Atlanta Unitarian

Tuesday night I attended a presentation of the Dow Sustainability Fellows, a cohort of faculty, postdocs, and doctoral students at the University of Michigan whose work touches on sustainability in some way.  One of the presentations was by the Director of the University of Michigan Energy Institute Mark Barteau.  He presented a basic overview of energy use across the world and the US, and showed that based on current projections we are headed towards a global increase of 3.6 degree Celsius, even if the world is able to stick to its current greenhouse gas emissions reductions commitments.  In addition, he showed us graphs illustrating how drastically the world would need to deviate from its current course to attain a 2 degree Celsius limit. It was a stark and depressing presentation.  One member of the audience fought with Professor Barteau about whether or not the University of Michigan should install solar panels on all its parking areas, something that would red...

I am in the phase of my life where much of how I spend my time and energy revolves around my profession.  I am trying to establish my professional reputation and become secure in my career.  So it makes sense that I spend a lot of time thinking about my productivity and my professional effectiveness. But I find something hollow about my own - and many others - obsession with productivity. In almost any professional job - perhaps in any job at all - more work can be done.  The bar can be raised.  Performance can be improved.  Weaknesses can be found and analyzed. But if the only guide we have to our professional lives is efficiency and productivity, we risk burnout, and perhaps even worse, emptiness or hollowness, where work and productivity become an end in themselves, divorced from their impact on other people or the world. I think the center of our work should always be rooted in love.  Love for others, love for institutions, love for knowledge, l...

In adolescence in particular there is a strong need to call out those things that are fake, those niceties required by society but performed without any sincerity. This impulse, the impulse to say no to the half-truths of the world, is, I think, a deep spiritual impulse, one that never entirely goes away as one gets older. Perhaps as we grow older we learn the instrumental value of little white lies, of picking our battles. But in some sense we want the freedom to yell out "No!", to set aside the expectations of others and the roles we have assumed and shout out the contrary, more direct and more honest truth we harbor within.  I think we all have a hunger for unrefined truths, especially when they have been long suppressed. The truths of the soul are quiet and difficult to obtain. This early form of resistance is the potential beginning of something much more significant, the capacity for deep listening to the callings of one's true self. When we are adults, teachers...

One of my areas of greatest discomfort with Christian theology has been the concept of original sin.  To say that human nature is inherently inclined towards the evil seemed to me unfair and inaccurate.  Also, the score keeping seemed unfair as well:  If you do something wrong, you get the blame, but if you do something right, only God gets the credit.  You own your own flaws but not your own virtues. Now I say all of this as a strict amateur, someone who has never studied Christian theology seriously, so please take it with a grain of salt.  This is less an accurate portrayal of Christian theology than an outline of my own theological thinking. For a long time I think I subscribed to an essentially optimistic view of human nature - that people are born essentially good, and if they gravitate towards bad behavior later in life it is because they were not provided the necessary nurturing and guidance in their childhood.  I think this is a view fairly com...

Found this in my draft posts from 2006, so I am posting it now: Recently I came across an excellent reprint of an essay by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in the Atlantic Monthly regarding the dangers of the free market economic system (or rather the dangers of idolizing that system). Galbraith observes the danger in mistaking the tool of the economy and economic growth as a moral end in its own right. This is a mistaken moral view that has gained wide currency in our contemporary society, particularly among business-minded Republicans. To those who subscribe to this view, the purpose of education is to promote economic growth - education has no inherent humanistic value apart from its affect on productivity. In fact, from this point of view, all values that interfere with economic growth are seen as unnecessary frills. Liberals must correct this error, and understand the basis of our support for the free market. The free market system has historically proven to be the...

We can only pursue sustainability if we feel connected to something larger than ourselves .   Contemporary values are completely disordered - they treat the Earth as something disposable, and the individual as the ultimate end, whose desires are to be fulfilled regardless of the cost.  In reality we are mortal beings small parts of a much larger system of life.  Our lives are only meaningful when they are in order with the larger system.  The Earth is the source of all life, and we owe all of our whole lives, every bit of joy and suffering we can squeeze out of our finite span, to the benevolence and generosity of creation.  Our ultimate goal in life must be oriented towards the preservation of all the diversity of life on Earth.  This is a spiritual but also a practical and moral task to which we all owe our allegiance. How is it possible for the individual to be saved?  Only by being connection to something larger than himself.  If the ...