Comments for Boy in the Bands

Comment on Quiet worship in a public place by Liz C

Liz C — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:19:24 +0000

A Quaker Meeting has been holding a meeting for worship at Speakers Corner Hyde Park London for a couple of years now. I was quite nervous the first time we did it but we have had very little trouble or even heckling-” you’re very quiet” being about the size of it. And its a really cool experience- the noise and confrontation all round and then a prayerful stillness,I just wish I could get up there more often

Comment on Quiet worship in a public place by PeaceBang

PeaceBang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:15:43 +0000

Int’resting. Because some Christian colleagues and I were just discussing the practice of praying together before a meal when meeting together in restaurants or cafes. We weren’t sure if maybe it was inappropriate as a kind of showy display of piety. I think it depends how you do it. Food for thought.

Comment on UU Linux Users Group? by Adam G. Van Kirk

Adam G. Van Kirk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:54:49 +0000

I’d be all over this. What’s best is that it’s a group that can exist without borders and anywhere the internet is. <3

~Adam

Comment on “Weird” statement at first meeting of Morales and Board: a copy? by Chris Walton

Chris Walton — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:48:31 +0000

Oh, I should have been more clear in the first post about the board meeting. Yes, Will Saunders read a statement he had written at the invitation of Rosemary Bray McNatt. I have not seen a copy, and it’s not the sort of thing that usually ends up in the board minutes (which you will eventually find here).

Trustee Linda Laskowski writes about the “weirdness” at the board meeting at her blog.

Comment on UU Linux Users Group? by Smoot

Smoot — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:47:19 +0000

I am one and am interested. My church has its website running on a shared Linux environment using Drupal. I am the site administrator - http://www.phoenixuu.org.

I am a longtime (> 30 years) Linux/Unix user and run Linux on my notebook and also have my own server with fulltime Internet connectivity.

Smoot Carl-Mitchell

Comment on “Weird” statement at first meeting of Morales and Board: a copy? by Bill Baar

Bill Baar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:35:28 +0000

Southwest has been advertizing $89 air fares Chicago to LaGuardia. If they start doing that to Boston I might be out there live blogging some of these board meetings. (Anyone join me?)

UUA really needs to open things up so we understand better what in the heck these folks are talking about. Congress broadcasts their hearings on the net. Why can’t we? If people are broadcasting themselves live, we really should be…

I asked a UU minister why both Hallaman and Morales spoke in such odd cryptic ways. I felt the outsider listening to this weird debate among insiders where all the issues where hidden and known to just a few. It starts weird and kept on going weird. The minister responded how candidates get locked into a language and for one institutional / cultural reason or another, and they can’t get out of it.

Getting transcripts, bloggers attending, live webcasts, a way to break-these-folks lose from their habits and let the wider UU world understand what they heck they’re saying.

Comment on “Weird” statement at first meeting of Morales and Board: a copy? by Derek

Derek — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:12:32 +0000

YES! In the interest of transparency, I would also like to see the text of Will Saunders’ comments.

Comment on Oblique UU reference in The Onion by Derek

Derek — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:49:43 +0000

The dark humor of all this, is that I’ve known people like the fictional Dan Klein. They’ve poured their hearts out for unpaid internships where much has been promised, nothing was delivered, and they were promptly forgotten at the end of the Summer. Remember that employers tend to pay for what they value. Too many unpaid internships are window dressing, designed to make the employer look good to some outside constituency.

If your internship is unpaid, ask yourself if there is something else you are getting out of it? Perhaps certification in some skill? A unit of clinical pastoral education? Make sure that your internship has some concrete educational value for your future, and it is not simply a seasonal public relations ritual.

Comment on Insert punchline here by Carol

Carol — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:35:03 +0000

I’m so glad you said what I was thinking about “Standing on the Side of Love.” It’s cutesy and nearly meaningless (love is relative…), but it was worth a try and I have to say, I’m standing on the side of trying.

Comment on Insert punchline here by Scott Wells

Scott Wells — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:52:39 +0000

Oh, you reminded me to note the new congregations on the blog! Though few, they’re reasons to celebrate.

Comment on Insert punchline here by derek

derek — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:50:33 +0000

Did you notice from Chris Walton’s official reports that there were only 3 new congregations admitted this year? I believe the one in DE has been “emerging” for at least the last 5 years (if not more).

Comment on Better hope for the Unitarian Universalists by Ron Robinson

Ron Robinson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:20:43 +0000

A very belated Amen to your post Scott; I love your designation of those three markers.

Comment on Is this the Dojin Christian Church in Tokyo? by Hank

Hank — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:58:22 +0000

Hey Scott,
I know that James Kubal-Komoto at the Saltwater Church outside of Seattle has visited the Universalist Church in Tokyo and would be able to tell you if that is the right church or not. He did tell me that you would be very comfortable with their theology. Here’s the link to his church.

http://www.saltwaterchurch.org/

Comment on Funding to force the “fierce advocate” by C.W.S.

C.W.S. — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:41:50 +0000

Yes, the fierce advocate of the campaign trail has become the political hack in victory. “It’s not like the gays are going to vote Republican, after all,” the advisors say behind closed doors.

Comment on Funding to force the “fierce advocate” by Bill Baar

Bill Baar — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:25:49 +0000

Obama’s claim of Ill State Senator Meeks as one of his three Spiritual mentors should have been a tip off. Meeks is rabidly anti homosexual with a Halloween haunted house each year at his mega-Church featuring kids portraying Gays burning in hell. This was all simply ignored by way too many people during the election.

Last night Rachel Madow said Obama’s taken Democrats to the right of Dick Cheney on Gay issues. She’s right except Obama and Cheney had both staked out those positions long ago. It’s just no one bothered to listen to either of them.

So now we’ve got this group of Chicagoans in Washington… and the wheels are going to come off Obama’s Liberalism with a vengence sooner rather than later.

I once argued on another blog that I thought Evangelical Christians often more favorable towards Gays, than the local Regular Democratic Organization Democrats local Gay activists were promoting. This brought all sorts condemnation on me save one comment from a gay who wrote, there are those against us, and those against those against use; but very few for us.

Wait for Blagojevich’s trial to start next year and the 400 hours of intercepted calls to start playing (Blagojevich’s defense team has them all now). The world will hear for themselves who Chicago Democrats were really for….

Comment on Is this the Dojin Christian Church in Tokyo? by Jaume

Jaume — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:45:05 +0000

If you can send the Google Map shot to John Clifford, who is the Executive Secretary of the ICUU, he may have an answer or redirect this to the relevant person(s).

We had a representative from the Japanese church at a ICUU meeting in Hungary, but it is very difficult to keep contact (partly because of language barriers but also due to the size and age of these congregations).

Comment on Holocaust museum guard dies after shooting by Bill Baar

Bill Baar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:48:52 +0000

sorry, I got shooter and the Mr Johns: the murdered guard; switched.

I have little stomach for these stories…

…but you get my point about whether the shooter a terrorists or not. Hatred towards Jews has become common place and I hear it now in places and from people I never thought would say such things.

Comment on Holocaust museum guard dies after shooting by Scott Wells

Scott Wells — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:46:06 +0000

@Bill. Well, yes, there are some people who think Jews conspire against all others. One problem is equivocating rants with fact-based discourse, and that’s been degrading badly in an age of a simulacrum of journalistic balance. I have no interest in coddling lunatics, or enabling them. So I’m glad you clarified your point.

Let me repeat though: Johns was murdered, he was not the murderer.

Comment on Holocaust museum guard dies after shooting by Bill Baar

Bill Baar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:33:12 +0000

Norman Cohn, in his book Warrent for Genocide, wrote of the time best, if you’ll allow me to quote,

It is a great mistake to suppose that the only writers who matter are those whom the educated in their saner moments can take seriously. There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history. —Warrant for Genocide: the Myth of the JewishWorld-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, page 18

I fear we’re at one of those moments again in history.

Comment on Holocaust museum guard dies after shooting by Bill Baar

Bill Baar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:23:35 +0000

Some people think there is a Jewish conspiracy. Some people deny the Shoah happened. Some people think 911 was a Jewish conspiracy.

If you believe that, well than I think you’d have at least an understanding of some sort towards John’s murdering a co conspirator with the Jews. John’s not a terrorist in their frame of thought.

I certainly don’t believe that. I don’t think there is a Jewish conspiracy. I don’t deny what happened to the six million, and indeed believe were far to closer to another Shoah…. which will perhapes happen and than denied also.

John’s talk about Jews is not all that unusual in Chicago. Witness our Sister Muhammed as member of the Illinois Head Crimes Panel. She and her talk frightens me deeply. I’ve never been more pessimistic about the future of Israel and the Jewish people than I have been the past few years.