tissue and blood that reflexively cries. There is a spark of something intangible yet simultaneously compelling and vivid that produces an attitude of gratitude and awe, or perhaps, recognition.

Of course people were awed at Jesus' birth. Birthing is awe-full.

Human life may be specially situated, because we can reflect upon and share about that embodiment. We reflect on suffering, on joy, on pain, on love. To be cognitively and emotionally reflective about what happens to our bodies and minds is a gift that is, I believe, unique to humanity.

One of the deep deep roots of the theological underpinnings of my job as Director of Religious Education is reflection upon and taking action from a place that takes seriously the idea that the sacred is embodied in human form. This is a touchstone for decision making about programs, policies, interventions, curricular and extra-curricular choices, and the framework of a community within which collective and individual faith development is addressed.

Why do we run Coming of Age programs as a holistic,reflective, intentionally practice-filled faith development experience? Why do we run COA programs with elements of Relationship, Social Action, UU Identity, and Values/Belief? Because latency and teen aged young people are not empty brains to have information poured in, nor are they merely adolescent bodies needing to continually physically externalize their particular internal chaos. They are complex human creatures, at a particular point of development that places incredible intellectual, emotional, and physical demands on them that require guidance and direction. We provide that guidance and structure in these four areas, not because we have the answers, but because we know how to make the path more navigable as they grow -- and because we know that children with structure, boundaries, information and direction, and healthy adult companionship are more likely to develop into healthy adults.

As Embodied Beings from birth, we require certain kinds of guidance, structure, and support. This is why Our Whole Lives, the UUA's lifespan sexuality curriculum, is so important in our congregations. As embodied creatures all the time - we have skin and mind, gender and emotions and spark. Awareness, knowledge and respect for all of these bits of ourselves, as we age and develop, are crucial to making healthy decisions about what we do with our bodies. Personally, I wish we called OWL Our Embodied Selves. But OES is a lousy acronym.

Like COA programs, OWL is based in best practices -- what we know works. We know that simply believing that all the people in our young children's world will maintain appropriate physical and emotional boundaries with them is not sufficient to protect and prepare our children for advocating for their own bodily autonomy. We know that ignoring children's bodies until the sudden onset of puberty does not provide them with the tools to manage the emotional and physical changes of puberty, or ignoring the pulls of sexual attraction will not provide young people with the tools to make careful, healthy decisions about sexual behavior. Our children are beings with bodies with a sacred spark from birth, and from birth we must attend to the sacredness of their bodies, and prepare them to respect, develop, and care for their bodies. We must do so pro-actively, with great attention to developmental appropriateness and milestones, and to best practices in sexuality education.

I sometimes tell parents: There are two things we want our children to hear about from us first -- G-d and Sex.

And right after that, I mention that usually, these are exactly the two things that parents want the most help and support around.

Our religious community is the best suited to provide that help and support, and one way we do it is through the lifespan curricula of the Our Whole Lives program. We don't simply insert it into our "regular" curricula saying "we will return to our regularly scheduled curricula after this brief announcement about sexuality," but as an integrated part of our lifespan faith development programs. Just as the year long COA program is one of many years of RE that build together, (and, imho, is not nearly as successful when a parent comes to the UU for the first time because they want their 8th grader to "have a COA experience,") OWL is also a component of an integrated program. We integrate care for bodies into our curricula, modeling for our children that while we talk about the transcendental and magical, we also talk about the visceral and concrete, that ideas about G-d are explored right next to ideas about babies.

See? It all comes together at Christmas. Babies as the embodiment of the sacred, our sacred responsibility to provide for their care and nurture in ways that actually help them to move along in their development, and our sacred commitment to the work we do and the lives we lead as we tend our own spark.

Or, this year, in my case a little sooner than Christmas. In 44 hours when my twin nieces will be born.

The Estatic Faith of Rumi

2007-12-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

UU's love Rumi.

she says as a ginormous stereotype of UU's, thereby guaranteeing at least a couple of comments about how I don't speak for them

Krista Tippett, over at Speaking of Faith, my favorite radio program (except, I must admit, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me when Paula Poundstone is on,) has a fabulous show on his poetry.

Even if you're not interested in the 53 minute radio piece, click the link just to see the incredible photo/poem.

Speaking of Faith is always linked from my sidebar. This link goes directly to this story.

Communication is Key for Religous Professionals

2007-11-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

Another important skill for DRE's is communication. Listening for Understanding and not responding from our own assumptions or misunderstandings is often key to the lifesaving work we do.

(thanks to Berlitz for this...)

Should be in a DRE's Job Description - Herding Cats

2007-11-08T08:50:00.000-05:00

It ain't an easy job, but when you bring a herd into town and ain't lost a one of 'em, there ain't a feeling like it in the world.

Wonder if your vote really matters?

2007-11-08T07:57:00.000-05:00

In Longmeadow MA, the Prop 2 1/2 override, (Thanks Mitt Romney for making local municipalities override local property tax limits over and over again in order to fund the schools that you defunded so you could claim to have "lowered taxes" in your Presidential run) designed to level fund their schools, passed by 4 votes. Last time it failed by 10.

In Northampton MA a City Councilor retained his Ward 5 seat by 10 votes, in my opinion, a seat that really mattered were it to be lost.

And here's the kicker. I didn't have to work at all to find these examples. It didn't require hours of searching the internet for evidence of voter importance. These were garnered from my local news.

Hope you voted, and that you understood that no matter how close an election was or was not, your vote mattered.

Did you vote?

2007-11-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

I return to blogging one year later with this very important happycindy moment.

Did
You
Vote?

Local elections today in Massachusetts. Some contested, some not. All important in terms of...

Say it with me folks...

Our Civic Duty.

Make a Difference. Exercise your right and responsibility.

Even if you live in a town with one person running for re-election for Mayor, and 6 people running for 6 spots on the School Committee.

...For instance.

In Massachusetts you've got another hour and a half to get there.

Go, run.

What Television do UU bloggers watch?

2006-11-10T15:17:00.000-05:00

Inquiring Minds want to know.
The answer to these questions is potentially more telling about our Selves than our apparent politics or relative crankyness/openness/snarkiness/warm and fuzziness on our blogs.

Do you have cable?
Do you have a television in more than one room?
Do you watch television on your computer?
What are your favorite shows?
What old[er] shows do you love to watch in re-run?
What are favorite shows you hate to admit to?

These are questions I wonder about.

My own answers, (put out here rather than on Crankycindy in an effort to avoid ridicule:)

Cable plus premium channels in the winter. In the summer, only basic cable.
Four tvs. My office, two bedrooms, and the living room.
YouTube, but not tv.

Favorites:

The Closer
Desperate Housewives
House
NCIS
Grey's Anatomy
Weeds
Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert
Intervention
C-SPAN

Re-runs:

Columbo
Matlock
NYPD-Blue
Diagnosis Murder
Roseanne
West Wing

Favorites I hate to admit to:

Survivor
Trading Spouses
Biggest Loser

My version of the UUSC Mailing your Dinner - Introduction to GaYT

2006-11-02T17:15:00.000-05:00

This is such a challenge for me -- using absurdity to make a serious point. No, really! I use sarcasm and absurdity and irony, general cranky-ness and all the other "y's" online all the time, but in worship? My sensibilities are such that I want humor that is open and affirming of members, welcoming of children and avoiding even the appearance of rudeness. So I've given it a shot.

The following is my version of a widely described, (but impossible to find a script for,) skit which many congregations use to introduce the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's Guest at Your Table boxes. I haven't been able to find a version to adapt from, so I wrote one myself, lifting copiously and without attribution (other than this comment) from UUSC materials provided for such purposes.

It's about 10 minutes long. I'm posting it here so next year when all the DRE's in North America are looking on our e-lists for a script to cut and paste and copy from, there might be one to find.
We haven't done a run through yet, so I may replace this in a couple of days if it doesn't read as well as it reads, you know?

And yes, I get the fun part.

Cast

TV Broadcaster – Tom

UUSC Advertiser – Brenda

Stuffer - Cindy

Stopper – Beth

MATERIALS

TV Screen, oversized, made out of Foam Core (that can be passed back and forth between the Voice Over people.) Photos of water, and subtitles as desired

Dinner table set with candle sticks, wine/cider, flowers, GaYT box,

Dinner, (Cooked, de-fatted, frozen turkey legs; raw baby carrots; cranberries; baby red potatoes with green magic marker parsley dots; dinner rolls, bottled water)

Large Tyvek envelope

Rugs for under table to catch spill

Cindy and Beth are sitting at Thanksgiving Dinner table.

The TV is on in the background to UUSC-TV. Cindy and Beth join hands for grace.

Cindy

Do you have the meditation grace for today?

Beth picks up a meditation guide

Beth

We join together with hearts overflowing, grateful for the many treasures of our lives. Traditionally, the harvest season is about storing up, saving, and preserving. It is a quiet, graceful dance.

Emotionally and spiritually, many of us turn inward at harvest time, we turn toward reflecting, quieting, pondering.

But this season also includes quite a different type of movement. As we appreciate the fruits of our labors, our hearts fill up and overflow with gratitude, and our spirits are moved to

generosity. Even as we take in the harvest, we give out thanks. The harvest involves motions of sending out, of giving, of praise and celebration.

There is balance, in the dance of the harvest, between taking in and giving out.

Beat.

Cindy

Great. Let’s eat.

Cindy and Beth begin to put dinner on their plates.

TV Broadcaster

This Week in Review on UUSC-TV is brought to you by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, helping people of faith help the world since 1940.

UUSC advertiser

“A Thanksgiving meal, with all the trimmings: $100. Presents for family and friends: $250. UUSC holiday cards: $36. Celebrating with those I love: priceless.”

Cindy

Aww. That’s a sweet ad. I love being able to show my love to my family and friends by supporting them and giving them nice things. Pass the sweet potatoes with marshmallow stuff on top please.

Beth

MMMmmm. I love this stuff.

TV Broadcaster

Our lead story today is about the struggle to end the genocide in Darfur. The violence has continued even though our government has spoken out against it.

The food does not get to Cindy and Beth’s mouths.

Beth

I know it is so hard to believe that such terrible things happen, but they do. We've got to find a way to stop these horrible crimes.

Cindy

Yes, I agree. It’s awful how people are unfair and violent. Also Beth, to tell you the truth, it is very upsetting to me to have to hear about this at dinner. Where's the remote? Is there anything else on tv?

Pass the cranberry sauce, ok?

Beth is somewhat stunned.

Beth

Cindy, these are terrible things they’re talking about. They don’t stop just because it’s dinner time. In Darfur, the murderers are supported by Sudan's ruler. He gives them weapons for genocide. They burn houses and ruin the food and water supply.

Cindy takes it a little more seriously.

Cindy

That's terrible. But, really, I feel so helpless to do anything. It’s the other side of the world, you know? Pass the carrots.

Beth is astounded. They eat in silence.

TV Broadcaster

Water, like air, is a necessity of life. It is also, according to Fortune magazine, "One of the world's great business opportunities. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th."

In the past ten years, three global corporations have quietly taken control over the water supplies of almost 300 million people. Enormous wealth can only be gained by a few at the cost of the many. Some people are richer because other people become poorer.

In Ghana, water prices rose 95 percent after private companies took over the water company. Overnight, families that earned less than $1 a day (which is 1/2 of the population) had to pay double for a bucket of water.

Cindy

Get out! People can't afford water!? The earth makes water, and all creatures need water to live. Isn’t water a basic human right?

UUSC advertiser

This Harvest Time, let us pause to consider some difficult questions. Has our nation taken more than it deserves? Have we? Have we overfilled our pantries and overstocked our shelves? Has it been all about taking, and not about giving?

Cindy and Beth put forks down and turn and look toward the tv.

TV Broadcaster

Today’s Special Comment: People in Unitarian Universalist Congregations all around the country are pondering these questions this month and finding that the answers are all too often “yes.” They have decided that it is time to consider how they can do things differently. They are planning how to give back, thinking carefully about how to achieve the balance between taking in and giving out that makes the dance of a true harvest beautiful, joyful; raining down blessings everywhere.

Cindy is a little verklempt.

Cindy

That’s beautiful. I feel so convicted. I have to do something. But what can I do? Nothing, there’s really nothing I can do.

I I I’ve got so much. Beth, it’s not fair. I’m so blessed.

Beat

Awareness dawns.

Cindy

Oh my goodness. I AM so blessed. I’m one of the rich people aren’t I? Oh. I’ve got to help. Oh ! Oh!

OH! I know what to do!

Cindy jumps up and starts to put food into an envelope.

Beth

What are you doing?

Cindy

I’m sending food to people who don’t have enough. Give me that bottle of water.

Cindy continues to put food into the envelope.

Beth

Stop it, that’s not the way to help people.

Cindy continues

Cindy

But I’ve got to do something. They’re right. I am not a powerless person, I am a powerful person. I have money and education and I have to use my power for good.

Cindy reaches for a clear bowl of cranberry sauce.

Beth stands up and puts her hands out like a traffic cop.

Beth

Stop! Put. The Cranberry Sauce. Down .

Cindy puts it down slowly.

Beth

You’re right, you are a powerful person, and when you get together with other powerful people you can make the world a better place.

Picks up the GaYT box and wave it around while talking.

Beth

You have strong commitments and ideals of service, but there is a better way to approach those ideals than just making up a solution all by yourself.

You know, one of my favorite hymns we sing at the Unitarian Society says that we can join together and build a land where we bind up the broken and set captives free. We can build up devastated cities, and dissolve all crying and mourning. When we extend our hearts out toward the world, we don’t just have a feeling of love and compassion, but we have the action of combining with others to do what works to help people.

Did you see this box on the table? This is one way we’re helping these people.

This box, with the organizations and systems it represents, helps us expand our circle to a wider sweep of humanity.

Cindy puts the envelope down.

Cindy

That’s what I want to do, to share and help people in a way that is meaningful and realistic.

Beth

There are things we can do that we know will help people, organizations that have been doing this work for years. We are more effective when we join together. The UUSC coordinates that effort on our behalf.

UUSC advertiser

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee invites us to welcome many strangers to be guests at our tables. We welcome the underpaid workers of our country and of our world, the thirsty peoples of developing nations and our own communities. We welcome those whose lives have been devastated by war, famine, and natural disaster. We support programs that provide people with both immediate aid and long term support.

Beth

This box is on your table as a reminder of all of these strangers you are welcoming. People of all ages in your household can place coins in it daily over the next few weeks. You may consider eating more simply, and sticking the money you save on groceries into the box.

Cindy gestures to the envelope.

Cindy

So I guess now this should probably be for soup.

Beth

Yes, and this box should be for reminding you that you join with everyone else here to help the people of the world.

Beth puts coins in the box. Cindy does so as well.

The End

A Must See for all Religous Professionals

2006-11-01T12:09:00.000-05:00

A wonderful, and amusing, teaching tool for flu safety. I'm thinking of showing it to the Board of Trustees. Perhaps we could add this to the Safe Congregations Materials! (that was only sort-of a joke)

Cough Safe Video : Why Don't We Just Do It Into Our Sleeves.
Quicktime version direct link.

How to Save the Planet

2006-10-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

"People of Earth, I've been sent by the United Universe Alliance. Here's the deal, you guys are botching things up."

This is great fun. An alien sock puppet instructs us on the principles of the universe such as respecting the worth and dignity of all sentient beings.
I'd use it for our Children's Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks, except the alien uses the word "sucks" in the first paragraph.

It's about 5 minutes long, and makes me very happy. Let it make you happy too.

What I'm doing on my day off

2006-10-07T11:14:00.002-05:00

First day off in 14. Last night in the middle of the night Beloved came upstairs and told me that Eric (her grown son) came home and is ensconced in the living room. Thus far today I have already shopped, washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, taken out the recycling, made kickass fried potatoes, and blogged. Next, I'm doing laundry, cleaning the porch and reading three, count them, three (3) newspapers.

Then, how great is this, Beloved's daughter is coming and we'll take them out for her Birthday Chinese dinner, and then, she's leaving our grandchildren here with us! Then I'm playing "Yes honey," and "Tell me about that picture" and "Really? You can do that? Show me" for several hours, along with copious amounts of street bowling, badminton, and puppet theatre.

I'm confident that if I'm not completely rested up when I go back to work tomorrow, I will certainly be happy. :-D

What then, is our religious purpose?

2006-09-25T17:31:00.000-05:00

(tagteam blogging with crankycindy)
I'm a progressive. A radical even. About my country, and my religion.

There's been a lot of chatter this last week in the UU blogosphere about religion in politics, or more accurately, UUs in politics. I've watched it with interest, because I cannot imagine walking a religious journey that did not involve a good deal of making the world a better place. In my world view, that involves not just hand-outs, but transformative social justice. In our culture, anything transformative must involve politics.

If our religious purpose, as a denomination whose people don't particularly believe in heaven or hell, is not to make our world where we live today a better place, then what is our religious purpose?

In the olden days when I was a fundamentalist, I might have turned to scripture, prayed a moment, and then plunked my finger down, demanding that G-d show me some clear direction by good old fashioned proof texting.

Maybe I'd drop an index finger on Paul's exortation that Christians were to 'be all things to all people.' (google that phrase for a giggle.)

1 Corinthians 9:19 For since I am free from all I can make myself a slave to all, in order to gain even more people. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew to gain the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) to gain those under the law. 21 To those free from the law I became like one free from the law (though I am not free from God’s law but under the law of Christ) to gain those free from the law. 22 To the weak I became weak in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some.

This is hooey, or hypocricy, or both. It provides no meaningful direction for UUs. Putting aside the reality that most UUs aren't Christians, even if we were, there is no one church that can be all things to all people. To create an institution of the lowest common denominator, or to bond by pretense with the miserable, the rich, and the powerful in order to show them some kind of "way," some kind of our religion is better than theirs and if we're nice enough, vanilla enough, we will grow. Pure hooey. Paul was wrong.

This would be the Unitarian Universalism that never pissed anyone off. This then would lead us to be a religous tradition that refused to afflict the comfortable, one where a few of us gathered to only talk to those of ourselves we already agreed with. This would be the religious tradition where we'd skip a Sunday if we knew we didn't like the guest speaker, or would never bring a social justice statement to the floor of GA for fear of not being able to be all things to all people in the room.

I'm a religious educator in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. The very definition of my job is that I work to negotiate the complexities of administering an educational program that promotes a living tradition that listens to wisdom from a multiplicity of sources. My job is to help parents who don't find comfort and meaning in a particular religious tradition nonetheless teach it accurately and fairly to our children. My job is to help kids in understanding the complexity of our religious and spiritual world. To support them as they gain a foothold in our own community with eyes that cast outward toward the delicious diversity of the beautiful human and natural world around them, and with hands that pick up the hard work of protecting and even increasing that beauty. I am proud of the work we do - my congregation and I - in raising up young men and women who believe in the power of their own labor, their own ability to change the world.

My job, were we to be vanilla UU-lite, would be, yawn, to set up a series of Christianity classes for the Christians, humanist lectures for the humanists, a Habitat for Humanity Tree House that the social justice-y people could work on, and a couple of world religions classes for those who wanted to embrace some digestible western form of Buddhism. It'd be easy. We could still even have 7 of something.
7 classes, 7 rooms, 7 teachers who already knew what they thought and who were comfortable teaching it. And I'd get paid 7 times what my labor would be worth because it'd be such a cake job.

Seriously, if we aren't about social justice -- about systemic, transformative social justice -- then what is our religious purpose?

If I were turning to some of that wisdom from world religions, I'd be likely to turn to the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. They were all about justice in the face of opposition and/or oppression. Granted, theirs was generally a theocratic government that the prophets were booming on about. Yet and still, I find the simplicity of the approach comforting.

Micah, in Chap. 6 gives us some clear direction in this statement that follows a deliciously sarcastic opening.

"What does the Lord require of you, Israel? What are you supposed to do to live faithfully with your God? Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God."

There's my message from G-d. Simple. To the point. Based in reality, in the present, and in this world.

We Unitarian Universalists are a democratic denomination. We vote on things. We encourage one another and our leadership to take action based on our democratic decisions.

President Sinkford, and the incredibly hard working people in our Boston and DC offices are doing our work. They are doing the work of justice, and they are doing it with the kind of humility that doesn't lead them to pick a social action project according to if we can point to a House floor vote that was changed because of it, but because this action is the right thing to do.
How lousy would those jobs be, if, as has been argued recently, they can't point to clear successes.

They do what they do because statements of conscience are passed, programs supported by our membership. These are the issues we brought to GA, the issues we passed. They do our work.

And finally, the man's name is President Sinkford. Like him or not, it's disrespectful to toss his last name around the blogosphere like it's a rolled up sock in a group introductory name game.

I guess we all have some traditionalist in us.

I'm Kyle. South Park 2 Scientology 0

2006-09-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

There's a silly personality quiz over at comedycentral.com. I was hoping it was a play on the scientology personality quiz, but alas, it just decided that I am Kyle.

In honor of last night's Comedy Central replay of the "Trapped In the Closet" episode of South Park, something I never thought would happen, I am shamelessly plugging a television show I alternately find appalling and hysterically funny. This episode is consistent with that assessment . And, as I've said before, incredibly accurate as to the Scientology bits. I use it for the 7th graders for the Neighboring Faiths series on Fundamentalisms and Totalistic groups. (but I cut out the opening "be a jew" comment, the closet sequences and just show the Scientology bits.) If you still haven't watched it, you can see the episode here. If that doesn't work, try links from this page.

Two Fathers - a kids song video from the Netherlands

2006-09-22T07:52:00.000-05:00

Move over Barney, gay families have hit Main Street in the Netherlands.

See it atYouTube. Kinderen voor Kinderen song - Two Fathers.

Tip o' the hat to Steve Caldwell for this one.
(and to Heike Meya for the nationality correction, which led me to use my google like a good researcher, and find the Kinderen voor Kinderen web site.)

Our children are amazing -- Coming of Age 2006

2006-06-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

Balanced, not on the head, but on the point of the pin that is the dangerously beautiful tightrope walk between childhood and youth, they take to the pulpit and make us remember why we do this work.

In my congregation, the Coming of Age 8th graders take responsibility to plan and implement the entire COA service. Music, readings, chalice lightings, meditation -- and they all write and read credos. They dress up (for them.) There's a little pomp and ritual as we welcome them from childhood into the world of youth.

They don't come from nowhere, but from hundreds and thousands of hours of community and content and collective responsibility. This responsibility is shown in myriad of ways -- from Sunday morning RE classes to potlucks and trivia contests and Habitat for Humanity Saturdays and October Halloween Haunted Houses (if your congregation doesn't take advantage of this group building leadership development opportunity, ask me how), to Middle School Rallies to making beautiful gift baskets for our winter shut-ins. All of these are oportunities within our community to model a meaningful religious life and spiritual practise, and lead our young people in exploring their community one with another, their faith community, and their larger world. All of these things are part of what our community contributes to the beauty that we see in these young people on that special day each June.

We initiate them into a world where risk and responsibility dance in close proximity; a world where we commit ourselves to stand near as a community to catch them if they need, but no longer require certain acts or participation as when they were young children. We step back and provide structured autonomy within which they can continue to explore and grow.

Every June I am reminded why I love my job.

Amy Goodman Colored HER Hair!

2006-06-13T11:20:00.000-05:00

I take credit.

Amy Goodman made me color my hair

2006-05-26T10:25:00.000-05:00

Democracy Now!s Amy has fine hair for radio, not so much for TV... even public access. I've eschewed coloring my own for a few years, although my partner kept after me.

"No," I said, "I like the salt and pepper."

Turns out Salt and Pepper is a different color from grey and slate and brown. And it took Amy Goodman (and this very disquieting imaginary PeaceBANG voice in my head) to make me see that natural isn't always a good idea.

So thanks Amy, and PeaceBANG, for ruining my ability to have cheap haircuts every 10 weeks.

"Sister Womyn Sister" & "You Look Veryveryprettytoday"

2006-05-24T07:52:00.000-05:00

Recognize these lines? THE KATHY AND MO SHOW: Parallel Lives is being run on HBO in Demand until June 18th. Whether you lived through the 80's as an adult, or have always wondered what your elders like PeaceBANG are making fun of, this show is the most brilliant piece of off-off theatre comedy that existed that decade.

(PB: sorry I called you an elder; really, we're middlers, but that didn't flow right in the sentence)

Although this show was filmed by HBO in '91, I first saw it in a gay bar in Philadelphia in '85 or '86, which began my own personal Rocky Horror-esque stalking of the show wherever and whenever they took it. I still have my Giant Kathy and Mo button.

Some of my favorite bits didn't make it from the full length stage to the one hour tv format (most of the material about religion and sex and abortion and the deletion of these bits made me cranky.) That whined, everyone should run out and pay for HBO for a month just so that you can watch this incredible piece of cultural commentary. It won an OBIE and 2 Cable Ace awards, and I can nearly guarantee that if you lived through the 80's you'll wet yourself laughing. If you're younger and don't remember the womyn's or LG culture from the time it'll be an interesting experiment in cultural observation. You can let me know if it's funny to you.

Also, Harold and the Purple Crayon is playing if that tips you over the top.

HappyCindy needs a PDA

2006-05-23T10:02:00.000-05:00

CrankyCindy has sniffed at PDA's and silently scoffed at those who use them, clinging desperately to the struggle to structure a life as she always did, out of her head and a paper calendar when it wasn't lost. Unfortunately, CrankyCindy isn't all that well organized, and HappyCindy has to clean up after her all too often. I had to add an online calendar, and now I've got to start writing to-do lists.

Like other things I've scoffed at over the years (chemical/perfume sensitivity, coloring my hair) I've had to humble myself and acknowledge that I was wrong.

My memory no longer carries everything around in it like it used to, and I need a PDA.

Any recommendations from those of you who use one (and who just found out that crankycindy scoffed at you for knowing better than I what the future would hold and how to manage it?)

Joke of the Day - On Fire!

2006-05-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

From beliefnet, slightly tweaked.

During a recent ecumenical gathering, the church administrator rushed in shouting, "The building is on fire!"

The Methodists gathered in the corner and prayed.

The Baptists cried, "Where is the water?"

The Quakers quietly praised God for the blessings that fire brings.

The Lutherans posted a notice on the door declaring the fire was evil.

The Roman Catholics passed the plate to cover the damage.

The Jews posted symbols on the door hoping the fire would pass.

The Congregationalists shouted, "Every man for himself!"

The Fundamentalists proclaimed, "It's the vengeance of God!"

The Episcopalians formed an orderly procession and marched out.

The Christian Scientists concluded that there was no fire.

The Pagans danced in honor of the spontaneous appearance of one of the four elements.

The Unitarians held a discussion of the usefulness of fire as a symbol of cleansing and whether or not one needed to believe in fire in order to respect it.

The Presbyterians appointed a chairperson who was to appoint a committee to look into the matter and submit a written report.

The church administrator grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

One of these is not like the other

2006-03-29T08:34:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the email. Seems that my humor has confused and confounded. Not the last time, I'm sure. One of the '10 things I believe' posted below is something I don't really believe. I wrote it as a total funny, the rest are half funnies. It's been a long winter here in my world, and I sometimes reach.

like this, my current favorite joke:

What does a 500 pound mouse say?

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

See, reaching. Anyway those of you who know me and those of you who don't -- which ones' the totally not true one? Taking bets now.

10 things I believe without much evidence

2006-03-28T15:38:00.000-05:00

Tip o' the hat to This Girl Remembers for tagging us all here.
For me, this category of "things I believe" is much ado about contradictions.

1. There's no such thing as ghosts. Except for that one I saw that one time.
2. There's no such thing as TV preacher style Faith Healing, but in little ways, like how I can usually make people's hiccups stop, (which, really at this exact moment might be more about what you have to believe without much evidence) we can intervene in the solid world around us.
3. The world is connected and interconnected in a bzillion ways, and it is when sitting on a large rock by the ocean or holding a baby that it's easiest to believe.
4. All those people who say that in their previous lifetime they were the Queen of Sheba, or an "Indian Princess"-- they weren't.
5. In another dimension, me, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, and Rosie O'Donnell are best friends.
6. When I was a kid I thought I saw a UFO, but it was only deer poachers.
7. There is hope for salvation for George W. but it would cost him more than he's willing to spend.
8. I can't sell my books at a tag/garage sale, because all my intelligence and wit are stored in them and I must have them near me at all times or the stuff will leak out of my brain.
9. I regularly believe that this time I can shovel/mow the lawn without hurting my back because I'll be extra careful.
10. The correct way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is to put peanut butter on a piece of (gluten-free) bread, then, as you eat it from a corner, put dabs of jelly on one bite at a time with the knife going in and out of the jar of jam so no one else wants to eat out of it.

Walk Together, Don't You Get Weary: Notes on Community

2006-03-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

Sermon delivered Mar 5 '06 at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence.

The title of this talk this morning is taken from an old slave spiritual. “Walk Together Children, don’t you grow weary.”

“Don’t you grow weary.” It seems like such a ridiculous thing to say. I’m sure some of the first slaves who sang this song thought so; perhaps Civil Rights Marchers who sang it a hundred years later wondered at the truth of the message.

And we, we are living in our own time when we cannot help but be uneasy and weary, bone tired and teeth grindingly frustrated. Our national politics are governed by people who hide information, lie, cheat, and give their friends big contracts. Our state is governed by a carpetbagger who is quiet about his grandfather’s two wives, and now proudly opposes monogamous gay marriage. We are members of a democracy whose people choose, again and again, not to vote; who abdicate our choices when we have them. Is it any wonder that we grow weary?

But this is not a sermon about the danger our national democracy is in. It’s a sermon about community – in particular, this community of faith, this richly and intentionally religious community of people who rely on one another for support and energy, for comfort and impetus. Where other people may choose to leave the search for Deep Questions for another day, not engage in an active search at all, or release their own authority over their own answers to another, we choose to attend to the Big Questions together.

We are faith-ful people, by which I mean we have faith in one another – we are oriented toward trust and commitment – toward the active and intentional cherishing of one another, our children, and our world. We risk together and take “healthy urgent action that transform[s] fear into beauty.” We are democratic and committed, in terms of our approach to those Big Questions, as well as in terms of the mundane internal decisions of how to be together, not mundane as humdrum or boring – they matter deeply - but mundane in terms of how much work and information and dialogue go into each commonplace decision we make. In a Society of 450 members and 180 young people, all decisions involve people and committees and policies all sewn together by the faithful-ness of how we live our communal lives.

Deborah Levering, RE Program Consultant for our Clara Barton District, told me last week that professional staff, lay leadership and membership of all of our congregations are exhausted. I’m fairly certain she wasn’t just trying to make me feel better; she said that as a combination of the state of the world, the nation, and the complex nature of our families’ personal and social lives, our congregations are full of exhausted, bone weary people.

Yet, weary as we may be, we choose to come to this place again and again, to walk into this building alone and walk out together. We are a community of people who love to eat and laugh and sing, a liberal religious community that is committed to free faith, religious pluralism, and justice. And we are beautiful.

We are beautiful together because of our differences of belief. We are life-long Unitarian Universalists. We are muscular mathematicians with a particularly scientific bent; we are proud tree-hugging Wiccans and Pagans. We are Jews and liberal Christians and Woman Christ feminists. We are agnostics who claim an ethical humanist belief system based on justice-making; we are people who find our personal belief systems affirmed in the practice of Buddhism or prayer or yoga, and more.

Although we sometimes pat ourselves on the back for walking together with such diversity, we’re not the first religious group to choose to do so.

The Jewish peoples have lived for over 3000 years with Hebrew Scriptures that posit not only different opinions on how to act or what to believe, but with completely different images of the divine. Unlike children raised with a UU religious education, I believed until I got to Seminary that that the 5 books of Moses were written by Moses, but they weren’t. They were put together by redactors, editors who selected stories and traditions according to their own beliefs. The editor scholars refer to as the Elohist source collected stories that told of a mean, grumpy and cranky Elohim G-d who bursts authoritatively from burning bushes and powerfully writes commands on stone tablets. The Yahwist source provides us with the image of the bubbly playful Yahweh G-d who told Abraham his 95 year old wife would have a baby, and whose god-feelings were hurt when she laughed at the idea.

It was when confronted with the academic and scholarly study of Hebrew and Christian scripture, with a liberationist and feminist perspective that I came to realize that I was theologically, but not necessarily institutionally, Unitarian Universalist. That realization had to do with my beliefs – my intellectual affirmation of the truth of something. As I studied and dialogued with my peers and professors – in class, in chapel, in the coffee shop, in the pub - I was able to claim new and dramatically different beliefs about the world. I left Seminary with a new belief system, but no community within which to continue my journey.

I came ridiculously late to the conscious realization that religious community is not simply about belief – about that intellectual affirmation of something – but also about faith – that orientation toward commitment and trust of one another. Religious life is about content and beliefs, community and faith. I’d done all my belief-crafting in the intentional and intense and sometimes intoxicating community that is Graduate School, and yet for many years after I believed my academic work to have been a purely intellectual exercise.

I honestly thought that I’d come to my new beliefs as an interaction between myself, a few hundred texts, a computer, a great library, and some incredible lectures. The community, I thought, was extra.

It would be several more years before I could, with Rev. Kate Tucker, say, "Our individual experiences [and beliefs], powerful as they are, need a language to live in. Our individual experiences, intense as they are, can still seem random, isolating, disconnected from the web of life. This is what religious community is for: to give us a language. To give us a way to see our experience within a larger pattern of meaning and beauty."

There is a story about an old woman who, upon leaving a subway car, realized she only had one glove. She turned back and saw its mate on the seat across the way. As she raced to retrieve it, the subway car doors began to close with the relentless intentionality of large machinery,

and in an instant,

she chose to throw the glove she had into the car.

This story struck me because as I heard it for the first time it didn’t even occur to me that there was an option other than folding her fist around the glove that she had and holding on to her anger and frustration at having lost the other. When I heard this story, my belief system immediately affirmed that she took right action. But my own internal dialogue had not been sufficient to lead me to think of that action on my own. I had to hear the whole story all the way through to the end. I had to spend time in a place where people told stories, I had to listen, and tell my own.

I rather doubt that this woman was born with this kind of generosity, or that her belief system alone informed her actions.

I think this action came out of the choices she made throughout her whole life. The people who inhabited her childhood, the people she surrounded herself with as an adult, the religious community she gathered to herself and cherished - all these together went into her decision to throw the glove into the car to meet its mate. All of these people, their beliefs and care and actions, influenced her as much as any textbook, intellectual exercise or meditation upon letting go she'd occupied her mind with.

I think she must have surrounded herself with people who challenged her to be her best self; people who were imperfect, people who were, perhaps, exhausted.

It is in community that each day, through our interactions one with another, that we make the small choices; how and when to speak, listen, ask or share; as we attend to the news and the details of our lives together, as we show up; these small choices are the mortar of community.

Our Principles, these affirmations of our common values, don’t give us points of agreement of belief, but guarantee that we will disagree on that plane. We don’t have even the expectation of control over what others believe or think. We do have control over each small choice we make about how to act along the way. This is what the principles give us – a framework within which to judge, not others, but our own participation in the sacred work of community and justice-making.

Note to people reading this and not in the Great Hall: the children decorated 7 12x12x12 boxes with representations of the 7 UU Principles. These boxes were placed on either side of the pulpit, in the fashion of a bridge 1 thru 7, with 1 and 7 as foundations. They are colored with the ROYGBIV coloring which can be sampled here.

Unitarians are first-rate when it comes to pursuing a free and responsible search of truth and meaning – the stuff of beliefs. But that pursuit is our fourth principle, (here the green box,) and it rests completely on the other six and without them, it would topple.

Our foundational principles are the 1st and 7th, and they form the cornerstones of these bridges our children have made.

We often shorthand our first principle for our children as “Each person is Important.” Actually, the principle reads that we “covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

Affirming and promoting someone’s dignity is much more difficult than simply respecting their difference of opinion, belief, or personal style. It’s more than speaking respectfully, it’s listening closely for understanding.

We make conscious choices about interacting with people with whom we disagree. When we affirm and promote someone’s dignity, we are vigilant about attending to their humanity. We here know that compassion and commitment always precedes correction. Gandhi said that behavior that berates or humiliates one’s opponent, in their presence or out of it, is violence. One knows non-violent conflict resolution – the only way to disagree while promoting someone’s dignity - because it leaves no taste of bitterness in the mouths of those involved. When we respect and promote the humanity of those with whom we disagree, we find it more and more difficult to resent them for not being, or believing, just like us.

In order to promote the worth and dignity of others, we assume good will. We do not question the sincerity or sanity of those with whom we disagree, but we cling as mightily as necessary to a faith in the goodness of another person’s intention while holding one another accountable for the consequences of our beliefs and actions.

And finally, we promote the worth and dignity of others and are open to their influence and willing to change. That is a hallmark of healthy, mature community: that members are open to true dialogue, to being influenced, and to the possibility that they may be changed because of the interaction.

Robert Karnan wrote, “Our task as a religious society… is to love one another in just relationship so that we make [the sacred] a reality and not a desperate dream or a painful despair. The love of God that is in the yearning of our hearts is the love we give away and the courage we hold fiercely within. It is in our ability to be a human community of peace and to do what is good and right. The quality of the love and goodness we expose from our sometimes reluctant hearts will change the world.”

We come together in this place on this day and others like it - to do the work of the Society, to worship, to be together - not simply to affirm our individual right to believe whatever we want, but because we recognize that the beauty of our community is shared values, principles, and action. Because we know that in walking together our burden is shared and our load lifted.

There is no magic to keep us from growing weary; we can count on weariness, because community is hard work. But we can also count on hope and inspiration, for community is that as well. In community we challenge and change each other and ourselves to more deeply understand our faith, until it informs even our smallest actions; as small as tossing a glove aside for the benefit of someone we will never meet. This faith calls us to join hands, even when our beliefs diverge dramatically. It is our best path, and as marvelous, weary, gloriously imperfect people, we choose to walk it together.

END

Oh walk together, children, don't you get weary,
Oh talk together, children, don't you get weary,
Oh sing together, children, don't you get weary,
There's a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land.

[1] Victoria Safford, “All that’s Past is Prologue” UUA General Assembly, 2001. available online at http://www.uua.org/ga/ga01/4032.html
[2] Karnan, Robert W. “Inclusive Evangelism,” in Salted With Fire, Unitarian Universalist Strategies for Growth, p. 145

I so rarely preach, I'd love feedback

2006-03-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

This is tomorrow's sermon. Feel free to comment today and help me tweak it. I appreciate the insights of UU bloggers (and others of my friends). You all are smart people whose opinions I respect. Also, how on earth do some of you blog and write sermons in the same week!?!

***
REMOVED the draft. Posted the final version above. Thanks for feedback, posted here as a comment, as well as private notes.

Bishop Gene Robinson goes into treatment

2006-02-15T12:07:00.000-05:00

for alcoholism. I'm glad for him and his family that he's been willing to take this step toward health.
Crankycindy is really cranky about the media coverage though.

Color Scheme change. No longer am I ruled by Blogger and Firefox orange and blue,

2006-02-14T10:54:00.000-05:00

The orange moments are now more random rather than being central to the design. I'm going with caribbean floating as a general feel. At some point I'll figure out how to add a pic to the header, but for now, I'm just coloring myself Barbara, I mean blue.
Thanks to the great website house of 3D.com, I was able to tweak the hexidecimal colors to my hearts content.

There are a couple of random glitches in color application I can't track down, but I figure they'll eventually roll down to my archives and live blindly in the dark for years.

Which got more hits?

2006-02-13T10:37:00.000-05:00

UU web awards -- The definitive bound anthology or Tom Cruise, Fred Phelps and Me? Betting is closed.

My post suggesting that there was a bound anthology of all nominees received 65% more hits during the voting period than the post which was nominated, and about 20% more hits than TC,FP and Me received the whole time it was posted.

So here I am on my first day off in 2 weeks. Trying to catch up. This is a deep ponder for me. Is it all about the titles/headlines?

I'm pleased with the posts/blogs which won the blog awards, and I love the fact that there were close races for the top two or three in each category, it speaks to our diversity and quality in the same moment.

As to my sermon which was nominated, it was too long for a good blog post, and my speaking voice isn't the greatest writing voice, and it wasn't right for the blog awards. Why didn't it get many votes (thanks to you five), is not my question.

My question is 'why didn't it get read?'
I'm really pondering 'What gets people to click through to a post?'

Is it all about the title? Is it all about the "Hey I want that but I don't want that"?

That is was too long for a strong blog entry shouldn't have prevented people from clicking through to it, they wouldn't know, would they? That it was written in my speaking voice also would not have been known without clicking through (except, like this post, everything is written in my speaking voice, so that maybe could have been known.)

OR Do I just suck?

OR Am I completely wrong, and somehow some of your fancy computers fool my stat counter into not seeing you?

I'd love some real feedback on this one.

But mom, maybe not from you. I already know I'm the green apple of your glass eye. :-)

UU web awards -- The definitive bound anthology

2006-02-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

I'm printing out what could be the First Annual Best of the UU Blogs Anthology. I'm making myself a binder for weekend reading because there are too many individual posts up against one another to sit through at my desk.

The UU Blog Awards are here,
and thanks to the three people who voted for my Fred Phelps, Tom Cruise and Me sermon.

Mom, dad? Was that you?

How much longer do I have to get through these and vote?

Flipping The Script: White Privilege and Community Building

2006-01-26T12:19:00.000-05:00

Some of us were born on third base and thought we'd hit a triple. How do we help those less privileged without replicating the structures that created the inequity inthe first place?

Flipping the Script, (pdf) is a book designed for people who work in communities to identify and address issues of white privilege, oppression, racism and power as they play out in their work. It is for community builders, grant makers, technical assistance providers and others who are trying to develop more equitable and thoughtful partnerships with community residents and organizations.

Flipping the Script is written by Maggie Potapchuk of MP Associates, Sally Leiderman of the Center for Assessment and Policy Development, together with Donna Bivens of Women's Theological Center and Barbara Major of St. Thomas Health Clinic. (from the Women's Theological Center press release)

I haven't read it yet, so feel free to comment/discuss here to get me off my butt.

Thanks to Karen J. for letting me know about this.

I am a Total Geek! (NOT!)

2006-01-07T09:39:00.000-05:00

the Geek Test gives me 27.2% geekiness. The Answer is 42... I was on my high school's Dollars for Scholars TV Trivia team... 7 of 9 is not really about percentages but hotness, and Junkyard Wars is awesome for imagining post-apocalyptic survival. Imagine what a geek I'd be if I understood how the inside of a computer works, or knew any computer languages, or how to program, or, really, anything more than how to make these programs go!

Hey HappyCindy's brother -- take this test and let me know how you fare. You understand all the computer stuff which will give you great point scores (although perhaps your successful social skills and incredible good looks will detract from your total score) . Don't you have to be an Extreme Geek or above to be making money from your geekiness?

This is their scale.

+ Geekish Tendencies................................≥09%
++ Geek.............................................≥15%
+++ Total Geek......................................≥25%
++++ Major Geek.....................................≥35%
+++++ Super Geek....................................≥45%
++++++ Extreme Geek.................................≥55%
+++++++ Geek God....................................≥65%
+++++++! Dysfunctional Geek.........................≥75%

THE GEEK TEST UPDATE

My mom clicked on the link I've removed above, and her internet security suite identified an "intrusion attempt" from that website. Mine didn't though, and it's the same companies program, and up to date, and I'm not enough of a geek to understand why hers did and mine did not, so I have removed the link.

If you're geeky enough to understand such things, or if you're just foolhardy, the address is http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html. but i'm not embedding the link b/c I don't want to be responsible for anyone else clicking through w/o thinking about it.

HappyCindy's brother may understand and explain????? Or Michelle?

Rachel Maddow is now on Air America Radio and KARMA

2006-01-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

Monday - Friday from 7-9 am. Listen as she pokes a sharp stick at the right wing scheme machine. You can go to Rachel's show's website here.

She picks up news "they" don't want us to hear -- she finds when the government takes out the trash and release inconvenient news to be hidden by bigger or more dramatic stories.

You can listen online anytime you want if you have dsl or cable modem!!! Go the website to Stream Today's Show . The shows go online a few hours after broadcast.

Sadly, Monday, her first day on the air in this new, extended drive time slot, she bragged about her vacation trip to Mexico, where she ate and drank whatever she wanted and didn't get sick. Lettuce, water, everything.

So yesterday's show was hosted by Mark Riley who stayed on for her two hour time slot while she and the porcelain goddess bonded.

I mention this now because since she's better, it really is kind of funny.

I myself invited karma like that many years ago when I made fun of women who had chemical sensitivities to perfume. At the time I was a smoker, (and I was a polite smoker, always went outdoors, blew my exhaust away from people and everything) but I couldn't conceptualize how anyone could be allergic to perfume and I must admit I was, behind their backs, vicious in that 80's kind of catty gay bar way.

Of course, later in life, having a crappy immune system due to undiagnosed celiac disease and 10 years of smoking, I too became "allergic" to perfume and other chemically laden, petroleum-based products. I've become one of those chemically sensitive people, holding my breath when I pass certain elderly ladies in church, never going into restaurants that have smoking, having two reasons for not shopping at Walmart (1 economic and 1 the plastic smell makes me stoned and stupid) and, alas, eating organic food.

So it was funny when she bragged about not getting sick and then got sick. I was about her age when I bragged like that.

Am I a bad person for thinking it's funny?

my top ten happy posts

2005-12-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

I'll bite.

Like boy in the bands and chutney, I'll list my heavy[ier] hitters, but I'm also going to add my top ten bombs -- those titles that didn't attract much attention at all. I'm not at all clear about what makes the difference in terms of which titles people click through to. Ideas?

Top Ten Most Read Posts

Fred Phelps, Tom Cruise, and Me.
24 hours for Gwen and 24 hours for Gwen Schedule
No silly, that isn't a duck, it's a platypus
Water Water Everywhere, and What do DRE's do anyway?
Submi**ive Wive*
On Child Safety in Congregations
Vroomfondel, Thich Nhat Hanh, and RE
The flow of the RE Year
Southpark does Scientology
the Problem with Seventh Heaven

Top Ten Bombs

Great Online flash Visual for 7th principle
Don't want to learn about Ex-gays by going to their conference?
Fred Phelps, Tom Cruise, and me Readings
home again home again
Dear Neighbors happy halloween, don't let me in your house
Why you should participate in your Children's R.E.
My New Scanner
Church Windows
Speaking of Faith, Approaching Prayer
Random Music Day

"I'm not a freak, I'm a prototype"

2005-12-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Season 1 of Seaquest DSV is being released on DVD today, but for cheapos like me, the whole series is on the SciFi channel this week.

After Robert Downey Jr, there are no actors I love watching more than the DeLuise brothers. They're dreamy.

Deep meaningful moment from the series:
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."

Mr. Beezely?

2005-12-25T15:35:00.000-05:00

I've never been one for taking on the language trappings of heterosexual marriage. I'm not Mrs. Beezely, nor Rebecca's wife. We are partners, just like before we became legally wed last August.

That said, I was at the supermarket at 7 am Christmas Eve day, waiting for the doors to open, list in hand when I noticed that I was standing there with 11 men, also with lists in hand.

I suddenly realized, "Holy Pete! I'm the husband!!!"

Merry Christmas.