Installation Service

Rev. Peter Morales

President of the Unitarian Universalist Association

January 15, 2012

Audio of this service does not include the music and some of the readings due to technical constraints. An unabridged video of the complete service can be purchased from our bookstore.

Podcasts of sermons are also available for free on iTunes.

Call to Celebration:

Rev. Bret Lortie, Minister, First UU Church of San Antonio

Chalice Lighting:

Reading:

Exerpt from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Read by Rev. Kathleen Ellis, Co-Minister, Live Oak UU Church

O! You bad little thing! — said the woman, teasing her baby granddaughter. “Is Buddha teaching you to laugh for no reason?” As the baby continued to gurgle, the woman felt a deep wish stirring in hear heart. “Even if I could live forever,” she said to the baby, “I still don’t know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason. But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well. Little one, was this kind of thinking wrong?… ” The baby laughed, listening to her grandmother’s laments.

“O! O! you say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again? You say you are the Queen Mother of the Western Skies. now come back to give me the answer Good, good. I am listening . . . Thank you, little Queen. And you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Welcome:

Susan Thomson, President-Elect First UU Church of Austin

Greetings from the Austin Community:

State Representative Donna Howard

Reading:

Excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Read by Rev. Eliza Galaher, Wildflower UU Church

When the doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The lights of the fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

Greetings from the Southwest UU Conference

Jennifer Nichols, District Director for Lifespan Faith Development

Charge to the Congregation

Andrea Lerner, DE Metro NY District

Reading:

Credo by Judith Roche

Read by Sharon Moore and Michael Kersey,

Co-Chairs of the Ministerial Search Committee

I believe in the cave paintings at Lascaux,

the beauty of the clavicle,

the journey of the salmon,

her leap up any barrier,

the scent of home waters

she finds through celestial navigation.

I believe in all the gods –

I just don’t like some of them.

I believe the war is always against the imagination,

is recurring, repetitive, and relentless.

I believe in fairies, elves, angels and bodisatvas,

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

I have seen and heard ghosts.

I believe that Raven invented the Earth

And so did Coyote. In archeology

lie the clues. The threshold is numinous

and the way in is the way out.

I believe in the alphabets – all of them –

and the stories seeping from their letters.

I believe in dance as prayer, that the heart

beat invented rhythm and chant -.

or is it the other way around –

I believe in the wisdom of the body.

I believe that art saves lives

and love makes it worth living them.

And that could be the other way around, too.

Offering for the Unitarian Universalist Association

Laurel Amabile

Sermon:

Peter Morales, President, Unitarian Universalist Association

Act of Installation:

Susan Thomson, President-Elect

Charge to the Minister

Kiya Heartwood

Reading:

Fearing Paris by Marsha Truman Cooper

Read by Rev. Daniel O’Connell, Minister, First UU Church of Houston

Suppose that what you fear

could be trapped

and held in Paris.

Then you would have

the courage to go

everywhere in the world.

All the directions of the compass

open to you,

except the degrees east or west

of true north

that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare

put your toes

smack dab on the city limit line.

You’re not really willing

to stand on a mountainside,

miles away,

and watch the Paris lights

come up at night.

Just to be on the safe side

you decide to stay completely

out of France.

But then the danger

seems too close

even to those boundaries,

and you feel

the timid part of you

covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend

who learns your secret and says,

“See Paris First.”

Reading:

We have not come to take prisoners by Hafiz

Read by Brian Ferguson, Minister, San Marcos UU Fellowship

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender ever more deeply

To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,

From anything

That may not strengthen

Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

“O please, O please,

Come out and play.”

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom and

Light!

Benediction:

The Fountain by Denise Levertov

Read by Rev. Meg Barnhouse

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

and you drinking there. And I too

before your eyes

found footholds and climbed

to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched – but not because

she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.