This sermon was delivered virtually at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis, Indiana, on January 30, 2022. You can also watch/listen to an online recording.
If you told a caterpillar that one day it would become a butterfly, would the caterpillar believe you? How is it possible that a worm with short stubby feet that munches on plants can transform into a creature with huge, elegant wings, long, slender legs, and a straw-like tongue that sips from flowers? Surely such transformation is impossible. But it’s not.
How does the caterpillar know to form a chrysalis? Does it know what will happen to it when it does? Does it have any idea that its body will literally break down into a kind of genetic goop, that its tissues and very cells will disintegrate, that it will digest itself before being reborn in a completely new form? Is it terrified? Is it eager? Is it answering a call that only it can hear? The idea that any creature would willingly undergo such a destruction of itself seems impossible. But it’s not.
Continue reading “Impossible Until It’s Not”
At every point in the history of the United States there have been people whose faith has provided the bedrock for lifelong efforts to end violence, oppression, and inequity—Dorothy Day, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Bishop Gene Robinson—and there have been others who have used their religion as a weapon to further these same forces; to maintain the oppressive status quo rather than challenge it.
roots grow the tree 