Reconstituting the World
A Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton

April 26, 2020


Reading:

II in 1988 in A Timbered Choir
By Wendell Berry


It is the destruction of the world
In our own lives that drives us
Half insane, and more than half.
To destroy that which we were given
In trust: how will we bear it?
It is our own bodies that we give
To be broken, our bodies
Existing before and after us
In clod and cloud, worm and tree,
That we, driving or drivn, despise
In our greed to live, our haste
To die. To have lost, wantonly,
The ancient forest, the vast grasslands
Is our madness, the presence
In our very bodies of our grief.



Excerpt from Natural Resources
By Adrienne Rich in The Dream of a Common Language


My heart is moved by all I cannot save
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those, who, age after age,
Perversely, with no extraordinary
Power, reconstitute the world.



Sermon:

    
Last Week we explored the nature of apocalypsis - the ancient Greek word that refers to revelation or unveiling. 

We looked at what is being exposed in this moment of crisis, certain abuses of power and resources, inequities, inequalities and incompetencies in areas of leadership. We’ve also witnessed surprising shows of leadership from unexpected quarters.  

We were encouraged to consider that one of the most important things being revealed, right now, is the importance of taking care of ourselves and each other. 

We were encouraged to see this moment and other moments like it, as a necessary passage towards a renewed sense of vision. But not just that, this moment is ushering a new Heaven and new Earth. We are in the early days of a revolution of values. COIVD-19 is revealing so much.

The tensions and stretching of this moment are all a part of our unfolding, our becoming more fully human. 


Today I want us to consider what aspects of our current experience do we want to carry with us into this courageous, new world we are entering? 

Post apocalypse?

Post-COVID-19?

What are the tools and resources that could only be found here, that could only be summoned in this crisis that we might call upon in the future?

What have we learned now that will be of benefit to us, and our communities going forward?



It is important for us to understand that these times are not normal. There is no amount of routine, doublespeak or sheer makebelieve that can convince us otherwise. And, that is OK. 

You are OK.

That sensation of dislocation, being untethered and unaccountable is actually the right response right now for all of us. Everyday I have this personal sense of being untethered, floating along in the mist and haze of this waking dream, or nightmare. Military analysts and theorists talk about the fog of war. This must be what it is like to be at war, and to have the war in our homeland. 

We have always been fortunate as Americans to always be at war, but to rarely have war interfere with our daily routines. Since the second world war, we’ve been able to blithely go about our affairs, sans risk, sans supply shortages, sans disruptions in travel, while wars were being waged in our name. While our bombs leveled cities from Hanoi to Haiphong, Aleppo to Baghdad.

However, something different has occurred here. While we slept, an unseen enemy had landed on our shores, and marched into our towns and cities and into our homes.  For the first time and very, very long time, we Americans can begin to appreciate the level of risk, and uncertainties, the stark realities associated with grocery shopping in a war torn nation. 

Leaving our homes has taken on an unprecedented level of risk. A trip out could mean slow-going, through check-points, rations, violent confrontations, shell shocked people. Leaving our homes is dangerous in ways that most of us are not used to in the United States. However, some of the uncertainties that we now face, would be quite familiar to someone in Beirut, Lebanon; Kabul, Afghanistan or any of the occupied territories of Palestine and Gaza. There are many ways that  a virus can be much like an improvised explosive device, a bomb, hidden in a marketplace, in a school, in a church in Cairo or Baghdad. Think about it. 

Everything is more dangerous now: the handshakes, the intimate conversation, the exchange of money, the breaking of bread, the singing around campfire, even with social distance. All of this has caused me to grieve, the loss of my freedom, and most of all, the loss of my ability to engage the world using all of my senses. 

If I am feeling untethered, weightless it is because our reality has become virtual. It is mediated through various screens (computers) and shields and masks and gloves, sanitizing wipes, and other barriers. All of these things are indispensable, yet they serve as painful reminders of the risks we are exposed to everyday. Everything is risky now.

Disruptions and dissociations, the overall disconnect between self and reality; these things are the qualities of war, especially when the war is at your doorstep. 

I am not alone in saying that we are currently in a kind of war, in the age of COVID-19. Aisha Assad, an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that:

Global catastrophes change the world, and this pandemic is very much akin to a major war. Even if we contain the Covid-19 crisis within a few months, the legacy of this pandemic will live with us for years, perhaps decades to come. It will change the way we move, build, learn, and connect. There is simply no way that our lives will resume as if this had never happened.

This war is a global war. There are many battle fronts in different countries, in different parts of town, in the hospitals and the halls of government.  

Some might wonder just how we arrived at this moment of confrontation. What caused this crisis? I am not sure how relevant it is to speculate about these sorts of things. Instead of looking out, it is better to look within, here. The fact is the contagion is here, we know it, and we must do what we can to take care of each other.

At the same time, COVID-19 and the war we are waging to protect life, is causing our worlds to unravel, and we are seeing it in so many different ways. 

What I most appreciate about our first reading by Wendell Berry, is how he articulates  what we are witnessing, the unraveling of the known world, and he is able to name the strong emotions associated with its coming apart: the greed, experienced as hoarding; the haste: experienced as impatience, the madness, experienced as the clawing at the walls, some of us do, desperate for relief from our sense of loneliness and disempowerment. 

And, most of all, he names the grief we are all experiencing. Grief is a special kind of sadness, it is always caused by the perception of lost, the lost of someone or something. It is a heaviness of the heart, mixed in with the pain of regret.

Berry also suggests that we are complicit in this apocalypsis. There is a sense that we brought this on ourselves by our participation in a corrupted system of beliefs that allow us to destroy the very thing that was given to us in trust, this delicate Earth. 

Think about how our incessant comings and goings, our travel in the air, on the land and on the seas for recreation and vacation; our materialism, the buying of so much more than we need; all of this created the pathways that brought COVID-19 everywhere. 

How much of our doing has contributed to our undoing, and how much of that is now shown to be unnecessary, wasteful, needlessly risky?


Being at war has a way of clarifying things. It necessarily lends itself to changing, and polarizing our perspective. It crystalizes what's important, essential, what's worth dying for. So, if we were to name and imagine what we are going through as warlike, how might that change things for us? Any veteran of war can attest to the fact that there is little room for second guesses, or second chances. War has always had a sharpening effect on the psyche, things become black and white, friend or foe. The grey areas are few and far between. There is common enemy and common cause in war. Another compelling quality of war that relates to what we are experiencing, is the exquisitely excruciating stillness between fighting, the lulls between the battles.


In a recent article in the New Yorker Magazine, the journalist Karen Russell calls that exquisite stillness, stasis, where she writes:

...our stasis …[is] Externally we are all separating from public spaces, cancelling weddings and graduation, retreating into our homes. This physical separation belies what is happening on another plane: people are responding to the crisis with a surprising unity.  (page 36 The New Yorker, April 13, 2020)

Stasis can be painful, but it also lends itself to preparation --ours. 

And, in a way, without fully realizing it, we’ve used this time to come into formation, we are already showing the kind of unity that will help us to win this fight. Russell goes on to note: “How rapidly we are adjusting our behavior, to protect each other.”


In our second reading we heard:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those, who, age after age,
Perversely, with no extraordinary
Power, reconstitute the world.


This is the concluding stanza from a poem titled Natural Resources, by Adrienne Rich. Rich was an American poet, essayist and Feminist of the second half of the 20th century. She chronicled her experience as an out lesbian through poetry and prose, as well as the challenging experiences of all women in a patriarchical, heteronormative society. I really appreciate her insights into a world, very different from my own.

So much has been destroyed, she writes, in the lives of many people, which could be said for our world now. 

The economy, livelihoods, and the lives of families and communities impacted by COVID-19.

I can think of the loss of Gurcell Henry, a long time professional soloist at the Community Church of New York, she often sang when I was the guest minister. Gurcell sang at my ordination service. Her stirring musicality, expressed in body, as much as in sound, disclosed expansive new vistas in our ancient tradition. Singing hymns like they’ve never been sung before. She recently died of COVID-19 related complications. 

This is the loss of a beautiful person, an incredible voice and presence from the music world, and Unitarian Universalism. A loss like this feels all too soon.

So much has been destroyed.

In so many ways it feels as though the web of life is unraveling, it is being torn apart in some places. 


But here, I want us to look away, and see a more compelling image that we might hold onto.

Imagine a spider.  Now, I know many people have a fear of spiders, but imagine a friendly spider, as most spiders are harmless to humans, imagine her spinning an orb web, of incredibly strong yet delicate strands. This spider and her web are glistening in the morning light.

Our spider goes to great effort to spin an entire world for herself in a hedge row, near a nighttime light source. We’ve seen her at work. She builds this web to supply her needs, and care for those closest to her, her kin, it is also beautiful, especially in the morning light and bedazzled in dew. 

Now imagine a careless child bounding in the yard and knocks up against the web in the hedge, causing part of it to come undone. It’s all too bad. And so she builds anew, reconstructing the parts of the web that have been destroyed.

Imagine another time, this time, the gardener trimming the hedge, breaks strands of the web, again our spider returns and repairs. Perhaps if it becomes too hazardous, it will be necessary to move to another location, but in the new location our spider works with renewed effort to rebuild the web.

We are the spiders, we are the builders of the web. We are the ones who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary, power, reconstitute the world.


As Unitarian Universalists we see ourselves as builders of a new way, and getting stronger everyday.

So, lets lets come back to the work, lets remember our bearings, our principles, and what we have learned from this experience as we pick up the pieces where we can, remembering that the disruptions, dislocations and dissacitions of the moment are momentary.

Our tradition reminds us, with our 7th principle to Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Our 6th principle reminds us of the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

This sixth principle is still our goal even here, in the midsts of ruins, the unraveling wrought by a pervasive enemy we cannot see.

Even here as we sit in the rubble and ash of our personal and communal lamentations, and they are many.

Even here as we struggle to make sense of all the broken pieces, broken strands and shattered glass of our lives.
 
Even here, the goal remains the same, world community with peace,, liberty and justice for all.

And so we courageously (not perversely) come back to the web and find our work of reconstituting the world.


Amen. Blessed Be. 





Let’s come back to the questions that got us started, these wartime questions. Please consider journaling or discussing your responses:

• I want us to consider what aspects of current experience do we want to carry with us into this courageous new world we are entering? Post apocalypse, Post-COVID-19?
  

• What are the tools and resources that could only be found here, that could only be summoned in this crisis that we might call upon in the future?
  

• What have we learned now that will be of benefit to us, and our communities going forward?
  

​

The Space In Between
A Sermon 
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire


In Betweenness
By Richard Gilbert (Adapted by Daniel Gregoire)



We live
In between festivals of gratitude and joy
In between seasons of contrasting color,
…
We live 
Not quite at the apex of joy,
Nor in the nether of sorrow,
But in the moving space between,
Uncertain of our location.

We live
Walking from city of birth to death,
Hoping along the way
To see something of beauty, 
To touch hands with those we love,
To give more than we get,
To make some sense of it all.

We live in betweenness.


From the Holy Quiet of this Hour: A Meditation Manual by Richard S. Gilbert





This moment that we find ourselves in now, has the quality of uncertainty as its most apparent characteristic. We are living in a time of liminality, that sense of being betwixt and between worlds of experience, where the unknown and the known live together in a less than perfect harmony.

We really don’t know what will come next and the hazards are nearly impossible to see with any degree of clarity. It is so hard to make decisions at this time, and perhaps we should defer deciding anything if we can. Defer doing anything if we can.

The board of Trustees of our church and I thought it was best to suspend in-person gatherings today, and for the next few weeks, as all the other churches in town have done, to lessen the impact of the new Coronavirus. I am sure that it was the right thing to do, but I am sad that we had to do it. 

As a way of having it both ways, so to speak, I wondered if I should go the church, and conduct the service in the sanctuary with a small number of people? But the sanctuary itself would conspire against me, that vast, unpeopled space would echo me into silence. The sanctuary just doesn’t work without a critical mass of people. And thank goodness for that! 



As hard as it is, I think we must resist the urge to do our “own” thing in this moment. Kate and I were out for a drive yesterday, to go for a walk in the Hassanamesit Woods. We drove into Grafton center, and the business district and we both thought of how hard it is to tell if others were really following the advice of social distancing. The shops and restaurants seemed peopled with the normal amount of people. There was this sense of ambivalence in the air, in the most value neutral sense of the word. 

We, like others have made it a point not to engage too much with others outside of our home. Cancelling and postponing engagements to slow down the spread of this new virus. It seems a small sacrifice to make for the greater good and to protect the lives of the most vulnerable members of society, people we know and love, our parents, grandparents, our friends with more delicate and tenuous health.

We also remember those who have little choice in venturing out, those in the healthcare sector, those in government and law enforcement, the armed services and other essential areas of our economy. They are also sacrificing for the greater good.

This so-called Social Distancing has been hard because Kate and I are both fairly social people and we are mindful of the importance of connecting with others. But we know it is for the greater good, and we hope it is only for a short time.

Social Distancing, which is what we are doing by suspending in-person worship service at the Unitarian Universalist Society is according to Kaitlin Tiffany in the recent issue of the Atlantic Magazine “—a term that epidemiologists are using to refer to a conscious effort to reduce close contact between people and hopefully stymie community transmission of the virus.” The recommended distance is between 6 to ten feet in most cases.

It is an important part of the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions guidance on “Community Mitigation Strategies” for COVID-19.

One of the researchers quoted in the article said that the best way that we can show love is to “step back and step away” during this crisis.

I hope that the social distancing does not become the excuse for social isolation, which is already a problem in our society. My colleague Rev. Margolie Belazaire of Hartford reminds folks to check-in with each other, especially those who are living alone, and the elderly. She recommends keeping a buddy-system or caring pairs who promise to call or write at some regular interval. That is so important now, and going forward. 

Social Distancing should never be the excuse for xenophobia or the racist innuendo we are hearing in political circles.


Our Tradition of caring offers us some guidendance in this moment of uncertainty. Our first Principle of Unitarian Universalism invites us to affirm and promote the inherent Worth and Dignity of all people. 

Our first principle suggests that we might do all we can to preserve and sustain life.

Right now, in this inbetween place, of knowing and not knowing, the advice from health officials and experts is to avoid all that is unnecessary, showing restraint in our movement in our interactions in our social contacts. For those who can, it seems like a very small ask to preserve life, and to respect the inherent worth and dignity of all people. 


In this moment, the universe seems to be conspiring to force us to slow down, if for no other reason than to catch our breath. We resist that invitation at our own peril and we risk civilization as we know it. 

I recall looking at images online, satellite photos of air pollution over China, before and after the outbreak of the virus over there. 

In the before image, we see a landmass mostly obscured by dark grey clouds, these are the emissions from factories; on the right we see the clear and distinct boundaries of a less polluted country, because of the closed factories. 
Today people are actually breathing easier, for the first time, because of the slowdown of the global economic engine.

There is no denying that this is a strange and unbidden moment of calm and pause and inbetweeness. It is strange  for us, a people unconsciously coerced into a regimen of agitation, wandering, noise and consumption. And we actually have no idea what to do with ourselves right now.

Some call it sabbath, some call it mindful living, some call it rest, some call it renewal. Being!

Whatever it is we call it, All that exists is saying to us: slow down, catch your breath and take our time in this place of uncertainty. No one will be rewarded for rushing through this place of inbetweenness where we now live.

But we have everything to gain if we can remember to reach out:

• To see something of beauty, 
  

• To touch hands with those we love, those are closest to us,
  

• To give more than we get, using our powers, whatever they are for the greater good
  

• To make some sense of it all. And by that, seek meaning  and purpose in this particular moment
  

As a people of faith, many different glorious kinds of faith, as Unitarian Universalists we are looking toward the future that we already know exists. We are forward thinking and expansive in our way of living; using our actions to move ourselves and each closer to the ideal.

However, that future, from this vantage point, under the shadow of the coronavirus looks cloudy and uncertain. Our expansiveness seems to be constrained by the boundaries of the unknown, and we are rubbing right up against the very limits of our knowledge and abilities.

We don’t know what the future holds, but there is a tremendous power in naming where it is we are. Our location now is inbetween the apex of Joy and the netherworlds of sorrow. But we wont stay here for long. If past experience can be a guide, (and, I believe it is) we will make it through this moment, lives will be changed, and mostly for the better, our society will be stronger and healthier through the compassion, generosity, sacrifice and service we give today.

Let’s find the grace and dignity to lean towards the sacred quiet of this moment. Running away into activity for the sake of doing, wont serve us well here. Resisting the command to stop won't save us. Let’s live well in this inbetween place, so that all might live. 


​

Sermon by Rev. Daniel Gregoire
1/5/2020

On the Pulse of Morning 
Maya Angelou (excerpted by Rev. Daniel Gregoire)


...Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.

Do not be wedded forever 
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space.








This is a moment, of communal beginnings, again we are setting the clocks and lighting the path we wish to walk going forward. 

This is the very moment that Kwanzaa enters our cosmos, for those who might need it. 

I want us to see this as an opportunity to look back, gather up what is precious and worth keeping from our own experiences in order to move forward into the new year with intention and intensity. 

This is our opportunity! 

This sermon is our message in a bottle that has come to this Kwanzaa Sunday morning; inscribed with the words of Maya Angelou and the printed image of the Sankofa bird.

We see the words:

...Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.


Now, it should be stated that: I have long been ambivalent about Kwanzaa, and I often  say, Kwanzaa comes at a time of the year already filled with holidays in the month of December. 

It has never really been able to hold its own again the imperial juggernaut of Christmas and the convulsion of New Years Eve. 

It is sandwiched in between all that glitter and glamour and tinsel (so much tinsel) , between December 26 and Janaury 2, it is hardly enough time and space to get the attention it rightfully deserves.

Even in my Afro-Caribbean neighborhood in East Flatbush and Crown Heights, in the very heart of the  People’s Republic of Brooklyn, even there Kwanzaa struggled for attention when I was growing up.


Kwanzaa was received as alien and exotic, even among people well acquainted with the unusual, and well practiced in the unconventional. 

I can remember my Grandmother Lauraine saying “What is this, Kwanzaa?” in her Haitian accented English, was if it were a thing she did not wish to catch, like a cold or the flu. But, despite her best efforts (I suppose), Kwanzaa had some traction there in Brooklyn.

 I remember as a child my aunt Sabine, who could be described as “woke” to use the contemporary term for being conscious to the world, she would take me to huge Kwanzaa festivals at Medgar Evers College, a majority black school named after the civil rights martyr. 

These annual celebrations took place in what might be described as intentionally pro-Black spaces, spaces that encouraged a zealous celebration of all things Black, which is to say: black people, black history, black intellectualism, black art and the black aesthetic.

These Kwanzaa festivals were heroic spectacles of self-determination, chosen families, political, economic and cultural revolutions. These spaces, swirled with a heady mix of feelings and emotion, joy and militancy, anticipation and impatience, love, acceptance, excitement and fun. 

There was drumming and dancing, and so much tasty food. The experience of Kwanzaa, and it was an experience, emphasized health and well-being, specially naturopathic, vegan and vegetarian lifestyles, and most of all looking to the continent of Africa, for inspiration, both in present-day cultures  and ancient civilizations. 

The one thing I am not sure of, is whether these spaces would have necessarily been welcoming to openly LGBTQ people like myself, in the past, but I hope they are today. 

But in every other respect these were radically inclusive and hospitable spaces, irresistibly African in a very postmodern way.

It was a mixing and matching to achieve an African feeling rather than a painstaking recreation. It was more Wakanda than Timbuktu. It was a reimaged space, a fantasy of old and new, and somethings invented just for the occasion, all of it appropriate to our setting in North America.

And, people would travel far and wide to come to these annual events. 

Life and circumstance and distance has to a great extent consigned those extraordinary, revolutionary spaces to memories for me. 

It’s been a very long time since I’ve come into a space quite like the Kwanzaa Festival at Medgar Evers College.


I’ve always felt it would be better to celebrate Kwanzaa in the summertime, August and September, we have celebrated it in Grafton during the late summer, to coincide with our harvest season in rural New England, and the start of the new School year for children, and the new program year for our church. Kwanzaa has been well received in Grafton as a new tradition in the summer months. 

While, it is true that Kwanzaa’s principles are in effect year round, and should be practiced throughout the year, perhaps my decision to move the actual celebration might reflect my own Eurocentric worldview, which is just the kind of thing that Kwanzaa works to remedy.

Kwanzaa is an opportunity to adjust our focus.

The focus of Kwanzaa is an Afrocentric worldview and a Pan-African point of reference. And, perhaps it is right that  it should assert itself in between the homogenizing and commoditizing Christmas and New Years Eve.

Kwanzaa says with all necessary defiance and assertiveness, I belong here! 

Not at a more convenient time, but now. At the beginning, at the head of the table, a place for too long denied to the people of the African diaspora. 

Kwanzaa invites those of us of the African diaspora to take a chance and reclaim our place of dignity and worth, by remembering our Africaness, which is to say, the distinctive gifts that we bring to the world. 

All people bring gifts, and there is one race the human race, the differences we see in skin color, hair, shape of face are all recent adaptations to the environments humans called home. We are all African in essence.

But despite our common origin, full humanity has long been denied to black people, and this continues to this day with police brutality and hyper surveillance of black men in cities and elsewhere, a broken criminal justice system, that disproportionately jails black men,.

Our humanity, the dignity and worth of people of African descent, is undermined with an education and health system that consistently delivers poorer outcomes for black families.

To say nothing of the continued intervention in black majority countries, in Africa and the Caribbean by European, and North American powers intent on maintaining the status quo, often by undermining and removing democratically elected government leaders, to the detriment of cultures and economies. and the list goes on and on. 

In this moment Kwanzaa comes to remind the people of the African diaspora, and all the world’s people, that Black people are agents and creators of their own past and futures. 

And, Kwanzaa is the moment to begin to create that future, now at the start of something new for our community, the changing of the year. 

The African American poet Maya Angelou wrote in On the Pulse of Morning

...Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.


Now is the moment for us to lift up our eyes! Maya Angelou says, and when we lift up our eyes I hope the light of Kwanzaa kinara, the lit candles in the holder might meet our eyes, and greet our gaze and in that moment we might be reminded of what matters.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa, wrote that one of the five fundamental activities of Kwanzaa is the Commemoration of Past.

He wrote in the book titled Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture that Kwanzaa, this moment:

...Is a time of honoring the moral obligation to remember and praise those on whose shoulders we stand. ...It is the time to appreciate our role as heirs and custodians of a great legacy, and to honor that legacy by preserving and expanding it. (5)

Karenga wrote:

Each period leaves a legacy of challenge, struggle and achievement. We honor each by learning it and living it. And Kwanzaa is a focal point for this. (5)

We must remember the past in order to go forward, and I desperately want us I want us to see this as an opportunity to look back, gather up what is precious and worth keeping from our own experiences in order to move forward into the new year with intention and intensity. 

Kwanzaa gives us this rare opportunity to do this now, by reclaiming our African past and future as people of the African diaspora.

And, if we are not of the African diaspora, that is to say, not directly subject to Transaltanic Slave Trade, we can ally ourselves to Kwanzaa by creating space for those of the African experience to connect more fully with our heritage in rich and meaningful ways. 

Most of us in this room as not of the African diaspora, and this is a fact we don’t need to run away from. Kwanzaa invites everyone to appreciate the worth and dignity of black people, and that is not something that one has to be black to do. It is a chance for everyone to celebrate how the presence of African peoples makes the world a richer, a better place by acknowledging and the willing ourselves to discover the contributions of the African continent from before the dawn of civilization!

We can only do this, we can only go forward in this way by looking back to Africa for inspiration on Kwanzaa. 


And when we look back to Africa, Africa offers us Sankofa a term of the Akan people of Ghana which means “Go back and fetch it”

Sankofa is often represented by a bird with its feet pointed forward and its head looking back, often the bird will have an egg or a jewel in its mouth.

The feet pointed opposite the head, represents going into the future. While the head pointed behind represents looking to the past. 

And here’s what makes this symbol unique, the bird has gathered something precious from the past and it is carrying that thing forward, with it to the future!

According to Julia Stewart author of African Proverbs and Wisdom this symbol is associated with the proverb:

“Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi” which she translates as “It is not wrong to go back and for that which you have forgotten”

All of us have aspects of our past that has made us into the people we are today and we might want to overlook, or even try to forget, especially the more challenging aspects of our past, but I believe that the past remembers, so we must too. 

And we must acknowledge those things and to begin to embrace them, in order to break the vicious circles and move forward virtuously. 

Kwanzaa has been my Sankofa experience with my own coming back, to go forward. Where I could visit Brooklyn, as I did last week with my partner Kate, to explore the old places that have added so much depth, and meaning to my own life, in ways that are obvious, and not so obvious. 

These are the places and the experiences that have made me the person I am today.

All of us have those places and experiences that the wisdom of Sankofa will guide us back too.

What are your places? 

Where do you need to go back and fetch it? To move forward?

Our faith tradition also helps us to do the work of Sankofa. This second source of Unitarian Universalist inspiration is:

Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.

This source invites us into a faithful celebration of Kwanzaa, whether we are of the Pan-African experience or of other cultures, because we are guided by principles that encourage us to search for truth and meaning, and to seek out those stories and experiences that connect us more fully to our shared humanity. 

Our source of inspiration can be learning more about the people of the African diaspora, the people invoked in our libations. 

The practice of Sankofa gives us a chance to do just that...and Kwanzaa invites us to connect and reconnect with all things African that delights and inspires!

We do this so that we might be restored to wholeness as individuals, as families, as communities and as one human race.

We do this to undo generational trauma and hurts, to break the curse, start the healing and obtain the glory, here and now.

We are all yearning for wholeness, all of us, and Sankofa is one of the important ways that we will realize our potential to live together in peace.

This is our Sankofa moment!

Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.

Let us remember the past in order to go forward, gather up what is precious and worth keeping from our own experiences in order to move forward into the new year with intention, purpose and zeal.

Happy Kwanzaa
And 
Happy New Year!

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What is Race
A Sermon 
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton

Sunday, February 23, 2020


Reading:


“If I take your race away, and there you are, all strung out. And all you got is your little self, and what is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? I mean, these are the questions. Part of it is, ‘yes, the victim. How terrible it’s been for black people.’ I’m not a victim. I refuse to be one... if you can only be tall because somebody else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.”

Toni Morrison, in an excerpt taken from a 1993 interview with Charlie Rose on the Public Broadcasting Service, featured in Esquire magazine



Sermon:



The solution to any problem begins with asking the right questions. The answer is the question in many cases.

Unitarian Universalism encourages us to ask questions of ourselves and others, it encourages us to question our faith.

We are invited to search for truth, with the knowledge that the truth (lowercase truth) is on the move, searching us out too, and the truth will set us free from the binds that bind us. 

Freedom our spiritual theme for February, which is also Black History Month, a time where we celebrate the often overlooked contributions and experiences of those of African descent in the larger unfolding of the American story. When we say Black History we are talking about American history and I think it is important to remember that. Moreover, freedom when looked at through the lens of the African American experience takes on a deeper, richer meaning, due in large part to the Trans Altantic Slave trade, and obvious contradiction that exists between the presence of enslaved people in a country founded on the principles of freedom and equality.

I remember, when I was a High School student, taking the elective class of Black History, and suppose since it was an elective, I should not have been surprised that there were mostly black students in the class. But I was surprised.  The teacher was white, and most of the students in the school were white. So this class was different from any other class in the school, other than the more vocational track classes offered by the school. I really enjoyed that class and there were lessons on struggle, triumph and empowerment that I still remember. There were surprising Firsts that always were a delight to discover. That Black History class, together with some unique learning opportunities from my early childhood in New York really shaped my understanding of myself and others. As I think back to that experience, I also remember the overwhelming sense of disappointment I had that others were not there in that class. Why didn’t this class better reflect the ethnic makeup of the school?  It didn’t feel right that this class was an elective, in other words, one had to choose this class, but it was not required. So it could be avoided. 

The idea that one could graduate into adulthood, and then take on their role as American citizen and not know about Black History, not just the suffering and oppression of African Americans, which is altogether impossible to avoid, and is sometimes almost fetishized. But the real loss, is not knowing the spirit, the joy and triumph, the firsts and the gifts of the Black experience. It  seemed to me like an awfully big “Missed Opportunity” in the 21st century, in our interconnected and interdependent world.

Of course one can begin to make up for the missing out on that experience by visiting the new Smithsonian museum of the African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. or the African American History museum in Boston, or taking advantage of the opportunities that come up from time to time to explore local Black history in Worcester and the surrounding areas. Now is the time that we must begin to take that important part of our education seriously and connect with African American history, and the people. 

Some in this room will recall our Kwanzaa Service from a few weeks back where there were slips of paper inserted in the order of service with the names and short biographies of historic African Americans, that we shared in the service, that was also an opportunity to begin to think, and connect and reconnect with the people and stories that remind us that we are all one. What I didn’t share then, was the fact that the slips of paper were prompted by the fact that the year prior, in a similar service, it seemed that the congregation struggled to come up with names of famous African Americans, as we poured libations, which is to say we struggled to name famous Americans who are also black. I was surprised then.

One could say, well, Daniel, the vast majority of your congregation is white. But, of course that isn’t reason enough. We are not so separate, we are not so different.

The Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, says that:

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

And, that is where we will find our freedom, which is the extraordinary power to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The empowerment to Be.

We are alive to get free, to regain our freedom by awakening from the illusion of our separateness. And that is perhaps best illustrated in the Black experience, in the will to become free. But as we, even with a very limited vantage point, can see that the will to be free has been long restrained by racism in general and White Supremacy in particular. 

Toni Morrison, who died last year at the age of 88, you might recall was the author several iconic, and award winning works of American literature, including the Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved, Beloved was quickly adapted to a film in 1998.

Toni Morrison was a chronicler of the American experience through the lens Black Folk. She beautifully, magically and hauntingly describes the experience of racism in our country; both the internalized racism of a young black girl who desperately wishes to have blue eyes and the broader systemic impacts of oppressive systems on African Americans and European Americans alike, in the trauma of slavery and post-civil war America. Morrison courageously examined the blight and ugliness of racism on the very soul of our nation. Racism distorts everything, even one’s perception of self. 

In an interview from 1993, where our reading from this morning comes from.

Charlie Rose asks Morrison: “How do you feel about racism?” 

Morrison  responds by saying “That’s the wrong question,” and she goes on to ask rhetorically  “How do you feel?” 

Then she replies:

“Don’t you understand that the people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft? There is something distorted about the psyche. It’s a huge waste, and it’s a corruption, and it’s a distortion. It’s a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is,”

I believe this is the clearest construction and definition of racism: its is a waste, a corruption a distortion of the human spirit, a neurosis  (or obsessive behavior) of individuals and societies.

Morrison goes on to say:

“If I take your race away, and there you are, all strung out. And all you got is your little self, and what is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? I mean, these are the questions. Part of it is, ‘yes, the victim. How terrible it’s been for black people.’ I’m not a victim. I refuse to be one... if you can only be tall because somebody else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.”


The takeaway for me, is that the right questions will help us to arrive at the right answers.

When asked about Racism Morrison, who is Black, asks for interviewer, Charlie Rose, who is white:

“How do you feel?”

This is a question we must ourselves from time to time:

How are we feeling?

In this moment.

How do we feel when we encounter differences?

How do we feel, when we hear a joke clearly meant to demean a group of people, and their experience?

How do we feel when families are torn apart?

How do we feel when so many images of suffering show people with faces that look like ours?

How do we feel when so many images of suffering show people with faces and features that look, unlike our own?

How do we feel? 

This is a good place to begin, a truly courageous starting point.

Another question we might consider is what is race?

Especially, what is race? that it should be the cause of so much suffering, both here and around the world?

It is another illusion of our separateness.

Race is a myth!

Dorothy Roberts a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says in a recent interview in Spirit of Change Magazine, explains that race is a myth, confirming what I think many people believe in their hearts to be true.

From Dorothy Roberts:

“The biological concept of race has been refuted by evolutionary biologist and geneticists and genomicists for decades. The scientist who led the Human Genome Project made a point of saying human genetic variation isn’t divided into races. There’s no such thing as black genes or white genes.”

She goes onto say:

“You might have genes that can be traced to a certain population somewhere on the globe, but there is point at which you can draw a boundary line and identify one race on one side and a different race on the other ...All humans originated in Africa and then migrated outwards in groups, each carrying a subset of the genetic variations found in Africa.” (page 34)


Our living tradition Unitarian Universalism, religious in origin, traces its roots to two ancient Christian theological positions.

Unitarianism simply refers to the unity or oneness of God, which brings Christianity into closer alignment with its Jewish roots. 

Universalism to Gods all inclusive, or universal love for all creation, and of the reconciling nature of that love that embraces everyone.


The 21st Century Unitarian Universalist Theologian, Forrest Church in his book, The Cathedral of the World: A Universalist Theology wrote:

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because ‘God’ is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, ‘God’ is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. 

While having our origin in Christian and Western thought, we are not limited in that regard, again ours is a living tradition that draws from many sources.

The beauty of our tradition, its ability to draw on the best, to take and reformulate religious language to serve a higher purpose.

Our experiences today allow us to expand our conception of the holy, not just to speak of things that are supernatural, or wholly “other” but to recognize the unseen threads that link us to each other. The things that bind us together, and awaken us are holy.

Our tradition invites us to discover the intricate unity or Oneness in our common origin as Humans. Out of Africa we all came.

Universalism for us today can be seen as the will to not just love, but to expand our circle of concern, to the point that bursts open to include everyone. A universalist today, as in the past, is one who actively shows love of God in the world.

This all pervading commitment to the good, shows up in all we do.
We do this in our interactions, in our politics, in our purchases, in our commitments to the highest good and in the highest good of lifelong learning and growing. 

If we can do this, we can break the chains that keep all of us enslaved knowingly and unconsciously to racist systems and ideologies of today. These ideologies are often so subtle and so cleverly disguised, but the outcomes, and the impacts that they cause reveal them for what they really are. Just look!

I am not advocating a colorbind point of view, while race is a myth, created by those with the desire to control, exploit and oppress, the outcomes of racism are very real today, we can see them.

Let us instead hold as a guiding vision, one where each person is given the freedom to connect across differences, mindful of the fact that differences are illusions that we come into this world to interrogate and  transcend.

This is an invitation to life long learning and growing, crossing all of the boundaries that exist in our heads, which is what our faith calls us to do! 

This is what we must remember:

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.

It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.
It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.

Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime. - W.E.B DuBois.





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The First Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts


So much time has passed since my last blog post. I should admit to having allowed the quotidien ministerial tasks and responsibilities of being a solo pastor to overtake me, making for less fun time to do things like blogs exploring the spirituality of place. But, I won't.

So I hope it is enough to say, that I am back from outer space and I am looking forward to reconnecting to this hobby of mine, and sharing it with those who might find it interesting. 

The other day I had the tremendous opportunity to visit the First Church in Roxbury, a borough of the city of Boston. It is the actual first church, founded by British settlers, most them Puritans in the early 17th century. The first church was a Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregation, that  lasted until the 1970s, when the church closed for good, and the building was deeded to UU Urban Ministries. Today it serves as a mission to the Roxbury community, offering needed services in that underserved area, such as after-school tutoring, job readiness training and supportive services to survivors of Domestic Violence, among other things.

I think it is beautiful that the church can have a second chapter as a place of respite and empowerment in a challenging urban environment. Of course, I wish it were still a functioning place of worship, that worshiped in way that we UUs worship. But, churches are irrepressibly a cultural thing, and the cultures that would readily connect with the UU experience do not exist in large enough numbers in that community. 

I went to the church to collect some old and rare books from the long disused Minister's Study. These books will now live at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton, where we have a thriving congregation, a terrific minister and fabulous music. I have to thank the UU Urban Ministry and Rev. Ken Sawyer, a member of the board, for entrusting these books to me and my congregation. 

Since moving to New England I've made a practice of visiting the historic churches, that like my own, live in the center of most of the towns and cities and have played key roles in the histories of those places. I don't know how this practice became my work, but it is and I am passionate about it. Often I take pictures of every aspect of the church building. (they are usually called "meetinghouses" here)

Of all the churches I've visited so far (12 and counting), First Church in Roxbury moved me the most. At times I felt overcome with emotion. It is a place filled with all of the ghosts I don't believe in. My visit felt more like an initiation into some ancient mystery or a portend of the coming apocalypse, its hard to tell which? I'll save the more elaborate description, for the book I have to write about these visits. For now, I hope it is enough to say, that this place is really, really special. 

The building is situated on a hill with views of downtown Boston, about 3 miles and a world away. The grounds are surrounded by a big iron fence, and an elaborate gate for entry. The land behind the fence is parklike and its feels sacred, and set apart from its surrounds. I imagine it must seem like an impossible place in a notoriously rough and tumble Roxbury.

The sanctuary is really a place set apart, and it communicates a kind of immortality, expressed in things that age, but somehow never die. I hope you will appreciate this in the pictures of the place. The magic comes through the memorials on the wall, the roughness of the floorboards, the stable decay of the pews and other fixtures.

The absence of people, the monumentality of the space and the way the light pours into the room, even on a cloudy day is also what makes this place so special. While I walked in the sanctuary I felt a sense of kinship with all those who came before me, and I also found myself swept up in their dreams and aspirations for the world, and I was also swept up in what would become their disillusionment. 

However, I also felt a sense of sadness, because I know that this place will go on, in some way, as it has, but it is unclear if the traditions of this place and it's people will survive? The sanctuary had a ruinous quality to it. It was like visiting a archeological site that once belonged to a proud race of people now vanished from the face of the Earth. The unexpected collapse of their civilization lent a kind of weightiness to the present. I also had the sense of weightiness in that the future, if we have one, now rests on my shoulders.  There I was, to get the ancient scrolls (so to speak) from the temple and to carry them into the future.

I wondered if I am up to the task, and I was convinced that I wasn't, at least not yet. Nevertheless, I hope that I can rise the the occasion and eventually become the person who can carry these traditions forward. I hope that I can also remember that I am not alone in this work.

I am thankful for spaces like these, and thankful to the people who work so hard to keep them going. We need spaces that inspire, desperately; spaces that call us out of the cramped and claustrophobic ordinariness of 21st century life and into the majestic, ever-unfolding mystery of the cosmos.

This place really, really does that!







​

​Oh the Places We Will Go!

I was installed as the Parish Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton in Massachusetts on Sunday, April 9, 2017. It was a momentous occasion with all the beauty and pageantry of a wedding, a coronation and an inauguration all rolled into one. The installation occurred eight months into my pastorate here, by design; on the Sunday closest to the full moon, which is a traditional time of culmination and fulfillment.

I chose the theme of “Coming Back to Life” for the service, because I believe that I have entered a generative stage in my life that dovetails perfectly with the new found confidence and expansive spirit of the church I serve. I feel as though the magic of the day has recreated me into a new person and the whole congregation has been energized in this process.  My people and I are endowed with new powers and special abilities. And word of new found vigor is spreading; people are coming to the church like never before: families that were active in the past are reconnecting and curious townsfolk, hearing that something exciting is occurring, are visiting en-masse every Sunday and other times during the week.

The installation confirmed our new status as minister and congregation. The change was affirmed and celebrated by visiting friends and family members.  Our commitment was witnessed by clergy of diverse traditions from throughout the Blackstone Valley and beyond. We even had local civic leaders and a state representative in attendance. It was an extraordinary thing to be feted in this way. I know that there were many more people who could not be there in person, but their spirits filled the sanctuary.

While the installation in some ways is a deeply personal thing in the life of a minister and a church, it has an impact that extends far beyond our small meetinghouse on the common in Grafton. I often think that the good we do for ourselves, whether it is prayer, meditation, healthful eating, journaling, singing, walking- whatever, is never exclusively for ourselves. People are always watching, listening, perhaps even silently wishing us well in our practice, because they know we are doing it for them too. As we are transformed through our spiritual practices and rites of passage others are changed too. Our evolution as individuals and a community ripples out into the universe.  Sometimes just being who you are, being your most authentic self, whatever that is, is enough to make a world of difference. I didn’t always think this way, but the installation really brought all of this into proper focus for me and for the church as well.
​
I believe that my vocation of ministry is a calling to be a religious leader. I was led here by the spirit to be with a people who need me, speaking a language they can understand, for as long as they need me. I hope to grow here and to teach and to be taught here.  I want to infuse all I do with joy, gratitude and purpose. Most of all, I want this ministry to be a witness to the wonder that is unfolding in this time. Right now the world is groaning under extraordinary labor pains, as it anticipates a new birth of greater love and justice, as well as mercy and reverence. My parish is Grafton and Upton, and I see the whole world as my parish, to recall an idea first coined by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and my job, now confirmed by the installation, is to minister to all the people.  From this semi-rural, exurban, post-industrial corner of the commonwealth of Massachusetts I hope we can influence that world, making it a better place by lighting the fire of the spirit right here.

This house is for the ingathering of nature and of man in nature. It is a house of friendship, a haven in trouble, and open room for the encouragement of our struggle...This house is a cradle for our dreams and the workshop of our common endeavor. -- Kenneth Patton

At times it is difficult to love this house, the meetinghouse of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton. It is old, it's barely weather tight, the roof leaks in places, repairs are always expensive if they are to be done right; no parking, no elevator for disabled and elderly members. We have steep stairs for the sake of steep stairs and they creak loudly, especially when you try to climb them discreetly.

The meeting house is an 1860s building designed to look much older, more colonial, more pure-it-tanical, less Church of England. I love its aggressive simplicity; it's overt restraint. I love its light and openness. In fact it is as open a space as a building can be and still retain it's structurally integrity given the building technologies of the time it was built. 

I want to do everything I can to preserve its simplicity, because I recognize that it is an outward display of our hope for religion, that religion be pure and simple, without too much embellishment, free of too many theological flourishes and not overly heavy with tradition, doctrine and creed. Religion can fuel our excesses, and promise us more than is possible. This place doesn't allow for that.

Our meeting house is for a faith that is as open and unadorned and light, as the clear glass windows. But, because it is still a house built by human hands it is still framed by our principles (Currently seven of them) and culture (mostly White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant with some notable exceptions -- ME) and our lived experience (21st century North America). Our faith, much like our place, is not without a context and antecedents. We try to keep what is essential: Love and Service and Hope.

The openness of our meetinghouse reveals what is most important to us, nature and human nature. Our space is actually space for the Spirit to move and where the Spirit can move us, perhaps even transform us. It is a blank canvass inviting us to write the vision and make it plain, as ancient scripture reminds us. Our house is a place where dreams come to life, and where we become stronger for the work of healing our heartbroken world. 

I'm glad for this place of search and discovery. It's a house of history and the future; cradle and workshop.

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We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Robert Oppenheimer

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There have been times in my life where I’ve had to step back to fully take in the puzzling enormity of some action or decision I’ve taken. In those moments I’ve Instinctively reached out for some kind of comfort in the form of a “self-embrace” an autonomic hug, with my arms crisscrossing my belly, reaching around my back, as I wondered “what have I done?” These moments were sometimes good and other times bad, but usually somewhat ambiguous.

In the case of the scientist Robert Oppenheimer he ushered humanity into the nuclear age, by unleashing the power of the atom in the 1940s. Oppenheimer realized that life as anyone had experienced it before was forever changed. His generation slipped into an uncharted  landscape with an array of terrifying and beneficial possibilities in it. Oppenheimer couched this realization in religious language of scripture, quoting lines from the Bhagavad Gita: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds”. One world order was dying while another world order was being born and Oppenheimer was left wondering “what have I done?”

When I was ordained to Unitarian Universalist Parish Ministry two years ago I had a similar realization. I crossed a threshold and entered an entirely new world as a religious leader. The ceremony, participants, speeches, and even the cake of that day communicated to me on a visceral level that life as I knew it would never be the same. In that moment I resisted the urge to give myself a autonomic hug, not wanting to be a spectacle at the spectacle of an ordination. But that moment is seared into my memory as a huge, joyous threshold event.

Whatever your threshold event is, whether it’s developing a device of unlimited destructive power, or developing a curative vaccine, entering into marriage, starting a new job, moving into the new home, becoming the parent or becoming a UU minister, I hope you allow yourself the grace of an autonomic hug, the hugs of loved ones. I also hope you are open to the grace that seeks to embrace us all on our journeys.