UUA - call to honor & uphold non-negotiable sacredness . . . call to justice

 

UUA Announcement  Unitarian Universalist Association November 2024

Dear friend,

We gather on the morning after, in a time of great fear and devastation and very real risk to ourselves and our Beloveds. There is so much that we cannot yet know. Even if we know the shape and fear the character of our next governmental administration, we cannot fully know what is yet to come in this country.

What I do know, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that we are a sanctuary people. We can make that claim. From the powerful efforts of our elders in the middle of the twentieth century through to our congregations and communities offering shelter to migrants today. Whether harbor or pink haven, our homes, sanctuaries, and even our national headquarters model what it means to offer solidarity, shelter, and asylum in the face of what many of us cannot begin to imagine. These are times that will be defined by the continued and increased need for organizing, and a faithful commitment to mutual aid. 

I want to invite us all back to what we learned in our earliest understandings of what humanity itself means. We draw our purpose from the call to honor and uphold the non-negotiable sacredness of each and every person, of Earth, and of all beings, bound up together in an abiding love that rests in the call to justice. 

So many of us are afraid today. Fearful for the safety of our loved ones and overwhelmed by the public plans to deny our basic human rights. I invite us to feel the reality of that concern, and to hold one another in our grief. I also want us to remember how very many others in our UU communities and across the nation share our values and prepared all the way through this election for what might be asked of us through the remainder of this month and beyond. Look to your community partners. Draw on all you have learned through UU the Vote and other opportunities to work for electoral justice. Know that you are never alone. 

Your UUA will be with you this day and for all the days to come. We have been planning for this possibility and are here to offer best practices for safety, theology, spiritual practice, and communal care. We also know that people may come to our congregations in perhaps larger numbers this weekend and in the coming weeks. We acknowledge the additional stress and strain this creates for so many of you, and we are deeply grateful for the ways you can shift to meet the needs of this moment.

Together, we will rest in the strength of our covenants and bring that love, generosity, sacred witness, and values driven interdependence to bear as we continue to work toward a future where our liberation is collective, and all of our people can count themselves whole. 

Let us keep working toward all that we hold most holy together. 

Amen, Ashe, and Blessed be.

Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt

President of the Unitarian Universalist Association

An unpromising future of the People in this American Empire -trashing of the Union

 

We the People

These last images before 2024 nation-state election illustrate a boding preface to another and more destructive t’RUMp maladministration that at this point is nothing short of an omen of death in ways that will manifest in further shallow, flat, small and weird and down-right evil manipulation, micro-management, and hegemonic decision-making that will further divide and weaken the union and constitutional valuation, sending millions in distressful scenarios that will take years to recover from while many will die at his hand.

 

t'RUMP at his best, projecting himself unknowingly [smart—right?]

After colossal negligence of the Covid Pandemic when t’RUMP demonstrated significantly underperforming leadership capacities proved conclusively his deficits on the mismanagement of government resources, messaging, and plain old get over your addicted ego and let the big hitters run the program.

In the final year of t’RUMP presidency, over 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19, and life expectancy fell by 1.13 years, the largest decrease since World War II. Many of the deaths were avoidable; COVID-19 mortality in the U.S. was 40 percent higher than the average of the other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven (G7).[1] –Exceptional, Right?[2]

He suppressed scientific data[3], delayed testing, mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass gatherings where social distancing was impossible. Despite the mounting threats of COVID-19 and global warming, he pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He installed industry insiders in regulatory posts tasked with protecting Americans from environmental and occupational hazards; their regulatory rollbacks resulted in 22,000 excess deaths from such hazards in 2019 alone.[4] He pushed through a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, creating a budget hole that he then used to justify cutting food and housing assistance for the needy.[5] He tried, but failed, to repeal the ACA, then bent every effort to undermine it, pushing up the number of uninsured Americans by 2.3 million. He denied entry to refugees fleeing violence, abused immigrant detainees,[6] and penalized immigrants for accessing basic social services.[7]

The pattern of government neglect set the stage for racist and nativist appeals Trump has and will probably resume, thus adding to longstanding policies that  contributed to persistent race-based health gaps bequeathed by the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow segregation and Native American genocide, and widening gaps by income[8], education[9] and geography[10]. In 2016, Trump gained his largest electoral margins in counties with the worst mortality trends. [11]

An ancient epistle of St Paul to the exiled and distressed people living in the current Empire (57_CE), serves as a fitting historical political context for comparison, especially we who in praxis have taken on a form of resident aliens. [kenosis] and are awoken. 12]

t'RUMP at his best, pumpkin complexion,
white orifice and piss-colored hair

Their throats are an opened sepulcher; 

they use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of vipers is under their lips.

Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, 

and the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

---

---

[1] Trump's Policy Failures Have Exacted a Heavy Toll on Public Health | Scientific American

[2] Study: More Than 335,000 Lives Could Have Been Saved During Pandemic if U.S. Had Universal Health Care < Yale School of Public Health

[3] House Democrats Renew Investigation Into Trump COVID-19 Response: Coronavirus Updates: NPR

[4] Lancet report details devastating impact of the Trump administration's health-harming policies, calls for reforms

[5] The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028

[6] Under Trump, US no longer leads world on refugee protections | AP News

[7] Federal Register :: Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds

[8] The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014 | Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion | JAMA | JAMA Network

[9] Population health in an era of rising income inequality: USA, 1980–2015 - The Lancet

[10] US County-Level Trends in Mortality Rates for Major Causes of Death, 1980-2014 | Oncology | JAMA | JAMA Network

[11] Diverging Life Expectancies and Voting Patterns in the 2016 US Presidential Election | AJPH | Vol. 107 Issue 10

[12] See—read Hauerwas, Stanley; Willimon, Willimon H. (1989). Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-0-687-36159-5

The Possibility of Peace between Factions--a practice that nurtures Hope

 Fortunate are the peacemakers, for they, pupils of God, shall be named.*

Creating Peace requires right effort, time, courage to let go—to give oneself to silence, breath; and then under simple conditions and often with support of a non-anxious person(s), receive mediation process where parties within a simple practice can hear oneself and the other, share their suffering, needs, mutually understand the other and carve out a path to peaceful resolution. 

Thich Nhat Hanh in this excerpt offers an example of how this simple, profound process can work with any faction experiencing the challenge of letting go of their suffering, who like collective America and Israel, out of a fear of the unknown, prefer suffering that is familiar.

From The Conversation: Making Sense of These Times: What do we make of ourselves after September 11, 2001,

         This summer, a group of Palestinians came to Plum Village and practiced together with a group of Israelis, a few dozen of them. We sponsored their coming and practicing together. In two weeks, they learned to sit together, walk mindfully together, enjoy silent meals together, and sit quietly in order to listen to each other. The practice taken up was very successful. At the end of the two weeks practice, they gave us a wonderful, wonderful report. One lady said, "That, this is the first time in my life that I see that peace in the Middle East is possible." Another young person said, "That when I first arrived in Plum Village, I did not believe that Plum Village was something real because in the situation of my country, you live in constant fear and anger. When your children get onto the bus, you are not sure that they will be coming home. When you go to the market, you are not sure that you will survive to go home to your family. When you come to Plum Village, you see people looking at each other with loving kindness, talking with other kindly, walking peacefully, and doing everything mindfully. We did not believe that it was possible. It did not look real to me."

       But in the peaceful setting of Plum Village, they were able to be together, to live together, and to listen to each other, and finally understanding came. They promised that when they returned to the Middle East, they would continue the practice. They will organize a day of practice every week at the local level and a day of mindfulness at the national level. And they plan to come to Plum Village as a bigger group to continue the practice.

       I think that if nations like America [Israel] can organize that kind of setting where people can come together and spend their time practicing peace, then they will be able to calm down their feelings, their fears, and peaceful negotiation will be much easier.

 

 

https://practiceofzen.com/2020/09/16/peace-is-possible/

 

* 

The Gospel According to St Matthew 5.9 [personal translation] 

http://www.theconversation.org/archive/essence.html

https://plumvillage.org/articles/peace-between-palestinians-and-israelis

 

Roots in the family: Cut-off and it's detriment to the whole.

 Regressive levels of anxiety hover over the global field; and whatever happens this year in the realm of nation-state politics, there's a basic yet often unconscious aspect of an existing large-scale, multi-lateral conflict that has its roots in family functioning and projection. That is, you can often find hints of a person's family functioning by way of the kind and quality of leadership one provides. Add to this,  one premise of Family Systems posits that the level of maturity in leaders reflects the overall level of differentiation in society.

Most would agree that the US is entangled in a sever conflict of huge human groups having been drawn into uncooperative functioning, while  issues and competing interests have multiplied and unresolved. As current issues activate memories of old grievances, people who have lived together as neighbors in a democracy may turn against one another.  Just as in families,

“People do not have trouble getting along because of issues. These issues tend to bring out the emotional immaturity of people, and it is that immaturity, not the issues, that creates the conflict.”  (M. E. Kerr, and M. Bowen. Family Evaluation.  New York:  W. W. Norton, 1988, 188)

Large-scale conflict is often multi generational. Children, now adults, have been born into divided emotional fields and have been educated on a deep, visceral level to a way of life that perpetuates these divisions. Societal regression grows in intensity as conflict escalates in intensity. The process of emotion dominates thinking so that the intellectual system is more geared to winning [fight] than to finding an accord with the opponent. Polarization is intense and people find it hard to find a middle ground. Middle way,  alternative and third way values and resolutions almost always require emotional regulation of its leaders.  If not, then there is a sense of stalemate and discouragement, as well as increasing danger that the conflict will spread.  

Hence, the level of maturity in leaders reflects the overall level of differentiation in society. 

The move toward individuality [individual progression in emotional maturity and regulation] is initiated by a single strong leader with the courage of his conviction who can assemble a team, and who has clearly defined principles on which she can base her decisions when the emotional opposition becomes intense.” (M. Bowen,  Family Therapy in Clinical Practice.  New York:  279)

Graham Franciose, 2020 Morning Coffee Paintings

 

Build a Strong Middle Class: Aristotle's Advice for the Vulnerabilty of Nations [the US]

Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant

Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes . . . the

middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. . . Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme- either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them.

 [When] the middle class is seldom numerous in them [government], and whichever party, whether the rich or the common people, transgresses the mean and predominates, draws the constitution its own way, “the middle class is seldom numerous … and whichever party, whether the rich or the common people, transgresses the mean and predominates, draws the constitution its own way” and thus arises either oligarchy or democracy.  

[Additionally] the poor and the rich quarrel with one another, and whichever side gets the better, instead of establishing a just or popular government, regards political supremacy as the prize of victory, and the one party sets up a democracy and the other an oligarchy. 

 [Hence] For that which is nearest to the best must of necessity be better, and that which is furthest from it worse, if we are judging absolutely and not relatively to given conditions: I say ‘relatively to given conditions,’ since a particular government may be preferable, but another form may be better for some people.  [2.2 Aristotle, Politics]

 

*

Since all societies aim at some good and the polis is the most encompassing form of society, Aristotle argues, the polis aims at the highest good of all: eudaimonia (flourishing, happiness, the term referred to in the US Constitution’s preamble, “the pursuit of happiness”) (Pol. I.1.1252a1-7). In order to attain eudaimonia for the polis and all of its citizens, the specifically political good must be aimed at: "[T]he political good is justice, and justice is the common benefit" (Pol. III.12.1282b16-17). It is no small matter, then, what form the polis takes, for it will be crucial in allowing individuals to live a good life.  

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created [creativity is the core of any system] equal, that they are endowed by their Creator [however recognized—separation of religious organizations and state power] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among [persons], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety [need further regulations of weapons, due to the current demise of American society] and Happiness [this is much more than ‘men