A Place of Peace

This is the text of the reflections I offered at the congregation I serve here in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, July 1, 2018.  I wanted the second half to be less consciously conceptual and more a free flowing of spirit, so this is a reconstruction of what those who were here heard.

Opening Words:

The abbot of a provincial monastery was in something of a tizzy, because the abbot of his school’s main temple was coming for a visit, and he wanted everything to be just perfect.  He had set his students to polishing every bit of wood, and brass, and gold, and to seek out every single dust bunny.  He, himself, attended to the grounds.

An old monk, a recognized Zen master who had retired to this monastery watched as the young abbot spent several hours raking leaves from all of the walking trails.  The abbot wanted the woods to exude quiet, and peace, and … well … perfection.  He imagined walking these clear, unobstructed paths with his honored guest, just as he strove to lead the monks under his care over the clear, unobstructed paths of the dharma.

As I said, the old monk stood watching the abbot at his labors the whole time.  When he was finished, the abbot came to the monk, and with pride in his accomplishment the young man asked the old man what he thought.  “Well … ,” the old monk said, “I have to say, you’ve certainly worked very, very hard at this, and it’s almost right. 

The abbot replied, somewhat anxiously, “Please, tell me what I have to do to make it perfect.”  “I’d rather show you,” the old master said.  He took the rake, and spent the next hour putting the leaves back on the path.  “There,” he said when he was done. “Now it’s perfect.”

He gave the rake to the startled abbot, and walked away without another word.

Sermon:

One hour a day.  One day a week.  One week a year. 

One hour a day.  One day a week.  One week a year. 

I want you to hold on to that formula.  We’ll come back to it later.  (I’ll come back to that story about the monks and the leaves in a bit, too.)

Most Sundays I note that the heart of our sanctuary service is not the sermon, or the music, (or the offering!), it’s what we call the time of “Going Deeper.”  Our lives can be so full, and so hectic, I say (as if it would be news to any of us).  Every religious tradition I know anything about exhorts us to seek, to find, or to create spaces and places in our lives where we are not overcome by the cacophony of life; where our hearts and our minds can find respite; where our souls can be silent and calm. 

In the book of 1 Kings in the Hebrews Scriptures the story is told of the prophet Elijah who asks to see G_d.  After all manner of images pass him by – a strong wind that can destroy a mountain, an earthquake, an all-consuming fire – after all of these things pass him by, Elijah finally recognizes his G_d in what is usually translated as, “a still, small voice.”  (It is alternately rendered, “a gentle whisper,” or, my favorite, “the voice of quiet stillness.”)

We have, hopefully, each of us had our own experiences of such sacred silence, times where the world grew quiet … and so did we.  Spiritual practices such as meditation and contemplative prayer can be understood to be, at the very least, about learning to create and cultivate such peace in a world, in our lives, which are most often anything but.

We need such times.  We need such places.  We need such experiences.  Because just as we have been learning how vitally important sleep is to our bodily and mental health, so too is such peace vitally important to our spiritual health. 

The Unitarian Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (who, a colleague once described as, “wash[ing] out of the ministry early”) had more than a little to say about sacred space.  In his essay Nature, St. Ralph described an experience he had in nature, that has been often quoted (although here I’m going to read a little more than is usually used):

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.  In the woods, too, a [person casts off [their] years, as the snake [its] slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child.  In the woods, is perpetual youth.  Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how [they] should tire of them in a thousand ears.  In the woods, we return to reason and faith.  There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.  Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing.  I see all.  The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

The Austrian poet René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, better and more simply known as Rainer Maria Rilke had similar thoughts about the ocean:

"When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused."

How many of us have had such experiences?  How many of us – in the woods, by the ocean, at the bank of a river, on a trail, in our gardens – how many of us have found this kind of sacred space and felt its healing balm (at least some of the times)?  I have always loved the power of an incoming storm, when the temperature drops and the winds pick up, and the sky changes color and, almost, texture.  (I’ve read that the Persian poet Khalil Gibran did too – going up to the roof of his apartment in New York City whenever a really powerful storm was coming.)  Like Emerson, I experience “a perfect exhilaration […] am glad to the brink of fear,” and find my worries and woes dropping away.

All of this is why our time of “Going Deeper” is the hub, the heart of what we do here week after week.  This time we set aside is, for some of us, the only time when we can slow down long enough to have even a taste of this kind of stillness.  And for some of us – no doubt for many of us – this place is as important as this time.  We come here, to this sanctuary, as, if you will, to an in-town forest or ocean.  We come here to seek a stillness, to find a stillness, so that that stillness can carry us through the rest of our week.

The Unitarian Universalist pastor and preacher Rev. Phillip Hewett described this seeking in words that are often used as Opening Words in UU congregations (it’s #440 in the back of our hymnals):

“From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness.  By many cares and preoccupations, by diverse and selfish aims are we separated from one another and divided within ourselves.”

Another story.  (And I haven’t forgotten that earlier story about the monks and the leaves, nor the formula with which I began – one hour a day; one day a week; one week a year.  I hope you haven’t yet either, and if you did I’ve just reminded you.)

I’ve mentioned before that when I was in my 20s I had the wonderful opportunity to spend two months in Japan working with the Kanjiyama Mime troupe.  This was in the midst of the twenty or so year period in which I followed the Zen Buddhist path, so although my work in Japan was centered mostly in and around Tokyo, I simply had to make a side trip to Kyoto, which was the Imperial capital of Japan for over 1,000 years.  It’s also been called “the city of temples,” because of its 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines.

I visited several Buddhist temples while I was there, particularly those with the justly famed gardens of stone and raked sand.  And I have to say, when I walked onto the temple grounds – and this was true of all of the temples I visited – I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace.  It was nearly palpable, and I felt myself infused with it.  Just being there quieted my mind and stilled my soul.  It was powerful, and an experience I hope I never forget (no matter how much else I may come to forget).

And this pervasive and palpable peace was perhaps nowhere more present than in the zendo.  These beautiful, spare spaces seemed filled with the energy generated by the monks who meditated there day after day, week after week, years upon years, over centuries and centuries.  It seemed to me that these halls had been infused by the peace of its monks, just as it held the fragrance of all of the incense that had been burned there.

At one of the temples the monk who was walking me around brought me outside the back of its zendo.  The meditation hall had been built at the base of a cliff, and there was a place where a small waterfall had carved a channel in the rock.  Ice cold water from a mountain stream above still fell, as it had for centuries.  At the base of this channel there was a somewhat circular, somewhat flat rock … about the size of a meditation cushion, actually.  And the monk told me that the most advanced students would sometimes leave the zendo during the time of meditation, that they would get off their cushions and come out here.  They would leave the peace and stillness of the zendo and come out here to continue their zazen practice— here, on that rock, under that icy shower.  He invited me to touch it, and even the brief period it poured over my hand was quite literally bone chilling.  And there were monks who choose to practice here under this freezing flow, rather than in the warmth and peace of the meditation hall.

Since I posted the Black Lives Matter sign on the wall behind this pulpit, I have heard from some of you who’ve said that it disrupted, and for some even destroyed, the feeling of peace you had in this hall, and which you sought still.  For some it’s the “garish” colors, discordant with soft blue of the wall.  Some felt it to be an intrusion of the outer world into this inner space, an imposition of the political – and the divisively political at that – into this place of peace.  “I used to look up at the altar throughout the service” someone said to me, “and it would allow me to let everything go.”  This person continued, “Now I can’t.  Whenever I look toward the altar I see that sign, and I can no longer get away from anything … even for just this one hour.”

I would note that this isn’t everyone’s experience.  I have also heard from some of you who find the presence of this sign a powerfully positive thing.  Many – not all, but many – people of color, and perhaps especially those who are new to the congregation, who are checking it out, have said that seeing that sign not only outside of our building, but inside it as well, has made them feel truly welcomed and safe in a predominantly white faith community … for the first time.  “You see me,” they’ve said.  “And you care enough about me to say that explicitly, here, in this sacred space, even though it must cause some of you discomfort to do so.”  As Unitarian Universalists – particularly as Unitarian Universalists committed to the vision of true Beloved Community, that is truly multigenerational and multicultural and committed to the dismantling of racism and the systems and structures of oppression of all kinds – as Unitarian Universalists we know that having our needs met is not the ultimate measure of our success.  Rather, it’s to be a people who know that what matters most is our collective needs, the needs of our whole community, and that means sometimes setting aside my own needs for the sake of someone else’s.  This is one of my reasons for keeping the sign where it is – while some of us are discomforted by its presence, others (and not just people of color, but some of us who identify as white, as well) are more comfortable because it’s there.

I’ve also said, over the years, that if those of us who identify (or are identified as) white are really committed to the overthrow of the deeply and fundamentally racist culture that is U.S. culture, if we’re really committed to this work, then we are going to have to change.  We are going to have to be uncomfortable, because it is uncomfortable work to let of what we’ve known, and learn to see the world through new eyes.  Yesterday, at the Families Belong Together rally downtown, we were reminded by one of the speakers that as outraged as we are by the separation of immigrant families today, it’s been happening in our country to brown and black families since the founding of the nation – African families, native families, the families of anyone deemed to be “Other” have had their families split up as a deterrent .. a deterrent to even thinking about fighting back against their oppression and their oppressors.  This makes a lot of white folk really uncomfortable, as we want to believe that this kind of behavior is an aberration, and it’s tremendously disconcerting and disorienting to discover that it’s actually been a part of the fabric of our culture from the beginning.  

I’ve preached this need for those of us who identify as white to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” to lean into the pain that brings with it, and to realize that our assertion, our assumption, that we can and should be comfortable is a piece of privilege not shared equally.  Black and brown people – like women, those who identify as part of LGBTQI communities, Muslims, and everyone who’s been historically, and still are, marginalized – have had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because that’s a part of their daily experience.  I’ve preached this, and this message has been greeted with applause and praise for my “courage” and willingness to “say what has to be said.”  The presence of this sign is one way to remind us of these truths.

My two Buddhist stories are another way of understanding what the presence of this sign, in this place, is all about.  It is easy to find peace in peaceful places.  It is easy to be still when there is stillness all around.  It is easy, with apologies to Kipling, for us to “keep our heads when all about us are keeping theirs.”  But try meditating under a shower of ice cold mountain water.  Try finding a clear path when it’s obscured by leaves.  Try looking at the altar and letting everything go when out of the corner of your eye you see a reminder of the pain and the struggle in our world.

I can imagine that some of you are experiencing these reflections as being more than a little … defensive.  And I can imagine that some of you are experiencing them as being dismissive … of your concerns, of your real disheartening discomfort, of your own felt needs.

I hope that I’m not being defensive; I’m hoping that I’ve been offering an explanation of why, in this regard, I am doing what I’m doing.  Agree or disagree, I hope I’m helping you to better understand. 

I am aware, though, that I have often come across as dismissive.  I acknowledge that some of you here – and no doubt many who are not – have felt dismissed, especially this year and especially since the end of February when that anonymous racist note and attack was directed at our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, and her family.  And while I do recognize and acknowledge that for some here that has been the impact of some of what I’ve said and done, that was never my intent.

In her sermon on Sunday morning at General Assembly last week, the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray reminded us that she had been called not just to be a leader in our movement, but also a pastor.  That really struck me.  It struck me deeply.  And it struck me deeply because I realize that – especially since February – I have not been as much of a pastor as I now realize I should have been.  Prophetic, maybe, but not all that pastoral.

I know that I have come across to some of us as if I were saying that there were one, and only one, way of being involved in the struggle for racial justice.  I recognize that I have not always said what I mean to say in ways that have been all too easy to misunderstand.  And I am aware that this has led some people to feeling blamed, or shamed, or, as I’ve said, dismissed.

The Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou said, “If we agree in love, no disagreement can do us any harm.  Yet if we don’t, no agreement can do us any good.”  I’m paraphrasing, but you see what we meant.  We don’t have to agree with each other, we don’t have to see things the same way, we don’t have to be the same amount of “woke” (as if you could measure that), we don’t have to be in the same place of understanding, or in the same place of action … if we agree in love, none of that need matter.  The Beloved Community has room for all of us.  We are all works-in-progress and, again, if we can remember to “agree in love,” we can move forward together.

This is a community of good-hearted people, and we cannot afford to risk complacency – the time is too dire and the stakes are too high.  This is a community of beautiful and loving people, and we cannot let a comfortable appearance of peace supplant our commitment to justice.  The work we have set ourselves to is hard.  Relationships are hard.  For that matter, life itself is hard.  Yet as I say to my younger son, “We can do hard things.”

And the discovery of, or the creation of, the cultivation of places and spaces of peace is something we all have to do – individually and as a community – if we want to do the hard things our faith calls us to.  Our time of “Going Deeper’ is intended to be such a time each week, as I know listening to the musical gifts of Scott and James is for many of us.  But that’s not enough.

And that’s where we come back to the formula with which I began:  one hour a day; one day a week; one week a year.”  The Unitarian Universalist preacher Carl Scovel offered this as a pattern we can use to structure our spiritual lives, to ensure that we’re feeding that sacred silence.  Take one hour a day, each day, for quiet and contemplation.  Pray, meditate, walk your dogs and enjoy the walk, sip a cup of tea … for one hour a day give yourself some space to quiet down enough to listen for that “voice of quiet stillness.”   And then give yourself one day a week.  Think of the Jewish tradition of Shabbat, the seventh day of the week on which you are to abstain from anything that might be called “work.”  I’ve heard the practice of such sabbath time as being, “don’t do anything because you feel you have to do it.”  This one-day-a-week is not the time to do the laundry and the 101 errands that have piled up.  It’s a space for space.  And so is that one week per year.  Scovel suggested that we should strive to shape our lives so that we can have one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year during which we can set ourselves to the no-thing-ness of stillness.

When we are intentional about creating such space – even if we can’t quite meet Scovel’s recommendations – we will find ourselves in a much better place to find that love in which, and through which, we can agree, letting no disagreement tear us apart.

Closing Words:

I have another story.  In Divinity School I was especially interested in cross-cultural monastic practices, so this is another story of a monk. 

This time it’s a Christian monk who was in her room, engaged in contemplative prayer.  It was a warm day, so her window was open.  Outside, the birds were singing, the crickets were chirping, the frogs were croaking, dogs in the distance were barking, and the wind was rustling in the leaves of the trees.  The cacophonous chorus of life was going on outside of her room, and the monk found that she simply could not concentrate on her prayers.

So she rose and went to her window.  Such was her spiritual power that she did not just close the window, she leaned out and shouted, “Silence!”  And all the world grew silent.  There was no sound at all – no birds, no crickets, no frogs, no dogs, no wind.  The silence was complete and total.

The monk returned to her prayers and, at first, she was able to go deep into her contemplations.  Yet she began to notice that again she was distracted, and this time it was worse than it had been.  The silence was nearly deafening.

So once again she rose and went to the window.  And once again she leaned out.  This time, though, she spoke more softly and said, “Sing!”  All at once, the song of life resumed, and she welcomed the world back into her prayers.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

How Do You Want to Bloom Here?

This is the text of the reflection I offered to the congregation I serve on Sunday, April 25th, 2018.  (If you prefer, you can listen to it.) 

I want to thank those of you – both here and not here this morning – who have taken the step of formalizing your membership in this community.  The two things I like to say to new members are:  congratulations (because you’ve joined a wonderful congregation), and thank you (because by your joining, and by bringing the gifts and spirit only you have, you are making it more wonderful still).  So, congratulations and thank you.

I must say, though, that you’ve picked an … interesting … time to take this step.  There’s supposedly an ancient Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times,” said not as a blessing, but a curse.  “May you live in … interesting … times.”  It turns out that it isn’t a bit of ancient Chinese philosophy, yet we certainly can understand using the word “interesting” as an ironic euphemism for … well … for the kind of times we’re living in.  And while I could be talking about “the times we’re living in” in relation to this time in our nation, or this time in our city, this morning I’m most interested in the … interesting … times we find ourselves in here in our congregation.

This is a time when many people are questioning whether or not this is the right congregation for them, or who don’t know if they want to, or even if they can, go with it in the direction it seems to be going.  This is a time when people are even wondering about whether Unitarian Universalism, as a faith tradition, is what they’d thought it was, and whether they can honestly and with integrity continue to call themselves UUs.  As I said, this is very much an … interesting … time to be joining TJMC.  You’re joining just as a lot of people are wondering about, and fearing for, the future of the congregation.  There are those who are saying that we’re in a time of crisis.

Not me.  Not me.  I believe firmly that his disconcerting disquiet and disequilibrium we’re experiencing right now is not a problem.  I think it’s a good thing, something to lean into it. I see it as an opportunity. 

My Mother-in-Law, herself a retired Methodist minister (and well versed in the ways of congregational life), asked me just the other day if what has been happening at our church had “calmed down” at all.  I told her that I certainly hope things haven’t calmed down too much.  I reminded her of the Rev. Dr. King saying that there are some things to which we all should be “maladjusted.”

I want to be clear that I don’t think being uncomfortable just for the sake of feeling uncomfortable is a good thing.  Nor have I forgotten that while the famous description of religion’s purpose is about “afflicting the comfortable,” it also says that our work as a faith community is about “comforting the afflicted.”  I know that; I do.  Yet don’t we all know how easy it is to move from comfort to complacency?  And sometimes it can be hard to keep track of who, in our culture, needs comforting and who’s in need of some afflicting.  This isn’t another sermon about our racial justice work, or even about the current controversies surrounding us.  I’m really talking this morning about how our faith invites us to live our lives, you and me.

Unitarian Universalist unequivocally calls us to reject complacency in all its forms.  At its best, and perhaps more than any other of the organized religious responses to life we humans have developed, it calls on us to refuse to be too settled, too satisfied.  It calls on us to question … everything … and to keep on questioning.  As one of our hymns puts it, we believe that, “to question is the answer,” or as an old bumper stick said, “Unitarian Universalism – leaving no answer unquestioned.”  We are famously not bound by creed or dogma; we are charged with searching for truth and meaning – on our own and in community – and understand this to be a life-long search.

One of my favorite spiritual teachers is the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.  (If you’ve never seen the video of him giving a talk that’s usually described as “the greatest sermon ever,” it’s well worth Googling when you get home.)  He has said that for a real scientist is kind of disappointing if an experiment proves their hypothesis, because then it’s all over and done with.  The excitement comes when an experiment doesn’t prove your hypothesis and opens up a whole new host of questions.  According to Tyson, it’s the questions, not the answers, which drive the scientific enterprise; scientists are much more interested in exploring the currently-still-mysterious, rather than simply creating a catalogue of the known.

I love this so much because I think that it’s the purpose of our Unitarian Universalist faith as well.  When we’re at our best, it’s the enterprise our congregations exist to help each of us, and all of us, engage.  We are not supposed to be satisfied with the answers we found ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, or even, necessarily, last year.  We believe in evolution not just in biology, but in our understanding as well.

Years ago, while serving another congregation, I had a sign on the board in front of the church for several months.  It said: “If you can’t change your mind, how do you know you still have one?”  The Christian theologian, and Catholic Saint, Augustine of Hippo said way back in the 5^th century, si comprehendis non est Deus.  (One of the few bits of Latin I remember.) That translates as, “If you understand it, it’s not God.”  And I’d say that whatever terms or images we use to describe Ultimate Reality, that Spirit of Life we sing about most Sundays, our faith calls us to have that same awareness and attitude:  if we understand it, it’s not … It.  That’s why we’re called to the search for truth and meaning, and not to the celebratory party for truth and meaning discovered.

But this is hard.  It is hard to keep questioning our answers.  It’s hard to keep looking for new ways of seeing, listening for new ways of hearing, finding new ways of being in the world – especially when the laundry’s been piling up, and the fridge is getting a little empty.  With so much … chaos … swirling around us it would be nice to have something solid to hold on to.  Yet just as comfort can change to complacency, something solid can easily become something stagnant.

This is why I think that this … interesting … time of disquiet and discomfort is not a crisis but an opportunity.  It is an opportunity, for us as individuals and as a congregation, to really wrestle with – or, as I prefer to say – to dance with our principles, our values, and our understandings of things.  It’s an opportunity to re-examine what we really believe, something our faith doesn’t dictate to us but, rather, invites us to discover for ourselves.  It is an opportunity to ask questions:  What does it mean to be truly welcoming if in welcoming some people we unavoidably exclude others?  What does it mean to be committed to being a truly safe place for people who have historically been, and are being still, marginalized if it means things we’re accustomed to have to change?  What does it mean to disagree with others, risky though that might feel, yet still be one community?  (Can we trust each other enough to do that?  What does it mean if we can’t?)  What does my “belonging” to this community mean?  What expectations can I reasonably have, and what can be expected of me?  Do my wants, my perceived needs, my desires, my preferences have to be met for me to say that things are “going well”?  (What is the measure of the “success,” if you will, of our mutual ministry?)  What are the limits – or are there limits – to my commitment to this place and these people?  Do I really belong here? 

These are the kinds of questions people say that they’re dancing with these days precisely because of the … interesting … times in which we find ourselves.  Yet the truth is, these are the kind of questions we ought to be dancing with all the time!

Mickey ScottBey Jones, an anti-racist organizer, has written about real, deep, transformative relationships with perhaps a surprising metaphor.  Deep, transformative relationships are the kind I hope we’d agree we ought to be striving to create here, and we might think of them as cool and comforting, soothing and supportive.  Yet Mickey ScottBey Jones wrote:

[R]elationship is the sandpaper that wears away our resistance to change. Relationship is the abrasion that agitates enough to make a way forward … it smooths the way for the sacred, even as it rubs us raw.

Relationship is the sandpaper of life.

We are being offered an opportunity – again, as individuals and as a community – to ask ourselves deep and fundamental questions about our faith tradition, our own faith, the purpose of this community (and others like it), and about the meaning of our membership in it.  At its best, a faith community offers us an opportunity to discover the way into our fullness, an opportunity to truly bloom.  In our faith tradition we are challenged to discover that way for ourselves, and to keep discovering new dimensions of that “way,” so that our blooming can become ever more beautiful and fragrant. 

For me, the most important question in all of this is whether we will make good use of this opportunity.  The question to that is something that only you, and all of us together, can answer.

[The Parting Words were the well-known quotation about question by Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet.  They are well worth remembering in just about any times, be they ... interesting ... or not.]

Pax tecum,

RevWik

To sing not enough ...

Yesterday morning I joined with a group of people in a park in downtown Charlottesville.  The park has been getting a lot of attention lately, both locally and in the national media, because of an effort to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee which stands so prominently in its center.

A couple of weeks back a rally was held in front of the statue.  Richard Spencer, the man who is credited with coining the term "alt-right," led a torch-bearing crowd in chanting, "We will not be replaced," and the Nazi-era slogan, "blood and soil."  The next night, a larger crowd gathered, bearing candles, to say that Charlottesville should be a place where all people are welcome, and that the stories, the experiences, the lives of People of Color will no longer be dismissed and ignored.

Word went out that there would be a "pro-Confederacy" rally yesterday morning at 10:00, so a group came together at 9:00 so as to be there to greet them.  Signs and banners were gathered, prayers were spoken, songs were sung ... we even hummed "Amazing Grace" over and over again as people read from the Bible, made stirring speeches, and prayed some more.

And I was there, with others from the Unitarian Universalist congregation I serve, singing, and humming, and chanting with everyone else.  I even was moved to give voice to a prayer of my own. 

"Let us not be fooled into thinking that rallies are enough.  We can sing all we want to, but if lives aren't changed for the better, it will be in vain."

Earlier I had been walking around the periphery of the crowd -- trying to get a photo of the congregation's banner, truth be told -- when I was stopped by an African American man who wanted me to explain to him why I was there and why I was saying "Black Lives Matter" when, really, all lives should matter.  There was a small group around us -- some of whom I recognized from other pro-statue rallies -- but it was pretty much only the two of us talking.

A point he was trying to make was that from his perspective, People of Color in Charlottesville don't really care all that much about whether there's a statue of Lee in Lee Park.  They care about the gangs that have taken over the projects; they care about jobs, and housing, and unfair incarceration rates.  He said, essentially, "why don't all you white folks who're here singing get together in the projects and do something to actually make a difference in people's lives?  That's what will bring people together.  This stuff will just divide us further."

I have heard this same point made even closer to home.  The Pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church has been a frequent guest in our pulpit, and he has said this same thing about our congregation's decades-long wrestling over whether or not to change our congregation's name -- "people in the Black community," he has said, "don't really care whether this church is named after Thomas Jefferson or not.  We care about jobs, and drugs, and real problems that affect real people."  [An interesting coincidence -- the man I was speaking to in the park is a member of Ebenezer.]

Now ... while I do hear this, I also hear the voices of other People of Color, here and around the country, who talk with equal clarity about how the names and the statues do matter.  The mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, gave a powerful speech a week or so ago about why it was so important that the city had taken the step of removing four Confederate monuments.  If you haven't heard it, you should.  [Here's a transcript of the speech, but his delivery was incredible, so I encourage you to actually watch and listen to it.]

Anybody who's ever read even a little of what I've written knows that I am very much a both/and guy, and I recognize that there are a lot of perspectives on this country's history with regards to race, how to understand its present, and where (and how) we should go from here.  The people on one side of the issue have a lot of different motivations for holding the views that they do, as is true for those on the other side, and there is another whole group who, for a whole lot of different reasons, fall somewhere in between.  So I do see that this isn't just, excuse me, black and white.

AND

At the same time that I recognize that there are a lot of different perspectives, I also recognize that some of those perspectives have been consciously, intentionally, and systematically denied or denigrated.  While I know that there are a number of different voices offering a number of different stories, each of which I believe has some core of validity, I also know that there are some voices which have been purposefully silenced.  This is one of the things I think Mayor Landrieu did so well in his speech -- he recognized the existence of a variety of perspectives, denying none of them, and he named the importance of now listening more attentively to those perspectives, to those people, who have been for two long pushed to the margins of U.S. society.

So I understand that names and statues don't matter for some, and I understand that for some they matter a lot, and I understand that for some they have been painful for a long, long time and that that pain has been ignored. I also know that for me, I will side with those whose voices have gone too long unheard; I will cast my lot who are asking that their too long unrecognized pain for finally seen and responded to; I will show up when I am asked to show up as a sign of solidarity with those who have been pushed to the periphery.

That's why I was there yesterday morning, singing, and humming, and holding a sign that says "Black Lives Matter," because there has never been a question in this country that white lives matter.  What has been said repeatedly, and in ways both subtle and overt, is that Black lives don't matter, and I will lend my voice, my time, my energy, my body to the growing number of people insisting that we, as a country, no longer pretend that there is a rot in the roots of the nation, and demanding that we do something about it.  Black lives do matter, all evidence to the contrary.  And until our reality reflects this rhetoric, I will keep showing up.

Yet there's one more both/and here, and that's that while I will keep showing up because I think it is important to gather to sing, I also recognize that singing is not enough.  If all we do is show up in the park on a Wednesday morning and sing, and hum, and speak strong words, but the gangs remain a presence in the projects, and African Americans are more likely than whites to have negative interactions with the police, and our legal system remains so obscenely imbalanced, and ... if these things don't change, none of the songs of solidarity will matter much at all.

What would happen if all of the people who identify as white who show up at rallies like this were to put as much energy and enthusiasm into making a real difference in the real lives of real people as we do in putting on a show?  (Note that I said, "we" there, because I should certainly be asking myself that question, no less than any other large-hearted, well-meaning, liberal white person.)

A post from a Charlottesville man named Chris Newman (owner of the local Sylvanaqua Farms), responding to the candle-light follow-up to the torch-lit rally, recently went viral.  He begins:

A message to Charlottesville about Lee Park from your local Black farmer:

I know some folks are really feeling themselves about this whole Love Trumps Hate counter-rally to Richard Spencer's punch-worthy shenanigans in Lee Park.  I'd like to appreciate it, but frankly I just don't.

He goes on to describe Charlottesville as "the most aggressively segregated place" he has ever lived, and he describes some of the realities he faces as someone "farming while black."  He concludes.  

Truth is, as a Black dude, I'm far less bothered by the flag wavers [...] than this town's progressives assuming its race problem has nothing to do with them.  The former is a visual inconvenience.  The later could leave my daughters without a father.  

So please, put down the candles and instead ask yourself:  why is my city like this?  Why is life like this for Black people in my wonderful city?  The answer is a lot closer to home than Richard Spencer or Lee Park.

Singing is not enough.  It's never been enough -- important, even essential as it is, it's not enough.  We do need to ask those questions Mr. Newman encourages us all to ask, and then we really have to go out there and do something about it.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Listening Even When We Don’t Want to Hear: UU White Supremacy Teach-In

This is the text not only of the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve -- the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville -- on May 7, 2017, but the text of the entire service.  I don't usually do this (if for no other reasons that that copyright restrictions allow the use of copyrighted materials within the context of a service of worship but in no context outside of that -- like posting online).  But this service was created as an integrated whole, even more than most.  

Ringing the Chime

Greetings

Good morning, and welcome to Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist.  Ours is a congregation in the liberal religious tradition, and we welcome all who would work together to make this a world in which all are welcome.  As a part of that welcome I would encourage each of us to do what we need to in order to be fully and authentically present.  You might need to squirm a bit, or doodle on your Order of Service, or quietly knit, but be aware that the people around you have their own needs as well, so do try to balance yours and theirs.  If what you need is a more quiet, less stimulating place to be, we have a Comfort Room out those back doors and to the right.  The sound from the service is broadcast into the room, so you won’t miss anything.  I am going to encourage all of us to take out our electronics at this time and set them to silent.  You don’t need to turn them off – some people need to be able to connect to the outside world in order to be fully present – yet none of us wants to be that person whose phone breaks a powerful silence with its default ringtone.

I want to call your attention to three things this morning.  First, I want to thank everyone who made last night’s auction the incredible time it was!  Also, as this is the start of a new month we have a new art exhibit around us – these are the works of Susan Patrick  And I want to welcome Törok Karöla, who is here visiting Charlottesville this weekend.  Karola’s father, István, is the minister of our partner congregation in Gyepes, Transylvania.  István, his wife Melinda, and Karola were all here 2013, and she has been back in the states this year as part of a fellowship.  She’ll be in the Social Hall to greet friends old and new.  Szia, Karola.

Finally, I want to say up front that this service will not be comfortable for all of us – me included.  But I hope it won’t be, because if we can examine racism, really look deep into its foul maw, and especially if those of us who think of ourselves as white can do this honestly, and it isn’t uncomfortable, then we’re doing it wrong.   Between last Sunday and this, over 600 Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country – and around the world – have been looking, deeply, at the issue of white supremacy, and not just how it operates “out there,” but how it is alive and all too well “in here” – within our Association, within our own congregations, and within our own souls.  This morning we’ll be exploring it here in the sanctuary, and all of our children’s and youth’s religious education programming – except for OWL – will be looking at issues of racial justice in age appropriate ways as well.

If you identify as a person of color, I’d like you to know that there is a space for you to caucus with others who come to these issues from a different perspective than do those who look more or less like me.  You are certainly more than welcome to stay here, of course, but the people who have developed the resources for this UU White Supremacy Teach-In realize that you may have unique needs.  This safe caucus space – which is for people of color only – is downstairs in Lower Hall 3.  I would say to anyone, however you identify, that there are people at the Racial Justice Committee table in the Social Hall with further resources for you, and that that’s a good place to go for further conversations.  (And keep your eyes open to all the ways we communicate things, because in the coming weeks and months we will be offering other opportunities to continue to explore these issues.)

All that said, as always, it is good that you – you specifically, you particularly – are here this morning.  Each of us brings something unique to this gathered community, so each of us is essential.  It is good that we can be together.

Words of Welcome

Let us say together these words we say each week, words that describe the kind of community we strive to be:

Whoever you are, Whomever you love,
However you express your identity;
Whatever your situation in life,
Whatever your experience of the holy,
Your presence here is a gift.
Whether you are filled with sadness,
Overflowing with joy,
Needing to be alone with yourself,
Or eager to engage with others,
You have a place here. 
We all have a place here.
We all are welcome here.                                      

Prelude

Chalice Lighting

Please stand close together so your shoulders or arms are touching.   Let’s read the chalice lighting together.

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice in covenant with you.

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice with my love.

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice knowing I have much more to learn. 

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice with my hope.

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice with my determination.

We are the Chalice.
I light the flame of justice supported by our Unitarian Universalist faith.

(written by Kate Fraleigh)

Opening Hymn:  #119 Once to Every Soul and Nation

The original lyrics, “Once to every man and nation …,” were taken from a much longer poem by the white poet and abolitionist James Russel Lowell, titled, “The Present Crisis.”  It’s a poem about the need to bring slavery to an end and for America to free itself from its past so that it could become what it was meant to be.  The version we sing addresses the problem the poem’s gender-specific language, but after singing it one Sunday a parishioner suggested that the title should be changed again, this time to say, “Oft to every soul and nation.”  This looks to be one of those times.  It’s #119 in our grey hymnal.

First Reading

Our first reading is an excerpt from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  While in jail, an ally of Dr. King’s smuggled in a newspaper which contained a piece titled, "A Call for Unity."  It was a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods. The letter provoked King, and he began to write a response on the newspaper itself. King writes in Why We Can't Wait: "Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me.”  In this section, he wrote:

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

First Reflection – Establishing a Context

To those of us in this room who identify as, or are identified as, white, I encourage you to take a deep breath and to do what, at its best, our Unitarian Universalist faith calls on us to do – to open our minds to the possibility of encountering truth in ways, places, and forms we hadn’t expected, and to open our hearts to hear the voices of those who have different stories than the ones we know and tell.  To those here who identify as people of color, I am grateful for both the support, as well as the suspicion, I expect you bring with you this morning.

I must say that I have rarely stepped into a pulpit with more trepidation than I do this one this morning.  Stepping, blindfolded, onto an electrified tight rope strung over a minefield built on a quicksand pit seems more appealing right about now. 

Some people are calling what’s been going on recently within our Unitarian Universalist Association an “upheaval,” an “implosion,” “chaos,” a “crisis.”  I would note that most of the people who are saying these things are people who identify as, or who are identified as, white.  It is, by and large, white Unitarian Universalists who are expressing fear at “what we’re doing to one another,” who are outraged that words like “white supremacy” and “Unitarian Universalism” are being uttered in the same breath, who are counseling taking care not to “push people away,” who are already talking about “healing” and “building bridges,” and who keep reminding anyone who will listen that the real fight is “out there.”

Black and brown Unitarian Universalists … not so much.  At least those I know personally, and those I have some connection to – no matter how many degrees of separation – aren’t saying that stuff.  None of this is some kind of shocking revelation to them; it’s been their lived experience.  None of this is all that surprising, except, perhaps, surprise at just how surprised (and threatened) so many white UUs are.  Oh, UUs of Color are expressing anger –that the things they’ve been saying for decades are being met with so much dismissive disbelief.  And they are expressing fear, too, but it’s not so much the white fear that this is going to tear our Association apart.  It’s the fear that once again what looks like a possibility for a real awakening, for real change, is going to – once again – turn back on itself and renew the slumbering status quo that is required by the dominant, white supremacist culture.

But let’s take a look at those words, those two words – white supremacy.  They’ve seemingly become the magnet, drawing to them all the anger, guilt, fear, denial, rage, disorientation, and discomfort that go along with any honest examination of race in this country.  People are saying – the vast majority of them white people – that those words just aren’t appropriate to use to describe us.  Those words, people are saying (the vast majority of them white people) are too divisive, too inflammatory.  A lot of white UUs are saying that the insistence on using those words, those particular words, is going to tear us apart and spell the end of Unitarian Universalism as we know and love it.  To this last point, my dear friend Aisha Hauser has said (and this is in your Order of Service), “If the words “white supremacy” – that accurately describe the water in which we swim – are going to be the reason that Unitarian Universalism will fall apart, I invite you to think about what exactly is holding us together.”

One of the things we know without question about the way racism works – beyond, of course, the conscious and intentional racist acts of individuals and groups – is that it creates a system, a culture which makes white perspectives, and white attitudes, and white experience, central and normative.  We know, incontrovertibly, that one of the ways racism works is to subtly, and not so subtly, conflate “white” with “normal” … with “human.”  It makes it so that we – both whites and people of color, too – come to believe, even without realizing it, that the assumptions white folks have about the way things are and the ways things are supposed to be – based on what we’ve been taught and on our own experiences –  are true, are reality.  (The white anti-racist author and speaker Tim Wise has said that one piece of white privilege is the ability to define reality and have that definition stick.)

The white scholar of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell, famously said that the stories other cultures tell about how the world works are called “Myths;” the stories our culture tells about the way the world works are called, “The Way The World Works.”  On my door there is a poster with a quote from the white anthropologist Wade Davis which says, “The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you ...”  To me, these two are helpful here, because one of the ways the culture of white supremacy perpetuates itself is to try to convince us –all of us – that its racist assumptions and assertions are simply “The Way The World Works,” and that anything – any practice, any perspective, any perception – anything at any variance from that is simply “a failed attempt at being [normal],” (where “normal” is defined – even unconsciously – as being synonymous with “white”).

None of this is new.  For more than a decade we’ve offered workshops and classes, book studies and discussions, film series, and my predecessors in this pulpit and I have preached on it all frequently.  But it’s hard to hear.  It’s hard to understand.  I know, because no matter how many times I hear it, no matter how many times I say it, I know that I can’t yet – hopefully, “yet” – fully grasp it.  Because it is only natural for me to think, for you to think, for any of us to think that the world as we’ve seen it, and experienced it, and known it is the way things are.  Yet this analysis of white supremacy culture is that we – we all, to some extent, but particularly the “we” who identify as, or are identified as, white – we have to not only understand with our minds, but fully and deeply realize with all of our senses and the very fiber of our beings, that “the world in which [we] were born is just one model of reality.”  “Up” is not necessarily “up” just because that’s how we’ve always experienced it to be.  “Down” is not always “down.”  “Fair” and “right” are not always “fair” and “right.”  And it doesn’t matter how well-meaning, and good-hearted, and liberal we are.  How “woke.”  Because the culture of white supremacy doesn’t care about how well-meaning, and good-hearted, and liberal we are; it cares only that “whiteness” – and all things “white” – remain regarded as supreme.

And really, the words “white supremacy” are no more – and no less – judgmental than “systemic racism.”  To say that our own beloved Unitarian Universalist Association, even our own beloved TJMC, participates in and perpetuates the culture of white supremacy is no more of a condemnation that it is to say that they are as infected by systemic racism as is everything else in the United States.  How could it be otherwise?  As Aisha put it, and others besides her, it’s “the water we swim in.”  The culture of racism, the culture of white supremacy, is the air we breathe.  It’s in the very DNA of everything – and everyone – whether we want it to be or not, whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we are consciously working towards its eradication or not.  To deny this is like denying climate change – it has simply been much to clearly established to be argued with.  It simply is true.

So what are we going to do about it?  And in this case the “we” I’m talking about, and to, is primarily the “we” who identify as, or are identified as, white.  What are we – we white UUs – going to do about having been clearly, forcefully, unambiguously shown that the institutional containers of the faith of Unitarian Universalism – the Association and its congregations – are part of, participate in, and perpetuate the systems and structures – the culture – which keeps “whiteness” supreme … what are we going to do about it?

We could argue about what words to use.  We could argue about the “strategy” being employed to call for this examination.  We could blame the people who have been, and continue to be, hurt by the systems, and structures, and practices of the UUA for daring to speak of it out-loud and demanding to be taken seriously.  We could condemn those who are calling for change, who are, as we put it here, “lovingly calling each other back into covenant when we have fallen short.”  (Even though that love is decidedly “tough love.”) 

All of these things have been happening, with a vehemence and an ugliness that most of you might not believe and that I find exceedingly more disturbing than any declaration that the UUA is a white supremacist institution.  (This morning I saw a graphic a Unitarian Universalist made that puts the flaming chalice over a rainbow … confederate battle flag.  A Unitarian Universalist did that!) We could respond in any of these ways – and we are – but are these the ways we are called to behave by the Unitarian Universalist faith which these institutions exist to support?  I don’t think so.

I’m not sure who said this first, but I know it was a UU of Color (and I’m paraphrasing here):  Instead of arguing over what words to use, why not ask what pain caused someone to feel the need to use them?   Can we who identify as, or are identified as, white step out of our own assumptions about how things are to listen to, and really hear, what’s being said by UUs of Color whose experiences are not “failed attempts” at being us, at being … white and all that that means?  Are we willing to not only recognize –  but really believe – that our “up” is not the only “up,” and that our “down” is not the only “down,” and that our “fair” and “right” is not the only “fair” and “right?  And that, in fact, our “fair” and “right” might actually be “unfair” and “wrong.”  If we are willing to try to do that, we need to know that we will be changed.  We will have to let go of things, even things we take for granted … even things we love.  But we simply have to be willing to be changed, if our society is ever to be transformed into Beloved Community we dream about.

Musical Response:  #127  “Can I See Another’s Woe?”

The words to this hymn are from a longer poem by the white poet William Blake, titled, “On Another’s Woe” from his book Songs of Innocence.  It’s #127 in our grey hymnal.

Second Reading

The author of the piece we’re about to hear self-identifies as Vietnamese American … and Unitarian Universalist.  This is, “Dear Liberal Allies,” by Trungles

Dear Liberal Allies,

You and I learned very different things in very different ways. If you didn’t live an experience, then step aside.

We students of color, gay students, trans* students, children of immigrants and refugees
knew this stuff before our professors told us what to call it. We learned it from the bottom up.

You learned it another way. You received a set of key words and a list of definitions. Your learning was, in all likelihood, “Here is this word. This is what this word means.”

For you, it was “Xenophobia: a strong fear or dislike of people from other countries.”

For us, it was “Xenophobia: the time that boy in my kindergarten class spat on me because I couldn’t speak English yet. Or when I saw that clerk yell at my mom in the grocery store because her English wasn’t clear enough.”

For you, it was, “Racism: unfair treatment of people who belong to another race; violent behavior towards them.”

For us, it was, “Racism: that one time I saw that manager tell that sales girl to follow my dad around at Kohl’s. Or that one time my neighbor’s kid got shot by the police and they tried to cover it up by convincing everyone he was in a gang because he was Hmong, but we knew he wasn’t. Or the time my dad told me I shouldn’t rollerblade to the library because I’m not white and it’s not safe for me.”

For you, it was, “Homophobia: a strong dislike or fear of homosexual people.”

For us, it was, “Homophobia: that time in the sixth grade when Ryan shoved me against a glass door and banged my face in it while yelling, ‘faggot!’ at me until the teacher stopped him. Or when my Catholic high school’s president told me that, though he loved me as a child of God, he still believed I was sinful.”

For you, it was: “Classism: prejudice or discrimination based on social class.”

For us, it was: “Classism: the time when my best friend came over to hang out and her parents didn’t want her to come over again because they didn’t like our neighborhood. Or that one time when my friends had no idea what food stamps looked like and I was too embarrassed to explain what they were.”

So while you were learning that these academically-framed phenomena were real problems, we were getting figurative nametags for awful things that we already knew. Your weekly vocabulary list was, to us, just a hollow shadow of our lived experiences.

When you step out of class, you get to say, “Oh, awesome. I’m learning how to be a good ally and a better human being. This will help me.” For us, it’s more like, “Ah, so that’s what they’re calling it nowadays. When exactly did they say change was going to come for us?”

A Time of Silence

Let us take a moment of silence – to sit with what we’ve heard; to be with what we’re feeling; to sink into the realization that what we see, what we know to be true, is not as true as we believe; and to seek the courage to risk losing some of who we’ve been to become who we need to be.

Musical Response:  Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed on Freedom

Reverend Osby of Aurora, Illinois created this revamp of an old gospel song “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus” while spending time in Hinds County jail during the freedom rides. The song spread and became part of the civil rights movement as did many others during the time, this song being one of the more notable pieces.  I hope that even as a predominantly white congregation we can hear in it what People of Color must hear, and sing it in honor of their struggles.

Offering

One of the gifts of our Unitarian Universalist faith -- and of this particular Unitarian Universalist community -- is that it calls on all of us to grapple with the truth of life, even when it's unpleasant, even when it hurts, even when we'd rather not.  But at its best, ours is not a faith that turns its back on “inconvenient truths," nor does it give up and walks out when we disagree.  We are called on to persist in the free and responsible search for truth, even when it’s hard … even when we don’t like what we find.  To support this kind of deep and challenging faith, the ushers will take a financial offering.

Third Reading

Our third reading is from “The Uses of Anger:  Women Respond to Racism,” the keynote presentation Audre Lorde delivered at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in 1981:

Women of Color in America have grown up within a symphony of anger at being silenced at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them for strength and force and insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not learn this difficult lesson did not survive. And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. […]

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

[…]

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?” […]

My response to racism is anger. That anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone. It has also served me in classrooms without light or learning, where the work and history of Black women was less than a vapor. It has served me as fire in the ice zone of uncomprehending eyes of white women who see in my experience and the experience of my people only new reasons for fear or guilt. And my anger is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your own actions.”

Third Reflection:  Listening Even When We Don't Want to Hear

“I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. […] my anger is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your own actions.”

I have a confession – I really don’t like this.  I am genetically pre-conditioned to try to avoid conflict, and in all of this there’s a whole lot of conflict going on, with a whole lot more to come.  People are feeling ignored, disbelieved, dismissed (both in this moment and for decades, centuries).  People are feeling attacked, and rejected, and misunderstood.  There’s rage, and guilt, and blame, and fear, and all of it makes me want to run to the hills.  And hearing myself and this faith tradition that I love spoken of in the same sentence as the words “white supremacy” makes my skin itch and burn.

But as a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender male, with a comfortable income, and a whole lot of education I don’t have the luxury of running away.  I mean I do – that’s part of the privilege that comes with all those identities I just named.  I have the freedom to do that, but I don’t want to.  No matter how much I want to, I don’t want to, because I know that absolutely nothing is going to change if I do.

That’s not even it, because sure, things might change … a bit … here and there.  But as I said in my Bulletin column last month, if there is ever going to be an end to racism (and sexism, and heterosexism, and ableism, and classism, and all the other “isms” that are used to oppress), if these forms of oppression are ever going to end, there needs to be more than just change, but fundamental transformation.  And I know that I need to give up some of the privileges that I’ve become accustomed to, that I take for granted, that I never even used to be aware of, because whenever I take advantage of those privileges, I become even more complicit in the continuation of those very things I claim to want to end.

And I know that I have to give up my assumption that whatever we do, however we go about doing it, I have to understand the approach and be comfortable with it.  I have to let go of my predisposition toward insisting that I get to approve the words we use, and the actions we take, and the timing of it all.  That I believe – as a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender male, with a comfortable income, and a whole lot of education – that I get to call all these shots is yet another one of those privileges that I have to reject.

In Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he castigates those white clergymen – and through them all those “white moderates” of “good will” he despairs of – for thinking that they get to determine the strategy.  He wrote,

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never."

To their criticism of the strategy of non-violent action as being too confrontational, too inflammatory, too likely to cause possible allies to turn against the movement, he wrote,

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community […] is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. […]  [W]e see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help [people] rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and [kinship].

That is why I said at the outset that I hope this won’t be comfortable for those of us who see ourselves as white.  I can’t help but see parallels, parallels between those calls for patience, for dialing back the tension, for reducing the feelings of confrontation, and those same calls today.  I can’t help but see parallels.  I’m hoping that you can’t either.

I pray, I pray that we white UUs – however uncomfortable we feel, however hurt we feel, however guilty we feel, however angry we feel, however we feel – I pray that we will stay with all that discomfort and keep working toward what we say we want.  I pray that we will not give up, not turn back, not go back to sleep, not absolve ourselves, not make this about us, and that we not fail the call of justice as we have done throughout our history.

Candles of Hope & Remembrance and the Sands of Forgiveness & Atonement

A Moment of Prayer (spoken and silent)

Great and Gracious Spirit – God, to some; Spirit of Life and Love, to others; Call of Justice to yet still more:  This is hard.  Being uncomfortable is hard.  Being hurt is hard.  Being ignored, and disbelieved, and accused, and judged is hard.  Change is hard.  And transformation is harder.  Yet this is the work that Justice, that Love, that Life, that God calls us to – for our world is not yet the Beloved Community we’ve dreamt of for so long, the Beloved Community in which everyone is welcome, in which everyone is free, in which everyone is encouraged and ennobled, in which everyone can flourish.  So we pray for the humility to hear hard truths; we pray for the courage to speak those truths; and we pray for the strength to let ourselves be changed by them, for only with these can we join those who, from the beginning of time, have struggled for liberation of all.

And now, given that there are so many ways of naming and knowing the sacred and the holy, let us each, according to our own understandings and our own traditions, take a moment of silence open our hearts […]

In the name of all that is holy, and in all the Holy Names we have ever known, and those we have never yet allowed ourselves to hear, and today, in the most holy name of Liberation, we say, Blessed be, Namaste, Asalaam Alikum, Ashé, Shalom, and Amen.

Parting Words

For our Parting Words we return again to the Rev. Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.  Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebur has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.  […]

[And] we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.  We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.  We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

And the question for us – all of us – here and throughout our Association is, how are we going to deal with it?

Closing Hymn:  We Are Building Up A New World

Dr. Vincent Harding, who was a friend and advisor of Dr. King’s, and wrote Dr. King’s ‘Vietnam’ speech delivered on April 4, 1967, was a legend and a mentor to so many folks worldwide, and especially in the city of Denver.

In Denver circles, he is widely credited with spreading the song “We Are Building Up A New World,” sung to the tune of “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” and it’s used often at activist and spiritual events:

We are building up a new world

We are building up a new world

We are building up a new world

Builders must be strong.

Courage, sisters, don’t get weary

Courage, brothers, don’t get weary

Courage, people, don’t get weary

Though the way be long.

We are building up a new world

We are building up a new world

We are building up a new world

Builders must be strong.

Benediction

Postlude