Crossing Over

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, June 2, 2019 at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.  This was the Sunday of our annual Bridging Ceremony, the uniquely Unitarian Universalist rite of passage from "youth" to "young adult."  It might be worth noting that these words were illustrated by project images.  (I've put the images at the end of the post, and noted throughout where they came.)

Prior to the reflection we watched a clip from an episode of the BBC Documentary "Human Planet," about the "Living Bridges of Meghalaya."  It's awesome.

There aren’t too many rituals that we Unitarian Universalists all share.  The vast majority of congregations light achalice at the beginning of their worship services, covenant groups, and some meetings, but not all congregations do.  And many UU communities celebrate an annual Flower Communion, yet I don’t think it’s even most.

Back in 1967 the Rev. Peter Raible took songs from the hymnal that was then in use, Hymns for the Celebration of Life, and, as he described it, “freely translated” them, creating Hymns for the Cerebration of Strife.  One of the more popular, sung to the tune of “Holy, Holy, Holy” was, “Coffee, Coffee, Coffee:”

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee,
Praise the strength of coffee.
Early in the morn we rise with thoughts of only thee.
Served fresh or reheated,
Dark by thee defeated,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

Though all else we scoff we
Come to church for coffee;
If we're late to congregate, we come in time for thee.
Coffee our one ritual,
Drinking it habitual,
Brewed black by perk or drip instantly.

Coffee the communion
Of our Uni-Union,
Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity.
Feel the holy power
At our coffee hour,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

So there’s that – the Coffee Hour.  Yet not even all of us drink coffee.

No, the one ritual that I believe is celebrated in every Unitarian Universalist congregation is what we’re about to do here today.  As far as I know every Unitarian Universalist congregation marks the transition of its young people from being youth to being young adults.  We don’t have a first Communion.  We don’t have Confirmation.  We don’t have Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.  We don’t send our children out into the woods to come back adults.  Instead, we have the Ceremony of Bridging.

Bridges are symbols with deep roots in our cultural consciousness. From “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and “A Bridge Too Far,” to “Bridge of Spies,” “Bridge to Tarabithia,” and, of course, the 1995 classic, “The Bridges of Madison County,” bridges evoke so much.

Fundamentally, bridges represent getting from here to there, here to somewhere else. (1)  They cross some kind of chasm, connect two places separated by some kind of gulf. (2)  Some bridges take a long time to traverse (3), while the journey over some others is pretty quick (4).  Some bridges are solid (5), when you’re on them you feel safe, secure.  Others are a little more … sketchy (6).  Some (7) are improvised, rather impermanent.  Others (8) you know can last for centuries.  Like those bridges in Meghalaya. (9, 10)

This morning I want to lift up three messages I find in this metaphor.  I’m talking particularly to our bridges, of course, yet I think we could all do well to listen.

First, even on the most solid of bridges crossing over from here to there is an act of faith.  You don’t always know (11) where there is.  We generally know where here is, but where there is, (12) and what’s waiting for you on the other side is not always so clear.  Sometimes you’re not even sure what’s under you, (13) what’s supporting you, what's keeping you up.  Yet we all have to cross over the bridges of our lives when we come to them. 

Oh, we don’t always have to be in a rush about it.  (14) Sometimes we’re able to take our time. (15)  Eventually, though, we all have to cross over the bridges of our lives. (16)  If we want to keep moving forward, that is.  If we want to truly be Alive, that is.

The second message in bridges is that crossing a bridge can be a dangerous thing.  That’s why so many movies set a fight scene on a bridge (17) – it ramps up the tension (18), because we all know, viscerally, that when you’re crossing a bridge from here to there, (19) there’s always the danger of falling.  Of course, there are some bridges that don’t give any cause for concern (20) -- they're not all that high, and a fall wouldn't be so bad.  And there are others that are built (21) so as to inspire every confidence, constructed to assure you of your safety.  But not all bridges are like that. (22)  There are some bridges that are truly dangerous (23) to traverse.  We know that we cross over them at our peril. (24)

Yet even these we have to cross if we want to keep moving forward and be truly Alive.  The truth is that even when it’s a bridge like this – and I hate to tell you, if your doing it right, you’ll come to such bridges more than once in your life – even when it’s a bridge like this – and maybe especially when it’s a bridge like this – it is actually far more dangers to our life’s journeys if we refuse to cross, and instead settle for staying stuck where we are.

So that’s two things – as we live our lives we will be faced with crossing over a bridge the end of which we can’t always know, and we will have to cross them even though we do know that it can be dangerous.  The third lesson comes specifically from those living bridges of Meghalaya. (25) The third lesson is that the bridges that are the strongest (26), that will truly stand the test of time, are those that we create with others (27), those bridges that are really Alive not only because they grow and evolve but also because they are made by living and loving hands. (28)  

You who are bridging today are about to cross a bridge (29) from here to there, from being seen as youth to being known as young adults.  And this bridge you cross has been lovingly built and carefully tended by your parents, your siblings, your friends, your teachers at school, your teachers here at church, the people who make up this Unitarian Universalist faith, and all those who have crossed over this bridge before you.  You, too, have a part in building this bridge, because as you cross it you leave something of yourself.  You add your own unique beauty, and you strengthen this bridge for all who will cross over it in all the years to come.

In this distinctively Unitarian Universalist ritual, one of the few shared by every Unitarian Universalist congregation, we recognize that you are young adults; that you’ve reached a milestone, a turning point, a transition in your lives and that we, as a community that loves you, recognize, mark this moment and honor this passage.

Oh, one more thing.  Despite the roughly 1,200 words I’ve just spoken, in the end it is up to you to determine just what the bridges of your life mean, and what messages you will glean from your crossings.  (30)   

Pax tecum,

RevWik

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Let's Not Keep From Singing

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

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

What can I say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My life flows on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation.

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing.

It sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

What through the tempest ‘round me roars,

I know the truth, it liveth.

What through the darkness ‘round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love prevails in heav’n and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

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

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Inevitability of Victory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will justice ever roll down?

Will justice ever roll down? 

Hope that calls in vain,

So much hurt and pain, 

Sorrow all around...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Notes:

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

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

Be Here Our Guest

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, March 18th, 2019 at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.

What makes you feel at home?  What makes you feel welcome? That's not a rhetorical question.  Really ... what makes you feel welcome and at home?

I read an article this week in which the author pondered this question.  She came to the conclusion that she felt most at home, most welcome, when the place looked like someone lived there. 

“The homes in which I’ve felt the most at ease have been the homes that feel lived in. They are the ones that are not perfectly clean or perfectly decorated. Now don’t get me wrong; they aren’t filthy either, but a little dust on the furniture and a few stray items cluttering up the counter top almost make me breathe a sigh of relief. The house is inhabited by real people! On the other hand, when I enter a house that looks like a show piece, I spend most of my time holding my breath, worrying about ruining something, especially if the kids are with me! It’s stressful enough to bring your children to someone else’s home without having the added stress of perfection to deal with.”

Then she asked herself what she did to try to make people feel welcome.  You might have guessed that she cleans the place top to bottom, making sure that there is no dust anywhere.  She puts away everything and sets the pillows on the couch “just so.”  (I added that last part, but I feel certain that she does.)  My paternal grandmother, Maria Quanstrum, put those plastic covers on all of the fabric covered furniture, and kept them on even when company came.  My dad said that that’s one of the reasons he never brought any of his friends over to the house – he knew they wouldn’t feel comfortable, wouldn’t feel welcome.

What makes a person feel welcome?  How can we make a person feel welcome?  How can we actually be welcoming, as we say we strive to be?

It had been my intention to dance with those questions as they relate to our lives as individuals, and as a community.  Yet recent events have led me down a different path.

The other day my son said to me something I never said to my father, “Did you hear that there was another shooting?”  Mass shootings happen so frequently today that they’re in some ways becoming part of the background noise of his life.  “Did you hear that there was another shooting today, dad?”

It wasn’t like this when I was growing up.  Oh I am sure that it was more like this than I knew.   There wasn’t the same kind of from-every-direction-at-once 24/7 coverage, and in those days (“the Before Times” as my kids call it), parents tended to shield their kids from the ugliness in the world in a way that not all parents do today.  Nonetheless, I do think that there’s been a real change.

We’re 11 weeks into 2019, and already there have been 58 mass shootings (defined as more than 3 people being shot in the same place at generally the same time).  58.  And there have been 11 times when there was more than one mass shooting on the same day! On January 26, on that one day, there were 4 separate mass shootings – in Georgia, New Jersey, Indiana, and Louisiana – that left 12 people dead.  On one day.

Shopping malls, movie theatres, outdoor concert venues, schools, churches, synagogues, mosques – these were places of relative safety when I was a kid.  I say “relative” because the places I, as a white person, felt safe were not always safe for women, people of color, homosexuals, trans people …  Yet even taking that into consideration, I do believe that there has been a quantitative shift, and a qualitative shift in life in the U.S.

I’ve talked with a number of you over the past few years, and you’ve told me – not exactly in these words – that you just don’t know, just don’t understand, what’s going on in the world anymore.  That the world as it is today doesn’t make sense to you, and that it doesn’t feel like “home” anymore. 

Just a few months ago a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people and wounding another 7.  This past Friday a gunman shot and killed 50 people in two mosques this past week, shouting words of hatred as he released destruction and death.  He filmed the whole thing, streaming it on Facebook live as it happened.

Two summers ago there were actual tiki torch carrying, robe wearing, klu klux klan members and other white supremacist marching in our streets, rallying in our parks.  There is a man in the White House who will not come out and directly, explicitly, and unequivocally condemn white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, trans-fobia, anti-Semetism, Islamo-phobia … And not only doesn’t he outright condemn these hateful ideologies, he seems to actually embrace and encourage them with winks and inuendoes.  Deniable, of course, yet all too disgustingly visible.

Hard won protections for the environment; equal rights for women, people of color, trans people, gays and lesbians, people with physical or mental disabilities, immigrants (just about anyone who isn’t white and well-off); peace on the planet; religious freedom; our country’s relationship with other nations and place in the world; worker’s rights; income inequality … in all of these areas where progress has been made over the past decades (however slowly and incompletely), there is currently regression to former, less fair, less safe, less “welcoming” times.

Mr. Rogers, spiritual father and grandfather to several generations, famously said this:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’  To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

It is so easy to become focused on the shooters in public, private, and sacred spaces; focused on the Islamo-phobes, and the people who desecrate Jewish cemeteries and synagogues with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti; and those servants of the people who leave unarmed black youth lying dead in the street; and those venomous politicians (and preachers) who spew hate; and those men who prey with impunity on women and children …  I could go on.  It’s so easy to become focused on them.  Yet they do not represent humanity.  And while I need to stay aware of them, recognize their reality, and actively work against their agendas, I do not have to let them to define the world in which I live.  Neither do you.  We can follow Mr. Roger’s mother’s advice and “look for the helpers.”

This summer a man name Mamoudou Gassama came across a small crowd of people in the streets of Paris, looking up at an apartment building.  When he looked, and saw what they were looking at, he didn’t just stand there.  He started running toward the building, because what everyone was looking at was a baby dangling precariously from a balcony.  Gassama ran to the building and started to scale it.  You can find videos of it, and what he does is really amazing.  In almost no time he was at the balcony, and he brought the baby to safety.

Mamoudou Gassama could have stood with the others, staring at the infant’s precarious predicament.  Instead, he instinctively ran toward the danger.  Especially as an undocumented immigrant from Mali, in France for only six months at the time, he might have wanted to maintain a low profile.  But he couldn’t.  He was a helper.

The National Public radio program “Radio Lab” devoted an episode to the topic of “heroism,” and there was a story that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.  I guess I really don’t want to, because it’s a reminder of the helpers in the world.  A man was standing on a subway platform, when another person nearby began having a seizure and fell onto the tracks.  The first man, without hesitating, jumped down to help the other one up.  When he couldn’t, and when it was clear that a subway was coming, he laid down on top of the other man, holding him down on the track.  The subway cars passed over the two men, just grazing the top man’s back.  The two men were strangers, yet one risked his life for the other without a moment’s thought.

In the early days of my ministry I was officiating the memorial service of an elderly member of the congregation.  During the eulogy his son mentioned that his dad had gotten a purple heart because during a battle he had run out to pull back a wounded comrade.  “That’s not what happened!” a voice shouted from the congregation.  A little while later, during the open sharing of memories, this man took the microphone.  “I’m sorry I caused a commotion,” he said.  “But that’s not what happened.  He didn’t go out under fire to bring back a wounded member of our unit.  He brought the first boy back, and then went out again!”

And on Friday Abdul Aziz ran outside and toward the gunman, shouting “Come here!”  He threw the only weapon he could, a credit card machine he’d picked up on the way out.  After the shooter had gone back to his car to get another gun, Aziz ducked and weaved among the cars in the parking lot as bullets whizzed by him.  He saw a gun that the gunman had dropped, but it was out of bullets, so Aziz threw it like a spear at the shooter’s car, shattering the windshield and scaring the killer away.  But Aziz wasn’t done.  He ran after the speeding car, stopping only when he couldn’t keep up.  Because of him the shooter never got inside the second mosque, which is why the carnage was so much less there.

“When I […] would see scary things [going on in the world around me] my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’  To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

The haters, the demagogues, the killers, the oppressors, the ones who deny another person’s humanity, the ones who push people to the margins so that they can have the center for themselves, the ones who seem determined to make this world a living hell … they’re real.  They exist.  And we must do all that we can to see to it that they don’t win the day

The helpers are real too, though.  They are just as real.  And we must never lose sight of that.  We must keep them in their minds and hearts, drawing strength, and courage, and hope from their examples.

One last thought:  while reading for this reflection I came across an article in which the author said that Mr. Roger’s mother’s advice is not good advice for us today.  He had several reasons, a couple of which I found neither compelling nor convincing, yet there was one that struck me as both true and important enough to share it with you this morning.  He noted that simply looking for the helpers is not enough.  We need to be those helpers to the extent we can, wherever and whenever we can.

Friends, we can work to make this a world in which all people are truly welcome, a world which all of us can truly call “home.”  And not only can we … we must.

Pax tecum,

RevWik