Food ethics, a son's addiction, and more

Morality and food

Inspired by Earth Day, Plaidshoes at "Everyday Unitarian" considers making environmentally-friendly lifestyle changes. First on the list:

Get back to being more committed to veganism. I have been a vegetarian for over 17 years, but keep slipping when I try to be vegan. So much of the Earth's resources would be saved if people ate more ethically. (April 22, 2008)

But Jacqueline at "Moxie Life" points out that economic factors also shape decisions about food consumption:

[F]ood is only a choice for those who have the financial privilege to make that choice. It is an economics thing. If you come from a lower economic background or a definitive cultural background you will have food ideas around that. You MAY choose to break out of those ideas, but often, in the circumstances you CAN'T. You eat what is offered, and if you are lucky you are grateful. (April 22, 2008)

Response to a son's addiction

The Rev. Sean Parker Dennison at "ministrare" copes with his son's substance abuse:

It is very hard to face that I can't protect or save my son from this. Even though every day of parenting has been another lesson in letting go, this is excruciating. Almost as excruciating as finding another thing that is missing, stabbed, or destroyed because of his addiction and the behaviors it caused. I think, down deep, I have always believed that my love alone could protect and save my child. Even in this moment, I want that to be true. But it's not. And all those parents who have lost children to this disease loved them just as much as I love him. Welcome, compassion. (April 21, 2008)

Loved and chosen, no matter what

Marking her thirtieth birthday, the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd resists the urge to measure her life by her professional accomplishments:

It's tempting, at 30, to look back at my life and try to come up with all of the reasons these have been three decades of reasonably well lived life. It's tempting to try to justify the way I used those years and envision a new and improved me for the next 30. But I tell my people that they are loved and chosen, no matter what. Today, in honor of my birthday, I will endeavor to tell myself the same thing. (April 23, 2008)

Rejecting punitive theology

In response to the idea that tragedies are a form of "punishment" from God, the Rev. Fred Hammond at "A Unitarian Universalist Minister in Mississippi" writes:

[T]hings will happen in this world. Some things will be filled with pleasure and joy like sunshine causing rainbows after a thunderstorm. Some things will be filled with pain and sorrow like miscarriages and HIV/AIDS. But neither the rainbow nor the miscarriage is a result of our righteousness nor our wickedness. They just are. (April 21, 2008)

Not to be missed

At "UUCSR Writers," a blog organized by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Santa Rosa, California, pseudonymous cparkhill1730 describes growing up with Asperbergers Syndrome. The Rev. Debra Haffner of "Sexuality and Religion: What's the Connection?" relates the Passover teaching on "dayenu" to sexual justice advocacy. And Mary Wellemeyer of "A Larger Faith" joyfully reports on the vote to merge the Unitarian Universalist Association's New Hampshire/Vermont and Northeast districts.