I was sorry to miss the Youth Service today (on account of preaching responsibilities elsewhere). That being said, I had the pleasure of helping our youth practice last week - the "dress rehearsal," of sorts. It was especially powerful to watch them pledge their eyes, ears and hearts to curtailing teenage harassment. They saw themselves as anchors amidst the storms of peer pressure. They felt called to stand up, and speak out, for what they know, deeply, is right.
Much has been made of school bullying in recent months. Lawmakers, policy analysts and concerned citizens have offered a wide array of suggestions for how to curtail provocation and victimization. From closely monitoring a child's online activity to empowering teachers as safe allies, most every "solution" sounds reasonable, and seems welcomed. Heidi Saxton lists nine helpful tips for parents of bullied children.
All the same, I cannot help but wonder: is the ageless phenomenon of bullying as much a spiritual issue as it is a policy issue? Can we ever fully control a bully's actions without ministering to the emotional insecurities that prompt such behavior?
If, indeed, bullying has as much to do with how our children are, as how our children act, then what is our role as people of faith?
Please: continue the conversation.
This past Sunday, Jamez challenged our community to live into and up to its pledge of radical welcome. To open our doors to others, exactly as and who they are, is to open our hearts to difference and to open ourselves to change. We will be transformed in the very act of offering others religious transformation.
This topic sparked for me two primary questions: that of serving and that of deserving.
Our first question is this: whom does our radical welcome serve? Is our increased attentiveness to inclusivity a function of our desire to grow, or our desire to grow others? Truly, is this effort about making ourselves feel better, or about reaching out to our neighbors so that we may all make better lives?
Our second question is this: do we deserve to extend a radical welcome? We often take it for granted that others would join our ranks if only we would welcome them properly. But are we deserving of their presence? Does our faith have something to offer this world that other traditions do not? If we cannot answer this challenge in the affirmative with honesty and confidence, perhaps we would do well to focus on deepening our message alongside merely disseminating it.
Please: continue the conversation.
It is hard to know where to start.
Silence opens the way. Then we plant our prayers, nursing them with the sacred waters of fear and hope. I fear for lives brushing the threshold of death. I hope for families reunited with those they love - if not in body, in holy memory.
In the aftermath, pundits refuse to fly their partisan flags at half-staff. The Left and Right engage in tireless guilt-slinging, uninterruptedly showcased on 24-hour news networks. The alleged shooter is either a Tea Party archetype or a crazed loner. The media influence on his actions was either implicitly obvious or empirically unverifiable. Oh, and guns either always kill people or never do ("individuals do").
I miss the voice, and soul, of our faith. UUA President Peter Morales did issue a statement, calling citizens to help "create a culture where violence has no place." But I think Unitarian Universalism has something deeper to add:
1) The alleged shooter may not be like us, but we are capable of being like him. Our theology teaches that we are all of One Source, after all, and as such we share the human proclivity to fear, anger and violence. We would do well to look inward and take inventory.
2) Morality trumps causality. Whether or not the alleged shooter was directly influenced by extremist broadcasting is of secondary importance. We must insist, above all, that this type of discourse is morally wrong. And that we are implicit in its consumption, whether through Fox News or MSNBC. Our theology counsels that the human story is shared, fated all to One Destination. We would do well to participate in a political dialogue that reflects our salvation.
3) Guns are unity-cleaving tools. Our faith weaves us out of unity and delivers us back into unity. To take a life is to violently unravel a thread, defacing the underlying fabric. We would do well to advocate for both laws and behavior that promote and protect this inherent unity.
How does your Unitarian Universalist faith call you to respond?
Please: continue the conversation.
Do we pride ourselves on being heretics?
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| Michael Servetus |
Historian Rev. Mark Harris opens his pamphlet on Unitarian Universalist history with the proud assertion: "Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics." How 19th century Unitarian visionary Joseph Priestley would have balked! Far from embracing unorthodoxy, most early Unitarians sought to demonstrate, through rigorous historical and scriptural proof, the very orthodoxy of the Unitarian position, often tracing it back to the earliest Church Fathers. So too of many Universalists, who would cite, among others, the Pauline insistence that "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
Today, though, heresy is definitely "in." As Rev. Alison Wohler exhorts: "We remain heretics for yet a while longer, and I say, Blessings on us all." It's hip, admittedly, to go against the religious grain, to swim spiritually upstream. But, as Harris also advises, "we are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. Heresy in Greek means choice."
I am reminded of the adage: "Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely." The freedom of choice can be as dangerous as it is emancipatory.
This past Sunday, Robin cautioned against protesting our way entirely out of Christianity, thereby losing our seat at the table and with it: our influence, our identity, our memory. One cannot be a heretic, she argued, without a tradition to push up against, or within which to "choose." And religious dilettantism doesn't count.
Ironically, hers has since become the heretical position within Unitarian Universalism writ large.
I invite your thoughts: do we need more Unitarian Universalist "heretics" choosing to reclaim our Christian heritage and its accompanying symbols, aesthetics and theological richness? What do we lose as a tradition when we protest our way out of Christianity altogether? Or, is this intentional "historical amnesia" a necessary strategy for growing in a new direction?
Either way, let us "choose wisely."
Please: continue the conversation.
