Sermons

The Dark Yin of the Soul

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

Color_Stripe

“It is easy to admire someone of grace and elegance, to have one’s eye caught by the sleek drape of a skirt or by a sidelong glance across the room. In certain circles it is possible to live through an entire affair which is composed of nothing more than brittle witticisms. But the love of the spirit comes when the dark yin of the soul is exposed in the lover’s sight; vanities, insecurities, those tender crevices that hold the potential of real pain.” That quote is from a short story by Bruce Sterling, called “The Beautiful and the Sublime.” I couldn’t tell you now what the plot of the story is to save my life, but this quote has stayed with me for over ten years.

And while we’ve had this topic planned for weeks, thinking about how and when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, or to receive the vulnerability of others with love, now we are examining these patterns of our lives in the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the largest in US history. The death toll currently stands at 59 people, with 527 injured.

And to those of you who think that something like this could never happen here in Canada — you’re wrong. It wouldn’t be next week, of course, or even next year, or in five years — laws take time to be changed –but unless we dig deep into the reasons why white men are taught by our embedded systems that this is the only “solution” to whatever they are experiencing — this toxic culture will seep across our border. It has already begun — just two months ago we experienced racist, facist graffiti painted all over our city, not just our sign, the same day that a white supremacist plowed a car into people protesting hate in Virginia. That was not a coincidence.

And while it’s so important in our dominant white culture to recognize the need for vulnerability, to learn how to let other people in to our tender crevices, where we are raw and sore, Sterling’s use of yin and yang in this metaphor gives us insight to a layer deeper than what he merely writes on the page. The essence of yin and yang in Taoism isn’t that one is necessarily better than the other, but that they each part are the larger whole. They need each other to exist, and humans, as part of the larger multiverse, are neither yin nor yang inherently but contain both within each of us. Balance is what brings us harmony, and because we are living beings, staying in balance is a constant process.

So here we are. Diversity is one of our strengths, and yet it brings with it complexity and the potential for real harm. And remember, diversity includes gender identity and expression, class status, education level, physical ability, cognitive ability — the list goes on. We are, each of us, a unique collection of locations on a multitude of spectrums. That’s pretty amazing. But it also means that sometimes, we have to be as intentional about making room for others around us as we are about living into our own potential. Our reading today, by Lao-Tse, speaks of the space within, the empty places, as being the most useful. Sometimes, listening to another’s pain is just as important, if not moreso, than sharing our own. The problem comes when we always do one at the expense of the other.

And here is where awareness of our systems and what the dominant culture is come into play. Some of us are taught that we take up too much space just by existing — women, people of colour, tall people, fat people, etc. When we attempt to share equal space, we are told that we are asking for too much. That’s why you’ll hear the common counter-argument to feminism is that feminists are actually seeking superiority, not equality, which couldn’t be further from the truth. When one is accustomed to certain privileges, equality can often feel like an attack.

And even our metaphor today, of yin and yang, isn’t immune from sexism. Yin is traditionally identified with the feminine, while yang is the masculine. In our dominant Western white culture, to be emotional, to be vulnerable, to be sensitive is attributed to the feminine, and is more often than not framed as a bad thing — as weak. You hit like a girl. You scream like a girl. Man up. You don’t have the balls to do that. In our dominant culture of toxic masculinity woman can wear pants but men still cannot wear skirts. And if you’re genderqueer? You risk life and limb just by going outside your home.

The late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has been using his platform of privilege on his show to rail against the atrocities of the current US government, including how their health care system kills people. He has cried on camera, in front of millions of people. In retaliation, someone has purchased bus bench ads, attempting to attack Kimmel by calling his show “The Estrogen Hour” — implying that this feminine hormone, and that demonstrating genuine emotion for the deaths of millions of Americans, is somehow a bad thing.

So I would offer to you today that finding ways to be vulnerable with each other, to develop emotional intelligence about how we feel and why, is a form of resistance to the status quo. Acknowledging the global majority cultures that embrace our emotions as valid sources of experience is a form of resistance to white supremacy. Learning how to be vulnerable, to embrace the dark yin in each of us, will not only make us better at being human with each other — it will also heal the world. It will save lives.

But what does it mean to “learn to be vulnerable”? Can’t we just do it by talking about what’s hurting us or bothering us at any time?

No.

We cannot become yin at the exclusion of yang. We must seek balance. We cannot go around bleeding on those around us all the time, because then we have failed to make room for those who are also bleeding — sometimes their wounds need more immediate attention than our own. And while all our blood may look the same, our wounds are in different places and are of different degree. Someone who is bleeding from stepping on a nail has very different needs from someone who’s been shot. Just because we acknowledge that all of us bleed, that all of us have wounds, doesn’t mean that our suffering is the same. It doesn’t mean that all our needs can met in the same ways.

The Rev. Sandra Fees said, on the topic of learning to be one’s true, authentic self: “This means revealing what we so often try to keep hidden from others and allowing ourselves to be seen. Now I want to make an important distinction here. This is really important. Being seen is not the same as dumping ourselves on other people. It is not about oversharing deeply private information with people we don’t know or barely know. Being vulnerable requires having good, appropriate boundaries and trust with people in one’s life. The idea is to build deeper connections, not to bare the soul to a stranger or passing acquaintance. When someone share their deepest struggles and secrets with someone they just met, that has more to do with desperation, attention-seeking, and pain than being oneself. And it is unlikely to lead to any kind of deeper connection and intimacy. It is more likely to lead to an experience of alienation. […] True vulnerability requires some thought and consideration.”

So here we are. Right now, I realize, at this point in the sermon, the message seems to be “Be vulnerable, it will save the world, but don’t be too vulnerable, or you’ll mess everything up for everyone.” No pressure.

So authentic vulnerability requires thought and consideration. What does a congregation do with that? It’s true, of course, but at the same time this is also supposed to be our caring, supportive community. Unitarian James Luther Adams once said, church is where we practice what it means to be human. Being human is hard. And practice means not we’re not getting it right the first time around. Practice means getting better by doing it over and over again.

And the way we do that, with this multitude of different people with different life experiences, is by holding to our covenants — the ones we make as a larger community, and the ones we make in our smaller groups within. And those covenants will need to be rewritten and renewed, as we learn more about how to be together and make room for each other. Nothing is carved into stone, because that would hold us back from our evolution.

And, you have me. Right now, I’m the one you can bleed all over until the blood clots and you can move towards balance once again. It’s one of the most important roles I have as your minister — to hear your stories. All of them. You can bleed on me.

And to make sure the whole congregation’s needs are met the pastoral care team and I are working on rebuilding and restructuring this part of our church’s ecosystem — to recruit and train pastoral care associates who will listen and support you when you need to be vulnerable.

But even then, I’m not psychic. And, neither is anyone on the pastoral care team right now — that I know of. I know I’ve only been here two months, and that’s not a lot of time to build up trust. So I’m going to keep working at it. But I also need you to reach out to me, to be vulnerable even in the asking to be heard. I know from personal experience that that is one of the hardest things to do. And I believe in you — in your capacity for love, in your willingness to be loved, and in your commitment to making the world better for everyone else around you.

On this Thanksgiving weekend, as we here give thanks for this community in which we gather, for the earth and the sea and the sky, and for the ties that bind us to each other, remember: “it may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you. You better somebody love you, before it’s too late.”

May it be so.

Color_Stripe

Viola Desmond Goes to the Movies

Meghann Robern

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

 

I cannot, in good conscience, offer you this sermon today without pointing out that I am a white woman in 2017 speaking to you about the lived experience of a Black woman in 1946. I am claiming her story in the fulfillment of my work, using it for my own ends. No matter how well-researched, or how well-intentioned, my sermon is, I am still a white woman interpreting and retelling the personal experience of a Black woman. That fact will be hurtful to some, possibly many. Possibly even in this room right now. Impact always outweighs intent.

And, at the same time, it is the very least I can do as an ally to indigenous peoples and people of colour (two identities between which there is much overlap), it is the very least I can do to use my power and privilege as minister of this congregation to share this story. To be intentional with our full worship team about lifting up the voices of those who have been marginalized and oppressed.

In preaching about Viola Desmond this morning I am trying to dismantle systemic racism while at the same time continuing to participate in it. It is a complicated question that does not have a one-size-fits-all answer, and it relies on both things being true in order to be authentic.

I’ve been a runner for a few years now, and one of the things that happens is you find yourself part of the online running community. Groups where people share stories, tips, and generally support each other. One of the things that was given to me by a member of the online running community was when a Black man shared with us what he has to do to stay alive as a Black man running in the streets of his home.

He always, always, without fail, wears the brightest, most neon clothing he can find — from the sweatband on his head all the way down to his toes. He puts on reflective gear, so that headlights will make him known in the dark and the attempt to be visible can be recognized even in the daytime. He wants to be seen, so that no one can argue he was trying to hide or look inconspicuous. He always wears a shirt from a race he’s done in the past, so that on first look people can get that extra piece of information before judging him. He does all of this, because in his experience when people in our dominant culture see a Black man running, they assume he’s running away from the scene of a crime, and to protect his life he has to make them think something different.

That is not my experience as a runner. It never has been, and it never will be. And I think that everyone here, regardless of how you have been racialized in your identity, can agree that it would be preposterous to argue that because my experience was different, that therefore his isn’t true. And yet, this is what happens every single day to people of colour, both inside and outside this congregation. The pervasive abuses of systemic racism that continue in our modern, dominant culture are not hearsay to be debated. They are documented fact. Here is just one: in Policing Black Lives, Robin Maynard says:

“Black communities live in a state of heightened anxiety surrounding the possibility of bodily harm in the name of law enforcement. A genuine fear of law enforcement officers exists among many in the Black community, a response that is rational given the circumstances. In a society where many white Canadians think of the police as those who protect their security, Black people, quite legitimately, largely fear for their for their security in any situation that could involve the police. Parents, in particular, have expressed a genuine concern for the physical safety of their loved ones.” (Maynard 102)

“Though police killings, like other forms of systemic racism, are frequently justified by invoking Black criminality and “dangerousness,” this does not stand up to scrutiny. Criminal involvement does not, by any means, provide moral justification for police killings. However, police use of force also does not correlate to rates of Black criminality: while most white persons involved in incidents of police use of force have criminal records, this is not the case for Black Canadians. Instead, it is race that impacts police treatment: in one study, it was discovered that when responding to “minor offences,” police drew their weapons during arrest four times more often when arresting Blacks than any other group. Black people continue to be killed by police in situations that could have been de-escalated by other means and often due to police interventions that would not have even occurred had they been white. (Maynard 107)

We have covenanted together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That is not the same as the inherent worth and dignity of every opinion. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, is welcome to join us in this community, but to stay they must be willing to do the work of examining their sustaining beliefs, and their choices in the world. When we fail to hold people accountable for their beliefs that lead to the destruction of those that are not like them, we are failing our core Unitarian Universalist principles. White supremacists will not find a home here. Neo-Nazis will not find a home here.

Making room for everyone does not mean that we ignore those who are using that room to hurt others. Being freethinkers doesn’t mean that we are free to use oppressive language and to choose oppressive actions. Freedom from dogma and creeds does not mean freedom from ethical accountability. None of us can claim to be living into our full potential, or claim to be nourishing our spirit, when we are at the same time ignoring We can and should be better than this — not only to truly honour the diversity we have among us today, but to ensure a better future for those who will come after us.

Our choir today, singing the words of Unitarian Universalist Dr. Ysaye Barwell, asks if any of us would harbour, or maybe even become, a Harriett Tubman or Sojourner Truth, those fierce women of colour in the fight against slavery in North America. Would any of us harbour, or maybe even become, a Thomas Garrett, a white Quaker who helped innumerable Black people escape slavery on the Underground Railroad. This is a question for everyone here, because systemic racism poisons all of us. Viola’s sister, Wanda, describes how many people of colour expend great effort to stay out of trouble, to stay under the radar, because of the danger of being noticed.

She herself describes how she was aware of her Blackness by the time she was in junior high, and that she was ashamed of her sister for getting arrested. Viola, who only wanted to be able to see a movie in focus, and tried to pay for the proper ticket, and was forcibly dragged out of the theatre by two men as she clawed at her surroundings. Her own sister was cultured to be ashamed of rising up to defend oneself against racism. Even now, when people of colour protest peacefully, pay attention to how they are described by the dominant media — uppity. “Doing it wrong” “An inconvenience.” That is a legacy of a culture in which slaves ought to know their place.

And I know, I know, some of you are right now squirming in your seats and figuring out how to tell me after the service that sermons should be about the spiritual, that this is too political. Well, this is spiritual work. Viola Desmond is going to be the face of our new $10 bill. And yet, still, in 2017 people are dying because of the colour of their skin, and they are crying out for help, and they are being ignored because the majority of our culture can’t handle multiple experiences of the same thing. Because it is, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, incredibly hard to do so.

Why? Because the story we tell of our individual life, the narrative sum of our experiences, is the definition of who we are. Being able to form a coherent self-narrative is one of the ways we heal from traumatic events. So when we are asked to validate a different narrative, one that often contradicts our own, it feels threatening. It feels like an attempt to erase us. So we get defensive. This is spiritual work, because it affects our spirit, the stuff that makes each of us, us.

And when we feel threatened, when we feel defensive, we often forget to take into account the bigger picture — which includes a power analysis. When two individual accounts of reality conflict, and those involved will only allow one to be “The Truth,” then the one that has more power will win. Remember the saying, history is written by the winners? And one wins in a conflict by having more power — more money, more resources, the “right” assigned sex, the “right” size body, the “normal” skin colour. And here’s the other thing that’s so hard for us to understand, because it cuts right to how we define ourselves — it’s possible to have privilege and not have privilege at the same time.

I have immense privilege as a white person. I am marginalized as a woman. I have privilege of class, due to the pure luck of my birth. I am marginalized as a queer person. I have privilege due to my level of education — which is also linked to my whiteness and my class status — and I am marginalized due to my size. Holding different experiences of the same thing in tension with each other means that someone else having life struggles doesn’t diminish my own — but if I am going to be a true partner, if I am going to truly live into our shared UU principles and shared values, I have to acknowledge multiple realities as true. I have suffered immense pain in my life due to my size.

When I go running, I have to keep eye out for people throwing things at me because they think it’s funny to see a fat woman running. I’ve had horrible things shouted at me, been called awful names. But never, not once, have I been afraid for my life. My suffering is not negated by my fellow runner’s suffering as a Black man, and I can hold my painful experience as valid while also naming that his has been much worse. The real question is — how can we help each other find freedom in this world by changing it for the better? This is what it means to be intersectional.

Each situation, each choice, must be examined, must be held accountable to the larger work of dismantling systemic racism (and classism, and sexism, and ableism, and, and, and). And, I firmly believe that if there is a religion in the human experience that is capable of living into that tension, of holding multiple truths in a loving embrace and asking what’s next — it is Unitarian Universalism. We have failed at this many many times. But the promise, the potential of world-changing healing is there… if we are willing to take certain risks. But the how and when of those risks will be distinctly different depending on our racial and other social identities.

Those of us who are white will be asked to do very different things than those of us who are indigenous people and people of colour. Those of us who are white will need to always remember that we can go places, do things, say things that people of colour cannot without risking life and limb, much less freedom. White people are less likely to die in jail, or even die during arrest. And for those of us who are people of colour — the white people, myself included, are going to mess up. White people are going to continue to say awful things and make bad assumptions and forget to decenter themselves and their whiteness as they do this work of breaking down these systems and I’m so very sorry it won’t change overnight. But as I said to you a couple of weeks ago…. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is the enemy of better. We can’t wait until we’re perfect to do the work. None of us will survive that long.

We Unitarian Universalists are a covenantal people, no matter what our colour. We are bound together by the promises we make to each other about how we are going to build and sustain this community, about how we are going to teach the larger world what it means to believe different things but to still care about each other. The seeds are already within us, within this community. This is spiritual work, for the betterment of all. As we go forth today, remember — there is more love somewhere. There is always more love somewhere. And we’re gonna find it. Together.

May it be so.

Gratitude and Generosity

Meghann Robern

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

 

Today’s service grew out of a learning group in this congregation devoted to stewardship. They met throughout last year, and as you heard in our meditation today, their experience was much more than just memorizing facts from books and videos. These dedicated members of our community learned as much about themselves and each other in their shared journey as they did about expanding their visions of what it means to build, sustain, and care for this congregation and the work it does both inside and outside its walls.

This, to me, is a living example of the Buddha’s message from our choral prelude today: Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence; hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp. Live your lives with love and passion in a world that craves to heal. With your hearts warm and embracing, care for those who long to feel. Truth and light and understanding help us mend a world of woes. From our hearts and from our souls be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence; hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp.

And then, in our reading today from James Baldwin, we are reminded that while each of us hold the truth of our own lamp — the lived experiences and sustaining beliefs that help each of us navigate our lives — we do not exist in vacuums. One of the base elements of our historical Universalism is the radical idea that since we would all be equal in heaven, therefore we must, we must, strive for equality in the here and now. Today in our tradition, we do not share a communal belief in heaven, or even any afterlife at all, but we do share the legacy of that communal value — that this community gathers to change lives and make the world a better place for all. We do it with our bodies, with our minds, with our hearts. And, since none of us can remove ourselves from the currency-based society in which we exist, we also do it with our money.

And now, I wonder, how many of you cringed when I said that last line. Maybe even winced. Don’t worry — this isn’t a stealth kickoff to the pledge drive. That’s still in February. But talking about money openly is often taboo. The dominant culture teaches us that it is uncouth, inappropriate, that we open ourselves up to judgement and shame if we venture into that territory. I would offer up to you that this money taboo, so pervasive in our modern lives, is born out of a culture of wealth and privilege that did not want to be held accountable for hoarding their resources at the expense of those who had less than them. And I am not speaking of individuals here. I am talking about the systems at large. By creating a culture of stigma around talking about money — how to earn it, how to save it, how to spend it, how to redistribute it to serve the greater good — entire generations have been cut off from learning the best possible ways to care for themselves and for others. When we cringe at the mention of money in church it is because we have been taught we shouldn’t do that, when in fact the opposite is true. This congregation exists entirely on the generosity of its members and friends — unlike other many churches we do not receive money from a governing body — and so we need to talk about what that means year round.

And this is what the stewardship learning group has been doing — they have been engaging in the work of undoing the entrenched systems that keep us from being the best people we can possible be — with our treasure as much as our time and our talents. Your household budget is a moral document. The church’s budget is a moral document. This congregation is an employer of staff, really excellent staff with whom I am proud to work, and our salaries are a moral statement about the value of sustaining this community.

The church is not the building and the building is not the church, but the House and the Sanctuary are where the church does its work. The choices we make about caretaking our beautiful and historic buildings make moral statements about who we are and how we live into our values. When this congregation built the Sanctuary, an elevator shaft was put in. There is still no elevator — we keep putting off that expense. This means that two entire floors of our space are inaccessible. This is heartbreaking for those already among us who struggle with mobility. It is devastating to a church that wishes to be welcoming, and yet cannot welcome a child using a wheelchair to join their faith development group downstairs. And the only way we can ever change that, the only way we can ever learn to be better in all parts of our lives — not just our minds and hearts — is to talk about it openly. Without shame. Without judgement.

Because what I really want to tell you today, is that you are amazing. Our newcomers who came here for the first time — you came here into a group of strangers for a new experience, and that is amazing. Our visitors, who have been here more than once, offering more of themselves to this community. You’re amazing. Our congregational friends, who find themselves coming back, again and again, engaging with the precious Unitarian Universalist idea that diversity is our strength, and that makes each service a little different. You’re amazing. And our members. The lifeblood of this community, the spiritual and religious heirs to three congregations and 125 years of Unitarian Universalism in Winnipeg. You bring your joys and sorrows, your blood, sweat and tears. You bring your voices, in speech and song and poetry. You bring your senses — not just ones of our bodies but also those of our hearts — sense of justice, sense of bravery, sense of covenant. You are amazing. I moved here, bringing my family on a journey of over 2000 kilometers, because you are amazing.

And amazing doesn’t mean perfect. I’ve spent many years, a lot of therapy, and a lot of spiritual direction on letting go of my tendency towards perfectionism. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is the enemy of better. I want to return to the words of my dear friend and colleague, the Rev. Theresa Soto from our opening this morning:

I know that people
Have told you that before you can give
You have to get yourself together. They
Overstated the value of perfection by a
Lot. Or they forgot. You are the gift.
We all bring some broken things, songs
and dreams, and long lost hopes. But
here, and together, we reach within.
As a community, we begin again. And
from the pieces we will build something new.
There is work that only you can do.

If we spend all our time working towards perfect, we will wither and die, having done nothing at all. The real work is in our relationships with each other, which will be always changing and shifting, as life does. This congregation will not always look and feel like it does today, but if we commit ourselves to a culture of stewardship, we can ensure that it will inherit our shared values and the legacy of our covenants, our promises to each other. And this is the real test of sustainability in a community — are we willing to devote ourselves to the lives of people we have never met, and may not ever meet? Whether they are people suffering and in need in our community today, or the generations to come after us in this congregation — how are witnesses for them, as Baldwin tells us we are? How are we creating now a safe harbour for them away from the roll, as in the anthem sung by our choir? What is the work that only you can do, your precious gift to the world, and how can we help you do it?

Ultimately, though, a culture of stewardship and giving — in all aspects of our lives, not just our wallets — comes back to us in a sense of fulfillment. No matter what some people have tried to claim, human beings are not actually hard-wired for selfishness, and that way of life is not how we thrive. Pervasive, unrelenting selfishness may allow some few to control others through hoarding wealth and the power that wealth offers in our modern culture, but it stunts our growth and limits our potential. And I’m not talking about living an ascetic life, like monks, unless that appeals to you. I don’t want people to give up much-needed vacations or other opportunities for joy. I want to help people thrive, not just survive. And it has been proven that the more people talk about money and how to handle it, the more resilient they are when it comes to making good decisions about it — finding a balance between their needs and the needs of others. And when we give to others, as we are able, we are forging a connection with them, we become part of their story and they become part of ours. Without connections, we are nothing.

And, “as you are able” means something different to every person. For some, five dollars is a drop in the ocean. For others, five dollars might be the difference between the luxury of a bus ride home one day or paying rent this month. No matter where you fall on the financial spectrum, you are welcome here, and you are welcome in how our community lives into the circle of gratitude into generosity into gratitude, and on and on. Let us be intentional in learning how we care for ourselves and each other, and always remember that together, we can be better than any one of us alone.

May it be so.

Shaking Out Your Gear

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

Color_Stripe

One of the things you’re taught when you’re training to be a religious leader, no matter which faith tradition you call your own, is to figure out what spiritual practices nourish you so you can serve others, and to try to always find inspiration and connection in your daily life, not just on Sundays. As Unitarian Universalists, I think these are important things for all people to develop in their lives, not just the clergy. It’s part of my work here with you to help you on your individual spiritual paths, and to help you build a covenanted, beloved community.

We do this by expressing our shared values through our seven principles, and exploring the six sources of our faith. Today in particular, I’d like to share an example from a source that we Unitarian Universalists describe as “direct experience of the transcending mystery and wonder”. It comes from a friend of mine, an Episcopal priest named Jana, who serves the communities of Southern California in the United States. We went to seminary together, and soon became good friends. We were both women in traditions historically dominated by men in the clergy–this congregation being an exception, of course. We both were finding our way through graduate school and credentialling requirements while being married and co-parenting. We both had sardonic, sarcastic senses of humour that sometimes got us in trouble.

One thing we didn’t have in common, however, is a love of hiking. As many of you found out last weekend on the church camping trip, while my partner, Josh, made the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, I am Troop Beverly Hills. I enjoy camping, but I have my limits. For Jana, however, deep trail hiking and camping is not just time she devotes to her self-care and bonding time with her family, but it is also a spiritual practice in the same way that running — or in my case, wogging — is for me.

For a class project, Jana shared with us one of the most important spiritual lessons that she had learned from these endeavours, while preparing to hike the John Muir Trail. This trail is famous, even outside of hiking and camping communities. It runs 338 kilometres from the Yosemite Valley to the peak of Mount Whitney, and then you have to do another 17 kilometres to get from the official end of the trail down the mountain. The elevation gain is 14,000 kilometres. It’s called the backbone of the High Sierra. While parts of it are accessible even to the likes of me, hiking its length takes multiple days, ventures through deep wilderness, and is not for the unprepared.

What Jana taught us for this class project, and I’ve carried with me as an essential tool in the spiritual kit since then, is the concept of shaking out your gear. Before you actually go up on the trail, committing to hundreds of kilometres and several days in the wilderness, you do test runs. You pack up with the stuff you *think* you will need, and go out for a test hike somewhere less dangerous, for a shorter amount of time. And you *pay attention*.

A pack that feels fine at the beginning on day one can be dead weight by lunchtime. By the end of the day, you could have slowed down so much that had you been on the real hike, you might have run out of supplies halfway through the trail. So — you go through all the things you brought with you. Be ruthless. What do you *really* need, and what can you leave at home? What might useful for another situation, but not this one? What can you get rid of entirely? What can be shared among the group instead of each person carrying their own?

What I’d like you to consider is how what we did this morning, cleaning out my bag, might be helpful in our internal work. So much of our culture is about perfection, and about getting rid of the parts of us we don’t like. Pretending they don’t exist and never did. The problem with that is it causes erasure. It prevents wholeness, it prevents integration between our minds, bodies, and spirits, and it keeps us from living into our full potential.

One of the key components in the definition of trauma and its side effects is the inability to create a narrative out of one’s experiences. Things that we have experienced are kept in our memory banks isolated from everything else, with no connection to things before or after. In extreme trauma, the memories are imprinted on the brain without even a stamp or time or place for filing, which is what leads to flashback experiences for those living with post-traumatic stress disorder. With PTSD, our brains have no system to file these memories of trauma in the archive, so they keep coming back as a present-day experience. Therapy and other treatments help the brain assign traumatic memories a place in the past, so they can be examined with some distance, and integrated in a personal psychological narrative.

That’s a lots of psychological terminology to say that we as human beings are hard-wired to tell stories. We tell our own story to define who we are. We tell stories in groups to teach each other what it means to human, and to be in a particularly community. Multicultural understanding comes when we learn stories not our own. For Unitarian Universalists, stories are the bedrock of our tradition — our stories help us journey on our personal spiritual paths, and our stories guide us in how to be together and live into the covenants of community we make with each other. Stories allow us to be flexible and responsive, and to always be learning and evolving and adapting, instead of being tied to creeds or doctrines.

Some stuff that comes out of our bag is stuff we need to get rid of. The ways we’ve been cultured to allow -isms into our culture, to become entrenched in our systems. It’s the protein bar that fell to the bottom of the bag, broke open, and melted over everything else, including the inside of your bag. It’s permeated, and gonna take a lot of time and effort to get it out. Might even take more than a few attempts. But knowing it’s there is so much better than ignoring it and letting it mess up everything else in your bag. Pretending it was never in the bag prevents you from actually being able to use the bag.

And so it is with all the stuff that makes us who we are — our flaws and faults as well as our talents and shining abilities.

I’m someone who likes being prepared. I have multiple backup plans for any given situation. My lists have lists, and sometimes all my lists are catalogued in a spreadsheet. Organizing my resources into easily accessible forms is soothing for me. It helps me work through anxiety and fear about the unknown. And these are skills that someone in my position should have, as a sole minister of a mid-size congregation. But what this also tells me about myself is that I like to be in control. I like consistency, reliability. Many years ago, before a lot of therapy and spiritual direction, I would allow my need for control and planning as a comfort mechanism to interfere with my ability to be person in relationship with others.

What I’ve learned from my spiritual work with shaking out my gear is that while making all these lists and plans are helpful for me, to help me assess and process what happening in my life — sometimes to actually live I need to throw out the lists. To truly be in community I need to be disrupted by the needs of those around me. To acknowledge that it’s not all about me, to check my own selfishness and self-absorption, I need to be willing to ask — what would be helpful for you right now?

Even more importantly, I know that this tendency of mine is part of who I am. It is not something I can simply pretend doesn’t exist. What I *can* do is recognize it for what it is, and spend intentional time figuring out how it is helpful, and how does it hinder? When I “shake out my gear”, is it something I need to leave behind for this excursion in the wilderness? Or is it something I can use to help all of us get to the end of this particular adventure?

And shaking out our gear is not a one time operation. Especially as Unitarian Universalists, who have built adaptation, growth, and learning into the fundamental values of our tradition, we should always be willing to examine our ways of being — on both the personal and communal level — to see what work needs to be done. What has had its time, and can be shifted into fertilizing our roots? What new innovations are before us, to give us wings? How can we take all of who we are, as whole yet imperfect people, and love each other so profoundly that we find ways to thrive even in the midst of maelstrom. That we find ways to share that love even in the deepest cracks where rot seeks to take root.

I leave you once again with this blessing that survived the shakeout from my ministry in Nashville to here: May our minds be open to new learning; may our lips bring truth into the world; may our hearts know love; and our hands do the work of justice; as we go our way in peace.

May it be so.

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With a Lion at Her Feet

Meghann Robern

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Listen to the sermon here:

With a Lion at Her Feet

or watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook.

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Thekla. A young woman, caught up in a culture wherein she is denied all control over her life. Her mother makes her decisions for her, and she is engaged to a man who believes he is entitled to her submission — something which is validated by all those around them. Thekla has been denied affirmation of her inherent worth and dignity.

But then, she is given the chance to hear the teachings of Paul. She hears someone speak of love that rises above all injustice, of equality that knows no sex or gender. She hears a voice telling her that she is a person and not a thing. For teaching her this, Paul is thrown in jail. Think about that. Think about how powerful words can be, and how dangerous they are to people who hoard and abuse their power.

Regardless, Thekla has tasted freedom, freedom of her heart and freedom from her chains. Neither her mother nor her betrothed find that they can control her anymore, and while Paul is merely imprisoned, Thekla’s own mother asks for her to be burned. People oppressed by a system are most often taught that they must collaborate willingly in the system in order to survive.

Now, I know this story has some miracles in it. I’m not asking you to take them literally. What I want to do is invite you to consider them as metaphor for the immense power of the religious community to love, and protect, and change the fabric of the world around us. Thekla is saved from the pyre by an outpouring of rain; we learn that Paul and his people were actively praying for her deliverance.

What would it take for us to become the rain — single drops, each of us, overwhelmed by the magnitude of putting out a raging fire. And yet, when joined together, we become a downpour, extinguishing fires of hate and injustice. Rabbi Shana Mackler, of the Temple, taught me a saying that has become essential to my spiritual life this last week. “Pray as if everything is up to God. Act as if everything is up to you.”

Prayer, of course, means different things to different people. And maybe you’re not the kind of person who finds prayer to be very useful in your life. But I would offer up that because prayer can take so many different forms, and that one of those forms is to act as a direct conduit to our conscience, that maybe it’s not so irrelevant to all of us in these times. The Sikhs go to daily prayers because they believe that hearing and chanting the words of the Guru Granth attunes them to the needs of the universe each day. Prayer can be engaging with our personal gods, or with our still, small voice. However your personal spiritual journey has, and continues to unfold, prayer is not about quieting and soothing the mind, like meditation, but rather is about actively engaging your inner self to help choose the course of your outer life. This religious community offers up a mission, and shared values, to help guide us in this constant discernment.

Pray as if you are part of something bigger than yourself — a world that encompasses far more than one person’s experience. Act as if loving that world, and all the people in it, begins with you.

Let us return now to Thekla. Reunited with Paul, they travel to Antioch, where a powerful government man first tries to buy Thekla from Paul, and then, finding that she is not owned, immediately forces himself upon her in a public street and in broad daylight. He just grabs her and starts kissing her. Apparently he can’t help himself. She fights back, in the process ripping his clothes and knocking his crown off his head. Once again the world in which she lives is trying to make her into an object, and she finds the courage to resist from the love and empowering message taught to her by her religious community. Even though, once again, she finds herself under arrest and sentenced to death, while the power figure trying to control and objectify her, trying to make her less than human, is allowed to continue as a public figure and government leader.

But Thekla will not be silenced. She will not be contained. She not only believes that she has inherent worth and dignity, but she has also been told this, and shown this, by her religious community. She preaches about it to all who will listen, including the people of the house where she is kept locked up until it is her time to be thrown to the beasts.

And here we have another miracle. The lioness, the fierce beast meant to kill Thekla, most likely starved and abused by keepers in order to increase the violence of the demonstration, walks up and lays at her feet. Another creature, trapped in the system, decides to say, “Not this time.” They try again the next day, and not only does another lioness refuse to attack, but it protects her from the other beasts released into the theatre.

“Not this time.”

In this story, the beasts are not less than humans, but merely a different aspect of creation. They represent the diversity of this world, and the fundamental, interdependent web of which we are all a part. The lions have not necessarily heard Thekla preach, nor have they been converted. They simply see an injustice being perpetuated, one tied to their own captivity and oppression — because we are all tied to each other — and they rise up in solidarity.

“Not this time. And never again.”

Now, here’s the part that I love, and that has led to institutional western Christianity to run away screaming from this text.

In the midst of all this — a theatre of execution games, wild beasts running around, crowds of people, half of whom are screaming for her death while the other half are so moved they shower her with gifts thrown from the stands — in the midst of all this, she sees a tank of water, and says, “Oh look! This is a perfect time to baptise myself!” And throws herself in. She baptises herself. She doesn’t need Paul, or anyone else to declare her fit for it. She doesn’t need someone to bless the water. She doesn’t need someone else’s hand to be involved at all.

When this story began, she was a person trapped, with no autonomy over her life except to sit at her window, waiting for her mother or her future husband to make decisions for her. It is through hearing a message of love and acceptance, for everyone, not just some, that led her to make her first escape. It is through experiencing how that religious community lived their message, in deed as well as in word, that empowered her to claim her personhood, even when it was threatened. It was knowing that she was not alone, even if they were not physically by her side, that allowed her to know she could create herself however she wished, as long as it could be held over and against the values of love and justice she had been taught by her religious community.

Freshly baptised, and with the beasts dead around her, and half the crowd cheering for her, the powers that be are forced to let her go. She returns to Paul, and he tells her to go forth into the world and to preach of what she knows. She spends the rest of her long life doing that, and becoming a healer. She brings the religious community with her wherever she goes, working to heal those around her of their fear, anger, loneliness. She lives a life of compassion and strength, offering comfort and love to those who need it the most. She prays as if everything is up to God, and she acts as if everything is up to her.

So here we are, now, almost two thousand years later. While we may not cleave to Thekla’s Christianity, we can absolutely relate to her experience of how a community built on love and justice can heal us and empower us to live in the world. The Acts of Paul and Thekla was a text written to justify women as religious leaders and preachers, but it is ultimately, for me, about personhood. Replace her identity as a woman with any other oppressed identity — being black, being Muslim, etc. — and little about the story changes. How do we, as Unitarian Universalists, live into our legacy of a religious community built on love and justice?

Today we are welcoming new members. They have decided not only to participate in the shared ownership of and responsibility for this congregation and its ministries They also are promising to uphold and live into this congregation’s mission. Being a part of this religious community, in addition to our seven UU principles, means answering a call to create community, nurture spiritual growth, and act on our values in the larger world. We are not, as many claim,a community in which you can believe or do anything you want. We are a community in which we celebrate the diversity of our lives, and the diversity of our spiritual journeys, and we are called to believe only that which our conscience allows us. What we claim in this space, when we are gathered in safety, means nothing if we do not also live into it when we are separated, and the beasts are coming for us and those around us.

This congregation is a sanctuary. That means it is a place where those who need safety are met with protection. That those who have been hurt and battered outside our walls will find healing. That those who are tired and weary will find rest. That those whose voices have been silenced will be encouraged to share their stories. That those who are lonely will find companionship. That those of us who, like Thekla, have learned that they are worthy of love just because they exist, will in turn teach it, show it, to those of us still struggling to love ourselves.

May it be so.

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Big Magic

Meghann Robern

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Listen to the sermon here:

Big Magic

or watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook.

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You may have figured out by now that my usual preaching style is to start with an opening — a story, a quote, a news story. Build it up into larger context, link it to one or more of our seven principles. Lift up the power of community to heal and restore, and then send you out with a call for living into our mission and values outside of this sanctuary.

Yes, I am that predictable.

Today, I am starting at the end. Because I believe we are at a crossroads in our human history, and I need you to hear this. If you take nothing else home with you today, please take this:

You have within you, right now, just as you are, everything you need to meet your muse, to engage with your genius, to raise your dead, to reclaim your creativity from where our culture told you to toss it in the gutter.

You have within in you the power to reconnect with that mysterious thing that calls to us from an early age. That force which led human beings to draw pictures on cave walls well before they developed agriculture. The need to create poured out of us thirty thousand years before we thought to cultivate reliable sources of food.

And creativity is not about making a product. That’s just something else to be sold. And, once again, our culture tells us that’s the only way creativity is valid — is if its value is about money.

The most important thing you can create is yourself, in relationship with the world around you.

Our reading today was an excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic, in which she tells us her thoughts on why it is so important to extricate artistry and creativity from the concepts of suffering and torture. Valerie and I chose this story because it focuses on something a person, Susan does entirely for themselves. It’s not about winning medals, or performing in shows. There is no audience, no sponsorships, no livelihood waiting at the end of each ice skating session. This person has resurrected something from their childhood that gave them joy, that helped them live into their entire being.

And recognizing that as an adult — raising that feeling from the dead — and putting it back into her life, helped her become a better person overall. A better co-worker,  a better friend, a better daughter. Putting it back in her life made her better, and that made her better to others.

Living into yourself, into your truth, can take so many different forms and expressions. Ruth chases her poems around her yard. Susan ice skates three times a week. I went back to school after ten years and became a minister. President George W. Bush became a painter. Every day, someone either learns something new about themselves, or rediscovers something left behind. Every day.

The question is, do we keep it, even if we have to chase it down and catch it by the tail, or do we allow it to slip through our fingers?

This brings me to our meditation, and confronting our fears. Fear of failure, fear of ineptitude, fear of putting time and effort into something that doesn’t bring us more stuff or money to buy more stuff. Fear of mediocrity, as if being average is a bad thing.

Well, if you were here on New Year’s Day, you know that I’m less than mediocre at running. I’m pretty bad at it. But in doing it, I’ve found something that goes deeper in me than running to win. And, if you were here on New Year’s Day, you also heard me attempt to make up a song verse and sing it with no rehearsal. Twice. To make the point I had to make up something totally different for the second service. We didn’t plan that to embarrass me, or anyone else who bravely came down to make up their own verses. We did it to lift up creativity as something that can, and often should be, fun and delightful and messy. That by sharing our experiments, and our bravery in taking these risks when we do so, there is nothing to fear.

And our meditation today reminds us that stories to embolden and inspire us to live into our own wonder and joy are not just coming from those around us, but from our own past. We can look not just to what we may have overlooked or tossed aside in our childhood, but also in our histories. Systems, especially family systems, carry long memories even when the details are forgotten. The homes in which we grow up, either by birth or by adoption, imprint their ghosts upon us. Sometimes they are malevolent, yes. But just as often, they are benevolent. They are our permission slip to chase the fullness of our being and co-create ourselves with the multiverse.

And, this is just when we’re working at the individual level.

There’s that saying that charity begins at home, which is often thrown around as an argument to be less charitable, actually. But in reality the original meaning of the phrase was about growth outward being a natural result of tending to the needs inward. That by starting with generosity in the home, one would naturally become more generous outside the home, because it would be an everyday practice well-integrated into one’s life.

So what I want to ask you today, is what would it feel like for you to be generous to yourself? What would it feel like to begin living into the affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, by affirm that about yourself?

So much of the fear we have around claiming our creativity is that we are taught to hate ourselves, and then to turn that self-hate out onto others around us who have less power. We witness it when the poor white worker, who is made that way by the policies of the rich, is convinced that their poverty is the fault of the black worker or the immigrant instead of the executive maintaining low wages and breaking unions. We are taught it when we are told that if something we love to do won’t pay us money, that we need to find an alternative to do with our lives, and we are a disappointment if we don’t succeed in filling our bank accounts.

Charity, generosity begins at home. What happens if we recognize that because we are worthy of health care, that has to mean everyone is, too? If creative expression is fundamental to our creation as humans — however you believe that creation to have come about — that has to mean that we should support learning how to empower it and express it in our homes and in our schools.

But most of all, in communities like this congregation, that exist to provide safe, loving, supportive environments for people to learn and grow — we have to support each other in being brave, in running toward the thing that inspires us instead of watching it disappear because we are afraid.

Fear is how we allow people to control and manipulate us. Fear is how we get convinced to back down when there’s a fight that needs to be had — a fight for our own sake as often s a fight for the sake of others. And when the fear becomes constant enough, when the anxiety is chronic, we become reactive, and apathetic. We dismiss it when people in power blatantly lie to our faces and get away with it. We insulate ourselves, and try to avoid drawing attention. We become collaborators with our own slow destruction instead of collaborating with our creative potential.

And nowhere was that creative potential more apparent than in the marches across the world yesterday. This was not an exercise put forward by “coastal elites”. It wasn’t even limited to big cities. Mentone, Alabama, population 360, had fifty people come together for their Women’s March. That’s 14% percent of the town’s entire population. In Alabama. Talk about creative expression. The smaller cities and towns, in the nation’s heartland, the turnout was just as astonishing, and this is where the oppression is the greatest, where their presence was needed the most.

In some of the bigger cities, so many people showed up that the entire route was filled from beginning to end, and they couldn’t actually march anywhere. So they shared food, shared stories. They played, and danced, and they sang.

But whether these gatherings had marching or not, they were an unstoppable outpouring of energy, just like those cave paintings on the wall from the infancy of our beginnings. They began from a single idea, tied to our country history of resistance to tyranny and oppression, and inextricable from thousands of years of patriarchy that has made white women second class citizens, and racism that has debased women of colour even more. The Women’s Marches were not only the largest protest in our nation’s history, they were a celebration of expression without fear. Of solidarity, and community, and of what it means to support each other in the diversity of our journeys into self-discovery and wonder.

They showed us what it looks, and sounds, and feels like to hold hands and stick together, like we’ve supposed to have been doing since kindergarten.

And so, I’ve come back around again to where I began. The most important thing you can create in this lifetime is yourself in relationship with the world around you. This is not a luxury. This is not a waste. This is not an irresponsible choice.

It is necessary. It is essential. It is vital.

Generosity begins at home, with you loving yourself so that you may pour that love out into others. Love yourself so that you can learn what the fullness of your being can be. Love yourself so that you are strong enough to learn from the wonder and joy of the diversity in our world, and not run away from it.

Love yourself, so that you may trust yourself, and chase your muse until you can grab it and hold it close.

May it be so.

Distributed Denial of Service

Meghann Robern

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Listen to the sermon here:

Distributed Denial of Service

or watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

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In his reflection, Steve spoke of experiences in which he witnessed the immense gulf between different populations in our world, a gulf that is only growing as our ability to innovate technology increases and the very valid attention being paid to STEM education — to science, technology, engineering, and math — is redirected at the expense of the humanities, philosophy, and religious studies?

One area is not inherently better than the other — they inform and shape each other. Steve’s identity as a Unitarian Universalist, his commitment to living into our principles, gave him the insight to both appreciate the technology in his hand as a positive tool for fostering connections and joy of community, while at the same time recognizing how it was preventing him from helping someone experiencing great distress.

The hymn that was chosen to follow Steve’s reflection this morning was chosen deliberately because of its particular message that is far from the truth for millions of people in our national communities, and billions of people around the world. It takes the time to mention creatures of “high and lowly birth”, but fails to acknowledge that such categories are more often than not human constructions of systems that keep the power with the already-privileged and disenfranchise those who are born into such a hierarchy. It totally ignores that life, and the struggles within for so many, are not a precious gift, but are in fact an endless stream of disappointments and suffering. And telling people living those lives that they should be grateful just to be alive is making the choice to diminish their narrative, to erase their story.

If we, as UUs, are going to sing about Life Being the Greatest Gift, then we need to commit ourselves to working to make that true for everyone. The moral arc of the universe only bends towards justice when we make it so.

So what does the story of the Tower of Babel teach us about how we can accomplish this? The conventional western Christian take on this story is that it’s about a community driven by “arrogance”. They realize they can build a very tall tower, a tower that can reach so high it can touch God, and they want to do so in order to make a name for themselves. And remember, historically, temples for gods were built to acknowledge their space in the sky, not the area on the ground. They were symbolic of something that could not be reached by those born of earth.

So this attempt to build a tower offends God, because, God claims, if they can do this, then there’s nothing they can’t achieve. So God decides to scramble everyone;s languages, so they can no longer communicate. They become separate communities, and the gulf between them grows.

That’s a pretty crappy thing for God to do, eh?

Yeah, that’s not my God.

Here’s my take on this story for your consideration — the people in the community lost touch with each other, and became so distant from each other in communication and experience, because they were using their innovation and gifts as a community for the wrong thing.

This community set about to build a tower as high as they could, just because they could. Imagine the resources that must have been put into it. Yeah, there were job for a while, but once it’s built… what does it do? What does it symbolize? An accomplishment that will stand there and mean nothing as the government is bankrupt from paying for it and the citizens experience massive unemployment. It is not God who breaks this community aparts and creates the dissonance between its citizens — it is the people themselves.

Imagine, instead, if the community has thought about what they would build before they did it. Instead of building it just to make a name for themselves, what if, knowing that they were capable of great things that would lead them to innovate and explore, they chose instead to build a thing that would keep them connected when they spread out into the world? What if they invested all those resources and all that time in a structure that would allow them to continue to communicate with each other, and hear each other’s stories of both joys and sorrows, across time and space?

Imagine how strong they would be. Imagine what they could accomplish, and what they could overcome. Imagine the larger world they could create. Sounds a lot like the shared values we strive for when we covenant to affirm and promote our seven principles.

It also sounds really threatening to those who hold and hoard power, like that really crappy God that wants to keep them from knowing what they can achieve.

What God does in this story is the Biblical version of a distributed denial of service attack. Now, for those of you in the room who use the internet, you may have experienced one of these attacks and not known it. What happens is that someone decides they want to stop you from accessing Amazon,com, or another website, for whatever reason. So they create a program that sends so many requests to that site, that it can’t handle all the requests and overloads. When people who want to use the site try to access, they can’t. It’s like someone intentionally keeping all phone lines busy so people can’t use them, or a group of people intentionally crowding into the doorway of a store so others can’t get in.

It’s frustrating, and oftentimes the average person doesn’t know what’s actually happening, so they take it their negative feelings on the victim of the attack. The website has not only lost its presence, but without awareness, its reputation and ability to recover are also affected.

What that God does in the story of the Tower of Babel is a distributed denial of service. He shuts down the people’s access to each other, and makes them think it’s their own fault. And he does it because they were going to know their own power to shape the future of the world.

We are currently living in an era such as this, where the people in power are using our own innovations to attack our ability to live into our seven principles and make them a reality. Technology is a tool, and all tools are only and good or an evil as the choices people make when using them. Twitter, Facebook, the internet, have allowed people to lead revolutions across the world. They’ve also allowed white supremacists to organize and consolidate their power without us noticing. And, this use of technology and innovation is nothing new in human history.

While we were planning this service together, Steve showed me the Never Again Tech pledge statement. This is an excerpt:

We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes.

Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.

The story of the Tower of Babel is a warning to us about where and when we are, right here, right now. As we celebrate the life-affirming, community-building aspects of the technology we build, we are also witnessing an increasing chasm between communities, a separation based on class and resources. This separation is perpetuated and enhanced by people with an agenda to attack the nature of objective reality. Spin masters and fake news combined with the soundbite attention span have created a world in which public leaders can blatantly lie, and there are no consequences. This is only made worse by the idea that these technological platforms are somehow inherently neutral or apolitical.

The Tower of Babel failed, and divided the people who built it, because they were focusing on the wrong thing. They were building something just for the sake of building it. Instead of looking up to an empty sky, I would offer today that we should look at the whole setting — earth, sea, and sky. That we intentionally takes these amazing creations of humanity and take that innovation one step further — to combine our science with our morality and use both to build a world in which we empower communication and community. We already have the capability to do so much — we must keep building to manifest our sixth principle: our goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

May it be so.

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The Courage of Creativity

Meghann Robern

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Listen to the sermon here:

The Courage of Creativity

or watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

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Y’all would not believe the time I have had writing this sermon for today. Oh, the irony of getting writers’ block on a piece about creativity! But there you go. Stuck on that blank, white page. Kids home from school for a second full week, that definitely didn’t help. But I had to pull it together somehow, because this is the first worship service of 2017, new beginnings, new goals, new inspirations for my beloved congregation!

And that, I realized, was my problem. My creativity was blocked because I was afraid of failing, of letting down the people who need me to be creative and inspiring and… courageous.

The origin of “courage” is the French word for heart: “coeur”. To have courage is to live with your heart. Bravery comes into it because a lot of the time living with your heart is really scary. If we’re lucky, it’s not. But living with your heart means putting your heart out in front, to take the lead. It leaves our heart exposed, vulnerable.

A heart in that position takes enough beatings, and it might not have the resilience to recover. That makes me hesitate, every single time.

Brene Brown once asked herself, when she was examining her own vulnerability, “does this mean that our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted?”

I spent many years afraid of a broken, irreparable heart. I saw it as a fragile thing, made of glass, easily shattered, unless every movement was known ahead of time and carefully planned. It was a safe life. And it was devoid of true creativity — the creating of me.

When I finally started down this path to professional ministry, after years of not leading with my heart, it became clear that I had to learn how to take risks, how to be courageous in my creativity. Because how can I serve a congregation if I can’t show them who I really am?

Last year, when I first told you the story about why I started running, it was about proving something, about proving someone else wrong in their assumptions about me. It was, in a way, a creation narrative, and it happened to succeed.

What I talk less about, at least from the pulpit, is how I fail every single time I put on those running shoes.

I’m really bad at it. I’m slow. I always look ridiculous, even in my snazzy outfits. I sweat buckets, and I smell no matter how much deodorant I put on, and I’ve never, ever, ever had a runner’s high. I fail at running on a regular basis.

And then, I do it all over again. Sometimes, over thirteen miles worth.

And yeah, someone hands me a shiny medal and I get to eat a lot of really terrible but delicious food for one day. But what I come away with, and what leads me to always sign up for another race so I have to keep training, is that I did something that I am not good at, that I will never be good at. I did something just for the experience of doing it… and I didn’t die. I survived,  and it hurt a lot, and my heart is a little stronger each time because of it. What was once made of glass, that I was afraid would turn to stone if I let it be hurt too much, turns out to be a living muscle, warm and flexible and willing to lead me into amazing new realities of my own making.

I may have started running with a purpose, with an expected result. But it soon became something I did for its own sake, because of the experience itself. When Marie Curie wrote about her life’s work, she said:

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

While scientists sometimes describe the things they encounter in their work as beautiful, it’s not often that we as a culture consider the act of science itself as an art, as a creative act of beauty. And yet, it is. Science, in the way the Marie Curie approached it, was worthy of doing for its own sake, and by equating it with music, and painting, and language, it then also must be held over and against the demands of the humanities — our morality and ethics.

One cannot tell the story of Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, and the good it did for many lives as a cancer treatment, without also telling the story of how unchecked consumerism took this scientific, artistic discovery, and proceeded to market it without further experimentation. These people were all absolutely convinced that there was nothing else to be learned, no more creativity to be found, except what could line their pockets.

Instead of doing what Marie did — continuing in the science, in the creative act of loving the world by learning about it — they assumed a false state of static, complete knowledge. Radium began to be used in cosmetics, as store-bought health aids, and in the most well-known case, in paint used on watches. The women who did this work, who were told to lick their paintbrushes to make points for detailed work, are known to history as the Radium Girls, whose lawsuits barely covered their living and medical expenses as the cancer caused from the radium exposure slowly killed them.

Even Marie Curie herself died from near-constant exposure to radioactive elements throughout her career, although she lived much longer than the people who consumed radium products.

The Radium Girls were not given the full breadth of knowledge, and even when they began to investigate, the company outright lied to them to protect their assets.

And yet, Marie Curie, who was forced to flee her home and her country to a strange place where she had no connections, no safety net, changed the world not because she could, but because she felt compelled to try new things and see what would happen. The results of these experiments, as we have also learned, cannot be put to use without ethical and moral examination. But Marie Curie was willing to risk her own life in order to live it to what she felt was the fullest extent.

Last year, one of Rev Gail’s sermons talked about how, when seeking to innovate, if you can aim, then it’s not really innovation. Because if you can aim at it, it’s known territory. True creativity, true experimentation, requires a willingness to shoot without a target. It requires shooting just to see where it lands.

What that reminds me of is how people talk about desperation. “Any port in a storm.” “Settling for what you can get.” So often that’s framed as a bad thing. And yeah, if you’re only going to shoot once, and commit yourself to wherever it is that you end up, probably not the best idea. Leading with the heart, having courage, truly embracing creativity, is being willing to shoot without a target, and then do it again if the result doesn’t work.

Innovation is scary. Creativity is scary. Because they are unknown, and our lizard brains hate the unknown. Unknown means danger.

But the unknown is also where we find freedom from our chains. The unknown is where we catch the glimmer of our vision, the tiniest seed of possibility. The unknown is where we must go to build something that works better than what we already have.

And that, my friends, is ultimately why creativity is so very very scary — because, by its nature, it seeks to undo the status quo. It seeks to undermine stability, to make you examine everything that you’ve been told is how it ought to be. It’s why artists are the first prophets of a revolution, it’s why tyrannical regimes seek to keep people so desperate and anxious that they cannot feel the pull of their hearts, and it’s why the rich and powerful always seek to own and control scientific innovation.

And I’m going to let you in on a secret.

That courageous, creative prophet who will change the world?

It’s you.

Whether it’s writing, or a science experiment, or designing a new education curriculum, or painting, or engineering, or any number of other things… something as yet unknown in the world, is calling from your heart.

In this new year, let us in this community help each other find our courage. Let us help each other explore the beauty in this world just because it exists. Let us find freedom in celebrating our creativity, no matter how scary, and no matter how many times we fail.

May it be so.

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Amaterasu

Meghann Robern

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Story for All Ages
Amaterasu and her little brother, Susanoo (photo by Rev. Jason Shelton)

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Watch and listen to the homily on Facebook

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So Amaterasu has run away to hide in her cave. Chelsea has taken us through how she might be feeling, and how those feelings are felt in her entire body — just like we feeling our feelings not just with our minds, or our hearts, but also with our bodies.

There’s a few things about this part of the story, when Amaterasu in is the cave, that I want to lift up for you today. The first is that even Amaterasu, the primary goddess of this tradition, has folks in her life that she can’t control and who do things to upset her. In this case, it’s her brother — but even if we don’t have a sibling, each of us has people in our lives that annoy us, that test our patience, that sometimes do things that upset us so much we feel that we need to separate ourselves for a little bit.

And that’s okay. Amaterasu goes into a cave. I go to bed and under the covers. Some folks go for a walk. Each of us is different — the important part is to spend time figuring out what works for you. What in your life will be your cave, where you can retreat to think about your feelings?

Taking the time to be in the cave is important, because it helps us be smarter about when we’re outside of the cave. This is the one of the most important lessons that we have been given from our Earth-centered traditions — the understanding that the world around us exists in cycles. We cannot have spring and summer without fall and winter. The ecosystem needs the period of rest before it can create something again. We have been in the season of fall, feeling the nights get longer and the days get shorter– Amaterasu is fleeing into her cave

But even though this week marks the Winter Solstice, and those of us in the northern half of the world transitioning from fall to winter, it also marks the return of the sun — Amaterasu emerging from her cave to bring sunlight back to the world so it will become spring again. This is a holiday about knowing we are in darkness, that it is necessary, and that we have hope for the future nevertheless.

This story is also about community. Amaterasu has a gift for the world — her light, a gift that world needs in order to survive. Each of us has something to offer that is equally necessary to our community.

And in the end, it is her community, and the power of laughter, that brings her back out again. Retreat time is important, yes. But sometimes, we try to think our way out of difficult situations are experiences. We get trapped inside our own heads. When Chelsea and I were discussing this service, she said — “Some things you can’t think your way out, But you can laugh your way out.”

It is through the power of laughter, offered by community, that Amaterasu is drawn out of her cave, out of her isolation. The story is not complete without both the willingness to go into the cave, and the understanding that something wonderful is waiting for you outside. And sometimes, we’re the ones in the cave, and sometimes we’re the ones drawing them out.

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The Gift of Sweetness

Meghann Robern

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Watch and listen to the homily on Facebook

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I have a question. How many of you currently go to school? What do you do at school? You learn new things, right? Things you didn’t know before.

Now, in order for me to be one of your ministers here, at this church, I had to go to a special school called a seminary. And I was very lucky, because I lived close to a seminary that dedicated itself to lots of different religions in addition to the Methodists that had started it. They partnered with the school that trains Jewish rabbis and cantors, and the school that trains Buddhist leaders. They even helped create a school to train Muslim leaders! Even better, these relationships between the schools meant that there was diversity among the students in all the classes. But, they didn’t stop there. Learning new things is so important to my seminary, that they require every single person who is training to be a minister, like me, to take classes in religions that aren’t ours. I couldn’t finish my program unless I learned about something totally new to me.

Now, because of my great seminary, I had a lot of options to choose from. Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and more… and I chose Sikhism. Does anyone here already know something about Sikhs?

One of the reasons I wanted to study Sikhism is because I believed they truly practice radical hospitality, something which we UUs try really hard to do. Did you know that every Sikh temple has rooms that anyone can stay in, at no charge, for up to three nights? It doesn’t matter why you need a place to stay — they will give you a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head. They also feed everyone after every prayer service. Even the Golden Temple, the holiest gurdwara of Sikhs all over the world, in India, serves thousands after prayer three times a day, entirely on volunteer effort. They form their religious community around radical hospitality of food and shelter for all.

And what about the story of Ukko and the woman who didn’t want to share her bread? The more she kept for herself over what she needed, the smaller she got. Now, we all know here that being small in body isn’t necessarily bad — small people can have great big hearts. But the smaller the loaf she made for Ukko… the smaller her heart was. And even when she began frantically giving more and more of the bread away so she could be herself again — it was important that she not give everything away. She still kept what she needed to feed herself and her family. Community doesn’t mean giving until you have nothing for yourself. Community is about giving and sharing to sustain everyone, including yourself.

Then Marguerite told us the story of the people seeking a new home. They asked to share space, and they were initially told they would take up too much room, that they would overflow the bowl and cause resources to be lost. But their leader decided to offer a different way of looking at joining this community. Instead of being a burden, instead of causing trouble… what if their presence instead made something new? Instead of draining the community of its abundance, they would add to it, and change it for the better. And so they were welcomed, and the community was made better by its hospitality to people who were different, but were still in need.

Like the sugar in the milk, life is better with a little sweetness. This community, this congregation, strives to be something sweet in your life. Something else the Sikhs taught me is that the sweetness of your religious community should be matched with a sweetness on your tongue — they hand out little balls of sweet dough after prayers, before they head to the meal. It’s to remind that connection between your mind, body, and heart, that the sweetness of community comes from nourishing all parts of yourself. For there to be peace in the world, it must begin with peace in the heart.

So today, for our Bread Communion, we are offering you something sweet for your tongue to symbolize the sweetness of this community.

May it be so.

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