 As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in the inherent dignity and worth of all people. I believe that babies are born with inherent goodness. I believe even the worst of us have some goodness somewhere inside us. This is really standard contemporary Unitarian Universalist belief. I also believe in original sin. That's kind of a fancy theological label for the idea that we all screw up. I generally prefer the label screwing up, especially for that kind of garden variety mistake. However you label it, the truth is that we humans harm ourselves, we harm each other, we harm the earth, we harm the interdependent web. Hopefully not all the time, hopefully not massively, but most of us screw up minorly, pretty frequently, and majorly every once in a while. Okay, now a baby really doesn't screw up, but every baby has the inherent ability to screw up, just as they have inherent goodness, and sooner or later they will screw up. So Unitarian Universalists have historically rejected the idea of original sin. This largely came from our aversion to the orthodox companion beliefs of predestination and divine election. Our Universalist ancestors wisely rejected the idea that some people are saved, while some people are condemned to the eternal hell. Perhaps most odious to Universalists was that some Protestants played God and acted as if they knew who would be saved, surprise, surprise them, and they knew who would be condemned. They gave belief and original sin a bad reputation. But it's also true that Universalists did believe that people, including themselves, grew up and are in need of the balm of God's forgiving and healing. In many ways, Unitarian Universalists lost this understanding as we got swept up in the Unitarian idea that humanity somehow is on this path ever marching toward perfection. Well, I believe that original sin, this idea that we screw up applies not just to individuals, but also communities like congregations and nations. In the case of the United States, the origins and the expansion of our nation are just completely entwined with the massive sins of slavery and genocide against black and indigenous people. And here, yeah, I'm using sin instead of screw up because that's a pretty terrible thing. The same impulse behind enslaving Africans and waging genocide against indigenous people has created in more recent times sins like interning Japanese Americans during World War II and in the last few years, caging immigrant children and separating them from their parents. There are big sins, mistakes, and our UU faith history too. For example, most Unitarians in the Boston establishment during the days of abolitionism actually opposed abolitionism or anything that would deter the lucrative slave trade. Or the outsized role of Unitarians and Universalists in imperialism in Hawaii and the Philippines, which I've talked about previously, or the prominent role of Beacon Press, the Unitarian publishing house in promoting eugenics and the forced sterilization of poor, disproportionately women of color and disabled women. And then there's the litany of white Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists turning their backs on black UUs as they requested support in fellowship. Over and over we have sabotaged or at least missed opportunities to welcome black Unitarian Universalists and invite them to change this historically white faith. I don't know enough about FUS's history to understand how it might have participated in or worked against some of these denominational sins. I'm curious to learn more about the time that then FUS minister Kenneth Patton resigned from the white race back in the 1940s. I see that Jim Jager wrote, did a sermon about that earlier I think this year and I'm going to look at that. I'm curious to learn more about FUS member Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner was a UW professor whose frontier theory in the late 1800s greatly influenced the academic American understanding of Western expansion. My colleague Reverend Fred Muir is exploring the impact of Turner's frontier theory on what was then the next frontier conquering the Pacific Islands. So regardless of the impact of Patton's resignation from the white race or how imperialists used or misused Turner's theory, my guess is that FUS like most UU congregation had its shining moments, its screw ups and its moments of missed opportunity. Well here we are in 2020. None of us virtually hear this morning enslaved people. None of us opposed the abolitionists in Boston. None of us published eugenics books. None of us overthrew the Hawaiian queen or conquered the Philippines. But those of us who are white have profited it from many of these sins. My own story I think is illustrative where I was lucky enough, privileged enough to be raised in elite public schools in a suburb, ritzy suburb that was 99% plus white. I was lucky enough, privileged enough to attend an eastern college that was elite. Even though I didn't have financial aid and then attend the University of Chicago Divinity School. I had a boatload of educational opportunities that most non-whites, especially most lower income people just don't have. The land I was born on, the land I live on, the land I work on was all stolen from indigenous people. Every time I buy a piece of clothing from the Philippines or a dull pineapple that is cheap because of worker exploitation, I profit from US imperialism in the Pacific. And I note here that William James Dole, who started the Dole Fruit Company in Hawaii, a company built on exploiting the land in indigenous Hawaiian people. I note here that he was a Unitarian. I wish all this was not true, but it is true. I am part of what went before, whether I like it or not. So my conclusion from all this is that we are in need of healing as individuals, as Americans, as Unitarian Universalists, as members of FUS. Black indigenous people of color within our country, within our denomination, within our congregation need healing from the continued harm of their bodies, their emotions, their souls from racism. Whites like me need healing, so we don't keep harming people of color. So how do we heal from our screw-ups? This morning I want to propose a seven-fold path for healing. I'm focusing today on racism and oppression. But the seven-fold path applies to lots of other screw-ups, minor or major, personal or collective. First in the seven-fold path is we need to learn. Ignorance, parochialism, denial, fear of learning the truth have all helped enable white racism. So we need to learn our history. Knowing, for example, that Unitarian Universalists and Unitarian institutions promulgated eugenics, that's important for us to know. And that leads to the second thing on my path, which is we need to acknowledge our individual and collective screw-ups. This isn't about shame, it's not about guilt. Shame is never productive. Guilt is only productive for a few seconds if it then leads into learning and acknowledgement. Shame, wallowing in grief about our supportive eugenics just does not help, but acknowledging this, apologizing for it, that's what we need to do. And then step three, borrowing from 12 steps, is to make amends where to do so does not cause further harm. There are many ways to make amends. The first one that comes to mind is after we make a mistake, we don't continue to make the same harmful mistake again and again. Reparations can be a good avenue of making amends. One of the many missed opportunities for our Unitarian Universalist Association and its relationship with Black UUs was a failure to fulfill a promise in the late 1960s to robustly fund Black UU initiatives. The UUA's decision a few years ago to fund the organization Black Lives UU can be viewed as reparations. I think that's a really great helpful lens for that. It's a way of making amends for our repeated failures to lend support and fellowship to Black UUs and our broken promise in the late 1960s. Fourth in my path is that every screw up we make, every screw up our ancestors made is an opportunity for empathy. This is why I try really hard to listen when UU people of color share their experience of harm within our faith. Rather than become defensive or argumentative about their experiences, I try to listen. I try to take a little step to imagining in a small way what that might feel like. It's empathy. It's the same lesson Penelope had to learn in the time for all ages. Fifth, we need to stay curious and I'm not going to say more about that if you want to remember more, go back to my August second sermon. Sixth, this one's surprising to me. I've learned more about this one in recent weeks working with UU the vote and election defenders. Now, defending democracy as we know today is really serious business. But part of the defense that I learned from these organizations, organizations led by people of color, is that we need to bring joy as well to this cause. Even when people are standing in long lines to vote and feeling really frustrated, these groups would bring in dance and song and try to help lighten the moment. We need to bring joy to the revolution. So along these lines I want to plug today an all ages virtual party that's going to happen Monday afternoon from 5 to 6 p.m. And it's going to be a chance wherever you are at your home to make cards and crafts, to express your appreciation to the folks who are doing the recount here in Dane County. And so we'll get those to the people who are doing the recount and give them a little bit of joy in the midst of this really hard task that they're doing. You can find details about this on FUS' Facebook page. And seventh, simply we need to repeat the cycle over and over and over again as long as we keep on screwing up, which is going to be as long as we live. So I want to say this morning that it was interesting to me and entirely predictable that the ministerial search survey that 500 of you filled out, thank you so much all 500 of you, that survey highlighted the desire in our congregation to become more diverse. Very few UU congregations are racially or ethnically diverse, but almost every UU congregation longs to reflect more the community in which it exists. It's a great vision. Unfortunately, there's no simple way to accomplish this. There's not a magic wand to make it happen. The best answer, I think, is to do this hard work of healing, to learn about the impact of our individual and collective histories and behavior, to acknowledge the screw-ups, to make amends and try to behave differently going forward, to deepen our empathy, to stay curious, to practice joy, and to keep repeating the cycle over and over till our last breath. So I asked Drew Collins to share his learnings about the song Kumbaya this morning because it beautifully illustrates this path of healing. So white people took a song from enslaved people, changed the origin story, changed the meaning, and then forgot we did all that. So most of us grew up thinking that this was a song that came from Africa. It's kind of a sappy song about blissfully getting along about those Kumbaya moments. So learning the true story, respecting the people who created the song and their descendants, trying to sing it as the people who created it, saying it, these are actually movements along a path of healing. To me, this is just a great picture of what healing can look like. So friends, this is how we can build a better world together. This is how we can build a more whole world together. This is how we can heal. May we stay on this path.