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