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Rev. Jen Crow Senior Minister
First Universalist Church of Minneapolis
August 1, 2021
Today’s challenging times require a nimble and resilient spirituality. We need a demanding, inspiring faith and a love strong enough that it will not let us go. Join us as we draw the circle wide, gather our strength, and promise to stay in the struggle and joy until love wins.
This broadcast is the Sunday worship service held during the 2021 General Assembly, hosted by First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, original service date was June 27, 2021.
Sermon
Rev. Jen Crow:
Welcome everyone to the Sunday morning worship service at the 2021 General Assembly. My name is Jennifer Crow, and I’m one of the ministers at the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, and we are so glad that you are here with us. If you’re joining us live, on Sunday morning, we hope you’ll use the chat if you’re able, and let us know where you’re coming in from and say hello to each other there. First Universalist Church is a faith community that welcomes, affirms and protects the light in each and every human heart; that listens deeply to where love is calling us next, and with humility, compassion and courage acts for justice in the world. We do all of this as a faith community that is deeply committed to dismantling white supremacy culture, and building the beloved community, a place where all can be free and feel a sense of belonging and wholeness. We welcome you to this place and space. We come to you today from Minneapolis, Minnesota from First Universalist Church from the shores of Bde Maka Ska, and the contemporary and traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples, the original stewards of this land. We come to you uplifting the name of these lands and the community members from these Nations who reside alongside us. We come to you from Falcon Heights, from Brooklyn Center, and from George Floyd Square. We acknowledge the trauma that is deeply embedded in the foundation of this country. The genocide, enslavement and ongoing occupation and oppression that has impacted indigenous communities, communities of color, and immigrant and other communities – the culture of colonization and white supremacy that injures us all. We acknowledge the communities of resistance that continue to side with love, teaching us through their persistence, courage, and creativity that another way is possible. Here in this particular place, and in all of the places that you are – we invite you to bring your full self into the present moment.
Breathing in and breathing out – we connect across space and time, we heal ourselves and each other, as we tell the truth in love. Welcome, once again, to the shared experience of hope and healing.
Our Chalice lighting today is led by some of the members of First Universalist Church’s, single parents community. These families have been meeting faithfully together over Zoom throughout the pandemic, offering care and support to each other during these challenging times. Please join us in lighting your own chalice as we light our chalice led by Reverend Sara Smalley and these families.
Please join in the words for the lighting of the chalice: Love is the spirit of this church; and service is its law; this is our great covenant; to dwell together in peace; to seek the truth in love; and to help one another.
Singing: Love, love, love… all we need is love, love, love. (repeats)
Lauren Wyeth:
I’m Lauren Wyeth. And I’m here to tell a story, and in particular I want to talk with the kids, because I’m going to tell you about a time kind of a long time ago – when I learned something really important from my son. My son Ames and I we were hanging out one Sunday afternoon, not really doing that much, and apparently i was i was humming under my breath, I was humming this tune. (humming) Mm hmm. And Ames was about maybe five years old, but somehow he’d never heard this song before so he asked me to sing it to him. And so I did, it’s the one that goes like “On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese. I lost my poor me ball and somebody sneezed.” And Ames listened really closely and then he got really serious, and he demanded, “Sing the rest.” And so I did “It rolled in the garden and under a bush” it goes and then at that point Ames’ lower lip starts sticking out and his forehead starts getting all wrinkled up. And I was surprised I stopped and I said, “You know, what’s up” Are you okay honey” And he goes, “Keep singing.” So I did, but when I sang, “and then my poor meatball was nothing but mush.” Ames just started crying, tears running down his face, and I was shocked to me. I was like “Honey, what’s the matter”” And Ames just said “Sing it again.” And I said, “But isn’t the song what’s making you cry”” And he nodded, and I said, “But I don’t want to make you cry.” And he goes: “Mama, sing.” Now, I really didn’t want to sing something that was clearly breaking his heart. But Ames was 100% clear. So even though it was really hard to do it, I sang the song again and he kept crying. And then he wanted to hear it all the way through again and then again, until finally he was all cried out. And only then, when he was resting his head on my shoulder, and he was patting my arm really exhausted, only then was he ready to talk. I asked him, “What was making you cry” Was was it that they lost their lunch that their lunch rolled away”” And Ames told me. “No,” and I could tell it was really hard for him to say this next part, but he said “It was, it was the poor meatball.
Well, ever since that day, Ames and a lot of other kids too many of them at my church, they’ve been teaching me something really important. They’ve been teaching me that when we feel compassion, when that wells up in us, it’s natural, and it’s good to move in closer, even, even if it hurts. So we can use our hearts and our minds and our bodies to understand what’s happening. And when we grownups, when we try to distract kids from what’s painful or broken, that they notice in the world, we’re not actually helping you, and know it back then. But Ames really needed me to sing so that he could better understand the meatball. Now, sometimes, sometimes we adults might feel unsure about whether you’re ready for certain conversations, because sometimes if really young people ask really hard questions. Like, “Why doesn’t that person have a place to live”” or “Why are the police hurting people instead of protecting them”” Or “What if my pronouns that people are using, don’t fit” What then””. But if you’re asking, you’re ready, you’re ready for the conversation. You want to understand, right” And it’s our job. It’s our job as your grown ups to be ready when you are, and to go there with you. Now, several years after Ames insisted I sing about the meatball, he and his brother discovered this series of books called The Hunger Games. And those books have so many sad parts. In fact, they have some really, really upsetting parts. And some of the grownups that I know told me, they didn’t think my kids should even be allowed to read those books. But I didn’t believe that because of this lesson kids had already taught me. I figured out that I think the Hunger Games, books and movies were really popular for a good reason. And I think it’s because they are about make believe kids. And I make believe world where terrible and dangerous problems are right in front of them. And where many of them make believe, grownups don’t really seem to understand how scary and wrong things have become. And the truth is, there are some big serious problems in the real world. Evil things that happen. And kids are right to look for stories that help them think about why that is, and what we might be able to do about it. Kids have taught me that it’s important to understand the poor meatball gone to mush. It’s not too much. If we do it together. And there’s a magic that happens. There’s a magic that happens when we do it together. There’s a tenderness. There’s a sweetness that happens in our togetherness, there’s freedom, and there’s a healthy kind of power in our togetherness. Thanks for revealing that to me. Imagine the world of love and liberation, we could build with that power together.
Yahanna Mackbee:
Hi, my name is Yahanna Mackbee. I’m a member at First Universalist Church and I also serve on the Board of Trustees. Today I’m going to be reciting a poem by Reverend Teresa Ines Soto.
It’s called everything is still on fire. Everything is still on fire. Despite your best efforts. In addition to living, it is clear that fire or not, you must level up in what it means to thrive. Right now that means wrestling with the truth in the fact that everything is not your fault. I am sorry that everything is still on fire. Once hate catches the winds of “Not my problem” blow in blaze, it is hard to stop. But hard is not impossible. Not yet, is different than never. You, in community, have an answer. You have a response to systems of power and control and to the cost of suffering.
You and your community, together, are the answer. You are not only a people of flame, but also a people of cold, clear truth. You know both where you fall short and where you flourish, and where you still reach. Everything is still on fire, but all is not lost. You remain more nimble than steadfast. More unshakable than swayed by the latest rage. You are here to put out the ravenous flames and heal the world. Enough is enough. Everything is still on fire.
Rev. Karen Hutt:
In 1967, Douglas Turner Ward wrote a play called the Day of Absence. The play starts off with a town in absolute panic. Something was terribly wrong. Half the people had disappear. In fact, all of the black people in the town had disappeared. A scene from the play: Jimmy they gone. Henry, not a one of them in the street. Not a one of our homes. Not one singing. Not one walking down the street. The last living one of them nowhere to be found. What are we going to do Mayor” Keep everybody together. Keep your head on your shoulders. They can’t be far, probably just hiding somewhere. Jackson, Jackson. Yes, sir Mayor. Immediately mobilize our Citizens Emergency Distress Committee. Order a fleet of sound trucks to patrol the streets in the nigra alleys. They can’t remain hidden for too long. Tell everybody just to calm down. Everything’s gonna be under control. Then have another squadron patrol some more alleys and find out if they’re hiding somewhere we can’t find them. Ordering them out, one by one. Wherever they are by God we will find them if we have to dig them up from the ground ourselves. We got to find them negros. Now the play is performed in white face with black actors. And it goes on to depict the chaos that occurs in this small town without black people. But where did they all go” Why did they all leave” Will they ever come back” What prompted them to leave in the first place” In many ways, the disappearance of Black people from this town, this empowers white supremacy. Without black bodies, white supremacy, becomes non functional and inert. Without blackness whiteness is dangerously feeble, feckless and frightened by its own shadow. Since it is historically irrational, and nearly impossible for blackness to enter into any kind of fruitful relationship with the concept of whiteness, black liberatory responsibility and rationality is the only path forward. One form of this rational black resistance that has proven highly effective throughout the Black Diaspora is that of fugitivity. The philosopher and the discourse of Professor Fred Moten defines black fugitivity as a “disavowal of and disengagement from state-governed prospects that attempt to adjudicate normative constructions of difference through liberal tropes of freedom and democratic belonging. Black fugitivity it is a desire for and a spirit of escaping and transgressing the proper and proposed.” Friends, fugitivity means always running away from the ontologically embodied challenge for African Americans to leave that random social notion of slaveness. Because of this inheritance that we have incurred, it is deep within my Black DNA to escape.
Years ago, I was on a tour of a plantation with a Native American friend of mine. And while the tour guide was giving some very vague descriptions describing the antics of this plantation, I decided that I was going to make history come alive with my friend, and we started to play a game with the tour guide and the other tourist of running away of hiding around every corner, telling them “shhh we try to escape master.” We attempted to do this throughout the tour. And while our reenactment caused great consternation for our guide and the other tourists, it was the only response we could have had, freeing ourselves from the proper and propose government sanction limitations placed on us by this historic plantation. The demarcation of blackness necessitates our fugitivity. In the play blackness disappeared from that town. They left because of the gratuitous acts of harm inflicted upon them. They left because they had plans to build communities, like the Blue Maroon community and the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. They left because they had ideas to produce an economy like the fabulously wealthy, Black Wall Street of Tulsa. They left because they had dreams for their children in the swamp schools on stilts off the eastern shores of the Carolinas. They had visualizations of independence, of self reliance and of joyous segregation. I came to Unitarian Universalism with a free thinking, unapologetically human centered belief that that was unshackled by any kind of proper and propose notion of religiosity, superstition and trickery. Black Fugitivity is supported by our first principle, because fugitivity supports the act of self directed inherent worth and dignity. Not the worth and dignity ascribed by others who simply want to see my black body next to them in a pew to smile at me on Sunday. NO, a worth and dignity that is ascribed by us for us, because we want to love ourselves, and we want love to win first, not a love of self that has a bargaining chip, or some kind of negotiables. But a love of self that is firm, rooted, solid, unwavering and fierce. The worth and dignity of blackness must imagine eradicating the after life of slavery, which like all after lives from nuclear waste, On has lethal capabilities that still live on in the half lives of our behavior that pervert our moral and theological imaginations. We also can not simply say we believe in hope for systemic reform, prayers for a better day, and conditional mutuality. These acts will not help love win, because conditional hope, and prayers by themselves never liberated anyone. Fugitivity is not unknown to Unitarian Universalists. We know that is because of our ideas. Micahel Servatus, because of his rejection of the Trinity, and eventual execution by burning for heresy, knew what fugitivity was he survived running from town to town and place to place writing and publishing his radical thoughts while resisting the prescribed and proper trinitarianism of Calvin.
Ethelred Brown in Jamaica had found his way to the Unitarian Universalism by rejecting the Trinity, and as a Unitarian Universalist minister he received nominal and limited support, and it was all conditional from the Unitarians, but he started a successful black church in Harlem 100 years ago. Rev. Brown like so many black Unitarians and Universalists over the last 175 years, became fugitives within our faith. Seeking theological and religious freedom, only to be met with racism, tokenism and pet-like curiosity. Remember, the Unitarian Universalist Black fugitivity walkout in 1967″ Black ancestral commitments to humanism is seen in these freedom seeking behaviors. Fugitivity, Escaping, Marooning and Hiding. These techniques have been the avenues to realize our humanity, as we resist the anti-humanism of whiteness. Along with our indigenous siblings, our commitment to our inherent worth and dignity makes us the first humanist in North America. Think about it so, think about it, friends. Think about it. Will the Black people ever come back to that town” What happens when we focus on the fugitive instead of the emancipated” What might we learn about justice from the runaway slave, the outlaw, the maroon” Is Òjustice” something that is state sponsored and can be bestowed, or must be fashioned from the broken shards and bits and pieces of life in the swamps and the hills seeking freedom” Can the memories, experiences, and unreconciled grievances of fugitivity expand our vision of the future in America” Now, at the end of the play, the town is an absolute disarray. In fact they’re thinking of calling in the National Guard to do laundry and cook for them. They just don’t know what to do without blackness. The Mayor pleads, pleads on a loudspeaker… “Please come back y’all. For my sake, please# All of you – even you questionable ones# I want you to come back. I…I promise no harm will be done to you. There will be no revenge dismissed. Dis…disallowed to you. We’ll forgive everything. I’ll kiss even the feet of those shoes of the first one that walks up and returns to show up. Just come back please.” In the next scene, the play ends as it starts with Clem and Luke, sitting side by side talking, when one of them notices Rastus coming down the street.
Is that a Negra I see” Sure does look like one to me. With their backs, single file held high and straight. Looking forward. They return to the town without a word. They acted as if nothing has happened when we asked where they were. You see the fear, the fear, the fear, the fear of fugitivity changes things. I would like to believe That they came back because the town had developed a powerful new vaccine or an anecdote to white supremacy culture. Is that possible” Friends, create a container with your arms and open up your own moral imagination. Visualize the words, behaviors, gestures and impulses that bring forth a new world that blackness can return safely to. Let us create a vaccine for the contagion of white supremacy. Let’s replace the symptoms of perfections with the cure of appreciation. Can you see that” Let us replace the urgency of white supremacy culture with measure discernment. Let us acknowledge our fear and relinquish defensiveness. Let us replace the characteristic of objectivity with particularity. Let us replace the characteristic of power hoarding with the shi.., with sharing and listening. Let us replace the characteristic of fear and open of, open conflict, with honesty and authenticity. Let us replace the characteristic of paternalism with real mutual regard. Let us stop thinking there is only one right way and cultivate cultural humility. If we do this, we will replace some of our individualism with communion. Now that we are filled up with an aspiration to imagine a new culture ask yourself friends, this question. Is this country, is our faith, is America ready for the fugitive to really return” Is this country redeemable” What will you do to help us figure it out” Blessed be, and Amen.
(music) I have to admit I am in the rough !Try to forget but it’s just so tough, yeah !Hungry for peace and whenever I ease it !The more it just brings me down, no, no
But I still hang onFor if there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh !People say they’ll hear you !But they don’t really understand !It’s really so exhausting !They’re tryna reach out for someone’s hand !Keep on tellin’ me it gets better !It’s hard to see when all I get is bad weather, no !But I still hang on !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !Hunt for me, press on me !I don’t mind seeing it comin’ my way !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !So I don’t mind it comin’ my way, no !I’m tired of putting out the fire !Freedom is all I desire !If there’s no pressure, there’ll be no diamonds !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, diamond !I know I will be a diamond, diamond, a diamond, oh
Rev. Jen Crow:
It was a few months ago, when my son made the invitation. It was the first spring thunderstorm here in Minneapolis after what felt like a perpetual winter. Henry wanted us to join him outside in the rain. Now, this might seem like a typical invitation from a kid to their family, but it wasn’t for us. You see, it was just about five years ago, during a thunderstorm much like this one, that lightning hit our house in the middle of the night. The impact of the lightning the sound, it rocked us awake that evening. And we went stumbling through the house looking for each other and heading out into the rain. We lost almost everything in an instant. And we were incredibly lucky. We knew it could have been otherwise. Now, given that history, I can’t say that anybody in my family really looks forward to a thunderstorm. In fact, on that night, when Henry was inviting us to join him out there in the rain, I was considering cowering in the corner of the basement. But I figured as the only adult present at that point, I should probably stay upstairs. It wasn’t until the next morning that it dawned on me what Henry had been doing that night. He wasn’t hiding from the reality of the rain. He wasn’t hiding from the thunder and even the fires that had in fact returned to our city. He was out there in it. He was soaking up the joy of the first spring rain after six months of waiting in Minnesota. He was out there, even as the lightning was lighting up the sky, going past surviving and into thriving. And he was inviting us to join him in it. I tell you this today, not just because I want to brag on my son, which I always do, just to be clear. But I’m telling you this because when I woke up the next morning and realized what he was doing, I realized he was inviting us to go past the kind of living where it’s white knuckle Hold on, barely make it through and move past that out into joy. He was reminding me that another world and another way, was possible. And I was so grateful for that reminder. Now, we know something about fires. All of us do literal and metaphorical, whether we’re in Minneapolis or somewhere else. Fires happen in all kinds of ways in all of our lives. When one moment things are one way and the next, they are another. This past spring we were reeling here in Minneapolis, reeling from the trauma of the trial of Derek Chauvin, reeling from another police murder of a black body of Dante Wright over in Brooklyn Heights. And as this was happening, there were particular words ringing in my heart and mind. They were Rev. Soto’s words. They write, “Everything is still on fire.” “Everything is still on fire.” And, and in addition to living, it is clear that we are going to need to level up in what it means to thrive. “Everything is still on fire” they write and in addition to living, it is clear that fire or not, we must level up in what it means to thrive. Beloved’s, it is time for us to level up in what it means to thrive as individuals and as Unitarian Universalists. We are meant for more than survival, even though sometimes that is all we can do. We are meant for thriving. Our communities are meant to be spaces of collective liberation, places where we and all who join us know without a doubt their inherent worth and dignity. Places where we can be living examples of the embodied experience of what it means to be whole and holy and worthy welcome, and wanted. To know ourselves one more redeemer here on this earth. That is what our communities are supposed to be like. We are meant for thriving, a circle wide enough to welcome us all. A love that will not let us go. This is who we are meant to be. This is the love we are meant to embody. Now, the pressure is on these days, the pressure is on as Jake Zyrus and our First Universalist youth just sang to us. And if I am honest, I do not mind it coming our way at all. Because it is time. It is time for us to become the people we have long proclaimed ourselves to be the people of a true wide welcome. This is who we are meant to be. And I’ll tell you my fear is that we will continue to dream small. That we will dream small and fall victim to a miniscule change and call it progress. I’ll tell you I am haunted.
Absolutely haunted by the story of a young Howard Thurman, Howard Thurman, who would go on to become the spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, who would go on to write words that continue to serve all those who are living with their back against the wall. It was the 1920s and Howard Thurman was a student at Morehouse College, and he was on his way with his mentor to an integrated meeting at the local YMCA. there at that meeting, he was going to hear from the white leaders in town about their plan to create greater racial equity in the city of Atlanta. So, Thurman arrived and sat down, and one of the most liberal white men in town got up and began holding fourth. Great change was coming. He said, they had done something magnificent. You see there in the auditorium in town, the seating had always been segregated, with whites sitting at the front of the theater and Blacks sitting at the back. But he and his friends had gotten to work. And they had changed things there in the city. They had made it so the dividing line in the auditorium now ran down the center, running vertically with whites on one side and blacks on the other. Wasn’t this amazing progress they had made” Thurman stood and turned and walked out of the room. This was the progress he had been promised. Was this really the best that the well meaning white folks in power could come up with” Simply a moving around of the lines that divided them. Such discouragement, so much frustration. I tell you, my fear is that we will be limited like this. Now 100 years later, that somehow we will still fail to imagine progress and change big enough to be worthy of the legacy we proclaim. That is my fear for us. It was 20 years later, after that meeting at the YMCA, that the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman was called to serve the first intentionally multicultural, multiracial congregation in the United States. It was 1944. And Thurman and the people of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples did something more, they’d stopped moving around the lines that divided us and instead created a community that truly welcomed people of all identities, where folks had experiences of the transcendent together and felt a sense of unity, a place where they lived into their faith and moved with action out into the world. They created a community of collective liberation, the kind we are dreaming of creating now. Even in a world where the fires keep on coming, it is possible for us to level up in what it means to thrive. And this friends is the kind of transformation I am inviting us into as individuals and as Unitarian Universalists, even in the society that is so broken, and so soul breaking, we are called to live lives and create communities of collective liberation. Places where we can feel joy, where we can be welcomed in the fullness of who we are, and trust that we will be welcomed in love with the wide embrace that we talk about. This is who we are, this is who we are called to be. We can do this, we can level up in what it means to thrive, to be the people of the wide welcome. To be part of a love that will not let us go. To stay in the struggle friends until love wins. May it be so, and Amen.
Rev. Jen Crow:
Beloveds. May you each know yourselves as the beautiful and important people that you are. Each one of you born one more redeemer in this world. Whole and holy and worthy, welcome and wanted. And then friends, may you go share this love with the world. May it be so, Amen. (music)
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