 Hello again. Thank you again for welcoming me into your virtual sanctuary this morning. Earlier I named some of the ancestors who have made it possible for me to be here. It's important for me to tell you that I wouldn't be here without Unitarian Universalism either. My parents joined the UU Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin outside Milwaukee when I was six. My dad is the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, and my mom was raised a devout atheist. In Columbus, Wisconsin. The family joke is that when they became UU, my dad's whole family said, Oh no, he's lost religion. And my mom's whole family said, Oh no, she's found religion. I think of my parents as the quintessential Unitarian Universalists. They came from previous spiritual paths that didn't fit them. They are white and middle class and in their 60s, and they both have higher degrees. My dad was an environmentalist way before it was cool. They listen to NPR and read The New York Times and have season tickets to the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. They own two cars and a house and a suburb. They are politically active and vote Democrat. Sound familiar? I'm so grateful my parents joined my home church. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I was taught to honor my own truths. I came to believe that living our faith meant working to make the world a better place and fighting oppression. And as a queer and trans person, I was able to grow up without any sense that these deep truths about myself were at odds with my faith. And yet, not actively making it harder for me to be myself in the world was not enough for me to feel a sense of unconditional welcome and belonging in my church as I grew into adulthood. Nor have I ever felt that way in any of the dozens of UU churches I've been to since. I've never felt like any of them were places where I could fully get my spiritual needs met. Why? I was raised here. This is my religion. You would think that those of us who are raised UU would be the ones who would feel most at home in our congregations, right? The truth is really hard to face. The vast majority of those of us who are raised in a UU church leave. My parents church is not my church. Why? Well, before I answer that question, I want to tell you a little bit more about my parents. I love them dearly. They aren't perfect, but I've never questioned their love for me. And they have given me so much a great childhood, a college education, and acceptance that has grown into appreciation for who I am, even though I'm not the person they expected when they were raising me. When I was growing up, my parents world was a reflection of themselves. Their friends were all people like them, people their age, their race, their class. Our church was a reflection of my parents world as well. As the quintessential UUs, they fit right in. It was easy for them to feel a sense of total belonging, like our church had been made precisely with them in mind. As my sister and I grew older, it became clear that our parents expected our lives to look like theirs without being aware of it. They had so many unconscious assumptions that we would get master's degrees, own houses, be upwardly mobile, that we would have friends and partners of particular races, classes, abilities, genders. Of course, they had these assumptions. They wanted the best for us. Based on what their own lives and cultural contexts had told them, the best is. But my life and my sister's life don't look anything like our parents' lives. Our people are not their people. My sister married a wonderful man from Nicaragua who immigrated to Milwaukee to be with her. Spanish is the primary language in their home. There is a multiracial, multilingual community of friends and a huge, vibrant, extended Nicaraguan family. My community is also a multiracial, multilingual one. A community of queer and trans people of many faiths, many ages, many abilities. Like my brother-in-law, my partner is also working class. He's a generation older than me and queer and trans and in recovery and a long-term survivor of AIDS. Our given and chosen family bridges almost every facet of difference I can imagine. It's hard for any parent to let go of the framed picture that grows in their mind's eye of what their child's life will be like. It was particularly hard for my parents to grasp that their experience of the world and what they had been taught the best is does not translate to the lives of their children. At a certain point, I had to sit them down and say, look, I want a real relationship with you and I know you want a real relationship with me. And in order for that to happen, I need you to stop making assumptions and start asking questions. I need you to be curious about my life, how it's different from yours and what a difference those differences make. I need you to respect my truths. If you can't do this, we can still talk and see each other, but we're going to be people who talk about the weather. Because we are so different, real relationship takes more than just being friendly to each other. It takes actively engaging with our differences and doing the hard work of unlearning our assumptions. Now, my parents didn't have great relationships with their own parents, so they didn't have good models for what it would be like to have good relationships with their own adult children. I think Unitarian Universalism is the same way. If the quintessential UU, like my parents, came here from somewhere else, they might not have good models for how to be a religion whose children don't leave. Did you catch that? If most UUs have fled churches they didn't fit into, they might not know how to create a religious community where people who are different from them don't leave. It's not that our churches aren't welcoming. Of course they are, but a warm smile and not being told I'm going to hell isn't enough. It takes a little bit more than that for me to want to come back. I need more than friendliness. I need radical welcome. So what do I mean when I say radical welcome? Well, there's a really powerful model that my bestie, Reverend Slack, and I, talk about in our Trans Inclusion and Congregations program. It comes from Reverend Cannon Stephanie Spellers, a leader in the Episcopal Church. She talks about three ways that welcome shows up in congregations that are actively seeking to be welcoming. Invitation, inclusion, and radical welcome. Now, invitation is represented by the open door. All are welcome. Come on in. But there's an invisible asterisk after that phrase. All are welcome if you leave your sins like your sexuality behind. All are welcome if you don't need a wheelchair ramp or closed captions or a fragrance-free environment. All are welcome if you are able to make a financial pledge. The goal of the Inviting Congregation is assimilation. The expectation is that everyone who comes in will fit the existing norms for who we are and the way we do things here. If folks can't assimilate, they will eventually leave. Because of this, the Inviting Congregation is overwhelmingly homogenous. It wants to grow, but only with people who are like us. Inclusion is represented by a desire for diversity and surface-level acknowledgments of people who are different from the norm. Inclusion means we want to be a place where different sorts of people feel at home, but we put the burden on them to fit in. Maybe we march in pride, but don't have a gender-neutral bathroom. Maybe we put up a Black Lives Matter banner, but on Sundays we only use music and readings by white people. We might fill our website with images of children, but visiting parents get disapproving looks when their kids make noise during service. The goal of the Inclusive Congregation is incorporation. The expectation is if we add on top of the way we do things here. In small ways, people who are different from our norm will feel welcome. We aren't completely homogenous, but folks on the margins struggle to experience full belonging. The Inclusive Congregation wants to appear diverse, but it doesn't acknowledge what a difference our differences make. Radical welcome, that third type of welcome, is a practice of being transformed by relationships across lines of difference. Being radically welcoming means constantly practicing curiosity about the many different perspectives, values, gifts, and needs within and outside our congregation, and actively seeking out ways for them to influence the very core of who we are and change the way we do things here. The goal of the Radically Welcoming Congregation is incarnation, constantly being made new through our encounters with each other. The culture is co-created and everyone helps shape the congregation's identity, leadership, worship, and programs. The Radically Welcoming Congregation is truly diverse. So invitation says, I'm having a dinner party. Everyone's welcome. Inclusion says, you are invited to my dinner party. I'm making lots of pasta. I hope you come. Radical welcome says, hey, I'm thinking of having a dinner party. What do you like to eat? Are you vegan or gluten intolerant? Do you use chopsticks? Where should we gather? Do you feel the difference? The difference is relationship. Now the temptation is to see this as three stages, but that's not how it works. You see, inviting congregations think that welcome equals friendliness. So as long as they perceive themselves to be friendly, if folks don't feel welcome, they must not belong here. Inclusive congregations think welcome equals surface level efforts to acknowledge difference. So as long as there's a rainbow flag or a ramp or a once a year gospel service, if folks don't feel welcome, that's their fault. So invitation and inclusion are actually barriers to radical welcome. To the Radically Welcoming Congregation, welcome means personal and collective transformation. It means constantly seeking to expand our definition of us and remove the barriers that some of us face. It means practice, not perfection. I need radical welcome because my Unitarian Universalism isn't the same as my parents' Unitarian Universalism, just like my world isn't the same as their world. Remember how my parents wanted what was best for me based on what their lives had told them the best was? NPR, a PhD, upward mobility. The church I grew up in drew the same circle. Classical music, chairs and rows, orders of service, privileging that head over the heart. That's not my Unitarian Universalism. My faith is a queer and trans UUism full of black fierceness and disabled wisdom and multi-generational solidarity. A Pentecostal UUism of praise music and soul food. Worship services that break me open and bring me to tears. I really need a spiritual home where I can hit my knees, open my broken heart and be held and healed so I can go back out into the world and keep fighting. What I need you to understand is that drawing a circle that's big enough for my parents' UUism and my UUism is possible. I need you to understand that this isn't about hating on NPR or classical music. It's about adding new radio bands and new rhythms. It's about creating a mosaic. You know how a mosaic is made, right? From broken pieces. The invitation isn't to throw away my parents' UUism. The invitation is to transform it. To be made new by encounters with different flavors of Unitarian Universalism. Want to know the good news? The good news is you're already doing it. Because here you are online. It hasn't been easy or comfortable, am I right? But you have proven that this community is capable of immense change when the stakes are high enough. That's what radical welcome requires of us. It requires us to not only change, but to be changed in the process. It calls us not to invite more people into the circle, but to draw a wider and wider circle. It calls us not to tolerate or accept people who are different from us, but to celebrate and love people who are different from us and allow this love to transform us. My challenge to you today is to not lose the transformational power of this moment. Allow yourself to not just change, but be changed in the process. Grieve the things you miss about in-person worship, but also talk about the things you've gained. Seek out those on the edges of this community and ask about what they are longing for. How can you draw the circle wider and be made new by all the differences our differences make? This sort of transformation is a tall order. It's not easy. It's not comfortable. And in order to heal our world and ourselves, it's necessary. I firmly believe that this is the place where we can practice this. Because radical welcome is a spiritual practice. So thank you for joining me in this practice. Because it is truly one of the most holy, heart-transforming, and world-changing things that we can do together. Amen. Ache, Aho, and Blessed Be.