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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
March 15, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
The ability to keep our attention focused on the present moment has been shown to benefit us emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Yet sometimes, doesn’t it feel like the past many present moments (years?) have been filled with drama, trauma, and a constant deluge of factors vying for our attention? How might we develop the spiritual resources and practices that will help us direct our attention toward that which centers us and brings us love and joy?
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
Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.
– Frederick Buechner
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
ATTENTION
– adrienne maree brownput your attention on suffering – which is constant and everywhere – and it is all you will see. joy will come, and laughter, but you will find it brief, possibly a distraction.
put your attention on joy, being connected and feeling whole, and you will find it everywhere, your heart will still break. you will know grief. but you will find it a reasonable cost for the random abundance of miracles, and the soft wild rhythms of love.
return to love as many times as you can.
Sermon
Lately, this image of the serenity prayer on a bad decoupage plaque like used to hang in peoples kitchens in the little East Texas town where I grew up, keeps coming involuntarily into my brain.
Remember that? The serenity prayer?
In that little town where I grew up, you had to say it like this:
Lawd,
Lawd was more dramatic than just saying, “god”.
“Lawd, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
You had to draw it out and get all serious voiced like that so people would be sure to notice how put out you were by how difficult life can be sometimes!
I don’t mean to make light of the sentiment of the prayer, which is most often credited to theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.
I think it’s beautiful, and I love the sentiment.
We do have to accept that there are things we cannot change.
Creating change does so often demand courage. And Lawd knows we can use some wisdom sometimes.
I just think we can oversimplify the prayer probably because acknowledging complexity is much harder.
Social justice advocates often cite the way activist and two time vice presidential nominee Angela Davis flipped it around to say,
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change.
I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
And I love that sentiment too – the way it warns us against escaping accountability through coddling an unearned sense of serenity.
AND, I think things still get even more complicated.
We sometimes don’t have any way to know whether we can change something or not, whether the outcome is within our control or not.
And there are times when our struggle for love and justice is more than worth it, whether or not having “the wisdom to know the difference” is even possible.
Sometimes, staying in the struggle for love and justice, even while acknowledging the uncertainty, is how we sustain our agency versus expending a lot of emotional and spiritual energy trying to maintain some illusion of control.
As our chalice lighting says, sometimes “our struggle becomes our salvation”.
So, here is Rev. Chris’ serenity prayer.
“Lawd, grant me the non-anxious presence to:
Work to change what clearly might be within my control.
Stop wasting spiritual time and energy on things that are clearly beyond my control.
And, when my deepest values are at stake, say to hell with clarity and struggle mightily for change anyway.”
Amen.
Now, let’s chat for a moment about that term “non-anxious presence”.
It comes out of something called “family systems theory”, which we don’t have time to get into in detail this morning.
Don’t get your phones out and start Googling it. Unitarians!
I’m happy to provide resources if you get with me later, and we will also be offering some religious education on it sometime in the near future.
For now, non-anxious presence refers to an ability to remain calm, emotionally steady, even in challenging situations.
It’s this way of being able to stay in the present moment, not because we never feel anxious, but through practices that help us regulate our anxiety, so that we are able to consciously choose our actions rather than allowing the anxiety to unconsciously drive our behavior.
And here’s the thing.
I think now more than ever, we need to be able to hold onto that non- anxious presence, that ability to be present in the here and now, in order to stay in that struggle for change – that struggle for love and justice even amidst all of the uncertainty and chaos and intentional cruelty we are experiencing.
Now, here is something we don’t discuss enough.
We have all experienced a lot of drama, trauma, and emotional overload over the past, oh, decade or so.
And all of this can lead to trauma, grief, and what is called “moral injury”, which happens when our most deeply held ethical values seem to be being contradicted or even violated.
And grief, moral injury, and trauma, even if it does not lead to full post- traumatic stress syndrome – these all can place us in this state of high-level, ongoing anxiousness, making it really hard to keep our attention in the present moment.
Now, I want to move over here to talk about this for a bit.
Now, of course sometimes acute post traumatic stress disorder or disabling grief that is ongoing require professional counseling support.
In addition to that in such circumstances though, and for the many more of us who may carry less acute trauma, the all of us who will experience grief, those of us currently afflicted by moral injury, for all of us, there are a number of practices that can help us move through these challenges and center ourselves in the current moment so that we can keep on working for the change that we dream about.
You probably will not be surprised to hear the minister say that individual spiritual practices and the things we do at church can help.
Praying, chanting, meditating, yoga, singing together, shared rituals and so much more can lift us up and reconnect us with a spirit of love and belonging.
And other grounding practices such as various forms of deep breathing exercises, arts or crafts, music, lamenting, walking, gardening, dance, any number of movement practices – anything that gets us in our bodies can help, because our bodies know how to process trauma and grief.
And simple things like getting good rest, eating well, exercising and working out can also nourish our souls.
I want to close by emphasizing how we must reclaim joy and the experience of beauty.
The irony is, things like grief can rob us of our ability to experience joy and beauty, yet it is joy and beauty that can help carry us through grieving.
Right after my spouse Wayne died, I found myself feeling like I was not allowed to experience joy. Like I would feel guilty if I did. “I’m grieving. I’m not supposed to feel joy.”
Then, one morning, I couldn’t take being in our house now alone anymore, so I made myself go out on a nature walk. Still absorbed in my grief, I almost missed the hummingbird that came flying right up to me and then hovered nearby next to a mountain laurel.
Wayne had loved hummingbirds and told me of a similar experience, so I did stop to pay attention.
I stood mesmerized and completely absorbed in its beauty.
I started crying because suddenly 1 was feeling a joy like I had never known somehow made possible by a grief like none I had never known.
Joy and beauty and the universal love that creates them can guide our way though things like grief, trauma, moral injury.
So I want to encourage you to identify ways through by focusing on joy and beauty.
I’m going to ask you a couple of questions that are deeply related to one another.
Please call out your answer to one or both of them if you are comfortable doing so.
What brings you joy and where do you find beauty in your world?
Listen to all of that my beloveds.
We can stay in the struggle for love and justice despite all the chaos and uncertainty and intentional cruelty.
We can let ourselves feel it all.
AND, we can center ourselves in the present moment to reclaim love, beauty, joy and justice for every single being on this sacred planet of ours.
Now that is truly a prayer for serenity.
Amen.
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
Touch the earth.
Listen to the wind.
Feel the movement and rhythms of your own muscles and
body.
Allow yourself to be surrounded by the beauty that is already
there, if you stop to notice it.
Cruelty and pain and chaos will come without our asking.
Joy, is ours to both embrace and create.
Love is ours to give and to receive freely.
And from this, new worlds are made possible.May the congregation say, “Amen”, and “blessed be”
Go in peace.
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