tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40330966743582893582024-03-14T07:57:25.140-07:00Voices of Liberal Faith
<a href="http://www.uua.org/visitors"><img alt="Nurture Your Spirit. Help Heal Our World. Unitarian Universalists." border="1" src="http://www.uua.org/images/uua/nurture_heal_468x60.gif" height="60" width="468"></a>Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-72195690180838062172021-01-15T10:11:00.003-08:002021-01-15T10:11:19.718-08:00Prayer -- 2021 Jan 10Dear Ground of Being:<br><br>
As we are rightfully concerned for the fate of our nation, let us remember and hold in our hearts the people in places that have it much worse:<br>
The people of Syria: displaced and ravaged.<br>
The people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador where so many have fled due to record levels of violence, torture and death. <br>
The Rohingya in Myanmar escaping genocide and now displaced in Bangladesh. <br>
The Refugees everywhere who have traveled unbelievable distances and through unimaginable harms to be turned away, silenced, detained and imprisoned. <br><br>
And famine has returned. World-wide efforts to avert famine came to a blessed fruition, with the last famine being a short one in South Sudan in 2017. Now, driven by wars and the economic dislocations brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and lockdowns that inhibit aid, famine looms again. So let us remember and hold in our hearts the famine-stricken in Yemen, South Sudan, Burkino Faso, Nigeria – and 16 other countries that don’t yet but soon may be facing mass food shortage.<br><br>
Poverty and disruptions from the pandemic may push 13 million additional girls into child marriages, the UN warns. Disrupted campaigns against female genital mutilation may result in two million more girls subjected to that pain, fear, humiliation, and permanent curtailment of their human expression and birthright. Reduced access to contraception may lead to 15 million unintended pregnancies. Access to the means of literacy is narrowing: an additional 72 million children may be consigned to illiteracy as a repercussion of the pandemic.<br><br>
And as we in the rich countries are impatient at the months it will take for the vaccine to reach most of us, in poor country, it will be years. In many poor countries, 2021 will end before one-fifth of their population is vaccinated. Let us remember – for to be forgetful would be to disconnect, to relinquish a part of our own humanity.<br><br>
Let us hold in our hearts all who suffer, for they are we. We remember, too, in gratitude, the long hours of care put in by health workers, in our country and around the world. We hold in gratitude those who grow, harvest and transport food. Our thanks to aid organizations, and to schools and teachers everywhere striving to push back the ignorance that so destroys human flourishing. Our thanks and undying gratitude to everything in the universe that made us and gave us the capacity we have for compassion, for love, for joy, for purpose and meaning.<br><br>
We ask of ourselves the mindful intention to delight in what is good, to confront what is cruel, to heal what is broken.<br><br>
Amen.
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-9672977280645534132020-04-25T05:36:00.004-07:002020-04-25T06:12:55.669-07:00PrayerDear Great Mystery that was and will be and is:<br />
<br />
Let us this day, and often throughout our lives, enter into mystery, wonder, and awe, turning over the questions:<br />
<br />
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?<br />
<br />
Yes, there are answers to those questions. A range of narrative options is available. Let us not settle on any. Let us simply hold any answer, any story – whether curt and simplified, or long, complex, and detailed – whether felt with assurance or qualified with “probably” or “maybe” – and then move past it, return to nonnarrative presence, enter again into the mystery into which the questions beckon us.<br />
<br />
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?<br />
<br />
We don’t know. The stories and fragments of story that guide us, that help us make meaning – are always incomplete, always obscure as they reveal. Therefore, let us hold our stories lightly and amend them often, guided always by compassion, attentive ever to who is hurt, and how, and who is liberated, and how, by the story before us.<br />
<br />
May the stories that guide us guide us toward justice. May they keep before us that the conditions of our lives today derive from and depend upon centuries of dehumanization and genocide. We shrink our souls when we forget that. <br />
<br />
May the stories that guide us guide us to notice where fear and greed, the roots of historic atrocities, continue today in our own hearts. May they help us see where our current habits of thought exclude from reverent concern and respect. May we grow our awareness of what we place outside our circle of loving and kindly regard. <br />
<br />
Knowing that it is from our own wounding that we wound others, let our stories guide us toward healing, toward justice. Then will possibilities of life without violence, without coercion, without fear, without greed, and without deceit unfold.<br />
<br />
Dear Great Mystery that was and will be and is:<br />
<br />
Teach us to tell the stories that will lead us in the ways of compassion, that will open our hearts to all the pain and oppression that is and ever was. Strengthen our capacity for reality so that we will not seek the false comfort of turning away. Open our hearts to the joy that flows in when compassion flows out. Open our eyes to see where there is hurt. Commit our bodies, and the hours of our lives, to the work of love, of inclusion, of justice.<br />
<br />
And grant us, from time to time, the grace of setting aside all stories to re-enter mystery, to re-inhabit nonnarrative presence.<br />
<br />
Amen.Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-53239362701201488232020-04-11T12:21:00.003-07:002020-04-11T12:44:49.481-07:00Will We Come Together?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtWc4sX_Jm9gNDN5uieNsDA4nNdgMJA97lFOdY5rhOdzUcBUVIYChb_ULFKc4I_TSFVoCi3nhbl4RgGiJh8YRA59pp83ir1bn_iEqclO21y-5noHh6-nyVU5jU7WDGSiLKEatGnQIjJac/s1600/2020.04.10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtWc4sX_Jm9gNDN5uieNsDA4nNdgMJA97lFOdY5rhOdzUcBUVIYChb_ULFKc4I_TSFVoCi3nhbl4RgGiJh8YRA59pp83ir1bn_iEqclO21y-5noHh6-nyVU5jU7WDGSiLKEatGnQIjJac/s200/2020.04.10.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>People often come together in disaster. Neighbors who had hardly ever spoken to each other turn up with casseroles or building supplies or just helping hands and sympathetic ears in time of disaster -- right? But pandemics aren't like hurricanes or earthquakes. Daniel Defoe's <i>A Journal of the Plague Year</i> (published 1722 about the London plague of 1665) reports, "The danger of immediate death to ourselves, took away all bonds of love, all concern for one another.” Whereas other disasters wreak their havoc quickly and are done, allowing us to come together for rebuilding, a pandemic drags on and on, inducing a gradually growing fatalism, a slowly deepening sense of lost control of our lives.<br />
<br />
In the 1918 flu pandemic, pleas for volunteers to care for the sick went largely ignored. About 675,000 Americans lost their lives to the 1918 flu -- over 12 times the number killed in battle in World War I -- yet there have been very few books or cultural products about it. It's as though Americans, as a people, didn't like who they became. We suppressed the shameful memory of how we turned away from each other.<br />
<br />
Yet not all Americans turned away. Then, as they are now, health care workers responded with courageous compassion. Whether their example is more widely followed today than it was in 1918 is up to us. One century ago, your 16 great-great-grandparents would have been about the age that you are today. Some of yours might have been health-care workers; probably not all of them were. Now it falls to us to step forward to redeem our great-great-grandparents who didn't. Because the neighborliness to which we are now called is apt to be an extended deployment, we will have to pace ourselves more carefully than we would for a hurricane or earthquake response. We also have technological tools for connecting and supporting each other that our great-great-grandparents didn't have.<br />
<br />
This morning I got an email blast to all alumni of one of my alma maters from the university president. She affirmed, "I am certain that the test of this pandemic will give rise to what President Lincoln once described as 'the better angels of our nature.'" <br />
<br />
It didn't in 1918. Let us make it so in 2020.Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-43712418308069024262019-06-07T15:46:00.001-07:002019-06-08T04:10:43.408-07:00The Doubtless Very Different St. Benedict<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Words of Alasdair MacIntyre haunt me:<br />
<blockquote>What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict. (<i>After Virtue</i>)</blockquote>(Why Benedict? Benedict of Nursia [480-547] composed the "Rule of Saint Benedict", a set of rules for monastic life that were so widely adopted throughout the middle ages that Benedict is thought of as the the founder of Western Christian monasticism. For MacIntyre, Benedict thus represents the salvaging of "civility and the intellectual and moral life" and "the tradition of the virtues" after the fall of Rome.)<br />
<br />
"New dark ages . . . are already upon us," he says. The "barbarians . . . have already been governing us for some time." It's startling to realize that he wrote this 1980.<br />
<br />
Actually, though, this sense of decay of order is a leitmotif of the last century. In 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote:<br />
<blockquote>Turning and turning in the widening gyre<br />
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br />
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br />
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br />
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<br />
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;<br />
The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />
Are full of passionate intensity.</blockquote>I am not as pessimistic as MacIntyre, nor do I find the dichotomy between barbarism and virtue quite as compelling as he does. The Greek and Roman virtues are valuable, but some newer virtues -- equality, most generally and most significantly -- are also important. Still, the sense of things falling apart has only been growing -- if not continuously for the 100 years since since Yeats wrote, then in the 40 years since MacIntyre's passage. On the right, this manifests as a reactionary urge to return to a largely imaginary period of American greatness. On the left, it is the populist appeal of that reactionary urge that occasions a feeling of civilizational collapse.<br />
<br />
Still, I believe MacIntyre is right that, "What matters . . . is the construction of local forms of community." It is that conviction, and the desire to contribute what I could to construction of moral community, that propelled me eventually out from the academy to the congregation.<br />
<br />
My money's on the proposition that it is we -- we who gather to share our lives, strengthen our values, and deepen our wisdom -- who are ourselves the new St. Benedict. "Doubtless very different," indeed!<br />
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-74331226221873843952019-05-03T12:41:00.001-07:002019-05-03T12:41:22.637-07:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
The 2018-19 UUA Common Read is:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Justice on Earth</span>:</i></b></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a></div>
<br />
This week, I’m looking at Chapter 11:<br />
Mel Hoover and Rosed Edington, "Water Unites Us.” <br />
<br />
Hoover and Edington were co-ministers serving the UU Congregation (UUC) in Charleston, West Virginia in 2014 when a water contamination disaster struck the area. <br />
<blockquote>
“Freedom Industries and the West Virginia Water Company (WVAC) allowed 4-methylcyclohexanemethano (MCHM – used for removing clay and shale from coal) to poison a water system serving 300,000 people in nine counties.” (120)</blockquote>
Advisories told people not to use the water for anything other than flushing the toilet and putting out fires. Schools were closed. Restaurants were ordered <br />
<blockquote>
“closed until the tap water was declared safe or owners could demonstrate they had enough bottled water on hand to operate. . . . Some went out of business.” (121)</blockquote>
WVAW’s response was slow. Though a two-day supply of water in backup tanks was legally required, there was none. <br />
<br />
What did UUC do?<br />
<br />
They got to work <br />
<blockquote>
“helping low-income families who otherwise would have to choose between purchasing bottled water and paying their rent, delivering water to those who could not get to distribution sites, and organizing and advocating for legislation to ensure safe water.” (122)</blockquote>
In the ensuing, and ultimately successful, drive for new state legislation requiring chemical storage tanks to be registered and monitored, “rallies, demonstrations, and press conferences were often planned at UUC and attended by UUC member” (124).<br />
<br />
To help UUC deal with the crisis, more than $24,000 was donated to UUC from individuals and UU congregations in the region and nationally. UUC “established a Clean Water Fund and a Clean Water Task Force to administer the financial donations” (126).<br />
<br />
Hoover and Edington remind us <br />
<blockquote>
“that water everywhere is at risk, that everyone is downstream from something, and nearly everyone is at potential risk from flooding . . . increases in extreme water events are projected for all US regions” (128).</blockquote>
You’ll want to read the chapter to get the inspiring details of UUC’s work in Charleston.<br />
<br />
Questions<br />
How well do you understand the system that delivers water into your home? Where does the water come from? What potentially polluting industries might be a source of toxic contamination? <br />
<br />
What do you know about lead poison risk in your area?<br />
<br />
(A map of lead-poisoning risk is <a href="https://www.vox.com/a/lead-exposure-risk-map">HERE</a>. For may congregation in the metropolitan NYC area, the map shows that a large part of the Bronx is at the highest risk of lead exposure – Risk Level 10. There’s also a Level 10 risk in much of Yonkers and parts of Mt. Vernon, New Rochelle, and Ossining. Other parts of Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, New Rochelle, and Ossining are at Level 9 risk, as are parts of White Plains, Mamaroneck, Hastings-on-Hudson, Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant, Peekskill, and most of Pelham and of Portchester. About 90% of the area of the Bronx is at Risk Level 8 or higher. More than half the area of southern Westchester (that is, south of a line from Armonk to Sleepy Hollow), is at Risk Level 7 or higher. In all of Westchester, nowhere is the risk Level as low as 1 or 2, and there are a only few scattered census tracts at Risk Level 3. All the rest of the county is at Risk Level 4 or higher for lead. Community UU Congregation at White Plains is in a tract assessed at Lead Risk Level 4. To our southeast, the tract on the other side of the Hutchinson is at Lead Risk Level 6. Just north of us, the tract through the middle of which Bryant Ave runs, is at Lead Risk Level 7.)<br />
<br />
What should you know about the factors for lead-exposure risk? What actions are called for?<br />
<br />
For my reflection/summary on previous chapters, click the title:<br />
<ol>
<li>Jennifer Nordstrom, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-1.html">Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Paula Cole Jones, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-2.html">The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement</a>"</li>
<li>Sheri Prud'homme, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-3.html">Ecotheology</a>"</li>
<li>Sofia Betancourt, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-4.html">Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Adam Robersmith, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-5.html">Cherishing Our World: Avoiding Despair in Environmental Justice Work</a>"</li>
<li>Peggy Clarke, Matthew McHale, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-6.html">Becoming Resilient: Community Life for a New Age</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-7.html">Drawing on the Deep Waters: Contemplative Practice in Justice-Making</a>” </li>
<li>Pamela Sparr, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-8.html">Transforming Unitarian Universalist Culture: Stepping Out of Our Silos and Selves</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, “<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-9.html">Learning to Change: Immersion Learning and Climate Justice</a>”</li>
<li>Peggy Clarke, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/03/justice-on-earth-chapter-10.html">Eating the Earth</a>"</li>
</ol>
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-23770421429952507692019-03-19T17:29:00.001-07:002019-03-19T17:31:48.947-07:00Shared Planet. Shared Faith. Reflection #2.<div style="text-align: right;">Rev. Meredith Garmon<br />
All-Westchester Worship Service<br />
2019 Mar 17</div><br />
I'm mindful that as we gather to worship and reflect together on our Earth and our faith, our hearts are also carrying the fresh wound of Friday’s shootings at mosques in New Zealand. Fifty are dead; another dozen are in critical condition. While Australia has tight gun control policies, New Zealand is at the other end of the spectrum, similar to the U.S.<br />
<br />
Our own country has been under a scourge of gun violence for some time – a shadow that will not lift. On the occasions of such shootings we hear people say, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families.” We may also hear, “What good are your thoughts and prayers?”<br />
<br />
Indeed, it’s tempting to be cynical about public statements of prayers being with. While we can pass no judgments on the sincerity of anyone’s prayers, we may suspect that many of these prayers are doing nothing to transform, deepen, or even connect the pray-er. We don’t know -- though it has occurred to me to wonder -- how much prayer actually happens. The prayers we are told are with the victims and families, in some cases, perhaps, are never prayed. If they were, we might see greater commitment to the holy tasks of building beloved community: reducing violence, fostering respect, ending injustice, making peace, strengthening institutions, developing practices of neighborliness, joy, and sustainability.<br />
Our Earth needs our prayers.<br />
<br />
Our Earth and all its peoples, all its inhabitants, all its life – need our prayers – because our daily lives push and pull at us with a constant flow of concerns, issue, matters to be dealt with, meals to fix, dishes to wash, jobs to do. If we do not pause, step back for a few minutes every day, to remind ourselves of what we want to our lives to be beyond to-do list, reconnect with the big picture beyond the minutiae of each day, reorient ourselves to the love that we are here for, then our spirits are not sustainable.<br />
<br />
You can make your house fully solar powered – get rid of your car and walk, bicycle, carpool or use public transportation to get around – eat vegetarian because 15% of greenhouse gases come from the meat industry – plant a tree every day, grow your food, remove plastic from your life.<br />
You can reduce your carbon footprint and your net resource consumption and pollution to zero. You can do all that and still not be living sustainably if you aren’t taking times for quiet reconnection to, and reaffirmation of, what’s the meaning of your life and the joy of existence. <br />
<br />
Our energies will flag if our spirits are not sustained. Worse, we may be driven by anger and frustration and fear and set back the very causes to which we vociferously declare our allegiance if we do not maintain the spiritual work of keeping ourselves grounded. It’s not that anger and fear don’t have roles to play. The wholeness of our humanity makes a place at the table for the voice of every emotion to be heard. But the beloved community is not constructed where the loudest voices are fear or anger.<br />
<br />
The Earth needs us, and it needs our spirits sustained for the long work, and so, it needs our prayers. It needs not the claim of prayers that substitute for action but actual prayers enabling and energizing action: strengthening our resolve, deepening our grounding, and bringing cheer to the work. So let us pray.Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-58978330829061927352019-03-19T15:20:00.001-07:002019-03-19T17:25:57.484-07:00Shared Planet. Shared Faith. Reflection #1<div style="text-align: right;">
Cindy Davidson<br />
All-Westchester Worship Service<br />
2019 Mar 17</div>
<br />
As Unitarian Universalists, we are often called to minister to a weary and unjust world…. And we do rise to the call for justice!<br />
<br />
Over the years, we have learned we do our best justice work when we leave behind any tendencies to swoop in as experts and try to fix things, and instead, we build relationships and partner with impacted communities.<br />
<br />
We do this, in part, by centering the voices of those most marginalized and by flanking their leadership. We become allies, even accomplices, at times, for the good of all. The same is true as we work together to create climate justice.<br />
<br />
Among the many on the frontlines of climate change and injustice are our children, youth and young adults. Because their physical presence, feelings, and energies are absent in today’s line-up of speakers and musicians,<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1sBUr-ZYronSO0EXg6keXrsRaoym_Cwjo6YRfeK4KPFu3BRgwQxheezZc_q-zPYo3cK30dQwXvVPY-TwHp93hdhMUGIM763CsqowzvRHFoPTJ9YyXY2vUQaYl-N9wM_t3MU1qHlvMJ04/s1600/Thunberg_Greta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="533" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1sBUr-ZYronSO0EXg6keXrsRaoym_Cwjo6YRfeK4KPFu3BRgwQxheezZc_q-zPYo3cK30dQwXvVPY-TwHp93hdhMUGIM763CsqowzvRHFoPTJ9YyXY2vUQaYl-N9wM_t3MU1qHlvMJ04/s200/Thunberg_Greta.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I want to at the least lift up the words of two young climate activists.<br />
<br />
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish fifteen-year old who began in August 2018 to skip school on Fridays and sit outside the Swedish Parliament protesting their inaction on reducing carbon emissions. You may have heard she was nominated last week for the Nobel Peace Prize. She addressed leaders of the 2018 United Nations Climate Talks last December and the World Economic Forum in January. There, she said,<br />
<blockquote>
“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic....I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act...I want you to act as if your house is on fire. Because it is.”</blockquote>
What began as her solitary action spawned a global movement: Fridays for the Future.<br />
This past Friday, an estimated 1.4 million students skipped classes to attend 2,052 organized protests in 123 countries.<br />
<br />
Columnist Rebecca Solnit, writing in <i>The Guardian</i>, recognized these climate strikers as “the force of possibility that runs through the present like a river through the desert.”<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht3nCDbc9E8qvKAd-rqP-HmlWwYMDTJMWaV1m7mar3_p_uveKvIJA2oAkWQxU_oei9Ft88wnyLpK7E_9vPFT0TwoO1t0ukjpiBbfvePtM9xOPHKYtGTxVv-rLY4g4ekC-o0NdBNY0DYio/s1600/Villaseor_Alexandria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="719" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht3nCDbc9E8qvKAd-rqP-HmlWwYMDTJMWaV1m7mar3_p_uveKvIJA2oAkWQxU_oei9Ft88wnyLpK7E_9vPFT0TwoO1t0ukjpiBbfvePtM9xOPHKYtGTxVv-rLY4g4ekC-o0NdBNY0DYio/s200/Villaseor_Alexandria.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Thirteen-year-old Alexandria Villasenor is part of that force. She is a native of California whose family relocated to New York City so she could breathe more easily. She has followed in Greta’s footsteps and spent every Friday since December outside the UN headquarters protesting their inaction on climate change.<br />
<br />
In a recent interview for <i>The Nation</i>, she said, <br />
<blockquote>
“It’s important to take action now, because we don’t have time left. By the time the youth are in positions of power, it’ll be too late to reverse climate change. We have to force politicians to start acting on climate change.”</blockquote>
When asked why she wasn’t in school, she replied, <br />
<blockquote>
“Why go to school if we won’t have a future? Why go to school if we’re going to be too busy running from the next hurricane or fire?”</blockquote>
She is one of three organizers of the US Youth Climate Strike and was, I imagine, among the many students in New York City on Friday protesting at schools, City Hall, and Columbus Circle, before staging a mass die-in on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History. <br />
<br />
Would you, could you, do the same? How might you amplify this force of possibility, and step into the “present like a river through the (parched) desert?” <br />
<br />
I encourage you to take more than just this moment and our time together today to reflect upon the fears and courage demanded of those whose future unfolds amidst such unimaginable change and uncertainty. We do owe them and all beings a livable climate.<br />
<br />
As Greta Thunberg reminds us, “The one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.” So then, tell me, and tell the children, tell the youth, and tell the young adults, and tell each other – what actions do you intend to take in your one life to help build today’s movement and create climate justice?<br />
<br />
For your acts are their hope today and for tomorrow’s tomorrow.<br />
<br />
===============<br />
Sources:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/greta_thunberg_the_disarming_case_to_act_right_now_on_climate/transcript?language=en#t-660050">Greta Thunberg, TEDx Stockholm, Nov 24, 2018</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg">Greta Thunberg, COP24, UN Climate Talks in Krakov, Poland, Dec 12, 2108</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate">Greta Thunberg, World Economic Council in Davos, Switzerland, Jan 23, 2019</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/interview-alexandria-villasenor-climate-striker/">Rebecca Solnit: “Thank you, climate strikers. Your action matters and your power will be felt.”</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/interview-alexandria-villasenor-climate-striker/">“Why Go to School When You Have No Future?” A Q&A With a 13-year Old Climate Striker</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17597181249213102445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-22551138629990097012019-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:002019-03-02T10:32:06.246-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The 2018-19 UUA Common Read is:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Justice on Earth</span>:</i></b></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a></div><br />
This week, I’m looking at Chapter 10: <br />
Peggy Clarke, "Eating the Earth.” <br />
<br />
Rev. Clarke begins with the story of what rewarding fun she found when she joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) – the party with friends who came over to celebrate and partake of the bounty; and learning to can with her neighbors.<br />
<br />
Then she got involved with a project to bring people together across generational lines. A community garden seemed just the ticket. “In light of consistent reports of isolation from every corner of American culture, participating in life-sustaining, communal, multigenerational activities that deepen our connection to Earth could become a healing balm” (110).<br />
<br />
She co-founded InterGenerate, “a small food-justice organization” for establishing community gardens for which participant neighbors pay $50 a year and commit to “shared work and communal engagement.” A couple years in they were up to four gardens and an “experiment of communal caretaking for about 45 chickens with 25 households.”<br />
<br />
Bananas, for instance, from a New York grocery store come to us from Latin American plantations created from deforestation and habitat destruction. They come to us from farm workers who pick them, earning less than a living wage; women who drop them into vats of a carcinogenic solution that slows ripening, at risk of illness and early death from exposure to those chemicals; workers who box them and others who truck them, driving diesel trucks that burn fossil fuels and produce pollutants. <br />
<br />
“I am accountable,” says Clarke, “for how food gets to my plate” (112). I’d say, rather, that we are responsible, but, unfortuntately, <b><i>not</i></b> accountable. Our spirits want and need to be accountable. We yearn for relationships of accountability. The meaning of our lives flows from embeddedness in relationships that compel us to account for ourselves. That we aren’t accountable to the food supply-chain is a part of the problematic modern condition which engenders lives deracinated (literally, “uprooted,” appropriately enough) and alienated. We desperately need relationships that hold us accountable. In the cooperative labor and the sharing of neighborhood gardens, along with the sustaining food, participants are fed by accountings they give and receive, in word and in body -- accountings much more robust and hearty than the wan, abstracted, depersonalized accounting given by the credit card swipe with which we buy bananas.<br />
<br />
Neighborhood gardens build relationships and build community. They reduce our carbon footprint and contribute to saving the planet. They offer an alternative to the food system in which labor is exploited and polluting effects are felt mostly by the poor and communities of color. <br />
<br />
These gardens transform participants from isolated and disconnected lonely individuals into people connected to their neighbors and to the good earth. It’s about the food, “but it’s also about harvesting a deeper way of living. It’s about planting and watering and weeding and harvesting community. It’s about deeper life, better life, shared life. It’s about being transformed” (116)<br />
<br />
Questions:<br />
1. “Food deserts” are places where affordable access to fresh produce and other healthy food options is limited. What food deserts are in and around Westchester?<br />
2. How much do you know about the food supply-chain that brings food to your table? How might knowing more change what you do, and change you?<br />
<br />
For my reflection/summary on previous chapters, click the title:<br />
<ol><li>Jennifer Nordstrom, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-1.html">Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Paula Cole Jones, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-2.html">The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement</a>"</li>
<li>Sheri Prud'homme, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-3.html">Ecotheology</a>"</li>
<li>Sofia Betancourt, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-4.html">Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Adam Robersmith, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-5.html">Cherishing Our World: Avoiding Despair in Environmental Justice Work</a>"</li>
<li>Peggy Clarke, Matthew McHale, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-6.html">Becoming Resilient: Community Life for a New Age</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-7.html">Drawing on the Deep Waters: Contemplative Practice in Justice-Making</a>” </li>
<li>Pamela Sparr, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-8.html">Transforming Unitarian Universalist Culture: Stepping Out of Our Silos and Selves</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, “<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-9.html">Learning to Change: Immersion Learning and Climate Justice</a>”</li>
</ol>Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-42004900337567089082019-02-20T14:38:00.001-08:002019-02-20T14:38:44.810-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The 2018-19 UUA Common Read is:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Justice on Earth</span>:</i></b></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a></div><br />
This week, I’m looking at Chapter 9: <br />
Kathleen McTigue, “Learning to Change: Immersion Learning and Climate Justice.” <br />
<br />
McTigue spent 6 months in the 1980s in Nicaragua as a volunteer host for visiting US citizens encountering the realities of Contra violence. For many, the experience “completely changed their understanding, perspective, and actions – and in some cases, their lives” (97).<br />
<br />
Experiential journeys aren’t always done well, but when they are, participants “see more vividly the ways our political and economic systems leave entire populations in the margins, both within our nation and around the world, and we begin to learn what it can mean to become effective allies to their struggles” (98). <br />
<br />
Approaching climate change with a “justice lens” means learning about and accepting the leadership of the “voices, choices, and needs of these frontline communities most affected.” McTigue offers four guidelines:<br />
<br />
1. <b><i>Always work with a partner organization made up of the people who are directly affected.</i></b> “They are in a position to tell us what they actually need from us, and though that sometimes feels incongruent with our expectations, we are far more likely to be of genuine use” (100).<br />
<br />
2. <b><i>Focus on justice rather than service.</i></b> Service “helps people with an immediate and chronic need,” while justice involves seeking “to challenge and change the systems that give rise to that need in the first place.” Both are important, but the needs of justice are likely to be less tangible and satisfying than service labor. The people need us to hear their stories, “bear witness to their struggles and victories,” “honor the solutions they choose for themselves,” “look unflinchingly at the historic, systemic injustices that may continue to benefit us today,” and “go home prepared to roll up our sleeves and tackle those systems” (102).<br />
<br />
3. <b><i>Use a study framework before, during, and after the program</i></b>. Before you leave, study up about the community you’ll be visiting and the background of your partner organization. During the encounter experience, study yourself – observe with curiosity the reactions you’re having. Continued study after you get home helps integrate your experience. <br />
<br />
4. <b><i>Ground the program and participants in reflection and spiritual practices</i></b>. Group reflection helps collective wisdom emerge. Prayer or meditation quiets our inner noise and helps us be less reactive, more open – and able to set aside the urge to “fix it.” “We come up with a great idea that will surely make things better, like a scholarship program or a solar lamp project. As well-meaning as these ideas may be, if they spring from our own need to be of use and are not rooted in the wisdom of the host community, they are likely to have unintended negative results” (105).<br />
<br />
Questions<br />
1. Would you be interested in taking an immersion justice learning trip? (The UU College of Social Justice has a number of options: see uucsj.org)<br />
2. What “immersion” experience with a frontline community might be available to you right here in Westchester?<br />
<br />
For my reflection/summary on previous chapters, click the title:<br />
<ol><li>Jennifer Nordstrom, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-1.html">Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Paula Cole Jones, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-2.html">The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement</a>"</li>
<li>Sheri Prud'homme, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-3.html">Ecotheology</a>"</li>
<li>Sofia Betancourt, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-4.html">Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Adam Robersmith, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-5.html">Cherishing Our World: Avoiding Despair in Environmental Justice Work</a>"</li>
<li>Peggy Clarke, Matthew McHale, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-6.html">Becoming Resilient: Community Life for a New Age</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-7.html">Drawing on the Deep Waters: Contemplative Practice in Justice-Making</a>” </li>
<li>Pamela Sparr, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-8.html">Transforming Unitarian Universalist Culture: Stepping Out of Our Silos and Selves</a>”</li>
</ol>Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-72686268218554672532019-02-10T19:06:00.000-08:002019-02-11T06:52:40.743-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 8<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The 2018-19 UUA Common Read is:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Justice on Earth</span>:</i></b></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a></div><br />
This week, I'm looking at Chapter 8: Pamela Sparr’s essay, "Transforming Unitarian Universalist Culture: Stepping Out of Our Silos and Selves.” Sparr relates that when she taught about climate justice at a summer institute, she had been warned that participants didn’t want to be “bummed out.” Anyone who speaks about environmental issues faces that question: how to be inspiring rather than paralyzing or depressing. This is what I have said and firmly believe: <b><i>reality is never depressing</i></b>. Depression comes from attempts to block out reality. When those attempts fail and awareness seeps in, mixing and conflicting with our desire for denial, depression is the result. Embrace of reality – with no desire to deny any of it – is many things: fascinating, challenging, invigorating, even oddly peaceful. Reality may be beautiful, dangerous, or both. But <b><i>reality can never be depressing</i></b>. It's denial that's depressing.<br />
<br />
Still, embracing reality is no easy thing. I’m not always great at that myself. But when I’m bummed out or just bored, I ask myself, “what is the reality here that I’m resisting rather than embracing?” <br />
<br />
Sparr’s approach is to call for: <br />
<br />
(1) a bolder prophetic imagination. We need to speak, among ourselves and to others, in visionary ways, showing humanity a better version of itself, offering moral clarity, and an unflinching insistence on justice.<br />
<br />
(2) the courage and capacity to talk religiously. UUs are disproportionately involved in environmental organizations, yet when we show up for this work, our UUism is often invisible. “Our challenge is to move out of our secular skin and to wear our UU skin all the time” (83) – to claim our identity and authority as religious persons. Grounded in our faith, a moral language of hope and justice takes the center – and proposed technical solutions move to the periphery. This means UUs must get comfortable and articulate in about our profound sense of the sacredness of all life, the dignity and worth of every person and every threatened species, our wonder and awe and the interconnected mystery of existence. Faith-rooted solidarity is based on knowing that “my well-being is totally and irrevocably tied up with yours. My liberation is dependent on yours” (84). Acting religiously means that the opposition is never demonized, never “othered,” always loved.<br />
<br />
(3) getting out of our silos. Racial injustice, climate change, sexual harassment and abuse, LGBTQ discrimination, environmental degradation and species extinction are all interconnected and all have the same solution: building a world of justice and equality. We can’t let ourselves get into a “single issue” silo.<br />
<br />
(4) radical relationship building. “We are going to have to stretch ourselves to befriend and collaborate with many different types of people and movements, including those with whom some of us may feel theologically uncomfortable” (90).<br />
<br />
(5) becoming more countercultural. Current culture is characterized by a disconnect from nature and a casual acceptance of power hierarchies (and thus of the injustice and inequality that necessarily inheres in institutionalized hierarchy). Our denomination must transform itself into one that is thoroughly counter to these characteristics.<br />
<br />
Sounds to me like a five-fold approach for embracing reality.<br />
<br />
Questions. <br />
Do you know how to go about doing any of these five? Which ones? How?<br />
<br />
For my reflection/summary on previous chapters, click the title:<br />
<ol><li>Jennifer Nordstrom, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-1.html">Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Paula Cole Jones, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-2.html">The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement</a>"</li>
<li>Sheri Prud'homme, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-3.html">Ecotheology</a>"</li>
<li>Sofia Betancourt, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-4.html">Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Adam Robersmith, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-5.html">Cherishing Our World: Avoiding Despair in Environmental Justice Work</a>"</li>
<li>Peggy Clarke, Matthew McHale, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-6.html">Becoming Resilient: Community Life for a New Age</a>”</li>
<li>Kathleen McTigue, "<a href="https://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/02/justice-on-earth-chapter-7.html">Drawing on the Deep Waters: Contemplative Practice in Justice-Making</a>” </li>
</ol>Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-12412853844454265962019-02-07T21:15:00.000-08:002019-02-07T21:15:17.537-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 7<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>This week I'm reflecting on Kathleen McTigue’s essay, "Drawing on the Deep Waters: Contemplative Practice in Justice-Making” – Chapter 7 of the 2018-19 UUA Common Read, <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a><br />
<br />
UUs, notes McTigue, “agree broadly that any religion worth the name should help shift our behaviors and actions toward the greater good.” This, she says, “is necessary and laudable, but insufficient.” McTigue explains five reasons we need to do the inner as well as the outer work.<br />
<br />
1. Spiritual practices ground us in something bigger than ourselves. “We are connected to and are part of a vast unfolding that we cannot entirely grasp.” Living is not a private affair of the individual – we belong to each other and the universe. When we waste time, we are squandering the universe’s opportunity. This spiritual awareness also helps us attend to care for our fragile planet.<br />
<br />
2. Spiritual practices help us stay in the present moment. Incessant stories play out in our heads. If you pay attention to it, you’ll be appalled at your “monkey mind” – the repetitive, boring, and judgmental running commentary going through our heads virtually every waking moment. “Spiritual practices help quiet the noise in our own heads.” This reduces our reactivity and thus reduces internal conflict within a justice movement that occurs when we trigger each other’s unexamined emotional reactions.<br />
<br />
3. Spiritual practices cultivate the qualities we most want to bring forward. “Despite what we aim for in our moments of high aspiration, we get caught up in the small stuff. Spiritual practices help tilt us back toward our aspirations.”<br />
<br />
4. Spiritual practices remind us that the things we most want to change in the world also exist in ourselves. “If deep inside us we are seething with anger, how shall we be peacemakers? If deep inside us there are the seeds of greed, how will we shift the grotesque chasm between the rich and the poor? Spiritual practices keep us hones, mindful of the fact that the change we want to work for in our world need to be undertaken with a willingness to be changed ourselves.”<br />
<br />
5. Spiritual practices help sustain us through confusion and despair. “Despair, discouragement, helplessness, and confusion may all still go parading through our hearts – but spiritual practices help us hold them within a larger context. . . . In the long arc toward justice, our best efforts are just one small part. This allows us to hold even our despair within the larger frame of this lifetime work. Grounded again in hope, we can then bring that hope back out with us, to all the others who are struggling to find their way in this beautiful, fragile, difficult world.”<br />
<br />
Questions<br />
1. What’s your spiritual practice, and how does it integrate with your justice work?<br />
2. Have you had experiences in your justice work where you later wished you’d been more spiritually grounded?<br />
<br />
Yours in faith,<br />
Meredith<br />
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-90844694850251929642019-02-07T21:13:00.002-08:002019-02-07T21:13:29.834-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 6<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>This week I'm reflecting on Peggy Clarke and Matthew McHale’s essay, "Becoming Resilient: Community Life for a New Age” – Chapter 6 of the 2018-19 UUA Common Read, <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a><br />
<br />
The prophetic task, the authors note, is not merely to decry injustice. It’s more broadly about nurturing, nourishing, and evoking, an alternative community. The essay then develops in two parts:<br />
<br />
1. Resilience-based organizing. Here we learn about Movement Generation, which offers trainings, resources, and support to social movements led by communities of color or low income. Movement Generation’s organizing approach is rooted in community “in a way that reorients power to be more local and democratic.”<br />
<br />
The approach is inspired by such examples as the Black Panthers and MST (Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement -- Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra). The Black Panthers’ less famous programs provided services such as free breakfast for school children, free medical clinics and drug rehab, clothing distribution, and classes on politics and economics. In Brazil, MST peacefully occupies unused land, securing it for the dispossessed. MST sets up cooperative farms, constructs houses, schools, and clinics while working for environmental sustainability and promoting Indigenous culture and gender equality.<br />
<br />
2. Congregations as centers for community resilience. “Houses of worship will need to become centers of hope and resilience.” Doing this will entail congregational engagement with the communities around us -- offering meeting places and shelter, learning centers for reskilling, among other things. “We can start by identifying local ‘front-line communities’ – low-income communities and communities of color who bear the brunt of the devastation of the modern industrial system and who are leaders in the struggle to shift toward a more just and sustainable future.” Once such a prospective community is identified, the congregation’s task is solidarity, listening, relationship-building, humility, and a willingness to take on a support role when asked – NOT to expect to swoop in as the savior or the experts.<br />
<br />
The authors conclude: “Without authentic partnership and without clearly understanding the systemic transformation required, our response to the current climate crisis will be insufficient. . . . Building resilient communities is the transformative response these times demand.”<br />
<br />
Questions<br />
What communities around CUUC are most directly affected by issues in which environment and race come together? How might CUUC develop a relationship of solidarity with those communities?<br />
<br />
One response to the essay might be: “I’m convinced that we need to commit ourselves to supporting and nurturing communities of resilience. But I don’t see any need for congregations. Congregations should simply fold – transferring their land, buildings, and members’ energy to organizations like Movement Generation.” How would you respond to this suggestion? The members of a support network for resilient community would share a kind of “secular faith” – is that faith enough?<br />
<br />
Yours in faith,<br />
MeredithRev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-6071267985511097792019-02-07T21:08:00.001-08:002019-02-07T21:10:01.173-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 5<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>This week I'm reflecting on Adam Robersmith's essay, "Cherishing Our World: Avoiding Despair in Environmental Justice Work" -- Chapter 5 of the 2018-19 UUA Common Read, <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a><br />
<br />
The situation is dire, Robersmith reminds us:<br />
<blockquote>“We are affecting our climate and ecosystem in ways that are detrimental to life on the planet and to how we live….We should have changed as a nation long ago, yet we have not….Research shows that our acts disproportionately affect the poor and oppressed all over the world, yet we continue to use harmful technologies and resources.”</blockquote>Trying to scare people into changing behaviors and policies hasn’t worked terribly well. Robersmith is reminded of our Universalist ancestors. When the predominant theology used fear (of hell) to induce righteousness, our ancestors pointed out:<br />
<blockquote>“The preaching of future rewards and punishments, for the purpose of inducing people to love God and moral virtue, is not only useless, but pernicious.” (Hosea Ballou, 1834)</blockquote>Rather than extrinsic punishments or rewards, argued Ballou, we ought to preach that God and moral virtue are intrinsically worthy and lovely.<br />
<br />
Along similar lines, Robersmith urges that the value of the environment lies not in financial measures or apocalypse prevention. Rather, it is intrinsically worthy and lovely.<br />
<blockquote>“If we, as a nation, a people, or a species, loved this planet as our Universalist ancestors understood loving God, we would have already made so many different choices about how we live on this Earth and with each other.”</blockquote>In particular, by turning away from fear-based arguments about economies and catastrophes threatening all humanity, we can, instead, attend to localized effects on marginalized populations: mountaintop removal and strip mining degrade environments of poor communities; water poisoned with pollutants flows disproportionately into poorer communities of color; for example.<br />
<br />
What Robersmith doesn’t mention is nonattachment to results. Of course, we should as lovingly and as rationally as possible discern strategies most likely to succeed, but sometimes we’ll guess wrong, and other times, even when our strategy has the best odds of success, we will still fail. Plan carefully for success, then let go of attachment to whether success happens. “The victory is in the doing,” as Gandhi said – not in the outcome. <br />
<br />
“Turning off the water while brushing our teeth,” says Robersmith, “makes a difference and is a necessary next act.” But this is either hyperbole or fantasy. If it’s necessary, then one person failing to turn off the water one time means the planet is doomed. In fact, one person saving one quart of water per brush does not, in itself, make any measurable difference to the Earth – especially here in New York where water is plentiful. But it makes a difference to the one who does it. Practices of care change us even if they don’t change the planet. And if we are changed, we are more likely to influence others and do things that do make a difference. The victory, to repeat, is in the doing. <br />
<br />
In leaving out the role of nonattachment to results, the risk is that we may disavow fear-mongering only to find ourselves mongering shame.<br />
<br />
For my reflection/summary on previous chapters, click the title:<br />
<ol><li>Jennifer Nordstrom, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-1.html">Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
<li>Paula Cole Jones, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2018/12/justice-on-earth-chapter-2.html">The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement</a>"</li>
<li>Sheri Prud'homme, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-3.html">Ecotheology</a>"</li>
<li>Sofia Betancourt, "<a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2019/01/justice-on-earth-chapter-4.html">Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice</a>"</li>
</ol>Yours in faith,<br />
Meredith<br />
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-87756191785724177702019-01-11T13:20:00.000-08:002019-01-11T13:20:13.543-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 4This week I'm reflecting on Sofia Betancourt's essay, "Ethical Implications of Environmental Justice" -- Chapter 4 of the 2018-19 UUA Common Read, <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx"><b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></a><br />
<br />
Betancourt got me thinking about the whiteness of the American environmental movement. Searching around, I learned that a survey released 2018 Oct <br />
<blockquote>
“found that about one-third of African-Americans, half of whites, and two-thirds of Latinos and Asians consider themselves to be environmentalists.” (<a href="http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/10/everyone-has-got-to-stop-assuming-that-only-white-people-care-about-the-environment/">Anthropocene, 2018 Oct 30</a>)</blockquote>
OK, so environmentalism is not just a white people’s thing. But it is perceived that way. The survey also found that <br />
<blockquote>
“across racial and ethnic groups, people tended to underestimate how concerned people of color are about the environment, and overestimate how concerned white people are.” (<a href="http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/10/everyone-has-got-to-stop-assuming-that-only-white-people-care-about-the-environment/">Anthropocene, 2018 Oct 30</a>)</blockquote>
Indeed, mainstream environmentalist organizations – groups like the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Nature Conservancy – have, through their long history, consisted largely of upper- and middle-class whites focused on protecting wilderness areas. These groups have made the face of US environmentalism disproportionately white. More to the point, their focus -- protecting wilderness areas – has racial justice implications.<br />
<br />
Consider the question of where to put waste facilities, landfills, dumps, and the most polluting industries. We clearly aren’t going to put them in wealthy, white neighborhoods. So (until we find a way to eliminate such pollution sources), that leaves two options: put them in poorer and darker-skinned neighborhoods, or put them out in an area away from human habitation. The historically predominantly-white environmental organizations (Sierra Club, NRDC, etc) work to keep industries, landfills, etc. from encroaching on our uninhabited areas -- thereby unwittingly pushing toxic pollution into poorer, black or Latino neighborhoods.<br />
<br />
Betancourt cautions against <br />
<blockquote>
“a perilous tendency to sacrifice entire populations of our human family in the name of acting quickly.”</blockquote>
Black and brown folks’ <br />
<blockquote>
“experiences of environmental racism and injustice are erased by a movement born out of an imagined pristine wilderness empty of humanity.”</blockquote>
She cites Aldo Leopold’s ethic –<br />
<blockquote>
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”</blockquote>
This influential principle, however, says nothing about environmental justice. It tends to treat “humanity” as a monolith – something to rein in for the sake of the planet. Instead -- or, rather, in addition -- we must attend to how consequences and risks of environmental destruction are unequally distributed within the human population.<br />
<br />
Questions <br />
<ul>
<li>Our first principle commits us to the worth and dignity of all – and thus to combat racism. Our seventh principle commits us respect the interdependent web – and thus to combat environmental harm. How do you balance and honor both of these imperatives in your spiritual life?</li>
<li>American individualism weakens the ethic of mutual care and engagement necessary for honoring the dignity of all. What are your relationships with communities of color? How might you reach out and deepen those relationships, from an ethic of care and mutuality?</li>
</ul>
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-82439499516008913102019-01-05T18:03:00.000-08:002019-01-05T18:03:24.977-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
The 2018-19 UUA Common Read: Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., <b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b> Available from UUA Bookstore <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx">HERE</a>; from Amazon <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Justice-Earth-Working-Intersections-Environment/dp/155896813X/">HERE</a>.<br />
<br />
This week, chapter 3: Sheri Prud'homme, "Ecotheology."<br />
<blockquote>
“A prevalent theme in ecotheology is the radical interdependence of all existence and the accompanying mandate to view humankind as embedded in a complex web of relationships with other organisms that have intrinsic value.”</blockquote>
With these echoes of the UU 7th principle – and the 1st – ecotheology is substantially connected to UU theology. Significant ecotheologians include Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, John Cobb, Joanna Macy, Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller.<br />
<blockquote>
“All that exists in in relationship with everything. As Ivone Gebara writes in <i>Longing for Running Water</i>, it ‘is not a mechanical interdependence but a living one: a sacred interdependence that is vibrant and visceral’.”</blockquote>
Ecology becomes ecotheology when it encounters a sense of mystery, when the study of the relations of life forms to one another and their environment evokes awe and wonder. Theology, historically and currently, may serve the interests of dominance and empire by coopting God into a story that underwrites the social inequities of its time. Mindfulness of mystery can help protect against such cooptation. African-American writers such as theologian James Cone and Shamara Shantu Riley express the connections between oppression of people, exploitation of animals, and ravaging of nature.<br />
<br />
For many ecotheologians, God does not precede the cosmos, but arose and unfolds with the cosmos. Ecotheology lends itself to <i>pantheism</i> (God and the universe are the same thing), or to <i>panentheism</i> (God and creation are inextricably intertwined, but not identical, as they participate together in creation’s unfolding).<br />
<blockquote>
“As McFague explains in <i>The Body of God</i>, ‘Everything that is, is in God and God is in all things and yet God is not identical to the universe, for the universe is dependent on God in a way that God is not dependent on the Universe’.”</blockquote>
Unitarians and Universalists of the 19th-century foreshadowed many of ecotheology’s concerns. UUs today<br />
<blockquote>
“are increasingly able to participate powerfully in ecumenical and multi-faith efforts when we draw on God language and images that are inclusive, expansive, immanent, and intermingled with the unfolding of creation.”</blockquote>
The writings of ecotheologians provides us a language for connecting with people of other traditions yet one UUs can use with integrity.<br />
<br />
Ecotheology’s ethic emerges from seeing that the source of evil always lies in a good and necessary need taken to excess. Virtue is skill in balancing all needs.<br />
<br />
Questions<br />
<ul>
<li>What seems to you attractive about ecotheology? Are there aspects that give you pause?</li>
<li>How does the power of beauty affect your work for justice?</li>
<li>Ecotheologians are apt to say “God (the holy, the sacred) is <i>in</i> all of the created universe,” or that “God (the holy, the sacred) <i>is</i> the universe,” or that “God (the holy, the sacred) is creativity itself.” How might these thoughts support the work for environmental justice?</li>
</ul>
Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-88053428434887774752018-12-28T19:15:00.000-08:002018-12-29T03:53:19.203-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 2The 2018-19 UUA Common Read:<br />
<blockquote>
Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., <b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b> Available from UUA Bookstore <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx">HERE</a>; from Amazon <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Justice-Earth-Working-Intersections-Environment/dp/155896813X/">HERE</a>.</blockquote>
This week, chapter 2: Paula Cole Jones, "The Formation of the Environmental Justice Movement." <br />
<br />
In 2014, UUs from around the country assembled in Detroit for a "collaboratory" to learn and reflect on our denomination's environmental work. Detroit was a good example of the intersection of environmental issues and urban issues. As local environmental activists showed the UUs around the city, they saw a city <br />
<blockquote>
"dominated by abandoned homes, crumbling industrial plants, and sparsely traveled streets."</blockquote>
They met people<br />
<blockquote>
"fighting for access to municipal water services and the enforcement of clean air stands at recycling plants,"</blockquote>
and saw the work to develop "urban agriculture to meet the city's goal of food sovereignty." They witnessed commitment to the principle, "No one is expendable. Everyone matters."<br />
<br />
When waste sites and polluting industries are located in poorer and darker communities, this may appear to be following the path of least resistance. But this explanation <br />
<blockquote>
"takes the focus off of the systemic nature of oppression; specifically, who gets to make the decisions."</blockquote>
It leaves out the role of <br />
<blockquote>
"racial and ethnic segregation, income inequality, and limited access to resources and policy makers."</blockquote>
The environmental justice movement, still relatively young, corrects this lack. How did this movement emerge?<br />
<br />
The post-WWII boom substantially increased both prosperity and industrial waste and pollution. These two factors led to the modern environmental movement, landmarked by the first Earth Day in 1970. The movement was slow, however, to attend to ways entrenched racial inequality affected environmental decisions. Research by African American sociologist Robert Bullard, published in 1983, found that <br />
<blockquote>
"African Americans making $50,000 to $60,000 per year are much more likely to live in a polluted environment than poor white families making just $10,000 per year."</blockquote>
In 1982, the environmental justice movement broke through to national recognition in a case from Warren County, North Carolina. The sending of PCB-contaminated oil to a landfill in Warren County's poorest and most heavily African American community was resisted by activists seeking to protect their groundwater.<br />
<blockquote>
"More than five hundred people were arrested, including Congressman Walter Fauntroy and pastors Benjamin Chavis and Joseph Lowery."</blockquote>
A citizen class action suit was filed.<br />
<blockquote>
"They did not win the case or stop the landfill, but they successfully launched the environmental justice movement."</blockquote>
In 1991, three hundred people of color gathered for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. The Summit adopted seventeen “Principles of Environmental Justice” which continue to frame and guide the movement.<br />
<br />
Paula Cole Jones concludes:<br />
<blockquote>
“As Unitarian Universalists continue to work on environmentalism and climate change, we must operate with the knowledge of structured racial and economic inequality so that we are truly confronting oppression and doing our part in building the Beloved Community.”</blockquote>
Also read:<br />
<ul>
<li>The Seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the 1991 Summit: <a href="https://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html">HERE</a>.</li>
<li>The Environmental Protection Agency’s <i>Eco-Justice 2020 Action Agenda</i> (2016), 66pp.: <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/documents/052216_ej_2020_strategic_plan_final_0.pdf">HERE</a>.</li>
</ul>
Questions:<br />
<ul>
<li>How well do you know the history of the environmental justice movement? What will you do to become more familiar with this history?</li>
<li>What do you know about federal and state government actions that ameliorate or exacerbate environmental injustices?</li>
<li>Are environmental decisions in Westchester County fair and equitable?</li>
<li>Which communities are at risk? Where do Westchester community officials stand on local environmental justice issues?</li>
<li>What local organizations have been formed by and for people of color and working-class communities to address environmental racism and classism?</li>
<li>How can CUUC partner with people of color in our community?</li>
<li>Who could be invited to speak here about environmental justice?</li>
<li>What can you do to build relationships, trust, and partnerships that make a difference?</li>
</ul>
This week, read chapter 2. Consider and talk about the questions, and any other questions that come up for you. Feel free to click "Comment" below and share your thoughts here. Thank you!Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-14888021679581033282018-12-21T15:52:00.001-08:002018-12-21T16:03:25.476-08:00Justice on Earth: Chapter 1<div style="text-align: right;">
Rev. Meredith Garmon</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.cucmatters.org/search/label/From%20Minister" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PEAiOGsfBxI/WbsDCYQOeYI/AAAAAAAAIig/IVFafUqdMgwVE34qMDvwbktYxI1PtqEXwCLcBGAs/s200/ab6897e5-fbfb-40ba-a7fc-0f13f150e511.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="324" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWInKp6S3iOuPxvWYC74VoyLBwFOo_tdtskiiz8-b_H-27cUeVvyN_OPwYE4Vc9Zio4E-ZvHuWzhxgpQTTicjUwYSiXKJHAJoW5oDjHZfuR3qwTKdqQbd-gbvv7nBuwkjHhXuBok3lOM/s200/1220e.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Let's talk about the Common Read!<br />
<blockquote>
Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, eds., <b><i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class and the Environment.</i></b></blockquote>
Available from UUA Bookstore <a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx">HERE</a>; from Amazon <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Justice-Earth-Working-Intersections-Environment/dp/155896813X/">HERE</a>.<br />
<br />
This week, chapter 1: Jennifer Nordstrom, "Intersectionality, Faith, and Environmental Justice."<br />
<br />
The word "intersectional" is big these days among people thinking about social justice. The word calls attention to how interrelated the various justice issues are. Nordstrom opens with mention of a 10-day "direct action and permaculture training camp" she attended in New Mexico to simultaneously learn sustainability and "build resistance to white supremacy and militarism." Growing food and growing cross-cultural relationships of equality and respect at the same time is one manifestation of "intersectionality."<br />
<br />
The overlap of issues calls attention to the commonalities, but also the differences:<br />
<blockquote>
"For example, women will experience sexism differently depending on their race, class, gender identity, and sexuality. People of color will experience racism differently based on their class, gender, gender identity, and sexuality."</blockquote>
In particular, <i>Justice on Earth</i> looks at Environmental Justice through the lens of intersectionality -- this is, in light of interconnecting systems. Nordstrom shares her experience learning that <br />
<blockquote>
"communities of color were exploited and poisoned through the entire nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mining on Indigenous lands to nuclear weapons production on Indigenous land and the contamination of surrounding Indigenous, Chicano, and Latinx communities to nuclear waste storage in communities of color."</blockquote>
Thus, militarism, colonialism, racism, and the environment interrelate.<br />
<br />
We are thus lead to see that "the environment" "is not simply natural wilderness in need of saving" -- as UUs are prone to view it. It is also roads, industries, urban trees, other people -- everything around us, and all of it shaped by patterns of power.<br />
<blockquote>
"There is not a single experience of the environment divorced from other relationships, or a single experience of humanity divorced from the environment."</blockquote>
For too long UUs have done "justice work in silos" -- an approach that "is not true to our whole lives, or to the wholeness of other people." When we ignore intersectionality, our work "usually caters to the dominant identities within the issue."<br />
<br />
Yet, Nordstrom argues, as important as intersectionality is, equally powerful for us is faith. Our faith as UUs "can ground and nurture our work for environmental justice." Our situatedness in the interdependent web is our "call of the deep to the well of" our souls.<br />
<br />
Related and Recommended: Kimberle Crenshaw's Keynote address to the Women of the World Festival 2016.(30 mins) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA">HERE</a>.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-DW4HLgYPlA" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
Questions:<br />
<ul>
<li>What overlapping patterns of power and oppression have you experienced in your own life?</li>
<li>How have they manifested in the institutions in which you live and work?</li>
<li>How have they affected your experience of you own identity?</li>
<li>What do you know of environmental justice organizations active in Westchester?</li>
</ul>
This week, read chapter 1. Consider and talk about the questions, and any other questions that come up for you. Feel free to click "Comment" below and share your thoughts here. Thank you!Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-39518990506204820052018-12-01T16:07:00.001-08:002018-12-01T16:07:27.590-08:00Peace on Earth -- and Justice<div style="text-align: right;">
Meredith Garmon</div>
<br />
During this holiday season, we will frequently see, hear, and perhaps say the words, "Peace on Earth." Unitarians have been noticing that the words do not match the reality at least since Unitarian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the carol, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" in 1863: "For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men," wrote Longfellow. The challenge to us is to take the words, "Peace on Earth," to heart, reflect on what we've done in the past year to build peace, and what we will commit to do in 2019.<br />
<br />
Let us attend, as well, to Justice on Earth, for peace and justice are intricately interconnected. There will be no peace without justice (for human beings systemically denied justice will agitate for it, including turning to violence when there is no other recourse) -- and, too, no justice without peace (for human beings under attack focus on defending themselves, not fairness to others). I take this not as a chicken-and-egg insoluble dilemma, but as indicating the need to gradually build both at the same time. On the "Justice on Earth" side, I recommend a book of that title.<br />
<br />
Our Unitarian Universalist Association selects a Common Read every year, which all UUs are urged to read. The Common Read for 2018-19 is: Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom, Eds., <i>Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Environment</i> (Skinner House Books, 2018). Here's what UUA says about it:<br />
<blockquote>
"At a time when racial justice, environmental justice, and economic justice are seen as issues competing for time, attention, and resources, <i>Justice on Earth</i> explores the ways in which the three are intertwined. Those on the margins are invariably those most affected by climate disaster and environmental toxins. The book asks us to recognize that our faith calls us to long-haul work for justice for our human kin, for the Earth and for all life. It invites us to look at our current challenges through a variety of different perspectives, offers tools to equip us for sustained engagement, and proposes multiple pathways for follow-up action."</blockquote>
The book is available from the UUA bookstore (<a href="https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx">HERE</a>), or Amazon (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Earth-Working-Intersections-Environment-ebook/dp/B07B9SXHRH/">HERE</a>). Let's read it, talk about it, engage with these ideas, and learn how we can more skillfully contribute to the building of a world of justice and peace.Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-69697348770320033402018-10-16T11:22:00.000-07:002018-10-16T15:55:46.601-07:00From Capture to Criminal -- Juneteenth 2018<div style="text-align: right;">Petra Thombs</div><br />
June 19th was the 153rd commemoration of Juneteenth, an acknowledgement of the end of slavery in the US for African Americans. June 18, was the 566th, anniversary of the signing of the papal bull from 1452, Dum Diversas, which began the process of the enslavement of Africans by Europeans. The effects of these edicts have been far reaching. Consider now that in two days, we will acknowledge the four-year anniversary of the death of Eric Garner. This is in memorial to him:<br />
<br />
In a matter of minutes, he was on the ground, the officers arm wrapped around his neck in a choke-hold. He had just said, “please don’t touch me.” And all for supposedly selling loose cigarettes. (Did he actually have any product on him?) Officers had crowded around him, and as he was a large man, it took several of them to force him to the ground. As he lay there, the one who choked him had his hand pressed on Mr. Garner's head. He whispers, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. The coroner’s report labeled Eric Garner's death a murder by asphyxiation. The officer was not indicted, yet the one who claimed Eric Garner was a criminal, was himself one. He was guilty of over policing, <i>invading</i> Mr. Garner’s space, <i>capturing</i> him, <i>subduing</i> him by use of an illegal choke-hold and <i>vanquishing</i> him on the sidewalk of a Staten Island street. What gave him the right to create such harm, such destruction to a Black body? Trayvon Martin was pursued by a neighborhood watch man who was off duty and was told by the police in his 911 call, <b>not</b> to pursue the teen. Sandra Bland was stopped for not signaling while making a turn, Freddie Grey was pursued for not making eye contact, Tamir Rice was killed in one minute of police arriving for holding a toy gun in a public park, something white children do every day without fear. Orlando Castile was shot and bled to death for identifying that he had a weapon and a carry permit, during a traffic stop. Most recently, Antwon Rose II, an unarmed seventeen-year-old, was shot three times in the back by a rookie officer, who was only sworn in that same morning. Those who protest this unjust treatment are also demonized, such as Collin Kaepernick, football players who take a knee and the Black Lives Matter movement. To invade, capture, subdue and vanquish, these are the directives of the papal bulls of the fifteenth century, living prominently in our modern day, causing terror in communities of color.<br />
<br />
We see this terrorizing at our southern borders as well, with children, babies, being captured and subdued as their parents are vanquished for the supposed crime of seeking asylum. This is only taking place with Black and Brown families. The use of scripture, specifically Romans 13, is a favorite for those looking to enforce enslavement, or subjugation of any kind. The completed verse is as follows: <blockquote>“Be in debt to no one -- the only debt you should have is to love one another…all of the commandments are summed up into one command, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' To love, then, is to obey the whole law.” (Romans 13:8-10)</blockquote>When the Japanese were captured during WWII, and placed in internment camps, their property was seized. Many owned businesses such as retail shops. Many owned farms which were thriving and were strong competition for American farmers, particularly in California. Their farm lands were seized by the government and auctioned off. When the detention period was over, they never regained their property. The very late reparations given to them would not come close to compensating for their losses.<br />
<br />
Former Federal prosecutor, Paul Butler clearly articulates the facts in his book <i>Chokehold</i> stating, <blockquote>“Cops routinely hurt and humiliate Black people because that is what they are paid to do. Virtually every objective investigation of a U. S. law enforcement agency finds that the police treat African Americans with contempt...the official practices of police departments include violating the(ir) rights...The police kill, wound, pepper spray, beat up, detain, frisk, handcuff, and use dogs against blacks in circumstances in which they do not do the same to white people.”</blockquote>So, indeed, Mr. Garner’s cop assailant, engaged in a criminal act against him. Our moral obligation to these horrendous situations is to ask why? Why does this happen (Butler, 2-3)?<br />
<br />
These Papal Bulls operate in our culture today, because we are historically tied to our past, we are tied to the mindset, culture and actions of criminalizing the Other. The world view of ancient Greece and Rome lived on through the church over the ages. Nativism leeched into the policies of the papal bulls after the defeat of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, bringing about the inquisition and the horrors of that period. Good Christian people tortured fleeing Moors and Jews, in order to cleanse their land of these so-called infidels. This justification is revenge and a sense of righteousness. What created this historical mindset begins at an even earlier age, in 98 CE, with Tacitus, a Roman historian, who authored the influential writing known as Germania. This was considered to be one of the most dangerous books ever written -- perhaps not for what he said but for how it was perceived. Author Kelly Brown Douglass explains this theory in her book <i>Stand Your Ground</i>; superiority has precedence to take on a righteous cause. <blockquote>“In the brief space of thirty pages, Tacitus offered an ethnological perspective that would play a significant role in the Nazi’s monstrous program of racial purity. Subsequently, it became the racial specter behind the stand-your-ground culture that robbed Trayvon Martin of his life.”</blockquote>Tacitus’ writings created a construct for white supremacy, insisting that only a certain people of ancient German ancestry possessed superior attributes in character, intellect, in their systems of governance, in their religious institutions and in their society as a whole. The myth further evolved to focus on the blood of the people, emphasizing its purity and the belief in a characterization of white Anglo-Saxon superiority. Its chauvinism made its way across the Atlantic with our founding fathers, to be instilled into our culture. This is the justification of enslavement that Thomas Jefferson wrote of in his <i>Notes on the State of Virginia</i>, that Benjamin Franklin promoted and that George Washington enforced. The Anglo-Saxon language deified by the English has created a belief in our national language -- our mandate for English only, which serves as our country’s internal border wall against any other language, especially those spoken by people of color.<br />
<br />
In these two writings, these subjugating entities, that of Tacitus and the papal bulls, specifically the right of superiority and the right to use it to subjugate non-European Christian peoples, our western culture is armed and fueled with the fire of patriarchy to go forth and conquer the world.<br />
<br />
And so, it began. Columbus, by all standards, was lost, but he knew his rights as a European Christian when he encountered the Indigenous people on the island he named San Salvador. According to his diary, “They would make fine servants...with fifty men, we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want.”<br />
<br />
Although the church at the time and the nobility as well, professed that these people were to be converted to the faith, they would none the less remain Barbarians. They could never be equal to Christians, even if they were baptized, they were no more than “baptized beasts” (<i>Doctrine of Discovery</i>, Stephen Newcomb). The edicts allow for righteous Christians to do the work of the church and handle these difficulties for God. These individuals are deemed to be enemies of Christ. Over time, the identity of white becomes synonymous with Christians. This is no longer the work of the church, <i>this is the work of the imperial state.</i> Often times, it’s hard to tell difference. These newly baptized beasts are not equal, but they have a place in this society. They are to do the work. They will do the work that we won’t do. This justifies placing them into perpetual slavery.<br />
<br />
The Emancipation Proclamation creates a dilemma for this nation: if these “beasts” are not here to do the work for us, then we have a problem. If they are claiming to be equal to us, that defies what we have believed about them for all the ages. The Thirteenth Amendment provides the answer. They are free, unless they commit a felony, at which time we can then re-enslave them, bring them back into balance with our beliefs with the “laws of humanity” (Doctrine of Discovery). Michelle Alexander points out in <i>The New Jim Crow</i>, that the Thirteenth Amendment was finalized during Southern Redemption, and leaves the estate of the felon (and the felon himself) to essentially be “that of a dead man” (Alexander, 31).<br />
<br />
Given that, Eric Garner, a large, heavy set, dark-skinned Black man, had to be put down. He did not appear subdued and dared to speak up in his own defense and assert his rights. He had to be taught a lesson. (“Professor Luban describes) the torturer’s work is inflicting ‘pain one-on-one, deliberately, up close and personal, in order to break the spirit of the victim’- in other words, to tyrannize and dominate the victim” (Butler, 113). “Stop and frisk demonstrates who is in charge, and the consequences of dissent” (113). Apparently, Mr. Garner, paid a high price for his statement of protest. He did not have the right to say, <i>“do not touch me.”</i><br />
<br />
(In the case known as Terry, sets the scene and) Our legal system empowers law enforcement to do whatever they need to do to invade. Author Andrea Richie, describes the indignities of being searched by police. When she objected to him searching through her purse and taking out her identification photo, he said, “I can do whatever I want, because you are my prisoner” (<i>Invisible No More</i>, Richie, 86-7). Butler states,} this makes “law abiding citizens outsiders to democracy.” This happens because certain court cases have set the precedent. Statistics presented in McCleskey v. Kemp indicate that Blacks are far more likely to receive the death penalty for killing whites, than white people convicted of killing Blacks would ever get for the same crime. A Black person killing a white person was twenty-two times more likely to get the death penalty. Despite this data, the court ruling was actually worse than in Plessey v, Ferguson. This case was allowed, in what Butler calls a, “good enough for black people, kind of justice” (122-3).<br />
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I had said that this was an act of state, but the church has it way of staying involved in these matters. On July 14, 2015, an Interfaith Prayer service took place at Mount Sinai United Christian Church on Staten Island, blocks away from where Eric Garner was killed. The service marked the one-year anniversary, although an article in The Catholic paper, did not indicate that a crime had taken place in regard to his death. Cardinal Dolan presided over the service and inquired about healing and reconciliation. <blockquote>“Could the grief that began a year ago just down the street from here and seemed to ooze like a toxic oil spill to places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, and Brooklyn and beyond…be an occasion of repentance and renewal?”</blockquote>Cardinal Dolan asked. Could this year-long trial transform us? From death to life? From winter to spring? He then suggested it could, “but that we must first acknowledge the <b><i>supremacy</i></b> of God.”<br />
<br />
I find the use of the word supremacy, rather triggering in any context in which Blacks have been made to suffer. Mrs. Garner’s husband was killed and yet there is no word of sympathy or effort to console. Is she not worthy of receiving compassion as a grieving widow? I understand that His Eminence is looking to contain and socially control the outrage of the community through the widow of Eric Garner. But how can that be, since he refuses to name the issue at heart, which is the dehumanizing treatment and criminalization of Black people? How can we heal if the sin is not named and the actions associated with it are not addressed? How can we reconcile if the society perpetuates an unequal and unjust dynamic, authorizing the continual subjugation of its citizenry? Why does this widow need repentance? When will the police be held accountable? Scripture demands justice for widows and orphans, the poor and disenfranchised. What actions have been taken to address this situation? Dr. King spoke of the appalling silence of the good people, particularly of his fellow clergy. The late James Cone, father of Black Liberation theology, railed against mainstream theologians for refusing to address race and racism. He was particularly critical of Reinhold Niebuhr. In his book <i>The Cross and the Lynching Tree</i>, Cone wrote, <blockquote>“During Niebuhr’s lifetime, lynching was the most brutal manifestation of white supremacy. He said and did very little about it. Should we be surprised that other white theologians, ministers and churches followed suit?"</blockquote>Our Unitarian Universalist principles are based on a covenant -- to love and to serve, acknowledging the inherent dignity and worth of all. We know that standing with disenfranchised communities means taking on political, even alienating positions. We cannot risk supporting the deception of the state, creating an illusion of justice knowing full well justice is not in the offing. So many churches are orchestrating a criminal enterprise in order to maintain a seat of power aligned to the state. What reconciliation can be made, when the only connection that is sought is not the “supremacy of God” but the supremacy of the empire, whose ultimate goal is the vanquishing of a people? It’s clear that the cardinal refused to acknowledge the issue at hand. The human connection that was needed in this moment was not given; the disconnect and absence of respect was palpable. It is not only sometimes that we experience this, it is day to day, and moment to moment. This is one of many aspects of the legacy of the Papal Bulls -- continually leaking into our current reality, wreaking havoc in communities of color; we must be mindful of its existence. <br />
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In our Unitarian Universalist racial justice circles we continually ask ourselves why are we not making more progress? In order to be able to combat these entities which prevent us from creating the beloved community, we need to know the history; that these entities operate continually, claiming to be on our behalf, in order to preserve this society's structure and power dynamic. Know that it keeps all of us hostage, it is social control, hampering our humanity, making it difficult for any of us to breathe. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><u>Bibliography</u></div><br />
Michelle Alexander, <i>The New Jim Crow</i> (New York, NY: The New Press, 2012)<br />
<br />
Paul Butler, <i>Chokehold: Policing Black Men</i> (New York, NY: The New Press, 2017)<br />
<br />
Kelly Brown Douglas, <i>Stand your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God</i> (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015)<br />
<br />
Andrea Ritchie, <i>Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color</i> (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2011)Poetesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08836200675738895427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-22525866264532772702018-10-10T10:00:00.001-07:002018-10-16T16:08:03.976-07:00Cruelty: The Worst Thing We Do<div style="text-align: right;">Rev. Meredith Garmon</div><br />
Dear Unitarian Universalists,<br />
<br />
I just want to say: thanks! Thank you for siding with love. And against cruelty.<br />
<br />
Isn't everyone against cruelty? As someone raised UU, I grew up assuming that was the case. <br />
<br />
In January 2007, LoraKim and I were living in Gainesville, Florida, so of course we watched the NCAA football championship game that month, and of course we rooted for the home team Florida Gators against the Ohio State Buckeyes. When Florida, slight underdogs going into the game, won 41-14, I was glad. All around me the town was celebrating. <br />
<br />
I was in a celebratory mood myself, and left the TV on for post-game reporting. Post-game shows seem to like to include fan reaction segments -- don't ask me why. They cut to a scene in Columbus, Ohio and showed a woman bedecked in OSU red and white. She was dejected, of course. In fact, she was crying. The broadcast cut back to a Gainesville bar, and two young men who had been watching the bar TV and had just seen the shot of the Ohio woman crying. The young men gleefully jeered and mocked her.<br />
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That was the moment I lost interest in college football. I'd been a football fan all my life, and I understood that jeering and mocking the opposition before the game -- and a certain amount of gloating afterward from partisans of the victor -- were to be expected. Yet I was unprepared for the delight I saw being taken in another's pain: the evident pleasure in cruelty for its own sake. The brief shot of those celebrating Gator fans haunted me. As I processed my horror, a more extreme example of the same phenomenon rose to mind: the photos I'd seen from the 1920s of smiling, celebratory white faces at the lynching of a black person.<br />
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All of this came back to me this week as I read Adam Serwer's article, "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/">The Cruelty is the Point</a>," and Lili Loofbourow's "<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-allegations-yearbook-male-bonding.html">Brett Kavanaugh and the Cruelty of Male Bonding</a>." Cruelty, directed toward women, apparently functions as a bonding mechanism for some men, a means "for intimacy through contempt." Oh, dear God.<br />
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Political theorist Judith Shklar is credited with saying "liberals are the people who think cruelty is the worst thing we do." I am quick to distinguish a religious liberal and a political liberal, recognizing that many people are religiously liberal and politically conservative. I don't know if viewing cruelty as "the worst thing we do" is actually any less prominent among political conservatives than political liberals, but Shklar's point resonates with me as a characterization of religious liberals. Moreover, I have always appreciated that Shklar's way of putting it avoids claiming that liberals actually are less cruel -- just that, when we are, or discover that we have been, we think of it as "being at our worst."<br />
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My life as a Unitarian Universalist has kept me in the company of people with an intuitive revulsion to cruelty -- people who see cruelty as, indeed, worse than, say, betrayal, dishonor, subversion, cowardice, or desecration -- which, of course, can also be devastating human failings. I'm so grateful to all of you who keep UU congregations going, who give your lives to sustaining liberal religious communities, who see cruelty as the worst thing we do and therefore see care and kindness as the best, and who keep lit the flame of care and kindness as the supreme value. During these times when the celebration of cruelty -- seems to be ascendant, the only hope I see is . . . you -- the people who side with love. Thank you. You're lifesavers!<br />
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Gratefully, so gratefully yours,<br />
MeredithRev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-65495811889500630502018-01-20T15:20:00.002-08:002018-01-20T16:38:05.394-08:00Centering for Freedom<div style="text-align: right;">Rev. LoraKim Joyner, DVM</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvYpeXoA4NZVeRTE06vtu4eJjIWCJO2ZI5cDKcbWuZIsQlgbxE-R88Pe0Imh926Jdz48fg0V2Z0MeFxz0m2vNGDQoAScrFbWEpyjD7i8DVU_HhgYNY9s3x64m2049MxKFfwqk17MibKgI/s1600/Joyner-LoraKim03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvYpeXoA4NZVeRTE06vtu4eJjIWCJO2ZI5cDKcbWuZIsQlgbxE-R88Pe0Imh926Jdz48fg0V2Z0MeFxz0m2vNGDQoAScrFbWEpyjD7i8DVU_HhgYNY9s3x64m2049MxKFfwqk17MibKgI/s200/Joyner-LoraKim03.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I was born into a racist culture and family – specifically in Atlanta, Georgia. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1968, only a few months before Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My parents enrolled me in Louise Archer Elementary School an all African American school, founded in a black neighborhood mostly fenced off from white suburbs. I started only a few months after the school had been desegregated and I was in the first batch of white children to attend.<br />
<br />
I found myself making friends quickly Thea, who I invited home so that we could practice a school play. She lived nearby, but on that the other side of that fence, which we climbed to get to my house. My mother came home from work and saw us playing in the living room and told me to get Thea to leave. As soon as she left my mother slapped my face and said, "Don’t you ever bring another _______ into this house again.<br />
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My family has a lot of work to do and so do I to combat that training of seeing more worth in some than others, undoing the fear that I would be loved less if I thought any differently. Though my example is more extreme than many, none of us escape this enculturation.<br />
<br />
My family is not just my biologic nuclear family, but it is my cultural family anchored here in the USA. I didn't know how that family had trained me into a dominating colonizing culture until I started to work in Latin America. I consulted with the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery project. Once a million of these lived on the island precolonization, but by 1973, only 14 remained<br />
<br />
The indigenous people were long gone due to European colonization, and the parrot nearly went extinct due to the large deforestation of the island after the USA invasion and colonization in 1898. The USA collapsed the Puerto Rican economy and put sugar cane all over the island. Due to extreme efforts the parrot numbers somewhat rebounded. But the recent hurricanes this late summer, Irma and Maria, devastated the people and the parrots there, vulnerable due to past and ongoing extraction economies, and instutionalized racist business, taxation, and aid practices.<br />
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My human, USA family has a lot of work to do, and so do I because I benefited and continue to do so at the cost of the many. None of us escapes the work to stop this extraction and domination economy that marginalizes and colonizes.<br />
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I responded to the work my human family and I had to do by taking up the call to UU Ministry. My sense of family grew to incorporate Unitarian Universalism. While preparing for the ministry I learned the long, hard, and painful history of how Unitarian Universalists had made many mistakes in how people of color were treated in our movement, as evidenced by this book, multiple painful episodes since, and ongoing ones as evidences in this book.<br />
<br />
My UU family has a lot of work to do. I know this because I am at the forefront of a UU movement to understand how what harms animals, also harms humans. We ask how extending our sense of the inherent worth and dignity to individuals of all species helps humans too. This work brings up the pain and loss of how deficient UUs have been with people, as well as other species. This is uncomfortable, painful, and stressful, and it seems that none of us can say or do the right thing. Sound like fun? It is hard, but there is a tang of freedom in the air. You are invited to join us as various possible denominational change, votes, and study groups are coming in the future, including reading this book. My family is doing the work, and we need to do more, for we have not won freedom yet<br />
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Our work for freedom means addressing intersectionality. Intersectionality means that oppression is experienced differently based on our various identities. Women experience oppression differently than men, and blacks different from whites, and hence black women experience oppression from being both black and female. The corollary is also true - we benefit from a system that oppressed others based on our identities and locations of privilege. I am white human North American from the lower middle class -this gives me privileges that others have, and oppressions that others don’t have.<br />
<br />
Intersectionality also means that there are core oppressions that intersect all identities. Some call this core oppression patriarchy, which isn't really about men, so relax guys. It is a culture based on seeing different others as less than, which is tied to dominance, power over, white supremacy, and inequality, all of which catch each of us in a sticky web of harm and benefit.<br />
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What does the work of intersectionality look like?<br />
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First off, it is not shame or blame or pointing fingers at who oppresses more or is oppressed more. We all are enculturated to be oppressors and oppressed. We are not to blame, but we are responsible. All of us.<br />
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The world has lived with 500 years of modernity and colonization to hide the reality that we are inextricably tied to one another and all life in beauty, tragedy, and death. "Wishing for life at any price continuously calls forth death - the death of other people, other beings, the extinguishing of languages, ideas cultures, and worst of all, possibilities and degrees of freedom" (Andrea Weber). We all are trapped. Our work for freedom is undoing the core oppression for our co-liberation. For this liberation we must learn to live without fear and to die courageously.<br />
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This is a death of individualism so that all are centered. In the circle of life, the suffering of another is also ours. In the countries I work in Latin America there is constant evidence of the devastation of colonialism and USA foreign policy. The people I work with, descendants of disappeared indigenous cultures and slaves, and the dearth of wildlife, do not let me forget it. But I am so alive there for it takes everything I’ve got to show up and be vulnerable. What began as a wound ends in a caressing touch. I’m undone and then made whole.<br />
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The work for freedom means we center the marginalized voices. Our individualism dies every time we allow another to speak. And we are born again.<br />
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We must center what we marginalize within ourselves. Miki Kashton, a leader in Nonviolent Communication, told me a few weeks ago to not believe a thing you grew up thinking or doing, for it was all based on core oppressions. We need to lay aside the armor that doesn't protect us, but fetters us. Let us lay that burden down.<br />
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We must center ourselves in history, ecology, and biology. We must look at past societal practices and how we have been harmed and benefited. Thanks goodness for our neuroplastic brains which are ready to believe that power over is the only way to meet our needs, but can also learn that cooperation and co-liberation brings flourishing to many lives. We must accept that we will die and no level of control will stop that. We must embrace t reality - to accept all that is now and also, paradoxically, do everything in our power to change it. We are so powerful in freedoms return embrace.<br />
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I am glad that this month's theme for our journey groups is resilience because we tread a fragile path of feeling shame, separation, and oppression, but there is joy lurking in that journey. We can take a beginning step by sharing our social location when we meet with others, without shame or blame, being honest of our privilege and oppression. We confess. Here is an example.<br />
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My name is LoraKim Joyner. I identify as a white human heterosexual female of European descent raised in the southern USA in the lower middle class, 2 generations from Alabama sharecroppers, currently living outside of NY City. My childhood was full of experiences and hard lessons taught from family, friends, the surrounding society, and a dominant oppressive culture that acculturated within me the trappings of privilege, white domination, human domination, as well as victimhood. I am also a mother and grandmother of people who identify as of European/indigenous descent from Honduras. My work in the world is as conservationist throughout Latin America, wildlife veterinarian, Unitarian Universalist minister, and a Compassionate Communication trainer and practitioner.<br />
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All of this history and categories of oppression and oppressor cannot be unwoven from my relationships. They form me but they do not bind me. We can help each other loose these chains of bondage by sharing how my message and this congregation intersect with your identities, experiences, and locations of oppression and privilege.<br />
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I am held rapt by the power and hope of freedom won together, for none are free until all are free. My father in his older years nearly died of heart failure, but miraculously a heart match was found for him quickly. He was a small man so the heart of an African descent girl who had died in a car accident became his. My parents were grateful, and softened.<br />
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Let us not let death, or the fear of death, keep us from giving our hearts to one another.LoraKim Joynerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07305359695072392847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-80097167976819640242018-01-06T15:08:00.000-08:002018-10-10T10:55:46.877-07:00Centering 1: Darrick Jackson, "Othering and Belonging"<div style="text-align: right;">
Rev. Meredith Garmon</div>
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<i>A reflection on Darrick Jackson's "Othering and Belonging." Jackson's essay appears in Mitra Rahnema, editor, </i>Centering: Navigating Race, Authenticity, and Power in Ministry<i> (Skinner House, 2017).</i><br />
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<b>The Stress of Being Black</b></div>
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Shortly before I began reading <i>Centering</i>, I heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition that brought home in a particularly poignant way one of the myriad effects of US racial prejudice. The Center for Disease Control has reported on the infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births in 2015. For white nonhispanic Americans, the rate was 4.8%. For Hispanics, it was 5.2%. For black nonhispanic Americans, it was 11.7% -- more than twice the rate for whites. OK, that's appalling. But why is it happening? Is it poverty? Is it genetics? NPR's Rhitu Chaterjee and Rebecca Davis reported:<br />
<blockquote>
"Scientists and doctors have spent decades trying to understand what makes African-American women so vulnerable to losing their babies. Now, there is growing consensus that racial discrimination experienced by black mothers during their lifetime makes them less likely to carry their babies to full term." (<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/20/570777510/how-racism-may-cause-black-mothers-to-suffer-the-death-of-their-infants">"How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants," Morning Edition, 2017 Dec 20</a>)</blockquote>
The essence of the matter is stress on the mother. Stress causes early labor, thus premature births, thus higher infant mortality. This gives us a very concrete manifestation of the stress of being black in America.<br />
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"Even educated, middle-class African-American women were at a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies with a lower chance of survival....Black and white teenage mothers growing up in poor neighborhoods both have a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies. 'They both have something like a 13 percent chance of having a low birth weight baby.'...But in higher-income neighborhoods where women are likely to be slightly older and more educated, 'among white women, the risk of low birth weight drops dramatically to about half of that, whereas for African-American women, it only drops a little bit.' In fact, today, a college-educated black woman is more likely to give birth prematurely than a white woman with a high school degree....Some people suggested that the root cause may be genetics. But if genes are at play, then women from Africa would also have the same risks...[But] babies of immigrant women from West Africa...were more like white babies — they were bigger and more likely to be full term. So, it clearly isn't genetics....[Moreover,] the grandchildren of African immigrant women were born smaller than their mothers had been at birth. In other words, the grandchildren were more likely to be premature, like African-American babies....Meanwhile, the grandchildren of white European immigrant women were bigger than their mothers when they were born....'So, there was something about growing up black in the United States and then bearing a child that was associated with lower birth weight.'...What is different about growing up black in America is discrimination....'It's hard to find any aspect of life that's not impacted by racial discrimination, whether you're talking about applying for a job, or purchasing a new car, finding housing, getting education....' Higher education and income did not necessarily mean people experienced less discrimination....In 2004, David and Collins published a study...in which they reported the connection between a mother's experience of racism and preterm birth. They asked women about their housing, income, health habits and discrimination. 'It turned out that as a predictor of a very low birth weight outcome, these racial discrimination questions were more powerful than asking a woman whether or not she smoked cigarettes.'...Other studies have shown the same results. (<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/20/570777510/how-racism-may-cause-black-mothers-to-suffer-the-death-of-their-infants">"How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants," Morning Edition, 2017 Dec 20</a>)</blockquote>
In what does this extra race-based stress consist? For some details, I looked at <a href="https://www.thenewprogressive.net/ultimate-white-privilege-statistics/">J.B.W. Tucker's "The Ultimate White Privilege Statistics and Data Post"</a>." A few lowlights:<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from the fact that Blacks are less than 13% of the populations, yet, as best we can tell since many police departments do not report, blacks are 31% of all fatal police shooting victims, and 39% of those killed by police when not attacking. Yes, it's worth remembering that 61% of the "killed by police when not attacking" category are <b><i>not</i></b> blacks. Still, the number that are is disproportionate.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from the fact that young black males, ages 15-19, are 21 times more likely to be to be shot and killed by the police than young white males. Between 2005 and 2008, 80% of NYPD stop-and-frisks were of blacks and Latinos. Only 10% of stops were of whites. 85% of those frisked were black; only 8% were white. Only 2.6% of all stops (1.6 million stops over 3.5 years) resulted in the discovery of contraband or a weapon. Whites were more likely to be found with contraband or a weapon.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from the fact that blacks (remember, 13% of the U.S. population) are 14% of regular drug users, but are 37% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 56% of those in state prisons for drug offenses.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from the fact that one in every 15 black men are currently incarcerated, while for white men the statistic is 1 in 106. Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from the fact that whites are 78% more likely to be accepted to the same university as equally qualified people of color -- and that a black college student has the same chances of getting a job as a white high school dropout. For every dollar a white man makes, white women make 78¢, black men make 72¢, black women make 64¢.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from Voter ID laws, which do not prevent voter fraud, but do disenfranchise millions of young people, minorities, and elderly, who disproportionately lack the necessary government IDs.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from news reporting that regards black lives as less significant. African American children comprise 33.2% of missing children cases, but only 19.5% of cases reported in the media.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from knowing that financial institutions expect to be able to exploit you and take advantage of you. In 2009, bailed-out banks such as Wells Fargo and others were found to have pushed minority borrowers who qualified for prime loans into subprime loans, which can add more than $100,000 in interest payments to a mortgage over the life of the loan. Among high-income borrowers in 2006, African Americans were three times as likely as whites to pay higher prices for mortgages: 32.1% compared to 10.5%. Black car buyers are charged $700 more on average than white car buyers of the same car.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from consciously or unconsciously racist real estate agents. When looking for a home, black clients looking to buy are shown 17.7% fewer houses for sale, and black renters learn about 11 percent fewer rental units.<br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from facing hiring discrimination. In one study thousands of identical resumes were mailed to prospective employers -- identical except only for the name. A black sounding name – say, Daunte Williams instead of David Williams – was 50% less likely to be called back. <b><i>Fifty percent.</i></b><br />
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The stress of being black in America comes from a medical establishment and a political establishment that doesn't care about you as much as it does for white folks. Doctors did not inform black patients as often as white ones about the option of an important heart catheterization procedure. White legislators – in both political parties -- did not respond as frequently to constituents with black sounding names.<br />
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"<a href="https://www.thenewprogressive.net/ultimate-white-privilege-statistics/">The Ultimate White Privilege Statistics and Data Post</a>" has a lot more data . If you don't know it, take a look.<br />
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<b>Darrick's Dilemma</b></div>
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It's a good idea to have this reality clearly in mind as one begins reading <i>Centering</i>. Were it not for this reality, then Rev. Derrick Jackson's essay, "Othering and Belonging," which opens the book might seem to be merely Rev. Jackson's statement that his preferences in worship style differ from most other UUs.<br />
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Rev. Jackson was raised in the AME Church. When he says, "I often ache for the music that makes my heart soar," he means the kind of music he was used to growing up. Whether Jackson also thinks that this music is objectively better, more heart-soaring, regardless of one's upbringing, isn't entirely clear. That is, is typical UU worship music different from AME worship music because UUs find a different style of music makes their hearts soar, or because UUs prefer not to have their hearts soar in worship? I don't know what Jackson would say, but sometimes he seems to imply the latter:<br />
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"Music can evoke a deep spiritual strength in me that helps me transcend the issues and concerns in my life. In worship, it can help me connect with the theme for the service in a visceral way. But most UU hymns feel like vehicles for the words, not for an experience of the holy." (4-5)</blockquote>
The point seems to be more than just that Jackson personally doesn't experience the holy in UU hymns, but that UUs have opted for hymns in which human beings generally will not experience the holy.<br />
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The same goes for sermons. UUs "look for sermons that make them think and find sermons that stir the heart lacking" (5). Again: is it that other UUs find their hearts stirred by a different kind of sermon from the kind that stirs Jackson's heart? Or do UUs prefer sermons that don't stir their hearts? Jackson's implication seems to be the latter. When he says "I want to touch the heart, to nurture the soul," he implies that "the intellectual sermon" typical of UUs doesn't do those things.<br />
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I suspect Jackson is <i>mostly</i> right about that, but that that's not the whole story. Suppose we grant that typical UU sermons touch UU worshipers' hearts less than AME sermons touch AME worshipers' hearts. Even so, those UU sermons do touch the hearts and nurture the souls of many listeners more than they do Jackson's -- and a more AME-styled sermon would touch their hearts less than it would Jackson's.<br />
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It's <i>possible</i>, I think, to be both intellectual and heart-stirring. A. Powell Davies' sermons made worshipers think and also quickened their pulses, fortified their spirits, and expanded their souls. Granted, even Davies wasn't universally appealing -- even in his time, and even among worshipers theologically aligned with Davies, some worshipers found the thinking getting in the way of the feeling and would have preferred more feeling. For the great bulk of preachers less gifted than Rev. Davies, the either/or of mind OR emotion/body/spirit is transcended less far and less often. The practical reality is that one side or the other will be emphasized. Sunday after Sunday, the average UU minister leans more to the intellectual than the average AME minister, and the average UU worshiper is less heart-stirred and more mind-stimulated than the average AME worshiper. Is that a bad thing? Or are both groups pretty much getting what they want and what feeds them?<br />
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Here's why it's a problem. At the first level, people want both their theological preferences and their worship-style preferences satisfied. If worship-style preferences were the only dividing line among US congregations then having different congregations with different worship styles would be all we needed. But Americans also fall into different theological groupings. People who, like Jackson, have a theology that is liberal but a worship-style preference that is body-experiential and emotive currently have no very satisfactory home. I do believe that Unitarian Universalism must make itself into a more satisfactory home for people like Jackson -- or Unitarian Universalism will (and will deserve to) whither and die.<br />
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At the second and deeper level, my phrase "worship-style preference" must now be exposed as misleading. There are worship <i>needs</i> at stake that are not mere preferences. And Jackson's experience cannot be reduced (as, so far, I have been doing -- in order to now expose its reductiveness) to the experience of finding UU worship different from the worship to which he happened to have grown up accustomed. What's at issue isn't just (as it might initially appear) a fond nostalgia for childhood church experiences.<br />
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Race is fundamental to all our experience (though whites find this easier to ignore -- that's part of our privilege), and Jackson's experience as a black American is fundamental to his. This is why I began this post with an extended account of the stresses of being black in America. The music and preaching of AME worship is not accidental. Such worship emerged and was sustained because it responded to the needs (not "preferences") of a community under tremendous stress.<br />
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Nor is the music and preaching of historically-typical UU worship accidental. It is a response to the needs of people whose bodies are not at risk, who have sufficient physical security to indulge the luxury of philosophical exploration. They -- let me say, we -- may, indeed, find our hearts stirred and souls cultivated (interestingly distinct from "nurtured," isn't it?) by these explorations because we can take for granted a certain basic belongingness. Our experience of alienation and partiality (i.e., not feeling whole) is based more in ideas than in direct threats to our bodies, so our path of healing depends more on engaging with ideas. It's not that the ideas we explore in worship don't touch our hearts and lift our spirits -- for our predominantly white, middle-class congregations, they often do. But (a) they don't do much to touch Darrick Jackson's heart or lift his spirit, and (b) folks like Jackson won't find their hearts much touched or spirits much lifted in worship unless that worship addresses the fundamental stresses to which their lives are subjected.<br />
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<b>How Can This Change?</b></div>
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If belongingness is the, or at least a, fundamental psychospiritual need of corporate worship, the belongingness that UU worship has tended to provide for its predominantly white, well-educated congregations is reassurance of a place within the structures of white privilege. Our community-building provides networking for mostly whites. Our pastoral sermons have often assured congregants "you're OK" within a system of unjust privilege. Our social action has flowed at least partly from an attempt to conscientiously deploy our privileges to "do good" -- and thereby make ourselves feel that we deserve to have these privileges, and are "at home" with them. In short, the belongingness our worship and our congregations have offered is belongingness within white power. (Yes, we have occasionally been able to extend that belongingness to a few people of color -- but this is because the structures of white power themselves admit a few exceptional people of color.)<br />
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The challenge is to proffer a different kind of belongingness. At first, we would offer it mostly to white people because those are currently most of the people in our congregations. The new ground of belongingness that I have in mind depends on identifying with -- not just sympathizing or even empathizing with -- the sufferings and stresses of all people. Their suffering is apprehended as my suffering; their stress is understood as my stress.<br />
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"All the pains, the joys, the sufferings, the cries of everyone in the universe are as such my own pain, my joy, my suffering, my cry....A straightforward look at our present world as it is will manifest the state of suffering of countless living beings, those suffering in the midst of dehumanizing poverty, where malnourished babies die every minute, and where many continue to die victims of violence both individual and structural. All this is <i>my very own</i> suffering, and my body is racked with pain from all sides. And I cannot remain complacent and unconcerned; I am literally inspired by an inner dynamism to be involved in the alleviation of this pain and suffering, in whatever capacity I am able." (Ruben Habito)</blockquote>
Darrick Jackson observes that UUs tend to find "sermons that stir the heart lacking." Even if we are allowed the qualification that we love sermons that stir <i>our</i> hearts, it's true that we haven't much cared for the kind of worship that is healing for people who live under much greater social stresses than middle-class whites. If we are to become a people who appreciate, who yearn for, who <i>need</i> the kind of worship that theologically liberal American blacks like Rev. Jackson appreciate, yearn for, and need, then we need a theology that takes on the stresses blacks face <i>as our very own</i>. Care, of course, must be taken not to do this appropriatively, and not to claim any of the moral high ground that comes from being a voice of the oppressed. We can't speak or act or judge as, for, or on behalf of the oppressed. We can simply take in the pain and grasp it as our own.<br />
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We can revise one of our hymns -- Sarah Dan Jones' "Meditation on Breathing," which goes:<br />
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When I breathe in, I breathe in peace.<br />
When I breathe out, I breathe out love</blockquote>
We can replace this with something more like <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-tonglen/">tonglen practice</a>, in which we take in the suffering of ourselves and others on the in-breath, and on the out-breath send back compassion to ourselves and all who suffer. A single word change yields:<br />
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When I breathe in, I breathe in pain.<br />
When I breath out, I breathe out love.</blockquote>
After about 10 minutes of chanting that, even white UUs with PhDs might be ready and eager for the most joyful, emotive, embodied, lively, shouting and dancing worship that Darrick Jackson could imagine.<br />
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And if not, well, it would still be a start.Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-57121137011788118192017-10-19T12:11:00.001-07:002018-01-20T16:34:35.646-08:00Steadfast in the Craziness<div style="text-align: right;">Rev. Meredith Garmon, Oct 3</div><br />
Hurricane Maria brought suffering to millions in Puerto Rico. Water is in short supply, the power is out on much of the island, communications are down, and temperatures are hitting 44 degrees C -- which is 112 F. It's a deadly dangerous situation for critically ill hospital patients. The San Juan airport is packed with people there to get a one-way ticket off the island. <br />
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In Las Vegas, Steven Paddock fired from a hotel into a concert crowd, killing 59 and injuring about 500 more. <br />
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Our distress at these two disasters is compounded by our country's tepid response. In the one case, thankfully, aid is arriving in Puerto Rico. Getting it distributed to the places it is most needed remains a huge challenge which we could do more to help address. In the other case, the most needed response is reasonable gun control legislation -- which our legislature is incapable of passing. <br />
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Other calamities of recent months include the Transgender Military Ban, the rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), violence and white supremacy in Charlottesville. <br />
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The world may seem to be getting crazier, harsher, crueler. Our task remains what it always is: to love, to connect in empathy and kindness, to seek understanding, to give help where we can, to keep doing the work of peace and justice. There are many so committed. We are not alone. As the poet Adrienne Rich put it:<br />
<blockquote>My heart is moved by all I cannot save: <br />
so much has been destroyed <br />
I have to cast my lot with those <br />
who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power <br />
reconstitute the world.</blockquote>Rev. Meredith Garmonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600609816550758194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-20982755890476869142017-10-11T21:53:00.000-07:002018-01-20T16:33:42.817-08:00On Statues and Statutes, Part 3<div style="text-align: right;">
Cindy Davidson</div>
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As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We are called to bear witness to those whose worth, dignity and rights are denied. We are called to answer the call to love and defend those rights. Knowing this, delegates of the 2012 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Associations, our annual large gathering, passed a responsive resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. Delegates called it “a relic of colonialism, feudalism, and religious, cultural, and racial biases having no place in the modern-day treatment of indigenous peoples.” (See <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.uua.org/action/statements/doctrine-discovery">https://www.uua.org/action/statements/doctrine-discovery</a>)<br />
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The resolution called “upon our Association to invite indigenous peoples into a process of Honor and Healing (often called Truth and Reconciliation) and to consider Unitarian, Universalist and Unitarian Universalist complicity in the structures and policies that oppress indigenous peoples <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and the earth</i>.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">The work of truth and reconciliation, the work of justice-making and being good allies to Indigenous Peoples today rests not solely with our Association’s leaders. We, too, play an important role. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">We can cultivate relationships with the Indigenous Peoples in our own area and learn more how they would like<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> us</i> to follow <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> lead in addressing their current challenges. For us, that would be the Ramapough Tribe in Mahwah, New Jersey which maintains the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/splitrockprayercamp/">SplitRock Sweetwater Prayer Camp</a>, working to educate citizens and protect sacred lands and waters from the environmental threats of proposed pipelines. The Westchester Indigenous Collaboration is in development in a neighboring UU congregation to offer support and partnership to the prayer camp. Stay tuned for ways to become involved.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">UU minister Colin Bossen, in his award-winning sermon, “This Land is Your Land?” picks up on how the Doctrine of Discovery, which he describes as a “product of human imagination,” “is one of those hidden sources of human suffering that needs to be revealed [not only because of the atrocities][but also because] it remains present ….. within the way most European Americans think about our relationship to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">land</i>.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">He urges those of us who are primarily of European descent “to enter into right relationship with the land and her original inhabitants, our indigenous” kin, that is “to reconcile ourselves to our mother earth and all of her peoples who our ancestors harmed, and who we continue to harm, through the ongoing process of colonialism.” (</span><a href="http://colinbossen.com/the-latest-form-of-infidelity/13604898"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">http://colinbossen.com/the-latest-form-of-infidelity/13604898</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Neither we, nor any peoples, are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">owners</i> of the land, of this earth, though we may “own” a sense of discovery as we encounter new lands, landscapes and people on our life journeys or legally own a title or rights to specified land.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Rather, we are of this earth… waters, fire, atmosphere, sun, moon, the stars. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">“Earth forms us,” we sang earlier. “Then, let us with justice, willing and aware, give to earth, and all things – [all peoples] – living liturgies of care.” (</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“We are Not Our Own.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Singing the Living Tradition Hymnal, #317. </i>UUA, 1992)<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Let us “create a new inheritance for the future, … recognize and abandon the familiar attitudes and practices that do not serve the whole, … and assist in dismantling paradigms of oppression and suffering.” (</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Spoken Invocation: “Being Human Means We Are of This Earth” by Sweethome Teacup: </span><a href="https://www.uua.org/worship/words/invocation/being-human-means-we-are-earth"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">https://www.uua.org/worship/words/invocation/being-human-means-we-are-earth</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Let us build the way to a future that “honors the gifts of the people who were here before … that heals wounds, makes amends, and honors the holiness of all humanity.” (</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Reading: “Call to Worship for Indigenous People’s Day” by Rev. Jason Cook. Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Fullerton, CA. October 5, 2017.)<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Let us lift up, honor and celebrate Indigenous Peoples this day and every day. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">May it be so.</span></span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;"><a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2017/10/on-statues-and-statues-part-1.html">On Statues and Statutes, Part 1</a> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;"><a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2017/10/on-statues-and-statues-part-2.html">On Statues and Statutes, Part 2 </a></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04337745853544684161noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033096674358289358.post-19076971240704161812017-10-11T21:50:00.003-07:002018-01-20T16:29:48.556-08:00On Statues and Statutes, Part 2<div style="text-align: right;">
Cindy Davidson</div>
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We can’t quite concur that what’s past is past with Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery. That’s because the Doctrine of Discovery has been articulated and used in US courts and become part of a body of federal Indian law and that has been used to deny tribal sovereignty and land rights for almost two hundred years and continues to be used in case law. It has also been a key tenet in statutes that infringe upon the freedoms, rights and thriving of African Americans.<br />
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In 1823, US Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall used it to argue “that ‘superior genius of Europe’ claimed an ascendancy over the Indigenous peoples and that the bestowal of civilization and Christianity was ample compensation to the inhabitants (Dunbar-Ortiz 29).” He also argued that “discovery” of a land equaled conquest and the Doctrine “becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questioned (46).”<br />
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Later, beginning in 1887, the Doctrine was used in the Dawes Act, the General Allotment Act in effect until 1934 which divided treaty lands into privately held lots meant to undermine tribal communal life. This was also “a massive land grab by the United States, with a loss of two-thirds of Indian treaty lands by an act of legislation (55).”<br />
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Lastly, as recently as 2005, the US Supreme Court has cited the doctrine in a decision concerning the Oneida Indian Nation of New York <a href="http://doctrineofdiscovery.org/">(doctrineofdiscovery.org)</a>.<br />
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Cherokee anthropologist Russell Thornton estimates a pre-contact Indigenous population in North American of seven million plus. “By 1890, 228,000 American Indians were counted in the US, … a population decline of roughly 97 percent (Dunbar-Ortiz 28).” A complete litany of the <span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">genocide, cultural genocide, and other mistreatments of our Indigenous Peoples perpetuated by the Doctrine of Discovery and its way of shaping thinking, behavior and legal decisions, is best summarized and revealed, I think, by this confession, apology and pledge from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.<br />
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In September 2000, Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, offered these remarks at a ceremony marking the 175th Anniversary of the establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I share here excerpts that resonate with me, inspire my reflection and engender a similar humility as a white person benefiting from settler colonialism at the expense of our kin of color. Gover writes:</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">… this is no occasion for celebration; rather it is time for reflection and contemplation, a time for sorrowful truths to be spoken, a time for contrition. </span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">From the very beginning, the Office of Indian Affairs was an instrument by which the United States enforced its ambition against the Indian nations and Indian people who stood in its path, … to execute the removal of the southeastern tribal nations, …. and to participate in the ethnic cleansing that befell the western tribes. … The deliberate spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use of the poison alcohol to destroy mind and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children made for tragedy on a (ghastly) scale. This agency and the good people in it failed in the mission to prevent the devastation. And so, great nations of patriot warriors fell.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">After the devastation of tribal economies and the deliberate creation of tribal dependence on the services provided by this agency, this agency set out to destroy all things Indian … (it) forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government, and made Indian people ashamed of who they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these acts against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The legacy of these misdeeds haunts us. ... </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">These wrongs must be acknowledged if the healing is to begin.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Let us begin by expressing our profound sorrow for what this agency has done in the past. ... On behalf of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I extend this formal apology to Indian people for the historical conduct of this agency.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">We accept this inheritance, this legacy of racism and inhumanity. And by accepting this legacy, we accept also the moral responsibility of putting things right.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">Never again will this agency stand silent when hate and violence are committed against Indians. Never again will we allow policy to proceed from the assumption that Indians possess less human genius than the other races. Never again will we be complicit in the theft of Indian property. Never again will be appoint false leaders who serve purposed other than those of the tribes.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Never again will we allow unflattering and stereotypical images of <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Indian people to deface the halls of government or lead the American people to shallow and ignorant beliefs about Indians. Never again will we attack your religions, your languages, your rituals, or any of your tribal ways. Never again will we seize your children, nor teach them to be ashamed of who they are. Never again.</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Together, we must wipe the tears of seven generations. Together, we must allow our broken hearts to mend. Together, we will face a challenging world with confidence and trust. Together, let us resolve that when our future leaders gather to discuss the history of this institution, it will be time to celebrate the rebirth of joy, freedom, and progress for the Indian Nations. </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">(Complete remarks at </span><a href="https://www.indianaffairs.gov/sites/bia.gov/files/assets/public/pdf/idc1-032248.pdf"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">https://www.indianaffairs.gov/sites/bia.gov/files/assets/public/pdf/idc1-032248.pdf</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">May we as a country be up to that formidable task.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2017/10/on-statues-and-statutes-part-3.html">On Statues and Statutes, Part 3</a></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><a href="http://www.voicesofliberalfaith.org/2017/10/on-statues-and-statues-part-1.html">On Statues and Statutes, Part 1</a> </span></div>
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