It was an impressive site. Thousands of young people gathered in Boston that October day for what was billed as the Wide Awake Rally. Young Black people and young White people, side by side, carrying banners and posters with liberal slogans slamming racism and tyrants. Many of these young folk belonged to the same political organization; the Boston rally was the last before the November presidential election, and their organization had just held similar huge rallies in New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Just the week before, 10,000 of them had marched in Chicago.
They were there that day in Boston to support their candidate for president, a candidate drawing huge crowds everywhere—it’s always about the crowd size—and that candidate’s campaign was about to send these young people around the country to spearhead voter registration and to urge young people to vote.
And the name of this organization of young adults? The Wide Awakes.
If you’ve never heard of the Wide Awakes, it’s because the Boston rally I’m speaking of took place in October of 1860, the candidate was Abraham Lincoln, and the adoring crowd was made up of young Republicans. These young people called themselves the Wide Awakes, an organization that proclaimed itself as the newfound voice of younger voters.
The Wide Awakes were anti-slavery and anti-tyrant, White and African American, and they were fired up. These young people had been alarmed by the extreme political partisanship of the 1850s, and with their newfound awareness, were searching for an identity. By the time Lincoln was elected president, there were 500,000 Wide Awakes all over the country. They had uniforms, a logo that would have been at home on Facebook, and a slogan, “Mind Your Eye.” They even had a promotional comic book, a graphic novel, the TikTok of its day.
All of this to say, staying woke is nothing new, at least in its most general sense. Over the last one hundred years, staying woke has developed a more specific meaning in the Black community: being aware of all the ways racism rears its ugly head, and to avoid falling victim to those ugly ways– “Mind Your Eye,” as the Wide Awakes said -- but also to do something about them. As Kenya Hunt, the author of Girl: Essays on Black Womanhood wrote in an essay for The Guardian newspaper, put it, woke is “a sensibility, a quality, a state of being, a feeling backed up by a set of actions, sometimes all these things at once.”
And that is my understanding, too. But I have to caution here that as a White male in his sixties, the privilege I’ve enjoyed all my life has undoubtedly clouded my vision and limited my understanding. I have no authority, not even a ministerial one, to speak to the Black experience. I want to acknowledge that and to own my own limitations.
As a Unitarian Universalist, however, I do feel some kinship with the idea of staying woke. Our eight principles are fairly shot through with the energy, the righteousness, just the plain good sense of staying acutely aware of what is going on in our world, calling out injustice when and where we see it, and taking action.
Our first principle—staying woke to the inherent worth and dignity of everyone.
Our second—justice, equity and compassion. Equity, the Big E.
Third—accept one another and encourage growth. Encouraging spiritual growth is also part of First Parish’s mission.
Fourth—search freely and responsibly for truth and meaning. It is precisely because the free part is under siege right now—our right to speak our minds, to speak our truths, to speak truth to power—that the responsible part has become more important. Being honest with ourselves and with each other.
Our fifth principle calls us to support democracy. ‘Nuf said.
Our sixth—improve the global community. Glory to Ukraine, and while we’re at it, to Canada, Greenland, and Panama.
Our seventh principle—respect our interdependent web of existence. What touches my neighbor touches me. What touches one touches all.
And our eighth principle most directly relates to staying woke by calling us to dismantle racism and other oppressions, the better to build the beloved community Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of oh, so long ago. As Kenya Hunt writes, “To be woke is to long for a day when one doesn’t have to stay woke.” It’s what we’re working toward.
In simplest terms, staying woke is just a really good idea. Woke has sparked many efforts to balance the tires of opportunity, from affirmative action to DEI efforts, so all human beings can have a chance to roll down the same roads. That’s what we thought was meant by the land of the free, that everyone has a shot at the same freedoms.
You wouldn’t know that now, though, would you? According to its detractors, woke is some new code for the sinister concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion, whose efforts these same folks see as reverse discrimination against White people. In our federal agencies, universities, and schools, even mentioning DEI is now verboten, and who knows, might even get you picked up and hauled away.
There’s been a war on woke for quite some time now. And yes, we need to join the battle. But I don’t want to turn this into another finger-wagging that we should all be doing more for social justice. No one needs that kind of guilt pile-on right now. No, let’s talk about being woke, staying woke, as a spiritual practice. But a spiritual practice of consequence.
Because, despite being under attack right now, staying woke remains a potent spiritual weapon hiding in plain sight. It’s a weapon of mass inclusion, the sword of a stronger love, which makes those who embrace wokeness peaceful warriors. I believe that rather than shy away from saying woke, we should be shouting it from the rooftops. Not with words, but with actions. We can live as Wide Awakes.
The Wide Awakes of the 1860s were awake to the wrongness of slavery and the system of racism it depended upon to survive. They saw a solution in the political process and a savior in Lincoln. That’s how they lived their wokeness. What do we see as our solution today? Who do we see as our savior? How do we live our wokeness?
Maybe those are not the right questions because they speak to things outside of us. Being awake, staying woke, is something that happens inside first. Our eyes can only see as far as our hearts can reach. Because of this, staying woke, rather than being a cause or a responsibility, becomes a remedy for our sore and wounded hearts. When we awake from within, we gather strength for the journey.
And here is how you know that is happening:
When you walk out of this church, what do you see? Do you spot your car and head straight to it, or do you look around you? Do you see one of the homeless people who sometimes gather along the south wall of our church? Does your gaze settle upon Marian Manor, the nursing home across the street, and think for a brief second about the lives within, the aging adults in need of 24/7 nursing care, wondering what happened to their bodies, wishing their children and grandchildren would visit more often?
Do you glance at the weather-worn banners hanging on our outside church walls, declaring our love for all, or our lawn signs stating that hate has no home here, and marvel that for all the snow, for all the storms, for all the wind gusts this season, those sagging banners and those fragile little signs haven’t budged? Kind of like us?
Do you sometimes see our children running around the sanctuary when we’re all supposed to be still, and instead of thinking, hey! Quiet down! You think, ah. That’s what freedom looks like. Freedom still exists. Trust me. There’s going to be plenty of time to be still someday.
Do you read or watch the news and find yourself feeling angry and frustrated and fearful—perfectly understandable these days—or do you remember to open your heart to the fact that time and time again, people driven to the breaking point have triumphed over tyranny? Keep your ear to the ground and listen to the growing rumble underneath. Because there’s always an underground.
And last but not least: Do you take some time each day to realize that you are loved?
That last bit just might be the greatest woke of all. One of tyranny’s most heinous crimes is its ability to make people think love doesn’t matter anymore, that love is no longer relevant in a world where only might makes right.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Love couldn’t be more relevant than it is right now. And it begins with staying awake to the goodness that lives inside of you. I mentioned earlier that we need to shout our wokeness, but with actions, not words. Kenya Hunt, who I quoted earlier wrote that, “woke is at its most powerful, and valuable, when it is lived and not mentioned. When it’s not viewed as a quality to be smug about. Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Biko and Angela Davis didn’t declare themselves activists – they didn’t have to, their actions defined them. Woke people know not to, and need not, describe themselves as woke.”
“Ultimately,” Hunt says, “wokeness is rooted in love – of self, family, humanity – just as injustice is rooted in hate.”
So wake up to the love that is yours, given and received. Wake up to the strength you didn’t know you had because all the noise made you forget. Wake up to the joy in your midst, the room in your heart, and the resolve of good people all around you. The journey ahead won’t be easy. But if we stay woke and take a look around, we’ll see a magnificent sight: all the other woke people by our side, making the same trip. And we’ll know the most important thing we can know in this moment we find ourselves in: that never, not for a single step, do we have to go it alone.
May it be so, and blessed be.