In a Time of Micro-Identities

IN A TIME OF MICRO-IDENTITIES At my Unitarian Universalist Society no one is Jane Doe or Jack Spratt anymore! A person being introduced or referenced for their political, social or spiritual wisdom, their positive impact on business, industry, education or community, inter-faith connectivity or even their potential for simple friendship and warmth, must be presented and pre-validated by their ethnicity and race, their religion, place of origin, their sexual irregularity, behavioral irregularities, and any number of special pronouns or nouns that have multiplied like weeds after a soaking late spring rain or like non-native species of flora or fauna, imported to address problems both real and imagined, that have become prolific and invasive, pervasive and problematic in unintended ways, like the popular new sport called “daring us to get it wrong”…. These micro identifications give the person being presented an unnecessary social asterisk that divides our collective focus, fogging up the intended message, diluting the joy of engagement, perhaps rendering inconsequential the reason they are even there! They are no longer simply folks but a type, a brand, perhaps another public admonition to check our social attitudes, maybe scold ourselves a little, and it makes me irritated rather than appreciative, jaded rather than enthusiastic, somehow cornered rather than free, a little wary of presenter and presented, more weary of division, classification and the perpetually annoying tactics of moral correctitude! My pronouns, as you can see, are he, him and his, as normal as water and oxygen in our planet’s biosphere, but more important are my aspirational adjectives: open, giving and loving, which admittedly, I’ve discovered, are subject to tidal fluctuations, my diurnal disposition reaching out and pulling back. But this disclosure not-withstanding, let the person and the message speak for themselves like the sun speaks of light and the moon, like my wife, speaks subtly in phases about sunlight at night! Let our penchant for insight and moral validity allow us to determine if speaker and word bring us clarity and truth, encourages our efforts to find ourselves in each other in this reckless adventure we call humankind!