Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County - Sermons

“It can’t get any worse.” Remember when we used to think that? When we used to say that to each other? I don’t know about you, but I had to stop saying and believing that at least a couple years ago. Because it kept getting worse, and, as we’ve watched events unfold over the past two weeks, it keeps getting worse. And it’s disquieting and discouraging and disheartening and just about any other “dis” word you can think of, including “dystopian.” How many times can we say to ourselves those words of Unitarian minister Theodore Parker until they simply ring hollow in our ears and in our souls? You know the words I’m talking about, the ones that King and Mandela and Obama used so forcefully. “The arc of the moral universe is long…” Oh, yes it is, we can feel that in our bones these days, can’t we? “…but it bends toward justice.” Oh, really? Do we feel that in our bones, too? Or do we just repeat this mantra over and over again, desperate to believe it, hanging on by our fingernails, hoping to hope? Last week Latifah Griffin spoke about strength emerging from suffering, about the power of the human spirit to rise from the ashes. About our resilience in the face of pain and our determination, our belief that “we shall overcome.” Because that’s what we preachers do. We preach a gospel of hope, the good news of the resurrection. Maybe not a bodily resurrection, but a resurrection of the spirit. A resurrection of hope. Even when hope is forced to carry its own cross through the streets of the city, mocked by crowds who spit on it and would grind it into the dirt. Hope that is forced to stretch out its arms as it’s nailed to that cross. Hope that is lifted up to hang, to be mocked until it breathes its last breath. Hope that is crucified, it seems, every hour of every day of every week. Hope that is torn down from that cross and placed in a tomb, sealed with a stone that no one of us can roll back. Oh, yes, that is the purpose of the pulpit. It’s why you come here on a Sunday morning, isn’t it? To witness, to be a party to the resurrection of hope. To be reminded that, together, we can unseal the tomb and resuscitate hope. To breathe new life into it. To be reminded that we are the first responders, ready to run into the burning building of a culture of conflict and conflagration to rescue hope. To recover hope. To revive hope. We come here to remember, too, that hope requires the long view. The view past this moment, this day, this year, this Presidency. We come here to be inoculated against the virus of fear with the vaccine of hope.

And, trust me, I’ll get there today.

I will. I promise. But any preacher worth their salt must be a truth-teller. Because

if they cannot speak the hard truths, if they cannot tell the truth in a spirit

of love, as we say, their words of encouragement are nothing but pablum – a

bland and tasteless food that we choke down out of some sense of obligation and

not by choice. And so I want to be honest with you, and I want you to be honest

with me. We are in dark and dangerous times. I don’t have to enumerate all the

ways in which we see that damnable arc bending in the direction away from

justice. Away from equity. Away from compassion. Our government is putting kids

in cages and blowing up sacred sites to erect monuments to ego and hate. We are

stealing food stamps and health care out of the hands of women, children and

the elderly to fund corporate greed and the machines of war and death. Enemies

of the state are being summarily dismissed, while convicted criminal cronies

are set free. Toxic industrial polluters are given free rein to despoil our air

and water while, moment by moment, sea levels rise and threaten to swallow up

our coastlines. Oh, and don’t forget how the gun lobby has a stranglehold on

lawmakers while our children are dying in the streets.

I am sorry to remind you of all the bad news, when you came here to hear the good news, that gospel of hope I mentioned a moment ago. But as much

I was ever so tempted today to use the movie “Groundhog Day” as our sacred text. I mean, how often does the actual Groundhog Day fall on a Sunday? And, beyond that, what better illustration of this month’s theme of “Resilience” can there be? A man is forced to relive a single day of his life, over and over, seemingly forever. Every day his life is pulled and stressed and challenged, and he’s forced to bounce back and recover and, hopefully, eventually, learn and grow. But when I mentioned to Chrissy that I might preach on the movie, she gave me a look. It wasn’t exasperation, exactly. Or disappointment, really. Maybe it bordered on pity. But when I asked about her reaction, she pointed out to me that my sermons this year have been full of 1980’s movie references. “City Slickers.” “Indiana Jones.” I made the argument that “Groundhog Day” was released in 1993, but that didn’t persuade her. Chrissy telling me that was my first “Okay, Boomer” moment, and I realized she was right.

So instead of talking about “Groundhog Day,” I’m going to take us in a completely different direction. We’re going to boldly go where no minister has gone before. At least not this minister. And I’m not talking about the new “Star Trek: Picard.” No, where we’re going is the wonderful world of physics. Because I want to play some more with the rubber band metaphor Chrissy used earlier today during her time for all ages. I want to dig a little deeper into what happens when a rubber band is stretched and released. And to understand it, we’ve got to look at the physics of it.

Now, before I begin, I want to offer a disclaimer: Physics was my worst course in my entire educational career. I was doing so poorly in my college physics course that, halfway through the semester, the Dean of Students urged me to drop the course instead of fail it and have that haunt my transcript for the rest of my life. And, of course, I didn’t heed his warning, and I doubled-down and hired a tutor and worked my butt off. And I ended up with a big, fat “D.” Which, along with similar grades in Chemistry classes, forced me to drop out of the pre-med program halfway through my second year. More about that later. So, with this confession and perhaps a bit of foreboding, let’s look at the science of the rubber band. This subset of physics is called “elasticity.”

Elasticity is defined as the ability

of a material to respond to external stress and then to return to its original

form when that stress is removed. Every piece of matter has a factor of

elasticity. It may be slight, like a piece of wood, or it might be great, like

a spring or a rubber band. Rubber is uniquely suited to elasticity, both in its

natural and its manufactured state. That’s because, on a molecular level, it’s

made up of long chains of molecules that, in their resting state, are all

twisted and tangled up. Picture a big pot of cooked spaghetti after you’ve

drained the water out. When you stretch out a rubber band, you’re untwisting

and untangling those chains, straightening them out and pulling them tight. Those

chains of molecules have their limits, and if you apply enough pressure,

they’ll break. You’ve exceeded the rubber band’s elasticity limit. But assuming

we don’t reach that limit, we observe that, when we stop stretching it, the

rubber band will return to its original shape.

But on a molecular level, that’s not actually true. After a rubber band has been stretched, those twisted chains of molecules aren’t, in fact, as twisted and tangled up as they were before it was stretched. The molecular bonds have been weakened, and some may have been broken. This is called “hysteresis,” which you don’t need to know, but I tell you anyway to demonstrate that I’ve researched all this. If we stretch a rubber band over and over again, we all know what happens. It loses its elasticity. It gets longer and longer as fewer and fewer of those chains bounce back and, eventually, its elasticity is lost completely. Stre

I don’t know if you know this about me, but I love naps. I’m a total power-napper. I can lay down on my couch in the middle of the afternoon, close my eyes, and be asleep almost instantaneously. And – you can almost set your watch to it – ten minutes later my eyes will pop open and I’ll be wide awake and refreshed for the rest of the day. I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. Give me a shout out or an “amen” in the chat if you’re a power-napper, too.

Over the past couple weeks, with

everything that’s going on, I’ve found a shift in my napping taking place.

Maybe it’s the stress, or maybe it’s a means of escaping all the terrible news,

but I’ve found that my naps have been a little longer, my sleep a little deeper.

I’m not sleeping for 10 minutes, but more like 20. I think I even clocked a

30-minute nap one afternoon last week. But there’s a limit to how long I can

nap, and just the other day I hit it. You see, I have sleep apnea, which means

that if I enter into a deep enough sleep all the muscles in my neck and throat

relax, and my airway shuts down so that I can’t breathe. And when that happens,

I wake up gasping for air, like I’ve been under water for too long. It’s a

pretty rude awakening. And that’s what happened to me during that long nap. I

woke up gasping for breath.

There is nothing like not being able to breathe to make you appreciate breathing! Breathing is something that we take for granted most of our lives. It’s something that we – at least most of us – can literally do in our sleep. But of course, we also can’t live without it. It is literally life-giving. And that, for me, is the very definition of “sacred.” Something is sacred when it gives us life. When it enriches our lives. When it becomes such an important part of our lives that we either can’t, or don’t think we can, live without it. So, let’s all take a moment here to breathe in together, and to feel that sacred moment of inhalation and exhalation, taking in and letting out the good air of this precious day.

In these strange and troubled times, I think we’re learning a lot about things that we’ve long taken for granted, ordinary things that have suddenly become extraordinary. Things that, when we face losing them, take on a new significance and that we might even call “sacred” or “holy.”  Who knew that we would miss handshakes, hugs and holding hands so much? Or the hustle and bustle of our local coffee shop? If you’d like, you can name some of the things you miss right in the chat. Maybe it’s going to the gym, or going to school and seeing your friends. Or coming to church. All these things that we used to just do automatically, without a second thought, have suddenly become precious, become holy, become sacred to us. I hope that, when all this is over, we remember this feeling, and that we appreciate all these ordinary experiences as the extraordinary, holy things they are, and that we never take them for granted again.

The flip side of all this is that,

during this pandemic, we have the chance to make all sorts of new things

sacred. Who knew that simply

washing our hands could be life-giving? That by simply staying at home we could

be saving someone else’s life? What about the ritual of washing our fruits and

vegetables? We can approach that like a chore, or we can engage it as a

spiritual practice, noticing how each grape, each orange is perfect in its own

right.

It’s like the stone Chrissy pulled

out of the WonderBox, the stones of joy and sorrow we drop in our bowl of water

every Sunday. By itself, it’s just a stone. But when we hold it and invest it

with whatever we’re feeling when we drop it, this ordinary thing becomes

sacred. It becomes a blessing. We each have the power to make the mundane

sacred, to discover the holy in the ordinary. It might be as simple as looking

into each other’s eyes, seeing each other’s’ faces, when we sit down to eat

dinner together.

So, I wondered what everyday things

we’re doi

I would like to begin today’s message by expressing how good it is to be with all of you today. In this time of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders, it’s a gift and a blessing to be provided with the opportunity to join others in sacred time and worship, and to be invited and welcomed not only to your church but into your homes. So, my heartfelt thanks for this time together.

To say that we are living in a strange and sometimes confusing time is, sadly, not an overstatement. For those of us who connect with others through Facebook or other social networking sites, we are able to witness the various and numerous experiences that our friends and family, and the people that we follow are going through. Some posts are filled with joy and inspiration – flowers discovered during daily walks, songs that folx have created, and uplifting quotes. While other posts reflect the sadness and frustration that folx are experiencing, such as a loved one being sick with COVID-19, the loss of a job or steady income, food insecurity, and frequent episodes of either insomnia or lethargy. Such revealing posts regarding isolation and outbreak remind us that responses vary from day to day and that these experiences are both familiar and uniquely individual. It is in this remembrance that Life and Spirit charge us to breathe deeper into awareness, interconnectedness, and love, so that we may continue our advancement towards the vision and practice of Beloved Community.

When Life and Spirit beckon us to breathe deeper into awareness, interconnectedness, and love, these forces are asking us to transform words into actions and to choose a path that is less traveled.

For example, Merriam-Webster’s online definition of awareness, “the quality or state of being aware: knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists,” exemplifies how the word requires an adjective to flesh out its actual quality or state – for example, slight awareness or acute awareness, etc. The lens of Life and Spirit, however, quickly expands the definition of awareness into a state of being present, with an openness and empathy to receive and witness the Other and their experiences. Such an expanded definition invites one to experience another’s creative agency. As UU Reverend Patrica Jimenez, expounding on Ismael Garcia’s quote explains, “To be a creative agent means that one is not just allowed but also actively encouraged to tell one’s story as an act of “active assistance” and “passive witness.”  As Dolores Huerta, organizer, and activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, reminds us in the documentary Dolores, “All that a person has is his or her story. Who they are. What they’ve gone through. What their families have gone through. When you’re trying to deny them their story, you’re taking away their power.” The deeper walk with awareness invites us to see the more complex nature of reality. It asks us to seek out and honor the histories of this land that we are unaware of, and to discover for ourselves who has benefited, either directly or indirectly, from these missing histories. It asks us to know and honor the stories of our siblings. In relation to the pandemic, it invites us to see the myriad of stories, struggles, and needs that are unfolding during the stay-at-home orders. Awareness opens our hearts to the reality that some folx may not be able to rebuild their lives or savings. It opens our hearts to the fact that, for some folx, isolation, food insecurity, educational inequity, healthcare inequity, and socio-economic inequalities have always been present in their lives and that the end of the pandemic does not mean the end of these disparities.

When realizations like this occur within us, and our hearts are opened, Life and Spirit call upon us to breathe deeper into interconnectedness. With their lens to guide us, we begin to understand how truly connected we are to each other, and that the movements and actions that bring about so

The sermon is provided by the Rev. David Miller, who serves at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax (VA). It is inspired by the song “Orpheus” by Sara Bareilles, whose lyrics are shown below for reference.

There is no text for the sermon, so please listen to the sermon.

“Orpheus” by Sara Bareilles

Come by the fire, lay down your headMy love, I see you’re growing tiredSo set the bad day by the bed, and rest a whileYour eyes can closeYou don’t have to do a thing but listen to me singI know you miss the world, the one you knewThe one where everything made senseBecause you didn’t know the truth, that’s how it works‘Til the bottom drops out and you learnWe’re all just hunters seeking solid ground

Don’t stop trying to find me here amidst the chaosThough I know it’s blinding, there’s a way outSay out loudWe will not give up on love nowNo fear, don’t you turn like Orpheus, just stay hereHold me in the dark, and when the day appearsWe’ll sayWe did not give up on love today

I’ll show you good, restore your faithI’ll try and somehow make a meaning of the poison in this placeConvince you love, don’t breathe it inYou were written in the stars that we are swimming inAnd it has no name, no guaranteeIt’s just the promise of a day I know that some may never seeBut that’s enough, if the bottom drops outI hope my love was someone else’s solid ground

Don’t stop trying to find me here amidst the chaosThough I know it’s blinding, there’s a way outSay out loudWe will not give up on love nowNo fear, don’t you turn like Orpheus, just stay hereHold me in the dark, and when the day appearsWe’ll sayWe did not give up on love todayWe’ll sayWe did not give up on love today

This Sunday, four mothers in the church,

Liss Small Sharon FichthornKelli SchweitzerLaura Evans

offer their reflections on “Parenting Through the Pandemic.” They are shown below for all to read!

Liss Small

I used to think I had a pretty good rhythm going. I enjoyed my home life, my work, the time I spent with friends, and time spent alone. All of that has fallen away. I no longer have the time, the space, or – frankly – the mental clarity to do the things that I think of as simply mine. Painting, knitting, playing the piano, practicing yoga…

Instead, I am working full-time (remotely), teaching two bright and belligerent students, running an amazing zero-waste vegetarian all-hours commissary, attempting to stay sweet with my husband, and – most daunting of all – mothering in a pandemic. Which is the work that is relentless.

Not since my children were newborns has mothering felt so important, beautiful, brutal, universal, and isolating. Although I have amazing friends who I talk to regularly, I still feel kind of on my own most of the time. No one can tell me exactly what my children need right now. Not even my children themselves. None of us have the language for it. I’m left trying to narrate my own feelings throughout the day in the hopes of normalizing the waves of fear, joy, sadness, and gratitude.

I did have one “Parenting Win” the other night. I took a sobbing 5-year-old out to the back deck and introduced him to the power and effectiveness of a few well-timed Primal Screams.

If you know my kids, Calvin and Jesse, you know that they have lots of big, creative ideas… All. Day. Long. My house is NOISY right now. There’s not a lot of space for my own thoughts. And isn’t that typical of motherhood? Struggling to find your own thoughts amidst the noise and opinions of others. So again, I’m noticing how parenting in a pandemic is a lot like being a brand-new parent. It’s just me and Gabe and our kiddos, on our own little island, cozy and loved yet quite alone, trying to figure out how to survive and maybe even thrive in a brand-new situation.

My house is chaotic right now, but it’s also pretty joyful. I feel so lucky that I’m here to listen to my kids’ ideas, to watch them nurture those ideas in a project, to see their creativity and pride. My children are just old enough to be pretty independent. And just young enough to still want me nearby. I will never again have this much time with them, at these sweet ages. And so as much as I could use a little alone time, I have to admit that I am not eager to send them back to school for 7 hours a day when this is all over. This pandemic is scary and sad and I wish it weren’t happening. But this period of intensive mothering, with all of its hardship and beauty, is a gift. I intend to treasure it.

Sharon Fichthorn

Nine-month-old Izzie cuts her first tooth and goes from crawling to cruising. Three-year-old Eliie surprises us by learning to ride her brother’s old two-wheeler, six-year-old Wyatt rediscovers his skateboard and perfects his boarding skills, eight-year-old Maddie gets new roller skates and zooms up and down the street in front of her house, right on top of the giant chalk Chutes and Ladders game the kids drew earlier that morning. We arrange a Zoom meeting to celebrate my 65th birthday with a three-household toast, the adults sharing drinks that we made from a Saloon Box kit that arrived in the mail (who knew this was possible?), while the big kids drink strawberry smoothies in fancy glasses. Grandparenting and parenting during the pandemic means sharing family milestones via text, photo, email, FaceTime, Instagram, FaceBook, Zoom, mobile phone, and snail mail. After each connection, I have to temper my urge to hook up my little trailer and head out west. 

Staying connected through technology didn’t seem that different as we entered the pandemic. My daughters and their families live on the west coast, Kate in San Francisco and K

The pandemic was well under way.  Leaving his position of privilege, this respected medical practitioner went into the streets and hospitals to serve those who were suffering and dying from the disease.  The physician’s name was Guy de Chauliac.  It was the 14th century and the plague, known as the Black Death, would devastate up to a third of the population of Europe.

De Chauliac was what researcher Kim Strom-Gottfried would call a moral exemplar, one who shows courage, integrity, and service during times of upheaval; one who places their safety at risk in order to live by the values they hold dear.

There are innumerable examples of moral exemplars throughout history, people who were willing to put themselves in harm’s way in order to do what was right.  Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Galileo, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Ghandi, Harvey Milk, Harriet Tubman, Malala Yousafzai (Muh-lala you-sah-faai).  And other lesser known individuals who demonstrated the courage to speak out and take action at great personal risk.  People like Edith Cavell,  a nurse in Belgium during World War One who was arrested and executed for helping Allied servicemen escape back to England; Emmeline Pankhurst, a leading suffragette in the United Kingdom, who was jailed several times for her efforts to gain women the right to vote; Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931) African-American activist. She investigated the practice of the lynching of black people in the US and wrote about it in newspapers. Her office in Memphis was burnt down after exposing a lynching. Despite considerable opposition, she was able to turn public opinion against the practice.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran Pastor who consistently spoke out against Nazism and was eventually arrested and died in a concentration camp.  And our own Michael Cervetus, the original Unitarian martyr, who in the 14th century, wrote a book entitled On the Errors of the Trinity challenging the basic beliefs of Christianity.  He became a marked man during the Spanish Inquisition and went underground, was eventually exposed, arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.

All of these individuals, known and unknown, exhibited what today we call Moral Courage: the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences.  Moral Courage means doing the right thing in the face of your fears. 

During this generation’s pandemic, during this extraordinarily challenging and difficult time in our history, we see an abundance of moral exemplars.  Hospital workers on the front lines caring for people with Covid-19; paramedics heading out in ambulances to care for strangers; staff working in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and community homes for people with physical and intellectual disabilities; those providing psychological or spiritual counseling to patients, caregivers and front line staff; cashiers in grocery stores and pharmacies; the ones who drive the buses and trolleys, who deliver the mail, who disinfect the offices and hotel rooms, who work in meat factories, who volunteer at food banks, who go to work every day in any business that is deemed “essential.”

Moral courage for these people is not something spontaneous.  Of course, we admire and acknowledge the person who instinctively runs toward the fire or the automobile accident to help, rather than running the other way.  But to the people I listed, the act is deliberate.  These people are clear eyed about the inherent risk of the situation that faces them.  They admit to their natural fears and yet take decisive action to assist or alleviate the situation despite those fears.  Whether through a sense of duty,  altruism, or simply the need to keep their jobs, they rise each day, screw up their courage, and charge back into battle against a foe that they cannot see and cannot fully comprehend.

But what about th

Memorial Day brings up some complicated emotions for me. I don’t have any relatives I know who died in war. My grandfather volunteered to serve in WWII and, from what I can tell, pretty much hung out on a beach in Australia the whole time. My father enlisted in the Army and served stateside after the Korean conflict. I was young enough to miss the draft for Vietnam by a couple of years and didn’t lose any friends over there. I was an armchair liberal in high school, and have always wondered what I would have done had I been drafted. Resisted? Registered as a conscientious objector? Fled to Canada? Gone into the service because it was my duty to God and country? I’ll never know.

So, I don’t know what it’s like to be caught in the heat of battle, or to run into a burning building, risking life and limb for the sake of another. Nor do I know what it’s like to be a medical professional these days, working tirelessly to help save others, every day staring down the barrel of a stealthy but lethal disease. And it brings tears to my eyes knowing that so many caregivers have lost their lives as a result. I don’t like to use the metaphor that says we’re fighting a war against this disease, but in the case of these front-line responders and helpers, it does seem apt, particularly today, on Memorial Day.

But what of the rest of us? What of the majority of us who have been asked simply to stay at home? To be self-isolated and socially-distanced? It certainly doesn’t feel like a war when, with a few quick keystrokes on our laptops we can have groceries or a prepared meal delivered to our door. When we can sit on our lawns and chat with neighbors across the yard. I don’t want to minimize the stresses of homeschooling while simultaneously trying to get work done. Those struggles are real. But they hardly rise to the level of life-and-death battle. I doubt any of us would call these struggles “heroic.”

And yet, as we heard from Mark Bernstein last week, it does take courage, and fortitude, and persistence to keep up our isolation and distancing. It takes moral courage to have patience and to stay at home and to do what we can to flatten the curve. As this whole situation wears on, it seems to take more and more courage, more stamina, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you, but all this pressure to re-open stores and businesses and churches comes exactly at the same time as my resolve is ebbing and my patience is wearing thin. That’s perhaps true for the whole country. And it could have dire consequences.

If you’re feeling worn down by your confinement, it’s not surprising. There’s even a name for how we’re feeling right now, for this stage many of us seem to be going through. It’s called “Third Quarter Phenomenon.” As reported in a recent article in Psychology Today, TQP is something that scientists have observed with individuals living for long periods of time in space, on submarines, and at Arctic research facilities. It’s characterized by agitation, irritability, depressed mood, and decreased morale in the “third quarter” of periods of social isolation.[1] Does that ring a bell for anyone? If you think about what we’ve been through and what we’re going through, this makes sense. At the beginning, in the “first quarter,” as it were, we were in response mode. We were all about figuring out what we could or couldn’t do, how we could and couldn’t be. Once we got past that first stage, we entered something of a honeymoon phase. The novelty of staying home and our mastery of things like wearing a mask or planning a week’s worth of meals led us to feel like “We’ve got this. We can do this.” But now the honeymoon is over, and signs of Third Quarter Phenomenon are setting in. I see it in my adult daughters and their school-age children. I’ve noticed it among colleagues and friends. And, yes, in myself, too. We’re irritable and on edge. More easily agitated. We’ve got a hair-trigger. Our mood swings have increased in frequency and severity.

I have no words. I have no words to describe what it’s like to witness a murder. To watch as another human being writhes under the knee of state-sanctioned actor, begging for his life, begging for his dead mother, begging to be able to breathe. Until slowly his life seeps out of him. Or to watch two white men chase a black man down in a residential neighborhood, instigate a fight with him and then shoot him dead at point blank range. And all the while, like most of us I sit safely ensconced in my suburban home, secure in the knowledge that it will never happen to me, simply because I was born with the skin color I have. I have no words because all the words have been said. They’ve been said so many times before. “Hands Up. Don’t Shoot.” “I can’t breathe.” “Black Lives Matter.”

What do we do? What can we do? What must we do? There is no limit to the actions we can take – my Facebook feed and my Inbox have been flooded with urgent calls to action. March. Protest. Sign petitions. Send money. Engage neighbors and friends in the hard conversations about systemic racism, white privilege and white fragility. Oh yes, there is so much to be done. So much we can do, to add our voices to the call for racial justice, for equity in our society. We can and we must take action, even when we feel it is futile. Even when all our actions over all the years haven’t seemed to move the needle, not one little bit. So, make no mistake about what I’m about to say. I’m not saying we don’t act. But I think there’s more that we need to do than “to do.” Because what do we do when we have no words?

Today, my friends, we are called into a religious tradition, a religious practice that is foreign to many of us. And that is the practice, the tradition of lament. You see, as UU’s we have a tendency to jump from outrage to action. Action makes us feel good. Action affirms our sense of power and agency. Action is, for many of us, a source of comfort and hope. But in these dark days, when there are no words, we must take time, we must make space for lamentation. For the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments. For admitting our powerlessness, our abject fear, our desperation at what’s happening to our country, right before our very eyes. We must allow ourselves to go to what poet David Whyte called in our reading today, “that winter place.” And we get to that place not by doing, but by feeling, by being, by creating the space and taking the time to lament the state of the world, the state of our world, today.

Lamentation is the way that we connect with our pain and our grief when words fail us. Dr. Jamie Aten, executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, said that “Lament makes room for a group or a person to grieve what ought rightly to be grieved. When responses to suffering, like despair or rage or anguish, naturally bubble to the surface, choosing lament is deciding to honestly experience our suffering.”[1] I know that people of color are lamenting right now. Their howls of pain and their cries of desperation can be seen in the streets of our cities. Yes, what our black and brown friends need is for us to “show up.” But to be in true relationship with them, we must allow ourselves to experience their pain as our own. We must lament alongside them as they suffer through their long nights of the soul.

Lamentation takes many forms. The Bible is full of lamentation, particularly in the Book of Psalms. The long-suffering Jewish people certainly had cause for lament, and there are dozens of Psalms that express the pain of exile, occupation, oppression and separation from God. Perhaps the most familiar prayer of lament in Western culture is found in the gospels. They are the words uttered by Jesus on the cross shortly before he died: “My God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?” The cry “I can’t breathe,” shouted from the raspy, tear-gassed throats of African Americans occupying the streets of our nation’s cities i

This Sunday is the annual YUUCKI youth service. The YUUCKIs are our high school youth, and this is their moment to re-acquaint themselves you. There is no text for this service, so please enjoy the video!