Thinking deeper about Thanksgiving
Rebecca Hecking acknowledges that Thanksgiving, even stripped down to the practice of gratitude, is a complicated holiday.
Thanksgiving? Stuffed with history and myth, basted with family drama, sugar-coated with platitudes, but also seasoned with thoughtfulness, it is what we make of it.
Just like everything else. (Breath and Water, November 21)
Shawna Foster objects to liberal disapproval of retailers open for business on Thanksgiving.
I remember working holidays. Holidays paid a time and a half. It made the extra bills of the season bearable.
Perhaps retail workers themselves would rather be home. At the same time, I am not so sure of outrage on their behalf. (Vessel, November 21)
Fifty years later, remembering JFK
For Deb Weiner, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was an “end of innocence” for her pre-teen self.
I started peppering my childhood minister, Rev. Wayne Shuttee, with questions about how there could be a loving God in the face of insanity and rage. About why there was a world where such bad things happened. About how people find courage and strength to carry on in the face of such stuff. (Morning Stars Rising, November 21)
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Landrum points out generational differences in how we think about the anniversary of JFK’s death, and suggests a pastoral approach.
So, Gen X and Millennial friends, we need to get over our cynicism and stop rolling our eyeballs. . . . [We] need to . . . cut through the surface level, the media level, that we’ll be hearing about, and talk to people about what this moment really meant to them, how it changed them, why they continue to focus on it, what its deeper meaning is. We need to get past the nostalgia and into the real work of the grief and fear, and the way it continues to shape our country. (Rev. Cyn, November 21)
A wider love
Roy King asks, “What if Pantheism were a middle path between monotheism and humanism, between the One and the Many?”
The great divide in our Unitarian Universalist congregations has historically been between those who are theists, namely those who believe in some sort of personal God, and our humanists/atheists who believe that humankind is the ultimate measure of all things. A monotheistic God is a unifying principle, while humanity is a source of rich diversity. (Mediterranean Wisdom, November 21)
The Rev. Dr. David Breeden considers the influence of Hinduism on “Transcendental Humanism.”
If the self is Brahman . . . Sounds a bit like American Transcendentalism, doesn’t it? There’s a reason for that. British philologist (and one of the colonizers) William Jones, better known as “Oriental Jones,” made Hindu thought available to early-Nineteenth Century Americans of a particular intellectual persuasion. People such as the Unitarians inclined toward Transcendentalism—including the Peabody sisters, Thoreau, and Emerson.
Vedanta’s third point is direct experience. The Transcendentalist knew what that meant. They put themselves in the way of lived experience. They lived for those moments. (Quest for Meaning, November 21)
The Rev. Jake Morrill remembers being a “playground atheist,” and the support his younger self received from his UU community.
In all the years since, my theology has evolved. I have taken communion, stopped in awe before mountains. I have prayed till tears come, and sat in meditation for long hours in a dark Buddhist Zendo. But, truth be told, it was as an atheist that I first came to see, in a way that was real and has not failed me since, how I am part of a love wider than my own life, and how that spacious embrace makes itself known to me, most often, through a community like the one that first told me, “You are not alone.” (Quest for Meaning, November 18)
Gender, memory—and grammar
Teo Drake refuses to live in fear.
They did not like me as a girl—they like me even less as a boy.
I am not a straight white man, my queerness invisible to the naked eye.
They tell me they might let me live if I never speak up. If I sit complicit in my silence, while they shout their misogyny, their homophobia, their transphobia—their ugly hate.
If I keep my mouth shut maybe it won’t be me to die today—maybe it will be you. Can I live with my own deafening silence?
No.
I will not live in fear. (roots grow the tree, November 19)
The Rev. Dan Schatz offers a prayer for the recent Transgender Day of Remembrance.
We remember and honor those who walk proudly,
who love themselves and others,
who teach by their being,
and who reach to help others along the way. . . .This day
and every day,
may all of us,
transgender and cisgender alike,
dedicate ourselves unflinchingly
to respect for every human being,
to justice,
to equality,
and to the transforming power of love. (The Song and the Sigh, November 20)
The Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern boldly declares “‘they’ is a perfectly appropriate gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.”
Whether agender and transgender folk will adopt “they” for themselves is up to them. It’s not up to me, and I will use whatever pronoun a person prefers for themself, but I humbly suggest that it has a huge advantage over “ze,” “hir,” or any of the other neologisms that have been tried. Neologisms do take hold sometimes, but when we already have a word that has worn a path in our linguistic landscape—the way “they” has done for many of us—it’s likely to be the best place to build the road. (Sermons in Stones, November 14)
Babies, mamas, and ministry
The Rev. Tom Schade would like UU congregations to go into the baby blessing business.
Our baby blessing should come right out of our core theology. Each baby is a person, unique and irreplaceable. The baby blessing ceremony should challenge parents and families to respect and honor that child’s own soul. A child is not a toy, a pet, a person who can use to fulfill our own needs. A child is not here to bring you glory, or fulfill your dreams. In all likelihood, a child will not turn out as you expect, or hope. (The Lively Tradition, November 16)
The Rev. Parisa Parsa charges her colleague to live in the power of both ministry and motherhood.
The world is rife with terrible tales of both bad ministers and bad mothers, and both vocations are subject to images of goodness idealized to inhuman proportions. Short of setting ourselves on sainthood—which is particularly unrealistic in a tradition that abandoned that notion a couple of centuries ago—we have to find other ways to live in the very large landscape between perfect and terrible. The charge I have to offer you this morning is to live in the power of these roles at least as much as you live in the fretting over each of them. (Pastor Prayers, November 21)
Growing—and breaking through
The Rev. Tandi Rogers pulls back the curtain on the process of choosing Breakthrough Congregations.
This is how I want to answer that question:
• Do “religious community” well.
• Be yourself intentionally, joyfully, and impact-fully.
• Live your saving message in bold, generous, loving ways inside your walls.
• Live your saving message in bold, generous, loving ways outside your walls. . . .
[But] I know what most people mean by the original question is really, “How are Breakthrough Congregations chosen?” Here’s how. . . . (Growing Unitarian Universalism, November 20)
The Rev. Thom Belote allows us to eavesdrop on his congregation’s decision-making about one service, or two.
If it was our goal to stay at our current size, I would recommend returning to one service. If it is our goal to grow, we should probably stick with the two service format. (Rev. Thom, November 16)
Happy Thanksgiving!
The Unitarian Universalist Association will be closed next Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving. Interdependent Web will return the following week.