Young UU Organ Donor And PB's Day
One of our youth approached me today after the service. He said he's taking driver's ed, and they gave out organ donor cards and he wasn't sure about filling his out. He wanted to know if Unitarian Universalism had any teachings or commandments for or against distributing parts of our body after death.
Moments like that are so amazing.
I told him that there is no official UU position on organ donation, that our religion regards the body as a gift, and that we are called to use our gift responsibly and with love. I said that if he was loving enough to share the gift of his body after his death, that would be an amazing thing to do, in my opinion.
I confessed to him that I have so far been unable to fill out a donor card, but that I am working on it.
He said, with his wonderful teenaged insouciance, "Well, I won't be using it...!"
So admirable. What a lovely encounter. Those are the moments you savor.
In other news, I accidentally deleted my sermon late last night while preparing to print it out. What a gorgeous feeling that was.
I hurriedly got the computer back up to MS Word and madly typed out all that I could remember of it, and thanked the gods that I had my dear friend and colleague's 2005 sermon on Ramadan to quote from, so I knew that at least those sections would be truly coherent.
It was all fine. I gave myself 6 hours of sleep, I didn't sweat it too much, I told the congregation to say (in the style of the African-American church), "Help her, Jesus" if I started to get too wound up without reaching any point, and they were right there for me, dear forebearing people. So it was an unplanned leap over a much-dreaded rite of passage: PeaceBang's First Formal Sermon From Notes Only.
I had one of those meetings this evening that you drag yourself out of an afternoon nap to go to -- thinking all the while that you would SO RATHER BE in your armchair reading the NY Times and baking something fragrant and savory and cheese-related for dinner than be there -- and then of course wound up energized and inspired by the other folks who came. Plus I got the hold a beagle puppy for a few minutes and if you don't think that was the best thing ever, you just weren't there to smell it's little puppy breath and to kiss its little smwoft baloney ear.
When I hold a puppy in my arms I swear I have some kind of wild, longing hormonal maternal surge the way so many women who want -- but can't have -- children say they feel when they see or hold babies. It doesn't happen for me with human babies, just canine ones. I felt positively tragic giving my puppy back to its people.
(She was even more newborn than this and snuggled right into my shoulder and I love her forever and ever, amen.)
Moments like that are so amazing.
I told him that there is no official UU position on organ donation, that our religion regards the body as a gift, and that we are called to use our gift responsibly and with love. I said that if he was loving enough to share the gift of his body after his death, that would be an amazing thing to do, in my opinion.
I confessed to him that I have so far been unable to fill out a donor card, but that I am working on it.
He said, with his wonderful teenaged insouciance, "Well, I won't be using it...!"
So admirable. What a lovely encounter. Those are the moments you savor.
In other news, I accidentally deleted my sermon late last night while preparing to print it out. What a gorgeous feeling that was.
I hurriedly got the computer back up to MS Word and madly typed out all that I could remember of it, and thanked the gods that I had my dear friend and colleague's 2005 sermon on Ramadan to quote from, so I knew that at least those sections would be truly coherent.
It was all fine. I gave myself 6 hours of sleep, I didn't sweat it too much, I told the congregation to say (in the style of the African-American church), "Help her, Jesus" if I started to get too wound up without reaching any point, and they were right there for me, dear forebearing people. So it was an unplanned leap over a much-dreaded rite of passage: PeaceBang's First Formal Sermon From Notes Only.
I had one of those meetings this evening that you drag yourself out of an afternoon nap to go to -- thinking all the while that you would SO RATHER BE in your armchair reading the NY Times and baking something fragrant and savory and cheese-related for dinner than be there -- and then of course wound up energized and inspired by the other folks who came. Plus I got the hold a beagle puppy for a few minutes and if you don't think that was the best thing ever, you just weren't there to smell it's little puppy breath and to kiss its little smwoft baloney ear.
When I hold a puppy in my arms I swear I have some kind of wild, longing hormonal maternal surge the way so many women who want -- but can't have -- children say they feel when they see or hold babies. It doesn't happen for me with human babies, just canine ones. I felt positively tragic giving my puppy back to its people.
(She was even more newborn than this and snuggled right into my shoulder and I love her forever and ever, amen.)
posted by PeaceBang at 9:26 PM
1 Comments:
Though it sounds like things ended up going fine, if you ever erase your sermon again, please feel free to call us. TheCSO is good with that sort of thing and as part of his dayjob is IT support for people who produce academic journals I'm sure he's faced that issue before.
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