The Goal of World Community with Peace, Liberty, and Justice for All
December 10, 2013
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” – so begins the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948.
Today marks the 65th Anniversary of this visionary document, created shortly after the end of World War II. In the aftermath of massive global violence, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of that conflict happen again.
The decades since have been filled with violence and atrocities.
And.
And the arc of the universe has bent toward justice.
For at least there is now an international promise of how we know we are called to be together, a First Principle
guideline leading to a Sixth Principle vision.
To paraphrase the G.I. Joe cartoon of my childhood, “Now we know, and knowing is half the battle.”
May this knowing lead to loving, compassionate doing in the next 65 years.
“As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, let us intensify our efforts to fulfill our collective responsibility to promote and protect the rights and dignity of all people everywhere.” ~UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Deep South
Planned Parenthood of Louisiana hosted a screening of deepsouth last night in honor of World AIDS Day. Filmmaker Lisa Biagiotti joined the panel after the screening and shared that it was the startling statistics of HIV/AIDS in the south, combined with the SILENCE about this reality – in stark contrast to the national story that HIV/AIDS is “under control” – that drew her to create deepsouth. As Elizabeth Pandolfi writes in her review of the film:
Unlike the rest of the nation, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the South has not been controlled and conquered. Instead, it’s rampant and largely invisible. Deaths from HIV/AIDS are 50 percent higher than in the rest of the country. The South also has the highest rate of incarceration, the highest number of uninsured people, the highest rate of STD infection, the highest rate of poverty — and the list goes on. Those Southerners who are HIV positive are still mired in many of the same problems that patients faced during the early years of the disease, from discrimination to lack of access to care.
Born and raised in the southland, I often respond to news like this with a Gina Forsyth song:
Oh, I love it and I hate it
Every now and then berate it
Oh, the sweet and sunny south where I was born
And yet I know the South is simply the identified patient in the United States – where every place is suffering from an illness greater than HIV/AIDS, an illness endemic to the structure of this nation from its creation. The dis-ease of racism.
Panelist Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision,went directly to the soul of the matter when asked what can be done to address HIV/AIDS in the South. Address racism. Address poverty. Address homelessness. Address food access and healthcare access and daycare options. Address the internalized racial inferiority and internalized racial superiority that destroys lives.
Beloveds, in this interdependent web of all existence, nothing exists outside of relationship.
Let us shine the light of our faith on these connections. Let us address the root illnesses of our nation – structural racism, sexism, heterosexism – every –ism that privileges anyone and demeans another for the superiority of a few. If we spend our lives addressing only the symptoms, the next generation will suffer even more from this dis-ease.
Let the SILENCE be broken by a multitude of voices rising up with truths, with stories that remind us we are all in this together – and together, we can heal. Only together can we heal.
Songs that Save Us
Emma’s Revolution came to New Orleans and offered a workshop focused on singing and songwriting for social justice last weekend. I am still reeling a bit from process. Yesterday I caught myself humming a song and wondered “whose song am I singing?” With a flash of wonder, I realized that it was mine.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how shut up/shut down the songs within me have been.
We are endlessly adaptable, us human beings. We can adapt to racism, to endless war, to drone strikes and wire taps, to fracking and mountain top mining…We can adapt to deformed seafood and boil water alerts, to a school to prison pipeline and senior citizens choosing between heat or healthcare.
“That’s just the way it is,” we say. We forget that we have the power to resist. We forget that there are unsung songs within us. We forget that adaptability is essential for survival, but there’s more to life than surviving.
We must refuse to adapt to that which dehumanizes us, destroys our habitats and our hearts. We who would be whole and holy – who would thrive together as beloved community – must remember the songs within us. Remember the songs within us and sing them out loud together.
Anything I can do, We can do better…
“We think that honesty and living in truth are better ways to live than propaganda and denial and comforting stories.” –Tom Schade, “Religious Community is Not Enough: Unitarian Universalism’s purpose is much bigger than gathering with like-minded people for mutual support,” UU World Winter 2013.
Earlier this year the Board members of the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal voted unanimously to attend an Undoing Racism training offered by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. While most of the members of the Board consider themselves anti-racist, we are stretching into what it would take to intentionally shape the Center to be an anti-racist institution. A primarily interpersonal understanding of racism limits our collective ability to address institutional, internalized, and ideological racism. With support from the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, the entire Board registered for the November Regional Training in New Orleans.
Beloveds, it is not enough to send off one or two of a congregation’s more social justice-y members to a training and consider the work of anti-racism done. It isn’t even enough to go through a congregation-wide training – once. This system of inequity, so deeply in the bones of our country’s constitution that you can take white people out of leadership and have the system continue to provide a preferential option for whites, requires a diligent commitment to undo.
One white member of the Center’s Board was attending this training for the “umpteenth time” since beginning to attend in the 1980’s and was clear that she would keep coming back. What has been done to us as a nation is a powerful, hypnotic thing. It lets me think, as a white woman, “I worked hard for what I have” and not even begin to reflect on how hard my neighbors of color have worked to have not even half as much.
It is hard to express my gratitude to the members of the Center’s Board for showing up for the training, day after day, for an exercise in living in truth, unpacking and confronting propaganda and denial. And doing it together. While I have attended multiple-trainings as an individual, this is the first one I have attended as an intentional member of a collective – and I experienced this training profoundly differently than the ones before. Instead of getting stuck on my own abilities (and lack thereof), I was able to think about the resources and structures of the organization I was a part of – and this has sent me back into the world with energy and hope.
The strongly individualistic (white) values of this nation will not serve us in the task of undoing the structures of oppression. Dismantling systems of oppression is collective work, friends. Find your collective. It is not enough to be a lone crusader in the work of undoing racism. This position only enforces the structure of isolation, designed to prevent collective organizing. If this is your position, look around. You are not alone. All of our lives are diminished by the structures of racism.
Organize, beloveds. The work will not be done perfectly, but together, we can begin to heal that which is profoundly broken.
Who does your heart break for?
Last month I had the joy of participating in the first Life on Fire un-conference (https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe).
I was drawn to the gathering by the questions being asked, as well as by the beloveds who were convening us.
• Do you want to transform the world into the beloved community?
• Do you want to live a committed life that takes you to third places, abandoned places, and secular places?
• Do you believe in radical integrity?
• Do you want to live as if you are who you say you are?
• Do you know who your heart breaks for?
Do you know who your heart breaks for?
I know who my heart breaks for. My heart breaks for the neighbor who has nothing and the neighbor who lives in fear that what he has will be taken from him.
My heart breaks for the creatures of the disappearing wetlands and for the communities destroyed because the wetlands are no longer there to protect them.
My heart breaks for the transgender woman who has no shelter to accept her in New Orleans as a woman “because she hasn’t had the operation yet” and for the shelter director whose compassion has been destroyed by the unceasing need that shows up on her doorstep every day.
My heart breaks for everyone dehumanized and treated as less than by the evil of oppression, and for those so blinded by their own hate that they do not realize they have given up their own humanity in the process of denying it to others.
Who does your heart break for, beloveds?
When we find what breaks our hearts open, we can begin to live with a sense of purpose, with a mission, as a compassionate community of faith.
Together
Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all –
- A culture that prioritizes paper with imaginary value over oxygen, clean water, livable communities,
- A culture that tells some of us we are better than others, tells some of us we are inferior,
- A dominant culture that sacrifices the many for the few and lays the blame for the destruction squarely upon those who are being destroyed…
- A dominant culture that resists even being named, but which much be named to be changed…
Singer activist Ani DiFranco sang in 1995 (Not a Pretty Girl)
I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I’ve got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
Sometimes I am an angry white woman. And sometimes, I am afraid. I am angry that children are not eating this week because human beings elected to govern the resources of this nation have decided that ideology is more important than people. I am afraid of how much harm is being done, how many lives without safety nets are crashing to the ground even as I write these words today.
And always, always, I am grateful to be a part of a faith on fire – on fire for love, mercy, and justice, a faith that walks the talk, not perfectly, but with a broken open heart of commitment. A faith that says it is okay to be angry and afraid and keep going, keep going… beloveds, let us turn toward each other in this vulnerable moment in our nation’s history.
Let us change the story together.
Rejoice?
First, gather friends and family. Together, build a structure with at least three sides. Roof it with bamboo or cornstalks, anything you can cut from the ground. Remember to leave spaces where the stars can shine through. Dwell in this place for a week.
“Dwelling” includes eating, talking, singing, napping, reading, relaxing, entertaining, all that is our life. Lounge here, dine here, enjoying the fruits of the harvest. Invite friends and strangers in to dine with you. If it isn’t raining and you’re up for the adventure, sleep in the sukkah you have built. The sukkah is one of the few Jewish practices that involves the entire body in the experience of a mitzvah, a commandment relating to Jewish practice and observance.
Sukkot encompasses a multitude of themes and symbols. This Jewish holiday is rich in life and lessons of an embodied faith.
Dwelling in a sukkah, a little hut open to the elements and slated for demolition only a week after its construction, one is returned to a time in Jewish history when the entire nation was homeless and wandering.
Dwelling in a sukkah invites people to remove themselves from both the materialistic things that normally fill our environment and the illusion of security that our stuff provides to us.
Many of us fill our homes with the most beautiful and expensive stuff we can afford – (sometimes more than we can afford). We are surrounded daily by our material things, symbols of our security and comfort and accomplishments.
Usually, we dwell in the midst of our stuff. Sukkot calls those who honor this holiday to leave their stuff behind for a week and return to a simpler existence.
Focus shifts from what we want
to what we need,
from what is additional
to what is essential.
Sukkot is a harvest festival, yes, but it is much more than that. It is a time when people of the Jewish faith are invited to step out of their comfort zones as a community and make sure that their life priorities are in line with what is of ultimate value. Stepping into a sukkah provides a physical framework for understanding what is ultimately important within a very intimate space.
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg writes:
Sukkot is the holiday of change! Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that don’t last.
The little hut which is so vulnerable to wind and rain and will be dismantled at week’s end;
the ripe fruits which will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends and family who may not be with us for as long as we would wish;
the beauty of the leaves changing color as they begin the process of falling and dying from the trees.
Sukkot comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things.
But that we have to enjoy them right away today because they will not last.
The children in our lives get out of the way in no time flat. Our elders die, taking their stories and our love with them. The ones we love cannot not wait for us to finish other things and get around to them. The season of Sukkot brings into sharp relief the contrast between what we value and how we spend our days; the distance – if there is distance – between how we love and how we live.
And it does not rebuke us. Instead, we are invited to give thanks for our restored sight, to celebrate the realignment of our actions with our values. Let us rejoice together, beloveds.
UU Verbs
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.
Keep the Faith!
art by Kristi of Barn Owl Primitives
In his story of a man with a sneering wife, Sufi master Rumi begins:
A special guest was coming to visit and the man worked 200 days to earn the price for the quality lamb kabob he wished to serve this guest. On the appointed day, the man bought the meat and brought it home for his wife to cook and then went to fetch the guest.
While he was gone, the wife cooked the kabob and
ate
every
bite
of
it.
When the man returned with the special guest, she greeted them at the door, saying “the cat has eaten the kabob. You’ll have to buy more, if you have any more money.”
The husband asks a servant to bring the scales and the cat. The cat weighed three pounds. “The meat was 3 pounds and one once. If this is the cat, where is the meat?” “If this is the meat, where is the cat?” Start looking for one or the other!
Sometimes truth can be found on a scale. Usually, it is a more complex endeavor for us human beings. The recent trial of George Zimmerman for the death of teenager Trayvon Martin revealed a plethora of truths in the lived experiences of the people of United States. Some have an expectation of justice within the justice system. Others have no expectation of justice within what they consider a criminal system – one that actively perpetuates crimes against humanity.
What you look like, where you grew up, who you live with – all of these are complex predictors of how you experience truth and what truth you experience.
Walking away from the Justice for Trayvon Vigil in New Orleans last week, I met up with a history professor from Tulane University. She brought up the Jena Six, which some of you may remember as a time when the criminal justice system in Jena, Louisiana revealed to the nation its deep roots in the Reconstruction Era, built after the abolition of slavery to maintain control over black bodies. In 2007, a nationwide protest against the mockery of justice there descended upon the town of Jena, population 2,500, with an estimated 50,000 protesters.
There were so many people – and so few white people. The professor I was walking with said, “if you took all the Unitarians out of the crowd, I could have put the white people present in my car.”
Author activist Jordan Flaherty, in his book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six reports that “perhaps one to three percent of the crowd was white, in what amounted to a disturbing silence from the white Left and liberals.”
I would call it a disturbing silence from white people, regardless of their political stance. When children of color are demonized by a criminal justice system created for and by white people, we cannot be silent. We cannot be absent.
What was faithful was the profession of divine living by the white Unitarian Universalists who showed up, were called out as allies, people living into the truth of beloved community with their bodies, their whole and holy beings.
What was faithful was the profession of divine living by the Unitarian Universalists of color who walk in this faith with trust that we are going to live into our collective covenant with more and more anti-oppressive skill, more and more respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each person, more and more beloved community.
When we show up as our whole and holy selves, lives are transformed, systems are changed, beloved community becomes possible. Keep the faith, beloveds. Keep showing up on the side of love in this world.
_________________
References:
The Essential Rumi, 1995 (translated by Coleman Barks).
Flaherty, Jordan. Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, 2010.
Embodied Justice, Embodied Speech
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.