A Minister's Musings: racism

Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

The Need for Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Friday, March 22, 2019

We Can't Resist What We Refuse To Acknowledge

This week both Charlottesville and Albemarle High Schools were the target of online threats. Parents were notified that the schools were taking precautions to keep our kids safe. A spokeswoman for the city schools, "acknowledge[d] and condemn[ed] the fact that this threat was racially charged." "Racially charged" does not begin to capture the truly heinous nature of the threat.

I submitted the following letter to the editor's of our local paper, The Daily Progress:

Whenever someone says, “Black Lives Matter!” you hear, “shouldn’t that be ‘all lives matter’?” Yes … void of any context. Yet we do not live in a world that is void of context. This is a world where black and brown lives have regularly been, and are still, treated as mattering far less than the lives of those who identify as white. “Race-neutral” and “color blind” ideals obscure the very real inequities still present in our so-called “post-racial” nation. Yet simply choosing to pretend there is no monster under the bed doesn’t mean there is no monster. It just allows me to feel safe beneath my covers, while allowing the monster unfettered freedom to do as it likes.

Parents were recently alerted to an online threat made against Charlottesville High School. School officials wanted to assure all of us that they and the police took seriously their responsibility to keep all of our children safe. What they did not want us all to know was that this wasn’t a threat of random violence, but violence directed specifically at children of color. The anonymous poster was very specific, describing their intent as “ethnic cleansing,” using ugly racial slurs to describe the African American and Latinx students who would be their targets. “If you white … you better stay home,” the post said.

What was gained by the “whitewashing” of this pointedly racial threat? Only the comfort of white folk in Charlottesville who want to keep saying that “all children matter,” so we can continue refusing to recognize the ugly reality that some of our children are treated as if they matter more. Meanwhile, those African American and Latinx students and their families are left wondering if anyone really cares that they were the ones being threated, and only because of the color of their skin. When those of us who are white refuse to affirm the racist nature of such a threat, we also refuse to affirm the importance of those who were being threatened. That’s why we need to keep saying, “black lives matter” … until they do.

Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom

The signs outside and inside the congregation I serve have been up for years, and I hope will remain up until they are no longer needed reminders.

P.S. -- I am pleased to report that The Daily Progress is now reporting that arrests have been made in both cases, and are noting that the threat in the Charlottesville High case described "ethnic cleansing." I believe that the point of my letter remains valid and worth saying.

Monday, March 04, 2019

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

Tuesday, March 06, 2018

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

Thursday, March 01, 2018

The Mirror Has Been Held Up. Are We Brave Enough To Look?

This is the text of the entire service held Wednesday evening, February 28, 2018. It was to have been a service celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the Congregation -- there was to have been a time for families together, a community dinner, a service of celebration, and ... cake! A racist event which took place earlier in the week demanded a change of plans. Simply, how could we sit around together, eating cake, when something like this happened within, and from within, the very community we were to be celebrating? The celebration has not been canceled, but it has been postponed, because congregational leadership recognized that what we really needed at this time was an honest look at what happened, and what it says about our community. [I will be reflecting on these themes further in my sermon this coming Sunday.]

GREETINGS

Good evening. This was to be a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of this congregation. But then, just three days ago, on Monday morning, our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, was doing her job, going through the mail that had accumulated over the weekend. Along with the bills and the solicitations there was a plain piece of paper which said,

“quit your whining. it’s always about racism with you. you have a job to do do it. we went into debt for your full time and now you complain? your kids must be so proud at least they are just half and maybe they are learning from their dad. you should be thankful and get to working.”

Someone had had those thoughts about a member of our staff, a fellow Unitarian Universalist, about another human being, and that person apparently thought that it was okay to type those thoughts up, print them out, and place them, anonymously, into the mailbox on Chris’ door. It seems virtually certain that whoever did this is a member of the congregation, and it appears likely that they committed this undeniably and inexcusably racist act on Sunday. With the knowledge of this hateful incident swirling around us, this just doesn’t seem like the time to be celebrating.

Yet our history is not irrelevant to what’s happening now. 75 years ago today 15 women and men declared that they wanted to be – that they were – a church. The woman who started it all by placing a classified ad in The Daily Progress had been told that it was unlikely a town as small as Charlottesville was then would be able to create and nurture a Unitarian congregation. She was, in fact, discouraged from trying to do this. Yet, as she said at the time in a letter to a friend, “I am not easily discouraged and we can see what we can do.”

Carrie Baker was not easily discouraged, and throughout the 75 years of our existence this congregation has shown time and time again that we are not “easily discouraged” either. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing – there have been times when events in the wider world or right here in the congregation have caused real uneasiness and distress; times when the ordained minister or the lay leadership were taking the congregation in a direction not everyone wanted to go; times when support (financial and otherwise) dropped off precipitously; times when even beloved members felt the need to break off their connection to this place and these people; times when we have disappointed one another, hurt one another, damaged one another and it seemed that the fabric of the community was being damaged, too … perhaps damaged beyond repair. Yet in looking back over the history of this congregation it is clear that while we have no doubt been discouraged more than a few times, we have yet to be so discouraged as to truly give up on one another.

WORDS OF WELCOME

Adam Slate, the President of our Board of Trustees, likes to say that he looks at this church as a family. What we witnessed this week is not how families – is not how healthy families – behave. It’s not who we say we are, or want to be.

Each Sunday morning we say with one another Words of Welcome that are intended to describe the kind of community we wish to be, a community that, as I often say, “welcomes all who would work to make this a world in which all are welcome.” So I’d invite us to say those words together now:

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

LIGHTING THE CHALICE

We kindle a flame of power, illuminating the Holy in each of our faces.
We recognize in the flame a passionate commitment to our shared faith.
We are held and carried from day to day, week to week, in the shining of the light.
This flame is mine, as well as yours.
We are brought together on this day, called to growth, to expansion, within its glow.
What does your heart know while beholding this holy fire?
~ Adrian L.H. Graham

I invite you to think about that question as James plays our Prelude, to think about what your heart knows while you behold this holy fire here tonight.

PRELUDE

REFLECTION

In the first sermon delivered here, in the then brand-new building, the Rev. Malcolm Sutherland said this:

You are invited to draw your attention to the fact that in all its simplicity and its beauty, this building is not a church. It was designed to serve a church. It was designed to make more effective a church. It was designed to inspire a church. But it is not a church.

You are the church . […]

So we are not opening a church this morning.. We are opening a home for our church. This physical home is fully worthy of our highest aspirations. The question is simply – can we prove ourselves worthy of our new home?

If it is to be a beautiful church – as beautiful as its home – it will be because you are living beautiful lives. And how we need beauty today: there is ugliness and distortion enough.

How we need beauty today: there is ugliness and distortion enough.

He said in that first sermon that to be a church worthy of this beautiful home we would need to be strong, significant, courageous, fearless, and devoted. In his last sermon here he said that the congregation needed to ask itself (as each of us individually needs to ask ourselves, he was quick to point out): Why is it so damned hard to live up to and out from our values? Again and again he returned to the question, “Why don’t we?” Why don’t we do the things we know we should do? Why aren’t we being the kind of people we know we want to be? Why don’t we take the kind of risks we know our faith calls us to? Why don’t we really, deeply trust each other more than we do? Why don’t we recognize how much we, ourselves, have to change, instead of focusing so much of our attention on the ways other folks are falling short?

I’m not even necessarily talking about the “big things” here. The obvious things. The things we can justifiably say we are doing, or which we can honestly say simply aren’t possible for us to do. I’m really talking about all of the little ways we betray ourselves, betray our values, don’t do the something that we could have done. Why don’t we do those things? But all of these questions really boil down to one: Why don’t we live our faith?

I don’t know how any of you would respond to that question, but I know that I am chastened, humbled. And I know that it really gets real when I stop myself from asking these questions of the vague “we” and, instead, force myself to ask them only of myself. Why don’t I? Because it’s easier not to. Why don’t I? Because I already feel overstretched, and my life can be hard enough as it is. Why don’t I? Because I figure someone else is going to do it, and it’s not really my problem. Why don’t I? Because I’m not so bad, right? I mean, other people are a lot worse than me – look at those guys over there! Why don’t I? Because I’m afraid that I’ll be rejected somehow if I do. Why don’t I? Because I’m comfortable the way things are, and I know – I know – that if I do I’ll be less comfortable. Why don’t I? That’s a question worth pondering.

The last words of Malcolm’s last sermon to this congregation were the question: “Why don’t we?”.

The person who anonymously wrote and then delivered that hateful (and hate-filled) message to Chris has done something reprehensible – and they dragged Christina’s two incredible boys and her lovely husband into it. What this person did is inexcusable, and I cannot say clearly or forcefully enough that such behavior will not be tolerated – can not be tolerated if we’re who we say we are. The person who sent that message has placed themselves so far outside the boundaries of our covenant that I can’t imagine how they can say the words “Beloved Community,” or “inherent worth and dignity,” without bursting into flame because of the blaspheme of their hypocrisy.

Yet I need to say with equal clarity and conviction that the rest of us are not without responsibility for what happened this week. Each of us, all of us – and I do mean “us,” myself no less than anyone else, maybe even more so because of my role here – we all have to recognize our complicity, because some how we have allowed a climate, an atmosphere, an environment to exist in which something like this can happen. A climate in which one of us could believe this violent racist act was okay.

What happened this week is the most egregious, yet it’s not the only example of what we have allowed to grow in our community. I talked several weeks ago at some length in my sermon about how upset some members of the congregation were about my January report to the Board. I shared that several of the people who were upset had contacted the Board and/or the Committee on the Ministry to share their feelings, as well they should have. You may or may not know, however, that someone else created an anonymous email account, and then sent an anonymous email, seemingly for the express purpose of directing a select group of congregants to check out that report, and then, after sending that email, immediately closed the account. Let me be clear – the anonymous nature of this act was not okay. Sharing my Board report and encouraging others to read it – fine. Essential to the honest life of our community, actually. It’s doing so anonymously, having no accountability and taking no responsibility – that is what’s out of covenant.

People expressed their dismay over this person’s behavior, of course, yet it really shouldn’t have been too surprising. We think it unfortunate, yet accept, that there are groups of congregants who get together informally to talk with each other about their concerns and complaints. They do this outside of any committee or leadership structure – which is why these have often been called “parking lot conversations.” And because they do this “offline,” as it were, there is no accountability to the larger congregation. None of this is secret, yet no one calls them back into covenant – and they are out of covenant because they rarely, if ever, actually try to reach out to the people they’re concerned or complaining about. Please make no mistake, we give this behavior our tacit approval each time one of us says that we really wish this kind of thing wasn’t happening but we engage in it ourselves, or see others doing it, and do not say directly and forthrightly that such behavior is out of covenant, that it’s not constructive, that it’s destructive and has no place in our Unitarian Universalist community.

Please hear that I am not saying any of this to divide us, to make this about any kind of “us” and “them.” My goal, instead, is quite the opposite – I’m saying what I’m saying because I want to help us be more unified, with a clearer and deeper understanding of just what it means, and just what it takes, to be who we say we are and want to be. That’s my job here. So I’m going to take this a little further, knowing that I’ll upset some people. (Knowing that I already have.) We show our tacit approval of anonymous notes in people’s mailboxes every time we insist that members of the congregation must have the option of giving feedback anonymously in surveys, questionnaires, and communications with the Committee on the Ministry. I’ve heard the argument that some people are afraid to attach their name to their opinions, that they won’t feel comfortable or safe if they have to sign their name. But if that’s really the case, our community has much greater problems than whatever it is the person’s complaining about.

If we have not created a community in which people know that it’s safe to express themselves, no matter who they disagree with; a congregation in which we hold one another – and want to be held, ourselves – accountable for our behavior; in which we can be clear that there are things antithetical to our values and our visions, that not everything is welcome – then we have created a community in which someone can feel okay about leaving an anonymous note that a Klansman would be proud to have written in the mailbox of one of our staff members.

Back in Divinity School I learned that the Biblical word Christians translate into English as “sin” is actually seven or eight words, each with its own meaning. One is, “sitting down when I should have stood up,” and I know that I am guilty of that. And I’ll say without hesitation or apology, that I know everyone else in here is, too. Can anyone honestly say that they have never let pass a racist joke, or some behind-their-back gossip, or some subtle or not-so-subtle bullying behavior, or someone shutting someone else down, or any other kind of behavior that you knew was not what we’d be doing as a community if we were at our best? If we’re really honest with ourselves, how can we not recognize that we all share culpability?

I am sure that some of you may be feeling castigated, attacked, reprimanded and chastised. I understand because, remember, I’ve also been talking to and about myself this whole time. I haven’t laid anything on any of you that I haven’t also laid on myself. And even as I’m saying this I’m feeling uneasy and a little bit defensive. But I have learned that sometimes – maybe even often – the umbrage we feel when someone points out our flaws and failings is an incredibly effective deflection device. I get angry at you for saying harsh things about me rather than taking the opportunity to listen with an open mind and heart, and then to ask myself, deeply and sincerely, if there might be any truth in what you’ve said.

Oh that’s hard. That’s really, really hard. It is so much easier to just write you off. But we can’t write this off, friends. Our covenant doesn’t call on us to be so kind to one another that people believe – even unconsciously – that they can get away with saying or doing just about anything. Our covenant calls us, as Malcolm Sutherland said that first morning in this space, to be “strong, significant, courageous, fearless, and devoted” to the values and visions of our faith. A mirror has been held up for us to look at ourselves. My questions is whether we are brave enough to look at what it shows us.

A TIME OF SILENCE, CANDLES, AND SAND

There is no question – the work of building Beloved Community is hard. It’s dirty. It’s bruising. We’ll hunger and thirst. Yet it is the work we have committed ourselves to doing; it’s the work we have been called on to do. But it’s not work we can do in the head alone, and there have been a lot of words tonight (and there are still a few more to come). So why don’t we now, as we do each Sunday, take a time for silence, a time for letting go of the words, letting go of the thoughts, and getting down into the feelings. After a time I will invite the chime to sound, and some of us may feel the urge to come forward to light Candles of Hope and Remembrance, or write in the Sands of Forgiveness and Atonement. Others may choose to stay right where you are now, continuing to hold the silence and the stillness in your body as well as your heart. Through all of this, James will play, and when this time is done, we will move directly into singing together the hymn so many feel as a prayer, “#123, “Spirit of Life.”

HYMN: #123, “Spirit of Life”

LITANY: THE PROMISE THAT BINDS (By Viola Abbitt)

About a month ago we joined with Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country in designing our worship experience so that the voices of black Unitarian Universalists were centered, so that the experiences of black Unitarian Universalists could be heard, without comment or qualifiers, without interpretation, within the discomfort which that caused for many of us – us UUs who identify as white who’d never experienced our faith in those ways. Who’d never imagined that it could be experienced in those ways. Many of us left that service stunned, saddened, and unable to un-see or un-hear what we’d heard and seen that morning.

One of the elements of that service was a litany written by Viola Abbitt which she calls “The Promise That Binds.” I would note that there are three different responses in your Order of Service. Each is subtly different, and those differences are important. (We’ll say the first response several times, and I’ll give you a visual clue when it’s time to change to the second, and then to the third.)

Loving inclusion has been an elusive goal within our congregations.