Sermons

Where Do We Go from Here?
November 8, 2026
Ithaca UU Church
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Where do we go from here? I recently learned that this past Friday was the 25^th anniversary of the acclaimed musical episode of Buffy the Vampire, “Once More with Feeling.” The climactic ensemble song is titled “Where do we go from here?” That show (and that episode in particular) was a big deal in my house when my adult children were teens. Sadly, that is not what my title was meant to reference.

No, I am taking about our current political situation through the lens of our religious values. We just had an election; our values were on display. There has been corruption and feints at fascism lately, but we have also seen courage and persistence and real heart. Educator and author, Parker Palmer once wrote that “Democracy is a nonstop experiment in the strength and weakness of our political institutions, our local communities and associations, and the human heart.” We had a break this mid-term with what was on display at the last election. There has been a change. Now what? Where do we go from here? 

Nearly 60 years ago, Rev. D. Martin Luther King published a book with this question as the title Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? This is where my title comes from. It was the second to last book he authored, the last one was a collection of his sermons published a few months after his assassination. This one, “Where do we go from here” has the memorable quote:

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

Following these 2026 mid-term elections, with their clarifying rebuke of the corruption rampant in our government today, I am reminded of Dr. Kings words. I am reminded of his tireless work resisting the evil of racism in our society, racism and other pressing injustices such as poverty and militarism. He understood what it was to fight for justice and goodness. As I look back on the victories of this recent election, I am reminded of his words. 

“Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting, (he wrote). If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.”

There is a persistence needed to pursue justice. King advised us, fom 60 years ago, to not let up. It is like the story of the widow seeking justice that is in the bible. The eighteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells The Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:2-6).

He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’”

I don’t know about you, but this small parable surprised me when first I bumped into it. It just does not seem like the kind of thing you would find in the Bible. It is just so pragmatic! “I’ll see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out.” The persistence of the people who seek justice, who accomplish reform, who make a difference, is remarkable. The persistence of those who will not sit down and wallow in pity, of those who stand up to injustice though the odds are stacked against them, of those who don’t stop after a small victory, of those who stare unjust authority in the face and say, “grant me justice against my adversary,” is remarkable indeed. The persistence of those who practice resistance is the key to accomplishing justice.

Because “evil is recalcitrant and determined” King warned us nearly 60 years ago. We need to be persistent. Not persuasive, not trying to convince them they’re wrong – persistent in our calls for justice. We have new leadership that will take office in January. Our job now is to not stop being persistent now that the voting is done.

We will not vote our way out of the mess we’ve been in. Voting is one part of the work – an important part, but only one part. And that part is done. Howard Zinn once said “Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.” The voting is done. And the deeper work has now begun.

President Trump has long displayed too many of the traits and behaviors of an abuser for us to ignore what he is doing now and what is likely to continue to happen while he is in power. The most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is when you are leaving.

Our deeper work, after the voting is done, is to remain engaged in the work of building the world we long to live in.

Let me share with you a small set of ideas that can serve as a guide for the coming months. Parker Palmer, in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy, offers five habits or attitudes that we need as a democracy. Before you pull out your notes app or a pen and paper – let me assure you, this list is going to click for you.

The five habits to heal the heart of democracy are:
An Understanding that We Are All in this Together
An Appreciation of the Value of ‘Otherness’
An Ability to Hold Tension in Life-Giving Ways
A Sense of Personal Voice and Agency
A Capacity to Create Community

I think this is an elegant list and is a fair framework for staying engaged. In short – the answer is to focus back on our deeper moral principles as a people; to lean in to the identity that was revealed in this mid-term election.

We are deeply interconnected and interdependent. This is what Palmer listed as the first of these five habits. We are all in this together. For our democratic republic to continue to function, “we” needs to really mean “we” – all of us. As my colleague Julian Jamaica Soto has said, “All of us need all of us to make it.” We can’t move forward divided. I don’t mean, we have to be conciliatory to the point of ineffective with the fascists. I mean we need to build coalitions to accomplish our goals.

Because Palmer’s second point is that while we are all in this together, we are not all the same. We are each unique, and amazingly different. And our differences are part of what makes our country beautiful. And it is true we tend to gather in like-minded groups, to create ‘us’ and ‘them’ clusters – that doesn’t need to descend into competitive acrimony of leftists fighting against those they see as less-leftist them themselves. Parker Palmer reminds us that ‘us and them’ is fine. It is when it becomes ‘us vs. them’ that we have trouble.

Well, this, of course leads right into the third habit Palmer offers: an ability to hold tension in life-giving ways. Embracing differences while still finding our unity is a tension. Promoting personal agency and working toward creative community is also a tension. America is an extended exercise in holding tension – but you know what? So is Unitarian Universalism. Yes, it’s hard, but it gets easier with practice. And it does take practice. It takes work to hold tension well.

The fourth and fifth habits in Palmer’s list are dramatically revealed in this recent election. A single vote is just that -one voice with one vote. We each cast our ballot. But the agency of one vote is lost without the context of the community. We need to be actors in the ensemble – participants in the full drama of life.  

This is an elegant set of five habits. The first two are complimentary: we are united and we are different. The last two are also a complimentary pair: We must be strong individuals and we must build strong communities. The middle one is simply the glue – we must be able to hold creative tension in life-giving ways. There is actually a lot of overlap between these habits Parker Palmer offers and our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Values.

The way forward for us as a nation is through a set of habits that we Unitarian Universalists have been practicing at for a long time. The habits of holding tension as pluralism, of promoting individual agency while also building community, of honoring our differences while focused on our unity.

We are certainly not the only religious community doing this sort of work, but it truly is our bread and butter as Unitarian Universalists. And I’m not suggesting this is therefore something easy. The way forward means we need to speak the truth about who and what has been hurt, threatened, and endangered. The way forward is not to rest on any laurels, but to instead remain persistent in our call for justice. And we must stay with each other as we figure it out together – because “all of us need all of us to make it.”

Where do we go from here? (Buffy)

And this is what we need to do: Keep faith with our messy democratic process. Keep fighting for truth and for compassion. Keep vigilant against the outbreak of violence. And stay true to the underlying principle of Unity to which we aspire as a people.

May grace and mercy go with you through the days and months ahead. We’re on a new road now; mind your step. Stay safe out there. Look after each other.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Redeeming Omelas
Rev. Douglas Taylor
10-25-26
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/nmmtLKy9vTM

Omelas? What’s an ‘Omelas’?

Omelas is the name of a fictional city in a short story written by Ursala Le Guin a little over fifty years ago. It won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974, clocks in under 3,000 words, and is categorized as “Philosophical Fiction.” Le Guin has noted that The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (OH-meh-lahss) has “a long and happy career of being used by teachers to upset students and make them argue fiercely about morality.” (Here is a free pdf version of the story: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf)

The story is about a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas. After describing the joy and prosperity on display, the happiness evident at every turn; the narrator reveals one final element: the one atrocity. All of the utopian prosperity is dependent on the perpetual misery of one child. 

Le Guin credits Dostoyevsky for the original idea which comes from a brief quote in his 1880 book The Brothers Karamazov. It was Dostoyevsky who outlined the utopian city with one suffering person at the center. Le Guin built her story to include the added component that every person, at a certain age, had it all explained to them. And that most of the citizens would even make a visit to the cell where the child is kept to witness for themselves. Thus, everyone is aware of the arrangement.

And it is described as an arrangement – although Le Guin is vague about the how this is accomplished or with whom the city has made such an arrangement. That part is not important to the deeper question. What we are drawn to the experience of the citizen upon learning of the arrangement. How would you respond to learning that your happiness depended on this one miserable child?

Le Guin explains that some people feel shocked, sicked, or disgusted when they learn of the atrocity, that a child is kept miserable so that the rest of the population may have prosperity and happiness. In learning about the arrangement, “they feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.” None are willing to sacrifice the happiness of everyone on the possibility of happiness for the one. ‘The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one.’

After that initial reaction, our narrator tells us, the young people go through a time of deep anger. They “go home in tears, or in tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced the terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years.” “Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it.” Most of the people, we are told, accept it. And then there are a handful who do not. Some people walk away; they remove themselves from the moral paradox and they become the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Of course, all of this is meant to prompt discussion among blossoming minds, questions about morality and justice, fairness and suffering. I was not given this story when I was in middle school. That is the common time when a story of this sort is put forward for young minds. I instead watched the short film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” which also raises the similar moral question of sacrificing one for the continued ease of everyone else. And that is the point with which I wish to wrestle this morning. Rather than trying to grapple with the details, consider this moral question it poses to us still today:

Who is suffering that we might thrive?

I imagine over the decades, this question has had a variety of answers. Who does the miserable, tortured child of Omelas represent for us in our current society? Who is the one we sacrifice? Of course, one obvious point I would make in translating this into our current lives when asked: Who is the one we sacrifice? ‘Only one?’

We sacrifice thousands. We sacrifice dozens of children to school shootings every year now. https://everytownresearch.org/maps/gunfire-on-school-grounds/ The number of Trans people murdered in the US at least doubled in the past ten years,  https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/HMKP-118-JU00-20240321-SD011.pdf and hundreds of Trans people over this past year have died by suicide or other violence. https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports 1,500 women are killed annual through domestic violence and intimate partner violence in the United States alone. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499891/ They estimate that 3 million children die from hunger worldwide each year. https://wfpusa.org/news/10-facts-child-hunger/

Closer to home, we’ve seen the deaths of people on the margins here in Broome County – Peter Bennedum beaten to death last spring; and six people died in the Knights Inn fire at the end of June – three of whom were children. And I’ll add to this the suffering of all those detained by ICE over the past year who were housed at our Broome County jail and beyond.

There are so many humans we sacrifice, many swept under the rug and demonized to ease the conscience of the broader community. And were this a Faustian bargain, aren’t we supposed to be thriving as a result of all the sacrifice? Aren’t we supposed to be blessed in an idyllic utopia? Or is it only the exploiters, predators, and colonizers who prosper?

We have not only a multitude of people suffering, our society as a whole is not thriving as a result. The sales pitch to hate immigrants and trans people, Palestinians and those seeking the release of the unredacted Epstein Files, … that sales pitch from the fascists offering a beautiful society gleaming in toxic patriarchy and Christian Nationalism has lost some of its luster by the rising cost of food and gas I suppose. I will confess it is heartening to see reports that ‘government corruption’ matters a bit more to voters than the cost of gas as we go into the midterms. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/23/corruption-midterm-election-cnbc-poll-trump.html

In the story about Omelas, the only moral option seems to be to walk away. Many, in the story, (most, in fact,) settle into an uneasy rationalization in which they accept the atrocity against the one child and let it settle into the back of their minds. They then treat all others around them humanely, with kindness and care – especially children – because they are aware of the atrocity.

And for those for whom that bargain is not enough to allow them to sleep at night, there is the option to simply walk away. We do not have that option.

We cannot walk away from society. Oh, I know many of you have that little liberal fantasy of moving to Canada. And I suppose there are some who do. But you know Canada has troubles too. No. The solution is not “love it or leave it.” The solution is “love it and change it.” It always has been.

And Ursela Le Guin would say the same. She knew the solution she posed in her story was not a real one for our living. Le Guin was holding a mirror up to society, not merely a moral question for middle school minds. She also offered a witness to how we handle atrocities and suffering as a society. I think she wanted people to question the assumption that there had to be some suffering in the system for it to work well.

Does there need to be suffering for there to be good things and joy? Sit with this question for a moment. That there is suffering is certainly a reality, a fact. There are atrocities and traumas in our world, in our lives. And there is joy and beauty, love, agency, and happiness. They blend, yes. “Joy and woe are woven fine,” Blake tells us. But do we need suffering for joy to be manifest?

Maybe. That might be an assumption I’ve been holding, unexamined. I certainly recall my own evolution into emotional literacy as a young adult dealing with depression. I recall learning how to allow sadness and even depression into my life because I had grown emotionally flat. Allowing myself to experience grief and sadness allowed me to better experience love and happiness.

I am hesitant to assume my personal growth experience is the template for the whole world. But even still, let’s go with the argument that my experience translates to how society should be run – that suffering and joy are intertwined. Does that mean we must have our suffering? I think Le Guin is suggesting in her story that we are too enamored with the idea that someone most be suffering for society to thrive.

How are we to respond to the suffering among us? I don’t want to walk away from Omelas. But I don’t want to see the suffering in our city and accept it either. I want to make it better. I want to break with that bargain of ‘acceptable suffering’ and bring kindness and healing to all who suffer. I want women to walk freely in the evening without fear of being attacked or stalked, rather than learn better techniques to protect themselves. I want children to eat and grow and learn and cry and laugh without being bombed or starved. I want trans people to be welcomed as beloved instead of scapegoated by a fascist regime.

I want the kindness and care, the joy and prosperity that Le Guin describes in her story, that politicians promise in their stump speeches, that scripture proclaims is possible, that our values lead us to build together. I want it without the assumption that somewhere, out there hidden away from us, someone is suffering so we can thrive. No. I want the truth.

We don’t have to hurt each other. I want to know about the hurt. And I want us to be heartbroken by it instead of resigned to it. I want it to spur us to be better. I want us to want to change things. I want us to build something better. I believe we can.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

The Cost of Kindness
Rev. Douglas Taylor
October 18, 2026
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/7LIM-p5rNCU

It costs you nothing to hold the door for the next person, right? The simple kindnesses we can offer one another do not have a fee attached. There are small kindnesses that will cost money – buying a coffee for someone or a meal – sure. But a moment of thoughtfulness is fee-free. We can return an extra shopping cart or greet a retail worker by the name they have on their name tag. We can shovel a snowy walk for a neighbor or offer a compliment for a stranger’s cool hat. These things take time and effort, attention; but generally are not connected to the grand capitalist scheme at play. Such actions do not add or subtract from anyone bottom line. It costs you nothing to be kind.

And yet, kindness is noteworthy. Kindness is noticed. Kindness stands out against the backdrop of all the other interactions we have in a day. Kindness can sometimes feel scarce. There is so much cruelty and meanness on display, so much self-serving and exploitative behavior that kindness seems a little lost.

To be fair, we don’t always call these behaviors “kindness.” We don’t always think of them that way. What I am calling kindness, the behaviors of being kind to others, may feel more like something else for you. Kindness is about doing something positive or good for someone else in a way that is not transactional.

You many call such behaviors civility or basic human decency – “all people deserve the same respect I want from the world. That’s just how we make society work.” Or you may think of such actions as good character or personal integrity – “I am treating others this way because of who I am as a person.” What I am calling kindness, you may think of as compassion or generosity or helpfulness or even justice – “I will treat the vulnerable the way I would want to be treated if I were in their shoes.”

You may even think of it theologically – there is a whole branch of theology in existentialism that distinguishes between two types of relationship – “I-It” and “I-thou” relationships. Basically, we can treat other people like objects or like people. Think again about the cashier from your last visit to the grocery store … and we have a whole theology that says, ‘maybe we treat that person like a person instead of as an object that happens to be in our path.’ 

Kindness is not only a mindset, a way of thinking. Kindness is essentially a behavior. It is a behavior that does not benefit you directly. And, I’m arguing, does not cost you anything to do. Granted, there is a whole mess of examples in which kindness does literally cost you something – buying a gift or paying someone’s parking fee and so on. Yes – that version of kindness has a financial component. My point is not that there is zero money involved. My point is that there doesn’t have to be. People are not being unkind because they can’t afford to be kind.

And on the flip side of it, they are not choosing to be kind for the financial benefits, for the pay off. Here I will pause for a brief tangent and admit there are studies that show some benefits to the person who is offering kindness.

Studies show that being kind is good for your heart, it boosts your immune system, lowers anxiety, and even slows the effects of aging. There are several studies about something that has been called the “kindness feedback loop” which essentially reveals that being kind increases our happiness; and when we are happier, we tend to be more kind – the results suggest kindness and happiness are entangled.

So, being kind is good for you, being good to other people is good for your health and happiness. In case you needed a selfish reason to behave unselfishly.

And now I want to take a bit of a leap and maybe you’re willing to come with me. What if it did cost you something to be kind. What if there was a cost, would you pay it? We used poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s excellent poem on Kindness as our opening words, with the reminder that “Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow is the other deepest thing.” What if you made choices to be kind that followed the deep sorrows you experience in the world? What if that were the cost?

This has me thinking about one of my granddaughter’s favorite kid’s shows: Ms. Rachel’s Songs for Littles. Ms. Rachel, if you don’t know, is an educator Youtuber, and activist. She started making videos for infants and toddlers, and her work blossomed during the pandemic. People have likened her to Mr. Rogers both in style and impact.

Lately Ms. Rachel has been speaking out against the harm children are suffering in Gaza and in our American immigration detention centers. She wants children to live free and to grow, to be able to eat and be healthy. She is an incredibly kind and generous person. And she has a deep sorrow for the suffering of children. “Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow is the other deepest thing.”

She has gotten a lot of support and a lot of accusations. About a year and a half ago, she posted on social media about a group calling her evil. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/stop-antisemitism-ms-rachel-doj-investigation

“They called for me to be investigated by the DOJ because I care about Palestinian children, along with all children.
It’s lead to me getting threats, needing security & they tried to ruin my career. It’s been incredibly painful.
But the pain doesn’t compare in the slightest to what the children of Gaza experience. And my dedication to children & their human rights is stronger than any of it.”

Ms. Rachel – or Rachel Griffin Accurso if you want to be specific – is advocating that the hungry children in Gaza deserve food, they deserve to not be targeted, they deserve to not be bombed. And she says all children deserve the same. Israeli children deserve the same. She says this. And people react saying she should stick to her kid’s show, she should be quiet, she should die.

I’ve brought up the example of Ms. Rachel to highlight how her sorrow for the suffering of children has led her to kindness on behalf of children. Her example highlights something of the cost of kindness. 

And along the way, Ms. Rachel’s example highlights a second way kindness can have a cost. Be mindful to whom you are kind because that’s the part that may get you in trouble. Kindness itself is not radial. But who you are kind too may make it radical. Kindness can become a radical behavior if you choose to be kind to certain people whom society has deemed unacceptable.

Everyone will love it if you buy a coffee for the next person in line behind you are the coffee shop because that person, while random, is likely to be comfortably part of society still. But if you start buying coffees for the homeless – watch out. Everyone will love you if you hold the door open for someone with mobility struggles, but if your kindness leads you to advocate for better systems to support folks with disabilities, the praise may be mixed with accusations.

Dom Hélder Câmara, a Brazilian Catholic archbishop and champion of human rights who died a quarter of a century ago once said it quite clearly: “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” Who you are kind too is where we often discover a cost.

But that is exactly our work, is it not? Jesus called people to love their neighbors as themselves. When asked to clarify who counted as a neighbor – the question of who we should be kind to is an old question – when asked to clarify, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. And even with this parable resonating so centrally in Christian belief, it is still hard for people to be kind to those society deems unworthy. And there will be a cost. 

And we can remember what Rev. Debus told us in the reading this morning (“Kindness over Niceness.”) “Kindness doesn’t calculate the return on investment or the risk to reputation or the fear of comments.” Kindness calls us to behave in ways that may have a cost – but we don’t look to the cost to know if we should do it or not.

You and I are not celebrities and will likely not experience the costs incurred by folks like Ms. Rachel. But we can act with kindness toward all people, toward who ever happens to be near us, toward particular people who are vulnerable and in need. We can call those behaviors kind, or we can say we are just offering basic human decency. Or call it love, because love changes everything, and Love Is Resistance, and ‘love is patient, love is … (kind).’

But here’s the thing: We are offering our attention and our actions in the service of making things better. We are acting with kindness. There may be a cost, a cost of acknowledging the sorrow we feel for the plight of others. There may be a cost to reputation or some threat from those who don’t like us being kind to those people.

But still, we act with kindness. We offer our kindness not for praise or reward, but because it is the thing to do in a hurting world. And we do not count the cost. We hold the door for the next person, we treat others as humans instead of object, we cry out with the sorrow we see and experience in the world, and then we help the next person and do the next kind thing. Because that’s how we make the world better. It’s just what we do.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Keep the Circle Unbroken
Rev. Douglas Taylor
September 27, 2026
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/c6wPZP6yKH4

I wonder how many of us have a memory about coloring outside the lines as a child, or learning about the importance of staying inside the lines. I don’t have such a memory myself, but it is a common enough experience that many adults can reflect back on it.

My colleague Rod Richards says

“We humans are the line-drawers. We are the border makers … the census-takers. We draw a line to separate this from that, so we can see clearly what each is. We create a border to define our place, so we can take care of what’s there.”

Rod goes on to say, however, that compassion does not have such boundaries, “God has no borders.” “The lines we draw,” he says, “disappear when viewed with eyes of compassion.” We can say, perhaps, that God loves those who color outside the lines.

In the September 17^th issue of Braver/Wiser from last year, UU leader Clint Nicely https://www.uua.org/braverwiser/crossing-lines reflected on this, sharing his experience at the Smithsonian at age 8:

“I learned that lots of great art doesn’t have clearly defined lines. It was an epiphany, and within a few years I was questioning everything. Some musicians, as it turned out, didn’t always play the music as written. Teachers didn’t always follow the textbook. My mother often took liberties with recipes. Though I was not yet consciously aware of it, crossing and blurring the lines had become a metaphor for everything in my life, a new way of experiencing the world.” 

Last week I preached a sermon about breaking out of unhelpful cycles, patterns of harm. https://douglastaylor.org/2026/09/21/breaking-the-cycle/ I urged us to break with tradition. Following Nicely’s reflection, I urged us to not play the music as written, to not follow the textbook, to take liberties with the recipes. As Unitarian Universalists, I think we’ve come to expect this sort of perspective from our pulpits. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, after all, advising the Harvard Divinity School graduates to

“Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse all good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of [humanity], and dare to love God without mediator or veil.” 

Eschew tradition, break the cycle, dare to be original, color outside the lines! Allow me to moment to acknowledge the power and importance of all that, and to say – we don’t need to do that every time. It is worth learning when to cross the line and when to hold it. There is a value in knowing how the break the cycle and how to keep the circle unbroken – because both behaviors are needed depending on the circumstance.

I was at a multi-day minister’s conference a few years back, the topic was on leadership and authority. There were a few dozen of us participating, and when we came in to the room after our lunch break on the second day, the presenters had set up a game for us.

There was masking tape on the floor dividing the room into thirds. We were each assigned a section with most of us in one section, a smaller number in the middle section, and about five people in the last section. We were given only one rule – don’t cross the lines.

At first, knowing the course was about leadership and authority, we played along. After about ten minutes, we started crossing the lines just to see what would happen. When nothing obvious happened, most of us roamed the room. Some people pulled up the tape and used it to make art or create new boundaries. I started at the big end, but over the course of the activity I occupied every section of that room you can be assured. Eventually I sat down and started a rousing hymn sing.

Some of what we learned while processing the experience is that when left with no direction or aim, no leadership, people tend to accomplish a significant amount of nothing in particular. We also learned from our experience something about our basic anti-authoritarian streak so prominent among folks in our faith tradition.

We Unitarian Universalists tend to be ‘boundary crossers.’ We are iconoclasts. Our favorite stories from our history are the ones about the rebels, the heretics, the trail blazers, and tradition breakers. A. Powell Davies, the Unitarian preacher serving in Washington D.C. during the McCarthy Era, wrote “How strange and foolish are these walls that separate and divide us.” But are all walls foolish?

My middle child is an artist. He draws with ink and pencil, and more recently has learned to draw digitally. When he was little, he spent months tracing pictures out of books. We had a reem of that really thin printer paper – the kind that was all connected but folded along perforated lines … and it had the punched holes along the edges to spool through the printer which you would need to tear off after it was ready. Do you remember that paper? It was very thin and we had a lot of it. Our son would hold a piece against one of his books about whales and trace the creature. Month after month! We had so many sheets of traced whales. So many! He spent so long just tracing other people’s art. 

And now he can freed-hand all manner of creature. He can sketch a heron in a few minutes. I saw him create a frameable drawing of three bears climbing a tree in an afternoon based on just a conversation in the morning with someone. My point is that he started by not even coloring inside the lines – he just drew the lines exactly as they were. Not all walls are foolish, not all lines need to be crossed, we don’t need to break every rule. Such boundaries are supposed to serve a purpose, to protect something important or support someone in need.

We had a shift in our Unitarian Universalist ministry when we were training new ministers to be change-makers, border-crossers. This was when immigration was becoming a central issue in national politics, when authoritarianism was beginning to take root. A few prescient teachers in our seminaries saw that we needed to develop this mindset and these skills in our communities. 

I admit when I first learned about the focus of ‘border crossing,’ or ‘boundary crossing’ as it was called originally, I was concerned. I had spent my seminary training and the first handful of years as a minister navigating the impact on our ministry of inappropriate boundary crossing. My seminary training occurred in the shadow of the clergy sexual misconduct scandals. I learned the importance of ‘healthy boundaries.’ While I have never had a personal or direct connection to any such misconduct, the reality of it impacted the breadth of society. Not all boundaries are bad; there are useful walls that divide.   

Useful dividing walls serve for when we want to make the lines clear between what is mine and what is yours, such as with your bank account or my body. Conversations of consent and rape culture are a response to a type of ‘boundary crossing’ that is harmful.

Tearing down a wall can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing depending on the boundary, what it was meant to protect, and why it is being crossed. In our game at that minister’s conference, we tore up the tape boundary without establishing first what the boundary was for or clarifying if it was a boundary in the service of justice or of injustice.

Becca Beorger, the author of our reading this morning, reminds us of lessons from cell biology – lessons that are analogously applicable to maintaining individual integrity and the health of a community. She wrote that the reality for our cells, and a goal for our communities, is to have boundaries that are flexible. That our lines, walls, circles, what have you, give us both support and stability as well as the ability to change and grow; protection for what is precious and invitation to something new.

When Jesus exhorted his followers “love your neighbor as yourself,” it was less about tearing down the division between Jews and Samaritans, and more about finding one’s integrity and compassion given the divisive social structures of the day.

“A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robber.” Priests refused to help the man, passing on the other side of the road instead of stopping to help; until finally, a Samaritan came by. “When he saw him, he was moved with compassion.” (Luke 10)

The parable of the Good Samaritan recognizes that humanity must find a way to deal with the divisive instinct within us. The deeper question is not if the boundary should be held or torn down. The deeper question is how can you live with integrity given the reality of the walls around us. That is the discernment question to know how to respond to our walls, which to maintain and mend, which to challenge and tear down.

Crossing boundaries is good and just when we are partnering with the oppressed, when we are meeting the ‘other’ across our differences, when we challenging a status quo that causes harm. Crossing boundaries is bad when we are abusing our power or other people, when we are taking advantage of the trust that has been given to us, when we see every boundary as just a challenge rather than as a guide to navigate the needs of the individual with the needs of the group.

Boundaries are a tool, how we use them is the question. We do need to break harmful cycles. We also need to hold close to the unbroken circle of love and connection which is the tap root of what we are building as a community. With all the destruction and division that abounds in our world, yes, we need to also tear down the barriers that cause harm. But more importantly, I contend, we must hold the line for the integrity of our values, keep the rule of kindness and inclusion, mend the wall that holds up the world we are building together.

We must stay within the unbroken circle, because that is where we all heal and grow.

In a world without end

May it be so

Breaking the Cycle
Rev. Douglas Taylor
9-20-26
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/I_c87tdRZPk

Breaking a harmful cycle is not simple. One of the tricks life can play on us is when we grow up or move away or in some way leave a situation that has been harmful, we too often carry the patterns with us unwittingly. We may have gotten away from whatever was going on that we didn’t like, that was causing harm … but too often people fall back into an old pattern even when we don’t want to. Breaking a cycle is not simple.

This topic can get us thinking about therapy or healing or how we can help people get out of bad relationships. But today, I’ve gone down the path of leadership. I am thinking more systemically than personally. I want to build a better world. I want to be a leader who helps people build that better world together. And … sometimes we unwittingly carry patterns – patterns of how to be a leader, for example – that continue to be harmful. The models of leadership that are celebrated in society are not always models I want to follow.

This summer I attended a workshop about the “Transforming Hearts Collective.” https://www.transformingheartscollective.org/ This is a faith-based organization that support queer and trans people (particularly those with multiple marginalized identities) to survive and thrive. Offering workshops and classes, they work to bring liberation, healing justice, and radical welcome. The workshop I attended was led by two of the three collective co-leaders, Rev. Mykel Slack and Alex Kapitan.

Throughout the workshop, these two leaders shared about the work they’ve done and the impact their organization has had. They also talked about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ aspect of being leaders creating the organization. Later, during the open questions time of the workshop, someone asked them the question that prompted this sermon for me. Someone asked them to talk about how to be a leader without perpetuating harm, without re-inscribing the patterns of patriarchal power that run counter to the goals or healing and liberation expressed in the mission of their organization.

So many of us only have experience with the basic patriarchal version of leadership. It is tangled up with authoritative decisiveness and dominance, commanding a sense of loyalty and obedience from others. This basic patriarchal model of leadership (which most of us have witnessed and experienced) comes with the leader’s ego calling the shots, in which they wield their authority to gain control over other people. In which they use their position to cause harm. Many of us have experiences of bosses or teachers, politicians or parents who use authoritarian tactics to enforce compliance, to control those they are leading.

These queer, trans leaders hosting this workshop I attended were leading in a different way. And they acknowledged that it is not always easy to break out of the patterns we grew up in, to break the cycle of “the way things are done,” especially if no one has offered us an alternative way.

How did they do it? How did they break the cycle. To paraphrase Audre Lorde: what tools did they use, if not the master’s tools, when they dismantled the master’s house? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/audre-lorde-the-master-s-tools-will-never-dismantle-the-master-s-house

For Audre Lorde, back in 1979, she was suggesting better tool such as the experiences and wisdom of marginalized people. She was suggesting the tools of intersectionality and the power of a collective community built across our differences – specifically our racial and sexual differences. This is not the first time I’ve circled around this conversation. What are the better tools we need to build the world we long for? What are the characteristics of an alternative leadership style?

I came into the ministry at a time when Unitarian Universalism was a decade or two in to the influx of women in ministry and the influence of feminism on our collective leadership expectations. I remember an elder male colleague reflecting back on his ministry saying if not for that influence on our UU ministry, he would not have been able to be a minister among us. And that made perfect sense to me, too.

He referred to the shift away from a competitiveness among ministers toward more supportive collegiality. He talked about our ministry becoming more relational and storied, less dry and academic. I’m sure there were male ministers who were supportive storytellers throughout the ages, and certainly there have been women ministers who were dry and academic. But this colleague was talking about a general shift in the culture among UU ministers, a shift influenced by the feminism of the 80’s and 90’s.

When I heard this elder colleague talk about this shift and how it allowed an opening for him, I resonated with that. I too feel my ministry, my leadership style, is relational and supportive and storied. And I just thought it was normal. And I now recognize it was the culture around me as I came into leadership.

You know the movie “9 to 5” starting Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton? That came out in 1980. It showed an innovative workplace at the climax of the movie that “including an in-office daycare center, equal pay for everyone, flexible hours, and a job-sharing program allowing employees to work part-time.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_to_5_(film) And at the time it was not an outlandish fantasy – those innovations were real possibilities. They seemed not only possible, the ideas seemed smart. And yet we have regressed over the past 45 years. Granted, those innovations in the movie were less about dismantling systemic oppression and more about allowing women to be more equally oppressed in the workforce. But still. Even that is less attainable today.

And that is an example of the models I saw for how to be a leader when I was growing up. How has it been for you? Are you now, or have you at times been, a leader? Or perhaps you are reflecting on this from the perspective of someone on the receiving end of these leadership styles. I want the world to be a better place, and part of how that is going to happen is for us to get better leaders, to have leaders who are responsive and relational; who don’t just want control and power, but want healing and empowerment for people.

And here is an exciting point I’ve stumbled into while thinking about this and reading about this and talking with people about this. There are so many alternatives around us to draw from.

The recent death of Wendell Berry drew me back to his work, his poems and his perspective. And I consider the wisdom of a farmer as a model for leadership. Wendell Berry called for us to slow down. The farmer calls us to invest in the ground and trust that the yield will sustain us. A farmer’s model of leadership is about sustainability. Not the agribusiness model, but the model of an actual farmer working the actual earth. Leadership focused on sustainability through the years is counter-cultural to our mainstream understanding of leadership.

Or consider the leadership lessons from the Tao Te Ching that talk about not meddling and instead allowing the people to rise to their work. The Tao Te Ching talks about not forcing or coercing. Reading the Tao Te Ching gave me insight into my spiritual yearning as a young adult, but it also offered me a model of leadership that shaped my perspective.

There are many ways to be a leader that do not involve force or exerting control. Of course, one trick is to still be effective. There is a frail model of leadership that riddle with conflict avoidance leading to nothing getting happening, nothing much getting accomplished. And such ineffectiveness is seen as reason enough to cause harm, an excuse to be cruel – to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs. But human beings are not eggs and perhaps breaking people does not make you a good leader.

What makes someone a good leader? Can you name some of the qualities? Can you break out of the cycle that assumes there is only one way to be an effective leader and that includes some casualties?

I listened during that workshop about the Transforming Hearts Collective and wondered about what these trans and queer leaders are doing that I could learn from. They offered leadership that was relational and collaborative, as I had learned to be through the feminist lens of leadership.

But they also had an emphasis on healing and liberation. The empathy they drew on to bring their leadership to the people and communities they were serving caught my attention. These trans leaders knew what their communities needed and it wasn’t just about being in relationship and being treated with equity. The folks they served also needed healing. I suspect a lot of us could benefit by a space to heal. I suspect many people who consider themselves leaders could learn more about leading from trans and queer leaders. I have been learning.

Perhaps we can break the cycle and build a better sense of what a good leader does, how a good leader is with people. Perhaps our best leaders are also healers.

In a world without end,

May it be so.