When I was a young child, going to Catholic school, I would sometimes (in the early mornings of a school day) have reason to pass through the large sanctuary of the church that was part of my school. Some of the elderly women of the church would be in the dimly lit sanctuary, wearing their modest dresses, sensible shoes, and black lace head coverings. They’d be kneeling in the pews, rosaries held to their lips, rocking back and forth as the words spilled out of their mouths, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed are thou...” Their voices were low and mumbled and fast, and if you didn’t know the prayers of the rosary, you probably wouldn’t be able to discern what they were saying.
The first time I stumbled upon these women, I was both frightened and mesmerized. It was as if they themselves, in their morning prayers, were the motor of the church, what kept it going day to day. And from then on I often tried to find them there, early in the morning, blessing that sanctuary with something holy and important.
Despite these early encounters with something holy, I could not see myself as a pastor. First of all I grew up understanding that only men could be pastors, but more than that even, I was so painfully shy and nothing about standing up before a group of people each Sunday sounded good to me. But religion, I came to learn, is about so much more than the sermon.
In that same church where I grew up, Sunday after Sunday, a wooden plate got passed around (sometimes twice), each of us putting on our hands on it, dropping in money we earned, sometimes for the church and sometimes for a homeless shelter, or a soup kitchen, or some other cause. I learned that we, religious people, are a generous people.
I remember when I was in middle school, my father was diagnosed with Lupus and sent to the hospital. It was a really scary time and families from the church would show up (a family each day) with a casserole for us and sometimes dessert (oh my gosh the desserts!). I didn’t understand then what motivated this train of casseroles, but I realized that having people in our home who were not hurting and scared like we were, was just what we needed. I learned that, religious people are people who are not afraid of being in need, and who are not afraid of being vulnerable in front of one another.
Later I came to learn that religious places are places, sometimes the only places, where we can ugly cry, or laugh, or sing out. They are places where we wed our beloved, and where we say goodbye to our dead. We come back to religion when we cannot remember what is important or how life is sacred. Religion is where we find just enough hope to move forward like when our streets and schools feel dangerous, or when groups of people are singled out and labeled as bad. Religion, at its best, points to truths above and beyond the truth that is created by popular culture, governments, or systems of power. Religious places have long been the sites of activism and the birthplaces of movements for justice.
And so when a mass shooting happens we are not “sprung into action” because we were never a people of inaction. On the day of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, the nearby UU Church in Fort Lauderdale was already on day 16 of a Season for Nonviolence where services had been addressing the gap between peace and the life we live in the United States. Many of their members and youth were practicing 64 Ways in 64 Days, a daily practice of developing the skills, wisdom, and character of nonviolence. And sadly it did not stop that school shooting from happening, but it nurtured an ideal of peace and nonviolence that I believe is getting more and more traction especially from youth who are leading this movement of safety and peace in schools by confronting leaders with their truth.
Early Universalist minister, Hosea Ballou, imagined that, instead of Jesus dying for the sins of humanity, that instead Jesus’ death “released a great spirit of love into the world” inviting us closer to our world and all living things in it. What if a great spirit of love has been released into the world and what if our religious work is simply to manifest that love in new and surprising ways?
It would be so easy to keep mongering fear, spreading hate, getting impatient with one another, judging one another, and putting one another down. But what if we instead push love? What if we nurture a community that does not tolerate hate or injustice, but instead a community that invites people into relationship?
I think of those elderly women in the pews of my childhood Catholic church, shuffling into the church every day to offer prayers. I think of the offering plate every week where my parents shared from our finances even during the lean years. I think of the people holding my family through our pain, even when I was the kid serving detentions because I hemmed up my school uniform too short and colored my hair a shimmery, bright red.
From the quiet, personal work of laying to rest our beloveds and reaching out to one another in pain, to the larger, public work of addressing systems of antiracism, anti-sexism, religious bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other oppressions, our ministry is to keep doing this work. We gather to figure out what it means to be human, to get in touch with the feeling of being alive and being in love with one another and the world. We come together with violence and hate outside, but we just keep loving the hell out this world. There is no more rewarding work than this. So we come with our mumbled prayers, and our good works, and our constancy in a world that needs all of it. Holding this space and in doing so making it sacred and safe, that we might bring that sacredness and that safety out into the world to all who need it.