Here at UUCSS we’ve been working our way through a chapter of Valerie Kaur’s book this year. As I was reading through the seventh chapter for this month, it made me think of one of the most powerful pictures I’ve ever seen. You may have seen it before.
It’s a black and white picture of a menorah in a window, outside of which a Nazi flag is just visible hanging on a building in the distance. It’s compelling not just because placing a menorah in a window would have been dangerous when the picture was taken, but because the people who took it, in spite of all of the horrific things happening to them and all around them, decided to celebrate and embrace some anyway.
In this chapter titled “Breathe” Kaur weaves a few different stories together. When a mass shooting takes place at a Sikh gurdwara, Kaur postpones surgery for a condition that’s made her ill for years. She is so concerned about the pain and suffering of others she neglects her own body’s needs and this takes a mighty toll. The takeaways from this chapter are many, but include the idea that breathing can help us do hard things like be courageous amid violence, and that taking time to breathe, to rest, to embrace joy together in community is how we sustain the work of revolutionary love.
Breathing is life-giving, so it should be no surprise, as Kaur points out, that “Buddhists, Hindus, and many other wisdom traditions have taught conscious breathwork for centuries.” Studies have shown that the heartbeats of people in orchestra audiences or congregations just like this one can fall into synch when moved by the same music, the same message, the same spirit. When one person needs to step away to use the bathroom or tend to the needs of a child, the group continues on. The work for revolutionary love is just like this. We all need and deserve to take breaks. We all need time for beauty and joy, and to tend to the needs of our bodies, our families, our spirits if we are to sustain this work over the long haul.
It was easy for me to identify with Kaur in this chapter. So much in this country and world feels so dire, so much is at stake, it’s easy to wonder if by centering our own needs for a time we betray those who don’t have that privilege or luxury. It’s easy to buy into the lie that it will all fall down if we stop, even for a moment. I love our liberal religious heritage, our tradition’s focus on the power of each choice we make. But the shadow side of placing so much faith in human agency is the worry that if we all don’t fill every waking minute doing everything we have the power to do, we’ve let one another, future generations, maybe even the whole of the planet down. The weight of the world is a lot to carry on our muscles and bones.
Years ago, very soon after I’d begun serving in ministry, a member of my congregation experienced the loss of a child. The staff and family tried to reach me for several hours, but it was my day off, and I’d turned off my phone because I was with a friend for a long-planned girl’s day out. I was exhausted, and I needed this time away from my usual life to catch my breath. But that means I didn’t see the messages and voicemails with the dreadful news until I turned my phone back on when I got back to my car. I felt awful.
When I came home in tears, Christian asked me what was wrong. I told him I felt so guilty, that I’d been enjoying myself while this member of mine experienced anguish unlike any other. Christian pointed out that I was allowed to turn my phone off sometimes, and that the family had not been abandoned while my phone was off. Other members from the church were there supporting them.
“But I’m their pastor,” I said “they rely on me. Sometimes I don’t feel up to the task of the ministry. When it feels like I serve the church enough, I neglect myself. But when I take care of myself, I feel like I’m letting everyone else down.”
And Christian very gently patted my back and replied “Who’s not the Messiah?”
Thankfully Christian knew me well enough at that point to know this would make me laugh. He helped me see that I was reacting out of worry, worry that I wasn’t enough instead of acting out of faith that somehow what I had to offer would be worthy. In the words of our story this morning, I needed to focus on rocking what I got, not worrying about what I’m not.
Because of course I wasn’t up to the task of ministry! No one is. No one person can ever be available for an entire community’s needs all the time. The task of caring for a community’s needs belongs as much to the whole congregation as it does to the minister, just as caring for our neighborhoods, our states, our entire country belongs to those whole communities. The task is really “squad care” as Melissa Harris-Perry put it in our reading today.
The work of justice isn’t going to be destroyed because one of us needs a day or a week or a month to catch our breath. The resistance isn’t going to fail if we need to buy something from Amazon during the economic boycott. The work to heal our planet doesn’t rest on what we personally are able to do. Our choices matter, but the fate of the entire world does not rest on our shoulders alone. In order to live out of faith and joy rather than fear and anxiety, it takes faith and trust that something or someone outside of ourselves will keep the work going when we need to tag out.
I can remember even as a young child admiring my Grammy so much. She was the most joyful, giving person I knew. She was the kind of grandmother who hosted a huge Easter Egg Hunt for all of the kids in the family, who baked cookies and cupcakes for us to decorate, who would cook our favorite meals when our parents dropped us off for her to babysit.
My Grammy also happened to be the most religious person in my life. Of all of the people I knew, she was the one most able to hold onto joy even when life got very difficult. My Grandad, a hard man to love in the best of times, became violent as his dementia worsened. Eventually Grammy wasn’t able to care for him anymore and he moved to a nursing home. But her light shone as bright as ever. Somehow, even in the face of pain and loss, she kept faith in goodness, she had a community of people who cared about her, and she seemed to live out of a sense of joy. I wanted to be like her then. I still do now.
The thing about my Grammy is that she always took time to care for herself, to love herself. She went to the beauty parlor every week to have her hair washed and set. She never missed Bible study with her girlfriends and spent a lot of time with her family. As the airlines would say, she made sure her own oxygen mask was on so she could keep breathing while helping others rather than rushing from one important task to another, anxious to be all things to all people. She took time to breathe, to stay centered in her joy.
My Grammy came to mind when Kaur described the Sikh concept of Chardi Kala. Chardi Kala means “aspiring to maintain a mental state of eternal resilience, optimism and joy; an acceptance that life ebbs and flows with hardship and to rise above that adversity.” All of our emotions are valid, especially when we experience loss, pain, and wrongdoing. And overwhelm is a completely normal response to the news these days. But we cede an awful lot of our power if we allow our inner lives to be dictated by the choices of others. Hopefully everyone picked up a copy of the handout Rev. Caitlin made with the things we can do when we feel overwhelmed. It’s got a lot of good ideas for how we can work through our feelings so we can again live out of our faith, out of our joy instead of living out of fear.
Here I want to make a point. Having faith that what we have to offer is worthy applies to us as a congregation, too. As a community of human beings, this congregation isn’t perfect. We’ll always have more work to do. As one of my former ministers as a kid always used to say, “we’re loved as we are, but too much to let us stay that way.” Here’s what I mean: we will always have anti-racism work to do because we live in an inherently white supremacist society. We will always need to work on welcoming people better. There will always be a new book we should read, a new leadership approach we should try, a new important issue to advocate about.
Just as we can as individuals, congregations can spread ourselves too thin by trying to do too much, too. The most important question isn’t what we should be doing, because that list is endless. The most important question is what are we called to do, what are we best situated to do? How do the gifts and passions of this particular collection of people intersect with the needs within and around us? And when do we need to make time to simply breathe, to rest, to embrace joy amid the work that never ends? When do we just do something not because it’s part of a fundraiser, or a strategic plan, but just because it’s fun and we love to delight in one another?
As we shared in an email last month, I will be going on sabbatical for four months from November through February. I’m incredibly grateful for this chance to care for my body and spirit so I can return renewed and ready for another chapter in our ministry together. But this isn’t just a chance for me to try new and different things, this is a chance for all of you as well. Next church year is a chance for UUCSS to catch its breath, to take joy in our newly renovated Community Building, and for people who haven’t participated in leadership to move forward and give it a try.
UUCSS has worked really hard these last several years. From pivoting to Zoom worship on a dime when the world shut down to beginning a new ministry. Then we figured out how to rebuild in-person church, did a capital campaign, a mission and vision process, and began renovating our Community Building. There are a lot of people who have given incredible amounts of time and energy to accomplish these things. And I think the healthiest thing we can do is encourage and rejoice in people tapping out for a break after a job well done, taking a year away from committee work to catch their breath.
So, what does loving ourselves look like for us as a people? What does squad care look like for us as a congregation? How can we practice moving up to serve and moving back for a break here at church so we know how to do it in the rest of our lives? Because politics is gonna wear us out. The PTA and the school board are gonna wear us out. Family drama’s gonna wear us out. Working for our collective liberation is gonna wear us out.
At the end of the chapter, her mother convinces Valerie Kaur and her new husband to finally take their much-delayed honeymoon. And you know what? The world didn’t fall apart because they took some time for joy. The work was still there after they got back, and they were better able to do it.
May we all find the faith and trust in our squad, our community, to continue the work we share when we all need some time to catch our breath. Because what the world needs isn’t self-sacrificing messiahs. What the world needs is people who know they were fearfully and wonderfully made, people who rock what they got, people who are filled with joy. May we be those people. Amen.