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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.

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« 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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

[revlyncox]

Holy Water, Sacred Flame

The holidays of Imbolc and Brigid may have something to tell us about courage, creativity, and commitment in these difficult times. This sermon was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on February 2, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

The Celtic Pagan calendar is rooted in the seasons of light and dark of the northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycles of western Europe. There are other calendars and festivals for earth-centered cultures all over the world, but this is the one we’re talking about today. At approximately the same time of year in Ireland and the United Kingdom and the northeastern United States, the middle of winter means that we can start to perceive the time of sunrise and sunset reaching toward spring, just a little more daylight each day. Yet, even as the daylight increases, February can be one of the coldest months of the year. It’s a both/and situation. Winter is still here, yet we know that change is coming.

February into March is the time of year when lambs start to be born, vulnerable and full of promise for the coming spring. They need to be kept warm. There’s some suggestion that one word for this early February holiday, Imbolc, comes from a word that means sheep’s milk. I have never kept sheep myself, but my impression is that lambs have more agility than common sense, and so Imbolc is a time when we tend patiently and carefully, even when we know we will be frustrated.

There is a holiday coming up later this month on the Jewish calendar, Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of Trees. It’s not the same holiday, each culture brings its own meaning to its own holidays, yet there are some similar themes when we’re observing Tu B’Shevat in a northern climate. We appreciate the trees as they are, and we commit to their health and growth. It’s a traditional time to plant something, if you can.

Early February, when we can imagine the next season’s arrival, is a time of initiation and starting new projects. Gardeners in climates like ours have their heads full of ideas, gathering seeds, starting a few indoors, and figuring out how to make the most of the soil and sun that will be available later. It’s hard to know how things will turn out. Making plans at this in-between time of year takes courage.

The Irish goddess Brigit and her later incarnation, St. Brigid of Kildare, are associated with this early February holiday. In the legends, Brigit protects access to clean, healing water. Her sacred well continues to be a place of healing and inspiration. In the book, Circle Round, Raising Children in Goddess Traditions, the authors suggest honoring Brigit with a “waters of the world” ritual, similar to our Water Ceremony in September. Brigit is also a figure of light and flame. When you put fire and water together, you can make entirely new things out of what you had before. You can forge iron, cook food, sculpt clay and fire it into ceramics. Maybe this transformative potential is why Bridget is also associated with childbirth, poetry, healing, song, and art.

There is one thing that newborn lambs, vegetable seeds, soup ingredients, raw iron, and future poetry all have in common: They don’t look at the beginning the way they are going to look at the end. You have to have some hope and imagination to believe in the transformation that is coming. You have to keep doing what you are doing, when the evidence for success has not yet appeared. We need to hold on through the long term, through step-by-step processes, through the discomfort of growth and change. And so another thing we learn at Brigit’s holiday is the need for commitment. 

Has anyone here ever had to practice something? Have you gone to sports or dance practice, or been in a play? Has anyone here ever had to work on a project that took more than a day to complete? Big things take a lot of time to get ready for, and it can be discouraging to work on something before you can know for sure how it will turn out. Imbolc is the holiday where we decide to stick to those projects anyway. Commitment.

If we’re paying attention to a legendary figure of generosity, art, and transformation, it’s a good idea to listen to the voices of poets who figured out how to sustain themselves and their families and communities through difficult times. During Black History Month, we are reminded of many examples of poets and artists who showed and inspired perseverance as they provided hope and imagination about a better world that was not yet visible.

Lucille Clifton wrote in 1993 in her poem, “won’t you celebrate with me”:

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Going back further in time to the 1800s, our UU ancestor Frances Ellen Watkins Harper wrote at the end of her poem “Songs for the People”:

Our world, so worn and weary,

   Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

   Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,

   Till war and crime shall cease; 

And the hearts of men grown tender

   Girdle the world with peace.

Both poems articulate a place in the middle, in between what is difficult or dangerous and the better world that is possible. Both poems find reasons for song and celebration, even in this in-between place. And perhaps the joy we find amidst the challenges is part of what will bring us closer to the world we dream about.

Ancestors and prophets speak to us through poetry, especially in these times when we need to hear from those who have gone before us and faced great challenges. They teach us not only to go forward one breath at a time, one stanza at a time, but to sustain our minds and souls with enthusiasm for the smallest details and the biggest dreams. Poems can be quite short, and yet their evocative words plant seeds, growing into thoughts and conversations and relationships. Brigit’s holiday is a good time for tapping into the creativity that sustains commitment.

Brigit is a goddess of fire and inspiration as well as clean water, healing, and creativity. Both holy water and sacred flame are her symbols. When we act on it, inspiration is a form of courage. We risk the vulnerability to manifest our hopes, dreams, and visions. Being open to the spark of a new idea can be dangerous. In these times when faithful public servants are facing retaliation for enforcing the law, when there is a widespread hunt to punish those who seek to end bias and discrimination in employment, when major news outlets are submitting to the pressure to repeating the liar’s version of events, we are aware that inspiration that is born from truth and creativity requires courage.

Let’s be refreshed by the holy water of our connection and let us be guided by the sacred flame of truth. The sacred well denotes healing. Everything we do to heal and care for ourselves and each other honors the sacred and is a form of resistance. Brigit’s forge calls us to creativity. Everything we make with our minds, voices, hearts, and hands helps us to imagine a better world, to process our grief and rage, and to connect with others. Creativity simultaneously grounds us and shows us possibility. We must create courageously. When we love our families fiercely, whether families of origin or choice, we honor the generativity of the holy water and the sacred flame. Let us gather the courage to rise up in solidarity with all of our siblings, especially those who are targeted by those who would build their power on a foundation of oppression.

In the cycle of the year in this part of the world, winter is a necessary and natural part of the order. As I said earlier, there are certain seeds that will only sprout in the warmer months if they first experience cold. Without winter, there are insects that overpopulate, and there are native plants and trees that don’t do as well. Winter has its own gifts of beauty, of a change of pace, and of our ability to see the sky. That being said, there are some difficult things about surviving through the winter. Some people find themselves less resilient in the months that have less daylight. While we can appreciate the gifts of winter in their own time, there is also something to look forward to about the spring.

In our human lives, we are living through difficult times. The metaphor of winter for our times is true in the sense of challenge, but without the serenity and natural cycles. The current federal administration is issuing grave threats to human rights, economic justice, world peace, and basic science. I don’t believe that there is anything beautiful or necessary about that. But the spiritual lessons of these February holidays -- the lessons of commitment, creativity, and courage – are useful as we strategize about how to hold on to our values and survive, and how to help as many of our neighbors as possible to do the same.

The world is calling us to be innovative, strong, resilient, and practical. Those are some of the values that are highlighted at Imbolc and Brigit. May we be inspired to shape the future with courage, creativity, and commitment. May we create a meeting place for fire and water, past and future, winter and spring, celebration and potential.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Dinosaur by the Highway

Stories have the power to hypnotize us into forgetting our power or to motivate us toward connection and liberation. Let's use the power of stories wisely in our calling to be the accomplices and co-conspirators of the Spirit of Life. This sermon was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick by Rev. Lyn Cox on January 26, 2025.

I love dinosaurs. I love learning about dinosaurs. It keeps my science brain fresh and active.  I love that scientists are learning new things all the time about dinosaurs. This reminds me of the thrill of discovery, the potential for the expansion of human knowledge, that we have not yet reached the limits of what is possible to know. I love that I have something to talk about with young children and people of all ages who have dinosaurs as a special interest.

To be clear, I also love birds, and I love that birds are dinosaurs, but mainly this story is about non-avian dinosaurs from the Mesozoic.

One of my favorite things about dinosaurs is the reminder of the fullness of time. When you look at a timeline, the age of the dinosaurs -- from the Triassic to the Jurassic to the Cretaceous -- itself lasted a long time, from 252 million years ago to around 66 million years ago. So, Hadrosaurus foulki, the state dinosaur of New Jersey, at about 80 million years ago, is closer to us in the timeline than Hadrosaurus foulki is on the timeline to a dinosaur like Coelophysis, 225 million years ago. I never cease to be amazed and fascinated.

Thinking about time on a geologic scale brings some concreteness to the idea that the arc of the universe is long. The web of life is complex, and it extends backward and forward in time as well as all around the earth. Change sometimes happens slowly if we look at it on a human scale, but it does happen. Organisms evolve. One of the things we know about life is that it keeps moving.

My attachment to dinosaurs is a kind of a story. The story of life on earth has highs and lows, it has drama, it has twists and turns. Yet the meaning is all constructed. The things that strike me as interesting or exciting or profound are that way because of how I and other people think and talk about the facts. The relationships and changes in life on earth over time capture my imagination, but the facts themselves simply are what they are.

Humans can’t help but make meaning and find patterns and seek connections. These are adaptive skills. We will never stop making stories. Yet we also have the power to reframe and revise the stories that are meaningful to us. Whether these are historical stories or folk stories or scientific stories or personal stories, we can go and re-examine the elements of a story and make new meaning. We can change our relationship with a story. And we can connect with people around us in a new way as we explore our stories together.

Stories do a lot for us as humans. They can convey kinship, helping us get to know our elders and ancestors and chosen family. Stories carry culture, becoming shared touch points and common metaphors that help people to understand one another and to explain cultural mores. Stories give us frameworks for meaning, helping us understand that trouble does not last always, that dragons can be fought or befriended, that there is still good in the world even when Mordor is ascendant, that sometimes the real treasure is the friends we make along the way. Folk stories and sacred stories and foundational cultural stories give us symbols to work with in our conversations with each other and a departure point for yet more stories in literature, art, and drama. Our personal stories and these big stories can get woven together. The way we understand ourselves and our capacity to face challenges can be affected by our understanding of what a hero is, or what success means, or who gets to have agency in the world.

Stories are powerful. We can leverage that power for good or for ill. At the very least, we need to be aware of the power of stories so that we can figure out when they are being used for harm, or when we have unintentionally thought ourselves into a corner. My colleague, the Rev. Mykal Slack, led worship for the DC-area ministers earlier this week. He said that stories are “sticky.” They stick to us. Stories can connect us or get us stuck. He said that when we understand a situation as a story, we can ask, “Whose story is this? What is the impact of this story? Is this a story based in facts, or fear, or something else.” Then we can decide to find a different point of view for the story, or switch up the plot, or change the background music.

Though I have said it before, it bears mentioning again that Timothy Snyder, in his book, On Tyranny, urges us to look beyond a monolithic story, and to enrich our ability to talk about alternative futures. He says that certain kinds of tyrants practice the “politics of eternity,” an ahistorical view that is “concerned with the past, but in a self-absorbed way, free of any real concern with facts. Its mood is a longing for past moments that never really happened during epochs that were, in fact, disastrous …”

“In the politics of eternity (Snyder continues), the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures … Since the crisis is permanent, the sense of emergency is always present; planning for the future seems impossible or even disloyal. How can we even think of reform when the enemy is always at the gate?”

Snyder suggests that we must go back to a critical study of history. He says, “History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each one of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.”

Snyder knows that stories are powerful. In these times when the power of stories is being used on national and international scales for great harm as well as for resistance to tyranny, it is even more important for us to gather in communities where we practice stories of connection and liberation. This is, I believe, one of the core purposes of a congregation.

Sometimes, when we get stuck in a story in a bad way, we need to go back and look at the elements of that story, find out what is factual, and seek out other perspectives. Some stories are powerful because they are cultural or sacred or mythic or personal. Some stories are powerful because they involve real people who took real actions that align with values such as courage, love, and liberation.

This is one of the reasons I sneak Unitarian Universalist history into wisdom stories and sermons. We need to know our history. We need examples and maps. We need to know what didn’t work sometimes, and why. And, at the same time, sometimes stories lose something in the retelling. It’s a good idea to go back and re-examine the ways we tell our stories.

For instance, the way we talk about John Murray has changed a bit over the years. For one thing, Thomas Potter sometimes gets less attention, though I think he is the hero of this chapter of the story. John Murray was certainly important to Universalist history. Once he settled in Massachusetts, with the help of his father-in-law Winthrop Sargent and John’s second wife Judith Sargent Murray, John changed the course of religious freedom in the early United States. He put a lot of energy into organizing the Universalist movement. But back in Barnegat Bay in 1770, it was Thomas Potter whose hospitality, patience, generosity, and persistence made that story possible. When I was in seminary, we taught kids a song to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” It was a fine song, it mentioned Thomas Potter, but didn’t say much about him. The song we sang today, “Preach the Gospel of Love,” is much more of a dialogue. Someone (in this case Lisa Romantum Schwartz) went back and looked at the story again, and found a new perspective rooted in the facts.

In these times, I think it is good to remember someone like Thomas Potter who prepared their mind, heart, and friends for a moment of opportunity. Few of us will have the chance to make grand and public gestures that will save the world, but many of us can prepare ourselves and our communities for surprise chances when kindness or truth can move things in the right direction, or at least when a little sand in the gears can slow the progress of harm.

The songs and the rituals that help us to remember our stories don’t have to be critical pieces of scholarship in themselves. We can point to reliable sources while making meaning and finding symbolism and inspiration in narrative. Stories and the values they illustrate come alive for us in rituals. The water ceremony in September invokes not only our shared spiritual life fed by many different sources, but it is also a reminder of our history with gender equality. The flower ceremony in the late spring is not only a ritual celebrating the beauty of diversity, but also a reminder of a time when our Unitarian siblings resisted fascism in Europe. Stories are told and held and remembered in embodied ways as well as narrative ways.

Rituals don’t have to be limited to religious communities. When my mother died in 2008, her nursing colleagues wanted to have a special service for her at the hospital where she spent most of her career. My dad and I were welcome guests, but it was really a ceremony for the nurses and other clinicians, for honoring her lifetime of dedication, and for rededicating themselves to the values of their profession. The nurse’s memorial was a few weeks later than the funeral at my mother’s congregation. Sometimes people in caring professions are so busy managing logistics and feelings for other people, it takes extra time to be able to process their own feelings.

At the nurse’s memorial, there was a special reading, and a presentation of white roses. There were remarks by people who knew her well. One of my mother’s friends had a daughter who was a professional vocalist. She sang, “For Good,” from the musical Wicked.

You are probably familiar with the song, “For Good.” It wasn’t in the movie that just came out, it will be in the second movie. I understand that P and her daughter sang it for Rev. K’s farewell service. The lyrics include the phrase, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.” The vocalist added my mother’s name at the very end of the song, when in the original they repeat the line, “Because I knew you.”

Even though I didn’t feel the need to clear the air with my mother, as the characters do in the song, I associated “For Good” with my mother for a long time. The memorial service was a ritual that contained stories, and the story of the song contained a reminder that the ways we grow and change are part of how we carry our loved ones with us.

The potential for change is a great reason to explore our stories. Mental health professionals sometimes talk about narrative therapy, or “story editing,” the idea that we can reframe the way we talk about our lives. Retelling our own stories in new ways that are also true can help us to unlock new solutions, to improve our sense of agency in our own lives, and to reinforce the joy that we can create in the here and now. Retelling the story might be aided by further research, uncovering more of the context of our histories than we knew at the time, or by receiving the stories of others and noticing common themes as well as differences. As always, connection matters.

Our work together during the interim period involves some storytelling on the congregational level. Last year, when we met for the history pizza party, we talked about the story of this congregation as a place of dedication and participation. Learning is important to you. And we also talked about some things you have learned over the years about helping each other to process your conflicts productively and directly. This year, as you consider revising your mission statement, we have talked about the story of this congregation as a place of sanctuary, a community that saves lives by making room for people who need space for meaning and purpose and whose journeys are not necessarily accepted in other places. Your future will involve bringing forward the parts of those stories you want to keep, and editing the parts that make it difficult to adapt to the changing religious landscape.

Reflecting on our personal and congregational and cultural stories is big work. It can be emotional. Telling and re-telling our stories, listening to each other’s stories, is faith formation. We have been talking about that a little bit in our “Authentic Selves” study group. Reflecting on our stories is sometimes one of the activities for rites of passage. In the past, this congregation has had a program called Affirmation for students around eighth or ninth grade. In most other UU congregations, the comparable program is called Coming of Age.

I remember one Coming of Age group I helped facilitate; the youth had a rich opportunity for reflection as part of our retreat. This was maybe six months after the memorial service I talked about earlier. My co-facilitator’s family had a cabin in southern Virginia, a place with a yard that backed onto a lovely creek, and plenty of outdoor space for silent journaling and reflecting. We encouraged the youth to create playlists about their spiritual journeys to share on the car ride down. We had reserved time at a high ropes course, and almost had to cancel because of predicted thunderstorms. The youth created a weather magic ritual in front of the fireplace, and perhaps it was coincidental that the storms held off, but it made for a great story.

It was a good retreat, but very emotional for everyone. By the time we piled into the cars for the long ride home, we were tired. The other chaperone in the front seat of my car fell asleep immediately. The two youth in the back seat were in their own world, as it should be. I let them choose the music. They chose the soundtrack to Wicked.

There I was, driving down a two-lane highway in Virginia, hoping the GPS on my Prius didn’t lose satellite signal. Eventually, the youth stopped singing along and got deeply involved in their own conversation, and I was processing my own thoughts and feelings and exhaustion while the music kept going.

Then “For Good” came on the stereo. The song from the memorial service. I was totally safely driving, I was holding it together, my eyes were just getting a little bit teary. Kristen Chenowith and Idina Menzel were singing, “Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun …”

I came around a bend in the road, and there was a giant plaster statue of a dinosaur. One of my symbols of the fullness of time, and the presence of joy, and the potential for evolution and change.

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better.

I had no idea that there was such a place called Dinosaurland in Winchester, Virginia. I had no idea that I would meet a Tyrannosaurus rex on my way home from a spiritual retreat. I swear on John Murray’s boat that this really happened. In that moment, I felt the impact of all of the love in my life that had allowed me to grow and to change. I have been changed for good.

Humans are capable of creating new stories. We are capable of change in ourselves and our society. And the people we love are always with us because of the lessons we carry with us as we change. Stories help us to create meaning, to find purpose, and to connect with each other. Let’s choose a story about welcoming the stranger, sharing liberation, and putting love at the center. Let’s choose to be changed for good. 

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

[revlyncox]

Pastoral Message, January 22, 2025: Nothing can take away your inherent worth and dignity as a human being. You are a precious, irreplaceable creature of worth. Hang in there.

[revlyncox]

People's Rally Invocation

Yesterday was the People's March in Washington, DC. I had the honor of giving the invocation at a local rally in Norristown, PA. Below is the text of the prayer.

I am here this afternoon as a Unitarian Universalist minister and also as a member of Clergy for Choice for Planned Parenthood Delaware. How, you might wonder, can a member of the clergy be also involved with reproductive rights? The answer is that religion does not have to be a force of divisiveness, nor a place of control and power. Religion can also be a force of coming together, of recognizing and upholding the worthiness of each and every person. So, in that variety of our beliefs and our non-beliefs, in the variety of our labels and our individualities - and in our agreements on the importance of democracy, justice and human rights for all - let us join our minds and souls in prayer.

To the highest spirit of all our aspirations, to that which grounds us and uplifts us, to that which transcends us and which we create - we come in prayer this afternoon. Our prayer is one of desperation and hope. We are in despair that gatherings such as this are needed. We are frustrated that politicians and governments continually put value on money and power while ignoring the value inherent in all people. We are angry that our leaders put themselves first with no regard for whom they step over or on.

In the midst of the anger and frustration is hope - hope that we are here, hope that a loving world is indeed possible, hope in the faith that love can and will triumph over hate. We know that every person is worthy of love and with that knowledge we will continue to work and strive for a more just world where the disenfranchised are heard, where the broken are held in care and where siblings of all backgrounds are welcome.

We do not pray for miracle changes in policy and leadership. We do not pray for miracles because we know that we are the miracles. We are the force of the divine in the world, we are the holy wind of change promoting more love and more justice. Instead we pray that our words are heard, we pray that our actions create a more just, more loving and more equitable world.

Look at those to your left and right. Take a look at yourself, your hands and feet. You are looking at the divine embodied. Not only do we pray, but we are the answer to our own prays. We are the force of the holy responding to our own desperation and hope. You are that divine force of goodness and justice we have been waiting for.

Remember that - today and forward into this trying year and the years to come. You are worthy of love. No matter what others might say, you are worthy of love. And, you are responsible for promoting the justice you seek in the world. You are the love we are praying for.

Amen and amen.

[revlyncox]

"Begin Again," sermon from January 12, 2025. With the new year fresh in our minds, let's think about how to start over. Forgiveness and collective imagination - learning how to tell our stories differently - can help us to begin again.

The Wisdom Story for January 12, "Carl and Cupcake," is unlisted, but just for you, here it is.