Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here at the 2018 UUMA Center Institute in Tampa, Florida. The theme of the conferences is Faith Inspiring Innovation. We’ve had phenomenal worship leaders and the collegiality of the ministers in attendance reminds me of what it means to feel inspired to seek innovation. Innovation is something I excel at, for better or for worse. I’m always looking to do something new, or in a new way, or with a new spirit. I shrink fro repetition and the mundane.

In my seminar, Prophetic Leadership in a Digital Age, the discussion and focus turned towards the cultural systems of Unitarian Universalists. What is the the UU Culture? My first instinct was, there isn’t just one. That’s the beauty and the curse. It’s one big tent, but it is one BIG tent. Many of the systems and traditions named by my colleagues were things that were not particular to UUism, but rather cultural systems of white, upper-middle class, intellectual Americans.  Not shouting “amen” during a sermon. Stone-faced attention during worship services in gerneral. Mistrust of authority (okay, that one is UU), intellectual rigor, etc.

The talk was about how UUism can be intentionally inclusive if it’s culture is so set in a way that only caters to one type of person, rather than to many or all types of people. I got stuck on this one.

Isn’t that the history of religion? of humanity? the point was never to be more inclusive. Religion has long been used to exclude, to set apart, to make sacred, to lift up, to separate out. Only when an identity is established by religious groups does the focus turn towards becoming inclusive, but it is an inclusiveness that demands you come to us, rather than Us changing for You. Truth becomes centered in the group.

The Christian tradition has a word for this separation. It’s called the Fall. It’s the story you might remember as how the first Man and Woman got kicked out of the Garden of Eden paradise because they disobeyed the one rule God set for them. Don’t eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, because then you’ll be trying to be God. Christians use that story to indicate why sex is bad and why women have pain in child birth and why only prayer can save the world before God wipes it out in some apocalyptic disaster. The term “original sin” gets thrown around, as if the worst kind of sin comes from an association with nudity.

It’s also a story about how humans separate themselves. God doesn’t have to do it. We do it on our own. We create rituals and routines that bring us comfort and meaning….and they dis-integrate us. The whole promise of Christianity, of Universalism, of many religions in fact, is the unification of the disjointed. The separation of the many corrected and re-integrated into the whole.

Paul Tillich wrote about sin through this lens. Sin should never be plural, like if you do a bad thing that’s not a sin.  Sin is a state of being, of separation. Sin is the reality of being separated from God, from yourself, and from one another. I can’t think of any thing more original to the human condition. We’ve always been seeking to separate. That’s the truest thing in the story of the Fall from the Garden of Eden.

Religion, especially Unitarian Universalism, is supposed to seek out pathways to reach that destination of Beloved Community. But we’re working against millennia of social conditioning and biological programming. It’s hard work.

So maybe the goal shouldn’t be a monotone culture where we all have to do the same thing. We shouldn’t have to seek the same rituals to bring us comfort and meaning. We shouldn’t have to sing the same songs or pray in the same way or shout the same words during the sermon.

But we should all feel welcomed to do those right? We should be open to the experience of the Divine entering our lives in a myriad of ways, in a writing by Darwin or a poem by bell hooks or a clip from Finding Nemo or a Spanish rap (shout out to Despacito).

I think that’s my big take-away from this weekend. It’s not about creating a space in our church for others to come find. It’s about engaging the world where they are and bringing our values and beliefs and bodies and songs to the Garden from which we exiled ourselves. If we can all gather together around the Tree of Life and honor it in our own different and similar ways, then we’re really getting somewhere on this road to restoration and Beloved Community.

So here’s my promise: I’m open to it. I’m welcoming of it. If you feel comfortable shouting, shout. If you feel comfortable dancing, dance. If you feel comfortable sitting down and shutting up for an hour, go for it. But let others do it, too. Or not do it. And let the energy of the Spirit of Life move in you to shout if you are usually silent, to sit if you usually dance, and to work its magic in its mysterious way. Let God speak into your ear and listen to the call, because it’s not calling you to become someone else or be someone different. It’s calling you to become more of yourself and be yourself differently, more lovingly, more universally.

I hope you’ll join me on this adventure as we explore and build a culture that is grace-filled, welcoming, and diverse precisely because that’s what our values and Love demand.