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The Space In Between

3/19/2020

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.

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Our own Sankofa

3/5/2020

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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?

3/5/2020

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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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yield and overcome

The Space In Between

Our own Sankofa

What is race?

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