People Get Ready
Reverend Sharon Dittmar
Curtis
Mayfield wrote People Get Ready in 1963.
He was 21 years old and his inspiration was the
I’ve
been thinking about visions lately, about dreaming, about the need to believe
in a vision, especially when we don’t know how to get where we want to go. The Hebrew Scriptures tell us that “without a
vision the people perish.” In the words
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “ Never mind the ridicule,
never mind the defeat; up again, old heart!”[2] Words written after the
crushing death of his son. On
August 28, 1963 the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in front of the
Lincoln Memorial and said “I have a dream my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but
by the content of their character.”[3]
And so
we vision and choose to believe because it sets us in direction to catch the
train, never quite knowing if we will hop on board in our lifetime. But how lonely, how disillusioned we would
be, how lost and confused if we did not have a vision to walk us in a direction
where we might try.
Just
about three years ago most members of the church sat down, sighed, rolled their
eyes, groaned, gritted their teeth, muttered (It was ugly), and sat down together
to write a mission statement with a vision of who we are and who we would like
to be. We hear the first part of this
mission statement every Sunday morning during our welcome “Our urban Unitarian Universalist community celebrates and supports one another
on our spiritual and ethical paths. We
work for justice, dignity, and respect for the web of life.” I am proud to minister with a congregation
that has the integrity to speak our mission, the words of our vision, and try
to live it. This is not, as some feared,
another neglected and forgotten internal document. It is our living and breathing attempt to
find the beloved community here and now, for some a divine endeavor, for others
a humanist endeavor. For me it is
inseparably both.
So how
delighted and moved was I when the Social Justice committee came to me and
said, “We need a sermon and survey. We
want to broaden congregational support and connect our social justice work to
our mission and UU purposes and principles.
We have worked as a small group of interested individuals for too
long. We want to know the will of the
people.”
I
appreciate the vision of the social justice committee. Our full mission statement contains these
words at the end (longer text than we read) “Working for justice; to explore
the responsibilities of being an urban UU church in the 21st
century, to focus on social justice programs where we can be the most
effective, to live in harmony with nature, recognizing the interconnectedness
of all life. This is our vision of ourselves as an urban UU congregation. How will we live it?
The
social justice committee created the survey in our order of service to
help. I’d ask that you turn to it now
(yes, I am asking you to stop listening to me and look at something else). Up top you see the goal “To more effectively
promote social justice by broader congregational involvement.” Below you see a list of choices, beginning
with “Refugee support” and ending with “Environmental concerns” on the back
page. Each choice has a column for your
consideration, would you work on this project one time, a couple of hours every
month, a couple of hours every week, or would you like more information? Indicate you interest in as many categories
as you believe you would honestly have time to address. If you would like more information, please be
sure to include your name (and if you are a visitor please include an address),
so we know how to get it to you. There
will be time at the end of service for you to fill this out (so you can put it
down now, I believe that pencils will also be provided).
There
is no right or wrong answer here, only your interest. What moves you? What speaks to you of our mission statement,
our UU Purposes and Principles, which we just read? What are you, with a full life and busy
schedule, ready to do? The committee has
some preferences, but they want to know ours, to see where our energy rests.
I want
to say a few more words about the choices.
As I mentioned, the first one listed is refugee support. Most of you are familiar with our refugee
work, three years ago with the Destani family from
Kosovo, and now the Komi family from the
Farm
Labor organizing, World Library partnership, Community-police relations, and
the repeal of Article XII (which prohibits gays and lesbians from protection
against discrimination in
This
past week, while looking at the Commission on Social Witness web page through
the UUA website, I saw that UUA President, Bill Sinkford,
a former member of this congregation, met last week with His Holiness the Dalai
Lama. In their conversations the Dalai
Lama said, “Change must start in the human heart.” Bill added that change starts when “people
are brought into relationship with one another, when they reach out across the
differences that usually divide them.”
As the religious leader from a war torn, occupied country, I have always
been fascinated with the Dalai Lama’s engagement with justice issues. “Change must start in the human heart.”
Our
Capital Campaign consultant, Jerry King, likes to remind me that the capital
campaign will end in three years. He
says “No one will remember this now, but keep your eye on it. In just three years the campaign will end,
and then what? What is next for this
congregation? Remember that you
renovated so that you could live into your mission, to do more and to be
more. The people will need something
next.” So I tell you, people get ready. We are building to make way for a change in the
human heart, to have resources we will need so that we can reach out across differences
that usually divide us. When we wrote
our mission statement, we recommitted ourselves to the city, and to social
justice issues.
Recently
the social justice committee sent a large packet to the UUA with information
about our congregation so that we could see if there are any UUA workshops that
can help us address social justice now and in the future. Most of the UUA workshops help congregations
organize their program, which we have already done. In speaking to the director, Bill Gardiner,
he suggested a different social justice workshop for us, one on sustainable
social justice that emphasizes self-care.
Now he had my attention.
I know
that some of us get frustrated with social justice that is all talk and no
action, but let me suggest a different interpretation of our current level of
social justice talk. Sure, we talk, but
social justice conversations are often so weighted and freighted by guilt and
pain that we don’t listen to one another.
Our limited discussion, our one-sided conversations, prevents us from
understanding the complexity of individual human experience and sacrifice. When we don’t listen we are not in
relationship, we have no change in the human heart. If social justice work can change society, it
is only because it first transforms the individual. In my fifteen years of active social justice
work, I have not yet found a way to engage in sustainable social justice. But each time I try I learn more about burn
out, my limits, and the need for self care.
I want to try again, but I believe we need a new paradigm, a new
example, in order to do better.
Guilt
is an endless motivator that perpetually attracts and repels desire. The endless cycle of guilt and desire keeps
us from acknowledging real issues and success.
We are so familiar with arguing (perhaps fond of arguing?) about the
small points that they keep us too preoccupied to address the large
points. They keep us so pre-occupied
that we cannot change. The problem then is that we can’t keep our eyes on the
prize - we lose the prize of unity, relationship, and change in the human
heart. What we need to value is that
every act of dignity, compassion or transformation is a victory for the peace
train.
I can’t
judge you, only you can. I don’t want to
judge you or myself. I’m not sure it is
helpful. I want to work with you and
myself. I’m not concerned about the
people who don’t care. I’m happy to work
with what we have, people who do care, to work together in dignity, compassion,
and transformation. And it might be a
lot to ask from in my vision, but I don’t want any less. I’m tired of operating with less.
If you
live and work in your suburb and attempt to remove the Ten Commandments from
your public school yard, I salute you.
If you live and work in the city and generously sponsor the arts, I
salute you. If you are in a period of
turmoil in your life, and you work as hard as you can to get up, get dressed,
back you car out of the driveway in the morning, and be good to others, I
salute you. Justice making begins with
us, our families, our communities, and spreads from there.
What
are you moved to do? Please take just
ten minutes to fill out the survey, being honest about your interests and
availability. Perhaps there is nothing
on here that interests you. That is
fine. Please don’t feel you have to lie
to impress someone, me or anyone else.
Be who you are. That is what I am
asking of you, what we need to ask of one another, as we fill out this
survey. If you don’t finish the survey
today, please mail it to Mimi Gingold. People get ready, there’s a train a
coming’. You don’t need no baggage, just hop on board.
Now I’ve
been crying lately
Thinking
about the world as it is
Why must
we go on hating
Why can’t
we live in bliss
Cause out
on the edge of darkness
There
rides a peace train
Everyone
jump upon the peace train
Peace
train, peace train
Come take
me home again[4]