Actor - Ally - Accomplice
Rev. Matthew Funke Crary
October 1, 2017
The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There a a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the live of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice."
It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited too do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.”
- The Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed
Our Puritan forbearers in colonial America spent considerable time at church. They came to church early on Sundays, stayed until lunch, and then returned for a full afternoon. I was taught that after 20 minutes no souls are saved. I suspect one thing that makes worship today shorter is that we don’t believe in bludgeoning the soul into submission, with hellfire and brimstone preaching, but rather inviting it to life.
Like any good invitation, worship must be clear. A party I was recently invited to offered the date and location, but left out the time. Until it got cleared up, it wasn’t really an invitation, it was more like a… hopeful confusion. Without clarity, our Sunday’s might be joyful celebrations, but we could be just a “hopeful confusion” sharing ideas that do not connect our deepest selves to our lives.
Our forbearers had doctrine, a complex system based on scripture that told them what God was, who Jesus was, what the Church was, and the meanings of sin, forgiveness, and redemption. I imagine that it took half of Sunday just to get back on on the same page each week and then start to talk about how it is you are to live.
In contrast, we gather on a Sunday with many individual soul-views. This is that perspective you have gathered from you life and your experience which is deeply held. This is the vision of the world the organizes your actions, sustains you through dark times, and guides you to who you are becoming. Instead of one big doctrine, we have lots of little soul-views, snapshots of who you are and how you are to live in this world.
We are not the first people to note the difference between a comprehensive worldview, that doctrine approach, and many that are diverse and subjective. Germans have two similar, but slightly different words that reflect this distinction. Weltanschauung is a comprehensive, often sophisticated, perspective of the world. Weltbild is a snapshot, a personal picture informing you of who you are and you can become. Communities based on doctrine follow a single weltanschauung, where we hold many weltbilds as a community.
Joanna Macy, a systems thinker, eco-activist, and a Grandmother-mentor to me, teaches that there are four weltbild “passed down through the ages. They are specific to any culture or tradition. You can find all of them in tall the major religions. These for are: world as battlefield, world as trap, world as lover, and world as self.” (World as Lover, World as Self, Macy p19) In her teachings, I hear the language to clearly collect the deep soul-views that are here among us, here, today.
Each of these four offers a vision, a deep soul-view, of the world and who we are in it. These do not look beyond our experience of the pain and sorrow and scarcity in this world. They take into account our individual experiences of suffering and gather them into common containers.
The world as battlefield, then, is a soul-view of those that have been so battered and hurt by life that they perceive the world as a conflict. From the overt clash of armies to the confrontation of ideas to the interactions of daily life, it is all a battle.
You can see this soul-view in the scientific theory of the “survival of the fittest,” which places all life in a biological battlefield. In this view, life exists and evolves by better adaptation and besting of competitors. You can see the battlefield in the collusion of our values, like the argument that will never, ever end, between pro-life and pro-choice. And it is in our daily interactions. You may remember that bestselling self-help book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Within systems, arguments, and differences we know to be true, the world is a battlefield, sees only conflict.
Now, the world is a trap, is similar, but with a twist. Instead of viewing the pain, sorrow and scarcity as a fight, it instead orients on escape. It’s like the first ten minutes of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when Indy faces venomous spiders, deadly pits, poison darts, walls to crush him, human betrayal, and that giant spherical boulder that will either flatten him or trap him forever in the lost temple. The world is a trap names the soul-view of escape from the suffering of this world through addictions, material distractions and shallow entertainment.
Perceiving the world as battlefield and the world as trap invites us to live as Actors. They invite us to play out roles, following scripts not of our choosing, to take up a side in the battle, or avoid the reality of this world altogether. As Actors of these soul-views nothing changes. In fact, they perpetuate themselves, as all we can ever be is an Actor within them. We cannot move outside of them, we cannot analyze them, we cannot understand them, we can only play the role and perpetuate them… and they are pervasive.
Our world today is ruled by the soul-view that it is either a battlefield or a trap. Life is either a conflict or it is to be avoided. This engages the oldest evolutionary part of our brains, the reptilian brain, that knows only fight or flight. This part of us is about our survival in the face of pain, sorrow and scarcity, it is not about living. It’s about everyday being a battle or an escape. And it doesn’t change anything.
In the world as lover, Joanna looks to ancient and modern traditions for imagery of the beloved. This soul-view does not ignore the pain of life, instead it looks into it and sees suffering as a part of who we are. Rather than being the thing to fight or escape, suffering is viewed as a means to grow.
This is much harder to see in our world today, but it is just as true a soul perspective as the world as battlefield and the world as trap. It is the deeply held view that the world wants you to become more, and that the grief and loss and mourning we experience is intertwined with our love and joy and growing. It is the view that life embraces you as a love wanting you to become more in your view, more in your strength, more in your connection and community.
It affords a place to look at the battlefield or the trap and wonder, “Is survival all there is to life?” The answer comes through seeing others, people in the same situation, facing the same sorrows, who not trying to just survive, but are cooperating and working to make a change. This is the invitation to become an Ally. This is the role of recognizing that there is a struggle, but it is not against or away from others, but with them. And that together we can begin to understand what life is and together we can live beyond survival.
There is a brand new billboard on my commute home, that says in big bright block letters, “United We Win.” I’ll be honest, I’m too busy driving by to be able to read the fine print and know what organization is promoting it, but I can tell you that, this is the soul-view of the world as self.
This is a view and a way of living arising from the truth that we are all in this together. It builds on that sense of the world as beloved, holding you through the pain and sorrow and scarcity, and it goes further. It looks back at the battlefields we have made and the traps we have laid for ourselves and acknowledges that I have assisted in creating those battles, I have helped to set those traps.
This is an invitation to living as an Accomplice. An Accomplice knows that we were a part of the problem and that means only we can be part of the fix. It is a way of living of deep engagement and dismantling of the battlefield, we are going to slip in and disarm all of the traps, because we are the ones who made them.
This is the very invitation that Unitarian Universalists who are people of color are putting to us today. This is behind those challenging articles in the UU World magazine, the dialogue and discussion at the New Orleans General Assembly, and the White Supremacy Teach-ins that are taking place throughout our churches.
This is first the invitation for we white Unitarian Universalists to hear the soul-views of the Unitarian Universalist of color as they share the pain and sorrow and scarcity they have experienced within Unitarian Universalism. This is the opportunity for us to live out our covenant, that deep relationship we agree to that we come to share our soul-views as well as hear them.
We are being invited to understand if we are Actors, if we are living out a soul-view that is based on the world as a battlefield or the world as a trap. We are being invited to look at ourselves. We are being invited to be Allies, to see the beloved, the radical welcome of others into our lives though the pain and sorrow and scarcity into a becoming widening our vision and gaining us strength. We are being invited to become Accomplices, to understand that the battlefield and the traps were caused the privilege of white people. And we are being invited to dismantle them.
This is the invitation of our faith brothers and sisters, Unitarian Universalists, who have said clearly that the way we practice our faith together is hurting us.
Will you be so courageous to accept the invitation? Will you look at your own soul-view? Will you look at how you are in this world? Will you be an Actor? Will you be an Ally? Will you be an Accomplice? In making a change within our faith and for our world.
This is the invitation we have before us as congregations, as the Baja Four, as districts, and regions and associations as human beings conventing with all creation. But mostly it is the work of our own souls. I will not promise that it will be comfortable, but I can promise you will not do it alone.
Together may we widen our vision and gain in strength for the work that is before us.
May it be so.
October 1, 2017
The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There a a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the live of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice."
It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited too do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.”
- The Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed
Our Puritan forbearers in colonial America spent considerable time at church. They came to church early on Sundays, stayed until lunch, and then returned for a full afternoon. I was taught that after 20 minutes no souls are saved. I suspect one thing that makes worship today shorter is that we don’t believe in bludgeoning the soul into submission, with hellfire and brimstone preaching, but rather inviting it to life.
Like any good invitation, worship must be clear. A party I was recently invited to offered the date and location, but left out the time. Until it got cleared up, it wasn’t really an invitation, it was more like a… hopeful confusion. Without clarity, our Sunday’s might be joyful celebrations, but we could be just a “hopeful confusion” sharing ideas that do not connect our deepest selves to our lives.
Our forbearers had doctrine, a complex system based on scripture that told them what God was, who Jesus was, what the Church was, and the meanings of sin, forgiveness, and redemption. I imagine that it took half of Sunday just to get back on on the same page each week and then start to talk about how it is you are to live.
In contrast, we gather on a Sunday with many individual soul-views. This is that perspective you have gathered from you life and your experience which is deeply held. This is the vision of the world the organizes your actions, sustains you through dark times, and guides you to who you are becoming. Instead of one big doctrine, we have lots of little soul-views, snapshots of who you are and how you are to live in this world.
We are not the first people to note the difference between a comprehensive worldview, that doctrine approach, and many that are diverse and subjective. Germans have two similar, but slightly different words that reflect this distinction. Weltanschauung is a comprehensive, often sophisticated, perspective of the world. Weltbild is a snapshot, a personal picture informing you of who you are and you can become. Communities based on doctrine follow a single weltanschauung, where we hold many weltbilds as a community.
Joanna Macy, a systems thinker, eco-activist, and a Grandmother-mentor to me, teaches that there are four weltbild “passed down through the ages. They are specific to any culture or tradition. You can find all of them in tall the major religions. These for are: world as battlefield, world as trap, world as lover, and world as self.” (World as Lover, World as Self, Macy p19) In her teachings, I hear the language to clearly collect the deep soul-views that are here among us, here, today.
Each of these four offers a vision, a deep soul-view, of the world and who we are in it. These do not look beyond our experience of the pain and sorrow and scarcity in this world. They take into account our individual experiences of suffering and gather them into common containers.
The world as battlefield, then, is a soul-view of those that have been so battered and hurt by life that they perceive the world as a conflict. From the overt clash of armies to the confrontation of ideas to the interactions of daily life, it is all a battle.
You can see this soul-view in the scientific theory of the “survival of the fittest,” which places all life in a biological battlefield. In this view, life exists and evolves by better adaptation and besting of competitors. You can see the battlefield in the collusion of our values, like the argument that will never, ever end, between pro-life and pro-choice. And it is in our daily interactions. You may remember that bestselling self-help book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Within systems, arguments, and differences we know to be true, the world is a battlefield, sees only conflict.
Now, the world is a trap, is similar, but with a twist. Instead of viewing the pain, sorrow and scarcity as a fight, it instead orients on escape. It’s like the first ten minutes of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when Indy faces venomous spiders, deadly pits, poison darts, walls to crush him, human betrayal, and that giant spherical boulder that will either flatten him or trap him forever in the lost temple. The world is a trap names the soul-view of escape from the suffering of this world through addictions, material distractions and shallow entertainment.
Perceiving the world as battlefield and the world as trap invites us to live as Actors. They invite us to play out roles, following scripts not of our choosing, to take up a side in the battle, or avoid the reality of this world altogether. As Actors of these soul-views nothing changes. In fact, they perpetuate themselves, as all we can ever be is an Actor within them. We cannot move outside of them, we cannot analyze them, we cannot understand them, we can only play the role and perpetuate them… and they are pervasive.
Our world today is ruled by the soul-view that it is either a battlefield or a trap. Life is either a conflict or it is to be avoided. This engages the oldest evolutionary part of our brains, the reptilian brain, that knows only fight or flight. This part of us is about our survival in the face of pain, sorrow and scarcity, it is not about living. It’s about everyday being a battle or an escape. And it doesn’t change anything.
In the world as lover, Joanna looks to ancient and modern traditions for imagery of the beloved. This soul-view does not ignore the pain of life, instead it looks into it and sees suffering as a part of who we are. Rather than being the thing to fight or escape, suffering is viewed as a means to grow.
This is much harder to see in our world today, but it is just as true a soul perspective as the world as battlefield and the world as trap. It is the deeply held view that the world wants you to become more, and that the grief and loss and mourning we experience is intertwined with our love and joy and growing. It is the view that life embraces you as a love wanting you to become more in your view, more in your strength, more in your connection and community.
It affords a place to look at the battlefield or the trap and wonder, “Is survival all there is to life?” The answer comes through seeing others, people in the same situation, facing the same sorrows, who not trying to just survive, but are cooperating and working to make a change. This is the invitation to become an Ally. This is the role of recognizing that there is a struggle, but it is not against or away from others, but with them. And that together we can begin to understand what life is and together we can live beyond survival.
There is a brand new billboard on my commute home, that says in big bright block letters, “United We Win.” I’ll be honest, I’m too busy driving by to be able to read the fine print and know what organization is promoting it, but I can tell you that, this is the soul-view of the world as self.
This is a view and a way of living arising from the truth that we are all in this together. It builds on that sense of the world as beloved, holding you through the pain and sorrow and scarcity, and it goes further. It looks back at the battlefields we have made and the traps we have laid for ourselves and acknowledges that I have assisted in creating those battles, I have helped to set those traps.
This is an invitation to living as an Accomplice. An Accomplice knows that we were a part of the problem and that means only we can be part of the fix. It is a way of living of deep engagement and dismantling of the battlefield, we are going to slip in and disarm all of the traps, because we are the ones who made them.
This is the very invitation that Unitarian Universalists who are people of color are putting to us today. This is behind those challenging articles in the UU World magazine, the dialogue and discussion at the New Orleans General Assembly, and the White Supremacy Teach-ins that are taking place throughout our churches.
This is first the invitation for we white Unitarian Universalists to hear the soul-views of the Unitarian Universalist of color as they share the pain and sorrow and scarcity they have experienced within Unitarian Universalism. This is the opportunity for us to live out our covenant, that deep relationship we agree to that we come to share our soul-views as well as hear them.
We are being invited to understand if we are Actors, if we are living out a soul-view that is based on the world as a battlefield or the world as a trap. We are being invited to look at ourselves. We are being invited to be Allies, to see the beloved, the radical welcome of others into our lives though the pain and sorrow and scarcity into a becoming widening our vision and gaining us strength. We are being invited to become Accomplices, to understand that the battlefield and the traps were caused the privilege of white people. And we are being invited to dismantle them.
This is the invitation of our faith brothers and sisters, Unitarian Universalists, who have said clearly that the way we practice our faith together is hurting us.
Will you be so courageous to accept the invitation? Will you look at your own soul-view? Will you look at how you are in this world? Will you be an Actor? Will you be an Ally? Will you be an Accomplice? In making a change within our faith and for our world.
This is the invitation we have before us as congregations, as the Baja Four, as districts, and regions and associations as human beings conventing with all creation. But mostly it is the work of our own souls. I will not promise that it will be comfortable, but I can promise you will not do it alone.
Together may we widen our vision and gain in strength for the work that is before us.
May it be so.