August 24, 2025: Another World is Possible

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

What is the world we imagine for ourselves and our children? Naming it is part of creating it.

View the video archive of this service here:

Sermon Text

Another World is Possible

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

August 24, 2025

READING

“V'ahavta”
by Aurora Levins Morales

The V'ahavta is a traditional Jewish prayer from the book of Deuteronomy. It is said in the morning and in the evening. In this piece, Levins Morales begins by echoing a contemporary reading of the traditional prayer and then expands on it to invite us to remember that another world is possible.

The text of the poem can be found here: http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/blog/vahavta

SERMON Another World is Possible

The poets, the prophets, the visionaries, the speculative fiction writers, the dreamers, the musicians - those whose texts and writings and stories we have explored throughout this month delving into what it means to be a Community of Possibility have all brought this one message - it doesn't have to be like this...another world is possible.

It has been a struggle this month, amid the wave of worsening, horrifying news in our country and across the world - the starving children, bombing of cities, the disappeared, the shredding of constitutional rights, and witnessing institutions cower to tyranny and autocracy.

One danger is that an exploration of possibility could seem to trivialize matters. So we remember that imagining another world is possible doesn't make it change the reality in which we find ourselves. That would make it just wishful thinking or denialism. No, the power of possibility - and in knowing that another world is possible is the change that it can make within us and the power that this gives us.

In the biblical scriptures, in Paul's Letter to the Romans, he writes, “do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The power of nurturing possibility in our community, in our imaginations, and in our lives is that it prevents us from becoming resigned to - or even reinforcing what we know is wrong and unjust in our world. Imagining possibility - holding fast to a vision of what could be is a part of how we resist complicity with injustice and transform ourselves.

We do this by remembering what we hope to see in the world and practicing that within our lives, our homes, and our communities.

Aurora Levins Morales invites us to imagine this other world. She writes, “This is your sacred task. This is your power. Imagine every detail of winning.” Every detail of this other world.

Take a moment. What do you imagine when you picture a bold and beautiful future for the children of all of our children's children? What are its qualities? What does its peace feel like? Look like? Sound like? What is present in the future you imagine the future as you wish it to be?

Breathe it in. Hold that power and the light of that possibility in your heart, in your stomach, in your feet, in your hands, in your mind. Levins Morales writes:

“When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.”

This imagining what is possible, what is hoped for - is not just a fool's errand. We know it doesn't change the reality of injustice and war; it doesn't end suffering or bring back the disappeared.

And yet, there is power in creating places - whether in the recesses of our minds, or in the practices of our homes and communities that exemplify the values we hold dear. I think of Unitarian minister Norbert Capek who continued to write hymns of the beauty of life and the love of God in the concentration camp of Dachau. I think of Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery and risked her life and returned to the South to help others get to freedom.

In one example, Capek is not free - yet he denies his captors and oppressors the freedom of his mind and heart - and he shares the love with others imprisoned. And for Tubman, she escapes to freedom and her commitment to another world helps her risk her own life to bring more people to freedom.

Levins Morales reminds us:

“Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.”

Doing this is an antidote to despair, and antidote to inaction.

To be a community of possibility is to nurture love despite the propaganda or conditioning telling us to fear; it is nurture, welcome, and inclusion despite the conditioning of division. It is to nurture generosity in the midst of messages of scarcity; it is to nurture compassion in this time when our leaders dismiss and deride empathy; it is to nurture courage and action rather than despair and apathy.

This is how we keep what we value alive - it is how we preserve it. Last week, I quoted from Marge Piercy's speculative fiction novel Woman on the Edge of Time. The characters in the future say, “We lost and lost, until we won. And this is what we teach the children.” The values of love, compassion, generosity, justice, inclusion, pluralism - they need people and communities to nurture them. For they are needed - they are real - they matter and they are crucial to our future - even if in this moment - they seem far away.

When we get to the heart of it, these values are core to preserving our humanity - and what is in us is good. It is crucial to keep teaching, and passing on to our children, and renewing in ourselves these values. And this is not easy. It may sound easy. Or it may seem impossible (the belief that another world is possible), but the truth is it is deeply spiritual work to hold true to our values - to practice them in all we do, and to use them to foster a spirit of possibility in our lives and community. Let's dig deeper. What would it take - what would the foundation for another world be? In a few words - it requires integrity, honesty, and above all overflowing compassion and love - a recognition of our shared humanity.

And we can be honest with ourselves that in the midst of seeing our values crushed - derided - witnessing people disappeared off the streets of our country, seeing injustice and cruelty growing on every front - talking about compassion, particularly for those inflicting so much harm - that is no easy task.

In “V'ahavta,” Aurora Levins Morales quotes the Salvadoran poet, writer, activist Roque Dalton. She calls him the prophet Roque Dalton. Dalton escaped death sentences and prison and lived in exile for many years for his leftist ideas, but ended up being murdered by a different faction from his own country's left. It is a good reminder of how quickly movements on the right and left can turn violent and undermine their own principles. In her poem, she quotes these lines of his: “Altogether they have more death than we, but altogether we have more life than they,” Levins Morales goes on: “unless we lay down our souls to become them, and then we will lose everything.”

In her essay “Torturers” in her book Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals, Levins Morales says that for what Dalton says to be true, “that altogether

then we have more life than them,” then “we must hold a larger vision of what is possible than the people who kill and torture and ravage.” She explains:

“To me the choice seems difficult and clear: either we are committed to making a world in which all people are of value, everyone redeemable, or we surrender to the idea that some of us are truly better and more deserving of life than others, and once we open the door to that possibility, we cannot control it. If we are willing to say that some people don't matter, that some people are unaffordable for the planet, that some people's actions have placed them beyond the pale, then what forgiveness is there for any of us if we commit errors, even crimes? If we agree to accept limits on who is included in humanity, then we will become more and more like those we oppose. Do we really need to name the list of atrocities committed by people who claimed to act in the name of human liberation?”

Levins Morales's words are deeply challenging - and necessary. As a religious people who place love at the center of our values and theology - that love is one of a larger vision - one that excludes no one. Our Universalist theology tells us that no one is outside of God's love, no one is outside of the circle of humanity, no one is irredeemable. And if that is true, then we too must cultivate compassion for those who create even the most devastating and cruel harm and suffering. Because this is the foundation for another world - this is what makes it possible.

For without this, no matter how much we hope for a better future, if we cannot stop creating “us and them” and cycles of revenge, punishment and dehumanization, we will never be free of what ultimately allows for - again and again - the dehumanization and exploitation of people and the planet on which we depend. We need a renewed vision of our humanity - and we need communities and individuals cultivating that vision.

During my ministry in Phoenix, I learned from elders in the migrant rights movement about organizing work in Mexico within jails. Organizing inmates to try to engage humanely, compassionately with the guards - to help those who most often inflict the brutality of the system to recover their humanity. Because only through recovering their humanity would they realize and feel the pain of the harm they were doing to others.

We often wonder how people can be cruel. There are at least two ways it begins. One way is when a group is taught to see another group as less than or not human. Today, we hear it from leaders who refer to people as animals, or as inherently dangerous. Another way it begins is when we ourselves have been victims of cruelty, cruelty that detaches us from the inherent relationships of love, family, interdependence that mark our humanity. When this happens, we can lose our connection to our own humanity. And the only way to undo these patterns is through compassion and finding a way to connect back to our humanity.

Forgiveness and compassion in the midst of cruelty is a great spiritual challenge. I ask myself, how can we engage the humanity of those being sent to carry out injustice - including the ICE agents, the National Guard - many of whom responded to an honorable call to serve their country - now being asked to intimidate and police their neighbors and community members. In this context, compassion still matters. It is the foundational seed for how we build something new.

What has worked for me - and Levins Morales says this is the technique she has used too - is to imagine the children that perpetrators once were. To imagine the ways in which they experienced violence and cruelty and neglect and were taught to inflict the same on others. This doesn't excuse the behavior, nor mean there should not be accountability and restitution - but how do we do that without reinforcing cruelty and punishment which just perpetuates the cycle again.

The line that most captured my attention in my first reading of Levins Morales' poem was:

“Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.”

It reminds us to hold the light - to stay true to what we believe - to keep our compassion even in the most difficult of moments. It matters that we remember another world is possible - that we show up in the dark alleyways of history with this light - and a clarity of values and commitment to humanity and what is possible burning bright and leading us on.

May we bring this light, this love, this power with us everywhere we go. May we not forget. May we remember:

“Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.

“Don't waver. Don't let despair sink its sharp teeth
into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams...
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.

“Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children's children
may live.”

(From “V'ahavta” by Aurora Levins Morales)