Three Simple Words

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Life, Politics, Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

This homily was delivered at University Unitarian Church on Sunday, January 26,2020 as part of a rededication of the congregation’s #BlackLivesMatter banner. An audio recording of this homily (and others) can be found HERE.

Siblings in faith, I speak these words with the spirit in which they were written, in the spirit of life and love. Black Lives Matter. Three simple words that began with a Facebook post by Alicia Garza on July 13th, 2013: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” This love letter was shared on Twitter by friends and activists with the hash tag #BlackLivesMatter. Garza, a queer black social justice activist, was responding to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. It wasn’t until the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9th, 2014 that the movement grew rapidly.

My ministerial journey was also born in the Summer of 2014 and has been deeply impacted by Black Lives Matter. As a chaplain and public theologian, and because I am Unitarian Universalist, I choose to read Garza’s letter as scripture. A brief epistle written to family and community because of compassion – she suffered with her people. Black Lives Matter are prophetic words from within the Black community to remember their own inherent worth and dignity. To remember that they are worthy of love. “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” So I ask myself: what must it feel like for my life not to matter?

I bring this question with me into my Chaplaincy ministry: sometimes with a homeless veteran, a gunshot victim, a person dying of cancer, a child in a jail cell, a spouse losing a partner, a child losing a parent, and each and every time I somehow end up saying those same words when the pain of the world is too big to hold alone: “Javier. Sheena. Mr. Brown. Ms. Wilson. I love you. Your life matters.” I understand Black Lives Matter as a deeply Unitarian Universalist theological and ontological statement. Theological because our worthiness of love is attached to our very existence. Ontological because we are born to matter and to belong.

When the walking wounded walk into our community, I want them to hear: “I love you. Your life matters.” I believe all our principles and sources boil down to these words. They are about potential, not purity. Therefore, whatever the powers and principalities have made Black Lives Matter mean in the six years since it emerged, I understand it through its original context. A response of powerful love from deep pain and grief.

When I see the banner on the side of our church building, this is what I believe: “Black people. Brown people. White people. People without housing. The hungry. The poor. The oppressed. The marginalized. The undocumented. The refugee. The immigrant. The discriminated. The displaced. The sick. The dying. To mother Earth herself. We love you. We love us. Our lives matter.” When the least among us get free, we all get free.

Our banner challenges us to get out of our seats and into the streets and live our principles and sources into the world. Unitarian Universalism is a religion that aspires to create a world in which all life matters while recognizing that humanity as it is does not value the inherent worth and dignity of all lives and all life. We move beyond thoughts and prayers into action. If we don’t, we’re no better than the vipers and hypocrites who send only their thoughts and prayers. But that is not us.

Siblings in faith, Black Lives Matter is a commitment to love. A mantra. A yearning hope and an eschatological vision. A reminder for me to wake up. To love myself. To love my neighbor. And to love the Earth. It is who I believe we can be as a people of faith. Three simple words: I love you. Three simple words: Black Lives Matter. May we all be transformed by their power. Amen.

New Year’s Revolutions

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Originally given as a sermon at Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Congregation on Sunday, Dec 29, 2019. A link to the sermon audio recording can be found HERE.

Siblings in faith, I deliver these words in the spirit in which they were written; in the spirit of life and love. Welcome to the last Sunday of 2019, a rollercoaster of a year with tremendous highs and devastating lows; it certainly lived up to that ancient blessing, or perhaps curse, of “May you live in interesting times.” For the time we share together, here in this space and in this place, I am happy to be with you all at Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Thank you for welcoming me to your church of beloved community and common-union.

In just a few days, we enter a new decade: the 20’s. Which sounds strange to my ears. When I think of the 20’s, I am reminded of the “Roaring 20s”. A time in the 20th century marked with prosperity and abundance following the Great War. We received many blessings in the decade; the advent of Jazz, the height of Art Deco. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby which embodied the generation’s decadence, idealism, and struggle with cultural and societal change. Automobiles, radio, telephones, movies, and aviation blossomed, changing our world forever.

Now, almost one hundred revolutions around the sun later, we are facing our own 20’s. The 1920s were ushered in after four years of World War. Our own 2020s are marked after four years of intense political and cultural war in our country. We see the rise of artificial intelligence, a new interest in space travel, and miracles of medicine. With an election looming, and a world in environmental crisis, I wonder what we will choose as a people and a faith in 2020? Will we roar like the last century, or will we aspire to be different? Remember, the roaring 20’s ended in collapse. So maybe… just maybe… our story can be different. Friends, I invite you to the revolution!

A spiritual revolution. Which may sound strange for a religion that holds our powers of reason as a source of our living tradition. However, I experience no dissonance between my human capacity of reason and my intrinsic human spirit. I reject any kind of cartesian dualism that divides the realms of spirit and matter. I believe the human spirit is found not in some magical essence but in our unique ability to transcend our incarnate limitations. A capacity to reject either/or lines drawn in the sand and find new ways of becoming in the world through gifts of agency, empathy and compassion.

The Islamic mystic Rumi writes about this capacity in his poem A Great Wagon: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.” Rumi understood the transcendent human experience as one of interconnection, interdependence, both/and rather than either/or. This season before the New Year is filled with traditions that call us into that field beyond division. The season leading up to the New Year invites people of good faith and good will into a new-ness after a period of spiritual hibernation.

For Christianity, the season marks the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, who represents a healing between the sacred and the mundane and offered the world another way to respond to violence and persecution, not with an eye for an eye, but with non-violent resistance. The winter solstice offers sacred imagination reminding us that darkness cannot last forever, and that just as the sun will rise in the morning, our own days can become longer and filled with light.

Hanukkah responds to oppression and destruction with a celebration that honors the mutual work of God and human beings in keeping our sacred fires burning even when it seems impossible. Kwanza with its own seven principles is a creative response to holiday consumerism and colonialism, calling communities of color into a remembrance of family, tradition, and interdependence. So many religious and spiritual traditions mark this time as “sacred” – set apart from the mundane.

A time to contemplate and encourage our capacity of agency in transcending “what is” in order to achieve “what can be.” All rooted in our ability to choose even when it seems there are no more options. As a hospital chaplain, I’ve found that a key to resiliency when facing the unfaceable is in finding options. At the bedside with a patient who is dying of cancer, questions can shift from “Why is this happening?” to “This is what I need to die well.” It’s a pivot of perspective; from fear to hope. Claiming responsibility. Part of my ministry is working with patients in realizing they have agency no matter what cards are dealt. Which is very hard to do when overwhelmed by pain and suffering. Fear can be paralyzing. And so can despair.

The powers and principalities of the world really do create an illusion of powerlessness. I struggle with a newsfeed of dystopic narratives wondering what I can do about the world’s pain and suffering. I am just one small person. Yet I cannot forget that I am an individual with inherent dignity and worth, empowered by my own agency. Regardless of the systems surrounding me, I have choices: over my thoughts, feelings and responses.

Holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl lifted this capacity up as a unique gift of the human spirit which even the Nazis could not crush – he found that those human beings who could hold onto a spirit of hope and transcendent connection could survive the horrors of concentration camps. I have seen this first hand. When I am with incarcerated children at our own juvenile detention center, I work with them in developing the resiliency Victor Frankl wrote about.

I remember one thirteen year old boy incarcerated for murder with a gun, with a life marked by abuse, addiction, homelessness, and violence. He had reached out to jail chaplains because he had hit what so many incarcerated youth talk about, as “rock bottom.” That place of choosing between life away from the hustle and death on the streets. He asked me if he could still be loved. Could he still be forgiven. Was he damned to the life he was given in punishment for his sins?

In my own social location of power and privilege, I have no concept of what this child had gone through. In front of me was not just a lost child of color, but the human result of generational systems of oppression in which I am a part. I believe he was asking me: “After what we have done to each other, can you love me? And can I love you?” At thirteen years old, facing life in prison, a question of love was his only hope.

My response came from my Unitarian Universalist theology and Roman Catholic upbringing, where the God of Jesus responds to sin with forgiveness and mercy. I told this child that I believed in one powerful source of love in which, regardless of deed, no one was unworthy. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about this love in his speech Where do We Go from Here? “Power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”Powerful love is always an option; and often the hardest choice. Because it means being changed ontologically; becoming a new being in the world.

Together, the child and I explored how we usually use our lives as excuses, giving up our power to the powers that be. I can’t change his life of poverty because I’m powerless; I’m not rich or connected, a lawyer or a judge. He can’t change his life of violence because he struggles daily to find food, water, and shelter. In our excuses, we could come away from our encounter unchanged; only feeling guilty as I return to my warm home and he returns to his 10×10 cell.

We then explored how we can use our life narrative through the lens of sacred imagination. Is it possible to take our excuses and transform them into reasons? Reasons to change? Reasons for hope? Reasons to choose something different? There are reasons for our social locations and how we ended up across the table from one other in a juvenile detention facility. And we can choose to no longer let our excuses define our lives. For me, the meeting with this child was transformative, because we explored beyond what we were given and entertained something new: the possibility of redemption. Committing to waking up in the morning and asking ourselves: “What will I do different today?”

Siblings in faith, this is the difference between the sacred and the mundane. While the mundane is ordinary, dull and routine, the sacred always overflows the barriers and boundaries holding it at bay. Our key to accessing the doors of the sacred is found in our own capacity to reject excuses of either/or and to recognize our sacred power to invite both/and. The sacred always connects; the mundane maintains; and therefore the profane divides. And in our own time and place we are overwhelmed by profanity. Not the childish words that middle schoolers snicker in the back of the classroom. I am talking about the profanity of hate.

A hate in which I am guilty. These last four years of concentration camps on our southern borders, mass shootings in our high schools, white supremacists in the white house and rapists on the supreme court has had me so fearful and angry that I have broken bonds of family and friendships. It has felt so good to be “us” versus “them.” So confident that I am on the right side of history, I have forgotten the sacred command to love my neighbor as I love myself.

My favorite example of this is found in the Christian gospel of Luke the Evangelist. This is where we get the phrase of “Good Samaritan.” Which has become saccharine in its “niceness” of going out of our way to help people. However, the original story of a Samaritan helping a Jew on the bloody pass between Jerusalem to Jericho was a holy reminder that we are all neighbors; even to those who we hate. This is from Luke 10:25-37

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

He said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?”

The lawyer said, “He who showed mercy on him.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

It is our capacity to be merciful which transcends fear and anger. Remember, the profane divides, while the sacred unites. The sacred will always challenge and reject hate, and any other power that demands division. It is not democrats OR republicans. Progressives OR conservatives. White supremacists OR anti-fascists. My capacity for empathy and compassion cannot be drawn between group lines, not if I want to maintain my humanity. If I want this world to be a better place for my 5 year old son, than I have to model for him kindness and compassion to all people, not just the ones I like. In surrendering my hate, I regain control over my own story.

I am learning how to choose that field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. It has taken sitting with veterans in the mental health unit at the VA, children at the detention center, and gunshot wound victims at Harborview, to soften my heart. Where I can hold the hand of a dying man with a MAGA hat and pray with his family for love and forgiveness. Where a black child is offered a chance at freedom despite jail cell walls. And where a person with a swastika tattoo can find a presence who will listen to his grief over his mother who had just passed away. Because empathy does not equal endorsement.

Siblings in faith, our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us into the world as bearers of a sacred light of truth. Which is why I propose that for this new year into a new decade, we commit not only to the tried and true resolutions of a healthy lifestyle, weight loss, less screen time and more vegetables, but to a powerful and transcendent love: a New Year’s revolution. A spiritual revolution in which we commit to reject our mundane excuses and instead embrace our sacred human capacity of agency. A commitment to respond to brokenness with curiosity and compassion. A commitment to be transformed by each human connection. A decade of change, where every day we wake up and ask: “What will I do today that is different?”

May it be so. Amen.

What are we waiting for? (Advent & Waiting)

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Life, Politics, Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment
What Are We Waiting For? was given as a sermon on December 15th, 2019 at Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church.

Siblings in faith, I deliver these words in the spirit in which they were written; in the spirit of life and love. Welcome to the third Sunday of Advent, known in many Christian communities as Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is a Latin word meaning: Rejoice! In many Unitarian Universalist communities, our own advent wreaths are lit on this Sunday with the theme of “JOY!” And here we are, together in this space, in this time and in this place, to rejoice together: to feel and show great joy and delight in our community and in our common-union. Thank you for welcoming me to Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church.

Advent has a very special place in my heart. I grew up Roman Catholic, the son of a mother coming from a long line of German and Irish immigrants, and a father whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the early 20th century. Most of my life revolved around the interwoven celebrations of Irish Catholics and Mexican Catholics, who in my experience know how to both lament deeply and celebrate ridiculously. For my family, Advent was and is a time for preparation and expectation for transformation in the world.

Being raised in a high liturgical tradition, the year flowed differently from secular society. The Christmas season didn’t start on Black Friday (or as I know now, after Halloween). It started on Christmas eve at midnight mass. The four Sundays before Christmas marked the Advent season. They shifted from the green colors of “ordinary time” to the purple colors of “transition time.” In the Catholic church, there is another liturgical shift like this, marking the observation of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. Both Lent and Advent are 40 days long; both are a time of turning inward; a time for reflection, repentance, forgiveness, and hope.

The definition of the word Advent is “the arrival of a notable person, thing or event.” For Christianity, the season of Advent is the celebration of the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth into the world. For Unitarian Universalists, it can be a time of multiple meanings: all of which involve some kind of waiting. Waiting for the Winter Solstice. Waiting for Hanukkah. Waiting for Kwanzaa. Waiting for the New Year. Waiting for the Capitalist Consumerist Industrial Complex to come to an end.

We all know that waiting is not an easy behavior for human beings. I am the father of a 5-year-old, and as he loves to remind my partner and me: “Ugh, I hate waiting!” I empathize with him. As a child my home would gently change through December with garland and lights, nativity mangers and ornaments; I would see presents begin to gather beneath the tree. Bright paper with bows and ribbons, every day was more excruciating than the next. Because all I wanted to do was find out what was in those presents.

Advent calendars, with tiny chocolate treats for each day of the season, added to the excitement. Every day came with a little bit of sweetness, with the knowledge that underneath each panel there was more chocolate. And for some reason to my own 5-year-old experience, that was never enough. I wanted it all now! The practice of waiting stretched me mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Now in my 40s I am thankful for learning the lessons of waiting, though I admit I am still learning when I am stuck in traffic on I-5.

For northern hemisphere pre-Christian cultures, there was a waiting in fear and hope that the fading sun and long nights would shift their course and light would come back into the world once again. Winter was not only coming, but it would leave, marking a transition back into daylight and abundance. Festivals like the Roman Saturnalia and Germanic Yule, with their focus on rejoicing, were about bringing light back into the world at its darkest moments. As Christianity spread throughout Europe it is no wonder that Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the “Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun”, became the celebration of the birth of the Son of God, who came according to the gospel writer John, as the “light of the world” and whoever followed him would “never walk in darkness.” (John 8:12)

My experience of Christianity is as a religion about waiting. With its eschatological focus, a focus on a future time, when Christ returns, and all creation is reconciled with the Creator. At its best, this waiting is marked in spiritual lives dedicated to “loving neighbor” as one loves themselves. (Luke 10:25-37) In a people who “turn the other cheek”, “go the extra mile” and who live a Christmas spirit year-round.

Advent, with its concentration on waiting, can have a spiritual effect of stretching time and space “thin.” In the Celtic tradition, thin time and space marks when the veil between life and death, sacred and mundane becomes permeable. Like in Unitarian Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it is a time when spirits can manifest and challenge the living. And for Unitarian Clement Clarke Moore in ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, it is a time when jolly old elves fly through the air on sleds pulled by reindeer and where saints can slip down chimneys to deliver abundance to those of good hearts and deeds. I resonate with these authors sense of wonder: the Advent season was for me a season of miracles: when our United States culture somehow magically shifts from “God helps those who help themselves” to a spirit of generosity, compassion, and charity. A “Christmas Spirit.”

Listening to our story for all ages, it reflects so many of our cultural Christmas parables about the Spirit of Christmas. A moral play regarding the poor who despite poverty and abuse rejoice in the small blessings of a suffering life and who demonstrate almost impossible contentment. Little Gretchen, despite her grandmother’s admonishments, refused to give up her hopes and dreams, praying to the stars for a miracle. And then accepting Christmas day as it came; thankful for what is rather than for what was lacking. For Gretchen, Christmas day was about the blessings of the now. This is the innocence of a child that Jesus spoke to in the Gospel of Matthew: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matt 19: 14)

There is also a shadow side to this narrative; an insidious darkness which I witness played out in our own time. If a life is dedicated to a silent waiting of prayer and hope, like our poor Gretchen and her Grandmother, living in poverty, what changes? For Gretchen, it was the miracle of life and love that made Christmas day. Where were her friends? Her community? Her church? In many ways the Christmas story distorted can be a message of “be happy with your lot in life”; be happy with your poverty. Be happy with your slavery. Be happy with your disenfranchisement. Make do with the seasonal generosity of Merry Gentlemen of wealth and privilege. Better things are coming; just wait and see.

It is this part of the Christmas narrative that I preach against. Because as Unitarian Universalists, we are not a people waiting for a God to do the hard work for us. We are not children learning how to wait; we are a mature faith who, having learned the counter-cultural lessons of delayed gratification, can know the wisdom of both patience and action. We are a sacred faith, free from the dualistic thinking of “either/or.” We are a people of “both/and.” We look to a future beloved community AND commit to the hard work of the transformation of the now. We believe in the salvation and redemption of all people regardless of their wickedness AND we work to dismantle the systems and structures of evil in the world.

In our readings for today, we are reminded of the generational struggle between waiting and acting. For the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, he came to embody a spirituality of both/and in his activism. At the time of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, many of his liberal white peers were advocating for him and his movement to “stop and wait.” He says, “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’” He recognized that there was a time for both waiting AND a time for action. He refused to wait for a Christmas miracle; he decided to be the miracle.

Advent is a powerful time for waiting AND a time for action. The power in waiting comes from its seasonal focus on our inward work. As the days grow shorter and nights colder, creation invites us into the restoration found in spiritual hibernation. An invitation to reconsider our capacity for charity, for volunteering, for advocacy and for our relationships. It is a time to hope and pray with each other in solidarity, facing the darkness of climate change and fascism with the chalice light of community. Advent is a powerful time for action because at its end, we are forced to ask: “What are we waiting for?”

As President Barack Obama said in our second reading, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. … We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be.” We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Advent for Unitarian Universalists is an opportunity to tap into the strength and resiliency with which to act in the world. Our waiting is a spiritual exercise in accessing the powerful resource that theologian and civil right icon the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman writes about in his book Meditations of the Heart: “It is the insistence of religion that the God of life and the God of religion are one and the same. Implicit in the struggle which is a part of life is the vitality that life itself supplies. To affirm this with all of one’s passionate endeavor is to draw deeply upon the resource available to anyone who dares draw upon it. The aliveness of life and the power of God move through the same channel at the point of greatest need and awareness.”

Our season doesn’t begin with the waiting, just as Christmas doesn’t begin with Advent. Our season begins on the day we emerge into the world, filled with a Holy Spirit of life and love for prophetic work and transformative change. We do not do it for ourselves alone. We do it because we have inherited the success and struggle of our ancestors. We do it because that arc of history which bends toward justice has never bent itself. We do it for my child and our children and our children’s children.

Which is no surprise. Advent and Christmas has always been about children; and the dynamic tension between our desire to wait and their desires for now. We hope that they learn patience and they hope we remember urgency. Which is why this Advent song has always been my favorite:

Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see
A star, a star Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
Ringing through the sky shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
A song, a song High above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know
In your palace wall mighty king
Do you know what I know
A child, a child
Shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Let us bring him silver and gold

Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say
Pray for peace people everywhere
Listen to what I say
The child, the child
Sleeping in the night
They will bring us goodness and light
They will bring us goodness and light

In this song, written during the Cuban Missile Crisis as a challenge to both war and consumerism, creation and humanity call us into Advent. We are called to arrive. If we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the stars dancing in the night, it is our voices as big as the sea, we are the wisdom of shepherds who speak truth to power and transform the hearts of kings, and it is our children who will bring us goodness and light: because there are other children like shivering in the cold. Immigrants like my grandmother in detention centers. Mad leaders playing with our lives. There is a world on fire threatening our very existence. We can not just wait. We must arrive!

Siblings in faith, with so much darkness in the night it can be hard to rejoice. A Christmas Spirit seems almost impossible. And that is why we have Advent. Why we have a special season dedicated to waiting and healing; family and friends; gift giving and tree trimming. Which is why we light our chalice on Gaudete Sunday. Which is why we come together in this time and in this place. To hold each other tight. To tell the stories that kindle miracle and mystery in our children and rekindle our own sacred imagination. And when our children ask, “What are we waiting for?” We will tell them, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Amen.

A blessing on Samhain

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Life, Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Siblings, we embrace Samhain as a thin time and thin space, between those of today and those of before.
We choose now to evoke memory of our sacred bonds; to call on our ancestors.

Spirits of my life and love, mi casa es su casa.
You are with me always, protecting me, guiding me, this is your holy day.
Your blood is my blood, your spirit is my spirit, your memories are my memories.
While your bodies have returned to the earth, your being continues on, within me, within our family, and within our family’s family.
You are honored and blessed.
Please accept my offerings of food and drink, meal and memory as thanks given.
May I live into the future with gratitude and charity for your gifts of life and love.
May it be so, amen.

A Theology of Trauma…

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Politics, Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

“A Theology of Trauma” first appeared at Religica.org on Sept. 14th, 2019 as part of the project’s blog series. “The Religica Blog explores ideas that shape our future. The impulses that shape our future come from people who share their values, stories, and insights. Each blog is seeking meaning over argument, and new discovery that helps all of us. Leave the argument and come discover something new.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
            ~ The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Theodicy abounds! Given my newsfeed over weeks and months, my human spirit feels an abrasive insistence that the world, or at least from my perspective in Seattle, is very bleak indeed. With concentration camps on the southern border of the United States and ICE officers rounding up immigrants, escalating conflict around the globe with nuclear arms treaties ignored, and hurricanes destroying islands while the media obsesses with the placement of Sharpied lines, Yeats’ theopoetics is prophetic: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” I wonder when such distant atrocities will show up on my doorstep, my brown skin, liberal leanings, and Hispanic last name trumping my U.S. citizenship and my humanity. It seems to me that the whole world is crying out: “Oh God, why have you forsaken me?”[1]

As a hospital and prison chaplain, I notice that miracles and tragedies often coincide. With the sudden death of an aged mother, siblings reunite and reconcile at her bedside after years of animosity. An incarcerated 13-year-old boy convicted of homicide with a gun asks whether forgiveness and reconciliation are possible. A young man takes a wrong step off of a porch and is now a quadriplegic. A teen girl would rather be in a detention center cell because the alternative is living homeless on the streets. So many times I am asked: “Where is God?” So many times I ask the same question as I listen at the intersection of despair and hope. As a spiritual practice I often turn to Leonard Cohen, who in his song “Anthem”writes: “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.”[2]

Being a witness to stories such as these has led me to explore a theology of trauma as a response to the challenge of theodicy. I experience the universe as created in trauma, with an explosion so violent it manifested both space and time. The Earth was formed in trauma over eons of heat, cold, collision and eruption. Life evolves in violence, needing to consume resources and other living beings in order to survive and thrive. I put my body through trauma, tearing muscle and crushing bone, to keep it healthy, strong and flexible. It seems that trauma is an essential component of the universe, of life, of human cosmology. Complexity and evolution always come with the pain of change.

Theologically, if the wisdom of Genesis is correct and everything was created “good,” there is a temptation to believe that God blesses trauma. But was it “good” when the Abrahamic God participated in mass infanticide in Egypt? Or in the slaughter of the Canaanites so Israel could have their land? Was the incarceration, torture, and state execution of Jesus of Nazareth “good”? For myself, coming out of the Abrahamic religious traditions, I reject these revelations of theodicy if I am to maintain a relationship with a Spirit of life and love that is benevolent, powerful and present.

But what if, instead of blessing trauma, God speaks from creation itself in the midst of trauma? Through this theological lens the holy invites humanity, from our primordial depths in creation, to choose goodness despite trauma. Instead of asking “Oh God why have you forsaken me?” the question transforms into “Oh God, where do I find you?” Arthur Peacocke writes in his article The Sound of Sheer Silence: “Our exploration toward God has inevitably led us to the question of how God can communicate with a humanity depicted by the sciences as a part of a monistic natural world and evolved in and from it.”[3] Instead of a distant cosmic judge, the Spirit of life and love becomes an apophatic, panentheistic presence that invites holy participation.

As Viktor Frankl found in the Nazi concentration camps, even in the darkest depths there is always a choice within trauma. What will I say? What will I do? In my chaplain work I have a sense of love and justice that responds when I see suffering. My center cannot hold. Instead of asking “Why did God let this happen?” I consider that perhaps the answer is, “What is God doing while this is happening?” And I find myself in that answer. John Haught writes in his book Science and Revelation: “the divine decent [into creation] in no way means that God is weak of powerless. In Christ’s passion God is presented to faith as vulnerable and defenseless, but, as Edward Schillebeeckx has remarked, vulnerability and defenselessness are more capable of powerfully disarming evil than all the brute force in the world could ever accomplish. […] ‘Power’ means the capacity to bring about significant events, but this does not necessarily require the external use of force.”[4] In this theology of trauma, the nature of our humanity, our common-union, participates with and in the Spirit of life and love. The arc of justice bends not because God wills it from beyond but because an eschatological whisper resonates through our cells into action in the world. All beings of good will manifest divine mercy, charity, and compassion into the universe by listening to that “sound of sheer silence”[5] inviting us to participate in the story of creation. The Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman writes: “the God of life and the God of religion are one and the same. Implicit in the struggle which is a part of life is the vitality that life itself supplies. To affirm this with all of one’s passionate endeavor is to draw deeply upon the resource available to anyone who dares draw upon it. The aliveness of life and the power of God move through the same channel at the point of greatest need and awareness. What precarious ingredients!”[6] Which means responding to trauma, not in reciprocation of atrocity, but with connection, healing and growth. In doing so, we dare to swim in the powerful currents of the Spirit of life and love.

[1] Psalm 22:1 ; Matt 27:46 ; Mark 15:34 ; NRSV

[2] Leonard Cohen, “Anthem,” The Future, 1992

[3] Arthur Peacocke, “The Sound of Sheer Silence” in Paths From Science Toward God: The End of all Our Exploring (London: Oneworld, 2001) p. 117

[4] John F. Haught. Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature (Theology in a Global Perspective) (Kindle: Orbis, 2014) p. 42

[5] 1 Kings 19:11-13, NRSV

[6] Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953) p. 63

The liberative, spiritual resistance of Pride!

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Politics, Religion, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Siblings in faith, I deliver these words in the spirit in which they were written; in the Spirit of Life and Love. Happy Pride Sunday! A festival of remembrance and resistance; a festival of “I will be seen!” and “We will never forget!” As we celebrate this holy day of Pride, the liberative work of love and justice is still in progress. But don’t worry; it has been at work since the beginning of humanity. Once in a while, as an act of spiritual resistance, we choose laughter over weeping, turn up the music and dance as if our lives depend on it. Pride is a festival of love and it is a festival of justice. Justice was demanded 50 years ago at Stonewall, justice was delivered four years ago by the supreme court. Justice is still overdue for queer lives broken and taken.

Many a prophet have said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. But what is this “justice” with a gravity capable of influencing the course of humanity? Some synonyms are “fairness, equity, egalitarianism, impartiality, objectivity, neutrality, right-mindedness, trustworthiness, incorruptibility.” With so many aspirational definitions, we easily forget that justice is complicated and messy. And it is different in every culture and every age. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth is as old as Babylon and is still alive and well today, and so is the first Century Palestinian Jewish call to love those who persecute you and turn the other cheek when harmed.

We have many tools at our disposal to help our discernment. Distributive justice seeks only the proper dispersal of goods in transactions. Punitive justice seeks to punish offenders for wrongs committed. Retributive justice wants restitution. Social justice attempts to bend society toward equity and equality. Restorative justice focuses on the complex needs of both victims and offenders. But when injustice happens, which one do we choose?

If I am driving down the road and somebody makes a mistake and hits my car, I would like them to pay for the damages. Certainly, that’s fair. But what if it’s a family that is scraping by with children to feed and medical bills to pay? Or what if it’s a tech executive driving a Tesla? Or a person who is living out of their car? There are so many “what if’s” justice quickly becomes complicated and messy, and let me make it messier. What if it is a drunk driver? Or a woman who has just escaped from an abusive home and is in crisis? What if my son is in the back seat of my car and is killed? Friends, the narrative of justice is rarely a dualistic, right vs wrong, one size fits all episode of Law and Order.

In our first reading we heard the story of the holy night at Stonewall. Here is a narrative of oppression and violence by the very system that is supposed to dispense justice. Still, was the riot just? Is it justice when violence is payed back with more violence? Is it justice when violence is payed back with the destruction of personal property? Narrative and context matter. For too many years to be queer was to be a criminal. Just as it used to be illegal for women to vote. Or for people of color to drink from water fountains labeled “white only.” Was it a riot or was it a rebellion? Which brings to light that laws are only as flawed as the community who creates them. The power of moral justice, when righteous, can supersede and challenge unjust legal codes and civil law.

Friends, I quote from Rev. Theodore Parker: “look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” And to orient my conscience toward the kind of justice I want to see in the world, I look to our Unitarian Universalist faith.

We are a people who believe that justice should uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It strives for equity and compassion in human relationships. Our justice holds diversity and the capacity for nuance and growth. It seeks to balance freedom with responsibility, is democratic, and respects the conscience of both individual and community. Our justice promotes peace, and takes into account a holistic view of life and creation as intrinsic parts of human flourishing. Siblings in faith, this is the kind of justice that continues to bend the arc of the moral universe. It is this kind of justice, a queer justice, a justice that is able to contain multitudes, uplifts complexity, and restores the human person, that when found, evokes a response of singing and dancing, of hips swaying and hymns announcing “let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

Which is why Pride is such a raucous, joyous celebration. Because queer justice is human justice. Its victory over adversity is a holy call to jubilee. It is an eruption deep within the human spirit that, when witness to injustice, refuses to accept a universe that turns a blind eye to suffering. We curious mammals have a proclivity for creating newness in the world: we make powerful love manifest through our blood, sweat, tears and relationships. And when we reap the fruit of such arduous labor, our only response can be one that celebrates life lavishly. Certainly, today we celebrate Pride Sunday! Because it is a victory of the human spirit over those who say, “You’re too loud,” “Too liberal,” “Too politically correct.” “Too flaming.” “Too ghetto.” “Too emotional.” “You’re moving too fast.”

Often times, these are the same voices who believe bootstraps are a proper response when “life isn’t fair.” It’s a finger-wagging magical wand ingrained in childhood. Growing up, when I felt that someone or something had delivered me an injustice and I would scream “it isn’t fair!” I would inevitably hear from an adult, “Well, life isn’t fair.”

I understand the point; not getting my way is not necessarily injustice. But arguing to be recognized as person with worth and dignity is not the same as throwing a tantrum because I didn’t get cookies after dinner. Yet some hear the call from the margins, “We are suffering and dying! Help us!” as flippantly asking for “wants” rather than standing up for “needs.”

Now that I am grown with a child of my own, I agree—life isn’t fair. Because in my experience life shrugs at such metaphysics like fairness and equality. I can’t distill its finest points into atoms of compassion or electrons of generosity. Our universe goes about its clockwork business of laws that govern energy and matter. It leaves the messy business of humanity to us.

Perhaps because life isn’t fair, and that rubs my spirit the wrong way, I look toward the heavens and say “Hold my beer.” And commit to bringing fairness into the world. Just as I have the power to make love real, I also have the power to make justice real. Because isn’t that the point of all this? Our governments and institutions and civil society and churches and laws and constitutions and covenants are all human creations that attempt to bring some kind of justice into the world. And if the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, then that arc was fashioned long ago by humanity and it is our literal bodies lending weight to its completion.

Through the lens of human history, we know about many of those beautiful human bodies who refused to accept that “life isn’t fair.” Prophets have been nailed to trees for standing up and demanding justice. In our own tradition it was holy bodies seeking religious and spiritual freedom against a world who would burn them at the stake for heresy. There were the mighty bodies of abolitionists who risked life and limb in opposition to the injustice of slavery. There were the resilient bodies of suffragists who demanded women have full agency in the destiny of their communities. There were the prophetic bodies of civil rights activists who gave their lives for freedom. And among them all, there were the holy, mighty, resilient, prophetic, beautiful queer bodies of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, fluid human beings. We are filled with Pride!

At the Stonewall Inn fifty years ago when the queer community stood their ground against state violence and demanded the system uphold their inherent dignity and worth, their bodies bent the moral arc of the universe and human destiny would never be the same. Let me uplift our own victories as a people of faith. In 1863, our tradition was the first to recognize the ordination of a woman to the ministry. In 1969, we were the first major denomination to ordain an openly gay minister. In 1988 we were the first to ordain an openly trans minister. Our tradition, with a justice rooted in our covenanted principles, has been at the front of movements of freedom since our founding. In the celebration of the holy day of Pride is our own call to celebration as a people of faith, love and justice.

Celebration is necessary for a people who are committed to bending the arc of the moral universe. Without joy and laughter and fun, we will succumb to the temptations of futility and despair. There is a destructive lie in the mantra: “How can I laugh and enjoy myself when so many are suffering.” Especially in a country with concentration camps on our southern border, trans people of color being murdered, and ecological apocalypse at our doorstep. Of course my inner critical voice tempts me into despair, as if the only way I can be in solidarity is to suffer in solidarity.

No. A queer love and justice rejects all attempts at dualistic, fatalistic thinking. A queer love and justice is able to hold the human reality that we can experience joy and mourning simultaneously. Which is why we are a gentle, angry people who sing. Which is why we are a justice-seeking people who sing. Which is why we are young and old together and we sing. Because we recognize that our joyous singing and celebration are acts of holy resistance against the cultures of death that would refuse dignity and worth to all our beloved siblings. Certainly today, we celebrate Pride!

But just because we celebrate Pride, does not mean we are absolved of our sins and responsibilities. Yes, I recognize that “sin” is a loaded word for our post-Christian faith. And I believe a queer love and justice invites us to acknowledge our sins; it asks I take responsibility for the harm I cause other people regardless of intentionality; that I admit to my very human failings in the form of phobias and prejudices and anger and hate that creep in due to my insecurities and fears of difference, otherness, and the unknown. Yes, my siblings, I have sinned; against you and against the Earth. I commit, with your loving guidance, to being better.

It is only through the painful process of humility and vulnerability that I find forgiveness for the harm I do to my siblings and to the Earth. Some believe that by leaning into vulnerability I make myself weak, powerless and deficient. But that is not what qualitative researcher Dr. Brene Brown finds in her years of studying vulnerability. Her data suggests that something queer happens when I choose curiosity and possibility; I become stronger than I could possibly imagine; that my letting go of my sins makes space for the difficult penance of transforming my heart, mind, body and spirit toward an orientation of love and justice. And when this happens, is it not a cause to celebrate?

Siblings in faith, we have so much to celebrate today. We celebrate the freedom to love. The freedom to be seen. The freedom to laugh, and sing, and dance for victories won and victories yet to come. Our joy is a sacrifice on the altar of the Spirit of Life and Love in praise for the strength and resiliency to stay the course and not lose our humanity in the process. Today we celebrate the conversion of hearts and minds toward a beautiful, sensual, queer, love and justice which has oriented the arc of the moral universe from the very beginning.

Pride Sunday is a call to repent and hear the good news: love and justice will emerge victorious! We will emerge victorious! Because of the beautiful, sensual, queer bodies who lend their weight to the transformation of humanity. Let us go out, in humble solidarity, and refuse to accept the despair of the cultures of death. Instead, we go from this church with joy in our hearts and laughter in our bellies, to engage in the spiritual resistance of Pride. Amen, and hallelujah!