bell street chapel – RI Future

July 31, 2015July 31, 2015

Lessons from Sally Gabb’s South

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“The civil rights movement did not spring up whole cloth in 1960. Rosa Parks was not an isolated individual too tired to stand on the bus. She belonged to a network of political and social justice organizers who had worked for several decades laying the groundwork for the sixties and seventies. The older experienced foot soldiers for social and economic justice gave us the advantage of history.”- Sally Gabb

Sally Gabb told me she recently wrote a chapter in a book; she died earlier this summer. After her passing, I started looking for her writings. I heard in a movie, “You can still learn from someone when they’re gone.” It’s true.

The late Sally Gabb, a human rights activist, journalist and teacher, always talked about the importance of working in community to achieve change and connection. I connected with Sally and her wife Beth at our Unitarian-Universalist congregation, Bell Street Chapel in Providence’s West End. She was fascinated by the role of the unconscious in our actions, and was leery of big talk that overlooked the day to day work that makes experiences real and connected (and hard to achieve).

As she told Options Magazine, “While it’s great that stores like Target sell shirts that proclaim “girl power,” we need to make sure such commercial hijacking of slogans doesn’t invalidate actual work – politically, socially, legally – to achieve an end to discrimination against women.”

In the book Sally contributed to, Voices from the Underground:Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, she recounted successes and struggles at an alternative paper, The Great Speckled Bird, she and other radicals wrote for in 1970s Atlanta. At its peak the paper had over 3,000 mail subscriptions and 20,000 circulation copies per issue. Topics ranged from music culture to foreign policy, from the Black Panther Party to desegregation, from socialist politics to feminism.

She wrote, “The Bird’s midwives were, naturally, a collection of current or former graduate students. Who else has been so groomed to take themselves so seriously? Budding historians philosophers they were, mostly men, with women in the shadows, women on the brink of bursting forth to be heard. They were men and women joined by a certain lesson: The South.”

For Sally, what made The Bird fascinating was it’s struggle to run itself like the ideals it professed- attempts at collective leadership, independent leftist politics, shared work (from the tedious task of labeling to strategy brainstorming), the Progressive stream of Southern history, rock and roll, gay liberation, anti-war.

“Atlanta police, for various reasons,” according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, “arrested people selling the newspaper on street corners, on charges ranging from jaywalking to distributing pornographic material. City building and fire inspectors routinely visited the house on Fourteenth Street in which the staff worked, and schools banned the publication from their campuses. In 1972 the Bird’s offices were firebombed.”

The Bird was an attempt, as she put it, to “run an enterprise against capitalism.” It was collectively run, and tasks were rotated but not everyone agreed on all issues- political or design. Sally notes, “We did establish policies that would draw the line at advertising that blatantly contradicted our politics. The choices weren’t easy however. The Bird was heavily supported by advertisements from so-called “Hippie Capitalism” – the clothing stores, head shops, and music related businesses that knew they could reach consumers through our pages. Such advertisements often appealed to traditional male domination, and to the view that women exist as sex objects for men.” I’m reminded of the back pages of the defunct Providence Phoenix.

Looking back, she said there were some things very naïve about the work – but she was proud to have documented labor struggles, desegregation, the fight for a more equitable workplace (in the paper’s office and without), and to work with a group to create a community, however imperfect, committed to documenting and encouraging radical change. She was perhaps most proud to learn from and interview long-time labor and civil rights organizers who had been working for change in the South since the Depression.

After the Bird, Sally worked at a Lesbian Print Collective before “her life’s work of adult education.” I’m still learning from Sally.

July 16, 2015July 19, 2015

Remembering Sally Gabb

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Rhode Island is a little smaller.

A good friend, Sally Gabb, passed away, after a struggle with cancer. I spoke with her a few weeks ago. She and her wife, Beth, had been together for over 20 years. They only could legally be married for the last 3 or 4 in Rhode Island.

I know Sally and Beth from Bell Street Chapel, our West End Unitarian Universalist congregation. They were known to indulge a love of diners (Seaplane for breakfast!), pot lucks, gardening, justice work, and were gratuitous with their wonder and compassion.

Sally was a proud Civil Rights-era veteran and 70s veteran activist. She was from Virginia, went to Duke, renounced her background, became involved in the sit-ins, became a journalist, did radical organizing work and LGBT advocacy in Atlanta. She moved to Rhode Island in the 1980s, and has been dedicated in adult education in Providence (at the Genesis Center) and Fall River (at Bristol Community College). Hundreds of first generation students gained new skills through her work.

She fell in love with Beth when she saw Beth on her motorcycle. In the years ahead, they helped raise a son, supported neighbors, ran an ice cream parlor, bought a home, created a garden, lived life. Food– and more important — sharing it with others -was so vital to Sally and Beth’s love as a couple.

Sally loved to read, constantly, voraciously, and to plan, think and act about injustice, faith, community change and growth. She taught me to find allies, that a person doesn’t have to do things alone in change work- in fact, they can’t.

Sally was involved in the civil rights movement, women’s movement, medical marijuana regulation, marriage equality – and constantly wanted to listen, laugh, and be positive. She was a great cartoonist, and liked crafty things- whether drawing cartoon sketches of the church at pond clean-ups to cutting out little construction paper feet for a “A Step Up” campaign.

She would show up at rallies and I remember her smiling that the big Providence Occupy march was like a reunion. She was a truly wonderful friend and mentor.

As she became more sick, especially this last year, she and Beth went to Europe on a trip with her niece, and on a hot air balloon ride in Sedona, Arizona (She loved it). She wanted to connect me with a friend who was a public defender in Oakland.

I’ll miss her. I thought you would like to know about her.

March 23, 2015

Tipped minimum wage increase debated at the State House

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A large coalition to raise the tipped minimum wage was launched at the State House with a press conference and public testimony on House Bill 5364. Representative Aaron Regunberg introduced the bill that would gradually increase the the minimum wage from $2.89 to match the regular minimum wage by 2020. Senator Gayle Goldin introduced matching legislation on the Senate side. There has been no increase in the tipped minimum wage in nearly 20 years.

ROC United RI (Restaurant Opportunities Center) launched “One Fair Wage Rhode Island,” an impressive coalition of community, labor, faith business and women’s organizations that includes the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island, RI-NOW, NAACP-Providence Branch, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, the Economic Progress Institute, the Bell Street Chapel, Rhode Island AFL-CIO, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, Fuerza Laboral, NEARI, United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England and Unite Here Local 217.

Many restaurant patrons are unaware that their tip is not simply a “thank you” for great service, said Senator Goldin, “It’s paying your server’s base salary, and nobody’s base salary should entirely depend on a customer’s mood.”

More than just being an issue of fairness, this is an issue of impacting “women’s economic security,” says Women’s Fund Executive Director Jenn Steinfeld. “Nearly three in four Rhode Island tipped workers are women, one-third are mothers, and more than half of these are single mothers.” Steinfeld says that eliminating the tipped minimum wage will “help address the gender pay gap.”

Being dependent on tips for their salary makes servers more vulnerable to sexual harassment, since telling a customer that their advances or flirting is unwelcome puts the server at risk of losing a tip. A recent report from the national ROC United found that, “Women living off tips in states with a $2.13 an hour tipped minimum wage are twice as likely to experience sexually harassment than women in states that pay the full minimum wage to all workers. In fact, all workers in $2.13 states, including men, reported higher rates of sexual harassment, indicating that the sub-minimum wage perpetuates a culture of sexual harassment.” It’s in response to this atmosphere of sexual harassment that ROC United has launched its “Not on the Menu” campaign.

There is also good economic sense in raising the tipped minimum wage, maintains Mike Araujo, of ROC United RI. “”Raising the subminimum wage will have an important stimulative effect for Rhode Island. When tipped workers earn more, that money goes right back into the local economy.” ROC United estimates raising the wage will pump $64 million into the state’s economy. Further, tipped workers in Rhode Island currently receive $638,325 in food stamps every month, which means that taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the restaurant industry through social welfare programs.

After the press conference there was a heaing on Regunberg’s bill in the House Labor Committee. Though over 150 people signed up to testify, on both sides of the issue, in the end only 25 people could endure the four hour hearing waiting for their turn to speak. Those speaking against raising the tipped minimum wage were mostly members of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association (RIHA), a business lobbying group that routinely opposes any legislation that might raise the minimum wage or improve the ability of workers to collect money lost to wage theft. Many of the RIHA members wore small golden pineapple pins.

“The states that have eliminated completely their subminimum wage,” said Representative Regunberg describing the economic impact of his bill, “have as high or higher industry and job growth rates as subminimum wage states.”

Bill Kitsilis, of Angelo’s Palace Pizza sees no reason to raise the tipped minimum wage, and said, “My tipped employees… are some of the highest paid employees in my business.” He thinks $2.89 is fine, since that’s what he predicated his business model on. Comparisons with other states are not valid, Kitsilis maintains, because other states have much, much stronger economies.

Representative Antonio Giarrusso asked about employee turnover. Kitsilis feels that turnover only happens when people aren’t making money, and he also says that there are a lot of people hiring right now, making it difficult to find workers. An odd statement, considering Rhode Island’s unemployment rate.

The issue of “side work” came up, that is, the work servers do for a restaurant, at $2.89 an hour, that doesn’t earn the server tips. Side work is an old way of getting work done in a restaurant on the cheap, and is completely legal. Raising the subminimum would eliminate this disparity. Kitsilis said that such work “tends to be… a small percentage of what they do, most of the time…”

Representative Teresa Tanzi has worked in the restaurant industry for 14 years. “In those 14 years I have worked at dozens of restaurants, somewhere around 45 restaurants, I would say. And in all those restaurants, one has paid me according to the law.” For fear of retaliation, she could never confront management about this. “I’m well aware that they are breaking the law, but there is nothing I can do. I am relying on my manager and the owner of that restaurant for my employment.”

The Department of Labor surveyed 9000 restaurants over two years and found that 84 percent of them violate the law.

When Chairperson Joseph Shekarchi pushed back against Tanzi’s experience, saying that he doesn’t see the connection between low wages and harassment and abuse of servers, drawing on his experience as a bartender, Tanzi stuck to her guns and pointed out that the experience of women working as servers and men working as bartenders are very different. “It does happen and it’s a daily occurrence. If someone touches you, or if you’re waiting on a table and it’s a party of ten and that’s all the money you’re going to make tonight, and they want to be fresh with you in some way shape or form… I refer to it as a ‘golf clap’ in my vernacular. Whenever someone says something that’s ‘funny,’ you’re waiting on someone and they something that isn’t funny, you have to laugh. If someone touches you inappropriately, what are you going to say? There’s very little recourse as a server that you have.”

Rep Giarrusso’s solution for “any woman or anybody getting sexually harassed” is that “they should hit somebody with a nine iron.” Maybe he’ll introduce legislation to that effect.

“The truth is, 60 percent of restaurant workers in Rhode Island are over the age of 24 and 32 percent of all of Rhode Island’s restaurant workers are parents.”

“I feel that the current wage devalues me as an employee,” says Daniel Burke. Burke explained how the days and hours he is making good money from tips are averaged with the days and hours he’s performing other tasks at the restaurant. As long as he averages minimum wage with the money provided by customers, the restaurant can get away with paying him $2.89 an hour. Of course, Representative Giarusso thinks that Burke should take this issue up with his employer because, “I would, that’s for sure.”

As a 31 year old mother explains that her bartender job requires her to perform duties that are not directly related to serving customers. Therefore no tips can be expected and the restaurant gets away with paying employees $2.89 an hour for work that any other business in the state would have to pay at least minimum wage to accomplish. Again, Representative Giarrusso misses the point, thinking that the issue of side work isn’t related to this. As long as there is a two-tiered wage system, restaurant managers and owners will have an incentive to make workers do untipped work at the lower wage, rather than pay the server properly.

ROC United RI’s Mike Araujo finally explains that “those extra tasks,” that is side work, are “built into the job.” Side work, prep and cleaning averages out to about 3 or 4 hours a day, which is “effectively unpaid labor.” This profitable industry is built on the backs of primarily underpaid women.

Araujo may have summed up the night best when he said, “This issue speaks to how we believe society should be shaped. Do we believe that our citizens deserve equal treatment and deserve full equality, or do we believe that there is a second tier that women, increasingly, belong to?”

“Moving into a restaurant that paid over the minimum wage had such a tangible benefit…”

“When we talk about this issue we can’t escape the fact that this is a women’s issue… forcing a worker to rely on tips for any portion of their base wage significantly increases their chances of experiencing sexual harassment.”

Once again, Representative Giarrausso claims that “I don’t really understand the connection to sexual harassment… If someone’s a jackass, for lack of a better word… I mean, I don’t promote sexual harassment. I think those people should be tied up and jailed and never come out.” Giarrusso claims he “can’t draw the parallel” between low pay and sexual harassment.

But Giarrusso tips his hand as he grins and asks, “Is there an acceptable level of sexual harassment depending on how much you’re getting paid?” This is simply a variation of the line, variously ascribed to George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill, “We know what you are, we’re just haggling over the price.”

In response to testimony quoting FDR, Rep. Giarrusso maintains that “there is data that shows that every time minimum wage goes up, so does unemployment.” The US Department of Labor dispels that myth at the top of its page on the minimum wage. Giarrusso also brings up the specter of automation, as is done now whenever minimum wage increases are discussed. I deal with the automation argument here.

Joe Fortune, speaking below, wrote about his experience speaking before the committee on his own blog here.

Notice the pineapple pin. RIHA is in the house. This man is a CPA who specializes in hospitality. I am willing to bet he makes more than $2.89 an hour plus tips.

John Elkhay owns Ten Prime Steak & Sushi, Rick’s Roadhouse, XO Café, Luxe Burger Bar, and Harry’s Bar & Burger, as well as Veritas Catering. “Unlike the people who testified before me,” says Elkhay, “I actually live and work in Rhode Island.” I guess he wasn’t listening to the experiences of the four speakers who do live and work in Rhode Island. After telling the committee about how many employees he has and how much money they all make, he throws them under the bus, saying, “They don’t claim all their tips, by the way. That’s a sneaky little secret.”

“Don’t say that in this building,” says Representative Giarrusso, trying to make light of the comment.

Elkhay doesn’t blink. “Yeah, well, it’s the truth.”

“Who is here, in the industry, saying there is a problem?” asks Chris Tarro, owner of Siena Restaurant Group, answering “I don’t think there is a problem.”

“Don’t take my word for it,” he continues. Rather, he recommends going out to dinner and asking a server. But, “don’t ask if they want a raise, everyone would like one.”

Tarro thinks that the kind of retaliation employees face for stepping up to complain about their working conditions is somehow equivalent to the reaction of potential customers when they hear about the ways restaurants pay their employees and the ways in which many restaurants exploit their employees. “When I testified last time here,” says Tarro, “I got emails, I was on progressive blogs… there’s a penalty to us coming here.”

“I would like to give a nice big golf clap to Representative Tanzi and to anyone else who is trying to distract you from the issue at hand…” is as much as this sarcastic restaurant owner could say before being stopped by Chairperson Shekarchi, who advised not going after those who previously testified.

“I don’t want character assassination,” said Shekarchi, “It doesn’t help your cause.”

“I would suggest to you that twenty years… twenty years without a raise… I don’t think there’s anybody in this room that’s going to work for anybody for twenty years without a raise.”

Kristin Dart, speaking for Planned Parenthood, said that when women are paid more, they are better able to pay for essential medical care.”If I have to choose between food on my table and my annual health exam, I’m going to put food on the table.”

Speaking of her own experience as a server, she said that she was regularly told by her bosses that sexual harassment was “part of the job. If you want to make tips, then you have to be ‘nice’ to customers.”

Amy Barclay owns Simpatico in Jamestown. She’s worked her way up from being a server, pregnant with twins making $4500 a week to owning her own place. She says, “This isn’t a gender issue. This isn’t a Planned Parenthood issue, this is a performance issue.” Barclay says, “I was great staff. I still am.”

Barclay has 15 core employees and 60 in season. “They beg for their jobs back,” she says, “and they should.”

Having worked in California, where there is no tipped minimum wage, and now working in Providence, Avi maintains that in California the restaurant industry is booming and that people in the restaurants out there have a greater feeling of teamwork. “It should be the employers responsibility to pay their employees, and not to pass that on to the customers.”

Ray Desmarais, of 99 Restaurants, sounded like he was blaming victims for for their harassment when he said, “For anyone to be harassed in the restaurant business, shame on them for allowing it. Leave and come work for me. Cause I’m a good guy and I’ll treat you well.”

Senator Joshua Miller says, “…there hasn’t been a minimum wage bill I didn’t love, until today, until this bill.” Miller feels this bill takes “important revenue away from some of my most valued staff.” He owns three restaurants with over 80 servers. Senator Miller, like Representative Giarrusso, sees no relationship between low wages and sexual harassment.

Justin Kelley said that “it’s time to raise the wage” in Rhode Island. Business models change, says Kelley, citing out the end of slavery, child labor and the eight hour day as examples. Compared to those changes, raising the subminimum wage should be easy.

“I think it’s a human rights issue,” says this restaurant worker from Olneyville, “I don’t care if your male or female, that minimum wage needs to come up.”

Bob Bacon is the owner of Gregg’s Restaurants and the president of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association. He frequently visits the State House to testify against bills that might increase a worker’s wage or strengthen a worker’s ability to not have their wages stolen. Bacon feels that the Department of Labor is doing a terrific job enforcing labor laws, and no new laws are needed. Servers make a “self-reported” average of $12.12 an hour, says Bacon.

Sam Bell, president of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, explained President Obama‘s support for increasing the minimum wage and for increasing the tipped minimum wage. “Raising the full minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage will help reduce poverty among women and families as well as make progress towards closing the gender pay gap.”

“Considering a tipped minimum wage increase… would cost ten percent of our current sales.” This begs the question: Is the entire profitability of the restaurant industry dependent on paying servers subminimum wage? Do restaurant profits come solely from underpaying staff? How do restaurants remain profitable in California, where there is no tipped minimum wage?

She finishes the evening’s testimony with, “we’re seeing servers being replaced right now with technology all over the world.”

As I’ve said before: technology like that is coming no matter what we pay our employees. The questions we need to be asking in the face of new technologies are bigger than minimum wage increases, such questions go to the heart of our economic system, and whether it’s sustainable in the long term.

February 23, 2014

Weather: The primary metaphor

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Sally Gabb, a member of the Chapel’s Worship Committee, reflects on the “primary metaphor” within human culture – weather.

Did you enjoying this weekend of 50 degree days? How do we all feel after this season of icy cold and snow? How does winter affect you – do you get down from the darkness? When spring weather arrives with it’s introduction of light and warmth, does your mood automatically lift, do you get up in the morning with a smile rather than a groan?? As an April baby, I have always found that spring, and spring weather give me energy and hope.

Weather is probably the most common of human experiences. It affects us all. And because of this, it is the primary metaphor for our thoughts and beliefs about life – including our spirituality. Metaphor is such an important part of our thinking process because much of our experience can’t be explained concretely or literally. This is especially true for our spiritual thinking, our spiritual beliefs.

As Sam Keen points out in Hymns to an Unknown God*: “Language which authentically describes a spiritual experience transcends verifiable knowledge and is very imaginative, poetic, metaphoric and inexact. It is language stretched to the breaking point. In speaking about spiritual matters, we are always beating around the bush, albeit a burning bush.”

Of course, major metaphors in spiritual discussion refer to weather, darkness and light, storm and clearing.

In discussing weather metaphors and spirituality, Simon Jacobson of the Meaningful Life Center wrote on the MLC blog:

“Snow is an intermediary state between fluid water and solid ice. In order to appreciate the spiritual implications of this, we need to examine the properties of snow.

A snowflake needs at least two components in order to form. In addition obviously to cold air, it requires water droplets (vapor), and a nucleus. The nucleus is made up of dust, minerals or other microscopic particles in the air.

A snowflake is formed when water takes shape around these microscopic particles and the cold air turns it into ice crystals.

Thus snow has two components: water and earth – earth being the particles, and the water being the droplets. Earth is the material world – without any recognition of G-dliness; water is the knowledge of G-d – divine energy without any containers. Thus snow, being half heaven and half earth provides the perfect intermediary between these two worlds.”

December 27, 2013December 27, 2013

No room for Them in the Inn

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“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus – that the whole world should be enrolled.”

This was the first census, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manager, because there was no room for them in the inn. ”

In 2007, there were 3926 homeless people in Rhode Island.

As of 2012, there were 4868 homeless people, an increase of 942.

It is 2013, and there still no room at the inn. Contact the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless to see what you can do to change the experience of our neighbors and far too many families.

As Sophia Lyon Fahs has written:

“For so the children come
And so they have been coming.

Always in the same way they come
Born of the seed of man and woman.

No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.

No wisemen see a star to show
Where to find the babe that
Will save humankind.

Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,

Fathers and mothers-
Sitting beside their children’s cribs
Feel glory n the sight of a new life beginning

They ask, “Where and how will
This new life end?
Or, will it ever end?”

Each night a child is born is a holy night-
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshiping.”

December 22, 2013December 23, 2013

No isolation of opposites

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by Ray Perreault

Having dogs has changed my routine, now I’m out in all four seasons and in every type of weather. This has reopened my eyes to the changes in the plants and animals that create and recreate our living landscape.

Each bird, every animal, is a point of view, a unique set of eyes, part of a long delicate thread that stretches backward to the beginning of time. Each is also a restless movement into the future. It is a future we can no more predict, than the great lumbering dinosaurs could dream that their descendants would someday fly effortlessly from tree to tree and continent to continent. I see more mystery in everything.

A few years ago, during a West Nile Virus outbreak, I found a dead crow on the ground. I cradled it in my hand. It had the sheen of blackened steel, a rainbow iridescence of blues, green and violet.

In living, it was loud, raucous, territorial, fierce, wise and fearless. Lying silent and still, it seemed to weigh barely more than its own shadow.

There are a million, million invisible workings that make such a marvel possible. My whole life, these birds have flown above, but their existence still seems like a magicians crepe paper trick.

This is a world where magic is commonplace and taken for granted.

Truest alchemy is taking place every day. The golden sun is transmuted into green leaves, crimson cardinals, blue jays, goldfinches, all the animals, flowers and fruit.

It is a play with a cast of trillions over 300 million years in the making. It here on the well-worn paths of an urban park because it thrives wherever it is given space.

In our living world, there is no isolation of opposites: no inner and outer, abundance and scarcity, past and future, or life and death. All are cycling or seamlessly connected and mutually affirming. Spectacular endurance and greatest delicacy exist together, not side by side, but wound into beings that are fully both.

My renewed sense of wonder has become a place of peace and contemplation in the middle of restless activity.

I have to remember to thank my dogs.

December 15, 2013December 16, 2013

Call to Worship: Just a Little More Light

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Looking at continuities between past and present, Audrey Greene reflects on the “religion of light”

Religion of Light
by Audrey Greene

I can imagine that ancient woman, huddling in her cave, above the village. The harvest had been good enough, she thought.

But with the harvest came the darkness. The sun still came each day but then left, sooner and sooner. Where did it go, why did it go? The cold was coming again, as it had before. What, what could be done? They still had the fire, that gave them warmth and light. It could not grow the crops, but it would have to do for now. Then she remembered, they would light bigger and bigger fires each night, as they had done during the last dark time and perhaps the sun would return as it had last time.

I can see that woman, and all the other women and men like her, huddled in terror as the sun died away and the cold came again. And what could they do but keep their own small lights burning? To warm themselves, to chase the darkness to the edges of the cave, to keep out the marauders, to see each other’s faces. When the harvest was in, there was nothing left to do but huddle together around the fire in the growing darkness and tell stories.

That’s it, isn’t it? The cave, the cold, the fire, the stories we tell each other. Very little has changed. Sure, the cave looks a little different, but the stories are essentially the same, there are not that many plot lines.

We face the growing dark and cold again. It’s difficult not to feel the fear. But when I see all these stories of solstice, from ancient Saturnalia though Santa Lucia to Kwanzaa, I see people looking for just a little more light.

And that’s why we come here, not just for the warmth of community but for light…the religion of light, not radiated from a single source which seeks our unending obedience and praise, not filtered through a rigid hierarchy or translated into immutable laws, but from each other!

How great is that? We each have some light.

Some of us are incandescent, some of us are positively luminescent, we all flicker once in a while. But we know that together, our light is more than enough to get us through the dark. With music and words, with memories, and myths, let us celebrate our light.

December 8, 2013December 8, 2013

Unitarians and Universalists

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Who exactly are Unitarians and Universalists? From the active congregation on Benefit Street to our spunky chapel off Broadway, the following reflection from Brian Kovacs suggests that this modern faith is actually very old, is defined as much by who we are not, as much as by who we are, and suggests there are some lessons from uncertainty.

Unitarians and Universalism

From the beginning, the strains of Unitarian-Universalism have formed a protest against core principles of Christianity — the religion of the dominant culture. Unitarian-Universalism has rejected in turn fundamentals of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Anglicanism and Protestantism, to name just some. Unitarian-Universalism has been and can be defined, to this day, by what it doesn’t believe as much as by what it does. And that is true for many modern Unitarian Universalists as well.

For most of my life, I’ve begun any statement about what I believe with what I reject. I think many people come to this denomination and this church, rejecting what they can no longer accept. The core belief is disbelief. We define ourselves by what we are not.

Universalist scholars trace its origins back to the early Christian church, to the fourth century theologians Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. They held that no one was damned and no hell awaited anyone at death. Later, Universalists rejected all claims to an exclusive revealed truth. They therefore rejected biblical authority and institutional inerrancy. Everyone’s spiritual salvation is a product of their spiritual quest and rational search. No revelation can supercede the genius of the rational mind. On the contrary, revelation must always be subject to reason.

In America, Universalism grew with the new country, with John Murray and Hosea Ballou (who family has RI connections), among others — two names that be familiar to some Bell Streeters. It aligned itself with social reform and renewal: its principles included the abolition of slavery, gender equality, separation of church and state, and spiritualism. The first American ordained woman minister,

Olympia Brown, was a Universalist. The year was 1853. In later years, Universalists actively sought inspiration in religious literature and practice outside Christianity and Western culture. Spiritual insight was sought in the Bhaghavad Gita, the writings of Lao Tsu and Confucious, the Koran, Jewish Mishnah and Haggadah, and elsewhere.

Unitarianism sprang up in multiple locations in mid-fifteenth century Europe: Poland, England and Transylvania. That was the era of the Reformation. In Transylvania, the Unitarian movement got its first legal status, protection and institutional legitimacy. Unitarians rejected the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity, election to grace, predestination, authoritarianism in religion and special

revelation through scripture.

Unitarianism flourished in America following the Revolutionary War. At Boston’s King’s Chapel, settled minister Rev. James Freeman led the congregation in rewriting the Book of Common Prayer, excising all Trinitarian doctrine and references to a divine Christ. Numbers of congregational churches soon followed in asserting a strict monotheism that excluded a privileged role for Jesus except as a good man and teacher.

Non-creedal churches, Univeralism and Unitarianism had no fixed beliefs, no doctrines, no statements of faith. They believed what their members believed, taught what their churches and their schools taught, and preached what was spoken in their pulpits. It was democratic, diverse, rational and rabidly individualistic. That’s hardly changed.

Brian Kovacs

October 27, 2013

Call to Worship: Does everyone have a right to dignity?

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Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm seven principles, basically a set common ethics and sources of traditions, that all member fellowships acknowledge. The first principle of Unitarian -Universalism is to affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” The following reflection is written by Brian Kovacs, a longtime member and worship leader on struggling with the First Principle.

Struggling With the First Principle

I told a friend I was working on the difficulty of living the First Principle. I had no sooner said, “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” than she cut me off and said, “That’s not true.” Further discussion was out of the question. My friend is a socially-engaged and liberal Jew. For her, our First Principle is not just preposterous, it is wrong. To her, people obviously do not all have the same inherent worth and dignity. She thinks we’re mad. Well, then, what are these Principles? Are they ideals, abstractions, unreal sentimental aspirations, untrue? Are they to be honored in the abstract and denied in the concrete? Do people have inherent worth and dignity? Like my friend, you don’t have to believe that. These are Principles, but they are neither dogma nor creed.

‘Worth’ and ‘dignity’ could mean respect or regard. They could mean access: rights. Perhaps they mean equality of some sort, though that’s not exactly what the Principle says. Personally, I wonder if you can have worth and dignity without equality, without human and civil rights, without access: education, health care, the ballot box.

Many people believe that worth and dignity must be merited. I’m gay. Like other marginalized groups, my people are often told that they haven’t earned access or regard and therefore do not deserve it.

Or, that by being offensive or impertinent or demanding or obnoxious or violent, they have disqualified themselves from legitimacy, individually and collectively. Are there statuses that diminish a person’s worth and dignity in some manner? Is there a list? If we find one status that somehow disqualifies a person will we not find others?

In the spirit of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, some people handle the inherent ambiguity of human existence by looking for objective signs of one’s worth and dignity: prosperity, success, power, celebrity. The rich and powerful are worth more; the proof is that god favors them. Poverty and suffering are proof of god’s distain. That’s the prosperity gospel. It’s found in Pentacostalism, Mormonism, Scientology, Presbyterianism and frankly I think even among Unitarian-Universalists.

In the words of Belize, from Angels in America, it “isn’t easy. It isn’t worth anything if it’s easy. [It’s] the hardest thing.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr of the Nazi Reich, called what we’re talking about, The Cost of Discipleship. When the Worship Committee offers leadership training, one thing that’s stressed is that the best services come at a cost: “Say something that it costs you to say.” Our struggle with the First Principle and with all the Principles reflects what it costs us to say and to believe things of value. I wonder: what’s your struggle?

Brian Kovacs

October 19, 2013October 19, 2013

Call to Worship: Time Capsule, part two

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From its inception in the 19th century the Religious Society of Bell St Chapel – a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Providence’s west end has been devoted to each persons free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Below is another excerpt from a pamphelt published by the society in 1934.

NOT HOW NEW BUT HOW TRUE

Liberals in Religion do not reject any orthodox doctrine just because it is orthodox, because it is old. Neither do they hasten to accept an idea just because it is new.

Not how old or how new, but how true – that is what they ask. Their quarrel is not with the conservative or the radical as such but with the dogmatist.

The tested truths of the fathers and the tested truths of the moderns – between these there can be no contradiction, and the Liberal welcomes them both as essentials of his faith.

Whenever anybody finds out the truth about any subject, he makes an addition to Liberal doctrine.

The Bell Street Chapel invites you to its fellowship. Its members do not agree to think alike but all alike agree to think, to exercise their reason and conscience in matters of faith, to follow the truth wheresoever it may lead them.

The principles of the liberal faith is set forth at

BELL STREET CHAPEL

Providence

October 6, 2013October 7, 2013

Call to Worship: Bumper Cars

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Audrey Green expresses our jolt as a congregation when our new minister suddenly resigned from a fairly new assignment. The announcement reminded her of riding a bumper car. However, as you read this, you will understand how she realizes our bumpy rides at Bell Street are unique and often help foster our beliefs to make this a better world for all in it. Yes, we got jolted and bumped as a congregation, but we also found the good from all we went through and are moving forward together in common cause.

Bumper Cars
by Audrey Green

I am not an amusement park person, I’m a “walking on flat surfaces in sturdy shoes” person.

Since I would shake with terror at ferris wheels, I was pressured by high school friends and later my children to at least ride the bumper cars. At least! The bumper cars!

I remember the shady carnival guy casually hanging off the back bumper of a car, saying “No bumping!”

(What?)

“And don’t ever, ever, ever, get out of your car, you will be electrocuted!”

Oh, dear Lord!

My car’s pedal doesn’t work, I drive haltingly around the outside of the ghastly electrified rectangle, trying in vain to avoid the spine shaking and doubtless paralyzing “bump”.

Whether my maniacal brother, a gleeful high school classmate, or yes, one of my own dear children, it inevitably came, “Wham!”

And there I’d be, shaking, smiling gamely, nodding in false hilarity. What fun.

Lots of Bell Streeters think of this congregation, our spiritual gathering, as a safe place of acceptance and unconditional love. And it is that wonderful sanctuary. Yet, in my 15 years here, and especially this last summer, I’ve begun to understand that it’s also, along with the rest of life…bumper cars. It would be nice to think it didn’t happen, that we all just got together on Sundays and at meetings, potlucks, and picnics, gazed at each other fondly, spoke rationally about shared concerns, and “hugged it out” when the rare differences arose.

And that does happens, but then, “Wham!” And, I’ll admit, in this particular bumper car ride, I’m not always the timid soul keeping to the corners or smiling benignly while easing around other cars, nope, I have been the oblivious bumper. This past July, we all got bumped, badly. Many of us, especially those who’ve been here for years, had been feeling more comfortable and “safe” than we had in a long, long while.

We “knew” that CJ, our minister, was here for the long term, that he loved us, that he was going to lead us towards a promising future Bell Street that shone brightly in the middle distance, beckoning. Then “Wham!” He left. And he not only left unexpectedly, but with many questions unanswered. We felt not only abandoned but utterly puzzled. All we got was a giant bone-shaking jolt and the view of his back bumper as he sped away. What was that?! And many of us are still shaking, still moving delicately, checking our bones and our hearts to assess the damage. I think it’s going to take a while.

I always left the bumper cars with great relief. Shook my head in patently false regret when an excited friend or one of my children said, “Come on, let’s go again!” No, thank you.

But, of course, we can’t avoid every bump in life. Especially if we want the support, solace, and joy that comes from living in community. And Bell Street bumper cars are a bit different from those at your local amusement park, we’re not aimlessly cruising around each other, idly passing the time. We are bumping together along a road to a better understanding, to a better society, to a better world. I’ve pretty much run this bumper car metaphor off a cliff, so I’ll end by saying that this particular ride, at times jarring, frustrating, challenging, lovely, uplifting is also, in my opinion… sacred. We, sometimes with trepidation, join together because we know that what we are here for is bigger than each of us, it’s a dream, an abiding faith in what can be if we all continue to bump along together.

-Audrey Greene

September 15, 2013September 16, 2013

Call to Worship: ‘That urggh feeling’

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Audrey Greene, coordinator of the Worship Committee at Bell St Chapel, asks, “Maybe, we just have to learn to live without answers. To think of the questions as an end in themselves. Is that possible?”

Drift

I like to sing and dance. Aside from sitting with my children at the kitchen table and watching them eat, singing and dancing are the closest thing to heaven for me. But there’s this point. Not always, not every time, really only when I’m learning, when urrrrrgh. The timing is not there, the note won’t come, the feet are not connected to the brain. Granted, being 6 feet tall, my feet are quite a ways from my brain and that may be part of my problem with dancing.

But I’ll bet each of you has experienced a moment like this, many times. You’re learning a language, or taking your first fencing class, or trying water color painting, when you’re reaching, you’re struggling for the right way, the answer, and it feels like it’s never going to happen. You feel unmoored, uncertain, even afraid. I see little kids deal with this every day and it is interesting to see which ones keep trying and which ones throw themselves into fits of weeping and which ones just walk away.

Honestly, I’ve often been the type who walks away. I think this is because my mother told me I was smart. So I thought anything I didn’t know instantly and without effort wasn’t worth learning. This is not a good mindset for a child entering first grade, and I can tell you it didn’t win me many friends. My mom was doing the best she could, but I wish she’d told me I would sometimes fail, mess up, feel frustration. I’m still working on this.

Someone told me that that uncomfortable feeling is actually your brain growing dendrites, new connections between cells. This is a very good thing, especially for folks of a certain age. Actually, I think uncertainty, that urggh feeling, is a good thing for everyone.

Yes, we are a meaning-making species, we love answers. But answers for their own sakes, especially when it concerns the vast messy problem of people living together in peace, can be limiting and dangerous. Sometimes it feels to me like many Americans would love to have any answers at all, even very outdated ones from 250 years ago, just so long as they are answers. And it seems there are plenty of people willing and eager to provide those answers, even if they have to make them up.

Maybe, we just have to learn to live without answers. To think of the questions as an end in themselves. Is that possible?

Here is where I think Unitarian Universalism and especially Bell Street can lead the way. Although even in this congregation, we can get a little squirrelly (which, parenthetically, is a great image; a little wild-eyed animal clutching her precious nut of truth, her eyes darting this way and that) when things are in flux. I think we are uniquely qualified to open, examine, and live with life’s pressing questions. Where are we going? Who are we? Why are we here? Who knows? We are okay being unmoored, a little scared. We know we have each other. I say, let’s continue to drift together.

– Audrey Greene

September 1, 2013September 8, 2013

Call to Worship: The Bell Street Chapel blogs

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“Love is the Spirit of this Church, and Service is its Law. This is our Great Covenant: To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”

Bell Street Chapel is a Unitarian Universalist congregation in the West End of Providence- and has been since the 1880s. Our history has been tumultuous, mundane and inspiring – and we want to go digital!

This “Call to Worship” blog spot is our way of connecting with a wider community across the state – you. Starting this Sunday, we will be uploading reflections and sermons from our pulpit. If you like what read each Sunday, check us out in real time, Sunday mornings at 10:00am. We’re the temple next to the dog park, off Broadway, at 5 Bell St.

Our story is tied to our neighborhood. Providence’s West End in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (from Olneyville to Federal Hill) was a hot-bed of ideas- free religion, socialism, immigrant Catholicism, theosophy, Armenian Orthodoxy, rights for women, mysticism, labor unions, Progressivism. In that background, James Eddy, an eccentric and charity-minded art dealer, founded a chapel for a free religion.

In the 1890s, Bell Street Chapel called the first female minister in Rhode Island, Anna Garlin Spencer. Garlin Spencer was involved in the Suffrage Movement, the Peace Movement, promoted education for women in Olneyville, and was investigated by the Federal Government for her anti-war activities in the 1910s.

Our chapel had speakers from Booker T. Washington to Susan B Anthony. Bell St. was the church of the reform governor who told Lincoln Steffens that Rhode Island was, “A state for sale, cheap.”

In more recent times, our chapel bounced from 12 members in the 1980s peaking at over 100 in the early 2000s, and has remained steady at about 60 today. We have a history of support for LGBT rights going back to the early 1990s, if not earlier. We were the first church in Rhode Island to oppose the Iraq War, and among the first congregations to support Marriage Equality. We share a portion of our undesignated collection plate offering with a different social justice organization every quarter.

Our hope is that by sharing some of our chapel community’s thoughts on spirituality, social issues, and day to day living, Bell St Chapel will have some impact on the discussions of what is right and just in Rhode Island today.

As James Eddy, the founder of Bell St Chapel, once wrote, “Organized error is more powerful than unorganized truth.” Bell St Chapel has been a space for liberal religion for well over a century- our words aren’t always popular, but we’re a home for reflection and action.

As Unitarian Universalists believe all people have value and all are connected. Let’s figure out a way to better live together. Have a good week!

Religion of Light by Audrey Greene

Religion of Light
by Audrey Greene