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    • Mar

    16

    No More Saint Patty’s Day for Me

    Filed Under people, small happinesses | 7 Comments

    For many years, in recognition of St. Patty’s Day, I’d wear something green. One year I even wore a Kiss Me, I’m Irish shirt, which I’d planned to insert “1/32nd” into.

    It was my one little thing to acknowledge the one non slave owning white ancestor I knew about. But alas, I recently learned I’m NOT 1/32nd Irish - I’m 1/32nd Scottish.

    Ack! My mortal enemies! (j/k)

    Do the Scots even have a day? I dunno. So I guess I’ll just say, “Uhh, thanks, great-great grandpa Daniel and great-great grandma Mary Jane … for getting hitched and having lovely and feisty daughters, one of whom went on to raise my grumpy late grandfather, who produced my amazing Mom - without whom I would not exist (or blog).”

    (I pay homage to my Jamaican roots more frequently throughout the year.)

    But I don’t have to give up on March 17 entirely; it’s also my mother’s birthday. She’ll be 50 tomorrow!

    Happy Birthday, Mama! I love you sooo much. And you look great! Have fun at the hot springs tomorrow!

    Popularity: 31% [?]

    Mar

    16

    The Myth of Progress

    Filed Under anecdotes, capitalism, from the heart, life changes, politics, spiritual practice, uuism | 4 Comments

    This began as a political thought that became religious, then social. I’m too sick to go to church today, so I’m doing my spiritual work online.

    About two months ago, while comparing viable options for Presidential candidates, I was struck by a feeling I’d never had before: maybe it was time to accept a candidate who could represent all Americans - including the ones who believed the opposite of what I believed.

    This is a no brainer, right? Taking into consideration other people’s needs and values, and allowing them a voice and access to the political process - isn’t this what we are taught by our teachers and parents? I don’t remember. I feel like it was, but why did it take 31 years for it to sink in?

    Since then, this has been percolating in the back of my mind. This weekend, I’ve been reading lots about Islam and current Islamic thinking among young people. I started to recall many things about the Muslim mindset. I guess the pot started boiling over, because last night at dinner with Michael, I had another epiphany.

    “Maybe America is never going to be the America I think it should be.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, when I was Muslim, everyone was so sure what America needed was Islam - that Islam was going to illuminate the society, transform people’s lives - slowly, but surely. That we were on that road of progression towards the Truth. And even then, I’d meet other people who felt the same way: Christians, conservatives - not to mention the various subsets of Muslims: the Salaafi, the Qur’an-Only folks, the Black Muslims. And now as a UU, I see it, too. Everyone thinks we are heading towards their vision of their world, but the visions are all different. It can’t be true.”

    Michael thought about this for a moment, then said, “Well, that’s the myth of progress, isn’t it? That’s a criticism I have of Marx, for example. His notion that capitalism would inevitably lead to communism, socialism. The world is a complex system; you can’t make predictions like that. Civilizations aren’t always moving forward. We know this from history. [UU historian James] Loewen talks about this in his tapes [Everything You've Been Taught is Wrong]. Sometimes things get ‘better’ and sometimes they get ‘worse’. It doesn’t matter how great an idea is - what matters is what it’s up against. It has to interact with other ideas.”

    “And this is why you were asking those questions about The Great Turning group, and the concept of an earth community versus an empire?”

    He smacked the steering wheel. “Yes! And it goes back to that conversation we had about pacifism, and you were saying it doesn’t always seem appropriate. And I agree. Gandhi used pacifism to overthrow the rule of the British. But I don’t think it would have worked against, say … Russia.”

    I nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think so, either. I think Gandhi would have been ganked. Plenty of movements have been completely crushed. I don’t even know if Gandhi’s approach would have worked had there not been mass media. The Civil Rights movement in the US would have looked very, very different were it not for television.”

    We sat in the car in our driveway for a few minutes more talking about this. Ultimately, I came away with a much more shifting sense of the world. Like people, strategies need to adapt and evolve. There is no pre-destined outcome that we are working our way towards. This thinking differs from that of people who believe in Armaggedon - but also some of my friends who believe we are “cycling” towards a particular kind of world community.

    I do believe social “progress” is possible. But as Loewen alludes to in his lecture series - particularly the segment titled the Nadir of Race Relations in which he describes how conditions for Blacks improved dramatically for 25 years after the Civil War, and then became horrendous again up until the Civil Rights Movement - we are not pushing forward in some inevitable way. It is through things like human effort, ingenuity, circumstance, and trial and error that positive change happens.

    This does help me. It helps me to expect less from the top. I’m less inclined to trust “movements” in the sense that I know a wave doesn’t always reach the shore. And I know I don’t stand at the center of righteousness - not unless the center can hold everyone, in which case it would no longer be “the center.” I feel less overwhelmed by the world, because I don’t think anyone has all the solutions. I’m not looking for the eternal panacea, or the way.

    Popularity: 41% [?]

    Mar

    15

    Because of Me, He’s an Atheist?

    Filed Under people, questions, quotes, religion, spiritual practice | 7 Comments

    My husband informed me that before we met, he was agnostic. But due to what he’s learned from me about religion over the last 2+ years, he’s now an atheist. Wow. And I thought he’d influenced me to be an atheist.  

    I’m not sure what to think about this. Apparently, his attitude about God-belief used to be one of “whatever.” He didn’t see God as something that could be proved or disproved, and therefore chalked it up as irrelevant. For me, God was always very important. So losing my faith in God as I understood it in my mid-20s was life-changing for me. Trying to “make sense” of the world as a post-believer, means I haven’t let go of religion, or even notions of God.

    The best explanation of this I’ve heard yet was provided by Hubert Dreyfus, in his first Berkeley lecture on existentialism. Here is my transcription of what he says about why Camus isn’t an existentialist, according to his definition:

    Camus says he isn’t. He says he’s a pagan. I think that’s right. That is - I think, all the existentialists are within the Judeo-Christian tradition … they are in opposition to a culture that has as one of its fundamental beliefs that there is a supreme being that makes everything intelligible, that gives moral law … and thanks to the supreme being, we can find out what to do and everything will make sense, and not be contradictory and so forth, and the culture lived off that for a long time …. we can call that absolute - this absolute source of meaning, absolute authority. You can count on it to make sense of the world, and make sense of your life.

    Now Camus certainly denies there is any such Absolute … he’s definitely against the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, but he thinks that the way you should fix it is just get over the problem of seeking an absolute. So, reduce your demands … why should we think that there’s going to be THAT kind of answer, why should we need that kind of answer? Can’t we just appreciate the little things? Lie on the beach in Algeria as at the end of The Stranger, appreciate all the way the world is, even though you’re going to die … but … that’s a kind of pre-Christian attitude, that’s why he says he’s a pagan ….

    Our culture has gotten addicted - Nietzsche would say, we’re sort of absolute junkies; that is, we’ve gotten so used to understanding everything in terms of a supreme being and creation and so forth, that you can’t just get over it. Camus’ idea is you just get over it, you stop expecting the kind of answer that we thought we had for 2000 years. And that’s pre-Christian as I say ….

    [The existentialists (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Heidegger)] - they all think that though it turns out there isn’t any such absolute, we have become defined in terms of the need for it; because once we thought we had it, and it gave us this amazing world in which everything made sense, and we knew what to do and we knew that virtue was rewarded and vice was punished …. But when Nietzsce says God is dead … unlike Camus … he thinks it is the most disastrous and frightening and terrible thing you could possibly experience and discover - because he’s not a pre-Christian or pagan, he’s a post-Christian, he’s somebody writing after we got hooked on this absolute supreme being.

    The most serious thing we have to deal with is that the supreme being kind of absolute doesn’t exist anymore.

    So if you’ve read that far (which I hope you did), that pretty much sums up where I’m at, and it also explains why Nietzsche, and writers inspired by Nietzsche have been so instrumental for me.

    In our time together, I’ve managed to impress upon my now-husband the centrality of religion to many people’s lives, and now he seems genuinely alarmed. His eyes are opening to the ways people call on their faith to justify their lives, to sort themselves out, make even small daily decisions, rule nations, and so on. Now he sees religious belief as a threatening state of mind, whereas in the past he saw it as a mostly harmless personal matter.

    I’m not sure how to feel about this. Did I unwittingly draw him away from a more innocent, pre-Christian attitude while I’ve been busy coping with the tear in my own religious fabric? And another question I have is what is the next step? I’m asking this of myself - what is my next “step” in belief about the nature of things. Am I going to continue to try to “make sense of the world?”

    The conscious part of me says there is nothing to make sense of: The purpose of life is to find and make meaning. This is what I’ve learned from the writings of people who have lived through the horrors of war (particularly the Holocaust). When I isolate my thoughts to that, I feel a tremendous amount of peace. But the unconscious part of me is still grounded in an absolute mindset, this belief that somewhere, there is an answer, and that if I purify myself enough and educate myself enough I might be able to glimpse it with a mythical clarity - even for a moment.

    I don’t know. Whatever happens for me, I now feel a greater sense of responsibility - knowing that whatever path I walk, my husband will be with me.

    Popularity: 33% [?]

    Mar

    14

    More on Race (and Gender) for Kids

    Filed Under ao resources, race | 6 Comments

    “Seek and ye shall find” … just a few days after I vaguely despaired a little in What Does it Take to Be a Good Person, I came across a blog that is addressing some of my concerns about being in a multiracial relationship and having multiracial children.

    Anti Racist Parent is “a blog for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook.” I just read a review of Weaving a Family, a Beacon Press book about a white mother of several children, including a black daughter. Little “pings” went off in me - it’s interesting to note my own soft spots. I haven’t read the book, but heard about it because transracial adoption is rather common among UUs. Although I’m not a white adoptive mother of children of color, I’ll add it to my list.

    Another good post is by a dad who writes about navigating the world of gender-coded toys and clothing for his three year old daughter.This is something I’ve already encountered just in checking out (sweatshop-free, of course) onesies and basic crib bedding.
    Ack! I don’t wear pink dresses with giant flowers on them, and my husband doesn’t wear shirts with trucks and baseballs on them, so why would our kid? It’s very intense.

    We stopped in Pottery Barn Babies the other day (just to look) and wow. Even the beds are for girls OR boys. But more distressing was that the girl room side had beautiful kitchen and laundry set-ups; the boys’ side looked like a prep school dorm room: bookcases, planetary mobiles, sports, and yachting shit. Again, all beautiful, but if I’m going to be passing off weird-ass dreams to my kids, they’re going to be my weird-ass dreams. And I happen to think it’s possible to be both studious AND willing to wash your own clothes.

    In any case, I digress. Anti-Racist Parent - it’s a great blog. A diverse group of people are contributers, and the posts are as entertaining as they are illuminating.  And you don’t have to be a parent to enjoy it.

    Popularity: 30% [?]

    Mar

    14

    Remembrance of Things Past

    Filed Under inspiration, islam, media, nostalgia, spiritual practice | 2 Comments

    This excellent 5 minute video won a national contest, and brought back some memories for me of being a young Muslimah trying to do my faith thing in a non-Muslim world. This made me think of the current UUA/YRUU troubles, and … I don’t know. I felt sentimental. I’m so not a kid anymore, but some of the same issues still linger. In any case, watch the video. It manages to be both dead-on and inspiring. (And who knows, maybe even evangelical.) What do you all think?

    *** The website this video is posted to (netmuslims.com) was sent to me today by an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over a decade. He manages netmuslims.com and says I first taught him how to design a website, for which he’ll “always be thankful.” Who’d a thunkit?

    Popularity: 31% [?]

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