top of page
Writer's pictureuuseoffice

I was a Stranger, and You Welcomed Me, Rev. Josh Pawelek, Nov. 10, 2024



After last Sunday’s sermon, a far-greater-than-usual number of you called or wrote or texted to thank me for my words and to say you felt better, felt not so alone, felt more hopeful. I hadn’t anticipated that response, though maybe I should have. It was gratifying to hear from so many that my words had been well-received and helpful.

This morning is different. The 2024 elections are over. Donald Trump won the presidency handily. Though I do hope that being here in the UUSE sanctuary or in our online space, together, will remind you that you are not alone, I confess I don’t know what to say to make anyone feel better or more hopeful about the future of the United States, or about your own future, or about the futures of your families, your loved-ones, your friends.  Like many of you, I have been struggling emotionally—cycling through fear, sadness, anger, disbelief, and all the shades of feeling in between. Like many of you I have been struggling physically—sick to my stomach, dizzy, jittery, not sleeping well and, therefore, tired. I haven’t lost my appetite, though some of you have said you don’t feel like eating. Like many of you I have been struggling spiritually—not feeling grounded, rooted, centered; not able to take the full breaths I know I need to take. Perhaps, if you leave this place this morning and remember nothing else that I say, remember the admonition to breathe.

I said last Sunday that, in the very least, we could anticipate the next few weeks would be very hard, meaning that if Kamala Harris won, there would be relentless legal challenges, disinformation campaigns, and possible violence. Now we know it’s not just the next few weeks that will be difficult. Now we know it’s minimally the next four years and likely beyond that that will be difficult. Of course, the word ‘difficult’ does not begin to articulate what is likely coming. Given what the President- and Vice President-elect have promised, what the writers of Project 2025 have promised, what anti-immigrant radicals like Stephen Miller have promised, what Christian Nationalist leaders have promised, what Elon Musk has promised, referring to it simply as ‘difficult’ feels somehow to have wildly missed the mark. Furthermore, we must be mindful that what those of us with more resources, more privilege, more financial security experience as ‘difficult’ will likely be catastrophic for those on society’s margins.

I want to say five things to you. Everything I have to say ought to sound familiar coming from me—there’s nothing radically new here. What is new is the shift in the American body politic that has brought Donald Trump to the presidency claiming a popular mandate. That is, he won the popular vote. What is also new is the lack of guardrails—the friendlier courts, the supportive Congress—giving him far more unbridled power this time around. Given this newness, what I have to say, though I have said it before, feels more radical, more essential, more vital to me. I hope it will feel that way to you too.

First: the depth of our spiritual life and practices—our individual spiritual life and practices, our collective spiritual life and practices—matters immensely. Our capacity to move through the coming years with strength, resilience, grace, hope and an abiding love depends first and foremost on the depth of our spiritual life and practices. So make it your righteous habit to breathe deeply, in and out, in and out, in and out. Take time every day to breathe in peace, as the song says.[1] Breathe out love, as the song says. Breath in peace, breathe out love.

Then pray. I know quite a few of you do not identify as praying people. That has to change. Whether you are a committed atheist or a committed theist, say the words of your deepest longings out loud. Let yourself and those around you encounter in your words what your heart longs to say. Let your body and the bodies of those around you resonate with your voice as it speaks the words your heart longs to say. Let your spirit and the spirits of those around you soar in response to the words your heart longs to say.

Then go outside. Bear witness to the natural world. Bear witness to the earth. Bear witness to the last falling leaves saying your name. Reach down in any way you can and touch the earth. Lie down on the earth. Let this earth-touch steady you. Let this earth-touch ground you. Let this earth touch center you.

Then stretch, then walk, then sing, then create, journal, meditate, read scripture—whatever is scripture to you—exercise, sit quietly, sit in stillness.

Then, come to worship on Sunday morning. Come to this scared space or join us online. Come so that we can be together, because that is the center of our collective spiritual life. This being together in beloved spiritual community is our central spiritual practice. Come, so that none of us has to face what is happening in our country alone. Come so that we can go through it together.

Second: “just as you did it to one of the least of these, so you did it to me.” I have never been more clear in my life. We, the members and friends of this Unitarian Universalist congregation; we, Unitarian Universalists across the United States and across the world; and we, liberal people of all faiths—all religions—must root ourselves in solidarity with the least of these. We must proudly, unapologetically and faithfully align ourselves with oppressed peoples, with poor people, with, as the biblical reading says, those who are hungry and thirsty, those who are strangers in need of welcome, those who are naked, those who are sick, those in prison. We must proudly, unapologetically and faithfully orient ourselves to the needs, the vision, the organizing efforts, the strategies of those who are targeted by the incoming administration—people targeted for deportation, targeted to have rights taken away, targeted to have public goods and services taken away, targeted to have their history erased, targeted to have control of their own bodies taken away, targeted to have their healthcare taken away. We must proudly, unapologetically and faithfully align ourselves with freedom and justice movements led by women, led by Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color, led by immigrants, led by transgender, nonbinary and queer people, led by people with disabilities. We must proudly, unapologetically and faithfully pursue a vision of Earth justice, Earth stewardship, Earth survival.

We know how to do this. A few years before I arrived as your minister, this congregation voted overwhelmingly to become a Unitarian Universalist Association Welcoming Congregation and to support and empower Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people both here and in the wider community. For us this is not just a proud legacy. It is a fundamental spiritual commitment. Soon after I arrived this congregation became a certified Unitarian Universalist Association Green Sanctuary, dedicated to living in harmony with the Earth. For us this is not just a proud legacy. It is a fundamental spiritual commitment. In more recent years we overwhelmingly passed a congregational resolution in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. And still more recently, we overwhelmingly passed a congregational resolution to become a sanctuary congregation. For us these are not merely proud legacies. They are fundamental spiritual commitments. Of course they have never been easy commitments to keep. At times we have missed the mark over the years. But these are our commitments, and in the weeks, months and years ahead, I have no doubt we will be called to fulfill them in ways we never imagined when we first made them.

Third: Struggle lies ahead. I use the word ‘struggle’ often. The struggle for social justice. The struggle for racial justice. The struggle for reproductive justice. The struggle for worker justice. The struggle for environmental justice. None of these struggles are new, but Tuesday’s election results have catapulted the stakes into the stratosphere. I’m mindful that I rarely say what I mean by struggle. I assume everyone knows more or less what I mean. Sometimes I worry that I—and we—have entered into these struggles in ways that require the least amount of disruption to our lives, the least amount of sacrifice, the least amount of risk for us. To the extent that’s true, my gut tells me that era of safe struggle is over. Although we don’t know yet what struggle looks like in the coming months and years, I am confident it will be different than what we are used to, that it will require more from us than we are accustomed to, that it will require sacrifice, that it will be disruptive. Here’s just one example I have begun contemplating: I’m trying to imagine multiple families facing deportation somehow living in our meeting house. It doesn’t seem possible, yet we may be asked to make it possible.

A few years ago I preached a sermon entitled “Perhaps Struggle is All We Have.” In that sermon I shared wisdom from the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 book, Between the World and Me. Some of you will remember he wrote this book as a letter to his then teenage son about the way the United States treats black bodies and how to live in such a cruel society. He said justice is never guaranteed. He said “you must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice.” [2] This statement contradicts the Kingian saying (based on the words of the 19th-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker) that “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Coates is saying, “no it doesn’t.” Coates says “perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of the universe is an atheist, and nothing about this world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all.” But—and this is critical—“This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”[3]

Last Sunday I spoke about the promise the founders of the United States made to their posterity. This week the hard lesson: no promise is unbreakable. But let us not despair. We can still act. We can commit to struggle for what is right and good. We can commit to struggle for the reassertion of the founders’ promise. We can commit to struggle for the least of these. We can commit to struggle for democracy. Let us trust that struggle is indeed the preference of the universe. Let us make ourselves ready to be in the struggle.

Fourth: Despite the broken promise, I urge you also to “Keep Alive the Dream in the Heart.” Last Sunday we sang “America the Beautiful.” Many of you reported getting choked up in ways you didn’t expect. This week, at our vigils, and in private conversations, some of you reported feeling that the United States of America is done, is over, has failed; or more specifically that American democracy is now dying, if not dead. I don’t want in any way to belittle or downplay the strength and intensity of your feelings if you feel this way. But I do want to urge you to “Keep Alive the Dream in the Heart.” I borrow this language from the 20th-century American mystic and mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., the Rev. Howard Thurman. As long as we keep the dream alive in the heart, he says, we will not lose the significance of living. He writes; “The dream in the heart is the outlet. It is one with the living water welling up from the very springs of Being, nourishing and sustaining all of life…. The dream is the quiet persistence in the heart that enables [us] to ride out the storms of [our] churning experiences…. It is the ever-recurring melody in the midst of the broken harmony and harsh discords of human conflict…. It lives in the inward parts, it is deep within, where the issues of life and death are ultimately determined. Keep alive the dream; for as long as [we have] a dream in [our] hearts, [we] cannot lose the significance of living.”[4]

However you understand the promise of the United States of America; however you understand the promise of our Unitarian Universalist faith, I urge you to keep alive the dream in your heart. And on those days when you simply can’t do that, please know and trust that I or someone else in this congregation will keep your dream alive for you; just as I know and trust that on those days when I simply can’t do it, you will keep it alive for me.

          Fifth, finally:  please know and trust this too: I love you. And I know and trust that you love me. And I know and trust that you love each other. And I know and trust that you love the promise of our nation, just as you love the promise of our faith. I am glad I have you, and I am glad we have each other. I am glad knowing that we will not go through this alone. I am glad knowing that we will go through this together.

          Amen and blessed be.


[1] Jones, Sarah Dan, “Meditation on Breathing,” Singing the Journey (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005) #1009.

[2] Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015) pp. 70.

[3] Ibid, p. 71.

[4] Thurman, Howard in Fluker Walter Earl and Tumber, Catherine, eds., “Keep Alive the Dream in the Heart,” A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998) pp. 304-305.

22 views0 comments

Comments


Commenting has been turned off.
bottom of page