Hello and welcome to our online service
we are the Rogue Valley Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship
in Ashland, Oregon and we're so glad you
found us. I am Reverend Sean Parker Dennison. It's
my privilege to
be the minister at RVUUF which is what we
call the congregation and to welcome you. 
We're so glad you're here.
Today we are going to take part in the
celebration of the 80th anniversary - 
or birthday if you prefer -  of the
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
Ithink it's important that we do this
because we need to remember,
especially during this tough time, that
we're part of something
bigger than ourselves; bigger even than
our congregation.
We're part of something that reaches
through time and space
and the Service Committee has been
making justice for 80 years. They're connected all over
the world,
they work with community leaders and
they do a great job of making this world a
better place. And we're part of that so I wanted to
celebrate with them and with you.We also take a
moment at the beginning of each of our
services
to remind ourselves that we gather on
land that is the traditional
home of the Shasta, Takelma
andLatgawa people, as well as others who
were brought here against their will.
It's important to remember that
indigenous people are still part of our
communities
and they still suffer the consequences
of colonization
and oppression so we take a moment each
week
to recommit ourselves to fighting for
justice
for all people especially indigenous
people here
and around the world. Thank you for
joining us.
I hope you enjoy the service.
Today is the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
Memorial Day is the day we honor those
who paid the ultimate price
for our culture of war. I used to have a button
that said, "Honor veterans. No more war!"Ii hope as we learn about the 80 years of
work the UUSC has done, we remember
it is up to us to make a world of peace with justice
 
 
Who is my neighbor? He and she
and they are lying by the side of
Jericho Road
crying for a compassionate home,
searching for shelter from the world's atrocities
seeking a fresh start.
"Take care of this stranger, this child,
these refugees.
Take care of them and whatever you spend,
I will repay you when i come back,"
says the outcast, the Good Samaritan.
They are my neighbors.
Welcome all to this service sponsored by
the Unitarian Universal Service
Committee. We are grateful to be invited into your
worshipping community in this way.
I'm Reverend Mary Katherine Morn
President and CEO of UUSC.
 In uncertain times,
it helps to look to times past when we
have risen to challenges
and tested the strength of our UnitarianUuniversalist values.
We hope the UUSC Sunday service we are offering
will provide both consolation and
inspiration to your community
as we honor 80 years of our UUSC history
and look toward a future shaped by hope
and justice.
I invite you to join me in lighting a
chalice
This is the flame of our faith, the light of hope,
the cup of community, and the fire of commitment.
May we be bearers of the light and the
cup and the fire
as together we create a world of justice and joy
When I breathe in
I'll breathe in peace
When I breathe out
I'll breathe out love.
When I breathe in
I'll breath in peace.
When I breathe out
I'll breathe out love.
[overlapping melodies]
When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace.
When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love.
When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace.
When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love.
When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace.
When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love.
Hi friends, it's great to all be together
even while we're staying in our homes.
Today i want to tell you a story about
how the Unitarian Universalist Service
Committee, or UUSC began.
It all started 80 years
ago when Unitarians in the United States
were watching what was happening in
Europe and they were getting very worried.
They were worried because a man
named Hitler and the people he was
leading, people called the Nazis, 
were becoming very powerful and hurting
a lot of people. The Nazis believed some very mean and
wrong things. They believed that the only people who
were any good were people who were just like them.
They wanted everyone to be the same as they were and
if you weren't
well, they would kick you out of your
house. They would take all of your things.
They wouldn't let you work and
eventually the Nazis 
started killing a lot of people,
people who they thought were different
from them: Jewish people,
Gay people, People with disabilities--
 all of them were targets of the Nazis during
this time. It was very scary. 
What do you think you
would do if you saw something like this happening?
Would you want to help? Would people in
your UU community want to help too?
It was the same 80 years ago. 
The Unitarians wanted to help people in
Europe who were being targeted by the Nazis.
So, a Unitarian minister and his wife
from Wellesley, Massachusetts,
Waitstill and Martha Sharp, went to Europe 
to see how they could help
the people there.
They found lots of ways to help when
they got there but they had to be creative
because the Nazis were always watching
and it would be very dangerous if they
got caught. 
The Sharps helped get paperwork to
people that they needed to escape to
safer places.
Sometimes they would even sneak people
past the Nazi guards wearing disguises.
They also help people, including kids
like you, get food and clothing
at a time when it was very hard to find both.
The Sharps were very brave, but they
didn't do this work alone.
They worked with people in the Jewish
communities in Europe
and they worked with other Unitarians in
the United States who would send them
money and other supplies 
so more people in
Europe could be helped.
That is how the Unitarian Service
Committee -  now called UUSC -  got started.
Today UUSC is still working around the
world to help people who are being
treated badly
find safety and have their human rights respected.
We work with migrant communities who
fled their homes in Central America and
are seeking asylum in the United States.
We work with Rohingya muslims from Burma
who are facing inhumane
treatment and displacement by their
government. We work with people around the world
whose home communities are
threatened by climate change, and many
many more. Both 80 years ago and today, UUs come
together through the UU Service Committee to work
with people who need it most.
And we will continue to be there to help
into the future, because Unitarian Universalists believe
in doing what we can to make the world a
better and safer place
for everyone. Thank you for all the ways
you help us do this work.
We couldn't do it without everyone
joining together.
So grateful that you're here. Thanks for
listening to this story.
Bye.
This reading is called "Thank You Climate Strikers"
by Rebecca Solnit. 
It is an excerpt from a letter that first appeared in
The Guardian on March 15, 2019, at the time of the
first youth-led global climate strike.
"I want to say to all of the climate strikers today
thank you so much for being unreasonable. 
That is if reasonable means
playing by the rules
and the rules are presumed to be the
guidelines for what is
and is not possible, then you may be told
that what you are
asking for is impossible or unreasonable.
Don't listen. Don't stop. 
Don't let your dreams shrink by one inch.
Don't forget that this might be the day
and the pivotal year when you rewrite
what is possible.
i don't know what will happen because
what will happen
is what we make happen. That is why
there's a global climate strike today
This is why i've started saying don't ask 
what will happen
be what happens.
Today you are what is happening. Today your power
will be felt. Today your action matters. Today in your
individual action you may stand with a few people
or with hundreds, but you will stand with
billions around the world.
Today you are standing up for people not yet born
and those ghostly billions are with you too.
Today you are the force of possibility
that runs through the present
like a river through the desert."
 Here ends the reading.
[ooh]
Fuente de Amor, ven hacia mí.
Y al corazón, cántale tu compasión.
Sopla al volar, sube en la mar,
hasta moldear la justicia de la vida.
Arráigame, libérame,
Fuente de Amor, ven a mí, ven a mí.
Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind. Rise in the sea.
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close. Wings set me free.
Spirit of Life, come to me. Come to me.
Greetings friends, we are glad to join
your worshiping community today for this
UUSC Sunday service. Thank you.
Hello justice lovers. It's good to be 
with you in this virtual way.
Like you, we at UUSC are finding our way in this
difficult time.
In addition to adapting to social
distancing, working from home,
homeschooling, caring for loved ones,
mourning our losses, and 
finding new ways to connect, we are
also discovering all the ways we are
called to pivot in our work for human
rights. Over the last weeks we have reached out
to all of our partners around the world.
We are hearing from
them and learning about the ways the pandemic
is posing new threats to communities
already facing so many long-standing
threats. Together with our partners we are
striving to be nimble and creative
in responding to needs that are
emerging. We feel grateful for our history of
deeply rooted partnerships
which makes it possible for us to move
quickly to respond.
For all of us committed to being a part
of creating a world transformed by
justice, we know that these commitments are more
important now than ever. That it is in times of crisis
that human rights for all are most at risk.
We are grateful for this opportunity to
share how UUSC works for a world
transformed by justice,
to share what has always guided our work
and what guides us still.
When we think of Social Justice and
human rights we often think of words
like resistance   fortitude   resilience
and courage. Perhaps especially courage.
And sometimes this stops us. We know
We know courage. We've seen courage.
But we often think of courage as
something other people have.
So today we want to start with
imagination and move to hope
because the courage to imagine and hope
for a new world -  a world reflective of
the values we cherish -
is exactly the courage we need.
Imagination and hope are acts of
courage because a vision of what more is
possible demands
that we move away from the sidelines.
Imagination invites us
to see beyond the current systems and norms
and hope points us toward new
regenerative systems and norms
reflecting the values we share.
80 years ago in the face of rising Nazi repression
Unitarians imagined a different world - 
a different response from the U.S.
isolationism. They knew
 there was a beloved community
that cared about human rights
across the country and around the world
and then they asked themselves what they
needed to do to get closer
to that different world. They asked themselves
who else shared their vision for that
beloved community
and they asked themselves what they were
willing to risk
to live their values in the world. 
They chose to form
and support the Unitarian Service Committee.
Now,  I realize i keep saying they,
but in reality we chose to form
and support the Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee.
You choose to form and support the
Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee. 
Those people 80 years ago
were not separate or different from us, from you.
They were regular people living average lives
worried about their jobs and children and bills
just like us, just like you.
They were overwhelmed by the state of
the world in a time of fear
and pandemic, fascism and war,
anti-semitism and racism, just like us
just like you when the opportunity arose
for them to make a difference
and affirm the inherent worth and
dignity of all people across the world
they took action with their time, with
their money, with their influence just like us
just like you do every time you write 
a letter to a politician,
go to a protest, volunteer your time, or
give your money to UUSC and our partners.
For 80 years our Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee
your Unitarian Universalist Service
Committee has been working in
partnership with those
most directly impacted by injustice to
create a different world
a beloved community where every person's
rights are honored and protected.
We joined with migrant workers in Texas
in the 1940s as they fought against
exploitation
We launched desegregation projects in
Georgia and Florida in 1960.
In 1978 UUSC sponsored the first
Congressional fact-finding mission to
El Salvador
as violence there escalated.
In the 1980s we sent emergency funds to
ease the Ethiopian famine,
long before the story reached 
mainstream US news.
We sent emergency medical equipment to
Rwanda in the 1990s and then launched
the Drumbeat for Darfur campaign in the
2000s
to help end the genocide in Sudan.
In 2010 we went to Haiti to assist with
immediate relief
after the earthquake and remained to
partner in long-term recovery. Today
UUSC works with organizations in Central
America, Mexico
and the United States on the forefront
of migrant justice,
as we seek security for people who wish
to remain in their home countries,
safety for those traveling along the
migrant trail, and justice
once people reach the United States.
We partner with First and indigenous
communities in the South Pacific,
Louisiana and Alaska
who are on the front lines of the
climate change crisis
as their homes and way of life are
threatened
by rising sea levels and rising
temperatures.
We are working with Rohingya leaders as
they seek justice and healing for their
communities
following genocide and forced
displacement from their homeland
by the Burmese government and military.
And we are joining with the minority
Haitian community in the Bahamas
after the devastation of hurricane
Dorian as they seek to rebuild their
lives with no access to government assistance.
I know sometimes,  maybe a lot of the time,
things can feel hopeless like the world
is moving farther and farther away from
our values from all the progress we have
tried to make
At the time of the Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee's founding
when it was officially known as the
Unitarian Service Committee,
the world gave few signs of moving in a
better direction.
The work of UUSC began in 1939,
when Hitler's Germany was dragging all
of Europe into war
and laying the groundwork for the
Holocaust. Thousands of refugees were already
displaced from their homes
and forced to flee religious and
political persecution
as the Nazis took power. When Martha and
Waitstill Sharp opened the first office of the USC in
Prague, they met an embattled Unitarian
community at the Unitaria church
that had to preach their opposition to
the Nazis in double meanings.
 During the German occupation
of the city,  the Nazi's secret police began
monitoring every sermon given at the
Unitairan congregation,
listening for subtle messages of dissent.
A few years later they found what they
were looking for. In 1941 the minister of the Unitaria
congregation, Norbert Capek
 was arrested and deported
to the concentration camp at Dakau
  where he was killed with
poison gas the following fall. Capek had been
personally named by Hitler on a list of
ten thousand
politically suspect persons slated for
murder. Capek wasn't the only figure associated
with the founding of UUSC
to make the ultimate sacrifice for human
rights, USC's early work in Prague involved
helping refugees apply for visas and process other paperwork they would need
to seek safety abroad.
Similar to UUSC's current model of
partnering with directly impacted communities
the Service Committee's first employees
were Jewish refugees
working to protect the rights of their
own community.
at the time Jewish people in Prague were
already facing persecution underNnazi
occupation and all the warning signs of the coming
genocide were in place.
They therefore knew the risks they took
by staying in the city to help others.
Nevertheless, historian Elizabeth Subeck
writes, "they delayed their own immigration
efforts to help other refugees."
Ultimately none were able to emigrate or
avoid deportation to the concentration camps.
In the face of genocide, religious persecution
political assassination and all the
worst atrocities the human imagination
has ever devised, it was an indescribable act of courage
for these women and men to hope for a different world.
As it always is in the face of genocide,
religious persecution, political
assassination and
all the worst atrocities the human
imagination has ever devised
men and women fighting for liberation
display indescribable courage. I am in
awe of the courage I have seen and
learned about through our partnerships
at UUSC.
And I have also come to understand that
the first and most important thing required for
courage is imagination. In the reading activist
and author Rebecca Solnit thanks the youth leaders
for being unreasonable. She might have also said
thank you for imagining there is another way.
"You're being unreasonable!" is what we
often hear when structures of power
are challenged. When youth challenge their elders,
when indigenous leaders challenge colonizers,
and industry and demand protection of
community sources of water
when congregations perhaps like yours challenge
authorities and regulations
 by welcoming a person into sanctuary.
Vision and imagination 
about how things might be different
are often discouraged 
and dismissed by the status quo
and when we allow ourselves to be
discouraged, when we resign ourselves to
our illusion of powerlessness,
when we're cynical when we don't believe
there's another way
we are playing right into the hands of
those in power.
Our lack of imagination is a tool
of empires and tyrants. It's how power
gets away with conceding nothing.
It's the courage we need right now:
the courage to imagine.
And the courage to imagine is so important now
because it is through courageous
imagination that we find the seeds of
hope: radical hope, nourishing hope.
It's a hope born of courage that can
best be described
in the often quoted phrase by the
Reverend Jeremiah Wright
"the audacity of hope."
These words we are so familiar with
today originally appeared in a 1995 sermon
in which Wright was reflecting on the
ravages of racism and an apartheid in
South Africa. Wright took as the text of his sermon a
painting by the victorian artist
George Frederick Watts whose depiction
of hope shows a blindfolded woman playing a harp.
Wright analyzed the message of the painting
in these words,
 "The harpist is sitting there in rags,
her clothes are tattered as though she herself
had been a victim of Hiroshima or Sharpville.
Yet the artists dared to entitle this painting
'Hope.'
See, in spite of being in a world torn by war,
in spite of being in a world destroyed by hate, 
in spite of being in a world
devastated by distrust and
decimated by disease, in spite of being
in a world where apartheid and apathy
fed the fires of racism, in spite of all
of these things
the woman had the audacity to hope.
She had the audacity to hope and to make music
and to praise God on the one string she
had left."
Friends we have come as far as we have because
justice seekers throughout time have
continued to have the audacity
to keep reaching towards another
imagined possibility.
At UUSC we have joined with audacious,
imaginative, hope-filled people for the
last 80 years. And with your help we will continue this
vital work for the next 80 years.
And the 80 years after that.
We will continue to go where justice calls,
partnering with those most affected by
disasters and human rights abuses.
So long as Unitarian Universalists
people of conscience and moral imagination
continue to join with us, we will be here
to join in the struggle,
to lend our weight to bend the arc of
the universe towards justice.
To keep turning courageous hope into action.
Thank you my friends. Be well,
take good care of each other and keep
the flame of justice kindled
wherever you are today. Blessed be
and amen.
We hear over and over now that we are
living in unprecedented and
uncertain times. And we all know this.
We can feel it in our bones. During times
like this the communities we are a part of become
even more important. While we must engage in physical
distancing, we must find new ways to
strengthen our social and spiritual
connections to each other.
With fear and isolation surrounding us
we turn to our faith which tells us that we will endure
by caring for one another. Like many
Unitarian Universalists,
I find comfort and inspiration in the
virtual worship services being offered
by our congregations.
Just being able to see the faces of the
people i love so much on a Zoom gallery
Sunday mornings does my heart so much
good. I hope that you will continue to support
your home congregation
as generously as you can now and in the
months to come.
We also hope that you found some comfort
and inspiration here today in the story of UUSC's 80-year
legacy of centering the experience and
leadership of the people who are most
impacted by injustice, and partnering
with them in their struggle for human rights.
Our partners are some of the scrappiest,
most creative, and courageous groups of
people you can imagine
and they need our commitment now more
than ever. We asked some of our supporters what
being a part of UUSC means to them
this is what they had to say:
As the chair of the board,  I am honored
and delighted
to be serving this organization at this critical time
when human rights are not universally embraced
when we have a mission to carry out
to try to do our best not only support
the incredible partners with whom we work
but to encourage our congregational members 
our congregations
and the wider community to support
universal human rights.
I am proud to support the UUSC
because of their commitment to
partnership and supporting justice and
human rights organizing
across the world.
 Human rights are under attack everywhere
and the wisdom and courage to fight for justice
always lives inside a community
and with its people. UUSC's commitment to
local communities and grassroots organizing
is essential and i am proud to support it.
I'm Reverend Bill Sinkford, the senior
minister of the First Unitarian Church
of Portland, (OR) 
and former president of the UUA. I am so
pleased to be a supporter of UUSC
because the UUSC can be relied on to be
working with and accountable to the most marginalized
rather than the most powerful.
Isuppourt UUSC because few other
 human rights organizations
understand the dynamics of power
anywhere near as wel.l We usually think
of power as top down power: politicians,
governments, big corporations.
UUSC understands that the way you get
big people and big power to move is by
seeding the grassroots and working with
those people
at the grassroots to put pressure on the
powerful and to create alternative institutions for social change.
For 80 years UUSC
has been turning the good intentions and impulses
of Unitarian Universalists and others into
outcomes and impact. What is the
most important thing an individual can
do to advance the cause of human rights?
Stop being an individual! 
It is our privilege and opportunity to join in
solidarity with UUSC to make a difference in our world.
If some of what you've heard today intrigues you,
If you long to be part of a movement that imagines,
hopes, and fights for more, now is your
chance to be part of this vital justice work.
UUSC is completely independent and is
able to do all that it does because people like you
support our mission. 
A contribution at any level makes you a
member of UUSC, and your support ensures that in
perilous times, with threats to human rights expanding
on all sides, our response too can expand,
After you've made your congregational gift,
 we hope you will consider making a
contribution online by going to uusc.org/UUSC-Sunday
or by finding the UUSC Sunday image on our homepage.
Many, many thanks.
oh gather up the brokenness
and bring it to me now
the fragrance of those promises
 you never dared to vow
the splinters that you carry
the cross you left behind
come healing of the body
come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
come healing of the spirit 
come healing of the limb.
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching to
The broken heart above
Let the heavens falter
And let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name
O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it 
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
O let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
In the spirit of activist and author
Rebecca Solnit
When our dreams our hopes for a better future
cause them to admonish us to be reasonable
Don't listen. Don't stop. 
Don't let your dream shrink by one inch.
Don't forget this might be the day and the pivotal year
when we rewrite what is possible
with imagination and hope, with courage
may we build a new world.
Every day i want to know when to speak
up
and disrupt injustice even in the
seemingly insignificant moments
each moment is significant 
each day an opportunity arises
when we can bear witness 
and choose to disrupt injustice.
Spirit of Life, give us the courage and
wisdom to become holy
disrupters and truth-tellers when called upon
grant us the humility to know that this is a practice
and when we make mistakes we will try again
with love and patience.
We are called to the caring and growing
of souls and we are all in this together.
As people of faith who affirm the
interdependent web of which we are all
a part, we are called to become holy disrupters
because we are all in this together.
May it be so
May we be the ones that make it so. 
Amen, Ase' and Blessed be.
Gentle people, I hope youhave a wonderful week
I love you and I miss you and I'm glad
we can be together this way.
Go out and be holy disrupters of injustice.
