Sermon: Freedom Dreams

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as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, February 23, 2020

As you know, we are in the midst of stewardship season. And I want to thank all of you who have made your pledges to support First Church so far. We had a really lovely early pledgers party last night. The stewardship team put on a great event with good conversation, good food, and, my favorite, good dancing. It was a pleasure to proverbially cut a rug with some of you. I think we may have to do it more often. And I want to lift up Dick Doughty for bringing his DJ skills to the party. I very much enjoyed the mix of World Beat infused electronica he provided us–and the bit of Chicago house he played to humor me. It was a lovely reminder that we humans share a universal need to, as the adage runs, shake what your mother gave you. As the funk anthem goes, we are one nation under a groove.

The poet Rumi wrote:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

I sometimes think that the field he was talking about was the dance floor–that space where we can come together beyond words and just experience the pleasure of connectedness through sound and movement.

So, thank you stewardship team and Dick for creating that space. I hope that the early pledger party will become a tradition. It is something that can be open everyone who contributes to sustain the beautiful community that is this congregation–an opportunity to celebrate the joy, compassion, and love that bind First Church together.

Speaking of stewardship, one of the many things that your gifts to this congregation allow us to do is bring fabulous guest preachers. This month, we have had two talented religious leaders come and bless us with powerful messages. My dear friend Aisha Hauser came and gifted us with a sermon challenging us to lead with love and liberation. And Duncan Teague, who is something of a new friend, brought us a story from his life about a time when his imagination failed him and what he learned from that experience. In their own ways, each of them called us to imagine the liberating power of our Unitarian Universalist tradition. Each of them called us to imagine a Unitarian Universalism big enough for everyone, a Unitarian Universalism where we truly live into the vision of our religious ancestors: God loves everyone, no exceptions.

Their words painted pictures of what we might, following the historian Robin Kelley, call freedom dreams. These are, in his words, visions of “life as possibility” in which exist “endless meadows without boundaries, free of evil and violence, free of toxins and environmental hazards, free of poverty, racism, and sexism… just free.”

We dream freedom dreams when we are called, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., to trust in “a power that is able to make a way out of no way.” Freedom dreams are the paths–paths which often seem impossible–that lead us to a way when we are stuck in no way. We open ourselves to them when we realize that imagination is one of the most powerful forces on this Earth. Imagination enables us to bring things into being that do not exist. Every human creation that exists–microwaves, computers, violins, soccer balls, teacups, cutting boards, bundt cakes, brick sanctuaries, or well-tailored suits–began in someone’s imagination.

Imagination uncovers hidden paths when all the roads seem closed. Imagination lets us find a route through the forest when we reach the end of the trail. Imagination is trusting that there is a power which, no matter how difficult the day, how drear the hour, will help us to find more love somewhere, more hope somewhere, more peace, more joy. It might not be right here, we might not see it before us, it might not be present in the brutalities and disappointments of our daily lives, as we suffer, as so many of us do, from an exploitative and extractive economic system, but we can imagine that there is a power which, if we keep on keeping on, will enable us to find more love somewhere.

It is one of the purposes of this religious community to help each of us discover and uncover that power. It resides within each of us and surrounds all of us. It comes in many forms. We can call it by many names. Some of us might choose to label it God. Others might find that language limiting or oppressive and prefer to call it human creativity. For my part, I find this power runs beyond my human ability to describe or understand in its totality.

Sometimes we cry out and only encounter its absence. Not everyone is able to find a way out of no way. That is a reality that is heavy on my heart this morning. It is the last Sunday of Black History Month. Black History Month was conceived by the historian Carter G. Woodson as a time to celebrate the achievements of the African American community. A time to lift up: great abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass; great scientists including Neil deGrasse Tyson and Daniel Hale Williams–the first surgeon to perform an open heart surgery; great athletes such as Muhammed Ali and the Williams Sisters; great musicians like Nina Simone and Beyoncé; great writers like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin; great artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kara Walker; great spiritual leaders like Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer…

The list could go on for hours. But there is a difficult truth behind it. We would not be celebrating Black History this month if it was not for the horror of the TransAtlantic slave trade. We only have Black History Month because one of the most brutal exercises in human history. Reflecting on a need to recognize this dynamic as part of Black History Month, writing in the New York Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan recently argued, “It’s time to acknowledge what black history really reveals — not individual heroism or the endurance of democratic ideals, but their opposites.” Black History Month, in other words, reveals not just the beauty and power of black people but the brutality and danger of white supremacy.

And so, as part of Black History Month, it is important to take a moment to honor all those who suffered as they were unwilling brought from Africa to the American continents. The Caribbean poet Edouard Glissant offers a challenging description of their pain:

“Imagine two hundred human beings crammed into a space barely capable of containing a third of them. Imagine vomit, naked flesh, swarming lice, the dead slumped, the dying crouched. Imagine, if you can, the swirling red of mounting to the deck, the ramp they climbed, the black sun on the horizon, vertigo, this dizzying sky plastered to the waves.”

It is terrifying to imagine that between 1502 when the first enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean and the 1880s, when the last ship landed with an illegal human cargo in Brazil, some ten to twelve million people–parents, children, friends, husbands, wives, mothers, lovers, elders, and babies–were forcibly moved across the ocean blue. Not all of them arrived. Not all of them made a way out of no way. Some died of illness. Some were thrown overboard by brutal captains who decided it was easier to collect insurance money for lost human cargo than to transport unwilling people from one continent to another. And some threw themselves into murky blue graves rather than endure a life of unfreedom.

The discouraging, disheartening, dismal truth is sometimes it is impossible to find the power that will help us make a way out of no way. But, then, I am not entirely certain that finding a way out of no way is something we are supposed to do on our own. Nor am I entirely certain that we are supposed to be finding a way out of no way for ourselves. I suspect that when we dream freedom dreams, we are often dreaming them for the people who will come after us.

There were people who dreamed freedom dreams in the bellies of those disgusting slave ships. Many of them dreamed those dreams for themselves–dreamed of returning to Africa. Many of them also dreamed dreams for their descendants, for the people who would come after them. They imagined that the world might not be better for them, but it could be better for future generations: there is more love somewhere.

Sometimes when I think about freedom dreams, I think about the last public words of Martin King, the words he left us right before he was brought down by a white supremacist bullet. He told us, God’s “allowed me to go the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.”

It is right there. In that passage. The truth about freedom dreams. It is not about your survival or my survival. It is about our survival. It is about us, collectively, together, as a human community, as a community of memory and witness, love and justice, figuring out how to find a way out of no way.

We can only survive together. It is important to remember this when we cry out for a way out of no way. Sometimes we cry out and hear nothing in response. But when our voices are met with silence, we might recall the words of denise levertov:

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.

History teaches us that it is always possible to imagine a way out of no way. I might not be able to envision it. You might not be able to visualize it. But the collective we can find it.

This is one of the lessons of Black History Month. Beginning in the holds of those awful freighters, suffering humans began to dream freedom dreams. They imagined that their lives and the world could be different than it was. They imagined no slavery. They imagined freedom for themselves. And that imagination enabled some of them to find it. They found it onboard ships like the Amistad when they rose up and overthrew the slave traders. They found it when they organized and revolted–creating the nation of Haiti and enabling the Union to win the Civil War. And they found it when they ran away.

Carol told the children and youth a story about a maroon. Have any of you heard that word before? Maroon? The maroons were groups of people who escaped slavery and then, using their freedom dreams, built new communities where they could live free. Some of these communities became quite large. They numbered in the thousands and fought against Europeans who wanted to re-enslave.

In Maroon communities people often sought to live and worship as their ancestors did back in Africa. They attempted to recreate ways of life and love that had been disrupted by their forced migration. Some of these communities endured for years. In towns in Jamaica and on the island Barbuda there are communities that were founded by maroons hundreds of years ago and are still governed by their descendants today.

Maroon communities were sometimes multi-racial affairs–places where people imagined a continent organized around interracial cooperation not white supremacy. In such places black people, white people, indigenous people, the polyglot of people who lived in the Americas, came together and imagined and built new kind of communities where they could pursue their dreams of freedom. In such places, people held up and held out ways of being that were antithetical to the white supremacist economic and social order that told them they were less than human. In such places, there were ways of being that suggested it is possible to find more love, more hope, more joy, somewhere.

Freedom dreams, some people dreamed them in the holds of slave ships, some people rebelled, some people ran away and started maroons. Freedom dreams, the TransAtlantic Slave Trade ended with the abolition of slavery. Freedom dreams, the legal regime of Jim Crow was ended. Freedom dreams, black people survived and many thrived.

We are lifting up freedom dreams because this is the last Sunday of Black History Month. It is important to take time to center the experiences and theologies of people of color. It is important for at least two reasons. The first is simple: our congregation is on the cusp of meeting the definition of a multiracial religious communities. The vast majority of religious communities in the United States are racial and ethnic enclaves–where one group comprises 80% or more of participants. So, when a religious community is reaching a point where 20% or more of the people do not belong to a single ethnic or racial group it is considered a multiracial one.

At the beginning of the month, Alma and Tawanna reported our congregational data to the Unitarian Universalist Association. They had to tell the UUA how many members we have, the size of our annual budget, the number of people who attend worship and the like. One of the questions that the UUA asks is the percentage of people of color who are members of the church. And Alma and Tawana came up with at least 17%.

So, we are on the cusp of transitioning to a predominantly white church to one that fits that definition of a multiracial one. And experience teaches me that one way we make that transition is being intentional and inclusive about our theology and our community. It is why we have been using more Spanish in the service. And why I have been very intentional about inviting people of color and women to fill the pulpit when Scott and I are not in the pulpit.

And it is why I take time each year to give a sermon inspired specifically by black theology. I want us to live into the vision of our religious ancestors–the vision that said that God loves everyone, no exceptions, and be a community where all people can feel beloved. This is why next month I will also be offering a sermon on eco-feminist theology and another in the autumn on indigenous and Latinx theology.

Second: we are talking about the Black Radical Imagination this morning because I think it is an essential resource for all us–regardless of our racial identity–to find a way out of no way. I know this from personal experience.

I think that many of you know that I grew up in Michigan in the eighties and nineties. Detroit in those days was a musical hotbed. There was always something amazing something going on. It did not matter if you went to a tiny club, a street party, a county fair, or a big concert venue–there was always some funky music to be found. And if you tuned into your non-commercial radio station–college or public radio–you could catch a flash of audio inspiration.

One of my favorite groups to listen to was Parliament-Funkadelic. Have you ever heard of them? They are headed by the fantastic George Clinton, an incredibly talented musician known for his wild, often multi-color hair, flashy and imaginative costumes. The band itself is a large admixture of vocalists and instrumentalists–drummers, bass players, keyboardists, and horn players.

As the band’s name suggests, Parliament-Funkadelic is a funk band. They create hypnotic, psychedelic, kaleidoscopic soundscapes filled with ingenious Afro-centric fantastic and futuristic lyrics:

Well, all right, starchild
Citizens of the universe, recording angels
We have returned to claim the pyramids
Partying on the mothership

Those lyrics appear on their seminal 1975 album “Mothership Connection.” Earlier in the album listeners are informed that the P-Funk is coming from “Top of the Chocolate Milky Way.”

P-Funk’s words offer a vision, in Robins Kelley’s words, of “modern ancients redefining freedom, imagining a communal future (and present) without exploitation; all-natural, African, barefoot, and funky.”

P-Funk made that vision available for everyone. Sure, it came from their experiences and their tradition as African Americans, but it was available to everyone who wanted to turn their dial to radio “station W-E-F-U-N-K” or attend their concerts.

And let me tell you, a P-Funk concert in Detroit was an amazing affair. George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic brought the whole family on stage in a way that I cannot imagine was possible anywhere else. The stage crafted mothership descended and out came Bootsy Collins with a bass guitar, star shaped sunglasses and fabulous high heels. And then George Clinton was inviting everyone he knew on to the stage. His granddaughter–a starchild of maybe the age of five–was telling everyone, “Make My Funk the P-Funk.” At one concert I went to I think Clinton even invited his accountant on stage. I am not sure my memory is exactly correct, but I do remember an older white man on stage who had no discernable musical talent and was wearing a button-up shirt. Clinton gave him a quick introduction that seemed to suggest the man helped him manage the business of the band.

Such experiences opened the world–opened the imagination to me–in a way that was not otherwise possible. I saw, live and enfleshed, a community that invited everyone to live their own truth, live into own self, a community where people were just free, “free of evil and violence,” in Robin Kelley’s words, “free of toxins and environmental hazards, free of poverty, racism, and sexism… just free.”

These visions are not limited to George Clinton and P-Funk. They are all around us. We can discover them inside ourselves. We can find them in so many voices. They are in music today, just as they were in music from Clinton’s generation. The Grammy Award winning artist Janelle Monae casts her own freedom dreams in songs like “Crazy, Classic, Life.” There she sings:

We don’t need another ruler
All of my friends are kings
I’m not America’s nightmare
I’m the American cool
Just let me live my life

Just let me live my life. As we move to the close of this sermon, I want to invite you to have space to dream your own freedom dreams. What would it mean if we were all able to truly live our own lives? The exercise I am about to offer you comes from Chris Crass, I have invited you to do it before I am inviting you to do it again now because there are precious few spaces in the world where we can come together and imagine a world organized around love and liberation.

I invite you to get comfortable. Close your eyes. Notice your body. Notice how it feels to sit in your pew. Notice how it feels to sit in this sanctuary filled with people inspired by our Unitarian Universalist tradition’s vision of love for humanity. Take a deep breath. Feel the air as it enters your lungs, bringing with it the force of life. As you exhale, feel your body releasing any stress and any negative emotions you have. Feel that negativity drain to the ground. Stay with your breath and focus on it as you inhale and exhale five times. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Now, give yourself permission to think creatively and expansively about: The world you are working to create. What is your vision for a just society? What is your freedom dream? There is so much violence that exists in the world. It exists in the government. It exists in our communities. Sometimes it exists in our homes. If you could imagine all of that shifting, all of that hate and fear disappearing, what would the world be like? If you left your home a week from now and discovered that white supremacy had been dismantled what would your neighborhood be like? If you went to the grocery store and learned that violence against women, sexism, and misogyny had been overcome, how would the world appear? If you went to work a month from now and found, we were no longer in the midst of a climate crisis what would humanity’s relationship to the planet be like? What can you imagine? What would it look like in family or your home? In your neighborhood? How would people relate to each other? How would people relate to resources and to the planet? In this new vision, what is valued, who is valued and how?

Imagine that the world you dream about has come to fruition. Imagine that the honest world, the fair world, has arrived. Imagine that you encounter it today, after you leave this worship service. When you depart from this sanctuary what do you find outside of the door? As you travel down the street what kind of institutions and resources do you discover? What do they look like? What sort of services are there? What values are the economy based on? As you return to your home, what does it look like? What is your neighborhood like? What kind of activities are going on? How are decisions being made? How is conflict dealt with? Can you think about the rest of the city of Houston? What are other neighborhoods like? What about other cities? What is Dallas like? Or other states or countries? What is California like? Or Ethiopia?

When you are ready, bring yourself back to what is happening in our sanctuary. Hold onto your freedom dreams. As you do, I invite you to recall the advice of our poet from this morning, Angelamaría Dávila. She wrote about being:

un animal que habla
para decirle a otro parecido su esperanza.

An animal that speaks
to tell another animal what it hopes for

Today, after you leave this service, I invite you to find someone you do not know already and share with them some part of your freedom dream. By speaking it aloud you may just bring it closer to being. By speaking it aloud you might just strengthen your own resolve to work towards creating it. By imagining together, we might be able to find a way out of no way. It might not be for us. It might be for those who come after us. But it is there, waiting, in our imaginations. It is waiting for us to envision it.

We are going to follow the sermon with a rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It is a wonderful piece rooted in the African American tradition that calls us to remember the possibility that we can dream freedom dreams and move together into a better future—move together like the saints.

That it might be so, I invite the congregation to say Amen.

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