The shock is over, black lives are public executions, the prison complex is Gehenna, oil interests kill water protectors, white terrorists are normalized in nationwide mass shootings. How many more movies does Michael Moore have to make?
Monday, March 13, 2017
Do Not Normalize in Our Churches
Do not normalize in the Trump era.
The shock is over, black lives are public executions, the prison complex is Gehenna, oil interests kill water protectors, white terrorists are normalized in nationwide mass shootings. How many more movies does Michael Moore have to make?
The shock is over, black lives are public executions, the prison complex is Gehenna, oil interests kill water protectors, white terrorists are normalized in nationwide mass shootings. How many more movies does Michael Moore have to make?
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Moving Through Love And Pain
Sermon for 2 worship services at Olympia, Washington, 3/12/2017
You can listen here: http://ouuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2017-03-12-service.mp3
Good morning, everyone. This is probably my 15th pulpit in the US now.
I will have probably do 12 more to go. Thanks for inviting me even this far to listen to what I have to say. This, as a privilege, is not lost on me. It gives me courage. I know I could be preaching to the choir. It is my hope that you are true allies. But I look all over churches today in our Unitarian faith and find myself doubting. They said there are only 3 sacraments in the Unitarian faith : Doubt, argument, and voting. I am doubting about our progressiveness. We owe much of our faith to the lives put at risk in the narratives of people of color more than to the theoretical wanderings of those in their comfort zones. And yet I see almost very few clues in our churches to signify this. Our explicit curriculum of equality is not what is implicit in our conversations, our walls, our people or our art.
I am here to be honest. I should be honest. I didn’t come all the way here just to sing old songs and confirm Filipino stereotypes. What a waste that would be. It has been an interesting few months in the states now. This is now the 24th state I’ve visited.
After each sermon I’ve done, people come to me with quite a range of reactions. The first is the most fascinating: The Burning Man look: “I’ve been to the Philippines, it was amazing!!” You can definitely still hear all 7,641 islands partying in their heads.
Second reaction I get I name the Royal Treatment: “Oh poor Filipinos, they take the jobs we don’t do around here. And oh my, so many nannies, nurses, teachers --- the care industry, Filipinos are so good!” Caring is something we should all do, by the way. Just because non-white people do it better, doesn’t mean caring is less valuable. Third reaction I get I call Disturbia: “Duterte is so much like Trump!” Duterte is an anomaly – an old school chauvinist polyamory in a country where gender equality is in the top 7 in the world along with Scandinavian countries. This is according to the World Economic Forum. Duterte has scuttled the oligarchy and disloged the dominance of Manila, the capital. He is from the south, an outsider. In his 21 years in office, he remains untainted with corruption. Meanwhile, he has exposed Catholic bishops who had been receiving special favors from the government to be silent about corruption. His postcolonial rhetoric is the voice of the masses suppressed for a long long time.
In his first 6 months of office, one million people testing positive for illegal drug use surrendered, not killed. Why would he kill 7,000 people? The powerful lords have been rattled. They began to eliminate assets. Small-time drug dealers who have taken on mafioso personas in their small communities refused to give in. They have resisted arrest, sabotaged police operations, obstructed justice, and tried their best to preserve their little power, and even launched their own vigilante groups to eliminate competition. Because bad people are real. We can talk more during coffee hour.
But why am I really here today?
I told you about the 3 reactions I get and well, here’s the fourth:, “All will be usual, all will be normal, all will be well.” No matter how much I clamor and make a good case for more people of color on our walls, I come back to churches and get nothing, no change is evident, no insurrection, no revolution. And this really is what erodes my faith more than anything, this is what truly hurts my sense of agency, if at all I am an agent of change. And I’m tiring out. Whatever demon wanted me to tire out is succeeding more often in pulling me down now: I met a minister who think that my suggestion of having people of color lined up for the opening words is, in his own words, “A big fuck you to sensitive white people reeling from Trump’s election.” I’ve endured worship services whose idea of marginalization is being a liberal in the Trump era, to be unheard and not counted in Trump’s agenda. That is not marginalization, that’s just being opposition in a highly polarized country. Yet if one white male minister from a congregation is to be believed, the government is not going to be a fascist regime. He says there is enough check and balance in this mature democracy to stop this from happening. Well the US Constitution never envisioned a scenario where all three branches of government will fall under a singular plan, hasn’t it?
I am tired of being allowed to have only two voices: (1) Being a teacher of what ought to be and yet not being given power or authority to make changes. (2) Being the oppressed voice, like Valerie Kaur, the sikh voice appealing to our good sense to make way for the “others” in this society, asking for empathy and pity.
I am here because I DEMAND wisdom. I don’t ask for it. I demand every ally of humanity here, who professes to be one, to make the decision to make love win.
I’m also here to tell you I can be an ally in what Dr. John Berquist calls an insurrection of the spirit. And I’m here because I cannot in good conscience tolerate any more inaction from our churches. And I’m risking my heart to tell you that I will have none of “That was a great sermon” pleasantry anymore.
Now I’m not here to win in an oppression olympics. Every system has an interdependent web of experiences and tendencies and we are all the oppression we are bringing into the system. We are all in it together. I’m here because you who profess to be my allies, giving me nothing but the pulpit and your handshake and kind words, need to move with more urgency than you are comfortable with.
I asked Dr. Bell Hooks at the International Women’s Conference weeks ago, “How does love move with urgency?” And she couldn’t give me a straight answer. She mentioned of an author and a book. And you know what, we don’t have time for more books, for more teach-ins, it’s already in your Constitution and Declaration of Independence :
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Is it still self-evident though?
And my question is fundamental, “Are we still pilgrims?” “Are we still in pilgrimage?” Dr. John Berquist says that pilgrimage is a practice of migration from one world to another. And he says, it only takes 2 generations for memory to become history. All the memory that we have built into a UU identity is now part of our narrative. But have we arrived at our destination? Memory gets built layer by layer. Now pilgrims need a compeling reason, or a force, or a surge, Dr. Berquist says. It’s from the latin root surgere - to spring up, arise, stand up. Same root as surgery, insurgence, insurrection, resurgence, and resurrection. In the science of revolutionary studies, it is called the “shock”. But the force and the surge is past us. Black lives make up our public executions, the penal system is our Gehenna – a place Jesus mentions as the place of trash, white terrorists are in every state normalizing mass shootings, oil interests take lives of water protectors, the United States is in more foreign wars than we know of, I mean how many more movies does Michael Moore have to make?
What is asked of you is simple: Do not normalize. Surge forward. Let us not go back to asking, “Will love win?” Let us create that movement that asks, “How shall we let love win?” Let us move through love and pain like a surgical procedure. We wound but with the hope of healing.
They say church is in the business of selling a product no one has ever seen. But we actually can start somewhere. We go out there with our reverse evangelization: We reach out to people to be converted by them. In our rituals, within our walls, in loving speech, in welcoming unease, we become insurgents selling a foreseeable heaven that is our revolution. We are Unitarians, we are in the business of proof. We are in the business of raising up what is self-evident but obscured.
People who have propelled progress have always rooted their memories in the worst past experience they have. Israel’s story of enslavement they have used for liberation. Dear church, let us not make the mistake of manufacturing the worst ever period in our history by being complacent or complicit.
May we learn from the stories of people gone past, the shakers, the movers, the insane, the incredible, the jokers, whose stories bring us hope in humanity, whose insurrections taught us that a small band of crazies can change the world, whose deaths show us how we are the heroes we now need. May these people be monumentalized as we have done the talkers, thinkers, and translators.
Everytime we light that chalice, may revolution come to visit.
Everytime we ring the bell, may we welcome the pilgrim in us.
You can listen here: http://ouuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2017-03-12-service.mp3
Good morning, everyone. This is probably my 15th pulpit in the US now.
I will have probably do 12 more to go. Thanks for inviting me even this far to listen to what I have to say. This, as a privilege, is not lost on me. It gives me courage. I know I could be preaching to the choir. It is my hope that you are true allies. But I look all over churches today in our Unitarian faith and find myself doubting. They said there are only 3 sacraments in the Unitarian faith : Doubt, argument, and voting. I am doubting about our progressiveness. We owe much of our faith to the lives put at risk in the narratives of people of color more than to the theoretical wanderings of those in their comfort zones. And yet I see almost very few clues in our churches to signify this. Our explicit curriculum of equality is not what is implicit in our conversations, our walls, our people or our art.
I am here to be honest. I should be honest. I didn’t come all the way here just to sing old songs and confirm Filipino stereotypes. What a waste that would be. It has been an interesting few months in the states now. This is now the 24th state I’ve visited.
After each sermon I’ve done, people come to me with quite a range of reactions. The first is the most fascinating: The Burning Man look: “I’ve been to the Philippines, it was amazing!!” You can definitely still hear all 7,641 islands partying in their heads.
Second reaction I get I name the Royal Treatment: “Oh poor Filipinos, they take the jobs we don’t do around here. And oh my, so many nannies, nurses, teachers --- the care industry, Filipinos are so good!” Caring is something we should all do, by the way. Just because non-white people do it better, doesn’t mean caring is less valuable. Third reaction I get I call Disturbia: “Duterte is so much like Trump!” Duterte is an anomaly – an old school chauvinist polyamory in a country where gender equality is in the top 7 in the world along with Scandinavian countries. This is according to the World Economic Forum. Duterte has scuttled the oligarchy and disloged the dominance of Manila, the capital. He is from the south, an outsider. In his 21 years in office, he remains untainted with corruption. Meanwhile, he has exposed Catholic bishops who had been receiving special favors from the government to be silent about corruption. His postcolonial rhetoric is the voice of the masses suppressed for a long long time.
In his first 6 months of office, one million people testing positive for illegal drug use surrendered, not killed. Why would he kill 7,000 people? The powerful lords have been rattled. They began to eliminate assets. Small-time drug dealers who have taken on mafioso personas in their small communities refused to give in. They have resisted arrest, sabotaged police operations, obstructed justice, and tried their best to preserve their little power, and even launched their own vigilante groups to eliminate competition. Because bad people are real. We can talk more during coffee hour.
But why am I really here today?
I told you about the 3 reactions I get and well, here’s the fourth:, “All will be usual, all will be normal, all will be well.” No matter how much I clamor and make a good case for more people of color on our walls, I come back to churches and get nothing, no change is evident, no insurrection, no revolution. And this really is what erodes my faith more than anything, this is what truly hurts my sense of agency, if at all I am an agent of change. And I’m tiring out. Whatever demon wanted me to tire out is succeeding more often in pulling me down now: I met a minister who think that my suggestion of having people of color lined up for the opening words is, in his own words, “A big fuck you to sensitive white people reeling from Trump’s election.” I’ve endured worship services whose idea of marginalization is being a liberal in the Trump era, to be unheard and not counted in Trump’s agenda. That is not marginalization, that’s just being opposition in a highly polarized country. Yet if one white male minister from a congregation is to be believed, the government is not going to be a fascist regime. He says there is enough check and balance in this mature democracy to stop this from happening. Well the US Constitution never envisioned a scenario where all three branches of government will fall under a singular plan, hasn’t it?
I am tired of being allowed to have only two voices: (1) Being a teacher of what ought to be and yet not being given power or authority to make changes. (2) Being the oppressed voice, like Valerie Kaur, the sikh voice appealing to our good sense to make way for the “others” in this society, asking for empathy and pity.
I am here because I DEMAND wisdom. I don’t ask for it. I demand every ally of humanity here, who professes to be one, to make the decision to make love win.
I’m also here to tell you I can be an ally in what Dr. John Berquist calls an insurrection of the spirit. And I’m here because I cannot in good conscience tolerate any more inaction from our churches. And I’m risking my heart to tell you that I will have none of “That was a great sermon” pleasantry anymore.
Now I’m not here to win in an oppression olympics. Every system has an interdependent web of experiences and tendencies and we are all the oppression we are bringing into the system. We are all in it together. I’m here because you who profess to be my allies, giving me nothing but the pulpit and your handshake and kind words, need to move with more urgency than you are comfortable with.
I asked Dr. Bell Hooks at the International Women’s Conference weeks ago, “How does love move with urgency?” And she couldn’t give me a straight answer. She mentioned of an author and a book. And you know what, we don’t have time for more books, for more teach-ins, it’s already in your Constitution and Declaration of Independence :
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Is it still self-evident though?
And my question is fundamental, “Are we still pilgrims?” “Are we still in pilgrimage?” Dr. John Berquist says that pilgrimage is a practice of migration from one world to another. And he says, it only takes 2 generations for memory to become history. All the memory that we have built into a UU identity is now part of our narrative. But have we arrived at our destination? Memory gets built layer by layer. Now pilgrims need a compeling reason, or a force, or a surge, Dr. Berquist says. It’s from the latin root surgere - to spring up, arise, stand up. Same root as surgery, insurgence, insurrection, resurgence, and resurrection. In the science of revolutionary studies, it is called the “shock”. But the force and the surge is past us. Black lives make up our public executions, the penal system is our Gehenna – a place Jesus mentions as the place of trash, white terrorists are in every state normalizing mass shootings, oil interests take lives of water protectors, the United States is in more foreign wars than we know of, I mean how many more movies does Michael Moore have to make?
What is asked of you is simple: Do not normalize. Surge forward. Let us not go back to asking, “Will love win?” Let us create that movement that asks, “How shall we let love win?” Let us move through love and pain like a surgical procedure. We wound but with the hope of healing.
They say church is in the business of selling a product no one has ever seen. But we actually can start somewhere. We go out there with our reverse evangelization: We reach out to people to be converted by them. In our rituals, within our walls, in loving speech, in welcoming unease, we become insurgents selling a foreseeable heaven that is our revolution. We are Unitarians, we are in the business of proof. We are in the business of raising up what is self-evident but obscured.
People who have propelled progress have always rooted their memories in the worst past experience they have. Israel’s story of enslavement they have used for liberation. Dear church, let us not make the mistake of manufacturing the worst ever period in our history by being complacent or complicit.
May we learn from the stories of people gone past, the shakers, the movers, the insane, the incredible, the jokers, whose stories bring us hope in humanity, whose insurrections taught us that a small band of crazies can change the world, whose deaths show us how we are the heroes we now need. May these people be monumentalized as we have done the talkers, thinkers, and translators.
Everytime we light that chalice, may revolution come to visit.
Everytime we ring the bell, may we welcome the pilgrim in us.
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