Transformation

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
April 10, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The last of our church’s religious values, transformation is: “To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world.” What is transformation and how does it occur?

Call to worship

Now let us worship together.

Now let us celebrate our highest values.

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

Now we raise up that which we hold as ultimate and larger than ourselves.

Now we worship, together.

Reading

In the night,

I dreamt of a world made better by our togetherness.

Of reaching toward never before imagined horizons,
Made knowable and possible only by living in mutuality.

I saw distant lands made out like visions of paradise,
Replenished and remade through a courage that embraced interdependence.

We dwelt in fields of green together,
Fertile valleys nurtured by trust.

We built visions of love and beauty and justice,
Nourished by partnership, cultivated through solidarity.

I dreamt of lush forests thriving with life,
Oceans teaming with vitality,
Mountains stretching toward majesty,

Our world made whole again.

These things we had done together.

These things we had brought to pass with each other.

These dream world imaginings seemed possible in the boundless creativity we only know through our unity.

I awoke,

And still, the dream continues.

Sermon

“Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world” – Today is the final of a series of worship service on our church’s five religious values. I think it is fitting that our value of transformation is listed last among our values. It is in many ways the culmination of living our other values.

Our mission arose out of our values, and I also think it is significant that two of our values ended up being restated in the mission – community (“we gather in community”) and transformation (“transform lives” – and really, to “nourish souls” and to “do justice” also require transformation). Here’s why I think that is significant. I believe that transformation, both in our own lives and in our world, is the reason for religious and spirituality communities to exist.

Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology and religion wrote and spoke about the “hero’s journey”, mythological tales, which he found within all world religions. Such myths and religious stories, while, of course, not literally true, convey metaphorical truths about transforming ourselves and our world.

These myths contain a number of commonalities, not all of which we will go into today. Most often the central character is called from within a community where change is needed and must journey into a different environment – the wilderness, the desert, a mountaintop, the land of their enemies – where they are tested and challenged. In this process, the central character is spiritually transformed and returns to their community as an agent of continued transformation.

In these myths, transformation requires struggle – what the preacher at the little Baptist church we went to when I was a child used to describe in the temptations of Christ story as “trials and tribulations”. Transformation also always involves loss, as who the hero has been must cease to be in order for transformation to occur – something new to become.

It involves sacrifice and serving the needs of others, losing one’s self or giving of one’s self to something larger.

Campbell believed that we are all on a hero’s journey of sorts to find our deepest center – to transform ourselves into the person we were born to be. This, he said, is our “soul’s high adventure”.

Several summers ago, I spent three months as a student chaplain with the Seton hospital system. During that time, I was called upon to be with parents who had just lost young children, people in the throws of addiction, folks who had just been given a fatal diagnosis – people experiencing some of the most difficult situations we can go through in life.

People in that kind of circumstance are in a deep well of despair and grief. Being their chaplain required that I climb down in that well with them, that I dig deep down within myself and find some way to have at least an inkling of what they must have been feeling. It required that I feel with them and could truly say, “I’m here. I’m with you.”

And those experiences transformed me. Not only did they teach me a lot about what is and is not important in life, they put me back into touch with a range of emotions and ways of being that for many years of my life I had not allowed myself. They allowed me to reclaim the sensitive young boy I had been born, who had been told that such feelings were not appropriate for guys.

Now here is something significant about that story. Though I served many nights as a chaplain alone, I always had an intentionally constructed religious community I could call upon and go back to for support – my instructors and my fellow student chaplains – not to mention Wayne, my own church, friends and family.

That’s one of the paradoxes about transformation, growing into our true, most authentic selves more fully, ultimately happens through relationship with others and all that is.

We go out into the wilderness only to realize more greatly our interconnectedness, which then allows us a more profound sense of our place within that interconnectedness and our own expression of it. Thus transformed, we can go back into our community and more effectively be an agent for continued transformation.

This, I think, is the work of the church and of our own spiritual quests within it.

With our rituals, music, meditations, prayers, storytelling, faith development and other intentional ways of entering that deeper, more authentic place within, that spark of divinity in each of us, I think that religious community is particularly well”suited, in fact intended, to catalyze our souls’ high adventure.

Likewise, our rites of passage ceremonies and rituals, child dedications, coming of age ceremonies, weddings, memorial services and the like help us to mark and understand more intensely these transformations in our lives. Sometimes, we have intentionally sought out these transformative life events; sometimes they come unexpectedly. That’s the thing about transformation – it will come eventually whether we seek it or not. Our choices then are whether we use our agency in seeking it and how we respond to it when it comes to us spontaneously.

In 1991, I was the director of a non”profit organization doing clinical research studies to try and find new and more effective treatments for HIV disease and related infections. I worked with a network of similar non”profit research organizations to get some funding to send two representatives from each organization to the International Conference on AIDS being held in Florence, Italy that year. One of the funding sources stipulated that at least one of representative from each organization be a physician participating in the clinical research studies.

After talking with my board, we made the decision that I would ask one of our most active participating physicians to go with me.

And so it came to pass that I ended up inviting a certain Dr. Wayne Bockmon to go with me to Florence.

We flew into Rome, rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Florence. The entire way there we both talked about our miserable dating experiences, how we were both just done with the whole romance thing and would just be going it on our own in life.

The hospital back home where Wayne saw patients needing inpatient care had offered to obtain lodging for us in Florence. We get to Florence, and discover that the Hotel is called “The Grand” for a reason, marble staircases, Tiffany glass ceiling and all. Years later, we returned to it and could barely afford to have a glass of wine in the lobby.

They put us in one room together – a room that was clearly designed for a couple. At a reception that first evening, people kept asking us how long we had been together, and we would protest that we were just friends. But, after a week together in Florence, we had to start saying, “Well, now we’re more than just friends.”

When we got back home, I looked at Wayne and said, “Soooo, I took you to Florence for our first date, what’s next?”

It turns out that what was next was 25 years together in a relationship that has certainly transformed my life and made me a better person. Love and the transformation it brings come unexpectedly sometimes.

We found out later that the staff at the hospital and the folks at my organization had decided we should be together and conspired to try to make that happen. Joseph Campbell said that our transformations are the ones we are ready for. Maybe those folks knew something we didn’t!

So far, I have mainly been talking about individual growth and transformation. I’d like to talk now about growth within an institution, as a corporate body – transformation of the church as a religious community.

If the reason the church exists is to create a space within which seeds of transformation can be cultivated, then it makes sense that the church itself would also continually transform in order to be better and better able to fulfill our mission.

Our capital campaign is a giant and very tangible step this church has taken that will enable us to literally transform and enlarge our physical space. Doing so, will create a more welcoming space for the growing numbers of folks in Austin seeking a spiritual home that allows for that free and responsible search for their soul’s high adventure.

Doing so will also transform the religious community itself – who we are now will undergo a metamorphosis that I believe will move first UU Church of Austin into becoming even more fully the church it was born to become.

And yet, as I know our senior minster, Meg, has already talked about some, like with any of these journeys, it will not be without struggle – “trials and tribulations”.

I think it is worth reiterating that to get through the renovations, we will have to transform the ways in which we use the building and go about the activities of doing church for a while.

And all of these changes can stress us out. They can raise anxiety levels, so we will have to try help each other keep the level of anxiety in our community as a whole as low as we can.

It’s good to remember that sometimes anxiety expresses itself in ways that narrows the focus to something specific that may or may not be seem directly related to the larger, actual source of the anxiety.

So when someone leaves a stack of Styrofoam plates on a kitchen counter during the middle of the sanctuary remodeling and emails get sent, phone calls get made and Facebook posts get posted to try and ferret out the culprit, it might good for us all to try to take a step back and ask ourselves what might really be getting us all so wound up.

Might it be that what we’re truly stressed about is the fact that we’re temporarily not able to use our sanctuary? (And if we realize that, then we might have a better chance of avoiding all the drama before we find out that it was a construction crew who left them there anyway.)

Though, I have often thought, that if anyone asked Unitarian Universalists to articulate our theology of evil, all of our answers would somehow involve Styrofoam and invasive plants, me included.

So, how do we take that step back when we’re feeling anxious and before we find ourselves posting a screed on Facebook? Well, there are a number of methods, but it turns out there is one simple method that studies have shown can very often help.

It is just this. Breathe in on a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out on a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Repeat. Repeat until that anxiety driven older part of our brain let’s go of us and allows us to reengage the reason”centered parts of our brain.

That’s it.

And this works in lot’s of other situations too, including with the stress I bet a lot of us are feeling over the social and political discourse going on right now. I know Meg has also talked about this some also

I think it is worth continuing to discuss it though, because I think at least part the stress so many of us are feeling is due to the fact that:

– the racism and misogyny that have infected our current political campaign,
– the efforts to suppress voting rights,
– the laws legalizing discrimination against LGBT people being passed under a false claim of religious freedom,
– the efforts to take away women’s agency over their own bodies,

All of these are related. They are all in different ways efforts to maintain a system of straight white patriarchy.

Now, let me quickly add that I have a great deal of affection for many, many white straight guys, many of whom have helped fight for the rights of other folks. What we’re talking about here is a system of white straight patriarchy that got set up very early on and was the norm.

One characteristic of systems is that, once set up, they will struggle mightily to continue themselves, so it may be helpful to remember that the folks who are fighting to maintain the system have been taught that that is the way things are supposed to be by that very system itself. We can’t see the system sometimes when we are way down deep inside of it. That’s why people will support such a system even against there own interests sometimes.

In fact, I would argue that such a system harms even those who are at the top of its hierarchy by limiting the fullness of their humanity, like when I found that the definition of maleness I had been taught was keeping me from fully experiencing life. Knowing this, we might able to start from a place of greater empathy and curiosity when we engage those with whom we disagree.

And I do think we must engage them. As one of my professors at seminary said, “Like it or not, our religious values will be lived or not in the public and political arena.” The other voices will be there, so ours are needed for the transformation that heals our world and liberates all of us to have a chance. But our voices, again, are most effective when they are as non”anxious as possible – we self”differentiate, which means stating our values and convictions in a calm, non”personal way. By doing so, we may be able to lower the anxiety in the system itself, at least a little. And if, little by little, the anxiety in the system get lowered enough, more and more people will begin to be able to see the system itself.

And that’s when transformation becomes possible.

So, when that friend or family member you disagree with politically includes you on a mass email or a Facebook post that has your face turning red and steam coming out of your ears, try to remember our breathing trick so maybe you avoid sending back that scathing reply and then blocking them.

Breathe in on a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out on a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Repeat until the steam stops coming out of your ears.

Let’s practice that together. I invite you breathe with me.
Breathe in, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4.
Breathe out, 2, 3, 4. Hold 2, 3, 4.
Breathe in, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4.
Breathe out, 2, 3, 4. Hold 2, 3, 4.

Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

Let’s trying remembering to do that a lot together over the next months, as together, we each continue our “soul’s high adventure”.

Benediction

Transcendence.
Community.
Compassion,
Courage.
Transformation.

May you carry these, our church’s religious values, with you today.

As you go back out into the world, may they nourish your soul and provide the foundation for fully living into the person you were born to be.

Go in peace. Go with love. Amen and blessed be.

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