It’s so easy to be fooled, as irrevespekay found out:

It is only now, in the midst of this frame around cultural borrrowing and misappropriation, I am now noticing *myself* in the mirror.  I found this poem online (which should have been my first clue that something could go awry).  It was attributed to someone named Bee Lake who was described an Aboriginal poet.  I loved the imagery and the theology and thought, sure, not that I know much, but it seems to exude Aboriginal. Whatever that means.

But:

Turns out that Bee Lake is a fictional character, created by a white American woman named Marlo Morgan, who spent four months in Australia and wrote a book:

We’re very open to the world, and that’s good, but that doesn’t mean we should consider the world open to us like a candy store. It is open to us–just not in that way, like someplace where we pay a little cash and take what we want.  It’s more open like the open road.

Tired of elections? Sorry–you have another one coming up, for presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Tony Lorenzen has some thoughts about what’s needed in the next president. There are three items on his list:

1. A person under the age of 50  2. A person with a deep sense of spirituality  3. A person who has a deep sense of mission and who will help Unitarian Universalists articulate our mission is in a way that speaks to our culture.

What do you think? (Be sure to see Tony’s response to a comment. It clarifies his thought considerable.) Is 40 more reasonable? 45?

For over a year, I’ve been teaching a class called Unitarian Universalism 102. I’ve tried a variety of formats, and the one that’s done the best has been to pick an article or two from the current UU World and open it up to discussion. I’ve got another in December.

Here, I’m going to do a different thing, a daily series. Every day I’ll post some item by, about, or for Unitarian Universalists and Unitarian Universalism. It’ll be the single most compelling current item I know of.

It’ll be tagged under the category UU 102, as will items for and from my class, and other pertinent items. And what makes an item pertinent? I’m focusing on new ideas and practices of the post-merger era, from 1961 through the foreseeable future.

Doing this was part of why I decided to blog again. Here’s the piece which triggered my decision:

Who Are My People? A Black Unitarian Universalist on Selma and Ferguson

Kneeling in front of Rev. Reeb’s marker drove me—to tears, and to an understanding of history’s importance. Finally, after ignoring the race problem for years, we showed up in Selma. But fifty years later, if we UUs show up in Selma in 2015 but not in Ferguson right now, and not for all those black and brown victims of police violence in the sadly inevitable future, we will not have learned from our past.

The harrowing truth is that I could be the next Mike Brown. My household had two parents. I have a college degree and a job. My pants don’t sag. When I’m out protesting or canvassing, though, none of that matters. I cannot opt out of blackness, and I do not want to. In the wrong situation, though, my respectable nature may not save me—from a racist police officer or citizen, nor from the ensuing character assassination. I would go from the decent, reasonably friendly guy some of you know to a mentally deranged (I have depression) Harvard dropout who was “no angel” and deserved what he got.

Read the whole thing, and visit Kenny Wiley’s blog, A Full Day.