 When I was a chaplain in training working at the neonatal intensive care unit of a trauma center I was sometimes afraid I would tear up when I was speaking to parents who were facing the Worst and most unimaginable thing that they had ever faced by the end of the summer I realized that having tears in my eyes while relating to someone facing something so Devastating was nothing to be ashamed of it was just being human There was empathy and that's one of the skills in this new world that we're called to use Because there's so much now. We can't unknow In 2021 we are faced with so much we cannot unknow As we enter this strange time of reemergence coming out of this year of Social isolation we face things we can't unknow We can't unknow how much it gladdened our hearts to see one another in little squares on a computer screen or in Little slightly less screen squares on our phone Or how much it meant to us this time last year if someone came by and dropped off a Saraptitious roll of toilet paper or a bag of flour What it will mean to enjoy the first hugs with loved ones which some of us are starting to enjoy now That is something that we understand to be a great privilege among us right now We also Though can't unknow The sight of floodwaters or winter storms that seem to come with greater intensity or where I live out in the west in California the terrifying fire black and hills which now come Seasonally each year it seems as part of the fall in this climate changing world We can't unhear George Floyd's rasping voice saying they'll kill me or Eric Gardner's saying I can't breathe We can't uncount all the empty storefronts or begin to ungrieve the number of People who died from the this plague and those that died from other health conditions Unaddressed in this time in which the resources had to be concentrated on fighting COVID-19 We can't know the or unknow the despair of our youth and young people who wonder what future this is that they will inherit We can't unview those images of our nation's capital under siege and the anger contorted faces of Ordinary people we can't unknow that so many in the United States Senate chose party politics over the now always known possibility of autocracy and totalitarianism and authoritarianism We cannot unknow the damage that racism unattended privilege or other oppressions do in our own precious religious communities and After a year of mail order and delivery that deepened our individualized lives We want to heed that voice in our head that's saying I I don't want to know this I don't need to know this and yet we can't unknow these things For they are part of the greater truth that we now hold together It's a lot to hold and yet isn't that what we do in our religious communities? We hold together those things that we cannot hold alone We must in these times speak of these things to each other hold them together grieve together and try to figure out what this new Reemergent world will be together. Yes. We are eager for that trip to our favorite restaurant on at the mall or To see the places that we've longed so much for in our minds and yet we have other things We also need to hold together for we also can't unknow how much better We understand our interdependence with with all of the rest of the natural world or we can't forget the Blue of the sky or the quiet of the night last spring when we had done what we had long said we would do and and Stopped all our mad dashings in individual vehicles We can't unknow how ordinary people Did their everyday jobs as health providers and grocery store workers and Drivers and they made it possible for the rest of us to be here today Ascension beings we can't unknow how our youth and young adults heard the call of black and brown Voices and led many of us into the streets To affirm the black lives matter in record numbers last spring We cannot know how we made masks before mask industries were born and gave them and gifted them to each other or how Our neighbors and those without resources Those with resources shared with those without resources time and time again We cannot unfear how easily the hard-won rights of women gay lesbian Bisexual transgender and queer people can be turned back by just a few Changes in the highest seats of power in our nation We can't unknow how those of us with the resources came together to learn and laugh and be each other's Actual lifelines on screens We can't unknow how when somebody needed something food a postcard for advocacy a listening ear a virtual hug We did our best to provide it We can't unknow any of this or turn back the clock to live in another world other than the one in which we actually live We cannot unknow the joy that some among us now are Feeling that that we can go about and do some things that we used to do Having had not just one but two vaccines and those precious two weeks after the second one What we've taken around here to calling two twos people that are already in that privileged state We are celebrating that teachers and essential workers and lots of other folks are Beginning to get vaccinated in that this week We began to hear a time when almost everybody even our children might begin to get this kind of protection that we want so much Though we know there are people among us who will never be able to have it at this time We can't unknow our Extended appreciation for science which gave us these vaccines in Record time we cannot know the people that worked tirelessly in coalitions to counter the effects That gerrymandering voter intimidation and suppression would likely have had to ensure that people could vote it was an amazing effort and what was so interesting was that the Articles on it show that it was an unusual coalition that included the US Chamber of Commerce and also the AFL CIO that fought Consciously and very conscientiously behind the scenes to make sure that this all came about as it did We can't Uncelebrate the tenacity of leaders like Stacy Abrams and the principled leaders of all political stripes in Georgia Who stood up for what was true? We can't unknow that when despite misinformation false news and gerrymandering the People's turned out in record-setting numbers to vote and the majority still chose the yet Unfulfilled promise of democracy we can't unknow that the world we will create in these coming months as More and more of us can reemerge With a higher degree of safety and we cannot unknow that this will not be the world that we left a little more than a year ago This and what we are coming to understand about this new world are what we can Hold together what we are called to hold together in our religious communities All of this requires the power of adaptation that you know a living tradition gives us as we prepare for this time of Reemergence we will try not to unknow and try to go back to the life that was before and I think we'll find that we can't That's what everyone is helping us see now. I Spent the last six months of the pandemic doing my suddenly impossible ministry jobs and finishing my work as the chair of the Commission on institutional change documenting the truths about The fates of black indigenous and people of color here in our midst in Unitarian Universalism and It was hard work and hard to hold that to not be able to unknow that in the midst of everything else that was swirling around us in those months and Even in just a few months of slightly calmer times It's easy to forget the chaos with which we greeted so many days in those times The truth we found over a three-year data-intensive process that was the work of the Commission Became only more stark during the time of the pandemic and made us only more clear that we needed to Make the steps and do the study that would allow us to address this as a people The thing is that delving into all of this isn't so bad because we need to know the ways that People continue to work across lines to minimize threats to our democracy we need to understand the way that working at home has reduced pollution for us or bodily stress on many workers though it's created other kinds of stress which the Yoga time for all ages with the children was designed to improve We have now also know how much richer our intellectual climate is because we're hearing more voices of Black and indigenous and people of color among us and many of us are trying to listen with a renewed attention again If we can hold all this together in community all that we know and can't unknown We can also drill down into some new and emerging data such as a study coming out of Massachusetts that says that communities Where where people had actual black lives matter? Protests are actually seeing a reduction in the killing of black people and Especially large Protests that they made a difference and I want to thank this congregation in Madison for your work on racial justice We need to look at the grim statistics about the rate of black and latinx businesses And how much more they failed because they had the thinnest of resources going into this pandemic We need to stand in solidarity with our Asian neighbors who have been targeted for hate and murder Especially the elders in those communities who are now so afraid Especially in places where they are easily found in larger numbers like here on the West Coast We need to look at the cost of this pandemic on parents and especially on women who have borne so much of the cost in their work lives We need to listen to experts such as those At the renowned Southern Poverty Law Center who are now saying that what is needed to end this era of division and hate Isn't actually just compassion and listening. It may also require other things like cult deprogramming We can't unknown a presidency which made a mockery of our government on a regular basis or state Legislature is now imposing new forms of voter suppression We can't unknown the images of people on ventilators or the pictures of a rising tide of hate What many call the other plague the other pandemic We can't unknown what it felt like to be in our bodies when we were confined to our homes separated even at the most Joyous of holidays and if we rush back into everything as if we didn't know any of this as if this wasn't part of what we do If we try to push this aside at these most difficult times It will certainly be at our own peril and especially at the peril of those with less privilege Those most at risk from these times This isn't a time of returning back to something that we have known before Because normal will probably never return in exactly the same way just as when we come back together into our houses of worship We won't have all the same faces in our pews It's a time of transformation and we need to have conversations about what we want to do differently as a result of what it is That we can't unknown how we want to balance our individual desires with our community Reinvestments for example those are some of the commitments that sustained us through this time and Will again in other hard times, which we know now will probably be coming at some point We have to think about where we're going to spend our money Are we going to perhaps support some of those minority owned or family owned or women owned businesses that have suffered so much in these later months Are we also going to think a little bit more about how we? Approach family members or once close friends who now sit on the other side of a political divide How we might think about how many times we fly across the nation or across the world or how many miles we drive Now that we've had some time doing a little bit less of that How we might engage more fully with our democratic processes, which we now know are fragile and Temporal unless we guard them we need to read and consider people who have been thinking about How one reemerges after a time of potential Annihilations people in places like Detroit and on the indigenous nations that are all around our country And we that co-habitate in this land. We need to forge new partnerships There are a million ways that we can use what we now can't know to have a new form of reemergence We will not Unknown and do so not just with the fierceness of our intellect, but also with the very fibers of our body and With our hearts we know now that we need to Understand and comprehend through the fullness of our beings Because that's the kind of experience. We've had one that was deep gripping and overwhelming at times We are creatures that can adapt we can't we know this now we can change we can learn It doesn't mean we always want to but when it comes to it and we absolutely have to we can do things in different ways As we know by the way, we're doing church just this morning all around the nation as We begin to reemerge after this year of living virtually we will need to learn some about the The field that Stanford professor and author Jimmy old is a key says is one of our adaptations as a species Part of what we can't know is our deep sense of how we need one another and that challenges to us to learn better One of our innate traits, which is empathy according to the research that Zaki does He says that just as geologists once thought continents were fit Fixed and drummed out the odd odd ball who suggested that they had a once moved Our society is deprived of essential empathy because we believe it's something you're born with or you can't just Grow into obtain or learn Zaki said that this fixism is dangerous and that we need to move towards a more Mobilist way of understanding Remembering that we can expand and develop our capacity for the empathy that we may need to help bring into our own hearts All that we can't unknown for empathy may be an essential survival skill for us in that world Look at all we have learned this year. There's so much to celebrate in quite a bit Tim one How much of community is based on? Who we are not where we are how much our deepest values can guide us through crazy times How we are more than talking heads and how we need to remember our poor bodies Ours is a living tradition as I said in our congregations our places to take on that deep learning I share with you as I did with our children today There's my poor old body do showing off the yoga skills that were one of my pandemic learning vectors for this time We had too few distractions So we learned to pay attention better to some of our neighbors among us to listen to those who have different backgrounds and different Generations we learn to listen with our minds But also with our hearts with our empathy and to come to a different level of understanding This is our tradition. It allows us to learn and grow the spiritual growth that we need We have a lot to celebrate as we come out of this odd isolated time when we have proved our resilience Because of what we can't unknown we are going to need to allow ourselves the time for Celebrating and mourning all we have lost not in this just in this last year But rather because of the ways that we have allowed a culture of toxic individualism to destroy community reinvestment and Prevert our economy and throw hate on our beloveds We see that now more clearly than we did a year ago And we need to be beginners and practice new skills like a deeper kind of empathy covenant And yes embodiment for true science shows that we can't hold all this stress Intention that we're living with now in these days just in our bodies forever without dire consequences When we come physically back together more even though we can't sing We may be ready to hum and to clap in worship and then to sing our hearts out in the shower That will be a new way of being and as activist and mentor extraordinaire to so many grace Leabogs has written you transform yourself to transform the world We who have learned the power of tears and the power of deep joy both cannot learn that now We know that we have what it need we need to meet this new time Especially if we use our precious time together to reflect upon it with the deep foundations of our tradition Which values each life and also our? Interdependence we can greet these new times in this time of reemergence This chrysalis time if you will we know we can love one another deeply and what we know Whether we wish to know it or not has a power and it's a power that we should not turn aside We can greet it by being either scared or treating it as sacred and thus taking it into our own lives And ways of being if we choose to reap from what we now cannot Unknown from these years and months then we can reemerge into a better and more vital force for change and support and we can be the places of sanctuary that so many need today and We'll need in the months to come as the impacts of these last years continue to unravel and enroll Sanctuary for ourselves for one another and for the larger family of humanity and also for the family of creation May these commitments through our actions through our being be the legacy of what we cannot unknown And may we be the ones to make it so