More Hope, Vigor, and Strength, part 2

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Our faith has never been about individual spiritual growth. Salvation, we know, having heard it in Unitarian Universalist theology and having learned it from each other, is collective, not individual. Ain’t nobody saved until we all saved. Ain’t nobody free until we all free. ‘Cause there ain’t nobody – apart from everybody.

One example of what Unitarian Universalist faith accomplishes in this world was last year’s nationwide effort among Unitarian Universalists called “UU the Vote.” We built voter engagement, voter registration, voter turnout. It was more than our denomination had ever tackled before. And it was massive, and it was awesome. Folks were ready to give generously of their time and resources because our values of justice, compassion, and democratic process – and people’s lives – were on the line and on the ballot. We UUs invested dozens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of hours and over a million dollars to vote love over division in last November’s election. The campaign reached over 3 million potential voters. We UUs were likely the largest, most organized faith-based pro-democracy effort in 2020.

One example from here at Community UU is our Hope Kitchen project. We continue, week after week, to bring the power of imagination, generosity, commitment, and collective action to meet a vital need.

Receiving inspiration and spiritual sustenance and giving of our energies for justice and compassion for others are not two different things. Those who think of spirituality as individual, as distinct from embodying compassion and justice for others will never have the inspiration, the spiritual sustenance, the joy from tending to where there is hurt.

Spirituality without actively caring for others is thin and wan. Caring for others that isn’t caring for all others is a constrained and limited joy. Caring for all others that isn’t actively engaged in building the structures of equality, respect, and fairness fails to be spiritually satisfying.

Spirituality without activism isn’t spirituality, but only a self-centered embryo of what it could grow into. Activism without spirituality isn’t activism, but only noise and ego projection.

To build peace within, build justice without. To build justice without, build peace within. It’s another positive feedback loop – or, essentially, the same positive feedback loop as gratitude and generosity.

That’s the Unitarian theology that brings joy and healing to ourselves and to our world. That’s the Unitarian Universalist vibrancy – the hope, the vigor, and the strength – that grows our souls and that our world so needs. As we find ourselves loved into being, we must work together to love our world into the fullness of its being.

Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, recounts a conversation she had with the scholar Gary Michael Tartakov. “This is a civilization searching for its humanity,” Tartakov told Wilkerson. “It dehumanized others to build its civilization. Now it needs to find its own.” How do we do that? How do we, as a civilization, come into our humanity? How does a whole country come into the fullness of its being?

Love.

As you and I are loved into being by love around us, a nation may be loved into being by love within it. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke often of love, meaning not a fond sentimentality or romantic attachment – nothing precious or maudlin or fey.

Love, he said,

“means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies.”

Dr. King told us

"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

And again he said:

"At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”

And he said:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

He believed, he said,

“that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

He said,

“This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.”

And thus he saw and reminded us:

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

There is no joy in retreating from reality, withdrawing, turning away from the systems that do harm. At the founding and foundation of our country are forces of domination, forces that said people identified as black, as indigenous, as people of color didn’t matter. It was and is a system of double exclusion, for the people identified as white have also been excluded – excluded from responsibility and accountability, which are as necessary to beloved community as respect and justice are.

There is no joy in blithe aloofness from reality. We fool ourselves when we think paying attention will only make us feel bad – just as we fool ourselves when we think keeping five dollars will make us happier than spending it on someone else. All the joy there is comes through compassion – from orienting toward the hurt and engaging in the healing.

This Unitarian Universalist congregation isn’t the only community with this power – this power that loves you into being and helps heal our world. I don’t claim that ours is the only beloved community, only that it is ours. This – this building that we long to gather in again, this place of music and song, friendship and support, inspiration and encouragement – happens to be our place. It's not a static place, but a path -- the path we walk together, stepping where we could not step alone: stepping into more hope, vigor, and strength.

Unitarian Universalist president Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray said in a message she had for us this week:

“When we give – boldly, generously, audaciously -- of our financial resources as we are able, we make our values and our ministry manifest in the world. When we give generously of our hearts and our care, and our love, to our children and families, elders and adults, young adults, and youth, we change lives. We save lives. And when we dream big – as leaders and staff – about the impact we are called to make in the wider world, lives are changed. The material conditions of our communities can chage. And we are changed” --

-- progressively loved, and loving, into being.

May it be so, and Amen.

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More Hope, Vigor, and Strength, part 1

Go to part 2

Gaudeamus Hodie (let us rejoice today) – for we are alive, and we are together, and we are embodying the good life. The good life.

In the 320-year history of Yale University, no class has been as popular as Psych 157: Psychology and the Good Life, taught by Professor Laurie Santos. It was offered in 2018, and 1,200 students enrolled for the lecture course. That’s a large class. As a former professor myself, my first thought was: that’s a lot of papers to grade. Fortunately, Dr. Santos had 24 Teaching Assistants for the class.

That 2018 class was the only time it was offered in-person. Coursera made a 10-week version of the course available to the public, attracting 100s of thousands of on-line learners. Then came the lockdown of March 2020, and enrollment really took off. So far, says Coursera, 3.3 million people have enrolled for the class. The class “asks students to, among other things: track their sleep patterns, keep a gratitude journal, perform random acts of kindness, and take note of whether, over time, these behaviors correlate with a positive change in their general mood” (NYT).

In her class lectures, Dr. Santos mentions a study in which 632 Americans were asked to predict how happy they would be if they were given $5 to spend on themselves versus getting $5 and being told they must spend it on someone else. In the study, people predicted that they would be happier if they were allowed to keep the money. But participants consistently reported afterward that they had in fact derived more satisfaction from spending money on someone.

I was surprised. I was surprised that people predicted they would be happier keeping the money. I think most of you probably understand yourselves better than that – you have a better grasp on what’s conducive to joy – and the fact that giving to others makes you feel good is well-known for you. One student, inspired by the class, decided to try a practical experiment. Instead of keeping an expensive dress she had bought, she gave it to her sister. “I’m still feeling that happiness months later,” she said. No surprise there.

Generosity. Gratitude. And sleep. Yale undergraduates – and maybe many of the 3.3 million who took the online class -- benefitted from being disabused of the notion that high grades, prestigious internships, and good-paying jobs – or making law review -- had any relationship to happiness. But most of you, I expect, know those things have little correlation with well-being.

Sleep. Help others. Gratitude. There you have it: a full life, a life of well-being, a life that lets joy in. Congregational life provides the framework for developing gratitude, and generously helping others. It may also ease anxieties so you can get more sleep at night, but I don’t know about that one so much.

We help each other become more generous people – which enhances and deepens our happiness and well-being. The generous spirit that pervades many congregations, including this one, gives us much to be grateful for, fueling a positive feedback loop of generosity, to gratitude, to more generosity, to more gratitude. We yearn for beloved community that will love us into the fullness of our being – a community that will show us how, and provide opportunities, to love others into their being.

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston.

Unitarian Universalist congregations have loved me into being – from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Auburn, Alabama when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade, to the UU Congregation of Atlanta from 4th-grade through high school, to the UU Fellowship of Waco, Texas when I was a young adult graduate student, and the congregation that is now called Unitarian Universalists of Charlottesville, Virginia – and then the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, Tennessee. These places shined a light straight into me that dispelled a little boy’s nihilism and despair, and then a teenager’s, and then a young adult’s, then an adult’s.

Over and over – because dark nights of the soul have a way of recurring, moments when it all seems meaningless have a way of recurring, for beings like us – composed, as W.H. Auden put it: “of eros and of dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair.”

I came to these places – Unitarian Universalist congregations – for two opposite reasons: the comfort of people like me, and the delight of people not like me. Through and with those like me – which, really, has been everybody – and those not like me – which, really, has been everybody – I have loved and been loved into being, into my voice, into my place in this world.

My guess is: you have stories like this -- stories of how the values, the theology, you found here -- the music, the work, the camaraderie and friendship – maybe even helped along by some of the preaching you found here -- changed you. Grew your heart. Helped your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

Then I began serving our congregations in a professional capacity. The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clarksville, Tennessee, the Unitarian Universalist Community of El Paso, the Unitarian Church of Midland, Texas, the UU Fellowship of Gainesville, Florida – and for the last 8 years, Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation at White Plains, where I’ve spent more Sunday mornings now than at any of those other places.

You are such wonderful people. I am so glad to be among you – a people, rich and multi-layered -- people of action – at our best, unstoppable – guided by our heart’s desire to serve others.

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