Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Unitarian Universalist Principles & Reconciliation

Rev. Chester McCall
March 28, 2010
Palo Alto, CA

 

Martin Luther King Jr., echoing the words of Theodore Parker, said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Yes, the arc of the universe is long and it does bend towards justice; but it also bends towards reconciliation, forgiveness, and love — for there is no justice, there cannot be justice without reconciliation, forgiveness, and love.

This is a reality that is affirmed in all cultures and religions; Jewish, Pagan, Muslim, Christian, Humanist and even atheist embrace, affirm and promote the notion and ideals of justice, reconciliation, forgiveness and love.

While justice and love are explicitly stated in the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist movement, I assert that forgiveness as well is captured in our seven principles given the words “acceptance of one another” because there cannot be acceptance without forgiveness.

I believe that all seven of our principles were shaped by our human need for reconciliation! Moreover, they exist for the purpose of reconciliation! …… For why else would there be a need to covenant to affirm and promote them?

We know in our consciousness and in the depth of our being that as a people and a species that share a ride on this bus called earth, we do not affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person as a basic principle of our humanity.

We know that justice, equity and compassion in human relationships is non-existent in societies in the far corners of the world, and in the past couple of days of violence in language and action since the passage of the Health Care reform bill, it has been demonstrated and reaffirmed that it is not a total reality here at home in the United States, in our local communities, and sadly to say not totally a living value within our UU congregations, or any political and/or faith movement that we know of — which is why our seven principles are regarded as Aspirations.

But even as aspirations they offer a hope like no other. Listen to these words of our past president Eugene Pickett found in O. Eugene Pickett — Borne on a Wintry Wind by Tom Owen-Towle (p. 207-208):

Those years as president made me deeply aware of how much we need one another. It is only as we recognize our mutuality, honor our diversity, and reconcile our differences with respectful honesty that we can build a strong and vital religious community. Being part of and nurturing such a religious community is what ministry is to me.…

I have found that I need you in order to be me, that we need them in order to be us, that only together do we have a future. Could we but accept and act on this simple but basic insight, prejudices would be undermined, injustices denounced, and exploitation of nature and people condemned. The world would become ours and all women and men us.

It seems to me that “reconciliation” has always been a basic core value of Unitarianism and Universalism, long before the merger when we became the Unitarian Universalist movement and association.

Let me be clear about what I mean when I speak of “reconciliation.”

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, reconciliation means to re-establish a close relationship, to settle or resolve to bring oneself to acceptance, to make compatible or consistent, to make whole. It also means to overcome distrust and animosity. It is interesting to note that the synonym “to conciliate” means to pacify, which itself means “to end war, fighting, or violence or simply to establish peace.”

In the context of this definition, I want you to consider the description of the lives of Pamela and Henry, found in Reihnold Niebuhr’s sermon titled “The Common Root of Joy and Pain” as lives striving to manifest reconciliation:

Pamela, who was born in the deep south, has lived in Africa in the region of Darfur, learning to love the African people and to follow their political life with such sympathy that every victory on behalf of the people in that war-torn nation fills her with joy and satisfaction; but every frustration of the political ideal to which she is committed leads her into gloom.

She is far away from Africa but feels so united to it in mind and spirit that the WEAL and woe of Africa echoes in her soul. I do not know that you could say that she is happier than the rest of those who know and care about Africa. She is possibly more potent and more fully alive than the rest of us, for she has sources of both happiness and sorrow that we may not have.

And then there is Henry who has a more than ordinary sensitivity towards the plight of the industrial workers. The injustices from which they suffer, the shoddiness of their recreational life, fills him with horror and despair. Bitterness enters his soul, such bitterness that threatens for a while to destroy his social usefulness. He finally overcomes his despair and throws himself feverishly into every effort that promises some hope for an equitable social order. He is not happy; he suffers too much from the miseries of others; and the more intimately he identifies himself with their life, the more he sacrifices the serenity of soul, which blesses and curses less sensitive souls. He is not happy, except, as there is a kind of fierce satisfaction in the sense of being in conflict with social wickedness in high places.

If that is not happiness, it is certainly morally preferable to the so called happiness of the multitudes who, whether they benefit from or are victimized by social injustice, eat, drink, and make merry so that they may forget either their own or others’ woes. ¹ 

So here we have two stories about despair and justice, about joy and sorrow. We have two stories about harmony and love, two stories of two people in their own way and in their own lives seeking to manifest reconciliation and thereby attaining a level of happiness that possibly eludes most of us.

A happiness that can only be achieved through a commitment to the well-being of another — or in our case as Unitarian Universalists a commitment to the fulfillment of our seven principles, which if we were to fully live out — embraces our personal and collective commitment as “white people” and “people of color” to end racism and all forms of oppression in the lives we live daily, in the social institution that we are a part of including within our Unitarian Universalist movement.

Reinhold Niebuhr in his sermon asserts that happiness comes through love.

Moreover, he tells additional stories like the stories of Pamela and Henry to affirm his assertion. For underlying the life stories of Pamela and Henry is the belief that the foundation of their lives is a happiness that is derived from a lived and engaged life of love.

Carter Heyward, in her article “Our Passion for Justice,” unveils for us the kind of love we find demonstrated by Henry and Pamela, and the kind of love that was the foundation of the civil rights movement that was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose whole understanding of justice was based upon what he called the “love ethic.” Listen to these following statements based upon Carter Heyward’s article:

Love, like truth and Beauty, is concrete.

Love is active, effective, a matter of making a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship with one’s friends and enemies.

Hmmm — a mutually beneficial relationship with one’s enemy? (Is this not reconciliation)?

Love creates justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice.

Love involves struggle, resistance, and risk.

The most compelling relationship demands hard work, patience and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

Love involves commitment.

Love is a choice — not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice. For me, LOVE is the doorway to the “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”

Love is a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile.

Love is a conversion to humanity — not away from humanity.

Love is a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives.

Love is a choice to experience life, as a member of the human family rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart be it intentional or un-intentional.

I do not know about you, but as I hear these statements about love, I hear a comprehensive description of the “beloved community” or what I call the “Undivided Human Family” wherein lays our joy, our pain, our sorrow and our happiness!

I hear a description of the “Undivided Human Family” which has been created by the mainfestitation of reconciliation in the world as a lived experience, rather than just an aspiration or ideal to be sought after, or a moment of intellectual discourse.

As I hear these descriptions of what love is, I hear a deep longing to belong and a desire and reason for the existence of the “beloved community,” where lives justice, equity, peace, liberty, and a respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are all a part.

I hear an understanding of the “beloved community” that has been envisioned by many including Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Mary Lou Hammer, Thomas Jefferson, Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, Rev. Bill Sinkford, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama and many others past and present.

I believe that the racism-free, multicultural, anti-oppressive beloved community is not a possibility but an actual reality that exists right here — right now.

All we have to do is to reach out and touch it with our heart, mind, and soul, and allow our physical being to reside in this place by transcending the boundaries and barriers that blind us to seeing and experiencing this actual concrete reality.

I have been in this place many times and I venture to say that you have visited this place in your life several times, as well.

Yes, it is allusive, for we can touch it, see it, we can feel it, but cannot hold on to it — because, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr: “It is a reality in the moment that is unveiled, when we are most truly ourselves, which emerges as a result of us having a sensitive insight into our own limitations, a binding social passion which unites us to others and a moral robust vitality, which brings the universe under the domain of our moral imagination, creating in our heart both joy and pain.”

Being the “beloved community” living as an “Undivided Human Family” living in love and affirming our happiness with being fully alive, like Pamela and Henry, is our gift to the world, is your gift to the San Francisco Bay Area communities, which includes Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, through your ministries.

Seeking to create and be the “beloved community” is the Unitarian Universalist promise and hope for all generations that have gone before us and those that shall follow.

Today is an opportunity to make that long-term commitment to seek your happiness by participating with others in the healing of a broken world and in the healing of broken lives brought about by the reality of the existence of racism and oppression in our lives, the lives of others, in our homes, in our educational institutions and in our political organizations and religious communities.

If we as individuals and as a community are truly committed to the creation of a racism-free society, if we are truly committed to the creation of a society that is multicultural, multi-racial, non-oppressive and diverse, we will come to know the reality of “the beloved community and the undivided human family” experientially rather than as just an intellectual ideal.

What do you choose? That which gives life, meaning, and purpose — leading to the wholeness of the human family — or that which robs each of us of our humanity?

Martin Luther King said that if you want to end the injustice in the world we have to first remove the injustice within our heart. If we want to end racism and oppression in the world, we must first end the racism and oppression in our hearts. As long as there is one person in the world that is oppressed we are all victimized by oppression. None of us is free until all are free.

May this day be the day when we each recommit our lives to the creation of the “Undivided Human Family” and the freedom of all from all the forms of injustice, institutional racism, and oppression in the world!

May it be so!
Ashai, Amen, Amèn, Namaste, Bless It Be!

 

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