At this very moment, there are approximately four thousand Unitarian Universalists wandering around Fort Worth, Texas, including half a dozen delegates from Nashville. According to the General Assembly schedule, they’re probably all scrounging for lunch right this minute. The worship service took place from 10 to 11 this morning, and the next round of meetings and workshops start up at 12:15. Some of the debates the past couple of days will have centered on this year’s Statement of Conscience, which will articulate the Unitarian Universalist Association’s stance on Criminal Justice and Prison Reform. When the topic was selected two years ago, one deciding factor was the location of this year’s assembly: where better to advocate for fair and compassionate justice than right in a state notorious for its executions and screwed-up-edness in that regard? (cf. Molly Ivins).

Before I continue, let’s be absolutely clear: although this sermon has a GA theme, I am in fact glad and relieved that I’m not actually there, and not just because it lets me be here instead. I do like General Assembly. I firmly believe most UUs should try to go at least once, regardless of whether they formally belong to a UU congregation or not, or whether their congregation belongs to the UUA (yet) or not. To resort to an old cliché, our annual national convention does offer practically something for everyone – my favorite speaker at the Boston assembly a couple of years ago wasn’t even Unitarian Universalist. That would have been Rabbi Harold Kushner, who delivered a very thoughtful address on the rise of fundamentalism and how to consider addressing it. The most controversial speaker that year was sex columnist Dan Savage – some people found him funny, others found his opinions harsh and hurtful. To me, it was interesting that both Savage and Kushner made remarks that got them booed, as well as statements that triggered spontaneous applause.

In other words, if and when you do go to General Assembly, you will almost certainly encounter someone whose opinions are bound to annoy or offend you. Or, you might find yourself annoyed at how quickly and automatically some of your fellow worshippers find things to be offended about. It’s an astounding and fascinating coming-together of people, and I’m hoping to make the trip at least once a decade, and probably more often than that.

That said, it’s not cheap, and it can be exhausting. The programming runs from 7 a.m. to midnight almost every day for four and a half days, and I admit to being the utterly greedy type that can’t resist trying to catch every blessed thing on offer – at least until the sugar and caffeine let me down. When I was a delegate in 2003, I attended six business sessions, at least four concerts, three tours, and four or five worship services – including Friday night shabbat in a hotel room. There were also heaps of workshops and panels, over a hundred exhibit booths, and no end of stimulating conversations to be had with folks from Massachusetts to Mississippi. It was exhilarating – and, I happen to be an introvert. It doesn’t take much for me to get “peopled out,” and my idea of a fabulous Saturday night is me with a book and six ounces of single-malt Scotch. I think, as a layperson, one General Assembly every three to five years is probably more my speed.

So, I am glad I am not in Texas this morning. Still, right now my mind’s very much there as well as here. Part of it is simply that I have all sorts of ties to the place: I was born in Lubbock, I dated a guy in Austin, I’ve been to a slumber party in Houston, and I went to a wedding in Fort Worth itself just last year. My family moved soon after I was born, so I don’t even remotely qualify as a GRIT – that would be, Girl Raised in Texas – but I do have fuzzy armadillo potholders, and my husband’s motorcycling buddies from there are the sweetest guys this side of the Mason-Dixon line. In short, I’m quite fond of the Lone Star State, and it feels pretty weird to me when I hear people speak of it as something that ought to be “sawed off the mainland and pushed out to sea.”

I grant you, Mr. George W. Bush and Mr. Tom Delay aren’t making the best case for the state these days. Lately I’ve found myself giving thanks that I merely have to be embarrassed about Bill Frist. To be absolutely fair, however, the writer I quoted just now was in fact waxing indignant on behalf of Unitarian Universalists when he let loose his ire against Texas: this was back in April 2004, when the comptroller of Texas refused to grant tax-exempt status to a UU church because it failed to meet her definition of a legitimate religion – that is, one insisting its members maintain “a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power.” As the same writer – Patrick Nielsen Hayden – summed up, “to the State of Texas in 2004, a money-making racket founded by a third-rate science fiction writer qualifies as a ‘religion’ and the faith of Ethan Allen and Daniel Webster doesn’t.”

Fortunately, this state of affairs didn’t fester long. Two attorneys in Austin donated their time and expertise to the Red River UU Church, and other Texans were quick to express their contempt and dismay at Comptroller’s Strayhorn stance. One such letter to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram urged that she be “put out to pasture before she further damages this great state,” and some locals suspect it was all a ploy to look good to fundamentalists, since she apparently holds some interest in running for governor in 2006. I will refrain from dwelling on the parallels to a certain senator’s ambitions for the Oval Office. At any rate, the Comptroller’s office reversed their ruling by the end of May, determining that “Red River Unitarian Universalist Church is an organization created for religious purposes and should be granted the requested tax exemption." [emphases mine]

This was reassuring news not just for Red River, of course, but for the other forty to fifty UU congregations in Texas, some with fewer than ten members and some approaching nearly a thousand. It can be all too easy to feel isolated or immaterial in our stretch of the Bible belt, and to feel outnumbered and outshouted by swarms of intolerant evangelicals. For that matter, I suspect quite a few of us have moments where we feel alone and out of place even amongst each other, even when we know we’re at least among people who share and cherish the same principles, with whom we’re in covenant. It certainly happens to me: my home church sustains and stimulates me, but sometimes I’m not even in the same book as my fellow worshippers, let alone the same page. Our interim minister was a very good sport about the fact that he spotted me cringing at one of his comments one of the first times I heard him preach; given that he’s a mystical humanist and I’m a pragmatic theist, it’s rather odd and wonderful that we got along at all.

Multiply all this by a hundred and you get General Assembly: four thousand people, one microphone labeled pro, another one labeled con, a whole lot of good intentions and twenty-odd pages of bylaws. It’s messy, it’s passionate, it’s terrifying, and it’s inspiring: it’s not easy saving ourselves and it will never ever be easy to save the world, but Tennessee needs us, and there’s something about seeing hundreds of congregational banners on parade that I find profounding stirring and energizing. I personally loathe the phrase “UUs who just don’t realize they’re UUs” (I think it’s condescending and presumptuous), but I do believe part of our collective job is to teach and remind people of the beauty of what’s possible: they don’t have to be Unitarian or Universalist to share our principles and strive for justice. That is the heart of the work being done in Texas, and the work ahead for us here. To quote from this morning’s closing hymn, Let there be light, let there be understanding. . . open the door of concord opening into grace.

Let us sing that hymn now. Please stand as you are able. . .