To Awaken the Soul
Every once in a while I’m blown away by how contemporary some snippet of historical Unitarian Universalist thought sounds today. Even words I’ve known for years can surprise me from time to time by how applicable they are to the current moment.
Take, for example, this morning’s responsive reading, by prominent early 19th century Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, sometimes called the Father of American Unitarianism. I can rattle off the opening words of the piece from memory–the great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own. But this week the closing lines captured my attention–In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.
In an era when the mere word “woke” sets off debates, evokes white hot rage, and inspires punitive and life threatening legislation, awakening souls is a crucial life-saving undertaking, vital to the common good. That’s what ‘being woke’ is really all about, after all. Not about theories. Not about policing the language of others or memorizing and using correct words and phrases ourselves. Not about following the trend of the moment or posting the right memes.
Far from mindlessly following a political correctness crowd, being woke means we refuse to allow anyone–on the left or the right, civil authorities or social media influencers–to stamp their minds upon our own. And woke behavior arises from awakened souls. That is to say, people in the process of becoming woke–because wokeness, like recovery, is ongoing and never complete–people in the process of becoming woke seek ongoing clarity about who they are and what they hold to be of worth and value in their own lives. That practice inevitably deepens their compassion and expands their hearts–characteristics of an awakened soul. And so, people in the process of becoming woke use a person’s proper pronouns not out of political correctness but out of respect. People in the process of becoming woke center the voices of marginalized persons because doing so mends the rent fabric in which we all exist. People in the process of becoming woke passionately defend the rights and agency and humanity of society’s most vulnerable–particularly, these days, trans people and people who can get pregnant–because they know that, to use Dr. King’s words, in the inescapable network of mutuality, we all die a little bit when any one of us dies, our humanity is diminished anytime anyone’s humanity is denied. People in the process of becoming woke seek to make reparations and offer land acknowledgments not out of shame or guilt for actions they themselves did not take but because their hearts ache for the ongoing pain and injustice they benefit from.
It’s been nearly two hundred since William Ellery Channing declared that awakening souls is the great end in religious instruction, and I’m happy to report that that has been happening at UUCS most every Sunday this year, up in Phillipa’s Place, here in the sanctuary, and across Savannah–as we’ll see in a moment. Presented with an ever-shifting group of young people, ranging in age from two to seventeen, with the occasional baby drawn in for good measure, in post-lockdown mode which has families reevaluating their priorities and struggling to get back into church-going routines, our no-longer-new Director of Religious Education had the wisdom to recognize that using a published curriculum, even one designed for a one-room schoolhouse Sunday School, would just result in frustration and chaos for all involved. Instead, without ever reading a bit of Channing, Megan set out to awaken the souls entrusted to her each week. Carefully selected stories, creative activities, discussion, special guests, and community service, combined with games and freeplay, allow these young souls to explore who they are and what they hold to be of worth and value in their own lives, expanding the hearts and deepening the compassion of our already amazing children and youth. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing.
Awakened souls, deeply compassionate and expansive hearts will save us from the destructive morass of greed, hatred, bigotry, bullying that is the air we currently breathe, the water we drink, the systems we navigate, the society we inhabit, though surely not overnight. Slowly, in fits and starts, with leadership from the most awakened souls–who are never the predictable, most likely candidates for leaders– in this way, we are already saving ourselves, our neighbors, our society and our planet. Our ranks swell with every soul that awakens. The young people of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah are already among us, and I am so grateful that they are–and that Megan is one of our leaders in this joyous, crucial work. Amen.