Living Among Strangers
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 19, 2014
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It happens every few months or so. The phone rings, I make the mistake of answering it and a telemarketer, in what is usually a cheerful voice, asks, “Is Mr. McNamara there?” They’re looking for my husband. If he’s home I’ll usually ask who’s calling or just give him the phone. If he’s not home I’ll say he’s not home or not available. Inevitably the caller then asks, “Is Mrs. McNamara there?” To which I respond, “This is he.” After an awkward pause, the caller usually thanks me and hangs up or indicates they’ll call back at another time.
Although people usually laugh when I share with them the way I respond to a telemarketers assumptions, my response to those assumptions is not meant to be funny. Rather, it is an act of self-empowerment; self empowerment in the face of an injustice I, and millions of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), experience in one way or another regularly. I’m not talking about homophobia here, but a more subtle yet no less alienating oppression...heterosexism.
Heterosexism is defined as, “a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It is frequently marked by the presumption that other people are heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior.” (wikipedia). Because it is a systematic form of oppression, that is, deeply embedded in our social, political, economic and legal structure, we are all raised to some degree or another to be heterosexist.
The more overt forms of heterosexism make headlines...state marriage and adoption bans, for example. Thankfully, many of these are now crumbling under the weight of legal review. Then there’s the somewhat quieter forms, like definitions of family that exclude same-sex couples and their children from buying family membership to a town recreational facility or advertising in which portrayals of couples, families and displays of affection are almost exclusively heterosexual. The more savvy marketers have taken small steps to change this where risk to the bottom line from consumer backlash is believed to be minimal. And then there’s a largely silent form of heterosexism, the experience of living among strangers. An experience that in truth affects not only people who identify as LGBTQ but everyone.
A few years ago I found an envelope in a dresser in my old room at my parents house. Inside were two letters written when I was in my late teens, one from my mother to me and one I wrote to myself. My mother’s letter expressed concern that something was troubling me. She said she worried I was lonely; wondered about my self-esteem. She knew I had dated but never had a steady girlfriend. She wrote about all the ways in which I was special, talented, and loved. She closed the letter expressing hope that I would work through whatever this unnamed issue was and assured me everything would be alright. It was a sweet if not cautious letter.
The letter I wrote to myself, was written about the same time as the letter my mother wrote to me. In it I pined after a male friend to whom I was attracted while also writing desperate pleas for help, for answers...asking what’s wrong with me. My letter was something of a prayer echoing the sentiments of the psalm from our first reading...”Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes from grief, my soul and body also.” I felt terribly alone. I didn’t know anyone personally who felt as I did and of those in the wider world who shared my “affliction” nothing good was ever said or happened to them.
Now some might wonder, why didn’t you just go talk to your mother, after all she did seem to notice that something was bothering me. That would have been a logical response if this type of experience were simply an issue of communication, but it is not. It is an issue of how we love. Heterosexism and any form of oppression for that matter, teaches us to hold love tightly and express it narrowly.
It does this by assuming that everyone’s basic life script, that is the basic trajectory of one’s life, is and ought to be the same. In a heterosexist society the basic life script everyone is given can be summarized as boy meets girl, marries and has children. Anything that impedes, counters or challenges that basic script is met with reactions ranging from mild suspicion to moral condemnation.
In retrospect, my mother’s cautious approach in her letter to me suggests she suspected the unnamed issue troubling me might be a deviation from the life script we both assumed I would follow. My own letter to myself wrestles with it more openly but we both nonetheless concluded it was a problem to be figured out and solved. Never was the script society had handed us questioned in either my mother’s or my letter.
Without realizing it, we had perpetuated an oppressive assumption which unchallenged creates a gap between who we’re assumed to be and who we really are.
The price we pay for this is a life living among strangers, hearts hidden from one another, love constrained, human potential unrealized.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Oppressive systems cannot be willed away, but they can be brought into the light of day, challenged and resisted. To do this we need to be empowered and to empower others...something I know our congregation, as an official welcoming congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, is capable of.
For those of you here today unfamiliar with what the official welcoming congregation designation means, it is a designation congregations receive following a process of eduction, reflection and a congregational vote in churches seeking to actively promote and affirm the inclusion of people who identity as LGBTQ in all aspects of congregational life and leadership.
Becoming an official welcoming congregation was an act of empowerment. Being an official welcoming congregation is the practice of empowerment. A practice we are all charged to take up as people of faith.
How do we practice empowerment?
We practice empowerment by learning to love differently. Something the poet Marge Piercy rightly describes as hard even painful at times. It is hard because our instinct is to love by grasping for and holding tightly expectations, norms, life scripts intended give us a sense of solidity and purpose in an often chaotic, uncertain world.
Learning to love differently is painful because it forces us to experience loss, an experience our society spends a lot of time, energy and money trying to avoid. Indeed, to love with hands wide open as Piercy suggests, means letting go, releasing what was in order to embrace what is. Sadly, those unable or unwilling to let go...unable to love with hands wide open are those who often disown or lose their LGBTQ loved one or friend. Which still happens a lot.
And this serves to remind us that just as oppressive systems can’t be willed away, loving differently can’t simply be willed into existence...it is something we learn...not in books, but by doing...
Here I have to confess, Piercy’s poem made my job a lot easier because in her poem she names four ways to love, differently...
Love:
consciously
conscientiously
concretely
constructively
To love consciously is first to look inward. Many spiritual traditions emphasize the need to love oneself before we can truly love others. This does not refer to self-centeredness but self knowledge and acceptance. To love consciously then, it to seek to become aware of all the things that inform and influence our actions. This awareness helps us understand why we are the way we and can help us embrace or let go of the thoughts, feelings, assumptions, beliefs, values and motivations we need to in order to be more accepting of ourselves and others. Being able to love consciously enabled me to come out as a gay man and my family to not only accept but affirm me.
To love conscientiously concerns commitment and vigilance. When I marry couples, I remind them that marriage is a most solemn commitment and not to be entered into lightly. To love conscientiously means we’re in it for the long haul, aware that there will
be ups and downs but willing to endure those ups and down in service to a greater good. Being able to love conscientiously allows people here and beyond these walls who work for social justice... to get up and keep up the fight in the face of cynicism and setbacks. Its one of the reasons a majority of the US population lives in states where marriage equality is or will soon be a reality.
To love concretely is as we might imagine, to do something. It is demonstrative, an outward manifestation of the love we have cultivated inwardly. One of the most powerful aspects of the life of Jesus as it is presented to us in the Christian scriptures is that he not only spoke of love, he demonstrated it and often in the process wound up violating some long established religious or social norm....hanging out, as the Bible tells us with all manner of people his society considered undesirables: tax collectors and sinners, the sick and poor. To love concretely is to transform our highest values into actions, into lived experience. Gandhi is credited with saying, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” That’s what loving concretely is all about.
Its what BUUC does in our outreach ministries. Its what we did when we decided to become an official welcoming congregation.
To love constructively concerns purposeful improvement or growth. When we love constructively we may be engaged in acts of affirmation for ourselves and others or we may be engaged in the work of transcending obstacles in pursuit of personal wellbeing or a broader justice. When we love constructively, we reach beyond the known horizon towards possibilities we can’t fully imagine including changes to family, social, political and economic systems. To love constructively is an act of faith, not unlike that expressed by our Unitarian forbear Theodore Parker, who said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” By loving constructively we and now many other faiths have become a viable spiritual home and community for LGBTQ people and of all ages and their families.
By learning to love differently we move closer to experience the meaning of Rumi’s words offered in our call to worship, “Don’t hide your heart but reveal it, so that mine might be revealed, and I might accept what I am capable of.”
To love differently, to have and not to hold...love offered with hands wide open is a powerful, empowering force. A love whose practice encourages reflection and acceptance of self and others, inspires determination and action, and engenders faith. It is a force that chips away at oppressive systems by dismantling barriers of the heart, barriers we learn and can unlearn.
The practice of empowerment, of loving differently is essential to be a welcoming congregation and something that is as important as ever. I invite you in the days and weeks ahead to reflect on ways we might strengthen our practice of empowerment. How might we, as a gathered body, continue to love differently to help ensure no one, including ourselves, is living among strangers?
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 19, 2014
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It happens every few months or so. The phone rings, I make the mistake of answering it and a telemarketer, in what is usually a cheerful voice, asks, “Is Mr. McNamara there?” They’re looking for my husband. If he’s home I’ll usually ask who’s calling or just give him the phone. If he’s not home I’ll say he’s not home or not available. Inevitably the caller then asks, “Is Mrs. McNamara there?” To which I respond, “This is he.” After an awkward pause, the caller usually thanks me and hangs up or indicates they’ll call back at another time.
Although people usually laugh when I share with them the way I respond to a telemarketers assumptions, my response to those assumptions is not meant to be funny. Rather, it is an act of self-empowerment; self empowerment in the face of an injustice I, and millions of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), experience in one way or another regularly. I’m not talking about homophobia here, but a more subtle yet no less alienating oppression...heterosexism.
Heterosexism is defined as, “a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It is frequently marked by the presumption that other people are heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior.” (wikipedia). Because it is a systematic form of oppression, that is, deeply embedded in our social, political, economic and legal structure, we are all raised to some degree or another to be heterosexist.
The more overt forms of heterosexism make headlines...state marriage and adoption bans, for example. Thankfully, many of these are now crumbling under the weight of legal review. Then there’s the somewhat quieter forms, like definitions of family that exclude same-sex couples and their children from buying family membership to a town recreational facility or advertising in which portrayals of couples, families and displays of affection are almost exclusively heterosexual. The more savvy marketers have taken small steps to change this where risk to the bottom line from consumer backlash is believed to be minimal. And then there’s a largely silent form of heterosexism, the experience of living among strangers. An experience that in truth affects not only people who identify as LGBTQ but everyone.
A few years ago I found an envelope in a dresser in my old room at my parents house. Inside were two letters written when I was in my late teens, one from my mother to me and one I wrote to myself. My mother’s letter expressed concern that something was troubling me. She said she worried I was lonely; wondered about my self-esteem. She knew I had dated but never had a steady girlfriend. She wrote about all the ways in which I was special, talented, and loved. She closed the letter expressing hope that I would work through whatever this unnamed issue was and assured me everything would be alright. It was a sweet if not cautious letter.
The letter I wrote to myself, was written about the same time as the letter my mother wrote to me. In it I pined after a male friend to whom I was attracted while also writing desperate pleas for help, for answers...asking what’s wrong with me. My letter was something of a prayer echoing the sentiments of the psalm from our first reading...”Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes from grief, my soul and body also.” I felt terribly alone. I didn’t know anyone personally who felt as I did and of those in the wider world who shared my “affliction” nothing good was ever said or happened to them.
Now some might wonder, why didn’t you just go talk to your mother, after all she did seem to notice that something was bothering me. That would have been a logical response if this type of experience were simply an issue of communication, but it is not. It is an issue of how we love. Heterosexism and any form of oppression for that matter, teaches us to hold love tightly and express it narrowly.
It does this by assuming that everyone’s basic life script, that is the basic trajectory of one’s life, is and ought to be the same. In a heterosexist society the basic life script everyone is given can be summarized as boy meets girl, marries and has children. Anything that impedes, counters or challenges that basic script is met with reactions ranging from mild suspicion to moral condemnation.
In retrospect, my mother’s cautious approach in her letter to me suggests she suspected the unnamed issue troubling me might be a deviation from the life script we both assumed I would follow. My own letter to myself wrestles with it more openly but we both nonetheless concluded it was a problem to be figured out and solved. Never was the script society had handed us questioned in either my mother’s or my letter.
Without realizing it, we had perpetuated an oppressive assumption which unchallenged creates a gap between who we’re assumed to be and who we really are.
The price we pay for this is a life living among strangers, hearts hidden from one another, love constrained, human potential unrealized.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Oppressive systems cannot be willed away, but they can be brought into the light of day, challenged and resisted. To do this we need to be empowered and to empower others...something I know our congregation, as an official welcoming congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, is capable of.
For those of you here today unfamiliar with what the official welcoming congregation designation means, it is a designation congregations receive following a process of eduction, reflection and a congregational vote in churches seeking to actively promote and affirm the inclusion of people who identity as LGBTQ in all aspects of congregational life and leadership.
Becoming an official welcoming congregation was an act of empowerment. Being an official welcoming congregation is the practice of empowerment. A practice we are all charged to take up as people of faith.
How do we practice empowerment?
We practice empowerment by learning to love differently. Something the poet Marge Piercy rightly describes as hard even painful at times. It is hard because our instinct is to love by grasping for and holding tightly expectations, norms, life scripts intended give us a sense of solidity and purpose in an often chaotic, uncertain world.
Learning to love differently is painful because it forces us to experience loss, an experience our society spends a lot of time, energy and money trying to avoid. Indeed, to love with hands wide open as Piercy suggests, means letting go, releasing what was in order to embrace what is. Sadly, those unable or unwilling to let go...unable to love with hands wide open are those who often disown or lose their LGBTQ loved one or friend. Which still happens a lot.
And this serves to remind us that just as oppressive systems can’t be willed away, loving differently can’t simply be willed into existence...it is something we learn...not in books, but by doing...
Here I have to confess, Piercy’s poem made my job a lot easier because in her poem she names four ways to love, differently...
Love:
consciously
conscientiously
concretely
constructively
To love consciously is first to look inward. Many spiritual traditions emphasize the need to love oneself before we can truly love others. This does not refer to self-centeredness but self knowledge and acceptance. To love consciously then, it to seek to become aware of all the things that inform and influence our actions. This awareness helps us understand why we are the way we and can help us embrace or let go of the thoughts, feelings, assumptions, beliefs, values and motivations we need to in order to be more accepting of ourselves and others. Being able to love consciously enabled me to come out as a gay man and my family to not only accept but affirm me.
To love conscientiously concerns commitment and vigilance. When I marry couples, I remind them that marriage is a most solemn commitment and not to be entered into lightly. To love conscientiously means we’re in it for the long haul, aware that there will
be ups and downs but willing to endure those ups and down in service to a greater good. Being able to love conscientiously allows people here and beyond these walls who work for social justice... to get up and keep up the fight in the face of cynicism and setbacks. Its one of the reasons a majority of the US population lives in states where marriage equality is or will soon be a reality.
To love concretely is as we might imagine, to do something. It is demonstrative, an outward manifestation of the love we have cultivated inwardly. One of the most powerful aspects of the life of Jesus as it is presented to us in the Christian scriptures is that he not only spoke of love, he demonstrated it and often in the process wound up violating some long established religious or social norm....hanging out, as the Bible tells us with all manner of people his society considered undesirables: tax collectors and sinners, the sick and poor. To love concretely is to transform our highest values into actions, into lived experience. Gandhi is credited with saying, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” That’s what loving concretely is all about.
Its what BUUC does in our outreach ministries. Its what we did when we decided to become an official welcoming congregation.
To love constructively concerns purposeful improvement or growth. When we love constructively we may be engaged in acts of affirmation for ourselves and others or we may be engaged in the work of transcending obstacles in pursuit of personal wellbeing or a broader justice. When we love constructively, we reach beyond the known horizon towards possibilities we can’t fully imagine including changes to family, social, political and economic systems. To love constructively is an act of faith, not unlike that expressed by our Unitarian forbear Theodore Parker, who said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” By loving constructively we and now many other faiths have become a viable spiritual home and community for LGBTQ people and of all ages and their families.
By learning to love differently we move closer to experience the meaning of Rumi’s words offered in our call to worship, “Don’t hide your heart but reveal it, so that mine might be revealed, and I might accept what I am capable of.”
To love differently, to have and not to hold...love offered with hands wide open is a powerful, empowering force. A love whose practice encourages reflection and acceptance of self and others, inspires determination and action, and engenders faith. It is a force that chips away at oppressive systems by dismantling barriers of the heart, barriers we learn and can unlearn.
The practice of empowerment, of loving differently is essential to be a welcoming congregation and something that is as important as ever. I invite you in the days and weeks ahead to reflect on ways we might strengthen our practice of empowerment. How might we, as a gathered body, continue to love differently to help ensure no one, including ourselves, is living among strangers?
Amen and Blessed Be
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