This past Sunday we had a labyrinth walk following the church service at church. Many people participated, and I found that the labyrinth appealed to young and old, Christian, Pagan, and Humanist. It's amazing how this simple tool can be used and appreciated by such diverse groups of people. There are several people who expressed an interest in having a labyrinth permanently on our grounds, and we have the space for it, if we could figure out how to do it so that it would be able to be easily maintained, mowed over, and parked over, and inexpensive. Those are hard hurdles, but not insurmountable.

Meanwhile, on the same day, a couple of our members and I presented on atheism and agnosticism at the Jackson Interfaith Discussion Group. We spent a lot of time in question and answer. The questions included the usual ones that I've gotten at things like this, such as: What keeps you from doing evil, without a belief in God? and Without God, how do you explain the Big Bang starting? But the questions also took us a lot deeper, into areas I find more fascinating: Is belief or disbelief something you can choose? How does one come by faith or lack of it? How do atheists define God? Do atheists beleive in a soul? In universal truth?

Of course, in true Unitarian Universalist style, the answer to "Do _______s believe ________?" is always, "Well, some do and some don't." But that's part of the point I was trying to make, that atheism is not monolithic. There are all sorts of different types of atheists and agnostics. And they include people who would not say that they are religious, and people who are part of a religion. And, as we see all the time in our churches, people who would say both of those things!

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

A member sent me this link to a radio piece on "Exploring the New Humanism" http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/new_humanism/index.shtml - worth checking out!

The new UUCEL Webpage is now up.  It's still at the same site -- www.libertyuu.org -- but it has a brand new look.  Check it out!

I've been captivated by the media coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barak Obama's (in)famous pastor.  I've felt that the relationship between minister & congregant has had a very odd portrayal in the media, one that seems to assume that people sitting in the pews absorb everything a pastor says, uncritically, and, at the same time, if one does disagree, the only thing to do is to leave.  

I recommend the latest edition of "Sightings" from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago - http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2008/0324.shtml - as an excellent essay on this subject.

Our church recently voted to support a local program that helps young adults who are graduating out of the foster care system.  Here's a great article from the Detroit Free Press which shows why such programs are so important: http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080221/NEWS05/802210374/1001/NEWS.

The article on "The Fellowship Movement" in the current issue of the UU World by Holley Ulbrich says, "I found that about 40 percent of the hundreds of little lay-led congregations planted from Cape Cod to Alaska and from Minnesota to the Virgin Islands survive in some form. Thirty percent of the UUA’s current congregations—323—started as fellowships during those two decades."  According to the count given in the article, six Michigan congregations were fellowships founded in the fellowship movement period (1948-1967).

It's worth noting that there are many other Fellowships that may continue to have lasting impacts in other ways.  The Jackson Unitarian Fellowship (later the Jackson UU Fellowship) was founded in 1958 and existed until 1991.  The Fellowship was influenced by the Universalist church from the very beginning, as a member of the church encouraged the Fellowship to join the Unitarians' association, the AUA.  During its existence, the Fellowship met at our Universalist church for some periods, and also gave financial support to some of our ministers.  Some of the ministers had agreements to preach at the Fellowship on a regular or as-needed basis.  The Fellowship, while it was still a separate religious body, jointly ordained one minister with the Universalist church and had a member on the search committee for another.

When the Jackson UU Fellowship closed its doors in 1991, it didn't formally merge into the East Liberty congregation, but it did give us the remainder of its funds and encourage its members to come to UUCEL.  Several of its members continue as members of our church today.  

The Jackson UU Fellowship wouldn't be one of those fellowships Ulbrich counted when he says 40 percent "survive in some form," as its survival would be hard to trace in UUA records.  But it did "survive in some form" and continues to have a postive impact on our church today. 

I just got back from the Meadville Lombard Winter Institute "Can We Build the Beloved Community through Political Action" with Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Rob Keithan. It included the practical, the physical, and the theoretical. 

Practically, we learned the dos and don'ts of political action in congregations and as ministers (and religious educators) associated with congregations. We can hold forums and debates, we can address issues, we can lobby (up to a point). We cannot endorse a candidate. Interesting to me, we cannot increase the level of negative criticism of a candidate or encumbent as an election approaches. The advice on that one is to keep your negative critique going strong all the time! 

Physically, we did trust walks and trust falls, learning the difficulties of building trust in beloved community. On the trust walk, I learned that it is important for the blindfolded person to speak up if they're not comfortable with the directions. This was important when I was blindfolded, and also when I was the one giving directions. When you're not feeling trust, speak out.

Theoretically, we studied how our schema and heuristics, while learned, make it difficult for us to see anyone other than a white male as "presidential."  The difficulties the democratic candidates have in overcoming these difficulties is substantial.  We talked more about race than about gender, tracing things back to emotional responses of caucasian U.S. Americans and African-American U.S. Americans following Hurricane Katrina, showing African-Americans more likely to have negative emotions following Katrina, and that this correlates with an experience of already viewing the country as owing reparations to African-Americans, a view that caucasians are substantially less likely to hold.  Another study on Katrina showed that when caucaians are shown pictures of people fleeing Katrina who are white and labeled "Americans" they are more likely to believe that the government should do whatever possible to help, whereas if they are shown pictures of African-Americans or people labeled "refugees" or both, they are less likely to believe that the government should do whatever possible.  (http://melissaharrislacewell.com/docs/Katrina_Initial_Report.doc)  

Dr. Harris-Lacewell asked us the provocative questions: 1.  Why doesn't anyone ask whether Mitt Romney is "black enough"? and 2.  Why aren't people asking white males whether they're going to vote based on race (Clinton) or gender (Obama) the way they're asking black women?

Tired of paying attention to the U.S. presidential race?  Why not turn to the UUA presidential race, instead?  There are now two candidates running for UUA president: Peter Morales - http://moralesforuuapresident.org/, and Laurel Hallman - http://www.laurelhallman.com/.  It should be an interesting race.