Monthly Archives: November 2008

A Thanksgiving Sermon – Lies My History Teacher Told Me

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I won’t be preaching a Thanksgiving sermon this year.  Our congregation celebrated UUSC Guest at Your Table last Sunday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving and we are having a Thanksgiving service tonight, Thanksgiving Eve, without a sermon.  This is last year’s Thanksgiving Sunday sermon.

Lies My History Teacher Told Me

Last year about this time Jonathan D. Sarna, Professor of American History at Brandeis University wrote a piece for Newsweek/Washington Post that I caught on-line titled “Once Christian-Only, Thanksgiving Now for All Faiths.”  Professor Sarna wrote:

“How can a good Jew celebrate Thanksgiving?” a fervently Orthodox Jew asked me some years ago. Thanksgiving, he pointed out, is not mentioned in the Bible, the Talmud, or any of the Codes of Jewish Law, and had its origins among Christian Pilgrims in New England.

For a Jew to celebrate Thanksgiving, he insisted, is no different from a Jew celebrating any other non-Jewish festival. It is a sin.

Sarna’s article went on to describe how the Governor of South Carolina issues a Thanksgiving proclamation way back in 1844, but with a distinctly Christian setting, mentioning Christ in the proclamation and South Carolina’s Jews didn’t celebrate the Thanksgiving for years nor did Jews elsewhere join in when Thanksgiving celebrations intentionally excluded them.
This article drew many on-line responses.  Typical of the comments was this one by Risa Lapidow:
Personally, I have always felt that Thanksgiving was the one American holiday that we could all celebrate equally. My siblings and I were raised in the only Jewish family in a small New England town, where Christmas and Easter were celebrated in the schools (that has changed now). We always felt uncomfortable with public holidays, except for the 4th Thursday in November. Thanksgiving transcends social and religious boundaries. The blessing that thanks God for allowing us all to be together in celebration seems especially appropriate.

This attitude, expressed by Ms. Lapidow is not uncommon.  The Boston Globe expressed much the same opinion not too many Thanksgivings ago in an editorial, noting that Thanksgiving is wonderful because is it not over-commercialized and doesn’t involve gift giving, and isn’t bound by religion and everyone can join in the celebration.
The problem with this attitude is that it’s just plain false.  Thanksgiving is, at its heart, a religious celebration.  The religion it celebrates is the American Civic Religion.  Thanksgiving is as bound to religion as is Christmas or Passover because in many ways the celebration of Thanksgiving is a ritual re-enactment of one of the foundational stories of the American Mythos.   Thanksgiving, like the Creation Story in Genesis or the story of the Flood or the Giving of the Ten Commandments or the Birth of Jesus or the Easter Story or the angel reciting the Koran to Mohammed or the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree and entering a state of enlightenment is a grounding, starting point, bedrock story upon which a faith is based.  In the case of Thanksgiving, the faith that was built upon it is the American Civic religion.  The Revolution, the Constitution, The right to vote, Democracy, the stars and stripes, the bald eagle, The White House, O Say Can You See, – All built upon Plymouth Rock – the cornerstone the builders did not reject.
In his book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong, author James W. Loewen  points out that “Thanksgiving dinner is a ritual, with all the characteristics Mircea Eliade assigns to the ritual observances of origin myth:”

1.    It constitutes the history of the acts of the founders: the Supernaturals.
2.    It is considered to be true.
3.    It tells how an institution came into existence.
4.    In performing the ritual associated with the myth, one “experiences” knowledge of the origin” and claims one’s patriarchy.
5.    Thus one “lives” the myth, as a religion.

Loewen notes that it is the job of Civil Religions to hold society together according to Robert Bellah.  Even when the founding stories are myths, lies, and half-truths.  It is more important that the national religion be upheld than to question the suspect theology holding it up.
There is no historical evidence for the Puritan separatists, who never called themselves Pilgrims, landing at Plymouth Rock.   They first landed at what is now Provincetown and there is considerable debate about whether or not they ever intended to actually aim for Virginia, which was supposed to be their destination.  When they came ashore at what is now Plymouth, there were rocks there, but according to Nathanial P. Philbrick in his book Mayflower the rock now known as Plymouth Rock wasn’t identified as the landing place until 1741 by then 94-year old Thomas Faunce, the son of a Mayflower passenger.  The rock has since been moved into town and back to the shoreline.
Where were the Indians when the Mayflower arrived?  The Puritan separatist came ashore onto territory called the Dawnland by its original inhabitants, the Wampanoag, members of a larger ethnic-linguistic group, the Massachusett.  As a group, the Massachusett who lived along the coastal regions were called People of the First Light.  But where were they when the Pilgrims waded ashore at Plymouth?  They were already dead.
The town we know as Plymouth was called Patuxet by the Wampanoag.  It was a large village of thousands of people. The Wampanoags were trading with Europeans and controlling access to Indians goods from inland groups such as the Narragansett and Nipmuc for decades before the Separatists arrived in 1620.   All the more sad for them because this contact brought with it contact not only with Europeans, but with European germs including smallpox and influenza.
When a Patuxet named Tisquantum (and there is some argument as to whether that was his real name or name he gave himself as in his language it means Wrath of God) left home in or about 1614, captured by captain John Smith the village was thriving.  By 1620 when the people we call Pilgrims arrived it was empty. An epidemic had wiped them all out.
Disease would be the white man’s greatest weapon against the Indian. Indeed he would think it a great divine gift.  John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay wrote in 1634 “But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox.”
In his book Invisible Armies: The impact of Disease on American History, Howard Simpson reports the Pilgrim accounts of the effect of disease on the Massachusetts Indian villages: “The Villages lay in ruins because there was no one to tend them. The ground was strewn with the skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died and no one was left to bury them.”
The fact is that Thanksgiving is our most ethnocentric if not overtly racist holiday.  More so than Christmas or Easter or Memorial Day or Veterans Day or the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving leaves out an entire people from the story or if it includes them, it includes them in red-face, the Native American version of Black-face from the minstrel shows.
The memory so many of us have of grade school Thanksgiving plays is a religious ritual from the American Civic religion liturgy.  Pilgrims in black hats invite Indians to dinner and share their food with them.  The story is backwards.  When the Pilgrims arrived, the first thing they did was rob the graves of the dead of Patuxet for anything valuable they could use.  They went through the houses and set up shop in an already abandoned village.  They didn’t need to clear the land, they didn’t need to lay out a town – it was already there and they took it over.  The same thing in Deerfield and Springfield and Greenfield.  Towns with accompanying fields already environmentally landscaped for habitation by a population decimated by unintentional germ warfare.
If it hadn’t been for disease, perhaps our civic religion never would have emerged because the native population would have been too strong to overcome. It’s a distinct possibility.
When Massasoit walked into the Patuxet compound in 1621 to make a deal with the newcomers he was being shrewd, not a friendly Indian. His people were destroyed by disease and he wanted a treaty with the ugly, inept, smelly white people against the Narragansett so he could continue to control inland trade and provide for his people.  He wasn’t a dope. He wasn’t Tanto.  (What a stereotype Tanto means stupid in Spanish).
The people of the First Light, the inhabitants of the Dawnland were a proud people.  They were shocked to need to be in league with these incompetent newcomers who had trouble with such commonplace tasks as finding and growing food, making shelter, and personal hygiene.
I wonder what they thought of each other, both of these groups on that harvest feast they shared -  two completely exotic cultures mixing and mingling with absolutely no reference points.   As is often the case when cultures clash, even when you think you are being understood, sometimes you’re not.
There’s an interfaith joke about the Pope and the chief Rabbi of Rome that illustrates this.
Centuries ago during a time of Jewish persecution, the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave the Papal States. Naturally there was a big uproar from the Jewish community. So the Pope made a deal. He would have a debate with the Chief Rabbi of Rome; if the Rabbi won, the Jews could stay; if the Pope won, the Jews had to leave.  The Pope insisted the debate be in Latin. The Rabbi in Hebrew. Eventually, they settled for sign language and hand gestures.

On the day of the debate the Rabbi and the Pope sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. The Rabbi looked back at him and raised one finger. The Pope waved his finger in a circle around his head.  The Rabbi pointed to the ground. The Pope pulled out a wafer and a glass of wine. The Rabbi stood up and took an apple out of his pocket.

The Pope stood up and said in Latin and in Hebrew, “I give up. This man is too good. The Jews can stay.”

An hour later, the cardinals were all around the Pope asking him what happened. The Pope said: “First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there was still one God common to both our faiths. Then I waved my finger around me to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground and showing that god was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show that god absolves us from our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything! What could I do?”

Meanwhile, the Jewish community had crowded around the Rabbi back at the synagogue. “What happened?” they asked.

“Well,” said the Rabbi, “First he said to me that the Jews had three days to get out of here. I told him that not one of us was leaving. Then he told me that this whole city would be cleared of Jews. I let him know that we were staying right here.” “And then?” asked a woman.

“I don’t know,” said the Rabbi. “He took out his lunch and I took out mine and he gave up.”

This joke is an excellent example of how our cultural and religious assumptions hold us captive.  The Pope and the Rabbi can’t understand each other (within the limits of the joke, anyway) because they can’t speak each other’s language.  They try to communicate, but their underlying assumptions about each other make communication impossible as they hear what they mean and not what they other person says.  They assume they understand the dialogue they’re having, but they are at the same time trying to have a conversation and translating the conversation.
This is what happened with not only the Pilgrim contact with Native America, but all subsequent contact with American Indians and white people as promises were made, but broken by white people who then took all the land and erased the defeated people from the national history as best they could.
Then in the 1960s and 70s with the Civil Rights movement the American Indian movement began and American Indians began taking more pride once again in staking a claim to not only who they are, but to what is rightfully theirs.
The organizers of the Plymouth Community’s 350th anniversary celebration of the landing at Plymouth thought it would be nice to invite a friendly Indian to take part in the ceremony, so they asked a local Wampanoag leader named Frank James to write something and read it for the occasion on September 20, 1970.  His Wampanoag name was Wamsutta and when the organizers got a look at what he was going to say, they revoked his invitation to participate.
That Thanksgiving in 1970 marked the first year the Wampanoag gathered on Cole’s Hill above Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning.  This year will be the 37th National Day of Mourning for the American Indian.  Thanksgiving is not something to celebrate for the Wampanoag and other American Indian groups, it marks the beginning of the end of their culture, their language and their people.
Yet I want to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I just don’t want to celebrate the ritual re-enactment of the Pilgrim’s first year harvest at Plymouth.  Giving thanks is good for the soul and I want to give thanks.  Thanksgiving festivals, especially fall harvest festivals, were celebrated by the native peoples of this land, by the Massachusett.  Harvest festivals in which giving thanks is a central theme were a part of the pre-Christian traditions of Europe and are remembered today as Lammas, Mabon and Samhain.  The Jewish tradition celebrates Sukkot, the festival of Booths and Passover is a true Jewish Thanksgiving.  The Christian rite of communion, called Eucharist gets its name from the Greek word Eucharisto – to give thanks.
I want to give thanks.  I want to mark a festival of thanksgiving and take time to recognize the bounty of the harvest and count the blessings in my life.  What I don’t want is history based on falsehood instead of fact.  When we continue to celebrate an American history based on myth and lies, it becomes easier and easier to swallow an American present based on myth and lies that will become the future history based on lies.  Lies such as there were weapons of mass destruction. Lies such as Iraq was behind the 9-11 bombings.
So today, among other things for which I give thanks is our Unitarian Universalist faith.  Our is a faith that allows me to take our Puritan forefathers and mothers and appreciate the spirit of democracy that lies within the Mayflower compact, yet recognize that the people who wrote it dismissed as inferior human beings the American Indians who made their survival possible and who they later exterminated.  Ours is a faith that allows me to revel in the respect for the interdependent web of existence so woven into the Native American world-view, so alien to the Puritan.  Ours is a faith that allows me to build a new Thanksgiving holiday in my free and responsible search for truth and meaning.  Not a secular thanksgiving, but a genuinely religious thanksgiving, founded in my liberal faith that shines light on the left out of American history, celebrates the bounty of the natural world, appreciates all the blessings I enjoy that much of the world goes without and encourages me to recommit myself to work for a more just and equitable world in the present day so that the history our descendants read will shine with the beauty that comes from the genuine blessings of the light of truth.

THE SUPPRESSED SPEECH OF WAMSUTTA JAMES

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Tip of the hat to whoever posted this on the Net.

THE SUPPRESSED SPEECH OF

WAMSUTTA (FRANK B.) JAMES, WAMPANOAG

To have been delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1970

ABOUT THE DOCUMENT:
Three hundred fifty years after the Pilgrims began their invasion of the land of the Wampanoag, their “American” descendants planned an anniversary celebration. Still clinging to the white schoolbook myth of friendly relations between their forefathers and the Wampanoag, the anniversary planners thought it would be nice to have an Indian make an appreciative and complimentary speech at their state dinner. Frank James was asked to speak at the celebration. He accepted. The planners, however , asked to see his speech in advance of the occasion, and it turned out that Frank James’ views — based on history rather than mythology — were not what the Pilgrims’ descendants wanted to hear. Frank James refused to deliver a speech written by a public relations person. Frank James did not speak at the anniversary celebration. If he had spoken, this is what he would have said:

Full text of the undelivered speech at -

http://www.uaine.org/wmsuta.htm

Former UU President offers Human Rights Agenda to Obama

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Rev. William F. Schulz is in a position to do this because he is also a former Executive Director of Amensty International USA, the American wing of the Amensty International, the worldwide human rights organization. Schulz is currently senior fellow in human-rights policy at the Center for American Progress. These human rights priorities all come from what amounts to an open letter of sorts, suggesting a human rights agenda, to the incoming President Obama in today’s Boston Globe:

Announce the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay at a date certain. John McCain also favored the shutting down of GITMO and, though it may take some time to figure out how best to process or prosecute the remaining prisoners, setting a date to close the camp will send a powerful message of intention, just as President-elect Obama’s commitment to get out of Iraq in a specified period of time has done.

Extend the ban on torture to the intelligence services. Congress put a lid on the use of torture by the military but President Bush indicated that prohibition would not apply to the intelligence services. President Obama should make clear that it does.

Send the secretary of state to Sudan. The United States has denounced the mass atrocities in Darfur but failed to mount a concerted effort to stop them. The new secretary of state should make Khartoum the first foreign destination and should deliver a firm message of resolve. Appointing a high-level US envoy (Colin Powell?) to shepherd a renewed initiative to bring peace to Darfur would reinforce Obama’s seriousness in resolving the crisis.

“Re-sign” the International Criminal Court treaty. In one of the most bizarre actions of the Bush presidency, the United States sought to remove President Clinton’s signature from the treaty establishing the court. By “withdrawing the letter of withdrawal” and committing to send representatives to the 2009 Review Conference that will consider amendments to the court’s statutes, the new administration can seek adjustments that would make eventual ratification by the Senate more likely.

Reappoint observers to the UN Human Rights Council. While the council has been a disappointment to almost everyone and the United States has chosen not to stand for election to it, last June the Bush administration went so far as to remove even observers from the council’s meetings. Such petty detachment gains us nothing and comes across as hubris. The new president should reverse the decision.

Apothegm of Narda

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Apothegm of Narda: “Never utter these words: ‘I do not know this, therefore it is false.’ One must study to know; know to understand; understand to judge.”

“Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?”

John 7:53- 8:11:

2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

This has long been my favorite passage in the canonical Gospels.  First there is the fascinating linguistic mystery of why this bit of Lukan material is in John (there’s a decent summary of this in the notes at http://net.bible.org/passage.php?passage=Joh+7:53-8:11)?   Then there is the reaction of Jesus to the Karl Rovian campaign question posed by his enemies.  “Moses says stone the whore. What do you say?”  If Jesus says someting contrary to Moses, he breaks with his religious tradition. If Jesus goes into the exact Mosaic law, that the woman needed to be actually caught in the act by two adult male witnesses (and so on) he risks coming across as an East Coast academic elitist policy wonk.  If he gives his own ruling, well then he’s a greater authority then Moses.  It’s lose-lose-lose proposition and the questioner knows it.  Jesus’ reaction is brilliant.  He stops the action and draws in the ground – before turning the tables.

The scribes and pharisees basically ask the entrapment question, “So Senator ben-Yosef, when did you stop beating your wife?”  And the reply is, “Y’all are such an unethical press corps, y’all don’t get to ask the question.”    Once the question is asked, the senator from Nazareth is forced to defend whether he abuses his wife or not, and especially if he doesn’t he’s now cast as someone who does.  But the reply, “You whoring press corps shouldn’t ask such questions,” stops them dead in their tracks.

The reason the reply is so effective is the pause, the quiet, the zen of it.  Jesus’ ability to sit and down and shut up first before speaking.  Then his phrasing, let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

My religious heart hears the rest of the story, my human heart knows that in all too many parts of the world all the stones would come hurling at both Jesus and the woman anyway.  The greatest power of the story is that Jesus and his followers and all the Christs and buddhas and men and women of courage never know if the stones are going to come and they sit down and shut up and gracefully offer the stunner and wait to see if our highest resolve will the day one more time.

Civics Test

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My latest favorite Internet quiz is one with some real substance.  Our Fading Heritage is a program provided by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute American Civic Literacy Program.   You may take their CIVICS QUIZ here.

The major finding from three years of doing this quiz, the survey and the study related to it:

* Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy
* Americans Agree: Colleges Should Teach America’s Heritage
* College Adds Little to Civic Knowledge
* Television—Including TV News—Dumbs America Down
* What College Graduates Don’t Know about America

I scored a 90 percent, 30 out of 33, missing three economics questions (#’s 27, 31, 33) , admittedly my weakest area – although I did answer the other economics questions correctly.

Leave a comment if you take the quiz. I’d love to know how you did, and what you thought.

My chief complaint, other than it being an internet quiz which can only tell us so much, is that is assumes rather uncritically that free market capitalism is the best economic system available.  In the last century, arguably the two most successful economic programs our country has seen were the New Deal and the Great Society reforms.  Both of these packages of socially oriented economic efforts were socialist programs.  Both aimed to provide for the Commonweal, they  aimed to ward off poverty for millions of our citizens, especially the most vulnerable and most at risk including our elders and our children, they tackled foundational social issues such as jobs, education, health care, and equal access.  They were about the promise of America and all of us being in this together.  Unchecked free market capitalism brought us the Great Depression and our current mess.  So, not that capitalism per se is an evil or that socialism is a divine cure, but, to keep in mind that the survey just takes that as a given that capitalism is the THING.

The survey is excellent in reminding us about Jefferson, Lincoln, The Constitution and Declaration of Independence and MLK – and what did these people and documents actually say – do YOU know?

Average score for ALL Americans taking the  test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. The truly frightening part was that the average score for elected officials taking the test was 44%.  No wonder we’ve spent the last 8 years shredding the Constitution – none of the people doing it know what is in it! As Jesus said, “forgive them, they know not what they do.” Literally, in this case.  There ignorance doesn’t forgive their behavior, but it seems we may have gotten the PATRIOT ACT, and rendition and wire-tapping, and a President who thinks it’s the President’s job to declare war (The Decider) instead of Congress’ because, well, they actually didn’t know.  Now that’s just plain frightening.  And the next time someone suggests YOU run for office, don’t think for a minute you’re less qualified than they people who are in office, because after you take this test, you might find out just how much more qualified than our current pols you actually are.

Deer on Retreat

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I’m preparing to attend a ministers’ study group in just over a week.  We meet twice a year for three days in eastern Massachusetts.  We gathered for our convocation last April at a retreat house on Cape Cod. The chapel there had a wall made entirely of glass.  One morning there were deer on the other side as I entered for the morning prayer service.

“Deer on Retreat”

The doe was already eating when I entered the chapel.

She looked up at me through the wall of windows behind the altar,

paused and glanced over at the fawn by her side.

Satisfied all was safe for the moment, she resumed her breakfast.

I remained still, looking at her and her young one

until her eyes locked mine once again.

I had come for the morning service,

but this communion was more important.

Two steps towards the unstained glass separating us

didn’t startle her off so I sat in the front pew

and we contemplated each other for a moment, she and I,

while her child ate what was left of the morning meal.

I wasn’t sure who was watching whom pray. Both of us, I guess.

I was the one on retreat, but it was the doe and her fawn that broke the ecstatic moment

and bolted for the woods, irritated it seemed to me,

that I had disturbed their sanctuary.

What's your type?

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Hat tip or should I say type, to James Ford at Monkey Mind to pointing to Typealyzer.com, a web site that analyzes your blog for its Myers-Briggs personality indicator type.  My blog has a personality? Who knew?  For those wondering, The Sunflower Chalice is an ISTP: The Mechanic.

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Which is very interesting because I, as the blog’s author, am an INFP,  I’m wondering what Peace Bang is? And Tensegrities? Tag you’re it.

And remember as James points out, that while useful tools, The Myers Briggs like anything else doesn’t have all the answers, so don’t cling to the tools,

If you want to look within, well, friend, the best way is to sit down, shut up and pay attention.

Your best bet…

The universal solvent.

That’s why he’s the Zen teacher.

It's almost Thanksgiving – where's the football?

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High School Football may be big in Texas, but it’s not as old or as time-honored a tradition as it is where I’m from.  Although I’ll grant they may have taken it to another level.

Friday night lights is real phenomena here in the Lone Star state, but my Bay State commonwealth of origin is the grandaddy of high school football.  As Thanksgiving Day approaches I’m going to miss the annual Thanksgiving Day football games.  for all the football madness that is Texas, Thanksgiving Day morning high school football games are unknown here.  I grew up in a town, Leominster, MA, that was part of the 10th oldest high school Thanksgiving Day game in the country.  Leominster High School has been playing Fitchburg High School since 1894.   There are four other games that began in 1894 as well.  In fact, of the 24 games that hold the top ten places (due to ties) ten of them are from Massachusetts and another three from New England, including the oldest high school football rivalry in the country between Norwich Free Academy and New London High School in Connecticut which dates to 1875!  Was there even a football IN Texas in 1875?   Odessa Permian and Midland Lee, Texas have only been playing each other (not on Thanksgiving) since 1961.  That game’s just a baby.  Friday night night-lights.  The oldest high school game in Texas I could find is Guadalupe River Shootout between New Braunfels High School and Seguin High School that dates back to 1914 – not too shabby, but still 20th century.

Next Thursday morning will continue a tradition between the Leominster High Blue Devils and Fitchburg High Red Raiders that  completely takes over the two communities.  Opening day and homecoming and even playoff football have nothing on turkey day.  One team could be headed to the Super Bowl and the other headed nowhere, but a win on Thanksgiving makes a season. Thanksgiving dinner will taste slightly better in one town than in the other and just about every Thanksgiving meal in both towns won’t start anytime before 1 p.m. due to the game’s 10 a.m. starting time.

When I candidated for the ministry here in Texas they asked me if I knew about football.  I told no lies when I said I understood this part of the Texas culture completely and I think some people found it curious that someone from central Massachusetts understood what Friday night football means in Texas, but I do, because I grew up with Thanksgiving football culture in Massachusetts. And not only that, I grew up with football in a part of Massachusetts that is football mad like Texas.

Leominster’s Wikipedia entry tells the story:

Football is  the main competitive sport in Leominster. Leominster has 10 State Championships second to only Brockton who has 11. Leominster High’s football team has faced Fitchburg High School’s team since 1894 and have met each other 125 consecutive years and 103 consecutive years on Thanksgiving, one of the longest Thanksgiving Day rivalries in the state. Both teams have been very competitive, but Fitchburg leads the series 58-57-9. Leominster has lost three consecutive super bowls to Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The last Superbowl win was by the dominating 2003 squad who crushed upon Minnechaug, MA

Football is played at Doyle Field in Leominster.

The original stadium included a press box, bleachers for 6,200 people, and additional portable bleachers that could be placed in the end zone making seating for nearly 10,000 fans. Doyle field was dedicated on October 10, 1931. Doyle had spent $200,000 on the project. 2005 was the start of the Doyle Field Renovation Project. The project consists a three-phase plan to update the complex. Phase One will cost an estimated $4 million

A film has been made about the game.

As the week draws closer to Thanksgiving the local daily will run a an entire special section on the game.  The weekly paper has already published its pieces:
http://www.leominsterchamp.com/news/2008/1121/sports/038.html

Demanding an inclusive We the People

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I’m a straight, white man and the struggle for GLBT rights and marriage equality has somehow become my struggle.  I have prayed for the right of gay people to marry at my own wedding in 1992 and then worked hard, knocking on doors and making phone calls, and meeting with my legislator in Massachusetts to make sure it stayed a reality when it became law.  I have spoken out publicly for GLBT rights in Catholic high schools and in town squares in Texas as a UU minister. It seems I have been at this struggle my entire adult life.  I’m not exactly sure how it happened that this cause has become so central a part of my life’s calling.

I don’t know when it happened.  Maybe it was when I learned about human rights while working for Amnesty International in college. Maybe it was when I went off to Divinity School and learned that at least one third of teen suicides who leave behind notes or letters cite gay issues as the reason for taking their own lives.  Maybe it was when I first had gay friends and saw the world through their eyes.  Maybe it was when I became a Unitarian Universalist and marriage equality was an article of faith and praxis.  It might have been any of these, but the reality is that I joined the struggle, really became committed to it, long ago, when as child, I began to understand the power of equality and justice behind the promise of America.

I began to support GLBT rights and marriage equality the first time I understood the phrase “all men are created equal,” and that I later learned really needed to be understood as “all people are created equal”…”endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”  I began to support GLBT rights and marriage equality the first time I understood the words “that to ensure these rights governments are instituted among men (people).”

I began to support GLBT rights and marriage equality the first time I understood the first words of the Constitution of the United States of America: “We the People” and understood that as long as there is an “us” and a “them” in America, there is no WE.  As long as there is woman lesser than man, there is no WE.  As long as there is black lesser than white, there is no WE.  As long as there is gay lesser than straight, there is no WE.  Only WE the people form a more perfect union.

I began to be a straight ally before I was old enough to know if I would be gay or straight.  I began to be a GLBT rights and marriage equality supporter the day I understood what America is all about.  Anyone who understands about We the People and all people being created equal must support gay rights and marriage equality.  Anything else is arbitrary, discriminatory, and goes against everything we believe as Americans- all the way back to our founding documents.

The history of America is a history of expanding who is included in the WE the people.  Today all across America, ordinary Americans, gay and straight said We Are The People, demanded the promise of those documents be kept, and made anyone who opposed them look petty, mean, hateful and unpatriotic.  Good job folks.

Andrew Sullivan has an excellent photo set and quotes from around the country at his Daily Dish.