UU President Bill Sinkford writes to his fellow Unitarian Universalists:
We’re no longer way out on the margins, and we no longer need to confine our message to the little side streets in our UU neighborhoods. We can take our Good News to the center of the public square with some expectation that it will be favorably received.
(B) Particular self-formational practices. Classically, this means activities like prayer and fasting, meditation and alms-giving. Different communities teach different methods, with different purposes in mind (say, Sufi dancing, Pietist soup kitchens, or Zen meditation). Other practices are less traditionally religious, if religious at all. Ethicist Alisdair MacIntyre believes that even playing football can be considered a practice, if it is played simply for the joy of the game and for the goal of being a better football player. Click to continue reading “How to renew a vocabulary of reverence
(part two)”
From the Happy Tutor over at the Gift Hub:
In the 1950’s what chance did a child have in saying he had been abused by a priest? The word “abuse” was not used in those days. Whatever words the kid came up with would have been sinful. To disparage a priest would be sacreligious. Had the parents pursued it they would have been met with mild reproof, silence, denial and the opportunity to make their own confession of sinful thoughts. How different is that climate from our own, when it comes to the cloistered workings of wealth and power? When a corporation corrupts the young through brands, sexualized content, spectacles of cruelty, and appeals to the basest motives, is that not abuse, tantamount to soul murder? And what is said? What is done? “There is nothing we can do.” When funders pursue philanthropy in an incestuous web of favors traded and deals done, all in private, is that not abuse? The public’s sense of powerlessness, that silence, is the sign of abuse, and the condition under which it flourishes. Philanthropy, at times, in the games of power, is the Mass said by the abusive priest, rendering criticism impossible.
The wife and I were flipping channels and stopped for a bit to watch a minister in a store front church on the local religious public access station. In front of two carpeted stairways that led up five steps to doorless walls painted to look like a clear summer sky, he led an passionate impromptu prayer for a good ten minutes.
His title? Apostle. His name? Chuck. I think I’ve found a new church home.
In the midst of a Salon.com article on Pentagon misgivings about Bush, Sidney Blumenthal offered this insight into the Commander in Chief:
As the iconic image of the “war president” has tattered, another picture has emerged. Bush appears as a passive manager who enjoys sitting atop a hierarchical structure, unwilling and unable to do the hard work that a real manager has to do in order to run the largest enterprise in the world. He does not seem to absorb data unless it is presented to him in simple, crystal-clear fashion by people whose judgment he trusts. He is receptive to information that agrees with his point of view rather than information that challenges it. This therefore leads to enormous power on the part of the trusted interlocutors, who know and bolster his predilections.
I see a three part process to renewing any “vocabulary of reverence.” Three parts, but not three steps. Any point of the process is a legitimate starting point. Any point of the process is a legitimate ending point (if it’s fair to say you can finish this process.) There will be false starts and double-backs, to be sure. At times we may even need to work on more than one part of the process at the same time.
For the academically inclined, the process derives from Foucault’s notion of “technologies of the self” and ethicist Alisdair MacIntyre’s understanding of virtue. (I might take some time to outline both author’s thoughts in the future.)
Before we get to the three parts, it’s worth saying that this process is always particular, always learned, and always historically enacted. Particular because some somebody (or several somebodies) is going through the process with their own personal history, their thoughts and feelings, their faults and graces, and their body. It is learned initially in the battle for authentic individuality and social acceptance in adolescence, but when previous resolutions of the process no longer satisfy it usually needs to be relearned (with some measure of struggle). To say it is historically enacted is to say that is never pure, never ideal. It is also to say that while the particular forms it may take will be unique, they are always enacted in conversation with those who have gone before. Click to continue reading “How to renew a vocabulary of reverence
(part one)”
