Mailbox, Spring 2006

What our readers tell us.
By Jane Greer
Spring 2006 2.15.06

The uu&me! kitten debate continues, garnering three letters out of a total of forty-four this time. In a Winter 2005 letter, Ann Lewis of Fletcher, North Carolina, objected to a description of “awe” in the Fall 2005 uu&me! in which Betsy Williams described watching the family cat give birth each year. Wrote Lewis, “Certainly in this entire world of wonder and excitement there has to be a better example of ‘awesome’ than a cat having kittens. You must have read the statistics of the millions of cats put to death in shelters, and strays dying by the side of the road. Spaying and neutering cats is advocated by every responsible humane organization worldwide.” We received three responses to this letter, two agreeing with Lewis, and one raising objections. Writes Greta Sproul of Brownville, Maine, “I would imagine that most Unitarian Universalists share [Lewis’s] concern for the fate of unwanted cats and kittens. Grim statistics don’t make the birth of kittens any less awesome than they do the birth of any living creature.”

Rosemary Bray McNatt’s Bookshelf essay reviewing the Commission on Appraisal’s report on UU theological diversity and Paul Rasor’s book Faith Without Certainty drew the most responses (five) after the winter issue. The Commission’s report, Engaging Our Theological Diversity, elicited the most comments. Writes Dino Drudi of Washington, D.C., “To recover our former vitality, Unitarian Universalism needs to make a clean break from Christianity.” Maureen Chen, of Flushing, New York, sees the UU Seven Principles as a uniting factor for all UUs: “These concise principles allow plenty of room for an individual to add additional principles or spiritual practices from other religions or of one’s own creation. For me, these principles are sufficient as is.”

In the always-interesting “other” file were letters about the Gulf Coast hurricanes, America’s involvement in Iraq, and the use of the expression “purpose-driven.”