Let’s face it, the last several days have been hard on White Power. Despite a setup to essentially force a riot with the announcement in Ferguson, the city did not burn. Even clever editing on Fox News just didn’t make anything look all that riot-ish. Makes you think that maybe some of those protesters were responsible citizens . . . Then, well, this: Overweight asthmatics (back off: I’m one too) just don’t look all that dangerous. Forget race: overweight asthmatics... Read more
The British novelist Charles Dickens toured the US in the early 1840s. Dickens was considerably left of center and had a particular dislike for monarchy and social class. He wanted to see firsthand this new nation that had thrown off the yoke of threadbare European ideas. Instead of encountering that shining city on a hill, however, Dickens experienced a society soaked in classism, slavery, and gun violence. One city on his tour was St. Louis, Missouri. (He visited at about... Read more
In the wake of Ferguson, in the wake of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant and the 12-year-old boy with a pellet gun who was recently shot by a police officer in Cleveland and all the other young Black men killed because a White man found them threatening, it’s hard to know what to say. It’s hard to know what to say to my Black teenage daughter as we take the long way home from downtown Oakland to avoid protests that... Read more
“They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush.” –Jeremiah 6:14-15 From the prophets to the present, a call for integrity. Literally – to integrate what we do with what we value. If we value humanity, then we must act in ways that support and affirm that value. Shooting children, shooting adults – these... Read more
All of us are born into a world we do not understand. All human beings who have ever lived were born into a world they did not understand. What has humanity done with the mystery of our existence? We tell stories. And thus, slowly, we learn. Stories. Stories that explain the origin of the universe. Stories that explain the origin of the things in it. Stories that tell us how to act in this mysterious, beautiful, and tragic world. Some... Read more
Patheos generously sent me a copy of The Grace of Yes: Eight Virtues for Generous Living, written by Lisa M. Hendey (founder and editor of CatholicMom.com), to read and review in this space. While appearing to lack an analysis of race and class, Hendey offers truly useful tools for living a faithful life in this accessible book. As a Unitarian Universalist minister and community organizer, I found that I had to translate a bit of Hendey’s theology and assumed common... Read more
Just yesterday I got the call. “Reverend Maginn,” declares Chaplain Jason Dipinto who has faithfully called me Reverend Maginn through three months of countless emails and phone calls. “Reverend Maginn, you have been accepted into the Navy Chaplain Corps!” There are so few of us Unitarian Universalist ministers serving in military chaplaincy; I thought I would briefly tell you how this unlikely tale came to pass. A week ago I was sitting in the Pentagon before a formal panel, interviewing... Read more
“I have been Don Quixote, always creating a world of my own.” ~Anais Nin Science is that which is the same for everyone. Everywhere. Gravity, for example: call it what you will; describe it’s origin as gods or fairies—still, it’s results are the same and describable everywhere for everyone. Science: oxygen and its effects—the same everywhere, as Joseph Priestly surmised. Believe in it. Don’t believe in it. Yet its effects are the same. That’s science. It’s the same for... Read more
In Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1915) In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe; To you, from failing hands, we throw... Read more
Another election has come and gone. Some people, presumably, are delighted, while others are filled with gloom. OK, it was mostly gloom on my Facebook page. Maybe you worked really hard on behalf of a candidate you truly believed in, and that candidate didn’t win. Maybe the one who did win is the worst kind of corrupt imbecile, totally in debt to the moneyed interests. Maybe you feel like the country is going to hell in a hand basket, and... Read more
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