On the Practicalities of Spiritual Practice

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson and Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
December 29, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Lee and Rev. Chris discuss their own and other spiritual practices, how to maintain them and why they are more important than ever in the year to come.

Chalice Lighting

As the days begin to lengthen, the world slowly moving from winter to spring, we kindle the flame of Transformation, the fifth of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Transformation lead us to the growth that shapes our lives and heals our world.

Call to Worship

IN THIS MOMENT
By Chris Jimmerson

In this moment, we gather together, in this our beloved community.

In this moment, we gather to know the power and beauty of ritual, music and the blending together of the loving presence we each have to offer.

In this moment, we gather to glimpse that which is greater than us but of which we are part.

In this moment, we gather to worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

DEFINING SPIRITUALITY
by Brene Brown

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives … For some people, that power greater than us is God; for others, it’s fishing. Some are reminded of our inextricable connection by faith; others by expressions of shared humanity.

Sermon

Lee and Rev. Chris discuss their own and other spiritual practices.

Leo: To start, I’d be interested to know how you might define “spiritual practice”, Chris.

Chris: Well, I suppose we would have to define what we mean by “spiritual or spirituality”, and I loved Brene Brown’s description of it that you read earlier. So for me, then, a spiritual practice is anything I can do that gives me that perspective and grounding in love, compassion and interconnectedness that sense of being a part of something much more powerful and larger than myself.

Leo: Lee, Does Chris’s definition of spiritual practice resonate with you?

Lee: Yes, Leo, except that I often exchange the word “practice” for “habit.” You’ll hear me use “spiritual practice” and “spiritual habit” interchangeably this morning. Thinking of them as spiritual habits made experimenting with them more accessible to me when I was just starting out. A habit is a behavior repeated so many times it becomes automatic. Washing your hands, brushing your teeth, stopping at a red light, those are all habits, and I am great at those! I knew I had transferable skills related to habit building back when I did not know the first thing about a spiritual practice.

Also, I use and depend on my spiritual habits like a carpenter uses tools or Navy Seal uses weapons. My spiritual practices are my gear or armor for encountering life. If they are absent, rusty, or not working properly, then I do not have everything I need to do what the moment requires.

Leo: Can you share some of your own spiritual practices with us?

Chris: Sure. I tend to have a couple of types of spiritual practices. The first I would call committed, on going practices – what some folks call spiritual discipline. There are two examples I have practiced in the past. One was going on meditative hikes in nature three at least three times per week, weather permitting. Most often, would bring my camera, because having it helped me notice and focus on the beauty all around me.

Another was was listing three things for which I was grateful in the notes application in my iPhone each morning. That then got shared across all of my computers and devices so that I could access the list to remind myself later of all for which I have to be grateful. I have found over time that those became less effective for me, and I recently read that there are sound neurological reasons why me might want to change our regular, committed spiritual practices.

Currently, I spend an hour each month speaking with a spiritual director. I have also come to realize that going to the gym and working out three to four times per week, for me has become a regular spiritual practice. It beaks up my work day and requires me to be mindful of just the exercises I am doing for that time period. Even when I am tired or having a stressful day or am not feeling all that well, I find that after going to the gym I usually feel much better physically, have more energy and that the stress has melted away.

The other type of spiritual practice or the ones that I do not do on a regular basis but that are more impromptu, spur of the moment activities. So, for instance, though I don’t do the meditative hikes or list gratitudes on regular, scheduled basis, I still sometimes do these practices if I am feeling a particular need for them. Another example is that sometimes during the workday here at the church, I will go sit quietly in the sanctuary for just five or ten minutes or walk the grounds of the church. These seem to clear my thoughts and help me center myself. A friend of mine from seminary says that she has an impromptu spiritual practice of sipping Chateau st. Michelle Chardonnay.

Leo: What are your spiritual practices, Lee?

Lee: I tie my spiritual habits to things I do at certain times of day. After my alarm goes off in the morning, I say a mantra: “I greet this day with an open mind, a happy heart, and a grateful spirit. I will enjoy all that I can and learn from the rest.”

After I brush my teeth, I pick the stone pendant I will wear and the pair of rock balls to put in my purse and hold throughout the day whenever I’m seated for any length of time. I think of making these selections as a type of divination. I open my mind to what challenges the day may hold and feel into what rocks might best help me meet those challenges.

If I’m going to be working with people who are upset, I’ll choose black rocks to remind me to keep my own boundaries and avoid taking on pain that is not mine. If I feel down, rocks associated with nurturance or support may feel appropriate, like Jasper or Moonstone, and using them reminds me to be gentle with myself. Divination helps me have an open mind and listen for wisdom from the inner teacher or from the Spirit of Life.

When I feel cranky at mid-afternoon, I do twenty minutes of meditation. I love to do a body scan meditation while lying down, but some days walking meditation of seated breath work better fit my schedule.

I always have a beaded rock bracelet on or with me, and can hold it any time I have a few minutes and do some breath prayer work. I touch a bead and say on the in-breath, “I serve the One,” and on the out breath, “Glory be to God.” Then I move my finger to the next bead and do the same thing. The words don’t matter, but it is helpful to say something a little longer on the out-breath so you are breathing in a four-seconds-in, six-seconds-out pattern. You could say “breath in,” on the in breath and “release the breath now,” on the out breath and achieve this 4-6 pattern.

Leo: What other types of spiritual practices might folks consider?

Chris: You know, I think we tend to think of spiritual practices as being in some way tied to one or more religions – prayer, meditation, yoga and various religious rituals. But prayer doesn’t have to be seeking help from a higher power. It can simply be articulating our wishes and hopes and inner state. And spiritual practice can also be simply digging in the ground if gardening centers us. They can be journaling, creating art, singing, chanting, knitting, learning something new, acts of kindness toward other people, engaging with others in public act for justice, absorbing the beauty of nature, holding those we love in front of a fire at night, volunteering, attending a communal bonding event – the list goes on and on. We’ve given everyone a hand out with a partial list spiritual practices. The main point is that any activity which gives you that sense of grounding, interconnectedness and being a part of something larger can be a spiritual practice. Some practices are more directed toward the mind, others the body, heart or soul. A wonderful book called, “An Alter in the World” by Barbara Brown Taylor talks about how just the way we go about our daily lives, if we practice mindfulness, can be a spiritual practice. So from that perspective voting our values or the way in which we treat other people can be spiritual.

Leo: You do more than one spiritual practice a day then?

Lee: Yes. The reason I like to layer up my armor of spiritual habits is that the day that you most need your spiritual practices is going to be when everything is going wrong. On that kind of day, you’ll miss most of your spiritual practices, and that is fine, because you will have fallback practices.

I learned this lesson when my husband had a near fatal car accident. A neighbor called me, saying he did not did not know if my husband was alive or dead but that paramedics had used the jaws of life to pull him from the wreckage, and an ambulance had taken him to the nearest trauma 1 hospital. Well, I missed my twenty minutes of meditation that day. I missed my gratitude practice. I was in spiritual freefall for a lot of hours, waiting to see if he would emerge alive from emergency surgery (which he did and he is miraculously 100 percent recovered).

The spiritual practice that I grabbed onto during the freefall was my prayer beads. I have them in my purse, so they are essentially always with me. I could do my prayer bead work in fits and snatches and unobtrusively in front of other people. In that situation, I had a tool that helped me meet the moment. All it takes is one, but you are a lot more likely to have the right spiritual practice if you have options you are comfortable with to choose from.

Leo: What obstacle or challenges can folks encounter when trying to maintain their spiritual practices?

Chris: For me, one of the biggest challenges is that when I am busy or stressed out, I tend to feel like I don’t have the time available to engage in my practices. And of course, these are the times when I need them the most! Having an accountability partner can help. For example, knowing that I have an appointment with a trainer at the gym (and that I get to pay him whether or not I show up!) is good for getting me there even on days when I am tempted to skip it. I think sometimes people get frustrated because the first few things they try don’t have the desired effect for them. For instance, I have never been good at sitting meditation. I’m too hyperkinetic. But then I discovered walking/hiking meditation and that can still be very powerful for me sometimes. Also, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes a practice may become less effective for us over time, so we may not vary our practices from time to time or find ways to deepen the ones we are already doing.

Leo: Lee, what tips do you have for folks starting out with spiritual practices? [To ask just before or after Chris talks about obstacles or challenges of spiritual practices.]

Lee: I offer four pointers for building a successful habit from James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits”:

  1. Make it obvious,
  2. make it attractive,
  3. make it easy, and
  4. make it satisfying.

Make a new spiritual practice obvious by stacking it on top of a preexisting habit. “After my alarm goes off, I will wake up [an existing habit] and then I will [do my spiritual practice: meditate, say a gratitude, create an intention for my day–whatever].”

Make your spiritual habit attractive–step two–by bundling it with something you want to do: “When my alarm goes off, I will wake up [existing habit] and do my spiritual practice [new habit], and then I will have coffee [making the new habit attractive by smacking it against something you like to do].”

Step three is “make it easy.” Set the bar for your new spiritual practice so low that you can’t fail. If your new habit is saying a gratitude, then say one and say it in your head. If your new spiritual practice is meditation, meditate for five breaths–not five minutes–in the beginning. Build up your spiritual practice after you have succeeded in building the habit of doing the spiritual practice in the first place. Your goal is to get 1 percent better at doing this new thing every day, not 100% better at doing it on the first day. Make it easy.

Finally, make your spiritual practice satisfying. What is rewarded is repeated. My prayer bead bracelets are smooth and beautiful. It is sensorily satisfying for me to use them.

Eventually, the intrinsic reward of feeling less stress and more compassion is reason enough to use them, but in the beginning, it helped a lot that I loved and wanted to hold them, like a crow likes shiny objects. For a new spiritual practice to take root, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.

Leo: Finally, why would you say that engaging in one or more spiritual practices matters for us?

Chris: Well, first, I would mention that there is a pretty good amount of research on at least some of these practices that shows they can be very good for us psychologically, physically and spiritually. They can even do things like lower blood pressure and relieve depression and anxiety. I also think they help ground and sustain us, especially when times are tough. They help us gain perspective and give us a sense of interconnectedness and belonging. And I think we are really going to need practices that help give us this resilience as we come up a new year where we know things like a senate impeachment trial and an election that likely to get very ugly will be happening. Finally, I would say that our practices do not all have top be individual. We can support each other. We can develop shared practices such our guided meditation group. These bind us together, deepen our relationships and reminds us that during these challenging times, we are never truly alone.

Leo: Lee, Why should people go to the trouble of developing spiritual practices?

Lee: I think your identity–indeed your humanity–is tied to your daily habits. To me, karma is a kind of compounding of habits. Peaceful, loving people practice being peaceful and loving. They do peaceful and loving things daily. Spiritual practices are embodied actions consonant with the kind of people we want to be. With practice, we become those kinds of people.

Most sermons during the past 20 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Lessons and Carols

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 24, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Come join our annual Christmas Eve worship service of Lessons and Carols. We will read, from the Christian texts, the story of Rabbi Jesus’ heralded birth as well as sing Christmas carols and hymns for the holiday.

WINTER TREES
by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the dis-attiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold

Chalice Lighting

On this night of anticipation, we raise our voices in story and song to greet Christmas. May the lessons of compassion, trust, and generosity alight within us and lead us into the new day, renewed.

Opening Words

The Persian poet Rumi wrote,

God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box
From cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
Now a cliff covered with vines,
Now a horse being saddled.
[God’s joy] hides within these,
Till one day it cracks them open.

Reading

“COME INTO CHRISTMAS”
by Ellen Fay

It is the winter season of the year
Dark and chilly
Perhaps it is a winter season in your life.
Dark and chilly there, too
Come in to Christmas here,
Let the light and warmth of Christmas brighten our
lives and the world.
Let us find in the dark corners of our souls the
light of hope,
A vision of the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Let us find rest in the quiet of a holy moment to
find promise and renewal.
Let us find the child in each of us, the new hope,
the new light, born in us.
Then will Christmas come
Then will magic return to the world.

Reading

“THE SHORTEST DAY”
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us-Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Reading

“ON ANGELS”
by Czeslaw Milosz

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.
There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.
Short is your stay here:
now and then at a morning hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.
They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.
The voice – no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightning.
I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:
day draws near
another one
do what you can.

Reading

Luke 2: 1-7

1. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
2. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
3. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
4. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
5. To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
6. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
7. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Reading

A GENTLE KIND OF MADNESS by Anthony F. Perrino

A gentle kind of madness
Comes with the end of December
A winter solstice spell, perhaps,
When people forget to remember –

The drab realities of fact,
The cherished hurt of ancient wrongs,
The lonely comfort of being deaf
To human sighs and angels’ songs.

Suddenly, they lose their minds
To hearts’ demands and beauty’s grace;
And deeds extravagant with love
Give glory to the commonplace.
Armies halt their marching,
Hatreds pause in strange regard
For the sweet and gentle madness born
when a wintry sky was starred.

Reading

“EACH NIGHT A CHILD IS BORN”
by Sophia Lyon Fahs

For so the children come
and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they came-
Born of the seed of man and woman.

No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
no wise man see a star to show where to find
The babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
Fathers and mothers
Sitting beside their children’s cribs-
Feel glory in the sight of a new beginning.
They ask “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”

Each night a child is born is a holy night
A time for singing-
A time for wondering
A time for worshipping.

Reading

Luke 2: 8-14

8. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Reading

“IN THIS NIGHT”
by Dorothee Solle

In this night the stars left their habitual places
And kindled wildfire tidings
that spread faster than sound.
In this night the shepherds left their posts
To shout the new slogans
into each other’s clogged ears.
In this night the foxes left their warm burrows
and the lion spoke with deliberation,
“This is the end revolution”
In this night roses fooled the earth
And began to bloom in snow.

Reading

Luke 2:15-20

15. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
16. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
17. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
18. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
19. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
20. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Reading

“THE CAMELS SPEAK”
by Lynn Ungar

Of course they never consulted us.
They were wise men, kings, star-readers,
and we merely transportation.
They simply loaded us with gifts
and turned us toward the star.
I ask you, what would a king know
of choosing presents for a child?
Had they ever even seen a baby
born to such simple folks,
so naked of pretension,
so open to the wind?
What would such a child care
for perfumes and gold? Far better
to have asked one born in the desert,
tested by wind and sand. We saw
what he would need: the gift
of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way,
making do with what there is,
living on what you have inside.
The gift of holding up under a burden,
of lifting another with grace, of kneeling
To accept the weight of what you must bear.
Our footsteps could have rocked him
with the rhythm of the road,
shown him comfort in a harsh land,
the dignity of continually moving forward.
But the wise men were not
wise enough to ask. They simply
left their trinkets and admired
the rustic view. Before you knew it
we were turned again toward home,
carrying men only half-willing
to be amazed. But never mind.
We saw the baby, felt him reach
for the bright tassels of our gear.
We desert amblers have our ways
of seeing what you chatterers must miss.
That child at heart knows something
about following a star. Our gifts are given.
Have no doubt. His life will bear
the print of who we are.

Reading

A RITUAL OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE FIRE”
Rev. Meg Barnhouse

Let us take into our hands a Christmas candle, a Solstice candle
this is a night of ancient joy and ancient fear
those who have gone before us were fearful of what lurked
outside the ring of fire, of light and warmth.
As we light this fire we ask that the fullness of its flame
protect each of us from what we fear most
and guide us towards our perfect light and joy.

May we each be encircled by the fire and warmth of love
and by the flame of our friendship with one another.
On this night, it was the ancient custom to exchange gifts
of light, symbolic of the new light of the sun.

Therefore make ready for the light!
Light of star, light of candle,
Firelight, lamplight, love light

Let us share the gift of light.

Reading

“THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS”
by Howard Thurman

When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are
home,
When shepherds are back with
their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the brothers,
to make music in the heart.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Closing Words

“KNEELING IN BETHLEHEM”
by Ann Weems

It is not over, this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s just the time that God will be born
in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening, always listening for angel words.

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

When God was a baby

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 22, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Our Annual Christmas Pageant with costumes provided for Angels, shepherds, and more as we hear and perform the famous story and sing beautiful carols.

Chalice Lighting

Through the longest night we waited for the sun to rise once more. This first morning we kindle the flame of Courage, the fourth of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Courage strengthen us as we tend to our roots in the winter darkness.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Christmas Pagent

The season of the winter solstice has been celebrated in one form or another for thousands of years. A hundred different cultures have told stories about how the birth of their gods took place at this time of year. In the Northern Hemisphere, we tell of how light, hope and life are returning to the world and to our lives. Darkness is good for rest and for root growth, but it’s harder to see where you are going and what is coming when you’re in the dark, so humans like to celebrate light. Today we will present the Christian faith story, as Christianity is one of the sources of our UU faith. It is the story of a special baby, a child of God as all babies are, a child called Jesus.

THE CHRISTMAS STORY

Here is the Christmas story. It happened a very long time ago in a land faraway. A man and a woman named Joseph and Mary had to make a journey to the city of Bethlehem, because there was a new law that said everyone had to return to the city where they were born to pay their taxes. Joseph was worried about Mary taking this trip as she was going to have a baby very soon, but Mary wanted to be with her husband for the birth of their first child. It was a long trip to Bethlehem, three full days of walking. Mary was glad when they saw the rooftops of Bethlehem in the distance. “Joseph,” she said, “let’s stay at the first inn we come to. I think our baby is almost ready to be born.” But when they got to Bethlehem, they found the little town crowded with people. They stopped at the first inn they came to and knocked on the door. But the innkeeper told them, “I’m sorry, there is no more room here.” At the next inn the innkeeper said, “We’re full. Try the place three streets over. It’s bigger.” Joseph tried another place and another place, but everywhere it was the same story: “Sorry, no room for you here.”

Finally, when it was almost night time, they saw a house at the edge of town with a light in the window. Joseph knocked at the door, and told the innkeeper, “Please help us. We need a place for the night. My wife is going to have a baby soon and I don’t think she can travel any farther.” And the innkeeper said, “There’s no room in the inn, but don’t worry, we’ll find someplace for you.” The innkeeper showed Mary and Joseph to a quiet little barn where the animals were. It was clean and warm and smelled like sweet hay.

And on that very night in that barn in Bethlehem, their little baby was born. It was a boy and they named him Jesus. Mary and Joseph wrapped him in the soft swaddling cloth and made a little bed for him in the hay.

That night, like every night, there were shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem, watching the flocks of sheep. The shepherds were surprised and amazed by a very bright light in the sky and a strange song coming from nowhere and everywhere, all at once. It was angels and they were glorious! After sharing the joyous news, the angels went to see the baby born in a stable in the city of Bethlehem to tell him hello. What a beautiful baby!

After the angels had gone away, the shepherds remembered what they had said, that a wonderful baby had been born and that they could find him by following the brightest star in the sky. So the shepherds all said to each other, “Let’s go look for that baby.” They had no trouble finding the stable, because of the bright star, and sure enough, there inside were Mary and Joseph, watching over their little baby, Jesus. And the shepherds saw that Jesus was just stunning. “Oh! What a beautiful child!” Then the shepherds went away and told everyone what they had seen.

On this same night, three wise ones saw the bright star and said to each other, “Look at the amazing star! It must be shining for something very special!” The wise ones loaded up their camels with treasures and traveling supplies and followed the star all the way to Bethlehem. Jesus was only a few days old when the wise ones found him, but they knew he was special. “What a wonderful child. This child will be our teacher.” And they gave the baby gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Mary and Joseph wondered for a long time about all of these things that happened when their child was born. “It’s astonishing that all these people would come to see our baby and give us presents for him. They don’t even know him.” When Jesus grew up, he was a courageous teacher, just like the wise ones said. And one of the most important things he tried to teach people was to love each other and to treat all people, even strangers, with kindness and care. And people who have tried to follow his best teachings have become better people, and have spread light through their world, which is what we are here to do.

Tonight we shared the Christmas Story about one special baby. But this baby isn’t the only special one. Every child is a treasure, is a wonder and a miracle. And as they grow up, they are always and forever a treasure, a wonder and a miracle.

Excerpted from “Each Night a Child is Born is a Holy Night”
by Sophia Lyon Fahs

For so the children come and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
Born of the seed of man and woman
Each night a child is born is a holy night.
Fathers and mothers sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel the glory in the sight of a new life beginning …
Each night a child is born is a holy night, a time for singing, a time for
wondering, a time for worshipping.

Sermon

There is no Batman at the manger,” one person said later. “Probably not,” I answered, “but there is a lot we don’t know about what actually happened. Historically, we barely know Jesus lived, much less whether he was born in Bethlehem, or whether he was married to Mary Magdalene, or whether he went to India to study in the ‘lost years’ between being a twelve-year-old talking with the teachers in the temple and beginning his ministry as an adult.” I saw her eyes glaze over with this much information, and circled back to the point. “Right. Odds are against there having been a Batman.”

The baby in the manger is a soul story, if not an historical story. Soul stories are as likely to be true as stories from history, but they are perhaps a different sort of true, and you approach them differently. Before and after doing historical research, biblical study, and the kinds of work on context and language one does when looking at a story from scripture, my inclination is to interact with the story as I would with a dream.

Holding the image of the Divine as a baby in mind and heart, I invite myself to let go of my hold on the Abrahamic God, the ideas about the Divine I can live with or not, the elements of the concept of a God I believe in and those I don’t believe in. A soul story is a dream from the depths of a culture, not an individual. This is bigger than my squeamishness or my history.

When God is a baby, no one has to be afraid of God. No one has to tremble before God’s wrath. No one has to wonder what they have done wrong, how they have disappointed God. A baby God isn’t mad at you — in fact, he needs you to coo over him, hold him close, smell her head, curl her tiny fingers around your pinkie, protect him, and visit her with presents. No wonder Christmas is a well-loved holiday: We get to coo over the baby God, and feel the aching openness of a heart at its very beginning.

Among the ways to understand the Divine is as the spirit of love, the spirit of light, the spirit of life. A baby love, a baby light, a baby life would carry within itself all that it will become, like an oak within the acorn, like a mighty river that starts as a spring seeping out of the earth in a high and quiet place. The light starts as a tiny spark. A new baby love has all the possibilities in the world; it carries all the hopes and dreams. Later on, as it grows and matures, it becomes more real, and if you are skilled and lucky, it grows richer and deeper. As life starts you care for it and nurture it. You are careful with it. You delight in it. A baby is full of possibility.

What if this is a story about the soul entering the world of the body? The light of spirit and wisdom, the Divine seed planted in a human being? Some of the founders of our free religion believed that the seed of God, a tiny sliver of the light, was in each of us.

I think about the Divine seed, the wise baby, within me, containing the whole of divinity in itself, yet needing to grow. Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes in Flight to Arras: “The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground.” Is my soul the seed, or is it the light? I say it is both. Do we long for the Divine, or are we divine ourselves? Both. Do we search for God or is God within us? Both.

In times of confusion and doubt, I see myself able to visit my soul like the magi, the wise magicians, and kneel before it with gifts of quiet, respect, and love. I can nurture the light, the seed of God within me. I can protect it from the forces of power over, which show up next in the faith story-the forces of fear and control, the Herod power, the light-killing, love-killing power of the outer world and of my inner world as well.

I wish for each of you at this time of the rebirth of the light that the light be reborn in you, that love be cradled in your heart, that you be a seed haunted by the sun, finding your way from the nurturing darkness, past all obstacles, stubbornly and rapturously breaking through to live in the light.

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Perfect Miracles

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 15, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What can we say about miracles? Are they supernatural interferences with the laws of nature? Are they proofs of divine power? Are they everyday beauties and interactions we can see if we have an eye for miracles?

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Compassion, the third of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Compassion brighten our own spark of the divine, guiding us to treat ourselves and others with deep love.

Call to Worship

Albert Einstein (attributed)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is a though nothing is a miracle, the other is a though everything is a miracle.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Meditation Reading

MIRACLES
Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love,
Or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

Sermon

PERFECT MIRACLES

The choir this morning is singing about the conversation Mary had with the angel, when he brought her God’s message that she was to be the mother of the divine baby. In the faith story, this is a miracle. In my mind the bigger amazement is that in that time when women were seen almost as property, the angel, and God, waited for her to say yes. The church, as it evolved, made the miracle of Jesus’ birth a centerpiece of the faith. In most religions of that time, a miraculous birth was part of the story of their prophet, or their divinity. The Roman Christian church didn’t cement it in time, though, because the gospel of Matthew begins with the list of the ancestors of Jesus, and the lineage goes back through his father Joseph. You may not want to point this out to Uncle Hollister at Christmas unless you want to start a fight.

The Transcendentalists, our Unitarian forbears in the 19th century, were scornful of the thought that the Divine would have to show their power by miracles. Most people think of miracles as events where God disrupts the laws of nature for the purpose of helping, healing, or showing power. Ralph Waldo Emerson saw it as almost insulting of God, that the creator of this wondrous world with all of its laws and patterns, with falling rain and crashing waves, with buds that bloom and then make seeds, with the Fibonacci series, with our bodies, and most of all our minds, would have to interrupt those laws in order to show the people, whom they created, their power.

If we don’t retain our sense of wonder and awe at all of these things around us, we could get into an overly dry and linear place where we say “there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything is chemistry and physics and everything is understandable.” Or we might stubbornly hold on to a desire to live in a world where monks can levitate and make themselves warm sitting in the snow on the mountain. People flock to evangelical and Pentecostal churches where the Spirit is called down for healing and guidance. The miracles advertised by these churches are like the ones in all religions, faith stories, up to and including people being raised from the dead. My suspicion is that most of that is fake, or it’s the placebo effect (which I take to mean “great! You are healed for some reason we don,t understand. That’s wonderful. Your mind/spirit/body did that.”) Any scientist, any person working in medicine, will tell you there are factors in healing and sickness that can surprise and astonish everyone involved. There are mysteries. Most of us, if you get us in a talkative and trusting mood, will talk about something inexplicable in our lives that could be considered magic, or a miracle. The poets, the mystics of all religions remind us that there are things beyond our ken. Almost any traveler will tell you how their minds were opened, broadened.

I live in the tension between what I can believe and what I experience. I don’t believe in Reiki, but I have experienced it and it has been helpful, and when I do it for others they sometimes find it helpful. When I say I don’t believe in something what I mean is I can’t find a rational scientific way to understand it, and that it works sometimes and not other times. I don’t believe that there are Saints who can help us find things, but, as I confessed to you a couple of years ago, I sometimes pray to St. Anthony to help me find something I’ve lost. I was not raised with saints, but when he seems to agree to work with a UU, who am I to argue?

I saw a medicine man from Surinam offer to show a group of us how he could walk in fire. “Oh yeah, I thought. He’ll be like those folks who walk fast across coals, and the distribution of their weight and the speed at which they move keeps their skin from burning.” He left to meditate for fifteen minutes. Walking back to us, he said “There are many of you, so I will choose a burning log and hold it to my foot as I move around the circle.” I was disappointed, as I pictured him holding it to his foot for a second, then moving on. Then I watched him go choose a log. By which I mean he walked into the fire and stood there as he picked up first one log then another to find just the right one.

I saw a man who teaches mentalism at the New School in NYC bend keys at my father’s wedding reception. He didn’t touch the spoons himself, he asked us all to hold one of our own keys in our hand. Then we were to concentrate on them and try to make them bend with our minds. I wanted mine to bend, but it didn’t. When he asked the assembled crowd to open our hands, my Uncle Rob, a conservative Episcopalian Pathologist from Squirrel Hill and his daughter who was teaching English in China gasped in a chorus of two. Their keys, as they held them up, were nearly bent in half. We were astonished, even as Gabe the mentalist said “Please let me remind you that this is an illusion.”

I also saw a fortune teller in India run up to a friend of mine on the street, and say “your mother’s name was Ruth and your father’s name is Greg. Your mother died when you were 38. If you want to know more, come into my shop for a reading.” My friend, a Franciscan friar in his brown robe with its white cord, lost all the color in his face. “That was right! How did he know!” We were both – what’s a word – nonplussed.

My Aunt Ruth, who was with us on that trip, a medical doctor as well as a doctor of divinity, said “Of course. He was reading the Akashic record in your aura.”

What I think as a neo-Transcendentalist is that just because there is no current scientific understanding of all of those mysteries doesn’t mean they are supernatural. What a bunch of arrogance, to draw the trajectory of human scientific understanding as if we were at the pinnacle. If anyone were to give it more than a moment’s thought, they would know that we are somewhere on the trajectory, but nowhere near its peak. Here is what I think. Surprising things happen. The rules of nature as we currently understand them may be disrupted, and that just means there are things in nature we don’t yet understand.

And speaking of miracles Mary’ s Magnificat says

The Magnificat
My soul magnifies the Lord…
He hath showed might with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the lowly.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

May this world she dreamt of come to pass. May the heavy-footed be thrown down, their scepters broken, their hearts healed. May the proud, conceited and heavy-footed within each of us also be scattered and our hearts healed. This would be a miracle indeed.

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Awe and Then Some

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
December 8, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

When we consider the magnitude of our universe; observe the intricate beauty and yet the sometimes seemingly random cruelty of nature; contemplate the mysteries of life and living, we can feel both small and humbled, as well as have a sense of being a meaningful part of something much, much larger than ourselves. We’ll explore this sense of awe and how we might cultivate it as a spiritual practice.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Community, the second of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Community burn bright, reminding us to connect with joy, sorrow, and service to the Beloved Community that begins within these walls.

Call to Worship

Robert Benson
“Between the Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God”

We do not always see that we should be moving about our days and lives and places with awe and reverence and wonder, with the same soft steps with which we enter the room of a sleeping child or the mysterious silence of a cathedral. There is no ground that is not holy ground.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Moment for Beloved Community

I was just reading a study that found that white employers were more likely to reject a job application without even doing an in-person interview if they thought the person’s name sounded “black” on their resume.

So, our question to ponder this week is what would it be like to be rejected for employment just because of how your name sounded to someone.

As we ponder this, remember there is no need to immerse ourselves in guilt or shame. In fact, these can be counterproductive, we need joy and community to sustain our struggle to do justice and build the beloved community. There is beauty to be found in the struggle itself.

Meditation Reading

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Who is Man?”

The Sense of the Ineffable

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things.

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Sermon

In August of 2017, my spouse, Wayne and I flew to Denver, Colorado. There, we rented a car and drove to a rural area of western Nebraska, where we met up with Wayne’s best friend, Teresa and her two of her sisters.

One of Teresa’s sisters had arranged with a family who had a farm outside of the little town of Alliance, Nebraska, for the group of us to view the total solar eclipse from up on a hillside on their farm.

We gathered on the top of the hill, picnic supplies in hand to wait for the eclipse.

Now, neither Wayne and I, nor the Denny sisters, Teresa, Pamela and Lisa, very often find ourselves at a loss for words. However, when the eclipse began, as the moon moved over the face of the sun and the light began to fade, as night creatures suddenly began their chorus of early evening sounds, we humans fell still and silent.

Evening shadows fell over what had been mid afternoon brightness.

Eventually, the moon completely covered the sun, yet there was still a slight glow around the edges of the moon, casting a glimmer of light on us and all of the creatures and geography below.

I was awestruck. I could feel my skin tingling.

As the moon began to move further across the sun and one edge of the sun began to be visible again, we could see a glow of light in the distant horizon.

The glow surrounded us.

I turned around in a full circle and could see an orange glow, the color of a sunrise, at the edges of the entire 360 degrees of the horizon around us.

Birds began their morning songs.

I felt myself involuntarily inhaling a deep breath. My eyes were brimming with tears in reaction to the absolute beauty and enormity of what I was witnessing.

Later, after the eclipse had ended, and we had returned to the hotel where we were staying, Wayne and I talked about the experience of it.

We both had gotten a powerful sense of how tiny our planet, indeed we are, in the almost incomprehensible vastness of our universe and the limitless sweep of time.

Yet, we also had experienced a sense of expansion and interconnectedness, of being an integral part of that great immensity.

I wanted to start with that story this morning because it is such a strong example of the spiritual theme we are exploring as a religious community during December – the experience of awe.

What does it mean to be a people of awe?

To start, it may be helpful to define what we mean by that little word “awe” that names an an experience which can have such a profound effect on us.

The expression “awe” is rooted in the Greek word “achos”, which also gives us the word ache.

So, the experience of awe opens an ache in our hearts and thereby expands them with a desire to hold on to the change in perspective, the expansion of understanding that we are given by such experiences.

Dr. Dacher Kelner, researcher and Director of Psychology at the University of California, Berkley, who studies the experience of awe, offers this definition – “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”

He says that “Awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, more humble and part of something larger… “

Similarly, neuropsychologist, Nicholas Humphrey, who also studies awe, defines it as “An experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it”

The scientific study of the experience and emotion we call “awe” is relatively new. However, we have already begun to discover some intriguing and potentially important aspects of these experiences.

Several studies of the physiological responses to awe across a variety of different cultures have found a number of commonalities:

  • A sudden, often vocalized, involuntary intake of breath.
  • The feeling of hair on the arms being raised and/or of having goosebumps.
  • Widened eyes and the formation of tears.
  • Stillness and a feeling of being struck silent.

And awe seems to be beneficial to us in a number of ways.

First, and this may be one of the reasons we evolved to have the capacity for awe, is that it seems to move us from individualistic and self-centered behavior toward collective interest and prosocial behavior.

And, of course, social behavior has been a major factor in the survival of our species.

Researchers theorize this may arise because of the psychological effects of awe that I described earlier – a sense of smallness and humility and yet at the same time a feeling of connection with something much larger.

For example, near the University of California at Berkley stands a grove of eucalyptus trees that are the tallest in North America. Staring up from beneath these trees with their peeling bark, their odor and the grayish green light their canopy creates can readily induce a sense of awe.

In one study, researchers had a group of students do just that for one minute. However, the researchers had another group of students look 90 degrees away, at the facade of a science building.

Then, the researchers arranged for each group of students to encounter a person who stumbled and dropped a handful of pens.

Sure enough, the students who had ben gazing up at the awe-inspiring trees were far more likely to help the person pick up the pens. They also reported feeling less self-entitled than the other group did.

And studies like this, demonstrating the prosocial influence of awe, have now been repeated using a wide variety of methods, in diverse subjects and in numerous different circumstances.

Studies have also found that experiences of awe may improve our relationship with time by anchoring us in the present moment, making us feel we are rich in time rather than always running out of it.

Further, researchers have also found that experiences of awe boost creativity and improve scientific thinking.

This may be because awe stimulates the dopamine system, which triggers curiosity and exploration in mammals.

Albert Einstein once claimed that experiences of awe are “the source of all true art and science.”

Finally, early research indicates that feelings of awe may also be physiologically and psychologically beneficial in numerous other ways also.

For instance, several studies have found that even short but regular experiences of awe can help our bodies regulate the cytokines in our immune system.

Cytokines can be thought of as chemical messengers that among other functions help manage our inflammatory response when we get injured.

Abnormally elevated cytokines, however, are associated with depression and other psychological and physical problems.

Awe seems to help us reduce cytokine levels when they are elevated unnecessarily.

Researchers even theorize that experiences of awe may be beneficial to people with post traumatic stress syndrome.

I was struck by the story of of a man named Stacy Bare. Mr. Bare had been through two deployments in Iraq. After returning to the United States, he was suffering from severe post traumatic stress syndrome, burdened by suicidal thoughts and was drinking heavily.

One day, he had gotten into an argument with his brother as the two were hiking in Utah’s Canyon National Park. Things were getting heated, when suddenly, they came upon an amazing natural structure called the Druid Arch. Here is a picture of it.

DRUID ARCH SLIDE

The men stopped short. Their jaws dropped. They began to laugh. They hugged each other. Bare says that in that moment he could no longer even remember what they had been fighting about.

That experience of awe was the beginning of Stacy Bare’s life turning around.

Today, he is the director of “Sierra Club Outdoors”, the environmental organization’s program that sponsors trips for veterans and at risk youth on just such awe inspiring wilderness excursions.

The program has documented clear “improvements in psychological well-being, social functioning and life outlook.

Now, here is something important to know.

It does not take stumbling upon the Druid Arch, seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time or experiencing a total solar eclipse for us to reap the potential benefits of awe.

Certainly, these and other large and stunning experiences of awe, such as to be found in these types of extraordinary natural phenomenon or pieces of art and music, ritual and religious or spiritual experiences and the like are so often unexpected blessings.

However, the research has found that smaller, more run of the mill feelings of awe may be both more common than we might expect and more beneficial over the long run if we look for them and recognize them on a consistent basis.

Here are just a few, more day to day events that people have reported moving them into a sense of awe:

  • Becoming absorbed in a pattern of light that the setting sun is casting on the floor through the living room blinds.
  • Simpler but more frequent experiences of going into natural areas (most of us can’t visit the Grand Canyon every few days, after all).
  • Gazing at the stars on a clear night or upon an extraordinary sunrise or sunset.
  • Witnessing a child we love’s astonishment and joy at discovering something new in their world.
  • Watching gold and red autumn leaves swirl and dance to the ground in a light wind.
  • Observing other people engage in acts of kindness, justice or courage.

And the list of these more common, smaller doses of awe goes on and on.

In fact science has found that on average folks feel awe every third day and that we can increase that frequency even more if we allow ourselves the time to slow down – open ourselves to the potential for awe.

We can even find awe through other’s experiences of it, including their digital video of it!

The Unitarian Universalist Soul Matters group even put together a YouTube play list of potentially awe inspiring short videos.

Here is a short URL I created that I hope may be easy to remember. It is https://tinyurl.com/aweatfirstuu

And here is just a short example from one of the videos.

VIDEO

I want to share one more video with you also.

It’s by philosopher and television and social media personality Jason Silva. Silva thinks that finding awe in what we might otherwise consider the mundane is not only possible, but that we need it to move us out of the banal and toward the more sublime and life fulfilling.

Let’s look and listen.

SILVA VIDEO

I think I agree with him, and I think that means that these smaller doses of awe, as well as the more immense ones we may be fortunate to experience once in a while, are a vital part of our spirituality.

They nourish our souls.

A fascinating study found that practicing scientists who held awe as a a part of their love of science, were much more likely to have deep sense of spirituality and even to hold a concept of God.

Now most often, they did not hold a classic or biblical sense of God, but rather a mystical concept of the divine.

They found God in the seemingly limitless creative potential of our universe, as well as the still profoundly mysterious nature of it – some of them metaphorically and others as an actual, mystical cosmic force.

Either way, they found through awe a deep meaning and beauty in life and a source of creativity and innovation in scientific their work.

What if we made being open to – even actively seeking these experiences, both the everyday and the more extraordinary, a spiritual practice?

Surrender to the mystery.

Immerse yourself in experiences of awe. For therein is where God lives.

Amen

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS

Lessons in Welcome from Thanksgiving and a Blow to the head

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Lee Legault, Ministerial Intern
December 1, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

We experience the world differently. Those of us journeying life neuro-typically and with ableist privilege too often hold this truth abstractly and at a distance. Let us hold the truth of neuro-physical diversity closely and tenderly to transform worship and build the Beloved Community.

Chalice Lighting

As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Transcendence, the first of the five values of our congregation. We are in awe at each glimpse of the Oneness of everything, the great truth that lives deep within ourselves and reaches to the farthest ends of the Universe.

Call to Worship

by William F. Schulz

This is the mission of our faith:
To teach the fragile art of hospitality;
To revere both the critical mind and the generous heart;
To prove that diversity need not mean divisiveness;
And to witness to all that we must hold the whole world in our hands.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Moment for Beloved Community

This moment comes from American feminist scholar – and white woman – Peggy McIntosh. She wrote an engaging and convicting essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it she says, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.”

In unpacking this invisible knapsack, she lists conditions of daily experience that she once took for granted because of her whiteness. Here are three that stood out for me because I’m raising three, white UU young people:

  • I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
  • I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
  • I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

She lists 50 items in the knapsack of white privilege. I invite you to explore her full essay on the website www.racialequitytools.org

Meditation Reading

YOUR BODY IS WELCOME HERE
by Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Your body is welcome here, all of it.
Yes, even that part. And that part. And yes, even that part.
The parts you love, and the parts you don’t.

For in this place we come with all that we are,
All that we have been,
And all that we are going to be.

Our bodies are constantly changing, cells die and cells are reborn
We respond to infections and disease
Sometimes we can divorce them from our bodies,
and other times they become permanently part of us.

Your body and all that is within it,
both wanted and not wanted, has a place here.
Our bodies join in a web of co-creation,
created and creating.

Constantly changing, constantly changing us
Scarred and tattooed, tense and relaxed
Diseased and cured, unfamiliar and intimate
Formed in infinite diversity of creation
Your body is welcome here, all of it.

So take a moment and welcome it
Take a moment to feel in it.
Take a moment, to be in it.

Sermon

My Thanksgivings

When I think back to when I first internalized that people experience the world differently, I would say it was Thanksgivings at my grandparents’ house in Corpus Christi. My grandparents hosted seven or more family members in their small townhouse, so we got cozy, and I always looked forward to spending a couple of nights together.

I usually got to sleep on something other than a bed, and when I was little that felt like an awesome adventure. Would I get one of the couches? Maybe the air mattress?

As I drifted off to sleep, I fondly remember hearing my mom and my aunt whispering urgently to one another. It was always about the same thing: the thermostat.

My granddad kept the thermometer set to 78 at night. He slept in pajamas with long sleeves and long pants; he wore fleecy house slippers. My mom and my aunt were what we called hot-natured and that made them susceptible to “sweltering in the night,” which is why they kept their thermostats at 68 at night in their houses.

At Thanksgiving, my mom and aunt would wait about thirty minutes after my grandparents had gone to bed. Then they would hover about the thermostat debating how low they could turn it without the air conditioning waking my granddad up. My aunt always got up super early in the morning to “put her face on” before anyone saw her naked visage, so she would change it back to 78 before my granddad noticed.

I was pretty much impervious to temperature as a kid. I slept fine no matter where the thermostat ended up, but I could see at Thanksgiving that other people experienced the environment differently than I did ….

Now in addition to a fun story about my family at Thanksgiving, I have just given you some important, unspoken information: I carry able-bodied, neurotypical privilege. Like white privilege, able-bodied privilege is often invisible or unknown to those who have it, because they have the luxury of drifting through life oblivious to their role in an oppressive system. Able-bodied privilege is how I made it through childhood only aware once-a-year at Thanksgiving that people experience their physical environments differently.

Like white privilege perpetuates racism, able-bodied privilege perpetuates ableism. Ableism creates an unwelcoming environment for many, many people.

I was reminded of my able-bodied privilege last month when I got a mild concussion. I was unpacking luggage in a hotel and when I raised up I banged the heck out of my head on the open door of the hotel safe. Today I am back to my own normal, but for about a month, I experienced the world differently. I had trouble focusing, and my memory was unreliable. I fatigued easily and had to pare down my schedule to get enough rest. I got overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. I felt anxious in social situations because I was not sure what would come out of my mouth, or if I would be able to keep up with what was going on around me. These symptoms temporarily changed the way I lived my life and very much changed the way I experienced worship.

Vocabulary

The Accessibility Guidelines for Unitarian Universalist Congregations define a disability as a physical or mental challenge that substantially limits one or more major life activities. There are times when using the word “disability” makes sense, but being a welcoming congregation requires openness to moving beyond binary labels. UU Minister Teresa Soto, who identifies as a disabled person, reminds us that “disability isn’t medical when it comes to being in community. It’s ‘an experience’.”

Two emerging terms reframe the medical model of disability, and cast all of us along a spectrum of physical and mental differences. These two words – neurodiversity and bodily diversity – respect differences in neurological and bodily realities as variations in a shared human experience. Importantly, neurodiversity and bodily diversity are neutral words, that emphasize that we are all in relationship, working it out together. Here’s a sample sentence for neurodiversity: AcknowLedging her son’s attention deficit disorder as neurodiverse means that she understands he approaches time and organization differently than she does – and he is often more creative and innovative than she.

Things not to say

A few more words about diction because words shape and reveal attitudes. Words matter for welcoming.

A “handicap” is not a description of a person. It is a barrier that society places on a person with a disability. So it would be appropriate to say, “Stairs will be a handicap for John, who uses a wheelchair.” It would not be appropriate to say, “John is handicapped and can’t use the stairs.” It should go without saying, but do not refer to someone BY disability.

Here is a poignant anecdote from Reverend Soto:

“Very often people call me ‘wheelchair.’ You would think: that wouldn’t happen, but it does. The bus driver will say, the wheelchair is getting off here. Well, I’m hoping to go with it. So because people call me a wheelchair sometimes, I prefer to call myself a person with a disability.”

I apologize that these next few words are coming out of my mouth, but I want to be explicit about this from the pulpit. Drop the following descriptors from your vocabulary of neuro and bodily diversity: crippled, crazy, retarded, dumb, shut-in, invalid, sufferer, or victim. Those words do harm: reinforcing stereotypes, creating false narratives, and disseminating disinformation.

Neurodiverse testimonies

Theologically, mindfulness of neuro and bodily diversity is a way to practice our first and seventh principles: the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Theologically, welcoming does not mean adapting the existing system for a few; it means the many shake up their attitudes and their way of thinking to make room for every whole person who might be in the room–their needs And their gifts. Theologically, welcoming means relying on our second source: Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. Specifically, we need to listen to those among us — like Reverend Soto — willing to offer the wisdom of their lived experience that we all may grow spiritually.

Another of these prophetic people is Ramon Selove, a Unitarian Universalist from Virginia who teaches biology, identifies as autistic, and trains congregations on best practices for welcoming people with autism. He wrote about neurodiversity in worship in a piece called “Preventable Suffering: A UU With Autism Confronts Coffee Hour.” He says:

Meeting people, touching people, and general noise levels during and after a worship service can be real problems for me and others with autism. During services, just when things have quieted down and we are getting into the rhythm of the service, our minister asks us to stop and greet each other, shake hands, etc. It then takes the congregation a while to calm down again and get back into the service. I personally find that break disruptive. I really wish we wouldn’t do it at all.

It is stressful for me to be in the presence of a large number of people and it is much worse when many conversations are going on at the same time. I sometimes come to church late so that I can avoid all the conversations that occur prior to the service. At the end of the service I usually remain in the seats instead of going to the “social area.” Sometimes people come to talk to me (which I appreciate very much) and sometimes I just sit alone.

Welcoming Practices

First UU of Austin already has in place some of the best practices for a neuro and bodily diverse worship, like our quiet room with a window into the sanctuary, the choice of listening to the service from the fellowship hall, the large-print orders of service, streaming the service on Facebook, and the hearing loop system, among other things.

There is more to do, and that is all right. Let’s ask ourselves as a community of neuro and bodily diverse people: How could we do this better? If we can’t do it today, how can we work towards it and what would it take to do it in the future? We welcome discussion and suggestions. Let us know how to welcome you.

Reverend Helen McFadyen, coordinator of the UU Accessibility and Inclusion ministry, notes that true inclusion and welcome take sustained commitment, and that some of the most important changes are attitudinal.

One step we can all take, beginning today, is to make welcoming a spiritual practice. Some of our middle school youth are learning how to do this as part of their Crossing Paths RE curriculum. I offer you the Eight Practices of Welcoming that they are learning:

  1. Be fully present
  2. Be curious
  3. Be open to being changed
  4. Be comfortable with discomfort
  5. Be an appreciative listener
  6. Be light-hearted
  7. Be gentle
  8. Be yourself

Return to Thanksgiving and link church to sanctuary

At bottom, hospitality and welcome are not about social graces. They are about seeing the divine in every person. They are about Mutual Reverence. We call the room we are all in together right now “The Sanctuary.” “Sanctuary” can mean simply a place that a person can go to avoid harm. But it is more than that. The word “sanctuary” comes from “sanctus,” which is the latin word for “holy.” Let us make this place holy for all who seek it.

Most sermons during the past 19 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link below to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

SERMON INDEX

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link below or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776

PODCASTS