Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia Snavely’s video recording of this sermon.

“He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!” These words come from turn-of-the-twentieth-century American poet Edwin Markham.

When someone excludes you, considers you a thing to flout, a quite normal response might be anger. A month or so ago, one of you loaned me the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s book titled Anger. When I was growing up, my evangelical Christian family and church taught me that anger in and of itself was a sin. That was not helpful. Hanh has a different approach. He says we should recognize that anger is a part of us, but that we should not act from anger. When we are angry, we are suffering, and when we act from anger, we often want to make the one we think is responsible for our suffering suffer too. He says we should deal with our suffering as a parent deals with a crying baby. The parent knows the baby is suffering. They look into that suffering so that they can come to know, to understand, and to react appropriately with food or a diaper change or a cuddle, with compassion. So, we should look at our own anger until we can recognize the cause of our suffering and appropriately address it with understanding and compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) writes, “Suppose two warring parties want to negotiate, and both sides do not know enough about themselves. You have to really know yourself, your country, your party, your situation, in order to understand the other’s party, the other’s nation, the other’s people. Self and others are not two separate things, because the suffering, hope and anger of both sides is very much the same.

“When we get angry, we suffer. If you really understand that, you will also be able to understand that when the other person is angry, it means that she is suffering. When someone insults you or behaves violently toward you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the other person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget. We think that we are the only one that suffers, and the other person is our oppressor. This is enough to make anger arise, and to strengthen our desire to punish. We want to punish the other person because we suffer. Then, we have anger in us; we have violence in us, just as they do. When we see that our suffering and anger are no different than their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately. So understanding the other is understanding yourself, and understanding yourself is understanding the other person. Everything must begin with you.

“To understand ourselves, we must learn and practice the way of non-duality. We should not fight our anger, because anger is our self, a part of our self…. So don’t despise your anger. Don’t fight your anger, and don’t suppress your anger. Learn the tender way of taking care of your anger, and transform it into the energy of understanding and compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book Anger, primarily addresses one-on-one relationships; spouse and spouse, parent and child. But that is not the anger I am hearing a lot of at the current moment. Sometimes it is directed at a certain person in the current administration or someone working for it, but we don’t know those people to talk to them. We are angry at what they are doing to us and to people we care about. In our anger, we could decide that what we want to do is to make them suffer. But is that intelligent? Will that do anything to address our suffering or the suffering of those we care about?

No. Thich Nhat Hanh continuously writes in his book that acting from our anger without examining and caring for it is not intelligent. We need to act not from unexamined anger, but from understanding and compassion. We need to keep our wits about us, if—as Markham says—we have the wit to win; if we and love have the wit to win.

This week the Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Lauren Smith wrote this in “Seasons of Giving,” the UUA Stewardship and Development News:

“No one gets to be your age without having their heart broken. What matters is what you choose to do with your broken, open, broken open heart.

….“So many of us are nursing broken hearts right now. We are devastated by the savage indifference among some public servants to the harm being visited on vulnerable communities and our planet. We are devastated by the deluge of deliberate cruelty….

“Another colleague, minister and religious educator Martha Durkee-Neuman, captures the spirit of lament beautifully: She says our heartbreak points to the presence of a value deeply held, a value that has been violated. We lament because we love. 

“It matters, too, what we choose to do next, what we choose to do with our broken, open, broken open hearts….”

Love is at the center of our values, but this is not sappy Valentine’s Day card love. This is not candy boxes and roses love. This is the kind of love that twentieth-century African-American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin was talking about when he said, “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

We can be angry at injustice, but we need to act not from the anger, but from the love beneath the anger. As Durkee-Neuman says our heartbreak points to the presence of a value deeply held, a value that has been violated. We lament because we love. 

Love is a growing up. I was sent to the principal’s office once in my school days. It was because of the way I handled my anger. It was first grade. I was six. The teacher called me and another girl up to her desk. She said that our spelling tests were exactly the same with exactly the same mistakes. She declared that one of us must have cheated, and we would need to stand there until one of us confessed. I was outraged. I was angry. This was an injustice.

I had been taught not to yell. I had been taught not to curse. I didn’t know yet how to take care of my anger so that I could respond with understanding of why I was feeling as I did and compassion for myself. I could not put my feeling and my needs into words. I began to cry, a full-blown temper tantrum. The teacher could do nothing to calm me, so she sent me to the principal’s office. He told me to go wash my face and get a drink of water. But I was still mad. I said, “I don’t like water.” He bought me a Coke. I don’t remember much more, but I still remember the episode. I suppose I did a little growing up that day, a little learning about how to take care of my anger. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

Now is a time for all of us to do some growing up. We can start by remembering our values and the covenant we have made to live them out: “We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.” Remember, “…our heartbreak points to the presence of a value deeply held, a value that has been violated. We lament because we love.”

“Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. Inseparable from one another, these shared values are….” (Remembering those values and understanding what has been violated will help us enact our love.)

Our values are: “Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence. With reverence for the great web of life and with humility, we acknowledge our place in it. We covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation. We will create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice. We will work to repair harm and damaged relationships.

“Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology. We covenant to learn from one another in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, and respect.

“Justice. We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all thrive. We covenant to dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression. We support the use of inclusive democratic processes to make decisions within our congregations, our Association, and society at large.

“Transformation. We adapt to the changing world. We covenant to collectively transform and grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritages, never complete and never perfect.

“Generosity. We cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. We covenant to freely and compassionately share our faith, presence, and resources. Our generosity connects us to one another in relationships of interdependence and mutuality.

“Equity. We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion. We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities.”

I am going to particularly pull out equity for this moment: “Equity. We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion. We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities.” This value is under assault, but we have tools. We have time, wisdom, attention, and money.

We are an honor congregation. Every year we include in our budget and fully pay the fair share donation to the Unitarian Universalist Association requests of us, based on our congregational budget. Some of you may have read this email from the UUA this past week.

“We are proud to share with you that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has joined with a multifaith coalition and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection to bring a lawsuit challenging Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) “sensitive locations policy.” The case, Mennonite Church USA et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al., was filed in federal district court in Washington, DC. Churches, as well as schools and hospitals, had previously been protected from ICE enforcement actions, but a Department of Homeland Security memo rescinded that protection on January 20.

“We join this multifaith coalition, representing millions of Americans across dozens of denominations, to challenge the ending of ICE’s sensitive locations policy and oppose any interpretation of law which would allow immigration raids in houses of worship and religious ceremonies. We believe, and the lawsuit asserts, that subjecting places of worship to ICE enforcement actions without a judicial warrant substantially burdens our religious exercise in violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“As our Executive Vice President Carey McDonald affirms, ‘As Unitarian Universalists (UUs), fighting for justice and liberation for all people is at the heart of our faith tradition, which recognizes the spark of the divine inherent in every person; our sacred spaces must continue to offer sanctuary to those who face oppression, violence, or alienation, including immigrant communities.’

“We know that many of our congregations include members who are immigrants, both documented and undocumented, and many of you carry out important ministries that serve immigrant communities in church spaces. The UUA is committed to supporting and protecting your ability to continue this vital and lifesaving work.”

That is one use of our money.

Every first Friday of the month at noon, UU Faith Action New Jersey holds a Zoom meeting suggesting actions one can take. For a half hour the actions are described and then one is given another half hour to do them. Even if you don’t have time at noon on a Friday, you can sign up for the emails and take the actions at your convenience. There were four actions this month all asking us to contact our state or national representatives around a particular immigration-related issue.

That is one use of our time.

We cannot best use our time or our money if we don’t give our attention to the issues. And we cannot act intelligently if we don’t use our wisdom to care for our anger. “We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities.”

Let us center our attention not on our anger, but on the values that are being assaulted. That is what has prompted our anger. To care for our anger, we need to care for our values. Only then will we be able to act out of compassion for ourselves and others.

Rev. Lindasusan Ulrich wrote this for this week’s Braver/Wiser email: “For the longest time, I’d admired friends’ tattoos, but couldn’t think of what image I’d want permanently stamped on my own body. One day the light bulb went off: I wanted words. Not just any words, though. I chose qualities to which I’d already made a lifetime commitment: Justice. Compassion. Love. Kindness.

“I was then inspired to design my next ink: a dandelion puff with seeds floating away on the air, spelling LIBERATION. I’d felt this word’s magic for years, even when I wasn’t ready to answer its call. But it kept asking me to explore what comes after justice, compassion, love, and kindness. Liberation revealed itself as the next evolution in my life’s purpose. And so I worked with a tattoo artist to bring the concept to life, in a location where I’d see it all the time. 

“What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the way this commitment began writing itself on my life—not just my forearm.

“I started growing a friendship with someone I’d long admired, someone I considered one of the ‘cool kids’ in our shared community. To my delight, he was equally enthusiastic at the prospect, and we began corresponding regularly. I wasn’t popular growing up, and this new relationship gave me confidence; it was profoundly healing.

“Then, at my instigation, I had a conversation with someone who’d caused a deep trauma in my life. I wanted answers. As we talked, I heard more about his own tragic history—and my story shifted, as though a new operating system had been installed in my brain. My anger drained away, as did the echoes of hurt I’d carried with me for decades. I kept staring at my tattoo as I realized I felt only compassion for this person who had wounded me. My past hadn’t changed, but I’d been liberated.

“Suffering is part of the human experience, but what would our world be like if all of us could also experience liberation? What emotional and spiritual resources would be available if we weren’t owned by the hurt and numbness that lock us down? What if each of us made a lifetime commitment to get free and to bring others with us? I suspect that a robust, transformative hope would flourish.” Thus says Rev. Ulrich.

If you are angry right now, you are suffering. But hurt and numbness can lock us down. Take care of your anger like a parent takes care of a crying baby. Understand where your anger is coming from and treat it compassionately. Liberate yourself from the suffering, so that a robust, transformative hope can flourish, so that you can act.

We are not the first to face such a time. In a time when people were being physically attacked, when government agencies were infiltrating planning meetings. when he knew he was a target to be assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. could still say, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

“He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!”

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