relationships

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

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

My colleague Rod Richards says

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a world without end

May it be so

How to Adult
Rev. Dougals Taylor
April 26, 2026
Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/Ybsp_eg2MMc

I love how in the English language you can “verb” a word that would normally be a noun if you try hard enough. Do you remember being ‘wanded’ at the airport? Or how you can ‘friend’ me on social media? It’s not a new phenomenon. We ‘table’ discussions and ‘pencil’ each other in. You can ‘butter’ your toast while you ‘voice’ your opinion on this. This morning, I am curious about what goes into the act of “Adulting.” 

If you are unfamiliar with this ‘verbing’ of the word ‘adult,’ allow me to reveal its meaning. There is an old Peanuts cartoon (1972) in which Charlie Brown is talking with Peppermint Patty. https://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2023/02/14/security-is-sleeping-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car/#jp-carousel-35790

She says, “Lately everything seems to bother me …”
“How do you mean?” he asks.
“What do you think security is, Chuck?”
“Security?” He thinks about it. “Security is sleeping in the back seat of the car. When you’re a little kid and you’ve been somewhere with your mom and dad, and it’s night and you’re riding home in the car, you can sleep in the back seat. You don’t have to worry about anything. You’re mom and dad are in the front seat, and they do all the worrying … they take care of everything.”
“That’s real neat,” Peppermint Patty is smiling thinking about that feeling.
“But it doesn’t last!” Charlie Brown warns. “Suddenly you’re grown up and it can never be that way again. Suddenly it’s over and you’ll never get to sleep in the back seat again! Never!”
“Never?” She asks.
“Absolutely never.”
“Hold my hand, Chuck!”
Ah, classic comic strips. Sometimes light on the laughs but always ready for some poignant social commentary.

Adulting, according to Peanuts, means you have to do all the worrying now. People might say “I’m done adulting for the day” when they’ve had a particularly hard task they had to do that earlier that day. Adulting is about being responsible, about doing things that have to get done, usually unpleasant things like car repairs, taxes, and getting yourself to the dentist – all while the world around us feel like its on fire. That added layer of context is important. ‘Adulting’ as I’m hearing the term used, is about coming to terms with the reality of global climate degradation, war, Fascism, human trafficking, political corruption, and corporate greed, … all while doing the laundry and making the grocery list. Adulting is about doing all the things we need to do while everything else is also going on. You have to do all the worrying now.

And the current generation feels this more pressingly than previous generations with the way our media and information is always available in our lives. There is so much to worry about! The news was not so much in our faces two generations back. So ‘adulting’ is certainly about managing responsibilities and obligations, but this piece about also having to do all as the world seems to be on fire is an important nuance to it all.

This week I was up at a retreat with my clergy and religious educator colleagues, and over lunch I asked several of them about my sermon topic. I told them my title and asked, “What do you think I should say to them?” One colleague really emphasized this piece around the feeling of global anxiety. This younger colleague really wanted me to hear how her generation can’t get away from the pile-on of crises happening around us.

Another colleague recommended I pause mid-sermon and let us all howl for a bit. Because adulting is hard. (Awoooo!) A modern, playful version of biblical lament, perhaps, about all the things! (Awoooo!) Howling is a little outlet for the anxiety.

Yet another colleague framed their response around learning better regulation techniques. They said being an adult means you have to do your own regulation of your nervous system. This point tied in with what I was planning to say already but filled in a piece I had been missing until this colleague mentioned it. Perhaps ‘adulting’ is about learning to regulate your nervous system in the face of everything you are responsible for now.

Perhaps it’s not really about the errands and the chores and the decisions we need to make as adults. It’s about managing all those adulting obligations while also navigating fear and loss, managing the ebb and flow of friendships, dealing with anxiety – your own and that of others. “Being the one responsible for all the worrying” is about learning to regulate your nervous system.

This the ‘adulting’ task that caught my interest. Learning to regulate is foundational to dealing with all the other, mundane adult tasks like filling out extra forms for the doctor’s visit, or paying off a parking ticket, or dealing with growing personal debt.

In keeping with the analysis offered by Charles Shulz, we need security. The opening question in the comic about being able to fall asleep in the back seat is about security. Being an adult is not only about providing that feeling of security for our children; it’s about having that security for ourselves. And I hear from a lot of young adults that they are scrambling, which does not signal a feeling of security.

The economy features strongly in this scrambling people describe to me. One article I read talks about “the insecurity produced by the gigification of labor, AI-driven job loss, and algorithmic scheduling” as a reality blocking the generation of young adults from attaining a financial foothold into the stability we normally associate with adulthood. (From May 2026 Christian Century article “Has Worship become a Luxury Good?”) 

The usual benchmarks of adulthood and financial security are things like getting married, starting a family, graduating with a degree in your field, beginning a career that will last 40 or more years, buying a home: These milestones are less attainable for today’s young adults. And that’s something people might want to howl about.

It is hard to really feel like you’ve entered adulthood when you are still in a transitional space in your life. And you may not be personally feeling this but you probably know someone who is, or you’re feeling something related. And I’ll note that many elders are feeling this economic phenomenon when they don’t feel secure enough to retire. For elders, it’s not the same conversation as ‘adulting.’ It plays differently but I think it’s rooted in the same overarching economic and social context. This may simply be what it feels like to be regular people experiencing the decline of an empire in real time.

And before we fall into despair, allow me to say some more about how we need to learn to regulate our nervous systems as adults. Because the premise is that we need to all get better at self-regulating. The premise is that ‘being an adult’ means we can’t fall asleep in the backseat anymore.

But what if that’s not true? What if adulting doesn’t have to be imaged as a solo act? I do agree that self-regulation is a key feature of adulting. You do need to figure out how to keep yourself grounded, doing the things that need to get done. Yes. But what if that doesn’t mean we have to give up on co-regulating?

My colleague (… and let me pause for a moment and point out how often in this sermon I’ve said that I found wisdom from a colleague – I’m not relying only on my own adult brain to bring today’s message! …) My colleague George Tyger shared this reflection recently on this point of regulating our nervous systems:

Self-regulation is important, but co-regulation is imperative.
Why is co-regulation is so important:
it creates safety before insight
It reduces threat and shame
it helps the body come out of survival mode
it teaches regulation through lived experience, not just instruction
it protects connection when distress would otherwise turn into rupture
When the nervous system is in distress, either in flight mode or shutdown, We don’t need a lesson on coping skills. We need a grounded human being to be with us, attuned to us. Individual skills work if the nervous system is no longer drowning.
We do not learn calm alone. We learn it in the presence of calm.

Which means, maybe some of the anxiety baked into the idea of adulting – the part that says we have to do all the worrying on our own now – maybe that part is a lie. Maybe, like Peppermint Patty at the end of the Peanuts comic, we can reach out and ask Chuck to hold our hand.

And here is why this is a sermon instead of a ted-talk that happens to be on a Sunday morning: a significant part of what we do in Unitarian Universalism is build community together around shared values. We gather on Sunday mornings and sing together, we hold silence together, we share food and conversation together after the service – which are all practices that allow co-regulation to be happening for people.

I know that no everyone has friends around them that can help calm that anxiety – but that’s what places like this congregation are for. We help each other grow in maturity. Growing is not something people are meant to do alone.

I have always enjoyed the quote from A Powel Davies who said the work of the church is to help people grow a soul. Davies was talking about developing our personal moral compass and critical thinking skills; he was talking about deepening our capacity for empathy and compassion. ‘Growing a soul’ is done in community.

I suggest this is also what we need to make ‘adulting’ easier. We need communities in which we can learn to be calm; in which we can co-regulate together in the face of the world’s atrocities; in which we can, at times, carry each other.

It is a lie that says we have to carry all this alone. We can support each other; we need to support each other and to be supported. That’s how we grow. That’s how we live. That’s what it means to be a mature adult. We do this together.

Hold my hand, Chuck.

In a world without end
May it be so