Memorial Day

Today for memorial day, my wife went and sold poppies, and I mowed the lawn. Both standard Memorial Day activities. For lunch, we had corn on the cob, baked beans, and I had some blue fake-gateraid (not finished mowing the lawn). With the exception of my blue drink, a mostly standard memorial day lunch.
Mowing the lawn without headphones, you do some thinking.....

Memorial Day is a day for remembering those who died for us in wartime. As usual, I think of my uncle, who was killed in the south pacific - one of the first casualties from North Carolina. I never knew him, but he was only 10 months different in age from my father, and as a teenager, i was given his Eisenhower jacket and his leather flight jacket. the Eisenhower jacket is now in a museum, and the leather jacket hanging in my closet. If I could lose 50 pounds, I could fit into it again, like I could when I was his age. His age, I think of soldiers of ww2 of being in their 30s-50s, because that's how old the veterans of ww2 were when I began to think of them. But like all soldiers, they were young. My uncle would have been around 20 - 21 when he died.
All of his brothers went on to get graduate degrees, he was successful in high school, got a college scholarship - he could have had a long happy life past 1942.... but he chose to enlist in a war. I dont know his motivation, but I suspect that he wanted to do the right thing for his country - which was clearly the right thing to do for his family. His father did not serve in ww1, nor his grandfathers in any war - but he had heard the stories of wars - a great grandfather had died in the war of the 1860s, and both sides of the family were full of stories of sacrifice and hardship from that war. No 20 year old believes that they are going to die, but Im sure he knew it was a possibility. But he thought that that risk was worth it. With hindsight and bluntness and possible selfishness, he was right. The sacrifice that he and others made was worth it, The USA has and had plenty of problems - but it would have had more problems had the result of WW2 gone differently. I raise my poppy and give thanks to him and to all of those who gave their lives for me. Thanks so much.

Songs to sing

Over on "Mom to the Left"'s blog - I left a comment about hymn singing, and I mentioned that I had intended to mention it on my blog- so let me do so.

On the way to Shelter Neck, I took a hymnal; and while my suffering spouse drove, I sang every hymn I knew. I discovered a few things about our current hymnal.

1) I dont know many of the songs. I know a few by heart, but most I dont even know by looking at the words.

2) there are a fair amount of Charles Wesley hymns in there. that being so, let me plug (unheard by me - so buyer beware) Maddy Prior's upcoming CD "Paradise Found" - a collection of Wesley tunes. Prior is famous for singing in her own band and in Steeleye Span (and for having an X-men named after her). It should be good - as Wesley knew how to write a tune.

3) we have a few old classic folk tunes (and a lot of civil war era spirituals), but some of the classic folk tunes arent there. Why not the classics like Pete Seeger's (who is an UU) - "Turn Turn Turn" or more dated "Where Have All the flowers gone". Why do we have wimp folk songs (cough cough) and not more with passion or conviction? Why not "No Man's Land" (AKA Willie McBride) or even "Last Night I had the Strangest Dream". ok, well maybe not - and probably not "Positively 4th Street" either....

4) being on a hymnal committee must be the thankless job ever.........

Belief-o-Matic

I assume that most folks have been to the Belief-o-Matic at Beliefnet.....

I go every couple years to see what I am "today".
Now, that's a rather UU thing to say, isnt it?
However I was an UU long before the internet -

5-10 years back, Belief-o-Matic had me as 100% UU, but I've been slipping

"today", I'm

1.	Reform Judaism (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (98%)
3.	Liberal Quakers (94%)
4.	Mahayana Buddhism (81%)
5.	Sikhism (80%)
6.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (80%)

This is the first time that sikhism has been this high -- and as I was thinking "what has changed in me? do i listen to too much Richard Thompson music or what?" when the question to me became "is it me changing? or does Belief-o-matic keep up with changes in the religion themselves? A Baptist today is a long way away from a Baptist 40 years ago - the same for a Methodist .... and the same for an UU ----
- so not only how do we keep up with who we are, how do we B_O_M keep up with who the religions are?

When someone leaves the fold (taken from another's blog)

I googled, looking for info on N. P. Walker for my other blog -- and I found these quotes by me...
I thought it was worth moving over here.
this from where someone who was leaving the UU for a more Christian denomination, I wrote
**********************

"it’s like a divorce - does one remain friendly or social (particuarly if there is no children) - or does one forget all the past, good as well as bad? - or then there’s the folks who try to conivence the rest of us that their joy at their new life means the rest of us are wasting our lives associating with their ex. If God wanted a hell, it would be full of folks complaining about their ex- (spouse, religion, football team, drinking habits, etc)

Seriously, we only given a short time to live our lives,so we have to do what we feel right and best. to do what’s right. To grow, to learn, to celebrate and live one’s faith to the best we can.

“Oh let me live from this day forth to sing
The prasies of earth’s victorious God and King.
Oh send me out to tell the nations of a love
That bars no soul outside that heavenly home above.”
—Rev. Athalia L.J. Irwin, portions of her poem “Heaven”, written on her day of ordination to the Universalist ministry November 1902.

In my tiny monthly UU Fellowship, I dont go for worship, as I worship everyday. Certainly the sermons that I give (when I give them) would not be fulfilling for those looking for worship. I hope they are fulfilling in other ways…even if the word Jesus and God aren't mentioned every time.
One of the good things about Universalism and Universalists, is that when someone leaves the fold - we miss them, we wish they would come back, but unlike other religious views, we don't worry about their souls….