homily – bodily integrity

Amaterasu

December 18, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gift of Sweetness

November 27, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

Watch and listen to the homily on Facebook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May it be so.

Good Friday

March 25, 2016September 22, 2016Meghann Robern

This the text of a homily given at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison on March 25th, 2016.

The supreme irony of the whole crucifixion scene is this: He who was everything had everything taken away from Him. He who was perfect was totally misjudged as “sin” itself (Romans 8:3-4). The crucified Jesus forever tells power and authority, and all of us, how utterly wrong we can be about who is in the right and who is sinful (John 16:8). All human solidarity and sympathy was taken away from Him and He finally had to walk the journey alone, in darkness, in not-knowing, as most humans finally have to do.

Jesus hung in total solidarity with the pain of the world and the far too many lives on this planet that have been “nasty, lonely, brutish, and short.” After the cross, we know that God is not watching human pain, nor apparently always stopping human pain, as much as God is found hanging with us alongside all human pain. Jesus forever tells us that God is found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the beginning of time. I wonder if we even like that. There are no games of moral superiority left. Yet this is exactly the kind of Lover and the universal Love that humanity needs.

What else could possibly give us a cosmic and final hope? This is exactly how Jesus redeemed the world “by the blood of the cross.” It was not some kind of heavenly transaction, or “paying a price” to God, as much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered. If he was paying any price it was for the hard and resistant skin around our souls. — Richard Rohr

For many years, I didn’t understand Easter as a Christian holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus. Christmas was easy for me to understand. But to a much younger version of me, Easter as a holiday that celebrated the death and resurrection of someone I believed to be a man with a message, well, I found it corruptive. I blamed Easter for so much of Christianity manifesting as a death cult of personality and of miracles that no longer happen in our world, as opposed to a religion that should be speaking truth to power and easing suffering wherever it might be found.

And then I went to a Christian seminary. I made dear friends, whom I respect, and who love Easter. So I listened.

They taught me about the rituals of their churches, leading up to Good Friday. How they empty their altars of artifacts and symbols until only the Spirit remains. How that emptiness in a place of worship and community leads them to lament — He’s leaving. He’s leaving. He’s leaving. They taught me that this day is not the holy day of a death cult, but is part of the larger story about how people, and communities, learn to cope with and to live with profound grief and loss.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus confronts the reality of what he knows will come to pass — his execution. He had a moment of choice in his past, when his dear friend John the Baptist was killed — a choice to continue their work of resistance to empire and fighting oppression, or to walk away, and be safe. It is at this moment that Jesus knows, if continues down this path, he will die, because what he asks of people with power and influence is not something they are willing to hear. What matters is how much change he can manifest in the world before they kill him to shut him up.

And so, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he despairs that he has no more time. He does not want the burden of death, nor does he want to abandon his work or the people who follow him. Even in this time and place, so near to the end, his disciples cannot stay awake for him when asks. “Father,” he pleads, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He is willing to die, has been willing to die on this path, but it is in this moment that he fears for a future without him to lead the way. His disciples continue to fail, unable to stay awake, unable to wait with him and pray, And they are us.

The first time I realized that, I was heartbroken. No one wants to imagine themselves as the sidekick, always paling in comparison to the hero of the story. And yet, Jesus is the hero because, ultimately, he believes that despite our brokenness, despite our failures… we are just as good, and as worthy, as he is. “If this cannot pass unless I drink it, “ he says, “your will be done.” We cannot stay awake, and yet the care and justice of the world is passed into our hands by someone who believes we can, who believes we will stay awake.

My Christian colleagues taught me that the lessons of Easter are about forgiving the most unforgivable of sins — not because Jesus sacrificed his life as some kind of payment for all time, but because each of us has failed time and time again. And despite our brokenness, Jesus took up that cross because he knows we can be better. He asks us to be better, relentlessly, for our entire lives.

Because I believe what he learned, as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, is that he wasn’t enough by himself. His disciples were followers, not teammates. He died because one person, alone, is not enough to tear down the oppressions of empire and corruption. His death was not about sacrificing himself for some cruel sense of atonement, a bargain of blood with a hateful God. He died because he could go no further, and he died with hope that his disciples, now apostles, would resurrect him not in body, but in word and deed. Jesus’s death teaches us that the Kingdom of God, in which all are free from suffering, is found in building sustainable communities that work for a better world.

No matter how many times we fail, we must always find the strength, somehow, to pick up the pieces and try again — not for our sakes, but for the sakes of others. Jesus died with his mission unfulfilled. His resurrection happens not just on Easter, but on every day that we are willing to reach out our hands, without expectation, without judgement — with just loving intention and strength of will — to learn, to create, and to listen.

Habitat Unity Build 2015 Sermon Meditation

October 9, 2015March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

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.

Why #BlackLivesMatter

August 30, 2015September 22, 2016Meghann Robern

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

The Fire of Commitment

May 5, 2015September 22, 2016Meghann Robern

CST Chapel Service, May 5th, 2015

photo by Kimberly Edwards, used with permission

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.