Tim DeChristopher is a UU and a climate activist and, I’m not afraid of saying, a profit for our time. In 2008 as an undergraduate economics student, Tim joined a protest in Utah outside a federal land auction populated largely by oil and coal companies. The auction had been in the news for having been slipped in by an outgoing Bush administration without following many regulations including a climate impact study. Tim was outside with members of his congregation, holding signs, hoping to draw attention to the illegal auction, but there were no reporters and being there was having no impact. Looking for a way to make a difference, Tim entered the auction and got himself a number. At first, he just bid long enough to increase prices dramatically. (In one case from $2 an acre to $240 an acre.) But he saw that, regardless of the price, this land was going to be destroyed, so he went a step further and starting winning the bids. Tim shut down the auction by driving prices outlandishly high or outbidding his competitors, even though he had no money. When the auction was over, he was arrested for fraud. The money to cover his purchases was soon raised, but it didn’t matter. He spent two years in federal prison, but he was successful both by saving that land and by calling attention to the immense, uncontrolled power fossil fuel companies wield. His act of civil disobedience ultimately safeguarded thousands of acres of public land, and inspired activists across the country. Before being sent to prison, Tim said to the judge, “[My message] may indeed be threatening to the power structure. The message is about recognizing our interconnectedness. The message is that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited. Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.” (You can hear his Unitarian Universalism, can’t you?) He went on to say to that judge during sentencing, “At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow."
This is what love looks like. M. Scott Peck starts his famous book The Road Less Travelled with the line, “Love is not a feeling. It’s a decision.” Love is not a feeling. Falling in love is a feeling. Living a long, joyful, committed life with someone is a decision. Feelings come and go. We decide to love another human being after the intoxicating experience of falling in love with them overwhelms us, and then passes. Love is how we live, not how we feel. Love is an action word. And there are countless examples of how well we love all around us.
The week I was candidating here, there was a meeting in the Assembly Hall. Everyone was there. Standing room only. I had a microphone and another was being passed around and everyone had questions – long questions – and everyone wanted answers. People were settled in for the afternoon. There was lunch and coffee and this was important. Unless you were three. The pre-K crowd was less interested in spending the day in a church basement. I stayed focused, not easily distracted by children running wild. In fact, it gives me energy. But, then I saw one of those sweet children on a custom carnival ride made just for him. Our own Sandy Brooks had put the child on the seat of her walker and was weaving him in and out of the hall and the people. She was smiling. He was having a grand time. His parents were focused on me, fully trusting that this community of believers is their village, helping raise their child. I was in discernment too, trying to figure out if leaving my church for this one was the right move, but in that moment, I was sure I could call this home.
Sometimes love is breaking an immoral law and going to prison and sometimes it’s riding a three year old on your walker. This is what love looks like.
Next week, we’re voting on the 8th Principle. The 8th Principle reads, “We covenant to affirm and promote journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural beloved community by our actions and accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.” I first saw this principle when its creator Paula Cole Jones handed it to me on a card in 2014 and told me not to show it to anyone. She said she didn’t know what she was doing with it. She knew that if her church couldn’t embrace it, she was in the wrong place, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to find that out yet. She didn’t want to go public with it because hearing a lot of white people rejecting it would be too much, but she also knew it couldn’t sit in her pocket forever. It did, though, sit there for a few years while she and her colleague gained the strength they needed to bring it to the rest of us. It was time to see if talk about “beloved community”, so often found in our mission statements, Community Church included, was just talk. Are we interested in the real work racial equity requires? If we say we want justice, are we willing to look inside ourselves to find the tentacles of oppression and remove them? Are we willing to look around the room and say to our spiritual community, “I am willing to act in love for all of us, as uncomfortable as it might be sometimes, so that we can build the world we dream about?” Is beloved community something we just put in our mission statement without thought? Or is it a grounding principle, an articulation of our vision for ourselves and the world around us? Next week, we’re going to vote on it. Next week, during our 1pm congregational meeting, we’re going to ask ourselves what love looks like here at Community Church and whether we can join the 144 churches who have already voted to include an end to oppression, an end to systemic racism, and a vision of equity as embodied love in their own hope for the world. Next week, we’ll ask ourselves what love can look like, here.
Yesterday was my son’s 12th birthday. Last year there were no vaccines yet and we were all in lockdown. Zac attended 5th grade from our living room. January 22nd 2021, was cold, icy, and the feeling was equally chilled for the 11 year old birthday party we had by asking our friends to drive by our house, honking. They did and it was more fun than we might have anticipated, but the thought that this year would be the same was too much. As I keep telling Zac, this will all make for great story telling when he’s older, but in the meantime, I know it’s really difficult to be a kid during a pandemic. Trying to salvage the experience of a celebrated birthday, I was able to gather a few kids together to be outside during the snow this week for a little sledding and cake, but it was clear that turning 12 wasn’t going to be much more exciting than turning 11. So, I went to Facebook and posted a request. I asked if people would send my son cards so he’d have something to open on January 22nd.
And, he did. Dozens of cards came in. My mother’s cousin from California. A colleague in Cambridge. Someone I haven’t spoken to in 20 years sent a gift her grandson loves. An acquaintance from Oregon sent books her son read obsessively at this age. An entire Kindergarten class in Texas sent a whole pile of handmade cards. A colleague I’ve never met sent a package of Dungeons and Dragons stuff to support Zac playing. Friends from college, people we haven’t heard from in decades, distant family, neighbors, some of you…beautiful acts of kindness came in from all over the country, overwhelming us with gratitude. After we finished opening it all, my husband declared his faith in humanity restored and Zac told us he felt like his birthday ended with an avalanche of love.
I held six Listening Circles over the last two weeks. Everyone was invited to come tell me what they want from church. There was very little consistency from group to group, even about topics people wanted to cover, but a couple of things were said more than once. The big one was sermon topics. Some people want more justice sermons. Some want more spiritual sermons. Some can do without the justice stuff and some would prefer spirituality be kept out of church. (That’s a topic for another day.)
The thing is, I don’t see justice and spirituality as different. Maybe what’s different is how someone feels when the sermon is over. Maybe some people like to feel comforted, and some like to feel inspired to action. But, the content is the same, as far as I’m concerned. Every sermon I’ve ever preached was designed to remind us that life is wildly, radically connected, that we are called to a life of love and mutual dependence, lived both in our homes and on our streets. We are all called to be icons of the divine, reflecting divinity so well others know God because they met us. We are all called to put our hands to work, touching this holy world, bringing healing and hope to all the places it’s needed. It is the life of the spirit. It is the life of the activist. It is our shared life, the one we promise to live together, building the beloved community where we care for each other deeply and meaningfully, where we care for Earth and for all the creatures and plants and people, where we work to build systems that ensure that love defines life for all of us. We make a decision to love, to live well, to become an instrument of peace, to lean into our interdependence, creating home and comfort for everyone. We make a decision to live a life of vision, of hope, of generosity, of patriotism, a life of wild, active, embodied, confident and boundless love. Because love is not a feeling. It’s an action word. It’s a decision. And on any given day, we can look around us and say, yes, this is what love looks like.