(Sermon only) Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley January 4, 2026 FLOWERS AND GARBAGE

I want to start my first sermon with you

with what I believe in. How I am a

believer. And what I believe in is

compost.

That's right. Compost.

I wrote that statement. I believe in

compost. Six years ago for a program at

my small layled fellowship in

Farmington, New Mexico,

I was following directions from a book

and a website called this I believe that

asked readers to succinctly articulate

in 500 words your deeply held values.

And the value that I was writing about

was transformation.

But I didn't start out writing about

that value. Instead, I started with my

habits and the things that I had been

doing in my daily life.

I have had a compost pile for 33 years.

When I moved to my house in New Mexico

28 years ago, I set up the black box to

the side of my garden. And over the

years, I have added adjoining piles and

I have creatively experimented with all

sorts of ways of creating compost. I've

had multiple setups of worm bins and I

have finally settled on a two tier

structure of thriving red wiglers.

But lest this sound overly productive,

my setups have often changed in

relationship to mine neglect.

I have failed to water my worms. I have

ignored the pile for months. I have put

in too many dry items or too many wet

watermelon rind. And I have let scraps

accumulate for too long and needed to

deal with the ex excess.

I come from a high desert landscape with

little water and extreme temperatures.

Left unattended, a banana peel will take

years to decompose.

And sometimes I question the long

process when I see the same corn cobs in

my compost pile for months or years.

I restore my faith in compost by driving

north for less than an hour and hiking

in the nearby forest of southwest

Colorado.

With more rain and snow, leaves and tree

fragments break down right underneath my

feet. Not because someone tended a

compost pile, but bea because decay is a

natural part of life.

In the woods, I see the difference that

water makes for transformation.

At home, the compost will happen

eventually,

and it's a whole lot faster when I turn

and water my pile or I pay attention to

what my worms need.

But my belief in compost is about much

more than scraps, bacteria, bugs.

I believe in the process of

transformation

itself for people, for society.

Compost presents the possibility of

gathering discarded lifegiving scraps,

pieces that some would send to the

landfill.

By com by composting, I create the

conditions for those pieces to be

transformed into something valuable,

something lifegiving.

Now, I'm learning that in California,

this lesson is already in the culture

with public compost piles and curbside

pickup. I'm still occasionally reading

the details of what goes in each bin.

And I feel incredibly comfortable at a

church where Reverend Marcus's

installation service involved a

wheelbarrow of compost right on the

chancel.

When I learned of this event, I knew

that this community would feel like

home.

Now, on the surface,

compost sounds like a great idea. Who

wouldn't want to change garbage into

lifegiving organic matter?

But when we dig into compost, I mean

really dig in. Transforming garbage can

be messy, smelly, unappreciated work.

Transformation is a core value in our

Unitarian Universalist faith.

We embrace change as part of our living

tradition. We evolve, never perfect,

never complete, exploring truth, not

with a capital T, but with the best

thinking that we currently know.

We continually discover new ways of

understanding what we hold sacred.

And when we do so in community with an

ever widening circle of voices,

we invite complexity

because we don't have to think alike.

Well, we don't think alike.

We can find ourselves in messy, smelly,

unappreciated work.

Sometimes this is in relationship to our

larger world, sometimes to each other,

and sometimes within ourselves.

Sometimes it would be much easier to

just throw what we don't like into the

metaphorical landfill instead of

engaging with differences.

So what does it really mean that we

embrace transformation?

Zen master Tiknadhan frequently invokes

compost metaphorically,

seeing mindful awareness as a

transformative process akin to a compost

pile.

Emotions that are often discarded, such

as anger, fear, and hatred,

have potential to be transformed

when held in loving awareness.

He writes that a gardener sees the short

life of flowers as potential compost and

also seeing decaying matter as potential

flowers.

Decaying matter and flowers create a

continuous cycle,

a continuous transformation of

interdependence

or in Tiknad Han's words interbeing.

In the flower is the potential for decay

and in decay the potential for flowers.

The flower and decay inter are or more

succinctly

no mud no lotus.

Complex relationships exist in all areas

of our lives. often overlooked

but present upon deep inspection.

Each cup of tea that I drink holds more

than water and tea leaves. It holds a

raincloud that produced the water and

the breakfast that fed the farmer who

harvested the leaves.

The tea, the raincloud, the breakfast

inter.

They're not separate. They're not

separate entities. But there is

possibility in their connectedness

like the flower, the garbage or the mud

and the lotus.

Now I sometimes catch myself using the

words change and transformation

interchangeably,

but I see some subtle differences.

Transformation asks for more than

adaptation.

Change adjusts to existing reality.

Transformation alters the nature of that

reality itself.

Change focuses on doing things

differently.

Transformation

asks for us to become something

different.

Transformation occurs when I can no

longer identify that banana peel in my

compost and instead it is fertilizer for

the garden.

But my compost pile has taught me that

not everything can be transformed.

I read an article around 10 years ago

that shook my faith in compost with a

concern over plastics that showed up in

municipal composting.

Researchers figured out that microscopic

plastics had come from bags that would

be composters put in the bins with the

waste and instead those bags leeched

toxins into the compost.

The result was not beneficial compost

but something harmful and unusable.

Every composter needs to know that basic

list, the greens, the browns of what

does and doesn't go into the compost

pile. Yes to plastics, pl Yes to plant

scraps. No to plastics, even when placed

in the bin with good intentions.

Some things will simply not transform.

Scholar Vanessa Machado de Ala

frequently refers to compost as she

looks at society's failures.

She writes about everyday complicity and

systems of ecological and social harm

and she describes this as composting

excrement.

Manure can transform through composting,

but it is even more smelly, gross, and

downright unpleasant than my food scraps

or the municipal compost pile.

As economic systems become more

stratified,

as colonialism's legacy continues to

produce genocide and murder,

as imperialism reaches outside of our

borders and into Venezuela,

transformation in our world is urgently

needed.

The work of transforming systems

may be smelly, gross, and downright

unpleasant.

And we need to be honest about what

systems can transform

and when a system carries toxins that

will not disappear.

Sometimes it's easy to make judgments

about what can transform food scraps,

plant materials, and sometimes it takes

a little more discernment,

which is a word I frequently encountered

in my four years of seminary.

Discernment can describe making moral

choices.

Often it's a process of seeing and

taking a certain path.

Hearing a voice, making a choice, doing

the next right thing.

I think of discernment as aligning,

aligning with my values and seeing how

real world choices line up or deviate.

When I searched for an internship, I had

to ask questions about what I value in

ministry and where I need to grow.

Discernment asked me to align with what

I hold sacred, holy, with deeper meaning

and convictions.

Singer songwriter David Wilcox has lines

about the well-known Robert Frost poem.

Two roads devo diverged in a yellow wood

and sorry I could not travel both and be

one traveler long I stood and looked

down one as far as I could and Will Cox

describes the fear and looking at the

paths and he imagines a game show host

type of god. Let's see what door you

have chosen. Oh no, door two. That's the

wrong one. No prize for you.

But the holy, the sacred

is not a game show trickster looking for

the run one right door.

Truth doesn't have a capital T, but

instead is the best thinking that we

currently know.

Sometimes it's clear what aligns, what

will transform, what path we want to

travel.

Sometimes our choices come easily and

sometimes they take more introspection,

more awareness of the connections that

weave through our lives, of the ways

that we inter.

Sometimes I see so many connections that

I am afraid to choose, afraid to move,

afraid to transform.

As much as I value transformation and

believe in compost,

the reality of becoming something

someone different is hard.

In my four years of seminary, I have had

my assumptions challenged and my

privileges examined.

When I'm brutally honest, I see how much

I am a creature of habit.

When I told you that I had composted for

33 years and had the same pile for 28

years, it's not a statement of virtue.

It's a testament that I will run a

groove long and deep. I will continue

with the same actions because

transformation

really embodying compost

is hard work.

Staying with difficult feelings, being

in the mud

requires raw honesty, and sometimes I

revert to those well-run emotional

grooves.

I stay with habits that perpetuate a

world of injustice out of alignment with

what I most value, often by failing to

speak out against harm that is right in

front of me.

Discernment invites us out of those

well-worn grooves into the next right

step.

It invites us to ask probing questions

and listen, really listen to the

possibilities that emerge

as we challenge our assumptions.

Compost invites us to see possibility.

The flower in the garbage,

the compost in the flower.

When we attune to interdependence,

we open not just to change but to

transformation.

I invite you this morning to engage with

your own process of aligning with what

is sacred and holy, with what you value.

And I want to end the sermon in an

unusual way with a ritual to begin our

new year.

You were given a piece of paper and pen

when you entered the sanctuary.

And if you don't have one, if you want

to raise a hand and the ushers will give

you a piece of paper or pen.

This paper has the ability to transform.

But like compost, it needs water.

In this case, it needs water to melt

away.

As you reflect today, at the outset of

this year,

I invite you to write a word or phrase

on the paper and offer it up to the

water for transformation.

Is there an area of your life that you

want to prioritize

for transformation in this new year?

Is there something that you want to let

go of that cannot be transformed?

Perhaps a habit, a harm.

Is there something that you want to

remember when you come to the junction

of paths in a wood? Something that

aligns with your highest values that you

want to honor in this new year.

I invite you to find your word or phrase

whether it is transforming, letting go,

remembering

your word that brings you into what is

sacred and holy and write it on your

piece of paper.

When you're ready, come forward to one

of the three bowls and place your paper

in the water. You can expect the

dissolving paper to take about 20 to 30

seconds. And you're welcome to fold the

paper if you prefer that your words be

private.

When you're done, you may not see

anything left of the paper, but we know

that the water has been changed by all

of our collective sheets. and Katya will

offer music as we come forward to

transform our words.

Okay.

to the year as an inspiration. a

challenge or release.

May we see the lotus in the mud,

the holy moments of transformation.

And may we recognize that not everything

can be transformed. I want to get my

compost stick and stir it all up

and let them dissolve.

We need wisdom and discernment to know

what is compostable,

even when it is stinky and gross.

May we be alert to all that has

potential for transformation,

and reaffirm daily a belief in compost.