The Importance of Questions

A few months back I was sitting at a picnic table with a couple of friends of the congregation. One friend had been to a training, but she wasn’t sure she was going back- she had asked a question and been told the answer was “too complicated for her to understand” Ugh. Another friend told the story of a time she asked her boss a question about her job, and was called a trouble maker. All of us had been told at one time or another that “we ask too many questions.”

Perhaps this has happened to you? I know some of you have told me it happened to you in Sunday school -- and you told me that in fact you were here in a UU church today because you asked a question that was shut down somewhere along the way.

So I just wanted to say; Unitarian Universalism is a place where your questions are welcome. Where questions are important.

Where do ducks sleep? What makes some clouds look flat on the bottom? Why is it so hard to see the crescent moon where I live? What is gender, really? Every research project, every scientific discovery, starts with a question that someone decided was worth the investment of time, resources and curiosity. 

Questions help us fix things that are broken- Why is my car making that rattly noise? Does trickle-down economics really work? Do the musicians you listen to on Spotify get any money for their work? What can we do about all the plastic in the ocean? How does human activity impact climate change? Where can people who are unhoused go on freezing cold days?

One of our 7 guiding principles is the “free and responsible search for meaning” and this has been part of who we are from the very beginning.

When the printing press was invented, folks who had never read the bible were able to read it themselves for the first time. Servetus, a physician who discovered pulmonary respiration – the way air moves through our lungs -- wanted to understand where the idea of the trinity came from, and found it didn’t come from the bible! He got in big trouble for that question- We UUs have been getting in trouble for our questions for a long time.

Back at the picnic table, we wondered why a presenter might have shut down my friend’s question. Most likely they didn’t know the answer or weren’t sure how to explain it. I shared a story from when I was in high school -- our chemistry teacher was teaching us about fire, and I wanted to understand “what IS fire.” He was very cross with me and I didn’t get the answer I was searching for. I learned much later in life that fire is a PROCESS, and moreover, that there are things we just don’t know.

You can understand why a frazzled high school chemistry teacher in an unruly class might be cross about a question he didn’t have the bandwidth to answer, but my friends and I had all felt the impact of having a question shot down by someone in authority- having our curiosity nipped in the bud. Those memories stay with you.

We talked about how hard it is, especially when you are new in your job -- as a teacher, a presenter, a minister -- to say “I don’t know” when that’s the case. What a relief it is to realize you can simply say “I don’t know” - it opens the door for other folks to figure it out together. This was the guidance when I was parenting a child in the “why” phase of life -- “let’s go look that up together”.

I’m grateful to have been raised UU, where questions were appreciated, and mostly welcomed. I was, of course, the child who asked a million questions, and even my mom, who loves a good question herself, would occasionally have to say “that’s enough questions for today, I’m tired” I asked so many questions in yoga class that the teacher would sometimes have to say, “let’s talk about that after class.” Not that it was wrong to ask the question, just that there were other people in the class who needed the teacher’s attention too.

The friend who asked her boss a question- she noticed that sometimes when we ask questions, it feels like a threat to authority, especially questions like “why do we do it this way?” Those who fear such questions are not wrong; a good question, a really good question, can be destabilizing, it might lead to change.  

When I was about to head off on my sabbatical last year, I wondered what resources the UUA had to help us navigate the time. There wasn’t much on the website, so I emailed the head of the department to ask “Who is working on sabbaticals?” I asked the same question at the minister’s association. Crickets. I asked and asked that question, until one of those people I had asked, heard someone else asking the same question, and set up a meeting with folks from both organizations. We confirmed that there was no one else who was in charge, and we agreed that together we would make a space to resource sabbaticals. A new task force emerged with all kinds of great new questions … what is a sabbatical really? And if sabbaticals are important, what are we going to do about community and interim ministers who don’t get sabbaticals? The Task force is now revising the handbook and has other projects in the works. A simple question leading to real change.

But a question, like any tool, is something we must learn to use with skill.

Unitarians have sometimes used the same wonderful skeptical questioning that helped us figure out that the earth rotates around the sun, and trickle down economics does not work, and applied that same skepticism to the life of the spirit and the heart. Do you love me? Do you really love me? Prove it! Did you really have that life -changing numinous experience, or was it just endorphins at the end of a hike and the thin air at the top of the hill? Sometimes UUs have mis-used their right to ask questions in a way that disrupts community, harms relationships, “just asking questions” when in truth they already believe they know the right answer.

That’s why we say a free and “responsible” search for meaning. Because questions are powerful, we must use that power responsibly. I’m proud that in our congregations we treat each other’s beliefs with great care and respect. When a friend tells us about the visit from a cardinal to her bird feeder, that felt like a visit from her beloved who had died, we just enjoy that good feeling with her, that she had a meaningful experience. In spiritual direction we try to ask questions that help people know their own hearts, know their own spirits “What did you feel? What did you notice? What is your desire?” We’ve noticed that some questions shut people down, or limit their freedom, and other questions help them follow their own inner truth more closely.

Some questions poke us in tender places. I’m sure you’ve experienced a question that was unkind, or at least clumsy. I remember standing in a long line for a potluck many years ago when someone asked “are you going to have any more children?” This was a tender and active question in my own family, ouch. I don’t remember what I answered, but I remember asking “how about you guys, are you going to have children?” “That’s personal!” She returned. Yes. When we ask questions about someone else’s life, their heart, their body, their tender places, our questions can be like a weapon that cuts down, or like an open hand that invites. We can offer our questions with great respect and care, or sometimes just ponder them quietly in our own hearts. It can be good when getting ready to ask a question, to consider “Who or what does this question serve?”

I think, if you ask a question that makes someone mad, or nervous, it might be because you’ve found a really good question. The reason that question felt tender to me, was because that was a powerful, alive question for me and my family at that moment. But that was a question for me to explore with my therapist and my partner, not an acquaintance in a potluck line.

Questions have an important part in my spiritual life. I often bring questions into my spiritual practice. Perhaps I start out with a general feeling of things being unsettled. It might take a while to find the right question, some of the ones I’ve been wrestling with lately are: Who am I now? How can I, an adult who grew up in a humanist home, learn to pray authentically? Do I have something more to contribute in this next chapter of my life? Why would a loving God allow suffering? I know I’ve found the right question because it has a deep, clear resonance. If it doesn’t ring like a bell, if it sounds a bit muffled, I keep refining it, I keep molding it like a piece of clay, until I find a question that gets to the heart of things. I might write it in my journal, and I find that sometimes just getting the right question means I’m in the home stretch for understanding what I most desire to know.

Some questions we ask ourselves can be challenging, destabilizing. In recent years the leaders of our church in Athens were tired after years of faithfully steering us through the challenges of Covid, and we wondered- does what we do here matter? And once you’ve asked a question like that, really wondering, really looking for a true answer, you have to be open to the possibility that it doesn’t, that maybe it would be enough for there to be churches in neighboring towns, and communities of UUs online. Does it matter that we have a space here; do we offer something different than a coffee shop, a library, or one of the many other churches in the Valley? And when we asked that question, people told us how this place mattered. New members told us they couldn’t believe a church would say they were welcome just as they are. It matters that we create a caring community together, when we are lonely, when we are sad, when we are worried. And when we saw the standing room only crowd at Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience that Sunday of 2024 eyes shining with tears, hearts full, people gathered in community for something important, something that mattered, we had our answer.

Our Cortland congregation asked a hard question about their beautiful historic building- it is a lot for a small band of dedicated volunteers to maintain. Was it time to let go of that beloved building and find a new place to meet? You could feel the tender power of that question in the room when it was asked. We sat with that question for over a year, until we were all clear that the old cobblestone church was a unique sacred space, important to the history of Cortland and to each of us, and we were ready to fight to save it. We also asked “does this space have a calling?” And since that time, our building with the hard work of our volunteers, has been a home to all kinds of wonderful gatherings, from farm workers, to coffee houses, to the masked activity collective, to our Community Meals. “Yes”, we learned. The building does matter, and it does have a calling.

Questions have power, so I invite you to nurture those Questions that come out of your own curiosity, your longing to know things more deeply, your desire to discern what is at the heart of things. Questions have power, so I invite you to use them responsibly, with respect and open mindedness, at the service of what is most precious. Questions have power, and your questions are welcome here.

Peace

We talk about peace today, on Mother’s day, because the first Mother’s Day Observance was the brainchild of Unitarian activist Julia Ward Howe.[i] Mother of 5 children, poet, and activist on many topics from safe hygiene for soldiers in the Civil war, to women’s suffrage and the right of women to hold public office, to the abolition of slavery. Howe also longed for peace. In 1872 “after the Franco-Prussian War, Howe began to think of a global appeal to women. “While the war was still in progress,” she wrote, she keenly felt the “cruel and unnecessary character of the contest.” She believed, … that it could have been settled without bloodshed. And, she wondered, “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?”[ii]”

So today, in honor of Mother’s Day, at a time when our own country has entered yet another war, we talk about peace.

In the Buddhist Sutra, the Dhammapada, verse 5, The Buddha says “Hatred never ends with hatred. By love alone does it end. This is an ancient truth”

Buddhist teacher Gil Fronsdal says “the Buddha first spoke this poem to his own quarreling disciples. His monastic community had fractured over a minor rule violation. The sangha, meant to embody peace and harmony, had become a verbal battleground offering his poem of peace”… “Hatred never ends with hatred. By love alone does it end. This is an ancient truth”

This teaching of the Buddha has inspired many brave folks over the years to respond to violence with peace. It inspired the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hatred multiplies hate, violence multiples violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” [iii]

Fronsdal says of King: “This is not naïve optimism, It’s hard-won wisdom. Love, as the Buddha teaches it, is not sentimental or weak. Those who love wisely see clearly by knowing the full humanity of others, including both good and bad. Love heals division by viewing others as kin. any conflicts dissolve in the presence of such love. Those that don’t are transformed from battles to be won into problems to be resolved. Without love, friends, and understanding, divisions persist as seedbeds for future conflict. But with love, not only can hate end – the very ground from which it springs disappears.”

No, King was not naïve. He saw the hatred of those ranged against him, he spent time in the jails. He fought alongside thousands of others for many hard years for the rights that eventually were won (and some overturned last week)

He rigorously lived out this ideal of a non-violent resistance, believing that “"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." He vigorously opposed the war in Vietnam, the cost of human life, the cost of destruction of a country, the material costs that could have been put towards feeding, housing, educating the most vulnerable among us.[iv]

"It is not enough” he said “ to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it."

I’ve spoken before about the Buddhist teacher, monk, activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who saw horrific things in his home country of Vietnam during the war, It was no “naïve optimism” with which he taught peace all the rest of his life. Having seen war, he believed that teaching peace was critically important. He believed that it would take brave people grounded firmly in their dedication to peace, who would practice peace every day. Being peaceful is not always as easy as it seems. I know that though I am committed to peace, I make mistakes, I get angry or impatient, or someone pushes my buttons and I say something I regret. But I do find that with practice, with intention, I can embody peace a bit more each time.

Perhaps the hardest time to practice peace is when someone confronts us with anger, or when someone is hurtful to us. Both Martin Luther king and Thich Nhat Hanh are beautiful examples of people who practiced living peace even when faced with hatred, violence and division. They did this because they wanted to be part of changing the pattern. There is a story about the monk arriving on stage to speak about peace, and being met with angry hurtful remarks. Witnesses say he held his composure, and peaceful presence, though after leaving the stage, faltered with the fatigue of the effort that had cost him.

The monk could have met anger with anger, would certainly have been justified to do so, but who knows how a harsh response might have rippled out into the minds and bodies of those who first spoke harshly to him, and others present in the audience. [Gil Fronsdal writes] “divisions persist as seedbeds for future conflict. But with love, not only can hate end – the very ground from which it springs disappears”

Yesterday at the church spirituality retreat, I found myself standing under a grove of old conifer trees, many stories tall. The rain was falling in big steady drops, but as soon as I entered the grove, the drops were slowed by the canopies of the trees. The giant trees were, with their steady presence, changing and softening the pattern of the rain. There was a sudden quiet there, and on either side of the path by my feet were these stunning patches of glowing green moss that looked soft enough to sleep on. I noticed all the delicate new life emerging, that spring green that is the color of trees just leafing out, of new life and life renewed. Peace. I considered how long such a place would have to be undisturbed for this richness to be possible. How many hundred years had those trees been left to grow in peace? How many years of fallen conifer needles, and leaf litter to accumulate into that springy rich ground cover? how long for the tiny gentle moss to grow to cover it? Peace makes space where beings can grow to old age, and so provide a stable reliable shelter to the little ones who grow at their feet.

One of the basic human archetypes is the gentle, loving caregiver, often called mother. We know that people of every gender can embody that kind of peaceful nurturing presence. I believe this archetype lives within each of us, even if we didn’t experience it in our own upbringing. So I invite us to imagine this morning summoning up that archetype in yourself.

Imagine being present with someone who needs a gentle, caring space- perhaps you have felt this watching a child of any species, a grandchild, a puppy, a nest of chicks by your house, or perhaps sitting by the bed of a friend who is weak with illness. When I call up that inner nurturer, my heart longs to make a peaceful space for them.

Living beings need peaceful spaces: 

Consider the songbird scoping a site for their nest, how they will fly off and abandon the whole enterprise if their peace is disturbed

Think of the toddler first learning to stand, how precarious their wobbling is as they make the developmental journey onto 2 feet.

Consider a child, or one of any age who is shy to speak, taking the risk to express themselves,

Consider a time when you or a loved one were sick, the kind of space that lends itself to healing

Consider after a long journey, or a challenging experience, that sense of finally coming home to a place where you can rest, where you can restore, where you can integrate what you have experienced.

Consider a construction site, how long it takes for the disturbed ground to begin to heal, for plants to return and in their season to grow and bloom

Consider the delicate act of pollination as a buzzy bee finds flower after flower in a dance that allows life to continue.

Living beings need peaceful spaces - they are critical for growing, for rest and renewal, for healing, for integrating our experiences, for blossoming and thriving life.

A peaceful space is not one without conflict. If you have ever spent time with a 2 year old, you know that their growth requires them to say no to everything. Their healthy individuated flourishing that will shape who they are as a grown up depends on some nurturing caregiver receiving that sometimes angry, frustrated NO with compassion and good boundaries.

One of the hardest jobs of parents is to set boundaries in a loving way- for safety and for growth. To set boundaries not with threats of violence, but with clarity and patience. Any parent will tell you that at times this is impossibly hard, but we practice- we try, we miss the mark, we try again.

One of the things I love about my congregations is that sometimes I say the wrong thing, and you are so gentle and considerate when you say “Darcey, I think you forgot the hymn, or the name of a longtime member I’ve worked with for years”

I love that people can say in a congregational meeting “I have a different opinion about that” and we are genuinely ready to hear ideas different from our own with an open mind.

We are not perfect, but I see all of us working hard to make this a beloved community where learning and growing, resting and renewing, healing and caring are possible here.

As Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his book Being Peace

"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."

I think this was the power that brought so many people out to see the monk's walk for peace -- people around the world just wanting to be near ,to witness people living peace in this time of conflict and war. People are hungry for peaceful spaces, and it is a worthy ideal that we could create little pockets of peace for each other, and for our community.

Let us practice peace together, for the benefit of all life.

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[i] https://www.uudb.org/howe-julia-ward/

[ii] https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/commemorations/history-of-mothers-day/

[iii] From King’s 1963 book "Strength to Love,"

[iv] https://web.mit.edu/21h.102/www/Primary%20source%20collections/Vietnam/MLK,%20Beyond%20Vietnam.htm

 

How it Began

The only clue about the beginnings of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland is this one line: “Universalist circuit rider Nathaniel Stacy held regular meetings in the area starting around 1807.” Who was this Nathaniel Stacy?

“He was …of diminutive stature, being five feet and one inch in height, and weighing but ninety-five pounds. ... He was active in movement and rapid and nervous in speech, but at the same time of a very calm and even-tempered disposition. He lived his religion.“[i]

He was born in Gloucester Mass, where his dad was a Fisherman, and where his family heard the famous John Murray preach Universalism. Now at this time Universalism was a pretty controversial idea, and you risked “bitter censures, denunciates and condemnations” as Stacy would later recall. He was the 3rd of 7 children, and he didn’t have much education, because he needed to help his dad on the farm. He tried apprenticing as a blacksmith, he tried being a store clerk. He took a job as apprentice to a clockmaker in part because it was near the church where Hosea Ballou was preaching. One day, says biographer Mark Harris “Ballou came into the shop and asked him, “Brother Stacy, what are you tinkering here for?” He had not been able to settle on a career, Ballou told Stacy, because preaching was his true business. Until he began to serve as a minister he would not be happy. Ballou offered to become his teacher and, in October, 1802, took Stacy into his home and study.”[ii]
In 1803, in his first year of ministry, Stacy made the long journey on horseback to the National Convection of Universalists, and was amazed to be in a room with many of his heroes, and to hear them preach. (Being a Universalist preacher in those days could be a lonely business.)

Now here’s the fun bit -- at this convention Stacy was one of 4 new ministers to receive his fellowship as a minister, (that’s like the official stamp approval from the association) and who received fellowship at the exact same time? Noah Murray! Stacy remembers “Mr. Murray was a convert from the Baptists, with whom he preached a number of years; but, many years before this, he had renounced the doctrine of Partialism, (partialism is what we called people who believed only some people would be saved) and had been proclaiming the doctrine of Impartial Grace; (I love that way of explaining Universalism - God’s grace is impartial)” His residence was in the town of Athens, Tioga Point, Pa.” [iii]

A few years later, in 1807, Stacy traveled all around Sullivan, Madison and Cortland counties, where there were no other Universalist preachers. He writes “Homer was then a newly settled country. There was but one solitary house where the flourishing village of Cortland now stands and that was the residence of a friend of ours by the name of Hubbard, ... On my first visit to Homer, I delivered one discourse at the old village, and another at Port Watson. ... I subsequently visited Homer several times in the course of the summer and fall; and organized a society in the place which in after years I regularly supplied for a considerable space of time. [Memoir p. 190]

His obituary in the Universalist Companion of 1869 says “ Father Stacy was one of the most indefatigable missionaries we ever had; and the history of his labors for forty years is in good part the history of Universalism in New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan. ... How cheerful was his temper, how kind his heart, how tranquil his philosophy and how unfaltering his faith, all know who had the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

Translation- he worked hard to share Universalism, even when times were rough and people were mean to him. He was cheerful and kind and never stopped believing that God loves everyone in the universe.

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[i] https://nyscu.org/Archives/Universalism-Various/Stacy,%20N%20M.%20Rev..pdf

J. S. Schenck, History of Warren Co., Pennsylvania (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., 1887) PP. 491-2

[ii] https://www.uudb.org/stacy-nathaniel/

[iii] http://www.christianuniversalism.net/universalist-history/nathaniel-stacys-recollection-of-the-1803-winchester-convention/index.html

The Mystery of Easter

 

Luke 23:55-56, 24 1-11 [New Jerusalem Bible]
Meanwhile the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus were following behind. They took note of the tomb and how the body had been laid.

Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. And on the Sabbath day they rested, as the law required.

On the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn, they went to the tomb with the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but on entering they could not find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled about this, two men in brilliant clothes suddenly appeared at their side. Terrified, the women bowed their heads to the ground. But the two said to them, ‘why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen. Remember what he told you when he was in Galilee that the son of man was destined to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified, and rise again on the third day. And they remembered his words

And they returned form the tomb and told all this to the Eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. And the other women with them also told the apostles but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them.

Reflection:
This week, Holy week, is the most sacred in the Christian tradition. From Jesus' procession with all his followers into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to the last supper with his disciples, betrayal and arrest on Maundy Thursday, his crucifixion and death on Good Friday, we come to the scripture reading for today. Joseph of Arimathea takes down Jesus’ body from the cross, wraps it in a shroud and puts it in a tomb “hewed in stone.” The women who had traveled all the way from Galilee with Jesus witness.

Then the women prepare the spices and ointments to care for the body of one who is deceased, until, as observant Jews, they rested for the sabbath. Holy Saturday is a day of grieving… all those followers, disciples and friends who had loved Jesus dearly as a man, as a teacher, as a religious leader must have been devastated, each grieving in their own way. The women left to finish their traditional funeral care for the body at the first sign of dawn, but they are met by an empty tomb, confusion. Two angels give them the surprising, mind blowing news, that He was risen.

All these women go to tell the disciples what they have seen, but (and I love this part) “this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them”. It’s neither the first time nor the last that people haven’t believed women.

As we gather this Easter morning, some of us are Christian, others were raised in different traditions or none at all. We come with a diversity of perspectives on this festival day. Historically, while our Universalist congregations tended to be pretty traditional Christians who believe in a loving God, Unitarians have long questioned the divinity of Jesus, and have often sought a religion without miracles. Thomas Jefferson once published a bible where he literally cut out all the miracles with a pair of scissors. Unitarian, transcendentalist Preacher Theodore Parker preached long[i] ago that it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in miracles to be faithful, to lead a good life. Born and raised in that Unitarian tradition, I have long sympathized with Doubting apostle Thomas, we did not believe that Jesus had returned until Thomas put his hands on the wounds Jesus suffered during the crucifixion. But Doubt, my friend Gloria says “is an invitation to look around, to explore.”

I take comfort in the resurrection of the earth in Springtime. This is a resurrection you can feel in the air, hear in the birdsong, and see the grey cold earth matted down under the winter snow and ice show the first signs of color, as spring emerges from “seeming death.” Every year the snow drops, and then the crocuses, and then the green grass, and the buds on the trees, and just yesterday the first daffodils and forsythia blooms. But I, like anyone who has lived in the North East, have learned to be skeptical of that first “fools spring” which, while delightful, is inevitably followed by a snowstorm and bitter cold. Nevertheless, spring does, eventually, come. I have seen it with my own eyes.

But what happened in that Tomb is a mystery. I don’t mean the kind of mystery that some good detective work can solve, I mean the kind of mystery that we will never understand fully. As UUs we don’t always do well with mystery. We love science, and reason, but the life of the spirit brushes up against mystery. There is mystery at the edges of life and death. What happens beyond this life we know. Mystery is sometimes a name for the divine, because how could our human minds comprehend what is beyond us?

As much as we study the world around us, there is so much we don’t know, and I believe there are things we will never know because their very nature is beyond our understanding. If we are going to be present with all of life, especially in the depth of life where our soul is rooted, we are going to come up against mystery.

Those women went to the tomb not seeking a miracle, but to do the hard and sacred work of caring for the body of a loved one who has died. On Easter we sing “alleluia” but I don’t think those women felt “alleluia” when they stood at the tomb, when they saw the body was missing. I imagine that even when the angels spoke to them they felt confused and bewildered. They definitely didn’t feel “alleluia” when they tried to tell the story of this mystery to the apostles and the men didn’t believe their story. On that first Easter Sunday at the empty tomb, those women who cared deeply for Jesus didn’t yet know what we know today, about the thousands of years that Jesus’s teaching and spirit have survived.

When, I wondered, and how did their hearts finally turn to joy? That is a mystery too.

“I have come through too many dark places
To waste any time censoring what is permitted
To bring me joy”

writes the poet Nell Aurelia

We have surely been through some dark places, and we need joy. Joy is part of what we are working for, what we are fighting to protect. Joy is resistance. Not an easy joy, but the joy of birdsong after winter, the joy of resurrection after seeming death. The joy of ordinary people gathering on a Sunday morning, giving and receiving love and care. If joy is available to you today, don’t let cynicism keep it down, The world needs your joy. Not a joy that skips over hard things, but the deep joy of one who has seen the realities of this hard world and, in one mysterious moment, remembers what it is to be full of life.

Today as we sing our alleluias, as we sing the joy of the season, like a bird singing their dawn song in the first rays of sun, I invite you simply to be present to the mystery of life, of death, of resurrection. And today, to open your heart to the joy of this precious life we share.

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[i] https://www.uua.org/lifespan/curricula/river/workshop9/178598.shtml

https://www.sermonindex.net/ebooks/p/parker-theodore-the-transient-and-permanent-in-christianity.pdf

Let My People Go

Passover Plate - image by David Silver 

The first time I was invited to a Passover Seder at my friend’s house, I was surprised to find that it’s not just a meal, it’s a ritual, and a story and a feast that takes the whole evening. The Seder tells the story of the Jewish flight from slavery in Egypt. There are special foods that remind us of the key moments in the Exodus story, (the Charoset which reminds us of the mortar the Hebrew people used while working while enslaved is surprisingly delicious!) The Seder involves 4 glasses of wine, singing and after a lot of waiting, a delicious feast and a scavenger hunt for the kids! As a religious educator, I’ve always been impressed by this traditional ritual that involves the whole family, and storytelling that involves all the senses. I know sometimes in this church we can’t remember what we did last year, so I’m moved by this beautiful practice that has kept the Passover story alive for centuries.

Though there are Jewish Unitarian Universalists, I am not Jewish, but I wanted to take time this morning, as our Jewish neighbors and friends prepare for Passover (which begins at sundown on Wednesday) to remember the story that is important to our UU tradition, and to liberatory theology. For those who are Christian, today is Palm Sunday, and it says in the Christian gospels that the reason that Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was to celebrate Passover. So whatever your beliefs, I hope that by spending some time with this important story, we will find resonances and wisdom that will serve us in our own time.

This is also, I’m sad to say, often a week of anti-Semitic violence and speech[i]. So I invite all of us to be on the lookout for that in the coming days, and bring our UU values of pluralism and love to the conversation, should you hear antisemitism raise its ugly head.

The story of Exodus, found in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred texts, is too long for us to read from the scriptures this morning; it takes 11 weeks to tell, a portion each sabbath, in the Jewish tradition.

But it goes something like this. Centuries ago, the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. Moses was just a baby at the time when Pharoh decreed that all Jewish infants should be killed. His mother placed him in a basket and set him adrift on the Nile River, where he was rescued by the Pharoh’s daughter. Moses grew up in Pharoh’s household, raised and educated as a prince. But the treatment of the enslaved Jewish people made him so angry he killed an overseer who was beating a Jewish person, so he fled to the hills, where he met his wife and began a family.

Scripture says that during this period “The Israelites, groaning in their slavery, cried out for help from the depths of their slavery and their cry came up to God. God heard their groaning” remembered his covenant and took note. [Exodus 2:23-25]

One day, as Moses was tending his family’s flock, Moses saw a burning bush that was not consumed by the mysterious flames, and God spoke to Moses asking him to lead his people to freedom. So Moses and his brother Aaron go to Pharaoh and tell him that God has commanded him to “let my people go.”Pharaoh refuses, and God visits a series of 10 plagues on Egypt, but “Pharaoh became obstinate, and did not let the people go.”

Finally the last and most terrible plague; to kill the firstborn in every Egyptian household. In preparation, God gives a series of very precise commandments about sacrificing a lamb (religious animal sacrifice was traditional at the time) and how each Hebrew family must mark their door with the blood of the lamb dipped on an herb called hyssop. Any house marked with the blood would be passed over. The scripture says that they must observe this as ritual for all time, “and when our children ask you ‘what does this ritual mean’ you will tell them, it is the Passover sacrifice in honor of Yahweh who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt” [exodus 12:27]

This tragedy finally moves the heart of Pharaoh. When his own son dies, and he at last says the Hebrews can go.

Here I want to pause for a bit, and notice that this is not an easy story. I remember hearing this story as a 2nd grader visiting my friend’s Sunday school, and being horrified by the violence. I mean, there’s a LOT to be disturbed by in this story.

But one part never made sense to me - throughout the story, the scripture says after each plague “God hardened Pharoh’s heart”[ii] Which always bothered me. If God had the power to change someone’s heart, why wouldn’t God soften Pharoh’s heart and give him compassion?

In their book You Only Get What You’re Organized To Take, the authors note that:

“people have wrestled with this moment for centuries. Why must a society suffer for the sins of a few, and why must its ruler become crueler as conditions deteriorate? Why would God make things harder for the very people God claims to love and protect?”

Thank you! That was just what I was wondering!

They continue “We have always thought of this moment in Exodus less as an ethical quandary and more as an accurate depiction driven by deep inequality.” Dan Jones, a Jewish organizer writes “what use would we have for this story if Pharaoh let the Israelites go simply because he saw the error of his ways and not because he was forced to do so? Our long experience tells us that only a society in crisis is a society ripe for transformation.” [p. 191]

Certainly, this version, with the hardened heart could have been written in our own times. For centuries this story has been passed from generation to generation because it resonates with something we recognize in our own experience. We recognize that when the people ask for their freedom, the leaders, the oppressive systems don’t just say “no worries, glad you asked.” As the author says rather “the powerful double-down on deceit and violence.” That story we recognize, as our ancestors recognized before us.

This story has been told by oppressed peoples in every age, (Consider the song "Go Down Moses" from the African American Spiritual Tradition - just one example of how the story has inspired the folks impacted by slavery and racial oppression in the United States). It is one of the foundational stories of liberatory theology, at the core of which is the notion that God wants us to be free, especially those folks, like the enslaved people in the Passover story, who are most oppressed. There is a different story we hear in our times, the story that that we can tell who God has chosen because they are wealthy, they are powerful, their lives are going pretty well. But in this story we find in the scriptures, God is clearly and repeatedly siding with folks at the bottom of the power structure. This is a central idea in liberatory theology, that God sides with folks who are poor, folks at the margins, folks who are struggling, folks in pain. In our UU congregation we are theist, atheist and agnostic, so if you are having trouble with this image of God, consider Liberation theology as an ethical standpoint in which we view the ethics of a society through its impact on the most vulnerable. We UUs believe that we have a responsibility to help create a more compassionate, ethical world. And when we are choosing our actions, we are called to let the needs, the pain of our most vulnerable neighbors guide us. And when we are the most vulnerable, to know our voice, our experience is important and will help guide us to a better world.

Well, after that terrible last plague, Pharoh sends the Jewish people away. They leave the only home they have ever known, taking with them their flocks and herds. Scripture tells us “the people carried off their dough still unleavened, their bowls wrapped in their cloaks, on their shoulders 12:34 “and with the dough which they had brought from Egypt they baked unleavened cakes, because the dough had not risen, since they had been driven out of Egypt without time to linger or to prepare food for themselves.” 12:40 This is the story of the Matzoh you see on Passover tables, and enjoy in delicious matzoh ball soup.

But then, as we are learning to expect, God hardens Pharoh’s heart, and Pharoh sends his troops after the refugees. After all, the Egyptian economy is going to suffer without all that unpaid labor.

There are resonances here for the struggle in our own country, in our own time; even battles we have already fought, human rights we thought were settled law can be taken away by hard-hearted leaders. But we persist. We keep going towards liberation for all.

When the Israelites see the troops coming, the people are of course frightened and discouraged. They say: 14:10-14 “Was it for lack of graves in Egypt that you had to lead us out to die in the desert? What was the point of bringing us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you as much in Egypt? Leave us alone we said, we would rather work for the Egyptians! We prefer to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

That’s so human, isn’t it? We yearn to leave behind a hard reality, but the process of liberation is scary. It is so hard for us to let go of then known, even if it oppresses us. We get discouraged; we lose faith. Liberation is not a sprint; it is a journey.

It is then God parts the red sea for the freed people to cross in safety.

Where do you see yourself in the Exodus story this year at Passover? 
I feel like maybe one of the Hebrew people in the middle of the plagues; the waves of bad things keep happening, but the hearts of our decision makers seem hardened against the cries of the oppressed in our own time. Yet I am still eating leavened bread, waiting for something to shift, for a movement, a moment, when a way opens for us to be free.

So often religion is used to uphold the status quo, but this Exodus story takes the perspective of enslaved people, who then become refugees as they flee oppression.

The book of Deuteronomy, where many of the religious laws are found, points to this story as a reminder of why we must be ethical and compassionate in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable. The book of Deuteronomy repeats “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt” as it instructs us that we “must not infringe the rights of the foreigner or the orphan” and that we always leave for hungry people.[iii] Even when we are comfortable, and our plates are full, this story serves as a reminder that it has been otherwise, and it may be again.

I invite you to carry this Passover story with you in the coming days, to notice where it resonates for you this year in our own time as peoples longing to be free encounter oppression. I invite you to remember that, as it says in the scriptures, God sees those who suffer, God hears our cries, and God will be with us on the road to freedom. And for the Humanists among us, we see one another’s cry, we see one another when suffer, and together we make the journey to freedom .

End Notes
[i] https://religionnews.com/2020/04/03/palm-sunday-the-most-anti-semitic-time-of-the-christian-calendar/

[ii] Exodus 7:13 ("...heart was hardened, and he would not listen..."), Exodus 9:12 ("But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart..."), and Exodus 8:32 ("Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also...").

[iii] Exodus 24:18 and 24:22, 15:15, and 16:12 

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