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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
February 23, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Sometimes it takes grit and determination to stay resilient in times of challenge. Sometimes, though, like the trees, we need to be able to bend but not break when strong winds gust – change, but also hold onto our core selves, like when the river changes course around obstacles in its path. Always, we need each other to weather life’s challenges.
Chalice Lighting
At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice. As we light our chalice today; let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith. May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice, and truth.
Call to Worship
by Adrienne Rich
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Moment for Beloved Community
“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
To deepen our reflection on the meaning of Beloved Community and the challenges we still encounter for building it, each week we have been asking folks to consider something that is may be outside their realm of experience.
Kevin was 17 when he fled Honduras with his sister. After their grandmother had died, they had been left parentless, and the gang MS-13 forced them to work for it at threat for their lives.
When the gang told Kevin he would have to kill a stranger to prove his loyalty, he and his sister made the decision to flee to the United States.
He was captured at the border and placed into a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for providing care for underage immigrants.
As a part of that care, he was offered psychological counseling, which he understood would be confidential.
He met with a therapist and talked about all of the things the gang had forced him to do or witness.
Little did he know, that under a new Trump administration policy, his therapist’s notes would be passed on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who would use it to declare him a danger to society and argue for his detainment and deportation.
He has now been in detention for over 950 days while his legal case plays out.
One has to wonder if they would have done the same to a teenager from, oh, say, Finland.
What must it be like to have a vulnerable counseling session used against you in a legal setting?
As we struggle with this, let us remember there is no need to immerse ourselves in guilt or shame. In fact, these can be counterproductive, as we need joy and community to sustain our struggle to do justice and build the beloved community.
There is beauty to be found in the struggle itself.
Meditation Reading
GRACE
by Chris JimmersonWhen she was a young girl, they told her that Grace was only available to her, a child of original sin, through the forgiveness and whim of an all-powerful God.
Then, she sat with her Grandfather as he was dying. She held his hand, as she and the ones she loved stayed with him through his great passage.
And she felt Grace arise among them.
Later, during her college years, she volunteered for the local refugee shelter. And one day she witnessed the counselor work with young children traumatized by war.
She heard the children begin to speak their truths with one another, in that language that is only fully understood by such children, and she watched the counselor put his plans aside and let the children begin to heal one another.
And she felt Grace radiate between them.
And as over and over again through her years, she witnessed this same emergence between and among people, she came to understand Grace as something we co-create, and, sometimes, something we allow to happen by simply getting out of the way.
Sermon
“Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”
“You’re stronger than you think.”
“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
How many of you have heard one or more of these platitudes about human resilience?
The problem with them, besides the fact that they’re platitudes, is also that they center our resilience solely upon each of us as individuals. However, in reality our ability to remain resilient in difficult circumstances greatly depends on communal relationships and social support.
That’s not to say that there are not practical things we can do as individuals to build our personal resilience, and I’ll talk about some of these later.
It’s just that too often we forget that when we face challenges, we do not have to face them alone.
We have each other. We are a part of something much larger than ourselves.
As our religious education chaplain and communications coordinator, Bear Qolezcua put it in one of his wonderful Weekly Faith Connections bulletins, “These are the moments in which we are blessed to remember that we are part of the great, interdependent web of life upon which all things strum a rhythm of living and love and hope and sorrow and joy and pain and loss and newness.”
So this morning, as we consider the spiritual topic of resilience, which our religious education classes and activities have been exploring this leap year month of February, I want to start by stressing the relational, communal and social aspects of our resilience.
One group of psychologists who study resilience define it this way: “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress .. .It means ‘bouncing back’ from difficult experiences.
However, Eric Greitens, former navy seal, humanitarian, author and ex-disgraced, shortterm Republican governor of Missouri, but hey, wisdom can come from the strangest of sources sometimes – Greitens writes that we do not really bounce back to exactly who we were before.
The parent who loses a child is forever changed.
The nineteen-year old who goes to war comes back a different person than when they left.
Greitens says that rather than bouncing back to who we were before, we move through our challenges.
He writes, “What happens to us becomes a part of us”.
Resilient people find healthy ways to integrate hard experiences into their lives.
And, especially in our most difficult situations, to do that, we most often need relationship with; we need the support of others.
As I began what was supposed to be my final year of seminary in the fall of 2014, my world had suddenly become very challenging.
My spouse, Wayne, had developed a debilitating and life-threatening illness.
I am happy to say he is doing well now, but at the time it was pretty scary.
My step-father, Ty was dying of congestive heart failure. We knew it was only a matter of time. We just did not know how much time he had left.
We were blessed that he actually lived more than a year longer than his doctors had predicted. I was so moved that he was even able to attend my ordination here at this church just a couple of months before we lost him.
On top of all that, the congregation where I was doing a part-time internship that was required as part of my final year in seminary was moving through a great deal of emotional turmoil because of abuses they had suffered at the hands of other ministers.
I began to doubt whether I would be able to complete the school year and graduate.
The seminary was a long distance program, where I could do much of the studying and work here, but then had to go to Chicago for intensive classes for several weeks three times per year.
With all that was going on, it seemed a high likelihood that I might not be able to be away at some point or that I might have to leave in the middle of classes if the worst happened in any of the situations going on back home.
I also just was not sure I was going to have the emotional stamina to push through the hard work of seminary.
My prior years at the seminary, I had served as the co-chair of the student advisory council, and the school’s president, Lee Barker, had asked me to fill a position that would serve as student representative to the faculty team and the board of trustees.
I realized that I had to call Lee to tell him I could not serve in the position. I dreaded making that call because I was afraid he would be disappointed in me.
Instead, as soon as I told him all that was going on in my life, he said, “Forget the position, you’re what matters. Let’s talk about what you need.”
He gave me such a gift of grace, because he stayed with me where I was as we continued the conversation. He didn’t try to tell me it was OK or that it would be OK because, of course, it wasn’t and he couldn’t make the promise that it would be.
He did tell me that the school would work with me to find ways around it if I had to miss class time or had trouble keeping up with readings and assignments.
He offered to be available to me if at any time I needed to talk more.
And as the school year went on, he helped me find a resilience that I could not have found by myself – a resilience that allowed me to complete that final year of seminary and graduate with my friends and classmates.
Research has found that our resilience is rooted in relationship in several ways.
Positive and supportive social relationships, such as Lee offered too me, are key to our resilience.
As the American Psychological Association puts it, “Many studies show that the primary factor in resilience is having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family. Relationships that create love and trust, provide role models and offer encouragement and reassurance, help bolster a person’s resilience.”
So building and maintaining relationships and community are vital to our ability to weather life’s inevitable storms.
Next, finding a sense of purpose that involves altruism and working for the good of others is a second way that our resilience is rooted in social connections.
Research has found, it turns out, that when we get involved in contributing to our communities, working for social justice, trying to create a better world, we benefit ourselves, because in doing so we are exposed to different perspectives and life experiences, and we find that sense of purpose. These, in turn, help build our own personal resilience.
Finally, social safety nets increase the resilience of citizens. In countries with strong social safety nets, such as paid parental leave and universal free health care, people are healthier and express greater life satisfaction.
In turn, these seem to make folks in such countries more resilient when they encounter challenges in life.
So, paid parental leave and Medicare for all, ya’ll!
Now, while still stressing that maintaining the social relationships I’ve been discussing is vital, I do want to talk a little bit about what we can do individually to maintain and build our resiliency.
Jane McGonigal is a video game designer who a few years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury that left her with constant headaches, nausea, vertigo, memory loss and mental fogginess.
Her doctors told her that in order to heal, she had to avoid anything that triggered these symptoms – no reading, no email.nowork.no running, no writing – basically none of the activities she loved in life.
She found herself growing more and more depressed. She found herself having suicidal thoughts.
She decided to try to create a game she could play that might help her make it through.
She called the game, “Jane the Concussion Slayer” and invited her twin sister and her husband to play it with her.
The game basically just helped them identify how to battle the “bad guys” – anything that could trigger her symptoms like bright lightsand activate power ups – anything she could do to feel even just a little better like cuddling her dog for a few minutes.
Within just a few days her depression lifted. She still had symptoms of the head injury for another year, but she no longer had suicidal thoughts.
She renamed the game “SuperBetter” and shared it over the internet. She soon found herself receiving messages from around the world from people with a variety medical conditions saying that the game had helped them face their challenges with much less anxiety and depression.
She was curious how such a simple game could be so helpful, so she devoured the scientific literature and discovered what the game was doing was helping people identify simple activities that have been shown to contribute to four different types of resilience.
I want to share with you a few minutes from a Ted Talk that McGonigal presented in which she walked her audience through some very simple activities we can do even several times daily that help build these four types of resilience that she will describe.
I invite you as, in the video, she talks the people in her audience through these exercises to join in with them and do the activities too.
VIDEO
So, everybody ready? This is your first quest. Here we go. Pick one: Stand up and take three steps, or make your hands into fists, raise them over your head as high as you can for five seconds, go! All right, I like the people doing both. You are overachievers. Very good.
(Laughter)
Well done, everyone. That is worth +1 physical resilience, which means that your body can withstand more stress and heal itself faster. We know from the research that the number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That’s all it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
Everybody ready for your next quest? I want you to snap your fingers exactly 50 times, or count backwards from 100 by seven, like this: 100,
93 … Go!
(Snapping)
Don’t give up.
(Snapping)
Don’t let the people counting down from 100 interfere with your counting to 50.
(Snapping)
(Laughter)
Nice. Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. Bonus physical resilience. Well done, everyone. Now that’s worth +1 mental resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
So good job. Quest number three. Pick one:
Because of the room, fate’s really determined this for you, but here are the two options. If you’re inside, find a window and look out of it. If you’re outside, find a window and look in. Or do a quick YouTube or Google image search for “baby [your favorite animal.]”
Do it on your phones, or just shout out some baby animals, and I’ll put them on the screen. So, what do we want to see? Sloth, giraffe, elephant, snake. Okay, let’s see what we got. Baby dolphin and baby llamas. Everybody look. Got that? Okay, one more. Baby elephant.
(Audience) Oh!
We’re clapping for that? That’s amazing.
(Laughter)
All right, what we’re just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel looking at baby animals, when you need them most.
Here’s a secret from the scientific literature for you. If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for everyone negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you’re facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio. It’s my favorite SuperBetter trick, so keep it up.
All right, pick one, last quest: Shake someone’s hand for six seconds, or send someone a quick thank you by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. Go!
(Chatting)
Looking good, looking good. Nice, nice. Keep it up. I love it! All right, everybody, that is +1 social resilience, which means you actually get more strength from your friends, your neighbors, your family, your community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better.
Here’s one more secret for you: Shaking someone’s hand for six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that’s the trust hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands are biochemically primed to like and want to help each other. This will linger during the break, so take advantage of the networking opportunities.
So just these simple activities, repeated enough, can build our resilience. And if her activities are not workable for someone because of a disability or such, finding some simple way to challenge ourselves in each of those four areas will likely still have the same effect – physical, emotional, mental, and, of course, social.
Now, have I harped on the importance of spiritual practices yet this Sunday?
No? Well, here goes. Yep, it turns out spiritual practices – meditation, prayer, gardening, gratitude journaling, etc. engaging in regular spiritual practices builds our resilience.
Here are some other activities that help us build and maintain resilience:
- Allowing ourselves to experience joy.
- Immersing ourselves in that which we find to be beautiful.
- Laughter and humor.
- The arts, music, poetry.
- Engaging our creativity.
I think sometimes we think of resilience as always meaning being tough, having grit and determination. And that CAN be part of it.
But like those platitudes with which I started, it is not all of the story.
Sometimes resilience means allowing ourselves to feel the grief and rage and sorrow and pain of our situations without falling into immobilization, without losing joy, laughter, humor, beauty.
Sometimes, like the “flag” tree on the cover of your order of service and up on the screens, we need to muster the grace to bend but not break up against the winds of traumatic challenge or dramatic change. And my beloveds, we need each other to do so.
Sometimes we have to have the courage to ask for help.
For after all, we co-create grace in our world together. We grow stronger together.
We build our greatest resilience together.
May this place and this religious community be a wellspring of spiritual resilience so together, we may:
- nourish souls, ours and others,
- transform lives, in our midst and out in our world,
- and do justice, within these walls and beyond them.
Building the Beloved Community requires just such a great spiritual resilience.
Thus, we are blessed to have each other, in this, our beloved religious community.
Amen.
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