It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that California, frustrated with the slowing pace of research on global warming and in a final rebuke to President Trump’s denial of its human causes, would launch a satellite of its own to track pollution.
At a climate change summit convened by the City of San Francisco, Brown concluded: “With science still under attack, we’re going to launch our own satellite, our own [blankety-blank] satellite to figure out what is going on.”
Governor Moonbeam used more colorful language.
In the face of division and denial and stalemate in Washington, in the face of the rejection of science and the permission for hatred by our national leaders, creativity and commitment are re-emerging at the state and local and community and congregational level in ways that offer glimmers of hope. And perhaps…just perhaps something more illuminating than mere glimmers.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Was A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens’ story of despair and hope during the French Revolution…was that required reading for you?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”
This has to rank as one of the great opening paragraphs in literary history. Dickens captured a time of extreme inequalities when an entrenched elite of power and wealth was challenged. It was a time of conflict. A time of seeming polar opposites without any in-between.
Not unlike this time.
It was also a time of hope as people reached the end of their rope.
“Revolution…” writes Daniel Jose Older in The Fire This Time, ”I heard it in my own writing…demanding more than just reform, more than just diversity. …But suddenly it was a collective howl, it echoed through the streets and out across the world: ‘This far and no further.’” No further.
Are we reaching the end of our rope? Are we finding new relationships and new solutions emerging out of our despair? Are we finding that our withdrawal from the dysfunction of ‘politics as usual’ is opening new avenues for engagement and discovering that we are being called back to hope?
Can you see why I decided this was a good theme to explore with you?
I don’t need to rehearse for you the state of the world…the inequalities and injustice…the violence of the system in which we live. The world has not seen such concentration of wealth…since…well we are now, officially, putting the Gilded Age of the robber barons to shame.
Nor do I have to remind you that amidst all that wealth, you and I are still asked to provide Food Stamps to the workers employed by some of the largest corporations in the world, owned by some of the richest people in the world…because those workers do not make enough to buy food…
Nor do I need to dwell on the dangers of authoritarianism and the ethnic hierarchy that it would sanctify.
When families are torn apart on our border and asylum seekers are imprisoned…
When black and brown people are disenfranchised to prolong the power of white elites in a desperate attempt to hold back history…
You know these things. We all do.
We’ve done lamentation and still do it. We’ve resisted. But it is not getting easier to stay centered.
And I know I am not the only one who has wrestled with the self-protective urge to simply withdraw into the reliable circles of love in my life.
Now, ready or not, we are being called back by what is emerging within us and around us…because as we reach the end of our rope, it becomes clear that we must find a new way.
And we are.
Here at the church we have had folks witnessing at the border in solidarity and support of undocumented immigrants. Faith Floods the Desert. You can hear about it after 2nd (this) service.
We are welcoming asylum seekers, who have been detained illegally, as they are released from Sheridan Prison.
We are in accountable relationships with native peoples and justice partners.
We are building the world we dream about…showing up…in collaboration, not hierarchy…our leadership a leadership of presence…
It is a new day that requires a new way…and we are seeing it emerge…we are part of the creation…
Here at the church our Learning Community teachers joined with our social justice council leaders to understand how the culture of white supremacy operates even here.
We are making connections and deepening relationships.
Even in the divisive world of politics more women and women of color are putting themselves forward. Could it be that the gender and complexion of our political leaders might shift significantly?
Could it be the beginning of the best of times? Could it?
What religious resources, what spiritual strengths can we bring to help us find the blessing in these dangerous days?
A few years ago, UU minister Meg Riley was invited to moderate a forum between two groups that, truth be told, would each rather that the other not exist. One side spoke and shouted. The other side spoke and shouted. Words flew like weapons—attack, not communication was the intention.
Exhausted, the combatants turned to Meg: “Have you anything to add?”
Meg rose. “If you are in this camp, God loves you. If you are in that camp, God loves you.” Then she simply sat down and grace happened. Her invocation of our most fundamental theology…that we are all loved…was enough to break through.
When I think about what we bring to the table in these divisive times, that is where I begin.
Now we are not the only religious folks who bring that theology…let me be clear. Nor do we practice it perfectly…far from it. But it is a resource.
Our Universalist religious ancestors trusted that we were all going to heaven…so we needed to start figuring out how to live together down here. It did not give them the answer, but it gave them a place to start.
“Because we are loved,” writes Rita Brock, “we are empowered to [invite] openness and affirmation from others…” Because we are loved, “we are truly free.”
The Unitarian side of our religious family tree gives us resources as well. From their educated and affluent social position, the Unitarians had complete faith that their lives mattered and that they could help shape their world.
“Agency” is the $50.00 theological term. The Unitarians knew they had agency. And they bequeathed that to us. Belief in our ability to have an impact is in our religious DNA.
So, first, we are loved. And because we are loved, how we live matters And because the way we live our lives matters, we can help change the world.
Sounds so simple. We are loved. How we live matters. The way we live can help change the world. So simple.
How we live it is the issue.
The privileged Unitarians passed down to us a radical individualism and a deep distrust of arbitrary authority.
Individualism is an empowering resource. But it can be used to empower self-interest and even greed.
And radical individualism can lead to loneliness.
That individualism unleashed energy and creativity but left us feeling untethered to a ground firmer than our self-interest.
Accountability was not a strength of our Unitarian ancestors.
But there is, on that Unitarian side, a corrective, an antidote to unfettered individualism. The practice of covenant.
This morning with the Board of Trustees and last week with the teachers in our Learning Community we made promises and commitments to one another. We were doing the work of covenanting.
Covenanting recognizes relationships and calls us into accountabilities.
Covenants emerge locally…not nationally…because covenants grow out of relationship, out of how we are already living and how we want to live. They are sustained by the practice of accountability.
Covenants are, in fact a response to the freedom of individualism and to the agency we have been given.
Covenants are commitments to be co-creators with the Spirit of Life…however we understand that spirit.
Covenants can help us in this time.
Rebecca Parker, former President of Starr King School for the Ministry, argues that covenants can respond to brokenness around us and to our longing for connection we have lost.
Rebecca writes: “It is by patient pursuit of this longing [for connection we have lost], including the willingness to wander without its anguish being relieved…”
In other words, to be fully present to the brokenness…
“It is there that fresh vision will come. The place of limit becomes the place of revelation.”
At the end of our rope is where the way forward is being found.
I cannot help but believe that the constant barrage of angry argument that we hear at the national level and in the news and on social media…the constant drum beat of us vs them…
I cannot help but believe…that the intentional lying and the knee jerk reaction to the lying are all serving to protect the status quo.
Let me give you an example. Each new instance of mass killing leads to a predictable shouted argument that even the young people from Parkland, Florida have not been able to break through. We have not even been able to pass, at the national level, limits on ammunition or the availability of military level weapons. Not even mandatory background checks.
Defense of the 2nd Amendment is screamed from the well-funded rooftops. The progressive response is equally shrill.
Until the next tragedy overtakes the news cycle. And a different heated argument crowds out action.
What is served? The gun lobby.
Despite the fact that the vast majority of our citizens and the majority of gun owners and even a majority of NRA members…all want limits to be put in place.
The shrill and divisive arguments are keeping us stuck.
We need to find a solidarity grounded in relationship…not in combativeness.
Our tradition of covenant and our faith in our agency, our ability to make a difference, can point the way.
From Professor Mike Hogue, of Meadville Lombard Theological School…in his new book, American Immanence, Democracy for an Uncertain World:
“…resilient democratic solidarities are associations of maximally diversified unity.”
Maximally diversified unity.
I know…it is pretty dense, but stay with me…
The goal Mike articulates is solidarity…but solidarity not based on ethnicity or on privilege…solidarity not based on sameness.
From Mike again: “These solidarities can be diverse in any number of the nearly numberless ways in which we humans differ from one another…age, gender, ethnicity, [sexuality]…
But insofar as they compose a ‘we’ by way of a common purpose rather than shared identity, and insofar as they strive for resilience…resilience…
There must be some aim…some chosen purpose, that unites them.”
[they are unifed], Hike Hogue says, “by a common aim for ‘ the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.’”The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
Solidarity made possible by our dreams, not by our greed.
The Beloved Community.
This sermon is not finished. In fact, it is not even really ready to be preached. I haven’t thought all this through. More importantly I and we have not lived our way far enough into new covenants and new accountabilities…though we are on the way.
This sermon is not finished.
But what I know is that there is not time to wait until we can arrive at certainty.
As liberal religious folks we are skeptical of certainties anyway.
I also know this: In less than two months there will be a pivotal election. And we need to show up with every resource at our disposal, and be part of the creation that our resistance has helped open space for.
There is not time to wait for certainty. That is why this is called faith.
And those of you who have been paying attention to the conversation about the culture of white supremacy, know that the demand for perfection and certainty is one of the primary ways that culture sustains itself.
The High Holy Days draw to a close on Tuesday with Yom Kippur when, Jewish tradition, the Book of Life will be closed and fates will be sealed for the coming year. These days, until Yom Kippur, called the Days of Awe, are the time to ask for forgiveness and to grant it…not least to ourselves.
One of the beauties of the Jewish tradition is that we are called, each year, to begin again in love. We need to begin again in love. We need that personally…each of us. And we need to begin again in love collectively as well.
There is a last thought I would leave with you today.
Mike Hogue speaks of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Rita Brock speaks of radiance uncovered. Rebecca Parker speaks of co-creation…a exciting process of possibility. All of these wonderful contemporary expressions of our theology and our tradition…point toward beauty and toward joy.
The system we have been and are resisting…and the discourse of division that enables and supports it…that system is grim, it is distrustful, it is angry, it is fearful…
That is not the way we choose to live.
We do not have to accept such a grim and fearful way of being.
We can choose love.
And that is part of the mystery. That if we choose to begin again in love, it can open our hearts to joy.
May it be so.
Amen
Topics: Integrity