One of Aesop’s Fables goes like this: Lion once went once hunting with Fox, Jackal, and Wolf. They hunted and they hunted, and at last they surprised a stag, and soon took its life. Then came the question of how to divide the spoils of their hunt. “Rip the stag into four pieces!” roared Lion. This pleased Fox, Jackal, and Wolf, and they did as Lion asked. Then Lion stepped in front of the meat and said: “The first quarter... Read more
Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter. In Louisiana In Minnesota In Texas Black Lives Matter. When we commit to undoing the systemic racism that sets black people up for harassed and penalized existence, that sets police up for fearful lives, that sets us all up to be dehumanized – only then can the news change. Then there can be right relationship in neighborhoods. Denying the impact of white supremacy on this country’s judicial system creates more injustice, more inflamed rhetoric,... Read more
By Rev. Dr. David Breeden A question from one of her children sends Ozment on a five year quest. As they watch an Eastern Orthodox procession, one of her kid’s asks, “What are we?” The question brings her up short. Ozment long ago lost any attachment to her childhood Presbyterianism, and her husband is a secular Jew who occasionally performs a smattering of the rituals he learned as a child. Ozment realizes that traditional religions hold nothing for her or... Read more
Mathematics There is no algebra for death. No life lost cancels out another. The idea that there is some other side to the equation is a lie perpetrated by centuries of war and revenge. There is no other side. You cannot subtract and equalize the equation. There is an addition of loss, grief upon grief upon grief. There is a multiplication of loss, ripples of sorrow expanding through families, friends, communities, nations. Division is a choice. Division is a... Read more
One of the most serious issues for a tradition such as Unitarian Universalism that has embraced pluralism as a central doctrine is how to navigate the fraught waters of pluralism itself. Furthermore, when a collection of congregations with very different traditions join together—as is the case for General Assemblies—the chance of odd and jolting disjunctions becomes inevitable. It’s all well and good to say that UUs have freedom of the pulpit and freedom of the pew, but in that vaunted... Read more
After the September 1938 Munich Pact with which the European democracies ceded territory to Nazi Germany in exchange for what turned out to be one more uneasy year of peace, poet T.S. Eliot wrote: We could not match conviction with conviction, we had no ideas with which we could either meet or oppose the ideas opposed to us. Was our society, which had always been so assured of its superiority and rectitude, so confident of its unexamined premises, assembled round... Read more
“The good life.” Lordy, lordy . . . I’m not hearing about it on CNN. The good life and what makes a good life has been the focus of philosophers across the planet and throughout human history. But I haven’t heard much that might be called philosophical in the current US presidential cycle. This might be because there isn’t a sufficient percentage of the electorate interested in the question. Perhaps. I suspect, however, that the reason may go deeper: the... Read more
When I was coming out as a young lesbian, back in the late 70s and early 80s, you could find me hanging out pretty much every Friday and Saturday night at A Woman’s Coffeehouse, in the basement of Plymouth Congregational Church. It was appropriate that this chemically free, women only space was in a church, because it was holy ground for a gathered community. There, I heard the likes of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde read their poetry, listened to... Read more
The recent massacre in the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida is unfortunately an example of why the oft-repeated phrase “the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice” is bad theology and dangerous magical thinking. While the phrase offers hope, it offers false hope, and President Obama, who loves the phrase coined by Theodore Parker and made famous by Martin Luther King, follows up saying by adding, “but we have to bend it.” Even this addition of human volition... Read more
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