Why I Sing

Back at the beginning of the Unisinger year, our choir director asked us to think about why we sing, with an eye towards maybe using some of our thoughts in some future music service.  We do one annually that is called "Music For The Soul."  Not only have I not forgotten about this, it’s actually weighed a little heavily on my mind from time to time.  Not in a bad way, more like a sound in the background that you can’t identify that periodically weaves its way in and out of your consciousness.

Recently I was reading Stephen King’s latest book of short stories, “Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” and he mentions that he is often asked why he writes stories.  His answer is pretty much why I sing in church.  He says that he was born with a gene to entertain people, and he sure as hell can’t tap dance, so…writing.

It sounds a little flip, but it fairly accurately sums up why I sing.  I do love to entertain people.  I also sure as hell can’t tap dance.  Or tango, or lambada.  Before my poor health took it away from me, I had hoped to be a professional entertainer.  Specifically,I wanted to be an actor.  I got rid of most of my New Jersey accent.  I learned to sing, and to sorta, kinda read music.  And I acted and sang and sometimes even danced a little (poorly!) for about 11 years.  When I had to give it up (and I really HAD to give it up) it just about broke me.  I got through it by searching around for something else that I loved, that I could do, that wouldn’t hurt the world or others, and what I came up with was books.  I have always loved to read, and I have always loved turning others on to a good read or a favorite author.  (I often tell people who are about to read a book by someone I love, but someone they have never read before, that I am a little jealous because they still get to discover this for the first time.)  So I became a librarian and worked with children and youth, and got them to maybe discover their new favorite author for the first time.  I did this by not just reading books aloud to them, but by performing them.  I’d learn the book, create the characters, and give voice to them, and it would scratch that entertainer gene and maybe do a little good.  Certainly no harm was done, I think.

But my health continued to decline and pretty soon I had to give up working 9 to 5 altogether.  So when I happened to be standing next to my friend Donna at a Clover Lane “Deck Our Halls” one year (1997, not that I’m keeping track or anything) and she suggested I might want to try out for the Unisingers (our choir) a little light bulb went off as I realized that I might have found a way to scratch that itch once again.

For some reason, I have so far managed to hang on to a good speaking voice, which I am very pleased to use at church from time to time when they let me, and I love to sing with the people I have come to love so deeply in the choir.  And Brian too.

All kidding aside, I can’t do much physically around the church.  I can’t build or repair things.  I can’t serve at the Café.  I can usually throw a little money at some of the good work we do, but not nearly as much as I would like to, or as much as the church deserves.  But I can give my voice, and what talent I have hung onto, and if it makes a church service a little more memorable or meaningful for someone, or helps to bring a little beauty into someone’s life, then I am profoundly grateful for the ability to do so.

In an article in “Time,” Stacy Horn says it better than I can, much though I wish the words were mine: 

“Group singing, for those who have done it, is the most exhilarating and transformative of all. It takes something incredibly intimate, a sound that begins inside you, shares it with a roomful of people and it comes back as something even more thrilling: harmony.  Singing is like an infusion of the perfect tranquilizer, the kind that both soothes your nerves and elevates your spirits.  Singing lessens feelings of depression and loneliness. It turns out you don’t even have to be a good singer to reap the rewards.  Group singing ‘can produce satisfying and therapeutic sensations even when the sound produced by the vocal instrument is of mediocre quality.’  Singing in a choir at Christmas [was] an experience so euphoric I never forgot it.”

So, I sing to make church a little better, to make me a little better, and to make the “us” that is my church community a little better.  I sure as hell can’t tap dance, but I sure as hell can sing in the choir.

Movie Ratings

When I was in college, my good friend Ralph Cohen and I would watch a LOT of movies.  We became friends because of this, in fact, because we kept running into each other at midnight screenings of films like "The Maltese Falcon" which we of course had both seen dozens of times.  But not that often on a big screen, so if a film class or the local theater was showing it, there we would be.  We ultimately wound up living in the same building, so it was just a short walk down the hall to whatever was playing on TV at 1:00 AM on the local Richmond, VA, station.

We came up with our own rating system for the stuff we watched.  Initially it was quite simple:  in descending order of perceived quality, it went --

• Film
• Movie
• Flick

But then for some reason we progressively hit a string of movies that were so awful that it seemed wrong to dignify them with the designation of "Flick."  So Ralph and I kept coming up with lower and lower qualifications for our system.  Ultimately, it went like this:

• Film
• Movie
• Flick
• Talkie
• Mere Use of Celluloid
• Complete Waste of Celluloid
• Kaiju Crapfest
• "El Topo" Special
• Ed Wood Must Have Been Behind This Somehow

I have no idea why this came to mind today.  I never forgot it, though.  Miss you, Ralph!

Wow!

Completely missed November, folks!  Sorry about that!

• Still no budget in Pennsylvania, but both sides are talking.  Maybe by Christmas, maybe not.

• So, still no full-time job offer for my daughter, who works for the Commonwealth as a permanent temp.  Maybe by Christmas, maybe not.

• People, it's the so-called Holiday Season.  Try to keep your assholery to a minimum on the highways and in the parking lots, OK?  (Yeah, I'm looking at you, guy who cut me off for no bloody reason.  There was open sailing behind me; what made your errand so important, you selfish git?)

Other than that, nothing to report.  

PA's Budget Impasse

OK, Pennsylvania, it's now getting to be goddamn ridiculous.  119 days and counting with no budget.  State House and Senate have both borrowed millions of dollars in order to pay their staffs, because the last time this happened, we made it illegal to not pay state workers in the event of a budget battle.

It's hitting close to home now.  My daughter has been effectively laid off for a month.  She works for the State as a permanent floating temp, going from office to office as needed.  She was forced to leave a great position at the Department of Education because they had nothing for her to do; all the work was on hold pending approval of the state budget.  Which was supposed to be done by July 1.  Instead she had to go to another department, to a less attractive position, which was then cut completely in a frenzy of cost-saving.  She can only earn pay for hours worked, and because of a statewide hiring freeze, no new position is forthcoming.

People all over the state are suffering because of this idiotic pissing conteste between a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor.  It's time it was ended.  I don't want my tax dollars to be spent on loan interest because the Republican senate can't get their minds around a tax on fracking.  (PA is the only state out of 50 that imposes no such tax.)  There are other sticking points, but that's the big one.

Cut the crap, do your freaking jobs, and get the state workers back to work.

Oh, Heavens, It's More Kvetching About Church

I grew up Catholic.  I'm 62 years old as of this writing, and that means that when I was first exposed to Sunday services, they were performed in Latin, with the priest's back to the congregation to preserve the mystery of transubstantiation (or whatever) and apart from the sermon (usually a request for money rather than a lesson of any sort) it was in large part unintelligible to me.

Then Pope John XXIII held Vatican II and the world went crazy.  Suddenly the Mass was being said mostly in English, everybody could see what the priest was doing (it wasn't much, it turns out) and it was all done in understandable colloquial English.  In an effort to add more community to the service, a bit was added where we all had to greet our neighbors and "offer them a sign of peace."  ("Peace be with you.")

Man, I hated that.  Not Vatican II or the English, but that greeting of strangers.

I am fairly introverted, and extremely uncomfortable around people I don't know, even people who are only acquaintances.  So when my Unitarian church added a bit to the Sunday service which involved getting out of the pews and greeting your neighbors, it gave me fits.  I don't like it, and I rarely choose to participate in it.  I don't feel like I'm being true to myself when I'm forced into phony sociability with things like "greeting my neighbor."  So, just like I drop out of prayers or meditations that mention God (I am atheist, strenuously so,) I only choose to greet the friends immediately around me and I don't go looking for others.  I'm not antisocial, I'm just a bit shy and a bit introverted, which is why I sing in a choir.  It does me good to get out of my comfort zone a little, and generally on Sunday mornings I'm already surrounded by people I like so I can get away with not wandering out into the congregation at large.

Now this will seem like I'm going off on a wild tangent, but bear with me.  Like most librarians, I hate the movie/TV stereotype of The Librarian who is a buttoned-up plain woman who likes to SHHH people.  However, we have in our church a librarian who is, unfortunately, the living embodiment of that stereotype.  Severe clothes, permanent scowl, and a tendency to over-enunciate when talking to you as though you were some unfortunate idiot with comprehension issues.  She chose this morning to barrel her way through to where I was sitting and frown a stern "Good morning!" at me.  It was anything but a wish that I have a good morning.  The tone was definitely one of admonishment, with an undercurrent of "why don't you get up off your ass and get out there good-morning-ing with the rest of us?"

So I wished her an oblivious "good morning" right back and stayed right where I was, on my ass.

Which she can kiss if she doesn't like it.

You don't get to judge me, or anybody else, lady.  You don't know what kind of baggage or damage people might bring with them, whether it be from previous church experiences, or family experiences, or life experiences.  If someone doesn't want to hop up and glad-hand with strangers simply because they were ordered to, that's their business.  Leave them the hell alone.

If I see someone I particularly wish to have a good morning, I'll tell them.  Otherwise, as Unitarians, I expect to have my privacy respected.  If there are elements of the service that make me uncomfortable, whether it's being asked to say that "what we know about God is a piece of the truth" (because what I know is that THERE ISN'T ONE) or if it's processing down the center aisle like an Episcopalian or greeting our neighbors and wishing them peace which makes me feel like I'm back in a Catholic service ... I reserve the right to refuse to participate, and moreover, I ask that those reservations be respected.

That's all I'm looking for.

Autumn Anthem Antinomy

"Antinomy: a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox."  (Okay, I'm stretching the word "reasonable" here in the service of alliteration, but I'm getting ahead of the story.)

Last night at choir we began rehearsing a song called "Autumn Canticle" which is, as our choir director commented, one of those pleasant musical pieces that we can pull out of the hat when there's nothing obvious in our playbook to tie in to the theme of the sermon.  Luckily for us, choral composers have given us a plethora of seasonal songs to choose from throughout the year:  if you think about it and know anything about choral music, there are a ton of songs about Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter out there which are relatively church-friendly.

In last night's piece, there are a couple of lines about the Lord's blessing and other such nonsense that some sensible humanist Unitarian choir director changed to "the Earth's blessing."  (And this is why I feel like I'm stretching the word "reasonable," because I find nothing reasonable about belief in God.)  We have a couple of Jewish folks in our Unitarian choir.  They are not members of the church, nor are they Unitarians or Universalists -- they just come to sing with us.  During the rehearsal for this piece, one of them muttered quite angrily, grumbling, "Why do they have to take God out of everything?"  I leaned over and whispered, "Because He isn't there."

It was not particularly well-received by the mutterer, but I frankly don't give a single crap.

First of all, I was offended by the use of the word "they" in her grumble.  I always find language that uses some form of the phrase "those people" or "you people" offensive, and this was no exception.  Secondly, if you are going to sing with Unitarians, you have to be at least a little sensitive (or at least knowledgeable) about their history.  While recent years have seen an increase in spirituality in the music and language of Unitarian church services, the fact remains that for a good stretch of our recent history -- say, the 1960's through the early 1990's -- Unitarian congregations were largely white, liberal, humanist, and agnostic or atheist.  (I myself am a large, white, liberal humanist atheist.) So probably twenty or so years ago, some previous choir director thought to themeselves, "This is a really nice piece of music.  We can do this easily.  All I have to do is change the God language."  (Well, probably the thought was more likely, "All I have to do is change the 'God" crap," but I digress.)

I regret my flip response to my fellow singer, even though it prompted a welcome chuckle from the people sitting around us, but I feel entirely justified in my bristling reaction to her use of the "they" language, as well as to her frustration with our removal of God language where possible.  I appreciate that she and others in our community value their theism, but I also feel disrespected when objections are raised to our humanism and agnosticism in the Unitarian church.  Especially when those objections are raised by people who refuse to fully join the church.  A lot of us joined the Unitarian Church because we were damaged by religion.  We are deeply uncomfortable when we find God in our language and music.  I personally take it a step further.  I find the idea of God not only to be completely unreasonable, but an active negative force in how human beings act with one another.  "Imagine no religion" indeed.  As an atheist, I sing because I like performing, and I sing in the Unitarian Church because I believe that, unlike many, they walk the proverbial walk by actually doing good work in those parts of our community that most need it without worrying about who or what might be one's Personal Savior.

I'm very happy to raise voice in song with anyone who wants to join with us.  Anytime.  Ever.  But if you're missing God in your music, well...I hear Temple meets on Friday nights.

Destiny!

So I've been playing this game from the guys who invented the original "Halo" which, as you may know, became quite the juggernaut.  For the past year they have been growing this sci-fi shooter/RPG/MMOG called "Destiny."  This past week the creators sent me this:

The Legend of GLFAN2814

What a hoot.

If Kim Davis...

If Kim Davis --

-- had been a Muslim who refused to issue driver's licenses to women,

-- or a Quaker who refused to issue gun licenses,

-- or ANY of the other "[insert religion here] who refused to issue [insert taboo here]" jokes that have been bandied about since this whole stupid mess started...

...we would not be having this conversation.  She would be impeached so fast there would be a Warner Brothers cartoon Kim Davis-shaped cloud behind her desk.

Just do your effing job.

Driving in Sicily

Yah, I know, it's been a while.  Lots of personal stuff going on since April.  Including a trip to Sicily.  More on that sometime, but for now -- this is for you, future traveller.  What I Learned About Driving In Sicily:

• Stop signs and stop lights are suggestions only.  Nobody ever stops.  Ever.
• Same goes for speed limits.  If the carabinieri are not actively shooting radar and taking pictures of offenders, consider whatever road you're on to be the Autobahn.
• It is impossible to tailgate in Sicily.  For the simple reason that it is impossible to be too close to the car in front of you.  Climb on in to their trunk if you can.
• The passing lane is JUST FOR PASSING.  As soon as you pass, get out of it.  If you sense that the guy behind you wants to pass, hug the shoulder.  Do not hog the left lane.  It won't be tolerated.  As soon as you pass, get back over into the right lane.  Immediately.  Otherwise you are going to majorly piss off other drivers.  And these people have shotguns.  Just saying.
• Want to pass on a blind curve?  No problem!  People will mostly get out of your way.  Mostly.  Why not make the drive even more interesting?  So give it a shot!
• Not strictly directly related to driving, but worth a mention:  there are no toilet seats in any public restroom.  They have all been inexplicably removed.  Too much trouble to clean?  Always being stolen?  Who knows?!?
• Exit strategies are a must on narrower roads.  You never know when you're going to round a bend and find an oncoming herd of cattle being chased forward by a team of little tiny dogs.  Always know where the gaps are in the walls that are otherwise trapping you so that you can back into a field and let the cows go by.  And the tiny dogs.

(Luckily there was a gap in the wall we could duck into.  These cows meant business.)

• Having an urgent crisis of a sexual-encounter nature?  Is the Farmacia closed for siesta?  Not to worry.  Just drive right onto the sidewalk and hit the condom machine.

(Not just one machine, no -- you have a choice!)

One of the machines is clearly marked with the universal symbol of urgent need for a condom, the Playboy Bunny.  A sure sign of quality!

Have fun and -- happy driving!

Postscript

I should have known better.

Re-reading the previous three entries, I sound like an idiot.  Three days.  That's how long the treatment lasted.  A treatment I can only have every eight weeks, and it lasted three days.  I'm back to the pain and to spending, quite literally, half of my day in the bathroom.  When I am able to make it that far.  I had promised myself I wouldn't feel too much hope so that I wouldn't be to miserable when, not if, those hopes were dashed.

I really should have known better.

Still, it was a bit of an education in self-inspection.  I do need to learn to define myself in a better way, and not in terms of this vile, vile illness that over the past fifty years I have come to hate more than I could ever find the words to describe.  I really am not my illness.  I'm just not sure what I actually am.  I'm working on it.

Still, I should have known better.

So What?? (Part Three)

So if you're still with me, you've just absorbed the capsule history of my past half-century with Crohn's Disease, minus many of the nastier bits, like daily life on a bad day, or the really bad results of surgeries gone wrong.  Those things are even more off-topic than the brief history I've given.

The point of all of that detail has been to show you that, in large part, I have been defining myself in terms of my illness.  I have studied it as well as lived with it, and my life has in no small way revolved around the various and varied effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the many treatments, including this latest one, the infusion of Entyvio.

Here's the thing:  granted, I've only had the one treatment, but it seems to already be working.  Like flipping a switch.  I didn't even have much of a headache, the one noted side effect (apart from a fatal brain virus, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, a viral infection with no known treatment, prevention or cure.  Not kidding.)

I woke up feeling, well, normal.  Without going into way too much detail, this morning has been the first normal morning I've had in a long, long time.

Funnily enough, I do still remember what it felt like to feel normal.  I still feel normal in my dreams, but truly, I have only felt it once in actual, real, waking life exactly once in the past fifty years.

I was going to my wife's family home for the first time, to meet her mom and sisters.  I had gone to my then-doctor and begged him for something, anything to get me through the week without having an attack from the Crohn's.  He put me on Prednisone for the trip, for the very first time, and it worked fantastically well.  I woke up on the trip with no pain, no problems, no bathroom issues.  We took my wife's sister and her family to Universal Studios in California and played all day.  Saw the original Bates Motel.  Saw the Black Lagoon.  Saw the Cecil B. DeMille Parting of the Red Sea.  Saw my wife in a spacesuit from "2001: A Space Odyssey."  It was brilliant.  And it was the last time I felt like a normal person.  Until today.

My dilemma, then, is this:  If this feeling lasts (and, oh, how I hope it does!) how do I begin to define myself now?

Please don't misunderstand.  I'm in no particular rush to get my hopes up, not after having them repeatedly dashed time and time again for the past five decades.  But if this works out, well, I am no longer my disease.  I will have to reinvent myself from scratch.  I'm not sure I know how to do that after all this time.

I'm really not.  

Now What?!? (Part Two)

Side effects.  A phrase that I make fun of during the endless onslaught of drug ads that seem to always accompany television news.  ("Warning:  May cause diarrhea, stomach upset, stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, tumors, muscle pain, or death.  Contact your doctor for erections lasting more than four hours."  Why would anyone take something that can do that???)  The side effects from those monoclonal antibody treatments I mentioned last time were not well understood at the time I began receiving them.  But my disease was progressing -- by this time I had had five or six surgeries to try to cut out the disease and it kept coming back worse, and in new places -- and I was desperate to try anything.  And a lot of people were getting really good results, including a reasonable percentage of folks who were experiencing actual remission of their disease.  So I jumped in with both feet.

It turns out that a similar percentage were getting, not remission, but instead:  neurological side effects.  After about six doses I started experiencing burning in my arms and legs.  I was given benadryl prior to treatment and continued getting the drug.  This turns out to have been a bad idea.

In fairness, I should say that there is an outside chance that the damage to my nervous system may have been caused by another aspect of my autoimmune disease.  But studies began to come out of Germany that indicated that a small percentage of people receiving this medication were experiencing similar neurological side effects.  I began to feel cold, or wet, or like bugs were crawling on me.  None of this had any basis in reality, but it was very difficult to ignore.  A series of neurologists led me to the ALS clinic at Penn State Hershey Medical Center where, after several tests and a nerve biopsy, I was told that something very strange was going on in my nervous system:  I had what appeared to be ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease) but in my sensory nerves, not in my motor nerves.  I would be able to walk, and move, but could no longer trust what I thought I was feeling.  I need to be really careful around hot water, for example, because I can no longer accurately sense what is and is not too hot to touch.

And so, it was back to Prednisone, for a time.

In more recent times, treatments have been getting unusual, to say the least.  There is one treatment that is based on the idea that, since Crohn's is an over-reaction by the immune system, it can be treated by giving the immune system something else to react against.  That "something" is the deliberate infection of a form of hookworm.  Another theory is that it's caused by an "unbalanced biome" -- the billions of bacteria that make up our insides.  The idea is to kill off as much of them as possible with antibiotics and then give the patient a "transplant" of feces from a healthy relative.

Both of these seem vaguely disquieting.

Then along comes this new stuff, Entyvio.  The science behind it is complicated, but basically, it says that the idea behind the previous monoclonal antibody treatment is sound; just the execution has been faulty for some patients.  Oversimplifying, it was right to try to block a chemical pathway, but the wrong pathway was being blocked.  Entyvio blocks a different pathway that seems to be directly connected to the digestive tract.  It's been in use for about a year, and so far no side effects beyond a mild headache at the time of treatment have been reported.

(Next time:  So what??)

Cured?!? (Now What?)

I am 62 years old.  I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease when I was around 12, so I've been living with the illness for about 50 years.  Yesterday I received the first in a series of new treatments with something called Entyviol.

You have to understand something.  When I was small, I started having severe stomach pains 30 minutes after I ate a meal.  Almost to the second.  My parents took me to various doctors until I finally wound up at a gastroenterologist in The Big City who had me take a test called the Upper GI Series.  It's the one where you drink a nasty concoction that contains barium, and a radiologist takes a series of x-ray pictures of your belly as they follow the stuff through your digestive system.  The test showed that I had severe narrowing in my small bowel, almost certainly from inflammation.  It was in a place that, when I ate, it took the food almost exactly 30 minutes to get there.  That's what was causing the pain, the fact that the food was unable to pass easily through this narrow, narrow passage.

In the ensuing years I have tried many, many treatments.  Some were better than others, but frankly, none of them ever really helped me to any great degree.  With every new treatment or medicine, I was told that the new one was probably just a stop-gap measure, but that "great strides" in treatment were being made "every day" and that there were lots of good things "in the pipeline" and that a cure was "just around the corner."

I've been waiting to turn that corner for half a century.  It has always seemed just as far away as it did when I was 12.

The treatments and medications over the years have certainly had their ups and downs.  The first one was huge doses of a sulfa derivative which was supposed to coat my insides and damp down the inflammation.  It worked poorly at best, but it did turn my fingernails and teeth and (I'm told) my bones a strange orange color.  Then research seemed to indicate that Crohn's might be caused by a hitherto-undiscovered bacteria or virus.  Treatment involved massive doses of a "cocktail" of every known broad spectrun antibiotic and antiviral drug.  There was one particular concoction that was thought to be effective.  I don't know that it did anything for my Crohn's Disease, but I know that it almost did for me.  My hair fell out and I began to go blind.  Luckily I had a superb eye doctor who realized it was the drugs that were destroying my retinas, and he had me stop the drugs immediately.  Most of the damage was, blessedly, reversed.

Steroid anti-inflammatories came next, most notably Prednisone.  It worked pretty well in the short term, making me feel almost normal for about a week.  Longer than that and my appetite ramped up to previously unimaginable levels and my weight simply ballooned up to huge heights.  This was very disheartening.  I had been the proverbial "fat kid" growing up and suffered nothing but misery from it.  When I dropped all that weight and shot up in height back in high school I promised myself that I would never be fat again if I could help it.  That was the catch.  On Prednisone I couldn't help it.  Nobody can. Plus, I became so uncontrollably irritable that it almost cose me my marriage and my family.  So Prednisone became kind of like an emergency fire extinguisher, a thing used to put out flareups and then be discarded as soon as possible.  Getting off of it involved a ridiculously slow tapering down which would take weeks, and just when I was ready to get off it altogether, I would have another flareup.

Then Crohn's research seemed to indicate that the disease was not caused by a bug, or by a sensitivity to certain foods, but was in fact an autoimmune disease, like Lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.   The body was in essence rejecting the digestive system in much the way that a kidney or heart transplant can go wrong.  So I spent the next several years taking immunosuppressants in large doses, as though I had had a kidney transplant.  Periodically we tried treatment with monoclonal antibody infusions which were supposed to block the chemical pathways that led to the self-rejection.  These had to be stopped.  Why?  Two words:  side effects.

[Next time:  now what?]

Not My Easter

This past Sunday was Easter Sunday.  It can be a tough one for atheists and agnostics.  We can feel particularly vulnerable to the insistent beliefs of others, and they can feel particularly prickly with regard to ours.  Normally when our church seems to cater a bit more the theists and deists and Christians in our congregation I can just tune it out.  Ordinarily I would not be in any church on Easter morning, ever, except for the fact that the choir (of which I absolutely LOVE being a part!) contributes some pretty spectacular music, as a rule.  This past Sunday was no exception, with a lovely piece by John Rutter being the centerpiece, but in this writer's opinion, the rest of the service crossed a line into the unacceptable.

My troubles started during a message to the children.  After a lovely presentation by a member of the congregation as to why he has started wearing a cross -- all in "I" language, no judgements, no "should's" -- the minister took over with a story about a little boy who came into church and after sitting quietly asked, "Is God coming?"  It is, in my opinion, a very schmaltzy, sappy, chicken-soup-for-the-soul story, and I don't believe for a second that it has an element of truth to it.  You can read it here if you want to, but have some insulin ready:

http://momastery.com/blog/2015/04/01/most-important-question/

If you were unable to get through the schlock, the briefest summary is that while in the sanctuary of a church a little boy named "Ryan" asked the minister, "Is God coming?"  As the story develops, it turns out that the little boy's father has passed away and the minister says, and I quote:

"Well, my guess would be that God and your Daddy are together there [in Heaven] and that God sent me and your teachers and these friends to be here with you today.  So that we could love you for God.  I think that God loves you more than you can even imagine.  And I love you too, Ryan.  I can't believe how lucky I am to know you.  I think God sent you here for me." 

One of the children in the circle was a nine-year-old girl whose mother had committed suicide just last week.

Now, if you know anything about Unitarian-Universalism, you know that you are unlikely to hear that kind of specific "God language" in our churches, even on Easter.  And a story like Ryan's would be delivered to other adults for its metaphorical message, and NOT to children.  All children take away from this tale is that there is a God, He is in Heaven, and our beloved dead are there with him.  When another minister posted this same tale on Facebook, I commented that I was upset it had been used with our children, and that I would never want my UU child to hear from her minister that her dead Daddy was sitting with God in His Heaven.  This other minister just could not hear me, or understand why I was upset.  The usual dialogue started in the Comments section of the Facebook post, with various others chiming in, and one point I was told that my atheism is "just another form of fundamentalism" and nobody wants to deal with fundamentalism.

I have to say that I somewhat resent being called a fundamentalist.  I do not proselytize, nor do I ever force my beliefs on anyone, from a pulpit or a lay group or in social situations.  When I delivered a reflection on what it is like to be an atheist at Easter (http://www.oancitizen.blogspot.com/2014/04/happy-easter.html) it was because I had been invited to do so by the minister.  I am told that it was respectful and thoughtful and contributed a great deal to the Easter service.  As to my personal atheism, I simply live my life without an Invisible Friend (or as Douglas Adams said, I simply believe in one less God than other people do) and I try to do good because good is the ethical thing for me to do.  I try at all times to live the Golden Rule.  And I freely concede the point that some atheists can be real jerks about it.  I hope never to become one of them.

I do agree with "Faitheist" blogger Chris Stedman that the charge of atheist fundamentalism is very often used as a weapon to marginalize critique of religion and the religious.  It is used to maintain a status quo in which religious viewpoints, practices and communities are privileged over nonreligious ones.  Which they are.  And I do remember a time when a UU church could have a happy conglomeration of Christians and humanists and Jews and Buddhists and agnostics and Pagans and Wiccans and Hindus and Muslims and Ba'Hai and any other faith you can think to list, and we all agreed to disagree according to our Principles.  Unitarians live by their Seven Principles.  Number Three states that we should have "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations."  The idea is that there are many paths to truth, and we need to accept that another person's path may be very different from our own, but their path is still worthy of respect.  I remember a time when I could feel that going to church was going home, and I could learn from others and occasionally have the opportunity to impart some idea in which others found value.  But I have not felt this way about my own church for quite some time.  As to my atheism, I don't want to convert anybody, or convince anybody, or argue with anybody.  I just want to be accepted with respect for my beliefs.  I would like to feel accepted and respected for who I am and for what I do, and I find that this is no longer the case.  And I am uncomfortable with what I see as the current policy of attempting to better fit in with our downtown neighborhood location by seeming to be more Christian.  I find it disingenuous, not to say dishonest, and I believe we are not letting our message and our principles succeed or fail there on their own merits.

And while all this is buzzing around in my head, the minister wraps up her Easter sermon by asking the congregation to recite the Lord's Prayer along with her.  If you are not a UU, you have no idea how unutterably shocked I was.  As a Unitarian and an atheist, I have so many problems with just the first six words of that prayer (i.e, not my Father, there is no Father, there is no Heaven, and let's skip the rest while we're at it) that I had to look around and make sure I was in the right building.  If the friend sitting next to me had not also remained silent, I would have walked out right then and there.

This minister was hired by the temporary minister who is filling in for us while we find a permanent one.  I am hoping to be able to hang on until this new permanent person arrives.  I am hoping they will prove to be more Unitarian than what we currently have in our pulpit.  And, well, if they're not, it's not that far to drive to Philadelphia for the new chapter of atheist, humanist, do-good-because-it's-the-right-thing-to-do Sunday Assembly there.

You can read more about Sunday Assembly here, and if you're near one, you should go and check it out:  https://sundayassembly.com 

Rage Quit

I am ready to rage quit the entire effing human race.

For my friends who aren't gamers, the term "rage quit" (sometimes written as one word) means "To stop playing a game out of anger towards an event that transpired within the game," at least according to Urban Dictionary.  Anybody who has ever been tempted to throw their controller or their keyboard across the room knows exactly how I feel right now.

This past week's news was marked by both amazingly good news and tragically horrific news, and both were tainted by religion.  The good news came from nearby Mifflinburg, PA, when an 18-month old boy who had fallen into a river and was submerged for nearly two hours was revived by a skilled and dedicated team of doctors and nurses who basically refused to give up.  They were able to bring him back after 101 minutes of CPR.  Details of their brilliant achievement can be read here:

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2015/03/21/Pennsylvania-boy-revived-after-nearly-2-hours-without-pulse/5511426950325/

When interviewed on our local CBS news, the mother of the boy thanked "the Hand of God."  Not one word, not one thanks, not even a mention of the medical team who actually saved the boy.  And as for the dozens of others who did die from drowning this month, well, tough luck, folks.  I guess the Hand of God was busy elsewhere.  And the people who spout this nonsense never, ever seem to consider for a second how their remarks might affect people who are the victims of tragedy -- that it might make them feel abandoned or rejected or worse.

The horrific story came out of Brooklyn when seven children died in a house fire.  The fire was caused by a hot plate that had been left on.  Why was the hot plate left on?  Well, the family was Orthodox Jewish and God doesn't want them to flip a switch or turn a knob on the Sabbath.  So if you want a hot meal in one of the coldest winters on record, you need to turn on the hot plate before sundown at the beginning of the holy night.  Or a light if you don't want darkness, or the radio, or whatever other modern convenience one might require.  Further details on the tragedy can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/21/us/brooklyn-fire-children-killed/

Apparently the same God who saved the one little Pennsylvania boy let seven kids in Brooklyn die because they're NOT ALLOWED TO TURN A F@$#!%G KNOB ON THE SABBATH.

So much misery in the world.  Warring sects within Islam.  Extremists destroying historical and archaeological treasures because they are thought to be "blasphemous."  Killings over cartoons.  Women attacked and killed for no real reason other than that they are women.  All of the back and forth in the Middle East and in all the other places where one side's God is deemed to be better, or more right, or the only truth, or whatever other inanity it might be couched in, than the other side's God.  Muslim vs. Muslim, Jew vs. Muslim, Jew vs. Christian, Buddhist vs. Who-bloody-ever.  The only people not killing each other over unprovable, unfathomable beliefs?  Atheists.

I despair of us as a race ever waking up to the truth of this misery.  I despair of us ever actually living according to the Golden Rule, treating others the way we ourselves would wish to be treated, with acceptance and tolerance for all faiths and genders -- this despite the fact that The Rule is a basic tenet of every single faith on the planet.  We are ignorant, tribal chimps.  And we are going to die as such.

Boring Stuff

This is an essay where I'm going to vent.  It won't be about politics, or popular culture, or anything that will mean anything to anyone who isn't local, so feel free to skip this one.  It's pure selfishness on my part, buttressed by a need to get some things out of my system.

As I have mentioned several times previously, I am a member of the local Unitarian Church.  Yes, despite being an atheist, I've kept membership in a church for the past 30-plus years.  Back when I joined my first Unitarian congregation, the Unitarian-Universalist church was very different from what it is now.  The one I joined, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, Unitarian-Universalist, in Charlottesville, Virginia, was primarily a congregation of atheists, agnostics and humanists.  As were many, many other Unitarian congregations.  We had a complement of pagans and Wiccans and some other folks who would normally be considered a fringe element in any other church, but Unitarians have always been a pretty welcoming bunch.  I used to liken them to Hindus in that there was always an element of "there are many, many paths to Truth and yours might be one of them, too."

The one thing you used to hear over and over again from people new to the church and to Unitarianism was that, when they first arrived, they felt like they had "come home."  There are (or used to be) entire Sunday services based on the theme of "Coming Home."  I frankly felt that way myself.  On my first visit I heard a sermon by retired-chemist-turned-minister Rev. Charles Howe that knocked my socks off.  It was all about how doing good work was more important than which version of the Bible you believed was "The Truth."  I got involved and soon thereafter signed the membership book, and I have considered myself a Unitarian ever since.

Unitarians are the butts of a lot of jokes (thanks, Garrison Keillor!) but the targets of those jokes, the Unitarians who decide everything by committee; who, when threatened by the KKK, have a Question Mark burned on their lawns instead of a cross; who are terrible at singing hymns because they are too preoccupied with reading ahead to see if they agree with the next line...you get the idea.  Those Unitarians are pretty much extinct these days.  The church has, over the past couple of decades, returned more and more to its Protestant roots.  There is a lot more mention of God and Jesus these days, despite a fair number of diehard humanists and atheists still in attendance.  I think we all go mostly out of habit, and because the alternatives remain far worse.

I have no patience for God or Jesus in my Sunday mornings.  I can barely tolerate euphemisms for prayer ("meditation") and some sort of Almighty ("the Spirit of Life.")  I strongly believe that belief in any deity is misguided and is the source of the majority of the world's troubles, and I hate to see my church pay even the smallest lip service to the concept of a Higher Power.  As far as I am concerned, there isn't one.  As I have said many times, I can fully appreciate the beauty of the Universe as it is without feeling any need whatsoever to attribute its lovely structure to An Architect.

Again, if you've stuck with me this far, you've probably read previous words about my own church's acquisition of an old brick cathedral in one of the worst neighborhoods in my city.  You may also recall that I was one of those who disagreed with the acquisition of this property and voted against it in no uncertain terms.  Despite a divided congregation (the vote on whether or not to buy the building was something like 52% in favor and 48% against) the church went ahead with the acquisition.  The purchase ultimately irrevocably divided the church, cost us our minister, and caused the departure of a big percentage of our membership.  We went from being a rising star in the Unitarian universe to barely getting by with maybe 80 people in attendance on any given Sunday.  And that's on a good week.  The main problem is with the neighborhood and with its lack of convenient parking.  As to the neighborhood, there have been two murders on our property since we acquired the building, and many, many more in the immediate neighborhood.  It's mostly drug dealers killing other drug dealers.  So far nobody from our congregation has been involved in any violence bigger than having their hubcaps stolen.  At choir practice we are periodically reminded that when we are finished we should head directly to our cars and NOT congregate out front chatting, because it's not safe.  This is irksome, but a necessary practicality.  It bothers me, though, because the choir is pretty much the vast majority of my social circle.

Which finally gets me to the point of this tirade.  The church leadership has been trying to increase its appeal to the neighborhood by making its message more Christian-friendly.  We have Bible stories for the kids, frequent mentions of (and appeals to!) God from the pulpit, and generally a more theist slant to the message.  I have been told by those in authority that in order to appeal to the locals we have to couch our message in terms that they can identify with, or at least understand.

I find this at best to be disingenuous.  To be completely truthful, I find it dishonest as hell.  (A place I also do not believe in.)  We're behaving in a way that seems self-destructive to my mind.  You can't misrepresent your message in order to "get people through the doors" and then try to slip the actual message to them once they're in.  It's not right, and it's behavior that will kill your soul.  It's certainly killing mine.

We currently have a temporary minister, an "interim minister" assigned to us by the Unitarian Universalist Association whose job is to shepherd us  over a two year period to a place where we are ready to find a full-time, permanent minister of our own.  When some staff resignations freed up money in the budget, the interim minister took advantage of the way our charter is written to hire a second minister for the downtown church.  This is all perfectly legal and above-board, and when we do get a full-time minister, he or she will find themselves with a permanent Assistant Minister who is already in place.

Unfortunately, I have not connected with the new Assistant Minister at all.

She seems to subscribe fully to the idea that we have to be more "conventional" in our services in order to appeal to and draw in the locals.  She is the one who started the Bible story nonsense in the Children's Message.  Her services so far, at least for me, have been sloppy and ill-planned, since she often seems to work "without a net" so to speak -- no visible notes or script for a sermon, just talking off the top of her head.  For the life of me I could not tell you the theme or message of a single sermon she has delivered.  Services start late and run overtime, largely because of too many hymns and old-fashioned nonsense like an opening processional.  I have never been to a Unitarian service that felt so...Episcopalian.

So I find myself on the horns of a dilemma.  On the one hand, if I left the church I would have precious little social life left.  When the church essentially divided (we are technically one congregation with two locations, but there is very little crossover between the two) the vast majority of the people I love decided to stick with the downtown location.  Since for me, the most important aspect of any church is its community, I followed that community and sing downtown with my friends.  On the other hand, I get absolutely nothing from my time there on Sunday mornings.

Let me repeat that:  I get absolutely nothing out of the time I spend in church on Sunday mornings.

This was never the case until the past couple of years.  I could always find some nugget, some idea, some form of mental or even, dare I say it, spiritual fulfillment from my Sunday morning.  Now, though, if the choir isn't singing, I just stay home.

I still believe that my church has great potential.  I think that it experienced its near-meteoric growth a decade ago for two reasons:  a great minister, and great music.  I truly think that lightning could strike twice.  We still have, if I do say it myself, a kick-ass choir.  People do come for the music.  And I hope that we are well on our way to hiring a new minister who can pick up the pieces and put us back on track.  We were one of the great Unitarian church congregations once, and we could be again.  But not if we continue to water down our message in a misguided attempt to make it more palatable.  No good can come from misrepresentation or dishonesty, no matter how subtle or well-intentioned.

So, I'm not sure what the best way is to proceed.  I guess I could talk to the Interim Minister about my feelings, since he hired the new person.  Or I could wait until the new full-timer is hired.  Or I could hang in there, but withhold my financial support, telling the Powers That Be why I am no longer giving money to the church.  (That would certainly get somebody's attention; my family is one of the top donors.  Not bragging, just sadly commenting on how much financial support has eroded since the second building was acquired....)  I just don't know what to do.  I really don't want to give up my friends, but I also don't want to spend my Sunday morning resenting the fact that I have to be there and counting the minutes until I can safely leave the neighborhood.

I hope either I, or the church, finds our way, and soon.