Author: Nick Laux

This past week’s service on Transformation gave me far more reflection than I could include in one sermon. One of the things that I found was a beautiful poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, originally entitled “Anoche, cuando dormía,” translated to “Last Night, As I Was Sleeping.” I loved the idea of dreaming of transformation that was happening in our lives. I was transfixed by the idea of making beautiful honey combs from our failures and the transformative energy of the earth giving me warmth and light.  

If you are still thinking about Transformation, if you love nature, or if you love good poetry, I encourage you to take 4 minutes and watch this video with Machado’s words and the beauty of our natural world. The poem is also listed below.  

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive here inside my heart.
And the golden bees were making white combs
and sweet honey from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept, I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had here inside my heart.

LAST NIGHT AS I WAS SLEEPING, by Antonio Machado

There is a great shift that is happening on our campus. This past year, we have had some big changers with our renters that have created some great opportunities for how we use our space at UUCP.

• The preschool is moving to someplace with more space.  
• We have new renters that will be using less space and in ways that allow us to use it as well.  
• DVLC is adding Annex B and C to their campus, providing us additional rent as well.  

There are some short-term plans and some longer-term plans. We are excited to share all of them with you, and we have the beginning of that in this email that went out this week.

All of this means a little more stress on your staff who already have full plates, a little more chaos in a year that has already had more than our share of change. Here’s some thoughts on how you can make this easier for all of us:

• If you have questions, ask.  
• Be curious. We may not have all the answers, but we’ll do our best to figure them out.  
• Be patient. We may not be able to do everything the way it was immediately, but we’ll get there. 
• Show some grace. Please remember that we’re all doing our best to make the transition happen. 

I am going to write about the misconduct event for this one final week. But this week, I want to address something amazing that came out of it.  

In addition to the people at the center of this situation, this event struck home with the many people who have experienced misconduct, abuse or boundary-crossing in their past. For many of them, this took them right back to the situation where they were abused, told someone, or decided to hide it in shame.  

I heard–over and over again–that our board’s handling of the situation with openness and transparency created opportunities for healing.  

We know the statistics of abuse are high–as much as 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of some kind of abuse by someone they know in their lifetime, and we know that these statistics cross race, income, and class lines. So it must follow that it affects a number of folks in the UUCP community as well.  Over these past few weeks, so many of them have been brave to share their stories, and they had this to say:

• That saying “we believe the child” was transformative and healing for them.
• That naming the people involved took away the mystery of what had happened in a transformative way.
• That having clear boundaries that were unambiguous felt like safety for them. 
• That several of them–especially ones who had experienced misconduct in a church setting–felt like this act was more healing for them than anything else they had experienced.  

I’m so sad that our congregation had to go through something hard like this, however I am reminded that HOW we do this ministry together is important, life-saving and revolutionary. And I am so glad for the stories that you all shared these last few weeks so we can understand the full impact of our actions.  

I am in awe of you. I am humbled by you. I am so grateful to serve with you.

I’ve been reflecting on the events of the last two weeks A LOT lately. And–me being me–one of the waysI like to reflect is in a theological way.  

I’ve been thinking about Paul from the Christian Bible. Paul spent a lot of his letters talking about how the Christian church should be set up. He called the church the “Corporate Body,” in Christian terms, it was the Body of Christ in a community. That is different than what they called at the time the “Corporeal body,” which comes from “corpus,” which is literally a person’s physical body.  

Thinking of these two kinds of bodies these last two weeks has given me a lot of room for reflection:

• This situation stems from the fact that we should always have consent and autonomy over our physical body.  
• This event affected the entire “corporate body” of our UUCP community.  
• Some individual bodies in our congregation have experience with misconduct and the trauma was triggering to their bodies.
• While this was happening, I was also helping take care of Karen’s corporeal body while she healed from her knee surgery. I actually found this very grounding.  
• Also while this was happening, the AZ Supreme Court also ruled in outlawing abortions through an 1864 law: this is very relevant to the autonomy that we have over our bodies.  
• The song that I’ve been singing to you all these last two weeks is all about loosening our body and not carrying the weight of the world in our muscles and bones. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

With our theme of interdependence this month, I clearly see that these are all connected; they offer me an opportunity to reflect on them individually by seeing where and how their connections are woven together.  As we continue to make meaning out of all the things happening in our world, what do you reflect on around the body today–the community body, your personal body, the legal body or the spiritual body?

Several years ago, a TED talk by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie went viral, about the danger of a single story. While people have evolved even in their thinking around this, it has stuck with me. The video of it is here.

One week after we shared the news about the misconduct, I am finding myself thinking about this a lot. Because as we are grappling with this news, we are wrestling with the fact that there are multiple stories that are all true. In my service last week, I talked about the “Holy And.” I think this is a variation of it.

The key thing after a trauma like this is not to simplify it to a single story. Oftentimes, the story tends to demonize the adult and create a victim to be pitied of the youth. We’ve already seen the courageous Together Time last Sunday where the youth disrupted that story (also in the video link from last week).

I’m watching several of you do the holy work of holding space for the multiple stories–all that can be true.

• The youth has good support around him.
• The adult cared for a lot of people in our congregation
• The adult is worthy of compassion and dignity
• This event will have long-term impact on the youth and his family
• There is worry in the congregation for both the youth and the adult
• This event will have long-term impact on this congregation
• There were boundaries crossed and there are ramifications to that

There are so many more. My encouragement to you is this: think about all the multiple stories that exist in your mind and make the spiritual space to hold all of them. Resist the urge to reduce this to one simple story, especially if it paints the adult or child in one extreme way.

This is hard work. I so appreciate all of you who have shown up for the different ways we’re supporting each other during this time. I am confident that we will get through this with compassion and commitment.