(Sermon only) STAINED GLASS JOY Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley January 25, 2026

How to be a person in the world.

How to be a person in the world by

Lindsay Rush. Call yourself Mary

Oliver's drunk cousin.

Let the sorrow of it all sink deep into

your bones.

But don't forget to finish the laundry

and water the lawn and dry your eyes.

Dream up a five-year plan for your small

business while picturing your baby doing

a lockdown drill in his kindergarten

classroom.

Discover new music and laugh at new

jokes and let creativity drip from each

of your fingertips, but be mindful that

you have neighbors who are starving and

dying and fighting for the most basic of

freedoms. Look up how much protein you

should be eating and also what to do if

you're in public with an active shooter.

Get your moles checked

and get your head checked. Get a

mammogram and get a grip. And the new

thriller book everyone's talking about

on Tik Tok. But please, dear God, don't

forget the oceans, the ozone layer, the

rhinos, the emails, the dogs and cats

that need forever homes.

try to grapple with the fact that your

parents are starting to get old old.

But also with the future of AI and the

pending recession and the billionaires

and the depth of division between you

and so many people you love, it's

undeniable

that everyone everywhere is on the brink

of losing their humanity and their

empathy and their But to be

a person in the world

is to do the impossible every day.

Simply by keeping your eyes open,

simply by getting out of bed,

simply by facing these incomprehensible

horrors again and again without somehow

abandoning your joy.

by facing these incomprehensible horrors

again and again without somehow

abandoning your joy.

Yesterday, the unaccountable agents of

fear and chaos our government has

unleashed upon the Twin Cities, like

many other places, murdered another

citizen of our country, as you have no

doubt heard.

Alex Jeffrey Prey was a nurse at the ICU

at the VA hospital.

As he blew a whistle in alarm, Border

Patrol agents peppered him with pepper

spray.

Him and a woman nearby who he tried to

protect.

They threw him to the ground and beat

him. And then when he was laying on the

ground, surrounded and held down by

these agents, one of them appeared to

notice a gun he had in a holster,

removed it, said he has a gun. And in

response, another agent pulled out his

own firearm and shot Alex Prey. And then

as he lay face down on the ground, they

shot him nine more times.

by facing these incomprehensible horrors

again and again without somehow

abandoning your joy.

So, I watched that video

of Alex Py's murder yesterday, and later

I found out a beloved friend who grew up

in the Unitarian Church in Oakland,

where I grew up, a generation younger,

was at the scene there yesterday, having

just been arrested by ICE herself, while

protesting,

watching from the bus where they kept

the Danees as they murdered Alex nearby.

And I was I was thinking I was hoping to

talk about joy today.

That song we've been singing this month

as the children leave for their classes,

many windows, one light. The image was

central to the theology of the late

Unitarian Universalist Minister Forest

Church. And boy, if there was ever a

crack in someone, he had a complicated

ministry.

He imagined us Unitarian Universalists

gathering in a cathedral beyond time and

place. He said, "This cathedral

as ancient as humankind, its

cornerstone, the first altar, marked

with the tincture of blood and stained

with tears. Search for a lifetime which

is all you are surely given, and you

shall not know its limits. Visit all its

transcepts, worship at its myriad

shrines, nor span its celestial ceiling

with your gaze.

The builders have worked from time

immemorial, destroying and creating,

confounding and perfecting, tearing down

and raising up the arches in this

cathedral, butresses and chapels, organs

and theaters, chancels and transcepts,

gargoyles, idols and icons.

Not a moment passes

without work being begun that shall not

be finished in the lifetime of the

architects who planned it,

the patrons who paid for it, the

builders who constructed, or its

expectant worshippers.

Throughout human history, one generation

after another has labored lovingly,

sometimes fearfully, crafting memorials

and consecrating shrines. Untold numbers

of these collect dust in long

undisturbed chambers. Others cast

centuries or eons ago from their once

respected places lie shattered in shards

or ground into powder on the cathedral

floor. Not a moment passes

without the dreams of long deadad

dreamers being outstripped, shattered,

or abandoned,

giving way to new visions. each immortal

in reach, ephemeral in grasp. Welcome,

he said, to the Cathedral of the World.

To live in a time when the great and

cherished shrines we have inherited from

generations past are being smashed daily

before our eyes is a disorienting

burden.

Where do you plant your feet in this

cathedral of such constant outshripping,

shattering, abandoning, giving way?

How do we orient ourselves in this

cathedral of such violent

transformation?

Above

all else, he said, "Contemplate the

windows."

In the cathedral of the world, there are

windows without number.

Some long forgotten, covered with many

patas of grime, others revered by

millions. The most sacred of shrines,

each beautiful in its own way. Some are

abstract, other representational, some

dark and meditative, some bright and

dazzling.

Each window tells a story about the

creation of the world, the meaning of

history, the purpose of life, the nature

of humankind, the mystery of death. The

windows of the cathedral

are where the light shines through.

Many windows,

one light,

one sacred source, one indivisible

reality refracted by a multitude of

colored shards of glass.

Perhaps the light that that shines on

you shines with Mother Mary's blue glow.

Or maybe it's through the brilliant

orange of the monk's robes

deep in meditation.

In this cathedral, there's no end to the

variation of the worshippers hues and

illumination. The same light falls on

the Somali urban Uber driver in in

Minneapolis

and on the ICU nurse pulling a double

shift and on the kindergarten teacher

kneeling on the floor tying shoes before

a lockdown drill.

The same light falls on the border

crosser walking through desert heat and

the border agent taught to vilify him.

On the mother counting tips

in the middle of the night

and on the billionaire counting yachts

in the bright sunlight.

On the protester zip tied on a bus. and

the passerby who keeps walking because

they can't bear one more image. On the

teenager doom scrolling at 2:00 a.m. and

on the elder who still reads a paper in

print slowly deliberately. On the trans

kid trying to survive middle school. And

the pastor trying to learn not to cause

harm. on neurode divergent minds, on

pattern seers and deep feelers and

literalists and wanderers whose ways of

knowing refract the light and colors the

cathedral would be dimmer without. On

the person praying in a rug on a rug on

the one praying with beads. on the one

who can't bring themselves a prey

anymore but still

hopes somehow

on the person who's given up joy because

it feels irresponsible.

On the one clinging to joy because it

feels like the last form of resistance

left.

on the grieving parent and the terrified

child and the exhausted organizer and

the burnedout bureaucrat. On the oceans

warming and yeah, even the rhinos

dwindling

and the forests holding their breath

on Alex pretty

on my friend watching from the bus on

you on me. Many windows, one light.

Our task in this cathedral,

it's not to defend every shattered

shrine or pretend the destruction isn't

happening, but to keep turning ourselves

again and again toward whatever window

is ours to gaze upon. to let the light

reach us, to let it warm us, to keep our

hearts from hardening, to refuse the lie

that joy is frivolous

in a world like this. To remember

that joy keeps us awake to what we love.

Joy keeps us awake in all our senses to

what we love, to the world we know is

possible, to the vision we are called to

keep fighting for. Because we cannot

just resist the harm that is being done.

We must hold clear the vision we love.

And no, joy isn't pure white light the

way we sometimes imagine it to be, but

comes in alongside a kaleidoscope of

colors. I watched another video

yesterday.

It was 19 seconds long and showed me a

glimpse of my son on his first day

learning to ski.

face a glow as he glided across the

snow.

And the joy watching him didn't replace

the outrage or the sorrow or the fear,

but it shone through them with a

luminous vision of life as it should be,

life as it can be. Joy isn't an escape

from the challenges or a fleeting taste

of something good that cannot last, but

in essence we must keep letting in if we

are ever to have a hope of making

justice.

It's the sign of our deeper calling. A

communion with something that remains

real and true no matter how bad it gets.

No amount of cruelty can diminish the

light.

And now even though everyone here in

this cathedral of the world sees the

light through different windows, gets to

bask before the windows that speak to

them.

We also have to know that no one gets to

claim that source, the light as their

own.

No one gets to say their window is the

right window. However transmuted the

light that shines for us is all one. And

those who would try to catch it like

pharaohs in the ancient

pyramids,

who would see only their own reflection

in the mirrors that would capture the

light and demand others agree that the

light come in their image.

Those who would blaspheme in such a way.

Well, Joy says we have to resist them

like hell.

One of the leading lights this week in

the world

offered

the words of Vaklav Havl, great

statesman of the 20th century.

Mark Carney's speech in Davos, I want to

just share a few words from it.

He was talking about

the essay that Baklav Pavl wrote, the

power of the powerless.

And in it, he asked a simple question.

How did the communist system sustain

itself?

And Carney explained his answer began

with a green ger. Every morning this

shopkeeper places a sign in his window,

workers of the world unite.

He doesn't believe it.

No one does.

But he places the sign anyway to avoid

trouble, to signal compliance, to get

along. And because every shopkeeper on

every street does the same, the system

persists,

not through violence alone, but through

the participation of ordinary people in

rituals they privately know to be false.

Havl called this living within a lie.

The system's power comes not from its

truth, but from everyone's willingness

to perform as if it were true.

And its fragility comes from the same

source. When even one person stops

performing, when the green ger removes

his sign, the illusion begins to crack.

Carney has called upon the world's

leaders to take seriously the reality of

the moment and act with both pragmatism

and principle.

But I also hear his call to every one of

us in our own small lives as well to not

live within the lie.

The lie tells us it doesn't matter how

we behave, that all the old rules are

out anyway.

The lie tells us it doesn't matter what

we do, that the high and mighty will

dictate the course of events.

the high and mighty, not the city

librarian or the retired social worker

or the third grade teacher or the legal

aid or the family medicine doc.

The lie is insidious. And when we are

feeling the full kaleidoscope of

emotions, when we're rocked by events

like what happened yesterday, we can

find all our network of relationships

impacted by it. I wonder, have you

noticed

unexpected friction in your own life?

Have you noticed the anxiety of our

society impacting relationships within

your own family? You're with your

friends or here in our community.

Last week I read that pledge

that the activists of Birmingham

60 years ago

made the discipline

to decide not to live within the lie,

the rigor that that takes as a community

together. And one of them I was sharing

with a friend and colleague this week

that number six, observe with both

friend and foe the ordinary rules of

courtesy. It sounds so benol,

but I think it asks actually quite a lot

of us. Observe with both friend and foe

the ordinary rules of courtesy. He told

me a story I had never heard before that

he was born in in Birmingham

and one year Christmas caroling his

parents carolled outside the king's

house and Kretta invited them in. They

were Menanites. And when she offered

them a drink, most of them refused. That

was their principle. But my dear

friend's mom

couldn't refuse.

Courtesy

was a higher principle than her

abstinence from alcohol.

And so she accepted Kretta's offer, her

hospitality.

and through this small moment of

courtesy kept weaving this fabric of

beloved community one to another.

How are you called in the small world of

your own life to tend to these

relationships without living in the lie?

to offer that care, that love, that

common courtesy

as a spiritual discipline.

In a moment, we're going to sing again.

We're going to sing a song. This joy,

this joy

I have, the world didn't give it to me.

The world can't take it away. And the

world in the theology of the people who

wrote this song, the world is that world

of empire. It's the world of tyrants and

pharaohs. It's the world of power over.

It's it's not that world where joy comes

from. We get that confused sometimes.

All the beautiful things that world can

provide us. But this joy, this joy I

have deep inside, it comes from

somewhere else. It comes from some light

that cannot be altered or diminished.

A light that reaches us through many

windows

and yet is still that same sacred

precious light.

Before we sing that song, a final word

from the last third video I watched

yesterday.

It was of Alex Prey

offering a final salute to a patient he

had cared for.

In the dimly lit hospital corridor,

the man's body lay beneath the honored

armaments, the blankets of his service.

And Prey read out, "Today

we remember that freedom is not free.

We have to work at it,

nurture it, protect it, and even

sacrifice for it.

May we never forget and always remember

our brothers and sisters who have served

so we may enjoy the gift of freedom.

So in this moment, he read, we give

thanks for their dedication and selfless

service to our nation

in the cause of our freedom.

In this solemn hour,

we render our honor and our gratitude.

Amen. And may it be so.