“Every Soul”
by Dan Schatz
January 28, 2024

I was not one of the popular kids when I was growing up. I know – to see me today it comes as a shock, but truth be told, I was a nerd. I had this mop of unruly curly hair, big glasses, cheap clothes, and I played the autoharp, for crying out loud. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t part of the in group. The fact is, I was bullied a lot of the time.

But somehow, I still loved people. I won’t say I loved the bullies – I wasn’t some kind of spiritual prodigy – but I did love being with people, interacting with people, engaging and connecting with people. My natural talkativeness is part of that, I think. I was always reaching out, sometimes awkwardly, trying to be included, but also trying to include others. I don’t know where all of that came from, but I have an idea where some of the love did – because the faith I grew up in also loved people.

Unitarian Universalism welcomes people. Unitarian Universalism embraces human beings not because we accomplish great things or because we have a lot of money or status or power – but simply because we are human. Unitarian Universalism embraced me – even though I was this awkward, nerdy kid growing into a bumptious and presumptuous teenager. My church and the national youth group became the place where I could flourish. And I think some part of my brain internalized that teaching very early on, even as a young child. I knew what it was like to be left out, I couldn’t bear the thought of other people having to go through that, and here was this part of my life, teaching me there was another way.

So when I learned, as a child, that there was such a thing as a gay person, or lesbian or bisexual, and that some people hated “those people,” my first thought was – “Why would you discriminate against somebody because of who they love?” As a high school student in the 1980s I had my first interaction with an openly transgender person – at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. That was thirty-six years ago. She was, I later learned, a pillar of the UU community in our region and deeply respected – and in 1988, she walked into a conference of 4000 strangers as herself. Honestly, I can’t imagine the courage it took, in that time, in that era, but it was a UU conference. This was the faith that helped her flourish as the woman she knew herself to be.

That’s the faith I grew up in. That’s the faith I love. That’s the faith that honors every soul.

And in being who we are, as Unitarian Universalists, we have helped change our culture, this country, and our world. As I grew and began the path toward ministry I learned that our leaders in the 1960s marched with Rev. Dr. King, that the Unitarian minister James Reeb died in Selma for the right to vote, that Universalists and Unitarians led the women’s suffrage movement, that Whitney Young, the founder of the National Urban League, was a Unitarian, as was the great Philadelphia abolitionist and suffragist poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. I would go on to take part in our historic struggles for equity, as did so many of you, when we marched for marriage equality, worked together for immigrant rights, and rose up for Black Lives Matter. And you know how I said that I remember vividly the first openly transgender person I ever met? Well I have a son about the same age now as I was back then, and he can’t remember anything like that, because transfolk have always been part of his life, his whole life, and for him, there’s absolutely nothing unique or memorable about it. That’s progress, and we helped make it happen.

This is the faith I give my life to. This the faith that I love. This is the faith that lifts every soul.

Of course, it hasn’t always been easy. We’re not perfect; we need to admit that. We’re like anybody else; we misstep sometimes. We have feet of clay sometimes. We haven’t always lived up to our ideals. I will never forget the letter in a 1990s UU World Magazine: “Unitarian Universalism depends on middle class respectability. How would people react at seeing two men dancing together at a church social?” What? I mean, a sermon isn’t long enough to list all the things wrong with those two sentences. And maybe it was an aberration, but realistically it was part of a long, and probably inevitable pattern.

Social change takes intention. There’s always a learning curve, and sometimes, when you’re part of the privileged group, it’s easy to think that affirming everyone’s worth and dignity and equality is enough. But it’s never that simple. It’s too easy to exclude people, sometimes without even realizing we’re doing it – simply by being unwilling to change, or getting stuck in old and comfortable ways of doing things that fit very well into our social cultures but not so well into others, or seeing people as rude or weird if they violate norms we don’t even realize we have. Let the congregation say “Amen.” (See? As an aside, I’d be thrilled if we broke that norm. I enjoy a responsive congregation.)

But think about it – this congregation, right here, only became mostly accessible six years ago. And you still can’t get where I am, physically, if you’re in a wheelchair. It takes work to live up to our ideals, and we’re always moving towards them. I don’t blame us for that; I don’t blame anyone for that. It’s human; it’s natural. But because it’s human and natural I am eternally grateful for the courage of those who have sometimes found themselves excluded from our inclusive faith, and who have spoken up and called us back to our deepest ideals. I am equally grateful for those who have been willing to sacrifice the comfort of familiarity so that others may know what it is to be welcome.

When Unitarian Universalists say that “Every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness,” it’s more than just an affirmation; it’s engagement. And when we pledge “to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities,” we bring it home. To me, that’s a covenant worth keeping.

It’s what makes Unitarian Universalism more than an intellectual exercise, or a social club. It’s the heart of who we are, and I believe always has been. It’s a big part of the “love” in our congregation’s mission to grow, love, and serve.

We have the right to flourish. I have that right; you have that right. Every soul has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worth.

Every soul.

You don’t have to be especially talented, or beautiful, or wealthy, or intelligent. You don’t have to fit a particular mold. You don’t have to believe all same things as the people around you. You might be a Democrat, a Republican, an independent. You might be a Unitarian Universalist or a member of any other kind of religion. You might be a Christian or an atheist. You might be an Israeli or a Palestinian. You might be a child or an elder. It doesn’t matter. You are important because you are you. You are worthy of love because you are you.

And you have the right to flourish.

I know there are a million messages telling you otherwise. I know that in a million subtle ways we’re taught that we’re not good enough, or important enough, or worthwhile enough. We get told we have the wrong gender expression, or the wrong color skin, or the wrong age, or the wrong body shape, or the wrong beliefs, or the wrong mental processes, or the wrong habits, or the wrong past, or the wrong ways of being a sexual person, or whatever it is. The messages are relentless, and after awhile, it’s hard not to internalize that. It’s hard not to suffer with the illusion of inadequacy. And it’s hard for all of us – and I truly believe all of us – to avoid becoming complicit in these kinds of messages, sometimes, and in some ways.

Unitarian Universalism is here to remind us that we are better than that. We are all better than that. Every soul is better than that.

Every soul has the right to flourish.

That means we, in this place, have a responsibility to create a space in which every soul can. Here in this congregation, if we truly live our values, we will be more than just welcoming. We will create and recreate our community again and again, so that we never atrophy into what is merely familiar at the cost of anyone’s dignity or worth.

Now that doesn’t mean that we all get to do or say whatever we want to whomever we want and call it “equity.” That’s not what that means. Sure, sometimes we make mistakes or act out of ignorance, but when somebody lets me know that I’ve hurt them, I need to be willing to change my approach. Yes, we’ll disagree sometimes, and more than sometimes – if Unitarian Universalists agreed on everything, we wouldn’t be the people of free thought that we are – but we need to learn to express our beliefs and our values, and yes, our disagreements, in ways that are compassionate, caring, and open minded, and that honor each other’s right to flourish with worth and with dignity.

Every soul has that right.

When we’re living these values, when we’re living the value of equity, and of the right to flourish, and of inherent dignity and worthiness, it’s not just about me and what I get out of it. Yes, honoring our self worth is important too, and that’s a whole different sermon. But equity isn’t just about me, the self. It’s about you, and you, and you, and every soul. It’s about how we manifest love in our lives, in our congregation, in our Unitarian Universalist Association, and in the world. It’s about the right of every soul to flourish. And as someone in a fairly privileged position, I know that one of the ways I can flourish better, one of the ways I can grow into the human being I aspire to be, is to listen very carefully to those who have not been so privileged, or who have not been at the center of power, or who have had to struggle not because of who they are but because of what they are. Sometimes the best way I can flourish is to find ways to lift their lives, and their souls.

One of the first sermons I ever heard, in those years of growing up Unitarian Universalist, was from Ken McLean, the Minister at Cedar Lane Church was I was growing up. I must have been somewhere between 8 and 12 years old, but for whatever reason on this particular Sunday I sat with my parents in the upstairs service. Ken said that one of his mentors had told a group of seminary students that the most important thing when you enter a Unitarian Universalist congregation is never to shut the door behind you. At the time, he recalled, everyone thought that was ridiculous. Of course you shut the door behind you! Can you imagine the heating bills in the Winter? The bugs in the Summer? The street noise! Of course you shut the door behind you.

But the mentor said, “No. You’re not getting it. When you enter a Unitarian Universalist congregation, the most important thing you can do to is hold the door open for the next to come in.”

Hold the door open. Maybe the next to come in is homeless. Hold the door open. Maybe the next to come in is an atheist or a Pagan or a believer in Jesus. Hold the door open. Maybe the next to come in is Black or Brown or White, Trans or Cis, Hetereo, or queer, or asexual, Aromantic, or uses pronouns you’ve never even heard of before. Hold the door open. Maybe the next to come in votes differently than you do. Hold the door open. Maybe the next to come in is young or is old, or is in a wheelchair, or has a seeing eye dog. Maybe the next to come in is neurodivergent in any of a hundred ways. Hold the door open, and when I say hold the door open, I don’t mean stand at the entrance looking numb. It’s cold outside! Or the bug will get in. Street noise, or something. What I mean is that we remove every possible obstacle to someone who would join our community. What I mean is that all of us keep ourselves open to change, because we are made new with every human being who walks through these doors.

That’s what it means to honor the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worth. That’s what it means to be inclusive. That’s what it means to live values of equity and justice. That’s what it means to make love the center of our spirit. Hold the door open, for every soul. Welcome the people in.

And together we will flourish. Together we will rise. I will lift you and you will, lift me and we all will turn to every soul so that no one is left behind, so that no one is forgotten, so that no one is neglected, so that one is demeaned. Together we will love. Together we will live. Together every soul will rise, turning to each other to offer a hand and a heart and all our spirit.

We will lift every soul.

This table is love,
this table is joy,
this table is welcome.