Now What?

Some of you are too young to remember an old sitcom called M*A*S*H. Aired from 1972 to 21983, it chronicled day to day life in a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. Exceedingly popular, it ran for more years than that conflict itself. At the end of the third season, some of you are old enough to remember, the unit’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, has accumulated enough rotation points to be discharged. After a drunken celebration (a frequent trope throughout the series), Henry departs, headed back to his family in the States. And at the end of the episode, as the surgeons and nurses and medics and orderlies are in the OR doing what they do, the company clerk walks in looking stunned, failing to put on a surgical mask. He reads from a telegram, “Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.” The surgeons and nurses and medics and orderlies gasp and tear up; turn back to their patients and carry on.

A scene in the final episode finds the unit in the OR again, listening to Armed Forces Radio over the loudspeaker, when a reporter says, against background noises of gunfire and explosions, “It’s one minute before ten p.m. We can still hear the sound of nearby artillery. At some point during the next few seconds the guns should go silent as the ceasefire officially goes into effect.” The sounds of shelling continue and then…nothing. As they notice the silence, the surgeons and nurses and medics and orderlies look up; some hold their breath, some exhale deeply. The reporter speakers again, “There it is. That’s the sound of peace.” And the surgeons and nurses and medics and orderlies bend back over their patients and carry on.

I don’t know whether for you the outcome of Tuesday’s election was more like the death of Henry Blake, or more like the ceasefire. I do know that what we do now is carry on. Whether the election results feel to you like death of something beloved and precious and irreplaceable and nearly 250 years in the building, or like the end of a four year period of suffering, like relief and the prospect of prosperity are just around the corner (for surely it does feel that way to some within the sound of my voice, within our families, our communities), whether this turning in our country’s history feels like a death or coming peace, what we do now is carry on.

The work of this moment was always going to be the same, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, control of the US Senate and the House of Representative, and all the down ballot races and ballot initiatives. Some of us may have taken the work up more joyfully if the elections had gone the other way, and some of us are taking it up more joyfully because the election went the way it did. But the work itself hasn’t changed, not for us as a people of faith, not for the church.

In other episode of M*A*S*H, the unit chaplain says to the visiting psychiatrist, “If you lose a patient, you lose a mind. If the surgeons lose a patient, they lose a body. But if I lose a patient, I lose a soul.” Father Mulcahy isn’t really a one upmanship kind of guy. He isn’t saying his job is more important than that of the surgeons or the psychiatrist. He’s simply, I think, trying to explain the weight of the responsibility he feels, the depth of his despair.

I don’t dwell much on the idea that my job as a minister might be about saving souls, or that when I fail someone, as I do, I lose a soul. Still, something in me or beyond me called me to draft some paragraphs about that long ago TV show before I could sleep in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Maybe it is because our faith community, many faith communities, probably, is like a mobile army surgical hospital–with various professionals and paraprofessionals going about the work of repairing brokenness–souls and spirits, relationships and systems.

Sometimes our operating room is this sanctuary or Phillippa’s Place where we tell our children and one another, “you are worthy. You are loved. The universe is vast and

terrible and miraculous and curious and you belong in it.” Sometimes we set up our mobile hospital just across the courtyard into Rahn Hall where we write letters, phone bank and text bank, discuss books, listen to speakers, strategize, and tend to one another’s spirit and soul, while we strive to heal the world with what resources we have. And sometimes we take our operating room farther afield, to the Pride Festival in Forsyth Park or the MLK parade, where we build relationships and show solidarity and declare that this faith community knows the worth of the whole alphabet of queer folks and the whole color spectrum of the human race. Other times we take our OR to the dining room of the education building of First Baptist Church where we feed bodies so that families can mend themselves.

And now, even as the consequences of what happened Tuesday are not yet completely known, what comes next for us, is carrying on with all these efforts toward repairing the brokenness of souls and spirits, relationships and systems. As the folks at M*A*S*H 4077 did when Henry Blake died and when the guns fell silent at the moment of ceasefire and hundreds of times in between, we carry on with it all.

We carry on being the church:

by praying, or calling on the ancestors, or sitting, or walking labyrinths, or otherwise centering down and connecting to wisdom from beyond our conscience minds;

by willingly, intentionally, holding minds and spirits open to new ways of being the church and doing the work of the church; and

by remembering that joy and celebration and community are not simply sustenance for the work ahead but acts of resistance.

We carry on being mobile and nimble, taking our faith, our values with us where they are needed:

to protect the vulnerable whose rights, the incoming administration has made clear, will be curtailed and denied in coming months;

to partner with other organizations and faith communities who are knowledgeable or equipped than we;

to raise money or organize safe passage for those who must relocate to other states or other countries to keep themselves or their families safe; and

to stand in the breach with our power and privilege when those in peril call for allies.

We’ve got work to do, and we need to carry on with that work even as some of us reel from the magnitude of our grief and rage. But here’s the thing, as I said a few minutes ago: it is the same work that we would have been called to do if all of the races from the county to the Presidency had gone the other way, if all the ballot initiatives in all the municipalities and all the states–whatever they were–had gone the other way. This sermon would not have been substantially different if the results had been other than what they were. Because our neighbors, our communities, our nation and our planet are broken and in need of our ministrations toward their repair and they have been for a very long time. But if our efforts are not to be in vain, if we are not to find ourselves on a similar brink in four years or another decade, or before even twelve months have passed, there is a truth we must acknowledge.

It is said far too often in the wake of some horrific event, “this is not who we are”. This is not who our city is. This is not who this state is. This unspeakable act that has just happened is not who we are. #not all men. # not all Jews. # not all Moslems. # not all Israelis. # not all Palestines. # not all conservatives. # not all liberals/feminists/progressives/socialists. But it did happen, this mass shooting or that bombing of a federal building. It did happen, this election result. And this is who we are: a country that hates women, hates trans folks, hates undocumented immigrants who put their lives at risk to do jobs we won’t do, a country that hates all of these people enough to return a man to the White House who has promised to dismantle the framework of American democracy. We are a nation of people who have felt so ignored that 74 million of us were willing to buy a promise that will likely hurt not only democracy, not only undocumented immigrants, not only LGBTQIA+ folks, not only hurt women and others who want bodily autonomy and basic health care, but will also hurt all those who voted in favor of hurting all the people I just mentioned, will also hurt most of the ordinary, that is to say non-millionaire/non-billionaire, people who are celebrating this week, will also hurt white and black and Latino cisgender working and middle class people if only, and significantly, financially in the near future.

That this is who our country is in 2024, doesn’t necessarily mean the 70 million people who voted a different way, who worked so hard for a different outcome are culpable or complicit, though it might. I don’t have the political or social science expertise or knowledge to say with any integrity what it does mean, what it says about those who couldn’t believe in the possibility of this particular outcome. But as a faith leader I can say, that that this is who we are and who we elected might mean that somehow the majority of voters couldn’t, didn’t, don’t feel the welcome, the comfort, the recognition and validation of the all-embracing, fierce Immense Love we think we preach and embody in our Unitarian Universalist congregations across the country.

Unitarian Universalism will never be the religion for everyone. That’s not what I’m calling us to remedy–that somehow we specifically failed because we didn’t welcome every disaffected, hurting person into one of congregations. What I am saying is, the outcome of this election might mean that most of the 74 million ordinary (non-millionaire, non-billionaire) voters don’t or haven’t often enough, felt love, belonging and recognition and dignity in any community, from any institution, haven’t known their fears and their concerns to be heard. Haven’t experienced the very things so many millions of others are now afraid of losing or having further curtailed than they already are: secure employment at a living wage, justice labor practices, safe neighborhoods, stable families. As is said in therapeutic circles, hurt people hurt. And scared people strike out.

So when we enter our UUCS operating room every Sunday or whenever we enter it, wherever we bring it, and take up our continued work of repairing brokenness of souls and spirits, relationships and systems, let us deliberately be about tending to those already on society’s margins, and those who will be more imperiled because of Tuesday’s election, and those whose brokenness (and wholeness and holiness, by the way), we have so often failed to see beneath their anger and hatred and through our narrowed gaze. Because we want to “invite more … connections, more moments of … tender vulnerabilities, because [we] can’t let [ourselves] Hate… That’s not the America [we’re] willing to [carry on] shap[ing].”

Amen