I haven't posted for awhile because I was busy with a play and also I needed to rest my hands. I am having trouble learning to accept the fact that I can't go full-bore 8 hours at work and then come home and fool around on the computer. So every now and then I have to take a "sabbatical" from the Internet. Not such a bad idea.
I am still with the Unitarians and feel more and more at home. I still occasionally meet with people from my old church who have pretty much accepted the fact that I have moved on. The interesting thing is that apart from the members of "small group", no one else has contacted me. Supposedly Pastor has tried to call me but I haven't been home. Well, it's true that I haven't been home, but what about email? What about the assistant pastor, the one whose office is right above mine? No word from him. So I am not really buying this. They haven't contacted me because they don't want to contact me. I also heard from this same source that I was not the only one distressed at the tone of his sermons, that others have expressed the same feelings. I said to this person, why is it that I spent nearly 3 years there and never once ran into anyone who felt the same way I did; yet in three months with the Unitarians I have met all kinds of kindred spirits? I know why, it's because the Unitarians don't have a "party line" that you must follow or else. As someone said to me, "We even have ATHEISTS in this church." (Mock horror!) So one can be free to think as he or she likes. The important thing is love for one another. Or as they put it in the orientation session, "we might have a problem if you came in here preaching racism or hatred" but other than that, it doesn't really matter what your politics are. They consider themselves "a liberal religious congregation." As for me, well, I am too conservative to be a liberal and too liberal to be a conservative, so I'm used to getting it on both sides.
Anyway last Sunday the topic was what People's was doing in the social justice arena. It was quite interesting. They focused on two programs in particular, one a nurse-family partnership and the other a program to prepare four-year-olds for kindergarten. Now, I've been active in various groups and done my share of volunteering but this was a real eye-opener. Because these people know how to get things done. They know how to network, how to identify and work with people who can open doors. A term I heard over and over was "evidence-based". In other words, they aren't guided by ideology but whether a program works. I especially liked it when one speaker talked about working with a local pro-life politician (most people in this church are pro-choice); he said, "You never know who your allies are going to be." Even though they were on opposite sides of one particular issue, both were able to put their differences aside and work together.
And this is the trouble with the pro-life, pro-abstinence movement (and I speak as an insider). They think too small. There is a great deal of truth in the accusation that pro-life people don't care about babies after they are born. While individually that is not true, organizationally it is true. The nurse-family partnership for low-income, at-risk families and the Ready4Kindergarten were not started nor sponsored by pro-life groups. There is no visible pro-life presence beyond birth. Yes, there are crisis pregnancy centers but how much do they help out and for how long? Do they connect the young mothers with programs like the nurse-family partnership? Or do they just refer to social services and beyond that you are on your own? How much mentoring, how much follow-up is there? I really can't say because I haven't really worked in that area. But in my old church there were women who supported the crisis pregnancy center by making booties and caps for newborns. Well, they do need those but they need a lot more. That is thinking too small. You need to think big. You need to tackle head-on the issues of poverty.
One of the speakers mentioned "the privileged class." I went up to her afterwards and said I wanted to talk about that. Because it has been my experience that there are a lot of people who talk about poverty issues but only know them from the outside. I described where and how I lived and I asked, "how many people in this church know what it is like to rent from an absentee landlord who can't be contacted? What it is like to have the furnace go out on the coldest day in January and there are babies in the house but you can't get the landlord to come out and fix it--he won't be bothered. What about that trailer park on University Highway that closed two years ago--the one that was in the news because the residents had little or no warning that they had to get out--how many people here have ever faced that situation?" She said maybe 10% of this congregation lived in that kind of housing insecurity. I suggested that it might be a good idea to have people who don't know what it's like to live like this spend some time doing so--much like the author of "Nickled and Dimed" did. Because they would get a different picture of the situation and might be more effective than someone who has only known that kind of life.
For example, I was living in a house in the student district with several other people including a young mother with a baby when the furnace went out in the middle of winter. No one wanted to go to the landlord--they were all afraid. But I had nothing to lose at the time, if he kicked me out, I could always move back in with my family. So I went over and told him the furnace was out. He did not want to fix it and was not going to fix it. I told him there was a baby in the house and if he did not fix it I was going to report him to the authorities. You better believe that furnace got fixed! This is the sort of thing I am talking about. If you don't know how to stand up for yourself--if you don't know that you even can stand up for yourself--you will never stand up for yourself. And it does no good for an outsider who has never faced what you faced to tell you that you can.
Now I am used to people blowing me off but I don't think this woman did. I think she was very intrigued by my suggestion that one or two people ought to spend some time living like that if they want to talk about housing justice although she did say that they work a lot with neighborhood activists who are from these types of neighborhoods and they have done a lot to improve conditions in the city. She suggested that I become the activist for my neighborhood, well, I am in a way but it's a very lonely position and it's a lot like pulling teeth. Still, I can see there is a lot I have to learn.
I am still with the Unitarians and feel more and more at home. I still occasionally meet with people from my old church who have pretty much accepted the fact that I have moved on. The interesting thing is that apart from the members of "small group", no one else has contacted me. Supposedly Pastor has tried to call me but I haven't been home. Well, it's true that I haven't been home, but what about email? What about the assistant pastor, the one whose office is right above mine? No word from him. So I am not really buying this. They haven't contacted me because they don't want to contact me. I also heard from this same source that I was not the only one distressed at the tone of his sermons, that others have expressed the same feelings. I said to this person, why is it that I spent nearly 3 years there and never once ran into anyone who felt the same way I did; yet in three months with the Unitarians I have met all kinds of kindred spirits? I know why, it's because the Unitarians don't have a "party line" that you must follow or else. As someone said to me, "We even have ATHEISTS in this church." (Mock horror!) So one can be free to think as he or she likes. The important thing is love for one another. Or as they put it in the orientation session, "we might have a problem if you came in here preaching racism or hatred" but other than that, it doesn't really matter what your politics are. They consider themselves "a liberal religious congregation." As for me, well, I am too conservative to be a liberal and too liberal to be a conservative, so I'm used to getting it on both sides.
Anyway last Sunday the topic was what People's was doing in the social justice arena. It was quite interesting. They focused on two programs in particular, one a nurse-family partnership and the other a program to prepare four-year-olds for kindergarten. Now, I've been active in various groups and done my share of volunteering but this was a real eye-opener. Because these people know how to get things done. They know how to network, how to identify and work with people who can open doors. A term I heard over and over was "evidence-based". In other words, they aren't guided by ideology but whether a program works. I especially liked it when one speaker talked about working with a local pro-life politician (most people in this church are pro-choice); he said, "You never know who your allies are going to be." Even though they were on opposite sides of one particular issue, both were able to put their differences aside and work together.
And this is the trouble with the pro-life, pro-abstinence movement (and I speak as an insider). They think too small. There is a great deal of truth in the accusation that pro-life people don't care about babies after they are born. While individually that is not true, organizationally it is true. The nurse-family partnership for low-income, at-risk families and the Ready4Kindergarten were not started nor sponsored by pro-life groups. There is no visible pro-life presence beyond birth. Yes, there are crisis pregnancy centers but how much do they help out and for how long? Do they connect the young mothers with programs like the nurse-family partnership? Or do they just refer to social services and beyond that you are on your own? How much mentoring, how much follow-up is there? I really can't say because I haven't really worked in that area. But in my old church there were women who supported the crisis pregnancy center by making booties and caps for newborns. Well, they do need those but they need a lot more. That is thinking too small. You need to think big. You need to tackle head-on the issues of poverty.
One of the speakers mentioned "the privileged class." I went up to her afterwards and said I wanted to talk about that. Because it has been my experience that there are a lot of people who talk about poverty issues but only know them from the outside. I described where and how I lived and I asked, "how many people in this church know what it is like to rent from an absentee landlord who can't be contacted? What it is like to have the furnace go out on the coldest day in January and there are babies in the house but you can't get the landlord to come out and fix it--he won't be bothered. What about that trailer park on University Highway that closed two years ago--the one that was in the news because the residents had little or no warning that they had to get out--how many people here have ever faced that situation?" She said maybe 10% of this congregation lived in that kind of housing insecurity. I suggested that it might be a good idea to have people who don't know what it's like to live like this spend some time doing so--much like the author of "Nickled and Dimed" did. Because they would get a different picture of the situation and might be more effective than someone who has only known that kind of life.
For example, I was living in a house in the student district with several other people including a young mother with a baby when the furnace went out in the middle of winter. No one wanted to go to the landlord--they were all afraid. But I had nothing to lose at the time, if he kicked me out, I could always move back in with my family. So I went over and told him the furnace was out. He did not want to fix it and was not going to fix it. I told him there was a baby in the house and if he did not fix it I was going to report him to the authorities. You better believe that furnace got fixed! This is the sort of thing I am talking about. If you don't know how to stand up for yourself--if you don't know that you even can stand up for yourself--you will never stand up for yourself. And it does no good for an outsider who has never faced what you faced to tell you that you can.
Now I am used to people blowing me off but I don't think this woman did. I think she was very intrigued by my suggestion that one or two people ought to spend some time living like that if they want to talk about housing justice although she did say that they work a lot with neighborhood activists who are from these types of neighborhoods and they have done a lot to improve conditions in the city. She suggested that I become the activist for my neighborhood, well, I am in a way but it's a very lonely position and it's a lot like pulling teeth. Still, I can see there is a lot I have to learn.
