Sermon: "For I was Hungry and You Fed Me" (Rev. Danielle)

In case you’re wondering if this exceptionally high pulpit has given me delusions of grandeur, you should know I had any illusions about my power amongst Unitarian Universalists humbly knocked out of me many years ago, when I served as a volunteer 4th and 5th grade religious education teacher at All Souls in DC. I think I’ve told this story in every congregation I’ve ever preached at, because it’s so fundamental to my ministry and UU identity. It was there that my class came under the influence of a particularly charismatic leader, a 9 year old girl we’ll call Francis. Each class was tasked with making a felt banner that would hang outside of their classrooms on Sunday mornings for the rest of the church year and represent that class’s understanding of Unitarian Universalism. 

I had seen the banners the first service classes had made and they were sweet and predictable, with chalices, peace signs, doves, and multi-racial groups of felt children holding hands around a borderless blue and green earth. I was confident in my ability to guide our class toward an equally acceptable depiction of global love and cooperation. But Francis… well, Francis was a true Unitarian. She recognized no authority greater than her own conscience and was confident in her place among the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. She liked to cook and it seemed that while I was busy setting up supplies, she got the whole class in on her plan to make a banner depicting a pot roast dinner. By the time I was let in on the plan, each student had already chosen the ingredient or side dish they’d cut from the felt; kale leaves and cranberries, mashed potatoes, and a loaf of french bread. 

My objections were for naught and the art project was underway with or without my blessing. Exasperated, I asked, “what does a pot roast have to do with Unitarian Universalism?” Francis never even looked up from her work cutting and gluing. “We’re supposed to feed people who are hungry,” she said “We’re supposed to share meals with people we love.”

I think about her often and the many lessons she taught me during that patience-testing, beautiful year of religious education. Our children and youth here often remind me of Francis in the best possible ways. 

And I’ve been thinking about her, and her matter of fact assertion that we’re supposed to feed people who are hungry, quite a bit during these last few weeks as cuts to SNAP benefits loomed.  The ongoing government shutdown and willful inaction on the part of the Trump administration meant that over 40 million people were at risk of losing the funding they rely on to feed themselves and their families. As communities tried to step up to care for their neighbors, the level of cruelty coming from the federal level in response was astounding. Grocery stores were prohibited from providing discounts to SNAP recipients. The Trump administration  threatened states who tried to provide full benefits with financial penalties if they don’t take back the benefits they’ve already provided. It was not just a matter of not enough funding, or a government whose hands were tied when negotiations came to a stand still. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t help feed people. They didn’t want anyone else to either. And that is nothing short of state sanctioned violence. I know that sounds dramatic but given the time and effort they put into ensuring no one received benefits, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a government fully committed to figuring out how to starve its people.

Francis’s banner expressed a value system that is so fundamentally different from the one our government is advancing right now. But that’s not especially surprising. And it’s not why I’m telling this story today. I don’t want us to just sit smugly in this sanctuary knowing we have the right values. I want us to act on those values. And that’s what stood out to me about that banner. It was actionable. It was concrete and immediate. We’re supposed to feed people who are hungry. Now, I could probably extrapolate that from the other class's banners eventually. Symbols of peace and equality point me to a world where there is no more food insecurity, but there’s a lot of work to get those lofty symbols pared down to concrete actions.

Figuring out how to act in the face of cruelty, injustice, and inequality is not always easy. The enormity of suffering in the world can feel paralyzing. We know we can’t help every person or fix every problem. We debate what people or what causes are most worthy of our time and have the best return on investment. We worry that charity work addressing the symptoms, rather than the root causes of the problem, is ineffective, so we hesitate to volunteer at the soup kitchen or contribute to the food drive. I’ve heard this in any number of churches, organizing meetings or classes. Why are you wasting your time on direct service rather than working for policy change? We can get so caught up in strategy, we lose sight of our ability to ease the suffering that is right in front of us.  

This is not a new dilemma. Dorothy Day, journalist, anarchist, pacifist, and tireless champion of the poor wrote about this in 1938. Along with her friend Peter Maurin, she had started a radical newspaper, The Catholic Worker, and opened a number of Houses of Hospitality providing food, shelter, and clothing to those in need.  Day writes, “There is always so little we can do. There is always the complaint–“but we are only feeding them!” from some members of the groups in different parts of the country. It is right never to be satisfied with the little we can do, but we must remember the importance of giving even a drink of cold water in the name of Christ.” She quotes Cardinal Manning, “The existence of hunger, nakedness, misery, death from insufficient food, even of starvation, is certain, and as yet no agency reaches it. How can any man discourage the giving of food or help?” Day concludes, “We must live from day to day, and continue with courage to do the little immediate jobs of feeding the hungry.”

My little RE student Francis and Dorothy Day both understood the same thing. This call we follow, from the scriptures of Isaiah and from Matthew, our UU principles and values, from the still small voice inside that guides us, this call is not a political strategy, it is a moral imperative.

We’re supposed to feed people who are hungry. We’re supposed to share meals with those we love. This doesn’t mean we ignore that long-term work to change our systems and our culture, to address the root causes of poverty and food insecurity and inequality. We absolutely need to do that work. But what I want to remind us of today is those immediate acts or direct service, those actions that ease suffering where we can, even just for a moment, are never a waste of time. They are good and worthy in their own right, but they also serve two important purposes that I want to lift up today.  

One is that they keep us connected to humanity- our own and our neighbors. Francis said “We’re supposed to share meals with people we love.” But who is it that we love? Who is my neighbor? LIberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez says, “You say you love the poor? Name them.” The truth is, I think a lot of us are more comfortable at an interfaith organizing meeting about a ballot initiative than we are serving food to those who are hungry or offering beds to those without shelter and actually forming relationships with our neighbors. I say this as someone who spent 10 years doing professional policy advocacy. It can be distancing. It can disconnect us from the very real suffering poverty and inequality cause in our country. When we break bread with someone we are intimately connected. “Strangers maybe never again,” Ross Gay tells us in the poem Marlene read earlier. We’ve got to get proximate, to use the phrase popularized by attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson says, “What I believe is that in poor communities all across the world, in places where there is suffering, and places where people have been marginalized in jails and prisons, and places where people have been oppressed and pushed down, there are still songs being sung. When you get proximate, you hear the songs. And those melodies in those songs will empower you, they will inspire you, and they will teach you what doing justice and loving mercy is all about. Find ways to get closer to the poor and the excluded, the marginalized and the neglected, and to go with an open heart and listen for the songs that will teach you the things we need to understand.”

The second reason is that direct acts of service remind us we have the power and agency to care for one another and create change. 

During my two years serving in Portland, I was privileged to join alongside the volunteer team of congregants who established the 13 Salmon Shower Project. We were in the heart of downtown Portland and trying to figure out how to best serve our unhoused neighbors. We had willing volunteers and an unused basement space with an accessible shower. So two days a week, we opened that as a space of respite, hygiene access, and community. Neighbors would stop by for a hot shower, a clean set of clothes, some lunch and a safe space to rest and build community with one another and with our volunteers. In the wake of the 2024 election, I noticed that the shower project volunteers were the least despairing people in the church. I knew they cared about politics and I knew they were keeping up with the news, so I asked them what was different. They said every week they were doing something tangible that reminded them they were not helpless. They still had the power to live out their values, to care for one another, to make change, even in small ways. And in the process, their broader advocacy efforts were invigorated. They were showing up at city council hearings consistently, providing testimonies, and committed to systemic change in a new and deeper way.

And it’s why I’ve been so inspired by the responses to the SNAP crisis and people’s eagerness to figure out how to directly and immediately feed their neighbors, through mutual aid networks and local food pantries, and free community refrigerators. I was so heartened by how many of you reached out to say, “What are we doing? How can we get food to people?”

Because this response, like the shower project, is a way of holding on to our power, agency, and moral compass in an increasingly authoritarian system. It’s part of how we keep us from slipping over into totalitarianism, where those in authority seek to govern both public and private life, including our thoughts and values. Direct service reminds us that we do not need the government’s permission to care for one another and our communities. When we do policy work, as important as it is, we are appealing to the government to deem people worthy of food and shelter and dignity. When we feed people ourselves, we say we already know who is worthy, each and every single child of God, and nothing those in power can do or say will change that. Authoritarian systems need us to feel powerless, helpless, and fearful. They want our attention and they don’t particularly care if that attention is good or bad as long as they have it. Each act of care and mercy we perform apart from that system is an act of resistance, a reclaiming of our attention, our power, our values and our humanity. 

So, how are you called to live out your faith in material and tangible ways? This month we are giving half of our Sunday collection to the Salem Pantry and are collecting non-perishable food items for Beverly Bootstraps. I know some of you volunteer at the panty or with our LifeBridge dinners. May this not be the end of this work, but rather a blessed beginning. Let’s keep pushing for systems change but let’s also take literally the call to love God by feeding the hungry and providing shelter to the poor. May we engage in actions that connect us to, rather than distance us from the embodied suffering and embodied joy of our shared humanity. May we refuse to let oligarchs and unjust leaders define who is considered human and worthy of humane treatment. And may we remember our own power to care for our neighbors and communities. It is a holy thing to ease the suffering of another, even if just for a moment. May we make it an article of our faith and a cornerstone of our work for justice.

Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2025

Sermon: "O to be a Dragon..." (Dr. Rose Wolf)

“O TO BE A DRAGON…”
Or, Why the Wyrm is a Most UUseful Symbol
for the Lives and Labors of UUs

In two previous pre-Halloween pulpit-appropriating presentations, I’ve contemplated how we UUs are—among other entities—mutants and dreamers. Today, let’s combine those two and become “muti-ful (and dutiful) screamers:” DRAGONS!

“I desired dragons with a profound desire,” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien in his classic essay On Fairy Stories, “but though I searched diligently all through my childhood, I never found so much as the footprint of a wyrm.” It’s scarcely to be wondered at that this ardent dragon-seeker—(and it must be remembered that “ardent” means “fiery”)--went on to create one of the most memorable wyrms in literature: Smaug the Magnificent in The Hobbit. Another dragon in one of his poems, we are told, “knew the place of the least ring / Beneath the shadow of his black wing.” Such treasure-keepers were the original hoarders, aware of all the wealth they had amassed but utterly unable to use it to benefit either themselves or others— with one exception, also from Tolkien: Chrysophylax the Rich, of his hilarious sendup of the heroic saga: Farmer Giles of Ham. 

That wyrm, when confronted by the shrewd rustic of the story’s title, buys his life by allowing the farmer to take a portion of his hoard but leave enough behind “to keep him respectable.” The dragon even accompanies the guileful Giles back to his village and takes up residence there to guard his gifts. In the same way, wealthy UUs may bequeath their fortunes for the good of the “global village”—perhaps we should call them not Questing Beasts but Be-Questing Beasts!

When we consider the dragons of the East, particularly those of China, we are dealing with creatures who give us—and help us to give—riches more precious than gold: wisdom for our fellow mortals and protection for the environment. According to noted dragonologist Ernest Drake (who bears a most perfect name, “drake” being an old synonym for wyrm), it was to a courageous Chinese gentleman from the third millennium B.C.E. named Fu Hsi that a great lung, or water dragon (an early AquaLung?) gave the gift of writing. Fu Hsi used this new learning to teach his people many sciences and arts—in short, “how to become civilized.”
“It is interesting [continues Drake] to note that, while legends of Western dragons portrayed them as vicious, bloodthirsty monsters, Eastern dragons are for the most part seen as benevolent helpmeets to mankind. In the East, such creatures are granted a proper respect.” Chinese wyrms live not only in water but also in earth, air, and fire, and they can be called upon to help humans maintain the health of all four elements. Indeed, the concept of the dragon may well have been an early attempt by pre-scientific societies to explain the power of those natural forces. Children who admire our dragon-headed wand at Wynott’s, which stands for all four elements (and their elementals) are told that, if they’re even picking up after themselves at home, they’re going to be putting a grin on the wand’s scaly chin because that’s doing a kid’s part to clean the planet! We as UUs know how vital it is to help children learn to be good stewards of our beautiful world, and a dragon tale may help them to, um, “wand” to.

Visionary poet Vachel Lindsay, who wrote not only of “dragons great, merry and mad and friendly and bold,” such as we met in our first reading, but also of gigantic bookworms: actual vermicular creatures who keep the wisdom of the ages in their bodies. It was the wise Confucius, says the poet, living in an era in which “right principles had disappeared and perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were waxen rife” (does this sound familiar?) who “was frightened at what he saw and undertook the work of reformation.” The ancient sage did this by putting off his scholar’s gown and becoming one of the lowly. In so doing, he freed the bookworms from their dwellings in library walls to come out into the streets and find the “beggars and clowns” who, unlike the learned, were ready to hear their message. Those dragonlike spirits stung the poor and voiceless to “rebel in might until they’d fight.” How often in history has it been proven that, if a courageous and compassionate teacher dares to bring the good news of equality to a currently-oppressed people, that sets the flint to the tinder for a rebellion that can “shake the towers and counsels of the great.” Since in this era no such charismatic speaker has yet come forward to urge our fellow humans to claim—no, reclaim!—their rights, then we UUs must be not only wisdom-wyrms but Shrek-like dragon/donkey hybrids to inspire them—and we’d better not be “dragon” our “asses” to get out the word! Many of us came to Unitarian Universalism from oppressive—or at least repressive— religious or cultural traditions that denied us the right to think and act for ourselves, perhaps even causing us to regard entire groups of our fellow beings as misguided or malevolent. In that case, the creatures we resemble are those of How to Train Your Dragon, in which the wyrms of that world are controlled by an entity that causes them to regard humans as enemies deserving of destruction. When that mind-power is broken, the dragons accept the young warriors being forced to fight them as bondmates for life, like the great fire-lizards and their riders of the planet Pern.

In the words of Sam Gamgee, then, let us “Take dragons, now” as our motto--and mojo--as we rise on wings of passion for the good of humanity and breathe the fire of liberation from a rule by bigotry and ignorance. Happy Halloween, blessed Witches’ New Year, and--most of all—a soaring, saurian UU Year!

© Dr. Rose Wolf, 2025

Sermon: "Pumpkin Spiced Spirituality" (Rev. Danielle)

Okay, for those of you who’ve stuck it out with me here for the past three weeks, we’ve had some serious Sundays together. We tackled repentance during the high holy days, had a very Biblical-centric sermon for world communion Sunday, and last week I talked about resisting fascism. That’s some heavy stuff and you’ve all approached it with grace and receptive hearts. And that’s all while surviving the high tourist season here in Salem, so y’all are due something a little more light-hearted. So in honor of October, I present to you today: the spiritual meaning of pumpkin spice. 

Partly, this is selfish because I really love an excuse to think about the deeper meanings of pop cultural trends. You know those articles in the Atlantic or the New Yorker that are like, "White sneakers: How today’s teens are upending evangelical purity culture through their fashion trends,” Or “What the rise of gourmet donut shops tells us about our collective despair in the face of the climate crisis.” Those are like catnip to me, I read every one. Send them my way when you find them. 

So I’ve been really fascinated with how fall got to be “Fall.” This complete obsession with everything autumnal feels new. Growing up, I remember back to school sales and halloween decorations but I don’t remember people basing their personalities around the season. I don’t remember anyone saying, “I’m such a fall girlie” or hanging up advent calendars counting down to sweater weather and spooky season. But now it’s everywhere. If you’re not perpetually online and haven’t been inundated with the memes and perfectly curated apple picking photo shoots, here is some data. Market analysis shows that the “pumpkin spice industrial complex” is a $1.1 Billion dollar industry.  Revenue from agrotourism, like you-pick apple orchards, has tripled over the past two decades. (I see the tour team members out there getting ideas, adding up potential fundraising profits in their heads if we offer a coffee shop or plant some apple trees out here. They’ve got the Scrooge McDuck dollar-sign-eyes). There’s now a whole set of bestselling romance novels called “The Pumpkin Spice Cafe.” GIlmore Girls, a show that premiered 25 years ago, is once again back in the top 10 streaming shows, as it is almost every year in September and October, thanks to people who rewatch it every fall for the smalltown New England vibes. New Hampshire is hiring seasonal park workers to direct traffic at the most instagrammable fall foliage sites. And a private facebook group run by Starbucks, devoted to the love of fall, called the Leaf Raker Society, has 42,000 members. Its description jokingly reads, “This group serves as a forum where we constructively work together with Mother Nature to help Autumn arrive earlier in the calendar year.”

And while perhaps interesting, it doesn’t seem on its surface like something worth exploring in church. But I think our human longings and yearnings and the ways we try to fill those longings and yearnings is inherently a spiritual and theological topic. And clearly there is something we’re trying to fill by consuming so many lattes. It would be easy to just chalk it up to capitalism and commercialization, but while capitalist systems are often complicit in expanding the voids we feel, so they can profit off of filling them, there still needs to be a way in: a little crack or a small hole to exploit. So today we’ll attempt to answer, What is the spiritual void at the heart of #pumpkinspiceseason?

I did kind of an absurd amount of research for this sermon, so if you want a lot of facts about the history of Starbuck’s pumpkin spiced lattes or the labor theories of you-pick apple farms, find me at Fellowship. But one of the more interesting facts I discovered was that St. Hildegard, 12th century Benedictine abbess and medical practitioner, was a big believer in the spiritual benefits of a little pumpkin spice. French author Géraldine Catta, who has researched St Hildegard's herbalist practices, says that, for the saint, “joy is an essential reference point, a sure guide on the path to a healthier diet.” St. Hildegard considered a combination of nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon to be particularly beneficial. The saint writes, “This preparation softens the bitterness of the body and mind, opens the heart, sharpens the blunt senses, makes the soul joyful, and diminishes harmful moods.”

I found no evidence that the developers at Starbucks knew this history of St. Hildegard, but they nevertheless found a way to tap into her wisdom. The ancient wisdom of female folk healers and those who stay connected to the medicinal properties of the land. Hildegard, a declared Doctor of the church, understood that joy and comfort and the health of the soul are as worthy of our attention as any physical ailments. Something we can’t say for most modern medicine. Centuries later, Hildegard’s wisdom forgotten, Starbucks found this crack in our society and slipped inside. Instead of a return to folkways or a health care system that values a person's body, mind and spirit, we get overpriced lattes. We live in a world where marketing departments are more tapped into our underlying human needs and yearnings than our churches or public servants. 

Beyond the ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice, psychologists think one reason people love fall is because as humans, we seek temporal landmarks, or “moments that create a structure for how we see and use time.” Like birthdays or New Years. Fall is a particularly potent temporal landmark. The back-to-school associations give the season a kind of “fresh start” energy and research shows it’s associated with improved motivation. Conversely but just as powerfully, it is also a season of death. The falling leaves a reminder that nothing gold can stay, to quote Robert Frost. And the autumn holidays of Samhain and Halloween and All Souls honoring the thin veil between this world and the next. Fall, out of all the seasons, seems to be the one that most visibly and powerfully connects us to a sense of time, to cycles of beginnings and endings.

We are in many ways living through an era of profound dislocation and disconnection. So many of the structures and systems that gave shape to our lives and grounded us in time are falling away. Like our connection to the land. We are a hyper-mobile society. Most of us don’t spend our entire lives on the same piece of land, where we can track the seasons and the passage of time by individual trees, the way Henry David Thoreau did on his daily walks around Walden Pond. We are no longer an agrarian society, where we measure time through cycles of planting and harvesting. And climate change means it’s hard for us to even know what seasons are anymore. Several authors and academics I read this week posit that we are fetishizing autumn more precisely because it is vanishing. It’s nostalgia for a season that barely exists.

Even our social temporal markers are changing. Church attendance in the US continues to decline, meaning most of us aren’t in tune with a religious or liturgical calendar with seasons of repentance, reflection, death and rebirth. Our changing economy and gig culture, with more people working multiple jobs driving Ubers or delivering food to make ends meet, means that the traditional workweek and weekend has less meaning. And where we used to have seasons of lying fallow, our current economic system expects the same level of productivity in late fall and winter as it does the rest of the year. Shorter days and longer nights are no excuse for not meeting Q4 numbers.

And lord knows we are disconnected from the most personal and visceral of temporal landmarks, our own mortality. We live in a death-phobic society that wants to reverse any sign of aging and keep any evidence of dying politely behind closed hospital doors. 

In so many ways, we have lost our sense of time and place.

So we look for new rituals and practices to ground us, for ways to reconnect with cycles and seasons that honor the rhythms of the earth and the rhythms of our bodies. We are longing to return to ancient wisdom that our bodies and souls remember, but we can no longer seem to find our way there. So we reach for the lattes and the sweaters and the Gilmore Girls binges and we take the perfect picture at the pumpkin patch in the perfect boots and flannel. But I’m not sure we’re any more fulfilled. And we’re certainly not any more in touch with any kind of natural rhythm. In fact, the more we try to fill the void, the better business fall becomes, and the more incentive there is to stretch the season outside of its meteorological limits.

I hear many of you talk about how the Halloween season in Salem continues to expand on either end of the holiday. The pumpkin spiced latte is released earlier and earlier every year. Now arriving in August. So these things lose their usefulness as a temporal marker and now we have this double disconnection. Does it feel hotter in fall because of the climate crisis or because businesses are now insisting fall actually starts at the height of summer? It’s disorienting in a way that can mask the truth of what’s happening in our world. If we don’t really know when autumn begins and ends anymore, we lose our connection to the earth that would let us know our planet is hurting and we need to act. If we don’t know when autumn begins and ends anymore, we lose our sense that it’s time to let go, to rest, to let something die and return to the earth to make room for new life. It’s like the more we grasp for temporal markers, the more meaningless the seasons become. 

We have gone bananas for all things fall because we are hungering for connections to place, time, the planet and community. And that impulse, that hunger is good and true. And the things we’re using to fill that hunger aren’t inherently bad. In fact, they’re often very good. Like the ancient, soul healing combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. But they aren’t enough when they’re disconnected from the deeper needs they represent.

So, I’m not going to stop anyone from ordering a pumpkin spiced latte, although I might encourage you to order it from a local place. The one I had a few weeks ago at Wolf Next Door was delicious. And I won’t discourage you from rewatching the Gilmore Girls. I just started season 2 last night. 

But maybe don’t give Starbucks a monopoly on filling that spiritual void. Notice what it is you’re longing for when you reach for the trappings of fall and find ways to fulfill those longings that don’t further a sense of disconnection. Maybe the annual family trip to the U-pick farm becomes a year round plot in a community garden. Maybe the desire to take a picture with leaves crunching under your feet becomes a spiritual practice of contemplating mortality and cycles of death, decay and new life. Maybe the desire to drink an iced pumpkin spiced latte because it’s 85 degrees becomes an entryway into climate activism or volunteering with an environmental justice organization. Perhaps the desire to watch a TV show about a quirky small New England town becomes a desire to get more involved in civic life here. Whatever it is, let the lattes and the apple orchard trips and the cozy accessories be the cherry (or perhaps cinnamon dusted whipped cream) on top of a life lived in deep community, in right relationship with the planet, and with an awareness that there is a time and a season for every matter under heaven.

May it be so.   

Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2025

Sermon: "The Web of Disconnection" (Rev. Danielle)

I am an only child, so I’m used to spending time by myself, but I grew up in an east coast suburb in the 1980s and 90s, so I’m not used to being alone. Like, really alone. I’ve always been within a few yards of a next-door neighbor. Even most of my outdoor adventures hiking and camping are with groups, or with my wife or at campsites where you can hear the campfire laughter or hushed tent conversations of the people around you.

But when I was in seminary, hoping to renew my spirit before I began another school year, I booked two nights in a charming but bare-bones cottage at a small silent retreat center in Tennessee. I was the only person on the property that weekend. When I arrived, a kind volunteer showed me around and told me if I needed anything she was just a few miles down the road on the other side of the center’s wooded hiking trails. And then she left. I read a biography of St. Francis and sat by the pond and walked the labyrinth and when night came I went and looked out at the stars expecting to feel peace and wonder and instead I was terrified. I was struck by the sudden realization that I had never been that far away from another human being in my 35 years on this earth. I was trying so hard to take a break from technology on this retreat, but the desire to feel less alone was almost overwhelming. I had to restrain myself from grabbing my phone. And the thing was, it wasn’t even like I was going to call my wife or a friend if I pulled out my phone. I almost certainly was just going to scroll or try and drown out the silence. It was actually disturbing, the level of comfort I thought I would feel from listening to a podcast or going on Facebook. It would not have changed anything about my physical surroundings. It would have simply been an illusion of connection.

I tell this story because it helps me understand patterns that are happening in our larger culture, in more extreme ways. Do any of you have relatives, especially older relatives who watch fox news all day and you wonder “how can they stand it? How can they possibly believe it?” Or have you wondered, in the wake of the 2024 election or recent acts of violence, why so many young men are being radicalized by right-wing political podcasts or online forums? Why would they want to spend their time listening to Joe Rogan or posting in increasingly cynical and nihilistic online gamer forums? This story of my attempt at a silent retreat reminds me why. I am blessed that I am not a lonely person and yet the temptation to use the internet to escape a brief and voluntary moment of aloneness was so difficult to resist. The temporary feeling of belonging and community these kinds of spaces provide is addictive. And the people profiting off those spaces know this.

We are so lonely as a culture. To try and cure this, we have 24/7 access to tools that will temporarily numb that feeling of loneliness. But in the long run those tools only serve to further isolate and divide us from each other. So we become lonelier. And we rely on these loneliness numbing tools even more. We are caught in a seemingly inescapable web of disconnection. And it is killing us, literally and spiritually.

I know this might be difficult, but how many of you can reach way back in your memories and recall the bygone days when the US Surgeon general cared about public health? Like, you know, 2023. That’s when then surgeon general Vivek Murthy released a report naming loneliness and isolation an epidemic, calling it the most serious mental health crisis facing America today. In the 1970s, 45% of Americans said they could reliably trust other Americans. That number was down to 30% in 2016. Since 2003, the time Americans spend alone has increased by 24 hours a month, and time with friends in person decreased by 10 hours a month. According to the report, teens and adults said they are online “almost constantly” but across all ages had fewer friends and in-person interactions. Most strikingly, the report says that lacking social connection is as dangerous for our physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 15 cigarettes a day.

Loneliness and isolation are also affecting the health of our social fabric, with fewer people engaging in the kinds of civic and service associations that are so important to our democratic life. It would be easy to blame the increasing rates of loneliness and isolation on our partisan divisions, right? We are angry and distrustful, so we retreat to our own corners. But actually, some researchers and political scientists believe it’s the other way around. Our loneliness and isolation are a driver of our political polarization. Because when we lack a sense of belonging, one of the quickest ways to find it is through the act of othering. This is why increasing rates of loneliness are correlated with increases in hate groups, especially those that organize in largely online spaces. And this is what Fox news producers understand when they market towards older demographics who are more likely to experience loneliness and isolation.

These two impacts of loneliness—the damage to our physical health and our social fabric—would be concerning enough on their own and worthy of a sermon or two, but what I want to talk about today is more immediate and more terrifying. And that’s the way those in political and economic power are engineering this sense of isolation and then capitalizing on it for their own gain. The ICE raids, the attacks on free speech and on the free press, the militarization of American cities, these authoritarian maneuvers we’re witnessing with horror—their success relies on our distrust and fear of one another. It relies on a sense of isolation that makes us feel hopeless and helpless against it.

And this is not a new strategy. In 1951, German moral philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt called totalitarianism “organized loneliness.” Arendt devoted her life to studying the nature of power and evil and she, more than perhaps any other scholar outlines the ways the Nazis rose to power in Germany with sobering clarity. She writes, “What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience.”

The goal of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime is to disconnect us from one another so thoroughly, we eventually become disconnected from ourselves, from our own humanity, from our own capacity for empathy, and from our own sacred values. So, they tell us our cities, places where we regularly encounter diversity and are in close proximity with others, are unsafe, are on fire. They say things like, “The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy.” They tell us immigrants are a threat. They say things like, “At this very moment, large well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion. ... These are tough people in many cases; a lot of young men, strong men and a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country. ...

This isn’t an innocent group of people. It’s a large number of people that are tough. They have injured, they have attacked.” By “they” I obviously mean Donald Trump. They tell us that others are threatening to take our jobs; to take our spots in college or on sports teams. They tell us we’re under attack by violent criminals and protestors. They make us scared to encounter people different from us, scared to leave our homes, paranoid and distrustful. So, we retreat and isolate. And then when we’re so isolated that we hunger for belonging, they feed that hunger by offering a false promise of connection and community through identities and spaces that are built on othering, whether it’s the sense of belonging in wearing a red MAGA hat, the constant company of 24 hour news, or an online forum where young white men feel less alone in their anger.

Now, I’m not here today to preach a luddite sermon where I decry the use of the internet. I mean, on Friday I posted an invitation on Facebook encouraging people to come to church to hear this sermon and worship together. But I do want to help us see more clearly the waters we’re all swimming in. Arendt’s words are as true today as they were in 1951, but that preparation for totalitarian domination she writes about is in hyperdrive. The messages and propaganda that tell us to fear one another can reach us even faster and they reach us constantly. And the incentives to get out of the house, to be together in community to do the things that would counter those messages are even less, when we have such quick fixes at our fingertips.

So, this is why spaces like ours are vital and counter-cultural and frankly dangerous to authoritarianism. This is why so often, fascist states seek early on to co-opt or control religious institutions. Because here we resist attempts at isolation and disconnection. Here we remember there is beauty and meaning in coming together, across difference. We walk with each other through joy and suffering, refusing to become numb or apathetic. Authoritarianism needs us to feel helpless and powerless, but here, through even small acts like meal trains and rides and lending a helping hand on our pastoral care team, we remember we have the power and resources to care for one another. And we remember our sacred obligations to care for one another. Through worship and study and prayer and spiritual practice, we stay grounded in our sacred values and ethical commitments. We stay connected to our own humanity and to the divine spark in ourselves and each other.

In the 1940s, folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitar “This machine kills fascists.” Now I have not cleared this with the fellowship committee or vestry/decorating, but I did think about affixing those famous words to the coffee carafes and fellowship hour this morning. Because connection kills fascism. Real authentic connection, to the sacred, to the deepest part of ourselves, and to one another. Poet Maria Popova puts it this way: “Our insistence on belonging, community, and human connection is one of the greatest acts of courage and resistance in the face of oppression.”

If totalitarianism is organized loneliness, then now is the time for us to double down on organized belonging. So even when you aren’t sure how to respond to the injustice and corruption and inhumanity we are witnessing. When the protesting and letter writing and get out the vote efforts seem futile or exhausting, keep showing up here. Find Sallie after service and volunteer for pastoral care or chat with Kathleen about our social justice work. And invite your friends and neighbors to show up here with you. Keep resisting their efforts to isolate and divide and disconnect us from all that is most holy. Our lives and souls depend on it.

May it be so. May we endeavor together to make it so.

Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2025