Order of Service1-20-13

Love and Justice

Bowl rings

Welcome (Sarah O.)

Good morning and Welcome to the Boulder Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. My name is Sarah Oglesby-Dunegan, and I am the ministerial intern here at BVUUF until June. Reverend Lydia Ferrante Roseberry is on sabbatical until April, and as always we send her warm thoughts and look forward to her return. Today I am joined by my fellow ministerial students at Iliff, Jennifer Friedman and Beth Chronister. Jen is also a singer-songwriter and a Dance Leader in the Dances of Universal Peace tradition. Beth has a degree in social work and spent time in the peace corps before coming to Iliff. Beth and I completed a chaplaincy program at SAN where Jenn has just started the same. We hope our collaboration will be as meaningful for you as it has been for us. There will be some surprises in this Order of Service; our postlude comes at the very end, so stay with us after our benediction!

As I say our opening words of welcome today, while I welcome each of you, I want you to imagine that you are sitting next to or even living next to someone who is a recent immigrant, possibly from Latin America or Asia, and with these words you are inviting them into this community:

No matter your age, your size, the color of your hair, your skin, you are welcome here.

No matter whom you love, or how you speak, or whatever your abilities, you are welcome here.

No matter where you live or how you make your living, you are welcome here.

Whether you come with laughter in your heart or tears, you are welcome here.

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If you come here with an open mind, a loving heart and willing hands, you are welcome here.

I extend a special welcome to all visitors today, and hope that you find here a place that both nurtures your spirit and inspires you to help heal our world. If you are new to our Fellowship, and haven’t already done so, please stop by our Welcome Table at the East entrance to the building and pick up a newcomer packet and sign our guest registry. This helps us welcome you and connect you to our community. We hope you’ll find meaningful ways to engage your heart, mind and soul here. All are invited to stay for coffee and conversation following the service.

Are you new and considering becoming a member here at BVUUF? We are holding a Path to Membership class on Saturday February 9. Get to know others who are involved here and learn about ways you’d like to get more involved. Here we are seeking, serving and sharing together as we grow and expand our sense of ourselves and community. Sign up at the Welcome Table.

After service we will be hosting a worship associate training. If you would like to join us, we will begin at 12:30. This is will a chance to practice leading various elements of a worship program. Current Worship associates are asked to attend and sign up for services they would like to assist on. New trainees are welcome!

It is our practice to give ½ of our plate away each Sunday to groups that help bring our values into the world. Today’s ½ plate will go to BVCAN. You can read more about them in your order of service. I’d like to introduce ___________ from BVCAN who is with us today. You can learn more about their group during Unity Plaza.

It is MLK weekend, and tomorrow and throughout the week there are many opportunities to celebrate, commemorate and engage in his dream and life’s work, from parades, to speakers, to interfaith gatherings. We’ve posted many of these in our yahoo group, our FB page, and around the Fellowship. I hope you’ll find something that works for you!

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Of special note, I have started an adult RE class that connects spiritual practice and social justice, using immigration as a lens. We meet on Tuesday nights--if you are moved to join us after today’s service, I welcome you to join us.

We like to get to know all of our newcomers. If you are new and would like to do so, I invite you to stand and introduce yourself so that we might better get to know you following our service. Please share with us where you live, if you live here in Colorado or where you are visiting from. Our neighborhood connectors would love to connect with you after the service. Are there any new people that would like to introduce themselves?

Following introductions, bring bowl out from around the pulpit

May the sound of the bowl draw you deeper into the present moment.

Ring the Bowl again.

Prelude (music)- Give yourself to love by Kate Wolf performed by Jennifer Friedman

Chalice lighting and opening words (Sarah O.)

We light this chalice for the light of truth, the warmth of love, and the energy of action

These words come to us from From Stevie Wonder, as he reminisced about meeting Rev. Dr. King and the fight to make his birthday a national holiday : “My defining moment was discovering God’s love and our own human purpose: striving to value the other guy as much as we value ourselves. To me, Dr. Martin Luther King exemplified that higher purpose. I only met him once, but that’s what he represented to me. Nelson Mandela represents it as well, along with all the other leaders and ordinary

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people who step beyond themselves and value the importance of others...because, in the end we all are related...I believe the most important thing we can do is to have compassion for each other. Our common goal has got to be caring. What if we took the pain we might feel if we lost the most important person in our life, and then we felt that pain for other people? People who are not related to us--but who are related in that they are part of our community, part of our universe. If we can feel for those other people the way we’d feel for ourselves, then we’ve achieved our highest purpose. That’s our biggest challenge, and we don’t always succeed. We may only be works in progress. But let’s at least be works in progress! Let’s try to achieve that caring.”

Sing kids out [All]

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Hymn- Love and Justice; led by J.F..Love and Justice (words/music by Judy Fjell, except 3rd verse by Jennifer Friedman)

Chorus:What’s it all aboutit’s all about lovewhat’s it all aboutit’s about justicewhat’s it all aboutit’s about love and justiceand the way we all live in the world

When you let down a wall, it’s all about lovebut when you tear down that wall, it’s about justicebuilding bridges, crumbling wallsit’s about love and justiceand the way we all live in the world

Chorus

When you hold a woman’s hand, it’s all about lovebut when you respect her right to choose, it’s about justicewhen your heart and your head are connected, it’s about love and justiceand the way we all live in the world

Chorus

When you learn to speak a new language, it’s all about lovebut when you use it to organize, it’s about justicewhen your belief gets put into action, it’s about love and justiceand the way we all live in the world

Candles of Community Sarah and Jenn? or Beth?

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Pastoral Prayer Sarah

Spirit of Love, we call on you today to help us to find and create unity, “to restore that which is estranged to new harmony and cooperation.”

We call on you to transform us into new beings, with the energy to re-create the world.

Help us to be generous, giving and receiving on behalf of individuals and the communities they live in, moving into harmony and expanding into open communion and creativity with ourselves and each other.

Help us to find salvation in caring for each other, believing that “to care for persons is to create a new world; to care for the world is to build a new personhood” (13.)

Help us to create “shalom” or a sense of “love and justice for the sake of greater community and harmony.”

Spirit of Love, help us to be able to see how the pain of an individual is connected to the pain of the community, and encourage our community to respond as supporters and redeemers for each other and for the whole.

Help us to see that the communion of souls is a prerequisite for social action, and that social justice can heal a community and also an individual just as surely as one individual’s healing can be a catalyst for change that heals others and causes systemic change. [Quotes from Larry Graham’s Care of Person’s, Care of Worlds]

(some music to transition-)

Today’s offering goes to BVCAN, Boulder Valley Community Action Network, which is the community organizing group of our Fellowship.

BVCAN is a member of Together Colorado. Faith and school-based organizations and clergy throughout Colorado work to make positive local changes in education, healthcare, housing, economic justice, and

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immigrant rights. Together Colorado is a member of the national PICO network, which represents one million families across the country. This work has resulted in continuing involvement of a BVCAN leader in the Boulder County mental health task force that is developing strategies to lower the counties suicide rate.

BVCAN is continuing to explore the possibilities for increased integration of Boulder County's faith based communities into the mental health system and how to best to support the Governor’s Mental Health Care Reform Proposals. We will also be listening to Fellowship mental health concerns again with story circles.

Please give generously as you always do.

The Call of Love verse 1 (this may not be long enough to do offertory…but I could sing it through twice so that people will get the melody down)

Part 1-It's the heart that guides us, it’s the heart that healsIt's the heart that grounds us to transcend our fearsIt's the heart that gives shelter from the storms of our livesIt's the heart, the heart of love

(repeat)

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Part I sermon: Beth

Neo-Globalism has woven sticky strands across the earth. Our current world is comprised of a frenzied global web made through the movement of monies, resources, goods, and people. Parallel to the rapid communication of the internet or the possibility of travel between hemispheres in a single day, Neo-Globalism is defined by unprecedented movement across physical distances at high speed. Also definitive of the Neo-Global era is the non-mutuality of relationships. A few benefit at the cost of many. It is precisely these systems that can make living in the US so comfortable. The United States' reliance upon political and economic coercion to gain global access to natural resources and cheap labor has served to created the material abundance that is available to people like you and me.

These current realities come at immeasurable costs to the greater human community as well as to the health of our planet. Furthermore, these costs are intentionally masked, the human work and natural resources that create a shirt becomes invisible in the process of it reaching a store shelf. Such realities pose serious questions and challenges to those of us who dream of a more just world. Not only out of concern for the well-being of others and the earth, but also as reflected in the truth spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr when he said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly".

How much more pertinent has this statement become in light of our ever increasing inter-connectedness? How do we want to be together as weavers in this mutual destiny?

Before we all become stuck in guilt or shame about our positions of power in this web, it is important to recognize that these systems and relationships have been broken intentionally. What so intimately and

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profoundly shapes lives has been intentionally broken with racism, segregation, greed, materialism, and fear. The presence of such brokenness serves to prevent connection and compassion across difference. It keeps the system's parts divided, less powerful. Meanwhile, the systemic whole appears immovable.

This is the social soup within which we are simmering. These reflections bring up painful and challenging questions-- I wonder, how am I a mirror of these larger systems? What brokenness have I internalized along the way? What does it mean to truly challenge my own privilege? Is it possible to use this privilege to create change? And how might this be done without perpetuating the same hierarchy and imbalance of power which I hope to help dismantle?

Reflecting on questions of social change, I find both inspiration and caution within the parable of the Compassionate Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is reported to have shared this parable in response to a lawyer who asked the question, "Teacher, who is my neighbor?"

Jesus responding with a story, described a man who is accosted while journeying between lands. The robbers, who violently attacked the traveler, leave him half dead in a ditch-- stripped, beaten, and vulnerable. A priest who happened to walk by, sees the man and rather than respond, walks to the other side of the road. Likewise a Levite, a member of the priestly class in Jesus's time, passes the man in the ditch and also chooses to not acknowledge his suffering. But a Samaritan, a member of a rejected ethic minority group, was also traveling that dusty road in the borderlands. He saw the man experiencing agony and was moved to compassion. The Samaritan came to the man, bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn where he cared for him--- giving of both his time and money out of compassion for this stranger who he chose instead to treat as neighbor and friend.

I find this story most challenging when I imagine myself as the characters. How have I responded to the suffering and agony of another? Have I stayed safe and disengaged by quickly walking to the other side of

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the road-- carrying with me a burden of guilt while evading the challenge of connection and empathy? Or, do I, like the Samaritan, respond to suffering by bravely entering into relationship with the unknown? How may I make myself more vulnerable by responding to the vulnerability and hurt of another? How might I open myself to being changed by relationship?

This is a story that speaks to our Unitarian Universalist religious imperative to act justly in our relationships, to connect through love, and to honor the worth and dignity that we affirm is universally endowed. It is a story that is often referred to by liberal, prophetic voices speaking on the need for more compassion to be expressed in our immigration policies. Unfortunately, while I find that the parable is useful in exploring the question of "who is my neighbor?" and how I might act in relationship to others, particularly those suffering- I find it can be difficult to apply this parable directly. While I have learned about some of the traumas and stresses that face undocumented families-- because of my privilege, I do not generally encounter these pains on the side of the road. I do not walk by the detention center on my way anywhere. I do not live in fear that someone I know and love will be deported. Segregation, white supremacism, and fear make relationships between undocumented immigrants and the native born rare. In order to respond like the Compassionate Samaritan to the families caught within the brokenness of the immigration system-- it is going to take imagination, vision, and courage.

Rather you choose to respond to those suffering because of broken systems by working toward policy changes, or by accompanying a local immigrant family, the commitment to offering love rather than fear will require us to leave our individual worlds and go into discomfort. And when we enter into these dusty roads of vulnerability and loss, may we dare connection instead of convenience-- And may we be transformed through being with others in the spirit of love and the fire of commitment.

Hymn or music- The Call of Love verse 2

It's this path we walk, oh freely hand in hand

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It's this path that protects us when we feel we don't stand a chanceIt's this path that's laid out from me to you and themIt's this path, this path of love

Part II sermon: Sarah

I want to share with you the perspective of what happens to families in our mixed up immigration system, the way in which we disconnect individuals from their origins. In his book, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore defines family, saying that “we all know the family in its particulars. This is the nest in which soul is born, nurtured and released into life. It has an elaborate history and ancestry...its stories tell of happy times and tragedies. (28).” Family, the first place in which we might experience community, may be imperfect and vulnerable, and yet it may hold so many possibilities for growth and support, for building our capacities and finding our gifts. This is how the faith community sees family. As a community we must strive to support families to be the best that they can, to offer children what they need, and to be a place of development and strength. For immigrant families in the United States, this relationship is even more tenuous and fraught with danger.

As a faculty member and advisor in a community college in Texas and here in Colorado, I watched many families being torn apart by our convoluted system of immigration. I often experienced a sense of broken heartedness, a sense of helplessness and defeat when I heard their stories. This year, as the state of Colorado and our national leaders struggle to pave a path to citizenship for young people, allowing them to attend college affordably and find jobs, as well as developing comprehensive reform in our system for immigrants, I hope you will think about these families and their struggles; how can we keep families whole and embrace the gifts and talents, hard work and initiative these families arrive with and grow into? My heart was broken by students like Magolly. Magolly sat down to do her degree planning with me a few years ago. We looked at her transcripts. She had a lot of dropped classes! She was working 40 to 50 hours a week in her dad’s restaurant. She was out of status, making her “illegal.” Her

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dad had come first, started his business; he had papers. In fact, he became a citizen. He sponsored his family. But INS—they were so far behind. They did their part. Magolly was 13 when they came and now she was 21. She had aged out, and the process starts over and is expensive. And now, she had a 2 year old daughter. Magolly wanted to be a nurse, and had good grades. What could I tell this young lady? Where did we go wrong? My heart ached. Here there are no assurances, not now, not for immigrants in this country of immigrants who have forgotten they were immigrants.

[read by another voice?] bell rings[For you were strangers in the land of Egypt:Do you remember? Do you remember the stories of your parents?Egypt is the land, the time, the situation where you were persecuted and misunderstoodEgypt is intolerance and slaveryEgypt is the place where you felt aloneEgypt is the feeling of lashes on your backand curses on your soul

Then there’s my student Muriel. Her mom brought her to Colorado when she was three. She has a sister who was born here. Her mom is single and works as a maid. Muriel was an honors high school student—straight A’s and no nonsense. She worked hard in class, a perfectionist. She wanted to be a doctor. She has childhood diabetes and has struggled with her health, but you’d never know it. Here in Colorado, she can’t even get in state tuition. Makes Magolly’s situation look simple. Her sister qualifies for food stamps. She doesn’t. This is just the beginning. Muriel doesn’t even speak much Spanish. She wants to stay in college but she can’t afford it, and she can’t receive the scholarship she won from the mayor because…she’s not legal.

Thousands of students graduate every year from our local high schools, smart kids, kids who want to go to college and make a difference. Kids whose parents tried to come here legally and kids whose parents didn’t.

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Kids whose parents understood the laws they were breaking, but mostly kids whose parents wanted for them what I want for my daughters—safety, food, housing,an opportunity to thrive. Jobs. Bread.

What was I supposed to say to these kids? What are we supposed to tell them? Who is going to invite them to the dinner made from our harvest,what can we plan to offer them?

(Bell rings)[Love them as yourself:Love them. As. YOURSELF. We are all one. There is a unity that makes us one.All souls are sacred and worthy.Love Love Love, this is a verb, this is what you do and what you say and how you do it andhow you say it,this is the laws you makeand the cities you buildand the taxes you collectand the ethics you teach,the values you live by.] Last night when I was putting my youngest to bed, the three year old, I imagined I was Muriel’s mom. I imagined Muriel as a tiny girl. I imagined I was in a dusty Mexican village, where there is no work, no men (they are all working somewhere else), where there is no food bank, no hospital, no one with more money to help. I imagine her mama looking at her beautiful hija the way I look at mine and deciding to find a way across the border, a way into the los estados unidos. And I imagine them, here, with a new fear. It’s no longer the fear of not being able to feed, clothe and house this beautiful girl—it is the fear of being caught, separated—of losing her. I wonder what Muriel dreams about at night, what she thinks about her future. Does she see one?

How does she keep hope alive?

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[he can live with youthey already live with youthey have always lived with youthey are youthey can livethey youthey can, you can, we willsi se puede] I invite you into my heartbreak. I ask you to share it with me, I ask you to care enough to ask what we can do. There are no easy answers. I can’t tell you what will fix this. I can tell you what won’t. Ignoring these children and their families, locking them up or trying to “send some home” won’t help. I ask you to love them first and then to ask how we can work together to make their dreams possible, to make their dreams our dreams and our dreams theirs. I ask you first to simply join me in praying for these families and their children. I ask you to keep these families in your prayers, to ask how we can share this harvest,

how we can love without heartbreak. [reap the harvestthere is an abundancethere is enoughWe all reap the harvestThe harvest is not just yoursThe harvest is a gift from the Earth to all of usTherefore, reap the harvestbut do not withhold the harvest]

Hymn or music- The Call of Love verse 3

We walk in the ways of loveeven when we feel we don't have enough love to give

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just reach out and... There's a hand to hold us when we cannot hold ourselvesThere's a shoulder to lean on when we cannot find our groundThere's a heart just waiting to take up the loving callIt's the call, the call of love

Part III sermon

The first part of this sermon, I focused on the web that Neo-Globalism has woven around the planet. As Unitarian Universalist, we celebrate and honor the existence of a larger, more enduring web. The Seventh principle lifts up the centrality of "respect for the inter-dependent web of existence of which we are a part". At times, I have considered myself a seventh principle UU. This core statement has helped me to define what I know to be greater than myself and how I should be in relationship with the mystery that surrounds me within this inter-dependent web.

*** Theological Assumptions from honoring the interdependent web of existence combined with covenant

I invite you to meditate briefly on the inter-dependent web of existence. You may close your eyes if it suits you. Imagine the inter-dependent web. What comes to mind? Is it a concept that you are able to visualize? Or do you enter into this religious claim of connectedness and unity through your senses? Your emotions? The boundlessness of spirit? Or through your use of reason and knowledge? How do you know and feel that you are connected and inter-dependent within something much larger than yourself? Where is power located in this web? Is power at the center? Or is it as Foucault describes, available across different channels to varying degrees. Where are you? Where are undocumented families?

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*** What questions do we need to be asking as the church prepares to engage the immigration conversation? What does an ethic of accompaniment look like? How do we use our power to create more power and opportunity for others?

I would like to end today by revisiting the parable of the Compassionate Samaritan. As I mentioned, Samaritans were an ethnic minority in the time of Jesus. They were a group relegated to the fringes, a people who experienced rejection from the mainstream. Sermons this month have explored the theme of brokenness as it appears not only in systems, but also in the shadows flickering within each of us. I wonder, how did the Samaritan's experience of rejection and persecution inform his response to the wounded man? Was it from his own experience of hurt that helped him to choose compassion over avoidance?

I am reminded of a time when I was living as a Peace Corps Volunteer with a host family in rural Paraguay. I was sitting in the hammock with my 8 year old host sister, Yanina. We were reading the Spanish translation of "I'll love you forever" by Robert Munch, the story of a mother singing her growing son to sleep. At one point, I started to cry-- the origin of my tears was my own longing for my parents. Yanina leaned against me and said, "Extrano mi mama tambien", I miss my mother too. Because of the lack of work in the community, Yanina's mother had to live across the country in order to work cleaning homes. Yanina connected to me from out of her own sadness and longing. And in that shared space we offered one another for comfort.

I believe that it is through our own places of hurt and brokenness that compassion and connection with another may shine through. Not in the sense that I know the story of another-- Assuming too much can also be damaging. Yet, having had my own stories of pain, rejection, and grief, I am compelled to respond to the agony of another member of the inter-dependent web. To accompanying another recognizes him or her as another being with worth and dignity. To recognize the communal rights to family, to love, and to work. To choose not to walk on the other side of the

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road, but to go into the ditch and offer compassion. To risk connection and become more vulnerable to the challenges that social change asks of us. beth, see if you can connect this to the meaning of restorative justice--that this is how we restore right relationship. That we no longer see each other as victim/perpetrator or oppressed and oppressor but as allies who need each other.

Jenn...Transition/reprise/finger picking some kind of music before we enter the benediction...

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Benediction Sarah, Jenn and Beth (from Barbara Wells)“Oh Spinner, Weaver, Seamstress of our lives,your loom is love. [Jenn]May we be empowered by that loveto weave new patterns of truth and justice [Beth]into a web of life that is strong, beautiful and everlasting.” [Sarah]

Sarah: May you go in peace, and may love guide you to build relationships that will create our beloved community, from the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to our hands and hearts.

[and directions for dance!] Jenn

Postlude “One More Step Dance” Led by Jenn

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