The CLF applauds the vision of the members of the congregations listed below. We are deeply thankful that they have chosen to hold special collections during their services to benefit the CLF’s Prison Ministry. If your bricks and mortar congregation holds special collections, we hope you will consider joining them in supporting this life-changing ministry.

East Shore UU Church
Eliot Unitarian Chapel
First Unitarian Church of Oakland
First Unitarian Church, Omaha
First Unitarian Church, Portland
First Unitarian Church, Rochester
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
First Universalist Church of Denver
First Universalist Church, Minneapolis
Fox Valley UU Fellowship, Inc.
Main Line Unitarian Church
Maumee Valley UU Congregation
Rogue Valley UU Fellowship
Unity Church Unitarian of St. Paul
UU Church of Reading
UU Congregation of Atlanta
UU Congregation of Marin
UU Fellowship of Ames
UU Fellowship of Central Oregon
UUs of Clearwater FL, Inc.
West Shore UU Church

photo by Jenna Starr

I’ll try to keep this post short. Because that’s what I’ve been appreciating lately: few words. At almost 11 months old now, our Little Bean is right on the cusp of being able to say…something. And what I’m finding is that I’m savoring every moment of this Beautiful Wordless period.

Because she can communicate just fine. She points at anything and everything these days, to see what I’ll say she’s seeing, or to indicate that she “wants that,” or is going to go crawl after something. She grunts and grimaces very clearly when she is “all done” with what she’s eating, and she can (and sometimes does) also sign “all done.” As for the other end of the digestive cycle (forgive me, child), it’s very, very clear from her red grunting face when she’s pooping. When I put music on or pull out the vacuum, she claps her hands with excitement and gladness. She waves hello and goodbye when people come and go. And this week, when she’s ready to sleep, she just crawls right into her co-sleeper and lays her head down.

I’m also appreciating the beautiful wordlessness because it’s so unique. Every other relationship and interaction in my life involves words. Establishing a new working relationship, sorting out a misunderstanding, keeping up with e-mail, or even just reviewing a complex day takes so many words, so many sentences, so much effort. There is something truly sublime about how a baby at a certain age and developmental stage can do all those things, pretty much—connect with people, transition from one event to the next, express frustration or love, unwind from a day—all without words.

For several years before I got pregnant, I was not particularly enthused about babies. I used to shrug about them, really, thinking to myself specifically about all that crying about who-knows-what. The lack of words, which I associated with an inability to communicate, actually kind of concerned and worried me. What would I ever do with a crying baby? Well. I’ve had plenty of opportunity now to learn, to try things, and to sometimes just be present with her crying self. We’ve endured together. I’ve learned that usually the crying is about one of a handful of things, or she just needs to “get her cry out,” as we say around here. Which, honestly, don’t we all sometimes? But as mature adults it can take us hours of talking things through to accomplish the same result.

There is so much we all already communicate without words; I know this, but I like to remind myself of it. Just the hint of a smile or a glance away from the person in front of us can convey so much—I know, I read all about it once. For now, I love to watch our Little Bean playing, reaching for things, moving around our apartment, figuring out how to get from one place to another, discovering the world, all without words, touching everything, looking at me to see if I’ll shake my head no and say that blur of phrase I know she recognizes: “noooo, not-in-your-mouth,” before she moves on to the next thing and the next and the next. Discovering. Beautiful wordlessness.

Being with her on thunderstorming afternoons like the one we had today reminds me to appreciate every person in my life with whom I’ve shared wordless time. A hike along a long trail with 20 feet of sweet silence between us, a bowl of ice cream with only the sound of our clinking spoons after a long day, sitting on the front porch listening to birdsong, pulling weeds and picking sugar snap peas in the garden at twilight—whenever or wherever it’s been, thank you for that sweet silent time. I’m going to be looking to create more of that this summer.

May you also have some beautifully wordless time in your days.

Today the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and declared that the proponents of California’s Prop 8 had no standing to argue against Judge Walker’s ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. What these rulings mean in the real world seems pretty straightforward. Same-sex couples can finally resume getting married in California. Same-sex couples who are legally married in states that allow their unions will be entitled to the full federal benefits of marriage. For me, as someone who was married in California during the brief period when it was legal before Prop 8, it means that I won’t have to keep filing my state taxes as a married person and my federal taxes as someone who is single. It means that if I die before my wife that she will be entitled to my Social Security benefits, and that our house will belong to her. The benefits are significant, and tangible.

But the non-tangible benefits mean so much more. The Supreme Court’s rulings mean that we are, like the Velveteen Rabbit, finally Real. At long last the law of the land recognizes what we’ve known all along: that two people who fall in love and commit to one another for life, who have a child and a house and dogs and cats together, who argue and make up and talk about their day and eat dinner and check homework and sleep in the same bed are married. Just plain married. Not domestic-partnershipped or gay-married, but married. Real. Entitled to refer to one another as “my wife,” and have people understand what that means.

I know that a judicial ruling won’t change the hearts of all the people who feel that our relationship is counter to God’s will, or simply icky. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But everyone is not entitled to have their opinion enshrined as law, and the law has finally stood up and said that equal rights are equal rights, and that your personal theology and comfort levels don’t get to trump that fact. If your church doesn’t want to perform weddings for two men or two women, fine. My church is happy to. Was happy to 15 years ago when Kelsey and I stood up in front of our family and friends, our church community, and declared our life-long commitment and enduring love, and is happy to now. Only now, in some select states of the union, the minister can sign the wedding license knowing that it is Real, not a second-class document that somehow disappears if you cross the state line.

That matters. It matters that so many of my friends, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, religious and unchurched, have been hoping and praying for this day. It matters that in the course of my lifetime we have gone from the Stonewall riots to the highest court in the land declaring that “no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.”

I would like to wrap this joyful moment in a bow and declare, with Theodore Parker and Dr. King, that the “moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But I know it’s not that simple. I know that yesterday the same Supreme Court which today ruled to protect my personhood and dignity ruled against key portions of the Voting Rights Act. I know that the arc of the moral universe is less of an arc than a squiggle, bending this way and that, and only because people take the trouble to bend it. I know that the status of my marriage is a small thing compared to families torn apart by immigration laws, or the bizarre declaration of Citizens United that corporations are people and money is speech. I also know that my 18 years with the love of my life are a gift and a blessing regardless of what the courts have to say. But still, in spite of it all, there is the fact that we have arrived at this moment, somewhat the worse for wear, and with much of our fur worn off, to hear People Who Matter declare that we are, in fact, Real. It is a celebration of marriage, and I, for one, intend to have cake.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day about a controversy in her church. A member raised the question to the congregation about what their policy should be about bringing guns to church. This was not a question that had ever crossed my friend’s mind in the course of many years of church-going in Chicago, but she’s in another part of the country now, and the question is real. And, if you’ll forgive the pun, loaded.

There are members of the congregation who cannot fathom why anyone would carry a gun anywhere other than a shooting range or a hunting trip, and maybe not even then. They feel threatened knowing that there is a deadly weapon in their midst, and offended by the idea of bringing an instrument of violence into a place of peace.

There are also members of the congregation who, it turns out, have been bringing their guns to church all along. They see carrying a gun as an act of community service, a way to keep the community safe should it be threatened from the outside. Carrying a gun makes them feel safe, and makes them feel like they can contribute to the safety of loved ones around them.

It does not help that these two opposed and mutually contradictory views are also associated with differences of class and culture, making any conversation deeply fraught. It’s the kind of situation that doesn’t have a clear, correct solution, and the opportunities for offending people, for misunderstanding motives and assumptions, are rampant. There is no compromise. You can’t “sort of” bring a gun to church. You allow it or you don’t, and saying, “Well, just don’t bring a gun if you don’t want to” is not much consolation to a person who feels that they can’t settle into the prayers of the community knowing that a person next to them is armed and prepared to kill.

My friend wasn’t asking for advice, but if she was, here’s what I would have said—and I think it applies to the unsolvable issues that each of us has to decide on throughout our lives. When there is no way to answer a question, it is probably time for a deeper question. There’s no good way for this congregation to answer the question: “Should people be allowed to bring guns into our sanctuary?” But maybe it would be helpful for congregants to be in conversation with one another, taking turns answering the questions “What frightens you?” and “What makes you feel safe?” It might not provide a clear-cut answer to the original question, but it would provide a way for people to tell their stories, to approach one another less from a place of knowing what is right and wrong and more from a perspective of what Nelle Morton called “hearing each other into speech.” People could relate dreams they’d had about guns, tell of their own experiences with guns, tell the stories their parents or grandparents related to them in which guns meant terror or survival. These conversations might not lead to a clear answer as to whether or not guns should be allowed in worship, but they would help to weave the fabric of the community together rather than tearing thread from thread in a pitched battle over who is right and who is wrong.

There are plenty of subjects in this country which have become that kind of battleground: abortion, gay marriage, gun control, aid to the poor, climate change, etc., etc., etc. And it’s pretty much impossible to have a conversation amongst 300 million mostly unrelated people. Which is why it is so important to grab onto these conversations wherever we can: in our churches, on Facebook, with relatives and friends. As we slip ever more deeply into a culture in which differing opinions descend into obscenities and name-calling in the comments sections of news sites or YouTube, it matters more and more that we find ways to turn to the questions behind the unsolvable questions, that we hear each other into speech. If there’s one thing that most of us can agree on, it’s that society and government based in mud-slinging and sheer contrariness gets us nowhere. We need questions that demand that we put our full humanity into the answers.