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Pride 2025

This reflection on Pride Month looks for inspiration in the past, present, and future. This sermon was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on June 15, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

The high school where my kid attends flies several flags in front of the building. They fly the American flag and the state flag, of course. They also fly a Black Lives Matter flag and a Pride flag. It’s just an everyday thing, as common as cafeteria food. There are many terrible things about the times in which we find ourselves, and many urgent issues that demand our attention. Some things have gone backwards from the progress we had hoped to achieve by now, but some things are different and better than they were when I was a teenager, at least in some places. That flag tells me that the struggle of those who came before me, the freedoms we have organized for in my lifetime, that work has not been in vain. In gratitude for those who made that progress possible, in community with those who live and love as their whole selves and are working for liberation, and in hope for a future when everyone can be free, I celebrate Pride Month in June.   

Unitarian Universalism is a faith that puts liberating love at the center. The values we express, from pluralism to equity to transformation, all connect back to liberating love. We cooperate with the forces that create and uphold life. Life is ever-changing, adaptive, creative, and unpredictable. Life is abundant and interconnected. Liberating love sings with that interconnection and breaks the obstacles that try to prevent change and growth and surprise from flowing onward. Liberating love does not tolerate attacks on the dignity and worth of the beloved, but seeks to ensure nourishment and mutual thriving for all life. 

To me, upholding the rights and strengthening the community of LGBTQIA+ people is inextricably linked to my Unitarian Universalist religious values. We must work to create congregations and a world where people can grow into their whole, authentic selves. The glittering diversity of sexualities and genders and presentations among us is a beautiful expression of the fullness of life. When we honor and celebrate our differences, we have more creativity among us to solve problems together and to generate joy. We care for each other and ourselves more effectively when we have confidence in our belovedness. 

This is why Pride Month is a party as well as a protest. Joy is manifest when we are open to liberating love. Living out loud is part of the recipe for resilience and care. Celebrating Pride is one way of saying, “I am here and I am whole. You are here and you are whole. We are here and we are whole.” It is a song of gratitude and praise for the infinite variety of creation. We reflect millions of different facets of the Divine image, and each one is essential. 

As people of faith, we make meaning out of the whole flow of time. The past, the present, and the future are all important. Just as Unitarian Universalism has a legacy and a foundation as well as a constantly re-forming present and destiny, the Queer community honors our ancestors and shapes what’s next. We know that there has never been a world without Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual people in it. Diversity in gender and sexual orientation is part of human diversity and always has been. There never will be a world without us, for as long as humans live on this planet. All of us, allies as well as LGBTQIA+ people, have a role to play in making room for that community of the future. 

Let’s start with the past. Queer people existed before 1969, yet we remember the Stonewall uprising as a turning point. We honor ancestors like Marsha P. Johnson, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, Raymond Castro, and Brenda Howard. We celebrate their call to be in community in the first place in an era of police repression, their courage in resisting direct violence and dehumanization, and their persistence in speaking up for their rights. In these times when authoritarians want to erase that history, it is all the more important that we listen to the historians and elders and community members who can retell the stories of that time with authority. 

For me, one of the lessons I receive from that chapter of history is that our struggles are intertwined. I love that there are so many ways of understanding ourselves and naming our experiences under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, yet we cannot be lured into boxes that are so separate that we forget our common cause. Racism figured into the police violence experienced by community members in 1969. Dismantling white supremacy culture is part of Queer liberation. Retaliation against sex workers was another part of the violence that set off the Stonewall Uprising, and so respect for sex workers, concern for their safety, and support for their self-determination is part of the legacy we receive. Trans women of color were at the front lines of that struggle, and Trans liberation is inseparable from any other part of our movement. From the Stonewall Uprising to the Christopher Street Liberation Day march a year later and beyond, the movement was always a collaboration among people of different genders, races, and sexualities. Personal connections, joy, confidence, and music were always part of it. We cannot let the opponents of freedom divide us. A strong community looks out for each other. 

By the time I came out in the early 1990s, community care was part of the fabric of the movement, and was essential in navigating the AIDS crisis. Bringing people food and medicine is as much a part of Queer life as dancing and marching. For that matter, community was and always is essential for survival for all of us. We need each other so we can hang in there when the world tells us we are unwanted. But finding that community is not always simple. In the early 90s, some people had access to the Internet, and that helped, but a lot of people didn’t. Teens in particular were isolated, with precious few books in print that reflected their experience, and certainly none in the school or local library. Bullying, parental rejection, and street violence made it unsafe to deviate from the norm. 

That’s still true in far too many places. It is true that Queer youth mental health improved immediately after marriage equality became legal, when young people were better able to see a possible future for themselves. There are more books, movies, and TV shows with diverse characters now, so it’s harder to lie to a kid and tell them they are the only one in the universe with a particular set of experiences. Even so, physical safety and mental health support for LGBTQIA+ kids are still basic issues. The world authoritarians want is one where LGBTQIA+ characters don’t exist in any kind of fiction or nonfiction, a world where bullying and violence to enforce conformity are accepted parts of the system, a world where kids’ lives are less important than maintaining an oppressive system of patriarchy and white supremacy. 

What I learned from that part of my history is that we have to be loud for our own survival and for the survival of those who need help finding their people. One of the functions of being fabulous is so that people who are coming to understand a new facet of their identity will feel less alone. Even if they aren’t ready to reach out yet, simply existing as your whole, authentic, beautiful, unique self gives other people permission to imagine living as their whole selves. For the LGBTQIA+ community and for UU congregations, being joyful and loud and fabulous means that someone who is trying to find their way home can find you. Being loud also makes it easier to figure out who has your back, who merely tolerates you, and who only offers acquaintanceship that is conditional on conformity. Also, having fun is conspicuous sometimes. We need joy to build up our reserves of resilience, and joy creates more of itself. Pride celebrations are a beacon of hope and nourishment for our resilient souls. There have always been challenges, and there have always been assets in the community. Let’s move on to the present. There are very real threats to the lives and civil rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Asexual, and especially Trans and Intersex people. Housing discrimination, employment discrimination, outlawing Trans affirming medical care, and restrictions that affect LGBTQIA+ people traveling or existing in public are all back on the table. Book banning is having a resurgence. There are credible right-wing strategies in place to claw back marriage equality. 

These actions are not only a conservative project in themselves to enforce a particular vision of power and dominance in our society, they are wedge issues to pry open the public’s tolerance for authoritarianism. If straight, cisgender people can be made to fear or hate LGBTQIA+ people, they will welcome attacks on the bodily autonomy and lives of Queer people, they will cheer for the disruption of our medical care, they will sit idly by when we can’t get passports, they will support increased funding for surveillance and repression to prevent us from gathering or being ourselves. Meanwhile, authoritarians are running a similar strategy to harm other marginalized groups, such as immigrants, using fear and dehumanization as excuses for militarization, ignoring due process, and retaliating against their political rivals. The next step for an authoritarian government is to turn those same tools on the rest of the population, when it is too late to stop them. The goal is to end the freedom of speech and assembly for everyone, to dismantle a free and unbiased press for everyone, to enforce reproductive coercion on everyone, and to squeeze the freedom of expression into such a small space that creativity will not conceive of a way back out of this mess. That’s the authoritarian playbook, but we don’t have to let them play it all the way through.  

Our liberation is bound up together. It always has been. It always will be. 

The larger community of Queer people and our allies have been in difficult places before, and we know what to do. We will come together in joy and mutual support, because we are human beings and we are in alliance with the forces that create and uphold life. We will find common cause across differences of gender, race, class, and experience, knowing that none of us is free until all of us are free. We will honor and celebrate our differences, becoming stronger through mutual understanding. We will care for one another in body and spirit. We will tell our stories and the stories of our ancestors. We will live in love and joy, out loud and unapologetically. We will make ourselves into a beacon so that all who desire a life of authenticity and liberation can find us. We will create sanctuaries of hope and music and art to welcome in the wandering souls who need to be reminded of their divine belovedness. 

I don’t know what the future holds. Authoritarianism cannot last forever, it is always fragile in the face of the Spirit of Life. The collaboration of people who hold liberating love at our center is necessary to making the time of dictators as short as possible. I know that, in this struggle, we are equipped with tremendous gifts. We have a proud history and wise elders. We have music and art and theater. We have the skills to take care of each other, to center the most impacted, and to move the levers of power strategically. And we know how to celebrate. Let us do all of these things in the name of Love, with the power of Love, and in the spirit of Love.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen. 

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A Prayer for My Queer and Trans Siblings

Here you are. Here, in this holy space, on this ground that is holy because you are here.

Here you are, in flesh and bone, filling up this body that belongs to you alone. Your pumping heart is a wonder because it keeps you alive. Your loving heart is a blessing because it keeps all of us alive.

The Spirit of Love has a home in you. May we all see that love in you and let our hearts become mirrors for the compassion at your core.

The Spirit of Justice has a home in you. May we light our wicks from one another until we are all aflame, until we burn out every prejudice we carry in these bones.

Here you are. Holy as you are.

Blessed be.

Jess Reynolds Love Like Thunder

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The Beauty of Freedom: Flower Ceremony Homily 2025

The Flower Ceremony is a Unitarian Universalist ritual that dates back to 1923 in Prague. In the ritual, each person in the congregation brings a flower and places it in a shared vase, symbolizing the free choice to be part of a community that finds beauty in diversity. At the end of the service, each person receives a flower from the vase, different from the one they brought, symbolizing the unique gifts that each person receives in community. Both the underlying message of mutual respect and the actual history of Unitarians in Prague bring a clear anti-authoritarian stance to this ritual. In 2025, we need to remember these messages.

This homily was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on May 18, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

I am growing a lot of borage this year in the garden. Not all of it intentionally. Borage, also known as starflower, is an annual flowering plant that blooms from June through October. It has tough, hairy leaves and edible flowers. Pollinators love the blossoms. Finches and other little birds enjoy the seeds. Once harvested, borage is a good component in mulch or compost. All of that is the good news. 

Depending on how you look at it, the other good news is that borage is really good at self-seeding. That means that the mature plant drops the seeds readily, and the seeds are not fussy about what they consider to be good soil, so a flowering crop early in the season will lead to more plants later in the season, and even more the following year. You can’t predict where they will come up. 

If you are the kind of gardener who likes to map things out carefully, arrange your seedlings in neat rows, and plant all your seeds according to a strict schedule, borage will laugh heartily at all of your best-laid plans. Last year, the borage didn’t come up where I planted it at first, but it did come up in the mulched-over garden path next to the flower bed. Then it self-seeded and the next generation grew where I had wanted it in the first place, in a bed that I had in the meantime crowded with wildflowers. This year, borage is finding creative new places to sprout in the garden paths, in the vegetable beds, and in the herb containers. There’s a particularly large and healthy one in one of the containers where I had planned to put a tomato seedling this weekend. 

Feeding pollinators is important, so I will work with the borage, taking out competing plants, repurposing part of the path into a flower bed, and watering as needed. It’s good for me to be reminded that, as far as the garden is concerned, I am not actually in charge. Though the garden does benefit from my help, the garden belongs to itself. 

The beauty that shows itself to me is ungovernable. It is the kind of beauty that thrives among a diversity of companions. It is beauty that goes where it will, and brings abundant life trailing after it. It is beauty that calls me to collaborate rather than to control, and that brings joy with that surrender to interdependence. That is true of borage and other flowers, and it is true of movements for social justice, and it is true of this congregation. There is a wildness and freedom to the kind of beauty that flourishes with interdependence and right relationship. 

Wild, liberated beauty is a threat to systems that prioritize control rather than cooperating with the forces that create and uphold life. When we support healthy systems, when we honor diversity, when we adapt in partnership we are living into our Unitarian Universalist values. Those values are incompatible with authoritarianism and fascism. Norbert Čapek knew that. Ancestors from throughout our living tradition knew that. Now it is our turn to practice the wild beauty of relational values and liberation. 

Following an adaptive, pluralistic, life-affirming path is a form of resistance to authoritarianism. By authoritarianism, I mean a form of government where the leader attempts to rule by fiat, and to undermine all other forms of authority that might provide checks on their power. Sidelining the courts by ignoring their rulings and taking over functions that belong to the legislature are the actions of an authoritarian. Arresting a mayor who attempts to enforce the laws regarding an occupancy permit in his city is the action of an authoritarian. 

When Unitarian Universalists remember their calling to something more deeply authentic, more eternal, and more loving than obedience to a dictator, you are already making room for liberation in your minds and hearts. Moving with the dance of liberated, wild beauty helps people to be resilient. In artistry and joy and mutual care, remind each other and your neighbors that another way is possible. 

Similarly, the ungovernable garden of interdependence is incompatible with fascism. In fascism, the leader seeks to collapse civil society, the economy, the business world, intellect, and culture into one consolidated system of power. No other sources of authority for knowledge, history, or morality are respected by the fascist leader. When universities are attacked for teaching true science and history that conflicts with the leader’s statements, that is fascism. When theaters, museums, media outlets and other institutions are defunded and attacked except for those that repeat the leader’s point of view, that is fascism. 

Yet the people are not powerless. When you celebrate pluralism in song and story and ritual, when you create opportunities for learning, when you commit to UU values and to supporting each other, you are resisting. The shared life of celebration, knowledge, and compassion is compelling. 

The beauty of freedom thrives when people honor their differences. Variation and change are hallmarks of life. People are strengthened by participating in the give-and-take of interdependence, when they look to their roots and see that they are entwined with many lives. When people act with justice, equity, and generosity in their families, their neighborhoods, and their congregation, they are planting the seeds of a healthier society. Unitarian Universalists are practicing a way of life that can grow as more people are gathered into a network of caring. 

It matters that this congregation honors pluralism. It matters that this congregation finds a sense of oneness in UU values and in the creative living legacy of a UU faith. It matters that you find joy in this wild, unpredictable beauty. It matters that you sing and meditate and share food in celebration of both unity and diversity. 

The beauty of freedom, this unpredictable garden of liberation and interdependence, needs cooperation. It cannot be taken for granted. Yet to collaborate with life is to be part of a universe of strength and resilience. Each person may be called in a different way to collaborate with life. Some care for others. Some teach. Some commit to public witness or advocacy. Some are artists or archivists or musicians. There are an infinite variety of talents in the community. The talents of this congregation are a bouquet of strategies that bloom in a riot of colors. 

May the flowers gathered in this ceremony be reminders of the love at the center of our faith, and of the liberation that is possible when we cooperate with abundant life. So be it. Blessed be. Amen. 

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Nurturing Faith 2025

How does our theology support our ability to be a community that welcomes young people? This sermon was revised and delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on May 11, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

Two children showed up that day for the lower elementary Religious Education class. The warm California sun eased its way through the window, into our small classroom. I was in my twenties and I had been a Unitarian Universalist for about a year. My previous experience with children had been as an older sister, a babysitter, and as a mentor to at-risk girls, but not as a teacher or a spiritual guide. 

My friend, the Director of Religious Education, encouraged me to face my fears and to rely on the excellent curriculum. He didn’t seem to mind that I was neither a parent nor a professional teacher at the time. It just seemed to me that a person ought to know all of the other people in church, young and old. Teaching was the best way I could figure out to build relationships. As it turns out, I was right. 

In the religious education class, we read a story about how people can have many different ideas about God. After the story, we took crayons to paper to express about our own ideas. One of the children drew a human figure with a beard flying through the clouds. “Is that God?” I asked. 

“No,” the child said. “That’s Jesus. God got old and died.”

This led to an argument with the other child, which saved me from wondering how to move the discussion along. Is there a guidebook for introducing philosophy to eight-year-olds? I hope I was able to practice curiosity about their ideas and questions. Part of what was challenging for me about that experience was that I didn’t feel confident about my understanding of my own position or the UU tradition. I needed a firm place to stand while I received their questions and ideas. I could have benefitted from spiritual support so that I was more resilient to moments of uncertainty. More experience would eventually teach me that spirituality grows and changes, so neither the children in class nor we as the adults had to have a final answer that day. I learned a lot from my first experience with teaching.

As a community, there are many ways we come together to nurture young people. Today being Mother’s Day, we especially honor people who take on parenting roles. At the same time, I don’t want to forget that everyone in the congregation dedicates themselves to growing souls when we bless the children among us. We may be aunts or uncles, neighbors, mentors, teachers, or activists preparing a better future. Many of us are role models and cheerleaders, consciously or not. 

And I want to acknowledge that today might be painful for those who hoped to become parents, but have not yet realized that dream, or for people who are separated from their parents or children through death or distance or estrangement. It is a complicated day. I invite us to be present with our feelings and experiences, whatever they may be, and, when we’re ready, turn toward the practices that will help us with mutual thriving. 

Whether we care for children in our daily lives or we’re part of the larger circle of care, there are a few ideas that can help us nurture the faith of growing Unitarian Universalists. Taking time for our own reflection and contemplation can help us handle complicated questions and surprise learning moments. Know yourself. A regular spiritual practice brings a little bit of peace and a greater ability to take each moment as it comes. This is important because being around human beings in progress is seldom peaceful. It is tempting to ignore the present with its chaos and uncertainty, which would mean losing its gifts. Know this moment. As UUs who affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the possibility for spiritual growth, we maintain hope for what people can become given encouragement and resources. That means we have to be open to change and humble about predicting outcomes. Know that we don’t know. 

There is no shortage of advice out there for people who have concern for children. Those outside sources only go so far. I’m suggesting that the experience and open-mindedness we bring are important sources of information as we support growing souls, especially the souls of young UUs. Know yourself. Know this moment. Know that we don’t know. 

Reflecting as a Nurturer: Know Yourself

As a new Unitarian Universalist, I relished the freedom to be around people who believed a range of life-affirming things about the sacred. Learning about the responsibility to reflect on my beliefs and what they meant in terms of my actions came later. We don’t have to have a final answer about the nature of the Divine or the meaning of death. As UU’s, part of the fun and the challenge is to figure out what our answers are about the big questions for now, even as we bind ourselves to the love at the center of our faith and to our values such as justice and interdependence. 

Applying the ethic of freedom and responsibility to children is more difficult and all the more important. Children think differently than adults do. They ask different questions. They need different kinds of information and frameworks to find comfort and make sense of their world. We are a community of people of different ages and perspectives who travel together on a spiritual journey. For me to support and encourage someone else in their way of traveling, it helps if I know where my own head and heart are pointed. 

In her book, Tending the Flame: The Art of Unitarian Universalist Parenting, Michelle Richards, emphasizes this point in her first chapter, which is titled “Know Thyself.” She writes:

Sharing our personal spiritual and religious beliefs with our children is not indoctrination. It is offering the wisdom and the insight that they eagerly seek from us—just as they look to us for guidance when choosing between right and wrong courses of action. If we are vague and ambiguous when our children ask us theological questions, we lose the opportunity to have a positive influence on them in this area. Eventually they’ll stop asking us their religious questions and look for answers elsewhere. Many of the other people they encounter in life will not be so hesitant to pass on their beliefs, opening up the possibility that the vacuum we leave in our children’s lives will be filled with a belief system contrary to our own.

(End quote.) Richards suggests that articulating our faith through word and deed, and allowing other people to see us go through that process, is more supportive than leaving a void and inviting the people who depend on us to fill it. 

I hear some of my friends who are unaffiliated with a religious community say they want to let their children make up their own minds. People will make up their own minds no matter what you do. Give them a set of tools and a decent sample of data to start with in their exploration. Give them a sense of belonging so that they have a safe place to think and an ethical framework to help them test their beliefs. Give them epic stories with flawed characters as well as positive role models, because they will need both to understand how to overcome challenges. 

Even problematic stories are teachable moments. Delving together into mythic tales where good and evil are all mixed up forces us to exercise our powers of discernment. What can we learn from this story by example? What can we learn by counter-example? Every legend is fair game, from Bible stories to Greek myths to honest history. 

Children are able to deal with stories much earlier in their lives than they are able to handle abstract moral arguments. Stories give us common ground in our shared spiritual exploration. By knowing what I believe right now, I can use stories to get the conversation started and launch growing souls toward their own conclusions.

Daily Practice: Know This Moment 

Once we’ve had a chance to get to reflect on our beliefs, the next step is to get comfortable with being in the present. People in general and children and youth in particular are subject to change without notice. Living creatures are unpredictable. Those who devote at least some of our time to caring for others need something to hang on to from one minute to the next, because we don’t know where this ride is going to end up. Spiritual practices such as prayer or meditation can help us to honor each moment.

That doesn’t mean every single second is lovely and enjoyable. Quite the opposite. Taking care of humans who are dependent on you means bodily fluids in inconvenient places, arguments with little reference to rational thought, and an ongoing search for what circumstances can still be embarrassing. There are awe-inspiring experiences, too. I am grateful for all the people who allow me to journey with them, especially my family. 

Because human outcomes are unpredictable, we can’t pin our hopes on the promise of a future reward. The best place to find meaning is in the now, tangled up with the struggles and joys of reality. Mindfulness with the day-to-day environment and relationships around us takes work. A little bit of distraction can make life bearable. Too much distraction means we miss opportunities to learn, discover, and solve problems alongside our loved ones. A daily spiritual practice can help keep us on track … at least sometimes. 

The spiritual practices that sustain me and that fit into an unpredictable life have changed over the years. Lately, I have found that gardening and taking walks support my ability to be mindful. Music as a spiritual practice keeps me humble. I also have peers in ministry that I check in with regularly so that we can keep each other accountable to our moral north stars. 

Regular spiritual practices can help us to get through the day, to stay true to our values, and to pay attention to the present in all of its complicated glory. If we have the added bonus in our lives of nurturing other people, regular practices show them in actions louder than words that spiritual growth is important. What we do builds stronger memories than what we say. May we be faithful to the actions that replenish our souls, and may this very moment yield its blessings. 

Openness to Change: Know That We Don’t Know 

So far, I’ve talked about what we can come to know through reflection about our own faith and through mindfulness. I’d also like to talk about what we don’t know. The mature fruit of a growing soul is unique, there is nothing else in all of time and space like it. Building a world where every person can fully realize their potential is an act of faith. There are no guarantees. 

In her essay, “Family Values,” Rebecca Ann Parker demonstrates how liberal theology has historically translated into the way we understand the growth of children, the relationships of families, and the actions we take as a community to support families. (This essay can be found in her 2006 anthology, Bless the World: What Can Save Us Now, edited by Robert Hardies.) 

Going back as far as Universalist minister Hosea Ballou in 1805, Parker notes that liberal theologians “understood that how people imagine God influences the social structures they create and how they, themselves, behave. Theology and family values are inextricably linked: If God is a harsh father who demands punishment for human sin, earthly fathers should follow suit … In place of a punishing father-God, nineteenth-century religious liberals reimagined God as a gentle, nurturing parent.”

Parker goes on to describe Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing’s view that human beings are born good with gifts waiting to manifest. “The purpose of life, religion, and education, Channing said, is to unfold and direct aright all the powers of the soul and thus to grow in likeness to God.” 

Part of Parker’s point is that our heritage of the Divine as a nurturing rather than punishing figure is directly linked to a vision of a society where we care for one another with abundance. We want to dismantle the oppressions and the divisions between people that slow down our unfolding powers. 

Let’s also take a look at what this living tradition means for the way we relate to each other in our families, however we define them, and in our congregation. I believe most of us wish for our loved ones a chance to develop their gifts, to be appreciated, to practice resilience, and to move in harmony with others. We don’t know exactly what that will look like in the future. Helping people become their best selves is more important than controlling them to fit a mold that wasn’t created for them. Is that right? 

Being willing to co-write our story with the next generation is a powerful aspect of liberal theology. Tradition has a voice, ethics have a voice, yet we still have respect for the growing souls in our collective care.  

Conclusion

Today, we honor those who have tended to growing souls. We honor grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, and mentors. We especially honor parents in all of their forms: birth, step, foster, and forever, awesome and imperfect. In whatever way our gifts of love and service are offered, may we remember the perspectives we bring from within. Articulating our beliefs is the beginning of a conversation. Being comfortable in our own faith helps us to listen and accept the faith of others. Know yourself. Replenishing our own souls, increasing our capacity to keep faith with the present moment, sets the tone and offers an example from which our loved ones can learn. Know this moment. Encourage the powers of the soul to unfold, past the horizons of our vision. Know that we don’t know. So be it. Blessed be. Amen. 

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The Question Box! I spontaneously answered questions at a Sunday service rather then delivering a prepared sermon on May 4. I'll have to get back to you with the video from that service. This video is the follow-up, with answers to the questions I didn't get to on May 4.

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Eastering

Why this sadness toward spring? Half smiles at the first yellow flowers, Tears pooling for no reason with each rain and sunset?

Each year this green show blows wide winter’s coverings and lets us see the swell and push of beginning again.

Am I meant to rise too? To push away what leans against the door of my pinched heart? I cannot. Compassion for myself is a slow growing crop, however carefully tended it yields an unreliable harvest.

These resurrections ask more than I can give every time this hurts more than the pains of my body than the old world full of sorrows this offering of love this unbearable gift of another chance.

—Barbara Pescan Morning Watch

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"Navigating the Narrow Places" (revised for 2025) was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on April 13, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

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What Is Hope 2025

Drawing from the Humanist strand in our heritage and in conversation with our interfaith partners for social and economic justice, we find a way forward that is based on vision and values rather than wishful thinking. This sermon was revised and delivered by Rev. Lyn Cox to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick, April 4, 2025.

In this morning’s reading, we heard about “hope” as a transitive verb from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. Bishop Barber has been a force in movement building for justice for a long time now. While I’m not a full-time movement builder myself, I have been present for a few of the actions of the Poor People's Campaign, and before that with Repairers of the Breach. I have been inspired by the capacity for hope in all of the organizers and witnesses who come together to declare a new vision of who we can be as a community, as a society, as a country, as a world. 

This week has been full of inspiration as well as heartbreak. I know it is discouraging to see news about the destruction of basic human rights, disappearing people based on their perceived views without due process, a budget that will kill millions of people with its cuts to Medicaid and other programs, and universities capitulating to attacks on equitable education and academic freedom. Yet there are people gathering to lend strength to justice and compassion. Senator Corey Booker, in his record-breaking 25-hour speech, quoted Egyptian pro-democracy activist Wael Ghonim, “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.” Yesterday, at over a thousand different locations, people rallied for democracy. Communities are coming together to look out for each other and to learn their constitutional rights. When I call my legislators, their staff members sound really busy; I think I’m not the only one calling.

There is a lot going on. Sometimes I have the strength and energy to participate in an embodied way, and sometimes I don’t. Each one of us can be a wave that goes in and out with the tide, as long as we keep being an ocean of acceptance, gathering to send energy to each new wave going in, and to lift up with potential energy the waves returning. 

I’d like to speak about hope today. Some of us need to draw from hope to hold out a vision of the world that can yet be. Some of us need hope to sustain the relationships, the communities, and the institutions that are holding people together during these difficult times. Some of us need hope to get through the day, to care for ourselves and the people we love in a personal way. I’ll be drawing from examples of justice making, and I want to be clear that hope is for all of us. You do not have to earn your inherent worth. Your path to creating a world with love and justice at the center might be caregiving, or science, or statistics, or direct service, or mutual aid, or actually physically creating the infrastructure our community needs, or something else. We can respect each other’s paths, and not beat ourselves up for failing to travel every path at the same time. Hope is for everybody. 

When we seek change in coalition, we collaborate with people of many different faiths and no faith, each one speaking out of their own tradition about what moves them to be part of the movement. We each need to reach down to the roots of who we are and what our mission is in this life, because the status quo is not set up for this work, and the energy has to come from somewhere. Dr. Barber speaks eloquently from his tradition, but hearing him does not mean we have to draw from the same roots. Instead, it can inspire us to look to our own and answer in response based on the legacies and communities that energize us as Unitarian Universalists. 

For instance, when Dr. Barber speaks of hope, he might bring up a story from the Biblical book of Zechariah, comforting and energizing his people who were trying to put the pieces of themselves back together after a time of oppression; or from theologians like Walter Brueggemann or Reinhold Niebuhr, who speak about faith and realism. Those stories and essays can help illuminate points in our own philosophy, even if the texts that Dr. Barber references aren’t stories that everyone here draws from. 

Unitarian Universalism is a pluralistic faith. There are among us Pagan UU’s, Jewish UU’s, Muslim UU’s, Buddhist UU’s, Christian UU’s, Atheist UU’s, Humanist UU’s, and just plain Unitarian Universalists. Humanism technically means a worldview that looks for human solutions to human problems, it doesn’t necessarily mean atheist or agnostic. Humanism influences all the other paths I just mentioned, and though there are many Humanists in this congregation, not everyone here identifies primarily in that way. I’ll focus my comments today on the Humanist strand of our heritage and community, with the standard reminder that, when I illuminate one part of our pluralistic faith, I’m making room for lots of other ways that people find meaning here. 

Humanists act based on the philosophy that people are ends in themselves. People should not be used as means to an end. Each human has inherent worth and dignity. Part of our work is to humanize the spaces we go out into, to create spaces where inherent worth becomes more evident. In humanizing the spaces we inhabit, we help dismantle obstacles to human thriving like racism and other forms of oppression. An economic system that exploits the many to increase the wealth of the few is a system that uses people as a means to an end and is unacceptable in Humanist philosophy. 

Therefore, if we declare ourselves to be Humanists, we have some responsibility for helping to make that philosophy a reality, to call attention to the places where human dignity is being disrespected and to increase the momentum of the world of interdependence and justice that we know can be. 

When we look back at our history, and admire the institutions that were founded by our UU predecessors that showed respect and care for people who had been previously regarded by the upper class as disposable, the point is not to rest on our laurels and brag about our ancestors. The point is to remember that respect for the inherent worth of every person was never meant to be exclusively about individual interactions. Yes, certainly, treat individuals you meet with care and respect and curiosity. And also realize that respecting human worth on a large scale requires that our society be built upon justice and compassion. Nobody can be their whole and full selves in a situation of oppression, poverty, war, coercion, or environmental devastation. And so those who declare—as an axiom—the worth of human beings have a responsibility to bring a just and compassionate society closer to fruition. Again, there are many paths for doing that, political activism is only one, and we need to coordinate those paths and see ourselves as part of something larger.

This is where hope becomes difficult. There are among us librarians, scholars, scientists, and careful readers. We are a people of data. We are a people who respect concrete research; we aspire to take an unflinching look at the world as it is. We don’t rely on promises or predictions or fantasies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a vision for a different future. Our hymns and readings are filled with hope for a world made whole. It is OK to have an imagination. And, yet, if we unveil the depth of suffering and injustice at work in the world as it currently is, and compare the data with that vision, we can easily become discouraged. True hope—the hope of staying the course, the hope of refusing to let dehumanization win even when we know what we are up against, active hope—is not easy. 

So let’s be sure we’re framing hope consistently. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is not pretending things are OK. Hope is not glossing over the grief and pain around us and within us. Quite the opposite. Hope is strengthened when we can bear witness to suffering, to be in companionship with one another in the midst of pain and setbacks, and to keep doing the right thing anyway. Hope is staying committed to our values and purpose, acting on those values even when we cannot be assured that our vision will prevail in the short term. Dr. Cornel West puts it this way:

This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown, and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.

Dr. West and others refer to being “prisoners of hope,” people who can do no other except the next, right thing in pursuit of justice. He is speaking of a commitment to act toward justice, to be held by ancestors and promises and community. It’s partially a Biblical reference, and even if we do not share the same relationship with that source, I hope we can identify with the strength of a commitment to values held in our community yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It’s a hope based in action, not speculation. 

If we do not have assurances, and we don’t have illusions, our hope has to come from somewhere else. And one of the places it comes from is our interdependence. We get that hope from each other, and from the world of relationships we inhabit. That’s not as simple as trading platitudes with one another. It means caring for one another and the earth as best we can. In the reading we heard earlier from Dr. Barber, the practice of community care both spread hope among the people and energized the sharers of hope. When we create practices and spaces of humanization, places where those who are despised by the dominant society are treated as worthy and capable agents in their own lives; when we learn and perpetuate practices of respect and care, we are creating pocket universes that can grow into aspects of the Beloved Community. 

Our Pastoral Care Associates create hope by being present, by being peer listeners. Our Greeters and Chat Chaplains create hope in the way they hold us in community and hospitality. Our Tech Team creates hope in the unbelievable feats of science and engineering that allow us to weave our community together across time and space. Our Climate Justice Revival participants create hope in holding out a different way to be in relationship with each other and the planet. Our Social Justice Committee creates hope in their practices of love, support, and empowerment. Our Open Minds Book Group creates hope by reminding us that we can humanize this space as we un-learn and dismantle the white supremacy culture we’re swimming in. Members of our Board of Trustees create hope by doing the unglamorous work, day in and day out, of creating and sustaining the container of this community, a place where we can gather in comfort, challenge, and resilience. Our Religious Education volunteers create hope by conveying this vision and these values to a new generation. All of this is part of the work of humanizing, of opening up new pocket universes that connect to the world that is possible. All of these aspects of hope link us together as part of something larger than our individual selves, larger than this community, larger than Unitarian Universalism.

There are many paths in the practice of hope. If your hope-making activity is caregiving, teaching, caring for institutions like this congregation, or simply surviving when the world tells you your survival is inconsequential, your hope-making is vital. And. If you have energy for social change, there are plenty of hope-making opportunities there. Activities aimed at social change—direct action, public witness, electoral organizing, policy work, union organizing, and other forms of social justice—encompass some of the practices for hope. 

We may not achieve our goals. Short term success would be nice, but that’s not the deepest well from which we can draw hope. We increase the strength of our hope by showing up for each other, in whatever way is possible for us in our own time and place. Taking action for change creates hope because it is demonstrating to the other people involved that we are not alone. All of the ways we humanize the spaces we inhabit are practices of creating hope. We might not win. But we might. And, even if we don’t achieve our legislative goals in the short term, we’ll be building a movement for the long term. Dr. Barber reminds us:

Dr. King said we are called to be thermostats that change the temperature, not thermometers that merely measure the temperature. Gandhi said first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win. And the truth is, every movement that has ever changed America began when electoral politics, the majority, and even the law were antagonistic. The abolition movement didn’t have the majority with it, or the politics, when it bagan. The women’s suffrage movement didn’t have the majority when it bagan. The fight against legalized lynching didn’t have it. The fight for Social Security the battle to end segregation and Jim Crow, the campaign in Birmingham, the Greensboro sit-ins, Selma, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, none of these efforts was popular. None of these efforts had the Gallup poll with them. None of these efforts had political sway with them. But what changes the country and what changes the world is not just electoral politics, but moral movements that change the atmosphere in which electoral politics have to exist. 

(Revive Us Again, p. 77)

I don’t know what will happen to this country in the short term. I do know that my own resources for hope are increased when I can stay in touch with the network of relationships that sustain me, keep me rooted in my values, and help put my hope in context with the inspiration of the past and the future people and planet to whom I am responsible. I know that when I practice gratitude for communities like this one, where we are surrounded by people practicing hope-making activities, it’s a little easier to do the next, right thing. I know that I am not alone in holding a vision of a world of love and justice, a world where the inherent worth of people and our relationship with the planet are both evident in the fabric of society. Humanizing the spaces we inhabit is a hope-making activity. If we are Humanists, let us be Humanists for hope.

[revlyncox]

« Authentic, Visible, and Connected » Sermon for Transgender Day of Visibility, March 30, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox

Officially, tomorrow is Transgender Day of Visibility, so we’re ahead of our time by observing it today. I am not sorry for taking an extra day for celebration and resilience and inclusive community. We should have a whole three-day weekend for that. In these times, our joy is resistance. Our joy is a gigantic, sparkly “yes” in response to the attempted “no” that would take away our visibility, our dignity, and our lives. Every one of us who lives and thrives is a victory.

And, yes, I mean “us.” I mean all of us who are gender-diverse, gender-expansive, and gender-fabulous. I mean all of us who are Transgender, nonbinary, agender, gender fluid, and gender anarchist. In community with our accomplices and co-conspirators who might be comfortable with their gender assigned at birth but are not OK with attacks against our beloved Trans kinfolk, we are building an inclusive, diverse, always-growing-and-changing community of love and justice.

We know that what happens to any one of us affects us all. Just as we cannot sit idly by as our immigrant friends and colleagues are disappeared without due process; just as we cannot be silent as this administration attempts to erase the contributions of People of Color from the history books and roll back protections on voting rights, equal employment, and every other human right; just as we know that undermining science puts all of our lives at risk; we know that we are an interdependent society. There is no acceptable sacrifice to totalitarianism. There is no population that we can hand over in appeasement that will make dictators leave the rest of us alone. All of our rights are at stake. We may each have a different bit of the interdependent web that we’re holding up, and no one can do everything at once, yet we must remember that we are all connected. As my colleague Julián Jamaica Soto said in a poem, “all of us need all of us to make it.” For me to make it through this life, for you to make it through, we need all of us.

In the case of Transgender rights, even if you are not Transgender yourself, even if you thrive in perfect conformity with the expectations assigned to you at birth, you know that an attack on us is at best the prelude to an attack on your bodily autonomy, your ability to access the healthcare you need, your freedom to wear the clothes and hair that work best for you, your access to equal employment, and your freedom to travel safely. Nothing that is being done or threatened against the Transgender community will stop with us. It is in your self interest to resist. But I don’t have to say that here. This congregation believes in showing up for the Trans community because it is the right thing to do, not out of mere self interest. There is love here, and you show up for the people you love.

Something that may not be obvious to everyone is the way that Trans inclusion is intersectional. A survey of Trans Unitarian Universalists a few years ago showed that Trans folks in UU congregations are more likely than cisgender folks to be disabled or poor. In addition, there were a greater percentage of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color among the Trans survey respondents than there are in general in our congregations. That means that we can’t be fully inclusive of Transgender people without also dismantling racism, economic injustice, classism, and ableism in our congregations. Furthermore, as we are working on intersectional justice issues in the larger community, let’s remember that all these things are linked. Poverty is a barrier to the thriving of the Trans community as a whole, partly because of the employment discrimination, housing discrimination, harassment, and interpersonal violence that are targeted against us. So, if the piece of the interdependent web that you are holding up has to do with economic justice, remember that Trans justice and inclusion is part of that. If the piece you’re working on is disability access, remember that some disabled people are Trans. None of us are free until all of us are free. Our liberation is bound up together.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge our intersex kinfolk. Intersex people don’t necessarily identify as Trans, they have their own community and their own struggles and their own gifts. Nevertheless, attacks on the Trans community endanger the Intersex community and vice-versa. Let’s keep learning so we can show up for each other.

The challenging realities we face are real, and we don’t need to dwell on them exclusively. We have whole lives, and living into that wholeness is both our right and our long-term strategy. Joy and resilience and healing ripple through the web as well. We are interconnected, and when we remove the barriers to thriving for the most impacted, all of us will have a more abundant life. Joy leads to more joy, generosity leads to more generosity, and collective liberation leads to more collective liberation.

In the Trans community, we see this over and over again. When one person has the courage to show up as their whole and true selves, they give other people the courage to grow into their whole and true selves. You never know whose life you are saving just by existing and demonstrating that living your truth is possible. Being Trans isn’t contagious, but the will to live can be.

Not only that, when we have the space to live authentically, we have more emotional, mental, and spiritual resources available to grow into the best versions of ourselves in all kinds of ways. The energy it takes to pretend to be someone you are not exacts an enormous toll. When we stop trying to cut parts of ourselves off in order to fit into a box that was never ours, we unleash time and brainpower and creativity that can lead us to better personal health and to the benefit of our community. It doesn’t always work instantly, we continue to face discrimination, and sometimes the strategies we used to get through the day before our transition continue to haunt us after we transition. But we have a fighting chance at a better life when we are able to be who we are, and to sing out loud about what in us is true. We need to make the most of the joy we find in that freedom. It is hard won.

In my own case, I had to stop trying to escape certain truths before I could face up to my experience of gender. I had to change my relationship with alcohol, and then I needed a good long time to sit with my own thoughts and feelings before it became clear to me that my gender assigned at birth no longer fit and I didn’t need to make it fit.

After that, I needed friends who would listen without judgment, an accepting and culturally competent therapist, and someone I could trust to cut my hair. Figuring it out was not easy, and is a process that may never be complete.

At this part of my journey, I can tell you that I would rather risk being myself with all that entails in These Times than go back into that box. I don’t need to get into the details, but there are health problems I don’t have anymore now that I’m not spending energy on running away from myself. I’m sleeping better. I’d like to think I’m more patient. There was a time in that struggle when I had stopped singing, and many of you know that music is part of me again. My ability to participate in movements for justice is strengthened because of the energy authenticity makes available. Liberation and joy feed each other.

In our congregational study group for the book Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families, we got to hear many stories like this. If you missed the study group, the book is still available and highly recommended. You can get it from the UUA Bookstore, Bookshop.org, or as an audiobook from Libro.fm. The book Authentic Selves offers rich profiles of diverse Trans and Nonbinary people, including photos. There are also interviews with their loved ones, showing that the support structures we have make a huge difference in our lives. Throughout the book, we learned about struggle and hope, and the kinds of amazing things that are possible when people embrace who they are.

Today’s wisdom story, « Casey’s Ball, » is fictional and it says something true about what happens when love surrounds Trans people, especially Trans kids. People who are accepted as they are, people whose loved ones use their correct names and pronouns, people who are included in community life are able to be resilient. Family support gives people the courage to try new things, to learn, to get back up when they fall. Support means kids can just be kids. Again, this is life saving.

I would like to say some things to those who are Trans, Nonbinary, gender expansive, and otherwise gathered together under the umbrella of gender diversity. You are a precious creature of worth and your life matters. Whether you can be your whole self in public or not, you matter and your survival is important. Your joy matters. Your ideas matter. The things and people you love matter. Please take care of yourself, please receive the love and care that is sincerely offered to you, and, to the extent you are able, participate in community care. These are difficult days, yet we know that there has never been a world without Trans people, and there never will be. Let’s build connections as best we can. There is no such thing as total safety. When we can go together, the rewards and the resilience make the journey worth the risk.

For those whose gender matches the one you were assigned at birth, there are also some things I want to say to you. The word for that is cisgender, and it’s not an insult, it’s just a description. Earlier, I talked about accomplices and co-conspirators. That’s what we need. Being an ally is nice, and we need to remember that ally is an action word that needs constant tending, not an award that we can claim like an eternal trophy. We need people who not only have a welcoming and inclusive sentiment, but will also be with us in community, who will use their privilege to speak truth to power, who will help move resources, and who will challenge acts of bias large and small whenever they come up. This may involve having uncomfortable conversations, rocking the boat, and being the person who can de-escalate when things get risky for the people around you who don’t share your privilege. I think the cisgender people here know all this. Maybe you need some training to figure out how to be accomplices and co-conspirators and de-escalators, and that training is available. Empathy and decency are harder to teach, and you have that part down. I want the members of this congregation to know that your open hearts, passion for inclusion, and willingness to learn all mean a lot. The love you have shown and the work you have done mean a lot to me. This congregation loves learning, and I know you will keep learning how to show up for your Trans neighbors, friends, and beloveds.

We can all learn together how to get organized and who is already working on the issues where we want to take action. Look for SWEEP New Jersey on FaceBook or check out SOMA Action in South Orange and Maplewood for updates on work for inclusion in the state legislature. Local and statewide actions are great places to leverage our energy in these times.

In these last few months, I have found that staying connected with people who are taking action lifts my spirits. Like all spiritual and self-care practices, it is a question of moderation. Too little attention and action is isolating. Too much obsessing over the news–or feeling like we are personally responsible for every single possible point of advocacy–is also not good. Action can be joyful and encouraging and connecting. And we also need room in our lives for other kinds of joy, for the people we love, and for rest. Live in wholeness, and affirm each other in wholeness.

Wherever you are in the vast, dazzling, diverse universe of gender experience, I am glad you are here. I hope that you find in this congregation the strength and the practices and the community to help you to get in touch with the version of yourself that is most congruent with your values and your truth. Tell your story, and be open to the way your story can change. When someone else trusts you with their story, receive it with gratitude. Cultivate joy, and treasure it when it arrives. Let us practice liberation by living abundantly and making room for others to do the same.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Waiting in front of The United Methodist Building in DC for Faithful Witness Wednesday with Sojourners. It’s a beautiful day to hang around with social gospel preachers speaking truth to power.

[revlyncox]

Reimagine Together: A Climate Justice Revival Homily

This homily was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick, New Jersey, as part of a celebratory Climate Justice Revival on March 23, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

Does anyone remember that song, “There’s a hole in the bucket?” One of the characters in the song explains about a problem, the other character makes suggestions for fixing it, but every suggestion leads to the revelation of another problem. Henry and Liza need straw, a sharp knife to cut the straw, a sharpening stone, water, and a bucket without a hole in it before they can fix the hole in the bucket. Everything is connected.

Sometimes, the interdependence of all things can feel overwhelming. It can seem like all we have are interlocking challenges, all the way down. It is true that we face many challenges, and the solutions are not simple. And it’s also true that we can overcome some of those challenges with a network of care and with imagination, and that when we can make progress on one challenge, we affect the whole system, because everything is connected. In the song, Henry and Liza don’t think to ask a neighbor to borrow a bucket, or a sharpening stone, or a knife. They also didn’t think about other tools that could cut straw, or using something like a cooking pot to gather water. Being stressed about a challenge can shrink our worldview, making it difficult to find solutions or to remember that others care about us.

Perhaps, once they solve the immediate problem, Liza and Henry can advocate to have their local public library add a tool lending library to their services, some place where anyone can borrow a sharpening stone or a hammer or a bucket. Perhaps they can start a local buy-nothing group, where neighbors pass along gently used items or create a system for loaning each other what they need. Perhaps they become aware of other neighbors who are struggling to maintain their basic equipment and supplies, and they organize a cooperative to fight back against the cutthroat banks that prey on small farmers. They can write a new ending to their story. Everything is connected, and strengthening relationships with their neighbors can reveal solutions that ripple out and bring healing, liberation, and abundance in multiple ways.

In These Times, we are aware of a lot of holes. And we’re aware of the active effort that certain people with money and power are engaged in to gouge new holes every day in the fabric of democracy and decency. Yet we are not powerless. We still have the capacity to be creative, to reimagine together a world with love at the center. We still have the capacity to support one another, and to strengthen this congregation’s relationships with community partners. Networks of care can fuel creativity and courage. By rooting ourselves in relationship, we can focus on the work of love, supporting the wellbeing of our beloveds and our planet.

Today’s Be The Change partner, Soul Fire Farm, has long been working at this intersection. Co-founder Leah Penniman has spoken about the long history of American policy that discriminates against farmers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Repairing the planet is linked with food sovereignty for Afro-Indigenous people. Racism, hunger, poverty, and destructive farming practices are all rooted together–all arise out of an extractive worldview rather than an ethic of reciprocal and respectful interconnection; therefore, solutions for liberation, abundance, and ecological healing are also linked.

In our Climate Justice Dialogues sessions earlier this month, we talked about the interconnection of the challenging realities in central New Jersey, as well as some of the relationships and assets where we find hope. For instance, clear cutting trees for industry and single-use subdivisions exacerbates increasing temperatures, causes more erosion and flooding in low income areas, leads to more waste in the Raritan river, and is one of the factors in the epidemic of asthma and lung problems. Those issues are tied to affordable housing, health care, and access to public transit. Everything is connected, and we see that low-income communities and communities of color are hurt first and worst by the impact of policies of extraction. Harm reverberates across the web just as surely as love, and so we must make an intentional practice of mutual care.

In our organizing meeting this afternoon, we’ll reflect on what the local community most needs as we formulate the response of love. We’ll each look inside for the spark of energy and excitement, lifting up what brings us joy in life and in our embodiment of love and justice. And we’ll each consider what we individually have to offer, what we can do reliably and responsibly, knowing that we are not alone. Out of the combined responses to those questions, we’ll be able to notice themes and trends, and begin forming a plan for collective action that is rooted in what the people of this congregation feel authentically called toward.

Members are already committed to this congregation’s partnerships with Interfaith RISE and New Labor. Leaning into those partnerships with attention to the intersectional issues of climate justice might mean getting more involved with Global Grace Farms, or fighting yet more clear-cutting and construction in the form of a new immigrant detention center in Ironbound. We can follow the lead of those who are most impacted by air and water quality, extreme heat, and other signs of climate change.

Let’s also think about the gifts you have among you right here. This congregation is a powerhouse of knowledge when it comes to science education, and science education is key to understanding the challenges we face, so there may be opportunities to benefit the community in that way. This campus is beautiful, and attracts neighbors who walk the grounds in search of peace and a place to breathe. What would it look like to build more connections with those neighbors? The wealth of trees on this campus is good for the planet and people, but means this isn’t a great place for growing vegetables. What if you started a community composting project, and got into partnerships with community gardens that donated produce to food pantries? The Unitarian Society was on the vanguard with your first generation of solar panels. Times and technology have changed. What is the best approach going forward with renewable energy? These are just some of the ideas and questions I have already heard from members, and I can’t wait to hear more this afternoon.

Part of our path forward is to deepen relationships and to keep learning. Many of our partners have been approaching climate change as an intersectional justice issue for years. The Poor People’s Campaign is very clear in their advocacy that environmental devastation is one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, poverty, the war economy, and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. We’ll hear from leaders in the New Jersey Poor People’s Campaign as well as from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the New Brunswick area NAACP, and historian Dr. Bill Davis at our MLK@TUS teach-in on April 6.

Rooting ourselves in our relationships, staying grounded in what’s around us and within us, can help us to maintain hope. Don’t get mired in the national headlines. Many of the decisions that affect the health of people and the planet around us are made locally. Advocacy matters a great deal at the level of towns, cities, counties, school boards, and state legislatures. Building committed, sustained relationships at an institutional level between a congregation and community partners matters a great deal. Acts of kindness and solidarity matter a great deal.

The challenges we face can seem overwhelming. We definitely do need our practices of self-care, reflection, and contemplation to help us to sustain ourselves and to stay committed to our ethics and values. We need this community. And we also need some humility. Climate Change is not going to be solved by a single hero in a single, sweeping act of rescue. Everything is connected. Healing requires small acts of repair and relationship-building, constantly and mindfully, done in collaboration with others and with great love. You do not have to save the world alone. And we are not alone.

I turn often to the words of Rebecca Solnit from last November. She said, “You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything. And everything we can save is worth saving.”

Everything we can save is worth saving. There are trees, and community gardens, and butterfly habitats that can be saved. There are neighborhoods where we can help make it safer to breathe, and schools where we can help make it safer to drink the water, and food pantries we can help fill with local produce. Again, we can’t accomplish any of those things alone, but together with our neighbors and our community partners, we find a future of possibility.

Our hope is rooted in our connection with each other, with the source of blessing as we understand it to be, with the natural world, with our neighbors near and far, with our ancestors, with future generations. Our hope is rooted in love. That love is within us and among us and around us. May we keep faith with that love, and may we reimagine together a world with love at the center.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Spring Prayer

Spirit of Life, we come seeking stillness. The world is bursting with green, with frenetic energy and a desperate need to fill the empty spaces with life.

We are bursting, too, our hands frantic to fill the blank slots on our calendars and the empty spaces in our gardens. We all have leafless branches and flat, dark soil. There is no guarantee that we will sprout this year as we have before.

Spirit of Life, we seek your blessing. May your hands join ours as we tend our gardens, coaxing life from our sleeping seeds. May you sit with us in the quiet, settling our hearts into a space for waiting, taking in the sun and rain so that we, too, might bloom.

Blessed be.

—Jess Reynolds Love Like Thunder

Available at inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop.

[revlyncox]

Agape (2025)

Unitarian Universalism is a pluralistic faith. Some UU's are Christian (and have a lot of different definitions of what that means), many UU's are not, yet all of us cultivate mutual respect for each other's spiritual paths. In this season of Lent, we can learn from each other about the spiritual disciplines of love. We learn from Universalism and some other forms of Christianity that agape love is unconditional, that agape demonstrates what love looks like in public, and that agape is a discipline of readiness for change. This sermon was recast for The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick for the service on March 9, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

In the kitchens of my internal calendar, the smell of soup is in the air. For Western Christians, Lent started this past Wednesday. In my upbringing, that means simplicity, community, and mindfulness.

The idea is that, just like Jesus took time in the desert for spiritual discipline and challenge before beginning his ministry, Christians enter a sacred time to prepare for the holiest day of the year. Lent can be framed as paring down, removing the distractions that get in the way of an authentic spiritual life. This season helps Christians make room in their hearts and souls so that they can deeply experience the hope and promise of their faith.

Unitarian Universalism is a pluralistic faith. As it says in the values statement that is part of the UUA bylaws and as I often say when I’m introducing the wisdom story, “we are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology. “ Universalism and Unitarianism have Christian roots, and yet our movement has grown to embrace many life-affirming spiritual paths. Some UU’s are Christian, many are not, and we all support one another in a life of meaning and purpose with love at the center. Those of us who are not Christian might find it helpful to learn how to support our UU Christian comrades, and we could find some inspiration that resonates with our own spiritual paths. Furthermore, as a progressive faith movement, we are among the people who are called to disrupt the harmful false narrative of white Christian nationalism, and so we need to be equipped with an understanding of the life-affirming and love-centered traditions within Christianity. Whoever you are, whatever your beliefs or un-beliefs about Jesus or God, you are welcome here. My hope is that we can learn about each other’s spiritual and ethical paths so that we can be in closer community. 

I was raised as a liberal Christian, and though my own path has moved on, there are things about my upbringing that are still meaningful. In the Christian church where I grew up, people gathered for potlucks every Wednesday night during Lent. Basic, nourishing foods like soup and bread kept us warm while we gathered in the social hall. A lay leader would introduce reflection questions for small groups to discuss. Topics might include materialism or how we respond to world hunger in light of Jesus’ observation that we do not live by bread alone. When I went back to visit as an adult, I was struck by how the tone of the discussion was guided by curiosity and affection.  

These Lenten potlucks were called Agápe meals. Agape is a Greek word that means the kind of love the Divine has for humans and, by extension, the kind of love that humans in the spiritual community have for one another. Agape love is not a response to someone’s accomplishments or usefulness or even moral virtue. Agape love is there from the beginning. We are loved, not because of anything we have done or will do, but because love is the primary force in the universe.

To me, Agape has always evoked the sacredness and the strength of a community of ordinary folks who show extraordinary love for their neighbors. That sounds a lot like an ideal congregation. I’d like to explore three aspects of this concept that are relevant for our spiritual life together: Agape is unconditional. Agape demonstrates what love looks like in public. Agape is a discipline of readiness for change.  

Agape is Unconditional

First, Agape is unconditional, because love is a primary force in the universe. This may sound either naïve or novel, but it’s not just 21st century hippie talk. Love is foundational for Jewish and Christian teachings.

There is a story about Jesus that appears in both Mark and Matthew (Mark 12:28-31 and Matthew 22:39) in which someone asks Jesus about the most important commandment. Jesus responds in two parts. The first part is drawn from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” That first part is the beginning of the Shema, the most basic Jewish prayer. For the second part, Jesus quotes Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it in a nutshell. Jesus said the most important thing to do is to love.

Incidentally, as Jewish scholars like Amy-Jill Levine and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has pointed out, this teaching resonates very strongly with the teachings of Rabbi Hillel. Most of my favorite teachings ascribed to Jesus are firmly Jewish teachings. Do not believe antisemitic framing about Jesus’ Jewishness or what Judaism is.

Anyway, the most important thing to do is love. Neither Jesus nor the writers of the Torah put a caveat on that. They didn’t say, “Love your neighbor, unless he annoys you, then never mind.” There are standards of behavior, but not limits placing members of the community outside the reach of love and respect.

Universalism says that Divine love is unconditional and is so powerful that no one is beyond its reach. That theology has been around since Origen of Alexandria in 225. The Universalist movement that is tied most closely to us in an organized way goes back to the 1700s in England. We’ve been doing this love thing for awhile. We keep practicing. We’ll get better at it.

Being in community is not painless. But I can be OK with struggle, and OK with not being perfect, because the love arising from the Spirit of Life is unconditional. Unitarian Universalism is accepting and also challenging. Love sounds simple, but simple is different than easy.  

Whether we call it Agape or Universalism, unconditional love is a gift. We can rest in that gift, knowing that we are acceptable just as we are. We can respond to that gift through practicing respect and kindness, knowing that the face of the Divine shines all around us.

Agape Demonstrates What Love Looks Like in Public

A second aspect of Agape is that it is concrete. You can experience Agape in a real sense through the words and actions of the beloved community. That’s because Agape love, like all forms of authentic love, is not just about a sense of emotional connection. Speaking to each other in loving and respectful ways is an outgrowth of Agape. Actions that demonstrate care for one another are manifestations of Agape. When we clear away the barriers that are preventing the members of our beloved community from thriving, that’s Agape.

For us as Universalists, because we believe that worthiness and love don’t stop at the meeting house door, that sense of interdependence keeps going, too. Pretty soon we see that relieving hunger is a form of Agape. Resisting racism is part of Agape. So is ending gender identity discrimination. The list goes on. Love is a primary force in the universe, but it is up to us as humans to respond to that love and to fix the messes humans made when we forgot the source of life.

Dr. Cornel West writes that “Justice is what love looks like in public.” To put it a slightly different way in a 2009 interview, he said:

“The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. And as a Christian, I believe in unconditional love.... But unconditional love is always tied to justice. Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere.”

Dr. West speaks about racial justice and economic justice as current concerns for love made visible. He speaks about racial justice and economic justice as current concerns for the visible work of love.

No human community can be an absolute example of loving, kind, justice-centered relationships. Being respectful, emotionally present, and open to learning from our mistakes is difficult. Noticing our own complicity in brokenness is difficult. Uprooting generations of ingrained, systemic patterns of oppression is difficult. Yet moving ahead on that journey is what love calls us to do. As I said, love is simple, and simple is different from easy, yet none of us are beyond its reach. We can learn to do better.

The practice of love, especially the practice of unconditional love in community, is actually quite difficult. The practice of love benefits from mentoring, reflection, trial and error … all of the elements that go into helping us to learn any other skill necessary for life.  Author and scholar bell hooks (of blessed memory) wrote that we need “schools for love,” places where we can explore the practice of relationship as an accountable, truthful activity.

Congregations cannot be perfect. Congregations can provide some of the resources and emotional space we need to educate each other about love. We study the most life-affirming aspects of the great religious teachings, including our own Universalist heritage. We are rooted in a living tradition of love. Our tradition can help us to learn to manifest that love in concrete forms of justice.

Agape is a Discipline of Readiness for Change

Jesus, as he is depicted in the Christian scriptures, taught by example that cultivating openness to transformation and taking bodily and spiritual risks are aspects of the path of love. He spent time in the wilderness, risking injury and starvation, to confront ideas that would stand in the way of his mission. According to the stories in Matthew (4:1-11), Mark (1:12-13), and Luke (4:1-13), the spirit leads Jesus into the desert following his baptism. While there, Satan tempts Jesus to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread, to jump from a pinnacle and rely on the angels to save him, and to worship Satan in exchange for power over all the kingdoms of the world.

I interpret this story as being in the mind’s eye of Jesus, a spiritual vision rather than a physical reality. At a pivotal moment right after the baptism, maybe what met Jesus in the desert was only what he brought with him. He had to be willing to wrestle with human things like physical vulnerability and self-centeredness. The temptation of political power is interesting, because theoretically Jesus is going to rule with God someday anyway. I would like to believe that the choice Jesus is making is between the short-term, obvious authority of domination and the slow-building, resilient power of just and loving community. He is giving up the idea that leadership means absolute control over people and outcomes.

Let’s think about what that means for UU congregations. UU congregations are, to varying degrees, democratic. They run on shared leadership. Being involved means a certain amount of letting go of control of outcomes, and we can do that because we trust each other to be committed to the essential values and mission of the congregation. Divine love as it is manifest in the beloved community is flexible and resilient. We are prepared to be surprised and amazed by what we can do together, which necessarily means we have to be open to change. Maintaining that openness requires some work.

That’s where spiritual practice comes in. I don’t think we have to go out to the desert. I do think that we do a better job of Agape as expressed in shared leadership when we can take a deep breath, practice mindfulness, and center our discussions on mutual care and concern. It’s easy to get caught up in the fear of the unknown, yet we have the courage to follow our mission when it leads us to unexpected places. To me, the story of Lent and Easter is that love is stronger than fear.

When we skip the reflection and intentional choices that accompany Lent and move straight into the joy of Easter, we lose some of the tools of transformation that could help us to sustain and share that joy. I’m thinking of tools like meditation or prayer, when we quiet down so that we can confront the devils we bring with us in our own minds. I’m thinking of tools like simple living, when those of us who can choose to make do with less create room to share more with others. I’m thinking of tools like asking forgiveness, when we create change and invite new beginnings. One might even call those tools for transformation a discipline, in the sense that discipline means a choice to focus methodically and purposefully.

If we need schools for love, if the congregation is going to be a school for love, the coming month is an opportunity for intense study. We are Universalists, so this is a school with no grades and no failing. I’m not talking about exam week. For me, periods of intense spiritual practice are more like preparing for the science fair—a time of experimentation, exciting discovery, and thinking about how to share my findings. Other folks may have more anxiety about the science fair, so that’s probably not a metaphor that works for everybody. My point is that a time to spiritually stretch ourselves, a time to challenge ourselves to love justly and concretely and to accept love that is fully nurturing, a time to invite positive change into our religious lives is a valuable season.

Conclusion

We can benefit from spending some time reflection in the coming weeks, whatever the spiritual tradition we draw from individually. Let’s share a commitment to disciplines that will increase our abilities to embody love in the community.

We will need to remember that we, ourselves, are worthy of love, and that our neighbors are worthy of love. We will stick to spiritual practices that support mutual wellbeing.

We will make love visible, here at The Unitarian Society, in the community, in our homes and in our workplaces. We will not leave affectionate feelings to fend for themselves, but will clothe them in works of justice and compassion.

We will open our minds and hearts to transformation, because experiences of true love will challenge habits and attitudes we didn’t even know we had. Agape, experienced madly, deeply, and passionately, will lead us to new ways of living.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Kindle One Flame

Cultivating, evolving, and sharing our passions can help us to find resilience. Let's honor the spark within, make a beacon of our talents, and rekindle the spark for others. This sermon was recast for The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick for Canvass Sunday, March 2, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

Clara was restless. She had moved from Washington, DC, to Massachusetts after losing her government job. She spent time with family and looking for employment. She studied French and art. She got along, but there was something missing. Clara looked back on a decade of success as a teacher in her twenties. That career didn’t seem to be right for her anymore. Her time in the U.S. patent office during her early thirties had been invigorating, with evenings spent in Washington society and days spent with plenty of work on her plate. But all of that went by the wayside when the new president was elected and she was laid off in 1857. For four years, she went without a clear idea of her mission in life.

The election of Abraham Lincoln brought Clara an offer to return to Washington. At first, she was working in the patent office again as a temp for less than her earlier pay. Her liveliness and cheer returned. Clara realized that what she needed was to feel needed. When wounded Civil War soldiers started arriving in Washington, her calling came into focus. Some of those soldiers were her former students. They all needed care, and they needed personal supplies to replace the ones that had been lost in battle. She found a way to be of service that was entirely different from her first two careers. Clara Barton became an Angel of the Battlefield.

She honored her passion for service as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, getting as close to the front lines as possible. She preferred to jump in wherever there was an opportunity to serve, following her instincts rather than someone else’s plan. After the war, President Lincoln put her in charge of helping families find out what became of the soldiers who never came home. She supplemented her income on the lecture circuit, speaking about her war experiences.

In 1870, she found a connection between her own passion for service and an increasingly interdependent global community. She was in Europe, theoretically to get some rest, when she heard about the Geneva Convention and the International Red Cross. She set up aid centers in war-torn cities, earning the Iron Cross for her work. She found a new mission in Europe, but not the rest she needed. After she got home, she recuperated in Massachusetts for a time, working up the strength to make two trips to Washington in 1877. With the help of advocates like her, the United States signed the Geneva Convention in 1882.

Clara Barton is best known for organizing the American Red Cross in 1881 and for serving as its president until 1904. Those pioneering years were difficult and chaotic for the young organization, even as the need for humanitarian response became clear. Today’s Red Cross has its own challenges, yet the idea of a world community of compassion remains a compelling vision.

Today, let’s talk about passion, and how it fuels resilience. I think a lot of us are in need of some resilience right now. Let’s talk about the flame within each one of us, the way it sometimes “goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.”  Let’s talk about bringing those lights together into a fire circle that brings warmth to all, and how to be the people who rekindle the flame in others. In considering how to channel “our separate fires” into “one flame,” I would like to make three suggestions. Honor the spark. Share fire and fuel. Rekindle the spark for others.

Honor the Spark

For Clara Barton, the flame that animated her was not the same from her twenties to her thirties to her forties and beyond. The times in which she lived were not the same in each decade; both she and the world that was calling to her changed. Honoring her spark meant being open to a new way of being. Looking back, we can see a common thread in her lifetime of service. For the thirty-eight-year-old Clara, however, the pre-Civil War Clara, I bet she had no idea what was coming next. I imagine that the next chapter to come into her life was like a falling star, the sort of light that one is more likely to find when on the lookout, yet something apt to surprise a person in any case. Clara Barton caught that burning ember with both hands and ran with it.

A personal mission, a passion for service, can sneak up on us. The ignition may be a casual hobby, or an unexpected invitation to leadership, or the recognition of a need. Part of what it means to honor the spark is to accept its arrival. We’re not always completely ready. Clara Barton could have said, “Gee, thanks, International Red Cross, but I’m not a politician or a diplomat.” She spoke from her experience, and she leveraged the reputation she gained from her experience into a public platform. As a child, Clara had been painfully shy. Her parents encouraged her to become a teacher. Clara was terrified, but she discovered that jumping into the fray and meeting what seemed to be an impossible need was worth giving up her fear.

Perhaps you can remember visiting this congregation for the first time, or when you took a leap of faith and accepted a new leadership role. We can all sympathize with the vulnerability of seeking community. I hope we can all tell stories of the gifts that arise from participating in community. Equipping members to live out their values and to make deeper connections in the congregation is an important part of what a congregation does. In this stewardship season, I hope you are noticing your spark, the calling you feel to connect here. Let it energize you.

The next thing to do in honoring the spark is to learn what we can to carry the flame forward. We won’t know everything from the start. Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, shared with me the adage, “God does not call the qualified. God qualifies the called.” Whether you believe that calling comes from God or the Universe or the voice of the community, I hope we can agree that we can accept the beginning of a personal mission before we’re trained for the end of it.

Underpinning all of that is hope. Accepting a spark means being willing to act as if what we do matters. In case you haven’t heard it today, what you do matters. What this congregation does together matters. The flame within us can be kindled when we believe that our mission is worthwhile. Sustaining that fire is where other people come in.

Share Fire and Fuel

In today’s meditation, Albert Schweitzer reminded us that, at times, “our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.”  Carrying the flame of a mission is easier in the company of other travelers. Our companions inspire us, encourage us, and help us stay grounded in our values. Think, for a moment, of someone who influenced you in your Unitarian Universalist journey. Maybe it was a Religious Education teacher if you grew up as a UU. Maybe it was a friend who invited you to join them at their congregation. Maybe it was a volunteer here at TUS who has a gift for making people feel welcome. “Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

The book Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World (1997, Beacon Press: Laurent Parks Daloz, Sharon Daloz Parks, Cheryl H. Keen, and James P. Keen) presents several ideas about keeping our flame alive. Common Fire is a report from a landmark study in the 1990s of individuals who maintain a commitment to the common good without getting burned out. Though the study is historical at this point, I think there are still some salient points. The researchers found that a sense of connectedness was important to sustaining the spark we’ve been talking about. The researchers suggested that the idea of the commons, like the town square, is less prevalent in our modern society, making connection hard to come by. Nevertheless, the leaders interviewed for the study named mentors, colleagues, and communities as essential for their continued success. Another factor that the report uncovered was that resilient leaders are aware of the way their mission links into an interdependent world. It helps to know how a project connects to a larger whole.

This second factor, seeing connections with a larger system, reignited Clara Barton during her sojourn in Europe beginning in 1870. She had thrown her body into the gaping need for a humanitarian response during the Civil War. She had taken charge of a challenging and emotionally difficult project by researching the names of missing and dead Civil War soldiers to help families find needed closure. She knew what it was like to pour out compassion on her own steam. Joining a world community of humanitarians helped Clara Barton connect her personal vision of service with something larger. Linking the American Red Cross with the International Red Cross gave Clara access to a source of energy that helped sustain her work for twenty years.

We need to give and receive support as we keep the flames alive. This, I believe, is one of the compelling arguments for working with and through religious communities as we channel our sparks into a sustained mission. In a religious community, we find other people with whom we can trade inspiration back and forth. All of us are going to have times when we need to be rekindled. Congregations are meant to hold people of all ages, in every season of our lives, so it makes sense that the people of a congregation would have lamps in various phases of shining at any given moment.

A religious community also provides a tradition of hope, a heritage to take up from UU ancestors, including humanitarians, suffragists, and abolitionists. Faith communities are set up to help people grapple with meaning. This is the place where we ask questions about how our separate passions fit into something larger. When we work with and through congregations, we have people of the past and people of the present to assure us that we are not alone. Not-alone-ness is vital to keeping a flame alive.

In our opening hymn, “Gather the Spirit,” we sang, “our separate fires will kindle one flame.”  Each one of us brings individual passions, our own spark that animates a life of being and doing. I’m suggesting that we bring those together. Accepting a spark from someone else is part of interdependence. Working with and through the congregation doesn’t diminish the meaning or the impact of our separate fires, it creates more warmth and illumination, and it supplies fuel to prevent burnout. Share fire and fuel.

Rekindle the Spark for Others

I’ve spoken so far about accepting a spark and being in community as we carry that spark forward. Before I close, let’s consider different ways to rekindle the spark in another person. We can pass the torch on purpose with delegation or mentorship, or simple encouragement. Just being kind can rekindle the spark for someone else. With gratitude for the ways we ourselves have been rekindled, we return light and warmth for others.

There are sparks that we don’t even know we’re sharing at the time, displaying moments of kindness or inspiring others just by shining our own light. We can let the ember fly and pick up a different candle, realizing that we may have already passed the flame to a new person without recognizing its new form. It sometimes happens that new ideas and new leaders only emerge when there is a breathing space, a pause when a previous leader moves on to other things or a previous project is properly honored in its completion.

In the historical records, we more often notice the intentional kind of sharing the spark through mentorship or some other learning arrangement. Clara Barton found that with her friend Frances Dana Gage, and I think there was an element of mentorship from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Women’s suffrage in the United States was a cause passed down from one generation to the next for 144 years. Abigail Adams asked her husband to “remember the ladies” in 1776. From Lucretia Mott to Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Lucy Stone to Olympia Brown, activists throughout the 1800’s formed bonds of friendship, mentorship, and encouragement that helped the dream survive past individual activists. Of all the movers and shakers from this period, only Olympia Brown lived long enough to cast a vote after the 19th Amendment was passed. Passing the torch can keep a spark going for a long time.

In these times when so much has been destroyed, we gather strength from our ancestors who faced impossible odds and a long arc toward success. History is not a linear march of progress. We need new ideas each time we face a familiar evil, but some techniques are classic, and inspiration has a long run time.

Again, religious communities can be great environments for sustainability. Exemplars from the past and companions in the present remind us that we are not alone. Current and younger generations extend that companionship and hope into the future. The sacred flame we have brought this far will be passed from one candle to the next, dancing differently in response to the light of each era. When we practice passing the torch, looking toward the future can give us energy to shine brightly in the here and now.

One other thing I want to say about tiny sparks, and that is that we kindle the flame more effectively when we’re out of the wind. What I mean by that is that we need sheltering communities, sanctuaries for growth, learning, reflection, lament, and celebration. Our chalice has a bowl that cradles the flame, and a stem that lifts us up. Congregations are circles of trust where people can learn to be brave. Sustaining the congregation with your time, talent, and treasure helps to ensure that there is a hospitable place for people to pass the flame of resilience between them.

There are many ways to rekindle the spark in another person. If you know the time has come to entrust fire to someone else, put down the candle. Know that it may rekindle a lamp in a surprising way. Cultivate apprenticeships and mentorships so that you can pass the torch when you are called to do something else. Be yourself, and know that shining brightly may rekindle the light in another person when you least expect it.

Honor the spark. Share fire and fuel in community. Rekindle the fire for other people. This is how we gather warmth and illumination for ourselves and our future.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Wisdom from Rev. Marta I. Valentin.

Image is a copy of the poem from the text of the post alongside a photo of a black person wearing a hoodie and sunglasses sitting in a field of daisies. The colors are muted, as if the picture was taken near sunrise or sunset. The logo of the Unitarian Universalist Association is in the lower right next to the words Skinner House Books.

Self-ish

"Unless you were of a certain shade and persuasion you were not taught by the world outside of your family that what you thought mattered, that how you showed up in the world could alter the real in reality, that who you loved would bring to light forms of affections always present, yet kept in darkness.

To bring value back to your Self in a world that functions by daily stripping you of it, you must hold fast to being first in your mind and heart. To be number one to number one, means being self-ish, that is, knowing that who and what you have been in spite of the intrusion and institution of internalized oppression makes all the difference in creating a multicultural world and must shine forth."

—Marta I. Valentín A Long Time Blooming

[revlyncox]

How to Survive the Apocalypse

First, learn to listen. Not only for enemies around corners in hidden places, but for the faint footsteps of hope and the whisper of resistance. Hone your skills, aim your heart toward kindness and stockpile second chances. Under the weight of destruction, we will need the strong shelter of forgiveness and the deeper wells that give the sweet water of welcome: “We have a place for you.” When the world ends, we must not add destruction to destruction, not accept a beggar’s bargain, to fight death with more death. In order to survive the apocalypse— any apocalypse at all— we have to give up the counterfeit currency of self- sufficiency, the mistaken addiction to competition, the lie that the last to die has somehow survived.

—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison Breaking and Blessing: Meditations

[revlyncox]

The Art of Spirituality (2025)

Creative arts and spiritual practices have a lot in common, and we need both to cultivate connection, resilience, and courage for the difficult times in which we find ourselves. This sermon was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on February 9, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox. A recording is available.

 

I have this habit of bursting into song at unexpected moments.  Sometimes it’s disconcerting to people around me.  Usually I’m able to contain it as humming when I’m out in public or in polite company.  When I’m around people with whom I’ve become comfortable, though, they’ll ask me how I am and I’ll say [starts singing], “When tyrants tremble as they hear the bells of freedom ringing.” 

I don’t think I have a great singing voice.   It’s just that the world makes more sense to me when it’s framed musically.

When I had been away from organized religion for awhile and I knew I needed more community in my life, one of the things I missed the most was shared music.  I missed singing in a congregation.  I missed the common language of a hymnal.  I missed hearing children learn mythic stories by singing in the children’s choir.  I wanted to think about big questions like life and death and the Divine, and I needed music to do that.  I took the risk of exploring a religious community because of that.  And because the Unitarian Universalist congregation I found was using music in worship, I could stay. 

Spirituality is an adventure for our whole selves, all the aspects of our being.  We go through our day-to-day lives solving problems and creating things with words, with actions, with space, with sounds, with emotions.  We wrestle with moral and religious questions in every one of these arenas.  Art and spirituality depend on each other so that we can engage with moral and religious questions anywhere and anytime we meet them. 

The arts have helped me engage with religious questions.  I’ve drawn some conclusions about spirituality based on my experience with different kinds of arts.  Spirituality is deeper than words. Spirituality grounds us in relationship. Spirituality moves us toward ethical action.

Deeper Than Words

Spirituality and art both invite us to dwell more deeply in our minds, hearts, and environments. Both spirituality and art can help us to let go of quick answers or surface-level noise. They may even help us to become more comfortable with silence, or to be open to the still, small voice within. To be clear, I love words. Words are very useful to me. On the other hand, every asset has its shadow side. I am really great at generating words when there is something I would rather not let myself feel. But even I sometimes can’t come up with words when I’m overwhelmed by events. Art and spirituality can help us to dwell in the place of no-easy-answers.

I used to work for an art museum affiliated with a university. I coordinated educational programs, managed volunteers, and talked with teachers about integrating museum tours and images from our collections into their curriculum. From abstract outdoor sculpture to Renaissance European paintings of saints to carved reliefs of the Buddha from India, our goal was less about conveying information than getting visitors of all ages to engage with the art, bringing their own questions and ideas. We wanted visitors to be fully present, to bring their whole selves to the encounter.

The Curator for Education taught us about the work of Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen. Yenawine and Housen conducted research about how people engaging with visual art make meaning, and how to help people grow in their capacity to engage with art. Based on their work, the docents in their tours and I in our educational brochures posed three questions: What’s going on here? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Visitors were encouraged to trust their own experience of the art and to draw from that experience in a discussion. Information and context is useful at some point, but it does not help anyone to use that information as a barrier to prevent someone from having their own experience with the art.

The university museum’s collection included outdoor sculpture all over the campus. Some of my favorites were large, abstract pieces. I could approach them and wonder what was going on in that sculpture and pay attention to the experience rather than what I thought someone else wanted me to think about it. I could notice the strong visual lines in one sculpture having a conversation with the tall trees around it. I could notice the way the sunlight and shadows in a courtyard fell on a sculpture, adding to the drama of a piece. The question, “what more can we find,” kept my attention on the art for a little longer, helping me settle into quiet engagement with meaning.

Similarly, spirituality invites us to a place that is deeper than words. Sometimes this is serene and blissful, sometimes it’s just sitting with things that are difficult. When we face the most difficult transitions in our lives, sometimes there is nothing we can say, no way to explain or to bargain. These are the times when we need a spirituality beyond words. In her book, Glory Hallelujah!  Now Please Pick Up Your Socks, UU writer Jane Ellen Mauldin talks about such an experience. She writes:

A number of years ago, my brother lay dying in the hospital. He spent days in the intensive care unit while members of my family, including my mother, sat for many long hours on chairs in the hallway outside his room. Among visitors who came to share the vigil was a member of our church.

“How are you doing?” the friend asked.

My mother was too exhausted to tell anything but the truth. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m very, very tired. I’m too tired to even pray anymore.”

“But don’t you see,” her friend replied, “your very presence here is a prayer.”

There are times when all words fail us, all forms seem hollow, and no one out there or inside seems to be listening. At those times, our presence, just our presence, is prayer. Our bodies, our actions, become our prayer, our connection to God, whatever God may be.

So ends the reading.  Mauldin alludes to the reason why it’s useful to have worship that uses arts not limited to words, and this is why it’s helpful to have an embodied spiritual practice.  When we come to a place when the only prayer left is our actions, it’s good to have practiced. In these times when the pace of evil seems designed to overwhelm us, being able to operate in a place that is beyond words gives us another avenue for resilience. Let’s be creative with our questions, our doubts, and our silence.

Grounding in Relationship

Something else that art and spirituality do is to ground us in relationship. The relationship may be with others around us, with history, with other practitioners, with our own souls, or with the ground of our being. In this congregation, we have learned over and over again that our relationships are enhanced through music. We have been learning to sing together again in our recovery from the social distancing phase of the pandemic; and as we learn to sing, we find more joy and a greater sense of community. Choir members and song leaders lift our spirits and find a deeper sense of connection. Creating things with our hands, bodies, and voices increases our sense of collective power, and helps us to pay attention to each other in the here and now.

This might be what Lewis Latimer was getting at in some of his creative writing. In addition to being an inventor and a scientist, Lewis Latimer also wrote a play that got produced in his lifetime and he wrote poetry. Here’s one of his poems, “Love Is All”:

“What is there in this world, beside our loves,

To keep us here?

Ambition's course is paved with hopes deferred,

With doubt and fear.

Wealth brings no joy,

And brazen-throated fame

Leaves us at last

Nought but an empty name.

Oh soul, receive the truth,

E'er heaven sends thy recall:

Nought here deserves our thought but love,

For love is all.”

(“Love is All” by Lewis Latimer, p. 39 in the anthology Been in the Storm So Long, edited by Mark Morrison-Reed and Jacqui James)

Latimer suggests that our loves, plural, collectively form the strongest force that keeps us “here.” I can imagine several meanings to where “here” might be. It is not a fixed point. “Here” moves with life and time. Here is where we put one foot in front of the other. Here is the present moment, this time and place and plane of existence. Here we are, gathered in strength, rooted in the world as it is. Love keeps us grounded in relationship in the here and now. 

In these times, it is our relationships that will sustain us and give us the strength and purpose to go forward. In healthy relationships with each other and with the Spirit of Life, we will remember our values and we will remember what is true in history, even when warped and cruel misinformation is surrounding us. When we create, when we find the ground of our being in the present moment, when we find beauty together, we can overcome the trauma response that certain elements are trying to evoke as a way of undermining our power.

People need each other. For those of us who have marginalized identities, it is essential that we have place where we show up regularly, where people will miss us and follow up if we disappear. For those of us with relative privilege, it is essential that we pay attention to the people around us and follow up when someone is missing. Investing in relationships through art and spiritual practice is a form of resistance to tyranny. Love is all.

Moving Toward Ethical Action

A third thing about both spirituality and the arts is that they can move us toward ethical action. The Poor People’s Campaign understands this. They have a songbook for their movement, and they have special training for song leaders. The campaign is inclusive of people of many faiths and no faith, and they accomplish this by being multivocal, not by asking people of faith to hide their differences or their spiritual perspectives. Art, music, and spiritual practice help us to commit things to memory, to learn them by heart, and to let our hearts thus instructed to lead us toward right action. Spiritual practice and the arts share this quality of cutting through the illusions of systemic injustice and drawing out the power we have within.

The author Toni Morrison (of blessed memory), speaking in 2016 at the Stella Adler Institute of Acting, spoke about the role of the artist. She said:

I want to remind us all that art is dangerous. I want to remind you of the history of artists who have been murdered, slaughtered, imprisoned, chopped up, refused entrance. The history of art, whether it's in music or written or what have you, has always been bloody, because dictators and people in office and people who want to control and deceive know exactly the people who will disturb their plans. And those people are artists. They're the ones that tell the truth. And that is something that society has got to protect.

In our own time and context, book bans and curriculum purges and attacks on libraries are just the beginning of another wave of attacks on the arts. Just this week, we learned that the Kennedy Center is under threat. Art and artists need us. It is important that we support artists with our attention and kindness; that we purchase art and music created by real, live artists and not corporate-owned large language models; and that we use our own powers of creation to tell bold truths.

Just as engagement with the arts can prepare us to speak truth to power, so can spiritual practice. Yes, it’s also true that faith can be co-opted for imperialism, so we need to be accountable to each other and to the people who are most impacted by systemic oppression. That being said, throughout human history, spiritual practice has been one of the resources that strengthened people who were making change toward love and liberation. In recent weeks, we have seen the courage of the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, who drew directly from sacred text to urge the administration to practice mercy. For this, critics called her all kinds of names, and one legislator even suggested that she should be deported. The un-elected shadow President openly accused Church World Service and various Lutheran aid organizations of criminality. Even the Vice President, who calls himself a Catholic, characterized the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as helping refugees in order to pad their “bottom line,” and implied that helping refugees was illegal. Just like art, spirituality when practiced with integrity and compassion is dangerous.

If we are going to choose the path of integrity and compassion, which we are; if we are going to put love at the center of our Unitarian Universalist faith, which we are; if we are going to risk speaking the truth, which we are; we need practices that will keep us connected to our paths and to each other. We need ways of committing our values to mind and heart. We need to invoke the memory of our ancestors, and we need to commit to being the kind of ancestor that the people who come after us can be proud of. Practices of art and spirituality will give us courage.

Practices that help us to sustain ethical action come in a lot of different forms. Embodied or interactive practices have a lot to recommend them. Your practice might be hiking or baking or crocheting blankets; whatever it is, if it helps you connect with that which is larger than yourself and to tap into your human power to thrive and make change, go for it. Your practice might be meditation, prayer, dance, or chanting; something that reminds you of sacred text or spiritual lineage or your deepest values. Let’s lean into our practices to help us to speak the truth, do justice, and love kindness.

Conclusion

In the end, artistic practices and spiritual practices have a lot in common. Both can lead us to a place deeper than words, a place where we can sit with lamentation and pain and growth; a place for our doubts and questions; a place where silence can make room for what hasn’t yet emerged. Both art and spirituality can ground us in relationship as we create and engage together, as we connect with the transcendent and with the deepest truths we hold within. Both art and spirituality can move us to ethical action, giving us inspiration and courage to be our whole, authentic selves, even in times such as this.

May you find and sustain practices that are deep, connecting, and encouraging. May creativity nourish your path. May we align with the Love at our center and with the Spirit of Life in our habits of the heart.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.