Tuesday, April 24, 2001

The Weekend and Unitarianism

Ah, lets see. The last entry was made on Sunday but written about Friday. So I’ve got Saturday, Sunday and Monday to write about.

Saturday the family went over to my mother-in-law’s house to help her move some heavy stuff. She’s having her house remodeled and we needed to clear out the master bedroom and move some of the living room stuff out of the extra room and back into the living room. It was pretty easy once we got started. And she treated us to the buffet at Pizza Inn for lunch.

Sunday we went to church. This is the third weekend I’ve taken Duncan to the local Unitarian Universalist church. Duncan’s five and has started asking questions about the religious elements of western culture that we inadvertently rub up against in daily life. Tamara and I have developed our own version of anti-establishment liberal agnosticism. At the very least we’d like a church that teaches ideals and views closer to our own beliefs and includes a healthy dose of tolerance and acceptance. I know I’ve lived through enough fire and brimstone preachers for the both of us. So I checked around on the internet and came to the Unitarian Universalist Association. After reading much of their views on theology, religious diversity their stand on social justice, I figured this would be a better place than most to handle Duncan’s indoctrination into western religious culture. I also figure that if we just ignore the whole issue he’s more likely to find some radical sect later on. Not that he wouldn’t snap out of it later on, I did, but if we can nip it in the bud, then so much the better.

This week in Duncan’s religious education class they glued some wood together to be like carpenters – they were talking about the early life of Jesus. At this stage the UU church seems to be keeping the stories pretty light. The older elementary kids participated in a Seder as part of the UU Easter and the adults heard a lecture from a professor of religious psychology on the pre-Christian origins to much of the story of Christ and the “passion play.”

Last week, in honor of earth day, the adults heard about stuff we can all do to pollute the planet less. The only thing that I thought was missing was a concise rebuttal of the objections to environmentalism. Republican, nationalistic, and pro-business concerns have only a handful of reasons that they use oppose most environmental actions. I won’t go into them here but an outline of what they are and how to rebut them would have been nice (I may try and scan the literature to provide this information at a later date). The talk was based on the premise that it is a moral imperative to preserve the planet. This view was accepted last year by the general assembly of the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association).

After church I lazed around and let it rain on us. After the rain I lazed around for no particular reason.

Monday was a pretty dull day. I worked in my office and went to meetings. After work I watched Duncan at his dance class and then the whole family went out for Chinese food. While reading Duncan his bedtime story – “The incredible journey to the planets” – he remembered that we haven’t been doing our exercises. So I stopped after the asteroid belt and we did some push-ups and sit-ups. If I don’t forget we can pull out the hand weights and do curls and triceps extensions tonight.

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