But Can We Afford It?

As an intern minister thirty years ago I taught a course of the old adult RE curriculum Building Your Own Theology. During one session or another, I said with all the convocation and naivete of a new minister and a life-long Unitarian Universalist, “ we don’t have to accept narrow, fundamentalist definitions that deprive us of rich religious language. We need to reclaim rich and meaningful words and concepts for ourselves.” In response one participant in the class let me know in no uncertain terms that she had been too wounded by the conservative Christianity of her upbringing to ever want to reclaim religious words and concepts.

I wasn’t wrong, and to this day I believe we, as individuals and as a faith, benefit when we claim and reimagine and make creative use of what is sometimes called “a language of reverence”, rather than surrendering it to those who would wield rich and time honored religious terms in judgment and hate and narrow definitions of love. Still, while I wasn’t wrong, I had taken into consideration neither the complexity of the issue nor the breadth of lived experience present in any group of Unitarian Universalists. Reclaiming religious language often isn’t desireable or even possible for Unitarian Universalists (or others) who have experienced violence in the guise of religion.

That exchange in that long ago Building Your Own Theology class has been much on my mind as I consider this month’s theme of vulnerability.

Personal growth gurus and mental health practitioners, with researcher and licensed social worker Brené Brown at the forefront, advocate the benefits of vulnerability, both interpersonally and in the workplace. These include increases in

trust and intimacy

strong teams

innovation and creativity

accountability

self-worth

awareness and empathy

gratitude, and even

joy.

Based on all I’ve read and heard in recent years, including SoulMatters resource materials for this month, it is not wrong to say emotional vulnerability is good for us. But it is a vast oversimplification, and one that is perhaps most flawed by its failure to examine and account for the experience of the most oppressed, and physically, financially, socially vulnerable members of society. Engaging in acts of vulnerability require varying degrees of courage for anyone who undertakes them. But for people of color, trans folks–particularly transwomen of color–undocumented people, people without job security or rainy-day savings accounts, people who have been or continue to be victims of violence–for so many people, already vulnerable in so many ways, additional, voluntary vulnerability isn’t safe. Too often the truths they tell aren’t believed. The experiences or feelings or opinions they speak are twisted and used against them.

Consider the single parent, probably a person of color, who reveals their fears about financial insecurity, and then loses custody of their children.

Consider the person who reveals their difficulty finding appropriate medical care due to having been assigned the wrong gender at birth, and then finds themselves excluded from their faith community.

Consider the person who discloses their history of struggling with addiction, and then loses their health insurance or security clearance for a job.

Consider the person, maybe a woman, probably a person of color, who is repeatedly passed over for advancement and dares to protest or seek redress or even simply point out the injustice, and then finds themselves labeled a troublemaker, not a team player, and eventually demoted or laid-off.

Consider victims of crime–undocumented, perhaps, or unhoused, or living otherwise outside the mainstream–who report the crime, and then find themselves blamed, deported, arrested or investigated.

Consider the person–usually male–who speaks of their depression or struggles with self-worth, and then find themselves dismissed or told to suck it up or reminded that others have it worse or called offensive names.

To reiterate, as Dr. Yazeed points out in the second of this morning’s readings, everyday acts of voluntary vulnerability that require emotional courage from middle class white people, are dangerous to the lives, livelihoods, social networks, and financial status of people on the margins of society. In other words, vulnerability is a luxury not everyone can afford. And while more than half a century before Dr. Yazeed, Howard Thurman, a black minister, scholar, and theologian, recognized and proclaimed what he seemed to consider a basic and universal human impulse and desire to be "thoroughly and completely understood", he too knew that a prerequisite to voluntary vulnerability is know that one can "look out around me and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down".

We must allow people to know what is best for them. We must accept the assertions of people of color and other marginalized people. We must take them at their word when they tell their truth, recount their life experience. And if they say the kind of vulnerability Brené Brown and others advocate is not safe for them, then we must believe them. But that doesn’t mean that Howard Thurman was wrong.

If the basic human need to be deeply and fully known is universal, and the fulfillment of that need is denied to large numbers of our society, there are repercussions for all of us. A society in which certain people are routinely and systemically deprived of a basic and beneficial need is a society characterized by unrest, misunderstanding, and injustice. And these are circular. Systemic injustice creates the conditions that make vulnerability dangerous. The inability to be vulnerable reduces trust, intimacy, self-worth, and team building which lead to poor health outcomes and decreased life satisfaction and unrest. And the gap between the experiences of people who can afford to be vulnerable and the experiences of those who cannot creates misunderstanding, which makes vulnerability even more dangerous.

The question I ask in my sermon title is a question for us as a society, Can we afford to continue to perpetuate systems and conditions that make voluntary, interpersonal vulnerability dangerous for those who are already vulnerable, physically, financially, socially?’ Can we afford to have so many people so precariously situated in life that vulnerability, the very thing that we all desire, to know and be known, to be thoroughly and completely understood is out of reach? What are the costs to our society when so many people must constantly guard against the life and death penalties of being vulnerable?

We can’t force people for whom it is dangerous to make themselves emotionally vulnerable. We can change the conditions that make it dangerous. We start by centering the voices and experiences of black, indigenous and people of color, and other marginalized groups. That is to say, by believing what we are told by those whose life’s circumstances we do not share, even when it is so far outside our own experience of the world as to seem unbelievable, even when it makes us uncomfortable or reveals our specific participation in white supremacy culture. By making space for the voices of marginalized people to be heard in public discourse. By interrupting and challenging narratives that cast marginalized peoples as less than, as undeserving, as dangerous precisely because they are marginalized. By investing in resources in communities and organizations that serve BIPOC and GLBTQI and undocumented folks. By voting our values at the ballot box and with our personal spending. By showing up at rallies and JUST’s Nehemiah Action–and the processes of discussion and research that lead up to the Nehemiah Action.

Vulnerability and the benefits it offers shouldn’t be a luxury available to only a few. That is simply, plainly, unjust. Creating a society in which vulnerability is a courageous choice open to all will transform society. Imagine the release of increased trust and intimacy, innovation and creativity, accountability, self-worth, awareness and empathy, gratitude, and joy for all… It won’t result from TED talks and other lectures and personal growth books–that are without a doubt beneficial and transformative for some, but only some. It’s not the work of a week or month or a year. But it’s the work of the church. Over and over again, through the ages and further into the future than we would like it to still be necessary, it is the work of the church to seek, unleash, create justice. It has looked like civil rights marches. It has looked like ordaining LBGTQ folks, and solemnizing same sex marriages. It still looks like paying special attention to making sure ministers of color and other marginalized identities are called to serve our congregations and in other ministries. It looks like making our sanctuaries and RE classrooms and restrooms and social halls accessible to people with physical disabilities, and our content accessible to neurodiverse folks. It looks like showing up for fair housing and the rights of parents to seek the health care their children need. It looks like saying “if it’s good for some of society, then we need to make sure everyone has access to it”–no matter what it is. Including, this month, vulnerability without mortal danger.

It would have been easy, maybe even lovely, to speak encouragingly to you today about personal and interpersonal vulnerability. To make use of the Brené Brown quotes provided in the SoulMatter packet for the month–quotes that would probably resonate deeply with some of you and speak to your experiences or your desires. I certainly could have made that a cleaner, crisper, yet lyrical sermon. And it would have been fine. A suitable and meaningful sermon, both. But because it is a growing edge for me, and because this congregation has called itself into the work of building a diverse, multicultural and beloved community by taking actions that dismantle racism and other oppressions, my motivation can’t be ease nor my goal poetry. Justice seeking and creating, including dismantling racism, starts with recognizing and parsing and understanding injustice–and that’s messy, complex, challenging work. Holy work. Church work.

I can’t predict when or how we will achieve the conditions under which all might one day, as Howard Thurman envisioned, "feel that [they are] thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then [they] can take [their] guard down and look out around [themselves] and not feel that [they] will be destroyed with [their] defenses down… [feeling] completely vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed and absolutely secure."

I can say, we are in it together, as members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah. Providing meals to participants in the Strengthening Families program. Screen Daughters of the Dust. Having a service in honor of Women’s History Month in a couple weeks. And a service presented by the Green Team next month. Calling ourselves and one another into kinder, more compassionate interactions in all our church business. In little ways and big, visible ways and nearly invisible ways, we are together in the work of making vulnerability a safer choice–in our church and in our wider community. Even if we’ve never thought of it that way before. Protecting the most vulnerable among us, changing the conditions that make them vulnerable in the first, and offering our vulnerability to one another and receiving the vulnerability of others, when and as it is safe for them to offer that gift.

Holy work. Church work. Our work.

Amen.