What Grounds Us?

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, November 4, 2018, to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Sort of.  I preached from notes, so this is my best reconstruction of what I'd said.  (In places I'm sure this reflects more what I wish I'd said!)

In Yarmouth, Maine the area clergy would get together once a month for lunch.  At least they did while I was there.  I really hope they still do.  Those lunches were great.

We all got together for lunch once a month – same restaurant, same table, same waiter even, and same lunch order.  Every month we all ordered the same things we’d ordered the month before, and which it was pretty much certain we were going to order the next month as well.  (The funny thing was that each month the waiter would run through the specials anyway, knowing that none of us would order them; he’d come back at the end of the meal to ask if anyone wanted desert, knowing that none of us would.)

This regular routine was broken one month when one of us – I think it was the Pastor of the Methodist church – asked for Thousand Island dressing on his salad rather than his usual Ranch.  Well, pandemonium ensued.  Chaos.  The next month someone did order desert, and someone else ordered something entirely different than their usual.  One time one of us even ordered the special!  The best thing is that for once it wasn’t the Unitarian Universalist who bucked the system and broke with tradition – I really liked their fish and chips and never saw any reason to change things up.

But I digress.

This group of area clergy met each month, and we talked about all sorts of things.  Like I said, these lunches were great.  Yet it quickly became clear to me that this wasn’t really an interfaith group – it was an ecumenical group.  The difference is that in an interfaith group people of different religions come together; in an ecumenical group, the people who gather are from one or another branch of Christianity.  I brought this up to the group once, and asked if they realized that Unitarian Universalists are not a branch of the Christian family tree.  Oh, there are Christian Unitarian Universalists, and our movement is rooted in the so-called Judeo-Christian heritage, yet we aren’t merely some kind of “Protestant lite.”  We’re our own thing, our own distinct religion, just as Buddhism, Judaism, and Wicca are different religions.

This was apparently news to them.  My predecessor had apparently not thought it overly important to stress this distinction.  But I was fresh out of Divinity School, and a recent convert to Unitarian Universalism to boot, so I thought it was an important distinction to make.  I thought it was important for this group to recognize that “Christian” was not our primary language, and that they couldn’t even assume a theistic orientation of any kind.

The Pastor of the local Baptist church was particularly … intrigued.  He peppered me with questions.  Not in an accusatory way; he was sincerely interested in understanding us.  We even stayed around for another 45 minutes or so after the lunch had ended.

To try to illustrate our tradition, I used what I call, “The Mountain Analogy.”  Using theistic language – to make things easier – the mountain analogy says that we can think of God as a mountain, and that there are many paths to the top.  Most religious traditions say that there’s really only one, true path.  We Unitarian Universalists, on the other hand, say that each of those paths has its own trajectory, and that none can be called “the only” path.  Some may be easier.  Some may be harder.  But no one path is the only right one.

I can remember the Pastor asking, “What if the path you’re on leads to a dead end?”  I told him that from our point of view (again, using theistic language) God isn’t just at the peak but is the whole mountain.  So even if you get stuck in the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain, you’re still on the mountain, and why would any God worthy of the name care if you’re at the summit or the base?

“Okay,” he asked, “what if you come to a broken bridge, or find yourself at the edge of a cliff?  What then?”  “Well,” I replied, “I’d like to think we’re smart enough to turn around and go back, and then look for another path.”

We came to a point when we had to stop our conversation – he had a wedding rehearsal to lead and I had a memorial to facilitate.  In the parking lot, on the way to our cars, he said, “I’m going to pray for you.”  He quickly added, “No!  Not in the way you’re probably thinking.  I’m going to pray for you because … that sounds really hard!”

And it can be.

It was around this time that I came up with my rather erudite explanation of our faith – “a non-creedal, covenantal, post-Christian, religious movement.”

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, covenantal, post-Christian, religious movement.

Let’s “unpack that,” as we preachers like to say.

Non-creedal.  We don’t teach a truth.  We don’t hold that there is only one way of looking at the world, only one way of understanding of life. That’s us at our best.  At our worst we can be as dogmatic as anyone else.  I was talking with a UU once who said that if anyone wanted to have deep conversations about life’s meaning I should point them to him, because he’d known the truth since he was a teenager.  He was, shall we say, far from being a teenager now, so I said to him, “Hmmm … since you were a teenager.  Maybe it’s a little past time to take another look at those beliefs of yours.”  (The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once said, “If the you of five years ago doesn’t think the you of today is a heretic, you’re not growing spiritually.”  There’s also a bumper sticker I love – “If you can’t change your mind, how do you know you still have one?”)

I know that there are some people who think that we UUs do have a common creed, and they point to the Principles.  For many people, the so-called Seven Principles are a clear and concise statement of what Unitarian Universalists believe.  There’s even a little red card titled, “What Unitarian Universalists Believe,” and inside you’ll find the Principles.  They are:

1.      The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2.      Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

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

4.      A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

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

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

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

Right now there’s an effort to add an 8^th Principle to that list:  journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.

Some people cite these as the things that UUs believe in, and there is an implied belief statement in there, but what these really are is a covenant.  This list doesn’t come from some theological tome.  It’s actually from the UUA’s bylaws, and it’s preceded by the statement that the congregations of the Association “covenant to affirm and promote …”  What’s important, what’s foundational for us, is not the shared beliefs reflected in those Principles; it’s the promise we make to affirm and promote them in our lives and in the wider world.

That’s a natural segue in looking at what it means to be a covenantal tradition.  In many, if not most, religious traditions the first question you’re asked is, “What do you believe?”  If what you believe and what we believe align, then you can be a part of the group.  That’s not our first question.  Our first question is, “What kind of world do you think this should be?  How do you think we should treat one another?”  If your vision aligns with the open and inclusive vision our tradition espouses, then why shouldn’t we join together?

Our second question has to do with belief – “What do you believe that has led you to that vision?”  For some people it’s because we are all God’s children, or because Christ died for our sins, and so we’re responsible for making heaven on earth.  For others, it’s because all things have Buddha-nature, and so we are all interconnected.  Still others don’t see anything but what our senses can observe, so if we (and our planet) are going to survive, then we have to find a new way of being together.  Asking about beliefs isn’t determitive of whether we belong, it’s inquisitive so that we can learn from each other.

To go back to that Mountain Analogy – if you climb up the north face, you won’t have any idea of what it’s like over on the south face.  And if I’m climbing up the south face, I won’t know anything about the vistas you’ve seen.  So we get together from time to time, sit around a fire, and share our experiences.  Like the wiggly creatures in the story, we tell each other about where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, and what we’ve done.  In this way, all of our understandings are enriched and expanded.

So … Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, covenantal, post-Christian, religious movement.

Saying that we’re “post-Christian,” is not so much a theological assertion as it is a sociological one. We live in a society in which Christianity is no longer the center of the conversation.  Some people would like to change that, but for now it is true.  Scholars have long noted that American religion is essentially secular. 

In one of my classes we were taught that you can tell a lot about what is central to a society by looking at its cities.  During the middle ages, Cathedrals dominated – they were the largest, grandest, most ornate buildings.  Then, several generations on, government buildings that were the most impressive structures in a city.  Then it was the universities and other places of learning that took pride of place.  Today it’s banks and businesses, the “citadels of commerce.”  We live in a society in which religion is no longer the most important thing in that society, and it is in this sense that UUism is “post-Christian.”

Religious.  Yes.  This is a bit of a tricky one.  There are some say that Unitarian Universalism is the religion for people who don’t like organized religion.  The joke is that we’re not really organized.  Yet for many of us, it’s the word “religious” that’s the stumbling block.  That word carries some bad connotations for some folks.  Yet the word itself comes from the Latin root is “relegare,” which means to bring together, to bind together.  (Another religious word --  “worship” -- comes from the Old English weorthscipe, “to consider things of worth.”)  Ours is a religion – different and distinct from other religions, yet nonetheless a way to bring people together, and bind people together in community.

So … we’re a non-creedal, covenantal, post-Christian, religious movement.  One of our Universalist ancestor’s, when asked what Universalists stand for, said, “we don’t stand; we move!”  Some today might tweak that a bit to say, “we don’t stand; we march!”  (Just this morning I read a colleague describing Unitarian Universalists as, “not too sure about God, but absolutely certain about voting!”)

Yet, like the wiggly sea creature, just moving around isn’t enough.  Just moving around, going wherever the current takes us, passing one another going this way and that, is no way to make a community.  It’s certainly no way to make the Beloved Community we dream of (and work for).

So … what grounds us?

Less well-known than the Seven (soon, I hope, to be Eight) Principles the Association identifies Six Sources of our “living tradition:”

1.      Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;

We start by acknowledging our own lived experiences.  We’ve always said that our own discoveries about life are at least as important “scriptures” as those written thousands of years ago.  So we ground ourselves in our own direct experience of life.

2.      Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;

If we are only grounded in our own, personal, subjective experience(s), then we’re not really grounded at all.  My mentor used to say of us that, at our worst, our churches should take down their steeples and replace them with weather vanes, because we’re really just going wherever the prevailing wind happens to be blowing at the time.  To provide some balance, we also ground ourselves in the wise words and deeds of those who have come before us.

3.      Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;

We acknowledge that we are our own different and distinct religion, yet in doing so we don’t disparage any of the others.  Each represents a path up that Mountain, and there is wisdom in each.  One of the ways we ground ourselves is by seeking, and learning from, the truths others have discovered.

4.      Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;

Specifically, we look to the teachings of the Jewish and Christian traditions, because that where our earliest roots are found.  And this source doesn’t mean that we all find the word “God” and the notion of “God’s love” to be meaningful.  Rather, it asserts that it is in the teachings of these traditions about what they understand as “God” and experience as “God’s love” that we find strength.

5.      Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;

Many, if not most, of the signatories to the original Humanist Manifesto were Unitarian or Universalist clergy.  We recognize that the head is just as important as the heart in exploring issues of birth, and death, and everything in between. 

6.      Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

When we talk about affirming and promoting the principle of “the intereconnected web of all existence of which we are a part,” we do sometimes bump up against the dominant culture’s assumption that those last two words are really one.  This last source in which our religious movement is grounded reminds us that we are not apart from nature but, rather, are a part of it.  Our vision of Beloved Community is not, must not be, about human community alone.  We are part of a cosmic community, and this reality grounds us, too.

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, covenantal, post-Christian, religious movement, and we are grounded in some pretty powerful places.  And because our movement is grounded, we can be grounded, too.  We, as a congregation, are not just floating out there alone, being pulled and pushed by forces beyond us.  There is something we can hold on to.  And this is true for us as individuals, too.  Our faith tradition, our Unitarian Universalism, is a religious movement that can bring us together, and bind us together, and encourage our examination of things that really matter.  And if Rick, my Baptist pastor friend, were here right now, I would tell him that it is a hard way we travel.  Yet the views are spectacular!

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Here We Have Gathered

This is the text of the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve on July 29, 2018.  I have also included the Opening and Closing words, and hope UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray will understand their importance to the whole.

Opening Words:

As a people—a people of faith—that say we are committed to justice, compassion, and equity. As a faith that says we are committed to the inherent worth and dignity of all people. As a faith that says we are committed to respect for the interdependent web of all life—we have a critical role to play in this time.

Two things that are absolutely clear. #1—This is no time for a casual commitment to your faith, your community, and your values, and

#2—this is not time to think we are in this alone. 

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, from her sermon, “No Time for a Casual Faith,”
 delivered at the 2018 General Assembly Sunday service

Sermon:  “Here We Have Gathered”

It is not uncommon to hear people talk about being “cultural Christians.”  They are acknowledging that there is something Christian-ish about them, but don’t mistake them for strong adherents of the faith; these are not what you might call “committed Christians.”  The scholar of comparative religion, Winston Smith, was once asked why, after he’d studied the great religions of the world and incorporated into his own life many of the spiritual understandings and practices he’d encountered, why he still referred to himself as a Methodist.  He replied, without skipping a beat, “ancestor worship.”  He had been born into the Methodist tradition, and he continued to claim it long after it’d had ceased to have any claim on him.  (This is true in all religious traditions – there are “cultural” Jews, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and, for that matter, Atheists.  People for whom their relationship with the spiritual/religious tradition they claim has little or no claim on them; people who we might say are “casual” in their religious affiliations.)

Leia, our Director of Faith Development, and I once ran a two-day training for staff teams – ordained ministers and the professional religious educators with whom they worked.  One of the exercises that we’d borrowed from some place began with participants calling out things that the congregation they served did that they were particularly proud of.  “Our monthly food pantry!” one said.  “Our collaboration with other faith communities to provide housing for the homeless during the coldest months of the year,” said another.  “The work we do to keep the vision of the United Nations alive in the minds of our congregation.”  “Our ministry with, for, and by young adults.”  Someone said, “Our religious education programming,” with someone else quickly adding, “especially our youth!”  “Meaningful worship.”  (That came from one of the clergy people present.)  “Our covenant groups that bring small groups together in powerful ways.”  “Our support of the Movement for Black Lives.”  “Having become a Green Sanctuary.”  Having become a Welcoming Congregation.”  “Our program to bring food to members of the congregation when they are sick.”  “Our practice of raising money monthly for non-profits doing meaningful work in our wider community.” 

I could go on.  They certainly did.  They had no problem listing program after program, project after project, one after another, of which they were proud.  (The list I just read, by the way, didn’t come from my notes after that weekend: they’re all things we do here that I’m proud of.)

Like I said, this group had no problem coming up with a long list of things the congregations they served were doing that were making a difference in the lives of their members and their wider communities.  It was the second part of the exercise that we tough.  Participants were asked to read together an item from that list beginning with the words, “We do …” and ending with, “. . . because we’re Unitarian Universalists.”

·    We have a monthly food pantry because we’re Unitarian Universalists. 

·    We collaborate with other faith communities to provide housing for the homeless during the coldest months of the year because we’re Unitarian Universalists.

·    We have a ministry with, for, and by young adults because we’re Unitarian Universalists

·    We bring food to members of the congregation who are sick because we’re Unitarian Universalists.

·    We became a Green Sanctuary and a Welcoming Congregation because we’re Unitarian Universalists

Not everyone had a hard time with this, but a lot of the people there found it really hard to say that they and the congregations they served do the good and important things they do because they are Unitarian Universalists.  They would have felt comfortable saying that they did them because they were good people, because they cared about each other and the world, because they were the right things to do.  But to say that they did them because of being Unitarian Universalists, because our faith traditions compels them to, because as Unitarian Universalists they felt a mandate to make the world a better place … well … a lot of the folks in that workshop weren’t all that comfortable saying that.  And these were religious professionals!

Last week during the annual “Questions & Responses” service I was asked what I found most frustrating about Unitarian Universalism (and, by extension, I’d think, “about Unitarian Universalists”).  In addition to the things I mentioned then, I’d add this – the number of people who are, for lack of a better phrase, cultural, or casual, UUs.  Oh we’re good-hearted people, just as are most “cultural Christians.”  If asked, we will claim our connection to this Unitarian Universalist tradition, yet if we’re being really honest, it has little to no claim on us.  It isn’t truly a part of our identity – our core ­identity.  It’s what we do, where we go on Sunday mornings (and a few other times during the week), yet it’s not really who we are.

And I find that frustrating – and more than a little sad, frankly – because our Unitarian Universalist faith is something.  Our tradition has a history, and an identity, and a power that is different than the history, identity, and power of other religious traditions or civic groups.  Unitarian Universalism is more than, as one joke at our expense puts it, “halfway between the Methodists and the golf course.”  Yet when we don’t feel, don’t know ourselves to be part of something larger than ourselves, larger than the congregation we happen to go to when we think there’ll be something interesting to us, it is so easy to become focused on our own congregation and what’s happening there right now.  This is true in and about Unitarian Universalist congregations wherever we’ve set up shop, and whatever is, or that we might think isn’t, happening in them at any particular moment.  (And how we feel about it.)

When we become so isolated and insular, we cut ourselves off from the power of our association, and I’m not talking about our institutional Association, but the reality that our congregations are associated with one another, connected with one another, can draw strength from and offer support to one another.  When we lose sight of the fact that we are part of something larger than merely the group of people who gather at 717 Rugby Road in Charlottesville, or 351 Boylston Street in Boston, or 2952 South Peoria Avenue in Tulsa, or online through the Church of the Larger Ministry, then we all too often also lose sight of the fact that we are a part of an association of several hundred thousand people, over 1,600 congregations, and a faith that, in the United States, can trace its roots back to the founding of the Universalist Church of America in 1793. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition is something, and we lose something when we don’t fully recognize, acknowledge, and own that as a part of who we are.  We lose something, and our congregations, and our wider Association loses much when we are just “cultural UUs” or, “casual” about our Unitarian Universalism.

In the sermon I quoted from as our Opening Words, the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray also said,

“Friends, this is no time to go it alone—we as Unitarian Universalists can’t go it alone. We as individual congregations cannot be in this struggle alone.

[…]

This time we are living in is one of tremendous opportunity and needed change—and the health and strength of our communities and our commitment to our values, to this theology of love and interdependence is crucial”

And she said,

“This is no time for a casual faith. As Unitarian Universalists, we are first and foremost religious communities, religious communities that practice love as our foundation—and we are living in times of heartbreak, violence, struggle, and pain. In this time, we need communities that remind us of our humanity in this very inhumane time.”

And these are very “inhumane” times, indeed. 

Hate crimes “more than doubled the day after the 2016 election, with a 92 percent spike in average daily hate crimes in the two weeks following the election compared to the daily average from the beginning of the year. Crimes against Latinos increased by the greatest percent, followed by Muslims and Arabs and African-Americans.”  (I quoted that from an article co-authored by the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University San Bernardino.)

These are inhumane times

This past Thursday the Justice Department issued a legal brief arguing that federal civil rights law does not ban discrimination on sexual orientation.  In April the administration rewrote a federal rule that had bared discrimination in health care due to “gender identity,” and the State Department reportedly has been, “retroactively revoking passports for transgender women, forcing them to provide proof of their gender.”  Some in the EPA have come out and said that under Trump their mission is changing, “from protecting human health and the environment to protecting industry.” 

These are inhumane times.

All this, and I haven’t yet mentioned that, according to U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, the administration is responsible for “losing several hundred parents” of the more than 2,700 children forcible separated at the U.S. boarder since October of last year, nor that, as a recent article in New York magazine put it, it seems increasingly plausible that “Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987.”

These are inhumane times indeed.  Frightening times.  Dangerous times.  And times that call on us to work, perhaps harder than we’ve ever worked before, to both stem and then reverse the rising tide of hatred.  These are times that call on us as Unitarian Universalists to do this work, because as Unitarian Universalists we have something rare and unique to offer.  We know more about interfaith collaboration than just about anyone, because every Sunday in every UU sanctuary is something of an interfaith service.  We know a lot about working for justice as an expression of our spirituality, because the work of justice has been at the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith and the Unitarian and Universalist faiths which preceded it.  We know so much about inclusion, for it has been a principle around which we have rallied since the beginning that every person has inherent worth and dignity.

I’m going to give the last words here to the Rev. Olympia Brown who, among other things, was the first woman ordained in the United States with the full support and backing of a denomination.  In a well-known passage from her writings (included in the back of our hymnal at #569) she said,

Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost.

Parting Words

For our Parting Words I will once again return to Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray’s GA sermon:

The promise of our faith means liberating ourselves from the systems of dominance and exploitation we all suffer under. The promise of our faith means making compassion a way of being, it means creating a collective sense of both community and responsibility. It holds the vision of a yet to be realized future where our collective survival, our liberation, and a practice of the fullness of our theology is possible.

[…]

Theologically, our Universalism tells us that no one is outside the circle of love. However, we must understand that in our lives, in the context of oppression and discrimination, that the circle has never been drawn wider from the center. It has always grown wider because of the vision, leadership and organizing of people living on the margins who truly understand the limits and costs of oppressive policies—and what liberation means.

This time we are living in is one of tremendous opportunity and needed change—and the health and strength of our communities and our commitment to our values, to this theology of love and interdependence is crucial. I know this work is calling more from us, but I also know that we have been readying for it. And I know it will change us, but I also see that day when we will look back and see the measurable change in our hearts, in our communities, in our faith and in our society that were nurtured by our struggles and our courageous love today.

Now this change won’t come through optimistic hope or casual practice. It will take a greater commitment and generosity to communities that sustain courage, love, hope and resiliency. It will mean new ways of living our faith and reaching out more boldly, lovingly and faithfully with others for justice. And it will take each of us finding our work, our place—where our gifts help call something new—something life giving—into this world.

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

Benediction

Instead of our usual benediction, this morning I offer the words with which Susan concluded her sermon:

May the spiritual community that we practice strengthen all of our hearts, may it give us courage, may we not be silent or shrink back from the demands of love. May we hold one another in love as we follow new pathways of joy, of community, of change, of risk and of joy. And may we all be held the practice of agape love that leads us to the liberation we all need—until all are free.

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

Introduction to the Closing Hymn

These are the words Jason Shelton spoke at the 2017 General Assembly when he premiered the updated lyrics for his beloved song, “Standing on the Side of Love” (now “Answering the Call of Love”).  This morning was the first time we sang the new words, so we shared Jason’s introduction:

Sometimes we build a barrier to keep love tightly bound.
Sometimes our words themselves are the barriers.
The metaphors we use for the work of justice matter.

If we are called to be in this work together, then we have to understand when our words become barriers to full participation.

What does love call us to do? For some, it’s standing on the side of love. For some, standing is not an option. And the continued use of that metaphor is a painful reminder of the barriers to full inclusion of people with disabilities in our congregations and at our General Assemblies.

What is my responsibility as an artist when awareness of this pain comes to my consciousness?

I am clear that the SSL metaphor — as I intended it — has nothing to do with the physical act of standing. It’s about aligning ourselves with what love calls us to do. But I am also clear that intent is not the same thing is impact, and the impact of this metaphor has become a barrier for some among us.

Friends, when love calls, it sometimes asks us to let go of our attachments, and maybe even our t-shirts. I’m not sure what to do about those t-shirts, but I do know that love is calling us to a new and deeper awareness, and I can do something about the song that I wrote.

So I ask you to rise not in body, but truly to rise in spirit — mindful of all that might mean for you — and join me in Answering the Call of Love.

Responses to the Questions II

This past Sunday, July 22nd, I facilitated the "Questions & Responses" service we have annually in the congregation I serve.  Congregants write questions on index cards, which are then collected, and to which I offer my in-the-moment responses.  Over the next several weeks I plan to devote this page to attempts to offer written responses.  If you'd like to see the entire list of questions asked, they're the bulk of my post-Sunday post on July 23rd.

For the most part I expect my responses to the questions I was able to play with on Sunday to be very similar to what I said them.  (Although I reserve the right to have changed my mind in the meantime!)  There are also several questions that were asked more than once (in slightly different ways).  I'll group them together here.  (And I'd remind readers that these are only my responses, and my responses today, at that.)




Help me learn to pray, please.

Given that I've literally written a book on prayer, this feels something like a softball.  (Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life, Skinner House Books, 2005.)  Yet before responding to this question specifically, I want to pull back and address the larger issue of "spirituality."

I think that the heart of "spirituality," shorn of any particular theological overly, is the universal observation that there are, let's say, two ways of living -- living in such a way that we are truly and deeply alive, and, well not that.  Our Unitarian Transcendentalist ancestor Henry David Thoreau wrote in his classic book Walden that he wished to live in such a way that when he came to die he would not discover that he had not lived.  (That's a rough paraphrase.)  And this sense that there are two kinds of living can be found in nearly every religious tradition we humans have developed -- alive and dead, living in sin and living in the spirit, deluded and enlightened, asleep and awake.  I could go on, but probably don't have to.  "Spirituality," then, has to do with this living life rather than not-life.  This would mean that spiritual practices -- like prayer -- are tools to use in the effort to be alive.

How, then, do you pray?  I'd say that we should pray in the way that "works" for us.  It's not necessary to believe in some anthropomorphic deity with whom we "talk."  It's not necessary for "prayer" to involve "talking" at all -- either externally or interiorly.

I'll digress here to make a plug for another book project I've been involved with.  In 1999, Skinner House Books published the ground-breaking Everyday Spiritual Practice:  simple pathways for enriching your life.  It's an anthology which offers an extremely wide variety of understanding of just what could justifiably be called a spiritual practice.  Earlier this year, Skinner House Books published something of a successor -- Faithful Practices:  Everyday Ways to Feed Your Spirit.  I was honored to have been the editor for this anthology, which includes examples of spiritual practices as wide ranging as sitting zazen, blowing bubbles, walking through your neighborhood, chopping vegetables, playing roller derby, and "playing" with action figures.  (Guess who wrote that chapter?)

To learn to pray, then, in it's most expansive understanding, is to (again) feel your way to the answer.  What are you doing when you're feeling most alive?  Most connected to the universe?  I'd say that you could call that "prayer" and that, after defining it that way, paying attention to how your experience of it might change.

[If, of course, this question was actually a specific request for help in learning to do the "talking to" kind of prayer, this response may not have been at all helpful.  I would, somewhat modestly, recommend my book as one resource.  There are many others I could suggest, and I know that I would be glad to talk with you directly if this is your question.  (Whether you actually wrote this question or not.)]



I am trying to find my space in this liberal religion -- where there are more questions than anything else.  Where do I start?

I'll begin my response by saying that, properly understood, Unitarian Universalism is filled with lots of answers as well as questions.  It should!  What would be the point of asking questions if we were never to find an answer to them?  That said, our faith tradition encourages us to hold on to the answers we've found ... lightly.  We're encouraged to be willing to let them go when new experiences lead us to new ways of thinking.  There are two quotes I love which speak to this.  The first comes from someplace I've never known, "if you're not willing (or able) to change your mind, how do you know you still have one?"  The other, which I just heard a week or so ago, comes from the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.  He once wrote, "If the you of five years ago doesn't consider the you of today a heretic, you're not growing spiritually."

All that said, I think it's important to remember that there are not set answers for you to find.  Unitarian Universalism invites us to look to our own lives as "sacred scriptures," as full of depth and meaning as any text revered by one of the world's great religions.  I've often said that for UUs, "experience precedes theology."  I mean that, in a great many other traditions, we are told what, for instance, God is like, and are then encouraged to go out and look for experiences of that in our lives and in the world.  We, on the other hand, invite us to first look to our own lived experiences to identify what we would consider "sacred" or "holy" (whether or not those are the words we'd use).  Then, after discovering our own experience, we can apply more traditional religious language, or not.  (I once wrote what I think was a pretty good sermon about this.  I'll see if I can find it, and I'll post it here sometime in the future.)



Well ... those two questions took up a lot of space, so I'll hold it here for today and come back tomorrow with more responses to more questions.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Can Love Have Limits?

This is the text of the reflection I offered to the congregation I serve here in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, March 4, 2018.  It is a continuation of my response to a blatantly racist note delivered anonymously to our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera.  Here is a link to the immediate response of senior congregational leadership (which includes a photo of the note), as well as a link to my sermon from the special evening service we held two days later.

Opening Readings

From Jack Mendelson.  Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age:  Why I am a Unitarian Universalist. 

“I made my fundamental choice long ago.  I wanted freedom.  Freedom to think, express, question, examine, grow, and change.  But freedom without a firm foundation of faith in action and a sense of history is fragile….I knew from the beginning that I did not want to go it alone.”

Forrest Church quoted in the UU Pocket Guide.

“We Unitarian Universalists have inherited a magnificent theological legacy.  In a sweeping answer to creeds that divide the human family, Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from one source; Universalism, that we share a common destiny.  Unitarian Universalists are neither a chosen people nor a people whose choices are made for them by theological authorities—ancient or otherwise.  We are people who choose.”

Sermon

I love that hymn.  I would sing it, for what often seemed like hours, as I rocked one or the other of my children to sleep.  I wanted them to hear that message, from before they could even understand the words.

It seems to align so well with particularly the Universalist side of our Unitarian Universalist faith.  After all, the theological assertion embedded in the name “Universalism” is that God’s love knows no bounds, that no one will be condemned to eternal damnation, that “Mother, Father God,” as some of our prayers at that time said, loves each and every one of their children, from the most angelic to the most  … not-so-angelic.  God’s love is universal.  So universal, in fact, that our Universalist ancestors said that God is Love.

And while for many of us that particularly theistic language doesn’t work, the underlying assertion still does.  That’s no doubt why some people were, and are, both confused and upset that I would stand here and say something like, “the person who wrote the blatant, despicable, anonymous racist attack on Christina Rivera, a member of our staff and of our community, is not welcome here.”  I said that during the special service on Wednesday night, right here – I was clear and unambiguous:  if you wrote that note you are not welcome here.  What I didn’t say then, but will say now, is that if you agree with the racist sentiments expressed in that note, you really don’t belong here either. 

We all agree, I hope, that such behavior has no place in the loving community we strive to be (and so often are).  This is a community comprised of extremely lovely and loving people.  I also believe that we all agree that we can – and that we ought to — say that such behavior will not be tolerated.  But what, exactly, do we mean when we say that?  The word “tolerate” means, “allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of something (that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.”  Saying, then, that we will not tolerate the kind of racist, hateful attack – and it was an attack – means that we will not “allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of” things like this.

But what does that mean if we say to the person who did this, “you’re still welcome here”?  What does it mean to say, “you’re still a part of this community”?  What does it mean to say that we won’t tolerate such behavior and then, in effect, demonstrate that we will tolerate it.  I don’t understand that.  I simply don’t understand that. 

Whoever did this is way outside of our covenant, perhaps particularly because because it was done under the cloud of anonymity, extending the damage as suspicion spreads, with people wondering, “could it have been them?  How about them?” (I’ve had several people tell me that they’re convinced they know who did it, and others have said that they feel like they can’t trust anybody right now because they just don’t know.)  This content of the note, as well as the way it was delivered, is antithetical to our Unitarian Universalist principles and values, and is, I think we’d agree, is in stark contrast to the expectations of human decency.  Please make no mistake, please do not minimize or deflect – this was not just some “unfortunate” thing that happened.  Although there was no overtly threatening language in the note, can’t you see that there was a threat there?  That note was intended to intimidate, intended to hurt, and it certainly seems to me that there was an implied “… or else” in it  

And the note was not just directed toward Chris.  Whoever wrote it brought her kids and her husband into it.  The person not only dismissed Christina’s humanity, denied her “inherent worth and dignity,” but also attacked her kids, her husband, and the sanctity of their family.  If someone had spray painted this on her car, or thrown a rock through the window with the note tied to it, or had come into her office while she was working here at night, come into her office with a robe and hood on and said this to her face … would any of that really make a difference in terms of the severity of this offense?  I have heard so many people this week say, “Oh, that was awful, but …”  “… but we shouldn’t make too big of a deal out of it,” “… but we should have still gotten together to eat cake and have the party we’d planned to celebrate the congregation’s 75^th anniversary,” “… but this was an isolated incident and doesn’t say anything about who we are as a community.”

Immediately after the service on Wednesday, and certainly since then, I’ve heard from people who, as I said, are either confused about how an ordained UU minister – or any UU, for that matter – could say the things I’ve been saying, or are really angry that I have.  I have heard from many people who disagree with me — well-meaning people, good-hearted people, people who are really trying to apply our liberal values.  “Aren’t we supposed to welcome everyone?” people have asked. “It’s likely that whoever wrote that note has some kind of mental illness,” some have said, “and aren’t we supposed to be compassionate toward people with mental illnesses?”  “What about our affirmation of ‘the inherent worth and dignity of every person’?  Doesn’t even the person who wrote that note have worth and dignity?”  “Should we judge someone – and in judging, reject someone – because of what might be the worst of their actions?”  ”Shouldn’t we reach out to them and try to, as we promise to do in our covenant, ‘lovingly bring [them] back into covenant?”  I’ve heard all of these things this week, and I don’t for a moment doubt the sincerity, or the heart, of the people who are asking these questions.  I just disagree.  I just strongly disagree.

Over the years I’ve heard repeated nearly word for word the same question from people who want to better understand our commitment to welcoming everyone:  “What about Hitler?,” they ask.  “Did Hitler have ‘inherent worth and dignity’?   If you really do ‘welcome everyone,’ shouldn’t Hitler have a place in your community?”  I’ve been asked this not only from non-UUs; I’ve been asked this by a whole lot of UUs over the years.

So what about this Universalist thing?  What about our commitment to “welcome all?”  Well … I don’t think we really ought to be welcoming to all people.  God’s love, as our Universalist ancestors would have put it, may be unending and unconditional, but our human love needs to be.  Yes, I’m saying that human love needs some kind of limits, some kind of boundaries, if we are to be healthy and whole.

Consider a woman in an abusive relationship.  She loves her husband, and when he’s not beating her he is contrite and demonstrative.  Yet who here would seriously suggest that she stay in that relationship because, after all, there shouldn’t be any limit to our love?  Is that really what we’d say, or would we tell her that she should get out of that relationship as fast as possible and never look back?  Wouldn’t we tell her — or him, since men are also abused — that their safety takes precedence over any commitment to compassion? 

I don’t mean that we can’t be — should’t be — compassionate. We can understand that the abuser was very likely abused themselves as a child and is, then, also a victim. We can hope that they get the treatment that they need.   And that doesn’t preclude our saying that for their own safety they need to sever those ties, break those bonds, and end that relationship.  And we’d no doubt tell them that any time, every time, their abuser came back to them bearing roses and remorse, they ought to say, “I may still love you.  I may still care about you.  But you are no longer welcome in my life.”  Isn’t that what most of us would do?

And what about that prescription for health and happiness we’ve all heard, which says that we shouldn’t surround ourselves with people who disrespect us, put us down, do what they can to crush our spirits and our sense of self-worth?  Such people are “toxic,” we’re told – or, in my favorite description, “psychic vampires.”  For our own well-being (and, really, safety), this philosophy council’s that we should disassociate ourselves from such people.  Once again, we can understand the psychological conditions that have probably affected the way they act in the world.  We can have all sorts of compassion for them.  But would we invited them over to hang out and sleep in our guest room?  I don’t think so, and I don’t think it’s a betrayal of our Unitarian Universalist values for us not to.

The ideal of “welcoming all” is laudable, it comes from a good place.  Yet the reality of our lives is that we often we find that our ideals can be in conflict with one another.  The conviction that we be welcoming to everyone, for instance, can be in direct opposition to our conviction that we create a safe place for the most vulnerable in our society.  Take a look at the Words of Welcome we say each week.  We say:

Whoever you are, whomever you love, however you express your identity, whatever your situation in life, whatever your experience of the holy, you presence here is a gift.

That is a welcome particularly to people who do not find themselves welcome much of the time.  It all boils down to this:  if you have been marginalized in any way, if your identity has been diminished or denied, in this place you are seen as a gift.  If the dominant culture is unsafe for you, we strive to be a community in which you will be safe. 

That’s why, for the past several years I have not been saying in the greeting, “ours is a congregation that welcomes all.”  I’ve been saying that “ours is a congregation that welcomes all who want this be a world in which all are welcome.”  I say that now, because I’ve learned that the warm and enthusiastic welcome and embrace of everyone — including the victimizers, the oppressors of our society — makes this an unsafe place for those whom the wider society has oppressed and victimized.  To say that we should welcome absolutely everybody is to directly contradict and undermine our saying that here we are striving to be a place where those who have been historically marginalized can find safe haven.  As much as our ideals may think that there should be a “both/and” here – and you know how I have always preached the theology “both/and” – there is just no practical way, no way on this earth, for this to be anything but an “either/or.”  As South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”  This is hard for us well-meaning, good-hearted liberal folks to hear – especially us well-meaning, good-hearted liberal folks who identify or are identified as white. 

I can hear people still saying, nonetheless, that it goes against our Unitarian Universalist values to tell someone that they’re not welcome.  Our bylaws have no provision for the removal of someone from membership, only for a person withdrawing on their own.  So let me rephrase what I’ve been saying about the author of that letter, and those who agree with its sentiments not being welcome here.  Let me try saying that a different way:

To the person who wrote that note:  you have, by your actions, effectively and clearly demonstrated that you do not ascribe to our covenant, and don’t agree with our vision and our values. And as Unitarian Universalists our communities are not bound together by creeds, but by covenant, and shared vision and values.  So by your own behavior you have shown yourself to be someone for whom this community and all that it stands for is not the kind of place you want to belong.   Because of what we say about ourselves, because of who we are and have committed ourselves to being, the kind of behavior you have demonstrated is intolerable, and by thinking that what you did should be tolerated, should be accepted, you have effectively demonstrated that this is not the community for you.  You have, effectively, withdrawn yourself from membership in this community.  I’m not asking you to leave, I’m just making it clear that you already have.

Yet even with that framing, I feel certain there will still be resistance.  I know, I am certain, that there are people who are hanging on to their hope, their faith, that we can “all just get along.”  I have no doubt that there are people who think this because they truly and deeply believe in that ideal of all-embracing love and the power of both forgiveness and redemption, and I ams sure that there are people who simply resist any kind of limit to their freedom, chafe at any assertion that some things are beyond the pale, rebel against there being any expectations or demands put on them, perhaps especially in a UU setting.  Yet whatever reasons, whatever motivation, I know that there are people who staunchly believe that this ought to be a place in which everyone – absolutely everyone – is welcome without exception.  That no one should be left out of our circle.

As a person who identifies as white, one of the things I’ve learned — and will not doubt keep learning — is that I have grown up unquestioningly in a society that is steeped in racism.  It’s in the very foundations of the dominant culture.  It’s seeped into the beams, the flooring, the walls.  It is in the air I breathe.  It is, and always has been, all around me, and it’s there in so many ways, part of the systems and structures that make up our culture, and I so often simply don’t see it.  Can’t see it, really, because it is all around me and it just seems like “the way things are.”  Even after years of trying to unlearn what the dominant culture of white supremacy — the culture in which white people, and all things connected to “whiteness” are kept in a “supreme” position — even after years of trying to unlearn what the dominant culture of white supremacy has taught me, I continue to be amazed at what I don’t see.

 A month or so ago one of our Sunday services was designed entirely around the words — the stories, the experiences — of people of color.  And many of us were amazed at what a different experience UUs of color have had, and continue to have, from the ones those of us who identify as white have had.  That service provided us an experience of what we white folks who want to see the end of racism have to learn how to do — listen to people of color.  Really listen to what they’re saying about how the world looks to them.  Really listen — and really hear — what they need in this struggle for our mutual liberation, and not keep imposing our ideas of how things are supposed to be.  Because whether we know it or not, whether we want it to be or not, many of our ideas of how things are supposed to be keep things they way they are.

I saw this post on Facebook the other day, written by DiDi Delgado.  It’s an expression of how our (white) commitment to embracing absolutely everyone is experienced by people of color.  (With apologies, I’ve edited it a bit.)

Can 'allies' please stop trying to "get through" to racists and change their minds.  […] That's not why we confront white supremacy.  When we debate and argue with racists with the intent of saving them from themselves and/or changing their minds, we're centering the oppressors and not the oppressed. [,,,] The reason you're arguing with racists, confronting Nazis, challenging your xenophobic grandma, and ruining Thanksgiving dinner is to uplift and center the voices of the marginalized and situationally make being a racist as uncomfortable as being a person of color. […] The goal should be advocating for and defending the oppressed.  Anti-racism work isn't about changing the minds of racists. It's about changing the environments that allow them to practice their racism freely.  It's about speaking up for the voiceless.  If prioritizing the mental and emotional growth of oppressors is your reason for intervening, you've already lost.

If we’re going to change the culture from a paradigm of white supremacy — a paradigm which privileges people with white skin in hundreds and thousands of ways and penalizes people of color to at least the same extent — if the dominant, racist culture we say we want to undue is ever going to be transformed, then those of us who identify as white are going to have to give up some of our privileges.  I’ve been saying it here for years — we are going have to become uncomfortable. We may even have to come to see that some of our benevolent, compassionate, well-meaning values, are not as wonderful as we think, and actually cause people harm.

This attack on Christina was not just an attack on her.  The perpetrator also did real harm to every person of color, and every multi-racial family, who have called this place their spiritual home, and those who might.  To me it’s no question whether to align myself with those who have been harmed or those whose actions caused it.

You all called me here and loaned me this pulpit, asking me to speak the truth as I understand it, and I believe that our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to choose, as Forrest Church said, to be a people who choose — choose to ally ourselves with those who have been historically cast off, even if that means I must let go of my conviction that the lion should lie down with the lamb.  If I care to listen, the lambs will tell me that that’s never really worked out too well for them.  I believe that our Unitarian Universalist faith calls on us to choose to not accept the unacceptable, to nor tolerate the intolerable.  I believe that our Unitarian Universalist faith demands that we sometimes choose not to do the thing we’re conditioned to do, perhaps even convinced we must do, instead doing the thing that brings us into the Beloved Community we say we we’re working toward.  It’s nothing less than a new world we’re trying to build, and that’s never easy.  Our Unitarian Universalist faith is not easy.  But if our 75 year history here, and the thousand year history of our Unitarian and Universalist faith, tell us anything, it’s that we UUs are strong enough, committed enough, and loving enough, to take the harder road, which is the only way to get where we know we need to go.

Parting Words

In his letter he wrote while incarcerated in the Birmingham jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had this to say:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice […]  Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Pax tecum,

RevWik