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Gulf Coast Relief Trip Come join CLFers and members of the UU Church of Marblehead, Massachusetts the week after Christmas in rebuilding New Orleans ! Those with skills in sheetrocking, mudding and taping, and those willing and able to follow directions, are in high demand. For more information on the trip go to www.uumarblehead.org, or, if you have specific questions, feel free to be in touch with the Rev. Wendy von Zirpolo at revwendyvon@yahoo.com, or with past trip organizer Hugh Stewart at hughstewart@usa.net.
Did You Know? ... that minutes of CLF board meetings, financial reports and more are available online.
SUZELLE LYNCH, MINISTER, UU CHURCH WEST, BROOKFIELD, WISCONSIN
On a sunny day in September...a stern-faced, plainly dressed man could be seen standing still on a street corner in the busy Chicago Loop. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, he would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to the person nearest him, intone loudly..."GUILTY!"
....Without any change of expression, he would resume his stiff stance for a few moments...(and) then, again, the inexorable raising of his arm, the pointing, and the solemn pronouncing of the one word, "GUILTY!"
The effect of this strange pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary.... They would stare at him, hesitate, look at each other, look back at him again; then hurriedly continue on their ways.
One man, turning to another...(was heard to) exclaim: "But how did he know?"
So writes Dr. Karl Menninger in his book Whatever Became of Sin.
Guilty. If someone on the street suddenly pointed at you and pronounced you guilty, what would come to your mind? Of what sins are you guilty? Overwork? Self-indulgence? Guilty of a few little white lies? Overdue library books? Guilty of uncharitable thoughts? Of raising your voice or your hand to another person in anger? Of keeping the extra $5 the cashier gave you in error when you paid for a purchase? Guilty of judging harshly someone whose beliefs or opinions are different from yours? Or perhaps you're guilty of one of those good old seven deadly sins: envy, anger, pride, sloth, avarice, gluttony or lust. All of us, it seems, have cause to feel at least a little guilty about something.
Sin. It isn't a word we use much these days—yet it still carries a lot of baggage.
There's the idea of Original Sin—that we all are marked from birth with the stain of sin passed down to us through the generations from Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God and were tossed out of Paradise. In her book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, scholar Elaine Pagels describes the way in which this notion of original sin, dreamed up by Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century, came to dominate the Church. A primary reason was that original sin could be used to justify both the authority of the Church and of the state. If human beings were depraved, unable to resist their urges to sin, then they were desperately in need of what the church could offer: salvation, including by forced conversion. And then, of course, since the Church was making decent citizens out of dreadful sinners, the state would be justified in using its force and power to support the Church's work.
Unitarian Universalists rejected the idea of original sin long ago, and along with it the idea that we are saved by the death of Jesus or by some other action from on high. In the early nineteenth century, our Unitarian and Universalist forbears preached our "likeness to God," the idea that we're created in the divine image and that our nature reflects that beauty and goodness.
I agree with the idea of the innate human capacity for goodness, but I think we do ourselves a radical disservice when we reject the concept of sin entirely. Indeed, I believe that a grounded moral and spiritual life requires an understanding of sin. We need a definition of sin that helps us cope with our lived experience—how we feel when we have violated our cherished values, or when someone has trespassed against us. We need a definition of sin that acknowledges our failings and the reality of evil in the world, but also recognizes the possibility of our goodness. And if we can find this definition of sin, we might even find that sin can be a kind of gift.
At some point in my theological education, sin was defined for me as a word translated from Greek, meaning "missing the mark"—the image of an archer shooting an arrow at a target, but missing the bull's-eye. I found this to be a useful concept, for while it acknowledged that we all make mistakes, it also left room for us to try again to get things right.
In recent years, I've heard two modern definitions of sin from clergy friends of mine. One of them, a United Church of Christ minister, defined sin as that which is destructive, whereas God is that which is creative. The other, a Presbyterian, defined sin as those actions or inactions that prevent the God in us or the God in another from shining through.
These are good definitions. I wonder, though, if they are strong enough to stand up to real evil in the world. Rape, child abuse, war, torture, domestic violence, environmental devastation, lobbying scandals, drug dealing—missing the mark? By a mile. Actions which prevent the God in us or the God in another from shining through...yes, but so much more. Destructive of the creative force within another, yes.
I believe that we sin when we zone out, numb ourselves, deny the reality of our lives or our times. I believe that the purpose of our lives is to grow in consciousness, and to live up to who we truly are by becoming more fully present to ourselves and to all that is. So when we go unconscious, we forget who we are. We forget that we are interdependent with all that lives, and we take on a kind of radical "me first" individualism. We forget to exercise our muscles of compassion, of generosity, and act as if ours were a world of scarcity, where there is never enough love, enough money, enough attention, enough of whatever it is we need. We forget to live our lives deeply, to live our values. Instead, we stay safe and shallow.
The hard part for me in defining sin this way is that if sin is unconsciousness, then I am sinning all the time! Being awake, aware, and mindfully present from moment to moment is not only nearly impossible, it also can be painful. It brings full awareness not only of joy and beauty, but also of suffering and despair.
The good part about understanding sin as unconsciousness is that we can change it.
And this is a good time of year to do it, for the Jewish practices observed during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—which occur this month—can help us. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, and the days between them are practiced as days of repentance. It's a time when the people examine their souls and become aware of the ways they have failed—failed others, failed themselves, and failed their God. In other words, it's a time to become conscious of their sins.
Imagine taking ten days to reflect on your relationship with yourself, with others, and with the holy. Ten days in which to ask, "Have I lived up to my aspirations? Did I stay true to my values? Did I keep my promises? Did I do the things I know I needed to do? Did I hurt anyone?" Imagine having ten days to let all of our excuses fall away. Ten days to be courageous and honest with ourselves. Ten days to have compassion for ourselves.
These days of introspection are meant to lead to remorse for any harm we have caused, and to remind us to ask for forgiveness from, and to make restitution to, the people involved whenever possible. The whole process is called teshuvah, which means turning: turning inward in self-evaluation, turning back to look on one's deeds of the previous year, and re-turning to a larger wholeness, through acts of restitution, charity and forgiveness. This process is not easy, for we live in a culture where we're taught to never take the blame, even when we know we're at fault. It takes courage to meet our partner, our neighbor, our co-worker, our parent, our child—face to face—to make peace, to seek justice, to ask forgiveness.
Nearly two hundred years ago, our Universalist ancestors—particularly the great ultra-Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou—believed that sin lay beneath all human misery, and because no human being would wish to remain miserable, sin would eventually bring us into reconciliation with an all-loving God. Ballou did not believe God would punish sinners, arguing that the separation from God created by sin was, in itself, punishment enough. In this way, sin was a gift from God, designed to help create a lasting unity with the Eternal.
This is the gift of sin: it leads us back into relationship with one another, with ourselves and with that larger wholeness some name God. It can lead to our deepening, our growth in consciousness, our movement toward right relationships. It reminds us that if we want to experience what is most sacred in this universe, we must find it and honor it in one another.
So, if you ever pass a street-corner preacher shouting "Repent!" or the next time you feel a twinge of conscience nagging in a small corner of your mind, the next time someone dear to you flinches and you don't know why—before moving on to the next thing in your life, pause for a moment and listen. For the voice of wholeness calls to us in many ways, if we will only pay attention.
SEAN PARKER DENNISON, MINISTER, SOUTH VALLEY UU SOCIETY, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Our sixth Principle declares that we affirm and promote "The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all." This assertion seems extravagant in its hopefulness and improbable in its prospects: So much has happened since the Principles were adopted in 1961 and revised in 1985. Can we continue to say we want "world community"? "Peace, liberty, and justice for all"? The world is full of genocide, abuse, terror, and war. What have we gotten ourselves into?
As naïve or impossible as the sixth Principle may seem, I'm not willing to give up on it. In the face of our culture's apathy and fear, I want to imagine and help create a powerful vision of peace by peaceful means, liberty by liberatory means, justice by just means. I want us to believe—and to live as if we believe—that a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all is possible. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but I can assure you that we will improve ourselves and improve the world by trying.
One way I have served the Unitarian Universalist Association is by being a part of the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee. This committee is charged with an enormous task: "to strategically plan, coordinate, monitor, assess, and guide the transformation of the Unitarian Universalist Association into an authentically anti-oppressive institution." To build an Association that is free of oppressive patterns and behavior, to pursue wholeness of heart as well as wholeness for our world—these are things I believe in. Maybe I am one of those foolish optimists, because our sixth Principle is something I won't give up. In fact, I'll fight every effort to make this crazy dream even one bit smaller.
People often assume that I do this work because it benefits me, because I am transgender. They are right, but not in the way that they imagine. It may be true that I was asked to serve on this particular committee because, as one of just a few transgender ministers, I have faced the realities of prejudice and discrimination. In a world that wants gender to fit neatly in one box or another, "M" or "F," my gender is not that simple. This makes some people uncomfortable and even afraid. When people are afraid, they sometimes fall back into patterns and assumptions that can hurt.
You don't have to be transgender to know how it feels to be crushed into a role or a box that is uncomfortable and painful. This is at the heart of every social justice movement. Women know how it feels to be defined in ways that do not hold their strength and value. Anyone whose skin is not white knows how it feels to be limited by others' definitions of their place and power in the world.
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people know how it is to be made small by prejudice and defined by only one part of their whole being. All of us know. Even straight white men with healthy bodies and strong minds know the pain of being judged and limited by other people's assumptions. Working for world community with peace, justice, and liberty for all is a gift to the world, but also to ourselves as we become liberated from the boxes that keep us from being whole. We are all on a "Journey Toward Wholeness," as people, and as a religious community.
When I began my ministry, I was not so optimistic. In fact, I was fearful of social justice work. I was born in 1965, right between the assassinations of Kennedy and King. I remember the Watergate hearings preempting Sesame Street. I came of age during the "me generation" and graduated from high school in the indulgent 1980s. By the time I was aware enough to pay attention, the great social movements of our times were over, many of the heroes of those movements were dead or disgraced, and we'd become a narcissistic society, with an increasing emphasis on self-help and self-actualization.
During my internship year, the topic for our district ministers' retreat was social justice. As the retreat grew near, I realized I was not looking forward to it.
During the social hour, a colleague asked if I was as excited about the program as he was. Much to the surprise of both of us, I answered honestly that I was not looking forward to it at all. This led to a long discussion. I recited for him the reasons I was feeling cynical.
As I peeled through the layers of my resistance, I found at the core a sadly simple fear. "I'm young," I said. "Unlike you, I've never seen a social movement succeed. You stopped the war. You marched for civil rights. You've seen the government change policy and people change the culture. To me, those are only stories—and most of those stories end in defeat. I wonder, ‘Why bother?'"
To his credit, my colleague was quite patient and listened to all my fears and excuses. Then he looked me right in the eye and said, "Sean, we didn't march because we thought we would succeed. We marched because it was the right thing to do." In that moment, all my pathetic excuses crumpled. I knew what he said was true. The people in the streets were not simply "idealistic hippies," as I'd been taught to believe. They weren't simply foolish optimists. No, they were people driven to the streets by conscience and conviction. They had to march because they knew what was right, and they could not stay silent. They were living their principles, and they were living our Principles. And I was—and am—called to do the same.
I did not know at the time that my colleague was echoing words that have been repeated again and again throughout Unitarian and Universalist history.
Olympia Brown, the first woman to be ordained to our ministry in 1863, said,
Every nation must learn that the people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the world. You may say this is impracticable, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is what we are appointed to do.
The goal of world community with peace, freedom, and justice for all may not be attainable. It may be an uphill battle, an impossible dream. And yet, if we give up without trying, we lose the opportunity to do what we know is right. We may forfeit the prospect of some peace because we insist on perfect peace. We may prove what French novelist Gustave Flaubert once said, "Perfection is the enemy of the good," and unwittingly make ourselves enemies of the good—or the good enough—as well. To insist on success is to ensure that nothing will change.
Luckily, we do not have to create peace, freedom, and justice for all single-handedly. I am not required to do it alone, nor are you. Despite our plurality about what we believe, Unitarian Universalists are surprisingly united when it comes to what we should be doing. In a 2004 survey, respondents consistently rated several affirmations of mission as highly important:
"We challenge ourselves and our world to look for options other than violence to resolve differences." "We need to challenge ourselves and our world to build bridges of understanding and respect across differences." "We are committed to the work of dismantling prejudice, racism, and all forms of oppression." "We challenge ourselves to question values (such as consumerism and conformity) that permeate our society." "Right relationship with the natural world means cooperating and protecting, not controlling."
"We challenge ourselves and our world to look for options other than violence to resolve differences."
"We need to challenge ourselves and our world to build bridges of understanding and respect across differences."
"We are committed to the work of dismantling prejudice, racism, and all forms of oppression."
"We challenge ourselves to question values (such as consumerism and conformity) that permeate our society."
"Right relationship with the natural world means cooperating and protecting, not controlling."
The Unitarian Universalist community knows some things to be true. We are united in our belief that we should be working to make the world a better place. The next challenge is to do something more than talk about it. A vision of "world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all" can help us do that.
The Rev. Richard Gilbert says, "I am hopeful, though not optimistic, about our capacity to repair the world in the face of the many unjust assaults upon it." He goes on to say that the church is "a school of the spirit, helping us to probe the depths of worship and work," a place "where we can ask the basic questions of the meaning of our brief guest appearance on this earthly stage."
I like this idea. Our congregations are schools for our spirits—places where we can learn to ask what it means to be here, what we can do to help heal the world, what will make our lives more meaningful. Our congregations should be places where we are constantly asking, "How can I make a difference?"—places where we work hard to expand our sense of community to all people, our sense of justice well beyond "just us." Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams said, "The ‘holy' thing in life is the participation in those processes that give body and form to universal justice." Our congregations are places where we can make that happen.
These affirmations do not have a paternalistic "us" changing "them." Instead, they are personal as well as political. They challenge us to confront and change our thinking, our relationships, and our assumptions. They echo the words of Mohandas Gandhi, when he told us to "be the change you wish to see in the world." We are asked to help create peace by becoming more peaceful, to create freedom by dismantling oppression, to create justice by changing our way of relating to others and the earth. This is something we can do at any time—internally or externally, in small or large ways—to bring about a world in which our Unitarian Universalist Principles are increasingly realized. We may not succeed at perfecting the world, but we will be able to improve it.
It is easy to get discouraged and even give up in the face of such a big job.
Healing the world cannot be done quickly, and in fact may never be done. Justice will always be in process, and our work will always be needed to help create and sustain it. We, like generations before us and generations to come, will have to keep working.
If giving body and form to universal justice really is what is holy, I am glad there is more to be done. Our congregations and our own lives will be made more meaningful and are enriched as we work for justice for all people. Our congregations are schools for our spirits where by learning to welcome all, we learn to live lives of justice. Our congregations are schools for our spirits where we learn that by serving this vision of justice, we make our own lives holy. They are schools for our spirits where we face a broken world and know we can help heal it, and we don't have to do it alone.
Excerpted from Chapter Six in The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, edited by Ellen Brandenburg. Published in 2007 by Skinner House Press, this book is available from the UUA Bookstore (800-215-9076) or through the CLF Library (617-948-6150).
CARL SCOVEL, MINISTER EMERITUS, KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
"Lord, I know you think we should forgive each other," Peter must have said to Jesus. "But what do we do when we forgive someone and he is not as nice as we are? What if he keeps on sinning against me? How many times should I forgive him? Seven? Or seven times seven?
"No," said Jesus, "seventy times seven. For that's how it is in the Kingdom of God."
Peter's answer is not recorded. I'll bet he was thinking, "So who wants to go there?"
If we hear what Jesus says as a rule, we misunderstand him. Jesus did not mean that Peter or we should count offenses right up to the 490th and then let our enemy have it on the 491st. Jesus meant that forgiveness is a way of life. We should forgive always. And what on earth does that mean?
First, we must understand that there are three things forgiveness is not. It's not denial. When we forgive we don't forget that we were hurt, that we hurt now, that we may hurt for a long time— perhaps a lifetime. Forgiveness is not denial.
Second, forgiveness is not excusing. It's not being "nice." When we forgive
we don't pretend that the offender is not responsible because of childhood or biology. A human being is responsible. Forgiveness is not excusing.
Third, forgiveness is not forgetting. When we forgive, we do not block the memory, nor do we nourish it. But no, we do not forget.
What, then, is forgiveness? That's a hard one to answer, but again as I thought of that discussion, an answer came to me.
Forgiveness is not something we give or do, but something we receive. It is not an action. It's a gift. It comes when we want it and it does not come before.
It is easy to cherish anger and hurt. They give us an identity, however false, and sometimes the wrath and pain feel better than the emptiness which comes when we surrender them. But we pay a price for indulging our anger. It cripples us. We become paralyzed.
When we forgive we are freed, not from the hurt, but from the dominating power of the hurt. We are able to give up our anger. The hurt and wrath no longer direct us. However it happens, we are free.
We may still suffer the consequences of the offense, but the offense no longer masters us.
Do you see? Forgiveness comes first for our sake, and then for the sake of the offenders, if they are penitent.
They may not be. They may not know. They may not want to know. But we, the aggrieved, are free.
This piece was published by Skinner House in 2003 in Never Far from Home: Stories from the Radio Pulpit. It is available from the UUA Bookstore (800-215-9076) or through the CLF Library (617-948-6150).
I'm Dan Kane, and I am thrilled and honored to be the ministerial intern at the CLF this church year. I just completed my third year of classes at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley and during those years also served as a chaplain at Napa State Hospital, an incarceration facility.
I am very excited about working at the CLF, as I consider myself a UU evangelist—called to spread the good news of our life-saving message to all of those who might hear it. I have a deep regard for those who carry and embody our faith beyond the safety of numbers and popular sentiment.
My passion for our faith grows out of my personal experience of coming to Unitarian Universalism fifteen years ago—in my mid-30s and with all the trappings of 'success'—only to discover that I had never learned to view myself (let alone others!) as having inherent worth and dignity. My blossoming as a human being and as a compassionate seeker happened through shared ministry at my home church in Oakland, CA. I hope to create similar opportunities for us all during my time at the CLF.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Here it is September, that traditional "church shopping" time of the year. Of course, we're always delighted when questions lead newcomers to the CLF.
Whether they come to The Church of the Larger Fellowship by means of the Web, a podcast, a copy of Quest, an online quiz, the front door in Boston, or at the kind invitation of a friend, their questions about Unitarian Universalism often include something about god.
What is god in the context of the Unitarian Universalist religion? Of course, many don't find the word "god," or even the concept, helpful at all, but many do. And many more are intrigued by what one might call "the changing face of god," where god becomes a goddess, or a cosmos that's generally friendly, or a free-floating inclination toward the good, or an omnipresence that helps us to behave. Some look for an image of god that promotes healing, or wholeness, or inner calm, or acceptance, or guidance. Others are drawn to images or conceptions from traditional religions—Jewish, maybe, or Pagan, Muslim, or Christian. Unitarian Universalists have Sunday school curricula that encourage our children to explore all kinds of ideas of god.
Some questioners step back and wonder why so many images of god appear in human form. The short answer seems to be that that's what people do. Peter Berger's Sacred Canopy tells us that human beings externalize, that it's an anthropological necessity. In The History of God, Karen Armstrong claims that throughout history, people have conceptualized the gods that worked for them in their own time and in their own place: that each generation creates its own god.
We look back and remember that the Romans held Caesar to be a god, and the Egyptian pharaohs became gods, as did the Greek Dionysus, and Jesus. Western history in particular has a habit of apotheosizing people, turning them into gods. They become not just superheroes, but supernatural heroes. Or at least that's how the history appears to many of us living in the 21st Century.
A colleague, Laura Cavicchio, once did some research about the goddess Anath, popular about the time that the god of the Hebrew Scriptures was developing. Anath is an anthropomorphic goddess—she looks like us—but she's a super-powerful warrior goddess: "She killed the people of the coast/she annihilated the men of the east..../She plunged knee-deep into the soldiers' blood, up to her thighs in the warriors' gore." Different people, different cultures, need different concepts of the divine at different times and places, depending on their circumstances.
So of course there are thousands and thousands of gods out there. All of us sit in our own cultures looking out at the gods, and we see what we see, not what believers see. Some gods seem completely abstract to me, but their manifestations look concrete. The Hindu supreme being Ishvara, for example, manifests as the physical Vishnu and Shiva. Buddhism seems to have the same sort of arrangement to this outsider. Buddhism is not based on a god at all, but still you wind up with a panoply of popular gods and demons derived and assimilated from indigenous folk religions.
Meanwhile, the Jewish god looks to me to be a personal god, yet is never described or given a visual image, nor, in the strict sense, is god's name ever to be spoken. Somehow, though this god has no physicality, we imagine this god to be male. This male image was inherited by both Christianity and Islam.
We can look back and forth through time and over and around the world, and Karen Armstrong's observation seems to be true: if we do need gods, we create the gods we need.
What gods, if any, does a religious liberal look for?
Of course that question is yours to answer. Although atheism, agnosticism, and humanism are welcome and particularly popular, among Unitarian Universalists, some gods are common among us.
Some describe their god as a spirit that offers a feeling of safety and advocacy close at hand, a feeling of belonging wherever they are. A warmth, a confidence, an acceptance.
Others experience a god that provides strength and encouragement, especially in the face of life's challenges. A god that understands how difficult their situation is and how hard they are trying, as only a god can.
Still others experience a cosmic kind of god that inclines some things to happen and others not to, or balances the good in the universe with the not-so-good, or tips the balance toward the positive.
Some among us feel a life-force in the world, an energy, a liveliness, a connection that is not so much personal but universal.
No two Unitarian Universalist theists conceptualize their gods in exactly the same way—at least that's my guess. But when people in our fold want a god in their lives, they are inclined to welcome a face of god that gives them strength for the good, with meaning and love.
Informed by religions of the worlds and our own unique needs and experiences, a number of options are out there for those who are interested. That, in my view, is what a church shopper needs to know about Unitarian Universalism and god.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
What do you know about Labor Day? For a lot of kids in the US, the only thing you might associate with it is that it marks the end of your summer vacation. Which kind of makes sense, since "labor" means work, and many kids go back to school (work) around Labor Day.
But this holiday is really about honoring workers, and the important campaigns for workers' rights that have been carried out by labor unions across the years. For instance, in 1835 children who worked in the silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey went on strike to gain the right to only work 11 hours a day, 6 days a week. It wasn't until 1940 that the Fair Labor Standards Act set a 40 hour (eight hours a day, five days a week) work week as standard.
For decades labor unions, organized groups of workers, have used various techniques to pressure corporations to improve the way they are treated. As with the kids in Paterson, New Jersey, one technique is a strike, in which workers refuse to go to work until the corporation that employs them agrees to raise wages or improve working conditions. Oddly enough, it's a way of changing things by actively not doing something. And by not doing something, they often end up having a big effect, forcing employers to treat them better if they want the work to get done. Another way to change things by not doing something is called a boycott. A boycott means that people agree not to buy a certain product or shop at a certain store until there is a change. For instance, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta led a boycott against grape growers, asking people not to buy grapes until the owners of the farms created better working conditions for the people who picked the grapes.
As with all kinds of movements for social change, from fighting against slavery to working for civil rights for people of all races, genders and sexual orientations, Unitarian Universalists have been involved in the struggle for workers rights. Consider, for instance, Ruth Young Jandreau, who was a labor union leader in the 1940s, and who, in 1944, became the first woman member of the executive board of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), a union that had some 600,000 members. Ruth started out life in poverty, and began working in a factory when she was still young. But she had a tremendous dedication to getting justice for workers, and her drive and commitment eventually led her to the top levels of union leadership. She led strikes for better pay and met with government officials about working conditions for women in the big factories. She also was a mom, and later in her life, a member of the First Parish Unitarian Church of Schenectady, New York.
In her reflections on her life, which you can find at www.harvardsquarelibrary.org, Ruth Young Jandreau writes of her time leading a strike:
For thirteen weeks I was with these people, going home to Brooklyn to sleep a few hours each night.... We set up soup kitchens, got welfare, had banks declare a moratorium on loans and mortgages, sent committees out to raise funds. I went to speak to large meetings in New York City... pleading for money. Some days I was discouraged. Sometimes frightened. But I couldn't tell anyone. Couldn't show weakness to the workers. They were counting on me.... I...remember when the Courts issued an injunction against our strike and we answered by calling for a mass picket line of thousands. The sheriff came with bull horns and read the riot act.... But we marched. I was frightened but was in front.
For thirteen weeks I was with these people, going home to Brooklyn to sleep a few hours each night.... We set up soup kitchens, got welfare, had banks declare a moratorium on loans and mortgages, sent committees out to raise funds. I went to speak to large meetings in New York City... pleading for money.
Some days I was discouraged. Sometimes frightened. But I couldn't tell anyone. Couldn't show weakness to the workers. They were counting on me.... I...remember when the Courts issued an injunction against our strike and we answered by calling for a mass picket line of thousands. The sheriff came with bull horns and read the riot act.... But we marched. I was frightened but was in front.
If you're feeling inspired by Labor Day, or by people like Ruth Young Jandreau, maybe you'd like to take some action of your own. Generally speaking, only workers who belong to a union can change things through staging a strike, but kids can certainly participate in a boycott. Is there a store or a recreation program in your community that you think has unfair policies? A company that is damaging the environment? A boycott can be a good way to make your point about something you think is unfair. Remember that in addition to not buying from the folks you're protesting, you also need to let them know that you're not buying, so you should write a letter and explain why you are boycotting them. You could also write a letter to your local newspaper explaining why you are boycotting a corporation or product, and asking others to join you in the boycott.
But even if the only labor you're thinking about is your own at the beginning of this month, have a happy Labor Day!
Ministry is
a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities. inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another.... standing for human dignity and equity, for compassion and aspiration. believing in life in the presence of death. struggling for human responsibility against principalities and structures that ignore humaneness and become instruments of death.
a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities. inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another....
standing for human dignity and equity, for compassion and aspiration.
believing in life in the presence of death. struggling for human responsibility against principalities and structures that ignore humaneness and become instruments of death.
It is all these and much, much more than all of them, present in
the wordless, the unspoken, the ineffable.
It is speaking and living the highest we know and living with the knowledge that it is
never as deep, or as wide or as high as we wish.
Whenever there is a meeting that summons us to our better selves, wherever
our lostness is found, our fragments are united, or our wounds begin healing, our spines stiffen and our muscles grow strong for the task
there is ministry.
Excerpted from "Anyone's Ministry" in Out of the Ordinary, by Gordon McKeeman, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron, Ohio. Published in 2000 by Skinner House, this book is available from the UUA Bookstore (800-215-9076) or through the CLF Library (617-948-6150).
Last updated August 25, 2007
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