The People’s Work
In The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice, Rev. Richard Gilbert lays out a Unitarian Universalist interpretation of worship. He wrote:
The church is a worshipping community, a religious community that deliberately and regularly gathers together to celebrate life in all its dimensions. Worship understood as the celebration of life is the most generally accepted definition in Unitarian Universalist circles today. Worship derives from the Anglo-Saxon weorthscipe, pointing to and celebrating that which is of worth. Religion is derived from the Latin religare and means to bind together. The form of this religious worship is called a liturgy from the Greek words laos (people) and ergos (work), literally, “the people’s work.” All this leads to an understanding of worship as a binding together or coming together of people to fashion ceremonies pointing to what they regard as of worth.
A primary point of coalescence in Unitarian Universalism is our emphasis on the value of inclusion. From the first principle to the last, we covenant to affirm the worth and interdependence of all existence. Institutionally as an Association of Congregations, we are working to name and undo systemic exclusions that we have been educated into not seeing. Those at the margins can see the growing edges of an organization most clearly. Our faith calls us to trust this naming and bring these insights into the center of our institutions, welcoming even challenging visions.
One named challenge is time of worship. This is not a criticism of Sunday worship, but rather, a critique noticing “who is not at the table” as well as, “who is there but not getting fed.” Sunday morning service is deeply embedded in the Protestant tradition from which Unitarian Universalism emerged. It matters that we examine this practice with anti-racist/anti-oppressive/multicultural lens, unpacking the assumptions and exclusions that come with simply following this tradition. Certainly, no single time will work for everyone. But having only one day and time for worship each week excludes many from being a part of an inclusive religious community with a life affirming faith.
Similarly, having only one way of worship, (the “sermon sandwich” Protestant-style service, which with a few modifications can be traced to the 17th century), can be seen as an exclusionary practice through AR/AO/MC lens. Not only does it privilege a particular canon, it is extraordinarily challenging for many youth and elders of multiple identities to engage meaningfully in the service. It is said that how a society treats the youngest and the eldest tells us about the state of its soul. As a faith, we are morally called to serve the youngest and the eldest with as much attention as we give to everyone in between. The integrity of our “collective soul” depends upon it.
Social change agents tell us that people fear not change but LOSS. What could be lost when all are included? Comfort. Security. A sense of control, maybe. What could be gained? Our very humanity and the embodiment of our faith.
Come beloveds, let us do the people’s work together…
A is for…Afebrile.
I was braced for a strange and challenging week with my partner out-of-state for a work trip, but then our little babe was hospitalized for an infected (and previously undetected) cyst at her throat, and things really got surreal. Somewhere in the midst of the past five days (only five?!), we started making some fun out of learning all the new vocabulary words. Along the lines of Innosanto Nagara’s lovely book A is for Activist and Yusef Islam (formerly Cat Stevens’)’s beautiful song A is for Allah, I’ve made my own list, with the help of many Facebook Friends. This being National Poetry Month (one of my favorite months of the year) makes this Alphabet Poem even more timely. If you or your kid has ever been hospitalized, feel free to fill in the missing letters–or alternate versions to the ones we have here–in the comment field! And we are wishing our little one and all of you much healing and good health.
A is for Afebrile (no fever).
B is for Bummer: because it just is, when you’re in the hospital.
C is for Cyst. And Clowns! On our last day in the hospital, the clowns came by, complete with a ukelele, and bubbles. That was nice.
D is for Doctor, definitely: there are so many of them, especially in a teaching hospital!
E is for ENT: Ear-Nose-Throat specialists.
F is for Family & Friends: so essential when things are challenging.
G is for Gentle Giraffes, keeping R company and helping her sleep with soothing sounds…
H is for Hospital.
I is for IV, as in Intravenous. Having our baby get 2 IVs put in her…well…the word “iiiiiiiick-scruciating” comes to mind.
J is for jugular which is where you definitely do not want the doctors to put an IV.
K is for Kisses; we ALL need more kisses when we are in the hospital.
L is for love. So much love.
M is for medicine.
N is for NPO. Nil per os — Latin for “nothing by mouth” — no food, and no nursing. Words we (and Robin!) would be happy not to hear any more.
O is for “Oh my goodness. What now?”
P is for Parents (or guardians or loving people). or Patient. Being the patient, being patient…
Q is for questions, so many questions, all around…questions we were asked repeatedly, and questions we asked repeatedly, and questions we were scared to ask, but did anyway, grateful for the doctor’s calm and compassionate responding.
R is for rounds. So important to be ready for the doctors’ rounds, sometime between 6:30 and 8am each morning.
S is for sleep…or sterile…oh, stethoscope! Definitely: stethoscope. Stealth-o-scope.
T is for toys! Robin loved the colorful wooden block toy she picked out from the children’s toy room–where toys could be borrowed and later returned to be cleaned and then put out again, on shelves at the kids’ height.
U is for the umbrella of love covering our family–kindnesses expressed and felt from near and far.
V is for…?
W is for Waiting. So much waiting! And W is for We. We are in this together. We will get through this together.
X is for X-Ray of course!
Y is for…?
Z is for….?
Your turn!
There Is No Failure But Not To Try
We do not have to wait until we are perfect to practice our faith.
While the perfection of Jesus is lifted up in many congregations on this holy weekend, it is humanity that has always drawn Unitarian Universalists towards his prophetic message of love and justice. Our faith tells us that it is not perfection that is the goal – but transformation.
Within our own religious heritage, we often find flaws in the prophetic men and women who worked to bring visions of respect and mercy for all into this world. Alice Walker, writer and international activist, skillfully names this humbling truth:
“People who go about seeking to change the world, to diminish suffering, to demonstrate any kind of enlightenment, are often as flawed as anybody else. Sometimes more so. But it is the awareness of having faults, I think, and the knowledge that this links us to everyone on Earth, that opens up courage and compassion.”
Ms. A—, a wise soul who once managed the cafeteria of a New Orleans public school, sealed this lesson into my heart. Her “food counts” were always high by accounting standards and, no doubt, the administrative office was concerned that she was skimming off the top. The accounting couldn’t show the extra helpings she slipped onto lunch trays of ravenous teenagers with bottomless pits for bellies and this their only hot meal of the day. She was forever tucking fruit and snacks into the backpacks of children going home to empty pantries. Many afternoons she would pull out food for the young ones – hungry and tired- who were stuck at school after a long day, waiting for their guardians to get off from work and come get them.
The administrative faults of Ms. A— were, in fact, often the tools by which she, with courage and compassion, worked to diminish suffering on a daily basis. She was not perfect. She was practicing her faith.
“Deanna,” she would tell me “there is no failure but not to try.”
May we who dream of justice and mercy, of diminishing suffering, be not afraid to practice our faith today and every day. May we seek not perfection, but wholeness and healing for all of creation. There is no failure but not to try.
Suprised by Joy: the Gift of Forgiveness
“Forgiveness can begin the moment we accept that the past cannot be changed.” These words, copied by a friend from a radio show, name one of the biggest hurdles on the path to forgiveness of self and others.
Playing past events over in my mind like bad movies, some of them horror shows, I find myself wondering how different life would be if – if — if the levees around New Orleans had been built and maintained adequately, if planes had not sprayed the fields with DDT while my papa and his siblings were hoeing weeds, if I had been more mindful about what I said that time—and that other time. What if the past was different? What if?
The five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross are useful parallels to the stages of forgiveness, especially when harm has actively been done to us or by us-
- Shock and Denial that something like this could even happen.
- Anger that it has happened.
- Bargaining (here’s where we find the “what if” mental movies).
- Depression when we begin to move into the present moment and experience the harm that has been done.
- Acceptance – the moment when we accept that the past, indeed, is past and cannot be changed. We must now try to live in a world where what happened and all its consequences are what we in New Orleans call the “new norm.” Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. That is not the case. Acceptance is about recognizing and acknowledging that this new reality is, in fact, reality.
Life as we knew it has been forever changed and, really, no kidding, no bad joke, we must re-adjust. New Orleans was flooded. My papa and all of his siblings are dead, all having suffered from some form of cancer. I cannot unspeak careless, harmful words once spoken, no matter how much I wish I could.
Dutch-born Catholic priest Henri Nouwen tells us that “It is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding.” Forgiveness, he says, “… sets us free without wanting anything in return.” Forgiveness, strangely, perhaps counter-intuitively, is largely an internal process, one that allows us to release the poison of pain and anger that makes us unhappy and unhealthy.
Nations, institutions, families, ourselves – the need for forgiveness, to forgive and to be forgiven, looms large for many of us. To accept, truly accept that the past cannot be changed, opens the door to the possibility of forgiveness.
Bill Chadwick of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, speaks skillfully about the internal nature of forgiveness. His 21 year old son Michael was killed as a passenger in a car crash where the driver at fault survived. Bill relates:
It was some months later that it hit me: until I could forgive the driver, I would not get the closure I was looking for. Forgiving is different from removing responsibility. The driver was still responsible for Michael’s death, but I had to forgive him before I could let the incident go. No amount of punishment could ever even the score. I had to be willing to forgive without the score being even. And this process of forgiveness did not really involve the driver—it involved me. It was a process that I had to go through; I had to change, no matter what he did. … This is what I learned: that the closure we seek comes in forgiving. And this closure is really up to us, because the power to forgive lies not outside us, but within our souls.
Once we accept that the past does not change, we can make a choice about how we live in the present. “There are times,” Sister Joan Chittister observes, “to let a thing go. There is a time to put a thing down, however unresolved, however baffling, however wrong, however unjust it may be. There are some things in life that cannot be changed, however intent we are to change them. There is a time to let surrender take over so that the past does not consume the present, so that new life can come, so that joy has a chance to surprise us again.”
As we enter a new season, may we choose to live in the present, accepting that the past will not change. May we forgive and know forgiveness. May joy have a chance to surprise us once again.
Smoke Signals
The drama of the selection of the new pope has captivated the world, and why wouldn’t it? They’ve just selected the first non-European pope in 1300 years. There is the question of how the new pope will deal with the sexual molestation scandals that have rocked the Church. There is, of course, the reality that the new pope will have the ability to shape doctrine for millions of people around the world. But I have to confess that what has captivated my attention is the smoke.
Smoke signals. The conclave of cardinals uses smoke signals to update the world on how the whole voting thing is going. Now, I get why sending up columns of black or white smoke was a sensible form of communication 1000 years ago, but really? Smoke signals? This is 2013. You couldn’t use Twitter? (#stillnopope, #gotone) When is an embrace of the ancient and arcane a lovely part of the grand pageantry and a way to honor a rich history, and when is it just silly?
Of course, churches with a considerably smaller store of history and tradition run up against the same problem of whether and how to allow the modern world into church life. Do we stick with the old, beloved hymns, or do we introduce more contemporary music? Do we need to pay to send the newsletter out on paper, or can we just email it to everyone? Will putting in a screen for multi-media presentations destroy the look of the sanctuary? Do we offer online small groups in place of gatherings in the church basement?
It’s hard to let go of the way things have always been done. And change is not always for the best. Churches have an important role as conservators of language and ritual that have served the human soul across the centuries. There is a depth to the Lord’s Prayer, the words of Jesus repeated across the world and across 2000 years, that is just not likely to be present in the words that your minister pulled out of thin air (aka The Holy Spirit) on Sunday morning. To paraphrase 19th century Unitarian Theodore Parker, some pieces of tradition are transient, while others are permanent.
Of course, in some instances it doesn’t much matter. The Vatican can keep sending up smoke signals for another 1000 years, by which time humans will no doubt have developed instantaneous transmission of information directly into the chip implanted in your brain, and no one will be the worse for it. But what about adherence to the policy of an all-male, celibate priesthood? In the immortal words of Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ for ya?” What about clinging to a prejudice against homosexuality, based on the assumptions of a bygone era? Sometimes the failure to recognize what is a transient holdover from an long-ago society carries a devastating cost, both to the institution and to individuals.
In the days to come, we’ll find out what Pope Francis I thinks is permanent and what is transient within the Roman Catholic Church. But all of us will still have to go on deciding for ourselves what in our own lives is precious and must be preserved, and what we must let go of in order to make room for new growth.
…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.
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.
Collective Joy!
It is Carnival time in New Orleans!
From now until Ash Wednesday, there will be beaucoup parades, parties, and costumes…While February 12th will be “just another Tuesday” in much of the country, here it will be Mardi Gras – the final day of communal revelry before the ascetic season of Lent begins. It wasn’t until I moved to New Orleans that I actually understood the season of Lent. While it may be perfectly obvious for some, it took the context of Carnival, culminating in Mardi Gras, for me to truly appreciate the gift of Lent. A season of contemplation and prayer after a season of glorious communal excess now makes perfect sense.
But first – the glorious communal revelry, the collective joy…
While Lent encourages us to turn inward for reflection, sometimes taking our humanity to task, Carnival gives us the resources to accept and even celebrate our humanity- mine, yours, that stranger’s. Carnival reminds us, in the wisdom of ecotheologian Thomas Berry, that “the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not of objects to be exploited.”
In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich proclaims:
“While hierarchy is about exclusion, festivity generates inclusiveness. The music
invites everyone to the dance; shared food briefly undermines the privilege of
class. As for masks: They may serve symbolic, ritual functions, but to the extent
that they conceal identity, they also dissolve the difference between stranger and
neighbor, making the neighbor temporarily strange and the stranger no more
foreign than anyone else. No source of human difference or identity is immune to
the carnival challenge… At the height of the festivity, we step out of our assigned
roles and statuses—of gender, ethnicity, tribe, and rank—and into a brief utopia
defined by egalitarianism, creativity, and mutual love.”
Collective joy tells us that we are enough – that we are all enough, that we belong to the wonder of creation. As Rev. Sam Trumbore once prayed:
Ash Wednesday will arrive soon enough…
Now, we feast on the abundance of life
The delight of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching
In a celebration that unites
the diversity of all races, classes and faiths
at the common table of fellowship…
May it be so.
Happy Mardi Gras, beloveds!
Guns: Relationship Status: “It’s complicated.”
I first held a gun when I was eight years old. One of my uncles let me fire his new pistol. I still remember the strain of trying to hold the heavy gun steady so he wouldn’t think I was too weak to try it. All these years later, I vividly remember the incredible rush of power that washed over me as I fired that pistol.
I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could spit fire and knock a beer can off a fence several yards away. I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could have ended the life of the uncle who handed it to me. It is difficult to articulate how much power surged through my little being. I swear I heard the Scots heritage in my mutt-blood swim screaming to the surface with a mighty roar…
Nine years later, the older brother of the uncle who first handed me a gun died after being shot by another family member. Not long after that, the father of my classmate was killed while responding to a domestic violence call. The man who killed him was devastated to realize, once he descended from his pain-killer induced high, that he had killed not only a police officer, but a friend.
Four years ago, my partner called me at the hospital where I was working as a chaplain to let me know that he was not one of the two white men shot to death a block away from my house (where a heroin deal apparently turned deadly). Shortly before that, I had watched an ambulance come claim the body of a sixteen year old boy, victim of a drive by shooting at the other end of my street.
I have lived in the rural life and the urban life and what each had in common was:
- a sense of powerlessness about how the world is run and
- deaths by firearms.
Our country (and colonial powers around the world) has a history of taking away a population’s weapons and property (i.e. indigenous peoples, Japanese-American relocation camps, mass incarceration through a government-created drug war…) when people in power decide to do so. How then, to trust that you really will be safer by giving up your guns?
Christian social justice activist and writer Jim Wallis proclaims:
Former assumptions and shared notions about fairness, agreements, reciprocity, mutual benefits, social values, and expected futures have all but disappeared. The collapse of financial systems and the resulting economic crisis not only have caused instability, insecurity, and human pain; they have also generated a growing disbelief and fundamental distrust in the way things operate and how decisions are made.
I confess that I am grateful to finally live in a gun-free home, I freak out just a bit when even toy guns are pointed at me or anyone I love, and I would love to trust that I could walk through my neighborhood at night without hearing gunfire. But I was also here in New Orleans when the National Guard rolled through with their Humvees and their guns and I know what it feels like to be occupied by a military force – first denied access to my home and property, then patrolled and subject to interrogation once home again.
My faith and my lived experience teaches that life is rarely an either/or proposition. In this interdependent web of all existence, we are all connected, tangled together in a tapestry of history and mystery. It’s complicated.
It is hazardous to talk glibly about gun control unless we talk about creating a nation that is welcoming, safe, and empowering for all people. This conversation is complex and deserves real discernment, not sound bites and bullet points.
Guns do not provide actual safety. They provide a sense of power. [Bear witness: our government is not at all ready to give up its guns, its sense of power.]
I suspect that if we are going to end gun violence, we will have to address the collective needs of all – urban and rural, white and people of color, individuals and institutions – who feel powerless without their guns.
Like-Hearted People
“You need not think alike to love alike.”
This was the wisdom of Francis David, spiritual advisor to King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the Unitarian king who pronounced the first edict of religious toleration in the year 1568.
You need not think alike to love alike.
At Unitarian Universalist gatherings, I sometimes hear “it is so nice to be with a group of like-minded people.” Beloveds, it is tempting, in the not-so-liberal parts of these United States, to take refuge in liberal religion. Here you are welcome. We often say in worship welcomes “no matter your gender, your race, your ethnicity, your sexuality, your age, your size, the color of your eyes – you are welcome here.”
Your politics, however…Your education level…these might matter …
Seeking sanctuary with like-minded people, while a deeply understandable and very human response, is not the basis of our faith. We are called to honor the inherent worth and dignity of all in our interdependent web of existence– no matter how people vote, what they believe, or where they went to school. Liberal religion is grounded in a theology of inclusion. As Rev. Marilyn Sewell states, “at the center of our faith is not belief, but love.” Love. We are a people of covenant, a people of promise. And we promise to love one another.
During a dialogue on race and class with a group of UU volunteers in New Orleans, one group member casually mentioned the “white trash-y” trailer park area across the tracks in his midwestern home town.
I felt the term sizzle across my skin, leaving a faint contrail of anger and shame… White trash. Trailer trash. Humans who have the skin color of privilege, but few other privileges. Who often live in generational cycles of poverty, who generally have few educational opportunities. Who have had nothing for generations but their pride and their whiteness, neither of which keeps the refrigerator full or pays rent, much less a mortgage.
I remember the day I received a copy of my birth certificate, ordered for the purpose of applying for my first passport. There, in black and white, and forever a part of my American identity: “Place of residence at time of birth: Fort Fredericka Trailer Park.”
I am often reminded in subtle and not so subtle ways that I am welcome in Unitarian Universalism because I am the exception, not the rule of my people. I left my home state after high school, struggled through a liberal arts college education that my public education had not quite prepared me for, got a passport and studied abroad in Central America on scholarship. Much of this was possible because my father joined the Navy at 19, put his body on the line for a chance to break the cycle of poverty and violence that he grew up in. Much of this was possible because my grandmother believed it was important to educate girls to and insisted that her daughter have the same chance to graduate from high school as her sons. It was not a question in my house whether I was going to college after high school. The only question was how I was gonna pay for it.
Without these breaks, these formational pattern changers, I would not be a Unitarian Universalist minister. The educational requirements alone for the training would have been barrier enough, let alone the cost of them…
Come, come whoever you are
We sing and we say these words from the 13th century Sufi Mystic Rumi:
Wander, worshiper, lover of leaving
Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times
Come, yet again come
Our Unitarian legacy is tolerance, our Universalist legacy is radical salvation for all souls. How then can we reconcile the promise of our faith with the practice of our faith?
It is not faithful to write off a group of people because they do not sound like you, do not think like you, do not have the same life experiences as you. We know this to be true in the marrow of our bones. We know it and so we work on radical hospitality, begin Welcoming Congregation programs, have A Dialogue on Race and Ethnicity. And this is good, faithful work!
Please let us remember, in our stretching, that everyone means everyone. As we discern our internalized superiority and inferiority around race, gender, and sexuality, let us also remember to check our assumptions and oppressions around class and educational privilege.
We are not called to be a faith of like-minded people. We are called to worship and work together as like-hearted people – loving all of creation with compassion and curiosity.
“You need not think alike to love alike.”
Come, come, whoever you are. May you find yourself welcome here.