What Do Unitarian Universalists Do?

In a religious culture dominated by right belief as the door to salvation, Unitarian Universalists are often asked, "If you don't share a common belief in God or Jesus, what do you believe?"  There are many answers that can be given to that question, some of them summarized by UU's who've developed their own "elevator speech."  Because we tend to emphasize a faith that promotes right action, it seems the better question to ask is "What do Unitarian Universalists do?"

In his Berry Street Essay of 2012, Fred Muir, a UU minister, enumerated four areas of especial concern where Unitarian Universalists have been active living out their beliefs.  Multiculturalism. Environmental justice. Sexual and family values. Right Relationship. 

What have we been doing about multiculturalism?  For decades Unitarian Universalists have supported the rights of people of all races and ethnicities to enjoy the same freedoms, privileges, and access to opportunity.  During the civil rights era, we stood on the side of equality.  In Tallahassee, the small UU church building was the only place where whites and blacks could safely gather together.  The number of UU ministers involved in freedom marches outstripped the size of our relatively small denomination. Today, congregations and clergy continue to work for immigration laws that protect family integrity as well as the individual right to freedom and the "pursuit of happiness." 

What may be our "growing edge" in multiculturalism is a dawning awareness that as Unitarian Universalists we have allowed some societal attitudes about people with disabilities to color attitudes and actions within our congregations.  We are becoming more aware of how barriers to inclusivity create patterns of injustice, and we are working to be ever more inclusive.

Unitarian Universalists have been defended the environment in numerous ways.  We are committed to caring for the "interdependent web of life."  The earth and her creatures, of every species, have received careful attention from individuals and congregations. Congregations evaluate and support their commitment to sustainability and conservation by pursuing and maintaining a status as a Green Sanctuary.  UUCT is a Green Sanctuary.

The struggle for environmental justice can't end when we "reduce, reuse, and recycle."  Justice demands that we look for and support actions that protect every environment, not just the land we happen to occupy.  It asks that we look for ways to change the economy to create "green collar" jobs for people who might otherwise be unemployed.  It requires us to acknowledge that living simply in the U.S. promotes a rate of consumption many times that available to other people in many areas of the world.  

Unitarian Universalists have supported sexual values in two generations of outstanding sex education materials.  Before Our Whole Lives (OWL) was written, we dominated the field of sex education for adolescents with a program called About Your Sexuality.  Building on the successes of that program, OWL was developed as a curriculum spanning all ages and offering opportunities to think about self-care in age appropriate lessons.  

We have insisted that families arise in the presence of love, and that gender identities don't dictate love.  Our support for gay families and gay marriage rights continues in the present. Here in Tallahassee, we pursued and received a designation as a Welcoming Congregation, affirming that we not only accept lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into the congregation, but, that we will actively promote rights and freedoms for all 'lgbt' people.

We have been active in supporting all families as they define themselves in loving, respectful relationships.  Right relationships are founded in respect.  We support equality for both partners in a couple, affirming that women who find themselves in abusive relationships should have access to life affirming support for change. Pursuing right relationships is always important. Many UU congregations, including UUCT, have adopted covenants for right relationship that value direct, caring communication within the congregation, even in times of conflict. The principles of right relationship call us to speak to differences in love while promoting peaceful resolution of conflict. Practicing in our community, and learning throughout our lives, we hope to live up to those principles, not only in our congregations, but in all our relationships. 

Those are some of the ways we "do Unitarian Universalism." By what we do, we hope to bring justice and lovingkindness to bear in ever increasing circles of inclusion and caring.

Waiting for Justice

I've just started reading Behind the Kitchen Door by Saru Jayaraman and she's talking about me.  On average Americans eat out at restaurants once a week. I eat out about once a week. In fact, I look forward to that regular break from shopping and cooking.

Even though I've barely finished the first chapter of the book, I can see its relevance to eating out in Tallahassee. One of the many issues Jayaraman raises is that restaurant staffing follows a fairly predictable pattern. Lighter skinned people work as waitstaff and darker skinned people are employed behind the kitchen door or as bussers.  Of course, kitchen staff and bussers make less than their waitstaff co-workers, and that problem is compounded by the fact that many restaurants never promote kitchen workers or bussers to better paying jobs. 

My personal sampling of restaurants in Tallahassee leads me to conclude that I can recall seeing diverse waitstaff at Red Lobster and Cracker Barrel.  Many of the other restaurants I've supported with my patronage have all white waitstaff. It's a symptom of my white privilege that I have to bring to consciousness the question of whether I've seen black and white waitstaff working together.  It's a symptom of endemic racism that, in a city where 34% of the population identifies as black, many of the restaurants I've dined in don't have diverse waitstaff.

I am called to embark on a local, personal research project.  One that should find expression in a Sunday service.  I envision interviewing owners, managers and waitstaff at the restaurants I frequent.  I want to ask the owner/manager describe the waitstaff and kitchen staff, and to talk about their relative wages, and also how they advertise for applicants when seeking new employees. Finally, I want to ask them for permission to speak to some of the staff.  When I talk to staff I'd like to ask how long they've worked at the restaurant, why did they apply to the restaurant where they are employed, did they apply to other restaurants at the same time. at which restaurants were they granted interviews; and if they are making a living wage in their current position.

All of this data will inform an early to mid-May sermon and service focusing on what happens behind the kitchen door and on the dining floor. In the meantime, I can recommend Behind the Kitchen Door to anyone who ever eats in restaurants. It will lead you to consider new definitions for sustainable food and just desserts.

Of Sermons and Puzzles

Writing a sermon is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle when pieces of several puzzles have been dumped into one box.  Only some of the oddly shaped bits will fit together to create a whole picture.  It often happens that I have information gathered in the process of researching a sermon that just doesn't make it into the final oration. 

While researching Abraham Lincoln I listened to lectures and read a number of articles.  After each bit of research I thought about how it might fit into a sermon.  For instance, I heard a scholar muse on Lincoln's Kentucky origins and if he was perceived as a Southerner. I made note to mention Lincoln’s Southern origins. Another lecture left me with the new understanding of how emancipated blacks influenced a culture of appreciation for Lincoln as the premier hero in the drama of freedom.  I wanted to point out in the sermon that black Americans fashioned an understanding of Lincoln's accomplishments that persists today.

I also listened to a lecture that reflected on the one time Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln met. The night before they were briefly introduced to one another, Emerson delivered his American Civilization speech in Washington.  Emerson's point was that civilization rests on morality, and that the end of slavery was an essential condition for building a truly civilized America.  Despite the fact that Emerson was the pre-eminent lecturer of his day, Lincoln wasn't present for the speech. He could likely have read it entirely or excerpts from it in the morning newspaper. It would be very unlikely that the topic of Emerson’s lecture would have escaped the President. Yet, Emerson recalled in his journal that when he was introduced to the President, Lincoln spoke of another speech altogether.  Lincoln quoted to Emerson his words that described Kentuckians as people who present themselves to be accepted just as they are.  Given the context, and the pressure radical Republicans were placing on Lincoln to emancipate all people held in slavery immediately, Lincoln's words carried an ambiguous message.  One could conclude that he meant to say "I'm a Kentuckian, and the President, and I haven't put emancipation ahead of saving the union. Deal with it."  

None of that fit into the sermon when it finally came to be written.  Neither did a critique of the screenplay for Spielberg's film, Lincoln; or quotes from Emerson's American Civilization, or a half-dozen other pieces that didn't have the right shape to fit into picture emerging as I wrote. Now, they are just a few pieces laid to the side of the puzzle, the ones that didn't fit the whole picture of one twenty-minute sermon, too important to be lost.  

(Note: I am today resolving to post to this blog once a week until my sabbatical begins in August. Wish me luck...and sign up for the RSS feed to receive each post as it happens.)

Sharing Across the Ages

Carol Howard Merritt, author of Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation explains that when she works with intergenerational groups she often asks people to consider the following questions:

 “What sort of political, religious, economic, and social movements defined your generation? What events did your generation go through that made you who you are?”

This blog post is what I expect to be the first in an indefinite series of responses to those questions.  I hereby issue an invitation to any member or friend of the church who wishes to write to those questions to do so and send them to me for posting here on the TallahasseeUU.  I’ll also be asking people of all ages to take time to write their responses. 

Robin Gray responds:

I was born not so many years after WWII ended.  Lingering distrust of Germans and Japanese prompted our church to bring to America young adults from those countries.  A young German woman stayed with my family for a few weeks one year, and our congregation brought a young Japanese woman to work with the children’s program.  Still, the neighbors down the street, who were Jewish, shuddered at the thought of the little German car, the Volkswagon, that was gaining popularity in the U.S.  Seeking healing from that war, one I didn’t remember, was a recurring theme. 

We were not fettered by austerity during the post-war years.  A VA loan made it possible for my parents to buy a house, and with that a piece of the American dream. My mother didn’t work outside the home until I was in my teens, and my father’s one income with lots of overtime took care of our needs.  

The Korean Conflict, as it was called, spanned my early youth.  Then, it was replaced by the Civil Rights struggle down South (I was a Northerner, born and bred).  The struggle was chronicled on the evening news: children set upon by dogs, hoses turned on peaceful protesters. The same freedoms for which my parents generation fought WWII were denied to countless American citizens.  Watching a black and white TV, we witnessed a deep travesty of justice, anathema to the liberal Christians like us, but, it seemed that half the country didn’t care. 

The assassinations of four leaders representing change and progress ushered me in and out of high school.  President John F. Kennedy.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Malcolm X. Robert Kennedy.  From my perspective the American people had been cheated out of a brighter future with each death. 

In those years, the war in Vietnam flickered onto the stage, bringing with it nightly newscasts of death and destruction. The Cold War cast its own pall on America’s future, and fear of Soviet missiles crept into classrooms. The student protests against the war in Vietnam swirled around me in college.  I was opposed to the war, and opposed to the tactics of the opposition.  

While my life was full of potential -- I was getting a good education after all -- I couldn’t muster up much patriotism for my homeland.  I’d grown up thinking that the wounds of WWII had been addressed in many ways, but, I couldn’t see evidence that the wounds inflicted by war in Korea and Vietnam were being addressed in any helpful way.  And, after what seemed a era of victories in Civil Rights, American injustices that touched every state and city festered without successful intervention.

A Village of Help

Sometimes when we enter a long canvass season, asking people to make a pledge for the coming year, and then challenging them to increase that pledge -- it might seem as if the only thing the church asks of us is money.  The truth is the church asks for a lot more.

The extended canvass was just winding down this year when Anne Rudloe succumbed to her final illness.  The timing was such that Anne’s Memorial Service was scheduled on the day following a special Finance Committee meeting and a special Board meeting.  That day, Saturday, also happened to be the Church Workday.  Although the members of the Board and the Buildings and Grounds Committee had plenty to think about that day, they also all helped to coordinate extensive plans for Anne’s memorial.   

Knowing Anne as we did, and knowing the positive impact she had in the many circles of her life, we knew we had to prepare for a larger-than-average number of people coming here to honor her life.  That meant making special arrangements for parking and organizing parking volunteers.  Little did we know that it would also mean letting those volunteers get drenched while performing their duties, which came to include holding umbrellas over the guests. 

Extra chairs were moved into the Sanctuary so 180 people could be accommodated there.  The virtual sanctuary was prepared to hold another 40 people, and a final overflow space was created in one of the classrooms.  Making those spaces available called on the resources of Workday, set-up and technology volunteers.

As it is the custom of this congregation to offer a reception at the close of a Memorial Service, another host of volunteers were called upon to make food, set up the Veranda, serve beverages, and clean up after everyone left. The Veranda was the perfect setting for fellowship as the sun finally returned.  

No one counted all the attendees, but, a fair estimate suggests 210-225 people found places in the Sanctuary, at the back of the Sanctuary and in the virtual sanctuary. They were all welcomed by greeters who tried to find everyone comfortable seats. Tables of food and beverages greeted all those people at the close of the service.

This is one of the additional things our church asks of us -- to provide hospitality to those who mourn, to make our sanctuary their sanctuary, to provide comfort in times of need.  

No one took a full accounting of everyone who helped...but, there were about ten people working at dozens of tasks on Saturday morning, and forty-six people supported the efforts on the day of Anne’s Memorial Service.  A village of over fifty people, working in concert to make of a Memorial Service the very thing it needed to be...welcoming, hospitable, and a safe place to mourn, remember and reconnect.  This is some of what our church asks of us. 

Chalice Lighting for Pride Service

Our sanctuary was packed on April 17, when representatives of eleven faith groups and combined choirs from UUCT and Temple Israel shared in a moving service for Pride 2012. The theme was 'radical inclusion.'  Below you will find the chalice lighting Carl Sherrod and I offered to open the service, it is adapted and expanded from words by William F. Schulz.
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This is the mission of our faith: 

To teach the fragile art of hospitality.

The fragile art includes more than welcoming the stranger, but, being present to the needs of men, women, and children in their triumphs and their pain.  The fragile art of hospitality is symbolized by the bowl of our chalice which gathers us into a circle of common caring.

This is the mission of our faith;

To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart.

The expanding search for truth creates both doubt and faith; and we strive to welcome each in our midst.  The generous heart jumps the chasm between believers and unbelievers, young and old, gay and straight seeking only to know the inherent worth in all.  The refining fire of thought and the passion of non-judgemental love are called forth in the flame we light.

This is the mission of our faith:

To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness.

As the chalice is composed of several parts, stem, bowl and fire; so too we are called to recognize that our differences enhance our abilities, for without the unique role played by every person in our communities and outside them as well, we would lose more than ever we would gain.

This is the mission of our faith:

To witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.  

Our witness is met in action for all that we find to be right, good and true. We call ourselves to ‘stand on the side of love’ whenever and wherever human beings are oppressed.  The need for each and every one to be a witness is symbolized by the stem of the chalice which holds our light like a beacon reminding us that all humanity is one. 

What do Sex, Science and Religion Have in Common?

A religion can't make it, without one thing--mystery.  Humans desperately seek out mystery.  No where is this fascination with mystery more evident than in four fundamental aspects of the human experience: sex, stories, science and religion.

First off, sex. Cognitive developmental psychology explains that one of the mechanisms that drives the formation of our sexual attractions is an affinity for difference (I’m told this is true for homosexuals as well).    We look for differences and are drawn to them.  We seek out mystery in romance. Mystery lights up our brains and our romance.

Stories. Why do we spend billions and billions and billions on movies, books and TV?  We "just gotta know how it ends!"  We despise and yet are addicted to cliffhangers.  Good writers know it's often what you don't say, don’t show that is more important than what you do say--the monster you never see, the whodunit, the love that may or may not find consummation.  

Science.  Some of science is solving practical problems so we can fix everyday problems, but a huge portion of science has been and always will be just because we're curious--mysteries of consciousness and how the brain works, the uttermost stretches of outer space, the inner workings of the quantum realm, the pageantry of our planet's evolutionary history.  Each unanswered question draws a deep part of ourselves that wants to find out; to search and not just to obtain.

Religion's no different.  German theologian Rudolph Otto gave us the term 'mysterium tremendum' to describe the sense of 'holy' or 'god', a 'tremendous and terrible mystery' that we desperately seek out in life to worship.  Our religious preoccupation with the mysterious abounds in the form or paradoxes and secret knowledge in religion--the nature of the Trinity, the path to Enlightenment, the paradox of free will, the duality of spirit and matter, prophecy, secret incantations, hidden codes, the list continues. 

Einstein said it best: 

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.  ...It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion.  A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.” 

Mystery inspires, inflames, enlivens, seduces, captivates, fascinates, terrifies and brings us to tearful awe.  Mystery is religion at its deepest core because mystery is the fundamental response of the universe to our most basic questions.  As the songwriter Iris Dement put it, 

"Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.

Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.

But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.

I think I'll just let the mystery be."

submitted by Lee Walton, based on his remarks at the services on March 25, 2012