Our Unitarian Universalist Seven
Principles call to us to make a positive difference in the world, in particular
our Sixth Principle: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian
Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote the goal of world
community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” Our forebears can seem like social change
and social justice giants to many of us.
“Both Unitarians and Universalists became active participants in many
social justice movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unitarian
preacher Theodore Parker was a prominent abolitionist, defending fugitive
slaves and offering support to American abolitionist John Brown. Other reformers included Universalists such
as Charles Spear who called for prison reform, and Clara Barton who went from
Civil War “angel of the battlefield” to become the founder of the American Red
Cross. Unitarians such as Dorothea Dix fought to “break the chains” of people
incarcerated in mental hospitals, and Samuel Gridley Howe started schools for
the blind. For the last two centuries, Unitarians and Universalists have been
at the forefront of movements working to free people from whatever bonds may
oppress them.”
(https://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are/history/faith)
Today, we
can still find ourselves in dire need of prophets, reformers, defenders,
affirmers and promoters of peace, liberty, and justice for all. I would be one of them. But there are times when I am overwhelmed and
weary, I stumble and struggle with how to make a real, tangible
difference. How many of you feel the
same way sometimes?
Last week,
I attended MCCJ, the Miami interfaith leaders dialogue group. I was excited to meet many of the long-time
leaders in Miami’s interfaith community.
After socializing, there was a presentation by Sylvia Heller, Co-Chair
of the Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Committee of the Woman’s Club
of Coconut Grove. She is also a member
of the Human Trafficking Committee of the National Council of Jewish
Women. She is working in collaboration
with the Office of the Florida State Attorney, the South Florida Human
Trafficking Task Force and the Events Committee for the Anti-Trafficking
Campaign for the Super Bowl 2020 in Miami.
She read quotes from women who had been trafficked for sex. She told us of people as young as 3 months
abducted for the slave trade. She told
of the documented increase in sex slavery that occurs in any city that hosts
the Super Bowl and of incidents of children and women abducted and put on a
plane with hours transported to another city or country, and forced in the
slave trade. Sylvia described the
process of grooming and the various forms of torture to break the spirits of
children and women. She pointed out that
young men and women in our country are increasingly learning about sex through
pornography, learning unhealthy attitudes and practices about sex that in turn
supports sex slavery. Sylvia told us that
Florida is one of the three worst human trafficking states in the US;
California and Texas round out the top three.
By the end of her presentation, I was angry, overwhelmed, depressed and
sad. I wanted to get involved, to do
something, anything, to make a difference.
And so I talked with her about helping local children and youth by
starting Our Whole Lives, OWL, Lifespan Sexuality Training in this area. I went on to discuss how this program helps
teach children and youth to respectfully and honestly talk about healthy sexual
attitudes and behavior, along with getting a clearer understanding of what
consent means.
After the program, still feeling
overwhelmed by everything Sylvia had shared, I got in the car and turned on
National Public Radio and heard about the Environmental Protection Agency
rolling back water quality protection standards, which would allow industry to
pollute our drinking water. And I heard
about Trump wanting to roll back standards on light bulb efficiency. And I heard a debate about the Supreme Court
letting the new asylum restrictions go into effect, limiting people from being
accepted as asylum seekers in this country if they had passed through another
country before coming here. It was just
after lunch, yet I wanted to turn my car around, go home, and crawl into bed
and pull the covers over my head.
So many things to do, so many needs,
so many atrocities, and there’s only one me, and I have limited energies,
limited focus, limited resources. I want
to help; I want to make a difference; however, the needs just keep piling up:
more and more assaults on human rights and on our planet. It would be so easy
to give up, sit back and watch Jeopardy, and lower my expectations of myself. I
can’t do it all, so I won’t do anything.
It would be easy to give up and just let it all go to hell anyway
because “What can I really do about any of it?”
What can one person do? What can a congregation do? And how is it possible for a person or a
congregation to keep up the energy, emotional resilience, and motivation to
make one difference after another after another, day after day, after day.
Unitarian Universalist Reverend
Elizabeth Nguyen writes “Our faith teaches us two truths: That we are always
enough…. And that we are responsible for bending our small piece of the arc [of
the moral universe].” She goes on to
say, “When we find our [personal] front lines, we find not only our hope, but
we also find our most effective action.”
These are heartening words, but let me tell you, after Thursday morning,
I’m not sure I would have been able to hear them, much less write them on my
heart.
There are those of us in this room
who try do everything we can to be enough until we burn out. I remember a time in my life when I spread
myself out as wide as I could serving on the Board of Planned Parenthood for
Eastern Iowa, being on the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission, leading the
Inter-Religious Council of Linn County, serving on the Board of the Interfaith
Alliance of Iowa and traveling across the state of Iowa for marital equality,
all at the same time. Oh and I was the
full-time minister of the local UU church, too.
I finally realized I couldn’t do it all.
That I had to choose my small piece of the arc to bend. Perhaps some of you have had that experience
as well.
I had to choose my own personal
front line, where I could dig in and offer my most effective action. A single area that touched my heart, my life,
my experiences most authentically, and where I could make a difference. That is not to say I wouldn’t continue to
offer my presence and my experience and expertise to other causes, but I
couldn’t do everything for everyone. I
chose one social justice area that I personally could put energy into, and also
reserve some of my personal resources to support whichever social justice
initiative the congregation I served chose to get involved in. In choosing to refine my focus, I have more
energy to support the causes I choose.
And one thing I have come to realize, in stepping back from so many
leadership roles, I was given the opportunity to trust that others can and will
take on the other issues, causes, needs that I cannot.
Refining my focus has been a helpful
to me, might be helpful to some of you, and can also be helpful to a
congregation. What would be different if
this congregation, as a whole body, chose one social justice focus? If this congregation focused its energy and
resources toward one social justice initiative with one project that bubbled up
from that initiative, to make a difference in the world? You, we, this congregation, do not have an
inexhaustible amount of energy and endless resources for all the causes out
there. The process of choosing a focus
for an individual or a congregation takes time, reflection, discernment. In a congregation it also takes one-on-one
conversations about our deeply held values and about experiences that have
affected how we view the world and the needs of the world. In addition, this congregation would have to
vote on a specific social justice focus, then proceeding from there to really
educate ourselves on that focus. Book
studies, outside speakers, learning from allies, exploring gaps in services,
looking for where we can make a difference.
This is a tangible way that this congregation, can find and bend the arc
in find our personal front line.
Now some of you might say you
already have active social justice initiatives and actions going on within this
congregation, and I will tell you that is true, especially most recently with
the work you have done in Homestead at the detention facility. I honor the work you have been doing and
continue to do. I offer my thoughts
about social justice because this congregation-wide process has worked for me,
for the congregations I have been a member of, and for those I have
served. The decision on how to move
forward together making a difference in the world is up to you. What I propose is an intentional
process. With all that is going on this
country and world, many of us feel we need to do something right now. Right now!
And what I am saying is that immediate action is one type of social justice
initiative; sustained action require we take the time as a congregation to
discern and identify the social justice action which speaks to our collective
heart. Like so many things in Unitarian
Universalism, it is not either or, it is both and.
One more thing, having done social
justice work for many years, I have had to learn how to keep my social justice
focus while coping with the constant barrage of attacks on people’s rights and
attacks on the health of our planet.
After the MCCJ meeting the other day, I took some time to meditate and replenish
my resources. I encourage you to find
ways to fill yourselves back up when you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to
face another attack on rights and freedoms in this country, to restore your
hope when all seems lost. For some of
you, it may be coming to this congregation on Sunday morning for an uplifting
word from the pulpit, or to be with people who accept you just as you are, who
share similar values, and who brighten up when they see your face, just as you
brighten up when you see theirs.
That’s how it works for me…when I
am paying attention. When I remember to
look for, be mindful of, and open up to those things that replenish me. But in order for them to work, I need to
pay attention, to look for, be mindful of, be It is so easy for us humans to
focus on and be consumed by what repels us, upsets us, and caused us internal
conflict, rather than attending to what we need to replenish our hearts and
souls. I read somewhere we humans are
genetically predisposed to be vigilant to the threats around us, and now in
this current age, with fewer immediate threats to our lives that vigilance
comes out sideways, as we give our attention to things that bother us, scare
us, and cause us discomfort, rather than giving attention to things that fill
us spiritually and give us hope.
Reverend Teresa Soto wrote (“When
There is no Happy Ending” in Spilling the Light by Reverend Theresa I. Soto): “Hope is the thing inside you that says yes
in the face of every no…We find ourselves [today] in a time that is equal parts
cruelty and confusion. [And] There are…
times when the confusion is a tool of systems of oppression… Our ongoing
acknowledgement that each of us is somebody means that we don’t need many
finely crafted ways to say that in an uncertain and confusing world, the
certainty we offer isn’t that we have all the right answers or even all the
right actions. Rather, we present the
certainty that no matter what happens, we aim to move forward together…Our hope
is not indefinite…Hope is a practice we create.
Just as mastering physical skills takes a lot of training and practice,
mastering communal hope requires that we stay at it and do the actions that
will bring about new states of being and new futures. ‘We are in this together’ means that we choose
each other, over and over, as sources and communities of hope. Maybe we will repeat this often. [and we will remember that] Changing our
reality often takes more than one try…”
How do you practice hope? Perhaps by being part of a Unitarian
Universalist faith community. Perhaps by
reminding yourself of the other communities of hope that are in your life. Perhaps by acknowledging that change happens,
human systems don’t last, that the administration in Washington will eventually
change. Perhaps your hope practice
involves doing something to make a difference.
When I am witnessing at a rally, lobbying a legislator, when I tell a
person who is from a marginalized group that I will walk with them, support
them, and bring my resources to bear for them, I feel hope. When I am actively listening to someone tell
me about the countless issues in my community, I can find myself slipping back
into distress. My hope seems to
slip.
And that’s when I turn back to our
Unitarian Universalist Principles.
That’s when I remember we are a people of the Principles, a denomination
founded and grounded on building a new way, and I am not alone in this work. What gives me hope? You do.
Hope that shines like a beacon in the world sorely in need of deeds, not
creeds. What give me the energy to get
us and keep trying to right the wrongs around me? You do.
What replenishes my soul? Why,
it’s you. You and Unitarian
Universalists like you across the world that inspire me to
“go out
into the world singing songs that proclaim [peace,] liberty [and justice for
all.]
Songs that turn ashes into garlands
Songs that bind up the afflicted and those who mourn.
Songs that, like oaks, have roots that go deep and stand
strong..
They are the songs that give us life.
They are the songs that give us meaning.
They are the songs that give us purpose.
[And once again] it is our turn to take these life-giving
songs out into the world.”
(from Into the World Singing by Reverend Dawn Cooley)
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