The Making of a People of Prophecy: the book report

In the sermon I delivered (and posted) yesterday I said that I'd actually written another sermon which I came to realize was not the sermon I needed to deliver.  For what it's worth, here's that first version:

After coming home from General Assembly this past summer, our Director of Faith Development, Leia Durland-Jones, told me that I should watch the Sunday morning service and, particularly, to listen to the sermon that had been given by the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd.  Not that much after, our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, told me that I needed to hear it –  “You’ve really got to listen to this sermon!” she said.  It’s really, really powerful.”  That was in early July.

Well … a week or so ago, while I was home sick, I finally cued it up and watched.  And they were right.  Oh my goodness, they were right.  I put a link to the video of the sermon – and the whole service, actually – in the insert in your Order of Service, and I strongly encourage you to watch it, because it isn’t just Nancy’s words, but her delivery – and not just her tempo, tone, and body language, but her presence as she delivered it – that makes it so powerful.

I mention all of this because in this powerful, and truly prophetic, sermon, Nancy says some really important things about just what it takes to make “a people of prophecy,” and, perhaps more specifically, what it will take to make us – Unitarian Universalists – able to live into this role. 

She grounds her prophetic charge in the importance of relationship for building up our communities into places where real change, real transformation, can come about.  She quotes the anti-racist organizer MickeyScottBey Jones – whom she calls “wonderful” and “deep-spirited” – as saying:

relationship is the sandpaper that wears away our resistance to change. Relationship is the abrasion that agitates enough to make a way forward.  Relationship, consistent and ongoing encounter with people and perspectives different than our own - it smooths the way for the sacred, even as it rubs us raw.

There is a holy abrasion of the spirit born in deep relational encounters across differences.  We, as congregations and as a movement, exist to be instruments of those very encounters. 

Let me say that again – “We, as congregations and as a movement, exist to be instruments of those encounters.”  You may have seen the bumper sticker that says, “The most radical thing we can do is introduce people to one another.”  The Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed has said, “The task of religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all.”  In other words, as Nancy said, we exist to facilitate these kinds of deep, real, and, yes, raw-rubbing encounters. 

And yet we know [Nancy continues] that there are so many ways to hide from the discomfort inherent in a holy abrasion. There are plenty of opportunities presented each and every day in the life of the church to back away from the hard work of continually and repeatedly relating meaningfully to one another and the world.

And one of them is to insist [she says], at any possible juncture, that you get what you want out of the experience of congregational life, as if church is a short order menu and community is a product to be consumed on your terms, in your time, without making you uncomfortable or demanding a whole lot of you in the first place. 

One of the ways to block the holy abrasion that brings change is to imagine that both congregational life and religious liberalism itself are contests compete with winners and losers and if we don’t get our way – well – we are wanderers, worshipers – and lovers of leaving, are we not?

Does any of that resonate with you?  I can tell you that as I was watching the sermon, when I’d reached this point, I was glad I don’t wear mascara.  She’d brought me to tears.  There she was, behind that pulpit, speaking to a couple of thousand of us UUs, and speaking truth to us.  Hard truth.  Challenging truth.  Truth we need to hear.

One of the ways we hobble ourselves – as a movement, and here in our own “local franchise” – one of the ways we hobble ourselves is by spending … wasting … so much of our time and energy on trying to make sure that everything is arranged just so … just so that I feel comfortable and affirmed. 

When we hear – as Christina reminded us just a couple of weeks ago – that one task of the religious enterprise is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” we give a deep sigh of gratitude that there is a place like this that will offer us such comfort.  We rarely, though, if ever, see ourselves as the ones in need of afflicting.  As I said last week, we’d like them to change so that we can just get on doing what we’ve been doing, the way we’ve been doing it.  But, as I also said last week, that’s just not the way things work. 

Nancy got even more specific, and offered us language that will no doubt be used for years to come:

[T]he greatest impediment to the efficacy of the liberal church today [she said] is not the real fights and real failures we get into when we’re doing hard work – it is the fake fights [that’s the phrase!] we waste our time on while our own people and the people all around us struggle to survive. 

I worry literally every day [she continued], that in this moment of utmost urgency - we, the very ones the world has been waiting for, are wasting our capacity to build change on fake fights that distract us from the work at hand.

We go over and over again who’s a humanist and who’s a theist and who got their way in what bylaw discussion and what color we should paint the church bathroom - so protected by our busyness that the real fights, the honest conversations, and the transformative sandpaper of real relationship presented to us Sunday after Sunday, week after week, slip right past us and we remain thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.

“Thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.”  As I watched the video I sat there, weeping at the power of this prophetic preacher who was speaking truth to us – to me – with such love.  Yet I was weeping, too, because her words were unveiling in me a deep sense of cynicism, revealing to me my own crisis of faith.  “Thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.”  “Thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.” 

Again and again, that crowd of a couple of thousand Unitarian Universalists applauded and cheered as Nancy challenged them with hard truths.  I’ve preached hard-truth sermons here, as well, and people have afterward told me how brave I was to do so, commended me for taking such a risk.  Yet as I listened to Nancy do just this, I was struck by the idea that, really, there is so little risk involved.  Those people in that hall that Sunday morning wanted to be challenged – they ate it up.  You all want me to challenge you – I’ve also received applause and affirmation whenever I’ve spoken “hard truths with love.”  We want to be challenged, but I fear that we want to be challenged because, on the one hand, we know – know in our bones – that something is wrong, and it fills us with anxiety, stress … with agita.  On the other hand, though, I fear that we want to be challenged because we know – know beneath our consciousness of our knowing – that by listening to these hard truths our agitation can be assuaged, and that by affirming them we can allow ourselves to remain, “fundamentally unchanged.”

Nancy told me that when she looked out at that crowd of thousands of Unitarian Universalists from around the country and around the world and said she worries, “literally every day that [we] are wasting our capacity to build change on fake fights” that she meant exactly that.  She meant that she worries about this all the time, that we, as a movement, are far too often “thoroughly agitated and fundamentally unchanged.”  She told me that she understood my frustrations, but she also said that she did not share my despair. 

Instead, in her sermon she’d decided to take advantage of that bully pulpit to publicly declare:

I tell you what, I’m tapping out.  Right now.  And I invite you to join me.  I’m tapping out of every fake fight in our congregations and our movement about getting what I want or what you want or what we think we want - because in this age the stakes are too high and we don’t have time for fake fights anymore. […]

[T]he world does not need another place for like-minded  liberal leaning people to hang out together and fight about who’s in charge.  The world does not need a place where you or I or any single one of us is going to get what we want.

What the world needs is a movement like ours to step more fully into our higher calling - to serve as an instrument for encounter - with one another, with the holy and with the world.  So that we might love more fully, and speak more truly and serve with greater efficacy, in such a time as this.

More tears poured down my cheeks, my friends.  New tears.  Because her faith had reignited mine; her hope had brought my own back to life.  Having lived with this sermon – its vision, its challenge, its truth, its hope – I can honestly say that I feel thoroughly less agitated, and can feel the stirrings of change.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Making of a People of Prophecy

This is the text of the sermon I delivered to the congregation I serve-- Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist -- on Sunday, January 29, 2017.  As always, you can listen if you've prefer.

After coming home from General Assembly this past summer, our Director of Faith Development, Leia Durland-Jones, told me that I should watch the Sunday morning service and, particularly, to listen to the sermon that had been given by the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd.  Not that much after, our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, told me that I needed to hear it –  “You’ve really got to listen to this sermon!” she said.  It’s really, really powerful.”  That was in early July.

Well … a week or so ago, while I was home sick, I finally cued it up and watched.  And they were right.  Oh my goodness, they were right.  I put a link to the video of the sermon in the order of service.  (Or you can watch the whole service.) I strongly encourage you to watch it, because it isn’t just Nancy’s words, but her delivery – and not just her tempo, tone, and body language, but her presence as she delivered it – that makes it so powerful.  (And please, please don't wait half a year to watch it!)

Her sermon called out a sermon from me.  Two, actually.  The first one I’d written a little earlier in the week, so it was all done and I was feeling pretty good about it last night when I decided to re-watch Nancy’s.  Afterward, I realized that that first sermon was really only a little more than a book report, and that the real sermon hadn’t made its way to the surface yet.

Nancy begins by lifting up the importance of relationship in building up our communities into places where real change, real transformation, can come about.  She quotes the anti-racist organizer Mickey ScottBey Jones – whom she calls “wonderful” and “deep-spirited” – as saying:

relationship is the sandpaper that wears away our resistance to change. Relationship is the abrasion that agitates enough to make a way forward.  Relationship, consistent and ongoing encounter with people and perspectives different than our own - it smooths the way for the sacred, even as it rubs us raw.

There is a holy abrasion of the spirit born in deep relational encounters across differences.  We, as congregations and as a movement, exist to be instruments of those very encounters. 

Let me say that again – “We, as congregations and as a movement, exist to be instruments of those encounters.”  You may have seen the bumper sticker that says, “The most radical thing we can do is introduce people to one another.”  The Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed has said, “The task of religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all.”  In other words, we exist to facilitate these kinds of deep, real, and, yes, raw-rubbing encounters. 

“And yet,” and I’m quoting Nancy again here, “we know that there are so many ways to hide from the discomfort inherent in a holy abrasion. There are plenty of opportunities presented each and every day in the life of the church to back away from the hard work of continually and repeatedly relating meaningfully to one another and the world.”

The first she names is our misunderstanding that congregational life is going well when we’re happy.  When we’re getting what we want out of it.  She says:

One of the ways to block the holy abrasion that brings change is to imagine that both congregational life and religious liberalism itself are contests complete with winners and losers and if we don’t get our way – well – we are wanderers, worshippers – and lovers of leaving, are we not?

Ours is a religious movement that is part of the “free faith” tradition, and many of us interpret that to mean that we are free to come and go as we please.  If things get unpleasant, or not to our liking, there’s nothing saying that we have to come, is there?  Even if we did have a hell to threaten you with, most of us are such questioners of authority that we wouldn’t take it seriously anyway.  For many of us, here and in our wider movement, we take full advantage of the escape clause we see in our “free faith,” and feel no compulsion to show up when we get busy or things here get hard.

Yet this work of “continually and repeatedly relating meaningfully to one another and the world,” that is our work takes showing up again and again, even when we don’t particularly want to.  Even, truth be told, when we’d really rather not, because we know it’s going to be messy and we know it’s going to be hard, and we know we’re not going to get what we want.

Yet there’s an even more pernicious way we undercut the possibility of that sandpaper of relationship bringing about that holy abrasion that may rub us raw at times but which ultimately and inevitably smooths the way for change.  In her sermon, Nancy put it this way.:

[T]he greatest impediment to the efficacy of the liberal church today is not the real fights and real failures we get into when we’re doing hard work – it is the fake fights we waste our time on while our own people and the people all around us struggle to survive. 

I worry literally every day [she continued], that in this moment of utmost urgency - we, the very ones the world has been waiting for, are wasting our capacity to build change on fake fights that distract us from the work at hand.

We go over and over again who’s a humanist and who’s a theist and who got their way in what bylaw discussion and what color we should paint the church bathroom - so protected by our busyness that the real fights, the honest conversations, and the transformative sandpaper of real relationship presented to us Sunday after Sunday, week after week, slip right past us and we remain thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.

“Thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.”  I will confess that as I listened to this prophet in our midst speaking truth to our movement I felt … depressed and discouraged.  A cynicism overtook me, and I discovered a despair that we, as a movement, as a congregation, and as individuals, may well simply and forever remain stuck being “thoroughly agitated but fundamentally unchanged.”

A couple of days later, I had a dream.  I was an observer, not a participant, and what I observed is what I took to be a Jewish congregation about to begin its worship.  The Rabbi – who undoubtedly not coincidentally looked exactly like Nancy McDonald Ladd – was feeling anxious about what she knew was going to happen.  And just before she entered the sanctuary she had an idea, and called over a few of the congregation’s children.  She gave each a small, flat piece of wax and asked them to bring it to her when she called on them.

I don’t remember anything about the beginning of the service, but during the sermon portion, the Rabbi held up a small, think, black-bound book that was clearly one of their sacred texts.  She called it “the Tishuba,” and she began a litany saying, “the Tishuba calls us to <this>, and the Tishuba calls us to <that>.”  I don’t remember all of the this-es and that-s, but I do recall her saying that the Tishuba called them to welcome people from the transgender community, and to work with undocumented immigrants and refugees.  And after she named each of these callings, she asked one of the children to come up and melt their wax onto the cover of the book, so that in not too long the face of it was complete obscured with blobs of differently colored wax.  When it was, she held it up and said that this was no longer a generic Tishuba, it was now their Tishuba, they had made it their own, so that now, instead of saying, “the Tishuba calls us to …”, she would say, “our Tishuba call us …”

I woke from this dream with tears pouring down my face.  And that day I got to wondering what our “Tishuba” might be.  We don’t have a sacred book to point to, we share no holy writ.   We don’t even share all that many rituals and traditions throughout our movement.  And then I thought about the flaming chalice.

As we prepare to light the chalice at the beginning of the service I often say that it is “a sign and symbol of our faith.”  During World War II, the Unitarian Service Committee was in Europe, among other things helping Jews and other persecuted people to find safety.  Other organizations there had a logo, something to put on business cards and letter heads, but also something to signify who they were.  The Service Committee commissioned a man named Hans Desutsch, a German cartoonist who’d fled German, to create for them a symbol, and he created the first flaming chalice.

This symbol, this flaming chalice is more than just, as someone once disparaged it, “a candle in a martini glass.”  And it’s more than just a light to illuminate and affirm the views and positions we already hold, or to provide warmth for us to bask in in our self-satisfied complacency.  No.  It is a beacon, a beacon that should be leading us forward, out of our sanctuaries, out of our congregational buildings, out, even, of our devotion to our false fights, and out into the world that so desperately needs its light.  It is our Tishuba.

And our Tishuba calls us to leave behind the false fight of who has the authority to make what decision to have, instead, the real conversation about what the right decision is;

Our Tishuba calls on us to leave behind the false fight of whether Joys and Sorrows and spoken, or written, or eliminate completely to have, instead, the real conversation about whether we are really listening to one another – not just for those things we agree on but where we truly differ;

Our Tishuba calls on us to leave behind the false fight of Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter to have, instead, the real conversation about the system of White Supremacy that saturates our society and in which we are all complicit, and what we can do to dismantle it and build a new way in the world;

It calls on us to leave behind the false fight of whether to use God language, or not use God language, and to have, instead, the real conversation about what is holy, and what is sacred, and what the holy and sacred call us to do;

Our Tishuba calls us to leave behind the false fight of who’s right and who’s wrong, so that we might have, instead, the real conversation of who we are and how we can be together and how can model this for the world.

When I woke from my dream I thought that the word “tishuba” sounded familiar, so I looked it up.  Google told me that Gora Tish Uba is a city in western Kazakhstan.  But the similar sounding word “teshuvah,” is a Hebrew word which means “repentance,” or, “returning.”  The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are sometimes called The Days of Teshuvah, and it is said that an observant Jew will do teshva each and every day, searching for the ways they have fallen short, committing to not make the same mistakes again, and making amends when amends are appropriate.  (Those are the three aspects of teshuvah.)

I find it meaningful that that which was calling that congregation – and which is calling ours – is the idea of repentance, or returning to our true selves, of emptying ourselves of our hubris so that we might humbly engage with that holy abrasion we experience in real relationship.  To paraphrase the Reverend McDonald Ladd, this holy abrasion of the spirit is only born in deep relational encounters across differences, and we, as congregations and as a movement, exist to be instruments of those very encounters. 

The stakes are high, my friends – higher than many of us have had any idea – and there simply isn’t time to waste on our fake fights – no matter how important they may seem – and our instance on having things the way we want them to be.  We must leave these behind – must leave these behind – so that we can do the oh so necessary work the world calls us to.

I’m going to give Nancy the last words:

[T]he world does not need another place for like-minded  liberal leaning people to hang out together and fight about who’s in charge.  The world does not need a place where you or I or any single one of us is going to get what we want.

What the world needs is a movement like ours to step more fully into our higher calling - to serve as an instrument for encounter - with one another, with the holy and with the world.  So that we might love more fully, and speak more truly and serve with greater efficacy, in such a time as this.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Prophetic Role

This is the text of the sermon I delivered at the congregation I serve -- Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist.  As always, you can listen to it if you'd prefer.

“After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history.”  This description of a then still upcoming television program was published in a Scottish newspaper last week.  It continues, “Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories – among the most common is the ‘What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War’ setting – but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present. The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.”

I checked it out.  This was actually published in Scotland’s Sunday Herald as its description of Friday’s coverage of the Inauguration.  “The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 …”

It was quite the weekend in DC, wasn’t it?  About a quarter of a million people gathered on the Washington Mall on Friday to see Donald J. Trump sworn in as the nation’s 45^th President.  On Saturday, an estimated half of a million women, children, and men – but mostly women – descended on DC to make their presence and their voices seen, heard, and felt.  Throughout the country, it’s been estimated that roughly 3-4 million people gathered in solidarity with what was once called “the Million Woman March.”  And initial, rough estimates says that nearly 30,000 people gathered in the more than 670 sister demonstrations around the world.  That … well … that’s a lot of people wanting to “speak truth to power,” a phrase that’s often identified as being of old Quaker origin but which seems to have actually been coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin.

We’ve been exploring this month what it means to be “a people of prophecy,” and, perhaps more specifically, what it would mean to say that our Unitarian Universalist faith calls on us – as congregations and as individuals – calls on us to be “a people of prophecy.”  The two busloads from our congregation who joined that gathered throng in DC, and the thousands of other UUs around the country, were living examples of at least part of the answer.

One way of understanding the word “prophecy,” of course, is to think about soothsayers and oracles, fortunetellers and clairvoyants.  That’s not how I’m using the word this morning.  Instead, I’m talking about “prophecy” as that thing those well-known prophets of the Jewish tradition were all about.  I’m talking about “prophecy” as, “speaking truth to power.”

The Talmud teaches that during the Biblical period there were hundreds of thousands of prophets: at least twice as many as the 600,000 who were said to have left Egypt.  For a variety of reasons, however, Jewish scripture only identifies 55 of them.  The majority, but not all of those remembered, were men – there are stories of seven female prophets.  And while that certainly isn’t it a lot, it’s worth noting that the Talmud reports that the prophetic ability of at least one of them, Sarah, was superior to that of her husband, Abraham.  God told Abraham to listen to his wife and to do whatever she told him to, and said that he did not “ennoble” her, but that she “ennobled” him.  Sarah would have brought Abraham to the March.

Gender identity aside, the prophets all spoke out for justice and against the injustices they saw in the society around them.  Amos, for instance, cried out because he saw that the wealthy and the powerful oppressed the poor and dispossessed while, at the same time, pretending to be religiously observant.  He said that the way those who had power treated those who did not was the measuring stick by which God would judge the whole nation.  “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; I take no delight in your assemblies. … But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Hosea preached that the primary focus of God’s judgement was on the religious and secular leadership who willfully ignored God and deliberately abused those under their control.  And while both the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah were to pay the price for this, the people themselves, if they repented, would feel God’s mercy.  “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings"

Micah rebuked Israel because of dishonesty in the marketplace and corruption in government, and warned that when a nation’s leadership fails to set the right example for their society, the society will crumble.  “He has shown you, O human, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Over and over again the men and women the Jewish tradition remembers as prophets bravely lifted their voices to warn, to rebuke, to challenge.  They said, in essence, “the way things are is not the way things are supposed to be, and if things don’t change, there’s going to be hell to pay.” 

Cypress did some research for this morning, and came across the book What Manner of Man is the Prophet? written in by the Polish-born American rabbi Abraham Heschel.  Heschel was one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century, as well as a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  In his book, Heschel identifies a number of characteristics of the Hebrew prophets.  Here are a few:

In and through the prophet’s words, the invisible God becomes audible.  The Hebrew word for prophet – navi – comes from the term niv sefatayim, which means “fruit of the lips.”  In his initiatory vision, the prophet Isaiah sees a seraphim take a live coal from the altar in the Temple and place it, burning, on his lips.  The prophet speaks for God – you could say that through the prophet the people heard God’s words in a human voice. 

It doesn’t really matter what word you use to describe this thing the Hebrew Scriptures call “God.”  Call it, “The Good,” or “Truth;” call it, “Justice,” or “Love,” or “Spirit of Life.”  The point here is that the prophet speaks for – and from – something larger than themselves.  It isn’t just an individual noting her or his preferences or personal biases.  When the prophet speaks, something larger is speaking.  When Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; or Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK Lobby; or Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother; or Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X's Daughter; or Gloria Steinem; or Angela Davis – when these women spoke yesterday, it was not simply their voices that were heard.  Each of them – and all of the other speakers on the dais in DC, and those at rallies and marches around the country and the world – spoke for and from something larger than themselves.  The spoke on behalf of the three million women, children, and men who had gathered, of course, and the hundreds of thousands more who were there in spirit, yet they spoke on behalf of something even more than that.  Call it “Love,” call it “Justice,” call it “God” … call it what you will, but it was speaking in and through those human lips.

And like the prophets of old, these modern-day prophets challenged the whole country, not just those individuals or groups that might seem most at fault.  That’s another one of Heschel’s observations about the prophets of the Jewish tradition – they never said that society’s problems were simply the fault of “those other guys.”  You never heard a prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures warn of God’s judgement only on the “one percenters,” or the “fat cats on Wall Street.,”  or “the crooked media.”  Oh, they had no problem calling out the politically powerful and the wealthy elite for their behavior, or misbehavior.  Yet they were equally clear that when things got really bad – as they inevitably would – it was going to be everyone’s head.  Heschel says that the message of the prophets was that while “few are guilty; all are responsible.”  While few are guilty, all are responsible.

Drawing again on the rallies yesterday, no one was intended to take away the idea that “those people,” over there, the ones who voted for Trump, let’s say, or the ones who were, and are now, actively working with him, no one was saying that “those people” need to change their ways while the rest of us just go only living as we always have.  On the contrary, the hard truth of the prophetic imperative is that each of us is going to have to make some fundamental, and unvaryingly unwelcome, changes in the way we live.  We, together, all of us, have to change, have to do things differently, have to be different.  Heschel says that “the purpose of prophesy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner person as well as to revolutionize history.”  It’s not just “them,” it’s “us” too.  Because, of course, ultimately there is no “us” and “them.”  “We” is all there really is.

There is one other aspect which Heschel says is common to all of the Biblical prophets – besides the fact that it seems like an awful job – is that while their message begins with a message of doom, but ends with a message of hope.  “the way things are is not the way things are supposed to be, and if things don’t change, there’s going to be hell to pay.”  That’s how it begins.  Invariably, though, the prophet then says, “but things can change.  Things don’t have to continue being the way things are right now.  Instead of descending into hell, we can, together, create heaven on earth.”

Those 3 million women, children, and men – cis, trans, and other – did not gather in cities and towns from Abaline to Zebulon did not come together to declare, “We give up.  We’ve lost.  We have been overcome.”  Quite the contrary.  They said, “We’re not gonna take it.  We will not be silenced.  We will not be cowed.  We will change the way things are into the way they should be.”

To say that we Unitarian Universalists are called to be “a people of prophecy” is to say that it is our faith’s mission to affirm and promote, to advocate for, to work for the principles we hold so dear:

·         The Inherent worth and dignity of every person;

·         Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

·         Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

·         [The] free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

·         The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

·         The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

·         Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

As “a people of prophecy” we add our voices to all those prophetic voices – past, present, and into the future – who will not stop until justice rolls on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Doing Nothing ...

This coming Friday -- January 20th -- is the day on which Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.  There will be, not surprisingly, protests and demonstrations as well, but "the eyes of the world" will be on the West Lawn of the Capital Building in Washington, DC.  People have wondered what our congregation is going to do on the 20th, what our response is going to be.

Nothing.

Individuals, of course, will be doing all sorts of things.  And the congregation I serve is sending two busloads of people to join with the thousands of other women, children, and men who are gathering the next day for the Women's March on Washington!  In the days, weeks, months, and years ahead the members of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist will be doing many things in response to the actions of this new Administration and the Congress.  But on Inauguration Day itself, we will not have any formal response at all.

Why?

This is not a case of "sticking our head in the sand."  In the days since the election it's been a not uncommon thing to hear people say that they intend to turn off their TVs and stop reading the paper for the next four years.  I've heard many people say that it's just too painful to pay attention to the daily -- hourly -- bombardment of bad new and surreal behavior.  I've heard this from people within the congregation and from the wider national and international community.  It is just too painful to bear, so they're going to tune it all out.

While understandable, that is a response born out of privilege.  (Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those I've heard saying this have been people who identify as White.)  People who look like me have the choice to pay attention or not.  It is one of the privileges our White Supremacist culture bestows on people who look more or less like me -- the ability to decide how much to let our lives be disturbed.

Of course, as you move down the privilege pyramid -- which places white, heterosexual, cis-male, well educated, financially comfortable people people at the top of the pile -- the number of discomforts a person cannot escape increases.  People who identify as women, for instance, have no choice but to be aware of misogyny, whereas those who identify as men can, if they wish, push it out of their consciousness.  Women of color are forced to continually face both misogyny and racism.  You see how this works.  Poor, lesbian, trans-women of color, with little formal education have very limited ability to tune out things that are disturbing.  Those of us who say that we just can't bear to think about any these things are demonstrating our relative places of privilege.

The reason TJMC is making no formal response to the inauguration is not, then, because of a desire to "pretend it isn't happening."  Nor is it an oversight.  Instead, it's a choice.  Of the many things that can be said of our incoming President, one that is inarguable is that he craves attention.  He hungers for the spotlight ... thirsts for the affirmation of the masses.  As I noted, on Inauguration Day the eyes of the world will be upon him and all of the pomp and circumstance that surrounds such an event.  And all of that attention will feed him.  He will be at a feast.

On both Twitter and Facebook I recently suggested that an appropriate response -- an act of resistance -- is to pay absolutely no attention to President-elect Trump as he assumes the highest office in the land.  For this one day, avoid watching or listening to coverage, don't click or comment on anything you see on social media, hold back from writing anything about him, the incoming administration, the inauguration itself.  Demonstrate resistance through a disciplined decision to afford him absolutely no attention at all on the day which under other circumstances is one of the most celebrated days in a President's term.  I'd encourage people not to even speak his name.

For that one day only.

Then, of course, we all need to turn our attention back to making sure we show up where needed, ally ourselves with those whose voices and whose presences are routinely marginalized and ignored, struggle to become comfortable with the discomfort of being with others whose pain is different than ours and who may even see us as part of the source of that pain.  Tune in to the coverage of the Women's March to ensure that it has tremendous ratings.  Spend Saturday the 21st writing letters to your elected representatives, speaking up and out for those who are most threatened.  But for that one day, refuse to give Donald J. Trump what he seeks most of all -- our attention.

This is why the congregation I serve has no plans for any formal response.  Our faith calls us to resist injustice, and this is one way we can do that.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Day of Silence

In The Wizard of Earthsea wizard Ged inadvertently lets loose on the world a great evil.  He tries to undo his mistake, but the evil is too powerful for him.  And then it begins to chase him.  To hunt him.  And as Ged flees, his pursuer grows more powerful.  Eventually, the young wizard decides, "not the hunted, but the hunter be," and he begins to chase down his enemy.  And as he does, the evil grows weaker and weaker.  It fed on his fear.

When I took  myself and my dog to class so that they could train me to help him behave his best -- stay with me for a minute -- they said that what a dog craves nearly as much as food is attention.  So when, for instance, a dog jumps, and you loudly scold it for doing so, you are actually reinforcing the unwanted behavior because you're giving the dog the attention they crave.  (Even if it is negative attention.)  The best thing to do is to turn your back on your dog, ignore it, refuse to give it what it wants.

Donald Trump craves attention.  Hungers for it.  Feeds on it.  We know this about him.  Whatever else may be true of him, we know this.  Is he mentally ill?  Stupid?  Cunningly shrewd?  We honestly can't claim to know.  But we can know that whether he his mentally ill, stupid, and/or cunningly shrewd, he has an insatiable need for attention.

This Friday, Inauguration Day, he's going to get it.  The "eyes of the world," as they say, will be upon him.  And oh how he will feed on it.

So let's not feed him.  By most accounts Donald Trump lost the popular vote by roughly 2.5 million votes.  The majority of the people who voted did not support him, and no doubt many of those who did are now wishing that they hadn't.  What would happen if each of these people refused to give Trump any attention -- positive or negative -- on Inauguration day?

Let's commit to each other that on Friday, January 20th, we will not:

• watch, listen to, or read any coverage of the inauguration
• post anything having to do with Trump, or his administration, on any social media;
• respond to anything we see posted;
• click on anything we see posted;
• talk about the Inauguration, the new President, or his administration.

I am not suggesting that we bury our heads in the sand.  Vigilance will be required during this Presidency as, perhaps, in no other.  But for one day let's refuse to give Donald Trump the thing he wants most -- our attention.

Spread the word -- #TwitterSilence

Pax tecum,

RevWik