Turns out it's not simple. I really don't think corporations are people, and yet they are treated that way when it comes to the First Amendment. Teir contributions of money to political causes and to politicians are protected because they enable and amplify speech. They can't be people, because they do not have consciences. Their proper motive is profit, so their speech reflect a search for their own profit, and not the common good. Because they are brought into being to pursue profit, their speech doesn't even properly reflect the views of their shareholders as persons.
I found today's Opinionator in the New York Times particularly helpful: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/how-the-first-amendment-works/ although the dreary truth is that we are stuck with the results of highly refined legal redefinition of terms and reinterpretation of events.
I say, not people. I also say, the giving of money is not really speech but action, and actions can be regulated. Having our government turned into an instrument for promoting the profitability of companies cannot be a good thing.
Showing posts with label Unitarian Universalist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unitarian Universalist. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Corporations, People, Rights, and Values
Apparently corporations are people, with first-amendment rights to participate in electoral campaigns, just like anyone else. True, they are treated in some ways as people, a way to limit the liability of Boards of Directors for their actions. This is important: it's probably one of the reasons for the popularity of corporations as a way of organizing business.
But look, corporations are collections of people. They are made up of workers and shareholders, in whom the true personhood and the rights associated with it are properly lodged. One of the arguments corporations used about income taxation, if I remember my economic history correctly, is that they are actually not people themselves, because look, they belong to these people who also pay taxes, so any tax on their corporate "personal" income would be a second tax on top of the tax the actual humans behind them pay. We ended up with a system that taxed corporate income at a lower rate, and not all of it, in effect asking them to pay for the privilege of being considered people under the law.
So for some purposes, corporations are people, but for taxation, they are not. I say, the right of using money to talk in political campaigns should be like the taxation thing. The people who make up the corporations have the right to express themselves. Having the corporation do it too is double expression, just as taxing corporate income is double taxation.
Should people who own corporate shares have double expression? That doesn't square with my values. In citizenship, it should be one person, one voice. That way, I get to say what I think, and I don't have to worry about whether the corporations in which I own stock say what I think or something else. It's more efficient, and it's the right thing to do.
But look, corporations are collections of people. They are made up of workers and shareholders, in whom the true personhood and the rights associated with it are properly lodged. One of the arguments corporations used about income taxation, if I remember my economic history correctly, is that they are actually not people themselves, because look, they belong to these people who also pay taxes, so any tax on their corporate "personal" income would be a second tax on top of the tax the actual humans behind them pay. We ended up with a system that taxed corporate income at a lower rate, and not all of it, in effect asking them to pay for the privilege of being considered people under the law.
So for some purposes, corporations are people, but for taxation, they are not. I say, the right of using money to talk in political campaigns should be like the taxation thing. The people who make up the corporations have the right to express themselves. Having the corporation do it too is double expression, just as taxing corporate income is double taxation.
Should people who own corporate shares have double expression? That doesn't square with my values. In citizenship, it should be one person, one voice. That way, I get to say what I think, and I don't have to worry about whether the corporations in which I own stock say what I think or something else. It's more efficient, and it's the right thing to do.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Church and Community Change
They are starting a program to explore making Belfast a "Transition Town" of the kind that develops resilience for the coming changes of climate and energy use. I haven't read the book that goes with it yet, and as usual, I have to be at work during about half the discussion group meetings that are about to happen -- one of the perils of a line of work that requires meeting with people who have normal jobs during the day. But that book is on order, and I'll go when I can.
I have been reading another book, though, $20 Per Gallon, by Christopher Steiner, subtitled "How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives for the better." Steiner works for Forbes magazine, coming to business journalism with a background in engineering, so his investigative choices are interesting and his analysis is mostly sharp. He outlines the changes that the market system will bring into being as the price of petroleum products rises, giving some attention to the global warming question, but focusing mainly on changes in lifestyle that will come. Mass transit, dense urban centers, food production near point of use, rebirth of manufacturing.
Coupled with a reading of Jim Wallis' Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, a Moral Compass for the New Economy, $20 Per Gallon opens some interesting vistas on the future.
The most important vista I see, through the lens of these two books and my own experience, is that we have some really important choices to make about our values and how we use them to shape our lives and communities. Change is coming. The big question: Is it going to be governed by the Wall Street ethos that considers demand and costs of production and not much else, or is it going to be governed by something more human- and planet- oriented?
Either way, it won't be a catastrophe. Still, I have become weary of realizing time and again that my body and mind are being used as ATM's for some corporation. I'm going to get to as many of those "Transition Town" meetings as I can and try to get a glimpse of an alternative.
I have been reading another book, though, $20 Per Gallon, by Christopher Steiner, subtitled "How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives for the better." Steiner works for Forbes magazine, coming to business journalism with a background in engineering, so his investigative choices are interesting and his analysis is mostly sharp. He outlines the changes that the market system will bring into being as the price of petroleum products rises, giving some attention to the global warming question, but focusing mainly on changes in lifestyle that will come. Mass transit, dense urban centers, food production near point of use, rebirth of manufacturing.
Coupled with a reading of Jim Wallis' Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, a Moral Compass for the New Economy, $20 Per Gallon opens some interesting vistas on the future.
The most important vista I see, through the lens of these two books and my own experience, is that we have some really important choices to make about our values and how we use them to shape our lives and communities. Change is coming. The big question: Is it going to be governed by the Wall Street ethos that considers demand and costs of production and not much else, or is it going to be governed by something more human- and planet- oriented?
Either way, it won't be a catastrophe. Still, I have become weary of realizing time and again that my body and mind are being used as ATM's for some corporation. I'm going to get to as many of those "Transition Town" meetings as I can and try to get a glimpse of an alternative.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Report from the Hermitage
It really is small, but it's not as small as Thoreau's cabin. It has inside plumbing, which is a good thing, because it's in town rather than out in the woods. But it's an experiment in living simply. Thoreau lived in a time of great cultural and economic change, the dawn of the industrial-commercial America we have lived in from that time to this. Now, that way seems to be in trouble, and something new begins to take shape. Thoreau stepped aside to look, and I find I am doing that too. But from a different kind of cabin.
Somebody asked, so I measured it: 300 square feet, with an additional unheated back room of perhaps 80 more, counting the closet space. That includes a bathroom, which Thoreau did not have, and room for lots more clothing than he would have found right ("Beware of all enterprises that require a new suit of clothes"). I have more chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society, he said. He also had a bed people could sit on if there were more. I have a couch, plus a nice comfy rocking chair, and four chairs.
He had his fireplace for cooking, and drew water from the pond. I have a little kitchen with a stove, fridge, sink, and cupboards. I figure I can have three guests for a simple meal -- so far two is the most I've had for supper -- and five for sitting and conversing.
I have more books than he did, most of them stashed at my office nearby. Although I have been reflecting a bit on The Iliad, I will not be reading it in the original Greek as he did. I have my computer, and radio, though I'm living without TV in its usual forms. Electricity, which he lacked, and central heat. I have a car, which seems like a necessity and might not be. I experiment with leaving it parked for days at a time. Maybe a day will come when I declare it surplus.
My regular job is half-time, so my days have space for the meditation, sauntering, and journaling that went with cabin living for Thoreau. He stood aside from the rapid social change of his day to reflect and find words to comment. May it be so for me.
Somebody asked, so I measured it: 300 square feet, with an additional unheated back room of perhaps 80 more, counting the closet space. That includes a bathroom, which Thoreau did not have, and room for lots more clothing than he would have found right ("Beware of all enterprises that require a new suit of clothes"). I have more chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society, he said. He also had a bed people could sit on if there were more. I have a couch, plus a nice comfy rocking chair, and four chairs.
He had his fireplace for cooking, and drew water from the pond. I have a little kitchen with a stove, fridge, sink, and cupboards. I figure I can have three guests for a simple meal -- so far two is the most I've had for supper -- and five for sitting and conversing.
I have more books than he did, most of them stashed at my office nearby. Although I have been reflecting a bit on The Iliad, I will not be reading it in the original Greek as he did. I have my computer, and radio, though I'm living without TV in its usual forms. Electricity, which he lacked, and central heat. I have a car, which seems like a necessity and might not be. I experiment with leaving it parked for days at a time. Maybe a day will come when I declare it surplus.
My regular job is half-time, so my days have space for the meditation, sauntering, and journaling that went with cabin living for Thoreau. He stood aside from the rapid social change of his day to reflect and find words to comment. May it be so for me.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
A New Year's Prayer
Somebody asked me about prayer, whether Unitarian Universalists pray. The person who asked is considering joining our UU congregation, and prayer is part of her way. Prayer is a part of my way, too, though I come to it by a winding path. There was a long time when I would meditate, but not pray. Then some things happened.
This is a post about what I recommend now, rather than how I got here. See what you think. It rang true for me when Mother Theresa was quoted as saying of her prayer life, “I listen.” Whether you are sure there is a God, either out there somewhere or deep within, or suspect there might be but aren't sure, or feel confident that there is not, deep listening for the promptings of the spirit (or Spirit), is a practice worth cultivating.
Actually, I recommend four basic spiritual practices, all of which can be thought of as kinds of prayer. The first is to pay attention to what is real in this world, really pay attention as well as you can, every day. The listening – and looking, smelling, tasting and touching – would be a big part of that. The second is to accept whatever is there, whether it's bad, like the cancer that reappeared; or good, like realizing that your relationship with your difficult child is becoming more joyful. Acceptance involves compassion and forgiveness as it grows deeper. Finally, practice gratitude. Not for the cancer, surely, but for life and the kindness of those around you. Find the gifts that have arrived for you each day, notice them, accept them, and feel the gratitude.
The one other practice I truly recommend is to take time for wonder. I sometimes name it “look at the sky.” Take time to admire and be awestruck by what is around you.
If you do these things, and I try to do them, your life will be a prayer. It won't matter if there is a God or not. You will sense yourself as a part of the flow of energies in the Cosmos, and you may find yourself asking to be guided into harmony with that flow. When someone asked President Lincoln if he prayed for God to be on the side of the Union in the Civil War, he said no, but that he prayed that the Union was on God's side.
I pray this January that we may find our ways to be on God's side, to live in harmony with the great flow of energies, to help the arc of the universe bend toward justice, love, and peace.
This is a post about what I recommend now, rather than how I got here. See what you think. It rang true for me when Mother Theresa was quoted as saying of her prayer life, “I listen.” Whether you are sure there is a God, either out there somewhere or deep within, or suspect there might be but aren't sure, or feel confident that there is not, deep listening for the promptings of the spirit (or Spirit), is a practice worth cultivating.
Actually, I recommend four basic spiritual practices, all of which can be thought of as kinds of prayer. The first is to pay attention to what is real in this world, really pay attention as well as you can, every day. The listening – and looking, smelling, tasting and touching – would be a big part of that. The second is to accept whatever is there, whether it's bad, like the cancer that reappeared; or good, like realizing that your relationship with your difficult child is becoming more joyful. Acceptance involves compassion and forgiveness as it grows deeper. Finally, practice gratitude. Not for the cancer, surely, but for life and the kindness of those around you. Find the gifts that have arrived for you each day, notice them, accept them, and feel the gratitude.
The one other practice I truly recommend is to take time for wonder. I sometimes name it “look at the sky.” Take time to admire and be awestruck by what is around you.
If you do these things, and I try to do them, your life will be a prayer. It won't matter if there is a God or not. You will sense yourself as a part of the flow of energies in the Cosmos, and you may find yourself asking to be guided into harmony with that flow. When someone asked President Lincoln if he prayed for God to be on the side of the Union in the Civil War, he said no, but that he prayed that the Union was on God's side.
I pray this January that we may find our ways to be on God's side, to live in harmony with the great flow of energies, to help the arc of the universe bend toward justice, love, and peace.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Minister as Community Organizer
When people learn that I came to ministry with a background in community organizing, they think immediately of all the work I might be doing in the larger community, getting out there to make things better for poor people, the homeless, immigrants, others. And I do some of that. But what surprises me is that nobody tumbles to the idea -- until I suggest it to them -- that ministry is a kind of community organizing. True, it's a kind of spiritual guide gig, and a kind of religious education thing, but at heart, much about it is concerned with gathering the congregation into a functioning organization and breathing into it a sense of its own purpose.
When I read that the minister of a mid-sized church is "a kind of executive," it feels wrong. Yes, maybe a kind of executive, but really, a community organizer. Someone who can teach the skills of welcoming newcomers, getting the word out about special events, integrating those newcomers into the purpose of the organization, developing leaders, and using leaders well. I've been ministering to congregations that are smaller than mid-size, doing my work this way, and I'm pleased with the results.
It's easy for a minister to fall into picking up the pieces of a non-functioning organization when dealing with a smaller congregation. It's possible to do it, and it can be helpful if the people don't come to expect the minister to do it all. I say jokingly that the minister of a smaller congregation is a bit like the proprietor of a small business, the one who is always prepared to step in and run a machine when someone is absent or sweep the front walk or wash dishes. But not all the time. A congregation's disarray needs to be addressed by the minister-as-community-organizer. People need to be invited to step forward and take responsibility for things.
Working with disarray is something that appeals to me. It's one of the reasons I became an intentional interim minister.
Right now I am serving a congregation that is afraid of becoming "minister-centered," That is something to be afraid of, I think, and a hazard for congregations the size they are. They would benefit from more ministry, moving from a half-time to a full-time person. They would benefit from a minister who is a spiritual guide, a religious educator (there is a sense in which it's all religious education), and a community organizer. They seem to believe that more professional support would somehow diminish the leadership they are accustomed to providing, reduce them to helpers of the Big Professional.
Some congregations do get like that. They commit to more ministry than they really choose to pay for, they lose their sense of purpose, and they become a kind of perpetual fundraising organization with little further reason for being than the comfort of being together. A good community organizer can help remedy that situation or prevent it from developing.
I recommend looking to the approach, the tools, and the results of community organizing as a way to revitalize our congregations. There needs to be sense of mission, yes, but also a commitment to strengthening participation and leadership within each of our gathered communities.
When I read that the minister of a mid-sized church is "a kind of executive," it feels wrong. Yes, maybe a kind of executive, but really, a community organizer. Someone who can teach the skills of welcoming newcomers, getting the word out about special events, integrating those newcomers into the purpose of the organization, developing leaders, and using leaders well. I've been ministering to congregations that are smaller than mid-size, doing my work this way, and I'm pleased with the results.
It's easy for a minister to fall into picking up the pieces of a non-functioning organization when dealing with a smaller congregation. It's possible to do it, and it can be helpful if the people don't come to expect the minister to do it all. I say jokingly that the minister of a smaller congregation is a bit like the proprietor of a small business, the one who is always prepared to step in and run a machine when someone is absent or sweep the front walk or wash dishes. But not all the time. A congregation's disarray needs to be addressed by the minister-as-community-organizer. People need to be invited to step forward and take responsibility for things.
Working with disarray is something that appeals to me. It's one of the reasons I became an intentional interim minister.
Right now I am serving a congregation that is afraid of becoming "minister-centered," That is something to be afraid of, I think, and a hazard for congregations the size they are. They would benefit from more ministry, moving from a half-time to a full-time person. They would benefit from a minister who is a spiritual guide, a religious educator (there is a sense in which it's all religious education), and a community organizer. They seem to believe that more professional support would somehow diminish the leadership they are accustomed to providing, reduce them to helpers of the Big Professional.
Some congregations do get like that. They commit to more ministry than they really choose to pay for, they lose their sense of purpose, and they become a kind of perpetual fundraising organization with little further reason for being than the comfort of being together. A good community organizer can help remedy that situation or prevent it from developing.
I recommend looking to the approach, the tools, and the results of community organizing as a way to revitalize our congregations. There needs to be sense of mission, yes, but also a commitment to strengthening participation and leadership within each of our gathered communities.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Community, Houses, and Church
There are a group of people in the Belfast area who are getting together a cohousing community. This is to be an eco-village, with everything done to reduce the carbon footprint. There will be a walkway to the town center, and the project will actually preserve some farmland in a key part of town where housing development is very likely in the near future. But I feel a little grumpy about it.
On reflection, I know why I'm grumpy. I grew up in a place that had a lot in common with what is now called co-housing. It was a suburban development of small houses on large, wooded lots. There was a community association that owned and managed the water system, the extra lots, and the community house, where there was a cooperative pre-school. There were lots of potluck suppers (Dutch suppers, they called them), at the community house, where people from the community got together to socialize. One of the extra lots was developed for tennis courts. At the winter holidays, there was a tradition of strolling through the neighborhood singing carols. There were paths, so you didn't have to go everywhere on roads. It was nice. As with many suburban developments, the first residents were mostly about the same age--people with kids. And in this case, they were all concerned to build a good community in which to raise the kids.
The first families got to work with the architect to design the homes and figure out the layout of the subdivision. Individual homes, common house, eating together, shared responsibility -- So far, it sounds a lot like co-housing, only in those days they were not so specifically concerned about eco-friendly living and I don't think they insisted on consensus, which is the co-housing standard.
It was nice. But then I think what happened was that it turned out some of the people were really interested in houses. Their incomes rose, and they went off to a nearby hillside to build larger, more elegant, homes, also on lots with trees, but without quite the complete apparatus of the common house, the community suppers, the extra lots, the paths -- the ideological underlay was softened. They did have a community association, and their way of sharing was to have a community swimming pool. (Everybody was older, so the preschool was not quite the draw it had been in the old location.)
A good thing about that new neighborhood: it was there that the Unitarian (no Unitarian Universalist yet) congregation got started. The old neighborhood, where my family had stayed, stressed community-building based on where we lived. Our grownups did reach out: they provided leadership for the Girl and Boy Scouts that inclued others beyond our enclave, they also provided leadership for the League of Women Voters, the Democratic party, and the Parent Teacher Associations first of the grade school, then of the high school. I think the parents of the new neighborhood did those things too, but for me, the main thing they accomplished was starting that Unitarian congregation. Old neighborhood people participated, but it was mainly a New Neighborhood thing. I went there. It was good for me. By not focusing so much on their own housing development as a definition of community, they drew a circle that included me, a kid from a place that tended to draw a circle that left them out.
Both ways are good and important. Whether it's a congregation or a housing development, a community provides a good base for feeling safe in the world. And a person who feels safe in the world can be much more effective in reaching out to help others in the wider world. My mother didn't approve of church. She said it tended to wall people off from the rest of the world. I found that the co-housing-like community I grew up in did that, too. Church worked better for me.
So I feel grumpy about the people who are going back to the housing development as a source of community. I should be saying, "go well, best wishes!" But I suspect they will be sitting on their porches reading the New York Times on Sunday mornings, missing out on the kind of community I have found most satisfying and telling themselves it doesn't matter. The thought makes me grumpy.
I think it does matter. But my mother was right for her, so maybe they are right for them. I'll just have to be in the business of drawing larger circles.
On reflection, I know why I'm grumpy. I grew up in a place that had a lot in common with what is now called co-housing. It was a suburban development of small houses on large, wooded lots. There was a community association that owned and managed the water system, the extra lots, and the community house, where there was a cooperative pre-school. There were lots of potluck suppers (Dutch suppers, they called them), at the community house, where people from the community got together to socialize. One of the extra lots was developed for tennis courts. At the winter holidays, there was a tradition of strolling through the neighborhood singing carols. There were paths, so you didn't have to go everywhere on roads. It was nice. As with many suburban developments, the first residents were mostly about the same age--people with kids. And in this case, they were all concerned to build a good community in which to raise the kids.
The first families got to work with the architect to design the homes and figure out the layout of the subdivision. Individual homes, common house, eating together, shared responsibility -- So far, it sounds a lot like co-housing, only in those days they were not so specifically concerned about eco-friendly living and I don't think they insisted on consensus, which is the co-housing standard.
It was nice. But then I think what happened was that it turned out some of the people were really interested in houses. Their incomes rose, and they went off to a nearby hillside to build larger, more elegant, homes, also on lots with trees, but without quite the complete apparatus of the common house, the community suppers, the extra lots, the paths -- the ideological underlay was softened. They did have a community association, and their way of sharing was to have a community swimming pool. (Everybody was older, so the preschool was not quite the draw it had been in the old location.)
A good thing about that new neighborhood: it was there that the Unitarian (no Unitarian Universalist yet) congregation got started. The old neighborhood, where my family had stayed, stressed community-building based on where we lived. Our grownups did reach out: they provided leadership for the Girl and Boy Scouts that inclued others beyond our enclave, they also provided leadership for the League of Women Voters, the Democratic party, and the Parent Teacher Associations first of the grade school, then of the high school. I think the parents of the new neighborhood did those things too, but for me, the main thing they accomplished was starting that Unitarian congregation. Old neighborhood people participated, but it was mainly a New Neighborhood thing. I went there. It was good for me. By not focusing so much on their own housing development as a definition of community, they drew a circle that included me, a kid from a place that tended to draw a circle that left them out.
Both ways are good and important. Whether it's a congregation or a housing development, a community provides a good base for feeling safe in the world. And a person who feels safe in the world can be much more effective in reaching out to help others in the wider world. My mother didn't approve of church. She said it tended to wall people off from the rest of the world. I found that the co-housing-like community I grew up in did that, too. Church worked better for me.
So I feel grumpy about the people who are going back to the housing development as a source of community. I should be saying, "go well, best wishes!" But I suspect they will be sitting on their porches reading the New York Times on Sunday mornings, missing out on the kind of community I have found most satisfying and telling themselves it doesn't matter. The thought makes me grumpy.
I think it does matter. But my mother was right for her, so maybe they are right for them. I'll just have to be in the business of drawing larger circles.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Interplanetary metaphor
It took me awhile to realize why I was reading all those novels and stories by Ursula LeGuin. They so often feature these supremely lonely interplanetary travelers, folks who have gone to sleep to traverse the light years between their starting place and their destination. Their families live and die while they are in suspended animation, so that if they return, their loved ones are no longer there, and the culture has moved on.
The lives of these travelers are lonely, but not friendless, for they find companions in the worlds they visit, even love. What they do not encounter is anyone who is truly their own kind. They are outsiders, bringing and outsider view to the places they visit. Often they are under instructions to interfere only with great care in what is going on where they have landed. They might promote women's rights, for instance. Or introduce some new technology. Or stop the progress of a rogue colonizer. But only after careful study of the culture, and with the intention of doing it in a culturally appropriate way. Or in the case of the rogue colonizer, to excise the unauthorized alien presence cleanly.
So yes, I was reading these novels and stories in September and October, feeling drawn to them. Because... it's so much like interim ministry! I'll be walking among the people of this planet, joining in their culture, working alongside them, carefully introducing possibilities by working with the list of interim tasks. Making friends. Finding my usual sources of entertainment in whatever form they are available, and discovering others from among what is preferred locally. (The yoga is not quite the same on this planet, but satisfying. The country dance is a little different. They have a lively program of plays they put on for one another's entertainment.) The Emissary is welcome, and invited to partake, yet always bound by the rules of the Ekumen about what the boundaries must be.
I have chosen this metaphorical interplanetary travel, or rather, it has chosen me, drawing me to this outpost now and another one soon, bearing news from the Ekumen and interpreting it to the people here. This outpost welcomes the Emissary warmly, but I know there are other planets where the Ekumen is seen as the problem rather than as part of the solution. Will I travel to those as well? How might the mission be different?
I am grateful to Ursula LeGuin for her heroes, the lonely observers who enter into relationships and make carefully planned moves that might change things. They, along with my actual colleagues in this work, light the way.
The lives of these travelers are lonely, but not friendless, for they find companions in the worlds they visit, even love. What they do not encounter is anyone who is truly their own kind. They are outsiders, bringing and outsider view to the places they visit. Often they are under instructions to interfere only with great care in what is going on where they have landed. They might promote women's rights, for instance. Or introduce some new technology. Or stop the progress of a rogue colonizer. But only after careful study of the culture, and with the intention of doing it in a culturally appropriate way. Or in the case of the rogue colonizer, to excise the unauthorized alien presence cleanly.
So yes, I was reading these novels and stories in September and October, feeling drawn to them. Because... it's so much like interim ministry! I'll be walking among the people of this planet, joining in their culture, working alongside them, carefully introducing possibilities by working with the list of interim tasks. Making friends. Finding my usual sources of entertainment in whatever form they are available, and discovering others from among what is preferred locally. (The yoga is not quite the same on this planet, but satisfying. The country dance is a little different. They have a lively program of plays they put on for one another's entertainment.) The Emissary is welcome, and invited to partake, yet always bound by the rules of the Ekumen about what the boundaries must be.
I have chosen this metaphorical interplanetary travel, or rather, it has chosen me, drawing me to this outpost now and another one soon, bearing news from the Ekumen and interpreting it to the people here. This outpost welcomes the Emissary warmly, but I know there are other planets where the Ekumen is seen as the problem rather than as part of the solution. Will I travel to those as well? How might the mission be different?
I am grateful to Ursula LeGuin for her heroes, the lonely observers who enter into relationships and make carefully planned moves that might change things. They, along with my actual colleagues in this work, light the way.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Notes from the Hermitage
Living in this little space, cosy and comfortable in a basic sort of way. I thought when I started that I would learn a lot, and this is a report on what I am learning.
Living in a small, well-insulated space, I'm quite sure I am reducing my carbon footprint. Living so close to work that I don't have to drive, ditto. I can and do walk to yoga and food shopping and the doctor's office. But I drive long distances to see friends and have professional meetings. So far, one airplane trip, but it was all the way to the West Coast. Probably wiped out all the savings.
But the point is that living in a small space is having an impact on the way I live. There is no way to have a selection of places to leave piles of books or papers related to a variety of projects. Everything has to be put away every time, or it makes gridlock. I rely more on electronic files, and have gotten more paranoid about making sure they are backed up. No space for paper files.
I seem to have too many clothes, since the closets of my little place are full. And yes, there are still some things that are not being used, so they could be released into the possibility of other uses -- given to Goodwill. Everything must be put back in the closets, because there are no extra chairs on which to drape clothing that is between wearings. Clean enough to put away, or dirty enough to wash? There is no middle ground. I am not used to being so decisive about this matter.
And clearly, I have too many dishes, because they overflow the sink before I get around to washing them. Actually, it's the same as with the clothes -- everything must be used regularly to justify its place on the shelves, and it all needs to be put away soon after using. If they are in the sink, it's a very, very, short time until nothing can be done in the kitchen. And I can't (and don't really want to)eat out all the time!
I am tyrannized by the flow of material through my life. Everything must be disposed of right away -- trash in the trash bin, garbage in the mouse-and-skunk-proof frozen storage, recycling in the assortment of bins and bags in the back/front hall. The Sunday New York Times is more than enough newspaper -- I'm really surprised with myself not to have started a daily newspaper subscription. I don't even get the weekly Belfast paper, which would give me a lot of information not available elsewhere. But the packaging! Food and other things come wrapped in so much material that is otherwise useless, and I have no room to store it! Buying things with no wrapping is really appealing.
This is all very good for me, I think but let me warn you all: living in a smaller space will change you in ways you don't expect.
I think of someone I once knew who had been for a long time in the submarine service. Living alone, he found it hard to take up enough space to fill up a one-bedroom apartment. I think of people who really are monks. Of the young man who had been part of a household I joined when I went to seminary. When he finished his time helping in the world and was ready to go back to the monastery, he put his things into a backpack and left.
I suspect this sort of thing is not going to be great for the consumer economy. Maybe it will be great for those of us doing it. I wonder...
Living in a small, well-insulated space, I'm quite sure I am reducing my carbon footprint. Living so close to work that I don't have to drive, ditto. I can and do walk to yoga and food shopping and the doctor's office. But I drive long distances to see friends and have professional meetings. So far, one airplane trip, but it was all the way to the West Coast. Probably wiped out all the savings.
But the point is that living in a small space is having an impact on the way I live. There is no way to have a selection of places to leave piles of books or papers related to a variety of projects. Everything has to be put away every time, or it makes gridlock. I rely more on electronic files, and have gotten more paranoid about making sure they are backed up. No space for paper files.
I seem to have too many clothes, since the closets of my little place are full. And yes, there are still some things that are not being used, so they could be released into the possibility of other uses -- given to Goodwill. Everything must be put back in the closets, because there are no extra chairs on which to drape clothing that is between wearings. Clean enough to put away, or dirty enough to wash? There is no middle ground. I am not used to being so decisive about this matter.
And clearly, I have too many dishes, because they overflow the sink before I get around to washing them. Actually, it's the same as with the clothes -- everything must be used regularly to justify its place on the shelves, and it all needs to be put away soon after using. If they are in the sink, it's a very, very, short time until nothing can be done in the kitchen. And I can't (and don't really want to)eat out all the time!
I am tyrannized by the flow of material through my life. Everything must be disposed of right away -- trash in the trash bin, garbage in the mouse-and-skunk-proof frozen storage, recycling in the assortment of bins and bags in the back/front hall. The Sunday New York Times is more than enough newspaper -- I'm really surprised with myself not to have started a daily newspaper subscription. I don't even get the weekly Belfast paper, which would give me a lot of information not available elsewhere. But the packaging! Food and other things come wrapped in so much material that is otherwise useless, and I have no room to store it! Buying things with no wrapping is really appealing.
This is all very good for me, I think but let me warn you all: living in a smaller space will change you in ways you don't expect.
I think of someone I once knew who had been for a long time in the submarine service. Living alone, he found it hard to take up enough space to fill up a one-bedroom apartment. I think of people who really are monks. Of the young man who had been part of a household I joined when I went to seminary. When he finished his time helping in the world and was ready to go back to the monastery, he put his things into a backpack and left.
I suspect this sort of thing is not going to be great for the consumer economy. Maybe it will be great for those of us doing it. I wonder...
Monday, November 2, 2009
When it is all connected consciously
I reflected on Michael Pollan's story in The Omnivore's Dilemma, the one about the farm in Virginia where everything is interconnected in complex and important ways to produce happy, healthy animals in a sustainable way. There are probably many ways to build farms that interlink the care of the land (and the planet) with the feeding of humans, and this is but one example.
What struck me was that while the farm's chickens were very much in demand, it was not possible to respond to the market signal of rising price by shifting production more toward chickens. Everything on the farm was interconnected in more or less fixed proportions, so more of one thing really meant expanding the whole operation, possibly producing more of some other products that were not in high demand.
Imagining a town surrounded by farms engaged in sustainable agriculture of this type, I began to think, well, the people in the town would have to sort of want what they have, except when there was a chance to start up a whole new complex of farm operations with a whole new mix of products.
It might not be bad at all, but it is really very different from a system where more demand calls forth more production, that is, the market system.
We could settle into wanting what we have, enjoying a lifestyle that would gradually evolve into being traditional, getting to know one another, talking things over, exploring possible changes together, and allowing things to shift ever so slowly with changes in taste or knowledge of nutrition or requirements of climate change.
Living here in the small town of Belfast, Maine, the sense that this could happen is very real. It would not be a market system. What would it be? And how would it respond to changing wants and shifting conditions of production? Probably it would be good to explore the answers to these questions by allowing that kind of agriculture to grow up around our small towns. Something post-industrial might emerge, carrying with it some of the pre-industrial, for good or ill.
I suspect that values have a lot to do with how it might evolve, so naturally, I want Unitarian Universalists to be right there helping it happen. Will we do it?
What struck me was that while the farm's chickens were very much in demand, it was not possible to respond to the market signal of rising price by shifting production more toward chickens. Everything on the farm was interconnected in more or less fixed proportions, so more of one thing really meant expanding the whole operation, possibly producing more of some other products that were not in high demand.
Imagining a town surrounded by farms engaged in sustainable agriculture of this type, I began to think, well, the people in the town would have to sort of want what they have, except when there was a chance to start up a whole new complex of farm operations with a whole new mix of products.
It might not be bad at all, but it is really very different from a system where more demand calls forth more production, that is, the market system.
We could settle into wanting what we have, enjoying a lifestyle that would gradually evolve into being traditional, getting to know one another, talking things over, exploring possible changes together, and allowing things to shift ever so slowly with changes in taste or knowledge of nutrition or requirements of climate change.
Living here in the small town of Belfast, Maine, the sense that this could happen is very real. It would not be a market system. What would it be? And how would it respond to changing wants and shifting conditions of production? Probably it would be good to explore the answers to these questions by allowing that kind of agriculture to grow up around our small towns. Something post-industrial might emerge, carrying with it some of the pre-industrial, for good or ill.
I suspect that values have a lot to do with how it might evolve, so naturally, I want Unitarian Universalists to be right there helping it happen. Will we do it?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
An Event in the Rain
So there we were, maybe a hundred soggy people standing in the rain, and yes, quite a few of our number had driven their cars to get there, and we were doing this media event about trying to get the attention of those who might do something about the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.
There was a reporter there, getting soggy with us. He asked me why we were doing it. Not being one of the organizers, I wondered if I should say anything. But, well, I was the Unitarian Universalist minister on the scene, so maybe... I mumbled something about getting together with other groups all over the world and something about how if we let the Earth become a place where humans really couldn't live, it would be something even a Unitarian Universalist could call a sin.
I wasn't at all sure. This was a kind of feel-good event (even though we were getting miserably wet, the group was really having a good time together) with content that was easy to love, no opponents anywhere in sight, an event that was asking us to do nothing but show up and stand around looking numerous --we actually spelled out the numbers 350, and a photographer climbed the fire department's ladder truck to take our picture and send it to the worldwide event headquarters.
I actually was proud of the Belfast congregation of Unitarian Universalists. The main organizer of the event was one of them. The singing group, the "Raging Grannies" had members from the congregation, the group that walked over from the other side of town with a great big drum under a beach umbrella included congregation members, the crowd was thick with us. Without the UU congregation, the event would have been much smaller. Maybe it would not have happened.
And on reflection, I'm sure it really did matter. It's hard to get beyond the generally pretty anemic things we do as individuals in the midst of a culture of waste, and it's hard to get people to be serious about the bigger things. We feel stronger now. We're part of a larger movement that is maybe going to get the attention of people with power around the world, to help them believe that people really care to save the planet. We may not know how, but we need their help to get everyone to be serious about this. Because it really would be a sin. Even for a Unitarian Universalist. Maybe especially for a Unitarian Universalist.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
If Consumer Spending Doesn't, What Will?
There was more on the news about how they expect the recovery to be "jobless", how employment will lag behind other indicators, and we'll have slow, slow growth for the next several years. Consumer spending, they say, is not bounding back robustly -- and why should it, since we were spending way too much and borrowing to make it happen and pretending house prices would never go down and we really, really, don't want to go back to that again.
Indeed, it's time to save, not time to spend, because so many of us are facing the uncertainty of an overstressed Social Security system with underprepared portfolios. Consumer spending is going to have to take a back seat to consumer saving.
So, the economy is not going to be recovering the way it has after the last several recessions. But it could still recover faster than they think. It could be about investment. And it could be about ending the violence of extreme poverty around the world. It could be about building some sort of post-capitalist system that made it possible for family incomes and consumption to rise around the world and didn't require the families of the United States to overextend themselves to keep everything working. Where is the creative thinking that once made American capitalism famous?
If the folks who make loans keep looking in the same places for their business, we'll just end up in the same old mess we were in the last time, only later. Let's do something different!
Indeed, it's time to save, not time to spend, because so many of us are facing the uncertainty of an overstressed Social Security system with underprepared portfolios. Consumer spending is going to have to take a back seat to consumer saving.
So, the economy is not going to be recovering the way it has after the last several recessions. But it could still recover faster than they think. It could be about investment. And it could be about ending the violence of extreme poverty around the world. It could be about building some sort of post-capitalist system that made it possible for family incomes and consumption to rise around the world and didn't require the families of the United States to overextend themselves to keep everything working. Where is the creative thinking that once made American capitalism famous?
If the folks who make loans keep looking in the same places for their business, we'll just end up in the same old mess we were in the last time, only later. Let's do something different!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Legacies of Violence
I just finished reading Tracy Kidder's book, Strength in What Remains. I devoured it as if it were a novel, transfixed and often horrified, anxious about its charming protagonist with the improbable name of Deogracias. It brought into sharp relief the problem of what happens to people who have been through large-scale violence, because it is in part the story of Deogracias' survival of genocide in the African country of Burundi.
We know what happens on a small scale from research and stories about the lives of returned veterans, rape victims, and survivors of other violent experiences. The people are forever changed. They often suffer from disordered ways of perceiving and responding to what's going on in the world. They need to talk and talk about what they survived, and to do that talking with people who can hear and care and not be made crazy themselves. They need to find a new way of being in the world. Not a few of them find that some kind of return to the event is part of the story of their new life -- advocacy for other victims, promotion of legislation or social change to prevent what happened to them from happening to others, running support groups, and much else. And some never find a way to be part of "normal" society again.
But what happens when whole communities have been subjected to large scale and ongoing violence?
We look at the way Israel and Palestine deal with each other in the world. Both sides look just plain crazy to the outside observer. I am deeply certain that large scale and ongoing violence against the people of both sides has created this.
In Tracy Kidder's book, the protagonist returns to Burundi after being away in the United States for years. During that time he has not been subjected to the ongoing violence. He has had a chance to do a number of things that have helped him begin to heal. When he goes back, the people seem very strange to him compared to the way they were before. Kidder quotes Deogracias as saying "you know what it is? They are all crazy." (p. 214).
What can a country do when everyone is crazy?
And, shouldn't we as a country be thinking about this as we proceed with military options in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Shouldn't we be thinking about this as we get ready to leave Iraq? The aftermath of large scale ongoing violence has to be that everyone is crazy, and someone needs to help them pick up the pieces, begin to heal, and find a wholesome way to live -- maybe to find it again, maybe to find it for the first time.
We know what happens on a small scale from research and stories about the lives of returned veterans, rape victims, and survivors of other violent experiences. The people are forever changed. They often suffer from disordered ways of perceiving and responding to what's going on in the world. They need to talk and talk about what they survived, and to do that talking with people who can hear and care and not be made crazy themselves. They need to find a new way of being in the world. Not a few of them find that some kind of return to the event is part of the story of their new life -- advocacy for other victims, promotion of legislation or social change to prevent what happened to them from happening to others, running support groups, and much else. And some never find a way to be part of "normal" society again.
But what happens when whole communities have been subjected to large scale and ongoing violence?
We look at the way Israel and Palestine deal with each other in the world. Both sides look just plain crazy to the outside observer. I am deeply certain that large scale and ongoing violence against the people of both sides has created this.
In Tracy Kidder's book, the protagonist returns to Burundi after being away in the United States for years. During that time he has not been subjected to the ongoing violence. He has had a chance to do a number of things that have helped him begin to heal. When he goes back, the people seem very strange to him compared to the way they were before. Kidder quotes Deogracias as saying "you know what it is? They are all crazy." (p. 214).
What can a country do when everyone is crazy?
And, shouldn't we as a country be thinking about this as we proceed with military options in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Shouldn't we be thinking about this as we get ready to leave Iraq? The aftermath of large scale ongoing violence has to be that everyone is crazy, and someone needs to help them pick up the pieces, begin to heal, and find a wholesome way to live -- maybe to find it again, maybe to find it for the first time.
Friday, September 18, 2009
If I Were Serious...
If I were serious about a smaller carbon footprint, there is so much more I could do -- and yet, some of it really feels beside the point.
I could stop using paper towels, change from plastic to glass for food storage and abandon plastic bags; I could combine projects that use the oven, and I could maintain the thermostat at a lower level in winter. I could dry more clothes in air. I could be more careful to buy things that come from nearer rather than farther. But how good is that?
Already I live in a small, well-insulated space that's really close to where I work. I use the lightbulbs. I do run a computer, but not a television set. I don't have to drive to work, to the laundromat, or to the grocery store. I even don't have to drive to the movies, the hardware store, the doctor's, etc., etc. I do have to drive to see my friends, but I'm starting to have friends here, too, my home since August of this year. I do have to drive to professional meetings, because we are not thick on the ground in this part of the world -- that could change, but it won't be soon!
Mainly, I could stop riding on airplanes. When I took a couple of on-line carbon footprint inventories, it was sobering to realize how much that adds to the weight of CO2 I contribute. That's because I live really far away from my family, and if I want to see them, I pretty much have to fly. Maybe there's another way to handle this, but that will take time.
So it comes down to this: it's time for me to pay attention to the systems that spout carbon on my behalf. Electricity. Transportation systems. Urban design. The economy itself, based as it is on "consumer spending," which basically means moving materials from one place to another, using energy to convert materials from one form to another, packaging stuff and packaging the packages
Not just my own personal choices, but the bigger choices we all make together or someone makes for us. I'm sure of it: we can have a really nice life and use a whole lot less stuff, move a whole lot less of it from place to place, the whole nine yards. It's time to start imagining it, and I feel really old to be starting. But let's. Now is the time we have.
I could stop using paper towels, change from plastic to glass for food storage and abandon plastic bags; I could combine projects that use the oven, and I could maintain the thermostat at a lower level in winter. I could dry more clothes in air. I could be more careful to buy things that come from nearer rather than farther. But how good is that?
Already I live in a small, well-insulated space that's really close to where I work. I use the lightbulbs. I do run a computer, but not a television set. I don't have to drive to work, to the laundromat, or to the grocery store. I even don't have to drive to the movies, the hardware store, the doctor's, etc., etc. I do have to drive to see my friends, but I'm starting to have friends here, too, my home since August of this year. I do have to drive to professional meetings, because we are not thick on the ground in this part of the world -- that could change, but it won't be soon!
Mainly, I could stop riding on airplanes. When I took a couple of on-line carbon footprint inventories, it was sobering to realize how much that adds to the weight of CO2 I contribute. That's because I live really far away from my family, and if I want to see them, I pretty much have to fly. Maybe there's another way to handle this, but that will take time.
So it comes down to this: it's time for me to pay attention to the systems that spout carbon on my behalf. Electricity. Transportation systems. Urban design. The economy itself, based as it is on "consumer spending," which basically means moving materials from one place to another, using energy to convert materials from one form to another, packaging stuff and packaging the packages
Not just my own personal choices, but the bigger choices we all make together or someone makes for us. I'm sure of it: we can have a really nice life and use a whole lot less stuff, move a whole lot less of it from place to place, the whole nine yards. It's time to start imagining it, and I feel really old to be starting. But let's. Now is the time we have.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Saving for Change
Maybe what we need is a bank. Or, a bunch of banks. We activists are often so focused on policy and legislation that we forget the creation of new institutions that could start to make the changes we want. We in our private lives (I'm thinking I don't like to call us "consumers") are saving more, spending less of the money we are still receiving. This is not surprising, since so many are boomers who just saw the market blow away their prospects of retirement. It makes sense.
So we are saving our money into a system that should be putting it back into circulation as investment, which would be spending that both creates jobs and income and creates additional productivity for the economy. Developing capacity to produce solar panels, insulation, products from recycled materials, maybe. Improving agriculture in places closer to markets, maybe. But it doesn't seem to be quite getting there.
"They" in the financial institutions seem to be waiting for the market for debt-financed consumption to firm up so they can make loans back to us. If we don't want to go there so much any more, maybe there need to be some new lending institutions that are focused on investment in the traditional sense. I'm thinking of investment in capacity-building that's close to the ground. I'm thinking of the a bunch of new New Hampshire Community Loan Funds, or a whole lot of credit unions for community economic development. The money we save could be recycled into the community in ways that would get us going on the lower-carbon way of life we are needing to achieve.
If we turned our attention, not completely, but partly, away from trying to persuade other people to do things to shrink our carbon footprint, and toward building communities that actually have smaller footprints, wouldn't that be a good use of both our passion and our newfound thrift?
So we are saving our money into a system that should be putting it back into circulation as investment, which would be spending that both creates jobs and income and creates additional productivity for the economy. Developing capacity to produce solar panels, insulation, products from recycled materials, maybe. Improving agriculture in places closer to markets, maybe. But it doesn't seem to be quite getting there.
"They" in the financial institutions seem to be waiting for the market for debt-financed consumption to firm up so they can make loans back to us. If we don't want to go there so much any more, maybe there need to be some new lending institutions that are focused on investment in the traditional sense. I'm thinking of investment in capacity-building that's close to the ground. I'm thinking of the a bunch of new New Hampshire Community Loan Funds, or a whole lot of credit unions for community economic development. The money we save could be recycled into the community in ways that would get us going on the lower-carbon way of life we are needing to achieve.
If we turned our attention, not completely, but partly, away from trying to persuade other people to do things to shrink our carbon footprint, and toward building communities that actually have smaller footprints, wouldn't that be a good use of both our passion and our newfound thrift?
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Consumer Spending Revolution
Almost every day there is yet another report of sluggish consumer spending. On the one hand, it's something that seems good. We're saving for the future, saving up in order to buy things, holding back on using those credit cards. We're feeling insecure because of the rocky employment picture, we're feeling poor because of the reduction in value of all our assets, so we're holding back.
According to the commentators, our greater thrift is holding back the economy. They sound as if they wish we would just plunge into that high-spending way of life that went before the financial meltdown that led to this Great Recession.
I say it's not consumer thrift that's the problem. I say the shift is an opportunity. Greater thrift creates an opportunity for the people and institutions who make loans to think anew about what they are doing. This is a time for investment in a new way of life, and the savings creates a funding source. Invest in green technologies, in farms closer to places where people live, in neighborhoods where people can get what they want by walking or riding a bike, in railroads that move things more cheaply, in all those things that will make real a different way of life. Invest in ways to recycle materials and reclaim waste for profitable use.
Let's not go back. Let's make art and put on plays, read poetry and do sports, go walking just for fun, hang out in coffee shops and go to church. Let's fix the equipment we already have so we won't be throwing so much away. Let's build a society where consumer goods are not the be-all and the end-all, but rather tools to enrich our relationships with one another or tools to our enjoyment of our own minds and bodies. Let's go on saving and letting the saving turn into investments that can undo some of the damage we have done to the planetary ecology on which our lives depend. We can have a nice life without so much stuff. A nicer life, even, if we open our eyes and look around at the possibilities.
According to the commentators, our greater thrift is holding back the economy. They sound as if they wish we would just plunge into that high-spending way of life that went before the financial meltdown that led to this Great Recession.
I say it's not consumer thrift that's the problem. I say the shift is an opportunity. Greater thrift creates an opportunity for the people and institutions who make loans to think anew about what they are doing. This is a time for investment in a new way of life, and the savings creates a funding source. Invest in green technologies, in farms closer to places where people live, in neighborhoods where people can get what they want by walking or riding a bike, in railroads that move things more cheaply, in all those things that will make real a different way of life. Invest in ways to recycle materials and reclaim waste for profitable use.
Let's not go back. Let's make art and put on plays, read poetry and do sports, go walking just for fun, hang out in coffee shops and go to church. Let's fix the equipment we already have so we won't be throwing so much away. Let's build a society where consumer goods are not the be-all and the end-all, but rather tools to enrich our relationships with one another or tools to our enjoyment of our own minds and bodies. Let's go on saving and letting the saving turn into investments that can undo some of the damage we have done to the planetary ecology on which our lives depend. We can have a nice life without so much stuff. A nicer life, even, if we open our eyes and look around at the possibilities.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
From Another Planet?
I've been holding this post for a long time, a bad thing since it is about interplanetary exploration!
Actually, Rev. Mark is not from another planet, he's from Uganda. I met him at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists gathering a couple of years ago, and here he was again this summer, attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Salt Lake City. He has many great connections, but somehow in the course of planning his itinerary, the International Office has routed him through Manchester, New Hampshire, where nothing was happening. I volunteered to help, so I met him at the plane, took him to his hotel, and spent some time sharing sights and food with him. The next day, I took him to South Station in Boston to meet the bus to Cape Cod and his next assignment.
He came to Unitarian Universalism the same way a lot of Americans do, by finding that another church tradition did not work for him. He believed in himself, he said, and in the inner guidance that came to him, rather than in submission to the authority of someone in a higher position in the church. He had found us online, then met us at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists meeting, which led on to his making this trip to the U.S. to make connections here. Many things he found strange -- he marveled at how heavy so many Americans are, he was uncomfortable in air conditioned buildings -- and it was all very interesting. He liked the highways.
We spent a space of time on the highway from New Hampshire to Boston, and in his company I found myself thinking that if a country were to begin a plan of development right now, they would do well to do it without highways. It is not at all clear how we will transform our highway-based way of life, the one where so many people get up in the morning, get into cars, and drive to work, as the price of fuel rises and its availability shrinks. For how long will this continue to make sense?
I spoke of my feeling that a country could have a nice life without so many of them, without so many cars. Having thought of a country that still had a choice, I began to see my own country in a different way. What will we do with them as we move into the fuel-scarce future? How will we have a nice life without so much driving?
Actually, Rev. Mark is not from another planet, he's from Uganda. I met him at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists gathering a couple of years ago, and here he was again this summer, attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Salt Lake City. He has many great connections, but somehow in the course of planning his itinerary, the International Office has routed him through Manchester, New Hampshire, where nothing was happening. I volunteered to help, so I met him at the plane, took him to his hotel, and spent some time sharing sights and food with him. The next day, I took him to South Station in Boston to meet the bus to Cape Cod and his next assignment.
He came to Unitarian Universalism the same way a lot of Americans do, by finding that another church tradition did not work for him. He believed in himself, he said, and in the inner guidance that came to him, rather than in submission to the authority of someone in a higher position in the church. He had found us online, then met us at the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists meeting, which led on to his making this trip to the U.S. to make connections here. Many things he found strange -- he marveled at how heavy so many Americans are, he was uncomfortable in air conditioned buildings -- and it was all very interesting. He liked the highways.
We spent a space of time on the highway from New Hampshire to Boston, and in his company I found myself thinking that if a country were to begin a plan of development right now, they would do well to do it without highways. It is not at all clear how we will transform our highway-based way of life, the one where so many people get up in the morning, get into cars, and drive to work, as the price of fuel rises and its availability shrinks. For how long will this continue to make sense?
I spoke of my feeling that a country could have a nice life without so many of them, without so many cars. Having thought of a country that still had a choice, I began to see my own country in a different way. What will we do with them as we move into the fuel-scarce future? How will we have a nice life without so much driving?
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Courage to Love a Troubled Country
I remember the Fourth of July of my childhood, a time when our whole neighborhood packed up their picnics and their softball equipment and headed out to a park by the Potomac River, a place of green grass with a nice grove of trees, where there could be running and playing in the sunshine and sitting later in the shade. I remember there were home-grown fireworks after it finally got dark, but before that, there were ceremonial talk and song and food.
The flag was displayed. One of the men, an actual radio newscaster, would read the Declaration of Independence in a strong, confident voice. The adults would murmur their assent in key places, but I had no idea what was so important about all that. We did sing the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and My Country 'tis of Thee, and it was from that singing that I came to learn all the verses of all those songs. Then of course there were things to eat, of which I only remember the Flag Cake, something my mother made, a normal rectangular cake frosted with stars and stripes. I got to help with the frosting when I was old enough.
We were patriotic, and determinedly so, for it was the time of McCarthyism, which was testing the strength of our little community. The radio newsman moved away to get out of the political heat of the DC area. One of the fathers of kids I knew went to jail. My own father lost his job. And still we read the Declaration and sang the songs and made the flag cake. But in the end, we were not the same. I certainly was scarred by the experience of those times, and I think others were too.
By working diligently in that small community and in the larger one surrounding us, my parents and their friends were able to build an island of good values in a sea of intolerance and selfishness. That island still exists, lo these many years since they did their work. Leaders of my generation are passing the work along to younger ones.
So it was worthwhile. And this most recent spell of McCarthy-like political climate was mostly not so bad as that one, though it had its moments. I'm hoping that little by little our country becomes civilized. Maybe it's really true that reaching out, having conversations on many levels, sharing words and song and food, maybe that's how the world is really changed. We remember the moments of courage, the moments of challenge, victory and defeat, but in a sense what's really important is the work in between, the daily building of the way of peace and freedom within ourselves and among our neighbors.
I don't have a flag cake to share this year. Maybe next year it would be good to do that. Whether I do or not, I will continue to love my troubled country with all its flaws, love it enough to speak truthfully and work diligently to make it better.
The flag was displayed. One of the men, an actual radio newscaster, would read the Declaration of Independence in a strong, confident voice. The adults would murmur their assent in key places, but I had no idea what was so important about all that. We did sing the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and My Country 'tis of Thee, and it was from that singing that I came to learn all the verses of all those songs. Then of course there were things to eat, of which I only remember the Flag Cake, something my mother made, a normal rectangular cake frosted with stars and stripes. I got to help with the frosting when I was old enough.
We were patriotic, and determinedly so, for it was the time of McCarthyism, which was testing the strength of our little community. The radio newsman moved away to get out of the political heat of the DC area. One of the fathers of kids I knew went to jail. My own father lost his job. And still we read the Declaration and sang the songs and made the flag cake. But in the end, we were not the same. I certainly was scarred by the experience of those times, and I think others were too.
By working diligently in that small community and in the larger one surrounding us, my parents and their friends were able to build an island of good values in a sea of intolerance and selfishness. That island still exists, lo these many years since they did their work. Leaders of my generation are passing the work along to younger ones.
So it was worthwhile. And this most recent spell of McCarthy-like political climate was mostly not so bad as that one, though it had its moments. I'm hoping that little by little our country becomes civilized. Maybe it's really true that reaching out, having conversations on many levels, sharing words and song and food, maybe that's how the world is really changed. We remember the moments of courage, the moments of challenge, victory and defeat, but in a sense what's really important is the work in between, the daily building of the way of peace and freedom within ourselves and among our neighbors.
I don't have a flag cake to share this year. Maybe next year it would be good to do that. Whether I do or not, I will continue to love my troubled country with all its flaws, love it enough to speak truthfully and work diligently to make it better.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Meeting Thoreau in the 21st Century
After he helped his father build an "arrived" house in town, Henry David Thoreau borrowed some land from his friend Emerson and built that cabin where he lived for two and a half years. There he wrote the only two books he ever completed: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden. He had the privacy there to observe, remember, reflect, and write. He was living at the cabin when he made that protest against the war on Mexico that landed him in jail and became the germ of his lecture and essay on Civil Disobedience. The cabin was a good place for him just then, furnished with just the barest necessities, and not too far from town.
My own new place, in keeping with the exigencies of having accepted part-time work as an interim minister with a wonderful congregation in Belfast, Maine, is reminding me of Thoreau's cabin. It's better: I don't have to build it myself. The rent is right. It has all the necessities. And even I, who pride myself on a fairly simple lifestyle, will have to pack a storage unit full of all the things I won't be taking to my Walden on the shores of Penobscot Bay. There will be enough chairs to entertain a very few people, and the place is but a few steps from the local food coop, where a larger group could sit for hours and talk. And it's very close to church, indeed. There will be privacy in the evenings to play my flute. I will be able to park my car except for trips to the hospital or people's homes or other suchlike excursions.
Will I write? I will surely keep my diaries, which will not have a record of anything like surveying the contours of the bottom of Walden pond, nor curmudgeonly commentary on other people's habits and beliefs. But what will present itself to be written besides that? I'll wait and find out. I do know there will be good spaces of time that can be devoted to the work of writing or to the mindless moodling that is such a necessary part of the creative process. Still, the temptation to look for other paid work is very real... for the right opportunity, I could surrender to the temptation to get paid for something more than the half-time ministry. Will I have the courage to drive life into this corner and experience the very marrow of it? This remains to be seen!
My own new place, in keeping with the exigencies of having accepted part-time work as an interim minister with a wonderful congregation in Belfast, Maine, is reminding me of Thoreau's cabin. It's better: I don't have to build it myself. The rent is right. It has all the necessities. And even I, who pride myself on a fairly simple lifestyle, will have to pack a storage unit full of all the things I won't be taking to my Walden on the shores of Penobscot Bay. There will be enough chairs to entertain a very few people, and the place is but a few steps from the local food coop, where a larger group could sit for hours and talk. And it's very close to church, indeed. There will be privacy in the evenings to play my flute. I will be able to park my car except for trips to the hospital or people's homes or other suchlike excursions.
Will I write? I will surely keep my diaries, which will not have a record of anything like surveying the contours of the bottom of Walden pond, nor curmudgeonly commentary on other people's habits and beliefs. But what will present itself to be written besides that? I'll wait and find out. I do know there will be good spaces of time that can be devoted to the work of writing or to the mindless moodling that is such a necessary part of the creative process. Still, the temptation to look for other paid work is very real... for the right opportunity, I could surrender to the temptation to get paid for something more than the half-time ministry. Will I have the courage to drive life into this corner and experience the very marrow of it? This remains to be seen!
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Scary Prospect
Last August, a gunman opened fire in a Unitarian Universalist church, upset because we are "too liberal". Last week, a doctor who provided abortion services was murdered as he ushered at the Sunday morning service. And then, a white supremacist opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC. Gun sales are up. Ammunition sales are so brisk that there are shortages in some places. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports a major increase in hate group websites. It's a scary prospect.
While I was checking the SPLC's website, I looked at the hate-group map of New Hampshire. We're not doing as bad as some other states, or maybe, our haters are more independent... there's a white supremacy group listed in Concord that has its Post Office address in Haverhill and an anti-semitic "traditional" Catholic group in Richmond. But we all know independent-minded folks with guns in the closet and emergency rations in the cellar, people who will talk about "the rising" that will result if the liberals push too far.
So what's a peace-loving liberal-minded religious person to do?
I guess I'm remembering that peacemaking does not wait for war to begin.
We need to talk with the folks we know, the ones with the apocalyptic mindset, and listen to them, too. What is it they fear? Is there common ground? Something to work on together? These conversations are not easy. Not easy to set up and not easy to pursue once they start. But each of us knows someone who needs to calm down about what's happening in our country just now. The TV news they see, the radio talk shows they prefer, and the websites they visit will not help them calm down. Only their real live neighbors, co-workers, and relatives can reach out with the calming effect of listening and caring.
What the shooters in Knoxville, Wichita, and Washington have in common is something that draws them out of the network of grumbling, fact-distorting, right-wing opinion they inhabit day to day into a supremely solitary action, a sense that the mantle of responsibility has fallen on their shoulders, that they must act rather than continue to complain.
There is no way to tell how many degrees of separation there are between us in our liberal cocoons and them in their right-wing ones, but to have any hope at all of reaching the next potential shooter before he (or she) shoots, we have to move toward them with courage, love, patience, and hope. How can we do that?
While I was checking the SPLC's website, I looked at the hate-group map of New Hampshire. We're not doing as bad as some other states, or maybe, our haters are more independent... there's a white supremacy group listed in Concord that has its Post Office address in Haverhill and an anti-semitic "traditional" Catholic group in Richmond. But we all know independent-minded folks with guns in the closet and emergency rations in the cellar, people who will talk about "the rising" that will result if the liberals push too far.
So what's a peace-loving liberal-minded religious person to do?
I guess I'm remembering that peacemaking does not wait for war to begin.
We need to talk with the folks we know, the ones with the apocalyptic mindset, and listen to them, too. What is it they fear? Is there common ground? Something to work on together? These conversations are not easy. Not easy to set up and not easy to pursue once they start. But each of us knows someone who needs to calm down about what's happening in our country just now. The TV news they see, the radio talk shows they prefer, and the websites they visit will not help them calm down. Only their real live neighbors, co-workers, and relatives can reach out with the calming effect of listening and caring.
What the shooters in Knoxville, Wichita, and Washington have in common is something that draws them out of the network of grumbling, fact-distorting, right-wing opinion they inhabit day to day into a supremely solitary action, a sense that the mantle of responsibility has fallen on their shoulders, that they must act rather than continue to complain.
There is no way to tell how many degrees of separation there are between us in our liberal cocoons and them in their right-wing ones, but to have any hope at all of reaching the next potential shooter before he (or she) shoots, we have to move toward them with courage, love, patience, and hope. How can we do that?
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