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.

Death is not a guy in a hoodie. Death is not a squished bug or a roadkill squirrel. Or at least, the magnitude of those things doesn't actually prepare us for the death of a person, stranger or loved one. What then? When I took the hospital internship that I did, I was unaware that laying out the bodies of deceased patients and accompanying their families to a viewing would be part of my duties. No other Unitarian Universalist seminarian at the time had to do this. But a job is a job; I had to figure it out fast. Three images helped me. 

• I was at a Veteran Affairs hospital, so one thing I thought of was how many of the patients had seen friends and leaders die in combat. I needed to be available for them as they experienced the same.

• If someone had called me and said, "Jesus has died and needs to be prepared for viewing. Their family will be here soon," I would have had no hesitations. Because that is someone I love and admire. This was an opportunity to offer that unconditional positive regard to each deceased patient, to express respect and support to each grieving family.

• In fact. before funeral science was professionalized this is what people did for each other, took care of bodies, prepared them, hosted mourners. It was an extension of being in community together.

I list these connections specifically for readers to help you all think about what would inspire and encourage you. Maybe it's something completely different. 

Late in the summer, I got a call to prepare a body to be viewed and accompany the family. The veteran was an organ donor so there were bandages covering their eyes that had been applied as X's. It made me so sad. By this time in my experience, I had a pattern of greeting the body as I uncovered it.

"Hello, friend. I am really sorry that you died. I know dying is embarrassing, but I am here for you and I will be here for your family."

My best friend said, "How can it be embarrassing? They're dead." 

I understood that as a scientific fact. But what I understood about the experience of being next to death or near it is that what we actually know about it is less than we think. Talking to the deceased patient also served to reduce my fear and helped me act in the ways that felt respectful. At my hospital, chaplain interns warmed the hands and face of the deceased person with blankets that had been in a warmer. (Those are the parts that family members were likely to want to touch. Warming them made the experience less uncomfortable.)

The hardest part for me was actually after the family had left. I had to cover the face.

"All right, friend. We are done here. I'm sorry, but I have to cover your face now. You are going to go get some more good care. Thank you again for your service."

The core of this learning was that I could become increasingly skilled as someone who could offer spiritual care and support from an authentic, tender place, even as I carried my own reactions and feelings, including sadness. Something, someone, that cannot die is not alive. The place of peace at which I arrived was simply that death is an inextricable part of life. Or to put it a different way, only 4% of the universe is visible. We people are a unique, artful moment in the universe, and, at some point, we expire. This is a small piece of holy knowing.

(Two) Resources On Death I Recommend:

• The Civilization of Maxwell Bright, movie. It looks like the whole thing is on YouTube.
• "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens

All the thanks in the world to Chaplain Thom Phillips, Thomas Olson, Rabbi Ballaban, and Mary Haley.

take. eat. this is
my body

means

my body is food for 
you and your children.

my body is nourishment 
for every imperfect body,

which is all of them

because my body is
where every kind of yes begins.

smitten of God means
afflicted

means formed this way out
of all the possible ways.

anointed. washed in this.
it is an abundant 
affirmation of humanity.

yes. I am. yes. I am
human. yes, as opposed to
inhuman-incomplete. yes.
as opposed to aspiring to be
the Monster-thing that you
avoid. yes.

I am putting a content warning on this essay because I realize. I realize that as a person of color, it is likely that trauma has found you, a relentless shadow that advanced on you until it found you, until it rang in your ribs like the bells for a five-alarm fire. Here’s another warning: I will sing a song you know. Even when you try to forget it, the rhythm will echo in the front of your brain, not words exactly, more like mumbled syllables. Then, when the words come back to you, all at once, it an icy rush, they will be that thumb-worn threadbare litany of all the ways racism and white supremacy are acted out on your skin, against your bones, and in your body. I just want to warn you.

I know you might get triggered. That talking about the pain that you’ve survived might bring it all back, like that sick kind of headache that only goes away for a little while when you take the medicine, but still comes crashing back in. I know that talking about racism, about the ways people try to control your body and mind to diminish you might cause you to remember all the other times, nested like Russian dolls, that this has happened to you. I definitely want to give you the choice of whether to listen to my story about that guy in the grocery store and the disgusting thing he said to me.

(CW: talk of rape, depression, mentions thoughts of suicide)
And if we talk about rape, well, of course, I want to give you a choice to opt out of my words. It turns out that if you’re a Black woman, you have a 40% chance of being raped by the time you are 18, meaning that, if you are reading this, it is really likely that you have experienced rape in your lifetime. For that, I am sorry. I am not sure that a warning can help all that much. But I will try. I will talk about that thing that people don’t understand unless they’ve been there. They think it’s funny to talk about being raped by gas prices. They have no idea what it means to fear for your life. (This is not a drill. This is not television. There will be no word from our sponsors.) They don’t know how hard you fought for your life. They don’t know how many showers you took trying to scrub the violence and feelings of worthlessness off of you. They don’t know that you almost died anyway, by suicide, your ability to be safe and happy collateral damage to this event.

(CW: talk of racism)
Still, you journey forward. People ask the things that they think are so clever. (What are you? Where are you from? Where are you really from?) They feel entitled to ferret out your ethnicity. They reduce your culture to one or two things that they don’t even actually understand. They assume that being white is best and find ways to completely overlook the sacred people and places from which you come.

I know you fight the reduction of your color and culture every day. You perfect a hard stare. You blurt interruptions so smooth that they almost seem like part of the lecture, part of the workflow. And still, you rise. You hold your tongue, eyes narrowed, while you read Jack Halberstam, who tells you that you that someone, certainly not him, accuses feminists of being humorless. Only I’m confident in this: allowing women of color choices about the content with which they engage is not too much to ask.

People can talk about whatever they want, write what they see fit. With a few words, a couple of lines, they make a simple accommodation. Let the Halberstams of the world complain that they could be so much freer and have so much more fun. I warn you of content as a political act; affirming that your identity, the way it connects you in the white supremacist system to sources of suffering, matters to me. Your own judgment to care for your own heart matters to me. Assata Shakur says that, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.” In this way, I fight for your freedom. I fight for your healing moment and for you to have a chance to engage in the struggle one more day. Your trauma is real. I fight for you not to have to visit it, bathed in sweat, hunger, and terror every day. You have that right. I want to warn you about this content.