A FUNDRAISER FOR UUSE….AT NO COST TO YOU!

Do you buy groceries?  Do you shop at Stop & Shop?  If the answer to both questions is “yes”, or even “sometimes”, you can help UUS:E raise money without costing yourself a dime. 

Here’s how it works.  Stop & Shop will sell UUS:E gift cards at a 5% discount, which we will sell to you at face value.  Five Percent may not sound like much, but if 50 of us bought a $100 grocery card this week ($5000) UUSE would realize $250! Over a year at that rate — $13,000! 

 The cards can be used for anything you purchase at Stop & Shop except lottery tickets and gift cards.  We hope to sell them on two Sundays a month, after services.  Starting in June, bring cash or a check for what you expect to spend on groceries at Stop & Shop over the next two weeks or more, and we’ll give you a card to use for your purchases.  Simple?  Yes.  Helpful?  Very. 

Watch for more details as we roll out this program in June!

Part I, Introducing the Grateful Dead

Dan:

This morning’s service explores spiritual insights in the music of the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead was an American Rock and Roll band, formed in San Francisco in 1965.  They lasted 30 years, through many changes in culture and taste, until the death of one of their founding members, Jerry Garcia, in 1995.   They fused many musical styles including folk, rock, reggae, jazz and bluegrass.  They played some 2,350 shows. The remaining members continue to perform to this day, collaborating with a huge array of musicians.  

To those of us who loved them, the Grateful Dead spoke to two spiritual yearnings: freedom and community.  Freedom to be who you really are, to pursue the things you really like, to step away from the button-down world of business and school and see and experience things in a different light. And in proclaiming that freedom, what emerged was a community—not only of fans and music lovers, but of fellow travelers, searchers, experimenters, counter culturalists, peace-lovers, and out-of-the-box thinkers—people who still share a common bond today, nearly twenty years since Jerry’s death.  

The point of this service is not to turn you into a deadhead. But rather to use the Grateful Dead experience—and to identify music in general—as a kind of stepping stone to enlightenment, our May ministry theme here at UUS:E. The Grateful Dead had some unique successes in terms of their longevity, their output, the huge record breaking crowds that attended their shows year after year, the poeticism of their lyrics, the sense of community that grew up around them, and tie dye.  We cannot forget tie dye.  And so I invite you this morning, as they themselves might invite us, to “come hear Uncle John’s band by the river side. Come on along or go alone, he’s come to take his children home.”

 Rev. Josh:

Dan purchased this service at last year’s Goods and Services Auction. Just a reminder: this year’s auction will happen on Saturday the 18^th and yes, there are sermons for sale! Today is a little different than the usual bought sermon in that Dan has written quite a lot about spiritual insights he draws from the Grateful Dead’s music and he will be speaking this morning as well.

A few years ago Dan had read a story in the New York Times about two rabbis who offered a weekend retreat in Litchfield County called “The Grateful Dead: Blues for Challah” (which was a play on the title of a Grateful Dead album, “Blues for Allah.” It was a weekend of discussions, sharing, playing music, singing and philosophizing about the connection between the Grateful Dead’s music and Jewish people.  And Dan thought, there must be connections between the Dead and Unitarian Universalists. And that’s what this morning is really about.

But before we go further, I want to confess a fear. Unitarian Universalists often profess a strong identification with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Because UU ministers marched with Dr. King, because a few UUs lost their lives protesting segregation, the Civil Rights movement is a primary lens through which we view our relationship as a faith community to American history. It is also true that quite a few UUs have a fairly strong identification with (or at least fond memories of) the 1960s counter culture—peace, love and happiness; sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, Woodstock, bell bottoms, long, beautiful Hair, alternative spirituality, communes, co-ops… and hippies. Though not entirely by their own design, the Grateful Dead was and is the quintessential 1960s counter culture band. In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, Jerry Garcia said the real part of the 1960s was not the political part or the social part, but the spiritual part.[1] There’s a lot about the counter culture that I like, but my fear is that we 21^st century UUs will become overly associated with that culture as in, “oh, they’re a bunch of 60s lefties,” or “a bunch of 60s radicals,” or worse, “a bunch of hippies.” the problem is that in today’s world  the hippy identity is not what it used to be. it’s become a stereotype, and quite often a negative one. I’ve never wanted to serve a 21^st century congregation with a 1960s reputation.  So, a service on the Grateful Dead? Uh-oh! Wear your tie-dye? Yikes!

In the end, I’m not really concerned. In the end, there is something much deeper here than hallucinating hippies frolicking naked in the mud at Woodstock. The Grateful Dead subverted and even shattered many norms and crossed many lines through their music, their lyrics, their do-it-yourself business practices, and their invitation to their fans to be present or, as writer and music producer Steve Silberman says, “to be however you wanted to be, however you felt just at that moment.” Indeed, he goes on, at a Grateful Dead concert “people were freed up to do what they naturally do—to play, to ponder the mysteries at the heart of everyday existence, and to build community with kindred spirits.”[2]

Part II, What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Freedom

Dan:

Grateful Dead concerts—shows—were always unique, never carbon copies.  Night after night the band changed the set list and the song arrangements.  Time was an elastic concept on a Grateful Dead stage. A song ended only when every possibility embedded in the structure, and set loose by the group’s improvisational empathy on that particular night, was tested and fulfilled.  The band would often flow from one song to another without a break, and although sometimes those transitions were entirely too long, they were remarkable transitions—as much a part of the show as the songs themselves. The band would often drop into weird time signatures, 7s and 11s (instead of 3s and 4s) sometimes with members playing each to their own time… Fans rarely heard the same song played the same way twice. Perfection was not the point. Where most other artists try to perfect their stage show and get everything just right and repeatable and synched up with the lights,  it was the sense of imperfection, of change, of adaptability that made a Grateful Dead show an expression of freedom.  

Of course this was not the unbridled freedom we might associate with musical anarchy. Each band member was an individual creative entity, but creative in relation to every other band member. They trained themselves to listen intently to each other and to feel each other’s energy. And they trained themselves to listen to the audience, to feel the audience’s energy.  They played to that energy.  They had a saying that the music played the band. For them the entire experience—the audience, the venue, the song selection, the energy—made a whole. Freedom yes, self expression yes, innovation yes, creativity yes, but always responsive and responsible to the whole.

So what you were left with, with a good show, was this feeling of being lifted up, of participating with the show, of anticipating where the show would go, and moreover, experiencing this with the entire audience… because the audience reaction often guided where the band went with its music.  And so, yes, you had this organic whole… a unique experience. And that is the experience that people still talk about today…

It seemed natural, easy, free. It seemed to just flow. But it actually took years of practice. It took hard work.  At the beginning they practiced almost daily, and sometimes twelve hours or more.  The incredible jams that they played, that we deadheads loved, with changing time signatures and keys that seemed to float around on their own didn’t just happen, they took thousands of hours of practice.  And this reminds me that anything that seems new or interesting or exciting or simple, often takes many hours of practice to make happen.  

It reminds me that to be successful, to gain joy, to spread joy, it is really, really important to do what you love and love what you do.  Because it can take years to become really good at something.  We might say practice brings freedom. Is that enlightenment? I suspect it is.

Rev. Josh:

I want to address two aspects of freedom that seem to coincide with peoples’ experience of the Grateful Dead. First, freedom within the music. Although Jerry Garcia is often identified as the leader of the band, there was no leader. Bassist Phil Lesh once said that “nine times out of ten if someone tried to take charge … it would just dissolve in their hands.”[3] Guitarist Bob Weir said it is pointless to try to tell each other what to play.[4] Each musician was free to bring their ideas, their energy, their creativity into each song, night after night, such that no performance was ever repeated. Garcia once described the band as a process rather than an event.[5]

It strikes me that this is akin to what we expect our Unitarian Universalist faith to look like. We want each member and friend to bring their full self to the life of the congregation—their energy, their creativity, their passions, their beliefs. If we told each other what to believe—if we asked everyone to confess the same creed—if we expected everybody to think and act alike—it would dissolve in our hands. We wish for each other the freedom to be who we are. But what keeps it together? There must be some limit to our freedom, some boundary. Well, in talking about what kept the Grateful Dead together, philosopher Horace Fairlamb says the band’s unity was not “the spontaneous product of selfless yea-sayers, but more like the opposite. It was the product of strong personalities who shared a vision with enough commitment to make it work.”[6] And what was the essence of that vision? It had something to do with valuing community as much as individual expression. It had something to do with a desire to listen and respond to what others are doing—to revel in the way one’s own ideas can be shaped and positively transformed by what others are doing—to recognize that in a community where acceptance matters more than agreement and diversity matters more than sameness, we have enormous opportunities for growth. Freedom yes, self-expression yes, innovation yes, creativity yes, but always aware of the other, always responsive to the other, always accepting the other, always open to the possibllity of change in oneself, always responsible for the health, well-being and positive growth of the whole.

Second, freedom beyond the music. In working together in spontaneous, creative ways; in the nightly discovery of new musical paths, members of the band and members of the audience would describe an intense, communal, even spiritual experience, the emergence of a group consciousness. Fairbanks cites drummer Bill Kreutzman’s speculation that “there is some great power, be it God or whatever, that enters the Grateful Dead on certain nights , and it has to do with us being open and getting together with the audience.” Garcia, more cautiously, called the experience “some kind of intuitive thing.”[7]

I can vouch. It was Tuesday, September 27, 1994, the first of six shows at the Boston Garden, and my first Grateful Dead show. I was not a deadhead, though my then girlfriend, Stephany, was. We went to see the show. I was skeptical. I was more of a hard rock, alternative rock, heavy metal kinda guy. The Dead? Nah. Not my thing. I promise you I took no drugs that night and I saw very little drug use inside the Boston Garden. I was moderately impressed through most of the show, until they played the song “Standing on the Moon.” Something happened. Some spirit of the music, of the evening, of the crowd swept me up and for a moment I was enveloped. Whatever it was, it was palpable. For a moment I lost myself in the whole. And I’ve heard countless Grateful Dead fans talk about a similar experience.

I don’t for a minute believe this essentially mystical experience they’re describing is unique to Grateful Dead concerts. People report these kinds of experiences in response to all sorts of music, all sorts of art, all sorts of physical activities, all sorts of worship. It’s an experience of ourselves stepping out of ourselves into a larger connection, a feeling of oneness. In our Unitarian Universalist sources we call it the direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life. Often fleeting, often momentary, it’s an experience of freedom beyond the constraints of our daily lives, our bodies, our culture. It’s refreshing. It’s rejuvenating, even inspiring.  This kind of experience is one of the reasons the Grateful Dead were so immensely popular. And I believe this kind of experience is one human beings long for.

Part III, What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Community

 Dan:

Philosopher Steven Gimbel writes that the spirit of the Grateful Dead “gave rise to a culture all its own. The traveling carnival that landed in fields, parking lots, and campgrounds across the country several times a year was filled with folks eager to dance over all the conventions that were socially enforced in the white-bread world they sought to leave. Each tour was a living laboratory, an experiment that was one part social engineering and one part chaos theory. There was an ethos to the parking lot, a social code, an economy, and customs all its own. It was a nomadic culture within a culture that attracted those who felt that there must be a different way.”[8]

I certainly agree. For deadheads, the Grateful Dead was much more than a band.  It was a reason for gathering together. To unite.  It was a shared experience.  The people who self-identified as Deadheads sometimes spent summers trailing the band from venue to venue.  Some of them set up camps and makeshift markets where they sold trinkets and beads and tie-dyed clothing.  They knew not only the lyrics to all of the songs, but the order in which they had been played at the shows they had attended.  It became a community of like-minded people who simply wanted to be there for the joy and connectedness it brought them.  

I never called myself a Deadhead, at least not until fairly recently.  But what did it for me was that I came to realize that if I brought my guitar to a sing along there was probably a handful of Grateful Dead songs that everyone knew and could sing along with and maybe even play along with.  And that was the case more than any other group I could pull from.  And that finally made me realize that yes, there is that thread of community and as much as I might want to deny it, I am a part of it.

 Rev. Josh:

I can vouch. It was spring break, March 1987. I was on tour with the Oberlin College Steel Drum Band in the Washington, DC area. The Grateful Dead were playing four hours away at the Hampton Roads Coliseum in Hampton, VA. We had a day off. We decided to drive to Hampton and set up our drums in the parking lot at the Coliseum.

The first thing I noticed when we arrived is that people were living there—tents, campers, vans everywhere. Lots of laundry drying in the sea breeze. Then I realized we had set up in what appeared to be the middle of an open air bazaar. People were selling jewelry, clothes, food, drugs. I’d always heard about the phenomenon of people following the Dead. Now I was part of it for a day.

We played and played and played. A crowd swarmed around us and danced. It seemed to go on for hours. People came with hand drums and tambourines and joined in. At this point, I can’t remember how long we actually played. I do remember people talking to us once we were done, people wanting to know who we were, where we were from; people thanking us for being there. I remember people wanting to feed us. I could perceive an underground economy in the parking lot, one in which sellers would try to earn a few dollars, but certainly would not balk at bartering or giving away their product for free. There was a sense of flexibility, of many ways to conduct business, of friendliness, of mutual concern, or genuine interest in strangers—a sense of real community. All of it mirrored the way the Grateful Dead conducted their own life as a rock band. I liked it. I was glad I went.

Dan:

Music can tell us about truth and beauty.  It can enlighten us, or just as easily pull us away from enlightenment in the glitz, the glamour, the selling of sex. But the Grateful Dead preferred its audience to seek enlightenment. They said “come join us, be as you are, if you’re weird, that’s ok; if you’re not that’s ok too. We accept you just the way you are, and you accept us just the way we are. Acceptance. I like that. That’s what makes a community.

Rev. Josh: Acceptance. That’s what makes a community. Amen and blessed be.

Just know that when you purchase supermarket produce that has been shipped in from faraway places you are buying food with a high carbon footprint. Consider buying or growing (organic!!) your favorite veggies in bulk and putting them up in the freezer or canning for use throughout the winter….better for you and better for the Earth.

As I sit down to write my May newsletter column, I’ve just heard the news of bombs exploding at the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon. Already I’ve learned of a distant relative who was there—he escaped un­harmed, though his friend was injured. Already I’ve learned that my younger brother who was running is OK. Already my wife, who is traveling with a group of exchange students in Italy, heard about the bombing from a waiter in a restaurant in Rome.

Already my colleague, the Rev. Lynn Ungar, has written a grounded, comforting piece in response to the tragedy. At least for me, her words say exactly what needs to be said in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy like this:

We don’t know, and we can’t imagine. And maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to sit with those two facts. We don’t know. And so it does no good to speculate about foreign terrorists or domestic terrorists or mental illness or right-wing or left-wing conspiracies. We don’t know. Maybe by the time you read this, we will. But for the meantime we just have to live with horrible suffering for no known reason….

However many of these horrible, heart-wrenching events happen, they will only be perpetrated by the most infinitesimal fraction of the population, while the rest of us watch and pray and donate blood and do whatever we can to hold safe not only our children and our friends, but also complete strangers whose suffer­ing we can, alas, imagine. I can’t say whether it’s enough, but it’s how we live in this world.

I was originally going to share a few thoughts on enlightenment in this column. Enlightenment is our ministry theme for May. I was wondering whether I should address the Buddhist concept of enlightenment or offer a few reminders about the influence of the European Enlightenment on Unitarian Universalism. But not now. After listening to the news; after watching the footage of carnage and chaos on Boylston Street in down­town Boston; after connecting with friends and family who live in Boston; and after explaining once again to my boys that “something bad” happened, that someone set off a bomb in Boston (my boys love Boston), that I wanted them to hear it from me and not someone else, and that we are safe (how many times can I keep assur­ing them of this before they start to doubt my words?)—after all this I am reminded that whatever degree of enlightenment we’ve attained in our lives, however spiritually advanced we are, there are moments in which, as Rev. Ungar says, “we don’t know, and we can’t imagine.” This is one of those moments.

At the time of the Newtown shooting I counseled our congregation that in the wake of tragedy we are re­quired to do three things: ground ourselves; attend to the suffering, whatever form it takes; and then enter into the work of repairing the world. This same advice applies now. I think it’s the right pastoral advice. But I ad­mit it feels like a lot in the sense that so many people are still working through the trauma of Newtown. Now we must add the trauma of Boston? Yes, we must, whether we like it or not, whether we’re ready or not.

We may not be ready. But life has taken a tragic turn. My prayer for us is that we may turn with life into this tragedy and respond to it with all the grace and dignity we can muster.

With love,

Rev. Josh

• A Humanist Perspective by Jerry Lusa
• A Buddhist Perspective by Nancy Thompson

Top
A Humanist Perspective

By Jerry Lusa, Sunday Services Committee

Maybe it’s the new job. I feel like Gimli standing in front of the Dark Door at the end of the Dim­holt road. Him, a dwarf hesitant to go underground, and me a Humanist / Taoist / Zen Buddhist hesitant to dive into either enlightenment or The Enlightenment. Both enlightenments are the rock on which I stand, the air which I breathe, and yet I stare into a void. Ah, well, here goes…

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Enlightenment, was the time between 1650 and 1800 when the thinkers of the day got free from the stultifying oppression of ecclesiastical authority that had held back the general progress of European society for a millennium. The sciences and philosophies they developed have blossomed to free us from tyranny, toil, plague and parasite. And it keeps getting better. The number of people dying from violence is steadily decreasing. Diseases are overcome faster than new ones arrive. The number of children starving to death or dying from preventable illnesses each day is dwindling (a big shout-out to Bill and Melinda Gates!) Intolerance is fading, though mostly in places that have embraced the principles which emerged in The Enlightenment. I’m feeling upbeat here.

So what could this possibly have to do with the small-e enlightenment discovered by Guatama Buddha two thousand four hundred years ago, you ask? The Enlightenment has certainly reduced many kinds of human suffering, which is also what the Buddha sought. How many of us know the physical suffering of the raw, organic human existence that the Buddha’s contemporaries knew? We may fanta­size about a noble past, but would we want to go back to lice and flees and tapeworms, and tigers drag­ging people into the night? Would we want to go back in time as servants to brutes, them taking our sons for their armies and our daughters for their palaces? Thanks to the discoveries and the ideas of The Enlightenment, we are largely free of those kinds of suffering – and it keeps getting better!

And yet we suffer: some of it real, some of it of our own making. We all know real suffering. I won’t dwell on that. But the human mind evolved to be ever alert to danger, the snap of a twig or a scent on the breeze. Sitting at our desks and in our kitchens and our living rooms we are divorced from the reality for which we evolved; we know this now, thanks again to the Age of Enlightenment. We know that our minds will find phantoms where there are none. We perceive threats and problems where none are present. We fret over wants when our cupboards are full. Here is where the Buddha’s ancient wis­dom still holds true. We still suffer when we need not.

Big-E and little-e enlightenment are very similar in a way. The little-e kind requires us to abandon our preconceptions of the world and of ourselves. The big-E kind, if we want to not just take advantage of it but actually know it, requires us to abandon wanting the world to be the way we might want it. The laws of physics describe all of what we perceive, and evolutionary psychology can answer our questions about ourselves, but it takes a bit of work to get there, the work of adding knowledge to our minds. Lit­tle-e enlightenment also takes work, but in a subtractive way, shedding that to which we cling.

Top

A Buddhist Perspective

By Nancy Thompson, UUS:E Buddhist Group

Enlightenment is at the heart of the Buddhist path; it’s what Buddhists aspire to achieve — for themselves, for all beings, for society — by practicing Buddhism. But enlightenment, or nirvana, is not a place that we get to, like heaven; it’s a state of mind that we bring to whatever circumstances arise. Noah Levine, a contemporary teacher in Buddhism’s oldest tradition, the Thai Forest tradition, says the Pali word for nirvana, nibanna, is a cooking term that literally means “no boil,” or to remove from heat. The person who has achieved enlightenment is able to be in the world with wisdom and compassion, fully awake to the world’s suffering but not drawn into it. That’s how a buddha or bodhisattva — those who vow not to attain enlightenment until they have led all other beings there– are able to be of help in the world, by seeing needs and responding compassionately.

The later schools of Buddhism say that we already are enlightened, we already have the innate wisdom and compassion of a buddha, but it’s covered up by fear, anger, confusion, and conditioning. The path, then, is not about becoming enlightened but unpeeling the layers that cover up our true na­ture. It’s about awakening to our inherent worth and dignity and seeing it in others. We all have moments of enlightenment. For a lot of people, they come in nature. When we lose our­selves in a leaf or feel the rhythms of the ocean’s waves or gaze in wonder at a sunset, we feel that con­nection to something larger, something that is beyond words or thought. something that is, simply, enough without any embellishment.

Discovering that connection to the inherent web of all existence is the aim of Buddhist meditation techniques. The thought is that if you can connect to it in meditation, you can begin to bring it into the world with you. And when you see the world and act in the world from that larger view, you discover the compassionate wisdom to see things as they are and the skillful methods to work toward making them better.

Enlightenment is possible, Jack Kornfield says, describing it as “unbounded freedom and joy, one­ness with the divine, awakening into a state of timeless grace.” But those moments don’t last. “We all know that after the honeymoon comes the marriage, after the election comes the hard task of govern­ance. In spiritual life, it is no different: After the ecstasy comes the laundry.”

For more, come to the May 26^th service: “How to Act Like an Enlightened Being.” Check the Sun­day Services page for more information.
Top

There it was again, the phone call. This time it was my father. “Did you see what happened at the Boston Marathon? Turn on the television. It’s awful.”

There it was again, that feeling of profound sadness. Tears welling up. Utter disbelief. How can this be real?

There it was again, that feeling of fear. Am I safe to leave my home? Are my children safe? What will I tell them? They love Boston. We visit friends and family there. Mason was born there. I’ll bet we’ve walked up and down Boylston Street at least twenty times in his eleven years of life. His beloved green line runs right beneath the spot where those bombs exploded. Continue reading at HartfordFAVS….

Molly Vigeant, a youth member of our congregation, wrote and performed this poem for our Earth Day service on April 21, 2013. I asked her to write a poem that makes the link between our disconnection from the natural world and the phenomenon of mass violence. Thanks Molly! 

The disconnect between life and the living
Longs to be mended
And yet,
We’ve pretended
Day after day
That it’s all okay,

A man enters a school,
Intentions clear
Not a single fear
In him,
But fear radiated
Shook the whole world,

Runners going to the finish line
Now blind
In the fires,
Runners now running
To escape
This hopeless fate

Pain in exchange for pain.
Grief for grief.
Perhaps,
Just perhaps,
If we listen to the wind
And free ourselves,
Maybe then the pain of the world can be lessened.

The people alive and dead,
Have souls here to stay
We are in nature
And nature is in us
This planet is our home,
We need to feel it in our bones
Connect and stop ignoring 

When a child is born
We welcome them,
Nurture them
Tell them to be who they are,
Tell them they can be anything they dream of,
We tell them to
breathe in the world,
yet our air is stale
were you ever taught to breathe?

We ignore the nature outside of us
in attempt to nurture the nature within us
But the imbalance
breaks both
weakens both
Kills off both,
We don’t realize what we’re doing,
We don’t mean to do it.
We don’t think about it.
We don’t feel it.
This is how we live.

But the disconnect 
Between life
And the living,
May unearth these planted souls,
Be yourself
Or we may wash away
Without another day
To say
All the things,
We never got to say
And without another day
To say
All the things,
We may never get to say

Rev. Josh Pawelek and Rhona Cohen, chair of UUS:E’s Social Justice / Antiracism Committee, were in attendance at a rally on Wednesday morning, April 17th, calling on legislators and the governor to maintain funding for HUSKY parents. HUSKY is Connecticut’s program for providing health coverage to low income children, parents, relative caregivers, elders, individuals with disabilities, adults without minor children, and pregnant women. (HUSKY stands for “Healthcare for UninSured Kids and Youth.) Governor Malloy’s current budget proposal would drop coverage for parents who earn between 130% and 185% of the federal poverty line, and direct them to purchase their insurance on Connecticut’s new Health Care Exchange, known as Access Health CT.  However, virtually every analysis of this idea concludes that HUSKY parents would not be able to afford to purchase insurance through the Exchange. (Read the first bullet point here.) This would effectively leave HUSKY parents without access to affordable healthcare. Thus the Gov’s proposal seeks to balance the state budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. 

Rhona Cohen and Rev. Joel Cruz

The UUS:E Social Justice / Antiracism Committee has been involved in efforts to expand health care in the state of CT for many years. And Rev. Josh has been a leader with the Interfaith Fellowship for Universal Healthcare (IFUHC) for the last six years. Other IFUHC members at the rally were Imam Kashif Abdul-Kareem of the Muhammad Islamic Center of Greater Hartford and Rev. (and Hartford City Councilor) Joel Cruz of Hartford’s House of Praise and Worship, Inc.  We’ve believed for a while now that CT’s health care system can come close to covering every resident through a patchwork of different public and private programs. But the failure to fund coverage for HUSKY parents will put a big hole in that patchwork. The failure to fund HUSKY parents moves us backwards, not forwards.

At the rally, Teresa Younger, Executive Director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, pointed out that we’re not talking about whether or not these families have enough money to afford cable tv. She said this is about having enough money to buy food and medicine and not having to choose one over the other. We can do better for the most vulnerable among us.