Unitarian Universalist Society: East
A welcoming, liberal religious community
The CT Council for Interreligious Understanding and Unitarian Universalist Society: East presents a moderated question and answer session designed to increase understanding of the varied religious beliefs and practices of our CT neighbors. Panelists will include members of the Jain, Hindu and Sikh faiths. Bring your questions and meet new friends on Sunday, November 10, 2019, at 2 PM at Unitarian Universalist Society: East.
Subtitle: The Greater-Love-Greater-Inclusion-Greater-Justice-Liberal-Religious-Vision for the United States of America
Rev. Josh Pawelek
What great and noble work uses you up?
What great and noble work calls to you, inspires you, focuses your energy, lets your passions meet the world where it needs them most?
My message this morning is really quite simple. Being fairly confident we each have only one life to live, it matters that we can envision a better world, and then work with all our strength, power, heart, creativity, steadfastness and love to shape the world in response to that vision. In service to our vision it matters, in the poet Rilke’s words, that we not “remain unused.”[1]
We cannot predict the future, but we can imagine it. Really, that’s what I mean when I speak of vision—our best imagining of what the future can be—our own future; our children’s and grandchildren’s futures, for those of us who are parents or grandparents; the future of our neighborhoods, our communities, out towns; the future of our congregation, our Unitarian Universalist Association, our collective UU faith; the future of our country; the future of our environment; the future of the earth. We cannot predict the future, but we can imagine it. And once we’ve imagined, let us not remain unused. Let us instead take to heart Rilke’s claim:“there’s a power in [us] / to grasp and give shape to [our] world.”[2]
Our ministry theme for September is vision. As I speak, you are welcome to reflect on your vision for your own life, especially if you’re not sure what that vision is, or if you’ve encountered barriers to realizing your vision, or if you’re in need of a new vision. But I want to focus my words on our collective vision as members and friends of this Unitarian Universalist congregation. What great and noble work uses us up?
Our congregation adopted a new vision statement at our annual meeting in May. The statement says the “Unitarian Universalist Society: East will be home to a spiritually alive, richly diverse and growing congregation. We will send forth energy, spirit and strength into our beloved communities. We will love, be present to suffering, comfort, heal, bear witness to oppression, and boldly work toward social and environmental justice.” I hope you encounter in these words hints, suggestions and directions for great and noble work we can do together. I am certainly looking forward to being used up in service to this vision. I hope you are too.
Having said that, it feels important to offer the observation that our vision is not really unique among Unitarian Universalist congregations; nor is it unique among liberal congregations of many denominations; nor is it all that different from the visions articulated among many secular organizations, liberal and progressive people in general, and even some pop music and movie stars. Our process for arriving at the specific words in our statement was unique, but the end result fits a pattern. This, by the way, is not a problem. I think it’s a good thing—a sign of our health.
I began thinking about this non-uniqueness when Jenn Richard offered to sing Janelle Monáe’s “Americans” for this morning’s service.”[3] I read the lyrics and thought, well, it’s a secular song—it’s about America. That’s OK. We sing a lot of secular songs. But then I wondered, is it a secular song? It’s not a gospel song. It’s not centered on God or Jesus. But it is prophetic in its call for justice. Monáe emphasizes the spiritual nature of this call by weaving into the song sermon excerpts from a minister named Pastor Sean McMillan. He says “Until women can get equal pay for equal work, this is not my America. / Until same-gender loving people can be who they are, this is not my America. / Until black people can come home from a police stop without being shot in the head, this is not my America. / Until poor whites can get a shot at being successful, this is not my America.” Later he adds “Until Latinos and Latinas don’t have to run from walls, this is not my America. / But I tell you today that the devil is a liar / Because it’s gon’ be my America before it’s all over.”
This is prophecy. For me, it’s a spiritual song. In total, it offers a vision of a more loving, more inclusive, and more just America. Though there are some subtleties within the song, its vision isn’t subtle at all. It is big, bold, obvious. It also feels very consistent with the vison American Unitarian Universalists and other liberal and progressive people of faith often express for our congregations, our local communities, and our nation: greater love, greater inclusion, greater justice.
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Janelle Monáe is a Unitarian Universalist and doesn’t know it. She’s not a UU. I am suggesting that our collective Unitarian Universalist vision fits comfortably into a more widely-shared liberal vision for our communities, our country and our planet. For now, I’ll call it the “greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious-vision for the United States of America.”
I subscribe to a blog called “The Velveteen Rabbi.” It features the poetry of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat. She lives in western Massachusetts and leads a congregation in North Adams. Earlier this week she sent out the link to her sermon from worship on Rosh Hashanah morning. The sermon is entitled, “A Vision of Better.”[4] I knew I had to tell you about her sermon when she announced that “Our theme for the High Holy Days is vision.” She preaches her version of the greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious-vision for the United States of America. She talks about immigrant children being torn apart from their parents at the border; about the insidious Question #3 on the Massachusetts ballot seeking to abolish anti-discrimination protections for transgender people; about looming threats to reproductive freedom and women’s control over their own bodies; about widespread attempts to suppress voting rights; about attacks on press freedoms; about actual Nazis running for Congress.
She acknowledges to her people that they may feel overwhelmed, that much gets in the way, that the problem we all face is one of fundamental human disconnection. Nevertheless, she preaches, “It’s up to us to see a better world and then make that vision real. In this sense we’re called to be prophets, and then to build our vision into being. In Jewish tradition a prophet is not someone who predicts the future. A prophet is someone who exhorts us to be and to do better. We need to envision a better world than this. Then we need to set our hands to the task of building it.” That’s the Velveteen Rabbi’s version of the ‘greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious-vision for the United States of America.’
We encounter this vision here all the time. You find it in my preaching all the time. We sing it all the time. Channeling the ancient Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Amos, we sang earlier, “Come build a land where [siblings], anointed by God, may then create peace. Where justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an ever flowing stream.”[5] We sang “We Would Be One,” pledging ourselves “to greater service, with love and justice, strive to make us free.”[6] We heard the echoes of this vision in the meditation from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “All will come again into its strength: / the fields undivided, the waters undammed, / the trees towering and the walls built low…./ The houses welcoming all who knock / and a sense of boundless offering / in all relations, and in you and me.”[7]
Our sixth Unitarian Universalist principle is itself a very short, very concise articulation of this greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious vision. It commits us, very simply, to “the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.” And the vision statement we adopted last May, in my reading of it, fits squarely within this greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice liberal religious vision.
We know something about the work of making this vision a reality. Because we collectively hold this vision, we voted to become a sanctuary congregation and have made ourselves ready to welcome guests seeking to avoid deportation. Because we collectively hold this vision, we voted to support the Black Lives Matter movement and have worked in solidarity with Moral Monday CT. Because we collectively hold this vision we fought for marriage equality and anti-discrimination protections for transgender people in years past—and we won. Because we collectively hold this vision, we continually engage in actions for social, political, economic and environmental justice. This has been our version, our interpretation, our reaching toward the greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious-vision in the United States of America.
Even so, with any articulation of a vision—with any sermon, any song or hymn, any poem or prose, and principle or precept, any adopted vision statement—there is always the risk that something will get in the way, as Rabbi Barenblat says. There is always the risk we will feel overwhelmed and slowly retreat from the work. In Unitarian Universalism, where we tend to be hyper-focused on verbal expressions of our spiritual and religious commitments, we encounter the unique risk of confusing the speaking of the visionary words with the actual work of bringing the vision into reality. Just because we’ve said it doesn’t mean we’ve done it. Words may inspire the work, but they aren’t the work itself.
Nevertheless, in this moment, words are what I have, so I will use them. I want to make sure our new vision statement does not end up gathering dust in the online equivalent of the proverbial desk drawer. I want it to inform our Unitarian Universalist life together, lest we remain unused.
I challenge each of us to bring the words off the page, to manifest them through what we do in the world. Turn to a neighbor and say, “There is a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.” [8] Turn to another neighbor and say, “There is a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.” I believe this about myself—and I believe it about you. Do you believe it about you? Let me hear you one more time: “There is a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.”
I hope when you encounter the words in our vision statement that say “we will love,” that you will feel, stirring within you, the power to love, to love fiercely, to love across lines of difference, to love yourself, your neighbor, the stranger, the alien, the refugee, the undocumented person, the enemy—and that you will then bring your love to each other and to the world.
When you encounter the words in our vision statement that say we will be “present to suffering,” that we will offer comfort and healing, I hope you will feel, alive and flowing within you, the power of your own comforting, healing presence. I hope you can begin to imagine yourself approaching pain—somebody’s pain here, somebody’s pain in our larger community—with a gentle, steady resolve, an unwillingness to turn away, an offer of support, a compassionate touch. Remember healing is not just what medical professionals do. Healing happens whenever we take actions that overcome that fundamental human disconnection Rabbi Barenblat names. Healing happens as we make connections and build relationships, as we acknowledge, accept and live into our interdependence with one another and the whole of life.
When you encounter the words in our vision statement that say we will “bear witness to oppression, and boldly work toward social and environmental justice,” I hope you feel rolling and roiling and raging within you the power to confront oppression with clarity and conviction, the power to creatively address our society’s and our world’s most pressing problems, the power to join with others in solidarity, in struggle, in justice movements for the sake of our collective liberation from all the forces that diminish and destroy life.
I hope when you encounter the words to our version of the greater-love-greater-inclusion-greater-justice-liberal-religious-vision for the United States of America that you will feel power in you to act, to let the vision use you so that it may, in time, become the new reality.
I like the way Christian mystic Howard Thurman put it in the words we said together at the top of the service: “Holy One, may your fire burn brightly in me that I may, from this moment on, take effective measures within my own powers, to courageously build the kind of world I so deeply desire.”[9]
I like the way the Velveteen Rabbi put it in her sermon: “Be brave enough to envision a world better than the one we know now, and set your hands to bringing that vision to life. That’s the work.”
And I like the way Janelle Monáe concludes her song, “Americans,” with the words, “Please sign your name on the dotted line,” meaning ‘come on, sign up, commit yourself.’
Let’s make our vision real. Let’s not leave this precious life unused.
Amen and Blessed Be.
[1] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Barrows, Anita and Macy Joanna, tr., “Alles wird wieder gross sein und gewaltig,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) p. 121.
[2] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Barrows, Anita and Macy Joanna, tr., “Da neight sich die Stunde und ruhrt mich an,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) p. 47.
[3] View the video for Janelle Monáe’s song “Americans” from her 2018 album Dirty Computers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POZNheF-KdY. Read the lyrics at https://genius.com/Janelle-monae-americans-lyrics.
[4] Barenblat, Rachel, “A Vision of Better.” View the full sermon at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiMutoPy4Nc&t=915s. Also check out the Velveteen Rabbit at https://velveteenrabbi.com/.
[5] Isaiah and Amos, adapted by Zanotti, Barbara, “We’ll Build a Land,” Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press and the UUA, 1993) #121.
[6] Wright, Anthony, “We Would Be One,” Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press and the UUA, 1993) #318.
[7] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Barrows, Anita and Macy Joanna, tr., “Alles wird wieder gross sein und gewaltig,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) p. 121.
[8] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Barrows, Anita and Macy Joanna, tr., “Da neight sich die Stunde und ruhrt mich an,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) p. 47.
[9] Adapted from Thurman, Howard, “I Confess,” Meditations of the Heart, reprinted in Lifting Our Voices (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2015) #54.
A Buddhist PerspectiveBy Nancy Thompson
In Buddhism, love is paired with kindness in the term metta, or loving kindness. It’s defined as the wish for other beings to be happy. That may sound weak, but it’s actually not.
“Metta is the protective and immensely patient attitude of a mother who forbears all difficulties for the sake of her child and ever protects it despite its misbehavior. Metta is also the attitude of a friend who wants to give one the best to further one’s well-being. If these qualities of metta are sufficiently cultivated through metta-bhavana — the meditation on universal love — the result is the acquisition of a tremendous inner power which preserves, protects and heals both oneself and others.”
The Buddha first taught metta meditation to a group of monks who had gone to meditate in the forest and were frightened of spirits they met there. In the meditation, you make the aspiration that the other beings will be safe, happy, healthy, and know peace. In the formal practice, you extend that wish to specific people and groups: a mentor, yourself, a loved one, a neutral person, an irritating person, a group, and all beings.
By practicing in this way, we break down the illusion of separate selves and find the connection with others that we crave, Sharon Salzberg writes in “Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.” The Buddha describes that state as “the liberation of the heart which is love.”
Buddhism talks about universal love for all beings. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have romantic and personal relationships, teacher Noah Levine says. “The awakened heart has room for all.”
Loving-kindness is seen as the basis for ethics; if you are making a deeply felt wish for other’s happiness, you can’t at the same time wish them harm or act in a way that would cause harm.
Dear Ones:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
“Love will guide us.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
“There is more love somewhere”
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you your age.”
“Love is blind, and lovers cannot see, the pretty follies that themselves commit.”
“Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move his aides, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.”
“You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.”
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
“Love stinks!”
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
“Love, love me do.”
“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
“Love me tender, love me sweet.”
“Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”
“What’s love got to do with it?”
So much has, is and will be said about love. The risk is always that we lose sight of what love is. Of course, love is more than one thing. And because it is rooted in those places in us that so often lie beyond words—and often beyond understanding—it is difficult to say with real precision what love is. But I’d like to try. Our ministry theme for February is love. I’m mindful of a poem from WH Auden, “So Tell Me the Truth About Love.” Well, that’s what I’d like us all to do this month. Let’s explore what we mean in those instances when we use the word. Let’s try to tell the truth about love.
With deep and abiding love (which I will try to name),
Rev. Josh
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”[1]—Pete Seeger’s famous question. Actually, if I have the story right, he got the flower question, and the questions about the girls picking them, and the men going off to war, from a 19th-century Cossack folk song mentioned in the Russian novelist Mikhail Sholokhov’s four volume epic novel And Quiet Flows the Don. Pete read it in the early 1950s. The lines from the folk song stayed with him. He eventually adapted it into his now iconic American anti-war ballad, adding the lines “long time passing” and “when will they ever learn?”—also a famous question. It’s a rhetorical question. We’re not supposed to answer it. We’re supposed to lament whatever it is in human beings that drives us to make war. On the surface these lyrics are mournful, but at the heart of the song is a confidence that there is a better way, that we can and will learn, that we can and will move beyond our penchant for violence and conflict. That’s the hope and the vision for which Pete Seeger is famous.
Nevertheless, I chose this song for us this morning not only as a way to honor Pete’s life and to mark his death last Monday, but also as a simple statement about humanity’s seemingly endless capacity to not put its highest values into practice. When will we ever learn?
Our ministry theme for February is love and, yes, if you’re wondering, the fact that Valentine’s Day happens in February has something to do with selecting this theme. Valentine’s Day has to do with eros, romantic love, sexual love, relationships, intimacy. If we dig a little deeper, Valentine’s Day lies atop more ancient European pagan fertility and purification festivals that occur at the halfway point between winter and spring; festivals such as the Roman Lupercalia and even the Gaelic Imbolc—which is today, February 2nd. Imbolc translates as “in the belly,” referring to pregnant sheep. It’s about fertility, pending birth, the anticipation of new life in spring. There’s a layer to it which is earthy, sensual, lusty. Eros.
As we explore love this month I don’t want to lose sight of the value of eros in our lives, the value of romance, sexuality and other forms of intimacy through the lifespan. Nor do I want us to lose sight of how difficult it can be to sustain intimate, romantic relationships, how much intentional work and effort are necessary to ensure such relationships last. The truth is they don’t always last. The shine can wear off. The romance can wane. Intimate, romantic relationships can hit snags, fall into ruts, develop bad habits. They can break down. They can end. Sometimes the ending is for the best. Sometimes the ending is very painful for all involved. My point is that in the work of sustaining intimate, romantic relationships we don’t always handle things skillfully. We don’t always know the right thing to do. And even when we know what the right thing to do is, we don’t always do it. We don’t always know how to bring our best selves forward. There are times when we might ask, “When will we ever learn?”
Of course, there are other kinds of love. When Pete Seeger sang “I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,” he wasn’t singing about eros. He was singing about agape or caritas—that love of neighbor, love of enemy, love of stranger, love of alien—that boundless, all-encompassing love for all humanity, for all creation, that lies in some form, in some articulation at the heart of virtually every religion. That love, also, is difficult to sustain, is hard to remember, hard to keep in the forefront of our hearts and minds, hard to conjure up when we most need it, when it would make the most difference. And we know our collective human inability to practice agape leads us back, time and again, to conflict, polarization, infighting, war. Hence, “Where have all the flowers gone?” “When will we ever learn?”
There’s a quote going around the internet that says, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”[2] I sense people feel compelled to share it because they recognize how easy it is for any of us not to practice agape. They recognize how distracted we can be by our own concerns; how quick we are to judge, ignore, write off; how needlessly defensive we can be; how much mental and emotional distance we can put between ourselves and another human being without even thinking about it. This quote reminds us to not let this happen, to assume everyone we encounter is worthy of our attention, our compassion, our love—just as we are worthy of theirs. We shouldn’t need an internet quote to remind us of this wisdom, but there it is.
I read earlier a single line from Franz Wright’s poem, “Walking to Martha’s Vineyard,” published in 2003. “How is it that I didn’t spend my whole life being happy, loving other human beings’ faces.”[3] This is one of the poems he wrote after coming through a long struggle with addiction which apparently included a number of hospitalizations and suicidality. From what I’ve read, he gained strength and a renewed sense of his own capacity to love by reconnecting with the Catholic Church and, even more importantly I think, reconnecting with God. Even so, his question reminds us of this human tendency to fall short of our highest aspirations, especially when it comes to love. Looking back on his earlier life he’s still somewhat mystified. What got in the way? How was love not my first inclination towards people? Why did I not know this then. How did I not learn this sooner?
Rev. Kate Braestrup wrestles with similar questions in her book, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity. She names her experience of falling short in this brief story:
“‘How do you do it all?’ a woman who doesn’t know me asked when she heard that in addition to being a law enforcement chaplain and a writer, I am [also] a mother of six children (including steps).
‘I do quite a lot of it badly,’ I said.”[4]
I don’t think she’s just being modest when she says this, nor is it just for effect. She knows she does a lot of it badly. She doesn’t think she’s a bad person or somehow defective when it comes to love. She clearly loves deeply—her husband, her children, the officers she serves as chaplain, Unitarian Universalists, God, the world. But her experience tells her that being loving in all the ways we can be loving is hard, sometimes mystifying work which we often fail to do well. I appreciate her willingness to name this, if for no other reason than that it gives me permission to name the same truth about myself. Ministers are supposed to know something about being loving. You could argue it’s our job to be loving. Those of you who heard my wife Stephany speak here at my ten-year anniversary party in November got a glimpse into our home life and learned that whatever high-minded principles I may spout off on Sunday morning, the preaching and the practicing don’t always sync up when I’m out of the public eye. And I’m pretty sure they don’t always sync up when I’m in the public eye.
I’ve recently begun dreading the day when my kids finally realize not only that ministers—of all people—probably shouldn’t yell at their children as much as their father yells at them, but that they have stories they could tell to all of you about my parental shortcomings and mistakes that will wipe away the rest of whatever dim shine remains on my reputation as a loving parent. It’s not that I don’t love them deeply or that I’m bad parent or husband. It’s that I get ticked off and I lose it from time to time. And even though I always resolve never to let that happen again, it happens again. Acting in a loving manner, bringing love to bear in every encounter—loving other human beings’ faces—isn’t impossible. But it requires enormous energy, discipline, focus, resolve and courage. It’s hard work.
Knowing this, I love Rev. Braestrup instinct, which is, essentially, “keep trying.” What else can we do? Keep trying. She writes: “All loves have much in common, and any one will offer a useful, if not painless, education in the limitations and possibilities of being human. If you can give your committed love to a person, an idea, or a cause, even should that person, idea, or cause be taken from you, or proven false, you will be a better lover—of anyone, of anything—for the experience…. The point of being human is to get better (and better)…at love.”[5]
How? How do we get better at love? I want to take you briefly through some preliminary answers to this question. They aren’t the only answers, but they’re the ones that call to me this morning. First, patience. When the Apostle Paul starts naming love’s qualities in that famous passage from First Corinthians, the first thing he says is “love is patient.”[6] Love grows and deepens slowly. It cannot be rushed. It doesn’t roll with the 24-hour news cycle. It isn’t a Facebook status. You can’t tweet it to your followers. There’s nothing virtual about it. It takes time and presence. It takes a long view of life. This is the message of Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox’s meditation, “Valentine.” Dare we “hurry such a thing as friendship?” she asks. “Let us write our vows slowly, knowing some of the words like snowflakes will fall away, that from time to time a misunderstanding will come like a gust of wind or a bird’s foot to a snow covered branch, disrupting the careful gifts of love. Let us work on our manuscript, mirroring nature’s patience, until the love is whole and the drift of our days is done.” [7] Our culture feels sped up these days, and we at times feel the need to do everything we can to speed up ourselves. But the faster life moves the less opportunity we have to really know each other—to hear each other, to learn each other, to tell each other our stories. Love demands that we slow down and be present to each other. Love, in this sense, is today, radically counter-cultural.
Patience also creates a gateway for love to enter into our most difficult situations—situations where anger and rage, frustration and disappointment, fear and anxiety come quickly to the surface, come pouring out of us before we even have a chance to think. In difficult situations—an argument with a spouse, frustration with a child, a conflict at church, anger at someone else’s driving, tension at work, some kind of injustice—whatever it may be—anger, rage, frustration, disappointment, fear or anxiety may be very understandable, may be justifiable, may even be necessary. But the quickness with which they rise in us often prevents us from bringing love to bear as well. On my better days, when I feel anger or frustration rising in the heat of a moment, I remind myself simply to breathe, to wait, to not speak, to listen more closely not only to the other, but to what love asks of me in the situation. Patience makes all the difference. Our impatience limits the sound and quality of love’s voice. But patience—breathing, pausing, waiting, not speaking, listening—patience creates a gateway for love to rise in us.
A final thought on patience: I’m mindful that so many people enter into social justice struggles out of a genuine and abiding love for humanity. Agape. So many people enter into social justice struggles with the conviction that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”[8] But love rarely drives out hate in an instant. Love rarely drives out hate in a day or even a decade. Love drives out hate because it takes the long view, because it persists and endures. Love drives out hate because it keeps coming, keeps trying, keeps organizing, singing, speaking, marching, demonstrating, taking arrest, taking all the punishments hate dishes out. “Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love is patient. As the Abolitionist movement was launching in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s, very few of those who were there at the beginning thought they would see the end of slavery in their lifetimes. But that didn’t deter them. Genuine, abiding love for humanity does not cower or fade at the thought of a lifetime or even multiple lifetimes of struggle. Such love is patient beyond measure—not inactive, not complacent, not resigned—but patient.
And one final answer to the question of how we get better at love. Trust. By this I don’t mean trusting the person or people we love. I mean trusting love itself; trusting that love has power greater than any other power we can bring to bear; trusting that when we act out of love, regardless of how it is received, we can move any situation over time towards healing, peace, justice, and reconciliation. I mean trusting that love matters, that in the end love wins.
I used to say all the time that love lives at the heart of creation. I suppose anyone who professes belief in a loving God is saying something like this. Franz Wright puts it in very simple terms in a poem called “Walden.” He writes, “There is a power that wants me to love.”[9] I am drawn to such statements. I want them to be true. But I’ve been making claims like this less and less in recent years, mainly because I feel less able to name what I actually mean when I make them. Love at the heart of creation? Where does this love actually live? What does it look like? What evidence do I have? I think it may be more accurate to conclude that the universe is, ultimately, cold and impersonal, unconscious and unfeeling, that there is no love at the heart of everything. And if so, so be it. I wouldn’t be the first to draw this conclusion.
But I still trust love. I still trust in its power to bring healing, peace, reconciliation, justice. Even though love in all its forms seems so difficult to sustain; even though love can feel like such a naïve answer to the world’s problems, I still trust it. I trust that if we keep trying to let love rise in us, to let love speak through us, to bring love to bear—if we keep trying—we will learn. We will love other human beings’ faces. The flowers will come back, if we keep trying. Humanity will learn, if we keep trying. May we keep trying.
Amen and blessed be.
[1] Pete Seeger’s story about the writing of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” is at http://performingsongwriter.com/pete-seeger-flowers-gone/.
[2] The original version of this quote is usually attributed to the 19th century Scottish author and theologian Ian Maclaren.
[3] Wright, Franz, Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004) p. 72.
[4] Braestrup, Kate, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2010) p.81.
[5] Braestrup, Kate, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2010) pp. 8-9.
[6] First Corinthians 13.
[7] Tarbox, Elizabeth, Valentine, Evening Tide (Boston: Skinner House, 1998) p. 45.
[8] King, Jr., Martin Luther, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?(Boston: Beacon Press, 1968) p. 63.
[9] Wright, Franz, Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004) p. 70.
Reflecting on his service in Afghanistan, U.S. Army chaplain and Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. George Tyger, writes, “I know love / For it is love that has kept me alive / Not bombs / Not bullets / Not body armor / These only kept me from dying / Love keeps me living.”[1] That is essentially the message of this sermon. If our Unitarian Universalist faith is to serve us well in the wilderness—and I’ll say more about how I’m using the word wilderness this morning—then love must live at its center.
I’ve heard it said, and perhaps you have too, that Unitarian Universalism is not a real religion, that our faith works fine when life is good, but offers no reliable assurances in the face of tragedy, injustice, evil, death; that our faith works fine for those who come for worship on Sunday morning, but does not travel well beyond the walls of our buildings. I’ve not yet finished reading George Tyger’s War Zone Faith, but if his ministry in 2011 and 2012 to the 1500 soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 10th US Calvary Regiment stationed in and around Kandahar City, Afghanistan—the “spiritual home of the Taliban”—is any indication, then I feel confident Unitarian Universalism’s liberal faith—its appeal to reason, its tolerance for ambiguity and difference, its call for social justice, its assertion of human dignity and its emphasis on love—holds up under some of the most dangerous conditions on the planet. If Rev. Tyger’s testimony is any indication, this liberal faith travels remarkably well.
Though let me be clear: I am not suggesting that any Unitarian Universalist minister, including me, could do what Rev. Tyger does, or that all one has to do is show up in a war zone and start talking about the love at the heart of his or her Unitarian Universalist faith. That’s not what Rev. Tyger does. He has a gift for battlefield ministry. And while he is clear in his writing that he doesn’t want us to romanticize his ministry or present overstated caricatures of his service, in my view his ability to provide chaplaincy to soldiers in combat is extraordinary. His Unitarian Universalism holds up well in a war zone because of who he is, because of his rare courage, and because of his unique ability to communicate his loving faith—to make it relevant in the midst of bullets, bombs, body armor and body bags. When I say our UU faith travels well beyond the walls of our buildings, I also acknowledge that no faith travels all by itself. People carry their faith with them, and specific people carry their faith into specific situations. Our faith has the greatest impact in the world when our gifts and talents are well-suited to the demands of the situation we find ourselves in—whether we feel called to be there or whether we arrive there by accident. Rev. Tyger has a gift for battlefield ministry. For me, this begs the questions, “What is your gift?” and “Where and how does your love for people and the world express itself most clearly?” I invite you to take these questions into this summer season. It’s important that we know the answer to these questions because, in the end, the measure of the “realness” of any religion has little to do with what that religion says or writes about itself—or how catchy its promotional videos are. It has everything to do with how that religion inspires its people to live their faith by using their gifts to bring more love into the world.
I want to share some thoughts on living our faith not only beyond the walls of our congregation, but in any situation we might call a wilderness situation. As a reminder, our ministry theme for June is wilderness. A few weeks ago I preached about the connection between the wilderness around us and the wilderness within us. I suggested that traditional religion often identifies wilderness as a place of trial, challenge and temptation—a place where something bad happens, where some wicked thing lurks—and if we can overcome it, meet the challenge, resist the temptation, then we can return to the safety of civilization having matured in our faith, having deepened our humanity. While I do think this is one important narrative for understanding the role wilderness plays in our spiritual lives, I also made the case for a second narrative. Wilderness is not only the place where we face challenges and trials. It is also the place where we encounter the things we hold most sacred; where the Holy actually lives and speaks out beyond the bounds of all established jurisdictions; where we find solace and peace; and where we gain strength to resist the various evils civilization has created and perpetuated among human beings.
This morning I want to explore how we engage the wilderness around us. I’m combining elements of both spiritual wilderness narratives. I’m not talking about the forests, the jungles, the deserts or the mountains—though I do believe the Holy lives and speaks there. Rather, I’m talking about difficult, challenging situations, painful situations that demand a faithful response from us—whether they occur in the actual wilderness of the natural world, or in the heart of civilization; whether they occur within the walls of our meeting house, or beyond them. I’m talking about the wilderness of the devastating diagnosis, the death of a loved-one, or the loss of a job. The Holy lives and speaks there too. It must. I’m talking about the wilderness of mental illness, of addiction, of loneliness. I’m talking about the wilderness of estrangement in families, the breakdown of relationships, watching a loved-one engage again and again in self destructive behavior. The Holy lives and speaks there too. It must.
I’m also talking about the wilderness of war zones, the wilderness of bullets, bombs and body bags, because the Holy must live and speak there too. I’m talking about the wilderness of more than one in five American children living in poverty,[2] because the Holy must live and speak there too. I’m talking about failing schools, gun violence, mass incarceration and the erosion of civil rights for people of color because, in addition to its positive rulings on DOMA and Prop 8 this week, the Supreme Court also eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, opening the doors to a myriad of efforts to restrict access to voting and, in my view, thereby stunting and even reversing the progress of American democracy. The Holy cries out in that wilderness too, demanding a faithful response. I’m also talking about the wilderness of marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, because yes, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA—an enormous victory for people standing on the side of love and justice. But there are still 38 state DOMAs on the books; and while some of those, I expect, will disappear quickly, most of them will not go down without a fight. Winning that fight will require people of faith to continue bearing witness to the injustice of marriage inequality and to express the tenets of their religion in the public square with courage and conviction. The Holy must live and speak in that struggle too.
Oftentimes the wilderness—whatever form it takes in our lives—feels overwhelming. The word “bewildering” makes sense. It is hard to comprehend at first. There’s an opaqueness to it. It is often unbelievable. Receiving a cancer diagnosis, unless you have some strong prior indication, is unbelievable. The tragic death of a loved-one is unbelievable. The statistics on the number of Black and Hispanic men wrapped up in the criminal justice system are unbelievable. The statistics on the educational achievement gap are unbelievable. Child poverty, unbelievable. Lack of access to quality, affordable health care, still unbelievable. So many lives are at stake. Always at first the wilderness seems overwhelming, unapproachable, insurmountable, dangerous, deadly, bewildering.
Consider this generalization about Unitarian Universalists. Unitarian Universalists often respond to wilderness situations not from the heart but from the head. If this statement rings true to you, please understand it is far less true than it sounds, but it is true enough—and out there in the larger culture enough—that some people allege ours is not a real religion. It’s not the only reason people make this allegation, but it’s one of them. Often our first response to wilderness situations is to seek information and data. These days we Google it. Don’t hear me wrong, I feel strongly that in order to respond faithfully to the wilderness around us, we do need to acquire information about what is going on. We need the facts. Information makes the wilderness less opaque, less bewildering, less unapproachable (though not necessarily less dangerous). Speaking specifically about the wilderness of injustice and oppression, it is essential that we analyze it; that we figure out how it works, why it is so pervasive in so many aspects of our society, and why it is so difficult to dismantle. In conducting such analyses, we ask questions like “Where is the money coming from?” Or “What is the money paying for?” We ask questions like, “Who benefits from this injustice?” or “Who has the power in this institution?” We ask historical questions like, “Why did this injustice come into being in the first place?” In the language of community organizing, we call this a power analysis. For years, working on antiracism organizing within the Unitarian Universalist Association and in different cities and towns in Connecticut I’ve heard myself say over and over again—because I was trained to say it—“We need a common power analysis of racism before we can work to dismantle it.” And those words are true. But in reflecting on this aspect of my ministry over the last fifteen years, I recognize that sometimes I’ve become too mired in analysis. I’ve stayed too much in my head. And my faithful response has been less than effective. There’s some truth to the generalization.
As essential as it is to have an accurate analysis of unjust and oppressive systems, we cannot confuse having an analysis with having a faith adequate for the wilderness. We need something more. We need love. I’m reminding myself of this as much as I’m preaching it to you. Rev Tyger says, “I know love / For it is love that has kept me alive / Not bombs / Not bullets / Not body armor / These only kept me from dying / Love keeps me living.”[3] When I call myself a person of faith, it means I enter the wilderness with a much deeper question than the many analytical questions I might be asking in order to overcome my bewilderment and quell my anxiety. When I enter the wilderness as a person of faith I am looking, quite simply, for opportunities to feel and express love for others. When we enter the wilderness as people of faith, the deeper question is “How can we bring love to bear in this situation?” When we enter the wilderness as people of faith, the deeper question is “How can we be a loving presence to those who are suffering?” “What gifts can we share that will make love come alive in this moment?”
Having the facts is essential. Knowing what’s really going on is essential. Doing the power analysis is essential. But the Holy that lives and speaks in the wilderness—in the depths of pain, suffering, loneliness, depression; in the war zone, the grieving spouse, the broken family the impoverished neighborhood, the failing school, the over-crowded emergency room, the addict’s needle, the prison cell—the Holy that lives and speaks there, no matter how we understand it, no matter what name we ascribe to it, cries out for a courageous, loving response. The heart of a faith adequate for the wilderness is love. In the end, the measure of the “realness” of a religion has little to do with what that religion says about itself. It has everything to do with how that religion inspires its people to live their faith by using their gifts to bring more love into the world. What are your gifts? Where and how does your love for people and the world express itself most clearly?
Tomorrow I have the honor of saying a few words at a press conference Senator Blumenthal is holding in response to the Supreme Court’s rulings on DOMA and Prop 8. (I received this invitation because I served for many years as chairperson of CT Clergy for Marriage Equality and, later, CT Clergy for Full Equality.) There are many ways to talk about these rulings that involve facts. If you read Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion—which I highly recommend—you’ll find it very factual, very analytical. [4] I expect nothing less from a Supreme Court Justice’s opinion. He clearly understands the nature and the full extent of the injustice DOMA visited upon gay and lesbian couples and their children. Reading his opinion I learned facts I hadn’t known before, like the fact that under DOMA the partner of a gay or lesbian veteran could not be buried next to their beloved in a veterans cemetery.
But I don’t want to address facts tomorrow. I want to speak of love, because I am a person of faith, and a Unitarian Universalist, and love has been at the center of our faithful response to this particular wilderness for a generation. In fact, I want to remind the media that it has largely mischaracterized the sides in the American debate over marriage equality. It has largely reported the debate as one between secular, non-religious people in favor of marriage equality, and religious people against it. But that has never been the case. Unitarian Univeralists, the United Church of Christ, Episcopalians, American Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians, the Metropolitan Community Church, Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, even some Pentecostals—and the list goes on—have been coming again and again into the wilderness of homophobic laws, of painful silences and closets, of fear and hatred towards gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer people, of bullying, bashing and suicides—people of faith have been coming into this wilderness and proclaiming a message of love, singing “we are standing on the side of love,”[5] singing “Love will guide us,”[6] praying prayers of love, praying, in the words of Rev. Tyger when he gave the invocation at last Tuesday’s LGBT pride celebration at the Pentagon that “love refuses to be constrained by culture, by creed or by fear,”[7]—coming into this wilderness and bearing witness to a Holy power in the world so vast that no one is left out, that all may come as they are, that all may love according to the dictates of their own heart. If I may be so bold, we are winning in this wilderness struggle, because love wins. Love wins.
We’ve heard it said that the poor will always be among us. Some say there will always be poverty. If nothing else, it’s a Biblical notion. I’ve never been convinced of its truth. But I am convinced there will always be wilderness, and that the encounter with wilderness is part of the human condition, part of the human experience. Therefore, we will always need love—to give it and to receive it—to courageously speak it, proclaim it, sing it, pray it. Love is the essence of a faith adequate for the wilderness. Love wins. I believe it. May we go out from this place and into this summer season ready to give and receive love.
Amen and blessed be.
[1] Tyger, George, War Zone Faith: An Army Chaplain’s Reflections From Afghanistan (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2013) p. xiv.
[2] See data from the National Poverty Center at http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/. Also see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/child-poverty-2011_n_2323383.html.
[3] Tyger, George, War Zone Faith: An Army Chaplain’s Reflections From Afghanistan (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2013) p. xiv.
[4] Read Justice Kennedy’s opinion at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf.
[5] Shelton, Jason, “Standing on the Side of Love,” Singing the Journey (Boston: UUA, 2005) #1014.
[6] Rogers, Sally, “Love Will Guide Us,” Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press and the UUS, 1993) #131.
[7] The Pentagon’s June 25 LGBT Pride event is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7vkpOYQiIo&feature=share.
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I found Colin McEnroe’s editorial in the Hartford Courant this weekend very moving. He was reflecting, one week later, on the December 14 tragedy in Newtown. He said, “If there’s an elixir, some potion we can drink, it’s almost certainly love. Right? Love is the only possible bright sparkling rope bridge we can clutch as we stutter-step through the dark universe.
“What a joke,” he goes on. “Our only good piece of equipment is love, the thing we fail at so often. We’ve been talking all week about weapons, but our only sure-fire weapon against chaos and nothingness is love….
I don’t know what comes next. But I am reminded to love.”[1]
I don’t know if he intended this as a Christmas message, but there it is: “We are reminded to love.”
Many of you know this past Friday I had the honor of participating in Tom Ashbrook’s National Public Radio On Point conversation about the spiritual challenge of Newtown. I believe Tom Ashbrook is a hopeful person, a positive person. But I also know that he, like all of us, was shaken to his core by this tragic event; and he wasn’t going to let his guests off easy. He wasn’t going to let us simply proclaim, “we should be hopeful.” He really wanted to know why. Given what we’ve witnessed, why should we be hopeful this holiday season? And how? How can any of us justify a feeling of hopefulness after this?
I suppose I ought to add: given all of it—given a culture of violence and crass materialism; given our national addiction to militarism; given our political polarization; given racism, classism, homophobia; given homelessness and poverty; given all the ways in which we are isolated from one another, separated, fragmented, alienated; given pervasive loneliness; given all of it, how can we justify an attitude of hopefulness? That’s what I was hearing Tom Ashbrook ask on the radio Friday.
It’s a fair question. And I suppose it’s the ultimate question any person of any kind of faith whatsoever is challenged to answer: why hope, when there is so much around us that says, again and again and again, there’s no reason to be hopeful?
Well, I’m not sure there is an answer—not a good one—not one that will suffice in the face of a tragedy like Newtown. Maybe we really do live in a cold and impersonal universe; and terrible, tragic things will happen from time to time; and evil things are just as likely to happen as good things. “It’s just the way things are,” said one of Friday’s On Point callers. “And it’s naïve to think you can somehow change it.”
But I do think we can change it. I really do. I don’t know exactly why I think this. If I did, I suppose I would have my answer to the question, Why be hopeful? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that our ancient ancestors learned to trust that the sun would return at the darkest time of year. Maybe it has something to do with the way a candle flame looks in the darkness—small, thin, even frail, but beautiful and heart-warming nevertheless. Maybe it has something to do with the grandeur of stars in a cold winter night sky. Maybe it has something to do with the ways people come together in the aftermath of tragedy, holding each other, supporting each other, bearing witness to suffering. Maybe it has something to do with the little kindnesses people seem to offer each other, over and over, in a million different ways. And maybe it has something to do with our capacity for love, this “joke,” says Colin McEnroe, this “thing we fail at so often,” yet this thing which is our only “sure-fire weapon against chaos and nothingness.” Time and time again, in the midst of pain and suffering—not always, but often—people find ways to love one another. As selfish and mean-spirited as we humans can be, we are capable of incredible love. I don’t ignore the mean-spirited part—I know it’s real; I just choose, most of the time, to focus on the love part.
Colin McEnroe said, “I don’t know what comes next. But I am reminded to love.” It may not be a good answer or even a sufficient one, to the question, “Why be hopeful?” It may be a naïve answer. It may even come across to some as a weak answer. But for me it’s the answer that makes sense. It’s the only reasonable answer to an otherwise violent and chaotic world.
This is what I know: Love comes into world, again and again and again. It comes as a new-born baby, and it comes in the wise eyes of our elders. It comes with angels singing proclamations of peace on earth and good will to all, and it comes silently, a hand held in the midst of grief. It comes with gifts from wise men. It comes with Herod’s soldiers breathing down its neck, hoping to destroy it. It comes despite our best efforts to thwart it. It comes when we don’t think we’ll ever find it. It comes sometimes because we seek it out. It comes sometimes when it wasn’t what we were looking for. It comes sometimes in strength and abundance, and sometimes it comes thin and fragile. Sometimes it makes all the difference and we can say with confidence, “love wins.” Sometimes it loses and at least for a time, hope disappears. But love keeps coming, like the returning sun at midwinter. It keeps coming, like stars in the night sky. It keeps coming, like one small candle lit against the darkness. It keeps coming. And I, for one, am hopeful. I hope you are too. Love keeps coming.
My prayer for each of us this evening is that we encounter love, and that we rediscover, even if we’re not sure why, our reasons to hope.
Merry Christmas. Amen. Blessed be.
[1] Mr. McEnroe’s editorial is at http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-mcenroe-so-that-1223-20121221,0,5527899.column.
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