Be Social Change by Eric Hepburn
- Admin - SGUUF Tech
- Jul 21
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 28
Our series developmentally exploring Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem arrives at spirit — not a fourth faculty, but the awareness that knows what the moment asks. The Guides and Weavers help the whole ecosystem see itself — and help each of us move freely among all the roles.
"It is possible to be free. Not free from anger, or shame, or fear — but free among them: transparent to the light, a window the light shines through." The final service in the four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem through a developmental lens arrives at spirit — not a fourth faculty, but the awareness that has been practicing all along.
The sermon slows down on purpose: three mindful breaths, and a practice of Cynthia Bourgeault's teaching that in any situation we either brace, harden, and resist — or soften, open, and yield. From there, the whole series gathers into six lines: the immature gut metastasizes hardship into rage; the mature gut metabolizes it into action. The immature heart, shame — the mature heart, healing. The immature head, fear — the mature head, foresight. And the reveal: for three weeks the question has been what comes up when you watch the news? The part of you that could answer — the watcher — is what we mean by spirit.
The message names the near enemies honestly (maturity is not freedom from fear, guilt, or anger, but the capacity to feel them completely without the trap), introduces the two roles that open to active conduits of spirit — Guides, teachers who have been there, and Weavers, shepherds of the whole ecosystem — and closes with Bourgeault's stained-glass window: shards, artisan, and the light that harmonizes all.
The Great World House looks ahead to the August 12 eclipse, the Perseids on the darkest night, and the sky's own lesson: attention without grasping. The Voice of Wisdom is read by Frank Sanders. Delivered at San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Georgetown, Texas.
The Pulpiteer Podcast Full Transcript
Lightly edited for readability: transcription errors corrected against the service script, filler words reduced, punctuation repaired. Bracketed items are editorial.
[00:00:00] Eric Hepburn (host intro): Welcome to the fourth episode of the third season of The Pulpiteer. I'm your host, Eric Hepburn, and I'm glad to have you join us for today's episode. Today's episode is called "Be Social Change," and it is the final of our four-part series exploring the social change ecosystem work of Deepa Iyer through the lens of the Enneagram triads. We'll begin with our Great World House segment, then our Voice of Wisdom, read by Frank Sanders.
The Great World House — Eric Hepburn
We pause to honor the Great World House, of which we are a part — lifting up the needs, the hopes, and the voices beyond these doors.
Since I'm going to be out of the pulpit for two weeks, I took the liberty of talking about something that's coming in early August, before I'm back.
On the twelfth of August, the moon will pass directly in front of the sun — a total solar eclipse, crossing Iceland and Spain. We won't see it from here. But it tells us something about what we will see: an eclipse only happens on a new moon, and a new moon means the darkest skies of the month. And that very night, the Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak. Most years, the moonlight washes out the meteors. This year, the sky is putting on its best show against its darkest stage — after midnight, facing northeast, dozens of falling stars an hour.
Now, here's the thing about watching for meteors. You can't will one to come. No bracing, no effort, no refreshing of the forecast will summon a single streak of light. All you can do is find someplace dark, lie back, soften your eyes to the whole sky — and receive what comes. The sky itself teaches the practice: attention without grasping.
As it happens, that same new-moon Wednesday is the night we relaunch our Sacred Currents earth-based practices here at the church. On Wednesday the twelfth, at seven fifteen, we will have a sound bath ceremony — good meditative practice to get you ready to surrender to the night sky later that evening. And I'm happy to say that the heavens and this fellowship are keeping the same calendar. Amen.
A Voice of Wisdom — read by Frank Sanders
After the words are spoken, we will breathe together in silence, until the ringing of the bowl calls us onward, into the space where the Word unfolds among us.
We welcome this Voice of Wisdom, carried through Cynthia Bourgeault:
"Although there are any number of spiritual practices, both ancient and universal, to bring a person to this state of permanent inner yieldedness, the most direct and effective one I know is simply this: in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist — or you will soften, open, and yield.
"If you brace, harden, and resist, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you soften, open, and yield — regardless of the outer conditions — you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you.
"Spiritual practice, at its no-frills simplest, is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost."
The Sermon: Be Social Change — Eric Hepburn
Bracing, hardening, and resisting are never worth the cost. Softening, opening, and yielding are always worth the price.
We've covered a lot of ground in the last three weeks. We're going to slow it down today — or I'm going to try. My speed is usually set on high, so we'll see if I can find a lower gear myself. But we're going to slow it down, because we're going to try to practice, here together, for the next twenty minutes or so: softening, opening, and yielding.
And I want to invite us all to start with three mindful breaths. As you breathe in, go ahead and let all the muscles tighten that need to. And when you release — let them go. Feel yourself make contact with that which supports you. Sink into it.
Now — some of you might be wondering why we're doing all this stuff that might feel a lot like psychology, or self-help. Some of you are wondering what the Enneagram, or social justice work, has to do with spirituality, or religion, or with Unitarian Universalists navigating this time and place. Let me remind you of the chalice lighting words we speak every week:
We light this flame to remind us: love is the center. As we grow and connect, mature and deepen: love is our center. When the light of truth burns all else away: love endures.
This gut-heart-head work we've been doing is the growing and the maturing. The social justice work is the connecting.
The immature gut-body metastasizes hardship into rage. The mature gut-body metabolizes hardship into action.
The immature heart metastasizes hardship into shame. The mature heart metabolizes hardship into healing.
The immature head metastasizes hardship into fear. The mature head metabolizes hardship into foresight.
The Enneagram triads can tell us something about where we start — about which of these struggles for maturity we must tackle first. And we do not unlock the power of spiritual presence in our own lives until we have mastered all three of these transmutations. Hardship in our lives will metastasize into rage, or shame, or fear — or some combination of the three — unless and until we've developed the skills to metabolize it into action, healing, and foresight.
The first of these skills is to see it clearly in ourselves when it happens. To develop our awareness of the patterns that activate our anger, shame, and fear. To interrupt those patterns with our awareness. And to learn more mature ways to channel those energies into our lives, and the lives of our communities.
So — for three weeks, I've asked you what comes up when you watch the news. Here's what I didn't tell you. The part of you that could answer — the part that watched the anger instead of drowning in it — that watcher is what we mean by spirit. And I've been inviting you to practice it all month long.
When we do that — when we practice that kind of awareness — we tap into the light of truth that burns all else away. We tap into it because it's not foreign to us. It's not a stranger. It is part and parcel of the deepest of what we are. We become transparent to that light. We become transmitters of that light. That light is the divine. It is the light that is us. And it is the light that is love. It is also the light that we call spirit. And that light is obscured when we get stuck in fear, or stuck in shame, or stuck in anger.
There are near enemies here that we need to be aware of.
Learning to metabolize thinking into foresight is not freedom from fear. It's not "oh — I never have to feel fear again." It is the ability to feel the fear honestly and completely, without falling into the trap of fear-triggered habits.
Learning to metabolize feeling into healing is not freedom from guilt. It is not "I never have to feel guilt again." It is the ability to feel guilt earnestly and remorsefully, without falling into the trap of shame, and blame, and self-hatred.
Learning to metabolize instinct into action is not freedom from anger. It is not "I never have to feel angry again." It is the ability to feel your anger deeply and wholly, without falling into the trap of unbridled and impotent rage.
Bracing, hardening, and resisting are never worth the cost. Softening, opening, and yielding are always worth the price.
And when we have learned to soften and open the head, the heart, and the gut — spirit flows into us, and out of us, and through us into this world. And it is healing. And it is foresight. And it is active.
So — when we become active conduits of spirit, there are two new social action roles that tend to open up to us: Guides and Weavers.
I tend to think of Guides like this. They were, once upon a time, in some other role or roles. They were Frontline Responders, or Caregivers, or Builders. They know that struggle — they've experienced it themselves: the pitfalls of moving from the immature to the mature version of that role, in their own developmental experience. And now they want to help others navigate those challenges with more support, or better support, than they had — or perhaps with support similar to what they had, from the guides before them. So Guides are like teachers who have been there. And they get it. They know the struggle, and they know your struggles. And they want you to succeed, and they want to help you get there — simply because you're worth it.
Now — where the Guide focuses on the individual journey, the Weaver focuses on the ecosystem of social change itself: seeing how the different roles, and the different people at different levels of maturity in those roles, can all fit together to build beloved communities. So they connect practitioners with guides, and they connect head people to heart people to gut people, so that all the roles get done, and all the people are fed by the work they're channeled into — and the work goes on by practicing that which it seeks to become: beloved community. I think of Weavers as shepherds. And I think of Jesus as a Weaver. He saw his disciples as they were, and showed them how to be something greater together.
Bracing, hardening, and resisting are never worth the cost. Softening, opening, and yielding are always worth the price.
So we have the realm of the three centers — gut, heart, and head. This is the normal, human realm. It is the realm where we do our social action work, whatever it is we're called to do. It is the realm where we are working to manifest beloved community.
And we have the realm of light and wisdom — of the divine in us and beyond us. The realm of spirit, unlocked when we get unstuck in our three centers. This is the realm where our calling comes from. This is the realm where we experience ourselves and each other as divine light and as love-essence. This is the realm where beloved community is imagined.
We began with a reading from Cynthia Bourgeault, and I want to end with another reading from her book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing:
"I gravitate back to this image of the rainbow. Let me turn to it one last time, allowing it to furnish a final concept for the way the two realms work together. Imagine that the unmanifest divine Oneness shatters into form, and suddenly we have color — color in shards, in pieces. That would be our physical, sensible world, with all its wondrous bits and pieces. Now suppose an artist collects those shards and begins to give shape to their colors and patterns in order to create a stained-glass window. That would be our human role, as conscious artisans and midwives of the divine becoming. But the final artistry is not revealed until light — the divine Oneness — strikes the window and radiates through it, harmonizing, unifying, and blending. Light, artist, and glass, all working in harmony, give us the full picture of how the sensible and imaginal realms work together to show forth the glory of God hidden in the pattern of finitude."
I want to end today's sermon as I ended the last three: with a statement of what is possible.
It is possible to be free. Not free from anger, or free from shame, or free from fear — but free among them. Transparent to the light. A window the light shines through.
May it be so. And amen.
[00:19:16] Eric Hepburn (host outro): Until next time — thank you for joining us on The Pulpiteer. If you enjoyed the podcast, you can help others find it by liking and subscribing. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a donation at sangabrieluu.org/give. The Pulpiteer podcast is a production of the San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Georgetown, Texas. The podcast is hosted on Spotify, and theme music is by John Faber. Our live recording tech crew is Frank Sanders, Rob Berthold, Keith Hutchinson, and Andrea McDaniel. The podcast is produced and performed by Eric Hepburn. See you next time.
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