Category: Specialized ministries

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Why I blog

Be sure to see the comments, below.

The group of Unitarian Universalist bloggers on Facebook have been meditating on a common questions, one of which is “why do you blog?”

Some of the reasons I blog are predictable: to muse aloud, to keep notes for later use or to promote something-or-other. It is not a systematic work, and its focus has changed over time.

I started blogging because of an aphorism about Universalist newspapers: one I came across when I was writing my unfinished thesis on antebellum Universalist history in the South. He — John C. Burruss, I think — wrote and edited his newspaper because the printed word would go where “the living evangel” could not go, and it would survive after he was long dead. Both assertions proved true. And it was the bit of folk wisdom I learned from a living minister: that if you wrote and published, anything would be forgiven you. I hope I’ve never done anything in such a need of such overwhelming forgiveness, but it’s clear, in Unitarian Universalist circles, where the power is. Public writing is important.

But more recently I’ve decided on another reason to blog. It’s far more effective to blog your little bit, and hope that it’s effective in some small way, then to be lost in bureaucratic committees. I read the agenda and minutes of the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees with a mixture of sadness and pity. So much work, so much responsibility, so much process, so little return.

Blogging, and by extension, shared or distributed, self-initiated online work seem to be better use of my little time.

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A guide for conference organizing (government transparency or otherwise)

Another happy bragging point about my workplace, the Sunlight Foundation. (And thanks to you who have spoken to me privately about it.) Sunlight has a guide for Transparency Camp, our annual meeting (convocation? unconference?) that has many transferable lessons for those organizing a conference.

And while you’re at it, why not try out Sunlight’s SuperPAC identifier mobile app (Ad Hawk) or follow coverage of the presidential electoral conventions.

Of course, I don’t speak for Sunlight (but then it doesn’t speak for me either.)

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A Coptic fellowship resource: review

A couple of weeks ago I purchased two British Orthodox Fellowship publications online. There’s plenty to say about the fellowship itself,  about the publications and how I ordered them, but today I want to focus on one book: Our Daily Life.

It’s a 156-page trade paperback, and intended to be a guide book and worship book for isolated and gathered fellowship members.

Apart from a couple of unfortunate references about gay people (and the underlying assumption that this church only appeals to traditionalists) there’s a lot to learn from this book.

Its preface and introduction greet readers with a remarkably wide “come and see” welcome. A 30 day devotional guide, based on the Gospel of Mark, features a verse of the day, a featured passage and a reading from an ancient work. (With a multicultural mix and a surprising number of women’s voices.)

Then come services: full and abbreviated morning and evening prayer, with directions on how to use them alone or in groups. Suggestions for novices, too

The following section is a guide of spiritual disciplines, but I have not read it yet.

A voluminous calendar of the saints and helpful directory of fellowship officers close the work.

Something to consider now: Unitarian Universalists, certainly the Christians, have examples of all the resources already, and have a tradition (through the Universalists) of handbooks for the laity.

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The British Orthodox Church background

A word for my readers on the left wing of the Reformation, which is by no means exhaustive and subject to amendment and correction, particularly by my Independent Catholic readers.

The British Orthodox Church is a small Oriental jurisdiction; that is, they recognize the authority of the first three ecumenical councils but not the later four widely accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy and in the Western Church. (While almost all Unitarian Universalists renounce the creeds of those early councils, our ideas of ministerial jurisdiction and collegiality echo back and perhaps depend on the rules they established.)

The “heartland” of the Oriental churches is from Egypt and the Horn of Africa through the Middle East to India. The great antiquity and mystery (to the West) of these churches have long made them a subject of study and exoticism. They also make a lively challenge to post-Puritanism as an authentically primal form of Christianity. Little wonder one finds the occasional weary Unitarian looking East when the first Oriental missions reached the West more than a century ago. (And as an inspiration to Unitarian liturgists like Frederic Henry Hedge, who used the Alexandrine Liturgy of St. James as the core of his communion rite; this is how I came to study this.)

Like today’s “commercial” yogis, missionaries for this ancient wisdom often had their own ideas about its application. Many were far from theologically orthodox. There was little structure or oversight, and the nineteenth century distance from the United States or England to Syria or Malabar was very far indeed. Let it be understood that churches like these could be, charitably put, quite eccentric.

Which is what makes the British Orthodox Church something of a success story. It put away some of its particular ways — how much of a change this is I cannot say — and has been habilitated into the Coptic mainline. So in Britain today there are sibling churches of Egyptians, Ethiopians, Eritreans and native Britons. (To simplify the ethnic situation there.)  So the British church worships in English, has a British outlook and ethos and has a great company of saints native to the British Isles in its calendar.

It’s small, and has a mission to welcome new believers. So let’s next consider the mechanics of their fellowship.

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Notes from another church fellowship

American Unitarians and Universalists have, for about a century, kept and extended fellowship through a series of institutions, the largest and most notable today is the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

The British (and independently the Scottish) Unitarians and Free Christians have a similar fellowship. And the Quakers have one globally.

But when I discovered the Coptic-jurisdiction British Orthodox Church had one,  I knew I had to investigate. And thus the background for the next couple of posts.

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Now! the new Unincorporated Nonprofit Association act in D.C. (and other business organization forms)

Back in June I assumed the Unicorporated Nonprofit Association act become law in the District of Columbia. See, we have this window where the Congress can zap legislation so it’s not always clear until the “birth announcement” is made. The change was a part of an omnibus bill that revamped Title 29 of the D.C. code, which also includes the provisions for corporations, LLCs, cooperatives and the like.

Well, it seems that the law became active January 1, 2012. I say seems because that’s when the new fees became valid, but since there’s no filing requirement for the unincorporated nonprofit associations, there’s consequently no fee and so no reference in this notice.

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Occupy: D.C., New York, Davis or where-have-you

I’d hate for my readers to think that my few comments about the Occupy movement suggests I’m uninterested. Far from it. Indeed, I’m very mad and deeply concerned about yesterday’s pepper-spraying of student demonstrators at University of California Davis. Google for it, if you’ve not seen this now-iconic photograph.

But I comment mostly by Twitter, Identi.ca, Google+ and Facebook.  And if you have the means to support your closest Occupy encampment, I encourage you to do so.