I’ve learned that as a complainant, silence from the “culture” of the UUA, and its very aptly named Ministerial Fellowship Committee, to say nothing of individual U*U “churches”, almost always means an emphatic “no” to those who dare to complain about clergy misconduct of various kinds, including clergy sexual misconduct. It means no, we don’t want to hear from you, no, we won’t provide what you need, no, please leave us alone. Of course, silence can also mean: I’m on vacation or I’m very busy, but such silence should only last a few weeks. After that it becomes the negligent and effectively complicit silence of the unfortunate “culture” of institutional stonewalling and denial that the UUA has yet to responsibly move away from inspite of empty promises to “bend towards justice.” It’s really not all that hard to tell.

Anyone who has any doubts about my take on this can get a second opinion from uugrrl’s ‘Speaking Truth To Power’ blog here -

http://uutruth.blogspot.com/search?q=silence

There’s always the koan no.

http://www.boundlesswayzen.org/teishos/blacker-noteisho.html

when we lived in Papua New Guinea they didn’t like to say no
so they would say yes
then not show up, do the job, or whatever it was they had said yes to
it was an extremely frustrating two years

It’s a wonder to me that anyone actually does communicate. Thanks for sharing these stories, guys. And James, I’m still wrapping my head around the koan no.