On the Occasion of the Ordination of the Rev. Ali Kujichagulia Bell
“Connect and Rise” to the Unitarian Universalist Ministry

May 22, 2021

Copyright © 2021 Rev Sofía Betancourt, Ph.D.

Please first engage with the reading: Give Your Daughters Difficult Names, by Assétou Xango (read by Rev Margalie Belizaire)

What would Unitarian Universalism, an intrinsically difficult name, mean to us if we allowed it to flow through all of its syllables? If approaching this tradition truly required one to taste liquid fire contained in a chalice? What if we were to reclaim our birth from a love that cleanses, that changes, that catalyzes? What if Unitarian Universalism was a difficult name?

We teach our young ones the sounds of our name and its meaning. We make Us with our fingers and memorize the syllables and even teach them how very much was given by so many for this kind of religious freedom. For a love that wraps itself around each and all, and for a clarity of thought and mind that lend themselves to justice. We teach them to be vulnerable, to live into their own goodness. We invite them week after week to strengthen and deepen their faith. We call them into discipleship. Into living, morning by morning and day by day, how Unitarian Universalism calls them into being.

And there is trust in that invitation. Trust in our years of being shaped by this faith. Trust in the paths some of us took along the way to find ourselves here. Trust that we know the we in Unitarian Universalism of course includes all of our children, youth, and young adults. Trust that we [gesture widely] whose labor keeps this movement alive know to our core how very much is at stake in the right to name and understand God on our own terms through the use of our very human faculties that we inherit from Unitarianism and the all-embracing love that will not let us go gifted to us from our Universalist roots.A clarifying wisdom and an endlessly compassionate love.

Such treasures we have been offered.

I am mindful that our beloveds often enter a period of confusion when they transition out of our dedicated spaces for youth and young adults into the main community and find that discipleship is not asked of all of us in UU spaces. You can call it whatever you like, meaning making, living our values, moving through the world as bearers of love and justice – I particularly appreciate that last one that comes from the Rev. Bryan Jessup – no matter the words, at its core is an ongoing invitation to become more than we would otherwise be outside of this faith that we love. And to live our lives in service to that greater good that we teach about.

It is that more that matters. 

This is not to say that we cannot be good unless we are shaped by this faith. It is not that there aren’t teachings from the world’s moral witness and religious philosophies that can guide us to a greater truth. It is that we have chosen to connect here. Chosen to rise together in community toward a future possibility that just might make us more whole. It is the absolute certainty that being born into Unitarian Universalism or discovering it along the way is not the pinnacle of spiritual achievement. It is instead a covenant, in community, to live our way to newfound truths.

The thing about discipleship is that it cannot be packed into tasty bite sized pieces free from the risk of change. Ours claims to be a living tradition. One that builds in wisdom and in love as it goes. And I see this bursting forth from what Unitarian Universalism dreams we might become. It arises in collective activism, in the profound moral witness of our chaplains in the face of pandemic, in a board of trustees willing to take on an entire morass of bylaws (yes, I went there) in the name of justice. It develops in the seeds we plant in community gardens; in the theological language we create together out of our hearts’ deep longing. It twists around our poets’ fiery tongues. 

The soon-to-be Rev. Ali Kujichagulia Bell reminds me that a phoenix, time and again, flies ever forward in its living yet soon bursts into flame, more glorious with each scorching transition, rising again from the ashes to continue onward. Our phoenix rises again and again in community in the hopeful, fervent prayer that we too might rise in its glory. Yet it is not enough to trust that all of us will continue to rise each time from the ashes. 

Our story is continual but it also comes with profound loss along the way. Who are we using as kindling to ensure that our chalices stay lit? No matter the habits of Ellis Island, we immigrants, and children of immigrants will not allow the smoothing out or shortening of a tidy naming. It is not ours to first seek that which soothes and reassures. To slide in behind pews unnoticed (as if some of us could ever go unnoticed in our places of worship) and assimilate to an unthreatening status quo.   

I want Unitarian Universalism to be given a difficult name. An immigrant’s name that resounds with the promise of home; A name shaped by disability and all its knowing of wholeness; A name that is as black black blackity black as a name can be, one that resonates with a dignity that can never be stripped away. I want Unitarian Universalism to be given a difficult name. One whose gender radiantly exceeds all definition; one that teems with the fecundity of an Earth made whole; one that carries everyday strategies for community care while we work for economic justice. One that approaches a range of peoples and skins and cultures and beings not only with an all-embracing love, but with as the Rev. Marjorie Bowens Wheatly reminded us, an awareness that it is resting on sacred ground. I want a Unitarian Universalism that knows that the name Linda, linda, means beautiful and does not waste its energy in fear that the long-honored names will somehow no longer be given life. 

I want a Unitarian Universalism that arises in all of us. That cannot rest when India suffers and Palestine bleeds. And I want us to WORK for it.

Discipleship is simply the choice to practice Unitarian Universalism every day. To be open to how its teachings might change us, and to risk expanding what we know. We are not pledging ourselves to a single teacher or leader or even a particular rhetoric, but to the work of faithfulness itself. As our President, the Rev. Susan Frederick Gray insists, this is no time for a casual faith. We support that risk taking, justice promoting, love embracing faith by daily practice. Living by the very principles that our congregations and communities hold in sacred covenant means resisting the habit of assuming Unitarian Universalism reached its pinnacle the moment we truly committed ourselves to its teachings. The UUism each one of us gifted to ourselves on that day, however we understand and express our own faith journeys, cannot possibly be the best version of itself because it was missing the wisdom and sacrality of every individual who found this faith after we did. It was missing the witness of all we did not yet know. For this difficult naming is larger than any one of us, or any habit of mind.

The Sufi mystic and teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan was a renowned musician who among many other things taught about the power of naming. In his writings he insists that our names are the most important music, the most vital resonance of our lifetimes. In essence your name is the sound that you hear more than any other in your life. Its vibrations call you into being. He cautioned against the use of nicknames because to shorten a name is to lessen the power that is calling forth the individual who carries that name in the world. I have not encountered any teachings from Inayat Khan on the decision to change one’s name. But I imagine it to be something like a newly reborn phoenix taking flight. More glorious for the transformation and for the wisdom required to journey through fire to a name that calls us to our true selves. 

Many of us have found our living in the journey of naming… of answering a call that builds in the quiet spaces between our bones, one that cares little for the logic of the job market or the expectations of complacency. Ministry, in all of its forms, is one such naming whether in the promises of one beloved who commits themselves to a life of religious leadership or in the outstretched spirits of the many who commit themselves to the everyday, nonheroic, unsung labor of a faithful life well lived. In the dance between the two we widen the circle of concern, we build the world we dream about, and we resist the call of an unexamined (or a casual) faith. Let us be the first to explore new ideas that should long have been a part of our faith tradition. Let us never silence the inherent worth of the many for the habitual comfort of the few. To be as clear as I can be, let there no longer be a Unitarian Universalism that refuses to be in dialogue with the now fifty-year-old teachings of critical race theory. Let us not make a fetish out of human reason by only turning our search for truth and meaning toward experiences that we already know.

Ali, Beloved, in you I see such promise for our living tradition, for our evolving faith. It lies in your calling to make room for each and all. To invest in us that we might connect with one another and rise, and rise, and rise again. In the rhythms of the phoenix that call you into being I see boundless depths of grace that we might continue the work of our faithful living even when we falter, and still find ourselves made new. On this most sacred day, I offer you the one thing that is truly mine. My trust in your ministry. My faith in all that will be made possible in this difficultly named, yet endlessly loved faith of ours. May the fire of your tongue, and this name on your lips, always sound like reverence. And may your ministry and all those with whom you are privileged to minister, be forever blessed.

Amen, Ashe, and Blessed Be.