Delivered Sunday, August 7, 2022 at the Unitarian Church of Lincoln.
Something curious happened last May. It was a bruising spring in my life. You’ve heard this story, I think, and in any case it’s not an unusual story: both Stacie and I had a health crisis in our respective families, Stacie was rehearsing and performing at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, My professional life was more exciting the usual, trying to close out the congregational year and a term as president of the Faith Coalition. We had houseguests (plural), as Stacie’s family came to see her perform and the church’s community minister visited for a series of programs. And on top of all that, somehow, I was in class, remotely, for my Doctorate. So for the first time that I can honestly remember, I dropped an academic class.
Yes, this is something that can happen. It’s not a habit for me – you do what you sign up for. And it did complicate my schedule in the D.Min program a little bit. But in a moment when there were too many balls in the air to keep track of, that felt like the thing that I could let go of, to bring some balance to my schedule and get through the end of the month.
So it was surprising, to me and just about everyone around me, when three days after dropping that class I found myself walking down the Billy Wolf trail, carrying a 15 foot teepee pole, marching across the city in solidarity with the Niskithe prayer camp. The question, that Stacie asked a few times, is “Why?”
Some quick review about Niskithe: Kevin Abourezk spoke her two weeks ago about the work of the Niskithe Prayer Camp, and if you didn’t get a chance to see that, go back in our Youtube channel and watch it. I have at best a supporting role in this story, Kevin lives at the center of it. Briefly: this spring the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln sold some land near Wilderness Park to a developer, Manzito, who proposes to build a large housing development on it. This development required approval by the city, which happened in April. Importantly: the development is located on Snell Hill, right across the street from the oldest and most used Sweat Lodge in Lancaster County. The native community did not feel they had been heard, that this development will impact their ability to practice their ceremonies, and that the City, Diocese, and Mayor’s Office had not included them appropriately in the approval process.
Overnight, in the hours after the city council decision to approve the development, a group of activists set up six teepees on Snell Hill, occupying the land to get folks to pay attention to what was happening. Eventually, after three weeks of occupation, the group decided that the best way forward was to take the camp off the hill, to walk (carrying a teepee) from the location near Wilderness Park, to the City County Building, to the State Capital, and then to the Catholic Diocesan headquarters – praying, at each location, and erecting the teepee they carried. This was the action I joined, but why?
There’s a few reasons, ranging from the theoretical and national to the practical and highly personal. Starting from the big picture and working down:
It’s no mystery at this point that over the last decade Unitarian Universalism has put countering white supremacy and other forms of oppression at the heart of who we are as a faith. This congregation has been participating in the Beloved Conversation program for two years, out on the side of our building there is a rainbow banner and a banner that declares that Black Lives Matter. But a part of this work that we maybe haven’t talked about as much, until this summer, is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s work on indigenous rights and repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. Here’s a responsive resolution from the 2012 General Assembly (Responsive Resolutions are guiding documents for the association, giving direction to the UUA board and staff, and calling on individual congregations to do the same):
WHEREAS the UUA Board of Trustees has submitted to the member congregations a report explaining the Doctrine of Discovery and why the Board believes it to be contrary to Unitarian Universalist Principles.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we, the delegates of the 2012 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery as a relic of colonialism, feudalism, and religious, cultural, and racial biases having no place in the modern day treatment of indigenous peoples;…
This work grew, and reached the point, just a few years ago, where it was intended to be the focus of a full General Assembly – in 2020, within months of the 400th anniversary of the English landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, we were to gather in Providence Rhode Island, and complicate that legacy.
Now – we clearly did not meet in Rhode Island in June 2020, and the online GA was as much about resilience in the face of COVID. But we still passed a resolution:
We, the delegates of the 2020 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, call upon the Unitarian Universalist Association and its member congregations to:
Continue to gather in solidarity with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Standing Rock nation, and all Indigenous peoples struggling to preserve their lands, waters, peoples, sacred sites, and sovereignty;
Continue to push for release of Indigenous Water Protectors from prisons, end public policies that criminalize resistance to extractive colonialism, and adopt a vision of prison abolition;
Work nationally, statewide, and locally on public policy that is decolonizing – such as establishing Indigenous Peoples Day, including Indigenous peoples’ histories in public education curricula, and eliminating racist monuments, flags, and mascots;
Work to stop and reverse ecological harm in genuine collaboration with and taking leadership from communities most consistently and harshly impacted by extractive exploitation of land, water, air, and all beings;
Research, identify, and acknowledge the Indigenous peoples historically and/or currently connected with the land occupied by congregations, and find ways to act in solidarity with or even partner with those Indigenous peoples; and
Examine practices relative to Indigenous peoples, particularly the narratives regarding UU origins and US holidays including Thanksgiving.
So, it’s important to say that my work with Niskithe, and this congregation’s work over this whole summer, are not some out there, complicated, unusual thing in our tradition. It is instead an expression of the tradition that we are a part of, and proclaim here every Sunday.
But theology and resolutions are not enough to get anyone to march. There’s a famous story, among our clergy, about the 1965 civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. The history of the UUA and race has a lot of times where we fell short, but this is one of the places where we are (I think) justified in being a little proud of how we showed up as a denomination. Something like 250 UU ministers and lay people showed up in Selma, within two days of the call going out. Ten percent of serving UU clergy dropped everything to head to Alabama. A few years ago, Mark Morrison Reed, one of the foremost historians of the Black UU Experience, tried to explain why.
And one of the things he hit on was relationship. Many of the clergy that showed up on short notice in Selma had also been at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They knew, if by proximity if not personally, the leaders of the Civil Rights campaign. So when Martin Luther King sent a telegram on March 8, 1965, “[calling] on clergy of all faiths representative of every part of the country, to join me for a ministers’ march to Montgomery on Tuesday morning, March 9.” Unitarians and Universalists showed up. The relationship that existed before March 8 was necessary for the fast response on March 9.
This is also how I felt when I saw the call from the Niskithe Prayer Camp to join them in walking across Lincoln. First: the Prayer Camp was in my neighborhood. I probably bike past that section of Wilderness Park at least once a week over the summer. Second: We know these people. Last fall Judy Hart introduced me to Kevin Abourezk over coffee at the Mill. Renee San Succi has been a friend of this congregation for years. This is not an unknown movement, these are people we know, whose lives and welfare are tied up in our own.
The relationship, and the commitments the UUA has made were enough to get me to support the work of the prayer camp, but that still doesn’t quite answer this question of why. Why in the midst of month where I was stretched as thin as I have every been, take a full day to participate in this protest?
When Kevin was here three weeks ago, he mentioned that everyone at the Prayer Camp came away from it changed in some way – that everyone there carries the experience with them, and had transformative experiences on Snell Hill. Most of those are not my story to tell. But one is.
In late April, I was working through a day with a long to do list. And one of the things on the list was to visit the new prayer camp near wilderness park, express my support, and then get home to start writing a sermon. I thought it was going to be a ten minute visit – I had (and still have) my calendar during the week down to fifteen minute increments. But when I arrived there, I was welcomed into the circle they had formed around the fire, and informed by Renee that we were about to start ceremonial time – that this was not a time to check watches, get up, or talk. Just to be present, to slow down, and to have this time in prayer.
That was also the week that my grandmother entered hospice. And, you know how things get. I thought I was processing that well. I had talked to my family, helped to find appropriate medical supports in East Lansing, consoled my sister. But I had not, until that moment on Snell Hill, slowed down enough to recognize my own grief. My own sadness that this person that I have loved my whole life was about to be one of my ancestors – present in heart and story, but no longer at the other end of a phone call. I wept, for the first time since her diagnosis, because there was time to. It was, for me, unexpectedly holy time.
So by the time the call went out to march, a few weeks later, it was not a question of whether or not I would participate. These were my neighbors, my relations, who my tradition asks me to support, and who I have shared sacred time with. FDR, during World War 2, said of the Lend Lease Act, “When your neighbors house is burning you don’t haggle over the price of the hose.” When our neighbors need help, we don’t stop long enough to think about what we are doing – we act.
Here's the interesting part of this morning for me. I’m fifteen minutes into this sermon, and I have not mentioned our Summer Indigenous Programming series directly yet.
For the last six weeks at the Unitarian Church of Lincoln, we have been engaging with this pretty straightforward question with wide-ranging causes and effects: Should the Unitarian Church of Lincoln have a formal land acknowledgment, stating that we gather on stolen land, that this place was not always called Lincoln, Nebraska, and that the community the land was stolen from is still here? Over six weeks we’ve had indigenous activists from Lincoln and the UUA speak here, historians and members, screen movies and visited art exhibits, attended the Pow wow at the Indian Center, all building up to this question in August: what should our Land Acknowledgement be?
It's important to say, and to keep saying, that this work came out of the congregation, not from me. It’s happened entirely in parallel with my participation with Niskithe. Until recently I was not preaching as part of this series. It’s important to say, because I am so proud to be a part of this community. We talk all the time in my professional circles about “Shared Ministry” as this big goal that we are all working towards, but I do not know a better example of that than this summer. To serve a congregation that engages the hard conversations with nuance, and then shows up, again and again, is just immensely gratifying for me.
But more than just pride, this summer series is also an opportunity, and a challenge. Our mission and vision are clear: We are here to transform ourselves and the world, and we do that by showing up.
How do we get to the point where we show up? Where we see our neighbors house on fire and go sprinting out the door to help before we even realize we are awake?
Response is grounded in relationship. This was Mark Morrison Reed’s lesson about Selma. We run out the door when we know that it is our neighbor. We share meals, jokes, stories about our kids, and when there is a need we show up to help out. This is implicitly the work that we are doing as a congregation this summer. Kevin, Kia, Renee, Mike, Tyler this afternoon – these aren’t anonymous activists in our community, these are our friends, our relations, and we know them as such.
Response is grounded in tradition and spirit. This is what Unitarian Universalism is called to do. We are called to solidarity, called to the work of decolonization. And even as we show up, we’re doing this work among ourselves, constantly asking where we can do better, where we can find solid ground for our spirits in the midst of the work.
And finally, response is grounded in response. That sounds like a tautology, but it is also a Nike slogan: Just do it. Do the thing. That’s the last lesson of the day. Because by the time you’re marching, somewhere between the State Capital and the Diocese, it is to late to back out of the response. Once you leave your front door, heading to your neighbor’s house with hose in hand, the commitment carries you forward. Even if we do it imperfectly, even if we need regular correction, it is easier to keep moving toward our aspirations than to drop back and out.
The Land Acknowledgement is like this. We aren’t going to get it right or perfect the first time. But it is not meant to be a perfect paragraph that we mount on the wall and then admire it’s artistry – it is meant to be a hook, pulling us forward through the work, calling us to show up, to tend to relationships, to do the thing.
Over the next two weeks we’ll have opportunities for you to gather after the worship service to be a part of writing the land acknowledgement we are going to start using this fall. It is the culmination of this summer series, but it is also the beginning of the next chapter – where we deepen the relationships we’ve formed this summer, and continue working in solidarity to bring a more just and peaceful world.
And, relationship in all things. This morning’s worship service is over, but I’m not going to extinguish the chalice. We are going to sing one more song, then take a five minute break to reset our AV equipment and attend to the needs of biology. After than we’ll regather in this space to hear from Taylor Keen, bio
Our last hymn is 168, One More Step.