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I have trouble falling asleep to silence, so I usually put the radio on as I lay down. I like words more than music for falling asleep, so I usually have on NPR. But this Tuesday night it was all election news and nothing else. I switched to a Hidden Brain podcast. Except that one of the sessions that played as I fell asleep was titled “Sitting with Uncertainty.” The show’s host, Shankar Vedantam, says, “We all view the world differently. Some of us see it as unpredictable and dangerous. Others see possibilities and room for exploration.

“Dannagal Young is the author of Wrong, How Media, Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. She says much of the way we view the world comes down to how we tolerate uncertainty. Some of us are more okay than others with ambiguity, unpredictability and randomness. How we respond to life’s gray areas informs everything from our career choices to our preferences in art and literature. It can also influence our political beliefs… we like to think our politics are informed by logic and values and traditions, but even these beliefs might be shaped by our capacity to deal with uncertainty.”

The guest on the show, Dannagal Young, says, “People who have a high tolerance for ambiguity tend to be really comfortable with situations that are uncertain and unpredictable. They’re really okay with change. They don’t need a lot of routine in their world. They can be spontaneous and it doesn’t stress them out. And people who are high in need for closure are quite the opposite. They really prefer routine and order and structure and predictability in their lives, in their interactions, and in their sort of physical environments….”

Vedantam says, “There’s another trait that’s related to our capacity for uncertainty, and it’s called a high need for cognition. Young says, I think about need for cognition as something that’s a bit of a luxury. Because if you’re high in need for cognition, it signals that you have the time, you feel that you have the time and security to be able to dedicate to thinking about something for a long period of time. Having high need for cognition is actually correlated with people who are less likely to be monitoring their environments for threat. If you’re not monitoring for threat, and you’re not looking around the corner to see who’s lurking, you can just, you know, I call it CUD chewing. You can chew your CUD all day. You could write a cost-benefit analysis of every possible decision you could make. You can write your pro-CUD list, and you can just sit there and think.”

She also says this is likely not the person you want with you walking through the jungle when a tiger approaches. Both ways of being have their benefits and their hindrances. (From https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/sitting-with-uncertainty/).

I was listening to all this and thinking I bet most UUs have a high tolerance for uncertainty and a need for cognition, but I also bet that there are probably a larger number of people who do not have a high tolerance for uncertainty and a need for cognition, who need to be able to identify the threat or have it identified for them and dispatch it as quickly as possible. That idea was not sleep-inducing.

The President of our Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, sent out a letter to religious professionals on Wednesday. She said, in part, “I want to be mindful that the results of last night’s elections land more catastrophically for some of us as we fear for our own safety and rights, and the security and thriving of our families and loved ones. Beloveds, this is time for shared ministry at a whole new level. Let us model communal care and collegial support with one another as we figure out the next ways forward together.

“I have every faith in our abilities to hold one another and keep one another safer than we would otherwise be in these times. Just as I have every faith that we will meet this moment… and work together to resource ourselves for greater security and faithful witness in these days.”

She is saying there is threat, but we are going to be able to deal with the uncertainty together.

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day. In 2002, a few months after 9/11 and soon after finishing his time as President of our denomination, Rev. John Buehrens wrote a piece for our denominational magazine, UU World, titled “Pacifists and Pragmatists.” He begins, “Some Unitarian Universalists take personal and principled stands against all use of military force, even in response to aggression and terror. There is a long tradition of such witness among us. The Rev. Adin Ballou, a 19th-century Universalist minister who served the Unitarian congregation in Hopedale, Massachusetts, wrote a notable treatise, Christian Non-Resistance, that influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. During the Vietnam War, the UUA established a denominational registry for conscientious objectors.

“Yet we have never been a ‘peace church’ like the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Mennonites, or the Church of the Brethren, in which rejection of military service or national defense has been normative for church members. Many Unitarian Universalists, while deeply committed to peace and justice, have been willing to take up arms….”

Later in the article he says, “I once went to call on the late Elliot Richardson, a staunch birthright Unitarian, who had served briefly as Secretary of Defense. It was shortly after William Perry, another UU, resigned that office, and President Clinton had named as his successor William Cohen, still another UU. So I asked Richardson why, with our relatively small numbers and our liberal values, three Unitarian Universalists in three decades had been placed in charge of the world’s largest military establishment. He replied that our commitment to the use of reason might have something to do with it.”

If you are in a foxhole on the front line, you might need to identify the threat quickly and dispatch it. If you are the Secretary of Defense, some need for cognition and some CUD chewing is probably quite appropriate.

Toward the end of the article, Buehrens writes, “Progressive communities, including Unitarian Universalist congregations, are prone to painful rifts between pacifists and pragmatists. During World War I, pacifists felt ostracized among Unitarians. Former U.S. President William Howard Taft, as moderator of the American Unitarian Association from 1917 to 1918, persuaded the General Assembly that all ministers and churches receiving aid from the AUA be required to support the ‘crusade for democracy.’ (WWI) Pacifist ministers lost their posts in some places, and the distinguished New York Unitarian minister Dr. John Haynes Holmes actually left the AUA with his church.

“During the Vietnam era, virtually the reverse occurred in some congregations. Pragmatists sometimes felt morally condemned by pacifist UUs. The current response to terrorism must not be allowed to have that effect. Let those UUs who would witness for consistent nonviolence do so as a matter of conscience. But let us also recognize that pragmatic reasoning about reducing the threat of terrorism can be conscientious as well.

“A public tempted by calls for angry, xenophobic vengeance needs to hear from pragmatic voices on behalf of more restrained action in pursuit of justice. And those activists tempted to deepen their anger and alienation from American society and institutions to the point of violence need the witness of committed pacifists.” (From Pacifists and pragmatists | UU World Magazine).

In our 2010 denominational annual meeting, the General Assembly passed a statement of conscience stating in part, “We affirm a range of individual choices, including military service and conscientious objection… as fully compatible with Unitarian Universalism.”

In 2009, UU World announced, “The Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) … the UUA’s largest congregation, serving more than 3,000 isolated UUs with online communities, religious education and worship resources, and a prison ministry, now… has a military ministry.”

The Military Ministry section of the church’s website states, “UUs on active duty face challenges. Although there are now more than a dozen UU chaplains across all the branches of the US services, UU chaplains make up a tiny percentage of the chaplain corps. Because of this, UU military members may have difficulty finding religious supports that reflect their progressive values. The challenges may continue when UUs come home; veterans may feel isolated and wonder how they will be welcomed back to their churches.

“That’s where the CLF Military Ministry comes in. We aim to provide spiritual supports to service members and their families during active duty and when they come home.

“In addition, we fully affirm people openly serving in the military and have been a leader in pressing for the rights of this community in the military. Modern Military Association of America offers excellent resources and advocacy work for GLBTQAI+ veterans and their families.” (From Military Ministry – Quest for Meaning).

Thank you to our veterans who have served and to those who still serve. Thank you to our conscientious objectors who have served and serve in a different way. And thank you for other types of service as well.

A member of one of my Florida congregations said, “I was in Vietnam, and no one ever thanks me for my service.” She wasn’t in the military. She was a “doughnut dolly,” or more officially a member of the Supplemental Recreational Overseas Staff of the Red Cross. She remembers a rather harrowing helicopter evacuation from one site where she served. But no one is selling caps or jackets with “Doughnut Dolly American Red Cross Vietnam” emblazoned on them for people to know to thank her for her service.

Another Florida congregant regularly wrote reams of letters to those serving. She was always so pleased to receive a letter in return. She kept up her letter writing into her 90s, when her macular degeneration made it too difficult to write and to read.

Let us thank each other for all the ways that we have served and still serve. And in all our actions let us live out our values.

Many years ago, I went to a protest against the Iraq War in Washington, DC. I was embarrassed. Some of my fellow Unitarian Universalists had made and hanged an effigy of then President George W. Bush. That was not in line with what I considered to be the principles and values of Unitarian Universalism.

Rev. Betancourt wrote, “I have every faith in our abilities to hold one another and keep one another safer than we would otherwise be in these times. Just as I have every faith that we will meet this moment… and work together to resource ourselves for greater security and faithful witness in these days.”

Greater security and faithful witness. Let’s not let our fear drive us to abandon the faithfulness of our witness.

Thank you to all who serve. Those who serve our country in our armed forces. Those who call us to peace. Those who serve those who serve. Those who serve as faithful citizens. “We draw from our heritages of freedom, reason, hope, and courage, building on the foundation of love. Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.”

This week, the Rev. Dr. Michael Tino, on the Lead Ministry team of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, sent out a letter that ended like this:

“Right now, I am reminding myself that I am part of a faith grounded in love. A faith that always has been and always will be profoundly counter-cultural. I am leaning on my faith ancestors to guide me, and I am trusting that my faith community will rise to the challenge presented to us.

“I invite you to pray with me (or center yourself, or meditate):

“O love that will not let us go, remind us of your presence now.

“Remind us of your power now.

“Remind us of your tenacity now.

“Fill us with your strength that we might know ourselves connected to a love greater than we can imagine.

“For we will need that love as we move forward together. Amen.”

It is an uncertain time, but we are in this together.

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