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Worship Elements
Bodies In Motion
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I’ve been blessed to spend time this week with Suzanne and Arnie Reed, who were lifted up in our Joys & Concerns this morning. Since I’m new to this congregation, Arnie’s been telling me wonderful stories about how they came to this community, and about why he loves Suzanne so deeply. And the more he spoke, the more I felt like Suzanne’s life had a place in our services today. When I asked Arnie’s permission to share with you all today, he said, “Oh yes! People need to know about Suzanne’s generous heart, It’s what drew her to First UU Nashville, and changed the way I look at life. It’s the ‘pay it forward’ philosophy put into everyday practice.”
Now, I don’t want to get too much into the pay-it-forward aspect, because Jason and Valerie will be digging into that next Sunday. What Cindi and I wanted to offer up today was an exploration of the multitude of ways we humans experience grace, and how that affects our bodies and our actions as we move through the multiverse of our lives. There is no one universal definition, nor one “true” way to have it enter our lives. What ties all these different graces together is what we do as human beings once we have had such an experience, and we learn what that is through the stories we tell.
Our first story, “The Umbrella Sanctuary”, is the pay-it-forward good deed. It’s a concrete action that has an immediate effect, and continues to ripple outward. We don’t know why it rains, but we can offer you shelter. Sanctuary.
Our second story, about “Amazing Grace”, is the story of a paradigm shift in perspective, a dramatic turn that leads a man to question the very foundation of the culture and economy in which he exists, a foundation that provides food and shelter for himself and his family. He survives a great storm, a natural disaster, that forces him to confront his own mortality and the limited life span in which he has to offer anything to the world. When confronted with death, he chooses to focus on the known life before death, not a life after it.
For Arnie, angels aren’t cherubim or the heavenly host. They’re the people who show up when he needs them — the ones who pick up the mail and mow the lawn when he’s holding his wife’s hand in the hospital. He feels grace from his community showing up and doing the little things so he has more room in his life to care for his wife. And when he talks about Suzanne herself, he describes how she taught him to be a better person just by watching her interact with strangers on a daily basis. Everywhere they go, he says, she finds something kind to say to complete strangers — their server at a restaurant, the cashier at store. She goes out of her way not only to notice the people around her, but to make their day better if she can. In Arnie’s stories, over and over again, I hear how Suzanne lives out Unitarian Universalist principles by offering moments of grace, and now he tries to do the same thing because he’s been so moved by how she’s lived her life. Each person is worthwhile. Be kind in all you do. Help each other learn. Search for what is true.
And then there’s the grace we experience when getting to know each other, and when we’re learning the ways in which we think differently from each other even when we share values. My favourite story about this comes from my own family. One day, when they were first married, my grandmother, a Southerner, saved up and brought home a beautiful steak for her new husband, who was a Yankee. She took that steak, and she beat it, battered it, and deep fried it, because where she was from, that’s what you did with steak. My grandfather ate every bite of that meal, because he understood how much it had cost and how much thought and effort had gone into making it. And it was only after dinner that he offered up an alternative way to think about cooking steak. For them, compromise was never about sacrifice, but about showing the other person that they matter. That they are worthy of grace simply by being.
This story is one of many about my grandparents, and how they lived their life together as a series of infinite kindnesses, both to each other and to those around them. They offered grace into the world, through awareness and understanding. I don’t know how they received grace. I never thought to ask them before they passed, and that’s something I’ll regret. But I think that desire to know is a want from the seminary nerd in me. What I *need* to know, to work towards being in right relationship with those around me, is the effect they had in the world around them, regardless of its source. How they put their bodies in motion to manifest their values.
The worship theme for this month is Grace and Safety. I feel like it’s often when we are experiencing grace that we feel the most safe, and it’s through that sense of safety, of sanctuary, that we can bring more grace into the world. And, when we are willing to manifest grace, we draw others to us who are willing to do the same. Over a decade ago, the grace this community offered to people who identify as queer, by being a Welcoming Congregation, had the added effect of drawing people like Suzanne and Arnie, who wished to be allies, through your doors and giving them a spiritual home.
So, in the spirit of Cindi’s meditation, I’d like to offer up an alternative to the traditional New Year’s list of resolutions, because I think we tend to set ourselves up for disappoint and a sense of failure that way, which is the opposite of grace and safety. What I’d like to suggest instead is a list of New Year’s Possibilities. For me, it might read something like this:
What if I tried to greet my family in the morning *before* my coffee instead of waiting until after it? What would that demonstrate to my kids?
What if I tried to be less messy at home?
What if I tried to make sure always to have a few dollars in my wallet in case I meet someone in need?
Now, if you’re paying careful attention, you’ll notice that not only do these examples all start with “what if” — the grammatical introduction of possibility and imagination — but they also include “I tried.” I know Master Yoda tells us that there is no try. Just do, or do not. But sometimes I think this lesson, while it does have its place and time, is can be too harsh. Sometimes, trying has to be enough. Sometimes, the most important grace we can offer in the entire multiverse, is the grace we give ourself.
May it be so.
Habitat Unity Build 2015 Sermon Meditation
Sermon Meditation given at The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom, on October 9th, 2015 as part of a multifaith service to celebrate this year’s Nashville Habitat for Humanity Unity Build.
Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice,
the People build a home.
Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds,
the People fashion a symbol and a reality.
That comes from one of the readings in our Unitarian Universalist hymnal (#733), and as I was praying on what words to offer here tonight, I kept coming back to this verse over and over again. In our modern culture, with high populations in urban and suburban areas, and increasingly specialized careers, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, the building of each other’s homes was one of the ways humans built community.
Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice,
the People build a home.
Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds,
the People fashion a symbol and a reality.
Today, we celebrate returning to those roots, We have come together to honor that which connects us together despite our religious differences — our mutual desire to support our larger community, and to invest our time and effort into making that community a better place for all, regardless of whether or not they share our individual beliefs.
Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice,
the People build a home.
Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds,
the People fashion a symbol and a reality.
The reality is a house that someone will male the symbol of their home, the place where their heart is. Every piece of wood, every nail, every window, every drop of paint, came together with your hands to build this place of shelter and comfort — an outward expression of what our religions seek to provide inward. Symbols and reality, inextricable from one another, for without one, the other loses all meaning and significance.
Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice,
the People build a home.
Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds,
the People fashion a symbol and a reality.
Trans Identities
This the text of the second half of a joint sermon given by The Reverend Gail Seavey (not included) and myself at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on September 27th, 2015.
Listen to the Entire Sermon (including Rev. Gail Seavey’s beginning half):
So one of my biggest encounters with my lizard brain — at least the one that had the most outward effect — is the story of how I came to shave my head.
A couple of years ago, I was a full time seminary student with two part time jobs. At the time I worked with a lot of vets who had maintained their military buzz cuts, and one day I found myself thinking, “Oh, how I wish I could do that.”
And then it hit me — I CAN do that, if I’m willing to deal with the cultural reaction. My life had gotten stretched so thin, my choices so limited and my time so precious, that I chose to create an outward appearance that was a honest manifestation of my inward being, despite the inevitable blowback I knew would come.
Strangers would call me “dyke” — as if that’s a bad thing — but still an assumption based solely on appearance. At my multifaith seminary, many thought I’d converted to Buddhism. Regardless of how positive or negative the reaction was, however, not a day went by that I wasn’t asked why I had shaved my head, while men walked by with shaved heads that no one noticed.
The absolutely hardest reaction has been the folks who think I’m sick, that I must have cancer. Because in their reading of what women should and shouldn’t look like, only women who have cancer shave their heads. And yet, this assumption that they put on me comes from their sense of connection, their overwhelming desire to reach out and help someone in need. They are my best teachers when it comes to navigating the art of identity, because they constantly remind me that cultural readings are about humanity, and that while the EFFECT of categories and labels are often harmful, the INTENT is not always about harm. And the more we are each willing to create our outsides to match our insides, the better we understand how make sure the effects our actions have on others matches our intentions.
It also works in reverse. While my INTENT in shaving my head was personal, was self-ish, the EFFECT has been to chip away at cultural assumptions about women’s appearance just by walking out my front door.
Now, I want to be clear — the creative act of shaving my head had, still has, a LOT of privilege holding it up. I’m white, which unfortunately our current culture pervasively makes “the norm” to the extreme detriment of people of colour. I have reliable access to clean clothes in good repair. I’m taller and heavier than most people, which makes me less likely to be physically attacked. When people do lash out at me because my identity art, my holy act of creation, makes their lizard brain anxious, they use words. The various ways in which my body has privilege protects me in a way that is denied to trans persons, especially trans persons of colour, when they act to bring their inner and outer selves into harmony.
All I had to do was buy a $20 electric razor. Those who wish to transition, to bring their inward self and outward self into right relationship, face huge costs in terms of money, time, and emotional bandwidth. Surgery can cost thousands. Hormone regimens can, too, and under our healthcare system are a lifelong cost. Legal fees pile up. Even the price of transitioning an entire wardrobe can be cost prohibitive. And transitioning itself, this holy, creative act, can often lead to losing the job that was paying for the transition, because firing someone for being trans is legal in most of our country.
And those who live as trans, regardless of how they choose to transition, often find themselves at the mercy of a world built upon the fallacy of binary gender being inextricable from one’s sex assigned at birth.
Just a few days ago, Shadi Petosky, was detained by TSA agents at the Orlando airport because a body scanner only has two settings — male and female — and her penis showed up as an “anomaly.” They held her against her will, causing her to miss her flight. American Airlines charged her full price to rebook her ticket, almost a thousand dollars, and she was denied her new boarding pass until a police officer ordered them to print it for her.
And every time I revisit this story, as I’ve followed how both the TSA and American Airlines are attempting to publicly gaslight Ms. Petosky despite her photographic evidence of what happened, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude to that police officer. It’s a sign, for me, that change has already taken root in our culture, as the trans community has, historically, had as much to fear from police and other first responders who were supposed to protect them as the ones attacking them.
Our call to worship spoke of those among us who are hurt and afraid, those who come with hope and anticipation, those who seek to learn, all a part of this family. Reverend Gail spoke to us about the concept of tribe, of the fundamental idea of a community that keeps its members safe. Through our new member celebration this morning we are reminded that we are, indeed a tribe.
The trans community lives in fear of poverty, abuse, violence. These things happen to our members and friends, to their loved ones. Out there, beyond these walls, more often than not they have to choose between being seen, or being safe. In here, as part of our community, we see them. We see you. You are us. What happens to you, happens to us. We cannot be whole until you are whole.
And the more we all choose to embrace the holy act of creating ourselves, of being identity artists, the safer we can make it for those around us. Embracing my role as an identity artist might have made living in this world just a little bit easier for someone else who doesn’t conform to expectations.
Wholeness is a constant creative process. We are not sculptures carved in stone. We are living beings, with thoughts and feelings and ideas that change with every encounter. We are all creative people, built on a relationship between the inside and the outside, energy going back and forth, growing, evolving.
How can we see you the way you need to be seen?
How can we help you feel safe?
What is your next holy act of creation?
What kind of tribe will we, together, create, and re-create, every day anew?
Honest Work
This is the text of a sermon given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on September 6th, 2015.
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So I have this friend, Allison, we’ve been friends since 2nd grade. We’ve watched each other grow up. She found her calling as a jeweller, and she’s really good at it, and she amazes me with what she can do — it starts in her brain as an image, and then she takes that image and figures out what raw materials she needs to make it a reality, and then she uses her hands and eyes to craft the most beautiful things to put on our beautiful bodies. And that’s what I love about her work — she doesn’t just make things for their own sake, but in her vision she sees how they will interact with necks and wrists and fingers in movement. She sees how everything interconnects, that we are bodies in motion, and she crafts things that honour those connections, that understanding that we aren’t static beings. We exist in relationships, we exist to create.
Now, I can’t do what she does. I have zero sense of design or spatial architecture. Josh can tell you about how I made him layout the photos for my final project in Vocational Praxis, or the boxes full of unused scrapbooking supplies in our home. But, what Allison and I do have in common is cutting stones.
I believe that the purpose of religious leadership is to help people into the best version of themselves — to enable them to find wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. And my favourite metaphor these days is that of a gem cutter. The raw material, the stone, can be used in any number of industrial efforts as nothing more than a means to an end, one part in the unthinking machine. The raw material is left undeveloped, becomes invisible. The stone has the potential to be beautiful in its own right, bringing energy into its facets and then reflecting it back out in new ways, but first it must be shaped in order to maximize its potential. And cutting a stone into a gem is delicate, difficult work that must be done with extreme care… or else the stone will lose more of itself than it needs to. Sometimes, it can even shatter under the pressure.
One of the fabulous things I learned about in seminary is something called transformational leadership, which is when we use our abilities to help others realize their abilities. It requires recognizing that others’ interests, motives, and needs are as valid as our own. Once we understand this, we realize how difficult it actually is to come together and work for a common future, for a common good, for a better world for everyone — even moreso for UUs, because we don’t even have the requirement of shared beliefs or creeds as a starting place. Some people mistake our seven principles for those things, but they’re calls to action, an ethical test of the strength of our covenants. Those seven principles ask us to stay at the table even when it’s harder to stick around than to leave.
So, here we are with all this raw material that we’re supposed to make into US — how do we fashion ourselves into precious gems? Well, I’m a UU, so I don’t have any answers, just more questions.
How do the multitude of our personal beliefs, our individual spiritual journeys, the billions of choices we make, work to manifest a world that recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of every person? How do we make justice, equity, and compassion a reality for everyone? How do we fit ourselves into the interdependent web that connects us with Syrian refugees dying in our oceans, that connects us with the construction workers treated like slaves in our own community? It’s the honest work, the hard work, of Unitarian Universalists to look at the patterns of our lives and identify what makes us tick, how we have each been shaped, by the things we consider important. For me, there’s been two primary elements: the stories we tell and the relationships we build.
I was pretty young when I first learned about all the texts that didn’t make it into the “official” Christian Bible. Not only did this discovery instill in me a lifelong obsession with fantastic words like “codex”, but I became fascinated with the exclusionary nature of history and its editors. When I found The Other Bible on the shelf in some enormous chain bookstore years later, it was the perfect gift to me from the universe. There, in one book, were selections from the Jewish Pseudepigraphia, Kabbalah, Haggadah, Midrash, Christian Apocrypha, and Gnostic scriptures, and that was only the tip of the iceberg. I had proof, there in my hands, that there was more to the idea of sacred scripture than the book in the pews at my friends’ churches, and that divine inspiration was not limited to those few pages. Humans had decided what was relevant centuries ago, and so, therefore, could humans continue to decide what will be relevant to them in the here and now.
When did you first encounter the idea that some people choose to tell certain stories over others?
One of the works I found most relevant to me was The Song of the Lioness quartet of novels by Tamora Pierce. I wish I could tell you how I first found them, as their profound effect on me is worthy of a great beginning. But they have become so steeped into my formation as a person that I can’t even remember how old I was when I read them for the first time, or what the context of my life was. All I know is that I must have been old enough to have an allowance and to walk around the YA section of a bookstore. The story of Alanna: her quest for knighthood, her struggle with her femininity, her profound faith, her bodily awakening, her growth as a healer without losing her strength as a warrior — it spoke to me at every level of my being. Her coming of age is intricately tied into a plot of power and ethics that literally tears the land apart and costs her some of her dearest companions, and yet she uses the whole of her life experience: love, training, trust, faith, friendship, and scholarship, to fulfill her sworn duty to her king, her country, and her Goddess. I still reread these books at least once a year.
Who is the character you return to, over and over again, to remember the very first person you wanted to be as you grew up?
I could go on and on about the stunning work of art and collaboration that is The West Wing, including the faults that it retains as part of its manifest humanity of a particular time and place. What got to me was how those characters are, without a doubt, some of the most privileged, educated people in their universe. And yet, they live their lives for something larger than themselves, humbled at every turn by the immensity of the call to justice and democracy. They come from different faiths — some none at all — and they still always believe in the mission and in each other. This show told me it was possible to both have privilege and strive for humility at the same time; in the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah: to do justice, to love steadfastly, and to walk humbly.
What have you watched, or read, or heard in your life that made you realize what gifts and privileges you had to make the world a better place?
Then, there was The Vicar of Dibley. This is when I learned how profoundly representation matters. I have felt the call to ministry for most of my life, but I never saw anyone who looked like me, or talked like me, or thought like me, in ministry. Not in my friends’ churches growing up here in Nashville. Not in my books, my music, on my screen. They were male, and only used limited scripture, and pop culture taught me they all party poopers. I was one of the teenagers in Footloose, not the bible-thumping father. And then, there was Geraldine Granger, the Vicar of Dibley. She is written and presented as a woman who navigates the delicate road between respecting tradition and keeping religion relevant. She pastors to the village in her care with love and compassion at the same time she pushes them to be better people. And the show was not afraid to remind us that she also makes mistakes. She actively resists the idea that she cannot be a minister because she a woman. She is both human and holy, always seeking to be better, and she changed how I saw myself.
What story in your life made you see yourself differently, made you ask, “What if?”
Even with that shift in my self-perspective, though, I knew I could never limit myself to just Hebrew and Christian scriptures enough to be a traditional Christian, so I tried other ways to reach people through stories. I wrote a few songs, a movie. Eventually I realized I didn’t have the patience for the “Hollywood” side of screenwriting. Executives were more concerned with the fact that I was a woman than whether or not my years as a devoted geek meant I could actually write a sci-fi thriller that would appeal to teenage boys. During the last writers’ guild strike, I faded away and couldn’t bring myself to go back.
And this is where the relationships come in. Without relationships, life cannot fully call us to where we belong. Relationships are how I realized I am a Unitarian Universalist.
A long, long time ago, my mother attended the Quaker meeting here. The youth consisted of me, another girl my age, and a toddler. The lay leaders didn’t really know what to do with us, but bless them, because at least they knew they had to do something. One day, they brought me and Valerie, the other tweener, to the day activities of a local UU youth con. Now, to understand the importance of this event, you need to know that the school I went to here in Nashville was small and sustained itself on the immaturity of mean girls. Now, full disclosure, I’m Facebooks friends with most of them now, and we’ve all grown up into much better people than we were. But I came to that youth con over twenty years ago expecting yet another day of trying, and failing, to be seen and heard.
And then, the most amazing thing happened. They welcomed me. And I don’t mean instant friendship based on common interests, like me and Allison. What made this so amazing was that I wasn’t like them, and it didn’t matter. It was just so natural to them to include me. And I carried that with me for the next twenty years, tucked away, until my first child was on the way. And I remembered those youth, and I wanted my kid to be just like them. So we joined a UU congregation.
Of course I had finally found a religious home that agreed with me about variety of human experiences and the inspiration we draw from everything around us. But by then, I had internalized so many things that I thought I couldn’t do. I had a mortgage to pay, a kid and a spouse to feed and clothe, and at that point in my life, even if I had finally found my religious home, my call to ministry was much more of a daydream than a possible reality.
So even when I had stuff of a religion clearly telling me I could, in fact, take up this call, it was the people who showed me the way to do it. The deeper I threw myself into congregational life the more I heard from those around me that I should consider ministry.
And the most important thing I take away from this revelation at that point in my life, is how important it is to have relationships that not only teach you about yourself, that show you where your facets should go, but that also steady your hand when you have to make those cuts into your stone. People who are willing to give of themselves to make sure you have the right tools for success. The only reason I am here today is because I have the privilege of people in my life who believe in me, who are willing to keep a roof over our heads and put food in our fridge. You all were my first choice for a teaching congregation, but without the coincidence of my family also living here, there was no way I could have moved here, and survived, for an entire year.
How many others have let their call fade into a daydream because they don’t have the resources to take that leap? For whatever reason, they don’t see themselves in the stories in their lives. They are tied by circumstance to a particular job, a particular location, a particular path, because the consequences of failure would have a much worse effect on them and their loved ones than the slim chance of success.
Our first principle calls us to not only make manifest people’s inherent dignity, but also their worth. Our seventh principle calls us to always remember our interconnectedness, not just with the ecology of the planet, but also with each other. The Unitarian Universalist youth of Nashville taught me that. I can’t remember any of their faces, or their names, but they left an indelible mark on my being, and my ability to realize the fullness of that being. So how do we honour that legacy, and fulfill the call to action our principles demand of us? In true UU fashion, I believe the answer is found in questions we can ask others in addition to ourselves:
What do you love?
What do you need?
How can I help?
Invocation Nashville Labor Day Parade 2015
Community, ingathering, is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Today we have gathered as a community to celebrate the contributions of the labor force, and how they have given strength and prosperity to the well-being of our country.
We have also gathered to remember that our work as a community is not finished. That as we celebrate victories already won in our past, there are still battles yet to be fought for justice, equity, and dignity.
As we walk today, let us put our minds to the steps of our feet, building a new path into a better world.
A world where all workers are valued.
A world where those who risk life and limb are protected.
A world where those who clean houses are also able to buy houses to live in.
A world where those who grow food can also afford to eat their fill.
A world where those who build hospitals can use them when they are sick or injured.
A world where those who build hotels can take time to rest with their families.
A world where those who serve and care for others are, themselves, also served and cared for.
As we walk together today, remember that we can build that world, step by step by step.
Amen & Blessed Be
Prayers for Water Communion 2015
Lifted up at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on August 30th, 2015.
In this sanctuary, and beyond its walls, are people who are trapped in a cycle of systemic racism, built on a legacy of slavery. They wonder, at the beginning of each day, how will they be disrespected, bullied, harmed, erased? How will they be treated as less than they are? They wish for others to listen to their stories, to acknowledge their suffering. They dream of a time when everyone will recognize that they matter… that they have always mattered.
In this sanctuary, and beyond its walls, are people grieving the loss of two journalists. They are remembering the hundreds of others also lost to gun violence just this year, and the thousands in years past. They are angry at leaders who express sorrow at these incidents and do nothing to change why they happen. They are bitter at how some who are lost are remembered better than others.
In this sanctuary and beyond its walls are people who have been taught that they are not worthy of love and respect because of how they look. They live through an onslaught of cultural and media messages that tell us who is too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too dark, too pale, too female, too distracting, too nonconforming… too disturbing. They deprecate themselves, and the next generation witnesses, and the distress continues on.
In this sanctuary and beyond its walls are people who feel stuck where they are. Some have jobs where they feel unfulfilled, or are mistreated by their co-workers, but they cannot afford to quit without risking access to food, shelter, and healthcare. Some want to go back to school, but don’t have the resources to avoid crippling debt. Some don’t have work at all, and spend every day wondering how to survive to the next.
At the same time, in this sanctuary and beyond its walls are people who are saying hello to new schools, new classrooms, new jobs, and new homes. They are immersed in excitement and anxiety. There are people who are saying goodbye, to their children, to their friends, to places, people, and things that have given them comfort and love.
Why #BlackLivesMatter
This is the text of a homily given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on August 30th, 2015.
Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors, Opal Tometi created #BlackLivesMatter as a call to action after the loss of Trayvon Martin, and after witnessing how he was put on trial instead of his attacker. They could clearly see that something new was needed in the fight to free black lives from institutional and cultural white supremacy. Alicia describes it as “an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted[…]”
Reverend Gail spoke to us a few weeks ago about how true innovation cannot aim itself, as that means it’s not truly innovative. To make real change, sometimes one must just fire. So Alicia, and Patrice, and Opal fired the hashtag out into the world to see where it would land, and Alicia says they were humbled when people from all vocations heard that call to action and stepped up to help these women expand #BlackLivesMatter beyond the hashtag, creating an infrastructure to the movement that connected the online activism with the street activism. The movement grew even more after the devastating loss of Michael Brown, when Patrice co-organized a #BlackLivesMatter ride to support the communities in Ferguson and greater St. Louis.
But Alicia, Patrice, and Opal knew that as powerful as people in the streets are, more was needed. So they’ve also been using modern technology to host national conference calls focused on lifting up the issues critical to Black lives as they work for freedom. They’ve reached out to connect people across the country who were previously fighting injustice in isolation, and are now stronger for those connections. Alicia describes their work as creating “space for the celebration and humanization of Black lives.”
And when she says that, she doesn’t mean that Black lives aren’t already human, aren’t already worth celebrating. It’s the opposite — that the history of slavery and white supremacy in this country has actively prevented Black lives from celebrating their inherent worth and dignity, has denied their inherent humanity. Their lives have been, and continue to be, stolen from them. Alicia, Patrice, and Opal, continuing the work of Black lives like Martin Luther King Jr., James Cone, bell hooks, and numerous others, are fighting to create space in which Black lives can live without being silenced or erased.
And so, given that so much of this story is about creating space for Black lives, and Black words, and how Alicia, Patrice, and Opal are shut out even more for being women and being queer while also being Black, I feel a moral imperative to lift up Alicia’s words from her story:
“We completely expect those who benefit directly and improperly from White supremacy to try and erase our existence. We fight that every day. But when it happens amongst our allies, we are baffled, we are saddened, and we are enraged.”
This is what happens every time someone responds to #BlackLivesMatter with All Lives Matter. The whole point of this movement is that no one can claim that all lives matter until it is clearly demonstrated in our media, in our politics, in our judicial system, that Black Lives Matter. Until that happens, the system in which we all live, that was built upon kidnapping Black lives and using them as slaves, will continue to trickle out into further oppression of other communities and identities.
Here’s more from Alicia’s story:
“BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important–it mean that Black Lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. […] When Black people get free, everybody gets free.[…] We’re not saying that Black lives are more important than other lives, or that other lives are not criminalized and oppressed in various ways. We remain in active solidarity with all oppressed people who are fighting for their liberation and we know that our destinies are intertwined.”
“Lift up Black lives as an opportunity to connect struggles across race, class, gender, nationality, sexuality, and disability.”
Alicia, Patrice, and Opal have waded into the water, taking that leap of faith. They are working for a world that offers healing to wounded bodies, to wounded hearts. They are leading, and we must follow.
Prayer Written for CST Baccalaureate 2015
Precious Spirit of Life, of grace, of gathering. Loving Divinity of many names, many faces, many creeds, and of none at all. We seek the strength to defend and release those who are oppressed and marginalized. We seek the wisdom to foster healing and forgiveness. We seek the knowledge of how to use our gifts in ways that we may be worthy of them. We seek these things, knowing how much we have already been given, and we do so with faith in your abundance, and faith in what you have called us to do. We pray for guidance to always live lives of service to our communities, have integrity in our hearts and minds, and create joy whenever and wherever we can. In the name of all that is holy, and precious, and beloved, we pray. Amen and blessed be.
The Fire of Commitment
CST Chapel Service, May 5th, 2015
Call to Worship
We gather today under the streams of the Maypole, signifying the arrival of spring, the bonds of friends and family, and the jubilation of harvests to come.
To our altar,
We offer cream to celebrate the richness of divine, creative love
We offer cake to celebrate the sweetness of this beloved community
We offer whiskey to celebrate the fire of our commitment
Chalice Lighting (from Singing the Living Tradition)
We gather this hour as people of faith
With joys and sorrows, gifts and needs.
We light our chalice, this beacon of hope,
sign of our quest for truth and meaning,
in celebration of the life we share together
Scripture Reading: Song of Songs 2:10-13
My beloved spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, come with me.
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.
The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.”
Beltane Reflection
The celebration of Beltane is about the waxing cycle of the year. It celebrates fertility, abundance, and recognition of the gifts given to us by the earth, by our loved ones, by our gods, that sustain us through the inevitable periods of waning. Today we are at a unique juxtaposition of Beltane, which asks us to focus on what can do moving forward, and the end of our community’s organizational year, wherein we are all focusing on what we have done in the past. Many of us are graduating, turning in the last of our assignments and preparing to catalog all we have learned for ordination and fellowshipping committees. We have faculty and staff retiring, closing a door on long, productive careers. Our school is getting ready to sleep as the rest of the world enters seasons of activity and creation.
As so many of our are leaving this beloved community — some for good, and some for just a season — how do we keep our fires for justice, love, and vocation alive? Beltane reminds us to look to those closest to us, our beloveds, to remind us of what is worth fighting for. Today is my anniversary. I will not be spending it with my husband, as I have class until late tonight. But my call to service, to religious leadership, is also his call. Instead of being upset at our separation on this special day, he surprised me with this cake on our altar. He baked it from scratch, with the help our two young children, to show his commitment to our life together. We kindle each other’s fires with our love, and hopefully we will pass along that example to our kids.
Again and again I have been moved by the love and abundance in this community over my three years here. I have questioned my call, and been brought back by fellow M.Div.s, who were able to see me in ways I could not on my own. I have witnessed profound hospitality, not just for each other, but for our pets as well. I read emails about grocery support for students’ families who are struggling to get enough food. For all of these things and more, I am ablaze with gratitude. Love is the source of my fire of commitment, and there is no time of year that celebrates love more than Beltane. Love is the source of growth and renewal, of healing, of grace. Love is forgiveness, and inclusion, and the one true act of creation. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we are made real when we are loved. Our missions, our visions, our change, manifest only when we love the hell out of this world. Take that with you today, for the waning times.
So mote it be.
Prayer
Please join me in the spirit of prayer, with words adapted from Jackson Browne’s “For a Dancer”:
Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
Will you choose to let it show?
Passing of the Chalice
For UUs, the flaming chalice symbolizes many things — service, justice, community, the search for truth and meaning — any list with an ending would be incomplete. As I and the other graduates leave this place, we pass the responsibility of its caretaking to you and the continuing students. May you all keep it safe, and strong, and vibrant. May you hold it with loving hands and hearts for those who will come after you. Blessed be.
Benediction
Please stand and join hands for our benediction from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker:
Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;
its temple, all space;
its shrine, the good heart;
its creed, all truth;
its ritual, works of love;
its profession of faith, divine living.