Animal Blessing

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 3, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join us for an All Ages service to bless the beloved animal companions in your lives. All friendly, well-behaved creatures young, old, great and small, furry and scaly are invited to this cherished annual tradition.

Call to Worship

THE CALLING OF THE CREATURES
By Ian W. Riddell

Come hoof and trunk and tail and horn
and paw and wing and claw;
Come bird and reptile, mammal born
all full of nature’s law.
Bring bark and crow and ribbit, too
and silent stare and hiss;
Bring purr and trill and warble, too
and voice no ear can miss.
We gather here each life and all
to celebrate and sing
to honor creature large and small
‘Tis holiness we bring.

Reading

WE GIVE THANKS FOR THE ANIMALS
By Gary Kowalski

We give thanks for the animals
Who live close to nature,
Who remind us of the sanctities of birth and death,
Who do not trouble their lives with foreboding or grief,
Who let go each moment as it passes,
And accept each new one as it comes
With serenity and grace.
Enable us to walk in beauty as they do
At one with the turning seasons,
Welcoming the sunrise and at peace with sunset.
And as we hallow the memory of good friends now departed,
Who loved abundantly and in their time were loved,
Who freely gave us their affection and loyalty.
Let us not be anxious for tomorrow
But ask only that kindness and gratitude fill our hearts,
Day by day, into the passing years.

Sermon

There is a love holding us.

There is so much love in this room. A woman’s husband had a dog he called “the keeper of his soul.” One night she idly asked him whether, if he had to choose between the dog and her, which he would choose. “Please don’t ask me that,” he said.

There is a love holding all that we love.

You heard me talk about the bear that was my friend since birth. He was a good companion. What makes a good companion was in a publication called “Yoga World” that I saw a wonderful description of how to be a good companion. Sometimes an animal can be this to a human, sometimes a human can be this to an animal. Sometimes we can find this with another human. To be a good companion, it says,

“You will need to be caring and concerned about [their] happiness. As a friend, you will want to share [their] concerns and labors. Naturally, you will want to make [their] life more pleasant. You will have to know life and yourself well enough to become trustworthy, capable of keeping your agreements. To be a friend, your word must be true. A true friend, you will hold good will in your heart even when you misunderstand or distrust your gracious companion. You will refuse to indulge bad moods brought on by your inadequacies. It is not easy to be a true friend. “

May we all find a being like this is our lives. May we sometimes be able to be a friend like this ourselves, to another being. Our job here on earth is to learn how to love and be loved. As our animal companions teach us those things, we are grateful to them.

SERMON SONG
There is a love holding us.
There is a love holding all that we love.
There is a love holding all
We rest in this love.

There is a love holding all….

Last week my wife and I were talking about ancestors, teachers and helpers who had been good to us in our lives. I was thinking about a woman named Polly who taught me a lot about dreams and how to interpret them. She trained me using my own dreams, and we talked about my life. I was sad sometimes, during those talks. She had an enormous dog, a Bernese Mountain dog named Riggi. When he would sense I was sad, he would get up from the floor and come lean on my knee. Sometimes when someone is sad, it is not any words you say that make them feel better. It’s your presence with them, just giving a hug or leaning against their shoulder that makes them feel better. I learned that from Riggi, and so I count that huge dog as one of my teachers.

Animal companions help people and people help their animal companions. We are going to bless them today because they bless us. UU theology says that all of us are able to bless, and that all of us are ministers in our own way. That’s why we don’t bring our animals up for just the ministers to bless. You can bless your own animal. We are going to use the blessing song that we’ve been singing, only we’re going to put the names of the ones we want to bless into the song.

Like this:  
There is a love holding us. 
There is a love holding all that we love. 
There is a love holding all.
_________ in this love.

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

Collective Liberation

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 27, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

How do we ground our social justice work, our struggles against racism, oppression and the destruction of our environment? Where do we find reliance and even joy? We will examine a theology that grounds this work in our collective interdependence or as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior put it, “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality … This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

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

“IF YOU HAVE COME HERE TO HELP ME, YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. BUT IF YOU HAVE COME BECAUSE YOUR LIBERATION IS BOUND UP WITH MINE, THEN LET US WORK TOGETHER.”
Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s

Call to Worship
Rev. Chris Jimmerson

I reach for my fullest potential in a world that pits my full potential against yours.

Together, we can all better reach for our full potential.

I am taught to fear difference.

By embracing our differences, we learn, grow and may be transformed.

The privileges I have been given, the power to oppress, leaves me trapped within those same systems of oppression.

Collectively, we can change those systems and liberate us all.

Racism, sexism, classism, radical capitalism, gender and sexuality biases, religious bigotries; these conspire together to bind us all into silos of spiritual emptiness.

Together, we can burst through these silos of disconnection and journey together toward wholeness and holiness.

Come, let us enter into this journey together.

Together, we celebrate our collective vision of Beloved Community. Together, we build that vision.

Reading

A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
by Martin Luther King Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat justice everywhere.

There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought be maladjusted.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.

We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation…

The foundation of such a method is love.

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

We shall hew out of the mouton of despair, a stone of hope.

Sermon Handout

COSTS OF OPPRESSION TO PEOPLE FROM PRIVILEGED GROUPS

Psychological Costs: Loss of Mental Health and Authentic Sense of Self.

  • Socialized into limited roles and patterns of behavior
  • Denial of emotions and empathy
  • Limited self-knowledge and distorted view of self
  • Discrepancy between others’ perceptions and internal reality
  • Pain and fears (of doing and saying wrong thing, of retaliation from oppressed groups, of revealing self for fear of judgment, of different people and experiences)
  • Diminished mental health (distorted view of self and reality, denial, projection)

Social Costs: Loss and Diminishment of Relationships

  • Isolation from people who are different
  • Barriers to deeper, more authentic relationships
  • Disconnection, distance and ostracism within own group/family if act differently

Moral and Spiritual Costs: Loss of Moral and Spiritual Integrity

  • Guilt and shame
  • Moral ambivalence (doing right thing vs. social pressures and realities)
  • Spiritual emptiness or pain

Intellectual Costs: Loss of Developing Full Range of Knowledge

  • Distorted and limited view of other people’s culture and history
  • Ignorance of own culture and history

Material and Physical Costs: Loss of Safety, Resources, and Quality of Life

  • Social violence and unrest
  • Higher costs (e.g. for good and safe schools and homes, for qualified employees)
  • Waste of resources (to deal with effects of inequality)
  • Loss of valuable employees, clients and customers
  • Loss of knowledge to foster societal growth and well-being
  • Diminished collective action for common concerns
  • Negative health implications

Benefits of Social Justice for People from Privileged Groups

  • Fuller, more authentic sense of self
  • More authentic relationships and human connection
  • Moral integrity and consistency
  • Freedom from fears
  • Improved work and living conditions
  • Access to other cultures and wisdom
  • More resources to address common concerns
  • Greater opportunity for real democracy and justice

From: Diane J. Goodman, Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Group (Routledge, 2011). www.dianegoodman.com

Benediction
by Bell Hooks

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.

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

The Holiness of Hands

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bear W. Qolezcua
January 20, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

In the midst of so much civil turmoil and violence, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched hand-in-hand with others. His life and his ministry of reckless love taught us what it meant to truly care for others through the works of our hands and hearts. Let us explore the possibility that lives within us to do the work of nourishing, transforming, and seeking justice to build our Beloved Community.

Call to Worship

OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE
By Naomi King

When the world’s violence shatters the joy of a moment 
We pause and reach out for the hands that remain

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When despair rises as a monster from the deep 
and drags down one of our own, our answer is that 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When hatred and anger rage in fire and suffering 
We bend to pick up the wounded, to bind up ourselves and

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

When fear whispers “build more gates” “add more locks” 
“the blessed are those who defend themselves,” 
we rock those fears to sleep and let them rest as

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

People will do unspeakably cruel and horrible things; 
we know this fact, we live and die this daily, 
all around the world, in every community and every wasteland. 
But we know the answer is found only with one action, and so 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone can be healed. 
This is the truth we affirm. 
We live with courage and with a wider and wider circle 
of that force that bends our lives to ones of mercy, justice, and compassion. 

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

It’s the truth: just by being born you are loved. 
There is something within you and every person that can be loved.

WE OPEN OUR HEARTS WITH LOVE. 

In love, we pray for those families, those individuals, 
all the persons here and everywhere 
who are desperately sure that there is not enough love in the world for them 
to have some, who are desperately sure that they do not matter. 
In love with life, in love with the Beloved, 
we turn to answer that desperation with assurance: 
you are loved, you are lovable, we will and do love you. 
Now, attend to your life’s work: to love. 
It’s the only legacy that matters. 

AMEN.

Reading 

ANYONE’S MINISTRY
by Gordon B. McKeeman 

Ministry is 

a quality of relationship between and among human beings 
that beckons forth hidden possibilities. 

inviting people into deeper, more constant 
more reverent relationship with the world 
and with one another 

carrying forward a long heritage of hope and 
liberation that has dignified and informed 
the human venture over many centuries. 

being present with, to, and for others 
in their terrors and torments 
in their grief, misery, and pain. 

knowing that those feelings 
are our feelings, too. 

celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit 
the miracles of birth and life 
the wonders of devotion and sacrifice. 

witnessing to life-enhancing values 
speaking truth to power 
standing for human dignity and equity 
for compassion and aspiration. 

believing in life in the presence of death 
struggling for human responsibility 
against principalities and structures that ignore humane-ness 
and become instruments of death. 

It is all these and much, much more than all of them, 
present in the wordless 
the unspoken 
the ineffable. 

It is speaking and living the highest we know 
and living with the knowledge that it is 
never as deep, or as wide 
or as high as we wish. 

Whenever there is a meeting 
that summons us to our better selves, 
wherever our lostness is found 
our fragments are united 
or our wounds begin healing our spines stiffen and 
our muscles grow strong for the task 
there … is Ministry.

Sermon 

In preparation for this sermon, I did what every good presbyterian seminary graduate would do and started researching in the easiest way I could think of. It began with me flipping through the dozens of notebooks and journals from my time studying theology hoping that maybe, just maybe, one of the pages would LITERALLY fly out and tell me it was the perfect place from which I might draw my entire sermon without a single hitch … which didn’t happen. 

In all this searching, however, I found St. Augustine, who wrote, “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and the needy. It has the eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of humanity. THIS is what love looks like.” 

So there I was writing and writing, trying to fight with my overall theme of the holiness of hands … for a sermon that also needed to involve the ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr. For a sermon about uplifting one another and lending a helping hand. For a sermon about mountains and valleys and marches and hope and distress and … I began feeling a LOT like Maria in the Sound of Music … up on that hill, dressed like a nun, spinning around while smiling into the camera at the perfect moment, belting out “the hills are alive with the sound of obvious connections that I’m not seeing”. And I rewrote this thing over 30 times. I’m not one to lead the expedition into theological territory, I leave that to the pastors, but I do believe myself to be an adequate sherpa. 

That’s why there were so many rewrites. I was trying to pack the necessary but bring as little extra weight as possible. The biggest lesson I wanted to impress here is that change begins the moment we decide to touch the divine, using the works of our hands and the strength of our commitment, to lift our world to a higher place. 

With our hands we share our power, our energy, our warmth and coolness. They open our “personal bubbles”, they welcome and guide, they stop and redirect. Hands can break barriers and bring us closer to one another in physical and spiritual ways. 

When I was younger, I used to sit on a big metal stool and watch my mother’s mothers, Trella and Noni, make challah, or my father’s mother, Maria Josefina, make tortillas. 

I often sat quietly on the floor as my father played his guitar or worked on his own sermons, poring through concordances. 

I loved watching my mom draw, paint, and sculpt pretty much any pliable material. She chiselled and sandblasted headstones into shape, confidently worked on car engines, built a barn. Her hands clasped together in earnest prayer at temple. They protected me fiercely. 

Hands not only touch … they express some of our deepest emotions in ways our words fail. They show hatred, concern, disgust, grief. 

When I see people protesting … I look for what they are doing with their hands. Are raised in fists of rebellion? Lifted in protection? Begging for an ear or mercy, for a crumb of humanity and compassion? 

I have held hands, both with those I love and those who I did not know I loved, as we marched for our lives, for the rights of others, for the memory of wrongs needing to be made right. 

I have held the hands, still warm but cooling rapidly, of people who otherwise would have been alone at their death. They have said hello, thankfully, more than they have said goodbye. 

I have felt hands raised in anger, in love, in companionship. 

I have picked up children who have fallen, wiped away tears, held sleeping babies, thrown them high in celebration and joy. 

Our calling tends to be fueled by the same fires that flare over and over along our journeys and hands, as you can tell by me repeating the word so much, have informed my own calling in this world in some profound way. They fascinate me. And because of all this, they are the tools I choose to empower our communal calling, tasked to do the work of care, to help support one another in our journeys out of the dark valleys and onto the highest plains and mountains of hope. 

Dr. King once, very memorably, spoke about being lifted up and standing at that mountain top hoping one day for all the people of earth to see the promised land that lies beyond. 

However, in that vision he also recognized that in order to get to the mountaintop we must first make it through the valley. And that valley … is wide and it is a dark place that may feel immeasurably deep from which so many of us feel we will never see ourselves free. 

Dr. King knew a lot about time spent there. His valley moments included three separate 108 mile long marches from Montgomery and Selma, for the right to register to vote. It included threats to his wife, his children, his own life. It included suicide attempts as a child. Depression throughout his life. So many sorrows and heartbreaks and losses but he knew that only in the darkest night can we see the stars. His valley was low, but his vision was high. He saw his ministry as one that represented and fought for the voiceless, the erased, the abused and forgotten. He saw his work as a minister in the light of duty to humanity, to equality, and for compassionate care for others. 

Now, I feel I need to warn you, I am going to quote a few verses of the Bible. However, I’m considering this to be more … “The Bible according to Bear” … 

Dr. King was fond of the parable about the Good Samaritan found in the book of Luke. The story is basically: Jesus was teaching in a temple and a lawyer/scribe … the translation is kinda both … a guy who studied the Torah and knew the WORDS by heart decided to test Jesus on his knowledge and maybe have him slip up on his own teachings about giving ourselves over to the care and service of others … and so he asked “Teacher. What must I do to inherit the promises of eternal life?” 

Rabbi Jesus responded with a question, because that’s how Rabbis do Rabbi-ing … speaking from a LOT of experience … and he asked “What does the law say we are supposed to do?” 

The lawyer/scribe guy replied “Love God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Jesus looked at him, probably in some “I am tired, can we please get to the point” but still polite way, and said “you know the answer to your own question. So go and do what you just said you know you are supposed to do.” 

Of course, the lawyer wanted to make sure he heard Jesus ‘correctly’ and asked him “well, who is my neighbor?” 

Ignoring the obvious, probably just blinking in silence for a moment, Jesus then did his Jesus thing and told a parable. 

“A man was walking down the sloped, windy, kinda scary path from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was attacked by robbers who took everything and left him for dead. A priest walked by, probably on his way to the temple, and followed the laws that dictated cleanliness for those who enter the temple by passing on the other side of the road. 

Later, a Levite came along. Levites were usually helpers in the temple so he too was probably scrubbed clean and wouldn’t be allowed in the temple for days if he touched the man. Choosing his work in the temple, he, too, passed by on the other side of the road. 

Then a man from Samaria happened by. He was a different race, a different religion, and not hung up on Levitical law. He saw the man, lying at the roadside, pitied him, cleaned and bound his wounds, put him on his animal and took him away to care for him … ” I’ll skip a bit here … So Jesus looked at Lawyer/Scribe guy and asked “out of the three of these who do you think was the neighbor to this poor man?” The lawyer replied “well, the one who showed him compassion.” Jesus, at this point probably rubbing his temples, finally said “Go and do the same, that’s all that you have to do.” 

Dr. King would stop and ponder the idea of what was meant by the Levite and the priest not stopping to help the man wounded on the side of the road to Jericho. He would propose what others quite often would, that perhaps they were busy, or there were laws forbidding them helping … but he didn’t dwell on that question or castigate the people who were following the laws of their religion. 

Instead, he looked toward the resolution of the story where a man stopped and cared for a stranger in need, lying beaten on the street, naked and bleeding. Dr. King said he saw that unlike the Levite and Priest who asked “if I stop and help what will happen to me?”, the Samaritan thought ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’ 

For the purposes here I choose to see these questions in my own UU-esque secular humanist context of – if we do not take the time to look beyond the small bubble of the world in which we live and see the greater body of humanity that surrounds us, if we do not recognize our own neighbor, then how will we fulfill our mission, our own principles, and achieve the great aspiration of a truly full, supported, and inclusive human family? 

In our hands, personal and communal, lies the power to see the dream through. To take the ink of our work and tattoo it on our hearts so that every moment of our lives is filled with the lifeblood of love, compassion, strength, and unity. To work together and nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community. “We have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that [humanity has] been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them now.” 

This great power is ours for the giving and the taking and it is our duty as human beings, participants in this world, to reach and touch one another’s lives. To leave an indelible impression of care and faithful works upon the face of this world. To own the good within ourselves and see it manifest outward, like sparks from our fingers. 

Dr. King reminds us that “We have two hands: one for receiving and one for giving. We aren’t silos to hoard away our gifts; we are channels expressly made to share our great wealth of humanity.” 

Dr. King did not want us to dwell in the valley. He didn’t want us to live defeated and lost. That wasn’t his idea of our purpose in life. His eyes saw a higher place for us, only reached by marching boldly forward as we climb up to the mountaintop with our neighbor, the folks who trudge and groan for mercy in their own depths, our siblings in this thing called life, and stand in body or spirit upon the shoulders of those who have come before us and continue to raise ourselves, generation by generation, higher out of our past that kept us separated and closed off from the broad spectrum of humanity … He said of his work, in his final speech, that “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter … because I’ve been to the mountaintop. (I’ve been allowed) to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! 

We must gasp together at the utter potential and diverse beauty of the world that is then set wide before us. 

Dr. King dreamed that one day we would climb to that higher place and then set out for the promised land of equity and equality and one day sit at the table together, embrace one another in common humanity, as we finally … finally are able to see that together we are free. And all because we chose to reach out, touch another soul, and the do the work required to make a difference. 

Benediction 

“We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday.” 

Be dangerously unselfish. Do good recklessly. Be kind with abandon. Love brazenly. Be flagrant in your generosity. Dig a deep well from which you draw benevolence. You never know who still dwells in the valley. Don’t make life harder for either of you. Reach out, take a hand, and rise together so that we may all see the dawn break at the mountaintop. 

Go in peace. 

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. 

PODCASTS

Potential Ever Emergent

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 13, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Though Unitarian Universalists are a people of many theological or philosophical perspectives, the human possibility, our potential for doing good in our world has always been central to our world-view. What are the ways in which we are being called toward our full potential. What lures us toward creative, life-fulfilling possibilities?

Call to Worship:

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CARES AT THE DOOR
By Norman V Naylor

Do not leave your cares at the door. 
Do not leave there your pain, your sorrow or your joys. 
Bring them with you into this place of acceptance and forgiveness. 
Place them on the common altar of life and offer them to the possibility of your worship. 
Come then, and offer yourself to potential transformation by the creative process that flows through you and all life.

Reading 

FOR A NEW BEGINNING
John O’Donahue

In out of the way places of the heart 
Where your thoughts never think to wander 
This beginning has been quietly forming 
Waiting until you were ready to emerge. 

For a long time it has watched your desire 
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you 
Noticing how you willed yourself on 
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. 

It watched you play with the seduction of safety 
And the grey promises that sameness whispered 
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent 
Wondered would you always live like this. 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled, 
And out you stepped onto new ground, 
Your eyes young again with energy and dream 
A path of plenitude opening before you. 

Though your destination is not clear 
You can trust the promise of this opening; 
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning 
That is one with your life’s desire. 

Awaken your spirit to adventure 
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk 
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm 
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Sermon

Earlier, we lit the flame of our chalice, calling it into being. And yet “being” is not quite an accurate description. A flame is not a stable object, but rather an ever becoming process of fuel and oxygen being burnt, one flame dying so that the next can arise, giving the impression to our eyes of one steady flame. 

A worldview called process theology says that we are like that flame. We are ever changing processes of becoming, changing into something new with each moment of our experience. 

For process theology, God is not omnipotent, but rather is a benevolent force, offering to us almost limitless possibilities from which to choose in each moment, luring us toward those potentialities that are life-giving and life fulfilling, that move our world to-ward greater goodness and beauty, that expand our awareness and spiritual wellbeing. 

God then holds our experiences, as well as those of all else, to retain what has been actualized in our world. 

The non-theistic version of this substitutes the possibility for novelty, the creative processes inherent in our universe, for God. Love and justice become what lure us toward the creative choices that will enhance our live and world. 

Now that is probably that shortest, most simplified version of process theology ever spoken. Process theology is much more complex than what I have just outlined. 

I wanted to start by sharing a little about it with you this morning though, because I think it provides one useful way for examining the subject of this month’s theme that our Faith Development classes and activities have been exploring – the Soul Matters theme of possibility. 

Unitarians and Universalists have always been a people of possibility. When other faiths have placed depravity at the core of humanity, we have seen potential instead. 

A couple of Sundays ago, we talked about how what we do not know, uncertainty and mystery can sometimes create within us experiences of awe and wonder and beckon us toward creative exploration and possibility. 

Last Sunday, we thought about how letting go of what may be holding us back can oftentimes create new, more life-fulfilling potential for us. For example, letting go of relationships that have become unhealthy or toxic, so that we can spend more time building those that mutually enhance one another’s lives. 

Today, I would like to explore some other ways that may offer us more creative means for reaching toward our full potential. 

First, I talk about something closely related to the idea of the things we need to let go to make our full potential possible. 

Far too often, I think we tell ourselves stories that make the challenging or difficult seem like impossibilities for us. 

  • I’m too old/too young. 
  • I have to be perfect. 
  • What would other people think? 
  • It’s too risky. 
  • I am not good enough/smart enough! talented enough, worthy enough, etc. 
  • If I do this, they won’t love me anymore.

And there are so many more false stories we tell ourselves. I think fear of rejection, loss of belonging, is involved in a lot of these stories. Fear of rejection is one of the big ways we stifle our creative potential. 

Jia Jiang is an entrepreneur who, in his early 30s, realized that a childhood incident had caused him to develop an even higher level of anxiety around being rejected than might be the norm. He ran from any possible chance of rejection, which was harming both his personal life and his entrepreneurial efforts. 

So, he decided to go into a period of 100 days wherein each day he would do something that was likely to lead to being rejected. He wanted to see what he could learn from this and whether it could help him work through his fear of rejection. One day he asked a complete stranger if he could borrow $100. 

Another, he went to a burger joint, had his lunch and then walked back up to the counter and asked for a burger refill. He convinced a Starbucks manager to let him be a greeter all day like they do at Walmart stores. On yet another day, he knocked on the door of a stranger’s house and asked if he could plant a flower in their backyard. 

Needless to say, he got rejected a number of times. But, he also began to notice if he stayed engaged. if he did not immediately flee if told, “no”, that creative possibilities began to open up. 

When he admitted to the Starbuck’s manager that his request to be a greeter was a little weird, the manger said, “OK, go ahead. Just don’t do anything too weird”. 

The person at the first house he asked about planting a flower in their backyard said, ‘no.” By now, a more confident Jia asked, “why”? The person answered that they had a dog that would just dig it back up anyway but then referred him to the lady across the street who loved flowers. The flower is now growing in her backyard. 

So in a way, what he did was to desensitize himself to rejection and even learn to embrace it as a gift. I want to let you hear his conclusions from his experiment. 

VIDEO 

I think Jia’s story also reveals a couple of other ways that we are called to creative possibilities first, we have greater possibilities when we educate ourselves – open ourselves to having our consciousness raised, and, second, we reach our greatest potential in relationship with others. 

We can educate ourselves by formal means, but also by putting ourselves in situations from which we can learn, as Jia did. 

One of the ways in which we are learning together here at the church, is how we can better recognize and dismantle a culture of white supremacy and other systems of oppression, within ourselves, within our church community, and beyond our walls, as one of our new ends statements related to our mission puts it. 

To that end, a subset of our change team, a group that is working on antiracism and multiculturalism here at the church, has put together an exercise for us this morning. 

You will see up on your screen and on a handout you have were given on your way in, a question related to the Language of Anti-Oppression, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

What is discrimination against someone based on race and reinforced by systems of power? 

  • a. white privilege 
  • b. Jim Crow-ism 
  • c. racism 
  • d. apartheid 

Please decide how you would answer the question and then pair up with someone near you. You’ll each take one to two minutes each to talk about why you chose the answer that you did.

OK, you may begin now.

Let’s come back together now. You’re Unitarians, so I know you are wanting to know if you got the correct answer, but to find out, you’ll have to come to workshop at 12:30 today mentioned on your handout and announcements, where you can learn more of the vocabulary of building the Beloved Community. 

So, we can learn from each other. Even further, each one of us can only realize our own greatest potential, I believe, in relationship with others, especially those who have much different life experiences than our own. 

We grow the most when we learn to not only encounter but value difference and alternative perspectives. This is one of many ways that our silos rooted in racism, bigotry and ideology harm all of us. 

And especially when it comes to movement building, we absolutely must have relationships and community, we must have solidarity, to maximize the social possibilities for which we yearn. 

I love the way poet Marge Percy expresses the possibility to be found in building movements in her poem, 

“The Low Road” 

What can they do to you? 
Whatever they want. 
They can set you up, 
they can bust you, 
they can break your fingers, 
they can bum your brain with electricity, … , 
they can take your child, wall up your lover. 

They can do anything
you can’t stop them from doing. 
How can you stop them? 
Alone, you can fight, 
you can refuse, 
you can take what revenge you can 
but they roll over you. 

But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob … 
Two people can keep each other sane,
can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. 
Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. 
With four you can play bridge and start an organization. 
With six you can rent a whole house …
and hold a fund-raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration. 
A hundred fill a hall. 
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; 
ten thousand, power and your own paper; 
a hundred thousand, your own media; 
ten million, your own country. 
It goes on one at a time, 

it starts when you care to act,
it starts when you do it again after they said no, 
it starts when you say WE and know who you mean, 
and each day you mean one more.

Here is another take on how movements start. 

VIDEO 

I think that advice about learning to follow might be a great source of possibility, especially for those of us who are managerial class, white and used to being in positions of authority. 

I’d like to end by returning to the process theology with which I began. 

What if God is calling you to toward those potentialities that are life-giving and life fulfilling? 

What if God is answering your desire to reach for your full potential, with a “yes”? 

Or, if you prefer, what if the possibility for novelty, the creative processes inherent in our universe – what if love and justice are luring you toward possibilities that expand your awareness and spiritual wellbeing and move our world toward greater goodness and beauty? 

What if the universe is saying, “yes” to the world of which we dream? 

How will we answer? 

Benediction 

GOD SAYS YES TO ME 
– Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be 
melodramatic 
and she said yes 
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is 
I asked her if I could wear nail polish 
or not wear nail polish 
and she said honey 
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly 
what you want to 
Thanks God I said 
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph my letters 
Sweetcakes God said 
who knows where she picked that up 
what I’m telling you is 
Yes Yes Yes

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. 

PODCASTS

2019 Sermon Index

by Posted in Indexes

2019 Sermons

Sermon Topic
Author
Date
On Practicalities of Spiritual Practice  Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Lee Legault
12-29-19
Lessons and Carols  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
12-24-19
When God was a baby  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
12-22-19
Perfect Miracles  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
12-15-19
Awe and then some  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
12-08-19
Lessons in Welcome from
Thanksgiving to a Blow in the Head		  Lee Legault
12-01-19
What happens in families  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
11-24-19
Paying Attention  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
11-17-19
How to comfort someone who is suffering  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
11-10-19
Jedidiah Morse and the Battle for Harvard  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
11-03-19
Room on the Broom  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
10-27-19
Sacred Belonging  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
10-20-19
Protected on the Journey  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
10-13-19
The Concord Genius Cluster  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
10-06-19
This Apple  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
09-29-19
Celebration Sunday  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
09-22-19
Faithful Expectation  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
09-15-19
How to Change Minds  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
09-08-19
Many Rivers to Cross  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
09-01-19
Ever Emergent  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
08-25-19
What does that pin on your backpack mean?  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
08-18-19
Walking Toward the Deep End  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
08-11-19
In My Life  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
08-04-19
Prophecy, Power, and Potter  Lee Legault
07-28-19
Learning through Joy  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
07-21-19
Abundance is already ours  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
07-14-19
Pausing for Perseverance  Rev. Chris Jimmerson & Bear Qolezcua
07-07-19
Out from Silence: Writing your Life  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
06-30-19
Stranger in a strange land  Lee Legault
06-23-19
Being a blessing to the children  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
06-16-19
Beauty amongst the thorns  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
06-09-19
Homecoming and Dedication  Mr. Barb Greve
06-02-19
Beautiful ‘Flower Girls’  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
05-26-19
Playing ball on running water  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
05-19-19
Fiery and Fearless  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
05-12-19
Curiouser and Curiouser  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
05-05-19
Youth Service: Reflection  Senior Youth Group
04-28-19
How to grow a seed  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
04-21-19
The power of story  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
04-14-19
If I needed you  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
04-07-19
The Holiness of Wholeness  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
03-31-19
The Kindness Connection  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
03-24-19
Celtic Christianity  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
03-17-19
Journey of the Spirit  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
03-10-19
The Promise and the Practice  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
03-03-19
Trustful and Trustworthy  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
02-24-19
The Magic of Music  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
02-17-19
Blues Theology  Rev. Meg Barhouse
02-10-19
 Animal Blessing  Rev. Meg Barnhouse
02-03-19
Collective Liberation  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
01-27-19
The Holiness of Hands  Bear Qolezcua
01-20-19
Potential Ever Emergent  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
01-13-19
Burning Bowl Service  Rev. Chris Jimmerson
01-06-19

Burning Bowl Service

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 6, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We begin the year by thinking about elements in our lives which are doing us a disservice, and what possibilities might become open to us if we let them go. We whisper these things into flash paper and burn them together, scattering the ashes to the wind.

Call to Worship

“We Hold a Place for You”
By Chris Jimmerson

Come into this sacred space. 

Bring with you your joys, your hopes – all that you love; that which you hold holy. 

Come into this, our beloved community. 

Bring with you also your imperfections, your secret fears and unspoken hurts – those things that you still hold but that you yearn to release. 

Come onto this hallowed ground. 

Bringing too, your wildest imaginings of what, together, we might create or create more of in our world. 

Come, we hold a place for you in this our hour of worship. 

Reading

“Burning the Old Year”
by Naomi Shihab Nye 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. 
Notes friends tied to the doorknob, 
transparent scarlet paper, 
sizzle like moth wings, 
marry the air. 

So much of any year is flammable, 
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone. 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, 
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. 
I begin again with the smallest numbers. 

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, 
only the things I didn’t do 
crackle after the blazing dies.

Sermon

This is the story of a woman, whom I’ll call Eve, though that is not her real name. 

Eve sought grief counseling: after losing her husband to Lou Gerhig’s disease. 

Eve and her husband were devout Catholics and were married in their Catholic church. They were very much in love. The marriage was a happv one. Eve described her husband as a good father and a wonderful spouse. 

After he developed the disease, she took care of him as it progressed which became difficult, as it is a cruel and degenerative disease. As he became more disabled, he resisted becoming more and more dependent, and they sometimes fought. 

Still, every night, they would lie in bed with their hands clasped so that their wedding rings touched together, and they would repeat their wedding vows to one another. 

Until his very last day, their love for and devotion to one another remained strong. 

When she sought counseling, it had been six years since his death. 

Eve told the counselor that she knew she needed to move on with her life. to start dating again, “But I can’t take my wedding ring off,” she said. “I can’t date wearing mv wedding ring, and I can’t take it off.” 

Intellectually, she knew she had honored her commitment to her husband. Emotionally and spiritually. she could not let go of her belief that marriage is for life, which the wedding ring symbolized so strongly for her. 

The counselor worked with her priest to put together a “reverse wedding” ritual for her. 

At the same church were they had originally been married, with many of the same family and friends who had attended their wedding, the priest called her up to the altar. 

He asked her. “Were vou faithful in good times and in bad?” 

“Yes,” Eve replied. 

“In sickness and in health?” 

“I was,” she replied. 

The priest led her through the rest of her wedding vows, but in past tense, and she affirmed in front of the loving witnesses who had gathered that she had loved, honored and been faithful to her husband. 

Then the priest said, “May I have the ring, please?” 

And Eve took it off and handed it to him. 

They had her ring and her husband’s ring interlocked and then affixed to the front of their wedding photo. 

Eve later described finally taking the ring off to her counselor by saying, “It came off as if by magic.” 

This story illustrates so perfectly the power of ritual. 

Like Eve, sometimes we can know intellectually that we need to let something go, and yet it can be so difficult to move past it emotionally – spiritually. 

Ritual allows us to embody our thoughts and intentions. It allows us to hold them in a much deeper place inside – or to release something from that same deep place – from our hearts and souls, not just our minds. 

That’s why we have made it our tradition here at the church, to begin each New Year by conducting a burning bowl ritual- each of us reflects upon something that we are carrying that may be holding us back – something we would like to let go because it may be keeping us from fully living out our life goals and values – reaching out with love to manifest more of what we would like to see in our world. 

Then, we whisper whatever it is into the pieces of flash paper you were given as you came in and toss them into the flame in our bowl and watch it burn away before our very eyes. 

Here are some examples of what we might want to let go: 

  • Trying to control things that can’t be controlled. 
  • Making other people do right 
  • What other people think of you 
  • Taking over other people’s problems 
  • Helping when you weren’t asked to help 
  • Having the same old conversation over and over

Burning Bowl Ritual 

May your life, your spirit be unburdened of that which you have burned here today. May you experience a lightness and a joy. So unburdened, may your heart reach out in love to help build the beloved community. 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. 

PODCASTS