Perhaps you have heard about Antoinette Tuff, who this week single-handedly prevented a massacre at an elementary school outside of Atlanta. When a man bearing an AK-47 and a variety of other weapons came into the school where Ms. Tuff works as a clerk she did not pull out a gun and shoot him, fulfilling the NRA’s fantasies of what protection looks like. Instead, she chose to respond to the gunman as a human being, not just a crazed killer. She told him her own story of heartbreak and getting through. She prayed. She told him that there was another way out, and invited him to lay down his weapons and give himself over to the police. And he did, without hurting anyone. In case the story isn’t wonderful enough at that, she gave him the opportunity to apologize over the PA system while teachers and students were still huddled in their classrooms.

Now, if you are a proponent of the idea that the best defense is a quick offense, then you will say that this is an anomaly, and that most people with violence on their minds cannot be talked down. While I have yet to see any particular evidence that this conviction is true, it also isn’t my point. If Ms. Tuff had pulled out a gun and shot the man as soon as she saw he was dangerous, teachers and children might have been saved, but someone would still have been shot. And in my theological world every life matters, even that of the gunman. But more than that, in the world of my personal convictions, love matters. Meeting people in their full humanity matters. And the true heroes are the ones who are willing to put their lives on the line in the service of love and humanity.

Antoinette Tuff is clearly a hero. So were the teachers huddled in their classrooms, determined that no child would be hurt on their watch. But you know what? Those teachers were heroes last week, when they didn’t have any idea that their school was headed for the news. They, and countless other teachers returning to school this season, were heroes when they stayed up late designing lesson plans that would engage children in the world of counting or chemistry or world history, working to get young people excited about the process of thinking in a world that is largely more interested in teaching young people to be excited about consuming. They were heroes when they scoured the garage sales looking for books that would make teenagers want to read; when they shared their lunch with a child who didn’t have any; when they stayed in at recess to talk with a child who was acting out in class to find out the source of his anger, rather than just sending him off to the principal’s office.

In the face of systems increasingly built around record-keeping and test-taking there are teachers – not all, but many – who continue to find ways to encourage creativity and critical thinking. In the face of increasing class sizes there are still teachers who still manage to meet each child as an individual, to accommodate each child’s needs and learning style. In the face of helicopter parents, parents working multiple jobs, addicted parents, and families living on the streets, teachers are providing environments where children can experience both responsibility and security. There are teachers – and a wide variety of other school personnel – who day after day meet child after child with love and respect and an  abiding interest not only in who that child is, but also in who they might become.

In my book, that’s some kind of hero.

I had the honor of spending this week with a dozen youth who chose to spend the first week of August in New Orleans. So you already know that they are brave. You should also know that they are leaders and followers, conveners and collaborators, organizers and educators. But this isn’t a note about nouns. This is a note about verbs. Unitarian Universalist Verbs.

My colleague, Rev. Paul, showed up (consistently, faithfully) this week wearing these verbs around his neck:

CARE

SHARE

GROW

LEARN

HEAR

HOPE

LOVE

I want to take a moment and affirm the National Youth Justice Training UU youth for embodying these verbs with courage and kindness beyond measure. Let us join Jessica, Emma, Emily, Emily, Meiling, Alex, Ellie, Ian, Sam, Sam, Anais, and Leah in transforming the injustices of this world into Beloved Community that both is and is becoming.

May it ever be so, beloveds.

Beloveds, let us have a common vocabulary. In the midst of the conversation on race prompted by the verdict of the Zimmerman trial, allow me to point us toward the 4 I’s of Oppression, spelled out clearly here by YouthBuild USA:    – https://youthbuild.org/sites/youthbuild.org/files/Four%20Is.pdf Ideological, Institutional, Interpersonal, and Internalize Oppression.  Recognize that racism operates on many levels in this country.  If you do not know this, please take the time to learn about it before joining loudly in the conversation.  This matters.

Let us hear truth when it is spoken to power. Let us keep the dialogue grounded in the realities of oppression. And if you are white, keep showing up in solidarity with all who call for Justice for Trayvon. It is beyond time for more than a handful of white people to stand on the side of love in this country.

Dear ones, let us live into the possibility of Beloved Community with courage and grace.

I just got back from a week at a dance and music camp in the California redwoods. The music was outstanding, the dancing ecstatic, the people open-hearted and the trees majestic. It was, in short, almost heaven. (My version of heaven does not include meatloaf prepared by the staff of a YMCA camp, but you can’t have everything.) Really, I think it’s as close to heaven as I’m likely to get.

My theology, and that of most Unitarian Universalists, doesn’t really run to a notion of a heaven that you arrive in after you die. The Universalist side of our heritage declares that a loving God would not consign anyone to eternal torment in hell. But when it comes to the question of what does happen to us after we die, most UUs tend to come down on the side of figuring that there’s no way to know until we get there, so there isn’t much point in worrying about it now.

Sure, every now and again I wonder if some consciousness might continue as my body fades to dirt, and what that might be like. But mostly I wonder why more people don’t dwell in heaven now. I wonder why so many people have to scrabble for the barest existence, when it would take so little to move them toward that heaven we call “enough.” But more than that, I wonder why so many people who dwell in the land of Enough seem so far from heaven.

Of course, maybe I’m missing it. Maybe it’s possible to find heaven in a shopping mall or in front of a TV screen, and it’s just never happened to me. But it looks to me like an awful lot of people spend an awful lot of time working jobs they don’t like to buy things they don’t care about, escaping at the end of the day into the world of people who don’t exist. And I know that heaven isn’t a place you can dwell all the time. For every moment of wordless delight when your baby looks in your eyes and grins there are an awful lot of diapers to be changed. But still, I have to wonder, how much effort have you put into the pursuit of heaven?

Not the pursuit of heaven that means following all the rules now so that you go Up when you die, but the pursuit of heaven right here and now—those moments of expansive joy,  deep connection, a bubbling over of delight. The heaven that comes when you laugh with your best friends late at night, or let the music roll through you as you sing in a choir or when you plunge into a lake on a hot summer day. The heaven of burying your face between the neck and shoulder of your sleepy child, or in the deep fur of that same spot on your dog. The heaven of creating a bowl or a sentence or meal that will nourish someone you love.

I don’t pretend to know what heaven looks like, not in this life or the next. In either case, I suspect it won’t look the same for you as for me. But whatever your heaven looks like, feels like, tastes like, I hope that you go out of your way to find it – not by walking the straight and narrow path, but by dancing down the wide road of joy.

We are all in this together, beloveds. All of creation is ultimately and intimately relational. Our faith is grounded in and continuously points us toward relationship. Covenants, promises about how we will be in relationship, cannot be made by one’s self. There are no solitary covenants – only communal ones.

It may surprise a few of you to learn that the Principles and Purposes Unitarian Universalists often speak of are part of congregational covenants. We covenant to affirm and promote the Principles and Purposes as member congregations – with other UU congregations. Indeed, in spite of the historically individualistic tendency of liberal religion, our strength has always lain in our relationships.

“None of us,” writes psychotherapist Marilyn Peterson, “can survive alone. Our capacity to trust, therefore, is precious because without it, we are isolated from the human community.” (At Personal Risk, 1992).

During my “year abroad” in California as an intern minister, I learned an important lesson from the ancient redwood trees of Northern California (author unknown).

Huge as they are,
They have very shallow root systems.
Yet they [are] not be blown over by strong winds.
The secret of their stability is
The interweaving of each tree’s roots with
Those that stand by it.
Thus, a vast network of support is formed
Just beneath the surface.
In the wildest storms,
These trees hold each other up.

Redwood roots photo by Impressive Magazine Team

So it is, I believe, with our liberal religious faith, Unitarian Universalism. Because we are an evolutionary faith, described by UU historian Susan Ritchie as “the Protestant Reformation that never stopped,” it is actually unfaithful for us to send down deep roots of certainty. Instead, we are called to send out many roots in a covenantal interweaving of commitment and accountability, becoming stronger through our relationships with each other.

May you find joy in the weaving, dear people of promise.