[As usual, the actual sermon was somewhat different than what's posted below, what with ad-libbing and on-the-fly tweaking, but the general gist is here.]


"The Poetry of Inconvenience"
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville
Earth Day sermon

( Today, April 22nd, 2007... )

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Miscellany:

* A voicepost of me reading Mary's poem is here.

* Listened to part of The Splendid Table during the drive home, which included a clip of Jonathan Gold talking about his twelve-year-old daughter's love of Italian squid feasts and about other food writers he admires. He sounds very cool and his "triumph of the proofreader" wisecrack makes me even more inclined to like him.

* However, catching up with Gold's writing is going to have to wait. The immediate plan: cook lunch (something with mushrooms and chicken), bake dog biscuits, and work on essays until my brain is goo.

* It's 78 F and sunny here. Here's the start of the Maura Stanton poem ("God's Ode to Creation") that was the meditation text for this morning's service:

Today's the kind of day when I feel good
about that dazzling stuff I've made down there,
everything so mixed up that even lies
turn out to be the truth...

This is the sermon I delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville this past Sunday. The assigned theme was "Unitarian Universalist Moral Responsibility in our Local Community." The worship chair read Raising the Roof as the "Story for All Ages," and before I spoke, I put on four long, gaudy strands of beads:

( Seven years ago, I celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans. )

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( ...from deep despair and perished things... )

"Every day should be World AIDS Day..." - Emma Thompson

Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders

"Time to learn, time to care. . ." - "Somewhere," West Side Story (The original Tony, Larry Kert, died of AIDS-related complications in 1991.)

UUA press release

UU Global AIDS Coalition

I am living. I remember you.



In memory of Thomas Peck and others, and in honor of Mary Early-Zald and others.

Prayer for Perspective

When I last checked, the votes for the "marriage = 1 man + 1 woman" amendment to my state constitution totaled:

YES 1,407,717
NO 322,575

I've been reminding myself that some of my Unitarian abolitionist forebears must have felt like this: the percentages will be reversed someday -- possibly even within my lifetime, give or take a few generations -- but it's painful how so many people don't get how grossly unfair they're being to their neighbors and kin on this matter.

On the determinedly positive side, at least 19% of the vote was against the amendment. That's more than some people would expect ("1 in 5 Tennesseans favor marriage equality!" It's tempting to go make some heads spin, as it were...). My own precinct voted 3 to 1 against it on Election Day (816 voters), which was not a surprise but cheering nonetheless (and the totals may be even higher, since that ratio doesn't factor in ballots cast during the "early voting" period).

So. Much work to do. There will always be more work to do.

This country's growing pluralism is a blessing - one that the founders of this country could never have imagined but for which they prepared fertile ground by writing their egalitarian ideals into our foundational documents. What we should be doing in this country is continuing to expand the circle of those we include in the promises made in our Constitution. And I believe that despite the backlash we see every time the circle is widened, it never really shrinks back to where it was before.

- Bill Sinkford

And also:

We are a gentle and generous people. But let us not forget our anger. May it fuel not only our commitment to compassion but also our commitment to make fundamental changes. Our vision of the Beloved Community must stand against a vision that would allow the privilege of the few to be accepted as just and even holy. Our religious vision must again and again ask the Gospel question "Who is my neighbor" and strive always to include more and more of us as we intone the words that gave birth to this nation, "We the people..."

We are, and we should be, both a gentle, and an angry people.

- Bill Sinkford -- from a pastoral letter on Katrina, but it applies to many other things as well

assigned theme: "Moral Authority – Religious vs. Secular: Are moral issues more or less justified if based on religious authority?"

( the homily )

Apparently what my brain really wanted was for mrissa to prompt me to write a poem (via the art-about-your-friends meme), because that's what it ended up focusing on as I planted the lilies of the valley this afternoon.

So here it is, first draft. I fancy I can revise it into something publishable, hence the locked entry. [ETA: Decided to unlock it and leave it here.]


Dear M'ris

( Before I could bake tomorrow's bread )

~ Peg

The assignment from the worship committee: "Activism as Religious Expression," for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville

The homily:

( L'shanah tovah! )

Something nice to see: Japanese convenience stores paying attention to the needs of older customers.