Sermon – Preparing to Be Deployed By, Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons

Preparing To Be Deployed

Ana Levy-Lyons

November 13, 2016

First Unitarian, Brooklyn

If you’ve been looking at your Facebook feeds or Twitter or reading the papers or listening to the radio or watching TV or having any conversations recently you’ve already heard everything that I could possibly say about this election. How it happened, why it happened, who’s to blame, why it’s bad, why it might not be as bad as we fear. You’ve heard that it’s a catastrophe for women, for people of color, for immigrants, for refugees, for Native Americans, for Muslims, and for the ecosystems of the earth that sustain us all. And indeed, it is. If you ventured beyond the liberal bubble, you may have learned that liberals bear some of the blame here – how our leadership failed the white working class men of the “flyover states,” how we shamed them for being who they are, condescended to them, scoffed at their faith, and forged an economy that rendered them obsolete. There is truth to this too. It goes back and forth, the winners and the losers, hurling blame at each other and driving the divide between us even deeper.

You’ve heard all of this. I don’t think it will help any of us for me to stand up here and rehash these arguments or rail against the past. I stand up here, as I always do, as your pastor. And my job, as it always is, is to say words to you that I think you need to hear right now. The question before us is where to go from here. I know that a great many of you are grieving the loss of progress made, the loss of another milestone that seemed so tangibly within reach, the fading vision of an inclusive and welcoming nation. Believe me, I share that grief. People grieve in different ways. Some people hole up with a pint of Ben & Jerrys and watch reruns of Seinfeld. Or in this case maybe the West Wing. Some people rail on social media, finding a thousand different ways to pour their hearts out on the screen, weeping in emoticons. Some people want to get busy right away and fight back. They plan demonstrations; they send money; they strategize for winning back the Senate in 2018. If you need to do any of these things right now, do them. Do what you need to do in your own way.

But I want to offer a fourth possibility for all of us as well: focus on our own bodies, hearts, and minds first. Before jumping into or back into the fray, take some deep breaths and prepare ourselves to be deployed. Like it or not, by being alive in 2016 a stunning responsibility has landed in our laps. We are at a point of fulcrum in history. Not only are we seeing whether this country will ever realize its humanist ideals, but it is not an exaggeration to say that life as we know it for humans and for many other species on earth hangs in the balance. That was true before this election. The poorest and most vulnerable around the world are already starting to suffer for the actions of our country and countries like ours. And now there’s a heavy foot on the gas pedal. The stress on our fragile ecosystems has reached a tipping point. And we are alive right now at this tipping point moment. A hundred years ago, we would not have had the scientific understanding or the tools to address it. A hundred years from now it will be far too late. This is the time, these are the generations, and we are the people who will determine whether humans can someday live in peace with one another and with the earth. I didn’t ask for this responsibility, I didn’t want it, and I’m guessing neither did you. But here it is.

So why not just go out and fight? Why do I say “prepare ourselves” instead of just going out and doing it? Because we have no idea what to do and we don’t yet have the spiritual power to get it done. Many of us are feeling overwhelmed, outnumbered, and outfunded. We imagine that we would have to charge at the world’s problems with our own individual strength. To make this work possible, I believe we need to prepare ourselves to be deployed by something greater than ourselves. We can call it being deployed by God, by a Higher Power, by love, by our deepest self, or by our highest ideals. But as Unitarians we believe that there is a gravitational force in the universe pulling us toward oneness. And as Universalists we believe there is a force pulling us toward love. Whatever you call that force, it is available to us. And it’s our highest calling to try to align ourselves with it, to enter its stream, and be guided by its power. Then any work for the protection of the earth and for the vulnerable among us will be unstoppable.

Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught of the need to intentionally prepare ourselves to be channels for holy work in the world. Both of their approaches to non-violent resistance depended on the resistors being spiritually strong and conscious. It was essential that resistance came from a place of love – that it was evil itself that was being resisted, not individuals being demonized. Gandhi asked his followers to purify themselves in a Hindu ascetic way through fasting and long periods of silence and meditation. King would do it through daily prayer and he explained in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail that, “Mindful of the difficulties involved [in nonviolent action], we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: ‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?’ ‘Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?’ These are lessons that we would be wise to learn. We can’t do this work with hate in our hearts. We can’t do this work while distaining or mocking people with whom we disagree. We can’t do this work when we see others as our enemies. And we can’t do this work with just whatever of our own meager strength happens to be left over at the end of our busy days.

So in practical terms, how do we do it? What does it actually mean to prepare ourselves to be deployed in our culture with jobs and kids, in our day of Facebook and Uber? We can put it all under the heading of self-care with a sacred purpose. I’m going to get really specific and practical here in hopes that this will be most helpful: Start with the body. All of our life energy originates in the body. This includes our mental energy – our ability to focus and grasp the complex, nuanced issues of our time. Our bodies are the source of our emotional energy, which allows us to access compassion for people in pain no matter who they are and to control our reactivity when hurting people lash out. Our bodies are the source of our spiritual energy, which is the energy of purpose and hope in the face of adversity. The stronger our bodies are, the more overall capacity we have – we can show up more fully for our partners and our kids and our friends; we’ll be more creative, communicate better, think more clearly. We’ll have better stamina as we go through the difficult days and years ahead.

That means three things: first, exercise. (I told you I was going to get really practical!) Whatever level you’re at, whether you just ran the marathon last week or you’re just learning to walk again after surgery, do something to move the muscles in your body. Try to get your heart rate up for at least 30 minutes a few times a week. You don’t need any special gear. Second is food. In the words of Michael Pollan, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” When we eat mostly plants, not only are our bodies healthier, but we are aligning ourselves spiritually with a practice of reverence and care for the earth. Third, sleep. Most of us need at least seven hours, few of us get it. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to prioritize this. Build your entire day working backwards from when you need to have lights out. Plan for what time you’ll need to shut down your computer and phone, turn off the TV, finish your housework, and get ready for bed. We ask so much of our bodies and they need the time to recover and regenerate. So exercise, eat well, and give ourselves permission to call it a day. We need to start taking care of our bodies as if we were athletes.

The other category of self-care with a sacred purpose is spiritual practice. If you don’t already have a daily practice of some kind, find something that you can commit to, at least as an experiment for the next month or two. It can be Zen meditation; it can be prayer – a daily conversation with God. It can be yoga or Tai Chi or chanting. Whatever for you connects you to something larger. As many of you know, I’m a big proponent of Sabbath practice. If there were ever a year to try this out, this is the year. Take some time each week, unplug from everything, step out of the consumer cycle of working and buying, spend time alone or with family and friends. This can be your place outside of our culture, outside of the problems, outside of the striving. This is your chance to get quiet enough to listen. What is your calling? What breaks your heart? Where is your unique role in healing this world? We need to start taking our spiritual lives as seriously as if we were monks.

I feel a little like a mom saying, “Brush your teeth, get into your PJs, and get some sleep. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow.” But I really believe it. These practices are vital for us at this moment in history. Do not think for a moment that caring for ourselves in these ways is indulgent or a luxury that we cannot afford. The difference in how we can show up for the people in our life and our work in the world is so huge, we can turn it around for ourselves and say that it would be selfish not to. We may think that these things will take up time that we don’t have. But what we find when we take care of our bodies like athletes and take care of our spirits like monks, is that it was never the time that was the limiting factor to begin with; it was the energy. An hour can either be wasted or extraordinarily productive depending on our mental energy. A conversation can either create snowballing problems or melt hearts, depending on our ability to listen. Tackling the problems of our day can either make for burnout and cynicism or for a life of meaning, depending on our connection to our deepest Source.

Pick your metaphor: be an athlete, be a monk; be a soldier without an enemy. When we prepare our bodies and spirits in these ways, it puts us in a different place. We can’t really imagine in advance what kind of difference it will make in our lives and or what kind of work we’ll be called to do. How we do our work and where we place our focus will be different for each one of us. We can’t know what’s on the other side of a mountain until we climb it and look over. To some extent we have to just take it on faith that if we open our hearts and minds, connect with spirit, and generate more energy in our bodies, good things will flow through us. But I believe that every single person can be vitally deployed.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would want not only the people in this room to prepare ourselves in these ways, but everyone in this country. These are not tools to help progressives vanquish an enemy. These are tools to help us see that there is no enemy. If we succeed, the single mother in South Philadelphia and the out of work steel worker in Youngstown, Ohio and the transgender teen in Durham, North Carolina and the evangelical cop in Miami, Florida will all realize the dream together. There is no enemy. There’s just you and me; there are hurting and scared people on all sides, there is a living earth that is crying out for healing, and there is still an opportunity before us to realize the unity promised by our faith. When we can open the tap for the loving energy of creation to flow, we will all win. On that day, in the words of the prophet Micah that we sang earlier, “everyone shall live in peace and unafraid.” So brush your teeth, get into your PJs, and get some sleep. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow.