Rethinking Privacy (August 30, 3015)

For the third annual summer read I offered you 4 very different stories about privacy. The reading Nick just did is from a book called Little Brother --a book set in the very near future, where technology that you and I would recognize from our everyday lives is suddenly co-opted by the department of Homeland Security in response to a terrorist attack. The same week I got to that part in the book, I also heard the report Karen read on NPR. Having the two juxtaposed like that was wakeup call to the fact that while the story in “little Brother” is science fiction, the use of common everyday technology by to track our movements and communication is very real. 

 

When I first read 1984 in 1984 (it was very popular that year) I thought the idea of a Video Screen that could see and hear our every action was a bit far-fetched. Then a couple of years ago I heard on the news that hackers were taking over people’s webcams[i], watching them in their private moments, even sharing some of these videos on YouTube without the knowledge or consent of the person in the video[ii]. Shortly thereafter, a friend of mine works for a global high tech company, told me they were all issued a little black sticker to put over their webcam while they worked as part of the company security program. Suddenly our ordinary lives seemed like Hard Science Fiction.

 

As I walked into the Grass Roots Festival this year I noticed a sign posted to the gate. It said that such and such a company was creating documentary images of the event, and both video and photos would be taken. By crossing the gate you were giving up the right to your image irrevocably and in perpetuity. And if you did not want your image used? Just move out of the area where photos were being taken. As I gazed around the festival I noticed any direction I looked there was someone with a camera, or taking photos on their phone. By just showing up, we had given away our privacy. 

 

“Privacy is Dead. Get over it.” It turns out this quote is not from Mark Zuckerberg, president and founder of Facebook, but a paraphrase of his remarks in 2010, that the social norms around privacy have changed radically in the past decade. He said this at a time when he was defending the chances to the Facebook Privacy Policy many of us didn’t even realize was happening back in 2010.[iii] That’s the understatement of the decade. It was really exciting to find old School friends on Facebook when I first signed up. The first time the Google search engine wished me a happy birthday, the first time a lawnmower I had been shopping for online started appearing in pop up adds in my webmail, I was surprised, and a little disturbed, but now it seems totally natural that Earthlink knows what I bought on Amazon, and Google knows my birthday, and Facebook knows that I support marriage Equality and videos of Baby Goats. 

 

That all seems pretty innocent when you look at it from one angle- websites, apps, social media can use what they know about you to tailor their advertising to your interests and habits. I’m sure it costs a lot of money to run a company like Facebook, and they’ve got to make it somewhere. But once that information is out there, it’s out there. You can’t shred it like a paper document; trying to find and delete your date once you’ve pushed “enter” is like trying to catch all the germs after a sneeze. Just ask the stars whose private photos were hacked and spread worldwide like a virus without their permission. Information that we may share for the most practical reason makes it available to folks who may not have our best interests at heart.

 

For example, Americans are divided about how much information we want the government to have about each of us. Some feel that data they are collecting is a violation of the 4th amendment of the US constitution which guarantees the right to privacy:

 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[2]

 

It has come out that the NSA is keeping data on every call we make- what numbers we call, when we call, and the duration of the call. Supporters feel that it’s fine to give up some of our rights for potential increased safety. they usually support it with a sentiment like “Innocent people have nothing to hide.” 

 

Which brings us to this morning’s question. What does privacy mean in this age of sharing, in this age of information? Is there anything about privacy that is more valuable than the ease of storing our photos and documents in the cloud? More valuable than finding the nearest restaurant on your smart phone? More important than making sure the government has in its storage banks every bit of information that could help them prosecute wrongdoing? What is privacy for anyway?

 

Think about artistic or creative expressions. For every song you hear on the radio or painting hung on the gallery wall, an artist put in hour after hour focused on the tedious work of creation. Often, when I practice a song I’m going to sing here at the Open Mic, I make some horrible sounds. Not just because I am out of practice and not yet ready to perform, but also because some of those horrible sounds are really helpful in warming up the muscles used for singing. I usually close the door to my study when I make those sounds, and I know for a fact my family appreciates that.

 

As a culture, we believe that privacy is important in certain supportive relationships as well. Our courts honor the privacy between doctor and patient- because there needs to be some place where you ask that really embarrassing question. We honor the privacy between therapist and client, between minister and parishioner, because we know everyone needs a place where you can speak the scariest truths about yourself, about your life so that you can get the help you need, or just hear a trained professional can say “that’s pretty normal.” Many times when we face grief, or despair, or a crisis of meaning, we need a little space from the noise of community to heal. 

 

And though we worship together as a beloved community, there is something deeply private about our spiritual lives. Consider the Buddha who finally found enlightenment sitting alone in meditation under the Bodhi tree. Consider Mary who, after the birth of her Son Jesus, and the arrival of the shepherds freshly visited by angels and when they all depart “Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.”[iv] Consider the great American Poet Wendell Berry, who has for several decades gone out walking each Sunday, alone in the farmed and wild places near his home, writing some of his greatest poems on these walks. Who wrote on one such Sunday in 1995:

 

“The best reward in going to the woods

Is being lost to other people, and

Lost sometimes to myself. I’m at the end 

Of no bespeaking wire to spoil my goods;

It probably bears explain that by “bespeaking wire” he means the cord of his landline. For Berry there is something precious about those private moments in the woods where one can be wild – in the way a great Oak is wild, it answers to no one and is truly itself. Privacy is necessary sometimes to allow us to remember who we really are and what is important to us. Sometimes privacy is necessary to lose oneself, to lose the rigid persona we present to the world in our roles as minister, dad, neighbor, nurse, teacher. That is why I tend to be of the opinion that we avoid taking photos during worship. Because when worship really does its job, we might have an unguarded moment. We might shed a tear, or try something new, or entertain controversial ideas. I want worship to be a time in our week when we don’t worry about how our face is composed, or that the words we speak from our heart will be taken out of context later. 

 

But maybe we would give all that up for national security. Maybe, but I would argue that our freedom to dissent is part of what makes this country secure, is at the core of who we are as a country. Without our freedom to dissent, we quickly become that which we most fear- a totalitarian regime, a dystopian world like that in the classic and deeply disturbing novel 1984. Few of us still remember a time in this country where receiving the Socialist Party newsletter or consorting with a known communist meant you could be blacklisted, could lose your livelihood, your friends, your home. Which is why I think this is a great time to build in some privacy protections, to avoid a second McCarthy style witch-hunt in the future. We already know that if we do a google search on a question like “What is Socialism” or “what is Isis” that that data is carefully stored. That doesn’t bother us too much because no one has yet abused that data. But how easily could such data be abused, sweeping up people who just want to learn more about the world, to have good facts about socialism, about Islam (In this increasingly islamophobic time). These tools for data collection create brand new ethical considerations for us, and we as Unitarian Universalists, the people who published the Pentagon Papers, the tradition where many of our congregations gave up their tax-free status so as not to have to give names to the House Committee on Un-American activities, I believe there is a role for us here in this as well.

 

 

This is all so new, that we UUs have not yet come up with a cohesive ethical platform to guide us here, so each one of us must be part of creating those ethics together. The most important thing I hope you will bring back with you out into your week is simply an awareness of all the times each day we give away our privacy.

 

But if you do feel called to action, I suggest you let your elected representatives know that privacy is important to you. The outrage of many Americans (and foreign leaders) when we realized the extent of the information the NSA was collecting and storing drove the outrage of our public officials who took those concerns seriously when the Patriot act was re- authorized this past year.

 

 

If you want to learn more about all kinds of electronic privacy concerns, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, (which was mentioned in that NPR interview  Karen read). EFF is a non-profit that carefully tracks issues that affect our civil rights in the digital world in a way most of us just don’t have the time or technical expertise to do on our own. . In fact, EFF is working on a case called “First Unitarian Church of LA v. NSA” which is currently in the California Federal Court. The case involves an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in June of 2013 which demands “whole sale collection of every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration fo the call, and other identifying information for every phone and call for all customers of Verizon for a period of three months.” such diverse groups as 3 guns rights advocate organizations, the Council on American –Islamic Relations, and Patient Privacy Rights--A total of 22 organizations signed on to the case to protect the freedom of association, against “government access to the records of who they associate with , when, for how long and at what frequency.” [v]

 

I also invite you to consider learning which options you have to protect your personal privacy in everyday life, and we do have a few. 

• Consider using a search engine like “Duck Duck Go” which does not track your searches
• Go into your phone and look at your privacy settings, and make sure they are set in a way that makes you comfortable.
• Same with your Facebook account- any time you see the word “public” that means anyone in the world can see information about you. Consider a setting like “friends only” when privacy is important to you
• Remember what Lindsey Lohan learned the hard way, and consider how you would feel if the cloud storage you use was hacked- is there anything you wouldn’t want shared by a malicious hacker?
• For those of us who use an EZ pass to speed up getting through tolls, remember that the device transmits information about your location[vi] Remember that gray sleeve it came with? Consider storing your EZ pass in its sleeve when not in use.

Finally, let’s begin to create together some agreements about what we share. I once had a co-worker who had fled an abusive relationship, and it was very important for her personal safety that her photo not appear on that businesses’ website or social media. In today’s culture we photograph and share everything we experience as matter of course. What if we went back to the etiquette of the old photographers who asked “may I take your photo” and then the 21st century follow up “may I post that photo online?” Just a reminder- once something is posted on Facebook, legally it belongs to Facebook. Once something has gone viral, it, like virus, cannot easily be contained.

 

Although Orwell painted a pretty grim picture in his book 1984, I actually felt better when I finished it, because we do still live in a society where dissent is protected by law, where you can still put some tape over your webcam if you don’t want your every moment to appear on YouTube. We are right now in an evolving ethical landscape of what privacy means in the age of information. I suggested these books of speculative fiction as summer reading to kindle our collective imaginations. We still have the freedom to shape our world- to protect whatever privacy is important to each of us. Whether that’s the freedom to dissent, the privacy that is needed at times for spiritual and emotional growth, the freedom to dance really badly and without caring what anybody thinks, the privacy to experiment and learn without being judged, or the freedom to have irregular traffic patterns. Now is the perfect time to consider carefully what privacy is for, and what we want to keep private.

 

---

[i] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22967622

[ii] http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/YouTube-Ads-Hack-Webcam-Videos-Investigation-New-York-I-Team-Glorioso-323085781.html

[iii] http://laboratorium.net/archive/2010/02/06/things_mark_zuckerberg_has_not_said

[iv] http://biblehub.com/luke/2-19.htm

[v] https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitarian-church-los-angeles-v-nsa

[vi] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/12/e-zpasses-get-read-all-over-new-york-not-just-at-toll-booths/

A Safer Place (May 31, 2015)

In order to become a safe community, we have to do something that feels unsafe. We have to acknowledge that women and children and men too are physically and sexually assaulted every day. For too long churches full of caring, well-meaning people have been silent to the reality of this abuse.

Feeling safe- feeling that people will respect your boundaries, your choices, your body, your freedom – feeling safe is important everywhere. But when a violation of that safety happens in your faith community, as too many people have told us is the case, then community becomes unsafe, religion becomes unsafe. Even our relationship with the divine can be broken, sometimes beyond repair. Too many survivors have sought help from their church or from their minister and are sent back into an abusive situations counseling patience, counseling forgiveness, calling it a “cross to bear.” But the suffering of an abused woman or man or child cannot be compared to the suffering of Jesus. As Marie Fortune, who was a pioneer in equipping faith communities to address sexual and domestic violence, writes in her book Keeping the Faith, Guidance for Christian Women Facing Abuse: “the suffering of being abused in one’s family is very different. It has no good purpose. It never brings forth a greater good. It is not God’s will for our lives. To accept it as purposeful, as your cross to bear, as God’s will for you, is to allow yourself to be a victim. You don not deserve abused at the hands of a member of your family.” [p. 20] or I might add, a member of your community.

So let’s be really clear. Unitarian Universalists believe that human sexuality is part of what it means to be human. We believe that there are as many ways of expressing it as there are people. And we believe deeply in the freedom of the individual to consent and to say “yes” but just as important is the freedom to say “no.” We know that if the power differential is too great, consent is not really possible. For example a child cannot truly consent to sexual acts with an adult. We know this not just in theory, but because men and women have come forward telling us how such interactions have affected them the rest of their lives. Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, former head of St. Luke's Institute, a treatment center for clergy said in an interview that “the abuse of minors, of course, is especially abhorrent and awful, but there are more cases of sexual exploitation of adults in all the churches, and that gets less air time …”[i] We know that ministers have a special role, whether they serve congregations or as hospital chaplains, and so something that might have been within the bounds of a healthy relationship between consenting adults, in the context of clergy and congregant can be coercive and harmful. We know this because after generations when people kept such things secret, were afraid to come forward, were silenced or shamed when they did come forward, we are finally hearing their stories and hearing what the cost was to their spirits, and to whole congregations. That is why in the UU Minister’s code of conduct it says clearly: “I will not engage in sexual contact, sexualized behavior or a sexual relationship with any person I serve as a minister. “[ii] Unfortunately, when their minister is accused of abuse Joe Trull, Professor of Christian Ethics at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, says congregations usually “circle the wagons to defend the accused minister, blame the victim, or even blame the minister's wife.[iii]”

It is time for churches to become part of the solution. We began creating a safe congregations policy for this church not because we were in the middle of a crisis, but precisely because we want to prevent a crisis. Congregations which have suspected clergy or staff misconduct, congregations where a registered sex offender ask permission to attend worship, or congregations who suspected that a child in their community was being abused those congregations that had a policy and procedure in place felt more empowered to handle the situation in a way that felt safer for everyone.

We have to start by speaking the truth. As Rebecca Parker, who was the minister of a small church before becoming the president of SKSM, and was a survivor of sexual abuse as a child, described so beautifully in our opening reading, truth is important to safety and it is important to healing after abuse. 

First, we need to make this a place where people can say the truth of where your boundaries are. We get messages from a very young age that it is more important to follow societal norms than to feel safe. We tell a reluctant child “don’t be rude- hug your aunty” and we get versions of that message all our lives. Sometimes women and men end up participating in sexual acts when they don’t really feel comfortable because there is a sense of expectation, because they want to go with the flow. Or as we have seen in these clergy sexual abuse cases, and cases of employees or interns coerced into sexual relations with their supervisors, sometimes we create a culture where it feels impossible to say no. Some of you have probably heard in the news about a blog for women in the film industry in which they detail the sexual harassment they face daily in their industry[iv] Sometimes our cultural norms make speaking out to protect safe boundaries a herculean feat.

I’d like to try something, and I want you to know before I even describe this exercise that you will have an option to opt out. What I’m going to suggest is that you pick a partner, someone sitting nearby you that you might know or not know. I want you to start out about10 feet apart, and then I want whomever is older to stand still and whomever younger will walk towards their partner. The person standing still- their job is to raise their hand when their partner gets to the boundary of their personal space. And the job of the person walking is to respect that and stop.  

Now take a moment to talk to your partner about how it felt to be the person whose job it was to say stop, and how it felt to be the person who was told to stop

[pause for conversation]

Now lets all come back together

Does anyone want to share with the whole group their feelings about that exercise?

[pause for conversation]

Now a word for those folks who decided to “pass.” When I was in seminary, students loved to create innovative worship where congregants would be asked to make eye contact, or hug, or dance. I had a theology professor who always sat those things out. It was critically important, he felt, that we always have the freedom to opt out of community activities that don’t feel right to us. Is there anyone who decided to pass who wants to tell us how that felt?

[pause for conversation]

This is part of being a “safer congregation” I think -- that we can express our boundaries to one another. It needs to be culturally normative in this congregation that it is okay to say no to one another, to be able to say “here is where my boundary is.” If we can practice on the easy things, maybe it will be possible to express our boundaries when it is really difficult to do so.

Next, to be a safer congregation, our goal is to be a community where we feel safe telling someone when our boundaries have been violated. So, for example, if that exercise didn’t feel safe to you, and it didn’t feel safe to say something to everyone in the middle of the service, I would hope you could come talk to me later, or talk to the Committee on Ministry. This is what we were trying to express in the lesson for all ages earlier. And that is why there are three members of our Safe Congregations Team. You can talk to your minister, of course, but if that doesn’t feel safe, you can talk to a different member of the team- Elaine or Katie. Of course if you experience or witness “seriously harmful, abusive or harassing behavior toward any UUCAS member, friend or visitor, and you feel the behavior cannot be successfully diffused, you are asked to call 911 or the local police department, requesting immediate assistance.” 

This brings us to the third way we that speaking the truth can create the safer community we desire. We must be advocates for those who have been abused. Especially for those who have been silenced. I want to tell you about a remarkable program that was born in India. It is called “bell bajao” which is Hindi for “ring the bell.” It is a public awareness program designed to encourage men and boys in particular to “do something” when they hear or witness or suspect abuse. The message is remarkably simple- just ring the bell. I’d like to share one of these videos with you:





What I love about that video, is that the man who rings the bell is clearly nervous, he’s not an expert. He’s not an official. But just by ringing the bell he is able to interrupt the abuse he suspects. What he does requires courage, but is something any of us can do. We do need to ask “why didn’t he notify the police as his next step?” but we know that there are many places not only around the world but also in the US where police consider abuse a private matter, and will not only fail to prosecute, but will fail to protect and will even blame the victim. I believe our justice system has made great strides responding to domestic and sexual abuse in just one generation in this country, and that is why we encourage you if you see a “seriously harmful, abusive or harassing behavior” to follow up “ringing the bell” with calling authorities you trust.

Think back to the reports we heard about Penn State case. Part of what is so horrifying about that whole story, is not only that the abuse happened, but that so few had the courage to say something. [v] What could have been different if any of the many people who knew or suspected what was happening had just done what that video suggests--just let coach Sandusky know that he was being observed- making a difference in the life of a child. Think of the compound of wound on wound- to not only be assaulted but to know that people knew and would not help you. And if any of those people who knew or suspected what was going on had gone to the police- they could have made the difference in the life of many.

Finally, as Rebecca Parker suggested in her reading, as a community of faith we encourage people to speak the truth of their experience -- both survivors and those who have hurt them. When Survivors speak the truth of their experience, they facilitate not only their own healing but the healing of others. I believe it is also important for perpetrators to speak the truth. At this moment in our culture we demonize perpetrators of sexual abuse like no other kind of person. And truly there are people who have committed horrible devastating acts. But when our laws create a situation in which it is impossible for convicted sex offenders to find housing, to find jobs, to be part of community, is that really better than having a community that knows the person and can hold them accountable for their actions? Rev. Debora Haffner, director of the Religious Institute which provides guidance to congregations and people of faith around these issues, told us that 87% of sexual offenders will not reoffend after prison or treatment. She says the person who comes to church after treatment and tells you is not the primary threat to our congregations. The primary threat are those folks who still live and act in a cloak of secrecy. I believe our current process of responding to sexual abuse leaves the work of restorative justice unfinished. An act of sexual abuse or violence is not just an infraction of the law, but an injury to a person, and to the web of relationships. Jennifer Llewellyn, Viscount Bennett Professor of Law at Dalhousie and an international expert in restorative justice tells us [vi] “Restorative justice is an idea that says, at its core, justice has to be about repairing or addressing the harm caused to social relationships when wrongdoing happens.” I think “restorative justice” is a big enough topic for another sermon, but in the words of Rebecca Parker, “we told the truth about our lives because telling the truth restored us to the human community. It brought us back from the dead. ... It made us free.”

To be a safe congregation, this must be a place where we speak the truth. Where we learn to articulate our own boundaries, and support others who express their boundaries because this is how we will help prevent abuse, and how we will help in healing from abuse. In our Lesson for all ages this morning each of us was asked to think of someone to tell if something bad happened to us. I hope that each us will also aspire to be “someone to tell” so that whenever a child or a woman or a man in our community feels unsafe, that this will be a safe place to speak our truth. 

Endnotes
[i] http://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.html 
[ii] http://www.uuma.org/default.asp?page=guidelines#Ethical Standards 
[iii] http://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.htmlhttp://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.html 
[iv] http://shitpeoplesaytowomendirectors.tumblr.com/ read more about it here: http://laist.com/2015/05/28/sht_people_say_to_women_directors.php
[v] http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline
[vi] http://www.restorativejustice.org/RJOB/what-is-restorative-justice

Not So Simple (May 10, 2015)

Reading- Solving for pattern by Wendell Berry

Perhaps it is not until health is set down as the aim that we come in sight of the third kind of solution: that which causes a ramifying series of solutions – as when meat animals are fed on the farm where the feed is raised, and where the feed is raised to be fed to the animals that are on the farm. Even so rudimentary a description implies a concern for pattern, for quality, which necessarily complicates the concern for production. The farmer has put plants and animals into a relationship of mutual dependence, and must perforce be concerned for balance or symmetry, a reciprocating connection in the pattern of the farm that is biological, not industrial, and that involves solutions to problems of fertility, soil husbandry, economics, sanitation - the whole complex of problems whose proper solutions add up to health: the health of the soil, of plants and animals, of farm and farmer, of farm family and farm community, all involved in the same inter-nested, interlocking pattern – or pattern of patterns.
A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained. It acts destructively upon those patterns, most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production. And it is typical of such solutions that they achieve stupendous increases in production at exorbitant biological and social costs. A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns – and this harmony will, I think, be found to have a nature of analogy. A bad solution acts within the larger pattern the way a disease or addiction acts within the body. A good solution acts within the larger pattern the way a healthy organ acts within the body. 

Sermon- Not So Simple

A couple of years back our congregation and the UU congregation up in Syracuse were getting ready to swap pulpits. Their minister, Jean, asked if I would preach about Fracking, because she knew we in Bradford County were in the thick of it, and because Elaine and Frank and I had presented a workshop on the issues of Natural Gas Development at the Social Justice conference the year before. Since we are the only congregation in the St. Lawrence District in Pennsylvania, we still are the only congregation where fracking is a reality in our lives. “Sure” I said, and started thinking about it. 

What could I say to the Syracuse UUs about Fracking, knowing that a sermon is not a workshop. It is not enough just to present the mechanics of fracking, the chemistry and economics. A sermon is supposed to be a call to ethical action. But my time serving this congregation had not shown me a clear call to action, but instead shown me that the lived reality of fracking is overwhelmingly complex.

Many of the members of this congregation have faced the ethical dilemma of what to do when the landsman comes to your door to talk with you about leasing the mineral rights to your land. And it is clear to me from listening to your stories, listening to how you grappled with the ethical issues, that there is more than one ethical position. Some folks have decided not to lease their mineral rights, believing that the environmental impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing are not worth it for the money to be made, nor for the energy to be produced. Other folks, knowing how many of us use natural gas, for example, to heat our homes- my home is heated with natural gas- don’t want to succumb to the “Not in My Backyard” thinking, leaving some other community to take the risks and bear the cost of extracting natural gas. If we are going to use Natural gas here, they reason, we should be willing to allow it to be extracted here. Still others consider the economic impact of natural Gas extraction on the region. This is not a wealthy area by any means. Bradford county is 48th out of 67 counties in PA for per capita income, and Tioga County is 57th[i] This area has always made most of its wealth from farming and resource extraction, and since the family farm has struggled so mightily in these past generations, many people hope these mineral rights leases will literally help people keep their farms or homes, would provide some economic relief. There’s a barn I pass on my way into Ithaca from points East. Maybe you’ve seen it? It is caving in you can practically see it falling apart and it has a big sign hanging on the side saying “Coming soon Natural Gas and My New Barn.” Moreover, we have met some really great people who came to town because of jobs in the gas industry, doing the best they can to support themselves and their families at a time when the minimum wage in Pennsylvania still lingers at $7.25 per hour.

For a while on my drive down here from Ithaca, I began my drive in a sea of “No fracking” signs which quite abruptly would change to a sea of “Friends of Natural Gas” or “Frack here, frack now” signs. A perfect illustration of how this incredibly complex issue has become deeply polarized. It has strained the web of relationships between neighbors, between family members. I realized recently that I haven’t spoken from the pulpit about this issue in years is because we don’t want to bring that polarization into our beloved community. You can feel the social danger of expressing certain ideas.

These past Wednesday afternoons a group of us have been talking about our distinctive UU theology. And one of the aspects of our “soteriology” that is, our theory of what saves us and what we need to be saved from, is that instead of anticipating an ultimate battle between good and evil, we know we are part of a complex web of life. As we work together to build the beloved community, it is not a gated community, but must include environmental activists, gas company executives, landowners, all the people who heat their homes in the winter, and all the beings who need water to live. In the same way Universalists long ago rejected the notion that some persons were predestined to go to heaven and others to suffer forever in hell, I would like to reframe the debate over natural gas from a battle that one side must win and another side must lose, into something more like that “tangled bank” we talked about on Evolution Sunday. If we are going to move in a life-giving direction with this tangled web of issues and problems, there is not just one final solution, but many big and little decisions that allow people to be warm in the winter, to have jobs that pay a living wage, and that preserve our beautiful agricultural land and the water we all need to survive.

This image some of you will remember from a sermon I did recently. Here is the circle that shows what we need. The circle that shows what we don’t need, and this intersecting circle showing what is possible right now. I think most of us would agree, for example, that we need energy to heat our homes and to run this industrialized world we have created. Most of us would agree that we need sources of energy that will not contribute to global climate change. But as we heard in our opening reading, we have to be careful not to create solutions that in turn create new problems. Wendell Berry tells us there are three kinds of solutions. He uses these with agricultural metaphors, but I will apply them to the whole web of issues around how we make and use energy

To quote Berry: “There is, first, the solution that causes a ramifying[ii] series of new problems, the only limiting criterion being, apparently, that the new problems should arise beyond the purview of the expertise that produced the solution.” I think a great example of this is the controversy over on Lake Seneca. Crestwood, a company based out of Texas, is planning to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industrial storage facility and a methane expansion facility, and plans to store methane, propane, and butane in unlined, depleted salt caverns “that were never engineered to store anything, on the shores of Seneca Lake”.[iii] So if the problem that we are trying to solve is where to store LPG, we have set up the discussion so that issues like the effects of leaks on water or air or agricultural soil or other industries like tourism are “beyond the purview” of the engineers and staff of the gas companies. Other problems caused with this technology are seen as separate problems requiring separate solutions.

Quoting Berry again: “The second kind of solution is that which immediately worsens the problem it is intended to solve, causing a hellish symbiosis in which problem and solution reciprocally enlarge one another” Some folks, including our president, have proposed Natural Gas as a “clean energy.” We know, for example, that Natural Gas “emits 50 percent less carbon dioxide than coal when you burn it.”[iv] The complexity comes from the fact that when Natural Gas is mined, Methane escapes into the atmosphere, and Methane “ unburned, is around 70 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.”[v] If we are using natural gas to reduce greenhouse gases, this is a solution that makes that problem worse.

In the same light, it seems like stopping all natural gas production tomorrow around the world would also be a solution that makes things worse. So many people would be suddenly out of work. People who now heat with natural gas would have to quickly have their heating systems converted, and those who couldn’t afford the conversion, the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, would suffer

But says Berry, there is a third kind of solution, those “which causes a ramifying series of solutions” . In his essay Berry uses for his example example a farmer who solved the problem of a grain shortage on his farm by selling off part of his heard, by using more of the herd’s manure to increase fertility, by breeding programs that selected for cows that could eat roughage, and then by reduced the percentage of grain in the feed ration. By solving the problem of a feed shortage, in this way, he ended up with a healthier farm. 

We need to have the courage to figure out what we REALLY need. To even imagine what we really need. We are afraid that there is no solution that reduces the acceleration of global climate change, while keeping our water clean, and providing jobs for everyone. When our vision is too narrow, we miss important pieces of the big picture. We all know that humans and most other living beings on teh planet need water to survive. But it’s easy to forget, living in an area that is one of the greatest sources of fresh water in the world. [vi] It’s easy to forget that many living beings right now on the planet are suffering from a shortage of drinking water. It’s hard to imagine that fresh drinkable water which is so freely available to us, it’s hard to really comprehend and that it could ever be a scarce resource, and that it could become scarce by our own actions. 

Did you know that in China governmental reports show 60% of their fresh water has become polluted, and others suggest the government is underreporting the problem, so it may even be worse?[vii] Half of China’s population lacks safe drinking water. Nearly two thirds of China’s rural population---more than 500 million people---use water contaminated by human and industrial waste.[viii] Now, did you know that it takes roughly 4.4 million gallons of water to frack one well?[ix] These millions of gallons of water are mixed with a chemical cocktail that so far we haven’t figured out how to remove from the water after fracking is over, and so is permanently removed from the water cycle and stored as toxic waste. I suggest to you that a true solution to our energy problems does not create a new water problem to be solved. We must have the courage to imagine and to say out loud that the energy we really need is energy that does not jeopardize the water we need to live.

When the complex issues around producing safe, clean energy are reduced to whether Natural Gas development is Good or Evil, it becomes impossible to have public conversations that will make a huge difference in our children’s lives and their grandchildren’s lives. 

Right now in Bradford County, Hydraulic Fracturing is a reality. It is providing fuel, and jobs to our community and other communities around the world. While the state of New York is under a moratorium. The choice is no longer “to frack or not to frack,” but a series of ramifying choices for those of us who live in both states. Remember those methane emissions I talked about earlier? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) concluded that “There is a need for the natural gas industry and science community to help obtain better emissions data and for increased efforts to reduce methane leakage in order to minimize the climate footprint of natural gas.” This seems like a really important issue- gathering data to track and reduce methane leakage would make the difference between natural gas being cleaner than coal, or being just as dirty as coal. In fact there are new EPA regulations that went into effect on January of 2015 that require many wells to capture some of that Methane. As an example of Solutions that lead to other solutions, the EPA projects that not only would the “new rule would reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by 190,000 to 290,000 tons per year and toxic air pollutants by 12,000 to 20,000 tons a year…. [through a process] known as “green completions,” at the same time the industry would save $11 million to $19 million a year because drillers would be able to capture and sell the methane that is now burned off, or flared.[x]

I never did preach that sermon in Syracuse. I chickened out and decided to preach on something less controversial- the Doctrine of Discovery and whether European-Americans even have the right to live on the lands we now claim. What would I tell that congregation in Syracuse today? I would tell them there is no simple answer, we must be constantly looking for solutions that increase the health of the whole. As Berry says “Good solutions exist only in proof... Problems must be solved in work and in place, with particular knowledge, fidelity, and care, by people who will suffer the consequences of their mistakes.” Berry is suggesting that good solutions are created by people who know a place, work a place, and will suffer if the place suffers. That’s us. Whether our land is leased or not. It’s up to us to monitor our local creeks (as several volunteers in this congregation and in our community are doing) and know how the water in this very place is healthy or sick. It’s up to us to ask for good data on the emissions, and to ask our DEP to create and enforce standards that make sure our solutions are good not only for energy production, but for our health. I would probably tell the Syracuse congregation that good solutions may be different in their community than in ours. I would tell them not to settle for Solutions “which causes a ramifying series of problems,” but to keep looking for solutions “which causes a ramifying series of solutions.” Even if they don’t seem possible right now, we must keep looking for solutions together. Not necessarily a simple solution, but one in harmony with “the inter-nested, interlocking patterns of health”, the interconnected web of life of which we are a part.


Endnotes

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pennsylvania_counties_by_per_capita_income
[ii] Ramifying-“ present participle: ramifying - form branches or offshoots; spread or branch out”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ramify
[iii] http://gasfreeseneca.com/?page_id=142
[iv] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/is-natural-gas-clean/
[v] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6435
[vi] http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/freshwater-map/ 
[vii] http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/chinas-looming-water-shortage/, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/19/content_18942169.htm 
[viii] http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html
[ix] http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/03/12/how-much-water-it-takes-to-frack-a-well/
[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/science/earth/epa-caps-emissions-at-gas-and-oil-wells.html?_r=1&ref=energy-environment 

Telling Our Story (April 26, 2015)

Twice now a group of us gathered upstairs on a winter’s evening to tell one another the part of our history that we ourselves remember. The first time we gathered to tell this story our earliest recollections were back to the time of the great flood of 1972, but this past fall our telling of our memories began around the time of the purchase of this building. The minister at that time was Rev. Harry Thor. He had served as the minister of the Binghamton Church (1963-1980), and came to serve The Sheshequin church part time in his retirement. He served our congregation for 17 years from 1989-1996. 

The story of this congregation in the 1990s can’t be told without Bob and Nell Allen. Both Bob and Nell were raised UU. He was an orthopedic surgeon at Guthrie, and served as president of this congregation for 15 years, and the Allens were a driving force in the purchase of this building. Bob and John McDonald build the chalice stain glass window using tiles from an old window. Don Riker commissioned the plaque below it. Perhaps you’ve noticed a crack in one pane. Bob said it was a “crack of humility.”

Bob was also a pilot, and when the plane he was flying crashed, killing him, the whole community was crushed. I’m told that his parking spot at the hospital was filled with flowers. Memorial services were held at Redeemer and at UUCAS. A year after his death the members of the congregation took a trip to the crash site to plant bulbs Imagine what a difficult time that must have been- to mourn the death of Bob Allen, longtime church pillar, just as our minister of 17 years retired. 

After Harry Thor’s retirement a student minister, Janelle Curlin-Taylor came to be our intern. This was a tumultuous time for the church, and when Janelle left the church was in a time of conflict.

We entered a period with no paid minister, and strong lay leaders emerged. Nell Allen served as president and church administrator for man y years. In 1999 we started the “Earth Day Fair” in our parking lot to bring the values of sustainability to the larger community, which became an annual event. 

Lee Richards, a student minister, served this congregation from 1999 to 2002. During this time our nursery was a lively, welcome place, Lee mentioned once from the pulpit “the sound of a happy child” in the nursery. When the Sayre and Keystone theaters had declined to host the Vagina Monologues, feeling it was too controversial, We were also proud to bring the Vagina Monologues to UUCAS. All of the participants actively promoted the events and sold tickets to friends. We were sold out and used the social room for overflows. Over 110 attended. The director, Barbara Coyle, and cast received a standing ovation. We were afraid of backlash from protestors and requested protection from the Athens Police Dept. They were stationed outside. Fortunately, we did not have any protestors.

In 2002 Lee declined to renew his contract after his third year. Conflicts lingered in the congregation.

During all these ups and downs we have had the incredible good luck of having dedicated, talented keyboard players at this church. Even when ministers came and went, we had a familiar face at the keyboard leading us in music. Marion Jones played from 1973 until 2002 when Katie Replogle took over, and Katie has been our church pianist ever since.

In January 2003 we hired Rev. Justin (Jace) Kahn, a trained Interim minister, who brought a great deal of healing to the church. Our ties to the district and to the UUA were strengthened. We became a fair share congregation and a leading giver to the UUSC. In 2003 we made Rev. John Trowbridge (who served this church for 21 years! from 1964-1985) our Minister Emeritus. By the time Jace completed his 2 year interim ministry, we were in a much stronger, healthier place. 

In 2005 the church was delighted to call The Rev. Ann Marie Alderman to be our first settled minister since Harry Thor. She encouraged us become a “Welcoming Congregation” by to do the inner and outer work necessary to truly welcome the GLBT community. For a couple of our members this was too much of a challenge, and a few folks left, but for the majority who stayed, this was a powerful transformation and “welcoming congregation” became an important part of our sense of identity. 

When Ann Marie told us she had accepted a full time position at another church, there was great sadness. We had worked so hard to bring her here, and had just gotten started in a healthy and energetic relationship. The time after her departure called on all the strength of our lay leaders. It was Genevieve and Marion who started calling this the “little church that could” and posted this moto in the social hall. IN 2007 we also brought the women’s a Capella Group Olympia’s daughters to perform. I don’t thing we PLANNED to do it in honor of Elaine Lovegreen’s birthday, but is sure was nice of them to sing to her.

During that year of lay leadership, I had been invited to preach once a month while you were in your search. When the church was not able to find a match through the search process, they asked me if I would come preach for another year, or maybe be a consulting minister. I said what I really wanted was to be your minister, to be called and settled. So even though I’d been preaching here for a year, we diligently followed the official process from start to finish with interviews and packets and finally a congregational vote to call me as your minister in 2008.

These past 7 years have been a busy time for us. After a yearlong congregation wide process to discern a way to reach out to the larger community, we decided on “Feed a Friend” where we would grow our own fresh organic produce to donate to local food banks. When Project Grow launched in 2011 under the leadership of Destiny Kinal, it was clear that the missions of the two initiatives were closely aligned, and we ended Feed a Friend, and put our energy into collaborating with and supporting Project Grow. In 2008 we also launched our first ever Coming of Age program in collaboration with the Big Flats fellowship, and offered a second collaborative program 2 years later. 

When we first learned about Hydro-Fracking many of us were confused and puzzled by it, especially those of us who were being offered mineral leases. We held our first community forum on the topic which grew into the “Community Shale Network” hosting about a dozen forums over 4 years. We were proud to provide information to the community about this controversial topic without any rancor. 

In 2011 a flood immobilized the Valley. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, Diane and Maggie wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a restroom, or a clean place to rest. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and all were welcome to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging their homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways.

In 2014 you offered the first sabbatical this congregation had ever given a minister. During that time you showed you were still the “little church that could.” You taught a class on Ethics. You brought in a trainer from Dickenson College to teach you how do water testing to monitor our local creeks. And it was during this time that it became legal in Pennsylvania for same gender couples to marry. Our members received the 1st and 3rd licenses in the county, and celebrated these unions with great joy. Our building once again rings with the voices of children.

That leads us to today. This story which began many generations ago is ours to tell. What our founders called “the Universal Salvation of the human race from the bondage of sin and corruption.” We might say “We are Standing on the Side of Love” The love, that fire that has burned in the heart of this congregation for 200 years is ours to tend.

Dreams Big and Small (April 12, 2015)

Consider the North star, also called the Pole Star or “ Polaris.” Our friends at “Earthsky” point out that it appears to hold “nearly still in our sky while the entire northern sky moves around it. That’s because it’s located [near] the north celestial pole, the point around which the entire northern sky turns.”  A clear vision is like a pole star, holding steady and guiding us no matter where we may travel, no matter how the seas may change.

 When I was in seminary all my teachers made sure we understood that it was important to create a vision statement with your congregation. I’ve been through this a few times now, and it always seems to involve butcher paper, and colorful magic markers, and possibly sticky dots. And when, a couple of months later, I couldn’t even remember the vision we had described that day, I always assumed that a better, more sophisticated process would be more successful if we tried again. We read books and expert opinions and started anew with a fresh pad of easel paper.

I think the misunderstanding I had, we had, was that vision was something that that we could create in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon if we just had the right process. What I now believe is that a true vision is already there, and needs only to be uncovered, given language, shared. 

When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he was proceeding along with his prepared remarks when Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” At that moment, he put his notes down and could describe, just out of his heart, to the dream that was already guiding him. He put into words the vision that had guided him to that point. When he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” he gave voice to a longing that was already in the hearts and minds of the people listening to them that day. It is still in our hearts and minds this Sunday morning, still guiding us forward when we hear about the racial bias people of color experience in this world today. We hear those news stories about the way children of color are treated, and hold those stories up to Dr. King’s vision, and we can see we still have a long way to go. 


Being able to imagine the future, to dream the future, is important to who we are as humans. Our dreams, large and small, provide a guiding star for our travels so we can know where we are headed, even when we don’t know exactly how to get there. Creating a vision is not something you need to read a book or attend a webinar to know how to do; it is something we are already doing every day. Here is the most mundane example I can think of: you are sitting in the living room and it comes to you “I want cheesy fries.” That’s it. That’s your vision. Sometimes the vision is easily implementable- you already have some frozen French fries in the freezer, and some cheese in the fridge, all you have to do is go into the kitchen and start cooking. Other times, the vision seems impossible- it’s already late at night, and you don’t have any of the ingredients. But if you can hang onto that vision, say, the next time you are at the grocery store, or the next time you are out to eat, that vision can still someday become reality. See- visioning is easy.


In the past couple of years our congregation has given birth to a number of new programs, like trivia night, or the meditation group, or the vegan potluck. Each started out as a vision. The first time each of us came to this church we had a vision that drew us here. Maybe the picture in our mind was of a place where we could meet new people, where we could find community. Maybe the vision was of yourself speaking what was in your heart, and other people truly listening. Or maybe you were frustrated and saddened by the state of the world, and imagined here at this church you could meet other people who were concerned, and together we could do something. I know you had a vision because you would never have come that first time without some hope for what you would find here.

One of the hardest parts of visioning is daring to have a dream when you can’t see a path that takes you there. When Marcia lead her visioning workshop a couple of years back, she told us it was important to give shape to your vision without regard for how you might get there. If we only allow ourselves to imagine what seems practical and possible, we might not even be able to imagine what we really need and want. Last month I attended a UU Clergy conference out in California, where I had the great fortune of participating in a week long workshop with Joanna Macy and the “Movement Generation.” Our facilitator drew for us 3 circles like this. This, they said is the circle that represents what we really need. And in this circle is what we don’t need. And this circle linking the two, this is what is politically possible. So a lot of our social justice work is about this middle circle here- the politically possible. We lobby for what we think is possible and needed, and lobby against what is possible and not needed. But, they said, we can’t be afraid to dream what we really need that is NOT possible right now. Consider Marriage Equality. How many of you thought 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that same-gender couples would be able to be legally married in the state of Pennsylvania? But we dreamed that dream anyway, and it came true. It’s hard to dream something that seems impossible; it’s scary because we know we might be disappointed. But what is possible changes as the times change. If we have dared to dream, we will be ready when the time is right.

Visioning is not about “how.” Even the congregational leadership manuals are clear about this. “How” is the sphere of plans and strategies. Some strategies fail, some succeed. When we confuse strategy for vision, when we confused the path for the guiding star, we sometimes end up losing our way.  

When Eric and I moved from California to Ithaca, we were following a vision with 3 important parts. We wondered if it would be possible to live within walking distance of anything worth walking to- something only the wealthy can afford in the Bay Area. Eric wanted to own his own business, and we wanted a good school system for Nick. But when we arrived here with our u-haul and the clock started ticking on our 2 month sublet, we became more and more constrained by what was actually possible. The only houses in the neighborhood where we had hoped to settle were in really bad shape and would require a lot of work. (we are not handy people). We found a lovely house a few miles out of town with 3 acres and a pond, but it wasn’t in walking distance from anything. Panicked at the thought of having no place to live when our sublet ended we almost gave up on our dream, but then we asked ourselves “what is at the core if this vision.” We let go of our attachment to a particular neighborhood, and got back to our vision: a good school for nick, and a pedestrian friendly neighborhood. When we let go of “how” to achieve our dream, and got back to the essence of our vision, we found our lovely little home just 3 blocks from the downtown, in an excellent elementary school district we’d never heard of that was just as good as the one we had been so fixated on. Now I’ll admit it was hard to let go of the fact that our home doesn’t have off-street parking, and the back yard is about the size of the social hall, but when we guided our choices by that pole star we were able to build new life in Ithaca that manifested our vision. (In a poetic twist of fate, that house on 3 acres with a pond was bought by our friends, whose vision was to raise their own livestock and grow their own produce, a vision for which that home was perfect.)

A compelling vision can help us change what we didn’t even know we could change. Philosophy professor, Tad Dunne, notes that the stories our society tells us, the stories we tell ourselves can limit our vision of who we are and what is possible. They can even limit the “field of possible desires” [i]

[Ruffing p. 115] Whereas if we “can imagine an alternative pattern or possibility, [we] can often create a new story that is more adequate than the original.” [Ruffing p. 116] So when our vision is limited, our imaginations, desires and actions may also be limited. [Ruffing p. 115] 

For example, if we can’t imagine two women or two men being married or having children, we won’t even desire it, and we certainly won’t do anything to make that vision come true. If Dr. Martin Luther King had not put that vision so eloquently put that vision into words in 1963, perhaps the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 would never have happened. Long before Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, a vision of that day had been cast, had been shared, had been nurtured.  

A vision is an image that “suggests possible plot lines” [Ruffing p 96]. When the images we see on TV or in the news are not big enough for the future we really need, we must imagine an alternative. Some of you will remember I told a story here a few weeks ago called “girls can be anything.” My mom gave me that book when I was little because she wanted me to be able to imagine myself as a doctor, a pilot, even the president. That author knew that before a woman could be president of the united states, we would first have to be able to imagine it. Whether or not it is possible right now, it is something we really need and want, and so we hold that vision for the future. 

Our dreams also help us when things fall apart. Times are changing so fast right now, it’s easy to be buffeted about by the swiftly changing waters of our times. Church itself is changing radically. Whereas in the 1950s just about everyone went to church, we are told, today more and more folks have never even been to church. More and more people can’t imagine why you would go to church, when there are so many other things to do on a Sunday morning. At the UU Minister’s retreat a couple of weeks back a room full of ministers and religious educators spoke about what church would be like in the 21st century. Some parts of church life that have always worked are just not working anymore. We wondered how technology might change our church experience. We talked a lot about discerning what is at the core of who we are, what is at the core of our future together, and what we might have to let go of to make room for the reality of this unique time and place in history. Our presenter Karen Bellavance-Grace impressed on us the importance of “dreaming UU into the future.” If, she said, we want our beloved tradition to have a future, we must dream it now, together.

So I want to share with you a vision I have had for our movement; it has been growing in me for sometime. (I shared this vision with our Board back in the fall). I see this church as the beating heart of Universalism. We in this beloved community embody Universalist love, a love that holds each and every person, that holds each and every living being, as the early Universalists believed that God’s love embraces each and every one of us. We are the heart of Unitarian Universalism, right here in this sanctuary. Our love is like a hearth-fire where we come to warm ourselves, a fire that we tend and feed, a fire have kept burning for over 200 years. This world needs the luminous fire of our love. And we are not alone, this world is dotted with fires like ours. 

But when I imagine that life-giving, restoring, inspiring, renewing warmth, it breaks my heart to imagine folks just out of site, wandering in the cold and dark. So part of my vision is that we are constantly reaching out for people who need the warmth our fire, whether they just need to be warmed for a moment during a cold, lonely time, or whether they choose to stay and become fire tenders themselves. This vision is simple enough that no matter what change the future holds, we will remember to keep the fire burning, to keep that fire at the heart of everything we do.

Dreaming the future -- casting and holding a vision of what we really need, this is important. If it is a vision you truly care about, then just having the courage to hold it in your mind, and to share it with others creates a bigger possible future for everyone. It’s hard to hold onto a vision when we don’t know how we can get there, but remember there was a time when no one could have imagined a female preacher. Remember there was a time when we thought marriage equality would never come to America. So hold on to your vision like a north star, guiding us into that future. 

---

[i] Ruffing, Janet. To tell the Sacred Tale.

 

When Faiths Meet (March 22, 2015)

Reading- from Rev. Rebecca Parker's Introduction for 2015 Starr King President Lecture
I had been raised in a liberal Methodist home and was devoted to the sense we had of the purpose of liberal Christianity. That purpose was formed for my parents in the early fifties in the aftermath of the horror and the tragedy of the Shoah. For my parents’ generation the revelation of the magnitude of the human capacity to destroy human life and human culture out of racial and religious hatred, out of a search for some kind of pure identity and its preservation was the life shaping shock and sorrow. And my parents, perhaps like some of you… my parents made a decision as young adults to devote their life to fulfilling the cry “never again.” Never again let there be such war. Never again let there be an enactment of human hatred. Never again such exploitation of human life and destruction of human life and attempted destruction of religious culture. 

…”Never again”, they felt, could be advance through the life of progressive religious communities. I inherited that life, that belief that in covenanted life with one another centered in devotion to the holy and engaged in on caring not only for one another and all the generations but the communities of the world. There was hope for peace and justice and compassion in the world .

I carried that with me. .. But I found myself as a young Progressive Christian restless with the experience of life within an exclusively Christian sphere. it seemed wrong to me as a Christian of conscience that after the Shoah, after the holocaust, that Christians would presume to worship in exclusive Christian communities. I thought the only way you could be a Christian after the holocaust was to enter into multi-religious community. To be in a place …where people of Christian and Jewish heritage could be together in some way. And UU enticed me as such a place-- A place beyond the religious violence of the holocaust. Within my work … at Starr King, the joy of being in a multi-religious community, the challenge of it and the importance of it has been the heartbeat of the work. And it has opened to me experiences beyond my wildest dreams, of entering into and learning from the religious practices of others...

Sermon
As a child growing up in a Unitarian Universalist church, we took it for granted that a basic religious literacy, not only of our faith tradition, but of our neighbor’s faith traditions was an important part of religious education. But it was not until I heard Rebecca parker tell this story at GA that I really got a sense of why this it was important. Growing up in a community which encouraged multi-religious dialogue, I didn’t understand what an important gift it is to our children and to our world. 

A couple of weeks ago I saw on a news story about a day when the Texas Council on American-Islamic Relations visited their state capitol, much like some of us and UUs from around the state are going to do on May 12 to meet our legislators and let them know what issues are important to us. Other folks had taken the day off work to drive to the Texas state capitol to shout hate slogans at their Muslim neighbors. They held placards that said things like “Go Home and take Obama with you” one protester rushed the podium and grabbed the microphone from the speaker.[i] One of the state representatives, Molly White, made news with her Facebook post saying that she had left instructions with her staff “to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.”[ii] This story, while not as dramatic as the massive anti-Islamic protests in Germany[iii], shows the depth of our ignorance. It didn’t dawn on Representative White that these visitors were her constituents, were American Citizens. She imagined that all of them were in some way connected to terrorist groups, and felt somehow exempt from the laws of their own country. 

After 9-11 it occurred to many of us in a blinding flash of the obvious that we were profoundly ignorant of Muslim culture, theology and history. At the Graduate Theological Union where I prepared for the ministry there were centers for Buddhist, Jewish and just about every flavor of main stream protestant and catholic traditions, but when my seminary offered an elective class on Islam, some of the other seminaries forbid their students from attending, lest it be a bad influence on their students in their ministerial formation. In the whole of my 3 years of coursework preparing for the UU ministry, there was only a single unit in a survey of “world religions” class to provide all we would need to know about Islam. 

According to a 2010 Pew study, %23 of the world’s population is Muslim. But what we see in the media represents a very narrow and fringe perspective on that ¼ of all the people on earth.[iv][v] Our ignorance of Islam and its people leads western cultures to view this incredibly diverse population with a monochromatic paintbrush of fear and anger. In a climate where Islam is painted as a boogyman hiding in our collective unconscious closet, the role of UUs and all those who remember the horror of the holocaust is to remember that part of “never again” is an inter-religious dialogue and relationships of care for one another. 

When I ask people who grew up Unitarian Universalist what they remember about Sunday School, I often hear about an experience called “Neighboring Faiths” which I personally count as one of the coolest things I did at my own UU church. The idea is that we would study a variety of religious traditions, and make a visit to their places of worship. I remember visiting a Greek Orthodox church, a reform synagogue, and a fundamentalist Christian church. I remember how empowering it was to go into a completely new religious community, like the Greek Orthodox church, prepared by our teachers and surround by other kids my age. We were greeted by a leader in the church who welcomed us, showed us to our special spot in the balcony, and could answer questions like “can we take communion?” His answer, “anyone who has been baptized can take communion here” left us with even more questions like “does a UU dedication count as a baptism for purposes of taking communion? We decided it probably didn’t.

We have learned some lessons over these decades of multi-religious dialogue. The first is that sometimes when we engage in this important conversation with our neighbors, we lose our grounding in our own faith tradition. A lay leader in one of our Midwest churches told a story about a youth in his church who asked in all earnestness “do you teach us about the world’s religions because you expect us to leave the UU church?” Another religious educator told me that whenever her students studied the Jewish and Christian traditions their UU kids became confused. Were they Christian? Were they Jewish? This raises some important questions for us so as we try to engage religious diversity with integrity: What is our intention in studying and participating in these faiths? What is our role? What ethical precepts shall guide our engagement? I'd like to look at these questions this morning to see if there are any central principles that can guide our way.  

If you turn in your hymnal to the page where our principles are listed.  You will see that “the living tradition we share draws from many sources.” These sources were adopted after a decades long struggle to articulate who we are and where we came from. Remember, both Unitarianism and Universalism were born out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. But while most of the Universalists still self-identified as Christian at the time the Unitarians and Universalists were considering merging in the 1950s, many of the Unitarians were humanists. Add to that all dauntingly diverse theological perspectives of our membership, and you can imagine why it would take almost 20 years after our merger to arrive at those 6 sources which finally felt large enough to hold our plurality.

These 6 sources reflect our openness to the ideas we encounter at the religious crossroads. They reflect our willingness to be changed and moved by what we find at the crossroads. That’s why we call it a living tradition because change and growth are an innate part of our identity as a religious movement. In exploring these sources, we begin to understand our own roots, both historic and contemporary. Some root systems go down deep, like the Acacia tree, others reach out along the surface, connecting neighbor to neighbor, like the redwood. These sources show organic our connections to our ancestors and to our neighbors.

As we study these sources – when we open the Upanishads or visit a Catholic Mass how might we understand our role. The role of sociologist or cultural anthropologist is a popular model for UUs, but this has some limitations. If we use ONLY the objective gaze of evaluation, we miss the chance to let any of the religion into our own hearts or spirits. The role of religious consumer is common in our contemporary culture. I could go online to buy the scriptures or ritual objects from a great variety of traditions. Right now my grocery store sells all the consumer goods you could want to celebrate Passover - but I want something different. I come to this church because I believe that the spiritual journey is both safer and more powerful when practiced within a community of people who inspire and watch out for one another. If we participate in religion only as a consumer, we loose the grounding and context being part of religious community provides. The Kabalistic tradition so popular with celebrities right now is an ancient aspect of Judaism that was hidden for centuries, taught only to initiates who had proven themselves ready. Now its sacred symbols are sold at teen accessory stores along with the mala beads used by Hindus and Buddhists for their prayer practice. As part of our “free and responsible search” I believe we have an ethical responsibility to the traditions which feed our spiritual life, a responsibility that goes beyond what is expected of us as “consumers.”

Let's take that communion question my Sunday School faced at the Greek Orthodox church. I nervously asked the same question at a Catholic Mass I attended with my roommate in college. She replied "Oh, no. Even if you are Catholic you can't take communion unless you've been confessed,” and sure enough as I looked around I saw almost 30% of the congregation remain in their seats as others formed lines in the aisle to receive the host. But later that year, when I attend a Presbyterian service with a friend in her tiny old white-steepled church, she looked amazed that I would even ask. "How could we turn anyone away from God's table" she responded, and so as the basket of rough cubed bread passed hand to hand, I took a piece and ate. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am not going to tell you whether or not you may take communion in a particular tradition. I can only encourage you to act with integrity. Does the gesture feel false and empty? Then please don't sacrifice your personal integrity. But if you are invited to participate in a ritual that is sacred to your friend or neighbor, and you want to be in communion with that community in that moment, I encourage you to accept that gift in the spirit it was offered. 

Perhaps the most important questions are asked and answered in our own hearts at the front door of the synagogue or mosque. Am I prepared to enter a sacred space that is not my own? Can I, with integrity, align myself with this worshipping body for this time? Can I help them hold a sacred space? Can I honor and respect their sanctuary while being true to my own core? Christianity is an evangelizing faith, and so it seems natural for many Christian communities to share their sacred texts (as the Gideons do) and to invite their neighbors to hear the words they hope will bring salvation to a newcomer. Not all traditions feel the same about their sacred rituals and traditions. Some Native Americans, for example, feel that religion is tied to a particular place, to a particular community; it belongs to the people and the land they share. And so when European-Americans borrow a chant or a symbol, it can feel like appropriation, it can feel like one more act in the imperialism that destroyed the very cultures we now turn into objects of consumerism. And so when we study Christianity we might be bolder than when we study indigenous traditions. We look for ways to learn from our neighbor’s faiths without opening old and unhealed wounds.  


As the vilification of Islam began to gain momentum in this country in recent years, Dr. Conde Frasier, a professor at Claremont Theological Seminary, a Christian School, asked a Muslim friend to talk to her about Islam. She wanted to have something real, personal and deep to inform her thinking about her Neighbor's faith. After several conversations, her friend invited her to worship. And so after receiving instruction in the Moslem way of prayer Dr. Frasier covered her head, entered the mosque, kneeled on her prayer mat, and prayed to Allah. She reports that she did experience something of Allah that day. Dr. Frasier remains a Christian, but I have to imagine that she now has a much deeper experience and knowledge of Islam that brings her closer to her Muslim neighbors, and gives her a new understanding each time Islam is in the news, each time she is in the classroom teaching. She also experienced something that enriched her own religious life.  

One of the concerns people have about exploring the world's religious diversity is that it can be done in a very shallow way. It takes patience and intention to get beneath the surface, where most of the gifts of a religious tradition lie. The Celebration of Easter without the struggle of Lent loses it’s power. If you were here last Sunday you may remember Don Bisson’s words: “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” Think how different Dr. Frasier's experience would have been the first time she joined her friend in prayer if she had done so without all the study and preparation. When I heard Dr. Frasier tell her story during the Fahs lecture at General Assembly this summer, I was moved by her courage, and by the clear respect she showed to her friend, and to the ancient tradition she encountered. Keeping her example in mind, I offer respect, humility and integrity as the primary ethics of our sojourns in other traditions.  

More and more I like to take the role of guest. For example, I love the traditional lighting of the menorah to honor the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. Sure I can buy a menorah and candles on my way to the checkout at my local grocery store, but I believe that without the depth of tradition behind that ritual, without the grounding in community, the ritual loses most of its depth, content and meaning. That is why I prefer to invite someone raised in or otherwise grounded in the Jewish tradition to light the candles that celebrate Hanukah, so that I can participate with humility in an observance as their guest.  

When Parker spoke those words at General Assembly, they were as introductory remarks for a panel on “Multi-religiosity.” This strange phrase is trying to express something new that the word “interfaith” does not. It is trying to articulate something that has been present in our UU contraptions for decades. That, for example, if you were raised Catholic and now attend a UU church, you don’t lose all those formative experiences that shaped you growing up in the Catholic tradition. When Marcia blew the Shofar for us to celebrate the New Year this past fall, it was because that tradition still had meaning and power for her as one who grew up Jewish, even though now she is a member of a UU congregation. Priestess Lady Hawk is coming to lead us in a Beltaine ritual next month, and she is also the president of the UU congregation in Towanda. We don’t always have to leave our own sanctuary to be guests in a new faith, If we open our hearts and minds we find a richness of experience right here in our own beloved community. 

This is and will continue to be a complex issue. But imagining ourselves as guests in a friend or neighbor’s home might provide a central organizing metaphor for our explorations. We treat their space and treasures with respect. We observe the house rules, just as some of my friends like me to take my shoes off when I visit, and others like me to leave them on. We listen from a place of shared humanity. And we humbly remember there are dynamics, history, wounds and gifts present of which we are not aware. We take only what we are given, and offer our gratitude in return.  

When we next hear the anger and fear of religious bigotry in the news, remember, as Rebecca parker reflected, “ I thought the only way you could be a Christian after the holocaust was to enter into multi-religious community.” Likewise, as UUs, whenever we are reaching out to our neighbors, or reaching deep into our roots and sources, this act is part of what it means to say “never again.” Moreover, it is a practice which helps us connect to the sources of our own religious wellspring. There is much we don't know about our neighbor’s faiths, so much they have to teach us about ourselves, about our roots, and about the world. As humble and respectful guests we undertake this journey, grounded in this our religious home, centered in the wisdom that lies in every human heart.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/texas-protests-mark-disheartening-week-pluralism

[ii] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/texas-gop-rep-explains-why-she-asked-muslims-declare-allegiance

[iii] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/06/photos-anti-islam-protests-meet-backlash-in-germany/

[iv] http://www.livescience.com/25110-negative-messages-muslims-media.html

[v] http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2012/01/23056/media-coverage-of-islam-and-muslims-in-western-countries/