Each of the last few years I have come back from GA more thrilled than the year before about what I witnessed. There has been a shift in the environment, the culture, and the energy of our churches. I am happy to take this opportunity to share my excitement in relation to the changes I've seen.
Our movement is growing beyond disembodied intellectualism and Protestant decorum. We are making strides to become welcoming of multicultural diversity. We are engaging social concerns as an exercise of our spiritual growth. Science is being embraced and incorporated into our religious life in unprecedented manner. We have bring languages of reverence into our worship and our religious communities, and it has helped not hindered the development of our identity as a theologically diverse faith. We are having a voice in public debate, and we are experiencing a revitalization of spirit as a result of our facing the significant social concerns of our time as a religious people.
My perception of how the culture has changed makes it feel easier for me to share myself more openly. Better still, I feel encouraged to become myself, to move into greater integrity with values held deep inside me, and to practice , express and experience my religious faith in a way that is authentic. I am thrilled to know that I am united to others doing the same!
Do you know what it means that I stood up at this gathering to lead you in a Niggun? I had to first bring into our circles aspects of other religious traditions that were meaningful to me before I would share my first language of the sacred. I first had to teach Buddhism, and tell of Native American ceremonies, before I felt comfortable sharing the many aspects of Judaism that are still a part of me. I had to lead Buddhist chants, and Pagan chants, before I had the courage to share a Jewish chant.
One of the most fulfilling things to happen to me to date has been that in several different congregations, people have come up to me after service, and thanked me for bringing their tradition fully into the center of the community. I remember a metaphysical Christian in the Virgin Islands who told me that it was the first time she felt that it was okay for her to be Christian and UU. In a Texas congregation I heard nearly the same thing from a practicing Wiccan. I have also had humanists and atheists thank me with tears in their eyes for a service on prayer.
It took me making sure others had the space they needed in our congregations before I found the courage to ask for myself.
My struggle to find a welcoming space isn't just about being Jewish. It has to do with wanting to express any and all aspects of my religious journey. As many of you know I am of mixed religious heritage. My mother is Catholic. When I was growing up I had four aunts that were nuns. On my father's side, I had an aunt who served three terms as president of her Reformed Jewish Congregation. I am a Bar Mitzvah, a son of the commandments. And I am someone whose adult life took shape because of my desire to follow Jesus.
Twenty four years ago, I set foot in a UU congregation, and immediately I was forever changed. It was the kind of immediate and forever change that may take a lifetime to complete. I didn't come to UU wanting to get away from religion. I wanted to claim all that was meaningful to me. In found in Unitarian Universalism, a religious tradition that I could be a home to me no matter how my theological beliefs might change in years to come. I found a place that accepted me, that helped me to accept myself and encouraged me to keep learning and growing.
Of course what we claim to be on paper, what really exists and what I perceive can be three separate things. How much acceptance has really been demonstrated? How much have I trusted and let in? Reaching for the best, and having a willingness to grow and learn without waiting for perfection, that is the work of spiritual growth.
Spiritual growth is not just a nice little phrase that I pay lip service to. It's something that helps me experience my life as meaningful. I am delighted because it seems to me that rising numbers of U Us and UU congregations are focusing on and giving increasing value to spiritual growth. We are encouraging spiritual growth in our members, in our congregations and of our movement as a whole. We are encouraging spiritual growth by asking congregations to adopt transparency in governance, to adopt fair compensation policies, to become peacemakers, to become anti-racist, and develop anti -oppressive cultures. Some congregations are becoming Green Sanctuaries. Others are supporting Immigrants Rights. Many have joined in the Gulf Coast relief efforts, and some are practicing stewardship by accepting the 10 Tree Challenge.
To some these efforts may seem more political than spiritual. What makes them spiritual is the way we approach them. Spirituality has to do with awareness of relationship between self and something far greater. In Western cultures this something greater is usually named Jesus. In our movement, we are increasingly expressing a more Eastern or Pagan sense of spirituality; an understanding of the transcendent as residing within an interdependent web of existence.
Increasingly we are acknowledging the contributions that science is making to our spirituality. Science has rocked and reshaped the way we understand and look at the world. Complexity Theory and Physics have done much to demonstrate that separateness is an illusion. The mechanistic view that has dominated our culture is crumbling. It was the mechanistic view that supported the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent exploitation of "resources."
Where does this leave us? It leaves us questioning the myth of objectivity. It leaves us no longer settling for disembodied intellectualism. Increasingly we are insisting that our congregational lives express a full range of emotional experiences from ecstasy and celebration to grief and mourning. Instead of only ever paying attention to our thoughts and the thoughts of others, we are increasingly paying attention to the precious energy of life as it moves in and through us.
As we have become conscious of our energy and spirit, we have enabled a vitality and spiritual awareness to flourish among us. This energy can be felt in our music, in our worship and in all our gatherings. This consciousness is manifesting in an increase of interest in a great variety of spiritual practices among our members. We have come to understand that religious and spiritual practices are tools for changing consciousness. And we realize that we are standing in the need of change of consciousness. We have suffered the disconnection and alienation that is endemic in capitalist society. We seek to affirm our connection to all life.
Our movement has become an intersection of personal and social change. In this instance our progress probably parallels advancements in the consciousness of society. Sixty years after the murder of Mohandas K Ghandi, social change groups are getting it that they must be the change that they wish to see. It is sweet and rewarding to witness this growing in our movement.
When I was a teen and young adult this awareness was not so widespread. There was a tremendous emergence of consciousness that caused and or came out of the civil rights, anti-war and liberation movements of that time. However, this consciousness and strategy was insufficient to bring about a transformation of society. What was and is needed to transform the system is greater and more deeply grounded love. Counter culture movements have always been deeply grounded in the values and practices of dominant culture. No movement to date has suceeded in creating and demonstrating a sufficient example and force that counters the patterns of society. To really challenge the sexism, racism, classism, militarism of society will require more than finger pointing. As long as the enemy has been seen as existing far outside of ourselves, we have not been able to admit our support and participation of the problem. Only when we can do this, will we have a chance of being willing to make the changes needed to transform society.
Ever since I first began to study the nonviolent social change movements advanced by Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther Jr, I have been longing for a movement that would simultaneously support transformation on personal and societal levels. Most social groups prescribe looking at the man in the mirror but discourage looking at systematic oppression or social ills. Examples of these cultures include the mental health industry, the self-help industry and the Christian salvation industry. On the other hand social change groups have often focused on the cause "out there" without insisting or demonstrating a deep concern or valuing of their individual members. In other words they have recreated the same patterns of exploitation dominance and disrespect within their structure and operation. Rarely have I found groups that simultaneously advocate for personal change and social change.
That is exactly what our movement is now doing. Our Principles and Purposes call us to learn, to grow and to act. We became welcoming congregations and became aware of the reality of oppression in the lives of lgbtq's. We developed reverence for the interdependent web, and we are becoming "green sanctuaries." Today we know that changing the problems out there will require us to change our consciousness and our habits.
We are working for personal and social change, and we want to see social progress in our congregations and in our association of congregations. Participation in plenary at GA, is a good example. Plenary is not about little groups fighting to get their way. Due in good part to our skillful moderator, Gini Courter, plenary is an opportunity to learn what it means to be UU, to learn how to put our principles into action.
Her moderating encourages serious engagement of our values, working hard to advocate for specific agendas, but also striving to love, respect and understand one another. With her leadership, I experienced plenary, the work of our association as something like worship. Videos of these events are available at uua.org. I highly recommend the free trip.
Standing on the side of love" doesn't just mean loving only the good politically correct guys on our side. It means breathing in peace and breathing out love when we need courage to speak truth to power. It means recognizing and expressing the inherent worth and dignity in the blessed ones whose ideas freak us out. It means listening to the hum of the dream deep inside our friends, our so called enemies and in all life. All my relations!