|
||||
|
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse Mama had a particular view of the world, shaped by her strong Christian faith, her love for children, her growing up as a missionary kid in India. Spiders in the house’s windows? No problem. Twelve cats? Fine. Missing a tithe payment to the church? Very Dangerous! Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermon are also available for free on iTunes. Keyword: Austin uu Podcast: Play in new window | Download Composer: Kiya Heartwood The Gaia Psalms are nine pieces written as part of a special Unitarian Universalist Earth Day Service. The concept of this work is to create an interactive multimedia worship experience that is both moving and simple. This work is in the Gebrauchsmusik (Utility Music) tradition. All the music is written with the beginning or amateur musician in mind. Visual artists have created four altars to the four directions and elements. The children and some youth and adults have made masks of different birds, fish and animals, and there are responsive readings in which the congregation participates. A tree planting on the grounds of the church completes the experience. The pieces were also meant to be spoken over. The minimalist, meditative quality is intended to create a spiritual connection in the listener and move the listener to both celebrate and reconnect as a member of the Earth’s community. “Gaia” (Guy-ah) or “Gaea” most commonly refers to Gaia (of Greek mythology), the primal Greek goddess of the earth. We chose the title, “The Gaia Psalms,” because psalms are songs of praise and engaged lamentation. This work comes out of NASA scientist James Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis,” which states that the Earth can be thought of as a self-preserving, living organism. The work also strives to remove the duality between science and spirituality. Christian monk Thomas Berry said, “You scientists have this stupendous story of the universe. It breaks outside all previous cosmologies. But so long as you persist in understanding it solely from a quantitative mode you fail to appreciate its significance. You fail to hear its music. That’s what the spiritual traditions can provide. Tell the story, but tell it with a feel for its music.” More info: www.kiyaheartwood.com or www.outlawhillarts.com. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse Our seventh principle is that we affirm and promote “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”… What does it mean to respect that web, to be a part of it? Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu Podcast: Play in new window | Download Meg Barnhouse “Quartet For the End of Time,” premiered in Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) on Jan. 15, 1941, to an audience of about four hundred fellow prisoners of war and prison guards. Composer Olivier Messiaen, an inmate of the camp, later recalled of the occasion, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.” The story of this music is an inspirational example of freedom and beauty rising in the midst of death and destruction, a fitting story for Easter Sunday. Messiaen quartet: Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermons may also be found on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse What do UU jokes tell us about ourselves? How true are they? Some sting: a UU family moves into a new neighborhood. Their little girl finds a new playmate, and they are happily getting to know each other. One day, the playmate says, “We’re Episcopalians, what are you?” The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.” Let’s laugh and think together! In honor of April Fool’s Day I’ve been reading UU jokes. I have to say some of them sting. Like this one: Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness? A: Someone who goes around knocking on doors for no apparent reason. I would have a reason, and I know a lot of you would too. I would want to say “Did you know there is a faith community that doesn’t believe God would send anyone to hell? That there is a tiny bit of the Divine in everyone? That everything is connected, really, everything is one, and what I call God is the connection between one thing and another – that which connects us all, the one soul of all things. I believe that the Bible has some sacred things in it, and so does the Koran and the Vedas and the poetry of Mary Oliver and the lyrics of Townes Van Zandt. We’re here on this earth to learn to love and be loved, and appreciate the earth and the sky and the stars and try to alleviate suffering when we can and add to the joy in the world when we can do that. And that you don’t have to believe things that don’t make sense to you, and that you can believe in God or not, but definitely you should not believe in a God who doesn’t believe in you. And that is just what I believe. What do you believe? This next one stung too: The UU child thinks for a minute and says, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters.” In this Religious Education program, we’re going to try to teach the kids what it means to be Unitarian Universalist. That this is not a “non-denominational” church. UUism is a denomination with roots in the early church. It is not a church where “you can believe anything you want.” You can’t believe that one skin tone or sexual preference is better or more blessed than another. You can’t believe in hell. You can’t believe that if you’re rich and healthy it means that God loves you more than other people. You can’t believe that it doesn’t matter how we treat immigrants. Well, what you can’t believe and be a UU is another sermon. We don’t have a creed to recite, though, that is true. That is the main factor making UU confusing to people. In Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham said: “A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.” I just don’t recognize that description of Unitarian Universalists. You know, with the hectic flow of life, we sometimes don’t take the time to think about what it is we believe. It is easier, sometimes, to say what we don’t believe. This winter Cyndi Stein kindly offered a ten-week Wednesday night class called “Building Your Own Theology.” The students in that class are given the opportunity and the language to begin to carve out a statement of what they believe. Some of you know a lot about what you believe. For some it’s all about energy and thought and love, for some it’s about believing in a loving God, and for others it’s about doing your best to live ethically with the support of your community. For many of us, a big part of it is about the democratic process, making sure people are heard, making sure everyone has a chance to say their say, making sure the loudest don’t obliterate the quieter souls, talking until the sense of the group is heard. That’s difficult! Democracy is a demanding spiritual path. It’s much easier to shame people into shutting up, to disapprove of them until they subside, to talk over them or accept their silent offer to stay out of the discussion. It’s hard to slow down a process enough to hear the voices that don’t agree with the majority. It’s a big temptation to ride roughshod over objections and pretend that the sense of the group is unanimous. But Democracy is another sermon. It feels to some people that the UUs believe nothing because most of our talk of believing is done one on one, or in smaller groups. I think part of why we like discussion so much is that we get to feel the presence of people who agree with us. Maybe that explains the old one about the Unitarian Universalist who died, and was off on the great journey. He came to a crossroad in the lane, with three directional signs. One said, “This way to Heaven.” Another said, “This way to Hell.” And the third said, “This way to a discussion about Heaven and Hell.” Of course the Unitarian Universalist went to the discussion. Conversation is one of our sacraments, along with child dedication, marriage, memorial services, coming of age, doing community service and drinking coffee. In the UU church you don’t get to feel the presence of like-minded people in the experience of a whole congregation reciting a creed together It’s in discussion. that you get to hear people who agree with your views, seeing the heads nodding as you say something can be very validating, if you have felt like a Lone Ranger before that. I like that, but it can be confusing to new folks. One year, a professor of Religion at Wofford College forwarded me a paper one of his students had written. This student came to the service here and enjoyed it, but he said: “The service was very different than any service I had ever experienced before, mostly because of the absence of any particular deity or central text. Instead, the sources for inspirational readings or authority seem to come from great thinkers or writers in world history, such as Rilke, Thoreau, Dickinson, Martin Luther King, Jr, and even occasionally the Christian Bible. The ideals were somewhat hard for me to wrap my mind around since there was no unifying feature other than feelings of love and acceptance.” There is this joke: “I can’t believe half the things that minister said!” sputtered the visitor in outrage. “Oh, good — then you’ll fit right in!” At the end of the paper the student writes: We do like to support one another’s responsible search for truth and meaning. That’s one of our principles. Why did the Unitarian-Universalist cross the road? To support the chicken in its search for its own path. Our principles come closest to unifying us. Only a black-belt UU can recite all seven, but most of us know the first one: “to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That’s a hard one, because we have to feel our way into whether we need to see as worthy everything about a person or just maybe that teensy spark of the Divine that is in each person. We can have people who seem as rigid and judgmental as the Pharisees themselves about being sensitive in our language and affirming of differences. That leads to the light bulb joke: How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb? Three – one to write a solemn statement which will affirm the following: 2. There must be no discrimination against dark bulbs in any form, and means must be found for all “dark” bulbs to take their place alongside light bulbs on a basis of equality. 3. We affirm the right of all bulbs to screw into the sockets of their choice regardless of the bulb’s illumination preference. 4. UUs seek for each light bulb the fullest opportunity to develop itself to its full electrical potential. Two to write this one: Other UU jokes poke fun at the Biblical illiteracy of some church members. Too true. We’re trying to fix that. Two UUs are having a conversation about it: UU#1: “UUs don’t know enough about the Bible. UU#2: “Some of us are self-taught, and know a lot. Like me” UU#1: “Oh, yeah? I’ll bet you five bucks you can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer.” UU#2: “You’re on. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” UU#1: “All right, I was wrong, you’re right — you win.” In The Big Book of Jewish Humor, the authors (Novak and Waldoks) quoted Martin Grotjahn who suggested that part of what Jewish humor is about is telling enemies, “You do not need to attack us. We can do that ourselves – and even better.” Let’s end by singing another ancient folk song together – this one was recorded by a group called the Limelighters. “Zen Gospel Singing.” Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse The Spring Equinox is coming, when the day and night are the same length. It’s a good time to talk about balance, about living gracefully. Do we want to grow deep roots that can hold us steady while all around us things are pushing us one way, then the other? Do we want to learn to be light-footed so we can, as the Zen teacher says, “play ball on running water?” What would good balance look like? Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse Purim is the Jewish festival celebrating a time long ago when the Jews were saved from destruction by the brave Queen Esther. What’s the story? Get ready to boo the bad guy. Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes. Keyword: austin uu Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse
Susan B. Anthony was a Unitarian during the days of fighting for abolition and women’s suffrage. She was fierce and complicated, and her life is an inspiration. Happy Susan B Anthony’s Birthday! Susan B Anthony is surely in the pantheon of Unitarian and Universalist saints. Her father signed the book of the Rochester Unitarian Church, and the family attended there. Susan was persecuted, ridiculed and jailed, and she worked tirelessly for the rights of the powerless. She was intelligent, persistent, tireless, fierce and serene. Everything we admire. In our free faith tradition, one of the sources we draw from is “Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love; ” I want to say we should all be like Susan B, but she had some things going for her that were powerful in her development and in her staying strong throughout her life. Some of us have those things and some don’t. She worked first for the temperance movement. Drunkenness was an enormous problem in those days. Per capita consumption of alcohol was over seven gal. per capita. You have to keep in mind that most women didn’t drink at all then, most slaves didn’t drink, and no children were drunks, to speak of…. yet they were counted in that statistic. After Prohibition, by the way, that consumption went way down, and it is just now reaching seven gallons again after sixty years, but men and women of all colors drink now. I think most children still do not. Part of the problem with men drinking that much was not that it was immoral or icky to drink, but that the laws made males owners of all property in a marriage. They also owned the children, and always would get custody in a divorce. They also owned their wives and received any money their wives made. If they were “bad to drink,” as we said in the South, they would drink up their paycheck and their wives paycheck. If they were the kind of drunk that would come home violent, they would hurt their wives and their kids and not much could be done about it at all. Beating your wife was not a crime in those days. All of the issues Anthony worked for flowed from her temperance work, as she campaigned for equal pay for equal work, for the right of women and African Americans to vote, for women to be able to get a divorce if she were abused, for women to have a chance at custody of her children, and for wives to be able to own property and keep their paychecks. Susan Brownell Anthony was born in 1820. She didn’t like “Brownell” so she just always used “B.” She grew up in New York state in the midst of a Quaker family. One of the elements in her life that allowed her to be a confident crusader was that her father believed in her, loved her, and made sure she was educated at the same level as the males in the family. Having Daniel Anthony as the head of her household, growing up, gave her the experience of how much good a good man could do. Quakers believed that men and women were equal, that they thought and spoke and led equally well. Women helped run the meetings, and women had a say in all decisions. Daniel Anthony sent his children to the town school until the school teacher refused to teach Susan long division. The thought at the time was that girls should be taught to read well enough to read their Bibles and taught enough arithmetic to count their egg money. Anthony brought the children home, started a school in his house and hired a teacher. When you are told, growing up, that you are smart and capable, when you are loved and admired by those who are in charge of you, it is much easier for you to be able to be smart and strong as an adult. Daniel Anthony believed in the work Susan was doing, and he supported her financially and emotionally. Her family helped her all her life, supplementing the fees she was paid as a lecturer and an organizer. When she was 20, Susan took a job teaching school from a fellow who had done poorly in the job. He had been paid $10.00 a week. She was paid $2.50. Five years later, when she was 25, the family moved to Rochester, where they joined the Unitarian Church. When you join a Unitarian church you meet people who change your life. Rochester was a hotbed of abolitionist activity. The family befriended anti-slavery activists and former slaves. Susan was horrified to hear stories of the brutality and heartbreaking conditions of the lives of slaves, and she became more and more of an activist. Her family’s farm became more and more a center of anti-slavery activity. She grew more and more radical, along with her father and their friends. She was asked to be a paid abolitionist organizer, renting halls, hiring speakers, and publicizing meetings. She began speaking some herself, and she was good at it. She also liked it. You don’t have to do everything you’re good at, but if you’re good at it and you like it too, it’s pretty clear this is something you should do. Susan spoke at a teacher’s convention, arguing, as a teacher, that both girls and boys should be taught, and that they should be taught together in the same room, that they could learn equally well, at equal speeds. She said there was not that much difference in their brains. It was thought by some in her day that women only had a certain amount of energy, and if they thought too hard and used their brains too much it would wither their reproductive parts. Clergy preached against the great social evil of educating boys and girls together. They said it would upset the balance of nature. What’s next, teaching our dogs and cats to read? When you study history you see that conservative religious voices, over and over, mouth what sounds from here like the most ridiculous claptrap. Those are the same voices now raised against same-sex marriage, saying “What’s next, we should be able to marry our dogs?” Liberal clergy from that time sound very much like voices from our time. In the division that always, always happens when working for change, there were people saying “Don’t scare folks off by wanting everything all at once. Be reasonable.” Susan B said “Shall I tell a man whose house in on fire to give a moderate alarm? Shall he moderately rescue his wife from a ravisher? Shall a mother moderately pull her baby from the fire it has fallen into? In 1848, when she was 28 years old, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, NY. She didn’t go. Local media had called it a hen convention, attended by cranks, hermaphrodites and atheists. Susan was shocked to find out that her father and lots of their friends supported the cause of women’s rights. They talked about that alongside the abolition of slavery Susan heard of the brilliant Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and hoped to meet her one day. When they did meet, they liked each other thoroughly and instantly. They were friends with Amelia Bloomer, who campaigned for more comfortable and sensible clothes for women. She wore an outfit that was called by her name. All three women wore those clothes for a couple of years, but they stopped when they realized it was keeping people from hearing anything they had to say. Clergy called the outfits devilish, and the press mocked them as women dressed like men. It was not only women who were fighting against the destructive effects of alcoholism and addiction on families, who all went down together if the man of the family went down. The Sons of Temperance was a powerful political organization. Women were not allowed to join. There was a group called the Daughters of Temperance, an auxiliary group. Separate and unequal. Susan was a member of that group, one of their successful organizers and fund raisers. They elected her to represent them at a big conference in Albany NY in 1852. When she rose to make a point during a discussion, a buzz of outrage swept the hall. “The sisters,” shouted the chairman, “were not invited to speak, but to listen and learn!” Susan swept out of the room, followed by a few other women. Some other women stayed behind, disapproving. A few called the women who left “bold, meddlesome disturbers.” That very night Susan rented a hall and called her own meeting where women could speak. The room was cold and badly lit, and the stovepipe broke in the middle of Susan’s speech, but those who attended were energized and inspired. They decided to form a statewide convention. Susan was elected to head up that effort. She wrote hundreds of letters. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote speeches for her, and over five hundred women came to the conference they organized. “You stir up Susan,” Henry Stanton told Elizabeth, “and she stirs up the world.” Their partnership lasted their whole lives, over fifty more years. Susan had more mobility, since she wasn’t caring for a household and children. Sometimes she would watch Stanton’s children while Stanton wrote her speeches. They always, no matter what they were writing and speaking about, spoke about the right of women to vote. They figured that would take care of both temperance and slavery. The women would vote correctly and abolish all evils. Susan and Elizabeth encouraged one another, kept one another radical. Her friendship with Elizabeth is the second element in her life that enabled her to be who she was. Without that partnership, as without the love and support of her family, Susan’s story would probably have been a very different one. After organizing this convention where five hundred women attended, Susan and Elizabeth were invited to the next Sons of Temperance convention. When they arrived they found that they would not even now be allowed to speak. Clergy men stood up and protested that they would not sit with these females. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer refused to leave. One delegate shouted that they were not women, but some hybrid species, half woman half man. Another man said that they had no business disrupting temperance meetings with their dreadful doctrines of women’s rights, divorce and atheism. Anthony held a petition with ten thousand signatures she had gathered. Within minutes the two women had been thrown out, bodily. As she lectured and traveled, some newspapers would attack her personally, calling her repulsive and ugly, saying that she was laboring under strong feelings of hatred towards men. She must have been neglected by men, and she was jealous. The third time Anthony and Stanton were rejected by the main temperance group, they disengaged from that group for the next 20 years. “We have other, bigger fish to fry,” said Stanton serenely. They began working on securing property rights for women. If women could own things, they could be free of abusive marriages. Maybe also if they had money, the legislature would listen to them better. They worked on that for the next eight years, until 1860. Anthony went door to door and town to town, gathering signatures on petitions, enduring snowstorms and ridicule, sleeping in cold farm houses and inns, going before the state legislatures everywhere she went. In 1860 the NY legislature passed the married women’s property act, enabling married women to own property, keep her own wages, not subject to the control or interference of her husband, enter into contracts, and have shared custody of her children. Many other states followed suit, changing the lives of millions of women. Some of the suffragists, in years to come, were embarrassed by the radical things Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did. ECS wrote “The Women’s Bible,” mercilessly asking questions about the portrayal of women in the Bible, questions that would offend and upset most people even in this day and age. Harriet Beecher Stowe refused to write for Anthony’s newspaper, The Revolution, unless she named it something less aggressive. Anthony rode stagecoaches, delivered speeches, and endured hardships until late in her 70′s. Until her father’s death, she had his full support. Until Stanton’s death, that partnership and support sustained her. She never married, never had children. Women’s rights, abolition, temperance, these were her passions and her life’s work. She didn’t live to see women get the vote, in 1920. She did vote, though. In the 1872 election she voted illegally, she and a few other women. She was arrested, tried, and convicted. She was hoping to appeal, as the judge wouldn’t let the jury speak, and he instructed them to find her guilty. Her fine was 100 dollars. She told him, “You have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my political rights, my civil rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. I will not pay a penny of your unjust fine.” As he shouted for her to be quiet and sit down, she kept talking. “I shall urgently and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that ÔResistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’” We can learn how to make social change from Susan B: Five easy steps: 1. Trust yourself. What feels wrong to you is probably wrong. 2. Get mad. Anger is a good fuel for action. Try to get mad at the right person or the right institution, as Aristotle said. “It is easy to fly into a passion – anybody can do that. But to be angry with the right person and to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way – that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it.” 3. Work to change things. Don’t just complain. Find out how to change things and start trying. 4. Lean on a friend. Have relationships, partnerships in making change. 5. Know how things work. Here is how they work: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you. Then they fight you, then they agree. Later, they say they agreed with you all along. If you know how it works, when they call you a man hater or ugly or repulsive or they say you’re not patriotic or ask what’s next, I’m going to marry my dog? You can know they have been doing it this way forever. Keep fighting.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse Our fifth Principle talks about liberty and justice for all, with a goal of world community. How are we supposed to get this done?
How would you sit down to eat a car? Knife and fork? Hacksaw? Ketchup? Hot sauce? Would you circle the vehicle a couple of times, figuring out where to start? Would you drink a nice lemonade with the upholstery? What about the more metallic meals? White or red wine? That would probably depend on whether it was a meaty truck like a Dodge Ram or a fishier Plymouth Barracuda. Eating a car is something that would take commitment, time, planning. It would take a special mind to think of doing it. Our sixth principle is like that. It says that we, as UUs, agree to affirm (say yes to,) and promote (try to get more people to say yes to) the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. That’s really big. It makes a person think the framers of the principles were getting tired at the end there, and that they just wrote one that was the equivalent of “well, we want the whole world to be okay, everything else plus that big freezer in the garage.” What do you do with a principle that large and unwieldy? There is a funny short film on youtube with the title “The Man Who Ate a Car,” and it opens with him talking in his kitchen. “A car is just the sum of its parts, and a lot of the parts aren’t that big, just a couple of inches across. 75% of the parts of an automobile are a couple of inches across and half an inch deep. That’s the size of an Oreo cookie. And the ones that are too big, you just machine down, smooth out.” Most of us don’t have time, in the biggest part of our lifespan, to do much for the world. We are busy making a living, raising children, maintaining the relationships we choose, taking care of our health and strength or adjusting to its loss. It’s hard to find time and energy for leaving the world a better place. Ralph Waldo Emerson said a successful life was to leave the world ” a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you live…” Many of us do that. I am beginning to know some of the stories of a good number of people in this room and I can tell you there are many people here who will leave the world a little better than they found it. Lives have breathed easier because you have lived. What will you be known for when you are gone? Unitarians and Universalists have thrown their life energies in with the forces of change over the centuries. Many Unitarians and Universalists worked in the Abolitionist Movement to overthrow slavery. Many have worked in the Civil Rights struggle. Unitarian Horace Mann organized the public school system Universalist Clara Barton founded the Red Cross. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was led by his liberal faith to a much more inclusive interpretation of the law. Thomas Starr King (after whom one of the UU seminaries, the one in Berkley, is named) was inspired to fight the California legislature for continued land rights of Mexicans. Jane Hull founded Hull House in Chicago, and began to professionalize social workers; moving caring for the poor from religious institutions that often pressured you to convert to get care, to non-religiously affiliated professionals. Roger Baldwin was led to establish the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). May Sarton wrote poetry inspiring her readers with truth and beauty. Social action, politics and art are some ways we can make the world a better place. Most of us, in the ordinary course of our lives, are doing it by being loving family members, teaching our children strong values of usefulness, tolerance, open minded curiosity, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, and love. We teach the children in the church, we care for our grandchildren, we cook for people and visit them when they need company. We make the world a better place by being good friends, by trying to behave correctly and do the right things. Do those actions bring about world community with peace, liberty and justice for all? We can barely make justice within our own church, our own families. How can we heal the whole world? This principle is over-large, and it sits there, parked in the driveway of every UU who is resolving to live the faith. “This is a long term activity,” says the man who ate the car. “Look, it took five years. I ate my first two lug nuts on Dec 30, 1990 — finished the last piece of the clutch housing on Feb 14 1995.” Compared to a task with no beginning, no middle and no end, eating a car sounds almost easy. World community, with peace, liberty and justice for all is too big a goal. When my goals are that big, I get overwhelmed. When a person is overwhelmed, they are stressed, crabby, emotionally less stable and sleepy. The principles certainly aren’t supposed to do that to us. When a rule is too hard to follow, it’s just begging to be ignored. When a goal is too big, it’s just begging to slide down the priority list behind every other thing in the world that can be accomplished. Overwhelm burns us out. When we can’t get anywhere, when the things we do accomplish seem so insignificant compared to what we are supposed to be accomplishing that we feel they are nothing. We don’t want the sixth principle to make us feel that all our small efforts are insignificant. What I learned about setting goals is that you are supposed to make a goal from something you can control. Instead of saying “I’m going to be a catalyst for change like Barbara Jordan was!” you might say “I’m going to change one thing ——about myself—- this week.” That you can do, usually. Instead of saying, “My goal is to be a millionaire,” you make a goal of saving a certain amount of your income, or of living within your means day by day, or just or writing down what you spend. Goals should be measurable. Did I do it or not? They should be attainable. We can say that we have a goal to do some action every day to make the world a better place. Most of us, just by living the principles and trying to be good people, are doing that. We can take the red heart from our bulletin and write a kind and loving note to someone who wants to get married and can’t do it in TX yet. The notes will be delivered on Valentines Day to the people who are going to the office on Airport Rd. to ask for licenses. Or you can get some food after church and take it to the Pecan Area of Zilker park where the Occupy folks have invited us and others for a picnic. One good purpose that can be served by an extra-large, unattainable goal, though, is that it is a measuring stick we can hold up to the various situations and decisions we face as we move through our lives. “Is this going to be more or less like world community?” You might ask yourself. “Will this make more peace, more liberty, more justice, or less?” A good large measuring stick can help as choices come up. Let’s take that sixth principle little by little, and let’s take our time. Take a big important stand or do something small every day, or both. Just keep it in mind. Look at your home, your work, your church through its windshield. Machine those pieces down until they are the size of an Oreo cookie. Then make them part of supper.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Rev. Meg Barnhouse In the Christian scriptures is a story about Rabbi Jesus doing a miracle where 5,000 hungry people were fed. It began with a boy offering to share what he had. What kind of miracle was it? What is its message for us? Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen. Podcasts of sermons are also available for free from iTunes. Keyword: austin uu |
||||
|
Contacts | Map and Directions | About This Site | Site MapCopyright © 2012 First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin - All Rights Reserved. Log in Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||
Comments are closed 