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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 21, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
In our religious education department, we are experimenting with teaching our children UU values through guided, joyful, playful games and activities. Many of our church groups are also engaging in more opportunities, for fun, fellowship, humor, and connection. We’ll take a look at how joy, fun, and connection can enhance our spiritual learning, build resilience and enhance our overall wellbeing.
Call to Worship
MINDFUL
by Mary Oliver
Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Reading
WELCOME MORNING
by Anne Sexton
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn’t shared,
I’ve heard, dies young.
Sermon
“BE MORE DOG” VIDEO
OK, it is not my intention to inflame a cat lovers versus dog lovers war by starting with that video this morning.
I love both.
I think the “Be More Dog” metaphor is about being less aloof and allowing ourselves to experience and engage in more fun and joy.
Though, of course, if you have ever engaged in cat cohabitation you know that they have their own ways of playing and playing pranks. Evil pranks.
As you may have heard already, there at the church, we are experimenting with help our children and youth learn our Unitarian Universalist history and value, engage in spiritual development and learning through games, play and joyful, fun activities.
And this is not just limited to our children and youth activities.
We will be infusing our adult religious education programs with this same sense of humor, play and joyfulness.
In addition their other activities, many of our church groups and ministries are also trying to add opportunities for connection, joy and fun, such as lunching together, holding potlucks, watching video and films together and other types of social activities.
Examples include our People of Color group, White Allies for Racial Equity group, our Alphabet Soup group and some of our Chalice Circles.
The same is being practiced more and more in our own and in other social justice movements. More and more, it is becoming clear that for such movements to be maximally effective, for folks to have resilience and avoid burnout, opportunities for social connection, play, humor and joy are absolutely vital.
And of course we have a fellowship team that creates such opportunities for the church as a whole.
Another group has started a game night here at the church.
All of next week, the church will be teaming with young witches and wizards attending our annual Hogwarts Camp UU.
The halls will be filled with laughter, fun, play and joy, while at the same time much learning about our faith will be happening.
Now, shhhh, don’t tell them I told you this, but I suspect that the adult volunteers, who make Hogwarts happen each year, experience as much, if not more, fun and joy as our children and youth they are serving do.
And all of this attention we are paying to fun and joy is for good reason.
More and more, we are discovering that fun and joy are key contributors to our learning and wellbeing.
More and more, science is finding that joyfulness and joyful play stimulate neurological patterns and neuro-chemical transmitters that improve our ability to learn and retain information.
Joy helps us lay down more complex and contextual memory and to retain such learnings and memories longer because they get associated with pleasure centers in the brain.
As one researcher puts it, “nothing lights up the brain like joy and play.”
Games and play also teach social skills and allow for a more creative perspective on the subject matter involved.
This is partially why many educational programs in general have begun to move away from strictly transmission models of teaching to more generative and even transformation models.
Within Unitarian Universalism there is even a model that is called “spirit play” (and in Christian traditions, “God Play”).
To over generalize a little, folks are moving away from the banking education model, wherein the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and deposits information into the passive minds of the students, to more like this (show Child Play Slide) wherein learning occurs through a sense of joy, play, games, humor, fun activities and social interconnectedness.
And, it is important to note that joyful play is not just rehearsal for adult challenges, as we oftentimes tend to think of it. For instance, if you prevent a kitten from playing, as an adult cat it will still know how to stalk, hunt and kill prey.
Humans and cats and dogs know instinctively know how to engage in play with each other simply for the joy of the playing.
In fact, all mammal species have been observed to engage in play at all ages of their lives.
The researcher I quoted earlier has found that play seems to have some vital biological role, just as sleep and dreaming do.
Joy, fun, play seem to be beneficial to us both psychologically and physically.
The opposite is true also. As adults, a lack of joyful play has been associated with depression. Children who are deprived of play often develop serious psychological issues as adults.
This was found to be a factor with Charles Whitman, the U.T. tower sniper who killed 16 people and injured 31 others here in Austin back in 1966.
I would propose that joy and play are also vital to our spiritual development and that a lack of joy damages our very souls.
In fact, there is a theory that church, along with its associated religious rituals, is in truth “deep play”. It is helping us understand deep and complex life issues in metaphorical ways at least partially through experiences of spiritual ecstasy (otherwise known as joy or bliss).
I want to share with you a story that I think illustrates both how we learn through our experiences of joy and how being open to joyfulness can be so good for us.
The guy in the video I am about to show you is a farmer and goat rancher from upstate New York named Jay Lavery. The video has become known as “The Barn Dance”.
Now, since our subject matter today is “Learning Through Joy”, and one of the ways we experience joy is dancing, I encourage you to get up and dance along with Jay if you are so moved – or at least to groove in place on your chair or pew if not.
VIDEO
I got a little worried when he started the stripper moves there (actually, he keeps his remaining clothes on through the rest of the video).
Mr. Lavery posted his video for his Facebook friends, partially because he had serious back problems, and he wanted them to know he was doing OK.
He says never expected that his joyful video would go viral, with over 7 million views in less than a year.
Fifteen years prior to making that video, Mr. Lavery had a traumatic back injury that required several surgeries including a discectomy and a spinal fusion.
His dancing, along with practicing yoga and meditation, are how he overcomes the back pain he would otherwise have and how he avoids having to take pain medications.
Now there could be some physical aspects to this, but I have little doubt that his joyfulness in his dancing has helped him learn how to move through the pain.
As he puts it, he hopes his video inspires “anyone to move in spite of pain and I hope this puts a smile on your face … ” Avery even got to go on the Ellen Degeneres show, where he expressed his great amusement over many aspects of what he calls his” 15 minutes of fame”, including several marriage proposals he has received from several women smitten by his silky moves.
“What they didn’t realize,” he says, “is I’m gay.”
So, if, as is apparent from Jay Lavery’s story, joy is so good for us.
If joy helps us learn more readily and in more complex and complete ways, why don’t we infuse more joy, fun, humor and play into our our educational institutions, our workplaces, indeed our lives?
Why has the banking model of education persisted for so long and why does it still continue to be the primary model throughout so much of our current educational system?
Well, I am not sure I know all of the answers to those questions.
I suspect though, that it could have something to do with our protectant work ethic and more broadly our puritan ancestry.
Work, school, and church are not supposed to be fun!
On a more individual level, I think we may sometimes not allow ourselves to fully experience joy because of what social science researcher Bene Brown calls, “foreboding joy”.
Now some of you may have heard me talk about Dr. Brown’s concept of foreboding joy before, so this time I thought I would let her tell you about it herself.
BRENE BROWN VIDEO
So, we do not get to experience true joy, the fullness of joy without vulnerability.
Joy requires a sense of belonging and connection, and we do not get these unless we risk being our authentic selves. We don’t get these unless we allow ourselves to also experience the inevitable sorrow and loss that goes along with living and loving fully.
Joy requires us to have the courage to be be vulnerable.
One of the religious values we have defined for ourselves here at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin is this:
“Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty.”
May we live that value together so that we may experience a full and vibrant joy together.
And let’s remember to dance, laugh, play and have a little fun while we are at it!
I would like to leave you with the words of Steve Garnaas Holmes, who is a Methodist Minister and author. He comes from a Christian perspective, so I invite you to translate with your own understanding of that which is ultimate as you listen to his words.
They are titled, simply, “Joy”. “Who says God has to be so serious all the time? That God can’t have some fun, go on a lark, crack a good one?
Who says God can’t evolve a platypus instead of a woodchuck, or a flightless bird just as a joke?
Or give you a gorgeous sunset just to see the expression on your face? Or invent laughter?
Who says God’s passion is reasonable and not unrestrained celebration?
Jesus’ first miracle was a party trick. Pure. fun. Wine from water. And really good stuff, too. And at a wedding, no less. It’s a parable of covenant faithfulness, and love, and an ironic reverse-foreshadowing of the Last Supper.
It’s a parable of abundance and beauty and mystery and needless splendor.
It’s about life, and about blessing, and about joy-way too much and too good, way more and better than we need. Ridiculous. Over the top joy.
So raise a glass! Drink deep.”
And amen to that.
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