Tuesday, February 26, 2019
My most recent sermon: Resilience through Robust Relations
March 18th, 2018
Sermon - Resilience through Robust Relations
FB Post from January:
[Start with excerpts from FB post back in January - portions used for sermon in yellow highlight.]
Our world had overwhelming instability and uncertainty during that time. People asked anxious questions like:
Will my job/employer/industry remain intact, or will the whims of government or commerce make it obsolete or unstable? Will my job in the new weed industry be safe? Or will I be in federal prison for it? Will my identity and/or bank account be fraudulently used? Will Wall Street pirates raid my life savings/retirement funds? Will our monetary system be stable? Will my loan/credit card rate go through the roof since it's attached to the prime rate? Will somebody outlaw the payday lending businesses I rely on to stave off eviction? Will I be making a minimum wage of $15.00, $10.10, or $7.25/hour? Will I lose my farm due to a frivolous lawsuit funded by Monsanto, with an order of magnitude more wealth to pay lawyers?
Will my taxes go up, or my write-offs disappear? Will the govt make a clerical error and insist I owe them $100k? Will social security be around when I reach retirement age? Will I have any legal recourse if I get hurt on the job a year from now? Will the price of gasoline be affordable next year? Will I need to take a job further away from home? Will housing prices in this community rise and force me to move? Will the price of my crops or commodities be subsidized?
Will I be able time get grant-funding for my research? Will there be funding for research or art at all? Will my tuition go up 15% or 80% during my four years of undergraduate study?
Will I have health insurance options? Will I be required to purchase second-rate health insurance? Will I be able to afford health care at all? Will the price of my lifesaving medicine get jacked up ten-fold by a greedy CEO? Will there be enough medical professionals when I'm older? Will there be a breakout of polio our the bubonic plague, or a new supervirus? Will I be able to access medical marijuana to treat my daughter's epilepsy or my mother's cancer?
Will a terrible storm or human disaster come wreck my city? Will my city provide potable clean water from the faucet? Will the national park I love be open to visit or be closed for strip mining? Will they force an oil pipeline through my town/reservation? Will the US govt honor the treaty they made with us? Will my city have bicycle-commuter routes in the next few years or should I buy another automobile? Will neighboring farms use neo-nicotinides that kill my honeybees? Will a nuclear accident happen upwind from my home? Will there be solar subsidies next year? Will humanity change course from its current path of despoliation? Will my food/water/soil/air be contaminated with chemicals?
Will there be a bathroom I can use there? Will there be anything at the food pantry? Will there be a bed available in the shelter? Will there be food stamps/CHIP available, or will I need to “steal a loaf of bread” for my food-insecure family? Will there be curb cuts when I get to the intersection? Is there public transportation available to/from that job/meeting at that time of day? Will my child's public school be adequately funded next year? Will my child's school have heat? Will my municipality still have regular garbage pick-up in my neighborhood? Will I receive treatment for my war injuries? Will there be aid provided if a storm or human disaster wrecks my city?
Will life on my planet be annihilated today? Will there be a mass shooting or suicide bombing at my school, workplace, or movie theater? Will I be able to drive to work without getting killed by law enforcement? Will my child be stolen off the street and sold into slavery? Will my adult child be stolen off the street and forced into legalized slavery? Will there be autonomous killer robots and drones? Will the leader of the US shake my hand normally, or try to yank my arm from the socket?
Will I be able to have decent freedom of speech on the Internet after net neutrality? Will I be able to vote in the next election? Will there be another election? Will I be able to use the phrase "evidence-based" in an official document? Will they have clothes in my size? Will my marriage be recognized in this state? Will my hairstyle be illegal? Will my favorite books and movies be banned? Will my public library hours continue to shrink? If I leave to visit my dying loved one in a foreign country, will I be allowed back in? Will I be able to stay with my family in the USA? Will we keep doing recounts until the desired results are produced? Will I be believed if I come forward with allegations against a powerful person? Will I be allowed to legally collect the rain water that falls on my roof? Will border patrol search my phone?
Will some wingnut message that even the most creative fiction writer could never have expected arrive in the form of a tweet? Will the next automatic update to my phone/tablet/computer break some functionality I need, or bloat to fill all of the storage space? Will my cloud-storage provider and email provider change their terms after I've committed my data/messages? Will my job be replaced by robots?
These are almost ALL questions that wouldn't need to be asked in a stable culture with a semblance of certainty. We should expect better from our leaders and ourselves.
BEGIN ACTUAL SERMON
One thing I do know is that there is still beauty in this world. There are glorious events and amazing people in our midst every day, and their presence sustains us. And this spherical garden we inhabit is able to sustain life, for now.
To live with confidence that things will come out right somehow is Pollyanna. To believe that everything will just be worse and worse would lead to nihilism and despair. Buddhism teaches a concept called the middle-way, in which the actual path is somewhere between the extremes. In the case of the current world, we have radical uncertainty – we can’t know the outcome, but can find a place to our faith. And we must continue with our shoulder to the wheel.
That wheel connects to problems bigger than any one of us can tackle alone. They are “transpersonal” problems.
And Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr counseled us, "An individual has not started living until [they] can rise above the narrow confines of [their] individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." We need to have concerns beyond ourselves, or we are not fully living.
But to have concerns for our community and all of humanity means to address concerns well beyond ourselves. We can’t do the big work alone, and this requires resilience, individually and in relationships.
The problem is that we think we are resilient, or we do not give sufficient consideration to resilience.
The problem is: resilience escapes many of us. Many of us go about our business of life, and just carry on, without a thought of resilience or how it relates to us. Some of us think we’re invincible, flame-proof, safe from harm – until the world gives us a painful lesson we’d rather not learn. And others among us are so wounded and weak already – or so filled with shame at our inadequacies – that resilience is in the realm of the unimaginary.
So many of us as individuals hear the call to address these concerns beyond ourselves, go through the pre-consideration phase, then the consideration phase, then move to the action phase in one fashion or another. But we miss out on the prep work. We show up as-is for the work or learning at-hand. But for a higher level of action, practice is required. Consider the Iowa Women’s basketball players in the NCAA tournament: They trained to get there, they did drills, and got strong. To think that they’d be able to show up game-after-game after a hard Summer of running errands and reading the news and getting together with family, while not strengthening for basketball and learning to work as a team would be absurd. But how often do we show up to things larger than ourselves, half-connected to those around us, and after one or two rounds, we are beat – and the movement, or our participation, is not as effective as desired. In the process, we also might make mistakes that set us way off balance in our lives, or break or strain relationships. Our resilience is easy to question when we’re beat, off-balance, or out of relationship.
Some questions to consider about resilience in our UUS community: How robust are our relationships to each other within this congregation? For new members, for visitors here today, how could we better welcome you? What would help you feel part of this assembly of people, like you’re in the in-crowd because we’re all in the in-crowd if we come through that door? Is there a set of best-practices on the UUA website? How well-versed are we as a community in making those practices habits?
And an important thing that doesn’t get mentioned enough: Porous boundaries. The walls of this lovely new building – and the windows as well – are solid, for good reasons. But our spiritual walls, our social walls, need to be porous as swiss cheese. People who are not members – how often do they come to our building for events? How often does our congregation go beyond the walls for events? In what ways are we insulated? I think of our congregation’s recent teach-in worship services speaking out against White Supremacy, but I wonder if we’re still in the consideration phase. A friend of mine – a Black UU minister actually – informed me - and I share this in this way because my guess is that our pews this week will be mostly White folks – “white people don’t know how to say that they don’t know what to do.” I’ll share here an example of how obviously we have work to do.
Black Lives of UU organizer Leslie Mac recently shared a video response to an article in the NYTimes: A Quiet Exodus entitled “Why Blacks are leaving White Evangelical Churches.” She says, “So many of the things in the articles could be said about all of the things that black folks have been experiencing in UU congregations.”
One person, on being asked why he tried a white church:
"We were willing to give up our preferred worship style for a chance to really try to live this vision of beloved community with a diverse group of people. That didn't work."
Another person spoke of the congregation’s disconnect on Trayvon Martin’s murder: "It's not even on your radar, and I can't sleep over it. And now that I'm being vocal, you think I've changed."
Mac shared, ‘When BLUU’s speak out about the problems, we’re divisive. We’re causing problems. Others say, “That’s not what we come to church to hear about.” For us, that really hits us in our hearts, because we are just bringing our full authentic selves to our faith, and living more deeply into our faith values. Our seven principles are what push us to continue to push for racial justice, equity, and to hopefully move us closer to this beloved community that we all claim to be in search of.’
She describes BLUU coming into being: ‘It was spontaneous. There were multiple black UUs in one space, and we thought “Wow, we can’t really let this opportunity pass us by because we are so few and far between and often scattered around the country. We just sat and talked, to get to know each other. It was clear that it was a scattered exodus, quiet, more from fatigue and heartbreak, than outrage. “I can’t go to this congregation anymore. I’ve been hurt too many times. They don’t hear me when I say I’m being treated unfairly. They don’t care about the issues that affect me, my family, and the people that I love. It’s not important to them, and I don’t know how to worship in that way.” This scattered exodus was alarming as we all saw each other. I can’t have one more random white person ask me if I’m new here after signing the registry over a decade ago…. The real problem was the complete lack of attention being paid to [our departure] by our congregations. I left my congregation and was very vocal about why I was leaving. I took my name off the register. The first person to ask me about why I left - asked after 4 years. Nobody had even cared to ask why somebody like myself who had been intricately involved in the congregation [in many ways] had suddenly decided to leave…. So we decided to come together to build a new way to make our full selves - Black, and UU come together on the faith work that was important to us. We didn’t expect opposition from our so-called “faith family.”’
The point of all this extended sharing from Leslie Mac is to show clearly that our community is not very often proximate to communities of color socially, and not-at-all proximate in our head-space. “Proximate” is a state-of-being recommended by Bryan Stevenson, civil rights lawyer, and author of the book “Just Mercy”. He describes being “proximate” as being “closer to the issues we are trying to address, and the people we are trying to empower.” As I’ve been working out beyond our walls, I’m finding our congregation is insulated, and has processes in place that gum up opportunities to connect. I will repeat: “White people don’t know how to say that they don’t know what to do.” I do see an awkward desire on this congregation’s part to be allies, and develop robust relationships interpersonally and inter-organizationally. But for now, just as we see ongoing racial injustices on the national stage, many elements of relationship here locally are broken, and trust will take serious time and dedication to be rebuilt. To get into that work, we will need resilience.
A bit about how our worldview affects resilience: In so many religions, especially the Christian religion from which both Unitarianism and Universalism first took root, beliefs have remained more-or-less static, and people kill to maintain the rigidity within discourse.
UU’s look instead to our 7 principles and several spiritual sources, which provides for (and requires) a different type of resilience than what might be necessary among those who subscribe to creedal religions. The organically-found nature of the diversity of worldview we bring to this room - may allow us to more dynamically change into that which we strive for, and to overcome aspects of human nature that cry out for predictability and for the perpetuation of the status quo.
So here’s what I see as necessary for change: Commit at the heart-level to resilience through spiritual growth in relationship (Our third principle: Acceptance of one another, and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. I would go so far as to say that we need to embrace each other’s authenticity, rather than simply to accept). Here I am speaking of relating not just to another person, but also our relation to the transcendent (that which is across or beyond) and our relation to the “ciscendent” (that which is right here, on this side, including our selves).
Critical for becoming and remaining resilient for the work of justice and for the work of spiritual growth, and for life actually, is self-care. As a chaplain, I meet people who are going through life-altering situations every day. And so many of them are so focused on what they need to do or control or say, that they forget to breathe, to get in touch with what sustains them. It may be art, or prayer, or meditation, or writing, or singing, shared poetry, laughter, or spending time talking with somebody about sports. But every one of us needs to spend time reconnecting and recharging with something that sustains us.
In a recent Safe Zone training I experienced through UI Chief Diversity Office, to help people better support LGBT community members, the trainers gave each of us a paper star to represent a “coming out” exercise. Mine was yellow [hold up star]. They also handed out pink, blue, and red stars. Each of the points was to represent something or somebody who you rely on. For the first point, they asked us to think of a close friend. If you had a yellow star, you were supposed to fold that corner down [fold down], meaning that upon coming out, that friend didn’t really accept you as they had before, but maybe might come around. The people with the red stars were told to rip that point off and throw it on the ground. The second point of the star represented a family member, and those with the yellow stars were told to rip that point off and toss it down [rip, toss], as that family member had cut you out of their life. The third point was the community, the fourth point was career, the fifth point was future hopes. At the end, mine had three folded down and one ripped off [fold, hold up]. The blue stars still had all of their points! But the red stars had most of them ripped off, and even though it was just an exercise, it was heart-wrenching to see these relationships symbolically quashed. Because these five points represent your support to make it through difficulties. Every lost point would require a period of grieving, and rebuilding relationships, career, and hopes - if possible.
One need not be LGBT to have your own star. Each of us has similar systems of support that we count on. CHERISH those relationships. Remember to tend to them, and monitor them. Just as a driver turning onto a road needs to look into traffic first to see the distance of approaching cars, they need to look a second time to discover the speed of those cars, and perhaps even a third time to figure out if their speed is changing. Resilience requires that we acknowledge that relationships change, and pay loving attention to them.
And also, we are responsible not only for sustaining our own network of relationships, but for being a sustaining support as a point on others’ stars. We never know the struggles the person right next to us may be carrying. A smile, an openness to listen, and words of kindness can make a world of difference.
So much else can help with personal resilience. We have to know ourselves. Know your motivations, know your assumptions, learn how you relate to others, know your fears, your hopes, your sacred texts and sacred experiences. Listen for reflective feedback from others – that’s key for spiritual growth.
And know your wounds. They are a gift informing your resilience.
Within and beyond each community, resilience requires robust relationships. We want to think of UUS as an “ally” organization. We don’t get to define that ourselves. We have to earn it from those with whom we are in relationship, and continue to live into that identity by being in relationship – they see that we are supporting whole-heartedly, they invite us again, and we keep going. We then become points on each other’s organization’s support stars, supporting both ways with BLUU, or JCIC, or FasTrac. There has to be a handshake, and regularly being proximate. Or perhaps even eventually an embrace, done regularly.
Building a relationship like this will take a serious investment of time, and exercise and training. Many white people barely lift a finger for issues raised by POC. Few men come together to lift for women’s issues. Straights sometimes lift for LGBT community. (And TERFs!) But what is required for work is to lift a whole hand, or put their whole body in, and stay in. The resilience offered by diving into authentic relationship can actually sustain us here. Fully expressing yourself, faults, strengths, idiosyncracies, feelings, and all…. And allow space for others to express themselves fully.
There HAS to be room for anger. Anger comes from love plus injustice. There has to be room for grief. Grief comes from love plus loss. If we’re not ready to receive anger or grief, then they can’t be authentically expressed, and the relationship is lesser for it. I want to recommend that this congregation, and each of our members, aspire to become an anger-friendly zone, and a grief-friendly zone. To faithfully receive anger or grief from individuals or communities processing their experiences requires a resilience comprised of real commitment, self-care, faith, self-knowledge, and preparatory processing of all the guilt, shame, internal resistance and other stuff we may be carrying, which could get triggered when anger or grief arrives.
I want to be clear about UUS, while we have sometimes been sporadic in our relationships, when we show up, we’ve done it well. When called on by the Iowa Justice Alliance in February 2017 to show up at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids to confront the CRPD about the shooting of Jerime Mitchell, there were 40 UUs in yellow SSL shirts. That took some organizing work, and I think it tired out those who organized us to get up there. Can we adapt to show up like this more readily, requiring less energy from the organizers? Our congregation also does well at collecting funds each week to support chosen charities. Monetary support really can be an important part of being in relationship, and I am glad that we have that woven into the fabric of our church. My understanding is that when BLUU asked for support for the Mama’s Bail-out project, our congregation raised $3-4k for it in just 4 days.
To show up with steadfast commitment, and to show up robustly requires numbers. It really does. For an organization to have a robust relationship with another, it can’t be a single liaison from each. They may get tired, may become seen as the “one who does that relationship”, and if they are unable to be present for any reason, the relationship goes on hiatus for a while. Having many who know each other (authentically) from each community makes for a melding, and spreads out the energy into porous boundaries. It makes for porous walls, and we always show up, and things don’t get dropped – this is resilient relationship. And this is definitely not just us giving, this is exchange and negotiation and learning about each other and ourselves. It’s as much about the relationship and the experience as it is about the work that gets done.
And finally, we are most resilient when we transcend the limits of our thinking. We are not only in relationship with our neighbors, we are in relation with all of humanity. We are in relationship not only with all currently-living humanity, but also with all those who have gone before, who co-created the life we are now part of. And we are in relationship with future generations, our hopes for them, and our responsibility to meet their needs, and we are resilient when we can have a vision that extends past this drunken hour of humanity. And of course we are also in relationship with the interdependent web of all existence. We are in the universe. We are the universe experiencing itself, every day. That’s a pretty resilient relationship.
So let’s remember ourselves as relational beings.
We’ve been under so much pressure for so long that we’ve forgotten a lot about ourselves, and we and our relationships have become dis-integrated.
As a chaplain, I often need to pull people back to who they are, and beyond this current situation. I encourage you to surrender individually, surrender as an organization into full connection - the joy of connection in any moment. Being fully proximal and authentic will be draining, there will be uncomfortable exchanges and broken hearts at times, but there is a huge reward. Broken hearts means hearts broken open, which can then fit more. But it’s a new feeling. Remember beyond yourself, the divine among, beyond, within, between us all. The connection is when we breathe in and out, we have new oxygen in our body to change us. The connection is when we eat to nourish ourselves or pass undigested matter back to the Earth. The connection is seeing another’s eyes and connecting somewhere in between, or meeting behind their eyes, or letting them behind yours.
Will the future you be individual? We are becoming so interconnected, and interdependent that living interrelated will be necessary. Our relationship to the Earth, to each other and to ourselves will be pressing against limits. Will you be resilient? Will you be ready?
Seven principles of BLUU:
1. All Black Lives Matter.
2. Love and self-love is practiced in every element of all we do.
3. Spiritual growth is directly tied to our ability to embrace our whole selves.
4. Experimentation and innovation must be built into our work.
5. Most-directly affected people are experts at their own lives.
6. Thriving instead of surviving.
7. 360 degree vision.
