In response to my November article about why we use the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” Clifford, a CLF member incarcerated in Illinois, asked me to look into the work of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about power and accountability from her vantage point as a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany.

Specifically, Clifford challenged my assertion that “I do not blame individual officers” for police violence against Black people. Drawing on Arendt’s work, Clifford wrote, “by not placing blame for particular action or inaction on the individual officers we not only strip them of the personal responsibility necessary to holding them… accountable, we undermine the importance and significance of the actions of those officers brave enough to stand up against the system.”

Hannah Arendt, in the essay Clifford asked me to read, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” writes, “where all are guilty, none is.” Making the case that “it is better to suffer than to do wrong,” Arendt says that individuals have a moral obligation not to perpetuate systems of injustice, even when their own lives or livelihoods are at stake. Clifford, and Hannah Arendt, of course, are correct. It is vital—even in an unjust system—that the individual perpetrators of acts of injustice be held accountable for their actions.

Arendt also notes that politically, “those who chose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.” “Acceptance of lesser evils,” she continues, “is consciously used in conditioning the…population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.” This is precisely how systems as violent and unjust as modern policing in the United States have become institutions that most white Americans support and trust—those of us acculturated to whiteness have been conditioned to accept evil.

Clifford is also right when he asserts that the notions of responsibility and accountability are not limited to extreme cases. Each of us makes moral judgments every day. Each of us makes choices for good or bad every day. Each of us has the option, again and again, to choose to participate in perpetuating wrong or to oppose it. And each of us should be held accountable when our actions cause harm to others.

It is here that we find tensions inherent in the principles that Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote. One example is the tension between freedom and responsibility. Our fourth principle says we affirm “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Freedom has limits. Elsewhere, the “right of conscience” promised in the fifth principle is not always compatible with the “justice for all” we seek in our sixth. Conscience has limits, too.

As a covenantal faith, we rely on how we agree to be together to help us decide what to do. And we rely on processes that help bring us back to covenant when we cause harm—processes of accountability in which we are asked to stop the harm that we are doing, to understand the harm we have done, to make amends for the harm, and finally, to agree not to do it again. Within our faith, just as in our society at large, these processes are imperfect. And yet, they are how we move forward towards creating better systems.

Not only is art a process of transformation but so is life. When we talk about spirituality we are talking about our inner life. Each of us has our own inner journey that we are traveling along that is filled with our own thoughts and feelings and experiences that only we have full access to. Most people have some stories or experiences that they never share because they are afraid that no one will understand or that people will reject them for it. One of the gifts of transformation is to take something that is difficult or unfinished or burdensome […]

The post Life is Art: The Joy of Transformation appeared first on BeyondBelief.

Ali speaking during the February 28th online meeting in which the CLF voted to ordain xer to Unitarian Universalist ministry.

In our UU tradition, ministers are ordained by congregations. Only the vote of a congregation can give someone the title “Reverend.” Only the vote of a congregation can place that sacred bond of trust onto the shoulders of someone seen as a minister.

It is with great joy that the membership of CLF on February 28, 2021 voted to ordain Ali K.C. Bell (who was previously known as Antonia Bell-Delgado) to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It is with deeper joy that I report that our vote included some 92 “yes” votes from our incarcerated members, able to vote because of the tear-off sheet we printed in the January Quest.

Ali will be ordained by the CLF along with the UU Congregation at Montclair, NJ (where xe is completing a ministerial internship) and the First UU Church of Wilmington, DE (xer home congregation). The ceremony will be Saturday, May 22, and we hope to feature an excerpt from the ceremony in our summer edition of Quest.

Since the bricks-and mortar congregation I serve first affirmed that Black Lives Matter and hung a banner with those words, we have had a steady stream of push-back to that phrase.

 Most of the people who object do so in anonymous letters and phone calls, and most of them argue that we should affirm instead that “all lives matter.” This is the public response I wrote to those people. Perhaps you, too, will find this helpful.

Of course all lives matter to us. Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person is the very first principle of Unitarian Universalism. And yet, all lives are not equally threatened by violence in our society. To simply state that “all lives matter” ignores the very real inequities faced by many.

It is easy to issue a blanket condemnation of all violence. It is harder to realize that a good deal of that violence is tied to systems and institutions that must be changed or dismantled.

It is easy to say that all relationships should be free of violence. It is harder to understand that the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women, and that the misogyny in our society contributes to every blow.

It is easy to say that all children are precious. It is harder to understand that LGBTQ+ youth are given such negative messages about their self worth that they are six times more likely than straight or cisgender youth to attempt suicide.

It is easy to say that we value a diverse society with people from all nations and ethnicities. It is harder to understand the anti-immigrant bigotry behind calls to separate and isolate poorer, browner schools filled with children of immigrants from wealthier (and mostly white) ones.

It is also easy to say that no one should be shot dead for a broken taillight. It is harder to understand that systemic racism leads us to a reality where unarmed Black men are seven times more likely than unarmed white men to be killed by police in a traffic stop.

I do not blame individual officers for this. I would imagine that there are very few police officers who signed up for their jobs with the explicit intent to perpetuate the racism built into our society. And yet, once you look at the reality of policing in this country, it’s clear that is overwhelmingly what is happening. The white supremacy baked into our society is endemic also in institutions given power and weapons by our state.

“Black Lives Matter” is a declaration that an emergency exists, not a statement that we value one race more than another. The emergency is that the lives of our Black siblings are being taken at an alarming rate in a society that systematically devalues them. The killing must stop. The dehumanization must stop.

All lives cannot matter until Black lives matter.

“Darling, the body is a guest house;
Every morning, someone new arrives.”
— jalal ad-din rumi

I do not espouse the theology that “everything happens for a reason.” I simply just don’t believe that. I don’t believe that pain and sorrow in our lives is deserved, even if it is a part of the universal human condition.

I don’t believe that suffering is redemptive or that God (or any other larger purpose) calls us to endure it. Too much damage has been done to people’s lives because of the belief that passively accepting pain and suffering purifies our souls and makes us worthy in the eyes of the divine. Way too much damage.

I do, however, believe that the hardships of our life can be opportunities for spiritual growth. To paraphrase Rumi, 13th century Persian mystic and poet, sometimes sorrow is a guest that sweeps our house clean so that joy may enter. Listening to our pain and learning from it is not the same as letting it take us over. Of course, we have to learn how to encourage the guests of sorrow, malice, and meanness to move on when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

The practice of moving through a labyrinth is very much a process of opening ourselves to feeling whatever is present for us, learning from them, and then releasing those things. You begin the process with an open mind—sometimes with a question, sometimes with an ache in your heart, sometimes with uncertainty, but always with an open mind.

As you make your way through the winding pathway towards the center, you must pay attention. To the lines. To the twists and turns. To lose that attention is to get lost in the labyrinth—it is the only way you can get lost, actually, since it’s just one pathway.

And keeping that attention with an open mind allows in the guests. Some of them—like the guests of joy and companionship and community—are ones we want. Some of them—grief, sadness, despair—are ones we didn’t invite but have to learn from anyway.

And then you get to the center.

In the center of the labyrinth is a chance to pause. A chance to sit with the guests that have come into your soul during your journey. A chance to listen to what they have to tell you. And a chance to make peace with the fact that they’re visiting you.

After whatever time you need to do this, you make your way out, following the same, solitary, serpentine path. The way out requires the same focus as the way in. And that focus signals to our guests that it is time for some of them to move on. I have found that moving through a labyrinth on a regular basis is a clearing, cleansing, and balancing ritual for my spirit.

The finger labyrinth included in this issue of Quest can be a spiritual practice you use anywhere you can have a piece of paper. Rather than walk or roll through a large labyrinth set on the ground, trace the line with your finger. The intention is the same. The practice is the same. I hope our Quest labyrinth allows you some measure of balance in your spiritual life.

How to use a Finger Labyrinth

1. If you can, try to find a quiet spot where you can sit down and put the labyrinth on a flat surface.
2. Sit still and quietly until you can focus just on the labyrinth. If you have the option, you could try ringing a chime, playing calming music, or humming a single note.
3. Start with your finger where the path opens to the outside of the labyrinth. As slowly and carefully as you can, trace your finger over the white path, until you get to the open space in the center of the labyrinth. Take your time; it can be hard to keep your place on the path.
4. If you wish, when you are tracing your finger along the path, you can try to focus your mind on thanks, regret or hope. Or, allow your mind to find its own focus for your meditation.
5. Pause when you get to the center of the labyrinth. When you’re ready, follow the same path back out. How did it feel to go on this journey?

Hope begins with honesty about what is real in this moment and yet it is not settled or complacent with the status quo. In this way hope involves living in this world without denying or escaping the present circumstances but with a strong sense of call and anticipation of something better.

The post Standing At The Gates of Hope appeared first on BeyondBelief.

Call to Action: Contact Governor Stitt in support of a mask mandate. Call to Caring: Write a note of encouragement and gratitude to the staff at our local hospitals during the holiday season to help lift their spirits. Senior Minister Rev. Marlin Lavanhar was interviewed on December 1 for a piece on the Governor’s call to “pray and fast” to stop the spread of Covid in our state. Here is what Marlin had to say about the interview. As you know, I’m all for praying… but I’m also for taking action.  America is facing the largest health crisis in living history […]

The post We Need More Than Prayer appeared first on BeyondBelief.

We are a divided nation. But that is not unusual. The recent election did not create the divisions; it just made them more evident. Neither division itself nor the differences among us are really our problem, because beneath and beyond all of our differences there are some things that unite us as Americans and as human beings. Or at least, there are some basic values that ought to unite us. I am not talking about what makes America great, but about what makes America work. Democracy has been called the worst form of government, except for all the other forms […]

The post A Nation Divided Can Certainly Stand appeared first on BeyondBelief.

I have to say that I feel like I am writing this to you from another country. Our Quest publication schedule is such that I am writing in March for publication in September. Which is generally not too much of an issue, except that March 2020 feels like a date that will go down in history, like the War of 1812, or 9/11. At the moment I am writing this, all of California, where I live, has been told to stay home to avoid spreading COVID19. I imagine the rest of the country will follow. I imagine that we are just at the beginning of enormous loss of life. I imagine hospitals in the US will soon be overwhelmed the way they already are in Italy. We are all, right now, pretty much in shock, but I imagine grief is on its way.

I imagine, but I don’t know. This is a message in a bottle, sent out to the future. I imagine (but don’t know) that by the time you read this in September, the worst of this crisis is past. I imagine being able to dance with my friends, to sing together, to go out to dinner or to a play. When you read this, you will either think “Of course!” or “How could she be so naïve!” I don’t know what September will bring, but I can imagine.

And perhaps that need to imagine is the real blessing in this time of crisis. Usually we go about our lives assuming that one day will be very much like the next. Some lousy days, some special treats, but generally all of a piece. Then a novel virus comes along and it’s all, well, novel. New. Unpredictable. We have some models based on the experiences of other countries, and the reasonable predictions don’t look good. But maybe we will have a medical breakthrough. Maybe people will be so careful for one another’s sake that we will stop this thing in its tracks. You know the answer, although I don’t.

But what I do know is that in this time of crisis an enormous amount of imagination is being required from us. Churches are re-imagining worship in a world of enforced social isolation. Musicians are re-imagining what a concert is as they continue to try to share their music with the world. Parents whose children are home from school are re-imagining education and family time and work and leisure and what a day might look like.

At this moment I am furious at the US government for what I would consider a criminal lack of preparation. But the rest of us have no choice but to be unprepared. We couldn’t imagine the place where we are now. But we’re working on it. I have to say that I am wildly impressed with the creativity and generosity of spirit that I am witnessing. So far this week I have done Zumba with a man who was live-streaming from some unknown country, attended a couple of virtual house concerts and watched live on Facebook as a friend drew a Venn diagram for her dogs to illustrate appropriate and inappropriate barking. The dogs watched studiously.

When everything is different, we have no choice but to live imaginatively, to create things that have never existed before. Radical disruption invites radical imagination. So now I am wondering just how radical our imagination might become. I wrote this poem today:

Imagine

Imagine with me for a moment—

don’t worry, I’m not saying it’s real.

Imagine, if you can, that there has been

not a calamity, but a great awakening.

Pretend, just for a moment,

that we all so loved our threatened earth

that we stopped going on cruises,

limited international flights,

worked on cherishing the places

where we already are.

In this pretty fantasy, everyone who possibly can

stops commuting. Spends the extra time

with their kids or pets or garden.

We have the revelation that everyone

needs health care, sick leave, steady work.

It occurs to us that health care
workers

are heroes. Also teachers.

Not to mention the artists of all kinds

who teach us resilience and joy.

Imagine, if you will,

that we turned to our neighbors

in mutual aid, trading eggs for milk,

checking in on those who are elderly

or alone. Imagine each of us

felt suddenly called to wonder

In this moment, what does the world

need from me? What are my gifts?

Yes, I know it’s just a fantasy.

The world could never change

so radically overnight.

But imagine.

Whatever life looks like in the world of September, I’m sure that we will still be imagining a better world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172652/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/05.mp3

In this spirit and our covenantal tradition, we will be deciding in the coming weeks and months how and when to resume in-person church activities and services. In the course of this pandemic, the balance of our decisions are weighted toward the common good.

The post For the Common Good: Pandemic precautions in the spirit of our democracy appeared first on BeyondBelief.

I’ve known the song Spirit of Life by heart for longer than I can remember.

Spirit of life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea.
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close, wings set me free.
Spirit of life, come to me, come to me.

Carolyn McDade, who wrote the song, tells the story of where it came from. I had heard through the grapevine that McDade wasn’t happy with the way that we often sing it, that it isn’t about celebration, it isn’t about triumph. If you listen to the words, you can hear that: it’s a request, a need, a longing. And when she was asked to tell the story, here’s what she said.

She was coming home from a meeting about Central America—this in the early 80s, when the US government was supplying arms to oppressive regimes, when people, including nuns and priests and activists were being massacred. She was coming home from a meeting, as she had done so many times as a life-long activist. The reporter Kimberly French records it:

What McDade remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. “When I got to Pat’s house, I told her, ‘I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I’ll be dust.’ I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me.”

McDade then drove to her own home in Newtonville. “I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer:

May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement.”

Spirit of life, come unto me.

It’s a prayer, a longing. It comes out of that place of feeling like a piece of dried cardboard, of feeling tired, empty, spent. That we cannot carry the load by ourselves for one more minute.

We yearn. We yearn for renewal because sometimes we feel like a piece of dried cardboard. We need renewal: a renewal of faith, a renewal of hope, a renewal of joy. I’ll tell you that lately I’ve been right there—dried cardboard, ready to be blown away.

Sometimes the candle is burning low. Sometimes it goes out. Parts of my life are good, and parts are really hard. There are parts of this work of ministry, this calling, that I deeply love, and there are parts that feel like slogging through a swamp. Like Carolyn McDade, sometimes I come home from the meeting on this or that, and feel like What was the point of that? The world’s problems seem so huge, and I’m just one person, and a tired one at that.

I’m yearning for renewal, and I’m feeling like dried cardboard. We’ve all had those dried cardboard moments, haven’t we? Stretched too thin, with no more tears to fall, because we’ve used them all up? Frustrated by the injustice of the world and despairing about how to fix it?

Yearning. And we reach for a language of that yearning, that longing for renewal. And, because we are Unitarian Universalists, because we know that language points to the mystery but isn’t the mystery itself, because we are suspicious of creeds and easy answers, this is complicated.

We want to be healed by some ancient ministry of stars, but language is tricky. For a long time we just avoided the subject all together. We didn’t talk about it; or, we spoke about it in psychological terms and not spiritual ones. We spoke about justice, but less about how to cultivate the spiritual resources necessary to stay at the work over the long haul, when things didn’t go according to plan. Sometimes we even dismissed this yearning as juvenile, something we had grown out of.

But that began to change a while ago. Partly, it was women like Carolyn McDade and others, who gathered to offer each other healing and comfort and solidarity, who expressed their yearning for the spirit of life, lived in community with one another. They kept their language open-ended, and focused on the heart. Others among us resurrected the old Universalist story of a God of love and mercy for all people everywhere, who loves us without needing us to be perfect.

As the culture has become more secular, the folks who come now to church don’t come for psychology—there are plenty of therapists to choose from, after all—they come for something deeper, something, dare we say, religious. Spiritual at least.

Some 15 years ago Rev. Bill Sinkford, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said we needed a “language of reverence.” He talked about his own long night in the hospital with his son, and how he reached for that language of yearning, and prayed—with open-ended language, but prayer to God—without apology. He was, by the very act of speaking of the yearning in his heart, renewed.

And he encouraged us, whatever our understanding of the holy, the sacred, the ultimate, to cultivate a language of reverence—a sense of mystery, humility, wonder and hope in how we spoke about and experienced our lives. A language of poetry.

There was a huge controversy at the time; folks thought he was saying we all had to say God, but that’s not what he meant. And when things settled down, it began to happen. Naturalistic atheists spoke about the sense of wonder and awe and community they felt when they stood upon the shore, under the stars.

The theists among us spoke of the love of God, how they prayed and yearned and felt that presence in their heart. Unitarian Universalists who were following the paths of Buddhism, Paganism, Islam and other wisdom ways of being in the world began to speak about their own languages of reverence: their yearnings for wholeness and healing and hope, their feeling of being dried cardboard, sometimes, and needing the spirit of life—however understood—to come unto them.

I’ve been feeling like dried cardboard, but I know that renewal will come. In time; you can’t force it. I know some of the things I need to do to set the stage. Reaching out to friends is one of them. Singing, that’s essential. I need to take Sabbaths. It’s really important to have that quiet, Sabbath time, because in the midst of a complicated life, when time is running down and urging us on, we need to put away our phones and lie on the hammock, and let Sabbath time renew us. We need to get out into nature and let water, sky and earth renew us for the journey, And I need to pray. To express my yearning, in the language of poetry and metaphor.

In time, renewal of the spirit, renewal of faith, will come. It was this kind of thing that we Unitarian Universalists began to talk about as part of the conversation about the language of reverence: our yearning, and our experiences of renewal.

We yearn, we seek, we long to be connected and renewed and inspired—and it’s right here. The holy isn’t gone from the world, it’s everywhere. Miracles happen every moment, if we open our hearts and minds—our friends, music, Sabbath time, nature, poetry—these things are each a sacrament, a sign of the holy in the world. In the beloved words of UU musician Peter Mayer, “Everything is holy now.”

I know there are moments that don’t feel like that, and suffering, pain and injustice are real. But even in these hard places there is holiness, there is compassion and solidarity and mercy and truth.

I may feel like a dried-up piece of cardboard right now, but these practices of holiness, of sacrament, have carried me through the journey before, and I know they will again. It’s the journey Bill Sinkford made from his son’s hospital room to the pulpit. It’s the journey Carolyn McDade made from the meeting about Central America to the piano. It’s the journey I’ve seen so many people make in their own lives, from a place of trouble and sorrow to a place of hope, solace and peace.

Each spring we celebrate renewal, as life comes back, but there really isn’t any seasonal limit on renewal. Open yourself to be renewed. Open your heart to all that is holy everywhere, every-now. Open yourself to life and love, even in your sorrow and grief, your fear and pain, for this too shall pass, and life is a gift, not a project. The Holy is here, is now, however you see it and feel it and name it— right here—so trust it will come.

And when it does, rejoice and be glad, and share your good news in this world which needs more than ever to be renewed as well.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131244/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/01.mp3

Imagine…if you believed democracy were essential. Not just a “choice” among variations of how to govern a group of people, but an essential structure. This is the claim authors Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen make in their new book, Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want. They write:

Creating democracies truly accountable to their citizens is essential to our very survival—to the flourishing of societies supporting human life, and now, because of climate change, to the survival of the Earth as we’ve inherited it.

This is a colossal claim, we know. But there’s one point on which human history makes us absolutely certain: it’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit…. What most defeats us is feeling useless—that we have nothing to say, nothing to contribute, that we don’t count.

Imagine that each of us could play an active, meaningful part in shaping the world we want to live in. Imagine a system in which the people share power. All the people—without limit or ranking according to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or the amount of money in their accounts.

Or, maybe we should imagine instead what it would be like to not live in a democracy. In some ways, it’s not too hard to imagine. Perhaps, like me, you have a fondness for period TV shows and/or for historical fiction. Any other fans of the PBS show Victoria? Over the years, there have been many such shows depicting life under a monarchy. I watch mesmerized by the beauty of palaces and gowns, feasts and gardens. And yet, I wonder—why do such portrayals of inequality of wealth and power have such a draw for me and for so many others in our democratic nation?

On an episode of Victoria, the young queen decides to visit the French king. Although the English prime minister seems wary, Victoria confidently exclaims that she would think that a self-made king should be very pleased to receive a visit from an anointed queen. I know it’s just TV, but think about Victoria’s attitude. What she says reflects the centuries-long belief that the authority to govern came from God, the Universal Ruler. Anointing a ruler was the sign of this divine blessing, this divine choice. So, this offhanded comment of Victoria’s reveals her clear bias that a ruler chosen by God would be better than a self-made ruler.

Yet, what is democracy if not a collective of self-made rulers? At its best, the democratic process allows people to “rule” themselves by sharing the power of governing. Choosing how to share power, how to govern, is of course the purview of politics. And yet, underlying these political choices are assumptions about who or what is the source of authority and power. In other words, underlying the choices of politics are ideas about human nature and the nature of the universe. Such ideas reflect religious commitments about the ultimate nature and purpose of existence.

For example, if the God of your understanding is an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Universe, then the source of all power must be understood as coming from that God. God holds the power and can divvy it out to those God chooses. This theological point of view supports the notion of the Divine Right of Kings that Victoria alludes to. Such a view of God as a power over others, who is due allegiance and obedience by “His” creation, generates an acceptance of hierarchal power as the natural order of the universe. When one accepts hierarchy as natural, the application of the same principle among human beings can be vast. Aristocrats with land are better than landless peasants. Men are higher than women. Whiteness is superior to people of color. And so on.

Of course, not all views of God support such a hierarchal understanding of power. For some, God may be all-powerful, but God created humankind as equal to one another. In my own training in feminist Christian theological discourse, I learned to rely heavily on Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In this view, God remains unquestionably superior to humankind, but among humans there is the expectation of equality. Indeed, this kind of just society is the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity.

And what of us as Unitarian Universalists? As inheritors of a Unitarian legacy, we hold fast to the individual capacity of a person to make moral and religious decisions. We have faith in our reason and in our ability to do good. And, as inheritors of a Universalist legacy, we claim an inclusive vision that values all persons, in a love that embraces people universally. Together these threads of individual capacity and universal inclusion emerge in our fifth principle: “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregation and in society at large.”

Our commitment to conscience and democracy emerge because of a long religious tradition that values the worth and dignity of every person. When we take these values as foundational to our understanding of how the world is, this is a religious claim.

I believe that religion is bigger than politics. I believe religion is about answering the biggest questions about who we are as fragile, fierce creatures; about where we find ourselves in this complex, beautiful, maddening world; and about how to navigate the ever-shifting dynamics of being who we are in the world in which we find ourselves. I believe religion is making sense of life by naming the landscape of how things are and values that will help us chart a course. I have chosen to be a part of the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition that values the capacity for moral choice as well as the dignity of each life, that promotes equity in human relations and the use of the democratic process in an effort to share power.

And it is from the basis of these moral commitments, these religious commitments, that I then take political action. It is from the basis of my humanity, my effort to craft a meaningful life in a shared world that I engage both my religious life and my political action.

And so I think that as religious persons and as a religious community we can engage in actions that seek to shape the kind of world we want to live in. We can promote and support issues that align with our inclusive values of human worth and dignity, of equity and justice in human relations, of the use of the democratic process in our larger society. We can live our values and religious commitments through our actions—through public social witness and the political process as well as through direct compassionate care to individuals in need.

There are limits to what we can do and to what we should do. By law, engaging in partisan politics endangers our non-profit status. Neither the congregation nor I can endorse or denounce political parties or candidates from the pulpit during an election. Nor do I think we should do this—even if it were legal. As a religious organization, we are exploring a much larger and bigger world than that of politics. We are reaching out to understand the expanses of meaning and the contours of moral action. I would never want who we are and what we do to be reduced to any political party’s platform.

And yet, I also do not want us to be curtailed in our relevance because we fear engaging in issues and actions that seem political. I believe that we can act in a public way as Unitarian Universalists with a religious voice, that we can call any and every political party to uphold certain shared values in their proposals and in their votes. We come together with a commitment to valuing every person—even those from a different political party. And we come together to live out those values in our actions—some of which may be to engage the political process.

We may not always agree on how to live out our values. It is a bold thing for a congregation to take a public position on an issue—to hang a Black Lives Matter banner, to offer sanctuary for a person facing deportation, to fly a rainbow flag on our steps. But, it is something we can choose to do as a religious act. Deciding what we should or should not do as individuals, groups, or as a congregation—that is a matter of conscience and the use of the democratic process.

Democracy is essential not because it is the only possible form of government. Democracy is essential because it is shared power that aligns with valuing the right of conscience and the worth and dignity of every person. Democracy is essential because to live out the fullness of who we are as human beings we need to feel like we can meaningfully shape the world we share.

Imagine what kind of world you would like to live in. Imagine believing, really believing, that you can be a part of making that world come to be. Imagine that democracy is essential.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110122023/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/01.mp3

I had a proud parenting moment the other day. My young adult daughter texted me “I have officially become the kind of annoying adult that won’t shut up about politics.” I replied “This makes me so happy.” Yes, I do feel that it says something good about my parenting that my kid is paying attention to politics. When she was little I made a point of taking her along with me to the polls to vote, so that we could talk about how important the process of informed voting is. And yes, when she turned 18 I badgered her into actually filling out her ballot and getting it in on time. My daughter is a young Black woman, and I feel like the world needs her vote, and she needs to feel that she can have an effect, however small, in shaping our country toward the way she wants it to be.

When I was her age, I did vote—I haven’t missed a presidential or congressional election since I turned 18. But I was hardly the kind of adult that wouldn’t shut up about politics. Politics seemed to me something like flossing—an annoying chore that you attended to because apparently it was important. Understanding issues was complicated and the information tedious. Politicians were better or worse, but not inspiring.

Then, in women’s studies classes in college, I learned the phrase “The personal is political.” That began to capture my imagination. How we live our lives, the choices we make, the way we treat the people around us, the words we speak or write, the songs we sing—it’s all political. Who we are as individuals shapes who we are as communities and who we are as a nation. That made sense to me. It also gave me an out. If I wasn’t going to protests or writing letters or campaigning, well, I was doing other things. Personal things.

Beyond voting and the very occasional protest my politics stayed pretty personal for some time. I just couldn’t bring myself to get invested in any activist way. I moved to Idaho in 1991 to serve my first congregation as an out lesbian. Surely, that was a personally political act! Well, in 1992 Kelly Walton, a local minister far into the right wing of Christianity started collecting signatures for an initiative that would stop gay people from having “special rights” like employment non-discrim-ination. And the personal got a whole lot more political. Somehow, two years later, when they had gathered enough signatures to get Initiative 1 on the ballot, I ended up as the chair of a faith-based organization opposing the initiative, and got out on the streets canvassing people to talk about why Prop 1 was wrong. In the end the initiative was defeated 50.38% to 49.62%, and we couldn’t help but feel our efforts made a difference.

I’d like to claim that my experiences of turning the personal political turned me into a life-long activist, but that would be a considerable exaggeration. I hate calling people with a nearly phobic passion, and standing in a group of people yelling just makes me feel squirmy. I make the occasional phone call, write the occasional letter, attend the occasional march. But I read about politics, and as the political situation gets more extreme and more bizarre my reading takes on an almost frantic quality. As if by knowing more I would have more control over the political tidal waves crashing through my country. Politics has gone from being tedious, to horror movie levels of jaw-dropping terror.

And I find that I have become the kind of annoying adult who won’t shut up about politics. To my friends. To strangers on Facebook, to anyone who will read what I write or engage in a conversation. Because it has become clear to me that not only is the personal political, the religious is political. Who I am as a minister is not more separable from who I am as a political person than it is from who I am as a mother.

And while it is not anywhere explicit in our UU principles and purposes, I believe that it is a central tenet of our faith that we are called to be in conversation. We are called to have convictions about how human beings are treated—with inherent worth and dignity. We are called to have convictions about how the earth is treated—as inseparable from our own lives. And we are called to talk with passion about what matters to us. We are also called to listen intently to what matters to others. We don’t have to agree, but we are called to be in the conversation. And we are called to move that conversation beyond the bounds of comfort into the wider world, boldly bringing all of our personhood into the realm of the political, working for a world in which everyone’s full personhood can flourish.

It isn’t easy. We will never do it “right” and we will never be done. But’s that’s how it is in any relationship. We talk. We listen. We choose. And then we do it all some more, trying to nudge ourselves, each other and the wider world toward something that looks more like wholeness.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121732/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/06.mp3

The call comes on a stunningly
ordinary telephone: the doctor
telling you the test is positive,
the agency saying that you have a child,
the lover who left so long ago
wanting to make amends.
Suddenly the earth tilts.
The path you thought to follow to the lake
heads sharply up the mountains.

The trail through the dense woods
comes around the bend into an open meadow.
Of course you weren’t prepared.
Who knows how to dress
for such a journey? Listen.
Inside your ear there is a high,
insistent ringing. What do you
suppose might happen
if you should answer?

Lynn’s book of poetry, Bread and Other Miracles, is available at lynnungar.com.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110085045/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/10.mp3

I confess I’ve never been a big fan of the concept of sacrifice. It’s always struck me as kind of punitive, like it’s morally superior to suffer than to enjoy life’s abundance. And the religious tradition of sacrifice, which is deeply engrained in a wide variety of religions around the world, strikes me as even more suspect. Why would God or gods want you to offer up something that surely a god has no use for? Why give up something so precious as a life, or even as trivial as a basket of fruit, for a god whose divine nature surely doesn’t run to eating or drinking? What kind of relationship is it when you are expected to give up something valuable for no reason other than to prove your love and devotion?

The quintessential religious story of sacrifice is that of Abraham and Isaac, from the Hebrew Scriptures. God tells Abraham that he must make a sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac—that he must take a knife and slaughter his own child as a way of proving his love for God. Now, when the time rolls around and Abraham raises the knife, he finds a ram caught in nearby bushes, and that ram becomes an acceptable sacrifice instead of his child. Yay.

Needless to say, this is a deeply disturbing story. Sometimes it is described as depicting human moral progress from sacrificing people to sacrificing animals, which is, you know, good. But isn’t this kind of a horrible way of God asking for proof of love and devotion? Where was Isaac’s choice in the whole thing? Where was Sarah, Isaac’s mother? Shouldn’t they both have gotten some say in whether taking Isaac’s life was an appropriate demonstration of Abraham’s love for God? For that matter, who gets to say whether God’s demand for Isaac’s life was a reasonable ask to begin with? What kind of a dreadful story is this?

Maybe it is a story that is both dreadful and true. The fact of the matter is that life continually demands sacrifices of us, some insignificant and some heartbreaking. Parenting, for starters, always involves sacrifices. Of course, there are the sacrifices that parents make for their children: the sleepless nights, the severe limitations on your freedom, the financial and emotional cost of being responsible for keeping another person safe and growing. Those are hard enough.

But there are also the sacrifices we make of our children. We walk away from a crying child to catch an airplane for a business trip. We shut down the endless barrage of questions and demands to get the ten minutes of quiet that we need to maintain our sanity. We send a child to school when another day to recover from illness might be better, because we simply can’t miss another day of work. We inevitably fail at the daily balancing act between what our kids want and what they need, or the ongoing push and pull between what we know society expects of them and the perfect freedom of expression that they deserve. And if all that
weren’t enough, we live with the knowledge that the choices of our generation deeply and inevitably affect the world that our children will inherit.

And there is just no way to do it right, let alone do it perfectly. The fact of the matter is that the world is continually making utterly outrageous demands. It isn’t nice or fair or right, but it is true. And the concept of sacrifice is one way of making sense of that painful reality. Sacrifice declares that in the face of all the impossible challenges that the world presents to us, we choose. Rather than just stumbling through whatever happens to be on our path, we try to remember what matters most.

Of course, what matters most changes from moment to moment. But the idea of sacrifice is that, at least some of the time, we are able to choose to give ourselves to what we most care about. We can give up what is lesser for the sake of what is greater. Maybe that looks like a choice to give up eating meat for the sake of the health of the planet. Maybe it looks like sitting through the raucous honking of a middle school band concert so that your child can see your loving witness. Maybe it looks like listening with soft eyes while someone berates you for a mistake you didn’t know you made.

Of course, not every loss is a sacrifice. Sometimes we really just get no choice. But the idea of sacrifice reminds us to consider when we do choose: Who or what is lost because of my decision? Who gains? What price will I pay and what will be the cost to others? What do I have the capacity to give so that someone else can thrive?

The choices, of course, are never entirely right and never entirely wrong. But the idea of sacrifice invites us to meet the challenges of the world with the crucial, ongoing question How do I serve love? and with its partner question Is there a larger love that I might serve? Maybe living in the rich and beautiful complexity of those questions is all that anyone, divine or human, has a right to ask.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063339/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/05.mp3

Brian La Doone is a musher—a sled dog racer—in far northern Canada, which is polar bear country. He says he keeps a working distance of about 70 feet from the bears. His Canadian Eskimo sled dogs don’t always do likewise. On one occasion La Doone warily witnessed a polar bear loping toward one of his sled dogs. The dog wagged his tail and bowed. This happened during a time when the polar bears were particularly hungry. The sea hadn’t yet frozen and the bears couldn’t reach the seals they typically hunted on the ice.

To La Doone’s surprise, the two began to play, to frolic. They rolled around and wrestled in the snow. They embraced and nipped at each other. The dog knew something La Doone didn’t know. The bear had signaled its playful intent while it approached. The dog in turn had signaled its playful intent. The bear actually returned every day for the next week to romp with the dog. And then, when the ice finally thickened enough, the bear headed off for its hunting ground.

What possessed the polar bear to want to play with the dog rather than making a meal of him? Why did the dog take the risk? Why did these two unlikely creatures become playmates? Why?

Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughn relate this story in their book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. The title of the book pretty much tells the story on play, which is as vital to true aliveness as breath is to being alive. Children and animals know this. They engage in play naturally. If left to their own devices, they play. That’s what they do. They intuitively and instinctively play. For adults, play too often comes to be seen as a waste of time, goofing off, or something to do in our spare time. At best, we set aside time for play—times of the day or week or year. The Protestant work ethic, our culture of busyness and drive for achievement, keep a tight grip on us. Many of us are frantically trying to keep up with the day-to-day demands of work, family and household. There is a constant urge and encouragement to demonstrate our worthiness and productivity. We need to get things done. And church can sometimes feel that way too. “Go for a walk” or “take a vacation” get added to the bottom of a to-do list.

The lack of play is no longer just an adult concern. There’s increasing evidence that children are becoming play deprived. Parents are often the ones most aware of this. Ironically, research suggests that the adults most worried about their children’s lack of play are also the ones most likely to lack play in their own lives. Parents, take note. The solution is obvious. Start playing more yourself.

The greatest danger in play deprivation may not be obvious at first. It may just seem like life is a little less fun and a little more serious. But observing those who have stopped playing makes it clear that there are more troublesome repercussions. A person or animal that stops playing becomes disinterested in new activities. When play stops, it becomes hard to find pleasure in the world. When play stops, our creativity, adaptability and intelligence get thwarted.

The opposite also occurs. When animals and people stop finding pleasure in the world, they stop playing. Anyone who has a pet has witnessed this behavior. One of my cats was recently unwell. He was having what looked like seizures and overall lacked his usual pep. A vet visit and blood work revealed a urinary tract infection. He got an antibiotic shot. After only one day, he was bouncing around like he had springs in his feet, livelier than ever at age 14. Play puts an added bounce into our step. Brown and Vaughn point out that play also animates the mind and has physical, social, intellectual, and psychological benefits. Play aids in survival. It makes us smarter and more adaptable. It makes us more creative and innovative. It fosters empathy and enables us to form complex social relationships and groups.

So it might be a good time to take a personal inventory of how exactly your play life is going. How much are you playing? Are you bringing a playful spirit to your work life, to your relationships, to worship? Is there a particular form of play you might engage in more often?

I’ve been reading a lot about play, and trying to practice it more. There are many benefits and attributes. I want to highlight just three that aren’t immediately obvious.

For one thing, the point of play is that it doesn’t have a point. People who study play consistently name purposelessness as a central quality of play. In other words, play isn’t goal-driven. You do it for the sake of the activity itself. Margaret Guenther, an Episcopal priest and spiritual director, says, “Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried.”  During play, there’s a sense of timelessness.

As a child I loved anything artsy-craftsy—coloring, drawing, making things. At Sunday School and in regular school I got so absorbed in my projects that I lost track of time. I struggled with the time limits on arts and crafts projects. I wanted to keep on practicing “holy uselessness.” That’s a phrase Guenther uses to describe this sense of purposelessness. She says in her book Toward Holy Ground:

When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.

Similarly, Stuart Brown says, “[Play] doesn’t have a particular purpose, and that’s what’s great about play. If its purpose is more important than the act of doing it, it’s probably not play.” That’s a great distinction. I can’t tell you how often I have tried to multitask my play time. If I go running to lose weight or be healthy, that’s great. But it’s probably not play. It’s possible it will become play while I’m running, but maybe not. On the other hand, if I run just for the sheer sake of running, for its own sake, for the pleasure of it, that’s play.

A second, striking, aspect of play is that it is deep. Soul level deep. It has its own reality. It runs counter to cultural norms, rules, and expectations. Maybe that’s part of what scares and thrills us about it. In her book Deep Play, author and poet Diane Ackerman says:

One sheds much of one’s culture, with its countless technical and moral demands, as one draws on a wholly new and sense-ravishing way of life…. We can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles…. When it happens we experience a sense of revelation and gratitude.

Deep play invites us to give up control, give up certainty, and give up our preconceived ideas and rules. That’s because play arises from deep within us, not from the world’s standards for us. It is an authentic expression of self. Play taps into our own creativity and innovation. Special equipment and fancy toys can actually get in the way. They can suppress the inner expression of self, rather than cultivating it.

Religion is the third quality of play I want to talk about. Diane Ackerman writes that: “Deep play … reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking [understandable], creativity possible, and religion inevitable.” Religion may seem an unlikely playground. So often we think of religion as being stiff, boring, structured, dogmatic, and serious. That has a lot to do with the kind of religious upbringing and experiences we’ve had. I don’t think of our Unitarian Universalist religion as stiff or boring. And we certainly aren’t dogmatic. But too much focus sometimes gets placed on church “work” rather than church “play.”

UUs can be a driven group of people who want to save the world. That’s part of the reason for religion. But we do well to remember that play helps us do that even better. Play helps build the beloved community we long for. It deepens relationships, builds bridges across our differences, promotes belonging, grows our souls, and cultivates harmony and love.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles and sources don’t mention play. Not explicitly, anyway. But the first and sixth sources of our faith are suggestive of play. The first source draws on the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to forces that create and uphold life.” Play and wonder go hand in hand. Play renews the spirit. Play opens us to creative forces. The sixth source draws on “earth-centered teachings which celebrate the sacred circle of life.” To celebrate the circle of life is to sing, play musical instruments, tell stories, enact pageants, share in rituals, share our joys and our sorrows, hear poetry, pray, and meditate. Through these and other forms of play, Unitarian Universalism calls us back to ourselves, to holy uselessness, to the spontaneous expression of true self where creativity, joy, and gratitude abound.

What would it hurt if we were to be more playful in all we do—whether at church, at home, at work? Perhaps if we let go of a bit of our usefulness and purpose we could step into another realm that was more creative, more joyful, more deeply and truly religious. Which might turn out to be our life’s purpose after all.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044154/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/03.mp3

“Who are you?” the caterpillar asks Alice in Alice in Wonderland. It turns out that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Maybe the caterpillar would like to know who Alice is in relationship to him. After all, she’s a stranger in Wonderland. The caterpillar is likely wondering where this stranger came from and what to make of her.

It turns out that this side of our identity is something that we run into a lot. We humans are relational creatures, and we want to understand how other people’s lives connect with ours. When you meet a new person they might want to know where you work or where you go to church or where your kids go to school.

Unfortunately, we humans are also quite territorial, and all too ready to decide that someone “doesn’t belong.” After her encounter with the caterpillar, Alice ends up growing so tall that her neck becomes long and snake-like, and a pigeon, in great disgust, accuses her of being a serpent. It doesn’t do Alice any good to protest that she is a little girl—the pigeon has already concluded that Alice is a serpent after her eggs.

This is rather silly in Wonderland—after all, no one ever really eats a mushroom and turns into a giant with a long neck—but it happens all the time that people decide who we are, and then conclude that what they have invented about us makes us a threat. And the less people know—the more they categorize someone as a stranger—the more likely they are to see them as potentially dangerous. For instance, people in locations with very few immigrants tend to be much more negative about immigration than people who live in places with large populations of people from outside the country. People who believe that they don’t know any LGBT folks are more likely to be homophobic than people who have LGBT friends or family.

Our brains want to affirm our identity by identifying who we are not. Evolution has shaped our brains to distrust those we think of as being not like us. But the world changes faster than evolution does, and in the modern world our chances of being neighbors with people who are, in one way or another, not like us are just about 100%.

So how do we re-tune our brains to this world where we constantly encounter people who are outside our “tribe,” who differ from us in ethnicity or race or language or politics or gender or sexual orientation or ability or any of the 1001 ways that people are different from one another?

Maybe some part of the answer lies in our ability to answer the question Who are you? There are so many answers to that question. We are our relationships: parents, children, siblings, partners, friends, colleagues, teachers and students. We are our heritage: race, ethnicity, language, stories. We are our sexual and gender identities. We are our bodies: age, ability, height, appetites. We are our theologies and our philosophies, the things we’ve learned and the things we want to explore. We are our hopes and fears and dreams and disappointments.

And not one of those things is normal. Or abnormal. When we invest the time and attention into deeply and specifically answering the question Who are you? we come up with a long list of precious details that we hold in common with others—and at least as many that differ from people who we know. The tendency to identify people as “strange” or “other” rests in the assumption—often unconscious—that our identity and experience is “normal.” But the more we look at all the facets of who we are, the more obvious it becomes that our intricate set of facets couldn’t possibly be the same for everyone.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle. Alice, in the confusion of falling down the rabbit hole and changing size and meeting beings as surprising as a hookah-smoking caterpillar, loses track of who she is. Or at least loses the ability to define herself in the ways she is used to. But in moving through a place where so much is unknown to her she is challenged to understand herself in new ways. Which is another part of the answer to how we change our brains.

When we dare to enter unfamiliar places, talk with unfamiliar people, taste unfamiliar things (even if they don’t change our size), then who we are expands to meet our expanded world. As Alice experiences, we may run into folks who challenge our sense of who we are—who lead us to the awkward realization that we aren’t sure, that our identity is shifting with each surprising encounter. It isn’t necessarily comfortable, this interview with a caterpillar, or with any stranger. But it is what leads us into a Wonderland of discovery, where we move beyond imagined walls into new possibilities for who we might turn out to be.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110015823/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/05.mp3

If, like me, you are fortunate enough to have a refrigerator and the means to fill it, it is possible that you have a tendency to stand in front of the open fridge, staring at the contents and wondering what there is to eat. It is even possible that some of us do this multiple times a day, staring at the shelves as if something would have magically appeared while the door was closed.

The thing is, when I stare at my open refrigerator—or at my open snack cupboard—it’s not just that I’m hungry. I’m hungry for something in particular, but I don’t know what. And so I stand there, wondering if what would satisfy me at this moment is avocado or cheese—or maybe both together on toast. What exactly is it that I want?

You could quite reasonably argue that my refrigerator-gazing habit is silly—I pretty much know what’s in there with the door closed, since I did the shopping and the cooking myself. And it is certainly not energy efficient to stand there letting the cold air out and the warm air in. But I would contend that the question that goes along with staring at the food is absolutely crucial.

What do I want? What exactly do I want? I imagine that pretty much all of us spend a lot of time dissatisfied with our own personal lives and with the world in general. We hunger for work that is meaningful and restorative rest and caring relationships and fun times and a world that is more just. And many of us have gotten pretty good at recognizing and sharing the many things we see that are wrong with the world—racism and homophobia and sexism and ableism and environmental degradation and corruption in government and the whole long list of very real, and often devastating, problems.

And it matters to identify those problems, whether personal or social. We need a clear analysis of what has gone wrong and why. But it seems to me that we often assume that identifying the problem is the same as finding a solution. Somehow we seem to think that if we tell our partner or our child how their looking at their phone during dinner makes us nuts, it should fix the relationship. Or maybe we figure that by sharing news of the latest police atrocity against a person of color on Facebook we are dismantling white supremacy.

And those are both perfectly good things to do. But they aren’t solutions. Solutions don’t start with what is wrong. Solutions start with the question What do I want? And the more precise we can be about what we want, the more specific we can be about how we might be able to get there.

What do I want from my family at dinner time? I want to hear about each person’s day, their successes and frustrations. I want to look in the eyes of the people I love. I want to share a story about something that happened to me today. I want to make plans for what we will do on the weekend. I want to hear about an idea you had or a book you read or something you learned.

When I know what I want, I can ask for it. I can make a plan for how I might get it. I shift the focus from how the other person is wrong to concrete steps that would move in the direction of something that is better. Of course, getting to those solutions is not necessarily easy. What I want may be in conflict with what someone else wants. Powerful forces may stand in the way of what I want. But creating change is only possible when you move step by step down the path of what exactly do I want?

To be clear, I’m not saying that there is some magic power that will manifest what you want if you just imagine it. I’m not a fan of the power of positive thinking, or of the prosperity gospel which seems to generate so much more prosperity for its preachers than for its followers.

The question What exactly do I want? is pragmatic, useful. What do I want? Justice. What exactly do I want? Well, it’s a long list, and I’m going to have to choose where I will focus my attention at any given point in time. I want an end to racist policing. OK, but that’s really what I don’t want. I don’t want racist policing. What do I want? I want police who understand their job as protecting and serving the entirety of the community where they work. I want police to choose de-escalation over force whenever possible. I want the police department to listen to the community about what would make people feel safer. I want police officers to be accountable for their behavior.

That list could go on and on, and each piece could be broken down into smaller pieces. But when I know what I want I can find other people who want the same thing, and we can find points in the system where we can exert pressure to accomplish those goals.

Maybe my standing in front of the refrigerator pondering what exactly I might be hungry for is a waste of time and energy. And it is possible to get what you wanted purely as a delightful surprise, without even knowing the hunger was there. But if you intend to actively pursue positive change, then the more exactly you know what you want, the better position you are in to make it happen.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004621/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/06.mp3

REMARKS: TREE OF LIFE MEMORIAL SERVICE B’NAI EMUNAH SYNAGOGUE, TULSA OCTOBER 30, 2018 By:  Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar Senior Minister, All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa My congregation and I come with our broken-hearts to grieve with you. We at All Souls consider the Jewish community of Tulsa to be family. Before we had a church building, in the early 20’s we worshipped at Temple Israel downtown for a couple of years. Then in the 1990’s congregation B’Nai Emunah worshiped at All Souls for two years when you were remodeling. When you live with people they become family! We are here to affirm that anti-Semitism […]

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Our UU faith encourages us to be agents of change in the world.

Rather than leaving it up to God to reward or punish people after they die, we think that folks should spend their lives not only trying to be ever-better human beings, but also trying to make the world an ever more just and compassionate place.

This is, of course, a tall order. Being an agent of change isn’t easy. Mostly individuals and social systems alike want to stay the same. “Homeostasis” is a high-priced word for exactly that phenomenon. In the same way that our bodies fight to stay at an internal temperature somewhere around 98.6     degrees regardless of what the weather is like outside, relationships between people—including complex social relationships—tend to actively preserve things as they are.

So how do we serve as agents of change? If our mission is to make the world a better place, what exactly is our job?

It seems to me that there are all kinds of jobs, all kinds of agents, and that some people naturally gravitate toward some roles more than others.

Most obviously, there are activists. Activists agitate. They lead protests and other symbolic actions, drawing the attention of both politicians and the general public to wrongs that need to be righted. They get arrested. They take to the streets with songs and banners. They sit in. They write letters, and ask their friends and neighbors to write letters. In whatever way they can, they pressure those with power to attend to the needs of the people.

Blessed are the activists, for they claim power for those who seem powerless.

Less obviously, behind the activists there are strategists. They plan. They identify not only what exactly they hope to change, but also where there are points in the system that might yield to pressure. They organize, build coalitions, foster conversations to help discern what the next move will be.

Blessed are the strategists, for they carry a map for the journey.

Somewhere in the mix of activists and strategists there are communicators, who cast a wide net to draw people toward the work of change. They articulate the message of existing wrongs and new possibilities in ways that change hearts and minds.

Blessed are the communicators, for they widen both the conversation and the community.

Significant social change only happens with the sustained efforts of large groups of people, but not all movement toward change happens in groups. Some agents of change are explorers, bold thinkers who are able to share both a clear picture of the world as it is and also a vision of the world as it might be. Explorers are people who offer possibilities. They are often historians, people who have a clear enough understanding of how we got to where we are to enable them to imagine where we might go from here.

Blessed are the explorers, who know the path we have traveled, and can imagine the road ahead.

Finally, there are artists, the creatives, people who, in music or paint or words or dance or sculpture or any number of other forms, create new worlds for us to inhabit. Artists give us the ability to not only see things as they are and to see other worlds that don’t yet exist, they also enable us to live in the gap between those two. Artists both create visions of what is possible, and invite us to live in the longing for something better than what we know.

Blessed are the artists, for they invite us into worlds of possibility.

Of course, many people operate in more than one of these categories, and a lot of us have a hard time finding our way into any of them. All the roles I’ve described are for different kinds of leaders, and the reality is that in many situations a whole lot of us not only aren’t called to be leaders, we shouldn’t consider ourselves leaders. If we are trying to be supportive of a community we are not members of, being a follower is probably a better choice.

But one way of being an effective agent for change is to look for the activists, the strategists, the communicators, explorers and artists who inspire us, and throw our weight behind their efforts. Rather than feeling inadequate and overwhelmed in the face of injustice, we can look for places where we might lean in, places where our own lives can shift toward something just a bit new, just a bit brave, just a bit outside our familiar comfort zone where we know what will happen because it has always happened that way before.

It might be scary. We might say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or feel like we’re not up to the task. Remember, it is as natural to long for the safety of the familiar as it is for your heart to return to its customary beat.

But what feels natural and what feels possible are two different things. You can, through diligent exercise, actually change your natural resting blood pressure. And you can, through diligent exercise, move down new paths, re-envisioning your journey as one of creating change.

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