If you weren’t at the SC Progressive Summit Nov. 17, this is just one of the moments you missed. Clip features master drummer Amara Camara, his student Toni Jones, and Network Co-chairs the Rev. Dr. Bennie Colclough and Donna Dewitt.
Monthly Archives: November 2007
Can I get an amen?
A Bible Lesson for Liberals
Rev. Dr. Neal R. Jones
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Columbia
The Rev. Dr. Neal Jones gave this speech/sermon/Bible study at the SC Progressive Summit Nov. 17 in Columbia. It was so well-received, we asked permission to post it here.
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Hello, my name is Neal, and I’m a recovering Baptist. One of the reasons I fell in love with Unitarian Universalists and became one is because, unlike any other religious group I have known, they can laugh at themselves. We UUs may be dead serious about human rights and social justice, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We can tell jokes on ourselves. You may have heard some of them.
A Unitarian Universalist died and came to a crossroad in the hereafter with three signs. One said, “This way to heaven.” Another said, “This way to hell.” And a third one said, “This way to a discussion about heaven and hell.” Without hesitation the Unitarian went to the discussion.
A jet airliner was having serious problems in flight, and it became apparent that the plane might crash. Everyone on board began to pray, except for the UUs. They organized a committee on air safety.
They’ve come up with a Unitarian version of the TV show “Survivor.” Contestants have to drive from Pelion to Pickens with a bumper sticker on the back of their car that says, “I’m a gay, atheist, vegetarian, and I’m here to take away your guns.” Anybody who gets there wins.
Unitarian meetings must be very confusing to visitors. A person speaks and says nothing. Nobody listens. Then everybody disagrees.
What do you call a dead Unitarian Universalist? All dressed up with no place to go.
Why did the Unitarian cross the road? To support the chicken in its search for its own path.
Why is a Unitarian congregation like granola? When you take away all the fruits and all the nuts, all you have left are the flakes.
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
Today I want to conduct a Bible study, and our Bible study is about prophets. Who are prophets, and what do they do? Many people think prophets tell the future, but prophets in the tradition of the ancient Hebrews told the truth. It’s informative to look at the etymology of “prophet.” In Hebrew, the word for prophet is “nabiy.” That shares the same root with “nabat,” the Hebrew word meaning “to see, to look intently at.” So one clue to what prophets do is that they help us to see more clearly. “Nabiy” also shares the same root with “nabach,” which means “to bark like a dog.” So a prophet makes a lot of noise to warn us of danger or to wake us up.
Hear the barking of some of the Hebrew prophets:
I hate, I despise your religious festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings, I will not accept them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. — Amos
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; But they shall all sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. — Micah
The Spirit of God is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. — Jesus
According to the etymology of the word, prophets bark to wake us up so that we can see “what’s going on,” to quote Marvin Gaye. The Biblical prophets were saying, “Wake up, Israel! This is not the way the Creator intended the creation to be. God intended for you to establish peace and justice here on earth as it is in heaven. Modern day prophets, like Martin Luther King, Jr., are saying, “Wake up, America! You’re not living up to your creed. You say you believe that all people are created equal, but you are not practicing what you preach.
We need prophets in every age because we can’t see clearly on our own. We can’t see the forest for the trees. We are born into a particular time and place, and the history of the place becomes our history, and the culture of the times becomes our identity. None of us asked to be born to our particular parents, in our particular communities, attending our particular schools and churches, in 20th century America, but we were. We could have been born at another time and place, but we weren’t. We perceive, think, and act the way we do because that’s the way people of our time and place perceive, think, and act.
Smoke and mirrors
Iraq 3.0
by Sheldon Richman
One gets the feeling that even the White House realizes the mess it’s made of Iraq. The other day the newspapers reported that the Bush administration has scaled back its objectives rather substantially. We might call it Iraq 3.0. First the plan was to create a democratic paradise which, domino-like, would spread freedom throughout the Middle East. When that didn’t work, the administration shifted to simply bringing some kind of order to Iraq, reconciling the three largest groups – Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurd.
That hasn’t gone too well either. The nearly two dozen political objectives that the military “surge” was intended to accomplish have largely gone unachieved. The violence level may have fallen (one never knows how temporary such things are), but there are many possible explanations for that. One horrifying explanation is that enough ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and emigration have occurred that less violence is “necessary” in the eyes of the various militias. That presumably is not the sort of peace President Bush had in mind.
So now the strategists in Washington have retooled. The New York Times says, “The Bush administration has lowered its expectations of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenue and holding regional elections. Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that some progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the intensified military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.”
Stage magicians call this “misdirection.” If you can’t have the audience look here, you must do something to make them look over there. Voilà!
Keep your eyes on the prize
the King
Workers picket AT&T over job losses
Donna Dewitt and Linda Carnes join the picket.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) held an informational picket today in front of the AT&T Building in downtown Columbia over problems in the workplace.
In December 2006, the merger of BellSouth with AT&T made it the largest telecommunication company in the world.
“It is now apparent the new AT&T is not interested in continuing the previous relationship we had with BellSouth,” says Deborah Brown, President CWA Local 3706. “We have lost over 300 jobs in South Carolina in less than one year. In our residential Consumer Service Center, our Sales Associates are denied Family Medical Leave time. They are disciplined every day and terminated for unrealistic sales quotas. The Consumer Service Center has become a revolving door to the unemployment line. There is no respect for the employees – our members – and this must stop.”
District 3 includes: South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, and Alabama. AT&T has removed a total of 1,519 jobs in the district in less than a year.
B. Robbins
photos by Brett Bursey
Watch out
Girl gets camcorder.
1 love
The end of America?
Naomi Wolf thinks it could happen
by Don Hazen
AlterNet, Nov. 21
If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf‘s newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.
Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In “The End of America,” she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. “Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today,” she writes.
SC to use paperless e-voting in primaries
Here is a link to an article about the voting machines we use in SC, and their possible effect on our presidental primaries. Author Sean Flaherty works for Iowans for Voting Integrity, and the piece is posted on Vote Trust USA, a national network serving state-based organizations working for secure, accurate and transparent elections.
Brett Bursey
Lest we forget
The First Thanksgiving
From the Community Endeavor News, November 1995, as reprinted in Healing Global Wounds, Fall, 1996
The first official Thanksgiving wasn’t a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children, an anthropologist says. Due to age and illness his voice cracks as he talks about the holiday, but William B. Newell, 84, talks with force as he discusses Thanksgiving. Newell, a Penobscot, has degrees from two universities, and was the former chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut.
“Thanksgiving Day was first officially proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their annual green corn dance-Thanksgiving Day to them-in their own house,” Newell said.
“Gathered in this place of meeting they were attacked by mercenaries and Dutch and English. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building,” he said.