Podcast: Play in new window | Download
First UU Youth Group
May 18, 2014
The Senior High Youth Group invites you to share in the exploration of the topic of love. The service includes poems, stories, and mini-sermons about love, from the unique perspective of our teens.
Welcome: Audrey Lewis
Reading: Nikola Locar
Homily: “Strange Places” Kate Windsor
Sonnett 18: Maya Runnels
Homily:
“Falling” Mary Emma Gary
The first christmas gift my boyfriend ever gave me was a copy of Alice in Wonderland. I remember reading it during standardized testing, and due to the nature of that sort of testing was left with plenty of time to admire how versatile the rabbit hole metaphor is. Today, I use it to make a narrative of falling in love.
I sit in a garden filled with tulips, bits of grass poke between the red and violet bundles as a reminder that it takes a collection of things to make a picture beautiful. The tree I rest against has bark that is smooth from years of clambering up it with dripping popsicles and wings of laughter. A rabbit passes by, curiously I follow, admiring how his pocket watch doesn’t affect the speed at which he runs in front of me, and how he waits for me as I stop to watch the sudden ambush of butterflies, whose collective wings sound like the laughter of a baby, and how their patterns of innocent eyes flicker with delight at the wind chimes. He waits for me as I bend to pick up a kitten, then a puppy, then we all take off running, joined by more and more bodies until we approach the hole in the ground, dark and shining with promise. One after another the creatures I love jump down, until the rabbit and I are at the top of the hole looking down as everyone one else falls freely. He jumps, then I, into the hole in what I assume is sanity because according to the experts who write love songs the only way to fall in love is to give up the sturdy fabric of sanctity and sanity.
Jump with us.
We fall. We pass cabinets of snow globes, stuffed animals, and candy wrappers. little bottles that say “Horchata” from the time my dad drove to have breakfast with me after a rally, and little cakes that say “for biology, don’t eat” for all the times I’ve made cookies and he’s tried to steal a few. We pass hamster balls, VCR’s, books so worn their pages look like leaves, we pass them and we fall into a tunnel reminiscent of the scene from Willy Wonka that my kindergarden best friend was terrified of. As we fall some of the creatures stop on shelves, for while they are loved the bulk of their affection was spent at a time closer to the top of the tunnel.
Occasionally a door opens from nowhere and another person is cast into my tunnel with me, though sometimes it seems that I have joined theirs or that we have created a new one altogether. Each time a door opens, a few bottles may break, papers may fly, but what would an adventure be without broken glass? Eventually I land with the white rabbit on a floor with a spiral staircase at the center, leading down. There is a velvet rope with a note reading, “enjoy here until further notice.” So we sit. A door, previously unseen, opens. We are joined by a mouse, a cat, and seemingly the entire cast of Winnie The Pooh in the room that now holds a table. As a collective, we are in love, seperate we love each other, and in memories we love the glass table and orange tea cups that adorned our dizzying, spirited, fait.
This is how I see falling in love. We are led on a beautiful chase until the ground opens up under us. Possibly scared and maybe a little grimy we fall until we are actually floating. Floating on kind words, snippets of songs that you can’t remember the rest of the lyrics to, and collections of gorgeous arrays of light. Sunsets, sunrises, nights on the town to nights under stars, we float down until it feels like there isn’t possibly farther to fall. And then, because love is an exhaustive journey, we may choose to find a floor to rest on with the people who rejuvenate us the most, until we are ready to once again descend into a world of beautiful madness.
Our journey is never ending, and perhaps I am too young and naive or already too old and jaded to portray the drug that you cannot OD on, but I invite you to forget the pain of the past, the promise of the future, and take it upon yourselves to feel gravity pulling you down, and the cloud numbered nine lifting you back up. I invite you to listen to what the experts say, then to take it upon yourselves to discredit everything ever said about love, and make your own conclusions. I invite you to find the hole in the ground, the fireworks on display, or the flames that warm your cheeks and join me on the journey to find a home where the heart is a puzzle that requires more than one set of hands.
Sonnett 130: Anna Reynolds
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Poem: “Scattered Leaves” Andy Tittle
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.
