"Are we a people of change?" by alyssa Lee,
delivered February 4, 2024
My mom and my step-dad are creatures of habit. When I was growing up, one of them would pass a sign as we drove in the car and make some joke about it. That would crack them up and then we would all be regaled by that joke every single time we passed the sign thereafter. Every time. I mean, this would go on for years. One particular favorite was the sign at the local beauty shop in my hometown, that my step-dad would love to yell out “Hair we are!” every time we passed.
Needless to say I was not raised in a house that liked a lot of change. We all had our roles and our duties, and no one was supposed to deviate from them. Personally, I often struggle with change.
Looking back, a lot of the conflict I had with friends and other loved ones typically stemmed from my fear of our relationships, and thereby my life, changing. As a result, I was probably not the most friendly person to new people brought into my friend groups, and I recognize now that this is because I was afraid of change. I was afraid the comfortable way I had been living or the way in which my relationships unfurled would be different and I would have to adjust.
In the past few years, I have been working on this, seeing the value of change, seeing how the unexpected can be a gift rather than something to be feared. Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler wrote, “The only lasting truth is change.”1 This has become such a popular quote in many Unitarian Universalist (or UU) circles that I know, that many people sometimes say it as a mantra. In fact, many UU’s are now finding their spiritual grounding, or the God of their understanding in this notion of change. However, I also know many UUs who say, “I miss how it used to be.” In her 2023 Berry Street Essay, the Rev. Cecilia Kingman said our UU faith is undergoing a major transformation and institutional reform. As we move away from as she says, “individualism to communitarian values, from white supremacy culture to truly radical liberation,”2 and to power sharing rather than concentrating power amongst those who have been historically privileged, in many UU congregations, there are people struggling to deal with the shifting dynamics of their relationships with one another and to their faith. They see the unstoppable river that is inevitable with growth and transformation, and they want to dam it. They want to curtail this transformational work, to make sure things remain as they have been. And yet, reform is still happening. Change is coming to our larger UU faith and most likely to our congregation here. One of the ways that is happening is by the proposed changes to Article II of the UUA Bylaws. “Article II is the section of our Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws where we articulate what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist: our purposes, our core values, and our commitments to each other.3 This is where you find the Seven Principals and Six Sources which the Unitarian Universalist Association describe as the strong values and moral guides for our faith.”4
They are things like the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” (first principle) or “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (4th Principle). The sources are things like, “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life,” or “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”5
If you tuned into the General Assembly, which is the annual meeting of our Association in which participants participate in worship, attend workshops, and congregational delegates vote to pass new bylaws, that occurred in Pittsburgh this past June, you would have heard a number of contentious conversations about these proposed changes to the bylaws. These changes would completely transform Article II. I will get to the specific proposed changes in just a moment, but I want to give you a timeline of how and why this has all been happening.
First, in 2017, there were several proposals for specific changes to the Seven Principles. For instance, with regard to the 1st Principle there was a vote to change inherent worth and dignity of “every person” to “all beings” which was rejected, and the idea of creating the 8th Principle was discussed.
In 2020, the 8th Principle was considered.
The 8th Principle has been a grassroots movement led by people of color within our UU movement as a way to hold ourselves accountable to the work we still need to do around de-centering whiteness and other dominant cultures in UUism. The 8th Principle states:
“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”
Many congregations have passed the 8th Principle on their own. However, when it came up at GA in 2020, the decision was made that, rather than doing this work piecemeal, perhaps we should reconsider how we articulate our faith altogether. Hence the Article II Study Commission was born.
In 2020 to 2022, the Commission held conversations with the UUA Board, had theological panel discussions, focus groups at GA, and other conversations. They then published a proposed change to Article II of the UUA Bylaws that changes the previous language around the 7 Principles and 6 Sources and hopefully incorporates some of what the 8th Principle movement is trying to accomplish.
In the spring of last year, they had a number of Zoom sessions in which people with a number of different backgrounds and identities gave their feedback. I was on at least one of these calls where people were really parsing the language and offering very granular suggestions for changing what had been written.
Then, at this past General Assembly there were a number of proposed amendments to the proposed Article II language as well as a vote regarding whether they should spend another year of study and discussion – particularly of these new amendments. The vote passed and now this next General Assembly, which will be virtual this year, there will be another vote, which requires a 2/3 majority of delegates from individual congregations to pass.
I am not going to read the changes to you in their entirety, but I did print off a few papers in the back that people can pick up and look at if they are interested. There is also a pretty extensive report on the UUA website if you want to read it. But, instead of the Seven Principles there now is a graphic of a flaming chalice with an overlay of the word love over the flame, with six outstretched arms that create a circle around each of the core values and form a six petal flower shape. Each arm is a different color and clockwise they are: Interdependence (Orange), Equity (Red), Transformation (Purple), Pluralism (Dark Blue), Generosity (Teal), and Justice (Yellow).
Under Section C-2.2 Values and Covenant it says about the central part of the chalice,
Love:
Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.”6
There is a brief line about what each of these core values means and also a couple of lines that explain in more detail, but I won’t subject you going into too much detail.
Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence.
Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings diverse in culture, experience, and theology.
Justice. We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive. Transformation. We adapt to the changing world.
Generosity. We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.
Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.
There is also a section on Inspirations that is meant to provide a more expansive consideration of our sources.
I listened to quite a bit of the discussion at this past GA regarding the proposed Article II changes and the amendments to them. There certainly were a number of people who voiced their concerns about these changes because they had objections to the direction our UU faith is going overall. They don’t like all of this language around antiracism and decentering whiteness and they feel we are focusing too much on social and racial justice issues.
However, there were also a number of people, particularly young adults, who had grown up with the 7 Principles and now mourned their potential loss. These Principles are a source of grounding for them and they feared what might happen if they changed. That we might perhaps lose some of what makes us UUs.
This has been a difficult process for everyone involved and I am not here saying we should advocate for one way or another. But, regardless of how this all shakes out, change is on the horizon. I think, if we’ve learned anything since 2020, it is that our lives can change so quickly and without warning and that truly the only constant in life is change. So, the question less is change going to happen but rather, how do we handle it when it does?
I recently heard a talk from Acting Director of the UUA’s HOPE for Us Conflict Engagement Team Connie Goodbread, “UU’s aren’t born again, but are born again, and again, and again.” This has rung the most true to me than perhaps any other definition of what it means to be a UU than I have heard.
My ability to bring to you my spiritual practice of mining the depths of my soul through poetry, but also hearing about others who find meaning in nature or meditation or, for I suspect a large population of this congregation, through music, has transformed me in ways I likely did not expect when I showed up on the doorstep of First Unitarian in Oklahoma City in 2013. It was the first faith tradition I belonged to in which I no longer felt I needed to hide what I believed. I believe in the power of this faith to save lives, to heal religious trauma many people never realized they needed healing from. I have seen it happen over and over again.
So, I want to see this faith grow and expand and hopefully transform communities as well as individual people’s lives. But I think in order for that to happen, we have to be a people of change. We have to be willing to challenge ourselves and have the uncomfortable conversation and make space for someone that has not had the space before. But, we also have to be willing to step into the fray and make sure this is a faith that still looks like one we want to be a part of.
You all have certainly been dealing with a lot of change here at BUUC, Rev. Craig has transitioned away, and I will also be doing so as well in a few months. And at least from my vantage point, you all have seemingly done well with change. Our whole world seems to be embroiled in change, now our church, our larger faith, it can sometimes be a lot to ask from anyone.
Maybe the challenge then is to lean into where you can be flexible while also holding onto what is good – the relationships amongst you, the beauty of shared worship, particularly singing together, and the passion for your community and your service in it – such as the food bank donations. If you can hold firm to what brought you here and what keeps you coming back every month, I firmly believe you can weather any storm – as our affirmation says – together.
Blessed Be and May it be so.
© ALYSSA LEE
1 Butler, Octavia, “The Parable of the Sower,” Four Walls Eight Windows, (New York 1993), 1.
2 https://uuma.org/berry-street-essay/2023-berry-street-essay-the-reverend-cecilia-kingman/
3 Article II Study Report to the Board of Trustees
4 https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
5 https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/sources
6 https://www.uua.org/files/2023-02/article-II-study-report-2021-23.pdf
Needless to say I was not raised in a house that liked a lot of change. We all had our roles and our duties, and no one was supposed to deviate from them. Personally, I often struggle with change.
Looking back, a lot of the conflict I had with friends and other loved ones typically stemmed from my fear of our relationships, and thereby my life, changing. As a result, I was probably not the most friendly person to new people brought into my friend groups, and I recognize now that this is because I was afraid of change. I was afraid the comfortable way I had been living or the way in which my relationships unfurled would be different and I would have to adjust.
In the past few years, I have been working on this, seeing the value of change, seeing how the unexpected can be a gift rather than something to be feared. Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler wrote, “The only lasting truth is change.”1 This has become such a popular quote in many Unitarian Universalist (or UU) circles that I know, that many people sometimes say it as a mantra. In fact, many UU’s are now finding their spiritual grounding, or the God of their understanding in this notion of change. However, I also know many UUs who say, “I miss how it used to be.” In her 2023 Berry Street Essay, the Rev. Cecilia Kingman said our UU faith is undergoing a major transformation and institutional reform. As we move away from as she says, “individualism to communitarian values, from white supremacy culture to truly radical liberation,”2 and to power sharing rather than concentrating power amongst those who have been historically privileged, in many UU congregations, there are people struggling to deal with the shifting dynamics of their relationships with one another and to their faith. They see the unstoppable river that is inevitable with growth and transformation, and they want to dam it. They want to curtail this transformational work, to make sure things remain as they have been. And yet, reform is still happening. Change is coming to our larger UU faith and most likely to our congregation here. One of the ways that is happening is by the proposed changes to Article II of the UUA Bylaws. “Article II is the section of our Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws where we articulate what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist: our purposes, our core values, and our commitments to each other.3 This is where you find the Seven Principals and Six Sources which the Unitarian Universalist Association describe as the strong values and moral guides for our faith.”4
They are things like the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” (first principle) or “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (4th Principle). The sources are things like, “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life,” or “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”5
If you tuned into the General Assembly, which is the annual meeting of our Association in which participants participate in worship, attend workshops, and congregational delegates vote to pass new bylaws, that occurred in Pittsburgh this past June, you would have heard a number of contentious conversations about these proposed changes to the bylaws. These changes would completely transform Article II. I will get to the specific proposed changes in just a moment, but I want to give you a timeline of how and why this has all been happening.
First, in 2017, there were several proposals for specific changes to the Seven Principles. For instance, with regard to the 1st Principle there was a vote to change inherent worth and dignity of “every person” to “all beings” which was rejected, and the idea of creating the 8th Principle was discussed.
In 2020, the 8th Principle was considered.
The 8th Principle has been a grassroots movement led by people of color within our UU movement as a way to hold ourselves accountable to the work we still need to do around de-centering whiteness and other dominant cultures in UUism. The 8th Principle states:
“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”
Many congregations have passed the 8th Principle on their own. However, when it came up at GA in 2020, the decision was made that, rather than doing this work piecemeal, perhaps we should reconsider how we articulate our faith altogether. Hence the Article II Study Commission was born.
In 2020 to 2022, the Commission held conversations with the UUA Board, had theological panel discussions, focus groups at GA, and other conversations. They then published a proposed change to Article II of the UUA Bylaws that changes the previous language around the 7 Principles and 6 Sources and hopefully incorporates some of what the 8th Principle movement is trying to accomplish.
In the spring of last year, they had a number of Zoom sessions in which people with a number of different backgrounds and identities gave their feedback. I was on at least one of these calls where people were really parsing the language and offering very granular suggestions for changing what had been written.
Then, at this past General Assembly there were a number of proposed amendments to the proposed Article II language as well as a vote regarding whether they should spend another year of study and discussion – particularly of these new amendments. The vote passed and now this next General Assembly, which will be virtual this year, there will be another vote, which requires a 2/3 majority of delegates from individual congregations to pass.
I am not going to read the changes to you in their entirety, but I did print off a few papers in the back that people can pick up and look at if they are interested. There is also a pretty extensive report on the UUA website if you want to read it. But, instead of the Seven Principles there now is a graphic of a flaming chalice with an overlay of the word love over the flame, with six outstretched arms that create a circle around each of the core values and form a six petal flower shape. Each arm is a different color and clockwise they are: Interdependence (Orange), Equity (Red), Transformation (Purple), Pluralism (Dark Blue), Generosity (Teal), and Justice (Yellow).
Under Section C-2.2 Values and Covenant it says about the central part of the chalice,
Love:
Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.”6
There is a brief line about what each of these core values means and also a couple of lines that explain in more detail, but I won’t subject you going into too much detail.
Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence.
Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings diverse in culture, experience, and theology.
Justice. We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive. Transformation. We adapt to the changing world.
Generosity. We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.
Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.
There is also a section on Inspirations that is meant to provide a more expansive consideration of our sources.
I listened to quite a bit of the discussion at this past GA regarding the proposed Article II changes and the amendments to them. There certainly were a number of people who voiced their concerns about these changes because they had objections to the direction our UU faith is going overall. They don’t like all of this language around antiracism and decentering whiteness and they feel we are focusing too much on social and racial justice issues.
However, there were also a number of people, particularly young adults, who had grown up with the 7 Principles and now mourned their potential loss. These Principles are a source of grounding for them and they feared what might happen if they changed. That we might perhaps lose some of what makes us UUs.
This has been a difficult process for everyone involved and I am not here saying we should advocate for one way or another. But, regardless of how this all shakes out, change is on the horizon. I think, if we’ve learned anything since 2020, it is that our lives can change so quickly and without warning and that truly the only constant in life is change. So, the question less is change going to happen but rather, how do we handle it when it does?
I recently heard a talk from Acting Director of the UUA’s HOPE for Us Conflict Engagement Team Connie Goodbread, “UU’s aren’t born again, but are born again, and again, and again.” This has rung the most true to me than perhaps any other definition of what it means to be a UU than I have heard.
My ability to bring to you my spiritual practice of mining the depths of my soul through poetry, but also hearing about others who find meaning in nature or meditation or, for I suspect a large population of this congregation, through music, has transformed me in ways I likely did not expect when I showed up on the doorstep of First Unitarian in Oklahoma City in 2013. It was the first faith tradition I belonged to in which I no longer felt I needed to hide what I believed. I believe in the power of this faith to save lives, to heal religious trauma many people never realized they needed healing from. I have seen it happen over and over again.
So, I want to see this faith grow and expand and hopefully transform communities as well as individual people’s lives. But I think in order for that to happen, we have to be a people of change. We have to be willing to challenge ourselves and have the uncomfortable conversation and make space for someone that has not had the space before. But, we also have to be willing to step into the fray and make sure this is a faith that still looks like one we want to be a part of.
You all have certainly been dealing with a lot of change here at BUUC, Rev. Craig has transitioned away, and I will also be doing so as well in a few months. And at least from my vantage point, you all have seemingly done well with change. Our whole world seems to be embroiled in change, now our church, our larger faith, it can sometimes be a lot to ask from anyone.
Maybe the challenge then is to lean into where you can be flexible while also holding onto what is good – the relationships amongst you, the beauty of shared worship, particularly singing together, and the passion for your community and your service in it – such as the food bank donations. If you can hold firm to what brought you here and what keeps you coming back every month, I firmly believe you can weather any storm – as our affirmation says – together.
Blessed Be and May it be so.
© ALYSSA LEE
1 Butler, Octavia, “The Parable of the Sower,” Four Walls Eight Windows, (New York 1993), 1.
2 https://uuma.org/berry-street-essay/2023-berry-street-essay-the-reverend-cecilia-kingman/
3 Article II Study Report to the Board of Trustees
4 https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
5 https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/sources
6 https://www.uua.org/files/2023-02/article-II-study-report-2021-23.pdf
