Prayers of the People

“Prayers of the People”        Rev. Laura Bogle

A sermon delivered on November 6, 2016

A song by the band Old Crow Medicine Show says “We’re all in this thing together, walking the line, between faith and fear.  This life don’t last forever, when you cry I taste the salt in your tears.”

Our country is walking that line, that tightrope right now – between faith in the foundations of our democracy, as imperfect as it has been – and fear that it is all coming apart.  That the center will not hold, that the extremes are pulling us so far apart that there cannot be repair.

The last months I’ve found myself falling to that side of fear at times. Usually this takes the form of reading doom-and-gloom political predictions, checking the polls, seeing ranting Facebook posts and getting sucked in to thinking that the world is about to end. 

Sometimes it involves talking to someone else who shares my political views and getting each other all worked up in a frenzy of self-righteousness.  Sometimes it has meant looking upon fellow citizens with suspicion and anxiety, seeing caricatures rather than people.  Often it has felt like a generalized anxiety and tiredness.  That last few weeks, I’ve heard from many, many of you about similar feelings, similar stories.  Some of us, because of particular identities we hold – for example, being a woman, being a person of color, being an immigrant, being LGBTQ, being a decent human being – have had real trauma re-triggered by headlines and campaign language.  I don’t know anyone who isn’t ready for this election to be over.

But here’s the thing:  No matter who wins the election on Tuesday, our country is in a challenging mess and I think is going to be for quite some time.  Let’s be clear, as I have preached before this year, the zenophobia and misogyny and out-loud racism and power-grabbing we have seen in this election is nothing new; but it has been unleashed and emboldened.  

In these times, how do we move on the tightrope we are walking more often towards faith, instead of fear?

NY Times columnist David Brooks recently said in an interview with Krista Tippet that “we are now in a culture that’s over-politicized and under-moralized.”  “It’s not that we’re bad” he says, but that “we are morally inarticulate.” (OnBeing interview)  For him, it is the language of religion and faith, struggling with ethical and moral principles, that will pull us out of this over-polarized and over-politicized place we find ourselves.

Others, including Rev. William Barber of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, have also been working on a conversation centered on morals – what is good and just – as a way to bridge the polarization in this country.  Barber and others have proposed the Higher Ground Moral Declaration – and it is not a right vs. left or democratic vs. republican thing. It is an articulation of deep yearnings for health and wholeness and peace.  Much like our prayers in our web here this morning.  (By the way, pick up a copy of Rev. Barber’s book ‘The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear” and join with others to discuss on January 8^th.)

The tradition of Unitarian Universalism is a story which shows how our inner spiritual lives and our outer political and ethical lives are intertwined.  One without the other is powerless.

James Luther Adams, the 20^th Century Unitarian minister and ethicist helped us to understand our tradition as the priesthood and the prophethood of all believers. 

The priesthood of all believers – The protestant reformation idea that we all must take some responsibility for cultivating our own inner spiritual grounding.  That professional clergy can walk with us in that, and offer guidance and support and challenge, but cannot do it for us.  In covenanted community, with one another, and in relationship to that which is bigger than anyone of us, we practice loving ourselves and each other into wholeness.

Our tradition though, also says that liberal religion cannot stop with the purely personal.  That there is a relationship between that inner growth, that search for truth and meaning and what we must do together  in this world, in the realm of politics and society.  We must also practice loving the world, bringing our inner spirituality out into the realm of history.  Adams called this the prophethood of all believers.

He wrote:  “A church that does not concern itself with the struggle in history for human decency and 

justice, a church that does not show concern for the shape of things to come, a church that does not attempt to interpret the signs of the times, is not a prophetic church. … The prophetic liberal church is the church in which persons think and work together to interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith….  The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it.”

As a community of faith attempting to be the priesthood and prophethood of all believers we bring a spiritual lens to our political commitments, and we bring our political commitments to our spiritual lives.  In this way we attempt to make history, to be a participant in what occurs here in this world—not simply a passive observer or commentator.

On some Mondays this fall I’ve been volunteering my personal time as a citizen to spend a few hours supporting a particular candidate for state office.  And I don’t want you to think I’ve done a lot, because I haven’t.  I’ve done a tiny bit—a few hours of data entry and fewer hours of phone banking.  But it has been my very small attempt to feel like I am connected in some way to what we call the political process, because my faith calls me to do this.

I have been remembering the words of Toni Morrison – “When I vote, it’s like a small prayer by the road because I remember Rosa. I remember Fannie Lou. I remember all those people who were hosed down in order to get the vote.”

And so, even though data entry and phone banking can be kind of tedious, I tried to make it a kind of prayer.  There can be a sacredness to scrolling through the names of voters, citizens of this country, my neighbors.  Knowing that in that list are the elderly and first time voters, parents and grandparents, more recent immigrants with names I didn’t know how to pronounce and those with generations of roots in Tennessee.  Reading their names was a meditation, a reminder of all these real people, with real addresses, and real experiences, living right here; people who may be voting, and part of deciding who will lead us in the next years.  If I actually got to talk with one, I was reminded:  here is a person who in all their complicated life experiences has landed in a certain place in relationship to what we call politics, just like I have, and who might agree with me in some places and not in others.  I found that approaching this work with a prayer-like sensibility has helped me to stay calm and not fearful, to keep my faith that in the end all will be well.

No matter what the results of the election are – who wins and who loses – we all have work to do my friends to keep holding the tension between faith and fear, not letting it overwhelm us.   

May we keep breathing in peace, and breathing out love; may we make our political engagements more like prayer, and our prayers more like listening.

I joked this week that my sermon might just be a poem because I was finding it so hard to put down words in prose that could capture what I wanted to say to you this morning.  And so I did write a poem, and I want to end by giving that to you now.

Outside

The flags fly

Down the highway, hanging on to the back of large trucks or the chest of a man.

Outside

There is grabbing and taking

A staking and restaking

Of territory claimed

The roads cut, the oil burned, blockades erected, and walls built

Outside

The borders between us are made visible in noise, colors, ballots, batons.

Signs and signals.

Inside resides

The breath of common ancestors

The child who plays with no thought of malice

The heart tuned toward suffering

The taste of figs ripening in the lingering autumn heat

The sliver of an orange moon low in the evening November sky.

Inside, begins something you might call a prayer

Let us kneel down.

Not to God or nation or ideology

But to what is inside.  A feeling, a connection

A welling like the waters at the very beginning of time

Unpolluted and gently flowing. 

Sweet and dark and healing.

Let us kneel down to the persistent possibility that life and love prevail.

Let us release what is inside

outward in beauty, spilling towards each other, until all merges.

An unstoppable well of knowing that we will only ever be saved by one another.

Amen.

Closing Words

We are all in this thing together—this election, nation, this earth, this universe.

Take care of yourselves and your spirits this week.

Will you turn toward one another, let us lift up our hearts, our best selves, towards the Great Good we know is possible,

Carry peace and love with you as you greet your neighbor.

The Guests at Our Tables

“The Guests at Our Tables” – Rev. Laura Bogle

A sermon delivered on November 20, 2016

How are you my people?

Back last March I preached a sermon entitled “A People of Resilience: Spiritual Practices in an Election Year.”  That day I said to you that “We are not a political club where only exactly like-minded people gather.  We are a community of faith and values.  Whether you are a republican or a democrat, I’m your minister, and I love you.  Period.”

Still true.  Except now it is after the election; there is no more candidate Trump, there is President-Elect Trump.  Still true that I will do my best to Love you and serve you, even if you voted for Donald Trump, or even if you didn’t vote. But I will not be censoring my own thoughts or my own feelings about his ascension to the White House and what I think it means about our country, or what I think it means about who we are called to be now and in the years ahead.

I’ve recently posted that sermon on resilience up on my FB page—you might want to go check it out and read it.  I myself needed to go back and re-read it.  What did I say about resilience back in March?  Will it be helpful now after the election? 

Drawing on the work of others, the three main resilience practices I lifted up then were:

Facing reality.

Finding meaning.

Creating new possibility with what we have.

I find that those three challenges still feel fruitful for these times.

I know a bunch of us feel beat down and defeated, scared and hopeless, worried, unsure what to do, disconnected from family/neighbors/friends. Some of us have already jumped into action, or renewed previous commitments at an even higher lever.  Wherever you are today, it’s OK.   

And now, this week we’ve got Thanksgiving coming up… and I want us to think about Thanksgiving as an opportunity to create new possibility with what we have, that third resilience practice.

I want you to think a bit about what this week will be like for you.

Who will you see?  What will you eat?  What will you do?  Will you be able to have time off from work, or will you be working?  Are you excited to gather with family and friends, or do you dread it?  Will you talk about the election or will you avoid it?  Will you spend time alone intentionally, or in loneliness?

I’ve been thinking about the mythological picture of the American family –usually a white American family-- sitting down to dinner,  happy to be together and give thanks for the blessings bestowed upon on them.

The differences that may exist between us get erased by the ritual of the kids table, the carving of the turkey, the pumpkin pie, the football on the TV.

Oh I know, there’s always the uncle who drives you nuts with this long, long stories.  And the cousin who just can’t not be in control in the kitchen.  The sister who always shows up late. The kids who wreck the house before dinner is even served.  The brother-in-law who drinks a little too much and gets loud. 

The myth is: We might not all get along, but we Love we each other, so we *will* be together and we will like it.  We will just avoid certain topics to keep the peace.  For some of us, at times, that has meant setting aside an important part of who we are.  There’s a long tradition, for instance, especially in the South, of gay and lesbian folks bringing their “friends” home for the holiday. As long as it isn’t named, then everyone can go along smoothly and enjoy the mashed potatoes and gravy.   Some of you may have had to keep your religious views under wraps at family gatherings.

This year there might be even more pressure to leave some things unspoken and unsaid.  This year the underground emotions might be running even higher than usual. 

I’ve talked with some of you who are in real distress about relationships with family members who supported Trump for President.  There are real fractures and fissures in families and communities after this election, mirroring the divisiness on the national level.  How should we engage on the issues we care about?  Should we even engage on the issues we care about?

And for some of us it might feel strange to be gathering for a celebratory meal of Thanksgiving when we feel like we are in mourning, and not sure what there is to be thankful for.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, since election day there have been more than 400 documented cases of hateful harassment – categories including anti-semitic, anti-Black, anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, and anti-Muslim are being tracked.  Many of the incidents reported also directly referenced the Trump campaign and its slogans.  President-elect Trump has also named top advisors with ties to white nationalism.

How can we approach Thanksgiving, no matter who we will be with, as an opportunity for connection, to create a new possibility, and yes even for a little action in the service of Love and in resistance to Hate.  I want to suggest a Thanksgiving practice this year that you can tailor to your own situation—I want you to invite some additional guests to your table for Thanksgiving dinner. 

1)     First of all, I want you to really set  place for your whole self

a.     This week, do what you need to do to get grounded in who you are, what your highest values are. What do you LOVE, what are you Thankful for?  Might even spend some time writing that down. 

b.     What are your places of power and privilege?  Who can you be an ally for?  For instance, me: I’ve got power and privilege by virtue of being white and middle class.  I can be an ally for those who weren’t born in the US.  I can be an ally to my transgender siblings.

c.      Where are you vulnerable?  And what kind of support do you need?  Who can you ask for that support?

d.     What risks to engage across difference and in the service of Love are you willing to take?  What are your limits?  Who or what can you be around right now, and still have your own spiritual center intact? 

Set a place—even if it is internally – for your whole self, your best self.  If you first set a place for yourself, your own values and stories, it will be easier to invite someone else at your table to do the same. 

2)     Consider how you might set a place for one group of people who aren’t usually seen/heard/or acknowledged in their wholeness at your Thanksgiving table—for example Native Americans

a.     The example I’m going to talk about today especially fits with the Thanksgiving tradition, because of the ways we have mythologized the Native American people of this land, and left out a large part of the story. If we as a culture dominated by white supremacy talk at all about Native folks on Thanksgiving, it is to re-tell the story about how they helped the pilgrim colonizers that first winter, how we shared the harvest, how we got along peacefully.  We leave out the parts about the following genocide, and forcible removal from their homelands, and the stripping of their culture and spiritual traditions in boarding schools, and the shrinking reservations that have become some of the poorest places in this country. 

b.     We leave out the part about how the Christian church supported this through the Doctrine of Discovery – 15^th century directives issued by the Catholic church that gave Christian explorers the right to claim lands of non-Christians. 

c.      And we forget that there are present-day Native folks.

Present-day Native Americans – story about 5 year old daughter and her school lesson; learning about Native Americans, weaving little baskets, drawing pictures of a person in a headdress.  My partner sat her down and said, You know what, these people don’t just exist in the past.  They exist today.  And yes some of them may still weave baskets,  but they also go to school and they are lawyers and mechanics and activists and writers and elders….

d.     This fall I have been inspired by the spiritual activism of native folks at Standing Rock opposing the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline; working and praying to protect their lands and the water—the Missouri River—that provides drinking water for millions of people. Working to raise the questions of climate change and our reliance on fossil fuels.  Praying to be seen and heard and respected.  The week before the election the local Episcopal priest sent a call out for clergy to come be at Standing Rock in solidarity for a couple of days – they expected about 100 to come, and over 500 showed up, including over 50 UU clergy. One of the most powerful things they did was engage in a ritual of confession and repentence, and a burning of the Doctrine of Discovery.  Did you know that our UU Association has passed a resolution condemning the Doctrine and Discovery and calling on UU’s to study ways we can continue to remove it’s impact on us today.

e.     What can you simply name, or what story can you tell that opens up a place at your table to acknowledge the past history and present reality of Native peoples in this country?

f.       There are other options—maybe you want to set a place at your table to give thanks for Water itself.  To remember we are living in the time of climate change.  The fact that in October we usually average over three inches of rain, and this year we had NONE; and now the mountains are burning.

g.      Or set a place at your table for refugees and remember those who aren’t in their own home eating the foods of their cultural tradition.

Setting a place means breaking a silence in some way, large or small.

Remember the words of Audre Lorde:  “Your silence will not protect you.”

She says, “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? …. … for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”

3. Finally, I invite you to set a place at the table for that which is bigger than any one of us.  To remember that the journey of bringing more Love and Wholeness and Justice to this world is never a solitary enterprise.  To remember that we are held in a web of interconnection and Love that some call God, others call the natural way of this universe, others call Community.  However you connect with that reality, I invite you to make room for it at this Thanksgiving table.  Perhaps it is through prayer, or perhaps it is through singing.

We began our service this morning singing Kumbaya – Come By Here, Lord – sung by the African American communities of the coastal islands of the South Carolina – it expresses a faith that God would take notice of suffering and would be with people in their suffering.  Each week we sing Meditation on Breathing from our own tradition – When I breathe in, I breathe in Peace; When I breathe out, I breathe out Love.  It is a way to connect with our breath and the breath of others; to step out of our own fear and anxiety into a larger frame.

Now you’ve got your table set.  You are grounded in yourself, you have broken a silence and invited in the presence of others who are usually unseen/unheard, you have connected to that which is bigger than any one of us. 

What conversation, even with one other family member or friend, can you have from that place? 

What invitation to talk and listen might you extend? 

There are a couple of great in-depth resources out there specifically for having conversations with Trump supporters – and I’ll be posting those in our Facebook group and happy to e-mail them out to you for further support.

What new possibility might be created right around your dinner table?  I am comforted by the words of poet Marge Piercy who reminds us

“It goes one at a time.
It starts when you care to act.
It starts when you do it again
after they say no.
It starts when you say we
and know who you mean;
and each day you mean
one more.”  (excerpt from The Low Road)

These are tough and scary times; but why do we gather in the practices and values of our UU faith, if not to be ready and resilient for times such as this?  This Thanksgiving, let’s look for ways we can embody and incarnate our core Unitarian Universalist values around our own dinner tables. 

May we yet live into new possibilities for all of us.  May it be so.  Amen.

We Begin Again in Love

Sermon delivered October 2, 2016 at Foothills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

“We Begin Again in Love”

Rev. Laura Bogle

When he was in the 9^th grade a young boy named Artemis Joukowsky was given the assignment to interview a person of moral courage.  His mother suggested he interview his grandmother, which he did. That interview led not only to a much closer relationship with his grandmother, it led to years of research and ultimately to the production of a film about his grandmother and grandfather—Martha and Waitstill Sharp.  The movie, “Defying the Nazis” aired on PBS a couple of weeks ago—

It’s an incredible story of courage and sacrifice of ordinary people during extraordinary times.  Waitstill was a Unitarian minister; Martha his spouse was much more than the ministers wife. She was a social worker who had defied her family to go to college on a full scholarship to Brown University. 

In 1939  Waitsill was contacted by leaders of the American Unitarian Association and asked if he would undertake secret missions in Europe to help get refugees and dissidents out of what was becoming an increasingly dangerous situation with Nazi power growing.

He said yes, as long as his partner Martha could join him.

And that began several years of the two of them undertaking incredibly dangerous work, and the beginning of what is now known as the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. 

In the end they both survived, and they helped bring many, many people to safety, including hundreds of children.

They were acting as individual citizens, connected to networks of faith organizations, at a time when the US government was *not* acting, was not giving many visas to those fleeing Nazi occupation, not accepting many people into our borders.

Waitstill was not the first person the American Unitarian Association asked to take on this mission.  

In fact, he was the 17^th.  He was the 17^th asked and the first to say yes.

They left two small children behind and risked their own lives to save the children of others.  The pain their own children experienced during those times of separation comes through in interviews with them in the film. And their marriage did not last.  In the end they both were irrevocably changed by what they experienced.  It is not a perfect storybook ending.  But what in real life ever is?

Exploring this history, I remember the words of Maya Angelou, “History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again.  Lift up your eyes upon the day breaking before you.”

Two things were sparked in me watching this film, two questions that I am still sitting with:

·       Would I say yes if I were asked to move right into the danger?

·       What is it that leads ordinary people to do such extraordinary things?

I think I know the answer to the first question.  I would have a very hard time to leave behind my children and my home and basically become a spy in a foreign land, travelling through war and occupation.  Though my highest ideals call me to love my neighbors as I love myself and my own family, I don’t live that out in many ways. 

I certainly am not doing it now, when we are facing the greatest refugee crisis the world has seen since WWII.  Just this weekend almost 100 children lost their lives in one city—the city of Aleppo.  In a sense we are all being asked to take action by these deaths and the millions and millions of refugees displaced from their homes.  The leaders of the UUA are not calling us up with a secret mission – but they shouldn’t have to. 

There is so much pain and suffering to respond to in this world, we can become overwhelmed and not know where or how to act.  This paralysis can lead to guilt for *not* acting, leading to further paralysis.  When I feel I’m not doing enough, I have less energy to do things I can do.

And the polarization of our current political context in the United States does not help.  We—and let me just speak for myself-- I can get so wrapped up in what “the other side” is doing or saying or not doing or saying that it just pulls me right off my center.  I begin to be defined by what or who I am against, rather than what or who I am for.  I forget that I am part of the great interdependent web of all existence that includes everybody, the whole world, including Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump; including police officers and unarmed black men; including the children of Aleppo and those who are dropping bombs on them. 

And that my friends, is why I need a religious community, a community of faith and practice.  Because sometimes, I want to be able to say yes, to do something new and risky in the service of Love.  None of us can say yes to every question, to every scene of suffering we encounter.  But together, we can cultivate the ability to have moral courage in our everyday lives.  Moral courage moves us toward the danger, the hard places, the conflict—wherever that may be in our lives—and yet stays rooted in a place of Love.

Unitarian clergyman Edward Everett Hale, writing in the early 1900’s called us to moral courage,  – “I am only one, but still I am one.  I can’t do everything, but still I can do something.  And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

We don’t have to wait until the UUA calls us up for a secret mission.  We can practice moral courage every day.

I believe one of the answers to my question “What is it that leads ordinary people to do extraordinary things?” is connection to a community of faith and practice.  A place and a people that can remind you of your highest commitments and values, that challenges you to live them out, that can hold you when you know you haven’t lived up to them fully, and can remind you that there is always a chance to begin again.  A place and a people that helps you to begin again in Love. 

This is one of the reasons why I find the Jewish tradition of collective repentance and atonement at the New Year so powerful.

The Jewish word usually translated as repentence is tshuvah which literally means to turn or return.  Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, opens into the Days of Awe – nine days of reflection until Yom Kippur.   It is a time to take account of our lives, where we have hurt or wronged others or ourselves, and to ask for forgiveness of those sins.

Rabbi Albert Goldstein writes, “What is sin? It is sickness of soul, unhappiness with what we are doing with our lives, to ourselves and to others who share our life: the unhappy misapplication of our talents and energies in directions that bring us no sense of fulfillment, no feeling of achievement or joy in living. …

And translated into everyday language, what is repentance? What, indeed, but the need and the longing to change, the effort to heal ourselves, the quest for a cure for our sickness of soul.”

During the Days of Awe there is an encouragement to actually go ask for forgiveness from those you have individually wronged.  But in the end, at the High Holy Day services of Yom Kippur, repentance happens as a collective confession and ask for forgiveness.

So one may be asking for forgiveness for something one didn’t actually do; I didn’t actually drop bombs on the children of Syria, and yet because we are connected, I did.  I didn’t actually pull the trigger that killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, NC, but I have not done all that I can to bring down white supremacy and racism.

We ask together for the strength to change, to turn towards health and peace.  A chance to begin again in Love.

Recognizing where we have failed to act, what we have failed to do, can help us to move out of paralysis and hopelessness to step into what we can do.

Confessing and asking for forgiveness collectively reminds us that none of us reaches wholeness and reconciliation alone.  We will all only be saved together to the extent we recognize our connectedness.

A candidate won’t save us, an election won’t save us.  (Though believe me, I want you to go vote. Please vote.) But we know that the ugliness that has been uncovered in this election cycle is not new.  The racism and the xenophobia, and the misogyny and the threats of violence are not new.  And they won’t go away after Nov. 8, no matter who gets elected.

Our faith, the practice of our faith, the building of our community, is not for the good, easy, happy times.  We are here for times just such as this, my friends.  Times when we are reminded each and every day of the high stakes in this life, times when we are clearly being called to act with courage.

I am comforted and challenged by the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Tarfon, who said “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.”  (Pirke Avot 2:21)

And so today I invite you into our own collective repentance and forgiveness, our own ritual to begin again in Love.  This litany was written by Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs and there is a sung response.  I will read a line and invite you to sing the words “We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.”

I invite you to rise in body/spirit. 

A Litany of Atonement (Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs)

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For the selfishness which sets us apart and alone

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For losing sight of our unity

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

For those and for so many acts both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of separateness

__We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.

Closing words

Maya Angelou: “Lift up your hearts.  Each new hour holds new chances for new beginnings.”

May it be a good year.

May it be a healthy year.

May it be a peaceful year.

May we be ones who help make it so.

Go in peace and greet your neighbor with love.

A People of Resilience

Sermon delivered March 6, 2016 

“A People of Resilience: Spiritual Practices in an Election Year”

Rev. Laura Bogle

Reading:  excerpt from spoken word poem “Say Yes” by Andrea Gibson

when two violins are placed in a room
if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound the note
if this is your definition of hope
this is for you
the ones who know how powerful we are
who know we can sound the music in the people around us
simply by playing our own strings
for the ones who sing life into broken wings
…

this is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom
who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world
has slapped them in the face with its lack of light
for the mothers who feed their children first
and thirst for nothing when they’re full

…

this is for doubt becoming faith
for falling from grace and climbing back up
for trading our silver platters for something that matters
like the gold that shines from our hands when we hold each other

…

this is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to
for the time you taught a 14 year old girl she was powerful
this is for the time you taught a 14 year old boy he was beautiful
for the radical anarchist asking a republican to dance
cause what’s the chance of everyone moving from right to left
if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS
this is for the no becoming yes
for scars becoming breath
for saying i love you to people who will never say it to us
for scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine
for the dime you gave away when you didn’t have a penny
for the many beautiful things we do
for every song we’ve ever sung
for refusing to believe in miracles
because miracles are the impossible coming true
and everything is possible

this is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When I planned this sermon topic a while back, to talk about resiliency in an election year, I didn’t think the political rhetoric could get much lower, but boy was I wrong.

I could not have predicted that two days ago I’d hear an interview with a former Republican strategist who said that for the first time ever he’s hearing from parents who won’t let their children watch the debate—even children as old as 12 years old—because they fear for what they will hear.

Before I go further, I want to be clear about a couple of things:

Yes, I may discuss or refer to candidates today, but I cannot and will not tell you who to vote for.  Nor can this congregation in any way even appear to endorse or use any of our time and resources to endorse any candidate.  It’s against the rules, folks.  Plus, as we affirm in our mission, diversity is core to who we are. We are not a political club where only exactly like-minded people gather.  We are a community of faith and values.  Whether you are a republican or a democrat, I’m your minister, and I love you.  Period.

But can we talk about and speak out on the crucial issues of this election?  Yes.

Can we discuss how the principles of our faith might guide us?  Absolutely.

Our faith is one that is engaged in this world, which means being engaged in the issues we face as citizens of this country.

It would be easy for me to stand up here and talk about a particular Presidential candidate as the biggest problem we face today.  What is harder, is to confront what he, and yes I am talking about Donald Trump, reflects and provokes in the American people:  our FEAR.

I want to give you just a few snapshots of fear as I see it manifesting right now --

Just this week a teacher in Knoxville took her school kids, many of them Spanish-speaking, to see an art exhibit downtown.  As the children got off the bus, they were soon confronted by a man screaming obscenities and racial epithets at them.  Screamed at them to “Go back to Mexico.”

The teacher wrote about this experience: “I was scared for my kids in a way that I should never have to be - that an adult, screaming obscenities at children in a public place, might do them physical harm simply for the color of their skin and the language they were speaking….

I experienced fear in a way that I should never have to experience, that no child should ever have to experience….”

There’s also a quieter kind of fear, a chronic fear that comes from being different than the mainstream.  For instance, I heard an elder in our community this week describe how for so many years she has censored herself in political conversations in Blount County.  Why?  Fundamentally because of fear.

The Southern Poverty Law Center ranks Tennessee fourth in the nation for the number of hate groups based here.  Groups rooted in fear of others, and meant to provoke fear in others.

A Gallup poll at the end of last year showed that 51% of American are very worried or somewhat worried that they or a member of their family will be a victim of a terrorist attack.  That’s a real fear people are carrying around, whether that fear is founded our not.

Our Tennessee legislature, among other things, has been spending time figuring out how to prevent refugees from settling in our state, for fear of what they might do to us.

It is not unreasonable to think that people voting for Donald Trump are doing so because they are fundamentally afraid.  The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump is doing best in places where middle-aged white people are dying the fastest.  Unlike other demographic groups, the mortality rate of middle-aged white folks has actually been increasing over the last decade, especially for those without a college degree.  Fear of a loss of privilege, loss of dignity, loss of family, loss of life might be driving their choices more than their hopes.

Fight or flight is the way the old reptilian part of our brains responds to fear.   

Fight means we lash out – fighting with words, with attacks, with denigrating language, with violence.  We are seeing this in our facebook feed and on our television screens and in our school and communities.

Flight means we disengage, running away to another place thinking we might be safe there—how many of you have seen or heard people talking about moving to Canada?  More often we don’t physically run away, but simply remove ourselves from the conversation.  Stay silent and distant.  Fear to speak up or speak out.  Or Fear that if we do it won’t make a difference.

Fight or Flight, the end is the same: disconnection and isolation.

But here’s the Good News: We are not reptiles!  We are human beings, with the ability to practice a different way.

What in the world will help us collectively rise up alive with love and hope in this climate of fear and division?

How might we create a community of resilience here, that can stay strong in our values without letting the fear lead us to either fight or flee?

We can take some advice from scientists and scholars who have been studying what makes for a resilient people.

Several years ago author Diane Contu did a review of many studies of resilient individuals and organizations.  In her article “How Resilience Works” she pulled out three common characteristics:

The first is a kind of courageous realism— she calls it “a staunch acceptance of reality”

To describe what she means by courageous realism she shared a story from Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war.  When he was asked who didn’t make it out of the camps, Stockdale replied:

            “Oh, that was easy, it was the optimists.  They were the ones who said we were going to be out by Christmas. And then they said we’d be out by Easter and then out by the Fourth of July and out by Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas again.  You know, I think they all died of broken hearts.”

I’ve seen activists succumb to the same.  Putting all their heart and soul into a particular idealistic dream of freedom, thinking we will fully arrive there one day soon.  Only to find out that reality is harder than that, on a time table we can’t control.

Contu says “Facing reality, really facing it, is grueling work.” 

When we are unable to truly face reality, with its challenges, we sometimes mis-place our hope.  Facing reality does not mean letting go of a sense of possibility.  It does not mean sinking into despair.  But it means not glossing over the hard truths. 

When we face reality, we might find a hardier hope.  Hope is not the same as optimism.  Hope dreams dreams rooted in the real here and now.

Margaret Fuller, Unitarian transcendentalist of the 19^th century said, “Only dreamers shall understand reality, though in truth their dreaming must be not out of proportion to their waking.”

Our dreaming must not be out of proportion or our waking.  This election year, with courage, let us confront with eyes wide open the reality of our country.  Only then can we dream a different reality into being. Only then can we rise through our fear to engage.  Courageous realism can help us get over the fear of the present moment, and stay focused on a bigger picture, a longer view. 

The second characteristic of resilience Contu found was “a deep belief… that life [is] meaningful.”  Even in the midst of hardship and suffering resilient people find a way to create a story of meaning for their lives.

This is what faith is all about.  Last month we spent time thinking together about our own faith affirmations.  What are the deepest truths on which we can rely?  These truths give us meaning and purpose.  We affirm that all life is sacred and that we are in a web of relationship with all of creation—whether we like it or not.  We affirm that we each are held in a Love that is bigger than anyone of us.  We affirm that this life is important, it matters what we do; human beings can create heaven or hell here on this earth. 

I think of my friend Carol who was running in her first ever marathon in Boston when the bombing happened in 2013.  She was running for her Mom who had been diagnosed with cancer.  It was a pilgrimage for Carol, something that went beyond just running a race.  It was an embodied action of meaning for her.  And so when she didn’t get to finish the race that day in 2013, after she was pulled off the scene and confronted the reality of what had happened – the violence, the fear, the grief-- she went back. Just three days later she went back to the route and finished running it.  For her Mom, for herself, and to make a story of meaning that did not end with a bombing and an unfinished race.

Victor Frankl, survivor of Auschwitz said, “We must never forget that we may find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.”

The third and final characteristic of resilience Contu offers us is “the ability to make do with whatever is at hand.”  “When situations unravel,” she says that resilient people “muddle through, imagining possibilities where others are confounded.”

It is a kind of improvisation – as conditions change, not relying on the same old ways.  Instead, relying on our own agency to respond.  No matter what, we can act, we can do something, where we are, to respond to the circumstances.  I challenge us all to imagine new possibilities for responding to the fear and anxiety around us.  What is it you can do where you are, with what you have?  What are the possibilities you can imagine for connecting across fear – in your workplace?  At your kids’ school?  In the grocery store?  In the state house?  More importantly, What can we do together?

Facing reality.

Finding meaning.

Creating new possibility with what we have.

Three practices for resilience in an election year.  In these Fear-Full times let’s practice saying yes to life and connection instead of fighting or fleeing.

Let’s remember to strike our own chords of Love instead of fear, so that others might sound that note also. 

And let us give thanks for

“the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us” (Andrea Gibson)

Amen.