General Assembly Reflections

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Both virtual and in person services are followed by coffee hour.

Story for All Ages

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Good morning, my name is Signe Lalish, I use she/her pronouns and I’m the President of your Board of Trustees.

This morning, we gather together in worship to practice love, explore spirituality, build community, and promote justice. This morning, we will hear from our members and staff who attended General Assembly this summer. General Assembly or GA is the annual meeting of our Unitarian Universalist Association also known as the UUA. Participants worship, witness, learn, connect, and make policy for the Association through democratic process.

Join us as we learn more about where our faith is heading and the lessons we each brought back.

Nicole Duff

Good morning. My name is Nicole Duff, I use she/her pronouns and I am your Director of Membership Development.

I was fortunate to go to General Assembly this year to serve as both an East Shore staff member and as the Vice President of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Membership Professionals.

This GA was a wonderful opportunity to connect with others from across the country, share ideas and get inspired. For me, the most impactful moment was in the opening celebration. Rev. Bill Sinkford, a former UUA president, gave a homily entitled: “The Transient and the Permanent.”

In this sermon, he starts by reminding us that as UUs, we are always wresting with the question of who we are and how to belong whole heartedly and help love win in the world. That wrestling happens because, as he says, “the answers to those questions are always changing… what served us yesterday those answers need to be tested against the needs of the new day.”

Our denomination has had a rough few years, back in 2017 we faced a crisis, a division. To help calm things, Rev. Sinkford and two others were asked to share the role of president to get us back on track. And even still, there is some division. There are some UUs who question our commitment to anti-racist work and if it’s right for us.

He said we need to face our history of our commitment to transformation and our history of retreating from those commitments.

In 1997, the GA voted overwhelming to commit to anti-racisim work (which you can read about on our website). There was pushback… pushback on the offerings and if the theology was “UU enough.” Others claimed since UUs were not personally racist, does Unitarian Universalism need to change. There was pushback, and the pushback won.

Before that, he shared, in 1969-71, the UUA decided to financially support the Black Affairs Council, a group made up of black UUs, as a form of early reparations. They made the commitment… and then reneged. There was pushback about if integration was really the answer. And the pushback won then too.

There were other chances to do more… opportunities we didn’t take. Rev. Sinkford says the pushback is often whether or not the approaches being used is “UU enough.” He reminds us this is a type of perfectionism, and as many of us have learned, perfectionism is really about power and who gets to define what is good.

Then he said the words that still give me chills:

“How many second chances do you think this faith will get? How many do you think this faith deserves?”

He reminded us, and something I think we can all use “If we knew what was guaranteed to work, we would have been living in the beloved community for decades.”

I wanted to share this, because I think we could all use a reminder of where we were and where we want to be. A reminder that the approaches will never be perfect, but it can move us forward…. And don’t we want to move forward?

Thank you.

Signe Lalish

A seminar that really stuck with me was about class. 

It touched on how Everyone will tell you they are middle class (couch surfers to millionaires). Using a very interesting mathematical breakdown of what our parents were like when we were 12, we were able to put ourselves in class categories. Predominantly, our groups consisted of upper middle class and wealthy categories. What was interesting is hearing the varying stories of people in each group and teasing out how we got there. The disparities in income and lifestyle were great but the stories of priviledge and access to upward mobility were varied. This isn’t a bad thing but something to be aware of. Mark W. Harris, the author of “Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalism History” wrote, “The essential question is: Who belongs with us? Sometimes Unitarian Universalists believe the stereotype that we are only educated suburbanites, when it is clearly not true. Many Unitarian Universalists live in marginal economic circumstances or do not have college educations.” 

I too came from a background of limited economic means. My parents’ parents were well to do, but mine chose a downwardly mobile lifestyle. To live below the poverty line and live off the land.  I was reminded in Africa recently (I am admitting just how elitist this sounds right now so its ok to laugh), just how wealthy my parents really were when I explained that we had no running water or electricity, but we had oil lamps. Apparently, only the rich families of long ago had those! The tribes there in Livingstone, Zambia, wrote that prior to English colonization they never felt poor. They were happy and content with their life. It was the British who told them they were poor and were missing something from their lives and made the tribes feel as though something was wrong with them. I remember the same thing happening to me as a child. My life was quite happy and content. The only time I ever felt it wasn’t was when another child made me feel I was missing out for some reason.  

Are we making assumptions or just accepting people for who they are? Let’s start by asking newcomers about what brings them joy instead of what they do for work? When we stop to recognize classism and call it out we can begin to make change to affect how we make our policies within our own church, how we spend the money and who is representing those decisions (for example), how we use language that is accessible to a wider swath of people so we aren’t only speaking to the groups we know and feel comfortable with (those who don’t speak English as a native language for example, or never graduated high school, Etc).  

In conclusion, I echo what Mark writes here, “The institutional goal of diversity and the theology of universalism can only be realized through personal connection.” 

Thank You 

David Langrock

I want to speak briefly about the ideas raised by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in the Ware Lecture Conversation he had with UUA president Susan Frederick Gray at Ga. I had certainly been aware of Dr. Kendi, most specifically his books about Anti-Racism and I’d heard him speak before this talk, so I was surprised at how much I would be moved by some of what feels like the foundational concepts of his work. 

Dr. Kendi believes that identifying people as opposed to behaviors as racist is fundamentally unhelpful. Turning racism into an identity comforts those who are not easily identifiable as a “Racist”. “I’m not in the KKK or the Proud Boys, I’m not a racist.” In ideologically liberal spaces such as ours, even predominantly white communities, I doubt anyone is a “racist” by this measure. And yet, we all have a lifetime of opportunity to be more anti-racist, to daily intentionally practice honesty and vulnerability about our behaviors both “racist”. I know from experience that this can be painful.

In his book, “My Grandmother’s Hands”, Resmaa Menakem, calls this “clean pain”. It is the pain that mends and can build our capacity for growth. It is the pain we experience when we don’t know what to do, when we are scared, and when we step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability. 

Kendi further stated that everyone is capable of both “racist” and “anti-racist” thoughts and behaviors. And I believe this is way of understanding can and should be extended to all dimensions of oppression. My thoughts from GA as I return to my life and my work here at East Shore is to push away these easy and comforting reductions of oppressive identity and to leaning in to this clean pain of honesty and vulnerability. I want to contribute to our community by holding myself and every space I’m in accountable to the anti-oppression principle we affirmed when we passed the 8th principle last year. I look forward to facing this hard and rewarding work with each and every one of you.

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