serious questions for UUs from my mother in-law

The Deistette and I took a visit to another UU church Sunday. I haven’t been to my home congregation on a Sunday morning in probably two months at least but I feel a strong sense of loyalty to my home congregation so this felt kinda… i don’t know, adulterous?

I’ve been so busy with keeping the HOA deed restriction wolfhounds off my back as well as doing other handyman work for neighbors that I’m either too tired or involved in working on a project to get to church on Sunday.

But I humored my wife and went to this other UU congregation, which on paper seemed pretty damn awesome. It has an engaging children’s program, a number of opportunities for adults to grow spiritually as well as activities to participate in social justice.

I told her not to get too excited about it because on paper a church is much different from what you experience when you get there. The minister might be dull, the people clickish, the sanctuary uncomfortable or it may just lack that “x” factor that tells you “THIS is a church I could see myself being a part of.”

She agreed but she was practically giddy come Sunday morning. She was on the phone with her mom that morning as we were getting ready and because of her excitement was able to convince her mom to come with us and spend the morning and afternoon of her only day off… at church. Full disclosure: it was mentioned we would be going to IKEA afterward. : )

So we get there and it was a nice service. The people were nice. The music was nice. Everything was… nice. But it was just so generic and lacking in what felt like any spiritual experience that we all left… well, disappointed.

We talked about it as soon as we were in the car. After about 15 minutes of conversation my mother in-law finally says, “did I miss something? I mean it was a nice service but there was not one thing said that made me feel inspired or give me something to think about the rest of the week.”

We ate lunch at IKEA and for another 40 minutes or so we continued with trying to figure out what went wrong from little things about that particular congregation to big picture things about religion as a whole as well as shortcomings with UUism.

One thing my mother in-law asked me was “is it hard for a UU minister to give a sermon?” The way she asked it and given we were talking about the sermon being rather lackluster made me think she asked the question because she thought the homily sucked. Plus she knows any one UU congregation can have as many spiritual paths to address as there are members. In that regard she asked do all UU ministers speak with that weird cadence with obviously scripted pauses.  Are they all kind of obnoxious, fake, overly dramatic? In my experience… yes. Yes and I don’t know why.

She asked me what is it about UUism that appeals to me. What is it that makes it a right fit for me.

She asked if I thought of it as a religion? She also asked if I thought ANYONE in a UU church believes it to be a religion considering the way they dressed and carried themselves portrays a lack of self respect. I think her point was if they can’t dress in a way that shows they respect themselves how on earth do they respect anything else, particularly the place where they worship?

And then she asked, how on earth has the UU church had any success or continued as long is it has?

I think these are questions that are asked week after week after week by visitors to a UU church. I think the UU church has such a potential to be a real, valid, significant, legitimate, truly meaningful and substantial voice on the world stage regarding human affairs if we could just get our shit together.

I have been a UU for only 10 years… actually I’m about six months shy of that. But it seems I have always heard some sort of conversation about growth.. the lack of.., the need for…, mechanisms on… growth. This conversation has in fact been going on for decades in the UU church.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we will always be a speck on the religious radar. We always be will be a punchline. We will merely be a voice of misfits that is never really taken seriously. Oh we’ve had a one-off success here and there but you know what… you give a monkey a typewriter and enough time… it’ll tap out a word or two.

The fundamental problem with UUism and why it will always be relegated to the outer fringes of the religion landscape is because we don’t have a singular passion as a collective religious people. We don’t believe in something collectively with burning passion. We have let the genie of “believe whatever you want to believe” out of the bottle long ago and allowed our theological center to scatter to the winds.

Bring it back ministers. Bring back our theology. Preach from the pulpits and the street corners and everywhere in between the idea that we are all One… we all have a spark of The Divine and as such ARE One.

AND, more importantly that there is such a thing as unconditional, undeserved Love that tells us we belong despite are our shortcomings.

You do this, and you’ll create disciples that will have a burning in their heart which lead them to spread a message that can save souls and heal communities.

housing crisis hits close to home… again

One of the first things President Obama did after he was elected in 2008 and subsequently took office in January of 2009 was put in place the Make Home Affordable program. It was a quick bit of legislation that was an attempt to stop the sucking chest wound that was the collapsing housing market.

It was a great idea but it had its problems… one of those being that even a year after its implementation there were only about 100,000 who were accepted into the program out of millions who qualified.

By some miracle, alignment of the planets or just dumb luck, The Deistette and I were accepted into the program in July of 2010. It brought us from the brink of losing our home and a whole host of other fallout (like our family splitting geographically) to keeping our home as well as making the slow, small steps to financial recovery.  Three years later we’re still struggling but we don’t have the specter of losing our house hovering over us.

Unfortunately I can’t say that for my neighbor.
About a week ago I told him I’d have to put my ladder on his side of the property line so I could paint the side of my house but that I’d be careful not to ruin the bushes there. He said, “oh that’s ok. We’ll be gone by then anyway.”

I was shocked and asked him what the hell happened. I thought he’d been approved for the Make Home Affordable program. He said the paper work got messed up (happened to me twice when we were trying) and when they reapplied they didn’t get approved. I’m sure he knew for a while but he told me only a week before he was supposed to be out.

I feel terrible for him. He seems really, really down… defeated, beaten. I’ve been there and know what it’s like. You feel ashamed, guilty and a crushing mental stress that is physically painful.

I’m not sure what they were doing in the time that they knew but I wonder if they were in denial or something because they didn’t really start making any movement toward leaving until about three days ago. Even with one day to go before the bank wanted him out, he still didn’t have a place where he, his wife and teenage stepson were going. Fortunately, the bank gave him a few days extension but it seems rather heartless. Why not give him an extra couple of weeks? I don’t know… they don’t have to be that way.

Anyway, I stepped into his house last night to help him load some bags of trash on the already four-foot pile of debris he had at the front curb and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason they didn’t make more aggressive movement toward getting out is they must have simply been overwhelmed and stressed to just this side of the breaking point. You see they’ve lived there about eight years and in that kind of time they have just accumulated a bunch of stuff… a bunch of crap really. We all do… accumulate crap. Ever since The Deistette moved in and we got married we’ve been trying to slim down all the crap we have but it’s hard.

And so I imagine for my neighbor trying to get rid of all this stuff (much with emotional ties) was difficult to figure out where start but now it’s crunch time. If they don’t get out and have ALL of their stuff out by Friday at 1:00pm, they lose out on receiving a pretty good chunk of change. The bank said they would give them 2,000 dollars if they’re out by then. This would help them so much in getting a new place. It would go a long way toward deposits and first and last month’s rent.

But I’m really worried they’re not going to make it. There is so much crap, and trash and fucked up shit in their house I’m not sure they can do it. The Deistette is gonna try to get a friend of hers to go with her tomorrow to clean up and give momentum to the process of shoving everything out while both my neighbors are at work.

I feel so bad for them and it’s such a terrible spot to be.
There but by the Grace of God go I.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

Twenty years ago today I got off a bus in San Diego. A U.S. Marine drill instructor yelled at me and about 70 other young men to get off HIS bus and get on HIS yellow footprints. It was my first day of bootcamp and I became another addition to the number of troops that allows the U.S. state department to flex its muscle and our interests against other countries around the globe.

My motivation for joining the Marine Corps was not because of some romanticized notion of serving our country or some willingness to sacrifice myself for the cause of freedom and democracy. There are very few who do.

I can tell you from first hand knowledge of having worked at a recruiting station headquarters there are very few who join for those reasons. In fact, more often than not the kids who join have either exhausted their options, are hoping to learn a skill/trade, get money for college or all of the above.

Rare, if ever, is there a kid of a congressman or senator being trained to be a ground pounder, trigger puller assigned to an infantry platoon. I still contend that if the Bush twins or President Obama’s daughters were in an infantry platoon our country would not be at war.

One Sunday when I was in bootcamp and was training in the field for a few weeks we had a Naval Chaplain come and deliver a sermon to those of us who attended chapel. He had been Marine reconnaissance before being called to the priesthood. He wasn’t your typical meek and mild priest. He was tall, big and muscled with character lines in his face of someone who had spent time in rugged space. Yet his voice was calm and measured and humble. I remember something he said that has stuck with me all these years. If I remember correctly it was the benediction and it went something like “may we see the day when our jobs as military members are no longer needed and the world is at peace.”

After my first duty station I was sent to Marine Corps Recruiting Station Houston HQ. One afternoon I was with a gunnery sergeant in his office and he was lamenting his numbers and how he felt he and his crew were going to come up short on the number of bodies to join the Corps. He said something similar to what the chaplain said. He said something like, “you know you’d have to be crazy to want to join an organization whose sole purpose is to go to war… where you will be sent to a far off land and people will shoot at you. You’d have to be crazy. I pray every night that someday soon I’m out of a job.”

I’m proud of my time in the Marine Corps. I loved being a U.S. Marine and came to believe that being one more member in our military was a positive for our country. I think the concept that “sometimes to maintain peace, you must prepare for war.” is accurate. But I’ve come to believe it doesn’t have to be that way. Certainly it can change.

[sigh]

I probably should have done this a long time ago. But because of the responsibilities I have I can’t be on the front lines of protests and activism but at the very least, certainly I can provide funding for an organization that will.

So on the 20th anniversary of my first day of bootcamp… the day I started to  learn how to be, for all intents and purposes a killer, I have joined an organization whose purpose is peace.

I have joined Veterans for Peace.

Isaiah 2:4
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

If I can’t fix it… it is broken

For the past two or three years, I’ve been working on fixing, repairing and maintaining my house after a long, long time of letting it go. I could make excuses and give a handful of decent reasons as to why I let my house fall into such disrepair that it probably would have been condemned by the county. I didn’t have time or more so, money. I didn’t know how to make the repairs. I was worried I might ruin something if I tried to fix it and then incur a really big repair bill to have someone with real know-how fix my fix. Or I was busy with church obligations.

The fact of the matter is those are all bullshit excuses from a guy who was depressed and self destructing because his wife left him. I sometimes wonder if I subconciously wanted my house to fall in on me after my ex-wife left.

Who knows… what i do know is that with the help of the internet (thank you YouTubers who post DIY vids!), the spurring of my wife The Deistette, a little help from some church friends (financially and physically) and some self determination I’ve managed to turn the ship on this house. It’s by no means finished or even close but at least things are pointed in the right direction.

One project where I learned a lot was in renovating my kitchen. Ok, renovate is the wrong word… that gives the idea this was for aesthetic reasons.  No, it wasn’t because I or my wife simply wanted to make it look pretty. It was because we had mold, lots of mold growing in the cabinet underneath the sink. With the help of my younger brother I gutted my kitchen down to the studs. I came up with a way to contain the mold spores and did a pretty damn fine job of it, I don’t mind telling you.  I learned basic plumbing and moved the sink from a corner location to a spot The Deistette thought would be better.

In other projects, I’ve taken out drywall… so much at one time that I exposed my house in such a way that I could see outside and across the street from inside my house. I’ve remodeled my bathroom. I’ve replaced toilets and fixed plumbing in my bathroom. I’ve repaired parts of my roof, disassembled  a bathtub single faucet and put it back together. I have torn off old siding, disposed of old asbestos type insulation and replaced with new thicker insulation.  I have replaced windows and in doing so reframed my house to fit a different sized double paned window.

I don’t list all these things I’ve done to brag (ok, maybe a little to brag) but to show what can be done with a little self determination AND help from some friends. You see, I know I didn’t do all those repairs on my own. I had some help. I had help from family, church friends and some amazing people on the internet.

As I continue to learn and gain experience, I hope some day I can say “if I can’t fix it; it is broken.” I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that skill level but I sure do like trying now. I really like fixing things on my house. Maybe being a handyman will be a second career for me someday. I’ve currently got about 1500 dollars worth of work I’ll earn from my neighbor over the next few months. For now, I’ll be hunting the interwebs for the answer if I don’t know how to fix something. Who knows… maybe someday I’ll actually start that handyman business.

I have found myself firmly in the Libertarian camp but not the one the Tea Party assholes preach or the Ayn Rand followers like Paul Ryan espouse or the textbook, theoretical view of Ron Paul. Despite being Libertarian-esque, I like this vid the Dems put out and believe whole heartedly in its message.

One dad’s examples for the definition of “shortage”

So yesterday my older stepson (he’s in third grade) asked me a question about his homework. He’d never seen a dictionary entry and was having trouble making sense of how to read it since he’s used to reading sentences. The word was ‘shortage’. I broke up the definition making sure he understood the words in the definition and filled in where the choppy method of definition might not make sense in his head.

I then began to give examples. “Let’s say we have a rat problem. We need 5 bags of poison to kill all the rats but we only have 2 bags. What does that mean?”

“we don’t have enough?”

“Right! We don’t have enough… and THAT is a shortage. Here’s another one. You boys are driving me crazy. I should have at least three beers in my belly so I don’t beat myself over the head with a hammer because you two are driving me so crazy. We have no beer in the fridge. There is a SHORTAGE! Do you get ‘shortage’ now?”

He blinked and went upstairs.

coincidentally after writing this post this morning, I had a friend send me a link to a series of images called “World’s Best Father” by Dave Engledow. I hope he doesn’t mind, but I thought this would make a great addition to my post. : )

you can find more images from Dave Engledow’s series “World’s Best Father” here.

what DO we UUs believe

They’re coming in oneseis and twoseis… tweets and posts and articles from different people putting their two cents into the cart before the horse debate of doing good works (i.e. social justice) vs faith/religion (theology).

The question makes one run in circles as Lo Williams pointed out as she responded to a post Kinsi had put on his blog last week.

It’s hard.

It’s a hard question for UUs to answer, even those who have been lifelong UUs or those who wear the cleric’s collar of our clergy. And I think part of the reason it’s such a hard question to answer is because we’ve become so damn afraid of actually saying “We believe ______ and if you don’t believe ______ then you’re probably not a UU.”

We have drifted so far away from a belief system toward inclusivity that we have no idea any longer what we believe. We are desperate not to diminish any individual’s belief system and so our mantra of “we will support your search for truth and meaning” has become the demise of a central religious belief.

If you ask most UUs to describe their religion, it will come off sounding as though members of this tradition define their own theology, that UUism pretty much lets you believe whatever you want and that UUs love coffee on Sunday mornings after they meet for service. That would be about it.

I think it is a common misconception that Unitarian Universalism is one big stew pot of all the world religions lumped together. I can see how people might think that but I simply don’t believe that idea of UUism to be true… at least not anymore. If I am being honest, I’m sure there was a time where I did think that of UUism.

But now… not so much. In fact, not at all.

I think Unitarian Universalism should be a religion based on two ideas. Ideas that stem from our religious roots of Unitarianism and Universalism.

1) that there is but only one God… Only one Higher Power in the universe.  One Truth. But there is the caveat that people view that Higher Power by way of different lenses. So for some this Higher Power or Truth is Brahma, one of the gods of the Hindu trinity. For some their view of the Higher Power is the teachings of the Buddha. For some it is a goddess that moves the wind. For some their Higher Power is sacred community, more powerful and forgiving than the individual can be. And for some their Higher Power is their concept of God.

and 2): That salvation is universal. Transformation is universal. And this salvation/transformation can be had by anyone. Again there is the caveat that this salvation is viewed from different lenses. Salvation can be had from Sacred Community when someone says, “hi my name is John Doe and I’m an alcoholic.” And the salvific response is “Hi John.”  Salvation/Transformation can be had when you say to yourself, “I forgive myself for my shortcomings. I am after all only human. And I will do better” Or perhaps one’s salvation comes from the teachings of the son of carpenter who died 2000 years ago.

My friends THIS is what we UUs believe and should get back to preaching from our pulpits. THIS is the salvation message we have. THIS is our Good News and when we get this in our hearts, our heart will lead us to transform injustice in this world into right… not the other way around.

I have a ten year old little girl in my house

Faith has lived across the street from us for not quite a year. She, her mom and her two tween sisters moved in just after the school year started. I think that’s when it was. Maybe it was just before the school year. I can’t remember. Apparently, her mom went through a divorce and I assume couldn’t afford to keep her previous home and so began renting one of the little wood frame, shotgun type houses that sit on my street.

We haven’t really met Faith’s mom although I’ve seen her on a handful of occasions getting groceries out of the car or heading off for work. Turns out those times I’ve seen her were rather miraculous because the woman works about 18 to 20 hours a day! YES… 18 to 20 hours per day. This happens about five days a week. On the other two days she may work one of those days for eight hours.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the policies and culture of a country that claims to be the best in the world, yet there are still people who have to work that many hours of a day to provide the barest of essentials for their family.

And that is the reason I have a ten-year old little girl in my house.

Faith knows The Deistette from the bus stop.

challenge to the UUA – reinvent UU ministry

There was a tweet I saw come across my time line last week from @Rev_Mother who stated to fellow UU blogger and tweeter @mattkinsi that she wanted to be put in charge of Faith Development. Kins was appointed to the UUA committee on appointments. Or the committee on creating appointments to appointing committees. I don’t know… irony and name aside, Kins has been noticed by some higher-ups in the UUA and it’s pretty cool that I can say I knew him when. In fact, Kinsi is the only one of my blog peeps who I have actually met in person.

Anyway… so a few days ago I woke up with a fuzz of ideas swimming through my head as I meandered from almost awake to drifting back into a dream state. I began thinking about her statement about a ministry on faith development.

Her statement was a tangent off a bigger discussion that had occurred (actually it’s still happening) which was debating the idea of the UUA focusing on it’s cause de jour coupled with the recent Social Justice General Assembly vice focusing on our salvific message. (i learned that word from Rev Mother. I use it all the time now. )

I’m assuming this is what brought on this subconscious/dreamlike thinking the other day. So I began thinking what if there was a ministry on Marriage and Family so that we could not only focus on pushing for legalizing same-sex marriage but also from the pulpit deliver a message that strengthened families and those who are married AFTER they have walked down the aisle whether they are gay or straight.  It may seem like semantics but the thing is we work pretty diligently at getting gay people to the alter but do NOTHING for them or other UUs who are married for that matter, AFTER they are married.

I challenge the UUA to develop a broad set of ministries, such as a  Ministry on Marriage and Family, Ministry on the Holy and Sacred, Ministry on Human Dignity, Ministry on the Holistic Human, Ministry on Stewardship  of the Earth. I challenge the UUA to reinvigorate the move Rev. Sinkford had in reclaiming our religious language and pull away from living by-gone days of being a hippy in the 60s.

These are just ideas for names but the concept is to create a small number of core of ministries where our actions and witnessing are sacred, holy work.  And the culture of our congregations would view it as such because that’s what we would hear and learn while sitting in the pews.  Those who are concerned with inhumane conditions at Joe Arpaio’s tent city would be doing holy work… UNDER the auspices of church/religious inspired language such as “ministry” “dignity” “sacred” instead of simply attending a protest to bring attention to a cause of injustice.

There are a million injustices in the world that should be righted simply because we know as a species what is right and wrong. The thing is when we as a religious people take up that cause to right a wrong it should be because we believe in our heart of hearts, it to be a sacred calling. UUism is a religion with a message of salvation… NOT a social club that meets on Sundays for coffee after protesting inhumane conditions the night before.

Five year blogiversary!

The activity has slowed but there’s still some movement here at the blog o’ Jules. That’s weird sounds Irish huh.

Anyway, I drafted the title the day of my blogiversary (June 22) as a reminder but then got caught up with other things and here I am two days late. Story of my life.

So what was I caught up with? Still working on house stuff. Had to cut the jungle that is (was) my backyard. And I was watching all the GA stuff.

I mentioned the UU General Assembly in my last post and I’ve been following the association’s Livestream channel to watch the worship services and other activities that have been videoed. Couple that with a bunch of UU ministers, attendees and off-site UUs who have been Tweeting on the #UUAGA hashtag and it’s been a pretty cool experience.

Nothing like actually being there. General Assembly was held in Fort Worth back in 2005 and with it being a mere four hours away from Houston, a couple of friends of mine and I went. It was a pretty amazing experience. So I know what it’s like to actually be there. The video, tweeting and live blogging is pretty cool but not quite like being there.

So back to the blogiversary… I’ve been working on going self hosted. I had actually hoped to be there by the time June 22 hit. Oh well, maybe in a month or two. Sept 11 anniversary? In time for the election? The Mayan prophecy?

Meh. Soon.

Cart before the horse

I can’t remember the last time I posted anything UU (unitarian universalist) related. Maybe a year or so ago when I wrote something titled my UU church must change?  I don’t know but I feel compelled as our national conference, known to UUs as General Assembly or GA, is underway in Phoenix.

So GA started yesterday and with Twitter, Facebook and blogging platforms being used in official and unofficial capacities, it’s almost as if I’m there. Almost.

One of the biggest problems I’ve had with UUism since I attended my first service 10 years ago has been the fact there is always some cause du jour and for the most part, those causes usually feeds the caricature that the Everyday Joe has of left-leaning, liberal-minded people.

• Please help the eight toed children of Burma have free-trade coffee!
• We must be the voice of the disenfranchised in equatorial Guinea who don’t have access to clean sinks and toilets!
• Save the three-legged, blue-spotted ninny muggins of Gila Island!
• What would a world with dignity and a fair wage for food chain workers look like?!??!!!

Believe it or not… that last one is a real cause the UUA is pushing at General Assembly this year. Some of the other causes I’ve seen are something about ethical eating and voicing the unfairness of server wages. I wish I knew who to talk to about trying to raise awareness about pushing for laws that raise the wage of waiters and waitresses because the UUA is going to embarrass itself if it goes full tilt on this. By law, food servers make at least minimum wage. It is federal law. Just because a food server is making $2.13 an hour… you know what, I’m not gonna get into it. But I work for a payroll company. I do it every single day. They are NOT being short changed. No pun intended. : )

Back to the social justice thing though… I mean, history is replete with examples of religious people taking up the banner of justice and heading to the front lines to make a wrong a right. Often times that is how change happens. But the UUA and my church I believe have it wrong.

It seems as though they are moving further and further in the direction of social activism as the means toward spiritual fulfillment when it should be the other way around. It’s the cart before the horse.

I delivered a sermon at  my congregation on Easter that touched on the point. I acknowledged it being a holy day for Christians and that although it is their holiday, we can learn from this narrative. I ended by emphasizing the idea that it is from spiritual transformation and the UU Good News of universal salvation that we are moved beyond the walls of our church and into the larger community to do good works. NOT the other way around.

It is apparent that the trendy missional theology bandwagon has its horse trailing the back end and many UUs are hopping on board, including my own congregation.  I am afraid there is only a nail or two left before the coffin is sealed for me and I am no longer willing to call any UU church my sangha.