Where Do We Go From Here?

This service was part of a weekend long celebration of the 70th anniversar

of Dr. King's visit to our Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland, NY. 

 

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the invitation of the New York Sate Convention of Universalists (NYSCU) to be the keynote speaker at their annual convention in 1956, he was fresh out of school- having had just received his doctorate the year before. He was also the proud father of a baby girl born the same year Rosa Parks made the strategic and courageous action of refusing to give her seat to a white man, and the great bus boycotts in Montgomery began[i]. The bus boycotts were still going when King came to Cortland to speak to NYSCU, and no one knew whether all their work and sacrifice would result in any lasting change. But Dr. King had faith.

We live now with tensions similar to those felt in MLK’s time. We have seen many come to power who believe America is a country for white people, and who are breaking down the hard-won victories of MLK’s time: repealing voting rights, punishing and repealing DEI programs, Prioritizing the white race for government resources and jobs.

We also live at a time when political violence is at the highest I remember in my lifetime.[ii] Violence against political figures, and violence and force used against peaceful protestors. Violence and imprisonment used against ordinary people swept up in ICE raids. People are full of anger on all the right and the left. I was at a rally the other day, and some of those gathered had signs and shouted slogans calling for violence against the Cornell 7. And though I understand how one might feel a murderous rage when we think about the oppression and harm done to our sisters, our brothers, our siblings, MLK in his speech to the Universalists 70 years ago called us to a different path – the path of non-violent resistance.

Though King was a young man not long out of school, he was not naive. From the beginning of his public life, he received threats to himself and his family. He spoke of one of those threats in an interview, talking about a night in January of 1956, not long after Rosa Parks appealed her $14 fine, and about 10 months before he came to speak here in Cortland. He said in an interview:

“It was around midnight. You can have some strange experiences at midnight,” He had received a phone call saying “ . . . [We] are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”

“I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born... . She was the darling of my life. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. . . . And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee, I never will forget it . . . I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night.

“I said, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m awake now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like this, because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.’ Then it happened: And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’ . . . I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone...”[iii]

… just 3 days later, was his home was indeed bombed as the caller had threatened. Folks who saw him right after that attack said they were amazed at his calm which he attributed it to that experience at the kitchen table with the God he knew and loved. King fought on, always committed to the principles of non-violence.

When Dr. King came to speak to the Universalists in Cortland, all of that was in his heart. When he called for nonviolence, it came out of a deep faith-filled conviction that this was the way God was calling him, was calling the movement. Calling us to see beyond the hate-filled moment, to the future we want to build for ourselves and our children. In his keynote that day, King said that the end goal of non-violence is:

“redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

King us calling us to want that beloved community more than we want to see the destruction of those who oppose us. Right now, all around us we see examples of what happens when the main goal of people in power is to “own” and to punish their opposition for who they are and what they believe. I challenge us not to be tempted into following that destructive path. King continued:

“To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.”

When I hear that, I think of the new Unitarian Univeralist statement of values, that asks us to keep love at the center. And I think of our long Universalist history born out of a deep belief that God was eternally and unimaginably loving.

King clarifies what he means by love saying:

“it would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense... When we speak of loving those who oppose us ... We speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. When we rise to love on the agape level we love men not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but because God loves them. Here we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does.”

This is so similar to our historic UU beliefs about evil, about injustice. Now, we UUs don’t believe just one thing, we don’t all believe in God, our plurality is one of our core values, but I think we do all believe in love. The hard part is living that love in the world. Of carrying that love not only into our daily life of family and friends, but out into protests and rallies, onto social media, into the halls of government, into our schools and businesses.

This is the core of our Universalist message, and why we continue, year after year, because there must be communities who keep love at the center, and radiate that love out into the world. The very reason we strive to stand up for our siblings who are oppressed, remembering that God loves the most vulnerable among us, is the same reason that as we rise up on behalf of justice, we strive to embody God’s love even when facing those who are hateful toward us and those we care about.

As we honor the anniversary of Dr King’s visit to this very place, we not only renew our commitment to stand against racism, to protecting those voting rights and all human rights for people of every race, we also renew our commitment to love others as God loves us, and to hear anew King’s call to the path of nonviolent resistance. 

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[i][i] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/montgomery-story-address-delivered-forty-seventh-annual-naacp-convention

[ii] https://spia.princeton.edu/news/2026/04/02/new-data-princeton-spia-initiative-shows-political-violence-us-rise

[iii] https://www.ldsliving.com/never-alone-the-unforgettable-lesson-of-faith-i-learned-in-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-s-home/s/92243

 

A Voice and a Vote

"Women are Persons!" monument in Ottawa, Canada 

Reading: from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton 
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Translation: Americans need to decide- do we want to have a voice and a vote, or shall we leave things to accident and might makes right?

If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind…

Translation: How we vote (or don’t vote) now might make things crappy for everyone- because other countries are watching what we do.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will … hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country...

Translation: some people don’t want to give up their power and are in it only for themselves. They hope to confuse us into voting their way

A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Translation: Some people with dangerous ambitions speak passionately for the rights of people, fewer people speak passionately for an effective government

History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

Translation: Be careful who you listen to, history teaches us that sometimes people who say with great passion that they stand for the rights of people end up acting like kings.


Reflection:

When Alexander Hamilton wrote those stirring words urging the adoption of the US constitution, At the time of the founding of this country, the ideals of democracy and the ideals of Unitarianism were surprisingly intertwined. Unitarians were swept up with zeal of having a radical new way of governing with equality for… more. A surprising number of Unitarians and Universalists were involved in the drafting of the Declaration if Independence and the constitution of this country.[i] It should not be surprising then that the 5th of our 7 UU principles is "The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large" or sometimes we say “all persons should have a vote about the things that concern them”

But in recent years, our UU movement has wanted to be honest about who got left out of our founding documents. Even at the time of our founding, the constitution denied the right to vote to women, people of color, and anyone who didn’t own property. Some estimate that only %20 of adult citizens could vote in those early elections![ii]

I was raised to have great faith in our democratic ideals, watching the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice. By the time I was in school we had secured the vote for women, and the voting rights acts of the 1960s had greatly expanded voting access for people of color. But in recent years I began to wake up to the ways that our system still makes voting easier for some people than for others, and to realize that democracy always fell short of that idealistic dream for many of our American siblings. Our new UU values statement was developed in conversation among UUs for several years beginning in 2020, and we put our principles into action by including many voices in the process. In an early version of our new UU values, the word Democracy had disappeared, no doubt because for some that word was a symbol of how the system had failed. And it seems that folks who have very different political beliefs than me have also lost confidence in democracy, wondering if maybe fascism wouldn’t be better- they are wondering if it wouldn’t be better to let the powerful be powerful and fix this mess.

I spoke up at one of those UU Values discussions, saying “this is not the time for us to give up on the word democracy. I understand there is a lot that needs fixing in the way our republic works (or doesn’t work) but this moment of rising fascism, is not the time to give up on democracy, even as we acknowledge that our democracy is at times aspirational. It is ours not only to defend but to transform until truly every “person has a vote in things that concern them." Other folks must have felt the same way because the final form of our UU values statement now says :

Justice: We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all feel welcome and can thrive.
We work to dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression. We support the use of inclusive democratic processes to make decisions within our congregations, our Association, and society at large.”

Our fore parents fought for this democracy because they knew the downside of living under a monarchy, yet this is where some seem bound. It seems that here in America the moral arc of the universe is bending away from justice, or certainly away form democracy. In recent years money has become political speech (with the Supreme court’s Citizen’s united decision) The gains we had achieved in voting rights are being chipped away at, taking us back to a more unjust time. Recently our courts affirmed that even the most egregious gerrymandering is legal. We are teetering on an edge, as we find out (in Hamilton’s words):

“whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

When we go to vote this year, we vote not only for the people and polices we think can make a difference in our country, but we are also voting for Democracy itself. No matter what happens in this election, the act of voting is one of the most important ways we can co-create a government that gives everyone a voice and a vote.

Between voter suppression and gerrymandering, those who want to preserve democracy must vote in greater numbers than that necessary to achieve a simple majority. We know that in close races with hanging chads, we can’t count on today’s courts to keep their fingers off the scales of justice. So we must vote in great waves of voter participation. Consider the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary- Orban was a difficult person to defeat, but this April after 16 years of increasingly authoritarian rule, the people of Hungary showed up in droves and voted to defeat Orban 57% to 37%[iii] - a decisive victory where Orban could not “find a few more votes” to put himself over the top.

This will not be the only election to preserve democracy, the fabric that has been torn and frayed will take many years to mend, and to re-weave into a fully inclusive government. But I’m very passionate about voting this year because I’m concerned that the gerrymandering and voter suppression will only spread if we don’t push back. I feel I must take a stand now in any way I can so that leaders won’t be able to set aside election results they don’t like. I’ve decided to vote early on Thursday, when Eric and Nick and I are all off work; we’ve made a plan to go together, and hug our local poll info on the refrigerator. We’ve decided to go out for mocktails afterwards to celebrate the act of voting. I hope that you too will make a plan to vote, will maybe invite a friend, or give a neighbor a ride to the polling place.

As you prepare to vote, if you get to feeling cynical, like your vote won’t matter, I encourage you to think of all those activists who were part of the civil rights movement who were beaten or jailed for trying to vote, who fought tirelessly to remove barriers to voting. It was during the fight for voting rights after that historic 5 day voting march from Selma that Dr. King stood on a truck bed in front of the Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama, and spoke those iconic words "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." And in 1965 after the 57 days of protest as the senate filibustered the voter rights act, the bill became law, and 250,000 new black voters were registered to vote in the American south[iv]. This year, when you cast your ballot, think of those 250,000 brand new voters casting their first ballot – do it for them.

When you prepare to vote this year, if you get to feeling cynical, I encourage you to remember Esther Morris, how hard she worked to get the right for women to vote in her community. How proud I felt when I read her story this morning, imagining what it was like for her to cast her first ballot.

As you prepare to vote this year, consider all those whose right to vote has been denied. I encourage you to hold in your heart the image of who you are doing it for- perhaps Esther Morris, perhaps those who marched from Selma to Montgomery, perhaps a new American citizen voting for the first time. And let the act of voting be a prayer, for them, for our country, and for our deep belief that everyone deserves a voice and a vote in things that concern them.

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[i] https://www.uua.org/pressroom/ingoodfaith/uu-250-american-independence

[ii] https://politifact.com/factchecks/2015/apr/16/mark-pocan/mark-pocan-says-less-25-percent-population-could-v/

[iii] https://apnews.com/article/hungary-election-orban-magyar-trump-1a4eb0ba6b94e0c80c3cd18bd36254ab

[iv] https://www.crmvet.org/info/votehis4.htm#pgfId-1010859

What Grounds Us?

Each fall, as the leaves begin to swirl on the wind, I inevitably notice how my own life feels like that swirl of leaves- whether it’s helping kids on their back to school journey, getting the church ready for our year together, or the seasonal chores of preparing for winter, I feel like I’m trying to catch and organize the endless leaves falling from the trees. (in my neighborhood right now it’s just the honey locust letting down its tiny yellow leaves, but we know what’s coming). Sometimes the events of the world have me feeling like a leaf fallen in a raging river after a storm. 

Any spiritual tradition worth its salt will have ways to help us deal with us. In the Pagan and wiccan traditions, this is called grounding. Grounding helps us feel less like a leaf on the wind, and more like a strong tree with our roots deep in the ground. If you’ve been coming to this church for a while, you will remember times when you’ve been encouraged to imagine yourself like a tree, feeling the ground beneath your feet, imagining growing roots deep into the ground. Most earth centered rituals will include a time of imagining and feeling our deep connection to the earth. 

There are lots of good reasons to do this, but one is to help us keep our connection to the material world when starting a ritual or spiritual practice. It’s easy when feeling energy move, feeling spirit move, extending ourselves into imagination and vision to lose track of what is real. UUs have historically grounded our faith in the practice of science, our relationships to one another and the earth, our work for justice, and service to those most at risk. 

Grounding has practical applications in other parts of life as well. Have you ever had a great idea, and then when you went to try to make it happen, it just didn’t work? I know I have. For example, I had this romantic idea that on my last sabbatical I was going to walk the Camino Real – like our member Aurelio Catano and some of my clergy friends have done. Then I started walking, getting in shape for it, and quickly realized that I was nowhere close to the mileage the other pilgrims would be walking. Turns out my body had changed while I wasn’t paying attention. That’s a plan that was not grounded in the reality of what my body was capable of. 

In the past year or so, when so much is in flux, when so many people and pillars of our society are at risk, we have talked frequently about grounding our actions in our values and principles. There are lots of forces in the world “moving quickly and breaking things” energies organized around pursuing profit or power, or just the confusing currents of a society that is ungrounded in compassion and ethics. Sometimes I notice myself carried along by the flow as the swirl of our fast-moving times like that little leaf, caught up in the current of modern life. As I go through my daily life, I see the increased single use plastic wrapped around the things I need, I hear the struggles of people trying to navigate our broken health care system. I see the impacts our global climate change is already having in fires and floods and storms. I can’t hear a story about ICE on the news without tearing up and feeling helpless. I feel how small my power to impact such strong currents. It would be easy to just let the current carry me where it will. But when I ground myself in my values, I see choices every day I can make that grow out of those values. I still compost my food scraps, feed people in the community, give to organizations who have more power to manifest those values. I can stand by family and friends when they need me. I’m sure each of us has different ways we live our values every day, and it’s okay that those are different- we can’t all do it all, and “plurality” is one of our values. (although I hope we are all going to get out and vote in November!) 

Not only do those things make a difference in the world, even if it’s only to a few folks nearby, but they make a difference in me. Every time I do something to live out one of my values, it strengthens that capacity in me, it strengthens my sense that I know who I am. Though I can’t always be the person I want to be, I can always try, I can always return when I stray. I imagine that through those actions, I build up a sense of personal integrity in myself like a solid core, that helps me feel like one cohesive Self, rather than a thousand drifting leaves. 

This summer I was privileged to attend a concert by Rhiannan Giddens, Grammy and Pulitzer prize willing singer, songwriter, musician, who started her career recording and performing the old songs of the African diaspora. I saw her on the Grandstand at the Grassroots festival, and I’ll tell you The crowd was a little unsettled at the start, like maybe a lot of folks hadn’t heard her before and didn’t know what to expect. Maybe they weren’t expecting the songs of enslaved people, as she offered music that black Americans would have been singing 250 years ago. Maybe they weren’t expecting her to mention race and hard things like that. But she is a skillful performer and storyteller, and she and the other musicians in the band were so gifted, that no one could resist the rhythm and soon everyone was dancing. At the very end of the show, she said we were going to do a sing along song, and was worried- would people join in? but she explained that this was a song that had been sung in the civil rights movement, but had a long history in the union movement, was sung in Spanish by independence movements in Chile and Spain and had been a spiritual before that. As she began to sing “We Shall Not Be Moved” 

I had the strong sensation of all these hundreds of people connected through the music, like literal grass roots, the strength of that connection, to neighbors, to place. It felt like we were all part of a giant tree -- that trunk being integrity, a core strength like a tall strong Maple. I could feel the strength of our unity in song, could imagine -- this is how, together, we would resist fascism, would resist forces of oppression. Like the wide complex roots of a giant old tree, connecting to earth, to other living beings --like mycelium, like other trees -- supporting and nourishing that strong core that resists all the storms and the seasons. This is grounding indeed- the feeling that we know who we are and where we are, and though the winds blow, we will not be moved.

These lyrics reference the scriptures, as so many spirituals do:

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, for he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. — Jeremiah 17:8

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. — Psalm 1:3

It’s important that this tree is planted by the waters- to me this reminds us that we are grounded in something larger than ourselves- grounded in our connection to the spirit of life, connected to the living waters. It is not through our own will that we stand, but through our connection to that which is larger than ourselves. We Unitarian Universalists are a diverse group in terms of what we believe, some of us believe in a higher power, some do not, and others aren’t sure. But none of us can be like that strong tree alone, we connect to the source, we connect to the web of life, we connect to one another, to the ancestors who came before us, we strengthen how we live out our values, which strengthens our integrity, our strong trunk. This is how we weather the storms, this is how we become the people we most want to be, this is how flourish together. 

Pride: Joy as an Act of Resistance

This has been an especially tough couple of years for those of us who are LGBTQ+, I don’t need to tell you that. OR maybe we should- because my friends who are trans and nonbinary keep telling me they are not sure their cis friends and family and colleagues really get how hard it is right now, they worry that we don’t see the news reports about, for example, what happened to trans service members and their families. Or, that we seemed to have missed new directive[i][ii] on Counter-terrorism from the white house released last month directing federal officials to target pro-trans rights organizations.

The targeting of our queer beloveds continues to rise.
These are hard things, scary things, and we must not look away from them.

I think it’s no accident that since 2020, 5 brand new pride festivals have popped up around us- Endless mountains pride, Elmira pride, Valley pride, Cortland pride, Ithaca pride. because we need one another. Because we know the way we are going to get through this is the way our queer elders got through tough times in the past- we stick together, and we show up for one another, and we demand our human rights. We insist not only on our right to exist, but our right to thrive, to be creative, to be heard, to be joyful. 

The very first pride march, was on the anniversary of the stonewall uprising - Christopher Street Liberation Day March on June 28, 1970. Thousands marched from Greenwich Village to Central Park in New York City. I remember hearing some of the original organizers in a documentary talking about the intentional choice to bring the vibrancy and color of the LGBTQ community out into the streets, “It was raw, bold, and brave—a visible, public declaration: We will no longer live in shame.”[iii]

When Gilbert Baker made those first rainbow pride flags back in 1978, he succeeded in creating a beautiful new symbol for the movement, and that colorful rainbow, has changed over the years to become more and more inclusive, today inspires straight allies as well. I know one member of the Cortland church, a straight cis woman, said she chose Cortland UU because they had that flag on their sign, that told her something about who we were as a church. It’s a symbol of inclusivity, and a community where we strive to be our authentic selves together.

At its root, pride is about claiming that right to live who we are. But there is a beauty, a color, a joy that is unique to pride celebrations. The organizers made a decision, back in the first planning meetings, and embraced by all who celebrate pride, that pride could be creative, it could be beautiful, it could be joyful.

“Joy is an act of resistance” wrote Black poet Toi Derricote[iv],[v] which at first seems like an odd thing to say. Isn’t joy just a spontaneous response to something good in our life? But there are so many ways our society can diminish our opportunities for joy, as we try to be the person others want us to be, as we try to fit into cultural norms. As we try to live in a system that seems increasingly willing to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of ordinary people to increase the wealth of billionaires. And so when we are joyful despite all of that, when we create sheltering spaces that feel safe and worthy to share joy together, we are resisting all those cultural forces that don’t care about our joy, that don’t make space for our joy.

When I hear that phrase “joy is an act of resistance” I feel the truth of it.

In a minute we are going to sing a wonderful song written by Gospel singer Shirley Caesar which has also been adopted by the resistance singers.  

This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me (oh, oh, oh)
This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me (don't you know that)
This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me
The world didn't give it, the world can't take it away!

That’s so powerful- the idea that there is joy that the world doesn’t give us… so where does it come from? If you are a theist, perhaps it comes from the divine, or from some inner love of life. When I sit on my porch on one of those rare beautiful days, the plants seem joyful, the birds sing joyfully, the squirrels chasing from branch to branch as joyful as toddlers at the playground.

When that joy rises up from deep inside, perhaps it comes from our connection with the divine, with one another, with the interconnected web of life.

When I looked out over the Endless Mountains Pride festival last week, that special kind of joy came over me when I saw the incredible hard work and thoughtfulness the planners had put into that event. When I saw the little kids running towards the bubbles, with their parents trying to keep up behind. When I saw a group of young adults trying to figure out what the labyrinth was, when I saw the care the team put into making it a beautiful safe space for us and the community, the kind of joy that is deeper because we know what is underneath it, the hard work, the thoughtfulness, the defiance that in a time when LGBTQ folks are not feeling so safe, we come together anyway -- loud and proud, ringed by the endless mountains themselves like a big mother earth hug. Even as I walked by the security guards, and the EMT I thought “we keep each other safe”. Grounded in the truth of our world today, balloons and bubbles floating above, rainbow bunting decorating the rafters I felt joy well up from deep inside. Not just because those things are beautiful and festive, but because they shimmer with the love, the blood sweat and tears that built a moment like that. Do you know the kind of joy I’m talking about?  

That kind of joy, the world can’t take it away. That’s the kind of joy that brings tears to my eyes sometimes, because it’s not just a superficial happiness, it’s a deep soulful joy that says yes to life.

The world can do scary things, the government can take away our rights, but we, in these beautiful pride celebrations, or when we gather in community on a Sunday morning, we claim a space where we remember that there is a joy the world didn’t give us, and we claim the space to hold that joy for ourselves and for one another. And we are surely not going to let the world take our joy away.

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 [ii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-USCT-Strategy-1.pdf

[iii] https://northlakebh.org/why-we-celebrate-the-story-and-significance-of-lgbtq-pride -month/ 

[iv] at the beginning of her “Telly Cycle” written 2008, https://rattle.com/from-the-telly-cycle-by-toi-derricotte/

[v] https://tessabielecki.com/reflect/joy-as-resistance/

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