When I think about transformation, I often think of when people say they had a “transformational experience,” or when, as religious professionals, we look for the ways in which ministry can be transformational for our congregants.

And it gets me thinking: What is all this transformation about? In my experience, a lot of people really don’t like change. Even people who say they want to be “transformed” also can really not like change! Why would we seek that which we can’t actually embrace? I tend to think it is because our entire human experience is leading to an ultimate transformation which we cannot know the result: death. So sometimes we are, at best, ambivalent, and other times outright hostile to change.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is one of my favorite books about Change. Because in the book she explores the idea that God is not some distant almighty spirit, but rather the very up close and real experience of Change (capital C.) What an exciting idea to explore! Her most often quoted refrain from the book, and that which the central characters revolve, is “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

When I first read that phrase as a young adult, it blew my mind! I loved it. I loved the capitalizations which conveyed the idea that what we’re reading in the capitalized word carried with it the reverence of the word God. Here was a religion I could get behind. The idea that I could continually be both transformational and transformed?! Wow!

This idea helped me look at the changes in my young adult life in a new way. It helped me realize that while there was change that I couldn’t control, I could still make that change part of my life. And it helped me realize that I had a deep responsibility for the Change that I created in the world. That Butler chose to capitalize the Y in “All that you touch You Change” was something I thought about frequently. That I continue to think about when faced with difficult situations and decisions.

In Parable of the Sower, the people who couldn’t change, couldn’t adapt, those who desperately clung to racism, sexism, and fascism, did not survive the new climate changed landscape. They met the ultimate Transformation while resisting the very changes which could have helped their survival. And when I think about the difficulties we face as Unitarian Universalists, I think about what it is we are resisting and could those things be the very things that can prepare us for survival?

In creating the community structures of Parable of the Sower, Butler relies heavily on the community building foundations seen in the “We” culture communities in which she was raised. “We” culture communities in the U.S. are most often found in Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous peoples as well as other BIPOC communities. Among many “We” cultural values, most strikingly, the requirement of putting group needs ahead of the individual needs is foundational in Parable of the Sower.

So I wonder: What would it look like to put the needs of our entire faith community ahead of our individual needs? What are the needs of Unitarian Universalism at large? How do we meet those needs even when it feels like we are not getting what we want as individuals? This feels a lot like the conversations which are going on right now around the proposed changes to the UU Principles and Sources, often referred to as Article II.

As we’ve written about in recent issues of Quest, our denomination is in the process of adopting new language to articulate and ground our faith community. This new language is framed as seven UU values: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity and Love.

I wonder if haven’t we actually already made these changes in spirit. Haven’t we already touched, and thus Changed how we practice Unitarian Universalism? What if the proposed changes — the new UU values — are simply the language catching up to the spirit of Unitarian Universalism?

Perhaps we have already touched and been Changed. Because in the end, Change cannot be successfully resisted but it certainly can be influenced. And we can do so together. ′

Christina delivered the following sermon during a worship service titled “Liberation, Incarceration, and Our Faith,” at General Assembly 2023, the annual gathering of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Her words express the UU theological mandate to work for liberation, particularly the liberation of all people through the abolition of the prison system.

The Rev Dr King: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”

This quote played over and over in my mind as I visited the Peace and Justice Museum and Memorial in Montgomery Alabama. It was my 5th time experiencing the Museum but only my second since becoming the Co-Lead Minister for the Prison Ministry team at the CLF.  And I was trying to work out why it was on loop in my brain. It was a very different kind of “ear worm.”  And I think I’ve figured it out.

We are on the daily, bombarded with news too terrible to really react to: guns are the #1 cause of death for children in the US, the climate crisis, attacks on reproductive justice, anti-trans legislation, and the general unraveling of our political systems.

And in that overwhelm, it is easy to say that abolition (yes, it is still that same old abolition of slavery we’re talking about, just dressed differently today) must wait. We’ll figure out what to do about cops and prisons later. But beloveds, I tell you true, the millions who are enslaved and caged in our prisons ask “when? When is this so-called more convenient season?”

So I say this, what we put off today will be even more difficult tomorrow. Evil relies on the principle that a body at rest stays at rest. It overwhelms us until we feel unempowered and ineffective. It relies on our certainty that there will be a “more convenient season” tomorrow, next week, next month, next election cycle, next and next and next.

But we can no longer afford to put off for tomorrow that which must be done today. To be true, we couldn’t afford it yesterday either. Our children literally march in the streets begging us for abolition, in the form of gun control. Our scientists beg for abolition, in the form of climate justice. Our Black and Indigenous peoples demand abolition, in the form of reparations. And our incarcerated siblings demand the abolition of slavery, in the form of prison and police resources transformed into community care resources.

My colleague the Rev. Julian Soto writes, “You are here to put out the ravenous flames of the world. Enough is enough.” In their words I hear that liberation is everyone’s responsibility: it is ours, it is yours. We can try to avoid the discomfort of that or we can face it, knowing we do it in solidarity with the communities whose lived experiences are the keys to making abolition a reality.

These are the tenets of our Unitarian Universalist theological foundation: we are all worthy of universal love and we are all responsible for creating heaven on earth. Beloveds now is the moment, now is the time, now is the season of our Unitarian Universalist mandate for liberation. Now is the inconvenient season of liberation.

So say we all and amen.

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