I do not identify as a disabled person. Our society has more or less shaped a world that makes it easy for my body to function or move; that rewards the way my brain works. I end up taking much for granted because of this. Though increasingly less so as I learn more about ableism in our culture, as well as due to my own aging body.
I am about to tell a story about a time my mobility was temporarily impaired. The story is only part of the sermon. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart honor the larger context which we inhabit, which is to say, there are many of us in this room and on the livestream who are disabled, who live whole lives in a society that does not treat them as whole.
It seems important to acknowledge, before the sermon goes much further, that this is not a sermon about ableism or disability justice, though that topic is probably overdue. Overdue and best to be led by an individual or individuals who identify as disabled.
This spring, we do have a service scheduled that explores neurodiversity from a first-hand perspective, so that’s a start. May it not be an end.
The Electric Slide. Do you know it? It is a kind of line dance, made popular around the time I graduated from college in the late 1980s. It is the only line dance I know. And I absolutely love it. Sometimes, years will go by and I won’t have a chance to dance it. If it’s been awhile, I can be a bit rusty, but I usually get in the groove.
That was the case at the annual silent disco held when UU ministers gathered at last year’s Ministry Days in Baltimore.
Yes, silent disco. Let me explain.
At a silent disco, everyone dancing is wearing specific headphones – in our case, all the same music played for everyone, spun by a DJ in the house. The music can only be heard through the headphones, allowing others to hang out and chat with each other. Those chatting cannot hear the dance music, except occasionally, when all the dancers shout-sing along to a particularly beloved song. [Don’t Stop, Believin’…]
On that night in mid-June, I danced so fiercely, that I received one of the highest compliments I have ever received: a 12-year-old – the child of two clergy parents also on the dance floor – told me – me! – that I was “a good dancer.”
Three minutes before the end of this two-hour dance event, my hip popped. I heard it. I felt it. This had never happened to me before. While not in immediate pain, I could not walk without collapsing.
The dance floor began to clear. I called out to a friend and explained my situation. Right away, several people (I have the best colleagues) problem-solved and got me the help I needed: a scooter to get me back to my hotel room (much to the surprise of my roommate who woke up and graciously helped me).
General Assembly started the next day. I spent the first two days of it walking with a cane and pronounced limp. Then without a cane, but still the pronounced limp. Then without a pronounced limp, but still a limp. Eventually, constant pain turned into an occasional ache. By the end of the summer, no pain, no limp. I felt so fortunate. I feel so fortunate.
At first, walking with that limp, not knowing how long it would be my companion, I was reminded of the Biblical story of Jacob, who while wrestling, came out of that with an injury to his hip and a lifelong limp.
Some say it was with an angel with whom Jacob wrestles, though in the Book of Genesis, it’s not clear. The original language uses the word “ish” which translates to “man.” Yet there are plenty of opinions: some say “a man” and some say it was “god” and some say it was an “angel.” Personally, I’m partial to the interpretation that Jacob was wrestling with his conscience (he had done terrible things up to that point).
As the story goes, in the course of this physical grappling that lasts all night long, Jacob’s opponent purposely injures Jacob’s hip. Jacob refuses to stop wrestling until this opponent agrees to bless him.
In the end, Jacob leaves not only with the blessing he insisted upon, but also his opponent has declared a new name: “Israel.” While Israel, formerly Jacob, emerges with that blessing he insisted on (and possibly a clear conscience), he walks with a limp the rest of his life.
Friends, we are not going to come out of this particular era of our shared communal lives without injury. We will not get out unscathed. It’s too late for that. I think of my clergy colleagues, some of them UU ministers, who were bruised and roughed up by ICE officers outside the Broadview Center in Evanston, Illinois, just about a month ago – intact yet bruised. If what we end up with is only a permanent limp, we should call ourselves lucky.
And even with all the ways in which harm is being caused, injuries to our neighbors, damage to our beloved, planet, we can choose to bless the world.
There is a David Sipress cartoon – maybe you know it?
How many here grew up with the “rule” that to be a good citizen, one must stay informed? The more informed, the better a citizen, right?
Times have changed. With that change, strategies for how to be an engaged citizen have changed, too.
While we must not have an ill-informed electorate, if we are to salvage democracy’s integrity, we also cannot have an oversaturated electorate. That oversaturation, that intentional overwhelm, that is an explicit strategy that comes from the authoritarian handbook.
There must be a balance between enough information and too much information, a bit like a dance that sways between too much and not enough, finding a groove with the just right amount.
Perhaps you are already dancing this dance of balance? Perhaps you have already discovered it’s no good for your blood pressure or your spirit or, frankly, your commitment to keep showing up for social change, to wake up and immediately read every single one of the headlines?
Perhaps you have noticed that yelling at the news show late at night sucks the oxygen out of the room, making it hard to breathe, zapping necessary energy your spirit needs to do your part to save our democracy.
This is explicit, intended strategy. This is a page out of the authoritarian handbook. Community organizer, Daniel Hunter, whom I quote often from this pulpit, wrote the following:
The pace of authoritarianism isn’t just fast; it’s dizzying. It wants us to stumble. To lose our grounding. To get used to the smoke, the noise, the constant edge of dread. But here’s a quiet truth: it’s a sign of your humanity that it feels awful. It means the sickness hasn’t set in. That your body, your spirit, your gut knows this isn’t normal. That we’re still capable of discerning dignity from decay. That our hearts haven’t adapted to the chaos—and that’s worth holding onto. Pain can be a compass. Grief, a refusal. Discomfort, a sign of integrity.
He concludes:
…if you feel awful, exhausted, raw, heart-heavy—you’re not broken. You’re alive.
Perhaps this is our wound from wrestling with these times into which we have been born: exhaustion, rawness, heavy-hearted-ness. Perhaps this is our wound, the limp we carry with us these days. Perhaps, as Daniel Hunter suggests, it is a sign of our humanity.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, if we must wrestle, if it is choiceless and unavoidable, then we do what we can, and just like Jacob who became Israel, claim a blessing.
I also often quote the late Buddhist scholar and deep ecologist, Joanna Macy, who said,
There’s a song that wants to sing itself through us, and we’ve just got to be available.
A song that wants to sing through us.
Perhaps a song that is a blessing – a blessing in our lives and a blessing we can choose to offer the world. A blessing as our contribution to the healing of the planet and the healing of the world.
May we, indeed, choose to bless the world – with words, with singing and music, with coming together – and in so doing, placing love at the center.
May these blessings be bigger than whatever struggles we encounter. May they be bigger than whatever it is we are wrestling with.
Earlier we heard words from Reverend Dr. Rebecca Parker, reminding us that we all must choose:
Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be—
can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind’s power,
the strength of the hands,
the reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting
Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door,
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.
You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
Choose to bless the world. Choose to be available to allow a song to be sung through us.
Do so, even as the world is damaged. Do so, even as the world wounds us. Do so, as we struggle in this long dark night for the political soul of democracy in our nation.
Yes, choose the dance even if we know, in the end, we will come out limping.
Yes, choose the texture of authentic, accountable, relational community, even with its rough edges and flawed parts, its imperfections and regular disappointments, over the commodified silos of individualism and fear.
Yes, choose to stay awake, but not overwhelmed, knowing that our choices shape how we move in the world, change how we move in the world, perhaps for the rest of our lives.
We close this poem from Jan Richardson, called Jacob’s Blessing:
If this blessing were easy,
anyone could claim it.
As it is,
I am here to tell you
that it will take some work.
This is the blessing
that visits you
in the struggling,
in the wrestling,
in the striving.
This is the blessing
that comes
after you have left
everything behind,
after you have stepped out,
after you have crossed
into that realm
beyond every landmark
you have known.
This is the blessing
that takes all night
to find.
It’s not that this blessing
is so difficult,
as if it were not filled
with grace
or with the love
that lives
in every line.
It’s simply that
it requires you
to want it,
to ask for it,
to place yourself
in its path.
It demands that you
stand to meet it
when it arrives,
that you stretch yourself
in ways you didn’t know
you could move,
that you agree
to not give up.
So when this blessing comes,
borne in the hands
of the difficult angel
who has chosen you,
do not let go.
Give yourself
into its grip.
It will wound you,
but I tell you
there will come a day
when what felt to you
like limping
was something more
like dancing
as you moved into
the cadence
of your new
and blessed name.
