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Love songs to Unitarian Universalism
In the fourth of a five-post series addressing systemic issues within the UUA, Joanna Fontaine Crawford asks, “What is harm?”
Is it entirely decided by the person who claims to feel harm? . . . Pain can be weaponized. And if we’re honest, we’ve probably done it ourselves.
. . . There are no easy answers here. And there aren’t supposed to be.
Easy answers are for fundamentalist thinkers who ground themselves in rigid dualistic thinking and blow off nuance and complexity as moral relativism. (Boots and Blessings, 5.23.19)
Their stories demand to be heard
Dawn Skjei Cooley describes the situations of women who die without access to safe, legal abortion.
[Those] who have died are more than statistics—they have stories for why they could not complete their pregnancies, and their stories demand to be heard.
They are people for whom having a baby would dramatically interfere with their education, work or ability to care for their children. . . .
They are women living under domestic violence who are afraid.
They are children who have been raped.
They are women for whom pregnancy will harm their health.
They are people who were denied essential reproductive healthcare, and it cost them their lives. (Speaking of, 5.21.19)
Tina Porter writes about miscarrying an unwanted pregnancy.
I tiptoed into the upstairs bathroom during nap-time and I peed on the stick and waited for the plus to turn into a minus or vice-versa, and I knew what it would say.
When it turned up the results I knew were coming, all the stamina I had been showing, all the toughness in the face of uncertainty about our future, about life itself in the face of cancer, all that “showing-up-ness” flew out of me like a startled finch and I sat on that linoleum tile, too saturated with emotion to move. (Tina L. Porter, 5.19.19)
Christina Leone Tracy’s personal story highlights the reality that pregnancy is dangerous for some women.
When I was born, I had a very very rare set of very serious medical complications. . . . I had 25 (30?) operations between birth and age 17, mostly before age 4. . . . [Because] of my condition and all the surgery, I decided it was unsafe to carry a pregnancy. We’ve never tried. It might be possible, but probably dangerous just because pregnancy isn’t always safe for even healthy bodies, and mine's not.
I live in fear of pregnancy. We adopted our son and are hopefully adopting again soon. . . . A complicated, expensive, long, emotional experience. But, what if I got pregnant? What if my birth control failed? What if I was assaulted? (Facebook, 5.18.19)
Limitless, limited, and loved
Misha Sanders celebrates human limitations and possibility.
sometimes it feels good
to remember
I know nothing
and also everything
all at the same time
just like you. (Facebook, 5.22.19)
Barbara Stevens defends love, and yet more love, as a strategy for changing lives.
[We] don’t learn to express that just and loving part of us by being chastened or beaten or shamed. Nor does it help to hear that we should “buck up” or stop asking for attention or work hard if we want to get ahead. We learn to express love and strive for peace and champion justice when we feel cared for and nurtured. (Universalist Recovery Church, 5.18.19)