Committed to Justice, Awakened in Love

I’ve served this congregation for about 20 months now, and many of you have gotten to know
me well. Some of you have even become Facebook friends, and in the days since the US
election in November 2024 and the Inauguration in January 2025, you have gotten to know
more about me, maybe something you already knew, maybe something altogether new—I can
get very, very angry. I say this with awareness, not pride. Lately, I hit that “Angry” emoji on posts
with at least double the frequency of the “Like” or “Love” emojis. The algorithm knows me well,
and when it is not feeding me stories and memes of the latest outrages of the current
administration, well, my friends are feeding me.

Some people will say that anger is a bad emotion, if not bad, then perhaps a useless or
counterproductive emotion. Maybe so. However, I was raised on anger, my father often enraged
about something, and he didn’t really hold back on his expression of the feeling. I spent many,
many years trying to be a less angry person, which most often showed up as a great deal of
self-control followed inevitably by an eruption of volcanic proportions. In management-speak, I
was a personality type known as the “Ticking Time Bomb.” Yes, that tracked. After more work on
myself, I learned that anger is often what is known as a secondary emotion, one disguising or
protecting other emotions, often fear or pain. That tracked, too.

Now, there is a lot to be angry about these days. Do I need to detail it? The viciousness. The
cruelty. The stupidity. The sheer grift and greed of it all. I don’t think for a minute it is just me,
just my habitual form of reactivity. And I have learned something else about the anger I am
feeling so often these days—anger is my engine. Anger is what drives me to action, anger is
what moves me to act for the people I love and the world I want for all of us. Anger, righteous
anger, helps me to keep my focus on my values, on what matters most to me. What is your
engine, the engine which drives you?

Yes, indeed, I feel angry often these days. I also feel tired. I feel worn out with hypervigilance
and hyperawareness. I feel helpless and powerless and afraid. Sometimes I feel guilty, if I
disengage, if I don’t look at the news, if I am not up on the latest outrage and the response my
friends are giving it. I feel guilty that my life day to day is not really all that different since the
election and the inauguration. Yes, the stock market plunge is lowering the amount in my
retirement fund, but I’m not retired yet and don’t really need to think about that money. I feel
guilty for the privilege I hold that, so far, has kept me from being detained, deported, prevented
from voting, disabled from reading the books I want to, from speaking my thoughts freely, from
crossing borders freely, from accessing the medical treatments and medications I regularly
require. I feel guilty for the privilege I hold that keeps me from being physically attacked for
whom I love and how I present. I wonder if you, too, feel guilt or, perhaps, detachment or fear or
pain, given all the weirdness and upheaval and uncertainty that is currently our norm. And
though I am very angry, I find that my anger is not sustaining me.

Our Unitarian Universalist values call us to the work of democratic process and justice, to
fairness and equity, to peace and the dismantling of systems of oppression within our UU
communities and in our larger world. We know the work required of us, and the world is
providing us plenty of opportunities to do that work. And most of us are well-versed in specific
actions of resistance: Marching is a form of resistance. So is sitting down. So is taking a knee.
So is meeting to organize for the letter writing, the phone calling, the showing up, making signs,
with our voices raised in words or songs. And we know we do not do the work alone. We are
always more than one. We are stronger and louder together. And yet, sometimes, in this time
truly, the problems seem too large or too complex. The problems are so many, everywhere all at
once. Our arms, our hearts get tired. Hope itself gets tired. We become so tired—Physically.
Emotionally. Spiritually. And though I am very angry, I find that my anger is not sustaining me.
And then that guilt, that numbness, the fear and pain, kick in.

The writer and political commentator Anand Giridharadas understands this guilt many of us are
experiencing when we try to give ourselves a little distance, a little respite from the devastation.
He encourages us to resist guilt, because, in his estimation and I have to say I agree with him,
“the best revenge against these grifters and bigots and billionaires and bullies is to live well,
richly, together.

The best revenge is to refuse their values. To embody the kind of living — free, colorful, open —
they want to snuff out. [. . .] They are waging a war on living. The more fully you live, the harder
their job will be.” 1 He says, “When they try to consume you night and day, you reserve time for
your garden or cooking or the feeling of your kid’s breath on your cheek as you cuddle.” And he
says, “Live lives in colors their eyes can’t even see. Cook food they want to deport. Call
someone you haven’t in a while. Fight with a smile. Fail and come back. Be weird. Be
welcoming. Kiss converts. Refuse despair. Be disobedient. Laugh loudly.” In the words of our
poet this morning, in the midst of the overwhelm of it all, “This was not a moment that will
change the world, but in this moment, loving the world changed me—made me more than my
fear and sadness, turned me again toward the miracle.”

Anger helps me to zero in on what I care about most, but anger is not sufficient for the work that
must be done. I hope it won’t surprise you that the fuel for our engines, fuel to sustain our
commitment to justice, is right at the center of our Unitarian Universalist faith. It is the word
occurring in the grey hymnal more often than any other word (a minister once did a count!). The
fuel we need to cultivate is in our reading this morning: “When stories of the selfishness of
humans stain my thoughts like spilt gray ink, when proofs of our cruelty grab me by the chest
and squeeze, squeeze until it hurts to breathe, when I lament what we’re capable of, this is
when I most need to remember it is also human to love.” Cultivating love, in its many forms, will
enable us to sustain our fight for justice.

Anger helps me to zero in on what I care about most, but anger is not sufficient for the work that
must be done. We need fuel for our engines, fuel that comes from our spiritual and ethical
centers. The fuel comes not from the outrage machine of politics and oppressive systems. It comes not from the terrible acts of violence and vileness we are all experiencing every day
these days. The fuel to drive our engines—made of anger and commitment and
determination—is love. Thriving life, beautiful and diverse, endlessly creative. This is what love
is, and love is the fuel for making a just world. More than ever, in days such as these, we need a
spiritually rich community to sustain us so we might create the conditions of lasting justice. A
commitment to justice requires discernment of our gifts and of the learning we will need to do to
express those gifts compassionately. It takes internal and spiritual work to remain passionate
about our values when the world is tearing them apart. But in the words of UUA President the
Rev Sophía Bentancourt, “No matter how we may feel we have failed in times past, let us
remember that we have everything we need to start again.”
Nothing angers the oppressor like the joy of the oppressed. Nothing says resister, not victim,
like the joy of the oppressed. Nothing fills our hearts with fortitude like the joy of those who
refuse to accept the world as it is and demand it be better for us, and especially those most
vulnerable, most victimized. We resist, in joy, in the discipline of hope, not because we hope to
take the day but because living our values is what animates us. Now, of course, we hope to win,
but we do the work without attachment to the outcome, and that is what makes joy more
possible. We can always have joy in the moment. Here is another poem, a short one by Loryn
Brandz called “Inauguration 2025,” to remind us:

“In a time of hate, love is an act of resistance.
“In a time of fear, faith is an act of resistance.
“In a time of misinformation, education is an act of resistance.
“In a time of poor leadership, community is an act of resistance.
“In a time like this, joy is an act of resistance.
“Resist. Resist. Resist.”

In other words: Love. Love. Love. Leave us not in hatred’s way. Show us how to love. We must
learn to love. It is not all we need, but it is fuel to drive our engines to action.
Last evening, I experienced a great and beautiful act of resistance: the performance of
“Considering Matthew Shepard” performed by the Mississauga Festival Chamber Choir.
Matthew Shepard is a young man tortured and murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming for being
gay. And Matthew Shepard is much beloved by his family and friends, by multitudes awakened
from acceptance of hatred to new life in resistance to such hatred. The composers took all the
pain and all the love of Matthew’s life and death, weaving it into an oratorio almost unbelievably
vivid and moving. And the singers—two of whom are part of our community—joined all the other
singers and musicians, each singing just the note that needed to be sung, just the note that
moved within the spirits of the audience, our tears and sighs becoming part of the music, part of
this amazing moment of beauty, of life. The music and tears cleansing the ache of anger.
Together, we created and recreated love. Love shows us how to resist.

And so I ask you to consider: What drives you? What is your engine? It need not be anger, but
you will live better and serve the good better if you know that for and about yourself. To ask
these questions can be a spiritual practice. And a spiritual practice is literally anything you do
with intention, with attention, and with duration. Ask yourself every day, day after day—what am I doing today, right now, to live my values? How will my living be an act of resistance to the
tyranny of oppression? Laugh, sing, connect, show your light, oh don’t keep it under a bushel
basket. Anger the oppressors with your joy. Resist. Resist. Resist with the love of life. Resist
with all your love and light.

Morning has come, and we begin again. Today we celebrate a dream awakening, renewed hope
in our hearts, an audacity of hopes and dreams for the future. We unify our hearts again
towards the clarion call of our time: May justice and equity guide us to greater connection, a
greater truth.
Our part is just as great: to know that when we cherish what is lovely and lively in our lives,
when we tend to the divine spark within, we open to greater potential for mutual understanding
and care. And we create the land beyond the now, the land of freedom and justice, where we
can sing and celebrate our values, truly available to all. May it be so.

1 The.Ink The opposite of fascism on Substack, March 19, 2025.