Standing on the Side of Love In Madison

On Saturday February 26th I drove up to Madison with a fellow minister from Eau Claire. We were travelling to meet other clergy to lend a faithful voice to the protests against Governor Walker's "Budget Repair Bill." We arrived to the streets filled with signs and energy. We missed our rendezvous with the other clergy that were starting the march, because there was no where to park. Eventually we took refuge in a church parking lot with the hope that they would faithfully not tow us! We wandered past a great diversity of protestors winding their way through the streets up towards the Capitol.

I have been a part of many different protests, but this was by far the largest. There are estimates that the crowds reached between 75,000 and 100,000. Yet in those crowds we were able to find our fellow clergy. I also found a fellow UU from a Madison church and this is how I came to hold our slogan sign of "Standing on the Side of Love." There were fireman, teachers, janitors, and artists. There were children, college students, and clergy. A diversity of voices rose that Saturday in the falling snow. It was a moving experience to be united in the demand for justice. It was a moving experience to see the peaceful way that my fellow protestors treated one another.

Justice with dignity and truth is faithful. We have to keep being faithful. We have to keep standing, shouting, and singing with our brothers and sisters. This is not about a budget. This about busting the rights of workers and not coming to the table. When you are talking about families, jobs, and education it can not be a zero sum game. There is too much to lose. There is too much to fight for.

What Would John (Lennon) Do? WWJD?

We are all born in the miraculous circumstance of birth, tears, and that first breath and wail to the world.

Hopefully our births are accompanied by loving voices and soft light. In an almost prophetic nod to his future peace work John Lennon was born amid the noise of Hitler's bombs and was serenaded air raid sirens. His mother also gave him the middle name Winston in tribute to Prime Minister Churchill. The Liverpool docklands were a primary target for Germany's Luftwaffe. Air raids were commonplace and sirens wailed warning of an attack on the 9th October, 1940 as Julia Lennon gave birth to John Lennon. Night after night German bombs rained down on Liverpool and often Julia, her newborn baby and her family took refuge in a nearby makeshift bomb shelter. John Lennon's Aunt Mimi ran to the event of his birth ignoring the bombastic dangers. She said, "I knew the moment I first set eyes on John that he was going to be something special."

John Lennon has been mythologized and canonized in both life and death. Yet the break up of the Beatles was often embodied by childish aggression. Despite being a childhood bully, making fun of those with disabilities, an avowed womanizer, aggressive and jealous in his relationships and a general jerk in many ways- John Lennon was also a talented cartoonist, brilliant musician and song writer, a creative visionary, and one would even say a prophetic voice for peace and justice. He definitely walked the flawed walk of many tragic heroes. Though John Lennon was not imbued with supernatural powers, he and the Beatles earned the love and admiration of a generation in the 60's. In an article written about Lennon by Martin Lewis he said, “The appreciation for him deepened because he decided to use his celebrity as a bully pulpit for causes greater than his own enrichment and self-aggrandizement. For several key years in the late 60's and early 70's, Lennon and Yoko Ono turned their lives into a virtual “Truman Show” to promote the issues they believed in.”

There is the Lennon legacy of an astonishing body of music. Lennon was unafraid to explore his struggles with jealousy, suicidal depression, and even heroin addiction in the later song “Cold Turkey.” After the painful revelations of scream therapy, he also spoke of relationships. In the song Mother he said in plain heartbreaking words, “Mother...you had me..but I never had you, I needed you – but you didn't need me.” He set in the music a repeating plea of Mama don't go and Daddy come home. Those plain howls of pain had not been heard in popular music. In his history of interviews and relationships John Lennon was an achingly honest kind of guy. He later regretted some of his honesty and accessibility in interviews. Yet in the latter stages of his career by choosing to set his life and music in the stage of art, Lennon seemed to make a conscious decision to live in the raw moment of truth and revelation. Lennon said, “You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.”

I think the best heroes are the ones that inspire us to find our own inner hero. The hero that calls us to something greater and larger than ourselves, multiplies their own actions and the affects ripple onward and onward. When we move beyond looking for a savior – we might just save ourselves – and who know's - maybe the world.
John Lennon's song God called this out, He sang

God is a Concept by which
we measure our pain
I'll say it again
God is a Concept by which
we measure our pain
I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in Tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me...and that reality

At the core of his seeking, John Lennon called us to become our own hero. He called us to wake and tune in. He called us to save ourselves from our own lethargy. John looked for “The Answer”in music,through teachers, lust and conquests, through drugs, through gurus and pilgrimages, and material pleasure. Ultimately in the throes of painful therapy, I believe John Lennon boiled it down to himself. He had to find the answer within before he could truly act in the world with integrity.
John Lennon was certainly a hero for many. He inspired many.

On December 16th 1969 huge billboards appeared in Times Square New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Berlin, Montreal, Tokyo, and Port of Spain, Trinidad spelling out in plain black type “WAR IS OVER if you want it, Happy Christmas, John and Yoko.
We ask, “What Would John Lennon Do?”
All You Need is Love....All You Need is Love..Love...Love is all you Need

Piedmont Park was covered with something besides pollen one hot day this summer. Youths, parents, and activists marched, sang, and supported the gay and Jewish community with signs saying “God loves Glitter” and “Peace, Love, and Tolerance.” Of course, we had our Standing on the Side of Love signs! I saw some fellow seminary students carried signs saying “God is love!”
Thursday afternoon a lot of teens from Grady High School in Atlanta and community activists converged into a wonderful counter-witness to the hate-filled messages of Westboro Baptist Church. The church members had horrible signs, “God Hates Jews”, “Fags Hate God”, and other horrible language. A youth from Grady High School found out that Westboro would be protesting at their school so she helped to organize a counter-protest. Over 800 people responded on Facebook and there were hundreds that came.

We took this moment to bring our Standing on the Side of Love signs and join other faith groups, local teens, and activist in a peaceful witness to love. It was a great day to see the power of all ages and types of people coming together in spite of hate. It was a testament to the power of people gathered in the name of love.

What Would John Do? All I can do is think that he would not stand silent. He would still be witnessing to that inner struggle for truth and The Answer that he sought for so long. I think John would not be silent on the Gulf. I imagine he would support the right for all to marry. I would hope that he would have kept creating, inspiring, loving,and acting from the core of his not so perfect being.

All we need is love. Imagine. Give Peace a Change. Come Together...Right Now. May it be so.

Protesting & Perfect Signs (God Loves Glitter) - Standing on the Side of Love in Atlanta

Piedmont park was covered with something besides pollen today. Youths, parents, and activists marched, sang, and supported the gay and Jewish community with signs saying "God loves Glitter" and "Peace, Love, and Tolerance." Of course, we had our Standing on the Side of Love signs! Fellow seminary students carried signs saying "God is love!"

This afternoon a lot of teens from Grady High School in Atlanta and community activists converged into a wonderful counter-witness to the hate-filled messages of Westboro Baptist Church. The church members had horrible signs, "God Hates Jews", "Fags Hate God", and other horrible language. A youth from Grady High School found out that Westboro would be protesting at their school so she helped to organize a counter-protest. Over 800 people responded on Facebook and there were hundreds that came.

We took this moment to bring our Standing on the Side of Love signs and join other faith groups, local teens, and activist in a peaceful witness to love. I really enjoyed meeting some of the parents of the high schoolers that spoke supportively of teen efforts to organize and get their message out. One parent said, "How can I not support my daughter, when she is supporting two friends that came out in high school." This may have been the first protest for many of these teens and they conducted themselves with good spirit and peaceful enthusiasm despite the hateful message they were protesting.

It was a great day to see the power of all ages and types of people coming together in spite of hate. It was a testament to the power of people gathered in the name of love. Even the police doing crowd control couldn't help smiling a little.

Standing on the Side of Love at Candler School of Theology

At Candler School of Theology myself and fellow UU students have formed a Unitarian Universalist Student association. To be recognized, one often needs to organize and unify the efforts and action of individuals. We wanted to establish our presence at Candler and set a precedent of welcoming for future UU seminarians. Though some of us have sang in choir and attended Chapel, there has not been a Unitarian Universalist Service at Candler's chapel since 1992. We saw this as something that needed to be corrected.

So we gathered together local ministers and students and brainstormed on a service. The theme of Standing on the Side of love quickly became an apparent choice. With the Standing on the Side of Love campaign, we knew had a topic that would be prophetic and speak to our fellow students and faculty.

The central theme of Universalism calls to a loving God that would not condemn her creation to be separated from fundamental reconciliation with the divine. Unitarian Francis David said "That we must not think alike to love alike!" There is a strong history in both strands of standing up for the rights of slaves, workers, and women.

We had this service on March 18th in Canon Chapel with local UU's attending, along with a good number Candler seminary students and professors. The service was split between students and primarily local clergy graduates from Candler. Myself and a graduate, Lynn Hopkins, did a reflection. Rev. Marti Keller did the central homily and called us to understand our connection to standing up in the face of violence. The convicted voices of Rev. Rhett Butler, Rev. Joan Armstrong, and Rev. Roy Reynolds rang out in the meditation, chalice lighting, and call to worship. Duncan Teague, a current student, sent us off with the holding of hands and hearts. We emphasized our heretical UU history that has always puts always on the leading edge of questioning and standing on the side of justice. We spoke to our spirituality of interconnectedness and the irrefutable human and spiritual connection that calls us to stand up and out. There was a rich connection between the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta and its history of racial justice and ties to Martin Luther King, Jr.

We sang Spirit of Life and of course, Standing on the Side of Love. I was proud at how many of my fellow students raised their hands, when I asked if there were other heretics in the Chapel. We built a bridge with that service, and hopefully a relationship in justice and love.

MLK Parade in Downtown Atlanta

Kiernan and I did our annual Marta train ride downtown for the parade. It was almost a two hour wait for the start of the march, but it was great to see fellow seminarians and the Unitarian Universalists turn out for the parade. I was really proud at the number of UUCA youth that also participated in the march.

For the Martin Luther King, Jr. parade in downtown Atlanta we had over thirty participants from UUCA marching with our congregational and Standing on the Side of Love banner. There were some men shouting anti-gay and anti-Jewish rhetoric once they saw our banner and our people marching. We met their hateful shouts with a rousing sing of "Standing on the Side of Love." We lived out our UU values of faith in action and meeting hate with the power of love.

Standing on the Side of Love

In 2009, are you serious? This was the cry of the GLBTQ community in Atlanta this afternoon. There must have been hundreds of GLBTQ supporters and allies at a rally in Atlanta's midtown.

Today I proudly stood with over thirty fellow Unitarian Universalists in a community rally against the raid at Eagle Atlanta, a gay bar in Atlanta. We were there not only stand up for rights, but also to support the GLBTQ community in Atlanta. From victim accounts of the raid there were heavy handed tactics, oppressive slurs against homosexuality, and possible rights violations. Rev. Anthony David, Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta gave a stirring speech and there were a great deal of press present.

Without a protest and without speaking out there is the danger of losing the momentum on speaking out against misdeeds. Richard Gilbert speaks of the prophetic imperative that demands that we speak, especially in the face of human dignity. The South has had more than its share of struggles for rights and recognition. The struggle still continues and Unitarian Universalists are on the rising front of recognizing that love knows no boundary. Love should not be bound by law, oppression, and fear. We must speak up and speak loud or we will lose our right to speak at all.