Relay For Life and the moral compass

I posted the note below in April 2009, after a successful Relay For Life. We'll be doing the Relay again next month, this time not at the behest of the kids, though some of them will be joining us. This time we adults have some personal drive to Relay, as many people we love have been touched or taken by cancer this year.

When I read the story at LifeNews calling for a boycott of Relay For Life and likening participation to supporting Nazi  experiments at Dachau, I decided to revisit this issue.

We can have a conversation on stem cell research, sure.  I will insist that you understand 1) we are not talking about embryos but about cells that are destined for destruction, and 2)  someone close to me has been benefiting from all that research lately so my opinion is more hardened now.

What I won't do is offer respect to or "tolerance" to the idea that a community coming together to raise precious funds for research, education, and care can be compared in any way to Nazis, or the suggestion that any compassionate God would tell a kid or their parent to stand down when given the opportunity to be of help. 

When I write below about the baggage that comes with the word "religion", this is what I mean. I have come to terms with the fact that a large minority of "Christians" have hijacked the very concept in order to construct a world in their own image. They make me terribly angry, but I can hold the concept of religion apart from them.  I don't wonder why other people, especially young people, can't, however.

Anyway, my note below. It was popular a couple of years ago. I still feel pretty good about it.

 April 27, 2009

So yes, this weekend was all about Relay for Life. And in addition to the tired and the proud and the giggles I brought home with me, I brought some thoughts that keep swirling through my brain.

 First, I should make clear: we relay because some of our kids feel very strongly about this cause. One of them has been relaying every year since he lost his mom to cancer. A couple more wanted to get involved when their grandmother was diagnosed. So we relay as a team because they asked: not because the grown ups thought it was a swell idea.

 But that's not what my note is about. My note is about who my community is, who our kids are, and how sick I am of being told by mainstream so-called moral leaders that religious or political liberalism means the death of a moral society.

 The Relay kicks off with a ceremony. The Boy Scouts raise the flag, followed by the pledge of allegiance and the singing of the national anthem. Then there's a prayer.

 My kids are in a church group, yes. But some of them (most, maybe) have difficulty with identifying themselves as "religious", for many of the same reasons that liberal adults do. "Religion", unfortunately, is a word with baggage. It carries with it notions of dogma and conformity and unreason. It brings visions of group-think and bigotry and mob mentality. It carries an idea of "God" that many are uncomfortable with.

 So we try to talk a lot about what it means to be us- to be a part of a liberal religion, where we are encouraged to figure it all out according to our own conscience, and to support each other on our paths. We talk of religion as a joining together, rather than as a school of thought.

 So a local minister offered a prayer on Saturday morning.

 He began rather beautifully. He asked for God to be with us as we recall the people we've lost, as we celebrate the people who're still fighting, to recognize and be with us in our pain. I'm a Universalist at heart, and so it's reflexive for me to translate certain words so that they work for my own spirituality. I don't have to picture or to speak to that minister's idea of God, and I don't ask for direct intercession while I hear and internalize his words. That's not part of my world.

 And this is the kind of prayer I am comfortable discussing with the kids. How we can take the prayer and make it meaningful to ourselves, appreciate the love that the minister is trying to communicate, respect the fact that he has a very different path than we do.

 Ah, but then he went on.

 He began to speak to his God about the sins of our society, the things we do, the policies we embrace, which are against God and which doom us to things like cancer.

 He went on to decry the removal of prayer from schools, and how we're raising successive generations of Americans without a moral compass.

 At that point, I checked out. Literally. I left the stands and went on a supply run, thinking all the way out, speak for yourself, asshole.

 Because my kids- and especially my son- do not lack a "moral compass". They somehow do not need engraved tablets to tell them how to behave in a civilized society. They somehow have developed empathy and compassion and respect without prayer in school, or, for that matter, in church.

 They have these things because they are each brilliant and deep and they are encouraged to think about what they believe, about what responsible action means, about what they want the world to look like and what their place is in that world. They have these inherent qualities because they are surrounded with family and community who care about them and who model right behavior, and who demand the same from them.

My kids weren't tramping around making noise and talking loudly during the Luminaria ceremony and the reading of the names. My kids weren't stealing food and making disgusting messes that no one cleaned up. My kids weren't yelling "GIMME THAT, YOU QUEER!" at each other in the middle of the night. My kids are silly and passionate, and held forth on neuroscience and male/female differences and ageism and a host of other topics all night, challenging the adults when they didn't agree with us. 

My kids weren't unchaperoned. While the majority of the teen teams were completely without responsible traditional Christian adults all night, my kids had crazy liberal grown ups sitting with them in camp, and they put up with my nagging (and usually reassure me that it's ok when I nag like the middle aged mom that I am).

My kids, in short, rock. And they're the people that I want to create society as they grow. They're the ones who give me hope that the world will not only go on, but will become a better place, in small ways and large, as they take charge.

So stop telling me that liberalism is the scourge of morality.

And no, my son doesn't need your prayer in his school. He'd only question it afterward, anyway, and I doubt the faculties of the local middle and high schools posses the background in theology you'd need to argue with him or answer his questions.

Bad Religion

This article in WaPo comes to me on the morning after a day full of what, for a Unitarian Universalist like myself, passes for religious ecstasy.

CHICAGO -- Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.
The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.
"For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church," ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. "It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It's not for the government to mandate the role of church in society."

Although I could argue the constitutional merits of the separation of church and state all day long, after a day like yesterday, I'm ruminating more on the very negative implications for religion in pursuing the weakening of that wall.

The tax code that the ADF has a problem with is very simple: to maintain tax exempt status, a church cannot engage in partisan political activity. We can, and do, and always have, organize issues-based advocacy. My church, for instance, has "No on 8" signs prominently displayed, because as a denomination we are passionate about marriage equality, which stems from our most basic and essential shared values.

Yesterday afternoon I attended the long-awaited dedication of our new church buildings. One of our former teens came up from college to attend with my family, it was a packed house with some overflow (we set up a simulcast in the social hall). Visitors from all over, including many clergy, UU and others from the local interfaith alliance, resplendent in robes and mantles. Powerful drums and the African Alleluia set hearts on high, and clergy from local and distant congregations congratulated us and charged us to remember who we are.

Tears streamed down my face as a local rabbi recited Hebraic verse and then exclaimed, "You are my people, my people are your people!" The minister from our sister United Church of Christ congregation recalled our long road together, and the battles we've fought and continue to fight, side by side. And then a luminary from Boston rose and gave a 15 minute old fashioned pacing rousing reminder, "We are the people who STAND UP!"

For those who don't do organized religion, it may be hard to understand, but this was one of those experiences that you want to relive over and over again.

We are the People Who Stand Up. This central part of our religious identity is what drew me to UU. Standing up together never fails to inspire in me a sense of what is divine. This means advocating for marriage equality. This means standing with the UCC in the work of the New Sanctuary Movement. This means that last week, Unitarian Universalist clergy and laity held a press conference in St. Paul calling for comprehensive sex education. This means that wherever I have marched or demonstrated, for peace, for women, for farm workers, UU clergy have always, always been at my side.

But we do not stand up beside a party or a candidate. If one polled my congregation, I think the democrats would probably hold a sizable majority, but one would also find republicans and libertarians and independents and greens. And while we are vocal and public on our issues, you will not find an Obama poster on our buildings, nor any other political candidate or partisan push. And that is as it should be.

Liberalism as a political philosophy is not the same as religious liberalism, something we try to remind our youth continually. Conflating the two cheapens religion, belies the depths that may be explored and the meaning that may be found.

The same is true for orthodox religion and conservative political philosophy. The two pollute each other, but religion comes out the big loser.

In religious terms, the larger issues of our world- war and peace and human dignity- must be examined and closely weighed against our stated values. If one is orthodox, one has sacred text and creed, and positions will be weighed against these sources, hopefully with honesty and openness. If one is religiously liberal, issues must be weighed against basic values, and one will examine the weaknesses and potholes carefully before coming to a conclusion.

What religion does not do: it does not give authority to an outside person for these considerations and conclusions.

An orthodox group may heed the word of their clergy, but supporting wholesale a political candidate or party would undermine entirely the authority of sacred text and creed. Wars were fought in Europe for hundreds of years over this: whose authority holds sway, prince's or pope's? The American answer was to give each responsibility for their own spheres, with final authority resting in the conscience (and action) of the individual.

For clergy to advocate support for a specific person or a political party means delegating to a secular body their responsibility to weigh carefully each issue through the lens of God's will. They risk, in other words, what the Hebrew Bible specifically prohibits:

Do not have any other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Understand idols, in this case, to mean princes or presidents or candidates or flags or posters of elephants.

For religious liberals, the responsibility for such judgment lies in each man and woman, and were our leaders exhort us to support a specific candidate or person for any secular office, that leader would be denying each of us the responsibility to think deeply and answer only to our own conscience.

Putting it another way: Clergy should cry loudly from the pulpit on issues of war. War means killing, it means inflicting inhumane conditions on many people, including the soldiers who fight. Taking a position from the pulpit on, say Iraq, and encouraging the congregation to pray for peace, or strength, or encouraging them to make their values known to decision-makers in government, this is what clergy do.

Crying from the pulpit that the flock should elect George Bush, or John McCain, or Barack Obama, because this is the man who knows best about this war: that is delegating moral authority to a single man, one that is responsible not for the conscience of the church, but for issues and actions of the secular world. That is bowing to a false god, that is removing the right of conscience from the faithful.

So, partisan political advocacy cheapens the experience of religion by delegating right and wrong to a secular body, relieving the clergy and laity from the responsibility of examining the world and our issues and how it all relates to what we say we most deeply believe. But there are practical problems for religion, too.

Take, for example, the Office of Faith Based Initiatives- which gave me shudders when Bush first announced his intention to open it. It is no secret now that the power and money of the office was, from its inception, directed to very specific religious organizations, those that would pass the muster of the "Mayberry Machiavellis" and the clerics who supported them. Only certain conservative religious groups got access and funding, liberal religious groups or those considered "weird" by traditionalist protestants did not.

Now consider election time. Is it not possible that a group who gives beds to the homeless and has funding from the office of faith based initiatives would want to keep the party that delivered this funding in power? Is the party's action on other important areas examined? Is it not possible to consider that another small group who houses the homeless but is denied access would want to oust those who run things, whether or not the party's other policies in other areas have been successful for the country?

How is religion strengthened, then, by being beholden to any political party or person?

I think these are problematic outcomes for religion, and they grow rapidly from a movement to mix private and public policy. More than one scholar has noted that the strength of religion in this country is most likely due to the very strong separation of church and state, which allows religion to flourish and deepen without state sponsorship or manipulation.

So I hope this little test case fails, and fails spectacularly. As a religious person, I resent- hugely resent- the framing of American political discourse in religious terms, and I resent the idea that it is in any way responsible for clergy to make their flocks beholden to a partisan body. As a citizen, I am as passionate about my secular government as I am about my freedom to practice my religion. Neither my government nor my religion is well served by the fundamentalist drive to conflate the two, in fact, both are threatened.

Oh, and by the way, congressman Westmoreland? Yeah, that's right, I quoted the 10 commandments, although I don't need to consult them to know how to treat people. Stupid cracker.

This just in: we're it

The press and the blogs have been going a bit crazy over this Obama theme. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Or This is the moment. Or any variation thereof.

Messiah complex? No. It's a call to collective work, as one would know if one spent time within a place of liberal religion. It speaks to the entwined natures of freedom and responsibility. As Annie Dillard wrote,

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead� as if innocence had ever been�and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak and involved. There is no one but us. There never has been.

Liberal religion, honoring as it does the dignity and worth of each person, of each mind, calls us to do the necessary work, to see our values given life.

The Right likes to remind us that Martin Luther King and most of the abolitionist movement were religious- yes, they were. But merely using labels like "Christian" or "Religious" doesn't explain the grounding of their movements. These and other progressive movements were inspired not by the death of Jesus or the infallibility of the Bible, but by the understanding that in this world, in this time, the only way society will reflect our deeper values is if we are willing to roll up our sleeves and make it happen.

When Obama speaks of the change we seek, and of this being our moment, he isn't talking in messianic terms. He isn't talking about partisan goals, or end moments, no culmination of anything. He's talking to the deeply felt yearning in each of us to see justice, to live our values, so that others may live. He's talking to the parts of us who've felt left out of the process, helpless, while the big cogs of government turn and our leaders give us answers that don't answer for anything.

He's saying, of course you can do this. You have to.

He's talking about personal responsibility. One wonders why that freaks the republicans out so much, as this has been their (empty) mantra for the last 40 years.

Dick Cheney said that conservation is a personal virtue that has no place in public policy. Barack Obama says that policy has got to broaden if we're going to achieve energy independence, and hey, by the way: are you doing everything you can to help out at your house?

Again, I have no idea why this freaks out the "personal responsibility" people.

And while the policies that will be pursued are, rightly, secular; the call reaches from within a liberal religious perspective, and attempts to speak to everyone, of whatever stripe.

It's not messianic. It's responsibility. So dear press corps and right-wing blogs: please get over your juvenile bullshit.

After a respite, the keyboard beckons

It's been almost two weeks since I last logged on. Knoxville took my attention for a time. I worked out a local service with two other women in their honor, which we will hold tomorrow night. We'll acknowledge the sadness and anger, honor the dead and express our support for the surviving community. And we'll reaffirm our shared values. Putting this together has been a powerful experience for me. Almost no writing was required; there have been so many beautiful words written by UUs across the country. Creating the service was almost a process of simple selection and editing.

In addition to Knoxville, certain home and hearth things have been demanding, and so I haven't made the time to write about exterior things.

But my personal internal is often moved forcefully by the external, so it's best that I blog, even if it has no outcome other than that I have spent some time forming sentences.

Ahhh... so off I go.

The Knoxville tragedy

Update: Over at Orcinus, Sara's post is a perfect expression. Recommended you read.

Whatever the reasons turn out to be, there are at least two lessons I hope y'all take away from today's events.
One is that you can bet that the members of this congregation will find a novel way to approach their healing -- and in doing so, they'll set example for the rest of us to watch carefully. If (when) mental illness becomes the issue, they will respond to this man and his family with compassion and justice, because that's the UU way. And if hate turns out to be part of the story, too, then Knoxville, TN is about to have a dialog on hate crime that will leave nobody in town untouched or uninvolved. That's the UU way, too.
The other is that this congregation's cool, brave response shows, once again, that it's past time to drop that old stereotype, and stop underestimating the courage and intelligence of the religious left in America. We've gotten incredibly short shrift over the past few decades -- not only from the religious right, which thinks we're the minions of Satan on earth; but also from fellow progressives, who think that "religious" is a synonym for crazy, dangerous, irrational, and definitely not an asset to the movement.

I was in a meeting yesterday afternoon, at church, when the phonecalls started coming in. We UUs are a pretty small, tight community, and news of the shootings in Knoxville immediately stunned, casting a pall over the rest of the afternoon.

I went home and searched the web: who was he? why? There were few details uncovered over the course of the day.

There was a lot out there in the blogs, and in various newsite's comment threads. Some of the comment threads were deeply disturbing. Things like, at least it happened to a bunch of bible thumpers, or, on sites where posters knew that UUs aren't "bible thumpers", stuff about maybe we should worship Jesus if we don't want to get shot at.

I stopped checking those sites.

Elsewhere there was discussion about whether the church was targeted because it is liberal. I was going to post this morning that such speculation is counter-productive and unecessary, but it turns out that the man did leave a note saying that he planned the shootings because he hated the liberal movement".

I still don't think talking about his motives is productive.

This is pretty clearly a man with a mental illness. He apparently was not part of a liberal-hating group of any kind, just a guy without a job.

I don't think this signals the beginning of any kind of backlash- though I do believe the country is changing and that there will be backlash from various quarters. I just don't believe that this particular incident is necessarily symptomatic of anything.

I am so sad for the church members and friends. I am grateful for the knowledge that the UUA is supporting them with crisis ministry teams. I am so grateful that surrounding churches in their community are offereing them support and love.

And I have a spark of recognition- proud recognition- for who we are, and who those congregants are. The gunman, they say, did not expect to leave the church alive. He expected to be killed by police.

The members of the congregation who tackled and held him assured that he would not die there. And he will now stand trial. And that is a very good thing.

Scott emailed me this morning full of praise for the heroes who intervened and kept him from reloading and firing again. I'm very proud of them, too. And heartbroken that one of them is dead.

Anyway. The point of this post is that yesterday was a tragedy, and mourning is the thing to do right now. And sending love to those who are personally affected.

Political agendas and paranoia can wait.

Is it wrong to say "Bring 'em on"?

My church will be voting on adopting a resolution which states that we will publicly denounce the proposition to amend CA's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. I got home from work and was responding to some emails on voting procedures and such. Took a break, went to Sadly, No! for a giggle, and found a link to this:

Anti-gay activists crash worship services
Minutemen take 'word of God' to 2 congregations

A conservative Christian values group has been interrupting services at two central Ohio churches to protest their support for homosexuality.

Minutemen United vowed to attend services every Sunday.

And they're not even going after UU or UCC, it appears to be Baptists and Methodists they're harrassing.

I do not like it when people harrass churches. ANY churches. It shows a dangerous level of crazy.

And, unfortunately, there is always the mama-bear part of me that screams, "TRY THAT IN MY HOUSE, MOTHER FUCKER!" while the rest of me tries to coax the she-bear back to calm and peace.

Ending the day with more love

I call that mind free which master the senses, and which recognizes it own reality and greatness: Which passes life not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting and seeking after righteousness.

I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself to a passive or hereditary faith: Which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come; which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.

I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, and is not the creature of accidental impulse: Which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement.

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion: Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.

I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically copy the past, nor live on in its old virtues: But which listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions.

I call that mind free which sets no bounds to its love, which, wherever they are seen delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering: Which recognizes in all human beings the image of God and the rights of God’s children, and offers itself up a willing sacrifice to the cause of humankind.

I call that mind free which has cast off all fear but that of wrongdoing, and which no menace or peril can enthrall: Which is calm in the midst of tumults and possesses itself though all else be lost.

Saw my minister this evening, after she spent the day at Ventura County Courthouse, embracing and celebrating same-sex couples who'd come to make their unions legal. She read the above, from William Ellery Channing, at the start of our meeting.

The three UU ministers from Ventura County were there, and congregants in and out all day. I hear the couples were suprised- there were more UUs there than licensees most of the time- but when they would come out, those gathered would sing "Standing on the Side of Love", and hand them flowers, cupcakes, champagne.

I suppose that while couples throughout the county may be weighing their options or deciding whether the license is really what they want, for us local UUs, the fact that they can decide for themselves is, in and of itself, a reason to party.

I'm really proud of my friends and my church today.