The theme this month is Heritage, and in the worship services for the last two Sundays we have heard reflections on how Unitarian Universalism has engaged with issues of justice and faith in action in mixed ways throughout our history. On October 1st Rev Mary asked in her sermon what does it mean to know that our UU heroes were slow to respond to slavery, or were proponents of eugenics? What does that mean to us?
I believe there is much to learn from a candid and honest engagement with our heritage. One curriculum for the UUA which I have taught here and loved, Resistance and Transformation, has this description:
Grounded in the belief that even "failures" in our history can be instructive, this program presents the ongoing struggle of our tradition to live up to its ever-evolving ideals of social transformation. Themes include abolition, peace-making, civil rights, free speech, utopianism, counter-culture, the women’s movements of both 19th and 20th centuries, sexuality education, and LGBT equality.
I love this phrase “ongoing struggle … to live up to ... ever-evolving ideals of social transformation”. We are descendants of people who have had great ideals and have struggled to live up to them. We are also descendants of people whose ideals are now understood to have been flawed. In other words, we are descendants of people who have been flawed, human, and have made mistakes.
What does that mean to us? Perhaps that we are also flawed, human, and make mistakes. In our effort to put our faith into action, we will not be perfect. We may sometimes cause harm when we mean to do good. We may sometimes fall short of the mark.
Which brings me to one of my favorite concepts (which you may have heard me expound upon before, it’s a repeating theme in my messages): Praxis. Praxis is a concept in liberation pedagogy that calls us to engage in an ongoing process of reflection that leads to evolving theory and practice. We never stop learning, and we never assume that we’ve got it all perfect. We continue to learn from what we do and then do better next after we have learned.
