Final Thoughts
My heart is heavy this morning - and I'll admit, though I don't really want to - that I was more than a little scared to get up here again this morning. I've known, of course, that standing up for what you believe in can be a dangerous thing - you can't help but know that if any of history's lessons have made it to your door - but I, like so many others - expected that I would have to do something more radical than go to church to warrant such violence.
Surely, there's been some mistake I thought when I heard the news of last Sunday's shooting. That can't be right - it's just not right - not even possible, I said to myself - and I moved the story I had heard off into a corner of my mind. But back it came - first in conversation with several of you - then as I flipped on my computer and made my way through the throngs of email updates from my colleagues in Knoxville, at the Unitarian Universalist Association - from those who had moved quickly to arrive in Knoxville to help with counseling and media management and hands on decision making and physical repair. The news kept coming in - and it is still coming in as the week goes on and as we move, slowly and purposefully - through our shock and anger and sadness the best way that we know how - by coming together to doing what we as religious people are always called to do - to try and make some meaning from the events of our lives.
But it is early, still, in the wake of this tragedy - and if any of you are anything like me - then many of you, too, have allowed the safety mechanisms of your mind to do their work - sweeping the full impact of these events to the side for most of this week. It is hard and it is painful to allow the sadness and loss to settle with us - the loss not only of two good and caring people who are a part of our extended family of faith - but the loss as well of the illusion of our sanctuaries as place of safety and refuge, immune from the realities and the dangers that exist all around us and so many others in this world.
And this is no easy thing to sit with - so I thank you, friends, for coming together this morning. As moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Gini Courter, reminded us in an open letter this week - coming to church on this Sunday in particular is a simple yet radical act of solidarity. We are bound together this morning by both tragedy and by common purpose - and as we celebrate life in the face of death - we are renewed in body and spirit and purpose.
And we are not alone this morning. Unitarian Universalist congregations all over the country and all over the world are coming together today to mourn and to grieve - and many of other faiths are doing exactly the same thing. Holding us up in their services and prayers that we might know ourselves as one body - regardless of belief - remembering that as religious people our highest calling is the creation of a beloved community of love and justice right here in this world.
So we gather to sing and to celebrate this morning - to know in our hearts that we are not alone - as we are never alone when we face life's difficulties. There are, of course, those who have gone before us - those who like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Ghandi or Violet Luozzo - those who like James Reeb or Michael Servetus - gave their lives standing up for what they believed in on this journey toward justice and there are those who - like Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger - likely never knew that such a price would come there way - but they gave their lives to the vision of a brighter future just the same.
We gather this morning despite the fact that there are those who believe we are too liberal, too accepting, too vocal in our advocacy for equality for all people. We gather despite the fear that sometimes grips our hearts when we acknowledge the risk we live within - and we gather knowing that in loving one another and caring about this world, we open ourselves to the pain that love and its inevitable loss brings. We gather this morning with heaviness in our hearts - but we gather, I hope, with pride as well.
I hope we feel proud that when called to act in the most unlikely of circumstances - ordinary people of our churches jumped into action in extraordinary ways, selflessly sacrificing themselves for the safety of others. I hope we feel proud that when calls of anger, retribution and revenge might logically come from churches - the call for forgiveness, for love and for healing have rung louder than ever. And I hope we feel proud that even though fear may freeze us momentarily - it has not stopped us this morning and we gather here today and every Sunday now - knowing the daring nature of our acts but striving anyway - to live lives worth losing.
When Jim David Adkisson walked into our church in Tennessee and started shooting - he ripped a veil from our eyes that I know I, personally, would much rather keep firmly in place. He harmed those we care for - and in doing so he reminded us of the sometimes terrifying truth that simply living is a dangerous thing. We were reminded this past week that it could have been anyone of us there in that church - anyone of us visiting from out of town anyone of us standing in the way of a shooter set on harming our friends or family or children.
So we could, this morning, we could easily spend our time focusing our attention on our own fear and security. We could spend our time trying to figure out why Jim David Adkisson did what he did and how we might keep ourselves safe in the future. We could let ourselves slide down the seductive slope of fear and turn away from our commitment to justice in this city and in this world - and everyone would understand. These are scary times. But that is not who we are.
We are Unitarian Universalists and this is not the first nor will it be the last time that our views are unpopular or even dangerous in this world. And we are already rising from the ashes of this tragedy.
When members of the Tennessee Valley and Westside Unitarian Universalist Churches stood up to protect others - they were already rising from the ashes.
When children were wrapped in the arms of fellow church goers that morning - when the Presbyterian Church across the street opened its doors to all those running to safety and stood guard to protect them - we were already rising from the ashes.
When those among us who could have easily fallen into talk of anger and retribution turned instead into kindness and caring - allowing the great sea-change - as the poet Seamus Heaney says - to sweep through their hearts and lead us to the far side of revenge - we were already rising from the ashes.
When congregations all around Knoxville and the world held vigils and services of remembrance this week - when we stand together today in song - joining our voices with Unitarian Universalists all over the world - we are already rising from the ashes.
We come together to say yes to life even in the face of death - and we stand together reminding ourselves and this world that for us, for Unitarian Universalists the purpose of living is not to avoid dying - not to avoid pain and loss - but rather the purpose of our living is to live a life worth dying for - to live a life that risks loss and pain and love to make this world a better place.
"Religion," my dear colleague and Unitarian Universalist minister and scholar Forest Church says - "Religion is our human response to being alive and having to die," and when you accept this as true, then you cannot escape the reality that the purpose of life quickly becomes living "in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for."[1]
This is a lofty purpose - to live in a way that our lives prove worth dying for - and luckily for us - we don't have to figure out how to do it alone. We have so many guides on this journey of living and dying - guides that teach us how to live lives worth dying for. Some of them are found in our own families - some of them are among our friends - and still others are among those we meet in the halls of history and through the wisdom of words. Often times those people who are teaching us how to live are also teaching us how to die - even in the very same moment. The writer, Anne Lammott's therapist once told her as she stood with her best friend, dying - "Watch her carefully right now, because she's teaching you how to live."
Watching Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger - I was taught again this week how to live.
Because none of us - at least none of us that I've ever met - is completely unafraid of death - but these two people leaned into love all the same.
"Death is the ultimate mystery." the Rev. Dr. Forest Church writes. "But there is one way to counter this fear. It lies in our courage to love. Our courage to risk. Our courage to lose. May people have said it in many different ways. The opposite of love is not hate. It is fear. There are so many instances in our daily lives when our fears stand in the way of our potential to love. How many ways we find to armor and protect ourselves. We sense the risk, of course. That is the main reason we act in the ways we do. Every time we open ourselves up, every time we share ourselves with another, every time we commit ourselves to a cause or to a task that awaits our doing, we risk so very much. We risk disappointment. We risk failure. We risk being rebuffed or being embarrassed or being inadequate. And beyond these things, we risk the enormous pain of loss."[2]
Loss is an inevitable part of this life - but when we reach out, when we stand together, when we dare to risk living a life worth losing - then love is inevitable, too. And love can never be taken away from us - not even by death.
Love and courage is what filled the hearts of our friends in Tennessee when they stood together last Sunday and throughout this week. Courage that comes some times in the small things - like going to church or extending your hand to a friend in need - and courage that comes in the larger moments you never saw coming - when without banner or bullhorn or time even to think - you swallow that small coal of courage that the poet Anne Sexton describes and you know - that in that moment when your buddy saved someone and died himself in doing it - that it was love - love as simple as shaving soap - that guided his way.
Love is already present among us - and love will surely guide our way forward. And the good news, the good news is that the healing has already begun for our congregations in Knoxville. This morning, the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation is gathering for worship and to rededicate their building - joined by their former minister and past UUA president John Buehrens. Children and adults have made paper flower bouquets and cranes that cover the sanctuary - and a banner reading: Love is the Spirit of this Church - is hanging near the road at the entrance to their building. Tents have been raised on their yard to house the overflow crowd and nearby congregations have pulled together to do what we all know how to do in the face of tragedy - to bring lunch for all in attendance. Eleven members of the UU Trauma Response Ministry Team have been onsite this past week to offer counseling and guidance - as have numerous other clergy and professionals from the area. Here in our own community, I have been overwhelmed and heartened by colleagues who have reached out across denominational lines to let me know that they are standing with us - and I have been surprised by the generosity of strangers who are not only taking up collections for the Knoxville Relief Fund in their own congregations this morning - but who have also stopped by the church office with their donations to our church - telling us that they want to support the good work of Unitarian Universalism locally.
We are not alone this morning or ever on our journey - and we are already rising from the ashes of this tragedy, friends. We do it by coming together - by resisting the fear and loneliness and detachment that our culture can create in us - and turning instead toward each other - offering and receiving the inspiration we need to live lives worth living. And we do it, in these next weeks and months - by following the advice of the sages who light our way - the sages like the poet Anne Sexton who remind us that if we are to rise again - we must first powder our sorrow and give it a back rub - cover it up with a blanket and let it sleep awhile as we mourn - that our pain and loss and sorrow might wake to the wings of the roses, transformed.
But first, first as the poet tells us we must sit with the sadness lest it fester and smolder within us diminishing our joy and our conviction to work for justice. First we must simply be together in gratitude. First we must mourn. First we must be gentle with ourselves and with one another in these days when the fragility of life rises so close to the surface. And then, then when we are ready, when our sorrow has been transformed on the wings of roses we will rise again - stronger in body and mind and spirit and purpose than ever before - ready to take up the calling that our faith demands of us as we lean in, again and again, to that larger love that holds us and guides us without fail as we strive to create the beloved community of love and justice we so long for in this world.
May it be so, and Amen.
August 3, 2008
- Forest Church. Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow. (Beacon Press, 2008), 64.
- Ibid., 15.