Sermon - The. Rev Bob LaVallee

 What do I need to let go to have more room for love?

Poem - Pluto Shits on the Universe - Fatimah Asghar

On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.

Naw.

I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.

Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?

That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.

My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.

It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.

Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.

It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.

Intent vs. Impact

I've done enough racial equity trainings now that I've fully embraced the difference between intent and impact and accepted the responsibility for my impact on others.

I was recently in a meeting where these came up, and someone pushed back on the idea of owning your impact, saying, essentially, not my fault if you're a snowflake and got your little baby feelings hurt. 

In the moment, I was floored and didn't even know where to begin explaining a whole paradigm of power dynamics in a system of oppression that argues for accountability for intent and impact and how you analyze/react to others' behaviors. It's only when all actors take responsibility for their parts in a situation that you can break the cycle of oppression, victimhood, and complicity. (Arguably the three parts in Karpman's co-dependent triangle of conflict.) As with most things, "yes, and" is the answer here. Yes, a person must take responsibility for their response and their feelings, AND when you hurt someone, even unintentionally, you say sorry. 

Robin DiAngelo (?) described this dynamic with the analogy that if you step on someone's foot and they say ouch, you don't say: "But I didn't mean to." You say, "I'm sorry I hurt you." (My kids are learning this one... slowly!)

I'll take this analogy a bit further, which is to say, all things being equal, the person who is stepped on should speak up to say "ouch." But if the person stepping on your foot is your boss, or a policeman, or the president of the United States, or you're a person from a non-dominant group and they're in the dominant group, there are reasons you might not feel free to speak up. There are power dynamics in play. 

The other person should be compassionate enough that if someone winces when they pass by, they might ask, "Did something just happen?" or "Are you ok?" opening the door for the other person to say, "Yes, you just stepped on me" and giving the other person the opportunity to say, "I'm so sorry I stepped on you!"  

Courage, Compassion, Connection - rinse and repeat.

So what are some resources that can help explain?

• Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility
• Transcript of talk: "Think Impact, Not Intent" 
• Intent vs. Impact: A Formula for Better Communication
• But I didn't mean it! Why it's so hard to prioritize impacts over intents - Scientific American
• "If you say something and you make someone feel seriously uncomfortable, it’s now on you to give serious consideration to why that person might feel that way. That’s how empathy and being a nice human being works."

Chinese proverb - "Might be good, might be bad; we'll see!"

 The Rev. Christine Robinson has shared the story with our congregation on multiple occasions of a Chinese farmer who experiences a series of events that seemed like bad luck when they happened but turned out to be fortuitous when the next "bad thing" happened. 

• Sai Weng Lost His Horse

I like this article that describes both the personal lesson about mindfulness and curiosity and also the leadership lesson of not wasting energy worrying about what's not within your circle of influence. 

• Leadership lessons from a Chinese farmer

Sermon - The Rev. Angela Herrera - 9/19/2021

 Spiritual values that are the antidote of perfectionism:

• Courage
• Compassion
• Connection

Poem - A Gift - Denise Levertov

Just when you seem to yourself 

nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.