Milk Thistle

Homily from Saturday morning worship- LREDA fall con

I met a man on my way to the rental car office after landing in Denver. He was probably in his mid 50s- i gathered by his smile when I implied we were peers as our conversation drifted to teenaged children, finding jobs, the value of a degree, and college cost- how much it’s changed since we were young. He is a black man who lives in Las Vegas and sells cars for a living. He shared with me that he loves Las Vegas, and we both looked down as we spoke about the recent shootings. “I think, I said, that we live in a country that values money and profit more than human life.” And he nodded and we both fell silent, until he added, “it won’t change.” 

And then he asked me what I do for a living, and I had that moment that I imagine many of you also experience, where I want to answer with 10 sentences, not 5 words: I am a Religious Educator, i say. And then i feel paralyzed, because somehow his comment - “it won’t change”- made me fear that my work- my faith- must seem like a waste of time to him. A religion rooted in an illusion, that: we can change.

But the truth is, our work is the opposite of that fear that bubbled up in me; to seek change is not illusive work. We will change, it is inevitable. It is simply a question of what that change looks like. I do not believe we have total control, but neither are we powerless. We each have the power to influence change-- at least in ourselves. 

“Milk Thistle teaches guerilla warfare.” Writes Aurora Levins Morales in her book, Remedios. “Adaptogen milagrosa, Milk Thistle works with what is here, the yellow layers of toxins, the charcoal grit, the green bile slow as crude oil pooling in the liver's reservoirs, waiting to learn to flow. Milk Thistle says take what you are and use it. She's a junkyard artist, crafting beauty out of the broken. She's a magician, melting scar tissue into silk. She's a miner, fingering greasy lumps of river clay for emeralds. She can enter the damaged cells of your life and recreate your liver from a memory of health. She can pass her hands over this torn and stained tapestry of memory and show us beauty, make the threads gleam with the promise of something precious gained. She will not flinch from anything you have done to keep yourself alive. Give it to me, she will say. I will make it into something new. She will show you your courage, hammered to a dappled sheen by use. She will remind you that you took yourself over and over to the edge of what you knew. She will remind you that the world placed limits on your powers. That you were not omnipotent. That some of the choices you made were not choices. Use what you are, she says again and again, insistent. You are every step of your journey, you are everything that has touched you, you are organic and unexpected. Use what you are.” 

Brave spaces are honest, and raw, and messy. They require us to look inward and find our boundaries, and then to push ourselves right up to their edge. 

Brave spaces are spaces where every person’s story matters, and is sought out. Where we are conscious of our limitations, and are open to guidance from one another. Brave spaces require authentic accountability, and they require trust- not just trust in one another, but trust in transformation. 

How do we embody milk thistle in our work. How do we recreate ourselves from a memory of health. Where do we find that memory?

What are the yellow layers of toxins, charcoal grit?

Because the suggestion is that it is in this ugly that we find our strength. And this resonates for me, when I look at my own life. It is in the ugly that I find my strength at least as much as in the beauty. The betrayals, the mistakes, the struggles, and losses, and challenges all pour into who I am- I am not me without them, and each time I face a new hardship, I am stronger because I have grown to know my own strength by the times before that I have been tested and survived.

“Give it to me,” Morales writes, “I will make it into something new.” That is the work set before us, dear ones. We are being called to find our courage and use what we are, in all of it’s messy, imperfect grandeur. We are being called to seek the truth and to speak the truth. To push ourselves, and to help others to see their own courage, so they can do the same. Aptogen Milagrosa, my friends. It even sounds like magic.

Let's get messy

I was asked by the ministers I work with if I would speak to our congregation about my vision for the future of Unitarian Universalism. I want to share that here, but I know that some of you are not UU's, and I hope you will still read this, because really, I don't see a difference at all between my hope for my faith and my hope for the world at large, for our families, communities, cultures, all of it. 

My hope is that we will get messier.

My friends, we need to keep at this work. I think some of us are on the right track right now, but we have been there before, and we’ve gotten tired and ducked back under the covers. 

I was watching the Yankees play in the ALCS Friday night and a commercial for the Free Masons popped up. The ad began with the statement: Being a man used to be simpler…

 I wonder if even 5% of the people watching that commercial flinched when they heard that claim? Statements like this are everywhere. Bids, being made to us in every corner of our lives, asking us to connect with an oversimplified statement of “truth” that is a far cry from the messy, complicated reality it is pretending to be.

It is hard to spend time trying to envision the future right now, because the future, when you really look at it, is ominous. I don’t blame people choosing to look away, it is understandable when the alternative- whether you are examining economics, politics, justice issues, or our planets health- is so bleak. Our problems are intertwined, and the power that might allow for change feels out of reach, or squandered, or misused.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover all the little and big challenges we are each facing individually:

Childhood

Parenting

Navigating friendships and romantic relationships

Missing those we love who have died.

Wishing we had more time with loved ones who are living.

Aging

Caring for those who are sick

Trying to make sure we, ourselves, are cared for

Health, Money, aspirations, dreams

Life is messy. And it’s complicated. It has always been that way, but we have taught ourselves to pretend otherwise. Throughout history, most human civilizations have operated with the presumption that the only people who’s needs we really have to consider are those who hold power. That was never the truth, there was never a day in all of history where the needs of those in power were more important than the needs of those without power, and yet, this has always been our modus operandi- right up to this moment.

That is our human legacy- we have found it more ‘simple’ to meet the needs of some, than to do the work to meet the needs of all. It has been a game of kick the can that has gone on for many centuries, putting off messy, complicated work, and now we are wondering how we got here? And reminiscing for the time when ‘Being a man was simpler...”

My faith, Unitarian Universalism, was built from this mess. It has grown from centuries of humans grappling with the world around us and trying to find truth. Not the simplified truth that serves some at the expense of others, but the messy imperfect truth that brings tears along with laughter, loss along with gain, that offers transformation for all.

In practice, UU's still have a lot of work to do, but my vision is a faith where we seek relationship with others in part because it is the key to understanding one another deeply, and that understanding each other is essential to our ability to help each other move forward.

I envision a faith where we are each looking for our own flaws, and understand that admitting to them, and naming them is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of strength. Where making a mistake is seen as an opportunity- not that we hope for them to happen- but that we recognize they are inevitable and we grapple with the lessons they offer us.

There will always be ways that we miss the mark because of our own biases- which are largely invisible to us by design- but which we must always strive to see. 

I envision a faith where we put our children and youth on the top of our list of priorities in our congregations and in our larger communities because we know that they are our future, they are the remedy to short sighted thinking. Investing in their ability to see complicated truth is investing in the formation of the hearts and minds that might literally save humanity.

And through all of this, I envision a faith that offers a path for each of us to find meaningful spiritual practice that can ground us and guide us as we grapple with this messy work. We sing with abandon, and dance, and cry, and laugh. We are joy-filled and passionate.

When we are doing it right, this work is not something we fit into our life, it is the air we breathe.

When we are doing this right, we look messy.

We show up with stains on our shirts, or tears on our cheeks, if that is what the day brings.

We ask questions that we aren’t sure we’ve framed the right way.

We forgive each other but also hold one another accountable.

When we are doing this right, I believe, we are taking one step at a time, leading and following, breaking the trail some days and recharging while others among us forge forward the next.  

When we are doing this right, we are doing it together. Our hands get dirty, we look awkward and confused, and we feel in our hearts that we are on the right path.

May it be so.

Dear Parents,

Dear parents,

A few years back, as I was planning  orientation for our High School Youth group, I found myself trying to figure out how to address an issue we’d experienced the year prior, where many of our upper class students (Juniors and Seniors) has dropped out of church.

It was an unexpected departure of a large portion of the group, and it had been disruptive, as you might imagine, for a number of reasons, and it was complicated in ways that I don’t need to dig into here, but one interesting thing I had discovered as the year had played out, was that many of the parents of those youth were also dismayed at the choice their children were making. In a variety of interactions over the year, I found myself in conversations with these parents, and repeatedly, heard them say something along the lines of:

“I’m really disappointed, but I had told X that after Coming of Age ended, they could choose if they wanted to continue attending church. I wish they’d made a different choice.”

Every time I encountered a variation of this message, I found myself feeling increasingly curious as to what this meant in relation to our congregation, the RE program, and Unitarian Universalism.  I wondered if there was a lesson in what I was hearing from these parents. 

As a parent of a teenager, I understood that parenting through adolescence requires us to walk a confusing line between asserting family expectations and values while granting new autonomy and independence. We are preparing our children for the transition they will soon be making into adulthood. Parents are regularly observing the day to day of their teenaged child and determining whether or not to get involved- whether to enforce an expectation, follow up on a task to see if it’s been done, or help our teens out of a mess they’ve made. Sometimes multiple times a day, we are called to evaluate and determine a path, and often times when we make a choice to step in or speak up we are met with resistance. It is mentally exhausting work.

Essentially, we are looking for things we can cut loose, new privileges and responsibilities, and hoping that we choose the right things and the right time. Perhaps this means we stop checking their school grades and following up on missing assignments with them. Perhaps we stop helping them remember sports schedules, or suggesting strategies for managing their time. Some parents choose to let go of monitoring bed time, or ‘screen’ time. Our teens may now find themselves responsible for their own laundry, a job out of the home, even car insurance or gas money. Some of us stop requiring presence at family meals, or family vacations, and some of us tell them they can make their own choice about church.

None of those decisions are necessarily wrong. Not even the church one. This is what I found myself sharing with the parents of our high school youth group at orientation that evening a few years back. And I have had variations of this talk with many groups of parents since. It is a part of our coming of age orientation in 8th grade, and we return to it in the high school years.

As I listed off that not-at-all-exhaustive list above, of things we might renegotiate as our children move through adolescence, you might have heard things you would also have passed off to your own teen, and you may have heard other things you would never have let go. Every family is different, for a million reasons, and every family has to make their own decisions about how to navigate this beautiful, difficult, imperfect journey of raising children to be adults.

But.

Do not forget that your answers to all of those questions and so many others, are deeply tied to your values. And the choices you make around which expectations you continue to require of your teen, as well as the way that you frame those things you are passing off to them, it all communicates your values to your teenage child, and they are listening.

So, if it is important to you that your teenager is a part of their church community, then you may want to be more nuanced about how you give them autonomy in that arena. It is not all or nothing, I am not suggesting that you go to the mat and force them to come to youth group if they don’t want to do so, but be thoughtful, and don’t underestimate your influence.

Perhaps, instead of telling your child they can decide if they want to be a part of church, you might say, they can decide how they would like to be involved in church; That church is an important part of your family, but if they don’t want to participate in youth group, they can choose to come to service on Sunday mornings instead, or to volunteer in the nursery. In my family, I have given my son 3 Sundays a year (not counting the occasional school event conflict) where he can choose to opt out on youth group. This allows him to choose to prioritize a concert or other social event on occasion but he knows to choose carefully.  That works for us, but as I said before, every family is different, raising kids is a tricky, imperfect process, and if I’m doing my job right, this talk is helping you feel empowered not making you feel like you’re missing the mark.

The first time I shared these thoughts with a group of parents was an awakening for me as well, because I realized as these words came to me, and as I saw my fellow parents relax into the message I was sharing with them, that this was another way that we learn from each other. My insight grew directly from deep sharing moments with multiple parents- from a relationship of trust and respect we shared with one another- and through that bond, and those conversations, I found the thread of something that can help buoy families still rising through our faith. It isn’t about finding one path and setting everyone upon it, it is about seeing patterns, and helping others anticipate them. Parents are the primary religious educators for their children, but none of us always feel confident in that role, and so we lean on one another, encourage one another, learn from each other, and we move forward together.

Farm and Country - (my TEDx talk)

[The following is the written piece I presented at TEDxPiscataquaRiver this past September. You can watch the actual talk Here.]

In April of 2016, a woman visited my family’s farm in NY where we teach people about the 40 years we have spent homesteading on our 16 acre farm- raising much of our own meat and vegetables. During a tour my mother led, they met Minnie, our Cow and in response to a question from the group about the cow’s age and how long she would live on our farm, my mother explained that Minnie was being raised for beef. The following day, this same woman called the farm wanting to buy the cow. She spoke with my dad, and explained that she was not, herself, a vegetarian, and did not have a problem with meat consumption per se, but felt that because our farm allowed people to visit our animals, we shouldn’t then be able use them for food. She explained that she wanted to buy the cow so it could be moved to a sanctuary where it could live out it’s life, and suggested that we might instead go to whole foods to buy our meat, like everyone else.

And when she was told, NO. That the cow was not for sale, this woman became angry.

She was not interested in understanding that living on a small farm was a lifestyle choice for my family. That raising an animal for meat and knowing that the animal was treated with kindness and fed healthy food was intentional and not at all the same as buying meat at whole foods. She did not understand the precedent that would be set if we were to comply to her request, and, perhaps most importantly, she did not feel we were entitled to say no to her.

The phone call that day did not end well. The woman eventually hung up, but first she ominously declared that she would find a way to save this cow.

As I spoke to my parents on that Monday from here in NH, and listened to them retell the events of the weekend, I got out my laptop to start looking on line. My stomach sank. In a period of less than 48 hours a facebook group titled: Save Minnie the Cow had been created, the local news channel had been contacted and my parents had agreed to an interview. The avalanche of viral media was in motion.

Over the course of two weeks, an unbelievable and unpredictable viral attack unfolded. I don’t need to share all the details with you, as I’m sure you’ve watched this new reality unfold in many contexts, and the script is usually very similar: 

An issue is identified as being above dispute, and a call to arms is declared. The sides: ‘Us vs. Them’ are established.

People far and wide become engaged as the news media latches on to the story

On each side of the issue participants lose sight of the humanity in the people with whom they are now in opposition- eliminating any need to see the other’s point of view, to try to understand the other’s experience, or even to agree to disagree.

Sounds familiar, right?

In a matter of days someone had created a change.org petition to Save Minnie the Cow. Quickly to follow, another person (this one on “our” team (I never found out who it was) had created a counter petition titled ‘Save Benner’s Farm’.

No matter that we did not need saving

No matter that this was a non-issue. We had every right to make the choice that we were making.

On the farm, baby lambs were being born, school classes were visiting, seedlings were sprouting in the greenhouse. The rhythm of the life my family chose continued, almost without pause, but, the fear of what was happening online was very real. The incessant phone calls to my parent’s house, and threats. The seemingly non-negotiable anger of the people coming at us, was terrifying.

From the moment I started monitoring this frenzy, I experienced an intense mix of adrenaline and fear for my family and the farm. It was all happening so fast, and few participants on either side seemed to take pause before throwing more fuel on the fire.

There is great wisdom in ignoring a lot that happens on social media.

However, it became quickly apparent that April, that if we did not use our own voice, people who felt protective of us would speak for us, in a way that often made things worse.  So I settled in and tried to keep claim of our message. If for no other reason, than to assure those who were rising to our defense that we had things under control, and that they could get back to their own lives.

I wrote a short statement clarifying what had happened which I posted on the protest page that had been set up. In my post, I identified who I was and I tried to avoid sounding defensive. I also agreed to remain online for about half an hour should anyone have further questions, and I listened to the comments that came streaming back to me, sorting through the hateful, angry retorts, and lifting up any response that sounded half-way rational by replying with sincerity and an interest to come to a mutual understanding. My message was simple: ‘we respect alternate perspectives, but we have a right to our choice.’ I wanted the people who were still to come to this protest page to hear that message, and so I planted it there. I placed similar statements on both of the change.org sites, and pasted it in response to the nasty reviews that were popping up on Yelp, and on our business page.

My clarity during all of this came from an understanding that has been growing in me, about how the culture we live in operates. I could see in this bizarre conflict the dangerous outcome that emerges from us living lives in isolation of other kinds of experiences, which compels us to expect agreement.

In this story, there is a visible disconnect that stems from people’s lives having become so far removed from the source of their food, that they are unable to relate to the realities of farming. The fact that most of the 4 million people living on Long Island have no direct experience with animal husbandry has quite literally made my family’s lifestyle a museum of sorts- a window into something that most do not know first hand.

Our willingness to vilify that which we don’t understand seems to have become dangerously common--in part because we are not challenged to navigate diverse opinions, cultures, and experiences in our day-to-day interactions. Many of us live in bubbles surrounded by people so much like ourselves that we can hardly imagine it could be any different. Online, that is perhaps even more true, as we get to friend and unfriend voices based on our comfort with them. We read a headline and come to a conclusion about what we think in a matter of seconds, and then we pass judgement with a thumbs up or down. We take intensely complicated issues, and we let them be simplified to that value of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, according to the team we have chosen, rarely giving any more thought to the details that have been washed away in the process.

 Communities today are isolated from one another across socioeconomic lines and across political lines. We find the means to buy into the best school districts, or we are shut out. Decades of discriminatory housing policies have resulted in whole communities that are almost entirely white folks, and other neighborhoods that are almost solely communities of color.

The story of Minnie the cow gives us a way in to examine the danger that emerges from living in isolation from one another. During the two week attack, we received messages from people as far away as Australia- Farmers all over the world, sending us encouraging notes, asking us to stay strong, because they have experienced similar attacks on their businesses, on their lifestyles. At the protest that was held on the street in front of our house on our opening day, the original cow activists found themselves sparring with PETA activists who had joined in, but disagreed on the reasons for why the cow should be saved. Across the street, a counter protest was populated mostly by a group who called themselves “bikers for Trump”, these guys had determined that this protest was clearly the work of liberals and they were there to stand up for the farmers. (I chose not to mention that my whole family was a bunch of liberals ourselves- it seemed like it was best to leave that alone)

When the dust started to settle at my family’s farm last April, we emerged relatively unscathed. Our long time connections within the community, teaching children, sharing lessons about the beauty and grace of living off the land, proved to be a potent shield against a sudden emotional attack. If anything, the drama provided a massive advertising campaign, for the cost of some restless nights and some long hours in front of a computer screen.

It offered something else as well, a reminder-

to look more closely,

to withhold judgment,

and most importantly, to honor the value of different experiences and perspectives.

It is necessary if we want to begin to tackle some of the mess we’ve made on our beautiful planet. Coming across a different opinion should not signal us to draw our weapons, rather, let’s see it as an opportunity to reach out from our own bubble and into that of another.

Burnt Toast

I like eating burnt toast because it reminds me of my great-grandfather.

My brothers and I called him Ya Ya Papa.
I don't burn it on purpose, but whenever I burn toast by mistake, I eat it happily because it makes me think of him-

his fine gray hair combed neatly
his black suit and white shirt that somehow never looked too formal, and is the only clothing I can ever remember him wearing.

His hands.  His old, elegant, delicate hands.
My great grandfather lived to be 94 and spent the last years of his life in my grandmother’s house on Townsend St- we called her Lala, named by my older brother because she never knew the words to the lullabies she sang to him. He would coo back to her “more lala” and she chose to hear it as a name- a term of endearment that would last through the rest of her days.
When we would visit Townsend St. my three brothers and I would climb up on Ya Ya Papa’s lap and kiss his cheek, and he would always give us a crisp dollar bill and pat our hands and share secret observations about each of us in Norwegian to Lala. They would pass smiles about his comments as they’d watch us play with toys stored in Lala’s basement waiting for our visits.

Ya Ya Papa was a night owl, and slept until almost noon each day. When he woke, my grandmother would bring him breakfast. Half a banana, a bowl of oatmeal, a soft boiled egg set in a porcelain egg cup, black coffee, and burnt toast with butter.
And they would chat with a mix of Brooklyn English and Norwegian phrases, and they would smile, and he would eat from the tray set on his lap, and read the paper, turning the pages with his long fingers, that everyone has always said looked a lot like mine. My grandmother always seemed so young when she sat with her daddy, and they didn’t know it, but they were teaching me about choosing love in every moment we shared. Without any big pronouncements, or oversized efforts. Just choosing every day to offer what they had to give to each other, just right, burnt toast and all.

Illumination

Homily offered at LRE conference on Star Island. July 16, 2017 

My ten year old came in and sat on my bed this morning as I was looking out the window toward sailboats in the harbor, thinking about tonight’s worship. He asked me why I had my computer out on my lap and when I told him what I was working on, he asked to hear the poem transcribed onto my screen.

I share poems with him often, we both love them, and smile at each other when we come to the last words. But this morning, he was also a welcome test subject, as I wondered if, in listening, it was likely for an audience to catch some of the important details in the poem. So I read it without introduction, and when my suspicion was confirmed that it might not be clear to everyone what the author was describing, I read it through again, explaining first to him, that in the poem, Natasha Trethewey was writing about her experience reading a second hand book, with penciled-in notes in it’s margins. 

Illumination    by, Natasha Trethewey

Always    there is something more to know

    what lingers    at the edge of thought

awaiting illumination         as in 

    this second-hand book    full 

of annotations        daring the margins in pencil

a light stroke as if                    

    the writer of these small replies

meant not to leave them     forever    

    meant to erase

evidence of this private interaction        

    Here     a passage underlined    there 

a single star on the page

    as in a night sky    cloud-swept and hazy

where only the brightest appears

    a tiny spark        I follow 

its coded message    try to read in it 

the direction of the solitary mind 

        that thought to pencil in 

a jagged arrow         It 

    is a bolt of lightning

where it strikes

    I read the line over and over 

as if I might discern 

    the little fires set

the flames of an idea     licking the page

how knowledge burns     Beyond

    the exclamation point

its thin agreement     angle of surprise

there are questions        the word why 

So much is left    
        untold         Between 

the printed words     and the self-conscious scrawl

    between     what is said and not

white space framing the story

    the way the past     unwritten

eludes us    So much 

    is implication         the afterimage 

of measured syntax        always there

    ghosting the margins that words

their black-lined authority

    do not cross          Even 

as they rise up         to meet us

    the white page hovers beneath

silent      incendiary    waiting 

I finished reading it through a second time and smiled down at my son, soaking up the spark in his eyes-- his smile. And we talked about the author’s words and I told him what I was thinking I might want to say tonight— and that also, I might want to use a different poem, and we read that too--

Eve, Oh Eve

By Taslima Nasrin

Why wouldn’t Eve have eaten of the fruit?

Didn’t she have a hand to reach out with,

Fingers with which to make a fist?

Didn’t Eve have a stomach for feeling hunger,

A tongue for feeling thirst,

A heart with which to love?

Well, then, why wouldn’t Eve have eaten of the fruit?

Why would she merely have suppressed her wishes,

Regulated her steps,

Subdued her thirst?

Why would she have been so compelled

To keep Adam moving around in the Garden of Eden all their lives?

Because Eve did eat of the fruit,

There is sky and earth

Because she has eaten,

There are moon, sun, rivers, seas,

Because she has eaten, trees, plans and vines.

Because Eve has eaten of the fruit

there is joy, because she has eaten there is joy.

Joy, joy-

Eating of the fruit, Eve made a heaven of the earth.

Eve, if you get hold of the fruit

don’t ever refrain from eating.

---

And my son looked at me, and asked

Who is Eve?

---

And then I was reading from the bible. Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent and God.

And then I was explaining to him, how the bible isn’t necessarily meant to be interpreted as fact so much as stories that we might learn from- metaphors for the world around us.

And that in the poem, Taslima is giving a different interpretation of that bible story, that perhaps it is the very choice Eve made to eat the apple, which represents our liberation. That before they ate from the tree of knowledge, they were not so much happy as they were unaware. She is saying that the Joy we know in this world was just as out of reach as the suffering until that moment. 

YES.

It’s all of it, and I know this isn’t a new idea, but it’s so important for us to keep remembering that we cannot hide from the work without giving away our rest. We cannot hide from mistakes without giving away forgiveness. We cannot forget that our understanding of history is only as complete as the wholeness of it’s telling.

And so, as I put down Genesis, my son and I started talking about who gets to tell the stories of our history. This question is so important, who gets to tell our stories? Are we asking who’s story is being told when we learn a new story, are we making note of who is doing the telling? Are we careful to leave space for more truth, even when we are the storyteller?

At the theme talk this morning, Reverend Renee Ruchotzke began by sharing some of the ideas that are driving her work in this moment, other people’s ideas, in which she has found her own understanding. She made a point of saying that she doesn’t see her task this week as a presentation of her own work so much as a threading together of several other people’s ideas. She continued on to describe her presence here as a part of her process in seeking understanding, she spoke about co-creation, and posed the question: What would it look like for our faith to be built around an ethos of mutual creativity, and I wanted to say AMEN. (but I didn’t, because our rooms are still so quiet, and I wasn’t feeling brave enough to break that proper silence)

And, also, aren’t we? At least amongst religious educators, aren’t we living an ethos of mutual creativity, or moving in that direction? Because I witnessed this spring, a collaboration unlike anything I have ever seen with the white supremacy teach-in. I witnessed leaders among us, Kenny Wiley, and Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera, (and so many others) recognize that in the midst of conflict there was an opportunity for us to grow as a faith. They saw (like so many of us educators) that magic moment where discordance pulls peoples attention toward one another, and those moments are scary, because they can end badly, but they also hold a potential for shift that is hard to manufacture. And when a teacher sees that opportunity, and has the wisdom to approach it with intention, great things can happen. That is what I saw this spring. Kenny, Aisha, and Christina came together with the support of many other colleagues, and they decided on a plan, and then they came to our wider network of religious educators through email and facebook, and they put out a call, and – this is an important detail—then they put a significant amount of time and thought into creating support materials for religious educators to use in their congregations if they were willing to join in the call for the #whitesupremacyteach-in.

And congregations joined- in droves. More than 800 congregations representing every state as well as Canada and overseas, and over a period of two Sundays, this action shifted the lexicon of our entire faith.

It did not obliterate White Supremacy culture, and it did not place conversations about White supremacy culture into an entirely safe space for marginalized people in our faith communities, but it shifted our language. I know this, because at GA this year, I heard the term White Supremacy culture countless times, and almost no one batted an eye. Everyone (seemingly) understood what was being said, in stark contrast to the reactions I witnessed to that same term in March and early April this year.

That doesn’t mean were done, it doesn’t mean there is not still a significant journey ahead of us if we are serious about transforming our UU culture, but it does mean that we can talk about the elephant in the room, that we are more likely to see who has been telling the story for too long at the expense of other experiences and perspectives.

Making that teach-in happen was co-creation. It was giving of your gifts to the best of your ability for the benefit of all, not for individual gain. It was putting aside other work, collaborating, reading, researching.

And I see that all the time.

Religious educators and RE volunteers, finding something that resonates with their students or stumbling on an idea, and sharing it out to the rest of us who are doing this ministry, because of course, we want to help carry each other along.  

This is a wildly complicated time. There are huge challenges in front of us, strong forces working to move our world in the wrong direction, and we have a long neglected history for which we must make amends so we can start to heal. But we are not working in isolation, and we are not spinning our wheels. I see deep intention in our faith right now, clarity of vision. I am hopeful and grateful and inspired.

In ‘The Fire Next Time’, James Baldwin wrote

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Listen for stories from fresh voices. Look for signs in the margins.

Blessed be.