OK, here, based on some genuine efforts at observation, is my understanding of the difference between liberals and conservatives. It is probably not actually news to you, but I, for one, haven’t thought about it quite this way before. Read more →
The natural response to seeing video or photos of an angry mob carrying torches and shouting racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay slogans is a sense of revulsion, and perhaps even panic. These are people who are the philosophical descendants of the folks who killed six million “unacceptable” people. And most of us know that we and/or people we love are amongst the unacceptable. We feel threatened, because we are threatened.
And when we feel threatened, our natural response is fight or flight. Our guts tell us to run away or to engage in combat. That’s our native, instinctual response. But you know who else is operating out of an instinctual response? These white men who feel a loss of power and privilege in our increasingly diverse society and fight back with a testosterone-filled fury against the perceived threats to their “right” to power and privilege. They are, of course, horrifically wrong, but they are going with their guts.
We need to respond, but we need to respond with the full weight of our minds and hearts and spirits as well as our guts. Read more →
This morning the nation must look squarely at images of people marching through Virginia with hateful slogans, confederate flags, and Nazi swastikas, who proudly proclaim that White Lives Matter and scream hateful epithets about Jews and gays and immigrants, who believe that slavery reflected a natural order. Some will say, in coffee hours in Unitarian Universalist congregations, that THOSE people are the white supremacists and people like Unitarian Universalists should not call ourselves that because it is confusing, people might think we are like them. I dearly hope those words will not be spoken from our pulpits. Read more →
I was sitting with two beloved twenty year olds at dinner recently, catching up with one another’s lives. Their stressful work lives, bad bosses, another week gone by. Then I asked, “So this threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads—how are you internalizing that?”
Both of them shrugged and kept eating. “In a way, it would be easier,” one of them said. “We’d all just die. I mean, it would suck, but it would be over . . . ”
This person always leans towards cynicism, so I looked to the other one, with her sunny side of the street personality, for a reality check. She was matter-of-factly nodding agreement. “Sure,” she said. “It sounds horrible but in a way much easier than the long slow fight for life that we’re going to have with global climate change anyway.”
We went on with dinner. Life returned to mundane topics. But this conversation keeps replaying in my mind. What hideous alternatives my generation is handing off to the young ones. I spent my own twenties in the Reagan years, furious at the weapons build-up and games playing by the world leaders. So outraged by the death-centered-theology (End times are GOOD!) that I entered seminary to focus on nurturing and sharing life-affirming beliefs instead.
My friends and I demonstrated at nuclear weapons facilities, spent months living at women’s peace camps, in New York and at home in Minnesota, camped out by military bases and weapon-producing factories. We held massive peace marches. Thousands of us committed civil disobedience at the local Honeywell plant that made cluster bombs. I spent seven years with a small group of women in an “empowerment group,” systematically working through the exercises Joanna Macy introduced in her book, “Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age,” and offering them up to the wider community.
I, too, thought we might all perish. The threat permeated our daily lives, our media. Reading statistics about millions of people dying was mind-numbing and unreal then, and it’s unreal now. I read a post that said before someone could push the nuclear codes, they should have to stab one living person to death and watch them die. That makes it real, takes away the video-game quality.
This morning, finally, I had a good cry. What opened my floodgates wasn’t statistics or speculations. It was a story about a particular act of cruelty, leveled against particular and vulnerable people, that someone told me about.
I felt better after I cried. It reminded me of the one lesson I learned from the Reagan years: While my friends and I—people of race and class privilege—were so focused on the scariest possibility of all, mass annihilation, specific communities were being annihilated all around us. There was a war on poor people. Mass incarceration really cranked up. The war on drugs was a strategic way to assault people of color. So, if I had those years to do over, I would focus more on the particular, the assaults already taking place, doing what I could to stop them, however tiny the effect of my actions might be, rather than fearing the ultimate destruction of the earth and her people. I don’t have those years to live over, but that’s what I’ll be continue to do now.
Don’t get me wrong, if there are massive peace marches, I’ll be there again. But meanwhile, you’ll find me affecting the tiny bits of change I can, where I live. The rest is too big to comprehend.
To the young ones, I can only say, I sorry. I am so sorry that this bleakness is yours to inherit. May you find the support and strength to fight in all the brave ways you can. And may you find joy and fun and love in the fight itself, because heaven knows we did. The friends I made then are still my fast friends, and I wouldn’t change that fact for anything. The creativity and courage of young adults have brought every kind of positive change the world has ever seen, and we all need you now.
Keep fighting!
So, the president responded to news of North Korean missile testing by tweeting that they will be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” which is not necessarily the most prudent response to a volatile dictator who is aiming nuclear weapons in your direction. I would put it in the category of “not a great plan.” It is, however, entirely unsurprising. It’s the only thing DJT knows how to do—get tough. Whatever the circumstances, domination and punishment are the only tools in his toolbox. Read more →
A lot of times, prayer can seem like something that is done with words and thoughts rather than action. For people who like to use their hands or bodies, it can sometimes be hard to connect to the idea of prayer, and this is doubly true when we are praying with or as children. But around the world, in many cultures and faith, there are prayers that are made with our bodies, with movement or by creating something with our hands. Read more →
We stand with Unitarian Universalists across the globe calling for the immediate release of the Rev. Fulgence Ndagijimana of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burundi.
“On November 16th, the minister of the church, the Rev. Fulgence Ndagijimana, was arrested from the church at gunpoint, taken into police custody and interrogated severely, regarding the activities of his church. He was threatened with physical harm and death. At the moment he remains in custody, with other members of the church also being questioned.”
—International Council of Unitarian Universalists (ICUU)
A man sits on the rubble—
not just in the rubble, but on the pile
of what remains. No people
in the bombed-out houses.
No dogs. No birds. Just ragged hunks
of concrete and loss. And on his perch
he is playing an instrument constructed
of what is left—an olive oil can, a broom handle,
a bowed stick and strings. It sounds
exactly as it is supposed to sound.
The instrument cries, but the man sings.
Because sometimes loss is deeper than tears.
Because sometimes grief is resistance.
Because, somewhere down the very long road,
music is stronger than bombs.
Dedicated to S.K.
VIDEO: “ت ناوازەیە” by Xendan
PHOTO: “Rubble litters the street in the main souk or market area of Maraat al-Numan, Syria” by Freedom House is licensed under CC BY 2.0
A Prayer Beyond Binaries
By Lindasusan Ulrich
I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree. –Robyn Ochs
For those who choose “and” in a world that insists on “or”
For those who struggle against invisibility
Even when it means sprinkling your own head with ashes
For those who will not accept dismissal and diminishment of your pain
Instead naming it with precision as callous disregard
For those who bring your whole self to the work of liberation
Whether or not it fits conveniently into checkboxes
Or someone else’s definition
For those who relentlessly widen the circle for others
Including those who would shut you out
This is a prayer praising your beautiful spirit and your courage
This is a prayer honoring your fierceness and your heartache
You’ve carried the trauma for generations
Still too frequently on your own
But we’re building something new –
Something that can only be shaped in the liminal spaces
Where imagination cannot be fenced in
This is a prayer giving thanks for language broken open
Because the only duality you still hold on to
Is to love and to love some more
There’s a reason the collective noun for bisexuals is blessing
May this day of celebration seep joy into your bones
May this day of acknowledgment reflect back to you your worth
May this day of action illuminate your gifts
May this day, and every day, remind you that you are loved beyond all bounds
Simply because you exist.
“We’re thinking about resistance more than resilience here in New Orleans.” -Rev De Vandiver, ten year anniversary of The Flood
Here’s to all who resist!
Resist assimilation
Resist cooptation
Resist oppression
Resist ignorance
Resist consumerism
Resist the certainty of others’ diagnoses
Resist complacency
Resist numbing out
Resist the same old same old
Resist being taken advantage of
Resist the hissed whisper to be quiet, settle down
Resist what is given, and instead create what is needed.
Here’s to all who create!
Create new stories, with new life springing forth
Create laughter and tears
Create gardens and delicious meals from them
Create music and its deep companionship
Create relationships that defy labels
Create deep rootsCreate beauty
Create courageous actions
Create what will carry us to a new day.
Here’s to the new day!
May it dawn bright for all, condemning none to nightmares
May it bring hope grounded in reason to hope
May it bring evidence for hearts to trust that love is real
May it bring joy and the simple abundance of enough.
Here’s to Labor Day, to the humble imperfect work of us all.
Seen and unseen, paid and unpaid, respected and unrespected.
Here’s to our real work together
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Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.