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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
& Rev. Chris Jimmerson
September 16, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org
As we begin a sermon series on our church’s ends/goals, we will talk about living our UU faith and values, teaching them to our children, and acting on them in the world.
When you think about your values, your personal values, what are they? Honesty? Authenticity? Busy-ness? Kindness? Winning? Compassion? Security? Power? Connection? Knowledge? Skill? Wisdom? Experience? Health? Inclusion? Fairness? How did you get those values? Did your parents teach you directly? Were there teaching stories? Was it a matter of watching the grownups and deciding you want to be like that, or not be like that?
I was taught through the stories of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Wisdom is more valuable than money. Kindness and love are paramount. We will be judged on how we treat the poor, the widows and the orphans. No group of people is better than another based on anything but character. Except people who don’t like classical music, and people who do think they are better than other people. So there are the big values and then there are the tiny ones. Jar with golf balls, beads and sand?
This congregation named its values, and the list is here in your order of service:
- Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life
- Community – To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch
- Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love
- Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty
- Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world
Children learn values mainly by interactions with us. When I was working as a family therapist, parents would talk about their hopes for their kids. “Well, odds are they are going to turn out pretty much like you, “They would grow pale and quiet. Yes. Be the person you’d like your child to be. You want them to say please and thank you? Say it to them. You want them to be kind? Be kind to them. How do you want them to handle frustration? You handle it that way. How do you want them to express anger? You do that? How do you want them to treat their friends? You do that. Does that make sense? This doesn’t always work. Sometimes there are organic issues, chemical imbalances, etc. that throw you a curve. Sometimes substances get involved, and each substance has its own “personality,” Alcohol is self-despising, accusing, pitiful and angry. When a substance gets involved, you are dealing with your loved one’s personality plus the personality of the substance.
When I was working as a family therapist, I would ask people what their parents’ expectations had been. “They just wanted me to be perfect,” they’d say. When I asked people what they wanted for their children, they would say “I just want them to be happy.” There is a disconnect there. I began to ask parents to create a “job description” for their children, a list of qualities and values that, if their children were to move toward those, they’d feel they had done a good job as parents. For my children, I make this list: be kind, strong and brave, joyful, useful loving honest and healthy. No one can be all of those things every moment, but it can be your goal, your constellation of stars by which you steer your little ship. We would say this list in our prayers every night. Now my grandchildren have their own list they say every night.
How are our values going to be transferred to our children here?
How do you teach someone to treat themselves and others with compassion and love? How do you teach someone to connect to the world with awe and wonder at the unity of life? Well, you teach them to extract DNA from strawberries, to make a volcano from lemons, you teach them about worm farming and the cycle of life, about water, about other people and their religions, about helping others and being fair, how to be an individual and also part of a group, how to look after the interests of yourself and your people, but balance that with looking after the interests of the community. We teach them about what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist in this world.
We have to talk about our faith. We make a family chalice and light it at meal times or in the evening while we’re going about our activities. We say things like “As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t act like that.” Or “As UUs, we treat our friends this way, we treat our elders this way, we disagree with curiosity and respect.”
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 18 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.
