Sermons

Faithful Anxiety

Rev. Douglas Taylor

3-10-24

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/LaGRs84tPK8

The big summer blockbuster movie for kids scheduled for this coming June is Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” The original movie all about feelings debuted in 2015, almost ten years ago. The premise was that we all have a base set of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Now, with puberty, our protagonist also gets anxiety along with envy, embarrassment, and ennui! I do not doubt that I will be seeing this new Pixar at some point.

Because we can relate! We all get anxious and worried at times. And I don’t mean the level that gets to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Anxiety Disorders are real and some people have an experience of anxiety that is beyond what most folks experience and it is debilitating. What I want to talk about today is more that sense of anxiety that we all get.

As we heard in our reading this morning, “Anxiety is nervous apprehension about the uncertain future.” And we live in uncertain times. There is so much going on in our world and in our lives that can lead us to feel anxious.

When I was a young minister, I learned a great deal about how to be a Non-Anxious Presence. When counseling a person dealing with uncertainty, or leading a congregation through uncertain times, we were taught the importance of being a non-anxious presence. This phrase comes from Ed Friedman and the Family Systems school of thought. Life has a share of trouble for everyone. But we are alone, we can support each other in our trouble. And it can be surprisingly helpful, supportive, and empowering to be a non-anxious presence with people. To be a non-anxious presence is to be calm in the face of trouble – to not try to fix or save or move or defend anything. It is instead to simply be present to what is going on; to be open and curious with people.

It is not much of a leap to hear in this the message that anxiety is bad and that we need to tamp down and get rid of all our fear and anxiety. In her book When Things Fall Apart Pema Chödrön shares this story about facing our fears.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

            (When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön; pp33-34)

Fear and anxiety live on the same wedge of the emotion wheel. They are similar. This Buddhist story of the young warrior is written with ‘fear’ as the adversary. It is worth noticing the distinction made by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary in our reading this morning. (Excerpts from an interview) Fear, she said, is rooted in the present moment while anxiety is about an uncertain future. But the description from the story is still apt: “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face.”

Anxiety is a normal part of our lives – we worry about things. We all feel fear. When faced with problems and trouble, we can get caught up worrying about what might happen. Anxiety prompts us to imagine the worst, to borrow extra fear in the form of worry over uncertainty before anything has happened.

Shantideva, an 8^th century Buddhist monk said, “If you can solve the problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” Or as a contemporary proverb has it: “Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.” But the twist that anxiety plays on us is when you don’t know if you can solve it yet.

This leads us to have a lot of energy and attention around how to get rid of anxiety. Buddhist thought, however, leads us away from the idea that we need to stop having such feelings and experiences. Buddhist thought suggests instead that we embrace them, accept them not as good or bad but simple a fact. This way, when we feel anxious, we can – in good Buddhist manner – accept the feeling as simply something we are feeling.

When we can separate the experience from judgement, we can receive it as information. If we can receive it, even as it ‘talks fast and gets very close to your face,’ we can take a breath and be curious. What is this anxiety revealing to me? I won’t pretend this is an easy practice. In my own experience, the information takes a lot of interpretation and translation and usually just sounds like alarms and panic. But with practice, we can learn the language of our anxiety and what it has to offer.

When we can step back from the anxiety and take a breath, we open up the possibility that our anxiety is not just a stumbling block or burden. It can be information that reveals something important to us. Anxiety can be a source of energy for change in our lives and in our communities. 

A few years back there was an article in the UU World magazine by psychologist and author Robert Rosen entitled, “Do you have just enough anxiety?” Rosen suggest that there is a health level of anxiety, just enough. It is the “amount you need to respond to danger, tackle a tough problem, or take a leap of faith.”

He acknowledges that anxiety is usually unhealthy. Anxiety can interfere with our good judgment and normal functioning. Anxiety blocks our ability to respond, it can close us off to possibilities that would serve us well, it narrows our vision and focuses us on our fears, our inadequacies, our failures, and our feeling of insignificance. That is our anxiety talking fast and getting close to our faces. Anxiety can close us down or send us off frantically in strange directions. Too much anxiety is a bad thing for our physical and psychological health. 

This much is well known and acknowledged by psychology and common sense. What Rosen adds to the conversation is this: 

Too little anxiety … is the face of complacency. It comes from the belief that all is well, and an unfounded expectation that good times will continue unabated, with no need for change or improvement. Too little anxiety leads to passivity, boredom, and stagnation.

https://www.uuworld.org/articles/do-you-have-just-enough-anxiety

What are the things that trigger your anxiety? What makes you anxious? Often our anxiety is tangled up with our sense of self – but as often it is about the news and worries have about war and politics.

Buddhism teaches us to take a step back from the heaviness of our fears and anxieties. The step back is not a disassociation however – it is not a disengaging or ignoring. It is a way to keep your own footing and remain within your integrity.

To touch back on that Pixar movie I mentioned at the begin, I’ll illustrate my point. In the original movie, the five base emotions all shared a ‘control panel’ inside a person. Sometimes Anger would seize control of the buttons and other times, fear would jump in and deal with something when the others froze up.

So my invitation to you is to imagine your anxiety – when you feel it – has taken over the control panel. When I say we can take a step back, take a breath, and just receive the anxiety as information, it is like moving anxiety away from the control panel of our brains. I’m just saying don’t let anxiety drive the bus whenever possible. It’s still there, it’s still the alarm sounding, it’s just not at the controls.

It is important to acknowledge that what I’m describing is not a technique to get rid of your anxiety – it is a technique to give your anxiety a proper hearing without turning over the reins.

And I’ll also touch back on the idea of being a non-anxious presence – or at least a less-anxious presence perhaps. I’d like us to noticed that sometimes I am not sufficient alone to regulate my own anxiety and could benefit from having another person nearby to co-regulate with me. Simply from a physiological level – if I am with a person who is breathing slowly and easily, has a calm presentation, and is simply being present with me; then my breathing slows, my body begins to calm to match the calm of the person I am with. Co-regulation is a powerful way to keep anxiety out of the driver’s seat.

Having another person helps when I am struggling on my own. Perhaps you’ve heard this inspirational story before, it’s been floating around social media for a few years:

“I was 13-years-old, trying to teach my 6-year-old sister how to dive into a swimming pool from the side of the pool. It was taking quite a while as my sister was really nervous about it. We were at a big, public pool, and nearby there was a woman, about 75-years old, slowly swimming laps. Occasionally she would stop and watch us. Finally she swam over to us just when I was really putting the pressure on, trying to get my sister to try the dive, and my sister was shouting, ‘but I’m afraid!! I’m so afraid!!’ The old woman looked at my sister, raised her fist defiantly in the air and said, ‘So be afraid! And then do it anyway!’” https://www.facebook.com/lovewhatreallymatters/photos/a.710462625642805/1113400108682386/?type=3

Do it afraid. The trick is not to avoid all anxiety. The trick is to learn, instead, to acknowledge my anxiety but not let it determine my actions. Anxiety, like fear or guilt or anger or any other unwanted emotion, is information about what matters to me and what has a hold of my heart. But anxiety should not be given free rein on my response to situations. I can instead have faith that a little anxiety can be a healthy. It can keep me just uncomfortable enough that I’m paying attention. And there is always the option for us to support each other in maintaining our balance.

Change and uncertainty will always unsettle us and make us anxious. And if we always avoid anxiety then we will always avoid change and uncertainty in life. Allowing for just enough anxiety – allowing anxiety a seat at the table, just not a hand on the controls – we can lean in to the trouble, trusting our own centered integrity to hold us. With both faith and a little anxiety, we can respond to all the challenge and the beauty that comes our way.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

The Distortion of our Best Values

Rev. Douglas Taylor

2-25-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/uN4RYgFPs4g

A few years back I discovered that, as a clergy person, I had to become fluent in recognizing online scams and phishing schemes – and more importantly – how to teach everyone in the congregation how to recognize and avoid them.

Here’s what would happen: some grifter or thief with a modicum of internet savvy would create an email address that was not quite mine but believably close enough. Then they would hack a list of contacts and send messages around to people asking for money, pretending to be me. “Blessings,” they would write, “I am in a meeting at the moment and can’t call. Email me back if you can help me out with something.” If you respond, the scammer will then say something like “Thanks, I have this group of adolescent cancer patients I’m helping out and I need to you go buy me gift cards, scratch the backs, and tell me the numbers so I can run off with this untraceable information.”

So I learned to say, repeatedly, that I would never, ever ask someone to send me gift card information using a fake email address. Ever!

It’s not that I would never ask some of you for money. And it’s not that I would never be part of a conversation to financially support people in need. I do talk a lot about helping people and supporting the vulnerable among us and using our money as a reflection of our values and about how important empathy is. It’s just that I will never do it with gift cards and a fake email address.

It is frustrating to have scammers take advantage of our kindness, empathy, and willingness to help others; to take advantage of the trust built up among us as a congregation.  I want us to continue to be kind, empathetic, and trusting. But we also need to stay curious and even skeptical. I’m thankful that curiosity and skepticism are also religious values we hold together. It is part of what helps us stay open and resilient.

We live in a world that is constantly pushing us to be fearful of each other, to be on guard against threats, to be vigilant against potential dangers. I want to be cautious about sounding that bell myself this morning. In the reading we heard this morning, from the beginning of the book Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Pamer warns us that the collapse of our democracy will happen not because the communists or the fascists have taken over, not because of a foreign invader, and not even because of greed and dishonesty among some elected officials; but because we “become fearful of each other, of our differences.” (p9)

Unitarian Universalism, as a faith tradition, has long held a deep value of honoring the differences among us. We prize our capacity to be together as one people without insisting on a coerced conformity of belief or practice. We have made ‘honoring our differences’ as one of our highest values.

Our diversity is like the prairie. Allow me to explain. Parker Palmer starts one of the early chapters in his Healing the Heart of Democracy book with the following story:

For nearly an hour, we had been driving the back roads of southern Minnesota, past acre after acre of corn lined up in orderly, tedious, and mind-numbing rows. As we crested a hill, my friend broke the silence: “Check it out.”

Afloat in the sea of uniformity called American agribusiness was an island of wind-blown grasses and wildflowers, a riot of colors and textures to delight the eye. We got out of the car and walked through this patch of prairie my friend had helped restore, dotted with the kinds of plants whose names make a found poem: wild four o’clock, bastard toadflax, Ohio horse mint, prairie Indian plantain. After some silence, my friend spoke again, saying something like this:

“There are more than one hundred fifty species of plants on this prairie – to say nothing of the insects, birds, and mammals they attract – just as there were before we first broke the sod and started farming. It’s beautiful, of course, but that’s not the whole story.

“Biodiversity makes an ecosystem more creative, productive, adaptive to change, and resilient in the face of stress. The agribusiness land we’ve been driving through provides us with food and fuel. But we pay a very steep price for this kind of monoculture. It saps the earth’s vitality and puts the quality and sustainability of our food supply at risk. The prairie as it once was – a state to which it can be restored – has a lot to teach us about how we need to live.” (p11-12)

Palmer declares that if our democracy were to collapse it would be because we had become fearful of each other; fearful of our differences. And, conversely, a healthy democracy is like healthy prairie – the biodiversity of our ecosystem helps us remain resilient and to thrive. And yet, there are those who claim diversity is destructive. Diversity and differences are used to stoke fear, but that is a distortion of one of our highest values.

I suppose one of the arguments against diversity can be echoed by the argument against the biodiversity of the prairie. The prairie does not provide us the corn we demand. The rows and rows of monotonous corn is what fuels our country. We all need food and the monoculture of corn provides it efficiently. Similarly, the monoculture of white, heteronormative, patriarchal consumerism is also efficient. As if being efficient is the best quality allowed to us.

But here we honor that our differences, we see that our differences are good. Here, we strive to be more like the prairie. Diversity is one of our best values.

In my description for this morning, I listed other values as well – Hope, Tolerance, Peace, Self-Respect and even Love. Consider that list, they’re good values! Let me unpack how they can get twisted.

The negative side of hope is a kind of naïve optimism that does not accept reality. We are in favor of reality around here. A false hope blocks us from accepting reality. Therefore, hope is for naïve, weak people who can’t handle reality.

Tolerance is good, but it’s always been the weaker version of true acceptance. Tolerance says ‘I’ll let you continue unhindered over there;’ while acceptance opens the door and ushers you in. Tolerance is okay if your not willing to do the real work of inclusion.

Peace is important, I’d be delighted to have more peace around the world. Let’s call for the full ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine. But in saying that we must acknowledge that peace without justice is too often appeasement. Peace is not enough; sometimes oppressors need to be challenged and stopped – which isn’t exactly the same as peace, is it.

Let’s talk about “self-respect.” Surely everyone can see that self-respect is a key value for all people. Hmm, let us consider the difficulties of how self-respect can be corrupted into entitlement. Let us consider how privilege and ego can narrow a person’s perspective as to think they deserve special treatment when they don’t get their way. I know that’s not what self-respect is really about, but that is the distortion. If you don’t believe me, I’ll remind you of the story Fox News ran 15 years ago saying Mr. Rogers ruined a generation of kids with his talk of self-esteem. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/ Their complaint was he made young people feel entitled when we told us we are loved just as we are instead of suggesting we could all stand to put in a little hard work to earn our place in society.

And love. Let’s not forget love. The proposed change to our Article II statement of Unitarian Universalism shifts us away from the Seven Principles to instead have a constellation of values with Love at the center. To distort our best values, even love, is to puff up the worst version of them; to imagine how these values are actually terrible things. Even love? Yes! Even love; soft, mushy, touchy-feely, kumbaya, let’s-all-just-get-along love. No thank you! That is a version of love that asks nothing of you; a version of love that is flakey and weak. We would do better to align ourselves with strong values like … the rule of law and free markets, I guess.

*Deep breath*

I refuse the distortions of our values. I am committed to truth and love and hope. I’m open to the critiques, I’ll listen. I am more than willing to temper a call for peace so that is aligns with justice – that is a great correction, a worthy conversation. And I have room in my world-view to let an idea like tolerance be the base, the bare minimum while acceptance becomes the truer goal. I can get behind that. And I will continue to laud our values of empathy and diversity and respect (including self-respect.)

And love. I will not be dissuaded of the centrality of love. The love to which I am committed is not mushy or soft. When I speak of love I mean something different from the feeling, from the romantic emotion of love. I mean love as the action, the behavior, the promise – love as the choice to treat others in a particular way. And it will not matter to me if other people misunderstand me – even if they do so on purpose. When we say love holds our center, we need not let others sway our definition of that value.

This calls to my mind that poem found on Mother Teresa’s wall at the children’s home in Calcutta. It’s the one with the lines “If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.” The poem attained fame with attribution to Mother Teresa but she never claimed to have written it. It was written by Kent Kieth under the title “Paradoxical Commandments.” And the sentiment gets at what I’m trying to say this morning. 

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never (only) between you and them anyway.

In other words – hold onto and stay true to the best values you have – even when others distort them. Stay true to them because you know they are true. And do not worry if my list of great values does not line up with your list of the list from the Seven Principles or the new UUA values constellation. Because diversity is one of our best values; and by our differences, we are made more beautiful and we will find greater resilience.

By grace and love, our diversity will help us to thrive; we will be like the prairie and we will thrive. Even as forces around us distort our words, whisper fear into our dreams, and threaten to destroy what is precious.

We are part of the prairie, my friends. We will not be scammed or fooled or bamboozled into abandoning our best values. Stay curious and even skeptical, my friends. Be not fearful of the differences among us and around us. Love will be our guide, truth will be our daystar, and compassion our constant companion. We will be the prairie.

In a world without end

May it be so.

Rest Is Resistance

Rec. Douglas Taylor

2-11-2024

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/yh3LKDd51wQ

In 2022, Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop, published her book Rest Is Resistance. In part, the book calls on us to take more naps. As part of my research for this morning’s sermon, I will share that I have been napping quite a bit lately.

Is it weird that I feel a little guilty telling you all that I take naps; as if that is a mark against my character? But there it is; it’s true. I take naps.

For a long time, my napping habit was sporadic, occasional. But during my recovery from Covid-19 a few years back I began napping regularly. For a few months I was napping nearly every day. Covid will do that to you. With time, my penchant for naps settled into a reasonable few-times-a-week; not every day, but certainly a still a common event.

But napping is an odd thing to talk about in our culture, as if it is a weakness or an indulgence. And while I will occasionally just say, “I’m going to take a nap,” I am more likely use one of the euphemizes we have, like, “I’m going to just sit here for a minute” or “I’m just resting my eyes,” or “I was meditating.” My favorite one is a line I picked up from my mother: “I’m going to lie flat for a bit.”

Maybe napping is becoming more acceptable in society since the pandemic. I’m not sure. We’ve certainly developed a strong market for Self-Care in our society in recent years, although it has a tendency to slip into pampering – which is not exactly the same thing. Naps, of course, are not marketable – there’s no money changing hands for a chance to nap. So, our society has focused on defining Self-Care as the massage and spa treatment instead.

But napping is equitable! Because it doesn’t cost anything, everybody has access to napping! Of course we’ve built up expectations and rules about who deserves naps and who does not. And we heap praise upon exhaustion and busyness and burn-out as marks of success and high status. Rest has been relegated to the level of a luxury only the privileged can enjoy. We’ve created a society in which we glorify exhaustion and some people can’t afford to rest.

An old Taoist story tells of a master walking along the banks of a river with a young disciple. At one point the master stopped and looked up at a gnarled, old tree. The disciple waited politely, having glanced at the tree for a few moments and seen nothing remarkable. Still the master continued to stare at this tree.

Finally, the master said “Tell me about this tree.”

“It is an old and gnarled tree.”

“Indeed,” the master agreed. “And what can we learn from this tree.”

“I do not know, Master.” 

“This tree has grown crooked. It is not useful to the carpenter who would have long ago cut it down for boards if it had not been so crooked. Because it was useless to people, it has been left to grow tall and old.”

With a twinkle in her eye, the master turned to the disciple, “We should be more useless as well.”

This is certainly not a message we hear a lot in our society – ‘be more useless.’ If anything, we are encouraged to be of use! I have included Marge Piercy’s excellent poem “To Be of Use” more than once in worship over the years. This would seem to be a contraction on my part. Piercy says, “The people I love the best jump into work head first …” And yet this small Taoist story about the gnarled tree cautions against that.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

But the master in our small story wants to be with people who have been left alone by the machinations of humanity, left alone to grow free even if it means growing twisted and unattractive, to be useless rather than useful. Perhaps the two perspectives are not opposites, perhaps it is a matter of agency.

I suspect the distinction is this: being useful is not the same as being used.

I need to give a little extra shout out to Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop. Hersey has been advocating for “the importance of rest as a racial and social justice issue” since 2016 when she formed the Nap Ministry. She is talking about rest – certainly as a spiritual practice – but also as an act of resistance; as a refusal to be used by the systems that continue to exploit people, particularly people of color.

Hersey wrote: “I don’t want a seat at the table of the oppressor. I want a blanket and pillow down by the ocean. I want to rest.” There is a photo I found of Hersey sleeping on a bench in a garden. It is quite striking. Part of Hersey’s focus is to recognize and honor the way sleep deprivation was a regular tool the slavers used to abuse black people. “[I refuse] to donate my body to a system that still owes a debt to my ancestors,” She wrote.

For people who work three jobs to keep afloat, who are on the edge of homelessness, or who live in fear of punishment if they do not produce enough; rest is too risky. And there are people for whom chronic illnesses causes rest to be just out of reach.

This is not simply a conversation about how we should take better care of ourselves. Self-help culture is not enough when the system is trying to destroy you. When you consider it from the perspective on the vulnerable, a conversation about resting shifts from an indulgency to an act of power.

A part of Hersey’s nap ministry is to host nap experiences. She hosts public, collective encounters where people nap together for 30-40 minutes. The news will show you protests and marches, rallies and riots. But a park full of people napping seems a little decadent, indulgent, lazy even. Angela Davies once said:

“When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles and the goals that you’re striving for – not in the way you reach them.”

The goal the Nap Bishop is striving toward seems to me to be one of agency, to be in control of our own healing and wholeness. Rest is how we access all our other power. When we are denied rest, we begin to lose something basic to our humanity.

Our own Henry David Thoreau with his Unitarian connections similarly suggests that rest is the occupation of the wise. I have regularly cited Thoreau with that time he talked about two types of hikers. There are those who climb to the top of the summit and once arrived they sit and rest and enjoy the spectacular view. And then there are those who rest in every step. This weekend I went looking for the exact quote from Thoreau on the internet because for years I have just had this idea in my head that he said this. I found the source in his journals – 1839, the same journals with that beautiful line “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

I was close, the exact quote does not talk about climbing mountains or stopping for beautiful views. The actual quote is far more in line with what Tricia Hersey is talking about with the importance of rest and reasonable pacing. Thoreau wrote,

“Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed?  The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step, while others never relax the muscles of the leg till the accumulated fatigue obliges them to stop short.” (Thoreau’s Journals 1839, Sept 17)

Thoreau argues the same point as Hersey. Don’t wait for exhaustion to stop you. Be wise and take your rest regularly, with each step! Be more like the natural world, do not make haste! Instead, take your rest like breathing: in and out, like the cycles of night and day, of rest and activity. The resting part is deeply important, not a neglectable bug we can work around. Ignore your exhaustion at your own peril.

“We want more than a life lived exhausted,” (p158) opens the prayer we had this morning. The prayer is from a collection of poems, reflections, and prayers by Cole Arthor Riley in her new book Black Liturgies. One of her reflections, on ‘rest’ includes this passage:

Rest will never feel urgent to those who don’t understand the violence of exhaustion. In a world that uses the body as currency, rest is a sacred defiance. A reminder that we will not be owned.”

Resting is healthy. It is interesting to think of resting also as a spiritual practice and even as a form of resistance. When we rest, we begin to reclaim our power. We set a firm boundary – a vibrant “no” to the violence of exhaustion. Rest is a form of empowerment. We protect our bodies from the harm and we begin to heal. Hersey says it more potently:

“To not rest is really being violent toward your body, to align yourself with a system that says your body doesn’t belong to you, keep working, you are simply a tool for our production.”

No one else is going to honor your need to rest. There will be no praise for you when you rest. The riches of the world will not be poured out upon you. And yet, the violence we do to our bodies, the way we push ourselves to produce for a toxic system that does not care – that will get praise, that will be celebrated. But to learn the true strength of resting is to tap into your full humanity and power.

We need to unlearn that which leads us to the brink of exhaustion. We need to honor the cycles of rest so that we can rise. The way to build our energy and to accomplish good things is through the dynamic back and forth or rest and rising – not through constantly pushing and pushing and pushing. We must regularly step back so that we may thrive.

There is no shame if rest does not come easily to you. Our society has concocted ways to keep you from rest. And if rest does come easy for you, consider its power for those more vulnerable than you. They need this message from you in word and deed.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: Your rest is holy act. Resting is like meditating or practicing yoga or zen sitting – a practice that can lead you deeper into yourself and your relationship with the holy.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: Your rest is an act of resistance. Even if you are not vulnerable or exhausted – we participate in a society that uses people up. When more people rest and are rejuvenated, the world will be more whole because we as individuals will be more whole.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: we are inexorably part of the natural world. Let us learn to follow nature’s lead, and take the time we need to rest and heal and live.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Thus Do We Covenant

Rev. Douglas Taylor

1-28-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/PLuBXFEUFf4

I bought a new laptop computer this week. My old, trusty machine died over last weekend and I spent several days trying to coax it back to life to no avail. Thus, it was I sat in front of my new laptop Friday morning, clicking, and accepting the “terms of agreement” for multiple pieces of software. I trust most of you are familiar with the experience. I am asked to read and comprehend page after page of legalese intended to cover each corporation from legal action, and then click the little box saying, “I have read this document and understand what it says.” After accepting with my click, I am then allowed to download and use the product.

I will confess, I did not read all the documents all the way through every time. I’ve read through enough of them to know the gist of what they say. And after the fourth or fifth product installment I had the sudden, hesitant thought: “Wait, what exactly am I agreeing to?” On the surface, I know the answers – I’ve signed up for Zoom and Adobe pdf editor and so on; software I’ve been using without concern for the past several years. Still, I had a moment, just after clicking on of those buttons, “What did I just agree to?”

Of course, it got me thinking about all the other places in my life where we have these agreements and how we may or may not pay attention to the small print of the situation. But you know, it’s only the business transactions that have the fine print actually all spelled out.

When you join this congregation, for example, we have you sign the membership book. And we don’t give you an extra page of legal provisos and addendums about what it means. We don’t have fine print spelling out the implications. What we have is a covenant.

You have heard me say before that Unitarian Universalism is a little different from most other religious communities. And our reliance on covenants is part of it. Often what I say is that we are centered around values rather than beliefs. We don’t have a creed or statement of belief that everyone must agree to before they click and accept our ‘terms of agreement’ as they join. We, instead, have values.

This is a helpful distinction when we are talking with other people about Unitarian Universalism. When we are asked what we believe here, we can respond saying – that’s the wrong question. Instead of all believing the same, we have shared values at our center.

Here is the trick, however. We have not simply swapped a list of beliefs for a list of values that we all have to accept. The new Article II statement which is set to replace our seven principles as an official definition of Unitarian Universalism lists the following core values: equality, interdependence, transformation, pluralism, generosity, justice, and liberating love. It is more explicitly a list of values compared to what we have as our current principles. However – and this is very important – it still is not a list of what we each must accept and agree to before joining a UU congregation!

It is easier to explain Unitarian Universalism to someone using the idea of values instead of beliefs. And it’s not wrong to frame it that way. But to really get at the heart of what is going on in our congregations, to really understand the ‘terms of agreement’ you click and accept when joining, to really know ‘what you just agreed to’ when you signed the membership book – we need to talk about covenant.

Covenant is about how we agree to be with each other in our community. Here is a working definition I found that I like: “Covenant is a mutual sacred promise between individuals or groups, to stay in relationship, care about each other, and work together in good faith.” (Unlocking the Power of Covenant Report of the UUA Commission on Appraisal, June 2021; p xiii)

All groups must navigate the interplay of the individual in community. Some groups over emphasize the individual while other lean stronger toward community. Historically, our Unitarian Universalist communities have had a strong preference for the individual. Freedom of the individual conscience, respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each person, making space for each voice – this is all an effort to lift the individual.  But we also are a community. And while we are each on our own path, we are traveling together – supporting each other in our journeys. Covenant is the concept we use to hold ourselves together.

We are seekers first; always open to new learning, to new insight, to new understanding. And the best avenue we have found is to be seekers in community. The covenant of respect and mutual care is the framework that provides the freedom we long for and the best boundaries possible for being in community together.

Yes, we have shared values. But we don’t need to necessarily agree on the exact language of that list of values, or the order in which they appear on the list. Yes, the values are important. But more than that – what matters to us is how we are in this conversation about our shared values. I find that calling us ‘covenanted seekers’ is a more accurate way to define us than to say we are a community bound by shared values. Because the covenant is what holds us together, it is what keeps us working together on the list of values we share. It is what keeps us as individuals in community. We are covenanted seekers.

But covenant is an odd word in our current language. Most folks will glaze over a bit when you drop that word into conversation. It is a statement of relationship. Covenant is an old idea.

The song we sang “Where you go I will go” is a covenantal reference to the book of Ruth. Covenant has a significant starting point in Hebrew Scripture, we can talk about Noah and Abraham, Moses and David. In each of those cases, however, the specifics of the concept, the details of how it worked are not all that applicable to how covenant works for us today. But it remains a good starting point and a solid reference for comparison.

In Hebrew Scripture, God is like a king setting the terms of the agreement. The people can accept them or not – but there is not room for negotiations and alterations. There was no amendment process for the ten commandments. But that’s how it was when people lived under the rule of a king. The king set the terms of agreement. And that’s how they imaged it could be under God as well.

In these Biblical stories, God was a character in the events with whom the Israelites would enter into covenant. God would make a promise: to not destroy the inhabitants of the earth by flood again, using Noah’s example, or to bring forth a great nation in Abraham’s example. God made certain promises to the people if the people would agree to abide by God’s law. “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The relational part of the covenant is clear in these old Biblical examples. But it is more one-sided than we experience in our congregations today.

Fast forward many centuries and we can find a form of covenantal theology that also follows a model of government: democracy instead of monarchy. When you shift the government model that the theology is using as a metaphor, the implications for the theological model are quite dramatic. Instead of the holy being vested in a single authority, holiness is found within every person.  

Modern Congregationalism traces its roots to Robert Browne and the English separatists of the late 1500’s. Browne gave up on the Church of England and attempted to create a new model of ecclesiology, or rather in his mind to recreate a very old model based on the early Christian house-church gatherings.

But here is the interesting stuff that carries forward for us from this history: We Unitarian Universalists have taken Congregational Polity to heart and have established our congregations in keeping with the basic tenets of Congregationalism from 400 years back. It radically relocated religious authority from the hierarchy of bishops and priests to the people in the pews.

And that is where our ideas of covenant really flourish. There is, as I’ve outlined, a deep history to our ideas of covenant. But there is also a remarkably contemporary understanding of covenant at play among us. The concept is old but we use it with our own modern spin. And part of why I think it is helpful to remember the older part is that it reminds us that covenants do not talk strictly about the relationship between individuals – between just you and me and you and you. Covenant in the way we talk about the individual’s relationship with the community, with us.

It is like a marriage. Think about weddings for a moment – the wedding vows in particular. Wedding vows are a form of covenant. They are often framed as a promise one individual is making to another individual. But really those vows are not to the individuals but the union itself, to the “us” that is created by the wedding.

And so it is with a congregational covenant. When you join this congregation, and you promise “to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another,” that is not a promise you are extending to each individual member. Instead, it is a promise to the “us” that is the congregation.

The covenant, therefore, calls you to consider and treat each individual member of the congregation as you would any other member of the congregation. There are certain basic pieces that you automatically offer to every member – not because you like them or even know them – simply because we are all covered under the same covenantal relationship.

It is a theological system that creates a relational equality. You treat people well not because you like them but because you have chosen to be in covenant with this congregation and what it stands for. A covenant allows us to sustain a community by promising to one another our mutual trust and support.

Part of that is about being kind with one another – as our behavioral covenant asks of us. Part of that is what allows our plurality – I’m seeking on my path of understanding and you are seeking on yours. We don’t need to be on the same paths to support each other – we don’t need to think alike to love alike.

So some of you in the room signed the membership book years or even decades ago. Some of you are newer members and some of you here haven’t joined yet and never will. And then there are some of you who have not yet clicked on and accepted the terms of agreement but you are thinking about it.

For you, let me say – there is no official document of our terms or agreement. Sorry. But here is a close version of what such a document might say: You will be asked to make a financial commitment and you will be asked every year to reconsider that financial commitment. You will be invited to offer your gifts and talents, and you’ll be invited to help shape this community as we live our promises together. And you will be held and supported, challenged and persuaded, accepted and inspired and – if you’re lucky – occasionally transformed.

In short, you will be part of this community and this community will be yours. “And your people are my people.” And together we will do what we can to manifest the Beloved Community together again and again, week after week.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle

1-15-24

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/KfYC3xdzpZ8

There was more than one conversation in my UU ministers circles asking which text will people be using this Sunday from Dr. King. Several people shared they were referencing the “Beyond Vietnam” speech, others of course focused on the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. At least one colleague is using the text of his Ware Lecture to the Unitarian Universalists in 1966. Another said she was following from his book Where Do We Go from Here: Community of Chaos? Dr. King certainly left us a considerable amount of material to work with.

I’m not sure when it became a common tradition among us to honor Dr. King’s message each January. An obvious possibility is in connection with 1983 when MLK Day became a national holiday. It does not seem as if there was a concerted effort from somewhere in the UUA to make this happen, it seems more organic. I’ve certainly felt a need to speak about racism, democracy, and justice each year in connection with the holiday – similar to how I feel I need to preach about forgiveness around the time of Yom Kippur each year. It just feels needed and now is a good time to bring it up. It is part of my regular liturgical year. King’s words are for me like liturgical scripture – text that keeps reappearing on my Sunday calendar year after year. 

Of course, there is a danger with this line of thinking. It does happen that people will only talk about the happy parts of Dr. King’s message and only this one time each year. ‘Whitewashing’ is the unironic term for such behavior. The question can arise – why only King? Why have this heavy focus on his words as if no one else every spoke eloquently or powerfully?

Remember Ella Baker who said “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.” And Jackie Robinson said, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” And we do well to remember that “In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist,’ was first spoken by Angela Davis. And it was Malcom X who said “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” Any of those voices would be a solid focusing center for a sermon on racism, democracy, and justice. And for a more contemporary voice, listen to Alicia Garza, founder of the Black Live Matter movement, who said: “The fight is not just being able to keep breathing. The fight is actually to be able to walk down the street with your head held high — and feel like I belong here, or I deserve to be here, or I just have [a] right to have a level of dignity.”

So why all the focus on Dr. King? I’ll start by agreeing that our ears should not only be open to the words of Dr. King on the topics of racism, democracy, and justice! I’ve made a note to myself to do a sermon focused on James Baldwin next year – probably not in January. And I don’t think I have done a sermon on the relationship between Dr. King and Malcom X – I’ll put that on my list as well.

But I am going to keep bringing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message to this congregation for two reasons. First, King has achieved a mythic level of acceptance in our society and it would be a waste to ignore him when speaking about the very issues that were central to his life’s work. King’s message already has a foothold in our broader culture. His legacy is sufficiently entangled with our nation’s story such that the message is already in the room! The second reason I continue to focus on King is because his message is still relevant to our situation today. I need to hear his message still. He was nuanced and deep enough in what he said more than half a century ago that we are still working toward his vision today.

Perhaps a third reason is something I’ve been pondering lately and is expressed in the title I chose for this morning’s sermon: “Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle.” I don’t mean to suggest we turn King into a saint and treat all his writings and speeches as the holy and infallible word of God. I don’t treat the actual bible that way – so of course that’s not what I’m suggesting with my title.

Let me pause for a moment and unpack the word ‘epistle.’ Like many ‘bible-y’ sounding words, it comes to us from Greek through Latin. It essentially means ‘a long, formal letter.’ Many people will simply refer to them as the letters, or more commonly, by the recipient community. 1^st Corinthians, for example, is the first of two letter Paul wrote to the church community in the city of Corinth.

Apostle Paul wrote many of the epistles we have in the bible, or at least the first handful; several others were written in his style. And when we say ‘long, formal letter’ I will share that King’s letter from Birmingham Jail is a little shorter than Paul’s longest letter in the bible, Romans.

Biblical scholars agree that the letters from Paul are the earliest Christian writings – the Gospels with their accounts of Jesus’ ministry were written decades later. Paul wrote his letters to these young congregations, addressing concerns of doctrine and behavior, encouraging them to live and act in more Christ-like ways. In recent years, people have occasionally offered letters written in the spirit of Paul, following Paul’s format or using some of Paul’s language or echoing the kind of message Paul offered. In that sense, King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail can be seen as such a letter written to the White Christian Churches of America.

Indeed, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King even suggests this interpretation of his letter when, explaining why he traveled from Atlanta to Birmingham for the demonstrations. He wrote:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city in the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

So, consider Dr. King – like apostle Paul – crafting a letter to a community in need of guidance, in need of clarity and dare I say correction.

The general thrust of the letter is an articulation of how we have a moral responsibility to use non-violent direct actions to oppose unjust laws rather that to wait for justice to be delivered through the courts. In this way it is an updated, in the trenches, revisiting of Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.”

“Unjust laws exist: [Thoreau writes] shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

And a little over a hundred years later, King felt compelled to articulate the same sentiment when white clergy in Birmingham questioned his actions, suggestion he could wait. King responded saying “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Do not blame the oppressed for the way they cry out in their oppression. Instead, join them. Thoreau, again, has said, “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Dr. King kept a dog-eared copy of that short essay on hand for moral sustenance and encouragement.  In his 1963 book, Strength to Love, Dr. King wrote, “The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of [humankind], put your faith in the nonconformist!” 

I hasten to clarify at this point that the hard work of a civil disobedience campaign is that its not just a moment for non-conformists to act out. A civil disobedience campaign is organized and thoughtfully enacted. It is not a simple step to take, and certainly not one taken in isolation.

The main argument in Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is similar to that of Thoreau: Unjust laws call for a moral opposition and we cannot wait for the oppressor to set the timetable for an oppressed people’s freedom. I am sure the work looks differently today – witness how different the Black Lives Matter movement has been when compared to the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. And I hear how that sounds – to be describing what happened in the 60’s Civil Rights work and the current Black Lives Matter movement as if they are not the same ongoing effort.

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.” Birmingham, chapter 4, verse 24, (I may be so playfully bold.) Progress is not inevitable. When King said the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice – he never meant for us to interpret that to say we can sit back and wait for universe to do the bending all on its own. Progress is not inevitable. “It comes,” King wrote, “through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be coworkers with God.”

Yes, we have done away with the lunch counter and drinking fountain version of segregation. Yes, we have had black astronauts and black senators and black billionaires and a black president. Yes there has been progress. But the rise of white nationalism and the flair up of white supremacy culture has been vitriolic and violent recently.

The reason we keep quoting King in our congregations is because we’re not done. King’s call for justice still serves our current situation. And it may take the form of fighting militarism or poverty – King certainly linked those evils in with racism as we experience it in our country. King would certainly applaud resistance against war and efforts to alleviate economic inequality as complimentary to our anti-racism work. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. Let our lives be the counter-friction to stop the machine.

As we prepare to go forth into the world from this morning, let us keep King’s call in our hearts. Let his eloquence ring in our ears. We can yet work against racism. We still can take part in speaking out against endless war. There is still more to do, right here in Binghamton in the struggle against poverty and economic inequality.

Let us go forth, ready to bend the moral arc of the universe a bit more toward justice today. Let us go forth, ready to help realize the dream King spoke about by working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the sick. Let us speak out against racism and the ways it corrodes the soul of our nation. Let us share the dream together, today. And let us have our hearts spurred into action to once again do the work of building the Beloved Community for today.

In a world without end

May it be so.