Service, religious community, big ideas, and more

Shelby Meyerhoff is taking a couple of weeks off, and in her absence Kenneth Sutton, managing editor of uuworld.org, will be blogging on the interdependent web.

Service in Mississippi

A.C. Miles went to Long Beach, Mississippi for a rebuilding effort.

"I can't. I'll be on a mission trip to Mississippi."

These have to be some of the oddest words I have ever said as a UU minister. But last week I made them a reality. 8 members of my two beloved congregations and I went to Long Beach, Mississippi to be part of the re-building effort from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was a life-changing trip.

Our common life

Chip offers reflections on what is "traditional" and "creedal":

there is a deeper emotional truth here: some secular humanists are feeling abandoned. Regardless of which theology came first, their lived experience is that their secular humanist home is crumbling. We ought not allow this to happen.

Dan Harper, meanwhile, looks at the political and religious implications of a new generation gap.

Mr. Crankypants smells a new generation gap. The Baby Boom generation is so doggone big that they wind up spending most of their time talking to one another, not to younger people, and avoiding new ideas.

On the very practical side of being a community, Dan also looks toward General Assembly:

The key question to ask before going to any convention is where to find cheap food — no one wants to eat the expensive crap they dish out in convention centers. And when you’re at a convention in Fort Lauderdale in the summer, you really want to know how far you’re going to have to walk in the hot humid Florida air before you get to a restaurant.

In response Scott McNeill offers several pages of logistical information.

Big ideas

David Pyle ponders the subtleties of discerning values:

A minister colleague and mentor of mine once told me to pay more attention to what people do, and less to what they say they value; that if you pay close attention to someone, their actions will tell you their lived values, even as their mouths express different professed values. I immediately thought that this was true of myself… but now I think the truth may be more subtle than this. I think that this perceived dissonance is pointing not at a disconnect in values, but rather an inherent ordering in our values.

PeaceBang puts her funeral arrangements in order before a trip. (Be sure to read the comments.)

This is a really satisfying exercise. Have you done it?

Andrew J. Brown reflects on what cannot be said.

I've been saying a great deal over my eight years as your minister and I have increasingly realised that, no matter how clever and erudite it may (or may not) be - it will never be able to say much at all; indeed most of it will be, speaking Wittgensteinly, nonsense. I am, once again, forced to reveal my ultimate commitment to a mystical understanding of religion.

Aaron Sawyer responds on his own blog.

Bookish posts

James Ford offers a list of recommended books with some surprises:

I got the brilliant idea of asking friends who are in the spiritual guidance business if they would recommend one book, just one book.

Earthbound Spirit seems to have been the entry point of a book meme into the UU blogosphere:

Below is a list of the top 106 books marked as "unread" by LibraryThing users. Bold the ones you've read, star (*) the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

The meme was picked up by (at least) Ms. Kitty, Biddies In My Brain, and Patrick Murfin.

Judith Laura (Medusa) reviews A Church of Her Own: What Happens When A Woman Takes the Pulpit by Sarah Sentilles (Harcourt 2008)

This book is at once big and intimate – big not only in number of pages (310 plus several pages of back matter) but also in scope. Its main emphasis is the challenge awaiting women who attempt to become ministers or priests, but it also brings into the picture gay, lesbian, and trans issues. Its feeling of intimacy arises from the author basing the material on her story, her experience, as well as anecdotes from many other women.

Ted Kennedy

Ms Kitty reflected on Senator Edward Kennedy's illness and his life of service:

. . . if reconciliation and redemption are truly the salvific events of life that we as religious people proclaim them to be, Ted Kennedy has done what he can to redeem himself and to make amends, however inadequate those amends might be for a loss of life.

Also noting Kennedy's illness were Debra W. Haffner, Dan Kennedy (links to Guardian article), and James Ford.