Currently, my 90+-year-old mother has been moved into an assisted living facility. I've been traveling, looking over properties in New York, New Mexico, Washington, and Italy (old family estate).
I've finished up a course of treatment for the PTSD I received from dealing with some horrid church leadership with help from a denomination that wanted to see me gone and my memory purged. EMDR treatments have been successful. I no longer feel the rage and pain I felt at being railroaded out of the ministry. I may finally talk about some of my personal experiences.
All of the above has contributed to this blog being put on the back burner. I haven't really checked my email much at all. [BTW Devilhead welcomes email from readers, contact me HERE.]
But there's a thing about back burners, everything simmers. So, for the past nine months or so, I've essentially ignored this blog. Not completely ignore it per se, I just had too much personal business that demanded my attention. And for the past several months readership has steadily grown. Not bad for a blog that could have been considered dead.
And boy do you guys write! My inbox has been overflowing with almost exclusively supportive material. There's negative too, usually along the lines of "how dare you force me to look at the shit-sty my denomination has become". But there's so little of that, I'm surprised.
A few of you have commented openly on this blog. Some of you want to know what I know. That's a two-way street. Contact me HERE (subtle fucking hint, I know).
So, as the blog slept, its readership grew steadily.
Who Reads This Blog?
A surprising number of people who like this blog are ministers who've become disillusioned and disgusted with a denomination run by ideologically-blinded buffoons. Some are retired and are grateful to be done. Several have communicated that they will never set foot in another Unitarian Universalist church, even as they collect a pension check from the UUA.Another large group, not as large as the ministers, are congregational leadership. And that's been growing. GA '19 was a wake up call for many. This one that has proven how far the UUA has strayed from its roots. [It's probably safe to say that what calls itself "Unitarian Universalism" is so completely different from what has been Unitarianism and Universalism (in both separate and combined forms) for all of its history that it would be more honest to simply name it something new and move on.] This would have the added benefit of exorcising inconvenient history to the dumpster in the process. Don't worry, that'll never happen because it makes sense.
Here's the best part, several UUA staffers read this blog and largely agree [?!] with it. The number one complaint I get from UUA staff is this: hypocrisy at the higher levels. Quelle surprise!
I can't make this shit up. Yo' Rev. Sue, looks like you don't have a unified team at all. Time to purge house, again.
And finally, readers from UUReddit have found this blog and have been sharing posts with their friends. This accounts for much of this blogs growing popularity among a certain segment of the UU populace. All I can say to that is Welcome Reddit!
And many of the readers have lots of questions. Most are about the ministries and churches I've already discussed, filling me in with details. I've heard from family, former congregants and others who've had dealings with some of the ministers mentioned in this blog. Let's just say that from what I've heard, it's a good thing some of these people are out of the ministry.
And since GA '19, all anyone can talk about is Rev. Todd Eklof of the Spokane UU Church and his book decrying the excesses of a denomination that has run off the rails. I don't know the minister, but I do know the congregation very well. (Intimately, in fact.) I will do a few posts on this, but let me give you a preview.
The distance between Spokane, WA and Hayden, ID home of many white nationalists and some very famous white nationalist groups is only 36.8 miles. Nothing, particularly out in the west.
There are current members of the UU Church of Spokane who grew up playing with Richard Butler's kids.
I know for a absolute fact that that their former minister, Rev. Richard Erhardt was completely against the anti-racism bullshit as promulgated by the
The congregation supports Rev. Eklof, does not see the Gadfly Papers as racist, and that's where it should end. But it won't.
Who says watching Unitarian Universalism commit suicide isn't fun?
Yours Truly,
Devilhead
