Today I've been sorting through my email backlog, and cursing myself for letting it get so out of hand. Here's some things I've been sent in the past two weeks:
Garrick sent me this super-awesome edition of Tom the Dancing Bug, that sums up seminary pretty well:
Shams sent out Rabbi Michael Lerner's reimagining of the Ten Commandments. I'd read this before, and was overjoyed to have the chance to revisit it. The hullabaloo over posting the Ten Commandments all over God's Green Earth (but especially in schools, courtrooms, and US government buildings) has died down a little, but it's not gone by any means. The pro-posting argument distilled to: the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our legal system, and can/should be posted as historical material. There are a lot of problems with this argument, since it's not a real argument but rather a Trojan Horse loaded up with fundamentalist dogma and eschatology. My biggest issue was always that, depending on how you slice them, three to six of the Commandments are YHWH specific. I mean, if the fundamentalists were sincere about their "foundation of US law argument," we would have to restructure the entire economy--where would USAmerica and capitalism be without our idolatry and congenital dishonoring of the Sabbath? Long story short, in this re-visioning of the Decalogue, Lerner opens their use and interpretation to all manner of people from all manner of traditions. Thanks for sending this out, Shams!
Marla sent one of the most powerful pieces of video footage I've seen in a long time: San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders announcing that he will not veto a City Council resolution in support of Gay marriage. He is taking heat for that decision (nice to see UU San Diego get a little space at the bottom of the article for being a force for awesomeness), but man, watch the clip of his press conference announcing his decision and try not to get choked up. Talk about guts. Talk about being on the right side of history. Talk about the power of love to change minds and prejudices.
Joel sent a rousing call from Harper's Magazine for a General Strike on November 6th. This one definitely speaks for itself, and I'm running out of typing fuel.
Here's one from, uh, me. I sent this article to myself last May, and it arrived last week. It's an insightful list from The Onion's wonderful pop-culture review/criticism site The AV Club: The AV Club's List of 13 Movies Featuring Magical Black Men. Nice unveiling of an especially noxious racist filmic trope.
Finally, a new ad from the Unitarian Universalist Association that will air during The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Nice little interior shot of the San Francisco church there--I don't know about the watercolor visual effect, but I think that, on the whole, it's a good start to the outreach work that, as an organization and denomination, we need to be doing so much more of.
Okay, that's that! Badgers won the game in a squeaker, I don't know about the Brewers, and if I don't get away from the front of the computer my eyes will fall out of the front of my face. Later on, anyone who reads this. That means you, Mom and Dad.
1 comments:
we got your back, dude. More later. Love, Mom.
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