Unitarian Universalist young boy has a special need. Can you, will you, help?

Rev. Lee Richards, Pastor of the Pullman Memorial Universalist Church in Albion, NY, writes a blog and Tuesday, July 29, 2014, this post appeared. I thought some of the readers of the UU A Way Of Life might be interested. Pullman is a very small but old Universalist church in Western New York in Orleans County between Rochester and Buffalo and one of the poorest counties in New York State. In order for the goal to reached to provide Tyler with a Diabetic Alert Dog, people from outside the area will have to help as well. Thank you for your attention and possible assistance.

From Pastor Richards blog:

One of our younger church members needs help...

Tyler was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 7. He has what is known as "labile diabetes" which means that he has extreme, volatile fluctuations in his blood sugar on a regular basis, as much as from 35-600 in the course of a day. He uses an insulin pump and CGM device to try to control his diabetes, yet even with these amazing technological advances, he was still found on his bedroom floor in a grand mal seizure that almost took his life. The hope is that through fundraising his family will be able to provide a Diabetic Alert Dog (DAD) that is able to smell and alert for high and low blood sugars and possibly save his life in the future.

More information about Tyler and how a DAD can help, plus how you - the reader - can help may be found at: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/bring-home-kenai-a-diabetic-alert-dog-for-tyler-/210944#sthash.UAhwStog.dpuf

Please, if you can possibly can do so, follow the link and make a contribution for this boy and give him a chance to enjoy life more. As his pastor, I thank you.

Story of the day - Saving our elderly planet

"Honey, listen to these passages from Moore's book. I just love her writing. It is full of pathos and snark all at the same time.

"I feel like I'm dying, but I'm not exactly breaking new ground here. Someone in my family is always dying."
........
" We've just finished supper. Eileen has our mother on a three-day visit from the nursing home. I keep calling it parole."
........
"Aunt Mary's legs were swollen up like two balloons." Eileen's voice is schoolmarm taut. "She couldn't catch her breath, and when we took her to the E.R., they gave her morphine right away, and six different kinds of medicine, and I said to the doctor, 'Does this mean you're trying everything?' and he said, 'Yes.'"
     The Aunt Mary in question is 97.

"She is good," said Jennifer. "What's the book again?"

"This Road Will Take Us Closer To The Moon," said Troy. "It's a book of short stories. This story is Baby Doll."

"Kind of reminds me, the stuff about people always dying, of Flight Behavior and the climate change causing all the extinction of various species," said Jennifer.

"Birth and death: it's the cycle of life, right?" said Troy.

"When it's natural, yes, but how about when it's deliberately caused by human selfishness? Then it's evil, isn't it? Not just the natural cycle of life," said Jennifer.

"Yeah, I guess so. It's a good point," said Troy.

"And when it comes to Mother Nature, I don't think we are trying everything like Eileen wants the doctor to do for Aunt Mary," said Jennifer.

"A lot of people, half of the freaking population in the country, don't want to admit that things are even sick," said Troy, "so how can they be trying everything when they don't even know or want to admit there's a problem?"

"What we need is Eileen," said Jennifer laughing. "She sounds a bit like a control freak who's willing to kick some butt to save her elderly aunt. How about if someone like Eileen was around to save our elderly planet?"

"We'd have to have a lot of Eileens," said Troy. "How about you?"

"What do you mean?" said Jennifer.

"Well you're a bit of a control freak and you care about the planet, don't you? said Troy laughing.

Flight Behavior: The moral of the story

At the end of Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, Dellarobia, and her 6 year old son, Preston, leave the house to walk to the neighbor's peach orchard where the butterflies have descended off the mountain roost temporarily in the cold snowy weather. It is early in the morning when Preston is waiting for the school bus to take him to his kindergarten and Dellarobia has decided this is the time to tell Preston that she and Cub are separating and that they will be moving to an apartment.

     "Why did you and Dad bet married by accident?" he asked.
     "People do wrong things all the time, Preston. Grown-ups. You're going to find that out. You will be amazed. There's some kind of juice in our brains that makes us only care about what's right in front of us right this minute. Even if we know something different will happen later and we should think about that too. Our brains trick us. They say: Fight this thing right now, or run away from it. Tomorrow doesn't matter, dude."
     He stopped strumming his knee, and appeared to think this over.
     "If I could teach you one thing, Preston, that's it. Think about what's coming at you later. But see, all parents say that to all kids. We don't follow our own advice."
     He sat perfectly still, staring at snow.
     "You know what else? Grown-ups will never admit what I just told you. They'll basically poop their own beds without saying they made a mistake. even the ones that think they are A-number-one good citizens. They'll lie there saying, 'Hey, I didn't make this mess, somebody else pooped this bed.'"
     The tiniest of smiles pulled his mouth out of line, like a snag in a stocking.
     "You and Cordie are going to grow up in some deep crap, let me tell you. You won't even get a choice. You'll have to be different." p.428

When we finish Flight Behavior we can ask, "And what is the moral of the story? What is the lesson to learn from this novel? What meaning did you make of the story?"

First, Barbara Kingsolver is a gifted writer. I have loved all her books, both fiction and non-fiction. Flight Behavior grapples with difficult subjects: climate change, stagnating marriages, fears for the future for children we desperately love, the role of science in society, the role of ethics in society, the dynamics of extended family life, cultural differences of region and class. infidelity, the importance of friendship, and the role of religion in our contemporary society. Whew! This is not a beach read but a novel of substance, depth, elegance, grace, and challenge.

Second, Flight Behavior deals with the most significant and challenging topic of our contemporary times, climate change which will affect all of us on the planet in very significant ways over the coming decades and centuries. The science is not debatable at this point, 99% of scientists agree with it, climate change is happening at a rapid rate and it is human induced. Those with vested interests want to argue because they don't want their profits threatened, or their life style disrupted, their political power, or some other vested interest disturbed.

Third, the major moral of the story is one of hope, that humans grow, can become more aware, that they can adjust and respond positively to what some might experience as negative changes. While Dellarobia is concerned for her children's future she is confident that Preston will grow up into a good man, and Cordie into a good woman, who will benefit humankind and life on the planet. What Dellarobia, herself, will do with the next stage of her life is unclear, but she is bright, capable, earnest, and with a sense of purpose has given up her adolescent sexual acting out in service of being true to herself and her desire to be of service to the other creatures on the planet.

Fourth, the lesson of the story is that we, as humans, need to grow-up and take responsibility for ourselves and our environment. Some of us have grown-up, some of us like Dellarobia are in process, and some of us need to get with the program if we are to salvage some semblance of civilization on the planet. It is time to give up childish things, and thinking, and behavior. As St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."

What does it take to grow-up and put away the things of a child? Education, instruction, guidance, and accountability. Who will provide it? Religion for our modern age. Just one religion or a particular one? It will take them all, working together in an interreligious collaboration, to save ourselves, each other, and as much life as we can on this planet in its multitudinous diversity. For me Unitarian Universalism works best with its seven principles and its Christian history with a little Buddhism and humanism thrown in with some Wiccan and Native Spirituality, and Sufism, and Hindu stuff. In short, my God is too big for any one religion. The teaching of Flight Behavior is that we humans can't screw with Mother Nature arrogantly without suffering her displeasure.

Story of the day - For there to be winners there's got to be losers.

Suzie said to her husband John when he got home from work, "Sophie came home crying today because the cheerleading coach told her if she didn't work harder she'd be cut from the team. She thinks she's fat so she said she is skipping dinner."

"She's not fat," said John. "What would make her think such a thing?"

"She's only in sixth grade, but developing faster than the other girls, and they may be jealous so they are teasing her. You know how girls can be? Or maybe you don't," said Suzie.

"So she thinks starving herself is going to stop her breast and hip development?" said John.

"I don't know," said Suzie. "Kids at this age are so competitive, and catty, and worried about fitting in and being popular. Everyone wants to be a winner and, of course, for there to be winners, there's got to be losers. Some people are just going to be the losers that's how the pecking order for the pre-teen, and young teenagers works."

"I remember when I was kid that age, I would complain to my mother that things weren't right, things weren't fair, things shouldn't be the way they were, and she'd say to me 'John, who have no right to complain unless you can do it better.' And I've walked around since that time muttering to myself, 'I can do it better, I can do it better, I know I can do it better.'"

"So that's where your self righteous indignation comes from," said Suzie laughing.

"Oh, yeah," said John. "I love to blame dear old mom for screwing me up."

"Honey, your desire for things to be right, and your honesty, and humility are what attracted me to you. If you were an arrogant know it all, it wouldn't be attractive, but because of your honesty and humility and willingness to admit if you can't do it better, it works for you," said Suzie.

"So what do we do to help, Sophie? She's got to eat." said John.

"You need to talk to her," said Suzie. "Coming from a man and her father is probably more important that it coming from me. Tell her whether she gets on the team or not is not important. What's important is that she do her best and the chips will fall where they may, she can't control that. And if she is cut it certainly won't be because she is fat, she is just right, and her body is changing just as Mother Nature intended and that you love her no matter what."

"God that's good," said John. "I hope I can remember all that."

And he did, and Sophie listened, and ate her dinner. The moral of the story is that love trumps torturing yourself, turning yourself into somebody you aren't, to win and fit in. Amen. May it be so.

Is winning the only thing? How about fair play?

Vince Lombardi, the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, has been credited with the slogan of UCLA Bruins coach, Red Sanders, "Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing." Many young people in the United States have been taught this ethic. Win at all costs.

Competitiveness, always being right, never giving in for fear of being taken advantage of or seen as vulnerable, are not only preoccupations of Americans and the basis for the perverted view known as American "exceptionalism," but are contrary to the second principle of Unitarian Univeralism: justice, equity, and compassion in human relations to which we all pay lip service and then behave in our society quite differently based on contradictory norms.

My son was playing high school football and I heard he and his friends discussing the coaching directive to "hurt" your opponent when you block him or tackle him so he is intimidated. When I questioned these young men about this instruction, they insisted "that's how you win games."

"By maiming your opponent?" I said. "You are deliberately trying to hurt him?! What happened to good sportsmanship and the love of the game well played?"

"That's what Coach told us," they all insisted. "If you hurt them, they will be intimidated and not play so hard, and you'll win games."

"Really?" I said. The coach was known as a born again Christian and attended one of the Pentecostal churches in our town. I scheduled an appointment to talk to him. He sheepishly denied everything and I could tell he was guilty as charged but couldn't be honest and admit it. I said, "Listen, Coach, your players are getting this message from somewhere."

"All I do," he said, "is encourage them to do their best."

"Doing your best I hope doesn't include playing dirty. If this is the basis of your football program I don't want my son playing, and I don't want any other kids playing as well. Perhaps, the coaching philosophy of this school is a matter that I should bring up with the school board," I said.

"This school takes great pride in its winning teams. A couple of the school board members are former players of mine. They have been the recipients of our coaching philosophy. You don't need to worry about this any more. I will talk to my assistant coaches and the players and correct any misunderstanding," said coach.

Predatory capitalism also puts an emphasis on profit at all costs ignoring the external negative affects of the business practices to the environment, human rights, and the well being of the communities in which they operate. Google "mountain top removal" and see what the coal companies have done to the Appalachian mountain region of the United States and the communities situated in those  areas where this mining occurs. We, consumers, have contributed to the injustice, and inequities by buying cheap goods at Walmart to save some money overlooking the long term effects of these bargains on the injustice, inequity, and disrespect for the people and communities who produced those cheap goods.

It is one thing to talk a good game promoting and affirming justice, equity, and compassion and quite another thing to play it. It is this hypocrisy, often unrecognized and unacknowledged, that is destroying the environment on the planet, as well as a sense of well being in our personal lives as evidenced by the epidemic of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide, and meanness in our communities and society. Listening to and watching our media, radio, TV, tabloids, internet, etc. we are not longer surprised at the scandal, the subterfuge, the tragedy of the day which will last about 48 hours for the news cycle until the next injustice, inequity, disrespectful thing breaks the news, and we can all tsk, tsk, and feel better because we are bad, but not as bad as that.

Are we playing to win or to be fair? Do we always need to be right or can we admit our mistakes? Do we need to ignore and look down on people who upset us, disgust us, annoy us, and threaten us or can we consider how God looks at them and extend some forgiveness and compassion? These are our challenges as Unitarian Universalists. This is what the second principle calls us to do. The ethical imperative of the second principle is so counter cultural, so foreign to the endemic ethic of exceptionalism of Americans that we UUs are the outliers in our culture. We do not fit in. It is very difficult to be committed to our faith and abide by the implicit norms of our society at the same time. Would that we, and the rest of society, could rise to our level of understanding and functioning to which we aspire.

My Kind Of Church Music - More For Your Money, Keb'Mo'

Story of the day - Butterflies and feminazies

"What do you think of that book, Flight Behavior?" asked Alex.

"I didn't read it all," said Brian. "Why would she ask us to read a book about butterflies? Jesus!"

"It really wasn't about butterflies  and you'd know that if you'd read it," said Alex.

"Yes, it was. Did you read it, dork face?" said Brian.

"It's about climate change and how it's affecting life on this planet," said Alex. "The butterflies are just an example, an artistic device, to tell the story."

"Chic lit, if you ask me. I swear you're gay," said Brian.

"How are you going to pass the exam when you don't even get the point of the book?" asked Alex.

"Who gives a shit. I'm cutting class that day, anyway, to go hunting. Deer season opens Friday."

"You're going to take a zero to go hunting?" asked Alex.

"Hell yeah. I can't believe that witch would schedule an exam on the first day of the season. She knows a lot of us guys hunt," said Brian.

"Well, she grew up in Boston, I think. Went to Bryn Mawr, or Vassar or one of the those Ivy League schools for women. She doesn't know about our lives here that well yet. She's only been here teaching for a couple of years. I think this is her second year," said Alex.

"Well she needs to get with the program, ya know, and quit with the butterfly shit already. My parents are paying good money for me to go here and if they knew what I was being forced to learn they'd probably be upset like Rush that these professors are all liberals and the women are feminazies," said Brian.

Unitarian Universalism is a religion for the mature, the courageous, the brave

Dr. Ovid Byron, the entomologist's wife, Juliet, an anthropologist,  has come from California to visit with her husband as he does his field work on the Monarch butterflies in Tennessee. The couple is having dinner with Dellarobia and Cub, a professional middle class couple, with a farming couple 20 years their junior.

      Ovid was explaining something to Juliet that he called the theory of the territorial divide. With some confusion, Dellarobia understood this was her theory, he was attributing it to her, though the terms he used were unfamiliar: climate-change denial functioned like folk art for some people, he said, a way of defining survival in their own terms. But it's not indigenous, Juliet argued. It's like a cargo cult. Introduced from the outside, corporate motives via conservative media. But now it's become fully identified with the icons of local culture, so it's no longer up for discussion.

     "The key thing is," Juliet said, resting her elbow on the table, that beautiful wrist bending under the weight of its wooden rings, "once you're talking identity, you can't lecture that out of people. The condescension of outsiders won't diminish it. That just galvanizes it."

     Dellarobia felt abruptly conscious of her husband and her linoleum. "Christ on the cross," she said without enthusiasm. "The rebel flag mudflaps, science illiteracy. That would be us."

     "I am troubled by this theory, Dellarobia," Ovid said, "but I can't say you are wrong. I've read a lot of scholarly articles on the topic, but you make more sense."

     "Well, yeah," Juliet said, "that's kind of the point, that outsiders won't get it." p.395

Most human beings although they benefit from the knowledge and technology gained from science are scientifically illiterate. The skill of scientific thinking and problem analysis has never been acquired by most people as a result of their education to facilitate a higher level of more deliberate and purposeful functioning. Most people still function based on emotional responses to what they perceive as external circumstances fueled by unconscious conditioning based on the avoidance, containment, or elimination of fear.

The avoidance, containment, and, if possible, the elimination of fear, is achieved by the security of belonging to a group of like minded people who will have your back and help protect you. Identification with the group, it's symbols, rules, values, beliefs, practices becomes important, so the individual thinks and feels, for survival. And yet we live in a time where "group think", especially if the "group think" is wrong, is especially important for the survival of the whole species of homo sapiens.

Juliet seems to be saying that correct understanding, right mindedness, must come from within the group, because if the group perceives the attempts to change their "group think" as coming from without, they will just feel threatened and become more "galvanized".

What is the Unitarian Univeralist approach to people caught up in "group think"? It advocates in its fourth principle the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" but not many people have the temperament, or the maturity, to be what are called "free thinkers". Perhaps it is the fifth principle, "the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large" which has the best utility in this situation of dysfunctional "group think". I was taught as a Roman Catholic that my conscience was the final arbiter of right and wrong. To be right with God meant that I was to bring my conscience into compliance with what I thought and felt God was calling to me to do. As long as I went with my conscience I would be all right. As St. Paul says in his letter to Corinthians, "If God is with you, who can be against you." It was the will of God, not the group, that was to be used as the final guide to my choices and decisions.

The psychological consideration is whether the individual is mature enough, has the courage,  is brave enough to stand up for his or her conscience? If not he or she may go along with the group out of fears of punishment, being dismissed as crazy, or exile and excommunication for rocking the boat, going against the grain, disturbing the status quo, stepping on the toes of the leaders of group who have the power to enforce compliance.

Unitarian Universalism is not a religion for the weak, the cowardly, the insecure, the people pleasers. We understand that our environment is being changed by human activity and that species are being made extinct and the weather is changing leading to significant changes in the geological functioning of our planet. The moral question is whether we, homo sapiens, will take responsibility or continue with the same because of the short term profit and security of the familiar? 

What is happening to our climate is a matter of science. What should be done about the changes that science is learning about is a matter of ethics. The ethical base for Unitarian Universalism articulated in its seven principles can be the saving grace for all species at this time in our geological evolution of this planet. Will we be a light unto the world, the yeast in the dough, the salt of the earth?