“First Unitarian Church is a beacon of hope for us and for our community, a spiritual center in the heart of our city that helps each of us find our moral compass, calling and challenging us to build the beloved community with an ever deepening sense of spirit, diversity and inclusion.”

The First Unitarian Vision Statement, developed and adopted by the Board three years ago, tries to put into language both our yearnings and our commitments.

“To build the Beloved Community with an ever deepening sense of spirit, diversity and inclusion.”

“Diversity and inclusion.”

What do those words mean…to us…and for us?

Are they describing Black Elk’s vision?

“And I saw that the sacred hoop

Of my people

Was one of many hoops

That make one circle,

Wide as daylight and starlight,

          And in the center grew one

          Mighty flowering tree

To shelter all the children…[in all of the hoops]…

The sacred hoop of my people…Black Elk says…the distinct cultural and relational hoop of our identity…was one of many hoops…one of many other distinct cultural and relational identities…that together make one [larger] circle…under the one mighty tree that holds them all.

Out of many …one. E pluribus unum.

But the many do not blend in this vision. They do not lose their distinctiveness.

Black Elk is writing from the margins…the Lakota had been defeated militarily…he had accepted reservation life and, in fact, converted to Catholicism…the hoop of his people was in danger of extinction…

In the vision he casts…difference persists…difference is valued…difference is, in fact, perhaps necessary…to preserve identity…

I’m pushing Black Elk’s language here. I know. But I do believe that Black Elk prayed that the identity of the Lakota would have an on-going-ness…even in the midst of the diversity beneath that one spiritual tree. That it would not be homogenized…into the dominant culture.

Is that how diversity and difference live in the Beloved Community of our vision, of your vision? With our individuality and our various identities preserved, our separateness not melted into sameness?

Or do we imagine something closer to what A Powell Davies described in our call to worship? Davies was one of the most successful Unitarian ministers in our history, planting 8 now large UU congregations in the suburbs around Washington, DC, and preaching to Cabinet Officers and supreme Court Justices in the pews of All Souls Church.

From Davies:

“Here we are—all of us—all upon this planet, bound together in a common destiny.”

“Living our lives between the briefness of the daylight and the dark.

Kindred in this, each lighted by the same precarious flame of life, how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else?

How strange and foolish are these walls of separation that divide us.”

“Bound together in a common destiny.” There’s  Black Elk’s one tree.

But Davies calls us out as individuals, not as members of a people: “each of us lighted by the same flame.” Each of us. Individually.

And the walls separating us are separating us as individuals. Walls of  prejudice and prejudgment.

Walls offer a loaded image these days. We think of our President’s border wall to keep asylum seekers and job seekers, brown and black people out. We think of the walls of paperwork that are keeping Bahamian immigrants out. Walls that separate and oppress.

Davies calls those walls strange and foolish…and by implication…calls for them to be torn down.

But walls and boundaries…particularities…can also define a culture and shape a people…can hold an identity.

Davies’ language suggests the “melting pot.” Suggests a blending that would follow the tearing down of those walls. Suggests, at least, that we can make common cause around what we share rather than around the particularities of our specific communities and specific identities.

Here, too, I am pushing Davies’ language. But I do believe that Davies assumed commonality as possible and powerful.  As he says, “how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else.”

It is a different vision of Beloved Community. A vision that suggests that the uniqueness of our “tribes” could be, might be, perhaps should be of less importance than our common humanity.

Two different visions.

And, truth be told, both of them live in me. And perhaps both of them live in you as well.

So, rather than forcing a choice, there are a few things that I want to point to:

First, that vision of common humanity, that vision of blending…well, that vision has most often meant, in practice, that the dominant culture has gotten to define what is common and what is shared. And, surprise, surprise, the commonalities almost always look like that dominant culture.

This is where our work on the culture of white supremacy intersects with our visioning.

So that’s the first thing. It takes real vigilance to keep power and privilege from having a shaping role in our visioning. That is why there is such need to center the voices of those on the margins…so that power and privilege do not, even unintentionally, preserve their prominence.

Second, I don’t want my identity…my identities…to be blended into some sameness. Do you? My identity as an African American connects me to my ancestors, to their strength and mine. My identity as male, as a person with education, …these identities are central to me. I would loose myself if I lost them.

Third, there are so few models of multiple identities sharing the shade of that one tree…successfully. There are plenty of examples of homogeneity, of separate communities built around a particular racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious identity. Plenty of examples in the religious world…of Black churches and Polish churches, Jewish synagogues, Mosques. And plenty of examples of one identity group forcing others out of the shade. But few examples of multiple identities successfully sharing a collective space.

Perhaps that’s why that vision is so hard to bring into focus. There are so few models to follow.

And, finally, there is the perversity of diversity. The perversity of diversity.

The phrase has a couple of meanings. The first is that a particular kind of diversity becomes easier and easier to create and sustain…when that diversity already exists.

For example, it is harder for a younger person to imagine this might be a welcoming home for them when they look into this sanctuary and see mostly grey heads. The same is true for a person of color. And perhaps for a trans person. One of the signs of welcome is to see people who look like you. The perversity of diversity.

But there is another meaning. Mark Morrison-Reed describes the wish for diversity in our faith as a conundrum…because we say we want to change…but we don’t want to change too much. We want to change the look of the faces in this sanctuary but not the culture of the church.

Mark argues that UU’s will settle for looking different, without being different. Most of those who are already here like what we have found and we want to stay in that comfort zone.

Is this sounding familiar…do you know what he means?

Comfort Zones.

In the last few weeks, I have been asking groups in the church how our congregational work on the culture of white supremacy is landing for them, and what they are hearing from other congregants. I’ve asked our Board, my Ministerial Relations Committee, our staff leaders…others.

The feedback has been so helpful.

Affirmation of the work has been good to hear, of course.

People, especially relatively younger and folks newer to the church have told me that that focus is why they come. These are white identified persons for the most part and they talk about how dismantling racism and the culture of patriarchy is central to their spiritual lives, central in their search for wholeness. Several spoke of wishing that we were moving further and even faster in that work.

The affirmation of the work has been important to hear.

But so has the discomfort. Folks spoke about still tripping over the language. The “culture of white supremacy” still makes them wonder if they are being accused of being “white supremacists.” They are not but I can understand the language raising that question.

Some spoke of the whole business of being “woke” and “centering voices from the margins” as a kind of political correctness that closes off conversation. I and we try to guard against that here at the church—that is language from the broader conversation out in our culture— and I avoid that “woke” language, but I’m sure self-righteousness slips into some of our conversations…or feels like it does.

For those on the margins, the people of color and the trans folks and others…well, those members of our community know that their ability to remain and thrive here is dependent on this focus. It enables their presence…enables our presence…as awkward as it can be.

And for all of us…all of us who reject the hatred and the violence that are being peddled as policy in our world…isn’t the least we are called to do to welcome those folks who find their way into our sanctuary?

Isn’t that the minimum we are called to do? Is that too high a bar?

Mark Morrison-Reed argues that the “central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that unite each to all…”

“To unveil the bonds that unite each to all.”

Some of those bonds, some of that connectedness…is grounded in pain. In not being seen. Not being valued. Not being heard.

It is a bond, and its part of our history…part of our present…but it is not warm and fuzzy.

We come together as a people…some of whom have been hurt, some of whom…intentionally or unintentionally…have done some of the hurting.

We start with our selves…with that person in the mirror. And hear the call of our faith, of our best selves…calling us to change our ways.

We need reconciliation…yes. But that reconciliation needs to be grounded in the value of real community…the value of being seen, and being heard and being loved for who we truly are.

We hear that call and we try to change and frankly to compensate for how we have all fallen short before. We name our pronouns. And we worry about cultural misappropriation. And we are sensitive that some of the language we use has to change. Some of the assumptions about who should and shouldn’t be in this sanctuary…who gets questioned or a raised eyebrow or a second look…those things need to change. And it is awkward. It does not feel natural.

And we make mistakes.

Some of us wonder how the culture that we love could have become a barrier to others who yearn for what we have found here.

How could that be?

And some of us wonder if it is all worth the effort, all this focusing on our differences.

But as one congregant wrote to me just this week:

“Change is really hard.  Asking ourselves to step out and make change happen when it is not forced on us takes something more.  Sometimes I wish for the old comfort, but there really is no such thing – we can’t go backwards and become unaware again.”

But the awkwardness is real because we are trying to do a new thing. A thing that has not been done. We are trying, in real time, to live out the promise of this faith.

And there is therefore no way to think our way into the Beloved Community of our vision. We have to live our way into it…each of us and all of us.

We are struggling toward the creation of community in which more of our real lived experience is known and valued. A Beloved Community in which more of us will be welcomed, in which more of us will find home.

This is not about identity politics or political correctness…this is about wholeness and the hope that our many hoops can finally find shelter under that one tree.

We are in process, but we can’t go back. And there is a hope calling us forward even through these early and awkward efforts.

 “May we see the fractions, the spectrum, the margins.
Let us open our hearts to the complexity of our worlds…
…make our lives sanctuaries, to nurture our many identities.

The day is coming when all will know
That the rainbow world is more gorgeous than monochrome,
That a river of identities can ebb and flow over the static, stubborn rocks in its course,
That the margins [within all of us] hold the center.”

Prayer

Will you pray with me now?

Spirit of Life and of Love. Great mystery that lives in us and through us.

We hear the voice of justice and the hope of freedom calling us

Is it our voice, the better angels of our nature?

Or is it some persistent hope in us that will not let us go?

We hear that voice and we answer

We move into the unknown territory through which we must pass

On the way to our visions and our dreams.

We learn new ways, but we learn slowly

And discover the truth of old wisdom, but with difficulty.

It is work, this building of Beloved Community.

But we know how much depends on it…our lives

And the lives of those we love.

And we know we cannot go back.

And so…

We quiet ourselves and listen

To hear as clearly as we can

That voice calling us to hope,

That voice calling our name.

Amen

Benediction

We are called to live into a new thing

A community in which all of each of us is welcome

A Beloved Community in which our diversities

Are sources of beauty and strength

It is a new thing and there are no sure maps to guide us.

Let us go…together…

Guided by our faith, our hope and our love.

Let us go…together…

But let us go.

This is the day…

There is a perversity to diversity. The more diversity (of age, or race, or…)that exists, the easier it becomes to welcome difference. Our values point toward pluralism. It is our practice and perhaps our assumptions we need to inspect.

Topics: Radical Hospitality & Welcome