The renovation of our church annex has entered its demolition phase. When I arrive each day, I find Jerry Best, director of the project, sitting calmly amidst the chaos. On Wednesday, he gave me the same warm greeting as always. “Reverend Phillip!” He told me he was eager for the upcoming service and suggested that I use Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” for gathering music.
I had heard this classic rock hit countless times but never knew the lyrics. Jerry knows what he’s talking about. You have seen Jerry working sound in our sanctuary. You might not know that he was once soundman for Lynyrd Skynyrd! Let me give you a sample of Crazy Train.
[half sung] “Crazy, that’s how it goes. Millions of people living as foes. Maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate. Mental wounds not healing. Life’s a bitter shame. I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”
Many of us can identify with the sentiment, sickened by hate and violence. Democracy, reproductive rights, voting rights, liberal education, libraries, and the environment all under attack. Where is the switch to turn off the insanity?
We take refuge in this congregation, imagining it as an island of rationality in a sea of insanity. But sometimes everything comes into question. Have we really found something useful? The ground of everything can seem to be shifting. Is UU for real?
We have this expansive wonderful vision of a world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Does that mean we have lost touch with reality? Are we crazy?
Does it make sense to throw in our lot with a religious tradition and movement that asks us to affirm and promote a global community with peace and justice for all? Is it crazy to devote ourselves to this effort? My answer may surprise you. What we are doing makes sense, and it’s crazy. Positively Crazy!
When I say that our UU tradition is calling us in a Positively Crazy direction, I’m using a phrase introduced to me by a friend and mentor, the legendary human rights activist David Oaks.
My last sermon talked about play as spiritual practice and as a requirement for survival. Today I’m playing with the words “positive” and “crazy”, and I’m emphasizing the positive.
We are the true pro-life fanatics. We respect life. Some would say we revere life.
Our tradition can be very challenging! Our vision of Beloved Community, our commitment to truth and justice, often leads us to challenge established norms. The norm of America is a prosperity built upon kidnapping, enslavement, and genocide. To this day, that prosperity is kept from many people; therefore, guns and war have been part of our norm. Normal culture has trashed ecosystems far and wide. “Normal” culture has generated so much plastic it’s choking life in the oceans. Normal people use RoundUp until glyphosate and other super toxins accumulate and poison our bodies
and our world.
Now don’t get me wrong! I have nothing against normal people. I’m just having trouble believing in their existence. Perhaps we have all been made crazy by a legacy of trauma, deception, and prohibitions on truth.
Addressing the American Psychological Association in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “You are saying that all must seek the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.”
“But on the other hand, I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted…We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”
UU tradition calls us to dismantle oppression. This will mean removing our support from established traditions and norms. That’s Positively Crazy!
George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Dr. King said, “The kingdom of heaven will not be ushered in by a contented majority, but by the creative discontent of a maladjusted minority.”
Hero activism is Positively Crazy. Take for example John Lewis and the freedom riders. If it’s crazy to disregard individual safety, the world is a much better place because of Positively Crazy people who risked and, in many instances, lost their lives in the service of humanity and justice.
As a teen, I was disturbed to realize that many of my biggest heroes had been killed. I’m talking about Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Jesus, and Gandhi. Seeing the movie “Gandhi”, and reading his autobiography, what struck me most was the 2,500 people who marched to the Dharasana Salt Works. There the British police beat them brutally
with clubs. The protesters remained peaceful and did not retreat! Reporting of the vicious attacks of nonviolent protesters exposed the brutality of British domination and it led to India’s independence.
In preparing this sermon, I went online and toured some Positively Crazy hero activism. Reading about India’s salt march, I found tears on my face — a few at first and then many more.
2,500 unarmed Indians received blows from British authorities without fleeing or returning the violence! How is that possible? How did they resist their biological fight or flight response? It’s crazy, right?! And it’s what defeated the British empire!
When I hear reports of protests by Russian citizens, I am similarly moved. What enables Russians to protest Putin’s war on Ukraine knowing that there is a good chance they will be arrested, abused, poisoned — killed?
Most of us have probably seen the video or image of a lone unarmed citizen stopping a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. European media referred to him as “Tank Man.” Best guess is that Tank Man was 19 yr. old student Wang Weili. After he stopped a tank and climbed onto it, Chinese police took him away. Wang Weilin was never heard from again.
By comparison, flying a rainbow flag outside a church is a lot less risky. UU congregations have flown them proudly for decades to side with love in solidarity with LGBTQIA+. Now with white supremacy MAGA inspired violence, flying a rainbow flag is Positively Crazy! Doing so we assume some of the risk that LGBTQIA+ people have been subjected to for years.
We like to talk about global community with peace and justice for all. It’s easy for me to speak to you about fascist trends like criminalizing the teaching of US history of systemic racism. It’s relatively easy for us to espouse global community with peace and justice for all. It’s good and easy to sing songs about a world transformed by our care. It
will take more effort for us to do what it takes to make our congregations truly welcoming of and attractive to people of color, LGBTQIA people, people with disabilities, youth, people who don’t have master’s degrees, neurodivergent people.
Rev. Alicia Forde, Director of the UUA International Office, calls this UU soul work. It’s the work of becoming honest about our participation in, support for, and benefit from oppressive traditions. This is hard work. We are being called to be willing to examine our privileges and behaviors. We are called to be part of the transformation of our lives and our denomination! We are called to continue prophetic tradition.
I put prophetic tradition in the Positively Crazy category. The prophets of the Bible were people who heard the voice of G*d urging them to speak truth to power, including the power of their peers. Prophets addressed the cost of maintaining the status quo. They called upon leaders and their fellow citizens to make corrections toward justice, to move into right relationship with neighbors and the source of life. The prophets spoke out against mistreatment of widows, disabled, impoverished, marginalized, and oppressed people.
Our prophetic tradition carries a utopian vision capable of correcting normal human insanity. Prophetic voice addresses the insane delusions of established norms. It directs us toward sanity and leads us in a free and responsible search for truth and justice.
Commitment to justice offers an antidote to the sense of meaninglessness that plagues so many in the modern world. Finding or making meaning, this is religion’s job. Religion helps us make sense of life events that are impossible to grasp.
Death is top o’ the list of life events that drive people crazy. Incomplete (unhealed) grief causes us to lose it. We lose our flexibility, our ability to flow along with life. Death and the little deaths that come with trauma, losses and heartbreak sometimes interfere with our ability to integrate new experiences.
Many years ago, UUA congregational life specialist Robert Latham told us that “every religion worth its salt offers a prescription for healing. Healing happens when we can integrate the fragmented pieces of our lives into a meaningful whole.”
Albert Einstein also spoke of religion’s ability to heal by nurturing consciousness. He said: “A human being is part of the whole called by us as the universe, a part of limited time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it, but to try to overcome it, is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
Supporting peace of mind, aka nurturing souls, is only half our UU mission. We are called to nurture souls in order TO help heal the world. Our tradition asks us to do the inner work and outer work simultaneously. We have this outrageous faith that sets our sights on the Beloved Community and asks us to grow spiritually to enable the success
of our mission.
Rev. Taqueena Boston said, “Beloved Community includes welcome, celebration, presence, and a sense that we are all in this together. It is knowing that wherever I find myself, I am safe, and all others are safe, and that justice, equity, and compassion is extended to all. Beloved Community means that when the Other is encountered, the response is the extension of hospitality and friendship rather than suspicion, mistrust, and regarding difference as a threat.”
We deliver this crazy message: we say you are welcome here. We love you just the way you are. Now, please join us in our effort to heal the world! Join us for learning, spiritual growth, and creating justice. Join us as we learn how to become more effective by acting courageously and by growing in self-awareness, compassion, and vulnerable honesty.
We love you! Now please change with us! We are trying to love the hell out of this world, and we are asking for your help. Our plea comes not from a delusional fear of divine wrath. It’s a positively crazy plea of hope and courage, a call to love justice and to walk humbly with Spirit.
Taking a little license with a song from Les Misérables: “Do you hear the people sing?” It is a song of hope again… Beyond the barricade is there a world you want to see? There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!
Amen and Ase’
(Ase’ is a Yoruba word pronounced “ah-shay”. It’s somewhat similar to Amen. Ashe represents the life force or power that each of us have to get things done, to make changes.)
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