I think this is what you call getting upstaged. Read one anti-nazi sign: “Wrong time. Wrong place. Halloween is in October.” Where are Jake and Elwood when you need them?

Some groovy posts from the Daily Scribe crew:

• David Kesley at Jewschool looks at the recent NYC “die in’s” and makes a modest proposal: Why should Zionist oppression start in 1948 and not with “the white male capitalist regimes of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon?”
• Philocrites sadly notes that the Unitarian who discovered Pluto has been demoted along with his newly christened “dwarf planet.”
• Crookedshore points us to Armor of God pajamas. (Sorry, no adult sizes.)
• Pomomusings links to biblical scholar Walter Bruegemann’s MySpace page. His theme song? “It’s good to be a gangsta.”
• Sean Anthony asks if theism makes society sick.
• Pagan Sojourner gives us Buddhism in 438 words.

Back in my charismatic days, we talked about moving from the spiritual milk of the newly reborn to the spiritual meat of the spiritually mature. (Spirits, apparently, are carnivores.)

And I’ve learned that we Unitarians sometimes fret about hosting a spiritual cafeteria where folks just pick what they want and move on down the line.

And then I keep thinking about Tim Boucher’s post on “metrospirituality” that I linked to last week. Spirituality: the shopping experience, coming to a New Age bookstore near you.

We already talk about eye candy, brain candy, and ear candy. One definition of brain candy is “an experience that is enjoyable because it stimulates the mind pleasantly, but doesn’t actually make it work.” Perhaps the problem isn’t spiritual milk or the spiritual cafeteria. Maybe it’s a spiritual sugar rush, followed by spiritual obesity and spiritual diabetes?

I have to say I’m all about experiences that stimulate my spirit without actually making it work. My own favorite spirit candy is a new book. The latest purchase is Machiavelli, which I ostensibly purchased to help with some of my tutees’ summer reading. But it failed to delight, and so it sits mostly unread in a pocket in my bag. There are books that do work my spirit, but so many that only tickle its sweet tooth.

Enjoy some spirit candy? What’s your favorite fix?

Following up on Andrew Young’s racist compliment of Wal-Mart:

1. Wal-Mart is pressuring its employees not to sign on to a court case alledging it forces them to work overtime pressure they say “borderlines on criminal witness intimidation,.”

2. Crime in Wal-Mart parking lots is disproportionately high. There’s a police incident at your local Wal-Mart every 1.5 days. Security patrols would stop most of it, but then there wouldn’t be “always low prices.”

3. We pay Wal-Mart employees’ health care costs via our tax dollars. Here in Georgia, there is one Wal-Mart kid on welfare for every four Wal-Mart employees you see in your local Wal-Mart. That’s fourteen times the number of Publix kids on the dole. (The ratio for Publix, a large supermarket chain, is one Publix kid per 24 Publix employees.)

(Hat tip to this Trees and Things thread.)

So Sen. George Allen finally apologized for the “macaca” remark, well over a week after it happened. Oh yeah, he’s running for president, ain’t he?

Had a good discussion this weekend with the Chalice Coven this weekend re: the first principle—“the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

(I’m normally wary of “let’s talk about the principles” discussions; they seem to carry a tacit assumption that we somehow “believe” them and move on from there to what feels like an evangelical bible study. But no matter. This one was good.)

Usually the phrase is run together: inherentworthanddignity… But someone made a distinction between the two. Inherent worth is what we have as a god given right. We are born with it, and no one can take it away, no matter how they try. Inherent dignity is what we are due from others, and no one has the right to take it away, no matter what we have done. Click to continue reading “Inherent worth versus inherent dignity”