Imagining a Congregational Year, Part II: It's Good to Be Alive, Rev. Josh Pawelek, Sept. 28, 2025

The oak burl chalice on the world map table in the chapel at UUSE

Over the last decade I’ve become a fan of the Drive-By Truckers, a three-guitar, southern rock band, founded in Athens, Georgia in 1996. I first noticed them when they started writing songs in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in the late 20-teens. I’m also very moved by their songs decrying American gun violence and the very nuanced way in which they proclaim their southern pride while not ignoring or white-washing histories of violence and racism. In July I went to their show at the College Street Music Hall in New Haven. Their encore was the song Andy and I just presented, "World of Hurt" from their 2006 album, A Blessing and a Curse. (Note that I left out some of the words and edited a few others – they don’t all work for a Sunday morning worship service.) I think I’d heard the song before the concert, but it hadn’t yet grabbed my attention. Well, it grabbed me that night in New Haven. I have no other words for it than to call it a spiritual experience. I found the music beautiful, and the lyrics a probing, searing meditation on the nature of love that met me right where I was in that moment, spoke to me in a way I needed to be spoken to, lifted me up, buoyed me, connected me. Music is known to have that effect on people. Over the next few weeks I listened to it easily 50 times—I’m sure I drove my family bananas. Please don’t play that song again. Please turn it off! Every time I listened I thought, I want to share this in a UUSE Sunday service. So, here we are.

            I would not expect anyone listening to our rendition this morning to be as spiritually moved as I was that evening in July. That’s not my purpose in sharing the song. I can no more recreate my spiritual experience in you than you can recreate your spiritual experience in me. But I do want to offer the song’s lyrics as a scripture not only for this sermon, but for the entire congregational year. This is Part II of a sermon series, “Imagining a Congregational Year.” And as I imagine the year stretching out before us, love figures prominently: naming and defining love; expressing love, practicing love, reflecting theologically on love, putting love into action. I imagine this for many reasons, but I’ll name two big ones here:

            First, I imagine love figures prominently this year because our denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), is centering love in its articulation of our faith both nationally and internationally. As most of you know, when our General Assembly changed Article 2 of its bylaws in June of 2024, it replaced the seven Unitarian Universalist principles with six values—justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, generosity—emerging from love at the center. The new Article 2 says “Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for [doing the work of] living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.” As a reminder, our congregation is committed to continuing its use of the seven principles and will integrate them with the new values and their related covenantal statements. Our Principles and Values Integration Task Force will be making recommendations for how best to do that later this fall. Because love is at the center in the new Article 2 and because our denominational leaders are using love to articulate who we are as people of faith, I imagine we will be talking more and more about love through the course of the congregational year. What does it mean when we say love is at the center of our faith? What do we mean when we refer to a spiritual discipline of love?

            Second, I imagine love figures prominently for us this congregational year because our response to authoritarianism in the United States demands it. I’m going back to my sermon two weeks ago on imagining the congregational year. In response to political violence and increasing threats of political violence that week, I said “our principles, values and traditions call us to engage in nonviolent resistance. I am convinced violence only leads to more violence. In resisting authoritarianism, the central question for me is how we do it with love, compassion and empathy.”[2]

            This is not going to be an easy conversation. Last Sunday, in a national address, President Trump said “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” In the face of such explicitly-stated presidential hatred which, I believe, includes liberal religious people like ourselves, what does it mean to say “My faith calls me to love my opponent and to want the best for them?” Not an easy conversation.

            I go back to the song, “World of Hurt.” The Drive-By Tuckers wrote it in 2006. They likely weren’t anticipating our world of hurt in 2025. There was plenty of hurt to go around in 2006. The September 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks might have been on their minds. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the government’s failed response in late August of 2005 might have been on their minds. The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq might have been on their minds. But maybe none of that was on their minds. Maybe they just wanted to write a song that acknowledged that none of us—no human being—goes through life without some measure of pain, suffering and trauma, though there’s no fairness in how the hurt is spread around. Maybe they just wanted to write a song acknowledging that none of us—no human being—goes through life without moments of sadness and grief, fear and cowering, loneliness and isolation, disappointment, disillusionment, discontent—though again, there’s no fairness in how the hurt is spread around. This world of hurt is not just this authoritarian world we live in now. It’s in the experience of being alive. It's in the human condition.

This song—our scripture for this morning—is saying, at least to me, that the only way to meet this world of hurt with integrity, maturity and wisdom is with love. But it’s not love as an empty pop music platitude. It’s not a feel-good liberal religious notion of love. It’s not some smart Facebook meme about what Jesus really taught which feels good in the moment, but which runs the risk of ultimately making us feel more smug and self-righteous. To love genuinely and authentically is to make oneself vulnerable to loss, because the people we love die. To love genuinely and authentically is to make oneself vulnerable to all manner of hurts because people in power may care nothing about you, may not want the best for you. To love in this world of hurt is to risk potentially everything. “To love,” as the song says, “is to feel pain. There ain't no way around it. The very nature of love is to grieve when it is over.” And right now, for so many of us, when it comes to love of country, love of democracy, love of what we thought were our agreed upon rights such as freedom of speech, it feels more and more like all of it is ending or over.

Part of why hearing this song for the first time felt like a spiritual experience is because it took me to a place I needed to go to, but I didn’t quite know I needed to go there. It’s not just a matter of preaching “love your neighbor” or “love the stranger,” or “love your enemy,” or “love your country.” It’s easy enough to say. What I’ve realized is that I need to love my neighbor, the stranger, my enemy, my country and preach it with a full and unflinching understanding that doing so inevitably comes with a cost, requires sacrifice, and will cause pain. That’s a conversation I imagine we’ll be having this congregational year.

But our scripture doesn’t leave us locked in a world of hurt. It shows us not a way out, because there is no way out—“to love is to feel pain”—but that there is also more to love than pain. And what our scripture shows us is a beautiful, spacious, life-giving hope that comes with our willingness to love despite the risk, along side the pain. For me, it’s a beautiful, spacious, life-giving hope that comes as we gather all our hurting pieces, knit them into an inevitably imperfect whole that says “yes” to life, “yes” to everything I love, “yes” to the people I love, and in this world of hurt, “yes” to the country I love, “yes” to the democracy I love,” “yes to the civil rights I love,” “yes” to the whole blessed thing.

The song ends with the humble, hopeful reminder that if what you have is working for you / Or you think that it stands a reasonable chance / And if whatever's broken seems fixable / And nothing's beyond repair / If you still think about each other and smile / Before you remember how screwed up it's gotten / Or maybe still dream of a time less rotten / Remember, it ain't too late to take a deep breath / And throw yourself into it with everything you've got / It's great to be alive.

I know it’s an unorthodox scripture. I know the proper Christian clergy might sneer and say “that’s not a real scripture.” But I remind us that the whole world is holy, and virtually any words can became scripture if they say what you need to hear. And this is what I imagine we’ll be talking about in the coming congregational year. To love is to feel pain. But it ain’t too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into it with everything you’ve got.

Turn to a neighbor and assure them, “it’s great to be alive.”

Turn to another neighbor and assure them, “it’s great to be alive.”

Let’s say it all together: “It’s great to be alive.”

Amen and blessed be.