“Dancing with all of the Aspects of Self”

The Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

One of the most heart breaking things for me in the last election was the passing of California Proposition 8 to amend the California Constitution to limit marriage between a man and woman. This is particularly sad for me having officiated at several same sex weddings in San Francisco both in 2004 when Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed same sex marriages in San Francisco as well as this fall after the California Supreme Court acknowledged that Same Sex marriages were in fact legal.

There are countless reasons that this popular vote to change the Constitution of California seems wrong to me and why as a person of faith denying civil rights to any individual is sad a sad state of affairs in my eyes. But the major reason that I am so disheartened by this decision is that when I was serving as the Parish Ministry Intern in San Francisco it was the first time in my life I had ever been in a place where sexual orientation was not treated as a defining characteristic. It wasn’t as though I did not know about people’s relationships. I knew if someone was gay or straight or in relationship or single. But for the first time in my life people held rolls and positions in the church based simply on their qualifications and without any concern over their race, economic stature or sexual orientation. The skills and abilities were all that mattered with little thought given to anything else.

In that setting sexual orientation seemed just part of the basic fabric of a person and no more or less important than their hair color or size of their shoes. I bring this up because in that setting to say that two people of the same sex cannot be married seems – well for lack of a better descriptor – it just seems crazy.

And when I think of this in the context of Parker Palmers words this morning it seems a perfect example of how societal expectations disabuse people of birthright gifts.

One thing I know for sure is that people are born to love and to be loved and to say that one love is different and better than another is a way of downgrading that innate gift we were all born with.

What is marriage if not a loving covenant between two individuals? And to keep giving a privilege and then taking it away from people who in every way embody a loving covenant between two people-- is saying over and over again – “your love is not the same. You may think you are a loving person, you may think you are committed to your partner but your love is not the same, you don’t have the same ability to commit.”

I have also been struck this week by the bantering in our media about our President elect’s race. It has saddened me to hear how many African American Leaders have said they never believed a black man would be elected president in their lifetime. And how many people fear our new President might be assassinated.

When you really think about it, the social constraints that have made it difficult for a black person to see him or herself striving for the highest office in our land are the same social constraints that restrict the marriage between two same sex people.

Our society creates dividing lines of race and class and sexual orientation and religion that are controlled and maintained with laws, fear and violence and create obstacles to living life fully.

Class and race are often assumed to be natural, biologically determined categories when in fact they are social constructs. Together with gender, these distinctions are perpetuated and exploited and limit our views of others and ourselves.

With the recent reports on the jobless rate and the news that our own town has more than 100 families facing foreclosure it makes me wonder what new dividing lines will be formed.

I think of how the stressors of not having enough money to pay bills or to fill up a gas tank or to clothe your children or buy Christmas presents or pay for heat or to eat. And I think of how loosing a home or retirement savings can affect an individuals view of him or herself.

All this leads me to the real question of the day: What does it really mean to be living in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

This was the promise of our forefathers. And yet I wonder how many of us this morning would say we feel truly free?

How often are you truly free to express your full self openly and without fear of reprisal?

I am not saying that it is inappropriate to keep some things private. At different places and times in our lives we all naturally have different aspects of ourselves more fully present.

When I am talking with the children I often can share my silly side where when I am preaching my serious persona comes forward. I am both serious and silly but there are times and places that these opposing aspects of my self are more or less useful.

And yet there are periods when whole parts of my self stay hidden and there are parts of my self that are hidden even to me.

I know that when Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangle Banner he was talking about that freedom from tyranny that the colonists were escaping to this land and yet how long have we recreated that tyranny in our social mores and our own minds?

We are by all accounts in a time of great change. As Duval Patrick has broken through the race barrier that had kept a black man from becoming the Governor of this state in the same way that Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the house, and while I have broken through an unwritten barrier here in this church as your first female parish minister, and Barak Obama has become the first dark skinned President of these United States I still believe we are a long way from being a country free from the tyranny of the social constructs that limit us.

I say this because we are still hearing about it. We are still hearing more about Barak Obama’s Kenyan father and white mother then we do about his education and other qualifications. Race and sex are still primary defining characteristics.

Many of these social constructs and parental and teacher expectations become internalized. They are not written and they are not all the same for any of us.

It might be easy for us to say, I am not black, I am not gay, I am not poor, I am not limited by the race, and class, and sexual divisions that divide our nation. But I can guarantee that we are all to some degree following a script laid out for us that veered us off the path we might have naturally gone. It is (as Parker Palmer suggests) the ways in which “we are trained away from the true self toward images of acceptability” that limit and constrain us.

And so I ask you this morning have you ever felt free? When have you ever felt the determination and liberation that Langston Hughes describes in his poem? Aware of the limits but fully open to your possibilities?”

And if you have never felt it- then I ask you today what would it take for you to feel that free? What would it take for you to feel free to live in full expression of the spirit that you were born with?

This is not a question I can full answer fully myself.

And yet I strive to answer it.

The reason our Unitarian Universalist Principals begin with the understanding of the inherent worth and dignity of every person is because this is the place we all must begin if we are to transform our world and ourselves.

Recognizing the divine in our selves and in others points us toward liberation. Waking up and dancing with all of the aspects of our self is the dance of transformation of liberation and of freedom.

To honor this time of great change in our world, let us begin with the transformation of our selves by unpacking all of the parts of our spirit that have been constrained by beliefs and expectations and express the divinity that is in you.

May it be so.