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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 14, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

In advance of a church storytelling event the first weekend in May, we will talk about the power of our stories. We will talk particularly about the stresses put on us by the stories told about people with our particular identities, women, LGBTQ, people of color, white men, Etc. How do those stories shape us and put pressure on our thinking?

Call to worship 

A HAT FULL OF SKY
Terry Pratchett

There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world. 

Meditation Reading

THE NAME OF THE WIND
Patrick Rothfuss

Chronicler frowned. “Is that the one where the king sells his crown to an orphan boy?” 

Bast nodded. “And the boy becomes a better king than the original. The goosegirl dresses like a countess and everyone is stunned by her grace and charm.” He hesitated, struggling to find the words he wanted. “You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” 

Chronicler relaxed a bit, sensing familiar ground. “That’s basic psychology. You dress a beggar in fine clothes, people treat him like a noble, and he lives up to their expectations.” 

“That’s only the smallest piece of it,” Bast said. “The truth is deeper than that. It’s…” Bast floundered for a moment. “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” 

Sermon

We talk a lot about story in this pulpit. How events happen, and then we tell stories about what happened, to ourselves and to others. People experience the same event and tell different stories to make sense of it. The stories shape how you respond to the event. If someone is rude, you wonder if you did something to them. Maybe they were in pain, maybe they were tired. I’ve told you about my friend Pat, who, when cut off in traffic, says “Bless her heart, I bet she just got out of the hospital.” That’s one possible explanation. It changes how you feel about what just happened. If a bad thing happened some people will think it’s bad luck. Others will think the God of their understanding is punishing them for something. If someone sees a toddler crying, they might think “that baby is tired,” Someone else might think the parent is doing something wrong, or not doing something they should do. Someone without kids might think “When I have children, they will never behave like that.” The Karma Fairy laughs. My daughter-in-law posted a photo of my granddaughter crying. “She’s crying because her tongue is wet and I won’t let her keep drying it off.” No one would have guessed that story. 

Today I want to talk about a different aspect of story this morning. Stories other people you grew up in a family with more than one kid, there may have been stories about each one of you. One is the quiet one, one’s the pretty one, one’s the smart one, one’s trouble. Family roles are assigned. Usually one kid is the hero kid, does everything right, gets good grades, doesn’t cause trouble. Sometimes one gets the “scapegoat” role, where, when something breaks its assumed to be their fault. When there is a fight, they are assumed to have started it. One kid sometimes is the family clown, where their humor diffuses tension, or distracts the rest of the family from something that might cause a fight. One kid sometimes has the “distractor” role, and they will sometimes develop a problem in order to give the parents something else to focus on besides their deteriorating relationship or financial situation. This kid’s problem is a semi-conscious try to pull the family together. If you were the hero kid, that story told about you that you never gave your parents a moments trouble, or that you were the smartest one, or the story that you were trouble – those stories can shape your life forever. We tend to re-create the roles we had in our families in our grown up families, in our chosen families, in our workplaces and in our church community. 

What about stories that are told in the broader culture about us and our people, our identity groups? Studies since 1995 are showing that those stories affect us. This is called stereotype threat, or identity threat, and the stories cause stress if you are aware of them. 

Girls are bad at math. Boys are bad at verbal skills. There are stereotypes about Black and Brown kids, sometimes borne out by statistics. There are stereotypes about Asians, sometimes borne out by statistics. Stereotypes about gay men and lesbians, stereotypes about older white men, about young brown women, angry black women …. What the psychologists found is that when you are aware of stereotypes about your group, you sometimes stress about being lumped in with the negatives about your group. You carry your whole group on your shoulders, or you are aware that you will be allowed fewer mistakes than someone else, or that you will not be given the benefit of the doubt. 

Studies find that this awareness, this worry, interferes with some of the executive functioning of your brain. Updating, a skill of the part of your memory that is available for immediate work, is diminished. Learning new things is harder, the ability to take risks is suppressed. If a female student is treated in a sexist way by a male experimenter, she tends to do less well on tasks. When Slack students are told to do a task, and stereotypes about African-Americans are highlighted, they tend to perform less well than Black students who didn’t hear the stereotypes mentioned. When, before an experiment, men are reminded that the stereotype is that men are not so good at verbal skills, they do more poorly on verbal tasks than men for whom this stereotype isn’t highlighted. 

In progressive circles, now, white men might be worrying about not talking or acting like “a typical white guy.” People of color might step on their expressions of anger and outrage. I’ve heard friends talk about not wanting to come across like “that angry Black woman.” 

POEM I WROTE TO MY BLACK AND BROWN SISTERS: 
by Rev. Kristen Harper

My beautiful black, brown, sister with your 
Nonconforming grace and rhythm radiating soul. 
You with the big deep brown eyes and piercingly fierce gaze. 
You with the long, short, curly, straight, locked crown 
You in all your regal baldness. 
I know what lies beneath that controlled voice, that diminished expression
I can see behind the veil of servant, of surrogate. 
I feel the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the slow death 
of shrinking, of trying to become small so other’s won’t be intimidated,
won’t be afraid. 

I know the depression of stuffing, pushing down the roar of righteousness 
the roar that claims our humanity, our value, our right to name the truth. I see your goddessesness, your divine love, 
the depth of your black, brown brilliance. 
I hope someday you will too. See the 
years of survival not as a test-but a testimony, 
to a stubborn love born from generations of strong black, brown sisters –
Mothers who refused to give up, grandmothers who passed down 
more than recipes of arroz con polio, tandoori or fried chicken. 
Sisters, many sisters and aunts who held one another up, reached out a hand, shook us when we needed to wake up. 
My beautiful black, brown sister with your 
doubt, and your brokenness, and your dusty knees …
You are loved. 

How do we counter this? The studies show that derogation works with some people, sometimes. It’s the old “consider the source” tactic. If you can think derogatory things about the person or people thinking bad things about you and your identity, you do better. Constructive behavior works also, where you just put your head down and do an amazing job. Some people try denying their identity group, or its importance to them. 

So what is the take away from all of this? It’s natural to be a bit dimmed, a bit daunted and slowed down when you are worried about the stereotypes about one of your identities. When you see black and brown kids not doing as well at school, consider that one of the factors is this identity threat, that they pick up all kinds of subliminal cues about how teachers, administrators, other kids, and society at large “stories” about them. 

Hearing and seeing positives about your group helps a lot. If you’re a Black woman in a STEM field, lifting up Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the women who were calculators for NASA, whose work helped the US land on the moon. If you’re a Latinx kid, knowing about Latino scientists, journalists, authors and warriors can help. 

I don’t know if history erases the accomplishments of women and marginalized people on purpose, but it has a tremendous effect. The recent photograph of a black hole was taken in large part through an algorithm created by Dr. Katie Bouman. It only took the internet a day or two to notice that her contribution was downplayed, that she was an unnamed grad student in some stories, and that the right wing corner or the net began claiming that a white man in the lab was the one who really wrote the algorithm. He shut that down quickly. That’s an ally. 

Hold in mind the proud things about your identity. Know the proud things about other identities. The stories are strong. Tell all the stories, dig them up, hold them in your hands like smooth stones, reminding yourself of your strength and power. Then go shining. 

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 7, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Using the music of Townes Van Zandt, combined with the April Soul Matters theme of Wholeness, we will talk about how we need one another in order to be whole. How can we care for one another? Is there a way to be loving and challenging at the same time? How do we reach out with compassion? Is compassion always the best approach to another person? How much are we supposed to take care of ourselves and how much do we take care of others?

Call to Worship

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see. You walk out at night and look up at the beautiful stars as they bedeck the heavens like slinging lanterns of eternity and you think you can see all. Oh, no. You can never see the law of gravitation that holds them there. When I speak of love I’m not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of love. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Reading

LITANY FOR PEACE (adapted)
Thich Nhat Hanh

“Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.
Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.
Let us be aware of the source of being,
common to us all and to all living things.
Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,
let us fill our hearts with our own compassion-
towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be
the cause of suffering to each other.
With humility, with awareness of the existence of life,
and of the suffering that are going on around us,
let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.”

Sermon

“Heart of Compassion” story

I wanted to use the music of Townes Van Zandt because I love his lyrics, and he’s a local man. Some of you probably knew him. Some have been sharing your stories about him this week. I don’t know him, though, just watched a documentary of his life, which was lovely and frustrating and sad to watch. “To live is to fly,” he wrote, “low and high.” He certainly did both. In the movie friends tell a story about him being at a party. I’m not sure I remember the details exactly, but they were on on the balcony of a place, pretty high off the ground. He sat on the balcony’s ledge, and then, he explained afterwards, he just wondered what it would feel like to fall, so he fell. Throwing himself at the experience of life. That looks like something he did over and over. It looks like he was one of those people who are both amazingly easy and hard to love. There is a story in our culture about genius, about artists, that the more brilliant they are, the more messed up they are. The picture of the writer banging away on the typewriter keys, a bottle of whiskey on the table, or the rock star barely about to stand up, trying to get to the gig… It’s almost as if our culture both loves and loves to punish artists. They get to ride with the muse, they get to live in a garret and stay up all night and be adored, and then their passion, their excesses, carry them swiftly toward their own destruction. If you live too long they make jokes about you, about how after the nuclear winter, there will just be cockroaches and Cher. They blame you for aging, for continuing to be passionate about making art long after you should have thrown it over for a more responsible job.

In the writings of my colleague James Ford, I came across this: He says “I found myself thinking of something Achaan Chah Subato, the great Theravandan meditation master once said about broken glasses. I have it framed and hanging on a wall in my office:

“One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?’ The master held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'”

When I read some of Townes Van Zandt’s poetry I see someone beating their wings like a moth against this truth. Everything and everyone is already broken. It takes the Sages years of humility and meditation to come to a place where they can look this truth fully in its face and find the joy in it, in being absolutely present in every moment with the beauty that is also there. Can you enjoy a friendship if there is always the lurking danger of one of you doing something that will end it? Can you look back at a marriage that ended and see that it was good for a while? Can you love your children knowing all of the dangers that are around and within them? Most of us can block out the knowledge that security is an illusion, that pain and joy intertwine in life, that when you love, you open yourself up to loss. Poets and artists don’t have that ability. They might try to forget what they see using drugs or alcohol, but when the daylight comes they see it all over again, the bright sharp truth that can blind you with its urgent light and send you spinning. 

In the song “Rake,” Townes Van Zandt writes:

You look at me now, and don’t think I don’t know
What all your eyes are a sayin’
Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies
They’re just tricks that his brains been a playin’? 
A lover of women he can’t hardly stand
He trembles he’s bent and he’s broken
I’ve fallen it’s true but I say unto you
Hold your tongues until after I’ve spoken

I was takin’ my pride in the pleasures I’d known
I laughed and thought I’d be forgiven
But my laughter turned ’round eyes blazing and
Said my friend, we’re holdin’ a wedding
I buried my face but it spoke once again
The night to the day we’re a bindin’
And now the dark air is like fire on my skin
And even the moonlight is blinding

Sooner or later what you know in the day stays with you at night, and what you know and do in the night comes all into your day until you can’t pretend any more that they’re separate. What you know when you are conscious and awake stays with you even when you are in your chosen oblivion. Once you see the fragility of things you can’t unsee it. You have to love if you can, knowing that what you love can go away. And for a poet, you have to keep writing about it.

What is the proper response to this painful realization? Is it to say “Gracious, that’s depressing, let’s not talk about it?” That is what most of us tend to do. As we grow in our spirit, though, we can learn that the best response to the pain, the joy, and the impermanence of this life is to embrace it with a wild courage. To respond to the pain with compassion. For others and for ourselves.

The British writer Warsan Shire writes:

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered 
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.” 

I am a happy person by nature, even though I worked as a therapist for many years and held oceans of pain in my ears, my eyes and my heart. I want to hold an atlas in my hand, acknowledge what Dr. Shire saw, and add “Where is beauty and joy? Everywhere. Everywhere.”

In Townes Van Zandt’s song “If I needed you” both are there.

If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well the night’s forlorn and the morning’s born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you’ll miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in two

How do we deal with a world of such impermanence? By being present to each moment, not wishing it away or clutching it to us. As the English poet Blake said 

“he who binds to himself a joy, doth the winged life destroy. But who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity’s sunrise.” 

Being present to each moment, and having compassion for all beings. Now, this part feels wearying to me. All beings, really? Most of us survive by blocking out some of the horrors of the world, or acknowledging them but not dwelling on them. I remember the Buddha lived in a world without TV, much less the 24 hour news cycle. I take him to mean compassion for everyone you meet in your day. Still that’s wearying. Some people are hard to keep feeling compassion for, as their problems seem to be self-inflicted and they don’t seem to learn. An addicted friend is hard to stay compassionate towards. 

Then I remember. Oh, compassion doesn’t mean you have to fix it. You just feel for them in their struggle, if there’s no more to do for them. The Yogic teaching is helpful here. When you are acting with compassion toward someone for whom your compassion is not doing any good, and you are emptying yourself for someone who lets whatever you pour into them leak out, or when someone is just playing you, that is called “idiot compassion.” In this world things change fast. We try to stay present to the moment we’re in, compassionate to the people we’re with, and to ourselves. We learn as we go. 

As Townes wrote:

To live is to fly
Low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes

Hardly anyone in this life is healthy enough or wealthy enough not to need other people. Some of us have strong ideas about the people we need, but we’re often wrong. Teachers, another learning experience. Compassion fatigue. Not for any of you all, but for the world. “Where does it hurt?” Everywhere.

Yes. And. There is joy and pleasure everywhere too. I’ve needed a lot of help in my life. I’ve given a lot of help in my life. I have to say I like giving it more.

IF I NEEDED YOU
Townes Van Zandt

If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well the night’s forlorn and the morning’s born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you’ll miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in two
If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain
Baby’s with me now since I showed her how
To lay her lilly hand in mine
Luke and Lil agree she’s a sight to see
A treasure for the poor to find
If I needed you would you come to me
Would you come to me for to ease my pain
If you needed me I would come to you
I would swim the seas for to ease your pain

We take care of each other to a certain extent, but not over certain boundaries. American Pema Chodron describes a conversation she had with an old man who was living on the streets for over four years. No one looks at him or talks to him. Sometimes someone gives him a little money, but no one really looks at him. No one asks how he is. It’s very lonely for him. People respond from discomfort, fear, anger, or judgment. According to Chodron, 

“Only in an open space where we’re not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.”

This openness is sometimes called emptiness in Buddhism. It means not shutting down or holding on too tightly When Things Fall Apart, 

I found myself thinking of something Achaan Chah Subato, the great Theravandan meditation master once said about broken glasses. I have it framed and hanging on a wall in my office:

“One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?’ The master held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'”

The false view of being an artist meaning you have to be tortured and addicted.

RAKE
Townes Van Zandt

You look at me now, and don’t think I don’t know
What all your eyes are a sayin’
Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies
They’re just tricks that his brains been a playin’? 
A lover of women he can’t hardly stand
He trembles he’s bent and he’s broken
I’ve fallen it’s true but I say unto you
Hold your tongues until after I’ve spoken

I was takin’ my pride in the pleasures I’d known
I laughed and thought I’d be forgiven
But my laughter turned ’round eyes blazing and
Said my friend, we’re holdin’ a wedding
I buried my face but it spoke once again
The night to the day we’re a bindin’
And now the dark air is like fire on my skin
And even the moonlight is blinding

FLYIN SHOES
Townes Van Zandt

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of these same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
‘fore I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

Spring only sighed
Summer had to be satisfied
Fall is a feelin’ that I just can’t lose.
I’d like to stay
Maybe watch a winter day
Turn the green water
To white and blue
Flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

The mountain moon
Forever sets too soon
Bein’ alone is all the hills can do
Alone and then
Her silver sails again
And they will follow
In their flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
They will follow in their
Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of the same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

Using the children’s book Zen Ties, by Jon J Muth, we will tell the story of the summer when Koo, a young panda bear, came to visit his Uncle Stillwater. Uncle Stillwater encourages the neighborhood kids to help an elderly neighbor in need, and friendships blossom. All ages service.

Call to Worship
Dalai Lama

This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.

Reading
– Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style

We are all so deeply interconnected we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for anyone and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessing of the universe.

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 17, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The Celts developed a Christianity that was intricately intertwined with the earth based faith of the land. Friendlier toward the body, toward women, and celebrating good beer, the Celts’ version of Christianity might be a delightful and refreshing insight into other possibilities than those some of us were raised with.

Call to Worship
M Scott Mumaday

“To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil’s Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space.”

Reading
– Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

“Later, when I stood in front of an alter waving incense, I would remember standing in front of the bar at Dante’s waving cigarette smoke out of my face, and the exact same feeling of tenderness would wash over me, because the people in both places were so much alike. We were all seeking company, meaning, solace, self-forgetfulness. Whether we found those things or not, it was the seeking that led us to find each other in the cloud even when we had nothing else in common. Sometimes I wondered if it even mattered if our communion cups were filled with consecrated wine or draft beer, as long as we bent over them long enough to recognize each other as kin.” 

Sermon

I arise today, through
The strength of heaven,
The light of the sun,
The radiance of the moon,
The splendor of fire,
The speed of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of the sea,
The stability of the earth,
The firmness of rock.
I arise today, through
God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptation of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and near.

St. Patrick is said to have brought Christianity to Ireland, but it was already there when he got there. There was also a robust paganism. The word “pagan” just means “the religion of the countryside.” People traveled a lot in those days too, and the Celtic peoples were, at one time, living in northern Europe and France, and got driven up into England, Scotland and Wales by the encroachment of the Roman Empire. In the year 313, as you all know, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, By the fifth century, though, the empire was falling apart, and people in the far-from-Rome fringes of the empire were feeling freer to return to their pagan practices.

The man we know as St. Patrick was born to Roman parents who were probably functionaries for the Emperor in England. When he was 16, the story goes, he was kidnapped from his village by Irish invaders. Other people say he may have gone to Ireland himself because he didn’t want to become a tax collector like his father. His story is that he was enslaved as a shepherd for a tribal chieftan, starved and naked. He said he escaped with the help of God, traveled back to England, and became a priest. In middle age he requested to go back to Ireland, and began preaching Christianity.

Most of the people in Ireland were Celts, part of a vast group of tribes who had swept westward from Turkey (some say from India) through central Europe and into Gaul. The Romans called the Celts “Galli, and the Greeks called them “Keltoi.” Some say these were the Galatians to whom St Paul’s letter to the Galatians was written. They were fierce warriors whose men and women both fought in battle, naked, with their hair bleached with lime and spiked, sometimes with their bodies painted blue. Their religion was one of warrior-heroes, who were gods and human, both at the same time and in-between. When you died you went under the hills with the fairy-folk, who were able to pass between the world of the spirits and the human world. The Celtic gods were not particularly loving or kind, they were tricky and mean. The Roman historians claimed the Celts practiced human sacrifice. Other sources say that was propaganda. We do know they liked to cut off their enemies’ heads in battle, after which they would take the head home to its niche in the dining hall and on special occasions the heads were thought to have the power of speech. There were spirits in the rocks and trees, spirits in wells and springs, in animals and in the ocean. 

Remember, the divinities were tricky and a bit capricious, so the spirits too, needed appeasing. The ones who were experts in this were the Druids. The Druids were a learned group of people in whose care was the oral tradition and knowledge of each tribe and clan. They frowned on writing, some say, but others say their writing was just secret. Tales of heroes were memorized and sung by the bard-druids, who were said to have the power of healing, killing in their poetry. The Bards would watch the court and write songs about the royals. They would observe battles from afar and write songs and poems about the bravery of their side. The Druids spoke in code and riddles, and took great delight in confusing and confounding rivals in riddle “slams.” In one old story, one Druid so overwhelmed and amazed his competitor that the loser just dropped dead.

It was into this arena that Patrick came. Familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick chose not to try to eradicate native Irish beliefs. Instead, he would incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity. He used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire. Holy wells were honored, and the churches were built next to them or on top of them. He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish.

The Druids fought him, but the people took to his Christianity easily. They were primed for the message. They were used to all the paradoxes in Christianity. They were used to warriors who were divine and human, so they didn’t have a problem grasping that about Jesus. They were used to the idea of living forever, so they grasped that easily. They were used to the triple-faced goddess, the hag, the mother, and the maiden, so the trinity of father, son and Holy Spirit was not a new one. The reason we have three-leafed clovers on St. Patrick’s Day is that he used the three-leafed clover to explain the trinity to the people. Many of the Druids became the first priests.

The reason I wanted to talk about Celtic Christianity today is that it is a different kind of Christianity from the Roman version that so influences even Protestant churches today. The world-denying, flesh-is-evil, women are awful, sexuality is sin Christianity that took over for such a long time came from St. Augustine of Hippo. He was an African man whose mom was Christian, but he didn’t want any part of it. He had a mistress for 15 years who bore him a son, but then he got converted. His sexuality gave him the most trouble in his desire to become a spiritual person, he felt, so he became extremely anti-sexual. Anti-woman. He talked a lot about “concupiscience” the way that Original Sin is passed into the Human race. It seems the more lust one feels at the time of conceiving a child, the more Original Sin. the child has. So the best thing to do is not feel much passion at any time. That way you rid the human race of original sin. The Roman way took over Ireland eventually, but for a while the religion was world-embracing. Women were leaders in the faith, dancing and good beer was celebrated in ritual and song.

How did they escape that twistedness for a few centuries? Bad manners. A different Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the pagan Anlgo-Saxons, and he was installed as Archbishop of Canturbury. The Celtic bishops traveled to see him , first asking a wise hermit if they should follow him. “If he is of God, follow him,” the wise man said. “How will we know?” “If he rises courteously to greet you, then he is of God. If he is rude and proud, he is not. Augustine did not rise, insisted the Celts change their customs to concur with those of Rome, and lost the attention of the Celts that way. 

So the Celtic Christians kept a love of creation, an acceptance of sexuality, and a respect for women unlike their Continental brothers and sisters in the church. Creation had a soul. Now some Christians are coming back to this in the church. Matthew Fox and his Creation Spirituality, Teilhard de Chardin saying “Every atom has consciousness” , Martin Buber saying we should have an “I- Thou” relationship with all of creation rather than an “I- it” relationship. There are movements within contemporary liberal Christianity that echo back to Celtic earth-loving green Christianity. Maybe the Christians and the pagans can sit down together after all and drink meade and ale in the halls of the believers in the summerland.

The Abess Brigid’s Grace 

I should like a great lake of ale, 
For the King of kings, 
I should like a table of the choicest food 
For the family of heaven. 
Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith, 
And the food be forgiving love. 

I should welcome the poor to my feast, 
For they are God’s children, 
I should welcome the sick to my feast, 
For they are God’s joy. 
Let the poor sit with Jesus at the highest place,’ 
And the sick dance with the angels. 

God bless the poor, 
God bless the sick 
And bless our human race. 
God bless our food 
God bless our drink, 
All homes O God, embrace. 

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

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

James Baldwin said “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” On this Sunday we will be lifting up one chapter of our Unitarian Universalist history, the black empowerment controversy of 1969. What can we learn from these ancestors, if we can call them that when many of them are still lively and very much with us? What is the 6th end of this congregation? What is the 8th principle of Unitarian universalism? The Promise and the Practice is hopeful lifting up of our commitment to live into a new chapter in the story of our congregation and our UU faith.

Call to Worship 
Lao Tze

If there is to be peace in the world, There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart.

Reading

THE ENDS OF FIRST UU 

1. We live our unitarian universalist faith and values, teach them to our children, and act on them in the world. 

2. We support and challenge one another in worship, spiritual growth and lifelong learning to practice a rich spiritual life. 

3. We engage with one another to care for the earth and the interdependent web. 

4. We care for one another in intergenerational community and connect in fun and fellowship. 

5. We embody the principles of unitarian universalism and invite people of goodwill to find a spiritual home with us. 

6. We partner with other organizations and faith communities to dismantle a culture of white supremacy and other systems of oppression, within ourselves, within our church community, and beyond our walls. 

7. We provide leadership to and collaborate with the greater unitarian universalist community to expand the reach of our movement. 

8. We are generous with time, talent, and treasure to realize our mission. 

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

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

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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 17, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Music can change the way your brain behaves, it can change moods, it can bring people together, Inspire and comfort us. Tyrants often fear the songwriters more than the rebel soldiers, as songs have toppled unjust regimes.

Call to Worship
-By Roberto Juarroz

The bell is full of wind 
though it does not ring. 
The bird is full of flight though it is still. 
The sky is full of clouds though it is alone. 
The world is full of voice 
though no one speaks it.
Everything is full of fleeing 
though there are no roads. 

Everything is fleeing 
toward its presence. 

Reading

WHERE EVERYTHING IS MUSIC
-By Rumi

Don’t worry about saving these songs! 
And if one of our instruments breaks, 
it doesn’t matter. 
We have fallen into the place 
where everything is music. 
The strumming and the flute notes 
rise into the atmosphere, 
and even if the whole world’s harp 
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing. 
So the candle flickers and goes out. 
We have a piece of flint, and a-spark:
This singing art is sea foam. 
The graceful movements come from a pearl 
somewhere on the ocean floor. 
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge 
of driftwood along the beach, wanting! 
They derive 
from a slow and powerful root 
that we can’t see. 
Stop the words now. 
Open the window in the centre of your chest, 
and let the spirits fly in and out. 

Sermon

Have you ever looked at your house, thought “This place needs cleaning!” and put on your go-to house-cleaning music? It’s upbeat, it gets you in the mood to move around and get some things done. Or you go to work out and feel sluggish, but then you turn on your music and you feel strong, ready and willing to do what needs to be done? Music changes our mood. It can change our consciousness too. Some rhythms entrance us, change our brain waves, even our heart beats. Cultures around the world have ancient traditions of drumming, dancing and chanting for healing and guidance. 

When we are inside our mothers’ bodies, we hear the rhythm of her heart beat, the swoosh of her blood through the uterine artery. We can hear voices through the uterine wall, voices we can recognize when we get out into the air. We respond to music before we are born. Some music will set a baby kicking, some will soothe.

Mickey Hart, who was the drummer for the Grateful Dead, has become more and more involved in studying the relationship between drumming in a group and a return to well-being. He has funded drum therapy for the child soldiers in Sierra Leone, to return them to wholeness after their drugged killing sprees. Drum circles for at-risk kids in the U.S. and for Alzheimer’s patients and other elderly folks seem to have a good effect. Here is some of what he said in his testimony before the US Senate on the issue:

“What is true for our own bodies is true almost everywhere we look. We are embedded within a rhythmical universe. Everywhere we see rhythm, patterns moving through time. It is there in the cycles of the seasons, in the migration of the birds and animals, in the fruiting and withering of plants, and in the birth, maturation and death of ourselves. Rhythm is at the very center of our lives. By acknowledging this fact and acting on it, our potential for preventing illness and maintaining mental, physical and spiritual well-being is far greater.

People who work in music therapy know that music stays with a person even after they have lost language. Stroke patients who have trouble speaking can often sing with more ease than they speak. People with dementia can remember the words to songs that are important to them, or they light up when they hear music from the time in their lives when they were young. One patient in the documentary The Music Instinct said, (with a strong Brooklyn accent) “Once you get it in your head it stays there.”

Music literally touches us. It makes rhythmic waves in the air that move our eardrums. We don’t only hear through ear drums, but through our bones. When we speak to another person our sound touches them inside their ear. Our words touch their bones. It behooves us to remember this as we speak to one another. One physicist in the movie talked about the tiny string in the center of all particles of matter that can vibrate. Is there a vibration at the heart of all matter?

A baby is born with a brain that grows to understand the music of their part of the world. Some music has harmonies, and those are important, so we hear notes which go together to our ear, Some Chinese and Indian classical music doesn’t rely as much on harmony as on more linear melodies that use many more notes than Western music uses, quarter tones that my ear would not be able to name. When I use a quarter tone, it’s because I didn’t quite hit the note I was going for. Rhythms are much more complex in Indian and African music. African music can use a complex layering of rhythms that don’t necessarily fit the way I was raised to listen for rhythm. Indian rhythm makes all kinds of sense to me because my mother grew up in India and was a fan of the table, and she played that music for us. Our culture is arrogant in ways that we are blind to. For example, in college, in the music department, you are going to likely be studying western music. If you want to study Latin, African, Indian, Chinese music, you are suddenly in the ethnomusicology department. That’s a strange separation, as music is music.

I’m sure as soon as people realize that’s kind of racist they will change right away. 

Scientists are studying how the brain is laid out for music, with the cilia in your ears sending electrical impulses to a place on the cortex that’s like a keyboard. Other place in the brain receive the impulses for rhythm, other places for timbre, like is this note a horn or a voice, yet other places for volume and tempo. When they use magnetic resonance imagery, the whole brain lights up when the person is listening to music.. For people with musical training, other places light up too, the places where the hearer is analyzing the music or thinking how they would write out the parts they are hearing. Kids with musical training process not only music better, but language as well. Language and music, they think, are different functions, but with some overlap. They say 75 percent of communication is non verbal. We have all been in discussions where the words “It wasn’t what you said, it was your tone” were spoken. Many languages and dialects are tonal. In the South, language is tonal. You can tell how women at a party feel about each other by the swoop of the call “HEY!” The higher it goes, the less they like each other. You can tell by how someone says “yes” whether it means yes or no. And you can tell, if you have attuned ears, exactly where in the wide range of meanings that “bless your heart” lies.

Now, let’s talk about the breath. The word for “breath” and the word for “Spirit” in the Hebrew language are the same: “ruach.” The breath, the spirit, moves into and out of us, that same breath that circulates through the leaves of the trees and the lungs of the badgers and skunks, it’s something we share. The next most basic element of singing together is the breath being drawn in, given a sound and a shape, and coming out of our bodies. It’s transformation, shape-shifting, magic.

First let’s breathe with our mouths open. If you can be comfortable, please now open them as wide as you can. Now sigh. Again. Now we are going to make a sound with our sigh. Now let’s stop the sigh on a note. Don’t worry about it being pretty. That’s singing! Even if you just do that, it’s energizing. 

Music is magic in that it affects more than one brain at a time. You’ve been at Austin City Limits or South by Southwest where there is a field of people moving and singing together. You are having a shared experience. You see other people’s feelings and you imagine that you all are feeling together. Soldiers marching have a rhythm, and sing marching songs, which entrain their brain waves and knit them together as one body. Protesters sing protest songs, and the power of the music can strengthen them. I hope you all know some stories from the Children’s March in 1963, where organizers asked teenagers and even children to be very brave, to be trained in the tactics of non-violence, and march together for Civil Rights. On May 3, the children walked out of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, in groups singing “Freedom…” Bull Connor and his men were out there ready to arrest them and take them to jail. A thousand children between 14 and 17 were arrested that day, and more the next day. Connor turned fire hoses on the children, who sat down and hunched their backs and sang “Freedom….” In South Africa, protesters against Apartheid danced the Toyi Toyi and sang, raising and expressing power, strength and a common bond.

For UUs, as a community, singing in a group is a non-verbal reminder that, even though we are individuals, we are also members of a community and we all choose to come together to do something in concert, to act or think or feel something together that is a needed addition to those things we feel on our own. Look around the room. All of these people each chose this morning to come be here to be with you and me, to see what happens, to feel what happens, to find something, to experience a connection with mind, with body, with spirit. We have our differences, and they matter, and we have commonalities, which also matter. We wrestle with justice, we take our mission seriously, though it’s difficult and demands discomfort and resilience. And we can sing together. And listen together. And our bones can vibrate together. And that can make us strong.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
February 10, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Wynton Marsalis, in his book “To A Young Jazz Musician: Letters From The Road”, talks about the philosophy of the Blues, how it both expressed and healed the lives of black people as they lived in a society which was structured to marginalize them. How do we learn from the Blues to express suffering, to face it, and to build and celebrate resilience?

Reading

THE STREET
by Ann Petry

(About Billie Holiday) Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important. That made it tell a story that wasn’t in the words. A story of dispair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart, that they had always known because they learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died.

Sermon

Ok, what is a white woman doing talking about the blues? That’s my identity, and I put it out there right here at the beginning. I’m not a Blues expert, but I love listening to the blues, and I wanted to learn from the Blues and talk to you about what I’m learning.

It’s a cliche that ‘all blues starts “woke up this morning.” ‘ this meant more than ‘I opened my eyes in bed as the sun came up.’ Here is what the singers and the listeners, at least at the beginning of the Blues in the South, knew was the meaning of the words:

“I woke up this morning knowing that in half an hour I’ll be pushing a massive plow behind a stubborn mule or bending over to hoe weeds, and I’ll be doing that until it’s too dark to see. And tomorrow and the next day and the next day, I’ll do it again, until, most likely, I work until I die, broke, just like my parents and grandparents. But right now I’m dancing.”

The Blues talk about real life. They tell the truth, even if in coded language, and the expression is true. If, as Keats says, truth is beauty, then the Blues are beautiful. The sadness is beautiful when it’s true. 

Ralph Ellison said that ‘the blues is an impulse to keep painful details and episodes of brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain.’

The blues are the voice of an oppressed and alienated people. The blues has always provided a unique way to ‘find one’s voice’ and to attest to the hardships of life in a way that draws others in rather than turning them away . Your friend might say to you “My Baby cheated on me. It has changed the way I feel about them. My love has been diminished, and I wonder whether I should break up with them, because if I do, I won’t have anyone.”

OR your friend could sing The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sorry someday
The thrill is gone
It’s gone away from me
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away from me
Although, I’ll still live on
But so lonely I’ll be
The thrill is gone

– BB King

The music can capture the pain of life, and the massive scale of exposure to painful trauma, loss, and adversity associated with enduring the humiliation and brutality of slavery and its transition to sharecropping. After slavery came the way its legacy was built into the culture, with Jim Crow laws, enforced through lynchings beatings and the KKK’s terrorism. Extreme poverty and harsh lives on the streets, and frequent arrest, incarceration, and the experience of prison road gangs, compounded by devastating and uprooting natural disasters (including droughts, floods, and hurricanes) perpetuated the pain.

Its musical expression followed the massive displacement of large populations from the plantations of the South to Northern cities such as Chicago, and later incorporated the experience of black soldiers returning after World War II and the Vietnam War. In this way, the blues served to hold and document memories, create a sense of community, and provide a platform to share their visceral impact with others.

Research done at Mt Sinai Hospital has shown that trauma makes changes in DNA, and this trauma, the PTSD, can be passed on through subsequent generations. These genetic changes can cause depression, differences in ways of regulating emotions, being wired to see threat and tragedy. This is what our government has set in motion by separating children from their parents on the border. The very DNA has been affected, and brains were re-wired.

The blues to create a shared narrative, a story that the system of white culture constantly tries to erase. You hear people say “We’re a nation of immigrants,” and they are lovely people, but they “forget” that 12 million African teachers, mothers, fathers, children, medicine people, farmers and merchants were captured and dragged to the Americas in chains.

About 350,000 were brought to the 13 colonies, and the rest were sold to the sugar plantations in the Carribean and Brazil. You hear politicians even today say “America was built on freedom and enterprise,” erasing the fact that the labor of enslaved men and women was a big engine of the American economy. There was even an article in Forbes Magazine a couple of years ago laying all of this out. To have the story of your people ignored and erased makes you feel crazy and angry, and the retelling of these stories can strengthen solidarity among the people, reminding them that they are being affected by these traumas, and that a lot of what happens has roots in the history that the culture around them is working hard on forgetting.

There are ongoing arguments about whether people who don’t live their lives as Black Americans can authentically sing the blues. The blues have a form, so anyone can technically play. 4/4 time, 12 measures, a blues scale. They are also an expression, though, of trauma and pain. Almost all people have trauma and pain, some say, and you express that through the blues.

“I am not maintaining that only African-Americans should be allowed to perform the blues. The point is only that blues authenticity depends upon group membership. While cultural outsiders can sing the blues, it should be understood that what is being sung in these cases is a variant of a cultural expression derived from a very different kind of experience”.

– Philip Jenkins

I was doing some learning about this last week. In my southern culture, the way we deal with bad things happening is that we ignore it or we refer to it in a vague way. And we move on. Well, there is a big lump under the rug, but we step over it. Sometimes we trip over it. “What’s wrong with Aunt Clara?” Well, she married a Catholic.” Whispered. I heard a whisper that one of my cousins had cancer, but then, when I asked about it, I got just vagueness. I’ve done this myself here, because I got here after the church had a big trauma. They had dismissed the minister, who was a controversial figure from the beginning. (I’m nervous talking about this because there are still folks here whose feelings about that time run high.) Anyway, no one was really talking about it when I got here. Being a family therapist by training, I knew talking about it needed to happen. I started calling it “The Troubles.”

This week, though, I had a couple of conversations about restorative justice, where, when a mistake happens, where damage is done, the thing that caused the damage needs to be named. You may have heard that a year ago we invited a man named Fidel to come do a program about the Water Protectors. He claimed he would bring some Native friends to do a ceremony. We did our due diligence, we checked his references, his social media, all good. Then he came, and brought an insulting and shallow program that lasted too long, and instead of Native friends to lead us through a ritual, he had a white lady who sang what sounded like fake Native songs. When some of our guests from the Indigenous community spoke up, toward the end of the thing, Fidel treated them dismissively. Harm was done to the Indigenous community and to the relationship between this congregation and the Indigenous community in Austin.

“Say the words,” the church member said to me. I told her I would think about that, but it was hard to figure out what she meant. I asked Jules what she thought that meant. She said “saying the words, naming the thing that did damage, is a way of letting everyone in the conversation know that you haven’t forgotten what happened. It lets people trust that you aren’t trying to sweep something under the rug. It is a way of bringing your history with you into conversations with people who may not be “over it” yet, who may not be ready or able to “move on.”

The Blues are about saying the words, repeating the words because repeated telling is how people process trauma. You shout and cry, confess and complain, all to a party dancing beat. You can dance and grieve, shout out your pain, all at the same time, if you want. The shouting comes from the field shouts, back and forth, singing in coded language while doing the back breaking work of hoeing or picking cotton. Talking about a mean woman taking all your money, when you really mean the boss man who is mean and takes all your money. The Blues scale has flatted notes and minor notes which express sadness, and bent notes, quarter tones, which don’t appear in Western classical music, but are all over classical African, Middle Eastern, and Asian music. The note which is not quite the note, and then resolves into what our ear was expecting, creates a tension and then a release of the tension that is part of the healing.

Saying the words, repeating the words, creating tension then relieving tension, all to a dance beat, within a structure that frees you to create within it, those are ways of healing trauma.

People from many cultures can learn from the Blues, and I think sitting at the feet of these artists, this music, can teach us. In the culture in which I was raised, it is shameful to struggle, shameful to be traumatized. We try not to speak of it, or we speak of it in whispers. Speaking your trauma in this midst of a positive life? My people don’t know how to do that.

Speak of the trauma. Speak it as many times as you need to. Put it into a structure that helps contain the sorrow, and tell your truth about it. If you can put it to a beat that lets you know you can be sorrowful and dance at the same time, that is amazing. The healing doesn’t mean the history goes away. It means you have a group of people who can listen to what happened and dance with you because you share the suffering.

What history do we in this church, and as members of the UU denomination, need to speak about and bring with us? How has the Unitarian movement and the Universalist movement attracted and then driven away so many among us who are black and brown over the past 100 years. The mix is a lot whiter now than it was years ago, and there are reasons for that. We have some work to do “Saying the words.”

“Living is a positive experience. That’s what the blues teaches you. That’s why it continues to exist. And that’s why it’s in so much music. Yeah, all of this tragic stuff happened to you, but you’re still here. And you can still express being here with style. Like laughing to keep from crying. And you keep dancing, man….

– Wynton Marsalis

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

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