By Rev. Andy Jacobs
I was speaking with a fellow UU minister who said, “We support our congregation by making the building, the sanctuary, a safe place outside of the problems of the world.”
Ideally, here where we can be vulnerable together, we can learn and grow in joy and reverence towards one another. It is a safe place to express our fears and manifest our hopes.
It reminds me a bit of the movie Sister Act.
The singing mistress of a hardened criminal witnesses him murder someone and must go into hiding in a convent.
She is taken in and given sanctuary, but not at the expense of the nuns who live and worship in that space. She doesn’t have to become a nun, but she does have to conform to the rule of the convent, the rules of the space. She wants security from the world, but there is a price.
We participate in similar rules in this space. We covenant to affirm the worth and dignity of every person.
It sounds like such a nice and relatively simple principle to affirm. And, if not in the world, where Trump memes exist, and school shooters and elephant tusk poachers make affirmations hard, then at least here, in this space we don’t call a church but a congregation, we can affirm this first principle and uphold each other’s worth and dignity without any real struggle.
I mean we’re all pretty like-minded in purpose and practice, right? Simple microaggressions and rude comments, cutting wit about less enlightened worshippers is harmless because we love and are loved in this vulnerable space.
Except this is not true! There is a price!
We come together because we are so many different people. We are histories and lived lives that uniquely suffer. We come together so we all have safe space to be free of the tireless pressure of being forced to wear emotional armor outside of these walls. Those microaggressions, so unintentionally said or done, in a safe space where those aggressed against are forced to either sit in pained silence or relive external trauma, here again in this space, out loud or repeatedly, in order to call out their abuser is NOT affirming the worth and dignity of every person.
The UUA lists 3 forms of disruptive behavior that can occur within these walls: rudeness, meanness, and bullying.
Rudeness: Inadvertently saying or doing something that hurts someone else. Incidents of rudeness are usually spontaneous, unplanned inconsideration, based on thoughtlessness, poor manners, or narcissism, but not actually meant to hurt someone.
Meanness: Purposefully saying or doing something to hurt someone once (or maybe twice). The mane distinction between “rude” and “mean” behavior has to do with intention; while rudeness is often unintentional, mean behavior very much aims to hurt someone. Sometimes “mean” comes in the form of “humor.”
Bullying: Intentionally aggressive behavior, repeated over time, that involves an imbalance of power. Experts agree that bullying entails three key elements: an intent to harm, a power imbalance, and repeated acts or threats of aggressive behavior. Bullying may be physical, verbal, relational, or carried out via technology. An imbalance of power can be as simple as being a member of a majority in the congregation, being with a group of supportive friends, against someone who is not the majority, or is alone. Religious professionals are not immune from bullying or being bullied.
These definitions are important to me as a means to addressing disruptive behavior within our congregation.
I want to assume that, at the very worst, we can be a little rude. I know my privilege and trust often make it difficult for me to attribute malicious intent to the behavior of those I minister within these walls.
To prove me right I need you to recognize when your words have gone to far. I need you to accept rebuke and move forward, not with resentment, but with intentional willingness to do better. Digging in and clinging to our righteous version of self does not create a safe vulnerable space.
The person I am today is not who I was 15 years ago. When this congregation asked me to be their minister and subsequently sent me to seminary, I was just barely beginning to understand my privilege in the world and the hurt that my careless rudeness or judgmental meanness poured int the world, like unsolicited advice or belittling humor.
I struggled my second year in seminary to divine why I was even doing this? Who would I be without my sarcastic charm, without my disenchanted whit? How much easier it would all be if people could just take a joke. If only others could measure the weight of my words with as little value as I gave those words; with as little value as I regarded myself.
Eventually, I realized that, while I might not have a connection to the divine, just like I have never seen a ghost or watched strange lights play across the night sky, I do have a connection to people.
That is when I made the conscious decision to view the divine as the compassionate interaction of humanity with everything. The whole interdependent web of existence. And it is here, within this congregation, that I practice this philosophy/theology.
It is within the body of this congregation that I attempt, work to achieve, that compassionate connection of the divine. It is why, as we try to affirm the worth and dignity of every person, we do NOT get to say or do whatever we want as if there are no consequences to our actions and words.
It is why, when I am confronted with an act of rudeness, that may be meanness, that can be viewed by the victim as bullying, that I get a deep well of fear and guilt within my being.
Just like I am practicing compassionate interaction, I must assume you are, too. I must assume the reason you are here is, at some level, to connect compassionately with your fellow congregants.
Connecting compassionately means checking your rudeness, meanness, and bullying at the entrance to the parking lot. It means acknowledging when you’ve harmed others with your rudeness, and sincerely apologizing and then working towards reconciliation. Because if we can’t apologize and change our rudeness towards compassion, then we’re just mean. Intentionally harmful. Supposing others support that meanness, then your actions become bullying. Silently letting that behavior occur makes us complicit with the bully.
Not knowing you’ve hurt someone does not absolve you of the pain inflicted. Like HR in the corporate world: being told of your rudeness is the first step. A second disruption then falls under the heading of meanness and, then, the third subsequent act defines as bullying.
Once we get to bullying then, as Susan Cogan phrases it, “We’ll have a parking-lot talk.”
I love that you choose to come here Sunday after Sunday. No one makes you. There is no obligation on your part to be here. In an all-volunteer organization, there will be more volunteers to take up roles set down by someone else. But no one is coming here so they can be othered. With the rise of antisemitism, misogamy, racism and anti-LGBTQI bigotry no one is searching out an extra place where they can be dismissed, intimidated, gaslit, misheard, misinterpreted, marginalized, or traumatized.
We are participating in a state of radical inclusion. We are practicing, like you’d practice the piano, or practice wood working, or practice medicine, or practice any other attribute you’d like to improve, we are practicing the affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Practicing wood-working, you may be cut. The piano takes years to learn and so many more to master. Medicine changes and grows in knowledge, tossing out the old that doesn’t work, like leeches and ether and OxyContin, and accepting new treatments that do.
Nobody wants to be berated for missing the ball while practicing catch, but no one wants to be hit by the ball either. Even though it is just practice.
I’m positive many of you here now, feel like I am talking to someone else. Like the song Your So Vain, You Probably Think This Song is About You, some of you may believe I am calling you out right now. There are definitely those of you here who just want to know who it is that brought this reflection into being.
What I will tell you is this, I am in full support of each and every one of you striving to uphold these seven principles behind me. I am 100% here in this place to make sure that the ideals we claim are those which we live within this congregation. I have no interest in creating trauma for the vulnerable in an effort to rationalize rude, mean or bullying behavior.
If you need mediation for disruptive behavior in our midst, you can always bring your needs and concerns to myself or someone on the board.
Our bi-laws’ mediation process is designed to be led by a panel of congregants outside of the conflict in case the issue is with someone on the board or myself.
Sometimes, mediation can feel like pandering to an abuser while forcing the traumatized individual to relive their negative experience. Under these circumstances the board and myself will work to resolve the issue in a way that upholds our principles without inflicting continuing suffering on the person violated.
I am listing here and on Zoom a link to the UUA’s page about defining disruptive behavior: www.uua.org/safe/handbook/covenant/defining-disruptive-behavior.
I hope you can all take time to reflect on these definitions and how they apply to our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of ALL people. I hope you can reflect on how you can increase the security of the vulnerable people we encourage to participate in this congregation.
The key to compassionate interaction is empathy with another person. Once we empathize, we can act in compassionate community. It takes reflection, discernment, reverence and practice to accomplish this kind of community; to live the compassionate congregation we come to each Sunday for support and love.