How Are We Known?

Imagine how it must have felt. For those first Jesus followers, the people we call his disciples, to know that their leader was leaving them. To know that the person who had the courage to do what was necessary and the power to keep them safe – was no longer going to be with them. For that group of people, who risked their lives speaking truth to power, working on behalf of the most marginalized in their society, who knew that they were seen as dangerous outlaws for challenging an unjust empire – that night described in the Gospel of John must have been one filled with fear.

And when the worst happened – when their leader, the one they relied on for protection was killed – the shock of that moment must have been unbearable. The anguish, the uncertainty about their own safety – “if they did not spare him, how will they spare us?” How on earth could they have gone on sharing a message of justice when it meant imprisonment? Why, in a world where challenging corruption and speaking on behalf the oppressed would get you killed, why would they ever want to make themselves known?

Back in August when I was a new intern, I attended a hearing about the Trinity Center’s winter homelessness shelter. I’d been warned about the pushback it was receiving, and was grateful to see several of you there as well. But I didn’t realize how much our presence mattered until members of the public addressed the council to share their opinions. Particularly their opinions against the shelter. As some of you may recall, several of the statements that evening dehumanized the people who would be served. Residents “concerned” that the people living in the armory would break into their homes or go to the bathroom on their lawns. Parents worried that there was nothing to stop the people in the shelter from attacking them and their children. Almost all of them agreed homelessness was a reality that needed to be addressed, but many didn’t want even a temporary solution “in their backyard.”

I admit, I was horrified. As I sat in the room listening to these statements, it became harder for me to keep a straight face, that unreadable but present expression that often accompanies what we in the ministry call the “non-anxious presence.” In the midst of these exchanges, unable to hold my shock on my own any longer, I texted Rev. Leslie – “Minister Face is really hard to keep right now.” A minute later, I got her response – “We often preach about the world we want. This is the world we live in.” And that got me thinking.

 “We often preach about the world we want.” Well, what is the world I want? The world I want is a place where the dignity of all people is acknowledged by individuals and systems alike. Where there is equitable access to opportunities, where we embody a shared sense of preservation in our engagement with the environment. The world I want, the world I think we all want, is a place where all life can not only survive but all life can thrive, in mutually supportive relationships.

So if that’s the world we want, what is the world we live in? I’ll be honest, my experience of the world these days – it’s in a tender place. Although several businesses and celebrities have vowed to boycott North Carolina in response to its recent transphobic legislation, that has not stopped other states from considering similar laws, including Mississippi, where it is now legal to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals in the name of religious freedom. This past week, a group of us here at MDUUC shared our reflections on Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy, which left more than one of us feeling overwhelmed by the degree to which our criminal “justice” system perpetuates racism and sentences black men to death in a manner that is too similar to Jim Crow era lynchings to be ignored. And in my own experience as an Arab-American Muslim, the world we live in is breaking my heart. Each morning I wake up wondering not if but “what time today” will I see Islamophobic rhetoric dominate the headlines. And each time some seemingly random act of violence occurs, I find myself praying “don’t let them say they are Muslim,” because I know the backlash that will follow if they do.

And when it comes to our physical world, this one precious world that we rely on to sustain us, that heartbreak is just as strong. We know the basic statistics – carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years, and they keep climbing. Like our time for all ages presented in simple terms, our global temperature is on the rise, and the impact is significant. Extreme drought and heat waves are occurring more frequently and are at risk of becoming a normal, annual occurrence. Hurricanes that have already devastated communities around the globe will continue to grow in intensity and frequency. And the arctic, a place known for its frozen terrain, is projected to be ice-free by the mid-century.

A closer look at the human costs is equally disheartening. For indigenous people around the world, whose lives are deeply dependent on the natural environment and its resources, warmer temperatures, deforestation, and fires limit their access to vital food sources. Here in our own backyard, in West Oakland, residents who are already experiencing the destructive health effects of emissions from ships and trucks are now facing the possibility of coal trains going by their neighborhoods. In a part of the state where the pediatric hospitalization rate for asthma is double the state average, families – particularly children of color – are at risk for even more respiratory harm.

Climate change affects everyone – but its effects on the poor and people of color make it a racial and economic justice issue that is often forgotten. Populations that have been systemically marginalized by governments and globalization, people who are largely NOT responsible for climate change, are the ones who bear the greatest and most devastating burdens. And still, with all of this scientific evidence and the price paid by the most vulnerable in our world, there are leaders who continue to deny that there is any danger – who deny that all life, and especially the people and beings whose voices have been historically silenced, is at great risk.

The world we live in is a place where suffering can seem so widespread that it is impossible to know every place it is occurring. The challenges in our reality can make us feel so powerless that we enter into a spiral of fatalistic despair. In the case of that August hearing, the world we live in shocked me. And when I see people in positions of political power deny the realities of climate change, defending projects that increase the burden it has placed on people of color and people in lower socio-economic classes – I am devastated and I am angry. Is this really how things are? Is this really how things still are? This blatant classism and unfiltered hate, the severity of institutionalized racism and politically-backed systematic dehumanization…this was the world I read about in my high school history textbook – is this really still the world I live in? The world we live in today?

Yes. And we need to know that. When we are confronted by the actualities of oppression in our society, the real suffering and harm experienced by communities that have too long lived in the margins - in the moments when we come to the edge of our grief – it can be so tempting to turn back to that place of ignorance or make ourselves numb with false assurances that it’s “not really that bad.” But we need to know and name our reality, as painful and difficult as it may be to acknowledge. We need to confess what is actually happening around and to us. To be explicit about the shock and anguish that we feel. We need to let our cries out and let our tears fall.

It isn’t always easy to enter that place of our harsher realities and heartache, but it is essential. In the words of civil rights activist and writer, James Baldwin, “we have to look the grim facts in the face because if we don’t, we can never hope to change them.” Without facing the challenges of the world we live in – without letting them move our hearts and spirits and break them open – our hopes for the world, the world that we want, will not have roots in our reality. And as Unitarian Universalists, we come from a long line of voices that spoke of the need to root ourselves in reality, in the world that we live in, not only when it comes to shaping our faith but also when it comes to acting upon it.

One of my favorite Universalists, Clarence Skinner reminds us that hell and salvation are not afterlife concepts but “humanized and socialized” processes. Both are the result of our own actions as well as our existence in a “world of humanity from which [we] can by no means wholly disentangle [ourselves].” Hell already exists, in human suffering and the social evils that bring it about. And heaven, the world that we want, the shared salvation we hope for, cannot be built until we fully acknowledge those heartbreaking parts of the world that we live in.

Using our acknowledgment of this hell and heartbreak to root ourselves and actions is a process that Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. recently called “prophetic grief.” Prophetic grief takes our pain and turns it into power. It does not deny the realities of suffering and oppression but it is resolute in the faith that there is something healing that we can always tap into, holy forces of justice and change that remain stronger than the most hellish of realities. Prophetic grief does not ignore the world we live in but takes ownership of it, and uses it as the inspiration to act in new ways that heal. Our prophetic grief sees our reality as the reason why we must strive to be a source of hope.

And while Rev. Moss speaks from his context in black faith communities, his idea of “prophetic grief” is one that crosses faiths and cultures. One of the verses I find myself turning to time and time again in the Qur’an says the following: “Through hardship there is also ease. Through hardship there is also ease.” This verse, repeated in the original text, is said to have been spoken by the Prophet Muhammad in one of the most trying times of his life. Living in Mecca, having been shunned by those in power for speaking against the ways in which their economic practices cause harm to others – Muhammad, his followers, and his family were on the brink of death. And yet, the verses that are said to have been revealed to him in that moment assure him that he is not alone. That there were forces supporting him far greater than the ones causing him harm. That through his hardship, there was also ease, because he fought on the side of that greater good that we have seen emerge victorious in history even in the harshest, most hostile of settings.

This concept of “prophetic grief” also resonates with Unitarian Universalism’s understanding of our expanding potential. It reminds us that our faith, our power as people, is rooted in an infinite love that we can and must continue to discover new expressions of everyday. As UU theologian Rebecca Parker writes, “I believe we are living in a time when the best is asked of us, and this best is far beyond what we thought we were capable of or what we thought we would ever be asked to do. I believe that in rising to the occasion of what is asked of us now, we will discover a depth of strength and a richness of love and courage that we did not know we could claim or achieve.” By naming our reality, we live into our ability to connect to others with a genuine awareness of what is actually happening to and around us. We build relationships that are rooted in sincere companionship and compassionate trust, and remind one another that in the midst of devastation, our ability to create and love is still possible and is infinitely stronger. Whether we call it prophetic grief or rising to the occasion, our honest acknowledgment of injustice in the world is what expands our capacity to change it.

So where does our naming the world we live in take us? What is the payoff of taking that risk and making ourselves known? Months have passed since that August meeting, and in that time, we saw the shelter organizers root themselves in reality. They held community meetings to address concerns and continued attending council hearings to defend their cause. At one such meeting, three youth spoke. Three teenaged girls who spoke in support of the shelter, imploring the community to consider how it wanted to be known. How the city had a responsibility to send a message of compassion and care by creating this shelter. And eventually, in spite of multiple setbacks, the shelter was approved and operated in the winter. Over that time, support from community members grew, to the point that one person testified to her change of heart at later meetings. She was so impressed by the shelter’s organization and the safety it actually created in the neighborhood, that she supported its renewal in the next year.

It may not seem like a major victory or that significant of a change. A few people supporting a temporary solution to homelessness in one city doesn’t seem like a whole lot. But it is. Each person’s shift in opinion, this city’s willingness to try something new, is a glimmer of the world that is possible to create using the saving resources of the world that is. Changes of the heart, cultivated by the love and rising to the occasion of advocates and people of faith, is a reflection of our transformative power, our ability to confront the ugliness of our world knowing that we have access to forces of healing and change that are greater and more beautiful than the ones that can cause pain.

That same transformative power is accessible in our efforts to address climate change. In our time for all ages, the children acted because they had the courage to name their reality. They knew that if they worked together, even the smallest actions would have a great impact. And they made themselves and their reality known, reaching out to children around the world, putting their faith in a healing love they believed was greater than the destructive harm they had encountered. Here in California, many of us are doing what we can to name our reality of severe drought, and address it in many small ways that make a huge collective difference. Living with three other people, I am amazed by how a little bucket in the shower saves enough water for us to grow our own vegetables. I am admittedly a little disturbed and somewhat nauseated by how my cat has developed a taste for that bucket of used shower water. I suppose he wants to contribute to our conservation efforts by reducing the amount of times we have to refill his water bowl.

Turning off lights, using public transportation, recycling, putting solar panels on a church sanctuary – at an individual level these may not seem like they make a dent, but collectively, we know they can and do have a tremendous impact. And when we trust in that greater good and the human impulse to heal by asking others to join us in these small shifts, we make ourselves known, and make a new reality possible. Our ability to tap into those forces of healing and change doesn’t just end with adjustments to our daily routine. It includes making ourselves known in risky ways that confront the devastating effects of climate change, especially those felt by the most marginalized in our world. Last summer in Portland, Greenpeace activists rappelled off of a bridge in an effort to prevent the passage of the MSV Fennica, an icebreaker ship that was bound for oil-drilling operations in the Artic. Although the ship eventually passed through, their efforts made them and the realities of such oil drilling activities known.

And it encouraged many to believe they too could be a part of the movement for healing change. On March 23, UUs were among the hundreds who protested an oil lease auction in New Orleans, seeking to bring an end to gulf-area oil and gas drilling that caused harm to the local environment and communities. Here in Oakland, local communities and organizations like the Sierra Club and Communities for a Better Environment, are mobilizing an effort to prevent the approval of health-destroying coal trains – an effort that we too have the power to support.

“We often preach about the world we want. This is the world we live in.” These words hold the answer to why those early followers of Jesus eventually chose to be known. To remain hidden and accept the world as it was would have meant admitting that the world they wanted was not possible. It would have meant saying that that the world they had committed their lives to, the justice their leader had taught them to fight for was not actually within their capacity to create.

But when they chose to make themselves known, they put their faith in something greater. Not something outside of their reality, but something embedded deep within it. They put their faith in the compassion and healing that had to be greater than the hate and harm they encountered. In loving one another, just as Mary did when she reminded them there was something greater than their pain, they made themselves known as believers and creators of the Good. In naming and challenging oppressive realities, in proclaiming the good news of a holy impulse for justice, they put faith in the possibility of change. And they put faith in the capacity of people to bring it about

That text also helps me understand how we can be known. Like those early followers of a radical Jewish teacher, like the sacrificing and perseverant Muhammad, we can make the choice to be known to a world that needs our honest and engaged faith. We can choose to be known to this world as people who see the harshness of reality, who name it and grieve it, and who still believe that it is worth the risk to put our faith in love. We can be known as people who dive into the pains of this world and turn it into power. We can be known as people who rise to the occasion because we are supported by and possess a healing and creative love that is far greater than the harming and destructive forces we work against. We can be known as the people who recognize that the world we want is the world we live in, because together we have the power to change it.

(Preached on April 17, 2016 at the Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church)