March 30, 2025

First Unitarian Universalist Society Burlington

leading worship with Emma’s Revolution – Sandy O & Pat Humphries

Hope changes everything. Song People sing.

Good lyrics to feed the spirit. 

Good lyrics to ground us in gratitude.

Hope changes everything. Song People sing.

Erika, our Director of Lifespan Faith Development, has been taking this month’s Earth Teacher very seriously. This month, our Earth Teacher is Roots, and Erika has been sparking our spiritual imaginations well.

A few weeks ago, she told the story of redwood roots – how those very tall ancient wise ones, tall oh so tall, have relatively shallow root systems. Systems that do not go down down down, but spread out, and entangle themselves with the roots of their sibling redwoods, creating a network of resilience not just for themselves, but for the whole redwood stand. 

Her take-away message has been that when violent winds blow, trees can lean into the strength of the whole stand, perhaps even the whole forest.

Any violent winds blowing in our midst? 

Now is the time to lean into the strength of the whole stand. Now is the time to learn better ways of being than going it alone. Now is the time to turn our long spoons in that direction that feeds others, because that also feeds ourselves.

Last year, as a faith movement we re-affirmed our relationship to interdependence. With new and renewed words, we describe interdependence as honoring “the interdependent web of all existence. With reverence for the great web of life and with humility, we acknowledge our place in it.”

And to deepen our living into this value, we Unitarian Universalists “covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation. We will create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice. We will work to repair harm and damaged relationships.”

Ours is not an easy faith. At times, it can be an exacting one, asking much of us. This covenant to guide us into living into our shared value of interdependence? It asks much of us. It demands much of us.

We covenant to protect all beings from exploitation. 

I speak this and want to weep. I know you do, too.

I think of Rumeysa Ozturk, that Turkish Tufts student, Fulbright Scholar, disappeared from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, just a few days ago. There are others, some of whose names we know, like Mamoud Khalil from Columbia University.  And some of whose names we do not know – all those Venezuelan men in El Salvador, placed there by OUR federal government, in places called prison cells, but which look like concentration camps.

Violent winds are blowing with a ferocity that it takes a vulnerable one, and then another, and then another.

Immigrants, in this country legally or not, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Trans folx and nonbinary folx applying for passports and having essential documents ~ birth certificates ~ withheld …or destroyed.

Right now, it is our communal attention – our spiritual attention, our political attention, our public attention – that must be the tangle of roots that does all that we can to minimize the harm of this storm. 

It was the public attention to Mamoud Khalil’s removal from New York City to New Jersey then to Louisiana detention, that brought him back to New Jersey. 

It matters that we offer our roots to be part of the interdependence that cannot save everything or everyone, but can still save.

It’s not easy. Our overwhelm is their strategy. Our despair, our worry. They want this.

Yet we must try. We must try to feed our spirits. We must try to ground ourselves in gratitude. In order to be available to take their hands off our democracy.

My colleague, the Reverend Alix Klingenberg, recently suggested, “Try a poem instead of panic.” 

Given that she’s a poet, this makes sense. In the spirit of our guests, I want to expand this notion to include songs.

Hope changes everything. Sing people sing.

In the original spirit, I offer you this piece of a poem – a preemptive gesture, in exchange for any panic that rises within you this coming week as violent winds continue to blow. 

This part of a poem is from Kimberly Blaeser:

 The bones [of the foot] don’t get casts when they break. We tape them— one phalange to its neighbor for support. (Other things like sorrow work that way, too— find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)

Next week, should you feel panic rising within you – or despair – or cynicism – or bitterness – can you follow Alix’s advice: try a poem, instead of panic?

Can you with that poem – any poem, or even a song – let the panic go? No, that is the wrong tense or texture, too passive ~ can you FLING the panic away? Throw it away, hurl the panic far from you, that harsh and hard feeling, the too much of it, and instead, welcome a poem, or a part of a poem, or just the message of the poem, that sorrow (and resistance) find healing in the closeness, in the not alone-ness, in the coming together-ness, even when we do not know why we come together or what we shall find ourselves doing when we do so?

Can you take as real the message from the earlier parable – that culturally and economically, we have all been given long spoons to feed our individual selves, except that’s not how the nature of reality works.

We are not meant to feed ourselves, or at least, not only ourselves. 

We are meant to feed each other. 

We are meant to sing with each other and to each other. 

We are meant to hold each other up and be held.

We are meant for leaning on.

We are meant to lean into the fullest and deepest and truest meaning of what it is to be interdependent.

This is how we feed our spirits. 

This is how we ground ourselves in gratitude.