These two phrases Blessed Be and May It Be So are said during our Unitarian Universalists Fellowship of Raleigh {UUFR} services every Sunday Morning. I really like these two phrases and I use them occasionally outside of our UUFR services. They have deep meaning for me.
Sometimes I say them out loud and sometimes I say them to myself as I go through my day at work or at home.
The first one Blessed Be is what I say after the prayer and meditation. I say it in a soft tone. It is my way of saying AMEN. The second one May It Be So is said after the message / sermon. Rev John Saxon says it in a clear and soft tone. I take it as his way of hoping we listened to what he said and go out into the world and Make It So. Both phrases are the way I want to live my life and what I interpret as the UU way of life.
Our seven UU principles are as follows:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person.
- Justice,equity and compassion in human relations.
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
These principles are what I try to live by sometimes I can and sometimes I fall short. The phrase Blessed Be is what I hope for ALL people because it is how I feel more times than not for myself. I feel as Rodney King did when he came out while the LA riots were happening and said in a TV interview "Why can't we all just get along?" That is my wish and my hope for everyone.
This world has so much HATE and BIGOTRY. There are so many people trying to be Superior to others instead of helping and loving others.
It would be so nice if EVERYONE could and would be EQUAL in every way. That is where the phrase May It Be So is put into play for me. To me we should go with the idea of we ONLY have ONE race THE HUMAN RACE. That is what President Obama said in one of his 2008 election speeches. Why Can't It Be So? It takes ALL of us to Make It So.
The next time you go into a grocery store or any type of retail store and are in the check out line take a moment and speak to your cashier. Call her/him by name that is why they wear name tags. I guarantee you will get a sense of unity and equality with them. Take a moment to greet others on the street. Just today as I was walking out of the Food Lion I smiled and greeted an older gentleman of color. He greeted and smiled back at me. It gave me a good feeling.
Just take a moment to be a part of the Human Race NOT apart from the Human Race.
These are my Thoughts and Feelings from Jillsville.
Loyalty is hard to come by for some people. My friends and family members have said that the one constant about me is my loyalty to them. I have an extremely small circle of friends and once someone is in this circle my allegiance is to them totally. I will support them, take up for them and never do or say anything against them and if someone does then they will have to reckon with ME.
Whenever someone that I call a friend speaks of me behind my back and I find out about it my heart hurts. This is the one thing that truly hurts me to my core. Because if I ever have a problem with someone I tell them face to face no matter how hard or difficult it is and I want and deserve that same respect.
The same is true with my family. I love my family some of them more than others. Never the less I live by and believe in the saying BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER. I remember my Aunt Gerry use to always say you have to give respect in order to get respect. To me loyalty is the one way that I show respect.
I was raised by a man that thought money was how you got respect. He would talk bad about people that he called friends and some family members. There were times that he and I would go head to head over this. It was not easy living in that environment.
Loyalty is important to me and I look for the same in my friends and family. Sometimes I find it and sometimes I don't. All I can do is live my life the best way I know how and there are times that I fall short but I do the best I can. That is all that anyone can do.
These are my thoughts and feelings from Jillsville.
Let me begin this blog by giving you a little background of how My Amendment One family began. I met Kathy 11 years ago when I first moved here. We started out as friends and began dating after a year of getting to know each other. Our first date was with her family at a small theater play. It was a bit uncomfortable for me but it worked out fine. Her family made me feel at ease and they have been a source of comfort for me ever since. After about 4 years of dating we moved in together. We chose to live in my house because it was the bigger of the two and it would accommodate all our critters that we had at the time. We had a commitment ceremony 5 years after we had been together and a legal wedding ceremony 2 years ago in Canada. So all together we have been a loving and committed couple for 10 years.
Our lives have changed tremendously in the last year. Kathy's mother Nancy aka Mutti moved in with us. She has severe stage Alzheimer's Disease. After reading a blog yesterday entitled Amendment One and My Family it got me to thinking that I should write a blog about my family and the effects that Amendment One has on it. Basically since the state of North Carolina has a law against Same Sex marriage we are considered a domestic partnership even though we are legally married it is only valid in Canada and other states where marriage is recognized.
My morning begins at 5:30 on my work days. I wake up and make my way in the dark to the bathroom very quietly I might add because everyone in the house in sleeping even the critters. After my shower I get dressed in the bathroom and turn the light out and tip toe out as to not wake Kathy who is still sleeping. Buddy our dog jumps down off the bed to greet me as I gently unplug my cell phone by the bedroom door. Torrie who is our eldest dog slowly rises out of her bed which is at the end of our bed and follows Buddy and I out as I close the door behind me ever so gently.
Once I make my way to the kitchen with just the light of my cell phone I then turn on the breakfast nook light. Then I push the button to the coffee which was prepared the night before and as that is brewing I turn on the stove to heat the water in the kettle for the tea that Mutti drinks later in the morning. Looking down I see 4 doggie eyes staring up at me waiting for me to prepare their food which I do promptly. Once they begin to eat I prepare my breakfast using just the light from the breakfast nook. Once my breakfast is prepared I sit at the table with my computer to check both my email and facebook. After I do the computer time I then read out of my daily meditation book. Sometimes I even share my meditation with my facebook friends. Once I finish what I like to call my quiet time I put my lunch in my lunch box and off I go to work.
Kathy's morning starts a bit different. I see it when I have a day off work. She hits the ground running once Mutti is awake. Kathy tends to Mutti by helping her get dressed and making her tea and making sure she takes her morning meds before heading off to Sarah Care her elder day care. She goes to that 5 days a week now. Once Mutti is at day care Kathy comes home and does her writing. She is a retired Wake County school teacher and an author. Kathy also takes care of the cats Ramon and Carlos. Ramon has diabetes so he has to have a shot every morning before he eats. I don't have time to take care of them in the morning so Kathy does. They sleep beside Mutti's bedroom and I don't want to take the chance of waking her up before I leave because it gives Kathy a bit longer to sleep before her day begins with Mutti if she doesn't wake up.
The point of this blog is to show that we are a family doing the best we can for one another and our community. The church we attend is the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh {UUFR}. This year our church UUFR took a congregational vote to support the VOTE AGAINST campaign. It past unanimously without conversation. Once this resolution past the congregation as a whole let out a huge scream and clapped with joy and elation. Kathy and I looked at each other and hugged and said "We are home."
This amendment is being called "The Marriage Bill" by the christian right which is totally WRONG because in North Carolina there is a law banning same sex marriage. This amendment is about diminishing domestic partnerships both same sex and opposite sex. To me it is bigotry in motion. It is a form of bullying by a group of people that feel they are "superior" to every one else. They keep chanting about saving traditional marriage. They have NO idea what this referendum is about. They have NO idea that they are damaging children of domestic partners in this process.
The woman that wrote the blog that I spoke of earlier made the comment "if Amendment One passes, and I fear it will, for us there will be that initial gut punch, then tears, and then a burning rage at all those people in our community who voted for it. This rage will slowly simmer down to a low boil on the back burner of our busy lives." This is so true for me and others like me. After the initial pain if this Amendment passes life will go on but for me it will have a long lasting effect. Because I will feel betrayed by those people who voted for it. Those who vote for this Amendment are delusional and misguided and don't have the FACTS of this Amendment. They don't even know me and my family. We are NOT a threat to them they are a threat to us in my mind.
To those of you in the state of North Carolina that are registered voters and who are against this amendment and who don't vote...I say SHAME ON YOU. Because by not voting you are giving the proponents another vote for this discrimination and hate resolution.
Even if this amendment passes I will wake up at 5:30 in the morning on my work days and Kathy will still wake up and hit the ground running taking care of Mutti. Nothing will change on the outside but on the inside it will NEVER be the same.
These are my thoughts and feeling from Jillsville.
Tonight my wife Kathy and I went to see the movie Bully. It was a very well done documentary about the effects of bullying. It was so sad and heart wrenching to see how many kids are affected by bullying in the schools each and every day. Some of these kids don't even realize that they are being bullied. They think it is just the way things are. The punch in the arm, the stabbing with a pencil, the throwing into the locker. In fact one of the kids said the reason why he didn't tell his folks was because it thought it was "normal."
One of the kids in the movie was a 14 year old girl who pulled a gun on a school bus because the kids had called her names and taunted her to that point. The sheriff said he could see NO reason for this "little girl" to pull a gun on those kids on the school bus unless she was on the ground being beaten. I just gasped at that comment. There is such a thing as emotional bullying and yes I can see how someone could get to the point that this "little girl" got to.
Many of the kids that were bullied got to the point of darkness and NO return and they committed suicide. Most of the parents were shocked because they had no idea this was happening to their kid. Some kids, according to this documentary, don't say anything to their parents. I can believe this is true. Because I was the victim of a form of bullying that I call abuse.
It was my first grade year. I was only 6 years old and it was at the hands of my first grade teacher. One of my cousins and I were in the same first grade class in Southern Pines. My teachers name was Miss Cameron. She was an old bitty. Every single day she would take my cousin and I to the dark walk in closet and paddle us. She would say to us that she knew at some point during the day we would get into trouble so she wanted to go ahead and get IT over with. She would leave us in there for a while in the dark. She would also tie my left hand to the desk because she wanted me to use my right hand. I never told my Mom about any of this.
We are ALL these kids have to protect them from these bullies. The schools can't take on ALL the responsibility. It takes us all. It takes legislation so the schools and the law enforcement officers have more authority. It takes parents and folks like you and me to be there for these kids. They need to know that bullying is wrong and that they have a voice in us. NO ONE SHOULD BE BULLIED.
These are my thoughts and feelings from Jillsville.
This morning at work I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker about marriage. He and his wife have been married for a few years. He is a young man with a young son. Our conversation was spoken with humor and sincerity. We both came to the agreement that marriage is made up of two people that love each other and are committed to each other. Also as long as one of them says "Yes Dear" at the appropriate times then all is good with the world as we know it and it just so happens that both he and I have that in common within our marriages. We are both the "Yes Dear" ones.
He said that sometimes his wife makes him feel that he has some power to make decisions for them by "allowing" him to make dinner plans for them. After he makes a few suggestions of places that they should go to eat she seems to make many different reasons for not wanting to go to these suggested places that he has made so they end up going to where she wants to go. His reply is "Yes Dear" that sounds like a great place to go eat. I told him that is pretty much how our relationship works within our marriage. I said that Kathy is our social director which works out great for us and as he nodded his head he said "yup that is pretty much how we do things to."
Just this past week Kathy and I have many hard and difficult conversations and disagreements concerning many different issues that have come up. We handled these through both going to therapy together and talking them out with Andrea {our therapist} and by keeping the love and respect that we both have and feel for one another in the forefront. This we do as a married couple having the love and commitment of our marriage vows which are {I promise to talk to you, to work out our differences, to listen with my mind and heart,to share my joys and fears,to love you into the unknowable future with spirit,laughter and grace.} These vows we took are ones that we live by every single day within our marriage.We take them seriously and to heart until death do us part.
I said to him that I feel that marriage is marriage no matter if it is same-sex couples or opposite sex couples. We all have the same type things that go on and the same type issues that come up and the same basic relationship. He agreed. It made me feel good to have this conversation with someone like him because it made me realize that with him being a straight young man and me being an older lesbian we both felt comfortable talking about this topic and with agreement. It gave me hope and delight all at the same time. Hope that people will see that marriage is marriage no matter if it is same sex couples or opposite sex couples and delight that we had a civil conversation about marriage.
Let us keep this conversation going between all of us so that we all will realize and understand that we are not so different afterall. LOVE + COMMITMENT = MARRIAGE. No matter what the sex of the couples are. PLEASE VOTE AGAINST AMENDMENT ONE SO THAT WE DON'T PUT DISCRIMINATION INTO OUR NC CONSTITUTION.
These are my thoughts and feelings from Jillsville.
There is such a fine line between doing what you feel is right for your comfort level and doing what you feel you know is right for another. My wife Kathy and I have had this ongoing discussion, to put it mildly, about Jack and Mutti hanging out together. As most of you know Mutti is Kathy's mother and she is living with us now and she has severe Alzheimer's Disease. Jack as most of you know is / was her significant other for about 5 years while she was living at The Heritage.
Now the discussion, that is the comfort level, for me is whether or not Jack should still be in the picture. We have already stopped the sleepovers because Mutti is at the point in her Alzheimer's that she is not longer able to make that clear decision. We felt that she wasn't a consenting adult any longer.
The problems with her seeing Jack, as I see them, are 1. that Mutti doesn't know who he is half the time and after one of their afternoons together she becomes very confused as to where she should be living and when "what's his name" is coming back. Also the more time she spends away from him the more she forgets who he is and about him. Which to me is a good thing because there is less confusion and less for us to have to deal with. 2. Their conversations are not as they once were. It is really hard for Mutti to have a literate conversation any longer. She searches for words and sometimes she doesn't find them and just gives up on the conversation.
Now in all fairness to the situation Mutti does light up when she sees him. But is that worth all the aftermath and confusion for us and for her? That is where my comfort level comes into play.
Now Jack's whole thing is that he wants to spend time with her as much as possible. That I get. But the comfort level for me is as I explained above with ~the fact that she doesn't know him all the times that they are together or she knows him but is not sure what his name is or exactly who he is and with her not being able to have a meaningful conversation with him and what happens with us having to deal with Mutti after their visits. Kathy and I are the ones that have to deal with Mutti and her confusion.
Hence the question for me Oh What To Do? Does Jack stay or Does he Go?
These are my thoughts and feelings from Jillsville.
Feedback is certainly welcomed.
