A Rose by Any Other Name Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Society, Madison, CT The Rev. Jeanne Lloyd July 15, 2018

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1 Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Society, Madison, CT The Rev. Jeanne Lloyd July 15, 2018 Minister s Announcement: As we join one another in community, let us listen quietly to our gathering music as it centers and prepares us for this morning s service. Gathering Music Intermezzo in A Major, Brahms Nick Stanford, Pianist Sounding of the Gong #Welcome Neil Schultes, Treasurer Board of Trustees Prelude What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong Chalice Lighting & Opening Words (The flaming chalice is the symbol of our free faith) Forrest Church, adapted Each of us, of course, must assume the responsibility for awakening. Others may be responsible for our being born, but what we make of our lives, how deeply and intensively we live, is our responsibility, and ours alone. Having accepted life as a gift for ourselves, we are then charged to revere the presence of this same gift in others. 1 #*Opening Hymn #151 I Wish I Knew How, v. 1-3, Taylor & Dallas Honoring Our Joys and Sorrows And, now, if you woke this morning with a sorrow so heavy that you need the help of this community to carry it; or if, in the spirit of thankfulness, you woke with gratitude in your heart that simply must be shared, now is the time for you to speak. Please come forward to the lectern as you are able. Or, we will bring a mic to you, as needed. PAUSE 1 Lifting Our Voices, Readings in the Living Tradition (Boston: UUA, 2015, #113, 38).

2 Page 2 of 8 Let us reflect with reverence in our hearts for the joys and sorrows spoken and unspoken today. Sung Meditation #396 Offertory Words & Music I Know This Rose Will Open, Grigolia Imagine, John Lennon Barnaby Feder 2 Spirit of Life, May our fumbling tongues be blessed so that chatter becomes prayer and prayer becomes concerted action. May our restless minds be blessed so that insight becomes will and will becomes effective action. May our anxious hearts be blessed so that longing becomes love and love guides our every action. Let us give generously for the work of this church and those it supports. Statement of Gratitude We thank you for your generosity of spirit and of giving. Reflection A Rose by Any Other Name Rev. Lloyd Today, I want us to think about how we perceive differences and similarities in each other, and what we can do to overcome our perceived differences. Long, long ago, when I was a community minister, I worked with 5 churches, 3 Unitarian Universalist that were predominantly white, and an African Methodist Episcopal church and an American Baptist church, both of whom were predominantly African American. Together, they called themselves Congregations United for Racial Equity & Justice. CUREJ. I had brought all of them together to grapple with the issue of racism and the invisible and visible ways that it keeps us apart even when we mean well at a personal level. Together, these churches struggled to overcome their assumptions about each other, and to understand the systemic racism that plagues a society that has for too long placed the needs, wants and desires of those of us who are white, at its center, leaving others with different cultures, ethnic backgrounds, and yes, skin color, at the margins. As the different church members struggled to understand each other s needs and 2 Lifting Our Voices, Readings in the Living Tradition (Boston: UUA, 2015, #56, 18).

3 Page 3 of 8 language, we discovered that with authentic and sometimes painful effort on everyone s part, we could find similarities between us. Indeed, sometimes, it seemed that what we had in common was a shared sense of helplessness over racism and classism and the multiplicity of ways that these ancient isms could still bind us in our separate cages, denying us the joy of getting to know one another s common story, of getting to know one another s hard-to-hear stories, and to somehow, getting to know and trust each other. PAUSE As most of you know, I was raised in the Army, and moved a lot. As my father was an officer, most of my world included white people, and, I didn t think twice about the mostly bland skin color that surrounded me. But, from my childhood, I remember two events that left me confused. 1. While in 3 rd grade and living at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, I made a friend with another girl. Her family invited me to dinner, and I enjoyed my time with them. In was fun. They were fun. When telling my parents of this new friendship, they tried to explain to me why I couldn t go there again. What I remember of that explanation was that because her father was an enlisted service man, that, for some reason (though they lived just across the field), I couldn t see my new friend again. Need I mention that they were black? Upon adult reflection, I see the supervisory/boundary issues, but I also see the intersection of class and race drawing fences around our separate worlds, preventing us from coming to know and understand each other. To this day, I don t know whether the enlisted label or the unspoken race label prevented that friendship from growing. Most likely, it was all these reasons. A rose by any other name Story #2 A few years later, in 7 th grade, I was once again the new kid in class (always the tallest). I was walking home from a San Francisco city school (Dad was in Korea then). On the way home, three girls from my new class blocked my path. The tallest of them had, for some reason, taken a dislike to me. (I was new enough that I was still trying to get adjusted and didn t remember their names.) I had done something that annoyed them. Don t know what it was, but the tallest among them started a fist fight with me. I lost. But, as they were all black, it has always felt to me that that fight was about the color of my skin, and theirs. It makes me wonder what assumptions were made, and how they interfered in us getting along.

4 Page 4 of 8 A rose by any other name... Experiences such as these, for children growing up in a society that privileges and centers people with white skin and decenters other people of other skin colors, solidifies practices and perceptions that have, from the beginning of this country, prevented this country from becoming a multi-cultural society, a society where everyone s culture and identity is relished and enjoyed, and, where everyone has the equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. PAUSE Likewise, the members of the 5 CUREJ churches that I worked with started as strangers to each other. As such, they struggled to escape and shed the chains that locked all of us in our smaller worlds. Just to find a common language was difficult. To say what was truly on our minds... all the while knowing that even the words we chose were shaped by a race and classdefined culture. One that distorts our perception and reinforces the belief that some people s perceptions matter more than others. One that says that there is a right and wrong way to how people speak and that the right way is the way defined by a white culture. This sense of rightness and wrongness about different cultures, language, music, books, and so forth, is getting old in a world that is rapidly becoming multicultural. But, this is a society that has consistently placed people of one color at the head of the line over and over again. It makes for a familiar world only for only those at the center, not those at the margins. The members of the 5 congregations learned that with this inequitable balance and use of space, misunderstanding and fear is never far away. To change those dynamics can be uncomfortable. But, familiar space can become a cage, beyond which we are afraid to explore. Cages that define our friendships, our tastes, how we think and perhaps most important and most regrettably, our language and voice. The risk of saying the wrong thing, the so-called politically incorrect thing is high the risk of making a mistake is certain. Few of us actively pursue opportunities to make mistakes. We d just a soon avoid them. Wouldn t we? But, for the 5 churches of CUREJ, the many layers of invitation, fear, reflection, sharing, apology, bonding, failing, trying again, failing again, making headway, all because we

5 Page 5 of 8 cared about each other, all that - was the adventure and the gift of being together. One of the essential rules that we agreed to follow was this: It was, To Say Ouch, when something hurt for it was the only way we could each learn from the other that we had just flown up against one of those bars in our respective cages that was keeping us from getting to know each other. And thus began the process of boldly embracing and inviting a new kind of multiculturalism into our lives, much like when you travel to a new place, and immerse yourself in a new culture. The effort to create an environment that encourages multiculturalism requires that we decenter our own language, customs, music, books and knowledge to and embrace another s. By learning the other s language we develop a new language that starts to understand the nuances and assumptions of each other s world view. As we encourage others to enter the center of society and as we step back so that they may do so, we break the bars of our own cages as our perspective changes to be more encompassing and inclusive. The circle widens and our world becomes richer in friendship as we begin to share and internalize the joys and sorrows of another s experience. With a broader worldview, we are able to confront injustices that continue to center white folks to the detriment of people of color. In so doing, we bear witness to a truth forged not only in the reality of our lives, but in the reality of others lives. PAUSE There is an old story that can serve as an example... of how the centering of one people and the marginalization of another, creates division among us. This is the story of a woman who came, let s just say, from away, to visit a friend in New England. Eager to join her friend in attending church, she expectantly sat down to worship. The minister was, that day, in rare form, and made a point so well that the woman stood up from her seat, and shouted, Praise God, Hallelujah! The minister could barely disguise her look of surprise on her face, but she did so, and continued until she made another outstanding point that really caught the woman s attention. The woman enthusiastically rose up, and once again, exclaimed, Praise the Lord! Her friend, seated next to her, didn t know quite what to do or say. Clearly, everyone in

6 Page 6 of 8 the congregation was surprised at this type of outburst. While the minister continued to speak, an usher in the back was trying to decide what to do... and as the minister delivered the next point, the usher could see the woman starting to rise again. The usher rushed quickly to her side, and gently putting a hand on her arm, he knelt down beside her, stopping her before she could rise again. As he struggled to find the words to explain, he said, Madam, in this church we DO NOT... PRAISE THE LORD. What happened here? Was the woman different? Perhaps, by some external judgment, she was. She acted differently, and did so in a way that couldn t be ignored. Was she seen as other?... probably. Was the perception negative?... probably. Was there some intrinsic sense of good and bad, that made her inherently wrong,... No. A rose by any other name... She just grew up differently than those around her, and if she had been at a church that did PRAISE THE LORD, she would have fit in fine, and been embraced as a long lost sister into a church that had been waiting just for her, so that, they could be her spiritual home. In our faith, we are actively working on, and at the same time, struggling, with how to open our faith to people of color. I ve been told that for too long, they have felt as though they were on the outside looking in. Did you know that one of the most common complaints by people of color in this faith, is that while they agree with this theology and long for the freedom to worship without dogma, what consistently leaves them flat is how we practice community in worship. If they want to embrace this theology, they feel they must give up the cultural norms of what worshiping in community means to them. Why? Because, it is said that often, for people of color, doing church means to do it big, do it long, do it in your best attire, and do it boisterously in terms of praying, singing, and receiving the message as a community. When I attended the African Methodist Church, the services were often 4 hours long. They didn t start on time, and didn t end on time. They started and stopped as the spirit

7 Page 7 of 8 moved. People clapped, music flowed in and out of the service, and, tithing was an act of spiritual generosity where the two offering baskets were the size of laundry baskets and the offering was collected 2 or 3 times in each service! It was different than how we do things, to be sure. But, I think there is room in this faith to do things differently. Don t you? I think that we can broaden our music and worship practices to be more multicultural, inclusive, and yes, different than the kind of worship we ve done in the past. I think we can look forward with eagerness and expectation to learning the language, culture, music of other people, and do things a bit differently, just as we would if we were traveling and exploring a new country. I think we can broaden what community looks like and I think we will be glad we did. When we return in September, let s start that voyage together. In his speech, I Have A Dream, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, We must realize that our destinies and freedom are inextricably bound together. We cannot walk alone. We need to share the road together, to walk toward that larger multicultural home where we all belong. Where some of us step back in order that others may be in the center. It is long overdue. We all need liberation from the cages that keep us apart, that divide us, and keep us from sharing this world we call home. Let us find our humanity in the stories of others. Let us connect to the Holy through the vision offered by others. May we center others in our lives and learn from them. May we create a community where all will belong. So May It Be. Responsive Reading #440 From This Fragmented World The next hymn was adapted from an old gospel song by Rev. Osby of Aurora, Illinois while spending time in Hinds County jail during the freedom rides. The song spread and became part of the civil rights movement. *Hymn #153 Oh, I Woke Up This Morning, African American Spiritual *Closing Words & Extinguishing the Chalice Please join hands as you are willing and able. We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. We extinguish this flame but not our willingness to meet people

8 Page 8 of 8 more than half way in order to welcome them into our lives. These we carry in our hearts until we are together again. Benediction #1057 Go Lifted Up, Mortimer Barron Go lifted up, love bless your way, moonlight, starlight guide your journey into peace and the brightness of day. A Moment of Silence Announcements Neil Schultes, Treasurer Board of Trustees * Please stand as you are able and comfortable. # Latecomers may be seated.