It is Love That Sets Us Free ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
September 15, 2024
Back in 2014, some cities in Ohio, including Columbus, Dayton, and Springfield, decided to join a network of communities, a task force, that formed under the name Welcoming America, created to unite cities that wanted to foster the inclusion and integration of immigrants. These were cities who were experiencing declining populations and as a result, local economies that were becoming less and less stable. The effort was seen as a way to help businesses expand, giving them the confidence of knowing that there would be a larger workforce, as well as more consumers. (https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/local-govt–politics/springfield-seeks-immigrant-friendly-city/YmnFF8Gu14p1h79QeWRBZL/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFSowlleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVJpGLbunYxmw-BYJc4JM4SWgM_PZX9rYD5OBO6bG9RkKNCKR9p9q0pc9w_aem_V43CPhoVQju5n4JH5jmFJw)
In Springfield, 10 years ago, the emphasis was on supporting Latino immigrants living there. But over the last 10 years, legal Haitian immigrants have found the city to be a safe home, and have moved there in large numbers. The city’s mayor reported this week that of a population of 58,000, some 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants have become residents. Many are Haitian. https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/13/i-am-afraid-the-aftermath-of-springfield-ohio-misi/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFSp51leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbFb4-Cbr_aiZTRGFUjVBfq9SfqFp65L5NgI5rcnbKmbQjB91X8U9Kap1g_aem_Ez-hKXVnKFk12vW2CIgsgg
As we can imagine, a large in-migration of people over a short period of time has led to tensions. Services such as health care, translation, and education are strained, as finances are tight. However, nothing prepared the city for what has happened since August when an unfounded rumor began floating around on Facebook that residents’ pets were being stolen and eaten by the immigrants.
The campaign season before an important election can be a crazy time. No doubt many of us were bracing ourselves over the summer for a certain level of chaos, lies, and nastiness. But who could have foreseen that a rumor that a particular immigrant group in Ohio is serving Fido and Mittens for dinner would spiral so out of control that it ended up being stated as fact by the Republican nominee for president in last Tuesday night’s debate? And in the aftermath of the debate, the City of Springfield, a city with plenty of challenges, has been beset by bomb threats in schools and public buildings, and visits from neo-Nazi groups. Not to mention the national media. Haitian members of the community are afraid to send their children to school, and some are withdrawing from public. Of course, if you can’t send your kids to school, you have to stay home to care for them, and so people will inevitably miss work. All this in a small American city that has tried to do the right thing, and has been, in the phrase that’s become very popular in recent days, minding its own business.
All this, of course, is a political stunt. But think of the impact on the most vulnerable members of the community. How much fear and hatred can you possess in order to make political scapegoats of people who are trying simply to gain a toehold in this country and make a living in safety? For a political stunt. It’s cruel.
One of our foundational national myths is that we are ‘the land of the free’. There are those words, enshrined in the last line of our national anthem. And of course, it has never been true for everyone, not in the beginning, and sadly, not now. Will it ever be true, will we ever be the land of the free for everyone?
Who is truly feeling free these days? Individual freedoms are being fought over daily. The freedom to own the weapons of one’s choice. The freedom to ignore mask mandates during the pandemic. The freedom for women to make decisions about our own health. Whether there should be limits on what we call ‘free speech’. Around and around we go, trying to decide what it means to be truly free, never reaching consensus.
But who really feels free right now? Not women of reproductive age. Not schoolchildren with their active-shooter drills, and especially not their teachers, and all of their families. Who feels free? Not immigrant communities, who came here often fleeing violence and oppression at home, hoping and believing that here, in the ‘land of the free’, that they would for the first time, be able to live safely and with agency. A Haitian man living in Springfield, Vilbrun Dorsainvil, said that “he fled his home country, Haiti, after someone tried to kidnap him.
Three years later, he says he’s afraid for his and his community’s safety in the U.S.
“’Before I was not, but right now I can say I am afraid,” Dorsainvil said. “Right now, I’m afraid there may be a mass shooting on us. That would be terrible.’” (Ibid.)
Something fundamental is missing from our national life and culture, something that too often keeps us from seeing the humanity of all people; the humanity and also the holiness, the spark of the divine that every being possesses. That something missing is Love, especially as it takes the form of compassion and empathy. Instead of centering Love, we are too often ruled by fear, which is the opposite of love.
I saw a really interesting quote recently from a colleague, the Reverend Kathleen McTigue. She said, “Fear’s pronoun is singular: ‘I’ve got to watch out for me and mine.’ Love’s pronoun is plural: ‘we’re in this together, and together we can grow things that will blossom even in a time of drought.’”
Our insistence on our own individual freedoms erodes our community life; it contributes greatly to the fear that clutches at us today. In the end, ironically it is this fear that robs us of our true freedom. We cannot be free as long as we live in fear. And we watch, year after year, as so many political voices traffic in fear – offering nothing but their apocalyptic visions. Where is Love?
This past June, delegates to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly voted to change our Association’s bylaws to establish a set of core values. As you’ll remember from all our conversations last spring, those values are Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity. And centering those six, anchoring them and sustaining them, is Love. We UU’s have placed Love directly in the center of all the other values, because everything we do to create more justice and more goodness in the world arises from Love.
“Love’s pronoun is plural: we’re in this together…”
Of course, the kind of love we are discussing is not Eros, or romantic love. It’s an all-encompassing worldview: a belief in a force that frees us, nurtures us, and liberates us. “If we are bold,” wrote the poet Maya Angelou, “love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.” (Maya Angelou, Touched by an Angel).
Love transforms us. Love guides us to act with justice. Love reminds us to be generous. And it liberates us: from fear, from hatred, from all those chains that keep us tied down and prevent us from living life fully.
There are different kinds of freedom. We often confuse them here in the United States. There is freedom ‘to’, and then there is freedom ‘from’. Far too often, we emphasize freedom to: freedom to carry a weapon, freedom to shout hate speech for political gain, freedom to intimidate others, freedom to refuse to wear a face mask even though it was clear that by doing so, we could protect other people. We’ve confused these ‘freedoms to’ with rights. Liberties. My freedoms: I, Me, Mine.
And then there is ‘freedom from’: freedom from fear. Freedom from violence. Freedom from oppression. The freedoms that will emerge and come to us by centering Love as a liberating force.
This belief in Love is the central tenet of our historic Universalism: that God is Love, that there is a Love in us and around us that simply will not let us go.
In Maya Angelou’s words: “love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.” (Ibid.)
We say that this Love, this force, is liberating because if we believe in it, if we are willing to have it as the central grounding element of our religious belief, then that Love calls us to something; to break the chains of fear. It calls us to work for justice. For if we believe that this Love is present for all, offered to all, then we must work to ensure that no one is left out of its embrace. No one is left behind. All are entitled to freedom from fear, freedom from want, entitled to live lives of safety in which they can flourish to become all that they have the potential to be.
What else, then, can set us free, if not this all-embracing Love, the Love known as Agape? For it is this force, or value, or emotion – call it what you will – that becomes a religious practice, that nudges us outward, pushes us to work for justice, for equity, for freedom for those who are marginalized. It calls us to stand with the Haitians and others in our country who too often are still excluded from the circle of community. It pushes us to insist on voting rights for all citizens. It requires us to demand clean air and water, adequate shelter, and enough to eat here in the richest country in the world.
What else can do that, besides Love? As Martin Luther King, Jr. so famously put it: ”Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Often people who don’t really understand Unitarian Universalism think that it’s an easy religion to follow. After all, the old saying goes that ‘we can believe anything that we want.’ But think of us following the demands of Love as our central religious practice. For when we talk about a Love that will not let us go, we acknowledge that Love doesn’t just hold us and bathe us with compassion. Love also insists. Love says, “Get up. Speak up.” Love says, “we increase love by giving it away.” Who thinks this is easy? It’s the work of our lives. We are called to spread love, to remember that fear’s pronoun is ‘I’, but that Love’s pronoun is ‘We.’
I will end with the words of Maya Angelou. She should always be given the last word. She wrote,
“We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
Love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
