Ah, those warm, comforting memories of Thanksgivings spent with family. … Or, are they sometimes not so blissful? Like when the family meal starts with a request that we all pray about Jesus’ blood?  If that sounds familiar, you may enjoy this short video by John Cleland Host.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

And here’s a simple grace that John Halstead says with his family:

We thank the earth in which the seed did grow.
We thank the hands that the seed did sow.
We thank the sky which gave us rain.
We thank the sun whose rays give us gain.
We thank the hands that this meal did prepare.
To live in honor of these gifts is our prayer.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our HumanisticPaganism.com friends!

A few days before the November 4^th election, I took a photo with an organizer while doorknocking to get the vote out. In that photo, the organizer and I pointed at one another (after, it has often been remarked, an awkward moment of set-up). A local news station ran a story that the pointing of our fingers constituted gang signs, that the photo undermined the morale of the officers in the Minneapolis Police Department, and that participating in the photo constituted poor judgment on my part. The head of the Minneapolis Police Federation — the union that represents Minneapolis police officers — made a comment publicly to that effect. He said, “She should know better” and asked, “Is she on the side of the cops or the gangs?”

As one of the two people pointing in the photo, I’ve tried to understand what the head of the police union…

I have long been uneasy with a recent practice among Unitarian Universalists of singing changed words to a particular song in Singing the Living Tradition, the hymnal published by the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Granted, we are always changing words to make them more palatable and therefore singable in our congregations. We free original hymns of their sexism and God-talk, for example, in an effort for our worship to be more inclusive.

The changed lyrics I am thinking of are to the old African American song, “There Is More Love Somewhere.” I have heard it sung by UUs as “There is more love right here.”

And as much explaining as I have done from the pulpit about understanding and respecting the history and context of the song, I field questions from congregation members who protest the song’s words when we sing it as is.

There is much to be troubled…

During his State of the Union Address to Congress on February 12, 2013, President Obama stated,“Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty – and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.”

The idea that people working full time should not have to live in poverty is not new. It has been put forth for many years, including by FDR. President Obama went on further to say, “Let’s tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on.” This approach of using automatic cost-of-living-adjustments has been in place for Social Security benefits for years, and negates the necessity to pass new laws every time the minimum wage becomes so outdated in purchasing power that it is no longer a living wage.

If the…

By now you’ve surely heard more than you ever, ever wanted to hear about the whole Duck Dynasty flap (if you live in The United States). But chances are you haven’t heard anything at all about the important lessons to be learned from it. So here are a few observations for your consideration.

1. Disapproval is NOT censorship.

It’s become an automatic response of anyone on the receiving end of a backlash for expressing bigotry or general idiocy to say, “Hey, you’re trying to censor me”. Or “you’re trying to suppress my First Amendment rights.”  Poppycock, horsefeathers, balderdash and codswallop.

Duck Dynasty’s head  mallard, Phil Robertson, expressed his mind (such as it is) and nobody tried to stop him. GLAAD and A&E expressed their disapproval. All were perfectly within their constitutional rights.  So was the network’s decision to suspend Robertson temporarily while they reassessed their relationship with him.

The constitutional…

With Election Day just around the corner, read why Jeza Belle believes the LGBT community should not sit out of this election in the Huffington Post here!