Author: uurevjeff

Re-dedication Sunday

/ uurevjeff

I would like to put out there the suggestion that Unitarian Universalist churches consider placing the last Sunday of July on their liturgical calendars as Re-dedication Sunday, in memory of the event on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We did this at our service last Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, resulting in a ritual that many in attendance found deeply moving.

I include much of non-sermon text below as the context for the service. The intent was to recognize that our sanctuaries are sacred spaces into which we bring much emotion throughout the year. The idea of Re-dedication Sunday is to cleanse our worship rooms of the past year’s accumulation of pain, anxiety, fear, and despair so that healing may begin anew.

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Re-dedication of Worship Center Service Elements

Call to Worship

The first peace…is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Sacred, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
— Black Elk in The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953)

Chalice Lighting

Let there be light!
Let it shine in dark places,
in moments of pain,
in times of grief,
in the darkness of hatred, violence, oppression,
where there is discouragement and despair.
Wherever darkness is to be put to flight,
Let there be light!
— Gordon McKeeman, Unitarian minister quoting Genesis 1:3 (from 1997 UUMA Worship Materials Collection)

Remembrance

Spirit of Life and Love that we know by many names, enter this space as we honor those whose lives were lost on Sunday, July 27, 2008. One year ago tomorrow, a man entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville with a shotgun. In a few short moments, the violent expression of his hate and frustration left two people dead, several wounded, and many shaken with trauma. We remember and honor those directly affected by the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We also remember and honor our own feelings we have experienced and will continue to experience related to this and other similar events.

We light a candle in memory of Gregory Joseph (Greg) McKendry Jr., of Knoxville, Tennessee. He was an usher and board member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
We light a candle for Linda Kraeger. She was a member of the Westside Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Farragut, Tennessee.

We take time now to remember the joys and the pains that entered through these doors today. We reach out to those who have come in today with heavy hearts; those who are struggling; those among us who are grieving; those who are caring for a loved one; those who are anxiously waiting for an unknown future, and all who are living with illness. We remember those who are home bound or hospitalized or, for whatever reason, could not be present with us today. May their names and faces be brought to mind. May they be assured that they have not been forgotten, and by our reaching out may they know that their presence is missed. Let us also celebrate the accomplishments and successful passages of life events we share today.

Just like our tools of technology, we occasionally need to reboot our lives so that we can better respond to life’s challenges and welcome life’s happiness. We need to cleanse our minds of outworn thoughts of guilt or shame. We need to cleanse our souls of outworn ways of living and being. Throughout the past year, this worship center has been a receptacle for the emotions brought in by the highs and lows of our lives. Just as we need help recovering from the challenges and the excitement of life, we should periodically cleanse our sacred spaces. Today, let us set about the work of cleansing ourselves and our religious home for the busy work in the year to come.

Offering

You may have noticed these boxes to my right. Standing on the Side of Love is a public advocacy campaign, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association, promoting respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Standing on the Side of Love will confront exclusion, oppression, and violence based on identity. Based in the aspiration to create beloved community, the campaign will pursue social change through advocacy, public witness, and speaking out in solidarity with those whose lives are publicly demeaned. All people, not just Unitarian Universalists, are invited to stand, speak, worship, march, roll, and live on the side of the love. Now, in the spirit of remembrance and of unconditional love, I ask the ushers to come forward to collect our morning offering to support the work, the witness, and the wonder of this religious community.

Ritual of Re-Dedication

When I first heard of the events in Knoxville one year ago, I felt a sick dread in the pit of my stomach. Beyond the senselessness of the act, as a long-time religious education teacher and as a parent, I was particularly struck by the occurrence of the act during a children’s play. All that day, I read updates of the news, seeking more facts; seeking information; searching for some reason or explanation.

I talked with others about the event so that I could share my emotions and pain. For we know that by sharing our pain, we can work toward lessening its debilitating impact on us. We can imagine moving beyond these initial emotions toward response, toward action, toward reconciliation. That is the nature of resilience.

Sometimes, we come here on Sunday mornings to share our pain…our pain of anger, our pain of fear, our pain of frustration, our pain of sadness. By sharing in covenant our love for each other and for all of humankind, we build on the knowledge that a shared joy is doubled in the sharing and that a shared pain is half a pain.

I ask you now to rise and form a circle. In this circle of our congregation, let us today re-dedicate this worship room as sacred space. As the chalice, the symbol of our living tradition, is passed among you, hold it for a moment and place into this vessel the fire of your own commitment to this place. May the combined power of our thoughts and feelings cleanse this space of the past year’s accumulation of anxiety, fear, and despair, so that healing can begin anew.

As this flame consumes a year of pain, may this chalice represent the foundation of that joy that is our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We remember not only the love we have for the victims of terrible events, but for anyone whose life is so bereft of compassion, that violence against others seems their only recourse. We remember to love and to forgive those who, either through mental illness, their own suffering from abuse or violence, or other challenges of life, must be held accountable for their own acts of violence perpetrated on others. Our commitment to justice, equity, and compassion in human relations calls on us to do this.

As we pass our chalice, let us join in singing the hymn Comfort Me.

Benediction

Please join hands for our closing words. For centuries, Unitarian Universalists have offered to the world the promise of hope; the promise of a world without hate; the promise of a world with equity and justice; the promise of a world without violence. Together, we here present affirm to build hope, for a hope shared can become a vision for the world. Now, more than ever, let us challenge ourselves in the coming year to stand on the side of love, offering the world in this sacred space the promise of hope.

Blessed be, Amen, and Let it be so.

Rethinking Our Holidays

/ uurevjeff

This sermon was delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock on July 5, 2009.

After Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the American Civil War raged on for four more bloody years of death and destruction. Five years after that, the Franco-Prussian War broke out in Europe and Howe acted. She began a one-woman global peace crusade, starting with an appeal to womanhood to rise against war. She went to London to promote an international Woman’s Peace Congress. That effort failed, so she returned to Boston and initiated a Mothers’ Peace Day observance on the second Sunday in June. That meeting was observed for a number of years.

Now, there were other movements afoot to create a day honoring mothers. Ann Jarvis was a young Appalachian homemaker who tried to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days before the Civil War. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter Anna worked to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908, at St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where Anna’s mother had taught Sunday School. From there, the custom caught on and eventually spread to 45 states.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. The following year, President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday. Now, this is long before radio and television, and advertising was still a new industry. But, the growing American consumer culture had successfully redefined women as buyers for their families. Politicians and businesses eagerly embraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As the Florists’ Review, the industry’s trade journal, bluntly put it, “This was a holiday that could be exploited.” The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans the best way to honor their mothers – by buying flowers.

Since then, Mother’s Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar event. For those who appreciate irony, Anna Jarvis became increasingly concerned over the commercialization of Mother’s Day, saying, “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit.” She opposed the use of greeting cards, calling them “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” In 1923, Jarvis filed suit against New York Governor Al Smith, over a Mother’s Day celebration. When the suit was dismissed, she began a public protest and was arrested for… disturbing…the peace.

Most Unitarian Universalist congregations routinely observe Easter, Christmas, Passover, Hanukkah, Palm Sunday, and Yom Kippur, in addition to other holidays derived from Christian and Jewish traditions. We can understand the rationale for these celebrations and even concur with our commitment to them. But, harder to understand is our lack of uniquely Unitarian Universalist religious holidays. We engage in a Flower Communion in June – a deeply moving and meaningful practice honoring our service and dedication to justice across the globe. Many of our churches embrace a Water Communion ritual at the end of summer that embodies a spiritual depth and that unifies us in our common human experience. But, we do not set aside whole days to perform these worthy worship elements, nor do we plan our life activities around them for preceding days or weeks.

We can acknowledge the importance of Christmas and Easter to our Christian colleagues, both within this congregation and without. We can respect the place of Yom Kippur and Passover to all of our Jewish comrades. Thankfully, some of our churches offer solstice celebrations for our Wiccan and neo-pagan members and friends. But, where are the religious holidays that every Unitarian Universalist can embrace as his or her own, not just out of a sense of shared joy and reverence, not just out of tradition or habit, but out of true ownership?

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. In doing so, we too can disturb the peace. We can disturb the peace of normalcy that for too long has suffered the manipulations of the self-righteous and the war profiteers. We can disturb the peace of normalcy that turns every decent expression of sentiment and honor into an opportunity for retail sales and advertising bonanzas. For we can and should reclaim Mother’s Day for the purpose Julia Ward Howe intended. The Mother’s Day for Peace should rise up again to help us create a normal world where every person is regarded with inherent worth and dignity; a normal world with justice, equity, and compassion; a normal world with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

Two years ago, Unitarian Universalist women in Kansas City began planning an event for the upcoming Mother’s Day. “Julia’s Voice” is a group of mothers and others joined together to return Mother’s Day to its original intent. They peacefully assembled along a public sidewalk and, standing shoulder to shoulder, were joined by Julia Ward Howe re-enactors, musicians, and other special guests. That is one way to reclaim our holiday. There are many others.

We can take the money we spend on greeting cards and use it to send letters to politicians and businesses and tell them what we think about war. We can take the money we spend on flowers and use it to provide microloans, or to buy alternative gifts for women across the world in need of our assistance. We can use the day to write, to study, to talk with each other and plan for our future. And, we don’t have to wait for Mother’s Day to honor the mothers in our lives.

The original Mother’s Day for Peace envisioned by Julia Ward Howe possessed deep meaning. The origins of Father’s Day lack even this hint of significance beyond a maudlin celebration as manipulated by commercial interests. The beginnings of the first Father’s Day celebrations derived from people listening to Mother’s Day sermons in the early 1900’s. It was not until the 1930’s, however, when the Associated Men’s Wear Retailers formed the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day, that a concerted effort to legitimize the holiday arose.

People were slow to accept Father’s Day because they saw the holiday for the marketing device that it was. And yet, people increasingly felt compelled to buy gifts in spite of the facade, and the custom of giving gifts on that day became progressively more accepted. By 1937, the Council calculated that only one father in six had received a present on that day. By the 1980’s, the Council proclaimed that they had achieved their goal: that one day holiday had become a three-week commercial event, a “second Christmas.”

Well, if Madison Avenue can create a holiday celebrated across the country by millions of people, why can’t we reshape that holiday into one with deeper meaning and perhaps with broader purpose? Why can’t we, as we reclaim the Unitarian Universalist heritage of Mother’s Day as a day promoting world peace, recast Father’s Day with a new intent and with a new range of activities and ways to involve everyone in our religious communities?

Especially to all of the young people here today, this point is important. As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. What exactly does that mean to you? When you come here for Sunday School classes, how do you see yourself freely and responsibly searching for truth and meaning?

For me, it means that I will think for myself and not let other people do my thinking for me. It means that when I decide to do something, I will do it because I want to, not because other people want me to. And, it means that whatever I think or do in my life, I want those thoughts and actions to mean something – to be important.

Now, I hope that everyone here has had a father, or one or more people in your lives who served the role of fathers. And I hope that the relationship that you have with that person is a loving one. You should feel free to take the time to honor and to share your thoughts with that person anytime, and not wait for the calendar to limit you. There is no rule that says that you must wait until Father’s Day to reach out to the fathers in your life.

So, what then do we do with the Father’s Day holiday? As we reclaim Mother’s Day for world peace, let us rededicate Father’s Day as a celebration of domestic peace – peace in our homes and peace in our hearts. Responsive reading #602 in the back of our hymnal quotes Lao-Tse, the central founding figure of Taoism 2,500 years ago.

  • If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.
  • If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.
  • If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.
  • If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.
  • If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.

The essence of this wisdom is this. We must have peace within ourselves and our families before we can become peacemakers in our communities and in our world. Father’s Day can become a time for reflection and study about our own lives; a time for families to bond and resolve differences; a time to strengthen the foundation of peace that can lead to a world without war. For the more practically-minded, Father’s Day can become a day to support agencies that combat domestic violence and that support healthy lives for children.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as we currently celebrate them can represent a noble exercise. Those who fulfill the roles of mothers and fathers in our society deserve our respect and our recognition. The question we must ask ourselves, however, is this. How do we best honor our mothers and fathers? How do we best honor the parents of all the other children of the world? How do we best honor those who assume this responsibility for tomorrow’s children?

Considered together, a Unitarian Universalist revisioning of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can celebrate men and women as role models for children and as partners for each other. As religious celebrations, these holidays can represent our commitment to the principles of our covenant, from the inherent worth and dignity of every person to the goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

An essential broader message overlays this idea to remember when you leave here today, when you sit at your desk this week, or when you return to school in a couple of months. Ask questions when you do not understand why things are the way they are. Challenge rules and beliefs that you see as unfair or oppressive. Use what you acquire here on Sunday morning to shine a religious light on all aspects of your life. Use that religious lens to rethink every aspect of your life, of our society, and of our world.

Benediction (modern words based on Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 Proclamation proclaiming Mother’s Day)

Arise, then, men of this day! Arise all men who have hearts, whether forged from fire or from fears!

Say firmly: We will not have our families damaged by outmoded stereotypes. Our partners shall not come to us, cowering and frightened. Our sons and daughters shall not go into the world equating manliness with malevolence, but with mercy. Our children will know men capable of compassion with strength; patience with wisdom; and forgiveness with justice.

We men of one community must be too tender of those of another community to allow our sons to accept violence as a tool of communication. From the bosom of our devastated homes a voice goes up with our own. It says “Men of the world! The fist of anger cannot wield the touch of parental caring and of spousal love.”

Atheist Dictionary of Religious Terms – Mystic

/ uurevjeff

Mystic

Merriam-Webster
From: Middle English mistik, from Latin mysticus of mysteries, from Greek mystikos, from mystes initiate
Date: 14th century
2 of or relating to mysteries or esoteric rites: occult
4a: mysterious b: obscure, enigmatic c: inducing a feeling of awe or wonder d: having magical properties

Hexham’s Concise Dictionary of Religion
A mystic is one who claims to know god immediately through a form of spiritual inwardness, as against knowing through sensation or through logical processes. They may report the experience of a sacred-human relationship, particularly of a oneness with a divine or trans-divine being or state.

Mystic is a word that has acquired much baggage, often associated with pseudo-science, magic, and the occult. Divorced of these exotic inferences, the mystic simply believes that there exists a reality beyond the material plane of ruled by mathematics and physics. The mystic accesses these realities through “peak experiences,” or moments of transcendence. Just as light exists as both wave and particle, the mystic believes that humans can exist in both the physical and the spiritual world simultaneously.

By including one’s perception to all realms of consciousness, the mystic opens themselves up to all fields of possibility. A common conception in Eastern thinking, the mystic pursues an egoless existence, seen as the route to authenticity, wholeness, and intuitive knowledge. The Western construct tends to connect the mystic with a deity, or some absolute divinity.

Atheist Definition: The mystic believes in a reality beyond the physical plane of human sensory perception, and through peak experiences senses this mysterious existence, transcending culturally imposed beliefs and conceptions. The atheist mystic connects intuitively with this alternate reality, becoming more authentic and whole.

Views on Torture by Religious Demographic

/ uurevjeff

We may not consider Jesus divine, but one survey suggests that atheists pay closer attention to his teachings than those who do. An analysis of a new survey illustrates differences in the views of four major religious traditions in the U.S. about whether torture of suspected terrorists can be justified.

The specific question put to the 742 adults polled last month was, “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can be justified often, sometimes, rarely, or never?”

The summary of responses to the question posed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that 62% of white evangelical Protestants believe that torturing suspected terrorists could be often or sometimes justified to get critical information. Fifty-one percent of white, non-Hispanic Catholics and 46% of white mainline Protestants agreed. Ironically, the respondents with no religious ties (“Unaffiliated”) were the least supportive – 40% – of the use of torture.

Now, this is one survey of only a few hundred people. But, the results raise the question of how people develop their ethical standards and whether or not religious belief, specifically theistically-centered religious belief, is a stronger grounding for this work than atheistic approaches. As an atheist, I am completely free to adopt part or all of the moral teachings of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucius, or any other great prophet without needing to place one above the other.

Atheist Dictionary of Religious Terms – Prophesy

/ uurevjeff

Prophesy

Merriam-Webster
From: Middle English prophesien, from Anglo-French prophecier, from Old French, from prophecie
Date: 14th century
transitive verb (i.e. requiring a direct object)
1 to utter by or as if by divine inspiration
2 to predict with assurance or on the basis of mystic knowledge
intransitive verb (i.e. cannot take a direct object)
1 to speak as if divinely inspired
2 to give instruction in religious matters: preach
3 to make a prediction

Hexham’s Concise Dictionary of Religion
To prophesy is to conduct the act of revelation, giving an inspired message from God or the Gods. Usually a prophecy is associated with foretelling the future, but it can also include messages of inspiration or admonishment that reveal the will of God towards a particular people or even an individual.

Grammar plays an important role in determining the use of the term “to prophesy.” In its transitive form, the act of prophesying implies that the message originates from a deity (“The minister prophesied rewards for the faithful and punishment for the wicked.”). In its intransitive form, prophesying derives from the human speaker (“The minister prophesied in the Sunday morning sermon.”) In its intransitive form, therefore, anyone is capable of prophesying, to teach, to predict, or simply to make observations.

In this broader view, any oration in a religious venue can be viewed as an act of prophesying. Ordained clergy, who have generally received extensive instruction in religious matters and gone through a discernment process to prepare them for ordination, might be expected to regularly prophesy as part of the practice of homiletics (delivering sermons aimed at the spiritual needs, capacities, and conditions of a congregation). When viewed as a profession, prophesying might be considered an act expected of ministers to offer insight, inspiration, and instruction through preaching.

Atheist Definition: Prophesying is the act of speaking or writing to make observations, to inspire, or to teach others regarding religious matters.

Atheist Dictionary of Religious Terms – Prayer

/ uurevjeff

Prayer

Merriam-Webster
From: Middle English, from Anglo-French priere, praiere, preiere, from Medieval Latin precaria, from Latin, feminine of precarius obtained by entreaty, from prec-, prex
Date: 14th century
1 a (1): an address (as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought (2): a set order of words used in praying b: an earnest request or wish
2: the act or practice of praying to God or a god

Hexham’s Concise Dictionary of Religion
Prayer is the means by which an individual or group attempts to enter into verbal or mental communication with a deity.

Prayers can be separated into two categories: prayer with and prayer to. When we are with others, either during a worship service, at a meal, or alongside one who is ill or troubled, we can pray with. Prayer with begins with listening to and caring about those with are with. Our prayers reflect their needs, the matters afflicting their minds and hearts. The purpose of prayer with is to let others know that they have been heard, that they have had the opportunity to articulate their fears, and that they are not alone in their struggles. Prayer with aims to help others find within themselves, their family, and their friends the resources to cope and to explore the wonders of existence.

If one does not believe in a deity, then what is the target of prayer to? We are all part of a universe of forces, fields, and life. We may never comprehend all of the levels of consciousness that exist in that expanse. As constituents in that enterprise, prayer to simply means asking for help from whatever resources there are – whether those resources lie in the depths of time and space, or deep within ourselves.

Atheist Definition: Prayer is the act of engaging spiritually with our inner selves, with others, and with the universe by reaching out and asking for help, support, and reassurance.

Another Definition

/ uurevjeff / 4 Comments

My attention recently has been drawn to words, particularly terms that challenge religious atheists. Another word brought to my attention in the past month deals with ministerial authority and discernment. That word is humility.

In my congregational polity class, we were asked from whence we will draw our authority as ministers. The author of one of our readings presumed that the pulpit for “serious” preachers has dimensions that are “scary and threatening.” Now, I might be willing to accept “daunting,” but the only nervousness I have when I am in the pulpit is simply the desire for service elements to go as I have planned. And even then, when worship goes in unplanned directions, the results can be amazing.

My source of authority, in the pulpit and throughout my ministerial development, has been human courage. As an historian, and particularly as a fan of Unitarian Universalist history, I cannot help but be infused with the numerous instances of courage displayed by my predecessors over the centuries. The enormous sacrifices paid by some, from imprisonment to even death, evidence the cost paid for our liberal faith. The bravery of countless women and men to commit heresy (“to choose”) when that choice ran counter to the dominant paradigm of society reveals the depth of our convictions. The dedication of our religious ancestors to acts of justice, acceptance, and compassion indicate the essential place of love in our collective theology.

When I stand in front of a congregation, I walk a path trod by many hundreds of others who have committed themselves to this task. I stand for the freedom paid for by the toil, sweat, tears, and even blood of comrades gone before. I speak with my own authentic voice since our commitment to polity does not bind me to creedal statements or hierarchies beyond the people I serve. I speak from my own experience because I can trust the wisdom and the capacity to reason of my congregants to think for themselves and to apply what they hear to their own lives. And, I prophesy because, as the author of that same article stated, I must say what I say and never compromise because that is how we grow and learn and be with each other.

When I have doubts, or question why I should assume this mantle of responsibility, all I have to do is to remember that I am not in the pulpit alone. I am with Arius and Origen, Servetus and David, the Polish Brethren, Murray and Ballou, Channing and Parker, and hundreds of current ministers and seminarians. My source of authority is the human courage to choose, to sacrifice for one’s beliefs, and to open oneself to others freely.

But, it has been pointed out to me that I can come across as “confident,” even “egocentric.” I have been cautioned to hone my humility. So, let’s look at this word “humble.” According to Wiktionary, the two meanings include:

1. Near the ground; not high or lofty; not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; as, a humble cottage.
2. Thinking lowly of one’s self; claiming little for one’s self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; lowly; weak; modest.

Some of these meanings are, indeed, worth cultivating. As I become a minister, I am endeavoring to avoid being pretentious or arrogant, to pretending to be something I am not, or to assuming that I am more than I am.

But I find little value in thinking of myself as lowly and weak. And while I do not see myself as above others, I do represent the search for the loftiest of human concerns; our attempts to engage with our ultimate purposes. I am just a catalyst, here to play a small role to facilitate the reaction between souls and between each individual and the universe. Our liberal religious tradition is magnificent, and as its representative in that moment in time behind the pulpit, I would do it a disservice to aspire too much to modesty, and to regard it with too little pride.

Of course, the lines drawn here are thin. I can only hope that those listening to my sermons or reading my words sense the sincerity with which I present them. Not just as a candidate for the ministry, but as a human being, I aspire to greatness and to encouraging greatness in others. That is a humbling goal, but one that I strive achieve with every fiber of my being.

Gross National Happiness

/ uurevjeff
I am thinking of moving to Bhutan.

Seriously, though, while there are certainly problems with any effort like this, I applaud the effort at grand vision. We assume that the way things are in the world are “natural” and somehow intrinsic. I find it refreshing to see that someone somewhere thinks otherwise and imagines a better way.

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Published Date: 10 May 2009
By Seth Mydans in Thimphu, Bhutan
Forget quantitative easing, fiscal stimulus or liquidity injections. Gross national happiness could be the way forward. The tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, high in the Himalayan mountains, is working on a rather different answer to the global economic meltdown than the rest of the world. “Greed, insatiable human greed,” said Prime Minister Jigme Thinley, describing
what he sees as the cause of today’s economic catastrophe in the world beyond the snow-topped mountains. “What we need is change,” he said in the whitewashed fortress where he works. “We need to think gross national happiness.”

The notion of gross national happiness was the inspiration of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s, as an alternative to the gross national product. Now, the Bhutanese are refining the country’s guiding philosophy into what they see as a new political science, and it has ripened into government policy just when the world may need it, said Kinley Dorji, secretary of information and communications. “You see what a complete dedication to economic development ends up in,” he said, referring to the global economic crisis. “Industrialised societies have decided now that GNP is a broken promise.

“Under a new Constitution adopted last year, government programmes – from agriculture to transportation to foreign trade – must be judged not by the economic benefits they may offer but by the happiness they produce. The goal is not happiness itself, the prime minister explained, a concept that each person must define for himself. Rather, the government aims to create the conditions for what he called, in an updated version of the American Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of gross national happiness”.

The Bhutanese have started with an experiment within an experiment, accepting the resignation of the popular king as an absolute monarch and holding the country’s first democratic election a year ago. The change is part of attaining gross national happiness, Dorji said. “They resonate well, democracy and GNH. Both place responsibility on the individual. Happiness is an individual pursuit and democracy is the empowerment of the individual.

“It was a rare case of a monarch’s unilaterally stepping back from power, and an even rarer case of his doing so against the wishes of his subjects. He gave the throne to his son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who was crowned in November in the new role of constitutional monarch without executive power.

Bhutan is, perhaps, an easy place to nimbly rewrite economic rules – a country with one airport and two commercial planes, where the east can only be reached from the west after four days’ travel on mountain roads. No more than 700,000 people live in the kingdom, squeezed between the world’s two most populous nations, India and China, and its task now is to control and manage the inevitable changes to its way of life. It is a country where cigarettes are banned and television was introduced just 10 years ago, where traditional clothing and architecture are enforced by law and where the capital city has no stoplight and just one traffic officer on duty.

If the world is to take gross national happiness seriously, the Bhutanese concede, they must work out a scheme of definitions and standards that can be quantified and measured by the big players of the world’s economy.” Once Bhutan said, ‘OK, here we are with GNH,’ the developed world and the World Bank and the IMF and so on asked, ‘How do you measure it?'” Dorji said, characterising the reactions of the world’s big economic players. So the Bhutanese produced an intricate model of well-being that features the four pillars, the nine domains and the 72 indicators of happiness.

Specifically, the government has determined that the four pillars of a happy society involve the economy, culture, the environment and good governance. It breaks these into nine domains: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance, each with its own weighted and unweighted GNH index.All of this is to be analysed using the 72 indicators. Under the domain of psychological well-being, for example, indicators include the frequencies of prayer and meditation and of feelings of selfishness, jealousy, calm, compassion, generosity and frustration, as well as suicidal thoughts.

“We are even breaking down the time of day: how much time a person spends with family, at work and so on,” Dorji said. Mathematical formulae have even been devised to reduce happiness to its tiniest component parts. Every two years, these indicators are to be reassessed through a nationwide questionnaire, said Karma Tshiteem, secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission, as he sat in his office at the end of a hard day of work that he said made him happy. Gross national happiness has a broader application for Bhutan as it races to preserve its identity and culture from the encroachments of the outside world.”How does a small country like Bhutan handle globalisation?” Dorji asked. “We will survive by being distinct, by being different.

“Bhutan is pitting its four pillars, nine domains and 72 indicators against the 48 channels of Hollywood and Bollywood that have invaded since television was permitted a decade ago. “Before June 1999 if you asked any young person who is your hero, the inevitable response was, ‘The king,’ ” Dorji said. “Immediately after that it was David Beckham, and now it’s 50 Cent, the rap artist. Parents are helpless.” So if GNH may hold the secret of happiness for people suffering from the collapse of financial institutions abroad, it offers something more urgent here in this pristine culture.”Bhutan’s story today is, in one word, survival,” Dorji said. ” Gross national happiness is survival; how to counter a threat to survival.”

Draft Statement of Conscience on Peacemaking

/ uurevjeff / 4 Comments

While I do not object to the contents of the current draft Unitarian Universalist Statement of Conscience on Peacemaking, it simply does not go far enough to garner my support as a statement of vision and aspiration. Therefore, I intend to submit my thoughts in the coming weeks, possibly as a prelude to a formal suggestion for amendment at General Assembly. I have drafted language that I might use in these discussions. I share them with you to solicit your feedback, so that I can be as clear and effective as possible. I would appreciate your reactions to the following.

The present draft Unitarian Universalist Statement of Conscience on Peacemaking leaves insufficient room for me as a pacifist to enter in affirmation. The Theological Principles expressed are those of a pacifist. However, the assessment of Where We Stand permits too great a latitude for armed aggression and the self-perpetuating cycle of violence to continue from one generation to the next. I cannot condone the use of military force as a method to inflict the will of one group of peoples over another, regardless of the sincerity of the purpose. Those who live by the sword will always find justification in “humanitarian purposes” and “self-defense.”

The proposed statement represents an admirable first step. However, I need this Statement to clearly express a Unitarian Universalist vision of future human society. In order to open space for me in the document, I respectfully suggest the following words be inserted just before the final sentence of the draft.

Unitarian Universalists envision a future society free of violence and oppression, of unlimited justice and freedom, without which there can be no peace. Humankind took thousands of years to hone its knowledge and fashion its skills and behaviors as war makers; it will take time to fully reclaim our human legacy as peacekeepers. We pray that someday all men and women will live with peace in their hearts and love for each other. Until that time, in reverence for all life, we covenant to practice peace by minimizing violence at all levels of human interaction.

Atheist Dictionary of Religious Terms – Religion

/ uurevjeff / 2 Comments

Religion

Merriam-Webster
From: Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back
Date: 13th century
1 b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
4 a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Hexham’s Concise Dictionary of Religion
Hundreds of different definitions of religion exist each reflecting either a scholarly or a dogmatic bias depending in the last resort on the presuppositions of the person making the definition. Religion clearly contains intellectual, ritual, social, and ethical elements, bound together by an explicit or implicit belief in the reality of an unseen world, whether this belief be expressed in supernaturalistic or idealistic terms. A number of the more common definitions are those that presume the existence of the Sacred (Peter Berger, Emile Durkheim), the Supernatural/Divine (James Frazer, Immanuel Kant, Rodney Stark), or Order/Purpose (William James).

Some definitions of the term focus more on the presence of different states of being and humankind’s grappling to come to terms with those differences, without making judgments regarding the nature of other states. George Hegel called religion “the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind,” while Friedrich Schleiermacher called it “a feeling for the infinite,” and Alfred North Whitehead described it as “what the individual does with his own solitariness.”

Some etymologists connect “religion” to the Latin ligare, which is the same root of the word ligament, meaning “to bind.” Re-ligare, therefore, would mean to bind again, perhaps in a ritualistic manner, or in meaningful practices.

Atheist Definition: Religion is the collection of practices by which groups of people come together repeatedly to find meaning in the relationship of themselves and of humankind to all existence, known and unknown.