Gratitude and Giving Back

I preached this sermon on Sunday Nov. 27.  It was an all ages service and our start for Guest at Your Table to benefit the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.   The sermon was preached in two parts.

Gratitude

Gratitude, to give thanks, an attitude of gratitude. There is no shortage of discussion about gratitude, counting our blessings, particularly during November.  It is a foundational spiritual practice to first be aware of the blessings of our lives and then to take the time to give thanks for them.

Throughout the month of November a number of friends on Facebook posted things they were grateful for.  Some missed a few days and then would catch up.  Each day I have read posts of gratitude – for family, work, friends, colleagues.   For many it was a spiritual discipline, each day reflecting on their blessings and posting them on-line.  It is not as easy a spiritual discipline as one might think, once one has given thanks for family, friends, food etc.  After a few days, it requires digging deeper, reflecting longer and getting creative.  Yesterday one person posted “thankful for the practice of patience.”

Harder still is giving thanks for things that are hard, illness, death, loss.  Finding blessings in the midst of loss maintains hope, hope that not all is lost, that the wheel will turn again, that life truly does go on. In the midst of despair, giving thanks can keep hope alive.  Giving thanks for the illness, loss, suffering takes time, self-reflection and an acceptance that loss and grief are parts of life. That loss and suffering are not strange, alien states that one should seek to avoid at all costs but rather that loss is woven into the very fabric of life.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew about loss and suffering.  He was born at home because his mother refused to have her children born in a segregated hospital.   He lived in a segregated neighborhood.  He attended segregated schools.  He knew the pain of racism.

This is not to promote a “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” superficial coating over suffering. Rather, it is seeing hope in the midst of despair, the small speck of light in the darkness, cultivating the trust that whatever it is that we are enduring now is a part of life and that life will endure.

The practice of gratitude, particularly if we are to practice gratitude even when we are hurting, when there is loss and grief, will require discipline.  It is easy to stop the practice of gratitude when things get busy, when things get hard.   So begin a year-round practice of gratitude. If you do not already have a practice of grace or blessing before meals, begin one.  Take the practice of going around the table to say what we are grateful and make it a daily practice.

In fact let us begin right now. Please take just a moment to reflect on one thing that you are grateful for … we will pause for just one moment of silence. Then when I ring the bell, please turn to one person and tell that person what you are thankful for in this moment.

Let us begin….

Giving Back



Beginning a regular practice of gratitude is a core spiritual practice.  Reflecting on what we have been given, sustains hope and faith through hard times and loss.  Yet stopping with being grateful without giving back is insufficient.   Sometimes it takes an encounter with scarcity to appreciate what we have. Yet if all we do is say, “I am so glad that is not me and I am so grateful for all I have” and the suffering of others does not move us to act then it is empty and insufficient. It is just a platitude.

Gratitude is the first step to moving beyond ourselves and living life with the knowledge that our lives are bound up together.  Gratitude for what we have that we did not earn, that we did not make, that we could not have imagined – like sunsets, the colors of leaves in fall, like our very bodies and the air we breathe.  All of these things we have been given … they are gifts freely given.

As Unitarian Universalists we begin by affirming that each has inherent and worth and dignity and end by recognizing that we are bound together in creation.  What affects one of us, affects all of us.

In the midst of suffering, loss, gross inequality, hunger, war, poverty, it is not enough to say “thank you for my blessings.”  Our gratitude must be the starting point for service.  

Martin Luther King Jr. says it this way “Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve.  … You only need a heart full of grace.  A soul generated by love.”

You only need a heart full of grace to serve.  Each of us can serve and each of us can make a difference in the lives of others.  Each of us, young, old, child, adult can serve. Each of us has gifts to share.  We serve each other by offering a smile, a hug or simply asking the question “how are you” and really stopping to hear the answer.  Serving each other is not just about serving those people out there somewhere.  Serving each other begins with the care we give each other.

We as a faith community practice service.  Each week the FISH wagon sits in the entry way of this building and each week we are invited to bring food for our neighbors in need.  In addition to our collecting food for FISH, one month each year, members give their time sorting and repairing clothes.  Each December we collect socks and underwear.  As a community we serve together.  FISH is just one example of how this faith community seeks to make a difference and there are many ways we can give back, to serve, to make the world a better place.

There is another way that we as a faith community, reach out in giving to others.  Each year, we here at WUU and many other Unitarian Universalist congregations participate in Guest at Your Table.  Nan and I are going to tell you about Guest at Your Table


Nan:  What is Guest at Your Table?

Margaret:  Hold up the box

Nan: That is a box not a guest.

Margaret:  Yes this is the Guest at Your Table box.  I invite each family, to take the box home.  I invite you to put the box at a place where you will see it every day – like your dining room table.  When you eat at the table you can look at the pictures and learn about the people on the box.

Nan:  Where do I find the stories of the people?

Margaret:   I also invite you to take this book home, called Stories of Hope.  The stories go with the pictures on the box.  I invite you to the practice of reading a story from the book and putting some money in the box.

Nan:  Money in the box?  Why do I put money in the box?

Margaret: The money in the box will be used to help the people on the box and others in their communities.

Nan:  How?

Margaret:  The money will go to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. They work in our country and all around the world helping people have clean water, good food.  They help people who have had a terrible disaster where they live – like an earthquake or flood and the Service Committee helps those communities recover.  They also work on things like a right to clean water, dignified work, education, shelter.

Nan:  So how is the money going to get from the box on my table to the Service Committee?

Margaret:  You will bring the box back to WUU on January 8. We will collect everyone’s boxes.  Then all the money will be counted and sent to the UU Service Committee. Our money will be combined with the money from all the other UU Congregations to help around the world.

Nan:  So let me make sure I get this. I take the box home.  I put it on my table.  I learn about the people on the box.  I put my money in the box.  Then I bring the box back here on January 8. Then all the money from all of us goes to the Service Committee.

Margaret:  Exactly.  And that is another way that each of us can give back. We can give what we have and that gets combined with what others give and we can make the world a more just place.


"Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve. You only need a heart full of grace.”

An Encounter with Martin Luther King Jr.

This was the story for all ages I shared this past Sunday, Nov. 27 in a service called Gratitude and Giving Back.


This summer my family and I traveled to Atlanta and while we were there we went to the King Center.  The King Center includes the Ebenezer Baptist Church and the childhood home of Martin and his siblings.

The house is a 2-story house in a neighbor that was all African-American. It included families that were middle-class like the King family and families that were working class.  It is the home that Martin Luther King’s grandparents lived in and raised their children.  Martin, his sister and brother were all born in this home.  Martin’s grandmother lived with them.

As you tour the home you realize that Martin Luther King Jr. was not some superhuman person. He, just like each of us he had gifts and failings.  He and his brother used to terrorize their sister and they destroyed all her dolls.  Martin would hide out when it was his turn to the do the dishes – he didn’t think boys should have to do the dishes.

Yet what also struck me was the daily practices in the King family.  At a time when children were to be “seen and not heard,” in the King family you were to come to the dinner table with 2 things.  One was you were to have memorized a Bible verse that you could recite at the table.  The second is that each child was expected to have read the news and know something about current events.  Over dinner, the family would talk about current events and the children were expected to be part of the conversation.

Martin Luther King Jr. had much to be grateful for -  a loving family, a roof over his head and food on the table.  He had a family that expected him and his brother and sister to be full participants in family meals.  At each meal they gave thanks for their blessings, and then each member of that family, not just Martin, lived in service to the world.  Out of their blessings, they gave of themselves in service – striving to make things better for others.

Going through the house, hearing stories about Martin Luther King Jr.’s family gave me a deeper sense of appreciation of this man who gave so much to all of us.  He, failings and all, is an example of a life lived in service to others, sustained by a deep faith and the love of family.  He had a deep sense of gratitude for life and out of that, he devoted his life to serving others.

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2011

Here are my closing words to last Sunday's Transgender Day of Remembrance service at the College of William and Mary.

It would be easy now to be overwhelmed and helpless; so many lives and so many young lives taken far too soon, taken because of misunderstanding and hate. Lives taken because they were different, viewed as outside the mainstream, challenging binary notions of gender and challenging heterosexist assumptions. Not all who were killed necessarily identified themselves as transgender, some were killed because assumptions were made based on appearance.

Yet this is not the time to be helpless or hopeless. It does not honor these lives that were lost for us to get lost in our own hopelessness. In the words of Dorothy Day, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.”

Yes too much work to do. Work to break down stereotypes and rigid assumptions about gender. We need to work toward a time when everyone is free to be who they are, to express their gender identity without fear of violence, losing their jobs or being treated less than. Each of us can do this work by first living our own lives with as much authenticity as possible. Each of us can do this work by challenging rigid notions of gender and expression.

Each of us can work for the day when we will gather together for one final Transgender Day of Remembrance Service and there will be no new names to read. The day when we will gather one final time to say “We remember, we never forgot;” a day to celebrate a time when no one need live in fear of violence, a day when we can all be just who we are.

May it be so.

99% Rally at William and Mary

Today I spoke at a 99% Rally at the College of William and Mary.

Here is what I said.


Good afternoon I am Margaret Sequeira and I am grateful that I was asked to speak here today.  While I hold many roles and relationships within Williamsburg and the College, I want to be clear that I speak today only for myself and not for any organization or group. I begin there because so much of the Occupy movement has been about individuals coming together in community to speak up.  If you read the mainstream press about the Occupy movement it is driving them crazy that there is no single leader, there is no spokesperson – no one who speaks for the whole.

This is not comfortable for us – we who long for clear leadership and clear lines of authority are confused by this.

Yet I stand before you not just a person by herself, I stand before you intimately and intrinsically intertwined in a complex web of relationships.  I think the Occupy movement calls each of us to live into the paradox that we are both individuals, with individual needs and abilities and that we are not just individuals – that our lives are tied up with others.

I am a Unitarian Universalist and in my faith tradition we are bound in covenant by 7 principles (don’t worry I am not going into all 7 – just 2).  The first is to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of the individual and the 7th is to affirm the interdependent web of creation of which we are all a part. This captures well this paradox – the paradox of being an individual and that we are part of complex web of relationship and creation.  One of my favorite signs from the Occupy Movement is one that read “My wellbeing is tied up with yours.”

The Occupy Movement has been critiqued for not being focused enough, clear enough with concrete demands and policy changes.  It is critiqued because it is out of step with our usual political organizing with leaders and talking points.  It is trying to capture a diversity – that yes it is about the economy and how the greed of a very few controls both our economy and our government and it is also about racism, sexism, and heterosexism.  It is about how if one is not wealthy, not white, not male, not straight, not able bodied, not able to pull oneself up by one’s boot straps – then one deserves whatever less than status one may find oneself in.

You see the Occupy movement is so threatening because it seeks to tell the truth to expose one big lie – the lie is that here in America anyone can be anything they chose to be – with enough hard work, if you play by the rules, if you do what is expected than you can succeed – you might even be president one day.  We love our stories of quote unquote self-made individuals who pulled themselves up and made an immensely successful life for themselves.  This myth of America – that anyone can be anything is very powerful and for that story/that myth to be challenged in anyway is a profound threat to way we see ourselves as a nation.

Yet many know for a fact that this story of America is a false one.  That too often people are too dark skinned, have too much of an accent, are too poor, are the wrong gender, are too queer – and no there will not be success there.  Part of the lie is that those who are successful do it on their own – they don’t need a handout or help for anyone.  “They are self-made.”  Yet none of us is self-made.  Human beings are communal beings – we thrive only in the midst of our relationships.  And if you listen closely enough to our quote unquote self made people – there are numerous people who helped them along the way, gave them a chance, opened a door.

The Occupy movement is speaking the truth loudly – the truth that a very few control most of the wealth and income, that playing by rules does not mean that one will thrive, that one can do it on ones own, that the 1% earned their wealth on their own and not through inheritance, government programs that have benefited certain people and not others, economic policies and programs are set up for the benefit of the few and not the many.  Speaking the truth is a risky business – one only need look to many of our religious and spiritual leaders to see that rarely do people want to hear the truth – Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, Oscar Romero to name a very few.  Speaking the truth means to risk violence, to risk outcast, to risk death.  Speaking the truth, whether it is our own personal truth or speaking a social truth is to be daring.  Occupy invites each of us to speak our own truth, to speak truth to power.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” was spoken by Lilla Watson an Indigenous Australian or Murri visual artist, activist and academic working in the field of Women’s issues and Aboriginal epistemology.  Occupy is not asking anyone to help them..they are speaking the truth that our individual liberation, our well-being is bound up together.  We are not just individuals who thrive or fail on our own … we are connected individuals whose wellbeing, whose liberation is woven together.

May this movement encourage us all to re-engage as public citizens.  Citizens that speak our own truth and risk speaking truth to power and thus transforming our country to be a more just, more thriving place for all.  

Is it Real?

One of my favorite scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is near the end when Harry converses with Dumbledore in the train station. At the end of their conversation, Harry asks "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"  and Dumbledore replies "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?" (Rowling, 723)

All too often we distrust our own experience and the things that happen in our heads.  As Unitarian Universalists, in particular, we want things that can be proven, verified by outside research.  Yet faith requires trust and it requires trusting and believing in that which may not be proven. There is a place for that which can be verified, including our own experiences, and yet when we dismiss all that cannot be proven, the world becomes a much smaller and less interesting place.

Also what does it say when we so readily dismiss our experiences and those things that happen in our heads? From an early age we drive imagination and creativity from our children, teaching them to distrust what happens in their heads.

Yet faith and justice require imagination.  In order to transform the world, we have to be able to imagine a world that does not yet exist.  Faith requires trust in that which cannot be proven - like love.  Hope requires a trust that may defy current circumstances, a faith that things can be different and better despite all the evidence to the contrary.

So we both need to check our what happens in our heads with others, with verifiable facts and yet we also need to hold that what happens in our heads should not automatically be dismissed as unreal.  We need to re-learn to trust ourselves and our own knowledge. For as Dumbledore challenges us - why does it mean it isn't real?

Same Sex Marriage in NY .. Anything to be Concerned About?

So I am pleased that same sex marriage passed in New York.  Yet I also want to add the caveats that I don't believe that mirroring the heterosexual paradigm should be the be all and end all of rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer persons. As young queer people have told us, marriage is all well and good but they are more worried about surviving middle school and high school and whether or not their parents will throw them out of the house.

Yet my concern here is about the religion exemption clause that is part of the same sex marriage bill in New York, has been part of the proposed legislation in California and is in the newly passed civil union bill in Rhode Island.  On the surface these seem innocuous ... a bone to those on the right who suddenly think that just because civil marriage is allowed for same sex couples that clergy and faith communities might somehow have to participate in these marriages even if it is against their teachings.  After all what is the harm to put these clauses in if it makes people feel better and they will vote the right way?

First no clergy person or faith community is under any obligation, ever to perform a civil marriage - any marriage between any people.  In fact religious communities can marry or not marry whoever they choose although not all those marriages may be recognized by the state as valid civil marriages. Such has been the state of same-sex couples whose faith communities, like Unitarian Universalism, have long been blessing their unions.  There is no need for these clauses because faith communities and clergy people have a choice to bless or not bless any union.

So what is the concern?  Well maybe I am just a bit paranoid but as the saying goes just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.  I am concerned that in putting these clauses in these bills we are one still saying that same sex unions are not as worthy as heterosexual ones and that some how faith communities need extra protection from the LGBTQ community.  Again it feeds the notion that LGBTQ people, their relationships, their families and their lives pose some sort of threat.

Secondly we have seen how the right and in particular the religious right never just let go of these fights even when they lose in the public square.  Let's take contraception and abortion rights.  The right knows it may not be able to undue Roe vs Wade but they can make it difficult if not impossible for a person to access contraceptives and abortions. Let's look at conscience clauses for pharmacists.  Let's look at Kansas and Virginia that are using health and safety regulations to close clinics and make it more difficult for women to access reproductive health services. How might these clauses be used to further limit the rights of same sex couples to get married and to access full rights and responsibilities that come with civil marriage?  Will hospitals be allowed to claim a religious exemption and not let a same sex spouse visit their sick loved one?  Will cemeteries be allowed to deny same sex couples buying a joint plot?  Will various non-profit and other organizations be able to claim a religious exemption from offering benefits to same sex spouses because of these clauses?  And just like with abortion rights, I would not be at all surprised that courts would go along with these exemptions.

Maybe it is time to fully separate religious and civil marriage. After all why are religious leaders allowed to act as officers of the state in this instance?  Maybe we need to require all couples to have a civil marriage ceremony and then they can choose whether or not to have a religious one. Let's separate civil marriage and religious marriage.

Let us render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto the Holy what is Holy.

The Adjustment Bureau

Last weekend I went with my family to see The Adjustment Bureau.  What an amazing movie and it is packed full of great theological questions.

Questions like is there a plan for each of our lives?  If so what is my role in that plan?  Do I have choice?  What is the role of chance?  Do we have free will?  What is the nature of the creator of the plan - the chairman?  Is it the chairman's intention only to enforce his/her/its version of the plan?  What is the relationship between humanity and the plan and creator of the plan? 

This film would make for a great discussion.  I hope to invite my campus group to see it and discuss it. I have recommended it to my high school youth group.