Communities of Care

Back before the pandemic, when we did a lot of things, it was easy to get confused about what church was for- we had a lot of activities and programs and they all seemed important. But as the pandemic has dragged on, many of those activities and programs and committees we thought a church could not function without have fallen away. What we do now pretty much comes down to – we worship together and we care for one another. And a big part of what we do together on Sunday morning is caring for one another.

Even when I show up for a board meeting, someone will ask after my loved ones, medical tests or dogs. We take time in every board meeting to ask after absent friends, folks not on zoom, folks who are grieving or sick. We celebrate with each other joys of all sizes. Many times over the past 2 years I have wondered “how are people without a congregation surviving this?”

For as long as there have been faith congregations, there has been a tradition of caring for one another. I don’t know when it started, but it was clearly part of the early Christian church. The Hebrew scriptures, which are much older, include specific instructions about helping the most vulnerable in ways that show this was commonly part of community life.

We, in both the Athens and Cortland congregations, have cared for our people as long as I have known you, and in a way that shows this is an old and deep habit. Let’s not take that for granted, but celebrate and nurture this aspect of our lives together.

First, I want to celebrate that when we create communities of care, we disrupt consumer culture, we disrupt the for-profit culture. When I put “communities of care” in my search engine, it came up with several pages of fee-based organizations that you can hire to do some of the aspects of caring. And thank goodness for them- thank goodness for nurses and therapists and medical assistants and assisted living and transportation services. We’re not trying ot replace the area agency on aging. But our community of care is a little oasis that removes money from the equation, we offer whatever little bits of support we can to one another because we care. We do it as a gift of love, sometimes for people we hardly know. In our voluntary communities of care we are not consumers and providers, we are co-creators. It is a care based on mutuality.

We have seen that when the big professional structures break down, let’s say after a disaster, that the first people on the scene most times are family, neighbors, friends, strangers who instinctively look around to see who needs help. That capacity to be there for one another gives us freedom from a system where we are numbers, where we are consumers, and reminds us of something beautiful about what it means to be human beings in community. Caring community can help and hold people at the margins- people who maybe don’t have family nearby, people who have fallen through the gaps in the safety net. Our communities are human-sized, we see one another and our needs, we notice people who get lost in big systems.

We co-create a caring community because we hope there will be a community to hold us when we need care, but not with any strict accounting of what we give matching what we get, but in a “pay it forward” kind of way. I remember when I was becoming a parent, we were inundated by gifts and supplies and advice and hot meals, and I am still paying forward out of a deep awe and gratitude for that outpouring of support. When my friends and sisters were becoming parents I released everything that Nick had outgrown, because I trusted the community of parents that if we found ourselves surprised by another child, I could step back into that flow, and the support we needed would be there.

Communities of care also disrupt isolation. I’m sure you’ve heard the studies about an epidemic of loneliness in our society. We were growing lonelier before the pandemic, and research affirms what we already know, that we have grown lonelier during the pandemic. I bet all of us have struggled with loneliness and isolation during these past 2 years. That’s one of the best things about church, and this congregation in particular- anyone of good will can join this community, no matter how unlovable you feel, all you have to do to be welcomed into community is show up with an open heart and mind. And because we are so small, there is pretty much no chance that you will be invisible, we see you, and we welcome you with open hearts.

I think it’s no accident that faith communities are so often caring communities. Not only are faith communities a place where we challenge ourselves to live out our highest values, of which care and love are among the most important, but love and care are also a spiritual path, a spiritual practice. I hope that each of you have experienced the special kind of warmth that Mr. Nick felt as he was knitting that blanket thinking of his friend, as he embodied his caring in a thoughtful and personal way for her. In our physical and emotional acts of caring we have a chance to connect more deeply to the divine that is present in relationship, The place between persona and person is a scared place of connection. The web that binds living beings together is sacred, and when we live into that web, embodying care, sometimes the web reveals itself to us in a beautiful and numinous way.

The spiritual practice of care is also challenging. Relationships are hard because people are different, needs are different. Sometimes people need more than we can give, sometimes what we can give doesn’t help. The spiritual practice of care helps us learn non-attachment to outcomes. We can make soup for our sick neighbor, but perhaps they have no appetite. We find a rehab center with a bed, but only our friend struggling with addiction knows if they are ready for recovery. We drive our neighbor to the doctor, but we can’t find a cure. Sometimes people in pain, in fear, in grief are grumpy or impatient or having trouble seeing the big picture. We care anyway, paying attention to our own limits. We can’t take away another’s pain. We offer, we act, and we let go.

It’s a spiritual practice that does not always feel good but invites us to grow in wisdom. The ocean of need is endless, none of us alone can meet that need, not even when we come together as our little congregation can we satisfy all the need. Instead, we must trust to something larger, to the large web that if we do the little things we can do, other people, other communities will do the same. As the dog rescue volunteer we’ve been working with signs all hear emails “until there are none, save one.”

Our community of care will be as unique as our little communities. It’s okay that we don’t have warehouses of supplies or our own unemployment insurance like the Mormons. The Athens congregation established a Minister’s Discretionary fund where many members have donated generously over the years for short term emergencies- like help with a heating bill, or a rent payment, or that technology you need to keep you connected to your community or to the workforce. We heard in "Singing the Soup"by Meg Barnhouse  how they came, in her congregation, to make soup when the power went out in an ice storm. In the Athens congregation we remember the time we set up our own lunch center after the floods. Just last month the Cortland the tradition of bringing poinsettias to folks in nursing care brought joy and connection to our own members and people we have never met.

In our congregations we don’t have specific pastoral care programs, we have a simple caring circle, where we let one another know about folks who might need our support, and those who are able respond spontaneously with food or rides or a comforting call or card. You don’t have to know one another, you can just say “I heard through he caring circle what you were experiencing. Here’s how I’d like to support you, is that something you would like?” and then listen for the answer.

The greatest challenge of our spiritual practice of caring community is that the more we care, the more we love, the more we open our hearts, we give up the protective numbness of detachment. Our congregation has lost 2 members this winter in death, and if we had not taken them into our hearts, and if we had not opened our hearts to their loved ones, perhaps we would not have felt the pain of their passing. But then we wouldn’t have had our friends who were so dear to us. If you take the challenging spiritual path of love, you will know joy and connection and care, but you will also know loss. And both are profoundly sacred.

Our congregation has been a community of care for a long time, it’s deep in our collective DNA. Today we celebrate and affirm this part of our life together. When we give, when we receive, when we witness acts of care, we remember that there is a love that is greater than any one of us, that we are invited to serve and co-create with our own care, with own hands and hearts.

Keeping the Dream Alive

 How shall we keep the dream alive? This is not a rhetorical question. In the warm months of 2020, we were in the streets witnessing the need for change in our criminal justice system. We created marched and kept vigil, studied and discussed, we called on our political leaders for specific legislative change. We felt a wave growing so large that change seemed inevitable.

Right now, we face the most contagious wave of the pandemic, legislatures who are passing more laws to take away voting rights than to create a more just world, and the change we called for in 2020 to our justice system has been grudging and incremental where it has come at all.

In his famous “I Have a Dream"  speech at the march on Washington, that he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to that massive gathering in support of civil rights, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us of the passage in the Jewish scriptures [Amos 5:24]: “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.“. Back in the spring of 2020 we could feel the growing power of that stream, the momentum. Today it feels like a trickle.

How shall we keep the dream alive? Because it’s an important dream- it’s a beautiful dream. As a people who affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, it is our dream. And that dream needs our steady attention and support both when the realization seems close at hand, and when progress is slow, when we can’t see the way forward. We must keep that dream alive in our hearts until it is finally realized.

How shall we keep the dream alive? We honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week for his heroism and inspiring words, but we also honor all those thousands who worked and sacrificed in service to that dream, through thousands of acts, large and small. One key, I think, to keeping the dream alive is not to imagine that there is one heroic act that we could do, as individuals, as a congregation, that will finally bring racism to an end. We must be willing to do all the humble invisible things that are part of great social change.

Racism is part of our collective shadow, it is bigger than any one of us. When we face our collective shadow as a nation, as a civilization, it can be overwhelming. My teacher Br. Don Bisson gave us this advice, at the first meeting of our class on the collective shadow: to be careful of inflation and deflation. Inflation is whenever we think that we ourselves can single-handedly defeat something in our collective shadow, like racism. That we can swoop in like a super hero, and slay the evil in a single great battle. Racism is real, and tenacious, and bigger than any one of us, that is why it persists. He also warned us not to deflate ourselves, not to see the size of the shadow, and give in to despair, thinking there is nothing we can do. Despair, he said, is what the shadow wants from us. As Margaret Mead is in our hymnal “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committee citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” Let that water of justice trickle through our own hearts, through our little community, trusting that like the creeks and tributaries all over this land that feed the great rivers, Susquehanna and Chemung the Chenango, our small acts, our small lives feed that great river of justice.

King got involved in leadership in the civil rights movement back in 1955, with the bus boycotts. He was a young minister in his 20s at his first church. During that movement his house was bombed, he spent his first nights in jail, but real change was won, as the courts ruled bus segregation unconstitutional. In 1961 King was involved in the movement that lead to the desegregation of lunch counters. But 1962, 60 years ago from this year, was actually a difficult time in the civil rights moment. People made many sacrifices, but saw no concrete change that year. Perhaps it’s helpful to remember that even during the great Civil Rights era, there were years like 1962 when the flow of justice slowed to a trickle. The following year, 1963, was the year of the great march on Washington, where King gave that famous" I Have a Dream" speech.

It wasn’t until the march on Selma in 1965 that the Unitarian Universalists really got involved in number. When those UU ministers and white folks showed up, we were able to offer the kid of support to the movement that made a difference. It was a proud day for our UU Faith, and our public stance drew in a wave of black members who were moved by our actions. In 1967 the momentum swelled in our denomination, and we made a significant commitment of funding and action in 1968, but almost immediately that mighty swell receded.

By 1970 the UUA board voted for a reduction in funding due to a financial crisis and some factions pushed for a leadership structure that would make sure there was white oversight of how the funds earmarked for black empowerment would be used. There was a great controversy and many black members and other folks committed to anti racism and black empowerment left our churches. Our work on anti-racism slowed to a trickle.

We, as a denomination, have that in our collective shadow. We must learn from our history, and keep the dream of an anti-racist, anti-oppressive faith alive. In recent years the momentum, the commitment for anti-racism swelled again, and we have to ask ourselves, are we a denomination who shows up for anti-racism when momentum is at high tide? Or are we a denomination who has taken the calling to work for anti racism into our identity, who shows up day after day to do the steady work of change? That is where we are now- can we keep our steady attention and support on this dream?

We are called to keep this dream alive- not only that beautiful dream MLK shared in his speech, the dream of all those who fought for civil rights in the60s, but our UU dream of truly being an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization. To do that, the people most impacted by the work must be making decisions, must give input, must be in leadership. UU is making progress with this. We have the report from the commission on institutional change that we called for during the swelling of passion for justice in our movement, but can we commit to the steady and often invisible work of implementing their suggestions in every part of our lives together?

We Unitarian Universalists are not called only when the streets are full of protestors, not only when anti-racism is in the news each day. We are called to do the slow work of justice, day after day. We are called to keep learning and growing our capacity. To show up and keep showing up.

How can we keep the dream alive when we are weary? When we are stuck at home? There are few marches in the streets this weekend, because Omicron is at high tide. As a denomination we have made choices to protect the most vulnerable by social distancing, by masking, by following CDC guidance. Our commitment to stay home this morning, to have this very worship online was informed by our commitment to protect the most vulnerable, knowing that people of color are disproportionately impacted by this pandemic.

In times like this, when we are dealing with illness and grief and weariness, the way we keep the dream alive will look different than it did in the summer of 2020, or 1963. If you are full of energy for justice right now, and looking for new places to roll up your sleeves, here are some wonderful places to get start today: 

• Showing up for Racial Justice
• The BLUU Housing Initiative
• Criminal Justice Reform 
• Black Lives Matter
• Protect Voting Rights  

...let us know what you learn and we will do everything we can to support you. 

But if you are weary, if you are overwhelmed, I invite you to simply keep the dream before you in the things you are already doing. Racism is truly in all the aspects of our shared life, and so our attention is needed in all those small tidepools of life as well.

A few years ago I gave a sermon encouraging folks to find ways to listen for voices they don’t normally hear. I suggested that if we love poetry, we can seek out poetry in voices different than our own. That if we love science fiction, we might check out afro-futurism, that if we love movies, we could support movies with black directors and writers, that if we love classical music we could see out black and brown performers and composers. I received feedback from one white person who said “is this really the most important thing we could be doing to end racism?” No, of course not. But how many days of the year do we get the opportunity to do that one heroic act? We may never get a chance to make history, like Rosa Parks, or Dorothy Cotton or James Reeb. On days when we don’t have the opportunity to do the most important thing, we can do something. Like a musician who practices every day so they are ready for the big concert, I encourage us to practice anti-racism everyday, perhaps when the moments come when we can do the hard thing, we can recognize it, and be ready to act skillfully.

How can we keep the dream alive? The thing we keep learning about racism, is how it is woven into almost every aspect of our lives together. It is not only in the criminal justice system, but in housing, in our schools, in our churches, in the arts. I stumbled upon an article this week explaining that black hair in video games is terrible (I had no idea), and that game design companies never seem to have the resources or motivation to fix the problem, so some enterprising folks are creating an Open Source Afro Hair Library of black hair styles that are beautiful, that encourage pride for all those touched by the gaming industry.

Or…Since the pandemic I’ve spent a lot of time watching birds. My interest in poetry and birds and anti-racism lead me to this wonderful poet: J Drew Lanham who introduced me to the black birder movement, - I had been completely ignorant of the challenges and dangers for black people who love watching birds like I do.

On all the ordinary days of the year, days when we are stuck at home, or weary, there are still opportunities to weave that vision of a world free of racism into our lives. We can support the dreams not only for our justice system, where things are among the most terrible, but also all the dreams that make up a complex and rich life- in our colleges, in our symphonies, in our video games, in our children’s libraries. In our parenting, and grandparenting and aunting and uncling, in our workplaces and football stadiums.

If you don’t know where to begin, type something you love, something you do every day into your favorite search engine with the word “racism in” before it. Or the word “black” or “native American” before it. Begin to learn how racism has been, still is part of the fabric of our daily lives, begin to learn the gifts and contributions and dreams of black people and other marginalized people to the things you care about. Don’t let the big things beyond our control keep you from doing the things you can do, touching the lives you can touch.

If you are the praying type, bring this to prayer, Ask for guidance about how your life can be part of that mighty stream:

“Spirit of life, weary and discouraged as I am today, help me find my own way to keep the dream alive.”

If you are not one who prays, follow your conscience, and see where it leads you.

Remember that board of directors of the Nashville public library who quietly voted to integrate all their facilities in the 1950s, and what a big difference it made to author Patricia McKissack, and many untold others.

In the words of 3D artist Jovan Wilson who contributed some really cool looks to the Open Source Afro Hair Library “I hear a lot of people say, ‘Why does it matter?’ Because it means a lot, you know? You want to see yourself. I’ve seen so many kids faces just light up when they see dolls and characters that look like them. It means something,” Wilson said. “So seeing this project for the first time was like time for me to heal my inner child.”[ii]

When we do the small things we can do, we may never know the difference we make, but we can help keep that dream alive, Let us protect that dream like a precious family heirloom, until it is finally realized.

---

[i] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Abridged%20MLK%20Dream%20Speech_0.pdf

[ii] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgdwz/black-hair-in-video-games?

Who We Are and Who We Are Becoming

The poet Mary Oliver writes:

“’We are what we are, you
are what you are, love us if you can.’"

This is the core of what I want to share with you today. What would it be like to arrive at a place where you know what you are, and love it?

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be what I’m not, to address my weaknesses. As a child I got extra tutoring in areas where I was struggling, like hand eye coordination and spelling and memorization. I’m conflict averse, so I spent a lot of energy going into situations that I was afraid of and saying hard things that needed to be said.

But something magical happened when I turned 50- Magical and hard. I realized that my memory was definitely not going to get better, that as a Highly sensitive person I was never going to enjoy conflict management, that even in an area like yoga where I do pretty well, I was never going to get into some of the pretzels because I just wasn’t built the right way.

When I was a kid, I had a whole bunch of visions of who I might become and other visions I had when I was a young adult, when I was a seminary student, many of which I can see now are never going to come into being.

I am never going to become a ballet dancer

I am never goign to be a brain surgeon

I am never going to be the first woman president

I am never going to become a professional singer

I think this is part of what the poet
David Whyte means when he writes:

“Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.”

I did, in fact, become a minister. I used to think I wanted to be Rev. Lindi Ramsden- the fearless and tireless Unitarian Universalist minister who worked 80 hour wees to create the UU Justice ministry of CA, creating a model that we is used all around the country. I tried to be like Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs or Rev. David Keyes who don’t take any nonsense from anyone, who act boldly fearless of the conflict that may follow. It was something of a relief, as I celebrated 20 years in the ministry, to realize that I would never be Lindi, or Rob or Dave, that I could only, in fact be me.

At first this letting go was just grief, an unexpected sadness for all those possibilities which, it was time to admit, were no longer possible.

But then I began to ask myself, what if I treated these imperfections not like bugs in a computer program, but like features? What if God was calling me not to be someone else, but exactly who I am? I began imagine that grief about all I would never be was like a cleansing rain, rinsing away the debris of who I never was, washing away who I used to be, and revealing the bones of who I really am.

Here’s one example- I am a slow reader. I sit down to read the 500 page book assigned for a class and 2 pages later I need a break. My whole life I thought this was due to lack of will, or laziness. My hero bell hooks said she made herself read a whole nonfiction book in the morning before she would let herself read fun fiction in the afternoon. I’m lucky if I get through a handful of non-fiction books a year. Recently I attended a workshop on “spiritual reading” that gave exactly this instruction: read just a few pages at a time, until you reached something that strikes you, that speaks to you, and then to just sit with that insight and let it soak in. It’s a great way to read poetry, or scripture, or anything really if you want to really touch layers of deeper meaning and integration. Oh! I realized with a shock of recognition- that’s the way I read naturally. In that moment I decided to stop being embarrassed by reading slowly, that’s just who I am.

Part of the journey in the second half of life is about owning who we have been, who we are not, and who we are right now. What things do I want to grieve and release- the things we wanted to be, hoped to be, felt we should be?

Are there things about yourself that maybe you were embarrassed about or sad about that you have come to peace with? Take a moment to consider  ...

A crucial element to the journey of discovery in the second half of life is asking: What do we really know about who we are right now? Consider all those thousands of things you know just from being alive in your mind and body all these years- from the foods that give you indigestion to how you respond in a conflict, to what has brought you joy. I often share Walter Burghardt's definition of contemplation “a long loving look at the real” and it applies here, in our contemplation of our own selves. We take our gaze off of all that we are not (and everyone, no matter how accomplished, has things that they are not – that’s part of being human) And invite your loving attention to who you actually are- right now. You don’t have to like the fact that cheese gives you health troubles, you may even need to grieve that loss, but can you gaze on your whole self, cheese problems and all, with love?

As Rev. Theresa Soto encouraged us: “The thing you must be is yourself.”

This kind of reflection and integration takes years, a lifetime even. Insight matters, but also intuition, preferences, feelings. In this kind of inventory it is less important what you scored on your SAT or your elementary school teacher told you about your bad spelling, and more important to notice, as the poet says:

“anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”

What brings you alive? What do you love, right now at this time in your life? Or simply prefer, if it’s too early in the morning to really get excited about things.

I Know that I love really dark chocolate,
I love reading sci-fi fantasy novels
I love when birds land at my feeder
I love lingering over my coffee in the morning.
I prefer having a regular schedule and getting enough sleep most nights.
I’ve recently developed a fondness for this particular shade of orange

How about you- what do you love at this moment in your life? Take a moment to consider ...

I used to think I wanted to be a brave warrior minister, going into the heart of conflict, but really what I love is peace. I love being part of peaceful congregations full of kind people who support each other and manifest love in the world. How lucky I am to get to do that. And if we have a conflict, I screw up my courage and use all my years of ministry experience with past conflicts to help us navigate it, but I know myself, I know that I love peace, and that’s a feature, not a bug.

Once we have begun this inventory, this loving reflection on who we are now, it enables us to move into the future in a choice-ful way.

A few years back a preacher at the UU minister’s institute from the Pentecostal tradition (Rev. James Forbes) reassured us that if God wants you to do something, God will provide a way. I’m an agnostic about things like that, but I decided to try it on. What a relief this idea has been. Last year I had a lot of theological questions about the hard things going on in our world. I realized that I had gotten to the end of where my theological understanding could take me- this new world we were in requires a new map, a new vision. I longed for a teacher, a mentor- I kept having dreams of going back to school. I had dreamed one day of getting a doctorate, but friends told me about the stacks and stacks of reading- 5 books a week in some programs. I decided that I can’t read fast enough for a doctorate, then probably the work God is calling me to do does not require a doctorate. It turns out that the kind of reading I do naturally is better suited contemplation than academics, so I signed up for a year-long program that has only 8 required reading books, and encourages deep contemplation, and already the insight I’ve gained from the course have helped me make sense of this life, and helped support me in my ministry to you.

By accepting who I am I was able to choose a path forward that feels like a good fit for me. The calling I feel matches precisely who I am and who I am becoming.

We Unitarian Universalists are a diverse group theologically. We are Theists and Atheists and Agnostics. So whether you believe in the providential hand of God active in your life, or the power of intention, or aren't sure what to believe, we UUs all affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That’s an unconditional worth- based on who you really are, not who you should be or an ideal standard you might someday achieve.

At the start of this new year, I invite you into this reflection, this long loving look, at who you are, right now. I invite you to release what you are ready to release, to love the parts of yourself that feel unloved, to follow the sparks of aliveness that come from your true self, and to move choiceful-ly into this next part of your life with faith that each of us can best serve this hurting and beautiful world by becoming more and more who we are.

“’We are what we are, you
are what you are, love us if you can.’"