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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 30, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As we approach Halloween, All Saints and All Souls days, we might think about which ancestors we would choose to honor, and what actions we could take to honor them.

During the time of meditation we called out the names of those we have lost. The Celtic tradition says that the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living are thin at this time. In the Mexican/Aztec tradition, these are the days to celebrate the death of innocent babies and little children, then the next day, adults who have died. The Roman Catholic church delineates All Saints Day on Nov 1, and then All Souls Day on the 2nd.

This is a good time of year to honor those who have gone before us. Do we want to be just like them? No, we are each a unique self, and not to be the best of who we are dishonors the creative force. Do we search our ancestors to find something of ourselves? Of course.

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.”
– Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White

Some people use Ancestry.com, others do the mitochondrial DNA testing where you swab your cheek and send it off in the mail. Everyone has ancestors, whether they were the ones who raised you or not. They are part of you.

I’ve told you some family stories, mostly about the Southerners on my mother’s side. I want to start by telling you about my dad’s aunt Neoskaleeta this morning. She was the oldest of three children, born in Huntingdon, PA to Rev. and Mrs. Tiffany. We don’t know why, but there in the 1890’s, they named their daughters, Mary Neolskaleeta and one Ruth Winureeta Tiffany. Local Native names. Ruth Tiffany was my grandmother, and Aunt Neosk found “Mary” to be dull and always went by Neoskaleeta, or Neosk. She had an illness as a child, maybe scarlet fever, and her hair fell out. When it grew back in, it was flaming red. She was argumentative, in contrast to her sweet sister, rebellious, and willful. In high school, when she declared she wanted to be a doctor, the principal told her that was out of range for a girl, but she could become a nurse. She went away to college, then medical school, got her diploma, rode back into Huntingdon on a motorcycle, went to the high school, and smacked the diploma down on the Principal’s desk.

She moved to Bahrain to be a doctor and married a man who worked for Standard Oil. A family story says that one day, men on horseback brandishing swords came and demanded she go with them. A sheik’s favorite wife was having trouble in childbirth. He wouldn’t have a male doctor look at her, and he’d heard there was a woman doctor in that town and went to fetch her. After hours long travel, she met with the sheik. If you save my wife, and if she has a daughter, I will pay you this much. If you save her and she has a son, it will be this much more. If she dies, you can find your way home across the desert alone. She saved the woman, who had a son, and the sheik gave her a back of gold and jewels. She gave those jewels to her children and grandchildren one at a time over the years. That’s what I hear. My grandmother, Ruth, married the preacher. He was a towering figure in the US during the twenties, thirties, and forties and fifties. They still sell his books in Christian book stores, I’m glad they are all part of me, but it’s Neoskaleeta I’m going to invite to sit down at the table with my inner committee. Do you have an inner committee? Who is on it? Any ancestors?.

This morning I want to tell you about some of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors.

Who will we want to emulate? A Universalist preacher named Hosea Ballou? 1796-1852 The “family” stories about him: “Hosea Ballou, another Universalist once found himself sharing a carriage with a minister from another denomination, someone who believed very much in hell and damnation. Midway through their ride, the fellow asked him: “Could it be that you are Hosea Ballou, the infamous Universalist preacher?” Hosea admitted with pride to being who he was, and this other minister began to question him about his beliefs.

“So you do not believe in the existence of hell?”
“No.”
“Not even for the punishment of truly heinous crimes?”
“No.”
“Not even when you imagine that you yourself could be the victim of such a crime? Can you not conceive of a space in hell for someone who harmed you personally?”
“I cannot conceive of any place in hell, friend, for it does not exist.” Finally, exasperated and upset, the man asked Hosea, “Am I to understand then that if I were a Universalist, there would be nothing to stop me from killing you and the driver and making off into the night with this carriage?” And Hosea replied, “No, sir. If you were a Universalist, the thought of doing so would not have occurred to you.”

Another time a father came to him, concerned for the eternal soul of his son, who was always in the bars, partying and making bad choices. Please talk to him, pastor! He begged.
YES, let’s go build a fire outside the bar, and we’ll drag him out of the bar and throw him in it!
The father was horrified. “Why would I do that to my son?”
Ballou nodded. Why indeed, and are you a better parent than God?

There is Theodore Parker, a Transcendentalist Unitarian minister who founded a Vigilance Committee to get in the way of the slave catchers who came to Boston to kidnap men and women who had escaped slavery and drag them back South. He was a fiery abolitionist, and had an integrated congregation. He was constant about reminding people about the Black activists and soldiers who helped with the Revolutionary War. He wrote a letter to President Millard Filmore, another Unitarian forbear, which said There hangs in my study . . . the gun my grandfather fought with at the battle of Lexington… and also the musket he captured from a British soldier on that day,” Parker wrote in his letter to President Fillmore. “If I would not peril my property, my liberty, nay my life to keep my parishioners out of slavery, then I should throw away these trophies, and should think I was the son of some coward and not a brave man’s child.” Millard Filmore thought he was doing the best thing for the Union, signing the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave-catchers to come north and snatch people. The new law also required all private free citizens to assist in the capture of those who had escaped. The members of the Vigilance Committee followed the slave catchers, harassed them, got in their way in many ways. They saved the lives of the men and women on the slave catchers’ list.

Margaret Fuller is one of the most dramatic female forbears. Her life is like an opera. She was born to a Unitarian family, educated in Latin, math, writing. She was a frequent visitor to the Emerson’s home, and a conversational adversary to him. Rumor has it that he had a great crush on her, but we don’t know if there was anything between them. She became a foreign correspondent for Horace Greely’s paper, the NY Tribune, He sent her to London to cover the literary world, but she became passionate about the Italian revolution, and went to Italy to cover the revolution there. Before this, war news was written by soldiers, and involved stories of battles and strategy. She wrote about the French bombardment of Italian citizens, and her stories held the human interest that war stories hadn’t included before that. She met an Italian Count, and they had a baby. Maybe tney weren’t married. She was advised not to come back to New England with a love child and an Italian Count, but they set sail. Caught in a storm, the ship was battered by waves and began to fall apart within plain sight of shore. A sailor said “I think I can make it, hand me the baby!” He strapped the baby to himself and dived in. They both drowned immediately. She stood on the deck as people on the shore watched in horror, her white night gown and her dark hair whipping in the wind, as the ship broke apart, its wooden hull battered from within by a giant marble bust of John C Calhoun being delivered to from Italy.

We are going to be ancestors ourselves. Whose story guides us? What family traditions do we carry on, consciously or unconsciously? What stories do we want told about us by our children’s children’s children? Do we sometimes do the wrong thing for reasons which seem sensible to us, as Millard Filmore did? Did we strain our relationships for the sake of justice or authenticity? Did we flout convention or do we live within the mores of a community to build trusting relationships or did they find a way to do both?

We can get guidance from the lives of those who have gone before us. No one is without flaws. No one is superhuman. Sometimes I color part of my hair red to honor Neoskaleeta, her intelligence and courage. I preach because that’s who I am, and I hope it honors all the preachers I come from. We are grateful to be here. We are grateful to be here together.

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 16 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.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 23, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

When making a decision, the 10-10-10 rule is used to think about where you’ll be in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years after the choice. Similarly, the second strand of the Buddhist Eightfold Path is sometimes translated as right intention.

Call to Worship
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will come out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.”

Sermon

The meditation reading was from Emerson, and he said what you believe about life shapes what you think about. What you think about shapes your actions. Your actions shape your work, your relationships, your whole life.

Buddhist teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi says The Buddha talked about two kinds of thoughts: those that lead to happiness and those that lead to pain. The ones leading to pain are thoughts of desire and greed, thoughts of ill will, and thoughts that lead to harmful actions. Those that lead to happiness are thoughts of contentment, thoughts of good will, and kind thoughts that lead to non-harming. Happiness will follow that person like a shadow, always there. For the person who thinks greedy, hateful, vengeful thoughts, pain follows like a cart follows the ox who is pulling it. Does happiness shadow you wherever you go, or do messed up situations lumber behind you like a cart on wobbly wheels? The first strand of the path was “right understanding, “or “right view.” Your right view of existence affects the things you care about, it affects where you put your focus, your habits of attention. The right view, or right understanding we talked about last month is the realization that life is full of suffering. Suffering is caused by desire. If you could let go of desire you lose your suffering. Not your pain, because pain comes with life in a body, but your suffering over your pain, the stories you tell yourself about your pain. The eightfold path of wise thought and action is the way to move yourself toward happiness. The teaching assumes that we want to be happy. It’s not wrong to want happiness, to aim for freedom from suffering.

Buddhism invites you to make three intentions, which I’ll tell you in a few minutes. First let’s try to look at the intentions currently guiding us. Emerson says you already have intentions that permeate your life. Do you want to be loved above all else? Do you want to be beautiful? The smartest? Powerful? Secure? Admired? Helpful? Do you want to leave the world a better place than you found it?

What are the stars you steer by? If you were to make a circle and pretend it was a compass, what one word would be at each compass point?

Martha Beck writes, in her book Steering By Starlight, that to find your real desires, you should ask yourself “what then?” questions about them. Say you want your business to succeed. Why? You would be respected. What then? Your dad will finally give you his blessing. What then? You can stop feeling like a failure. Odds are there is another way to stop feeling like a failure, because that feeling is inside you, not somewhere external. You want your business to succeed so you can have money. What then? You would feel secure. What then? You could stop feeling afraid. Is there another way to stop fear? Say you want a baby. What then? You would feel loved. Is that the way to get there? Maybe yes and maybe no, but it’s a hard job for a kid to be born to fill a hole in an adult. Is joy on your compass anywhere? Contentment? Think all the way out into the future, and imagine the feeling you want to have about your life.

Susy Welch, a business writer with a demanding job, a marriage and school aged children, talks about thinking out into the future in this way. She came up with a way to make decisions in her overwhelmed, information drenched, demand-crunched life. Should I say yes to the Saturday meeting the boss wants me to lead, which will be a huge plus in my column when it comes to promotion time, or should I say no to the meeting and go to my son’s black belt test? She asked herself this question: what would each course of action bring into my life in 10 minutes, 10 months or 10 years? I0 minutes from now her boss would be happy and her son would be crushed. 10 months from now her job would still be full of opportunities and her son would have a tangible memory of her love and support. In 10 years he would be looking for a relationship with someone who was not an out of control work-a-holic, and he would be confident that he was number one with her. That’s the decision she made. OR, and this is my contrariness, in 10 minutes her son would be happy and her boss would be disappointed, in 10 months she could be looking at someone else in the job she had coveted, and her kids would have had plenty of chances to feel her love, and if she had given up the meeting her son wouldn’t have grasped the sacrifice she’d made, and in 10 years he’d be looking for someone whose world revolved around him and he’d have unreasonable expectations.

I think the 10 10 10 works for decisions like “do I really want to go to the gym today?” In 10 minutes you’ll feel virtuous, but maybe whiny about missing a nap. In 10 months you’ll be stronger and maybe grow addicted to the gym. In 10 years it’ll be so much a part of your life that you don’t even look at it as a decision any more.

I think the 10 10 10 is a fun way of considering choices, and that the most useful part of it is the 10 year thinking. In order to think that far out you have to know what you’re aiming for. You need to have hold of your core values, you want to be squinting into your spyglass at the star on the horizon by which to steer.

Remember the three intentions the Buddha recommends? Here they are. First, you understand that greed, craving, and desire cause fear and suffering, so you make an intention to renounce desire. Second, you intend to have good will toward all beings. Third, you make an intention to do no harm. These intentions cure fear and suffering. They move you toward freedom and joy. Intend to have good will towards all beings. Intend to do no harm. You still might get fired, get sick, go broke, lose a child to illness, violence or accident. Life holds both beauties and horrors. Your intention is like a rope you’ve fixed along the way to your goal, and you can grab hold of that rope when conditions get rough. An intention forms your thoughts and gives rise to your actions. It’s not a feeling, or a hope, it’s a plan of action. Scarlett O’Hara set her intention on her knees in a field with the sunset behind her “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.” That intention shaped her decisions, for good or ill, for the rest of her life – uh – for the rest of the movie. Some of us set intentions very early in life that shape the person we become: “I will find security.” “I will not be around anger.” “I won’t try – it just sets me up for failure.” “I will never be hurt again, so I just won’t get attached to anyone or hope for anything.”

Marilyn Monroe said “I just want to be wonderful.” There is an intention that can shape a life.

To be content, as the Buddha said, and Suzy Welch came up with later, is that you look a couple of steps ahead of your desires. If you want to drink yourself to sleep every night, you think about what comes after that: sick feelings and a sense of having done yourself damage. If you think ahead to the feelings that will come after you act on that desire, the Buddha says, you don’t have to repress the desire. Everyone has always known that repressing desires doesn’t work very well at all. Thinking it through sometimes can. When you think it all the way through, the craving just falls away like autumn leaves from a tree. If you want to have an affair, you think two or three steps ahead to the chaos and insanity that will likely come into your life because of that. If you want to change relationships, you certainly can. Just don’t sit in one thing and hope for another thing. Clarity works to diminish the desire. Be content with where you are, or think what needs to change and change it.

If we have the intention to be content, we practice being content. We are grateful for what we have. We take care of where we are, the things we have, the people we have in our lives.

If we intend to have good will, we practice letting go of resentments. That’s hard, and fortunately there is magic to help you. That magic is called the resentment prayer, where you pray for a person to have everything in their life that you want in yours. So you would pray for your mother in law to have peace of mind, financial security, good health, etc. In Buddhism it’s called the metta, or loving kindness prayer, and you don’t have to believe in it or even mean it at first, you just try it.

If we intend harmlessness, for some of us that means we give up doing wrong to people. For others, it might mean giving up violent thoughts, for others it might lead them to eat in a vegan way, the way of most compassion and the least harm. What does it mean for you? Take the steps that feel natural, that feel like a call, that feel like a move toward freedom and joy. So it’s little by little. Contentment and peace rather than agitation and anger. It takes practice, practice, practice.

Notice what intention has been guiding your life. It works like a mission statement. Wonder to yourself how it has shaped your experiences and wonder ( so much better than making a resolution) what your life would be like if you intended to be content, do no harm, to have good will toward all beings.

“Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” –Rumi

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 16 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.

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 9, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer, “We Must be Saved,” he talks about what makes us whole as we try to do right in the context of history. Rev. Meg explores the beautiful complexity of this poem.

Prayer

We Must be Saved 
by Reinhold Niebuhr

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime;
Therefore, we are saved by hope.

Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous,
can be accomplished alone;
Therefore, we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous
from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love
which is forgiveness.

Sermon

These are the Days of Awe, celebrated by those among us with Jewish roots. Rosh Hashanna was October 3 and 4, and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Yom Kippur starts Tuesday evening and ends Wednesday evening. Observance of this holiday includes fasting from sundown Tuesday until nightfall Wednesday. Repentance from wrongs you have done, asking for forgiveness from those you have wronged, and gratitude for being pardoned are at the heart of this holy day.

Last Sunday you heard Susan speak about Rosh Hashannah, about new beginnings. Today I would like to continue by talking about the story that is traditionally read right at the beginning of these “Days of Awe.” It is the story of Abram (later given the name Abraham)Sarai (later given the name Sarah) and Hagar. The story in the Bible, written and later edited by the Jews, has a different perspective and emphasis that the story in the Quran. You know that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (named in order of their appearance) are called the Abrahamic Religions, as they share the same stories of their history.

In the Bible, which contains the Jewish version of the story, Abram has had a vision where he was promised that his children would be as many as the stars in the night sky. Time passes and his wife Sarai does not conceive, so she arranges for her handmaiden, Hagar, to lie with her husband, and she will bear a child by him. As soon as Hagar knows she is pregnant, she begins to look upon Sarai with contempt. Sarai is hurt and angry, and begins to treat Hagar cruelly. Hagar runs away, and an angel finds her by a spring and tells her to go back and submit to her mistress, and her son will be the father of great nations. He will be a wild donkey of a man, the angel says (the Jews say the angel says, about the forbear of the Arab nations, and his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand will be against him, and he will live in opposition to all his kinfolk. She goes back. The angel comes back to Abram and Sarai, and says they will have a child by the next year. He changes their names to Abraham and Sarah. After their child Isaac is born, Sarah is jealous of Ishmael, and makes Abraham send them out into the desert again. He sends them with a little skin of water, but it’s not enough, and they are near dying of thirst. They are both crying, and God hears them and shows her a well where she gets water. Ishmael grows up in the desert and becomes and expert archer.

In the Muslim version, Hagar is the daughter of an Egyptian king who has been given to Ibrahim as a second wife. She bears her son, Ismael, and Sarai is jealous. She makes Ibrahim take his second wife and child to a desert valley and leave them there, telling them God will care for them. They almost die of thirst, and Hagar runs back and forth between two hills looking for water. Finally God causes a spring to flow from the ground, and they are saved. Ruth Behar, and anthropologist and Jewish scholar, guesses that this terrible story was chosen to open the days of repentance and reconciliation because everyone in the story is at fault. Sarai was cruel and jealous, Hagar was unwise to treat her mistress, or the first wife with contempt, and Ibrahim was the miserable dad caught between two feuding family members. It is fitting that we see that each of us contributes in a way to whatever misery in which we find ourselves. There is almost always a way we could have done better, and it is good to see that before you ask for forgiveness.

You can see how different points of view spin a story in different ways. In the Muslim world, Hagar is an Egyptian princess, a godly woman of faith whose son was the father of the Adnan Arabs. Ibrahim was a faithful father who traveled between his two households, loving both sons and both wives. In the Jewish story she was an arrogant and unwise brat who trash-talked her mistress and gave birth to a wild donkey of a son. What can you expect from our distant cousins, these Arabs, who descend from a wild donkey of a man? His hand is always raised against others and the hand of others is always raised against him. How many of you have family members, at the level of first cousin or closer, who don’t speak because of a conflict? Do you think the stories each side tells about what happened are different?

What if Sarah had apologized for her cruelty? What if Hagar had apologized for her contempt? What if they could have done what was best for the family, for Isaac and Ismael? What might the rippling after-effects of such apologies have been? What would forgiveness in that family done for the world? Repentance and forgiveness are what this season is about for Judaism, which is one of the sources of our UU faith.

We have seen a Presidential candidate apologize recently. Once a couple of months ago, the kind of apology that is not an apology, where you say “If I did something that hurt some people, I’m sorry

An apology with “I’m sorry if….” in it is thin gruel, and will not nourish any relationship. The one Saturday morning was better. “I said it. I was wrong, and I apologize.” That’s more like it. You acknowledge what you did. You acknowledge that it was wrong. You apologize.” That’s a C- apology. It’s the one we most often give and get. “I was tired. I wasn’t myself. I was worried about some other thing and it came out sideways…” The non-interactive apology. There is no asking for forgiveness. There is no validation of the hurt that was caused. There is no deep understanding of the other’s point of view. A truly great apology involvesan understanding snf sn acknowledgment of of what happened. Not only in you but in the other person. It’s not too quick. A premature apology, where you say you’re sorry and that means the other person isn’t allowed to talk any more about their feelings about what happened, is unfair and controlling. A great apology leaves room for the hurt person to talk about what it was like for them to be hurt. It validates the hurt. There is deep listening. Patience. Vulnerability. It’s as simple as saying “I can really see how that hurt you.” Then it might be good to say more about that. See if you really do see, if you do understand. A great apology has a lot of listening in it. Then there is an ask – for forgiveness. Forgiveness also takes listening. Listening until you understand another person, how they could have done what they did. Deciding whether you still want to be in relationship, and under what conditions.

Listening is one of the most healing actions in the world. It is also, as I’ve said to you before, astonishingly rare. Deep listening, I’m convinced, can not only make a great apology, it can lead to forgiveness because it leads to understanding. Deep listening can transform lives, nourish souls, and bring justice. So many people suffer from not being seen or heard. Your family, your church, is a place where you can practice the healing art of listening and forgiveness.

You could practice nourishing souls and transforming lives this very afternoon if you wanted to make a listening appointment. Some people worry that, once they start listening, they will be sucked in to a three-hour commitment. Make a container. Set a timer. Get a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend, and say “Ok, you talk for 30 min and then I’ll talk for 30 min.” When the other person is talking, you get still (this is a complicated/simple spiritual practice) open your heart (also a practice) and be present to them in the moment (also….. you get it). You don’t think about what amazing question you are going to ask them. You don’t plan your self-defense, as you are feeling criminally misunderstood. You try to receive what is the heart of this matter. What is the feeling? Mad, sad, glad? There are lists of feelings online you can print out if you would like assistance in this. You listen with love. Ask yourself how this situation would be changed if you were held in the arms of love while you listened?

Sweethearts, when you can quiet the mad buzzing of the voices in your core, the energy attached to being right, the panic at being misunderstood, the urge to tell the story of when a similar thing happened to you, when you can sink the advice that bubbles up and needs to, has to come out, then you can get still enough to really listen. This is why listening is such a rare gift. To get to this place takes practice. A good way to live our mission is to listen. This is what can change people’s minds in politics. This is what can make a hostage-taker put down his guns and give himself up. Listening is what can bring the realization of common ground between protectors of the water and people in the oil business trying to deliver the energy that modern life in our culture demands. Our Chalice Circles, which you can begin to sign up for today, are a crucible in which you can learn to listen and be listened to. If you feel you need a trained listener, please let me know and I will connect you to one of the trained listeners in the congregation. Listening can heal the world.

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 16 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.