Leading by Being

Only a couple of short weeks ago, I spent four days in my nation's capitol, Washington, D.C., attending a Women's Leadership Conference hosted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The HRC fights to gain Equal Rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Americans, and I have been on Utah's HRC Steering Committee for just over a year. I now have two tri-chairs helping me put on events such as this February 25th's Her HRC Brunch at Squatters, booths at Salt Lake City & Moab Prides, as well as Street Festivals - and possibly the State Fair!

Today, one of the other groups I work for, the Utah Coalition of Reason, is hosting Darwin Day at Utah's Hogle Zoo. This was put together with the most limited resources, marketing, and assistance imaginable, but the families and individuals who are attending seem to be making the most of today's uncannily warm February weather. I am deeply grateful to the Service Learning students at Salt Lake Community College who are tabling for the Coalition this Saturday, so that I can work on homework for my Linguistics courses.

The most eye-opening thing that I learned from the Leadership Conference two weeks ago was not that I try to do too much (I knew that all too well already), but that I have sacrificed my own sense of being for many of the causes I strive to support. It's no longer a question of if I am doing too much. Rather I have learned to ask myself the question of why I do too much? What, exactly, do I sacrifice, and is it worth it? Self-reflection, feedback, constructive criticism . . . reflect, act, evaluate . . .

What I do that I truly adore, that feeds me, is teach, study, and relax.

When I prepare lessons, teach lessons, and/or evaluate my students, whether privately or at the Salt Lake Arts Academy, I feel enriched, enlightened, inspired! By watching how they learn, I learn more about how I teach - more about who, and how, I am. And by evaluating their progress, I am able to track my own.

When I read, study, and/or assist teaching for my Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) courses at the University of Utah, I am further inspired to improve my teaching methodology - to improve who, and how, I am.

And when I relax - I am able to simply be. I find myself writing to try to convey the sense of wonder I experience by seeping my two favorite teas together. I write letters to Oregon Chai and Harney & Sons Fine Teas, sending my thoughts to various states, spreading my words across the inter-webs, weaving something much more related to who, and how, I am. I receive messages back, offering me tea products to sample, review, and promote. I realize that somehow, who I really am is a leader. I'll offer Oregon Chai tea giveaways to all 11 of my blog followers, and I'll continue allowing myself to learn that, as my father so wisely told me at 18, I don't need to be the President of the United States of America to make a difference in this world. I don't have to fight allowing myself to just be, because who I am when I simply am, is enough! Every single human being is a leader - of something, or someone - and I lead best simply by being ~ Elaine.

Listen To The Mustn'ts

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me --
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

- Shel Silverstein

I bought a book a few weeks ago from the First Unitarian Church book sale, called "Earth Bound," which contains "Daily Meditations For All Seasons." The first meditation I read yesterday, January 1, 2012. It was about the atypical human tradition of crafting "resolutions" for the New Year. I adore this tradition, personally. For probably all of the month of December, I find myself thinking about what I would like to see change the most in my own life the coming year. I don't often write my resolutions, but I voice them, to myself and my partner. We encourage each other in pursuing some that are meaningful to us both.

But this meditation/thought I read yesterday pointed out that we are the only species in nature who seek for perfection in this way. I am trying to craft my resolutions now in terms of what will bind me more to the earth and the natural world I am a part of. Eating & moving healthily. Practicing consideration and compassion for others (people, plants, animals, all life). The reading suggested that, rather than seek for 'perfection,' or resolve to be 'perfect,' we embrace the changes and inherent imperfections as parts of who we are as human beings.

Thanksgiving Poem

Dear Turkey Hen or Tom

Though we may never know your gender
And we never looked you in the eye
We gather here today in thanks dear turkey . . .

For your giblet stock and turkey gravy
Compliment our mashed potatoes,
Yams, and breads, and casseroles

So dearly and our tummies
Have been grumbling in anticipation
So, once again, dear Hen or Tom,

Thank you for a life well-lived!

A Letter to the Turkey

Dear Wight's Farm Fresh Young Turkey from West Ogden, Utah,

This year will be my first preparing a Thanksgiving Turkey completely on my own ~ from Liberty Heights Fresh in Sugarhouse where I picked you up, to my parent's home in Sandy, you will have come a ways from Ogden where you were raised.

I do not know exactly the kind of life you lived. Apparently the owners of the farm where you were raised make about $100,000 a year and have been raising turkeys since 1974. I read two blog posts, one with an adorable little blond-haired girl playing with some baby turkeys, which say that your feed was made daily by hand by a farmer and his family. They say they never added anything weird to your food, and they let you out into the great outdoors to run around after you were about 7 weeks old.

Although I don't believe you had any sort of turkey spirit or soul that is still living someplace in the universe now, I do want to say “thank you” for the food that I am about to eat. It means a lot to me that no added growth hormones or antibiotics were added to your turkey body, and that you were able to run around with your turkey brothers and sisters in the sunshine for just over four months before you were killed so that I could buy you for just under $40. It would have been such a miserable four months if you had to be cooped up someplace with so many other turkeys that you couldn't move around comfortably. I'm very glad you didn't have to go through that kind of misery so that I could enjoy eating you.

Sometime this coming year, I will be going to Wights Family Farm in West Ogden, which is only about 45 minutes away from my home, so that I can see where you were raised. Preferably, I would like to go there sometime in the next month, because more turkeys are being raised there in preparation for more winter holidays in December.

When I was growing up, I always thought turkey meat tasted dry and bland and I never ate more than a few bites of it. However, these farmers at Wights sure know how to raise their turkeys as healthily and happily as possible. Because last year when I bought a turkey from your farmers, I could not stop eating more, and more, and more. The meat was soft, and tender, and juicy, and flavorful in every way I thought only the meat of a cow could taste.

I have always been the type of girl who savors the taste of meat when prepared to my liking. However, after finding out how many animals are treated while they are alive so that I can enjoy this savoury diet, I was so distressed that I could not eat the meat of any animal for quite some time. Eventually, however, my human body began to crave this sort of savoury diet once more, and in order to align my biological desires with my ethical principles, I began to research where and how I could find meat that was prepared by more compassionate humans. And last year, around the time of Thanksgiving, this search led me to Liberty Heights Fresh and Wights Family Farm!

So once again, I would like to express my gratitude to the farmers of such a venture as Wights, because I trust that my human body will be treated right as I consume the meat of animals who were treated right.

Someday I too will die, and I don't know of anyone who will eat me directly, but if what Mufasa told Simba was true, my body will turn into grass, and other animals (specifically antelopes) will eat that grass. Whenever that happens, I will have been able to run around in the great outdoors with my human brothers and sisters for a lot longer than four months, but I hope that, as was the case for you, there won't be any added growth hormones or antibiotics in my body either, that might contaminate this earth and/or those who live on it after me.

I love this earth very much, and am grateful that the natural cycle of life on this earth is one that provides the type of bountiful harvests we are gathering to celebrate today!

In Gratitude,


Elaine Ball
Certified Humanist Minister

Secular Humanism

Secular Humanism


Secular
from the Oxford English Dictionary

2. a) Belonging to the world and its affairs* as distinguished from the church and religion; civil, lay, temporal . . . non-ecclesiastical, non-religious, or non-sacred


Humanism
from the Oxford English Dictionary

4. Sympathetic concern with human needs, interests, and welfare; humaneness

5. a) Any system of thought or ideology which places humans, or humanity as a whole, at its centre, esp. one which is predominantly concerned with human interests and welfare, and stresses the inherent value and potential of human life*

b) A variety of ethical theory and practice characterized by a stress on human rationality and capacity for free thought and moral action,* and a rejection of theistic religion and the supernatural in favour of secular and naturalistic views of humanity and the universe.*

* emphasis added


Now, you may be wondering who I am. And, perhaps my only real claim to fame is, that I am a Secular Humanist in Utah! We are sort of few and far between. But, as you may have seen from the Billboard put up recently by the Utah Coalition of Reason – You Are Not Alone! Rather, we are not alone. There are doubting, questioning, free-thinking, skeptical Utahans ~ everywhere across the state. There have been “doubters” for all of human history! And, today I want to tell you a little bit about what many of history's doubters have come to claim as their own life-stance or philosophy.


Secular Humanism is the philosophy that we, as human beings, have what it takes. To make this world better. To provide care and love for each other and this Earth we're on. To be happy. Happy Humanists. Without the supernatural idea that we're all waiting to arrive someplace better, or hoping for someone better to save us, or yearning for something better in some distant future . . . Secular Humanism is the idea that we can make it better! That we do make life better. That we always have, and that we can continue to do so. It means questioning religious answers to the problems we face on this world, in this life, here and now – it means coming up with secular, or non-religious, solutions to our this-world problems. And, it means doing so together as one human race.


A couple of my “prophets” are Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, authors of “Leaves of Grass” and “Walden.” My true “church” or “religion” can be found on a blustery autumn day when unsuspecting leaves, flaming red, yellow, and orange, are brought down to earth in piles by an early snowfall. Then, again, you can find me “at worship” hiking among the flies and bees up Millcreek Canyon in the spring, sloshing through mud and breathing in deeply the crisp mountain air.


To me, “humanism” is simply a profound awareness of my own humanity. Humanism is a deep compassion for the humanity of others. This is what brought me to lead the once-tiny Secular Student Alliance as an undergraduate at the University of Utah, and then to join forces with other humans to found SHIFT – Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Freethought. This awareness of my own humanity and compassion for others is what has led me now to lead the Utah Coalition of Reason – and to, again, join forces with other humans – this time across the State of Utah – to create a deeper, broader community of awareness, compassion, and support. To let other freethinkers know they are not alone. To educate the broader religious community about what it truly means to us to be ethical human beings.


And, this is why I finally became a Humanist Minister this year : to remind ourselves and to educate others about what life is really like as a Secular Humanist – that we, too, celebrate life and mourn death. That we, too, feel and think and wonder and seek! That we are all human, and that it is what is human among us that we choose to relate with, not what is religious. It is what is secular, and humanistic, that unites us all, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist and all alike.

November Peace

A day of baking brings ~

Pain à la citrouille (pumpkin bread) mini muffins for First Unitarian Church tomorrow

Banana bread mini muffins left over from baking earlier this week

Artisan cheese bread

Ricotta stuffed shells with roasted tomato sauce and seasoned ground beef

A hot mug of tea before bed and an extra hour of sleep thanks to Daylight Savings Time.

A no-going-out-to-eat pact throughout the holidays because, after all, why would we??

100 Influential Unitarian Universalists

On a wall in the front lobby of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Salt Lake City hangs a poster with the names and pictures of 100 Influential Unitarian Universalists throughout history. I wrote down the first 25 names today, as I am interested in learning more about these people who have in varied ways influenced the history of this religion I now hold so close to my heart.

Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the first Vice-President of the United States and the second President. John Adams was the first President of the United States to only serve one term. Abigail is famous for the letters she wrote in correspondence with her husband, which demonstrated their unusually strong, respectful and emotionally connected relationship of equals. She became known as "Mrs. President" during the short time she was First Lady, because she was so much more politically active than Martha Washington had been. In March, 1776 she wrote a memorable letter to her husband John and the Continental Congress, requesting that they "remember the Ladies" in the forming of this new nation. John and Abigail are both buried in the Adams Family crypt underneath the United First Parish Church (Unitarian) in Quincy, Massachusetts.