Some resistance is futile
Some resistance is fertile

September through June, our Chalice Circles, Sunday Services, and Religious Education classes draw from monthly themes we get from Soul Matters, a UU community of collaborators. This month’s theme, resistance, lends itself to two interpretations. First is political resistance — organized resistance to injustice and oppression. Many of us are engaging in prophetic resistance in the Kansas legislature as we oppose the targeting of trans people and the defunding of public education. Whether or not we convince the current cohort of legislators to investigate their assumptions and recognize the humanity of people who appear different from them, our resistance strengthens our community bonds. The other kind of resistance is experienced personally and collectively when we hear — but tune out — the call to grow more fully into ourselves. Last fall, I gave a reflection drawing on the Hebrew Bible story of Jonah who attempted to resist his call, only to be gobbled up by a whale and coughed up on the shores of his destiny. You don’t have to believe in destiny to appreciate this story and its message. When we know what we’re made for in this lifetime, resistance is futile.

This year, in addition to the Soul Matters themes, my reflections have been informed by the book Trusting Change: Finding Our Way Through Personal and Global Transformation by UU Rev. Karen Hering. This month’s skill to help us cross the threshold from what was to what will be is “claiming companions.” The two forms of resistance are relevant to this threshold skill. Claiming companions is an act of resistance, a resistance to oppression which keeps us physically and emotionally isolated from others. Claiming companions for the journey through life is an expression of our power as a community to make a new world, resisting the status quo and writing a new story for ourselves and those we love. But there is also resistance to claiming companions, as Rev. Hering writes:

For some of us, it can be hard to ask for help or support, especially when we are feeling vulnerable — which is to say, when we need it most… I’ve heard people say their personal threshold is unique, so no one else could really understand or relate to it. I’ve also heard others insist they are on a journey they must or should make on their own. I’ve convinced myself, at times, of that rugged exhortation to pull myself up by my bootstraps.

She goes on to deconstruct the metaphor of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” pointing out that it was first used as a derisive comment in 1835, “about those with impractical aspirations of self-sufficiency, as delusional as Don Quixote chasing windmills.” Part of the beauty of, and rationale for, religious community is that we heal from the delusion of necessary isolation. We do this in small groups and teams throughout the congregation, on the Facebook group and on the listserv, and on Sunday mornings in our reflection time together.

We are taking the time to claim each other as companions not just in spiritual work of building community, but in the administrative and civic work of building institutions. To that end, we need all members’ participation at the Annual Meeting Sunday, April 23rd, after the service.

I will close my words here with a reading that will serve as the chalice lighting on April 2nd and as an anchor for the four other services this month. When the conveners met to prepare for April services this month, we were all drawn in by this invitation to invoke, provoke, and convoke as a form of justice-making and truth-speaking. Perhaps we should rename the role of “convener” as “convoker.” (I’m only partially kidding.)

An Invocation for Resistance
Rev. David Breden

Now, there is invoke;
there is provoke;
there is just broke
and there is a-woke.

There is justice;
there is injustice;
and there’s just us
to make justice and love happen—
that’s what I believe because
I’m a Freethinker . . .
I believe it’s only us, together, who can save ourselves.

I’m going to convoke— c-o-n— “with,”
to call to gather . . .
to call together . . .
to call to get with it;
Let’s convoke
and provoke,
because those mad with power,
those afraid of truth,
shut down newspapers,
bomb mosques,
close churches,
shut meetings down
and shut people up . . .
If you have an address,
you’re in danger.

But the poets, the writers, the artists—
the dreamers of a freer way—
will persist,
assist,
and re-sist—
invoking,
evoking,
provoking
convoking,
and awakening the populace.
You, poets, are the sacred;
you, prophet-artists are the hope;
you are the resistance!

This kind of resistance is fertile, holding and nourishing the seeds of our collective liberation and evolution.

Your enthusiastic convoker,
Pastor Isa