About three months ago I was sitting late at night in front of my TV watching a rehashed account of yet another religious person who has decided it is God’s intention that he and his followers shoot up a bunch of infidels. There seems to be an endless well of these stories on the streaming services. I guess I am not the only peaceful person who finds this niche of True Crime compelling.
I of course had my laptop open. I always do, and for a moment my head tipped down and away from the big screen to the little computer screen on my lap.
I looked down to read the following words from a speech the Universalist Reverend Gordon Butler "Bucky” McKeeman gave years ago when he was invited to deliver the Berry Street Lecture at GA
"We are lovers, we say Yes to each other. Yes to life—to more and more of life—to its brevity, its grief, its disappointments. To its possibilities, its magnificence, its glory. We quarrel—because we glimpse further possibilities and wish to lay claim to it. We remember death, and that life is brief, and that the time for love is now and more is possible. One more step toward the holy.”
I ran into this quote because I had rather aimlessly fallen into a UU history rabbit hole. I had just downloaded the Wikipedia description of the small group of universalist ministers who banded together under the weird name The Humiliati in the 50’s and 60’s. Rev. Bucky McKeeman was one of “The Humiliati” who in their own right were attempting to bring a little regality and pomp to our always thoughtful ritual starved religious movement.
I was bouncing between these two screens. One filled with a single religious megalomaniac frustrated that the world had not acknowledged his brilliance and advocating violence, the other of stories and simple black-and-white pictures of ministers tinkering with adding some formality to our ritual.
On the TV the long-haired guru sitting cross-legged, looked odd with a gun standing up to his side. His followers provided vague confirmation that they were as expected gathering guns for an upcoming day of sacramental divine revenge. Both acts were spoken of as if they came from a sacred calling.
Here in our church and broader UU movement, we are dedicated to the most profane simple acts. Acts that literally crawl our way towards a higher justice and a better society. We write postcards to encourage people to vote and later this month will pull together care packages of necessary goods for the unhoused.
Obviously, I was struck by how different these two digital offerings were. That group of now-disbanded Universalists honored the difficulty and patience required to improve the collective experience of humanity. Justice is made by patiently and painstakingly taking the deep values we train on in the church and move them out into the marketplace. What a contrast to the angry gunman asserting his will blindly on others.
It is said that "trust is built in drops, but poured out in buckets". So, sadly, is justice. If there is any solace in taking the slow patient steps towards building an ever slightly better world, it is as Reinhold Niebuhr said, “nothing worth doing can be accomplished in this lifetime.”
What we heard in our church at the end of September, in our Climate Revival service, was minus the poetry, tree talk, and grooving to Blue Boat Home, just one more tiny practical step to ritualize an affirmation of life.
I, and we all, know that the fight for voters’ rights and truly aiding the homeless is something in the end very practical and demanding. May we be one little mosaic tile in a world trying to embody the holy with justice and signature sheets, and words and song and not bloodshed.
How about we close with an Amen
Steve
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