All day Thursday I wore my Standing on the Side of Love t-shirt, through meetings with academia, organizers, congregants, and staff. A day of solidarity, a day of grief and a day of joy. Solidarity with the Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, who stood on the side of love (without eating, drinking, using the bathroom, speaking off-topic or leaning against any furniture) for all families for eleven hours. Solidarity with communities of color and anti-racist allies grieving the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Solidarity with beloveds all across the nation celebrating the end of the mis-named Defense of Marriage Act and the first step in the passage of a national immigration reform bill.
It is a lot to hold, beloveds. And this doesn’t even begin to take in the illness of the beloved elder Nelson Mandela or the floods and the fires around the world. Or my dear friends who are moving away from New Orleans this week or the beloveds going through a second round of chemo.
This morning, I sat and watched a summer thunderstorm crash through my neighborhood and gave thanks for this precious moment of unscheduled time, a chance to be fully present to the storms within and without. May you, too, have time to bear witness to your own storms with gentleness and compassion. May you feel companioned by a host of thousands standing in solidarity with you on your life journey.
It will only be five minutes. A favor. Celebrating women in the month of May and need a female minister to represent.
When she asked a few weeks ago, calling in the middle of a rich and full work day, I said yes, okay, sure. I needed practice publicly speaking about ministry, especially as a community minister ordained less than a year ago. An invitation to a brief moment on local TV on a Friday night made sense.
Yesterday, deep in the throes of a summer cold, trying to time the cold medicine for a sneeze and snot-free five minute window, the favor-asker nowhere in sight, I was beginning to rethink that yes. Two hours later, walking out of the studio with a DVD in my hand of a half hour show exploring becoming anti-racist, community connection, incarceration, and goodness only knows what else set to air Sunday night, all I could do was laugh and cough.
Universe, your wicked sense of humor is going to kill me…but what a way to go…
My friend recently shared an article that complained about dog lovers foisting their animals on the non-dog-loving public. Although I am a ridiculously passionate dog lover, I have to say I agree. People who don’t want to deal with dogs shouldn’t have to be approached by them. Also people shouldn’t have to worry about their shy dogs being pawed by strangers, let alone being pounced on by other dogs. Parents shouldn’t have to worry about their children being molested by strange dogs, and dog owners shouldn’t have to worry about their dogs being molested by strange children.
But the solution is not to forbid dogs being out in public any more than we should forbid children being out in public. The solution is simple, although it would seem near impossible based on so much of what we see in the world. It’s called “civility.” Civility presumes a) that you understand that you are not the center of the universe, which means that other people have needs and desires that are different than your own and b) that you can find out people’s needs and desires by asking. Really, does that seem so very difficult?
You can assume, just in general, that everyone exists in a little zone of privacy that belongs to them alone. You don’t enter a stranger’s house without permission, and you don’t enter their personal space. Not because you want to touch their pregnant belly. Not because you want to touch an African-American child’s curly hair. Not because you think they’re sexy and you want to get it on. That zone of privacy is an acknowledgement that a person (or animal) is real, that they are entitled to want and feel and believe as they choose. It’s what we Unitarian Universalists call “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”
But privacy doesn’t mean that we need to live without connection, each of us entirely separate in our own little bubble. It simply means that you have to ask to be invited in. And you have to wait for the invitation to be accepted. You can ask whether someone would like to pet your dog before letting it come near them, and you can ask permission before petting a stranger’s dog. You can teach your children to ask before petting a strange dog, and you can teach your dog not to approach people without permission. But more than that you can ask a child’s permission before hugging them or picking them up, teaching them more effectively than any lecture on “stranger danger” that each of us has the right to choose who will touch us and how. You can ask a date’s permission before offering a kiss or other physical intimacy, combating the rape culture which insists that there are ways that a woman can “ask for it” other than saying what it is she wants.
You can ask, even when it feels uncomfortable, as when you ask an acquaintance what gender pronoun they prefer, or when you invite someone whose skin tone is different than yours if they would be willing to discuss a topic related to race. You can ask someone with a disability whether they would like help, and you can ask an older person if they would like your seat on the bus. You can reach out your hand past the edge of your own bubble of privacy to see if someone else wants to take it. You can, and you should. But then you need to pause to find out whether that person wants to reach out their hand in return. And if their response isn’t want you expected or hoped for, oh well. It isn’t about you. It just isn’t all about you.
We human beings are a community. We belong with one another. But we do not belong to one another, and the sooner we start acting like it, the better.
Standing in the doorway between the ticket table and the concert last night, the music from the incredible jazz trio on the chancel washing over me, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. This is my life!
Somewhere between scheduling the termite treatments and the ceiling repairs from a leaky roof, between taxes and budgets, between making groceries and making amends – there is this gift – pure, sustaining creative joy.
On this Mother’s Day weekend, as we celebrate the creative power of women, I lift up some of the amazing, creative female artists I have had the joy of encountering as part of my work this year: Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Cindy Scott, Helen Gillet, Gina Forsyth, emma’s revolution…their creations remind me that life is a journey of choices – and that I can choose joy, I can choose to work for peace, for a world welcoming to all babies, all beings.
Beloveds, as you make your choices today, may you remember your sources of sustaining joy and celebrate your own power to create a life well lived.
What will you be doing for Mother’s Day? I confess it’s never been a big deal in my family, either with my mom or as a mom. Somehow, we just never got on the breakfast in bed, flowers, greeting card bandwagon. I don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t think mothers deserve to be honored. Let’s face it. Mothering is the hardest job in the world. I do not mean that metaphorically, or hyperbolically. It’s the hardest job. Every other job has days off, or at least hours off. Every other job has a limited field of expertise, and doesn’t require that you be simultaneously teacher, doctor, housemaid, entertainer, counselor and a whole host of jobs like construction worker that you might never have anticipated. Every other job, if you get mad at the boss, you can complain to your friends without having to feel like you’re a horrible person and that it’s all your fault. Every other job, if the boss hits you or calls you names you can sue. Every other job, if it gets stressful or tedious or overwhelming enough, you can up and quit.
OK, fathering could conceivably be as difficult as mothering, but it usually isn’t. Dad, if you’re the one who cleans up the barf and checks the homework and calls the teacher when things aren’t going well and strategizes how to deal with mean and gossipy friends and holds the croupy baby in the shower and drives to doctor appointments and reads The Runaway Bunny over and over and over again after washing the dishes and seeing that teeth are brushed and jammies on and explaining why it is that it gets dark at night then let’s face it, you’re a mom. I’m talking about you too.
You, whoever you are, deserve all the kudos that you may or may not get. Not just the dads who are moms, but also the grandparents, aunts, uncles, foster moms, step moms, all of you. You know who you are. However you got there, whether you struggled for years to conceive or adopt, or whether kids got dumped in your lap by circumstances you chose or didn’t choose, whoever you are, if you’re doing the job for life, with no chance of parole, I honor you.
I honor the amazing, creative moms who are helping their children to flower into artists who are moment by moment creating their lives. I honor the patient, calm moms who somehow manage to keep their tempers through the onslaughts of unruly toddlers and sarcastic teens. I honor the moms who exude love from every pore, whose kids learn that some behaviors are unacceptable, but that they themselves are cherished in every moment for the unique and precious beings that they are.
But more than that, I honor the moms who are just getting by. Who entered motherhood not as a divine calling, but as something that have taken responsibility for and will never give up on, no matter how brutal it may feel. The moms who mean well, but get sucked into screaming matches even when they know there’s no point. The moms who sit their toddlers in front of the television for a precious break from the clinging and the running and the mind-numbing repetitiveness of toddler games. The moms who drop their kids off for a play date with a sigh of relief, and who pick them up with utterly untrue assurances that they were missed.
I get it. It’s really that hard. OK, maybe being president is harder, but there’s an eight year limit on that gig. At year eight moms are just getting started. And while presidents may feel the weight of the free world on their shoulders, moms don’t ever get to set down the burden of wondering if their children will be all right, whether they will be happy, whether they will ever learn to put new toilet paper on the roll or wash their own dishes, whether they will turn out to be drug dealers, whether they will have children they are not prepared to raise that could, unthinkably, turn up just at the point when you thought the mothering job was done.
So for all of you moms, of whatever gender and biological relation to your children, here’s a bouquet of virtual roses. I hope that sometime between now and Mother’s Day you get a quiet moment to remember the real gifts that you’ve gotten throughout the year: not only the hugs and the smiles and the sweet snuggling at bedtime, but also the moments when your child has trusted you enough to cry on your shoulder, the times when you genuinely laughed at your child’s joke or they laughed at yours, the flash of insight when you were able to see the world through their eyes. Truly, motherhood is the toughest job you’ll ever love. On a good day.
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, I am grateful to have been born and raised in a religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that has stood strong through the history of the struggle for reproductive justice. Today, I lift my voice to thank some of those Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists who have gone before, and who labor currently, for women’s equality, health and moral agency.
It’s always risky to call out folks simply because we share an identity, especially a religious identity. It can seem as if we are separating ourselves, or declaring ourselves to be part of a club. For me, this is an act taken to ground myself. As my own congregation prepares to hold an online service honoring the complexity and dignity of all families engaged in making moral choices around reproductive issues, I have been asked, “How dare you speak out about this, as if we all agree?”
I would never believe that a few thousand Unitarian Universalists would agree about anything whatsoever! All the studies show that people of other religions don’t begin to agree either, however, and yet their leaders have no trouble declaring that they speak the absolute truth, God’s truth. They claim that God is pro-life, anti-abortion, against women’s equality. So I, who have spent my life laboring in interfaith coalitions lifting up this other point of view, feel it is incumbent upon me to speak clearly as well.
Here come my thanks, to those who have gone before me and labor still, who ground me in this work, who dared before me and handed their daring to me.
I thank Margaret Sanger, who opened the first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, violating obscenity laws for telling women how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. While we certainly challenge her beliefs on eugenics, she had nothing if not bold courage!
I thank all of those who labored for women’s suffrage, women and men, Universalists and Unitarians, allowing politicians to be elected who would support women’s equality. Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Rev. Olympia Brown, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. Lydia Jenkins, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and so many others. I lift up your names with gratitude. Amendment 19, 1919. 19 is our lucky number.
I thank all of the Unitarian and Universalist women who worked to make birth control legal and available in the US. I think of the church women, whose names I do not know, who looked through birth notices in Connecticut papers and mailed information to new mothers, illegally offering them birth control access. They weren’t just being kind; they were spoiling for a fight. Eventually they got one, and in 1965, in Griswald v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that criminalization of birth control violated the right to marital privacy.
I thank all of the Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalists who worked to make abortion safe and legal. The women, and leadership, of First Dallas UU congregation moved this case forward. UUs passed statements at our General Assemblies beginning in 1963. Clergy, especially men, were part of founding and leading the Clergy Consultation service. Hundreds of people were involved with this; many of whose names I don’t know. Please share your own knowledge in the comments section!
I thank the religious educators who, in 1967, agreed that comprehensive sexuality education is part of religious education, and began the groundbreaking sexuality education programs that have been part of religious education programs ever since. There are thousands to name here—deryk Calderwood, Rev. Eugene Navias, Judith Frediani, Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, and dozens of other writers and curriculum editors. Hundreds of teachers and youth advisors who have led young people through it.
I thank those who continue to focus their ministries on reproductive justice and sexual morality. I think of Rev. Deborah Haffner, Rev. Robert Keithan, Rev. Kelli Clement, to name only a few. I thank the congregations who are actively engaged with supporting reproductive justice. There are so many folks to thank here! Please add their names in the comments section.
Finally, I thank the Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Univeralists who have laid your bodies on the line supporting women as they struggle through these difficult choices. People in medical clinics, providing escort services, literally standing by women. I think especially of my late friend, June Barrett, who was shot in Pensacola Florida, while providing escort service to women as part of her service to the Pensacola UU congregation. June’s husband, Colonel James Barrett, and the doctor they were escorting, Dr. John Britton, were killed. As she lay still in the truck, wounded, but not dead, with these bodies beside her, she told herself that she survived for one reason: To continue to help women have access to legal and safe reproductive choice. This she did until her death.
How dare I speak out about reproductive justice? I can honestly say that I have been given this daring by thousands of others upon whose shoulders I stand. Please join us on Tuesday, January 22, at 3 PM and 7 PM Eastern time, for our online service at www.livestream.com/questformeaning. We’ll be gathering as part of a long tradition.
Let’s be fair, here. I’m sure that Richard Mourdock did not in any way mean to defend rape when he said that he thinks that God intends for babies to be born who are conceived through rape. I would hope that no one could believe in a God who intends for women to be raped. But I’m sure there are brave women who have borne their rapist’s baby, whether that rapist is a husband, boyfriend or stranger, and who regard their child as something precious that managed to grow from a terrible beginning. Such is the amazing resilience that can come to the human heart, and wouldn’t God be present in that beautiful redemption?
But let’s get real here for a moment. One could certainly imagine a God who could redeem even something as terrible as rape through the love of an innocent child. But when did it become the government’s job to determine on God’s behalf that this is the necessary outcome? For every woman who has chosen to keep and love a child conceived through rape there are probably many more who choose a morning after pill or abortion to end a pregnancy that they never wanted, and which would be an intolerable life-long symbol of a great violation. Why would you assume that God is not in that decision as well? Why wouldn’t God be there at the side of a woman as she struggles to reclaim her life and her strength and her ability to move forward in the world? Is God not in that woman’s choice to restore her own integrity and wholeness as she understands it?
I won’t presume to speak for God, but I will tell you what I think. When a woman is raped, God’s body is torn as her body is torn. When a fetus is aborted, some piece of God’s potential is lost. But God’s potential is infinite, and a woman reclaiming her life is no less a part of God’s potential. Indeed, every moment when every person chooses life, whatever that might mean to that person at the time, is a part of the potential of God unfolding.
It isn’t the job of politicians to decide which bits of potential God finds most precious. It is the job of each us, day by day and minute by minute, to decide what will constitute life more abundant for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and to act as the body of God in living out that choice. The role of the government is to support those decisions or get out of the way.
Last week, advertisements began appearing at commuter train stations in the county where I live that, it would seem, blame all of Islam for the actions of violent extremists who are Muslim. Debate over the ads here in Westchester, including in the congregation I serve as minister, has centered on the question of “hate speech.” Similar debate is happening elsewhere around other current events as well, including senseless violence against our Sikh siblings, the denial of equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the persistence of misogyny in our political arena.
What, we’re asking ourselves, is “hate speech,” and what is the proper response of moral, loving, spiritual people to it?
I should be clear at the outset that I am not seeking a legal definition of hate or hate speech. Im not a lawyer or a judge. Rather, I am asking for a spiritual definition of it. Whether something is right or wrong has little do do with whether it is legal. (This is, interestingly, something on which the religious right and the religious left can agree–even if we differ on what is right and what is wrong.) What is acceptable in a compassionate society is a smaller set of things than what is not punishable by law.
To me, demonizing an entire group for the actions of a few is the epitome of hate speech. The impulse that leads some to vilify all of Islam because there are Muslim terrorists who justify their actions with a misunderstanding of their religion is the same impulse that makes communities protest the building of mosques and deny some among us their freedom of religion. The more we accept dehumanization, stereotypes and lies about groups of people, the more likely we are to accept violence against them–or people who look like the stereotypical images we have of them stored in our narrow minds.
Recent public debate about rape is another example of speech that, frankly, should be unacceptable to all people who seek to shape our society in an image of love and compassion. If we deem it acceptable for anyone to create a category of “legitimate rape,” we are implicitly condoning a culture in which survivors of sexual violence are stigmatized, doubted, and shamed. Women who live in fear of violence should not be verbally assaulted by those seeking to make political points with their “base.”
Finally, if we use our freedom of speech to block another from having the same rights we enjoy, have we not crossed a line that no religion should accept? I believe so. My impending marriage here in New York has no impact on your relationship or relationships with your past, current and future partners. Don’t blame me for the moral decay of our society–blame our increasing tolerance for hate. Take the twig out of your eye before you reach for the speck in mine.
Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote, among other things, a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” in my faith, freedom comes with responsibility. It should be so in our society as well.
Just because certain speech is protected by the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution does not make all speech responsible speech.
If you’d like to engage in a meaningful dialogue about Jewish-Muslim relations with respect to Israel and Palestine, you’re not going to get there by calling everyone who disagrees with you a terrorist.
If you’re trying to instruct your followers on the specific ways taught by your faith to lead a moral life, you don’t need to violate my freedom of religion or make me a second-class citizen to do so.
If you’d like to open a dialogue on the sanctity of life, denigrating the lives of women isn’t an appropriate place to begin.
Those of us who believe in compassion, equality and love cannot remain silent in the face of such unacceptable hate. Our goal should not be to silence the haters, but rather to drown out their hate with our love. Where ten people show up to call a group of people nasty names, a hundred others should be present with a message of love and acceptance. Little by little, those who choose to hate will get the message.
The furor over Rep. Todd Akin’s astonishingly irresponsible and oft-quoted remarks this week has once again thrown a complex moral, religious, legal and personal controversy in our country into stark relief, the question of abortion.
It seems to me that the burning question about abortion in the United States is not primarily about whether or not any given woman or teenage girl should or can have one, but about whether or not such actions should be lawful: the crux of the matter in this country is around the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, which cleared the way for abortions to be performed legally in the United States. The language of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” is deliberately inflammatory. I’m not against language that inflames per se (perhaps this essay will demonstrate that), but I prefer to frame this not as an issue of life versus choice, but as an issue of legal access to abortion versus its legal abolition. It is an issue of maintaining the legal strictures in place as a result of Roe v. Wade (RvW), or intentionally altering the Constitution to remove those strictures. So may I suggest an experiment: instead of “pro-life,” I propose “anti-RvW,” and “pro-RvW” in place of “pro-choice.”
There are some positions that I disagree with and don’t understand. Same-sex marriage, for instance: intellectually, I suppose I can generally grasp the opposition to it, but deep in my heart, in the tenderest parts of my innards, I just don’t get it. Abortion is different. I disagree with the propositions and stances of the anti-RvW camp. But I get it. The intentional termination of a pregnancy through medical intervention is indeed a complex and difficult moral issue. Nevertheless, as a religious leader, a citizen-voter, and as a human being, I have to take a stand on what I think is right.
While I applaud the GOP for demanding that Rep. Akin drop his Senate bid, this occurred during the same week that Republicans approved party platform language that calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I strongly disagree with this move, but I will openly and freely admit it contains a stroke of internally consistent logic. If one truly believes abortion is murder, then what difference does it make how conception took place? I always felt there was an inherent hypocrisy or cowardice in the political posture of abolishing all abortions “except in cases of rape or incest.” It seems as if those who strike this pose are acknowledging that there are circumstances in which a woman should have a right to choose — just exceedingly narrow ones. “Abortion is murder,” this seems to declare, “but if, say, you’re a thirteen-year-old girl and your father raped you — well, okay then, you can go ahead and get an abortion.” In other words, for a woman or girl to have the right to choose, she can only earn it by unimaginable suffering and humiliation. Why do political conservatives grouse endlessly about reducing the role of government in our lives while endorsing positions that are so aggressively intrusive into the lives of women and girls? If we are going to promote that kind of government meddling in our personal lives, perhaps it would be fairer for both males and females to share the burden. Perhaps what’s needed is a move for a Constitutional amendment to prohibit males from having sexual intercourse with females, unless 1) procreative intent on the part of both parties has been firmly established (and of course the government would need us to fill out government-approved forms and such to declare such intent) , or 2) the male is required to wear a condom or provide legally verifiable proof of his being 100% infertile. If such a law could be passed and enforced, that would diminish the number of abortions spectacularly. If the passing and enforcement of such laws would seem preposterously invasive, why is the imposition of laws that restrict women’s sexual activity considered acceptable?
I do wonder why there doesn’t seem to be far more vigorous preaching and teaching from anti-RvW religious leaders urging men and teenage boys to refrain from having sex, or that we males should at least use birth control fastidiously. Never have I seen a pro-life bumper sticker or talked with an anti-RvW person who has mentioned, in my hearing, the role of males in the whole abortion question. Where is the anti-RvW religious voice calling men and teenage boys to sexual responsibility? Is pregnancy just regarded as a thing that just happens, like cancer or hurricanes, and what follows is all that’s important? What we seem to get from the religious right is the promotion of “education” which urges abstinence. I am not aware that any evidence has ever been offered by anyone to show that such programs achieve their aims.
The religious voices that are anti-RvW come from diverse traditions. What many of these traditions have in common, it seems to me, is an absence of female leadership. There are no female Roman Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. One person I know and love very much is a Pentecostal Christian and very much anti-RvW; there are no female pastors in this person’s church. I am not saying that religious institutions that bar women from professional leadership positions are not entitled to opinions on the issue of abortion, or any other issue, whether it pertains to women or not. I am saying that the absence of women in leadership roles in those religious communities is not irrelevant — especially if that absence is the result of a deliberate and tenaciously guarded policy.
The anti-RvW movement appears to be motivated by a dream of a world in which abortion disappears. But there is no reason to believe that abortion would disappear if the anti-RvW movement achieved its objectives. Women and girls had abortions before RvW; they just had to take far greater risks to their health and safety. I need not reprise the back-alley, coat-hanger refrains of the pro-RvW movement, but those assertions are correct. Some political and social conservatives claim that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns; I wonder why more conservatives don’t also argue that if abortions are outlawed, only outlaws will perform them — outlaws regulated by no professional medical organization, licensed by no government, accountable to no one for their training, their competence, the fees they charge, the sanitary conditions (or lack thereof) they provide, or the survival rates of the women and teens upon whom they perform abortions. These are circumstances in which women and teenage girls are maimed and killed. We know this is true because this is what happened in the United States before 1973. It is not clear how a return to such conditions would promote the sanctity of human life.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that said something like:
Africans didn’t choose slavery
Jews didn’t choose the Holocaust
Babies don’t choose abortion
I couldn’t help but think: But that’s the whole point. Babies don’t choose abortion; they don’t choose anything at all. The pregnant woman or teenage girl is the one who has to make all the choices — not just about abortion, but about what to eat and whether or not to quit smoking or what kind of prenatal medical care she is going to receive. Many women and teenage girls have very limited choices around many of those things, but the point is, the above bumper sticker leaves pregnant women and teens entirely out of the equation. And any argument about abortion which leaves pregnant women and girls out of the equation is not only irrelevant and morally suspect, it’s dangerous.
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