What Mary Knew

Readings
This particular Sunday, the minister asked us to join hands and to slowly start chanting “Om.” The resonance of the chant and the joy of belonging once again to a spiritual community made me feel, just for a second or two, as if my body had disappeared and I was lifted from the earth. In that momentary state of utter nothingness, I had a very clear and complete realization. I totally understood one thing: that we are all one. In that instant I knew that the whole universe is a seamless tapestry of people, animals, vegetables, rocks, and more—all sustained and nurtured by the Great Mystery. In the midst of this knowing, a voice said clearly, “For a moment like this, it was worth having been born.” The power of that essential awareness ended my feelings of isolation. I knew I was one with the universe and with all that is and that I must use my gifts to contribute to the welfare of all.
—Rev. Lilia Cuervo, Cambridge, MA

It happened unexpectedly, unsought . . . on an ordinary “ho-hum” day. On that crisp Spring morning I sat, alone, pondering the immense power and timelessness of the sea. After a while, the roar of the crashing waves, the kiss of the salty breeze on my face, the coolness of the sand beneath me, and all else in my conscious awareness just floated away. An overwhelming peacefulness embraced my whole being. In that moment, an intense experience of Self merging profoundly with what I have come to name The Spirit of Life was the entirety of all I sensed.
Our Transcendentalist forefathers and foremothers, process theologians, and others affirm such experiences as genuine. I have never doubted the authenticity of this deeply intimate spiritual experience. I carry with me the truth that we are interwoven in one intricate fabric of existence. We are all good. We are One.
— Rev. Christine Riley,

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

46 And Mary[a] said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
-- Luke 1:39-55 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

What Mary Knew

Mary is a controversial figure in the Unitarian tradition. For some rationalists, the idea of the virgin birth is an example of everything that is wrong with religion. I grew up in a UU church, and this was literally the only thing we ever discussed about Mary. Many sermons have been preached and essays written about whether you can have a religious faith without miracles.

As I became interested in feminist theology, Mary took on new importance because there are so few important women in the Christian Tradition, and she came to embody the divine feminine in many cultures. We can’t afford to silence any of the rare female voices in our Judeo-Tradition. Fortunately, as we consider the Mary we meet in the Gospel of Luke, we do so in our UU tradition, which views scripture not as a literal accounting historical events, but as poetry, as story. Almost by definition religious experience defies description. So we resort to poetry to gesture evoke a numinous experience. The story of Mary, as told in the Gospel of Luke, is one such story. So I invite you to enter into the text today with me with that spirit.

When we imagine the journey toward the divine, there are many conflicting ideas about what we might find if we came close enough. Many conflicting ideas about where the spiritual path ultimately leads. We may think of the hermit on his mountain top, away from worldly things, who meditates for 40 days with only his acolytes to come wet his lips with water every so often. We think of our own peak moments, like those experiences described in this morning’s readings, and we imagine that folks who are close to the divine must feel that blissful content feeling all the time.

Consider the imagery we see in religious art, from the great masters to holiday greeting cards: the glow of the saints, surrounded by angels, draped in beauty. At this time of year are surrounded by such images.

Luke 2 “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven”

Because most of us have never seen or heard an angel such as the artists portray them in beautiful paintings, we think religious experiences are things that happen to other people. We probably don’t think of comparing a moment of wholeness and peace staring at the ocean, or the profound bliss and connection to the cycle of life we might experience staring into the eyes of a newborn. but as Rev. Christine Riley Says: “Our Transcendentalist forefathers and foremothers, process theologians, and others affirm such experiences as genuine.” a “deeply intimate spiritual experience”

Anyone in the catholic tradition would affirm that Mary comes as close to God as just about any person could be. An angel visits Mary and says to her “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Her relative Elizabeth greets her cousin with the words, “Blessed are you among women” And when I listened to the words of this story while on a recent retreat, after a weekend of silence, worship, meditation, contemplation, prayer, I was struck by how Mary responds in what must be surely a peak religious experience of her life. It begins as one might imagine:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

In our UU community, we have many names for the divine (and Lord is not often a favorite, because it’s so patriarchal) but whatever name we would choose to speak in gratitude at one of those peak moments, I think our first thought might be the same- thank you for this beautiful gift of a moment, thank you Spirit of life, thank you random chance in the universe, I feel so blessed to have this moment. Gratitude is a common response to mystical experience

But then, as I listened to this poem, I heard something I’d never paid attention to before:

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

In her song of praise, a full ¼ is praising God as one who brings down the powerful and lifts the lowly, who fills the hungry and sends the rich away empty. We could easily understand if Mary got a little full of herself- she is called “blessed among women” after all. An angel appeared to her and spoke to her- and now, at least in metaphor, she is full of the spirit of God, she is gestating the divine. One interpretation of this passage is a reminder of the importance of humility in the Contemplative tradition. Just as UU minister Christine Riley “sat, alone, pondering the immense power and timelessness of the sea.” When we open ourselves to the vastness of all that is, we decentralize our own small self- the self-image that seems so important to us in our daily dramas loosens a bit and we are able to see a bigger picture. When put down our own self importance, we are more open to “that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”

Some weeks after Mary’s mystical experience, she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. I imagine that if you had been visited by angels, it would be easy to become overwhelmed with your own self-importance, to see yourself as better, wiser, more important than other people after an experience of this kind, but humility reminds us of our place in the whole of things. Mary’s song illustrates that she is not only able to stay grounded but she remembers those who are hungry, and she remembers the imbalance of power. When we are called to bring forth the spirit of life into the world, justice is part of what we are called to bring forth. As Lillia Cuervo wrote: “The power of that essential awareness ended my feelings of isolation. I knew I was one with the universe and with all that is and that I must use my gifts to contribute to the welfare of all. “[i]

Sometimes the spiritual journey, the inward journey are criticized as being self-centered naval gazing, and indeed it can be. It’s easy to use it as an escape from the world. We walk in the woods to let go of the bad news both local and global. We sit on the meditation cushion as a sanctuary form the difficult part s of life. There’s a danger to this- it’s called “spiritual bypass”- this is a term I just learned recently the "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks".[1] It was first used by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist. This term usually refers to personal, psychological issues, but I think we can see examples of using spirituality to bypass dealing with unresolved issues, tasks and wounds in the larger world.

But ours is one of many traditions, many teachers who believe that the spiritual path, if it is true, leads us inward, leads us to the spirit, only to lead us outward again to the healing of the world. In this song, Mary has identified 2 things, as praiseworthy manifestations of divine power. One is an equalizing asymmetrical systems: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;” [You expect to see this kind of line in the books of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures- it is a major theme for them. So maybe the writer of Luke’s gospel is linking her back to the prophets, to say that Mary, and the child she is carrying, stand in that prophetic tradition. ] By attributing to the divine the quality of raising the lowly and bringing down the powerful, Mary is saying a pretty revolutionary thing. Christianity is used by so many of the ruling class to bolster their claim to power, to validate and enforce the status quo, that’s why it was so moving to me -- to hear the widely venerated Mary praise the revolutionary aspect of divine power made me stop and look again.

Some of you will remember that one of our current UU Study Action Issues is about escalating inequality. It says in part: “Our Unitarian Universalist (UU) tradition places its faith in people to create a more loving community for all, guided by ‘justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.’ Challenging extreme inequality has now become a moral imperative…”[ii] In our UU tradition we believe that if something is sacred, as Mary here is implying that rebalancing power is sacred, then our role as humans is to be co-creators with the spirit of life, to magnify the spirit of life. In this case, we are encouraged participate in raising up the “lowly” which each of us may feel called to do in many ways. You could say that in a culture based on white supremacy that working to dismantle white privilege is a way of bringing down the powerful from their thrones, and lifting up the lowly. Working for racial justice is a way of co-creating with the spirit of life. Or take this tax bill just passed by the senate- Every analyst agrees that this will mostly reduce taxes for the top 1%[iii] The only argument is about whether cutting taxes for the rich will lead to ballooning growth, or a ballooning deficit. So while most of our cultural images suggest that the best way to honor the nativity is to shop and decorate our homes, one way to interpret this passage of the bible is to celebrate the season is by calling your congress person to let them know how you feel about the tax bill, or by going out into the social hall after service and writing a postcard to your US Senators and telling them what it means to you to co-create a just world. [iv] And when your friends ask you want you’re doing for the holidays, you can say you are raising up the lowly and bringing down the powerful.

The other thing Mary lifts up is the needs of the hungry: “53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” In her poem of praise, she acknowledges our hunger. Many bible commentators flip immediately to spiritual hunger. Certainly all humans have experienced a yearning, a hunger in their hearts … for wholeness, for connection. As Augustine wrote “restless is the heart until it rests in thee.” This is a reasonable point for religion to make. Consider the tv commercials we see this time of year, the one suggesting that this electronic gadget, this toy, and definitely a luxury car can finally fill that emptiness, sooth that restlessness. The spiritual point of view, however, sees that no material status, no material gain will satisfy that deep soul hunger. A good message for all of us in the “holiday shopping season.”

At the same time, to talk about feeding spiritual hunger without acknowledging the true fact that there are millions of people hungry in the world right now shows a kind of willful blindness. That’s why this is such a natural time of year to give to foodbanks and charities that support folks who are struggling. I’m so grateful to Judy for setting up our congregational service tomorrow with Food For Thought - at Lynch Bustin Elementary to pack up “ nutritional meals to students in need of food over weekends and school vacations throughout the school year”. For those of us who don’t experience hunger on a regular basis, it’s easy to loose site of the fact that according to the United nations “Globally, one in nine people in the world today (795 million) are undernourished” [v]

This advent season is traditionally one where Christians are invited into a time of inward contemplation, In the Catholic tradition Advent is a time of emptiness, a time of waiting. For observant Catholics, this means waiting to welcome spiritual light of the Christ Child into the world. But whether or not we identify as Christian, whether we are theists, atheists or agnostics, this time of darkness invites us to turn inward, to let go of the constraints of our individual dramas and striving, opening ourselves to that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life; opening ourselves to the larger oneness of all that is, with gratitude, with humility. Not so that we can escape our troubles, but so that when we are drawn back out into the world we find our part in the divine work of lifting up the lowly; and filling the hungry with good things.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.uuabookstore.org/Assets/PDFs/3117.pdf
http://www.uuabookstore.org/UU-Mystical-Experiences-P18005.aspx
[ii] https://www.uua.org/economic/escalatinginequality/csai
[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfHjzp0PxMI
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/26/senate-gop-tax-bill-hurts-the-poor-more-than-originally-thought-cbo-finds/?utm_term=.a08faf2de249
[iv] http://bit.ly/2jels7S UUs for Social Justice “Say no to fake tax reform”
[v] http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/

Expectation and Reality (November 19, 2017)

I imagine that many of us have plans for Thanksgiving. We probably have some picture in our minds of where we are going, and who will be there, and maybe even what food we will eat. And if you don’t yet know how you will be spending this coming Thursday, I would not be surprised if that caused a little anxiety. This is the way of holiday traditions; the stories and images, memories and expectations of “what Thanksgiving looks like” layer and harden like that magic shell ice cream topping.

So I would suggest that actually, most of us don’t really know “what we’re doing” for Thanksgiving this Thursday. Like the family in our children’s story, we may have expectations of turkey, salad, mashed potatoes and pie, but the reality may be something else. The family in the story made an amazing about-face from a thanksgiving dinner which could easily be called disappointing, and might be called “ruined” to embracing the reality of the situation and being present with one another in that radically unexpected reality.

I think we’ve all had our expectations dashed at one holiday or another. I don’t have a lot of extended family, so even if Gramma and Grampa and Uncle Don and our friend Mr. Hockenberry were all there for Thanksgiving dinner when I was growing up, it wasn’t a big crowd. But even on years when it was Mom and Dad and Me and my sister, mom would still get out all the good china and the heirloom serving dishes and work for 2 days to make all the traditional dishes from scratch, and then we would sit down to… well, just us, but tired and grumpy from having cooked for 2 days. I can still remember the feeling of emptiness after one such dinner- not even home-made pumpkin pie with whipped cream from scratch served on the fancy china could fill the hole left by Gramma and Grampa, could fill the hole between my expectation- that Thanksgiving is a holiday for extended family, and lively conversation and visitors – and my reality, that it was just us 4, and we were all a little sad and grumpy.

One of Homo sapiens’ special gifts is our capacity to imagine a future we can’t see. It helps us store up food for the winter, it helped us invent the smart phone, and it helps us plan a Thanksgiving dinner. Our expectations help us function as a culture. The grocery store or local farmer’s market expects that I will give them money in exchange for my thanksgiving groceries. I expect that I will open up my home to family and friends for dinner, and I expect when I go to dinner as a guest I will bring a bottle of wine or a sweet potato casserole. This happens hundreds of times every day that we don’t notice- Sun rose in the morning- check. Car still out front where I parked it- check. Other drivers stopped at the red light- check. So we are actually pretty good at knowing what to expect, but when our expectations are confounded, when our expectations are different from the reality of the present moment, we have choices to make.

Imagine 2 meandering paths running alongside one another, sometimes side by side, sometimes crossing, and sometimes diverging widely. One is the story we are telling ourselves about how our day is going to go, about how our life should go, about what we are doing for thanksgiving. The other line is our actual lived reality. I often don’t even notice how much I have my eyes glued to the path that represents my expectations. I am so invested in that path that when reality diverges, I will cling with all my might to the path of expectation, waiting for reality to meet our expectations, striving to bend reality back into union with our expectation, instead of joining reality where it is. We choose which path to take in every moment.

For example, this summer I went to see one of my favorite bands, the Decembrists. It was a sold out show, and I looked forward to it for weeks. As we walked to the theater I was so full of excitement I said to my husband “I can’t believe this is actually happening!” The band started with some new songs I didn’t know, and the lead singer was having some trouble with his gear. (Never use a wireless pick up- said my husband from the seat next to me- they always fail when you need them) The crowd was restless, and during the quiet moments in the music would whistle or hoot or yell out requests. Everyone could kind of tell that things were not going according to plan. I, ever the optimist, was determined to hang on to the vision I had in my head. This was going to be great- it would be great any moment. Finally as they played one of my favorite songs and I still didn’t feel that ebullient joy I had expected to feel, the light dawned. We had all had a certain expectation about what this show would be- what this very expensive, much anticipated, sold out show would be, would feel like, and the reality was something different.

Suddenly it occurred to me- if I wasn’t enjoying the show, I might as well practice mindfulness- the practice of constantly returning my attention to the reality of this moment we are actually living in right now. Right then and there, I began trying to bring my attention into the present moment. It resisted. I tried again. “But,” said the part of me so attached to my expectation, “if really let go of my vision and embrace reality I’d have to admit I am disappointed.” Okay. I thought. Let’s do it. I believe in reality, I believe there is a benefit to being in the present moment, let’s give it a try. A wave of sadness rose up in the space between me and the present moment -- almost like a wall dividing my expectations from reality. I was going to have to pass through that wall of sadness; I was going to have to grieve or somehow release my expectations. Okay, that’s another practice I’ve been working on- to let myself feel whatever I’m actually feeling. So I entered that feeling of disappointment. As I did, I thought- why do we go to live shows? They will never be as perfect as the tracks meticulously layed down and recorded on the album. We go to live shows because we want to witness the reality of these musicians, these human beings in the flesh, making music for and with us. The reality is that making music is hard. Sometimes your gear doesn’t work, sometimes the crowd hoots in the quiet parts, and doesn’t like your new songs. Sometimes it’s the first night of your tour, and things don’t go as you planned. The reason to go to a live show is to share a totally unique moment that has never happened before and will never happen again. And finally I dropped into the reality of that present moment. It was actually a pretty good moment.

Let’s take a pause now, together, to arrive in this moment. One way to do this is just to start with something small, like your hands. If you put your hands on your legs, you can feel the air across the back of your hands. You can feel the warmth of your legs under your hands. You can feel the reality of your hands, right now in this unique moment. Notice whatever arises with a non-judgmental compassionate awareness… When your mind wanders off, just notice and gently bring it back… back here to this moment…Back here to the lived reality of the moment we are sharing together.

Notice if you have any expectations of yourself or of the moment, and notice how those differ from your actual experience…

Here are a few things I’ve noticed from my own experience of this practice:

First of all, I spend very little time in the present moment. Apparently I focus most of my attention planning for and anticipating the future.

Second, trying harder doesn’t seem to help. If I’m “trying” I’ve created a story about what “should” happen, a goal to strive for. The goal is on that “expectation” path, dividing my attention from what is really happening. All I can do is notice what I’m thinking, notice what I’m feeling, and gently allow my attention to come back to this present moment whenever that is available to me. The present moment can seem like a shy kitten who will go hide if it feels pursued, but might come sit near you if you just wait quietly and patiently.

Third, it helps if I start with the premise that I can’t do it wrong. If I notice I have expectations that I SHOULD be able to be in the present moment, and I begin evaluating and judging and analyzing myself, now I’m even further from the present moment than when I started, that kitten is hiding in the attic by now. But if I notice my expectations and feelings and thoughts non-judgmentally, without expectation, without trying to decide if they are right or wrong, if I just notice them with compassion and curiosity, I increase my availability to reality. Because even the thought “this is lame and difficult, this shouldn’t be so hard” is a real thought, if that is indeed what is arising, so noticing it non-judgmentally allows us to stay on the path of reality.

Fourth, just because it doesn’t feel good doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. If you are trying to be present with the reality that you are lying in bed with the flu, you are still going to feel whatever symptoms your body is feeling. But if you notice and then let go your expectation that you SHOULD be at work, or whatever you were expecting to be doing right now instead of this, you may notice something shift in how you feel. It might feel freer, lighter, not as overwhelming, but don’t take my word for it, I don’t want to create expectations about how things might change- it will be different every time.

Fourth- reality is pretty interesting. I like to practice paying attention to reality when I’m bored, because I’m always saying I don’t have enough time for my spiritual practice, so why not use some scrap of time I’ve already labeled as boring? Moreover, I’ve found that I sometimes I feel bored because I EXPECT to be bored. I assume waiting in line at the grocery store is boring, that being stuck in traffic will be boring, but if I get curious about this moment, there’s often a lot going on in my body, my mind, my feelings, or in the world around me. That boredom might be a barrier between me and a really interesting moment I might have missed. Or it might be a barrier I put up because underneath I was starting to feel something challenging, a restlessness, a sadness, a frustration. I will leap out of my own experience of lived reality onto that other path- the path of expectation and imagination, as an escape from feeling that thing that might be difficult.

Why stay present with a difficult moment? Because reality always wins. We can escape momentarily into our imaginings of what Thanksgiving dinner should be, but if this is the year when everyone is a bit sad because Pop Pop’s not there, I believe there is a value to letting that sadness be part of our time together. In my experience, when I’m able to feel the reality of a moment that is difficult, instead of flying away from it in my mind to an alternate timeline where this moment is not sad, I free up a lot of energy I was using to keep my expectations alive. Now I can invest that energy in this real moment we are living. And if it’s a difficult moment, maybe that energy could be useful for healing, for connecting, for choosing navigating the moment with integrity and wisdom. If I decide to open myself up to the reality of the present moment, I no longer have to manufacture a wall to hide from the parts of reality that contradict my expectations.

Please don’t confuse reality with what I used to call “realism.” After being disappointed so many times, I cynically decided that I would always expect the worst, and then I could be presently surprised. This is the other side of the same coin however. If we always expect the worst, we may be more available for unpleasant experiences, but we may close ourselves off to what our heart really wants. Something beautiful and unexpected might happen, but our magic shell of expectations keeps us from being open to the experience. What are you doing this Thanksgiving? Allow whatever pictures and feelings come to mind to come, and just notice those expectations, give them a smile. Probably you are right about a lot of that, but inevitably reality will also contain something unexpected. As we move into the holiday season, I invite you to notice, with a non-judgmental compassionate awareness, when expectations and reality diverge. Let us hold our expectations loosely where we are able, and look for opportunities to be present with reality as it is unfolding, because that is where life is.

What about White Men? (November 5, 2017)

A few weeks ago my husband and I were having a pretty heated discussion about how, when the refrigerator was too full, it was really hard to keep track of what was in there and make sure it all got eaten before it spoiled. “White people problems, am I right?” quipped my astute son from across the table. Pick your favorite online content provider and type in “white people problems” and you will come up with pages of videos and essays and top 10 lists lampooning white privilege. A lot of them have to do with not being able to get soy milk for your Pumpkin spice latte. But the underlying assumption that white people don’t have any real struggles or problems -- as if there are no white people with empty refrigerators right now. It creates a challenging cognitive dissonance- the more we explore and understand the complexities of the asymmetrical systems we live in, the more complex our own identity, our own role in the world becomes.

I grew up listening to feminist voices, and could easily see with my own eyes the disparities between the opportunities for women and the opportunities for men. Feminism seemed to be divided into 2 worldviews. Sure, there were feminists who thought men had made a mess of things and could even be described as “man hating.” But I was taught that the system of rigid gender roles, the patriarchal hierarchical structures, were oppressive not just to women but to men as well. One of the things that first attracted me to my now husband was that he was a feminist. As the great Cultural Critic Bell Hooks wrote: “Patriarchy has no gender.”

“Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.” [bell hooks in  Feminism is for Everybody ]

So, when I hear about empowered women, I smile. But when I hear jokes about women taking over as the new political power, about women relegating men to powerlessness as women have been relegated, I worry. Because I’m a Universalist, and we don’t believe that the goal of life is for good guys to triumph over bad guys, but we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I’m not interested in tipping the asymmetrical system in my direction; I’m interested in creating a system that is liberating for everyone. I don’t believe that my husband and son are the bad guys- they, like me, are just people born into a patriarchal system.

While my mother’s generation won for me the right to wear pants to work, and to work outside the home, men (who identify as men) who wear feminine things to work today are often meet with stigmatization. Men who are stay-at home dads, men who are nurses, struggle against the patriarchy in their own way. I noticed the way my husband always got paid more than me for our almost identical entry level desk jobs, and the way car salesmen and bartenders defer to him. But I also see the tiny box of cultural expression that limits how he can be in the world. That limiting identity has come to be called toxic masculinity. As the Geek Feminist website defines the term: “Toxic masculinity is one of the ways in which Patriarchy is harmful to men. It refers to the socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.”[i]

The system of tightly constructed binary gender roles oppresses even more forcefully those who don’t naturally fall into one or the other of the 2 possible roles. That gender binary has done no end of violence to intersex and transgender folks. So the goal of overthrowing the patriarchy is not that women would win and men would lose; for there to be real justice and equity in our human systems I dream of a time when not only would cisgender women be liberated from an asymmetrical gender binary, but the that genderqueer folks would be liberated and cisgender men would be liberated too.

That being said, men need to be careful how they enter the feminist dialogue. One of the pathologies of the patriarchy is that it puts the straight white male at the center of everything. Part of the reason I was so moved by the Wonder Woman movie was not because it was the best movie I’d ever seen, but because a female character was finally at the center of a super hero movie. And men deferred to her. There’s this great scene where she crosses an impassible combat zone, revealing the depth of her skills and talent in, and the otherwise formidable men working with her let go of their male centrality and fall in line behind her. I get choked up just thinking about it. Finally, in my 40s, here is a major Hollywood movie, where a woman is not just a “super for a girl” but formidable by all standards.

For too long in our culture we have viewed the white male experience as normative, to the extent that scientists would perform medical research experiments only on white men, because their experience was seen as prototypical.[ii] As a feminist who is also a Universalist, I have great respect for the men I know who are trying to authentically express their own gender, who respect others who are authentically expressing their gender, and who are willing, as the folks who representing a group on the “have” side of the power imbalance, to be allies to women and transgender people who are on the dis-empowered side of the imbalance. Being an ally requires taking yourself out of the center.

What being a male ally means to me is speaking out among other men when you see or hear something that dis-empowers women. Whether that’s saying “I’m not sure everyone heard Melinda’s idea, and I thought it was really right on, can you restate that Melinda?” or whether it’s interrupting “locker room talk” or speaking out publicly when you realize a powerful man in your industry is harassing women. Being an ally also means decentralizing your experience as a white male. It means not mansplaining feminism to women, it means being a good listener. It means letting women be the experts on being women, and intersex people be the experts on being intersex. As it says in the Statement of the 1st European Intersex Community Event: “[allies] must learn about intersex issues from intersex people, without pressuring intersex people to provide input unless they themselves want to.”[iii]

But of course the power dynamics in my life are not marked just by my gender. In addition to being a woman, I’m also white, middle class, college educated, bisexual, clergy, parent etc. While being a woman provides some disadvantages in our culture as we make $.77 on the dollar, as our sexual boundaries are not respected by men in powerful positions. But I’m also white, with all the privileges that entails. Our congregation spent a lot of time talking about that recently- we know that there is plenty of hard data that white people have a different experience of the US justice system than our black neighbors do, that we get offered different loan rates, that education of white students is different, the list goes on. Being a black woman has challenges I don’t face as a white woman. This is called intersectionality. Because we are never just one thing. The idea of intersectionality was developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 when a lawsuit alleging discrimination toward autoworkers failed because you could not legally be discriminated against for being black and a woman at the same time.[iv]  Each person lives at an intersection of identity. So a white man who is, for example, a disabled veteran living in poverty, is already pretty decentralized in our culture- in many parts of his life, he will not experience a position of privilege. And yet, when he goes to the doctor, statistically speaking, he is more likely to receive medical care based on research designed for his body than a black veteran, or a female veteran at the same VA clinic. In the real world, a person can be both privileged and disadvantaged at the same moment.

I mentioned  the title of today’s sermon to my husband and he joked “great, white men finally get a chance to be heard.” [sarcasm dripping from his voice] It is absolutely true that white, straight men have dominated our narratives for centuries. But this narrative can be oppressive to a white man too. I can totally understand the white men living in or near poverty who say “is this what privilege looks like?” The toxic masculine tells us that a man, of any race, is only worthy based on his work, and we are living at a time when many of the historically living wage, dependable jobs have disappeared. While there could be a sense of solidarity among white men and men of color who feeling the oppression of economic inequality, we know that historically those in power are more comfortable when oppressed peoples turn their enmity on one another. Frederick Douglass, who wrote, "The slaveholders...by encouraging the enmity of the poor, laboring white man against the Blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the Black man himself." That is to say, if the workers of the world really did unite, the economic order would be disrupted. As Dr. Takiya Nur Amin, the keynote speaker at TPUC, remarked - it is true that low wage workers and folks living in poverty share common struggles and experiences, at the same time at the end of the day, if you are white you will have all those privileges that relate to bias based on skin color- better medical care, better education, better job opportunities, a better experience of the criminal justice system etc, than your black neighbor who works at the same minimum wage job, or was laid off from the same manufacturing plant. The interlocking and overlapping intersections of both privilege and oppression[v] mean there is no single unitive experience of what it means to be a white man in America.

Remember that at the foundation of our work on racism, of our work on gender equality is the belief that individuals should not be judged by based on generalizations about a larger group they were part of. I’m talking about stereotyping first - it’s not any more okay to stereotype a white man than it is to stereotype a black woman. Although when people with power over lives and livelihoods stereotype people with less power, the results are more dangerous. When we stereotype white privilege we have pumpkin late jokes. When we stereotype black men we end up with the criminal justice system we have today.

I’m also talking about how the lived experience of an individual person is always unique within the larger societal forces. Here’s a common theme I hear on TV “how bad could his life be, he’s rich?” or “I can’t have any sympathy for her, she’s famous” but many of the challenges we face as human beings are invisible from the surface. Neither race, nor gender, nor wealth protect us from physical or psychological abuse, nor from physical or mental illness. No privilege protects us from human tragedy. So we have to consider both Individual and systemic oppression. We can experience individual oppression while still living within cultural privilege.

At the fall meeting of the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention, one of the delegates asked why the UUA is talking about “white supremacy culture” within the UUA and within our congregations. Isn’t a white supremacist someone who belongs to a violent hate group? Our speaker, Dr. Takiya Nur Amin, explained that as an academic she uses words very carefully, so she is not saying that we, in this room are white supremacists, but rather that “A culture of white supremacy exists in UU, a culture that perpetuates whiteness as normative and superior.” This is something that Debbie Irving, author of Waking up White also talked about in her book- it’s hard for us to wrap our heads around the fact that we can be good people, who want to help, who would never knowingly hurt someone else, and yet by the fact of our birth we participate in White Supremacy culture.

How can our UU theology help us to hold all these things at once? Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, UU theologian, was once asked what she thought about evil. She suggested that UUs believe evil is trans-personal, that it exists in structures and cultural systems outside ourselves. We believe that all humans have the capacity for a huge range of good and evil. Humans aren’t evil, but they can do Evil and participate in evil. There is no KIND of person who is evil- it’s not true that men are evil and women are good, or white people are evil and people of color are good. But all of us participate, to one extent or another in the systemic oppressions embedded in our culture. Some of us benefit more from those systems than others. And all of us have a responsibility to dismantle asymmetrical systems, and to build more just systems.

White people have an access to power that can be really important in this work for change. Men have a privileged position from which they can work for change -- spheres of influence that people of color and women sometimes can’t access. And any of us, when we are occupying a position of privilege, can step out of the center, out of the spotlight, out of our comfort zone and invite a new voice to be heard. Every one of us has a unique position from which we can work, as our principles suggested, for “justice equity and compassion in human relations” can act for “peace, liberty and justice for all.”



Endnotes

[i] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
a powerful and personal presentation of the issues https://thenib.com/toxic-masculinity
and a useful article on masculinity https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/creating-a-non-toxic-masculinity-lbkr/
[ii] http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/213095.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236535/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/why-are-health-studies-so-white/487046/
http://intersexday.org/en/medical-discourse-bastien-charlebois/
[iii] http://intersexday.org/en/vienna/
[iv] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/?utm_term=.8e0be9e94580
[v] We don’t normally talk about overlapping privileges, more commonly about how oppressions compound when they interlock https://www.colorlines.com/articles/report-women-who-are-color-trans-and-hiv-positive-must-fight-overlapping-oppressionshttps://www.colorlines.com/articles/report-women-who-are-color-trans-and-hiv-positive-must-fight-overlapping-oppressions