Our Children Are Not Our Children

This blog post took much longer than usual to craft and to form hence why there have been no posts last week.  Hopefully after this I can get back on track.

I have never understood the parents that have thrown their children out of their lives for being gay. An Early Frost" had aired the night before, I was not yet out (even to myself), and I sat there listening to two women talk about how they would disown their child if they were gay. They were proud of it.  I sat there unable to speak and yet appalled.  How do you bring a child into this world, love them, comfort them, care for them and then throw them away because they are who they are?
When I was a freshman in college, I remember sitting in the faculty room of a Milwaukee public school where I was observing two classes of a child I was tutoring.  "

So it is with that context in mind that crafts my response to the article "If I Have Gay Children: Four Promises From A Christian Pastor/Parent" in which he vows to love and cherish his children if they are gay and a similar piece from a Rabbi.  It appeared numerous times in my news feed generally with comments about what a great dad he is and how they were moved to tears.  The article actually really bothers me because it assumes that a religious leader or a religious family should be expected to reject their LGBTQ child.  I also know that I am not actually the one being addressed in either article; their audience is their religious colleagues where it might not be so obvious that they should continue to love their LGBTQ children and by extension other LGBTQ people. Regardless of whether some religious leaders from surprising places are beginning to move toward acceptance, it is still true that too many religious families reject and throw out their children when they come out. My own spouse's family rejected her early on and some continue to do so; I have first hand experience of the pain this causes even years after some relationships become better. This article on the prevalence of LGBTQ youth becoming homeless after their families rejected them or required that they undergo reparative therapy points out the danger LGBTQ children face from their families if they come out.

I do however want to thank Rabbi Orlow for pointing out the harm done in religious community when hatred and bigotry are practiced. I appreciate his emphasizing that this bigotry is not just bad for LGBTQ people, but bad for his community and that it violates Jewish teaching.   In the end it is not good faith or good religion to practice hatred and discrimination against anyone no matter how "sinful" we may think them to be.

Yet to assume that a religious parent would reject their child flies in the face of everything I know as a person of faith and a religious person.  It shows that we still let the religious right hold the moral high ground in LGBTQ matters.

So that led me to thinking about Kahil Gibran's piece On Children:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

As a parent, I think the most important advice any of us can follow about our children is that they are not our possession, they are not ours to shape into particular forms or careers. Our job as parents is to love, nurture and support them into becoming the best people they can be in the best ways we know how and then letting go.  It is not to turn them into "successful" people although we certainly hope our children will be successful in ways that they define.  It is not to shape them into fulfilling our lost dreams, they have their own dreams.  It is not to make them fulfill our expectations of them, and in fact the hardest thing we will do is to lay our expectations aside for who they are and what they will become so they can become the people they are and who they are meant to be.  This is hard work because it means we as parents need to get our ego and our issues out of the way.

Our job as parents is to love our children as they are and not how we expect them to be.  To all of us in the LGBTQ community, we need to stop telling young people that it will get better and start making it better.  We need to be there as a community with shelter, food, housing, education for all those families who will stop loving their children and throw them out onto the street.  We need to fight for safe schools, non-discrimination in employment.  We need to realize that marriage equality is not the be all and end all.  We need to make sure that these children have a safe place to go and a community that means it when we say "it gets better" because we are in fact making it better for ourselves and for all of us!

Religious leaders we need to speak up for religious pluralism and not allow the guise of deeply held religious belief to justify discrimination in the public square.  This means that businesses, small, large, privately held or publicly owned have no right to discriminate or refuse to serve LGBTQ people.  If religious people want to discriminate within the walls of their community then by all means, please do so. We will never insist that you welcome, marry or otherwise give service to those you don't want whether on the basis or race, gender, sexual orientation, marital status etc. Feel free to be as bigoted as you please and then please realize that your bigotry stops at the moment you accept federal funds for a program or run a business in the public square.  That is what it means to live in a pluralistic, religiously diverse society. And, please know that the rest of us will call you out on your bigotry, hold you accountable for the harm you do in the name of religion and offer a more nurturing theology to those who you turn away.

So let's love our children and let them go. Let's help them to become who they were meant to be, who they were born to be and let us be proud that we were allowed to journey with them!

When All the Choices Are Poor - Making it Personal

For today's Throwback Thursday post, I chose "When All the Choices Are Poor."  In this election season, where those who are receiving public assistance, unemployment or otherwise struggling financially are being labeled as "lazy" and "just wanting to collect a government check" I think we need to remind ourselves over and over again the difficulty of being poor and getting out of poverty.

Today I want to make it personal. I would be what they call underemployed. I am working half-time and need and want to be working full time.  My spouse is waiting to hear from disability as her physical health will no longer allow her to work.  I am working on getting my wedding business going, doing occasional babysitting and writing.  Yet none of it is enough to make all our bills every month.

So I am learning first hand about making hard choices among limited, not so great options. I know about the stress and embarrassment of not having enough. I know about not doing things like going to lunch or coffee because I cannot pay for them.  I know about counting the change around the house to see if we can buy milk or another necessary item. We have blessed with friends who have helped us pay bills and who have bought us food.

Yesterday because we have urgent needs that we have no other way to meet I went to a local emergency relief organization and social services. Hopefully soon we will be approved for food assistance and we can get some emergency help with two urgent bills.  Today we will go to a local food pantry with the voucher I received yesterday. I spent all day doing this and today I need to finish all the paperwork and take it back to them.

It is eye-opening and truly self-revealing  what going through this  is teaching me. After all I come from an upper-middle class family where I was raised on  steady diet of welfare queens and the poor are lazy.  I have an undergraduate and graduate degree.  I embody the "this is not supposed to happen to me" and yet here I am.  Maybe it scares you to hear my story because after all if it happened to me, does that mean it could happen to you.

The first thing I have learned in all of this is to re-think who I think falls into the category of "poor."  I have deeper compassion and a deep empathy of the time, energy and money it takes to be poor.  Yes it is expensive to be poor, it takes a great deal of time and energy. Then when you add to it the stress and anxiety, it is truly amazing the human will to survive.

So today I ask you to re-think what you know about being poor.  The shame and embarrassment only add to the stress for those who are struggling - trust me I know this first hand.  So please I ask you to show an open-heart, an open-mind and deep compassion.

Blessings.

To Live in This World

I preached this sermon on Sunday October 12 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Outer Banks.

Text: "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

To Live in this World

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets and this is one of my favorite of her poems.  This poem is particularly appropriate to the fall, as she describes the trees turning their own bodies into pillars of light and giving off the fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.  Fall is a time of harvest as the soil prepares to rest for the winter. While maybe not so much here on the Outer Banks, the trees up and down the eastern coast of the United States, turn gorgeous colors of yellow and red.  Just as the trees turn these magnificent colors, they fall off and the trees become bare pillars until the new buds of spring.  It is like a last burst of beauty and amazement before the leaves die and return to the earth.

It is one of the big questions of life of what it means to live and love knowing that death will take those we love and that we ourselves will die.  What does it mean to live knowing we will die?  We love knowing that we will lose those we love.  Yet Mary Oliver reminds that this is at the heart of living - that to live in this world we must love what is mortal.

As we celebrate marriage equality this week, it is a good time to remind ourselves of the vows of marriage.  In marriage two people pledge to live and love together until separated by death.  In the midst of love and the start of a life together, the couple and their witnesses are reminded of death.  As we celebrate the end of Amendment 1 and the coming of marriage equality to much of the United States, we have to remember those who died before this day came, those who died waiting to have their loves and lives recognized by society.  In fact, Mary Oliver lost her own partner, Molly, in 2005. As I told a group the other day, civil marriage matters most in the worst moments of our lives - when the one we love is ill, in the hospital, when the one we love dies.  When we talk about marriage equality we are talking about having our wishes followed when we are least able to speak for ourselves.

Mary Oliver tells us that "everything I have ever learned leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation."  Oliver tells us that salvation is found on the other side of loss.  In essence, loss is essential for salvation. It is only through coming through loss, through loving and then letting go that we are saved. Saved from what?  Oliver tells us that we will never know the meaning.  We will never fully understand how it is through loving and losing what we love that we come to live more fully, more authentically. We become more fully human, more fully alive.  She tells us we must love what is mortal knowing that our own life depends on it.  We love knowing that those whom we love, and that we ourselves are mortal.  We love knowing that at some point we will also have to let go.

Just like the leaves on the tree, who bud, bloom, dazzle us with brilliant green and then turn red, yellow, brown and then fall to the earth, we too must learn to let go.  Most of us here have lost someone we have loved - parents, grandparents, friends, spouses - we know that it is hard to let go. It is hard to move through the grief to a time of letting go.  Yet those of us who have loved and let go know that the love does not die.  While we let go of the person, the love we have for them and they for us does not die.  The love lives on in our memories, in our hearts, it lives on when we see a picture of the person and smile, when we share a story about them, when we use one their belongings.  For me, my great-grandmother lives on every time I use her yellow mixing bowl or I watch Mollie or Donna use it. It is a great mixing bowl that went with a stand mixer.  I think of her every time we use it.  While she died when I was twelve, my love for her did not die.  Yet at the time, her death left a huge hole in my heart and in my life.  I am named after her, she was the one person in my family who stood up for me.  I was her favorite and in losing her I lost the one person in my family who truly stood up for me, truly protected me.  Yet I had to let her go. She was 88 years old when she died, she spent the last months of her life in a semi-comatose state unable to care in any way for herself.  It was time for her to go.

Yet the desire to cling, to hold on is so strong.  How can we not understand the parents of the 13 year old who was declared brain dead after what should have been a routine surgery to remove her tonsils and the parents have been caring for her at their own expense, refusing to accept the declaration?  No matter how misguided we may or may not feel the family is in fighting this particular fight, as a parent, as a mother all of my sympathy and empathy are with them.  How are you supposed to let go of your 13 year old daughter?  How do you say goodbye?

It is not always easy to know when to let go. Sometimes we have to let go of someone we have loved, not because they have died, sometimes it is just time for a relationship to end.  This can happen in families, it can happen to those who are married, to friends.  Sometimes we don't really notice it happening, we move away, we stop keeping in touch and we realize that we have let go of that friendship, that relationship.  Sometimes it is very intentional such as having to separate from an unhealthy relationship or in the case of divorce.  We love and yet we also have to learn to let go.  Often people hang on or cling on to relationships long past the time to let go.  Sometimes it is only in looking back that one can see that fact.

Yet each relationship, each time we love, we learn.  We learn more about how to love, to love ourselves, to love one another, to love the planet.  We are not automatic lovers, we must learn to love, we must choose to love.  It is not necessarily a rational choice but it is a choice.  Carter Heyward says it this way " Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh."

On this weekend celebrating Coming Out and Marriage for All coming to so many places, I want to claim a personal moment and say that I am glad that I chose to embrace my queerness and to love my wife … it is important to name that today.  And to also acknowledge that sometimes that choice has meant the loss of friends, the fear that comes with not having one’s relationship honored and respected and the lack of protections for those worst moments. I am a part of a community that includes both Mary Oliver and Carter Heyward that has chosen to love in spite of the dangers … I am proud to claim my place amongst that community and those ancestors. And I am incredibly happy that for the first time, I actually live in a place that recognizes my legal marriage, my choice to love in the way I have.

Just like in choosing to love, we must also choose to let go.  Even when death has taken one we love, that does not mean we have truly let them go.  Sometimes we hold on to the grief, we refuse to accept that the person is gone.  Like the parents of the 13 year old, we just can't let go.  Yet in letting go we cross that "black river of loss whose other side is salvation."  We learn that life and love do go on.  We learn we can love again, we can learn to hold what is mortal against our bones knowing our own life depends on it.  We can once again let go when it is time.  We can choose again to love, participating in the dance of life.

So let us choose to love, to love deeply and fully and hold nothing back.  Let us hold those we love against our bones.  Let us love abundantly knowing we will have to at some time let go.  May we know when it is time to let go and to do so willingly and consciously.  May we do this knowing that it is this, this loving and letting go that is required to truly live in this world.

Blessed Be!

National Coming Out Day

This Saturday October 11 is the 26th Annual National Coming Out Day (NCOD). It was an idea that originated with Robert Eichberg and Jean O'Leary and began on the first anniversary of the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights to encourage LGBTQ people to come out. Since 1990, the Human Rights Campaign has continued to support NCOD and provides resources.   It is marked with celebrations at college campuses and on-line.  It is about celebrating being proud of ourselves and who we are.

Coming out is also a profoundly spiritual act. It is the act of revealing one's authentic self to another person or maybe even a whole group of people.  When someone shares the truth of who they are, that is an act of love and trust.  When we tell the truth to ourselves, when we own who we are in our totality, we come closer to the holy within us.

The deep truth of the stories of creation in Genesis is that the Creator created each of us in the image and likeness of the Divine. Each of us at our core is a manifestation of the holy. When we  discover our authentic self and share that with others, we are manifesting the Holy.

So I invite to revisit my post from April of 2013 on the importance of coming out and being out! You might also enjoy this video for the 25th anniversary of NCOD.

Even in this time of celebrating that Marriage Equality has come to so many states, it is still important to come out. In fact, because so many have come out over the years, change has come but there is still a long way to go to ensure that all members of our community no matter the status of their relationships can enjoy a full life. It is also important for our allies to come out too. Be out and be proud!

How Do We Respond?

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 28, 2014 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Outer Banks.

Story:  The Wind and the Flag, a Zen story
Readings: Selection of Readings

 “…And so I say to you today that I still stand for nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country.

And the other thing that I am concerned about is a better world. I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth.

And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.

Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out violence. Only light can do that.

And so I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love. For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I am going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today.

I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love. I’m talking  about a strong, demanding love.

And I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.

If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“All violence is injustice. Responding to violence with violence is injustice, not only to the other person but also to oneself.

Responding to violence with violence resolves nothing; it only escalates violence, anger and hatred.

It is only with compassion that we can embrace and disintegrate violence. This is true in relationships between individuals as well as in relationships between nations.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

“Each time a man or woman stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those tine ripples can build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Robert Kennedy

“We must rededicate ourselves to creating a society where differences are resolved without violence, where the mentally unstable do not have ready access to lethal force, where violence is not glorified, and where we can live, love, and work in safe places. Our task as a religious people committed to compassion and to peace is to show a better way.”
Peter Morales

“Love is the active, creative force that repairs life's injuries and brings new possibilities into being.

Love speaks out in the face of injustice and oppression, calling leaders to account when policies and practices are injuring people.

Love tends the wounds created by injustice and evil and offers compassion in the presence of life's suffering.

Love builds communities of inclusion and friendship that break through the boundaries of prejudice and enmity.
Love embraces the goodness of this world and seeks paradise on earth, a heaven of mutual respect.

Love generates life — from the first moment of conception of a child, to the last moment when love creates a way for those who have died to be remembered with gratitude and tenderness.

And in the deepest night, when our hearts are breaking, it is the discovery of a love that chooses unshakeable fidelity to our common humanity that renews us and redirects us to a life of generosity.”
Rebecca Parker

How Do We Respond?

So let us begin today with some statistics and facts:

• One in three people in the U.S. knows someone who has been shot.
• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room.
• Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun.
• The U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population.
• A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.
• More than one in five U.S. teenagers (ages 14 to 17) report having witnessed a shooting.
• An average of eight children and teens under the age of 20 are killed by guns every day.
• American children die by guns 11 times as often as children in other high-income countries.
• Youth (ages 0 to 19) in the most rural U.S. counties are as likely to die from a gunshot as those living in the most urban counties. Rural children die of more gun suicides and unintentional shooting deaths. Urban children die more often of gun homicides.
• Firearm homicide is the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle crashes) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S.
• In 2007, more pre-school-aged children (85) were killed by guns than police officers were killed in the line of duty.

The statistics are overwhelming and staggering.  Where do we find hope in this?  How are we to respond?

As I stated in my description of today’s service, I am not here to propose legislation or to advocate for a particular bill or that I even have many answers.  In the interest of being completely transparent in where I come from, I do not own a gun, I have never handled or fired a gun.  However, my wife was in the military and grew up hunting with multiple guns in her home on a farm in rural Virginia. I have my own deeply held opinions about gun regulation particularly for assault weapons, but today is not the day for that, today is a day to talk about how do we as a people of faith, as a religious community respond to the almost daily reports of gun violence in our society? Just this week we heard about three killed in Alabama, another person killed by a gun who was killing former co-workers in Oklahoma.  Those are just two the hit the news, how many others have been killed or injured this week due to guns?

In our story today the itinerant monk states that it is the mind that moves.  We need a collective moving of the minds.  We need to move beyond simple either/or solutions. Right now the debate comes down to that if one supports gun regulation then one is seeking to take guns away from lawful citizens and violating their constitutional rights and if one supports little or no regulation of guns than one is in line with early patriots in America and believes that mental health care and police enforcement should stop the unlawful use of guns. It seems the debate is all or nothing – either total non-regulation of guns or the taking away of all guns.  It is a false dichotomy.

Yet like so many other debates right now we seem to only see two extreme views.  Like the monks we are arguing if it is the wind or the flag.  We need a new way.

What do we as people of faith have to say about gun violence?  In our readings today, all call upon us to find another way, to meet violence not with more violence but with love, with compassion.  While we argue with words, people are dying and being irreparably harmed by violence.  We also have to acknowledge that all too often those most affected by gun violence are people of color and those who are poor or working class.  In response to the Sandy Hook shootings, over and over we heard “this doesn't happen here” which is really code for it doesn't happen in our white, middle class communities.  Somehow it makes it ok for it to happen in the cities of Chicago, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit.

I am sure it was also said at Virginia Tech, at UC Santa Barbara, at the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.  Somehow if gun violence takes place in areas that are considered urban ghettos than somehow it is normal, expected and maybe on some level acceptable.  As people of faith who affirm the worth and dignity of every person, we must condemn violence wherever it occurs, whatever the color, gender, sexual orientation, class status and even the criminal history of who is the victim.  Meaning while we are glad that not more people were killed or injured in Oklahoma, we must mourn the loss of the person who was shot. He too was a person, he too has inherent worth and dignity. It does not mean that we condone his actions, it means we acknowledge his humanity. He too was someone’s son, maybe someone’s parent, friend, nephew, spouse.  He too mattered.

Our faith tradition first affirms the sacred worth and dignity of every person. In fact, in this country Unitarians rejected the inherent depravity of humanity held by the Puritans; they affirmed that human beings were all made in the image and likeness of the Divine.  Any response to gun violence must begin there – it must begin with the affirmation that every human life is sacred – all lives matter. Peter Morales, the current President of the Unitarian Universalist Association tells us in today’s reading “We must rededicate ourselves to creating a society where differences are resolved without violence, where the mentally unstable do not have ready access to lethal force, where violence is not glorified, and where we can live, love, and work in safe places. Our task as a religious people committed to compassion and to peace is to show a better way.”

This then is not just about whether and how guns should be regulated but a deeper conversation about addressing the overwhelming violence that is prevalent throughout our society, not to mention the world.

I will remind us now that we have begun another war as the United States leads a coalition of countries in air strikes in Iraq and Syria to counter the horrible terrorist violence of ISIS.  We are again responding to violence with violence.  I don’t know for certain if there is another way to respond, another way to stop this organization committed to wiping out anyone who doesn’t agree with their world view, and seems intent on inflicting terror wherever it goes, yet the words of Martin Luther King echo in my head and heart. “For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.  Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out violence. Only light can do that.”

What light are we going to bring?  What can we here on the Outer Banks do about gun violence?  We can begin where we are with what we have.  We can bring an open mind and open heart.  We can listen not just with our ears but with our hearts.  We can put faces to those names, we can put the faces of people to those overwhelming statistics.

We can be a place of healing, where those who have been affected by gun violence can have a space for all they are feeling – anger, sadness, grief, fear. We can be a place where they can share their story and the stories of their loved ones.

We can also be a community that values discourse and diversity of opinion.  We can discuss gun regulation with an understanding that we will not all agree and that feelings may run deep and strong. We can agree that the enormous loss of life must end while holding a diversity of opinions about how best to do that.

We can ask ourselves, what drives my own opinions and motivations.  In understanding ourselves, we can then open ourselves to the viewpoints and world views of others.  I can learn from those who are concerned about increased gun regulation.  After all I do not now nor have I ever owned a gun. Would I see these issues differently if I was a hunter?  Would I see differently if I had a family member or friend killed or wounded by a gun?  Would I see the militarization of our police differently if I was African American?  How would I see it if I had family members in law enforcement?

As it is I view these issues through the eyes of a person of faith, who wants a world of justice and free from violence for all people.  I want a world free not just of gun violence, but all violence.  As John Lennon says I may be a dreamer but I am not the only one. If we give up and say it will never happen, then we cannot move forward. If before we begin, we give up and say “it is impossible, such a world could never be” then we close ourselves to our possibility.  As people of faith, standing on the tradition of affirming the worth and dignity of every human being, let us imagine, let us dream big. Let us imagine a world where these statistics I started with are a relic of the past.  Let us move our minds as the itinerant monk tells us to new possibilities including the possibility of justice, peace and love.

I close with a reminder of the words of Robert Kennedy “Each time a man or woman stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those tiny ripples can build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

May we send forth those ripples of hope!

Blessed Be!

Ban Lazy

Just like Sheryl Sandberg wants to "Ban Bossy" I want to ban the use of the word lazy when it comes to talking about those who are unemployed, underemployed, living at minimum wage and otherwise economically struggling and impoverished.  Recently Speaker of the House John Boehner called the unemployed lazy.  He said  "People have this idea” that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.” This from the man whose congressional members he leads voted to give themselves another seven weeks of vacation. Who exactly is exhibiting "lazy" here?

I grew up in a family that talked about "welfare queens" and those on food stamps buying steaks, and of course the ever popular belief that women on welfare just kept getting pregnant so they could get more money from the government.  Yes I was raised on a steady diet that the poor are poor because it is their fault, they waste money, and yes that they are lazy.  There is very little that is done to counteract this prevalent cultural belief. Even those who are Democrats, who support a strong safety net want to make sure there are plenty of safeguards so that "laziness" is not tolerated.  I have heard faith leaders talk about making sure "people don't scam the system" by going to faith community to faith community looking for assistance - because the feeling is that dealing with bureaucracy and asking repeatedly safeguards the system by stopping the 'lazy ones'.  I have heard talk about "needing to be good stewards" and "being accountable."  All of this assumes that to be lacking in financial resources is to be lazy, untrustworthy, a scam artist and basically out to take rather than work for a living.  So even from those who want a safety net and who support liberal economic policies still don't have a problem with systems that are invasive, that want to micromanage the lives of the poor and assure they are not "lazy." So even from supposed "allies" the poor are assumed to be less moral, less capable and more lazy than everyone else. We never seem to realize that when real people need real help ... they work every day at somehow keeping their family afloat while often holding down jobs that are demanding or exhausting but does not meet the needs and on top of that they have to constantly ask for help; battle suspicion, judgement and redtape; and try not to give up as one's spirit is crushed and one's self worth is questioned.

This is outrageous.  The idea that those that live everyday wondering how they are going to keep a roof over their heads, transportation and food on the table are lazy is indefensible, it is morally abhorrent. Yes I am sure you could find examples or hear people say "why should I work when I can collect a check?" How is that any different from the Wall Street Bankers who kept their bonuses while receiving a bail out from the government? They said they were entitled to them. That they had earned them despite sending the entire economy into a Depression not seen since 1929.  They are still successfully getting legislation that requires little or no oversight, certainly no intense, invasive investigation and certainly not examining whether or not they are "lazy."

I am one of those underemployed persons.  I have written here about the bone weariness that comes from the constant stress and worry about money.  It has been eye-opening and world-view changing to realize how much my family promoted lies about those who are poor. They are lies.  We can listen to the CEO of Panera who undertook the challenge of eating on a budget provided by food stamps. We can hear other stories of how people go from store to store looking for the best prices on food or who live in food deserts where there are no grocery stores. We can read about the woman who drove her reliable, fully paid for Mercedes to pick up her food stamps and what she learned about being unemployed and poor in the United States.  Maybe we could read about the "laziness" of the woman who worked four part-time jobs and at times slept in her car between jobs.  How she kept extra gas in her car so she wouldn't run out and be late to one of her jobs and was found dead in her car when the gas leaked.

If we are truly going to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons than we must ban "lazy." We must stop judging people by the size of their bank accounts, or lack thereof.  We must stop assuming that if you are struggling financially you are more likely to commit crime or try to rip someone off.  Shaming people never gets them motivated to do better.  Shaming people makes sure they hide even deeper in their shell, keeping their head down and just doing their very best to get through from day to day. Shame strips hope, strips dream, strips motivation.  All our punishing of the poor only drives people deeper into despair, deeper into hopelessness and deeper into poverty.  This deepens poverty beyond just the material but to a poverty of the soul. I have come to know that both can happen.

So let's ban lazy!

Water Communion

Water Communion is one of my favorite Unitarian Universalist worship services! What a privilege to lead the service this past Sunday, September 14 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Outer Banks.

Story:  The Cracked Pot
Music:  "Coming Home" by UU Rochester and "Blue Boat Home" by Peter Mayer

Water Communion

Water Communion is one of my favorite UU services – it is right there with flower communion.  I love how in so many congregations I have been involved with these two rituals serve as bookends to the year.  I love the blending of the waters and hearing all the places the water comes from.  Even more I love hearing just a little snapshot from people about how that water represents some change or transformation that has occurred in their lives.  For whether we were here all summer working or playing, whether we traveled far or not at all, summer can be a time of renewal maybe even a time of transformation.

For some you may come here and your water may represent joy at seeing family, visiting a new place, or a favorite place.  Maybe your water represents a new job or opportunity.  Maybe it is about an experience of awe.

For some of you the water may represent relief that a busy summer season is finally winding down and now a period of rest and recreation can begin.  Maybe the water is a symbol of refreshment while working hard on a hot summer day.  Maybe it is a refilling of the well with the abundance of summer work.

For others the water represents salty tears of loss; the death of a loved one, the loss of a dream or opportunity.  Maybe your water is filled with sadness, a deep sorrow.

We come together this morning and celebrate coming home again. Coming home again to this faith community where we celebrate our diversity of beliefs, where we care for one another in times of loss and sorrow, where we celebrate with one another in times of joy.  We blend our waters together, from places far and near, from sorrow, joy, rest, hard work, change and transformation.  Some of us are new here today and some of us have been coming for years.

Today we blend our water, water that essential element for life everywhere.  As we blend our water let us think of those for whom this life saving element is hard to come by.  For the women who walk many miles, like the water bearer in our story, to bring fresh water to their families.  For those in places within our own country who are suffering from drought and those places that are overrun with flood. Water is life and water can also destroy as this area knows all too well.  Water is powerful and strong, refreshing and sustaining.  It is filled with complexity and paradox.

So as we blend our water this morning, let us stop, let us take a moment to reflect on what it symbolizes to us in this moment.  Where are you in your life right now?  Does your water represent hope, change, new life?  Does your water represent joy?  Or does it represent sorrow or loss? Are you in search of healing and wholeness?  Are you in need of rest and renewal?  What are you bringing with you this morning?  How can this faith community accompany you where you are on the journey?

For me, this has been a year of profound change.  It has certainly not been easy with a change of jobs, a change of homes.  There has been loss and sadness.  There has been joy at new community, new friends, new and fulfilling work.  In many ways my own year reflects some of this community’s year. There has been the loss of Pat and a time of searching.  There has been a time of finding and welcoming.  Now this community continues its search.  You are being invited to ask deep questions, to reflect on who you have been, who you are and what you hope to become.  It is a time of dreaming and hoping.  Yet it is also a time of transition, a liminal time.  With hard work and hope, next year you will celebrate Water Communion with your new settled minister.  Another chapter will begin for this community.

Yet in this liminal time of change and transition, life continues on.  Worship happens each Sunday, the work of the Board and the committees moves forward.  The work of this community continues and people will continue to come and be welcomed and others will say goodbye.

So this Water Communion we invite it all. We invite all the water from near and far.  We blend it together and we will save some of it for those moments of ritual that happen through the year.  Some we will save for next year’s Water Communion.  Some we will give as gift to Janice who is leaving so she takes a tangible symbol of this community into her new life.  We blend it all together and we celebrate being together, we honor all of what we bring and we offer the invitation to find home here!