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.