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EB, Phoenix, Max, Eli, Isaac
July 12, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Our First UU Youth Group share their thoughts and perspectives on serious topics of concern as they bridge into adulthood.
Welcome
Prelude: “Kids Are All Rebels”
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
DEAR LIBERAL ALLIES
by TrunglesYou and I learned very different things in very different ways. If you didn’t live in experience, then step aside.
We, students of color, gay students, trans students, children of immigrants, and refugees, knew this stuff before our professors told us what to call it. We learned it from the bottom up.
You learned it another way. You received a set of key words and a list of definitions. Your learning was, in all likelihood: Here’s this word, this is what it means.
For you, it was xenophobia, a strong dislike or fear of people from other countries.
For us, it was xenophobia, the time that boy in my kindergarten class spat on me because I couldn’t speak English yet, or when I saw that clerk yell at my mom in the grocery store because her English wasn’t clear enough.
For you, it was racism, an unfair treatment of people who belonged to another race, violent behavior towards them.
For us, it was racism. That one time I saw that manager tell the sales girl to follow my dad around at Kohl’s, or that one time my neighbor’s kid got shot by the police and they tried to cover it up by convincing everyone he was in a gang because he was a mog, but we know he wasn’t. Or the time my dad told me I shouldn’t rollerblade to the library because I’m not white and it’s not safe for me.
For you, it was homophobia, a strong dislike or fear of homosexual people.
For us, it was homophobia, that time in sixth grade when Ryan shoved me against a glass door and banged my face into it while yelling slurs at me until the teacher stopped him. Or when my Catholic high school president told me that though he loved me as a child of God, he still believed I was sinful.
For you, it was classism, prejudice or discrimination based on social class.
For us, it was classism, the time when my best friend came over to hang out and her parents didn’t want her to come over again because she didn’t like our neighborhood. Or that one time when my friends had no idea what food stamps looked like and I was too embarrassed to explain what they were.
So while you were learning these academically… Framed phenomena were real problems. We were getting figurative name tags for the awful things we already knew.
Your weekly vocabulary list was, to us, just a hollow shadow of our lived experiences. When you step out of class, you get to say, oh, awesome, I’m learning how to be a good allie and a better human being. This will help me.
For us, it was more like, ah, so that’s what they’re calling it nowadays. When exactly did they say change was going to come for us?
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
LIFE IS POLITICAL
from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
by Timothy SnyderLife is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures or their absence counts very much. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.
Centering
Music for Meditation: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana, arr. by Andrea Turini) – Valeria Diaz, piano
Sermon
YOUTH GROUP SERVICE
Phoenix, Isaac, and EB
NOTE: This is a AI generated (edited) transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
Phoenix
Hello, my name is Phoenix, and today I want to talk to you about something important to me, AI.
Now, I know AI can mean a lot of things, but today when I say AI, I mean large language models like ChatGPT or Gemini. Over the past few years, we’ve all seen the rise of artificial intelligence. AI was supposed to make all our lives easier, but as time goes on and the technology develops, it feels more and more like a way for the rich to replace us. People are getting fired left and right because AI could do what they did a little cheaper.
I’m sure plenty of you use AI, whether in your personal life or professionally, and my intention with this is not to just yell at you for using it. I understand that it seems really useful. I’ve used it before, but I want everyone here to understand what it’s doing to us and to the world.
I think it’s important to start with the impact on the people that use AI. You may have heard of AI psychosis, and while it is not an official medical term, it is a serious problem. Conversational AI is like a toxic partner, feeding into your delusions and separating you from everyone and everything you love.
The way chatbots work is they are programmed to not disagree with you. If you tell them that the sky is green, then to it, in your conversations, the sky is green. As people, we need more connection. We need connection.
As the rise of the internet, we have been more and more separated. And now with AI, they are trying to replace all human contact. And it has worked with some people. Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist believes that AI is sentient and there have been many mass shootings and suicides linked to AI.
If you use chatbots, then I urge you to be careful and to try and find more connections with real people. AI may feel real, but it is just a math equation coded to keep you coming back. You all probably remember when everyone was telling people like me who were getting close to college to go into tech. Learn to code because that’s where all the money is. But recently, we have seen more and more layoffs at tech companies as they try to replace their human employees with AI.
When I started high school, AI wasn’t very good. It was just something fun you messed around with and then continued with your life. But as I got closer to graduation, I had to rethink what I wanted to do in life because so many jobs aren’t hiring people. Going into anything that has to do with computers will either be impossible or they will make you use AI.
And the last thing I wanted to talk to you all about is the environmental impact. You may have heard people talking about the amount of water and power it needs. One large data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day. And I know you may say, but what about the water cycle? It will all come back. And while this is true, it will not come back to the people who live near data centers.
Towns near data centers are in droughts because of all the water AI is using. data centers produce a lot of waste. They’re made with large amounts of mercury and lead, and these toxic metals are getting into people’s limited water supply. AI is currently using 5% of America’s power, which may not sound like much right now, but with all the data centers they keep trying to build and the fact that a lot of centers aren’t at max capacity, that number could skyrocket, making everyone else’s electricity bill higher.
If your job requires AI, I’m not asking you to stop and get fired. If you use AI personally, I’m not asking you to stop. I just want to make sure that everyone is aware of what AI takes so that you can make an informed decision when using it.
And please understand that it goes against all of our Unitarian Universalist values. We cannot have equity when our most vulnerable are getting poisoned so that the rich can make a few more dollars, and we cannot have justice if there are people on this planet that are above others.
Isaac
Morning. I am Isaac. I am an average height white man with long brown hair, and I’m feeling extra jittery because I accidentally got caffeine coffee.
Our UU tradition calls us to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We are taught that justice, equity, and compassion in human relations are not optional ideals. They are responsibilities to be held sacred.
Today, I will reflect on over a century of the history between Israel and Palestine. It is a history filled with tragedy, displacement, and suffering, and is often reduced to disingenuous narratives and geopolitical motivations.
In order to understand the present, we have to begin before modern-day states and borders.
For centuries, the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River was part of the Ottoman Empire. Jewish people, Muslim people, Christian people, and countless other groups of people lived throughout that region, most of whom lived in harmony for centuries.
In the late 19th century, two powerful movements emerged. One was modern Zionism, a movement seeking a Jewish homeland amid rising anti-Semitism in Europe. The other was the growth of Arab nationalism and local Palestinian identity among the Arab inhabitants of the region.
During World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and in 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, supporting the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, while also saying that the rights of non-Jewish communities should not be harmed.
This Palestinian land being sought after in the Balfour Declaration refers to the modern-day state of Israel. Despite the outcome, this was the theory. And despite the intentions, this was the first step in a whole host of crimes.
After the war, Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. Jewish immigration increased, particularly as they fled persecution in Europe. During the same time, many Palestinian Arabs feared their own displacement and loss of political control. This caused riots and a gradual rise in distrust throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Then came one of humanity’s greatest tragedies, the Holocaust. Six million Jewish people were killed by Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. Six million. Survivors eventually made their way out of death camps with no families to go home to and nowhere safe to live, leading to the demand for a Jewish state to gain powerful international support.
In 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted the plan despite having reservations, but Arab leaders rejected it, claiming that it unfairly divided the land and disregarded the wishes of the Arab majority.
In 1948, Israel declared its sovereignty and statehood. Neighboring Arab states reacted through invasion. Israel survived and expanded its borders beyond what was envisioned by the UN partition plan. Nearly three quarters of all Palestinians were forced to flee from their homes by Zionist militias in the new Israeli army between 1947 and 1949.
There were several dozen massacres during this time, slaughtering women, children, and elderly people. One of the largest massacres in the Palestinian town of Deir Yassin Over 100 people were killed by Israeli militia, led by future Israeli prime ministers. Between 1948 and 1950, there were over 400 Palestinian towns destroyed by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army. Over 4 million acres of Palestinian land was stolen by Israel during the establishment of the state in 1948. Palestinians remember this as the Nakba, or translated to catastrophe.
As of 2021, there are nearly 8.5 million Palestinian refugees, mostly located in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring Arab countries. At the same time, many Jewish communities across the Middle East face persecution and displacement, leading to hundreds of thousands of Jewish people to leave or be expelled from Arab countries over the following years. Two groups of people came out of this with deep trauma. The following decades contained many wars.
In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. That war transformed the conflict of these two groups, with millions of Palestinians captured under Israeli occupation. For Palestinians, the occupation became a defining reality, and for Israelis, the war is remembered as a dramatic victory that secured survival against hostile neighbors.
In the following years, Israeli settlements were established in the territories captured in 1967. This land grab undermined Palestinian self-determination and violated international law.
The United States would later become Israel’s closest international ally, with many Americans confusing modern-day Israel with the Kingdom of Israel. They are not the same.
American lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, have long provided diplomatic support, offensive and defensive weapons, and economic aid to Israel. American policy has intentionally committed war crimes and home theft against Palestinian people and supported the apartheid regime of Israel that has left Palestinians without rights or representation and contributed to an unequal status quo.
A new phase in the conflict began in 1987 with the first intifada, which translates to uprising or shaking off. Palestinians engaged in widespread protests, strikes, and plenty of other acts against Israeli rule, which drew global attention to Palestinian grievances.
There was hope for some in the 1990s. The Oslo Accords brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together in an effort to achieve peace. The agreements created the Palestinian Authority and established a framework for future negotiations. Many people believed that a lasting settlement was finally within reach.
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had signed the Oslo Accords, was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process. Trust between Israelis and Palestinians eroded from there with attacks from Hamas, continued settlement expansion, and stalled negotiations.
In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlements and military presence from Gaza, and in 2006, Hamas won legislative elections. And after some violent conflicts between Hamas and Fatah, Hamas took power in 2007. Israel and Egypt imposed restrictions on movement in and out of Gaza, citing security concerns. Palestinians and several international organizations pointed out these restrictions created severe humanitarian hardships, including the UN. Then the point where people around the world started to look and care.
October 7th, 2023. Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing civilians and taking hostages. Israel responded with a large-scale military campaign against the people of Gaza, with civilians accounting for 83% of all deaths, including over 20,000 children. There have been over 75,000 Palestinians confirmed dead since 2023 from direct attacks. Those are people that have been found and identified. That number doesn’t include deaths from starvation caused Israel’s blockade. That number doesn’t account for deaths due to a lack of medical care because of Israel’s blockade. That number doesn’t count all of the people buried under rubble in destroyed cities.
So, what does our faith ask of us in the face of such history? It asks us to reject indifference and embrace those that struggle and have been oppressed. It asks us to remember that history is not just a list of dates, treaties, and statistics. Rather, it is the lived experiences of human beings. It asks us to recognize that every statistic represents a real person. It asks us to engage.
Young people have always played a role in movements for justice. and peace they helped transform the struggle for civil rights in the united states challenged apartheid in south africa and advocated against wars like the Vietnam war all before it was popular.
To do so here’s a small piece of advice: listen to the kids when it comes to these things, they are nearly always the first ones to be on the right side of history.
Our responsibility is not to tell young people what conclusions they must reach our responsibility is to encourage them to learn deeply think critically, and act according to conscience. Study history, listen to multiple perspectives, support humanitarian efforts, engage in dialogue, participate in the democratic process, stand against all forms of dehumanization, learn how to dissent, and learn how to develop independent thoughts and actions.
EB
The more panic grows, the more uplifting the image of a man who refuses to bow to the terror.
– Philosopher, writer, and entomologist Ernst Junge.
I’ve been constantly surrounded by a community of people who are unwavering in their bravery and willingness to be that who doesn’t bow. But unfortunately, hatred, intolerance, Polarization and tribalism have all spread faster than hope and love and community.
I began to engage in political activism at a young age. Drawing protest signs became a core memory of my youth. And in these last years with rising reasons to resist the ever-restraining boots of corruption, I found it necessary to pick one of these reasons and rally behind it.
As a high schooler, I canvassed and planned. Even though I couldn’t vote, I tried my hardest to find my voice. The culmination of my work, thus far, was the January ice marches. In Minneapolis, our president’s Gestapo, to put it lightly, was besieging the city and taking people off the streets. I couldn’t stand for that. We rallied thousands of students across Austin, spearheaded by an 18-year-old candidate I know personally, myself, and another young member of this congregation.
I led the march at McCallum, just up the road. Hundreds of students marched loud and proud for the people of Minneapolis. I was so proud. As a member of the youth political movement, And it gave me hope that the next generation is willing to show up against the forces of a corrupt system.
This is hope. Seeing the younger generation do justice, the youth are the man who refuses to bow to the terror.
Bridging Ceremony
It is now time for our graduating youth to bridge into the young adult community here at First UU. I would like to invite anyone who identifies as a young or young-ish adult to come join me on stage right to welcome your new young adults. Today, there we go, there’s our young adults. See, we got young adults here. Today, we honor the youth among us. You who are stepping away and beyond and towards.
Today, we share in your journey. and encourage your discovery. We welcome your energy and we offer you a safe place to grow. Today, we celebrate your hopes and dreams. We applaud you for all you have been, for all you are now, and for all you will be. Today, you cross this bridge. We see you, we support you, and we love you. You are amazing.
I invite the congregation to please repeat after me.
We bless your newest adventure.
We love you always.
May your life unfold with joy.Amen and blessed be.
Extinguishing the Chalice
We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.
Benediction
OUR CALLING IN THE WORLD
– Rev. Dr. Rebekah SavageWe have come to the end of our service, but not our calling in the world. We close our time together with the humble reminder that justice and equity are our spiritual practices to embrace each day, every day. We are blessed to be the embodiment of what is possible when justice and equity ground us in all that we do. May we go forth with the light and warmth of our chalice in our hearts until we are together again.
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