Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County -

As I walked down the hospital hallway, I was expecting to find my good friend JP hooked up to an assortment of wires and tubes, semi-conscious at best. After all, it was just two days after his heart transplant surgery. I was shocked – pleasantly so – when I walked into his room and found him sitting up, alert and talking. Pardon the pun, but it was almost like he hadn’t skipped a beat. Yes, he was hooked up to an IV and a chest tube, but he looked more like he’d had his appendix out than having a new heart installed. We chatted for a while about how the surgery had gone and what the recovery process looked like. And then he told me that he’d set a goal for himself: “I want to run a half-marathon before the first anniversary of my surgery.” Now, back before his heart started to give out, JP had been a soccer player and a distance runner. He had a few full marathons under his belt and more than a dozen half’s. But seeing him sitting in his hospital bed 48 hours after getting a new heart, talking about running 13.1 miles sounded ludicrous. Then he asked me a question, and I’ll never forget this moment. He asked a question far more ludicrous than the idea of him running a Half with his new heart. His question was this: “Do you want to join me?” Now, let me explain something. I was not a runner. I never had been. Oh, over the years I’d tried to get into it. Probably 5 or 6 times over the course of my adult life I’d invested in a pair of good running shoes. And I’d vow to get to the point where I could feel that legendary “runner’s high” that everyone talks about. But usually within a matter of a few weeks or, in some cases, just a few days, the pain and pure boredom of it just got to me, and I’d give up. Now, it happened that JP had caught me during one of those times where I was dipping my toes into the running world. I was using an app called “Couch to 5k” that’s aimed at getting you from being a couch potato to running a little over 3 miles. So, maybe he got me at a moment of weakness. Or maybe it was looking at him, just having gone through years of being pretty disabled, not being able to even take his dogs for a walk around the block because of his bad heart, just having survived this major surgery. I thought to myself “what’s my excuse?” Whatever it was, and no matter how ludicrous it seemed at the time, when he asked me if I wanted to join him, I said “Yes.” Last week used poetry to look at how words create worlds and how words can bring our wildest imaginings to life. Words are powerful things and we saw the stark reality of that last Wednesday, when the words of the President – his accumulated words over the course of the past five years – led to a violent insurrection and the occupation of the Capitol by treasonous terrorists. But today, I want to focus on the power of one word. One simple word. The word “yes.” As Kwame Alexander told us in his Ted Talk, “When we say ‘yes,’ we are allowing our minds to create a reality for ourselves, rather than letting others create it for us.” Or, to put it another way, “Yes” is the door, the portal, the threshold that takes us from our current reality into some unrealized, and maybe even unimagined, future. When I think of the power of this one little word, “Yes,” it makes me think back to the early 1960’s, and President Kennedy’s speech, in which he set the goal of putting a human being on the moon within the decade. It was an unimaginable feat at the time – even laughable. When JFK cast that vision, the U.S. space program was barely – literally barely – off the ground. But that current reality was shifted by a nation – our cabinet secretaries, our senators and representatives, the entire governmental hierarchy, along with the scientists and engineers and the brave pilots of the emerging space program – all saying “yes.” How many times have we been told “No” in our lives? No, you’re not smart enough to get into college. No, you’re not qualified for that job. No, you’re not good enough, or nice enough, or pretty enough for me to fall in love with. As Kwame Alexander said, the world is full of “no’s.” And they don’t just come from outside of ourselves. We send ourselves self-defeating “no” messages all the time. I’m not. I can’t. I won’t. I’m too scared to. Such thoughts are called “limiting beliefs” because they keep us hemmed in, contained, small, limited. And don’t get me wrong: there are some times when a loud and sustained “No!” is appropriate. We are called to proclaim a powerful “No” to injustice. To hate. To greed. To violence. As Dr. King reminded us, there are some things to which we should always remain maladjusted. But consider how many times in our lives we’ve shied away from opportunity, from taking a chance, from taking that leap of faith. And imagine, if you will, how our lives might have been different had we instead answered “Yes” when opportunity knocked. Because that’s what a Yes requires sometimes: an active and sometimes robust imagination. An imagination of possibility and potential, of what might yet be. Most of us, I venture to guess, are pretty good at imagining all the parade of horribles that a “yes” might lead to. What if, instead, we were to invest an equal or greater amount of energy in imagining all the possibly awesome things that a yes might create? Kwame Alexander reminds us that walking through the door of “yes” isn’t an end point. It’s only the beginning. Because once we’re on the other side of that “Yes” door, there’s usually a lot of work that needs to be done. “Yes” is a word that contains a lot of power, but it’s not magical power. That’s why “No” is so much easier. No is an easier answer, too, because one “Yes” often leads to another “Yes” and another and another. These days it might seem like the opportunities to say “Yes” are in short supply. Remember the days when opportunities used to simply float past us like so many fall leaves on a flowing stream? There’s no doubt that, with our activities limited and our lives confined, we need to work a little harder to find the places where possibility resides. But they’re there if we’re paying attention, and we have the power to create them if we can’t find them. It might start with something as small as committing to say “Yes” to taking a break from work to play with our kids. Or to say “Yes” to cooking a meal instead of staying stuck on FaceBook or watching TV. There are lots of fun things to say “Yes” to, too. You could say “Yes” to joining the UUCDC virtual choir (which meets Thursdays at 7:30) or “Yes” to attending the church auction later this month. In the course of reading and researching this topic I’ve come across a group on FaceBook called the “YesTribe.” It was started by the founders of an organization called “Say Yes More.” While the group isn’t meeting in person these days, the virtual community – the YesTribe – seems to be pretty robust. Right now I’m following a thread that’s offering ideas for safe, at-home activities during Covid-19, things to say “yes” to under the current circumstances. So, one of the things you could do is to say “Yes” to is becoming a member of the YesTribe! I know that this isn’t a sermon with deep theological substance to it. And I’ve worked hard to avoid that Marianne Williamson quote that we’re all familiar with, about how we’re more powerful than we can imagine. But I do think there’s a link between saying “Yes” and our liberal religious values. I have said before that we religious progressives are “Yes” people. We are people of possibility. We are called to look for and work for the good, for the opportunity, for the world that we imagine, a world that is not yet but, we hope and we pray, will one day be. Our commitment to justice, equity and compassion and to the inherent worth and dignity of every person are all different ways of saying “Yes” to ourselves, to each other, to our neighbors, our communities and our world. We believe in the power of life and truth and love, and we are called to say “Yes” to those values day after day after day, even when violent mobs are storming the Capitol and threatening our very way of life. When I said “Yes” to my friend’s offer to join him in running a half-marathon, when I hadn’t yet run 3 miles, let alone thirteen, I had no idea how I was going to do it or whether I could. But that “Yes” led me on a path of self-discovery I couldn’t have imagined. I learned that I was capable of setting a long-term goal and following through on it. I learned about self-discipline, and sticking with a training program, even when I didn’t want to or didn’t feel like it. I learned that my body was still capable of improvement, after years of neglect. I learned what it was like to enter a race not to win, but just to finish, when the competition wasn’t other people, but myself. And as we 2xtrained together and remotely over the course of the year, my relationship with JP deepened in ways I couldn’t have imagined. On October 31, 2015, exactly one day before the first anniversary of his heart transplant, JP crossed the finish line at the Philadelphia Rock and Roll Half-Marathon, and I was right there beside him. All because of a simple “Yes.” This day and every day I wish you peace, and plenty of opportunities to say “Yes” to life.

Before I begin my remarks on this Martin Luther King Sunday, I want to acknowledge that, for some, Dr. King has become something of an anachronism. A vestige of the past who has little relevance or value to the struggle for Black Lives in the 21st century. There is a sentiment among many of the new generation of powerful and prophetic advocates within the current movement for justice that today’s struggle is very different from the struggles Dr. King and his generation faced, and that, while we must express our appreciation for him and those who walked beside him, we should not venerate him. They fear that celebrating Dr. King’s legacy, as exemplified by the placement of his memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., distracts us from the very real dangers to black lives today – at the hands of the police, in the face of Covid-19, in the school to prison pipeline, in the inequitable impact of environmental devastation of communities of color. I want to acknowledge those voices, because it’s important for us – especially the white people among us – to hear and to heed them. My hope today is that I might perhaps find a way to bridge that generational divide, to examine a piece of Dr King’s legacy not for the sake of some nostalgic celebration, but as a way of grounding us in the work that is before all of us today. As we heard in Dr. King’s Nobel acceptance speech, delivered on December 10, 1964: “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” These words, spoken toward the end of the year 1964, were delivered less than a decade after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed. They were delivered just four years after Ruby Bridges was escorted into school by Federal marshals and a year after King’s delivery of his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – which was the same year that four little girls were murdered by a bomb that devastated the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Dr. King addressed the Nobel Committee just six months after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I reiterate these events and put Dr. King’s words into this context because, when he spoke them before a mostly white audience in Oslo, Norway, there was very little evidence pointing toward the realization of his dream, and barely any basis in reality for his refusal “to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” In his speech to the Nobel Committee, as well as in his “I have a dream” speech, Dr. King proclaimed a view of the future that did not, never has, and maybe never will exist. That vision was grounded in a deep theological understanding of the “not-yet-ness” of the Kingdom of God and a deep-seated belief in its eventual realization. From this theological foundation, Dr. King cast a vision of a world of justice, equity, economic opportunity and peace. From it he created so many of the memorable phrases that we quote today, like being judged not by the color of our skin but the content of our character.  It is the power of King’s imagination -his moral imagination – that seized and inspired millions to work to bring his dream to reality. Philosophers define “Moral imagination” as “an ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting in a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result from a given action.” In his book, titled “Moral Imagination,” author Mark Johnson tells us that “acting morally often requires more than just strength of character. For example, moral action requires empathy and the awareness to discern what is morally relevant in a given situation.”[1] Moral imagination is, as far as we know, a uniquely human capacity, and, to state it in Buddhist terms, it lies at the core not just of right thinking, but right action. To put it more simply, moral imagination is our ability not just to consider the consequences of our action, but to use our moral and ethical compasses to creative ends. To envision worlds that don’t yet exist, and to act in ways that lead us toward their creation. In another Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, offered forty-five years after Dr. King’s, President Barack Obama talked about “the continued expansion of our moral imagination” which he described as “an insistence that there is something irreducible that we all share.” Later he added that we must “sharpen our instincts for empathy, remind us of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”[2] I think that we can all agree that we’ve suffered from a lack of moral imagination – and even any morality – in our national leadership in the past four years, and I am looking forward to a return of that to the White House later this week. But we must also acknowledge that other leaders, other activists have stepped in to fill the vacuum. I think about Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the founders of the Black Lives Movement. On a more local level, Taylor Doleamore and Kendell Simmons, the young students who founded and lead Delco Resists have exercised moral imagination in their organizing and their calls for justice. And our own Delaware County Council, working to bring equity and fairness to our county government, to de-privatize the operation of George C. Hill prison, and to finally form a county health department has been exercising their collective moral imagination. At this moment, in the midst of the devastation of a pandemic that has killed more than 350,000 Americans, it may feel like a luxury to engage in acts of imagination. We have work to do, and we can’t stop to dream. But I would say that it is just these moments that call us to exercise our imagination, and especially our moral imagination. Because it is these acts of creativity, of wondering what might be, what could be, that form the foundation of our actions. Instead of just reacting to or, worse yet, receiving and accepting, what’s happening to us, to our neighbors, to our Earth, when we imagine what might be possible, it is the first step toward making our imaginings into reality. And while we can hope for leaders with moral imagination to inspire us, we cannot place that burden solely upon the shoulders of others. As glad as I am that Joe and Kamala are taking office in a couple of days, they are not saviors come to rescue us. We must strive to be instruments of our own salvation. And the first steps on the path to a brighter future are taken when we exercise our own moral imagination. Dr. King’s moral imagination sparked generations to work for justice, for peace, for equity, for voting rights. We needn’t aspire to such grandiosity. None of us is a King, or an Obama, or even a Biden. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. Because our children, our families, our communities need our moral imagination and the action and activism that flow from it. Consider your own circle of care, or your sphere of influence. The reach of your own impact. What do you imagine for it, for the beings within it? What does your wildest dreaming, your most unimaginable future state look like? We often use the phrase that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. President Obama and Dr. King both borrowed it from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. But what do we mean by that phrase? What images come to mind when we think of getting to the end of the moral arc, when it has fully and finally bent and justice has been achieved? We know what Dr. King’s dream was. And it’s a beautiful dream. But let us not stop dreaming ourselves. Let us not delegate the duty of moral imagining on others. These times call us to exercise our own moral imagination, to dream our own dreams and to bend our little piece of the arc toward them. How might our families, our neighborhoods, our communities be different were our wildest dreams to come true? How might we be different, were we to live into our moral imaginations, our moral aspirations for ourselves? In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech Dr. King expressed his self-proclaimed “audacious belief” that “peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits” and that “right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.” His moral imagination, so eloquently expressed, remains a dream that we’ve yet to achieve. We are, no doubt, called to be keepers of that dream, called to keep hope alive. And, thus inspired, we are called to cast our own visions, sparked by our own moral imaginations, and to weave our own dreams for our communities, our neighbors, our children and ourselves. May it be so. [1] Mark Johnson, quoted in “Ethics Unwrapped,” < https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/moral-imagination> [2] Quoted in < http://www.annarbor.com/faith/our-values-what-do-dr-king-and-president-obama-mean-by-moral-imagination/>

It was Tuesday morning at 8 am when I texted Chrissy, who for the previous two weeks had been on a study leave so that she could work on her religious educator credentialing portfolio. After welcoming her back and setting up a time to talk later that morning, here’s what I told her: “I’m completely out of ideas for ‘Imagination’ this week.” And it was true. I felt like I had said all I had to say about our January Soul Matters theme and that a fourth Sunday on the topic was a bridge too far. Chrissy responded in true “Chrissy” fashion. Her return text to me was “Have you done ‘what do you do when you’re out of ideas?” I replied with a “Haha” and she said “Umm, It’s a legit (albeit witty) suggestion. Imagination fails us regularly, or at least seems to.” And I told her that I had actually been thinking about the concept of “making way out of no way” – whose source I misattributed – and she said, “See!” And then, just a few hours later came the Inauguration, and Amanda Gorman rose to take the podium and she stole – she stole that podium – better  than that alt-right seditionist who stormed the Capitol a few days earlier could ever have imagined doing himself. I say I misattributed the concept of “making way out of no way” because when the thought, the saying occurred to me earlier last week, I thought it arose out of Buddhist principles and practices. But I was wrong. It actually comes out of the African American experience. Here’s what the National Museum of African American History, which houses an exhibition titled “Making Way Out of No Way” says about the phrase: “Throughout history, African Americans have acted to change and build their lives despite tremendous obstacles. Just as racism has taken many forms in American society, so have the solutions and strategies that African Americans have developed to challenge it. In making their own “way out of no way,” individuals have drawn inspiration, strength, and support from various sources – from their families and communities, from a higher power, from the world of ideas, from the past, from other people and places, and from within themselves. By embracing the belief that change is always possible, even in the bleakest of circumstances, African Americans have exemplified a resilient spirit that is also fundamentally American.” And, digging a little deeper into the idea of making way out of no way, I learned that, in many circumstances, it was the African American women – the matriarchs as well as the young, activists refusing to accept their current reality and circumstances – who were the motivating force for discovering and forging a way out of no way. So, to watch Kamala Harris be sworn in as Vice President this week, and to hear the inspiring words of Amanda Gorman seemed a fitting, living testament to the idea that way can be and must be and will be made out of no way. “If we’re to live up to our own time, /then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. /That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it. /Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; /it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.” So, with all that said, how might we, in our own lives, “make way out of no way?” What do we do when we have no idea what to do? When we face obstacles and barriers that seem insurmountable? When we’re out of ideas and even our own imagination fails us? One response, and I’d say it’s probably a response that grows out of the white, puritan work ethic, is to forge ahead and to keep doing what we’ve been doing. To put our heads down and keep going. That’s what we’re taught, right? At least, that’s what I was taught. Buck up. Stop complaining. It’s always darkest before the dawn. There are lots of ways that we trick ourselves into believing that, if we have enough personal fortitude, we can muddle through. If we ignore the problem, it’ll go away. If we needed any reminder of the ineffectiveness of this strategy, just look at what’s happened with this pandemic and where the prior Administration’s ignoring it has gotten us. Here’s where David Wagoner’s poem helps us out. “Stand still,” he tells us. “The trees ahead and bushes beside you/ Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, /And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,/Must ask permission to know it and be known.” “Stand still,” he reminds us. “Stand still. The forest knows/Where you are. You must let it find you.” “Stand still.” Now there’s a concept. Stop. Look. Listen. Pause. Breathe. As I read some more about the African American tradition of making way out of no way, I learned that one of the essential elements was to stop and listen. Sometimes to the trees. Sometimes to nature. Often to God. But especially to the ancestors.  When we are lost and don’t know which way to turn, when there seems no way to get out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into, or others have thrown us down into, it’s good to remember that those who came before us were once there too. We heard this in Amanda Gorman’s poem last Tuesday when she said “And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. /Somehow, we do it. /Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. /We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” Looking to our ancestors – be they our relatives, others who were in situations similar to ours, people known or not known to us – relieves us of the burden of our loneliness and points us toward hope. Chapter 12 of the Book of Hebrews refers to these ancestors – physical and spiritual – as “the great cloud of witnesses” and urges us forward.  “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,” the author writes, “let us throw off everything that hinders and…so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”[1] “We are,” as our hymn goes, “our grandmother’s prayer/We are, our grandfather’s dreaming.” We are links in a long chain, inextricably connected to those who came before us, as well as those who will come after us. In the tradition of the Iroquois, this linkage is embodied in the Seventh Generation Principle which reminds us to take actions that will be in the best interest of the seventh generation that follows ours. We often think about that Principle as only forward-looking, but let’s remember that we all are members of a generation that those who came before us counted in their own future seven generations. “We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation, / because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. / Our blunders become their burdens. /But one thing is certain, /if we merge mercy with might, /and might with right, /then love becomes our legacy, /and change our children’s birthright.” Not only are we surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, links in the great multigenerational cosmic chain, but when we stop and listen, we can find wisdom in those around us and that which lies within us. When we are lost, David Wagoner reminds us, we can be found by the trees. The wisdom of the natural world reveals itself to us. A simple walk in the woods, or gazing out at a full moon reminds us of our own insignificance and, paradoxically, our own agency. A simple act of meditating – sitting quietly for twenty minutes – enables us to tap into our own inner wisdom and to let the still small voice – whether you call it intuition or God – to emerge. “Listen more often,” another of our hymns reminds us, “to things than to beings.” To the rustling of the leaves. To the crackling of the fire. To the sighs of the wind. David Wagoner urges us, in times when we’re lost and don’t know which way to turn, at times when imagination seems to be failing us, to first be where we are and not simply try to escape it. “Wherever you are is called Here,/And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,/Must ask permission to know it and be known.” Can we be in this place of not knowing with openness? With curiosity? Even with a sense of hospitality, welcoming it into our lives as a guest, a “powerful stranger?” Can we simply sit in the dark and ask it what it has to teach us? Yes, my friends, we have made it through to the other side. More than 400,000 did not. Nor did Eric Garner or Brionna Taylor or countless other people of color who suffered similar fates. Sometimes we are lost. Sometimes we feel alone and at sea. Sometimes, even imagination fails us. And out of the shade of those times, if we listen closely enough, a voice will emerge to remind us of who we are, to whom we belong and to what we’re connected, and that each of us has the power to make way out of no way. “This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. /We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, /but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, /to offer hope and laughter to ourselves. /So, while once we asked: “How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?” /Now we assert, “How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?” May it be so. [1] Hebrews 12:1

What if to “side with love” meant making bold, faith-full choices? What if it were even a little bit scary? This worship service brings together worship leaders and musicians from across the country to offer hopeful, moving, challenging reminders about what we, as Unitarian Universalists, are called to do, and BE, in the world. There is no text for this virtual worship service presented by the Unitarian Universalist Association worship arts team. Please enjoy the video of the service!

There’s a game I like to play with my grandsons. We call it “Which superpower?” It’s simple and fun and maybe you’ve played it before. In fact, we can play it right now in the chat. It just requires you to answer two questions: “If you could have any superpower, which superpower would it be, and why?” I’ll wait a little bit if you want to share your answer in the chat. My answer, which won’t surprise some of you, would be the power to fly. I love being up in the air, whether in a plane or a paraglider, and I love the vast view you get from above. I’d love to have the power to lift off the ground an soar above the trees. To fly anywhere I want. Now, what’s interesting is that, for my grandsons, they always come down to the same answer: they want to have the superpower to be invisible. And when I ask them why, they say things like “that way I can sneak cookies out of the cabinet,” and “then I could spy on people,” and “because then I could play tricks on my parents.” Invisibility gives them the power of sneakiness and surprise, which they think would be great fun. I don’t tend to psychoanalyze this answer because, after all, it’s just a fun game to play and they’re little kids. But when I think about this answer – that they’d love to be invisible – it says to me that they feel like their parents, their teachers, other adults are keeping a close eye on them, and that maybe they’d like just a little more freedom than they have. But it also tells me that  they know that they are seen, that they are cared for, that they are loved. When we are seen by another person – as children or as adults – we know that we are important, that we matter. Yes, the superpower of invisibility can be fun for a while, but I don’t know anyone who would want to actually be invisible all the time. In fact, a couple years ago I was watching a program on Netflix called “Magic for Humans,” and in one episode the magician, with the help of the audience, convinced a guy that he was actually invisible. (Click here, so you can watch for yourself.) And while he seemed to be having fun at first, the “invisible man” soon started to panic. Not being seen caused him all sorts of stress and anxiety, and it was clear he wanted to go back to being seen.  Being invisible might be fun if it’s temporary and if we choose it for ourselves. But we all know how awful it feels to be overlooked, passed over, taken for granted. To be invisible. It’s not much fun at all. In fact, it’s downright hurtful. And it’s way more consequential than just a game, especially when we’re talking about being invisible because of the color of our skin, limitations on our abilities, and our economic status. As we heard in today’s reading, “…it should be heartbreaking to us all that people who need our saving message, who are sure that our values could help transform their lives, are trying to be part of us and yet cannot exist within our communities because we lack basic skills in welcoming the personhood and gifts of all people.”[1] Now, I know that now seems to be a strange time to be talking about hospitality. We’re isolated and socially distanced. We’re doing “virtual” church with Zoom breakout rooms as a substitute for coffee hour in Fellowship Hall. How can we properly greet newcomers – and especially people who don’t look or move or act like the majority of us – when we can’t meet them at our door and usher them upstairs to our Sanctuary? My answer to these questions is this: Now – right now – it’s even more critical that we extend our hospitality to those who find their way to our virtual door. Now is the time when people are craving connection as they never have before. Now is the time when aching souls are seeking comfort and refuge from the storms of their lives. Now is the time when our saving message of love, compassion, equity and justice is most needed, as this pandemic threatens to rip apart the very fabric of our families, our friends, our entire society. The last thing we need is for someone to tune us in and for us to turn them off. Now, lest you feel chastised, I’ll say that no one has complained to me about any miscues or micro-aggressions, and I believe we’re all doing the best we can. But that’s the thing about miscues and micro-aggressions: they’re rarely shared. Instead, those who show up on our doorstep and feel unwelcome or invisible simply stop showing up. And while doing the best we can is great, we know that we can always do better. That’s part of what the Beloved Community is all about: striving to do better, to be better, to extend our welcome beyond the boundaries of what is so that we can find the fulfillment of what might be. What is yet to come. This is where the “welcome table” comes into play. Now, before I talk about the welcome table in terms of hospitality and the church, it’s important that we understand and appreciate the origins of the concept and the song. That’s part of what we do in working to be a welcoming, anti-oppressive and anti-racist congregation. According to the Folk Song Index, “The ‘welcome table’ refers to ‘the marriage feast of the Lamb referred to in the New Testament book of Revelation. This event takes place when those who put their trust in Jesus Christ are joined with him in heaven. African-Americans bound in slavery,” the Index continues, “were never welcome to their master’s table and this song echoed their hope of the tables turning in future glory.” “We’re Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table” is a slave song. It’s a song of hope arising out of the apparent hopeless circumstances of slavery. It is a song about faith, a faith that the hereafter will offer those oppressed in this life a bounteous and joyful experience in the next. What’s most important to know about this spiritual is that it has its roots in the suffering of an enslaved people whose backs might be broken but whose spirits were not. Now, knowing where this hymn comes from is important, because without knowing and naming that history we might think this song is just an upbeat message about offering hospitality to others. And that is what it is in our UU hymnal and in other current contexts. Our dominant white culture has appropriated an African American spiritual that has its roots in suffering, and we’ve made it into a happy-clappy song that conjures images of a Thanksgiving feast, a table overflowing with food surrounded by anyone and everyone who wants to partake. And here’s the important thing in terms of extending hospitality to all and striving to create the Beloved Community: it’s okay that we’ve adapted and adopted this hymn to our purposes, as long as we acknowledge and honor its origins. Appropriate appropriation is permitted. Misappropriation is not. All that might seem a detour, a diversion from the message of inclusivity and hospitality I want to share today, but it is in fact the very point itself. To extend hospitality to those who don’t fit in to the dominant culture (and we all know that white culture is the dominant culture in our congregation and in nearly all of our UU churches), and to work toward building Beloved Community we need to dig a little deeper to recognize our differences, to respect our differences, to lift up and see our differences so that we can ensure that no one is rendered invisible. In last week’s service Takiya Nur Amin encouraged us to see every moment in our lives as an invitation to do the things that are most loving and life-affirming. “We all have to engage in the better-making,” Takiya said, “and each moment presents an invitation to do that.” I love that idea of “invitation,” especially when it’s paired with the image of the welcome table. While the welcome table’s origins point us toward a heavenly feast to be enjoyed in the next life, we UU’s aren’t content with that. We are called to set the welcome table in this life. We are called to fold the napkins, polish and put out the best silver, to race back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room carrying bowls heaping with soul-satisfying food. We’re called to fetch the chairs and the table extenders to make sure that everyone who shows up is welcomed and nourished and fed. To make sure that they know that this is a place where no one is overlooked, no one is forgotten, no one feels invisible. One of the former Presidents of the UUA, Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt reminds us that “we are in control of what we do with our daily living. Together we can lean into a possibility that we have yet to fully experience in human history. A collective wholeness. An unassailable good. That,” she writes, “is the kind of salvation I am here to fight for in the small moments of every single day.”[2] My friends, there is only one way to achieve that collective wholeness, that unassailable good. And that is by extending the invitation to the welcome table and making sure no one is made to feel invisible. That is what it means, and that is what it takes, to build Beloved Community. May it be so. [1] Widening the Circle of Concern, Report of the UUA Commission on Institutional Change p. 61 [2] Widening the Circle of Concern, p 67

What is a Muslim doing working at a church? A question our guest Minister, Sana, received frequently while working at the UU Church of Arlington, VA. Today there are more people identifying as UU Muslim. Join her to explore how we make room for interfaith families and people identifying as multi-religious in our community as we reflect on the theme of beloved community.  There is no text for this sermon, so please enjoy the video!

I’m guessing that there might be a few folks here today who are as geeky about space flight as I am. But only a few. Having grown up in the ‘60’s, as the space race unfolded chapter by chapter, from the John Glenn and the Mercury 7 to Gemini missions with the first space walks and docking maneuvers to the Apollo 1 disaster and ultimately to landing on the moon in July of 1969, I was glued to every news report about what was happening in the heavens. My parents actually took us to Cape Kennedy to witness the launch of Apollo 16 in person, from just a few miles away, and my memory of that event – the massive fireball from the Saturn V engines, followed by their deafening roar and the ground literally shaking beneath my feet – still gives me chills to this day, nearly 50 years later. So, you shouldn’t be surprised that I was glued to the TV as Perseverance began its descent into the Martian atmosphere last month. It was a bold and audacious descent, a Rube-Goldberg contraption that sounded like it was dreamt up by a couple of twelve year-olds in their basement after school one day: “Hey, what if we packed the rover inside this capsule with a massive parachute, but instead of the parachute taking it to the surface we had it hooked up to its own rocket engines, and when it gets close to the surface, we release the parachute and the heat shield, and we fire off these four rockets to slow it down.” Then the other kid says, “Yeah, yeah. And it uses artificial intelligence to look for the best landing spot and to keep it on track, because it takes 11 minutes for signals to travel from here to Mars so we can’t control what’s happening in real time.” And the first kid says, “Right. But listen to this. The rockets don’t lower it down to the surface. Let’s have the rover hooked up to this big sky crane kind of thing, so that while the rockets keep it hovering, we lower the rover the rest of the way down to the surface by wires. Then, when the rover has landed, we release the wires and send the rocket part off to crash a few miles away.” That’s exactly the landing system the NASA scientists and engineers dreamt up and launched into space last July. And on February 18, Irene and I sat glued to the TV as data from the rover was fed into mission control and relayed to the public. Confirmation of parachute deployment. Confirmation of descent rockets firing. Confirmation of the sky crane lowering Perseverance to the surface. Confirmation of the release and the rocket blasting away from the area. And finally, confirmation of Perseverance sitting safely on the surface of a planet more than 140 million miles away from Earth. Irene cheered and cried. I cheered and cried. Scientists around the globe cheered and cried. It was an amazing feat of engineering. Both the end and the beginning of an amazing journey that started out as someone’s dream, someone’s idea, and that was more than 8 years in the making. A startling accomplishment and a stunning example of the power of science and ingenuity and teamwork. [You can watch a video of the actual descent and landing here: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/320185-nasa-releases-incredible-perseverance-rover-landing-video Now, let me bring this all back down to Earth, and more specifically down to our own little piece of ground, the community we affectionately call “UUCDC.” Because today is Stewardship Sunday, the day that we officially kick off our pledge campaign for the coming year. I’m deeply grateful for Lori and Natasha’s leadership of the campaign, and for all those who are working to make it happen. And I’m deeply grateful to all of you who will make your pledges and make the campaign to support our congregation a success. Like the Mars rover, this community began as a dream, an idea. An audacious one, in fact. A small group of thoughtful and faithful people had the bold and courageous idea of creating a progressive religious community here in the then-solidly conservative suburb of Philadelphia that was Delaware County. And the seed of that idea was planted not here at 145 W. Rose Tree Road, but in a firehouse in Llanarch, where Sunday night meetings were frequently interrupted by alarms and sirens. When this intrepid group officially affiliated with the American Unitarian Association in the spring of 1952, it established the first new Unitarian congregation in the Philadelphia area since the end of the Civil War. Like the Mars rover, whose technology was built upon the learnings of all the space exploration that preceded it, UUCDC stands on the shoulders of all those who came before. Those bold and visionary founding members. Those who put together potluck suppers and talent shows and cabarets. Those who took a stance against the Vietnam War. Those who mortgaged our property to provide funds to help indigent arrestees post bail so that they didn’t have to stay in jail while they awaited trial. Those who established the Rose Tree Day School to support underserved families in Delaware County. Those who were committed to creating a congregation that was welcoming to members of the LGBTQ community and gained us Welcoming Congregation status. Those who labored tirelessly to do the little things a church demands, from painting walls and fixing faucets to making peanut butter sandwiches to feed the homeless and hungry. We are part of a flowing stream of leaders and followers, dreamers and doers, that has brought us to this day, and that will carry us forward into the future. The newest Mars rover was named long before Covid-19 was on anyone’s radar, but “Perseverance” became an apt name as it was launched last summer at the height of the pandemic. And perseverance is an apt value, a necessary quality for all of us right now. UUCDC has persevered through lean, dark times before and we have persevered through a year of isolation, separation and confinement. We grieve the loss of those who have left us in this time, but we are hanging in there. In many ways, our community is stronger today than it was pre-pandemic. Our reach has extended farther into the community and farther across the country with our virtual services. Our giving to our community partners has increased substantially. Our generosity and our compassion are shining through. We are taking care of each other and watching out for each other despite the fact that we can’t be with each other. None of us could have predicted a year ago that our confinement would continue for as long as it has, but like the Mars rover that sought a safe place to land as it descended to the surface, so have we adapted and adjusted to a shifting and changing landscape. Persevere we have and persevere we will. There is, too, another parallel between the mission of Perseverance and our mission to serve and to persevere in the face of injustice and intolerance. To launch and land the rover on a planet some 140 million miles away took the effort and the experience, the time and the talent, the varied gifts of thousands of people, all working together toward a common goal, a shared vision. From astrophysicists who calculated the trajectory of the rocket to engineers who designed a helicopter that will be flown over the Martian surface to the fabricators of delicate instrumentation that will search for signs of life to the skilled craftsmen who assembled each intricate piece to insure the rover’s functioning, each member of the team brought their particular gift and offered it up to make the mission manifest, to take it from dream to reality. Each and every team member was indispensable, and it took a wide array of gifts and talents coming together to achieve success. Yes, today is the kickoff to our pledge campaign, and we’re asking you to offer the gift of your financial support to our congregation and its mission to “ignite personal growth, engage in loving community and serve with integrity.” We need your pledge to pursue our mission and to make manifest the words of our covenant to seek, to strive and to serve. And I have every confidence that everyone will contribute to the Fund Drive to the best of their ability. But let us make our Stewardship Sunday about more than that, about more than money. Let us consider what other gifts we have to offer. What gifts we have to offer our congregation, our community, our neighbors and the wider world. What role we can play in this bold experiment that we’re all a part of, an experiment that began as a dream a few decades ago, that we call “UUCDC.” Because we need your gift, whatever it is, to help us not to just persevere through the pandemic, but to boldly move into an uncertain future. We need your gift, whatever it is, to set our sights on what might right now, under these circumstances, seem far beyond our grasp. We need your gift to build that beloved community that is as yet an unrealized reality. We need your gift to build and become a beacon for hope, a beacon for peace, a beacon for justice, a beacon for a radically inclusive faith that lies just over the horizon. We need your gift, whatever it may be, to help us reach for the stars and launch us toward a bright and shining future. May it be so.

About ten years ago I took up the sport of paragliding. In paragliding you strap yourself into a harness that’s attached to a large fabric wing that enables you to glide and soar through the air like a bird. It’s the closest thing to what I call “pure flying.” There’s no bulky, noisy engine to propel you. It’s just you and the wind. When I started paragliding we worked on a flat field and learned how to handle the wing in the breeze, how to get it stable over our heads. Once we were reasonably good at that, we worked our way up a small hill and ran down it. I’ll never forget the feeling of my feet first leaving the ground. As I got better and better, I moved up the practice hill for longer, higher glides back to earth. Within a few weeks the big day came. Terry, my instructor said I was ready, so with a couple other students we piled into the back of a pickup truck and drove to the top of Blue Mountain, a ski resort in the Poconos. Terry set us up at the top of an expert run that dropped off precipitously. As we waited for the wind to blow just right, I looked down the slope and out into the valley below. My heart was in my throat and, I’ll admit it: I was scared. Terry gave us one last reminder before pushing his baby birds out of the nest: “Remember, you’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to commit. When I give the signal, you’ve got to run like hell. Whatever you do, don’t stop.” I watched as one, then another of my fellow students took to the air, and then it was my turn. I got the wing up in the air above me as I’d been trained. I turned to face the wind, and when Terry gave the signal I ran as fast as I could toward the edge of a steep drop-off, hoping and praying that I’d get airborne before I went over it. “You’ve got to commit. Whatever you do, don’t stop.” My instructor’s words have stuck with me to this day, even though I packed up my paraglider for the last time a few years ago and have been earthbound ever since. How many times in our lives do we find ourselves standing at the top of a mountain, where we have to decide whether to stay safely where we are or to take a chance and try to soar? To commit ourselves to something scary or unknown? Where we face these critical choices, these moments of truth?  And how many times do we later wonder what might have been?  What might have been had we taken the bold step?  What might have been had we not been afraid?  Had we had enough courage?  Had we ignored the naysayers and trusted our gut?  Had we gone “all in” instead of holding back? The only way to avoid the wondering of the “what if” is to make a full, unrestrained commitment to a course of action, whatever challenge it is that we’re facing.  It’s like standing on the edge of a swimming pool when we know the water’s cold.  Dipping our toes isn’t going to get us into the water; we’ve got to jump in with both feet, or even head first.  The lesson I learned from paragliding is that, to gain the glorious freedom of the flight you’ve got to overcome the fear of failure.  It’s about going “all in” every time.  As you know, our Soul Matters theme for this month is “commitment,” and we here at UUCDC are in the middle of our Annual Fund Drive, so I’ve been thinking about what our faith demands of us. What kind of commitments we’re asked to make as members of our congregations, as members of this faith?    While belonging to a congregation and living our lives as Unitarian Universalists isn’t likely to be as physically risky as paragliding, I’d like to believe that the same lesson applies.  If we’re going to fly, we’ve got to commit.  We’ve got to go “all in.”  When I think of going “all in” for our faith, I think about the sixteenth century Unitarian Michael Servetus.  Talk about committed.  Imagine living in 16th Century Europe, where the Church of Rome is burning heretics at the stake all over the Continent.  Where Martin Luther and John Calvin are protesting the abuses of the Catholic Church and starting a powerful new religious movement of their own that is becoming equally violent in the enforcement of its doctrine.  And imagine telling both the Pope and Calvin that they are wrong.  Telling them in a very public way that their doctrines are unsupported by Scripture.  That Jesus was a man and not God incarnate, that there is no such thing as the Holy Trinity, and that God lives in each of us.  As you might suspect, this “good news” of Unitarianism that Michael Servetus declared did not go over well.  He was first jailed by the Inquisition for heresy against the Catholic Church, but he escaped before they could kill him.  Then a few years later he was arrested by the Calvinists for heresy against the Protestants, and he wasn’t so lucky the second time around.  John Calvin had Michael Servetus burned at the stake along with all the known copies of his books.  Michael Servetus went “all in” for his faith, that’s for sure. Here in the relative comfort of the 21st Century, we don’t think that declaring the principles of universal love and acceptance is such a dangerous thing. We don’t feel physically threatened by proclaiming the truth of our Eight Principles and we don’t have to worship in hiding. It’s not particularly dangerous to be a UU here in America these days, at least not in most places. So it doesn’t feel like we need to bet our lives on our faith, does it?  I suppose I would hope that our commitment to Unitarian Universalism –  to stand up for justice, to proclaim our gospel of hope, to side with love – runs that deep. But here’s the question that I once heard asked, that has stuck with me: “If you were arrested on charges of being a Unitarian Universalist, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” On most days, thankfully, none of us faces that kind of test.  But as we consider our commitment to our congregations and to our faith, we’re called to make an honest accounting, to look in the mirror and truthfully answer that question. I once had an email exchange with a member who had once been active but recently drifted away. I told them I missed them and asked why I hadn’t seen them recently. Here’s what they told me, and I quote: “I think my husband and I are both in desperate need of a place where we can have quiet and reflection with no strings attached and we just aren’t finding that at UUCDC anymore.”  A place where we can have quiet and reflection with no strings attached.   Our faith, and membership in this or any other UU church, comes with strings.  To be a Unitarian Universalist is to say “yes” to those strings.  We say “yes” to life.  We say “yes” to hope.  We say “yes” to a belief that all people are worthy, all people carry a spark of the divine.  And more than that, we say “yes” not just to these principles, but we say “yes” to doing the work of our faith, the work of this church, when we’re asked.  We can be that “place of quiet and reflection” my correspondent longs for only if, only when, we all commit ourselves to creating that place, sustaining that place, loving that place, and birthing that place into being. I am often asked by newcomers what is expected of our members, and this is what I tell them.  I tell them that to be a member of this church and to claim this faith as one’s own, you must do four things.  First, you must commit to showing up on Sunday mornings.  Worship is the central, communal act of the church, and members should participate in worship on a regular basis.  Second, you must commit to actively engaging in your own spiritual growth.  Take an Adult Faith Development class.  Join a Soul Matters group.  Sit in meditation.  Our Fourth Principle, which I see as the keystone holding the arch of Unitarian Universalism together, says that we engage in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.  Unitarian Universalism expects, even demands that we actively engage in that search however we might. The third thing that’s required is that we support the church financially, to the best of our ability.  Generosity is an important spiritual practice, but it’s not just a spiritual practice.  It is a practical necessity.  We cannot keep the lights on and the doors open, we cannot offer self-sustaining programs without everyone’s financial contribution.  Offer your pledge.  Put money in the offering plate or, these days, text it to us.  Buy something at the auction.  Your commitment to our faith must take tangible form in your giving, as best you’re able. Finally, the last string that’s attached to belonging to a UU congregation, or maybe it’s the first string, is that we get involved.  That we embody our commitment by showing up for others.  Going “all in” for our faith means that we bring our creative energy to our community and its mission to “serve others with a joyful heart.” As I’ve said before, ours is not a Sunday morning faith.  It’s a faith that must be lived out every day in our workplace, in our family, with our friends, and, most of all, by offering our talents to our community, all for the greater good. These four things – attending worship, growing spiritually, supporting financially, and serving others – are the only things we ask, and they are everything.  This is what Parker Palmer was talking about when he referred to being and becoming a part of  “the community of our lives.”[1]  This is what I mean when I speak of making a commitment and going “all in” with our faith and our congregation.  It is all well and good to have the faith of our convictions. But let us do those things that, were we arrested, would convict us of our faith. Let us all, together, face the wind, fully commit, run like hell and never stop. Let us choose to go “all in” for our faith so that, together, we may take to the air and soar. This day, and every day, I wish you peace.  Amen. [1] Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, p. 16.

What are we, as Unitarian Universalists, to make of the Easter story? This most mystical, miraculous event – the resurrection of Jesus from the dead – that forms the basis for belief for billions of Christians around the globe? Easter compels us to confront so many of our own competing, and often conflicting, principles and values. As UU’s we value the rational and the scientific, so the left side of our brain tells us “This couldn’t have happened this way. No one can come back from the dead.” And yet the first of our six sources calls us to consider, “experiences of transforming mystery and wonder.” So, there’s a part of us that must remain open to the idea that something – something powerful and sustaining and possibly even beyond belief – happened. Something so powerful and sustaining that we still tell the story more than 2,000 years later. Many of us are torn between two other poles as well. On the one hand some of us may have been injured by the teachings of a Christian church and arrived here on the doorstep of Unitarian Universalism battered, beaten and broken, and thus rejecting anything that even hints at Christianity. But Unitarian Universalism is a radically inclusive faith, a faith so inclusive that we are called to welcome those who  consider themselves Christian to share in the good news of this faith, our faith. I believe that we are radically inclusive to the point where we can welcome those who believe in the salvific power of the cross, those who believe that Jesus was the Son of God who died for our sins. And, so, we must make room for the “Trinitarian Unitarians” among us and celebrate with them this most holy of holidays. There was a time when Unitarian Universalists sought to simply ignore Easter. But we know now that we must strive to look at the Easter story and ask ourselves what we can take from it, to drill down on it and find meaning in it. Instead of simply rejecting it out of hand, we are called to ask ourselves what we can glean from this abiding mystery. One way we can do that, with our post-modern sensibilities, is to contextualize it. To view it within the context of where and when it happened, and then to look at our own lives to see where it might be relevant to us today. So, let’s consider where, why and how Jesus’s death and resurrection occurred. Jesus, we know, was a Jew living in Judah, the southern part of what would become Israel, at a time of Roman occupation. We know that, despite the occupation, Jewish custom, law and tradition still ran deep among the people of the occupied lands. This was the law of Abraham. The law of Moses. The law of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And deeply embedded in this culture was the concept and the practice of making offerings, of sacrifice. The Jewish word for this is “Karabanot.” The primary purpose of Karabanot was “to bring a person closer to God.”[1] Another important aspect of sacrifice under Jewish law and practice was the element of substitution. The idea is that the thing being offered or sacrificed is a substitute for the person making the offering, and the things that are done to the offering are things that should have been done to the person making the offering. The offering is in some sense punished in place of the offeror.[2] While the primary function of sacrifice was to bring people closer to God, Karabanot also served what’s called an “expiatory” function as well. Making a sacrifice to God was a way to be relieved of sin, a way to ask and receive God’s forgiveness for the sins they had committed. While it’s not exactly the same as Karabanot, scapegoating was another practice intended to have a similar effect. In ancient Jewish tradition, a community would symbolically place its sins on the back of an animal – often a goat – and the people would either send the animal off into the wilderness or ritually sacrificed. Either way, the effect was the same: the people were freed from their sins. So, all this is the backdrop for Jesus’s death. And while it was the Romans and not the Jews who put Jesus to death, and his killing was more politically motivated than religiously so, it is easy to see how the followers of Jesus – who were all Jews themselves –  would come to characterize Jesus’s death as a form of Karabanot or offering. And from there it’s only a small step to get to the concept that Jesus was a “sacrificial lamb” or even a scapegoat. It is also then pretty easy to see how, over time, this idea of Jesus as Karabanot or sacrifice led to the Christian doctrine of “substitutionary atonement.” That doctrine tells us that “Christ died for our sins” and that through his death those who believe in him are saved. The idea of animal sacrifices, of Karabanot, of scapegoats and sacrificial lambs offends our modern sensibilities, and well it should. Beyond the issues of animal cruelty, which are significant, we Unitarian Universalists are all about accountability. The idea that we could hand off our so-called sins – those times when we’ve failed to live up to our best selves and our highest ideals – to someone or something else, to actually put them on another’s back, instead of taking responsibility for them ourselves, is anathema to who we proclaim to be. And here’s where we Unitarian Universalists might actually find an entry point to the real story of Easter. Ironically, it’s in the resurrection itself. Because, remember, Good Friday is all about Jesus’s death. Easter is all about his return. What if, instead of seeing Jesus’s death as a form of substitutionary atonement, instead of saying that Christ died for our sins, we saw his resurrection not as a victory over death, but as a return to responsibility? Here’s the image I want to offer you: Let’s imagine that we’re all members of a small community – a village, we’ll say. And the village elders bring the scape goat into the town square and instruct  us to  place our burdens on its back. “Come,” they say. “Be relieved of all your sins.” And so, we all do that, and then the elders lead the goat out into the wilderness and leave it there to be consumed by wolves. All of we villagers have a great feast and celebration, because our slate has been wiped clean. But then, three days later, we hear something. It’s sort of a weak, bleating sound, and it’s coming from the town square. Curious, we come out of our houses and make our way to the center of the village. There, standing beside the well, is the goat. It looks a little worse for wear, but it’s still carrying all the burdens we placed upon it. What if the resurrection wasn’t some kind of sign that Jesus was actually God incarnate, someone who could by his nature defeat death itself. What if, instead, this attempt at substitutionary atonement was a failure? That God raised Jesus from the dead as a messenger, to say – “Hey, you’ve got to deal with your own stuff, people. You can’t just pawn it off on others. Stop the scapegoating and the sacrificing and take some responsibility for your life and how you live it!” And that message, if we can call it an Easter message, is particularly important today. We are living in a perilous time, particularly here in America where we seem to be backsliding into the ancient practice of scapegoating and sacrifice. As Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are targeted with violence and blamed for the Coronavirus. As we watch and re-watch George Floyd’s death at the hands of Derek Chauvin, who, like an ancient Roman soldier nailing Christ to the cross, knelt on Floyd’s neck with the full weight and fury of the State, and we wonder how many people of color must be sacrificed on the altar of white supremacy culture. As people who are simply shopping for groceries or working in an office are unwittingly led to the slaughter as sacrificial lambs for the sake of the gun lobby and the sacrosanct Second Amendment. I know that this may not be the Easter sermon you came to hear. Easter is meant to be a celebration of everlasting life, or at least the return of life, of the birth of birds and bunnies, and the blooming of daffodils and tulips. But what if, all this time, we’ve been missing the point? What if the true message of Easter is that for all life to thrive we’ve got to stop sacrificing the most vulnerable among us. That we cannot escape our own responsibility for the sins of our ancestors and the sins of our time. That we are called in our shared humanity, in our interdependent web, to accountability with and for each other. That we are called to celebrate all life, including the life of this planet as it awakens once again beneath our feet, as worthy of value, dignity and worth. That not a single life should ever be sacrificed in the name of our collective sins. Now wouldn’t that be a holiday to celebrate. [1] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sacrifices-and-offerings-karbanot [2] Ibid.

The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Augusta, Maine, the congregation where Rev. Peter served as an intern for two years before coming to UUCDC. Rev. Carie Johnson led our service. This Sunday she explores tensions of belonging and becoming in Unitarian Universalism. There is no text for this sermon, so please enjoy the video!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. Most of us are familiar with these words, which are often referred to as the “Serenity Prayer.” Its adoption by Alcoholics Anonymous in the middle of last century and its incorporation into other 12-Step programs has brought this prayer into nearly universal awareness. What’s not as well known is that this is not the full and complete text of the prayer that was written by Lutheran pastor and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It continues like this: Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it. Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen. There is a lot to unpack here, but before I start to do that, I want to acknowledge a couple of things. First, the Serenity Prayer, in either its condensed or its complete form, has been literally life-saving for hundreds of thousands of people over the decades it’s been in use. Its power in peoples’ lives is immeasurable and it is treasured by them. If you are one of those people, I want to honor and respect you as I talk this morning, and I want to say how incredibly happy I am that you are here. Second, I need to tell you that I am not one of these people. Because I’ve never been part of a 12-Step program, I feel a bit like an outsider looking in, and I feel my qualifications to even talk about the Serenity Prayer are suspect at best. That said, I may be able to offer a somewhat unbiased opinion about it, and I hope that has some value. And, as you’ll see, while we’ll use the Serenity Prayer as a jumping off point, I hope my message this morning will speak to all of us, both those who have been or are engaged in a 12-Step program and those of us who haven’t been or are not. So when we look at the Serenity Prayer we see that it’s really three prayers in one. This is, perhaps, what makes it so powerful. In just 27 words, it encapsulates the heart and soul of our human condition. The first sentence is about being in control. As hard as it is to admit it sometimes, we know we are finite and fallible people and that, therefore, some things are beyond our control.  We seek to gain acceptance for those things. The second sentence reminds us, though, that not everything is beyond us. As individuals with at least some power and volition, we are also able to exercise our agency over some of our circumstances. We seek the determination to seize and act upon those opportunities when they arise. And then, in the third sentence, we name yet another central fact in our lives: That, as one of the readings in our UU hymnal states, “the way is often hard, the path is never clear and the stakes are very high.”[1] We seek the power of discernment, an unmuddling of our minds, the conversion of confusion into clarity. We ask for wisdom. At the same time that the Serenity Prayer is three prayers in one, it’s also one prayer in three. Trinitarians have good reason to love this prayer, for its structure if for nothing else. The three impleadings are intimately connected and interwoven. We cannot achieve the serenity of the first movement or the courage of the second without achieving some measure of the wisdom we seek in the third. But enough about structure. Let’s dive into the content. We could spend lots of time talking about what we can or cannot change. About the scope of our power and the magnificence of our impotence. About how our image of ourselves as independent actors, in control of our lives is often at odds with our circumstances. We could reflect on what form courage takes. Courage to make a change. Courage to stick to what we’ve always done. And I could do several sermons just on what we mean by the term “serenity.” What it looks like, what it feels like, how to achieve it. How screaming “Serenity Now” is not the best way to invite serenity into our lives. But this month’s Soul Matters theme is “Wisdom.” So, for the next few minutes I want to focus on that part of the Serenity Prayer, the third movement, if you will. The prayer in which we seek the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can change and those we cannot. This part of the prayer raises the challenging question of discernment, or our ability to distinguish between things. Between what we can change and what we’re powerless to do. Between right and wrong. Between good and evil, even. When we’re talking about discernment, we’re usually not talking about simply making a simple either/or choice. About taking a sheet of paper and dividing it down the middle and putting the pro’s on one side and the con’s on the other, then toting them up to see which side wins. Wisdom and discernment are altogether different. They imply a deeper quality of what I’ll call “knowing.” Knowing not in the intellectual sense of certainty, but in the gut level sense, the heartfelt sense. As the Rev. Scott Tayler puts it in this month’s Soul Matters packet, “the math of wisdom is often the opposite of what we think. It’s more a game of subtraction than addition. Often, accumulation of knowledge doesn’t get us closer to wisdom; it’s just in the way.  There’s a sorting,” he says, “a simplifying and stripping away that needs to occur. It’s about unknowing as much as knowing.” The simplest way I can explain the difference between knowledge and wisdom is to point to the difference between a newspaper article and a poem. Both tell the truth. But they tell them in different ways, and they reach different places within us. So, where does wisdom come from? How do we gain the wisdom to know the difference? Since the Serenity Prayer is a prayer, maybe that’s a good place to start. I know that many Unitarian Universalists get squirrely when you start talking about prayer, but I think we simply need to get over that. Because too often we pigeon-hole prayer into that tiny little box of what’s called “intercessory prayer.” Those are the kinds of prayers where we ask God to intervene in our lives so that we can achieve a particular outcome. “Please God,” such a prayer goes, “help get Timmy out of the well” and “God, help me find a good parking space.” But prayer is so much more than just wishful thinking.  I define prayer as an opening up to all that is beyond us and outside of us. It’s about making connections with both the known and the unknown. It’s admitting that we’re finite, but that we’re a part of an infinite system of wonder and mystery. When we can “plug in” to that system, when we can experience our unity with it, we’re opening ourselves up to its wisdom. Maybe the words you’d prefer to use are “Meditation” or “Contemplation” or “Intuition.” It doesn’t matter what we call it, but we can access or gain wisdom from creating opportunities to allow ourselves to open up to the rhythm and melody of the Universe, and to be able to actually hear it. If that’s all too “woo-woo” for you, if you’re afraid that plugging into the wisdom of the universe is too esoteric and you’re worried that I’ve gone off my nut, there are certainly more concrete ways we can gain wisdom. Experience can be a source of wisdom, if we are wise enough to recognize it. I’d like to think that, with age comes wisdom. After all, there has to be some benefit to aging! But experience can be a tough teacher, and sometimes we’re not such great learners either. In his book Callings, Gregg Levoy puts it this way: “Our powers of discernment – of clarity – are routinely clouded and informed by all manner of impulses, hankerings, emotions, ulterior motives, and intuitions.”[2] We’ve all been there, haven’t we? That place where we keep trying and trying something, hoping for a different result, even long past the point where we know it’s not going to happen. Like when we try to change or control our kids or our spouse or our boss or our co-workers, when we know, deep down, we can only change or control ourselves, our own reactions, our own responses.  So, yes, experience – our own or that of others – can be a source of wisdom. But sometimes, maybe even often, even when we wish it to be so, experience does not inevitably lead to wisdom, discernment, or clarity. In his book A Hidden Wholeness, educator and author Parker Palmer describes a tool for gaining clarity, for supporting discernment, for helping us tap into the wisdom that exists both within us and all around us. It’s a Quaker process called “Clearness Committees.” As dry as that sounds – who wants to discern anything by committee? – I’ve both led and experienced Clearness Committees, and I can personally attest to their power. Palmer explains: “’Clearness Committees’ are based on the simple but crucial conviction that each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. Clearness Committees are not intended to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out.”[3] Essentially, the person seeking clarity or discernment brings together a group of trusted friends or colleagues who listen to them closely and then ask thoughtful questions. They don’t provide answers, direction or “fixes.” But they often leave the person with ways to access their inner wisdom that may have been blocked or overshadowed by fear, anxiety or other negative emotions. Clearness Committees have a lot of silence and an intentionally slow and deliberate pace to them. They are more shared spiritual practice than they are committee meeting as we’ve come to know and despise those beasts. “The wisdom to know the difference” – between what we can control and what we can’t, between who or how we want to be and who or how we don’t, between what we want to do and where we want to go or not – deep and abiding wisdom can be gleaned from a variety of sources. But I believe that ultimately it comes down to a single spiritual practice: listening. Listening to what others who have our best interest at heart are telling us. Listening to what our intuition, our heart, our soul is telling us. And engaging in practices that creating channels for the songs of the Universe to penetrate through all the noise of our lives and to reach us in our deepest, in-most places. It’s been nearly 20 years since I discovered my call to ministry. I didn’t figure it out by listing all the pro’s and con’s of quitting my job and going to seminary, although I tried that. It happened when I started paying attention to the signals that were all around me. Maybe they were there my entire life, or maybe they showed up just when I needed them to. But once I started paying attention, once I stopped letting my conscious mind control the process, once I allowed myself the dangerous luxury of letting my intuition, the Universe, God – however you want to put it – guide me, what I needed to do became crystal clear to me. Yes, it was scary. Yes, it made no practical sense. But the path opened up as clear to me as any mountain trail that beckons. I choose to call that the wisdom of the Universe, and I choose to believe that that wisdom is available to all of us, all the time, if we but stop, look, and listen. This day and every day, I wish you peace. Amen. [1] Rev. Wayne B. Arnason, Singing the Living Tradition #698 [2] Gregg Levoy, Callings, p 36. [3] https://www.uua.org/sites/live-new.uua.org/files/documents/guestkristin/1006_3045_clearness.pdf Closing Words Our closing words today come from M. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled: The unconscious is always one step ahead of the conscious mind – the one that “knows” things…If you’re willing to sit with ambiguity, to accept uncertainties and contradictory meanings, then your unconscious will always be a step ahead of your conscious mind in the right direction. You’ll therefore do the right thing, although you won’t know it at the time.”[1] [1] Quoted in Gregg Levoy’s Callings, p. 37.

In Biblical literature, Divine Wisdom is personified as Sophia, and sometimes considered the feminine face of God, but we don’t hear much about her. There is no additional text for this sermon. Please enjoy the audio!

I was ever so tempted today to use the movie “Groundhog Day” as our sacred text. I mean, how often does the actual Groundhog Day fall on a Sunday? And, beyond that, what better illustration of this month’s theme of “Resilience” can there be? A man is forced to relive a single day of his life, over and over, seemingly forever. Every day his life is pulled and stressed and challenged, and he’s forced to bounce back and recover and, hopefully, eventually, learn and grow. But when I mentioned to Chrissy that I might preach on the movie, she gave me a look. It wasn’t exasperation, exactly. Or disappointment, really. Maybe it bordered on pity. But when I asked about her reaction, she pointed out to me that my sermons this year have been full of 1980’s movie references. “City Slickers.” “Indiana Jones.” I made the argument that “Groundhog Day” was released in 1993, but that didn’t persuade her. Chrissy telling me that was my first “Okay, Boomer” moment, and I realized she was right. So instead of talking about “Groundhog Day,” I’m going to take us in a completely different direction. We’re going to boldly go where no minister has gone before. At least not this minister. And I’m not talking about the new “Star Trek: Picard.” No, where we’re going is the wonderful world of physics. Because I want to play some more with the rubber band metaphor Chrissy used earlier today during her time for all ages. I want to dig a little deeper into what happens when a rubber band is stretched and released. And to understand it, we’ve got to look at the physics of it. Now, before I begin, I want to offer a disclaimer: Physics was my worst course in my entire educational career. I was doing so poorly in my college physics course that, halfway through the semester, the Dean of Students urged me to drop the course instead of fail it and have that haunt my transcript for the rest of my life. And, of course, I didn’t heed his warning, and I doubled-down and hired a tutor and worked my butt off. And I ended up with a big, fat “D.” Which, along with similar grades in Chemistry classes, forced me to drop out of the pre-med program halfway through my second year. More about that later. So, with this confession and perhaps a bit of foreboding, let’s look at the science of the rubber band. This subset of physics is called “elasticity.” Elasticity is defined as the ability of a material to respond to external stress and then to return to its original form when that stress is removed. Every piece of matter has a factor of elasticity. It may be slight, like a piece of wood, or it might be great, like a spring or a rubber band. Rubber is uniquely suited to elasticity, both in its natural and its manufactured state. That’s because, on a molecular level, it’s made up of long chains of molecules that, in their resting state, are all twisted and tangled up. Picture a big pot of cooked spaghetti after you’ve drained the water out. When you stretch out a rubber band, you’re untwisting and untangling those chains, straightening them out and pulling them tight. Those chains of molecules have their limits, and if you apply enough pressure, they’ll break. You’ve exceeded the rubber band’s elasticity limit. But assuming we don’t reach that limit, we observe that, when we stop stretching it, the rubber band will return to its original shape. But on a molecular level, that’s not actually true. After a rubber band has been stretched, those twisted chains of molecules aren’t, in fact, as twisted and tangled up as they were before it was stretched. The molecular bonds have been weakened, and some may have been broken. This is called “hysteresis,” which you don’t need to know, but I tell you anyway to demonstrate that I’ve researched all this. If we stretch a rubber band over and over again, we all know what happens. It loses its elasticity. It gets longer and longer as fewer and fewer of those chains bounce back and, eventually, its elasticity is lost completely. Stretching a rubber band doesn’t make it stronger. It makes it weaker, meaning that eventually it only takes a weak force to break it. You know that expression, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Do you hate that one as much as I do? Well, if you’re a rubber band it’s not true. What’s interesting to me, then, about a rubber band is not the fact that it appears to return to its original shape after it’s stretched. What’s interesting to me is that, at a molecular level, it doesn’t. The stretching changes its internal properties. So, there’s a difference between what we observe on the macro level and what’s happening at the micro level. And here’s where I want to turn to the concept of “resilience” and how it applies to our own lives. We can all breathe a sigh of relief as we leave the wonderful world of physics. But this all does take me back to that “D” I got in college and how I flunked out of the pre-med program. At the fairly tender age of 19, my life-long dream of becoming a doctor was dead. And I didn’t handle it all that well. For the next 3 years I drifted through my classes, and I drank too much and smoked too much weed. I was lost and aimless. And I’d like to say that I had an epiphany one night and that I snapped out of it, snapped back to my original shape as a driven and focused and purposeful person, but that didn’t happen. At least, it didn’t happen all at once. But I did survive the disappointment. The loss. And, when I take the long view, as we ultimately must, it eventually brought me here and that’s not altogether a bad thing, is it? So, how do we respond to stress? To external forces applied to us, pulling us in several directions at once, stretching us taught, sometimes to the breaking point, sometimes beyond our elasticity limit? What are the sources of our elasticity, our flexibility, our resilience? When I think about this question, it calls to mind that commercial for make-up – and maybe this is a “Boomer” reference and I apologize to all you Gen Xer’s – but that makeup commercial with the tag line “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” I think that, like a rubber band, we’re born with a certain amount of resilience. We’re certainly tangled up and twisted inside like a rubber band, a Gordian Knot of calm and anxiety, fear and courage, impotence and power. Some of us have more inborn resilience than others, and some of us are better at hiding our insecurities and perceived inadequacies than others. But just as a tiny baby is born with bones that are soft and pliable, so are we all born with joyful and courageous spirits, an innate and inward ability to adapt. When we’re young, we’re like sunflowers that have this natural ability to turn toward the light, toward our source of nourishment and hope. If you don’t believe me, just watch a child learning to walk, and how many times they fall flat on their face and get back up to try again. They are nothing if not resilient. But then life happens. Someone tells us we’re fat or we’re ugly. We get picked last for the kickball team, every time. We get beat up by a bully on the playground. A parent berates us because we’re not like our sister or brother. We flunk out of the pre-med program. We can bounce back from these things, at least for a time. We bounce back and look for all the world – that appearance on the macro level – like we’re just the same as before. But like that rubber band, we’re not exactly the same. Some of our molecular chains are broken. And if it happens to us, over and over again, as it does in life because life can be relentless that way, and more and more of our chains are broken, we lose our elasticity, our resilience. And our spirits become like our aging bones: they harden and maybe even become brittle. Our natural response to this process of hardening, of hysteresis, if you will, is to learn ways to deflect and defend against future hurts. Maybe we self-medicate. Maybe we isolate. Often, we build up these walls around us, and don’t let anyone else in because, you know, eventually they’ll let us down or betray us. Instead of finding ways to be resilient, every morning we don our suits of armor and gird our loins to go out in the world and do battle. The fallacy with this response to life’s slings and arrows is that somehow we come to believe that it’s inevitable that our hearts, like our bones, will become hardened over time. That “growing up” means we need to toughen up. That the best offense is a good defense. And, here’s the ultimate fallacy – that our resilience is only inborn and that it’s in limited supply. That we’re like that rubber band that, after getting stretched over and over and over again, loses its elasticity and its utility. So, if that’s the ultimate fallacy, here’s the ultimate paradox: Our resilience doesn’t come from shutting ourselves away. It comes from opening ourselves up. Because our resilience isn’t like a gold mine that, once tapped out, is gone forever. It’s more like a gas tank that can be refilled and replenished, over and over again. Glennon Doyle, who started the popular blog Momastery, tells a story in her book Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed about what happened when she opened up to someone she didn’t know very well. She was sitting at a playground with another mom while their children played, and they were having one of those conversations we all have – like the ones at coffee hour – and not really connecting on a deep level. Glennon felt like there was this wall between them, that they were both wearing impenetrable suits of armor, and she realized that the superficial interaction wasn’t enough for her. Here’s what she was thinking: “Life without touching other people is boring as hell. It hit me that maybe the battles of life are best fought without armor and without weapons. That maybe life gets real, good, and interesting when we remove all of the layers of protection we’ve built around our hearts and walk out onto the battlefield of life naked.” And Glennon took that risk and, when she did, so did her friend. And they dropped their outward appearances of perfection and got real with each other. And they found their source of resilience not within themselves, but within each other. In making that deeper connection, they replenished each other’s reserves of resilience. The Rev. Scott Tayler, the creator and curator of the Soul Matters program, puts it this way: “While resilience has a lot to do with what is inside us, it equally depends on what is between us. Forget solo act; think community choir! We survive our pain by having the strength to tell others about it. We find the courage to make our way through the dark only when we sense we are not alone. Internal and individual grit only gets us so far; empathy, assurance and love from others gets us the rest of the way.  Resilience has everything to do with the water within which we swim and the web of connections that surround us.” That’s the key to this whole resilience thing: we don’t have to hoard it for ourselves. It doesn’t exist in limited supply, only inside of us. Our resilience can be replenished, over and over again, through our connections to others and through our connections to the world. As I close, I want to return to the physics of elastic bands. And I want to replace the image of the single band with the image of a fistful of elastic bands. A single elastic band can only withstand so much stress, so much stretching. Now think of how much stronger a bunch of bands are together. The same amount of stress, applied across all the elastic bands, will hardly move them. And together they can withstand a force that far exceeds the capacity of any single band. The more bands we band together, the more resilient we’ll be. If we allow it, if we open up ourselves to each other, if we band together in our common struggles, we will multiply our strength and our resilience, giving us power to withstand any storm. This day and every day, I wish you peace. Amen. Closing Words Our closing words come from the author Glennon Doyle: “The more I opened my heart to the folks in my circles the more convinced I became that life is equal parts brutal and beautiful. And/Both. Life is brutiful. Like stars in a dark sky. Sharing life’s brutiful is what makes us feel less alone and afraid… Life is hard—not because we’re doing it wrong, just because it’s hard. It’s okay to talk, write, paint, or cry about that. It helps.”

“It can’t get any worse.” Remember when we used to think that? When we used to say that to each other? I don’t know about you, but I had to stop saying and believing that at least a couple years ago. Because it kept getting worse, and, as we’ve watched events unfold over the past two weeks, it keeps getting worse. And it’s disquieting and discouraging and disheartening and just about any other “dis” word you can think of, including “dystopian.” How many times can we say to ourselves those words of Unitarian minister Theodore Parker until they simply ring hollow in our ears and in our souls? You know the words I’m talking about, the ones that King and Mandela and Obama used so forcefully. “The arc of the moral universe is long…” Oh, yes it is, we can feel that in our bones these days, can’t we? “…but it bends toward justice.” Oh, really? Do we feel that in our bones, too? Or do we just repeat this mantra over and over again, desperate to believe it, hanging on by our fingernails, hoping to hope? Last week Latifah Griffin spoke about strength emerging from suffering, about the power of the human spirit to rise from the ashes. About our resilience in the face of pain and our determination, our belief that “we shall overcome.” Because that’s what we preachers do. We preach a gospel of hope, the good news of the resurrection. Maybe not a bodily resurrection, but a resurrection of the spirit. A resurrection of hope. Even when hope is forced to carry its own cross through the streets of the city, mocked by crowds who spit on it and would grind it into the dirt. Hope that is forced to stretch out its arms as it’s nailed to that cross. Hope that is lifted up to hang, to be mocked until it breathes its last breath. Hope that is crucified, it seems, every hour of every day of every week. Hope that is torn down from that cross and placed in a tomb, sealed with a stone that no one of us can roll back. Oh, yes, that is the purpose of the pulpit. It’s why you come here on a Sunday morning, isn’t it? To witness, to be a party to the resurrection of hope. To be reminded that, together, we can unseal the tomb and resuscitate hope. To breathe new life into it. To be reminded that we are the first responders, ready to run into the burning building of a culture of conflict and conflagration to rescue hope. To recover hope. To revive hope. We come here to remember, too, that hope requires the long view. The view past this moment, this day, this year, this Presidency. We come here to be inoculated against the virus of fear with the vaccine of hope. And, trust me, I’ll get there today. I will. I promise. But any preacher worth their salt must be a truth-teller. Because if they cannot speak the hard truths, if they cannot tell the truth in a spirit of love, as we say, their words of encouragement are nothing but pablum – a bland and tasteless food that we choke down out of some sense of obligation and not by choice. And so I want to be honest with you, and I want you to be honest with me. We are in dark and dangerous times. I don’t have to enumerate all the ways in which we see that damnable arc bending in the direction away from justice. Away from equity. Away from compassion. Our government is putting kids in cages and blowing up sacred sites to erect monuments to ego and hate. We are stealing food stamps and health care out of the hands of women, children and the elderly to fund corporate greed and the machines of war and death. Enemies of the state are being summarily dismissed, while convicted criminal cronies are set free. Toxic industrial polluters are given free rein to despoil our air and water while, moment by moment, sea levels rise and threaten to swallow up our coastlines. Oh, and don’t forget how the gun lobby has a stranglehold on lawmakers while our children are dying in the streets. I am sorry to remind you of all the bad news, when you came here to hear the good news, that gospel of hope I mentioned a moment ago. But as much as we’d love to avoid it, to find a detour around it, to ask Siri or Alexa to chart us an alternate route, part of the truth of this world is that we cannot ascend to the mountaintop of hope without walking through the valley of despair. So, for just a moment, let’s be honest with each other. If you’re exhausted from the 24-hour news cycle, raise your hand. If you’re worried about cuts to Medicare and Social Security and the social safety net, can I get an “Amen.” If you have serious doubt that our elections will be free and fair, stand up.  If you fear that we are going to be saddled with four more years of hatred and division, give me a “hell, yeah.” If climate change keeps you up at night and you’re worried for the future of our planet, turn to your neighbor and tell them so. Now, look around the room, folks. Look into the eyes of those around you and say to each other, “I see you.” Say to each other, “I share your pain.” If you’really comfortable, take somebody’s hand or give someone a hug and say “We’re in this together” or “We need each other.” Because this is where it starts, my friends. This is where the seeds are planted. This is how we water the garden of hope. It may seem paradoxical, but the flower of hope grows out of the soil of fear, it feeds on the manure of despondency. Deep, abiding, sustaining hope begins with admitting the depth of our despair and the discovery that we are not alone in that valley, down in the darkness, under the ground. And here is where I will pivot, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief. Because here is the trailhead, the place where we start up that mountain. Where we poke our heads out of the soil and emerge out of the darkness into the light. Here is where we, together, roll back the stone of the tomb and discover the resurrection of hope. As I was thinking about how we can stay resilient to keep up our resistance, and how we hold onto hope in the face of fear, I remembered a wonderful book I read some years ago. Its title is The Impossible Will Take a Little While. And the first thing I realized is that this collection of essays was first published in 2004. And that fact alone gives me hope. Because it says to me that, while these times may feel unique, and uniquely dire – and dire they are, don’t get me wrong – we don’t have a corner on the fear and despair market. We human beings have, throughout our history, always had to fight for hope, be foot soldiers for justice, opposers of oppression. It’s a universal human condition. So, not only are we not alone among others walking the planet today, but we’re connected to all those who came before us. That includes the Freedom Riders, the suffragettes, the abolitionists, anyone and everyone who has ever taken a stand against injustice. We stand on the shoulders not just of giants, but of all those who took small steps and planted tiny seeds. When I and others from the church went to Selma, Alabama a few years back to mark the 50th anniversary of the march to Montgomery, I saw a young African American girl sitting on her father’s shoulders. She was holding up a sign that said “I am because he was.” She was referring to Dr. King, of course. But she was also referring to every man, woman and child who made the trek across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marching for freedom and justice. So we should never forget that we are because they were. We have a legacy of hope on which to build. And, more than that, we will be a part of the legacy that our children and their children and all the future generations can build on. There’s a red thread that runs throughout human history. The arc of the moral universe isn’t so much a rod that bends as it is a chain with countless links, and every one of us is called to be one of those links, to add our link to that chain. Realizing and remembering this helps me overcome my sense of impotence in the face of the overwhelming odds we feel right now. I also came across a video this week of an interview with four veterans of the civil rights struggle from fifty years ago. Not the “big names” we know like King and Abernathy and Lewis. But ordinary people, black and white, who have marched the long march. Some of the things these people said are sources of resilience. For example, they reminded us not to be so focused on outcomes. One of those interviewed talked about his work on voter registration. He said there were times when he would spend one whole day speaking with just one person, trying to convince them that they would be able to vote if they registered. And there were some months when he only got 5 or 6 people registered. 5 or 6 people in a month? Heck, I can do that, right? We can do that! What this tells us is that hope isn’t found by investing ourselves in the grand outcome. It’s about investing ourselves in the small increments. Philosopher Henry Nouwen puts it this way: “Because life is very small, you can never see it happening. Have you ever seen a tree actually grow? Growth is too gentle, too tender. Life is basically hidden…If you are committed to saying yes to life, you are going to have to become a person who chooses it when it is hidden.”[1] It would be good to remind ourselves of this – that it’s the work itself that’s important, not the outcome – as we get closer to November. These civil rights workers also reminded us, too, that it’s not all about the grand gestures and the big events – the marches and the speeches and the arrests. It’s the little things, the mundane things that truly matter. “Someone needs to make the signs and the sandwiches,” they said. “Someone needs to hand out the flyers and stuff the envelopes.” It’s good to remember that we’re not all Kings and Mandelas, and that the Kings and Mandelas had lots of people doing lots of menial tasks behind them. Theologian Matthew Fox calls this “the small work in the Great Work.” Mother Teresa famously said “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Hope is nurtured and nourished by these small acts done with great love, great purpose, great commitment. Another way we maintain our resilience for the resistance is to take a break now and then. To take care of ourselves and each other. In The Impossible Will Take a Little While, the environmental activist Sister Rosalie Bertell describes the importance of finding moments of personal spiritual renewal. It could be from having a meditation or prayer practice, intentionally enjoying a meal with a loved one, or playing with a child in a park. “It is the little things,” she writes, “wonderful synergies, amazing coincidences, and sudden discoveries of beauty that offer us daily nourishment. A morning sunrise can calm my soul and give me new energy for the day…The eyes of a child can reduce me to tears and energize me for months.”[2] There is so much news to keep up with, so much injustice to rail against, so much work to be done, that we can easily be overwhelmed, exhausted, and discouraged. Everywhere we turn we find opportunities for outrage, and it will devour us if we let it. Many of us are burning with a fiery passion, but if we’re not careful that fire can consume us. Neil Young said that it’s better to burn out than to fade away. But we need to find ways to stay in the resistance for the long haul. Burnout is not an option. In times like these, self-care is itself an act of radical resistance. To refuse to drink from the firehose and choose instead to dip a cup into the well of goodness, of kindness, of beauty, of love will give us the resilience we need to stay in the struggle for the long haul. Because we need each other, and we need to care for ourselves and each other, and knowing that justice-seekers and justice-makers are entering into a particularly intense period in the next several months, I will soon be creating what I’m calling a “Circle of Hope.” This will be a gathering, open to the wider community, where we can come together for just an hour or two to rest and rejuvenate, to drink from that well of goodness and beauty, to regain some resilience, to restore our hope, and to fortify us in the work we do. Who knows, maybe we’ll find a couple of Georgia Gilmores among us who’d like to feed us as well. Let me know what you think of that and whether you’d be interested in joining me. In the spirit of self-care and resilience, I’d like to close with a poem by Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Victoria Safford. It’s called “The Gates of Hope.” The Gates of Hope “Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope— Not the prudent gates of Optimism, Which are somewhat narrower. Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, Which creak on shrill and angry hinges (People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through) Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna’ be all right.” But a different, sometimes lonely place, The place of truth-telling, About your own soul first of all and its condition. The place of resistance and defiance, The piece of ground from which you see the world Both as it is and as it could be As it will be; The place from which you glimpse not only struggle, But the joy of the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, Telling people what we are seeing Asking people what they see.” May we stand at the Gates of Hope, together, and may we find in each other and in ourselves the resilience we need for the resistance we’re called to in the days that lie ahead.  Blessed Be and Amen. Closing Words Our closing words come from activist Brittany Packnett, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement: Hatred, climate change, global warfare, racism, and now, a sham trial. I get it. You’re exhausted. We’re all exhausted. What’s the point? WE are the point. WE deserve to thrive, not just survive. And we don’t have to take whatever the powerful give us. We have our own power. [1] Nouwen, in The Impossible Will Take a Little Time, p. 114. [2] Bertell, Ibid, p 191

As we continue our reflection on February’s theme of Resilience, guest speaker Latifah Griffin offers her thoughts on “building resilience as a spiritual community: a message of hope and encouragement for difficult times.” There is no text for this service. Please listen to the audio!

I’m guessing that most of us here today are familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins. And, dare I say that some of us are, perhaps, intimately familiar, maybe a little too familiar with some of them? Can we name them? Raise your hand and let’s see… That’s right, they are: Pride; Greed; Lust; Envy; Gluttony; Wrath; and Sloth. While their origins pre-date the Catholic Church, it was Pope Gregory I who brought the Seven Deadly Sins to the fore of Catholic confessional theology way back in 590 C.E.  The poet Dante reflected and solidified them in his work The Divine Comedy, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales includes “The Parson’s Tale,” which is essentially a sermon against the seven deadly sins. We in western civilization have, for our entire lives, been warned about and warned away from the sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, even if they weren’t assigned those names or identified as the seven deadly sins. Less frequently, it seems, are we indoctrinated into the Seven Virtues, sometimes called the Cardinal Virtues or the Heavenly Virtues. The virtues have taken many forms over time, and they don’t always correspond to the seven deadly sins. Among the Cardinal virtues are Prudence; Justice; Fortitude; and Temperance. When we try to match the virtues with the vices we come up with this formulation: The virtue aligned against Pride is Humility. Against Greed is Charity. Against Lust is Chastity. Against Envy, Kindness. Against Gluttony is Temperance. Against Wrath, Patience. And against Sloth we find Diligence. So, the seven virtues are often listed as Humility, Charity, Chastity, Kindness, Temperance, Patience and Diligence. Not altogether a bad list, really. But what if we were to update and revise this list according to our Unitarian Universalist principles and values? Would that be a worthwhile exercise? Would it help us gain some perspective on what it means to be a good Unitarian Universalist or, to put it in terms of this month’s spiritual theme, to help us live lives of integrity? After all, the term “integrity” speaks to us of integration, of alignment. Of integrating and incorporating our highest values into our sense of self, into our very identity, and then seeking to live in alignment with those values. If we were to try and name seven Unitarian Universalist virtues, what might they be? If you remember back to last Fall, we already embarked on this project. Remember when I talked about developing three new legs of the stool of our faith? I said that it was time to update the three primary principles of “freedom, reason and tolerance” with three other values. Can anyone name them? That’s right. They are Love, Justice and Transformation. If you think back to those sermons, I talked about how a fierce love of the world will lead us to be justice-seekers and justice-makers. And that, by doing so, we’ll not only be agents of change in the world, but we ourselves will be changed and transformed. So I still believe that Love, Justice and Transformation are three bedrock principles for our faith in the 21st Century, and I think they can be listed as three virtues as well. Before I go on, maybe it would be good to talk about what we mean by “virtue?” What is a virtue and what does it mean to be virtuous? In its simplest formulation, virtue is the desire to do good. The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that “Virtue is the moral strength of the will in obeying the dictates of duty.” So, virtue is not only the desire to do good, but the commitment to be good. When we talk about integrity, we sometimes say that it’s about walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Our actions match our words, our intentions. In this way, it’s the very definition of virtue. Catholic Theologian Thomas Aquinas took it one step further. He claimed that, for an act to be virtuous, it wasn’t just about what we do, but the intention behind the action that matters. If we do good for personal gain or benefit, that’s not virtue. If you will, virtue requires being good for goodness’ sake. He also rejected the notion that the ends justify the means. Not only must the ends be good, but the means of achieving those ends must also be good for us to be virtuous. So, with these thoughts in mind, let’s consider what characteristics we would put on our list of UU virtues. I have my own ideas, and I’ll talk about them in a bit, but first let’s put up your thoughts on this flipchart and see what we come up with… I went through a similar exercise earlier this week with my colleagues, fellow UU ministers on our ministers’ Facebook page. Here’s the list that they generated: Curiosity, Honesty, Humility, Kindness, Generosity, Gratitude, Hospitality, Love, Joy, Compassion, Presence, Wisdom, Seeking, Learning and Community Last Monday on Martin Luther King Day I walked around Chester with other folks, delivering reusable shopping bags to people. I was paired up with someone who told me – shocker – they’d never heard of Unitarian Universalism, and they wondered what our faith is all about. Whenever that question comes up, I find myself talking about the First Principle – affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person – and the Seventh Principle – how we’re all connected in the interdependent web. I also talk about how we’re committed to making the world a better place. But I find that I spend the bulk of my time talking about how we’re all seekers, that most of us are looking for meaning and purpose, and we come together to learn and grow. I talk about how none of us have all the answers, that no one knows the “Capital T” truth, and that we’re all on a journey together. This is essentially what our Fourth Principle says, which encourages us toward “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” To be a seeker requires us to be open to new ideas, and it calls us to be willing to take risks and, maybe most of all, to risk being wrong. And the bedrock value, or virtue, for all of that is curiosity. So I would claim curiosity as one of the UU virtues. Consider, if you will, what happens if we’re not curious. If we think we have all the answers. If “but we’ve always done it this way” is our response to innovation, to new ideas. Ours would be a stagnant faith, a faith stuck in the past, a faith not of roots and wings, but of ruts. Unitarian Universalism is nothing if not dynamic. Our faith calls us to see things in new ways, no matter how challenging those new ways might be. It doesn’t require that we agree with every novel notion that comes along. That would be an orthodoxy that runs counter to our inherent heretical nature. But it does require us to be open, and to critically consider different perspectives and viewpoints. So I consider “Curiosity” to be a Unitarian Universalist virtue. The next one I would add to our list is “Hope.” It’s interesting, and maybe it’s a reflection of the times we’re living in, that the UU religious leaders I polled didn’t include “Hope” as one of our virtues. But I think hope is an essential ingredient of Unitarian Universalism. To be clear, I’m not talking about a mindless, Pollyanna version of hope. Nor am I talking about a blind faith that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out okay in the end. No, the kind of hope I’m talking about is a hope informed by the harsh realities of life. A hope shaped and shaded by experience. A deep and abiding hope that calls us to see the world as it is and that motivates us to move, to be change agents. We’ve all heard that adage that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Hopefully you know that it wasn’t Barack Obama or Martin Luther King who came up with that, and that it was a Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, who did. That statement, though, is a statement of hope. Do we actually know that that arc bends toward justice? No. Is there plenty of evidence that it doesn’t, and that maybe it even bends the other way? Yes. But do we let that evidence discourage us, or stop us from pushing against that arc to make it bend the way we want? No. That’s the kind of hope that our faith calls us toward. You’re probably tired of me talking about “drop in the bucket” thinking. A kind of hopelessness that tells us that we’re unable to make a difference because we’re just one person. Unitarian Universalism calls us to overcome that kind of thinking, to realize that we’re powerful, both individually and when we’re in relationship with others, and that everything we do has an impact and makes a difference. That’s the kind of hope that we’re all about. That kind of hope is a virtue that leads us to do good for goodness’s sake. Next, I’ll offer up “Gratitude” as a UU virtue. And here, I’ll remind us that when I identify these virtues as “UU virtues,” I’m not claiming that they’re necessarily exclusive to us. Gratitude is probably a universal virtue as much as a Unitarian Universalist one. But I think, like hope, it lies at the heart of our faith. Gratitude calls us toward our best selves, in our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with others, and our relationship with the wider world. To hold what we have, what we know, and who we are with a sense of gratitude opens our hearts to joy and our hands to service. Gratitude helps us to see our lives as gifts, and not as burdens to be borne. And when we accept a gift we’re moved to pass it along, to pay it forward. As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to see the inherent goodness of life, of our lives. To appreciate the gifts we’ve been given and the gifts that others have to offer. No matter how great or how small. This requires us to pay attention, to notice, to name these gifts at every turn. Which, in turn, turns us away from grief and despair and toward hope and joy. When we are grateful, we treasure all life. For, as the hymn goes, “all life is a gift, which we are called to use, to build the common good and make our own days glad.” Now let’s talk about a hard one. A virtue that, I think, is elusive to many of us. Because, remember: Just because something is a virtue, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy or that we’re all good at it. What I’m talking about here is “Humility.” It’s hard to be humble as UU’s about Unitarian Universalism, because we all feel like we’ve got a pretty good thing going here, right? But we need to remember that, when we say that no one has a corner on the “capital T truth,” that includes us! We can fall into a trap of seeing our faith as the best or the right way. And it doesn’t just pervade our attitude toward our faith. Whether it’s our politics, our social stances, our commitment to righting the world’s wrongs, we have a tendency toward what has been called “exceptionalism,” which is the polar opposite of humility. But humility is what brings us into relationship with others and keeps us in relationship with them. When we commit to walking with, rather than ahead of, to following instead of leading, when we see ourselves as a part of, instead of apart from, we establish the building blocks of the Beloved Community that we proclaim we want. Humility may not be the first virtue that comes to mind when we think of Unitarian Universalism, but I wonder how we might be changed, both individually and as a faith, if it was. So, there we have it, and there we’ll leave it, at least for today. The seven UU virtues: Love; Justice; Transformation; Curiosity; Gratitude; Humility; and Hope. Seven, of course, is an artificial number, and we can and probably should consider others. But if we seek to incorporate and integrate these values into our identity, and then to bring them to life in the world, we’ll be off to a pretty good start. May it be so. May we work to make it so. Blessed be. Amen.

On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday for multigenerational services at 9:30 am and 11:15  am we focused on the issue of food insecurity in our community. There is no additional text for the service so please listen to the audio!

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. I guess it’s because I generally feel like January 1 doesn’t really hold any particular significance. It’s just another date on the calendar, like any other, and maybe an excuse for a party, but not much more. After all, every day we wake up is a new day, and we can claim it however we might want. March 11 might be a good day to start a new, healthy habit. October 23 is just as good a day as any to try to get out of a rut. I think I mentioned this last year at this time, that I actually made – and kept – my first New Year’s resolution at the turn from 2017 to 2018. It was a modest, easily achievable one, and I’m unreasonably proud to say that I kept my streak going for another whole year. For two years running now, I’ve only used one paper towel to dry my hands in the rest room. Huge, right? I’m going to stop climate change dead in its tracks. But I guess that it’s good to claim small victories where we can find them. But here I stand before you today, ready to publicly make another resolution. And this one feels icky on so many levels. One, because it feels so cliché. Two, because I know so many share in the same struggle. And three, because I don’t want to make anyone else feel like they have to do what I’m planning to do, or at least try what I’m trying. Which is to lose 25 pounds. That’s what I aim to do this year, and I’ve joined this online program called “Noom” to try and help me. But isn’t that just the oldest New Year’s resolution in the book? To try and lose weight? But the truth is that my weight has been creeping up for years, at the pace of about 5 pounds a year, and I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t feel as fit and nimble as I want to, and I don’t like the fact that even my “fat pants” are feeling snug around the waist. Plus, I’m going out to Utah in March to ski with my brother and I’d like to be nicer to my knees by shedding some pounds before I go. Now, before we go any further with this, I want to acknowledge that I’m talking about me and the physical and emotional feelings I have being at the weight that I am. I am not trying to shame anyone by revealing my plans to you, and if you’re happy with wherever you are on the scale and the body type you have, more power to you. I’m happy for you, truly. I’m not trying to recruit anyone to get on the diet and exercise bandwagon. And I’m also not telling you about my resolution so that you can try and make me feel better by reassuring me that I’m really not that heavy. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to know that I’m not feeling particularly good about myself right now, and because it’s hard to admit. Although it feels a little risky to tell you this, I believe I can count on you to support me, to check in on how it’s going, and maybe to lovingly hold me accountable, like when you see me eyeing the cookies or cake at coffee hour, or the desserts at our Chili, Chocolate and HomeBrew Challenge later this month. Now, did I have to reveal this to you today? Of course not. And maybe some of you will think it self-indulgent for me to spend your precious time here on Sunday morning to talk about myself. But here’s why I wanted to do it: I wanted to model, if even in just a small way, how we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable with each other. How we can share with each other something of our real and meaningful struggles in our lives. How we can ask for help and support with those struggles. Because, to be honest, most of us just aren’t that good at it. At admitting our frailties, our faults, our shortcomings. Of admitting when we’ve made a mistake or screwed something up, apologizing for it, and asking for forgiveness. Of allowing others to peek behind the curtain, to see beneath the veneer, to see beyond the image that we so carefully curate that tells all the world that everything is fine, that we’ve got it all under control. In her book Daring Greatly, researcher, author and speaker Brene Brown tells us that “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” Whew! That’s a lot to take in. So, let’s take a few minutes to unpack it. Through her years of researching the emotional and psychological impacts of vulnerability, she’s concluded that what we all are seeking, ultimately and intimately, is connection. “Connection,” she writes, “is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.” Another word that Brown uses for connection is “belonging,” or “the innate human desire to be part of something larger than ourselves.” She believes our greatest need is for connection because she has learned that our greatest fear is fear of disconnection. And the source of that fear is “the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.” These feelings of unworthiness are the source of shame, and shame keeps us from showing up as our true and authentic selves. Which, of course, means that we hide that authentic self from others, which reinforces our inability to connect with others. We get stuck in this so-called “shame spiral.” Now, Dr. Brown goes on to define vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk and exposure.” Those are scary words, aren’t they? To be vulnerable is to be willing to expose ourselves to others not knowing how they’ll react. Notice that I didn’t say “not caring” how they’ll react, because if we didn’t care then it wouldn’t be risky. But how and why would we take that risk? Why would we risk telling someone that we’re scared, or lonely, or in pain? Why would we let go of our carefully crafted image of perfection and always knowing the answer, always being right and risk telling someone “I don’t know,” or, worse yet, that we’ve made a mistake and we’re sorry and we want to set things right? The answer is because it’s the only way to connect with another human being. And, remember, connection and belonging is what we’re seeking. The key to vulnerability is worthiness. To be vulnerable, to break the shame spiral, to risk exposure for the sake of making connection and gaining a sense of belonging demands that we see ourselves as worthy of connection and belonging and love and empathy and compassion. Brene Brown calls this “Wholeheartedness,” which she defines as “facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.” To approach our lives wholeheartedly is to stop measuring our worth by the reaction of others and to claim the inherent worth of our true and authentic selves. Did you catch that? That phrase “inherent worth?” It should have a familiar ring to it, because we use it here in church a lot. The First Principle of Unitarian Universalism states that we “affirm and promote the inherent worth of every person.” We place a lot of stock in this idea of worthiness, inherent worthiness. And we talk about how challenging it can be to live into this principle when it comes to finding and believing in the inherent worthiness of others, particularly others who are different from us. But what we almost never talk about is how this notion of inherent worthiness applies to me, to us, to ourselves. We project this principle outward, but we rarely project it inward. Let’s sit with that a moment. What would it feel like to claim the First Principle not for everyone else, but for ourselves? To not just say “you have inherent worth and value” but to say, “I am inherently worthy and valuable?” To say that “I’m not perfect, but I’m enough?” In fact, let’s try a little experiment. I invite you to turn to one of your neighbors, to look them in the eye, and to say to them “I have inherent worth and value.” How did that feel? I’m guessing it made more than a few of us uncomfortable. But if we hold fast to the First Principle’s assertion, if we believe that it applies to everyone, then we have to be able to claim it for ourselves. Because it’s the only way we can risk vulnerability to gain connection and a sense of belonging. Now, I want to give you a glimpse, a preview, of two upcoming opportunities we’re going to offer here in the church in the New Year, opportunities to claim our worth, to risk vulnerability and, hopefully, to make deeper connections. These are in addition to our Soul Matters groups, which are ongoing and which are a great place to exercise these particular muscles. In the coming weeks, we’ll be forming a support group for those who are facing the challenges of supporting aging parents. I know there are a lot of us worrying about and working with parents who are in decline, facing issues around their health and well-being, and what our role in that process is and should be. This group will be a place where we can get real with each other about those struggles, share strategies and support each other. The second opportunity we’re going to offer is aimed specifically at fathers of young children. The evolving role of fathers and fatherhood presents specific challenges in our culture and society today, and there’s little organized opportunity for fathers to explore and support each other in navigating the terrain. There’s a group in Philadelphia that has started a “Fathering Circle” to help support those in that role, and we’re going to try forming one of our own, based on their model. So, keep an eye out for more information about both these groups if you’re interested. As we embark on a New Year, I invite all of us to engage in the deeply spiritual work of claiming our own worthiness and then presenting our authentic selves to each other and to the world. To risk vulnerability to gain connection and belonging. Maybe that’s a New Year’s resolution we all can work on, together. This day, and every day, I wish you peace. Amen.

There’s a scene near the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy has almost reached the sacred grotto where the Holy Grail – the cup of Christ – resides.  Our hero has dodged bullets, jumped from speeding trains and defeated most of the Nazi army to get to this point. He’s decoded clues, pieced together puzzles, and outwitted the bad guys.  Suddenly, as he emerges from a tunnel, he finds himself at the edge of a cliff.  Looking down all he sees is a sheer rock face and a thousand-foot fall.  And across the impossibly wide expanse, too far to jump, hundreds of feet away across this yawning chasm, is his goal.  Being Indiana Jones, he does what any adventuring archaeologist worth his salt would do:  he consults the clues he’s compiled during his quest.  His book assures him that there’s a bridge from where he is to where he wants to be. But, as he looks across the empty space, he sees nothing, not even the remnants of a span.  His goal is so tantalizingly close, yet impossibly far away.  After contemplating his situation (he could always go back the way he came), he takes a deep breath and steps out into the void. Can you see yourself in this scenario? Maybe not having to outwit enemies, maybe not literally standing on the edge of a cliff with our toes hanging over the edge. But working and striving to get to a goal, and getting tantalizingly close but still impossibly distant? Or maybe our lives are simply a journey we take for a while, and we reach a decision point. A crossroads. A place in which we have to choose, “Do I move forward or back? Do I choose Option A or Option B?” Sometimes we get to these places voluntarily, and at other times they’re thrust upon us. Sometimes these decision points present themselves with clearly defined choices laid out before us.  Do we turn left or do we turn right?  Perhaps we can see a little way down the two paths and predict how our choices will turn out. We may be able to do some measure of due diligence, to weigh the pros and cons of our decision and make an informed choice.  Other times, often times, we feel more like Indiana Jones, standing on the top of a cliff and we have to decide whether to turn back or to step off into the unknown. To take a leap of faith.  We hear that term a lot, don’t we?  “Leap of faith.”  It’s a beautiful metaphor, really, for any action we take when we don’t know or can’t predict what the outcome will be.  Although it’s in some dispute, many attribute the phrase to the nineteenth century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.  Kierkegaard used the term “leap of faith” is his conception of how an individual would believe in God, or how a person would act in love. He said that a belief in God, or a person’s response to love, is not so much a rational decision, as it is a rejection of rationality in favor of something more elusive. That is, faith. As such, he thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt that God exists.  The doubt is the rational part of a person’s thought, without which the faith would have no real substance. Doubt, therefore, is an essential element of faith, an underpinning. According to Kierkegaard, to believe that God exists, without ever having doubted God’s existence, would not be faith-full. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still to believe in God.  This is the leap of faith. As a Unitarian Universalist, I like Kierkegaard’s linkage between faith and doubt.  There is, he implies, no such thing as “absolute faith.”  This reminds me of a discussion that I had with a conservative Christian friend of mine a few years ago.  When I told her that I did not believe that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead, she replied, “How can you dispute that?  It’s historical fact.  There were eye witnesses!”  This woman, who claimed a deep faith in God and Jesus Christ, had no doubt whatsoever, and that leads me to question just how deep her faith really runs.  If we know something as fact, we don’t need faith.  Faith is different than absolute certainty.  Faith is believing tinged with doubt, colored by doubt, textured by doubt.  For me, the difference between being certain and being faith-full is the difference between driving the Blue Route and taking your first steps onto an unfamiliar mountain trail.  In one case, you know that you’ll reach your destination and you’re pretty sure of what you’ll encounter along the way.  In the other, you’ve got evidence that someone’s been there before and that they’ve marked out the trail.  But you’re not sure whether you have the right equipment to get where you want to go, or whether a bear is going to jump out and eat you.  Parker Palmer writes that “Faith is a venture into the unknown, into the realms of mystery, away from the safe and comfortable and secure.” To get to that place often takes a leap. A leap from the known and the familiar into the unknown and, perhaps, the perilous. Activist William Sloane Coffin wrote that “First you leap, and then you grow wings.  The leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see, then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must,” he concludes, “dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.” “In matters of faith, first we must do, then we will know.”  That’s an interesting way to faith, don’t you think?  Coffin is saying that we don’t gain faith through study, through reciting catechisms and creeds, through reading about the lives of saints and sinners, through prayer.  Instead, he says, we gain faith through experience.  Our experience shapes and informs our faith.  To become faithful, to grow and mature in the ways of faith, he says, we must first make the leap.  How’s that for a scary thought? What, then, does it take to make a leap of faith? To have, as some might say, the “courage of our convictions?” To “act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty?”  I believe it takes four things.  The first is clarity of purpose.  To make a leap of faith, we must have a clear sense of why we’re about to do what we’re about to do.  This requires a high level of self-awareness and self-knowledge.  This implies that we have a deep sense of what our calling is, what our unique contribution to the world will be.  A strong sense of purpose empowers us to focus our attention and it keeps us from becoming distracted by the demons that lurk at the edge of the abyss.  When we are secure in our understanding of what motivates us, what we seek to accomplish, and why it is important, when we possess a singularity of purpose, we help to align the stars in our favor.  In his book The Alchemist, Paul Coehlo refers to what he calls our “Personal Legend.”  This is the term he uses for the unique purpose that each of us has for being on this Earth.  He writes that, “when you discover your Personal Legend, the universe conspires to help you achieve it.”   If we step off into the void with a clear sense of purpose, we are far more likely to fly than to flounder. The second prerequisite to acting wholeheartedly without absolute certainty is to do our homework.  While, to the outside world, our leap of faith may appear to be spontaneous (and perhaps ill-advised), we need to prepare the foundation, to investigate the situation, and to lay some groundwork.  Leaps of faith are not, or at least should not be, impulsive acts.  It took years of careful research, analysis, and planning to bring Indiana Jones to the edge of the void.  Before we jump out of an airplane, it’s good to check out the safety record of the skydiving school, the experience of your dive master, and whether or not the person who packed your parachute was out drinking all night.  The third precondition to taking a leap of faith flows from the second.  Part of the preparation that’s required is to round up a network of support.  This is not the same as building a safety net (although that’s a prudent thing to do).  Rather, it is to appreciate the fact that, when we are faced with a difficult choice, we need the love and support of others.  A strong partner, a wise mentor, even a loving critic can help us see more clearly and give us the courage to take risks we might otherwise avoid, and thereby gain rewards which might otherwise go unrealized.  We are not necessarily asking these people to make the leap with us, but knowing that we have champions and cheerleaders behind us makes the step off the ledge a whole lot easier. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty we must be open to surprise. No matter how well-prepared we are, no matter how much investigation and analysis we do, no matter how clearly we see the path unfolding before us, the Universe throws a mean curve ball.  To act make a leap of faith is to take a risk that things won’t turn out exactly as we had planned or hoped.  It is our choice whether we view this as failure or as opportunity.  The bird that teeters at the edge of the nest, spreads its wings and falls flat on its face can decide to lie there, never to fly again, or it can resolve that it is a bird and it was born to fly.  Fear of failure holds us back from the edge and encourages us to retreat.  It keeps us from becoming who we were meant to be.  If we are able to remain open to surprise, if we pay attention and respond to the unexpected, if we even are bold enough to invite the unknown and the inconceivable into our lives, we may just soar to new heights and greater horizons.  As he stood on the edge of that cliff, Indiana Jones possessed a clarity of purpose.  He had prepared his whole life for this moment.  He had done his homework and he had the support of his father and his mentor.  He had no idea what would happen when he stepped off the edge, into the void.  But he took his leap of faith.   If you have seen the movie, you know what happens, and if you haven’t I don’t want to ruin the ending for you.  Instead, let me leave you with these words, from the poet Patrick Overter: When you have come to the edge of all you know And are about to step off Into the unknown, Faith is knowing that One of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on Or you will be taught how to fly. This day and every day, I wish you peace. Amen. Closing Words Our closing words today are an excerpt from Ana Lisa de Jong’s poem, “Rise.” I give up all that isn’t me, although tomorrow I know I will try for it to be retrieved. But for today, I give up what isn’t mine to carry, or feel the weight of it upon my heart as if my name were engraved. Yes, today I discard all that isn’t me. And I find myself afresh in the freedom of its shedding. As today I lay down the weights that would hamper my rise, and realise again how close is heaven.

This Sunday we begin our month-long reflection on the spiritual theme of “Awe.” Guest preacher Latifah Griffin offers the first of her two-part sermon series on “Being Awed by the Regular”, speaking to embracing the sacred awe and wonder of life. There is no text for this sermon, so please listen to the audio.