Finding our Place in the Social Change Ecosystem

Every week as we share our concerns I hear folks say “I’m worried about the state of the world, and I wish there was more I could do.” The problems are so big, and we are so small in comparison … I know I feel that way. But remember, we are all part of the interconnected web of life. We do nothing alone.

Last year, when the new administration took office, social media was filled with posts about what we MUST do, as if, for example, calling your representatives daily was the only way to be a good citizen committed to social change. When this diagram appeared in my feed, I felt a sigh of relief. I’ll be honest  -- I hate talking to strangers on the phone, and it didn’t seem like those hundreds of postcards my neighbors and I had sent were having any impact we could see. But some things that didn’t look anything like protesting or lobbying did seem to make an impact- remember when the Athens congregation opened the church the day after the election for our neighbors to share lunch and their feelings? Even though I joined on Zoom I could FEEL the power of that. My friends and I shared news about the boycotts and spending blackouts we would participate in, and some of those boycotts have made a difference too. 

Around this time last year I organized a couple of neighborhood trash pickups (we live in downtown Ithaca, and so when the winter snows melt, it reveals months of litter. Yuck) because I had this sense that we were going to need to strengthen our local communities, to build capacity for what we could do together. During that first trash pickup a neighbor called out to us, on that almost pleasant early spring day, and asked what we were up to. I looked and realized we had strayed a bit far from the sidewalk into her yard. She wasn’t concerned about that -- she was excited that we were out picking up trash in the neighborhood. We introduced ourselves, and by the end of our talk had added her and her housemate to our neighborhood text message group where we alert each other to emergencies and ask to borrow a cup of sugar. Later that summer, when the city repaved our road for the first time in 40 years, she organized a block party and invited the mayor, who (we were amazed) came an did a ribbon cutting on our little block. There we met even more neighbors, and the Mayor listened politely to my concerns about the increasing number of vacant houses in our neighborhood. It didn’t change what was happening in Washington, but that trash pickup has strengthened our neighborhood connections and our capacity to respond.

In this year’s UUA common read, Depa Iyer, a long time part of social change groups, goes deeper that framework that I saw on social media, describing the many ways we can pitch in. I’ll go through them pretty quickly  and I invite each of you to consider as we list these, are there any that you often play in the groups you are a part of? Are there roles you are drawn to or would be interested in trying in the future? 

Front line responders- “we address community crisis by assembling and organizing resources, networks and messages.”

Right now in Ithaca, a building that houses at risk people was condemned because broken windows in the only exit stairwell made it unsafe. The front line responders include those who immediately jumped in to find out what folks who’d suddenly had to leave their homes needed, from diapers to pet food. They are organizing donations, tracking the responses of the landlord and the timeline of the city and helping coordinate a way forward.

Visionaries “We imagine and generate our boldest possibilities, hopes and dreams and remind us of our direction”

This vision could be as simple as “what if the Valley had it’s own pride celebration?”

Builders: “We develop, organize and implement ideas, practices, people and resources in service to a collective vision”

That’s all the folks who said- great idea, how can I help? They set up tables, planned menus cooked the food, built a mailing list.

Disrupters “we take uncomfortable and risky actions to shake up the status quo, to raise awareness, and to build power”

Like the folks blowing whistles and putting themselves in front of ICE agents in their neighborhood, or folks asking hard questions in the city council meeting.

Caregivers “we nurture and nourish the people around us by creating and sustaining a community of care, joy and connection.”

The folks who host our social hour are caregivers. The folks who reach out to members and friends when they are hurting are caregivers.

Experimenters: We innovate, pioneer and invent we take risks and course correct as needed.

The folks who helped us pivot to zoom worship during covid, and then helped create the systems we use for multi platform worship are experimenters

Weavers: we see the through-lines of connectivity between people, places organizations, ideas and movements.

Those of us who help connect with our partner congregations, and other partner organizations in our community are weavers.

Storytellers: We craft and share our community stories, cultures, experiences histories and possibilities through art, music, media and movement

Like the author of our children’s story this morning

Healers: We recognize and tend to the generational and current traumas caused by oppressive systems, institutions, polices and practices.

When we hold our Transgender Day of Remembrance service, we are taking the role of healers

Guides: We teach, counsel, and advise, using our gifts of well-earned discernment and wisdom.

Anytime you use the wisdom you have gained through your own experience to support people in that role today you are being a guide.

I invite you to take a moment to reflect- did any of these roles resonated with you? Are there roles you have played? Roles you would like to learn?

Now at the center what connects all those roles is our values. That’s what brings us together, and what guides the work we do. In our UU tradition we have 6 values with love at the center And I would argue that because we live in a world that is not always guided by these values, whenever we come together around our values, we are social change makers. And whether you are the person who makes the coffee, or makes worship, brings lasagna to a person recovering form surgery, the one who helps us share a vision for a better world, the one who keeps us connected, or the one everyone calls when there is a crisis and they aren’t sure what to do -- making the world a better place takes all of us. Just as this valley needs the river and the maple trees, the bird, the insects, the fish, mushrooms, the good bacteria in the soil and us too.

As in any ecosystem, we try to keep things in balance. If you have a group with too many builders and not enough visionaries and disrupters, you end up getting stuck in your ways and forgetting where you are going, or not noticing when you have lost your way. A group without any experimenters will definitely not be able to keep up with changing times, and a group with only visionaries will never get where they are going. It’s good to think from time to time about the balance of our ecosystem, and notice what is missing.

Sometimes folks who have been doing a role for a while need step back and take a different role. This helps to avoid burnout, but also makes space to invite new voices, and welcome new people into roles they might be ready to try.

Our churches also have a role within the larger eco-systems of our communities.

Unitarian Universalists have often been disrupters since our very beginning, sharing our heretical ideas that God loves everyone, or that black lives matter. During the flood of 2011 The Athens congregation was a front-line responder going from house to house asking what neighbors needed. When we offer our community meal we are being a caregiver and weaver. Each week when we gather for worship we are storytellers, and when we provide infrastructure for one of our community partners, like the Endless Mountain Pride, we are builders.

The good news this morning is that whatever your skills, your experience, there is a place for you in the ecosystem of this congregation, and in the larger movement woven together of many smaller ecosystems working to create a more just, compassionate, sustainable world. Together we and all our human and more than human neighbors co-create the world we long to see, with love at the center.

From Hand to Hand: how "women's work" helped shape our modern ideas

Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, I want to tell you a story about how women, and “woman’s work” played an important role in the history of our faith tradition. Not just our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, but many of the radical movements that were part of the protestant reformation. I first heard this story from my colleague Rev. Barbara Meyers 20 years ago, and am so grateful she was able to send me a copy of her paper on which much of this reflection is largely based.

If you look down at whatever you are wearing today, you can see that most of it is probably made of thread or yarn, whether it was woven on a loom or knit with knitting needles, most clothing starts out as thread. And to make thread, (back before polyester was invented) you take the plant materials, like cotton or linen, or the wool that comes from the hair of a sheep. The fibers are cleaned and prepared, and then someone needs to spin all those fibers into thread. Before the spinning wheel was invented, this was done by hand with a spindle. You can imagine if every thread in your clothing had to be spun by hand with a spindle, most people would not have very much clothing, and it would be passed carefully from one person to another.

It might take a 40 hour week just to spin the thread for a pair of pants[i] It took about 4-20 people spinning to provide thread for one weaver, so one of the first ways society moved from feudalism to early capitalism, was to set up systems to move raw fiber through spinning and weaving to finished cloth. Now in some areas, the whole process was done in one community, but in the verlag system we are talking about today different communities would specialize in different parts of the process. Growing and spinning the fibers would be done in the country, and the thread brought to weavers in the city. Mercantilists convinced women and girls to do this spinning at home as one of the first “cottage industries” Spinning brought a little money to women, who had few other ways of making money, and it gave a bit of freedom to unmarried women, hence the term “spinster.” (Not a living wage, mind you, spinners never made enough to move out of poverty).

Women began gathering in community to spin together, since it’s nice to spin and talk at the same time, in fact this is how communities like the Beguines began, as communities of unmarried women who spun to provide their own living. And so it was natural that ideas spread among the women spinning together.

This system also required someone to go among small farms to pick up wool (this was literally called “wool gathering[ii]”) and to go from spinner to spinner pickup up the completed thread and then take the thread to the weavers in the city. And all along the way news and ideas were passed as well.

Barbara took this map, showing the trade roots of the textile trade in the 1600s, and circled the cities where these radical ideas were popping up.[iii] The ideas were certainly passed in conversation as wool and thread and money changed hands, but also now that the new-fangled printing press had increased literacy among women and made it possible to publish tracts (like pamphlets) these also could be passed on from person to person. In the days before Facebook, before television, before radio, this fed a hunger of rural folks for fresh new ideas and news of the world. Since many of these ideas were heretical, and some were outlawed, a quiet, private way to pass on the ideas was necessary for them to survive.

What kind of radical ideas? Well even though Universalism itself didn’t form until the mid-18th century, the idea of universal salvation was one such idea. A group called the Familia Caritatis or “Family of Love” believed in Universal Salvation back in the 16th century, and they were unitarian- that is they didn’t believe in the trinity. They didn’t believe folks should be put to death for their beliefs, Scholar Mike Betrand writes “the Family's emphasis on tolerance in matters of belief strikes a modern chord, also their insistence on the necessity for every person to find their own way to God in an ongoing, lifelong process… Much Family doctrine has a curiously modern feel — principled tolerance for all faiths, cultivation of the Christ within, the necessity to love all one's neighbors, the allegorical nature of scripture (and no less powerful for that).”[iv] The Lollards were another such movement, driven underground in the 1400s, Barbara tells us “The Lollards were fiercely anti-authoritarian, anti-aristocratic, and rejected the ruling class and its law.” The Levelers believed in democracy, and expanding the vote. The Diggers believed regular people should have the right to own and farm their own land. The Friends, or Quakers, were a later movement born in the 1600s but influenced by some of these radical sects, Meyers writes: “The Friend’s beliefs stress the guidance of the Holy Spirit, … and have a long tradition of actively working for peace and opposing war. They have also supported the equal gifts of women to preach and witness for their faith.”

I love to think of those spinners long ago, women who did not have many of the rights we modern women have today -- the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to speak in church, the right to choose whether or not they would have children. How proud I am to know that ordinary women bravely played a role in passing on the ideas that mean so much to us today, ideas about each and every person having worth and dignity, opposing war and valuing peace, anti-authoritarian ideas, a belief that even ordinary people needed a say in their governance, and belief that the land belonged to everyone, and not just the ruling class. These are indeed dangerous ideas that lead to things like democracy, and women’s suffrage, and female preachers, and Universalism. I’m proud that these women, who had most likely been taught that they should not think for themselves, should not have their own ideas, discerned for themselves was true and passed on that wisdom to others..

I think fondly also of the women in our own congregation who knit and crocheted the pocket hugs we shared today, who had quilting bees and made bandages for the war effort, who passed on the teachings of universal love, and a social gospel that respected the most vulnerable, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus and the wisdom traditions of the world.

Rev. Meyer writes: “It goes without saying that complete and accurate records of what were underground religious activities do not exist; heretics needed to be circumspect and not draw attention to themselves. As Christopher Hill says, ‘A successful underground leaves no traces.’ Thus, many important events and trends were doubtless not recorded and remain lost to us.” Just as we have no records of the Cortland Congregation’s role in the underground railroad, but we remember how our congregation bravely lived our values and faith even when it was dangerous to do so. Perhaps it was because they were so quiet and unassuming that their mission was successful.

It’s heartening to consider that the small, quiet things we do have their own power to change the world for the better, to tilt the moral arc of the universe towards love and justice.

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[i] https://herhalfofhistory.com/2025/08/14/15-4-the-spindle-the-spinning-wheel-and-the-spinning-jenny/

[ii] https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/power/WoolTrade.pdf

[iii] such ideas were also spread by traveling pedlers, and the leather trade.

[iv] https://nonagon.org/ExLibris/sites/default/files/pdf/English-Family-of-Love.pdf

The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality

Fox speaks at the Techno Cosimic Mass at UCS 2005

When I went on my very first sabbatical, I commuted from my home in Santa Clara to the University of Creation Spirituality (UCS) in Oakland for a semester-long sabbatical certificate program. The school was founded by Matthew Fox, a priest who had been expelled from the Dominican order for his radical teachings, things that seem pretty normal to a Unitarian Universalist, like calling God Mother, like believing we were born in original blessing rather than original sin, like incorporating earth centered teachings, like inclusion of LGBTQ siblings. I chose UCS for my sabbatical because I was growing in a sense of calling as an environmentalist, and I wanted a spiritual grounding that would help me grown an earth centered theology and practice that would inspire and inform environmental activism.

The first night of the semester, Fox spoke to all the students – we all fit in one room, it couldn’t have been more than a few dozen of us, about the idea of “awe” based education. He quoted Heschel “awe is the beginning of wisdom” and called awe “a passionate encounter with what is.” Awe also stood for “Ancestral Wisdom Education” an education that would include wisdom beyond the human - “Stars are our ancestors too” he said.

When I signed up for my classes, the former nuns who ran the program explained that “art as meditation” was required, and that every weekend intensive had both an academic and an art as meditation component. We began each morning with worship, would have a seminar on the topic, then art as meditation in the afternoon before returning to our academic topic. My first class was about the Universe story, and that is where I first encountered the Cosmic Walk we shared a couple of weeks ago.

From Fox himself I took a class on Meister Eckhart a Dominican priest who lived in the 1200s in Germany who was tried for heresy at the end of his life. It was in the writings of Eckhart that Fox found roots of the 4 paths of Creation Spirituality, an alternative to the traditional 3 fold path of the Christian spiritual journey, Purgation, Illumination, and Union[i].

The first path is the Via Positiva. This is the path of awe, the path where, in Fox’s words “… God is experienced through ecstasy, joy, wonder, and delight”[ii] If you have ever stood by the crashing waves of an ocean, or under the vast sky and been filled with awe and wonder, this is the Via Positiva. We encounter the sacred through being present to the blessing of the world around us.

Fox writes, in a recent Daily Meditation: "Our hearts are rendered large by the Via Positiva, the love of life and existence that we imbibe. ‘Joy expands the heart,’ says Thomas Aquinas.
Suffering also expands the heart. As Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy used to say, “when your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.”[iii]

This is the second path, the Via Negativa. In his Essential Writings, Fox says “The divine is to be met in the depths of darkness as well as in the light. ... “Daring the dark” means entering nothingness and letting it be nothingness while it works its mystery on us. “Daring the dark” also means allowing pain to be pain and learning from it.”[iv] This is, obviously, a challenging path. It contradicts a common notion that if we are on the spiritual path things should feel good, and that if things hurt, if we experience loss or pain we must have done something wrong. But heartbreak is it’s own sacred path “when your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.”

The 3rd path is the via Creativa. In his Essential Writings, Matthew says, “Beauty, and our role in co-creating it, lies at the heart of the spiritual journey.” we are “co-creators and fellow artists with God.” This is why art as meditation was always part of the curriculum at UCS, the Via Creativa is a spiritual practice of bringing something from the depths of our being out into the world.

Fox wrote in one of his daily meditations: “The Via Creativa is so often born of the Via Negativa, suffering precedes birthing just as an emptying precedes a filling. Or as Meister Eckhart put it, ‘I once had a dream, though a man I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness. And out of this Nothingness God was born.’”[v]

My son Nick was 4 years old at the time of this sabbatical. It was one of the reasons I had chosen to stay close to home. That spring I was able to be present as my sister gave birth to her first child. So when Fox spoke in class about this idea, that the via negative leads to the creative like labor leading to birth, I had feelings. Nick’s birth had not gone as planned, and I felt the hospital had treated me as a second-class citizen because I was a home-birth transfer. Being with my sister in the hospital as she bravely labored and delivered her daughter had brought all that material up again, and it was fresh for me in class that day Fox used Birth as a metaphor for this spiritual process. I had to raise my hand and say what was in my heart. Fox said something in reply about “women say it’s all worth it when they hold their child for the first time”, but even today, 24 years later, while I rejoice that my now-grown child made it safely in to the is world, there are aspects of that labor and delivery story that still cause discomfort when they come to mind. It’s not okay how hospitals treat laboring women sometimes. It occurred to me that perhaps I should not look to a celibate man translating the teachings of another celibate man about how meaning happens around labor and birth, but I was hungry to make meaning of that difficult experience.

As I sit with that memory now, and read Fox’s words again “daring the dark … means allowing pain to be pain.” Perhaps you’ve experienced something like this too- a challenging experience, with death, with loss, with betrayal, perhaps you know how it doesn’t satisfy the soul when folks say “it’s all for the best” or “ it will turn out fine in the end.” The Via Negativa allows space to be present with the pain itself, unredeemed by what might come later. Pain is not an absence of God, though it may be an absence of the delights of the via positive, it must be met on its own terms for the soul to be satisfied.

The fourth path, the Via Transformativa is a prayerful way of saying “no” to what we cannot embrace. It is the prophetic path. Fox wrote in a blog post last month: “To protest is to pray; to resist is to pray; to say “No!” in the most creative and effective ways possible is to pray. It is to say “thank you” for the earth and air and soil and sunshine we have by defending it. Our “No!” comes from a very deep place. It calls for courage and bravery and community sharing from which we get ever more strength and courage to take on powers that be, and speak truth to power.” [vi] I consider now, that while I will never feel warm and fuzzy about my time in the hospital, my experience of giving birth to my son did lead me to be a fierce advocate for other women. My experience of trying to raise an infant with my partner Eric made me a fierce advocate for other parents.

Fox writes: “All four paths constitute a radical response to life and, taken together, are the response we give on encountering the “Ground of being”[vii] [Ground of being is theology speak for the aspect of the divine that is the foundation, the ground of all that is]. Consider through the lens of the 4 paths of Creation Spirituality the difficult times we are living through today. Hard things are happening in this country right now to our democracy, to the most vulnerable people. When we humans suffer and struggle, I believe the sacred is there with is in the struggle, in the pain. I believe the divine knows our pain, and in the Christian tradition from which Fox speaks, this is why God came to earth in the form of Jesus, and is some part of the meaning of his suffering on the cross. The betrayal and humiliation of Good Friday.

And amid this destruction and pain, I believe there is truly the potential for something new to be born. Indeed something will have to be created to fill the spaces created by the smash and burn approach of this administration, just as new growth comes in after a wildfire. The outpouring of love and support of neighbor in Minneapolis is inspiring, and uplifting, and a model of how we humans can be together in community, but I would never say it is worth the life and death of Renee Good , of Alex Pretti, of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, of families torn apart. We travel the Via Negativa when we grieve that heartbreak, and perhaps our hearts become larger, more courageous because of it.

Sometimes that suffering leads us to the Via Transformativa, the feeling that we must transform the world, and that the divine is surely there in the process of transforming the world towards justice and compassion.

As Unitarian Universalists, we believe there are many paths one can walk with the Spirit of Life, many paths that bring us closer to the ground of our own being, and closer to that which is larger than ourselves. I offer these 4 paths of Creation Spirituality today to enlarge our sense that whenever and however we respond whole-heartedly to the joys and sorrows of life, there is a prayerful path for us too. Whatever this week may hold for you, the yes of delight and gratitude, the no of emptiness or pain, the yes of creation, the no of resisting injustice, be assured the spirit of life is with you there, in the community of all creation.

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[i] https://fathersofmercy.com/three-ways-of-the-interior-life-three-stages-of-the-spiritual-life/

[ii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2023/07/25/a-journey-through-the-four-paths-of-creation-spirituality/

[iii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/02/13/why-meditate-on-sainthood-in-a-time-of-ice-epstein-files-the-rest/

[iv] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2023/08/06/week-of-7-31-8-5-2023/

[v] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2020/03/19/beyond-kali-via-negativa-yielding-to-the-via-creativa-transformativa/

[vi] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/01/13/resilience-resistance-interfering-practicing-our-no-as-a-prayer/

[vii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/01/13/resilience-resistance-interfering-practicing-our-no-as-a-prayer/