Rainbow and the Soccer Mom
Rev. Sarah Person
Not long ago I found myself driving a van full of teenagers returning from a concert at Gillette Stadium. Anyone of you who has done so knows that one doesn’t go far or fast; and you have time to consider your life at length while the kids squeezed in back are singing at the top of their lungs. After about an hour or so, we had finally left the parking lot and were inching along Route 1 North while streams of cars tried to merge ahead of everyone else. I paused, trying to let a smaller car get in front of me. I flashed my lights, honked gently, asked one of the kids to roll down the window and waive the person ahead. The hapless driver was frozen, eyes glued ahead. I gave up. Turning to my front seat companion, I said “Why doesn’t she trust me?” “She’s afraid,” was the response. “You might be a SOCCER MOM.”
Well, although I’m not a screaming-from-the-sidelines-ejected-from-the-game kind of person, I AM a soccer mom. I am also a middle-aged, middle-class, overeducated, married, liberal, cancer surviving, Caucasian, musical, mildly neurotic, chocolate-loving, diet coke-drinking, somewhat overweight and arthritic shiksa daughter-in-law descended from Eastern European and Texan ancestry. Oh, and I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister who carries a Red Sox clergy card. And I consider myself a straight ally. Some of my characteristics are obvious and some don’t emerge until I open my mouth. Find me one other person in a crowded room who can identify with me in any of these categories and we’ll have something to talk about. Sociologists call this self-definition or social identity. However, I will look and act different in a room full of conservative, pepsi-drinking Yankee fans. This is the other side of my social identity. Another person in the same crowded room, just as on the crowded highway, will consider me a challenge or a threat and it will be almost impossible for us to talk.
Our membership in our various social groups has a certain value and emotional significance. We get a kind of comfort and safety and power from being one of “us” and not “them.” Then there is the added aspect of which group is larger. Some of us like nothing more than to be in what we fondly imagine is the majority; believing that most people would support our positions or feelings or actions. Anyone who is not in the majority with us, we think, must really want to be there if they only could. We are truly shocked when social or political choices or economic events don’t turn out the way we expected. Then, we become the silent and grumpy majority.
Some of us cannot imagine being in the majority – how boring. Maybe we know we look and act nothing like the majority. We have no choice, and we find comfort and companionship in recognizing one another. Or, maybe, our differences aren’t so obvious. And, if we could choose, we would still really rather be one of a minority of people who look and act different, or who are really in the know; or who know the way the world really works, or who claim to know the truth, or who know who God is and what God wants. The only real truth to all of this I have learned is: The more we define ourselves against others, the more freedom we have to hate. Those of us who feel free to hate, define ourselves by who we threaten. “I am a – fill in the blank – out to make the world safe for people like me.” The more we define ourselves as parts of the whole, the more freedom we have to love. When we can step outside of our social identities, even for just a moment, and just reach out, the world we live in can be amazing. This is the gift of the rainbow; that light, our light, can be divided into all of its aspects and be more beautiful. Separate parts work in tandem to make up an amazing whole.
What does this have to do with Unitarian Universalism? What does this have to do with faith? Faith is our fundamental, rock-bottom understanding of the world and where we fit in it. Unitarian Universalism at its core says to each of us; “Okay, here is where you stand, now – how and where are you going to live this life? How are you going to feel cherished while you live this life? How are you going to cherish others and the world you share? We will do this sacred task together.” Our history and our traditions honor those who recognized and honored the “others.” In sixteenth century Transylvania, court preacher Francis David said “We need not think alike to love alike.” I say we need not love alike to be faithful alike. And just like loving is limited if it is confined to the limits of one’s own heart; being faithful is limited if confined to the limits of one’s own church. We have to act on love, and act on faith to truly cherish others and the world we share.
On June 14th of 2007 I left my daughter and her friends and my fellow clergy members on the steps of the Massachusetts State House and joined a long line of people hoping to observe the vote on the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Over the course of three hours, we edged down the hallway and up the stairs to wrap around corridors and wait. Volunteers and staffers handed out pins to identify us as for or against the ban. I happened to be in the midst of a determined group who had bused themselves in from Virginia to support the ban. After the first hour, we began to sit down and make ourselves comfortable. A tall, spare-looking gentleman to my left asked me to “explain something, just because I’m curious…” Yeah, right, I said to myself – you bused yourself all the way up here because you’re just curious. “I’m not against gays,” he said, “but I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Why aren’t civil unions enough?” I took a deep breath. “Tell me, are you married?” “I was,” he said, grinning. “Would you have preferred to be civilly united with your wife, or married?” We then started talking about separate but equal and Brown versus the Board of Education. That was followed by the separation of church and state.
Along about the time he and I got to benefits, child-rearing and health proxy rights, the hallway started to get restive. My neighbors and I started to take bathroom breaks together, and bring each other snacks from the cafeteria. We all started to talk about our homes and families and the weather and wet versus dry barbecue sauce. Then the state house staff announced that the vote was imminent. We filed in, filling the downstairs and balcony to overflowing. The staff warned us several times to not make noise and to not respond when the votes were counted. I took a seat next to couples with children; even the small children were quiet. I heard someone come down the aisle behind me and turned to find my companion from the hallway. “I haven’t changed my mind,” he said, “but I’d like to sit with you.” I think that meant almost as much to me as did the vote eight minutes later to defeat the ban.
Being faithful to any ideal means more that being part of a Welcoming Congregation, or a worksite free from harassment, or a school without bullies, or a condo complex without restrictions. It means more than joining parades or carrying placards. It means more than learning the statistics about teen suicides and hate crimes and scientific explorations of gender and sexuality. It definitely means more than shouting down the ugly rantings of people who hate. It means trying to embody welcoming and overcoming the fear that comes with that embodiment. It means wrapping your mind around the idea that those you consider “us” or “them” – your relations, your neighbors, your co-workers, your heroes, might not look like you, sound like you, act like you, love like you. It means making no assumptions in your speech and in your actions about who is “us” and who is “them.” It means overcoming your apprehension that you might be aligned with “them.” Put another way, it means overcoming your fear of stepping outside of your social identity.
For this soccer mom, it means having the “talk” about love-making and sexuality and intimacy without using words like boyfriend or husband or girlfriend or wife and saying instead partner or spouse. It means teaching my children how to love safely no matter how they choose to love. It means accepting the fear that my children’s safety and happiness may be harder to achieve than I hoped. I won’t know one way or the other until they tell me. It means standing up when I encounter stupid jokes and thoughtless policies and saying “We can do better than this.” It means saying I love you without you having to love like me. I welcome you to be “us.” Welcome me back. It means I know the world is a richer place for having you in it. It means I harbor you here, with me, now. Will you harbor me?
The Universalist Church
West Hartford, Connecticut
February 8, 2009