Posts belonging to Category History
Posted by Rev. David on November 24, 2011
On this day, Thanksgiving Day, I think we are remembering the wrong message. I think our society has taken the wrong meaning from the mythologized story of starving pilgrims, a coming hard winter, and Native Americans who shared. We give thanks to God, or to some sense of the Universe taking care of us for [...]
Categories: God, History, Turnings
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Tags: American, Christian, compassion, faith, indians, justice, meaning, meaning of thanksgiving, native americans, native peoples, pilgrims, relationship, responsibility, thanksgiving, thanksgiving indian, thanksgiving tribe, theology, tribes, wampanoag
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2 comments
Posted by Rev. David on November 18, 2011
It is far easier for us humans to know what we are against than it is for us to know what we are for. Learned responses and internal morality can tell us if we are “against” something that we experience in our lives. We can know that we do not like the way our banking [...]
Categories: History, liberal faith, Patriotism, politics, Social Engagement
| Tags: activism, clergy, Equality, History, hope, justice, liberal, liberal faith, liberalism, occupy, occupy clergy, occupy movement, occupy protest, occupy wall street, politics, populism, populist, Prophetic Voice, relationship, responsibility, revolt, revolution, revolutionary
| 3 comments
Posted by Rev. David on November 7, 2011
My dear friend, Chaplain the Rev. Seanan Holland visited us this weekend, and as usual he and I got into one of our hours-long rolling discussions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. This time in particular, we were rolling around the origin and nature of religion, the fundamental flaw in Friedman Economics, a mathematical definition [...]
Categories: Faith, God, History, liberal faith
| Tags: Christian, faith, fear, fear of death, fear of humans, fear of nature, fear of people, fear of uncertainity, four great fears, fundamentalism, great fear, History, Jesus, liberal, liberal faith, liberalism, meaning of religion, politics, relationship, religion, religious fear, responsibility, theology, types of religion, war
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Posted by Rev. David on November 4, 2011
I’ve been thinking this past week about a class I took during my undergraduate degree, called “Political Thought in American Film”. It was class in my minor that combined two things I love, politics and movies… how could I resist? Specifically, I’ve been thinking about two films we watched in weeks next to each other, [...]
Categories: History, politics, Social Engagement
| Tags: communal culture, communitarian, communitarianism, community, Evangelism, farmworker, individual ideal, individualism, Jerimiah Johnson, latino, latino migrant, migrant, politics, relationship, responsibility, rugged individual, Shane, UU Principles
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Posted by Rev. David on May 30, 2011
This Sunday, I preached a “sermon-in-dialog” with Roy Wedge, a member of the UU Fellowship of Midland, a Vietnam era Air Force Veteran, and a singer/songwriter. Below is the final section of that sermon, written and preached by myself, telling the story of the last time I visited the National War Memorials in Washington DC. [...]
Categories: History, Military, Veterans
| Tags: chaplain, fear, History, hope, Korean War Memorial, lincoln memorial, Memorial Day, Military, military chaplain, national war memorials, unitairan, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, Universalist, UU, Vietnam memorial, vietnam wall, war memorials, WWI memorial, WWII memorial
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Posted by Rev. David on May 4, 2011
These last few days, I have been on a trip to attend a U.S. Army Chaplains training conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have been in hotels, airports, and restaurants in my military uniform, sometimes with other Army Chaplains, but often on my own. For these several days, I have had an experience happen over and [...]
Categories: History, Military, Patriotism, politics, Turnings
| Tags: 911, al Qaeda, bin Laden, chaplain, David Pyle, death, death of Osama, fear, hope, killed, liberal, Military, military chaplain, Ministry, Navy Seals, Osama, Osama bin Laden, politics, Prophetic Voice, responsibility, Seal Team Six, soldier, terror, terrorist, Usama bin Laden
| 6 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 23, 2011
For all our power in the world, the United States is still a very young nation. Unlike the modern states in Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East, we do not stand upon thousands of years of history in the location where our nation is. Because of our youth as a nation, and a [...]
Categories: History, Military, Patriotism, politics, Turnings
| Tags: america as gods chosen people, America as new rome, American empire, American Exceptionalism, American superiority, David Pyle, divine right, Doctrine of Exceptionalism, Exceptionalism, growing up, History, justice, liberal, Libya, Military, politics, responsibility, superpower, U.S. superiority, war
| 6 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 9, 2011
I wish I could say I did not know this was going to happen. I really wish I had been wrong. I really wish that my theory that the power of Mass Protests to significantly affect political realities is expirational had been proven wrong. I wish that mass protests still had the power to convince politicians they represented [...]
Categories: History, politics
| Tags: activism, budget, election, Equality, faith, Gov. Walker, History, justice, liberal, liberalism, politics, responsibility, scott walker, union, union busting, walker, Wisconsin, wisconsin budget, wisconsin protests
| 4 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 9, 2011
I regularly have conversations with conservatives, both political and religious conservatives. Sometimes that is through my work as an Army Chaplain, sometimes through my work as a liberal minister in a fairly conservative town, and sometimes it is through people from my past who seek me out to ask me the question… “what happened? How [...]
Categories: History, politics, Turnings
| Tags: activism, becoming a liberal, becoming a progressive, Bosnia, Christian, conservative, conservativism, faith, fear, God, History, hope, Jesus, journey, justice, liberal, liberal faith, liberal to conservative, liberalism, politics, progressivism, Prophetic Voice, relationship, religion, responsibility, transition, unitairan, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, UU
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Posted by Rev. David on February 21, 2011
What gives mass protests their power? Is it the will and voice of the people? Is it the power of the ideals that motivate them? Is it the amount to which they adopt civil, peaceful, resistance methods? Is it their hope for the future? Or when they represent a broad spectrum of the populace? Or [...]
Categories: History, politics, Prophetic Voice, Social Engagement
| Tags: activism, civil disobediance, Egypt protests, election, Gov. Walker, hope, justice, liberal, liberalism, mass protest, Middle East, peaceful protest, politics, Prophetic Voice, protest, protesters, protestors, revolution, Tunisia, violent protest, war, Wisconsin
| 7 comments
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