This sermon topic was requested by the UU church in Cumberland MD and I delivered it on April 23, 2006. The original title was Enacting Radical Change: Personal, Political, Global
What is radical change and how do we bring it about?
As some of you may know, I am a writer. And as I sat on Friday looking out at the rain and gloom, I begin thinking about how hard it was to get motivated at times. As I sat, facing the blank page, in the midst of a cloudy and rainy day, I asked myself, “How do you get motivated in the face of such a landscape?”
And I then realized that this is exactly the outlook many of us face as Americans and as inhabitants of this planet. How in the world do we get motivated to act during a time when everything seems so gloomy and so desperate? When for many of us our every effort seems so small and ineffectual. And every previous seeming victory is now called into question.
Radical change? Hell at this point, I’d guess that many of us would be happy with a sliver of change in the right direction. Or maybe I should say left direction.
I wrote in a frequently forwarded post after the last election, that
“ …if we cannot rely on the "youth vote and the disenfranchised single-female vote and the "Daily Show" vote and the Eminem vote and the celebrity vote and the humanitarian vote and the antiwar vote and the gay vote and the pro-choice vote and the Howard Stern vote and the immigrant vote" to turn an election, what the hell else can we do except re-look at everything again.”
And re-looking at it all again is ultimately what this sermon is about.
Okay, confession time -- It has taken me thirty years to finally concede that yes, political change is important. I was skeptical as a black nationalist, and later as a Marxist, with how so many people kept trying to use the American political system to create real change. It still bothers me.
But I now can say unequivocally that, yes, political change is important. However, you cannot rely solely on political change. That was and is the folly of so many movements for social, economic and racial justice. We have to change so much more than the politics; we have to change the symbols, the myths, the language, the art, the music, etc. We have to change the very soul of our culture. And to change or rather to work on the soul of a culture is by definition, a radical act.
We have confused ourselves by relying on our own faulty memories. We think, for example, that women won the right to vote via an amendment to the constitution or that slavery was abolished due to government proclamation. We think the Voting Rights act or the Civil Rights Act or Title Nine or Roe v Wade were the harbingers of major cultural shifts. We think we lost the ERA. We are mistaken.
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This sounds like something I need to do. I hope that I can work it out.
Connect DC is TEN?? Wow. Time flies.
Did I ever mention to you that I think the impact that working had on me was to connect me to DC? I'm so hooked in here ... just call me "swamp thang."
Speaking of which ... isn't it margarita weather? Let's get together.
Much love,
Reya
p.s. So cool to see my drawing again! Thank you for publishing!
"Such beautiful dreaming! Such clear work. You sound so much in-focus just now.
I honor this work and delight in reading your words ... and I'm moved to participate in the dreaming-work, perhaps more than is appropriate.
I think I'll take the risk, and I hope you'll tell me if you'd rather I not do it again.
In the dream group I used to work with, we would read one of our dreams aloud and then go around the room, each one beginning their remarks with "If this were my dream..." and then sharing whatever the pieces seemed to illuminate for them. And then the next person might see something quite different in the same images, the same words.
In that sense, if this were my dream just now, in my dream I am surrounded by water -- my life is filled with emotion, covering and drowning everything else, so that all I can see is my feelings.
The gathering of song and all these incredible people -- my life, friendships, the harmony we make together. And in my dream, I am beginning to see myself moving on. Does this mean a change of geography? a change of emphasis? in my life this minute this could be about gradually shifting some of the focus of my everyday spiritual community from the UUs to the Yoga studio, or it could be something quite different. If I had this dream last week sometime, it would look like the impending end of an important relationship.
And in all of those possibilities, I am so present to the sadness with which I gather up what is mine to take with me, make my farewells, and lose my ability to remember the words. In all of these possibilities, even as I'm leaving I'm rethinking the choice to leave ... do I really have to? why?
In my dream, I look for my car because I want to escape ... and I can't find my car because there's no way out. As I'm searching the beautiful dark man in the hotel uniform helps me -- the hotel uniform telling me that wherever I am is only a way station, his beauty telling me that I can enjoy and appreciate his help, his darkness telling me that sometimes I need to look closely to see what is important (other times everything is well-lighted).
I keep looking for the way out even as the hotel man would make me welcome, and eventually the welcome is withdrawn as he leaves. And then I am lost and wandering, trying to find my way home -- having ignored help and support, I find I can't find the way alone after all.
And now that my dream has ended, I see there is much here that I can use in my waking life, too. So thank you for dreaming this dream, thanks for sharing it, thanks for letting me dream it, too.
Many blessings, Dear One"
"I sit staring out the window, not lost in thought, but feeling completely and totally blank inside." I have been sitting in a similar space.
Your post reminds me to trust and to listen for the song.