faith

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 World We Long For
Rev. Douglas Taylor
8-30-26

Sertmon Video: https://youtu.be/iDr2ybW7LlA

Last Sunday, after leading worship here in morning, I met up with other people of faith for a Peace Walk in Otsiningo Park. This was our second annual interfaith Peace Walk. It feels good to have this positive activity together. The local interfaith group has been struggling in recent years. After covid and the shut downs, many faith communities felt the need to focus internally. We did. As folks were beginning to reach out again, the war between Israel and Gaza erupted, and locally we did not have the strength of relationship in place to navigate that together. It has been slow work to rebuild trust and come back together across our various communities of faith.

As one of the leaders in the interfaith community, I was pushing for us to keep it simple; to have discussions about the simple value of interfaith connections. In essence I suggested we not talk about the big divisive topic of the day, at least initially. Delightfully, last year we invited people to come together to offer prayers and walk together for peace. With wars and violence happening in the name of faith, we decided to meet each other in an activity for peace in the name of faith.

This is indirect – we’re not talking about genocide or about who is harming whom. We are not addressing the problem we all recognize, though we recognize it from different directions to be sure. But we are talking about what we’d like to see happening instead of the war and violence. We are talking together about the world we long for. It is a step. We are rebuilding local connections and relationships.

About three dozen of us gathered, Muslim, Christian, Pagan, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist. A few of the clergy and lay leaders offered prayers. Then we split up into pairs or small clusters to walk around the park together with the conversation prompt: “What does your faith say about Peace?”

I walked with a retired doctor of the Muslim faith. He talked about what Islam teaches him about peace, about how his healing work as a doctor is a form of being true to the teachings of his faith about peace. I spoke about how my Unitarian Universalist faith calls me to practice justice and compassion on the road toward peace. I talked about how my faith says peace will come if we can build a true Beloved Community where all are cared for and injustices are addressed.

One of the deep values of Unitarian Universalism is Pluralism – the celebration of our diverse cultures, experiences, and theologies. We strive to live that value among ourselves as well as out in the community. We have an insert in the order of service today which shows the official Unitarian Universalist statement of values. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/shared-values You’ll see that Pluralism is one of the values we share.

If anyone asks you, “What is Unitarian Universalism? What do you all believe?” You can say – we are not a belief-centered religion, we are a values-centered religion. We have many different beliefs, but we gather around a set of values centered by Love.” And Pluralism is one of the values on our list.  

And thinking back to the conversation I was having at the peace walk, Justice is one of the values on our list. When injustices are addressed, peace can occur. As Unitarian Universalist we pay attention of systemic oppressions and work to build something better in response. Over this past week, for example, we’ve had roof work done on our building. This meant we also had to be careful about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The way ICE shows up is different depending on the community – around here lately, they have been targeting roofers who are brown and black.

So our leadership made a commitment to make our property a little bit safer for our roofers by blocking our driveways and stationing volunteers to sit out front whenever the roofers were here working. This was a good deal of added labor on our part and very inconvenient for everyone – not just ICE. It impacted our ability to prepare for our annual Veggiefest. The prep work for Veggiefest is fairly extensive and involved. With the added difficulties around accessing the building and concerns about an ICE raid – preparing for Veggiefest was untenable. So, we canceled.

We do still have musicians playing Porchfest today; and the Flea Market sale is still on along with some root beer float sales. And we are giving away ice pops along with conversations about the negative impact of ICE on our communities. But we’re not having Veggiefest this year. Which helps highlight how living our values will sometimes mean things don’t work out the way we want. Living our values doesn’t mean there are no conflicts. But our values help us navigate these conflicts and difficulties among us. Our values also help us respond to what’s going wrong in the world.

I have several complaints about what’s going wrong in the world around me. The way ICE is roaming our cities like masked and armed gangs is deeply troubling. The way unhoused people are treated by our local government and police is inhumane and cruel. The constant and casual lying and corruption is infuriating. The erosions of our democracy, the predatory capitalism, the plundering of our environment, the deregulation of food and drug safety, and the rampant bigotry and hypocrisy of this current administration is staggering.

And!  … and I believe it is vital to have a clear vision of what I DO want. I have a long list of what is happening that I don’t want. But I cannot allow anger and indignation be my only response to it all. A set of values such as the official list of Unitarian Universalists values, gives me the framework for that affirming vision of the world we long for.

Here’s another example: This summer I had some back trouble which landed me in several doctors’ offices. Things are better now, but the suffering has shifted from physical pain to economic pain. We do not need to burden people with unreasonable medical debt – many other countries have figured this one out, yet we still do it. Economically, the country is in trouble. Many basic expenses like food and gas continue to rise, while medical debt, student loan debt, and housing costs sky rocket. It’s not sustainable – unless you happen to be one of the billions syphoning wealth off the rest of us. It’s sick.

But notice we have listed Generosity among our central Unitarian Universalist values. We, as a whole community, do what we can to share what we have to make the world a better place. We work to counter the avarice around us with compassion and attention. We are using our resources and several individuals are giving their time and energy to support vulnerable people in the community, to feeding people, bringing clothes and necessities to folks, treating people with dignity and respect. Generosity is not just about money; it’s about all our resources and how we share them.

The world we long for is a world rooted in the values that lift us up. Our Unitarian Universalist faith has constructed a list of values we hold as central, as defining for our identity as a religion. These values guide how we want to be as a religious community; and I argue they guide how us into the world we long to live in. I talked about and gave examples of Pluralism, Justice, and Generosity.

(And briefly, to say a word about each of the other values in our list…) We celebrate our Interdependence with our connectedness with nature and with each other. We honor the value of Equity with the way we treat all people with respect and dignity – each other and all those we partner with and who experience our activities in the community around us. And I am excited for the coming year and the offerings I will co-create for transformation and learning. All of this threaded though the central value of love!

And I want to be clear – this list of values we have is not exclusive or limiting. It’s just the list we came up with together through discussion and debate among thousands of UUs from hundreds of congregations over a span of more than 5 years just recently. But it is not to say there aren’t other values you find compelling or central to your understanding of love and faith.

We have some posters around the building that we made internally, they say

“Do you believe in kindness, peace, equality, love, inclusion, hope, and diversity? So do we.” Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton.

I want to be sure my list of values includes joy and grace and a sense of agency. I happen to like the term interconnected better than interdependent – but I still support the values listed in the official version of our UU values. I don’t need everything to fit me specifically or for every part of me to fit here – that’s just not realistic or necessary. This list is good, and good is good enough for us to heal each other and heal the world together.

In closing, I want to recast the reading we heard before the sermon. Rev. Scott Alexander’s “We Need a Religion” https://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/we-need-religion paired various troubles in the world with the Seven UU Principles – that’s what we used to talk about our religion for about forty years before writing the new articulation about our values. I needed a new version, following Rev. Alexander’s structure, but following the values instead of the principles.

We Need a Religion   inspired by Scott W. Alexander (by Douglas Taylor)

In a world with so much tyranny and oppression,

We need a religion that values justice, and works to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive.

In a world with so much fear and violence,

We need a religion that values transformation, and calls us to grow spiritually and ethically, adapting to a changing world.

In a world with so many persons abused and neglected,

We need a religion that values equity, and declares that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love and compassion.

In a world with so much dogmatism and falsehood,

We need a religion that values pluralism, and embraces our differences while celebrating our free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

In a world with so much greed and corruption,

We need a religion that values generosity, and cultivates in us a spirit of gratitude and hope, where we are connected to one another in mutuality.

In a world with so much personal isolation and environmental degradation,

We need a religion that values interdependence, and leads us to acknowledge our place in the great web of life with reverence and humility.

In a world with so much uncertainty and despair,

We need a religion that is centered on the value of love, and teaches our hearts to hope, and our hands to care.

—

In a world without end,

May it be so

The Modern Abolition Movement
Emily Richards and Douglas Taylor
3-29-26
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/phpQUnoJUh0

Emily: Part 1

When we hear the word abolition we immediately think about tearing something down.  Abolition in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries was the movement that sought to end slavery and continues to be what first comes to mind for many people when we talk about abolition.

Today the conversations about abolition have shifted and it is common to see and hear messages such as abolish the police.  Abolish ICE.  Demands that we get rid of the systems that are in place.

Dr. Crystal T Laura shared “I think of abolition as the deliberate and intentional removal of imprisonment, isolation, punitive institutionalization as the foremost way that we address issues of harm and healing.”

Abolition is the deliberate and intentional removal of systems that cause harm yes, but abolition justice inherently also has to include the building of something new.  

Not REbuilding, which in many ways was what happened during reconstruction after the abolition of slavery in the United States, the old systems were simply shifted to continue to allow for the oppression and profit off of the people who were freed from chattel slavery.  

True abolition means creating something totally different.  And ideally better.  In order to do that you have to tear down these systems and start from scratch.

The challenge there is that these systems, these ideologies, are so ingrained into the society in which we live that we cannot imagine what we would create to replace them.  

Eric Stanley wrote:

“Abolition is not some distant future but something we create in every moment when we say no to the traps of empire and yes to the nourishing possibilities dreamed of and practiced by our ancestors and friends. 

Every time we insist on accessible and affirming health care, safe and quality education, meaningful and secure employment, loving and healing relationships, and being our full and whole selves, we are doing abolition. 

Abolition is about breaking down things that oppress and building up things that nourish. Abolition is the practice of transformation in the here and now and the ever after.”

Abolition is building things up.  What do we want to build?  What are we called to build as UUs?  As a people who value justice and equity and generosity?  As a people who believe in transformation, of our selves, our communities and our society?

Douglas: Part 2

This conversation about Abolition grew out of a “Congregational Study Action Issue” at our UUA General Assembly this past summer (2025). In general, a Congregational Study Action Issue (or CSAI for short) is a multi-year process intended to have people in our congregations talk about and consider a justice issue most of us do not already know a lot about. The point is to encourage sermons and workshops to get us talking and thinking before we draft any statements or work toward any changes. 

When I heard the Abolition proposal, my initial thought was ‘prison reform is a worthy goal, I agree we should talk about that.’ But this is not simply a conversation about making changes to how prisons work in our society.

At root, it is about crime and punishment – yes. But theologically it asks us to look at what we mean by the idea of ‘crime,’ to recognize that not all behaviors we categorize as ‘crimes’ are about harm and not all harm is categorized as a crime. Digging deep we can ask: what do we do with people who cause harm? Are some people disposable? What would redemption look like, or rehabilitation, or repair? 

One aspect of this conversation I eventually realized is that we’re also talking about the issues in our society that lead people to ‘break the law’ and end up in prison. Can we recognize that issues of poverty, racism, addiction, and homelessness are connected to this issue of abolition?

If we abolish prisons, we will also need to abolish the conditions that too often lead people to ‘break the law.’ If we had universal health care and affordable housing and minimum basic income – a lot fewer people would be at risk of incarceration. 

This conversation leads us to consider all the harm that happens that never gets labeled as criminal. Can we recognize that climate degradation, wage theft, and income inequality are not ‘criminal’ but are issues we’ll want to tackle if we are going to seriously build a just world without relying on our current prison industrial complex. 

Abolition has a holistic vision bringing in a broad swath of justice issues we Unitarian Universalists tend to be actively working on already. We talk about intersectionality and how often our struggles in one area overlaps with other areas in our lives.

This conversation about abolition touches on LGBTQ issues and immigration and reproductive rights and human trafficking and political corruption and addiction and so much more because it starts with the question of ‘what counts as a crime?’ and how will we respond as a community? 

What might society look like if we began with responses to those questions that take our Unitarian Universalist values seriously? This isn’t merely about abolishing the systems that do not work – that are in fact causing us harm. It is also about imagining what we might do when we start to build something new.

Emily: Part 3

Frederic Jameson said “It’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Really sit with that.  “It’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

We can include capitalism when talking about abolition.  We can include it along with the abolishment of modern day slavery, of the prison industrial complex, of human trafficking, of forced labor, of family policing.  Of all of these systems.

It was my youngest’s birthday this past week and they wanted McDonald’s for dinner.  Wednesdays are a busy day for us so we went through the drive through on our way home from rehearsal and they noticed that there was a sign on the window that said that they didn’t accept bills larger than a $50.  

And they asked why.  I replied that it was probably because they don’t keep much cash in the register so they wouldn’t have change for a larger bill.  And then I kind of flippantly added, they probably empty the registers regularly so there isn’t much in there if they get robbed.

And my kids were so offended that someone might rob McDonald’s.  To which I responded, wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a society where people didn’t need to resort to robbing McDonald’s.  

When we talk about abolition that is what we mean.  Can we imagine a society where no one is living in poverty?  Where no one feels like they need to steal to survive?

Alan Detlaff, a professor, author, and abolitionist, shares that statistics show that nearly three-quarters of children in foster care are there because of neglect, which is largely associated with poverty and disproportionately affects brown and black children.

Can we imagine a society where there is no need for children to be removed from their families for the crime of being poor?

Douglas: Part 4

In two weeks, on Sunday April 12, we will have a workshop based on Mariam Kaba’s book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us. We used an excerpt from the book as our reading this morning. Alex Compton and Catherine Magdala will lead the class with the support of our Social Action Huub.

We’ll crack open this conversation around abolition together. If you already have this figured out, maybe this class isn’t for you. But if you are curious or are beginning to see some connections and want more – then we can start a serious conversation about abolition and what might be possible together. 

Last week in my sermon on “The Rejected Stone” I said: 
“We are called to take care of each other, to build a society in which we all can thrive – not just some, but all. We are called to denounce the idea that some people are disposable or unworthy. The rejected and the outcast are more than welcome here – we are celebrated, central.” (3-2-6)

If that’s true, then we will want to start talking seriously about abolition together. 

Last month in my sermon “Do We Have Enough Love” I shared this: 
“Friends, our theology does not call us to be among the respected classes. We are not called to whisper sweet platitudes of God’s love to the oppressors. Instead, we are called to remember that our love is radical. … Our faith calls us to build just and loving communities. Our faith calls us to get out among people in need and get our hands dirty, to let our days be the evidence of our hearts on fire.” (2-15-26)

If that rings true, then we will want to start talking seriously about abolition together. 

Last fall in my sermon “Sometimes Things Break” I reminded us:
“Sometimes things break. That doesn’t mean we are bad people. We can thrive and grow when broken, (perhaps only when we are broken.) How we respond to the brokenness builds the world around us. It’s not the brokenness that matters. What matters is our response. What matters is the love.” (9-28-25)

And if that sounds right to you, then we will want to start talking seriously about abolition together. 

Friends, this is something we’ve been building up toward for a while. It only seems impossible because it is a big idea. But all the pieces are in front of us and we’ve been talking about them together for a few years. Abolition only seems radical because it is. But that’s what we’re here for – radical love, the kind of love that can get all of us free. 

Emily: Part 5

W.E.B. du Bois wrote, at the beginning of  Looking Forward, “How two theories of the future of America clashed and blended just after the Civil War: the one was abolition democracy based on freedom, intelligence and power for all men, the other was an industry for private profit directed by an autocracy determined at any price to amass wealth and power.”

The rise of autocracy and an industry determined to amass wealth and power, at any cost, has created a society where only the few can truly thrive and the rest of us are confined within systems that judge our worth based solely on our monetary assets, and find us lacking.

Abolition goes beyond making a few changes to the systems that already exist.  Abolition requires a fundamentally different way of living. It requires building up things that nourish everyone.  It requires transformation in the here and now and the ever after.  

And to get there we need to start the demolition.

In a world without end,

may it be so.

Tea and Purpose
Rev. Douglas Taylor
12-14-25
Sermon video: https://youtu.be/wS0h-ziD9V4

The amazing Terry Pratchett once wrote: “There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.” (Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky)

As Pratchett suggests, we do well to pay attention to the stories we are telling ourselves about the world we live in and the world we long to live into.

Last week we talked about Star Wars and the power of hope. One of the things we saw in those stories was how resistance shows up against the forces of Empire. Star Wars is a form of dystopian fiction. Dystopian literature offers a bleak perspective on the future – things have gone wrong and now we need to work to make it better. Good dystopian fiction will go one better to reveal what is going wrong now, not just in an imagined future. It will be about our present condition more than anything else.

Today I want to talk about some utopian fiction. And in a similar vein, good utopian fiction reveals not just some imagined happy future, but how we are living with the seeds of that future even today. “Change the story, change the world.”

The story I am excited about this morning is about robots. I will confess, I’ve never been a huge fan of robot-based science fiction. And upon reflection I think that has to do with the way robots have been portrayed in science fiction over the years.

One of the things about stories is how they have a surface level entertainment and a deeper level of impact. On the surface, a story about robots may be a fun exploration of technology and imagination. On a deeper level, robots offer a mirror to explore what it means to be human. When Science Fiction leans into a character who is non-human, the author is able to help the reader better understand what it means to be human.

Isaac Asimov offered the classic version of robot stories. For Asimov, robots were an exploration into ethics and logic and the hope for a better future for humanity based on ethics and logic. Asimov wrote his robots as tools or servants to humanity. And while he did critique the premise in some ways – that was the premise. Robots were the perfect servants.

Later versions of the genre had the robots take on different roles. Think about The Robot from the Lost in Space series: “Danger! Danger!” The Robot was a powerful and loyal piece of equipment. Think about The Terminator, who was really just a weapon – and then remember how most advances in drone technology are rooted in military research these days. Think about the Droids in Star Wars who were really just a plot device and sometimes comic relief. And then think about the way Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek portrays the character of Data as a sentient being with relationships and a unique place in the crew. Data was the first (and until recently, the only) robot I enjoyed.

The Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers offers a radically different robot from the loyal equipment or perfect servant of earlier versions of this literary mirror.  Where Asimov’s robots are essentially tools of humanity and society, Chambers’ robots are peers with humanity seeking purpose and community. Where Asimov’s robots are stand-ins for a conversation about racism and law, Chambers’ robots are conversation partners on the topic of freedom and liberation.

And most alluring for me is that freedom is not an either/or scenario – it is not an apocalyptic uprising of the machines. They do ‘rise up’ but their freedom frees the humans too. And that is how this story changes the mirror of what robots reveal about what it means to be human.  

The description on the inside jacket of this book categorized as ‘cozy sci-fi’ tells us this:

     It’s been centuries since the robots of Penga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools. Centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

     One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot has one question: “What do people need?” But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot.

How would you answer? What do you see that we need?

I mentioned near the beginning that this is a utopian story. Part of the premise as the book begins is that the people have resolved their basic needs. There is no poverty, no inequity on injustice leading to homelessness or hunger. It is a society in which everyone basic needs are met. In a world where people have what they want, what more do we need?

In the second book, there is a scene when the robot, Mosscap, first comes to a community and asks it’s question: “What do you need?” The small town of people who turned up to see the oddity of a robot were confused by the question at first. Nobody quite knew how to respond.

After a long pause, a bearded man piped up from the back of the crowd. “Well, um … I need the door to my house fixed. It’s a bit drafty.” (PCS p23)

Sometimes it can be hard to think beyond the immediate needs of our daily rounds. What do you need? Maybe not ‘what do you need help with?’ Maybe not ‘What do you need a robot to do for you?’ Because I don’t have a real robot tucked up here in the pulpit with me. And I’m not so good at fixing your drafty doorway. So what do you need? Really?

I imagine many answers in our current situation might land in the category of righting a wrong, answering an injustice, fixing a gross inequity. I need ambulance rides to be fully covered by insurance and for teachers to be valued more than celebrities. I need oligarchs and abusers to be held accountable and removed from power. I need my society to really care for the wellbeing of all the people in our society.

So, if that were accomplished, as is suggested in our little novel about a tea monk and their robot friend, then what would you need? Pretend we’ve solved our injustices and we live in a Star Fleet type of universe. What do you need?

This begins to drift into theological territory. What is the Human Condition? Many theologies are built around an assumption of sin or fallenness and how awful we are compared with God and what God expects of us. I don’t have time for that sort of sour thinking. Yes, we are imperfect and broken, but not is a sinful or bad way worthy of judgment. We are imperfect and broken in the way all the world is.

I believe our Human Condition is one in which we need to be loved – and we are loved. We may forget this truth or trauma can chased this truth from our knowing, but we are. I believe our Human Condition is one in which we are intrinsically part of the holiness that pervades the whole universe. We are interconnected – thus what I need is not only what I need, but what we need. And we need each other. I think any answer to the question ‘what do people need?’ must include the answer: each other. We need mutual thriving.

In this story I’m inviting you to read, the author makes multiple references to our need for each other. It shows up when the story talks about various things from interdependent ecosystems to friendships. What do people need? Each other.

One of the characters is the robot, the mirror of humanity revealing a deep truth about ourselves. The robot brings the question and raises thoughtful and emotionally mature reflection on the responses it hears from the humans. The other character is Dex, the tea monk.

Let me tell you a little about the work of a tea monk. Dex the tea monk travels from town to town helping people. They set up a small booth in the town market when they arrive. The booth has comfortable places to sit and relax, and it has tea. People visit a tea monk to talk through things they are struggling with. Maybe it is a grief or a confusion, perhaps they just need to talk through a decision they have to make. Usually people simply need a bit of companionship and a space to relax. Dex offers people empathy and they offer a cup of tea. Dex gives people what they need.

“What do people need?” the robot asks. Both the tea monk and the robot are in the business of figuring out what people need. Perhaps it is your business as well. What do people need? Each other, certainly.

In a cozy science fiction story where people’s basic needs are met, where folks don’t need to fight against Empire or join the resistance – they still need things. Surprisingly, what people need to fight Empire is also what people need in this Monk and Robot story – mutual thriving.

Later, during the book discussion I’m planning in January, we will talk more about mutual thriving as well as topics of economy, ecology, freedom, pleasure, our relationship with nature and with technology, as well as the meaning of life. And I’ll serve tea. I promise.

For now, I leave you that question to ponder. What do you need. May you uncover surprising answers as you wind your way through this holiday season.

In a world without end, may it be so.