Abolitionist Ministry
There is growing attention within Unitarian Universalism to the calls for justice coming from behind prison walls. There are a growing number of UU ministers and congregations getting authentically involved in the work to put an end to the New Jim Crow, a framing popularized by Michelle Alexander. Many congregations across the US are reading Alexander’s book and hosting forums or attending conferences; there is even an active Facebook Group created by the UUA. We are moving our ministry in an exciting way, in many ways returning to some of the work we lost in the 1970s.
Prison ministry need not only happen behind the prison walls however. The prison industrial complex, while commonly seen as the concrete and steel prisons/jails/detention centers, includes the colluding interests of the police, politicians, big business, judges, victims advocates, crime watches, the media, academia, and theologies of punishment. Our shared ministry has endless possibilities. This morning I found myself in a court room supporting an incredible youth worker in Boston. This man has been on probation for the past five years and has been trying to get his probation terminated so he can more effectively live his life and do his job. There were fifteen of us sitting in the court room with him as this man stood before the judge.
Courthouses are such sanitized violence. These buildings house judges and prosecutors who serve the function of deciding the lives of, predominantly, poor people and people of color. Today is just another example of how the system functions. As the lawyer, whose fees were paid by the community, told the judge the story of the youth worker we were supporting we all sat together nodding our heads in support of this man’s great work in the community. After listening for some time the judge made her own statement, commending this man for his great work and recognizing us in the courtroom supporting him. She then went on to deny his request to terminate his probation, suggesting that instead because of his role as a youth worker he can model for the young people he works with how to be on probation effectively. What this judge was saying to this man of color was that he should maintain his servility to the state and demonstrate this to the youth of color he works with who, apparently, will inevitably also end up on probation. This insinuation and documented ruling by the judge perpetuates a racist narrative of the criminal Black and Brown young person.
As I sat there listening to this judge I felt my body temperature rise. Yet, in the moment there is not much to do but to bear witness, hold hands of the people around you, and make plans for resistance. The ministry here is to be a non-anxious, grounded, and loving presence that can hold the pain while also committing to transforming the pain into righteous action. As a Unitarian Universalist I remind myself that there is no saving power in punishment, that the flaws of the system are at its roots, and that through the strength of loving communities targeted by this system there will be a new vision of transformative justice.
When I left the courthouse I found myself walking to yet another court to secure a copy of a police report for a young transgender woman, Lexi, I have the pleasure of knowing. In October Black and Pink, the organization I am a community minister with, posted bail for Lexi and got more directly connected with her after she had been locked up for multiple years on a series of offenses. Two weeks ago Lexi was arrested again. I got a copy of the arrest report, in order to be prepared to share information with Lexi that her overworked public defender does not get to her. In the police report she is described by the arresting Boston cops as, “a man known to dress as a woman.” The report goes on to detail drug paraphernalia that I am 100% sure was not on her person at the time of arrest. Lexi then had her bail revoked and was taken out of the county to another jail where she will be held until her next court date.
The ministry with Lexi looks like building a relationship, building a caring relationship rooted in nonjudgmental listening. It is not my responsibility to “save” Lexi from her life. It is not my role to dissuade her from sex work as a survival mechanism. It is not my role to shame her coping mechanisms of drug use. I am available to her to safety plan, to help reduce the harm in her life, and to value her experience. The ministry includes writing letters, attending court, raising money, and challenging the system that stole her off the street and locked her in a cell.
As we engage in prison ministry I hope we struggle with the possibility of creating a Unitarian Universalist abolitionist ministry. The United States prison industrial complex functions as a system of domination, violence, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. As we work towards changes in the system we need to be sure we are not creating prettier bricks to wall people up with. We need to be clear that the system, since its genesis, has been to control the lives mainstream society has deemed undesirable, criminal. Unitarian Universalist theology calls upon us to heed the words of John Murray, to “give them not hell but hope and courage.” Our carceral structures are a hell on earth today. We need to be part of creating something new.
As you think of what to do next, consider the following resources:
The Formerly Incarcerated/Convicted People’s Movement
Generation FIVE (transformative justice effort)
Black and Pink (support for LGBTQ people in prison)
All of Us or None
Project NIA
Rev. Jason Lydon is a Unitarian Universalist Community Minister affiliated with Black and Pink and First Church Jamaica Plain in Boston, Massachusetts. Jason can be reached at jason@blackandpink.org
Thank you, Rhoda Morgenstern!
Rhoda Morgenstern changed my life.
As a chubby, opinionated, smart and mouthy teenager in Akron Ohio in the early 1970’s, I had never seen anyone on television who remotely resembled me, anyone I might be someday, or anyone who might be my friend. Rhoda changed that.
For those who weren’t born in the1970’s, Rhoda was the best friend of Mary, the lead character in the Mary Tyler Moore show. Unlike Mary, who was willowy, strove to be perfect in all things, and was never loud, Rhoda was a mirror that reflected someone much more like me and my friends. We loved her.
Another history lesson: In the 1970’s, you either watched a TV show when it ran or you waited for reruns. Mary Tyler Moore ran on Saturday nights. While it didn’t cause any males to weep that my girlfriends and I never missed it, we did choose it consistently over movies, driving around, and the other boring activities we had previously done on Saturday nights. We would either go to one anothers’ houses to watch it or we would call each other afterwards to discuss. (#Nohashtag)
First of all, we had never experienced a show that had as one of its central plots the friendship between two single women. This just wasn’t done! Marlo Thomas had blazed her way as a single career woman, so that wasn’t new. But if she had girlfriends, I sure don’t remember them. She had Her Donald (boyfriend) before there was The Donald!
So there were Mary and Rhoda, fighting about things girls fight about, helping each other out, upstairs/downstairs neighbors in an apartment building. I knew that Mary would never have been Rhoda’s friend if they hadn’t been in such close proximity, and she would never have been my friend in high school or after. A popular girl, if a single one.
So, how did Rhoda change my life? First, by accompanying me through those last miserable, lonely years in Akron, Ohio, making me laugh and feeling like a true friend. But then, after college, a friend asked if I might want to move to Minneapolis for a while to live. I’m not saying that I literally believed Rhoda would be here—even if I were that delusional, Rhoda had spun off her own series and moved to New York—but the fact that Rhoda HAD been here made it feel more like home; less scary to move. Sure, I said. That was 1978. Though I’ve lived other places in the intervening years, Minneapolis is still my primary home.
And now, Valerie Harper, the beautiful actress who says that Rhoda was her friend, too, is dying. She’s been on the cover of People magazine and made a very moving video saying goodbye to us all. I have wept, reading the article and watching the video. (Watch the video: http://broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=474142) As she is dying, she wants to remind us ‘no one is getting off the planet alive…we’re all terminal.’ In the video, besides saying goodbye, she is wishing everyone had the quality of healthcare she has. These things tell me yet again why Rhoda such a good friend to me. The actor inside her is also a good friend.
I imagine myself, on my deathbed, thinking, “Well, Rhoda’s already gone through this gate, so I guess it’s not so scarey.” Bless you, Valerie Harper, for all of the chubby lonely girls you have befriended, and for the love which surrounds you still and which will be stay alive until the great-grandchild of the last person to watch a Mary Tyler Moore or Rhoda show rerun has died.
…born and re-born again
“Love, yes, love your calling,
for this holy and generous love will impart strength to you
so as to enable you to surmount all obstacles.”
~St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier
In the late 1820s, a “change in inner conviction” led the Rev. Dr. Theodore Clapp to begin preaching universalism in New Orleans. This change inspired the Mississippi Presbytery to try him for heresy. The vote was for excommunication. Rev. Clapp returned home to New Orleans after his conviction in February 1833 and attempted to resign as pastor. Instead, a new church was born when the majority of the congregation voted to leave the Presbytery with him. Since 1833, this congregation has survived yellow fever epidemics, the Civil war, fires, fire-bombings, bankruptcy, and church-planting-through-schism. Born out of a conviction that all are loved, this congregation has been re-born, re-created, time and time again.
Eight years ago this May, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans was on the brink of a break through. Membership and pledging levels had reached modern era highs, a new minister had been called, counter-oppression work was going on within the congregation – the excitement was palpable on a Sunday morning.
Then there was a burglary in June. And then another in July, along with a Tropical Storm that knocked out power. In August, the local School District chose not to renew its lease with the congregation, creating a vast hole in the budget. And almost immediately thereafter, Hurricane Katrina came through town and the levees broke.
The church sat in 4-5 feet of water for almost 3 weeks. The congregation was scattered across the country. The newly called minister and her wife found themselves digging through muck, trying to pull their dreams out of the destruction, standing on the side of love with a congregation they barely knew.
Knowing its own history, being in relationship with the larger denomination, and living into the mystery have certainly played large roles in this almost miraculous continuity of Unitarian Universalism in the city of New Orleans. And perhaps as significant as all of the above is the thread, woven throughout each incarnation of the congregation, of loving, yes loving, the calling to be a liberal religious presence in the Deep South.
I invite you, in this season of contemplation, to think about the calling of your faith community, the calling of your life. Revisit your history, your most sustaining stories. Be in relationship – locally, regionally, nationally, globally – with all who share some of your story, your faith. Live into the mystery that is each new day with an open heart and a curious mind. And love, yes love, your calling as a person of faith in a world hungry for the conviction that all are loved.
May this holy and generous love impart strength to you as you are born and re-born again into a universe whose only constant is change.
This Is What’s Happening
This is what’s happening, now.
It is the last day of our week-and-a-half West Coast trip. We are in Portland, Oregon, the city where I was born and grew up, where I know a thousand places I would love to go–this and that bookstore, that cafe, and oh, the breakfast places I would love to savor, and the parks and walks and hikes. I’d like to get my hair cut (the last time I got it cut was in December) and take Robin to that all-children’s-book store on Alberta. Instead, we are staying close to the house today. We will be running some laundry while the few friends who are free on a weekday come by and say hi. It is so much easier this way–to not make plans or have big aspirations for the day.
This is what’s happening.
One of the highlights of this trip for me was on the very first day, just after our plane landed in San Francisco, after we waited for everyone else to get off first so that we could take our time looking around under every seat and in every overhead compartment for our whole assortment of bags and belongings. We walked up the ramp and past the boarding gate, and Robin started kicking-kicking-kicking and shrieking with delight. She looked around at the bright shops, kiosks, and quickly rushing stream of people moving in all directions in that busy airport terminal and laughed and giggled, smiled and cooed and laughed some more. And I realized–startled–I realized that she may well have thought that we had permanently moved in to that Boeing 737 with 160 other people and less than 2 vertical square feet per person.
This is what’s happening.
As a Unitarian Universalist minister, an occasional meditator, and a regularly-irregular practitioner of yoga, I have a great appreciation for all the variations of “be here now” that circulate around and through our religious and spiritual traditions and practices. But I also have always loved to plan, to anticipate the next thing, to schedule and “calendar” and try my best to organize the future. A baby is a sure-fire way to cure a person of the enjoyment of planning. It is the planned things that inevitably stress me out, now. That planned gathering will fall right during her new nap time, or come with expectations of getting Her Wiggliness into some outfit that is not her usual comfy footed sleeper. Planned things will often involve driving, or bus schedules, neither of which dovetail with easy nursing. Planned things often involve other people, and most other people are so much busier than we are, these days. I have cut back, and cut back, and cut back, until, most days now, I spend most of the day barely aware of what time it is. I keep a running list going in my head of what Robin might need; that is my ongoing daily meditation now: diaper, food, nap, play, and repeat.
This is what’s happening.
Robin has just this afternoon discovered the clanging joy of banging on overturned pots with wooden spoons, wooden spoons which also make fine teethers. We leave tomorrow morning, and there are so many people and places I would have liked to have seen. But it is a privilege and a practice to set aside for now all the other things we might like to do, and just enjoy this sweet day together, with both Mamas around continuously this whole delightful week, playing in the sunlight and savoring the luscious green that is spring in Portland. An acquaintance told me she looks back on her children’s first years and thinks of them as the “I didn’t” years, a reference to all the things that go undone–dishes, projects, housecleaning, travel. I like that phrase, the “I didn’t” years; it resonates. And at the same time, I want to look back on these years and think of them as the “I did” years. We did, we are. We are choosing to focus on being with our Little Bean. We are lucky and privileged to be able to make this choice, and it is financially stressful some days, energetically challenging other days. For now, for us, this is what’s happening, right here, on the floor: overturned pots, wooden spoons, clanging and laughing and kicking, going nowhere today except around the block to look at the newly bursting flowers, letting our own focused lives be full enough, letting this be bountiful, this ordinaryness be beautiful. This is what’s happening. May it be so.
Doubt, the Scurry
Thinking of it
is your first
mistake. A
scurry caught
in the corner
of a cat’s eye–
did it dart
down that hole,
that, or that?
One thing for
certain–it
won’t come
back to sure,
after you catch
a scurry out
of the corner . . .
Then you’re a
cat peering
down that
crack, that,
and that. No
it won’t come
back, that relax
in old after the
cat’s seen
the scurry of . . .
doubt. There’s
a hole, a fissure,
a crack there.
Bat at it!
There. There.
Good Guys and Bad Guys
Depending on who you talk to, the recent death of Hugo Chavez was either the tragic loss of a heroic defender of the poor or the timely end of a socialist thug. Now, I’m not interested in taking sides on this one. I make no pretense at being any kind of expert on the modern history of Venezuela. No, what fascinates me is the need to cast him as misunderstood hero or brutal villain, when it seems pretty obvious that he was neither, or both.
We have this human determination to decide who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are, and we expect to be able to identify them by their hats. The good guys are noble and honorable and agree with us on all particulars. The bad guys are greedy, unethical and cruel. They espouse ridiculous notions that run counter to all we know to be true. It’s a way of looking at the world that allows us the comfortable privilege of identifying “us” and “them,” so that we can know who is on “our side.”
But for better or for worse, people are rarely that two-dimensional, and we do everyone a disservice when we try to cram people into folders marked “good” and “bad.” The other day a friend posted a graphic that showed a picture of Bill Gates and a cornfield, with the label “evil” over Gates’s head because he owns a vast number of shares in Monsanto. I’m no big fan of Monsanto, but really? The man has done more than anybody since Jonas Salk to eradicate communicable disease in the world, and you’re willing to slap the word “evil” over his head? Pressuring public figures to divest from companies you think are hurting the public is one thing, declaring anyone who is invested in these companies to be evil is quite another.
It takes a little mental flexibility, but if you want to deal in the real world then you could acknowledge simultaneously that Chavez was autocratic and that he improved conditions for the poor, that Gates has done a tremendous job working to save children from disease at the same time that he is culpable for investing in Monsanto—not to mention Windows Vista. A recent French article points out that Mother Teresa allowed a great deal of suffering in her “homes for the dying” that she could have perfectly well prevented. Martin Luther King, Jr. plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation. There is no one who is totally pure, no one utterly evil. The congregation I serve, the Church of the Larger Fellowship, has a ministry to prisoners which includes a pen pal program, correspondence courses and more. We regularly receive staggeringly beautiful letters from inmates who are finding their way to spiritual insight and compassion in the brutally harsh conditions of prison. These men and women have done some dreadful things. They are not (mostly) innocent. They are also not evil.
But when we reduce the world to good guys and bad guys then we conclude that the bad guys belong in jail, and don’t deserve to be treated as humans with hopes and desires. When we imagine that there are good guys and bad guys then we assume that we need to take guns away from the bad guys and put them in the hands of the good guys, disregarding the fact that good guys shoot their wives or girlfriends or themselves on a disturbingly regular basis. When we divide the world into good guys and bad guys we go to war against the “axis of evil” without regard for the human or financial cost, because we know that good will triumph over evil, and we know that we are good.
Of course there are people who commit terrible acts, and who must be stopped. Of course there are people who accomplish heroic feats, and who deserve our praise. But if we think that we can divide the world into a superhero cartoon of good and bad then we have badly mistaken what it means to be human, and our choices will be lead dangerously astray.
We would be better off to let ourselves by guided by the words of Annie Dillard from her book Holy the Firm:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead–as if innocence had ever been–and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.
Waiting for Snow in Carlisle
Today, I carpooled to a daylong meeting with several colleagues. As we rode back toward home, we heard weather forecasts calling for several inches of snow tonight and into the morning. Now, you should know that unlike much of the rest of the country, we have had little to no snow in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania this year. My colleagues and I were all wishing for a blizzard or at least enough snow to have a snow day. Yearning for a snow day . . . a quiet day . . . a chance to slow down. . . and spend a little more time with my husband. I am just like a kid wanting a day off from school.
As she got out of the car, my friend said she would pray for snow and we wished each other a happy blizzard. I appreciate the beauty of snow when I am safe and warm inside, and I love the quiet hush that seems to fall with the snow. I even imagine playing in the snow. Yet I wonder why my colleagues and I want a snow day in order to slow down, to care for ourselves, or to take time with family. Our highly connected world has many of us working wherever we are and at all hours of the day and night. Many of us spend too many hours living like this quote from Marie Curie, “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” Our souls and spirits need time. We need to slow down and spend time not thinking about to do lists. We need to take time to celebrate what we have done, to notice where we are and reflect on where we have been. We need to time to play. Some folks wait until they get sick to slow down and take time for themselves.
So snow or no snow, apparently my colleagues and I need to slow down. I wouldn’t be surprised if you, too, need some slow time, some play time or reflection time. Do we need excuses or external events to care for ourselves – body, soul and spirit? If there is no snow, maybe we need to name some days “no snow” days.
May you give yourself the blessing of the time and space that you need to flourish.
Being and Doing, Work and Spiritual Practice
Last week I attended an interesting conference called Wisdom 2.0, about the convergence of technology and spirituality. To say it was interesting is an understatement: For this Midwesterner, listening to folks from the tech industry was fascinating, and the collection of spiritual teachers and industry leaders was artful. (You can watch what happened at Wisdom2summit.com.)
We heard from the folks who started up or lead massively successful technological companies—Google, Twitter, some new ones I hadn’t heard of—talk about how spirituality, and particularly mindfulness meditation, yoga, and service projects are part of their corporate environments. I was inspired.
I was also a little disoriented, and a little uneasy. With all of the talk of spiritual path, of wisdom, there was no talk at all about spiritual community. While we understood that some of the spiritual speakers came out of, and indeed dedicated their lives to, sustaining spiritual community, the talks seemed to suggest that wisdom was something attained by individuals who were devoted to meditation. The only spiritual community lifted up, in fact, was the workplace. Apparently on the job meditation and yoga cuts down on absenteeism and lifts productivity, while also providing health benefits for practitioners.
Pardon me if I don’t think workplaces really qualify as spiritual community. I say this as someone whose own workplace is a church, where I am a minister. Even this church does not qualify as spiritual community for me or the rest of the staff, though our work is spiritual in nature, and involves creating spiritual community for others. Every minister and religious professional knows that we must, ultimately, find somewhere else to ground ourselves and be able to embody the full mess we are, rather than believing our church is there to fulfill our needs. I’m not saying that being with the people in my church is not joyful, rewarding, deeply nurturing. But it’s not where I show up with all of my own stuff to work out. To believe otherwise is a recipe for misery for all of us.
And it’s not that spiritual communities don’t also need to raise money, either. We may be non-profits but we do need to be sustainable. So it’s not as if the concept of bringing in money is dirty or evil or wrong. I’m just a zealot for clear missions, and I think that the mission of for-profit companies is to succeed financially and the mission of congregations is to minister to a broken world. When congregations become centrally focused on raising money, they are not true to mission. And when corporations become centrally focused on the spiritual practice of their employees—well, I don’t think they ever really will.
When I realized that the workplace was being touted as the place to meditate and do spiritual practice, and when I kept hearing business leaders exclaim how this time was good for profits and the bottom line, part of me was afraid. As I write this blog, I’m waiting for some help from an airline which has let me down yet again with bad service. This airline used to be a different company—one dedicated to amazing customer service and care. After a hostile takeover, those same employees who used to do contortions to please the customers must look us in the eye and say there’s nothing they can do to help us. With or without hostile takeovers, I fear this could happen to any company as management discovers anew what actually helps the bottom line, and decides that it’s not spiritual practice after all. Far better to be part of a community which doesn’t care if you are a vice president or a mailroom clerk; they know you only as someone with a compelling spiritual practice. Far better, I believe, to belong to a spiritual community with the sole mission of being a spiritual community.
I loved the conference and learned a great deal. And I suspect I’ll go back next year. Next year, though, I’ll be more intentional and proactive about sorting through the folks present to find others who, like me, are interested in developing spiritual community with the bottom line of spiritual awakening, service, and joy.
High Resolve
“Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.” ~ Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman
Carnival has passed. Mardi Gras is over for another year. We are now well into Lent. In the coastal south, even faith communities that do not celebrate Lent, the time of reflection and repentance before the celebration of sacrifice and resurrection, become attuned to the lenten rituals their Christian neighbors.
In her article Lenten Disciplines, Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger wrote:
While Lent does not have the same meaning in a Unitarian Universalist setting that it does in an orthodox Christian context, it is not meaningless. Each and everyone of us is called (by God, the Spirit, our Higher Power, our Better Nature) to be our very best self, a self we often fall short of, sometimes even intentionally. “Giving up something for Lent” does not have to mean that we sacrifice something we love and enjoy (like chocolate, for example) but can be a healthy spiritual discipline leading to our betterment, to our reaching closer to that wholeness we all seek.
Whether or not you religiously observe the season of Lent, as Unitarian Universalists we are always called to a healthy spiritual discipline that heals the brokenness of our lives and our world.
In this time of contemplation, we are invited to re-center ourselves and our spiritual communities. We are invited to ask:
What’s in our heart?
What’s our vision, our passion?
What brings us joy?
Where are our strongest relationships?
What promises do we keep?
How are we called to nurture and heal our world?
“In the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar,” may we be mindful of our moments of High Resolve that we may not forget that to which our lives are committed.
Blessed be, beloveds.
Subtile Body
“There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.”
Frederich Nietzsche
Hard to think, perhaps,
this old man lives
in “subtile body”–
looking at my lines,
looking at my heft,
beer belly & broken teeth,
but I am;
I do . . .
Subtle body where
the accidents fall
into place because
I have seen the sacred
pattern of a life
botched, yet
all the universe gathered
to catch me in
my drunken fall.
Hard to see, but it’s
here–subtle body in this
old man, sway backed
& bowed legs
born of a child too
timorous to eat;
not enough; too much;
all I could think of. Yes,
my subtle body is subtle,
difficult to see
through the curtain of
fat and age,
yet it’s there, ashes
of mistakes, life
in a pattern
I see now, subtle
pattern in the ashes.
