Harrumph!

I honestly had forgotten my childhood brush with the heaven bound. We have the current Rapture ranter, a depressed woman who smothers her six-year-old and wants to die so the two of them will be together, and who knows how many terrorists who believe that their religion will guarantee them eternal bliss for dying while blowing others to pieces.

If you were inclined to ecstatic paradise and personal identity after death stuff, the believers acting out in front of you should give pause.

Nevertheless, back when I was maybe 8 or 9, our family got a personal taste in Danville, Virginia. Our weekly cleaning lady showed up at our mother’s office to take her to heaven with her.

Our divorced mom, Wanda, worked long and hard running the Red Cross chapter as well as raising two kids solo. While it bothered her not to also handle all the cleaning even with the meager help of her elementary-school children, she accepted that she needed someone a couple of afternoons a week to take care of laundry and such. Lena was that person.

A young, married woman with two children of her own, she was a cheerful presence. She had a family support system in town to help her with her kids and worked for several folk to supplement her husband’s income. We got along well.

One afternoon though, Wanda returned home distressed, which was unusual for someone so together. She told us how Lena had died.

I don’t have time today

She was at her desk, managing away, when Lena appeared. The normally calm Lena was instead both agitated and smiling. She announced that it was time to go to heaven. She said that of all the people she knew Wanda was the one deserving of joining her.

My mother said she explained that she had a lot of work to do and wanted to take care of her children. She really did not have time and was not in a position to go to heaven that afternoon.

She said that Lena accepted that and calmly left the office. Lena then went a few blocks away, waited for the bus, and threw herself directly in front of it. She died on the spot.

We were also Christians in our apartment. We had the behaviors as well as, attending both Sunday School and church ever week, taking communion, believing  in personal salvation through Jesus, and planning on heaven (eventually). I also had read the whole KJV Bible and had favorite parts.

Yet, even as young kids, my sister and I did not go for suicide. Wanda had made us far too pragmatic and fix-it for that already.

Of course, in retrospect, I figure Lena had been mentally unstable for quite awhile and had had a break, a psychotic episode. We didn’t know those terms yet, didn’t know depressed or bipolar people yet, and no one in our family was a fundamentalist religious sort of any flavor.

I recall though asking about Lena’s husband and kids. Why didn’t she want them to go with her if she figured she was heading heavenward that day? As it turned out, her husband wondered too. He threatened Wanda and us with death for somehow in his mind causing his wife to kill herself.

He got over that with some discussion with the police. I got over my puerile religion as well a few years later.

Yet, our very human, often emotional needs seem to drive us at the oddest times and with the great power of a surging, swollen river. I like to think I am immune to such relentless forces. I can’t be positive, but I’m not buying into rapture today.

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For well-meaning equivocation, it’s hard to outdo UUs on Easter. The wings of many Unitarian ministers stretch and strain as they try to include all, offend none, and somehow blend Easter, Passover, and jelly beans and Peeps.

Frankly, UU jokes are too common, too easy, too cheap. Having been a UU for decades, I attended and joined knowing what was up with liberal religious sorts, both in history and present. I also came from the stereotypical return-to-church-and-become-UU profile. Raised as a serious Methodist,  I was a devote little Christian, but as the Monty Python character says, “Got better.”

Younger folk should be aware that this was before the United Methodist Church. There were separate white and black churches, plus the white ones had both Southern and Wesley branches. Members of the former looked askance at those of us in the latter, also known as high-church Methodist. We were considered almost Episcopalian, which was almost Roman Catholic. Oooooo.

Regardless, my small self always attended both Sunday School and church, joined the youth fellowship, was in the choir and on and on. I knew the comfort of belief in a personal savior, an all-powerful, everywhere present God, life everlasting, Christ’s resurrection, and transubstantiation. To this day, I recall my young self rolling in the mystical sense of transformation in my mouth and throat during communion.

Now I am more typical of American UUs. Few are Christians and around here many of those are former Roman Catholics psychically roughed up by the clerics of their youth. Many say they are or were Jews. Others came from the camp of the amusingly condescending term of UUs unchurched.

Many UU churches specialize in social action, contributing self as well as money to good causes for the life, betterment and comfort of others. Most UUs I have known are not just write-a-check-and-praise-yourself types.

No Hell

So imagine being a minister on Easter Sunday carrying that many hearts and minds in your arms, not wanting to harm, damn, or offend any subcategory of congregant.  This exacerbates the weekly problem of including the Christian and specifically Protestant history of Unitarianism and the everybody-can-find-salvation heritage of Universalism with the current reality that most members are not Christians. Some even are affronted by Christ lingo. Too many UU churches give least consideration to Christian members.

I am to terms with my ex-Christianity in early adolescence. I got there on my own, struggling all the way, coming from a church-going family. It became an oft-told tale among my relatives and chums about confessing this to my mother. She was a long-time Sunday School teacher and her father has been in various offices in churches. She smiled broadly when I told her and said, “Finally, I can stop teaching Sunday School!” She had been doing that for me and was a closet humanist in her own right.

So there you are on Easter Sunday, in the pulpit before of the two most populated congregations of the church year. You make the wheezing joke about the church being open on other Sundays. You know that maybe half the folk don’t come regularly, that many have never been there before, that quite a few don’t understand what UUs are about, and that church members want that spiritual ambrosia. They want a sensitive blend of acknowledgement of Judaism/Passover with another joke about bunnies lugging candy about with cautious allusions to the Jesus story.

So the easiest mix has springtime/renewal concepts, equivocations about some believe a Messiah has never appeared, others that one is out of the question, and others that there was what today’s youth have profanely chosen to term Zombie Jesus. No one group will be totally satisfied — the universe in the pews is simply too diverse and stratified.

How much easier it would be to provide a homily for the religiously homogeneous. On Friday, Jews can hear a pure Passover message. On Sunday, Christians get the powerful message of hope for a heaven and permanent bliss.

Instead, most UU ministers stand before an often prickly crowd. They know they are sure to bore some, offend others, and leave out still others. Ministers tell me that typically congregants will let know them how they have failed on Easter Sunday.

Oddly, there seems to be less pressure on the services around Christmas. Even ex-Christians or lapsed Catholics let the infectious joy of the season compensate for loose talk about a savior being born. That rising from the dead to sit at the right hand of God is another matter.

Jews I know who attend and belong to UU churches seem much more flexible about service content. In most UU churches, you’re not going to find a crucifix or Christian communion. Instead, they tend to have highly adapted versions and even water communions, similar to how they name children instead of Christen them. Even Catholics tell me that is a big improvement over the baptism in their churches that intends to drive the devil out of newborns.

I feel for UU preachers come Easter. I do believe most need to show more guts though. In too many UU churches I have attended, there are subtle or plain derision of Christians as though all of them are intolerant and dull-witted. Yet, I know UU Christians and some of the greatest, most generous, hardest working social activists are in that camp. Fortunately for the UU ministers, that splendid set of good souls are, like the UU Jews, forgivable and flexible. I have heard a few mention in passing to a minister or worship committee member something like, “You know, I am a Christian.” This seems not to whine, but just to remind others that the history and shared religion includes Christians, as well as the astonishing range of Jewish, Sufi, Buddhist, and many other traditions often cited.

This sermon juggling pressure falls on the UU ministers or perhaps they take it on themselves. This seems in stark contrast to the fundy churches that openly deride homosexuals as doomed to a hell and shout often that only one man/one women couples are worthy of producing children. I try to imagine how the many couples who adopt or turn to IVF to grow their families must feel hearing such irrational hate. Likewise, I have heard gay black folk I know say the compartmentalize their religion from the homophobic rhetoric they hear so often from the pulpit.

It seems to be the UU preachers who try to accommodate the worshipers in contrast to expecting anyone coming in the door to shut up and do what they’re told…and sing a psalm of praise. As UU ministers have often said to me with a smile and laugh, they don’t have the threat of eternal damnation and suffering to use.

I have never heard a UU minister speak on the deep and simple joys that Christians feel in their belief in resurrection and hope in their belief of a heaven and relief in their belief that Jesus took away their sins by his death. I don’t believe any of that, but I recall believing it all.

I am pretty sure that UUs would not be hurt and might be more tolerant of the Christians among them and in the larger world if they considered life and afterlife from their view and experience.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Easter, UU, Christians, Jews, tolerance

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In Dublin and Cork, where actual Irish folk live, LGBT groups are welcome to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parades. Likewise, in much of America, that’s the case. That includes the second-largest such event, in Savannah, a parade and week of doings much larger…and jollier…than that in South Boston.

Notably, it in in Manhattan and South Boston were parade organizers have closed their minds into walls, their hearts into cinders, their fingers into fists. Unlike the real Irish, the self-identified guardians of what’s Irish in this country seemed to have missed the past 50 years of human and humane development.

In NYC, it is the Ancient Order of Hibernians and in Southie, the Allied War Veterans Council of South Boston that organize the parades and enforce the exclusionary rules. After the later won a unanimous SCOTUS decision 16 years ago letting them discriminate, they relish telling civil-rights supporters that LGBT folk are welcome to march in their parades. Of course, they can’t march as a group unlike the 100 or so other groups or identify themselves as anything other than of Irish extraction. The argument mirrors those who say gays can marry in their states, so long as they marry an opposite sex person. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

The hypocrisy and irony are well noted. In Boston’s Bay Windows, for example, Rev. Irene Monroe gets into this, including citations of how odd it would be that Irish-Americans as well as African-Americans so eagerly discriminate when they have been discriminated against so long and so often. Also, such hostility is respects neither the legacy of Christianity nor of American freedoms, which those groups allegedly follow and honor. Likewise, a wrap-up piece in last an Edge last year notes the overt and atavistic discrimination in such parades. Moreover, poll after poll of Bostonians, New Yorkers, Catholics and others make it clear that the vast majority of us have transcended anti-LGBT feelings in personal fears as well as discrimination in jobs, housing and more.

In Southie, this year was the first separate-and-unequal parade. The second comprising mostly Veterans for Peace and LGBT Irish-American groups had to follow the main parade and hour later, literally following the street sweepers. (…visions of following the elephants with a shovel…) Of course, most of the crowd came for the bagpipers, step dancers and such, and left sparse spectatorship.

Yet, to get a flavor of the bitter residual counterpoint, head to the Boston Herald. There a story on the two parades got at last count 119 remaining comments in two days. The paper removed the most obscene and inflammatory ones. Yet the pattern in these is clear enough. While the rest of Boston is pretty much let’s-leave-each-other-in-peace, the dozens of Herald regular comments show the city at its most hateful, least rational, most puerile, and least Christian. I won’t cite example here.

The true oddment is how out of step with the real Irish such folk and such parade organizers are. I’m certainly not the first to note many times how socially backward and slow to advance Americans can be socially. An oddment with the NYC/Boston situation is that the regressive organizers are no longer run by the WWII/Korean era folk, rather by their children. They now have marginalized themselves, while insisting they’ll never change.

Well, the world has. Even here, we follow Canada, Europe, and Catholic countries in Latin America as well. Most of America has even followed Ireland in St. Patrick’s Day parade traditions. Maybe the old guys in these two throwback cities really will have to die. There’s no indication that they are praying for guidance or even paying attention to Irish and Irish-Americans are up to — that would be fun, fellowship, and accepting Irish heritage rather than promoting pseudo-Irish hostility.

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Who knew? We certainly were not aware that we rented an apartment in a very historic home in Danville, VA, when I was a lad. No one, not even the owner told us.

Now there’s a marker at 770 Main Street, it is on the historic walking tour, and may have the additional cachet of being haunted. To us, Dr. Samuel Newman and his wife, whose first name I likely never knew, occupied the first floor for living and his pediatric practice. To historians, this is the oldest known residence in the city. The first mayor, Capt. James Lanier, had it built in 1830.

We were across the street from the Main Street Methodist Church. We attended it several times a week, as was the Southern wont of the time — choir practice, Methodist Youth Fellowship, volunteer sessions, prayer meetings, and over two hours each Sunday with an hour for kids and adults in Sunday school, followed by about 90 minutes of service with lots of hymns and 20 to 30-minute prayers buttressing the sermon. The YMCA was right down the road, as were three movie theaters. We had little reason to venture off Main Street.

The pic above is of that same 770 Main Street. That is a postal card in a compilation of them as a history of the city. Clara Garrett Fountain was somehow inspired to share part of her 100-year collection. Thanks to her and as the image is long out of anyone’s copyright I claim fair use, as I do to her cut line:

The nearby house at 770 Main Street, currently the office of Garrett & Garrett, attorneys, is the oldest documented residence in the city. Built in 1830 by Danville’s first  mayor, Captain James Lanier, it is remembered by many as the office of Dr. Samuel Newman, the city’s first pediatrician.

Dr. Newman turned out to be more than that. To us, he was the guy who jabbed penicillin hypos in my butt for my recurrent tonsil inflammations. As I found out later, he was also well known in Danville and several nearby cities and towns for his children’s clinics and forward looking preventative medicine for kids.

There’s a wonderful symmetry there in that the house served as a children’s clinic during the Civil War over 80 years before Dr. Newman bought it.  It also turns out that a clinic in nearby Martinsville was named for him. Scholarships from the Charity League of Martinsville and Henry County go to high school grads and college students in his name.

Dr. Newman and his wife were Jewish. That’s not all that remarkable here and now, although it seemed nearly everyone three miles above the North Carolina border in the middle of the state was Christian, some flavor of Protestant, in the 1950s. Catholics were rare and Jews much more so.

However, he was also a Virginian. As nearly everyone else around, he appreciated the long, skillful tradition of the region for its smoked porks — hams and particularly bacon. He worked long days and liked to start with some protein.

His wife was short and round. She always wore a purple ribbon around her neck, with a small key on the bottom. She kept the cashbox and took the payments for those who visited the practice. While her dresses were both fashionable and well pressed, over the years, the ribbon got dingy and a bit raveled.

In general, she kept a kosher table even though they were not Orthodox. She was a bit old world and put up with his breakfast preferences. However, many mornings when my sister and I came down the main stairs to the ground floor on our way to school, we’d see her running up and down the hall separating their living half from his office. She’d wave a hand fan or just her arms as she walked up and down, asking us at high volume, “Do you smell pork? Do you smell pork?”

I was reminded of her today while looking through Good Book (overly long subtitle) by David Plotz, self-defined as “never a very observant” (but proud) Jew. First of all, can that really be his name, asks someone with the last name of Ball? In Yiddish, of course, plotz means to burst, as if from strong emotion.

Regardless, he writes of poring through the Bible (at least the Old Testament) and finding remarkable passages, upon which he remarks. He did after writing this rush through the New Testament, in a defensive skim to prepare for an appearance on The Colbert Show. He wasted his time in the sense that Stephen didn’t ask a single question about the new stuff.

His section on Leviticus includes:

…God says that the pig, because it doesn’t chew the cud, is “impure.” Understood. But then the Lord describes lots and lots of other animals – including lobster, shrimp, ostrich, and most insects – as “abominations.” “Abomination” is a much stronger word than “impure.” Does this imply that bacon, pork chops, pulled pork, and ham are less bad than lobster? Can it really be that eating pork is a minor dietary offense, the kashruth equivalent of a parking ticket? God, I hope so!

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Danville, Lanier, Samuel Newman, kosher, bacon

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Being from a family of fixers seemed normal enough, but has proven otherwise. Being able to repair a machine and more only works consistently on one condition. You have to understand how things function and often how they are put together.

As it turns out, I have an earned reputation for fixing, assembling and configuring machines, computers and more. Lackaday, it seems most folk are quick to blame a poorly maintained inanimate servant for its failures. Often, it only needs a tweak.

My alleged magic is nothing more than applying an understanding of components and functions.

That came to mind this afternoon when my wife noted that one of the electronically controlled garage doors would not close with the remote controls. I looked out the back door and from 30 feet could see the issue.

The little beam at the base of the door track is part of a safety system. It won’t let the door move when something is in the way. It’s an ignorant optical/mechanical system and doesn’t know if that something is a human body part or a car trunk or a rake. If its light circuit is broken, it stops the motor. Period. The way I grew up, I notice such things and file them in wetware just in case.

I could see that number two son’s mountain bike was just inside the beam area. To the unusual who grew up taught to file away how things work, that was instantly obvious. I long ago accepted that even the otherwise bright generally would not see that. I liken it to my poorly developed musical skills and senses. I have musician friends and a musical spouse who hear notes and keys that are just music to me. I love music, but can’t begin to replicate it or explain how to make it.

Who You Callin’ Loser?

Specifically in the computer/internet world, there are derogatory terms for the ignorant and unobservant. Perhaps none is more common among the cyber-savvy as luser. A pun playing off a combination of user and loser, it expresses the exasperation of support types, sys admins (those bastard operators from hell) , and we alpha geeks who put together and troubleshoot family and friends’ system.

Given the rapid changes in and spread of technology, one slice of logic would suggest that oldsters are bound to be lusers and youngsters computer, internet and new media experts. Sigh. Not so.

To the contrary, from what I see, most 20 somethings and teens fail in far more ways than not being able to make change without the cash register lighting up the amount. Most are users only, a.k.a. lusers. They learn now to apply the most basic functions of software. They never went through any process that required them to understand what goes no behind the scenes and are helpless when anything unusual occurs, as it frequently does.

Indeed, as I am wont to allude to, these become the Eloi. Even if they have good hearts, the processes that keep their world perking are unknown.

In that tedious sniping between the Mac and PC universes, we see variations. The Mac types are compelled to say their computers are so superior that they plug in peripherals and connect to this or that without having to do or know anything. Isn’t that wonderful?

Well I suppose in the Eloi future that might be OK, if all systems were perfect. As a PC alter kaker, I know better and recall observing and working with my wife’s company’s struggles in the original Mac office decades ago. Mac lovers said their machines were well worth the 100% or more premium because they just worked. That is, until that bomb appeared. They worked until they didn’t. Then what?

Somehow, the Mac failure was supposed to be substantially different from the PC’s blue screen of death. In reality, both meant you had to reboot the computer to try again. Somehow the Mac folk had to feel their double-the-price failure was a better one.

The double seeds were planted way back then (nearly 30 years ag0). One was the Spple system and the other was the Microsoft fantasy.

The Apple system was expensive for two reasons. One was simple greed; they made everything proprietary and did not let anyone make cheaper versions, thus keeping the price up. The other was that they required much faster, more capable and expensive processors, with obscene amounts of RAM to hide the functions. The Mac was plug-and-play with peripherals before the PC because the operating system did tons of work behind the scenes.

For Bill Gates’ minions, they spawned the software version — that each of us is a perfect multitasking machine in a human’s shell. That’s absurd on the face of it. The vast majority of us do one thing at a time well and our efficiency deteriorates badly beyond that. Multitasking is cruel overload for nearly all of us.

Yet, managers love that concept and love to tell their lackeys that they expect them to use every second, meaning keeping open many documents, spreadsheets, email and more, spinning from one to another like a honeybee in a field of flowers. It is a recipe for assured failure, one that both bosses and workers cook from daily.

Me Worry?

So in this century, we allegedly have kids born tech savvy. They grew up with the internet, computers, smart phones, social networking and infinite varieties of applications for all those.

But big sigh, ask a teen or 20-something how anything works or what to do when it doesn’t and they are Eloi quivering before you. It’s like asking a high school or college student at the register to handle making change on a $41.67 bill when you hand over $50.17. If the register is not ready to do the calculation, the kid almost certainly can’t. If a software package punks out or the cable modem stops downloading, the lads and lasses get that idiot look.

Can you blame them? Well, yes.

I think of oldies, my late mother for one and a 93-year-old UU minister friend for another. They came with great period names, Wanda and Farley.

Wanda was sort of retired, although she never got the hang of not working and not volunteering. She grew up in a manual typewriter world, was a manager in the IBM Selectric days, and in her late 50s, semi-retired and moved to Santa Fe, learned to use computers in a state job. She then wanted 1) to communicate with distant children and grandchildren, and 2) to build and maintain a database for a local community college’s library. I got her the hardware and software (including what she needed for her impinging macular degeneration) and taught her how to use email, DB software and more. I set up her systems but, she was an ace.

Farley was a bit of a harder sell. He was interim minister at a Boston UU church were I chaired the board. His son and I worked him from different towns and angles. He was not a natural, but in his early 70s, he started using a computer writing sermons, using the net and emailing like a champ.

He and I laugh about the number of times he called late with, “Damn. I’ve worked on this sermon for 8 hours and it’s gone, just gone.” Almost always, I could recover it for him and off he went again. On his side, his son figured he’d move him from Windows to Mac. Surely Farley couldn’t goof up a Mac. Surely he could and did, but we perked along and still do over 20 years later. He’s moved to Mexico but is a regular email correspondent.

Neither Farley nor Wanda evolved much beyond the user/luser class. I had to help both regardless of how many times I explained how to avoid this or that on PC or Mac.

Unitarians v. Computers

Moreover, a couple of decade ago, Farley and I did a counterpoint sermon from the high pulpit of the Arlington Street Church. The sheer altitude of that locale, plus looking out to upwards of 1,000 congregants, focuses the mind and inspires.

He spoke on the human aspects of life so often lost in the modern technological times. He was truly the stereotypical humanist. I gave my view of how computers and the net (before the World Wide Web) enabled communications and advocacy, a trend that would only accelerate and magnify.

Farley’s attitude I consider unfortunate and one he and I still debate in person and by email. Many ministers, UU and otherwise, exhibit a computers v. people mindset. I don’t see the conflict. To me, computers are like cars or planes or telephones…only more so in each case.

Instead, I fret when I see the lameness of young lusers. There’s nothing I can do effectively beyond my three kids for the many who never had to master multiplication tables or learn subtraction and division. I think the boomers, under the Sputnik era pressures, did get a more rigorous education.

It’s still not too late for those in their teens, 20s and 30s to be inspired. It’s not too late for them to become aware and savvy.

The eldest of my three sons is an anomaly in his cohort. Actually he and one other of his high school chums have extensive IT experience and understand how networks, computers, routers and more work. They don’t whimper. They fix.

Truth be told though, he wasn’t always the guru. As a boy, he was absolutely fabulous in taking things, mechanical and electric alike, apart. Reassembling or fixing was an entirely different matter. Whether it was a toy or clock or radio, we’d often find non-functional groupings of parts.

Unfortunately or fortunately, he had a dad who was the fly in the ear or mosquito on the neck. “What do we need to do? What can we learn from this? Where does this part belong?”

Whether I had experience with and knowledge of the device in pieces before us, I could help or lead in the healing process. It appears many young adults and their younger siblings never got any of that. They simply don’t know how things work. They are willing to blame problems on the failure of this or than inanimate object. They have no curiosity about the problem or the solution.

I fear for a nation of Eloi. I’m not sure there are Morlocks who’ll keep our machines and processes in tune. I wonder how inert and paralyzed we might become if there are too many figurative Mac bombs.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, PCs, Eloi, Windows, Mac, self-reliance, humanists

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Nondescript 212 Fairmount in Hyde Park was the site of a social-activist nexus for Hyde Park, Boston and beyond — a century and one-half ago at least. Think abolitionists, suffragettes, Weld and the Grimkés (including the sisters’ half-black, former slave nephews).

Its nearby neighbors today are largely splendid Victorians. This is one of several clearly razed and replaced. No sign or wall plaque hints at the former buzz within.

In fairness to whomever redeveloped 212, that was what happened and not only in Hyde Park back then. One of Boston’s virtues is how many of its historic buildings it has kept. In contrast, in Manhattan far more important sites get that plaque if anything. However, Hyde Park was carved out of open tracts of Milton and Dedham and Fairmount Hill required either bushwhacking from the Mattapan train terminus or pushing across the bridgeless Neponset in a punt to begin settling the area. Such niceties as devoting resources to troubled houses could come later.

In fact, Hyde Park let herself go. The dangerous and dilapidated Fairmount House was totally gutted and rebuilt on Michael Tallon’s dime to become Townsend’s. The former grand inn lives only in a few pictures on the upstairs walls. Also, many of the grand meeting halls went down.

Moreover, the most known and distinguished building in this newest of Boston neighborhoods (1912) is Christ Church. While architects cite this Ralph Adams Cram building as the prototype for many other 19th Century works, it looks ugly to me and has mediocre stained glass.

Crusaders of Fairmount

Theodore Weld operated out of 212 Fairmount for the bulk of his rabble rousing career. In partnership were his wife, Angelina Grimké, her sisters, Sarah and Eliza, and eventually two of those those nephews, Archibald and Francis Grimké, They were a one-stop stop for freedom fighting for Black Americans and women.

The nephews became accomplished in their own rights, one after getting his Harvard Law degree. The lawyer, Archibald, also had a daughter Angelina Weld Grimké, who became a well-known poet and writer. She too had lived at 212.

The details of the sisters’ shock at finding their S.C. brother had continued to own slaves, fathered children with one of them, and then sold his sons is here.  Typical of today’s progressives, they did something, lots, about it. Their tale and Weld’s are in that and related documents on the link above.

So, out of 212 came tracts and activists on missions. Weld and the Grimkés were together and separately active writers, orators and organizers for abolition causes and what was known then as elevation of the Negro to equality. They were as passionate about women’s rights, and the suffrage action that didn’t take place in New York came out of Fairmount Hill.

Imagine the parade of women from 212 on election day, March 7, 1870, who went to the Hyde Park poll to cast the first votes ever by American women. Those did not count toward the total, but that was an inspiration for many.

There is a splendid period mixed theater to that episode as well. Each woman going to vote symbolically had a male escort, who had presented her with a floral posy. Each man held back at the poll to let the woman advance and place her ballot in the envelope for that purpose. So, it seems under the protection of men and with flowers, the women were at once demanding and fem.

Literally to the very end, Angelina showed her toughness and right-mindedness,  the stuff of a reformer. She had been frail and then lived her last years partially paralyzed from a stroke. She continued to write and made a poignant statement in her final note — I have purposely selected my oldest clothes to be buried in, that my good ones may be given to the poor, that they may do good after I am gone.

If there are any spirits around, it would seem that 212 would still have lots of Grimké/Weld mojo.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, library, Hyde Park, history, abolition, suffrage, Grimké

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Every priest a saint…right?

Well, to listen to local Archbishop, Sean Cardinal O’Malley, all that will take will be some focus.

Keen. Foolishly I had thought it might be time 1) to take legal and moral responsibility and 2) to rethink that father-come-lately mandatory celibacy thingummy.

However, at least the message he delivered to hundreds of local priests in his Holy Week homily was that even with proof that thousands upon thousands of their number are linked to child abuse and in a few cases heterosexual adultery and fornication, they can each and all live lives of holiness.

Cynicism aside, I note that he was a couple of steps above the simple-minded just-say-no rhetoric about drugs and premarital sex foisted on teens for decades. He had specific, detailed steps. Those include the three-part plan of:

• Annual personal retreat “for silence prayer, and spiritual direction, and a review of our life.”
• Supporting and holding each other accountable in regular activities.
• Leading a balanced life.

Unfortunately, that balanced life is heavily edited for the priesthood. It does not resemble the self-help and development that has worked for billions of non-clerics for centuries. Instead, according to that Boston Globe recap above, that would instead be “setting aside at least an hour a day for prayer and meditation, allowing time for sleep and exercise, eating properly, and getting regular medical checkups.”

One might note that this strategy does not mention a fulfilling emotional and sexual side to life. Under strictures of being married to the church and Christ, requisite celibacy and sublimation, the urges of hormones and the thoughts and feelings normal to nearly all of us are flat out.

For the many Roman Catholic clerics, as well as the parallels in a few other Eastern and Western religious groups, a pivotal ideal dominates. The superior practitioner transcends the physical and mental drives. In the R.C. priesthood in particular, the guys are supposed to direct their thoughts, feelings, energies and actions to the service of God, the Church and their parishioners (and sometimes their orders or specific causes). That’s supposed to happen all day, every day and to become that life of holiness.

Well, in the few centuries since celibacy became mandatory, that endless ideal seems to have escaped the capability of many, if not most, of this group. Forgive my incredulity, Cardinal, but a three-part strategy to refocus seems scant ammunition and weaponry in a relentless battle against very human needs.

Cross-post: This appears at Marry in Massachusetts.

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Good timing, Globe! A short feature today dovetails with my recent post on UU hand-wringing over lack of racial diversity.

After 378 years in Cambridge, MA, First Parish will have a Latina minister, Rev. Livia Cuervo. In a religious group striving to mix up its very, very white membership and very white ministry, that’s good. Unitarians founded and ran Harvard from the start, but has somehow fallen far behind in diversity efforts.

Cynics may ask:

• What took so long?
• How serious is this for adding her as an associate minister?
• How serious is this for hiring a 72-year-old?

Don’t sneer too long. The parent UUA most recently elected an Hispanic, Rev. Peter Morales, to its presidency.  Plus, the senior minister in Cambridge is Rev. Fred Small, who is also a hippy-dippy style folksinger (pretty good and pretty well known IMHO). I have no doubt he wants to build on this choice.

UUs are actively trying to diversify. They seem to be doing better in attracting and growing ministers of color than folks in the pews. See this chart from UU data with the maroon being they and the blue all US church goers by race in 2008.

Rev. Cuervo is coming in with a good attitude at least. The Globe‘s Lisa Wangeness quotes her as, “This is really breaking the tradition — it’s big for everybody…I want to help them nurture the dream they have.”

From my experience in the UUA and in particularly with the Arlington Street Church, I’m looking to see whether this will translate into more Latinos coming to a not-necessarily-Christian and pretty white church.  I think back to over 20 years ago at the ASC when we replaced the standard UU minister (white, male, graybeard) with a young, very out lesbian adoptive mother, Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie.

She was already well known in the LGBT communities around here as the minister at the P-town church. Very few of our members feared her presence might turn the ASC into an all-gay church; truth be told, we already had the reputation as the UUA chapel for the number of ministers and staff from HQ who worshiped there and we were already welcoming to all.

However, we were quite surprised in her first year at how many lesbian couples her ministry attracted, many adoptive parents and quite a few from Somerville. Most of those turned out to be tire-kickers as they say in the sales biz. When we asked those who stopped coming why, we typically heard that they’d rather sit in a café with the papers on Sunday mornings or that the 12 mile drive or subway seemed too much or that the kid’s classrooms were not nice enough for their children.

Rev. Cuervo might pack folk in by virtue of being a dynamite preacher, if she is. She might attract non-Catholic Hispanic worshipers. She might be just another good UU minister. Regardless, the calling was good. The effect and longevity are to be determined.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, diversity, UUs, race, Cambridge, Lilia Cuerfo

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A perennial source of Unitarian Universalist garment rending was an undercurrent last weekend in Brookline. The church there held a fabulous event that was an anomaly in several ways.

UUs do fret about many far too many subjects. Perhaps the greatest recurrent hand-wringing is over their incredible whiteness. Other Protestant denominations are also largely white, but UUs tally only  about 1% African American membership.

UU note: We refer to ourselves as an association and not a denomination. Despite both U and U’s Christian histories, our churches and church-like groups belong to the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. It’s OK to be a UU Christian, but it’s not the norm and disdain of Christians is an unfortunate UU habit in many congregations. It’s a reaction to the long-standing Christian dogmatic exclusion, discrimination and worse that have set the tone.

Musical Bridge

Well last Saturday, the Brookline church was not only nearly full, it had a more U.S.-representative share of brown and Black folk. It is likely that won’t happen again until there is another special event centered on an African-American person or project.

This dinner and concert double event celebrated John Andrew Ross. It was:

• a fundraiser for the restoration of the organ
• a project organized and produced by his recently late sister Paula Ann Ross
• a soul-food dinner
• a two-hour concert featuring superb jazz and gospel musicians and singers performing music John loved or arranged
• a largely African-American musician evening, with minor exceptions like single numbers by the church’s junior and adult choirs

John Ross, who died in 2006, became the church’s music director in 1997. He arrived already justifiably famous as composer, producer, director, educator and on and on. He made his “Uncle Langston” Hughes’ Black Nativity into a continuing national phenomenon. He led the Emma Louis School of Fine Arts‘ music and founded its remarkable choirs. So for the last nine years of his life,  he ran music at the church. He quickly picked up the title Minister of Music there as well.

Throughout his professional life, his sister promoted and often managed his career. She continued after his death, culminating in this project. She worked on it until a couple of days before the celebration, originating the project, driving it to completion and seeming to die in her sleep only after everything was in place.

Prima facie, one might suppose that nearly a decade of his musical leadership, performances and presence would have attracted more Black visitors and members than a typical UU church gets. That’s not so and there are only a few non-white members of any racial or cultural background.

Diversity?

That is a UUA-wide concern and trait. Again, this is the kind of thing, we UUs think, talk and worry about. In this vein, a couple of articles that cover the numbers and issues appear in UU publications. Try:

• Racial and ethnic diversity of Unitarian Universalists by Christopher L. Walton
• Can Unitarian Universalism Change by Paul Rasor

Note the related articles in the sidebars to these articles.

Many Protestant denominations are perfectly content to be almost entirely white. They speak of people being more comfortable with what they know, with their own kind. That is true of predominately Black churches as well. UUs don’t let it rest at that.

For a religion that does not proselytize, UUs nonetheless seem flabbergasted that  more and more types of people don’t flock to membership. As a UU of over a quarter century and having been involved in the polity and politics of various UU churches, I recall my own experiences with this.

The first time I saw a UU church nearly full of Black people was when Rev. Victor Carpenter got his fariend Rev. Jesse Jackson to preach at the Arlington Street Church.  They arranged for the choir of one of Boston’s largest Black churches to sing. The church seats about 1,000, was filled and for once, white people were in the minority.

In the next several year, I heard that question repeatedly about what we needed to do to attract Black, Latino and Asian parishioners to the ASC. I served on various committees and ran the board for a few years, so the question was often plaintive and also demanding when I heard it.

We’d have reports from membership-committee folk who were frustrated. I asked and had others go to visitors and friends with the question. Many times, the answer as far as African-Americans was concerned focused on two aspects:

1. Our music is comparatively stultifying with that in Black churches
2. Our non-creedal/non-dogmatic churches did not offer Christ as lord and savior or even hold out promises and threats of heaven and hell

As counterpoints to these likely intractable problems, Rasor’s article on the subject includes:

Multiculturalism is not simply about numbers, of course. The Rev. Taquiena Boston, director of Identity-Based Ministries at the UUA, reminds us that “diversity alone is not the goal,” and that developing a genuinely multiracial and multicultural identity “must be integral to the larger mission and ministry of the congregation.” Or, as former UUA President William G. Sinkford put it, “the objective of finding a few more dark faces to make our white members feel better about themselves is not spiritually grounded.”

I note for non-UUs that Sinkford is Black. Almost to a one, UUs tend to be inclusive. His skin color was not a problem. However, I heard numerous comments that mildly disparaged his overt Christianity.

The Possible

For music, yes, it’s true. I’m not very musical myself, but I can tell the difference. Our hymns are largely old Protestant tunes, with fine-tuned lyrics to enforce our openness and downplay God and Christ and lords over humans. Simply put, they don’t rock.

For the underlying beliefs, we in fact do not and never will push absolute answers in a dogma. Many people expect and need directive creed.

Instead, we have principles, which concern people and the larger world, and share the great goals and behaviors of many other religions. That is surely why many raised as Jews or Catholics are comfortable being members of UU congregations.

The cold fact remains that for many we lack the requisite trappings of what they demand from church. We may occasionally throw in some incense and sing old Christian hymns on Christmas Eve and Easter, but we can’t offer the music and dogma.

Thus, the UUA has just over 1,000 congregations and is likely to remain both one of the nation’s smallest religions and one of its whitest. I know that I am over fretting about what we can do to attract more members or even visitors of color.

I know that many of our congregations have a role as visitors to non-UU churches, as volunteers in community programs, and in co-hosting events. We get to know each other and our ministers often participate in social action and religious gatherings with those of other churches.

That’s gotten to be almost enough for me. I am certainly comfortable without dogma, but I would appreciate some snappier music.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, diversity, UUs, music, dogma

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Faith in action can work just fine. We see that in a follow-up to the tale of the New Hampshire preacher who early last year took a paroled ex-con into his home…to the anger and horror of nearly everyone. See the original post on that here.

The ex-criminal, Raymond Guay, had a particularly gruesome record of torture, murder and kidnapping. Yet, the Rev. David Pinckney was, well, a lot more Christian than nearly everyone. After getting to know Guay, the minister was convinced that Guay 1) had gone through a born-again transformation, and 2) had truly paid his debt to society.

See the original post for the details and links to the backstory. The key component is that Pickney took the paroled Guay into his home, replete with the minister’s wife and kids. The idea was to find a more permanent setting and help Guay get work. In other words, this was both rehabilitation as the justice system claims to want and Christianity as the New Testament describes it.

Pinckney’s neighbors, even some not very close, were beside themselves. Loving forgiveness? Nothing doing.

In my follow-up, Pinckney and I exchanged email. He made his offer and commitment and took what many self-identified Christians said was a gesture doomed to failure and maybe death. Not so, sports fans.  Instead:

Ray is doing very well, living in New Hampton, NH with a Christian couple on a 60 acre spread at the end of a mile long driveway…   He stays very busy on this property helping the couple, and does side jobs when they come available (he’s presently replacing a kitchen floor for a couple in our church).  His craftsmanship and work ethic are unmatchable in my estimation.   He has been accepted warmly into a church in Meredith NH and continues to find great joy in his faith in Jesus.   We stay in contact regularly and I see him at least once a month. 

Having covered justice and jail issues for newspapers and having worked with former prisoners, that is what I hoped. Rather than assume all the incarcerated are lost forever and deserving of perpetual punishment, in and out of prison, we should know that some do just fine. Invariably though, the help they get on this side of the walls and bars can make that difference.

We can’t think this didn’t depend on Rev. Pinckney. Not only is he a religious sort who actually lives his faith, he was very discerning. Unlike those women who communicate with and meet prisoners, he didn’t fall in love thinking this is someone who will really need and depend on me. He accurately assessed the man. He almost certainly is a better judge of minds and souls than you or I.

Let us praise those who make life better for another and provide an example for us all.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, ex-con, New Hampshire, Christianity, Pickney, Guay, River of Grace

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