Esse Quam Videri: Faith, Doubt, & Becoming

I was visiting someone in the behavioral health unit of a hospital. The music was playing over the loudspeaker, loud enough to notice but not quite loud enough to understand. Unless you happened to be standing directly beneath one of the speakers, it was mostly just a muffled noise drifting through the halls. She complains about the music fairly often. It’s repetitive, she says. The same songs, over and over. So as we paced the halls, she kept wondering what was playing. We walked toward the speaker. A little closer. Then closer still. And finally, standing almost directly underneath it, I could make it out. James Brown. “Get Up Offa That Thing.” I burst out laughing. Because, really. What else could I do? I love James Brown. I genuinely do. His music was the last music I listened to with my dad before he died. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the song itself. James Brown telling the world to get up and dance is pretty much James Brown doing his job. But in a behavioral healt...

Illinois has declared July 25th as Emmett Till Day. It's a noble thing to do. And it's nowhere near enough. Remembering Emmett Till matters. His murder in 1955 shocked the conscience of our nation, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, refused to let America look away. She insisted on an open casket for Emmett's mutilated and bloated body, and the world saw what hatred had done to her 14 year-old son. That courage was called for and necessary, and it helped set fire to the Civil Rights Movement. His story deserves to be remembered. But remembrance has a way of becoming comfortable. It's easy to honor the victims we can all agree were wronged. It's easy to condemn horrors that happened 70 years ago. (And let's keep in mind that it really wasn't all that long ago. My father was just one year older than Emmett.) It’s easy to issue proclamations once history has already given its verdict. The harder question is what do we do when justice is still unfolding? What do...

There are apparently two kinds of people in America right now.  The first group is talking about  The Odyssey . They're debating cinematography, quoting Homer, arguing about whether Christopher Nolan's version captures the themes of homecoming, perseverance, and the human condition. Their social media feeds are full of words like "masterpiece" and "visceral." Then there's me. I spent my afternoon watching Toy Story 5 . But I experienced an emotional journey, too. There was friendship. There was sacrifice. There was existential dread over being replaced by newer, shinier TECH. Honestly, that's not that far from Greek mythology if you think about it and stretch a bit. While Odysseus was battling monsters and resisting sirens, I was watching animated toys wrestle with the terrifying possibility that kids eventually grow up and put aside their playthings — or forget how to play altogether. Different ships. Same emotional damage. Maybe I should've com...

All throughout school, I excelled when it came to English. Anything beyond long division makes me break out in a cold sweat, but composition? Grammar? Advanced placement classes were cakewalks for me. I am a well-rounded and avid reader, and I can write. One assignment, though, still haunts me to this day, and that is when I had to give an in-depth analysis of Robert Frost's Mending Wall . More than 25 years have passed, and I still clearly remember Mrs. Brown's red ink below the final paragraph: "What happened? You missed the point." I think I've got it now. Possibly. And I think it came into focus during a random conversation in a bank parking lot.  Here is the poem. It's helpful to refresh: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left...

It’s easy to say, “Everyone is welcome.” Most churches say it, right? Most of us genuinely mean it. I wonder, though, if there's a deeper question beneath those words. When we say, “all are welcome,” what are we really inviting people into? Are we inviting them to belong? Or are we inviting them to become like us? Those are not the same thing. Unitarian Universalists have wrestled for decades with why there aren’t more Black people in their congregations. I've heard the question posed at my own church several times in the past couple of years. The short answer is that there isn't one reason, and it’s highly inaccurate to say Black people don't come to UU churches. Many do, and there are Black UU congregations, ministers, and leaders. But it is true that UUism remains disproportionately white. It’s about culture, not just theology. A congregation can sincerely say that everyone is welcome while still feeling extremely white in its norms —  what music is sung...

I want to talk about a thing. I want to talk about the First Principle of Unitarian Universalism: the inherent worth and dignity of every person. And I want to talk about what happens to that principle when the name Donald Trump enters the room. [Yep, folks….I’m really going there!] Because for many of us, perhaps for most of us, that's where the principle begins to strain. Some of us have said it out loud. Others have only thought it. But the thought is the same: Surely there must be an exception. Surely this is the person who forfeited it. If that thought has crossed your mind, you are not shallow, immoral, or un UU. You are human. You are reacting. You are responding to fear, grief, anger, exhaustion, and sometimes trauma. But the question isn’t whether those feelings are understandable. Of course they are. The question is whether the First Principle survives them.   Let’s slow down and look more carefully at the word we rush past. Inherent. The word comes from the Latin inhaere...