I thought it would be useful to explain what I understand (or think I do) which underlies my UU 102 effort, so:

• Regardless of the intentions of those concerned, the 1961 merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists produced the possibility of a new religion. We are living out that possibility right now. The future is unwritten.
• By deferring rather than engaging theological differences, a giant empty space was left where a religion usually has a theology. While we have continuities both organic and artificial with the past, that negative space defined us.
• That space was left empty, open, and inviting just as massive change occurred in the world. Change sought empty space and filled it with practice. While ideas and theories were present, it was peoples’ actions that mattered most.
• We now face the task, should we decide to accept it, to find or build a theology out of and among our current practices. We have the sources and the norms to do so, and enough practice to make respectable first runs at saying what it all means.

So I am looking among people’s practices and holding up the items which seem to me to face our common future. While it may not be necessary to have some common theology, I believe it is both possible and desirable to have one.

Here’s some good advice from Lynn Ungar, advice which might make my life easier and better at the same time, if only I could practice it:

It’s hard to know what to say, and it’s hard not to be impatient with people who seem hopelessly out of touch.

That impatience often has to do with the person who is impatient, not the person at whom the impatience is targeted.

Here is another valuable perspective on the kerfuffle at Starr King School for the Ministry. See this previous post for more.

I am not talking about the burden of guilt from revealing confidential materials, though you may indeed feel guilt about that. Whether you felt it was justified or not, you did cross a line when you revealed them. But the break in covenant that occurred when you crossed that line could have been restored if you had stepped forward sooner.

Like I’ve read elsewhere, it’s not the initial cost so much as the upkeep.

This had dropped out of my active memory until this morning brought an email from the new president of Starr King School for the Ministry, the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt. She’s quite a good writer. If you haven’t read her memoir, you’re missing out:

You shouldn’t miss the email, either. This is the paragraph that jumped out at me:

I thank both Elaine McArdle of UU World and Mark Oppenheimer of The New York Times for giving us at Starr King the opportunity to speak about our school. Unfortunately, these articles were not as objective or positive as I had hoped. Each of the articles contains several factual inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that paint the school, members of our community and our efforts toward resolution in an inaccurate and unfair light. Even more distressing, these two articles have caused anxiety, distress, fear, and hurt to members of our Starr King community. I am saddened that these articles have reopened a wound that, for many at Starr King and in our larger progressive religious community, had not yet healed.

There are three things to find objectionable in this paragraph.

First, if there are factual inaccuracies in these stories in UU World and The New York Times, I’d like to have them enumerated for correction. I’d also like to have the stories linked from the email so I can easily read them for myself and make up my own mind.

Second, I am troubled by the claim that causing “anxiety, distress, fear, and hurt to members of our Starr King community” is more distressing than “factual inaccuracies and mischaracterization” about Starr King (and by extension Unitarian Universalism) appearing in the national media. I don’t mean to diminish any worries some members of the Starr King community experience, but I also can’t regard them as more important than the rest of Unitarian Universalism, or even the rest of the Starr King community.

Third and finally, I am sick and tired generally of loose and irresponsible talk about wounds and the healing process. The use of such language here is a prime example. Is this a “reopened” wound? Starr King may want to move on and heal up, but must I privilege their point of view? There are others who have been wounded in this process. Do they feel it’s time for healing? Possibly they feel the wounding process is still going on. Perhaps they would like calls for healing to be preceeded by taking the knife out of the wound.

I’ve been trying not to take sides on this, but it’s getting harder to watch. From here, it sounds like every other story about powerful people doing stupid things, a problem so acutely experienced in academia, especially when student rights are set against administrative expedience. My rule of thumb in dealing with administrators when I was a student was they they lie more easily than they breathe and cannot be trusted. My greatest regrets include trusting them from time to time and getting screwed.

And yet, that’s how most administrative practice works. It’s designed for a result and what looks like trampling underfoot is often just motion along the straightest line. And I’m clearly biased in favor of students. So I don’t know, but this all smells very bad.

What do you think?

A few weeks ago, Rev. Colin Bossen asked people to self-identify as clergy, lay person, or academic, then answer these three questions:

1. Who are the five most influential Unitarian Universalist or liberal religious thinkers today?
2. What magazines, academic journals, and blogs most impact your work?
3. What is the most important issue for Unitarian Universalist scholars to address?

It’s not my story to tell, but I’ll add my two cents worth.

I was one of the dozen lay respondents out of seventy-four total, also including eight academics.

I was unsurprised to see Rebecca Parker was one of the common choices; i was a little surprised to hear more than half named her. I wasn’t surprised to see Mark Morrison-Reed or Sharon Welch, either, and had I thought of Anthony Pinn, he’d’ve been on my list.

(Note to self: Try again to get Paul Rasor’s book.)

There’s much more in the survey, so here are my questions, most of which could be resolved by having the raw data or something like it.

1. Were there significant differences among the three groups of respondents?
2. Which of the scholars named are Unitarian Universalists? Which ones aren’t? Are any not easily classifiable? Does it matter?
3. Can our congregations develop and support more scholar-ministers?

Okay, the answer to that last one isn’t in the data, but the others?

We’ve heard what Tony Lorenzen and Tom Schade want from the next UUA President. Now Rev. Cynthia Landrum speaks, and she’s using my language–numbers! Did you know the last four presidents of the UUA were born between 1946 and 1949? True fact:

I think it’s time for a woman or transgender president, and it’s time for Generation X to step up to the lead.  Generation X ministers now have 10-20 years of experience, so we’re right in the bracket of what we expect from a UUA president.  The oldest Gen-Xers are now turning 50; with ages in our thirties and forties now, we’re the right age to govern, if our history is any marker of what we’re looking for.

What do you think? What and who must the next president of the UUA be?