Sermon- October 26, 2025

“Reaching Deep Into Your Heart”

Yesterday morning, as I was waiting for my cup of coffee to be ready, I looked up at the ceiling and saw this tiny spec of a spider. Before you know it, this itty bitty spider was sliding down it’s silk rope right in front of me. Down, down, down, until it reached the floor. It was no bigger than a pinhead, and that little spider was trying to decide what its next step would be.

Under normal circumstances, I would have slid my foot over and squished it right then and there. But something stopped me. This amazing, tiny creature had just scaled down nearly eight feet in a matter of seconds, with the ability to defy gravity, stop in mid silk making, look around, and decide if it’s safe to continue its downward trek. What an amazing creation!

I’m not sure if what I felt at that moment was compassion or amazement, or a bit of both, but for that moment I felt connected to that tiny spider.

There are many traits that we are born with, how our DNA is arranged, how it lines up with our biological parents – such as hair and eye color, our propensity for disease or other health conditions, or even the structure and size of our body. Compassion is not one of those inherited traits.

Albert Einstein wrote : “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”

So compassion is something that is intentional, something that we must work on. Becoming a compassionate person is a process and a conscious decision. And it’s tough going sometimes!

But one of the first steps in living a compassionate life, is being compassionate with ourselves, loving ourselves. I know that on more than one occasion in my life, I have not been very kind to myself. “Well, that was dumb, or stupid” or “I’m not good enough.” Compassion requires us to take a deep look into our heart and also see our own goodness, forgive ourselves, and continue to love ourselves. In today’s reading that Mimi read, the writer speaks of placing your hand over your heart and speaking the word ‘oh honey.” 

However, I believe the bigger challenge for us as humans, is seeing others as “beloved.” The bigger challenge is compassion for the sake of compassion. 

Karen Armstrong, religious scholar and author, and a 2011 Ware lecturer at the UUA General Assembly, speaks of what she might well call the fatal flaw of our time...the fact that we have become addicted to our prejudices and our dislikes, even addicted to hatred.

We live in a world that is hard, a world that can hurt. We live in a world that is flawed and imperfect. So we arm ourselves with our prejudices and our dislikes. We arm ourselves with our hatreds. We build a shell around ourselves to protect whatever it is that we need to protect, an armor against hurt and disappointment. An impenetrable wall against our fears. Often under the guise of self-preservation and self-survival. The problem with that for us as Unitarian Universalist is that these walls are exactly what we are trying to fight against. These walls are the anthesis of who we say we are, or at least who we want to be.

Our second and third principles guide us through our world - Justice, equity and compassion in human relations and acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. One of our new shared values Equity also declares that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.

I know I’ve read this before, but it’s worth repeating. An old Cherokee Chief is teaching his grandson about life:

"A fight is going on inside me," he says to the boy. "It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, hatred, greed, arrogance, self-doubt, and ego. The other wolf is good - he is joy, peace, hope, generosity, truth, and compassion.

This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thinks about this for a minute and then asks his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old chief simply replies, "The one you feed."

I believe the practice of compassion is a spiritual practice, a practice that we as UU’s are well equipped to learn and practice every day. It boils down to basically the Golden Rule, which every major religious tradition incorporates. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. It’s that simple.

But why can it be so hard? Why can it sometimes seem so overwhelming to be compassionate, to live a compassionate life?

Many years ago, I was visiting my parents, and we were sitting down at the dinner table. I don’t remember the exact context, but my mom was badgering my dad about something he did or something he didn’t do. After a moment, my dad looked at her and said, “woman you try walking in these shoes!” At the time, and even today, I chuckle at him saying that. My dad was a very funny man with very quick wit. But there was an important message in that exchange.

Compassion means walking in someone else’s shoes, even when those shoes don’t fit. Compassion is continuing to love someone, even when you don’t agree or don’t see eye to eye. Compassion is opening your heart, even making yourself vulnerable to someone you might think of as the “other.” Compassion is at the core of who we are as Unitarian Universalists. And yes, compassion also means trying to understand and gently hold that person or people that you may see as religious or political enemies. Treating people the way you would want to be treated.

This is the hard part of being Beloved Community – being authentic and real, in the midst of imperfection and disagreement. And it can be messy! Because the world is messy, humanity is messy. But our faith calls us over and over to center our lives in love and compassion. It calls us to always remember that every person is worthy and deserving of respect. It calls us to remember that like it or not, we are all connected. What we do to each other, how we treat each other, we do unto ourselves.

I would encourage each of us, as we rise each morning, to put our hand over our heart and quietly whisper “oh honey.” Because we are beloved. We are deserving of giving and receiving compassion. 

Nelson Mandella wrote “Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.”

May our hopes for the future be filled with compassion. May we always learn to walk in another’s shoes, and may we always feed the wolf of joy, peace, hope, generosity, truth, and compassion.

May we make it so.