From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (6.8MB)
Subscribe: More
Recently I had the good fortune to go on retreat with some amazing ministers. These folks have been called to spend their ministries helping people in extremely difficult situations.
The populations these ministers work with are mostly young, disproportionately people of color, from a broad span of religions. Many of those they serve suffer from mental illness or trauma, struggle to make it financially, struggle to keep their families from falling apart, struggle to find jobs. Many ministers have been told they are the only thing that stands between those they serve and suicide.
It was a huge privilege to be invited into their honest, often painful conversations. My respect for these ministers grew as I got to know them. So did my awareness of the stress and pressure that they are holding. What amazing ministry, I kept saying to myself again and again. What amazing advocacy for justice.
When I returned from my time away with them, a UU friend asked me where I had been. When I replied that I had been on a retreat with UU Military Chaplains, she looked astonished. “UU Military Chaplains!?” she exclaimed. “I can’t even believe that there is such a thing! That must have been so hard for you, peace activist that you are!”
As I have reflected on her comment—and many people have said similar things, to me and to the military chaplains themselves—it has clarified the limited, inaccurate way that our culture has taught us to understand what it means to work for justice. In the stereotypical mind, “justice activists” would be those people who don’t join the military, they picket the military!
That’s not how I see it at all. From my perspective these UU military chaplains are some of the most amazing advocates for justice in our movement. Every day, every hour, they are standing up for humanity instead of dehumanization, names instead of numbers, fair treatment and equality for all of those they serve.
Our culture is good at calling soldiers “heroes” (especially if they die), but we are not good at paying attention to their real lives and needs. The UU military chaplains are doing that, often in routine, unexceptional, daily support and conversation with the soldiers.
Our culture also likes to lift up justice “heroes,” warriors for good causes (especially if they die). We make them larger in life—in part so we don’t have to be like them, so we can just relax even though we’re not doing anything to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. I’ll never be Martin Luther King Jr., so I might just as well sit back and remodel the kitchen and watch TV. Routine, unexceptional, daily ways that we can stand up for justice aren’t “good enough” so I might as well not bother at all. That’s the story we’re told, and I’m so glad that so many of you in the CLF community don’t believe it!
As I think about the people reading this column, I am awed by your courage in diverse situations.
Some 400 of you will read this from inside prisons. “Greetings from a hell that you can’t even imagine,” one of you began a letter to me recently. And I know that you are right, you live in conditions I cannot imagine. And yet you are faithful, finding courage to live from a place of compassion even in hell. You are my heroes.
I am aware that some of you who read this are in Afghanistan, serving our military in weather so hot and conditions so stressful that I can’t imagine them either. And that others of you are getting pepper-sprayed as you wear your yellow Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts to Occupy events, where you are committed to nonviolence even as the pepper burns your face. You are also my heroes.
And most of you are like me. Comfortable in some ways, suffering in others. Most of us benefit from some kinds of social privileges, and suffer from the absence of privilege in some other ways. You, too, are my heroes, living an examined life as you attempt to use the privileges you have to stand up for the common good, as you take small actions where you see them.
Whoever you are, whatever your situation, you have the opportunity to create justice. “Justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love,” said Martin Luther King. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Yes, it would be great if I were as eloquent as Martin Luther King, Jr. I’m not. Probably you aren’t either. But as long as we have breath, we have power, life force. As long as we have breath we can choose to love. As long as we have power, and know the truth of love, we can create justice. No matter our age, ability, race, financial status. No matter whether we are in prison or out, in the military or picketing against it, in a wheelchair or running marathons.
Justice is not a giant abstraction that will someday roll down upon us like waters, even though we sing out the ancient words longing that it will. Justice is daily, mundane, one breath at a time. Love and power are the tools with which we can bring it to life. May we practice using those tools daily.
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
