The current buzz at Coffee Hour (started by yours truly) starts with the assumption that UUism is stuck in Apple’s pre-iPod business strategy: cater to an elite niche market. It asks, “What should UUism’s iPod strategy be?”
Just to underline the importance of this discussion: I happened to have Easter lunch today with a neuropsychologist. She mentioned that 1% of the US population has some form of psychosis. That means there are ten times more psychotics than UUs.
In the Coffee Hour discussion thread, Jason Pitzl-Waters asks what our common discipline is: “What are we all working for/toward? In ten words or less. If we can’t know this we will never be able to spread our “gospel” to anyone outside of our small over-educated clique.” All too true.
Peacebang suggests our discipline might be something like “I will, with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul, truly strive to see the common soul in all living beings…” Send this to the liturgist for poeticizing; I think it’s a great start. I particularly like the nod to Emerson. I’m not a big fan of the whole “Oversoul” idea, but here I think it works rather well.
These questions underline a more fundamental issue: Click to continue reading “Coffee Hour: Seach for the “UU iPod””
Would you please stop masturbating now? Look what you’ve done!
Happy Good Friday, y’all! On Sunday you can eat chocolate again without hurting Baby Jesus!
Following up on Chalice Chick’s popular post on how to run a church committee meeting, here’s a great list of “Rules We Live By” (PDF) that also deserves a close reading by church leaders. Some gems:
- “Big change is easier than small change.”
- “A good, honest question either reduces or increases suffering.”
- “[Volunteers] will not, in the long run, give to others what they are not getting for themselves.”
Lots of great resources from these folks are in the “tools/articles” section at Community Activators. And there don’t seem to be usage restrictions, so feel free to distribute widely.
Lately there’s been a wide discussion in UU blogs about what place the Bible should have in UUism. I’m jumping in kind of late here, so I’ll try to limit myself to some thoughts about sacred texts in general.
There are a bunch of thinkers (believe this would qualify as “postliberalism”) who toy with the idea of “the classic” as a good way to understand (or start understanding) what a sacred text is and does. In one sense, then, sacred texts could be understood to be the Shakespeares and Dantes of this or that religion.
Fair enough, but I think we can take it further still. Besides being “a classic,” a sacred text is where a religious tradition keeps its founding stories, metaphors, etc. Its the text that folks start with and the one they go back to. (And, yes, I’m purposely ignoring the whole literalism question.) This isn’t to say it’s the only place it keeps them, just that it’s the classic text where it keeps them. If we understand sacred text in this way, then, no, the Bible is not a sacred text for UUism (though it might be for individual UUs).
But as UUs we like to claim that we can have and use several sacred texts, do we not? How can we make sense of having multiple sacred texts? Click to continue reading “Weighing in on UUism and the Bible”
I’ve got fifty invites to free gmail accounts. If you’d like one, drop me an email (see the bottom of the “about” section). First come, first serve. Yet another fantabulous free service from MyIrony, your internet friend.
The Apostopher quotes from a recent medical study:
Although teenagers who take “virginity pledges” begin engaging in vaginal intercourse [an average of 18 months] later than teens who have not committed to remain abstinent until marriage, they also are more likely to engage in oral or anal sex than nonpledging virgin teens and less likely to use condoms once they become sexually active.
And to think that in my day we settled for dry humping. Ah, to be a kid again…
