Our Assignment

A person was being chased by a tiger. The tiger chased them straight to the edge of the cliff. They grabbed a strong vine and began to lower themselves to the bottom–before noticing another tiger waiting below. They clung ever tighter to the vine and prepared to wait out the ravenous tigers. Then a mouse began gnawing at the vine. The person looked at the tiger above and the tiger below. They looked at the mouse. And then noticed a wild strawberry growing just within arm’s reach. They plucked it and ate it. It was very sweet.

* * * * * * * * *

I was a sophomore in high school when John Hinckely attempted to assassinate President Reagon. Our family didn’t keep a television or radio playing in the background at all times, so I learned about the attempt on the president’s life when the Director of Religious Education from our family Unitarian Universalist church called to talk to me about something else. The phone call sticks in my memory because I didn’t receive many phone calls from Nancy in those days, though in later years as I became a religious professional myself, and she moved on to become a district and regional staff person, and eventually a friend, we would speak frequently. But the main reason the call stands out in my memory is that as I received the piece of news from her and relayed it to my parents, I was struck by the seeming discordance of a religious professional passing along a piece of secular news–momentous though it was.

Looking back on it now, though, it seems strange that I had such rigid boundaries in my perception of what constitutes the religious realm of life and what does not. As far as I recall my parents never made explicit a connection between religion and national and world affairs and personal liberties. But that was a message I absorbed through observation and participation in our family life–even if, for a while, that message remained in my subconscious.

My parents were more actively religious than most of our neighbors and the parents of our friends. Between them they taught Sunday School, led Coming of Age, served on the Board of Trustees several times, volunteered with the Hmong refugees our church sponsored, and volunteered in the church office and music department. Oh, yeah–and they brought us to church every Sunday unless we were out of town, and critiqued the minister’s sermon on the drive home. At home we said grace before meals and lit Advent candles each December. All that instilled the dual message that religion is important and that church matters enough for us to devote a significant portion of our family’s week to it.

At the same time, my parents were visible consumers of news. They read the daily paper and Time magazine, and watched television news. They may not have had a television or radio playing at all times, but the news was on often enough that there was a period of time when the opening theme music of network news frightened me. I associated it with talk of the oil embargo and an energy crisis that I was sure would cast us into darkness at any moment without warning. Mom and Dad discussed the news at the supper table. They discussed the Watergate hearings with an uncle during a family visit at my grandparents’ farm. When Nixon resigned the Presidency fifty years ago this past Friday, we all watched it on television along with a family friend who happened to join us for supper that night. When we went on an extended camping trip in the autumn of 1976 my parents joined a handful of other campers in a state park restroom to watch the presidential debates on a portable television. My parents didn’t just know what was going on in the world outside our suburban home; they made sure they knew. And we, my sister and brother and I, noticed.

When my parents talked about why they left the Methodist Church and started bringing us to the Unitarian Universalist Church, they said it was because they didn’t agree with the preaching. They never said–and I should probably ask one of these days–what exactly they disagreed with. When I tell the story to myself, however, my parents didn’t leave over a disagreement over transubstantiation vs consubstantiation or any equally wonky bit of theology. Knowing what I know of my parents, when I tell myself the story of their move from a Christian church to the Unitarian Universalist, it's because they disagreed with that church’s message on a more foundational theological level–like what it really means to welcome the stranger and love our neighbor and who exactly is our neighbor. In the early 1970s (kind of like in the mid-2020s) that meant matters of race and personal bodily autonomy and gender equality and war. In other words, our family found its way to Unitarian Universalism because religion isn’t a realm apart from current events, world affairs, and the lives we live. Religion is inextricably bound to and in and through the lives we live and the worlds within which we dwell–natural, societal and global.

Though our perspectives will differ slightly depending on our politics, our personal financial and familial situations, our genders and other defining characteristics, our varying degrees of physical ability and disability, I think it’s pretty safe to say that almost a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century most of us feel kind of like that person being chased by a tiger.

We fled from the tigers of the great recession and the pandemic only to find ourselves peering down at tigers of job insecurity and changes in career trends. We’ve clung to vines woven of multiple jobs and watched the mouse of inflation gnaw away at purchasing power. Held fast to the dreams of education and homeownership, watching the mice of rising tuition and rising interest rates chew through the vine of possibility–with the tigers of underemployment and a lifetime of renting below us and the tigers of societal expectations and family pressure above us. Chased by the tigers of cheap clothing and fossil fuel dependency, we’ve nearly fallen to the tigers of greed and indulgence, the vines of decency and foresight supporting us nibbled at by the mice of self -interest, habit, and complacency. We’ve run for our lives pursued by tigers of racism and homophobia and transphobia and misogyny. We’ve clung to vines of long established rights and newly recognized rights as mice of hatred and sanctioned bullying and scarcity politics gnaw away at our safety nets, and tigers of back alley health care, violence, and tyranny circle below.

If we dwell lives that cannot be unbound from the religious impulse toward making meaning and striving after justice, repair, and the never ending revelation of an abundant, embracing Love (and I believe we do), then in late summer 2024, as we hang off the edge of a cliff, our assignment is two-fold: taste the sweetness; refuse to let go.

I have no illusion that I know the political views of everyone in this congregation; I’m pretty sure we are not all on the same side of the increasingly chaotic party-separating aisle. I also don’t know what views all of us hold on social issues, rights debates, and global climate change causes and solutions–all the things that have become shorthand codes for certain kinds of political stances. Again, I’m pretty sure we aren’t all on the same page. But I am sure that we can’t survive if we surrender. If any of us surrender.

Most of us, for example, believe the fate and future of our country is on the ballot in November (again, regardless of our politics). As such, with those stakes, we can’t abandon our pursuit of the future we believe in. We must work to get out the vote and we must get out to vote. And whatever the outcome–in national, state and local elections–not letting go means knowing, and acting on the knowledge that casting our votes can’t be the end of our efforts. My friend and colleague Ashley Horan, who is Vice President for Programs & Ministries at Unitarian Universalist Association and who describes herself as “Queer femme mama. Unitarian Universalist minister. Taking my shift for the revolution,” wrote earlier this week:

"The ever-brilliant Ricardo Levins Morales teaches that the soil is more important than the seeds -- our work as visionaries, as movement builders, as organizers for liberation depends on our ability to create the conditions of possibility for victory over long arcs of time. This includes, primarily, creating narratives of hope, liberation, possibility, and freedom that seem not only plausible but within our reach. We cannot accept the frames offered to us by fascism, by authoritarianism, by scarcity and oppression. Electoral politics is one tiny part of that work of soil-tilling, but it is nevertheless important.

… So there's work to do, both before the election and after. … And when we [a new administration in office], let's keep organizing the hell out of them and all our elected leaders.

The soil is ours to tend, friends."

She was writing from a particular political stance I generally share but mostly edited out because I think the task is the same from either side–if you believe the future is at stake. And she was writing primarily about the national election, but her point applies broadly. Before elections and after elections and in years that are not election years on the big stage, the lion’s portion of not letting go is the work of tending the soil so that the seeds we want to see grow have a fertile place to take root. The seeds of climate justice work; restoring reproductive rights; funding creative, pedagogically sound, public education including arts education and funding it well; recognizing and protecting the rights of those existing on the margins of society, especially trans youth, transwomen of color and undocumented folks living within our borders–to name but a few.

Not letting go and not allowing ourselves to succumb to visions of dystopia or to the weariness of living between tigers is a vital part of our assignment but it is only part. We must also taste the sweetness life holds for us.

Regardless of the specifics of personal circumstances and despite the presence of tiger more numerous and ferocious than I can describe, the cliff sides of the natural, societal, and global worlds we dwell within are dotted with strawberries–perhaps not as densely or abundantly as we would desire, but always one or two just within arm’s reach: a babies with lots of hair and toddlers with almost no hair; a marriage forging bonds of love between families that once were strangers; the spectacle of the Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and the strength, speed, grace and camaraderie of the Olympic and Paralympic athletes in between; Snoop Dogg along for the ride and Flavor Flav sponsoring the U.S. Women’s water polo team; friends who still laugh at the story you've told too many times to count; dog-eared books that changed how we see the world sitting on a shelf where we can see them everyday; dogs whose tail wags every time we walk by and cats whose purr resets our heartbeat; distant cousins who show up at the funeral; the potato salad you can count on at the potluck; teenagers who easily reply to "I love you"; crowdfunded mutual aid that provides relief to a friend or stranger in crisis; a new album by Beyonce or Taylor Swift, by Drake or Kendrick Lamar; a Savannah Philharmonic concert or a four hour Springstein concert; Jagger strutting or the choir singing an anthem here at church; sunrises, sunsets and meteor showers; teenagers who easily reply to "I love you"; actual strawberries and persimmons and cathead biscuits, sushi and vegan pizza, sweet tea and safe, clear drinking water.

So many strawberries within arms reach. Ready for us to pluck and taste with our eyes, our ears, our tongues, our fingers, our whole wondrous bodies, our imagination and our curiosity.

The Zen tale at the start of this sermon, one I heard often growing up in my family’s UU church, ends with the taste of that strawberry. Maybe it gives the person the vision and cleverness to escape their perilous situation. Maybe the person dies with the sweetness on their tongue. All we know is that they ate it and that it was very sweet. I believe, as a poet once wrote, that that made all the difference. And I believe it makes all the difference in our lives. Caught as we so often are between existential dangers, even as established or long trusted sources of safety or security or justice are being nibbled away–it makes all the difference that we pluck and taste what sweetness, what joy we spy within arm’s reach.

In this church may we be upfront about the situation–about the tiger and the other tiger and the mouse–and support one another in all our efforts to not let go. And may we be upfront about the whole situation–including the strawberry–thus encouraging one another to recognize it in all its guises, to stretch out almost beyond our reach to pluck it, and to taste the sweetness. And so may we be blessed. Amen