Recently a Young Adult Unitarian Universalist I know asked me “I know Love is at the center of our faith but how the hell am I supposed to love my oppressor?!” This is such a good question. As we embark on a new year with the knowledge a genocide is happening on one hand and constant consumer messaging on the other, how do we center Love?

To be clear, there are as many different kinds of love as there are grains of sand on a beach. Family love, friend love, partner love, pet love, etc. But when we talk about Love being at the center of our faith, the most relevant love is called Agape Love. Agape Love is known for its qualities of empathy and sacrifice. It wants the best for everyone and is intended for everyone. In the Christian faith, from which both Unitarianism and Universalism was born, it is the love God extends to us and the reciprocal love we extend to God. That love includes all things and all people. It is a covenant of unending care.

What Agape Love is not is absolution. It does not mean that we do not hold each other accountable for wrongs. It does not mean we do not name a genocide as a genocide. It does not even mean we have to like one another. We can go so far as to hate someone and still find Agape Love for them. This is because even in our hatred we still must see the humanity in the other person. Even if they have acted in inhumane ways, Agape Love, our UU Love, calls us to uphold their worth and dignity as we hold them accountable for the terrors they have committed. See the difference there, we can hold people accountable and uphold their humanity. We can Love them.

So after I got through that mini sermon, of course this UU had more to say! Here’s a replay of the rest of our conversation:

young adult: So I can tell them I love them even if I hate them…that seems hypocritical.

me: Why are you even talking to them if you hate them?!! If they’ve done something so terrible to you, why are you allowing them into your life?

young adult:  Well you just said I have to affirm their humanity, don’t I have to engage with them to do that?

me: Goddess no! Agape Love says that you affirm their humanity, it doesn’t say that you are solely responsible for that.

young adult: So I can hate them and love them, just from a distance?

me: Yes, set a boundary. Make sure that their access to you is exactly as much or as little or as none as you want. There is no need to take care of your oppressor or abuser. Agape love means that when they are held accountable for their actions, it is done by someone else and it done while keeping their humanity intact.

young adult: Well what about revenge, what if I want them to suffer?

me: Ah, that’s really getting to the crux of it all isn’t it? It’s not about not wanting to love them or not. It’s that we want them to feel what we felt, suffer the way we’ve suffered. And we know that if we’re called to Love them, we can’t allow them to suffer. Even if we have. Even if we have at their hands. That’s really what this conversation is about isn’t it?

young adult: Well, yeah.

me: Will their suffering heal you? Will it make the world a better place? Will it in any way change what happened in the past?

young adult: No but…is this like the time you told me that hate is like drinking poison hoping that the other person will die?

me: Do you think it’s like that?

young adult: Hmmm, maybe. I’m gonna have to think about it.

me: Absolutely, that’s part of our faith too! And if you can, please let me know what you come up with because that’s how I learn and grow as a Unitarian Universalist too.

So beloveds, there it is. Let me know what you think so we can learn and grow together.

When I think about transformation, I often think of when people say they had a “transformational experience,” or when, as religious professionals, we look for the ways in which ministry can be transformational for our congregants.

And it gets me thinking: What is all this transformation about? In my experience, a lot of people really don’t like change. Even people who say they want to be “transformed” also can really not like change! Why would we seek that which we can’t actually embrace? I tend to think it is because our entire human experience is leading to an ultimate transformation which we cannot know the result: death. So sometimes we are, at best, ambivalent, and other times outright hostile to change.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is one of my favorite books about Change. Because in the book she explores the idea that God is not some distant almighty spirit, but rather the very up close and real experience of Change (capital C.) What an exciting idea to explore! Her most often quoted refrain from the book, and that which the central characters revolve, is “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

When I first read that phrase as a young adult, it blew my mind! I loved it. I loved the capitalizations which conveyed the idea that what we’re reading in the capitalized word carried with it the reverence of the word God. Here was a religion I could get behind. The idea that I could continually be both transformational and transformed?! Wow!

This idea helped me look at the changes in my young adult life in a new way. It helped me realize that while there was change that I couldn’t control, I could still make that change part of my life. And it helped me realize that I had a deep responsibility for the Change that I created in the world. That Butler chose to capitalize the Y in “All that you touch You Change” was something I thought about frequently. That I continue to think about when faced with difficult situations and decisions.

In Parable of the Sower, the people who couldn’t change, couldn’t adapt, those who desperately clung to racism, sexism, and fascism, did not survive the new climate changed landscape. They met the ultimate Transformation while resisting the very changes which could have helped their survival. And when I think about the difficulties we face as Unitarian Universalists, I think about what it is we are resisting and could those things be the very things that can prepare us for survival?

In creating the community structures of Parable of the Sower, Butler relies heavily on the community building foundations seen in the “We” culture communities in which she was raised. “We” culture communities in the U.S. are most often found in Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous peoples as well as other BIPOC communities. Among many “We” cultural values, most strikingly, the requirement of putting group needs ahead of the individual needs is foundational in Parable of the Sower.

So I wonder: What would it look like to put the needs of our entire faith community ahead of our individual needs? What are the needs of Unitarian Universalism at large? How do we meet those needs even when it feels like we are not getting what we want as individuals? This feels a lot like the conversations which are going on right now around the proposed changes to the UU Principles and Sources, often referred to as Article II.

As we’ve written about in recent issues of Quest, our denomination is in the process of adopting new language to articulate and ground our faith community. This new language is framed as seven UU values: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity and Love.

I wonder if haven’t we actually already made these changes in spirit. Haven’t we already touched, and thus Changed how we practice Unitarian Universalism? What if the proposed changes — the new UU values — are simply the language catching up to the spirit of Unitarian Universalism?

Perhaps we have already touched and been Changed. Because in the end, Change cannot be successfully resisted but it certainly can be influenced. And we can do so together. ′