And Grace Will Lead Me Home

We are living in historic times, my friends. Times of great victories—such as the June 26^th SCOTUS ruling for marriage equality, and times of great pain and terror- such as the murders of nine people of faith in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.

And on the razor’s edge of sorrow and joy, President Barack Obama’s eulogy of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the minister shot down along with eight congregants at a prayer meeting at Emanuel AME, will also go down in history as one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches of our day.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grace this week, he states early on.  I, too, had been thinking about grace, wanting to put some words around the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the beloved church.  I thought about how the family members of the victims walked in grace that empowered them to tell Dylann Roof, the shooter, that they forgave him. 

Forgiveness is a tricky thing.  I’ve been thinking about forgiveness, too,  this week. It’s a much better focus, than the sense of helplessness or despair that can so easily find its way to the forefront of my being. 

It’s good to turn away from such bleak feelings to feelings of power. And forgiveness is just that. Forgiveness is refusing to allow injustices done to us have complete power over our lives, Forgiveness is acknowledging that we will never have a different past. Forgiveness is grace is action. 

I watched the footage of the families of the victims “facing” Dylann Roof via video feed and expressing their pain and anguish at the lives he took from them but also, curiously, telling him they forgave him, and I was filled with so many questions.

What does it mean to forgive in this type of circumstance? Can it even be real, so close to the rawness of their loss, the blood stains still not yet faded, despite the crime scene clean up?

What was the scene like at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC , that following Sunday morning? In black churches across the nation?  

And what does it mean for members of the African American community to forgive their white destroyer of lives and dreams? Should that be something to wait before giving, as black scholar and author, LaToya Baldwin Clark, suggests?

How is forgiveness borne in the heart? When is it real and when is it just words? And is it a linear path that once traveled, cannot be revisited? Or is forgiveness like the tide, ebbing and flowing on any given day, depending on our own strength and grace in the moment?

It seems to me forgiveness and grace are intertwined; they are woven into the same fabric of humanity; each one requires the other to fully thrive. Grace calls us to forgiveness, forgiveness calls us to grace. 

In his speech, President Obama alluded to the well-known hymn “Amazing Grace” in saying that grace calls us to open our eyes to see what we have refused to see; I would add that grace calls us to see the road that leads to wholeness, which is what the word salvation means, to stop insisting we can't find our way. 

The President spoke movingly about how we, as a nation, have in the past refused to open our eyes to the reality of the racism embedded in the flying of the Confederate flag, how we have refused to look upon the carnage of gun violence as something we can prevent with better gun control regulation, how we have turned away from the racist attacks on the African American community. But grace calls us to see.  Grace calls us to see the path that leads to justice and start walking. Ironically, "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, who experienced that turning point of having his eyes opened to the evils of the slave trade, in which he was an active participant. And Dylann Roof, himself, would talk about how close he came to having his eyes opened, due to the love and grace extended him by those nine people of faith, who welcomed him into their prayer meeting. Grace is not something thrust upon us; it is an invitation to have our eyes opened to a different, more inclusive way. Dylann heard that invitation, but in the end Dylann chose to continue with his blinders on, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. 

Grace may also call us to forgive those who have wronged us. I would like to think I could have as much grace as the family members did in forgiving Roof, but I don’t know that I am that evolved. Frankly, though, I would probably find it much easier to forgive Dylann Roof than I would to forgive our politicians who keep pandering to the powerful gun lobbyists out of fear that they might not get re-elected.  Our laws—particularly those that would provide a safer world—should be based on what is right and just, not what is politically expedient.  In  my opinion, that is where the real evil lies: in the hands of politicians too afraid to fall out of step with the NRA and other groups who insist their right to bear semi-automatic weapons is ironclad, and to put the craven desires of those groups above the safety of our nation. That is evil. That is reprehensible.

People talk about being in a state of grace as if it were something to shield them from pain, but that’s not the way the President spoke of it. He spoke of it as a catalyst for change, for having our eyes opened to the injustices and pain that is all around us and making a different choice.

In his eulogy for Rev. Pinckney, our President gave voice to the grace that we need as a nation, as families impacted by violence, as a grieving community. He stood fully in his power as the President and in his identity as a Black man and spoke prophetically about grace in such a way that we can no longer say we don’t see it. We can no longer say we don’t see the damage done by racism, subtle and overt, by gun violence. The President called upon us to open our eyes, and to walk in the state of grace that leads us to a place of justice, compassion, and forgiveness. If we can take at least one step, it will be a start.

The families of the fallen were able to do that, even if I don’t understand how they could. Now it’s our turn.  Let’s get moving.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. –Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion granting marriage equality.

My heart is full this morning as I celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality. I confess: it has struck me more profoundly than I thought it would; I can’t seem to stop the tears of joy from spilling over. HISTORY IS MADE!! I posted on my facebook wall, and indeed it has been. Two years ago, on this same date, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of equality, overturning California’s discriminatory Proposition 8 and recognizing the validity of the marriage between Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer in The United States vs Windsor, I said these words at a rally held in Colorado Springs:

We are here today to celebrate a victory that has been decades in the making.
When Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society in 1950 as an international fraternal order of gay men to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals, we began planning this party. When the Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 in San Francisco as the first lesbian civial and political organization, we started choosing the invitations. When the first commitment ceremony performed by a Unitarian Universalist minister for a same gender couple was reportedly done in the late 1950s, we began to get an idea that this party was going to be big.
In 1963 , when Bayard Rustin, organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as an openly gay man with full support from Dr. King, we started thinking about who would get those invitations.
In 1968 when Troy Perry– whose name is on the Prop 8 case, as one of the plaintiffs, along with his husband Philip De Bliek--when Troy Perry founded Metropolitan Community Church, as a queer Christian church, we started thinking about the entertainment.

In 1969, during the Stonewall Uprising, on June 28 , drag queens and butch lesbians and transgender folk got started on the party a little early when somebody called the cops.
In 1970 when the Unitarian Universalist Association passed a resolution urging support for the glbtq community and in 1972 when the United Church of Christ ordained their first openly gay minister, Bill Johnson, we got a few more details for this party.

And so it has been, through the years, that we have been preparing for this moment. If not us, personally, than our forebears who went before, who courageously paved the way, who dared to speak love’s name loud and proud, who would not sit down and shut up, no matter who told them to.

And so we stand here today, celebrating a great victory: The recognition by the Supreme Court that marriage cannot be separate but equal; that all marriages should be treated equally under the law.
Of course, the struggle continues, but the dominoes of injustice and inequity are falling, my friends, their precarious rigid black and white pattern is being replaced by the beautiful, powerful, rainbow-hued colors of freedom and equality.

So we’re throwing this party tonight. In fact, let's just call it a wedding reception. And we are celebrating but we are not stopping our march toward full freedom and equity under the law. And we won’t stop until it is achieved.

Theodore Parker, 19th c Unitarian minister, wrote this:
"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."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used this phrase to give him hope in the Civil Rights movement. May these words give us hope today as we rejoice in the victories we have won and look to the long arc still ahead, confident it bends always towards justice.” 
On that same day, Minnesota outgoing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann had this to say on SCOTUS overturning DOMA: “Marriage was created by the hand of God. No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted.”
I couldn’t help but think how similar her words sounded to the words spoken in 1958 by Trial judge Leon Bazile in the original trial of Richard and Mildred Loving, arrested for violating the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” 
I thought then of what a long, Sisyphean task it must have appeared to be, to seek the right for people of different races to be able to marry with all the love and dignity afforded same race couples. Yet love persevered, hope kept going, and justice was won. Now, as Justice Kennedy said—using this word nine times in his opinion—gay and lesbian couples are finally afforded the dignity of legal marriage should they so desire. History is made! Even as recently as 10 years ago, I said with full optimism, “Marriage equality will happen—probably not in my lifetime—but it will happen.” There is no way in the world I could have foreseen how swiftly the tide of justice would roll over the land; there is no way in the world I could have foreseen this momentous day happening just 46 years after the Stonewall riot which heralded the beginning of the Queer rights movement, and exactly 12 years following the SCOTUS decision on Lawrence v. Texas. That decision, on June 26, 2003, which declared that sodomy laws in the U.S. are unconstitutional." Overturning the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law which made it illegal for two people of the same gender to have oral or anal sex (which was already legal if with someone of another gender) was instrumental in making this day a reality. June 26 is a good day, indeed! I can't help but look back over my 21 years here in Colorado Springs and how hard we, as a community, have fought for this right. I can’t even count how many times we had a demonstration at the downtown office of the County Clerk; all these gay and lesbian couples lining up to apply for a marriage license, $20 (then $30) and driver's license in hand, only to be turned down by the (apologetic) workers who had to inform them, that, according to Colorado  law, marriage was only between one man and one woman. And then, how Ryan Acker (then the Executive Director of the Pride Center) and I would step forward, a lesbian and a gay man, who had never even gone out on a single date together, with cash in hand, and our driver's license at the ready to prove our identification; the two of us, who weren't even a couple (though I told everyone he was registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and I was registered at Home Depot); the two of us, achingly single in reality, yet we could step up and by virtue of the gender listed on our drivers license, we could get a marriage license. We could step right past those gay and lesbian couples, some of them together for decades, and get what was denied them, on the basis of whether or not we peed standing up. How many marriage licenses did we get? Five, ten? And all of them unsigned, a dusty testament to the abuses of a legal system that did not require evidence of love, commitment, trust, only an F and M in the appropriate boxes. 
Today, our fake relationship is trumped by true love, today the law of the land honors the love of all couples. 
Today, I cry tears of joy for the journey it has taken to get us, for the future queer children who will see their love fully represented legally and in society, for those whom we lost before this victory was granted, to despair and shame. 
Today, even though I am perennially always the officiant, never the bride, I understand what it feels like to be fully recognized as a citizen of this country, with all the rights accorded therein. 
Today I have been seen, because, to paraphrase Justice Kennedy’s words, we have asked for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants us that right. In my lifetime. In yours. Let the party begin!

Bottom of Form

I Need You; You Need Me

Last night I attended a prayer vigil for the victims and families of the Charleston church shooting. It was held at their sister church, Payne Chapel AME Church in Colorado Springs. The house was packed; every seat was taken, with some folks standing along the back walls. It was a simple service, beginning with a Prayer of Forgiveness, followed by the choir singing of God’s mercy and grace, then a Prayer for Healing, then two sections titled, simply, Expressions, interspersed with Gospel music, and finally, ending with a Prayer for Hope.

During these two parts of Expressions, the leaders of the service spoke and then invited other ministers, church leaders, community leaders to come forward and speak as well.

I hadn’t planned on speaking, I was casually dressed, but I felt like I was answering an altar call to go up and testify; so I did. I introduced myself as the minister at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church and then said something along these lines (it was extemporaneous, so I’m sure I’m not getting it 100% right :)

“I’m on sabbatical this summer. Unfortunately, violence doesn’t take sabbaticals; racism doesn’t take sabbaticals; hatred never takes a break. There is never a day when they shutter their windows and put a closed sign on their front door.

But here’s the other thing: Forgiveness never takes a sabbatical, either. Love never takes a sabbatical. Grace is always hanging around.

That is why I’m so honored to be here with all of you tonight. That is what we’re experiencing here tonight. And it is what the congregation of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston is experiencing tonight, even in the midst of their pain and anguish. Emanuel AME has a rich tradition of speaking and acting out for justice and being attacked and destroyed for it; they have always risen from the ashes of despair and they will do so this time, as well

And I want to pledge to you tonight that All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church will never take a sabbatical when it comes to standing with you in the struggle; we will stand shoulder to shoulder with you; we will be your allies in the face of hate and violence; we will not grow weary in the work of love.”

I sat down then, and others spoke. As I looked at the crowd of people gathered, as I listened to the choir sing, “God is good all the time; all the time, God is good,” I felt such a profound sense of solidarity, of community. There we were, people of all races, ages, faith traditions trying to make some sense of another senseless tragedy, and yet, it was not despair or defeat or the pervasive sadness I wrote about yesterday, that filled the chapel last night; it was, indeed, the never-resting spirit of forgiveness and grace and love.  We joined together, hundreds of people, to say, we are not broken down, we are lifted up in our faith—whether in God, or Love, or the Power of Humanity to one day rise above, and we will not let the hatred of this world ever overshadow the Love that sets us free, that calls us into wholeness, that gives birth to grace and forgiveness and hope.

At the end of the service, the choir sang one last song, before Rev. Arthur B. Carter, Jr., the minister of Payne Chapel AME sent us off with words of hope. The praise and worship song, written by Hezekiah Walker, summed up perfectly, the simple truth of our lives, the interdependent nature of this web of existence, of which we are a part, and the solid truth that we need each other.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll reflect on forgiveness, grace, love. For now, I’ll leave you with this:

\

(The audio for this was recorded live from the Prayer Vigil in Colorado Springs. For a clean version of the song, check out this link)

"I'VE HAD TO MAKE STATEMENTS LIKE THIS TOO MANY TIMES. COMMUNITIES HAVE HAD TO ENDURE TRAGEDIES LIKE THIS TOO MANY TIMES."-- President Barack Obama

I want to say I’m outraged, shocked, appalled. I want to say I don’t understand how something so tragic, so—if you’ll pardon the expression—evil could happen in 2015, in the United States, in one of the most developed countries in the world. I want to shake my fists at this young man who took the lives of nine people and forever altered the lives of those who knew and loved them and cry out, why?

But unfortunately, that’s not true. That’s not what I’m feeling; I feel deep sadness rather than molten outrage, the Novocain-like numbness that comes only from repeated witnessing of innocent people gunned down, of racially motivated terrorism white-washed—at least when the killer is white and the victims are black—and a sense of despair of us ever getting it right as a nation.

Why? Hell, I know why. At least in part. I don’t know all of the sad story of 21 year old Dylann Roof, who has confessed to the murder of the nine church-goers, shot down in cold blood as they met in a prayer meeting and Bible study but I do know that he has fit himself neatly into a template of violence that has become so familiar, we can just save the stories and change the name and location of the incident.

Why? Because we, as a nation, refuse to enter into any serious conversation about racial violence done in this country.  We allow white police officers and white vigilantes and even white guys driving a truck to say they felt threatened by black men as their single defense for their use of deadly force.  We want to say that we are post-racism, since we have a president who is half black while glazing over the incredibly offensive overt racist remarks and responses to President Obama from our own citizens.  There has never been a US president as openly ridiculed and reviled as him, even though his performance in office has been stellar in terms of the work he’s managed to get done while dealing with these attitudes.

Racism is so pervasive, so embedded in American culture that, as Jon Stewart so brilliantly and somberly pointed out in his opening monologue  on The Daily Show  last night, black citizens of Charleston drive down streets that are named for confederate generals that fought for the ability to deny black citizens the freedom to drive down those streets.

This is nothing less than an act of domestic terrorism. When Dylann Roof opened fire on a group of black people who were in no way threatening him, he did so out of a self-admitted desire of provoking some new, racially motivated, civil war. As Jon Stewart also asserted in his monologue, we seem to have no problem doing whatever it takes to protect our country from acts of terrorist aggression from foreign elements—we attacked two countries, spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to do so—but when it comes to an American committing an act of terrorism, we shrug our shoulders and say, “what can you do? Crazy guy.”

Why?  Because we, as a nation, have turned our backs and shut our pocket book to the mentally ill in our country. According to a  USA Today article from 2014, States cut $5 billion in mental health services from 2009 to 2012. In the same period, the country eliminated at least 4,500 public psychiatric hospital beds — nearly 10% of the total supply. As a result, nearly 40% of adults with

severe mental illness received no treatment at all in the previous year. Compare that to the money earmarked for military spending in this fiscal year which is a whopping $598 billion—over half of the money budgeted for discretionary spending. And while that number is huge, it neglects to show the cuts for Veterans benefits that our congress has voted in, even in the face of increasing mental illness among veterans returning from war zones; 22 veterans kill themselves every day, with many of them having fallen through the cracks of a system that glorifies the war and will pay a high cost for it, while neglecting the emotional toll it takes on those who serve. 

Dylann Roof is not a veteran but it would come as no surprise to me to learn that he suffers from mental illness, as do James Holmesof the Aurora shootings and Adam Lanza, the Sandyhook shooter.

Why? Because we, as a nation, refuse to deal with the rampant pandemic of gun violence in our country.  Once again, a gun, so easily obtained, was the weapon of choice. This is another conversation folks don’t want to have.  Today, as I write this, the prosecution rested its case in the trial of James Holmes, the young white man who shot up a movie theater in Aurora, CO, killing 12 and injuring 70. Their final witness was Ashely Moser, who was 25 at the time of the attack. She described how she took her seven year old daughter, Veronica, to see the movie “The Dark Knight Rises” to celebrate the news she had received earlier in the day: she was expecting another child. She lost her daughter, her unborn baby, and her own mobility that day; she was paralyzed by the bullet that ripped through her body as James Holmes unleashed a barrage of ammunition from the four guns—semiautomatic and pump action—that he was able to purchase legally from four different stores.

And, already NRA leaders and nervous politicians are spewing forth the well-worn trope that guns don’t kill people and that now is not the time to be political, but to focus on grieving the victims and supporting their loved ones.

South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, a long time gun advocate, said as much in this statement, 

One NRA board member, Charles Cotton, even blamed one of the victims, church minister and state legislator Clementa Pinckney, referring to his stance on control, saying, “And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”

The NRA has issued similar statements following the tragic killings at Sandyhook and in Aurora, even though an FBI report released last year shows that unarmed private citizens were three times more likely to subdue an active shooter than a citizen who is armed.

I said, in the wake of the Sandy hook shootings, that now is exactly the time we need to be having a conversation about gun violence and gun control; that there is no greater way to honor the horrific losses to gun violence than to enact laws that protect the 2^nd amendment but not at the expense of innocent lives lost. The authors of the 2^nd amendment had no concept of semi-automatic and automatic weapons; they had no idea of the violence that could be wrought in a 10 second burst of gunfire. They were addressing the right of people to bear arms, not stockpile enough military grade weapons for their own private war. When people declare their second amendment right to own an uzi they pervert the meaning of it.  

Why? Maybe because we as a nation have become so anesthetized to gun violence that we prefer to get our dander up over which Kardashian is dating who, and the prime time premier of Caitlyn Jenner, and an activist who has been discovered to be living a racial lie. We get worked up over, and pass great judgment on the details of those living in public life while every day, people are killing other people in manners which could have been avoided.

 And so now we gather, we grieve, we hold one another close; we will light candles, and hold vigils and say prayers; but here’s what remains the same: the Confederate flag still flies proudly, at full mast, over the state capitol of South Carolina, this shooting will get its 15 minutes of infamy and then be buried under an avalanche of celebrity mischief, sports hi-jinks, and the next deadly shooting.

It’s enough to take the wind out of anyone’s sails. It’s why I feel more sadness than outrage. It’s why this will happen again. And again.

And yet here is where the light shines through, here is what also remains the same: the good people of Emanual AME will rise again, they have already faced their killer via video feed and shared what they lost, even while forgiving him. Emanuel has a long history of social justice and activism leading to its racially motivated violence and destruction, and yet rising again and again out of the ashes of history to remain a shining light of justice and equity, good people of conscience will gather and disperse, blow out our candles and place them in the basket as we leave the vigils, but the embers of justice in our hearts will have been fanned into the flames of commitment and activism to make this a better world. There is a tipping point that we are approaching, my friends, a tipping point of sadness that will be alchemically transformed into the passionate outrage that can fuel a revolution; a revolution that can topple politicians who are more concerned about the money they get from the gun lobby than protecting the lives of their constituency, a revolution that will see a true dismantling of the racist attitudes and permissiveness  that allows a flag to wave over a state capitol that represents the worst of our history. Here is what also remains the same: in my sadness, in my despair at the exhausting sameness of these tragedies, I will not give up, I will not give in, I will not grow weary in the work of love.

There is more I could say but I’m off now, to attend a vigil here in Colorado Springs, at an AME church, where we will gather, we will grieve, we will hold one another close. And then we’ll leave with the light of conviction blazing in our hearts. Maybe I will see you there.

I have to share this blog post from my friends at bethelove.net. Who better to school white folks than James Baldwin. And Meck Groot does a brilliant job in  interpreting his words for today.
http://bethelove.net/white-people-loving-themselves/

“The house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman.” -- Mexican Proverb

I don't normally post the manuscripts of my sermons; the audio ultimately gets posted to the All Souls website-- and it's more accurate, with all my witty asides-- but I felt it was important for this sermon to reach a broader audience than might think to check the website to listen to a sermon, so, here it is. I apologize for any stream of thought writing or lack of punctuation but hey-- this is how I write a sermon. :) Watch the above video first; it was the "sacred text" for my sermon.

Mother's Day Sermon
May 10, 2015

My social media has been awash

This weekend

With people scorning Mother’s Day.

Anne Lamott,

An author whom I love deeply,

Wrote an essay saying

it’s the holiday she hates the most.

A couple of my esteemed colleagues

Have written blogs

On why they’re not preaching about

Mothers

Today.

And last night,

At a dinner with three of my nieces

And one of their friends

The friend said her husband wanted

To go to church

And she did not

Because it’s Mother’s Day

And she hated how the service

Would be all about mothers.

And I understand these sentiments;

I do.

Mother’s Day

Can seem like a cruel celebration

To those who have not been able

To have a child

Either by adoption or birth

Or to those who have lost a child

Or have lost a mother.

For some struggling with their children

Or with their moms

Where the Leave it to Beaver family mold

Was not available

This day may not be

A favorite holiday.

Even though we will spend 14.7 billion dollars on it

this is the holiday—

(that’s $127 per mom!)

With the biggest card sales

And second only to valentine’s day

For flowers,

Yet still

Hallmark has NOT come up

With cards that fit all families.

How can there be rows upon rows

Of Mother’s Day cards at the store

And there still isn’t one for all?

Where is the card that says

Thanks Mom

for not harming me more than you did?

And what about those

who have chosen not to have children

At all?

Ironically, Margaret Wise Brown

The author of the Runaway Bunny story

Laurie read for the Story for All Ages—

And author of countless beloved children’s books—

Was a lesbian who never had children.

For women who are married today

Who choose not to have children,

They still constantly face a barrage of questions

About why?

With implications of how selfish that is

To want a child-free adult life.

They might get a little tired of Mother’s Day

Platitudes.

Frankly, I think we SHOULD have a day

That honors those who choose to not have children.

We need their energy.

However

Regardless of whether you’re a mom

Or a dad

Or a dad who used to be mom

Or a mom who used to be dad

I think it’s important

That we celebrate Mother’s Day

It’s important to remember

Why we have Mother’s Day.

See, we’ve gotten Mothers Day wrong.

Mothers Day was begun in 1870

after a lot of lobbying

by women

(who, by the way,

didn’t have the right to vote yet

but they still made their political presence

felt).

And it wasn’t created because mothers

felt overwhelmed

with the task of raising children,

running the household

and still finding time to

foment rebellion.

It wasn’t begun as an

economic stimulus program

in hopes that all those flowers

and candy boxes

and presents

would boost retail sales.

It was created by mothers

so tired of having their sons

(at the time)

sent home in boxes

from one war zone or another

that they gathered today

women from every socio-economic status

some women who weren’t mothers at all

and they gathered together to say enough!

We are tired of losing our children to war!

Julia Ward Howe

a Unitarian rabble-rouser

and leader of the movement

to create Mothers Day

wrote in her Mothers Day Proclamation

in 1870:

“As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel

.Let them meet first,

as women,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other

as to the means

Whereby the great human family

can live in peace...

Each bearing after our own time the sacred impress,

not of Caesar,

But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity,

I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women

without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace

deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.”

So, according to Julia

this was never meant to be a day to honor mothers

it was a day to honor our children.

And to recognize the inherent worth and dignity

Of all mother’s children

And to seek peace.

Perhaps Julia Ward Howe

got the idea for this from

Ann Reeves Jarvis

who instituted

Mother’s Work Day

in her West Virginia town

as a rallying cry to improve sanitation.

Again,

who better than a mother

concerned with the health and safety

of children

to establish this?

After the Civil War ended

Ann Reeves Jarvis

used this day as a means of reconciliation

between the two sides

and it was her daughter

Anna Jarvis who spent nearly 10 years

seeking to have Mother’s Day

officially recognized.

But even in her lifetime

the sentiment had changed.

People sought to soften the holiday

and turn it into what we know it as today.

A time for sending cards and flowers

and letting our moms know

they were appreciated.

By the time Mother’s Day

was officially enacted

it had already lost the meaning

for which Anna Jarvis and her mother

and Julia Ward Howe

sought to have it recognized.

But today

THAT

Is the Mother’s Day

I want us to celebrate.

Today

I want to honor women

And girls

Who have made a difference

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To Malala Yousafzi

The young Pakistani woman

who was shot in the head

because she dared to continue

to seek an education

in a Taliban ruled country

that forbids girls to learn.

Not because she is a mother

But because already

In her young life

she understands the importance

of Mother’s Day.

Already

In her young life

She Is changing the world.

Winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Price,

Then 17 years old,

She said

“Pens and books

are the weapons that defeat terrorism.”

Even though she nearly lost her life

She has never stopped fighting

The ignorance of terrorism

With the wisdom of education.

Another Pakistani woman

And human rights activist

40 year old Sabeen Mahmud

Was not so lucky

On April 24th this year-

Just a couple of weeks ago--

she had just held a meeting

about the”silenced” activists and students

in Baluchistan,

Pakistan’s most neglected and separatist province;

Hundreds of activists and students had been abducted,

probably killed.

And she held a meeting in a café she had created

For just that purpose

In 2006.

For years, progressives in Pakistan

Would meet there

To discuss issues of the day.

And this was no different

Though it was risky.

“There would probably be blowback”,

she told a friend; “I just don’t know what that blowback entails.”

That blow back was being shot to death

I want to wish her a posthumous Mother’s Day

Even though she was not a mother.

And I want to wish A Happy Mother’s Day

To her own mom

Who was with her and was also shot twice.

She is expected to recover.

These women

Won’t be getting a card today

Or breakfast in bed

But they heard Julia Ward Howe’s call

Through the ages

And they answered.

Today I want to call out the names

Of the 234 Nigerian girls

Kidnapped while they studied

For a chemistry exam

April 14, 2014.

Finally rescued

From Boko Haram terrorists

After a year in captivity.

234 girls finally returned to their villages,

214 of whom are pregnant

As a result of rape.

I wish I could hear and learn

Each of their names

I wish I could tell them

They will not

Or at least should not

Be known as the mother

Of the rape baby

The victim of terrorists

That they are wonderful girls

And young women,

That their life has meaning.

I want to learn the names

Of all women

Who have been erased

By whatever patriarchal society

In which they live.

To say you are more

Than somebody’s mother

Or daughter or sister

To say you have a name

Even here in our own nation

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To those whose presence

Is being erased by laws;

To the women in Wisconsin

Where there’s a new bill

Wending its way through legislature

That would give in-laws

The right to stop their daughter-in-law

From getting an abortion.

Here in our own state

And in many states

There is a constant push

To render invisible

The rights of women

Seeking to make decisions

About their bodies.

I want to say

Happy Mother’s Day

To the members of group

Moms Demand Action

For Gun Sense in America

-a group that was definitely founded

In the spirit of Julia Ward Howe’s

Mother’s Day proclamation

Founded in the aftermath of the Sandyhook shootings

To say Enough!

A group of which I’m a proud member.

A group who was the target

Of a TV ad

By a Florida Gun instructor,

Who shot six carefully placed bullets

In a target that we then see

Is one of the posters

For Moms Demand Action.

He ends this ad

By turning to the camera

And then saying

“Not a bad grouping.

Happy Mother’s Day.”

I want to say Happy Mother’s Day

To all the activists

Mothers or no

Women and men

Who day by day

Have it in their heart to work for peace.

Rather than declaim Mother’s Day

As a exclusive party for those who change diapers

We need to reclaim Mother’s Day

As a day

Where we meet first,

as women AND men,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

And then to

solemnly take counsel with each other

as to the means

Whereby the great human family

can live in peace...

Maybe

if we who are mothers

can receive our cards and flowers

with joy and gratitude

and

also determine

to take back the original sense

of Mother’s Day

the desire to end injustice

and if we are joined by

the fathers and uncles and aunts

and brothers and sisters

and lovers

we can create a movement

of justice

we can reclaim Julia Ward Howes’

and Anna Jarvis’ vision.

We can realize it’s not just about

keeping our sons and daughters

safe from the perils of war

or providing clean water for our families

but about making sure our sons and daughters

live full and healthy lives

and that mothers everywhere

have the opportunity

to live long enough

to see their grandchildren

not just in our families

in our country

but globally.

You know,

tragically

Julia Ward Howe felt her voice

was not heard,

but maybe

just maybe

we can show her that it was.

May it be so.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. [We] experience [ourselves], [our] thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [our] consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. --Albert Einstein

I woke up this morning thinking of personal responsibility vs. institutional culpability and what it means to act with a depraved heart. The first two thoughts were because a friend of mine and I had argued the finer points of the murder of Michael Brown  by police officer Darren Wilson. She (my friend) insisted that the findings of the Department of Justice exonerated Darren Wilson, saying his claim that he felt threatened was valid. I said that, regardless of the report from the DOJ, Wilson’s claims that he felt threatened were based on the color of Brown’s skin, not any overt action on his part.

Brown allegedly stole some cigarillos from a local store and that was the reason for Wilson’s interest in him. If true, then yes, Brown needed to take personal responsibility for that petty theft; that theft did not warrant his death (an unwarranted plight, my friend also agreed.) Frankly I can’t imagine any young black man acting so menacingly toward a white police officer as Wilson alleged (and whose claim the DOJ upheld.) It makes no sense for a black man in today’s climate to act in a manner that is sure to bring down the hammer of retribution swift and strong, despite the fact that white people can act in threatening manners—and even actually be waving real guns around unlike 12 year old  Tamir Rice  and yet still, somehow the police managed to subdue them just fine without finding it necessary to kill them.

It is important to note that even while exonerating Wilson, the DOJ gave a stunning indictment against the government of Ferguson, including its police department.  In thisWashington Post article  that my friend sent me to bolster her claims, reporter Jonathan Capehart also gives a little ink to the report about the police department. He writes, “The report on the Ferguson police department detailed abuse and blatant trampling of the constitutional rights of people, mostly African Americans, in Ferguson. Years of mistreatment by the police, the courts and the municipal government, including evidence that all three balanced their books on the backs of the people of Ferguson, were laid bare in 102 damning pages. The overwhelming data from DOJ provided background and much-needed context for why a small St. Louis suburb most had never heard of exploded the moment Brown was killed. His death gave voice to many who suffered in silence.”

 So even if I can accept that the DOJ was equally diligent in getting to the facts as best they could in both of these two investigations, Wilson’s claim to have felt threatened cannot be sussed out from the climate of racist perceptions that were daily reinforced by the police department; indeed this shows a relentless and vicious cycle of cops stopping blacks more frequently and denying them their constitutional rights based on their racist beliefs that blacks were more criminally inclined, even when their own records prove otherwise. In other words, even if Darren Wilson says he felt threatened, it doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t trust him and I don’t trust the system that trained him. If he felt threatened, it was because he was raised in a culture and took a job in a police department that gave him the erroneous message that he should feel threatened by a black man.There must be at least an equal amount of institutional accountability in such egregious acts. If Brown's personal responsibility for lifting some cigarillos ended in his death, there must be institutional accountability in the way the system fatally failed this young man that August day.

Even so, as Capehart says, “Yet this does not diminish the importance of the real issues unearthed in Ferguson by Brown’s death. Nor does it discredit what has become the larger “Black Lives Matter.” In fact, the false Ferguson narrative stuck because of concern over a distressing pattern of other police killings of unarmed African American men and boys around the time of Brown’s death. Eric Garner was killed on a Staten Island street on July 17. John Crawford III was killed in a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, on Aug. 5, four days before Brown. Levar Jones survived being shot by a South Carolina state trooper on Sept. 4. Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was killed in a Cleveland park on Nov. 23, the day before the Ferguson grand jury opted not to indict Wilson. Sadly, the list has grown longer.”

And this brings me to my early morning musings of what does an indictment of depraved heart murder mean? This was one of the charges levied against six police officers  in the recent death of 25 year old Freddie Gray who suffered essentially a severed spine while in police custody in Baltimore, MD. In this case, it was unclear why Gray was arrested; first reports of an illegal knife were unfounded; he did have a knife that was legal to carry. Still he was thrown in the “paddy wagon” in hand cuffs and shackled without being secured to the bench with a seat-belt- a safety measure that is mandated by the Baltimore police.

In the midst of hundreds of people protesting -- in Baltimore and across the nation-- the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, brought charges of murder and manslaughter against six Baltimore police officers--- three black and three white. The most damaging charge was brought against the driver of the van, officer Ceasar Goodson, Jr,; he was charged with Depraved Heart Murder.

According to the statutes of Baltimore: Second-degree depraved heart murder is the killing of another person while acting with an extreme disregard for human life. In order to convict the defendant of second-degree murder, the State must prove:

(1) that the defendant caused the death of (name);

(2) that the defendant's conduct created a very high risk to the life of (name); and

(3) that the defendant, conscious of such risk, acted with extreme disregard of the life-endangering consequences.

According to a New York Times article, this  grave charge takes into account the lack of care shown Gray while he was in custody. "'Following transport from Baker Street, Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside the B.P.D. wagon,’ she [Mosby] said." It takes a person with a depraved heart to knowingly create a very high risk of life to another—regardless of whether or not that person has committed a crime. Baltimore, too, has made a name for itself as a place where black men interact with the police at their own peril.

It takes a nation of people with depraved hearts to protest the protesters—calling them thugs and criminals and accusing them of destroying their own communities rather than daring to pull away the veil of blissful ignorance that keeps us from trying to understand such rage and anger. As a facebook friend of mine, Elizabeth Cuckrow Thorson put it, "Have you ever been so angry that you punched a wall? Smashed your favorite teapot? Taken a hammer to something just to hear it break? Now multiply that anger by 100 or 1000, because the cause of your anger is that much bigger, more pervasive and life-threatening. Then multiply that anger by the thousands of other people around you whose anger, like yours, has been ignored, dismissed, turned on you, for years and years. You might be burning buildings too." Of course, this public anger towards the protesters (not to mention the appalling conditions the arrested protesters faced at Baltimore Central Booking) also completely ignores the number of times white folks have gone on equally damaging rampages--- following the victory or loss of one of their favorite teams such as this story illustrates and yet no one ever has accused them of being thugs or acting out of the white criminal instinct. Instead, they’re described as fans letting off steam, who got out of control.
As author and social justice activist Tim Wise, wrote in response to the DOJ reports on both Wilson and the city of Ferguson, “So long as most white folks turn a blind eye towards even those cases where the injustice is apparent, even proven (as in the case of the exonerations), it will be hard for folks of color, or for some whites among us who are committed to fighting racism, to view the concerns about Darren Wilson as anything but white racial bonding and smug supremacy. Especially when at least some among us are not only insufficiently upset about such incidents, but even giddily express admiration for police who kill blacks in such cases, as happened at a rally last year in Beavercreek, Ohio (where John Crawford was killed at Walmart).” DOJ reports aside, we cannot separate the "worthy" from the "unworthy" victim of police brutality, we dare not, at the risk of further hardening our own hearts into deeper depravity, think we can sit in our armchairs of white, middle-class privilege and arrogantly decry the violence done by people who are protesting a system that has worked against them from the dawn of our bloody history as a nation. I know too well the tendency of my own heart to slip into a depraved indifference for-- or judgment of --folks who don’t fit into my carefully constructed matrix of what constitutes “decent” humanity. I applaud this first step toward justice in the case of the murder of Freddie Gray. I am grateful that his death will not go unexamined, that his family and friends might have some level of closure with the arrest and trial of the police officers. But the depraved heart charge doesn’t end there. It is a charge we each must examine in our own lives, in our responses to ongoing police brutality, and in our own desire to indifferently pass judgment in the hopes that we can comfort ourselves that nothing like that would ever happen to us. Or, as Tim Wise closes his essay:

In short, to be black in America is to have a highly-sensitive racism detector, not because one is irrational but because one’s life so often depends on it. It is to have little choice but to see the patterns in the incidents that white America would so prefer to see as isolated, no matter how often they occur. It is to have little choice but to consume the red pill (to borrow imagery from The Matrix), so as to see what’s going on behind the curtain of the larger society, even as their white compatriots have the luxury of walking around, firmly and indelibly attached to a blue pill IV drip, the reliance on which renders us equally unable to see what’s happening. And just because every now and then that red pill shows its consumers an image that isn’t quite accurate, doesn’t change the fact that in general it provides insights far deeper than those afforded the rest of us. Rather than bashing black people for seeing the connections and presuming them present, perhaps we would do well to remove the blue pill IV and substitute the red for a while. Maybe then we could begin to see what folks of color see. Perhaps then we could understand their rage. Most of all, perhaps then we could be a little less smug about the exoneration of an officer who, whatever his crime or lack thereof, still took a young man’s life. As a nation, the eyes of our whites are misleading us. Time for some new lenses. 

 You know, I often get called names by people unwilling to surrender their own narrow interpretation of what racism looks like in America-- or unwilling to make room at the table for my opinion. One of the names flung at me in disdain has been that of "bleeding heart liberal." Though, as a Unitarian Universalist I don't think name-calling is a useful tool in discussing differences and serves only to give the name-caller the ability to dismiss everything I say, I will say this: I'd rather be known as someone with a bleeding heart than someone with a depraved heart. Indeed, it is time for all of us to get our eyes –and our hearts—examined, to free ourselves from this prison of separateness and widen our circles of compassion to embrace all.