Announcing a new UU comic from yours truly. Our first episode: “The New Guy.” (Click on the toon below to pull up the full strip.)

(With thanks to the good folks at StripGenerator.com.)

Earlier I said ubuntu is all we need. Now I want to push further.

If Unitarian Universalism has a Good News, it is this: we already have what we need to practice ubuntu, and to practice it more fully. There is nothing missing that prevents us from realizing a fuller expression of ubuntu. If there is something we need on the path to fuller ubuntu, it has already been provided for.

I take this to be both a universalist and a unitarian message. It is universalist because everything is already provided, to each and all of us. It is unitarian because we can each choose to pick it up and do it. There is no divine favor needed to qualify us for ubuntu. Whatever divine favor might be necessary is already in place.

There will be a natural inclination among many of us to turn to god-talk at this point to explain how this is so. This inclination is fine, and probably even helpful to a point. But from a metaphysical standpoint it is not strictly necessary. We do not need to parse our god-talk to be able to practice ubuntu. All we need to practice ubuntu is each other, and we already have that.

Words like “Providence” and “grace” and “divine love” help the theologically inclined to better grasp the whole of how ubuntu happens, but such god-talk should be used only to the extent that is helpful, no more and no less. My own turn toward the language of Taoism and panentheism helps me frame for myself, in an abstract metaphysical sense, how ubuntu can happen at all. If this language helps others do the same, then good.

But when god-talk becomes a distraction from realizing our need for the person in front of us, it should be put aside. And when we begin to insist on our own god-talk, we’ve started to leave ubuntu behind.

For a future installment: So why aren’t we all practicing ubuntu then?

Do not trust the pusher robot.

(I seem to need to post this once a year.)

The song from this sketch has been running through my head all day.

Posts this week from folks at The Daily Scribe:

• First, a stunner: Scribe CEO Shawn Anthony of Lo-Fi Tribe is leaving the Unitarian Universalist ordination track to return to Christianity.
• CK at Arbitrary Marks reminds us that sacred stories have costs too, not just benefits.
• The Journey sends us to a point-by-point call to order for critics of the emergent church.
• In tune with CK’s post, Pop Occulture tells us that religion is a challenge, not a comfort.
• Gathering in Light gives us the philosophical low-down on why protest can’t work.
• Finally, former-Mormon Philocrites tells reporters exactly the question they should ask presidential hopeful Mitt Romney about this Mormon faith.

A friend sent me this, and I just have to share.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.