Yes, I Voted

I take voting very seriously. One of my first memories is going with my mother to vote when I was 4. I must have asked her who she was voting for and why, because I remember her answer. She and dad thought that generals shouldn't become president. I took my son voting we me until he was old enough to stay home by himself and we've always talked politics in our family. He's turned 18 now, and does not get election day off, so we all voted together in the Early Voting center a couple of days ago. It probably won't happen again; he's going away to college and will, presumably be voting from his college address in the future, so it was a sweet family moment.

Yesterday, a volunteer claiming she was from Obama headquarters called last night to ask if I had voted yet. I said yes, and she asked who I voted for.

Now, I was raised to think that that is a very personal question, akin to, "What's your salary", and "What kind of birth control do you use?" These are not things I talk to strangers about over the telephone. So I said, "I don't think I want to say."

"So," she responded, in an angry tone, "In other words, you voted for Bush".

I'm not one who is fast with cunning responses, so I said nothing. She hung up before I could recover. But I really was quite insulted.

What a wet blanket on an otherwise very pleasant (40 minutes, car door to car door) family experience. How sad to think that Obama volunteers, who have every reason to feel energized but relaxed about their work, have such a hostile streak to them which whatever training they have had has not erased.

Rude lips may not lose campaigns, but they don't make friends.

Come, follow, follow, follow

Remember that song from 7th grade music class?

Probably not. But there's a new way you can follow blogs...a sort of cross between blogging and facebook for the writing and reading classes. Sign on to Follow this blog in the right hand column. I'd love to see your shining face and know more about who my readers are!

Enterprises Requiring New Clothes

Henry David Thoreau said to beware of them. ("Beware all enterprises requiring new clothes"--Walden)

It's been a while since I read Walden but I can imagine that Thoreau had two hesitations about enterprises requiring new clothes. The first is that such enterprises may end up being too expensive. One of the reasons I've always liked to walk for exercise is that the only thing you have to buy is shoes. No Yoga pants, no bike shorts, no climbing harnesses, just shoes. The second reason to beware enterprises requiring new clothes is that new clothes make you a new person, and if you need them, perhaps were you are going is not who you really are.

iMinister did not buy any new clothes when she started her campaign. All she did was take off her preaching robe to reveal her ordinary Sunday attire on the morning she gave her campaign speech. But she is well aware that her campaign was a bit irregular. She has no problem with the idea that an unexpected candidate for Vice President of the US who is suddenly thrust into the limelight would need a major shopping spree. She wouldn't have been at all shocked to hear that it was necessary to spend some thousands of dollars on sufficient, high quality new clothes to get a new campaigner through her campaign.

But too much was too much ....way too much. Palin's buyers clearly forgot that they should be sticking with "necessary, high quality, and attractive" and wandered into the "foolish, expensive, and high status" categories. It was an expensive mistake in more ways than one. She may be feeling that about the whole campaign. I certainly would be!

Michelle Obama has always appeared to my untutored eye to be very well dressed, and somehow it does not surprise me the she's a bargain hunter. One gets the feeling that being the First Lady wouldn't change her very much, and that she won't let it ruin her kids. Even new clothes won't go to her head. Henry David Thoreau would be pleased.

Creativity in Politics

In a campaign year drearily and anxiously focused on disaster and even more drearily replete with lack of truth-telling (on both sides, but particularly, as one would expect but not excuse, the side that has the larger challenges), I find one delightful, creative, wonderful, win-win strategy.


The huge swing state of Florida contains many elderly Jewish voters who have often been Democrats in the past but who are wary of Obama. Every vote counts in that state. What to do? Send in Jewish young people to talk to their grandparents and grandparents' friends about politics, Obama, and, presumably, life. It's called the Great Schlep. What grandparent could resist a visit from a grandchild who not only wanted to talk to them but talk to their friends! Think of the fun, the heart-warming, the family values, the brag-potential. Sheer genius.

iMinister knew a Weatherwoman

oh, gosh, another reason I can't be president. I actually knew my would-be "terrorist" when we were both 20. Her name was Loralie. She dropped out of music school to hit the streets. I don't know if she actually hurt anybody, but she talked a good line. I was filled with morbid fascination.

And you know, I kind of assume that she grew up and grew out of her radical ideas, that she settled down, repented any evil she had managed to do, and became an upstanding citizen, raising good kids, and making a contribution to whatever her work turned out to be. If I met her today it would be with a glad heart. Because people change. Glory, Hallelujah!

It doesn't matter how old Obama was when Bill Ayers was a Weatherman. Nor does it matter when he came to know Ayers' past. All that matters is Ayers' present, which according to all who know it, is that of a peaceful, productive, good citizen.

Obama belongs to a church which requires him to forgive the repentant. So does Palin, but she seems not to have absorbed the lesson.

The Second Debate

Was as boring as the first debate was interesting...in part because the VP's went over the same, often shaky ground, the P's went over, even some of the same blatant mis-statements about the others' record. These candidates must think we don't think.

The part of me that always wants a woman to do a great job and had anticipated biting her nails to the quick if Palin continued to act like a slow High School student ended the 90 minutes with 9 nails intact. The part of me that wanted to see the Republican ticket continue to implode was disappointed and ashamed of herself.

The part of me that was a candidate last week, (Yes, I figured out a way to go ahead with my "Christine for President" sermon. It was a great hit, huge fun, and available here)
was awed at what a candidate has to go through and is glad that she suspended her campaign before any debating went on.

And the part of me that loves the truth and thinks it should be told and the rules followed was outraged more or less continually, and especially by Pailn who played fast and lose with both and did a great job of covering her lack of experience and poor education.


My son said it best. Palin won the political game. Biden won the debate.

The Debate

Well, it was a riveting 100 minutes, which is more than I can say about most 100 minute TV segments. I thought both candidates did pretty well. I was impressed by the breadth of their knowledge and I got the sense that they both have a dignity and integrity which the current incumbent has always lacked. Whatever happens, it's gonna be better than it was.

There was one thing that really irritated me. Even given the propensity of politicians to compare the best of their actions with the worst of their opponents, I thought that John McCain went overboard in a couple of his accusations of Obama's record, edging from putting one's opponent in a bad light, which is to be expected, to misleading the public, which I suppose is to be expected but I don't like it at all. A person who attempts to mislead the public about the task of ones opponent's committee assignment is a person who will attempt to mislead the public on other occasions when it suites him...like when he wants to go to war but doesn't have the facts on his side.

Clean up your act, Mr. McCain.

Pulpit Initiative to Tease the IRS

iMinister was going to run for president this week, announcing her candidacy in a sermon, but this brilliant sermonic ploy was spoiled by a real life civil disobedience campaign. iMinister is annoyed.

This campaign of about 30, mostly Evangelical pastors (they tried to get others involved) will challenge the IRS's rules that tax exempt organizations such as churches can't engage in candidate politics, only in issue politics. They are going to go ahead an endorse their chosen candidate from their pulpits this Sunday and take the consequences. They say they'll sue the government if they do loose their tax exempt status. Read more here.

iMinister thinks this is a bit foolish, but she's aware that the IRS has been both negligent (especially to conservative churches) in enforcing its rules and out of bounds (especially to liberal churches) in harassing ministers who are staying on their proper side of the endorsement line, and she'd appreciate a clarification of the situation which is, after all, what often comes out of court cases and high drama publicity.

She also thinks that any preacher who can't figure out a way to preach "on the issues" such that the congregation can't figure out who the preacher wishes his or her people would vote for is not a very skilled preacher, so she doesn't put much stock in complaints about this particular rule being any real infringement on religious needs. She suspects that this the real inhibition these preachers feel is to their own egos, which are pinched when they can't tell their flocks how to vote.

IRS specializes in slow response, so I doubt if we'll know by Monday.

And if you want to know about iMinister's platform, check here on Tuesday.

Dear Misters Paulson and Bernanke,

If you really believe that it is crucial for the congress to quickly approve this bailout, it was your responsibility to propose a reasonably balanced, passable bailout plan. Since the plan that you proposed was so unbalanced and unrestrained that not even Republicans like it, you must not really think this is an earth shaking crisis. So Congress, take your time. No more playing responsible villagers to the foolish shepherd's cry of wolf!

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Obama said it about McCain's policies yesterday
McCain's supporters have morphed that into an insult against Sara Palin, as she is "the only one of the four candidates who wears lipstick."

McCain has himself used the expression several times in the campaign, always to point out just what Obama was trying to point out, which is that you can make a small change in the packaging of something but it's still the same inside.

Obama is right that this tempest in a TV screen is EXACTLY WHAT MAKES ME HATE POLITICS AND DESPAIR FOR OUR NATION. WE'RE AT WAR, FOR GOD'S SAKE. WE'RE BANKRUPTING OURSELVES. OUR KIDS ARE GETTING an inferior education and everybody's getting inferior health care. Our population is skyrocketing. The Globe is warming up.

And on the other hand, it's a distressingly sexist-sounding statement. There's too much in the culture that links women, lipsticks and pigs. Like the world "nigardly", which doesn't mean what it sounds like it means but is close enough that no smart person uses the word any more, let's retire this folksy statement. In the end, it does only harm.

On Cultural Mis-Appropriation

Monkey Mind, who is a Buddhist religious leader as well as a UU minister, has commented wisely, here on the problem of adding language to the UUA bylaws dealing with this sticky topic of cultural mis-appropriation. I agree with everything he said, and added a comment that writing bylaws to attempt to regulate practices about which there is not clarity or even agreement, not to mention experience with appropriate procedures is a dangerous mis-use of bylaws.

I want to also add that my experience with this "I know it when I see it but can't define it" area is that our lack of clarity on this subject already puts a dampening effect on robust sharing in our ministry of spiritual and worship practices and does not help ministers take spiritual risks with their colleagues or in their congregations.

We UU's have a profound ambivilance about spirituality of any kind already, and a tendency to pounce, sometimes viciously, on the scary notion that any bona fide UU's would be experimenting with ways to deepen our own spirituality and our corporate experience of spirituality.


Ours is a faith which is open to the wisdom and practices of human religious experience, and that can not simply mean that we learn about other people, although many a preacher or RE director has done only that. Of course understanding others is good, but if our knowledge is only a head-trip, we really have not finished learning. Anything we try to practice is going to fall, at least loosely, into the category of cultural misappropriation. There's not much new under the sun. We don't even all agree that practices like Sweat Lodges are disrespectful to Native Americans. (Nor do all Native Americans think that. ) What about using the tactic of having children ask questions of their elders about the history of their faith to engage them? That harkens to the Jewish Seder practice, and that's where I came across it, so it is a mild form of appropriation. How mild is mild? Who decides? The Orthodox rabbi up the street, the person of Jewish heritage in my congregation? Is the well-established UU Thanksgiving Seder a bad thing? Only a bad thing if it's called a Seder? Only bad if it is a congregational meal? Do we apply the same rules to the communion service? On and on we could go with the questions. They are interesting questions, and I'm not against asking them. What we need is not a by-law but a respectful conversation and learning opportunity. Simple prohibition will only dampen our already small talent for spiritual seeking together.

R.I.P. Ninja

Our household iguana died on Friday, and I'm still feeling shocked and sad. He had escaped his cage, something he'd done before, but then knocked out a screen and escaped the house. He must have made a beeline for the biggest tree he could see...that's what iguanas do. Unfortunately, the biggest tree in our yard is a utility pole, and he electrocuted himself. I was out looking for him by that time, and heard the bang of the fuse blowing and saw him flung off the pole.

He knocked out electricity for three blocks for three hours. Went with a bang, as they say.

He had always been an adventurous iguana. He'd roamed the world by himself as a yearling; I got him from a rescue organization where they figured he'd been on his own for some months. He was kind of wild his first year with us, but after that he settled down, allowed himself to be carried, and loved his outdoor cage. He had a good life. And died doing what he loved to do most; looking for sun in all the high places.

I'm gonna miss him.

Dan Harper's Purposes and Principles

Fausto notes in the comments that fellow blogger Dan Harper proposed a new Purposes and Principles in his blog last June. I had a peak and fell immediately in love. I promote Dan's alterego, Mr. Crankypants for king of the universe! (UU Universe, at least!) You can find his work here. Of course there will be quibbles with it, and more voices will want to be heard. But let's start with this. It's simple, you could imagine reading it in worship (even reading it responsively), it has a horse-like grace rather than a camel-like clumpiness. Thanks, Dan!

New Try at our Purposes and Principles

The Commission on Appraisal has come up with a proposed draft of the first few articles of the UUA bylaws, commonly called our purposes and principles. It's here.

I have liked our current purposes and principles, and while I agree that such statements should be revised from time to time, I don't like this revision. One reason I don't like this revision is that I don't like the way the purposes and principles have moved into a creed-like place in our life together. People are taking them way too literally. I heard it just yesterday: "Our purposes and principles say we are for Peace and Justice. Therefore YOU SHOULD support (our idea of how to gain these two things.)

The Purposes and Principles have taken over RE in the same, concrete way. Ugh.

Given that background, I have to say that I don't like the basic format of the Commission's work. It has given us too many more words to make concrete in the "principles" section, and it has collapsed the "sources" section into a paragraph of prose (verbose prose at that) which is not suitable for use in liturgy. That will mean that those italicized principles will be all the more elevated and concretized in our life together.

It also elevates our paranoia about "cultural misappropriation" to by-law level and seems to permit others rather than ourselves to decide what is appropriate and respectful. I can tell you that there are millions upon millions of Christians who would say that our use of any kind of communion service is disrespectful to their doctrinal Christ, and that any prayer which does not end in the name of Jesus is an insult to the word prayer. These bylaws would allow them to criticize us and give us no way to make our own decisions. Even worse, they would allow some us to criticize others. I'm all for exercising sensitivity to other's sensibilities. But my experience with discussions of cultural misappropriation leads me to believe that this "sensitivity" is mostly used amongst us to distance ourselves from spirituality and dis those spiritual leaders who take the risk of introducing us to spiritual practice. With a bylaw like this, we will reduce ourselves again to classical music, intellectual sermons, social action and a moment of silence as our only legitimate shared spiritual practices. It just won't do.

And there's the statement that the highest purpose of our congregations is to "worship together to create beloved community" (sorry, that's not my primary goal and I think it is a very dangerous one)

It's been hard enough navigating the shoals of congregational life around seven principles. (see above). Navigating around seven principles, cultural misappropriation, and beloved community is not going to make us healthier.

(political) Life is a Riddle and A Mystery

I think that amongst the most interesting things that is happening in our world today is how people are having to stretch themselves in order to stay true to their values. I first noticed this amongst the Episcopalians. Some of the most socially conservative Episcopal churches in this country have disaffiliated themselves from the American Episcopal body because of women priests and gay priests, and put themselves under the discipline of socially conservative African bishops. This shows an open-minded willingness to accept something new that I hope they take some pride in. I'm sorry they are doing it for the reasons they are doing it but I think God works in mysterious ways and up until last week, I thought that this was one of the great Mysteries of our time.

That is until another group of social conservatives welcomed with open arms a woman candidate for Vice President of the US whose major credential is her feisty track record against good old boy corruption. (Also she's against abortion and for guns and has a son in the military. I wonder when is the last time an American president or vice president had a near relative in the military?)

But she is a woman, and not only that, she's the mother of an infant. An infant with special needs, at that. I've got a fair number of feminist credentials and I have to say that it makes me queasy to imagine how much that little boy is going to miss his mommy even if she becomes Vice President, much less, president. These are not exactly 40 hour a week jobs which easily combine with family and child care. Nor is he the only child in the family; there are three others still young enough to need a big slice of parental time and love, and it's not like they have a full-time dad. He's the owner of a small business. And whatever became of "I am my children's mother!"(and therefore only work, at most, part time while they are in school.) ?

No doubt they will work something out, and I think it is wonderfully open-minded of American Conservatives to let them do that in peace. And should Ms. Palin become VP, I look forward to seeing what the old boys make of their feisty leader.

But I am drowning in the Mystery of it all...

Terms of Belittlement

I've been spending time in doctor's offices lately. Nothing major, just my annual stuff and my son's broken arm. What that means is that I've been hearing a lot of professional women referred to as "girls".

As in children.

As in "please hand this to the girl at the window" (meaning the highly trained, apparently competent 50-something person entrusted with sensitive papers and distressed people) and "just sit there and one of the girls will call you back. "(Ditto)

At first I tried being confused. "I don't see any girls here." (blank stare...right over there, can't you see?) Then I tried being shocked. "Surely you don't hire children to work here." (puzzled cluelessness. "No, of course not". ) Then I tried the direct approach. "It's so demeaning to call the professionals you work with girls." This approach was to the male techs who were waiting around to put a cast on my son's arm. (Funny, nobody called them "boys". ) However the response was quite revealing. "Well, they act like girls!" one of them guffawed. His partner sensed dangerous territory and hastened to add. "Of course, they think we're nuts too!"

At the Mamogram office this morning, when told by the clerk to wait for the "girl" to call me back, I said again, "It's so demeaning to imply that the people who do such important work are children." The clerk was taken aback and finally responded. "I'm sure its a term of endearment." But I saw a shadow cross her face as she heard her own words. No doubt employee relations are just fine in that big office, but it was crystal clear that the person who was going to call me back was not "dear" to the one who had just called her a girl. It's not really a term of endearment, after all. No, actually, it's a term of belittlement. It bespeaks a lack of respect for persons doing important but adjunct work in a medical office because of their sex.


Call her a tech or a receptionist, a nurse or a patient rep. (hey, then I know more about what I can expect from her!) Call her a lady, a person...heck, call her a woman.


If you play bridge with "the boys" or go out with "the girls", that's your affair. But if you refer to the woman in your office who is older than I am as a "girl" you belittle her, and her work, and by extension, you belittle me.

Chili Roasting Season

Its the weekend before Labor Day and I'm patiently standing in line to get my 30 pound bag of chili roasted at my neighborhood grocery store. You can roast chili at home, but it never comes out as well as it does from the great rotating barrels with their extra hot burners. The wait is going to be nearly two hours, and eventually I'll go back in to do the rest of my shopping, letting my neighbor read my magazine in exchange for keeping my place in line. For the moment I'm enjoying the beautiful day and the indescribably heavenly smell of roasting chili. New Mexicans go around sniffing the air in the Fall hoping for a whiff of roasting chili like we all hope for that increasingly elusive whiff of pine at Christmas.

They say that the chemicals that make pepper hot cause the body to produce endorphins, and that New Mexicans are so addicted to chili-high that they pine away without it. College-bound New Mexico teens are promised care packages, not of cookies but of chilis packed in dry ice.

Even the smell is addicting. Its the New Mexico high

The Anthrax Scare

So it seems that a suspect in the 2001 Anthrax scare/murders had committed suicide. Now we may never know what exactly happened and why a respected researcher put anthrax powder in envelopes, killed two people and scared the nation half to death. (remember, no powder allowed in gym dressing rooms?) ..either because the man who did it will now never tell, or because the suicider will be presumed guilty and the case closed.

One thing I've not seen much about in today's news about this strange case is how the Anthrax scare was originally blamed, with supposed substantial evidence, on Iraq. It was another reason we had to go to war. One of the supposed weapons of mass destruction was germ warfare. The notes in the envelope were supposedly from Iraq and the powder itself had some especially Iraqi chemical makeup. That turned out to be flat out made up somewhere in the "information" chain. For a long time now (once we started the war), the FBI has focused on domestic sources of this little terrorist event that we've mostly forgotten. But that little terrorist event was a major cause of this disastrous war. And now the person they were about to finger is dead.


It's an unsatisfactory, not to say downright fishy ending to a very strange, not to say, downright fishy episode in American life.

Avoiding Tragedies like Knoxville

Two are dead and 5 critically injured after a man fired on the UU's of Knoxville yesterday. One of the dead apparently heroically stepped in front of the shooter. Two brave congregants tackled him while he was re-loading his gun. The Presbyterians across the street took in the shocked apparently during their own worship service and has opened their building to the congregation for a de-briefing/vigil this evening.

The perpetrator apparently planned and practiced this attack for reasons not yet made public. How anybody can be so evil as to shoot innocent people in a church is one question of the day. How people can risk their lives for others and offer their love and their building to grieving victims is the questions of goodness.

There's another question that is not being asked, which is, why we are putting up with all this gun violence in our society. As the minister of a Knoxville Baptist church mused in his blog, "The last place you'd expect gun violence is in the peace-loving Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church." There's no escape.

Of all the comments I read in news blogs yesterday, 98% were offering prayer and sympathy, 1% had been deleted as crass and hateful, and one...exactly one, suggested we ought to do something about guns. One minute later someone flashed back, "no law would ever prevent a man like this from getting a gun." In other words, all control is completely hopeless.

I don't think so. It would take time and effort to buy back guns in our society, but if a person had to go underground to get a gun, fewer people would do it...fewer and fewer with passing years. Just as there are far more people who use (legal) alcohol to get high than there are who use illegal drugs, so, as guns got harder and harder to find, maintain, and but annumition for, fewer and fewer people would shoot their fellow human beings.

The TVUUC perpetrator was observed by his neighbors in target practice. If that was an unusual enough and fraught enough activity that someone had alerted the police, this tragedy might have been averted. Or at least, without practice, his aim wouldn't have been so good.

This is the 5th church shooting in the past year or so; there have been more shootings like that in schools. Churches and Schools are the open places of our society. If we must close them down, disallow backpacks and guitar cases, be suspicious of the stranger or the angry...we will all lose far more than if we just start cracking down on guns.

Praying for the People of Knoxville, and for us all....

Multi-Minister Staffs and the Lone Ranger

There's a lot of pain in our ministry about the issues of multi-minister staffs. We're a denomination of small churches, and most ministers never experience this situation, and the ones who do are in a spotlight. This is not something we've done well as UU's, and this is an impediment to our growth. We're going to stay a denomination of small churches unless we can figure out appropriate, workable structures and mindsets for two ministers to work together. So here is my morning's thought on this subject.

If you've never tried to work with another minister on a staff, let me tell you...it's a learning curve, a spiritual discipline, and a Damed Growth Experience all wrapped up in one...one of those ministerial tasks that nobody in their right mind would try unless they were deeply called to a specialized ministry or the church they served couldn't progress any other way. (A different sort of call.) Worse than a building program. Worse than a Sexual Offender, just to name two ministerial experiences that more of us are familiar with.

Whether you talk to people who have served as Senior ministers in such pairs or Associate/Assistant ministers, you scratch the surface and find pain and blame. Sometimes it seems as if our conversation assumes that anybody ought to be able to step into these roles and if things don't instantly go well, they just have bad intentions or a character disorder. A little charity for those who have chosen or found themselves in this very tough learning curve is in order, I think, especially from those who have not stood in those shoes.


All of us learned to be lone rangers in ministry. Even if we've been lone rangers with lots of volunteer rangers, part time rangers, or even a few sheriffs to work with, we have a major shift if we find ourselves one of Two Rangers Working Together, especially when the situation calls for (and in my opinion most of them should) one of the two to have some authority over the other.

Onlookers to these rather public relationships cluck and shake their heads when they don't work out well. (Most of them probably do work out well, often for many years, but we don't hear so much about those.) Mostly they cluck at the senior ministers who are accused of being jealous, protective of their place in the congregational sun, and unwilling to share the perks of ministry. There is, of course, another side of the story, which is the story of Associate/Assistant ministers who couldn't learn to work on a team, couldn't take direction, couldn't NOT be in the spotlight and generally continued to be Lone Rangers when the situation called for working with someone else.

Most UU Ministers, I think, wouldn't want to serve in multi-minister situations. We like being in charge...and whether you serve as a Senior or Associate/Assistant, you give up a good deal of 'being in charge.' For those called to serve in churches which are just too big for one minister and those called to specialized ministries...we just gotta work this out.