Bring Hope to the Hopeless A Homily by Sophie Fried

Each year Summer Seminary students select 4 or 5 student-written homilies to be shared at Sunday worship of the host Unitarian Universalist congregation. This year Sophie Fried delivered her homily, "Bring Hope to the Hopeless", at First Unitarian Church Chicago Sunday Worship on July 29, 2018.

Watch it here, and read the transcript, below.

Transcript

How are you changing when nothing is changing at all?

Octavia Butler writes that

All that you touch, you Change.

All that you Change Changes you.

The only lasting truth is Change.

God is Change.

In math, a set of numbers is closed under an operation if performance of that operation always produces a member of the same set. The result is predictable, reliable. Unchanging.

An example of this is even numbers, which are closed under addition; if you add an even number to another even number, the result will always be even.

Are humans closed?

In the most hopeless of moments, the weather in my soul seems recursive. It defines itself: Darkness will breed darkness. I become afraid when I see the sun, for when will it leave me?

I’m extrapolating, estimating the time I have left until the next storm. But living in this closed way, with fear in our hearts poisoning even the idea of happiness, this is not sustainable existence.

We analyze our trajectories constantly. When nothing is changing we approach zero. Don’t let yourself do this. Stop rehearsing tragedy. Live in the moment. Live openly. When nothing is changing take the derivative. Differentiate between your position and your rate of Change. Observe how your Change is changing.

All that you touch, you Change.

All that you Change Changes you.

The only lasting truth is Change.

God is Change.

And what if you don’t like it? What if your Change is not satisfying?

Change it.

Transform it.

If humanity is closed, then there is no hope.

If there is no hope, then humanity is closed.

If humanity is not closed, then there is hope.

If there is hope, then humanity is not closed.

Stare through

a thousand suns

and you will see

the light behind your sky and

the beauty beneath

your forest