 What I saw the photo of the Capitol Police crouching behind a desk. They'd used to barricade the door to the house chamber guns drawn insurrectionists clearly through the broken window Struggling to get in the room. I thought to myself that this will be the lingering image of this Insurrection this terrible event that beset our nation this week it'll be like the Iwo Jima picture or The girl running out of the napalm village in Vietnam the picture that we conjure in our minds when we think of these events Another photo though is haunting me from this past week in a different way It's a photo of the Insurrectionist who went into Nancy Pelosi's office and sat at her what he thought was her desk He clearly was making himself at home. His feet were up on the desk Looking at his cell phone. He claims that he left her a misogynist note and stole an envelope I'm reminded of the words by Hannah Arendt about the Nazis about the banality of evil an Opinion piece from Monica Hess in the Washington Post named the truth that this photo conveys She writes that the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol believed they were owed this opportunity to terrorize Their elected representatives. They were allowed They were the true guardians of democracy not the officials who voters had chosen for the job. I Read elsewhere that One of the chance that was used in the house by the Insurrectionists and in the in the Capitol was this is our house And they certainly acted as if they believed that Monica Hess concludes her column Lawmakers have rushed to explain that these people don't represent America Frankly, I don't think these people want to represent America a country full of immigrants and liberals and low-income people a Majority of whom voted to boot Trump out of Washington. They couldn't represent America if they tried. I Think they just want to act like they own the place That friends is the underlying Premisee of white supremacy White Americans own this country white Americans should be able to do what they want If enough non whites managed to vote in spite of voter suppression and carry the day Then it's time to storm the Capitol and overturn the vote in This viewpoint the Capitol belongs to white Nationalists not people of color or their white allies especially not black people as The presence of the Confederate flag so aptly illustrated Wednesday's insurrection and so much of what happened before was about Making the Capitol and our government the white's house Even if it's true that enslaved blacks Largely built the Capitol. This is an unvarnished picture of white entitlement Beneath the coded and uncoated language Trump and his enablers are trying to restore preserve and protect white entitlement That the Capitol was not ready for this onslaught in spite of Trump and others telegraphing that it was coming in spite of the the kid Glove treatment that was clearly in evidence of the rioters the insurrectionists What what we're seeing here is white privilege in action. It's white entitlement in action and It's embodiment is this guy acting like Speaker Pelosi's office is his living room Make America great again is at its core about white domination of public space and white ownership of the bodies of blacks Indigenous people and people of color Our unitarian Universalist principles and sources present a different view of our country in our world We believe in the inherent dignity and worth of all people and in the last few years We have moved toward an understanding that we cannot respect the inherent dignity and worth of all people if we don't prioritize black and brown lives When we fail and to prioritize black and brown lives, we become Accomplices to white supremacy. We've done this too much in our recent and distant past This is a painful moment of reckoning for we as Unitarian Universalists I've been talking a lot this year about widening the circle of concern the report of the Unitarian Universalist Association's Commission on institutional change it is an Impressive and consequential work and as I've said before I'm really delighted that our board of trustees is reading it Engaging with it as is our racial justice learning circle. In fact this very afternoon So one of the interesting things about widening the circle is its front and center assertion that we must dig into our theology and our spiritual practices if we are going to be able to widen our circle as Our uu faith got out of whack in the 20th century with an exaggerated Focus on individualism making an idol of individualism We ended up privatizing theology what I mean by this is we We kind of got to the point where where the sense in most uu congregations is that people ought to just sort of figure out What they believe on their own? Mostly anyway, and that developing beliefs as an individual sort of private action Not part of a communal effort privatizing Theological work and spiritual practice Deprives Unitarian Universalists of the company of others as we fashion our individual beliefs and practices and I think this is a really big loss. I Am part of a congregation Because my spiritual quest is enhanced immeasurable immeasurably by the questions The insights the wisdom and on occasion the challenges of my fellow travelers in the congregation If I'm on my own figuring out what I believe I have no accountability to anyone I have no help in thinking through the impact of my lives my my beliefs and how I Translate my beliefs into action. I Believe that we're better together That's why in addition to practicing my spirituality at home and in nature. I belong to a congregation It's why I believe so strongly in creating Opportunities here like the journey circles where we can explore and share in our spiritual journeys together It's why I started pub theology here, which sounds like kind of frivolous, but it's really anything but frivolous It's a chance to explore with others what we most deeply believe what we give our hearts to and how we practice our faith Widening the circle points out another problem of privatizing theology and spiritual practice in our congregations It's it's that we have a too thin theology then and a lack of regular spiritual practice And that makes it harder to sustain the work of justice over the long slow haul most of us need a liberating theology and regular spiritual practice to keep on keep it on with the justice work and a lack of these things facilitates burnout The Commission on institutional change recommends that we re-engage with our theological legacy And in order for our theology to become more liberating it furthermore recommends that we center the theology of black scholars indigenous scholars and people of color who are scholars both professional and lay and I'm excited about these recommendations. I believe that creating our Theologies and developing our spiritual practices should be at the center of our mission as a UU congregation this work is as important as the justice work and in fact Undergirds the justice work. I need to be clear that even as I lament the privatization of creating our own belief systems and practices that I'm not advocating for monolithic one-size-fits-all single theology Quite the contrary My vision of a UU congregation is that there are as many unique theological viewpoints as there are people in the congregation Our congregations should embody really wide theological pluralism in the key to having wide and deep theological pluralism is Making space for others If any of us acts like this is our house and only my way of seeing the world is allowed here Then we're acting like the guy in Speaker Pelosi's office. I Cringe when I hear Unitarian Universalists declare things like yeah, we don't believe in God here or we're not religious here in a truly pluralistic Unitarian Universalist congregation there will be folks who believe in God and folks who don't There will be folks who describe themselves as religious and those who don't Enforced oneness is an expression of white supremacy culture and it happens too often in our congregations It's part of why I think we remain overwhelmingly white in this increasingly diversifying country Rosemary Bray McNat who is the president of Star King School for the Ministry a Unitarian Universalist Seminary writes about a conversation that she had several years ago with Coretta Scott King Coretta King told Dr. McNat that she and her husband Martin had been tempted to join a Unitarian congregation But they realized that they would never be able to build a mass movement of black people as Unitarians McNat asserts that becoming Unitarian for them in the mid 20th century Would have meant a fatal separation from the sources of Dr. King's power a Faith in a suffering God who stood with suffering people despite their mistakes and failures and Covenantal love between himself and oppressed African Americans There simply was not space Created in Unitarianism in the mid 19th 1900s for someone to have that viewpoint McNat then asks some questions that shake me to the core Do we really understand that in pursuit of this goal of an anti-racist Unitarian Universalist Association? We are risking more than we realize Do we realize that we are risking being informed by varieties of religious Experience not entertained in our churches for decades if ever Are we prepared to accept that even among people of color at comfortable Economic levels as opposed to those poor uneducated people don't know any better than to praise God there may not only be a Theological but a cultural understanding of the divine that travels with them into our sanctuaries These are such good questions Too often blacks and other people of color have come into our sanctuaries and had members Implicitly and once in a while even explicitly say this is my house You're welcome to be part of it if you act and believe like I do if you can't do that Find somewhere else to go worship for me I Would love to be in a genuinely pluralistic Eventually multi-cultural congregation in which people see and maybe even hear the colors of the world in different ways Wouldn't it be amazing metaphorically to have a wide variety of Neil Harbison's the guy who did the Ted talk sharing how they see and hear and experience and understand the world in radically different ways This is how all of our theological imaginations could be unleashed stretched to the betterment of all and So let's find ways to invite and welcome in different kinds of folks Into this house of worship and let's embrace the understanding that as we do so this house that we love the way it is is Going to change and it's going to be a beautiful thing for all of us We have a unique opportunity as Unitarian Universalists to create houses of worship with an incredibly wide variety of people beliefs I Think our nation needs us to do this I think the world needs us to do it and I think we need us to do it May we do this good hard work