The Need for Change

There is a struggle going on right now for the heart and soul of the faith tradition I serve.  Actually, I believe that the "heart and soul" of the faith is safe and well, but the institutional expression of that faith, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Affiliated Congregations, is struggling with how to live in to our stated commitment of becoming a truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multi-cultural community. 

The Unitarian, Universalist, and modern Unitarian Universalist traditions have a long (although decidedly mixed) history regarding issues of racism.  This history has been powerfully covered in the writings of the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, and the nearly exhaustive book, The Arc of the Universe is Long: Unitarian Universalism, Anti-Racism, and the Journey from Calgary.  Yet many see the so-called Black Empowerment Controversy of the late 1960s, as the catalyst for all the successes, failures, and struggles which form the foundation of where we are today.  Over and over again, this majority-white religious tradition has been challenged to look at just what it means to be a majority-white institution committed to the dismantling of the white supremacist culture in which we all "live, move, and have our being." 

In recent years there has been a strong call by people in historically, and still, marginalized groups within our movement for us -- as individuals, as congregations, and as an Association -- to really, fully, deeply come to terms with the ways in which we participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of the white supremacist culture that is the dominant culture in the United States and which informs and "infects" every institution.  Especially those of us who identify or are identified as white are being challenged to recognize that we, ourselves, though good-hearted and well-meaning, are mired in the very muck we claim we are committed to cleaning up.

This is not to say that the commitment we claim is false.  When I first moved to Charlottesville, Virginia -- where I have been serving the UU congregation for the past 8 years -- I met with an African American pastor with whom my predecessors had established a relationship.  I'm paraphrasing him a bit here, but he said to me, "We know about you Unitarian Universalists.  We know how you've shown up over the years to support the African American community.  We know how you answered Dr. King's call to march in Selma.  We know about your commitment to racial justice."  And when the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. came to Charlottesville to speak following the events of the summer of 2017, it was not by coincidence that he choose to speak from the pulpit of the Unitarian Universalist congregation.  Many UUs have spent a good deal of their lives, and a lot of their heart and soul, working for the cause of racial justice.  That's a fact that simply cannot be denied.

Yet that fact, that commitment, is not what's being challenged today.  What's at issue is not whether we UUs are committed to racial justice, but rather what that commitment calls on us to do -- again, especially those of us who identify or are identified as white.  In the years since the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and '60s the analysis of the many, and often insidious, ways racism works has evolved. 

One example is the growing insistence on using the phrase "white supremacy" where in the past one might have said, "white privilege" or, more simply, "racism."  For some whites the term is thought to be too provocative, too inflammatory, especially when it's being applied to us.  We might be willing recognize that there's a sense in which we are "racist," because of the inherent "racial bias" with which we've been inculcated from our earliest days, and we might even be comfortable acknowledging that we benefit from "white privilege," yet we draw the line at using the phrase "white supremacy," because we think that it should be reserved for those who march with tiki torches, while waving Confederate and Nazi flags.

Yet anti-racist scholars and activists note that the term "racism" is rather vague because it doesn't explicitly say anything about the power dynamics involved.  The bizarre notion of "reverse racism" can conceivably exist comfortably within the term "racism."  "White supremacy," however, clearly indicates that the issue is not just racial prejudice, but specifically all that follows on the idea that white history, culture, assumptions, norms, practices, perspectives, etc., are superior to those of people of color or, to put it another way, are "supreme."  So, while not every white person is a white supremacist, we all participate in, and benefit from, the culture of white supremacy.

What is being questioned today is whether or not we white UUs will evolve with this evolving understanding of the dynamics of white supremacy culture -- an understanding that comes directly out of the lived experience of people of color and those of intersecting oppression.  Another way of asking this is, will we who identify as white actually listen to and believe what we're told by our siblings of color about how we (even if unintentionally and unwittingly) participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of the oppressions we are committed to ending?  Will we believe what we're told about what's needed to actually dismantle the culture of white supremacy, even if what we're told is different from, and maybe even contradicts, what we've always been told and what our own assumptions and "reason" tells us?

This is the challenge with which we are struggling today:  will those of us who identify as white within this predominantly and historically white tradition be willing to see ourselves and our institutions through the eyes of people of color, and will we be willing to change because of what we then see?  This is the direction a great many UUs desire to see the Association move, discomforting and disorienting though it will necessarily be.  We believe our faith calls us to nothing less than such a transformation. 

There is not universal agreement, however.  This disagreement gained public attention in Spokane, Washington this past week where our Association was having its annual General Assembly.  A member of our clergy distributed copies of his self-published book in which he decried what he sees as the Association's fall into "safetyism," "political correctness," and "identitarianism." 

The Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance responded with "An Open Letter From White UU Ministers," which was signed by over 300 ordained Unitarian Universalist ministers.  It is even more important to read the responses from DRUUMM -- Diverse  Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries -- and POCI -- the People of Color and Indigenous Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association -- as these provide the perspective of the people of color who were most directly harmed.

Although I was not in Spokane, I asked to have my name added to the "Open Letter" because even without reading the book I have heard other UUs from historically, and still, marginalized groups describing the pain they felt and the harm the book's content caused.  I believe their testimony, and need no more "proof" than that to know that I must place myself in solidarity with them.

I will read the book, though, because as a person who identifies as white I think it is incumbent upon me to know what other white folks are saying, what "case" they're making to push back against the call to be transformed in and through the work of transforming our society.  In the little I've read so far I'm saddened, though not surprised, to see arguments that I've heard in the congregation I've been serving from people there who think that the way we were going about the work of racial justice was wrong.  The struggle that's going on in the larger Association is going on in local congregations as well.

I do not believe that I know everything about the work of our mutual liberation.  I know for certain that much of what I think and see has been conditioned by the very culture I am committed to changing.  I recognize that the truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multicultural Beloved Community I am committed to working for will be entirely different than the world I know, undoubtedly unimaginably so.  And I know that getting there will require, will demand, that I undertake the painful work of transforming myself.  I do not like this.  I would rather not.  Yet if I truly am committed to dismantling the white supremacy culture I know that I have no choice but to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Cost of Freedom

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, May 26, 2019 to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Every year until his death in 2012, Senator Daniel Inouye introduced legislation to change the date of Memorial Day from what it is now, the last Monday in May, back to what it had been before, May 30^th (regardless of what day that fell on in any given year).  That change occurred back in 1968.  If Inouye, who entered the Senate in 1963, took up this cause immediately, he would have introduced this bill over 40 times.

Marking Memorial Day on May 30^th goes back to the mid-1800s.  The precursor of Memorial Day was Decoration Day.  The “official” history, the one we most likely learned in school (if we learned about any of this at all), is that in 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, the head of an organization of Union veterans, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, declared that May 30^th should be a day for decorating the graves of the more than 620,000 soldiers who died during the war, “whose bodies,” he wrote, “now lie in almost every village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”   It didn’t matter on which side of the war you’d fought – Logan believed that the ultimate sacrifice paid by both Union and Confederate soldiers alike deserved to be remembered.  It is said that he thought the day should be celebrated in the spring, and that May 30^th was chosen because it was a date on which no battle had been fought, making it a day to honor all the soldiers who died in all the battles of the war.

The story we most likely weren’t taught in school is that in 1865, at the very tail end of the war, as the white residents of Charleston, South Carolina fled the city in advance of the arrival of Union troops, the Black citizens remained, welcoming the troops back to the city where the war had begun four years earlier. 

A makeshift prison for Union soldiers had been erected in the middle of what had been a race track.  The men who died there buried hastily in a mass grave.  After the Union soldiers arrived, Black workmen from Charleston dug up the remains of those soldiers and re-buried them with proper respect, creating a proper cemetery.  Above the entrance they placed a sign that read, “Martyrs of the Race Track.”  This new cemetery was dedicated on May 1^st, with a parade that included 10,000 people and which the New York Tribune described as “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”  It seems to me that this, truly, was the 1^st Decoration Day, and is the real root of our modern Memorial Day.

But why did Senator Inouye, and a large number of veteran’s groups, care about the date on which Memorial Day fell?  Why would he try year after year for more than forty years to get it changed?  The last Monday in May is easy to remember and plan for; May 30^th would be a Saturday one year and then a few years later it’d be a Wednesday; it’d keep moving throughout the week.  Inouye fought for the change in part because the last Monday in May made it so easy to plan for.  He, and as I said, a great many others, feared that what was going to be planned for each year was not how to honor the people who had died while serving in our nation’s military.  Instead, people would be figuring out what to do with a three-day weekend and the official beginning of summer.  In 2015, Marine Corps veteran Jennie Haskamp wrote a piece for The Washington Post in which she shared her frustration that meaning of Memorial Day had become “grilled meat, super-duper discounts, a day (or two) off work, beer, potato salad and porches draped in bunting.”  She argued that it should be a day to remember and reflect on the truth that freedom comes at a cost.

Stephen Stills – of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – wrote a haunting song called, “Find the Cost of Freedom” which came out as the B side to their song, “Ohio,” written about the Kent State massacre.  The song is deceptively simple – it’s just two lines long:

“Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground. 
Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down.” 

Simple, right?  The complexity, the ambiguity of the song comes when you ask yourself who it’s talking to and what it’s talking about.  Soldiers are told that they are fighting for freedom, fighting to defend democracy, fighting to make the world more safe.  And I don’t know anyone who has ever served in the military, especially during times of war, who doesn’t know all too well that those things come at a cost.  Rows, and rows, and rows of headstones in Arlington National Cemetery; column after column, line after line of names on those polished black granite walls of the Vietnam War Memorial.  More importantly, and more impactfully, the cost of this particular father/mother/brother/sister/friend who will never attend another Memorial Day picnic.  This may not have been the band’s intention, but this song is talking to and about them.

At the same time, though, those who were protesting the military industrial machine also saw themselves as fighting for freedom; it was clear that they, too, needed to be willing to “lay their body down.”  And nearly every mass protest since, nearly every concerted effort for change, has seen at least some, “buried in the ground.” The song talks to, and about, them as well.

There are a number of different kinds of freedom, all of which come at a cost.

A woman who speaks up about sexual harassment in the workplace, seeking freedom from the prison of misogyny, has often paid for that freedom with the loss of her position and having her reputation dragged through the mud.  A trans teen who comes out, seeking freedom from the false identity society demands of them, may pay the cost of that freedom in rejection by family and friends, and all too often with emotional, psychic, and bodily harm.  A woman of color who dares to speak her truth in her own voice, seeking freedom from the oppression of a society that demands she speak and act in ways acceptable to white folk, can pay for that freedom by having to endure an angry backlash and attacks on her character.

There is a cost to freedom.

When someone comes to realize that divorce is the right thing for them, seeking freedom from a painful and maybe even dangerous marriage, they pay for that freedom in friends who take sides, loss of income, or status, or the dream of what they’d thought life would be like.  Choosing to leave the safety of a career, seeking freedom from something soul-sucking to pursue a passion, has the cost of the incredulity of those around them and the loss of what our society deems “security.”

The Catholic priest and Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton said that the purpose of our lives is to free ourselves from the “false self” in which we are trapped, so that we can live deeply, fully, richly the life of our “true self.”  This is something every religious tradition teaches – that we live imprisoned in suffering, delusion, sleep, sin, not-life, and that we should wake up and strive for freedom.

In the Hebrew scriptures it is said that it took Moses and the Israelites 40 years of wandering in the desert after leaving their captivity in Egypt before they entered the Promised Land of Canaan.  The distance between the two could actually have been traversed in less than two weeks.  One rabbinic interpretation is that God led them on that long, wandering way because all of those who had grown up with a captive’s experience and a captive’s mentality had to die before the people could enter the freedom of the Promised Land. 

Is there something in your life that you feel traps you, preventing you from living full and free?  Is there something that you do, or don’t do, because you feel that you “should,” or that it’s “expected” of you?  Is there some part of you that is stunted, held back, imprisoned?  Our faith challenges us to risk the discomfort, the pain, even, of striving for freedom – ours and that of “all of us imprisoned,” as our Opening Hymn put it. 

It tells us too, though, that there will always be a cost.  The journey from what was to what can be always requires us to leave things behind, even things that have been precious to us; it always calls for a “death” of some kind.  That is why so many of us so rarely attempt it.  We fear the cost will be too high.  Yet the experience of those who have come before us, and even our own lived experience, tells us that the cost of not making this journey, of remaining in our prisons, is even higher still.

This is one of the reasons that we so highly value community, because change is frightening and potentially dangerous … nearly impossible if we try it alone.  Together, though, we can encourage one another, inspire one another, carry one another when the going gets really tough.  And when we make it to the other side, enter the freedom of our own “promised land,” we may one day be able to look back at that which we left behind, that which had had to die, and then clean and decorate their graves knowing that the cost we paid was worth it.

May it be so.

Reflections on a Ministry

This is the letter I sent to the members (both formal and informal) of the congregation I serve regarding my decision to end our mutual ministry as of the end of this church year (June 30th).  If you're interested, you can read the formal announcement to the congregation, as well as the reflections I offered the Sunday after the congregation was informed.

To the people of TJMC, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Charlottesville:

Eight years ago you called me to serve this community as your Lead Minister.  I promised that I would do my best to accept the challenge you offered:  help you move into the next phase of your journey, help you to write the next chapter of your history, help you to grow into something new, help you to be more fully the Unitarian Universalist congregation that Charlottesville needs in these times.

As I have often been the first to admit, I have not always satisfied everyone’s expectations of what a Lead Minister should do and how it should be done.  I have dropped balls, and I have let people down.  During candidating week I told you that one of the ways I understands local UU congregations is as “laboratories” for discovering how our faith tradition should manifest in a particular time and place.  Some of the “experiments” I encouraged us to try were dead ends; I don’t deny this and never have.  Over the years, in response to feedback, I made changes, course corrections, and led us to try new things – some of which have excited and inspired many here; some which have taken our congregation to the cutting edge of our Association’s evolution. 

I have championed a radically shared leadership and ministry model aimed at addressing systemic issues of racism and misogyny by refusing to continue the clergy-centric structures and assumptions so common in faith communities.  Leia, Chris, and I have twice been invited to teach a session at Harvard Divinity School about our Senior Staff model, in which the Director of Faith Development, the Director of Administration and Finance, and the Lead Minister collaboratively and co-equally share the responsibilities and authority of “running the church.”  Our approach to shared ministry was also influential in the decision to create a tri-Presidency at the UUA during the interim between Peter Morales and Susan Frederick-Gray.

I have also unflinchingly demanded that we – myself as much as anyone – recognize in ourselves and our institution the ways we participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of our white supremacist culture, however unintentionally and unconsciously … especially those of us who identify as white.  It is challenging for us good-hearted, well-meaning liberal white folks who have long been committed to racial justice, among whose number I count myself, to hear that even we are complicit in the continuation of the very oppression(s) we are trying to dismantle.  Yet as we learn to listen more fully and faithfully to the voices of people of color, this truth becomes unavoidable and our denial of it just provides more evidence.  The myriad of ways Christina has experienced racism during her time here, and the difficulty so many of us have had in believing her when she’s named it, brought up close and personal the need for us, as individuals and as an institution, to address white supremacy in here if we want to have any hope of making changes out there.

Not everyone has agreed with my methods or my understanding and vision of what a UU congregation needs to be.  Some have felt that I was going too far too fast, while others thought I was leading in the wrong direction altogether.  In the past two or three years this divide has grown increasingly visible and deep.  In 2016 we watched together as our country elected a misogynistic, xenophobic, regressively bigoted, and entirely unqualified man to be our nation’s President.  In the summer of 2017 our city became ground zero for a newly (re)empowered expression of the basest expressions of hate when first the KKK and then the “Unite the Right” rally gathered (from far and near) in our own downtown.  In February of 2018 our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, was the target of a racist attack in the form of an anonymous note delivered to her office, with the perpetrator most likely being a member of our community.

That February marked the 75^th anniversary of the founding of this congregation.  Throughout that history there have been many times when a division erupted between those who believed that our congregation was called to take the risky position of moving to the forefront of efforts for change, and those who were less enthusiastic about taking risks because of their deep desire and heartfelt commitment to the quality of this community and the need to respond first-and-foremost to the needs of those who called this place “home.”  (We could call these the “risk friendly” and “risk reluctant.”)  Neither is “right” nor “wrong” – both can create loving community and both can work for justice.  Yet they are different from one another, and it is extraordinarily difficult to be both at the same time.  It might even be impossible.  Each pulls the congregation in a different direction.  And while there is a good deal of overlap, ultimately a decision must be made.  Or, at least, a decision must be made if the congregation wants to be its most healthy, vibrant, and Alive.

Time and again this congregation has bumped up against this divide, and according to all of the history I’ve read and been told about by people who were there, the congregation’s decision has been not to decide.  “The wounds were never healed,” I have read, “the issues were never fully addressed.”  To paraphrase one of our long-time members, “we’re really good at sweeping things under the rug.”  This has made it possible for folks to come back together comfortably, to “heal,” while leaving the underlying issue of identity unresolved.

Some of the conflict that has grown among us in the past couple of years is unquestionably about differing opinions on my performance, my message, and my style, and there are people who disagree about the way our finances have been handled, and decisions the Board has made, and no doubt other things.  I don’t deny that, and have tried to acknowledge the validity of those disagreements whenever possible.  Dissent within a community is essential for its health and longevity.  Yet I believe that beneath and behind those things is the never resolved division between the “risk reluctant” and the “risk friendly,” between two competing visions of what a Unitarian Universalist congregation should be, and what a healthy congregation looks like.  The greatest predictor of the success in solving a problem is a clear understanding of what the problem is.  If one tries to solve the deep root of a problem by addressing only its surface layers, change can take place only at the top of the iceberg, not the estimated 87% that remains unseen.

Two years ago an organized effort began to bring an end to our mutual ministry by forcing me to resign or asking the congregation to terminate my call.  Their stated assumption was that my departure would fix what they see as wrong here.  There is no doubt that things would change with another ordained minister in my role.  Yet if my ministry is identified as the source of our current conflict, the underlying issue of who this congregation is and wants to be may once again go unresolved. No one, and no institution, can be all things to all people – at least not healthily.  So much energy gets spent trying to react to the needs of whoever is unhappy at any particular moment.  Yet there will always be someone unhappy if you try to please everyone, and this futile effort at achieving the impossible leaves little left with which to respond to the real needs of the community as a whole, and the demands of the wider world.

The decision to end my ministry with and among you is not one I’ve made lightly, nor is it one that I want to make.  I would like to continue to serve this congregation; I would like to continue exploring and expanding the ministries that have been nurturing and exciting to so many here.  We have done some really good things together, and have been moving in a direction that I deeply believe puts us more fully into alignment with the Call of our faith.  I know that many of you feel that way, too.  And there is so much still to do.  We continue to be beckoned forward on the journey toward becoming a truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multicultural Beloved Community that will be a living, breathing alternative to the White Supremacist Culture which pervades every facet of our society.  I do not want to leave with so much undone, nor to leave all of you who are eager to embrace the discomfort of change.

Yet as much as I want to stay I nonetheless feel compelled to leave.  Over the past two years it has become undeniably clear that there are those who are willing to withhold or withdraw their resources to ensure that my continued ministry cannot succeed and that the congregation cannot continue down its current path.  I want to be very clear — I truly do not disparage most of those who oppose my continued ministry; I believe that many of them do have the best interest of the congregation in mind, albeit an entirely different understanding than mine of what that is.  These are honest disagreements, and as I have repeatedly said, honest disagreements are essential to a healthy community.

Yet I must also say that there are some who have demonstrated that they are okay with the environment in our community becoming terribly unpleasant, extremely unhealthy, and, as many have said, toxic.  These few folks are willing to see the congregation hurt in their effort to see me gone, so strongly do they believe that I am the problem.  I cannot in good conscience allow this group to damage the congregation any further in the name of their opposition to me, nor can I continue to put my own physical, emotional, and spiritual health at risk or that of my family. 

I honestly don’t know how much my leaving will “fix,” yet I feel certain that nothing will be fixed as long as I remain.  I have said since before I arrived here eight years ago that this is an extremely strong, beautiful, and committed congregation.  I still say this today.  Unitarian Universalism is truly needed here in Charlottesville and this congregation can be a beacon, a true powerhouse for racial justice, and an amplifier for the life-save message of our faith.  I pray that with the issue of my ministry resolved you will be able to focus on the fundamental question of what kind of Unitarian Universalist congregation you truly wish to be, and that this time you stick with that discomforting question until you have finally found its answer.

It has been an honor to serve as Lead Minister in the midst of this community of ministers.  The staff I have worked with have been incomparable, rightly respected throughout our Association.  The lay leaders have been inspirational.  And this congregation has been like no other I have served.

I bow deeply in gratitude,

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Let's Not Keep From Singing

These are the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve on Sunday, May 19, 2019.  They had just a few days earlier received the news of my decision to bring our eight-year mutual ministry to an end, as well as the decision of our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, to resign.  This was my first opportunity to talk with them after they received the news.

In case anyone's interested, I sang, instead of read, the two verses of the hymn at the end of these Reflections.

What can I say?

Many of you received an email on Friday from Adam Slate, the President of the Board.  For those of you who are new here, or may not have gotten it for some reason, the email was an announcement of my decision to step down as Lead Minister effective at the end of this church year (June 30^th).  It also shared the news that our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, has also made the decision to resign.

For some I know this is a shock; some have no doubt been anticipating it.  Since the email went out I’ve heard from a lot of folks who call this their spiritual home.  They’ve shared with me expressions of their sorrow, their confusion, their anger; their feelings of loss and grief; their fears for the congregation’s future.  I know all of those emotions, because I’m feeling them too.

And, though no one has said this to me yet, I am certain that there are people who are feeling something of a sense of relief, hoping that the painful divisiveness of, especially, the past couple of years may soon come to an end.  If I didn’t admit that I understand this feeling too, I wouldn’t be telling you the truth — it’s been a hard few years.  And while I do not share these feelings, I have no doubt that there are some people who received this news gladly, happy that the goal they have been working for has finally been achieved.

All of this is to say that there are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions in our community, our church family right now.  In this sanctuary right now.  There are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions within any one of us, individually!  Emotions are so rarely clean and simple; most often they are convoluted and more than a little tangled.  Complicated, to say the least.

In the days and weeks ahead, and in the months and maybe even years after I’ve left, it will be important to remember that everyone has a right to their own feelings about this.  Not only do we not have to think alike — as the well-known maxim goes — to love alike, we don’t have to feel the same way as one another either.  Yet if we stay in covenant with one another — not something we’ve always been able to do, of course — then the words of the late 18^th and early 19^th century Universalist preacher and theologian Hosea Ballou will hold true:

If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm;

Yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good.

"If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm; yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good."

Christina and I are writing letters in which we’ll share our stories about what led us to the decisions we have made.  Those should be going out early- to mid-next week, and I am sure that after you have read them both Chris and I will be open to talking with you.  We always have been.  It is, after all, part of our covenant with each other.

There will be opportunities for you to talk with one another, too, beginning after this service when there’ll be gatherings in several locations —  The Parlor, Lower Hall 2, and right here in the sanctuary.  Choose the space that works best for you.  These meetings were designed in a particular way to help facilitate the immediate sharing of feelings, the first asking of questions, and the initial expressing of hopes for the future.  There will be other gatherings, designed in different ways, aimed at serving different needs, in the days and weeks ahead. 

I want to say another word, to be clear about today’s sessions — they are designed to gather questions, not provide the answers.  The Board will take these questions and incorporate them into the FAQ they’re developing that will go out mid-week as part of the materials for the upcoming Congregational Meeting on June 2^nd.  At that meeting the congregation will be asked to support the Separation Agreement the Board and I have negotiated (with the help of staff from the Southern Region of the UUA, and other consulting religious professionals).  Throughout these negotiations we kept asking, “How do we stay in covenant with one another?” and, “What does Justice look like in this situation?”  It took a while, to be honest, yet we finally came to a place we all could agree was fair and in keeping with our values.  I hope you’ll come to that meeting on Sunday, June 2^nd (following the service), and with those two questions in your heart and mind I hope you will vote to ratify this Agreement.

When people have asked me what I planned to say today, or even why I thought I should talk at all this morning, I’ve repeatedly said that I believe times like these need a sermon — times of change, times of a sudden shift in our lives, times of loss.  Even when the loss is anticipated, even welcomed, it still can be so very hard when it comes.  When someone we’ve known and loved is in hospice, for instance, or has been struggling with an illness for a long, long time … we know that our parent’s, partner’s, sibling’s, friend’s, child’s death is coming, maybe even coming soon, yet when it does it is still so very often a shock.  Their death was expected … but not expected that day, or in that moment.

The suddenness of most (actually, maybe all) major life changes catches us off guard.  A pregnancy lasts roughly 9 months, yet after the delivery first-time parents often find themselves feeling as though the whole world just changed in an instant, that moment they first saw or held their child.  Even women who have labored mightily for hours to bring their baby into the world have told me that there’s still a moment after all that when they suddenly feel the reality of now being a parent, as if a switch was flipped.  And they tell me that even with all that preparation they’re still shocked and knocked off their feet a bit by it.

Anyone who’s ever changed a tire knows the experience of pulling, straining with all of your might, trying to loosen a lug nut that seems to have been welded in place.  You know the thing’s going to move at some point, but … until … it … does …  Andthensuddenlyitdoes!  Wham!  I’ve smacked my knuckles more than once when that nut finally let go.

Sudden change can hurt.  It can hit us upside the head, kick us in the gut, knock the wind out of us, or make us weak in the knees.  Sometimes it’s all of the above.  Even when it’s a change we’ve been looking forward to, its sudden arrival can leave us feeling disoriented.  Because change — even welcome change — is hard.  And hard change — change we didn’t expect or want — is even harder.

The change we’re in the midst of here is even more complex to navigate because there are so many moving parts to it — so many people involved, so many different understandings of just what brought us here, so many different responses to it.  Some people see things this way, others see those same things that way, and others aren’t looking at those things at all but are looking at different things altogether. 

And there are so many tempting places to place the blame.  “We wouldn’t be in this situation if only you hadn’t …” or, “… if only you had ...”  It’s human of us to want to find a cause, to identify a reason, to, in short, seek a place to place the blame for the change we wish we weren’t in, and all the cacophony and chaos, all the pain that comes with it.  A week or so ago I heard about a tee shirt that says, “I’m not saying that you’re responsible.  I’m saying that I’m blaming you.”  Right?  I’m seeing more than a few heads nodding.  Of course we get it; it’s so human of us.

It doesn’t do us any good, though.  There’s hardly ever — and I think I’ll go so far as to say that there isn’t ever — one person who is entirely at fault, or even a group of people who are entirely in the wrong.  It’d be nice if life were that clear cut, but it’s not.  It really isn’t.  This is not to say that none of us should be accountable for our actions — people do make mistakes, and people do consciously make decisions and take actions that are … problematic … and cause harm.  I’m not saying that we should always accept every kind of behavior in the name of “getting along.”  I am saying that blaming people is not helpful.  In fact, it can make it harder to hold them accountable. 

Blame is easier, of course.  We get to distance ourselves, create a comfortable buffer of righteousness around ourselves.  Lovingly holding someone accountable, “lovingly calling them back into community” (when that’s possible), is harder and infinitely more uncomfortable because we have to stay engaged, have to bring our own selves right there into the midst, the mess of it, have to acknowledge that there are no angels and no devils.  Not even us.

In the days and weeks, months and years ahead I encourage you to stay engaged, to stay connected.  Don’t write anybody off.  Don’t give up or give in.  This won’t be easy, but living authentically in covenanted community never is. 

There’s one other thing I’d recommend — don’t let this become everything.  This morning had been scheduled as far back as the beginning of the church year to be our annual Music Sunday.  When it became clear that Adam’s email was going out this past Friday there was discussion about whether we needed to postpone Music Sunday to some future Sunday because people would very likely want to and need to focus on … this.  In those discussions the words of a hymn kept echoing in my head.  (It’s #108, “My Life Flows On In Endless Song,” otherwise known as “How Can I Keep From Singing?”)

My life flows on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation.

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing.

It sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

What through the tempest ‘round me roars,

I know the truth, it liveth.

What through the darkness ‘round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love prevails in heav’n and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

As a congregation, as a community, a people … as individuals … we have just received news that even if we kind of expected it, even if we wanted it, signals a sudden shift from things as they’ve been to … something else.  And some of us are sad, or confused, or angry; feeling the pain of loss and grief; fearing for the congregation’s future.  (Or all of the above.)  These feelings are real, and we should pay attention to them.  Yet we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them.  Through all this tumult and this strife, though we may feel a tempest ‘round us roaring, let’s not keep from singing.  For, my friends, love does prevail “on heav’n and earth.”  The Love on which, in which, this congregation is grounded is stronger than any disagreement, any discomfort, any struggle, any loss.  That Love calls on us — each of us individually and all of us collectively — to be our best selves, to bravely follow where it leads, and … whatever else we do or don’t do … to keep on singing.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Inevitability of Victory

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It was just after 6:00 in the evening on Thursday, April 4^th.*  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had arrived in Memphis just the day before.  His plane out of Atlanta had been delayed because of a bomb threat, but he’d made it there in time to speak as scheduled at Bishop Charles Mason Temple.  The address he gave that night has come to be known by the name “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” because of what he said at its end:

“I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

The next day, and at the age of only 39, he was dead.

On April 4^th, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped out onto the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Hotel.  He’d not only stayed in this hotel before, but he and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy had stayed in that exact same room so many times that it was colloquially known as “the King-Abernathy suite.”  It was a chilly evening.  Jesse Jackson had just told Dr. King that he really should take a coat with him, and King had teased Jackson about how casually the later was dressed.  As he walked out room 306, Dr. King asked one of the musicians who’d be playing that night to “make sure [to] play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ … [and to] play it real pretty.”

The day had been tense.  A federal judge had issued a restraining order against the march that had been scheduled for that coming Monday in support of striking sanitation workers, the reason King was in Memphis.  Throughout that Thursday, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been in court, arguing to have the injunction lifted.  The city said it was worried about violence; SCLC reiterated its commitment to non-violence.  Right around 4:30 Judge Bailey Brown issued his ruling lifting the ban and allowing the march to go forward.  By about 5:00, Andrew Young had returned to the Lorraine to deliver the good news.  Yet perhaps because of all the tension that had been building up a fight broke out – a pillow fight!  That’s right.  Just before he was murdered by a bigot’s bullet, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his companions had been giddy, having a pillow fight and worrying about whether or not to take a coat against the evening chill. 

And then a single bullet fired from a bathroom window in a boarding house across the street brought an end to the levity.  Dr. King lay in a pool of his own blood.  An hour later he would be dead. 

Several years ago I developed a Unitarian Universalist service to fall on the Christian holy day of Good Friday – “A Memorial to the Martyrs.”  It provides an opportunity to pause and reflect on those, both known and unknown, who have given their lives in the pursuit of justice.  Jesus, of course, and also eco-martyrs like Chico Mendes, and Jairo Sandoval.  There’s Oscar Romero, Harvey Milk, Ingrid Washinawatok, Stephen Biko, Mohandas Gandhi, Malcolm X, Viola Liuzzo, and, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr.  And you know I could go on … for a long time.

One year, as I prepared to lead this service, I was feeling a bit of despair.  A lot of despair, actually.  Maybe you’ve felt this kind of despair, too:  despair that so many people have been killed, are being murdered, simply because they were trying to make the world a better place.  So many, oh so many who, like anybody, would have liked to have lived a long life. (“Longevity has its place.”)  So many people who knew full well the dangers that you face, and that face you, when you are working for real change, yet who refused to be “concerned about that.”  At least not so concerned that they let it stop them.  I was despairing – and I expect at times you have too – because of just how often, despite their courageous commitment, they were stopped by a gun, or a knife, or a fist.

I’m honest, I wasn’t just feeling despair; I was also feeling hopeless.  Who here this morning hasn’t felt that sometimes, too?  That night the future looked to me bleak, and my hope for change was weak.  The promise of justice rolling down like an ever-flowing stream felt like an empty promise, because those who want things to stay just like they are seem to always be able to build a bigger damnable dam.  (Or, if you would prefer, a “wall.”)  If preachers are supposed to inspire hope, to provide uplifit, I surely didn’t know how I was going to do it that night.  As the choir just sang,** I was asking myself:

Will justice ever roll down?

Will justice ever roll down? 

Hope that calls in vain,

So much hurt and pain, 

Sorrow all around...

Have you ever asked that?  Have you ever felt a sense of futility in all this work for change?

That evening my wife – wise woman that she is (except for that one time when she for some unfathomable reason said, “yes”) – suggested to me that I was looking at the wrong thing.  Yes, the list of people who have been martyred in the name of justice is agonizingly long.  And yes, their example of sacrifice – their willing sacrifice – should never be forgotten.  Yet, she reminded me, the list of people who those sacrifices have inspired, who are working right now, or who lived out their lives in service to that vision of a better world … well that list is really, really long.

I believe it was that same year that I came across this cartoon.  “The odd thing about assassins, Dr. King,” a seated Mahatma Gandhi is saying to a standing Dr. King, “is that they think they’ve killed you.”  I truly do not mean to be flip, but I can’t help thinking of Obi-Wan saying to Vadar, “If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”  “The odd thing about assassins, Dr. King, is that they think they’ve killed you.”  A verse in Peter Gabriel’s song Biko puts it like this: “You can blow out a candle, but you can’t put out a fire.  Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.”  The guns, the knives, the fists are strong enough to stop a person, yet not so strong as to stop a vision.  In fact, they seem to always end up amplifying it.

In the fantastic film Gandhi – which if you haven’t seen you should go home and watch it this afternoon … this evening at the latest – there is a scene in which Gandhi is speaking to people who will be participating in a demonstration of satyagraha (the “insistent holding on to truth” which is the power of non-violent action).  He acknowledges that there will be risks, saying:

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me – then they will have my dead body, not my obedience.”

And when the assassin’s bullets took his life, they did not take his commitment, his passion, his spirit of justice-seeking.  And neither was Dr. King’s faith in that “moral arc of the universe,” bending “toward justice,” his belief in the inevitability of victory, his unshakable certainty of the arrival of all people in the “promised land” he saw from “the mountaintop” – that was not silenced on April 4, 1968.  It lived on.  It has lived on.  And the good news is that with the spirit of all who have died in the name of a better world, it continues to feed and nurtures today’s seekers of justice.

If I am to tell the truth as I deliver this Good News of the inevitability of victory this morning, I must offer a word of caution.

A few weeks ago I talked a lot about the new book by my colleague the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, After The Good News: progressive religion beyond optimism.  She notes that there is a danger faced particularly by large-hearted, well-meaning liberal folks like us (and even more particularly by large-hearted, well-meaning, liberal middle-class, well-educated white folks like most of us here).  So few of us have our own direct, lived experience of the injustices we are committed to ending.  So few of us have personally suffered under the oppressions we strive to dismantle.  And because of that distance, it is actually pretty easy to find hope.  It’s actually pretty easy for us to believe in a better world, because to a greater or lesser extent most of us have been living in a better world than most of those who experience injustice first hand. 

For many of us, maybe even most of us, our vision of the future is derived from our experience of comfort and privilege.  It is, even if we don’t say it this way, the hope that one day everyone will be free to live “the American Dream,” not as it now so perverted, but as we believe it was meant to be.  Yet such a hope, such a vision, is ultimately doomed to failure because “the American Dream,” in any form, is, itself, the source of oppression, the reality in which all oppressions are rooted.  So the caution is this truth:  the Beloved Community will not be a better version of what we have today.  That toward which we strive will be a way of life that that has been transformed into something radically, disorientingly, discomfortingly new – un-imaginably different from anything we, especially those of us who identify or are identified as white, have ever seen.

To work for that vision takes a kind of commitment, a kind of courage, a kind of faith, a kind of hope that is nearly impossible for those of us who have known more comfort than suffering, more opportunity than struggle.  Such unshakable certainty in the inevitability of victory can only – only – take root and grow in the lives of those how do not stand apart from, but are, instead, intimately connected to suffering and struggling.  That’s because only a hope that is rooted in the struggle and the suffering, can transcend it; only a faith that is born in pain can survive the pain that is inevitable as we create, together, the true, and new, Beloved Community we all need so desperately.  And that means you, I, we (most definitely I) must find ways to step out of our zones of comfort and into the places of suffering, to not simply name it but to know it, directly, immediately, in our bones. 

I know, most of you know, that despair is easy to fall into.  Hopelessness is always just outside our door, waiting for an invitation to come in to our lives.  Yet those who have known the suffering, the anguish, the pain of oppression declare unequivocally that the promised land is our final destination, and that we are destined get there.  No matter how stony the road, no matter how many are martyred on the journey, victory is inevitable.  And one day “We shall overcome,” will be truly transformed and become “We have overcome.”

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Notes:

* The choir sang “Will Justice Roll Down?”  Words and Music by Jason Shelton.

** The details about Dr. King’s last days and hours come from both the Wikipedia article about Dr. King’s assassination, and also from a project of the Atlanta Constitution and Chanel 2 Action News in which, for the 50^th anniversary of the assassination they covered the events as if they were live tweeted.

Why Am I Sitting Here?

This is the text of the reflections I offered at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Sunday, March 24, 2019.

There is a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a man named Nehemiah.  You might be expecting me to tell the story of Queen Esther and how she outed herself as Jewish just after the King declared his intention to exterminate all of the Jews in his kingdom, saving her people.  That’s the story that’s the basis of Purim, which was celebrated this past Thursday evening through Friday, and which the Gill family will celebrate here after each service.

You might expect me to tell that story – and it is a great story, really – yet I’m going to tell a story from the book of Nehemiah (and if you haven’t yet guessed why, I’ll be telling you shortly).

In chapter 5 of Nehemiah, which most scholars think is historically reliable, Nehemiah says that “a great cry” rose up from the people in Jerusalem.  The 1% were really sticking it to the lower 99% .  There was a famine going on, and the people cried out that the rich were taking advantage of the situation, and they the average person was having to take out mortgages on their homes and farms just to buy food.  (Price gouging in the 5^th century BCE!)  And the bankers and other power brokers were charging usurious interest on these loans, leading to bankruptcies and foreclosures.  (Sound familiar?  “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” right?) 

One translation says that the people cried out, “Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children.”  It makes me think of that famous extemporaneous speech Sojourner Truth gave on May 29, 1851 in Akron, Ohio in which she asked, “ if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can't she have her little pint full?” and it’s powerful refrain, “Ain’t I a woman?”  We’re no different from you, the 99% cry out to the rich.  How can you treat us so badly?

The story tells us that Nehemiah heard the outcry of the people and he was incensed.  Maybe it was the inescapable awareness of the injustice of it all.  So he called “a great assembly” of the people and confronted the rich and powerful.  Remember, most scholars believe that at least this section of the book of Nehemiah actually happened.  Nehemiah called out the people of power, the people who had the power to make a difference, and he did so in the presence of “a great assembly” … in front of everyone.

One of the things that I find so fascinating in this story is that Nehemiah was one of the movers and shakers in Jerusalem at the time.  In fact, he was governor!  Installed by the King, with letters from the King declaring the King’s support of him and telling people to listen to him.  Even so, Nehemiah knew that his one, lone, voice was not enough.  He knew that, by himself, even he didn’t have enough power to make a real change in the status quo.  And he wanted change.  He wanted an end to the inequities, the injustices he could so plainly see all around him.  So he gathered together a “great assembly” of the people so that, in addition to his political and economic power, he had with him “people power.” 

In front of that crowd, with the obvious, undoubtable power of the people behind him, Nehemiah confronted those people who had the power to make changes, and they did:  properties that had been foreclosed on were returned, interest was eliminated on all loans from that time on, and the interest that had already been paid on those loans was reimbursed in full.

Around this time of year there is an intense, well-nigh inescapable inescapable push by a few members of our congregation to get a whole lot of the members of our congregation to attend something called “the Nehemiah Action.”  The Nehemiah Action is the largest public gathering in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area, and is one of the, if not the, biggest interfaith gatherings in the entire commonwealth.  It is, you might say, “a great assembly.”  (See why I told Nehemiah’s story?)

The Nehemiah Action is the culmination of a year’s – and sometimes more than one year’s – work done by IMPACT – Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together.  IMPACT is an example of congregation-based community organizing, a form of coalition building that leverages the fact that a large number of people are already gathered together in faith communities.  27 different faithcommunities from within the Charlottesville/Albemarle area make up IMPACT -- Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Quakers, Muslims, Presbyterians, non-denominational Christians, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Lutherans, … and us Unitarian Universalists.   In fact, we’ve been part of IMPACT, and IMPACT has been a part of our social justice ministries, since the organization’s beginning – thanks especially to the work of one of my predecessors in this pulpit, the Rev. Leslie Takahashi, we were one of IMPACT’s founding congregations!

Each year, through an extraordinarily democratic process, the congregations that make up IMPACT select one concrete example of a real injustice experienced by real people in our community.  It’s an issue that can be clearly articulated and for which a practical solution is possible.  People spend the year researching the issue, learning how other communities elsewhere have tried to deal with it, and working with stakeholders and the people with the power to make a difference to come up with a solution that will work here in our community.  If you want to talk about problems, if you want to create a committee to set up a task force to write up a report that then joins all of those other reports gathering dust wherever such reports end up, then IMPACT is not for you.  If, on the other hand, you want to help develop real solutions to real problems experienced by real people, IMPACT is one way to actually have … well .. an impact.

In past years, through the work of IMPACT, and the “people power” behind it that’s on full display at the “great assembly” of the Nehemiah Action, there is now extended service on area bus routes, and an entirely new route to serve the needs of underserved neighborhoods.  There is now a free dental clinic, with a full-time dental assistant, resulting in the first year a 1,165% increase in the number of people who previously had to go to an emergency room for their dental care because they couldn’t afford anything else.  (That wasn’t a typo.  An 1,165% increase in the number of people able to receive dental care.  That’s real change; that’s having an impact.)

Even a behemoth like the UVA Health Service was moved by the “people power” of IMPACT, and they now have a program through which otherwise unemployed youth can get free training to become Certified Nursing Assistants, and get on the medical career ladder.  During the first two-year pilot program, UVA planned to train 40 people.  In January of 2017 they expanded the program, so that it now trains 80 people per year!  And 76% of students from the pilot program are now working full time as CNSs.  

Not a report.  Not a wish list.  Not an ephemeral hope.  Real change for real people facing real injustices.

While I continue, folks who’ve been involved with IMPACT are going to walk down the aisle, distributing tickets for this year’s Nehemiah Action (which is on April 11^th at 6:30 pm at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center).  If you would like to show up and be counted, if you would like to join the “great assembly” and show community leaders – the people with the power to effect change – the “people power” behind making real changes, please take one of these tickets.  (Or take more than one and invite a friend to come with you!  You don’t have to be affiliated with this congregation – or any faith community – to make a difference.)

Two years ago IMPACT saw the need for a women’s residential treatment center here in Charlottesville.  In 2015 we learned that each year there were 3,150 people in our regional jail who struggle with addiction to drugs or alcohol in our regional jail. A majority of these inmates who are women are also survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence.  Residential treatment centers are considered the best way to provide real help, yet women had to go at least as far Richmond to find such a program, leaving their friends, family, and support networks behind.  They had to leave their kids behind, too.  Working with Region Ten and both City and County leaders, spurred on by the “people power” evidenced by the Nehemiah Action, the Women’s Center at Moores Creek opened on June 1, 2018.  Now women, with their children under 5, can receive the care they need in ways that just weren’t possible before.

This year, IMPACT turned its attention to the issue of affordable housing for seniors. Did you know that 900 senior households in Albemarle County are having to choose between paying for medical care and making their rent payments? In the city there are generations of families that can't keep the roof over their heads thanks to Jim Crow-era zoning and land use policies that are still in place. Over 4000 people in the Charlottesville urban ring pay half of their income toward housing!

IMPACT is seeking ways to increase land availability, consistent long-term funding of local housing funds, and rezoning of space, as a way of addressing the need for increased availability of affordable housing for low-income seniors in Albemarle County and low-income renters/families in Charlottesville.  On April 11^th – 6:30 – 8:00 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center – a “great assembly” will be gathered to speak to those with the power to make change, calling on them to commit to doing so.  I’ll be there, and I hope many, many, many of you will, too.

If you’ve been involved with IMPACT in any way this year, would you please stand or make yourself known?  (And keep standing or holding your hand in their air.)  If you have been actively involved with IMPACT in the past, would you join them?  If you have ever attended a Nehemiah Action, would you please stand or raise your hand?  And if you plan to attend the “great assembly” we call the Nehemiah Action this year, will you join this holy host.

Thanks.

Folks, this isn’t just “power to the people,” or “power for the people,” it’s “people power,” one of the most powerful things there is!

pax tecum,

RevWik

P.S. -- I feel that I should note that the story of Nehemiah's time as governor is problematic in some respects from today's perspective.  In addition to the justice-minded reforms noted here, and his successful efforts to rebuild Jerusalem. he also sought to "purify" the city, leading him to ban marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and prohibiting non-Jews from working within the city.