Acknowledging that some of our congregation’s buildings were built with slave trade money. Acknowledging that huge racial diversity just may not be in the cards for us, and that that can be okay if we do other good work. And this:

“Many of us thought we were going to solve racism and poverty,” said Sinkford, who is African American. “To come to terms with the unfinishedness of that work is almost acknowledging a failure for my generation.”

This kind of un-secreting goes a long way toward confronting how racism functions among Unitarians.

Go tell it on the mountain!

Because god is snarky. She created a snarky universe in her image. And, lo, it was good, very good.

I just started up a Flickr group for this year’s GA. Check it out and start adding your own photos.

This is my first GA. And so my first banner parade and opening shindig. And that’s all the academic throat clearing you get on this one. (This one’s long, so I broke into five bite-sized pieces.)

1. Ending institutional evil as we know it

The focus of the evening was three moments in UU social justice history: one part Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one part Civil Rights, and one part disability. Three moments where we took a stand and made it count.

The evening’s rhetoric took on an interesting dynamic. One moment we were being regaled with our incredible wonderfulness, our beacon-ness, if you will. The next we were bereft at our complete incompetence at making anything happen ever. Rinse and repeat.

“We so good!! Oh, but we’re so bad at being good! But, look, we’re so good!! Oh, but we’re so bad at being good!!”

Of course, when your goal is to end institutional evil as we know it, you’ve kinda set yourself up for that.

I was a little taken aback when the word flashed across the powerpoint screen, saying that we had committed ourselves to nothing less than ending racism. Wow.

It’s not every group of folks that will commit itself to ending institutional evil as we know it. Maybe most other folks limit themselves to more cautious ambitions. Or more achievable ones. Click to continue reading “Help me to be a noble failure—while I run this race”

Flying from Atlanta to Phoenix this morning, we had to make an emergency stop in Wichita. Turns out someone allergic to peanuts ate some peanuts in the “snack pack.” A doctor and a nurse were on board to help, so she’ll be fine, they said. Some folks in the row behind me knew her, and they didn’t seem to worried.

Then the hit your head on the ceiling turbulence. Thank god for seat belts, eh? Though, somehow, I managed to jam my thumb. Nothing major, just mildly annoying. Like this trip. Sigh. Almost there.