A Vision for this Time

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 29, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Though this is a difficult and challenging time, it also provides us with an opportunity to truly realize our interconnectedness – to know we can only get through this together, even as we cannot be physically together. Perhaps our vision, at least for now, may be less about the future and more about how we can treat ourselves and others with kindness and compassion in this moment and time.

Chalice Lighting

We light this chalice so that its flame may signify the spiritual strands of light that bind our hearts and souls with one another. Even while we must be physically apart, we bask in its warmth together.

Call to Worship

Rev. Chris Jimmerson

It’s okay to sit on the front porch and stare into the blankness. It’s okay to scream into the void. It’s okay to weep into the pillow and pound the mattress. None of us knows how to do this. All of us are here with each other in our hearts and spirits.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

Dr Amy Acton
Head of the Ohio Department of Health

I can tell you that I already envision a future that is full of hope. I’ve told you my story about how absolutely essential hope is. It’s the one thing that made a difference in a really rough childhood that I had and I feel more hopeful than I’ve ever felt. I actually believe that life is not shutting down right now. Life is not shutting us down, although we’re being quiet now and we’re making that physical distance.

Life seems like it’s shutting down but I feel life is waking us up. I truly see a vision of a future that is brighter than we have known. I say that from all my heart. I just know it in my heart and my soul. So please don’t feel like this is pulling us apart. I believe this is drawing us to each other and bonding us to each other, but it will have to be all of us.

Sermon

Well, it’s been a rough several days, hasn’t it? I know it has been for me. I miss being able to be physically with people, including you all. I’m wearing my rainbow kitties stole for this video because it helps me feel at least a little bit better.

I want to acknowledge the extra challenges those of you who are parents are facing with children at home all of the time because the schools are closed.

One of our church members, Kae McLaughlin posted on Facebook something one of her neighbors had sent out over NextDoor. It went, “Homeschooling is going well. Two students suspended for fighting and one teacher fired for drinking on the job.”

We are all facing challenges during this time, and we do not know yet how long this time will last. Our minds and our bodies know there is a potential existential threat to ourselves and those we love and care about. And this leads to several things we need to know.

Even as we go about the daily tasks of life, our minds are still processing what is happening in the background. Our bodies are producing a flood of chemicals that would normally prepare us for fight or flight in the face of danger. Only this is a danger that we cannot see and for which fight or flight do not really help, as we all have to shelter in place. Because of all of this, we are likely to tire more easily. We are likely to need more rest than usual. We have to be aware that we may be prone to be more snappish than usual, as those fight chemicals try to find a way to express themselves. I am trying even more than usual to pause before speaking whatever reaction I am having to try to counter this. My spouse Wayne claims I am only being partially successful at it.

Getting outdoors can help. Exercising can help. Connecting with those we love and care about in whatever ways we are able can help – phone calls, the internet, email, texting.

We are likely to experience both a wider range of emotions and to feel them more deeply than usual in times of stress such as this. Know that is normal. Let’s let ourselves feel the emotions. It is part of the way we move through stressful times.

The opposite can be true too though. We may experience times where we just shut down and stare at the wall for a while. Let’s be forgiving of ourselves and of one another during this time.

David Kessler, who along with Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote about the stages of grief says that grief is one of the emotions we must acknowledge that we are feeling during this time. He says we are feeling grief both over the loss of normalcy and lack of physical connection that we are currently experiencing and what he calls “anticipatory grief.” That’s when we face an uncertain future where we know we may experience even more loss.

He says that our minds can begin racing, imagining the worst possible scenario but that, if we try to fight that and shut it down, our minds will not let us. In fact, trying to do so can cause us more pain.

Instead, he recommends also trying to imagine the best-case scenario to gain some balance.

Kessler says that one of the ways we can best manage our grief is to recognize the different stages of it, though he warns we do not move through them in in any certain order and that we can move back and forth between them more than once also.

See if you have experienced any of the example he gives: He says,

  • “There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us.
  • There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities.
  • There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right?
  • There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end.
  • And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.” Kessler says that naming these stages helps us move through them. Kessler adds one more stage of grief that he calls “finding meaning”. I’d like to close by talking about that for a bit.

Now, I know we have witnessed the hoarding of ammunition and toilette paper. I know we have politicians calling on Grandma to sacrifice herself for the good of the capitalistic economy.

I want to tell you a few stories of somethings my spouse Wayne and I have also witnessed lately though. I had to go to Randall’s a couple of days ago because we had run out of groceries at the house. And even though there were these bright red lines we had to stand behind at the checkout counter and signs everywhere telling us we had to stay at least six feet apart, people were greeting complete strangers as they passed one another, asking how each other was doing and really wanting to hear the answer. People were checking with the store employees to ask how they were fairing and thanking them for being there. A man who had a lot more items than I did offered to let me go before him at the checkout.

Wayne was at our neighborhood convenience store and saw a woman give the store clerk her cell phone number and invite him to call her if needed.

We live on a cul de sac, and the other night, someone down the street went into their yard and started playing their clarinet. Pretty soon, a woman at one of the other houses came out into her yard with her two young daughters and joined in by playing a saxophone. Then, a young man and his family came out into their yard, and he joined in with his guitar. And so, our neighbors provided us all with a free, impromptu jazz concert.

That’s the meaning we may be finding despite these difficult, difficult times. The ideology of dog eat dog, everyone for themselves will not get us through this and is being shown to be a failed ideology.

Instead, we are finding our interconnectedness in ways that we never have before. We are discovering that we will need each other to get through this. We are finding ways to make music together, even from a distance, both literally and metaphorically. Let’s do that in this congregation.

Stay connected.

Reach out to one another.

If you go to austinuu.org and click on the calendar, you will see several opportunities we are providing to connect online through Zoom.

Reach out to Meg Barnhouse our senior minister and to me. The best way to do that is through email. Meg.barnhouse@austinuu.org and chris.jimmerson@austinuu.org. We both have our church email on our cell phones and check it frequently.

Meg and I both love this congregation with all of our heart and to the depth of our soul.

We will get through this together.

Amen.

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

Social Distance, not Spiritual Distance

by Posted in Audio available, Meg Barnhouse, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above. Text of this sermon is not available.

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
& Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 22, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Join Rev. Meg and Rev. Chris as they discuss community and what it means to them, while reflecting on questions such as: What does community do for us? How do we need it in our lives? And, what do we do when we cannot gather in person?

Chalice Lighting

Deep calls unto deep, joy calls unto joy, light calls unto light.
Let the kindling of this flame rekindle in us the inner light of love, of peace, of hope.
And “as one flame lights another, nor grows the less,”
we pledge ourselves to be bearers of the light where ever we are.

Call to Worship

from The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern

And there are never really endings, happier or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur. Your story is part of your sister’s story and is part part of many other stories and there is no telling where any of them may lead.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

from Second Glance
by Jodi Picoult

Heroes didn’t leap over tall buildings or stop bullets with an out stretched hand; they didn’t wear boots of capes. They bled and they bruised, and their super powers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted they could untangle someone else’s and maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.

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

The Grief Bible

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Bear W. Qolezcua
March 15, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Life would be so much easier if it came with a manual that told us all the rules for survival but, of course, nothing so simple exists. Let’s look at lessons gleaned through grief and find the common threads that bind us all together in this very human experience.

Chalice Lighting

We seek our place in the world and the answers to our hearts’ deep questions. As we seek, may our hearts be open to unexpected answers. May the light of our chalice remind us that this is a community of warmth, of wisdom, and welcoming of multiple truths.

Call to Worship

Robert T Weston
from “Seasons of the Soul”

I will lift up my voice and sing;
Whatever may befall me,
I will still follow the light which kindles song.
I will listen to the music
Arising out of grief and joy alike,
I will not deny my voice to the song.
For in the depth of winter, song,
Like a bud peeping through the dry crust of earth,
Brings back memory,
And creates anew the hope and anticipation of spring;
Out of a world that seems barren of hope,
Song decries beauty in the shapes of leafless trees,
Lifts our eyes to distant mountain peaks which,
Even if we see them not,
Remind us that they are there, waiting,
And still calling to us to come up higher.
Out of the destruction of dear hopes,
Out of the agony of heartbreak,
Song rises once more to whisper to us
That even this is but the stage setting for a new beginning,
And that we shall yet take the pieces of our hearts
And put them together in a pattern
Of deeper, truer lights and shades.
I will lift up my voice in song,
For in singing I myself am renewed,
And the darkness of night is touched
By the promise of a new dawn,
For light shall come again.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Meditation Reading

Jodi Picoult
from “My Sister’s Keeper”

“There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass – if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it’s okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.”

Sermon

I’ve brought my fair share of sorrows to this altar and left them here for you all to bear with me. Just like the fire bowl, we bring our worries and fears and pains to the candles, to the meditations, to our prayers in whatever form they manifest so that they are no longer only ours to carry. For that grace, I’m grateful. An old Swedish proverb that is dear to me reads “Sorrow shared is sorrow halved. Joy shared is joy doubled.”

It sometimes really bugs me that there is no handbook when it comes to grieving. However, just because there is no brochure out there with “The Perfect Grief Guide” splashed cheerily across the front leaf doesn’t mean we are bereft of any sort of guidance.

In each one of us there is an intangible well of wisdom that hastens to help us when we need it most. Some pages are scattered with frantic broken thoughts and doodles in the margins that speak of emotional highs and lows… and other pages are neatly set and well thought out, processed and made into a clear message of centered calm. Combined, much of that experience creates what I like to refer to as a “Grief Bible”, a place where we can look to find answers to our questions based off of our own learning.

My grief bible begins with “In grace, in heartache, in joy, in sorrow… I am not alone.”

Grief, of course, is not solely fashioned from the experience of death. Much in our life teaches us lessons of sorrow and those lessons have their own books within our personal bibles. Some of mine would be titled “Boy Troubles”, “What the heck do I want to do with my life?”, and “Student Loan Interest Rates.” That last one… that’s a real tear jerker.

These bibles of our own making are filled with a few short books, with only a passage or two, and others that span hundreds of pages with sayings and life experiences. Some are not yet written and others are in the infancy of them being penned.

Because I know my grief best and what I have carried away from a lot of these experiences, I would like to highlight a few takeaways. Like, Book 19. Kevin. My first love.

This book taught me that the heart never heals completely… not with time, not with distance, not with age or wisdom or any other method or measure. Though the pieces may be swept back into a pile lovingly reshaped into a semblance of its original form, a shattered heart will never be without its cracks. Kevin’s book taught me that no matter how much we think we actually want our heart to heal completely, it won’t and perhaps the most beautiful first lesson comes from that fact.

We want so desperately to not hurt anymore, to not feel that sting. When we lose someone we feel we can’t go on without, and our whole life is in an infinite number of pieces, the worst news we want to hear is that we will never really get over the loss.

There is good news there, though… and that is – we will never really get over the loss.

The reason it is good news, however, is that because you will never really get over the loss you will never really get over their memory. Eventually it might not hurt as bad when you do recall them, that itself is a gift, but the wound will still be there.

My mom told me, in one of her many personal parables, that grieving is like a robin that has broken a wing. There is hope that with time the wing will heal and the robin will fly again but the flight might be less sure than before. It will take to the skies once more but not before going through pain, healing, and growth to be strong enough for the task.

Kevin’s book ends as a lesson on the transience of life and the mortal beauty of death. And yes, as morbid as it makes me sound right now, there is very real beauty in surviving the death of someone you love. It just takes a long time to see it, if you ever do.

27: Trella, my last grandmother. This book taught me that sometimes we must rescue ourselves by whatever means necessary long enough to carry on until we can fall apart safely.

One of my favourite movies of all time, Steel Magnolias, puts Trella’s book into words perfectly… “Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion.”

My grandmother died surrounded by her descendents on a Saturday afternoon. One of her calling cards in life was a fastidiously maintained manicure done in cherry bomb red, almond shaped tips. It was her luxury that she indulged each week, on a Friday, usually with her friend Maxine. After she breathed her last we all kind of panicked and started to fall apart. We still had so much to do that we needed to be a bit more together in our heads, and I tried to find something… ANYTHING… to break me out of that all too real moment and maybe be able to help my family. Then I noticed her manicure and quipped “At least her nails look good.” We all stopped, looked at them and then the chuckling began. We were still crying but that moment of absurdity, the lifelong ritual my grandmother held sacred since coming to Austin in the 60s… it rescued us enough to keep moving forward a bit longer.

Book 31. Mom. This book taught me my most valuable lesson so far. I learned that I am not the person that so many other people told me I was, that I wasn’t just a steady rock and I didn’t have to be. Over the years I learned that I am quite tender, that I genuinely love the emotions in this life, and that the message I was told for all my years before was keeping me back from being able to call on my greatest source of true strength – my community of love and support.

I was the only one of my mom’s children she told about the final cancer diagnosis, Christmas day of 2011. When I asked her why she only told me, she said “Because you’re the strong one.”

I bore that “strong” label with me as if it were all I was. I pushed others away so that they wouldn’t have to bear this thing that I, the rock of strength, told myself I must carry alone. But her death, when it came three years later, proved I was anything but strong… or simply strong. And when I realized that fact, I was unsure as to who then I was. I wanted to hold up the box of puzzle pieces depicting my life and shake them out onto the table for them to fall perfectly in place, making sense of my grief and everything I was feeling and not feeling because I feared I was going to disappear if it went on much longer.

The last few sentences of this book read – you are never ready, even when you are ready. You are never strong enough even when you are strong enough. And you are never too old to feel like a child at the loss of a parent.

After my mom died I returned to seminary almost immediately, mistake number one. Rev. Dr. Blair Monie, one of my professors, sat with me for hours while I fell apart, crying onto the shoulder of his perfectly tailored suits. I’m sure I owed him a ton of dry cleaning money. He was the only Presbyterian minister I loved more than Mr. Rogers and y’all… I LOVE Mr. Rogers. He once told me “you will survive this. No matter what, you have survived and you will continue to survive even this.” Simple words, maybe a bit overused and even pithy but in the moment he said them, just two days after her death, they became bread to me.

In a lot of ways, he became a surrogate father and chaplaincy mentor. Blair was a gift I never had thought I would receive. A year and a half ago I added book 35. Blair Monie.

Adding this particular part of my bible felt like losing a parent all over again. His story in my life ends with the line – “We will say goodbye to our mothers and fathers many times in our lives, but only once can we say goodbye to the many mothers and fathers we have had.”

Grief comes at times we wouldn’t expect. Of course, we often see death attended by grief, that is a part of the human condition, but it so often follows closely on the heels of lost relationships, broken trust, or feeling that there is more to do and we are too small or unempowered to do the tasks needed. Right now, as a nation, many of us are experiencing the grief that stems from trauma and the uncertainty in which we all find ourselves. There is a human made food shortage because of the uncertain nature of our situation and a culture imbued with a strong “what if” mentality.

We keep watching reports of more cases of Covid-19 being confirmed in our communities and we are being told to hold steady and remain calm when our brain is screaming at us to do anything but that.

This viral disease comes with a toll for each one of us. We will all add a book to our grief bibles as we move through the waves of illness as well as the unknown recovery period. Our daily lives have been thrown out of balance and upset greatly. Not only has our comfort been shaken from our grip but also our security.

We see videos and hear stories of people fighting over basic staples of life. Folks hoard more than they will possibly need or use, much of it may be wasted in the end, all in some desperate attempt to reclaim that comfort, security, and feeling of being in control of their lives.

Many will experience the grief of feeling responsible to care for their family, however that is defined, and yet helpless to do so in the current situation. Some will experience the grief that comes from the presence of anxiety, being inflated by the media and a seemingly uncaring, inept government, the unknowns and those what ifs will build up further until that is all they can see in their lives. And still, others will, in the end, experience the grief at surviving the death of a loved one.

When humans feel that their sure footing is threatened, they lash out for whatever they can hold onto. Be that money, food, toilet paper, or other humans and now – because of actions and circumstances wildly beyond any of our control – we stand raw to the fear, exposed to the chill of these many forms of loss.

I can’t say to how this book will end, I can’t predict the final line and I dare not speak what is not yet to be into the world. I will, however, say this. In this time it is best to remember our community and keep each other in our minds and hearts. Check in with one another. Help others remain steady as they do the same for you. Draw from our collective grief bibles, if only to be reassured that, as with all things, this is temporary and it too shall pass.

A lesson from my long book of proverbs comes with a warning to remember that in ways, our society often shares the lesson that grief should be peripheral, that it is almost rude to grieve. People ask how you are but some really only want to hear “I’m doing well/alright/ok, thank you” not… I am still shattered, I haven’t showered in four days, I can’t remember if I ate or not, and I can’t find the willpower to pay my electric bill. They want absolution from the responsibility to care for another human being in a moment of pain because, for many, they’ve no idea how to help or what to do.

In conversation, the complications that come from grieving tend to be avoided. People feel embarrassed for you when you talk about your grief; you let them off the hook so that the awkwardness surrounding our fear of this part of life can be moved past. However… Here’s the deal.

Sometimes you must talk about it because talking about it is like opening the pressure valve, letting out all the steam and perhaps being able to take a breath once more.

When I talk about my grief, in times that are very heavy and loud in my head, I feel like I become more visible again. It feels like I am more able to live and move along in my life because I no longer bear it all. Just because I was told I was strong enough to do it on my own doesn’t mean that I have to be. One of the gifts that comes from talking about your grief and what you are grieving is that it can provide profound clarity and remove the gauze that hides things you never thought you knew.

Though it is growing alongside yours, I hope my grief bible is as complete as I can make it right now. This chain of stories and feelings that I have scraped together through my own faulty memory all culminates with this final lesson. – Our grief bibles have nothing to do with our actual grief. Yes, the pain and loss are there in those pages, bound and sealed for our entire lives, but they are not the end result of the book itself. Ed Sheeran sang once that a heart that’s broken is a heart that’s been loved. This grief bible… our gathered mass of stories and memories and hopes and proverbs, it is our testament to the fact that there is, somewhere within us, something more. Not every story of sorrow leads to a positive outcome, some have no greater lesson than survival, but many do come back to being a source of knowledge and guidance for finding that final page to our otherwise heartbreaking book and being able to draw on it when we, once again, need.

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

Awakening Our Wisdom

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
March 8, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Wisdom is more than just knowledge. In fact, sometimes we have to unlearn things to have greater wisdom. Sometimes wisdom is found in uncertainty, making mistakes and the ineffable experience of our interconnectedness with the interdependent web of all existence. Sometimes wisdom is found in experiences deeper than just the cognitive.

Chalice Lighting

At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice. As we light our chalice today; let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith. May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice, and truth.

Call to Worship

-Hafez

The beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor, hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

-Marcus Borg

It happened as I was driving along through a sunless rural Minnesota landscape. The only sounds were the wind and the drone of the car. I had been on the road for about three hours. The light suddenly changed. It became yellowy and golden and it suffused everything I saw: the snow covered fields left and right, the trees bordering the fields, the yellow and black road signs, the highway itself. Everything glowed. Everything looked wondrous. I was amazed.

I had never experienced anything like that before unless perhaps in very early childhood and so I no longer remembered it. At the time I felt the falling away of the subject-object distinction of ordinary every day consciousness. That dome of consciousness in which we experience ourselves as in-here and world as out-there. I became aware not just intellectually but experientially at the connectedness of everything. I saw the connectedness, experienced it. My sense of being in here while the world was out there momentarily disappeared. That experience lasted maybe a minute and then faded, but it had been the richest minute of my life. It was not only full of wonder but also filled with a strong sense of knowing, of seeing more clearly and truly than I had ever had.

Sermon

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

– Albert Einstein

This month, our religious education classes and activities are examining the concepts of awakening and wisdom.

How do we awaken our wisdom? How is wisdom different than knowledge?

I’m betting that many of you, like me, have been following the developments with the coronavirus with some degree of concern, so I thought I would start with a little wisdom from our public health officials on how to try to contain the spread of viruses.

While there is certainly no reason to panic at this point, there are some practical things we can all do.

First if we are sick with cold-like symptoms we should stay home.

We’ve placed flyers all around the church with information on proper hand washing and other sanitary measures we can all follow, such as covering our mouth when we sneeze or cough and keeping food preparation areas sanitary.

We also found a formula for making our own hand sanitizer and ordered the ingredients to do so because pre-prepared sanitizer has been sold out pretty much everywhere. We will place it around the church as soon as the ingredients come in.

Another thing we can all do is become aware of not touching our hands to our faces. We all tend to this a lot without realizing, and it is one of most common ways that we end up infecting ourselves with something.

The Center for Disease Control has recently advised that older adults and folks with severe chronic illnesses stay at home as much as possible. They don’t define what they mean by “older adults”, sorry.

If you do make the decision to stay at home and would like to watch the church services via the internet, church staff will be happy to show you how to access the the video if you do not already know how to do so.

I also have a service which would allow me to talk with you over video on the internet if we needed to so during the week.

And finally, though many of us enjoy shaking hands or hugging each other, let’s please display our affection for one another with elbow bumps instead for the time being.

The management team here at the church will continue to monitor the situation very closely and will let you know if any further precautions become necessary.

OK, public health announcement over, so back to wisdom.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, pastor and anti-Nazi dissident once wrote,

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil is. Against evil, one can protest; it can be exposed and, if necessary, stopped with force. Evil always carries the seed of its own self-destruction, because it at least leaves people with a feeling of uneasiness. But against stupidity, we are defenseless.”

Current theologian and minister, Tim Suttle writes that he is seeing a disturbing similarity in modern day America’s lack of wisdom, as that of the German’s in Bonhoeffer’s time.

Suttle notes that what many Americans lack is not knowledge. Instead, there is a refusal to apply that knowledge in wise ways and to dismiss as fake new any knowledge that contradicts our prejudices.

Witness the denial of so many about the growing possibility for global climate catastrophe.

Suttle says that contemporary America has lost several types of wisdom.

First – The wisdom of compromise. He writes, “Only fools believe in win-at-all-costs situations.” It is not that we need to sacrifice our values – but he notes that we gain wisdom through relationship with each other, particularly those with different Life experiences and world views. We can do more together than we can from within our ideological trenches.

Second – The wisdom of change. Trappist monk and mystic, Thomas Merton once said, “If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a hectic, you are not growing spiritually.” Yet so many remain entrenched in dogma and ideology, never learning, never growing. Growth and wisdom always involve change.

Third – The Wisdom of Fidelity. By fidelity, Suttle means staying engaged with each other even when we disagree or make mistakes and being willing to work for the good of society over and above what we want for own lives.

Fourth – The wisdom of suffering. Suttle says that we gain wisdom through our hurts and our mistakes. None of us can really avoid suffering in life, but too many of us try to numb it through the use of drugs, alcohol, television, habitual shopping, smart phone binging, etc.

And finally – The wisdom of uncertainty. So much wisdom arises out of mystery and paradox – in having the humility to recognize how much we really do not and cannot know.

I loved that reading from Marcus Borg that Leo shared with us earlier. There is sense of mysteriousness and paradox in these ineffable experiences of interconnectedness and oneness that so many of us have had.

And I think those experiences bless us with a wisdom that goes deeper than rational knowledge and move us toward acting with more compassion and wiseness in our world.

So ultimately what I think Suttle is trying to get at is that too many Americans have lost that sense of our interconnectedness and the many forms of wisdom to be found within it.

I would add to Suttle’s list several other sources of wisdom.

Sometimes wisdom can come from sorting through our rational knowledge to find what is really useful and strip away what is not. As our call to worship put it, “shake all the nonsense out.”

Paying attention to what our bodies are telling us and getting in touch with our emotions are also a part of awakening our full capacity for wisdom.

This is a lesson I have had to learn more than once. For instance, after my step-father, Ty, who had been more of a father to me than my actual dad, after Ty died in April of 2015, I found myself just feeling numb.

There was a sense of unreality.

And for a couple of weeks, it was as if I completely shut down emotionally.

I went though the routines of life and my ministry here at the church, but I couldn’t feel anything much less locate the pleasure and joy I normally get from life and ministry.

And then one day, I was talking with Meg, and I realized that what was happening was that I had been depressed. That for me, depression isn’t a feeling of sadness; it’s feeling nothing.

It was only after this realization, after I finally let myself fully experience my grief and sorrow over losing my step-dad that the depression began to lift.

It was only after I let myself have a good cry or two that I began to also the able to feel gratitude and joy and happiness again.

So our wisdom arises from our whole selves, our reasoning and know ledge, yes, but also our physical and emotional selves.

And, as I mentioned briefly earlier, but it is well worth repeating, our wisdom also comes from being willing to take risks and make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes are our greatest teachers.

So, as artist and writer Debbie Millman puts it, “If you are not making mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody has ever made before.”

I think we can also find a special sort of wisdom within the metaphors contained in our stories, myths and poetry.

There is wisdom to be found in our music and drama – in our rituals and the arts.

All of these help us to grasp and understand life’s complexities in ways we cannot with only literal thinking.

This is the error, in my opinion, that too many people make by trying to read the bible or other sacred texts literally and thereby missing or even distorting the metaphorical wisdom such texts often contain.

For me, getting out into nature can also shift my thinking to this bigger picture, more metaphorical form of contemplation.

OK, we have now come to the portion of our service where I harp on the importance of spiritual practices, as I have been and will be doing each time I preach this year.

Spiritual practices, meditation or gardening or knitting, whatever you find connects you with the greater wisdom that is already within you, also help us become even wiser because these practices can also help to shift our perspective on life.

So sometimes our knowledge doesn’t change through our spiritual practices, but our understanding of that knowledge, our worldview, does.

Likewise, our readings and hymns and music and rituals and, I hope at least sometimes our sermons, here in worship at the church may provide us with new knowledge or insights but can also just help us shift our perspectives around knowledge we already had.

And this is likely more true the more we can engage, once again with our whole selves, intellect, physical and emotional. And his capacity to grow wisdom I think is there throughout the life of the church.

Certainly I believe our wonderful teachers and other religious education folks, along with our public forum folks, are helping people of all ages to cultivate greater wisdom.

When we work together for social justice and against all fonns of oppression, we encounter difference, which, in turn, can enhance our own wisdom and shift our perspectives once again.

Our work for the environment reminds us of the wisdom that we are indeed not separate from the interdependent web of all existence but a part of it.

Our First UU Cares Council teaches us the wisdom of caring for each other.

Our Fun and Fellowship and our games night remind us of the wisdom that we need fun, friendship, community, joy in our lives.

Our art gallery, Paradox Players, our many musical programs bring these special sources of wisdom to us.

Well, I could go on and on but there are about another 80 or so ministry teams and church programs I haven’t mentioned yet, so I better stop now.

My point is that as a religious community, in these and so many more ways, I believe we can and do help each other grow our wisdom.

Today is International Women’s Day, so I would be remiss if I were to fail to mention that in Proverbs of the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s wisdom is personified as Woman Wisdom or Sophia.

Sophia, Woman Wisdom, hearkens back to the Tree of Life. She was there at the very act of creation, frolicking in God’s presence and taking delight as God fashioned humanity, the heavens and earth, placing true wisdom within the interconnectedness between the many elements of God’s creation.

So my fellow guys, let us ponder in the days to come over what metaphorical truth Proverbs may be trying to teach us.

I’ll leave you with a poem by Unitarian Universalist minister Leslie Takahashi. It is titled, “Labyrinth”.

“Walk the maze within your heart: guide your steps into its questioning curves.
This labyrinth is a puzzle leading you deeper into your own truths.
Listen in the twists and turns.
Listen in the openness within all searching.
Listen: a wisdom within you calls to a wisdom beyond you
and in that dialogue lies peace.”

Here, as a religious community, may we walk the maze of life together.

Here, in this sacred place, may we help each other find the wisdom within us that calls to a wisdom beyond us.

Amen and blessed be.

Benediction

– Khalil Gibran

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry,
the philosophy which does not laugh,
and the greatness which does not bow before children.

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

Two Parables of the Beloved Community

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
March 1, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Another in our sermon series on the elements of baking. We look at bread and yeast. Rabbi Jesus told a parable about how the kingdom of heaven, or the Beloved Community is like yeast. What could that mean for us?

Chalice Lighting

At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice. As we light our chalice today; let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith. May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice, and truth.

Call to Worship

From THE HOUSE OF BELONGING
by David White

“This is not the age of information, forget the news and the radio and the blurred screen. This is the time of loaves and fishes: the people are hungry. We say one good word, and it can become bread for a thousand.”

Affirming Our Mission

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

Moment for Beloved Community

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

– The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Meditation Reading

“[Jesus] said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ “

Again he asked, “What shall I compare the Kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Sermon

In the Jewish faith story, the Hebrew people, descendants of Abraham and Sarah, had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. Moses, their liberator, said to the Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” The Pharaoh was reluctant, since he’d needed the labor of the people to build his economy. Then came the plagues. The water turned to blood, and no one could drink it. Frogs infested the land, then flies. Then all the cattle got sick, then the people got boils. Hail came, then locusts. Then the skies turned dark so you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. The last plague was that the first born children of all the Egyptians died overnight. After that final plague the Pharaoh said he would let Moses’ people go. The Hebrew people were told to make unlevened bread, which we now know as Matzoh bread, a bread with no yeast, made only of flour, olive oil, water and salt. This was fast and simple bread to make, and a person could live on it for a short time.

You can mix grain and water together and live on the paste for a little while, but you will soon die. If, however, you give the flour and water time, if you mix it together and set it on a counter in your kitchen, after a few days it will start to bubble. I don’t know which prehistoric person saw the grain and water porridge bubbling in a bowl in the corner and thought “I’m going to bake that in the fire,” but they are the first baker of bread. Anthropologists are divided about whether the first person to see the bubbling said “I’m going to bake that,” or whether they said “I’m going to drink that.” You have the “bread before beer” scientists, and you have the “beer before bread” scientists.

If you let that flour and water paste we started with take its time, that is, if you don’t have to run away from the pursuing armies of Egypt, then you can have levened bread, and leavened, or yeasted bread can sustain your life indefinitely. Where does the yeast come from? It’s wild, it’s in the air. Yeast is a fungus that floats in the biosphere. If you give it time, it will find your flour and water and start to break down the starches in the mixture, forming sugar. This is fermentation. When the yeast breaks down the cell walls of the starch, it gives off carbon dioxide, which makes the bubbles and creates the holes you see when you tear open a loaf of yeasted bread.

Bill read a pair of parables for our meditation reading, parables attributed by the author to Rabbi Jesus. He was describing the Kingdom of Heaven, which we could translate as “the Beloved Community.”

The Beloved community is like a mustard seed, which a gardener planted. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches. It’s like yeast that a baker took and mixed into about sicty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Something that starts small can have a large effect. Helping build the Beloved Community doesn’t have to be enormous sweeping actions, but small ones, persistent, breaking down the walls of apathy and ignorance in order to create something that will nourish souls and transform lives.

In the series Cooked, on Netflix, botanist Michael Pollan talks about bread. How it was one of humanity’s first foods, how bread (or beer) was the reason humans changed from being nomadic hunters to being farmers of wheat and other grains. To plant and have a harvest, people have to stay in one place for a period of time. Staying in one place means you will probably build dwellings that can last for at least a year. It may mean that you will have to defend your harvest from those who didn’t plant it, but who may want it for themselves. Staying in one place means that when your people die, you will probably make one place where you bury their bodies, and you may develop some rituals, ceremonies to render those burials sacred.

When you have beer and bread, thanks to the wild yeast in the air of your place, you have conviviality, feasting, you survive, and you have nourishment and intoxication. Bread is the staff of life, a metaphor for a thing you need every day. In the Cooked series, you see a boy, maybe 10 years old, in Morocco, picking up the tray on which are the loaves his mother has kneaded and shaped that morning. He takes them to the neighborhood baker, whose is the only house with an over. He bakes all day, loaves the neighborhood families bring to him. The flour comes from all over the world: Ukraine, Germany, France, because Morocco can’t grow enough grain to make the bread eaten by all of its people. Bread is the spoon that they scoop up the dinner. Bread is the plate.

My mother, who was raised in what is now Pakistan, would wash dishes muttering grumpily about the wastefulness of having to buy, store and wash plates, when in India, she’d say, the plate is the bread, and when you are finished with the meal, the plate is gone. In some cultures it is an offence to take a knife to bread. It wants to be handled, torn, to have the shape of a human action instead of a metal tool.

When you have kneaded bread, and it has become smooth and stretchy, and then it rises, it has much the same feel to your hand as a human body, as if this were a baby smooth under your hands. It feels as if it could be part of you, or you part of it.

Here is what I want you to remember. The Beloved Community is like yeast. You don’t have to change everything all at once. This is true within us and in our communities. I told you two weeks ago that when I was in seminary, the women started calling God “she.” It was like a tiny seed that grew and changed everything, giving the birds of our lived experience a place to rest. The idea was like yeast, that started bubbling and soon we were all rising. Have you ever heard or seen something that seemed small at first, but changed the way you saw things? Another thing that changed me was when I followed a suggestion that, watching TV or movies, I switched the genders of the people involved. Another seed is reversing the ethnicity of people you see. On Face Book there was a meme with a row of Asian women laughing, on their phones, having pedicures done by white women.

Tiny things can start big things in the culture. Greta Thunberg began her climate change activism sitting in front of the Swedish parliament building in August of 2018. How far have things come from there? Young climate change activists have been the yeast that levens an enormous amount of flour. And we are all rising. People, ideas, songs can be yeast, a small beginning that changes everything. When 10 percent of a group begin to talk about something, people shrug them off as fringe folks. When 20 percent talk about something, people begin to notice, and it feels like everyone is talking about it. When 30 percent of people are on the bus, talking about that idea, it feels like a movement. When you have 40 percent, you can win over the rest of the people easily. You can see that in this 2 minute video from Derek Sivers.

VIDEO

The poet said “This is not the age of information… the people are hungry. We help one another rise. We say one good word, and it can become bread for a thousand.”

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