Community

December 27, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Nell Newton, Sermons, Video available

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Rev. Nell Newton
December 27, 2015
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

“Community: To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch.” In this second in our sermons series on our church’s religious values, former First UU member Rev. Nell Newton joins Rev. Chris in exploring the foundations for building religious community.

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.

Sermon

Rev. Nell Newton

“We Gather In Community”

When people chose those words – and it was a collaborative effort – this congregation was at a terribly beautiful moment. It was terrible because many people were still mad and hurt and angry and sitting far out on the edges. And beautiful because other people were crowding in close to see what they could do to be of help, how they could make things better. But let’s back up to what was going on before these words were chosen. Let’s start with a story….

Once upon a time there was a congregation that went looking for a minister. But not just any minister – no, they wanted a wonderful minister. They wanted a minister who would be bold and preach the paint off the walls. They wanted someone who would stick around and not just use them as a lower rung on his or her career ladder. They wanted someone who would challenge them! And that is exactly the kind of minister they got. It was wonderful and terrible. It was wonderful because the minster could preach the paint off the walls, but then terrible because it was hard to keep the walls painted. It was wonderful because the minister settled in and showed no inclination to leave them to better his or her own self-interests. But it was terrible because the minister didn’t show any inclination to leave for the congregation’s best interests either. It was wonderful because the minister challenged them. And it was terrible because, well, sometimes people need to be comforted too.

Ministers! But there was something else that was happening that the congregation had not experienced in a while. The minister drew people in – lots of people. Standing room only crowds of people who came to hear the minister. It was very exciting! But after the services, many of those people just got back in their cars and left. They were happy enough to hear the great sermons and watch the paint peel off the walls. They didn’t stay around afterwards to help repaint the walls or read stories to the kids or wash dishes after potlucks.

Now, in all fairness, those people were probably feeling pretty good about everything. They probably were feeling happy that they’d finally found a minister to listen to, so they could say that they had found a church. But what they hadn’t yet figured out is that sermons are not church.

Really. Church – if you do it right – is a verb, not a noun. And the folks who were just showing up for the sermons were missing the really hard, challenging, transformative part of church.

So, when things finally went “kaboom”, which happens if church is a verb, all of a sudden, the minister was gone! And the people who were there to watch the minister’s show, well, a lot of them just left. And that’s probably okay. It was a little sad to see the empty spaces where they had been sitting.

But, some of them didn’t leave. As the dust swirled and settled, they blinked, and as if waking from a magic spell, an illusion, and they began to notice that even though there was no minister, CHURCH continued.

And some of them began to recognize that the underlying, the foundational ministry in the church was the congregation. Those people they’d been sitting next to? They were all ministers. And good ones too.

It was during this time that the congregation – everyone who was still showing up – got to really see church as a verb – a process of creating and becoming together. It was pretty cool.

And when they set out to identify their mission, the reason for doing this church stuff, they all agreed that the most important part of what they were doing was simply coming together, gathering in community. Because while individuals are amazing and powerful, there are some things that you can only build where two or more are gathered.

I used to think of church as a wonderful banquet with welcoming tables, deeply satisfying food, and genial company. In this analogy the minister helps people find their place and points out good things to eat while the congregants take turns serving, eating and washing the dishes. The covenant serves as the house rules and there is a place for everyone at the table.

That’s a pleasant image, but it doesn’t include all of what really happens at church. It doesn’t include that radical bit about change.

These days I think of church more as a laboratory – a place where people can come and learn new ways of seeing and being. We’re building a new way and as we work sometimes there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke!

In this vision of church I see us conducting experiments with such titles as “Being Well Together” and “Walking and Talking”. Higher level experiments are also being conducted in “Not Walking and Not Talking”, and “Letting Go”. Church then becomes the place where we work at becoming a people so bold — a place where we change ourselves in order to change the world!

This version of church is explicitly a challenge to the people who identify as “SBNR” –“spiritual but not religious”. That’s how a lot of folks will explain why they don’t do church. They are just fine with their spirituality, no need to complicate things with institutions, or really, other people. Not even other SBNR people. Because, well, people. They can be so people-y. They can be so challenging.

And, there’s the problem with trying to do spiritual but not religious: if you’re off doing it all alone, there’s no one around to call you on your nonsense or useless abstractions, or self-indulgences that don’t ask you to look closer, work a little harder and become the best version of yourself. And there’s no one around to point out other versions of the holy, or new ways of giving thanks. Sometimes you need a near perfect stranger to point out the gaps in your theology.

So, come into this community of love and learning and falling down and getting up and starting over. It’s how we are doing our theology. Gathered in community.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson

Community – to connect with joy, sorrow and service with those whose lives we touch.

That’s our topic for today’s second in a series of sermons on this church’s religious values. Values that are at the core of this religious community and out of which our mission that we say together every Sunday arose.

I’d like to start by talking about what we mean by community – how we create and sustain religious community within the church, because I think sometimes when we talk about community we kind of have this Hallmark view of community where we’re all going to love each other all the time, and we’re only going to have joy and hugs and fun together, sipping coffee, munching on delicious bonbons and singing Kumbaya together.

And, no, we are not singing that today. Or ever; at least when I am leading worship.

Anyway, I think all of that is part of it. One of the things that I love about serving this church is that we do have fun – that we do demonstrate physical affection with one another – that we share a great sense of humor and joy.

Like, with a lasting marriage though, I think there’s more to it than that. I think that we also have to be aware that there will be struggles – that we will disagree – that we will have conflict from time to time, and in fact I would be wary of a religious community that never had conflict because it could signal that perhaps what we had actually created is a club of like minds, not a true religious community.

We have to be committed to and willing to do the work of maintaining relationship – of sustaining an ever-evolving, ever-changing religious community.

In fact there is a theology that says that God or the divine emerges out of the messiness of creating community. Now leaving aside for a moment that this theology envisions a supernatural version of the divine, which I don’t, I will say that I was fortunate enough to see exactly the process this theology tries to capture occur here in this very church after, what Meg refers to as the time of trouble had occurred. At a specially called congregational meeting, the congregation had voted by a fairly narrow margin to dismiss the person who was then senior minister.

It was messy. We had disagreements. We had hurt feelings. And yet leadership emerged that was wise enough to bring in outside help and to provide opportunities for members of the community to begin to speak with each other, both on and intellectual and an emotional level.

This community began the long process of forming a covenant of healthy relations that describes how we will be with each other – what promises we make to each other within the religious community. This community began to discern our values and to create our mission that gives us common purpose.

Out of the messiness and disagreement and hurt feelings, because some folks this religious community stayed in the struggle with each other and did the work of building and rebuilding relationship, this became a church even stronger than it had been before – a church that is providing a religious and spiritual home for more and more people -a church that is making real differences in our larger community and in our world – a church that I am so proud to serve.

Now, that’s an example from an extraordinarily challenging and thankfully rare situation. However, I think this willingness to stay in the struggle with each other – this willingness to embrace that true community will sometimes involve messiness – is necessary even during times such as the one that this church is undergoing right now, when things are going well, when there is joy and goodwill within our membership.

Because smaller but potentially destructive disagreements and conflicts will still happen that if left unattended and unspoken can fester and grow into larger problems. Because we are all human, and we will sometimes unintentionally fail one another.

And so, even during times such as this, religious community demands of us that we abide by our covenant with one another – that we ask for help when we need it -that we speak with one another directly and from the heart even over our smaller hurts and disagreements. Here at first UU church of Austin, we are fortunate enough to have a healthy relations ministry team that can help when doing so seems difficult.

It can be difficult. It can feel very vulnerable.

And perhaps that’s the key point. Without vulnerability, there can be no real religious community.

Only through being vulnerable with each other, can we create that true sense of religious community – can the divine emerge from among us.

Earlier, I talked a little about Community within our church walls. Now I’d like to talk about living this value Beyond them.

As many of you know this past summer, our church provided sanctuary to Sulma Franco, who had sought asylum in the U.S. because she feared persecution for having spoken out and organized on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in her home country of Guatamala. Due largely to her immigration lawyer making a mistake and the systemic injustice of our immigration system, she had been held 9 months in a detention center and was facing an imminent order of removal or deportation.

Working with a coalition of local immigration and human rights groups, other churches and faith leaders, we engaged in a campaign to pressure Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) to do grant Sulma a stay of removal so that she could remain in the U.S. while her immigration legal case could proceed. In August, the ICE office in San Antonio told Sulma’s new lawyer that they would grant the stay, but that Sulma would have to accompany her lawyer inside the ICE offices to sign the required paperwork. Not surprisingly, Sulma was afraid that if she went in the ICE offices, they might put her back into detention and deport her instead.

After much planning with our allies, and after our Senior Minister, Meg, received assurances from the officer in Charge of the ICE Office that Sulma would not be detained, we made plans for a whole entourage of folks to go to the San Antonio, where were joined by more folks from San Antonio outside the ICE building and several members of the press, whom we had invited.

We hit a snag when the ICE officer told us over the phone that by ICE policy he could not come outside and state in front of the press, that they would not detain her, so Sulma had to decide if she would still go in, with only the private assurances he had made to Meg. She decided that if Meg and I would lock arms with her, one of us on each side of her like this, and go in with her and her lawyer, then she would do it.

The ICE officer met us as we entered the building. Sulma was trembling. I could actually feel her shaking with fear. I only hope that if I ever had to, I could summon the courage it took her to walk in that building.

She was too terrified to let go of either Meg or me for any reason. To go any further, there was one of those metal detectors and X-ray belts you have to put your cell phones and bags and such on. The ICE officer took mercy on us as we fumbled around trying to figure out how to get things out of pockets and onto the conveyor belt while still locked arm and arm. He told us we could just go around but the space between the screening area and the wall though was very narrow so to get through still connected with Sulma, we had to kind of do this sideways shuffle.

I looked around, and there were these long lines of folks, almost all of whom where people of color, waiting and waiting to see someone about their immigration status. I thought, they must wonder who this woman is being escorted right past the lines and into a private office area, locked arm in arm with two white people one of them wearing some strange, bright yellow scarf. I thought, many of them must be terrified too.

After what felt like hours, ICE provided Sulma with the paperwork legally stating they would not deport her, and we left the office, Sulma holding her documents of freedom high in the air as her supporters cheered and celebrated her.

I think that on that day what Martin Luther King called “Beloved Community” had arisen. Now, I think that’s a term that gets overused, but as King used it, it involves a community of radical love, justice, compassion and interdependence. And to make the beloved community, we needed others. Our individual efforts to do justice are wonderful and needed AND our mission says that we gather in community to do justice. We have so much more power to do justice when we act together. We have so much more power to create the beloved community when we act with our interfaith partners and our larger denomination and a broad coalition of folks, some of them religious and some not, like we did that day in San Antonio.

Because we do these things not just to save one person, though that is vital and important, but to shine a light on our broken and inherently racist and LGBT oppressive immigration system, so that one day, if can build larger and larger coalitions, we might bring the change that will free all of those other terrified folks we passed by in that ICE office that day.

Building the beloved community requires, in the words of our great UU theologian James Luther Adams, the organization of power and power of organization. That’s why we gather in community to do justice.

That’s how we create the conditions for the divine to emerge in this world – in this time – here and now.

Benediction

As you go back out into the world now, know that there is a love that you carry with you beyond these church walls.

Know that our interconnectedness contains seeds of hope for justice and compassion to be made manifest.

Know that together, with one another and the many others who would join us to create a world wherein each is truly beloved, together, almost unlimited possibilities are still ours to create.

Go in peace. Go in love. Go knowing that this religious community awaits you and holds you until we are together again.

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 15 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.

The Christians and the Pagans

December 20, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 20, 2015
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Yule is a holiday that shimmers with elements of different cultures. There has been more interaction among peoples, cultures and religions than we sometimes know.

Call to Worship
From Rainer Maria Rilke

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fire, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!
powers and people,
and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.

Meditation reading:
Star Hawk

Hear the words of the Star Goddess,
the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven,
whose body encircles the universe:
“I who am the beauty of the green earth
and the white moon among stars
and the mysteries of the waters,
I call upon your soul to arise
and come unto me.
For I am the soul of nature
that gives life to the universe.
From Me all things proceed
and unto Me they must return.
Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices,
for behold-
all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.
Let there be beauty and strength,
power and compassion,
honor and humility,
mirth and reverence within you.
And you who seek to know Me,
know that your seeking and yearning
will avail you not,
unless you know the Mystery:
for if that which you seek,
you find not within yourself,
you will never find it without.
For behold,
I have been with you from the beginning,
and I am that which is attained
at the end of desire.”

Sermon

Good Yule to you all, and Merry Christmas! Along with our sisters, brothers and cousins in all Christian churches around the world, we are getting ready to celebrate the birth of the Baby, the Divine Child, the light of the world. We have all heard the story of this birth. This morning I want to talk about that story as the story of the divine seed in us, the wise baby spoken of in many cultures throughout the world.

In our Unitarian Universalist tradition we try to approach all scripture with respect, and with a broad sense of its possible meanings. One way we can do that is to approach the stories as if they were true in a transcendent way if not necessarily in an historical way. In other words, they tell truths, not about the world of history, but about the world of the soul.

Listen to the story of the birth of the Divine Child Yeshua in Bethlehem. His mother Mary had a visit from an angel who announced that she would give birth to a savior child. When it came time for the birth, the family was visiting Joseph’s home town of Bethlehem so they could pay their taxes. Born before Mary had been with a man, the baby was laid in a manger. Angels and shepherds attended his birth, and some time later three magi came from far off lands to pay tribute to the new king born in Israel. The magi had stopped in at the palace, asking King Herod where the new king was. The wicked King Herod quickly ordered all the males under the age of two in the town killed, so this royal child would not grow up to threaten his power. Warned by an angel to flee the slaughter, Joseph and Mary and their baby went for a time to Egypt, where they were safe.

The story of the Divine Child is repeated in many cultures throughout history. This information should let you know how important this birth story is, what the writers were saying about the baby by including these elements. They were saying he was a god-king, in a code the people of that time would hear and understand.

The Egyptian God Horus was born of the virgin Isis; as an infant, he was visited by three kings.

In Phrygia, Attis was born of the virgin Nama.

A Roman savior Quirinus was born of a virgin.

In Tibet, Indra was born of a virgin. He ascended into heaven after death.

The Greek deity Adonis was born of the virgin Myrrha, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. The Buddha is said to have been born of the virgin Maya, who was impregnated by a white elephant putting its tusk into her side. Those stories are from 500 BCE.

The most striking parallels are between Krishna and Christ (I say Christ because I want you to hear how like “krishna” it sounds, and also because that is how Christians talk about the divine aspect of Jesus, reserving the name “Jesus” for his human aspect.

Yeshua and Krishna were called both a God and the Son of God.

Both were sent from heaven to earth in the form of a man. Both were called Savior, and the second person of the Trinity.

Their mothers were holy virgins, who had similar names: Miriam (Mary) and Maia. His adoptive human father was a carpenter.

A spirit or ghost was their actual father.

Krishna and Jesus were of royal descent.

“Krishna was born while his foster father Nanda was in the city to pay his tax to the king.”

Both were visited at birth by wise men and shepherds, guided by a star.

An angel issued a warning that the local dictator planned to kill the baby and had issued a decree for his assassination.

Both were identified as “the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head.”

Jesus was called “the lion of the tribe of Judah.” Krishna was called “the lion of the tribe of Saki.”

Both were considered both human and divine.

I don’t tell you these things to shake anyone’s faith, in fact, many scholars are now cautioning us about making comparisons between religious stories that are too facile. I’m telling you that there are some similarities to lift up that this is a nearly universal human story that tells a truth about the life of the soul. The story of the Jesus, the Divine Child, has all the elements of every divine/human being’s story: Born in a miraculous way, threatened after birth but saved, visited by those who could see his light, a precocious child… the temptation, death and resurrection are part of all the stories too, but that is not what we are talking about here. In fact, what I want to talk about is the Divine Child in each of us. I want to say that maybe we are all divine and human at the same time.

The image of the Divine as a baby is so rich. I invite you to let go of your hold on the Judeo-Christian God you believe in or don’t believe in. Open up to an understanding of the Divine as Love, as Light, as Spirit. When God is a baby, no one has to fear Him. No one has to tremble before His wrath. No one has to wonder what they have done wrong, how they have disappointed Him. The thought of a baby lets you start new, before anyone got a picture of what you are like. Before you got defined and diagnosed. Before you made any mistakes, before there were any misunderstandings.

A baby love, a baby light, a baby spirit carries within itself all that it will become, like an oak within the acorn, like a mighty river that starts as a spring welling out of the earth in a high and quiet place. The light starts as a tiny sliver, something you care for, something you nurture, you are careful with it. You delight in it.

What if this is a story about the soul entering the world of our body? The light of spirit and wisdom, the Divine Seed (to use a traditional Unitarian phrase) being planted in a human being? Most of the founders of our free religion believed that the seed of God, a tiny sliver of the light, was in each of us. Maybe it enters into us when we are in the dark of our mother’s womb.

Do you sometimes have the experience of the Divine seed glowing within you? Does it sometimes come in a midwinter time of life, when it is dark, when it is difficult to see in front of you? When you are in a time of not knowing, uncertainty? In the dark, even the tiniest light is visible.

The Divine seed, the wise baby, is within all of us, containing the whole of divinity in itself, yet needing to grow.

Antoine St. Exupery says: “the seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground.” (“Flight to Arras”) We have the experience of being able to feel the light, however faint, as it shows us the next step to take. When our souls are seeds “haunted by the sun,” we can grow. Is our soul the seed, or is it the light? Both. Do we long for the Divine, or are we Divine ourselves? Both. Do we search for God or is God within us? Both. That is my belief. You, as always, are free to believe about this what makes sense to you.

In times of confusion and doubt, see us able to visit our soul like the magi, the wise magicians, kneel before it with gifts of quiet, respect and love. We can nurture the light, the seed of God within us. We can protect it from the forces of power over, the forces of fear and control. The Herod power, the light-killing, love-killing power of the outer world (and of our inner world as well.) I wish for you all at this time of the rebirth of the light that the light be reborn in you, that love be cradled in your heart, that your spirit be tenderly cherished.

Here is a poem by the 17th century Muslim Sufi poet Hafiz that says what I want to leave you with:

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender even more deeply
To freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
To hole 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.

Hafiz

1. William Harwood, “Mythology’s last gods: Yahweh and Jesus,” Prometheus Books (1992), Page 257.

2. Rev. Phil Greetham, “3: Where did our Magi come from?”

3. “Mithra,” Barbara G. Walker, “The Woman’s encyclopedia of myths and secrets,” Harper & Row, (1996), Pages 663 to 665.

4. Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, “The Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?,” Thorsons, (1999).

Author Kersey Graves wrote a book in 1875 titled “The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors.” It lists 346 “striking analogies between Christ and Chrishna.”

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

A New Year’s building update from Meg

December 15, 2015 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Capital & Building Campaign updates

(As published in the January 2016 newsletter.)

What Has Been Done:

We dreamed of the spaces we wanted for ourselves, for our children, and for the people who are future members of this church. We had deep talks about whether to buy in another location or stay here at the end of Grover Avenue. Deciding to stay, we began and are continuing to work hard to raise the money through our six-year capital campaign. Even though we didn’t hit our dream goal, it was a triumph nevertheless, with pledges totaling more than five times our annual giving. That is as much as the boldest consultants will project for a capital campaign.

We put together a building team from names given by the congregation and from members who have experience with building projects, from design through permitting through construction. After interviewing a group of architectural firms, the team chose to work with McKinney/York (mckinneyyork.com). This firm was budget conscious, they listened well, they spoke both in concepts and practicalities, and they knew Unitarian Universalism and its proud architectural history.

As part of their talk about practicalities, they let us know that, with a building of this vintage, we were bound to run into some hitherto unseen problems. We were dismayed but not surprised, then, when the engineers combed through our site and our building last month to make an in-depth analysis of what they had to work with and found that the roof on the religious education wing rests on walls that had never been meant to be load-bearing walls. The stress of that extra weight over many years is buckling those walls, which must be shored up. This cost will take 120,000 dollars of our budget. One possible solution would be to build a structural frame just inside our concrete block walls that will support the roof and face it with sheetrock, which will provide a new interior finish for the RE rooms. This and other elements are crucial for the safety of adults and children in the building, and for code compliance.

All in all, the practical “must-do” elements like shoring up the RE wing, replacing water pipes which are too narrow, sprinklering the sanctuary, making the bathrooms ADA compliant, changing the way the air in the sanctuary is vented, doing asbestos abatement, strengthening fire walls, and other such unglamorous but necessary work will take nearly half a million of our budget, leaving us about 2.7 million dollars to work with for the rest of the project.

What will be done:

What can we get done for that? What “scope of work” can we reasonably expect? That’s what we are trying to figure out. Meeting as many of your desires from our Town Hall Meetings last year is our task, and the good news is that we will be able to address many of the priorities within the budget you have given us. There will be good new ADA compliant bathrooms. We know that having an upgraded, workable kitchen was at the top of everyone’s list. Also high on the list was expanding the sanctuary to enable church growth. A new entryway and expanded Gallery area will ease the flow on Sunday mornings. The building team and the architect’s team are now hard at work to allocate our available resources in the very best way so as to accomplish as much of these priorities as we can, creating a more intentional welcome for the people who come through our doors.

In the last meeting with the architects, we were shown various exciting plans, most of which would have required us to stretch above the budget. We mixed and matched various elements, cut others, stoically accepted the news about the obstacles to be overcome, and asked the architects to go back to their drawing board to make a new plan, pared down to what we could afford. My expectation is that, when we meet with the congregation at the end of January (watch the announcements for the date) we will have diagrams of a plan in which you will see beauty, practicality and, above all, welcome. At that point, the architects’ team will invite questions and comments. After that, they will make a dimensional design, and will ask again for a meeting with the congregation later in the spring before proceeding with the final design and construction documents.

Any building project takes time, adjustments, negotiation, and management of expectations. You must articulate not only what you want, but why you want it. In a congregational building project, you must not only want for yourself, you must want for the people you don’t even know yet, you must want on behalf of the future. It’s a spiritually deepening and challenging exercise.

When the last congregation I served as settled minister built its new sanctuary, I warned them that we would have conflicts. The Episcopal Church in town nearly split over how far toward the altar the carpet should come and what portion around the altar should be slate floor. Another church I attended in college was having a discussion about whether to install a brass cross at the front of the sanctuary or a rough-hewn wooden one. One Sunday morning people showed up to see that some anonymous person had installed a rough wooden cross the night before, and no one even knew who it was. And no one ever had the nerve to uninstall it. Feelings about church buildings run high. It’s natural, since this is the container for our worship, our child rearing, our life event ceremonies, fellowship dinners, times of being soaked in beauty by the music, and planning our social justice outreach. It’s ok to disagree with one another here. All the church asks of us is that we disagree with curiosity and respect, as the covenant states. The guide for all of our decision-making is our mission, values and our ends. Those are on our website.

Christmas Pageant

December 13, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse, Rev. Marisol Caballero, Gillian Redfearn, Vicki Almstrum
December 13, 2015
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We present our annual Christmas pageant in an intergenerational, all-ages service. Our children perform in costumes of their choosing.

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

An Upside-Down World: A Hymn of Reversal

December 6, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 6, 2015

As the choir is singing Bach’s beautiful Magnificat, the sermon will give background on Mary, her words, and the radical social, political and personal layers of this most ancient of Christian hymns.

Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Saying Grace, Being Gratitude

November 29, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons, Video available

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Susan Yarbrough
November 29, 2015

Beyond focusing on gratitude once a year, how can we do more than simply be periodically grateful? How can we practice gratitude so consistently that we not only live into it, but actually become it?

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Family Life as a Spiritual Path

November 29, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 22, 2015

Can we gain more understanding of our place within our family? Why are we the way we are? How can we love those around us more capably?

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

December 13, 2015 Congregational meeting

November 19, 2015 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Governance Documents

This is your official notice for our regularly scheduled congregational meeting on Sunday, December 13, 2015, 1:15 p.m.–2:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary.

Copies of the meeting packet, including the agenda and budget, are available in the copy room at the church and by clicking on the link below:

12-13-15meetingpacket

The voting list will be posted by Wed. November 25 in the copy room at the church. Please check the list and let Chris Jimmerson know if you have any questions or believe you have incorrectly been omitted from the list. Chris may be reached at chris.jimmerson@austinuu.org and (512) 452-6168.

The church bylaws specify the following regarding voting eligibility: “Individuals who have been members of the church for 30 days or more and who have (as an individual or part of a family unit) made a recorded financial contribution during the last 12 months and at least 30 days prior to the meeting, have the right to vote at all official church meetings.”

We will be providing childcare during the meeting. Please RSVP to childcare@austinuu.org.

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

November 15, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Marisol Caballero, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Marisol Caballero
November 15, 2015

Our Covenant of Healthy Relations emphasizes treating each other and visitors with hospitality and respect, but “respect” means many things to many people. As we move toward becoming a multicultural church, let’s consider together various ways of treating others with respect.

Text of this sermon is not yet available. Click the play button to listen.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Report from the Building Team

November 15, 2015 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Capital & Building Campaign updates

We have received a preliminary “Pre-Design Report” from McKinney-York Architects. This includes analyses of materials, plumbing, roofing, landscape slopes, water pathways, air conditioning and heating systems, foundations, etc. They have given us some examples of playground concepts, and possibilities for where to put the money we have to work with. The building team will meet Dec. 2 to confer about this report. It is our intention to bring the congregation as a whole into the conversation after we have applied the congregation’s stated priorities (from Town Hall meetings in 2014) to the ideas from the architects. These conversations may happen as early as January. Please watch an announcement and newsletters for the Town Hall meeting schedule.

(As originally published in the December 2015 newsletter.)

November 15, 2015 Pre-congregational meeting

November 12, 2015 by Sasha Lorenzo Posted in Governance Documents

Please join us for the pre-congregational meeting on Sunday, November 15 at 1:15 p.m. in the sanctuary. Childcare will be available. We will discuss the proposed agenda and materials to be voted upon at the formal congregational meeting to be held on December 13 at 1:15 p.m.

Materials for the meeting are available in the copy room at the church, or by clicking on the link below:

11-15-15meetingpacket.pdf

The ugly duckling

November 8, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 8, 2015

Another in the fairy tale sermon series, why do we sometimes feel that we don’t belong, that we don’t fit? What are the blessings and curses of being different from those around us?

Text of this sermon is not available. Click the play button above to listen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

At the threshold

November 1, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 1, 2015

What is it like being at the end of one’s life? What do people think and write about? On this All Saints Day, we’ll say the names of loved ones we have lost.

Call To Worship

Our call to worship today is an adaptation of a poem by Birago Ismael Diop, a Senegalese veterinarian, diplomat, poet, and storyteller whose work revived interest in African folktales. He died in 1989, and many of you will recognize his words in the song “Breaths” by the African American women’s singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Listen more often to things than to beings,
Listen more closely to things than to beings.
‘Tis the Ancestor’s breath when the fire’s voice is heard,
‘Tis the Ancestor’s breath in the voice of the waters.
Those who have died have never, never left.
The dead are not under the earth.
They are in the rustling trees, they are in the groaning woods,
They are in the crying grass, they are in the moaning rocks.
The dead are not under the earth.
Those who have died have never, never left.
The dead have a pact with the living.
They are in the woman’s breast, they are in the wailing child.
They are with us in our homes, they are with us in this crowd.
The dead have a pact with the living.
The dead are not under the earth.

Reading

A Parable of Immortality by Henry Van Dyke

This is a poem by Henry Van Dyke, an American author, statesman, Presbyterian clergyman, and professor of English literature at Princeton University until his death in 1933.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
“There she goes!”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight … that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
there are other eyes watching her coming …
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout …

“Here she comes!”

Sermon

I was at the bedside of a man in my congregation. He was dying. “I don’t know how to do this,” he said. He had been a professor, a scientist. He’d been mean to his wife, mean to his grown kids, mean to the people in the congregation. I was surprised at the openness of this moment.

“I don’t either,” I said. “I’ve sat by a lot of people while they were dying. It looks like you just go farther and farther away, and your body shuts itself down. Maybe it’s like falling asleep. You’ve done that plenty of times, right?” He was fighting, kicking at death like he had kicked at life. One thing I’ve noticed over my thirty-five years of being a minister is that people seem to die the way they live. Some want to be no trouble, they slip away when no one’s looking. Some want to be surrounded by family and friends, some want to be sung to, read to. One man who was well loved in the congregation died in the hospital, and his nurse that night happened also to be a member, and his wife was there. She held one hand, Greg, the nurse, held the other, and I held onto his feet as he breathed his last.

My mother died at home. She’d been sick for five years, and she’d asked to come home to die. We made a pallet by the couch where she lay. I slept there that night. Sometimes when she’d called out, I’d said “I’m here.” Once, she said, “Just a second, I’ll be right there,” as if she had a long way to come back to where we were watching with her. One gardener said he just hoped he wouldn’t outlast his legs. When his legs went, he was ready to go. He was 92, and he said he’d thought he would like to get to 95, but now that he was looking at it from a wheelchair, he didn’t care to get there so much any more. My great-grandfather, the preacher who had been at his church fifty-four years, who retired when he was 80 by saying, after the sermon, “no one should preach past their 80th birthday, so today I retire.” As the buzz in the congregation died down, he asked Brother Matthew to pray, and while everyone’s head was bowed for the prayer, he walked down the aisle of the church and out the front door. That was his last day of work. When he lay dying, his family kept watch on the porch. Through the open windows they heard him saying “Isaiah, I’m James Hearst Pressly, from Statesville, North Carolina. I’m pleased to meet you. Jeremiah, James Hearst Pressly, Statesville, North Carolina. Pleased to meet you.” Then he died.

The end of life is a threshold time, meaning that it is a time when things come up for review, when changes are made more easily. Families can reconcile or break apart. Often, emotionally wrenching decisions have been made. Atul Gawande, in his book “Being Mortal,” talks about people weighing treatment options. How much pain are you willing to endure to add two months more of life? Medicine can prolong technical life for so long – what measures do you want them to take? How do you decide? How much does being at home matter to you? Who do you want to talk to? Do you have any regrets you want to take care of, if you can?

Some people’s thoughts have been mostly of the people they were leaving behind. They worried about how they’d get along. Some people get right to the point of dying and they haven’t made any plans, any arrangements. Everyone’s been talking to them about “fighting,” and no one has just gone on and asked what they would like to have happen at the end. That’s sometimes the minister’s job. “What do you want for your memorial service?” You might ask. It’s good to give it some thought, that way you get to pick readings that say something about you, songs you like. No one who is crazed with grief has to figure all of that out.

I’m asking you to think about these things. Talk about them with your family before you get sick. Take care of your relationships so you won’t have any regrets that could have been fixed. Practice accepting help so you will be graceful to your caregivers, rather than surly. When you’re angry at having to be helped, your helpers have a double job of helping you and reassuring you, or helping you and enduring your surliness. What questions do you want to ask your medical team? How can you communicate to them what things are important to you? Think about that now. They will want to extend your life. What do you enjoy in your life? What do you want to hold on to? Write them down and stick them in your freezer, or email them to me. I have a file I’m keeping of people’s wants and wishes for their memorial services. I have a form you can fill out if you’d like, that I can send to you. Me, I want the song Skylark at the beginning of my service. It’s a sad song, and it’s going to be a sad time. At the end, “Blue Skies.” And I want people to cry. Dying is scary, but we are brave, and we can talk about it together.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Transcendence

October 25, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
October 25, 2015

Transcendence: to connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life. In this first of a series of sermons on the religious values that are the foundation of our religious community, we will explore the meaning and experience of transcendence.

Call to worship

Come into this place of worship, where we live our values and mission together:

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

Come into this place that, through our values, we make sacred together.

Reading

Paradox
by Chris Jimmerson

I am in the leaves glowing green from backlit sun. I am in the freshly mown grass, and I flow throughout all in drops of water.
I expand through distant galaxies and rise upon stormy winds.

And yet, I am not.

I am one and many.
Here, where time has no meaning, or perhaps, all times exist at once.
Here, where place has no meaning and yet it is possible to exist in all places at once.

And yet, I am not.

I cease, melting into nothingness and yet into everything.
I know the heart of the raven and the swift reflexes of the dolphin,
even as these, too, blend into the whole.

Light. Darkness. Movement. Stillness. Glowing fires. Freezing snow. Hurricane. Blizzard. Stones. Mountains. Sand. Oceans.

Unity.

I am.

Sermon

Several years ago, I was serving on the board here at First Unitarian Universalist – this was before I went to seminary – and we were in the middle of a series of sessions with the congregation to discern what are now our values and our mission.

The folks on the board had gone through one of the sessions first. Our job after that was to listen deeply at other sessions, as other church members participated in the process.

I’ll never forget the first session where I was there to listen. I walked into Howson hall on a Saturday morning to find a group of folks who I knew were almost all self-identified atheists.

Now, I also knew from having already been through the process, that a major part of it involved people sharing their “experiences of the holy”, so I was thinking to myself, “I wonder how this is going to work?” Twenty minutes later, we were passing around boxes of tissue, as people told of times when they had felt connected to something larger than themselves, when they had experienced awe and wonder, when their hearts had expanded. So, there our group of atheists sat, in a church fellowship hall, dabbing tears from their eyes over sharing stories of experiencing the holy.

It was beautiful and moving and, well, holy.

What this exercise did was help us determine what values we had in common, as revealed through these experiences, as well as to reclaim that word “holy” for ourselves. Then, combining these values with the results from some other exercises we did, the board was to suggest what the congregation held as its key purpose or mission. That’s how we got the statement we still have on our wall and say together every Sunday.

I start with that story because we do not talk about our values as often as our mission, nor about how both came to be determined – that the values came first – the mission emerged out of our values. It will be important to remember this process as we live out and continue to assess our values and mission, as we grow into our future.

So, this morning, I am beginning a series of sermons on each our five religious values, starting with the one we list first, because you know, “Transcendence in Twenty Minutes or Less”, easy, no problem.

I actually do think it is important that we start with our religious value of transcendence, because I think there are good reasons we ended up citing it first.

Here is one of them. After those sessions I just told you about, we compiled the number of times each value was expressed by folks in the congregation and created one of those Word Art graphics that shows those that were mentioned the most often in a larger font size. Perhaps partially as a result of the way the sessions were structured, this is what we got.

Transcendence (and related words people had used to describe their experiences of it) were clearly the largest in the graphic.

It is important here to describe what folks meant by transcendence because one meaning of the word can be to overcome, to rise above, and certainly, we do, for instance, try to transcend oppression through our social justice efforts. What people were talking about here though was more of an experience of transcendence, an experience outside of their day-to-day experience of life, an awe and wonder of the unity of life.

Science has begun to examine these types of experiences and has found that what people label as transcendent experiences vary as to what seems to cause them, the exact nature of the experience and the degree of intensity. However, there does seem to be a common set of characteristics to them that includes:
– a sense of belonging and connectedness with others and with all of creation
– Closely related to this, a sense of both dissolution of self and a flowing or expansion outward toward a sense of unity with all that is
– An altering of one’s normal sense of space and time
– An acceptance of paradox
– A perception of beneficial changes in perspective and behavior afterwards.

These characteristics are remarkably similar to the way our folks described their experiences on that Saturday morning in Howson Hall.

Here is another reason why I don’t think it is all that surprising that transcendence as a value emerged so strongly here at the church. While as Unitarian Universalists, we come out of a tradition that has certainly always had a strong element of rationality and reason, so too has our tradition always contained a strain of finding truth and beauty through personal experience. And these two can sometimes be at odds.

Our Transcendentalist forbearers provide the obvious example. In the 1800s, people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker got themselves into trouble with, not just the conservatives of their time, but also their fellow Unitarians, by saying things like the miracles ascribed to Jesus in the bible didn’t literally happen. Reason says that doesn’t make any sense. Parker even went on to say that true Christianity would exist even if it were to turn out that Jesus had never lived.

Tell that to a fundamentalist even today. Then run away very, very quickly. And yet, the Transcendentalists were also reacting against the overly rational, dry worship and preaching styles of the Unitarians of their time. They found it devoid of personal spiritual experience. Emerson left his ministry and found what he clearly described as transcendental experiences through self-reflection and nature. He wrote:

“Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

I have always thought that is a beautiful passage. Well, except for the transparent eyeball part. That’s just kind of Éweird. But then when he went on to explain it as “I am nothing; I see all” it sounds very similar to “the sense of both dissolution of self and a flowing or expansion outward toward a sense of unity with all” that I mentioned earlier.

This influence is with us even today. Our Unitarian Universalist association of congregations lists six sources from which we draw wisdom and spirituality. The very first source is stated like this: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”

I think Emerson has also handed down to us a tradition of pushing back against the idea of hierarchical or vertical transcendence wherein our experience of it can only occur through a God that is “up there”, and they can only be mediated by the institution of the church and its religious authorities.

That’s how the little Southern Baptist church we went to when I was a child was. God existed in some elevated, holy realm, while we sinners wallowed down in the physical realm. The preacher and the deacons at the front of the church were holier than the rest of us, so we were not allowed to go up there except to get saved (or if we were part of the cleaning crew). The communion was brought to us lowly ones there in our pews.

Now, even then I didn’t like this, so, one Sunday when I was six years old, the time came in the service where you could go up front and say that you had been saved that day, so up I went and got saved. I don’t really remember having some transcendent experience of Jesus washing my soul clean or anything. I was six. I think I just wanted to be up their with the holier than thou people, the cool kids. And, please, no cracks in receiving line about me later becoming a minister.

Emerson believed in a very this worldly God that, to oversimplify a bit, was both the unity of all things and that also existed within all things. There was a spark of the divine in every person, so one did not necessarily need a church to experience transcendence.

Jerome A. Stone, a current day Unitarian Universalist theologian take this a step further by removing God from the experience altogether. Citing a perspective called religious naturalism, Stone speaks of these experiences as horizontal rather than vertical transcendence. He gives two examples.

In the first, he tells of the time that he got a call letting him know that his father had died. His daughter, who was eight years old at the time, came into the room where he had slumped into a chair. She asked what was wrong. When he told her, she said, “Oh daddy”, got in the chair with him, and wrapped her arms around him. Stone says he had the experience of transcendence as is typically described, only its source was the gift of love and comfort offered by his daughter, rather than by the grace of some God.

Similarly, he tells of having another of these experiences during the late 1960s. He was participating in weekly marches to demand a housing ordinance regarding racial equality in the city where he was busily attending graduate school. He says that he was pulled to do so by a moral demand coming, again, not from some God, but from a sense of ethics and compassion.

Interestingly, the theology that appeals greatly to me personally maintains this idea of horizontal transcendence but also includes a concept of the divine. Process relational theology, to oversimplify a bit again, conceptualizes the divine, as an ever-evolving process that is itself the sum total of every process of becoming (or evolution and change) throughout the entire universe. These processes of becoming include me, you, the rocks, the plants – all that is – we are all ever-changing and interconnected in ways that are beyond our normal, every day understanding.

The divine, whether seen as a metaphor or an actual presence, also holds all of the creative possibilities that are available to us in each moment. In this worldview then, we experience transcendence when we get a glimpse of the true depth and complexity of that interconnectedness – a sense of deep belonging that drives in us a love for all of creation and that lures us toward creativity, justice and beauty.

Hey, it’s a pretty theology, whether you agree with it or not! So that’s just a few of the ways some Unitarian Universalists have thought about these experiences. There are many, many other ways of viewing them throughout the world’s religions and, more recently, through various psychological and neurological theories about them.

So, as I thought about this first of our values, I struggled, not so much with their source nor what may be going inside with them, but instead with why they seemed to be of such value to us. What do they do for us? I was reading shame and vulnerability researcher Dr. Brene Brown’s latest book when I had a realization about these experiences that I really did not want to accept at first. That happens to me a lot with Dr. Brown’s work, so she pisses me off. And bless her for doing so.

I think at least one of the things we draw from these experiences is a greater capacity and willingness to allow our hearts to break wide open – an ability to love wholeheartedly, even though doing so will inevitably involve loss and heartbreak.

A while back, it was a very cold night, so we had the fireplace going. At the time, my spouse, Wayne, was suffering the worst of some very serious, potentially life-threatening health issues. He was lying on the couch across from the fireplace, covered with a blanket, sleeping. Our two ridiculously spoiled Basenji dogs had curled up on the couch beside him. It’s funny how our animal friends know when we are not doing well. They were 13 and 14, about as far as their expected lifespans go.

I sat in a chair looking at them, thinking about the thousands of years dogs and humans have been gathering together next to a fire and how many times a similar scene must have been occurring across our hemisphere in that very moment.

And I had that transcendent experience – that sense of deeper connection and belonging – that sense of self both dissolving and expanding outward toward an ultimate love and a beautiful unity.

And yet, it was achingly beautiful, because my heart was breaking over the potential for loss in my immediate, very real, every day world.

And my heart grew larger – large enough to withstand such loss – filled up with a deep understanding that I would not give up one single moment of the pleasure and joy and love they have brought into my life.

Now, I want you to know that Wayne is doing much, much better and that so far the pups are still going, still spoiled and still misbehaving.

If we think back to all of the examples of these experiences I have talked about just in this sermon, they all involved this sense of our hearts breaking wide open: our folks in Howson Hall moved to tears by one another’s stories; Jerome Stone’s story of being offered grace by his young daughter over the loss of his own father; his story of participating in marches because the world as it was what not the world he longed for; even Emerson’s description of our experiences of transcendence through being in nature, I think involve a sense of loss, because we know it is all temporary – all of the life around us will also end and be replaced – and even the very rocks in the hillsides will eventually dissolve away and be transformed into something new.

Abraham Maslow, who founded humanistic psychology, called these experiences “peak experiences”, and he thought that they generate within us a set of values that are more life-giving and life-fulfilling – values that have to do with connection and belonging.

I think he was right. And if I am correct that these experiences help us to break our hearts wide open so that they grow and can love more fully even though we will know loss, then perhaps the biggest reason we put transcendence first on our list is because the rest of our values emerge out of it. It takes courage to love wholeheartedly, knowing our hearts will be broken and yet also knowing that it is still worth it.

Loving whole-heartedly is the very essence of compassion. It is at the heart of the empathy required to create community.

Together, these make possible the ultimate reason I think we gather in community, transformation – the growth that changes our lives and heals our world.

Throughout time, ritual, prayer, music, poetry, meditation, art, singing, working together for a just cause, intentional silence, the things we practice here at this church, have all been known to be capable of generating this state of transcendence.

It’s pretty fantastic then, that we have chosen to value it so much.

Hallelujah and amen.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Dialogue with Conservatives

October 18, 2015 by tom Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons, Video available

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 18, 2015

It has become more and more difficult to have fruitful conversations with people who are different from us in their view of the world. How do we talk to one another?

One of the winners of the auction item inviting a suggestion of a sermon topic suggested that I preach on how she could better talk to her conservative relatives. We all have family members who think very differently from the ways we do. This sermon is a series of suggestions and some crucial bits of information about how liberals can talk to conservatives. This is as much a roadmap of how Republicans should argue with Democrats too.

Hard Wired

The news from science about changing a person’s mind through rational discourse is this: When someone feels something strongly, you can talk yourself blue in the face and not make a dent. You can post the wittiest and most cogent memes on Facebook, you can email jokes and facts and charts and not make a dent. You won’t make a dent in you and their memes won’t make a dent in you. We almost can’t help it. Study after study is showing that the very brains of liberals, conservatives and moderates are wired differently. In a study at University of Nebraska, the scientists follow people’s involuntary responses, including eye movements, when they are shown scary, neutral, pleasant or disgusting photos. It turns out that conservatives react more strongly to the pictures which might create fear or disgust. John Hibbing, of the University of Nebraska, says conservatives are more attuned to fearful or negative stimuli. So the conservative focus on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, and wanting the widespread availability of guns may go with an underlying threat-oriented biology. John Jost from NYU drew a lot of backlash from conservatives when his studies seemed to show in 2003 that conservatives have a greater need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Their funding was looked into, but so many peers were finding the same results that it makes everyone safer. The correlations between the body’s reactivity and political ideology are so striking that they can predict a person’s political views from simply watching the eye movements they make when seeing the aversive photographs. There is a common sense evolutionary imperative for threat-oriented wiring. Conservatives also tend to be happier, more emotionally stable. Liberals a bit more neurotic. Being sure of things, having strong ideas of what’s familiar and an aversion to what’s strange or icky keeps you happier, apparently, than being open to new experiences, being bothered by inequality and fretting about the suffering of others. I’m not saying conservatives don’t fret about the suffering of others. They just have a more certain, rule oriented plan for what should be done. I think, since there seem to be almost even numbers of those on the right and left, that nature decided we need people with their foot on the gas and people with their foot on the brake, in terms of social change.

Moral Code

It’s hardwired. The only way to change someone’s mind is to show them that their behavior or practice is counter to their own moral code. Not counter to your moral code, their own. But other studies show that the moral codes used are different. In a study by Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia, liberals cared more about fairness and compassion. Conservatives cared about those two sets of moral imperatives too, but also measured things in terms of respect for authority, the purity and sanctity of ideas and institutions and in-group loyalty. Those last three were less important to liberal’s thinking.

Steps to Change

Talk about the FBI hostage negotiators about this. What they know is that arguments are emotional. It is rare that someone you’re arguing with will change their mind due to a rational argument. Negotiators have diagramed what they call the Path to Behavioral Change. The first step is active listening. When a Republican is talking to a crazy liberal, or a liberal is talking to your wacky uncle who listens to Rush, the first step in changing someone’s mind is active listening. So you would say “tell me more.” You would say “How did you come to this view?” As they talk, you don’t evaluate: “hm, that’s a good point,” or “I’m not sure your facts are straight….” You just say small encouraging things. “hm.” Or “I hear you.” You might ask open ended questions, like I mentioned before “How did you come to that view?” “What do you think about the front runners?” “What policies really feel important to you?” You can also just, without being weird about it, repeat the last phrase they said. If they say “I just think this is the stupidest group of leaders we’ve ever had.” You could say “the stupidest we’ve ever had?” Using pauses can be extremely effective. When the Moonies and I were talking about their beliefs, sometimes all I would need to do was stay quiet after they had said something and let their words hang in the air. “You say Mr. Moon takes away your sins before he marries you? How does he do that, exactly? By dabbing some wine on your photographs Hm.” It also can help to name the emotions you hear. “That sounds like it was upsetting.” “That makes you mad.” “It doesn’t seem fair to you.”

It’s hard for even the most passionate and committed person to carry on a one-sided argument. You are listening, and not only that, you are showing them that you are listening. This is a rare enough experience for anyone to being to open things up between you. Empathy is the second step of the ladder to change. This doesn’t mean making understanding noises or saying an understanding phrase. This means really having empathy, emotionally relating, to the other person’s perspective. This is what the active listening is for, partially. To actually ask the questions which will help you get to a place of understanding. Rapport, when the other person feels in their body, their mind and their spirit, that you understand, when they begin to actually feel you with them, is the next step. See, this is hard. I rebel at this point. I don’t want to look at the places in me that actually relate to their fears, phobias, suspicion of the stranger, “disasterizing” about the future, cruelty to the suffering, what I see as lack of communitarian spirit. Without getting in touch with those places in you, conversation is not going to be fruitful. If you are a conservative talking to a crazy liberal, you may need to get in touch with the places in you that feel for other people, that want to help, that can face suffering and the reality that it isn’t always the person’s fault who is suffering, the idea that the world is big and overwhelming and our country might not be the greatest country there ever was, that we might have bad decisions, greed and cruelty in our history, that some of us are victimized by others, that security is an illusion, etc.

After rapport is established, then comes influence. It is at this point that you might be able to influence the thinking and feeling of another person. Since empathy, though, you are open to their influence as well. Our mistake is that we try to jump right into influencing other people. Things seem so clear to us. The facts seem to make our conclusion so obvious. One problem is that it seems everyone has different facts.

It used to be that people thought facts were supposed to be – you know, factual. When JFK debated Nixon, though, he later confessed that he just made up the statistics he cited. Made them up. They sounded great. Now it seems that people will say things with great authority whether they are true or not. It used to be that media outlets had to give both sides of an argument. They had to seek out viewpoints on all sides, facts which supported all sides, present them to people so they could decide. During the Reagan administration, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. I think that was 1987. In 1988 Rush Limbaugh started his radio show. These days, most people watch Fox news or MSNBC. They get red facts and blue facts. They hear about red issues and blue issues. You have to really work to hear both sides. Reasoned and civil discussions are not the style. It is easier and more fun for people to mock one another, to imagine that the people on the other side are ridiculous, crazy, clowns! All this does is to make you feel energized and good in a nasty way about your own side. I’m not asking us to stop that, but you have to understand that we can’t ask those who feel differently to stop their emails, jokes and memes either. It sounds like a lot of listening is recommended. And love even though they may not be able to see how right you are.

“In terms of their personalities, liberals and conservatives have long been said to differ in ways that correspond to their conflicting visions. Liberals on average are more open to experience, more inclined to seek out change and novelty both personally and politically (McCrae, 1996). Conservatives, in contrast, have a stronger preference for things that are familiar, stable, and predictable (Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008; McCrae, 1996). Conservatives – at least, the subset prone to authoritarianism – also show a stronger emotional sensitivity to threats to the social order, which motivates them to limit liberties in defense of that order (Altemeyer, 1996; McCann, 2008; Stenner, 2005). Jost, Glaser, Sulloway, and Kruglanski (2003) concluded from a meta-analysis of this literature that the two core aspects of conservative ideology are resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. How can these various but complementary depictions of ideological and personality differences be translated into specific predictions about moral differences? First, we must examine and revise the definition of the moral domain.”

“Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum? To test moral foundations theory (J. Haidt & J. Graham, 2007; J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004), the authors developed several ways to measure people’s use of 5 sets of moral intuitions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Across 4 studies using multiple methods, liberals consistently showed greater endorsement and use of the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations compared to the other 3 foundations, whereas conservatives endorsed and used the 5 foundations more equally.”

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