30 years

NPR reminds me that this is the 30th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant incident.  Which reminds me that I was in the first trimester of a pregnancy 30 years ago.  Which reminds me that my younger daughter will be 30 in the fall.  I'll have to blog about that later.

 

We were living in Newark, Delaware, then, less than 100 miles down-wind from Three Mile Island.  The friends who knew about my pregnancy worried about me at the time, but the worry faded as weeks went by, and I've never had any reason to believe that it had any effect on me or my daughter. 

 

No physical effect -- but I realize now that the psychological effect has been there.  I can't believe that it is ethically right to put a Three Mile Island or an Indian Point anywhere near pregnant mothers, nursing mothers, babies, children, people!  We are told that in the US we are oversensitive to these fears.  Other developed nations, like France, have gone much further with nuclear power.  And do you know where France has put its nuclear power plants?  Out on the borders of the country, as far away from French population centers as possible.

 

When the half human/half god Prometheus gave fire to humans, he was soundly punished.  It seems to me that there is still punishment whenever we unleash power from wood, oil, gas, the nucleus of the atom.  The best course is to use less of all kinds of power.  I started to learn that 30 years ago.

 

 

 

 

Right On, Whales!

In August, 1992, I took a whale watching tour off of Cape Cod and saw more than one percent of the world population of Right Whales. We watched three adults play around our little boat for a long time, and then suddenly our guide noticed that there was a baby with one of the adults. Four right whales, out of the population of 300 then remaining.

Since then I've sometimes checked in on that right whale population, and usually I could Google up a relatively current source that would tell me that there were about 300 right whales in the world. Not up, but not down. Okay.

Today, the New York Times Science section carries an article by Cornelia Dean which tells me, glory halleluia!, that there are now more than 325 right whales in the world. Recent changes in the design of fishing gear and in the designation of shipping lanes have lowered the number of accidental right whale casualties each year and the population has been growing. This makes my day!

The article admits that it is expensive to monitor and advocate for this population of 325 whales. In a world where millions of people are hungry and hurting, how can we rationalize this expense? I say that we must defend this different kind of scientience that we watched playing, -- yes playing -- around our boat in 1992. A world without right whales would be a lesser place.

International UU Women's Convocation

I am back from what I hope will be the first of a long line of international gatherings for Unitarian Universalist women.  Almost 500 women made the journey to Houston, Texas, including 35 women from outside the USA.  Most of us made it home in a timely fashion as well, but that's another story, -- based on a winter storm and the mysteries of why some flights get cancelled and others don't.  We'll never know why my flight went on time and my daughter Linnea had to stay an extra day.

 

But until we got to the problems of departure, the Convocation was a joy.  Yes, there were probably too many speakers shoe-horned into the time available, but we wanted and needed to hear all of the speakers.  They told us the story of women's challenges around the world, and gave us a vision of how we might stand together to improve the lives of all of us.  The conference was based in concrete experience.

 

I was glad to have some responsibility for the arc of worship along the four days.  Because there were four days, I thought of the four elements as a unifying pattern and that seemed to work well.  And serendipity was active in these worships.  Lisa Friedman, preaching on Friday morning, used the image of an eagle circling above, looking down on a wide view.  Laurel Hallman, preaching on Sunday morning, talked about looking up at a sky filled with V's of migrating geese.  Neither preacher knew the other image was going to be used, and I was probably the only one in the whole convocation who really noticed this progression of images, from individual to community, from intentional circles to motion toward something.  But it was thrilling to experience that strand coming together, and I know that other strands were being pulled true as well.

 

We finished the convocation promising to work on women's issues in the specific areas of education, health/reproductive rights, and violence.  This is going to help me focus the Partner Church efforts here at this congregation.  I also intend to get another Non-Violent Communication class on the schedule.

 

This was a new form of women's gathering, full of strength and intention to make change.  May we continue to gather in this spirit. 

 

 

February 12, 2009

 

Happy 200^th to Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln! 

 

If spirituality resides in connection, as I believe it does, this is truly a spiritual day.  It is amazing to recognize that these two major figures in the history of Western thought and action were born on the very same day.  Certainly it is an accidental intersection, but it is enlightening to think of the qualities that Darwin and Lincoln shared.

 

Both lost their mothers before age ten.  Both lost children, -- but then everyone lost children back then.  More significantly, both lost children at times when the pressures of their pursuits were heavy on them.  Lincoln lost a son on the day of the first Union victory of the war.  Darwin lost a son during the month when he was preparing �Origin� for first publication.  Both were near that child�s death, and both mourned but also pushed forward with their work. 

 

They were men of sorrow.  Both Darwin and Lincoln were burdened with emotional or physical illness.  Both were troubled by theological questions.  At the same time, both had the strength and courage to bring important changes to our world view.  And both had the talents for writing that served them well.

 

Both were human.  They hesitated and stumbled.  Their motives were created in their time, not in ours, and so they may not always have been up to our �high standards�.  But change the world they did, with words and patterns of thought that are with us still, and will be with humanity when these men hit the big 300!

 

Many happy returns.

 

 

 

Universalism lives!

Last June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released survey results which indicated that more than 70% of American Catholics and Mainline Protestants believe that many of the world's religions could lead to eternal life. More than half of those questioned even said that atheists and people from no religious background would be saved as well. These findings were so surprising that Pew repeated the survey in August, with the same results. Charles M. Blow reported this in a New York Times Op-Ed article on December 27, 2008. I responded to the piece with the following letter.

To the Editors of the New York Times:

As a minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, I was not surprised to see that a substantial number of American Christians believe that people from many religious backgrounds, or from none, can find eternal life ("Heaven for the Godless?" Dec. 27).

The Universalist denomination arose in the United States in the late 1700s, declaring that a loving God would not condemn any creatures to eternal torment in Hell. That view stood in contrast with the mainstream vision of a judgmental God, who would only save those of a specific creed and rigorously correct behavior. Around 1840, Universalism was a popular grassroots religious movement, one of the ten largest denominations in America. But by the early twentieth century, the number of Universalists had plummeted. Why? American Christians had quietly embraced the Universalist vision of a loving and accepting God, ready to receive anyone – perhaps after a period of repentance and purification – into life eternal. The Pew Forum statistics show that though the Universalist Church was a tiny remnant of its former self when it merged with Unitarianism in 1961, Universalist theology is alive and well today.

(The Rev.) Carol A. Huston
December 28, 2008

October 12, 2006

Ethical Eating II

One element of ethical eating is to buy local in order to avoid the long supply lines and usage of fossil fuel which are part of our current food supply.  The other equally important element is to encourage farming techniques which do not make animals into suffering commodities.  The factory farm has come to dominate the American food supply in the last 30 years.  In this process, animals are, among other things, confined to pens and cages and given food that isn't good for them metabolically.  They are treated like objects, not beings who feel pain and fear.

In response to this, some choose to become vegetarian.  But there is also a growing movement among smaller farmers who want to maintain older techniques of feeding and pasturing which are more humane, and many supermarkets carry meat, eggs and dairy products which  foods are labeled to how they have been produced.   Those of us who buy animal based food can vote with our shopping selections, paying more for food that was more humanely produced/

Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it might be.  There are no unified definitions for labeling and no inspections that would help us to know for certain what is the best to buy on humanitarian grounds.  Something that sounds great, like �free range,� has no real meaning � that freedom might simply be a door opening that none of the creatures will actually find and use.  Even so, I think there is something to be gained from buying these products.  In doing so, we are demonstrating that we want and are willing to pay for something from our food supply besides economy and efficiency.

At the moment, I don't buy pork and I have never eaten veal, whose inhumane growing process predates the factory farm.  When I buy beef or dairy products, I try to find �pasture-fed� beef.  �Grass fed� is better than �grain fed� because a cow�s digestive tract does better with grass, but �grass fed� probably means that the cow is getting its grass while confined in a feed-lot.  For chicken, I am buying a �certified humane� product at D�Agostino's.  And I recommend buying �cage-free� eggs, which I have found in several supermarkets.  Factory egg production is the nastiest  process of them all, with chickens packed tight in wire cages; it doesn't matter if chickens damage their own bodies in tight cages when the food product is the egg rather than the flesh. 

I will come back to this theme in other postings. 

 

 

October 11, 2006

Ethical Eating

In the service last Sunday, I talked about being mindful in our food shopping in three particular ways.  The first has to do with health; the second with fossil fuel consumption, and the third with the humane treatment of animals in our food industry.

On the matters of health, I don�t have anything to add to the constant barrage of health warnings that we get on our food supply.  I must leave you to sort those out yourselves.  But I have some suggestions on the other two matters. 

The way we manage our food supply today is based on fossil fuel, and thus our food choices have an impact on oil dependency and global warming.  As an example last Sunday, I noted the fact from The Omnivore�s Dilemma (Michael Pollan) that the bag or box of organic salad-ready greens that you get at the supermarket has used a pint of fossil fuel for its harvesting, chilling, washing, and transportation from large California farms.

What to do?  Shop at farmer�s markets whenever you can, to support regional farms and to eat food from a shorter transportation line.  When those markets aren�t open, look for indications of local sources in your supermarkets.  Meat and dairy products often have places of origin on them.  And we should start asking produce managers where their goods come from.  Let them know that we are interested in buying local when we can.  Processed food, almost by definition, has long transportation links in its production and even food additives are drawn from petrochemicals.  Processed foods have a place in our lives, but we also need to recognize that fossil fuel usage is at the heart of these foods.

My next post will outline how you might find ethically produced meat and dair products.