We All Go High (02-10-19 Sermon)

Unitarian Universalists are direct descendants of Eve, who did not make a “mistake” in the garden and thus bring down all humanity. She was not tricked by a snake or anybody else.  We are the children of Eve, the woman who said plainly, “I don’t want to live in this garden, this gated community, if I don’t have full access to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I’m ravenous for wisdom, and moral agency, and I’m ready for the messy work of ethical discernment.  This neighborhood’s too small, too homogenous, Adam, and I want to draw wide circles of empathy, so wide they insect and overlap into one great universal circle,  and this paradise is too precious and exclusive. I don’t like that there’s a wall around it. I don’t want dominion over the animals or anybody else. It’s time for us to go, and if you won’t go, don’t hinder me.”   That’s our biblical lineage right there.  We are called to the deepest, most radical compassion we can muster, for ourselves, for one another, for everyone and everything within the widest circles we can draw, the widest ring of love we can imagine.

-Rev. Victoria Safford, “We All Go High”
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