Today is my last sermon as co-pastor and so, this week, I’ve been looking back as a way of looking forward, thinking about and learning from the years we’ve spent together. I am grateful for all the ways that our community has helped transform the stories that dominate our society and to turn it around: offering kindness instead of condemnation, and justice instead of a tired resignation to the way things are. Our banners boldly remind us that we will not stand idly by, that we can make a difference, and that our own, very earthly voices can call one another to a more beautiful and just and altogether wonderful way of life. Thank you!

While shame and humiliation are part of the human experience, we should not promote them or build our communities and movements around them. Instead, let’s focus on becoming places where we learn to care for ourselves and one another, with healing for when we hurt and celebration for when we thrive. Wisdom and compassion as a “way of knowing” will serve us better for creating social norms and communities where we can learn to take care of our personal and collective well-being; where we can be and feel safe; and where we can nourish our creativity and joy.

The suicide of a 40 year old scientist (and athlete and musician) raises two crucial issues with modern day America. 1) While we have possibly the most advanced medical science in the world, our distribution of health care and our priorities in research are based on profit and not health and that is killing us. 2) The government (and the police) insert themselves into an individual's choice to end their own life when they have no prospect of living meaningfully, which forces them to not discuss their decision with family, friends, or professionals. These are problems that we can solve.

The authors of America's Declaration of Independence acknowledged that people seem to be willing to suffer the abuses of their government until such time that the liberties the government gives to itself become unbearable. With the loss of voter protection, the license given to corporations to make political donations (bribes), taking away affirmative action, women's right to manage their own reproductive lives, and the open threat to the civil rights of gay, lesbian, and trans folks, isn't it time for meaningful and sustained protest to demand reform, especially in our Supreme Court?