The Many Layers of Confinement Sermon Video

Copyright 2020 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.

The Many Layers of Confinement

The Many Layers of Confinement
A sermon by The Rev. Connie Yost
for West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
April 19, 2020

The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals,” are not people living “outside” society.
They have always been “inside” – inside the structure which made them “beings for others.”
The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings for themselves.”
                                                                  -- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Welcome, it is good to be with you today. I am The Reverend Connie Yost, one of the community ministers affiliated with WHUUF.

Little did I know when I was asked to share a reflection with you about immigration and liberation that we would all be experiencing our own confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic. This pandemic has affected us all – worldwide – in varying degrees. We all worry about health, ours and others. We all grieve and experience loss, some due to death of loved ones and some due to loss of income. We all are having to reinvent ourselves in confinement and find ways to stay healthy and stay connected. We struggle to find meaning in this invisible microbe which has stolen our freedom, livelihood and has changed life as we know it, forever.

What has sustained me during this difficult time is the cycle of life, noticing all the new life in springtime, and doing my part by planting seeds in my garden. I am also sustained by this holy season, this time of Lent and Easter, Passover, and soon, Ramadan.

All three of these holy traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – were born out a quest for liberation from oppression. Rabbi Michael Lerner says that Jews have been telling the Passover story of the Exodus for 3200 years. This is the story of the Jews who were enslaved in Egypt until a series of plagues convinced Pharaoh to let them go.

Let my people go.

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum writes that

“This year, it is impossible to tell the story and not see the parallels with our present day United States. She says, Our government has willfully recast itself in the image of Pharaoh. The innocent have been imprisoned, put to work, and persecuted. Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE) has taken on the role of today’s Egyptian overseer.”

She reminds us that “At any given moment, thousands of immigrants are locked up just because they can’t afford the bond—ransom—that a judge has determined their life is worth. Even during normal times, detention facilities are hot spots for infectious disease outbreaks. They are crowded, unsanitary, and lack access to proper medical care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these centers have become a public health crisis.”

It is estimated that 61 detainees and 19 detention center staff members have tested positive across at least 13 detention centers. Rabbi Kleinbuam writes that “Given the lack of mass testing, the real numbers are almost certainly far higher. As millions of us shelter in place from coast to coast, detainees are left with zero control of their fate. They wait in fear of dying in prison, separated from their families.”

Let my people go.

Passover is a story of liberation, of freedom that is a fundamental human right but can never be taken for granted.

Ours is a world in which the powers of greed and profit too often overrule human rights. Let us remember that the people in detention are poor people. Let us remember that many of the newly recognized “essential workers” in this country are poor people.

I am the President of Farm Worker Ministry Northwest and serve on the board of the National Farm Worker Ministry. We have always known that the people who do this hard labor in often dangerous conditions are essential workers – they keep us fed, while often not being able to feed their own families. Having been deliberately left out of labor law back in the 1930’s because the farmworkers in those days were black, they continue to be left out of labor law. Racism and exploitation, even slave labor, abounds in the fields. And now, the coronavirus comes to these poor people who live and work in crowded conditions, often lacking even the ability to wash their hands.

Many of our farmworkers are poor people who are living in our country without papers, and though they toil in the fields year after year, they are given no path to citizenship. Now it is recognized that they are really needed, they are essential, yet not essential enough to be given any help through the recent $2 trillion federal relief legislation. Even their US citizen children do not qualify for any benefits, and now the federal administration wants to cut farmworker wages as a way to bailout farm owners. Granted, farm owners are hurting in this crisis, too, but why is it even considered any kind of a solution to take away even one penny from the poverty wages of farmworkers?

It seems that if we can’t blame the poor for the trouble, then we have to ask them to make outrageous sacrifices.

Let my people go.

I hope you will ask your state legislators to support the Oregon Worker Relief fund which would give benefits to our undocumented neighbors – more on that later in the service.

These holy times, and this pandemic, call us to community and transformation. No more business as usual. No more lack of financial regulation that lets corporations buy up their own stock to inflate the stock price so the CEO can make over 800 times what the average worker at their corporation makes. No more inequality and wealth being extracted from the labor of poor people. No more governments more concerned about their own authority and image than in ensuring the well-being of the people.

Let my people go.

It may be tempting for some to call the coronavirus pandemic an “act of God.” It is not an act of God. It is not an act of humankind, either. It just is. Part of how the universe works.

But the way we deal with the pandemic, and the way we deal with the people who were on the edge before the pandemic and have now fallen over the cliff – that will be an act of humankind. And it will require each of us to participate. We will have to stretch ourselves to be more loving, kind and generous than we were before.

In his Easter address, Pope Francis said that he hoped this time of danger will shake us from our sleepy consciences. He said that this is not a time for indifference because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic.

These times of crisis often open our eyes to the struggles of people we were not aware of. Hurricane Katrina showed us people living in third world conditions in the USA. COVID-19 shows us poor people dying at a rate much higher than the more privileged.

But many of our immigrant neighbors lead invisible lives, whether toiling in the fields or construction or other low-wage jobs. They are invisible, locked down in detention centers or languishing in dangerous conditions on the Mexican side of the border. We may not ever know how they are doing through this pandemic, but we know they need our love and care.

You have already stretched your generosity as a congregation. The offering taken a couple of weeks ago here at WHUUF raised $1400 for Western Farm Workers Association which is going to help provide needed food for their low-wage members. I have worked with Western Farm Workers Association for many years now through my nonprofit, Friends Stay Warm, which provides emergency cash assistance for immigrants and low-wage workers. I know that the economic hardship of this pandemic will not go away soon for our lowest paid workers.

Let my people go.

Let us work towards a world of dignity and equality and justice for all.

Rabbi Michael Lerner reminds us that when Moses asked God, what is your name?
God said, I don’t have a normal name. I shall be whom I shall be.
I am the principle of transformation.
I am what can be.
I am the possibility of possibility.

Another world is possible. It is possible that this time of “shock” could suddenly make us do the things and enact the policies that so many said couldn’t be done.

It is possible that we can even come together across the great political divide, using well-being of people and the planet as our rule of thumb for good policies, rather than profit.

Let my people go.

Whom shall we be? Let us be the embodiment of the god who says I am the possibility of possibility. Even when I am hurting, let me choose to bless the world with all that I am and all that I have.


Amen and blessed be.



Copyright 2020 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.

In a Dark Time, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!

A sermon by the Rev. Connie Yost
11/20/16

First, I want to say that I know many of you are concerned about the recent election and what it may mean for the future of our country, our democracy, and our people. I share your anxiety and disbelief. November 9 was especially hard for me because in the midst of what I thought was the impossible happening, a very good friend of mine passed away. So I, too, am reeling from a world seemingly turned upside down and very dark.

My topic for this sermon - inequality - which I had been planning all along, is even more crucial and timely today. I wish I could say that we have some reason for hope that policies with this new administration and Congress will work for the good of all people, especially those in poverty. But I cannot say that I see much chance of that.

What I do hope is that we can turn our disbelief, our outrage, our fear and our anxieties into a renewed commitment to work for justice. This is my prayer and my hope, and I hope that you will join me in this.

What this election has made clear to me is the deep disenfranchisement of working people who have experienced the downward effects of the last decades of our economic policies. In a very sad way it comes as no surprise that someone outside the political system, making promises to restore jobs and communities to some past idyllic time, would appeal to so many.

I can only hope that when it becomes clear that new policies have made things even worse, that more Americans will stand up and fight for justice.

We cannot ignore the fact that a white man who brazenly trumpeted his xenophobic, sexist and racist beliefs won this election. It is not all about our failed economic policies. For some, it was the backlash against eight years of a black man in the Presidency. For some, it was the fear of a woman in the Presidency. And surely it was also the rush of white America to find someone to blame.

Fully Alive

Fully Alive

A Sermon by the Rev. Connie Yost
preached on Easter at the UU Fellowship of McMinnville

4/20/14

As some of you know, I love to travel.  I just returned from a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, where my nephew was married.  It was a beautiful wedding at a fancy restaurant in the old historic city.  The city, which I had not visited since I was 10 years old, is a truly gracious and lovely place.  At this time of the year, the azaleas and dogwoods were blooming with glorious color, and the wisteria grew wild up the trees in the forest.

Weddings and spring are surely signs of hope and life.  It was the first wedding both sets of parents had experienced, and the mothers, especially, were ecstatic.  Being the slightly eccentric old auntie, I decided to go ahead and ask my nephew the question we all were dying to ask:  “Are you and Becca going to have kids?”  My sister and I waited in hopeful anticipation as my nephew cleared his throat and announced, “Becca says the official answer is ‘We hate kids’” but he was smiling so I knew that this was not true.  He went on to explain that they wanted to get a house first, get out of the inner city of Washington DC where they live, and then – yes, maybe then we will have kids, he said.  OR, I suggested, it could happen the old-fashioned way – SURPRISE!

 Well, that’s life, isn’t it?  SURPRISE!  And we are!  For some reason, most of us are surprised when stuff happens that is out of our control.  Whether a good thing or not, it takes us a while to grapple with the things that happen to us.

Courage to Change



50th Anniversary March on Washington August 28, 2013



Courage to Change 

by The Rev. Connie Yost

A Sermon Preached at

Eastrose Fellowship Unitarian Universalist

Gresham, Oregon

September 1, 2013

I returned last night from an inspiring week in Washington DC, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. On Tuesday, I attended a conference on Civil Rights, titled "Marching Forward By Looking Back," where people from diverse backgrounds came together to share stories and solutions of what has worked in different communities and what still needs to be done. There was a lot of hope and excitement in the air. I went to bed that night grateful to be part of this historic occasion and grateful to be in the work of ministry -- that work of justice, hope and healing that we all share.

On Wednesday, August 28, the exact day of the March on Washington fifty years ago, I joined with thousands of others as we marched in the rain along the streets of DC for about a mile and a half, down famous streets with names like Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing at the Department of Labor, noting that the theme of this March was "Jobs and Freedom," a theme that was Martin Luther King Jr's focus when he was assassinated in 1968. It was an experience I will never forget, walking shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, with young people, old people, people in wheelchairs, people in baby carriages, black people, brown people, white people, people of all races, men, women, people of all sexual orientations, all religions, all together, all as one, singing "We Shall Overcome."

The UU Missional Church



Me in the Everglades National Park, soon to see a beautiful Roseate Spoonbill, February 2013

Yes We Can, Yes I Can -- The Missional Church Within

By The Rev. Connie Yost

A Sermon Preached at the UU Congregation of Salem Oregon

February 10, 2013

             I just returned from our UU minister's intensive training retreat that happens every other year.  The first one was in 2011; I did not go but I heard so many good things about it that I vowed I would go this year.  So I did.  Wow.  Imagine 425 UU ministers worshipping and sharing bread and learning together.  It was all awesome, but it was the worship that really got me.  The music, the silence, the singing, the readings, the preaching.  My God.  What beautiful, hurting souls we all are. 

            Church, when we really do it right, celebrates who we are.  Who we really are.  And if you're anything like me, you have your successes and failures in life, your gifts and gaffes, your regrets and dreams.  No matter our age, state of our health, current or past history, we have a soul which longs to connect with a force greater than ourselves.  I submit that this force is love, it is compassion, it is what I call God.  The Quakers often refer to this force as The Light.  You may have a name you prefer, or no name.  Thomas Merton called it Mercy within Mercy within Mercy.  Think about that for a moment.  Think about a love so deep and so vast that it is pure compassion.  Mercy within Mercy within Mercy. 

Traveling as Spiritual Practice



Me on my birthday August 6, 2011 with Momma Mt. Rainier



A sermon by The Rev. Connie Yost

Preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of McMinnville, Oregon

June 16, 2013

I am a traveler by birth, disposition and, I am sure, the hand of God.  It is in my blood.  My Dad was a great traveler, limited only by lack of money and time during his long, working life.  But he lacked nothing in imagination and passion for seeing the sights.

It was different with my mother.  She went along, of course, but she did not open up to anything new except with fear and criticism.  In many ways, it must been a real drag for him to have her along.  But in their world, you did not travel alone if you have a spouse.

Not so with me.  I have traveled with husbands, lovers, family, other people's family, friends, enemies, strangers, stuffed animals, cats, and one sad time, a turtle.  But I much prefer traveling alone.  A lot of people don't get this. 

"Hey, lady, where's your husband?" the young cab driver says the minute I get into the taxi at the airport in Puerto Vallarta.  "He's dead," I say.  It's not true, of course, as at that moment I have no husband, and the ex's are very much alive.  But it is the only thing guaranteed to kill the conversation cold.  You cannot explain to most people why you love traveling alone. 

I think most people are afraid of being alone in any place, and certainly can only think of what horrible dangers might befall them, especially if they are female, when traveling out of their tiny comfort zone.

In truth, we are not safe anywhere.  That is just the sad reality that very few people, before they are faced with major illness and death, are willing to accept.  It is an occupational hazard for those of us in the ministry, medical profession, social services and other helping professions.  We know we are going to die, because we see people die all the time.  I am sure that changes us, each in our own way.  But overall, I think it makes us appreciate the life we have more, and gives us a certain urgency to stop wasting time, tell the truth, help others, and follow our passions and dreams.