Evolving Together (March 8, 2015)

Reading: From Ask the Beasts by Elizabeth Johnson
A multi-year study by Peter and Rosemary Grant documented how finch beaks differ from short, narrow and shallow to long, wide and deep, the differences in dimensions correlating with the birds’ ability to harvest different types of seeds. In 1977 the [Galapagos] islands experienced a severe drought. Food was so scarce that no birds produced young that year. Only 15 percent of the adults survived to reproduce when the rains finally came. Those that survived had longer, wider, deeper beaks that enabled them to crack the tougher seeds in the seed bank. Their offspring inherited that trait. In 1983 a continuing deluge of rain carpeted the islands with grass, providing an abundance of small soft seeds. Finches with smaller beaks were more able to harvest the available seeds; many produced multiple sets of offspring. After this time the average bird in the population had a shorter, narrower beak, thus reversing the change that had occurred during the drought. As Reznick trenchantly observes, “This reversal is telling because it says that there is not a universal ‘best’ bird. Whether a given feature of an individual gives it an advantage of another depends entirely on the circumstance, be it drought or flood. This is a good illustration of the fact that evolution does not progress in any particular direction, but is rather a response to present conditions in the moment. If conditions change, then so will the selection experienced by populations. If conditions remain constant, it is possible there will be no evolution at all.” [P. 91-92]


Reading: From Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams

In 1950 government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navaho reservation in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep.

The Navajo elders objected, insisting, “If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.”

The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan. The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert near Chilchinbito, Arizona, became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan. The result; fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion. [p. 87]

Sermon- Evolving Together

When Darwin developed his theory of evolution, it didn’t come to him in one “aha” moment, but emerged over years of observing the natural world. Just after college he famously spent 5 years on the HMS Beagle as a self-appointed naturalist doing those things many of us did as kids, turning over rocks, watching critters, collecting fossils, catching tadpoles in a jar, or just staring at that natural world around him as the Beagle charted the coast of South America. Now what he did that most of us didn’t do was keep a series of meticulous leather bound diaries of all he saw, and how it all fit together. For twenty some years he observed and wrote and thought until in his 50s he finally published “The Origin of Species.”  

At the time he wrote this book, the prevailing scientific view was that “Each species came about by an independent act of creation.” [Johnson p. 33] That is to say, each individual species was created exactly as it is today by the hand of God. This theory is called “Special Creation.” Darwin proposed the radical new idea that species changed gradually over time without any supernatural intervention. At first Darwin called this theory “Descent with Modification” because common species can be traced back to common ancestors found in the fossil record. As natural variations occur in the species, some of these modifications would be beneficial, some would not. Darwin Wrote “This preservation of favorable variation and the rejection of injurious variation, I call Natural Selection…We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages” [Johnson p.28] This idea shook the foundations of both the religious and scientific establishments which were committed to the “special creation” theory. 

By 2015 the entire scientific community has rallied around Darwin’s “Natural Selection” theory, but the theory of special creation can still be found in churches, and on school boards, and in the houses of Congress. This is why once a year we join with other communities of faith to remind ourselves, to remind the world, that scientific and religious truth are not enemies, but together weave our understanding of the life we share. On Evolution Weekend, we tell true stories written in the body of the world. 

Darwin wrote in the final paragraph of his On the Origin of Species (1859):

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.”

He could have been talking about the story we just heard about the Mangrove tangle, and there are in fact mangroves in some of the places he traveled in his 5 years on the Beagle. Although all those little critters who, in our story, said “I could live here and find food and safety” are in the real world not individuals making a life choice, these are the species whose grandparents and great great grandparents co-evolved with the mangrove trees, and with the bacteria that live there, and the whole tangle of beings who not only live together but change and are changed by one another over thousands of years of living in natural community.

By way of contrast, my front window looks out on a number of trees and bushes full of seeds and berries, but none of the critters in my neighborhood seem at all interested in eating them. That’s because these trees and shrubs were purchased by some landscaper or arborist and planted there as relative strangers to the natural community. My squirrels and juncos and cardinals did not co-evolve with those plants, and so they remain as strangers, and their fruit goes uneaten.
“Evolution is a relational Process” says Elizabeth Johnson, Theologian and author this book Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. [p. 120] The plants and critters who live in Darwin’s tangled bank, are “dependent on each other in so complex a manner.” As Darwin wrote “… how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life” [p. 121]

These beings shape and are shaped by one another not only un competition for scarce natural resources, like the finches on the Galapagos Islands - evolving their beaks in local niches based on what food was available, and what beak shape they need to better access that food, but consider also clams or crabs or lobsters, with soft vulnerable bodies, who evolved hard shells or carapaces, for protection from their “predators, which followed suit by evolving body parts that pierce, chew, or even saw through these protections.”[i]

 My friend and colleague Scott Prinster offered a more gentle collaborative example as well between “hummingbirds and honeysuckle. The flowers evolve nectar that attracts the birds and fits their dietary needs (hummingbirds need enormous amounts of sugar to fly and keep their bodies from overheating). The flowers have also developed bright colors and unusually ornate shapes to attract the birds, and they bloom during the hummingbirds' breeding season. In return, the hummingbirds pollinate the flowers, which are not as attractive to bees as other kinds of flowers.”

Darwin’s theory is a profoundly relational one.

 Unfortunately, this idea of the “survival of the fittest” which did not even appear in Darwin’s work until the 5th edition of his famous book, has turned our popular understanding of the profoundly relational process of evolution, into a social theory that prizes the strength of the individual. In Darwin’s day, British Political Theorist Herbert Spencer co-opted the theory of descent by modification into a political theory in which there are inevitable winners and losers in human society. “Social Darwinism” holds that “the powerful in society are innately better than the weak; that their success is proof of their superiority.” Often Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetic line “Nature, red in tooth and claw”[ii] is used to suggest the violence of the natural world, to convince us that “only the strong survive.”

But remember, evolution is not about the survival of the individual. It is about the survival of a species, a community of species, of life itself. As Rosemary and Peter Grant’s work with finches points out, there is no single best bird. Instead the many varieties of life’s creative expression, ensure the survival of whatever form is most suited to this time and place in an ever changing world. Survival in nature is not limited to the arms race between predator and prey; sometimes it is cooperation, sharing or altruism that allows life to succeed. Did you know that Vampire bats will feed a starving bat who is not even related to them?[iii] As Elizabeth Johnson puts it: “Rather than existing as independent operators, all organisms live in intricate systems consisting of many such dynamic interchanges. Each ecosystem is unique. Each has intrinsic value … in a particular time and place...” [p. 119]

This misuse of Darwin’s theory not only seems to support the kind of escalating economic inequalities that UU’s around the country have chosen to study and confront together, but it also gives us the wrong picture of our role in the web of life. When we learn evolution in school (if we are lucky enough to live in a school district that allows it) we tend to study a single branch of the tree of life as it grows and branches and thrives or ends. Think of that classic drawing of the progression from ape to Homo Saipan. When we look at evolution this way it’s difficult to see the complex web of relationships by which species- plant, animal, bacterial, evolve together. 

Consider keystone species. This concept was first put forth by zoologist Robert T. Paine In 1969. Like a keystone in an arch, these species, when removed, cause the whole eco-system to collapse. Paine tested this theory by removing certain species from different eco-systems, and leaving other similar eco-systems alone. The systems where he removed the keystone species collapsed. For example, in the system where he removed the sea star from its rocky costal habitat, 7 out of 15 species he measured disappeared. While in the control systems all the species persisted.[iv] The groundhog, from our first reading, is a keystone species. Williams writes “More than 200 species of wildlife have been associated with prairie dog towns, with over 140 species benefiting directly, including bison, pronghorn antelope, burrowing owls, pocket mice, deer mice, ants, black widow spiders, horned larks, and many predators such as rattlesnakes, golden eagles, badgers, bobcats, weasels, foxes, coyotes and especially black-footed ferrets.” When prairie dogs are taken out of their eco-system, 9 vertebrate species disappear or sharply shrink in numbers. We evolve together. We live and die together.

Recently Sen. Lisa Murkowski was interviewed about President Obama’s plans to designate 12 million acres of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness. She responded in part: “There's so much focus on the wildlife, on the polar bear and the critters and the birds. And they are important. Don't get me wrong. But equally important - more important - is the obligation that we have to the people who live there” [v] This is a point many politicians have made over the years when someone tries to protect an eco-system in jeopardy. But I believe this poses a false dichotomy. It ignores how deeply we humans are woven into the web of life, how we too have co-evolved with plants, and animals, and bacteria. We may think we don’t need the groundhog, which ruins our golf courses, and might or might not limit the amount of grass our sheep can graze on, but not even humans can thrive on a hard-pan desert. The political rhetoric pitting Alaskan wildlife against human welfare ignores the complexity of this web of relationships, and the thousands of generations it took for us to weave the web of life as we know it. If we remove keystone species, of we tip an eco-system past the point where it can recover, it will take thousands more generations for a new eco-system to evolve.

I think the story of the Mangrove which found its niche as a genus of tree that can survive in salt-water is beautiful and inspiring. The birds, and crustaceans and sea mammals that shelter there and eat there have evolved together to share that habitat. The ecosystem shelters and feeds them, and they in turn feed it. It’s so elegant; the way mangrove islands protect our coral reefs from the silt runoff from clearcutting, and filter pollutants that run off our roads and farms. The mangrove islands absorb some of the wave strength of storms, protecting our coasts. The mangrove tree and all its living community survived because of the success of their interrelatedness. When we say “survival of the fittest” we are not talking about the kind of “fit” you get at a gym, a;; much strength and power, but living beings who “fit” together like an incredibly complex puzzle.

Perhaps that complexity is why we illustrate the history of our human evolution as one line of hominids marching in procession, without pausing to fill in the whole picture. If we really understood the complexity of each eco-systems that created us, we might wonder about the complexity of the eco-systems we inhabit now : the groundhogs we exterminate to make room for our grazing animals, or the mangrove forests we cut down to make shrimp farms. If we really took the time to understand this interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part[vi], we would be humbled by it I think. Understanding the true complexity of our world is not only a spiritual act of respect and gratitude, but pragmatic act. We provide a more accurate blueprint for our own survival when we see the web than when we imagine that we who are most fit can somehow survive alone.

So if this sermon has inspired you to boycott shrimp that is farmed unsustainably, or if it inspires you to lobby your Fish and Wildlife service to protect the Utah prairie dog from extinction, that’s wonderful. But just as important, I hope you will look with new eyes at the eco-system you live in, at the ones you visit on vacation, at the eco-systems where your food is harvested. To look with humility and awe at their beautiful complexity, and with gratitude for our living community which forms us and shelters us and shaped us just like that tangled bank.

Endnotes

[i] Thanks again to the Rev. Scott Prinster for this

[ii] In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850. The quotation comes in Canto 56 (it is a very long poem)

[iii] Jerry Wilkinson, chair of biology at the University of Maryland-College Park,http://www.radiolab.org/story/105440-blood-buddies/

[iv] http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/keystone-species-extinct.htm

[v] http://www.npr.org/2015/01/27/381783164/sen-murkowski-critical-of-proposed-plan-for-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge

[vi] http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles/index.shtml

Why We Suffer (April 5, 2015)

Each one of us has experienced loss. Each one of us has experienced pain. And on those blessed days we ourselves are free from suffering, we have only to look out at the world with a compassionate heart to know that suffering is always present. I suspect that this is one of the main reasons people lose their faith: when confronted with the reality of suffering it all seems meaningless. When we come together on Sunday morning we want to be renewed in hope and gratitude and compassion, but if our religious tradition cannot accompany us to the depths of life, it will not be enough to support us when we need it most.

We are atheists, agnostics and theists together here today, but our common ground is the physical world in which we live. Walking in a path through the woods, or even just through my own back yard I observe that no living being seems to be exempt from pain and loss. All forms of life know death. All forms of life seem to experience destruction and decay. When my family and I drove through Yellowstone Park for the first time, we were amazed to see acre after acre that burned during the great fire of 1988. Decades later the charred remains of trees were the dominant feature of that landscape. 248 fires that burned that summer; hundreds of thousands of acres burned. The first fires began in July, but it wasn’t until November that the snows had cooled all the fires enough for rangers to assess the damage, to tally the destruction to buildings, to count those elk, deer, moose, bear and bison who had died in the blaze. 
 
As the fires raged, so did the political debate about how they could have been prevented, about how we could keep this from happening ever again. Maybe, some argued, if we had allowed more forest fires to burn in previous decades there would have been less fuel this one summer of drought. Of the 7 major fires that did 95% of the damage, 3 were caused by human hands. So in a very pragmatic way, we know why suffering happens: some is caused purposefully, some by human accident, but the great majority is simply the interaction of natural forces in an apparently impersonal, inevitable way. That is to say, loss is part of life. Pain is part of life. Decay is part of life. Even the sudden, violent force of a great fire, a blizzard, or a tsunami are part of life. 

By the time we drove through the park in 2007, a new generation of trees and undergrowth and elk had rushed to fill in the scarred landscape. While the charred remains of the burned trees still stood starkly against the sky, an abundance of new growth crowded in dramatically illustrating the way that pain and loss are always followed by new growth, by new life. For those of us whose faith is grounded in the natural world, this is the meaning of suffering; each life that ends feeds the new life that follows. As Wendell Berry writes so elegantly “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…what they take in they change, but they change it always into a form necessary for its use by a living body of another kind. And this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures.”  [The Unsetting of America p. 85-86] This is why pagan traditions that grew up in a climate like ours, (where a cold dark winter is followed by a riotous growth of new life in the spring and summer) celebrate the spring equinox as a holiday of rebirth. The earth reminds us with her very body that dark is followed by light, and what seems to be an end is followed by a new beginning. 
 
The question of suffering is a more challenging question for those of us who in a transcendent God, a personal God who cares about each being. Why would such a god allow suffering? It is easy to imagine that it has something to do with us. It’s a popular theological idea that suffering happens when someone has been bad, that suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure. Being free from suffering, therefor, has something to do with being good, with being faithful. I think the reason we make this leap is more psychological than theological; it allows us to look the other way when we see suffering because “they probably deserve it.” When we see someone suffering we want to assure ourselves that this will never happen to us- if we are good enough, careful enough. When we ourselves are suffering we want to believe that there is something we can do to end it, to control it. But our Universalist tradition does not support the notion that a loving god would have punished all the inhabitants of those Yellowstone forests for some wrong they had done. When that Tsunami hit Japan in 2011, we do not believe it was the providential hand of God intervening to smite. It was a natural disaster which swept away innocent and guilty, careful and reckless, lonely and loved. 

As one who was not raised in the Christian tradition, I have always wondered about the centrality of the cross in contemporary Christian Theology. But slowly I am beginning to understand something about that symbol. In Christian Theology Jesus was the incarnation of God. Christ is God manifest in the world, in flesh like ours. Christ’s suffering, which Catholics ritualize in the Stations of the Cross during lent, tells a story not about a god who punishes the bad with suffering, and protects the good, but of suffering coming even to one who was closest to God. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus depicts a God who took on the suffering of humans, and suffered with us in this world. 

There has been a great debate throughout Christian history about whether or not Jesus truly suffered on the cross. Some feel that because of his divine nature Jesus escaped suffering, or perhaps even as a man he was so holy that he experienced only his closeness to God. To me that reduces the power of the story. A loving God, a caring God is not one who is exempt from the suffering all living beings share. A loving God is one who knows our suffering, and who suffers with us.  

When lying in a hospital bed scared and in pain, when facing foreclosure on our family home, or when reeling from a betrayal by someone we loved and trusted, it is natural to feel that God has abandoned us. The story of the crucifixion offers a different perspective- that God is never separate from any part of this living world we share, even when it suffers. 

As my family and I noticed in the great forest ravaged by fire, new life follows suffering. Jungian Spiritual Director Don Bisson asserts “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” We know this cold long winter will someday turn into spring. In the Christian story, the crucifixion is followed by resurrection. What we don’t get to know is “why.” Science and our observation of nature show us “why” in a causal sense- we know what forces lead to a Tsunami, investigators discovered how those fires in Yellowstone were started. But theologically, this suffering will always be a mystery. We can imagine an alternate history, an alternate universe in which there are no deadly forces of nature, in which humans never betray or do violence to one another. Saying “suffering is a mystery” can sound like a cop-out. But I know that when I hear about a tragedy, my mind immediately protects itself from the reality of suffering by imagining I can defend myself from it: I take comfort in the fact that I live too far from the ocean for a tsunami to ever threaten my home, I lock my door, I buy homeowners insurance. We want to protect ourselves from the truth that suffering comes to all living beings, and we cannot control or predict it. This is what I mean when I say “suffering is a mystery.” It is easier to hold on to the idea that if I am only good enough, suffering will pass me by. But if we look at the stories of those we elevate as living truly good lives- Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, these are not lives free from suffering. These are folks who responded to suffering with transformative goodness. 

Part of the question “Why do we suffer” is “how do we respond to suffering?” I believe the first thing we are called to do is to “stay awake” as Jesus asked his followers to do in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is really hard, whether it is our own suffering, or the suffering of others. But as Jungian psychology suggests, there is an enormous psychic cost to “falling asleep” to our suffering. I imagine each of us in this room has events in our past that we’d rather not think about, memories too painful to examine. And so our psyches provide us with the useful coping mechanism of being able to repress, ignore, turn away from those memories. But I hope that each one of us has also had an experience of looking with courage at some painful memory, or looking with courage at some unhealthy dynamic in our life and found that when we did the energy for transformation, for new life was released. Certain kinds of healing and growth and are only possible when we can stay awake to that pain. Not clinging to pain, not pushing it away, but just being able to stay awake in the presence of it. 

Buddhist Activist Joanna Macy has devoted her life’s work to the belief that staying awake to suffering is necessary to the healing of the world. She writes “[pain] is inseparable from the currents of matter, energy, and information that flows through us and sustain us as interconnected open systems. We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When the body is traumatized, we sense that trauma, too. When it falters and sickens, we feel its pain. Whether we pay attention to it or not.”

This is what it means to be part of the interconnected web of life. When the mangrove trees are cut down to make room for shrimp farming, the coastline suffers. When the prairie dog is exterminated, dozens of other species suffer, even the soil suffers. Many Unitarian Universalists have had profound spiritual experiences in nature, feeling the beauty and peace of an old growth forest, feeling deeply connected in a numinous moment. But that very connection to nature opens us up to profound pain as well, when we see that forest ravaged by fire, or clear-cut by human hands. 

Macy continues: “That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisms, pain has a purpose; it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action.” [Coming Back to Life p. 27]

For those of us who believe the divine is not separate from the world, that the spirit of life is present in every tree, every cricket, every human being, we know that God is part of the body of the earth as we are part of the body of the earth. This calls us to deepen our connection to the web of which we are a part, and to witness, to speak out, to call one another to action when we are aware of the suffering in any part of the web. When this fellowship collects donations for Second Place East, it is because you are aware of the suffering in your community. When Leslie went and got herself arrested trying to protect Seneca Lake from plans to store methane, propane, and butane in unlined, depleted salt caverns it was because she understood how deeply we are all connected to this web of life.

One reason we start each service with Joys and Concerns, is because we know this beloved community must be able to hold our good news with sympathetic joy, and to hold our suffering with compassion. This is not always easy. This morning we have all been deeply affected by the news of a beloved church member's failing health. We hurt for her and for her husband and for one another. Not only do we feel empathy for one another, but the pain and sadness we share today may remind us of other losses in our own lives that we are still grieving. They may remind us of our own fragility, our own mortality. The very word “Compassion” comes from the root words meaning “to suffer together.” The more we are able to stay awake to our own suffering, the more we are able to be present to the suffering of others. Even when we can’t fix it or take it away, acknowledging the reality of suffering in the world helps us grow in our compassion for one another. 

This week our Christian neighbors celebrated holy week, remembering the story of Jesus’s suffering and death. We too know something of suffering, and remember that even there in those hurting places the divine is present. Today Christians celebrate Easter, they celebrate rebirth. Now when the muddy earth is just beginning to emerge under the melting snowpack of a long hard winter, and the first green shoots are finally emerging, we too know something about rebirth. Remember that the spirit of life cannot be separated from the body of the earth, any more than we can. That spirit can be found both in the joy and in the sorrow. And there, even in the deepest suffering, is the promise of growth and new life.

 

It Is What It Is (January 11, 2015)

Reading: Neil deGrasse Tyson 

Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things...

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance. After all, the universe is mostly dark dotted by islands of light. 

Learning the age of the earth, or the distance to the stars, or how life evolved, what difference does it make? Well, part of it depends on how big a universe you want to live in. Some of us like it small. That's fine. Understandable. But I like it big. And when I take all of this into my own heart and my mind, and when I have that feeling I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality. I want to know what's in those dark places, and what happened before the big bang. I want to know what lies beyond the cosmic horizon and how life began. Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy have become alive and aware? I want to know my ancestors, all of them. I want to be a good strong link in the chain of generations. If we come to know and love nature as it really is then we will surely be remembered by our descendants as good strong links in the chain of life, and our children will continue this sacred searching, seeing for us as we have seen for those that came before. Discovering wonders yet undreamed of, in the cosmos. [Cosmos a Spacetime Odyssey- episode 13 "Unafraid of the Dark"]


Sermon: It Is What It Is

This year our whole family has been watching the remake of Carl Sagan’s classic show “Cosmos” this time narrated by Astro physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the very last minutes of the very last episode he said two things that I think are key to Unitarian Theology. The first shows a faith in truth and a faith in process: 

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

We believe that religious truth is not something we receive from an authority. Nor do we subscribe to that popular refrain “Unitarians can believe whatever they want.” Instead we believe in observation and experiment, in following the evidence wherever it leads.

This faith in evidence and observation is the well-spring of our tradition - and deGrasse Tyson puts it so beautifully: “… it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality.” Our imagination is nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality. 

Because of the stunning advances in Marriage Equality this year, I had the incredible privilege of marrying two couples in my congregation who have been together for over 30 years, and a young couple I recently met who have been together for just a couple of years. New couples are full of visions of an imagined future, whereas couples who have already spent a lifetime together are not entering into marriage in the abstract, they are committing to and celebrating a very particular relationship.

When I was a young married woman, I often felt self-conscious that my marriage didn’t look like marriages in the movies. Older married women would fill my mind with should: “he should do this” “if he loved you he would do that” “a healthy marriage is like this.” But as years passed, and against all expectations my partner Eric and I stayed together, I realized my fundamental mistake. We as UUs believe that each and every person is unique and special. Well, how on earth could you put together two absolutely unique people and create a marriage that looks just like, well, any marriage you have ever seen before? Our marriage was so much happier when I finally let go of what I imagined a marriage “should” be and just enjoyed the very really marriage I was living each day.

Like our handsome Prince Ronald, we have to decide if the princess of our dreams is the one who will risk life and limb and come to our rescue with her courage and quick wits, or whether she is the one that looks like the princess we have imagined. 

In her introduction to the Starr King Presidents lecture this past June at General Assembly, Rebecca Parker carefully proposed that: 

“Love seeks to know the other as ‘other.’ Not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights. From the other's own perspectives, the other's own practices and values. Love seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the "otherness" of the other.”

This is something Prince Ronald has not yet figured out, but I have a strong suspicion that any partnership that can last for 31 years is made up of two people who understands their partner to be “an other of sacred worth in the other’s own rights.”



Part of what makes the early days of a relationship so challenging is the tension between our expectations and reality. Not just a romantic relationship, but any relationship-- with friends, co-workers, neighbors. Because we unconsciously create a picture of the person we expect them to be. “A good neighbor does this. ” “A friend would do that.” “What else would you expect from that kind of person”. And so when your princess shows up in a paper bag, when your friend forgets your birthday, when your son drops out of art school to become a football player, it is a powerful moment. This is the moment when you know you are witnessing the other as other- not just as the person you expect them to be. 

Let’s face it-- those expectations are powerful. Every day we do something because “it’s expected of us.” When you experience someone defying expectation and exercising their freedom to be who they truly are, that moment can be disappointing, can be frustrating, but, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says “Our imagination’s nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality.” We may have to grieve the loss of the beautiful, spotless princess, but if we can let go of that imaginary being, real love, real friendship are possible. Reality is not always pleasant -- the reality of, for example, a roommate who doesn’t wash the dishes the way I would. A partner who doesn’t show love the way I do. A friend who doesn’t grieve the way I expect. The question is: can we lay aside which “might” have been, what “should” have been, and give our attention, our presence to what IS. 

Unitarian Universalists have preached tolerance of the other for many decades, but I am proposing something further. Love, as Rebecca Parker says, “seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the ‘otherness’ of the other.” This is where the alchemy of love occurs, the magic of love. When something totally UN-expected happens, something I would never have come up with myself, in that moment our relationship with our partner, our child, our friend is “real…it's not just something happening inside my own head.” There are, in fact, strains of theology that propose that this whole reality we perceive is “all in our own heads, just a dream” and maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, but the moment your grandson says that surprising, jaw-droppingly unique thing, you know that at least this is a dream you share with another.

When I was young I looked everywhere for the God I had read about in the Old Testament-- the God of burning bushes and parting waters, who offered commandments on the mountaintop. I never did meet this God. But remember what God says to Moses in the story of the burning bush, when Moses asks “who shall I say has sent me?” God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ [Exodus 3.14] One of the new authors I have been introduced to on my sabbatical is Thomas Hart, a Catholic Theology professor and a Family and Marriage Counselor. He writes:

“Coping well with reality is coping well with God. Escaping reality into a separate realm, however spiritual the motive, runs the risk of missing the real encounter with God, and the kinds of growth that come from that encounter.” [The Art of Christian Listening, p. 34]

Hart is suggesting that if we are only looking for God in burning bushes and parted waters, maybe we are missing something. I know that we here today are a very theologically diverse group. I want to speak first to the theists and the agnostics and offer this proposition- to try to know God as God is, instead of what we expect God to be. 

Those expectations come from many places: from scriptures, from an old Sunday School teacher, from television. Sometimes those expectations come from past experiences -- times in our life when we had a felt sense of the divine, or sought God and found nothing. Maybe wee found god hiking on a mountaintop one awe-filled day, but when we return to that very spot it felt empty. Without realizing it, we create a very small place for God to exist in our own imaginations, one with clear rules and expectations that God often disappoints. Are these spiritual expectations coming between us and what really Is? Because God is most certainly “other.” Can we allow God to be God? To be other "not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights.”?

In my own personal theology I believe that God is indwelling in everything that is. There is no place in this amazing universe of ours where God is not. Whether you are looking through a telescope, or a microscope or into the face of your roommate or neighbor, the divine is not separable from what you see.

Now I want to assure the atheists in our community that I didn’t forget you. The words of deGrasse Tyson are not only the principles of scientific exploration, but can be guidance for spiritual exploration as well:

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. ... Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. .. Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance.”

When a scientist comes across something in their experiment and observation that defies their hypothesis, I imagine this must be very discouraging. When you realize that the person you married is never going to take ballroom dance classes with you, or even pick up her socks off the floor, this can fill us with anger and grief. But when we can begin to let go of what we hoped would be, when we can grieve and release what we expected to be, we can finally begin to see what is real, to come closer to the truth of the other, of our world. 

Jesuit Theologian Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as “A long loving look at the real” and this is how I see our UU spiritual journey, whether we are theist, atheist or agnostic. This is where our “free and responsible search” begins. I want to draw special attention to that word “love.” Rebecca Parker used it, Neil deGrasse Tyson used it too when he suggested “we come to know and love nature as it really is.” Remember back to a time when someone in your life looked at you with love… remember how that made you feel…Now remember a time when someone looked at you with disappointment, looked at you as if you had failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking. Love matters. It shapes how we respond to all we encounter. Reality is constantly growing and changing and evolving. Let us be careful that our dream of what might be doesn’t keep us from looking with love at what it already is.
This morning I challenge each of us open our hearts and minds to the world around us as it really is. Let’s take time to appreciate it and love it, not as we want it to be, as we expect it to be, but as it is unfolding in this moment. Reality does not exist in the abstract. By definition reality exists in you, as you really are in this moment, in me, as I am in this very moment, and in the sometimes surprising and even maddeningly unpredictable moment that emerges between us. “I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality”

Coming Out (November 23, 2014)

Harvey Milk gave that speech in 1978, 7 months after he became the first openly gay person in the United states to be elected to office. He had come to San Francisco at a time when the police regularly raided gay clubs, arresting folks they found there on “morals charges.” In those days you could be evicted for intimate acts in your own home. Gay business owners were refused business licenses. You heard Milk mention “Prop 6,” also called the “Briggs Initiative,” which would have banned gays and lesbians (and may be folks who supported gay rights) from working in the public schools in California. Discrimination was everywhere.

In the 1960s the Gay and Lesbian community had begun to fight back. Milk, who served in the Navy during the Korean war, and now owned a camera shop in the Castro, began running a grass roots campaign for City Supervisor in 1973. It took him 5 years, but through growing a web of relationships in his community, and by building coalitions with other communities, on election day in 1977 he was elected and prop 6 was defeated.

When Harvey Milk made that speech, coming out carried some significant risks. You could be fired for being gay, you could be evicted and you would have no legal recourse. Many who came out to their families were cast out or disowned. Milk was calling on all who would listen to do a very brave thing. I’m told that in those days Gay and Lesbian clergy met secretly together, organizing by word of mouth, knowing they would lose their ministry if anyone knew their truth. Today clergy are out in the pulpit, and out in the streets advocating for marriage equality. This fall two couples from our congregation were married in big public weddings in Bradford County Pennsylvania! There was a time when none of us could imagine such a thing. But by coming out to our families, to our friends, to our communities one by one, we have facilitated a great turning of the minds and hearts of people all over the world.

Meg Riley, one of the many openly gay clergy in our movement, believes that the way we began to turn the tide on marriage equality, and the way forward is “deep intimate conversations with people you know, and people you don't. Values based [conversations], where you start with what they think instead of bombarding them with facts about what you care about.” The tide started to turn when the Gay and Lesbian sons and daughters of Congressmen came out to their parents. By coming out to our neighbor, our barber, or boss we interrupted entrenched ideas about what it meant to be queer, about what it meant to be married. People opened their hearts and were changed. When I started writing this sermon 32 states legally recognize same sex unions, but with the latest rulings in South Carolina and Missouri it is now 34. When I was ordained 16 years ago, there was not a single state where I could perform a legal wedding. This is an amazing transformation that we should celebrate. We can be proud that Unitarian Universalism has been part of this good work.

When Apple CEO Tim Cook came out recently he was the first CEO of a major corporation to out himself while still serving in that capacity. He says of his decision:

"I don't consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I've benefited from the sacrifice of others," he said. "So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it's worth the trade-off with my own privacy."

Fortunately he serves Apple at a time and place where probably his job was not at risk for his courageous truth telling. But when Jason Collins, a Center in the NBA, became first openly gay man to actively play for a major professional sports team [vi] he knew that he worked in a profession rife with homophobia, where fellow players went on the record saying discriminatory things against gay and lesbian people. This is part of what he wrote in that now famous op-ed article in Sports Illustrated:

“No one wants to live in fear. I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time. I still had the same sense of humor, I still had the same mannerisms and my friends still had my back.”

Collins was a free agent at the time, and he knew he might never play professionally again because of this decision. In fact many hateful things were said about Collins when he chose to come out. But the first time he took to the court after his public disclosure, the fans gave him a standing ovation. Collins said in an interview later “The atmosphere was incredible. Even my first game back during the regular season when I entered the game and getting a standing ovation from the crowd in Brooklyn is something that I will never forget. This amazing moment shows the character of the fans in Brooklyn.”

 

We have come so far on this issue, but there is still a ways to go. Even now that Pennsylvania recognizes marriages equally, it is not really “safe” to come out, is it? In the state of Pennsylvania, it is still legal to deny a person housing, or employment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Several states prohibit the second parent from adopting their own child when the parents are of the same gender. We recognize Transgender day of remembrance because we know there is still bullying and violence experienced by our transgender neighbors and friends. Coming out today still takes courage, still has power, still requires discernment.

 

My colleague Nada Velimirovic said once “When I feel that tension in my stomach, I know that it is time to come out.” Do you know that feeling? It happens to me not only when I come out as queer, but whenever I reveal some part of my identity that doesn’t feel completely safe. When your relatives are bashing Obama and you feel compelled to mention that you voted for him. When someone at work says “we’re all Christians here” and you say “Actually, I’m a humanist. ” When you are seated around a big festive table and the person next to you hands you the platter of Turkey and you have to say “Actually, I don’t eat meat.” It happens in a hundred little ways in our ordinary life whenever we risk saying the truth of who we are -- we get the sweaty palms or the lump in our throat that tells us that what we are about to say is a risk.

 

Coming Out is not the only choice we can ethically make. Wiccan Author and Activist Starhawk tells the story of being welcomed into the home of a Muslim woman while she was in the middle east protesting the treatment of Palestinians. She spoke to this woman in the role of a woman born Jewish in America in the 1950s, feeling that being present across that Muslim – Jewish divide was as much as the meeting could bear, without beginning to explain what on earth Wicca was. She chose not to come out as Wiccan that day. For folks who follow the goddess traditions, there is a realism that comes from remembering the times when women were burned at the stake for such things. A friend of mine who was trained in the tradition of the goddess Hecate, told me that her teacher lived in a very proper British home, all the elements of her religious observance folded into the appearances of ordinary culture-- sometimes passing as mainstream is the smart thing to do.

 

In UU culture and history we hold up the stories of Servetus, burned at the stake for outing himself and his heretical beliefs. We honor Joseph Priestly who fled to America when his home and his church were burned by an angry mob for his radical political and religious beliefs. And usually I do cone out is bisexual, and usually I do come out as Unitarian Universalist, but recently when I was at a training for clergy on mental health issues and the presenter asked, rhetorically “We’re all Christian here, right? We all know where we are going when we die?” I considered interrupting his presentation to out myself, but I struggled with what I would say: "Actually, I'm Unitarian Universalist, and while some UUs are Christian, I myself am not..." ultimately I just sighed and let it go. Each of us must discern in our own hearts when to answer that call to come out, when to stay quiet and when let that nervous knot in our stomach call us to speak truth of who we are.

 

In 1992, Oregon was considering an anti-gay rights initiative called Measure 9. The Portland UU church wrap the whole church block in a large yellow ribbon and declared it a “hate-free zone.” Some families left the church over the decision, but many more new members joined, drawn by their courageous stand. "Brothers and Sisters… you must come out." Said the great Gay Activist Harvey Milk in 1978. Who could have imagined how the world would be transformed between then and now, and how our coming out changed the world. These words are not only an important part of our history as Americans, as human beings, but they are also a prophetic imperative in our own times. Part of supporting the inherent worth and dignity of all people is supporting one another when we speak the truth of who we are. Coming out both closes and opens doors. That nervous ball of energy that builds as we will ourselves the courage to speak releases an energy for change in ourselves and in our communities. And we know now, 36 years after Harvey Milk made his impassioned plea, that it can transform the world in amazing ways.

Sprit of Life (May 18, 2014)

What makes us different from a smart phone?
What is it that we have in common with a tree?
Or let’s just ask the question at the heart of the matter- what is life?

We know it when we see it, right? When you see a tree in spring bursting out in those luminous bright green leaves, you know right away that something different is happening there than , say, the wooden fence that runs right by it. 

Now I know there are some ambiguities on the margins of life that scientists and philosophers have been debating for millennia, but today I want to talk about life that is unmistakable. A child bursting onto the playground at recess. A turkey defending his territory. Us, here in this room together right now. 

Some have argued over the centuries that we, and other animals, are not that different from a machine- from a toaster or a smart phone. I think that is a semantic argument. Even a child can tell that we, and a turkey and a tree are different from a smartphone. Just because we have trouble explaining it doesn’t mean we don’t know it in our guts. Lately when I hear the phrase “Spirit of Life” this is what I think of- that special quality that living things have that a toaster does not.  

One way I try to wrap my head around this is through systems theory. This is the way of looking at the world not as a collection of disparate parts, but as whole things. One principle of systems theory is that parts come together to make a system. Cells make up a body. Bacteria and beavers and fish and plants make up an eco-system. People make up a church. One of the characteristics of a system is that it has “emergent properties.” These are properties of whole that the individual parts don’t have. So, for example, if you put a bunch of brain cells in a petri dish, you don’t have a brain. If you put a collection of organs together you don’t have a living being. A random collection of 30 people at bus stop is not a church. Maybe the “spirit of life” is an emergent property -- that which emerges from a system that does not emerge from a collection of disparate pieces.

This morning as we sang “Spirit of Life” I suspect that not all of you thought of the emergent properties of systems. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that each person in this room imagined something different when they sang those words. But in all the time I’ve been serving UU congregations no one has ever complained that when they sung hymn #123 they felt like a hypocrite. There is a spaciousness about those words that leaves room for a lot of different beliefs.

Over the past year I have stood in this spot and offered a number of sermons about a “Language of Reverence” for Unitarian Universalists -- a language that we could use to express deeper truths. We have wondered together whether the language we use shapes our ability to understand and communicate such truths. We have talked about words like “Prayer” and other words that bog us down with their layers of meaning and history. We’ve talked bout reclaiming those words as our own- they are part of our 400 year history, and they are ours as much as any other.

But today I suggest that there are also words that express important religious truths that we can use without furrowed brows, words that feel like ours. Yes, not only do we have the choice to reclaim those traditional theological words, but we can gather together our own language of reverence. A colleague of mine, Scott Prinster, explained to me that the phrase “Spirit of life” (which I had assumed was something UUs came up with in the 1960s) has actually been used by Unitarian writers as early as the 1830s, and that the phrase existed well back into the 1700s. This is one of those phrases that we can claim as our own.

One of the things I like about the phrase “spirit of life” is that it is grounded in the world- in the life that we know. The first source of our living tradition is “direct experience” and life is something each one of us has experienced directly. Ours is a tradition that suggests we have a right to expect our own experience to harmonize with our theology. Ours is a faith that doesn’t require a leap between what we know and what we believe. 

“Spirit of life” draws a wide circle, one that can include atheists, agnostics and theists. If someone from the church down the street here asked if I believed in God, I would not know whether to answer yes, no or maybe, because the word “God” means such a specific thing in each religious tradition. People have been killing one another for centuries over the exact meaning of that word. 

But I know with some certainty that I believe in the spirit of life. I’ve felt it every day. And I have seen it go; when I saw the life pass from my dog Sandy – it was like a light had gone out in her eyes. It was unmistakable. It takes no theological leap to believe in life. 

But I do, in fact, make a theological leap- I believe that the divine is not separate from life. This is called Pantheism (a favorite heresy for both Jewish and Christian traditions) -- God is all that exists, and this universe is not different from God. I recognized myself as a pantheist the first time I heard it explained from the pulpit at a UU church some 30 years ago. Then a teacher in Seminary introduced me to “Panentheism” which means that the universe is a sub-set of God—that is to say, God is the universe plus something more. When I was introduced to Systems theory, I started to wonder if that the “something more” of panentheism is like the emergent properties of the system of all that is. Does the universe have consciousness? I don’t know. I am agnostic on that point. But as a universalist I believe in the one-ness of everything, and when I hear that phrase “Spirit of Life” I don’t feel like an agnostic, because I have felt that spirit of life in my own body and in the world every day. It is a phrase that brings us back from heady theological explorations… back into the lived world we know and share. 

Another common topic I have spoken about from this pulpit is the evolution of the universe. When you consider that epic story, it begins to seem kind of amazing that life not only came to be, but that it has persisted for so many hundreds of thousands of years. It has persisted through biological crises that killed off 70 or 90% of all life on our planet. For example, photosynthesis only emerged 2,800 million years ago, a dramatic change that both saved and endangered life. You see, the oxygen freed in photosynthesis entered our world in larger and larger amounts, changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the oceans, the very crust of the earth. Oxygen not only degraded the food supply, but also broke down the membranes of cells, causing the helplessness and even the combustion of these early cells. Then a new life form emerged with a mutation which allowed respiration. Because oxygen was so plentiful, this new life and its offspring thrived. The very oxygen which was poisoning the planet created a combustion which powered these new beings activities. What an amazing story of life on earth snatched back from the brink of annihilation!

When I was studying the history of the Universe on my previous sabbatical we were introduced to the radical idea that the actual scientific story of who we are and where we came from could be as powerful as those myths and legends of our traditional cannon. That the story of how respiration evolved saving life on earth is as powerful as the story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt. I suppose I should not have been surprised by this idea. Growing up UU I had always been taught that the findings of science could be considered a source of wisdom-- the wisdom of the life we observe all around us. 

When Carolyn McDade wrote the song that Unitarian Universalists sing each week across the continent, it was late one night in the early 1980s. She was driving her close friend Pat Simon home from a meeting for Central American solidarity... What she remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. “When I got to Pat’s house, I told her, ‘I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I’ll be dust.’ I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me.” McDade then drove to her own home in Newtonville. “I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer: May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement.”

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

In this song, in this very personal prayer, here is the point where our conversation turns from an abstract one about theology to a more practical concern- what do I call on, what do I turn to when I am “like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years?” What can we turn to not only for ourselves, but so that we can continue to live with compassion and work for justice in our world? Can we who are Atheist and Agnostic about a traditional understanding of God, can there be some hope for us in life itself? This is the true test of any theology, any language of reverence.

In considering the emergence of life-forms that first photosynthesized or breathed air and whether or not these life forms had any consciousness of this amazing process, scientists Swimme and Berry write that “A primitive eukaryotic cell would, for instance, be able to detect a temperature gradient, turning itself toward warming regions. It would possess a limited ability to sense nutrient densities and orient itself to their thickest direction.”[1] So even our most basic ancestors must have been guided by some life-sustaining drive.

Another way of talking about this drive is found in words of Lebanese poet, artist and writer Kahlil Gibran, words found in our hymnal:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and the daughters of Life's longing for itself" 

… Life’ s longing for itself. I know that feeling. I have experienced it in my bones. I don’t understand it, but I know it. For me that longing of life for life is bound up in the phrase “Spirit of Life.” One of the things we know for sure about life, is that it fights with great tenacity and creativity to keep on living. Not just the individual fighting for its own life, but our shared desire that even when each one of us is gone, life itself should persist.

 I find genuine hope in the indisputable fact that when life on earth was running out of food and on the brink of collapse, somehow photosynthesis was born. And when Photosynthesis inundated the earth with this poisonous gas called oxygen, life learned to breathe it. That’s the spirit of life. Seeing a tree (that for all the world looked dead during the winter) begin to burst out with those amazing spring-green leaves- that requires no leap of faith. It is hope embodied. 

Here’s another fact- you are alive. Right now. Right in this moment. Whatever it is that brings a tree out of dormancy in the spring, whatever it is that evolved photosynthesis, that “spirit of life” is indisputably within you. So how much of a leap is it to believe that we can call on that “spirit of life” – not as a transcendent spirit from above, but as that which is intrinsic to all living beings –we can reach down deep into ourselves as a tree reaches down deep into its roots at the end of winter, and we can call it up when want to come back from our own winters, we can call on it when we are dry as a piece of cardboard. 

The Unitarian writers who were using the phrase “Spirit of Life” in the 1830s did not yet have the benefit of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” They undoubtedly would not have explained it the way I just did. But that’s why “spirit of life” is part of our vocabulary of faith – because it is expansive enough to include the old traditional theologies, and still leave room for all that science has uncovered in the last century or so. Regardless of your theology, this song reminds us that there is something larger than ourselves we can call one when we are dry, when we need hope. It is lying in your own beating heart right now.

[1] Briane Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1992; p. 104.

 

Inherent Worth and Dignity (March 30,2014)

In Ithaca, the town where I live, I am told that there are more restaurants per capita than any place else in the US except Manhattan. We are lucky that so many restaurants near our house are independent locally owned businesses, and many feature local organic produce and local humanely raised pork and beef. If you are a foody and if you care about ethical eating it’s a great place to live.

Now I worked in restaurants while I was in school- as a bus person, as a waitress. I worked at fancy places and family restaurants. It’s hard work -- that I know. Never was I so physically exhausted at the end of a work day as I was when waiting or bussing tables. But it is good work you can feel proud of. I loved that feeling of rapport with the customers, I loved the food we served. I loved the camaraderie with my fellow servers who were some of the most fun co-workers I’ve ever had. I even got good at carrying plates on my arms, or on one of those huge trays on my shoulder. I didn’t love working a 7 hour shift with no breaks, and I didn’t love the days when the restaurant sat empty while we refilled salt shakers or wiped down the wait station with no customers to wait on, and no tips to be earned from empty tables, and I’m glad I didn’t have to support a family on my tips. The Restaurant industry is one of the largest growing in the country, and it is work 10 million Americans are proud, as I was, to call their own. 

I was surprised to find out that the so called “tipped minimum wage” has not changed since I was waiting tables- it is still $2.13 an hour[i] nationally. I have to tell you it’s been 20 years since I waited tables, and I was shocked to find that waiters in most states today made the same wage I did 20 years ago. It turns out that the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage rose together until 1996 when Herman Cain, then the head of the National Restaurant Association, struck a deal with Congress to de-link the two — the minimum wage will continue to rise, but the minimum wage for tipped workers will be frozen. Now in theory, if you don’t make at least the minimum wage in tips, your boss is supposed to pay the rest so you are making minimum wage. Some bosses do, and some don’t. The law also requires that wait staff are taxed based on 15% of their sales. This means that if someone forgets to leave a tip, or chooses not to leave a tip, you still get taxed on 15% of their meal. Those taxes are taken out of your paycheck, as they are for most folks, so many waiters and waitresses get a paycheck of , with a paystub detailing which taxes were withheld. 

It is a common misconception, I think, that waiting tables is a lucrative profession. You look out over the dinner rush as you calculate your tip, and you think, geeze- if my waitress gets this same tip from everyone seated here she’s going to make a ton of money. What you don’t see is everything that goes into that tip. You don’t see the hours a waiter or waitress spends before the restaurant opens polishing silver and filling salt shakers. You don’t see the wait staff waiting anxiously as the early customers trickle in- hoping their tables will be filled more than once that night. You don’t see the waiter stuck at work as he waits for that last table to finish up- the table that hasn’t ordered anything in an hour, but is enjoying each other’s company. All the waiter can do is, well, wait for them to move on so he can clear their table and re-set it for the next day. You don’t see that in restaurants where there are bus people, they also make $2.13 an hour, and so when I worked at such restaurants the waiter was required to take part of his or her tips and give it to the bussers, and to give part to the bar tender- it’s called “tipping out”. I’ve also been the bus person who sees the tips left on the tables and easily calculates that what the waiter is handing me is not the full percentage of his tips.

You don’t see that the Friday and Saturday night dinner shifts go to the most senior staff. Waiters and bus staff start off working Mondays, or the other less popular shifts. A Restaurant Opportunity Center study showed that only %20 of restaurant workers make a living wage, and those are mostly in fine dining restaurants[ii] (p. 141). So, yes, if you work at a fine dining restaurant in NYC and get the Friday and Saturday night shifts, you can make a decent living. But I think for too long we have let the image of the tuxedoed waiter rolling in tips keep us from making sure the waitress at the local pancake house can also earn enough to feed her family. In fact within the restaurant industry are 7 of the 10 lowest paying jobs (p. 71) as are the 2 lowest paid jobs in U.S. (p. 101). Restaurant workers rely on Food stamps at double rate of rest of the work force, and their poverty rate is triple. 

So what does this have to do with Inherent worth and dignity? I would like to propose the radical idea that “Affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person”[iii] needs to go beyond our good thoughts about our brothers and sisters, beyond treating our neighbors kindly, to creating a society where all our brothers and sisters can live in dignity. I propose that we could best affirm the worth and dignity of all honest hard work through a living wage. Right now the minimum wage in this country, in this state, is not a living wage. And what do I mean by that? A living wage is defined as the amount of money that a person needs to earn to put a roof over her head, food on her table, to go to a doctor when she is sick. I also heard a republican legislator say recently that this country was built on people saving up their money and starting their own businesses. Well, if we believe that is important, then we should pay our workers enough that they can put away a little bit for a rainy day, for their retirement, or even to become their own boss someday. That is what we mean by a living wage. [iv] A living wage means that anyone who works full time should not need public assistance to survive. Of course what it costs to live in Manhattan is different than what it costs to live in Chemung County[v]. In Tompkins county, where I live, the living wage as determined in 2013 to be $26,242.21 a year or $12.62 per hour.[vi]

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the minimum wage is not based on a living wage? That hard working Americans are living in that difficult gap between $8 an hour and a wage one can truly live on? This past October while Jeff Stratton, president of McDonald’s USA, was giving a speech to the Union League Club of Chicago, a McDonald’s employee yelled out from the back of the ballroom:

“It’s really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day. Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I have worked for McDonald’s for 10 years?” 

Nancy Salgado was taken from the room by police, and in an interview later told reporters:

“… he needs to know we are what all the employees at McDonald’s are going through. We’re struggling day to day to provide our needs in our houses, things for our kids. And it’s just–it gets harder and harder with just the poverty wage they have us living in.”[vii]

I want to be clear, it is not just the restaurant industry where people are paid less than they need to live. In fact it is so prevalent in this country we might despair that change is possible. We are told that any attempt to remedy this injustice would lead to a collapse of industry and a massive loss of jobs. But there are enough working examples to show that something more just is possible. For example, in seven states the tipped minimum wage is now re-joined with the regular minimum wage and all of these states continue to have growing restaurant industries. 

I wonder if what is happening here is what my old theology professor used to call a “Language event.” In an age where the Supreme Court confirms that Corporations are people, but the workers of the world are called "labor costs" that need to be “minimized.” As long as we think of the people who bus our tables, wash our dishes, and make our phones as "labor costs" that must be "minimized" we are stripping them of their inherent worth and dignity. 

When we explain why we can’t pay employees enough to meet their basic human needs, we hear a lot about market forces. But as near as I can tell, the market does not take care of people who make things. We cannot leave that to "the market" because it is the explicit job of the “market” to "minimize costs." The lives of human beings are not a cost. They are a blessing. Each and every one has worth.

No it is not the job of the market to make sure that each and every person on this planet is afforded dignity, and that we honor their worth as human beings. Such ethical concerns fall to people of conscience like us. I am not aware of any religious tradition the world over who hold as their highest principle “maximizing shareholder value” or “minimizing labor costs.” And you will not find either among the Principles and Purpose that join Unitarian Universalists in a common purpose. I know these are powerful ideas in our culture right now, almost like a sacred cow we must refrain from harming, but I believe the “inherent worth and dignity of all people” is more powerful, is more sacred. I propose that whether our brothers and sisters who put food on our tables can themselves afford to feed their own families is not something we should consider “if market forces allow.” “Inherent worth and dignith” is a fundamental ethical principle that we must bring to every decision we make as a country, as a community.

When you hear about market forces, remember that YOU are a market force. The market has no inner ethical compass except for yours. Not everyone knows that tips are not just a bonus for extra good work, but are rent money, grocery money. Not everyone knows that the IRS assumes you tipped your server %15. But the next time you are eating out with friends, and dividing up the check, have a conversation about how the tipping system really works. The next time you are eating out-- get curious. Do you know which restaurants offer their employees something better than the $5 per hour required by law here in New York? Do you know which restaurants have a history of making their employees clock out before they are done working, or taking a portion of their employees tips? As UUs concerned about ethical eating, we have gotten curious about whether our vegetables are local, or the beef grass fed. Let’s start getting curious about which restaurants offer paid sick days and promote from within. Let’s get curious about which restaurants honor the inherent worth and dignity of their employees. And then let’s be a market force- let’s support the restaurants that are ethical leaders.

These restaurants need our support in Washington[viii] and Harrisburg as well. Owning a restaurant, especially a small local restaurant, is challenging. Owners who want to pay a living wage to their staff really have to work hard and get creative to compete with all the restaurants who pay only $2.13 an hour. And it would really help level the playing field if we encouraged our legislators to re-connect the tipped minimum wage to the regular minimum wage. One bill that has recently been through congress, but was defeated, would have set the tipped minimum wage at %70 of the federal minimum wage so that whenever the minimum wage goes up with inflation our waiters and bussers would see their wages go up too. I know there is a popular myth out there that if the minimum wage is raised, food will become so expensive that none of us will be able to afford to eat out any more. The proposed Fair Minimum Wage Act[ix], introduced in 2012 and again in 2013 by Representative George Miller (D-CA) in the House and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in the Senate would have raised the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour over the next 2 years and the tipped minimum wage from $2.13 $3 and then to 70% of the regular minimum wage. Studies show that the actual impact on American families would be only about $.10 per day over 3 years.[x] Wouldn’t you pay $.10 a day to raise many Americans out of poverty, to reduce the need of working people to subsidize their wages with food stamps? I would.

We are a people who affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Those words are beautiful and inspiring, but challenging too. To promote the worth and dignity of every person we must go beyond the respect for one another that we hold in our hearts, that we aspire to live out in our day to day interactions with our brother and sisters, we must also create a world where each person who works receives a wage that allows them food and shelter and medical care, without which dignity is hard to come by. Be they restaurant workers, farm workers, or garment industry workers- we are called to stand by every worker until each can live in dignity. 

Feel Moved to do something? Visit the UUSC website to learn how to get plugged in.

 Endnotes

[i] minimum wage as of 1/1/14 per the department of labor http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
· Federal: $7.25 $2.13
· NY $8.00 $5.00
To learn more about wages in the restaurant industry visit http://www.uusc.org/ccc/frequently_asked_questions_about_restaurant_workers
[ii] All page numbers refer to Behind the Kitchen Door by Sarumathi Jayaraman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15936992-behind-the-kitchen-door?from_search=true
[iii] http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles/ 
[iv] http://livingwage.mit.edu/ and http://www.alternatives.org/livable.html
[v] http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36015
[vi] http://www.alternatives.org/2013livingwagepressrelease.html
[vii] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/09/mcdonalds-worker-arrested-after-telling-company-president-she-cant-afford-shoes/ 
[viii] http://www.timeforaraise.org/benefits-of-raising-the-minimum-wage/
[ix] S.460 - Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/460
[x] http://foodmyths.org/reports-resources/a-dime-a-day-the-impact-of-the-millerharkin-minimum-wage-proposal-on-the-price-of-food/

Language of Reverence: Queer (March 2, 2014)

Maybe a decade ago I used the word “Queer” in a public meeting to describe myself. One of the members of my congregation came to me afterwards and admonished me “NEVER use the word queer about yourself- you don’t have to put yourself down like that.” 

Her comment shocked me into remembering that for many people “Queer” is a loaded word. But for me it is just right. As a bisexual woman married to a man, I have always felt that both the words “gay” and “straight” didn’t quite fit; either word felt a little dishonest. I’m also not crazy about the word “bisexual” – not only does it sound kind of clinical, but it doesn’t sound like you can be monogamous when you’ve got the prefix meaning “2” right in the word there. 

When one of my seminary professors, whose name was then Elias Farajaje-Jones, delivered the Sophia Fahs lecture in 2000 (the lecture is named after the famous UU religious educator) I had just made the choice to enter into the Ministry of Religious education, which many people dismiss as a marginal sort of ministry that involves mostly cutting out construction paper shapes and lining up magic markers. When Elias delivered his lecture “Queer(y)ing Religious Education: Teaching the R(evolutionary Sub)V(ersions)! Or Relax!... It’s Just Religious Ed” it was like some walls I had in my mind came crumbling down. I suddenly knew that I was a queer person doing a queer ministry. I knew that the ministry of Religious Education is not tame and marginal to our movement, but radical, revolutionary and at the core of our religious formation as Unitarian Universalists.

So what do I mean by “Queer” in this expanded context? First, queer means “non-normative.” We have been raised to believe that some things are “normal” and other things are “not normal.” We get the message every day that being straight is normal, being white is normal, being able-bodied is normal, being middle-class is normal. (or if you watch a lot of tv it starts to seem like being rich is normal). When I use the word “queer” I mean anything that defies those norms. 

When the Gay and Lesbian rights movement started here in the US, those brave activists were fighting to add “Gay” as a possible category that a person could be. So we had “Gay” and “straight” – expanding the number of norms to 2. It’s even in our Hymnal [sing] “we are Gay and Straight together.” There were struggles to determine cultural norms for how to be Gay until our thinking evolved and we realized that not only is straight not “normal” but there is no “normal” way to be gay. Then the Bisexual folks came along and said “Actually…” Being a person who identifies as bisexual, I don’t want my own third box, I want to queer all those norms. I want to have room to be whoever it is I really am. As Dr. Farajaje said that day: “Heterosexual identity exists only by virtue of defining itself as the norm over against queer deviation. But if there really is no norm, then there aren’t really any deviations. We’re all then just a big mix of possibilities of desire just waiting to happen!” [p. 29]

I am reminded of a song by that great singer-songwriter Ani Difranco:

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong

We were all taught at a young age to assume that if there is 3 of one thing it is “normal” and the one that is different “does not belong”. What I am trying to suggest is that not only can the pear take pride in being “queer” but that oranges are not normative. 

My fruit analogy is breaking down quickly, so let’s look at Race for example. Scientists tell us that race is not biological, but an intellectual construct. In American we often talk about race by dividing it into two neat categories “White” and “People of Color” even though we know that, for example, Irish immigrants used to be considered non-white and are now considered white. We know that though President Obama is of mixed race, he is often referred to as the first Black president. What if we changed the way we thought about race to acknowledge that from a scientific perspective there is no such thing as “racial purity” -that we are all racially queer? It was only in the year 2000 that the US Census allowed people to check more than one box under “race”, that people didn’t have to choose one part of themselves and discard the rest. 

Moreover, Dr. Farajaje is proposing ( along with others in the field of cultural theory) that gender, sexuality, race, class, whether we are temporarily able-bodied, “These things are inseparable for us; we cannot and will not pull these apart without doing irreparable violence to our very bodies, souls, and minds.” [p. 26] He calls this “Intersexionality.” All the parts of who we are intersect. In an adult RE class I taught last spring I invited all the participants to write down 5 identity words for themselves. People wrote things like “White, gay, mother, UU, able-bodied, male” Many of us struggled with the exercise- how do you know which 5 to pick? No matter what words you pick you are leaving out part of yourself. 

Moreover, each of those words describes a whole multiplicity of ways of being. For example, how many of you self-identify as “white”?  Now look around at all the different ways there are of being “white” --what Dr. Farajaje might call “multiplicities of whiteness”. Or let’s take another one- If you are willing to out yourself as identifying “temporarily able-bodied” please raise your hand. Look how many different bodies this describes! There are multiplicities of being temporarily able-bodied. 

By looking at the world, at one another, in this complex, intersectional, wholistic way, I propose that we are doing something radical. We are interrupting that conversation about “which one is different and does not belong.” We are interrupting norms; we are rupturing walls and boxes. Remember the scene in” the Wizard of Oz” when Toto pulls back the curtain? The “wise and powerful Oz” is revealed as he really is- an ordinary man from Kansas who got lost. These boxes, these walls, these definitions of who we are and what is normal are not divinely given, which becomes clear as we pull back the curtain to see how they work and where they come from. This we can call “Queering” the conversation, because we are creating a space not defined by walls and boxes. 

This is a dangerous act. Every year we hear stories in the news of queer people who have been victims of violence. Gender theorists believe this violence arises in a culture that is threatened by anyone existing outside the two-box gender system-- male and female. We also hear about those who took their own lives because it was too painful not to be able to fit easily into the two boxes our society defines… too painful to live in a culture which asks “Which one is different and does not belong.” I call us to interrupt this conversation, to “queer” this conversation by saying “everyone is different, and everyone belongs!”

That is why Queering the conversation is also healing. Back when I was doing the internship every UU minister has to do in a hospital, I worked in the outpatient Cancer center. A kind, wise, circumspect woman I had the privilege of talking with told me: “my doctors don’t treat me, they treat people like me, that is --people with cancer.” It is hard to heal when people don’t see you, they just see a box. When her treatment wasn’t working like it should, when she had unusual side effects, or when she wanted treatment alternatives, she was constantly banging up against the walls of that box “Cancer patient” with all its clinical norms and expected outcomes. 

I suspect every one of us has some part of our self that does not fit neatly into a box-- some part of ourselves that does not look like the images we see on TV or in the movies. This leads us to feel “broken” or “incomplete,” “damaged” or “abnormal.” By radically acknowledging all that we are, we become whole just as we are. By radically affirming that each and every one of us belongs, our communities are made whole. For me, reframing my self-understanding from “not-really straight and not-really gay” to someone who was perfectly and completely queer filled me with a sense of pride and belonging. To hear that my non-normative call to the Ministry of Religious Education was still at the heart of ministry, to hear that I was not giving up my radical, questioning revolutionary self to in taking on “religious Educator” as part of my identity was so healing and affirming. This reframing helped me realize that I didn’t have to throw away the box called “religious Educator” to enter a box called “parish minister” when I was called to serve my congregation in Athens, because religious education is not just something that happens in a classroom with children, if we let it out of its box, it is happening right here, right now. 

When I was in the process of applying to seminary, I sent away for the catalogues for the 3 uu seminaries. I looked over the high-gloss brochure from Harvard and noticed that there was a page about their “women’s studies” department. I read the brochure from Starr King and I noticed that women and queer people didn’t have their own department, they were right there in the body of the catalogue. As Dr. Farajaje, who joined the Starr King faculty when I was in my last year at the school, writes about his approach to teaching:

 “Each class that I teach, whether it be liberating the Bible for UUs , African Religious in Diaspora, or the Divine Feminine in Russian Orthodox Religious Thought is taught in a way that calls us to continually and simultaneously consider issues of race, class, gender, embodiment, environmental issues, cultural representations, sexualities etc. These are not treated as peripheral considerations.”

I chose Star King because I wasn’t looking for a separate box to contain the non-normative parts of myself. I wanted to bring everything I was to my formation as a minister.

We often wonder “what is UU?” Members of every congregation I’ve ever served have come to me and said “Can I really be UU because I am … in the armed forces, republican, Christian, a person of color, transgender, Jewish, pagan, atheist, undecided?” What they are really asking is; “Do I fit in the UU Box?”

This, I believe, is part of our calling as Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century. Let this community be a place where you don’t have to leave your sexual orientation outside, you don’t have to leave your financial situation at the door, you don’t have to leave your body at home. Theology, spirituality is not something that hovers above the body, but I believe it is deeply embedded, imminent in everything that we are. We are all part of one interdependent web of life. From the very first days of Universalism we were rejecting the two-box system (the elect and the rest of us who were damned.) We reject the two box system of heaven and hell. We reject the two box system of God and the Devil. Back in 1805, the great Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou suggested:

 Is [God] not perfectly joined to his creation? Do we not live, move and have our being in God? …to take the smallest creature from him, … you have left something less than infinity.” (Treatise on atonement P. 81-82)

We believe in a God who can hold all our queerness, all our multiplicities. 

Our Unitarian Tradition has always been one that looks behind the curtain, to see who is defining the parameters, who is making the boxes into which we are asked to fit. Our Unitarian Tradition challenges us to open our minds beyond the conventional ways of looking at things. Our Universalist Tradition challenges us to open our hearts to hold every being in the oneness of the divine. 

This is why I propose to you with great pride, that ours is a queer theology. Or perhaps that in this ambitious tradition in which we stand, we are “queering” theology. We are “queering” church. Last year I spoke from this pulpit about the possibility of a “Language of Reverence” for Unitarian Universalists. I humbly suggest that we add the word “queer” to this list, because it honors something special about the radically inclusive place we strive to occupy among religious communities, and because it honors the wholeness of each and every one of us; all that we are, and all that we bring.