During my recent visit to Ohio, I was privileged to hear several amazing and inspirational speakers. Throughout my message this morning, I will share some of their words. If you wish to hear more, I encourage you to go online and watch the videos from General Assembly. One of these speakers was the Reverend Dr. William T Barber. As he so gracefully opened his speech, so I will too.
Great love.
Great love to all my UU friends.
Spirit of god fall on us fresh this morning.
Amen.
As a self-proclaimed “Welcoming Congregation”, we make an effort to ensure than everyone who walks through the door knows that they are welcome in this house of worship. That regardless of how each person may define spirituality, religion, divinity, for themselves, they are welcome within our community. And yet look around the room. Are we so different? How much diversity do you see? How much do you think is invisible? Is it because we hide our differences? Or perhaps we really aren't that different? And if you feel the need to hide your differences, how welcome are we really making you feel?
These are important questions. They should not elicit an answer, but rather are an invitation for deeper thought. As a congregation we strive to welcome everyone, but what would you do if someone that you consider an enemy were to walk in and sit down next to you. Would you give them the opportunity to worship in their own way? Or would you judge them?
(from right relations team) Lisa Bovee-Kemper: We are a people of many identities: people of color, immigrants, indigenous people, people of differing abilities, trans and gender non-conforming people, gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer people. We are women, we are men, we are all genders. We are young, we are elders, we are boomers and millennials—and don't forget gen X! We are people of much privilege and we are people of some privilege, and we are people of no privilege at all.
As individuals and as a group, we are much, much more than could be described in these limited words. Each of us holds multiple identities, and each identity has different wounds and needs and blind spots. Know that we are all a bit raw (she said in reference to others at General Assembly)... remember that your fellow attendees may be tender in ways you cannot see. Breathe before you speak. Breathe before you respond. Love one another, even if you do not know one another yet.
This is something we need to remember every day. I think those of us who carry the burden of the quiet or hidden illnesses understand this the most. Remember that your fellow humans are tender in ways that you cannot see. Breathe before you speak. Love one another, even if you do not yet know one another.
I titled this sermon “Radical Love” because I believe we must love radically, intensely, with every fiber of our being. We must allow it to permeate our thoughts, our actions, our heart and soul. We must empower one another to do this, and not disregard it as a weakness, but instead own it as a strength. We must use it as a tool for transformation. And it is hard. God sometimes its really hard to do. But we can not give up. When one of us falls, we must reach out our hands, and lift one another back up. So that we may continue to love radically.
Reverend Barber:
...hate, discrimination, and violence cannot have the first, the last, or the loudest word...Hurt is all around us. And so much of this hurt is driven by hate, racial hate, homophobic hate, religious hate, and the truth be told, it has a long history of causing hurt...And right now, hate desires that we react with hate and truth be told, when you are hurting, there is the possibility of succumbing to revengeful hate. And despite what those who promulgate hate will say to us, (speaking about the victims in Orlando he said) they remain members of our human family of love and in death as they were in life, they are children of god, made in the image of god and we must weep as one family.
When we are surrounded by so much pain, so much discrimination, so much injustice, it is easy to respond with hateful words and actions. I can't tell you how many times in the last few months I have heard somebody say “I love everybody, except <insert your least favorite political candidates name here>. God, I hate them.” As much as you may be dissatisfied with their actions or their words, try to remember, they too are human. While they may not now or ever be on your Christmas Card list, they too are a member of our human family. Instead of wishing them terrible misfortune, pray that they may be blessed with enlightenment and compassion. Let us not forget that hate speech is a form of violence. Whether it be verbal violence, a internet meme, or the butt of a joke, by copying & pasting, by sharing the post, by repeating or even laughing at the joke that is tasteless and hurtful, we too are promoting violence. Be mindful of what violence you may be spreading.
(moderator of our first business meeting) Jim Key: The cruel and hateful speech that seems to be flooding news and social media these days is disturbing to us all. Some public personalities are maligning people of color, people of faith, people who are refugees, people with different abilities, people with non-conforming gender expression, and even people who express a compassionate view of the world. These evil expressions are the opposite of our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all…no exceptions.
(founded the Ferguson Response Network, a Black UU from Grand Rapids, Michigan) Leslie MacFayden: The Black Lives of UU organizing collective is deeply rooted in Unitarian Universalism. We are here doing this work because we insist on working toward making the First Principle of this faith a reality. To say “we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person” is a nice place to start, but we—each and every one of us in this faith—have to work to make that true.
That should not be applied only to the afflicted. In order for us to truly own and embody this principle, we must, and this is the most important part, make sure to remember that this applies to everyone. No exceptions.
Dr. King told us that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Jim Key said, in regards to the General Assembly, “We are the love people and we have a whole lot of loving to do this week.”
But we have to carry this love outside of the walls of the church. Remember I said this is about Radical Love? We all know how to love, how to show compassion. Until we reach that pivotal point where the anger is too much to hold in. Then we snap. Then we allow ourselves to react in hate. This is the radical part. We must not, we must not allow our anger to fuel hate, but instead transform it into an even greater compassion, and even greater love, a radical love that transcends the inequities, that transcends the violence.
When the Westboro Baptist Church tried to protest outside of our General Assembly we greeted them with love. We did not mirror their hateful words with more hate. We did not tell them to go home. We gathered around them and sang hymns of radical love. They retreated in defeat because we refused to let go of our love. Over two hundred Unitarian Universalists marching down the streets of Columbus Ohio singing Breathe in Peace, Breathe out Love was a spectacle of beauty, of radical love, and I was so moved by the experience that I cried while I sang.
Some of you may be familiar with Krista Tippet, from her radio show “On Being”. I was really excited to find out that she would be delivering a lecture at General Assembly. I encourage you to check out her lecture online, an eloquent speaker and a phenomenal mind, she made three points in her lecture at GA. She calls them “encouragements”. The first encouragement is “Words Matter”. She states:
The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. And the world right now needs the most vivid, transformative universe of words that you and I can draw on and give voice to.
Krista cautions: Tolerance has value as a civic tool. But as I say, it's not big enough in human, ethical, or spiritual terms. Tolerance connotes allowing-- Tolerance, the word itself, connotes allowing, enduring, and indulging. And in the medical context, it is about the limits of thriving an unfavorable environment. Tolerance is not a lived virtue. It is kind of a cerebral assent and too cerebral for animate guts and behavior when the going gets rough. Tolerance has not taught or asked us to engage, much less to care about the stranger. Tolerance doesn't even invite us to understand, to be curious, to be open, to be moved or surprised by each other.
I propose that we need to pay attention to our use of tolerance. It is not interchangeable with compassion. It is easier to turn the other cheek and tolerate something or someone, as long as they are not directly affecting you. But this is not the same thing as compassion. Tolerating differences is not the same thing as acceptance. It is easy to accept someone with whom you can relate. It is easy to simply tolerate someone with whom you cannot identify. In order to love radically, we must challenge ourselves to reject the urge to simply tolerate, and instead practice compassion, and even love.
Krista's second encouragement was “to re-discover listening as a social art and questions as civic tools”. She states : Listening is not primarily about being quiet. It is primarily about being present. It is powered by curiosity, and that is a virtue that we can invite and nurture in ourselves and render it more instinctive. It involves a kind of chosen self-imposed vulnerability, a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.
Being present. When we are tolerant, we are not entirely present. Our thoughts stray to other more comfortable places, and in our absence, we gain very little understanding. Without listening, we are unable to formulate good questions. Regarding questions, Krista shares:
A question is a mighty form of words. Here is how I’ve learned to experience it. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. Answers mirror the questions they rise or fall to meet. It turns out it's not true what they taught us in school. There is such a thing as a bad question.
She admits: I struggled with this, but I’ve finally decided it's true. It is often true that a simple, honest question is precisely what's needed to drive to the heart of the matter. That remains as true as ever. But it is hard to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. It's hard, almost impossible, to transcend a combative answer, a combative question.
But I can state this positively. It is hard to resist a generous question. And we can all formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity, and revelation. There is something redemptive and life giving about asking a better question.
Here's another quality of generous questions, questions as social art and civic tools. They may not want answers, or not immediately. They might be raised in order to be pondered, dwelt on instead. The intimate and civilizational questions we are living with in our times are not going to be answered with answers we can all agree on any time soon.
Krista shares with us the importance and power of words, as tools that we can use to learn about each other, from each other. And I believe that as we learn about each other, so too we can learn to love each other. Sometimes, in order to discover each others’ humanity, we must learn to ask the right question. And then, learn to truly listen to the answer, without judgment. A perfect example of one of these really good questions, Krista suggests: “What hurts?”
She quotes Ruby Sales, a veteran of the civil rights movement, “How are you present right now to the pain and fear in our public life, a lot of it white pain and fear, that is manifesting in such ugly ways, looking like anger and hatred, seeming only to deserve anger and hatred back and threatening to undo so much of what is good and right and true?...behind the campaigns and the campaigners, how hard are you listening to the people in the crowd, and those are big crowds, so that means that's a lot of diversity of people. How are you listening for the people in the crowd who don't really want or mean to be haters, but are begging to be asked, what hurts?”
Krista's third encouragement is.. Love. She challenges us to : dare to insist that love can be a public good as politically weak and intellectually suspect as that may sound in modern ears. Virtue is an old fashioned word that I find is magnetic to the young among us, to young generations, because they instinctively grasp their need for practical disciplines to translate aspiration into action. Virtues are not the stuff of saints and heroes. They are tools for the art of living. They are [a] piece of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with no words and images. What we practice, we become.
And this brings me back to radical love. While it is not a new concept... Love thine enemy... It is a radical one. Because it has been tossed aside. Because it has been mis-judged as a weakness. Because we have grown up using the word for everything except when its most important. Krista points out:
'Love' is the most watered down word in the English language.
“I love this weather.” “I love your dress.” “I fall in love.” “I fall out of it.”
She states: What we've done with this word, we've done with this thing, this possibility, this essential bond, this act. We have made it private, contained it in family when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We have fetishized it as romance when its true measure is a quality of sustained practical care. We have lived it as a feeling when it is a way of being.
Radical love, to take this a step further, is to incorporate love, integrate it into our very being. I have said before in other sermons that I personally believe that love is how we experience the divine. When we share love with one another we are uplifted. The more love we share the closer to God we become. I say now, we must love one another as brothers and sisters. Because we are all part of the same human family. The inherent worth and dignity of all will be reflected in our eyes when we can see the humanity in each other.
Because when we share love with one another, we share god with each other. I propose that it is not enough to love your enemy. When you identify someone as an enemy, you classify them as separate, less than. You dehumanize them. I propose that in order love radically, to take this radical love beyond the walls of the church and integrate it into our very being, we must discard the concept of the enemy. We must ask good questions, be good listeners, and learn to view all of humanity with the dignity that each and every one of us deserves.
Great love.
Great love to all my UU friends.
Spirit of god fall on us fresh this morning.
Amen.
As a self-proclaimed “Welcoming Congregation”, we make an effort to ensure than everyone who walks through the door knows that they are welcome in this house of worship. That regardless of how each person may define spirituality, religion, divinity, for themselves, they are welcome within our community. And yet look around the room. Are we so different? How much diversity do you see? How much do you think is invisible? Is it because we hide our differences? Or perhaps we really aren't that different? And if you feel the need to hide your differences, how welcome are we really making you feel?
These are important questions. They should not elicit an answer, but rather are an invitation for deeper thought. As a congregation we strive to welcome everyone, but what would you do if someone that you consider an enemy were to walk in and sit down next to you. Would you give them the opportunity to worship in their own way? Or would you judge them?
(from right relations team) Lisa Bovee-Kemper: We are a people of many identities: people of color, immigrants, indigenous people, people of differing abilities, trans and gender non-conforming people, gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer people. We are women, we are men, we are all genders. We are young, we are elders, we are boomers and millennials—and don't forget gen X! We are people of much privilege and we are people of some privilege, and we are people of no privilege at all.
As individuals and as a group, we are much, much more than could be described in these limited words. Each of us holds multiple identities, and each identity has different wounds and needs and blind spots. Know that we are all a bit raw (she said in reference to others at General Assembly)... remember that your fellow attendees may be tender in ways you cannot see. Breathe before you speak. Breathe before you respond. Love one another, even if you do not know one another yet.
This is something we need to remember every day. I think those of us who carry the burden of the quiet or hidden illnesses understand this the most. Remember that your fellow humans are tender in ways that you cannot see. Breathe before you speak. Love one another, even if you do not yet know one another.
I titled this sermon “Radical Love” because I believe we must love radically, intensely, with every fiber of our being. We must allow it to permeate our thoughts, our actions, our heart and soul. We must empower one another to do this, and not disregard it as a weakness, but instead own it as a strength. We must use it as a tool for transformation. And it is hard. God sometimes its really hard to do. But we can not give up. When one of us falls, we must reach out our hands, and lift one another back up. So that we may continue to love radically.
Reverend Barber:
...hate, discrimination, and violence cannot have the first, the last, or the loudest word...Hurt is all around us. And so much of this hurt is driven by hate, racial hate, homophobic hate, religious hate, and the truth be told, it has a long history of causing hurt...And right now, hate desires that we react with hate and truth be told, when you are hurting, there is the possibility of succumbing to revengeful hate. And despite what those who promulgate hate will say to us, (speaking about the victims in Orlando he said) they remain members of our human family of love and in death as they were in life, they are children of god, made in the image of god and we must weep as one family.
When we are surrounded by so much pain, so much discrimination, so much injustice, it is easy to respond with hateful words and actions. I can't tell you how many times in the last few months I have heard somebody say “I love everybody, except <insert your least favorite political candidates name here>. God, I hate them.” As much as you may be dissatisfied with their actions or their words, try to remember, they too are human. While they may not now or ever be on your Christmas Card list, they too are a member of our human family. Instead of wishing them terrible misfortune, pray that they may be blessed with enlightenment and compassion. Let us not forget that hate speech is a form of violence. Whether it be verbal violence, a internet meme, or the butt of a joke, by copying & pasting, by sharing the post, by repeating or even laughing at the joke that is tasteless and hurtful, we too are promoting violence. Be mindful of what violence you may be spreading.
(moderator of our first business meeting) Jim Key: The cruel and hateful speech that seems to be flooding news and social media these days is disturbing to us all. Some public personalities are maligning people of color, people of faith, people who are refugees, people with different abilities, people with non-conforming gender expression, and even people who express a compassionate view of the world. These evil expressions are the opposite of our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all…no exceptions.
(founded the Ferguson Response Network, a Black UU from Grand Rapids, Michigan) Leslie MacFayden: The Black Lives of UU organizing collective is deeply rooted in Unitarian Universalism. We are here doing this work because we insist on working toward making the First Principle of this faith a reality. To say “we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person” is a nice place to start, but we—each and every one of us in this faith—have to work to make that true.
That should not be applied only to the afflicted. In order for us to truly own and embody this principle, we must, and this is the most important part, make sure to remember that this applies to everyone. No exceptions.
Dr. King told us that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Jim Key said, in regards to the General Assembly, “We are the love people and we have a whole lot of loving to do this week.”
But we have to carry this love outside of the walls of the church. Remember I said this is about Radical Love? We all know how to love, how to show compassion. Until we reach that pivotal point where the anger is too much to hold in. Then we snap. Then we allow ourselves to react in hate. This is the radical part. We must not, we must not allow our anger to fuel hate, but instead transform it into an even greater compassion, and even greater love, a radical love that transcends the inequities, that transcends the violence.
When the Westboro Baptist Church tried to protest outside of our General Assembly we greeted them with love. We did not mirror their hateful words with more hate. We did not tell them to go home. We gathered around them and sang hymns of radical love. They retreated in defeat because we refused to let go of our love. Over two hundred Unitarian Universalists marching down the streets of Columbus Ohio singing Breathe in Peace, Breathe out Love was a spectacle of beauty, of radical love, and I was so moved by the experience that I cried while I sang.
Some of you may be familiar with Krista Tippet, from her radio show “On Being”. I was really excited to find out that she would be delivering a lecture at General Assembly. I encourage you to check out her lecture online, an eloquent speaker and a phenomenal mind, she made three points in her lecture at GA. She calls them “encouragements”. The first encouragement is “Words Matter”. She states:
The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. And the world right now needs the most vivid, transformative universe of words that you and I can draw on and give voice to.
Krista cautions: Tolerance has value as a civic tool. But as I say, it's not big enough in human, ethical, or spiritual terms. Tolerance connotes allowing-- Tolerance, the word itself, connotes allowing, enduring, and indulging. And in the medical context, it is about the limits of thriving an unfavorable environment. Tolerance is not a lived virtue. It is kind of a cerebral assent and too cerebral for animate guts and behavior when the going gets rough. Tolerance has not taught or asked us to engage, much less to care about the stranger. Tolerance doesn't even invite us to understand, to be curious, to be open, to be moved or surprised by each other.
I propose that we need to pay attention to our use of tolerance. It is not interchangeable with compassion. It is easier to turn the other cheek and tolerate something or someone, as long as they are not directly affecting you. But this is not the same thing as compassion. Tolerating differences is not the same thing as acceptance. It is easy to accept someone with whom you can relate. It is easy to simply tolerate someone with whom you cannot identify. In order to love radically, we must challenge ourselves to reject the urge to simply tolerate, and instead practice compassion, and even love.
Krista's second encouragement was “to re-discover listening as a social art and questions as civic tools”. She states : Listening is not primarily about being quiet. It is primarily about being present. It is powered by curiosity, and that is a virtue that we can invite and nurture in ourselves and render it more instinctive. It involves a kind of chosen self-imposed vulnerability, a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.
Being present. When we are tolerant, we are not entirely present. Our thoughts stray to other more comfortable places, and in our absence, we gain very little understanding. Without listening, we are unable to formulate good questions. Regarding questions, Krista shares:
A question is a mighty form of words. Here is how I’ve learned to experience it. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. Answers mirror the questions they rise or fall to meet. It turns out it's not true what they taught us in school. There is such a thing as a bad question.
She admits: I struggled with this, but I’ve finally decided it's true. It is often true that a simple, honest question is precisely what's needed to drive to the heart of the matter. That remains as true as ever. But it is hard to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. It's hard, almost impossible, to transcend a combative answer, a combative question.
But I can state this positively. It is hard to resist a generous question. And we can all formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity, and revelation. There is something redemptive and life giving about asking a better question.
Here's another quality of generous questions, questions as social art and civic tools. They may not want answers, or not immediately. They might be raised in order to be pondered, dwelt on instead. The intimate and civilizational questions we are living with in our times are not going to be answered with answers we can all agree on any time soon.
Krista shares with us the importance and power of words, as tools that we can use to learn about each other, from each other. And I believe that as we learn about each other, so too we can learn to love each other. Sometimes, in order to discover each others’ humanity, we must learn to ask the right question. And then, learn to truly listen to the answer, without judgment. A perfect example of one of these really good questions, Krista suggests: “What hurts?”
She quotes Ruby Sales, a veteran of the civil rights movement, “How are you present right now to the pain and fear in our public life, a lot of it white pain and fear, that is manifesting in such ugly ways, looking like anger and hatred, seeming only to deserve anger and hatred back and threatening to undo so much of what is good and right and true?...behind the campaigns and the campaigners, how hard are you listening to the people in the crowd, and those are big crowds, so that means that's a lot of diversity of people. How are you listening for the people in the crowd who don't really want or mean to be haters, but are begging to be asked, what hurts?”
Krista's third encouragement is.. Love. She challenges us to : dare to insist that love can be a public good as politically weak and intellectually suspect as that may sound in modern ears. Virtue is an old fashioned word that I find is magnetic to the young among us, to young generations, because they instinctively grasp their need for practical disciplines to translate aspiration into action. Virtues are not the stuff of saints and heroes. They are tools for the art of living. They are [a] piece of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with no words and images. What we practice, we become.
And this brings me back to radical love. While it is not a new concept... Love thine enemy... It is a radical one. Because it has been tossed aside. Because it has been mis-judged as a weakness. Because we have grown up using the word for everything except when its most important. Krista points out:
'Love' is the most watered down word in the English language.
“I love this weather.” “I love your dress.” “I fall in love.” “I fall out of it.”
She states: What we've done with this word, we've done with this thing, this possibility, this essential bond, this act. We have made it private, contained it in family when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We have fetishized it as romance when its true measure is a quality of sustained practical care. We have lived it as a feeling when it is a way of being.
Radical love, to take this a step further, is to incorporate love, integrate it into our very being. I have said before in other sermons that I personally believe that love is how we experience the divine. When we share love with one another we are uplifted. The more love we share the closer to God we become. I say now, we must love one another as brothers and sisters. Because we are all part of the same human family. The inherent worth and dignity of all will be reflected in our eyes when we can see the humanity in each other.
Because when we share love with one another, we share god with each other. I propose that it is not enough to love your enemy. When you identify someone as an enemy, you classify them as separate, less than. You dehumanize them. I propose that in order love radically, to take this radical love beyond the walls of the church and integrate it into our very being, we must discard the concept of the enemy. We must ask good questions, be good listeners, and learn to view all of humanity with the dignity that each and every one of us deserves.