Sharks and God

A kid in front of me was curious why there were sharks.  He asked god for the answer, and waited to “see if an answer came.”  He closed his eyes in a silent prayer, waited, and said “no answer came.”  He had the most serene look I’ve ever seen on a fifth grader’s face.

“I bet dinosaurs would eat people in heaven.  That’s why they’re probably down there.  I bet they have dinosaurs down there.”

I could tell a shift in my thinking occurred – before, I would tell the kid why he was wrong about the whole dinosaur thing, or that I could tell him why there were sharks and that he didn’t have to pray.  But when he was presumably asking for the answer, I saw a calmness spread across his face.

There’s nothing I could say that could justify taking that inner calmness away.

Now you Wiccians can die serving the military too!

An interesting article from CNN with the military reversing a policy that said you couldn’t have a Wiccian pentagram on your tombstone in a military cemetary.  I’m quite glad this policy is gone – we should honor the soldiers no matter what their religion is.  Anyone of any religion should be allowed to be in the military – Jesus…at this point we need every willing volunteer we can get – what in the hell is the good in discriminating against some folk because of religion or sexual orientation?

Hmm.  If Kinsi joined the military, could get get a triangle on his tombstone?  Maybe some funky triangle chalice.

On Suicide and Unitarian Universalism – An Extended Post

Every 16.2 minutes, someone in America kills himself or herself.

Every 2 hours and 2.1 minutes, someone aged 15-24 kills himself or herself.

[American Association of Suicidology]

I remember reading the book Ordinary People in 10th grade, so when I saw it pop up on a recommended list via Blockbuster Online, I knew I wanted to get it. Well, I watched it for the first time last night, and watched it again tonight, and will probably watch it again every night for the foreseeable future. It’s incredible, and it’s stirring up thoughts, memories and experiences long since tucked away in the furthest corners of my mind. In fact, it’s keeping me up right now as I write this, unable to sleep. I don’t know if this post is ever, ever going to make it up on the blog or not, but rest assured I should be in bed right now due to needing to wake up in 6 hours to go to work. [A/N: I did decide to post it two days after writing that.] I’ll have to do a later post on all of these emotions from that movie, but that’s for later, but first, a personal story.

Flashback to a 16-year-old Kinsi – 1998. I was the tall, quiet fat kid with no real friends. I was smart, and saw my teachers more as peers. I was just starting to come out of my shell and start having friends by the end of my sophomore year. But a lot of things happened in the course of a week and it just seemed too much to handle.

I felt like the blossoming friendships were completely fake. I was trying to be friends with people, but I felt like it was all just a show and they had no desire to do anything with me outside of school. Sure I would chat online and on the phone, but it was fake. There was no one I could confide in, and it felt like these false-friendships were betraying me left and right.

I came across a box of videotapes from when my dad was alive. I watched tapes from Christmases, from little league basketball games, birthdays, etc. This was the first time since I was 10 that I truly acknowledged and accepted he was dead, and that I was alone. I was always too busy making sure my mom and my sister were stable emotionally and in a truce – I never stopped and got lost in my own thoughts. My ten-year-old self forced himself to believe that he was gone and I had to accept that…until that week.

I accepted I was gay. I had been flirting with the idea since 8th grade, but I knew it, and it was scary. I knew my family would not accept me, and I was sure that I would be completely and totally shunned in my South Georgia town. The only gay people were those that existed on the Internet in seedy chatrooms who would rather have cyber than a conversation. Ellen hadn’t come out yet, and it wasn’t seen that much on the pop culture I could find – I didn’t see how I could be gay and still live a normal life.

It all came to point around Spring Break that year…interesting to note that Spring Break is this week. Maybe there’s a reason why this is on my mind right now. The idea of suicide popped in my head. I could end the emotional pain. I could simply cease to be. I thought and considered it. I remember one afternoon I searched my bedroom for my pocketknife – alas, my room was messy, I couldn’t find it, and I was just so tired. I was tired of everything, and I ended up falling asleep. I don’t know why when I woke up that it didn’t seem as hopeless, I was still a depressed kid, but I knew something had changed. I never got that close again.

I told one of those fake friends about my thoughts. He proclaimed me as just doing it for the attention. I tired to explain to him that “I wouldn’t have these thoughts alone in my room” if it was just for the attention, but he could never hear what I was saying.

But I still had the thoughts. I remember reading/watching this in Girl, Interrupted. It went something like “once the thought is in you, it won’t go away.” That’s certainly true. While a student at Tech, for example, I would imagine how I would go if I did decide to kill myself (usually involving hanging myself off the student center balcony.) I never actually thought about the details of how I would do it, but it would just pop in my head in the most random of times.

I’m quite happy to say I don’t have these thoughts anymore, and am not nearly as depressed as I used to be, so don’t worry dear friends of mine – kinsi’s mental stability is quite fine. I went to therapy for a semester at Tech, and it helped. But I think it was just having friends I could talk to and be genuinely me with that did it – I started coming out a few months after that episode my sophomore year. Sometimes I still can feel like my mental and emotional foundation is like an amateur attempting to build a house of cards. But now I’ve got the motivation to make it to the top and be genuinely happy, but still the slightest breath or shift knocks me back down again. It’s tough rebuilding it, and nearly impossible to guard. But I want to make it there, so when the cards come tumbling down I resolve myself to get started again, no matter how many times I’ve restarted.

But so many don’t want to rebuild. Suicide is a fact of life for teens. I had friends who told me of their suicide attempts in high school [usually pill popping, but were found by parents in time to have stomach pumped.] I remember I was in awe of one girl who tried – when she told me we had a lot to talk about. We bonded, and were able to support each other when need be (although we saw each other as horribly depressed folk)

Then last year…and the suicide of a friend. He’s my age, and I heard they found him hanging by the telephone. I want to say I can’t imagine it, but I can see how someone would just give up.

Take a look at these statistics from the CDC -

Suicide took the lives of 30,622 people in 2001

In 2002, 132,353 individuals were hospitalized following suicide attempts; 116,639 were treated in emergency departments and released (CDC 2004)

I would imagine that more than 10 times the amount who tried seriously thought about it, and 10 times that number thought about it at some point.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group (Anderson and Smith 2003).

Of the total number of suicides among ages 15 to 24 in 2001, 86% (n=3,409) were male and 14% (n=562) were female (Anderson and Smith 2003). [CDC]

I think that might surprise people that male teens are more likely to kill themselves as females.

The risk factors are all true and noteworthy of mention, but this one stands out to me-

Unwillingness to seek help because of the stigma attached to mental health and substance abuse disorders or suicidal thoughts [CDC]

Oh how true this is. Suicide kills more people than homicide. [AAS] Yet how often do you hear of homicide, and how often do you hear of suicide? It’s a taboo subject in society – I’ve even scared as hell to put this up on my blog. It’s never talked about, for fear of causing pain, I assume. I certainly hope that it’s not reported because its not considered newsworthy. Durkheim showed that suicide is not a solitary act [those philosophy and sociology classes paid off! How about that!]. Maybe people think that if we report on suicide, then more people are likely to consider it…and that’s just a stupid thought. Suicide should be reported, and at the end of the report put something like “if you ever feel suicidal…call this number to talk anonymously.” With all respect to the family, if more folks were made aware of prevention hotlines, then maybe their family member would have had someone to talk to.

Most of efforts to combat suicide are seen in high schools. I think I remember some sort of “If you feel suicidal, call this number” thing. People generally know that suicide is the third leading cause of death in young people, but I’ve never seen it broken down like this -

Is suicide common among children and young people?
In 2004, suicide was the third leading cause of death in each of the following age groups.1 Of every 100,000 young people in each age group, the following number died by suicide:1
· Children ages 10 to 14 – 1.3 per 100,000
· Adolescents ages 15 to 19 – 8.2 per 100,000
· Young adults ages 20 to 24 – 12.5 per 100,000
[National Institute of Mental Health]

Look at that Young adult group – a higher suicide rate than teenagers. Why is this never talked about? And what can be done to decrease that rate for people my age? (I graduate from the 20 to 24 block in about a month.) I’ve never been exposed to an anti-suicide message in these past four years unless I searched for it.

And to my friend who proclaimed it an attention-seeking behavior,

Most suicide attempts are expressions of extreme distress, not harmless bids for attention. A person who appears suicidal should not be left alone and needs immediate mental-health treatment. [NIMH]

I want to also talk about how our faith handles suicide. I am happy to note that when I searched for Unitarian and Suicide this page from YRUU was at the top of this list.

I want to note that it’s about “Preventing Teen Suicide.” Although I do applaud these efforts, maybe we need more than just a single page about teenage suicide, and about coping for all age groups. I also tried searching for pages for other religions like I did for Unitarians, and nothing like that page was near the top of the list, and the pages that do come up revolve around how suicide is wrong, not how to get help. I’m thrilled to see our top page not condemning suicide, but offering preventive measures, so kudos to YRUU. So we are on the right track, I just wish we would do more.

Maybe its something we can put up in our churches, in our RE rooms. Maybe we can talk about it from the pulpit. Maybe we can have a pamphlet available. But I’d imagine that if one is suicidal, they won’t go to church.

Maybe we can just talk about it here. I hit the UU blog search for suicide and nothing came up really except stories about suicide bombers and the like. Maybe being open and honest about it is all that’s needed. So if you came across this post by happenstance and are considering suicide, check this website first - http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/

Maybe we need an interfaith movement – because we also need to reach out to those of other religions and work with them to prevent suicide – if all kids here that it’s wrong and immoral to commit suicide and will spend life in eternal damnation [instead of the damnation they are currently feeling]…well…I doubt that’s the most effective way of preventing suicide.

Pop-UU Carnivale – Why this is conversation is important

The Pop-UU post made it to the carnival topic!  Wahoo!  That’s not too bad for a post thrown up after midnight.   And if you think of yourself as a Pop-UU, be sure to leave a comment down there.

But my carnivale post (at least, my first one) is about why I think this conversation is important.

I know it can seem somewhat trivial at first glance – some weirdo whining about not enough Springer-watching inside his religion.  But I think this is one of the biggest problems facing our denomination’s future.  We come off too high-brow.  Most of America isn’t.

We’re in an unfortunate niche market (aka a theological rut), and if we are serious about our faith and think it’s the best (as seen through our patronage) then we need to break that niche and start reaching Common-folk/Joe 6-pack/The Joneses.  We need to show them that we really do have something special here, and that questioning in the back of their head if their religion is right for them isn’t to be dismissed.

But if we reach them, they might just go through the UU-Revolving Door when they encounter the atittude that pop culture is silly and not worth a damn.  If the first thing they’re asked to do is sign a petition against Wal-Mart, where they bought the shirt they’re wearing, odds are they won’t come back.  If people feel like they need to hide their Pop tendencies in order to belong, then not only are the missing out on being true to themselves, we miss out on fully seeing our fellow congregates.

That being said, some of us did make it through the door, and want to put our foot in that revolving door.  But we’re ususally not encouraged to ever admit we like Pop culutre.  We like American society [despite hating the president] and don’t want to always reminded of the faults things we happen to kinda like.  So that’s why it’s time to come out, and realize that we’re here!

Are you a Pop-UU?

Building off a mini-conversation that somewhat kicked off with my Am I Too Stupid To Be A UU? and added on by Mom to the Left’s A poplar culture UU?, I’m curious to know how many other UU bloggers out there who are one of us

So…do you feel too stupid to be a UU?

Do you watch Survivor?  American Idol?

Do you root with Jerry Springer or love the Maury paternity test shows? [I'm a thousand percent sure I do!]

Have you read less than 2 of the books/authors you hear regularly mentioned as being essential to UUism or mentioned in a sermon?

Would you rather watch prime time than go to an art gallery opening?

Then maybe you are a Pop-UU too.  I don’t quite know what that means yet, but, alas, let’s get a conversation started!  If you think of yourself as a Pop-UU, leave a note in the comments!  I want to add y’all to that links category over on my right hand bar, so we know who else we can commiserate with!

It’s time to come out, because we get lost underneath the deep theological debates.  There are plenty more of us out there [who don't blog] and they might find comfort in knowing that others share their insecurities…and love of relatiy TV.

I know I do.

Kinsi goes to a Baptist Megachurch

As part of the Neighboring Faiths curricula, we take our middle school kiddos to all sorts of houses of worship in the area.  This week we talked about fundamentalist Protestantism and we went to First Baptist of Atlanta, a Southern Baptist megachurch home of Pastor Charles Stanley, televangelist of Intouch fame.  Here are my experiences, thoughts, observations, and everything else.  It was an interesting experience, and I do thank them for opening up and inviting us to come.  Yes, these thoughts are scatterbrained, but here’s what I remember and what I took notes on.  Warning – it’s kinda long.

This weekend rocked.

And now for something completely not deep =

This weekend freakin’ rocked.

Friday morning I lost 4 pounds at my weigh in, and couldn’t believe it.  I spent the rest of the afternoon watching gay themed movies from Blockbuster Online.  Mambo Italiano and Latter Days are a necessity for any movie watcher who doesn’t mind homosexuality on the screen!

Friday night a friend from church celebrated her 30th birthday party.  After I went up and mentioned how OLD she is (30…geesh….) I got down to business and murdered the club owner for stealing profits from my Chicago operation.  See, it was a murder mystery party and I had a pretty big role as head of the New York mob in to Chicago to try and get his daughter to marry me so I could get half of his business.  He ended up being the one originally murdered, but we soon drew slips of paper that either had an action, a weapon, or nothing on them.  If you wanted to kill someone you had to have a weapon.  We had money to play poker with, buy drinks, and buy people (I did a lot of that.)  Well, I was a mobster!  When it was my turn to deal poker, I stole quite a bit of money and stacked the deck so my loyal associate would win. When I was walking around I saw an unclaimed piece of red paper and I stole it without the owner being any wiser – and it was a weapon!  Since I had finally figured out who was lifting my profits, I killed him, with the only witness being someone who I had recruited into my mafia earlier in the evening.  I later ordered one of my guys to kill the Congressman so I could get the Mayor of Chicago, who I liked and would owe me a favor, into power.  I was wheeling and dealing the whole night and by the end had like, half the room bought off or part of my mafia.  And I lived!  Surprisingly enough.  Afterwards I went to a friends house, relaxed and smoked a cigar and chatted for an hour.

Saturday was a long day of work, as ususal.  It started off *horribly* in the beginning, but got pretty good by the end of the day.  Had fun with the kids, taught them stuff at teh saem time.  Finally drilled stoichemetry into one of my favorite student’s head after four hours.  Felt good.

Then the work party, which was a lot better than I expected.  My CD won for Best New Director, and she won a sales competition.  Then I won for best teacher – and am still completely flabbergasted!  Won the Starbucks card for winning the scavenger hunt with my team, and had a good time (which stunned me!  I was expecting disaster.)

This morning we took the 6th/7th grade RE class to the big Greek Orthodox Temple here in the Atlanta area.  And I swear, if it weren’t for the whole Jesus thing and the Nicean Creed, the gay thing and the communion thing, I would consider converting to Greek Orthodoxy.  The temple is breathtaking, the ritual is beautiful.  This time I was able to follow along with the service in the little book, and it was simply beautiful.  During communion we sneaked out and went to the 10th grade Sunday School class where I even learned a lot about the early history of the Christan church…which made me want to learn more (and I checked out a book from the UUCA library on it – my first time checking out a book there!)

Afterwards time to watch Latter Days with my old roomie, had a good cry over the movie, then went to the same cigar-loving friend to watch my dear Colts play.  (For those who forgot, I was born in Indianapolis, lived there for 10 years, then moved to Georgia in the summer of 93, and all of my extended family is in Indiana but me.)

That was a freaking AMAZING game.  Unbelievable.  When we (yes we, I now consider myself part of the Colts team) were down 21-3 I thought it was over, but Peyton woke up and pulled it out!  It was AMAZING and the Colts are in the SUPERBOWL!  WAHOO!  We’re going to have a 20s/30s Superbowl party, and I plan on making a complete fool out of myself there, completely decked out in blue, face-paint everything that walks through the door, and decorate my friends house like mad.  I suggested tonight he repaint his room Colt blue, but he wasn’t quite up for the idea.

Now I’m back home, watching Mambo Itliano one last time before I get some new movies, seeing how a post of mine is sparking a new discussion on overt-hyper-intellectualism within UU [I'm working on a new post to talk more about it.] and I’m just having the best weekend ever.
So, Vh1, come and film it and put it on next weekend.

On Evil…

This month’s UU blog carnival, presented by ChaliceChick and hosted right here on this meager blog is about evil.  Given that today is Halloween, I figured I should post some of my often incoherent thoughts on evil.

Do I think there is a such thing as an evil person?

That’s a tough question to answer, because I see it as two fold.  I’m right now more of a moral/ethical relativist.  I don’t think there is such a thing as an absolute moral or ethical right or wrong in society, because everyone has a different belief structure, and whom am I to say someone is right or wrong.  So I don’t think there is such a thing as an absolute, universal evil.

But I do think some things are evil, which I’ll go into in a bit.

The key to remember is that just because I think something is evil doesn’t necessarily mean that it is “evil,” because someone else may very well not think so.  So my labeling something as evil doesn’t mean that it is truly an evil.  It’s just evil according to Kinsi.

A lot of people out there would consider me evil – a gay man who would like to get married some day.  I certainly don’t see myself as evil, and I certainly don’t think that many people who know me see me as evil.  But I am evil to some, and I acknowledge that.  But that doesn’t make me evil, just evil according to them.

So with that out of the way, are there things I think are evil?  Yes.  But I don’t know if people can be evil.

For example, I think hunger is evil.  There’s no reason for people to be starving in our world – there’s enough food to go around, we just lack the transportation and the effort to feed everyone.  People die from lack of effort – that’s evil.

But can someone be evil?  I think people can have evil parts to them.  I like to assume that everyone is born good in life with no original sin or anything like that.  But I don’t think that someone can be completely, 100% evil.  Maybe everyone has a certain percentage of evil in them.

The ultimate example in any of these cases is Hitler.

“Well, Kinsi, wasn’t Hitler evil?”

Well, I don’t know, I never met the man.  He certainly did many, many evil things to practically uncountable innocent people, and was a despicable man.  Maybe he was 99% evil, but was he 100% evil?  I’d like to think that as a little kid he wasn’t breathing fire on the kids at the playground.

To label someone as universally evil is dangerous territory.  Who decides who is evil next?  And after something is designated evil, what happens to them?

But that’s just according to me.

Let me…A Prayer

Let me make sense when it can seem so senseless,

Let me find strength despite my defenselessness.

Let me find harmony within all the division.

Let me see clearly when there is no vision.

Let me find silence when it can seem so loud,

Let me be humble despite being proud.

Let me find beauty when the world can seem so bad,

Let me find happiness when it can seem so sad.

Let me stand strong despite being small,

Let me find hope despite it all.

Am I too poor to be a UU? Part 1

After taking a vacation day from work so I could attend a Team Lead workshop for this year’s Stewardship Drive at UUCA, I was inundated with financial figures.  The top pledges at big churches are around fifteen thousand.  Some people make 400k a year (to this I made some weird sound in my throat which got everyone laughing.)

I’m living in poverty by these standards!  I feel fortunate that a year after college I’m making in the low 30s (which should bump up higher next week into the mid 30s range) after graduating with a Public Policy degree.  Sure I work for a sometimes-evil company, but the nonprofit world I was looking at was 10k less that what I’m making now.  I’m one of the lucky ones!

Give five percent of your income.  That’s the push of the stewardship drive.  Since I’m on the stewardship committee, I figure that I should do it too.  I’m a “per week” kinda person, and when I did the math I figured five percent of my net income would be 26 dollars a week.  Ok.  It will be tough, but I can do it.  That’s also going to be over double what my current pledge is.

And that’s less than ten percent of some of the other pledges so far this year.

There are some mighty rich people in my congregation and in our movement.

It’s pretty popular to self-accuse UU as being classist.  But is it really?  I hit the web to start with -

This is an interesting article from the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion titled  “Socioeconomic Inequality in the American Religious System: An Update and Assessment” written by Christian Smith and Robert Faris.  The entire article is worth a read, but I find it noteworthy to point out the Unitarians are the most educated and have the second highest mean income on that list (which is a fairly inclusive list.)

Now I know that’s a small sample size, but the findings make sense to me.  I was actually surprised that the mean income wasn’t higher.  So we’re one of the richest denominations/religions out there.  So there is some evidence to back up the idea that we are a rich denomination.

But does relative wealth necessary imply classist tendencies?

No, of course not.

But in order for there to be classist tendencies, there needs to be a lot of rich people first.

I don’t know if there’s a quantitative measure of how classist a group is.  It’s more of a feeling that an outsider gets when they try to be a part of that group.

Well, I certainly get those feelings.  I go to events at different member’s homes in incredibly pricey areas of Atlanta, and the homes are beautiful.  It’s intimidating. I get the feel that these people are just different from me.  People are richer, they have fantastic careers, and I’m barely making it in something that doesn’t quite have the career feel to it.  Another example – we have art shows in the halls where you’re encouraged to buy outrageously expensive works of art, where you hear people talking about the lighting, color, perspective as you walk buy, and most of those tags have “sold” written on them.

But that could just be my Congregation.

Does Unitarian Universalism just appeal to the rich folks among us…aka is it a denominational problem and not just a problem within our Congregation?  We talked about this in my covenant group one night and Manslow’s Hierarchy of Needs came up.  Well, in order to question the deep, spiritual parts of life we have to be able to have food, shelter, our basic needs met, and we have to have some of our wants met too.  UUism is all about encouraging us to find out own spiritual life and meaning…well do that we have to we have to have a certain amount of money.

Now I don’t know if I agree with that, but it makes sense too.  If I was worried about where my next meal was coming from, I doubt I’d be able to ponder the meaning of life too often.  Part it may be a historical thing, but I’m not well educated enough to know the historical UU roots in New England and the groups that it appealed to.  Maybe it’s more of a race than a class thing…but the two are so highly correlated sometimes its tough to separate the two.

Now, another question altogether is if this perceived classism is necessarily a bad thing?  That’s a discussion for a future post.

So…do I chalk these feelings up to jealously or is classism really a problem in UUism out there?