Speaking of…

an intro to immigration. June 28, 2012

Posted by Rev. Dawn in Uncategorized.
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On June 24, 2012, the three Louisville Unitarian Universalist congregations joined together in one worship service that centered on immigration justice. The three congregations represented were:

• First Unitarian Church
• Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church
• Clifton Universalist Unitarian Church

Below are several pieces of the service.

A History Of Migration, by Henry Austin, TJUC
Listen here: 2012-06-24-HAustin

We all come from someplace. One thing we know is no one came from this place, this city, this state, this country. We all come from someplace else.

It is widely agreed that the First Nation population crossed the land bridge from Eurasia into North America across what is now known as the Bering Strait approximately 12,000 years ago . While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from 2.1 million to 18 million By 1800, through horrific genocide, disease and wars, the Native population of the present-day United States had declined to approximately 600,000, and only 250,000 Native Americans remained in the 1890s.

Since the end of the 15th century and the beginning of what has become known as the “age of discovery” 60 million people have migrated to this country, 7 out of 10 from European areas. And why would so many people leave their homes to immigrate to unknown lands? Three primary reasons are- a push, a pull and a means. Push refers to those circumstances that encourage or compel people to immigrate- these can be such things as natural disasters, war, economic pressures, religious or ethnic persecution or such things as the Irish potato famine. A pull refers to attractive aspects of someplace new- religious freedom, the promise of new opportunities and wealth, freedom from military service and a rejoining of families. The means involves the ability to migrate meaning available and affordable transportation and the absence of barriers at the destination.

There have been 5 distinct waves of immigrants to North America since the “Age of Discovery” The first was pre 1800, the so called Colonial Period. These are the families genealogists are so eager to find in their family histories- the “founders of America”. This group comprised 600,000 Europeans, most of whom were English and 300,000 Africans. The majority of these immigrant ancestors were not free, either being slaves or indentured servants. The early pilgrims and puritans were attempting to escape the religious tyranny of the Church of England, yet they were a minority of those early immigrants coming to America. This was also a time of open borders when the country wanted any and all to support its growth. In 1790, the first census count was 3,929,214. A second period was 1820-1860 when primarily German and Irish Catholics, Scottish, Scots-Irish, and English immigrated. In those 30 years 5.4 million came primarily through New York. In 1860, New York City was known as the largest Irish city in the world. 1865-1890 found many Germans and eastern Europeans coming to America. 1890-1917 eastern and southern Europeans came in record numbers up to 10,000 per day at Ellis Island alone. Finally 1965 to the present has found predominantly Latin Americans, Middle eastern and Asian immigrants joining the many who had previously arrived to these shores.

From the beginning of immigration history in this country we have experienced an ever changing set of policies influenced by politics, economics and fear. We’ve moved from those early open borders to restrictions that excluded large groups of immigrants. In 1790 the newly formed Congress adopted the first uniform rules so that any free white person could apply for citizenship after a two year residency. The “white” law was in effect until 1952. The first federal immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 barred Chinese in the U.S. from citizenship and suspended all Chinese immigration for 10 years. In 1890 the U.S. census indicated more than 5.2 million immigrants entered the country between 1880-1890.

Also from our early beginnings, we have heard the alarmist nativist voices, such as the Know Nothing Party fearfully say immigrants were going to take jobs from “real ” Americans, over throw the government, spread crime and refuse to assimilate. We’ve blamed immigrants from many places for, well, the same things over and over.

We seem not to have learned from our history. Benjamin Franklin in 1750 said in response to German immigration ” Few of their children in the country learn English. Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious”. Those fears and predictions did not materialize. The same fears and debates continue, however, now from the descendants of the very same demonized immigrants who built this country.

In 1886 the Statue of Liberty arrived in 300 pieces , a significantly symbolic image of a nation of many souls. As it was assembled, so have we. We’re a nation founded on immigration and immigration has always enriched and shaped our identity. We have all truly come from someplace else to this permanently unfinished country.

The Invisible Immigrant, by Lisa Austin, TJUC
Listen here: 2012-06-24-LAustin

People immigrate for a variety of reasons: political strife, tribal warfare, religious persecution, to escape oppressive regimes or a desire for freedom and justice. No one immigrates to be a slave but that is what happens to approximately 50,000 people each year in the United States.

There are more slaves today than any other time in human history. There is an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide with someone being sold into slavery every sixty seconds. It is the second largest criminal activity in the world next to drug trafficking and the fastest growing international crime with women as the fastest growing commodity.

According to the Justice Department there are a variety of human trafficking categories: forced labor, bonded labor, sex trafficking, child soldiers, debt bondage, involuntary domestic servitude, child sex trafficking, and enslavement for organ selling.

Debt labor, which is probably the least known form of slavery today yet the most widely used, is when a person’s work is demanded for repayment of money. This is also used frequently with sex trafficking as well. Immigrants are promised a legitimate job and once they arrive their papers ( which are not legitimate) are taken away and they are forced to work to pay off the cost of bringing them to America. Of course, the loan is never paid off and in fact, they have been sold to an individual and because they are undocumented have become invisible.

Women are often raped and tortured to comply with their new “owner”. They must meet a quota or be beaten or killed, They are put in cages, never allowed to leave them and must service their customers where they live and sleep.

The men are taken to isolated areas where they are also tortured and often housed in a locked environment while under surveillance. In both sex and labor trafficking cases the rooms have boarded windows, bars, and the property is covered with barbed wire and security cameras. Often the owners threaten to kill their families and police have found records of murdered families in raids. Those who become ill or useless are dumped on the street or killed. Since the average price for a slave is $90, a human being is a relative cheap commodity.

In Kentucky alone there are have been 57 cases of human trafficking in the last three years. There have been arrests in the J’town and Newburg areas of Louisville where rental houses had been turned into brothels. The men are usually sold to rural land owners to work on farms or they are forced to work in urban restaurants where they are imprisoned when not working.

This past legislative session in Frankfort, House Bill 350 would have created a fund to seek and support trafficking victims. It also aimed for the formation of a Ky. State Police human trafficking unit. Unfortunately it did not make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Because we are a country that considers “illegal immigrants” criminals and not, as they often are, victims, it does not seem the invisible immigrants will be helped despite a moral obligation to take care of any person living in our borders. All around us are people living lives of desperation who came to America, innocently and under false circumstances, to live a better life. Instead what they have found was one much worse.

One Family’s Journey, by Jo Ann Dale, First U
Listen here: 2012-06-24-JDale

Through these messages we have heard this morning, we are moved beyond thinking about fences or laws to consider the question posed at the outset of the service: What causes people to leave their homes? We now turn to the answer one family has given to this question. I was honored to be able to talk at length with the Burundian family we are co-sponsoring, and to have been given permission to share with you a bit of their journey.

For those of us who have formed our understanding of the geography and history of central East Africa primarily on repeated viewings of The African Queen, a bit of introduction. What is ultimately most important in this story, of course, is a family’s courage, determination, and endurance. Still, we can’t ignore the European and American policies that help create the circumstances of their persecution. In the area we now know as Burundi, Rwanda and the Congo, Hutu and Tutsi lived together in harmony and agricultural stability for hundreds of years, using a communal land tenure system. When the late nineteenth century ushered in the colonial system, communalism and cooperation were not advantageous to the European powers, who needed to install instead individualism and consumerism. Thus, first Germany and then Belgium, began formalizing Hutu and Tutsi tribal identities. The agricultural stability was disturbed by the introduction of coffee and tea, which were grown in Africa, but always processed in Europe. Thus, when Burundi became independent of Belgium in 1962, the country was impoverished by externalization of resources and the transfer of debt to the new country, and the Hutu and Tutsi were eyeing each other resentfully.

But in a small town of a few thousand on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, two families still lived as neighbors untouched by tribal tensions. Esperance was Tutsi with a Hutu father, and Mohamed was Hutu with a Tutsi mother. They grew up, married, and began raising a family. Eric, Seleman, Grace, Jonas and Robert were born in the 1980s. Then, in 1993, the first multi-party elections took place. Voting was mandatory, but voting is contrary to the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mohamed was thrown into prison. When the new president was assassinated, the country erupted into violence that grew to a genocide of Tutsis. A group of Hutus attacked Esperance in her home. They beat her and broke her wrist, but her life was saved by the intervention of Jehovah’s Witness neighbors.

An uneasy peace resumed. Esther and Ruth and Mary were born, and Esperance and Mohamed continued running their restaurant. Still, racial tensions and religious intolerance simmered around them and assassinations and violence continued governmental instability. In 1998, Eric, the eldest son, was ordered to join the army. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he attempted to resist. In 2001, Seleman and Grace were expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag. Seleman was attacked, thrown into a well, and left for dead. He was rescued and hospitalized, but it was clear they were not safe.
During this time, bands of expatriate Burundians living in Tanzania would regularly cross the border and conduct night raids to rob and to murder. The family stopped sleeping at home, instead hiding in the bush at night. Esperance, pregnant with twins, dared not stay at home. Rebecca and Sara were born in the jungle.

On the first of January, 2003, the country exploded. Eric failed to join them where they hid in the bush, and they found his body later that morning. That same day, Esperance’s mother, her brother, and his four children were all murdered in the violence. Esperance, Mohamed and their surviving children fled that very day to Malawi, but in the camp, which housed primarily Hutus and Tutsis, they found their safety threatened by the same tribal tensions they had fled. Crossing to Zimbabwe, they were arrested as undocumented immigrants. The men endured daily beatings, while Esperance and the youngsters, in a transit center, endured the same old racial hostility. One day as they walked to school, Esther and Ruth were attacked. Ruth’s leg was badly broken, and she was hospitalized for three months. In November, word reached the family that they would all be killed while offices were closed for an official funeral. Again they fled, this time to Botswana.

In the 4000 person Dukwi camp, housing refugees from sixteen different countries, the situation was better. Still, they had no access to employment opportunities or higher education, were not allowed to leave the camp, and they found themselves the target of psychological violence, which ultimately resulted in Mohamed’s return to Zimbabwe for health care.

Esperance and her surviving children are among the lucky one percent of the 43 million refugees in the world in that they achieved resettlement. They had no choice as to the country where they would be resettled, simply enduring repeated interviews about their experiences until an opportunity arose.

Now they just want to rebuild their lives, go to school, get jobs, practice their religion, fit in with a new culture.
We can help these remarkable people; but let’s also think about how governments, NGOs, the World Bank, the IMF, and new Unitarian congregations can pursue policies that strengthen respect for inherent worth and dignity.

Immigration and emigration are two sides of a coin: It matters how we treat people who find themselves among us. And it also matters why they have left their homes.

Responsive Reading “Prayer for Travelers” by Rev. Angela Herrera

This is a prayer for all the travelers.
For the ones who start out in beauty,
who fall from grace, who step gingerly,
looking for the way back.

And for those who are born into the margins,
who travel from one liminal space to another,
crossing boundaries in search of center.

This is a prayer
for the ones whose births
are a passing from darkness to darkness,
who all their lives are drawn toward the light,
and keep moving,

and for those whose journeys
are a winding road that begins
and ends in the same place,
though only when the journey is completed
do they finally know where they are.

For all the travelers,
young and old,
aching and joyful,
weary and full of life;

the ones who are here, and the ones who are not here;
the ones who are like you (and they’re all like you)
and the ones who are different (for in some ways, we each travel alone).

This is a prayer
for traveling mercies, and surefootedness,

for clear vision,

for bread for your body and spirit,
for water, for your safe arrival
and for everyone you see along the way.

Connecting it to Our Values, by the Rev. Dawn Cooley, First U
Listen here: 2012-06-24-DCooley

Moments ago, in Phoenix, Arizona, thousands of Unitarian Universalists from all around the country (and even around the world) sang the song that we will close our worship with in a few minutes. We are building a new way.

For the past 5 days, these thousands of UUs have gathered in Phoenix to learn, grow, and act compassionately around the issue of immigration. This is our annual General Assembly – where we normally conduct the business of the Association. But when Arizona bill SB 1070 came up two years ago, a conversation began: do we cancel the 2012 General Assembly, scheduled to be in Phoenix? Do we boycott it? Or relocate it? Or do we do something completely different. The vote was to do something different: to have a Justice GA – do the absolute minimum business possible and spend as much time, energy and effort standing on the side of love.

This is not about politics. Well, it overlaps with politics – as discussions of values often do. But it is about much more than that. At it’s core, the conversation about immigration (a conversation taking place in UU congregations around the country this morning) is a conversation about about how we respond to people who we classify as other.

Driven by economic, social, political and environmental factors, people around the world are traveling. Are migrating. Millions are currently in transit, in refugee camps, in detention centers, or living and working in places (like the United States) without full legal status and without access to social services or protection of their basic human rights.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to work to build the beloved community – a world community of peace, liberty and justice for all. Our current UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales, boldly claims that “We have to remember that the great struggle for basic human rights …is not a legal battle. It is a battle for our souls. For Unitarian Universalists, our commitment to justice is based on the principle that every human being has inherent worth and dignity.”

But Morales does not stop there: “At the very core of our faith,” he says, “…is the conviction that religion should focus on this life. Our religion is not an escape from this life, but a means of engaging life fully. Our emphasis on justice is not partisan, but rather an organic expression of our belief that we are all equal and all in this together. The struggle for justice, for the beloved community, is a long, long struggle. It will not be won in the courtroom. It will be won in the human heart. It will be won when we let go of fear, let go of hate, let go of greed, and let the power of compassion fill our hearts and guide our lives.”

So how do we begin to let go of our own fear, hate, and greed (and, I would add, self-absorption)? How do we transform other into us? How do we let the power of compassion fill our hearts and guide our lives?

I think it starts with stories. The stories of people who have migrated – refugees who have fled persecution, women sold into slavery, children who were raised in this country who have been deported to places where they don’t speak the language, or had their parents or caregivers deported. Stories make it almost impossible for us to turn away, make it almost impossible to continue to dehumanize human beings by calling them illegal. No human being is illegal.

Stories, also, shine a light on how complicated our immigration system is. Stories demonstrate that human beings are in this country without documentation for many complex and complicated reasons – many not by their own free will, many without a home to return to, much less a safe home.

When we truly hear these stories, we begin to let the power of compassion fill our hearts and guide our lives. We are then called to “shine a light on the culture of cruelty perpetrated…by state governments that pass anti-immigrant laws like SB 1070 that lead to racial profiling and discrimination; ,” and we are called to shine a light on “a federal government whose practices…at the border and via an increasingly for-profit system of mass detention and deportation have created a culture of fear that terrorizes entire communities, makes us all less safe.”

This is not an issue just in Phoenix, or just in Arizona. It is an issue everywhere – all over the country. Including here, in Louisville, KY. Including here, in this sanctuary. How many of our lives are touched by our country’s immigration policies? All of us.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, reminded us: Justice is love in action. Let us act. Let us not turn away. Let us not stand by as the the discourse labels human beings as illegal, but instead work together to find solutions to an immigration system that is broken. May we work to build a new way, a new way that respects the inherent worth and dignity of every person, no matter their migrant status. Let us be a part of the mighty stream.

prayer. June 19, 2012

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Prayer
A sermon by the Rev. Dawn Cooley
Delivered at First Unitarian Church, Louisville, KY on June 3, 2012

Listen to the sermon here.

Thinking about sermon, could take intellectual approach:

5 types of prayers:

1. Praise
2. Penitence, expiation or contrition: seeking forgiveness
3. Petition: asking for something material
4. Thanksgiving
5. Intercession: asking for something for someone else

Could take each of these and talk about them, explain them, and tell you how a UU might interpret them.

Eric Walker Wikstrom has done a great job of this in Simply Pray.

Will do that sometime. Not today.

Prayer is a very personal thing, and there is no one right answer for what it means when we pray.

Instead of taking the intellectual approach, take a personal approach. Then connect it to what we do here every week.

My story:
Learning to pray as a child

• Now I lay me down to sleep
• Lord’s Prayer

As a teenager: Evangelical

• Stand in circle, hold hands, make something up
• ANXIETY – what to say???
• Got good at it
• Now, often will find me abstaining – prayer, sharing – as a way to make room for others to opt out as well.

No prayer

• disconnected, isolated, cut off from the ground of my being
• went searching…

Pagan

• rituals, raising energy and casting it out
• Movement – spiral dance
• Chanting, drumming
• Physical

Gratitude journal

• don’t need to send it out TOO someone
• act of being grateful changes ME

CPE in hospital

• had to reclaim ability to pray out loud, using words I could say with conviction an that would bring comfort.
• If any of you want me to pray with or for you, let me know. My job as your minister – few take me up on it, don’t hesitate to ask!
• Still an important part of my prayer life

Poetry

• mary oliver “you do not have to be good…”
• ee cummings “I thank you god for most this amazing day”
• hafiz “Just sit there right now. Don’t do a thing Just rest. For your separation from God, From love, Is the hardest work In this World.”

Tried meditation

• good for relaxing me
• fall asleep
• wish I could be someone who meditates regularly

Conversations with ???

• doesn’t matter who, what, why.
• It matters that it feels good and right to me.
• Often just one word or thought: Help. Thank you.

My prayer story – probably connects with many of your prayer stories.

No one right way to pray.

This is why, each week, in our moment of silence, I give examples of ways we might connect with the spirit of life and love – ways we might pray.

Though we don’t have the physical space for the more active forms of prayer or meditation, there are 4 ways I invite us to pray each week….

I say: We each have our own ways of connecting with the spirit of life and love: We may meditate on our breath as we breathe in and out,

Human beings, not human “doings”

e.e. Cummings “may I be I is the only prayer – not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.”

Member once told me this was his favorite part of the whole week, when he had a chance to sit, and breathe.

Sing: When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I’ll breathe out love.

We each have our own ways of connecting with the spirit of life and love: We may recite well worn words and phrases from times past.

Jozi – music, connects her to others who have played, prayed

Now I lay me down to sleep
our father
the lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…
Shabbat prayer
Poetry

We each have our own ways of connecting with the spirit of life and love: We may listen to the still small voice inside.

Joy Harjo: To pray you open your whole self to sky, to earth, to sun, to moon to one whole voice that is you.

A longtime member of our congregation writes “I wait for the strength and know how to do the right thing. Some people might call that prayer, but I expect the know-how to come from “my better self.”

Another says that thinking about things right before falling to sleep often brings a solution or answer sometime during the night.

Sing: Voice still and small, deep inside all, I hear you call, singing.

We each have our own ways of connecting with the spirit of life and love: We may talk to the divine as though it were an intimate friend.

Could be a conversation with God, like my own. Or not!

An agnostic leaning toward atheism in our congregation writes, “I do believe in the power of love and therefore I do pray that goodness and mercy stay with someone important to me who is dealing with significant difficulties and give them strength, help them to know the love that surrounds them, and keep them from suffering. I like to think that the thought counts and may somehow transmitted to the person. In any case, it helps me to think of them.”

Another member of our congregation says “Since I do not believe in the existence of any divine form of being, my form of prayer is directed inward. It is, for me, an acknowledgment of the inner dynamic of mind that we call the unconscious thanks to the insight of Sigmund Freud. As I see it, when the believer says “Lord, hear my prayer,” the unconscious hears it.” Though this person personally does not “request the intervention of an outside agitator.”

Sing: Spirit of Life, come unto me, sing in my heart…

Finally, perhaps I should add a 5th way to the list: we pluck on the string of the interconnected web and send energy out to those who need it.

Jozi – interconnected web
Earth-centered rituals

holding someone in the light

Sing: Great spirit come and rest in me.

We each have our own ways to pray, and our own reasons to pray. It matters not how we do it, or even why.

What matters is that we each find some way to connect with that power that is beyond our current understanding, that is known by many names, that moves in each of us, and reminds us of the mystery and wonder of life and love. Find a way – whatever way feels right to you. May it be so. Amen.

Memorial Day. June 13, 2012

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Beyond Flanders Fields
A sermon by the Rev. Dawn Cooley
Delivered at First Unitarian Church, Louisville, KY on May 27, 2012

Listen to the sermon here.

History of Memorial Day

• To honor those who died in service to our country.
• Memorial Day was first observed on 30 May 1868
  • flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
• Used to be called (and elsewhere still is) Decoration Day, or Remembrance Day.
• The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem
  • “In Flanders Fields” poem
  • These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I,
  • their brilliant red color an appropriate symbol for the blood spilled in the war.
• After World War II, Memorial Day became the more common reference for the holiday while some old-timers still called it Decoration Day.
  • 1967 Congress declared Memorial Day the official name
  • 1968, Congress moved the date from May 30 to the last Monday in May to give everyone a long weekend every year, effective in 1971.
• Mixed results, as now it is a time of retail sales and picnics.
• To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day,
  • “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000
  • 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.”

Connect with Moment for All Ages

• Conflicting feelings about this day – picnics or remembrance – are not new
• Not some war long ago: Over 6000 service members have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn and Operation Enduring Freedom.
• Same tune:
  • One hand, cheer and shout, ladies turn out, bells will peal, parades, etc.
  • Other hand: where are your legs? Your arms?
• Soldiers come back gravely wounded.
• “IED are causing blast injuries that extend upward under the armor…Blast injuries are also producing an unprecedented burden of what orthopedists term “mangled extremities” — limbs with severe soft-tissue, bone, and often vascular injuries.”i
• NY Times reports: “growing tide of combat veterans who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI), or concussions, caused by powerful explosions.
  • As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion, according to the latest Pentagon estimates.
  • About half the soldiers get better within hours, days or several months and require little if any medical assistance.
  • But tens of thousands of others have longer-term problems that can include, to varying degrees, persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems and light sensitivity.
  • These symptoms, which may be subtle and may not surface for weeks or months after their return, are often debilitating enough to hobble lives and livelihoods.”ii

And they come home with invisible or unknown wounds that may kill them days, months, or years later

• TBI – traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terror – still not often recognized
• PTSD – increasing!
  • 2004, 1 in 8 soldiers returning from Iraq had PTSD
  • 2008, 20% of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans hat Depression or PTSD
  • 2010, up to 31% returned with some mental impairment
  • increasing with multiple deployments as this war drags on and on
• Spiritual and emotional injuries on top of the physical:
  • Moral Injury: “A moral injury occurs when a soldier’s concepts of trust and right and wrong do not survive the heat of battle.
    • This breakdown can result from a soldier’s real or perceived failure under fire—or from the failure of a commander to properly lead.
    • As a result of this moral injury, the soldier brings home the psychological habits he developed for coping with the intense stresses of combat.
    • In other words, he or she returns to civilian life hyper-vigilant and trusting no one—a difficult way to live.”
• Depressed, PTSD, Moral Injury and much more. Often can’t live…Suicide:
  • “In fact, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died by their own hand is now estimated to be greater than the number (6,460) who have died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.”iii
  • At first VA denied that suicide was an epidemic.
  • Between 2004 and 2008, the Army study revealed a suicide surge of 80 percent
  • Studies now show:
    • that male veterans have a twofold increase in death by suicide over their civilian counterparts
    • female veterans are three times as likely to kill themselves as their civilian counterparts.iv
  • As of July 2011: Both the president and defense secretary will now send condolence letters to the families of troops who commit suicide in combat zones.
    • Which is nice, but does not begin to address situation
• Trusting no one also leads to inappropriate ways of expressing anger, of trying to control, dominate, and more.
  • From 2006 to 2011 Army records show:
  • Child abuse rose 43 percent
  • Domestic violence rose 33 percent
  • Violent sex crime was up 64 percent
• Though troops have left Iraq and an Afghanistan withdrawal is planned, the health and psychological problems will continue, and in some cases could even increase as veterans enter the civilian world

This is hard stuff! We might want to turn away. Ignore it. Go back to our picnics and our celebrations of summer.

But ignoring the problem does not make it go away. Ignoring the pain – physical, emotional and spiritual, of those who have served our country (whether we agree with the cause or not) is immoral.

War is terrible, its costs very high. And they don’t end on the battlefield – those who died in service to our country include those who have died as a result of their service.

We must find a way to do what we can so that those that we send to war, and their loved ones back home, don’t suffer any more than they have to.

Starts with not turning away. Paying attention. Taking that moment in silence to acknowledge our collective failure to care for those who we owe so much.

So let us pause, now, for a moment of silence. A moment to consider the high costs of war. After the silence, we will have a moment of prayer.

welcoming. June 2, 2012

Posted by Rev. Dawn in Uncategorized.
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Welcoming the Stranger, a sermon by the Rev. Dawn Cooley

Delivered at First Unitarian Church, Louisville, KY on May 20, 2012

Listen to the sermon here.  Note: There was a problem with the recording so I spliced two tracks together. The sermon fades out at about 22 minutes, then comes back for the conclusion, having skipped a few minutes. Sorry!

Reading
Food for the Spirit, by Robert Eller-Isaacs, based on Matthew 25

Sermon Notes
Intro

Woyaya

• confesses, non-anxiously, that we don’t know
• faith: we know within
• what gives us faith? Vision

Vision

• who we are
• who we want to be

Connect to mission statement

Top of order of service: We are a church of reason and spirit, witnessing for progressive faith, nurturing our community and transforming our world.

• Vote on this at annual meeting June 3 (2 weeks!)
• Focus on one way to live into the last two points – Being Welcoming/Offering Hospitality

Come, come whoever you are

• most socially isolated people in history
• Duke Study
  • 1985: 10% of Americans had no one to talk to and 15% had only 1 good friend
  • 2004: 25% of Americans had no one to talk to and only 20% had one good friend

Radical Hospitality, by Homan and Pratt:

“We hide out, isolate ourselves, and deny our natural need for others. We erroneously think we need safety the most. What we need most is acceptance. You probably can’t understand me, and I might not understand you, but we can accept each other. We need to connect and feel the deep acceptance of another human being and that will make the world feel safer….

We tend to confuse [acceptance] with tolerance or even approval. But acceptance is about receiving, rather than judging…When we accept, we take an open stance to the other person. It is more than merely piously tolerating them. We stand in the same space and we appreciate who they are, right now at this moment, and affirm the Sacred in them.”

One of the best ways to nurture our community and to transform our world is to accept people where they are, as they are. To welcome each person and affirm the Sacred in them.

People are hurting…

Not about growing the church, this is about saving people, here, and now.

Kaaren Anderson, at General Assembly:

The majority of people newly in our pews are no longer asking, “Do I have to leave my brain outside your doors?” but “Do I have to leave my pain outside your doors?” I don’t hear them emphasizing their primary hunger as helping them explore spiritual depth or build their own theology. No, what we hear them saying is: “There is a world out there, ripping my life apart and I’m wondering if this place can offer me any help? I can’t deal with a materialist, consumerist, shallow, selfish, status obsessed, indifferent, violent, economically unstable culture, a world that threatens to disconnect me from everything I hold dear, everything that truly feeds me, everything that makes me feel whole—on my own. I can’t do it in isolation, I want to know will this place help me stay connected.”

People are wondering: Are these my people? Will this church accept me, help me stay connected? Will this church feed my spirit?

So what do we do?

Member Ministry Reboot:

• Put some of these systems in place

• Prepare for GA here next year, which will bring visitors

Starts with saying hello

• not turning away when we see someone new

• UUs have a high proportion of introverts. It used to be 64%, which is the opposite of the general population. Means this is something we have to work at, may not come naturally.

Helping them find ways to be involved

• Morales: “People come to church in order to give of themselves, to get involved, to make a difference.”

Setting healthy boundaries

Helping people know who we are, and who we are not

• Try not be: oppressive, judgmental, disrespectful
• Don’t hold all the answers
• Someone comes in talking God love some people more than others – let them know that this is not what this church is about.

Honoring our own boundaries

• Don’t gripe to visitors or name our failings! What you don’t like may be what attracted them to us, so how do you think that will make them feel if you complain about it?

See the individual

• Find out what brought them to us, what they are looking for!
• Don’t tokenize: Young, kids, person of color

Be real! Rev. Josh Pawelek

“If the welcome we offer is real—that is, if we really feel it, if a spirit of hospitality is pervasive among us, then it must come from some place deep in the heart of our community—and newcomers will know it is genuine. If it’s not real, if we don’t really feel it, if we’re just going through the motions because some authority asked us to, then I’m not sure these small behavioral changes will make any difference.”

I/Thou

Homan and Pratt:

• affirm the Sacred in them.

• “Hospitality is not about social graces, but mutual reverence”

Pineda: “When it is most fully realized, hospitality not only welcomes strangers, it also recognizes their holiness. It sees in the stranger a person dear to and made in the image of God, someone bearing distinctive gifts that only he or she can bring.”

20th century theologian Martin Buber: I-Thou.

• human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships.

• All of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with the Divine, who is the Eternal Thou.

Radical Hospitality

Buzzword

Core:

• recognizing the sacred nature

• recognizing the inherent worth and dignity

• of all who walk through our doors

Pawelek:

“Radical hospitality is both a personal and institutional spiritual practice of being curious about and open to new people and to diverse cultures and life-ways. And it’s more. Radical hospitality reflects a willingness and even a hunger to engage across lines of difference. It reflects a willingness and a hunger to offer service, care and love to new and different people, to those who come to us in need, to those who come hurt and afraid…

Homen and Pratt:

“Only in opening yourself wide to another are you transformed by the power of love.”

Key word there: transformed

How will it change us?

New people reconstitute our community. People move or die. If we don’t have new people, the church will die.

But new people change the community as well. We are seeing that now, in the desire for many new families to have more exploration hour opportunities, and to have their children with them in worship. Used to be people would come to church a few times a week, but now we find we have to offer as much as we can for one trip – gas, distances, time.

Pawelek:

“Radical hospitality! Sounds great! Sounds like the key to becoming the best congregation we can be. Except…..Except if we, as a spiritual community, cultivate that curious, open, welcoming, serving, caring, loving, transforming identity that gives rise to radical hospitality, and if we practice that radical hospitality…We will change. In five years we won’t be the same congregation we are today.”

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Scary – like the church the way it is.

This is what it means to be a living tradition, growing, changing.

Unitarians celebrated the wholeness of life.

Universalists recognized each person as a child of god – loveable. No one was ultimately rejected.

As Unitarian Unviersalists, being welcoming goes beyond bad manners. UU President Peter Morales says

“To ignore the pain and needs of the thousands of people who walk into our churches every week is morally wrong. To ignore the visitor is not bad manners. It is immoral.”

If we are not offering hospitality, we are neither able to nurture our community, or transform our world.  Or don’t vote for the mission statement.

Conclusion

Morales:

“It is in relationship that we become fully human. It is in relationship that we find fulfillment. Only when we transcend our individuality do we touch the divine. All of the great religious traditions teach the importance of our connection to one another.”

If we are to make the circle of love wider, if we are to live into our vision of ourselves as nurturing our community and transforming our world, we must continue to ask ourselves: How can we practice radical hospitality in our world, and what does it mean to welcome the stranger? Then, we will know better where are are going, and can honestly say: “Come, come, whoever you are.”