Thank you, President Betancourt, for the invitation to be this year’s Ware Lecturer and to all those who have worked to make this event possible. It is a tremendous honor to be with you.
I hope that the General Assembly has been fruitful, and I pray that you have been renewed in your charism as Unitarian Universalists, for that is what unites you across distance and difference.
I am here because I believe in you. I can testify to the importance of your witness across the broad spectrum of religious expression, and I give thanks to God for you.
The theme for this year’s assembly Meet the Moment: Together Everywhere has particular meaning for me personally, for two reasons.
First, the call to meet the moment is one that I feel deeply, and across the country, there is a collective determination. Not that any of us wanted to be here. We would never have chosen to live through what we are experiencing: —the systematic, well-funded effort to purge our country of non-white immigrants, dismantle the pillars of democracy, and weaken the social fabric upon which all that is good depends.
It’s difficult to read the news, for each day seems to bring a fresh shock of something we can’t wrap our brains around. Those of us who live in Washington DC have front row seats to the damage being done that doesn’t make headlines, and it is beyond sobering. The agencies dismantled. The federal libraries and historical records purged. Regulations meant to reign in corporate greed swept away. Rampant corruption. The recklessness of those waging war in our name.
But here we are. This is our time.
LIke you, I find inspiration in gatherings like this assembly, the courageous people we know and admire, and stories from our sacred texts, history, and literature.
Whenever history places people in circumstances they would never have chosen, our wisdom traditions never dwell long on the question “Why is this happening?” Instead they ask us, “Who are you called to be now?”
In the Jewish Bible there is the story of Esther, the young Jewish woman who through circumstances beyond her control finds herself in the court of the Persian King ruling over Israel. When horrific plans to eradicate the Jewish people from Persia comes to light, Esther’s cousin pleads with her to use her position for good. She protests, for good reason. She knows that the previous queen was put to death for speaking her mind. Her uncle replies with words that reverberate across time and space : Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14)
Then there is Frodo Baggins, the reluctant hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The young hobbit is chosen by the wizard Gandalf for an impossible mission: to carry a ring with magic powers through all manner of danger to the one place it can be destroyed before it falls into the hands of the fallen angel who seeks to conquer and rule Middle-earth.
In an exchange that has inspired readers for generations, Gandalf exhorts Frodo to have courage. “The ring came to you for a reason,” Gandalf tells him, “There is comfort in that.” “I wish the ring had never come to me,” Frodo despairs. “I wish this had never happened.” “So do all who live in such times,” Gandalf replies. “But while we cannot choose the times we live in, we can choose how to respond to the time we are given.” Frodo says at last, “I will take the ring, but I do not know the way.”1
Meeting the moment means choosing how to respond to the time we are given with courage even if we don’t know the way.
Which brings to the second reason your Assembly theme resonates with me, from the latter clause of it: together everywhere. In my nearly forty years of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, whenever the faith communities I have served have felt summoned to meet the moment, we would invariably find ourselves in the good company of Unitarian Universalists.
Most recently in Minneapolis last January, when nearly one thousand faith leaders from across the country answered the call to join those resisting the federal government’s assault on immigrants and citizens alike. That is where I first met President Betancourt, alongside hundreds of Unitarian Universalists who came to pray, walk in frigidly cold weather, engage in civil disobedience, and provide moral and spiritual support to a state under siege.
In far quieter circumstances, without the attention of the media or anyone else, Unitarian Universalists across this country are among those to meet whatever the moment requires, the first to show up, speak up, and embody truths that others, in time, come to embrace.
In the work of social justice and inclusion, Unitarian Universalists are almost always among those who go first.
Going first is your gift, your vocation, and your strength.
Why is that, do you suppose? Surely one factor is your unwavering commitment to the dignity of every human being and an unqualified commitment to justice, equity and compassion in human relations. Your spiritual principles are breath-takingly aspirational and rooted in what the Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle describes as our “unshakable goodness.”2
It’s not that other spiritual traditions, including mine, don’t affirm these same principles; we do, but we don’t lead with them as clearly and consistently as you do.
I have become a student of social change theory, which attempts to understand how entire groups of people change their minds. How does a faith community, a segment of society, or an entire nation collectively embrace a new idea or accept a new understanding that is in direct conflict with previously accepted knowledge or common practice? How did it become normal, for example, for nearly everyone to wear seat belts while driving? Or for smoking to be banned in public spaces? Or for women to be ordained to the ministry, or for LGBTQ+ persons to marry? We all didn’t wake one day as a society and agree to what is now nearly universally accepted.
The process of change always begins when someone, or a group of someones, goes first, not only giving voice to a new idea or far-off vision, but choosing to embody that truth, to live as if what lies beyond the horizon of possibilities now were already true.
As you well know, those who lead the way in favor of the change are a small percentage of the overall population. These are the people who, for the most part, are comfortable with change, or who willingly embrace change for the sake of truth or a vision of what could be.
There is a certain excitement–exhilaration even–in having what biblical scholar Walther Brueggemann called a “prophetic imagination.”3 Yet it is also a lonely vocation, because the rest of human community takes its sweet time in coming around to the vision those going first can see so clearly. In the meantime, the majority of people resist the visionaries with every bone in their bodies.
But social change only happens when the majority of people move toward it. Thus, it depends on more than vision and those who go first; it also requires relationship building and trust with those who are not yet persuaded or engaged. Those who go first need to find common cause with those closer in, who are willing to invest some of their relational strength to the new vision and bring others along those who would never trust the original visionaries, but will follow the lead of the first followers. The good news is that not everyone has to move at once. It only takes about thirty percent of a given population to move together for momentum to shift. Then change can happen more quickly, and eventually those who were among the fiercest resistors become the greatest advocates of the new, and even persuade themselves that it was their idea all along.4
But all along, the ones going first are standing on the edge, looking toward the horizon, seeing the cost of delay, trying to be patient. When others who have the power to make change choose not to engage, it is beyond frustrating. Martin Luther King expressed frustration in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, addressed to Christian leaders in Birmingham, including an Episcopal bishop, who criticized him for going too far, too fast in his efforts to eradicate segregation and other institutional expressions of racism.
Speaking as an Episcopal bishop, I’ve been on the receiving end of frustration from some of you and members in my own faith community who would like me to take stronger stands on many issues, and especially against our country’s support of the state of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people and the horrific use of starvation and indiscriminate bombing of an entire population.
I hear you, and I confess that I struggle with how best to engage what has become, without question, the most painfully divisive issue among the faith leaders on the progressive wing of our country. For it lives alongside the rise of anti-semitism in our country and around the world. You and I know that there is a difference between the policies of the Israeli government and the Jewish people, just as the Trump Administration does not speak for all of us, but that distinction can be lost in the cacophony of our time.
All I can tell you is what you already know: Social change requires people occupying different positions in a movement ecosystem. Some are called to be out in front; others are needed for relationship-building and bridge work. For reasons that I can say more about when in conversation with the President Betancourt, I, alongside the office of our Presiding Bishop, have chosen the latter path.
Wherever we are on the spectrum of social change, we all need to remember your first spiritual principle: the inherent dignity of every human being, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. The greater the polarization and the higher the stakes, the harder it becomes to treat others with dignity. In the Episcopal Church, the debate on Israel-Palestine becomes so heated at times that I feel we need a peace process among ourselves.
I have been influenced by the work of Tim Shriver and others who point out that we are living in a culture of contempt, fueled by an “Outrage Industrial Complex” designed to keep us angry at one another and unable to work constructively across differences. They believe, as I do, that the only viable antidote to contempt is an unwavering commitment to treat every person, no matter who they are or what they stand for, with dignity. Just as hate cannot drive out hate, contempt cannot drive out contempt. Only dignity can do that.
In 2022, Shriver and his team created a tool for social change known as the Dignity Index which I commend to you. It is an eight-point scale to assess the ways we speak of those with whom we truly differ or whose behavior we find egregious. Low scores on the scale correlate with expressions of contempt (1-4) while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity.
The dividing line between contempt and dignity is somewhere between levels four and five in the Dignity Index scale.
A level four statement (the beginnings of contempt) mocks the other side’s background, their beliefs, their commitment, or their competence. At level four, our assumption is that we’re better than those people. They’re not one of us.
In contrast, at level five (the first expressions of dignity), we listen to the other side’s point of view and respectfully explain our own, with the sincere conviction that those on the other side have a right to be here and a right to be heard. They belong here too.
Moving down the scale, we become more contemptuous of other people. They’re not merely wrong. We’re the good people and they’re the bad people. It’s us versus them.
Moving up the dignity scale, we not only listen to others’ point of view and respectfully explain our own convictions. We do everything we can to find common ground. We admit that at times we can be wrong and are willing to learn from an alternative view. At the highest levels, we simply refuse to hate anyone. We treat everyone with dignity—no matter what.
What’s fascinating, and humbling, about spending time with the Dignity Index is that in the beginning, we see it as a tool to assess other people’s speech. After a while, however, something known as “the mirror effect” causes us to recognize how contempt has taken hold of us.
How many of us here would agree with the statement, “I hate hateful people” without realizing the irony of those words? The good news is that once we hear contempt in ourselves, we can no longer unhear it, and we strive to do better. When we recognize the distinctions between contempt and dignity, we are naturally drawn to dignity.
Friends, honoring the dignity of every human being is your superpower as Unitarian Universalists. At your best, you lead us all in holding with grace the tension between the aspirational, universally held value of human dignity and all the ways in human society that we actively work against that value.
On my reading list in preparation for this evening was the most recent edition of The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, a beautiful articulation of your common life. Here is but one of the dozens of passages I highlighted:
We move mountains, one stone at a time; as Unitarian Universalists, our journey is to transform the big and the small, to transform ourselves, and to transform the world. Universalism means no one is outside of the circle of love and no one is disposable. We stubbornly seek out the spark of the divine in each other, no matter what.5
In closing, I’d like to speak to you of hope.
Given the moment that is ours to meet, we need a sturdy, resilient hope that enables us to perservere in the face of adversity and disappointment; hope, that in the words of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, gives us eyes to see glimpses of light amid the darkness, and when we see no light at all, to trust that light still exists. We need hope that does not deny difficulty or danger; nor does it minimize disappointment and loss, but it is not stopped by any of those things.
The great naturalist and environmental advocate Jane Goodall described this kind of hope as “humanity’s survival trait.” Without it, she said, we will perish.6
There is a dimension to this kind of hope that is akin to a spiritual practice, an intentional commitment to be a hope-bearer through thick and thin. The practice of hope has become increasingly important to me as I get older, because the last thing the generations coming up behind those of us who are elders now need is our cynicism and despair. We need to be wind in their sails, holding fast to all that is good, providing places of respite and encouragement, giving sacrificially of our time and resources, and keeping the light of faith burning, just as our spiritual forebears did for us.
Thus, there is for me a dimension of resistance to hope: a choice that I make every day to live in hope no matter what, and to stand firm, to the best of my ability, when the dominoes around me fall.
We can’t keep this deeper hope alive on our own—I know that I can’t—and thankfully, we don’t have to. Hope, like courage, is both mysterious and communal. It passes through and among us like electricity, helping us to accomplish, as the Apostle Paul wrote, far more than we can ask for or imagine.
I once heard a radio interview with the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, one of the great literary inspirations of my life. The journalist asked what gave her hope. As she responded, it was immediately apparent in her tone and manner of speaking that she was not a woman easily shaken.
“I often remind people,” she said, “that we are a peculiar species, with a long history of doing injury to ourselves and to one another. But just as there was no reason to throw up our hands during the Thirty Years War, I don’t see any reason to do so now.”
I confess that her reference to the Thirty Years War, a brutal 17th-century European conflict, took me by surprise. Her point was that if you’re looking for reasons to give up on humankind, there was ample justification for doing so long before the atrocities of our time.
Equally true and more important: if you are looking for something to give you hope, there is always reason for hope.
Robinson was unequivocal: Our hope lies, as it always has, in the example of other people throughout history and in our time who, inspired by God’s grace, refuse to give up on what is best in us. Sometimes, to our amazement, we are the ones carrying hope for another, even when we don’t feel it ourselves.
My dear Unitarian Universalist friends, you are hope-bearers for us all. Remain true to your vocation, your charism, your gift to us all. You refuse to give up on what is best in us.
Let me leave you one more expression of hope, this one from a phenomenon from the natural world known as refugia. I first came across it in a book by Debra Rienstra entitled Refugia Faith.
She begins with a description of Mount Saint Helens, the active volcano in Washington State, when it erupted in 1980. “The debris and ashfall from the volcanic blast devastated the mountain and its surroundings for miles—crushing, burning, killing, and coating everything in hot ash.”7 Scientists and residents alike assumed that it would take generations for life to return.
But that’s not what happened. Within a few years, the mountainside was teeming with signs of new life. How did that happen?
Rienstra explains that when the mountain blasted ash and rock across the landscape, the devastation passed over some small places nestled underneath rocks and burning trees. They were tiny pockets of safety, refugia, where plants and creatures could hide from destruction. When the time was right, from these hidden shelters new life emerged.
Refugia is a powerful image of what we can do when so much is being destroyed. We can be about the work of refugia, creating pockets of safety, resilience, protecting as many people and institutions as we can, so that new life will be ready to emerge when this political storm passes.
And it will pass. Not on its own, but because, as the wizard Gandalf reminds Frodo at the beginning of his journey to save his world, “There are other forces at work in the universe besides the forces of evil.” And it will pass because of Unitarian Universalists and others across this country who rose up together everywhere, to meet the moment that is ours.
Thank you for leading the way.
1 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings; The Fellowship of the Ring, 2nd ed, (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, Company, 1954), 50.
2 Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (Simon & Schuster, 2024) .
3 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination: 40th Anniversary Edition (Fortress Press, 2018).
4 The classic work on this particular theory is The Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers, Everett M. (New York: Free Press, 1961).
5 “Our Work for Social Justice,” by Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, in The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide: Seventh Edition Kindle version, 49.
6 Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide, (New York: Celadon Books, 2021) Kindle ed., 9
7 Debra Rienstra, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelter, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022), 3.
