“I Am Awake” – March 10th, 2024

With Rev. Sophia preaching, Djalai Babazadeh, David Morrison, Sue and Clint Sours, Charlyn Bethell, Guy Urban and our guest violinist, the wonderful Beth Welty!

Transformation often occurs when we open our hearts to human realities and experiences than differ from our own. This Sunday we will consider those who live with seen and unseen disabilities. How might our UU theology help us wake up to their lived experiences and play a part in their thriving? Your body and soul deserve a place of healing and hope–do yourself a favor and come to church! 

The following poem comes to us this morning from Laura Hershey who was a poet, journalist, and disability rights activist. She has been described as a “powerful woman whose spirited refusal to let social responses to her spinal muscular atrophy define the parameters of her life as anything less than a full human existence.” She died in 2010 at the age of 48. 

“Telling” 

What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them. 
Your voice will break, your ink 
spill and stain your coat. 
No one will understand, their eyes 
become fences. 
You will park yourself forever 
on the outside, your differentness once 
and for all revealed, dangerous. 
The names you give to yourself 
will become epithets. 
Your happiness will be called 
bravery, denial. 
Your sadness will justify their pity. 
Your fear will magnify their fears. 
Everything you say will prove something about 
their god, or their economic system. 
Your feelings, that change day 
to day, kaleidoscopic, 
will freeze in place, 
brand you forever, 
justify anything they decide to do 
with you. 
Those with power can afford 
to tell their story 
or not. 
Those without power 
risk everything to tell their story 
and must. 
Someone, somewhere 
will hear your story and decide to fight, 
to live and refuse compromise. 
Someone else will tell 
her own story, 
risking everything.