October 4^th, 2015 by Joni Grady

Welcome to another step in my attempt to make sense out of an increasingly irrational world. When I picked the title, Reality Check, I had a rather different talk envisioned, one dealing only with the painful bifurcation of my life and the lives of everyone involved to any extent with that most dreadful task, saving the only livable planet we seem to have. In one part of my life, the dreaming world, we try to remember to vacuum the rugs and take out the trash, put money into Sophie’s college savings and reserve a beach house for Christmas. In this world, which seems so familiar, so pleasant, a bad problem is not finding the type of tea I like at Martin’s or getting stuck at too many red lights. A serious issue means the AC has gone out and the mattress needs replacing. And a tragedy would of course be sickness or death amongst family or friends. In this world, mainstream media news means killings, wars, politicians and celebrities. Sometimes on the front page or at the top of the hour but usually hidden on the inside or never heard or shown at all are floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. These, thank goodness, are simply “acts of God” that come and go randomly around the world but, happily, rarely in the Peaceful Valley. (Or at least that’s what I thought until Tuesday when the dreaming world intersected the waking world and an unusual (new normal?) storm dropped 4 inches of rain and a lot of it ended up in my basement.) Both worlds were interrupted by an actual Reality check!!

Normally, in the other, equally real, weirding-climate, waking world that I also live in 24/7, the minor day-to-day issues revolve around making sure there are enough materials for tabling at the Farmers Market, getting out the word for various events and keeping the CAAV facebook page up-to-date. (CAAV, for those new to the area, is the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley.) The more complicated ones involve designing a display to draw people in at the International Festival when they really just want to eat and have fun, not be bothered by inconvenient truth, and planning next month’s educational forum (which is, in case you’re interested, the inside story on fighting western forest fires, from training to living in camp to the actual hard and very dirty work of controlling a wildfire, brought to us by Sophie’s dad Alan Williams.) And the news I read is all climate, all the time: some good, some bad, some optimistic, some terrifying.

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September 27, 2015
by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”

Holy Bible, King James Version, Exodus 20: 3-5 (First three of the Ten Commandments)

“God does not forgive idolatry, but He forgives lesser offenses for whomever He wills. Anyone who sets up idols beside God, has forged a horrendous offense.”

Sacred Qur’an, Surah 4, Verse 48

(List of objects identified as being possible idols in different parts of the Qur’an include 1. calf, statues 2. other gods 3. Jesus 4. Jinns 5. children 6. humans 7 intercessors 8. Satan 9. property 10. dead prophets, messengers, saints 11. God’s servants 12. ego 13. religious sources other than God’s words 14. religious leaders and scholars 15. creating sects 16. dividing believers)

“Verily the most grievously tormented people amongs the denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would the painters of pictures.”

Sahih Muslim (Hadith, alleged quotations of Prophet Muhammed), vol. 3, no. 5271, (p. 1161), on authority of Abu Mu’awiya.

Note that nowhere in either the Qur’an or the Hadith is making an image of the Prophet Muhammed specifically forbidden, and in the Qur’an the Prophet never called for the punishment of painters.

So today we have headlines about radical Islamists engaging in attacks and destruction of objects based on the ban on idolatry. In January, 12 people were killed at the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo by people protesting alleged disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Last month (August) saw the destruction of the nearly 2,000 year old Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Syria, by members of Da’esh, ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State. They also killed 83 former Director of Antiquities there, Khalid al-Assad, who refused to reveal to them locations of hidden objects on the site. In March 2000, the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the world’s two largest statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, which had been made in the 6^th century.

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This talk was facilitated by Richard Wolf. Both Richard (on line) and Linda Dove (in person) participated as HUU delegates in the 2015 UUA General Assembly in Portland, Oregon and the service reflected their experience this year.

by Linda A. Dove
August 30, 2015

At the UUA General Assembly this summer I was struck with how many good causes UUs are promoting, from food and shelter to immigrant and human rights. The mood of the entire GA was jubilant because the Supreme Court pronounced on same-sex marriage and Obamacare while we were there. The latest UU World shows us celebrating because these are reforms that UUs have been campaigning for over many years. I think Richard as our GA on-line delegate was also caught up by the mood?

The theme of social justice was paramount this year and so that’s my theme today. I was encouraged by what congregations are doing and especially by the leadership of the many millennials at GA.

But I needed a framework to understand how we UUs are approaching social justice. So I dug around to explore its roots. Now, I would need a tenured professorship to dig down to all the roots for you. But don’t worry. I won’t take that long. I’ll just expose a few of the tap roots.

Give me one word or so that comes to mind for you when Social Justice is mentioned?

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On May 15, 2015, three members of the HUU Fellowship shared their own spiritual journey with us.

Eileen Dight

I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended by my comments and I regret that so many aspects of my Spiritual Journey have been negative and controversial.

Growing up in a Catholic family, the nuns at school told us we were lucky to have been born in the One True Faith, and I enjoyed this certainty, but in my teens I was already uncomfortable about rigid dogma. Papal Infallibility did not fit with the history of the Borgias, and the Inquisition. When I was 15, it was announced that St Mary had ascended bodily into Heaven. I thought it inappropriate to require every Catholic to accept this. Fortunately, frank discussion was encouraged at home by my Father who was raised a Wesleyan.

My Mother, third generation from Irish Catholic immigrants, was taught in school that “For ever and ever your soul will burn in hell if you don’t go to Mass on Sundays.” I didn’t believe this was a Mortal Sin. Neither did I believe in Original Sin. We have enough sins of our own without inheriting them.

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Facilitator Introduction

By Richard Wolf

I was one of the participants is our recent Adult Education Series called “Long, Strange Trip” which considers our Unitarian Universalist history and heritage. Today’s speakers, Chris Edwards, Robin McNallie, Judith Hollowood, and Linda Dove were also on that journey, along with a dozen or so members or friends. Over twelve sessions we watched and discussed the Long Strange Trip, a six-part film written and narrated by Ron Cordes. Some of us attended all the sessions and some just a few, but I think each of us found a surprising insight or wonderful enlightenment following from the experience.

If Unitarian Universalism is a “faith tradition”, then that “faith” may be in and from broader Source than an anthropomorphic godhead; and “tradition” is dynamic and moving rather than doctrinally set. We discover new applications via direct of experiences of revealed Wisdom, coming to us via cognitive insights, social actions toward justice and freedoms, spiritual enlightenments, and more.

So please consider the title of today’s service, along with our entire “faith tradition”, as a work-in-progress. (R)Evolutions could work, or not, on several levels: Are we talking about “revolutions”? If so, of planets, galaxies, or societies? Is it Re-Evolution – our on-going, conscious engagement with spiritual and special evolution? What Venn diagrams could be designed comparing and contrasting “evolution” and “revolution”? Alternate title options like “Toward Enlightened Reason” and “Wisdom Engaged” were also considered.

Our past has kept moving us forward via the lives of courageous change agents whom we continue to regard among our Sources. We are those same agents of change toward tomorrows of greater good.

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by Robin McNallie
April 12, 2015

The title of my presentation this morning, The Lengthened Shadow, is taken from Emerson’s most-quoted essay, “Self-Reliance,” in which he states that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” Not given to understatement, Emerson here was simply stressing that every institution owes a boundless debt to the individuals both male and female who have contributed significantly to that institution over time. Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly has not been under-sung as one of our prophets, remembered particularly for two rebellions against the Unitarian orthodoxy of his day.

The first occurred on Sept. 9, 1832, when he delivered from his pulpit at Boston’s Second Church a sermon, “The Lord’s Supper,” expressing his opposition to administering communion to his congregants. Two days later, on Sept. 11, he offered his resignation. It was accepted, although on a divided vote. The second, more ripple-creating challenge to his Unitarian elders was his Harvard Divinity School address delivered on July 15, 1838 (99 years to the day before my birthday), to its graduating class at their personal invitation. In it he inveighed against the continuing adoration of Jesus as a man/god/wonder-worker. This time, no divided vote from the establishment figures at Harvard. He was disinvited from Harvard Yard in any official capacity for the next 30 years.

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By Rev. Kirk Ballin
April 5, 2015

Responsive Reading #628 “Rolling Away the Stone” – Campbell

Reading # 593 “Liberation Is Costly” – Tutu

Reading:

“Our current crisis requires transformation. It’s less about changing a few individual behaviors and more about imagining radical new ways of living.

Our current paradigm assumes the expendability of some people and species in service to the dominant culture. In it, we willingly forgo human health and even human and non-human life on this planet as long as we can live in comfort and convenience today. In this paradigm, we willingly sacrifice the people on the margins of society—generally people of color, immigrants, and people who live with great financial instability—to maintain the industrial growth economy. This economic system assumes ecosystems, communities, cultures, and non-human beings are all externalities that are expendable in the pursuit of maximizing profit.

Today, Unitarian Universalists and other people of faith and conscience begin to think deeply together about altering social norms and creating climate justice. Climate justice is a global fight to dismantle the paradigm that disadvantages marginalized people and approaches Earth as supply source and sewer rather than a system of interdependent life, a single, beloved community. Climate justice pays deep attention to those most affected by climate change to find transformative solutions grounded in profound connections with Earth and each other.” — www.commit2respond.org

Unless our brains are undeveloped or damaged in some way, every human being requires culture in order to live…. As long as we have the self-aware, conscious brains that are unique to our being human, culture is as necessary to our survival as food, water, and shelter. Culture is the framework of meaning and purpose that our human minds must create in order to foster our survival. If you take culture with its myriad of expressions out of the human picture – we are not human. And even though this unique capacity for creating culture is inherent to every conscious human being, it is in the context of human communities, human societies that culture is most expressed and developed; culture is a collective necessity for the survival of the group, the survival of the species.

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