I woke up early this morning, my soul stirring, wanting answers. My heart was already heavy from the letter written by our Texas governor calling gender-affirming care “abuse” and directing government agencies to investigate any reported cases and for all people to turn on their neighbors and report any instances they know of. Then last night, before going to bed, I watched live coverage of explosions in Ukraine. War had begun.

There it was: the evil that comes from a lust for power, taking form in meanness in this state, and horror in this world.

There are people who define themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” I am both, and my religion is Unitarian Universalism, so I turn to it during my times of despair. The second named source of the living tradition of Unitarian Universalism is “Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”

I turned to the words of our prophets.

In a lesser-known book that he edited, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, UU theologian James Luther Adams wrote the chapter, “The Grotesque and Our Future.” In it, he describes the “nightmarish, sinister forces that emerge from the abyss of humanity. They are the progeny of spurious authorities.”

Living in 1969, he speaks of the war and racial injustice of that time, and writes:

But at such a moment, we can recall what Martin Luther said in response to the question, “What would you do if you were convinced that the world will come to an end tomorrow?” He responded, “I would go out and plant a tree.” …

“We must next ask the question: How specifically do we declare independence of spurious authorities and plant a tree?…I choose…to say that what happens to a denomination as a whole or a local parish depends upon a relatively small number of people, upon the small church in the large. The second mandate, then, lies especially upon these people; namely, to urge the achievement of consensus with regard to top priorities. Churches, like other organizations, can dissipate their energies by trying to do too many things. It is an axiom of theology as well as of psychology that both distortion and apathy are the children of lazy ambiguity, of ambiguity of purpose. The crucial question here is, What are the top priorities? The surest way I know to deal with the question is to respond to those who have the greatest need and to join those who are battling against rank injustice…

The fundamental mandate is the renewal of covenant within the churches, the reaching down to the covenant of being itself where mutuality and sacrifice alone free us from the universal monstrosities, the reaching out to the promise making and promise keeping that constitute the substance of response to the covenant of being, the substance of faith and hope. And the greatest of these is love.

What are the trees that Live Oak UU Church will plant?