{Editor’s Note: Due to technical difficulties, this post, originally scheduled for August 19th, was delayed – posting now!} I spent two weeks out of state, mostly away from the internet, TV, and newspapers – enjoying some much needed study leave. Returning to the news of the world on Thursday, August 14th was, I confess, quite an incredibly jarring experience. The depth and the breadth of the systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri revealed both in the shooting of an unarmed black... Read more
I have to admit that the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri have triggered mostly cynicism for me. In the US we have periodic paroxysms of piety triggered by events that happen every day but occasionally “go viral” in the media. Then, the outrage subsides . . . and nothing changes. Allow me to relate an example that went viral for a few weeks. I was born across the river from St. Louis, on the Illinois side, the industrial side of... Read more
by Susan Maginn, guest blogger My white family has been in St. Louis, Missouri for six generations. My grandparents met attending Ferguson High School in the early 1930’s. My grandfather’s childhood home was in Ferguson which back then was a bedroom community with a train stop leading to downtown St. Louis. After my grandparents married they bought a house close to Ferguson. This is where their four children were raised, my mother, my uncles and aunt. By the mid 70’s... Read more
It seems to me that the outpouring of emotion on the death of Robin Williams was not only for a beloved celebrity, although goodness knows he was that and more. His struggle with mental illness and addiction became an opportunity for the rest of us to talk about our struggles—with our own illness, or the illness of those we love, with our thoughts of suicide or our experiences of the aftermath when someone we love has taken their life. It... Read more
“Moralistic therapeutic deism.” That’s the term sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton coined to describe the religious beliefs of the average North American. Rev. Robert Vinciguerra calls it “egonovism,” a neologism constructed of “ego” and “novo,” new. Rev. Rob claims that most Americans are Egonovists, even though most don’t know it. http://revrob.com/society-topmenu-49/223-continued-observations-on-the-egonovism-of-american-society-and-dialogs-with-egonovists Why are they saying such things? Here’s one reason: Something on the order of 80% of Americans claim to be Christian, but 25% of Americans believe in... Read more
When a toaster keeps producing burnt toast, we don’t blame the bread—we fix the toaster. When a dishwasher won’t wash the dishes, we don’t blame the dishes—we fix the dishwasher. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford (a young man in L.A. yesterday). All African-American. All unarmed. And all dead. The drum beat goes on. In 2012, police, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extra-judicially killed at least 313 African-Americans. In other words, at least every 28 hours, an African-American... Read more
“Spirituality” is emotion. Sometimes the spiritual emotion springs from a consciously adopted attitude toward the world we see around us. Sometimes it hits us unexpectedly. A “spiritual experience” can be anything from the warm-fuzzy feeling we get singing a song we love to the inexpressible “mystical” experience of feeling one with all that is. Both great feelings. But not mysterious. Psychologist Daniel Khaneman in his groundbreaking book Thinking, Fast and Slow outlines how the head/heart and body/soul distinction actually functions.... Read more
A plane was shot down over the Ukraine, but I didn’t blog about it because, what after all is there to say about the fact that hundreds of people were killed by a missile that was really only intended to kill a few people? “People are not only brutal, they are also stupid” is hardly an uplifting message. And my senior colleague actually asked me to blog about the influx of children crossing the border into the US, fleeing gang... Read more
I just scheduled a hair cut. It took me a little while, but it needed to happen. We’ve been in our new home for just under two weeks, it’s summertime, I need a hair cut. I’ve been keeping my eye out for hair cutters in our new neighborhood. I looked up area hair stylists on Yelp and the White Pages. And then I decided to do it the old-fashioned way–I grabbed a little notebook, put on my shoes, wrote my... Read more
LITE The future of Unitarian Universalism does not lie in Christianity Lite any more than the future of Anheuser-Busch lies in Bud Light. Oh, wait: Anheuser-Busch doesn’t have a future: it was bought out . . . by a European corporation that makes tasty beer. In our consumerist religious landscape, the mainstream Christian denominations are scrambling to survive. I don’t doubt that they will do a fine job of brewing the new Christianity. A much better job than can Unitarian... Read more
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