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Sarah Butler pushed back against calls for liberals to sit down and shut up. “[C]ivility is the luxury of those in power. . . . It is instead loud voices, strong convictions, and unyielding insistence on justice that has always brought us further along as a nation.” (Finding My Ground, May 17)
Tina Porter cheered on the resistance: “Warrior on, my friends in the struggle. . . . Be not quiet in the face of tyranny, and listen and follow, my white friends, to those most vulnerable who have been in this fight since birth. . . . Do not be swayed by calls for civility. It is time to rock the boats. All of them.” (Tina L. Porter, June 26)
The Rev. Amy Shaw had advice for liberals: “We tolerated the intolerance because it just isn’t polite to riot, and now the highest court in our land has been stained and twisted. Stop being so damn nice.” (Chalice Fire, June 27)
Elizabeth Mount approved of Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant: “Your behavior has social consequences in this world, and the proper response to fascism isn’t to grit your teeth and politely seat them anyway.” (Facebook, June 25)
A blight in our nation
The Rev. Jason Shelton rewrote a favorite poem by Wendell Berry:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down in the middle of street,
in front of the state capitol,
where the voracious politicians feed. (Jason Shelton Music, June 13)
The Rev. Michael Tino described “a blight in our nation. A fungus that has lay low in our soil for generations, silently poisoning the ground. It is silent no more. It is killing our siblings, our cousins, our neighbors, our friends. It is a blight of hatred, of intolerance, of bigotry.” (Facebook, June 17)
The Rev. Theresa Soto updated a traditional prayer:
Brown Mary, full of grace,
Heal this fascist-turning place.
Wipe the tears from every face.
Help us be a humane race.
Brown Mary, full of grace. (Facebook, June 28)
The Rev. Jordinn Nelson Long issued a challenge about immigrant children: “Imagine it’s your kid. Dare—risk your whole heart—to imagine it. And then. Then, with tears fresh on your cheeks, demand—with the full strength of your horror, your hurt, your outrage—that these kids be returned.” (Facebook, June 20)
Hope in times of chaos
After watching Come Sunday, a film about Bishop Carlton Pearson’s Universalist epiphany, the Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford pointed out the real world implications of our Universalist theology: “[If] you are glad, if you thank God, at the idea of someone tortured forever in hell, then how could you possibly be willing to support anything that would mean a better life for them now?” (Boots and Blessings, April 17)
The Rev. Karen Hering described the hope we need: “Doesn’t spiritual work—and the physics of truly revolutionary change—always come back to letting go? Hope, to be useful in times of chaos like our own, must be detached from expectations of specific outcomes.” (Karen Hering, May 11)
What are we waiting for?
The Rev. Tom Schade writes that there is no reason for UUs to be “depressed, discouraged, or despondent” about the state of the UUA: “As in every social movement I have ever seen, there is also judgement, rudeness, impatience, intolerance, self-righteousness, and conflict. People bring all their shit into social movements and really let it fly in the heightened atmosphere. But none of that should distract us from what is most important. If this is not the moment we have been waiting for, then what are we waiting for?” (The Lively Tradition, June 25)