TIA
CLF member, incarcerated in KY

Love is the wish for all human beings to have happiness. Compassion is the wish for all human beings to be free of suffering and what causes suffering. Prejudice and being judgmental alienates us from each other. A quote from Mother Theresa captures this well: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

The monk and theologian Thomas Merton also spoke to this, saying, “the whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all living beings, which are all part of one another and all involved in one another.”

Spiritual practices like meditation and prayer can be used as tools to calm our mind, make us more peaceful, eliminate worry, develop concentration and understanding, as well as control our anger and jealousies, and rid us of negative actions and guilt. It is a tool of transformation; by taking the time to reflect on ourselves and our faults, we can change them.

How you treat someone is dependent on you, and you are only responsible for your actions, not everyone else’s. You can choose to change or transform anything you don’t like about yourself. You choose who you are and also who you associate with.

Many of us were reminded of the central role of community and chosen family in our lives by the articles by Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera in the most recent issue of the Worthy Now Newsletter. I was forced to create my own chosen family starting in 1990, when I was disowned by my family of origin for coming our as LGBTQ. I’m male to female transgender, and I’m not a devout Catholic, which didn’t earn me any familial credits. Since then, I’ve seen no one, and not been invited to any family functions, or been notified of any births, weddings, or deaths. Looking back at this time, my one regret is not finding the Church of the Larger Fellowship or Unitarian Universalism earlier — though I know I may not have been ready to join the community at that time, given the long spiritual journey I’ve been on and the religions and philosophies I’ve studied in the time past 30 years.

Prayer now helps me to center myself in love and compassion. I’d like to offer a prayer that may also speak to you:

Prayer for World Peace

Peace be spread throughout the Earth!
May the orient express peace,
May peace come from the East and go West,
May peace come from the North and go South,
And circle the world around!
May the garments of the Earth,
Be in the place to magnify the Divine.
In this day and hour of this night,
May the world abide in an aura of Divine Peace.

The Unitarian Universalist minister David O. Rankin liked to relate a story from his career. In 1968 he preached a sermon just before the presidential election in which he was not thrilled between the choice of Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey. Instead of making the case, however subtly, for either candidate, he chose instead to recommend that everyone vote for the most intelligent, experienced and compassionate candidate. Moments later, in the receiving line after the service, he was confronted by a man loudly and angrily shouting at him, “How dare you use the pulpit to support Hubert Humphrey!”

I endorse no candidates here, nor even stake a position on individual items on any ballot. No, let’s talk politics, but not parties. For decades now, we have repeatedly been told about values voters, and the moral majority, and the religious right, and family values and “pro-life” voters and so on.

It’s time to change the script.

Because friends, I’m a values voter. And the values I hold dear are taking care of my fellow human beings, ending oppression, and making sure that people have healthy food and a safe place to live. My values support     people of all gender expressions and sexual orientations, people of all races and ethnicities, of all national origins. My values are truly pro-life, not just pro-birth.

I consider myself both moral and part of a majority. I try to live a good life, to not harm others as much as possible, to do the right things and to be a good person. And I believe that the majority, perhaps all of us, are doing those same things, even if we might sometimes differ on how to accomplish them.

And I hope it goes without saying, I’m religious, though not right. I’m tired of the conversation about religion in this country assuming that religious people span the gamut from fundamentalist Christians to conservative Christians. There are liberal and radical people of faith, and there are Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and dozens of other religious groups who are here and politically engaged! If we could get this word out to the major news networks sometime soon, that would be great.

I think I have great family values. Those values include supporting same-sex couples in living their lives the way they choose, with the same access to rights and privileges I have as a heterosexual, cisgender man in an opposite-sex marriage. And I have family values that say children should grow up in a home where they are loved and cared for and supported, and that matters more than other concerns.

And I’m pro-life, but not in the narrow, nonsensical way I often hear used by those who claim that title. I support life—I want to support the flourishing of all human life. I recognize that women have a better understanding of their own bodies and decisions than I do. I oppose the death penalty—again, because I support life. I’m anti-poverty and pro-prison reform, because I’m for life. I’m pro-medicine and pro-science, and even pro-socialized medicine, because I’m for life.

I’m even, and here’s something you probably didn’t expect a minister to say, pro-gun. At any rate I’m not totally anti-gun, and that feels radical in an age where there’s precious little middle ground. Though I don’t own any, I’m not opposed to guns. I’ve lived in places where guns are important, and not as a symbol or for some inflated sense of self-defense. I lived in rural Mississippi and spent time with people who hunted, for whom guns were part of a way of life, with people who each donated hundreds of pounds of meat a year to a local children’s home as part of a program called Hunters for the Hungry. So I’m pro-gun, and I’m pro-responsible gun ownership, and I’m pro-sensible gun control—something this country lacks right now.

Maybe you think at least some of these same things about yourself. Perhaps you cringe at the destructive, divisive policies and platforms you hear from people who are too eager to lift up their moral framework as the right, and proper, and only one for this country. You might see the US as a country too large and too diverse and too amazing to be contained by any one system of thinking or seeing.

We follow the prophetic calls of those who have come before us, like Frederick Douglass and Barbara Jordan and Rosa Parks, and those like the Rev. William Barber working today. Barber has called upon people of faith to lift up and defend the most sacred moral principles of our faiths. We support pro-people and anti-war policies, equality in education, healthcare for all, fairness for all people in the criminal justice system, and rights for all people, especially people of marginalized identities.

The work that Unitarian Universalists around the country and the world are doing in the political process, the work we do in our local communities, all of this is part of the same work of creating the beloved community. And whoever we elect, this work will continue.

Friends, vote for the most intelligent, experienced, and compassionate candidates. And then go love the hell out of the world, each of us in our unique ways. The world cries out for our efforts, and no election alone will end that.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121926/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/02.mp3

I have learned about faithfulness and sacrifice as a result of a very strange journey I have been on since I inadvertently found some of the men who were in Vietnam with my older brother, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Christian Jr., “Bobby” to me, who was killed on April 11, 1969.

My son, Luke Christian, did an internet search for his own name and turned up a webpage where some of my brother’s Marine brothers paid tribute to him. In the years since then I have met with many of those men and even attended their reunions.

After my brother’s death in Vietnam, I saw him as a victim more than anything else. My brother joined because he received a draft notice after he graduated from college. He wrote a poem questioning war shortly before his death. The Marine Corps took a gentle young man who was taught “Thou shall not kill” in church and turned him into a killer. It’s hard for me to even speak that sentence; but, of course, that is what young Marines are trained to do. The Marine Corps part of his life was not something I wanted to dwell on and so, for many years, I did not.

The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful. Many of the guys end their email messages with “Semper Fi” or “S/F” and I often end mine with “Always Faithful.” We are all faithful, but to what or to whom? When this journey began, I would have said that my faithfulness was quite different from Marine Corps faithfulness. I would have said theirs is a blind faithfulness and that mine is a questioning faithfulness. I would have spoken about the differences in how we view doubt and ambiguity.

But what I have learned has both surprised and humbled me.

Marines have a commitment to leave no body behind. For these men, it meant that they would risk death to haul a body out of a rice paddy. My mom used to say, “Do not spend money on me when I’m dead. Wherever I die, dig a hole under me.” I would have also taken this to mean that I shouldn’t risk my life to haul her body out of a rice paddy.

In one conversation with a Marine, I said, “I can’t imagine my brother would have wanted someone else to risk their life to retrieve his body. I would hate to think that others might have died to do that.” He looked at me like he didn’t know where to start, because I just didn’t get it. He was right, but now I get it. Everything hinges on what we are willing to do for one another. Our willingness to sacrifice ourselves to protect one another is everything. We are all in this together. We are all we have. We are the saviors we’ve been waiting for.

The greatest sin is to put your own safety above the safety of others. The higher your rank, the greater your position of privilege, the greater the sin. When we put our own safety first, we are lost and so is everyone else. There is no such thing as individual salvation. We are lost or saved together. When we know that others will put our safety before theirs, all things become possible.

There is another part of “leave no body behind” that illuminates Marine faithfulness. You are part of something greater. It began before you and it will go on after you. You enter into a stream of history and you will be remembered. You are part of a living tradition. Your memory and your sacrifice will not be in vain. Your Marine brothers will continue to carry you with them, whatever the cost.

And my brother’s Marine brothers have continued to carry him and others who made the ultimate sacrifice. While still in the midst of war, these boys and young men contacted family members of killed and wounded brothers. They sent their own family members to visit the sick and wounded. They came home and named sons after fallen brothers. One son is named Robert Christian Ager. They made pilgrimages to The Wall just to touch a name. One of the men drove 2,400 miles to attend the memorial service of the man whose face he first saw when he woke up after losing his left arm in a firefight. Whenever they gather for Company or Battalion reunions they hold memorial services.

Another part of Marine faithfulness is that the right thing is not always the easy thing. You do it anyway. Let’s say, for example, that the sister of a Marine calls you out of the blue to ask you about a day that you have relived many times. By that, I do not mean you have remembered it, but rather that you have relived it. You were the Company Commander that day. When you think of that day, you are filled with regret and guilt and it is as if you are back in that place and time. The sister doesn’t know that even though you met your wife right after you returned from Vietnam, you have never spoken to her about it. What do you do? You sit down with her.

You ask for a piece of paper and you draw a map and you touch it several times before you can bring yourself to say, “They said, ‘Let’s put a company in there and see if it can survive.’” You look over at your wife who is hearing this for the first time. Her eyes are wide and full of tears. You tell the sister that you called her mother when you got back to San Francisco. It is like you have the phone in your hand again. You hear the mother’s voice, “My boy…. What happened?”

We need one another. Others are in need of us. We owe others a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid; it can only be honored. Doing the right thing often requires sacrifice. It is not always easy. We do it anyway. I can sadly say that the United States Marine Corps did a better job of teaching my brother those lessons than the religion of his childhood.

It is easy to say of Marine faithfulness: “Well, that sort of thing requires an enemy. It requires not questioning authority. It requires brainwashing people. You have to get them young.” At least it has been easy when I have said these things. It’s easy for me to denigrate sacrifice based on what the sacrifice is for and to even lull myself into believing that sacrifice and extremism of some sort seem to always go together. I have often trivialized what people are willing to do for their faith because I have not respected what they put their faith in or the ways in which others take advantage of that faithfulness.

I find that, in the name of liberal religion, we often trivialize sacrifice. In ways both subtle and obvious, we give the impression that sacrifice is for people who can’t think for themselves, less independent-minded sorts. Liberal religion often smacks of the old commercial which tells us “Have it your way.” Life is a buffet and you get to choose. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it. You even get to complain about what other people are eating or what is on the buffet table or how it was served. I have often heard liberal religious folks brag about how little their faith requires. Many of us don’t even want to use the word faith or faithfulness, let alone sacrifice.

We are not sure we even like “clear expectations.” Some of the most heated, emotional discussions in the congregation I served have been about what we could or should expect of members. Some are concerned that expectations might be seen as fostering exclusivity. There is concern that we might “turn people off.” We are reluctant to ask anyone for anything that they may not want to give or be able to give. This is especially true when it comes to financial support. In some religious traditions, it is assumed that people will tithe by giving 10% of their income. If everyone tithed in the last congregation I served, we would have had about an extra $900,000 dollars a year to bend the arc of the universe toward justice.

I think liberal religion can and should stimulate me to ask: What am I living for? What am I willing to die for? What am I willing to sacrifice for? What am I willing to put above my own comfort? To whom or what do I owe a debt of gratitude that can never really be repaid, but only honored? What does a life of gratitude look like? What would it mean to be faithful to what I say I believe?

I have used the word sacrifice the way it is typically used, meaning “to give something up.” But when we look at the root meanings of the word, we find that it is not about giving something up, but rather about making sacred. We might question what people are making sacred through their actions, but do we really question the act of making sacred, of finding something worthy of our faithfulness?

I think war is evil. It’s indicative of massive human failure. If we aren’t going to sacrifice for war, we had  better start sacrificing for peace and for justice. The answer is not less sacrifice; it’s more sacrifice. If sacrifice and faithfulness are only for others, then we need to be prepared to live by someone else’s faith or with the ramifications of their faithfulness. Each of us has cause to live a life of gratitude for all we have been given. We are called to work for justice and to bind up the broken. Imagine what it would look like if we, too, could say that we are “Always Faithful” to our highest ideals.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063421/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/03.mp3

Of course the GA has to be in Washington, after I move to Ohio :( Would've liked to have gone; been UU since I was 8.

so i grew up unitarian universalist & on one hand i have my church 2 thank 4 sex ed & a need 4 spiritual fulfillment but on the other i think all the time abt Apple Communion, the uu thanksgiving service where the minister counts down and everyone simultaneously bites into apples

Completely unrelated but 100% true, on my paperwork to get into Iran I said I was Unitarian Universalist (because they murder atheists). I spent weeks doing a deep dive on UU theology and people so I could survive any interrogation. They never asked about it.

Music Director - First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist - Kingston, MA http://zpr.io/gyLpK pic.twitter.com/Rxu8IhaGGW

(What Is Universalism and What Is the Unitarian Universalist Association?) has been published on Latest Christian News - https://www.christiannewspost.com/what-is-universalism-and-what-is-the-unitarian-universalist-association/ …

Reality 101 – Widening Our Circle of Compassion by Rev.Michael Dowd Rev. Michael Dowd’s guest sermon at Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North on February 10, 2019. Three main... https://progressivechristianity.org/resources/reality-101-widening-our-circle-of-compassion/ …

Sat.9.FEB.2019 Attend a free workshop on how to run for office and network with Neighborhood Councils from across the San Fernando Valley 10am-2pm Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society (aka "The Onion") 9550 Haskell Ave. North Hills, CA 91343 http://empowerla.org/rally-in-the-valley-neighborhood-council-elections-event-february-9th …

Sat.9.FEB.2019 Attend a free workshop on how to run for office and network with Neighborhood Councils from across the San Fernando Valley 10am-2pm Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society (aka "The Onion") 9550 Haskell Ave. North Hills, CA 91343

Sat.9.FEB.2019 Attend a free workshop on how to run for office and network with Neighborhood Councils from across the San Fernando Valley 10 am-1 pm Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society (aka "The Onion") 9550 Haskell Ave. North Hills, CA 91343 pic.twitter.com/8m4vS1p9Kp

#AlwaysREMEMBER!!! — attending Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil at Community Unitarian Universalist Church (CUUC) https://www.facebook.com/100009049153465/posts/2107188826259402/ …

Save the Date: Rev. Ray's Installation Celebration as the new Senior Minister of the Center for Spiritual Living Greater Baltimore Ceremony to be held at the Towson Unitarian Universalist Church 1710 Dulany Valley Road, Lutherville MD  Saturday Nov. 10th… https://ift.tt/2JhmMzv pic.twitter.com/nQPyV8Q5Wa

just discovered the unitarian universalist association is headquartered in boston, amazing the pressure the universe continues to put on me to make a visit

#ingridbelongshere #sanctuaryeverywhere @ Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder, Colorado

True story: all my paperwork going into Iran lists the Unitarian Universalist church as my denomination. Mammaw would not be happy.

Take initiative by joining an action team in the Hudson Valley. Head to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie at 6:45 p.m.

Take initiative by joining an action team in the Hudson Valley. Head to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie at 6:45 p.m.