sermon – Page 2 – bodily integrity

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.

We Ask the Church

September 4, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

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We Ask the Church

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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?

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

May 8, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

This is the text of a sermon given at First UU Nashville on May 8th, 2016.

Listen to the sermon:

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

The Wizard of Oz started out as a harmless showman in our world, one who entertained people with tricks and illusions. Then he crashed, literally and figuratively, into a whole new persona. To the people of Oz, he appeared out of the sky, in a vehicle none of them had ever seen before, and so they ascribed to him power equivalent to the only other sources of great power they knew — the Witches of the four directions.

His story is still important for us today because he shows us the nuances of the human condition, and how a good person can still make bad decisions out of fear. On one hand, the Wizard embraces the leadership thrust upon him, and uses his showman skills to genuinely care for those in his new community — building them a safe, sustainable city in which they thrive.

On the other hand, when he believes that these witches who have “real” magic will eventually discover his tricks and destroy him, he also uses that power out of fear. He sends Dorothy, a young girl, and other beings of Oz — the scarecrow, the tin man, the lion, into imminent mortal danger in order to save himself. He deems their lives to matter less than his, in the guise of protecting his legacy, when deep down he knows the citizens of the Emerald City would do just fine without him now.

The Wizard of Oz captured the attention, and the fear, of the citizens of Oz when he crashed his balloon — something they’d never seen before, a catastrophic event in their midst. They witnessed this man not only survive, but walk away unscathed. They projected power and authority on to him, and made him their leader. In the same way, the conflict and fear from the War of 1812 led Andrew Jackson to become a national hero, and he also had power and authority projected on to him. The first time he ran for president, he won the popular AND electoral vote, but with more than two candidates running, there was no clear majority. The other candidates colluded together to give John Quincy Adams the majority.

This gave Jackson more than enough ammunition to claim that the election had been tainted through government corruption and conspiracy. His political persona shifted from national hero to a man of the people, fighting a war against the establishment that had stolen the presidency. Four years later, campaigning on this narrative, on this “spin”, he won by a landslide.

When I was in school, here in Tennessee, we were taught that Jackson was a populist President — about how his election was a victory for democracy, how commoners were invited to the White House for his inauguration, how he took on the elite who were stealing power from the people. We were taught that he and followers founded the Democratic party, that he fought against the earliest attempts by states like South Carolina to secede from the Union. It wasn’t until I reached AP US History in high school, and I had a teacher who brought in The People’s History of the United States as a counter-narrative to the state sanctioned textbook, that I learned about Jackson’s pro-slavery platform, or how he was instrumental in the passage of the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears.

And the latter was not some kind of regretful political compromise, like we see our heroes do in the gritty reboots of our modern stories. Jackson went before Congress and used his showmanship, his charisma, to spin a tale to white colonial America of an oppressed population who should be grateful for their oppression. He said, “Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.” This from a man whom whole generations were taught was an unequivocal hero. He may have been heroic, in certain times and places. But he was handed power and he used it, along with his powers of persuasion, to ruin lives instead of protect them.

A different kind of Wizard from our history is P.T. Barnum, who was a lifelong Universalist. Contrary to popular belief, he did NOT say “There’s a sucker born every minute” — that was one of his competitors. Rather, Barnum’s principles are better summed up in his treatise on Universalism: “We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men.”

He was unapologetic about his desire to make money, but always tried to align his ventures with providing services to his local community and to the country at large, because he believed it was the right way, the only way, to do business. And yes, in his mind, in his religious faith, all the museums and shows he created were community services equal to his contributions to education and to Universalism. His museums and sideshows were created to offer humanity the experience of wonder, to inspire dreams of what might be possible. He wrote, “I base my hope on the Word of God speaking in the best heart and conscience of the race -the Word heard in the best poems and songs, the best prayers and hopes of humanity. The ages have been darkest when this hope was lowest.”

None of this is to claim that he was a perfect human being. Like all of us, he was a product of his time. This same man who was an adamant abolitionist also fought to keep people from having access to birth control. Ralph Waldo Emerson hated him, going so far as to claim that one of Barnum’s bankruptcies was proof of gods. But we as human beings are not all or nothing packages. Like the Wizard, like Jackson, like Barnum, we are neither black, nor white, not even grey, but rather a constantly shifting, living mix of all the colours of our human experience. Whether you call it the Word of God, or choose what our UU humanist origins describe as “the belief and trust in human effort,” the thought that we can make a difference even when we are not perfect all of the time binds us together in faith. We just have to find a way to make decisions out of love instead of fear.

Ultimately, the Wizard realizes what a horrible mistake he’s made in sending Dorothy to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. When she discovers his secret — that he has no “real” magic at all, they still insist that he honour his promises anyway. And so, the Wizard returns to the only skillset he’s ever had — showmanship — and uses his wordsmithing and clever props to draw out the qualities that the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion had actually had all along. Up to now, they have lived in fear — fear of not being smart enough, not being brave enough, not being emotional enough to survive. The Wizard takes away that fear by enabling them to see a different truth about themselves, one that leads to authentic wholeness, even as that truth is born out of deception.

I was so moved by Andy’s words, because of their honesty. He’s afraid. I’m afraid. I know some of you are afraid, too. I’m also angry, angry at how I see people’s fear being used to create more fear, to manipulate, to scapegoat, in all aspects of our culture right now. The news cycle, our modern narrative, moves so fast that we can barely fact-check something that comes across our Facebook feeds before we’re hit with another inflammatory meme.

People with agendas of control are hijacking larger movements that offer people hope: hope of jobs, health care, access to education. And before you assume that you know which “side” I’m talking about, let me be clear — I’m talking about all sides. The people you think are on the “other” side are just as afraid as you are. They’re afraid they’ll never work again. That they’ll lose, or never have, a home. That they’ll lose their children, or never be able to afford having them in the first place.

It is thousands of years of genetic memories that teach us to demonize, de-humanize those with whom we find ourselves in conflict, because when they are not-us, we can safely categorize them as a threat. That is how humans survived the millennia — with categories. This plant is safe, that plant is not. This tribe is an ally; that tribe is a threat. And yet humans are also hard-wired for compassion — we can see this in our babies and young children. It’s the most profound act of love, of our Universalist tradition, to witness something beyond that instinctual categorical thinking. When all of our human history works to convince us that putting people into boxes keeps us safe, it’s dangerously radical to live into the idea that love wins.

The modern populist revolt is happening on both sides of the political chasm, and we are called to reach out across this great divide and say, “You matter to me.” All the fact-checking and debunking in the world will not ease our suffering until we give witness to these people, our Samaritan neighbors, who are afraid. And yes, that includes the ones who are spewing racist hate speech, or deeply sexist rhetoric. This is the hardest task of our Universalist heritage — living into our covenant that every person has inherent worth and dignity — even those who are trying to take that worth and dignity away from others. And yet our world need this from us, desperately.

The life of Andrew Jackson is a warning of how easily the one claiming to be the saviour of the people can turn into an enemy of true freedom and justice. And seeing how the story of his life has been handed down in different ways, depending on one’s context, shows us how hard it is to ever find truth with a capital T. We must take the narratives we’re given, and instead of believing them at face value, test them against the rubric of our Unitarian Universalist call to build beloved, sustainable, welcoming communities in which people care for each other and thrive. This is how we find authenticity. This is how we embrace a multitude of truths that celebrate our diversity as a strength, not a weakness.

Even as I say that, I’m still afraid. But here, with you, I know I’m not alone. Even when I doubt myself, I believe in YOU. I hold tightly to that, knowing that even when we are afraid, when we are tempted to make terrible choices in the midst of our fear, together we will keeping calling each other back to covenant. This is how we ensure that love wins.

May it be so.

This Life, Imperfect

March 20, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

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Ask for the Stars

Bodies In Motion

January 3, 2016March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

Listen to the sermon:

Bodies in Motion

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.

Trans Identities

September 27, 2015March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

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):

Trans Identities

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

September 6, 2015March 16, 2017Meghann Robern

This is the text of a sermon given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville on September 6th, 2015.

Listen to the sermon:

Honest Work

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?

Book Smart, Heart Smart, Body Smart

May 19, 2015May 19, 2016Meghann Robern

Commencement Speech, Claremont School of Theology, May 19th, 2015

Commencement 2015 — L-R: AJ Bush, Kimberly Edwards, Meghann Robern

A little over three years ago, I decided, with the support of my family and friends, to pursue my call to ministry. As a Unitarian Universalist living in southern California, I had three choices for my Master of Divinity studies — two UU-identity schools that were low-residency, or Claremont School of Theology. There was well-meaning, but still intense, pressure to choose one of the UU identity schools, and I admit to leaning strongly in that direction. Then I came to a CST visit day.

What I found was a school that had taken its Methodist identity, and the Wesleyan call to put faith and love into action, and followed through all the way to its strangely heart-warming conclusion. It is easy to create a community when everyone in it believes the same things, thinks in the same ways, and comes from the same background. It would have been easy for CST to do “just enough”. Instead, this school recognized that “just enough” for right now would not even be close to enough for the future. In order to truly manifest the school’s mission statement to create agents of healing and transformation, a beloved community had to be fostered that respected the multitude of theologies, cultures, even languages that gathered here on this little campus. After just one day, I knew I could go nowhere else to truly “master” divinity.

I have not been disappointed. Yes, the school has great credentials. It’s accredited. It’s been named by the Religious Institute as one of the top thirty most sexually healthy and responsible seminaries in the country. It’s partnered with the Academy of Jewish Religion, the University of the West, the Indic Foundation, and been central to the creation of the Center for Sikh Studies, the Center for Jain Studies, and Bayan Claremont. During my three years here, I have shared classrooms with Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, and numerous Christian denominations. But the most extraordinary thing has been how intentional this community has been creating something outside of the classrooms: helping us learn about each other, and how to thrive together, while making us better at being leaders in our own traditions. My fellow UUs and I are in the minority here, but we are encouraged to contribute, and to speak up when we have a different point of view. I am reminded of the words spoken by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 1966: “There are those wonderful moments in life when you speak before a group that is so near and dear to you that you don’t feel like you have to engage in the art of persuasion. You don’t feel like you are in the midst of strangers. You know that you are with friends.”

I feel safe here. That quality is so much more than academic.

Which brings me to why I applied to be one of our commencement speakers today. I love this school, and not just because of the free massages and pizza during midterms. I have always been what pop culture calls “book smart”. I read really fast, I test well, and I write well. So the “school” part of this journey has been a lot of fun. I won’t go so far as to say easy… but fun. What set this experience apart from any other academic experience I’ve had is how much being in this community was also a learning experience of its own.

It has made me “heart smart”. I have spent so much of my life fighting against stereotypes and molds just to be seen and heard — as a woman person, as an outspoken person, as a fat person, as a parent person, as religious person — when I started here, I went through life resistance to me, always. All the time. There are no calm waters when you rock the boat simply by being in it. I felt constantly surrounded by strangers who needed persuading. Life was… exhausting. In my very first semester here, I was taken aback by how willing you all were — staff, faculty, and my classmates — to receive me. Me. And it has continued for all three years. “Tell me more,” you said. “I want to understand.” When I found myself in conflict between my schoolwork and my kids, you helped me find a way to include them. When I said, “What if we think about it this way?” you said, “Wow.” When I said, “This Systematic Theology paper has a soundtrack,” you listened to it.

One fall, my grandmother passed away the last week of the semester. All of my professors, the administration, and my advisor rallied behind me to get my incomplete filed so I could get on a plane as fast as possible — one even sending in paperwork from thousands of miles away. My classmates have often seen me better than I have seen myself, and brought me back into the fold of ministry when I doubted myself and my abilities to follow through on this long, difficult path. I am among friends. You have made me feel loved in a way that few people ever get to experience, and I will take that with me to share it with the rest of the world in all the ways that I am able.

This community has also made me “body smart,” and I’m not just talking about Feminist Ethics or Theology of the Body, although those classes were pretty epic. My time here has reminded me how integral our bodies are to our experiences of love and justice. I recognize now what I do to my own body, and how the systems in place in our cultures celebrate some bodies at the expense of others. I understand now that not only will sticks and stones will break our bones, but words most definitely hurt — they marginalize, they oppress, they erase people’s bodies completely from the narrative. And the narrative is where we find ourselves in communion with the Spirit of Life. You have taught me to be careful with my body and with the bodies of others, to be careful with my words and stories, and to use my body — including my loud mouth — to fight the good fight whenever and wherever I am able.

But that’s enough about me, and the graduates, and the faculty and staff. The biggest reason I wanted to speak up here today was to address the rest of you. All the friends and family sitting right in front of me, and watching the stream. None of us would be here, becoming Masters and Doctors, without you. You have put up with so much these last few years. You have waited until the end of a semester before suggesting that maybe we should clean our desks. You have forgiven us when we don’t return phone calls, texts, or emails. You have taken care of our children. You have worked hard at one, two, three jobs to pay our bills. You have kept us fed and clothed. You have endured countless nights alone. You have moved thousands upon thousands of miles across land and sea. You have left behind your home, your culture, even your language. You have said, time and time again, “I believe.” How blessed we are, to have been given such a precious gift. Know that you are appreciated. Know that you are loved. Know that you are just as much agents of healing and transformation as those of us about to walk across this platform.

Thank you, and blessed be.