Interpreting the Scream: A Call for a UU Mothers’ Day Pulpit Action

I remember the first day the State of Vermont paid me to take care of my partner, with her sometimes-mild-sometimes-totally-scary disability.

On the surface, nothing changed. For two years I had been doing these things because I love her and I want her to have the life I believe God wants her to have. That does not mean miracles, it means human relationship and basic work, reliably delivered, and fully made use of by the recipient.

But what a feeling to get paid!  No more putting aside something vital at home for a few hours of minimum wage reimbursement and cheerful conversation with people who do not have Huntington’s Disease. No more walking back into the house exhausted and seeing everything I had left behind.. and now I’m too exhausted to do it

No more feeling guilty toward Macy’s, my former employer, for having to call out when she’s too sick, for showing up late after squeezing in just one more little task, for declining to cover a sudden opening that takes experience and skill, in a specialized department.

No more struggling to shoe-horn into my over-packed schedule the leisure and family activities that reward her for doing all the work she does to live at the unprecedented front curve of disease management she has achieved.

It was a happy day. I dressed in good clothes, just to clean, cook and shop. I’m old enough to remember ridiculing the 1950s tv moms who wore heels to run the vacuum. Now I knew how they felt: like them, I was lucky lucky lucky to be able to make a good house for the person I love.

I remember that feeling every time I encounter socially conservative families getting more and more hysterical about the rights of unborn children, the sanctity of pregnancy. Here’s the latest.

From my rarefied vantage point as a professional caregiver for a loved one, my heart goes out to those folks every time one of my lefty friends brings another such outrage to my attention.  We used to talk about “dream interpretation.” Nowadays, I watch the news and work on the new art of “scream interpretation.” That’s what I’m working with here.

Scream interpretation tells me that all this talk about protecting children is less about abortion and more about mothers and fathers who worry about caring for their children. Today I walked past my local Roman Catholic church. My parents live in an affluent parish, and some of the young mothers were joyously planting flowers around the huge churchyard. Inside there was a class preparing for First Communion, but not one of these women was pregnant. They were slim and fashionable. The contraceptive ship has sailed.

So what’s all the screaming about? The hysteria about sanctity of life, about motherhood as a worthy mission? Even — bless you, Rick Santorum — about a father’s desire to cancel a day of campaigning for president to be with his wife and well children while the baby of the family fights for life?

I think these folks are actually wishing that they could feel the way I feel getting paid to take care of my partner. Sure the affluent young mothers can plant flowers on a Wednesday during school vacation. But most young families don’t have that kind of affluence anymore — or if they do, they’re not sure how long it will last. And every time they send a sick child to day care, every time they leave a 10 year old minding a 3 year old, every time they turn a sick infant over to a grandparent instead of sitting by the bed until the fever breaks — every time that happens, these young families feel insulted. They are being denied their American Dream, by a nation which no longer even offers a language to describe it.

Leadership on the left has to stand up for the language of paying for the job most women want most: caring for their family in times of need. Step one, of course, is calling out Rick Santorum on his hypocritical gambit of using Pennsylvania public school funds to pay tor his wife to provide homeschooling in Virginia. If that’s not a “mothering allowance,” I’d like to know what it is?  And naturally, since some folks are dramatically overpaid in this nation, I’d put a solid ceiling above which you don’t get this cash.

This is all I can come up with, because most Americans, of any political stripe,  have demonstrated their belief that more children — unplanned at best, unwanted at worst — are not what they really want. They prove this by using contraceptives. But so far, the right has given the only language of family sanctity tat most Americans have ever heard. And every time liberals rebut them with our own scream of fear, that women will be driven out of paid employment, the hearts of caregivers explode with the pain of  having been misunderstood.

Our positions necessarily speak the hard truth that not every potential child will come to life.  “You could choose which ones to kill, and keep some other,” we smile. And their hearts scream in agony:  “I am killing them already every day! It’s in their eyes when I  leave them at day care. It’s on my mind when I leave them unattended.  I am killing them every time I’m not there to make a healthy meal, walk them to school instead of dropping them off. I am killing them every day — and I hate it.”

Other countries give their family caregivers several years of paid support for doing what all of us agree is hard and complicated work.  Some of these countries are developed already, but others use this as a fast-track to development because kids who have parental nurture make better students, employees and citizens. I learned about this not in Europe, but in Singapore: it was part of the “Little Tiger” era.

In today’s political climate, talking about pay for caregivers has a civic benefit. Money is how we demonstrate that something has value, how we honor an action or output across different subcultures, languages, races, even state boundaries. This is not an issue of race, of  “language spoken at home,” or “where your parents were born.” This is all of us saying to all good parents, “Your children are the future of my country.”

Unless I’m a total freak, I believe that paying other caregivers as I am paid will release huge waves of tension throughout our national body politic.

Teachers will be able to teach, knowing they there is someone to help with homework, meals, routinized scheduling.

Employers in the larger economy will be able to pay those who serve or produce their product in accord with what that product or service can put back in the cash register.

Public safety officers will have allies to help implement corrections or protections that take care of our most vulnerable.

Why should taxpayers foot the bill?  We pay everyone who takes care of our country: the soldiers, the law enforcement officers, the inspectors, the infrastructure builders, the teachers. And yet, who does more for our country, for any of its component parts, than parents who have the time and resources to take care of our families?

That’s how I felt the first day I got paid.  I want that feeling for everyone who’s doing the work of child-raising and elder-caring.

Universal Access Single Access Health Care

Universal Access Single Access Health Care

Last week at Universalist National Memorial Church I preached the importance of Universalism as a guiding theological principle. I emphasized that when we evangelize this message, the enemy is not Christianity, or atheism or any other religion, but something our founders called “partialism,” Part of humanity is saved, part of humanity has some ability or capacity to order around the other parts of humanity…

I mentioned that I live in the home territory of homegrown Universalism (as opposed to the Universalism that George de Benneville brought from the scaffolds of France, that James Relly and John Murray brought from the debtors’ prisons of England), we have a US Senator (not a UU) who calls repeatedly for Single Payer Universal Access Health Insurance for all Americans. The point, I said, is not how you feel about Universal Health Care, but the fact that he is not afraid to use the word.

In reality, as I am sure the congregation surmised, I strongly support Senator Sanders’s plan to simply expand Medicare to cover everyone.

And yes, it IS a religious principle. We UUs have been on record about this, through our General Assembly Resolution process, since the 1970s. So to advocate for it in this regard, let’s learn from our Universalist offshoot, the Latter Day Saints, and our modern-day offshoots, the radical individualists.

Here’s how the Latter Day Saints hand out salvation: they have high walls for getting in, but once you’re in, that community cares for you big time, with large financial outlays. They pay no clergy, but carefully choose the layfolk who understand that pastoral care costs money. Who manage that money and hand it out. And every Mormon understands that as you have received, at other times so shall you give. That is one reason they push private enterprise and profit: they want to take care of their own.

Therefore, since Congress shall make no law establishing a religion, if any individual or religion wishes to provide medical services, they are free to do so. However, at the moment they choose to be guided by their principles, they give up two rights: one, to monopolize any aspect of medical care in any community, and two, to receive government income for services they provide or receive.

In order to give every institution and individual the means to make a free choice about not using the government system of Universal Access Single Payer, every individual will have a day to read a detailed list of what they are giving up, including government reimbursement for any emergency service they receive unexpectedly. When they sign this contract, they receive a card — just like an insurance card — which informs any medical provider outside the system they chose — how to access their wages, bank accounts, retirement accounts and physical assets, such as their homes and houses.

There will, of course, be annual Open Enrollment periods, in which these folks can change their minds. Every contract to forego government insurance will be subject to the three-day Think It Over rule.

Every child is automatically enrolled in Single Payer Universal Access for life-threatening medical emergencies. Every adult will sign as an individual; even two spouses in the same marriage.

The nice thing is that this plan takes state budgets and legislatures out of the picture. And it doesn’t take out private insurance companies, who want to cherry pick their customers and give them more. But it does make clear that when it comes to health insurance, as in government, we shall be what Theodore Parker described for us: of the people, by the people, for the people.

Another Way of Looking at the Trayvon Martin Case

All week I’ve been getting hooted off the web over at Facebook for saying that there is more than one way to read the Trayvon Martin killing case. I do not dispute some of the essential issues or demands. It is clear that he set off George Zimmerman just by Walking While Black, and that the police department should be investigating this without ceasing. George Zimmerman should already be under arrest, because he clearly did not behave like a person under fear. He pursued and killed a helpless victim.

But I’m not hearing that pursuit as others are hearing it. I’m flashing back to a schizophrenic family member who pursued another family member, for no apparent reason, for such a long time that restraining orders were necessary, and state borders were involved. That pursuer had a hard-core commitment to safety in his family, but the danger was all in his head. A real danger, calling for guns and vigilance.

Misinterpretation of neurological issues has serious implications for everyone.  Someone who should have been evaluated after assaulting a police officer and implementing a lifestyle of hyper-vigilance without boundaries was released because for some folks, “Yeah, it can look pretty scary around here.”

That’s the racist — not the person with neurological challenges, but the folks who disregard the person with the condition, one way or another, in favor of their favorite script about racism. I do believe that Zimmerman should have been arrested before or should be arrested now. But when he is, I would like to see a full and unbiased neurological evaluation.

And I would like a society with enough flexibility, enough commitment to scientific significance, to deal with what the scientists have to say.

Here’s what a determination of mental illness would not do:

It would not end Zimmerman’s legal liability: I believe in “Guilty but Not Mentally Incompetent.”

It would not lessen the severity of his sentence, other than removing the possibility of a death sentence. It appalls me that the man who shot James Brady and Ronald Reagan gets out from time to time, and possibly for good. If you’re cured, you’re ready to serve the remainder of your life sentence.

It would remind us all that when guns get into the wrong hands, innocent people die and the shooters often victimize themselves.

It would remind us that anyone’s mental healthiness is everyone’s mental healthiness.

It Never Gets Old

Looking across the top of Shelburn, Vermont, over Lake Champlain and across to New York. Lynne and I hiked to the top of a small hill today, strong and lively after lunch, to sit on a bench and enjoy the view. It’s not yet this green, but the rest is accurate.

When She’s Sleeping…

Medical science has reduced the burden of Lynne’s Huntington’s Disease expressions when she’s awake and active. One medication lets her sit still, stand with balance, walk freely, etc. This is more than cosmetic, as muscle spasms in throat and heart are major killers in the HD collection. Other meds manage the anxiety and depression which still sends so many folks suffering with HD into isolation or suicide. And a return of capabilities further lessens these negative tendencies. All of this gives joy to those who love a person with HD, and hope to the families who know it inhabits their genetic profile.

But a heavy medication life means lots of extra sleep. When she’s up and doing, her body is a war zone between the disease on the one hand, and her intentions and her medication allies on the other. For the first year, she chose the “one quality event a day” pattern, but lately, she’s been pushing herself to stay awake all day on days which have scheduled quality time. That means on other days she sleeps around the clock.

It’s easier for me to do other things on days of getting up and taking naps. These days when she sleeps all day scare the hell out of me. My intellect observes that this is high quality sleep, with lots of deep stillness. What a joyful experience for her body, to be free of the chorea. She is putting weight back on after last year’s crisis, and one reason insurance buys the incredibly expensive anti-chorea medication is precisely this, to let the body absorb more calories than it burns. Spiraling weight-loss is another way HD kills, and it turns out to be a side-effect of the chorea, rather than part of the digestive tract anomalies, what a boon.

But as good as this deep sleep is for her, it scares the hell out of my loving heart. All day long I hover nearby, searching compulsively for the expansion and contraction of life in and out of her beautiful torso. At the depths of her stillness, I sneek little pulse-checks on her outstretched wrist, as lightly as my anxious fingers can manage.

This anxiety completely saps my ability to focus on reflective writing and ministry when she’s sleeping. There, I’ve said it. Am I sharing the joy of her body’s good day of healing? Yes. Am I unable to delegate my hopes to the bottles rattling through that drawer of her dresser and head comfortably for my computer? Yes again.

These are contradictory impulses that totally rule whole days of my life, week after week. And I can’t even figure out what kind of goal I should have for resolving the tension.

Backinthe Day: My Dad’s Explanation for Excluding Women’s Health Care from Corporate Insurance Plans

Back in the 1970s, feminists like I was then got upset that corporate insurers excluded women’s health care coverage from their packages. As Eleanor Holmes Norton pointed out in Congressional hearings yesterday, they defined pregnancy and its related care as “voluntary” measures. Same with contraceptives. And voluntary measures are always excluded.

But having a family, nurturing that family, protecting that family is the strongest inner energy most of us ever feel. It isn’t male or female. It doesn’t limit itself by race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, national origin, language spoken at home… none of those.

It is, therefore, what insurance economists consider a Long term Treatable Chronic Condition.

And there is nothing insurers want to avoid more than they want to avoid Long term Treatable Chronic Conditions.

So according to my Dad, all those decades ago — socially liberal, economically cautious, UU Republican economist — the real reason the Catholic bishops don’t want to pay for contraceptives is that to do so would put a serious hole in the bucket they use to pay expenses and have enough left over to maintain their corporate power and project their corporate force.

And so long as the left plays into their long term chronic vision by calling this a Women’s Health Issue instead of a Corporate Power Grab, they really don’t care how upset we get,we’re letting them off the hook.

Is the left really too stupid to see who’s hiding behind the curtain working the puppets? I’m not talking about the Pope, I’m talking about the corporate insurance industry, for whom the Catholic Church, in good Christian fashion, is taking the fall.

Anybody?

Applying the Lens of Congregational History to the UUA-UCC Meeting

One way UUA President Reverend Peter Morales explained his recent meeting with his UCC counterpart was by rightly noting their continuing presence with UUs in various social justice campaigns. The UCC caught a lot of UU attention with a television outreach campaign that welcomed same sex couples, and got censored in several major markets. They’ve also taken the most fundamental theological tenet of the Reformation “God is still speaking” and made it look, to our ignorant eyes, like some special form of religious progressivism. As a lover of the Reformation, and living in a same-sex couple, these are certainly good things.

But here at the local level, in 2012, we’d be sadly remiss in believing that the UCC is unique among Protestant faiths in either of these positions. I bowed for ashes last night at the local Episcopal Cathedral, where the homilist was a victor in the long, slow legal campaign for the right right to marry the man he loves. Just as we do at the UU congregation, they include on their order of service — even on Ash Wednesday — a reminder of what they’ve committed to provide for our local food shelf. When I went down to chaplain after a shooting at our Occupy Vermont-Burlington camp last autumn, my call came from a Lutheran Youth and Young Adult Minister serving a coalition of liberal Protestant congregations: Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian. As both our state mental hospital and prisons reach out for spiritual support in new locations, we get updates and plan responses in large part around our local interfaith clergy table.

Which brings us back to the question, in these hard but hopeful times: If God is still speaking, is the voice coming into each humble local heart and ear, to be shared by reaching out and reaching up — or is it being parsed out in scant, broad instructions, vouched safe to special leaders for us to carefully handle with the guidance of these leaders’ most trusted emissaries?

Local history teaches that there’s a bumper sticker truth for our religion as well as our society:

If the People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow.

And maybe that’s why the Association’s top levels don’t invest in lots of academically solid congregational histories: the evidence suggests liberal religions doesn’t really need with a Moses or a College of Cardinals. God is still speaking, and the Universalists were right: God speaks to everyone, with clarity, energy and an emphasis on local practical service to neighbors.

 

Universalizing Ash Wednesday

Universalizing Ash Wednesday.

Universalizing Ash Wednesday

We’re packing my three six foot tall bookcases to make way for the accessible first floor bathroom that March will bring. Two kinds of open boxes sit ready: one for the storage room, and one for Crow, our mostly-used downtown bookstore. Lynne’s a jump start character, so weeks ago she bought boxes and pulled everything off the shelves willy nilly.  At first it enraged me but soon proved to have been the gift of ripping off the band-aid.

As I packed and resorted, calm settled in.  As I handled each one, I asked the fundamental question we Christians face on Palm Sunday: Does this really have superior worth (royalty) or did I fall for false gold, borrowed feathers? Was it true light, or the flash of my own face reflected in a mirror?

Worshipers on Palm Sunday bring home their palms for bookmarks, an art project, to decorate a beloved picture. Clergy secret a few to burn for next year’s Ash Wednesday. Wherever we put them, all year they remind us of the human desire to bask in borrowed glory, to rise at the touch of a magic hand.

 That’s what some of these books represent to me: fleeting prayers for the strength or skill to help myself, an afternoon of putting off work by pretending to enrich my mind. Some of them were good choices, made me what I am, but no longer participate in my life. I keep them as reminders of triumphs at earlier milestones, obscuring the fact that my journey is stuck against newer obstacles.

These are the palms we burn on Ash Wednesday: whatever we collect in pursuit of the universal desire to fool ourselves with borrowed glory, unexpected saviors, easy access miracles to keep on ourselves.  And the obverse, the relics of solid successes that time has washed away.

Lenten Poem

CLEANING HOUSE FOR LENT

My room is cluttered, unrefined;
files, unfiled, are piled askew.
It’s impossible to find
the hidden keyboard that you knew
was somewhere underneath.
Not too soon, Ash Wednesday!
I’m energized to chuck the stuff, bequeath
it to life’s junk yard. The day
is longer, light displays my flaws!
Up! Up! You loathsome slob
uphold the cause!
God calls: rise to the job!
But age has crept away with all the joys that please
There’s little left for Lent except the memories.

Poems from the Eighth Decade
Copyright © Harold Macdonald 2004 used with permission

After Categorical Victory

We watch a lot of c-Span at our house. Huntington’s Disease means Lynne’s body doesn’t move as fast or as often as her mind, and we were both poli sci majors, so all weekend long, we pretty much flip between BookTV and American History tv (until, of course, Downton Abbey).

So what a treat to wake up this morning and see a panel of GLBC(cross-dressing) active and former military service members discussing life since the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. As befits BookTV these are now journalists, of OutServe Magazine and Josh Seefried, active Air Force, has published a book. How did coming out work for them, and what were they hearing?

It was all good, and as always, that includes the questions. What caught my attention was the clear language of a veteran named Cathy (?), who had graduated with the first class of women at West Point and served the Army 5 1/2 years, surviving one witch hunt and leaving before she faced another. And this wonderful woman used language that showed me how to deal with a quandery I’m facing in anti-racism: How do you talk about the structural inequalities that remain in place after there has been a major shift forward in categorical justice?

She used a key phrase: “benefits justice.” In other words, yes, we can now bring our dates/partners/spouses to social events, but if we die they can’t collect our pensions.

With this phrase, she has solved a dilemma I’ve been pondering in anti-racism: yes, we have our first African American president of the United States, but African Americans who made the middle class during the last two decades of bubble and boom face disproportionate impacts in two specific mechanisms: they are more likely than Caucasian Americans to be steered into devastating rather than partial personal bankruptcies, and they are more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure.

Since it’s Superbowl Sunday, I’ve been using football metaphors all week to recover spiritual clarity as I  watch political developments day after day. Yesterday, I advocated using our wonderful and prophetic GA Resolutions from the first half century of our Association to define the end zones. Now, thanks to this heroic veteran on BookTV, I have language for marking first downs.

Yet another reason to thank a vet. Her service did not end when she resigned. No vet ever really resigns: despite a few bad apples, and many more with tragic and unjust scars, the retain the military training, community and integrity. We are lucky so many of them share this throughout our society.