Our spiritual theme this month is identity. So what are the identities that first come to mind for you? Some of the roles you have? Spouse, parent, child? Grandparent, grandchild, friend? Retiree, teacher, worker, manager? Or maybe it is identity of race or gender or orientation? Maybe it’s where you are from. Maybe it’s your connection to something you are passionate about: gardener, or singer or cook or justice maker.
We all have many identities. We each bring many of those identities into this community that now gathers each week in this virtual space. We gather together here sharing our identity as Unitarian Universalists.
Now depending on the context we are in, we may share some parts of our identity more than others. It may be we think we know someone pretty well until we find out they have studied ant relationships in great detail or that they have a particular expertise in infectious diseases. Or that they make the best peach pound cake you can image. Or maybe it is a part of ourselves that we really don’t feel safe sharing. Maybe it is an identity that comes from something we did—or didn’t do—a long time ago. Sometimes there are parts of our stories that we let hardly anybody know about.
Yes, identity can be complex and multi layered and it is based on so many things—our history, our life experiences, our families of origin. Based on what we have felt we could share and could not share. In our reading today Victoria Safford[1] talks about the places we have been and how those places have shaped us. We bring all of that into the present moment of how we live our lives, how we see ourselves. How it is we see others.
And maybe now, as we enter month four of this time called COVID that we would not necessarily identify the same way we did a few months ago. This is been a hard and complicated time. Life as we knew it and life as it will be may be pretty different than what we imagined a few months ago. Our view of the world and our place in it may have changed, maybe a lot.
One of you shared with me recently that with COVID and the calls for racial justice, how all that has been happening in this time has changed their whole outlook on things. This is a person who identifies as white and they said that now they find themselves looking at just about everything through a whole new lens—in particular through the lens of racial justice. How they thought they were woke but how the last few weeks has been a reminder of just how much work they had to do. How looking through the lens of justice takes time and effort. That is sometimes the way it is for those of us who are privileged in one way or another. Inherent in that privilege is that we really don’t need to see. We really don’t need to pay attention. But for this person, and I think for many of us this has been a time to pay attention and to see things that we haven’t been paying attention to before.
And I had a conversation with a person of color recently who told me they haven’t felt as if they had permission to talk about their identity much at all until recently. How there was some kind of message that they received a long time ago that told them it was better to not stir the pot. That it was probably better to not tell too much of their story. This has been a liberating time and also a cautious time. Is it OK to be more out? What are the opportunities? But are there risks to that as well?
Yes, friends, identity is a complex thing. I don’t know about you but the past months have changed up my view of all kinds of things. I have always tried to preach a message about interdependence but the past months have helped me understand that message more literally. What are the choices I make and how do those choices affect those around me? A global pandemic, a global call for racial justice and for police accountability the likes of which many of us have not seen before, examples of leadership and the complete lack of leadership, all of this, all of this in the mix, well it has a way of shifting our focus onto things that maybe we weren’t paying attention to not long ago or maybe we are seeing the world through some wider lens.
Just as our identities have been shaped throughout our lives, how is it now that we find ourselves being shaped and reshaped by the times we are in? And how is it that the world is also being reshaped, reimagined right now? And what are my responsibilities to myself and what are my responsibilities to the whole?
COVID has been a reminder of just how vulnerable we can be. It brings this level of fear and uncertainty with it. But it also brings an awareness of just how interconnected our lives are just how dependent we are on others and just how dependent they are on us.
These are times when so much seems to be changing, when so much is in flux. There is a sense of possibility. And when so much is changing, when so much is in flux, the impulse to keep the status quo in place can also be strong. Part of what more and more of us are learning these days is that for a long, long time the lives of some have meant a lot more than the lives of others. And so somehow the recognition of that can feel threating, especially to those of us in those places of privilege. It can feel as if we are losing something. And when we feel like we are losing something we may not always respond in a rational way, especially when there is so much uncertainty, especially where there is so much fear around us.
Right now it feels as if our world is asking us to hold a lot. The vulnerability that comes from COVID and the isolation we have experienced. An awareness of the long and devastating legacy of racism and colonialism. The complete abdication of leadership on so many levels. So much economic loss.
It can feel as if each new day brings both some new assault of our sensibilities and at the very same time some new springs of promise for how the world might be. Sometimes I feel helpless and stuck and I really don’t know what to do. Sometimes I am filled with a great sense of gratitude for what we see happening in the world. People taking to the streets and witnessing for justice. People claiming a right to say yes, our lives matter. Young people in particular claiming their voice is a way they haven’t done before.
One of the blessings of this time has been to reorient us—or at least to make us more aware—to others for a long time who have been on the margins, those who got the message that their lives haven’t mattered like the lives of others. And I hope that with this has come more awareness of just how interconnected we are.
Like a lot of good UUs I can often first think of myself from that individual perspective, the emphasis on my own inherent worth and dignity. But there is something with all that’s going on in the world that I find myself thinking more and more about the we in all of this. And just how interconnected our lives are. This has been a time when I have come to know more deeply that I have a responsibility to others and I hope that they feel that sense of responsibility to me.
One of the things that it feels like is happening right now, and I take this as a good thing, is that some of those defenses, those barriers that help us see our lives as separate have been breaking down, at least a little. One of the ways that change happens is that we move from that place of isolation to awareness of our connections. At least I hope that is what is happening right now. At least it is my hope that some of those walls are coming down.
I think the question for me right now is, how is it that we will choose to show up in this time? How is it that we will bring all of our identities into this mix? How is it that we can increase the odds that this sea change might actually take hold? What responsibility do I have, particularly when I am used to my privilege, to show up for others?
Each of our lives is a manifestation of our histories, the families we come from, the communities that have shaped us. Our privilege or our lack of privilege. Our gifts and our vulnerabilities. The losses we have known. The people we have been blessed to know and love. Inherent in that last part comes the recognition that none of us did all of us on our own. All of us are here because others helped us along the way. We bring all of that in the present moment, this present chapter of our lives. And yes, how is it that we will choose to show up?
Unitarian Universalism has often led with the individual. It is, after all, that first principle we quote, honoring the inherent worth and dignity of all of us. And that has been our starting point through much of our history, especially on our Unitarian side of the family tree. From our universalist side we have been called to that which holds us all. That universal love that will not abandon us. That love that connects us with others and with all of life. That holds our inherent worth in the relationship the honors the inherent worth of others too.
My hope for these times is that we might see that sea change. That it might be happening. And I also know that for some of us, particularly those of us who identify has white. That may mean giving something up. That may feel like a loss. But it is my belief. It is my prayer. That there is something liberating for all of us through this.
May we find security in our identities—and also courage for see ourselves as bigger, as wider. To recognize how our lives are so very much connected to the lives of others. And may that recognition extend to this planet that we all live upon. It’s all connected friends. It’s all connected.
And yes, that’s a lot to hold. But we also recognize that we don’t hold it alone but with others. What I know is that change, real change, takes time, and we need to find a way to sustain ourselves in the days ahead if that change is really going to be sustained.
As I have talked with many of you in recent weeks there is a weariness right now that I can’t recall in a long time. so much feels out of our control. And there’s so little we can do. It can feel as if one thing gets layered on another and on and on it goes. It seems as if there is a daily assault on our lives. There is right now this stew of fear, of anger, of complete abdication of leadership. There seems to be license for racism that only gets worse by the day. The rule of law is even at stake. I want to hope that much of this is a sign of desperation to something that is dying. My hope is that this is actually some recognition of some new order that is coming into being. Some deeper acknowledgement of black and brown lives matter, of some rising up and saying no to militarized policing practices, some indicators that may actually be pointing in the direction of transformation.
The question is how each of us choose to show up. Question is how we give voice to how it is we want the world to be. How is it that we find our way out of our comfort zones and see ourselves as part of what I hope is change unfolding around us. And to figure out too what it will take to sustain ourselves though all this.
How is it that we bring our identities, all the facets of our lives into this. How it is we bring all of those who have blessed us along the way and will continue to bless us. How is it we find a way to say yes in those places we need to say yes and also to say no in those places we say no. How we stay focused when there are so many voices that would call us in the wrong direction. How is it that more and more we can come to see as part of our own identity the lives of others? Can we recognize that part of our identity is the good of the whole and a recognition that as we care for each other we are also caring for ourselves.
Jody Feldman offered a beautiful story for all ages today and that metaphor of keeping our buckets full is a good one. It is a statement, as I hear it, about interdependence and an awareness that we do first need to attend to our own bucket, and that we are sustained ourselves by others and the way that they help us to keep that metaphorical bucket filled. And that it all works together, this filling and emptying, this sustaining that keeps all of us and the good of the whole together.
Our call is to keep coming back that that place of unity and working towards that unity. To keep coming back to that basic recognition of our interdependence.
Words of David Whyte:
We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
in common cause,
to produce
the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
round a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we, in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and look for the true
shape of our own self
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us.[2]
In these times of so many intangibles, have courage friends. There is a kind of paradox right now in our world. At the very time when we are being asked to isolate, something has been happening that we are recognizing more and more in our interdependence. Something is unfolding. May we trust in what is unfolding. Trust in that call to move out of our comfort zones. Trust in that call to follow what you know in your heart. And keep a place too for humility and make a space for what it is we still need to learn. In all of that, I believe, lies power and possibility. In all of that, I believe, is how we might make and also sustain change. In all of that, I believe, is a call to bring the fullness of our identities and to recognize the fullness of all of our identities, most of all those whose identities have not been valued as full until now. All of this, I believe, is how we are going to make our way through this time and hopefully we will also be stronger and wiser and closer yet to that dream of Beloved community. May it be so, good people, for each of us and for all of us. Amen.
Prayer
Spirit of life and of love, god of many names and of no name hear our prayers. Help us to hold all that we are holding in these days spirit. Grant us courage. Grant us wisdom. Sustain us when we grow weary. Help us to as we find our way to yes. We pray for our lives, for the lives of all your children. Amen.
Benediction
Remember, good people, that through these complicated and difficult and amazing times that you do no journey alone. On this day and in all the days ahead, use your gifts to bless the world. And remember to let you light shine.
[1] “Map of the Journey in Process,” by Victoria Safford, Walking Towards Morning, pp 57, Skinner House Books, 2003.
[2] “Working Together” by David Whyte, pp 86, The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press, 2011.
Topics: Identity