I Dream a World

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, March 3, 2018, to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The Opening and Closing readings were the incredible "Let America Be America Again!" by the incomparable Langston Hughes.

Langston Hughes wrote “I Dream a World” in 1929.  34 years before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously talked about his dream in front of approximately a quarter of a million people at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.  Another 49 years would pass before the UUA published the Tapestry of Faith curricula, “Building the World We Dream About.”  There’s a whole lot of dreaming going on.

Which should hardly be surprising.  It takes dreamers to imagine a world other than the world as it is, a world where “[one person] no other [person] will scorn, where love will bless the earth and peace its paths adorn.”  As Rodgers and Hammerstein put it, admittedly in a very different context, “You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?”

Yet there’s a danger here – a danger perhaps especially for good-hearted, well-meaning liberal white folk like … well … like most of us here this morning and most of us in our Unitarian Universalist faith.  The Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, easily one of my top two or three UU preachers, has recently published her first book – After the Good News:  progressive faith beyond optimism.  The description on the back of the book says, “With humor and humanity, Ladd calls religious progressives to greater authenticity and truth-telling rather than blind optimism.”  There is definitely humor and humanity in this book, and also courage; compassion; boldness; truth-telling (to be sure); history; rebuke; challenge; hope; deep, deep thinking; and oh so much love.  She know us; she loves us; she is us; and from within that knowing, loving, and being she writes:

“For much of the past hundred years, even through wars, devastation, and the insidious persistence of systemic racism, modernist religious liberals in Eurocentric churches [meaning us] have preached about our near-unlimited capacity to fix just about everything that is broken.  We believe in ourselves so completely that the ‘good news’ has become a good word about our own capacity to heal things, leaving little room for honest atonement or our own complicity in brokenness.”

She says,

“[Y]es, with Theodore Parker and Dr. King, we believe that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ … [but] why are we so quick to focus on the ‘bending toward justice’ bit rather than honestly addressing the maddeningly long length of the arc – especially for people who live and struggle and lead at the margins of power?”

Because – and these are my words now – religious liberals, including us, have become comfortably complacent and complacently comfortable in our role as the shining beacon, the moral compass, pointing the way to that Beloved Community we “dream about.”  We look around us and see the morass of misogyny, the depths of depraved white supremacy, the incomprehensible income inequality, the xenophobia, the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender, anti-homosexual, anti-Semitic, anti- … well … the anti-just-about-anything-that-isn’t-white, we look around us and see all of that and know with absolute certainty that we offer both an alternative and an antidote.  We look around us “out there” and see all of that, and we look around us “in here” and see all of these beautiful, good-hearted, well-meaning, truly inspiring liberal folk who have in so many cases dedicated their lives to changing that world into the world we dream of.  (The fact that we are mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly well educated is seen as nothing more than a coincidence.)

My parents raised their children to be feminists, non-racists, believers in the vision, the dream, of a world in which all people are welcomed, in which everyone – absolutely everyone – had a seat at the table.  The problem is, as Nancy points out (and I’ll quote her again):

“[T]he table progressive religion invites everyone to, no matter how broad and expansive it may be, is almost always set by people who believe they are white.  Those same white people who set the table have chosen to repeatedly align that white identity with the predominant power structures of their day.

Among the difficult truths we are called to grapple with is the fact that oppressive power structures undergird every single era of progressive optimism in this country.  […] the great institutions of liberal faith were and are inextricably interconnected with systems of supremacy, patriarch, and oppression.”

Last week was the one-year anniversary of a racist attack on a member of our community most likely by a member of our community.  Our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, came in to work, took her mail out of the box on her office door, and found among the bills and requests for rooms an anonymous racist note that was directed not only at her, but at her husband and her kids.  One year ago I responded to this attack, as did the senior leadership of this congregation, strongly and clearly, and holy – or unholy – hell broke loose.  [Here is Christina's own response.]

I had preached on racism before.  I had begun to use the term “white supremacy” before, a term which scholars and activists of color have said is a more accurate description of what had heretofore been called, simply, “racism.”  I said unequivocally that if we’re serious about dismantling the systems and structures of the white supremacy culture, if we’re serious about changing the world “out there” as it is now, into the truly multi-cultural Beloved Community we dream about, then we who identify or are identified as white will need to be the ones who change.  We will need to face, and deal with, the discomfort that unavoidably comes with change.  We will have to become “comfortable with being uncomfortable,” or, as Dr. King put it so marvelously, we are going to have to be “maladjusted.” 

Time after time, sermon after sermon, I preached this same message – we, those of us who identify, or are identified, as white are going to have to shoulder the cross of dis-ease, dis-equilibrium, discomfort – and was greeted with the white liberal equivalent of shouts of “Amen!” and “Preach it brother.”  On that handshake line over there person after person said that I was “brave,” and “bold,” and “saying what needs to be said.”

And then, one year ago, I actually made us uncomfortable.  I had the audacity to disrupt our equilibrium.   I said that we – good hearted, well meaning, liberal white folks who have unquestionably toiled mightily in the vineyards of social change and the movements for justice – that we are complicit in the racism that revealed itself in our own home.  And more than that, I said, unequivocally, that whoever wrote that note is not welcome here.  And boy did people get upset.

In her truth-telling Nancy says, “Those who are accustomed to privilege consider it reasonable to expect comfort and assurance of their own fundamental decency.”  She doesn’t exclude herself from this truth, and neither do it.  Yet when we – those of us who identify, or are identified, as white – really and truly open ourselves up to seeing with new eyes, looking beyond, or through, the veil of the norms and assumptions of our cultural inculcation we will have to acknowledge that we – as individuals and as institutions – often unconsciously participate in, and unwittingly perpetuate those systems and structure upon which our society is built.

In especially potent section of her book, Nancy takes us backward from the liberal church we know today, back through our history, to show us our roots:

“Well past the beginning of the twenty-first century, liberal churches continued to remember the good old days of twentieth-century modernism.  The great modernist churches of the mid-twentieth century were tied to the concept of unending societal potential birthed after the industrial revolution.  That vison of unending societal potential was in turn tied to patriarchal and racially unjust systems that benefited from the oppression they decried.

The prevailing cultural and socioeconomic ethos of this gospel of unending progress was built by and for white men with significant power.  They exercised that power through seemingly benevolent dominion over the earth, its peoples, and its mysteries alike.”

She concludes,

“So, that explains a lot of things.”

We are complicit, all of us are.  How could we not be?  Unless we are consciously and pro-actively creating and living in radically new ways of being in the world, then we are reinforcing the way things are right now whether we want to or not.  Whether we declare our desire to change things.  Even as we work for the transformation of society.  Unless we are willing to live within a transformed reality ourselves while we do so, we are working against ourselves unaware.

This doesn’t mean that we are bad people.  We’re not.  This doesn’t mean that there is no distinction between us and those who carried tiki torches through our city two years ago.  There obviously is.  This doesn’t mean that we should flagellate ourselves with whips of guilt and shame.  We are, we truly are good-hearted, well-meaning folks who put our hearts, minds, and souls into fighting the good fight and striving for our mutual liberation.

This does mean that we need to recognize that if there is ever going to be change in this world, we – especially those of us who identify or are identified as white – are going to have to learn to be “comfortable being uncomfortable” … even when we are actually made uncomfortable!  It does mean that we’re going to have to recognize that some of what we hold sacred, even some of our most cherished ideals and values that we have for so long bravely and lovingly espoused, even these must be examined for their unintended consequences and their role in perpetuating what we are working to dismantle. 

And it means that when we dream dreams, when we see visions, when we strive to build a new way out of the world as it is toward the world as we know it can be, we have to make sure that they’re not just our dreams, conditioned as they unavoidably are by the culture in which we “live, and move, and have our being.”  It means that we need to listen to the dreams of those who have been historically, and who are still, relegated to the margins, to make their dreams our dreams, even when, and perhaps especially when, those dreams challenge our comfort and threaten to upend everything we know about ourselves.

This is scary my friends.  And believe me, it’s as scary for me as it is for you because it’s new terrain for all of us and little in the life I’ve lived so far has prepared me for this.  I do not, can not, know what the future will look like, or the path to get there, because it is a new future we are called to build, unlike, and not simply an extension of what we have known.  Yet if we hold one another in love – whether we see things the same way, or say things the same way, or strive in the same ways – then we can, together, be part of helping that dream become a reality.

I’ll end with the words of one of my predecessors in this pulpit, the Rev. Wayne Arnason:

Take courage friends.
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.
For deep down, there is another truth:
you are not alone.

Amen.


Pax tecum,

RevWik

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

Sick & Twisted Roots

This is the text of the reflections I offered to the Unitarian Universalist congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, October 22nd, 2017.  This service was part of the second UU White Supremacy Teach-In, which encouraged (and challenged) UU congregations around the country to look intentionally and explicitly at the ways we all participate in white supremacy culture.

Peter Walpole contributed an original piece for the Opening Words, "Three Fifths Compromise."


I’m want you to hang on to two numbers – 700 and 200 – because I think that they point to one of the reasons our Association of Congregations is having this second “white supremacy teach-in.” 700 and 200. Okay? Okay.

My friend Aisha Hauser is one of the three powerful and prophetic leaders of color who have called the congregations in our Association to look with unflinching honesty at the ways our Association, our congregations, and we as individual Unitarian Universalists participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of white supremacy culture. (One of the others is Christina Rivera, our Director of Administration and Finance, who, along with Aisha, and Kenny Wiley, and with the help of a lot of other people, volunteered their time and talents outside of and on top of their “day jobs,” because they love our movement so deeply and fiercely.)

In describing this work, Aisha has said:

The UU White Supremacy Teach In is an effort to help us, well-meaning liberals, learn our complicity in a system that favors whiteness and punishes black and brownness.
I have been asked, “Why use these words? [White Supremacy] Why not different words?”

Kind words, gentle words, flowery words, poetic words, all manner of words have been used for the past four hundred years trying to explain the pain and suffering of black and brown people at the hands of white people and none have resulted in liberation.

It is past time to use words that are true and accurate and yes painful. It was painful for me to realize my complicity in a white supremacist system. And I realized that I must bear witness to what I notice and recognize, especially when it is in my beloved chosen faith.

I know this is uncomfortable.  [...]

This … is … uncomfortable. For some of us, it is a whole lot more than simply “uncomfortable,” while for others it is something entirely different than “uncomfortable” – it’s inaccurate, off-putting, a bad strategy, or deeply, deeply offensive. For still others of us – most often those of us who identify as people of color – it is both long overdue and painfully frustrating that we have to do it at all, and that some of us – most often people who identify as white – are so resistant to it.

Philosophers often begin their papers by defining their terms so as to be able to sidestep arguments over language and focus on the real issues. The reader, then, is expected to say, “Okay, that’s not how I understand that term, but if that’s how she’s using that word, what do I think of the point she’s trying to make with it?”

So here’s the way I’m using these words this morning. (And it’s not just me, and it’s not just some radical Unitarian Universalists. Academics who study race and racism in our country, and activists who are working to change things are using these words in this way too.)

“White Supremacy Culture” refers to the dominant culture in our society which is intended to foster and perpetuate the oppression of people of color, and to elevate everything “white” to a superior, to a supreme, position: history focused on the actions of white people; music and literature reflecting white tastes and norms; the designation of some language as “proper,” and what is in some way or other “deviant;” social norms of dress, and hair, and preferred features and body types; who is a bankable lead in a movie. I could go on with more specifics, but the point is that white supremacy culture is fundamental – foundational – to our society, and as such every institution incorporates, and is built upon, its systems and structures to some extent.

The term “white supremacist” is a little trickier, a little more nuanced. There are obvious and explicit white supremacists like Richard Spencer and his ilk. At the same time, though, virtually every individual is at least deeply influenced by the rot of white supremacy culture, even if unconsciously and unwittingly … even people who are consciously and intentionally working to combat it. We are, some have said, like fish who are entirely unaware of the water in which we swim because it is so pervasive. We are – even well-meaning liberal-minded white folks like most of us here – in this sense “white supremacists,” because the culture of white supremacy has perniciously permeated our thinking, our perceptions, and our behavior at our very core … even if, again, unconsciously and unwittingly.

You may disagree with the way I have said I am using those words, but for this morning I’d ask that you set that disagreement aside, and try to be open to what I’m trying to say with them. It should go without saying, I hope – although I’m going to say it anyway – that I am more than happy to talk with anyone who would, later, like to tell me what those words mean to them. I have not been called here to dictate to you what you should think but, rather, to share what I think as clearly, and lovingly, and forthrightly as I can so as to challenge you to really consider what it is that you think and believe. But for our relationship, for our mutual ministries, to have any meaning, I have to be open to being challenged as well … just as open to being changed by our interactions, just as open to being changed, as our faith calls you to be. For ours is not a church of the “closed and unchanging mind.” Each week our children remind themselves in Children’s Chapel that our is “a church of open mind.” That’s something those of us who gather here, instead of there, would do well to remember … at least from time to time.

Given the events that took place here this summer, and that Spencer’s in-and-out 10-minute rally a few weeks ago assured us that they will continue, it is all too clear that conscious, intentional, and disgustingly explicit white supremacists have not gone away in our country and that they are being emboldened. When the man who occupies the Oval Office does not plainly, forcefully, and unambiguously denounce them, he gives them his tacit approval.

Yet we were shocked when all those voices of hate descended on our beautiful oasis of progressivism, and we are disbelieving in the face of all the anger and all the charges of complicity that have been directed toward our police and city officials. We can’t believe the things that have propelled us into the national spotlight, that have made of our city a symbol for late-night talk show monologues and political posturing. We’re saddened by all of the pain, and the brokenness, and we really want to see the anger give way to healing. And I know that some of us are thinking this morning that given that we have had actual torch bearing mobs in our city, the idea that we’re being asked – in the safety of our own sanctuary – to look at our own participation in, and even perpetuation of, white supremacy is insulting. Right?

First, my apologies to the people of color here (and those who may eventually read or listen to this sermon online). You’ve just had to sit through the talk of yet another white person who clearly doesn’t get it. I know that you’ve had this experience far too often, nearly everywhere you go, even in the so-called “safety” of sanctuaries like this, and I am sorry to have put you through that again in order to make a point.

Now, for those of us who identify as white – did you notice what it is I’m apologizing for? I wouldn’t have just a few years ago. I can look back over two decades of sermons, and I did it over and over again with absolutely no awareness that I was doing it. The “it” that I was doing is participating in and perpetuating the systems and structures of white supremacy culture. Nothing less.

Throughout that paragraph about our experiences of, and responses to, the events that took place here this summer I kept saying “we” and “our.” But that “we” and “our” were not as inclusive as … well … “we” might have thought. That “we” was, really, a white “we,” because it ignored the experiences of, and responses to, the events that took place here this summer from the perspective of people of color, which are often really quite different.

While it’s not uncommon for those of us who identify as white to have been shocked and surprised by the ugliness of the Klan and the alt-right, it is perhaps equally uncommon for those of us who identify as people of color to not have been. And to say that this ugliness came to our city from outside, as though it weren’t already here, is something that it is far more likely for a white person to say. That’s because we – we white people – don’t have to live with it every day. Don’t have to expect it. Don’t have to brace for it. Don’t have to take notice of it, even, because it is not our day-to-day, lived experience. Most of us didn’t even notice that I was lifting up our white experiences and perceptions as though they were universal, oblivious to the fact that I was excluding people of color from that “we.” That’s a small demonstration of the way even we liberal-minded, good-hearted white folks keep the systems and structures of white supremacy culture alive. And we do so often, in so many ways, with absolutely no consciousness of doing it.

I’m speaking in some generalities, of course – there were people of color who were shocked and white people who weren’t – but in general, as a rule, it is simply the truth that people who identify as white and people who identify as people of color very, very often experience things in very different ways. Yet those of us who identify as white often, without thinking, identify our perceptions and experiences as normative, as though we speak for all. (One of my favorite sayings about white supremacy and white privilege is that those of us who identify as white “get to define reality and have our definition stick.”)

This may seem unimportant when there are people with Confederate battle flags, and Nazi flags, and Ku Klux Klan robes marching in the streets. And it’s true that those alt-right folks are perhaps the most explicit manifestations of white supremacy culture. Yet when I, even unconsciously, do something like lift up my white experience as if it is the experience, I essentially ignore, dismiss the realities of people of color. I dismiss them. And I demonstrate that white supremacy is alive and well here, too. And that make this sanctuary less safe for those who are not included in my “we.” It’s perhaps a difference of scale, but certainly not of kind. And that matters.

The reason we’re engaging in this white supremacy teach-in this morning is that those of us who identify as white need to learn to be more aware of the ways we participate in and perpetuate white supremacy culture, and because those of us who identify as people of color need to see that our Association, our congregations, and individual UUs are taking this seriously. And we’re not just trying to take this seriously here in our sanctuary:

• Today our religious education programming is focusing on issues of white supremacy in age appropriate ways, and they don’t do this just once or twice a year, but have an intentional racial justice focus on one Sunday each month.
  
• Our Adult Faith Development programming consists largely of curricula that aim to help our white members become more aware, and all of our members to find ways to make a difference in this struggle for our mutual liberation.
  
• This past week our Board was talking about the importance of doing its own work in unlearning the lessons of white supremacy, looking for the ways it is embedded in our systems and structures, and leading our congregation toward being that “powerhouse for racial justice” so many of us desire to be.
  
• We have a strong Racial Justice Committee which meets monthly. Its Chair, Kate Fraeligh, sends out an email each week which lists events in the community that you are encouraged to participate in.
  
• And following [our second/this] service, in addition to the congregational potluck, there will be a “Race Café,” which is to be a space in which people can talk about any or all of this in an informal, yet safe way.

The reason that we have been encouraged to hold a second UU White Supremacy Teach-In, even though we engaged in one just this past May, is that it is so easy for those of us who identify as white to get all riled up, all charged up, all energized by the work of dismantling white supremacy culture … and then find our focus moving on to something else. It is so easy for us – that us – to forget realities that are not our own day-to-day realities, and, so, to forget the urgency of confronting and combating systems and structure that poison all of us (even those of us who aren’t aware of it).

Do you remember those numbers? 700? 200? Back in May, more than 700 Unitarian Universalist congregations participated in that first White Supremacy Teach-In. That’s roughly 70% of all Unitarian Universalist congregations in our Association, and I have never experienced that kind of a response anything. This time, though, there are only a little more than 200 congregations that have committed to taking time to intentionally examine and engage with these issues. 700 down to 200. 70% down to 20%. That’s a pretty dramatic decrease over a time during which there has been an extraordinary increase of undeniable demonstrations of just how present and real and dangerous white supremacy is … for all of us.

This is uncomfortable, yes … and it is so very necessary. And until we can honestly say that we have overcome, and until our “we” truly includes us all, and until we’ve built that “new way” that we need in order for the Beloved Community to be established and deeply rooted, then we – all of us “we” – will need to stay in this uncomfortable place, and stay with this so very necessary work. We are called to nothing less.

May it be so.


Pax tecum,

RevWik