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Rivers and Resistance

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A sermon by Polly Peterson during our Earth Day service

When the poet Robert Francis, wrote the poem “Like Ghosts of Eagles,” he was living here in Amherst. He spent nearly all of his life in a little house near Cushman Village that he built for himself in 1940—right here in the Connecticut River Valley. He didn’t include the Connecticut in his poem, but I wonder if he felt its spirit as he wrote—if he thought about what its name may have sounded like when spoken by indigenous peoples—the Abenaki and Nipmuc and other Algonquian-speaking peoples who defined themselves by its proximity.

Kwenitekw (KWEN- ee – took – uh) is what the Abenaki call it. The name’s meaning is generally translated as “long tidal river,” but it is much more than that. To these river-centric people, the river is a vital spirit power, a continuous, flowing, connecting force, never static, ever changing. It is sacred. To say the name is to evoke an entire worldview, not an object or a single physical entity.

The logo that Lea recently created for our congregation prominently features the Connecticut River, honoring the importance of that vital source of our valley’s identity.

Rivers are the lifeblood of our planet. We all live in watersheds. No place thrives without sources of fresh water, and if we pollute the waters, we hurt not only the rivers and streams and brooks and lakes, but also ourselves. One of the activities of our UUSA Environmental Action Circle, has been the annual Connecticut River Clean-up. It gives us a chance each year to connect with our watershed and to do our best to keep its waters and riverbanks clear of pollution and litter.

We’re fortunate that our task is not as daunting as the task that faceMarion Stoddart in Groton as she promoted the clean-up of the Nashua River*, but her success can serve as an inspiration when we think that our own small contributions will never amount to much. Environmental activism is a profound calling. It connects us with the people who came before and the people who are yet to come, and it connects us to the web of life. It is a reminder that we all depend on the Earth, and that in the face of human threats and degradation, the Earth also depends upon us.

Henry Thoreau, one of our Transcendentalist forebears, spent a good deal of time pondering the interface between humans and nature. In 1839, when he was in his early twenties, he and his brother John took a trip on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in a boat they had built themselves. Henry, who had always been a keen observer of wild creatures, was struck by the effects of human activity along the river. He watched the migratory fishes that swim upriver from the sea to spawn, and he saw that the fish were being stymied by dams. “Poor shad!” he lamented. “Where is thy redress?” His concern led him to ask the haunting question: “Who hears the fishes when they cry?”

An encouraging feature of our time is that more and more people are hearing them. Dams affect not only migratory fishes, but whole ecosystems. Dam removal has become an environmental success story. The nonprofit organization American Rivers reported that in 2025, the efforts of environmental and safety advocates resulted in the removal of 100 outdated and unsafe dams in 30 states, reconnecting 4,893 miles of rivers, the most miles ever restored in a single year. Eleven of those dam removals were here in Massachusetts. Dam removals restore wildlife habitat, develop greenways in cities, and increase climate resilience.

Dams, of course, are built to serve humans, and they have much to offer. But their impact can be devastating. I remember going to a museum of Native American history in Tucson, Arizona some years ago, and being stunned to learn that the indigenous peoples living at the mouth of the Colorado River, whose lifeways had for centuries depended on the ecosystem of its lush and massive river delta, no longer get any water at all from the river. None. Less than a century ago, the mighty Colorado River flowed unhindered from northern Colorado to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Now eight western states divert nearly all of the water for agriculture, urban water supplies, and hydropower. One out of every 10 people living in the United States relies on the Colorado River for drinking water. We ourselves, when we eat fruits, nuts, and vegetables from California’s Central Valley, are consuming Colorado River water. Of the small fraction of the river’s flow that eventually reaches Mexico, most is used for agriculture. Satellite imagery shows us that the final trickle of that once mighty river simply disappears into desert sand before reaching the sea.

It’s easy for us to see this as a human tragedy, a violation of the rights of the downstream people who have lost the rich and complex wetlands of the Delta that had always been at the center of their lives. From our human-centric worldview, the injustice is clear. But can you as easily think of the river itself as having lost its right to flow unimpeded to the sea? Does a river have rights?

Remarkably, some now explicitly do. A few of the world’s rivers have been granted legal personhood. I was brought up with common assumptions that rivers are nonliving natural resources that provide water and power, transportation, recreation, and a place to dump waste.

But indigenous peoples throughout the world regard the life of a river as vital and sacred. People who have long regarded rivers as sacred ancestors have no difficulty accepting the concept of a river’s personhood. To them it is obvious that a river has rights.

In 2017, New Zealand’s Whanganui River became the first river to be granted legal personhood. New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people have long believed in a deep connection between humans and water. A traditional saying is, “I am the river, the river is me.” For more than 160 years, they fought for the rights of the Whanganui River in the courts of the colonial government. They finally succeeded in getting, not just legal protection for the river, but recognition of the river as a legal entity in its own right.

That recognition encouraged activists in other countries to work for the legal rights of their rivers. The success story that is closest to us is in northern Quebec. As wild rivers in Canada were being dammed and harnessed for hydropower, their loss was keenly felt by lovers of wild places and, in particular, by the indigenous Innu people. Massive dams built by Hydro-Quebec had resulted in the devastation of vast ecosystems. Activists were determined to save the Magpie River watershed from that fate, and in February 2021, the Magpie, or Muteshekau-shipu (Moo-teh-sheh-gow-shee-poo) became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood. It has nine specific rights, including the right to maintain its natural biodiversity, the right to maintain its integrity, and the right to be free from pollution.

Thinking of a river as a legal person is a new concept for many of us, and predictably there is lots of pushback. Unconscious cultural assumptions make it difficult for us to move outside the patterns of thought instilled in us by our language and culture—difficult for us to rethink assumptions about what entities are living and nonliving, sacred and profane, which are deserving of legal protection, and which can be bought and sold.

How different would our world be if we cared deeply about the rights of rivers and streams to flow freely, clear and unobstructed? There is so much money to be made from damming and harnessing them, there are so many ways that corporations might benefit from polluting them. And yet, as more and more people recognize our place in the interdependent web of life of which we are a part, the Rights of Nature movement is gaining ground. Altering our fundamental relationship to nature may be our best—or only—path to a sustainable future. Granting legal rights to rivers will no doubt be relentlessly opposed and ridiculed. That has been the fate of every movement that seeks to expand the definition of who has rights.

Today, in the face of governments that are causing so much hurt in the world, we often speak of ourselves as the resistance–and of course it is important to resist corrupt politicians and unjust policies. But what if we turn that paradigm on its head? Our nation was founded for the purpose of giving people in the American colonies the right to rule themselves, and throughout the history of our nation, we have seen effort after effort to expand that right to more people. Activists have dedicated their lives to ending slavery, ending child labor, advocating for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and, yes, now even for the rights of rivers. Every advance has been met with resistance. It is the instinct of those who are privileged to resist any expansion of rights for others. But the courage and persistence of people who are dedicated to freedom and justice continues to push forward against that resistance.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, we can look with pride and gladness on the ever-widening definition of who deserves to have full and equal rights. But in today’s political climate, we can also see that many of those rights are threatened. Battles once won may need to be refought. We may feel overwhelmed by the outrages that seem to come at us like water from a fire hose.

But take heart. When we look at the world from the perspective of expanding rights, we can see that we are not the resistance. We are the flow. We are the Revolutionary River, declaring that rights are for everyone, not just for the privileged few. It is those who want to block or reverse the expansion of rights who are damming the flow.

Water is soft and yielding, yet very powerful. A river can carve a canyon through solid rock. It can find its way through an obstacle or carve a new channel that flows around it.

So too, the quest for justice and equitable rights is powerful. It can break through resistance and find a way around the obstacles that people erect to stop it.

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, listen to what it has to say: tyranny must not stand in freedom’s way. Let us flow on in the spirit of our forebears, expanding their vision to an ever-widening embrace of all humankind—and perhaps we are ready to expand to an even wider embrace that acknowledges the rights of rivers and mountains, plants and animals, and all sacred beings in our more than human world.

May it be so.

 

*  The Time for All Ages story, “A River Ran Wild” by Lynne Cherry, tells the story of how Marion Stoddart led the way in the clean-up of the Nashua River, beginning in 1962. Because of her efforts, people rallied to transform the Nashua River from an industrial dumping ground (56 miles of stinking toxic sludge) to the beautiful clean recreational river it is today.

 

Easter: Wild Uncertainty

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The resurrection of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

So, they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Wild Uncertainty

Jesus is offstage for his own resurrection. And we experience this moment with the women who have come to tend the dead body of their loved one.

First, they are worried about the stone. It’s a large stone, large enough to keep wild animals and casual bandits away from the body. They saw it put in place, and they don’t think that the three of them will be able to move it. But they go anyway. The task they anticipate is emotional, anointing the body of their friend and leader, and likely unpleasant, since he died violently and was put away over a day ago. It’s also dangerous. Would caring for Jesus’ body mark them as rebels too? Would someone else be anointing their bodies tomorrow? They don’t wait to collect more people to help them move the stone–they just go as soon as they can. Maybe following Jesus has taught them to expect miracles.

But they didn’t expect this one. The stone was already rolled away. I can imagine that for the last 36 hours they’ve been trying to figure out how to move the stone, when they weren’t simply grieving. They were trying to figure out how they might move the stone without getting anyone else in trouble. And the obstacle they showed up dreading was already taken care of.

But then, another surprise. The tomb is empty. Not totally empty–there’s this guy in a white robe who narrates what they’re seeing, or not seeing in this case. How many of us are feeling burnt out, running on fumes, or just plain empty? What is the empty tomb to us, when we are so energetically empty?

Well, what was it to Mary, Mary, and Salome? I imagine they’re empty, too. In the last few days, they’ve seen their loved one and leader arrested, tortured, and executed. The other members of their group have scattered in fear–the same could happen to them. This is terrible trauma. And the three of them are the only ones who are daring enough, or heartbroken enough, to stay, watch the whole ordeal, and risk their lives caring for Jesus’ dead body.

Suddenly, they’ve put everything on the line for a body that’s not even there. They’ve given everything they have, they’re empty, the tomb is empty.

This stranger tells them not to be alarmed, but they are. They didn’t know what would happen before, but now they don’t even know what is happening. The text describes their terror, dread, and fear.

They leave the tomb. What they came to do is not possible–they can’t anoint a body that isn’t there–so they leave not knowing what to say.

And there it ends. Not just our reading, but the earliest gospel, the first narrative account of the ministry and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth just stops when Mary, Mary, and Salome leave the tomb. Later editors tacked on endings to make more sense of the moment. Later gospel authors give us time with post-resurrection Jesus. But the gospel of Mark originally ended when the women, Jesus’ would-be mourners, leave the tomb.

I hear a message in that moment for now. We’re on empty, coming from empty, shaped by trauma, and heading out into a future we don’t understand yet.

We don’t know what’s outside the tomb, any more than we could have predicted what was inside. When we don’t know, we can go back to what we do know.

What’s your stone? What obstacles are you dreading right now? What’s the thing that is in your way, preventing you from doing the thing you most need to do?

I can’t speak to your personal answer, but collectively we’re living in a time that might look shockingly familiar to the author of the gospel of Mark, which was written in the Roman empire around the year 70. The Roman empire depended on religious nationalism, on the cult of devotion to the emperor, to stabilize its expanding borders. And here we are watching our government lean into imperialism, Christian nationalism, and senseless authoritarianism. We’re at war in the Middle East, and we remember that for some of us it’s not so remote people in this congregation have loved ones in Israel, in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Iran. We remember that governments go to war but it’s the people who live with the violence and loss.

Mary, Mary, and Salome faced the terror of having to undermine the most powerful empire, which occupied their land, to grieve and tend their dead. We live within the American empire, founded on colonialism, occupation, and exploitation, and it underscores every act of care we try to offer the world. For some reason, call it stubbornness or integrity or even faith, we haven’t given up. We still care for one another. We still try to make the world a better place, even when people in power try to claim the world for themselves.

Being willing to face the obstacle makes it moveable.

So, we arrive already depleted at this tomb, find out that the problem was not what we expected, and now must go back out and figure out how to live in a world turned upside-down. Like Mary, Mary, and Salome, we have each other. We don’t have to do it alone. You have people who will help you through the strangest and most confusing situations. Maybe in other parts of your life, but certainly right here, in this congregation.

We need one another, so we’re there for one another. Universalism comes from the idea that we are all children of God, that God loves everyone so much that of course we’re all saved. So, what are we going to do if we’re not busy trying to get into heaven? We take care of each other. We look for suffering and find ways to help. We cry out for justice in the face of oppression. We try over and over again to learn that us means all of us, not just people like us. We try to put children and disabled people and outcasts at the center of our community, just like Jesus. We fight for the rights of those who suffer and die at the hands of the state, like Jesus did. And we pray. We open to what is larger than ourselves and let it change us.

Oh beloveds, we’re coming out of the tomb, just like Mary, Mary, and Salome did. We’re coming out of the tomb, and there’s so much to do.

Please join me in prayer.

Spirit of life and death, love and belonging, who has spoken to us in many traditions and speaks to us still, we are empty. We are empty and coming from more emptiness. Help us to remember that emptiness is a state of possibility, not just lack. Sound an echo through our empty soul that the vessel itself might sing an alleluia.

In the holiest of names and the sweetest of silences, we pray.

Amen. Alleluia.

Twilight and Tide Pools: Beyond the Binary

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A sermon by Sarah Prager — Writer, Speaker, and UUSA Member

I want to start off talking a bit about history.

I came out as queer 25 years ago when I was 14.

If you do the math, you’ll see I still have 5 months left where I can say I’m in my 30s, but the kids already say being “born in the 1900s” means that 2004 is ancient history. I hope you’ll agree it was recent history… but in terms of queer history it was actually a very different time.

In 2004, marriage equality wasn’t legal in any U.S. state until Massachusetts became the first in May right before my high school graduation. Two thirds of Americans opposed that right becoming law.

Sodomy had been decriminalized nationally just one year earlier. Hardly any celebrities were out besides Ellen DeGeneres. Facebook hadn’t even been invented, let alone Instagram or TikTok for finding other representation—just seeing another queer person was something exciting and relatively rare in my life.

Because of what I couldn’t see reflected in the world around me, I didn’t want to come out to myself as queer because I thought it would mean I couldn’t get married and have kids, never be normal. Now I know families are not made by laws and blood but a shared commitment to each other. But at the time I believed those messages I was getting from the world around me. I couldn’t see representation of what was possible.

When I started to seek out my community’s history, I started to find that representation. I could see myself reflected in the stories of other women who loved like I did. I could see a piece of them living on in me.

When I read love letters between two women from 100 years ago, 200 years ago, Sappho’s poetry about loving other women from over 2,000 years ago, it gives me a sense of belonging, of ancestry, of rootedness. When I read that as a teenager, it blew my mind open to realize that I wasn’t the first one to ever feel this way, that I wasn’t alone, that other women had had these feelings through all of time and that I had an infinite network of women across history with me. We existed. We always have. We always will.

Our community here at UUSA is sacred as well, and has a place in history. Our congregation has existed for over 100 years, in different buildings and of course with different people—people with shared traditions that we carry on today. You have a bond with those worshippers of First Universalist Parish 139 years ago who we never met, like I have queer people from 139 years ago I never met. To know those people had something intimate in common with us is a hauntingly beautiful thing to ponder.

The history of organized religion and queerness is often not a harmonious one—but religion and God have their own distinct relationships with queer people. Though the Church was a negative force in queer people’s lives for centuries before a relatively recent turn in which millions of people of faith like our congregation are now welcoming and affirming, God never hated queer people. Whether you believe in God, or not, or another spirit or force or energy that comes from us or nature or somewhere unknown, that divine is what I mean when I say God here.

Our reading from Genesis describes God’s creation of the world in categories and binaries—earth and heavens, day and night, sky and land and seas, fish and birds and livestock… man and woman—according to the Torah, the Bible.

But God’s creations are not so simple. There is not only day and night—there is dawn and dusk and light in the night from the stars and the moon, and darkness in the day from shade, and fireflies at twilight, and sunrise and eclipses. There are fish that fly and birds that swim. There is not only land and sea but marshes and swamps and bogs and islands and beaches and shallows. So, while the holy books may describe God’s creations in binaries, God did not create us that way. The text leaves out the twilight and the tide pools, but the reality exists anyway.

Nature knows no binary. We are transitioning to spring right now, however bumpily. Animals can change sexes or have more than one sex. Animals can show bisexual or homosexual behaviors. They can engage in sexual acts for pleasure instead of procreation. Males can carry pregnancy and be caretakers, females can be leaders and hunters. There is an infinite spectrum of color and size, combinations of feathers, scales, and fur.

And humans’ natural state is nonbinary, too. Before European Christians exported their ideal of the gender binary around the world, many indigenous communities had three, four, five, or more genders in their cultures as the societal norm. In North America, the umbrella term Two-Spirit holds hundreds of nonbinary genders of Native peoples under it. Two-Spirit people and other nonbinary genders around the globe were and are seen as holy and treasured. As having a special gift to transcend which makes them natural spiritual leaders. The gender binary was created in part to keep women in their roles, in part to further destroy and villainize indigenous peoples, in part as a misinterpretation of the story from Genesis.

In our story this morning, Not Quite Narhal, Kelp learned he could honor both sides of himself—the sea unicorn and the land narwhal—instead of having to choose one or the other. Kelp figured out there was not a binary choice of staying in the ocean or leaving the ocean and chose to live fluidly.

We can all learn from Kelp’s realization that the binary is a false choice. Think about a balance you’re trying to strike in your life right now, maybe about work, or parenting, or rest, or identity. How are you seeing it as a binary choice and how can you expand your thinking to be more fluid, more expansive, recognizing that binary choices are untrue.

No one is winning or losing as you try to flow between the beach and the sea—you are a sea unicorn. You are doing both. And you can do more than two things, too. Be a baker and a sibling and a knitter and a spouse and autistic and UU and an activist and an immigrant and a runner and a friend. Don’t judge yourself for trying to “have it all.” Celebrate that you’re an expansive, fluid being who is doing all that you can, no matter how imperfect by your or others’ judgements. You are not right or wrong, or good or bad—you just are.

I can think of few things more holy than my trans family. They mirror the transition of trees’ leaves from bud to bloom to a colorful death, the sun’s masterpieces across the setting sky transitioning from day to night. They embody nature and art. I am in awe and reverence of their ability to mirror the natural state of the world and constantly change like the water at a point in a stream.

Author Julian K. Jarboe wrote:

“God blessed me by making me trans for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

What a gift. Injections, pills, and scars can be tools of the divine—Creation in action.

My spouse and my child are nonbinary. They would be blessings in my life without being trans, but that part of who they are only enriches my life.

I deeply respect their ability to help me see outside of binaries in all parts of life, always finding a third option when I might see two. Not only do they show me how to see another way, but they also show me how they share in continuing the Goddess’s acts of creation, as Jarboe wrote.

LGBTQIA+ people have been part of that for all time as creators.

A gay man created the computer. A trans woman created the microprocessors inside our phones. A gay man created the high five. A trans woman created satellite radio. The children’s books Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are and Frog and Toad were created by queer people.

Queer people’s contributions to the world are in everyone’s everyday lives, not just queer people’s.

We can thank queer people for Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun, the Mona Lisa, the David, the lyrics of America the Beautiful, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

LGBTQIA+ people of faith have been part of that history, too.

Christina ruled Sweden in the 1600s as a Lutheran-turned-Catholic. They were raised as a girl but tended towards hunting instead of painting, the equivalent of trucks instead of dolls. They were fluid with their clothing, and dating, and relationship to gender, but being queen required them to marry—a man, of course. In Christina’s words, they would rather choose death than a man.

But it was required. What could they do? Christina thought outside the box and didn’t accept what felt like the only choice in front of them. At the age of 26, they abdicated the throne, negotiated a salary for life, moved to Rome, and lived out their life expressing their gender fluidly. They died happy, free, and old, and are buried in the Vatican.

They found another way.

Juana Ines de la Cruz lived at the same time as Christina but without Christina’s power, privilege, or money. In 17th century Mexico, called New Spain then, women weren’t allowed to get an education or to work, so they needed a husband to provide for them. Getting married was the ticket to food and shelter. But Juana, like Christina, didn’t want to marry a man… and she was far from a wealthy queen.

But Juana also found another way. She became a nun, and the convent provided her food and shelter. She spent her time there studying and became the most educated woman in the country.

She also became one of the most prolific poets of the Spanish language and some of her poems were romantically directed towards Maria Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, the queen of New Spain. Today, Juana is an icon of Mexican history and appears on the 20-peso note and Mexican stamps.

She found another way.

So, even as the Church was undoubtedly a negative force in the lives of LGBTQIA+ people for centuries—often a deadly force—there is no binary here either. Queer people of faith are part of the story, too.

Our UU history is one to be proud of. We were among the first religions to begin performing same-sex unions… in the 1970s… ancient history, right? In 1984, before I was born, the UU General Assembly passed a resolution formally affirming this practice.

UUs made up half of the plaintiff couples in the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in Massachusetts was a UU couple and married in the offices of the UUA.

We have been—and still are—part of every community. A final example of our presence within communities of faith comes from the Jewish tradition. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus lived from 1286 to 1328 in France. They studied philosophy and rabbinical literature and became a prominent writer, translator, and poet. In one poem, they curse being born a man and wish they had been born a woman. I’ll read an excerpt:

Father in Heaven who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water.

You transformed the fire of Chaldees so it would not burn hot.

You transformed Dinah in the womb of her mother to a girl.

You transformed the staff to a snake before a million eyes.

You transformed Moses’s hand to a leprous white, and the sea to dry land.

You transformed rock to water, hard flint to a fountain.

Who would then transform me from a man to a woman?

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, Philosopher (1286-1328)

 

However you might believe in the Divine, I have no doubt that Spirit smiles on this transformation and any time we are our true selves. No matter your gender identity, you can learn from the lessons of our nonbinary siblings.

Live in that spirit—questioning yourself, complicating your thinking, continuing to transform yourself over your whole lifespan. Refuse to get stuck in either/or thinking and stay in the “both/and.” Both, and, and more. Find a third, fourth, fifth way. Be a sea unicorn. Look for the twilight and the tidepools.

Your own metamorphosis from child to teen to adult to senior, from single to married to divorced, remarried to widowed, from unemployed to working to retired, from walking unassisted to walking with a cane, from pregnant to postpartum to menopausal… we all have transitions in our lives.

Handle them with openness, fluidity, expansiveness… and beyond the binary.

 

“I believed, and still do, that our bodies are ourselves, that my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, American author, journalist, and activist

 

Photo by Brice Cooper on Unsplash

The following is a video of this sermon.

The Young and Fearless Prophet

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In case you missed it, amid the firehose of news, Liam Conejo Ramos is back home in Minnesota with his family. If you’re struggling to place the name, Liam was the five-year-old in the blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack detained by ICE on January 20th. You may remember the picture. Liam and his father Adrian have active asylum claims and no deportation orders, but ICE arrested them in their driveway and transported them to the Immigration Center in Dilley, Texas.

On January 27th, Federal Judge Fred Biery ordered the federal government not to deport Liam and Adrian; on January 31st, he ordered their release. The judge wrote scathingly in his order, calling out the government for its policies of cruelty. And, in an unusual move, he ended the statement with the viral picture of Liam and two Bible verses: Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35.

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these'” and “Jesus wept.”

We usually talk about Jesus twice a year on the two big Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter, and I worry sometimes that I’ve done you a disservice by not mentioning him more often. Not because I think you need to believe a particular thing about Jesus, but because even though he lived and died two thousand years ago, his ministry remains relevant in so many ways.

There are reasons why Judge Biery quoted the gospels. When so much of our country is run on a platform of Christian nationalism, Jesus counts for a lot. Jesus counts for a lot, if we can go back to the source texts and stop waving him like a flag, that is.

‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’. These are the words of Jesus, printed in red letters in some editions of the Bible. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the little children you would push away.

Judge Biery is appealing to the authority most commonly recognized as higher than the President of the United States, and that authority is siding with compassion and the innocence of children, not might and power.

Of course, many of us are looking for the Jesus who flips the tables, who overthrows corruption. The story of Jesus cleansing the temple, where he runs the money changers and sacrificial animal vendors out of the temple, overturning their tables and brandishing a whip of cords, you can find a version of it in each of the four gospels.

And then there’s the story I told the kids, the feeding of the five thousand, the loaves and fishes. This story is the only miracle other than the resurrection that is in all four gospels.

If I can switch away from the six-hundred-year-old Armenian gospel illustration of the loaves and fishes miracle I have on the screen to another image about ten years old.

Bear with me a minute, as we look at these very Western European-looking Jesuses. About ten years ago, the internet was full of “he protec, he attac” memes, where the same character has a defensive posture and an offensive posture. The meme grew to have a third pane “but most importantly…” and something that rhymes. So, we get “he protec”–Jesus welcoming and blessing the children– ”he attac”–Jesus cleansing the temple– and “but most importantly he multiply snac”.

The Bible is an excellent collection of memes that are thousands of years old, after all. And I don’t mean memes as visual internet jokes, or not just that. I’m going back to the older sense of the word as a dense nugget of cultural information that is replicated and circulated through the culture and evolves through transmission.

It’s not the only thing that has created our culture, but Christianity of one sort or another is the normative religion in our country. Think of how elegantly Judge Biery dropped two Bible citations into his order, and with two words and four numerals millions of people understood that he was appealing to a higher authority than the government of our land, an authority that government claims to be serving. People also understood it as an appeal to compassion. People understood it as a defense of the rights of children. It was all of those. It was powerful, especially when paired with his text and the picture of Liam.

When the alternative is Christian nationalism, going back to the Jesus of the Bible–the strange teacher who railed against injustice and corruption, the healer who touched unclean people and restored them to community, the holy man who hung out with sinners–that Jesus is somebody I don’t want to lose track of. I don’t want to give him up for the Jesus who vanquishes enemies and judges the outcast instead of the powerful, the triumphant Christ of Christian nationalism. I like the original version better.

The Jesus who welcomes and defends the children, when children are under attack. As schools lose funding. As our government finds new ways to persecute trans kids. As we hear stories of the abuse and exploitation of children.

The Jesus who removes corruption from sacred places. As Pete Hegseth hosts Christian nationalist prayer services in the Pentagon auditorium. As the President of this country claims a mandate to remove our rights and the rights of those we love. As supposed ministers of the gospel get rich promoting the persecution of the vulnerable.

The Jesus who feeds everyone. As the gap between billionaires and the rest of us grows. As one in seven households in the US experience food insecurity.  As we watch as children starve.

The good news is that the gospel is good news. The Jesus in the gospel’s sides with the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed. The harder part, but the realistic part, is that after two thousand years I don’t think he’s going to pop in and set everything right. So it’s up to us, all of us living now. It’s up to us to end oppression, corruption, and poverty. And even if he did show up, wouldn’t we rather be working on building the kingdom of heaven? Wouldn’t we rather be building the world that belongs to the children, the one we want them to inherit? Wouldn’t we rather be building the Beloved Community than waiting for it to appear?

Because every life saved, every burden eased, every heart opened, it’s worth it, even if we don’t know the full realization of Beloved Community in our lives. Even if it doesn’t fix everything, doing the part that we can is better than doing nothing. Because the kingdom of heaven, the Beloved Community, is real, even if it doesn’t exist yet, so long as we keep building it.

And so many of the people in this country who want to build the Beloved Community, the kingdom of heaven in our midst, they talk in this language of Jesus, of miracles that some understand as fact and some understand of metaphor, of radical teachings of love, of challenging the status quo of greed.

We’re going to continue, in our public moral discourse, to hear demands made in the name of Jesus, and a lot of people making diverse arguments will invoke him as a higher authority. I challenge you to listen to what they have to say. Because the people who speak of a Jesus who divide the worthy and unworthy, we’re not ready to build together. But the people who speak of a Jesus who lifts up the oppressed, who challenges the powerful, who loves above all, those are our collaborators in building the Beloved Community, the kingdom of heaven.

We see them washing dishes at Wednesday breakfast, packing the 400-person sanctuary at First Church for the most recent LUCE bystander training, reaching out in love across borders, going into prisons, or standing outside them, to comfort and release the prisoners. These are the kind of Jesus people who are realizing the kingdom of heaven, one step at a time, and they are our co-conspirators in the Beloved Community to come.

May we build the kind of world that Jesus preached.

The Giving Tree

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This sermon by Robin Livingston follows a reading of The Giving Tree by Shel Silversteen during our  Time for All Ages.

I didn’t pick The Giving Tree for my Story Sermon because it’s a favorite of mine. I didn’t even pick it because I like it. I picked it because for as long as I can remember, The Giving Tree has frustrated me.

I have always found it upsetting how much the Boy takes from the tree. “I am too big to climb and play… Can you give me some money?” “I am too busy to climb trees… Can you give me a house?” “I am too old and sad to play… Can you give me a boat?” And he doesn’t say thank you! or offer anything in return, or even stick around to spend time with the tree. Come on tree, set some boundaries! Tell him, “No” for once! Offer the apples, and maybe even some or your branches, but not all of them, and certainly not your trunk! How can you survive if you give up so much?

I, a giver by nature, have always had trouble with this story. I recognize the Tree in my own habits – giving to others first, and not always saving enough of my time, energy, and care, for myself. I often find myself teetering between giving things that feel sustainable for me to give, and things that, in retrospect, were maybe my branches instead of my apples, and would take me a long time to regrow.

The gifts that the Tree gives the Boy are an unquantifiable sacrifice. Depending on how resilient she is, she might survive giving up her branches, but it’s unlikely she can survive on her own once her trunk is removed. Does she have a community of tree root companions who can nourish her through her roots, or is the gift of her trunk the sacrifice of her life?

Like I said, this book gets under my skin. I didn’t think I was going to pick this story to talk about until I read The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist and author. In this book, she tells stories of the Serviceberry tree and berries as a way to talk about reciprocity and the gift economy. She says:

“In a serviceberry economy, I accept the gift from the tree and then spread that gift around, with a dish of berries to my neighbor, who makes a pie to share with his friend, who feels so wealthy in food and friendship that he volunteers at the food pantry. You know how it goes.”

The Serviceberry trees offer nectar and fruit to the pollinators and birds, who in turn spread pollen and seeds that help the tree reproduce. The nutrients move through the bodies of the other beings in this interdependent web of creation – each giving a gift to each other in sharing the abundance. The farmer shares the berries with her neighbors, who share them with their loved ones. Robin Wall Kimmerer shares the story of the Serviceberry with her readers, who maybe in turn share the story with their friends.

Upon re-reading The Giving Tree in preparation for this service, I noticed the detail that the parts of herself, the apples, branches, trunk, that she gives to the Boy are not asked for, but offered. She gives them willingly in response to his requests. “Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy.” “You may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy.” “Cut down my trunk and make a boat.” said the tree. “Then you can sail away…and be happy.”

“And the tree was happy. But not really.”

The capitalist system we exist in is built in direct contrast to a gift economy. We live in an extractive economy – one that depends on over-extracting beyond the capacity of our planet and creating a false sense of scarcity in order to accumulate wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, and our precious planet. To find success in the capitalist system relies on continuous growth with no cap. If we were to see that in a biological system, we would call it cancer. Our planet is a finite system with fixed resources. We simply cannot take and take without regard for the consequences of our actions.

So, we have to find ways to carve out for ourselves a different way of existing. We have to find ways in our modern lives to share in the abundance of what we have, and learn to ask for what we need and to feel and express gratitude for what we have and receive.

I do wonder if the Boy and the Tree in our story could have found a path that would have been a little bit less fatal, or at least a bit more mutualistic.

Robin Wall Kimmerer offers guidelines for an Honorable Harvest which is, “… the indigenous canon of principles and practices that govern the exchange of life for life”:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.

Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for a life.

Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first one. Never take the last.

Take only what you need.

Take only that which is given.

Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.

Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.

Share.

Give thanks for what you have been given.

Give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken.

Sustain the ones who sustain you and the Earth will last forever.

 

What if the Boy in the story was accountable to the Honorable Harvest? Not held accountable by some other source, but accountable from within himself. What would change if he said thank you to the tree, or offered a gift in return that he might give back in gratitude, or pass on the gift he had been given?

A conversation in the gift economy might sound more like:

“I can share my apples to feed your belly while you plant some corn. I can share the shade from my branches to shelter your home as you raise your children. Let them, too, swing from my branches and pick my apples, and share in my shade. Tell them stories of how you played in my branches when you were their age. And when you die, let your body turn to soil among my roots so that the nutrients of my body that nourished your body, can go on to nourish another generation of apples and boys.”

The word “boundaries” has become kind of a buzzword in self-care spaces, but I’d like to talk about what it means for a minute. Boundaries, as Prentis Hemphill says, are “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”. “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” They come from a recognition of your own limitations, and what kinds of behaviors and patterns push you over some kind of edge. Boundaries are not a rule that other people have to follow to gain access to you – they are offerings we make to one another to let each other know – “this is what it takes for me to be able to show up in the ways that I want and need.”

It’s like how we say at our closing circle – you can stay where you are, you can place your hands over your heart, or you can reach out to hold hands with someone near you. If the person next to you puts their hand over their heart, it doesn’t mean you’re not part of the circle together. It means that what they need or want, in that moment, is simply to not hold hands. We hold love at the center of our closing circle by allowing each other to show up to that moment in the ways that feel good.

Some of you may have encountered some of the boundaries I have for myself around my relationship with this congregation. I use they/them pronouns, and using my pronouns correctly is not something that everyone here is fluent in quite yet. Calling me the wrong pronoun is typically not coming from a place of wanting to exclude me or intentionally make me feel unwelcome, it’s more often coming from a place of not being comfortable yet with the pronouns, or with the language acquisition task of practicing using pronouns that feel unfamiliar.  But for me, getting called the wrong pronouns adds up, and if it happens a lot in one interaction or one day, it takes time for me to recover from that, and makes it harder for me to show up next time. It requires a lot of tending to my soft spots. So, I’ve set some boundaries that make it possible for me to show up in this community in the ways that are most important to me.

After a particularly challenging social event here a couple years ago, I decided that I can’t come to social events here anymore. I get misgendered too often, and it hurts too much. So, you don’t see me at the congregational picnics, the Friday fun nights, the social suppers or the auction. And maybe you’ve heard me say this before, and it might have been hard to hear. Running into my boundary may have been uncomfortable. This is not permission for you to invite me to come to one of the social things after the service. Respecting my boundaries looks like hearing my “no” with grace. Setting this boundary looks like me continuing to say “no” gently but firmly. It’s the way that I have energy and capacity to show up here in other ways. If you’re feeling tense or on edge right now – breathe – you’re not in trouble, and I’m ok. This is how we do the work of community.

My many “noes” make space for my enthusiastic, whole-hearted “yesses”. Finding the edges of my boundaries is a continual process. It’s one that I re-negotiate with myself regularly, and my boundaries might change over time as we do the work. To bring it back to our tree metaphor, when we stop clear cutting the forest, curb the invasive species, and make space and time for native plants to come back, they often do. When we intercept harm, and make space for growth, repair becomes possible.

Going back to our friend The Giving Tree – What might a boundary have looked like for the tree? To figure out where that boundary needs to be, it might have started as some time of reflection for the tree. She might ask herself: what can I give freely, abundantly, regularly? What can I give sometimes if I give myself the time to recover afterwards? What kinds of nutrients do I need from my ecosystem in those moments of recovery to rebuild my bark, wood, branches, and leaves? Who do I need to reach out to for help in finding those nutrients? Setting a boundary might look like the tree saying, “I can’t give you any more branches until I grow back a few more. When I have enough to share again, you can have another.” For the Boy who is used to the Tree giving her apples, it might be hard at first to hear that “no”. He might feel defensive. Respecting that boundary might sound like the Boy taking a breath and saying “Thank you for sharing your apples and your branches, and thank you for letting me know that you need time to recover. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you rebuild.”

I wonder. What boundaries do you have of your own that we need to honor as a community? Do you have a boundary that you’re proud of yourself for honoring? Are there boundaries you need to devote more energy and care to maintaining?

The Giving Tree story still doesn’t sit easy with me. It reminds me that taking care of myself sometimes has to look like putting on my own oxygen mask before helping others, and that that in and of itself can be hard work that goes against my programming. It serves as an omen for me of what might happen if I don’t set boundaries and prioritize my own needs.

Maybe just what we’re missing in The Giving Tree is the focal width to see the community of fungi and tree roots who share water and nutrients below the surface that support the tree – even when she’s just a stump. We don’t fully know how forests work, but we do know more and more that trees are not individual creatures alone in the world. They communicate with each other in chemicals they produce and send out on the air, and they share water and nutrients through their root systems with the help of fungi. So maybe what the Tree gave was not, in fact, more than she could offer – and maybe I can’t make that judgement for her.

In coming back to The Giving Tree story, I need to let the Tree tell me, and the Boy, what her boundaries are, and trust that she is finding the support that she needs. I need to make space for the Tree and the Boy to express what they need, and to trust them to know what those needs are. I need to trust that beyond the pages of this book, both the Tree and the Boy have other ways of getting what they need, and hope that they can grow into asking for them.

Spirit of Life, when we reach for healing may we be met with tenderness and care. When we ask for what we need, may we be received with dignity and respect, and may we find sustainable ways to meet those needs. When we bump into the boundaries of others, may we soften defensiveness with compassion. And when we set boundaries may we be held in a love that stays, and does not let us go.

Featured photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

Finding Our Place in the Connecticut River (Kwinitekw) Valley

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Finding Our Place in the Connecticut River (Kwinitekw) Valley

Beginning to Heal 400 Years of Settler Colonialism

The Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst’s (UUSA) Indigenous Awareness Circle  is sponsoring a series of  educational workshops this spring to learn about the rich history, worldviews and lifeways of the valley’s Indigenous peoples, past and present – and the  traumas that 400 years of settler-colonizer violence have done, and continue to do, in this place.  At a time of increased repression of marginalized voices in this country, this work to acknowledge the harms done and work toward healing is particularly important.  You are invited to join us on this journey. 

Each workshop will begin with a presentation by an expert on the topic, followed by facilitated small group discussions among the participants.  We encourage participants to explore their reactions to, and questions raised by, the material in the presentations, including any thoughts on colonial ancestors or predecessors.  We also see this as an opportunity to build relationships of mutual support with others who wish to explore ways to participate in healing the wounds of generational trauma. 

The workshops:

March 22, 2026; 3:00pm-5:00pm at the UUSA Meetinghouse* or by Zoom

Recovering Histories of Native Presence in the Kwinitekw (Connecticut River) Valley  – Dr. Margaret Bruchac

For many millennia, Native people lived alongside the Kwinitekw (the Connecticut River) in present-day western Massachusetts, sustained by local flora and fauna, and supported by reciprocal trade and diplomacy with their Native neighbors. During the 1600s, Native leaders in Agawam (now Springfield), Woronoco (now Westfield), Nonotuck (now Northampton and Hadley) and Pocumtuck (now Deerfield and Greenfield) invited English colonists to establish trading posts and small settlements. Sachems like Chickwalloppe, Mashalisk, and Umpanchela negotiated diplomatic and trade relations with English colonial settlers and attempted to preserve, in written deeds, Indigenous rights to hunt, fish, gather, plant, and live here in perpetuity. Yet, during the late 1600s and into the 1700s, colonial conflict and warfare violated these agreements and fractured these relations.

This workshop offers glimpses into colonial relations, while also reflecting on the lives of Native families who remained highly visible – literally “hiding in plain sight” – in the aftermath of warfare and displacement, utilizing long-standing Indigenous skills, kinship networks, and ecological knowledges to supply their white neighbors with medicinal, material, and practical assistance.

Following the presentation, participants will be invited to meet in small, facilitated groups to discuss their own understandings of Indigenous and Colonial Settler relations in the past.  We will examine the histories and stories we were taught, and consider how better understandings could affect our thinking on current questions such as reparations, land back projects, inter-cultural relations, and the on-going oppression of immigrant populations.

The UUSA Meetinghouse is located at 121 N. Pleasant St, Amherst, MA

This series is offered by the UUSA Indigenous Awareness Circle and is open to all interested people.  The purpose of this work is to explore ways to engage with Indigenous histories and Indigenous people here in the valley.  Our work is guided by the 5-step framework for Developing right relations with Indigenous Peoples.