Fairness, equity, leads to compassion

When we are sensitive and aware of the drive and desire to be fair in our relationships with others we become naturally more compassionate. Compassion flows from an awareness that often in life things are not fair for reasons far beyond the individual's control. Our heart goes out to the person whom we perceive as suffering. We want to relieve the person's suffering as much as possible.

Of course, we are often told that life isn't fair. Suck it up. Nobody owes you a living. You have to take care of yourself, don't expect a handout. In the United States since the days of Ronald Reagan this libertarian ethic of dog eat dog has grown and proliferated and led to inequality greater than at any time in our history. How this has happened in the richest, most powerful nation on earth, where abundance is visible on a grand scale, can only be explained by the triumph of the ego which demands increasing levels of assuasion, and leds to the insane and nonsensical extreme attitude that nothing is ever good enough.

The opposite of compassion is the narcissistic grandiose sense of entitlement that not only doesn't want to share but doesn't even perceive or appreciate another's need and desires. In our fears and insecurities we even view other people's suffering with contempt and disdain and congratulate ourselves for not being like "them". Marie Antoinette is often quoted as saying, when she was told of the starvation of the peasants, "If they have no bread, let them eat cake." and that has become much of the attitude in the United States promoted by the 1% who have bought our government officials and design our policies which defines our inequalities as just. There is no compassion because the inequalities are of no concern other than the extent to which they are addressed would interfere with "business".

The ethic of predatory capitalism is based on greed and there is no room for compassion. Compassion interferes with the bottom line and cannot be considered in making sound business decisions which the stockholders will approve. Most of us are complicit in this predatory capitalist ethic when we consider our stock portfolios, our 401 Ks, our retirement funds. As much as we Unitarian Universalists like to promote our second principle, when we look more deeply at the values which contribute to our financial decisions, if we are honest, we will find that they are antithetical to what we superficially profess. When it comes to making money, compassion and equity are values which are marginalized, because winning and profit become paramount. We all want a "good deal."

Jesus was clear about all of this. In fact He couldn't have been clearer. He didn't mince His words. He said directly to the rich young man, "sell all you have. Give the money to the poor, and come follow me." And, the story goes on, the rich young man became sad and walked away. We, too, know better, but, let's be practical, equity and compassion are not really in the best interest of the ego, and we, become sad, and walk away too.

We are told by the public health professionals that depression and anxiety are large mental health problems in the United States with anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety drugs being the biggest type of medications sold in the United States. We have bought so deeply into the predatory capitalistic ethic that we don't even know what ails us. We are sad and anxious because our predominant social values are not congruent with The Good Life. We pay lip service to our second principle, but we eschew any close look at the implications it has for our behavior and life style. It is this cognitive dissonance that contributes to the psychological symptoms from which so many people in our society suffer.

We Unitarian Universalists know a better way. We covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion. Would that we actually practice what we preach.

"It's not fair!!!"

Fairness is not the same thing as justice as we have described in previous articles. Justice is compliance with laws, regulations, and ethical codes enforced by those with the power in our society to punish misbehavior. Fairness, equity, has to do with right relationship, balance, and often is proportional in the sense of "to whom much is given much is expected."

My thirteen year old daughter complained to me that I was not being fair since I was asking things of her I was not asking of her eight year old brother. I said to her, "Listen Katie, you're 13 and he's 8. You're in eighth grade and he's in third. You're a girl and he's a boy. You play the piano and he's tone deaf. He picked up and got the snake out of the house and you wouldn't even touch it with a broom. If I was to treat you fair it wouldn't be fair. The only way to be fair is not to be fair. Now go do what I asked you to do." She relented and begrudgingly did as I asked, and I had a moment of clarity. Fairness, equity, is not treating people similar or the same, but rather treating them according to what is right, meaning, what is balanced.

Fairness, equity, is about relationship, not about laws, and rules, and codes. Fairness can only be determined bilaterally or multilaterally with all the stakeholders in the situation and relationship participating in the negotiation. What might be fair and equitable for some, may not be equitable for all.

Fairness is something we feel in our guts, in our viscera. It is the first thing that children complain about when they put words together in a sentence, "Mommy it's not fair!!!!" Freud said that it was the libido which makes the world go around, our sex drive, but I disagree. Sex is nice and an important drive to ensure the perpetuation of our species, but what we, as humans, want more than anything, is equity; we want things to be fair and when things are not fair we struggle to rectify the imbalance sometimes in tragic and vengeful ways.

On the spiritual plane there is no justice, equity, and compassion because there is no need. We are one with the all and become aware that we are not separate egos but part of everything and what happens to our brothers and sisters happens to us. Our well being depends on the well being of our brothers and sisters. On this plane of unconditional love, justice, equity, and compassion have no meaning. The concepts are moot, unnecessary, irrelevant, not needed. So, what surpasses the virtues of the second principle, is Unconditional Love. Until then, if nothing else, strive to be fair, whatever that may mean in all your relationships. It is hard to experience love if things aren't fair.

Whatever happened to mercy?

A word that we rarely use any more in contemporary America is "mercy". As a young boy, brought up in the Roman Catholic church, I was taught to perform "works of mercy" which usually are thought of as giving alms, visiting the sick, and helping people in need.

Mercy is an attitude and behavior that is based on justice, equity, and compassion. It usually implies a leniency, and flexibility in abrogating what might be considered "just deserts" or consequences for illegal, unwise, or immoral behavior. In other words, a person deserves a harsh punishment or consequences, and is shown "mercy" in the sense of clemency or commuting of the sentence.

Mercy can be based on an ethic of forgiveness or it can be based on charitable acts to ease the suffering of another whether self-imposed or the result of uncontrollable circumstances. Granting mercy also implies a superordinate/subordinate position in the sense that a person with power or more resources in a one-up position helps someone in a one down position.

A "you made your bed, now lie in it" attitude while it may be just, and equitable, does not seem compassionate and not merciful. To be granted mercy can be soul saving and restore one's faith in human kind, God, and the world, or it can be enabling that allows the person to continue in his or her dysfunctional ways. Paradoxically, granting mercy may not always be merciful, if the person's dysfunctional behavior is only likely to continue. On the other hand, granting mercy can sometimes be a miraculous, conversion experience that significantly changes a person's life. Often the giver of mercy cannot know the outcome, and certainly can't control it. Mother Teresa said that she and her sisters of charity did their acts of mercy in the streets of Calcutta with the poor and the sick to be faithful not to be successful. Whether she and her sisters were successful or not in reducing sickness and poverty in Calcutta was in God's hands. Success was none of her concern. She did what she did out of faith in Jesus' injunction "to love as I have loved" and her intention and motivation came from the desire to be faithful not successful.

Unitarian Universalists may want to adopt Mother Teresa's understanding so that our following our second principle of justice, equity, and compassion is not necessarily with the intention of being successful. Bringing about justice and equity with our individual acts, person to person, may not always produce the desired results because of circumstances we can't control, but we should be faithful to our principle because of what the practice does for the doer if not the recipient. We are called, all of us, but especially those of us with power and resources, to be merciful in what is rapidly becoming a cynical, hard, "I don't care" world. Extending mercy and engaging in acts of mercy is a manifestation of our faith in our first and second principles.

My Kind Of Church Music - Mercy, Mercy Me, Marvin Gaye

Why be just, equitable, compassionate if a person didn't have inherent worth and dignity?

The second principle: justice, equity and compassion flows from the first principle: the inherent worth and dignity of every person for without recognizing and acknowledging the inherent worth and dignity of every person we might not be motivated to treat them with justice, equity and compassion.

Feelings and attitudes of entitlement, moral superiority, a sense of specialness, competitiveness, all act to undermine our sensitivity for justice, equity, and compassion. We live in a capitalistic system supposedly based on merit, a free market, an even playing field where everyone has the right to pursue happiness but some people have more advantages and resources in playing the societal game than others. We describe upper class people as born with a "silver spoon" in his or her mouth, or having started life on "third base". The idea of a free market, merit, an even playing field is a societal myth when the sociologists actually look at the class structure in the United States and consider the life prospects of groups of people with certain demographic characteristics such as ethnic, racial, religious, sex, and class. In objectively considering the second principle we must recognize that circumstances of birth, upbringing, and education both informal and formal heavily skew the reality of what we might consider just, equal, and compassionate.

We can deal with the injustice, inequality, and institutionalized oppression at a macro-systemic level attempting to influence social policies, laws, and organizational regulations and practices, and at a micro-systemic level in our personal relationships face to face, person to person. As a practical matter, Unitarian Universalists apply the principle at both levels macro and micro, and yet something happens at a macro level which is much more pernicious and evil when becomes part of a group and organization. Corporate behavior, with its incentives based primarily on profit, often is unjust, inequitable, and incompassionate. Countries go to war, corporations pollute the environment, and organizations operate in self serving ways to enrich their prime operatives while exploiting the people they serve.

People do things to other people as a representative of a corporation or organization they would never do to a person face to face if they knew them personally. When personal relationships are involved, people often expect and receive "special treatment", rules are bent, individual circumstances are taken into consideration, and a more "human face" is put on the encounter.

There is a popular literature emerging with titles like "Assholes: A Theory" by Aaron James, and "The Essence of Jerkitude" by Eric Schwitzgebel. As a society we have become very cynical and feed on a daily diet of irony. We have become inured to injustice, inequality, and a lack of compassion as "the price of doing business" or "that's just how things are." In our high paced, stressful, digital age of social media, rapidly changing economy, governmental corruption by a radical capitalist ethic, we have come to accept the small injustices and sometimes large ones as "par for the course". Watching the injustice, the inequality, and the lack of compassion around us has led us to slowly accept what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil." Like the proverbial frogs in the pot of cold water heating up on the stove, we are stewing in the hell of our own making creating what Gerald Celente at the Trends Research Institute has named the "I don't care" state.

It seems that Unitarian Universalists do care, though, at least on paper when they drafted and adopted their seven principles, the second one being to covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion. We are a light unto a cynical world. We are a group that still believes that justice, equity, and compassion is important in our personal lives as well as in our community and corporate. It takes great courage, energy, and sacrifice sometimes to stand in solidarity with those oppressed and speak truth to power. This courage, and willingness to sacrifice comes from our faith and commitment that The Good Life is based on a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that this belief is not just empty, pie in the sky, psychobabble, but based on practices of justice, equity, and compassion, not just for some who are deserving, entitled, morally superior, special, but for all our brothers and sisters who share the interdependent web of life with us all.

Compassion requires following the Platinum Rule

The word "compassion" means "suffering with", but it is different than sympathy which usually means the same thing. Compassion is more like empathy, being able to put oneself in the shoes of the other person, to understand the person's suffering, but not to feel the same thing, to maintain a position in one's own world and yet not allowing oneself to get into the position of the suffering person completely. Compassion in this sense is often a "one down" dynamic, someone in a better position understanding, and caring and trying to help another person in a worse position.

It takes a big person to be compassionate, to get out of one's self and consider the feelings, situation, and circumstances of another. Often people refer to the Golden rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" when they think about and talk about compassion. How would you like to be treated like the other person is, or be in the other person's situation? However, the Golden Rule doesn't quite get to the essence of compassion because it is based on an ethic of self interest. Treat other people the way you want to be treated or you can't expect them to treat you the way you would like to be treated. In A Course In Miracles, this is called "give to get" which is the game of the ego. This "give to get" game is not true compassion in the spiritual sense that the second principle is asking us to affirm and promote.

The compassion of the second principle is much deeper and more demanding than the Golden rule; it implies the Platinum rule. The Platinum rule is "do unto others as they would have you do unto them." As a 68 year old white middle class male, if I treat a 16 year old pregnant, inner-city, African American,  female the same way I want to be treated, I probably would be way off the mark. If I am to treat her as she wants to be treated, I would need to know several things. What it's like to be African American, What it's like to live in poverty in the inner city. What it's like to be a teen ager in this day and age. What it's like to be female. What it's like to be pregnant. And these questions are only the tip of the ice berg.

Before I can exhibit compassion, I would have to have some curiosity and interest in people who are very different from me. I would most likely have to be willing to explore circumstances, and dynamics that are outside of my comfort zone and usual experience. I would have to be willing to place myself in a not knowing position in proximity to the person I profess to want to understand and care about. I would have to be willing to listen and learn about a person's experience of suffering as well as the person's joys and experiences that are precious. I would have to willing to appreciate the meaning that another person makes of themselves and the world that is quite different from my own and even threatening.

I haven't found many people in my life who are mature enough, over themselves enough, to be truly compassionate. It is much easier for people to be superficially sympathetic, but to be truly compassionate takes courage, the courage to overcome the fears of people and situations and events so different from those we would want to happen to us. People don't say this verbally, but their behavior and attitudes often demonstrate the thoughts like these, "I don't want to listen to this." "I can't handle this. I'm not going there." "I'm busy enough and stressed enough with my own life than to get involved in this." etc.

Linda McCullough Moore writes a telling passage in her story, On My Own Way Now, in the Sun Magazine in April, 2014 about at elderly demented woman in a nursing home:

     This singsong woman here tonight: I want to ask if she knows my mother, what with them both having light-brown hair, both playing the guitar and singing "Side by Side."
     "Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money/ maybe we're ragged and funny/ but we'll travel the road/sharing our load/side by side."
     "Do you know my mother?" I ask the woman.
      She scowls and looks around for someone who might rescue her. She's got songs for us, but nothing else."

The singsong lady, god bless her, has sympathy and songs, but no compassion. Volunteering to sing songs for the old folks perhaps is nice enough. It's better than nothing. But the singsong lady is too frightened, to unsure about working with demented, geriatric nursing home patients, to have anything else for them.

Most of us don't have what it takes to be compassionate. Our fears of other people's differences and suffering frighten us so we keep distance, and protect ourselves. Compassion takes tremendous maturity and courage. It is a very difficult virtue to cultivate and practice. Compassion requires us to move outside our comfort zone and that is a requirement that often blocks us from becoming our better selves and being there for a person in his or her suffering.

We are called by the second principle to "suck it up", overcome our fears, rise above our egos, and extend the Love of God to another of God's creatures. After all, a brother or a sister is a part of us. When we realize that we are all in this thing called life together and that we swim or sink as part of the interdependent web of existence as one, we will have finally experienced what the second principle is naming compassion.

Retributive or restorative justice?

The King's justice, retributive justice, not only often misses the mark, it becomes criminal in and of itself because of the injustices it perpetrates against offenders, victims, and the community it professes to serve. The criminal justice system is very self serving and serves primarily the requirements and expectations of the primary stakeholders in the system itself, the judge, district attorney, defense attorneys and politicians who have a stake in the results the system produces. Because of these special interests the motivation and intention is to win in what has been set up as an adversarial contest, not to determine the truth or repair broken and injured relationships.

However, as we have learned increasingly over the last 25 years, there is a better way to do justice and the term that has been applied to this way is "restorative justice." The purpose of restorative justice practices is to determine what the harm that was done, and how best to repair the harm. The primary stakeholders in the restorative justice system are the victim, the offender, and the community. Crime is defined, not as a disturbance to the King's peace and civil rule, but rather as a violation of reciprocity of relationships through the harm that was done. The perpetration of this harm generates obligations to the offender, victim, and the community to put things right, to repair the harm.

Howard Zehr in his book, "The Little Book Of Restorative Justice", points out four key factors in the difference between a retributive and a restorative criminal justice system. First, the retributive criminal justice system defines crime as a violation of the law and an offense against the state while in the restorative justice system crime is defined as a violation of people and relationships. Second, in the retributive criminal justice system the purpose is to determine guilt and to punish while in the restorative justice system the purpose is to determine the nature and extent of the harm and to ascertain the obligations for repairing the harm and restoring right relationship. Third, in the retributive criminal justice system justice is defined as placing blame, determining guilt, and imposing pain (vengeance) while in the restorative justice system, justice is defined as involving the victim, the offender, and the community to determine harm and developing a plan to put things right by repairing the harm. Fourth, the central focus of the retributive criminal justice system is assuring that offenders are punished, and the focus of the restorative justice system is to address victim and community needs by holding offenders accountable for repairing the harm they have caused.

The second principle of Unitarian Univeralism is to affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations. It gives no clues or instructions on how to do this. "The devil is in the details" as the slogan goes. It sounds good in theory, but what does it look like when the rubber hits the road as they say. As I have gotten more involved in a prison ministry mentoring men in jail, and working in prisons and jails, it has become very apparent to me that our criminal justice system is criminal and creates many unintended negative consequences. Recidivism rates, in general, because it changes if we consider subgroups instead of the general population, is 65%. In other words, two thirds of the people we incarcerate in our society will return to prison after their release. Is it because they are bad people, or because our system is broken and doesn't work? I know of no other business or service organization that could survive and succeed with a two thirds failure rate. However, too few Americans question the failing system which we support with our tax dollars.

Jesus and many of his apostles were incarcerated and executed in the early days of the Christian church. Jesus seems to have understood the injustice in the retributive criminal justice system. He cleverly convinced the pharisees not to execute the adulterous women even though she was guilty under the law. Jesus was very much into healing and restoring broken relationships and His concern was always for the person not for the State or the ruling class of the day. Jesus counter-intuitively said we should love our enemies not blame, assign guilt, and punish them. We humans have been very slow in learning the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach us over 2,000 years ago. His life and moral vision and spirituality were solidly based on justice, equity, and compassion, and while cultural Christians profess to believe in Him and His teachings, you can't tell it by the criminal justice system they have created and support in the United States of America.

Justice is a beginning step on the path to experiencing the Tao

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone. 
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done. 
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds, 
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order. 
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness. 
When goodness is lost, there is kindness. 
When kindness is lost, there is justice. 
When justice is lost, there ritual. 
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion. 

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 28

When a person is kind and acts out of love, justice is not necessary, justice is not an issue. Unfortunately, people often act in other than loving ways because they want material things, power, or simply to have their own way because they egotistically think they are right. Justice is a very poor substitute for love, for kindness, but in the ego world of drama it is necessary to bring structure to unbridled, undisciplined desires.

However, when the disciplinarian, the enforcer, attempts to enforce the law, the effort is often resisted, avoided, even attacked, and the issue moves quickly from doing what is the right thing to winning in the contest between compliance and freedom to do as one wills. If the disciplinarian, the enforcer, fails to control the non compliers, we are left with ritual, an empty shell game extensively described in Franz Kafka's great novel, The Trial, where the innocent defendant finally, in exhausted desperation with the futility of the criminal justice system, kills himself. A living example today is the incarcerated human beings at Guantanamo who have been subjected to institutionalized ritual of containing "terrorism", and who have wound up killing themselves in high numbers.

When the Tao is lost, hopefully there is some goodness, meaning, I think, blessedness, and if goodness, blessedness, is lost, hopefully people will still be kind, and if they are no longer kind, let's hope that there is some justice, and if there is no justice which is where are at all too often today, we rely on rituals, going through the motions, paying lip service, and becoming spectators, as if we were watching the gladiatorial spectacles of ancient Rome, to the legal contests of our modern day "justice" system.

People have slowly grown cynically accustomed to the lack of justice especially when it comes to upper middle class, high class people, politicians, and corporations. Everyone knows that if you have money and power you can beat the system. Corruption in the U.S. especially in the financial industry and other high level corporate and governmental activities is prevalent. Lobbyists, working for the corporations, and those with large financial interests, write the laws and regulations of the country, and most Senators and congresspeople are financed by vested interests who expect, not what is best for the people and the country, but what is best for those who spend money to put these politicians in office. This system of "pay to play" has only gotten worse with recent Supreme Court rulings that have held that money is speech and those with money get to talk more about what they want to have happen in our democracy than poor people.

Poor people know that the deck is stacked against them, and that the trappings of our democracy are pretty much empty ritual. There not only is no Tao, or goodness, or kindness, there is no justice, but only ritual, and as the Tao says, this brings confusion.

Confusion brings fear, anxiety, anger, depression, and feelings of futility and defeat. "You can't fight city hall," as the old expression goes. An yet Mother Teresa said, "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." 

Can justice be restored person to person? Yes, and restorative justice is a way. Can kindness be restored person to person? Yes, start with the next person you encounter today. Can goodness be restored? Yes, learn how to pray and develop a sense of reverence and gratitude, and if you do these things you will become one with the Tao.

An eye for an eye = justice, really!?

The Code of Hammurabi has been around for almost four thousand years, you know, the eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth stuff. Now days, its known as retributive justice, you do the crime, you do the time. As an added twist "the king's justice" was mixed in during the feudal era so that injustice was no longer between the perpetrator and the victim but between the perpetrator and the king, the State. Victims were marginalized as the State took crime personally, a disruption of the King's peace, or civil order. And so justice became perverted. It became a game between the State, the district attorney, and the perpetrator and now days there is all kinds of chicanery with plea deals, copped pleas, reduced charges in return for testimony, high priced legal hijinks with attorneys known for working "magic" to get perpetrators off the charges. Is this the kind of justice that Unitarian Universalists are covenanting to affirm and promote? Business as usual in our criminal justice system?

Today's criminal justice system is criminal. It is only a naive person or someone politically cynical who would expect any kind of "justice" to come from it. The criminal justice system has very little to do with justice or the truth. All parties to today's criminal justice system has a personal stake in it from the judge, to the district attorney, to the defense attorney, to the accused, to the victim, to the community and none of these parties rarely want justice and truth. They each want something different and for every expectation and requirement there is a cost as well as a benefit, and each party is competing to achieve the greatest benefit with the least costs possible. What is in the hearts of each of these stakeholders is not justice but to win, and if winning takes bending the rules, avoiding, denying, or ignoring the truth then so be it. That's how the game is played.

Justice in the United States and most of the world is retributive justice. Vengeance, retaliation, retribution is not only tolerated and accepted but often times encouraged and advocated. It has filled America's prisons to record breaking numbers in the world per capita, and America is only one of a handful of countries, and the only first world democratic country which still executes people. Americans are a vengeful, vicious people compared to other countries and cultures. It is within this society that Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote their second principle: justice, equity, and compassion, and yet, most Unitarian Universalists have no, if any idea, of what justice actually entails in their own country. They say that ignorance is bliss and Unitarian Universalists, like most Americans, are blissfully ignorant when it comes to our criminal criminal justice system.

How can a principle be affirmed and promoted when the adherents covenanting don't even know the elementary facts of the situation?

First UUs need to educate themselves and then others about the injustices of the criminal justice system. They will be taking on a powerful system with vested interests. Second, UUs need to work towards a change of heart from a retributive to a restorative understanding of justice. Third, UUs need to work for change so that the criminal justice system can be more just and equitable. If UUs are serious about their second principle, they must bear witness to the dysfunctional aspects of the criminal justice system in place, and pave the path for a better way.

Compassion is based on an awareness of our interdependence

Most human beings don't like to see other human beings, or animals for that matter, suffer. Seeing other people suffer makes us suffer too. In the helping professions, this exposure to others suffering is called "vicarious traumatization." Sometimes it can be called "compassion fatigue." While as Unitarian Universalists we covenant to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in  human relations there is only so much we can take before we turn a blind eye. After all we have to take care of ourselves because if we can't function, we won't be any good for anyone else either.

This whole thing about compassion sounds good, but really, how practical is it if I am to maintain the life style to which I have become accustomed, and now I think I deserve? The rich young man goes to Jesus and asks Him what he must do to have eternal life, and Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The young man insists that he already does this and something is still missing, and Jesus tells him to sell all that he has, give the money to the poor, and come follow Him. And then the story says, that the young man became very sad for he had many possessions, and he went away. Don't we all turn away at this point. We try to be just, and equitable, but this compassion thing just takes us too far down a road we don't want to and are unwilling to go.

People are dying of starvation around the world and Americans spend more money on pet food and lawn fertilizer than any nation in the world. What's up with that? When projects of social uplift are recommended, people, with a sense of fright, complain about their high taxes. We want to keep what's ours and resent having to help people less fortunate.

What we fail to recognize is that we are all in this thing called life together. The Universalists have it right with their insight that our brothers and sisters are part of us. As John Dunne wrote in his famous poem, no man is an island, as much as we like to think of ourselves as separate, apart, and not connected to the suffering of the fellow humans on our planet, we are even if we don't recognize it. If you doubt our insistence on the illusion of separateness, consider the panic and nastiness over immigration. If we truly believed that we are one humanity on this planet why even have national borders that are enforced at all?

When we overcome our tribal, chauvinistic mentality we realize that "we are our neighbor's keeper, because our neighbor is but our larger self" as UU Minister, David Rys Williams, is to have said according to Richard Gilbert in his essay "Justice, Equity, and Compassion in Human Relations" in With Purpose And Principle. We recognize our interdependence when we exude compassion because we realize that what we do for our brothers and sisters we do for ourselves. When we care for another, we first and foremost care for ourselves, and nurture within ourselves that which makes us most human. It is this recognition that what we do for another, at a deep level we do for ourselves, that makes us better people and is the basis of a deep spiritual compassion.

It says in A Course Of Miracles that the purpose of life is to bring about the Atonement, At-One-Ment which I define as "when everyone loves everyone all the time." A crucial activity to achieve the At-One-Ment is practicing compassion which we UUs covenant to affirm and promote.

It isn't fair!

While justice is often determined by the laws of a society and is culturally determined, equity, fairness, "right relationship," as the Buddhists put it, is a different thing. Sometimes equity is just but often it is not. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer as is happening at an ever accelerating pace in America as well as around the world, based on a supposedly market driven capitalism, may well be just but it is not equitable.

Too often people are confused about the difference between equity and justice. Little children as they learn to talk and can put words together in a sentence will say, "It's not fair!!!!" Freud said it was the libido which makes human beings tick, but I think he got it wrong, it is not the libido, the sex drive, but the desire for equity, for fairness. We feel it in our viscera, our guts.

We put a certain amount into a relationship, a family, a community, a society and we expect a certain amount back and if we don't get it, we feel cheated, betrayed, disrespected, treated unfairly. There are certain relationships which by virtue of the nature of the relationships entail certain obligations such as between a parent and a child, a community and its citizens. Often times when we believe we have been treated unfairly we want to complain, "It's not fair!" and how often are we told, "Life's not fair. Suck it up. Quit your complaining." and yet at a deeper spiritual level even though we are silenced, we still harbor our resentments, our victimhood, our grievances, and unspoken, these resentments and grievances get acted out in sometimes terrible ways.

In a little different context the term "relational aggression" has come into vogue and the game often being played passive aggressively is that the players are following the letter of the law so they cannot be called unjust, but they eschew and deny the ethical obligations for equity, fair treatment. Sometimes the cry of "hypocrite" arises and if the person accused of hypocrisy is a person with power and high social status, the charge is laughed at toward the marginalized victim.

We struggle to make things fair. As Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, the psychiatrist who formulated the model of Contextual Therapy, taught us, it's like we have a ledger sheet with everyone we have been in relationship with. On that ledger sheet are our credits as well as our debts. We, as human beings, desperately want our ledger sheets in balance. If anyone owes us anything, we want to collect the debt. If we owe anything to anyone else, we want to pay our debt to "clean the slate" unless we are so psychopathic or narcissistic that we do not even acknowledge the debt owed. Before I die I would like to balance all my ledger sheets. I don't want to owe anyone anything, and I want to collect all that is owed to me, if reasonably possible. I can, then, die with peace of mind.

Consciously or unconsciously we spend our energy and time trying to balance our ledger sheets. It is a positive thing that Unitarian Universalism acknowledges that equity in human relations is an important responsibility for someone leading a spiritual life to acknowledge and maintain or rectify. In Christianity, the prevalent belief and attraction to the religion is the erroneous belief that Jesus made up for our sins and inequities by dying on the cross for us. The term for this belief is substitutionary atonement, and all too often relieves people of the guilt of knowing that they have made mistakes and failed to some extent in maintaining and working towards equity, fairness, in their relationships. Whether the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is a benefit to human relations or a barrier and obstacle to "right relationship" is for each one of us personally to determine. I think it is a barrier because it resolves me of responsibility having put the obligation on a magical man/god who has taken care of my obligations for me. On the other hand, the law of Karma would say that, in the long run, God, the Universe, our Higher Power looks out for us, and it all comes out in the wash whether in this life time or the next if you believe in such a thing.

Unitarian Univeralists usually don't believe in the traditional heaven where we go when we die. UUs believe that heaven is here on earth depending on what we make of our lives for ourselves and for each other. As Rev. Kaaren Anderson at First Unitarian in Rochester, NY says, "We, UUs, don't believe in getting people into heaven, but rather heaven into people." I would guess, if asked, Rev. Anderson, or any UU preacher might say, that the way to get heaven into people is to cultivate and maintain equitable relations with people, groups, societies here on earth. Are you being fair? How fair are your relationships with others? What can be done to rectify some of the inequities? Pick one and do it today, and tomorrow, etc.

Jesus says that unless we become like little children we will not enter the kingdom of heaven and what's the one thing that children are most sensitive to and want most, things to be fair.

What is justice?

Are justice, equity, and compassion synonyms or are they something uniquely different? These terms get thrown together in the second principle and there is a pleasing meter to the triadic expression of "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations." Why not justice, equity, and compassion to all sentient beings and the whole world of which we are a part? I don't see any reason to stop with just human beings. What about environmental justice, and equity, and compassion - if we had a little more of that like Native Americans maybe we wouldn't be in this crisis of climate change having soiled our own nest, now, beyond recovery.

If we take the terms one at a time, let's start with justice, it has to do with the breaking of the law or a moral code of some sort or ethical principles. Of course, the problem is that some things are legal but immoral such as segregation in the Jim Crow days, or what we do now with our criminal justice system where we legally incarcerate so many more people of color than we do white people when they commit the same crimes, or abortion, which while legal, many people consider immoral. On the other hand, there are things that may be moral but which are considered illegal like nonviolent protest against injustice when demonstrators get arrested and "punished" for breaking the law advocating for some greater good.

Using Lawrence Kohlberg's model of moral development most of what we consider justice falls at the stage of "conventional" thinking and behavior. If a person moves to a post conventional awareness, he or she, might operate in a moral and loving way, but outside the law.

Most of the justice in the United States is retributive justice, instead of restorative justice, where the Code of Hammurabi, an eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth, is practiced. If you do the crime, you do the time. If you do something unjust you can expect to get punished and most of our society gloats and relishes the punishment even if it is with a guilty veil of decorum. Spanking a child for hitting a sibling doesn't work. Executing killers doesn't work either, but many would say that justice demands it and until this kind of justice is down, victims can't rest.

So what kind of justice is it that Unitarian Universalists are promoting and affirming in their human relations? I have never heard a good sermon on this nor read any UU theological treatises on it. If you have, leave a reference in the comments. It seems that this term "justice" is a more sophisticated concept which means a lot more than alluded to with the saying of the word, as it slips so shiny off the tongue, as part of the second principle.

Jesus and Buddha didn't seem to be big on justice. Jesus let the adulterous woman go who under the law should have been stoned to death. Buddha cautioned against vengeance and counseled detachment as a means of limiting or eliminating suffering. In A Course Of Miracles forgiveness is advocated as the means to dispel resentment and grievances. What is being suggested in the perennial philosophy is the rising above the ego compulsions for "getting even" as being another injustice. As Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes us both blind."

My Kind Of Church Music - Tom Dooley, The Kingston Trio

July's theme: justice, equity, compassion

The theme for July, 2014 on UU A Way Of Life is the second principle of Unitarian Universalism: justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

I was in a pizza shop in Brockport Monday evening, June 30, 2014, and an old fat guy came in and ordered a slice of pizza with pepperoni, sausage, onions, and green pepper on it. He also bought a bag of potato chips and a 20 oz. diet pepsi. I thought to myself uncharitably, "Oh that diet Pepsi should assuage your guilt over that pizza and potato chips alright. What about you daily servings of veggies and fruit?"

The young woman, a college student, swiped his credit card and asked him to sign it. He said something about the line for the tip and asked her, "How much of tip do you want?"

She laughed and said, "$100.00 bucks."

He said "Okay" and signed the credit card slip with the tip at $100.00"

"I can't take that she shrieked. I was only kidding."

"That's what you asked for, right?" the guy said evenly.

"Yes, but I was only kidding. I didn't really mean it."

"What do you make in here," he said, "minimum wage?"

"I get a little more than that," she said.

"What do you do when you aren't working here," he asked.

"I go to college," she said, "I'm going to be a senior next year in Health Science."

"Put it toward you college fund," he said.

"Bob!" she called to her boss back in the kitchen. "This guy wants to give me $100.00 bucks. What should I do?"

All I could hear was some muffled reply which sounded like, "Shut up and take it."

I know who this guy is even though he doesn't know me. I think he is a Unitarian Universalist, and he goes to church in Rochester, NY while we were in Brockport, NY. I wondered what his motivation was in making this serendipity gift? Could it be a sense of justice, equity, and compassion for this hard working young woman, trying to get through college?

Who knows. I don't. Some might say he was nuts, had ulterior motives, must be rich and just throwing money around, or maybe he had deeper motives coming from values that include generosity, charity, equity, and a simple desire to make someone's life a little better.

Is the demonization of the unemployed immoral?

Is the demonization of the unemployed immoral? It certainly violates the UU second principle of "justice, equity, and dignity for every person".

David Sirota: Why the ‘Lazy Jobless’ Myth Persists - Truthdig:

"During the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, conservatives trotted out the shibboleth that says the program fosters sloth. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., for instance, said added unemployment benefits mean people are “encouraged not to go look for work.” Columnist Pat Buchanan said expanding these benefits means “more people will hold off going back looking for a job.” And Fox News’ Charles Payne applauded the effort to deny future unemployment checks because he said it would compel layabouts “to get off the sofa.”

The thesis undergirding all the rhetoric was summed up by conservative commentator Ben Stein, who insisted that “the people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.”

The idea is that unemployment has nothing to do with structural economic forces or rigged public policies and everything to do with individual motivation. Yes, we’re asked to believe that the 15 million jobless Americans are all George Costanzas—parasitic loafers occasionally pretending to seek work as latex salesmen, but really just aiming to decompress on a refrigerator-equipped recliner during a lifelong Summer of George."

Sirota goes on to describe 3 reasons he thinks that people behave this way making negative moral judgements about the unemployed.

First is the Just World Fallacy. People believe that life is fair and people get what they deserve. Unemployed people deserve their lot in life and they could improve their situations if they would just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Second is narcissism. People like to make themselves feel good at other peoples expense. So people feel superior by calling the unemployed names like "welfare queens", "poor white trash", "slackers",  "loosers", etc.

Third is fear. People are anxious about the economy being in bad shape and they structure their anxiety by thinking that they can control things. The myth of the "lazy unemployed" gives people a sense of explanation for forces they don't understand. Since they are not "lazy" they fool themselves into thinking that they are exempt from social forces which they are oppressed by.

These ideas are political, psychological, societal, but most of all spiritual. We still live in a Calvinistic country that is judgmental about the poor as not being God's chosen people and somehow deserving of their own fate. Jesus never taught this. He taught the opposite that the poor will find it easier getting to heaven than the rich.

Unitarian Universalists not only value justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, we also have a profound respect and understanding of the interdependent web of existence. We are well aware that we are interdependent and the forces that contribute to unemployment run much deeper than individual motivation. As Sirota points out, there five or more applicants for every job from the most menial to the highest paid. The problem of unemployment is not individual motivation but the "system" which is skewed for the wealthy who run it at the expense of the working class.

As a member of the Brockport Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, I constantly speak up for the unemployed. I do what I can to support people who are going through a tough time. At BUUF we contribute to the Brockport Food shelf and help people going through unemployment in practical ways as well as moral support and social advocacy.

I was very distressed this week to learn that tax cuts were extended to the 2% of richest Americans creating huge deficits for current and future generations to pay. Moral behavior is not only a characteristic of individuals, but also a characteristic of groups, organizations, and nations. The extension of the weath inequality in the United States is not only immoral but will have dire consequences in the future of our nation.

As Unitarian Universalists we are called by the Spirit of Life to be the conscience of the nation. As part of that conscience, what I witnessed this week gives one pause in the search for justice and peace.

Habitat for humanity has built or restored over 400,000 homes since its founding in 1976

Screw sub prime mortgages. The better way to get a house

From the Habitat For Humanity Web site:

ATLANTA (Dec. 13, 2010) – Habitat for Humanity surpassed its 400,000 house milestone during its most recent fiscal year. Since the nonprofit organization was founded in 1976, its self-help, hand-up model has resulted in rehabilitated, repaired or new housing for more than 2 million people worldwide.

The Flower City Habitat for Humanity, Rochester, NY.

Genesee County, NY Habitat for Humanity, Batavia, NY

RIT (Rochester Institute Of Technology) students helped build the sustainable Habitat home on Whitney Street in Rochester, NY last Spring, 2010. To read more about the project, click here.

Habitat for Humanity values justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, the 2nd principle of Unitarian Universalism, and hard work.
Habitat is a good example of people working within a practical theology of radically realized eschatology, that is, making heaven on earth.

Is this why the Catholic church is dying in Europe? Church fails to exercise justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

From Reuters:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A large majority of the Dutch public believes Roman Catholic Church authorities covered up sexual abuse, a poll found Sunday, revealing the extent of the damage to the Church's reputation in the Netherlands.

An independent commission said Thursday 1,975 people have declared themselves victims of sexual and physical abuse while under the care of the Church since 1945, ranking the Netherlands second worst behind Ireland in a scandal that has rocked the Church in Europe and the United States.

The Maurice de Hond poll showed 82 percent of respondents believe most Church authorities knew about the problems, while 81 percent believe the pope also knew. Some 78 percent said they were "extremely disappointed" by the abuses.


De Hond said the position of Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church authorities had been "strongly affected" by the scandal.

The survey also found that 69 percent think the Church should no longer make comments about how people should behave, but that percentage falls to 55 percent among Catholics.


Victims of abuse in the Netherlands want a full parliamentary inquiry into the scandal and the poll showed 56 percent of the Dutch were in favour of such an investigation.

The Roman Catholic church has failed, in the eyes of the Dutch, to act with justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, the 2nd principle of Unitarian Universalism. Hopefully, Unitarian Universalists deal with sexual abuse much better.