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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 11, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Persistence, endurance, resilience, grit – is it a mistake to be goal-oriented? Is there a better way to think about forward movement?

Call to Worship
– Rabindranath Tagore

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield
but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

Reading
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 out.

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character.

Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

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.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 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
November 4, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

What does the word “mercy” mean to you? When do you need it? When do you give it? Where does it come from?

Meditation Reading
Gretchen Haley

Before reaching out
Start by sinking in
Before lifting your eyes
To strangers and friends
Before scrolling still another headline,
another status update,
another family photo,
another election prediction
Still your heart here
For a time
Take stock of your breath, your pulse, your body
Give thanks
For all of these things that have conspired
To bring you here
Where there is no problem to be solved
No news to absorb
No worry to turn over and over and over
In your mind
No wondering what you came here for
Or what you were meant to do, or buy, or say
There is only the remembering who you are
And to whom you belong
And the space
For bringing in, and letting go
For mending, and waiting
With a purposeful patience
So that here in the vast, unfamiliar quiet
We might awaken again
To this wide world
and the light that breaks
through the thick autumn sky
And the beauty that
Persists
and the partners that are
everywhere
breathing, and remembering too

Sermon

My friend and colleague Joanna Fontaine Crawford, the minister at Live Oak, posted this on Facebook this week.

I don’t know if we’re all conscious about it, but right now, we’re just waiting for Tuesday. I see so many posts where people are commenting on how hard it is to get motivated to do their normal routines. We’re waiting for Tuesday. Because next Tuesday is bigger than the politicians we’re voting for.

On Tuesday, we find out about us. About the US. We find out what kind of country we’re living in. Is it a country that shrugs (or cheers) at hate? Or a country that firmly says NO?

And so it’s really no wonder that we’re having trouble continuing with “normal life.” We’re not quite sure that what we thought was normal life, is. Our country is in Schrodinger’s box right now, It could be that the last two years have been a fluke, a temporary reaction to progress, OR that they are the reality of who we are as a nation. “This is not normal,” we’ve been saying. Next Tuesday we find out.

The mass the choir is singing this morning begins with Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy. I’ve been thinking hard about mercy this week.

I’ve had a Mary Gauthier song, Need a Little Mercy Now, stuck in my head. Rolling Stone called it “the saddest song ever written.”

Mercy Now
Mary Gauthier

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over it won’t be long, he won’t be around
I love my father, he could use some mercy now
My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt
The pain that he lives in it’s almost more than living will allow

I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now
Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race towards another mushroom cloud People in power, they’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life and life itself could use some mercy now

Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it but we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
And every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

Mercy was such a creamy word, such a balm, a healing sound. I think about the refugees and asylum seekers on the long walk, hot and weary, blistered and hopeful. I read about the kindness they are being shown by the people in Mexico, the mercy they are being given along the way. I see the UU Service Committee raising funds to meet them with mercy at the border. My heart cries out for mercy for the people of color terrorized by racist violence, for the Jews who have lost eleven people to US racist violence, for the transgender people who are threatened more intensely by individuals and by policies under this administration.

We are living in another ugly time for vulnerable people. My heart cries for mercy. I suffer for the suffering, but then I ask myself whether my being twisted up and anguished helps them. No. My actions help them. The money I can send can help them. My being in pain only adds to the pain of the situation, and I am having a very good life right now. I want to stand against the ugliness, but I’m going to burn out if I keep feeling like I have been feeling. If I burn out by suffering over other people’s suffering, I’ve made it all about me, I’ve centered myself, my feelings, and that doesn’t help the people who are in danger.

Too much in me is riding on this election. For survival in the struggle for the long haul, I need a little mercy for me, for you, for our hearts and our spirits now. So many of us have been so twisted up, so horrified. We watch what’s been happening to our country, and we can’t stand it. Some of us are impatient with that despair, and say “Just work, just call, just write, vote vote. Some will have scorn for this longing for mercy. Some people have told me they worry about having any kind of Mercy on themselves for fear that if they started they would end up in a puddle on the couch for the rest of their lives.

The word as it is used in our culture comes from the Hebrew hesed, meaning long running loving kindness. It’s a word that is used when someone has more power than someone else. The powerful one can have mercy on the one who is less powerful. A parent can have mercy on a child. A teacher can have mercy on a student. A judge can have mercy on the accused. Husbands wives and partners can have mercy on each other. What does that look like? We can not keep score of every slight. We can make as many excuses for them as we do for ourselves. We can seek to understand the other before seeking to be understood. We can speak sweetly, with love. We can refuse to “bring a lawsuit” against them. That is the language used in the I Ching to talk about deciding someone is hopeless, that they will never change, making a bar they have to reach, and always watching and evaluating to see if they have reached it. Having mercy on your partner or spouse also may mean letting them go if you realize you are out of love or hope for the relationship.

I wonder if I just long to have mercy on myself. Sue Monk Kidd wrote,

“The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”
– Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Many among us have been in the struggle for years. Many among us in this congregation were active in the civil rights work of the 60’s. In the struggle for reproductive rights in the 70’s and all along the way until we get here. The struggle will continue, as rights have to be won over and over. I didn’t know that, really. I heard Congressman John Lewis say that a few months ago. It’s a long haul, without a steady trajectory. It feels like we’re moving backwards now, on LGBTQ rights, on voting rights, on protections for the environment, on relationships with allies, on aid given to help other countries … Some people like that we’re moving backward. It feels safer to them.

I think mercy must be there for our opponents. Susan Sontag said

“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”
– Susan Sontag

That helps me, to think that the people at the rallies, yelling “Lock her up” and hating the media have just been radicalized, infected with the terrible joy of being with other like minded people who say out loud something that you have thought and felt ashamed of thinking …. And the permission to not be ashamed is given, and for a time you are a member of the religion of your baser instincts. We might try Mercy on ourselves and our families our friends. Does mercy mean to look at someone with soft eyes? To hold on to the goodness in them? Maybe Mercy for humans means just understanding that there are creative and destructive impulses within you. That if it were the culture of progressives to have a big rally and start shouting your anger about current elected officials, can you see yourself in an ecstasy of togetherness shouting “lock him up! lock him up” with other progressives? Do you have fun at football games shouting things with other people? Exhilarating “Harass them! Harass them! Make them relinquish the ball” – nerd cheers.

Mercy doesn’t mean going to the mushy moral middle, it can mean disagreeing fiercely, standing against wicked policies, and it means not giving up on the goodness of the middle 80% of people who can be persuaded toward kindness or cruelty, some of whom are in an ecstasy of cruelty right now. And let us pour out mercy on those their cruelty is hurting.

Hate cannot convince hate to end. Mercy could? Maybe. That is what Lincoln said when he wrote:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
– Abraham Lincoln

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 18 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 28, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We will have a Clootie Tree again, from the Scottish/Irish/Appalachian tradition. We will put our wishes and our remembrances on pieces of cloth and drape them on the tree. What would we like to claim from our ancestors? What would we like to let go?

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.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 21, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Our second End (goal) as a congregation is “We support and challenge one another in worship, spiritual growth and lifelong learning to practice a rich spiritual life” What forms can a spiritual life take? The job of a church is often described as “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”

Call to Worship
Richard Jefferies

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.

Reading

Invitation to Brave Space 
Micky ScottBey Jones – inspired by an unknown author’s poem

Together we will create brave space
Because there is no such thing as a “safe space”
We exist in the real world
We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.
In this space
We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,
We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,
We call each other to more truth and love
We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.
We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know,
We will not be perfect.
This space will not be perfect.
It will not always be what we wish it to be
But
It will be our brave space together,
and
We will work in it side by side.

Sermon

When I was looking around at the churches searching for ministers nine years ago, I was struck by this church’s materials, which said, about seven times more than any other church, that you wanted someone who could help you create a safe space in church. I took that seriously, and we’ve all been paying good attention to that since I got here eight years ago. Last year the congregation and the board revisited the Ends/Goals of the congregation, and, since the feeling of safety has been there, a great deal of courage was expressed. Now, we have a safe space which also wants to be a brave space. This has always been a justice-seeking church, and now the language of its goals reflects that even more sharply.

About once every ten years I re-read the book “Full Catastrophe Living,” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Many of you know he teaches Mindfulness-based meditation at Johns Hopkins, one of the finest medical centers in the world. I read the book because I love to read, and I always hope that reading it will be the same as meditation, which I haven’t been able to do well, even though I’ve been giving it a try on and off for my whole adult life. I want to start meditation again because, not only does it help your brain, even to the point of creating new gray matter, it helps with inflammation. According to their studies, which are too significant to ignore. Inflammation makes my life harder, so I’m giving this another try. It’s a challenge to me. Why is it a challenge? I like reading and I like working, and just sitting there being aware of my breath feels like doing nothing. Even though it might be doing something really crucial for my body and my spirit, I have continued not to do it. Frustrating. I’m reminded of the letter by Paul in the Christian Scriptures where he says “the things I don’t want to do, I do, and the things I want to do, I don’t do.” As long as I’m squarely in the midst of the human condition, though, I know I’m not unusual in this regard.

In reading his book, though, one line jumped out at me, because I’m talking this morning about our church’s new Ends/Goals. We talked about the first one last month. The second goal the board wrote after listening to the congregation is this: “We support and challenge one another in worship, spiritual growth and lifelong learning to practice a rich spiritual life. ” The part that strikes me is that we support and challenge one another. What that means is that the board wants me to practice both sides of the preacher’s job. Those two sides are to be pastoral, which is related to the word for shepherd. To comfort, to heal, to speak tenderly to, to care for, to teach gently. Pastoral, and the other side is Prophetic. That is related to the word “prophet.” You could have told me that. Prophets are always shining the light on people’s shortcomings, calling people back into righteousness, scalding those who just want to be secure in their sense of themselves. People hate prophets. In the Jewish Scriptures, they get chased into the desert, thrown into holes, yelled at, jailed and even killed. To be pastoral and prophetic is the job of the minister of a church. An old saw says that the preacher’s job is Ôto comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That always sounded a little smug to me. In my 35 years of being a minister, I’ve met very few people I would call comfortable. Life afflicts the comfortable.

I don’t like to scald people. I don’t like to scold people. I don’t learn well from being shamed or yelled at. I am called, however, to challenge people and to challenge the culture; ur broken culture, which is so busy trying to worship money and power, which is so engineered to keep the heavy-footed on top of everyone else. “You dress the mortal wound of my people as if it were superficial, saying peace, peace, where there is no peace.” That is the prophet Jeremiah.

We support and challenge each other, our goal says, toward growth into a rich spiritual life. We know how to support one another, I think, better than we know how to challenge. That’s what my experience tells me. It’s certainly what FB tells me. We roughly “call each other out” for infractions, we stomp on a person’s ignorance, we mock people’s attempts at solutions to problems. It can be ugly out there. Here is the line from the book that jumped out at me: “People blossom when challenged and wither when threatened.”

When I put this quotation on Facebook for my friends to chew on, the responses were wise and well thought out. Challenges involve hope, not fear. A threat is something intended to harm, and a challenge is intended for good. What about people who perceive the challenge as a threat? Even though it wasn’t intended that way? Does the responsibility lie with the person offering the challenge or with the person receiving the challenge? One of the most elegant responses said “Challenges are invitations to grow. Threats are warnings not to grow.” The place where most UUs are feeling threatened is in our trying to get right about whiteness culture, so I’m going to talk about that for a minute. Those of us who are people of color, people of the global majority, know a lot about the way things are arranged in this culture, to favor whiteness, and those of us who identify as white are trying to keep up. For some reason a lot of us who identify as white don’t react to the new knowledge about whiteness culture with curiosity and courage. We act as if we feel like something is going to be taken away from us, and we clutch our lives and list our liberal credentials and shut the windows tightly. It takes practice to respond with curiosity and courage. I’ve thought a lot about my various privileges over the years. When I ended my marriage to a man and came out, I noticed the loss of heterosexual privilege. I’ll talk about that in another sermon.

We all are complicated intersecting privileges: youth, health, race, gender-typical, neuro-typical, sexual preference, socio-economic background, and many more. We all have some and not others. Those who have more are playing the game of life in this culture at a lower level of difficulty than others. It behooves us to notice and talk about our level of difficulty, but whiteness culture seems to forbid it.

There are so many challenges in our lives, it seems a shame to add to them here in worship, but look. Our country is wicked, and it has been forever. We have made it our mission to try to help build the Beloved Community. If we ae going to do that, we are going to have to be uncomfortable some of the time – with sermon topics, with the music, with expressions of emotion in worship or lack of them. That’s what challenge feels like. No one is trying to take anything away from us. Wait, that’s not true. I experienced my world view taken away from me as I began to wake up to the situation of women in this culture, and in the global culture. Once I woke up to seeing the war on women, I couldn’t unsee it. It was everywhere. Once I woke up to seeing the war on brown, black and native people I couldn’t unsee it. My naivetee was taken from me.

That’s what I lost. Is that bad? Why do I feel rude in mentioning that every 28 hours in our country an unarmed black, brown or native person is killed by police? Why do I feel strident pointing out that three women a day in the US are killed by their husbands, partners or boyfriends? The hesitancy to point out facts is one of the symptoms of this culture. Shhhhh, and talk about the American Dream.

This is a hard world for many among us. You look at people’s outsides and they look so together, but so many people are hurting. We need one another’s support. I would ask you to think about giving ten times the support to people you know as you give challenge. I would ask that we challenge one another rarely, and with huge love and humility. The culture, on the other hand, has all the support it needs, it seems, and we should rise up and challenge it with loud intelligent voices, with reason and disruption and skill and all the power we can muster together.

If we can hold one another in love and respect, if we can meet challenges with curiosity and the courage to make mistakes and go on, if we can build a strong spiritual life, where we root our hearts in compassion, where we slow down to take a deep breath when we are confronted by something new, where we do what we say we will do, where we know who we are and who we want to be, we will enrich our own experience of life, and we will live better and be better to live with.

If We Do Not Venture Out
Marni Harmony (excerpted)

If, on a starlit night,
with the moon brightly shimmering,
We stay inside and do not venture out,
the evening universe remains a part of life we shall not know.

If, on a cloudy day,
with grayness infusing all
and rain dancing rivers in the grass,
We stay inside and do not venture out,
the stormy, threatening energy of
the universe remains a part of life we shall not know.

If, on a frosty morning,
dreading the chilling air before the sunrise,
We stay inside and do not venture out,
the awesome cold, quiet, and stillness of
the dawn universe remains a part of life we shall not know.

[…]

If we stay inside ourselves and do not venture out
then the Fullness of the universe
shall be unknown to us….

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 18 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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 7, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

“Love is the Spirit of this Church, and Service is its Law.” Most people look for ways to feel useful, to find good meaning in their lives, and to connect with others as they seek to leave the world a better place than they found it.

Call to Worship

This House
by Kenneth L. Patton

This house is for the ingathering of nature and human nature.

It is a house of friendships, a haven in trouble, an open room for the encouragement of our struggle.

It is a house of freedom, guarding the dignity and worth of every person.

It offers a platform for the free voice, for declaring, both in times of security and danger the full and undivided conflict of opinion.

It is a house of truth-seeking, where scientists can encourage devotion to their quest, where mystics can abide in a community of searchers.

It is a house of art, adorning its celebrations with melodies and handiworks.

It is a house of prophecy outrunning times past and times present in visions of growth and progress. This house is a cradle for our dreams, the workshop of our common endeavor.

Reading

A Litany for Survival
By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

Sermon

Useless Fury. Have you been feeling some of that? I don’t think I have seen such distress in many years.

How long can you live with such distress? Lifetimes, if you read the writings of historically marginalized and powerless folks. Lifetimes. Feeling like the heavy-footed are silencing us.

I’m going to tell you something about women. Something most of you already know.

“We were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads. Learning to be afraid with our mothers milk.” For by this weapon the illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us. The heavy footed have reinforced this lesson now. It might be easy to give up. But we won’t, because we have a voice together. Together is the first word of our mission. Together is powerful. From time to time, individuals are called to step forward in Courage. Almost always, though, this courage has its roots somewhere in together.

We come to this place with our pain, our fears, or limits, and our strengths. we come to this place to learn to love and just serve. We come to this place to build the Beloved Community. Together. In order for this place to be here, we have to work together.

Sometimes when we are distressed and afraid, our first instinct is to shut down, to become isolated, to get depressed.

At my house what we do is watch a garden show called “Gardeners’ World.” The show has Golden Retrievers and volunteers. It has old ladies glowing with gardening and older couples discovering new species of orchids.

Transformation through service

Today is about transformation through service. That’s the name of a new program we have been beginning.

Every time we light our chalice, we say together, “Love is the spirit of this church and service is it’s law.”

There is so much service that has been done here. People help with the stewardship campaign, people help with Fellowship, people teach, people clean, people pitch in to proofread things, too right cards, to sit at the welcome desk so that everyone always gets a human voice when they call the church, I have a volunteer who assist me and helps me do more than I could do by myself. We have people who help us count the money and keep it safe as it comes in so that it can all be used well, we have people who write cards and make visits to those who are ill or in distress. Just to get an idea of how much human power it takes for us to make this congregation work, would you please raise your hand if you have done any volunteer service for this congregation?

I ask this so we can look around and see how many people it takes. Some people are in a position in their lives and spirits to do more than others people are temperamentally suited as givers. Other people are in a place in their lives where it’s all they can do to keep the home fires burning. We are all in different life stages.

There are many different kinds of jobs to be done in this congregation. Some require physical presence and others don’t. How can you tell if there is a job that might suit your life stage your spirits energy your gifts and talents? Transformation through service program.

Give and You Receive

“It is better to give than to receive” may have a biological basis. A new study found that the brain’s pleasure centers became activated as people decided to donate part of a new stash of money to charity, rather than keeping it all for themselves. The findings may shed light on why some people contribute to the public good, even at a personal cost.

Researchers at the University of Oregon took advantage of an advanced brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which shows when specific regions of the brain are activated. Their study was supported by NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Science Foundation. At the start of the experiment, 19 women received S 100 and were told they could keep whatever money remained at the end of the session. They then lay in an fMRI scanner for about an hour, while a computer screen displayed a series of possible money transfers to a local food bank. About half of the proposed transfers were voluntary – participants could decide whether to accept or reject the donation. In other cases, the proposed transfers were required, similar to a tax. Occasionally, additional money was unexpectedly added or taken away from either the woman’s or the charity’s account.

As described in the June 15, 2007, issue of Science, the brain scans showed that three very different situations – receiving money, seeing money go to a good cause or deciding to donate money – all activated similar pleasure-related centers deep in the brain.

Greek philosopher Aristotle once surmised that the essence of life is “To serve others and do good.” If recent research is any indication, serving others might also be the essence of good health.

According to a recent study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The research revealed the following about each of the study’s populations:

• Men Enrolled in Baltimore Experience Corps – This group experienced the greatest increase in brain volumes over the two-year study.
• Women Enrolled in Baltimore Experience Corps Women showed modest gains in brain volumes, but they also began the study in generally poorer physical condition than the men. By the study’s end, women had made the most significant improvements in physical activity. Dr. Carlson noted this could lead to future increases in brain volume and improved executive function among the women.
• Control Group Members – This group showed typical age-related shrinkage in brain volumes.

The study involved 702 retired men and women, 352 were trained to serve as Baltimore Experience Corps volunteer mentors. They worked in libraries at Baltimore City Public Schools, helping young children learn to read. The remaining 350 study participants – control group members – were not involved in Baltimore Experience Corps. Volunteer work involved:

• Working in teams
• Problem solving
• Walking throughout the day
• Sharing their knowledge

Within this larger study, researchers also conducted a “nested study” (a study within a study). This involved 111 of the research participants, 58 from the Baltimore Experience Corps group and 53 from the control group. These people underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans – an exam that uses a magnetic field and radio waves to produce detailed brain images – and memory tests at scheduled points during the research.

“We expected the brains of study participants to shrink as part of the normal aging process,” said Michelle Carlson, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Core Faculty at Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health. “Instead, after two years in a program that involved them in meaningful, social activity, their memory centers either maintained their size or grew modestly.”

“We learned that activity with a purpose may benefit cognitive function and memory in older adults,” Dr. Carlson said. “The magic ingredient seemed to be getting out of your home and getting out with a purpose.”

Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness can be taught. The way that you get taught learned helplessness is that nothing you do seems to make any difference to your situation. You get a shock whether you press the little paddle or not. You get your food or you don’t get your food; it doesn’t matter what you do. And you learn that nothing you do makes a difference.

We will not let them teach us this. This is a place where we can be together. We can learn that we are not helpless. We can learn our powers. We can join our voices. We can keep going 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 18 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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 30, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Being edited, rejected, praised, criticized, inspired, and uninspired; I’ll create circumstances in which you have to just keep your head down and write anyway.

Call to Worship
Navajo Tradition

Beauty is before me,
and beauty behind me
Above me and below me
hover the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it,
I am immersed in it.

In my youth I am aware of it
and in my old age I shall walk quietly
the beautiful trail.
In beauty it is begun
and in beauty it is ended.

Reading
Kathleen McTigue

May the light around us guide our footsteps and hold us fast to the best and most rightous that we seek. May the darkness around us nurture our dreams and give us rest so that we may give ourselves to the work of our world. Let us seek to remember the wholeness in our lives, the weaving of light and shadow in this great and astonishing dance in which we move.

Sermon

Think about your life, and ask yourself what your art is. Do you garden? Paint? Theater? Actions? Do you make music? Are you a dancer? Do you make businesses, do you teach, do you write? As I’m talking about being a writer, I invite you to think about your art form and how the things I’m talking about pertain to what you do.

The book I’m using for this sermon is called Art and Fear. It’s a small book, but it packs a lot of wisdom, and I notice new things each time I read it over.

I’m going to speak in broad brush strokes here. I may say something like “everybody struggles with fears as they create.” You may think “I bet Mozart didn’t. He was a genius.” We’ll get to that. Is your art going to be like Mozart? No. Ok, let’s get on with it.

We’ll talk about genius for a moment. There are some, no doubt. They are not most of us. Let’ s talk about talent. Malcom Gladwell says maybe talent is made up of interest or focus. It doesn’t make you good at something by itself. What makes you good at something is spending ten thousand hours at it. Whatever you spend ten thousand hours on, you will be good at. Putting in the time is what makes good art.

Some people have a picture of an artist, a writer, a dancer, a business starter-upper, who has a flash of inspiration, goes to the studio or the office, works feverishly for a few days, and brilliant things are born. There are flashes of inspiration, for sure. Many people have a great idea for a garden, a painting, a book, a business, but if they don’t have the training, the tools, the craft, the muscles, the experience, they can’t make that idea happen. The art of art is a mystery, intangible, but art is mostly made up of craft. Craft is what gets you the farthest. That’s not true. Keeping going is what gets you the farthest.

There are so many things that make you want to stop. Whereas art happens in some times and places as part of community, in our culture mostly it happens when individuals are working alone, without feedback or support, not knowing whether they are any good. It used to be that the community needed you to paint that bison on the wall of the cave, or the king needed the music for his party, or the tribe or clan needed the bard to write the song that told the history of the people, or the church commissioned you to paint the ceiling. Now a lot of people work alone. The questions and fears can make you stop. “Am I any good? Will I be a success? What does that mean? Is this going to mean anything to anyone? Are people going to be angry with me? Will I be misunderstood? What is the point of this? Is it just self-expression? Is that selfish? Is it going to be helpful to anyone?”

I started writing in journals, combing through my thoughts. I lucked into a gig writing commentaries for the local WNC NPR station. They said “Make it 600 words, make it deep, and make it funny.” I did one every three weeks for years. I wrote them with little kids running around scattering legos, I wrote while they asked what was for dinner. I wrote when I was sick and when I was well. When my inspiration ran dry I had to write about when your inspiration runs dry, because I had a piece due. The same thing with sermons. I need to have something to talk to you all about on a Sunday morning. That’s a serious deadline. No extentions.

What this book says is to wonder whether you’re any good, whether you’re going to be successful, whether you are better than that other artist over there, and do you art anyway.

It’s the most Buddhist thing ever. In order to write, you have to write. You don’t have to build a writing shed, clean off a desk, clean the house, water the garden, you just write. Ruthlessly. If you wait for inspiration you’re lost. Many artists quit because there is so much business involved, paperwork, fund raising, taking things to the post office, looking up writing guidelines to figure out whether they want one inch margins or one and a half inch margins. One successful artist figured he actually painted about 6 full days a month, even though he was working on it full time.

Many artists quit because they don’t realize how much doing nothing is involved in creating. Your brain has to get into that part of it that is the daydreamer. You can’t go straight from the decision-making planning brain to creating, usually. You need to spend some time doing nothing. That’s why I need Fridays and Saturdays to write a sermon. There is the reading to be done, of course, but there is a lot of wondering. “What would I want to hear about if I were in the pew for a sermon about this? How can I not bore people to slobber? Why did I ever think I could write anything about this? It’s too complicated, too multi layered. Maybe it’s just going to be meaningful for me and no one else. Let me watch one episode of this BBC detective series. Maybe one more.” Then there is the time when you put everything together and it’s sixteen pages when it needs to be five. Then there is time when you just let it cook for a while. Then you have to have time to panic. Then you write.

The main thing is to feel afraid and to write anyway. What will people think? Wonder that and do you art anyway. Keep putting in your hours. In the book is the story of the ceramics teacher. He announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

You learn to do your art by doing it. A lot of it. Stephen King, in his great book “On Writing,” talks about doing the “closed door” draft of the book, the one only you will see. Natalie Goldberg talks about the bad first draft.

Everyone talks about that. If you get stuck trying to make the first paragraph brilliant, the first version of the painting brilliant, if you try to put the garden in all at once, you are setting yourself up for frustration. Some thing just slip right out as if they were channeled, and other things have to come out messy first.

I think doing church is a kind of art. The same rules apply. You have to just keep doing it. There are 20 days of team meetings to 10 days of hands on justice in a month, 20 days of planning and shopping and talking to 10 days of hands on teaching, fellowship parties, amazing music and other experiences that hold within them the possibility of nourishment and transformation.

We have our eyes on the goal of Beloved Community, but we must learn to love the process, the cleaning of the brushes, the trips to San Antonio, the relationship building with other churches and organizations. This is the way things grow and change. A church will create the skills in the people to do community well by doing it clumsily at times. You celebrate your triumphs, while always feeling that divine discontent artists talk about, never being satisfied, still following the vision. Building the Beloved Community by doing church, dancing, parties, painting, speaking, writing, singing, moving money around, knocking on doors, registering people to vote, teaching, voting, getting good at love and compassion in the midst of our efforts – it’s a process we’ll be engaged with for decades. We are making a lot of art so that some of it will be brilliant. We keep going, because that is what all veteran artists have in common. They didn’t quit.

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 18 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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 23, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

This Sunday will be a party. We will talk about UU 101, 201, and 301 with original songs and stories from Rev. Meg. We will all be invited and encouraged to make our pledges together as a celebration of faith and hope, expectation and promise.

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.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 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.