(Sermon only) Babies and the News Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley December 7, 2025

My mom, Laurel, came out as a lesbian to

her mom in 1975.

And I remember her describing that her

mom, my grandma's first reaction was to

say how she was so sad,

so disappointed that Laurel would never

have children.

She said it in a letter. My one regret

she wrote is that I always thought you

would make such a wonderful mother.

She did.

Over the years, girlfriends came and

went. Then in 1981, just a couple years

before Laurel met my other mom,

Francancy, a newspaper clipping arrived

in the mail unexpectedly. Have any of

you ever received newspaper clippings in

the mail from your parents?

This is a dying art. I don't know that

my children will ever receive newspaper

newspaper clippings in the mail.

Well, in the newspaper clipping my mom

received, there was a story about the

opening of the sperm bank of California,

a fertility clinic right here in the Bay

Area, right here in Berkeley, first of

its kind, helping women, especially

lesbians, to have children.

A grandmother's hope had been

rekindled unexpectedly.

The woman Laurel was with at the time

was more interested in their law careers

than having children.

But Laurel kept the clipping. In fact,

she carried it around with her in her

purse every day.

One day in a restaurant, just before she

was to pay the bill, someone snatched

that purse and ran away with it. Stole

her purse. And she spent the rest of the

day searching dumpsters in the

neighborhood. She didn't care about her

ID or anything else in the purse. It was

all replaceable except that newspaper

clipping,

that little feather of hope.

So, you might not be surprised to know

that I've been thinking about babies.

There's an old preachers adage that says

you preach with the Bible in one hand

and the newspaper in the other. Um, but

what I've realized is then I don't know

where do you hold the baby?

And when I had that thought, I

immediately thought of Charlotte Perkins

Gilman who was an early feminist

theologian around the turn of the the

20th century. She was writing

incredible,

poignant, beautiful things about how to

imagine a religion that included women

fully.

And she took for a moment the idea of

all of the philosophers and theologians

of the age, all the great thinkers to be

gathered in a room together to do their

great thinking work, their writing. And

also in that room there would be a

chute. And from that chute, every few

minutes a baby would drop in.

And somehow these great thinkers, these

wise old men, they'd have to figure out

how to deal with all these babies

showing up in their midst.

I've been noticing walking around with

Robin strapped to my chest early in the

morning. Most mornings I'm out walking

in our neighborhood with him and the

magnetic pull for my neighbors to come

get a peek.

You know, this magnetic pull,

that feeling of wanting to be close to

new life,

of the bodily kinesthetic transmission

of a newborn's

hope

to all those who they encounter.

So,

here I've been holding a baby in one

hand, and more often than I want to

admit, certainly more often than my

baby's mother would like, the news in

the other,

holding this tender, precious,

vulnerable being in one hand and

watching clips of ICE agents brutally

forcing people from their vehicle. Les,

throwing them in handcuffs,

removing them from their lives, from

their families without process, without

professionalism, without decency,

without accountability.

Holding a baby in one hand and the news

in the other these days is a

disorienting feeling.

Always this time of year I think of this

poem by Maline Langal

called it the risk of birth. This is no

time for a child to be born. With the

earth betrayed by war and hate and a

comet slashing the sky to warn that time

runs out and the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born

in a land in the crushing grip of Rome.

Honor and truth were trampled by scorn.

Yet here did the Savior make his home.

When

is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on planet Earth.

And by a comet, the sky is torn.

Yet love still takes the risk of birth.

in that story of the enunciation. And I

always picture when Gabriel comes with

that flaming sword to announce to Mary

starting off fear not with the I I

imagine it as a pregnancy test. That

flaming sword, a big positive flaming

pregnancy test.

Scary times,

exciting times, overwhelming times.

Mary, 14, 15 years old, young,

overwhelmed.

The story is easy to tell. She's just a

pawn in this moment, just going along.

The patriarchs would tell us that Mary

simply submits to the plan the angel

announces to her.

Simply says, "Yeah, sure.

But in the poetic imagination of Denise

Leverto, Mary has a different kind of

choice. She says, "Aren't there

enunciations of one sort in most lives?

Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies, enact them in

sullen pride, uncomprehending.

More often, those moments when roads of

light and storm open from darkness in a

man or woman are turned away from in

dread, in a wave of weakness, in

despair,

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue. God does not

smite them,

but the gates close.

the pathway vanishes.

What enunciations have come to your

life? What gates closed or pathways

vanished?

When the risk of love comes knocking

with the news at your door comes to

perch on the branch outside your bedroom

window, asking if you will finally find

the courage to say to a loved one, "We

need to talk."

comes as an alert in your text messages

or on a signal thread about ICE agents

in your city coming for your neighbors.

Leverto says these enunciations arrive

not with compulsion but with an

invitation. God will not smite us for

saying no

because God only knows what will happen.

Any new parent can rattle off a thousand

ways their vulnerable little one might

come to harm.

Anyone with any sense of reality knows

the risk may not pay off. Anyone who

reads the news knows the facts don't add

up to hope.

So there's something that can feel so so

weak, so anemic about this idea of hope.

Maria Papova that uh that acclaimed

writer who who started the blog

Brainpickings she says that hope without

critical thinking is naive

it's polyiana hope

and I'll tell you my mom and she came by

it honestly with that newspaper clipping

in the mail she loved that movie

she made us watch Polyiana probably

every year of my childhood. You know the

version of the story with Haley Mills

and Yeah.

going away with the newspaper clippings,

but do you remember the glad game?

It's the game the orphan Polyiana

learned from her late father. The game

started on Christmas one year when

Polyiana opened her barrel from the

missionaries.

The orphan getting this charity of

Christmas gift,

hoping to get a doll and instead finds

only crutches.

In what I can only imagine was the

desperate improvisation of parenthood.

Her father makes up the glad game.

Find something to be glad about in any

situation, no matter how bleak.

That Christmas, Polyiana was glad about

the crutches because she didn't have to

use them.

Polyiana hope.

And yet that glad game turns the town on

its head.

While Maria Pova dismisses hope without

critical thinking as naive, she also

claims the necessity of hope because she

says critical thinking without hope is

cynicism

and cynicism is a dangerous thing

indeed.

So into this dance of critical thinking

and hope of polyiana and cynicism and

navete

I think of the writer Andrew Solomon who

writes extensively about depression you

know his work he he says that accuracy

of perception

is not actually evolutionary priority.

Normal human thought and p perception is

marked not by accuracy

but by positive self-enhancing illusions

about the self about the world about the

future.

He talks about the work of a researcher

Shelley Taylor at UCLA.

She explains how the mildly depressed

actually appear to have a more accurate

view of themselves. the world and the

future than do other people.

The mildly depressed lack the positive

illusions that can promote mental health

and resiliency.

Illusions that might help buffer against

the normal vicissitudes, the setbacks of

life.

How do we hold to an honest accounting

of reality while also cherishing our

evolutionarily adaptive capacity for

positive illusion? How do we find a hope

that is not divorced from critical

thinking? Hope that has grit, that is

steeped in the boiling waters of

realism. Where does this hope come from?

And I wonder if maybe we start our

search for it in its absence, in that

place called hopelessness or despair.

Because while it is a funny thing that

hope can be understood as weak or

anemic, can feel like a thin word, no

one would ever level that charge at its

evil twin.

Those

who've known hopelessness,

despair

in themselves or in those they love,

they know its power to suck light from a

sunny day to hollow out all achievement

and success. To cast the shadow of the

worst of the past and present across the

whole of the future to come.

When I felt

worst hopelessness and despair, I felt

like a prisoner to time, unable to

summon a spark of hope within.

And like Polyiana, when she is finally

flattened on the hospital bed, unable to

feel her legs, unable to be glad about

anything.

The paradox of despair is that while we

are in it, it feels as though we are

disconnected and separate from

everything else, isolated and alone in

our hopelessness.

But

facing our own hopelessness,

living through despair, in fact,

connects us more deeply to every other

person who has ever lived and struggled

like us. connects us to a bigger story

of an original struggle that puts us on

the same brutal page as every other

human life.

Because when Polyiana lays in that bed

and can't summon anything to be glad

about herself, she is flooded by a river

of visitors.

People who once rolled their eyes at

her, but who have been profoundly

impacted by her special brand of hope.

When Polyiana can't play the glad game

for herself, the game isn't over yet.

While the newspaper clipping

did end up lost forever,

my mom always remembered the sperm bank.

When she met my other mom, Francancy,

one of the things that brought them

together was that they both knew they

wanted to have kids.

That knowing made their decision to

leave their current partners who didn't

want kids

and

begin a relationship with each other.

Three decades later, I served on the

board of that sperm bank

that arrived in a newspaper clipping

from a mom seeing a new possibility of

how life might arrive.

The motto of the organization is making

the dream of family a reality.

Each year, hundreds of women and couples

are able to make their dreams of family

a reality through the bank.

Participating in hope is about saying

yes without knowing it will all turn out

okay.

It's about abandoning all the good

rational reasons not to play and

throwing in your lot with the mysterious

unfolding of hope in the world whether

you believe in angels or not.

It's about Mary knowing she had her

cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant and

just a little bit ahead of her and

believing Joseph would stay by her side.

Saying yes to the risk of love the angel

came to offer. Lever offers the moment

like this. She did not cry Mary I

cannot. I am not worthy. Nor I have not

the strength. She did not submit with

gritted teeth, raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans, consent illumined

her.

The room filled with its light, the lily

glowed in it, and the iridescent wings.

Consent, courage unparalleled.

Consent, courage unparalleled

opened her utterly.

How shocked Joseph and Mary were to find

out they were pregnant. Then to suddenly

upend their lives and head for

Bethlehem. Migrants traveling through

treacherous times with a desperate

decreeing by whim.

to find themselves dependent

on the care of strangers.

Life was not supposed to arrive in this

way. She was overwhelmed and in need of

help. He didn't know what to do. This

kind of moment will shape the rest of

your life.

The blessing of hope is this. You are

not responsible for keeping it alive.

Whether our angels come bearing flaming

swords, through newspaper clippings in

the mail, or through challenges like an

unplanned pregnancy, life invites us to

risk love yet again. Despite our more

rational judgment to say yes to the holy

conspiracy of hope,

hope, true, simple, honest hope, may not

be strong and burly. may not be a

blazing beacon bright enough to burn

away fear and keep despair at bay. It

cannot eradicate poverty or end war or

save the child. Not every mom accepts

her child's sexuality.

Some families torn apart by the violence

of the state are never reunited. Even

babies die each day to famine and

violence. Yet not even the worst

atrocity in the news

can negate the good news of newborn

life.

Perched on the soul,

singing its tune with words in the

chillest land, never stopping at all.

Burning in the flame that illuminates

even the longest night. spoken in

whispers among those waiting for a sign.

A baby, a savior, squeaking in the voice

of a child playing the glad game holy in

the rasping breath of the deathbed.

Hand

still held out with warmth, offering

children and grandchildren blessing even

as life comes to an end.

Beware the headlines worn.

Be hope the babe's face invites once

more.

Be illumined with the good news you were

born to share.

May it be so. And amen.