Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.” -Nietzche

“Nuthin’s fer shure but death and taxes, an’ I ain’t so shure ‘bout taxes.” -Anon (June 2011)

Ionce did a Sunday service regarding Neanderthal twin brothers, Ugh Laff and Moomaw. Remember Ugh Laff was the one with all the answers – while his younger twin Moomaw (born five minutes later) had only questions? Ugh Laff spoke to mountain gods spitting fire into night skies, and understood river demons claiming people were venturing out too far. One night, Moomaw’s small band of questioners grasped a fallen tree trunk and floated to the distant shore. Headed off to those mountains. And beyond.

In the grand scheme of things, Ugh Laff’s tribe of staunch believers advanced generation after generation, ruling as priests, kings. corporate CEO’s etc., astride our endless fears and insecurities. Moomaw’s gang was still muddling across mountains and tossing seas as humanists. Whoops, let it slip, didn’t I?

I probably titled that service, “The Certainty of Uncertainty” even though humanists rely on scientific methodology, seeking answers within nature. But why even call that humanism? Ultimately it’s results, not labels, that count. Current polls state one in six Americans carries no religious label; even less amid Europe’s towering cathedrals and traditions. Didn’t the Nazarene, himself, demonstrate that our human spirit is too deep and far ranging to be walled or even confined by community? Another great leader within Moomaw’s lineage of curiosity and uncertainty, told us there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

With endless resources, another young President was uncertain a middle-class Pakistan neighborhood would yield our enemy number-one! Some still doubt Bin Laden’s death, the twin tower truth, who had Kennedy killed. Sane or otherwise, Moomaw’s kin hasten into dark nights of our new century, braving the floods, clutching the tree trunk of indecision. Much to the disgruntlement of Ugh Laff’s people, watching us disdainfully from their fading shore of conviction. We, of Moomaw. The sting of uncertainty remains sweet upon our lips!

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.

- Oscar Wilde

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

– Nietzsche

That’s a bit hard on a concept presumably inspired by the gods, handed down through millennia.  After all, good stuff does get done! It’s likely ideas of right and wrong swung out of trees with us.  Morality’s long relationship to religions, although we seem willing to cast aside spiritual armor dealing with tribal truths contrasting with ours. Convert them to our truths;  failing that, cast them aside and, “Let God sort them out.”

Our moral truths may be better honed than other primates, but then perhaps we are simply more flexible! Our arsenal of self-defense mechanisms includes morality and self-righteous indignation, yet when doing immoral things to opponents we must first convince ourselves of their “otherness” as vile, vicious and dangerous. Or it’s for their own good. Maybe they even enjoy it.

Despite twenty-first century science, scriptural or secular justifications still tolerate turning on one another. Rudyard Kipling, describing the Khyber Pass and man’s moral courage and virtue, wrote “There is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.”

Difference? Today’s soldiers seldom share face to face confrontations.

New millennium morality demands evolutionary human adjustment! Clearly, morality and decency still rest upon circumstance – as they always have. Regardless of the morality claims of  faith or belief systems, moral people have always chosen the life stance- Reason in service of compassion.  In my words, being good for nothing.

SHALOM

No man is an island entire of itself. Each is a piece of the whole, a part of the main. - John Donne

It would be easy to sit and pen a few thousand words on the meaning of Humanism (I likely have), but Kurt Vonnegut’s definition in his book, “A Man Without A Country” sums it up well. “We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honestly as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in afterlife.” Or as we UUs would have it, being good for nothing!

Often UUs, humanists and free thinkers in general are thought of as “Head People.” Good time to put that theory to rest! The inference being that “head people” stand opposite to or oppose “heart people.” Psych 101 assures us the “gut” (emotion) ultimately makes our decisions. Of course it does! But a great deal of cognitive work is needed beforehand. If there is time.

On Japan’s island, as often in nature, things (there’s another word for it) just happened! Humankind, with our ability to visualize tomorrow, plan accordingly. All is well, IF all goes as planned. But when unexpected calamity rains down, we go with the gut. Perhaps our Western “Abrahamic guts” infused with capitalism differ markedly from the ancient, Eastern counterparts. Witness the lack of looting, patient waits in food or shelter lines, or phone calls to desperately loved ones. It is easy to conclude that Japanese are such “head people,” but only partially correct. Note also on snow and tsunami soaked ground, freshly falling tears.

True, you’d find few humanists at strident political or mega-church rallies. Walking, perhaps, a more solitary path. But nonetheless, in the humanist (head) scheme of things we hear the same bells. Those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki towns, soon in Northern Japan. Our hearts go out, in equal measure, to the homeless earth wanderers, crushed islanders, whether in Japan or Haiti. The humanist urgings of reason in the service of compassion ring in all our ears.

SHALOM

Panhandle Free Thought Association

Saturday April 9 at 10:30 AM See if ”Fifty states are superfluous.” No telling where that will go!

Saturday, April 16th 10:30 AM “Has societal change accelerated with the dawn of the computer age?” Change, I dunno. Confusion, fer shure.

For good and evil, man is a fine creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. —Joyce Carey

It seemed somehow appropriate to be in the middle of Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” with the Middle East perhaps on the verge of evicting our slumlords. Shortly defined, audacity means “fearless doing” and “aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery.” One witnesses bravery on Egyptian streets hourly. As for the unmitigated part, how about our new governor introducing his cut and slash budget in a church ?  As UUs, especially here, sometimes we shy away from comments on the emperor’s wardrobe, but it was not always so.

Dr. King, whom we’ve just celebrated, stared into the face of such grim realities as the glaring contrasts of poverty and wealth. In this abundant nation there are now more people in poverty than in his time! More than 167 million children live in households struggling to put food on the table. More than a million and a half American children, including 33,0000 in Arizona so lately in the news, are homeless – obliged to endure a lack of safety, comfort, privacy, adequate healthcare, uninterrupted schooling, fractured communities and families. So it was not surprising that the President singled out a murdered 9-year-old for attention. He described her as a dancer, gymnast, swimmer, ’A’ student, member of the student council, the only girl on her little league team, and a volunteer in a charity for less privileged kids. What audacity is in Obama’s challenge! “Live up to Christina’s expectations.” (our grand-daughter’s name)

Again, Dr. King reminds us that, “The greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

If these words smack a little of audacity, I’m shocked. Really shocked! They were supposed to be spiritual.

SHALOM

FREE THOUGHT ASSOCIATION

Saturday March 12th, 10:30 AM
“How can science and religion co-exist?”
What do you think? Stop by!

Saturday, March 19th
We’ll submerge ourselves in the topic
“Safeguarding the future of our oceans. Can we?”

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.”

– Mother Teresa

With  “love” day barely hours away, remember the loving spirituality undergirding every theology conceived by the human mind. Then remove the contradictory dogmas and “ever after” stories for which we’ve killed one another countless centuries. Lore and labels learned at mother’s knee often accompany us to the grave. Including the Humanist life stance that true spirituality lies in empathy, compassion and understanding of Other. Lao Tse to John Lennon, all sprung from the same spiritual root.

Christianity – All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so unto them; for this is the law and the prophets.   (Matthew 7:1)

Confucianism – Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or the state. (Analects 12.2)

Buddhism – Hurt not others in ways that you, yourself would find hurtful.   (Udana-Varga 5,1)

Hinduism – This is the sum of duty; do naught to others what you would not have them do to you. (Mahabharata 5,1517)

Islam – No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Sunnah)

Judaism – What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.   (Talmud, Shabbat 3id)

Taoism – Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. (Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien)

Zoroastrianism – That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself.   (Dadisten-1-dinik, 94,5)

Our shrinking, suffering global village demands we no longer ignore this true thread of love and spirituality in ALL our hearts. If you must pray,  go to your closet, then  emerge thinking. There’s so little time.

SHALOM

Saturday the 12th at 10:30 AM
The dilemma: “Balancing security and freedom in the post 9/11 world.”
Perhaps more timely than ever post WIKKI!

Saturday the 19th at 10:30 AM.
“What does the Global Village looks like to you?”

“The butterfly counts not months but moments,
And has time enough.”   – Rabindranath Tagore

Here we go! Careening off into a new calendar. Hope’s high, expectations — oh well. Surely this year we’ll realize more of human nature’s wonderful potential. It feels like a new time again, and apart from family, friends, and possibly the planet, my love life will be spread over two favorite things– walking and words.

Some folks prefer sitting quietly, waiting for the cosmos to come to them. For me, it’s one foot after the other. Just like we walked out of Africa - to everywhere! We run when chased or chasing. But the normal means of ambulation for Homo Sapiens is walking. Perhaps it’s kind of a walking meditation, when during my forays to Ferry Park I imagine myself chatting with the park’s other creatures. Squirrels, frogs, birds. Especially Harold (my father’s name), the heron. Great fun, pretending this tepid kinship with the greats, like Doctor Doolittle, or even Francis of Assisi!

My lifelong affair with words is surely reflected in the roughly five thousand volumes encroaching on our living space from one end of the house to the other. Enough to furnish the library for a small community. Like children, I fret over what will become of them when I’m gone. Like gorgeous, sometimes tawdry old friends, they have beckoned over the years, awaiting only a soft reading chair and good light to gather with me.

Now we’re informed even our modern bookshops with their squared off Swedish practicalities will soon become a thing of the past. Ultimately undone by a simple binary code! In my worst dreams I envision our “kids” coming home with a Kindle or iPad for me. My bookshelves vanishing into some forlorn digital haze. But it’s a new year, and the park still signals to me. The book in my fingers yearns for page turning attention. So Happy New Year! I must return to the future .       SHALOM

FREE THOUGHT ASSOCIATION

Saturday the 8th at 10:30 AM
Kicking the year off, a discussion of whether the U.S. will decline and fall as dramatically as the Roman Empire? Bring your Gibbons and chime in.

Saturday the 15th at 10:30 AM
We’ll be mulling over the “upsides and downsides of the Internet” Come mull.

“Violence does even justice unjustly”

- Thomas Carlyle

“All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jefferson speculated by the time of his death the whole country would be Unitarians. My own wish, by the time I became this long of tooth, was that greater numbers of fellow world citizens would categorize themselves as Humanists – if not in word surely in deed. What starry-eyed optimists we both were! But ’tis the season of hope.

It wasn’t that we’d all be dancing around the May Pole in perfect peace and harmony though. No way. Remember from my Sunday last October, chapter one in my little book “Hope’s Fool” deals with that scourge of mankind, seemingly magnified with each advance in science and technical skills. VIOLENCE. Physical, material and economical. Then the usual irony with solstice and its “Season of Peace” fast approaching, no? At least we’re still here to experience humanity’s shared joy for yet another year.

Nine out of ten humans profess some type of cosmic connection,  each replete with its recipes and rules for success, now and in the hereafter. Dogma. Differences we’ve slain each other over for centuries. Regardless of whose spiritual keys open what doors - this time each year it looks like there’s elbow room in the heavenly ethers for ALL of us!  Even (gasp!) questioners and free thinkers. The likes of Humanists, UU’s, Bahai’s, Quakers etc – presuming their hearts are in the right place. For a week or so!

As the sun returns, with it our dreams of peace on earth to ALL men of goodwill. Humanists celebrate HumanLight each December 23rd. Easy for me to remember. Bell and I celebrate our anniversary (52 this year) that day also. Homo sapiens have always reached out to each other as community in this season of cheer and change. Warm love lights briefly overcome the rockets red glare and howling missiles. Optimistic smiles flash across human faces saying “I’m with you”.  Yes, violence can be put aside for another day…

SHALOM

“Lost yesterday, somewhere between
sunrise and sunset, two golden hours,
each set with sixty diamond minutes.
No reward is offered for they are gone forever.”
– Horace Mann

“If I could save time in a bottle…” Jim Croce

At “One Nation” last month in Fort Walton, our Dave Abraham charmed us with his rendition of “Everything is Holy Now.” Cynics might insist if everything’s holy, nothing’s holy. Their religious counterpart might push you toward their holy ground. We can debate holiness ‘til our heads hurt!

Yet for THIS one moment in time, everything IS holy. Sacred and secular. There’s no place I’d rather be, right now. No one I’d rather be, right now. One needn’t be a monastery mystic to tap into the Now.

The only time we REALLY have is this very moment – no small wonder it’s holy! The best we can do with yesterday, or an hour ago, is conjure up memories that may or may not be balm to our spirits. The future, of course, belongs to no one. So at this very moment of being, beyond a doubt, everything is holy. Whether it be a lover’s bed or a torturer’s rack; a park bench or a Broadway opener; hospital bed or horse carriage in Central Park. Or simply sitting silently by the sea.

So often we tend to focus on water under the bridge, while losing connection with that wonderful bridge between the before and after! As Horace Mann warned us, that transcendental moment flashes by quickly no matter how we may try to slow it down. That’s one reason I don’t “FaceBook” or “Twitter.” Why I stopped formal chess playing when the youngsters could learn an entire book of openings in a single night, and play “blitz” in three dimensions. Time to go.

As it is, things still go much too fast for me . . .
SHALOM
Bill White

Panhandle Free Thinkers

Saturday, Nov 13 at 10:30 AM in the Boardroom.  
Topic to be tossed around, ”Ageism in the U.S.”  

Saturday Nov 20th.  
Up for discussion,  
“Pain. Why not a vital sign? Or is it?”

“Some of mankind’s most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.”
-James Bryant Conant

“Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent.”
-Adolf Hitler

Paraphrasing a familiar saying, “Words, words everywhere, never a pause to think.” Remember as a child, ”Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Really? We know better now, don’t we? Yes, they can! Yet unless we reside on some monastic mountaintop, we can’t live without them! Hearing the Qur’an in Arabic during Sunday service reminded me how beautiful but difficult Arabic is with its flowing rivers of consonants. Similarly in Vietnam, trying to pick up words seemingly strung together in endless vowels. Words. For those of us who remember reading Pasternak’s masterpiece, “Doctor Zhivago,” that novel so incredibly beautiful in translation, can you even imagine reading it in the original Russian?

Democracy can’t exist without words yet here we are virtually drowning in diatribe, smoke and spin – even in matters of profound importance. Especially when I’m off on a tangent (pretty often), Bell simply rolls her eyes with that quizzical look, and says “palaveras!” A gentle Latin expression denoting B.S.!

Words, so critical in our lives, often end up palaveras or worse. Important words in my own life like humanism, are seldom heard in
positive tones, even in UUA circles. Others change meaning altogether, like liberal, conservative, progressive, patriot, or even some like usury and monopoly. One man’s terrorist becomes another’s hero or freedom fighter.

I end these musings with “Shalom,” that exquisite Hebrew word bearing very little real significance in today’s Middle East. Meanwhile it reminds me how hollow wonderful words ring when they don’t match the circumstances…

SHALOM
Bill White

Panhandle Free Thought Society

Saturday, Oct 9th 10:30 AM.
Our topic will be “House of cards: The collapse of the U.S. housing and financial systems.” Bring your wallet for examination. Not really!

October 16th
Up for discussion is “ Darwin’s Legacy.” Come evolve with us!

“I like the dreams of the future better than
the history of the past.” -Patrick Henry

“The trouble with our times is that the future is not
what it used to be.” -Paul Valery

I love to ponder the idea that our species has evolved a quality scarce, if not totally absent, in other mammals. The ability we have to visualize the future. A Tomorrow! Connected to that wondrous tool is another unique quality. A sense of HOPE. You don’t have to search further than the cave walls of our early families, or the soaring spires of Europe. Fingers of hope, grasping for heaven – now replaced by ever and ever higher edifices worldwide, paying homage to the new gods of markets and money.

It seems only when we seek the shelter and renewal of sleep, can we finally escape the ceaseless, mindless drone of the commercial hymns, as the new priests in their Calvin Klein jeans and Gucci loafers seek ever more subtle ways to steal away our time and cash. We’ve seen the future, they assure us. The latest big thing – til tomorrow. Their sparkling, digital collection plates pass endlessly beneath our anaesthetized noses. In their cosmic Gregorian chant we are seeing the future, they assure us. Regaining that paradise once lost, but now easily re-gained. If the price is right.

It is often said of contemporary culture, in fact I’ve said it, we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. But surely that’s a bit harsh. Especially with so many complex lessons on our decade’s drawing board. Many hard truths in the current miseries of lost jobs, lost houses and lost savings. Jobs that have gone away. Away! But for countless millions of Pakistanis, Haitians, Congolese, Ethiopians, and so many others – everything has gone away! I don’t mean to belittle our own share of the drastic changes over-taking the planet, but it’s almost laughable to hear that the markets didn’t like this, or didn’t like that, or that the “consumer” is staying home. Really?

Anyway, let’s get back to the future, no? New shifts in economies will involve social re-orientations we can scarcely imagine. For the most part, the means for our children and grandchildren to make a living don’t even exist as I write this! Yet you can see the almost microscopic transitions already taking place. Let’s hope the likes of Buffet and Gates don’t write their philanthropies of their taxes, but at least now we have some inkling of how much may be too much, eh?

The shift to a culture of compassion and hope will not be an easy task because the “owners” of our present culture leave heel marks across the landscapes of our minds. But I believe understanding, equity and hope will triumph in the end. For all of us! Now you can probably understand why my little book, written a decade ago now, was titled “Hope’s Fool.” Because I truly believe we are thinking animals…

SHALOM
Bill White

Panhandle Free Thinkers

Saturday, Sept. 11 at 10:30 AM at the fellowship. We pass our first session wondering, “Marriage, just for heterosexuals” Come by and join in.

Saturday September 18th try to solve the question, “Love. What makes it enduring?” Better to have loved and lost, than not join in our discussion.