Who Has Time for Collective Liberation?

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When I preached the glossary service three weeks ago, I encountered a question that was too big to fit into the time we had for that service. It was about the term “liberal religion.” We have a tagline on our letterhead and now on our website that reads “A liberal religious light since 1893.”

Since we just had the November election, I want to be clear that liberal in the sense of liberal religion does not necessarily describe the electoral politics of our congregation or the Unitarian Universalist religious movement. We don’t endorse any candidates or parties. I do speak about how our values translate into public and collective power. Liberal religion is a term that describes not what a religion believes, or how its people vote, but how its beliefs work, though those things frequently do go hand in hand.

Liberal religion means, broadly, religion that is not limited by fixed doctrine but instead contains a framework for further evolution. Many religions have a liberal tradition–we’re not the only ones. In my seminary education alone, I read and studied with scholars from liberal Protestant Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions. If this is new to you, just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Let me know if you want a bibliography.

In the Unitarian Universalist context, we have made a tradition of outgrowing our own previously held doctrine. We don’t have a creed here. We do have shared values that guide our ethical decision-making. Those shared values are Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity, grounded in a foundation of Love. Conscience, reason, and inspiration are our tools in making ethical decisions.

To go back to 19th century Unitarianism, older than our congregation, Theodore Parker preached about the Transient and Permanent aspects of Christianity. Doctrine on the nature of Christ, the miracles, the things Jesus did two thousand years ago, all of that was transient; the teachings of love are permanent, and that is what we carry with us. And you know what, a lot of what Theodore Parker wrote turned out to be transient too.

Liberal religion expects to grow and change. I really hope that one hundred years from now, all of my ethical commitments like:

  • All genders are sacred and trans people are free to live as their truest selves
  • Migration is a human right in an unstable world. People need the freedom to migrate and the safety to not migrate.
  • All people deserve freedom and a say in their government
  • All people have the right to food, housing, healthcare, education, and support throughout their lives

I hope all of those ethical statements sound ridiculously outdated someday, and the sooner the better, because then we will have built a world where those things are taken for granted.

But the real question here, from the person who submitted this term for the glossary service was, ‘Is there such a thing as radical religion?’ I don’t frequently hear those words together, though Unitarian Universalists and others do talk about radical meaning grasping something at the root, getting the whole metaphorical carrot, I guess, and not just the leaves.

I more frequently hear us talk about the difference between liberal theologies and liberation theologies. Liberal religion, with its liberal theologies, is concerned with the growth and freedom of the individuals who practice and believe them. Liberation theologies are concerned with generating freedom where it’s missing. In seminary, I studied Latin American liberation theology, Black liberation theology, Indigenous and Asian and African liberation theologies, women’s and queer liberation theologies. My friend Rebecca Stevens-Walter is a children’s liberation theologian. Liberation theologies ask what does salvation mean for someone who is oppressed?

I find this question fascinating when we hold it in the context of Universalism, which is to say that all people are loved without reservation and deserve what they need to thrive; liberation theology reminds us that those of us who face particular oppressions might need more than one-size-fits-all salvation. It’s why we have Black Lives Matter and a Pride flag on the outside of our building. Sometimes loving everybody means being on the side of people particularly. Love makes demands of our consciences, and loving everybody means dismantling oppression, for the freedom and healing of both the oppressed and the oppressor.

Liberation theology in a theistic frame says that God is on the side of the oppressed. God never stops loving everyone, but sometimes love means stopping harm, righting wrongs, making sure the people who don’t have enough get what they need. You can see this idea in the ministry of Bishop William Barber, Rev. Liz Theoharis, and the multi-faith coalition at the heart of the Poor People’s Campaign. It says in the Bible and the religious texts of many traditions that how we treat those who are poor, those who have less power, matters more than who can offer the best sacrifice.

The world has so many needs right now, and always, and none of them is more important, even if they seem to take turns as most dire and urgent. Food insecurity matters, and healthcare, and safety for immigrants and trans and queer people. And disaster response. And really everything. In the Beloved Community, it all matters, from ending genocide down to the tiniest animal shelter.

I often ask you to imagine the Beloved Community, where everyone has what they need to thrive, where we no longer experience racism, poverty, militarism, where we build positive peace and settle conflict constructively, without violence. I have never lived in the Beloved Community. It has not yet existed, at least in the sense of everyone in the whole world having what we need.

But I have experienced it in tiny glimmers. A holiday dinner where everyone, including diabetics and vegans and omnivores and food-allergics sat down hungry and got up satisfied. A meeting where people came together broken and in conflict and decided to meet the humanity in one another, not to compromise or even agree to disagree but simply to hear one another. Maybe even an election like this past Tuesday, in which voters all across the country repudiated the ongoing persecution of poor people, disabled people, immigrants, and trans and queer people by voting for change.

Like with most things, collective liberation, I don’t know how to get to the end goal from these tiny glimmers. I don’t have a plan. But like any kid who grew up with the Ghostbusters, the X-Men, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I believe that having a plan is not nearly as important as having a team. Having a team means that we don’t all need to have the same gifts, and it’s better if we don’t.

Deepa Iyer’s children’s book We Are the Builders, as well as her helpful workbook Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection propose ten roles for social change.

  • Frontline responders: These are the folks who mobilize quickly, who always seem ready to help and calm in the storm. The first example I can think of here is LUCE, responding to ICE detentions. LUCE was part of the ICE bystander training we hosted last month, and I am so grateful that they’re running the hotline for ICE sightings, verifying them, and helping those who have been detained and their families.
  • Visionaries: These are the people who know where we’re going, the ones who ask if the direction we are heading will get us to our ultimate goal. Sometimes these are the ones who wind up at the microphone at a protest, the ones who reconnect us to our hope.
  • Builders: These folks do details, solve the problems, and get it done. We have a lot of builders in this congregation, and I appreciate you all so much.
  • Disrupters: These are the people who take risks to call out injustice. Think of whistleblowers. Think of people in inflatable frog costumes pointing out the cruelty of our government.
  • Caregivers: These are the folks who make it safe for others to get what they need and feel their feelings. We don’t always name the caregivers as an important part of movements, but they are the ones who remind us to rest, make sure we eat, ask us how we’re taking care of ourselves. We would fall apart without them.
  • Experimenters: These are the out-of-the-box thinkers, the ones who are willing to try new things and see what works, what doesn’t, and what we learn along the way. They call us beyond our comfort zones and have faith that we can survive and learn from things that don’t go according to plan.
  • Weavers: These are coalition-builders, the ones who find what we have in common across perceived differences. They keep the larger ecosystem in mind and can look beyond self-interest. They build bridges between communities.
  • Storytellers: These are the poets, the documentary filmmakers, the photographers, the ones who make a narrative out of the moments and complex characters out of headlines. They connect the movement to its humanity.
  • Healers: These are the people who move our society and movements, as well as our congregation, into healthier ways of being and interacting. This looks like practicing moving through emotions together, repairing relationships, sitting with grief.
  • Guides: These are the wise elders, regardless of age, who translate their own experience for others to use, who know that some things may be different this time around, but their thoughtfulness can be a resource.

The disrupters and weavers, for example, don’t understand things the same way, or work the same way, but both roles, or really all ten, are necessary for creating a future that is actually for all of us. And infighting between people whose ultimate goals are aligned is a huge distraction from our collective liberation. Which is not to say that we need to play nice with those who dehumanize us and those we love, but the work we do to come together across difference is part of the work of building Beloved Community.

Nobody is all of these social change roles. I tell myself that, over and over, and sometimes it sinks in that I, or you, don’t have to be good at all of them. Because together, we have one another. Collective liberation needs all of us working in our different ways, not all doing the same thing. Once again, we’re called to connection not perfection.

If you feel guilty that protests make you anxious, if you don’t know the right thing to say when times are hard, if you hate phone-banking, that’s okay. It’s just not your role. Do you believe me when I say that there are people who feel the joy of their community at a protest, who actually enjoy knocking on strangers’ doors to canvass for an issue, who get a thrill from asking for donations? They really exist. I encourage you to find your role in making the world a better place, the place that makes you feel alive and connected to your purpose. If you have time or money to give, and you can do so with joy, then you’ve found your place just right.

And you know what, maybe what you can do right now is survive, and that is enough. The world is a better place with you in it. As Julian Jamaica Soto says, “All of us need all of us to make it.”

So maybe sometimes it feels like we don’t have time to get everybody free, but it won’t be Beloved Community until everyone belongs. We’re not piecemeal struggling people up into privilege. We’re called to build something so much better, joyfully interdependent, for a better world than we have ever known. So, it’s not so much who has time for collective liberation as who has time to wait?

None of us can do everything, and all of us can do something. All of us need all of us to make it. May we each find the gifts we can offer with delight. Amen.

To view the sermon, click the link below.

 

Featured photo by Kelly Cristine on Unsplash

Come Cry With Me

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Come Cry With Me

The video of this sermon along with the introductory children story may be found on You Tube.

John Gerber; September 21, 2025

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NOTE: this sermon was preceded by a story told to the children of the congregation in which a slippery green seaweed and a big brown aquatic fungus where thrown up on a rock together.  They were both in danger of dying. but they chose to work together and created a new being, a lichen, an interdependent community comprised of two formerly separate organisms. This version was adapted from a story by Mark McMenamin and Mary Klein titled the Wedding of Seaweed and Fungus

Text of the sermon…..

The home I grew up in was divided with respect to both politics and religion, much like our nation today. But unlike our nation, the household of my youth was divided – but not divisive.

Our home on the north shore of Long Island was a two-family house with my grandparents residing on the ground floor and my parents, two brothers, and me upstairs.

My grandmother, Jennie, was a die-hard Rockefeller Republican from New York and my father was a dedicated Mayor Ed Kelly Democrat from the south side of Chicago.  They didn’t agree on many political questions, but they never expressed animosity toward the other.

The first presidential election I can remember was between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in 1960.  My family was evenly divided.  I remember it was something of a family joke that although they knew their votes would cancel each other out, they all went off to vote on election day in good spirits.

My maternal grandfather was from an Irish-Catholic “potato famine” clan in NY City.  He had been disowned by his family and excommunicated by the Catholic Church for marrying my Episcopalian grandmother and allowing Mom to be raised outside of the true faith.   My Roman Catholic father and my Episcopalian mother could not be married in the sanctuary of the Catholic church because of their so-called mixed marriage.

Somehow the family navigated these divisions with grace and good humor.  I suspect there was more tension around politics and religion in my household than I was privy too.  But when I told my parents I intended to marry my Jewish high school girlfriend, they were supportive and helped us find a hippy rabbi from Greenwich Village to lead the ceremony.

That was then…..

Today… we are deluged with a steady stream of political, ethnic and religious animosity – an “us” vs. “them” culture war.   My upbringing didn’t prepare me for the rancor we experience in the public arena today.  I’m disturbed when I watch the news, and all I can see is anger, blame, ridicule…..  judgement, derision… and rage.

It seems socially acceptable today, to condemn, and even to hate people from different political, religious or ethnic backgrounds.  And there is certainly no space for the sort of collaboration demonstrated by that slippery green seaweed and that big brown fungus wondering how they were ever going to survive, stranded on a rock.

How did those two distinct species ever find the humility and grace to work together to not only save their own lives, but to create an entirely new life form, lichens, which by every measure has been wildly successful?

I have shared this story of evolution with my students for many years in the great hope that they might come to see the value of cooperation over competition.  Maybe some do.  Others probably just want to know if it is going to be on the test.

My appreciation for this life affirming story took a giant leap forward when I read about lichens in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s now classic book, Braiding Sweetgrass; Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants. 

Listen to this!

She writes…. “Scientists were interested in how the marriage of alga and fungus occurs.  But when they put the two together in the laboratory and provided them with ideal conditions for both, they ignored each other.

“It was only when scientists created harsh and stressful conditions, that the two would turn toward each other and begin to cooperate.”

It was the extreme stress of being “thrown up on a rock” that resulted in cooperation, not just across political, ethnic, or religious lines…. but between two very different species.

How did they ever communicate across the “us vs. them” – green/brown divide?  I wonder, was it because being creatures of nature they could intuitively sense the interconnectedness of all beings, much like people from many Indigenous cultures?

Sherri Mitchell, the author of the powerful book, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, reminds us that “we all belong to one another, and we are responsible for each other’s well-being”.  We Unitarian Universalists call this “widening the circle of concern” as outlined in the 2020 UUA study by that name.

But how can we widen our circle to include those voters, who for example, supported a presidential candidate who is now actively dismantling American democracy, militarizing our cities, erasing efforts at inclusion, and arresting and deporting the most vulnerable among us?  How could we be anything but full of anger?

Father Richard Rohr, a modern-day Franciscan prophet wrote in his latest book, The Tears of Things….. “Life disappoints and hurts us all, and the majority of people, particularly men, do not know how to react – except as a child does, with anger and rage.”

We are good at anger and rage.

Anger at these injustices is surely understandable and may indeed get us off the couch.  But Sherri Mitchell reminds us that anger will not help us to “collectively dream a new world into being, with gentleness and reverence”.  She asks us to create space for the heart-to-heart communication, understanding and empathy that has the potential to transform “us and them” into “all of us.”

How do we begin this difficult work?

Father Rohr teaches that just below the surface of anger is a deeper emotion…  sadness.  He suggests that after the initial flare up of anger in response to yet another ICE raid, for example, we should dig deeper into our own feelings.  He offers us the counterintuitive step of sharing our vulnerability with others in the form of tears.

He writes …. “mere rage will not change anything.  Tears often will, first by changing the one who weeps, and then by moving others.”

Of course, we must respond to the abuses of social injustice …. and anger makes us feel powerful, at least for a short time.   But I wonder if the deep work of transformation needed today, and in fact has been needed for a long time in this country, would not be better served by a surrender to shared grief in the face of injustice and violence.

Sherri Mitchell, wrote..  “my group, Native Americans, have suffered an unrecognized holocaust in this country. The brutal genocide of Native peoples is hard to acknowledge for many, especially for those who have inherited value from the loss and destruction that occurred here.”

This truth has been largely ignored by those of us of European descent who live, work and worship today on stolen land.  Mitchell and others point out that the unhealed grief caused by European settlers in what we now call North America, and the violence that followed, affects us still today.

She explains… “we are all carrying grief, a deep unimaginable grief that impacts how we connect with one another.  It is a cumulative emotional and spiritual wound that results from the history of violence that we all share.” 

Mitchell teaches that this history of violence is carried forward today as a form of ancestral trauma in the bodies of Native Peoples who suffered unimaginable harm AND of white Americans whose ancestors caused the harm, including those of us who continue to benefit from the harm.

I had the privilege of attending a weekend workshop organized by an intertribal coalition of Native peoples last spring at Woolman Hill in Deerfield.  Native as well as non-tribal peoples like myself, were asked to remember the pain of our ancestors.  The feeling that dominated the weekend was not anger…. but grief, followed by a resolve to learn from each other and do better.  I believe we have much to learn from Indigenous traditions, as Native peoples in this country have had a long time to learn how to survive heartbreak.

We know that both heartbreak and rage may exist side by side within each one of us.  But the hard, hard work of social justice and healing might be more successful if it was motivated by shared grief grounded in love, rather than rage, based in fear.  It was fear-based rage after all that brought us the violent white men in the red MAGA hats.

We have a choice. And as Unitarian Universalists, we have made the claim that we will side with love.

I try…..

Nevertheless, my immediate instinctual reaction to everything from news of the arrest and deportation of innocent people… to the guy I saw last winter in South Florida walking down the aisle of a grocery store wearing a red MAGA hat… and what I imagined was a self-important smirk on his face… well, my first reaction may be …. anger.

I’m not suggesting that we deny the fear or bury the anger, but I know that anger aimed at the guy in the grocery store won’t erase the culture of white supremacy that dominates politics today, in fact, it might inflame it.

On the other hand, following Brene Brown’s wise counsel to have the courage to “lead with vulnerability” …. opening myself to feel and express grief might result in a heart to heart connection even among people who hold different political views.

Anger divides….. shared grief has the potential to connect.  And the bad/good news is that everyone gets to experience grief at some time in their lives, regardless of political affiliation, ethnic, or religious background.  Sharing this grief over all that we have lost, whether that be an election, a dream, an opportunity, or a loved one, may make space for something new to emerge.

Many of us who have experienced a deep personal loss understand that loss has the potential to “crack us open”.  My own “cracked open” heart has become “softer” and more likely to experience empathy and compassion for others since my wife died.

Sherri Mitchell teaches that grief and celebration are not only natural but necessary to a balanced life and a healthy society.  The sometimes wild, painful expression of shared sorrow in the form of tears, song, ritual and stories are a required element of the healing process for individuals and perhaps nations.

The feeling that dominates my own understanding of the long history of violence against Native peoples in the land we now call North America, is a deep sadness.

I have the same feeling about our current political situation, and this sadness motivates me to march, to sing, to write letters, to donate, to vote, to listen to the viewpoints of others with an open heart, and to cry…. not alone but together.  Personal sadness won’t heal the “us vs. them” divide, but if we have the courage to share our grief with each other we might build a broad enough coalition to make a difference.

That slippery green alga and the big brown fungus sacrificed their own bodies to build something new, a lichen, two separate species joining together to create an interdependent community of beings.  What were they thinking?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that we have all been thrown up on a rock.

And I know that evolution is not done with us yet.  The emergence of new species and perhaps even new interdependent communities, perhaps Beloved Communities, is possible.

This is NOT the end of the story.

And something…. perhaps… just perhaps something completely surprising and entirely new will emerge… tomorrow.

May it be so….

Amen.

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Photo by Caleb Wright on Unsplash

 

The Glow of Generosity

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A sermon by Rev. Rachael Hayes

Last June, our congregation adopted a mission statement in our annual meeting. What I appreciate about this mission statement is that it was crowdsourced from our congregation rather than proposed by a few individuals.

The mission statement process began with two questions: what is our purpose, and how does it guide us?

The Committee on Shared Ministries asked these questions, or versions of them, over the course of two years. Why do we exist? What do we want to mean in our community?

And it became clear to us, very early on, that there were three main reasons our congregation exists:  

  • To Support one another through a culture of connection.
  • To Nurture our spirits as we learn and grow together.
  • And to Build Beloved Community within and beyond our Congregation by putting our ideals and values into action.

That’s our mission statement. The longer version has more detail about how we want to do those things, but this is the story we heard over and over again from the members of our congregation.

I don’t think anyone in the congregation would have phrased these things exactly the way they sound in the formal statement, but it’s clear that the voices who contributed had a shared trajectory. Though some of us take side quests, we’re more or less on the same path.

The mission of the congregation has changed over the last nearly 140 years. Well, it has and hasn’t. The Universalist circuit-riding preachers came to Amherst in the late 19th century with their mission of hope not hell, of universal belovedness, and all of that sounds like what we’re up to right now. Their version had a lot more Jesus in it than ours, but the central message of Love, in our relations with one another, in our theology and our practice, in our relations with the larger world, that’s what we’ve always been here to do.

Communities guided by liberal theology have followed our values above all, and that’s why I am so encouraged by our mission statement. We do love, and this is how we do it.

I like to imagine how our congregation from any point in our past would respond to our congregation now.

The woman preacher part wouldn’t be especially scandalous. Universalists have had women preachers, going back to Olympia Brown. She wasn’t the first woman preacher, because women have preached forever, but she was the first woman ordained by her denomination in the US. She was ordained in 1863, before our congregation existed, and pastored congregations in Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Racine, Wisconsin. Our congregation has actually known women ministers since the 1890s. So, while my gender might be scandalous for those of us who grew up in or hearing about traditions without women clergy, it’s nothing new for our congregation.

Our congregation has celebrated queer relationships and families since at least the 1990s. Kids have been growing up in queer families here for decades. I don’t actually know the date of our first same-sex union. If you have more information on that, I’d love to hear it.

Some of our traditions might feel like they have always been there. The Water Ritual, which we celebrated last week, is about 40 years old; the Flower Ceremony is about 100 years old. Sharing Joys and Sorrows is maybe 50 years old. Though the iconography of the flaming chalice goes back to world war 2, lighting the chalice in worship only began in the 1980s. 

Traditions come and go, but the central value of love remains.

What are we here to do? We’re here to love.

During the 2024 and 2025 General Assemblies of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is to say the big national meeting of Unitarian Universalists, delegates from congregations all over the country voted to affirm a change to Article II of the UUA’s bylaws. Stay with me–I know bylaws is a magic word that can put some people to sleep. This is the section of our bylaws that talks about why the Unitarian Universalist Association exists, including the Principles and Sources we affirm. How many of you are aware that the UUA bylaws no longer lists these Principles?

The details are slightly different, but it’s all still there, perhaps in a more expansive fashion.

Instead of listing principles, we have six values supported by the central value of love. Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity.

And though I was absolutely in favor of this change, the word Generosity catches something in me. Maybe because one sense of the word implies that we should have a lot of money to give away, or that it implies money or class in general. And we don’t worship money, and we value each other’s character and actions, not parentage.

But generosity is so closely related to generate, and generate is a very exciting word. Generate as in put into motion. Generate as in give birth to. How do Unitarian Universalists put our love into motion? Because when we’re living our values, we do. We don’t just congratulate each other for being good and loving–we make things happen.

Across the national association, you can see those things when you flip through the pages of UU World magazine. But let’s talk closer to home. Love is making things happen here. 

  • Love is cooking up potatoes and eggs and sausage for over 100 people each week, during our Wednesday community breakfast.
  • Love is connecting with organizations making the world a better place, introducing them to our congregation, and sharing our offering plate with them.
  • Love is getting up early on a Sunday morning to sing in the choir, preparing anthems that open our hearts.
  • Love is calling our attention to issues that matter: indigenous awareness, climate justice, reproductive justice, democracy.
  • Love is carefully funding and enacting our mission so that we have a lasting impact for our members and our community.
  • Love is caring for a precious and peculiar wooden meetinghouse building so that we have a place to be together.
  • Love is putting that same building in the service of the wider community, offering it as a meeting place for justice, diversity, and collective memory.
  • Love is welcoming people to the service on Sunday, at the door, with social hour snacks, with tech, with careful planning and execution of the service.
  • Love is visiting someone going through a rough time, sometimes bringing a home-cooked meal or a bag of cider donuts.
  • Love is nurturing the ethical and spiritual selves of our children and youth, especially while we keep our program running without a director of religious education.
  • Love is pitching in for potlucks and suppers, is daring to be known and to know others in small groups, is playing charades and building connections. And building trust, with people who just happened to show up to this same congregation.

Each one of those small acts of love is wonderful, is a seed. But together, they grow and grow. This is what our congregation is made of. It’s not made of shingles or stained glass. It’s the organic and mystical network between people who have decided to put their love into action. It’s a whole micro-ecosystem of living in generosity, of love in active connection.

In 1893 or in 2025, our congregation has only ever been made of what a group of people decided to accomplish together. I joke sometimes that what is a congregation if not a group project through the centuries, but the institution matters, and it’s a thing that gives us hope on hard days. Because it’s a thing that gives us hope on hard days.

We have come through hard days together. The early covid pandemic, the first Trump administration, just to name a couple. Sometimes these feel like the hardest days. I don’t know. But these are the days we have now. It may feel frivolous to ask you to put your time and attention and energy into our congregation when so much is going wrong, but I don’t think that’s true. The touchstones of investing our attention into something we can feel making a difference can sustain us, not just the connections we nurture.

And it’s not only the giving side of that investment that builds our generosity. There is reciprocity to this flow. I know that we’d all love to give from the things that are perfect and finished in ourselves, but our congregation is made of connection, not perfection. Please don’t wait till you’re out of the hospital to let us know that you’ve been sick. Don’t wait for the crisis to be over and digestible to open your heart. These connections that make us stronger are forged in vulnerability, not in presentability or excellence.

When I found Unitarian Universalism as a young adult, I was in a rough place. I was grieving the end of my first career, realizing that it didn’t offer what I wanted after all. The centerpoint of my week was my therapy appointment, not exactly something I looked forward to. And then I walked through the doors of Fourth Universalist. I began to live my week Sunday to Sunday, not therapy to therapy. This is not a rejection of therapy–I didn’t quit going. But my therapy was full of things in my life that I had to figure out how to change. The congregation was something else altogether: that’s where I connected with the part of me that has always been worthy and whole. Being with a room full of people who saw my worthiness and wholeness week after week made it easier for me to see it in myself.

Being part of that kind of community made me want to share it. To receive it, but also to make it. It made me generous, in a way that didn’t have much to do with money at all. I came to the potluck. I helped replant the garden. I facilitated a small group. I co-led services. I started a racial justice initiative, which led to public witness events both at marches and in front of our doors. Or rather, we did, the members did, together. 

Getting involved in that congregation transformed my life. I had more capacity and more daring to take on hard things, including seminary, including surviving other life changes, because I had a network of generosity bolstering me. People who believed in me abundantly, people I wanted to be just as good to as they were to me. I don’t know if I would be your minister now without the gift of being so deeply connected to that congregation for that pivotal period of my life.

It is a gift to yourself, not just to the congregation, to participate in the life and labor of the congregation. Today following the service, we’re having an event in the social hall. It’s called Building Shared Community, and I encourage you to go and find a new way to get involved in the many committees, circles, and events that make our community strong, generous, and brilliant. This is our congregation, and it will be what we make it.

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

We Are

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We affirm our newest members in their wholeness. We want you to find belonging here, to trust our congregation with your real self. To jump in, to join in our traditions, to share your ideas, to bring your passions.

And that means that all of us need to open to our new members. This is Amherst, and this is a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and we expect everyone to have opinions, to participate in our governance, to swell our ranks but also to shake us up.

Though we value our individual and collective histories, we’re not here to stay the same. As we grow with our new members, as all of us grow from encountering the complexity of one another, it is impossible that we could stay the same.

Or to put it another way, a congregation of freethinkers that’s older than everyone in it will not be the same as when it began. It won’t even be the same as when our current longest member joined. It’s not even the same as it was six years ago, when I first entered this sanctuary. Beloved members and friends have moved, have died. New people come in and don’t take the places of those who came before. They find or make their own places. Each member no longer with us was unique. Each member here is unique. Those who join in the future will be unique too. There’s no replacing those people who did that thing you liked so well. And the people who come after are doing a new thing, or doing the old thing a new way. This is how it’s supposed to be.

Each of us is unique. This congregation needs the unique perspectives of all of us to be its most vibrant version. We don’t welcome those who are different in spite of those differences; we welcome everyone in their uniqueness. We’re not looking for common ground here–we’re rejoicing in a wild and varied terrain.

I have something to tell you, though maybe the octopus sermon tipped you off. I can be a little weird. And I don’t need people to love me in spite of it. In the wisdom of my 40s, I have come to realize that I don’t need to be tolerated. I need to be loved, in my specificity. I need people to know me for who I really am, to celebrate with me in my joy, to accompany me in my struggles, to sit kindly with me in my sadness, to laugh with me in the absurdity of it all, to challenge me and hold me accountable, and to trespass into strangers’ lawns to sniff their lilacs. Those are the relationships I curate in my life, not the ones where people look at their phones when I start getting excited about how beautiful and strange life can be.

And everyone deserves to be loved specifically. Not because they’re part of a group or even a congregation, not because they fit in, but because they are absolutely unique in the world and loved for it.

Our world would love to classify us, to bundle us all into packages of data, to sell and consume. But here, we’re doing something different.

The policies of the current federal administration have placed great value on sameness, on some sort of default if not ideal human, who is white and cisgender and straight and able-bodied and wealthy and US-born and English-speaking and Christian and male. And that’s garbage. I know several guys who hit all of those categories, and they’re not garbage at all, but enacting policy that sets them up as the default while the rest of us can’t measure up is garbage.

I’m particularly troubled by secretary of health and human services Robert F Kennedy Jr’s obsession with autism. The way he speaks about the worth of autistic people, as people who are burdens, that’s some hot eugenicist garbage. And we’re definitely here to do something different.

I want to give some love right now to all of our neurodivergent members, friends, kids, and neighbors. You matter. And you belong here. If you want to talk with me about what might make our congregation friendlier to you, I welcome it. We don’t all need the same things, and that’s actually a good thing. That means we can help one another. We all have different strengths and passions and gifts as well as access needs. So, friends who have autism, ADHD, dyslexia, Down syndrome, Tourette’s, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, dementia, epilepsy, chronic mental illness, and all the other forms of neurodiversity, any brain that isn’t typical, yes, you belong, if you want to. You don’t need to fit in to belong with us.

Every now and then we come back to that question of how do we do a better job with diversity in our congregation, and one of the most important things to remember is that we actually value uniqueness, not welcome in spite of differences. When we value diversity, of every kind, we remember that everyone who wants to join our covenant belongs, not just to fill our numbers but to share their whole unique selves.

How wonderful, how beautiful you all are. How full of inspiration. What a blessing to be here.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Songs of Freedom

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A Sermon by Rev. Rachael Hayes

Before I begin my thoughts on our texts today, I want to name that this holiday and the Exodus story would feel easier to approach if the ceasefire still held. What the Israeli government is doing in Gaza is heartbreaking. We have raised our lament and lament still for the hostages returned and unreturned, for the fifty thousand Gazans who have been killed, for all people in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon who live with fear for their safety and their children’s safety.

It feels more complicated this year, because I know that others will tell the ancient Exodus story to justify the actions of contemporary governments and the safety of one child over another. But when I turn to this story that people have told for thousands of years, this long, long journey of Moses and his mixed multitude, I hear something else. And I invite you to pause before closing your heart to this story OR thinking that it holds just one meaning OR thinking that this story is too old to have any truth in it.

This passage from Exodus comes later than we might usually go when telling the story. This is way after the plagues, after Pharaoh relents, after the mixed multitude, which Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg reminds us is the Israelites and all their friends and neighbors who came with them, after the mixed multitude walk through the sea, after God provides them with manna and water in the desert. Moses goes up onto the mountain and God gives him the ten commandments and a lot of laws and instructions.

Moses has been on top of the mountain for a long time, 40 days and 40 nights, and the crowd at the foot of the mountain is getting restless. Poor Aaron, who has been left in charge while Moses is gone, is trying to keep this whole thing from going sideways. Surely some of them have lost faith that Moses is coming back, fear that the God who brought them out of Egypt had abandoned them. And the Israelites and the rest of the multitude do a very human thing: they turn back to a thing they had tried in the past.

The worship of bulls has been a common thing across human history—and these folks have just left Egypt, where the bull-god Apis was worshiped as an intermediary between humans and other gods. So, Aaron takes their jewelry and makes a calf out of gold, perhaps to serve as an intermediary in Moses’ absence. Something tangible in the face of uncertainty. The story goes on to talk about how God overreacts, Moses talks God down, Moses overreacts, a lot of people die. It’s a mess.

And I find it incredibly relatable. We all want something to hold onto. Think of it this way: Aaron, who was Moses’ most trusted collaborator, and the very people God had delivered from Egypt and sustained in the desert, who witnessed miracles firsthand on a daily basis, even they in this time of uncertainty do something that they had specifically been commanded not to do. Yikes.

Rich Orloff’s poem, Resentment Is My Golden Calf, does something different. It asks us to consider what our own idols are. Not literal figures of worship, like Aaron’s golden calf, but maybe what shortcuts are we taking in our convictions?

Resentment is My Golden Calf

Resentment is my golden calf

See how it glistens

It’s always there to receive me

And oh, how good it makes me feel

Resentment is so much easier than love

Love is fragile

Resentment is sturdy

You can feel it without opening your heart

I can pray to it at any time

Openly or secretly

Resentment empowers me without asking that I give up victimhood

Can your god do that?

So, if your god isn’t satisfying your needs

Try resentment today

Resentment accepts everyone regardless of age, gender or race

All it asks is that you reject everyone else

Just look for the Golden Calf

It has more locations than you can imagine

Its glowing shine reflects all who have convinced themselves

That bitterness is the sweetest taste one can experience

 

What do we do that is more convenient than messy, complicated, abundant love? Orloff names resentment, specifically, but I can think of some more idols that I know: always needing to be right or to have the last word, having to see through to the bitter end, perfectionism, either/or thinking, constructing the world into heroes and villains, defensiveness, avoiding conflict, individualism–this list could get long. These are the idols I must remind myself to smash, to say nothing of the larger systems of oppression that con us into participating in them.

The old list of the sources of Unitarian Universalist faith includes a warning “against the idolatries of the mind and spirit.” And there’s a beautiful passage in our hymnal and Reform Judaism’s Gates of Prayer, possibly misattributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, that goes like this:

 

A person will worship something—have no doubt about that.

We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts—but it will out.

That which dominates our imaginations, and our thoughts will determine our lives and character.

Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

To put it another way, what’s subverting love in how you choose to be in the world. Or, since it’s Passover, and Passover is the celebration of the deep human yearning for freedom, where are you choosing a cheap imitation of freedom? Most of us have something that’s keeping us from fully embracing true freedom, but we don’t have to be stuck with it.

Jewish-American poet and activist Emma Lazarus wrote “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” Freedom means everyone, everyone.

There is no real freedom that is for me but not you, for citizens but not immigrants, for one soul but not another. This message of the Exodus of the Israelites has inspired us, from generation to generation, throughout the long history of Judaism, from the self-emancipation of people enslaved in this country to the civil rights movement, throughout lands and times and people touched by Jewish and Christian and Muslim traditions, all of which tell this story. People everywhere pray, yearn, and work for freedom, all around the world, and we will continue to do so until freedom and peace come to the whole world.

Photo by Mohamed Fsili on Unsplash

Seeds of Hope

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An Earth Day sermon by Polly Peterson

“Seeds carry the power of life,” wrote Carme Lemniscates to begin the story of seeds we just heard. It’s a powerful idea. In fact, it’s the idea that inspired this service. Last fall, I was in a car with Susan Rice, returning from a few days of canvassing in Pennsylvania with a group called “Seed the Vote.” Susan began to speak excitedly about how amazing seeds are, with their ability to hold all that is needed for becoming vegetables, fruits, flowers, or trees—everything that the whole organism needs to grow—all in that one tiny seed.

The moment was brief, but it stayed with me. It is such a special thing to be amazed and delighted by an everyday miracle. Seeds make Susan smile with delight, and starting seeds for her large garden is an exciting prospect for her each spring. A seed is a vision of possibility.

Most of us give little thought to the astonishing power of seeds. But even if seeds don’t inspire awe in you or make you smile with delight, you are probably aware that without them there would be no food. Seeds grow into plants that have a power we animals lack. They can convert the sun’s energy into food through the miracle of photosynthesis. A plant uses the sun’s energy to produce roots and stems, leaves, and the seeds that will become new plants. Each seed, no matter how small, contains both nutrients to feed a tiny beginning plant as it sprouts and the DNA that will tell it how to grow.

We cultivate seeds in our farms and gardens by planting them in fertile ground and making sure they have adequate sunlight and water. And they give us a tremendous return on our investment by growing into plants that provide food and flowers and so much more. We take care of seeds, and they take care of us. The relationship is a model of reciprocity—which, at its core, is what Earth Day is all about.

Earth Day was established when people began to realize that human activity was gravely harming our unique and irreplaceable planet. We know that we must give the Earth loving care, for we depend upon a healthy, living ecosystem for all of our needs.

Of course, not everybody thinks that way. Americans especially have become accustomed to seeing the world in terms of what they can take, not what they can share.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer has pointed out, commodifying nature’s gifts is a fundamental aspect of a market economy. One result of the obsessive focus on profit has been a loss of biodiversity in our agricultural sector as corporations have patented seeds and sold them widely.  Patented seeds give farmers some benefits—but at the expense of biodiversity and the freedom to save and share those seeds.

Susan Rice is a seed saver, as I imagine some others of you are, too. When you grow plants from non-patented seeds, you can save seeds from some of your favorites and plant them again next year. You can share them with your friends and neighbors. In recent decades, the idea of seed libraries has caught on to facilitate the free sharing of garden seeds. Seed libraries and exchanges are springing up everywhere.

Here in Amherst there is an especially delightful little seed library called the Mass Aggie Seed Library housed in the Science & Engineering Library at UMass. It offers lots of information and instruction, some playful activities for adults and children, and a big old-fashioned card catalog with packets of donated seeds for the taking in every drawer. It even has a program called the “common seed” inspired the “common read” programs in our local libraries. The program builds community through gardening and seed sharing. This year’s common seed is the ‘Provider’ Bean—which they say is perfect for gardeners of all levels. You can go pick up a packet if you wish. Seed sharing not only cultivates community, it is also an excellent way to cultivate biodiversity, with an emphasis on what grows well in your area’s particular soil and climate conditions.

So, yes, it’s springtime, a good time to think about cultivating our gardens. And, more than that, it’s an important time to cultivate community. Dark times have been thrust upon us suddenly, capriciously, cruelly, and none of us should try to face the challenges of this chaotic and dangerous time alone. We fear for ourselves and our loved ones, we fear for our children’s futures. We fear for the hungry and sick of this world, for the inadequacy of water and food in many places, for the return of epidemics, for our failure to stop the degradation of the environment. We feel the sting of our current leaders’ disdain for people of principle and for people whose gifts are intellectual or artistic. We see their intent to muzzle the free press. We see how they want to divide us and to make scapegoats of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color, especially those in leadership positions. If you are like me, you are feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the current crisis—which is why we need to cultivate community now more than ever. Many things are beyond our control, but each of us needs to do what we can where we are with what we have.

The first thing to do is to tend to the seeds within. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us that our mind is like a piece of land planted with many different kinds of seeds: seeds of joy, peace, mindfulness, understanding, and love; seeds of craving, anger, fear, hate, and revenge.

“Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities – those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

As I was naming things that we all might be fearing, did it stir up feelings inside you? Did your breath feel tighter as if entangled in a dense patch of briars and weeds? Seeds of hate, anger and fear grow as thorns and brambles. They affect our bodies as well as our minds. These thoughts invade us, but they will not nourish us. Best to uproot them and plant new seeds.

If your email feed looks anything like mine, it’s easy to focus too much on fear and anger and frustration. Let’s make it a habit to shift the focus more often to soul-strengthening thoughts of loving kindness, generosity, and joy. We already have many such seeds inside us—we just need to cultivate and nourish them. Re-reading a favorite poem or quote, listening to music, dancing, making art, playing an instrument or singing—these are all time-tested tools for cultivating the inner garden. When we let our thoughts dwell on what we love rather than what we fear, on what we are grateful for rather than what makes us mad, the inner garden grows greener. It can help us find the fresh energy we need to make a difference.

This spring, as we cultivate seeds in our home gardens and support our local farms, let’s remember also to plant and water the seeds of joy, playfulness, and generosity. It’s so easy to get stuck in the briar patch of fear. Thich Nhat Hanh has given us an excellent strategy for finding our way out.

How are you preparing the soil of your mind for the future you hope to cultivate? What seeds are you planting there? The seeds you nurture within are powerful. Every action you take to make the world feel healthier, more just, and kinder is important, however small it may seem. Many small actions can add up to big changes. Your acts of kindness and your courage can fill others with hope. Together we can find a way.

Our lives and our destinies are entwined, not just with each other, but with all living things.

Outside, on this early spring morning, we are greeted by green shoots and buds, bright red maple blossoms, greening grass, crocus flowers and daffodils.

May the rebirth of life all around you—the bursting forth of green growth and blossoms and the germination of seeds—plant hope in the rich soil of your being. And may we find strength in community as we strive together for a better tomorrow.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash