Going Forward Together*

Beloved Friends, it has been a long week. I think it lasted 3 months. I am sure that you have heard and read and spoken a lot of words. So let’s start with some quiet time. I want you to settle in your seat, and get comfortable, (or as comfortable as you can when sitting on a pew.) Let’s breathe in peace. Breathe out love.

Breathe in peace. Breathe out love.

Breathe in peace, Breathe out love.

As I get quieter, keep breathing in peace, breathing out love.

Feel the longing in your heart, the stirring of your soul. Sit and breathe in peace, breathe out love. (repeat 6 times)

In these days of mourning and lamentation, let us make sure we spend time doing exercises like this. Find sacred space, some kind of sanctuary, where you can remember to breathe in peace, and breathe out love. I need you all to take good care of yourselves because we have a lot to do in the coming months. And we need everyone to be at the top of their game.

Someone as wise as Leonardo da Vinci counsels rest. He says: “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”

I know many of you are scared. Because of the indecency, immorality and utter disregard for the individuals he disagreed with, Mr. Trump has made many of us fear that certain standards of behavior for civil discourse, standards like respectful language and sensitive behavior, standards like truth telling, may be gone forever. To think that the office that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Barack Obama held, will now be handed over to someone so at odds with our UU values is indeed, more than a little scary. Our UU principles of individual worth and dignity, equality and justice, compassion and acceptance, and our connection to each other and to the earth, seemed to be largely tossed aside by one candidate during this election. But we must not sink into despair. Or move to Canada. We need to stay right here, to keep the legacy of freedom and justice alive.

This is our country, it belongs to all of its citizens, black and brown and white and abled and gay and Jewish and lesbian and tan, and disabled and Muslim and Methodist and Irish and Russian, young and old, smart and brilliant, Somalian, transgender, Italian and blind and deaf and Polish and Czech. This is our country and we need to fight for those things we hold most dear: environmental and racial justice, job creation for those left behind by the rise in the service and technology industries, good health care and quality education, a system for illegal immigrants to become legal, the assurance that every citizen has equal access to voting. And the easiest, most effective way we are going to do fight for these things is together, right here.

Earlier we celebrated our newest members; they bring our merry band of spiritual seekers and justice makers to 95 individuals.  Not all of us come regularly, not all of us make the same level of commitment. But no matter what any one person is willing and able to do, when we join our hands and hearts together, we can do more. In the company of our religious brothers and sisters, we can be held when we falter, we can be encouraged when we are struggling, we can be strengthened in our resolve.

Recently, one of our members was talking about writing a letter to our government officials. Another member suggested a letter writing evening. Is it better to write one letter or be with likeminded friends and write 50? We can engage our minds and hearts in social action and it will be more fun and more forceful if we do it together.

You want to make sure the poor are taken care of?-Call a UUSR friend and cook dinner for our homeless brothers and sisters involved in the Family Promise program. You want to make sure that our UU values are shared more broadly—Share our UUSR
Facebook page and get the word out!

Last week, I spoke about the hard spiritual work required to move this country in the direction of beloved community. The work is still required. This would be the case regardless of who won. Building beloved community is not based on one election. Everything is always changing and always moving.

Our reading this morning talked about belonging being more a process than a state. Lynn Unger tells us that belonging “isn’t something you have. It’s something you build. It takes time, plus the willingness to listen and be wrong and work out a better way, a deeper understanding… It isn’t easy. It isn’t ever finished. But it is at the center of our hearts’ longing.” (CLF Quest Oct 2016).

Be good to yourselves, take care of your spirits and commit to the hard work of insuring our values are made manifest in our country. I want to close by telling the story that our current President recently told about his beginnings. Sue Gee told a group of us on Wednesday night the gist of it and I loved it so much, I decided to share it with you this morning. You can hear the whole speech on YouTube- my version is heavily edited, but these are, essentially, the words that our President said the other night:

“Initially, when we started the campaign the odds weren’t for us. And we had a lot of states to cover, and I had never run a national campaign. And so we had to try to get any support we could, any endorsements we could. So I fly down to…South Carolina for some state legislature’s banquet or something. And I’m sitting next to this state legislator, and… I ask her for the endorsement….. And she says, you know what, Obama, I like you. You’re a little young, a little green behind the ears, but I like you. I will endorse you if you come to my hometown of Greenwood, South Carolina….

So I must have had a little too much wine because I just said okay on the spot. I was feeling a little desperate, didn’t have a lot of endorsements, a lot of support back then. So fast-forward about a month and a half later. I’d been working in Iowa, I’d been coming up to New Hampshire, I’d been calling people and trying to raise money. And I’m exhausted, haven’t seen my family. I’m a little grouchy. And I fly down to South Carolina, down to Greenville, and I get in about midnight. And I’m exhausted. I’m dragging my bags through the little airport terminal and get.. to the hotel. And all I want to do is sleep….

…Right as I get to the door, I get this tap on my shoulder. And I turn around and it’s one of my staffers…He said, “Senator, you do know that you got to wake up at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, right?” I said, what do you mean? He said, well, remember that state legislator you met, you promised you’d go out to Greenwood? Well, that’s tomorrow. So I’m muttering under my breath. I’m not happy. I go in, just fall out. Alarm goes off, and I feel terrible. I’m exhausted. Think I’m coming down with a cold. I open up the curtains — it’s pouring down rain outside!… Horrible day. I make myself some coffee and I get the newspaper outside my door, and open it up — there’s a bad story about me in The New York Times.

I get dressed, shaved, walk out, just kind of still groggy, still staggering. My umbrella blows open… As I’m walking out. And I get soaked! Soaked! I get in the car. I say, all right, how long is it going to take to Greenwood? An hour and a half. ..

So we’re driving and we’re driving and we’re driving. ..Sheets of rain are pouring down. And finally, we get to Greenwood — although you can’t tell because there’s really no buildings in Greenwood that are more than like two stories high. And there are just a couple little stores, and there’s like one stop light….

And we pull up to this little park field house. And I get out and I’m sloshing around in the rain, and my socks are wet. And I walk in …and there are like 15, 20 people there — And I will tell you, they didn’t look any happier to see me than I did to see them. They were wet and damp and they weren’t really excited. They didn’t know why they were there. And so I go around the room, and I say, how do you do, and talk to everybody. But they’re not really feeling it right now….

And so I’m about to make my pitch. I’m trying to… make the best of this. I’m going to do it quick and then I’m going to get out of there. And suddenly I hear this voice from the back, this shout “Fired up!”

And everybody in the room says, “Fired up!” — and then I hear the voice say, “Ready to go!” And everybody in the room says, “Ready to go!” And I don’t know what’s going on. I think these people are crazy. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here…. [But this woman, the same state legislator who I had met earlier, keeps saying the two things, Fired up, ready to go.  Apparently, this is what she does at every meeting she goes to.].. After a while, I’m starting to get kind of fired up. I’m starting to feel like I’m ready to go. And all those negative thoughts and all those bad memories start kind of drifting away. And we have a great meeting with these 20 people. And they all say, we’re going to support you, and we’re going to go out there and work..   And even after we left Greenwood, the rest of the day, all the campaigning, when I saw my staff, I said, “Are you fired up?” They said, “I’m fired up, boss.” “Are you ready to go?” “I’m ready to go.”

… And it just goes to show you how one voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world!”

So let’s just try that here.

Fired up! (and the congregation says) Fired Up!

Ready to Go!  Ready to Go!

Fired up! Fired up!

Ready to Go!  Ready to Go!

Amen and blessed be!