Tag: Spirituality

The Crossroads of Covenant

On By Justin AlmeidaIn LifeLeave a comment

Delivered at University Unitarian Church on Sunday, August 8th, 2021 at 9:30am. Video from the service can be found HERE.

Good morning siblings in faith! It feels good to be back in our sanctuary this morning. This is my first time in our pulpit since my ordination in March. Once again, I want to say “thank you” for your love and support in my work and ministry. It is an honor and privilege to serve University Unitarian Church, our Seattle community, and our larger faith, as a chaplain and spiritual care provider. It is filled with good and holy work. Work that has been difficult, and needed, in the time of pandemic. As chaplains fill an important role in meeting the psychospiritual needs of patients and staff.

We don PPE (personal protective equipment) and go into patient rooms to deliver the rites and rituals of death. We hold iPads up for families to see and maybe speak with their loved ones, since they cannot be at bedside due to quarantine restrictions. We gather clinicians together to hold space and decompress from long and costly shifts. We sit with parents and caregivers, children and friends, in parking lots and waiting rooms, buffering the shock of tragic news. We are not therapists or psychologists; though we are trained in those techniques. We are more like psychospiritual paramedics, stabilizing the mind and spirit in the midst of trauma. Getting human beings through sometimes the most difficult day of their lives.

Over the last 18 months I have seen hospital policies change back and forth, sometimes on the same day, responding to new data coming in from executives and medical professionals. Before the pandemic, the only time we wore masks was when patients had the risk of airborne infection. Now, we all wear them. Patients used to be able to receive visitors at bedside. Now, they must be cleared ahead of time. At their best, the policies and culture of the hospital systems I work in encourage the health and healing of our patients.

Except when they don’t. Because they’re not perfect. In my experience, one of the more difficult and morally injurious tasks I’ve had to do, is tell a spouse, partner, child, friend, that they can not be there when their loved one is dying. Because the risk of exposure is too great. And I’ve been cursed at. Pleaded with. Almost physically assaulted. An experience many clinicians can speak to. We WANT to say yes. And yet, we can’t; except sometimes, for those rare occasions because every case is different, we have broken policy because we could not say no. Like when a 40 year old mother of two sons, 10 and 13, was dying, and we snuck in their partner and children, because we HAD to. We had to weigh the letter of the law against the spirit of the law. We did our due diligence. And we got lucky. The infection didn’t spread.

18 months later, many of us are challenging some of these policies, as new information has come in. We know more about the risks. And I’ve learned that blanket policies without room for exception quickly become harmful, because human life and death is messy and complex. At best, the policies serve as a structure to make the best decisions we can in our mission; to help and heal. At worst, they are wielded like a club to force compliance regardless of the injury, to self and soul.

I’ve noticed that many institutions of human culture function in the same way as the hospital. We have our rules and laws, mores and unspoken expectations about how we will be together. The greatest of which, in my opinion, are the covenants we create which inspire us more fully into our humanity. One of which is our own 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.

As much as its quoted, this is not a law. This is a faith statement. I don’t think it is an accident that the United States and its Federal Government in many ways functions like a church. The Declaration is also a covenant, for community and accountability. Because we all know the framers could to do better. At the time, many in the colonies did not have a right to life, liberty or happiness. Many were slaves. Many in power were slave owners. Still, they wrote the words and made the promise.

They formed a new nation, not so much in law or treaty, but in covenant. Because the final line in the Declaration is this: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” This is not the quid-pro-quo of many legal document. These words carried the weight of human connection; a promise that would be challenged through war and peace. And like many great works of humanity, would chafe and challenge all who encountered it. Because it reached for greater ideals than was reality, and uncovered the shortcomings and hypocrisy of its authors.

The Declaration was not enough. The Articles of Confederation were not enough. Our nation in its diversity and complexity needed something that would hold us together. Therefore the Constitution was drafted. And it too begins with a covenant:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

At the time of its ordination, “We the People” excluded many. Slaves. Servants. Women. Indigenous peoples. “Justice” excluded many of the same. “Tranquility” perhaps for the powerful. “Common Defense” which would seek to strip the land and culture from those who were here before “the white man came.” “Welfare” for who? Did those Blessings of Liberty trickle down like voodoo economics? No, they did not.

          Yet, our nation’s Constitution, like the Declaration and other similar documents; the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, the Beatitudes, the Five Pillars; became more than what was just written. A living document with words that would always break out of the containers in which they were placed. “We the People”, “Order”, “Union”, “Justice”, “Tranquility”, “Welfare”, “Liberty”, “Posterity”. These are transcendental subjects of human being that cannot be controlled or held by a minority of interpreters. They are not signs; they are symbols, for what could be.

          Signs are static. “Stop” with its red octagon and bold white letters, is not a suggestion. And while I have been known to perpetrate a “California Stop,” slowing down and making sure no police are looking on, its command is clear. For a good reason. In the Emergency Department at Harborview Medical Center, I have first hand knowledge of the danger in not following signs. “Yield”, “Warning”, “Do Not Enter”, “Wrong Way”, “No Left Turn”, our world is full of signs helping with navigation and structure; law and regulation. There is no room for interpretation; there is room for challenge. “Whites Only” is a sign which was challenged by the symbols contained in our Constitution.

          A symbol, theologically, is an object which directs the human gaze to something greater than its reality. Its meaning can be debated, contested. It can not be pinned down or captured through a sole interpretation. This, is a symbol: our flaming chalice. It was created for a particular moment in time, to help provide documentation for those fleeing Nazi persecution. However, it has become more than a passport stamp. It is the light of faith. The flame of wisdom. The fire of commitment. The container of spirit. It transcends the static. This, too, is a symbol: (hold fist in the air), which would overcome the limits of the signs of the time.

          Our Declaration and our Constitution are symbols which transcend their original meaning and intentions. Their words can be challenged and new ways interpreted. And when the old words are not enough, new words can be added with the consent of governed. Slavery can be abolished. People of color and women can have suffrage. Prohibitions against discrimination can be enacted. One of the reasons we say our Constitution is a living document, is because it can grow and change along with its society and culture. Symbols never expire their capacity of interpretation; will always overflow the narrow containers of belief.

          Our own Unitarian Universalist faith follows the covenantal tradition, replacing doctrine and dogma with seven principles and six sources which help guide us in our relationship with each other and the world. And like most living documents, as symbols of faith, our principles were not perfect nor enough when they were first drafted. Here is there original wording as adopted in 1961:

In accordance with these corporate purposes, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Association, dedicated to the principles of a free faith, unite in seeking:

1. To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship;

2. To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love to God and love to man;

3. To affirm, defend and promote the supreme worth of every human personality, the dignity of man, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships;

4. To implement our vision of one world by striving for a world community founded on ideals of brotherhood, justice and peace;

5. To serve the needs of member churches and fellowships, to organize new churches and fellowships, and to extend and strengthen liberal religion;

6. To encourage cooperation with men of good will in every land.

How much has changed in our faith, and in our world, from 1961 to 2021? Movements from within our faith, led by women and other groups, sought greater inclusion and openness. “Man” was made gender neutral. Indigenous and Earth centered traditions were included. Revised in 1985 and amended in 1995, adding a principal: “covenanting to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Brings us to its current form. Fifty years have passed since the merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists. Both Christian denominations that have since gone beyond their original creeds to form a more perfect union of pluralistic faith. We are truly come a long way in a short time.

Once again, our denomination is considering adding to our principles because for many, the demands of the world rub up against our covenant and lay bare imperfections and shortcomings. An 8th principle has emerged to meet these challenges, covenanting to affirm and promote “journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

          Like in the past, we struggle as a community and as a faith on why and how to do this. There was tremendous pushback in 1980 when women fought to be included as equals in the wording of our faith. It took five years and numerous meetings and conversations to remove the word “Man”, “men” and “brotherhood” as a placeholder for all human beings. Therefore it does not surprise me that we are having difficult and turbulent conversations around adopting the 8th principle. My hope and prayer is that our current principles and sources can hold us in tension and relationship through the process.

           As I reflect on the 8th principle and the events preceding its creation, I see it as a natural evolution of our liberal living faith. Like other living traditions, the crises of the moment have caused our symbols to transcend their old meanings and take on new interpretations. Because the old meanings were not getting the job done; they had become signs to point at, rather than symbols pointing to. And when religion becomes about signs, it loses its connection to the human spirit; to the source of Life and Love which calls us to transcendence. It becomes like a red octagon with white letters: “STOP!” It becomes literal. Fundamentalist. A rule to follow rather than a road to freedom.

I wonder how our own principles have become like stop signs? Stifling creativity. Are they still opening us to something new in the world? To me, our principles call me to reflect on how I may be a better partner and lover, sibling and parent, colleague and friend, minister and chaplain. When I hear the proposed 8th principle, I feel a fire inside of me, challenging me to dig deeper into my spirit and show up with powerful love in a new way. At the end of the day, I feel accountable to myself in how I have loved, working through the oppressions in myself and my institution.

In this pandemic, I have been called to minister to all people; including the angry white conservative Christian with the MAGA hat. The neo-Nazi with white nationalist tattoos up and down their chest and arms. The gun lover. The border wall builder. The racist. The homophobe. The COVID denier. And what helps me through those moments comes out of our principles. And through them, I build relationship as I’m able. To the point where a dying man with a very different ideology from myself trusts me enough to ask: “Will you stay and pray with me?” And I can reply, “We are in this together.” And we move on into that “field beyond right-doing and wrong-doing, where ideas, language, even the phrase each-other don’t make any sense.” (Rumi)

Siblings in faith, at this time and place, we are being asked to consider how we may better live into our Unitarian Universalist values. Because our seven principles have not been enough to bend the arc of justice to the point where all people of good-will are welcome and included in our congregations, communities and world. Events have exposed spiritual and moral cracks in our personal and institutional foundations. We are called to respond.

Like with many covenants I’ve known in the past, I am being asked to consider something new. My hospital needed new policies to respond to COVID. Our Declaration needed a Constitution to respond to the failure of the Articles of Confederation. Our Constitution needed further amendments to respond to abolition and suffrage. And our Unitarian Universalist principles are now tasked to respond to the challenges of climate crisis, prejudice, and systemic oppression. All of which are linked through intersectionality. To deal with one means to deal with them all.

And I believe the 8th principle makes explicit what the first seven principles say implicitly about our covenant with each other and the world. That we are interwoven in a garment of human destiny. (King) That what affects one directly affects all indirectly. That we cannot do this alone. That we need one another. We remember that our principles and sources are not signs; they are transcendental symbols that overflow with meaning and love into the world. Pointing the way to beloved community. And when the powers and principalities of the world hold up their sign saying “STOP!” we answer with a symbol of our own. (Our Flaming Chalice)

May our conversations and confrontations around the 8th principle be fruitful and lead to a deepening of relationship and understanding of each other. May our symbols lead us to deeper humanity and connection with the source of Life and Love. And may we remember that every day is a new gift to love and serve. May it be so. Amen.

Weathering the COVID19 storm in Seattle

On By Justin AlmeidaIn Commons, Life, Politics, Religion, Spirituality1 Comment

Every day this week, my bus has been on time and I’ve arrived to work early. Only a pandemic like COVID19 could ease the Seattle traffic to pleasant levels. It’s a silver lining that I’ve held onto given the strange quarantine which has gripped the city. My bus has been deserted. I suspect that the only people on board at 6am are healthcare workers. My route: to the Veterans Administration of Puget Sound. I am a chaplain.

It seems all the dystopian literature I’ve consumed over the years has prepared me for these times. Compared to the nightmare scenarios of 1984 and 12 Monkeys, the current reality is difficult and not unmanageable. In my community, with school and library closures, event cancellations and struggling small businesses, neighbors are offering childcare, meal and medication delivery, and resource sharing. Local businesses are stepping up through free meals, services and hiring temp workers. It’s like Fred Rogers said, “Look for the helpers.”

As a chaplain it’s my vocation to offer psychospiritual triage in every crisis. This morning at two different coffee shops filled with tech workers, exasperated parents with school aged children, and college students studying for finals, I asked baristas and patrons how they were holding up. I received wide eyes. Glances at the floor. Frustration at the disruption of life. And a begrudging acceptance of reality. In all the conversations was fear. In response I acknowledged their fear and offered solidarity. “I see you. You’re not alone. We’re in this together.” For a few the words brought tears. For most, a smile and a nod.

Chaplains are strange creatures. We’re a blend of mentor, councilor, therapist, spiritual advisor and preacher. Most of us are public theologians. As such, I wonder how to respond to quarantine and social distancing with creativity and the unexpected. The sacred always resists boxes. In conversation with my peers at the Veterans Administration, my supervisor shared this quote from CS Lewis (On Living in an Atomic Age, 1948):

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Yes, we are afraid. And it is possible to hope even while experiencing fear. So much in life can and will break our bodies. Every time I get behind the wheel of a car I invite destruction. I minister to too many accident casualties to truly feel “safe” on the road. And yet I choose to live life, perhaps more mindful of the need to be, as I tell my son, “kind, loving and listening.” I buckle my seatbelt. I put my phone down. I pay attention. I try not to speed. I commit to kindness on the road. Because we’re all in this together.

I am reminded of a story in the Christian scriptures (Mark 4: 35-41):

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Jesus’ friends wonder (and are more than annoyed) at his apparent calm in the face of certain destruction. For Christ’s sake, how can somebody sleep at a time like this!? (I imagine many in our moment are losing sleep) As a prophet Jesus knows the reality; that storms run their course. What is important is that they were together in the boat. Perhaps the disciples missed the point. It wasn’t about the power of control and domination over the elements. It is the faith that together we weather the storm. Siblings, where is your faith? What grounds you in this moment against the storm?

Every day of this outbreak I have woken up, gone to the gym, and come into the hospital. Because there are people alone in their hospital rooms, with cancer and infections and injuries and illness, who are better when we are together. COVID19 is dangerous and precautions are followed. There is a long road ahead. Yes I am afraid. I’ve read this story; I know the potential endings. I just believe in my ability to choose how to respond to the fear. And my choice is to show up. Because what dominates my mind is not to hoard toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It is knowing that I can make a difference. We all can. Every day.

Siblings of Seattle and around the world, I see you. You’re not alone. We’re in this together. You all woke up this morning already enough for this day. You were created with inherent dignity and worth. Today is an opportunity to live. And as St. Mary Oliver wrote in The Summer Day: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

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.

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!