Sermons

READINGS – Two Poems
I No Longer Pray For Peace - by Ann Weems
On the edge of war, one foot already in,
I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.
I pray that stone hearts will turn
to tenderheartedness,
and evil intentions will turn
to mercifulness,
and all the soldiers already deployed
will be snatched out of harm's way,
and the whole world will be
astounded onto its knees.
I pray that all the "God talk"
will take bones,
and stand up and shed
its cloak of faithlessness,
and walk again in its powerful truth.
I pray that the whole world might
sit down together and share
its bread and its wine.
Some say there is no hope,
but then I've always applauded the holy fools
who never seem to give up on
the scandalousness of our faith:
that we are loved by God...
that we can truly love one another.
I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.

Keeping Faith by Lynn Ungar
It’s hard, these days, to know what to believe in.
I still pray to Goodness, Truth and Mercy,
but I am starting to suspect there are stronger gods,
and war brewing on the mountain.
Hope is still in the pantheon, but Optimism
slunk off a while back. Joy, and her sister Delight,
still come around, and I leave the door open as I can.
But sometimes it’s hard for the soul to keep faith.
I am trying to listen behind its high, anxious whine
to prayers of the flesh. Tea, says the body.
Rain, lavender, red leaves, pie.

SERMON
“Love Is our Spirit - Even When It's Hard” Rev. Margaret A Beckman

And Jesus continued to teach those who were gathered on the mount to
hear him:
43 “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor[a]
and hate your
enemy. 44But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you
45 so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes
the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and
the unrighteous. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have?
Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers
and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?
48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone,
so also you must be complete.
We ourselves have said, “Love is the Spirit of this Church”
Sometimes, being a person of faith is hard.
This is one of those times.
How do we live our faith, a faith rooted in the notion that unconditional
and universal Love is our spirit, our doctrine, and our practice, when our
hearts are broken anew each and every day as we read the news?
The United Nations predicts that 10 million Ukrainians – one quarter of the
population – could be displaced by Russia’s war. Where will they find
refuge, sanctuary, welcome?
The news today is reporting that Russian troops have begun halting the
evacuation of cities despite having previously agreed upon safe corridors
for civilians to escape the terror. Civilians are dying every day.
Yes, we know, this is war and war is always terrible.
And then there is our own American pile-on effect as we learn that states
continue to restrict voting, cancel comprehensive healthcare for women,
and now, goddess help us, criminalize parental love and healthcare for
transgender children.
Really, this is just too much.
Tell me, in the last ten days …
➢ Have you wept for Ukraine and Ukrainians?
➢ Have you used unsavory vocabulary to describe President Putin?
➢ Have you wondered how to stop such hideous violence without using
violence?
➢ Have you wept for the children and their parents in Texas whose fear
has just been magnified?
➢ Have you wished you could just lash out at every single legislator
who votes to codify injustice and inhumanity …. Some of whom
represent us in our state and the United States Congress?
➢ Have you been stunned, though perhaps not surprised, that white
male law enforcement officers continue to be acquitted of wrong
doing when Black people are the victims of their brutality?
➢ Have you wondered where and how Love overcomes all evil?
➢ Have you wondered if your faith is up to the challenge of holding you
or even surviving in the presence of hate and greed and ego and
sheer power grabbing for its own sake without the slightest regard
for even one single human life?
I have done all these things and more that I am not going to mention out
loud.
Then, I saw the post from Carrie Newcomer about sending love – maybe
you saw it in our MailChimp this week – and I was reminded that my faith,
our faith, is a faith that knows the power of Love to overcome suffering and
want and fear and hate and even greed.
This is what she said:
When you read this, please take a minute,
hold all those lives…the children, the
infants, the young people in school, the
teachers and store clerks and mechanics
and painters and cellists and parents and
grandparents, the sick with covid and the
nurses who are still caring for them.
Consider every life…like yours like mine,
like your children, like everyone you
know or meet each day, beloved and
acquaintance and stranger. Think of them,
every soul who woke up yesterday with
bombs falling and surrounded by a hungry
evil that rises out of the bottomless
wanting for power.”
So, I am thinking about all those souls
who need love as I read her poem
“Send Love, It Matters” one more time.
Somewhere … in a shelter or wandering the bombed remains of a home in
Ukraine, in a Texas high school, in a Mississippi or Florida women’s health
center, in an ICU treating Covid patients, or in a living room watching the
TV news … someone needs help. We can send love. It matters.
I am also reminded of the words of Jesus. Love your enemies and those
who oppress you and pray for them. Be the human expression of the Love
that gives us life not only for friends, but also for adversaries.
Send love. It matters.
Well, it’s hard for me to send love sometimes - oftentimes.
And you may be feeling that it is not only hard but nearly impossible to
love the world’s great villains. I agree. And yet …I don’t take the
instruction lightly or metaphorically or casually. I think the instruction is
literal. Send love.
My faith asks me to do the very thing I resist.
I will not give in to the bullies and the people who are so deeply privileged
that they can take away the small freedoms of the marginalized to vote, to
exercise control over their reproductive choices, to learn the full range of
American history and culture, to simply live as the person they know they
are in a world that doesn’t acknowledge the fullness and diversity of
gender and identity and call it righteousness. I will not.
What does my faith, Unitarian Universalism, have to offer me in these days
when I go back and forth between weeping for the oppressed and raging
at the oppressors?
Platitudes and promises do not serve me.
I need a faith that understands and validates all of what I am feeling and
fearing right now.
I am heartbroken.
I am helpless.
I am furious.
I am filled with compassion.
I am skeptical and cynical.
I am hopeful and I am hopeless- just on different days.
When I hear the words of our poets, I am comforted.
I do have a faith that can withstand everything I throw at it without
flinching or making excuses. My faith essentially says, “Yup – you are ok to
have all your feelings and doubts and misgivings and crazy notions about
how everyone else needs to shape up. It’s ok. Now, Dear One , My Beloved,
what are you going to do?”
This week, I heard Lynn Ungar read her poem Keeping the Faith in an
interview with Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer. I was stunned.
I bought her book of poetry so I could read it again, and again.
She has spoken to my heart – it’s hard to know what to believe these days.
So much of what we thought was true or constant or helpful has fled and
war breaks out.
Hope is still here. Optimism is gone.
But Joy and Delight still come around sometimes.
It’s hard for the soul to keep faith.
Still, I try to listen and a faint answer comes … take care of yourself.
Have tea and pie.
What a relief! Keeping faith is hard. We are soul weary. Faith comes in
many guises – sometimes telling us to rest and renew and refresh.
Thank you, Lynn Ungar, for your words this week. I have needed to pause
trying to save the world and refresh myself – knowing that this too is how I
can keep the faith.
Love is the spirit of this church.
Love is the essence of my faith.
I don’t have many answers for the questions we all ask ourselves and each
other … mostly “What shall I do?’ and “How can I help?”
There are ways to help. For us right now it might be mostly using our
money to help those who are directly providing assistance to the suffering
wherever they are. My go-to on that right now is the UUSC – Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee. There are others whose work is trustworthy
and effective. You know who they are - - or can find out.
Maybe we will be asked if we can shelter, house and sponsor those who
have fled from the terror – whether that terror is in one of our 50 states or
in one of the many countries at war. I don’t know how I will answer that
call if and when it comes, so perhaps I ought to think about it.
When we cannot help those far away, we can help those close by.
Somewhere, some one needs help. Send Love.
Love works. Love alone does not solve all our problems or reverse hateful
laws or stop war, but it helps all those things. Love your adversary. That
requires establishing a spiritual discipline and practice that we can come
back to again and again after each time we fail, as fail we will. Practicing
love is hard.
Finding your way to love your adversaries and then practicing will be hard.
What I know is that when I do this practice, I am changed.
I may never change my adversary, but in changing myself into a calmer
more open and more compassionate soul, I have changed the energy in the
universe - - for the better I believe.
I invite you to spend a little time, maybe a lot of time, discovering your own
path toward the love that is the spirit of this congregation.
Let me share with you one small practice that has helped me time and time
again when I am confronted by my own loathing for those I regard as the
wrong-doers.
I sit quietly and bring forth a visual image of the person or persons or
entity (even if it is the whole legislature or the whole Russian Army) – just a
visual, not a portrait.
Hold it. Then I try to surround that visual with Love. For me, the color of
love is light blue or pale yellow and so I surround my adversary with blue or
yellow light and I try to fill the light with loving kindness and peace. My
negative energy dissipates and I am calm .. or calmer. This practice has
gotten me through some difficult times better than I would have otherwise.
I want to wish no one suffering – accountability - yes; a change of heart and
behavior – yes; suffering - no.
Love has no limits.
There is one life, one light and one everlasting and universal Love that will
never let us go. This is the spirit of our faith. It is the essence of you and
all our kin.
My Dear Spiritual Companions, may you find your way into that Love and as
you do, may you also find your way of showering the world with that same
Love.
When all else seems lost or forgotten or hopeless, Love whispers “I am
here, come find me.” You may very well find your faith renewed.
May it be so for you and for everyone everywhere.
Blessed Be. I Love You. Amen.