The arc of justice bending over time asks us to look into the future. Theodore Parker, beloved Unitarian figure spoke these words, foreshadowing the Civil War. They have been used over and over to ask people to act in ways consistent with these imagined more just futures. 

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Sometimes when I do the looking at the world Parker called for, I figure that whatever he saw must have been an inkling, a possibility, perhaps the fostering of simple hopes in adverse conditions. People with disabilities may struggle with the imaginary that Parker proposed because we/they struggle so hard to be imagined in the present. Sometimes I relate to this imagination as the way my parents talked to me when I was little: “Of course I had to learn to tie my shoes. Who was going to do it when went to college?” They knew the ableism and barriers I would have to overcome, but their imagination gave reality and common sense to a future in which my gifts were maximized.

Disability studies scholar Lee Edelman asserts that disabled people would be better off refusing the future because it is always conceived as a new order in which disabled people do not have a place. Churches, fellowships, congregations, this word is for you. As you imagine bending that arc, slowly bending, making justice, the best we can conceive for our Beloved Community calls on you to expand the arc, not just to include disabled people that you choose to privilege, but rather to interrupt the assumptions about disability that you carry with you.

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report on disability. It states that one in five, or 53 million Americans, report having a disability. The report is tricky reading in that it frames able-bodiedness as required and disability as less or deficient. At the same time, some of the information is useful in the consideration of what it means to imagine a place for disabled people within the future of the arc of justice. Can you conceive of a future in which disabled people being part of Beloved Community is an essential element in living ethics and faith beyond ideas and into practice? This future is the antidote to a dead-end future that people often assign to people with disabilities, assuming that they aren’t capable of much anyway. (The report reifies this, for example, by offering a percentage for people, “having difficulty with independent living.” It is likely that the assertion of independent living is counter to the community values of interdependence and interconnectedness that Unitarian Universalists honor and practice.)

I invite you to a future that disposes of the old assumptions. I invite you to perceive with your heart the biases that have kept you from connecting with disabled people as individuals. I invite you to reject the common sense story that disability is undesirable. (I desire mine; it is part of me and brings who I am to you today.) I invite you to interrupt the future of no future, of not much going on, not much possible. Instead, we can breathe life into unexpected futures and new possibilities.

Sometimes people tell me to be less angry. Disabled people remain the 10% of the population, throughout the centuries, across cultures, most marginalized, most robbed of support and participation. Disabled children are murdered by their parents and caregivers with revolting regularity. Their odds of being sexually assaulted are astonishingly high. Adults endure the same.

This is the context for the message of my body, for my life, and for my ministry. What I have perceived, I cannot go back to unfeeling and unknowing. I wonder why It seems possible to people for me to do this work without my whole heart. I bring my entire red and beating heart.

I will not ever harm you with my anger; that, I promise you. But you will see it. It is at once a light and a sacrament. It is the feeling that repeats in my bones and in my heart, "We are worthy. We are worthy." And that is the message that I will spend the rest of my life repeating. I am certain that some people will perceive my anger as less than ministerial. I have to allow for this.

When I started, "Please remember that I love you" and "Theresa loves you" it was for really simple reasons. I remember hearing so much God loves you. And sometimes it just wasn't enough. I couldn't see God or locate God, except in feeling. I wanted people to be able to know that I, a person, loved them. I am confident that I can follow through on that aspiration one person at a time. At the same time, it doesn't mean that we can't journey together toward being more, doing more, feeling more. Sometimes, I will be angry. I will not harm you with my anger. It is a way to know more. 

Some of the most important advice I've ever seen on anger is this:

Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry.

It's a good word that says, "Of course, Theresa, be angry; and sometimes, take a rest." Let your anger be a cleaner, not a weapon. Let it be a light and not a trap. When I say that I am committed not to practice harmful anger, it is because I am committed to something else entirely.

I'm going to be angry when people are indifferent to barriers keeping me and people like me out of buildings, when they are indifferent to our participation. I am going to be angry when it is not capacity that keeps people from being active learners, but rather unwillingness to wonder how to future-present could be different.

Most of the time this unwillingness is rooted in things people already, always know: that access is expensive, complex, or inapplicable. But, no, sometimes there is more than one answer and it is actually in relationship that access happens. Without relationship, it might just amount to more and different furniture.

That's all for now. I'm guided by a Love that will not let me go. Neither will it let you go. Surely there is room in that love for us to grow.

Some scientists estimate that the amount of light from the entire spectrum that is visible to humans is about 1.5%. We know that dogs can detect sounds and smell much smaller amounts than their human companions. Somehow, knowing that we are working from a limited data set doesn't keep us from already and always knowing, well, everything.

Yesterday, I had one of those experiences that reminds me that while I am beloved, in the scale of the universe, I am smaller. I had gotten up early to go to my internship church and talk to a group of teens about Unitarian Universalism again. I rode an Amtrak bus from Portland to Salem and called a taxi to get to the church. I had to wait a while, but then the taxi came.

An Amtrak worker came out to talk to the taxi driver. "Can you get another cab to come here? That guy has to go to Sheridan."

The driver called dispatch and got it word. It would be about twenty-five minutes or half an hour.

"All right," the man said, "but I'm already running late."

And then I left. As we drove, the taxi driver explained to me. 

"He's been in jail, but now they are transferring him to less security. He could run away, but why would he? He only has a few months left. If he is late, he will have fewer chances of getting out early for good behavior."

All at once, I understood. He couldn't call a cab because he'd been in jail without a phone. If I'd understood, I might have been able to give him the cab that I'd caught. With my phone. That I use all the time. I hoped that he would make it on time and that he would have a smooth afternoon.

I would usually say that I am an empathetic person; that I wish to consider life from the point of view that the experience of another person might give. The tricky thing is this: there are some experiences that are beyond me, some things, about going to jail, for example, that I can't know by guessing but I can observe. Is this part of what keeps social justice movements covering the same ground, over and over, like a person pacing over the same three feet of grass until it is tamped down, beginning to be bare?

Carl Rogers put it this way, 

"To be with another in this way means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another's world without prejudice. 

In some sense it means that you lay aside your self and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself that he knows he will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and can comfortably return to his own world when he wishes. Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being."

Rogers was confident that empathy was one of the key factors in bringing about change and learning in people's hearts. I don't know precisely all the ways I can teach people to develop and exercise their own empathy for one another and for people they meet, but I will try. In part, I wanted to tell you this story so that you could think about what it might be like to leave prison in one place and have to go to another without a phone to make arrangements and without being late. It seemed challenging.

This kind of love is missing in a lot of places in the world. Where can we add it?

 Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:3, The Message)

It bears being explicit that my frame of reference includes a strong connection to Christianity. Of course, it is not the same Christianity as seen on TV, as expected in the Baptist church down the street. I have love for the true heart of that religion, but not the harm it does, and not the -isms it perpetuates. In my opinion, it's not connected directly but rather as a matter of roots, much in the same way that the art of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the gospel crossover artist informed the development of rock and roll. It is important to know where things come from.

Sometimes when I am talking about Unitarian Universalism with people who come from more traditional Protestant or Catholic contexts, what they understand from what I say about my faith and ethics is different from what I actually mean. I think that sometimes people are so challenged by the idea that I would disbelieve something they take for granted, that it is as though I don't believe in anything sensible.

Last week I was talking with a group of teens from a Christian church. The conversation started in a meandering, exploratory way, but soon took on the flavor of asking me to defend my beliefs. That's OK with me, but I was sometimes shocked by the underlying assumptions of their questions. I found it hard that all the things that I find beautiful about my faith, they found nothing to smile about. That's cool, too, just weighty. The experience made me think of how I want to speak directly about the things that Unitarian Universalism doesn't mean to me.

Maybe you know these; maybe you don't.

Being Unitarian Universalist does not mean that I can believe in just anything. And, no, I don't believe in reincarnation. But someone with whom I practice in community might.

I am surprised when someone assumes that if I'm not a biblical literalist, then I have sucked up, hook, line, and sinker, some random gospel according to Spongebob. But, no. There is something to believe between Every Single Word and None of the Words. While there are not specific dogmas to which one must ascribe in order to identify as Unitarian Universalist, it is a faith and ethical practice that arises in covenant. Another way to describe covenant is the promises we keep between one another, or the actions of being in community. Practices like kindness, honesty, and integrity aren't really optional. I don't believe unkindness and dishonesty would be OK as ways of life in community.

If you're asking, me, Theresa, what happens to people when they die, well, I believe my body returns to the earth to become a pony or a river or a flower or a beetle. I don't believe I will have a new consciousness as any of those forms. I believe the person I was will live on in the people I have loved. I believe my soul will be with God. That not the same as saying this is the thing that Unitarian Universalism prescribes for after death. I practice faith and ethics in community with people who may believe a wide variety of things, not the least of which is that we should treat each other well in community and make more justice in the world.

I believe in love, between people. I believe I am held in a greater Love.