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Enacting Radical Change

This sermon topic was requested by the UU church in Cumberland MD and I delivered it on April 23, 2006. The original title was Enacting Radical Change: Personal, Political, Global

What is radical change and how do we bring it about?spacer

As some of you may know, I am a writer. And as I sat on Friday looking out at the rain and gloom, I begin thinking about how hard it was to get motivated at times. As I sat, facing the blank page, in the midst of a cloudy and rainy day, I asked myself, “How do you get motivated in the face of such a landscape?”

And I then realized that this is exactly the outlook many of us face as Americans and as inhabitants of this planet. How in the world do we get motivated to act during a time when everything seems so gloomy and so desperate? When for many of us our every effort seems so small and ineffectual. And every previous seeming victory is now called into question.

Radical change? Hell at this point, I’d guess that many of us would be happy with a sliver of change in the right direction. Or maybe I should say left direction.

I wrote in a frequently forwarded post after the last election, that

“ …if we cannot rely on the "youth vote and the disenfranchised single-female vote and the "Daily Show" vote and the Eminem vote and the celebrity vote and the humanitarian vote and the antiwar vote and the gay vote and the pro-choice vote and the Howard Stern vote and the immigrant vote" to turn an election, what the hell else can we do except re-look at everything again.”

And re-looking at it all again is ultimately what this sermon is about. How do we enact change? Not just at the political level, but also at the personal and the global level?

Okay, confession time -- It has taken me thirty years to finally concede that yes, political change is important. I was skeptical as a black nationalist, and later as a Marxist, with how so many people kept trying to use the American political system to create real change. It still bothers me.

But I now can say unequivocally that, yes, political change is important. However, you cannot rely solely on political change. That was and is the folly of so many movements for social, economic and racial justice. We have to change so much more than the politics; we have to change the symbols, the myths, the language, the art, the music, etc. We have to change the very soul of our culture. And to change or rather to work on the soul of a culture is by definition, a radical act.

We have confused ourselves by relying on our own faulty memories. We think, for example, that women won the right to vote via an amendment to the constitution or that slavery was abolished due to government proclamation. We think the Voting Rights act or the Civil Rights Act or Title Nine or Roe v Wade were the harbingers of major cultural shifts. We think we lost the ERA. We are mistaken.

The Soul of a Nation

  • The Soul of a Nation
  • How Culture Changes
  • Steering at All Levels
  • From The Personal to The Mythic
The Soul of a Nation ›

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Submitted by katrina on Sat, 07/08/2006 - 5:02pm.

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Recent comments

  • This reminded me of
    Anonymous (not verified)

    This reminded me of something I wrote a few months ago: eoma-p.livejournal.com/36134.html

    7 weeks 18 hours ago
  • Could be the start of a fun
    d.bella (not verified)

    Could be the start of a fun adventure - whatever words you find that fit you best, may you be blessed for it!

    8 weeks 4 days ago
  • Thank you for posting this
    Claire-Marie Le Normond (not verified)

    Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.

    30 weeks 5 days ago
  • Katrina, I wish you all the
    David Salisbury (not verified)

    Katrina,
    I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
    Wishing you joy in the Work.

    David

    32 weeks 6 days ago
  • The Raging Storm and the moving universe.
    Sigre (not verified)

    Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.

    The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?

    All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!

    33 weeks 1 day ago
  • descriptive titles
    Macha NightMare (not verified)

    Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.

    I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.

    My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.

    I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.

    I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.

    Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)

    xo,
    Macha

    49 weeks 5 days ago

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