blm

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.

We Were Made For This

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

14962732_10154741984919264_4244084439160120562_n

Listen to the sermon here:

We Were Made For This

or watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

Color_Stripe

I’ve gotten lots of questions about what today’s sermon will be about. I’ve deflected all of them — partly because, well, I wanted people to show up. And partly because, I think, I wasn’t sure where on the spectrum between pastoral and prophetic I was going to land. But here’s the thing: from this pulpit, I cannot endorse candidates. But I can absolutely speak to issues, especially ones directly relevant to our religious tradition, and I can talk freely about already elected officials. I want to be clear right now, at the beginning of this: I love you. I love all of you, with your depth and your nuance and your glorious divinity, and the parts of you you wish you could forget about, or hide. I love you. And as a human being, naturally, I like it when you like me. But I’m also one of your ministers. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I were trying to please everyone in the room. So buckle up.

In Unitarian Universalism, we also have something called the freedom of the pulpit — the right of the minister to speak what they believe to be truth to power. What often gets forgotten is that this freedom of the pulpit goes hand in hand with the freedom of the pew — the sovereign right of those listening to agree or disagree.

And here I come to the crux of the issue at hand in our culture this week: it is assumed, in our tradition, that we will have a diversity of beliefs. It is HOW we communicate about and through these differences, how we treat those who are not exactly like us, that binds us together as Unitarian Universalists. This is a legacy we UUs have not always lived up to — but that doesn’t mean that we should give up trying. One of our most popular hymns is Rumi’s come, come, whoever you are, but one of his most important lines of the poem has been cut from the version we sing: “Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, come.”

Now is the time for us to renew our vows, to our covenants of behavior and to our principles of action, because it became pointedly clear Tuesday night that much of the rest of our country has forgotten, or never learned, how to be together.

A few weeks ago, one of our members preached a controversial sermon on the inherent worth and dignity of every person in the face of great evil — the freedom of the pulpit. While she was preaching, someone was overheard to say, out loud, “She should throw herself away.” That is not the freedom of the pew. That is the kind of divisive response that has led us to this awful moment in our history, where a man who has incited violence, hatred, bigotry, racism, and openly admitted to sexual assault has been elected to the highest office we have. Say whatever you will about the electoral college, the fact that the popular vote was even close enough to allow the electoral college to override it makes me ill. The fact that almost half of eligible voters didn’t vote, by choice or by voter suppression, makes me ill.

I have friends, people whom I trust with the lives of my children, who voted for Donald Trump. I know there are people in this room who voted for Donald Trump. I’m both capable and willing to to discuss with civility and genuine interest the reasons those votes were cast. But make no mistake — the inherent worth and dignity of every person is not the equivalent to the inherent worth and dignity of every opinion. People are going to die because of this. In the last five days, there have been over 200 incidents reported of hate crimes directly linked to people feeling empowered by Trump’s election and the validation of his horrific rhetoric. Those are just the ones we know about.

People’s lives are at stake now. I am all for rooting out corruption in government, but not with an administration that believes climate change is a hoax perpetuated by China, that women should be punished for having an abortion, and that being gay can be cured with electroshock therapy. That’s only the beginning of the list.

It is not enough to look at policy platforms or party affiliation and ignore the person who will be taking the office. It is not a responsible choice to ignore the impact of electing a man who calls himself the “law and order” candidate while we display a Black Lives Matter sign on our lawn. “Law and order” is the spin white people put on the New Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and the epidemic of systemic racism in our criminal justice system. If you missed our Palmer lecture about this, it’s posted on our website. Want more? The documentary “13th” is streaming on Netflix, right now. Lives, families, of people of colour have been destroyed in this country for decades, and it became clear on Tuesday night that the system is going to continue.

I know this is a dismal picture I’m painting for you. For some of you — our members and friends who are people of colour, queer, women, and so on and so forth — this is more of the same. The fear that you have already lived with every day. For some of you, this reality is new, and it’s weird and really really uncomfortable, and it is so tempting to retreat back into locations of privilege to avoid that feeling. Even those of us who are part of one group under constant attack — for instance, me, as a cisgender queer woman — may find it easier to conserve my resources to protect myself. I can retreat into my whiteness, my education, my class status, as insulation.

But my resistance will be intersectional or it will be worthless.

I am part of the interdependent web of all existence, and that means I am in relationships. That web means those relationships are with strangers as well as with family and friends. My resistance to the status quo, to the patriarchal idea that any man can just grab me by the… well, you know. It’s a word we reject in our UU sex ed classes. My resistance to being grabbed by any part of my body, as a woman, must be intersectional with resistance to racism, transphobia, bigotry, Islamophobia, and all the other dis-eases burning through our communities.

So where do we go from here?

These words from Clarissa Pinkola Estes are a start, for me:

Ours is a time of daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to caring, visionary, civilized people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris, the bald faced audacity that some are engaged in while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, this mother earth, is breathtaking. Yet I urge you, ask you, gentle you . . . to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is, we were made for these times. Yes. For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for, and just waiting to meet, on this exact plain of engagement . . .

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts, or by whom,will cause the critical mass to tip towards an enduring good and transformative shift. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts great and small, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on earth to bring justice and peace, but small determined groups and individuals who will not give upduring the first, second, or hundreth gale.

The good words we say and the good deeds we do, are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the love and life that brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you may write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and tied to the pier, it is safe, there can be no doubt.  But that is not, what great ships are built for.

Each of us is a great ship. I truly believe that. But some of us, at this moment in time, have taken more damage than others, and we see no end in sight. It will require a fleet of great ships, working together, to bring about an end to the storm. It will require this sanctuary, this community, to commit to being a safe harbour when any of us need to resupply, to repair. It will require us, all of us, to keep each other safe, and to build the next generation of great ships in our children and youth.

I believe this can be done. I believe you, every single one of you, can contribute to make it happen. I believe that our world needs us, Unitarian Universalists, more than ever. I believe if we are willing to live into our seven principles — not as beliefs, but as calls to action — and to fully commit to our covenants of how we will be with each other and in our greater communities — that we can hold our government to account for the lives of the people. The moral arc of the universe only bends towards justice when we bend it.

You may have seen the safety pin meme going around. The idea is that, if one is wearing a safety pin, one is identifying as a “safe” person, someone who can be trusted by those who are in a vulnerable position. There is a lot of controversy around this idea. White pride people are telling their followers to wear safety pins to lure people of colour into trusting them. Leaders of colour are calling it out as yet another way that white people soothe their conscience without taking direct action to change the systems that lead to harm and violence.

You may have also noticed that I’m wearing one. And so is Rev. Jason. We’re offering them here today to anyone who wishes to take one. But I’m asking you, if you put one on, to remember it not as a symbol for others but as a symbol for yourself. That every day you wear that pin you have pledged to rise up, to speak out, to literally put your body in the way of harm. This is not something to take lightly. This is something that requires thought, training, and planning. This requires you to be willing to protect a black man, a trans person, and a Muslim woman with equal commitment. Wearing this pin means you are willing to get involved with organizations like Showing Up for Racial Justice, with Black Lives Matter. It means you are willing not only to come to the aid of a stranger, but to also risk your existing relationships when people you know make jokes at the expense of others,  jokes that perpetuate the hate against people we claim we want to liberate.

The safety pin also represents something else, as explained beautifully by the Rev. Kendyll Gibbons: “A safety pin is also about holding things together, maybe just barely, as best we are able – about improvising in the presence of brokenness and failure, and trying to keep the fabric of our connections from being completely torn apart.  It’s about doing what we can with the resources we have, even when they are far from ideal.”

I don’t expect anyone here today to take a pin, nor do I expect to see you wearing it if you do take one. Perhaps you want to take one and keep it with you, to reflect or meditate upon its meaning, as you discern your role moving into the future. Whatever you decide — you are still part of this community. You are loved. You are wanted. You have something to contribute. And we will figure out what that is, together.

The other item we have to offer today is a piece of sidewalk chalk. UU minister Ashley Horan, of the Minnesota UU Social Justice Alliance, has started the movement of Neighborhood Love Notes. She is asking people all over the world to take chalk, and to leave messages of love and support all over their communities, and in particular in front of places where people are particularly vulnerable, like Islamic mosques. So we invite you, as you leave this sanctuary today, to take a piece of chalk with you and spread our message of love.

Our closing hymn today is “America the Beautiful”. Jason and I chose this intentionally, because it contains within it hope, and the promise of grace, at the same time it speaks to our history of patriarchy, theft, and genocide. We cannot learn from our terrible mistakes if we pretend they never happened. In this sacred space, this sanctuary, we have descendants of these pilgrims, and those indigenous people whom the pilgrims decimated. In this sanctuary, we have those for whom brotherhood has always been a welcoming word, and those for whom it has oppressed and excluded them from the most basic of human rights. In this sanctuary, we have people who believe in God, people who believe God is a he, and people who believe neither of those things. For some, God is irrelevant. For others, divinity is many gods, of many genders.

This is the work we have to do, and the promise held within this song, including its devastating flaws. We are a multitude, and we are always seeking to grow, to listen, to learn, to be better, and to make amends. We invite you to sing this song, in its entirety, and to recognize when the words make you angry or uncomfortable. Our history as a country is bloody, and cruel, and oppressive. But just as we adapt our language to answer the call of love, so too can we change our vision to be more worthy of its promise.

May it be so.

Color_Stripe

We Are Groot

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

We Are Groot

Listen to the sermon here:

We Are Groot

Or, watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

Groot Hat

Color_Stripe

When I was initially working on this sermon, as evidenced by the description of the worship service from January, I thought the focus should be more on our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. But the more I’ve worked through it, the more I’ve found this story to be about the seventh principle — the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

That’s quite a mouthful. You’d think it could be shorter, you know, maybe just “the interdependent web”. But humans sometimes aren’t that good at recognizing the bigger story, especially when we’re in pain, or mad, or afraid. And us Unitarian Universalists in particular, sometimes we like to believe that we’re exceptional to the point of being set apart from others, removed from the things that we think we’ve rejected or left behind as our tradition has progressed. So we need this big mouthful of a reminder that we are deeply, deeply set into this web of existence, whether it’s moving us to joy or to sorrow.

The interdependent web of all existence. Even the pieces we don’t like.

The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We are intimately, inextricably connected to the people we dislike. Dare I say it, we are inextricable from those we hate.

We are a part of those who we try to shut out and disown as not being us.

This brings me to the reading, often titled “The Faith of the Canaanite woman”. I think it should have a subtitle: “In Which Jesus Is Wrong.”

I love this story. It’s one of the best stories for a perfectionist, overfunctioning person like me who’s spent years learning that mistakes are inevitable, that we are flawed beings always learning how to be better to each other.

And there’s lots of different interpretations of this story in Christian exegesis, and lots of different ways of working the text so that Jesus is still perfect. Perhaps those versions of the story speak to you, and that’s perfectly ok. One of the things I love most about Unitarian Universalism is that not only do we embrace different stories, we embrace different sides of the same story. We say, “Yes, and.”

So this morning, we’re focusing on the idea that Jesus was wrong. He gets called out on it, and instead of doubling down in his wrongness, throwing a tantrum, or any other deflecting behavior, he says, “Oh my gosh, you’re right.” And then he makes amends.

Think about the power dynamics here. A desperate women from an oppressed, systematically maligned population shows up asking for help for her child from a healer. This healer, who knows he could ease this child’s suffering, says, “No, I don’t think so. You’re not the right kind of people. In fact, I’m not sure you’re even a person. You’re like a dog.” (Which, I just want to point out, I know for many in this congregation, is not an insult. But apparently it was for Jesus. That’s another sermon).

And this woman, who has already made herself vulnerable just by showing up and begging for help, doesn’t back down. She says, “Even dogs get scraps from the table.” Even dogs are part of the household.

Even if I’m willing to debase myself to agree with your assessment of me as less than you, I’m still a part of the interdependent web and you should respect that.

I am willing to believe in you and your power to save my child. Why won’t you believe in me?

And there it is. Jesus realizes that he actually knows nothing about her life, or what difficult choices she had to make to survive. He has judged her worth solely on her identity as a Canaanite. He reacts like a bigot.

Now, this is not to say that the Canaanite woman is perfect. We don’t know anything about her, or her past behavior. She could be toxic in any number of ways– but not just because she’s a Canaanite.

And that’s the point of the story — that in this moment, it doesn’t matter. In this moment, right here, she is asking for help for someone she loves from someone she knows can help at no risk or loss to himself. Whatever she may have said or done in her past is irrelevant.

So how does this tie in to Guardians of the Galaxy?

I love genre stories, because they help us get understanding about our own lives by removing us from it. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on the original Star Trek series, was considering leaving the show, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked her to stay on. He told her how important it was for black people, especially young black children, to see themselves on television as something other than a servant. Star Wars tells us a story about the search for identity and resisting imperialism. Superheroes awe us with their powers while teaching us how to process the power of our emotions and actions in the world.

And sometimes, those heroes are anti-heros. The Guardians of the Galaxy are our Canaanites, and unlike the Canaanite woman from our others story, we know all about the history of this motley crew of criminals.

Peter Quill, con man and thief. He was kidnapped from earth as a young boy, after the death of his mother, and maintains emotional distance from those around him as a protection.

Gamora, thief, assassin for hire. Her family was killed in front of her when she was a child, and she was “adopted” by the man who did it. He turned her into a living weapon. She is fighting to both survive and find a way out.

Drax, a man consumed by a need for violent revenge after the slaughter of his family. He solves problems with brute force.

Rocket. He’s a freak, a mistake made from the progress of science without the temper of ethics. He is, more than any of the rest of them, alone in the universe, carrying memories of torture and abuse and living with the constant ridicule and mocking of those around him every day. He is cruel, and angry.

All created by the systems in which they existed. All have had to live for most of their lives with no one validating their inherent worth and dignity, so they are forced to carve it out for themselves, often resorting to brutality, fear, and avoidance rather than right relationship.

And yet, when push comes to shove, when they realize that they can contribute in a meaningful way to the larger community, to the survival of the very people who malign and oppress them, they rise to the occasion.

And then there’s Groot, the giant tree-being. Groot enters this story as Rocket’s muscle, giving him physical and emotional support in a world that created him and then abandoned him. While Groot can only vocalize the words “I am Groot,” he understands everything said to him. Groot becomes the force binding them together, the one among them who can create beauty amongst ugliness.

All of this is important for the moment that made this movie worth a sermon. You have to know how awfully these people have been treated to understand how huge it was for them to join the fight to save the world that had abused them. You have to know how criminal their choices have been to understand the risk they took by contacting the NovaCorps, the military and police forces of the first planet to be attacked.

You have to know how little they think of themselves, how little expect from their lives to understand how shocking it was that Groot sacrificed himself to save them. In that moment, when Groot uses “we” for the first time, he is using his power to heal those he cares about. He is telling them, you showed up, and so you are worth saving.

So where do you find yourself in this story?

Maybe you’re one of this mercenary crew, asking for someone to believe in you, to believe that you can change the world even as it’s trying to tear you down. Maybe you’re one of the NovaCorps, having to decide whether or not to give these people a chance despite their history.

And yes, I know that there are people, that there are relationships, that are so toxic we must, one-on-one, break those ties, for our safety and for the safety of others in our care. I’ve had to do this myself. There are people I will never let back into my life. One person cannot take down a Ronan, bent on destroying everything them just because they can. And people like this do exist.

But these toxic, destructive people remain part of our interdependent web. Even if we can’t be in direct relationship with them, we will always be in indirect relationship with them, and so by pouring love and and kindness out into that interdependent web of all existence, we can support them from a distance. Intimacy is not always required to provide care.

A large, healthy system, like the one this congregation has worked so hard to become, is strong enough to take a risk as a community when the risk is too great for one single person to bear. Like the criminal protagonists and the NovaCorps, we are stronger when we work together to fight a common enemy for the good of all. Like Jesus, we have the power to heal those who come to us, who willingly join with us.

And here’s the really difficult part of the story for us to bring into our daily lives. After the Guardians defeat Ronan, after they save the planet, and stop the spread of destruction to the rest of the universe, NovaCorps erases their criminal records. Builds them a ship to replace the one they lost in the battle. And then lets them go free.

They are given a clean slate, and the chance for a new beginning. The past is forgiven, but not forgotten — there is an understanding that if they break this new covenant, there will be repercussions. But until that happens, they will be treated like any other member of the community. I love this, because it’s not a magical panacea that erases everything about their lives and personalities.

Your past is always a part of who you are. Their personalities have not changed, but now? Now they have a vision of the future in which they are empowered to make better choices, despite the systems of oppression that have formed them. The sequel hasn’t come out yet, so I’m sure we’re going to see some bad choices yet to come. They’re flawed. We’re flawed.

But as the story of the Canaanite woman tells us, even Jesus was flawed. Groot was flawed. We can be flawed and still be powerful beings co-creating the universe, one choice at a time. We can still recognize the respect the ways in which we are connected to one another, from our closest friends and family to strangers on the other side of the globe.

We are Groot.

Color_Stripe

The Revelator

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

14368921_10154557567899264_6240819784940183736_n

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

Color_Stripe

The Book of Revelation. It’s a letter written by a person who called themselves John, meant for seven communities in Asia that had gathered around a belief in Jesus Christ. Unlike today, when Christian identity is linked with power and empire, Christian communities (even before they were calling themselves Christians) were subversive, anti-establishment groups fighting just to survive, much less thrive. Living in the shadow of the Roman Empire, which required imperial religious devotion in all aspects of life, including commerce and livelihood, many resorted to hiding in plain sight. They kept their beliefs about Jesus internal, while their actions supported the divinity of the Roman emperor and his authority over all because it kept them alive.

Enter John, the Revelator. Not the same John to whom the fourth Gospel is attributed, or the Johannine letters. A different John. He’s a Palestinian Jew, living among the Jesus communities in Asia, and he is so angry at his people for their collaboration with the empire that persecutes them, and so afraid that the message of Jesus, his messiah, will be erased, that he cannot truly express how he feels in everyday, conversational language. He is so overwhelmed he cannot even rely on traditional rhetoric like what Paul used in his letters. John can only communicate the depth and agony of his truth through manifesting visceral gut reactions to his fantastical and often grotesque imagery. The four horsemen of the apocalypse. The beast rising from the sea. The dragon sweeping stars from the sky with a flick of its tail. The woman clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet.

The imagery of John’s epistle is so powerful it has moved past Christian culture and entered the consciousness of the American secular experience. It’s the basis of numerous pop culture endeavors, like television shows, and referenced in many more. I would argue that it’s used as a founding cosmology in the creation of our art more than it’s used as a Christian sacred texts in modern churches. Many mainline Christian pastors are afraid of trying to exegete it, like English majors tiptoeing around James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s powerful at an emotional, reactive level. And one of the hardest things to deal with about Revelation is its violence.

Miroslav Wolf, a Bible scholar and survivor of the genocide in the Balkan peninsula claims that: “In the worldview of Revelation, there is no power great enough to stop the beasts from wanting to be beasts.” There is no power great enough to stop the beasts from wanting to be beasts. What do we do with that as Unitarian Universalists?

I think we have to go back to King, the authentic King, the one who understood that non-violent action does not mean it is not disruptive. Non-violent action, civil disobedience, must be disruptive, must make Rome agitate, for it have any effect. But King’s call to non-violence is also deeply rooted in Universalism, in demonstrating that those who hold the power in an oppressive system are just as much victims of that toxic environment as those who are oppressed. That we are called to love even the beasts who want to be beasts. That love is how we show beasts that they do not have to be beasts to belong. As UU Rev. Anita Farber-Robertson says: “My Universalism is fierce. It has no patience with a theology of scarcity.”

King also lays out for us a historical record of what he calls “creative extremists”. And it’s important to note that these leaders of change were not themselves perfect, nor were their messages always perfect. John’s resistance to religious imperialism did not intersect with resistance to patriarchy — his fantastical visions rely on caricatures of the historically oppressive roles of women — mother or whore. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” but left out the white women, the black lives that kept his household, and the economy of the Southern United States, running on slavery of human beings. That historical erasure of the humanity of black lives affected all people of colour as this nation formed its identity. It’s a legacy with which we are all still struggling today. Revelation is resistance.

To resist, we must acknowledge that our pasts are imperfect, and we are imperfect, and that’s okay as long as we are willing to keep learning. It is incumbent on us to learn from the mistakes and misunderstandings of our histories so that we can always be evolving into the people the visionary future needs to create itself. We will always be imperfect, because we will always be creating something new. We make each other better by learning from each other and the diversity of our experiences and our belief. We covenant together to more than the sum of our parts in building the future.

Revelation is resistance to the status quo. Revelation asks us to consider how we navigate questions of fidelity to covenanted communities of mutual love and support, leading to action on justice issues, when we live in a culture that demands unquestioning fidelity to imperial projects. In modern times, that becomes how do we navigate a covenanted agreement to make our seven principles, statements of hope and vision, the reality in this world that demands we agree to private prison industrial complex, the oppression of black lives, Muslim lives, Latinx lives, queer lives, and so many more. There are, right now, thousands of people supporting the First Nations protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, protesting for the sake of the future of clean water for our children and grandchildren. Those thousands of people are being ignored by the mainstream media while they report about a gas panic due to — wait for it — a broken gas pipeline polluting everything around it. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. Revelation 13:4: “They worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

We are, all of us, under the thumb of New Rome, my beloveds. And Revelation is resistance. Our seven principles are resistance.

I’m a huge fan of Nadia Bolz-Weber. She’s a Lutheran pastor who also happens to write some really good books. And it turns out that once upon a time, she tried to be a Unitarian Universalist. She decided it wasn’t for her because, for her, we UUs “have a higher opinion of human beings than I have ever felt comfortable claiming, as someone who both reads the paper and knows the condition of my own heart.” She claims that we rely too much on “hopefulness and positive thinking.” And this not a claim unique to her.

I offer to you today that we should not ignore or dismiss such judgements about us, but rather use them to fuel our drive to make our vision reality. I am willing to claim that hopefulness and positive thinking are central to our Unitarian Universalist identities, but they are not how we get things done. The hope is why we work for a better world. Love is why we work for a better world. The how is always changing. Revelation is resistance.

Our seven principles are not belief statements. They are statements of vision and mission around which we, as members and congregations, covenant to preserve where they exist and to make a reality where they are not. It is often very, very hard work, and more about confronting our own flaws of perception than is it about our own “awesomeness”.

Take, for example, our first principle: we covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. From a belief standpoint, we can recognize all around us, every day, how people are not shown, nor demonstrate, inherent worth and dignity. The difference, however, is that as UUs we are also willing to learn about, and then recognize, the systems of oppression that teach people to fear and hate each other. And, as we learned from the trolls in Frozen, “people make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed.” When the systems keep people from having access to food, to shelter, to health care, they live in fear, and they make choices based on fear. I’m not sure those decisions can be called choices at all.

The covenant of our seven principles is about recognizing the divinity of others. And only when we have done that can we truly recognize the divinity in ourselves. That we are worthy of love simply because we exist. That each of us is enough, just as we are. That living into the worth and dignity of every person includes living into the fullness of our own individual potential as we help others live into theirs. Revelation is resistance, resistance to the old order, resistance to the empire, resistance to systems of oppression that harm all of us with their poisonous ways.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous image of the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice is, in fact, paraphrased from the writings of Unitarian Theodore Parker. King understood that that moral arc bends towards justice because people bend it. That moral arc requires our thoughts and prayers and our actions. And this community is a perfect example of how necessary a faith in hopefulness and positive thinking is to how we hold together as a congregation, as a larger denomination, despite our multitude of differences. Our sources of faith are numerous, but we share a vision that we can make people’s lives better, including our own; that we can ease suffering, including our own. That vision relies on our covenant to work, to love, together. Our differences make us stronger because they encourage us to learn from each other.

The Book of Revelation shows us a world of anger and fear, where violence is inevitable and divine retribution is the only escape into New Jerusalem, into the new world order. And if all we do is wait for someone better than us to change it, that’s what the world is and will continue to be. Because there is no one better than you, right here, right now, as part of this community. There is no one better to change the world.

In the words of Black Elk, sung by our choir today, “I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children.”

We are the revelators. We are the creative extremists that King said the world needs.

Throw off the fear. Throw off the hate. Bring on the New Jerusalem.

Revelation is resistance.

May it be so.

Color_Stripe

We Ask the Church

Meghann Robern

Color_Stripe

We Ask the Church

Listen to the sermon here:

We Ask the Church

Or, watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook

Color_Stripe

I used to be a screenwriter. Almost ten years ago, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, right when my career was about to take off. I’d sold a project to a big studio AND it was being made, which doesn’t always happen. You’d be surprised how many successful screenwriters there are who’ve never seen something they wrote made into a movie. But they get paid for their work, thanks to the guild.

But because it was my first project, and it had been optioned but not purchased, and production hadn’t started, when the strike began, I was in this sweet spot area of having a lot of industry buzz around my name, but not yet enough “units” to be eligible for guild membership.

And before any of you ask, I’ll only tell the name of my movie to whoever takes the Program Council Chair position.

So one day, while my day job boss was down on the picket line, I get a call from my agent, Howie. Now, I’m sure that many of you have a very particular personality in mind when you think of a Hollywood agent. Howie is an exception. I’m pretty sure if I called him today he’d still talk to me.

So Howie calls me up, and after some checking-in small talk, he gets real quiet. “Meghann,” he says, “are you a member of the guild yet?” I said “No, I’m not eligible until they start production.” Silence. Then he says, “As your agent, you need to know that I can get you work right now.”

And what he’s not saying, what he and I both understand without having to say it, is that not only could I get work, but I could get a lot of work. More than any other fledgling writer could reasonably hope for at this point in their career.

And I had one of those moments that technically only lasts a second or two, but encompasses what feels like decades of thought. I remembered that I grew up with food in my belly and consistent health care because of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the American Federation of Musicians. In that one second I recalled all the conversations I’d overheard in recording sessions about scale pay, and how my parents never questioned that someone should be paid fairly.

I thought about my boss, the man who had taken me under his wing, treated me fairly, and given me every opportunity to move into my own career. I remembered that the money I’d already made from this movie was only in my bank account because of this guild that was on strike.

I knew, in that one second, that while I may not be a member on paper, I was a member in spirit.

“I’m sorry, Howie. I can’t cross the picket line. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“Good girl,” he said. Then he hung up.

And I never worked in Hollywood again.

I tell you this story today because it’s my example of what “labour union” means at a personal, spiritual level and not just politics. UU minister Rev. Aaron McEmrys, who was an organizer before following his call to ministry, describes it perfectly for me. He says,

I choose to use the word, “union”, because it best describes what happens when groups of individuals come together in a spirit of mutual support, respect and love. In this sense, the concept of union is one of the most beautiful and important “spiritual” words in my vocabulary. Whether people are organizing through the “official” mechanisms of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or through “unsanctioned” means – they are nonetheless organizing themselves into a relationship of “union” with one another, where “an injury to one, is an injury to all.”

Rev. Aaron also teaches UUs about our long history of supporting labour movements in this country. William Ellery Channing, in the 1830s, said that all people had the same “tremendous potential” regardless of economic class, and that the exploitation of workers was denying them their ability to fully manifest that potential. Theodore Parker preached on poverty and its direct ties to abuse of workers. Over a hundred years ago, John Henry Holmes wrote a description of that same link between systemic poverty and worker injustice that could have been written today:

Poverty, in this age as in every age, in our country as in every country, is primarily due to the fact of social injustice – that employment cannot be had by those who are ready to work; that employment even when regular is not paid enough to enable the faithful and efficient workman to guard against illness, to protect his widow from dependence, or to provide for his own old age; that insufficient wages force thousands of families to crowd into unhealthy tenements, to eat insufficient food, and to wear insufficient clothing, thus paving the way for physical weakness and disability; that accidents rob the wage earners without compensation from society; that taxes are inequitable, throwing the chief burden upon the poor instead of upon the rich; that natural resources, which are the basis of all wealth, are in the hands of a few instead of under the control of society at large, and are thus exploited for the benefit of the few and not for the sake of the common welfare; that the distribution of wealth is grossly unfair and disproportionate – in the final analysis, that society is organized upon a basis of injustice and not of justice, and is permeated by the spirit of selfishness and not of love. (The Revolutionary Function of the Modern Church (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1912) pp. 100-101)

Heartbreaking words, because they still ring so true. And yet. Hearing it so perfectly summed up, it becomes so thick and dense that I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. How am I, one person, supposed to help, especially when I’m as tied up in it as everyone else?

After the writers guild strike came the economic crash. My boss had to let me go. I had a new baby, a house I couldn’t sell, and I couldn’t find a job to save my life. Eventually my unemployment insurance ran out. And I know, without a doubt, that we would have ended up homeless, with Prudence in foster care, if it weren’t for our family’s economic privilege.

We had people not only willing, but also ABLE to support us in a time of great need. My family of musicians union members now included Josh’s family of teacher unions. Once again, my life, and the life of my child, was sustained by the ongoing work of the labour movement.

Even finally following my lifelong call to ministry — the years of seminary, moving here to serve as your intern minister last year– was only possible because of the economic privilege given to me — GIVEN to me, not earned by me — by union workers.

The quote I chose for the order of service today is also from Cesar Chavez, one of the co-founders of National Farm Workers Association. A devoted Catholic, he specifically reached out to religious communities for support, asking them “to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and for love of [sibling]. We don’t ask for words. We ask for deeds. We don’t ask for paternalism. We ask for servanthood.”

And yet, I know that fear that tells us to cross picket lines — fear of hunger, fear of losing our children, fear of homelessness. I know some of you here in this sanctuary are not just living with these fears as a possible future but are also living the reality of not knowing where next week’s food will come from, or where you’ll be sleeping.

I also know the fear of activism. I’ve thought about what I want displayed on the back of my car, and whether it will bring violence to me and my family. I’ve stayed out of protest situations wherein I felt the risk to my safety was too high. And I reconsider those decisions every day. I carry guilt for those decisions every day. I know that the fact I even have a choice is deeply rooted in my privilege. I’m not sure I’m as brave as Shaie’s mom, or as many of you here today.

But what I do know is that the more of people’s stories I hear, the more I know about people’s lived experience, the braver I become. Bravery doesn’t mean the fear goes away — it means going ahead even when we’re afraid. So let’s continue to listen to people’s stories, and to make safe space for those stories yet untold.

I also know that when I’m faced with a task that feels overwhelming, insurmountable, I have to find a way to make it smaller. I break it down, into little pieces, that I can conquer one at a time. And this is where our choices come in.

This is where solidarity, where Cesar Chavez’s call to servanthood and deeds looks like joining a boycott instead of joining the front lines of the protest itself. Where Shaie’s mom did as much to support the farm workers by telling their story to her daughter as she did by putting that bumper sticker on her car.

We cannot live into affirming the worth and dignity of every person and the interdependent web, two of our seven Unitarian Universalist principles, if we cannot stomach the reality of where our fruit comes from.

We cannot claim that we believe Black Lives Matter if we don’t see how Black Lives are forced into poverty through unfair labour practices.

We cannot venerate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a civil rights leader if we ignore his call that workers’ rights are civil rights.

So how is each of us willing to live up to this call?

What choices do we make, every day, no matter how small, that bend the arc of the universe towards justice?

How can we deepen our relationships with those around us, to strengthen the web that holds us in love?

Color_Stripe

Why #BlackLivesMatter

Meghann Robern

This is the text of a homily given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on August 30th, 2015.

Wade in the Water

Color_Stripe

Art Installation at UUA headquarters in Boston, October 2015
Art Installation at UUA headquarters in Boston, October 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.

Color_Stripe