“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come.”

We Unitarian Universalists love this poem and the songs it inspired. We identify as the wanderers, worshippers, lovers of leaving… We love it because it speaks to our aspirations of welcoming all — despite our faults, despite the vows we break, despite the times when we need to be called back into right relationship. Though the words were written by Sufi poet Mevlana Rumi, they also articulate one of the theologies of this church.

I imagine that many of you practiced this spirit of welcome this week, maybe sharing a table with friends, family, or strangers, some of whom you love and some of whom have disappointed you before… maybe more than a few times.

Despite the holiday’s roots in oppression and genocide of native peoples, the history told around many Thanksgiving tables is one of gratitude, harvest, and being welcomed in an unfamiliar land. In my childhood home, and perhaps many of yours, our Thanksgiving meal began with each person offering stories of gratitude from their lives.

These stories grounded us in connection with the other people at the table — as one person gave thanks for their improved health, we all remembered with empathy the way they had suffered before. As another spoke of the company gathered, we remembered how special it is to have a community. And as another praised the bounty of the food, we remembered the importance of beauty and abundance in our lives.

The stories of gratitude helped ease the tensions that were often among us. Given the chance to listen and reflect with one another brought us closer together across the differences in politics, culture, class, and generation that sometimes felt hard to bridge in my extended family.

It made it feel appropriate that we so often pair together the phrases “Thank you” and “You’re Welcome.” We started with gratitude, and that bridged the way into our hearts having more space for hospitality and empathy with one another. “Thank you, you’re welcome”

It might be experiences like this that have made me more open and curious to hearing the stories of people who I might otherwise be inclined to write off. In the face of so much division, oppression, and hardship in this country, I have come to value this transformative power of storytelling, particularly after an experience I had just about two years ago.

Right after the 2016 election, I remember feeling drained, disillusioned, and daunted by the enormity of what was to come. At just the right time for me, I read the quote often attributed to Lao-Tze, which says “If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.”

Honestly, when I read this, at first it felt like a cop-out. You mean to tell me that there is all kinds of messed up, hateful, impossible stuff going on in the world and at the highest levels of government, and I’m supposed to just be nice to people and cultivate peace within my own little heart? No way.

Strangely, though, as I turned the words over in my mind, a relatable image came to me, of combing hair. As anyone who has ever dealt with long hair knows, when it’s a tangled mess, starting at the top is absolutely pointless. If you put your comb into the top of the knot and pull down, it will be both painful and ineffective.

Instead, you have to start small, at the very ends of the strands, in little bits rather than all at once. Once this small section at the tips is sorted out, then you can move up the strands a little higher, and in bigger swaths, until it all brushes nicely.

This helped me understand the words I’d read. Maybe building our beloved community is a bit like combing hair. It starts with our own hearts and getting those sorted out, moving out to our interpersonal, close relationships, then to our communities, cities, and the world.

Just a week after I heard that quote, this new theory was put to the test for me. After a class at seminary one day, I had dinner with an youngish white male classmate from another school, who I’ll call Nick, who I didn’t know very well. At dinner I discovered that he was a Trump supporter from a conservative town, and that he had many, many socio-political opinions I did not agree with, and some of which were actually pretty hurtful for me to hear as a female, leftist, queer, activist religious liberal.

For some reason, though, that night I was feeling particularly centered and curious, and withheld my knee-jerk comments on many of his “wrong” words and “problematic” statements. I guess my heart was feeling fairly de-tangled at that moment. Instead, I listened, inquired, and learned about his family, and how he came to the beliefs, fears, and hopes that he held for himself, his community, and the nation. Though the conversation was littered with offhand statements that belittled, dismissed, or stereotyped myself and others, I could see that his intention really was to understand where I was coming from.

It was transformative to both of us. He said I was the first liberal he’d met in Berkeley who listened with kindness to him even after he revealed his political leanings. And he listened with openness to me. He told me stories about growing up in the rural south, his religious parents’ harshness, his dreams of being a journalist, or a minister, or a doctor — something that would help the world.
I told him my stories about protesting in the streets for racial justice, about building fiercely loving queer chosen family, and how I feel connected to the divine when I’m outdoors.

I was so surprised that I could deeply empathize with Nick. Who is to say that if I had grown up in his family and hometown rather than in Berkeley, I would not be in the same place as him politically? He, like so many of us, believed that our current status quo of disparity and oppression was not what America should be. He, like us, felt frustration and pain that so many in our country don’t have access to the education, safety, peace, economic security, and dignity that they should. He, like us, wanted to offer healing to the world. Though we disagreed a lot, my conversation with Nick made me care about him because I could empathize with how he came to be the way he is. He was then able to ask me questions and understand me a little more — what was it like to be queer? What’s the point of protesting in the streets? Why are safe spaces for marginalized groups important?

Through our exchange of stories we came to understand and respect one another. We still disagreed, but for the remainder of the semester, we were able to help each other learn and grow and ask questions, and also to challenge one another’s assumptions, knowing that we wouldn’t just be written off for saying or asking the wrong thing. Though it was just one relationship between two people, we had started that small bit of detangling at the edge of this vast knotted mess that is our world. By having just one person he knew and trusted, Nick was more able to feel welcome in and benefit from the learning community at my seminary. Can you imagine feeling so welcome that the barriers you’ve put around your heart start to melt?

This is the power of stories. Our stories help us love one another more, and welcome each other in our wholeness. They help us to build empathy and factor other people’s wellbeing into our decisions. Mister Rogers, who was an ordained Presbyterian minister, summed up this phenomenon when he said, “Frankly, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.”

Obviously, many people make choices that cause real harm. How can we trust them enough to reconcile, to welcome them into this beloved community? How do we hold them accountable for the harm they caused? Can we actually honor everyone’s humanity and do justice at the same time? I believe that there IS a way to prioritize accountability and reconciliation along with love and compassion — though, as in the Restorative Justice model, this requires a long process, with strong boundaries and hard work.

As you probably know, our spiritual theme this month at church is accountability. Quite literally, accountability is about storytelling. It is the ability to give a satisfactory account of what has happened and why. Account — ability is telling the true story and answering for the consequences. As Nick and I came to know each other better, we were each able to tell a more true story, and to hold each other accountable for the ways that we were falling short of the values we professed.

It was the kind of accountability that is based on a relationship of empathy and trust, and even love, rather than being based on a relationship of power. I see these as the two main kinds of accountability. In power-based accountability, you hold me accountable because you have some kind of power over me — maybe you can give me a bad review, withhold your money from my business, or make my life difficult in some other way. No matter the particulars, I try to act according to your wishes because I will suffer if I don’t.

In our current society, it is essential to be able to hold those in power accountable in this way, through flexing our collective muscle. It is the basis of most forms of organizing around justice issues, and is an important tool when those with power are not being responsible stewards, not listening, not responding to the needs of the people and the planet.

But the other kind is what I’d call relational accountability. This is the way that I feel accountable to my family, to the groups I am part of, to the people I love and care for, those who I claim as mine and who claim me. They don’t need to organize or exert pressure for me to act with them in mind — their wellbeing is just woven into the framework of who I am and the choices I make, because I love them.

In either form, holding people accountable requires relationship with them, and reminding them of our relatedness. In organizing, this means reminding those in power of the power we have collectively — the power to oust from office, to stymie financial success, to turn public opinion, to jeopardize the relationships they hold dear. But, this can create an antagonistic relationship where one person or group has power over another, with no inborn love involved. The problem with this is that then when the balance of power shifts so that the external pressure is no longer as effective, the powerful no longer feel intrinsically accountable because there isn’t real care and relationship.

In our current world, I see this power-based accountability an essential harm reduction tool — as we go about building the world we want, it’s something that helps now, when the harm being caused is so great that it must be stopped, even if we use flawed tools. But it IS flawed — exerting power over one another is not the essence of the types of relationships I yearn for. The world I want to build is one where we act from mutual care and love for one another, and that can only happen from the bottom up.

Rather than shaming, pressuring, and harming, accountability should be about the courage to enact our values — it should be the story of love.

Which brings me back to the stories. In order to truly be accountable, we have to be willing to listen to each others’ stories whenever possible, in order to build relationship and actually mean it when we say, “come, come, whoever you are.”

Let me be clear: building relationship requires energy, and grounding, so the work of extending this welcome and relationship is not something to be done by all people at all times in all situations, given our limited emotional bandwidth. Sometimes we have to choose what is sustainable over what is ideal. That’s ok. This is why we have community — I might be up for a hard conversation today but not tomorrow, and you, vice versa. Together, we can show up for all of us.

Part of where I see the answer is in holding the nuance that is in all of our stories. As Alicia Garza, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, notes, “We are here not to create smaller and smaller groups of people who tell the same story, but instead to expand the nuance of our stories so that we can learn more about who we are and who we can be.”*** What if THOSE people, who seem so opposite to us, in how they wield their power, how they vote, how they think, were actually not so different after all?

This may seem impossible, but we need only look to the growing prison abolition movement to see how stories expand welcome. One of the most effective tools that movement has used is the humanization of those deemed “bad” by society. By putting the actions of many incarcerated people properly in context of trauma, poverty, and systematic oppression, the narratives of their lives are expanded beyond the crimes they committed, and they are seen as people, in need of care, investment, and belonging, rather than ostracization.

In her original speech, Garza continues on to say, “Colonization, capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy – all of these systems function to break the bonds of relationship between us. Our movement must be a different one. One that seeks to forge many different kinds of relationships that reject the systems that tear us apart, rejects the fear and hatred and that rejects power over in favor of power with. Building a movement is ultimately about just that – restoring humanity to all of us, even those of us who have been inhumane.”

It’s hard work and takes time. The point is to begin to move toward seeing the story, toward combing through the ways that intolerance and fear have created tangles in our hearts. To begin acknowledging that the connections we share with others form the basis of our world.

Perhaps this looks like lingering to talk with newcomers, as John mentioned this morning. Perhaps this is listening with love and curiosity to someone whose choices and opinions you disagree with. Perhaps this is tagging out a friend in a difficult that you have more capacity to deal with. Maybe it’s doing the self-care you need in order to be grounded and receptive.

Though it is challenging and messy, I think that on some level all of us in this room believe that it is possible to begin to heal our divisions, or we would not be showing up here looking for hope.

The Christian mystic Howard Thurman identified this very work as the essence of why we are here. He says, “…[A] strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide … Human life is one and all [people] are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience.”

Despite the pain of our world, this transcendent “central concern” that moves beyond divisions, and welcomes nuance, this is the God of universal love that we are called to respond to, and to which we now pray.

Transcendent mystery, love that permeates all, God of one and many, both and all and neither, spirit of life which animates us and every being, we honor your presence in our lives and are grateful for all that we have.

Help us to strive for justice and heal the harm we cause, bringing peace and dignity to the world.

Kindle hope in our hearts when we encounter pain and difficulty in our own lives, and enable empathy as we witness the suffering of others.

In our fraught, tangled world, help us hold the nuances of compassion and fear, pain and joy, courage and rage.

Keep us pointed to the eternal, the true, and the tender as we share with gratitude the beauty of this life with all those around us, in every moment of every day.

Amen.

Topics: Accountability