tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24871742228127343672024-02-19T06:25:10.679-08:00The IrreverendWriting on matters sacred and secular. Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-23498076523320777042023-11-01T19:21:00.001-07:002023-11-01T19:23:59.531-07:00Why I am Not a Christian (with apologies to Bertrand Russell)<p>Let's be charitable and say that Jesus was indeed a real person and that he really did say the things the gospels report him to have said. Or at least, let's say that the gist of what he said is more or less accurately reflected in these texts.</p><p>He said many things that have resounded through the ages as praiseworthy and have become part of the normative ethics of western culture. </p><p>Let's then take all that he said as <i>seriously</i> as he intended it to be in his short ministry--his aim was to put us into a correct relationship with the will of the almighty creator of space, time, and dimension.</p><p>So: who's up for selling all your worldly possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor? (Matthew 19)</p><p>(Silence)</p><p>He's not saying give your second hand clothes and toasters to the Salvos, or throw a bum a coin, or donate to your favourite charity. He's requiring a radical redistribution of goods, putting the last first, as he says. So: all that private wealth and property you acquired? Let's be having it then...(Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 5)</p><p>(They do not move)</p><p>Okay, then: who's up for walking off your job right this minute, leaving all your tools and unfinished work behind, and following Him?</p><p>(Silence)</p><p>Oh, and leave your families too. Familial relations don't matter. The world is coming to and end, and soon, so ditch the lot and get yourself right with the almighty. Let's go! (Luke 14)</p><p>(They do not move)</p><p>What's wrong with you? Don't you know there is no way to the Father but through me? (John 14)</p><p>(A lone, nervous voice): "You mean all those billions of Buddhists and Hindus are <i>wrong?"</i></p><p>Yes, that's the only thing that can mean.</p><p>(Silence)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLCdXXkCg_ZIs6c0GELVNONczdujI5EZolrUf8z4KYsfBamQAxSUQoOfCN2FjqRbClgpHadwEK1dVHG32LDV6ywf3vtg2kEDAXTEfEYdUIGJxi2QHv0aQq8Ig19JaKACk7NKp1Pq_Pg-CukQrmbZ932qqvLDHMkbTHy_VJCM62PjKzm1Fw0e4AqZ6Behw/s948/CastingoutMoneyChangers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="948" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLCdXXkCg_ZIs6c0GELVNONczdujI5EZolrUf8z4KYsfBamQAxSUQoOfCN2FjqRbClgpHadwEK1dVHG32LDV6ywf3vtg2kEDAXTEfEYdUIGJxi2QHv0aQq8Ig19JaKACk7NKp1Pq_Pg-CukQrmbZ932qqvLDHMkbTHy_VJCM62PjKzm1Fw0e4AqZ6Behw/w640-h336/CastingoutMoneyChangers.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>***</p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Are these injunctions about becoming His follower (i.e. a Christ-ian) to be taken seriously or not? <b>Can these even be considered moral? </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Even if we are liberal-minded, and sympathize with radically privileging the poor and dispossessed, we certainly haven't voted that way. Ever. Anywhere.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">But yes, he did lots of comforting, put snobs and hypocrites in their place, and opposed the brutal Roman empire. Cool. But if we cherry-pick that sort of thing only, then we want the message to be what we want it to be, and not something else. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The real question with cherry-picking is: why do I want it to mean only this? What is the longing I am expressing? And what meaning am I avoiding, and why?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Whatever our longings, they are not and have never aligned with the tough, exclusive injunctions cited above. If we really thought the world was ending soon, there would indeed be the breakdown of all social order, and maybe we too would cut and run from our piles of stuff, our work, our families to seek our own personal salvation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And if we did that, we'd be moral cowards.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6n21E5gOWzuAf_f25EIGdZLT-M6-XqO3p4sVHFcDuT9pWzEBoSQRk4owCFtfiehNSV07H-Uxy7JTH1kHJN5HeSccNqhIBdjuGETkdfTLcD4iT0b4KvLAVUZhkUQRqh-FQnQYQxZhEwHb9DEjxrZTVsvmifdzzMYtHMJMnJ2g4_ORJLMSpKOMcjD30CS8/s1920/G._K._Chesterton2_at_work_public-domain-wikimedia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1920" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6n21E5gOWzuAf_f25EIGdZLT-M6-XqO3p4sVHFcDuT9pWzEBoSQRk4owCFtfiehNSV07H-Uxy7JTH1kHJN5HeSccNqhIBdjuGETkdfTLcD4iT0b4KvLAVUZhkUQRqh-FQnQYQxZhEwHb9DEjxrZTVsvmifdzzMYtHMJMnJ2g4_ORJLMSpKOMcjD30CS8/w640-h334/G._K._Chesterton2_at_work_public-domain-wikimedia.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This is why I'm not a Christian, not because Christianity is difficult, but because much of it is simply wicked, perverse, and manipulative.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In his famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian#:~:text=Contents,-Learn%20more&text=Russell%20questions%20the%20morality%20of,a%20supreme%20moral%20role%2Dmodel." target="_blank">essay of the same nam</a>e, Bertrand Russell says: </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create."</span></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-62606006424811749932023-08-28T17:48:00.001-07:002023-08-28T17:48:37.660-07:00Odd Job Man<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Whether in Church or in Chapel, whether Minister or Chaplain, there is no disguising the fact--<b>this is an odd job.</b></span></p><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How odd? I've poured my heart and soul into people for whom I now don't exist. I've publicly honored those who've later talked smack about me. And then, there's people I barely know who speak of me in honorific, reverential tones! </div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Wherefore odd? For some I do too much, for others far too little. The same preaching that inspires and consoles someone, angers another to furious rage, and another to casual indifference. The same material that was boring to one was massively impactful to another. You get praised for being caring and gracious, and also condemned for being aloof and detached.</span><br aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /><br aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Whither odd? Grudgingly paid a professional wage, and yet expected to project humble poverty. Have some nice things and you're materialistic. If you don't have nice things, you must be some kind of self-defeated schlub. People expect your personal time, money, and resources, but set healthy boundaries to care for your mental health and your families, and you're selfish.</span><br aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /><br aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Whence odd? Everything you say and do can be used against you by anyone disgruntled, annoyed, petty, or even just plain bored. Every mistake proves you're unqualified, but victories are taken in stride because they're expected, and hey--that's what you're paid for. Your personal life, hobbies, interests, friendships, relationships, and family are continually monitored for moral lapses. After all, you're paid to model virtue!</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Why so odd? Amateurs are fully confident they could do a better job and kibbutz from the sidelines. Everyone has an opinion about religion, no matter how little they've thought about it, let alone studied it. I'd never assume I knew better than, say, my dentist, how to do his job.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FkDhJrTLfPAktk666hH-NevBal_CPTLsy0gK2SOlBaiwqyjcgALdOzTEJnlgPJudmnw9nUBcpPBK6LB02Cb54_TiSFDUO01nLV_FRaVfJUYrkTTaySWL4tlt9_CYFXRNjpwTlH0YQK1c8n4w53ihTO6VFS5lAkBVrjmQOVPlaAREd10LVbuLdM1I4a4/s1500/9781580084574.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FkDhJrTLfPAktk666hH-NevBal_CPTLsy0gK2SOlBaiwqyjcgALdOzTEJnlgPJudmnw9nUBcpPBK6LB02Cb54_TiSFDUO01nLV_FRaVfJUYrkTTaySWL4tlt9_CYFXRNjpwTlH0YQK1c8n4w53ihTO6VFS5lAkBVrjmQOVPlaAREd10LVbuLdM1I4a4/w400-h400/9781580084574.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">It's ODD... and yet there's so much fulfillment in precious moments to which nothing in the rest of my life can compare.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> It's challenging, heartbreaking, and can be discouraging, but it's also fulfilling, inspiring, and awesomely life-changing</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">. It can be brutal, but it can also be beautiful. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Over half of clergy battle depression and 85% of seminary graduates to enter ministry will leave ministry within the first 5 years. Who'd stick with this?</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">So here's my hypothesis: the only reason I wanted to do this odd job, and keep doing this odd job, is that <b>it must a perfect fit--I must be odd too. </b></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">I don't have to do this., I GET to do it. My pathology is also my profession.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="x_ms-outlook-mobile-signature" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #242424; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-60152760873221273742023-04-10T23:22:00.005-07:002023-04-12T15:10:10.393-07:00Easter: not suitable for children (violence, torture, horror, partial nudity, adult content)<p>This past Easter Saturday was our friend Jim's 70th birthday party, and a helluva party it was.</p><p>70s themed costumes for all, disco ball, coloured lights, dancing to funky disco music--and food and drink of course.</p><p>To top it all off, Jim and several friends did 3 choreographed numbers with changes of drag and fetish costumes. A ball gown, an Abba get-up, and assless leather chaps for the inevitable Village People number. It was like a mini Mardi Gras: there was lots of love in the room, and everyone had a fab time.</p><p>Contrary to the current taste for protecting children from drag queens, I would rather my kids go to something like this every week than rehearse annually the grim passiontide story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.</p><p><b>Think about it.</b> A man is stripped to his loins--beaten, whipped until his flesh is flayed, forced to carry a heavy object to public ridicule. All of which causes him to faint again and again. A woman takes pity and uses her veil to wipe his face, only to have it come away with his tortured visage printed in blood, sweat, and do doubt tears, on the cloth. Extreme close-up on the horrid image.</p><p>Then, if that's not enough to put you off your chocolate eggs, this guy is nailed to a piece of wood by his extremities--hands and feet. (Well, we're told, hands are technically impossible, because the weight of his body would have torn the nails out between his fingers joints. His wrists, then. So much better.)</p><p>His torturers are not done yet. They gleefully force a spiked ringlet of thorns into onto his head in mockery of a crown, and stab him in the side with a spear because they're getting bored now. Blood and water flow from the gash. Water? Is he not fully dehydrated by now? This is Palestine, after all. </p><p>Of course, after lingering in excruciating pain for a while, he dies, his alluringly fit yet savaged body hanging like meat from a hook. His friends put what's left of him in a rock tomb.</p><p>And then after a few days baking in the Middle East, he becomes, one assumes, a zombie, rising from his grave to walk the earth again. Unrotted, somehow.</p><p><b>If there is a more gruesome movie on Netflix without the recommended use of the parental lock, I'd like to know.</b></p><p>As a young Catholic kid going to 'Stations of the Cross' every year, this 14-part mini series is on permanent repeat, and at Good Friday and Easter Sunday services the story is exhumed annually. And we were reminded all this unimaginable suffering was endured for us because we're born bad. He suffered and died thus for our sins. (Substitutional atonement--don't get me started...)</p><p>Hope, it was supposed to give us. Hope. Rot.</p><p>My hope is that this grisly story--hardly more ennobling than Mayan human sacrifice--is consigned to the curiosity cabinet of humanity's dark bestial past, a morality tale of how very sick our imaginations were only a couple millennia ago. </p><p>Give me the cheap redemption of the Village People and disco balls and music and drag acts and dancing and fabulous fashion. </p><p>Keep the death cult, thanks. I'm eating: the canapes are delicious.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ngGMTXaUUo4SUD21GvU8fb5Wphn8Y3YYVyIQ9E1sMyWGLuoycgb_zQRfArOT4AjMtrn8ncfavx7Xk_jofRJ02eLiJ-Cj-UW-A1yTRt_sfMS-Zt_8Y3ICybJL6oHa-IP90WIpr3M3OFXD2dEsQ8uuHRDDxVI_KHM7uZOAUocxGCAilqanLGcuejw8/s1024/L0jyMuWGaiDC4skRrw6e--grid.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ngGMTXaUUo4SUD21GvU8fb5Wphn8Y3YYVyIQ9E1sMyWGLuoycgb_zQRfArOT4AjMtrn8ncfavx7Xk_jofRJ02eLiJ-Cj-UW-A1yTRt_sfMS-Zt_8Y3ICybJL6oHa-IP90WIpr3M3OFXD2dEsQ8uuHRDDxVI_KHM7uZOAUocxGCAilqanLGcuejw8/w640-h640/L0jyMuWGaiDC4skRrw6e--grid.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-69517225803543271582021-06-23T17:49:00.002-07:002021-06-23T21:38:07.042-07:00The Case for Secular Liturgies: A Shared Spiritual Language<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <span>Since 2019, I’ve been the chaplain of a high-fee independent
school which has historically been ‘non-denominational’. But what does that even
mean in 21st century practice, especially when the school community is
reflective of the wider culture’s religious affiliations? 2/3 of the school’s
enrolments claim no religious affiliation, and 1/3 claim nearly every religious
affiliation on earth.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">So what should its chapel services look like? How do you
create cohesive spiritual experiences in this context? My answer has been to
offer secular liturgies. That is--language, texts, and music that are not
explicitly of any particular religious tradition. This approach to spiritual
development creates a truly inclusive spiritual awareness, and has become a key
point of difference from other independent schools. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">To clarify this, think of a how a hospital works:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">Imagine doctor going into a hospital to operate. Let’s say
this doctor is religious, specifically Jewish, say—an observant Jew who has
been raised that in that faith, reads the sacred texts, and regularly goes to
temple. While he is operating on a patient, a particularly apt prayer for
divine healing from, say, the Talmud, comes to his mind. Now should he, as an
observant Jew, pause the operation to offer that prayer to the God he worships?
If your child were the patient, and you knew the doctor paused operating on
them to be prayerfully observant, would you appreciate that? And if your
child’s surgery went wrong, would you applaud the doctor’s piety? Or sue him?</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn41SbJjSoXfquMe1A6WTdMTAFFolhc_ClMcUMHaq1KH1sjWQC8Bshmsu1RLgsvxA5ewZkfWtBx0_kTkRT4DZYjjRSlG4k30dNzZpf-6OvkCEmchjOjiDJX4-JJhzJKD_rOLXduthQp9w/s1200/shutterstock_280947350.0.0.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn41SbJjSoXfquMe1A6WTdMTAFFolhc_ClMcUMHaq1KH1sjWQC8Bshmsu1RLgsvxA5ewZkfWtBx0_kTkRT4DZYjjRSlG4k30dNzZpf-6OvkCEmchjOjiDJX4-JJhzJKD_rOLXduthQp9w/w400-h266/shutterstock_280947350.0.0.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Regardless of his religion, this doctor operates in a secular context</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, that imaginary hospital scenario never happens.
Because any religious doctor--Jewish or Hindu or Muslim—knows it’s for them to treat
the patient in that context. The doctor operates for that hour etsi Deus non
daretur, ‘as if God were not a given’. Does that make the doctor a religious
hypocrite? Does it make the doctor a bad Jew if he suspends his Jewish practices
for the time he operates? No, it does no such thing. The world we live in is
not as simple as that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">It’s complex: the world is becoming BOTH more religious or
less so. In some parts of the world, religious sects and their followers are increasing
in numbers. In places like Australia though, religious affiliation is in steady
decline overall. Both things are true—the world is getting both more religious
in total numbers, and also less religious in certain places like ours. So
there’s this big split, and institutions like hospitals have to accommodate
that split. Hospitals have BOTH doctors AND chaplains. They have BOTH operating
rooms AND prayer rooms. The institution of the Hospital operates in BOTH
‘secular’ terms AND in religious terms. BOTH. Which means the reality is not
‘either you’re one or the other’; the reality is you can be both—folks can and
do ‘operate’ in both religious and secular terms interchangeably. But for the
time he operates, the good doctor suspends his religion and makes his religious
beliefs and practices strictly irrelevant for that time. However, in his life more
generally, the doctor operates in both frameworks, switching depending on
whether he’s at temple or at hospital.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg066O3-NWxidgcY2qG9wy7Lb61GuzAByWxBMm2vWsb09CBk6VjK9rAnuRGXvwAX04DU3dTXS5HDbJbinY52ViWpo09lBB8GFExY-scHef92Bl-DgRCgfoIrMig6m0o3A5jkZqwJgeeBZw/s800/coexist-3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="800" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg066O3-NWxidgcY2qG9wy7Lb61GuzAByWxBMm2vWsb09CBk6VjK9rAnuRGXvwAX04DU3dTXS5HDbJbinY52ViWpo09lBB8GFExY-scHef92Bl-DgRCgfoIrMig6m0o3A5jkZqwJgeeBZw/w400-h160/coexist-3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modernity means choice</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like a hospital, an independent school is an institution
that must serve the needs of all who come there. Our school, our country, and
indeed the whole world is increasingly religiously plural—meaning there are
many different religious flavours to choose from. At the same time, secular
developments in science and technology are discovering and creating realities
that religions never dreamt of, things like biomechanics, quantum physics, and
artificial intelligence. A world containing both religious pluralism and
non-religious secularism is how things are, and have been for some time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Embracing that reality and learning how to
work with it in schools, is only just beginning. In effect, I have placed the
school at the vanguard of this emerging awareness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">2020’s attempts to offer chapel via Zoom have reminded us
that we humans crave live gatherings where we seriously consider meaning and
purpose together. And if we see the benefit of such gatherings, HOW should they
be expressed in a multicultural, multifaith community? What language can we all
share in them, when we meet as one institution to worship together? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">Well, our students have been living in the answer for the
past couple years. They will have noticed that chapels have not exactly
Bible-bashed, nor indeed bashed any particular book. Nor have chapels used
especially churchy language. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that,
particularly, in its place. After all, religion is the most continuous human
experience, secular society is young by comparison. We could just pick one or
two religions and unpack them. But once you focus on a select few, you
automatically exclude other stories which also have great truth, beauty, and
goodness. And we can’t do justice to them all. We could just have focussed on
Christianity, say, since it’s dominant in our colonial culture, and our mid-century
chapel already fairly bristles with Cx crosses. But to submit to what’s
dominant because it’s dominant, is not about theology or meaning, but about
power. ‘Cultural might makes right’ is the ethic of slaves and the mark of
fascism. Besides, since when has dominance guaranteed worth? No, choosing
what’s dominant because it’s dominant is a choice based on fear. To make a
choice based on the opposite of fear, a religious choice, a choice based on
love, would be to use language that can bring all together on equal terms, and
exclude no one.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisV2iYRXgI3y9YGRRXqDheabbs4aGiA8dsnEhMc-stQX6T76aQGTLnV92565M4BHAzaewzB25z3mgghvnYWBzAR-Okc7oxz_LBpKFbrLCJMUG5miTHFfS2SCo5Sqo_a872L4iyqlB9H5c/s1200/Screen-Shot-2020-05-27-at-8.10.34-AM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="1200" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisV2iYRXgI3y9YGRRXqDheabbs4aGiA8dsnEhMc-stQX6T76aQGTLnV92565M4BHAzaewzB25z3mgghvnYWBzAR-Okc7oxz_LBpKFbrLCJMUG5miTHFfS2SCo5Sqo_a872L4iyqlB9H5c/w400-h188/Screen-Shot-2020-05-27-at-8.10.34-AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Love includes, fear divides</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">So our chapel worship services are, in effect, secular
liturgies, using secular language and music, the same language which BOTH
doctors and chaplains (whatever their religion) use to function together in their
institution day to day. Secular language alone is the shared language through
which all in our institution can connect TOGETHER as a School community. If this
were a church community, we’d probably be using different language. Using this
secular language common to people of all faiths and none, is thus an
intentional and loving act of inclusion, rather than an act of division, of
privileging one faith over others. Doesn’t the hospital include all patients in
treatment, not just the religious ones? Shouldn’t we as a school, try to
include all our students in worship, not just a few?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">Don’t misunderstand: this is not anti-religion. Religious
language can be rich and moving and wise. Religious texts can be models of
beauty, clarity, and insight. But religious language does not have a monopoly
on such things. Secular language has poetry with deeply felt and timeless
spiritual wisdom–English teachers could provide abundant examples. Secular
language has moral power—read the Uluhru Statement from the Heart or, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. And your CD collection has secular music that lifts
your spirit just as sacred music can. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxs4QG3fM9r7RjjpUESSwMnWBvd9cVU_hyUGvFtTYS3igiDU45F_nseFLOKx-_fPwFoc1NK1GJwkk2PD6-XXuYVKhxCTmMdqbluJXb7zGXfwKJkiVqRACON7oQB7QTsXcrv8l7k00aqnA/s512/unnamed.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="512" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxs4QG3fM9r7RjjpUESSwMnWBvd9cVU_hyUGvFtTYS3igiDU45F_nseFLOKx-_fPwFoc1NK1GJwkk2PD6-XXuYVKhxCTmMdqbluJXb7zGXfwKJkiVqRACON7oQB7QTsXcrv8l7k00aqnA/w400-h225/unnamed.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Both are real; one offers a common language</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Secular language, secular texts, and secular music is the
language we all CAN share in chapel, because it’s the language we all DO share in
school every day anyway, whatever our flavour of religion and whatever our
flavour of no religion. And if we happen to put a family’s chosen faith
aside—like the doctor puts his--for the time school is ‘operating’, we don’t
deny their religion, nor do we make religious hypocrites of their students by
worshipping in a language that brings us all together as one school. What
religion does not seek the fullest possible bringing together of all God’s
children? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">If you get sick, you can certainly pray for healing and use
whichever of the many religious languages you choose. But I hope you will ALSO
go to a hospital. If you seek an education, you may choose a single book of
wisdom as a foundation. But you’ll ALSO go to an institution called a school,
where students read and draw wisdom from many books. Like a doctor going to operate
in a hospital, a teacher going into a school may believe with all their heart
that there is an invisible world beyond this one, a world populated with
intelligent beings we can communicate with, if we use a special language of words,
behaviours, rituals. But that invisible world is not on the school curriculum. Learning
about this one is challenging enough. During the hours the teacher is
operating, their professionalism bids them operate, like the doctor, ‘etsi Deus
non daretur’. And like the doctor, they do not betray their own religion by
using our common language, rather than the language of their faith alone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, more than ever, in our shrinking world of many faiths
and many of none, we need to find ways to come together, rather than endlessly
split into ever-multiplying factions, we need to seek meaning and purpose
together, to celebrate living together. If we want our world to come together
in mutual respect and tolerance, small worlds like schools have to come
together in mutual respect and tolerance. In a world of endless choices and
great uncertainties, our chapel services aim to bring together all our students,
that they may feel the spiritual power that comes from connectedness rather
than division. May they feel there is indeed strength in such unity.</span><o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-91576091533574074632021-06-17T18:13:00.003-07:002021-06-17T21:40:11.737-07:00Is Chaplaincy sustainable?<span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I'm <b>not</b> trying to talk myself out of a job; I'm trying to see things for what they are. </span><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Years ago when I was in seminary, Unitarians and other non-conformist church students were debating whether or not the role of Minister was sustainable in the 21st century. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Want information about religion? Want motivating religious talks? Gee, if only there were an online source for such things... </span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Want live gatherings that make you feel good, spark the mind, and touch the heart? Take your pick of the ever-multiplying ways of gatherings out there...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Want inner peace? Do yoga or meditate...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Want to mark a life transition--birth, marriage, death (the traditional institutional function of church--hatch, match, and dispatch)? Most now prefer civil celebrants with their own personal brand niches...</span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Want one-on-one advice your personal problems? We have these things now called counselling, psychiatry, even 'life-coaching' (whatever the hell that is)...</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">It's not 1854 anymore, and we should stop pretending that it is. The traditional expectations of Ministry have been more than covered, and with greater expertise by a broader range of professionals, than ever before.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjteInY6euyqMMOFE7CFk5VJ3NdQ1vPRd6ziPYkYrxkn4H8xeAPSGfDeMzScIpZ9fCWKHe3A9ctQB55X0PM4rUreg7hDFep_Ge1e8ECuPYwBz4smGuwHtBhfRNZ0d-lPDEwKdYCkmXoQHo/s300/school-300x225.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="300" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjteInY6euyqMMOFE7CFk5VJ3NdQ1vPRd6ziPYkYrxkn4H8xeAPSGfDeMzScIpZ9fCWKHe3A9ctQB55X0PM4rUreg7hDFep_Ge1e8ECuPYwBz4smGuwHtBhfRNZ0d-lPDEwKdYCkmXoQHo/w661-h480/school-300x225.jpg" width="661" /></a></div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Rationalist Society of Australia has recently published an important report called: </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>Religiosity in Australia
Part 1: Personal faith according to the numbers </b></i></span></span></div><div><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The aim of the report is to drill down and gather data about </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit;">actual </i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">religious attitudes and behaviors (vs. the perfunctory government census data). These attitudes and behaviors will have implications not just for my own school's future 'pitch' in relation to chapel and chaplaincy, and for Ministry more generally. I've digested the highlights for you, dear reader, but they are hard for me to swallow:</span></span></div><div><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e;" type="cite"><div dir="ltr" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Claiming 'affiliation' is a weak stat. (e.g. can be family history vs. actual practice)</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most claiming affiliation are </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>not active</i></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gen-X to millennials low affiliation numbers indicate </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>continued decline</i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (so, even less in future of what's currently low)</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Religion ranks </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>last place</i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in influencing<i> personal identity</i> (71% claim not important)</span></span></li><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Even for birth-death-marriage rituals, 80% prefer <i>civil</i> to religious celebrants</span></span></li><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Religious metaphysics (God, heaven, hell, etc.), even among the committed, are no longer seen to offer validity to moral/ethical debates</span></span></li><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Most reject religious authority as the ultimate interpretation of <i>law</i>.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Religious households most likely to have</span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> low incomes</i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (i.e. not my wealthy school's target demographic anyway)</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, there is a disconnect between this new reality and Australian government policy, which favors minority </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>religious policy</i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> at the expense of the emerging non-religious majority </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Schools</i></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> are at the frontline of this struggle between public policy and the social change in actual religious behavior (e.g., most Australians oppose religious schools' legal right to expel students or sack staff on the basis of sexual orientation)</span></span></li></ul></div></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Our chaplaincy model (</span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and its attendant chapel facilities, etc.) </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: trebuchet; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is still quite traditional. But given this emerging reality, is it really sustainable? </span></span></p><p><span color="inherit" style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Any serious quest for the meaning and purpose of what I do demands that question at least be asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The traditional role expectations of chaplaincy are almost fully secularized or outsourced at my school already. Even school leaders muddle the terms "Assembly" and "Chapel" as though they fulfill the same timetable function. Assemblies trot out a list of desirable character values--decontextualized, random, perfunctory, and numerous, though they are. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5WMqNGAvOIRHGi-kKMQbx3dnj4aCX2a99G-2cEz6KkPHzcQkH8z4hC8KSth0j7I5b1v0BOVs_W7yhCT9pEwCioPNzn5JEwwQUDtskrMXvj1N3qN3FaNfJu2H4buygMiDaQlvKGwoKKEc/s300/Chaplaincy-Benenden-300x150.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5WMqNGAvOIRHGi-kKMQbx3dnj4aCX2a99G-2cEz6KkPHzcQkH8z4hC8KSth0j7I5b1v0BOVs_W7yhCT9pEwCioPNzn5JEwwQUDtskrMXvj1N3qN3FaNfJu2H4buygMiDaQlvKGwoKKEc/w640-h320/Chaplaincy-Benenden-300x150.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Though I've taken pains to clarify that I am NOT a counsellor (even distributing a report that distinguishes Spiritual Direction from clinical counselling) I am still regarded as one by both students and staff, and I am woefully under-skilled to be that for them. I listen and care, but lack the tools to strategize a fix or a management of their issues.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Student and Old Scholar rites of passage do not default to my keeping--in three years I have performed one staff wedding, but as a private gig, off-campus. That's it. There have been births and deaths, and I've not been called to officiate, nor do I expect or even want to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">What seems to remain is an occasional, highly specialized performance art--a live mass speech event that shares frontiers with sage-on-the-stage teaching, but without the teacherly validation of evaluations to see what they're getting from it. All you get are sort of google reviews that say more about the person than the event. Those that are susceptible to this form of rhetoric approve, those that aren't, don't. What a surprise.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">As my boss reminded me, the decline in religiosity doesn't mean a decline in the need and desire to search for meaning and purpose. But do you need a chaplain for that? Someone in religious orders with all the cultural baggage that comes with that--the tradition of epistemic authority, the psychological pressure of that perceived authority, the emotional manipulation people are still susceptible to by anyone 'of the cloth'. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It seems more like a case of the right <i>person</i> for the job, ordained or not. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwIxjM8Rj8_79I7G4UOlkC-nDykd27QAJvmgBFRLwrdgJBy3Er5KRbJ1-TN6qgMKKruJ7lXMzYzdJt6VToAGKm65Q5Vrkm2LoDedVHJbGj-v88jdwL0q_6RH9s3HbNjTBQ8VwTtiv5u68/s800/High-School-Chaplain.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="800" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwIxjM8Rj8_79I7G4UOlkC-nDykd27QAJvmgBFRLwrdgJBy3Er5KRbJ1-TN6qgMKKruJ7lXMzYzdJt6VToAGKm65Q5Vrkm2LoDedVHJbGj-v88jdwL0q_6RH9s3HbNjTBQ8VwTtiv5u68/w640-h428/High-School-Chaplain.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-33433891597987842972021-05-31T17:29:00.021-07:002021-05-31T22:02:24.943-07:00A {Redacted} Epistle to a Fellow-Traveller, on moving on<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Dear <span style="background-color: black;">XXX</span>,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">First, please forgive the less-than-personal feel of this
word-processed reply. My handwriting is reputedly (and admittedly) deplorable,
even to those used to my crabbed scrawl. I really enjoyed getting a handwritten
letter for a change. During my church tenure, handwritten notes were generally
a red flag. But it was SUCH a pleasure to read what is essentially an epistle, the
only aim of which is deepening and broadening relationship between fellow
travellers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Quite without meaning to, I seemed to develop an M.O. as I
read it—circling parts that jumped out at me that I felt I wanted particularly
to respond to or reflect on. Inevitably, that will say more about where I’m at
than some forlorn pretence of ‘objectivity’. Some were things I could relate
to, others were an ingrained pastoral-care reflex, a <i>deformation
professionelle </i>from years of teaching and Ministry and now chaplaincy.
Anyway, I’ll plunge into some of these circled bits in order over the next few
days, and see where my reflections take me. May they be ‘dulce et
utile’—pleasing and useful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">First, though, I want to reiterate that you’re one of the best <span style="background-color: black;">XXXX</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span>I’ve seen on three continents. Measured, strategic,
persistent, inclusive, knowledgeable, analytical, deeply moral and
heartfelt—the conclusions to which you led even the most ideologically
resistant in my church were inescapable. That said, you are allowed to stop, to
have boundaries that are no one’s business but your own, and which require zero
justification from a free, self-directed adult. That UU 1<sup>st</sup>
principle of the ‘inherent worth and dignity of every person’ applies even to
the politically non-engaged. You’re no good to anyone if you’re broken, least
of all to yourself. Your energies have been outward-directed for a long time.
Give yourself a break. If you don’t, who will?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">“I contain multitudes” Walt Whitman said. I don’t know about
you, but as a fellow neurotic, I have always had this voice in my head as long
as I can remember who tells me I’m not good enough, that I’m a fraud, that I will
struggle to deserve comfort or happiness. You experience this as the
gaslighting imposter syndrome. Only quite recently, I have become better at
telling myself that this voice inside me has never done <i>anything</i> in life
other than be mean to me. One of us is sad and sick and useless, and it ain’t
me. Becoming best friends with yourself, as you say, is telling that voice
regularly to go <span style="background-color: black;">XXXX </span>himself, whenever it pops up. That is absolutely required
to be able to grab your oxygen mask, don it with a clear conscience, breathe
deeply, and enjoy the benefits of not suffocating. Our self-flagellation serves
no one.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7nMY4kYPJfvRrU1TEB6fictUQqADd-HQTevFsmVl5EGXBMbV8U0dkD0gAqNMDcj57JBugWff_bsckAnH_fN3hRJ8GK_EU6hJ3VqAphBAMAWj-7JbPDMPYLM5rkkMlV2KFXFRLHDGLRhg/s1500/1_HmWTvrv2W4kt0DkT1u0t2g.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1096" data-original-width="1500" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7nMY4kYPJfvRrU1TEB6fictUQqADd-HQTevFsmVl5EGXBMbV8U0dkD0gAqNMDcj57JBugWff_bsckAnH_fN3hRJ8GK_EU6hJ3VqAphBAMAWj-7JbPDMPYLM5rkkMlV2KFXFRLHDGLRhg/w640-h468/1_HmWTvrv2W4kt0DkT1u0t2g.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Talk about unproductive...</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Leaving things you’ve built behind, and letting attachment
to them go. Yeah, that’s a tough one! It’s hard because it puts us in mind of
our mortality and the ultimate, cosmic futility of individual human endeavour. The
power-brokers at <span style="background-color: black;">XXXXXXX </span>are probably claiming what they liked of my work as
their own, and burying what they didn’t. <i>C’est la vie. </i>Though I can’t
any longer influence what they do, the clean, sharp break still seems the
wisest course, not merely because doing so was a centuries-old protocol of free
churches, but because it embodies and fulfills the self-effacement inherent in
true service. The Ministry of the church is what matters, the particular
Minister does not. Facing what I knew to be the end of an important and
intentional identity felt like the most grown-up thing I’d ever done, and I
hope I face my final oblivion with half such certainty.</span></p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">When I begin to kick myself about it, I remind myself of the
way I respond to those who belabour me about the importance of the <i>person</i>
of Christ. If the ideas/values/principles he’s meant to have espoused were inherently
good in themselves, then his historicity (the particulars of the magical birth,
miracles, and resurrection) need never have happened, nor require my belief that they did. When I think of exemplary self-sacrifice at all (talk about a
sharp, clean break!), I imagine his death to be the ultimate faith that the
ideas will live in some form after him. The alternative to self-effacement is the
personality cult, a species of idolatry, a flat denial of the transience of all
material forms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Unitarian churches, having a few central principles but no single
text or narrative, necessarily tend toward personality cults, especially if
Ministers don’t know when to leave, when enough of you is enough. This was
happening in the latter stages at <span style="background-color: black;">XXXXXXX</span> Never trust anyone that puts you on a pedestal, no
matter how flattering, because the pedestal itself always belongs to those who
put you on it. Had I stayed, my contract would not have run out until 2023, and
I’m not sure a graceful, emotionally intelligent exit could have been managed
by then. Maybe this is the case in all intentional communities, <span style="background-color: black;">XXX</span>included. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It’s not false humility if you genuinely humble yourself to a greater good. This means sacrifice, and thus suffering, but also offers a
way through suffering to equanimity. While it would be false to say I’ve
achieved that state, I’m further along than I was a few months ago, so maybe it’s
a process that will continue. I did some good things there, and one of the
things that truly became my Ministry was the leaving of it. It was a hard thing
to do well, given the ample ‘friendly fire’ and the enormity of the task, so I am
allowed to be proud of all that and find something new that’s worth doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">To venture into new lives, you have to leave old ones,
knowing you can’t go back, not really. You can visit, but it’s never the same
because the observer (you) will have changed (this is the Heisenberg principle
at work in our own personal histories). Doing the kind of work you’ve done is a
young man’s game, best done in the vigour of one’s flowering season. But flower
is meant to become fruit, and fruit is meant to ripen. If that’s where you are headed
now, that’s only natural: the bright promise of the spring becoming the hard
realities of the harvest—what you’re damn well left with, what the scope of it really
is, what you might usefully do with it for those who come after in the time
remaining to you. Time to pick the fruit before it falls--and it must fall, if
we don’t pick it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPj7jTWdxI0HJ7Fxpn0jNOBcqY6IiAYTkO-ViQSLYZE4UoHrVvPaBo37C9fEMHdLDZHtIlNbczIzvMbfKsZkqTfbwfDFMdbn3HHZb7bt26fmi-lbB1KMmjzlrRZC7mg6tyqEPCVJI1G5Y/s337/download.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="337" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPj7jTWdxI0HJ7Fxpn0jNOBcqY6IiAYTkO-ViQSLYZE4UoHrVvPaBo37C9fEMHdLDZHtIlNbczIzvMbfKsZkqTfbwfDFMdbn3HHZb7bt26fmi-lbB1KMmjzlrRZC7mg6tyqEPCVJI1G5Y/w640-h284/download.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How nature says "pick the fruit"</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Tolkien quote reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide, the
eponymous character having finally settled down at the end of his wide-ranging,
bizarre adventures to a quiet, domestic life. His teacher, Dr. Pangloss, still
insists that since everything has worked out in the end, we still live in the
best of all possible worlds. “Yes,” Candide says, “but we must still tend our
garden.” The scope of his stewardship has shrunk, but it’s manageable, and
needs his agency to yield what it can. He drinks the wine of the country,
praises the God of all things, and lets the world be the world. There’s nowt
wrong with that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">That we resist this, well, <i>maturing</i>, is a way of
clinging to youth, and as much as I love Tolkien too, he wrote in, and never really
left, the sheltered workshop of a school. Now that I’m back in an academic
environment, I can see that even for the adults there’s something infantilizing
about that culture. Plus he was writing the Rings as the British Empire was
summoning up all its will and resources to conquer the great existential threat
of its day, and the Judeo-Christian trope of glorious sacrifice was understandably
at the heart of his work and that of many other of his peers (like C. S. Lewis).
It always reminds me of their debt to William Blake and the promise that a new
Jerusalem was at hand if only we took up our bow of burning gold, its arrows of
desire, and mounted our chariot of fire. All that heat and light in the sacrificial
fire of youth (no culture ever used the <i>elderly </i>for burnt offerings!). But
fire is a temporal phenomenon. Stories that deal with what happens <i>after</i>
this fire expends itself, as it must, don’t make exciting reading or viewing. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipzsoyYfsP-1PcD16VyP4QVHb_SQZjKUAELMEDg_VZfo9Qs4IRSoGqJu0rFUzU2LKyRObvUy16dQBD2Lvbpr6BbNRuRYUHFRjJwVqGJuy7tuZ9HxP4YHMWv50DgM6goXHYnGv7bF1Eryc/s317/download+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="317" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipzsoyYfsP-1PcD16VyP4QVHb_SQZjKUAELMEDg_VZfo9Qs4IRSoGqJu0rFUzU2LKyRObvUy16dQBD2Lvbpr6BbNRuRYUHFRjJwVqGJuy7tuZ9HxP4YHMWv50DgM6goXHYnGv7bF1Eryc/w640-h321/download+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">After the forward thrust of one story expends itself, it is
always possible to begin a new one—having the learned the lessons of the old, and
taken a break long enough to answer the question: “Well, what now?” I have complete
faith that however you answer that, it will be well, and all manner of things
for you shall be well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Obviously this all comes through a tired old man’s filter,
whose next story can only be how to face age, and then the only end of age. Naturally,
it says more truth about where I’m at than where you are, but I hope these
reflections are of use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Thanks for prompting this epistolary. It’s done me a power
of good to reflect deeply on issues that are alive in you. I hope we can
continue. Say, do you mind if I blog this, if I keep your name and the
organisation’s name out of it? Maybe others will find it useful too. No problem
if not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Yours in faith,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rob</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-25929451264437594092020-11-11T16:30:00.003-08:002020-11-11T16:37:50.523-08:00Put to the test<i><br />“We're all put to the test. But it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?”</i><br /><div>--David Mamet, <i>The Edge</i></div><div><i></i><br /></div><div>In the film <i>The Edge</i>, the two main characters are well-off guys, scouting locations for a high-fashion photo shoot in the Alaskan wilderness. But their small plane hits a flock of geese and crashes, killing the pilot, and stranding them in the middle of nowhere—lost, exposed, afraid, with only the clothes on their backs, their wits, and a single good pocketknife (the titular ‘edge’—geddit?).</div><div><br /></div><div>They resolve to head back whence they came rather than await the uncertainty of rescue. They cut wood to make a fire their first night, but one of them accidentally cuts himself with the knife, putting the scent of blood in the air. A grizzly bear gets the scent, and the rest of the film is about how they respond to the bear’s relentless, remorseless, inexorable pursuit of them as prey. The grizzly cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, will not tire, wants only to eat them alive.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5luHsDiTW9UuWLppyxR-z4RHkQUqM-K4ry0vDsat_19uulppInqFJbX2VxYoZ6n7BgR0NB2gjdftZt8P-qIJNnkxpLnjB5kaJNGTELczwm8tRb3ru4xcK2UFMNKXg_tV0Qlb8qlN1Qfw/s675/218114-675x450-Bear.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="675" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5luHsDiTW9UuWLppyxR-z4RHkQUqM-K4ry0vDsat_19uulppInqFJbX2VxYoZ6n7BgR0NB2gjdftZt8P-qIJNnkxpLnjB5kaJNGTELczwm8tRb3ru4xcK2UFMNKXg_tV0Qlb8qlN1Qfw/w400-h266/218114-675x450-Bear.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The survival test they are put to was, one of them remembers, a rite of passage for young Amer-Indian boys. In order to become a full-fledged ‘brave’, an unprovided Amer-Indian boy had to go out into the wilderness and kill a bear. Only then could he be considered fit to take his place as an adult in the tribe. Many of course did not survive the ordeal. Those that did were fundamentally changed, fully ‘grown up’. There are many such rites of passage among indigenous people. The walkabout. The vision quest. Even young Massai warriors today have to test their mettle by approaching a lion, and slapping it on the backside.</div><div><br /></div><div>Each of the two guys are carrying, of course, their own personal insecurities, delusions, and agendas. The older of the guys really gets that the situation is ‘do or die’. They cannot flee for long without food or shelter. They must kill the bear or the bear will kill them—there is no third way. They must focus on doing what is required to achieve this single, vital goal. What is being tested here is their character as supposed grown adults. At one point, they fail to catch the attention of a search plane. The younger of the two insists it will come back. The older of the two knows they cannot rely on this happening in time, and returns to the mission. The younger one says, “But can’t we think that...?” “No,” says the elder. Denial will not avail, only what you do and don’t do matters.</div><div><br /></div><div>We no longer have formal rites of passage as a culture that clearly demarcate childhood from adulthood, rituals so scary that they amounted to a death-and-resurrection of the individual’s character. In place of a single ritual guided by ancestral wisdom, contemporary adulthood is supposed to develop after a drawn-out and tortuous period of adolescent psychodynamics. It is said the average teen experiences in a single day, all possible psychological states, including so-called ‘abnormal’ states. The ordeal of Year 12 exams is not the same. If you fail, you can pack up your life like a board game and play somewhere else, living to fight another day. No real harm, no ultimate foul. With no clear, testing demarcation between youth and age, it’s not surprising that we see in our culture so many childish behaviors in people who are outwardly adults. Bullying, lack of boundaries, risk-taking, sociopathic tantrums, status games.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6MKvDSkyQlyV-Phwzwm_NmjEhb9rhAGBZRnYjo_0dmWGS1SZ_y1lpgLjT0MZJo_fLGN9CMmqquKWWdcq4KZGnQ9qmBeI3ovMSRg-6ZQB42_TkOS7HCT7sZaKqCiJRvbd_6z8ATG-kHkc/s970/still-suck-your-thumb-the-many-childish-habits-we-still-have-as-adults.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="970" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6MKvDSkyQlyV-Phwzwm_NmjEhb9rhAGBZRnYjo_0dmWGS1SZ_y1lpgLjT0MZJo_fLGN9CMmqquKWWdcq4KZGnQ9qmBeI3ovMSRg-6ZQB42_TkOS7HCT7sZaKqCiJRvbd_6z8ATG-kHkc/w400-h200/still-suck-your-thumb-the-many-childish-habits-we-still-have-as-adults.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Like all institutions and individuals across the world, this year has put us all to the test at a point and in a way we would not have preferred. We have been pursued by an implacable force of nature. Who the adults in the room already were, has become pretty evident. For many, this year was the rite of passage. Some have been changed by it. Some still flee in denial. And some, of course, have not survived.<br /><div><br /></div><div>In the film, the guys do manage to kill the bear, exactly as the Amer-Indian youth used to do. The edge—the knife itself—was useful, but was not what gave them ‘the edge’ over their gruesome adversary. What gave them the edge was their essential humanity—the ability to work together focused on their mission, despite their differences. Indeed their common urgent mission made their differences irrelevant.</div><div><br /></div>Be it known, I have never mentioned COVID in this post.<div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-57005258113507895052020-06-18T20:33:00.002-07:002020-06-18T20:33:46.425-07:00How to Do Ritual in Virtual Space?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fun and interesting fact: <b>recent research shows that 46% of Gen Z (so MS and SS age range) have tried a religious or spiritual practice that is new to them since the COVID outbreak. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let that sink in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rather than a hindrance, COVID has offered a unique opportunity, and an urgency, to undertake a serious exploration of spiritual values. The ritual space provided by regular worship services is the traditional way churches have gone about pursuing this aim.</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the very need Gen Z is having for spiritual and religious meaning has been caused by the very thing that makes traditional worship services impossible, namely the pandemic. The pandemic prevents the key element of ritual--being present together in a physical space for a fixed length of time that is set aside and apart from 'normal' activities.</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ritual gatherings can't be blithely dismissed. The practice of ritualized worship has survived for thousands of years because it is inherently well-designed to fulfil the very needs being expressed by Gen Z. Ritual worship has lasted for as long as it has because it's trusted and compelling and has adapted over time, to things as obvious as electricity, audio/video technologies, etc.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So just rub some new technology on it and it will be fine, right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be blunt: the technological tool at our disposable--Zoom--is not designed for ritual gathering, and it's hard to see it ever becoming adaptable to ritual gathering, and therefore to meeting the needs ritual gatherings address. Gatherings of human bodies do not occupy a grid-frame in constant surveillance, facing perpetually front-on like martinets. In ritual gatherings, we move our gaze around, we look to the peripheries or the ceiling. We are not always 'on'. We need not 'perform' attentiveness as we are compelled to on Zoom. In ritual gatherings, we can mentally check in and out, directing our attention into ourselves and out into the shared sphere as we feel moved to. The best we can do in Zoom is turn our camera off--which sends a message that may be interpreted as anything from boredom to active resistance. </span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So we can't just map onto Zoom what we've loved about gathering in ritual space. What can we do to make the most of the substandard tool we currently have?</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some practical research is being done in this area to make the best use of the wrong tool. Emerging principles include:</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Preparing the physical space, and marking the time as out-of-the-ordinary</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Finding ways to 'lean into' the reality of where we each are</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Finding ways to 'lean into' the fact that this is new and only partially adequate</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Acknowledging that people feel safe at home in ways they would not in public spaces among strangers--thus a higher willingness to risk engaging with big questions with new people</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. Finding ways in the technology to help people connect--assign break out rooms, briefly check-ins from everyone.</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any thoughts? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Feel free to comment or PM me.</span></div>
<span style="color: #ba0010; font-size: x-small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-41501582763860327612020-06-11T00:33:00.000-07:002020-06-11T00:33:48.252-07:00It is possible to do things badly with great love<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Chaplains and ministers are
meant to embody a certain quality, called ‘pastoral presence’. Part of our role
is the expectation to be a calm, non-anxious person in the crowd, the still
point by which the community can get is bearings, a firm post we can lash our moorings to ‘til the rough weather passes. </span><br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This quality of
presence may sound like some mysterious, arcane power acquired by monk-like habits,
but in fact it doesn’t require <i>wisdom</i> necessarily, or even squeaky-clean
moral goodness. All that’s required is being reliably around and available to <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white;">hold safe and meaningful space</span></span>
for people when and as they need it. We need to know certain people will just
be there, even though we may never use them--kind of like church itself has
become. 85% of Australians don’t go to churches except for rites of passage (the hatch, match, and dispatch), but need to know they’re still out there,
gamely waiting like an eternally patient dog, loyally there to offer companionship when called. </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdeiVlSNnzqyqlfU8C-TtakqIaL-Xw3y4xjvlYpadwZAS2CRu71Q1lFk2UOJ2htQwmfZ1lKylDG1-lwXV-MuGmSd9bIpLUCztfu2y8012zDZMemPIqo4dVQAR53KOLSMKyu9H1yHGS_c/s1600/0_PAY-AsiaWire-BridgeDog-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="615" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdeiVlSNnzqyqlfU8C-TtakqIaL-Xw3y4xjvlYpadwZAS2CRu71Q1lFk2UOJ2htQwmfZ1lKylDG1-lwXV-MuGmSd9bIpLUCztfu2y8012zDZMemPIqo4dVQAR53KOLSMKyu9H1yHGS_c/s640/0_PAY-AsiaWire-BridgeDog-01.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What it feels like.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We reach for church and chapel (and its ministers and chaplains) in the same way
we reach for poetry--<b>mostly</b> in times of nerve-jangled distress or big
transitions--death and birth and thoughts of these, such times as can only be framed, shared, and transcended through a language that’s at rather a higher pitch than one’s everyday chit-chat,
or, in the case of ministry, by a person who’s in a role that’s something other
than one’s everyday associates. <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;">So how about this analogy: <i>a chaplain is to lay staff, as poetry is to conversation</i>.</span> </span>We
seldom need or want poetry or religion, but at those times when we do, we badly
do, and nothing else will do. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here’s poem from a minister who’s a poet and
songwriter, my colleague Rev. Lynn Ungar, which I get the feeling some of us might badly
want or need to hear: </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-color: white; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;">Badly</span></b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><br /></span></b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Anything
worth doing </span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Is
worth doing badly</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">No one ever did something well</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Without doing it poorly first.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">But
if we’re going to get real,</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
chances of your ever getting </span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>really
good </b>are slim at best.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
Olympics and the Pro leagues</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Flee
with the end of your puberty.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Maybe
the Nobel or Pulitzer</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Is
out there waiting. But </span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I
wouldn’t hold my breath.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Even on our best days,</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Most of us are merely competent,</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">And
much of the time, adequate is a stretch.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;">Appearances
aside <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;">this might be</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;">One of the happiest things I know</span>.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I
hereby absolve you</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Of
the need to be better</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">than
anyone else. Poof.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">It is possible to suck at things</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto;">With great love.</span> Grab your Uke</span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">And
I’ll get my mandolin.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Meet
me on the porch.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">We’ll
play together, under tempo</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">And
ever so slightly out of tune.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Most of the time, I feel like I'm getting chaplaincy wrong, though I care about it and feel like I'm giving it my best shot. It's frustrating, because the last time I was in a school setting, I was a rather popular, even beloved, teacher--liked and respected in equal measure by my students. I still count many of them among my most precious relationships after 30-odd years.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But that was in my 30's and 40's, and the work I was doing then was more central to the core business of schooling. Maybe now I'm in my 60's the gulf between my life experience and theirs is too wide, and the human man seems to be disappearing inside the marginalized clerical role I have to wear, leaving only the outer shell of it to do duty for the whole person. Maybe I have become less open-hearted that in youth, but it doesn't feel that way. Maybe the gap is cultural--Australian private school kids are not identical to international expat schools. There is this...<i>distance</i> I constantly feel, and I can't tell if it's in them, or in me, or just what we've collectively become since mobile telephony and social media have so rearranged the inner lives of everyone. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Maybe this role can only be done in a way that's less satisfactory than my teaching used to be, and holding my new self to that old standard is unfair. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I am hereby absolved of trying to be as good as the old me. Poof!</span></span></span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-38631946543432905192020-05-13T16:23:00.002-07:002020-05-13T16:23:26.711-07:00Life isn't a pathology: random thoughts after pastoral care of anxious studentsOurs has been called an age of anxiety.<br />
<br />
But are we now more acutely anxious than ever before? The pandemic certainly seems to have amped up the most common 'mental illness' of the 21st century. But hasn't the vulnerable human species always been living with anxiety? Not just humans, either--anxiety is common to all biological forms. Anxiety responses can be detected and measured in every life form, from a bacteria to a bird to a bee to a tree.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipJPCf51bTTCdZaUEnTwgqTo7IU4oOB2uGCC6aaHLCCWBvIjNrhZ152TRMZ-8W0n8aX3-C367y1PIJ-T9fv02xitl8YWYZg4WiLuJbBODPGE194ftIipBCNbSFoZ1u7smbvxPFSnkPBfs/s1600/This_was_a_timely_capture_%25283926001309%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="858" data-original-width="1200" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipJPCf51bTTCdZaUEnTwgqTo7IU4oOB2uGCC6aaHLCCWBvIjNrhZ152TRMZ-8W0n8aX3-C367y1PIJ-T9fv02xitl8YWYZg4WiLuJbBODPGE194ftIipBCNbSFoZ1u7smbvxPFSnkPBfs/s640/This_was_a_timely_capture_%25283926001309%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Any life form scans for threats all the time</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Why? Because evolution. Living organisms have had 1.4 billion years' practice in being constantly on sentry duty, monitoring their environment for threats. Our late-evolved, highly-developed brains need only a nanosecond to home in on any anomaly in our scope and begin evaluating it, preparing to take evasive, life-preserving actions--freeze, faff, flight, flee. As it is doing this, other higher-brain capacities are either switched off or minimized--rationality, compassion, etc., get put on hold. Anxiety is biological, natural. Anxiety is inherent in living on this planet, and healthy anxiety has served us well for most of our evolution as a species. It has been a rational response to detecting threats and planning responses to replicate our DNA. Our ancestors spent eons as prey to teach us this, and we have learned it, but good.<br />
<br />
But an extra dimension has been added to the threat environment. The current information age bombards us now with new universes of data that didn't exist before, giving us an entirely new field of reality to scan and react to, looking for threats to fixes, or looking for allies to resonate with. COVID has taken information to yet another level, to the point where some desperate people genuinely consider drinking bleach for a moment, just to make it all go away. Our natural sentry duty is now on crack--twitchy with hypervigilance.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge7tIuj8rwjANlrZlIX5O3RVzXnh9HyTnFRxGmjZHOBzSRZ4cwfK-NWj2POA0dTNMmsPWg0z36bRD7RxVCOfh6Ds6dlFD1PodAeqs5nbeavsBViegJhfmcGIwG411kLt-HOXn0k5RG8WY/s1600/imagesF3E48NL9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="172" data-original-width="293" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge7tIuj8rwjANlrZlIX5O3RVzXnh9HyTnFRxGmjZHOBzSRZ4cwfK-NWj2POA0dTNMmsPWg0z36bRD7RxVCOfh6Ds6dlFD1PodAeqs5nbeavsBViegJhfmcGIwG411kLt-HOXn0k5RG8WY/s640/imagesF3E48NL9.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, it has got a lot more threatening in the past 15 years</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So no amount of Prozac, CBT, lying-on-the-most-expensive-couches, crystal healing or essential oils will do anything but manage the symptoms of anxiety. None of them address the root causes that are tied up with natural life-on-earth, and certainly not with life-in-the-world-we've-made. They may only get you propped back up to get back to work. It's kind of what they're for. The socio-economic order demands a quick fix. We may treat individuals, but the causes are often social and environmental. The system in pressuring us to 'just cope and deal with it' creates another layer of things to be anxious about--what if I can't cope? In late stage capitalism, that's pretty much a death sentence--you don't get to earn, you have no right to live, and certainly no right to be happy.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGotwIfOhWtN_holCNvOny3QoV5VZan4Xx1rwY-3YmbJ4EcXMJydYosuE5wtnDPi1cEoPTyI8m0fIDJterrsh3FdTlKsqhGa1aFG7g6ldpUHQ8tGDyKmZEB0nrvIfvWvb4E0bicoiWVs/s1600/imagesWT74QYQE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGotwIfOhWtN_holCNvOny3QoV5VZan4Xx1rwY-3YmbJ4EcXMJydYosuE5wtnDPi1cEoPTyI8m0fIDJterrsh3FdTlKsqhGa1aFG7g6ldpUHQ8tGDyKmZEB0nrvIfvWvb4E0bicoiWVs/s640/imagesWT74QYQE.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No sane person thinks this.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In this crazy-making context, only psychopaths would feel fine. It is no sign of health to be well adjusted to a world where we are geared to scan for destruction, or to a culture, making itself sick with a media storm of things to worry about. There is no cure for life on earth in 2020.<br />
<br />
The young people who come into my office to share their troubles, seem gripped and paralyzed by an extreme anxiety that cannot be explained by their circumstances. They are physically healthy, doing okay academically, have social networks, have families that look after them, so they get regular meals, suburban peace, comforts, treats, luxuries, even. They're not on meth but many are certainly on meds. Nevertheless, they are in an inchoate and generalized and intractable pain. If it is true that the young more readily embody society's vulnerabilities, we are in deep trouble, and these troubles can't be cured by considering them a 'disorder' to treat, or by strategizing some new, inventive coping mechanisms so their parents won't be inconvenienced by their inability to function, and so a private school's brand is not damaged.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4D-4pDBtxE56jyJG86p2P13JZWhSwtEEn5OvWGp5xhODPknzgc-Fz5Tdwd6JL2_ZYLm_iB2EMxuhIhNr22QzB1kDrI59TYw6BinbrV8eErSNckaiddjqcCQjY9Dbg6iZOlARtBLdOM9k/s1600/dsm-5-criteria-for-generalized-anxiety-disorder-1393147_v2-902be69757414cc7a517ef3ca9838b59.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4D-4pDBtxE56jyJG86p2P13JZWhSwtEEn5OvWGp5xhODPknzgc-Fz5Tdwd6JL2_ZYLm_iB2EMxuhIhNr22QzB1kDrI59TYw6BinbrV8eErSNckaiddjqcCQjY9Dbg6iZOlARtBLdOM9k/s640/dsm-5-criteria-for-generalized-anxiety-disorder-1393147_v2-902be69757414cc7a517ef3ca9838b59.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who functions well in the world we've made? </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yet they are certainly "ill", because their anxiety is such that they cannot function. But who says they have to function in this mess? If we are only concerned with their ability function socially, we are betraying that our children have become some kind of totem, an emblem in the narcissistic game of who is the awesomest parent, displaying their awesomeness through getting their kid into the bestest school. And from this too, anxious students get the message that life is a battle, not just of biology, but of social rank and pecking order and invented standards of achievement. All these hand-wring, tear-squeezing students actually want is to be loved for who they are, not for the scholastic tricks they can pull.<br />
<br />
Maybe we should listen to the wisdom of their extreme response and adapt to a wiser relationship to both natural and maladaptive anxiety. Anxiety is, after all, a sign of empathy, compassion, feeling. It says "I care, I am awake and aware. I am engaged in life." Anxiety is not to be got rid of, because living in the world is not a pathology. We cannot 'cure' a natural process. It has a place in the world and is useful to us, but must be moderated. We need to make friends with it, so to speak--understand is roots, acknowledge its usefulness, hear and respond to the dispatches from the front our troubled youth are sending us about life at the extreme end of threat.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3bjGJg6xuVXsLHy1Hl-lGPA03fKzVVFP0DWDXBSYIMlzNrqgUT29flXnS-XkNuBYfVO6uOoa927nujE8IgYGiymdky0obljFge8pFyqSSe8O0ChP4Uawx73zfUqwNtM_lj1Rdxj7Fe0/s1600/Depositphotos_66171019_s-2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="1000" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3bjGJg6xuVXsLHy1Hl-lGPA03fKzVVFP0DWDXBSYIMlzNrqgUT29flXnS-XkNuBYfVO6uOoa927nujE8IgYGiymdky0obljFge8pFyqSSe8O0ChP4Uawx73zfUqwNtM_lj1Rdxj7Fe0/s640/Depositphotos_66171019_s-2019.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kids need your love not your judgement</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And keep anxiety in some perspective. 3 out of 4 people do not have anxiety to the point of illness. What makes them resilient? It's useful to remember that there are fewer suicides and less depression generally when there's a war going on. This suggests that clarity and commitment to an urgent larger purpose, especially one that connects you to others, lowers anxiety. There's research to suggest that after 9/11, morale for many mentally ill Americans actually improved because they were able to identify what was important to them and adapted their lives and relationships accordingly. Some lives do actually improve after trauma, responding with humor, resilience, and community bonding. In short, anxiety is how your society allows you to respond to it. Extreme anxiety is a compounded condition--being anxious about being anxious. The first thing Jesus usually said before he healed people was : "Be not afraid."<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeRn2XCkers78FOI931Nh9JIPuaF6WBg7ZPQ53CANnUj-c_sl4k5X-TDZ-zef6lawo56qZ_kBIYmhzsCdpmLS3tEwjl-D9Dcl3uGsvk1Un3voRIvM085ZojKzyuY-PKU9PKLbu6Hz-uhQ/s1600/images7035CMMD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="277" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeRn2XCkers78FOI931Nh9JIPuaF6WBg7ZPQ53CANnUj-c_sl4k5X-TDZ-zef6lawo56qZ_kBIYmhzsCdpmLS3tEwjl-D9Dcl3uGsvk1Un3voRIvM085ZojKzyuY-PKU9PKLbu6Hz-uhQ/s640/images7035CMMD.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whose fear is it really anyway, your or theirs?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A collective evolution of our consciousness is called for in the age of anxiety, the kind prophesied by the religious wisdom of the ages--purpose, love, connection, larger perspective. We can define ourselves by what we choose to be afraid of. So maybe we should choose better things to fear than fear itself. Which means we need to love our anxiety-prone fellows, allow them to feel their feelings so that they need not fear feeling them. And worry a bit less about how well they adapt to a sick social order. And maybe even do what we can to create a more compassionate social order where the vulnerable are not told to 'just deal with it'.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-15596091286023945102020-03-25T18:40:00.000-07:002020-03-25T18:40:00.961-07:00Affirmations for Isolations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ytn2I0U3es/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1ytn2I0U3es?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-14689282172537168022020-03-23T18:43:00.001-07:002020-03-23T18:43:20.945-07:00What we are feeling is Grief. And Grief can be understood and dealt with.<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_FC8zWDfD-M?clip=&clipt=EAAYAA%3D%3D" width="480"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-62040228632494392802020-03-12T15:22:00.001-07:002020-03-30T18:44:17.626-07:00The Truest Christology is the Most Inclusive Christology<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I am the chaplain of a high-fee, private, non-denominational boarding and day school. Its student body is broadly multicultural.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Its constitution indicates that our education of
students is to be grounded in Christian Values.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">One of its stated aims is ‘t<span style="background: white;">o encourage the exploration of students' spiritual values and
their power to make ethical decisions.’</span></span></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The two notions taken
together appear to be straightforward enough, the sort of ‘motherhood’
statements you’d expect any school to have in its shopfront window. </span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">But if we look closer at how
these align, questions start to emerge.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">First: Is it possible to explore
one’s spiritual values and make ethical decisions without reference to
Christian values? Of course it is. Just ask any Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, or Jew.
If you look around, you’ll find a few in SA, and on our campus as well. It is
more than likely they’d report a sense of having their own spiritual values,
and the ability to make ethical decisions based on them.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b></b><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>On what basis, then, is the <i>supremacy</i>
of specifically Christian values merited?</b></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b></b><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(But we’ll return to that
question of Christian supremacy in a moment…)</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Second: WHAT Christian values
are being assumed here? All of them? Some of them—if some, which and why? Not
even Christians agree on what these values are, or which are non-negotiable,
hence the 1001 flavours ranging from The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic
Church to Shakers to 7<sup>th</sup> Day Adventists to…(add your own here).</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">But let’s pick ONE Christian
Value that seems to be the most basic and that therefore all who call
themselves Christian should agree on. It’s expressed in Galatians 5:14--</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: red;"><b><sup><span style="color: #c0392b; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“</span></sup></b><span style="color: #c0392b; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping
this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: #c0392b; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">That’s the familiar Golden
Rule. But wait, that’s Paul, not Jesus. Maybe it will be safer to go to the
source. Jesus had an extra layer to that value, as expressed in Matthew
22:36-40--</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“Teacher, which is the
greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the
first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour
as yourself.’<sup> </sup>All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: #c0392b; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">So, it would appear to the
face of it that Jesus requires a certain theism that Paul does not. Or rather,
that (for Paul) to love you neighbour as yourself is <b>how </b>you love the
Abrahamic God. The distinction here is rather a critical one, for religious
freedom would include the freedom to be atheistic. Do we insist our students
believe in this God, or at least predicate their education on the assumption of
this God? (That is a conversation I would not care to have with, say, Buddhist
or Hindu parents.) And if we do <i>not</i> make the insistence or assumption of
this God, in what sense are we upholding Christian values? (This is a
conversation I would not care to have with, say, Pentacostal or Catholic
parents.)</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Leaving an insistence on
theism to one side, however, let us assume that by ‘a Christian Value’ we mean,
as the most sound example, this ethic of the Golden Rule. But in what sense is
this a Christian Value? The Golden Rule is in no sense <i>originally</i> Christian.
There are expressions of this same ethic that predate Christianity by thousands
of years. The Golden Rule is in no sense <i>exclusively</i> Christian. It is
universally endorsed by faith and wisdom traditions ranging from the ancient
Hindu, Amer-Indian, and Aboriginal traditions, to the current Tenets of the
Satanic Temple (“</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">One
should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in
accordance with reason.”) At best, it is a human value, also endorsed by
Christianity, among many others.</span></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">On what basis, then, is the <i>supremacy</i>
of specifically Christian values merited in our work as a school? If its core
value is neither exclusive nor original, there seems to be no <i>theological</i>
basis for its supremacy above others. </span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps Christian values are
culturally supreme, in that Australia identifies itself as a Christian nation?
This would be fair enough, as we take government money as part of our
financing. However, the Australian government has also funded Islamic schools.
It has also funded Catholic schools, although technically Catholics recognise
the supreme earthly authority of the Holy See. (Let us hope Catholics’
allegiance is never tested by Australia getting into a war with Vatican City… </span><span style="font-family: "segoe ui emoji" , sans-serif;">😉</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">)</span></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The cultural supremacy of
Christianity in Australia begs the question: in what sense is Australia a
Christian nation? If we mean church-going, Australia is in no sense a Christian
nation. According to Professor Hugh Mackay, only 8% of the Australian
population attends ANY sort of church service regularly. Such a quantum is the
very definition of a niche interest. </span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If we mean a stated
affiliation, Australia as a Christian nation is at best a 50-50 proposition.
According to the 2016 census, while 52% self-identify as some species of
Christian, 8% identify as something <i>other</i> than Christian, and 30%
self-identify as having ‘no religion’. But since the census question was
optional, the remaining 10% did not think the question worth answering. Or
rather, that their choice not to disclose anything amounts either to indifference
to the question itself, or to a sense that the terms of the question were
specious and did not reflect their identity. Either way, it would be safe to
add this 10% to 38% non-Christian responses. That leaves a statistical
difference of 2%. Most quantitative research considers such a small difference
to be within the realm of a margin of error.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The most important fact about
the religious identity of the nation is that these numbers have been <u>trending
consistently and dramatically for the past two generations:</u> Christianity
sharply <i>downward</i> from 88% in 1966, Other religions up from 0.7% in 1966,
and No Religion sharply <i>upward</i> from 0.8% in 1966 to the whopping 30%
most recently. There is nothing to suggest these trends will not continue at
the same steep rate. This means that by 2030, Australia will not even be a
50-50 Christian nation. Christianity is headed, seemingly inexorably, to a
minority status. One is left to wonder what will be left by then of the 8% who
currently attend <i>any</i> form of regular worship.</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This will no doubt distress
those who consciously identify as Christians and whose lives are given
coherence by its traditions and theology. This distress will be tied up, in
part, with a perceived loss of cultural capital, and the power to direct the
affairs of the nation and its institutions (including schools) in light of their preferred faith. </span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It may be of some comfort to
Christians to return to the model of inclusivity and generosity that
characterized the person on whose teaching their faith was founded. As
Christian theologian Rob Bell puts it:</span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If
the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.
And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders
its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church
gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing
in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. </span></i></div>
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">To do
this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of
in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these
terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non",
they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus
commanded us to love our neighbour, and our neighbour can be anybody. We are
all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of
God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what
is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. </span></i></div>
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">As the book of James
says, "God shows no favouritism."</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-left: 28.35pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="color: #c0392b; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Non-denominational schools should show no favouritism either. To
move toward a stance of religious pluralism, to include theist and non-theist
alike, does not deny Christ. Rather, the widest possible inclusion upholds the
very essence of his life and teaching. His crucifixion is the ultimate act of
self-effacement in the service of the higher ideal of universal, self-giving love.</span></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #003000;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="color: #003000;"></span><span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In this context, what would
chapel and other religious services in such a school look like? </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">They would look something
like a church service for people who are broadly spiritual, but who don't
identify with a particular faith or denomination. Broadly, they would look like
religious humanism, and would be suited to a school setting where we would want
to encourage and enable participation in an ongoing exploration of the
spiritual side to human nature. It would not tell anyone what doctrines to
believe. Rather than the certainty of answers, we would keep re-engaging
with the age-old questions and watching how our (provisional) answers evolve
and change as we experience new things and encounter new writings in both the
arts and sciences. We would not necessarily throw out the baby of religious
language (grace, peace, sacredness) out with the bathwater of exclusivity, but
we don't wish to exclude anyone whom that language either triggers, or doesn't
help. As the reality of our student body reflects the broad cultural and
religious diversity of the nation, chapels would attempt to include</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="color: #404040;">people of all cultural
backgrounds, religious faiths, spiritual persuasions and world views, as a
place to be open to each other and to respect each other.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #404040;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This could be what we mean by
‘Christian values’.</span><br />
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMehgtahQmogiVQg85GWqBZdgDEKnAfyCk4EPjMCEX-S9-N1a4AV6j5VMqnSbilOHb8u1l3IcwGXozkJIwNQQiAH2ZIMOi2-1kUQxlIdzr9e8IpXb5BWEhibSlXzNHTB_fDFVvu-0zio/s1600/untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="255" height="496" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMehgtahQmogiVQg85GWqBZdgDEKnAfyCk4EPjMCEX-S9-N1a4AV6j5VMqnSbilOHb8u1l3IcwGXozkJIwNQQiAH2ZIMOi2-1kUQxlIdzr9e8IpXb5BWEhibSlXzNHTB_fDFVvu-0zio/s640/untitled.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-41235713346523712802020-02-18T15:32:00.001-08:002020-02-19T13:46:37.137-08:00The Numbers Game<br />
At our November 2019 AGM, it was officially noted that our membership
numbers are about 10% down on ten years ago, and that we are bringing in less
revenue. It was suggested in the ensuing discussion that one of the reasons for
the decline in revenue (i.e. tithing and donations by the members and
adherents) is not only that there are 10% fewer members, but also that our
members are less wealthy than the ones we used to attract. And that the reason
we are attracting fewer wealthy people is because our messaging is too liberal (translation in Inglese: the Minister is a 'lefty', so it's my fault).<br />
<br />
Leaving aside, for a moment, the multiple variables that <i>could</i>
account for and contribute to apparently declining numbers and revenue (lower
wage growth, SA’s nationally high un- and under-employment, the rise in the
number of working families in the congregation, the gig economy, Sunday trading
hours, mortality, families moving interstate where the jobs are…I could go on
ALL DAY), I thought a dose of historical perspective on our numbers and
demographics might be instructive.<br />
<br />
Brown (2002) et. al., have well established the general 45 degree
downward trend in church attendance and formal affiliation since WW1, a century
ago. This average includes all denominations and anglosphere nations. So the
struggle to keep numbers from sinking has been like King Canute before the
flood, ordering the tide to stop. The main game in the 20<sup>th</sup> century,
and now the 21<sup>st</sup>, is to maintain, rather than to grow, or at least to
manage decline. But how has this particular church fared after 160+ years,
beginning as it did during the worldwide high tide level of church membership
and affiliation in the mid 19<sup>th</sup> century? Rather better than most, it
seems.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjev7T5KUzVF1CZ2Aty34Fbndpz4PmIXANwPLJchzp1LnXPyJRCtwI6y0GjFoqOhsZP8CwLvWsF10GLfM2cRmpm7dqOuKS5qYbedsS5cRU9nATkaj-4RSt-tgQtB78HPbT_PwJlbIV6LJM/s1600/Census-NZ-religion-mike-crudge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1155" data-original-width="1500" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjev7T5KUzVF1CZ2Aty34Fbndpz4PmIXANwPLJchzp1LnXPyJRCtwI6y0GjFoqOhsZP8CwLvWsF10GLfM2cRmpm7dqOuKS5qYbedsS5cRU9nATkaj-4RSt-tgQtB78HPbT_PwJlbIV6LJM/s640/Census-NZ-religion-mike-crudge.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tide of history is going only ONE way</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I’m grateful to a scholarly article by David Hilliard in the
<i>Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia</i> from (1983), whose
scholarly research uncovered some interesting facts:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>In the 1881 census, 747 SA residents described
themselves as Unitarians, about the size of the SA Jewish community, but
smaller than almost all other orthodox denominations;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>However, <i>the church itself</i> had only <b>122
‘subscribers’</b> (i.e. members) in 1881;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>With so many ‘Unitarians’ in the state, why
weren’t we better <i>subscribed</i> then? At the time, we were unique in that
we had only <b>one accredited Minister in the colony,</b> and were the regarded
with contempt by many more pious Christians sects. So even then, we were
understaffed, and a bit suspect;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUGWH1slKvIBoGuFguCFn4jbdKw1rjXDv458R64RLwbOmcsWnwKICEdVmEBuASY4KiX-g7SanKaRYvU2ta2pl4s8dnZWETFL7xXigw8VQUQ36fI-WVr6vs_urwhoz7polv40C6nfDee4/s1600/440px-Upper_body_portrait_of_the_Reverend_J._Crawford_Woods%252C_Unitarian_minister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUGWH1slKvIBoGuFguCFn4jbdKw1rjXDv458R64RLwbOmcsWnwKICEdVmEBuASY4KiX-g7SanKaRYvU2ta2pl4s8dnZWETFL7xXigw8VQUQ36fI-WVr6vs_urwhoz7polv40C6nfDee4/s400/440px-Upper_body_portrait_of_the_Reverend_J._Crawford_Woods%252C_Unitarian_minister.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rev. JC Woods, our first and only Minister from 1855-1889</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>As the 19<sup>th</sup> century wore on, however,
other orthodox Christian denominations liberalized their theology and
encouraged freedom of thought. So as they became more <b><i>like</i></b> us,
there was less reason to leave the church of their upbringing and <b><i>join</i></b>
us;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Two key demographic features of the UCCSA at the
beginning of the twentieth century: the congregation, though closely knit, was
both <b>elderly and </b>(ahem...)<b> 'heavily inter-related by marriage';</b></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Old members died and younger member did not come
to replace them. By 1916, during WW1 when most men of military age had enlisted,
<b>services were sometimes attended by less than 20;</b></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>These conditions of low membership and age were
reversed dramatically in the 20s and 30s by <b>Rev George Hale,</b> whose
tenure saw an influx of young attenders. He was a charismatic, eloquent, and
provocative preacher, and <b>embraced the new communication technology of the
time</b>—<b>radio</b>—and regularly broadcast addresses, capturing people who
had no previous connection with the core families of the church. <b>By 1929, one
service had an attendance of 300, the largest in 25 years;</b></div>
</li>
<li><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSS4MdwfeSuZKWpTRsy4Sy3pbWjd4PUNpVfDrf2pLrJEIagmy8JhjRSNiVCIp2QRM6C3W4tmhsniyxbXU_Fuo5mlpLE6S8gBUoAjFwi1lTJYUYUSpLzl8HtCid66clJUuAznqBXJUkfhg/s1600/0b105d0a48335e622797ea65f62e59af.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSS4MdwfeSuZKWpTRsy4Sy3pbWjd4PUNpVfDrf2pLrJEIagmy8JhjRSNiVCIp2QRM6C3W4tmhsniyxbXU_Fuo5mlpLE6S8gBUoAjFwi1lTJYUYUSpLzl8HtCid66clJUuAznqBXJUkfhg/s400/0b105d0a48335e622797ea65f62e59af.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When radio was new...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>But by 1934 this media-driven peak had passed,
and <b>the actual subscribers (members) remained remarkably stable at about 100</b>
(i.e. about where we are now);</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Why then have we never achieved steady and
sustained growth? Hilliard points to <b>isolation </b>as a key factor. We have
been <b>isolated from other churches</b>—we have never had formal contact with
other denominations in the city. Our <b>ministers are isolated from the
geographical centres of the denomination,</b> with little or no opportunity to
exchange ideas with colleagues. We have, as a result, inherited a reflex to be <b>inward-looking
and sluggish</b>. As late as 1959 the Minister, the Rev Colin Gibson said: <i>“It
is indeed difficult to maintain freshness and enthusiasm, with no one other
than ourselves to engender it…the same voice in the pulpit, the same faces in
the congregation. <b>It may make for closeness, but the spark that strikes from
other minds and sets alight our own, is absent</b>.”</i></div>
</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1R7HWQWpZ8SGmJEm1q1HMAPfurcGOOpX79iNhHZO0V-2cPcD6mHcnoY8wNRrdqJTNNGR-eaiwNQ0zh99wzC69NIPciMeCq7fdqF0gcx-ufAftwAxOd6l7PKoyKtFXKVxCCTtqTiymJQ/s1600/images47SG2P0O.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="679" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1R7HWQWpZ8SGmJEm1q1HMAPfurcGOOpX79iNhHZO0V-2cPcD6mHcnoY8wNRrdqJTNNGR-eaiwNQ0zh99wzC69NIPciMeCq7fdqF0gcx-ufAftwAxOd6l7PKoyKtFXKVxCCTtqTiymJQ/s400/images47SG2P0O.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Isolated church</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Hilliard also points to historical documents
that indicate the conventionally cerebral approach to religion has done us no
favours. In <b>1895</b>, a review described a congregation of <b>50 or so
(about the same attendance we have today),</b> as being listless, and the
services “ <b>dull and inexpressibly dreary”.</b> Other reviewers found the
sermons heavy-going, with few concessions to those less interested in
intellectual matters;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ8NG5EnCBirVhIZhAZmUeJY3WQgFS3xke75QG5EJcGH4uqV7KEar3PtvEJKVR77ABeCaViu2mmNC2Ryyc5rVGAebXRAM5a-LcV8IOsTCBoXb62jgIcmfqWp996S5nCSeXH_VQloWH0AI/s1600/imagesIFGLXJPH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="331" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ8NG5EnCBirVhIZhAZmUeJY3WQgFS3xke75QG5EJcGH4uqV7KEar3PtvEJKVR77ABeCaViu2mmNC2Ryyc5rVGAebXRAM5a-LcV8IOsTCBoXb62jgIcmfqWp996S5nCSeXH_VQloWH0AI/s400/imagesIFGLXJPH.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Hilliard observes that the SA colony has always
been a place where fluidity of religious belief was the norm, and that there
has always been <b>overlapping in both denominational affiliation and
attendance</b>. Significant numbers were Unitarians not for a lifetime, but for
a period of their lives, a sort of <b>temporary resting-place</b>, before
moving back to orthodoxy or into profounder scepticism. <b>Multiple
affiliations</b> (with Quakers, Congregationalists, etc.) have been the
historical norm, so there was never a tradition of having one single church
allegiance as the norm;</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<b>Conclusion: we are now exactly
where we have always been in numerical terms, with maybe one significant expansion during the
tenure of George Hale.</b> So before we go trying to somehow lure the
fabulously wealthy back into membership, or belabour liberal ministry for
liberal messaging, or blame leadership or lack of it, or blame (again) the
poorer members for their poverty, maybe get out into the wider community. Beat the isolation that
has been our historical legacy, engage new SA people through whatever
communication technology we can afford and master, be less afraid of engaging
people with emotion, and be a little less in love with getting an intellect
foot-massage in services. </div>
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho0BqqkW8Jpzi9Jote5ETRA7aF_s4EuXM2YZTUDI93UeO9-21ou9nyQ-oGS4vtjKHCH0TW8OAF1w9jXrg6Mg1y_vni_Hfey9llDBCXi1ebEEmQjLAu5fUyV1FS-H5HbUb0wydfMY5z8uY/s1600/images3GUBT4ZL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="694" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho0BqqkW8Jpzi9Jote5ETRA7aF_s4EuXM2YZTUDI93UeO9-21ou9nyQ-oGS4vtjKHCH0TW8OAF1w9jXrg6Mg1y_vni_Hfey9llDBCXi1ebEEmQjLAu5fUyV1FS-H5HbUb0wydfMY5z8uY/s400/images3GUBT4ZL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
Can the culture of institutions
be changed? You bet it can. It happens all the time, and it must change here.
For there is only so long before we can keep the rising water from carrying
this church away. Given Brown’s trend, we should be below 50 members and 20
attenders. We’re double that, and that’s a HUGE achievement in this day and
age. But it doesn’t happen by magic, and the forces of cultural inertia, both
within and without the church, are strong. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
The good news is that we have the
best religious product in town, especially for those who don’t ‘do’ other
churches. Go out and get’em in.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-53656105518615062922020-02-09T14:48:00.002-08:002020-02-09T18:44:25.982-08:00A Ghost Story<div>
Now that I'm on a part-time footing at my church ministry, I haven't even been through the doors since Jan 26th, when I did my last service under my FT agreement. I'm doing roughly one per month until further notice. But because my attention has been mainly elsewhere, it feels so <i>over</i> now, like I'm a million miles away, instead of three blocks.</div>
<div>
<i></i><br /></div>
<div>
I had forgotten something in the office, or I needed some material--I'm not sure which. On an evening around dusk, I rode my bike there to get whatever it was I was missing. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQHa12htSJa14VRgy48y7B3UvHLBkCwKwOu0GPFnIpCNvOip-XMEaAsqj1HrFKjn-yCmoy65O1UU2EpzZdKVZM1o3YIUQqLKCg_6GUt7QIyewXh9ccRdBclmuHZVlES-Pbe-CN2k-lp8w/s1600/windows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="905" data-original-width="1600" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQHa12htSJa14VRgy48y7B3UvHLBkCwKwOu0GPFnIpCNvOip-XMEaAsqj1HrFKjn-yCmoy65O1UU2EpzZdKVZM1o3YIUQqLKCg_6GUt7QIyewXh9ccRdBclmuHZVlES-Pbe-CN2k-lp8w/s640/windows.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I discovered that the strangest thing had happened to the place.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The place has transformed into a thriving, diverse sort of ….village, with the church itself at the heart of it. There were so many kids, some were playing baseball (on a team complete with uniforms), some were in a kind of cadet program (ambling about in smart dress uniforms). Familiar elders, some dead, some living, were walking together under trees talking earnestly and discretely in pairs and small groups. There were food trucks around. A band was playing somewhere. Many ages, many activities--rich, vibrant, diverse, colourful, yet everything somehow <i>belonged here</i>, a single organism in the twilight, just doing its collective thing. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I went into the church, which was having some sort of evening service which had not started yet. The place was packed. I sat at the back as I tend to do when I'm not leading a service. Lights were dim, and there was the sport of hushed expectancy that one feels when a curtain is about to rise in a theatre. But I felt I should not stay, that what was to come had nothing to do with me, and rather than feel utterly alienated, I left before it started.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I made my way back to my bike, through thronging clusters of folks, and now--as in the church, as on my way to the church--I realized not a single person recognized me. They were not unfriendly or avoidant. There was eye contact, some nods of welcome, but not a single flicker of recognition. I had a sudden flash that it felt the same as when I had first arrived at this church 23 years ago, a stranger. Not unwelcome, just not known. In my end is my beginning.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was a part of this once, I wanted to shout at them. I didn't make all this happen all by myself, but I sure was part of what led to this flourishing. You're here because it's here, and it's here because I was here. Goddam it, why does no one recognize me? The feeling was not wounded pride, but terror--seeing the world like Clarence the angel makes George Bailey see it in <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i>--a world into which you've never been born, and your single absence has made it utterly different. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKO_JuEhHsnXCDVqj1I1Esm070rXbrXYMh32HJMs1GbOeJAVVFf8Vd38Fu6x7IK4M6q9Buo5cVFyWe0wX-upM3jsTPi4vTW9Atb-ENIj4UKoZjdBLBSy6A-6oZTVt6TY-xCptCxbqVvg/s1600/wonderfullifegeorgebaileyextremecloseup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKO_JuEhHsnXCDVqj1I1Esm070rXbrXYMh32HJMs1GbOeJAVVFf8Vd38Fu6x7IK4M6q9Buo5cVFyWe0wX-upM3jsTPi4vTW9Atb-ENIj4UKoZjdBLBSy6A-6oZTVt6TY-xCptCxbqVvg/s640/wonderfullifegeorgebaileyextremecloseup.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
"One person's life touches so many others..."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Was I <i>really</i> here all those years or was that all a dream? I mean, the years I remember spending there <i>felt </i>real, just as this utter strangeness and stranger-ness felt real. Oh, wait...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And from this dream, I woke to soundless dark. It was only the sound of Susan's breathing next to me that made waking reality take shape again--our bed, our ceiling, our curtains wafting, my own heart beating. Life.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The psychodynamics of life transitions are not to be taken lightly, no matter how busy you get, how driven-forward you're required to be. They remind you that everything comes to an end, even you. And that no matter how intimately tied to things you feel, it all has to be let go of eventually. No--you won't be remembered specifically. But you will have been of use, and part of the unfolding web of life that connects past and future worlds. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The church and the school where I'm chaplain had obviously merged together in my unconscious. I was a ghost in both, seeing it as the departed--if consciousness persists after death--must see the world. Full of familiar places, people, and full of what you can see has <i>grown out</i> of what you knew and who you were. You look at a house and you think--"Hey, that was where I used to live. What are these others doing there?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When you visit such places, they are called 'old haunts' and they are called that because what haunts them is you. Life has moved on, evolved, and it is only you that are stuck in, fixated on, an idea of the past. Which no longer exists, though it still seems real to you.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BNp8G71S2dbZuo-RgLoLPeJ8D0VQvEVZvvyuuHAnX7v0gHf4pyYQ_dI61G6YPb84wxzz9hoOuSyVqlOVfz1LMfkDJ_9NMlCEUg7gK1LiLfaZDLmf614rPE1uv650ePg2yUpiEbvG15o/s1600/litb_lincoln_still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BNp8G71S2dbZuo-RgLoLPeJ8D0VQvEVZvvyuuHAnX7v0gHf4pyYQ_dI61G6YPb84wxzz9hoOuSyVqlOVfz1LMfkDJ_9NMlCEUg7gK1LiLfaZDLmf614rPE1uv650ePg2yUpiEbvG15o/s640/litb_lincoln_still.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bardo can only be depicted as a kind of virtual reality, as in this VR experience of Lincoln in the Bardo</td></tr>
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Maybe the Zen Buddhists are onto something with their notion of the Bardo-- a period between one life and the next, in which the unskillful can become stuck as ghostly spirits, and never merge with Eternal Love. The skillful have a certain amount of time to come to terms with the fact that they are indeed gone from this world. And when they do, they are released from despair and self-blame, ready to be born anew. </div>
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A prayer:<br />
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<i><b>Oh Thou, maker (and shaker) of worlds within and without,</b></i></div>
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<i>M<b>ay I release what has been, that I may be reborn in what's to come. </b></i></div>
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<i><b>May those my life has touched and enabled, flourish as they will.</b></i></div>
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<i><b>May I know true entrusting.</b></i></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-52321642671245177702019-11-19T16:09:00.000-08:002019-11-19T16:45:04.057-08:00Put WHICH Christ back in Christmas?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border-bottom-color: currentColor; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image-outset: 0; border-image-repeat: stretch; border-image-slice: 100%; border-image-source: none; border-image-width: 1; border-left-color: currentColor; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: currentColor; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: currentColor; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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I'm not sure if you're familiar with the contemporary progressive theologian Richard Rohr, but I've referenced him several times in addresses. His book<i> Falling Upward</i> is one of the best things I've read on the problem of suffering in years, and has been widely
touted as a modern spiritual classic. </div>
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He's Christian, of course. Well, nobody's perfect...</div>
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Actually, his progressive Christology is the truest Christology, and one UUs could get behind if they wanted to--namely, that there is a place at the Divine table for everyone, Jew, Roman, Gentile, Greek, saint, sinner, leper, thief,...you name it. The only
type of person Jesus didn't have time for were..…(dramatic pause) <i>hypocrites</i>. Those who espouse high ideals or religious wisdom that they do not put in practice, or indeed even try. </div>
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That radically inclusive ethos is, of course, a political statement, for it stands in stark contrast to the familiar political expedience of "othering", which should be all too familiar in the 21st century to anyone paying any attention. Greenies. Boomers.
Inner-city elites. Bogans. Socialists. Fascists. Refugees. "The Gays". Pick your demonizing label, and kick'em to the curb. Or out. This is the opposite to a true following of Jesus--pretty ironic in what they keep reminding us is a "Christian country".</div>
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If we UUs are to be a church, rather than a cozy social club of like-minded folks, we are going to need to focus on<b> embodying</b> our progressive principles rather than merely
<b>espousing</b> them. Living our principles in the world, not just in church, will therefore have a political dimension. </div>
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…and at the word 'political' some of you reading this will have begun to see <span style="border-bottom-color: currentcolor; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-color: currentcolor; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: currentcolor; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: currentcolor; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; color: #c82613; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
red</span>. Well, that's tough.</div>
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A wiser, better known, and more respected theologian than me, Richard Rohr writes:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: currentcolor; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-color: currentcolor; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: currentcolor; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: currentcolor; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> "But you know what? There is no such thing as being non-political. Everything we say or do either affirms or critiques the status quo. To say
nothing is to say something: The status quo—even if it is massively unjust and deceitful—is apparently okay. From a contemplative stance we will know what action is ours to do, which words we are called to say, and how our spirituality must be fully embodied
in our political choices."</i></span></div>
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Our recent CHS oration had a political dimension. Was it necessary? Yes, in that humanity has not YET murdered the planet we all inhabit, but the status quo is apparently okay. Certain governments and billionaires seem determined to smother it in the quest
for their personal profit and therefore the power to escape the worst consequences of smothering it. It is impossible to uphold our 7th principle and be utterly 'non-political'.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-SV47rQjhVSAKNHZu5JNl5Sp_cVWYRb1MMHTVy88pcZ2ZSTP9ZidxdIfc2j1XAjFjlEwfRX6ExCNRssB5tJ1lgUNW3yjUCfEQes0zn4B0RS9PK_mYShRIl6JPcyBM5FEFrgADa8t1lA/s1600/70514312_10219823386836983_3972726551300014080_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="926" data-original-width="1236" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-SV47rQjhVSAKNHZu5JNl5Sp_cVWYRb1MMHTVy88pcZ2ZSTP9ZidxdIfc2j1XAjFjlEwfRX6ExCNRssB5tJ1lgUNW3yjUCfEQes0zn4B0RS9PK_mYShRIl6JPcyBM5FEFrgADa8t1lA/s640/70514312_10219823386836983_3972726551300014080_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Federal Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young giving this year's Catherine Helen Spence Oration on Climate Change</td></tr>
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Our recent Feast and ITDoR services had a political dimension. Were they necessary? Yes, in that the non-heteronormative are STILL systemically marginalised, demonised, and disappeared in our culture. In reflexively conflating homosexuality with paedophilia,
for example, or in not teaching about the nuanced differences between gender and sex, we still live in a world where sexual binaries are the status quo--you're either gay or straight, man or woman. It is impossible to uphold the 1st principle and be utterly
non-political.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_Lmo2uJjt5ZHgRUoivMysGGsN4Um6CzQcMzEHYKmKavo75fyuVflN-OikAJ4mydKD8s80np8ZBQFbleBx6QK_R2AEOIp2QbGaDyu25UIQWluHuFNk_CvBnltlPRyj9h1x1lKlxP-5Is/s1600/76194407_2545191969044759_8650688124172632064_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_Lmo2uJjt5ZHgRUoivMysGGsN4Um6CzQcMzEHYKmKavo75fyuVflN-OikAJ4mydKD8s80np8ZBQFbleBx6QK_R2AEOIp2QbGaDyu25UIQWluHuFNk_CvBnltlPRyj9h1x1lKlxP-5Is/s640/76194407_2545191969044759_8650688124172632064_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adelaide QWIRE making a joyful noise at our recent FEAST service</td></tr>
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And I'm sorry to say it, but Christmas too is political. Muslim, Jew, Atheist, Hindu and Pastafarian--you name it--are required by the status quo to reinforce the privileged cultural hegemony of Christianity, by having to bow in reverence to the annual telling
of this elaborate fairy tale of shepherds, angels, wise men, knowing animals, and a magical baby. I'm not sure what principle this violates, but if we uphold Jesus as actual God, we are probably in the wrong church. </div>
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Political too is this: that if Jesus' politically charged teachings of radically inclusive love were good, then it doesn't matter whether he lived or not, let alone what the circumstances of his birth MIGHT have been. Let's put THAT Christ, the progressive,
political Christ, back in Christmas.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-72845435038791400932019-11-05T14:17:00.001-08:002019-11-05T14:19:48.413-08:00Is church done? Or has the world become church?<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Getting out more
beyond the walls of the UCSA community this year as a part-time school chaplain has confirmed something I’ve
been suspecting for years now. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A key reason
church-going is declining as a cultural practice is that church no longer
exclusively provides a platform for people’s faith development or faith
engagement (if you don’t like the word ‘faith’, read: ‘values’). The world is
now church, and so you no longer need a church for things like these that are out there in the world everywhere you look:</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span><br />
<ul>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want to learn theology, or consider it more deeply or widely, you can find more free material online than any Minister could offer in a thousand carefully-wrought sermons. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want to work for social justice, you join Amnesty or XR, and organise and get out on the streets. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want to comfort those afflicted by age, infirmity, poverty, etc., you volunteer to help any of the many charitable organisations that do so. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you are struggling and want spiritual support, you call Beyond Blue or get a mental health plan from your GP and go see a professional counsellor. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want to get buried, married, or have your new bambino welcomed into the world, there are 3,000 civil celebrants in SA alone who would be happy to provide the service at reasonable fees. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want to ‘make a joyful noise unto the Lord’, there are any number of choirs or PubSings you can join. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you want lively intellectual debate, you can audit a philosophy course at a local Uni, who’ll do it better. </span></div>
</li>
<li></li>
<li><div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And it goes without saying that if all you want are new friends, taking part in any of the above intentional communities will put you in touch with plenty of like-minded people. </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So why come to a church? Has church devolved into a mere identity marker, just a way of labelling
yourself with a religious association (and you can always take your pick of them)?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What can OUR
church offer that is both broadly appealing, needed, and unique to church itself? Trying
to be all the above to all people probably can’t work for lack of resources,
and would yield a watered-down product even if you succeeded. An inadequate
version of all the above engagements won’t do, will it? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In what can we
SPECIALIZE and offer QUALITY?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Answers on a postcard, please.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuXzTTWnRFz7qKYfvEtV2zZ5y3qV78uUE1JyFhA6RvDJabUxj9ohblf1MK2qpcAshmvRK_XNPtrrRWnFbnTS1ztI1Xe_O9cr1SVfNF8JRSSEo5hKWaWH0C_gA0dyxemPhS7_c-GlHAkM/s1600/imagesXORQI1U9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="135" data-original-width="372" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuXzTTWnRFz7qKYfvEtV2zZ5y3qV78uUE1JyFhA6RvDJabUxj9ohblf1MK2qpcAshmvRK_XNPtrrRWnFbnTS1ztI1Xe_O9cr1SVfNF8JRSSEo5hKWaWH0C_gA0dyxemPhS7_c-GlHAkM/s640/imagesXORQI1U9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-65549503628108247932019-07-29T20:27:00.001-07:002019-07-29T20:28:35.696-07:00How do you think this ally went?Recently, I received an out-of-the-blue email from a Year 12 student. I might have legitimately said: "Get lost, I'm busy". But it seemed strangely urgent to answer their questions...er, <i>straight</i>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div class="x_xmsonormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<i>Dear Minister of the SA Unitarians, </i></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "segoe ui" , "segoe ui web (west european)" , "segoe ui" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<div class="x_xmsonormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<i>I am a year 12 student at Nazareth Catholic College, and I am currently undertaking my Religious Studies external task, in which I have decided to focus on the acceptance of transgenderism in the church. I believe your church would be
a great source for me and was wondering if you would be able to answer a few questions in this area of focus to help with my research.
</i></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "segoe ui" , "segoe ui web (west european)" , "segoe ui" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span>
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<br /></div>
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</span>
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<i>Below I have attached some questions in hopes to gather some feedback for my studies, by which I am hoping I can reference in my research.
</i></div>
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</span>
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</span>
<br />
<ol start="1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="1">
<li class="x_xmsolistparagraph" style="line-height: 16px; margin: 0px;"><i>
Could you outline for me, your church teaching on transgender individuals? </i></li>
<li class="x_xmsolistparagraph" style="line-height: 16px; margin: 0px;"><i>
Do you believe one’s gender, in particular, transgenderism, affects a person’s relationship with God?</i></li>
<li class="x_xmsolistparagraph" style="line-height: 16px; margin: 0px;"><i>
From your experience, how accepted have transgender individuals been in their religious community?
</i></li>
<li class="x_xmsolistparagraph" style="line-height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><i>
What does the Bible allude to in terms of instructing transgender individuals, and how does this reflect on the dignity of the human person?</i></li>
</ol>
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</span>
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<div class="x_xmsonormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<i>I hope to hear back from you soon. Thank you for your time.</i></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "segoe ui" , "segoe ui web (west european)" , "segoe ui" , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<i>Kind regards</i></div>
<div class="x_xmsonormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<i>XXXX</i></div>
</blockquote>
<i></i><br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="x_xmsonormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #201f1e; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Obviously, I was going to need to 'speak their language' somewhat. So here's what I said:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(32, 31, 30); color: #201f1e; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: 100%; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div class="x_MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 14.66px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span style="border: 0px rgb(0 , 0 , 0); color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Hi XXX,</i></span></div>
</div>
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</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(32, 31, 30); color: #201f1e; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: 100%; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: 0px rgb(0 , 0 , 0); color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Thanks for getting in touch. You've chosen a very interesting and important topic contemporary religions need to deal with. I'll try to deal with these succinctly here, but am open to further
questions/discussion on them. Don't hesitate to get back in touch if anything needs clarifying or more info. Well done, you. And good luck!</i></span></div>
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<b><span style="border: 0px rgb(0 , 0 , 0); color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Could you outline for me, your church teaching on transgender individuals? </i></span></b><span style="border: 0px rgb(0 , 0 , 0); color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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<i>First, that transgender individuals, like all God's children, are evidence of the diversity of his creation and are individuals with inherent worth and dignity, just as anyone else is. Second, that transgender people are systemically
socially and politically marginalised, demonised, and misunderstood, so we are called as people of faith to welcome, affirm, and support them. This is entirely consistent with the ministry of Jesus and the Christian tradition.</i></div>
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<b><i>Do you believe one’s gender, in particular, transgenderism, affects a person’s relationship with God?</i></b></div>
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<i>In the transcendent reality of God's eternal and unbounded love, gender is irrelevant. From a transgender person's point of view, they may FEEL as though they are less worthy (or sinful or whatever), and it is that socially-learned misperception
that church community exists to challenge, confront, and dissolve.</i></div>
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<b><i>From your experience, how accepted have transgender individuals been in their religious community? </i></b></div>
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<i>They are fully accepted in ours, and ours is the only community I can speak with any first-hand authority about. We have had two transgender individuals 'come out' in our worship services in the past couple years, and they have found
a warm and welcoming home here.</i></div>
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<b><i>What does the Bible allude to in terms of instructing transgender individuals, and how does this reflect on the dignity of the human person?</i></b></div>
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<i>I'm not sure I understand this question, as I'm not sure the Bible addresses the issue explicitly. In general, we do not see the Bible as divine dictation, and therefore <b>not </b>the one single, infallible source of every answer for every
question. We believe those who think of it as such are confusing the wine with the wine bottle. This may be hard for Christians to hear, but Unitarians are in fact a post-Christian faith tradition, interested in getting to the essence of faith beneath the
dogma of text and tradition, and we use many sources of wisdom to do so.</i></div>
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<i>Yours in faith and service,</i></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><i></i><br /></div>
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Even as a hetero-normative cis white male, I like to think of myself as a good ally to the LGBTQi+ community, but seldom feel sufficiently 'woke' to address why in terms of religious faith. I wonder if any of you could suggest how I might have answered these questions better from our UU principles?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJtrCI7FfRFM6-7oYjnutvZsOCDJVPXIiv0hku2cF1OBIILjC3OMIwSexawptrrJp3AAilgzGUQWwnglaXRqck9sd87yqgJ3kre5V80G7G9hhjHCrGMGWqezJCuG31eEEuPwQeoOLhGzQ/s1600/66525394_1288734794624613_3572742367351930880_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJtrCI7FfRFM6-7oYjnutvZsOCDJVPXIiv0hku2cF1OBIILjC3OMIwSexawptrrJp3AAilgzGUQWwnglaXRqck9sd87yqgJ3kre5V80G7G9hhjHCrGMGWqezJCuG31eEEuPwQeoOLhGzQ/s640/66525394_1288734794624613_3572742367351930880_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><i></i><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-25233370177364116072019-07-08T14:42:00.001-07:002019-07-08T14:42:10.626-07:00It's about time everybody watched this one again.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Fighting a full-on dose of Influenza, I managed to croak out the last ANZUUA worship service in October 2017. As the Ministry of our church enters a period of transition, it is time to revisit its main points again.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">You can't see the screen in the video, but these are the questions referred to at a certain point:</span></div>
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<i>1.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Will small and struggling church be the new
default?</span></i></div>
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<i>2.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">What would </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">churches</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;"> that buck the trend look like?</span></i></div>
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<i>3.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Can online engagement replace/supplement
physical co-presence?</span></i></div>
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<i>4.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">To what degree will online engagement
encourage consumerism, ‘</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">iChurch</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">’ of
personal preferences? What of community-building?</span></i></div>
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<i>5.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">What happens to U-</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">vangelism</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">,
discipleship, pastoral care, RE, and
mission with decreasing attendance/affiliation?</span></i></div>
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<i>6.<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">What is the future of professional
ministry and leadership?</span></i></div>
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(Readings by the excellent Barbara Willow.)</div>
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<br /><iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1q_eaqt2i0M/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1q_eaqt2i0M?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-64105231418189826652019-04-08T19:44:00.006-07:002019-04-08T19:44:58.306-07:00Gratitude Adjustment<span style="background-color: white; color: blue;">I wrote this eight years ago while I was studying for Ministry, and never finished or published it. So what the hell...I've finished it, and am publishing it now:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: blue;"></span><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<i>For years I've dreamed that one day I could get myself into a position to do nothing but read, reflect, and write. That one day I'd manage to slough off, just for a year or two, the endless rounds of work and getting and spending and the thousands of distractions that conspire to yank you out of purposefully exploring an inner life. I thought if I could manage that somehow, all the stuff I've done and all the roles I've played (on stages and off) over the years would somehow coalesce and resolve into something like an integrated self. And once coalesced, like the colours of the rainbow, it might become a white light to see more clearly with.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNpqRllzwFpksgTz5PmwwZoCW5DPNpMVdJCNPRPRJs8Nm6buoY8I3utREy6LC9t8JTTAwG2UPlY81BhNU-EvfUDg6THdh8tnCpGYL9MlGRPJAA_mQEUsptNDImn6d9mK_j7-r2y1QjAo/s1600/taking%252520off%252520mask.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNpqRllzwFpksgTz5PmwwZoCW5DPNpMVdJCNPRPRJs8Nm6buoY8I3utREy6LC9t8JTTAwG2UPlY81BhNU-EvfUDg6THdh8tnCpGYL9MlGRPJAA_mQEUsptNDImn6d9mK_j7-r2y1QjAo/s640/taking%252520off%252520mask.jpg" width="427" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You are both you, and not you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i>And somehow I have actually carved out a little island of time, a year or two at best, before returning to a working life again. Those close to me know that getting here has not been easy. I chucked my good job like a bad suit of clothes, cannonballed into the lake of under-employment, and dog-paddled for 18 months doing part-time teaching, voice-overs, some preaching and some acting. Then I got on a plane, and here I am, half a planet away from my much-beloved wife and daughters and my good Australian friends. </i><br />
<i></i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5N4FMR6Mub3rs3WJykW3qR93deB3laHnk8x4bGQ0W6Z9X51QLIc9n7aAzlgbkfUvcjuSP56oHmM0igvOEFvYvtqq-pswgMIqvnH8t1IHaVeWYA8aHr1zwZJYWkRtotQtnkLokSwwYJvQ/s1600/Photoxpress_15039973.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5N4FMR6Mub3rs3WJykW3qR93deB3laHnk8x4bGQ0W6Z9X51QLIc9n7aAzlgbkfUvcjuSP56oHmM0igvOEFvYvtqq-pswgMIqvnH8t1IHaVeWYA8aHr1zwZJYWkRtotQtnkLokSwwYJvQ/s640/Photoxpress_15039973.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm free, b*tchez!!!!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i>So how's that working out?</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Being alone and with only just enough money to subsist on has been a tough adjustment, I'll admit. But the abundance we become used to in the western, middle-class life comes at a cost, impoverishes parts of ourselves that not even Heineken can reach. So there's this <strong>big empty psychic space</strong> where work, people, chores and media once occupied, as well as the role-playing these required.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Though there is much in the way of assignments, reading, and service-writing that I'm called to do as part of my training, to my utter surprise, what has flooded into that newly emptied psychic reservoir is <strong>gratitude</strong>. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>No joke. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I feel heart-achingly thankful for everything and everyone I've ever known in my one, finite, inconsequential, little human life, and this feeling comes with an intensity that is sometimes hard to know what to do with.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>It's not that the experience is a slide-show type list of people and places and events and things. It's more like how parched land receives the torrents of spring; all at once it comes, and the earth softens and yields and gulps it in.</i> <br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwYwBykSyF52WcBlAhwYu_qTJmOY1kelov0H3us9sNbPuKQ_ZXzKKyFt1IWVGpZNhuYI5jf2XgCZl8xowiTlrCmduJ-waalNQqw_ZZIpv-Jw70aVPHKlUUZ6Qog1YTczJqVXGiwFbPuQ/s1600/parched-earth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwYwBykSyF52WcBlAhwYu_qTJmOY1kelov0H3us9sNbPuKQ_ZXzKKyFt1IWVGpZNhuYI5jf2XgCZl8xowiTlrCmduJ-waalNQqw_ZZIpv-Jw70aVPHKlUUZ6Qog1YTczJqVXGiwFbPuQ/s640/parched-earth.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You don't miss yo water, til yo well runs dry...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>In this flood, so much rushes past, I wouldn't know where to begin making a list, for fear I'd overlook someone or something, or that a list might seem to imply a prioritizing. Nor do I want to gush or wallow in these good vibes here, but to reflect on how much of the way we mostly live impoverishes our spirit, and makes us less than fully human.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Vacations, holidays, sabbaticals are meant to function as psychic pressure valves, to release the inner tensions created by the differentials between our 'full-spectrum' humanity and the narrow channels which the workaday life conspires to pound them through. I met a ministry student here, who, after 20-odd years of working as an accounts officer for a large firm, felt that somehow this was not entirely fulfilling. </i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Ya think? </i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Over those years, her involvement witth her church community kept alive the dim but persistent vision of horizons far grander than the next promotion, or monthly productivity targets, or what she could buy with the money she'd earned. It seems that much of the lure of 'retail therapy' is the acceptable, consumerist version of getting hammered at the weekends or popping Zoloft to get through the cramped prison of your days. Keeps the economy chugging along too, so there are endless incentives for burning up the charge card, and thereby making enslavement to drudgery more necessary. </i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>I remember daydreaming in grade school on a sunny spring day, thinking how much I wished I was outside in the open air, wandering through trees alive with bird-song. One day, I thought, I'll be grown up and be able to do just that. But I found, as most do, that the journey we call 'life' is a process of swapping one crib for another. From the school desk, to the office carel, to the gated retirement community, to the grave. And all we work to accomplish is merely to determine how well-appointed each crib will be.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Some folks thrive on the treadmill, though, and good for them. Some thrive on the treadmill while dreaming of not being on it. Not so good for them, perhaps. Some renegades, like Joyce's Stephen Daedalus, thrive on silence, cunning, and exile from all that. </i><br />
<i></i><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Which of these am I now that I am a Minister? I have no less a sense of work as a grind. I too grind on, daydreaming of golden days ahead that I probably won't know what to do with myself in. I love too many people and things in this prison too much to want to run away from it. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">So I conclude that I am, yes, grateful for the grind. It connects me to people. It keeps my days in order. It bears me up when I flag. The grind is the grit this little oyster is grateful for. Not so much for the pearls themselves, as for the broad parameters which make me as free as one in this world can be, rather than lost in it.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: blue;">So thank you, God.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-9456268905386816192019-03-25T16:05:00.003-07:002019-03-25T16:05:53.180-07:00When you're asked to co-host a prayer vigil, so long as you don't offer a prayerAs a response to the Christchurch mosque shooting, our church was approached by the Catholic Archdiocese to co-host an Interfaith Service of Prayer at the city Cathedral.<br />
<br />
Under the circumstances, this is not something you say no to, regardless of public media stoushes you may have had with the Archbishop, who would be leading this service. Time to put away such differences in the spirit of interfaith harmony, meeting on values everyone from Wiccans to wild-eyed dervishes can agree on: murder is bad, religious bigotry is bad, our faith divisions are deeply to be regretted and overcome.<br />
<br />
Just because something keeps happening, doesn't mean you get to stop regretting it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmvu1pSjAQBFzP0KZR6bTjX7yV3OtdCRpWQ66FT0dbFINRSlv_p2ARkp44cpkoNEaw77uX35N0piEAukpgVYHr-kMKyAPZ9afEjSfkqbIbDBwzJlW2SJ6bQixPPX8JuAcW3eopXweMyVQ/s1600/54799120_2356834177880540_3962787597545111552_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="678" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmvu1pSjAQBFzP0KZR6bTjX7yV3OtdCRpWQ66FT0dbFINRSlv_p2ARkp44cpkoNEaw77uX35N0piEAukpgVYHr-kMKyAPZ9afEjSfkqbIbDBwzJlW2SJ6bQixPPX8JuAcW3eopXweMyVQ/s320/54799120_2356834177880540_3962787597545111552_n.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<br />
The advert, as you see, has every religious symbol imaginable on it, including the UUA flaming chalice. One spiritual tree: many fruits. Religious pluralism in a nutshell. So, as I say, we agreed to co-host (without quite knowing what that meant) and I wrote this prayer to offer along with all the other faith traditions:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Interfaith
Peace Vigil Prayer</i></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>St. Francis
Xavier Cathedral</i></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>24/3/19</i></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>(based on a prayer by Sister Joan Chitister)</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>As we come together today, reaching
across our many faith traditions, in human kinship, let us pray:</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Great spirit of life, known by 99
names and many more names, yet beyond all naming, known in many ways, yet
beyond our knowing: </i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">may our prayers today call your eternal
and limitless presence more fully into our awareness, that you may search our
souls and lift from them any vengeful reflexes, any lingering lizard-like urge
to hurt by word or by deed as we have been hurt by deeds and by words, to
punish as we have been punished, to terrorize as we have been terrorized,</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">in
that presence and awareness, may we find in ourselves the strength to listen
rather than to judge, the strength to trust rather than to fear, the strength to
try again and again to make peace in a world we co-create through you, in you
and with you, moment by moment, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>thought
by thought, choice by choice.</span></span></i></span><span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Great
author of all things, you know our hearts deepest desires, our highest
thoughts, our noblest aspirations: we seek for the grace to be our best selves,
we seek for the vision to build up and fortify our human kinship, rather than
degrade and destroy that kinship; we seek for the humility to understand the
fears and hopes of all our brothers and sisters, even those led to desperate
acts of madness and destruction.</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>We seek to bequeath
to the children of the world to come more than our failures; we seek for the godliness
in us that it takes to care for all people… as well as for ourselves. </i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 9.0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">To these high
aspirations and deep longings, may we constrain our might, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>may resist the temptations of power and refuse
to attack the most readily attackable, may we understand that vengeance begets
violence, that we may be bringers of peace wherever we go, that may we become
more merciful and more patient and more gracious and more trusting, knowing
that no one yet has found the limits of your love and mercy. The love and mercy
which holds us now.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">So may it be. And <span style="line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">may we cause it to be so. Shanti, Shalom, Salaam, Namaste, and Amen.</span></span></span></i></div>
So imagine my chagrin when I showed up, was ushered to the "reserved" section along with the local New Zealand charge d'affairs and the Governor General, opened the program, and discovered that The Unitarian Church of South Australia, co-host of the event, an Adelaide church since 1854 and formerly directly across from the Cathedral, was NOT listed among the faith traditions that were offering prayers that day.<br />
<br />
And also, strangely, neither was the Uniting Church of Australia represented in prayer. And they're HUGE.<br />
<br />
So much for interfaith harmony.<br />
<br />
So I sat there and prayed with everyone else, seething quietly. So much for peace in my heart toward my brothers and sisters in clergy. I was angry and felt disrespected. In the pew, I debated with myself about whether I should seek an explanation (and whether I would buy any one that was likely to be offered). And blaming myself for having cocked a snook at the Archbishop in the media several months ago. This is how power works: it never forgets. It gets even.<br />
<br />
But what got me out of this dark, crazy-making state of mind was the collective affect of the service itself. It was truly an example of the spirit making you see the bigger picture, getting you to release your ego, lifting up your eyes and heart and remembering what's important.<br />
<br />
Don't let other's pettiness make you petty, it seemed to say. Don't seek for vengeance. Let go, be bigger than this.<br />
<br />
And so it came to pass that once again, something Bigger than Me reached down into the grave I had dug for myself, and lifted me up and set me back on my feet.<br />
<br />
I should know this by now. But once in a while, you need reminding: it's not about you. The hospitality of co-hosting has to be freely given and not a means of vaunting yourself or your posse. He who seeks for recognition has no genuine community feeling, Adler said. And by the end of that service, community feeling was all I felt.<br />
<br />
Or Interfaith harmony, you could call it. Praise be.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-66816185698165566042019-02-25T14:35:00.002-08:002019-02-25T14:35:43.039-08:00The Non-denominational Chaplain: What's the Point?Long story short: I was headhunted by a local, private, reputable, boarding and day school to become their chaplain. After much deliberation I accepted, n a part-time basis so that I could MAYBE still look after my church and the nearly 2000 new souls that suddenly appeared in my shepherd's paddock.<br />
<br />
The outreach potential for UUism is enormous, of course--quite unprecedented in our church's long history here, in fact. So I though it would be, yes, kind of my duty to say yes and try to make it work. It's early days yet, but I'm learning a lot and there is great potential for my ministry and beyond if I want to stay on. We'll see.<br />
<br />
This is an avowedly non-denominational school, though its roots spring from the Christian non-conformist tradition. The school body is widely multicultural, therefore multifaith (and none of course--the majority). How to conduct chapel services in this setting?<br />
<br />
Here's what I think they <b>can't</b> be:<br />
<ol>
<li>another teaching moment that talks about religion academically, like a school TED talk (but offers them no actual spiritual experience)</li>
<li>a proselytization tool specifically for the UU movement</li>
<li>a propaganda tool for the school itself</li>
<li>aimless Socratic questioning ("What do you think?", as if I have nothing to impart to the young)</li>
<li>morally relativistic, especially on urgent questions of social justice</li>
<li>coerced--if the Unitarian tradition is about anything, it's about freedom of pulpit and pew (but how's that supposed to work as it's meant to if they're compelled to be here?)</li>
</ol>
So here's my first go at the first Senior School Chapel service, transcribed verbatim, including visuals I'll be using, to be given today:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">S</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">enior
School Chapel 1</span></b></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">26/2/19</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Music and entrance</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Acknowledgement of country</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://media.adelaide.edu.au/kwp/audio/protocols/ngadlu-kaurna-meyunna.mp3" title="listen to:"><span style="color: windowtext; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Ngadlu Kaurna miyurna tampinthi. Parna yarta mathanya
puki-unangku. <br />
Ngadlu tampinthi Kaurna miyurna puru purruna.<br />
Pangkarra Wama Kaurna, Kaurnakunti yarta.</span></span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">(If you’re having
trouble recognising that, it’s the Kaurna acknowledgement of country in Kaurna,
probably mispronounced AND in a American accent. Those words translate to this:
“We acknowledge the Kaurna people. They are the landowners from a long time
ago. We recognize the Kaurna people are still alive. The territory of the
Kaurna Plains is exclusively Kaurna land.”)</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Welcome: </span></b><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Good morning and
welcome to this chapel service. This is called a service because it means to
serve you by honouring things that matter. I am the Rev Rob MacPherson, the new
chaplain of this school, and Minister of the UCSA just down the road on Osmond
Terrace, Norwood. To begin services like this one, it is my church’s rather
quirky but long-standing custom to kindle a flame in a chalice and </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">say a few words to set our
intentions</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">. Please find a
space of stillness within yourself, so you can hear these words in your deeper
understanding. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">Chalice lighting:</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"> </span></b></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Flames like this both consume
things, and cast light.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Like this flame, may these
chapel services we share both clear away our clutter and light our </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">path</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"> ahead.<br />
May this flame consume any regrets about our past,</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 13pt; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">any fears about our future year ahead, and any tensions
in us today.</span></span></span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 13pt; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">May it light for us a path of kind actions, peaceful
souls, and joyful hearts.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">“What’s the point?”</span></span></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">We only have 5 chapel services
together this year, and only about 20 minutes in each service and they’re often
months apart, so what </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">do we make
of</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> them? AND since this is a <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">non-denominational</span> school, I’m not going to s</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">p</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">end the time shilling for Jesus, Buddha, Allah,
Brahman, Zoraster, Lord Chthulu, Zeus, Odin, or the Wiccan mother goddess in
these services. But I wouldn’t anyway, because the church tradition I am
ordained by is predicated on <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">individual
spiritual and religious freedom</span>, and this freedom is something you all <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">have </b>already anyway, even if you don’t
think you</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> have it, or even want it.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">So what would be the point of these services if I’d only be pushing the freedom
you already have? At least here in DY, I’m not </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">offering this service</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> in front of a <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">humungous looming cross, eh</span>? </span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2kfH-glgd6ddmIg6ecs1DP4AH2qrGTVb436Z2ySr7hKCuTaGWKL6kL2O_bSSV_EQDiGFmTkBOa-ER-7gch9FNnofz7665bggn2QgbDwGnUBL59znWh6R-iPY0zeSKLwr5BLpw4Y3BiU/s1600/20190129_110940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2kfH-glgd6ddmIg6ecs1DP4AH2qrGTVb436Z2ySr7hKCuTaGWKL6kL2O_bSSV_EQDiGFmTkBOa-ER-7gch9FNnofz7665bggn2QgbDwGnUBL59znWh6R-iPY0zeSKLwr5BLpw4Y3BiU/s320/20190129_110940.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">Ooops, I guess I am
now…How’s tha</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">t</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> feel?
Better? Or worse? I’ve always found it odd that Cxtianity chose the cross as
its sort of brand logo, and not say, <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">the fish</span> (ICHTHYS—vamp?)</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtw-uI7K8s9jvDkuygY70kzsZyzZdU5p7LCl_bRsIAsMKdwgDbcMLW_C2rV8CJkzBkNnrL_4xlNsoXiXD-jAAxxyBFOjPXSeoYV8zOqFT-ou1SMYnp2axc-IVrX5X59nlLdPP44mdAFI/s1600/147582.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="151" data-original-width="340" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtw-uI7K8s9jvDkuygY70kzsZyzZdU5p7LCl_bRsIAsMKdwgDbcMLW_C2rV8CJkzBkNnrL_4xlNsoXiXD-jAAxxyBFOjPXSeoYV8zOqFT-ou1SMYnp2axc-IVrX5X59nlLdPP44mdAFI/s320/147582.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">I mean the cross was originally a crude
<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">Roman torture </span>machine
on which the prophet of the Cx religion suffered a prolonged and gruesome
public execution. In its function, a cross is as grisly an object as a gallows
or an electric chair. So maybe not a great brand management. Also, Cx are
assuming JC would be cool with it. If Jesus ever DOES come a second time, as
some believe, do you think he ever wants to SEE another cross? Holding it up to
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">honour</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> him is like…honouring MLK’s
birthday by handing out <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">sniper
rifle pendants</span> and lapel pins. “We remember Dr. King, we love him (SFX)…”
(</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">Any way the cross is Cxtianity’s business not mine. And you’ve probably heard <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">that</b> bit before too, cause I more or
less stole it from another dead prophet--the late Bill Hicks).</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">So we have a total of 100 minutes
(*checks watch* ooops, less now) spread out over months during which a lot
happens in your life, which is why I put the question to you in the bulletin: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what can be the point of this?</i><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And I’m quite serious. Linguists will tell
you you need a minimum of 12 minutes of connected thoughts to get anyone to</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> even</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> consider an
idea they haven’t already had, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">AND</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> then you need to </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">repeat and reinforce in a timely way</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">. So failing a regular, continuous, and connected set of chapels, all
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">anyone </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">can really do is <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">reinforce common-sense clichés</span>: these are the best years of your
life, believe in yourself, do what you love and the money will follow, strive
for the best that’s in you, fall down 7 times get up 8, and so on. And I can
certainly do that, but frankly…I’m too old to waste what time I have left
telling you stuff you already think, much less jam your time up too. And when
did cliché and banality become worthy activities for bright young minds? And if
you think you’re done growing </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">your bright young minds </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>now, or will be done when you graduate, it’s
my sad duty to remind you that</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> your mind will be under construction for some time yet. The rational
part of your brains aren’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> The
connections between the emotional part of your brain <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">(the amygdala, which governs how you process stuff
at this stage of your life) and the rational, decision-making part (the
pre-frontal cortex)</span> are still developing—and not necessarily at the same
rate. To </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">help you develop that growing mind so</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">you mak</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">e</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">good
judgements, which take account of both thought</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">s</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
AND feeling</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">s</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">, instead of accepting cliché and banality, you </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">should <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">question everything,</span> including the point of
chaplaincy and chapel services and the education you’re getting here, including
your own “set-in-stone” ideas, and the goals for your own life you’re already setting
your sights on beyond this place. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgresaKzwNtG1aNem23CFxjxDZnqGe39lxsaFQTL3h15UzNTZi8KfLlG0VWbnszvCq4pF9ir7ATpsrnck0pvPovafDjqxis4VzDfzPvFXX8tU_WIp8XvYLPAE-FoMStdA7JKjz3DSkaxPE/s1600/Question-Everything-Header-Mick-OHare-Profile-Books-The-Clothesline-960x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="960" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgresaKzwNtG1aNem23CFxjxDZnqGe39lxsaFQTL3h15UzNTZi8KfLlG0VWbnszvCq4pF9ir7ATpsrnck0pvPovafDjqxis4VzDfzPvFXX8tU_WIp8XvYLPAE-FoMStdA7JKjz3DSkaxPE/s320/Question-Everything-Header-Mick-OHare-Profile-Books-The-Clothesline-960x500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">Question everything! Why Rob?…SEE: good
question…. Because you damn well owe developing good judgement to your one and
only life, to the social fabric that makes possible the privilege to even ask such
questions, and to the future society you’re gonna help build, even if you’re
just dragged along while others </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">build </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">it. And you know as well as I do, there are profound changes that have</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> to be
made</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">what </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">society
already</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> think</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">s</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> of as common-sense, normal,
natural and right. W<span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">e have
to question the status quo,</span> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">especially</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> our own part in it, or </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">the near future holds </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">serious, possibly mortal, trouble.
For example:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> private education itself.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">N</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">o one seriously disputes there’s
rising<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> inequality</b> in our country and
the world. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">According to the OECD,
contemporary <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">Australia has
been far</span> and away the biggest spender of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">any advanced economy in the world, of</b> public money on private
schools like this one<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">, </b>and that was
before a spectacular re-up of an additional <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">4.6 billion public dollars</span> last year to support <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">private</b> schools. Public schools, on the
other hand, teach <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">70% of
the nation’s</span> students. <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">52% of PS</span> enrolments are from families below the average Index
of Community Socio-Educational Advantage. Only <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">11 per cent of Catholic school and 5 per cent of
independent school enrolments</span> come from such low-index backgrounds. As a
result, a <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">full 87% of the
public schools</span> that educate <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">most
of the most</b> disadvantaged students are being funded below the minimum
school resource standard with </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">no</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
change </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">planned</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">. You might well <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">question,</span> in a <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">democracy</span>, and in a culture supposedly founded on
the <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">‘fair go’</span>, what
could possibly be the justification</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 17.5pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">for spending <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">another</b>
$4.6 billion on students who are overwhelmingly from better-off families in
already well-resourced schools?</span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 23.06px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">It’s certainly questionable whether or not strong,
well-resourced <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">public </b>education, open
to every child regardless of the <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">crapshoot of birth,</span> is or is not of vital importance to an
advanced economy and to any democracy worthy of the name. Across the world and
through history, equality of opportunity has been the difference between free societies
and their many opposites. You could question how free can anyone possibly be
when the random circumstances of their birth determine the opportunities they’ll
get?</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 17.5pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6yQ7CX4A1EKLeGgdltmg_Ht5V7kCHODbcQieRB0yUHqalVItRnWat1oPUCbfLMzbljqU0pYFoS7FWp4aXqJjQjkhHbGdDWBemf9MutlQq_E0YGvQcySxPkrYk8ypY8JHKP0Kju-DARnI/s1600/manfred_making_mergers_less_of_a_crap_shoot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6yQ7CX4A1EKLeGgdltmg_Ht5V7kCHODbcQieRB0yUHqalVItRnWat1oPUCbfLMzbljqU0pYFoS7FWp4aXqJjQjkhHbGdDWBemf9MutlQq_E0YGvQcySxPkrYk8ypY8JHKP0Kju-DARnI/s320/manfred_making_mergers_less_of_a_crap_shoot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px 0px 23.06px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 17.5pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">Another question you might ask: <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">what has this to do with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">you</b>?</span> Well, it’s not beyond
question that you may be <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">obligated</b>
to ask such a question, because <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">you would appear to benefit directly from an unequal system</span>, and
if you know history, you’d know high levels of inequality only ever means:
rising crime, broken families, ill health, mass ignorance, and social and
economic unrest. No amount of </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">advantage</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
can shield you from the effects of degrading the social order that created that
very </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">advantage</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">. We
are all bound up together: this is as true for social inequality as it is true
for climate</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> change</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">: you can run, but you can’t hide. So
what we need <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">for </b>you and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">from</b> you IS hard questioning, not a
repetition of banality and cliché. </span><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; color: black; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">“</span><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; color: #242729; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">The world we have made as a
result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems that we
cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them,”</span><span style="color: #242729; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
Einstein said. That’s become a cliché too, but begins to bite a bit when your
questioning includes yourself and your </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #242729; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">own </span><span style="color: #242729; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">interests.
To <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">illustrate a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">different</b> level of thinking…</span> here’s
a </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">true story: </span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_f40tEpLoSfxgX7KsuADnXYLgxn5ce_9pcKqgE42Y47bVHEkKfdDTMDz7Dn4varmLyHpbzYj5YWvjzzYPdHflvcHva-n8wqVVy-TWkqnYoOgd0Wlc5QF8u7V-l_F8iiDLKYTO0ExocrQ/s1600/corn.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="171" data-original-width="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_f40tEpLoSfxgX7KsuADnXYLgxn5ce_9pcKqgE42Y47bVHEkKfdDTMDz7Dn4varmLyHpbzYj5YWvjzzYPdHflvcHva-n8wqVVy-TWkqnYoOgd0Wlc5QF8u7V-l_F8iiDLKYTO0ExocrQ/s1600/corn.png" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">There’s this <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; margin: 0px;">farmer who
grows the best quality</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt; margin: 0px;"> corn in the
country. One year a investigative journo questioned why. Turns out, the farmer
shares his</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> best</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> seed corn with his neighbours. “Why would share your
best corn seed with your neighbours, when they are entering corn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in competition</i> with yours each year?” “Nature
doesn’t respect boundaries. The wind blows where it will and picks up pollen
and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow poor corn, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">their</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> corn will steadily
degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help all
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">my neighbours</b> grow good corn.” As it
is below on the natural earth, so it is with we who are a part of nature. For the
welfare of each of us is bound up with the welfare of all of us. So yes, question
yourself and your interests and whether the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">advantages</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> you’ve been given are <span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; margin: 0px;">yours at all to hoard</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> like corn in a famine.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhdRFbFJh9V-NAY0M91hztEaRQNqcFsrvZBovuIXI6EPD9oT3AMTbnO_0riqiEGiLWH4ChaCw-by4IW3WCk3vBse0GGw44Frxx5Injiq2iG1KFuBw8FX7BBc5YpOHVyREQJBvH0u2BYc/s1600/gettyimages-532001826-640x640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhdRFbFJh9V-NAY0M91hztEaRQNqcFsrvZBovuIXI6EPD9oT3AMTbnO_0riqiEGiLWH4ChaCw-by4IW3WCk3vBse0GGw44Frxx5Injiq2iG1KFuBw8FX7BBc5YpOHVyREQJBvH0u2BYc/s320/gettyimages-532001826-640x640.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">If you do </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">face</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">such hard questions, you
will be able think anew and act anew, and the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">world </b>you will grow can be made anew. Oh and <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>by the way…if Jesus <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">were </b>ever to come back again, you</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
can</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">bet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he would tell you the same thing.</i> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Here is a prayer that’s
been taken from the Cx tradition, but revised for inclusive settings. Please
say it with me:</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">May
I become an instrument of peace;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">where
there is hatred, let me sow love;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">where
there is injury, pardon;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">where
there is doubt, faith;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">where
there is despair, hope;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">where
there is darkness, light;</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">and
where there is sadness, joy.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">May I seek not so much to be consoled as to console;<br />
to be understood, as to understand;<br />
to be loved, as to love;<br />
for it is in giving that we receive,<br />
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,<br />
and it is in dying to self that we are renewed.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Musical interlude</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Benediction and chalice extinguishing</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 12px 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">The Chalice </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">flame </span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">is now extinguished, but
may the fire of our t</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">i</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">me together live on in
the minds and hearts of each one of you. Carry that flame </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">within</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> you as you leave this place and share </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">your</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> light and warmth with
those you know, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">but more importantly,</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> with those you have yet
to meet. Amen</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"> and see you next month</span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Exit</b> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;">to music</span></b></span></span><span style="color: #373839; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-10596861570124855062018-11-19T13:25:00.002-08:002018-11-19T13:27:29.353-08:00The King of Nothing<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's official: I've resigned as President of ANZUUA, which makes me a little sad, since it's the only time anyone's trusted me to be the president of anything in real life. I was rather enjoying that. I sent this letter to all churches and fellowships last night:</span><br />
<i></i><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>19 November, 2018</i></span></span></div>
<i></i><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To all ANZUUA member churches and
fellowships,</span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The ANZUUA Committee meeting held today
will be my last as President, after a little over a year in the role. There are
two compelling reasons for my resignation, which will take place with immediate
effect after this meeting.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">First, I have taken on additional work
next year as the Chaplain of Pembroke School, close to the Norwood Church. This
will be in addition to continuing as Minister of our large, growing, and active
congregation until the end of my contracted term in March 2023. This new
association between these two Adelaide institutions represents the largest outreach
potential in the church’s history and requires appropriate time and energy. To
meet the demands of both roles, I am streamlining my work, jettisoning non-contractual
activities, which sadly would include any continuing work with ANZUUA. </span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Second, at the AGM yesterday, the UCSA
congregation voted overwhelmingly to withdraw from ANZUUA. This would, of
course, put me in a false position, were I to continue as President. The ANZUUA
Secretary will be receiving a letter from the UCSA Committee of Management in
due course, confirming this decision and its rationale, and outlining how the
UCSA plans to continue to support the growth of the U/U movement in Australia,
as well as the small and emerging fellowships here that have been seeking our practical
assistance.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I realize that...we
have another UCSA member on the ANZUUA committee. Whether or not she continues
to be involved with ANZUUA is for her to decide, but it should be noted that
she would no longer do so on behalf the UCSA.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I hope I have been clear about the reasons
for my resignation as President, a challenging role I never sought, but have
been honoured to have held, however briefly. I sincerely wish you every success
in your future endeavours.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yours in faith and service,</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Rev.) Robert F. MacPherson</span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Minister</span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unitarian Church of South Australia</span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What the church plans to do from here to not become isolated is for the church itself to decide. I see three possible directions of varying scope:</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">align more closely with the ICUU as an international hub, engaging with similarly large but isolated churches geographically outside the scope of the UUA and GA.</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">form a new Australia-based association which can be relatively easily incorporated and audited, and would enable us to concentrate on small and emerging groups within our scope</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">go it alone; be an independent church in and for the Adelaide metro region, and developed strategic partnerships with like-minded groups here.</span></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What's clear is that the movement in the region is dying, apart from a few groups, and ANZUUA as it's currently formed seems either unable or unwilling to do much about that. Therefore, a new and effective way forward must be found, and the UCSA has boldly committed to finding that new way, whatever it will be. To do nothing and to go on as we are seems worse than futile, it seems irresponsible.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As someone said in <i>The Godfather</i> in relation to an impending execution--"it's not personal, it's just business." </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Same goes here: neither the church nor I bear any malice toward any ANZUUA member </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">or group. But if we are to be in the business of getting the UU message out to the region, we have been failing for some time now. Time to cut losses and make new plans to promote the movement that called us all, from various faith backgrounds and none, together in the first place.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Watch this space to see how we go.</span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-29212842136755467792018-10-23T16:10:00.003-07:002018-10-23T16:10:34.737-07:00What I was supposed to say. What I said. What I should have said.This year's Parliamentary Interfaith Breakfast was again sponsored by the Australian Catholic University, but was held in Sydney this year rather than Canberra. The plan, as I take it, is to take the event around each capital city in turn, wherever the ACU has a campus and thus the support staff to organise it.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCFpaT1n35XJI9ajKju1BcLLtqU4aIM30ylIAulIuYT9s5db3yC0SPUxPf6i798zb8-wkbKmqg45CuvUx48xgK4EsKWy7q3pCNtiUxbsnsYtIwlJFxOabxPMt-B3MYDQ2p2kts7MEv6Yg/s1600/ACU_Interfaith_Premier_Berejiklian-502x335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="502" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCFpaT1n35XJI9ajKju1BcLLtqU4aIM30ylIAulIuYT9s5db3yC0SPUxPf6i798zb8-wkbKmqg45CuvUx48xgK4EsKWy7q3pCNtiUxbsnsYtIwlJFxOabxPMt-B3MYDQ2p2kts7MEv6Yg/s640/ACU_Interfaith_Premier_Berejiklian-502x335.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NSW Premier Berekjilian<span style="font-size: small;"> at this year's event</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Each year, faith leaders are invited to write a prayer from their tradition, and these are printed in the event program. Of these, a few are selected to be read at the end of the event as a kind of pluralist benediction. The meat of the event itself is not these prayers, nor even breakfast itself, but speeches from the Premier or PM, the Leader of the Opposition, and a special guest to what is essentially, a self-selected focus group. This year the focus group represented 120 faith traditions. Who knew there were that many?<br />
<br />
So I wrote another prayer, but this year I was contacted by the event organiser:<br />
<br />
"Wow, what a beautiful prayer! Would you care to read it at the event along with a few others?"<br />
<br />
Ever susceptible to flattery, I accepted. Here's what I sent them, and what was published in the program.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">A Unitarian
Universalist Prayer for the 2018 Parliamentary Interfaith Breakfast</span></i></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Spirit of Life and of Living, known by many names and
beyond all naming, known in many ways and beyond all knowing: </span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">May You, who illuminates our sacred land with the dawning
of this morning, illuminate us.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">May Your eternal and loving light guide the steps of our
leaders, that they may envision and fashion a social order both peaceful and
free.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">The lamps we see by may be different--Catholic and Jew,
Muslim and Buddhist, Christian and Humanist--but Your light is the same:</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of
universal compassion, shining as the sun, not on some of us, but on the sum of us;</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of justice,
a beacon of equality and justice for the lost and searching;</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of
life’s renewal, a dancing morning star of hope through forgiveness and
reconciliation.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Oh You who illuminate the world, shine through our
different lamps with the one pure light of Your grace.</span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">This we pray in the name of all that we hold sacred,
holy, right, good, and true. So may it be.</span></i></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
However, my host, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, has repeatedly and publicly refused to abide by new mandatory reporting laws in the wake of the Royal Commission's findings into institutional child sexual abuse, I felt this was rather letting them off the hook a little, despite the atmosphere of cozy tolerance engendered by the event. There are some things that are intolerable, and the Catholic Church's insistence on exempting the seal of confession from civil law is intolerable.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
I was scheduled to be the last prayer, following, in order: a Mormon, a Hindu, a Ba'hai, and a Catholic bishop. This was too good an opportunity to miss, so I hastily re-wrote the prayer at the breakfast table, and this is what I in fact read, the change in boldface:<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">A Unitarian
Universalist Prayer for the 2018 Parliamentary Interfaith Breakfast</span></i></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Spirit of Life and of Living, known by many names and
beyond all naming, known in many ways and beyond all knowing: </span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">May You, who illuminates our sacred land with the dawning
of this morning, illuminate us.</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">May Your eternal and loving light guide the steps of our
leaders, that they may envision and fashion a social order both peaceful and
free.</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">The lamps we see by may be different--Catholic and Jew,
Muslim and Buddhist, Christian and Humanist--but Your light is the same:</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of
universal compassion, shining as the sun, not on some of us, but on the sum of us;</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of justice,
a beacon of equality and justice for the lost and searching;</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><b>Yours is the searching
and cleansing light of truth, oh shine this light into the dark recesses of the
sealed sacrament of confession that has enabled the suffering of so many
innocents, and into those frightened hearts that would shrink from transparency
and accountability;</b></span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><b><br /></b></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px 48px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Yours is the light of
life’s healing renewal, the dancing morning star of hope that rises in forgiveness
and reconciliation.</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">Oh You who illuminate the world, shine through our
different lamps with the one pure light of Your grace.</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;">This we pray in the name of all that we hold sacred,
holy, right, good, and true. So may it be.</span></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
I was pretty nervous, and even stumbled reading it in a couple places--not like me at all. Still, you could have heard a pin drop. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
Did it land? Would my hosts be resentful? Will I ever be invited back? I don't really know the answers to these questions. The only response I had was from a Catholic Bishop who shook my hand and said, "Nice prayer." Then <i>sotto voce</i> in my ear: "I bet you think you're pretty clever."</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
Ouch.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
Well, it landed on him, I guess. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
We used to believe that God heard all prayers. And that sometimes his answer is 'no'. Well, he's God, so that's just tough. You can't always get what you want from the boss, no matter how earnestly you pray for it.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHcymIPRjNnOwBGlr8zxPxAkAgtk97i7riqQYXDjCWqixbt9Lds2rxJ8b3WIS8KQcEaJm3WXIicjWtNiVLojqKc0epy5O9EA9UUo80c1ruv_GbgrdjGac8tvRGhu1e8h-Amsvp4qnLX8A/s1600/gok.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHcymIPRjNnOwBGlr8zxPxAkAgtk97i7riqQYXDjCWqixbt9Lds2rxJ8b3WIS8KQcEaJm3WXIicjWtNiVLojqKc0epy5O9EA9UUo80c1ruv_GbgrdjGac8tvRGhu1e8h-Amsvp4qnLX8A/s640/gok.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">God's emissary, the Archbishop of Adelaide</td></tr>
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But given that here in SA, our local Archbishop Greg O'Kelly has recently doubled down on refusing to subject the rite of confession to mandatory reporting, I am reminded that God's supposed emissaries are just as brutal in their total-lack-of-giving-a-damn about genuine human suffering they could easily help to ease. The heart-heartedness of clergy like the Archbishop (to say nothing of the foul mafia of church-protected paedophiles) has ruined forever the product called 'religion' as surely as cancer research has ruined the enjoyment of a good cigar.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">
<br />
Here's what I should have said, if I only had the guts:<br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: red;">If the Catholic Church in Australia were any other organisation housing and hiding a culture of child sexual abuse, it would have been wound up and its considerable assets sold off for compensation of the victims.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="color: red;">The Catholic church in Australia has proven itself to be nothing more than a long-standing criminal conspiracy.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="color: red;">The Catholic Church in Australia is morally bankrupt.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="color: red;">And if there is a hell, and it has special circles for those complicit in enabling its abuse of power in the suffering of innocents, like the ACU, I do hope to see you all roast for it, and may your eternal, piteous, shrill prayers and scalding tears for release be ignored by the almighty brute you claim to worship. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="color: red;">Now that's what I'd call divine justice.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i>
But a<span style="color: black;">s a UU Minister, and especially as President of ANZUUA, you come to know futility and irrelevance on a first name basis. Breaking the seal of confession seems to be a lost cause, an exercise in futility. Why stick your neck out and risk shaming your own tradition?</span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black;">Because lost causes are the only ones <b>worth </b>fighting for, as someone said. </span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd0J0usWDE-J2URlOgfu8tYSoPEECYEwZYj0Fs5kroQPg7BbO4qAHocQzDZffGQZOcKpn8e4fAcQEhpB1mUrHDLd1z50bmipOIF4ZAWG5KsGqfuNDP0VvPc2nwnIM7Ctx9wqcJ-7lu3kw/s1600/20181024_091711.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd0J0usWDE-J2URlOgfu8tYSoPEECYEwZYj0Fs5kroQPg7BbO4qAHocQzDZffGQZOcKpn8e4fAcQEhpB1mUrHDLd1z50bmipOIF4ZAWG5KsGqfuNDP0VvPc2nwnIM7Ctx9wqcJ-7lu3kw/s640/20181024_091711.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Futility: a still life</td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2487174222812734367.post-78455402026903774312018-04-09T20:11:00.002-07:002018-05-14T00:15:16.757-07:00Why the right words never comeIn the beginning was the <i>logos</i>--the word.<br />
<br />
Written or spoken, a word is a symbol. As an aural stimulus, or as a visual stimulus, a word represents some <i>thing</i> other than the sound it makes on the eardrum or the squiggles on the page.<br />
<br />
But words are more than a system of signs. They are a means of connecting minds, a pact between sender and receiver.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjfai0lzHXTF903J4O5-CuTosDlLzSDJA3tRrGKSJ82jHUHt8xygoqzczA-pY846nIer4pCL0Rc83J_WMMism7s0JigBXWPPW9LR6N0OALejXQfsgq0MKjVrZJlbIQ3AvSoE5-kRzpw8/s1600/1200px-Logos.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="1200" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjfai0lzHXTF903J4O5-CuTosDlLzSDJA3tRrGKSJ82jHUHt8xygoqzczA-pY846nIer4pCL0Rc83J_WMMism7s0JigBXWPPW9LR6N0OALejXQfsgq0MKjVrZJlbIQ3AvSoE5-kRzpw8/s400/1200px-Logos.svg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Logos: the word</td></tr>
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<br />
Thus, spoken and written words are actions when they are received, and create a relationship between separate minds.<br />
<br />
Kurt Vonnegut, writer, wit, and sometime Unitarian, said that reading a book was in effect 'meditating with the mind of another' and thus one of the most intimate relationships we separate selves can ever have. In reading (or hearing--yay audiobooks!) the <i>logos</i>, the words, of another, we surrender to the writer, allowing him or her to restructure our inner world, to create moods, thoughts, ideas, imagery. Reading literally generates an imagined world, full of real-feeling sensations, for a time. At the beginning of the world was the word, says John.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv7oQsNGGAYTZ9G06xB_iY1TYmni20xihv1A4iYknWb9TKtDpaMpxwn8O3IcGYm3jXXvGAIB3mjoyQJGZPUhtWunzRqCezYHhq0c-vFPRfiqKSqfvVo8PHmWv_NvTwhhkegmqNCJmbFb0/s1600/minds.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="153" data-original-width="328" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv7oQsNGGAYTZ9G06xB_iY1TYmni20xihv1A4iYknWb9TKtDpaMpxwn8O3IcGYm3jXXvGAIB3mjoyQJGZPUhtWunzRqCezYHhq0c-vFPRfiqKSqfvVo8PHmWv_NvTwhhkegmqNCJmbFb0/s400/minds.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Words allow us to connect with the mind of another</td></tr>
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The imagined inner world made by the connection between writer/speaker and reader/listener does not remain as vivid over time as when we are actually reading or listening in the moment, But it leaves traces in the neural pathways. Repeated encounters with the author builds up these traces in something like sedimentary layers. Reading or listening repeatedly thus changes you. So it makes sense to be selective about what you read or listen to over and over and over.<br />
<br />
The <i>logos</i> thus assumes a bond of trust. Perhaps this is why every world religion comes down hard on bearing false witness (lying)--which breaks the <i>logos</i>' fidelity to the truth. They also come down hard on gossip, slander, etc.--words that can wound the tender mind of the one who has given their attentiveness to read or to listen.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFRI-7Quox7Pm9w6d1aTKJyPpMcjRHvGRYr_sW01Q2nQkkUHg0gOIKFQaF95moyrt0snc1cQjTdMAKYpqB96bIuvBO0Ta4F4UZ5vj-doKDYgLzUiTIIUQjfLu9vo3Ij7EavJ_wD1_VImM/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="297" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFRI-7Quox7Pm9w6d1aTKJyPpMcjRHvGRYr_sW01Q2nQkkUHg0gOIKFQaF95moyrt0snc1cQjTdMAKYpqB96bIuvBO0Ta4F4UZ5vj-doKDYgLzUiTIIUQjfLu9vo3Ij7EavJ_wD1_VImM/s400/images.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So just be careful with them</td></tr>
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It thus behooves anyone who would deal in words to offer words which are both true and kind. Or at least not untrue, and not unkind.<br />
<br />
Words are actions. Words establish relationship.<br />
<i><br /></i>
In my work, I deal chiefly in<i> logos:</i><br />
<br />
I write. <br />
I correspond. <br />
I read aloud. <br />
I preach. <br />
I dialogue one-on-one. <br />
I discuss in groups.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiKfQGT-OkGLHJSo6mStvPKCp5DWbmKs3kA9Jl6RQ9c9tloqr6oUyP-HX3oUsSD9plvM-JtM4aQX_Mer_A_H4z0lMCIJlM1IuxcYPJGqTnO41-Pzrmi2U5QKqASCxZz9HYU9yarwqyC8/s1600/untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiKfQGT-OkGLHJSo6mStvPKCp5DWbmKs3kA9Jl6RQ9c9tloqr6oUyP-HX3oUsSD9plvM-JtM4aQX_Mer_A_H4z0lMCIJlM1IuxcYPJGqTnO41-Pzrmi2U5QKqASCxZz9HYU9yarwqyC8/s400/untitled.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Funny when you look at them for what they are</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In so doing, there is a constant search for <i>the right words</i> in each situation. True and kind, or not untrue and not unkind. <br />
<br />
This full-time mental google-search reminds me of the myth of Tantalus, whose punishment was to stand neck-deep in a river under a fruit tree for eternity. Each time he bent over to drink water to slake his thirst, the water receded. Each time he reached for the fruit to fill his hungry belly, the branches of the tree lifted out of his reach.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqSRWGrsa0OY4xncWf5iJDhLUgj2ywBs3ozSykMn46u19zVS3rinDfUAhBKS16zLSB5kTqW4JsQZVXQu16JAeTSVGseHwGfH8JGvg-n1BhqiYBqER1jjksS9NVgaPNNgDXWEKhomjfPSo/s1600/tantalus.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="310" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqSRWGrsa0OY4xncWf5iJDhLUgj2ywBs3ozSykMn46u19zVS3rinDfUAhBKS16zLSB5kTqW4JsQZVXQu16JAeTSVGseHwGfH8JGvg-n1BhqiYBqER1jjksS9NVgaPNNgDXWEKhomjfPSo/s400/tantalus.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Searching for the logos is a lot like Tantalus...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The exact, perfect, 'just right' words never come. The words of life that end the existential hunger and thirst. They never will. They do not exist, because they're only symbols for a world just beyond our reach. I have had to learn to live with their fundamental inadequacy.<br />
<br />
With apologies and respect to my comrades who would dethrone the <i>logos</i> and replace it with silence, the answer to the limitations of words is not to remove them from worship. There is no silent meditation in existence whose context is not framed by words ('just breathe', 'let thoughts come and go', 'imagine a big ball of warm sunlight in your stomach...'). The answer to the limitations of words is not to ladle on more words through 'open discussion', like some directionless university dorm-room bull session (which verbal soup produces a white noise of multidirectional <i>logos,</i> and encourages competitiveness).<br />
<br />
The answer is there's no escape from on-going discernment around the words we use to worship. Understanding that the <i>logos</i> is not what it describes, but is a <i>living </i>word-- it can be fine-tuned, clarified, interrogated, rewritten and resaid. The <i>Logos</i> is not insurance form boilerplate or Apple terms and conditions. The <i>Logos</i> opens like the lotus and invites connection. It does not close off and regulate.<br />
<br />
We have to start <i>somewhere</i>. In the beginning was the word.<br />
<br />
So it pays to be selective about who you read, listen to, talk with. Every word creates relationship. Every word is a feeble attempt to bridge the gap of our solitudes, a leap of faith that we can make ourselves known to another and feel we are no longer completely separate selves locked in the first-person kingdom of our own skulls. Everyone uses words; not everyone uses them well. You become the words that occupy and shape your mind. Not everyone deserves to be allowed into it.<br />
<br />
Besides Vonnegut, I have meditated rather a lot with the mind of the poet T.S. Eliot, who put the problem (rather brilliantly) like this:<br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">“So here I am...</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Trying to use words, and every attempt</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Because <u>one has only learnt to get the better of words</u></span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">With shabby equipment always deteriorating</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">By strength and submission, has already been discovered</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">To emulate - but there is no competition -</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><u><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">There is only the fight to recover what has been lost</span></u><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><u>And found and lost again and again</u>: and now, under conditions</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.</span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
</span></i></span><b></b><br />
<b><span style="color: black;"><i><br /></i></span></b>
And so lately, when I am trying to offer comfort to one of my pastoral charges. Or when I am trying to encourage a young leader trying to get a new fellowship off the ground. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Or even when I'm trying to tell my wife how utterly in love with her I am...</span>I have to do more than be still (important though that is).<br />
<br />
I have to bloody well say <i>something</i>.<br />
<br />
Something true and kind, or at least not untrue and not unkind, something that will <i>never</i> be the magic spell we want it to be, wish it could be, or even expect or demand it to be. <br />
<br />
But to keep reaching, keep discerning, and like Tantalus, accepting that the reaching is all there is.<br />
<br />
<i></i><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">A very Unitarian disclaimer:
Views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Unitarian movement in general or the Unitarian Church of SA in particular.</div>Rob MacPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11620276034634845064noreply@blogger.com3