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JUSTICE ACTION MONDAYS: Flash Advocacy

Unitarian Universalist Church of San Mateo California

Rev. Benjamin Meyers and the congregation of the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo (UUSM) invite friends and neighbors in San Mateo to take part in Justice Action Mondays: Flash Advocacy. This Monday/April 10, we’ll write postcards protesting the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts.  We’ll continue making posters for those participating in the local Climate Marches in San Jose and Oakland on Earth Day, April 29. Snacks, supplies and pleasant, like-minded company provided.

Justice Action Mondays: Flash Advocacy!
Every Monday from 5:30-6:30 pm in Beck Hall
Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo
300 E Santa Inez Avenue
San Mateo, CA 94401
650 342 5946
Office Hours: Tu-Fri 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Apropos this effort: Lesson Fifteen: Practice Corporeal Politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen.  Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.  Make new friends and march with them.” Prof. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

The quote and recommended reading suggestion are from me, not UUSM. Justice Action Mondays are, however, a good way to implement this lesson and something that can be implemented by any organization almost anywhere in the world.

Peace! Hope! Joy!

Love, Jamie

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the mind and love, like two wings

Furious dreams, rivers of bitter certainty,
decisions harder than the dreams of a hammer
flowed into the lovers’ double cup,

until those twins were lifted into balance
on the scale: the mind and love, like two wings.
– So this transparency was built.

– Pablo Neruda
One Hundred Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (English and Spanish Edition)
translation by Stephen Tapscott

Regarding the flower photograph: As you may have noticed over the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with special effects for flower photographs. This flower photo put me in mind of Neruda’s poem. (Everything he wrote seems to stay in memory.) Originally the photograph wasn’t meant to be blurry but The Bax was pulling me along as I was clicking away and some photos got “ruined.” In the end, I appreciated the misty mysterious quality that the blurring gave this one. Some of the best things happen by accident – or at least partly by accident.

“In politics being deceived is no excuse.” Leszak Kolakowski

Recommended read: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Left, right or center – American or not – it’s a must read for our chaotic times … and not just the list of lessons but Prof. Snyder’s commentary on each. This book is a rational enlightening little gem and a powerful wake-up call.

Lesson Five: “Remember Professional Ethics When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.  It is hard to subvert a rule–of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”

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